This is the point from which I could never return;
And if I back down now then forever I burn;
This is the point from which I could never retreat;
Cause If I turn back now there can never be peace;
This is the point from which I will die and succeed;
Living the struggle, I know I'm alive when I bleed;
From now on it can never be the same as before;
Cause the place I'm from doesn't exist anymore
[Immortal Technique]
By Bradley Burston Mon., July 06, 2009 Courtesy of Haaretz NewsPaper
JAFFA - Why was this Fourth of July different from all other independence days?
What the world has seen over the past 12 months is a re-definition of patriotism. It derives from a central lesson of the Obama campaign, the Obama victory, and, so far, of the Obama presidency: In true love of country, there is no room for hatred.
Perhaps this is what is so crushing, so profoundly depressing, about the people who have of late taken to redefining patriotism in Israel.
There is no little irony in the circumstance that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu chose Palestinian recognition of Israel as "the national state of the Jewish People" as a central tool in efforts to stave off peace talks and deflect demands for a settlement freeze.
Never, thanks to his government, has the concept of a Jewish state looked worse.
The undercurrent of racism in this year's election campaign was a clear warning. Overtly anti-Israeli Arab legislation and bills aimed at curbing Arab freedom of expression have soiled the concept of a Jewish state to a nadir that Israel's worst, most energetic enemies have never managed to approach.
The outpouring of hatred has since become an equal-opportunity sewer. Radical settlers and immigrants from the former Soviet Union have voiced unabashed, despicable racist attitudes toward a black president of the United States.
Inevitably, fellow Jews in Israel have become targets of the hatred as well. In Jerusalem, Jews who presume to be the among the most devout of all adherents to Judaism, think nothing of attacking fellow Jews on the Sabbath with cinder blocks and glass bottles, all in protest over the opening of a parking lot.
Rabbis in the West Bank give Israel's enemies new ammunition week to week, by condoning killings of Palestinians.
And, in a reference to Israeli Arabs, ultra-Orthodox Housing Minister Ariel Atias this month chose the Bar Association, of all venues, to declare that he saw it as "a national duty to prevent the spread of a population that, to say the least, does not love the state of Israel." He went on to explicitly argue for segregation, not only between Jews and Arabs, but between ultra-Orthodox and secular Jews.
Whether all this is done in the service of patriotism or in the service of Jewish tradition, its effect is disservice to both.
Jewish tradition offers its adherents the widest range of choices, from an almost superhuman level of compassion and lovingkindness, to Old Testament admonishments to genocide.
It's up to the individual Jew to choose. And up to the Jewish state.
It's up to a Jewish state to find a way to oppose a Hamas government without resorting to blocking shipments of humanitarian supplies to more than a million innocent people, or arresting peace activists , among them a former U.S. congresswoman and a Nobel Peace Prize laureate trying to bring those supplies to Gaza.
It's up to a Jewish state to recognize when a policy of collective punishment is self-defeating as well as immoral, and to call a halt.
It's up to this Jewish state to redefine patriotism.
Love of country is, at heart, trust in a nation's people, faith in their better nature, esteem for their best hopes, understanding for the magnificence and the distinctiveness and the huge, infinitely shaded cultural palette of their simple humanity. Hatred has no place in this equation.
The choices here are never easy. The kinds of sacrifices which will be necessary to forge a peace with the Palestinians will come at the direct expense of many of the most fervent - if also most recent - ideologies of Orthodox Jewry, beginning with the imperative to settle the West Bank and oppose peacemaking.
The kinds of tolerance and policies which will be needed to deal fairly and humanely with refugees from Africa and with other non-Jews seeking a life in Israel will be difficult to enact and implement.
Yet we cannot call ourselves a moral Jewish state and countenance a situation in which, as in a Sunday edition of the newspaper, a picture of a refugee African boy protesting in Tel Aviv against threatened mass deportations, is placed directly atop an ad welcoming Jewish immigrants from southern Africa and wishing them "a smooth absorption in Israel, your new home."
The election of an African-American to the highest office of the nation which best embodied human equality - and for much too long, rebuffed it - is the kind of impossibility which takes minds and souls and forever alters them.
What sort of impossibility will it take for the Jewish state to place prophetically based compassion over rabbinically sanctioned boorishness and superiority to all those not exactly like us?
Hatred has no place in a Jewish state. And a Jewish state which sanctifies intolerance in the name of tradition or patriotism, will inevitably prove unwelcome not only to non-Jews, but to the Jewish People as well.
Updated 3:34 p.m. ET,Tues., July 7, 2009 Courtesy Of MSNBC
BACKGROUND
The Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region (XUAR), a territory in western China, accounts for one-sixth of China's land and is home to about 20 million people from thirteen major ethnic groups. The largest of these groups is the Uighurs [PRON: WEE-gurs], a predominantly Muslim community with ties to Central Asia. Some Uighurs call China's presence in Xinjiang a form of imperialism, and they stepped up calls for independence —sometimes violently— in the 1990s through separatist groups like the East Turkestan Islamic Movement. The Chinese government has reacted by promoting the migration of China's ethnic majority, the Han, to Xinjiang. Beijing has also strengthened economic ties with the area and tried to cut off potential sources of separatist support from neighboring states that are linguistically and ethnically linked with the Uighurs.
Intermittent Independence
Since the collapse of the Qing Dynasty in 1912, Xinjiang has enjoyed varying degrees of autonomy. Turkic rebels in Xinjiang declared independence in October 1933 and created the Islamic Republic of East Turkestan (also known as the Republic of Uighuristan or the First East Turkistan Republic). The following year, the Republic of China reabsorbed the region. In 1944, factions within Xinjiang again declared independence, this time under the auspices of the Soviet Union, and created the Second East Turkistan Republic. But in 1949, the Chinese Communist Party took over the territory and declared it a Chinese province. In October 1955, Xinjiang became classified as an "autonomous region" of the People's Republic of China.
Some Uighurs, nostalgic for Xinjiang's intermittent periods of independence, call for the recreation of a Uighur state. "The Central Asian Uighurs know a great deal about the two East Turkestan periods of sovereign rule, and they reflect on that quite frequently," says Dru C. Gladney, president of the Pacific Basin Institute at Pomona College. Many of these Uighurs say China colonized the area in 1949. But in its first white paper on Xinjiang, the Chinese government said Xinjiang had been an "inseparable part of the unitary multi-ethnic Chinese nation" since the Western Han Dynasty, which ruled from 206 BC to 24 AD.
Economic Development
Xinjiang's wealth hinges on its vast mineral and oil deposits. In the early 1990s, Beijing decided to spur Xinjiang's growth by giving it special economic zones, subsidizing local cotton farmers, and overhauling its tax system. In August 1991, the Xinjiang government launched the Tarim Basin Project to increase agricultural output. During this period, Beijing invested in the region's infrastructure, building massive projects like the Tarim Desert Highway and a rail link to western Xinjiang. In an article for The China Quarterly, Nicholas Bequelin of Human Rights Watch says these projects were designed to literally "bind Xinjiang more closely to the rest of the PRC."
Since 1954, China has also used the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps (XPCC) to build agricultural settlements in China's western periphery. Locally known as the Bingtuan, the XPCC is charged with cultivating and guarding the Chinese frontier. To achieve this mission, the corps has its own security organs, including an armed police force and militia. Over the past fifty years, the XPCC has attracted a steady stream of migrant workers to Xinjiang.
Beijing continues to develop Xinjiang in campaigns called "Open up the West" and "Go West." Experts like Gladney say these programs have made the region relatively prosperous. "If you look at the general per capita income of Xinjiang as a region," he says, "it's higher than all of China's except for the southeast coast." But others note that Xinjiang's wealth is concentrated in its oil-rich centers, and international development bodies like the Asian Development Bank say that there are high levels of inequality in the area. The Chinese government has launched a series of programs to alleviate poverty in Xinjiang, and in March 2008, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao emphasized harmonious development of the region in a government report.
Han Migration
Growing job opportunities in Xinjiang have lured a steady stream of migrant workers to the region, many of whom are ethnically Han. The Chinese government does not count the number of workers that travel to Xinjiang, but experts say the local Han population has risen from approximately 5 percent in the 1940s to approximately 40 percent today. These migrants work in a variety of industries, both low tech and high tech, and have transformed Xinjiang's landscape. In June 2008, the BBC produced a photo report called Life in Urumqi, which said Xinjiang's capital had recently witnessed "the arrival of shopping centers, tower blocks, department stores and highways."
Many of these Uighurs say China colonized the area in 1949. But in its first white paper on Xinjiang, the Chinese government said Xinjiang had been an "inseparable part of the unitary multi-ethnic Chinese nation" since the Western Han Dynasty.
In its 2007 annual report to the U.S. Congress, the Congressional-Executive Commission on China said the Chinese government "provides incentives for migration to the region from elsewhere in China, in the name of recruiting talent and promoting stability." Since imperial times, the Chinese government has tried to settle Han on the outskirts of China to integrate the Chinese periphery. But the Communist Party says its policies in Xinjiang are designed to promote economic development, not demographic change. Xinjiang's influx of migrants has fueled Uighur discontent as Han and Uighurs compete over limited jobs and natural resources.
Ethnic Tension
The Chinese government says Xinjiang is home to thirteen major ethnic groups. The largest of these groups is the Uighurs, who comprise 45 percent of Xinjiang's population, according to a 2003 census. Like many of these groups, the Uighurs are predominantly Muslim and have cultural ties to Central Asia.
As Han migrants pour into Xinjiang, many Uighurs resent the strain they place on limited resources like land and water. "Uighurs feel like this is their homeland, that these resources should be more devoted to them," says Gladney. In 2006, Human Rights in China said population growth in Xinjiang had transformed the local environment, leading to a reduced human access to clean water and fertile soil for drinking, irrigation and agriculture."
Ethnic tension is fanned by economic disparity: the Han tend to be wealthier than the Uighurs in Xinjiang. Some experts say the wage gap is the result of discriminatory hiring practices. The Congressional-Executive Commission on China reports that in 2006, the XPCC reserved approximately 800 of 840 civil servant job openings for Han. Local officials say they would like to hire Uighurs, but have trouble finding qualified candidates. "One common problem of the western region is that the education and cultural level of the people here is quite low," said Wang Lequan, Xinjiang's Communist Party secretary. Gladney says Han applicants tend to have better professional networks because they are more often "influential, children of elite Party members and government leaders."
According to Bequelin, Uighurs are also upset by what they consider Chinese attempts to "refashion their cultural and religious identity." In an op-ed, Rebiyah Kadeer, a prominent exiled Uighur, condemns China for its "fierce repression of religious expression," and "its intolerance for any expression of discontent." Beijing officials respond to these accusations by saying they respect China's ethnic minorities, and have improved the quality of life for Uighurs by raising economic, public health, and education levels in Xinjiang.
In July 2009, ethnic tension between the Han and Uighur communities in Xinjiang was brought into the international limelight after severe riots between the two groups and police forces erupted in the province's capital city of Urumqi. According to Chinese state media, at least 150 people were killed, and more than 800 were injured. The riots were reportedly sparked by a Uighur protest over the ethnically motivated killing of two Uighur workers in the southern province of Guangdong. Accounts of how the protest turned violent differ.
Terrorism and Counterterrorism
During the 1990s, separatist groups in Xinjiang began frequent attacks against the Chinese government. The most famous of these groups was the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM). China, the United States, and the UN Security Council have all labeled ETIM a terrorist organization, and Chinese officials have said the group has ties to al-Qaeda.
Concern about Uighur terrorism flared in August 2008—just days before the Beijing Olympics—when two men attacked a military police unit in Xinjiang, killing sixteen. However, a month later, the New York Times reported that according to eyewitness accounts of three foreign tourists, the attackers were also in paramilitary uniform, casting doubts on the official Chinese version of the incident, which had called it a terrorist incident. The attack had come a week after a group calling itself the Turkistan Islamic Party took credit for a slew of terrorist attacks, including two bus explosions in Yunnan province.
The Han population there has risen from approximately 5 percent in the 1940s to approximately 40 percent today. The Chinese government has taken steps to combat both separatists and terrorists in its western province. According to the U.S. State Department, Chinese authorities raided an alleged ETIM camp in January 2007, killing eighteen and arresting seventeen. China also monitors religious activity in the region to keep religious leaders from spreading separatist views. Since September 11, 2001, China has raised international awareness of Uighur-related terrorism and linked its actions to the Bush administration's so-called war on terror.
But many experts say China is exaggerating the danger posed by Uighur terrorists. China has accused the Uighurs of plotting thousands of attacks, but Andrew J. Nathan, a China expert at Columbia University, says, "You have to be very suspicious of those numbers." Gladney notes that many of the "terrorist incidents" that China attributes to ETIM are actually "spontaneous and rather disorganized" forms of civil unrest. Most experts say ETIM has no effective ties to al-Qaeda, and Bequelin goes so far as to say, "ETIM is probably defunct by now, as far as we know." In a 2008 report, Amnesty International accused Chinese officials of using the war on terror to justify "harsh repression of ethnic Uighurs." But in Xinhua, a state-run newspaper, Chinese rights organizations refuted the Amnesty report, saying it was designed to slander China under the pretense of human rights.
Experts disagree on the efficacy of China's counterterrorism measures. Some, including Bequelin, say China's anti-separatist campaign actually provokes more resentment, which can lead to more terrorism. But other Western outlets say China's counterterrorism measures have been relatively successful. A review of U.S. State Department documents shows a decrease in Uighur-related terrorism since the end of the 1990s.
Tough Neighborhood
Xinjiang shares a border with Mongolia, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, and the Tibet Autonomous Region. Because of the Uighurs' cultural ties to its neighbors, China has been concerned that Central Asian states may back a separatist movement in Xinjiang. According to Nathan, these fears are fueled by the fact that the Soviet Union successfully backed a Uighur separatist movement in the 1940s. To keep Central Asian states from fomenting trouble in Xinjiang, China has cultivated close diplomatic ties with its neighbors, most notably through the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. According to Bequelin, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization was created "to ensure the support of Central Asian states," and to "prevent any emergence of linkages between Uighur communities in these countries and Xinjiang."
Many experts believe China's diplomatic efforts have been successful. Adam Segal, senior fellow for China studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, says China's neighbors "are now fighting their own Muslim fundamentalist groups," which makes them more sympathetic to China's plight. According to the U.S. State Department, Uzbekistan extradited a Canadian citizen of Uighur ethnicity to China in August 2006, where he was convicted for alleged involvement in ETIM activities. Nathan says cases like these are evidence that China's neighbors are cooperating with China's anti-secessionist policies. In contrast, the United States refused to hand over five Uighurs who had been captured by U.S. forces in Pakistan in 2001, despite Chinese calls to do so. After their release from Guantanamo Bay in May 2006, the Uighurs were instead transferred to Albania. In June 2009, four Uighurs who had been detained at Guantanamo were resettled in Bermuda. The remaining thirteen Uighur detainees will be resettled in Palau.
None of China's neighbors have expressed official support for the Uighurs, but the region's porous borders still worry Chinese officials. In the 1980s and 1990s, many Uighurs traveled into Pakistan and Afghanistan, where they were exposed to Islamic extremism. "Some enrolled in madrassas, some enrolled with [the anti-Taliban opposition force] the Northern Alliance, some enrolled with the Taliban, some enrolled with the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan," says Bequelin. Chinese officials worry that militants who slip in and out of Xinjiang can promote anti-state activity.
International Disinterest
In the run-up to the Beijing Olympics in 2008, protests in Tibet reaped international attention. But protests in Xinjiang went relatively unnoticed. "People aren't threatening to boycott the Olympic opening ceremony for the Uighurs," says Segal. Because Tibet gets more global attention than Xinjiang, some reporters have referred to Xinjiang as "China's other Tibet.”
International interest in Xinjiang is muted for a variety of reasons. According to Nathan, the Uighur community lacks an effective leader. "For the Uighurs, their most prominent spokesperson is Rebiya Kadeer in Washington, who really doesn't have the infrastructure and the Nobel Prize that the Dalai Lama has," he says. Bequelin adds that the Chinese government has effectively branded Uighur separatists as terrorists, which has reduced international sympathy for their mission. Amidst international apathy, most experts say the human rights situation in Xinjiang is likely to get worse before it gets better. "There's no international pressure to change policy in Xinjiang right now," says Segal. "So why would China make any changes?"
East Turkistan, also known as the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of China, lies in the heart of Asia. Situated along the fabled ancient Silk Road, it has been a prominent center of commerce for more than 2000 years. The land of East Turkistan gave birth to many great civilizations and at various points of history it has been a cradle of scholarship, culture and power.
The pdf and txt verisons of the book Communist China's Policy of Oppression in East Turkestan are also available.
According to the information gathered from trustworthy foreign sources, our 3,721 Muslim brothers were martyred in Urumqi, Xinjiang of East Turkestan. Chinese morgues are full now. They bury the martyrs en masse by bulldozers. They are making arrangements for the execution of thousands of Muslim brothers as a whole.
China entered the twentieth century as the remains of an empire fragmented and crushed under pressure from especially Britain, France, Germany, Japan and Russia. After imperial rule had been overthrown, no powerful central authority was established for decades. When the Communist Party came to power in 1949, China soon turned into a state of fear. That process cost the lives of tens of millions of people because of the repressive and totalitarian methods the communists used to enforce their bloody ideology. The Chinese Communist Party resorted to violence to remain in power, and implemented one of the most savage and ruthless form of communism ever, enforcing one single way of living and thinking for the entire Chinese people. Throughout that period, those who refused to abide by the rules of their communist leaders were ruthlessly exterminated.
This three-volume documentary by HARUN YAHYA displays the terrible savagery of communism and its underlying philosophy. From Marx to Lenin, Stalin, Mao or Pol Pot, discover how the materialist philosophy transforms humans into theorists of violence and masters of cruelty.
Muslims are living under difficult circumstances in various regions of the world. The people of East Turkestan (Xinjiang) in the extreme West of China, for instance, have been exposed to severe repression for the last 50 years in particular. Life in East Turkestan, the majority of whose population are Uighurs, is far more troubled than any other region of China. The number of people killed in East Turkestan together with post-1965 massacres is the unbelievable figure of 35 million.
Occupation, repression and sanctions have brought the region nothing but tension, disorder and hatred. The days of exploiting nations by such means are dead and gone. For that reason, if China permits the people of East Turkestan to govern themselves and grants the country economic independence it will gain enormous advantages. An East Turkestan able to manufacture freely within its own borders, living in freedom and freed from the influence of fear and oppression, can represent a new center of progress for China.
These rights can be given to the people of East Turkestan thanks to the Turkish-Islamic Union, which will enjoy great power and authority. If such a power acts as guarantor, China's relations with the millions of Muslims in the country will be strengthened. China must be convinced and given guarantees that an East Turkestan that is emotionally bound to the Turkish-Islamic Union will not behave in a hostile manner toward China but will contribute to China's becoming a super-power.
The world needs peace, love, solidarity and justice. And that is the mission that the Turkish-Islamic Union will assume when it is set up. This union will exist to bring peace to the world, not to be an instrument of hostility, vengeance or menace. This union will not be one based on oppression and repression along the lines of "everyone must be subjects to us, and anyone who does not must be enslaved." The Turkish-Islamic Union is a union of love and understanding.
By means of this union, members of all faiths will be able to worship as they wish, to visit all the sacred sites of their faith, and their goods, lives and honor will be guaranteed by the Turkish-Islamic Union.
Contrary to the scenarios of clash of civilizations, this union will draw civilizations closer to one another. As a result, the whole world will benefit from the climate the union will bring about. The foundations of the union are love, affection, compassion, altruism and solidarity. In addition, it also aims to elevate humanity to the highest levels of respect for human beings, art, science and technology.
The Turkish-Islamic Union, which represents a population of around 1 billion spread over a very wide area and will knit all its individual components together, will constitute a large economic market. This, in turns, means a wide-ranging commercial opportunity especially for China. This must therefore be very carefully explained to it.
Terrorist activities in the Turkish-Islamic zone will be totally eradicated, and those who incite terrorism will find themselves confronted by the highly deterrent army of the Turkish-Islamic Union military pact. The unitary structures of the states comprising the union will be maintained. Secularism will be one of the fundamental principles of the union. For that reason, both Muslims and non-Muslims will be able to live in security under the same strong roof.
The Turkish-Islamic Union also represents a major opportunity to resolve the disputes regarding Israel and Palestine. Today the peoples of Israel and Palestine are forced to live uneasily behind walls in order to maintain their own security. When the Turkish-Islamic Union is established there will be no need to build walls stretching for many kilometers, nor for any other precautionary measures.
The foundation of the Turkish-Islamic Union is being awaited with the greatest enthusiasm and excitement by the entire Turkish and Islamic world.
AN INTERVIEW WITH MR. ADNAN OKTAR BY RADIO RFA (June 14, 2008)
Radio Free Asia which was founded in 1950's by the Parliament of USA, broadcasts in 9 Asian languages and also in English. Mr.Adnan Oktar in his interview with RFA, has made very important comments on the importance of the Turkish-Islamic Union, on the benefits such a union can bring to the member countries and to the whole world. He also gave the good news that very important developments will take place in the near future in that respect.
Upon the questions asked by the Asia RFA, Mr.Adnan Oktar stated that the 100 years of communist education caused a great growth in the Islamic virtues. He added that especially in countries like East Turkestan and Azerbaijan, communism had the exact opposite effect and caused people to lean more sincerely towards Islam.
Mr.Adnan Oktar explained what should be done to put an immediate end to the cruel policies executed by China upon the countries in the region, especially on East Turkestan, in precise details. He furthermore gave the good news that he will start putting efforts in that respect in the coming days.
In this interview Mr.Adnan Oktar has given information about the books, documentaries, conferences, exhibition and similar works he had been working on, in various Turkish dialects and also about the effect of his books in the Turkish-Islamic geography. He also gave the good news of the foundation of a Turkish-Islamic Union that will start with Azerbaijan in the coming years.
See also:Dick Cheney’s Song of America: The Plan is for the United States to rule the world. The overt theme is unilateralism, but it is ultimately a story of domination. It calls for the United States to maintain its overwhelming military superiority and prevent new rivals from rising up to challenge it on the world stage. It calls for dominion over friends and enemies alike. It says not that the United States must be more powerful, or most powerful, but that it must be absolutely powerful.
UPDATED ON: Tuesday, July 07, 200910:10 Mecca time, 07:10 GMT Courtesy Of Al-Jazeera
Kadeer said that silence from Muslim countries contrasted with support from the West [AFP]
A leading Uighur rights activist has criticised Muslim-majority countries for not speaking out against decades of alleged repression and persecution from the Chinese government.
Speaking in Washington on Monday, Rebiya Kadeer, a businesswoman who was jailed for years in China before being released into exile in the US, hit out at what she said was decades of "brutal suppression" of Muslims in China's western Xinjiang region.
Speaking after a day of unrest in Xinjiang left at least 150 people dead, Kadeer pointed to the lack of response from Muslim countries to the violence and the situation faced by the Uighurs.
"Muslim countries such as Pakistan, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Syria and a number of other Muslim countries as well as the central Asian states like Kazakhstan Kurdistan and Uzbekistan - they all deported Uighurs who had fled Chinese persecution for peacefully opposing Chinese rule, for writing something, for speaking something," she said.
"Those sent back to China were either killed or sentenced to life in jail."
She said the lack of action from Muslim countries contrasted with support given by other governments.
"Our only friend is in the West - Western democracies are supporting us and we are very grateful," Kadeeer, who heads the World Uighur Congress, told reporters.
"We certainly hope that more Muslim countries will raise our situation."
'Propaganda'
"So far the Islamic world is silent about the Uighurs' suffering because the Chinese authorities have been very successful in its propaganda to the Muslim world"
Rebiya Kadeer
Kadeer attributed the lack of action from Muslim countries to what she said was the success of Chinese "propaganda" to the Muslim world.
"So far the Islamic world is silent about the Uighurs' suffering because the Chinese authorities have been very successful in its propaganda to the Muslim world."
That propaganda, she said, sent a message to the Muslim world "that the Uighurs are extremely pro-west Muslims - that they are modern Muslims, not genuine Muslims."
At the same time, she said, to Western countries the Chinese government "labelled Uighur leaders as Muslims terrorists with links to al-Qaeda - so the propaganda has been pretty effective on both sides."
Thelim Kine, an Asia researcher from New York-based Human Rights Watch, told Al Jazeera that Beijing's accusations of Uighur links to "terrorist" groups had intensified since the 9/11 attacks in the US.
"Because they are Muslim they have been accused of carrying out what the government calls 'terrorist activities', as well as being linked to various organisations like al-Qaeda," he said.
'Mastermind'
China's government has blamed Uighur exiles for stoking the recent unrest, singling out Kadeer for "masterminding" the riots – claims she rejected as "completely false".
While she admitted that some Uighurs had been carried out attacks during Sunday's unrest, she said the violence was a symptom of Uighur frustration and resentment at China's repressive policies.
Her group, she said, has repeatedly called for only peaceful protests and urged all sides to exercise restraint.
As protests continue in Xinjiang and police arrest hundreds after the riots, Kadeer called for an international investigation into the unrest.
"We hope that the United Nations, the United States and the European Union will send teams to investigate what really took place in Xinjiang," she said.
"We hope the White House will issue a stronger statement urging the Chinese government to show restraint, and also to tell the truth of the nature of the events and what happened, and to tell the Chinese government to redress Uighur grievances."
The Uighur woman, standing up to Chinese security forces and soldiers, reminded a protester who walked towards Chinese tanks in Tiananmen Square in 1989.
The Uighur woman, standing up to Chinese security forces and soldiers, reminded a protester who walked towards Chinese tanks in Tiananmen Square in 1989 as similar protests that seem as voices against Chinese oppression.
Meanwhile, US lawmakers urged U.S. to strongly condemn the Chaina crackdown against Muslims to avoid a repeat of the Tiananmen Square crackdown.
The violence brings up memories and comparisons to the deadly Tiananmen Square protests in 1989.
The world media has draw attention on comparisons between the Uighur woman on a crutch shouted defiantly at Chinese forces who caused to grow Urumqi incidents in 2009 and a lone man standing up to the line of tanks during the Tiananmen Square protests.
The woman became a symbol of Uighur resistance against the China's bloody move over protesters that killed at least 156 and wounded more than 800.
Han Chineses attacked on Uighur workers in a dormitory of a toy factory in China's southern Guangdong province, killing two people and injuring more than 800.
After the attack, Chinese police arrested 1,434 Uighurs two days after killing 156 dead and wounding more than 1,000 since Uighurs started the protests in the capital Urumqi.
Video appeared showing Chinese lynch that sparked Uighur protests in East Turkistan.
East Turkistan has 8 million Uighurs and historical records show that the Uyghurs have a history of more than 4000 years.
Throughout the history the Uyghurs developed a unique culture and civilization and made remarkable contribution to the civilization of the world.
The Uyghurs Islam in 934, during the reign of Satuk Bughra Khan, the Kharahanid ruler. Since that time on the Islam continuously served Uyghurs as the only religion until today.
After embracing Islam the Uyghurs continued to preserve their cultural dominance in Central Asia.
East Turkistan was occupied by the communist China in 1949 and its name was changed in 1955. The communist China has been excersizing a colonial rule over the East Turkistan since then.
Many Uighurs resent Han Chinese rule, complaining they're marginalised economically and politically in their own land, while having to tolerate a rising influx of Han Chinese migrants.
Meanwhile, human rights groups accuse Beijing of using claims of "terrorism" as an excuse to crack down on peaceful pro-independence sentiment and expressions of Uighur identity.
Further Information On The Persecution Of The Uigher's By China:
After bringing a curfew from 9 p.m. Tuesday to 8 a.m. Wednesday local time, don´t persevere talks over World´s intervention stop the violence in Xinjiang province.
The kidnapping of 21 international human rights workers attempting to deliver needed aid to a besieged people is an outrage, but it is hardly an isolated one.
Since its founding in 1948 the State of Israel has regularly kidnapped and tortured Palestinians, throwing them into forgotten prisons where they can languish for years. Today, over 11,000 Palestinian political prisoners without benefit of due process, some never even charged - men, women, and children endure torture and isolation in Israeli jails, outdoor prison camps, and secret black sites. They come from all walks of life: doctors, journalists, parliamentarians, workers, resistance fighters, homemakers, students and others. They are our sisters and brothers
From the first night, the Free Gaza 21 have been busy trying to get news out of the prison about the illegality of Israel's actions in relation to themselves and the other inmates inside Ramle Prison who have no voice.
The outbreak of unprecedented street violence in the capital of China's far western Uyghur-populated region of Xinjiang, with more than 150 persons officially reported dead and 828 injured, has caught both the central government in Beijing and outside observers by surprise. To put these events in perspective, Beijing only admitted to the loss of 18 lives and around 600 injured during the last major uprising by Tibetans against Chinese rule in areas adjoining Xinjiang in March 2008.
How could a volcano of this scale erupt in Xinjiang's tightly-policed capital city, which has a demographic break-up of 75.3% Han and only 12.8% Muslim - mostly Sunni - Uyghurs?
Is it believable that protesters belonging to a regimented and closely-monitored minority community can organize into mobs and kill so many people of the dominant ethnic group with just "knives, bricks and stones", as is being announced by Xinhua, the Chinese government news agency? Of the 150-and-rising casualties, how many are actually victims of agents of state
The state's version of what transpired is almost a facsimile of its rendering of the Tibetan revolt of last year: foreign-based diaspora provocateurs plotting to disrupt China's social harmony, violent rioting by minorities against innocent Han businesses and civilians and restoration of law and order through rapid deployment of army and police reinforcements. What is glaringly missing in this pro forma version is any mention of the role of the Chinese security forces in the violence.
Even more disingenuous is the Chinese state's bureaucratic attribution of upheavals in its mineral-rich and turbulent western fringes to the "three evils - terrorism, separatism and religious extremism". By denying mass-level socio-political grievances of minorities against majoritarian-cum-authoritarian rule and overwriting them with the script of "evils", Beijing is aggravating the festering discontent.
The specific matchstick to the current conflagration in Urumqi comes from an ethnically motivated "transfer policy" the Chinese government initiated in 2006, wherein state recruiters aggressively hired young Uyghur women to work as factory laborers at the other end of the country in provinces like Guangdong.
Parts of Xinjiang, where Uyghurs make up the majority of the population, are especially targeted for these controversial transfers, which are carried out via threats and intimidation. Once the jobless Uyghur women are physically removed and sent to do low-paying and hazardous work far from home, the state fills the emptied spaces in Xinjiang with subsidized Han economic migrants.
It is notable that the apparent trigger for the latest burst of violence in Urumqi was an attack in late June by an incensed Han gang on “transferred” Uyghur workers in a toy factory in the southeast of the country. This incident in Guangdong left two Uyghur workers dead and some 81 of them injured. Local security agencies in the city of Shaoguan have been accused by rights groups of standing by inactively as the Uyghurs were singled out for harm.
Once news of this injustice reached Urumqi, protesters came out to express their disgust at the government's forced depopulation of Uyghurs and their ensuing ill-treatment in China's manufacturing heartlands. To reiterate, what happened next and who killed whom is unfortunately never going to be impartially investigated.
Like the other inhumane demographic experiment in Tibet, Chinese officials justify the transfer policy from Xinjiang as being beneficial to Uyghurs as it generates employment opportunities. The extremely depressed and persecuted form of employment that internal migrant workers of minority nationalities face in the industrial citadels makes a mockery of this alleged modernizing benefit being imposed on the unwilling Uyghurs.
Forced population transfers have been a standard technique with which China managed to extend its sovereignty over lands and peoples in its western frontier with Central Asia. But the same incendiary method leads minorities to rise up in rebellion from time to time because of its implied endgame of extinction of a whole community possessing demarcating cultural characteristics. The poignancy of slowly becoming a minority in one's own territory (Han Chinese have grown from 5% of Xinjiang's population in the 1940s to more than 40% today) is fertile ground for people banding together and waging a struggle through violent or non-violent means.
China, in sticking to the blanket formulation of "evils" and attempting to hide the ugly underbelly of its vulnerable western flank, has not prevented the reality from leaking out. Tibetan and Uyghur activists in exile have been raising awareness about the intricacies of Chinese state policies and their disastrous effects on minorities in particular.
The turmoil in Urumqi is proof, if any were needed, that China's weaknesses are internal and unwilling to go away despite its iron-fist. As China has been carving out greater influence abroad through smart economic and military diplomacy, there has been a gradual shift in international attention to its seemingly inevitable march to superpower status. This focus has somewhat obfuscated the country's continuing domestic human costs and tragedies which refuse to die down.
Aside from being obvious cases of long-term injustice, the rumbles and occasional roars from Tibet and Xinjiang send out a clear message: one must keep a constant eye on the ball of China's core domestic contradictions.
Sreeram Chaulia is associate professor of world politics at the Jindal Global Law School in Sonipat, India.
(Copyright 2009 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved.)
There are things that happen in the world that are bad, and you want to do something about them. You have a just cause. But our culture is so war prone that we immediately jump from, “This is a good cause” to “This deserves a war.”
You need to be very, very comfortable in making that jump.
The American Revolution—independence from England—was a just cause. Why should the colonists here be occupied by and oppressed by England? But therefore, did we have to go to the Revolutionary War?
How many people died in the Revolutionary War?
Nobody ever knows exactly how many people die in wars, but it’s likely that 25,000 to 50,000 people died in this one. So let’s take the lower figure—25,000 people died out of a population of three million. That would be equivalent today to two and a half million people dying to get England off our backs.
You might consider that worth it, or you might not.
Canada is independent of England, isn’t it? I think so. Not a bad society. Canadians have good health care. They have a lot of things we don’t have. They didn’t fight a bloody revolutionary war. Why do we assume that we had to fight a bloody revolutionary war to get rid of England?
In the year before those famous shots were fired, farmers in Western Massachusetts had driven the British government out without firing a single shot. They had assembled by the thousands and thousands around courthouses and colonial offices and they had just taken over and they said goodbye to the British officials. It was a nonviolent revolution that took place. But then came Lexington and Concord, and the revolution became violent, and it was run not by the farmers but by the Founding Fathers. The farmers were rather poor; the Founding Fathers were rather rich.
Who actually gained from that victory over England? It’s very important to ask about any policy, and especially about war: Who gained what? And it’s very important to notice differences among the various parts of the population. That’s one thing were not accustomed to in this country because we don’t think in class terms. We think, “Oh, we all have the same interests.” For instance, we think that we all had the same interests in independence from England. We did not have all the same interests.
Do you think the Indians cared about independence from England? No, in fact, the Indians were unhappy that we won independence from England, because England had set a line—in the Proclamation of 1763—that said you couldn’t go westward into Indian territory. They didn’t do it because they loved the Indians. They didn’t want trouble. When Britain was defeated in the Revolutionary War, that line was eliminated, and now the way was open for the colonists to move westward across the continent, which they did for the next 100 years, committing massacres and making sure that they destroyed Indian civilization.
So when you look at the American Revolution, there’s a fact that you have to take into consideration. Indians—no, they didn’t benefit.
Did blacks benefit from the American Revolution?
Slavery was there before. Slavery was there after. Not only that, we wrote slavery into the Constitution. We legitimized it.
What about class divisions?
Did ordinary white farmers have the same interest in the revolution as a John Hancock or Morris or Madison or Jefferson or the slaveholders or the bondholders? Not really.
It was not all the common people getting together to fight against England. They had a very hard time assembling an army. They took poor guys and promised them land. They browbeat people and, oh yes, they inspired people with the Declaration of Independence. It’s always good, if you want people to go to war, to give them a good document and have good words: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Of course, when they wrote the Constitution, they were more concerned with property than life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. You should take notice of these little things.
There were class divisions. When you assess and evaluate a war, when you assess and evaluate any policy, you have to ask: Who gets what?
We were a class society from the beginning. America started off as a society of rich and poor, people with enormous grants of land and people with no land. And there were riots, there were bread riots in Boston, and riots and rebellions all over the colonies, of poor against rich, of tenants breaking into jails to release people who were in prison for nonpayment of debt. There was class conflict. We try to pretend in this country that we’re all one happy family. We’re not.
And so when you look at the American Revolution, you have to look at it in terms of class.
Do you know that there were mutinies in the American Revolutionary Army by the privates against the officers? The officers were getting fine clothes and good food and high pay and the privates had no shoes and bad clothes and they weren’t getting paid. They mutinied. Thousands of them. So many in the Pennsylvania line that George Washington got worried, so he made compromises with them. But later when there was a smaller mutiny in the New Jersey line, not with thousands but with hundreds, Washington said execute the leaders, and they were executed by fellow mutineers on the order of their officers.
The American Revolution was not a simple affair of all of us against all of them. And not everyone thought they would benefit from the Revolution.
We’ve got to rethink this question of war and come to the conclusion that war cannot be accepted, no matter what the reasons given, or the excuse: liberty, democracy; this, that. War is by definition the indiscriminate killing of huge numbers of people for ends that are uncertain. Think about means and ends, and apply it to war. The means are horrible, certainly. The ends, uncertain. That alone should make you hesitate.
Once a historical event has taken place, it becomes very hard to imagine that you could have achieved a result some other way. When something is happening in history it takes on a certain air of inevitability: This is the only way it could have happened. No.
We are smart in so many ways. Surely, we should be able to understand that in between war and passivity, there are a thousand possibilities.
Howard Zinn is the author of “A People’s History of the United States.” The History Channel is running an adaptation called “The People Speak.” This article is an excerpt from Zinn’s cover story, "Just Cause Does Not Equal Just War." in the July issue of The Progressive.
BANGKOK - Iran's newly empowered administration of the "mullahtariat" is already reaping what it sowed. As far as the iron cross triumvirate - Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, President Mahmud Ahmadinejad and the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) - is concerned, the foreign-orchestrated (as the regime describes it) "green revolution" has been smashed. But another light of the "green" variety now looms in the (gloomy) horizon.
As far as the leadership in Tehran is concerned, the unclenched fists of the Barack Obama variety remain - at least for the moment - unwelcome. As Khamenei once again made it clear early this week, "The leaders of arrogant countries, the nosy meddlers in the affairs of the Islamic republic, must know that no matter if the Iranian people have their own differences, when you enemies get involved, the people ... will become a firm fist against you."
Then top IRGC commander, Major General Mohammad Ali Jafari, laid down the (new) iron fist law underneath the mullahtariat in unmistakable terms. The IRGC has literally taken over Iran, and not only in terms of security. This means "a revival of the [1979] revolution and clarification of the value positions of the establishment at home and abroad". What Iran and the world are now seeing is "a new stage of the revolution and political struggles, and all of us must fully comprehend its dimensions".
'Tonal Differences' Right in the middle of the "new stage of the revolution" stepped infamously loquacious US Vice PresidentJoe Biden. Biden told ABC TV, "Israel can determine for itself - it's a sovereign nation - what's in their interest and what they decide to do relative to Iran and anyone else." And it does not matter whether the US agrees or not. Biden was careful to add, "There is no pressure from any nation that's going to alter our behavior as to how to proceed." This behavior - a reference to Obama's new "unclenched fist" policy towards Iran - is "in the national interest of the United States, which we, coincidentally, believe is also in the interest ofIsraeland the whole world."
So Biden basically said two things. One: Obama's unclenched fist policy stays, regardless of the new iron-fist nature of Iran's mullahtariat. Two: if Prime Minister Benjamin "Bibi" Netanyahu's government wants to attackIran's nuclear installations, it's their business, there's nothing Washington can do about it. The first assertion (drenched in wishful thinking) may be essentially true. The second one is nonsense. The fact that legions of US pundits felt obliged to reach Sisyphean heights to extol the "independence of US policy-making" from Israel when it comes to Iran speaks for itself.
Critically, Biden was as ambiguous as it gets. He did leave a "green light" blinking - refusing to "speculate" on whether or not Israel would be granted overflight rights in Iraq - from the US, and not the "sovereign" Iraqi government - to attack Iran.
The fact remains that Bibi's government does not need a green light from Washington to attack Iran - regardless of the White House and the Office of the Vice President having to go into frantic turbo-spin mode about "tonal differences" to quell green-light speculations. As unclenched fists go, Israel and Iran now seem to be locked in a cage match - regardless of Obama's self-styled "refereeing" positioning.
Any intended or non-intended Biden-White House move to apply pressure on Tehran via an implicit, impending Israeli attack will cut no ice in Tehran. The regime is very much aware how the Israel lobby - in the US and the West in general - has evolved a very sophisticated campaign over the years to turn Iran's nuclear program into a global threat, and to depict the Tehran leadership as the new face of Nazism.
The regime anyway knows it can count on the support of both Russia and China. And they also know how Israel's whole strategic doctrine is based on the fact it's the only (undeclared) nuclear power in the Middle East, and determined to remain so. And this is where nuclear power meets emigration. Emigration is the engine of the Zionist project. One just needs to search the Israeli press for the past few months to find the Israeli establishment itself stating it quite obviously: the real risk of a supposed Iranian bomb is not the threat of destruction, but to reduce the emigration of Jews to zero.
The Obama administration seems to have realized that it's impossible to prevent Tehran from acquiring a nuclear capability by force. It also seems to have realized that to keep the illusion of a military option on the table amounts to a bald-faced lie. But that all leaves out of the box the real, supreme consequence of Iran becoming a nuclear power, at least in the eyes of the Iranian leaders: it would be the end of the American threat over the country. If pressured and cornered, Tehran, with the IRGC controlling the nuclear program, would go all the way. Israel, in this big picture, is just a minor detail.
Two inescapable facts won't leave the table. One: Iran's inalienable right to master the full, civilian nuclear cycle. Two: the only possible road map for a solution, which lies in the Obama administration persisting in unclenching its fist, trying to normalize relations with Iran, and trying to participate in the country's development along with Russia, China and India.
There's no evidence Tehran is ready to accept the possibility - at least not yet. But they won't go away - as they have just proved, and the US and the European Union must imperatively meet them at the table. Imperfect as it is, with no tonal differences, this is the only, feasible green light at the end of the tunnel.
By Dan Lieberman Online Journal Contributing Writer Jul 6, 2009, 00:24 Courtesy of The Online Journal
Three huge granite stones rest comfortably on the top of Midbar Sinai Street, in Givat Havatzim, Jerusalem’s northernmost district. Cut to specification, the imposing stones represent one of several preparations by the Temple Mount and Land of Israel Faithful Movement’s to erect a Third Temple on the Haram al-Sharif/Temple Mount.
Since the Islamic Wafq owns and controls all the property on the Haram al-Sharif, by what means can these stones be transferred to the Temple Mount and how can a temple be constructed there? Not by any legal means.
The stones are a provocation, which the Israel government refuses to halt. Neglect and passivity lead to a belief that an eventual Muslim reaction to the increasing provocations will give Israel an excuse to seize total control of the Holy Basin -- the ultimate of the properties that Israel intends to incorporate into a greater Jerusalem.
For decades, Israeli authorities have spoken of a united Jerusalem -- suggesting a spiritual quality to its message -- as if Israel wants the home for the three monotheistic faiths to be solid and stable. By being guided from one central authority, a united Jerusalem also offers a preservation of a common and ancient heritage. However, by stressing the word ‘unification,’ Israel disguises the lack of a sufficiently supporting and verifiable historical narrative that could bolster its thrust to incorporate all of an artificially created greater Jerusalem into its boundaries. Coupled with inconsistencies and contradictions, Israel’s eagerness to create a greater Jerusalem under its total control becomes suspect. The intensive concentration on a ‘united’ Jerusalem reveals a hidden agenda that debases Jerusalem’s religious ingathering and heightens division, hatred and strife.
Examine the Holy Basin. The Holy Basin contains well-marked Christian and Muslim institutions and holy places that have had historical placement for millenniums. Although people of the Jewish faith had major presence in Jerusalem during the centuries of Biblical Jerusalem, which included rule by King Hezekiah and control by the Hasmonean dynasties, their control and presence were interrupted for two millennia. Extensive commentary has enabled the two thousand years of lack of control and presence to seem as if it never happened and that today is only a short time from the years of Hezekiah. Some remains of Jewish dwellings and ritual baths can be found, but few if any major Jewish monuments, buildings or institutions from the Biblical era exist in the “Old City” of today’s Jerusalem. The often cited Western Wall is the supporting wall for Herod’s platform and is not directly related to the Second Temple. No remains of the Jewish Temple have been located in Jerusalem -- not even a rock.
According to Karen Armstrong, Jerusalem, Jews did not pray at the Western Wall until the Mamluks in the 15th century allowed them to move their congregations from a dangerous Mount of Olives and pray daily at the Wall. At that time, she estimates that there may have been no more than 70 Jewish families in Jerusalem. After the Ottomans replaced the Mamluks, Suleiman the Magnificent issued a formal edict in the 16th century that permitted Jews to have a place of prayer at the Western Wall.
The only remaining major symbol of Jewish presence in Jerusalem’s Holy City is the Jewish quarter, which Israel cleared of Arabs and rebuilt after 1967. During its clearing operations, Israel demolished the Maghribi Quarter adjacent to the Western Wall, destroyed the al-Buraq Mosque and the Tomb of the Sheikh al-Afdhaliyyah, and displaced about 175 Arab families.
Although the Jewish population in previous centuries comprised a large segment of the Old City (estimates have 7,000 Jews during the mid-19th century), the Jews gradually left the Old City and migrated to new neighborhoods in West Jerusalem, leaving only about 2,000 Jews in the Old City. Jordanian control after the 1948 war reduced the number to nil. By 2009, the population of the Jewish quarter in the Old City had grown to 3,000, or 9 percent of the Old City’s population. The Christian, Armenian and Muslim populations are the principal constituents and their quarters contain almost the entire Old City commerce.
In an attempt to attach ancient Israel to present day Jerusalem, Israeli authorities continue the attachment of spurious labels to Holy Basin landmarks, while claiming the falsification is due to the Byzantines, who got it all wrong.
King David’s Tower’s earliest remains were constructed several hundred years after the Bible dates David’s reign. It is a now an obvious Islamic minaret.
King David’s Citadel earliest remains are from the Hasmonean period (200 B. C. E.). The Citadel was entirely rebuilt by the Ottomans between 1537 and 1541.
King David’s tomb, located in the Dormition Abbey, is a cloth-covered cenotaph (no remains) that honors King David. It’s only an unverified guess that the casket is related to David.
The Pools of Solomon, located in a village near Bethlehem, are considered to be part of a Roman construction during the reign of Herod the Great. The pools supplied water to an aqueduct that carried the water to Bethlehem and to Jerusalem.
The Stables of Solomon, under the Temple Mount, are assumed to be a construction of vaults that King Herod built in order to extend the Temple Mount platform.
Absalom’s Tomb is an obvious Greek sculptured edifice and therefore cannot be the tomb of David’s son.
The City of David contains artifacts that date before and during David’s time. However, some archaeologists maintain there is an insufficient number of artifacts to conclude any Israelite presence, including that of King David, before the late ninth century. In any case any Israelite presence must have been in a small and unfortified settlement.
The Jerusalem Archaeological Park within the Old City, together with the Davidson Exhibition and Virtual Reconstruction Center also tell the story. Promising to reveal much of a Hebrew civilization, the museums shed little light on its subject. The Davidson Center highlights a coin exhibition, Jerusalem bowls and stone vessels.
The Archeological Park in the Old City contains among many artifacts, Herodian structures, ritual baths, a floor of an Umayyad palace, a Roman road, Ottoman gates, and the façade of what is termed Robinson’s arch, an assumed Herodian entryway to the Temple Mount. The exhibitions don’t reveal many, if any, ancient Hebrew structures or institutions of special significance.
Reliable archaeologists, after examining excavations that contain pottery shards and buildings, concluded that archaeological finds don’t substantiate the biblical history of Jerusalem and its importance during the eras of a united Jewish kingdom under David and Solomon.
Margaret Steiner in an article, titled It’s Not There: Archaeology Proves a Negative, in the Biblical Archaeology Review, July/August, 1998, states: “ . . . from the tenth century B. C. E. there is no archaeological evidence that many people actually lived in Jerusalem, only that it was some kind of public administrative center . . . We are left with nothing that indicates a city was here during their supposed reigns (of David and Solomon) . . . It seems unlikely, however, that this Jerusalem was the capital of a large state, the United monarchy, as described in Biblical texts.”
West Jerusalem is another matter. With banditry prolific and Old City gates being closed before nightfall, living outside the city gates did not appeal to the population. Wealthy philanthropist Moses Montefiore wanted to attract the Jewish population to new surroundings and he constructed the first Jewish community outside of the Old City -- Yemin Moshe’s first houses were completed in 1860. From that time, Jewish presence played a role in creating a West Jerusalem. Other institutions, Greek Orthodox, Catholic, Russian Orthodox and Muslim soon ventured forth and owned much property in the evolving West Jerusalem.
In 1948, After the Israeli army seized absolute control of West Jerusalem, the new Israeli government confiscated all West Jerusalem property owned by Muslim institutions. Reason -- enemy property. Few Muslims and no mosques remain in today’s West Jerusalem.
One contradiction. By attacking and ethnically cleansing the Christian Arab communities of Deir Yassin and Ein Kerem, Israeli forces characterized Christian Palestinians as an enemy. Nevertheless, Israel did not confiscate Christian properties, many of which are apparent in West Jerusalem. The Greek Orthodox Church owns extensive properties in West Jerusalem, many marked by its “TΦ” (Tau + Phi) symbol, interpreted as the word ‘Sepulchre.’
Another contradiction. Israel has cared for the Jewish cemetery on the Mount of Olives and expanded it as a heritage site. Part of the famous Muslim Mamilla cemetery in West Jerusalem has been classified as refugee property and is being prepared to be demolished for the new Museum of Tolerance.
East Jerusalem reveals more contradictions. The repeated warning by Israeli leaders that co-existence is not feasible and that it is necessary to separate the Jewish and Palestinian communities is contradicted by Israel’s desire to incorporate East Jerusalem into Israel. Incorporation means accepting somewhere between 160,000 and 225,000 Palestinians into a Jewish state. Or does it? Whereas the older historical Jewish neighborhoods in West Jerusalem have their character meticulously maintained or are rebuilt in their original style, the older Arab neighborhoods in East Jerusalem are entirely neglected (all of Arab East Jerusalem is neglected) or destroyed. How much deterioration and destruction can Palestinians absorb before they decide to leave?
Construction of Jewish homes in East Jerusalem Arab neighborhoods proceeds and destruction of Arab homes, either declared illegally constructed or illegally purchased, continues. On 44 dunums of lands confiscated from Palestinian families, a private company has constructed the gated community of Nof Zion, and conveniently separated Palestinian Jabal Al Mukabir from other parts of East Jerusalem. No Arabs need apply. The million dollar condominiums are advertised for American investors.
The Israeli ministry of Interior has approved a plan to demolish a kindergarten and wholesale market in East Jerusalem’s Wadi Joz neighborhood in order to construct a new hotel close to the Old City and near the Rockefeller Museum. The result will be the destruction of an Arab neighborhood and its replacement by Jewish interests, which will one day join other Jewish interests.
These are only two examples of a master plan to replace the centuries old Arab presence in East Jerusalem with a modern Jewish presence. The ancient Arab presence in an ancient land is further subdivided by the Separation Wall, which runs through the East Jerusalem landscape and detaches East Jerusalem from the West Bank, making it unlikely for a Palestinian state to have its capital in East Jerusalem. The master plan extends the boundaries of Jerusalem to include the large Israeli settlement (city) of Maale Adumim. Between Maale Adumim and East Jerusalem, Israel proposes to construct the E1 corridor, which joins settlements in a ring and adds to the separation of East Jerusalem from the West Bank. The E1 corridor will divide the northern and southern West Bank and will impede direct transit between Palestine Bethlehem, which is south of E1 and Palestine Ramallah, which is north of E1. Construction of the E1 corridor, portions of which are owned by Palestinians, could prevent the formation of a viable Palestinian state.
So, if Israel is destroying Jerusalem’s heritage and subjugating its spiritual meaning, why does Israel want to unify Jerusalem?
Israel’s Hidden Agenda
Israel is a physically small and relatively new country with an eager population and big ambitions. It needs more prestige and wants to be viewed as a power broker on the world stage. To gain those perspectives Israel needs a capital city that commands respect, contains ancient traditions and is recognized as one of the world’s most important and leading cities. Almost all of the world’s principal nations, from Egypt to Germany to Great Britain, have capitals that are great cities of the world. To assure its objectives, Israel wants an oversized Jerusalem that contains the Holy City.
That’s not all.
Jerusalem has significant tourism that can be expanded. It can provide new commercial opportunities as an entry to all of the Middle East. An indivisible Jerusalem under Israeli control is worth a lot of shekels.
Israel competes with the United States as the focus of the Jewish people. It needs a unique Jerusalem to gain recognition as the home of Judaism.
By controlling all of the holy sites, Israel commands attention from Moslem and Christian leaders. These leaders will be forced to talk with Israel and Israel will have a bargaining advantage in disputes.
Whatever Israel gains, the Palestinians are denied. Even if Israel agrees to the establishment of a Palestinian state, it will direct its policies to limit the effectiveness of that state. Since East Jerusalem and its holy sites greatly benefit a Palestinian economy and increase Palestine legitimacy, Israel will do everything to prevent East Jerusalem being ceded to the new state of Palestine. An “indivisible” Jerusalem is part of that effort.
West Jerusalem only gives Israel a North/South capital. An indivisible Jerusalem gives Israel a forward look towards an East/West capital or a centralized capital of the land of previous biblical Jewish tribes.
The Zionist socialist ideals and the cooperative Kibbutzim received support and sympathy from idealistic world peoples for many years. Israel’s attachment to the Holocaust tragedy extended that sympathy and support to more of the world. With the end of the Zionist dream, the decline of kibbutz life and the over-popularizing of the Holocaust, Israel needs a new symbol of identity that captures world attention.
If Israel has legitimate claims to Jerusalem, then those claims should be heard and discussed in a proper forum. However, that is not the process forthcoming. The process has the Israeli government using illegal and illegitimate procedures, as well as deceitful and hypocritical methods to force its agenda. Israel is not presenting its case but is exerting its powers to trample all legal, moral and historical considerations.
In the Museum of the Citadel of David is an inscription: The land of Israel is in the center of the world and Jerusalem is the center of the land of Israel.
This self-praise was echoed at a West Jerusalem coffee house in a conversation with several Israelis. A youthful Israeli abruptly sat at the table and entered the conversation with the words: “All the world looks to Jerusalem. Jerusalem is the center of the world and Jerusalem is the capital of Israel. Everyone needs Jerusalem and they will need to talk with Israel.”
And that is why Israel desperately wants its greater Jerusalem.
Dan Liebermanis the editor of Alternative Insight, a monthly web based newsletter. Dan has written many articles on the Middle East conflict, which have circulated on websites and media throughout the world. He can be reached at alternativeinsight@earthlink.net.
According to The New York Times this morning, violent clashes between Chinese government forces and Muslim Uighurs -- that country's long-oppressed minority -- have left at least 140 people dead and close to 1,000 injured. This incident in Western China highlights an important fact about America's "War on Terror."
Just imagine if the Uighurs were a Christian -- rather than Muslim -- minority, battling against the tyrannical Communist regime in Beijing, resisting various types of persecution, and demanding religious freedom. They would be lionized by America's Right, as similarChristian minorities, oppressed by tyrannical regimes, automatically are. Episodes like these -- where a declared Tyranny like China violently acts against citizens with whom we empathize -- are ones about which, in general, the American political class loves to sermonize.
But the Uighurs are Muslim, not Christian, and hostility towards them thus easily outweighs the opportunity they present to undermine the Chinese Government. Rather than support and venerate them, we instead spent this decade declaring them to be "enemy combatants" and locking them up in Guantanamo -- despite the fact that they have never evinced any interest in doing anything other than resisting Chinese persecution, and have certainly never taken actions against the U.S. (as even the Bush administration ultimately admitted). Yet even now, both Congress and the administration actively block release into the U.S. even of those Uighurs we wrongfully imprisoned for years, while the Right screams with outrage -- and fear -- over the administration's commendable efforts to find a home for them elsewhere.
For all the Serious analysis about the War on Terror, so much of it has been driven by nothing more complex or noble than sheer hostility towards Muslims. Muslims generally -- not just Al Qaeda -- replaced Communists as our New Enemy and became the new enabling force for our endless state of War and never-ending expansions of executive power. Rather obviously, the Uighurs were swept into the Enemy category solely by virtue of their status as Muslims. What more compelling evidence of that could be imagined than the fact that we imprisoned -- and continue to imprison -- people at Guantanamo whose only political interest is in resisting oppression by the Chinese government?
UPDATE: On a related note: there is much worthwhile commentary about Joe Biden's statements yesterday that Israel is "entitled" as a sovereign nation to attack Iran and the U.S. would do nothing to stand in its way. Marc Lynch examines what Biden likely meant and did not mean, but more importantly documents that it was perceived in the Middle East -- including in Iran and Israel -- as the U.S. giving the "green light" to Israel. Digby explains the particular stupidity of the U.S. appearing to threaten Iran with an Israeli attack -- of all things -- in light of the current political turmoil inside that country. And Chris Floyd describes how the "principles" invoked by Biden apply only to the U.S. and those within "the golden circle of imperial favor," while those disfavored by the U.S. are explicitly denied such rights.
There are so many hypocrisies embedded in what Biden said that it is impossible to note all of them. Last August, Biden himself demanded that Russia -- at least as "sovereign" a country as Israel -- withdraw from Georgia and threatened recriminations if they did not. The U.S. is now demanding that sovereign Israel cease West Bank settlements. The entire effort against Iran is based on an attempt to dictate that sovereign country's nuclear policies. The whole world knows that telling other countries what to do is what the U.S. does generally, and that the massive amounts of various aid we give to Israel allows us to dictate its actions particularly. Given all the ways we enable Israeli actions -- financial, military, diplomatic -- there are very few people who would interpret an Israeli attack on Iran as being done without American approval.
All that said, I think Biden's comments yesterday were more the by-product of the unique ineptitude and plain dumbness that Biden often exhibits rather than a conscious attempt by the Obama administration to announce some new policy. I say that mostly because Biden himself repeated the same comments back in October, 2008, when he told so-called "members of the Jewish media" that whether Israel attacks Iran "is not a question for us to tell the Israelis what they can and cannot do." That's just how Biden speaks when asked about Israel, and that was true before yesterday. Still, whether intended or not, our general willingness to constantly threaten military action against Iran, and to refuse to publicly oppose Israel's threats, is rather obviously inconsistent with our attempts to depict Them -- those irrational, barbaric Muslims -- as the root of all hostility and aggression.
UPDATE II: On an entirely unrelated note: Dan Abrams, formerly of MSNBC, launched a new wesbite today devoted to reporting on the media world (Howie Kurtz profiles it here today). The site (Mediaite), among other things, maintains rankings of media influence using puportedly objective metrics. Their ranking of the top print and online columnists is here, and it ranks my "column" at # 9 (tragically just behind Charles Krauthammer's but ahead of Karl Rove's, Peggy Noonan's, David Brooks' and Kurtz's). Attempting to quantify influence this way is a dubious proposition, but since the influence (or lack thereof) of blogs is a commonly debated topic among many here (including at Salon today), it seems worth noting.
Every week lately seems to bring a new round of unrest in some corner of the world. Iran, Honduras and now Xinjiang, where 140 people died in rioting yesterday. Any such outbreak of civil conflict, of course, has its own complex history, with rival factions and long-held grievances that aren’t immediately obvious to far-off observers.
Situated in China’s remote northwest, resource-rich Xinjiang is in many ways more akin to neighboring central Asian neighbors like Kazakhstan than it is to heartland China. The predominant population in the far west is not Han, as in much of China, but Uighur -- a Turkic-speaking, Muslim ethnic group, which has periodically attempted to separate from China. The Uighurs have been restive under Beijing’s repressive rule for years (as Glenn Greenwald points out, if they were Christians, we might have noticed), and in the 1990s the region saw a wave of protests, riots and bombings, which brought down a heavy-handed government response.
Sunday’s violence was apparently prompted by a fight at a toy factory in Shaoguan, in the south of China. Last week, local Han workers followed up accusations that six Xinjiang boys had raped two girls by attacking Uighur workers at the factory. Two were killed, and 118 were reportedly injured. The rape story now appears to be false. However, Uighur victims of the factory fight have issued statements to Xinhua, China’s state-run news service, denouncing Xinjiang rioters in terms that are suspiciously friendly to the government. "I believe the government will handle the brawl appropriately," says one. "Why did the rioters destroy our beautiful and peaceful Xinjiang region in such cruel manners?"
The rioting yesterday, apparently touched off by the Shaoguan fight, occurred in Urumqi (pronounced Urumchi), Xinjiang’s capital. Though Xinjiang as a whole remains Uighur-dominated, the Chinese government, as with Tibet, has encouraged Han Chinese to resettle in Xinjiang, and the Uighurs are now a minority in their own regional capital of Urumqi.
This tension appears to be at the heart of what happened yesterday. China has long sought to paper over its vast ethnic heterogeneity, and obviously does not look kindly on separatism, especially in a resource-rich region. Not only are the Uighurs occupied, exploited and repressed by Beijing, but they face the prospect of being gradually overwhelmed culturally, and without the worldwide attention Tibet has received for the same danger. (For a comprehensive description of the Uighur's problems, this story is a good start.)
Rioting erupted in the city’s market area, and involved at least 1,000 people before riot police and soldiers managed to lock down the city, likely halting any further public unrest. Demonstrations apparently spread today to Kashgar, another major Xinjiang city.
China has suggested that the victims of yesterday’s violence were members of Urumqi’s Han minority, targeted by angry and fanatic Uighurs, and blamed Rebiya Kadeer and other exiled, Washington-based Uighur activists for instigating the violence. But the Uighur exiles deny the charge, and claim that police fired into the crowds with live ammunition.
It’s extremely difficult to get reliable information out of China, especially at a moment of chaos and lockdown. Nobody will answer phone calls. The government has disabled Twitter, and China Mobile has limited service in Urumqi.
The closest available equivalent to the Twitter feeds coming out of Iran several weeks ago has been the trickle of cellphone videos posted online, apparently from Urumqi. Obviously, we can’t verify them, but these videos below, purporting to be of the riots, are compelling and disconcerting.
Historically the term "Uyghur" was applied to a group of Turkic-speaking tribes that lived in the Altay Mountains. Along with the Göktürks (Kokturks), the Uyghurs were one of the largest and most enduring Turkic peoples living in Central Asia.
In the literature, the term Uyghur has a number of differing spellings, including Uigur, Uygur, and Uighur. The word means "Confederation of Nine Tribes" and is synonymous with the name Tokuz-Oguz. In Turkic inscriptions, the name Tokuz-Oguz is used for the subdued Uigurs, and the resisting are called Uigurs, pointing to semantical nuances between the two names.[5] Etymologically, Türkic "tokuz" = nine, and "gur" = tribe. They were one of the Tele tribes that migrated in the 4th century from Hesi northward. The Chinese also referred to the Uyghurs as Hoy-Hu, Üan-Ga,[6] and Chiu Hsing ("Nine tribes," Chinese: 九姓; pinyin: jiŭxìng). Another suggested etymology is a composite of "uigy" quick + "er/ir/ur" = man for "Quick People", [7] "Uygar" as "civilised", and derivations such as "unified, united", though none of these are justified on historical or linguistic grounds.[8]
Three Uyghur girls at a Sunday market in the oasis city Khotan (Hotan / Hetian), in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of the People's Republic of China.
The earliest use of the term "Uyghur" (Weihu) was during the Northern Wei Dynasty (386-534 AD), in China. At that time, the Uyghur were part of the Gaoche (English: "High Wheels"), a group of Turkic tribes, which Chinese later called Tele people, from the Turkic word, "tele"[9] the "Nine-Family Tele" association, i.e., Tokuz-Oguzes) for "wheelwagon". This group included tribes such as Syr-Tardush, Basmyl, Oguz, Khazar , Alans, Kyrgyz, Tuva and Yakut from the Lake Baikal Region. The forebears of the Tele belonged to those of Hun (Chinese: Xiongnu) descendants. According to Chinese Turkic scholars Ma Changshou and Cen Zhongmian, the Chinese word Tiele originates from the Turkic word "Türkler" (Turks), which is a plural form of "Türk" (Turk) and the Chinese word "Tujue" comes from the Turkic word "Türküt" which is a singular form of Türk.[10] The origin of Gaoche can be traced back to the Dingling peoples of about 200 BC, contemporary with the Chinese Han Dynasty.[11][12][13]
The first use of "Uyghur" as a reference to a political nation occurred during the interim period between the First and Second Göktürk Kaganates (630–684 AD). After the collapse of the Uyghur Empire in 840 AD, Uyghur resettled to the Tarim Basin, while East Asian migrants arrived in the eastern portions of the Tarim Basin about 3,000 years ago.[14]
In modern usage, "Uyghur" refers to settled Turkic urban-dwellers and farmers of Kashgaria or Uyghurstan who follow traditional settled Central Asian practices, as distinguished from nomadic Turkic populations in Central Asia. The Bolsheviks reintroduced the term "Uyghur" to replace the previously used Turk or Turki.
Uyghur history can be divided into four distinct phases: Pre-Imperial (300 BC – 630 AD), Imperial (630–840 AD), Idiqut (840–1209 AD), and Mongol (1209–1600 AD), with perhaps a fifth modern phase running from the death of the Silk Road in 1600 AD until the present. Uyghur history is the story of an obscure nomadic tribe from the Altai Mountains rising to challenge the Chinese Empire and ultimately becoming the diplomatic arm of the Mongol invasion.
Pre-Imperial – 745 AD
Map of the Western (purple) and Eastern (blue) Göktürkkhaganates at their height, c. 600 AD Lighter areas show direct rule; darker areas show spheres of influence.
Uyghur Empire at its height
An 8th century Uyghur Khagan
Uyghur princesses. Bezeklik, Cave 9, ca. 8th/9th century AD, wall painting
Uyghur princes wearing robes and headgears. Bezeklik, Cave 9
The ancestors of the Uyghur include the Xiongnu confederation. When the Göktürk Khanate was established, the Uyghurs, together with other tribes of various origins, became part of Göktürk empire. The empire declined following Bilge Khan's death in 734. After a series of revolts coordinated with their Chinese allies, the Uyghur emerged as the leaders of a new Turkic coalition force called the "Toquz Oghuz". In 744 AD the Uyghur, together with other related subject tribes (the Basmyl and Qarluq), defeated the Göktürk Khanate and founded the Uyghur Empire at Mount Ötüken, which lasted for about 100 years (744–840 AD).
Uyghur Empire: The Golden Age (744–840 AD)
Properly called the On-Uyghur (ten Uyghurs) and Toquz-Oghuz (nine tribes) Orkhon Khanate, the Uyghur Empire stretched from the Caspian Sea[citation needed] to Manchuria and lasted from 744 to 840 AD. It was administered from the imperial capital Ordu Baliq. Uyghur Empire considered conquering the Tang Empire,[citation needed] but chose instead to use an exploitive trade policy to drain off the wealth of China without actually destroying it. In 840 AD, following a famine and a civil war, the Uyghur Empire was overrun by the Kyrgyz.
Modern Uyghur
840 AD – 1600 AD
Following the collapse of the Uyghur Empire, the Uyghur established states in three areas: present day Gansu, Xinjiang, and the Chu River the West of Tian Shan (Tengri-Tag) Mountains.
Today one can still see Uyghurs with light-colored skin and hair. The genetic studies show that the Uyghur (UIG) population, presenting a typical admixture of Eastern and Western anthropometric traits, results showed that UIG was formed by two-way admixture, with 50% Caucasian (Tocharian) ancestry and 50% East Asian (Turkic-Hun) ancestry. Overall linkage disequilibrium (LD) in UIG was similar to that in its parental populations represented in East Asia and Europe with regard to common alleles, and UIG manifested. Both the magnitude of LD and fragmentary ancestral chromosome segments indicated a long history of Uyghur. Under the assumption of a hybrid isolation (HI) model, it was estimated that the admixture event of UIG occurred about 126 [107, 146] generations ago, or 2520 [2140, 2920] years ago assuming 20 years per generation.[15]
Yugor The eastern-most of the three Uyghur states was the Ganzhou Kingdom (870–1036 AD), with its capital near present-day Zhangye in the Gansu province of China. There, the Uyghur converted from Manicheism to Lamaism (Tibetan and Mongol Buddhism). Unlike other Turkic peoples further west, they did not later convert to Islam. Their descendants are now known as Yugurs (or Yogir, Yugor, and Sary Uyghurs, literally meaning "yellow Uyghurs") and are distinct from modern Uyghurs. In 1028–1036 AD, the Yugors were defeated in a bloody war and forcibly absorbed into the Tangut kingdom.
Karakhoja The central of the three Uyghur states was the Karakhoja kingdom (created during 856–866 AD), also called the "Idiqut" ("Holy Wealth, Glory") state, and was based around the cities of Turfan (winter capital), Beshbalik (summer capital), Kumul, and Kucha. A Buddhist state, with state-sponsored Buddhism and Manicheism, it can be considered the center of Uyghur culture. The Idiquts (title of the Karakhoja rulers) ruled independently until 1209, when they submitted to the Mongols under Genghis Khan and, as vassal rulers, existed until 1335.
Kara-Khanids, or The Karahans (Great Khans Dynasty), was the westernmost of the three Uyghur states. The Karahans (Karakhanliks) originated from Uyghur tribes settled in the Chu River Valley after 840 and ruled between 940–1212 in Turkistan and Maveraünnehir. They converted to Islam in 934 under the rule of Sultan Satuq Bughra Khan (920–956 AD) and, after taking power over Qarluks in 940, built a federation with Muslim institutions. Together with the Samanids of Samarkand, they considered themselves the defenders of Islam against the Buddhist Uyghur Idiqut. The first capital of the Karahans was established in the city of Balasagun in the Chu River Valley and later was moved to Kashgar.
The reign of the Karahans is especially significant from the point of view of Turkic culture and art history. During this period, mosques, schools, bridges, and caravansaries were constructed in the cities. Kashgar, Bukhara and Samarkand became centers of learning. During this period, Turkic literature developed. Among the most important works of the period is Kutadgu Bilig (English: "The Knowledge That Gives Happiness"), written by Yusuf Balasaghuni between the years 1060–1070, and Lughat-at-Turk(The Turkic dictionary) by Mahmud of Kashgar.
Both the Idiqut and the Kara-Khanid states eventually submitted to the Kara Khitais. After the rise of the Seljuk Turks in Iran, the Kara-Khanids became nominal vassals of the Seljuks as well. Later they would serve the dual-suzerainty of the Kara-Khitans to the north and the Seljuks to the south. Finally all three states became vassals to Genghis Khan in 1209.
The Chagatai Khanate was a Mongol khanate that initially inherited part of the Mongol Empire that comprised the lands controlled by Chagatai Khan (alternative spellings Chagata, Chugta, Chagta, Djagatai, Jagatai), second son of the Mongol emperor Genghis Khan. Chagatai's ulus, or hereditary territory, consisted of the part of the Mongol Empire which extended from the Ili River (today in eastern Kazakhstan) and Kashgaria (in the western Tarim Basin) to Transoxiana (modern Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan). After the death of his father, he inherited most of what are now the five Central Asian states and northern Iran, which he ruled until his death in 1242. These lands later came to be known as the Chagatai Khanate, a descendant empire of the Mongol Empire after the latter's split. These territories would later become the Turco-Mongol states.
After the death of the Chagatayid ruler Qazan Khan in 1346, the Chagatai Khanate was divided into western (Transoxiana) and eastern (Moghulistan/Uyghuristan) halves, which was later known as "Kashgar and Uyghurstan," according Balkh historian Makhmud ibn Vali (Sea of Mysteries, 1640). Kashgar historian Muhammad Imin Sadr Kashgari called the country Uyghurstan in his book Traces of Invasion (Asar al-futuh) in 1780. Power in the western half devolved into the hands of several tribal leaders, most notably the Qara'unas. Khans appointed by the tribal rulers were mere puppets. In the east, Tughlugh Timur (1347–1363), an obscure Chaghataite adventurer, gained ascendancy over the nomadic Mongols, and converted to Islam. In 1360, and again in 1361, he invaded the western half in the hope that he could reunify the khanate. At their greatest extent, the Chaghataite domains extended from the Irtysh River in Siberia down to Ghazni in Afghanistan, and from Transoxiana to the Tarim Basin.
Tughlugh Timur was unable to completely subjugate the tribal rulers. After his death in 1363, the Moghuls left Transoxiana, and the Qara'unas' leader Amir Husayn took control of Transoxiana. Tīmur-e Lang (Timur the Lame), or Tamerlane, a Muslim native of Transoxania who claimed descent from Genghis Khan, desired control of the khanate for himself and opposed Amir Husayn. He took Samarkand in 1366, and was recognized as emir in 1370, although he continued to officially act in the name of the Chagatai khans. For over three decades, Timur used the Chagatai lands as the base for extensive conquests, conquering the rulers of Herat in Afghanistan, Shiraz in Persia, Baghdad in Iraq, Delhi in India, and Damascus in Syria. After defeating the Ottoman Turks at Angora, Timur died in 1405 while marching on Ming Dynasty China. The Timurid Dynasty continued under his son, Shah Rukh, who ruled from Herat until his death in 1447.
By 1369, the western half (Transoxonia and further west) of the Chagatai Khanate had been conquered by Tamerlane in his attempt to reconstruct the Mongol Empire. The eastern half, mostly under what is now Xinjiang, remained under Chagatai princes that were at times allied or at war with Timurid princes. Finally, in the 17th century, all the remaining Chagatay domains fell under the theocratic regime of Apak Khoja and his descendant, the Khojijans, who ruled East Turkestan under Dzungar and/or Manchu overlordships.
Both Transoxonia and the Tarim Basin of East Turkestan became known as Moghulistan or Mughalistan, named after the ruling class of Chagatay and Timurid states which descended from the "Moghol" (Mongol) tribe of Doghlat, but was completely Islamicized and Turkified in language. It was the same Moghol Timurid ruling class that established the Timurid rule on the Indian Subcontinent known as the Mughal Empire.
Under the Chagatay Khanate's rule in East Turkestan/Uyghurstan, the culture of the original subjects of the Karakhanids(Uyghurs) became somewhat of a "national culture" of the largely Muslim state, that the Buddhist populations of the former Karakhoja(Uyghurs) Idikut-ate largely converted into the Muslim faith, and that all Chagatai-speaking Muslims, regardless whether they lived in Turpan or Kashgar, became known by their occupations as Moghols (ruling class), Sarts (merchants and townspeople) and Taranchis (farmers). This triple division of classes among the same Muslim Turkic folk also existed in Transoxonia, regardless whether they were under Timurid or Chagatay, or even Uzbek and Khojijan princes. Even today, the sense of ethnic kinship between the modern Uyghur and Uzbek peoples remain strong.
It is widely believed that the modern Uyghur nation acquired its current demographic composition and its current cultural identity during the East Turkestani Chagatay period. The Chagatay period in East Turkestan was marked by instability and internecine warfare, with Kashgar, Yarkant and Qomul as major centers of warfare and warlord rule. Some Chagatay princes allied with the Timurids and Uzbeks of Transoxonia, and some sought help from the Buddhist Kalmyks. The Chagatay prince Mirza Haidar Kurgan escaped his war-torn homeland Kashgar in the early 16th century to Timurid Tashkent, only to be evicted by the invading Shaybanids. Escaping to the mercy of his Mughal Timurid cousins, which was then rulers of Delhi, India, he gained his final post as governor of Kashmir and wrote the famous Tarikh-i-Rashidi, widely acclaimed as the most comprehensive work on the Uyghur civilization during the East Turkestani Chagatay reign.[16]
The Khojijans were originally the Aq Tagh tariqa of the Naqshbandi order, which originated in Timurid Transoxonia. Struggles between two prominent Naqshbandi tariqas the Aq Taghlik and the Kara Taghlik engulfed the entire East Turkestani Chagatay domain in late 17th century, which Apaq Khoja finally triumphant both as a national religious and political leader. The last ruling Chagatay princess married one of the ruling Khojijan princes (descendants of Apaq) and became known as Khanum Pasha. She ruled with brutality after the death of her husband, and singlehandedly slaughtered many of her Khojijan and Chagatayid rivals. She was known to have boiled alive the last Chagatayid princess that could have continued the dynasty. The Khojijan Dynasty fell into chaos despite the brutality of Khanum Pasha, and became a vassal of the invading DzungarKalmyks.
The triumph of the Manchu Qing Dynasty over the Jungars brought Manchu military governorship to the Ili Valley north of Kashgar. Some Khojijan princes put up a struggle against Qing overlordship, but all were finally pacified and became local rulers in a fragmented East Turkestan that recognized Qing suzerainty.
Post-1600 AD
The Manchus, semi-nomads from present-day northeast China, vastly expanded the Qing empire, which they founded in 1644, to include much of Mongolia, East Turkistan, and Tibet. The Manchus invaded Dzungaria in 1759 and dominated it until 1864. During this period, the Uyghurs revolted 42 times against Qing Dynasty rulers. In the revolt of 1864, the Uyghurs were successful in expelling the Qing Dynasty officials from East Turkistan, and founded an independent Kashgaria kingdom, called Yettishar (English: "country of seven cities"). Under the leadership of Yakub Beg, it included Kashgar, Yarkand, Hotan, Aksu, Kucha, Korla and Turfan). The kingdom was recognized by the Ottoman Empire (1873), Tsarist Russia (1872), and Great Britain (1874), which established a mission in the capital, Kashgar.
Large Qing Dynasty forces under the overall command of General Zuo Zongtang attacked East Turkestan in 1876. Fearing Tsarist expansion into East Turkestan, Great Britain supported the Manchu invasion forces through loans by British banks (mostly through Boston Bank, located in Hong Kong). After this invasion, East Turkestan was renamed "Xinjiang" or "Sinkiang", which means "New Dominion" or "New Territory", and it was annexed by the Manchu empire on November 18, 1884.
Throughout the Qing Dynasty, the sedentary Turkic inhabitants of the oases around the Tarim speaking Qarluq/Old Uyghur-Chagatay dialects were still largely known as Taranchi, Sart, ruled by their Moghul rulers of Khojijan or Chagatay lineages. Other parts of the Islamic World still knew this area as Moghulistan or as the eastern part of Turkestan.
Before being renamed "New Territory" by Zuo Zongtang, this eastern part of Turkestan was more often known to the Qing Chinese as Hui Jiang, or "The Frontier of the Huis". Qarluq Turkic speaking Taranchi and Sart are often known as "Chantou Hui" (Turban-wearing Hui), for their headgears distinctive from those of the Chinese-speaking Hui. It was based on this designation of Hui, that Sart-Taranchi participants of the Czarist Central AsianIslamic modernist movement, the Jadid Movement, concluded that the modernized ethnonym of the Sart-Taranchi of Moghulistan should be Uyghur, because the names Hui and Uyghur are cognates. It was from outside of Qing Domain, well within the Czarist controlled parts of Central Asia, that Sart-Taranchi, Uzbek and Russian scholars first propagated the use of the modern ethnonym Uyghur. To illustrate the artificiality of the distinctions between the modern Uzbek and Uyghur nationality, one only needs to look at General Saipidin Eziz, the first governor of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. General Saipidin was born to a Kashgar Sart merchant family with Andijan roots. Technically, one with Andijan roots would be classified as Uzbek as many Xinjiang people with connections in Uzbekistan, and speaking Turkic dialects local to Uzbekistan, continue to be classified as "Uzbeks in Xinjiang". However, since Kashgar Sarts and Andijan Sarts are hardly different culturally from each other, Saipidin grew up to identify himself primarily with his hometown Kashgar, and has always been identified as an Uyghur. The Uzbek culture does derive largely from the Sart culture common to most of Turkestan during the Karakhanid and Chagatay eras. However the Uzbek Khanate which did not rule Xinjiang, but only Uzbekistan in early modern times, had its ruling culture derived from the true Uzbeks, a Kypchak horde similar to the Kazakhs and Karakalpaks. The modern Uzbek nation did absorb something from this Kypchak ruling culture which can be discerned from the doppas worn by the Uzbeks and Uyghurs. The Uyghurs usually wear the square doppas whereas the Uzbeks usually wear the round doppas in similar make as the Kazakh and Kazan Tatar doppas. The people today known as Uighurs are not all descended from this tribe, however. The name 'Uighur' was revived in 1921 as a generic description for the oasis-dwellers of Xinjiang. Until then they identified themselves as some still do by their oasis, as 'Keriyanese', 'Khotanese', or 'Kashgari'. In modern usage, "Uyghur" refers to settled Turkic urban-dwellers and farmers of Kashgaria and Jungaria who follow traditional Central Asian practices, as distinguished from nomadic Turkic populations in Central Asia[citation needed]. The Bolsheviks reintroduced the term "Uyghur" to replace the previously used Turki. The Soviets first used "Uyghur" in 1921 during a meeting of Turkic leaders in Tashkent. This meeting established the Revolutionary Uyghur Union (Inqilawi Uyghur Itipaqi), a communist nationalist organization that opened underground sections in principal cities of Kashgaria and was active until 1926, when the Soviets recognized the Sinkiang Provincial Government and concluded trade agreements with it. Comintern's structure included an Uyghur section. There is some evidence that Uyghur students and merchants living in Russia had already embraced the name prior to this date, drawing on Russian studies that claimed a linkage between the historical khanate and Xinjiang's current inhabitants. By 1920, Uyghur nationalism had already become a grave challenge to the Qing and Republican Chinese warlords controlling Xinjiang. Turpan poet Abdulhaliq, having spent his early years in Semey (Semipalatinsk) and the Jadid intellectual centres in Uzbekistan, returned to Xinjiang with a penname that he later styled as a surname: Uyghur. He wrote the famous nationalist poem Oyghan, which opened with the line "Ey pekir Uyghur, oyghan!" (Hey poor Uyghur, wake up!). He was later martyred by the Chinese warlord Sheng Shicai in Turpan in March,1933 for inciting Uyghur nationalist sentiments through his works.
Meanwhile, the "Great Game" among Russia, Britain and China was underway in Central Asia, with former continuous ethnic cultures from Afghanistan through Tajikistan and Uzbekistan to Xinjiang, being divided into artificial "nationalities". Artificial lines have been drawn between Shiite Persian speakers and Sunni Chagatay Turkic speakers within the same Uzbek cultural sphere and gave rise to the modern Tajik and Uzbek nationalities. Likewise the Russians and the Chinese deemed it necessary to draw a line between the Sart-Taranchi on different sides of the border separating Uzbekistan and Xinjiang. Whereas the rather similar Sart-Taranchi populations around Kashgar(Xinjiang) and Andijan(Uzbekistan) became artificially divided into the different ethnicities of Uyghur and Uzbeks, diverse local populations, though speaking closely related Chagatay dialects scattered among oases of Turpan, Qumul, Korla, Kashgar, Yarkant, Yengihissar, Khotan, Gulja through the Tarim Basin and the edges of Xinjiang, were recognized as one modern ethnicity: Uyghur. Official recognition of the Uyghur nationality came under the rule of Sheng Shicai, a Republican Chinese, or nominally Kuomintang warlord who ruled Xinjiang almost as an independent, feudal kingdom.
The Uyghur independence activists staged several uprisings against Sheng-Kuomintang rule. Twice, in 1933 and 1944, Uyghur were successful in setting up two independent Uyghur states: East Turkestan Republic and Republic of Uyghurstan or Islamic Eastern Turkestan Republic. The more secular, socialist East Turkestan Republic was multiethnic, with Kazakh, Uzbek, Han Chinese, Kyrgyz, Russian as well as Uyghur founders, and was backed by Joseph Stalin. In 1949, the East Turkestan agreed to form a confederate relation with Mao's People's Republic of China, banking on the firm grip on Xinjiang by its own pro-Soviet and ethnic nationalist local regime. However, a plane crash killed the main body of East Turkestan Republic's supreme leadership, as this party was on its way to Beijing to negotiate the terms of confederation. The crash is sometimes alleged as a plot by Mao, because soon following the crash, General Wang Zhen quickly marched on Xinjiang through the deserts, suppressing pro-Kuomintang and anti-Chinese ethnic uprisings. The remaining East Turkestan Republic leadership under General Saipidin Eziz quickly surrendered to Mao's terms and agreed to turn Xinjiang into the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, with the Eastern Turkestan Republican Army pressed into the PLA and Saipidin Eziz serving as the region's first CCP governor. Many East Turkestan Republic loyalists, resenting Saipidin's betrayal of the Uyghur's nationalist dream, made their exiles to Turkey and the West. Yet many other loyalists remained behind and staged anti-CCP activities aiming at re-establishing an independent nation in Xinjiang. Soon after that, all mentioning of the name East Turkestan have been censored and the display of the republic's blue star-crescent flag became illegal.
Uyghur protest in Munich 2008 against China policy
The name Xinjiang, which means "new territory" or "new frontier" in mandarin, is considered offensive by many advocates of Uyghur independence who prefer to use historical or ethnic names such as Uyghurstan or Eastern Turkestan (with Turkestan sometimes spelled as Turkistan).[17]
Following the September 11, 2001 attacks in the USA, China voiced its support for the United States of America in the war on terror. The Chinese government has often referred to Uyghur nationalists as "terrorists" and received more global support for their own "war on terror" since 9/11. Human rights organizations have become concerned that this "war on terror" is being used by the Chinese government as a pretext to repress ethnic Uyghurs.[18] Uyghur exile groups also claim that the Chinese government is suppressing Uyghur culture and religion, and responding to demands for independence with human rights violations.[19]
According to at least one outside source, Beijing has "decimated Uyghur culture."[citation needed]
In traditional Uyghur cities like Kashgar, a vibrant bazaar town on the border of Central Asia, the authorities tore down Uyghur stalls across the central square, where Muslim men once gathered for open-air shaves before heading to the central mosque. The local government replaced them with a bland plaza patrolled by Chinese troops. In another unpopular move, Beijing offered financial incentives for ethnic Chinese migrants to come to the province and set up businesses. Now, ethnic [Han] Chinese dominate nearly all big businesses in the region.[20]
Many Uyghur in the diaspora support Pan-Turkic groups. Several organizations such as the East Turkestan Party, provide support for the Chinese Uyghurs.
Most Uyghur political groups have supported peaceful Uyghur nationalism, advocating independence from China. There are two separatist groups (the East Turkestan Islamic Movement and, disputedly, East Turkestan Liberation Organization) that have been involved in fighting with the Chinese army and killing the Han Chinese. Often the Chinese government refers generally to East Turkestan nationalists as "terrorists". The most prominent, independently confirmed incident where pro-independence protesters clashed with the Chinese authorities was in the 1997 Gulja incident, in which at least 9 people died. Chinese state-run news agency has also reported a connection between Uyghur separatists and a series of terrorist attacks during the Beijing Olympics, though this has not been independently confirmed.
In 2009, United States President Barack Obama ordered the release of four Uyghurs from the military detention facility at Guantanamo Bay after 7 years of confinement by the Bush Administration following the attacks on September 11, 2001. Though these individuals insist that they are not terrorists and were never actually convicted of any crime in the U.S., the Chinese government insists these men are terrorists and has demanded their extradition to China following their relocation to Bermuda.[21]
Culture
The relics of the Uyghur culture constitute major collections in the museums of Berlin, London, Paris, Tokyo, St. Petersburg, and New Delhi. During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, scientific and archaeological expeditions to the region of Uyghurstan's Silk Road discovered numerous cave temples, monastery ruins, and wall paintings, as well as valuable miniatures, books, and documents. Explorers from Europe, America, and Japan were amazed by the art treasures found there, and soon their reports caught the attention of an interested public around the world. The manuscripts and documents discovered in Xinjiang (Uyghurstan/Eastern Turkestan) reveal the very high degree of civilization attained by the Uyghurs. This Uyghur power, prestige, and civilization, which dominated Central Asia for over a thousand years, went into a steep decline after the Manchu invasion of their homeland. Throughout the history of Central Asia, they left a lasting imprint on both the culture and tradition of the people of central Asia.
Chinese ambassador Wang Yen De to the Karakhoja Uyghur Kingdom in 981–984 AD: "I was impressed with the extensive civilization I have found in the Uyghur Kingdom. The beauty of the temples, monasteries, wall paintings, statues, towers, gardens, housings and the palaces built throughout the kingdom cannot be described. The Uyghurs skilfully make things of silver and gold, vases and pitchers.
Albert von Le Coq: "The Uyghur language and script contributed to the enrichment of civilizations of the other peoples in Central Asia. Compared to the Europeans of that time, the Uyghurs were far more advanced. Documents discovered in Uyghur Region prove that an Uyghur farmer could write down a contract, using legal terminology.
Literature
Some of Uyghur books have been translated into different western languages. In the 11th century the Uyghurs accepted the Arabic alphabet.[citation needed]
Most of the early Uyghur literary works were translations of Buddhist and Manichean religious texts, but there were also narrative, poetic, and epic works.[citation needed] Some of these have been translated into German, English, Russian, and Turkish. After the general population's conversion to Islam, world-renowned Uyghur scholars emerged and Uyghur literature flourished. Among hundreds of important works surviving from that era are Qutatqu Bilik (Wisdom Of Royal Glory) by Yüsüp Has Hajip (1069–70), Mähmut Qäşqäri's Divan-i Lugat-it Türk- A Dictionary of Turkic Dialects(1072), and Ähmät Yüknäki's Atabetul Hakayik. Perhaps the most famous and well loved pieces of modern Uyghur literature are Abdurehim Otkur's Iz, Oyghanghan Zimin, Zordun Sabir's Anayurt and Ziya Samedi's (former minister of culture in Sinkiang Government in 50's) novels Mayimkhan and Mystery of the years .[citation needed]
The Uyghurs had an extensive knowledge of medicine and medical practice. Chinese Song Dynasty (906–960) sources indicate that an Uyghur physician named Nanto traveled to China and brought with him many kinds of medicine unknown to the Chinese. There were 103 different herbs used in Uyghur medicine recorded in a medical compendium by Li Shizhen (1518–1593), a Chinese medical authority. Tatar scholar, professor Reşit Rahmeti Arat in Zur Heilkunde der Uighuren (Medical Practices of the Uyghurs) published in 1930 and 1932, in Berlin, discussed Uyghur medicine. Relying on a sketch of a man with an explanation of acupuncture, he and some Western scholars suspect that acupuncture was not a Chinese, but an Uyghur discovery. [22]
Today, traditional Uyghur medicine can still be found at street stands. Similar to other traditional medicine, diagnosis is usually made through checking the pulse, symptoms, and disease history, and then the pharmacist pounds up different dried herbs, making personalized medicines according to the prescription. Modern Uyghur medical hospitals adopted the Western medical system and adopt Western pharmaceutical technology to produce traditional medicines.
Uyghur Art
Wall painting at Bezeklik caves in Flaming Mountains, Turpan Depression
Abdulla Abdurehim is a singer who mixes traditional Uighur music with pop melodies and electronic instruments, and who is probably the most well known musician from this region. He is also known as the "king of Uighur Pop". His song "Father" is a classical example of this type of music[23]. His music was played during the opening ceremonies of the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games.
Russian scholar Pantusov writes that the Uyghurs manufactured their own musical instruments; they had 62 different kinds of musical instruments and in every Uyghur home there used to be an instrument called a "dutar".
Throughout the centuries, the Uyghurs have used the following scripts:
Confederated with the Göktürks in the 6th and 7th centuries, they used the Orkhon script.
In the 5th century, they adopted Sogdian script which after heavy modification became known as the Uyghur script, and was vertically instead of horizontally. See Old Uyghur alphabet. This script was used for almost 800 years, not only by the Uyghurs, but also by other Turkic peoples, by the Mongols, and by the Manchus in the early stage of their rule in China.
After having studied the Chinese historical chronicles, Uighur historian Turghun Almas asserts, that Uighur script came into the world several centuries before Christ.
After converting to Islam in the 10th century, the Uyghurs adopted the Arabic alphabet, and its use became common in the 11th century.
During a short period of time (1969–1987), Uyghurs in China used a Latin script (yengi yazik).
Today the Uyghurs of the former Soviet Union use Cyrillic, the Uyghurs of Xinjiang (Uyghurstan) use a modified Arabic script, and the Uyghurs of Turkey use the Latin alphabet.
Kamberi, Dolkun. 2005. Uyghurs and Uyghur identity. Sino-Platonic papers, no. 150. Philadelphia, PA: Dept. of East Asian Languages and Civilizations, University of Pennsylvania.
Mackerras, Colin. Ed. and trans. 1972. The Uighur Empire according to the T'ang Dynastic Histories: a study in Sino-Uyghur relations 744–840. University of South Carolina Press. ISBN 0-87249-279-6
Millward, James A. and Nabijan Tursun, Political History and Strategies of Control, 1884–1978 in Xinjiang: China's Muslim BorderlandISBN 0-7656-1318-2
Rall, Ted. Silk Road to Ruin: Is Central Asia the New Middle East? New York: NBM Publishing, 2006.
Rudelson, Justin Ben-Adam, Oasis identities: Uyghur nationalism along China's Silk Road, New York: Columbia University Press, 1997.
By Muhammad Sahimi, July 06, 2009 Courtesy of Anti-War News
In the days before Iran’s presidential elections on June 12, the War Party and the Israel lobby began worrying about the possibility of the victory of Mir Hossein Mousavi, the main reformist candidate. They worried that his victory would take away the main propaganda weapon against Iran, namely, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his incendiary, inaccurate, but inconsequential rhetoric about the Holocaust and Israel. They considered Ahmadinejad to be “Israel’s greatest gift,” and they wanted him to win reelection.
Mousavi said Ahmadinejad’s rhetoric against Israel and the West and the inflexibility in his nuclear policy had hurt Iran’s national interests and security. He promised that, if elected, he would pursue a sober and flexible foreign policy that would preserve Iran’s vital interests but also enable it to reach an accommodation with the West. Mousavi’s promises were not what the War Party and the Israel lobby wanted to hear, since for years their goal has been convincing the public that there is no solution to the confrontation with Iran but a military one.
Although they were fully aware that Iran’s president, while influential, is not the ultimate decision-maker when it comes to foreign policy, the War Party and the Israel lobby had transformed Ahmadinejad into the most powerful man on earth, a mad man who, if he got his hands on a nuclear weapon, would not hesitate to use it against Israel. Thus, they prayed that the U.S. would attack Iran, even though there is no evidence that Iran is interested in making nuclear weapons.
They are, of course, the same people who, before Ahmadinejad was elected in 2005, always mocked Iran’s presidents for being powerless. On the eve of Iran’s presidential election of 2005, George W. Bush declared that in Iran power is held by “an unelected few.” But after Ahmadinejad was elected, he was suddenly as powerful as Adolf Hitler.
So the possibility of Iran’s president being a rational, moderate man determined to make détente with the United States frightened the War Party and the Israel lobby. Thus, a week before the elections, Iran’s president was demoted to a powerless man again! The neoconservatives, the War Party, and the Israel lobby all began emphasizing how it does not matter who Iran’s president is, since all the important decisions regarding foreign policy are made by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. For example, writing in the New York Times, Elliott Abrams, deputy national security adviser to George W. Bush, declared that “the power of a putative reformist [Iranian president] is illusory.”
Alas! Ahmadinejad was declared the “victor” and will apparently be Iran’s president for four more years, even though a great majority of Iranian people living in Iran and in the Diaspora (including the author) consider his second term illegitimate, or at the very least suspect. So what did the War Party and the Israel lobby do? Make a 180-degree turn in less than a week and declare once again that Ahmadinejad is the most dangerous man on earth, bent on destroying Israel and the U.S.? Obviously not; that would be too ridiculous, even for this crowd. Instead, they decided to do the next best thing, namely, shed crocodile tears for the Iranian people and use those tears to prepare the public for a future war.
To be sure, the violent crackdown on the peaceful demonstrations of the Iranian people, which has resulted in the murder of at least two dozen, must be condemned. No one should be indifferent to the cold-blooded murder of Neda Agha-Soltan, the beautiful 27-year-old woman, and others like her. Let there also be no doubt that the arrest of many reformist leaders, journalists, human rights advocates, university students, and other demonstrators, as well as the harsh censorship imposed on the press, should be condemned in the strongest possible terms. Just as all peace-loving people condemn the carnage committed by Israel against the Palestinians, by George W. Bush and his cabal against Iraqis, and by Russia against the Chechens, they also condemn what is happening in Iran.
But for the condemnations to have any credibility, the condemners themselves must have credibility. At the international level, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Physicians for Human Rights, the International Federation of Human Rights, Reporters Without Borders, and the United Nations Human Rights Council have consistent and credible track records of defending human rights and can credibly condemn what is happening in Iran. The good people of Iran do not, however, need the crocodile tears of the War Party and the neocons.
Sen. John McCain, the man who said “bomb, bomb, bomb” Iran, the man who has consistently supported the illegal invasion of Iraq and the escalation of the Afghan war by the Obama administration – which have resulted in the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of people – need not shed crocodile tears for Iran. The decent people of Iran do not need, nor have they asked for, his support.
William Kristol, the man who was a major force behind the invasion of Iraq and who did his utmost best to provoke George W. Bush to attack Iran, also sheds crocodile tears for the Iranian people, criticizing President Obama for being “resolutely irresolute” about condemning the violent crackdown in Iran.
He likens Mir Hossein Mousavi, a pious man with an impeccable record, to Boris Yeltsin, the corrupt drunkard who sold out Russia to the Mafia-like Russian oligarchy, which only goes to show how much the “little Lenin” of the neocons knows about Iran and Iranians.
I suppose the imbecile fantasizes that if the democratic movement succeeds, Iran will become a U.S. client state again, and he won’t have to push for bombing Iran for Israel’s sake.
Danielle Pletka, a longtime hard-liner on Iran at the American Enterprise Institute, the same institution that provided the “theoretical foundation” for the invasion of Iraq and was home to such Iran “experts” as Michael Ledeen and Reuel Marc Gerecht, who did their best to start a war with Iran, also sheds crocodile tears for the Iranian people, who, she says, will suffer “the consolidation of power by a ruthless regime.” According to Pletka, “Iran [under Ahmadinejad's second term] neither needs nor wants accommodation with the West,” meaning diplomacy should not be pursued.
Yes, the Iranian people do need moral support. But they do not need the ersatz support of the warmongers who for years have done all they can to start a war with their country. In a message to the Iranians in the Diaspora, Mousavi said, “I am fully aware that your justified demands have nothing to do with groups who do not believe in the sacred Islamic Republic of Iran’s system. It is up to you to distance yourself from them, and do not allow them to misuse the current situation.”
Biden said the United States would make no effort to dissuade the Israeli government from launching an attack on Iran, but was deliberately evasive on the question of whether the US would provide Israel with access to Iraqi airspace for the strike, saying he didn’t want to “speculate.”
Ok then. Let us also remember this "Non-Interference" with Israel's "National Security" affairs, when let's say, an Arab nation or even Iran, Preempts Israel, by attacking it due to its possession of over 200 Nuclear Weapons.
Isn't Israel a threat to the Middle East's and the Mediterranean's regional security, when IT introduced nuclear weapons to that area, and continued building upon it?
Let's hope that our government doesn't chastise any Arab nation or Iran, for issuing threats like Israel, or actually implementing said threats.
Israel's attempt to legislate loyalty to the Jewish state is proof of the failure of the Zionist/colonial project of Israelification
By Azmi Bishara 18 - 24 June 2009 Issue No. 952 Courtesy Of AL-Ahram Weekly
What is behind the latest wave of legislative proposals flooding the Knesset agenda? I refer specifically to those intended to curb manifestations of Palestinian patriotism and to restrict the political activity of Arab Israelis.
Netanyahu and Lieberman
The aim of these laws is to impose the Israeli nationalist creed by coercion. It's really that simple. Over the last decade, the Knesset has experienced several bursts of legislative activity seeking to restrict freedom of opinion and expression on the questions of the Jewishness of the state and the right to resist occupation. The advocates of these laws are indefatigable. If the proposals fail to pass through any of the necessary stages, they are resubmitted over and over again in the hope of wearing out their opponents.
Is Israel really heading towards fascism? Is its vaunted democracy on the wane? Or, I suppose, we could rephrase these questions as follows: Was Israel more democratic at some point of time than it is today and are liberal civic rights in that country being beaten back after having thrived at that particular point of time? What exactly is going on?
I would say that two developments are unfolding in tandem. On the one hand, Israel is experiencing a deepening of and expansion in the concept and exercise of liberal political and economic civil rights (for Jewish citizens). At the same time, there is an upsurge in ultranationalist and right-wing religious extremism accompanied by flagrant manifestations of anti-Arab racism. As a consequence, the Jewish citizen endowed with fuller civil rights (than those that had existed in earlier phases when Zionist society was organised along the lines of a militarised quasi- socialist settler drive) is simultaneously an individual who is more exposed to and influenced by right-wing anti-Arab invective.
The contention that Israel had at one point been more democratic and is now sliding into fascism is fallacious. It brings to mind our protest demonstrations in the 1970s and the earnest zeal with which we chanted, "Fascism will not survive!" Our slogans were inspired by the Spanish left before the civil war in Spain and by the Italian left in the 1930s. But, in fact, the context was entirely different. Israel was the product of a colonialist settler drive that came, settled and survived. Fascism is a very specific form of rule, one that does not necessarily have to exist in a militarised settler society that founded itself on top of the ruins of an indigenous people. Indeed, that society organised itself along pluralistic democratic lines and it was unified on a set of fundamental principles and values as a basis for societal consensus. As militarist values figured prime among them, there was no need for a fascist coup to impose them. Even Sharon, who, from the perspective of the Israeli left, seemed poised to lead a fascist coup was one of the most ardent advocates of women's rights during his rule. He also proved one of the more determined proponents of implementing the rulings of the Israeli Supreme Court, which is a relatively liberal body in the context of the Zionist political spectrum and within the constraints of Zionist conceptual premises. Israel has grown neither more nor less democratic. The scope of civil rights has expanded, as has the tide of right-wing racism against the Arabs.
Among the Arabs in Israel there have also been two tandem developments. The first is an increasing awareness of the rights of citizenship and civil liberties after a long period of living in fear of military rule and the Israeli security agencies, and in isolation from the Arab world. That period was also characterised by attempts to prove their loyalty to the state by dedicating themselves to the service of the daily struggle for material survival and progress in routine civic affairs. At the same time, however, the forces of increasing levels of education, the growth of a middle class, the progress of the Palestinian national movement abroad, the advances in communications technologies, the broadening organisational bonds among the Palestinians in Israel, and the cultural and commercial exchanges between them and the West Bank and Gaza combined to give impetus to a growing national awareness.
The Arab Israelis' growing awareness of rights has paved the way for an assimilation drive to demand equality in Israel as a Jewish state. Such a demand is inherently unrealisable, as it would inevitably entail forsaking Palestinian national identity without obtaining true equality. Instead of assimilation there would only be further marginalisation. However, this danger still looms; there are Arab political circles in Israel that are convinced that this is the way forward. At the same time, there is the danger that truly nationalist forces could lose their connection with the realities of Palestinians' civil life, by stressing their national identity exclusively with no reference to their citizenship or civil rights, or the conditions of their lives. This tendency threatens to isolate the nationalist movement from its grassroots, and this danger, too, persists although to a lesser extent.
The flurry of loyalty bills and the like reflects another phenomenon that has taken root among Arabs in Israel and that the Israeli establishment regards as a looming peril. This peril, from the Israeli perspective, is twofold. Not only can Palestinians exercise their civil rights in order to fight for equality, they can also take advantage of their civil rights in order to express and raise awareness of their national identity by, for example, commemorating the Nakba and establishing closer contact with the Arab world. Commemorating the Nakba -- the anniversary of the creation of the state of Israel and the consequent displacement and dispossession of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians -- is a relatively new practice for Arabs inside Israel, dating only to the mid-1990s. Before this -- until at least the end of the 1970s, before the spread of national awareness gained impetus among Arabs inside Israel -- many of them participated in the celebrations of Israel's independence day and offered their congratulations to Israelis on the occasion. There were no laws against commemorating Nakba Day, not because Israel was more democratic but merely because there was no need for such laws in the eyes of the Israeli establishment, since the Arabs were not commemorating it anyway. In fact, open demonstrations of disloyalty to the state as a Zionist entity were very rare.
But since that time, change did not affect Israel alone. The political culture of broad swathes of Arabs inside that country shifted towards more open expressions of their national identity. To them, there is no contradiction between this and the exercise of their civil rights. Indeed, they felt it their natural right to use the civil liberties with which they are endowed by virtue of their citizenship to engage in forms of political expression that the Israeli establishment regards as contradictory to its concept of citizenship. Naturally, the clash became more pronounced with the growing stridency of right-wing Zionist racism.
The citizenship of Arabs inside Israel has a distinct quality that I have been attempting to underscore for years. Theirs does not stem from ideological conviction or the exercise of the Zionist law of return. Nor is their situation similar to migrant labour or minorities who have chosen to immigrate to the country and who accommodate to the status quo, as is the case with immigrant communities in the US or France, for example. Their citizenship stems from the reality of their having remained in the country after it was occupied. They are the indigenous people. It is not their duty to assimilate to the Zionist character of the state and the attempt to transform them into patriotic Israelis is an attempt to falsify history, to distort their cultural persona and fragment their moral cohesion. A Palestinian Arab who regards himself as an Israeli patriot is nought. He is someone who has accepted to be something less than a citizen and less than a Palestinian and who simultaneously identifies with those who have occupied Palestinian lands and repressed and expelled his people.
It is impossible, here, to examine all facets of the phenomenon, but we should also touch upon a third trend, which is the growing degree of showmanship, sensationalism and catering to the forces of popular demand on the part of Knesset members. This trend is to be found in all parliamentary systems since television cameras made their way into parliamentary chambers. Parliament has become a theatre and a large proportion of MPs have become comedians or soap opera stars, depending on their particular gifts and/or circumstances. However, when the favourite drama or comedy theme is incitement against the Arabs, this can only signify that anti-Arab prejudices, fear mongering, abuse and intimidation are spreading like wildfire. This is the very dangerous and not at all funny part about the parliamentary circus. And it's going to get grimmer yet for Arabs in Israel.
In the Obama era, following the failure of Bush's policies, the Israeli government will be directing the venom of its right-wing racist coalition against East Jerusalem and Israeli Arabs. After all, it will be easier to focus on domestic matters, such as emphasis on the Jewishness of the state, than on settlements in the occupied territories. Some of the proposed loyalty laws, such as that which would sentence to prison anyone who does not agree to the Jewishness of the state, will have a tough time making it through the legislative process. However, merely by submitting the proposal, the racist MK will have killed two birds with one stone: he will have made a dramatic appearance before the cameras so that his constituents will remember his name come next elections, and he will have stoked the fires of anti-Arab hatred. Other laws may stand a better chance. The proposal to ban the commemoration of Nakba Day could pass like the law prohibiting the raising of the Palestinian flag, or it could fail because even on the right there are those who object to such a ban. It is also doubtful that this country could promulgate a law compelling people to swear an oath of allegiance, because the intended targets are not immigrants but citizens by birth. It would require quite a feat of constitutional re-engineering in order to render citizenship acquired by birth subject to a loyalty oath at some later phase in a person's life.
Naturally, no state, however totalitarian it may be, can impose love and loyalty for it by force, let alone a colonialist state that would like to force this on the indigenous inhabitants it had reduced to a minority on their own land. Certainly it would be much easier for Israel to prohibit manifestations of disloyalty than to legislate for forced manifestations of loyalty.
For many years I've been advocating a Palestinian interpretation of citizenship in Israel that Israel continues to reject, with consequences to myself that readers may well be aware of. According to this interpretation, the Palestinian Israeli effectively tells the ruling authorities, "My loyalty does not go beyond the bounds of being a law abiding citizen who pays his taxes and the like. As for my keeping in touch with Palestinian history and with the Arab world in matters that should be inter-Arab, such things should not have to pass via you or require your approval." Such talk was previously unheard of in Israel and it came as quite a shock to the ears of interlocutors used to liberal-sounding references to "our Arab citizens" who serve as "a bridge of peace" and proof of "the power of Israeli democracy". Rejecting such condescension, the new type of Palestinian says, "My Palestinianness existed before your state was created on top of the ruins of my people. Citizenship is a compromise I have accepted in order to be able to go on living here in my land. It is not a favour that you bestow on me with strings attached."
Apparently, more and more Arab citizens have come around to this attitude, to the extent that Israel has begun to realise that the material exigencies of life or gradual acclimatisation to Israeli ways and political realities will not be able to stop the trend. It has come to believe that only new laws will bring a halt to what it regards as dangerous manifestations of disloyalty. Such laws will be inherently oppressive but they will simultaneously pronounce the failure of Israelification.
Author's note: In his defence of the need for a law to punish with imprisonment those who refuse to recognise Israel as a Jewish state, MK Zevelun Orlev cited the "case of Azmi Bishara". According to this right-wing lawmaker, "this case" began when Bishara refused to recognise the state verbally, after which he proceeded to visit "the countries of the enemy" without permission and to "abet the enemy" in time of war. Naturally, the accusations are groundless. Azmi Bishara did indeed visit Arab countries, openly and without permission, because he refuses to subordinate the relationship between himself, as an Arab, and the Arab world to Israeli authority. However, as an opposition Arab Knesset member, Bishara had no information to hand to an "enemy" or anyone else for that matter. Meanwhile, his ideas on politics and other matters are in the public domain, having been published and discussed in Israel and elsewhere. The allegation of abetting the enemy in time of war was merely a cover-up for a political witch-hunt. Its leaders are now trying to create legislation so they do not have to concoct security excuses in the future in order to suppress the advocates of opinions such as those Bishara expresses.
At a White House press conference on 18 May 2009, US President Barack Obama expressed "deepening concern" about "the potential pursuit of a nuclear weapon by Iran." He continued:
"Iran obtaining a nuclear weapon would not only be a threat to Israel and a threat to the United States, but would be profoundly destabilizing in the international community as a whole and could set off a nuclear arms race in the Middle East."
By his side was Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. In the room with them, there was an elephant, a large and formidably destructive elephant, which they and the assembled press pretended not to see.
I am, of course, referring to Israel's actual nuclear weapons systems, with which Netanyahu is capable of doing to numerous cities in the Middle East, including Tehran, what the US did to Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.
Iran, by contrast, has no nuclear weapons. The US President said so himself in Prague on 5 April 2009 in his major speech on nuclear disarmament. "Iran has yet to build a nuclear weapon," he admitted.
Obama's remark that "Iran obtaining a nuclear weapon" would be "profoundly destabilizing" and "could set off a nuclear arms race in the Middle East" is profoundly dishonest. In reality, the race started in the early 1950s when Israel launched its nuclear weapons program.
Let us suppose for a moment that Iran has a nuclear weapons program, capable of producing effective nuclear warheads and the means of delivering them to Israel, within a few years. Would that make Iran a serious threat to Israel, as Obama said? Of course not.
Rulers of Iran don't want their cities devastated and they know that if Iran were to make a nuclear strike on Israel, it is absolutely certain that Israel would retaliate by making multiple nuclear strikes on Iran and raze many Iranian cities to the ground -- so Iran won't do it. Israel possesses a nuclear arsenal, and the ruthlessness to use it, that is more than adequate to deter Iran from making a nuclear strike on the country.
Likewise, it is unimaginable that Iran would attack the US, or US interests abroad, for fear of overwhelming retaliation.
However, taking account of the elephant in the room puts a very different perspective on the impact of a nuclear-armed Iran.
The significance of Iran acquiring nuclear weapons is not that Iran would become a threat to Israel and the US, but that Israel and the US would no longer contemplate attacking Iran. Nuclear weapons are the ultimate weapons of self-defense -- a state that possesses nuclear weapons doesn't get attacked by other states.
One thing is certain: attacking Iran, ostensibly to prevent it from acquiring nuclear weapons, would make the case for it acquiring them like nothing else. It would then be abundantly clear that Iran could not protect itself by other means -- and it can be guaranteed that it would then make a supreme effort to acquire them.
Has Iran got a nuclear weapons program, in violation of its obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT)?
Iran has repeatedly denied that it has such a program. Furthermore, the Iranian Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, issued a fatwa on September 2004 that "the production, stockpiling, and use of nuclear weapons are forbidden under Islam and that the Islamic Republic of Iran shall never acquire these weapons" ("Iran's Statement at IAEA Emergency Meeting," Mehr News Agency, 10 August 2005) . In doing so, he was following in the footsteps of his predecessor and founder of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Khomeini.
That's what Iran says. As required by the NPT, Iran's nuclear facilities are subject to inspection by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). And, despite many years of inspection and investigation, the IAEA has found no evidence that Iran has, or ever had, a nuclear weapons program, though Western media consistently give the opposite impression. True, the possibility exists that Iran has nuclear facilities for military purposes, which it hasn't declared to the IAEA. The IAEA has found no evidence for this, but the possibility cannot be completely ruled out.
Iran's possession of uranium enrichment facilities is not in breach of the NPT, so long as they are for civil nuclear purposes. The operation of these facilities at Natanz is subject to rigorous IAEA scrutiny. The IAEA has testified that only low enriched uranium suitable for a power generation reactor is being produced there and that none of it is being diverted from the plant for other purposes, for example, to further enrich uranium to produce fissile material for a nuclear weapon. That being so, the ongoing demands that Iran suspend these enrichment facilities is a denial of its "inalienable right" under Article IV(1) of the NPT to engage in nuclear activities for peaceful purposes.
What is the current US intelligence assessment? A US National Intelligence Estimate, the key judgments of which were published in December 2007, concluded that Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in the autumn of 2003, and hadn't restarted its program in the interim (see David Morrison, "Iran hasn't a nuclear weapons programme says US intelligence," Labour and Trade Union Review, 14 December 2007).
Commenting on this, IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei, noted on 4 December 2007 that:
"[T]he Estimate tallies with the Agency's consistent statements over the last few years that, although Iran still needs to clarify some important aspects of its past and present nuclear activities, the Agency has no concrete evidence of an ongoing nuclear weapons program or undeclared nuclear facilities in Iran."
The present position of the US/EU seems to be that Iran should not have uranium enrichment facilities on its own territory, under any circumstances. As I have said above, this is a denial of Iran's "inalienable right" under Article IV(1) of the NPT to engage in nuclear activities for peaceful purposes. It is also discriminatory against Iran, since no objection has ever been raised to other states, for example, Brazil and Japan, having enrichment facilities on their own territory in order to manufacture reactor fuel.
Iran entered into negotiations with the UK, France and Germany about its nuclear facilities in October 2003. During these negotiations, Iran voluntarily suspended a range of nuclear activities, including uranium enrichment. The negotiations came to an abrupt halt in August 2005 when the European states made proposals, which required Iran to abandon all processing of domestically mined uranium, including enrichment, and to import all fuel for nuclear power reactors.
Had Iran accepted these proposals, its nuclear power generation would have been dependent on fuel from abroad, which could be cut off at any time, even though Iran has a domestic supply of uranium ore. It was no surprise, therefore, that Iran rejected these proposals out of hand -- and later resumed those activities it had suspended, including uranium enrichment.
Since then, the US/EU took Iran to the UN Security Council about its nuclear activities. The council has passed various resolutions demanding, inter alia, that Iran suspend uranium enrichment and imposing (rather mild) economic sanctions on it in an attempt to compel it to do so. Russia and China have gone along with this rather reluctantly, while using their veto power to keep the sanctions mild.
The key question is: are there any circumstances in which the US/EU would be content for Iran to have uranium enrichment facilities on its own territory? For example, could additional measures be put in place to provide assurance that these, and other nuclear facilities, are being used for peaceful purposes only?
In the past, Iran did allow an enhanced form of IAEA inspection, under a so-called Additional Protocol to its basic inspection agreement with the IAEA. This isn't mandatory on a state under the NPT (and Brazil, which also has uranium enrichment facilities, doesn't allow it). The Additional Protocol is designed to allow the IAEA to get a full picture of a state's nuclear activities by providing the agency with authority to visit any facility, declared or not, and to visit unannounced -- and thereby seek to eliminate the possibility that a state is engaging in nuclear activity for military purposes at sites that it hasn't declared to the agency.
Iran signed an Additional Protocol in 2003 and allowed the IAEA to operate under it from December 2003 until February 2006. But, it withdrew permission in February 2006 when it was referred to the Security Council. There is little doubt that Iran would be prepared to allow the IAEA to operate under an Additional Protocol again, if the Security Council dogs were called off and the economic sanctions imposed by the Security Council were lifted.
That is one additional measure that could be taken to help provide assurance that Iran's nuclear facilities are being used for peaceful purposes only. Another measure was suggested by Iran, as long ago as 17 September 2005. Then, in a speech to the UN General Assembly, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad made the following extraordinary offer, which goes way beyond the requirements of the NPT:
"... as a further confidence-building measure and in order to provide the greatest degree of transparency, the Islamic Republic of Iran is prepared to engage in serious partnership with private and public sectors of other countries in the implementation of [a] uranium enrichment program in Iran."
Needless to say, the US/EU have ignored this proposal, which would have put Iran's uranium enrichment facilities under a degree of international control. Perhaps, President Obama's staff should draw this proposal to his attention.
David Morrison is a political officer for the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign.
On Tuesday American troops withdrew from Iraq's cities to their barracks in accordance with an agreement the George W. Bush administration and the Iraqi government signed hours before a UN mandate permitting US presence in Iraq expired. The June 30 withdrawal was a milestone indeed, some analysts may say, given the fears many people entertained when the United States invaded Iraq in March 2003 without UN approval. But the milestone appears to be one made of desert sand — a milestone that is likely to be reduced to sand in the winds of Iraq's desert.
Like the lies and deception that led to the invasion of Iraq, Tuesday's troop withdrawal from Iraqi cities is also a façade, behind which lies a secret agenda to take control of Iraq's oil resources and dominate the whole of West Asia.
It all began long before the terror attacks on September 11, 2001 — even before Bush assumed the presidency of the United States in January 2000.
Project Iraq was part of a secret blueprint prepared by a neocon think tank — the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) — to dominate the globe both militarily and economically. This blueprint for a global Pax Americana was authored by Dick Cheney who was Bush's vice president from 2000 to 2008, Donald Rumsfeld, who was Bush's Defence Secretary, Paul Wolfowitz, Deputy Defence Secretary and other neoconservatives (neocons) such as Richard Pearl, Lewish Libby and Jeb Bush, the younger brother of President Bush.
The blueprint, titled 'Rebuilding America's Defences: Strategies, Forces and Resources', was ready by September 2000 and had included a security plan that the neocons had previously worked out for Israel. In the late 1990s, a draft of this highly ambitious plan was sent to US President Bill Clinton, but he did not buy it. But the neocons found more than a willing partner in George W. Bush, who, with his Born-Again evangelical zeal, jumped on the bandwagon.
The blueprint says: "The United States has for decades sought to play a more permanent role in Gulf regional security. While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein."
The blueprint recommended the setting up of permanent bases in Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait despite domestic opposition in these countries to stationing US troops because "Iran may well prove as large a threat to US interests as Iraq has".
The blueprint also saw China as a threat and called for an increase US military presence in Southeast Asia.
Given the recommendations of the blueprint and the presence of its authors in the top positions of the Bush administration, it was no mere coincidence that the plan began to roll on as soon the Republicans took control of the White House in 2000. This, however, astonished some top counter-terrorism officials who were not part of Bush's inner circle which planned the Iraq invasion.
Richard Clarke, the White House counter-terrorism chief, was one such official. He resigned in disgust when Bush and his neocon officials failed to heed his warnings on an imminent attack on US targets. Clarke in his book, "Against All Enemies," claims that each time he warned of an imminent al-Qaeda attack on US targets, Bush and his intelligence officials pressurized him to prepare a report linking Iraq to al-Qaeda. When he pointed out that there was no link between Iraq and al-Qaeda and that Iraq posed no threat to the security of the United States, he was told to come back with a new report establishing a link.
"The (Iraq) crisis was manufactured, and Bush political adviser Karl Rove was telling Republicans to 'run on the war," Clarke says in his book, noting that when the 9/11 attacks occurred, Defence Secretary Rumsfeld proposed bombing Iraq instead of Afghanistan. Award-winning Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward in his book "Plan of Attack" corroborates the claim that the plan for a war on Iraq preceded the plan to launch the war on terror.
The Bush and his neocon hawks used Iraq's alleged links with al-Qaeda and its non-existent weapons of mass destruction as a pretext to start the war in 2003. British Prime Minister Tony Blair also joined the war party and produced a false dossier to claim that Iraq's WMDs posed a threat to Europe and they could be assembled within 45 minutes.
History has seen many a war, but the 2003 Iraq war was perhaps the first to be launched based on blatant lies and threadbare deception. When they could not find any WMDs or prove Saddam's links with al-Qaeda, some Bush administration officials admitted to intelligence failure. Whatever it was, it was the Iraqi people who suffered the most. Some 1.3 million of them have died. The US war casualty figure was 4,321 as of yesterday. The money spent on the war is a whopping US$ 683 billion. This sum could have eradicated global poverty many times over. Besides, the war has also produced five million Iraqi refugees.
Yet, Bush and his hawks were spared of impeachment. Perhaps, in the post-9/11 political order, presidents are given a licence to mislead the American people. It was only a few months before Bush was elected to office that President Bill Clinton survived an impeachment process for telling a lie that he did not have sexual relations with White House intern Monica Lewinsky. Clinton's lie did not kill a single fly. Such was the post-9/11 political change — nay decadence.
If the Bush administration was crude in its deceptive moves, the Barack Obama administration appears to be refined. President Obama projected himself as an opponent of the Iraq war and claimed that the real war on terror was not in Iraq but in the Af-Pak region — a word his officials coined to refer Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Obama is sending more troops to Afghanistan and intensifying the campaign there, not because the United States has little or no interest in Iraq, but because the administration feels that US interests are being very well served in Iraq and therefore, there is no necessity to increase the troop level. For instance, as the US troops were being pulled back to barracks from Iraq's cities on Tuesday in terms of the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA), a meeting was being held in Baghdad to sell off Iraq's oil reserves to ExxonMobil, Chevron and British Petroleum. Some western oil companies have started oil production operations in northern Iraq after cajoling the pro-American Kurdish administration there.
The US is getting Iraqi oil on a platter and maintaining its biggest overseas military base — bigger than even the Vatican — in Baghdad. So what else does it want? The neocons' imperialist objective of dominating the region militarily and taking control of Iraq's oil reserves has been well and truly achieved. Mission accomplished.
Tuesday's troop withdrawal from Iraq's cities in terms of SOFA appears to be another charade. Other major SOFA deadlines are: the withdrawal of US troops from all parts of Iraq and confining them to barracks before August 2010 and the departure of all US troops — except an undetermined number to train Iraqi forces — by December 2011.
Now that the US troops have withdrawn from the cities, does it mean that they cannot return to the cities? No, they can. They can be deployed at any time, if the Iraqi government wants them or the Americans feel the situation warrants such deployment. Already, both the Iraqi government and its American masters have found ways to circumvent the SOFA provision which precludes US military presence in Iraqi cities after the June 30, 2009 deadline.
On May 19, a Christian Science Monitor report said that Iraqi and American officials redrew the borders of Baghdad’s city limits, so that the US troops could still patrol Baghdad's southern parts, which have now become out-of-city areas. Bush or no Bush, the same old dirty tricks, it appears, continue to spring out of Pentagon pockets
What is more disturbing are reports that the United States has plans to remain in Iraq even after the December 2011 deadline. All that the United States requires is an invitation from the Iraqi government. The United States sees no difficulty in exacting such an invitation from the Nouri al-Maliki government whose submissiveness to Washington's dictates is no secret.
The REAL ID Act may be on the verge of receiving its final coffin nails. Unfortunately, the Obama administration is pushing a replacement bill that poses many of the same threats as REAL ID. The history of REAL ID should inspire friends of freedom to once again vigorously oppose any and every federal grab for their personal information.
The feds had sought legislation to create national ID cards in the 1990s but were rebuffed by a Republican Congress. But, after 9/11, "everything changed" -- at least in Washington. Regardless of the reasons why the CIA and FBI failed to stop the hijackers, the solution was far more snooping and the potential creation of hundreds of millions of dossiers on American citizens. Almost overnight, it became widely accepted that the government must have unlimited powers to search anywhere and everywhere for enemies of freedom. The worse the government's failure to protect Americans, the further it permitted itself to intrude.
There was scant opposition when the House of Representatives initially considered REAL ID in early 2005. The Senate unanimously approved the bill, attached as a rider to an appropriations bill for military spending. Rep. Ron Paul was practically the lone Republican sounding the alarm. At the time the bill passed, he warned, "This REAL ID Act establishes a massive, centrally-coordinated database of highly personal information about American citizens: at a minimum their name, date of birth, place of residence, Social Security number, and physical characteristics."
REAL ID provided a blank check for the feds to demand more information at any time in the future. The new law granted "open-ended authority to the Secretary of Homeland Security to require biometric information on IDs in the future. This means your harmless looking driver's license could contain a retina scan, fingerprints, DNA information, or radio frequency technology," as congressman Paul warned.
Back in 2005, it was not fashionable in Washington to be afraid of federal surveillance. Luckily, in the subsequent years, civil liberties activists have raised Cain around the nation. More than half of all the state legislatures have passed resolutions or laws restricting REAL ID’s bite in their state. But in order to understand what the feds may try next, it is important to consider how REAL ID was sold, how it was expanded, and why it remains a threat.
At the time REAL ID was being promoted, advocates of federal surveillance claimed that national identification cards were necessary to make Americans safe. In reality, national ID cards would do far more to control than to protect Americans. Savvy foreign terrorists could find ways to evade the requirements for such cards -- the same way that they easily evaded ludicrous airport security systems on September 11, 2001.
REAL ID was intended to greatly increase federal levers over the movement and lives of Americans. In 2008, Homeland Security czar Michael Chertoff announced that Americans who lived in states who had not revised their drivers licenses to meet REAL ID mandates could be banned from boarding an airplane within the United States. Since the Transportation Security Administration was part of Chertoff's fiefdom, he could snap his fingers and the TSA would block anyone who did not present the proper papers from catching a flight. (Chertoff's attempt to bludgeon state legislatures into submission backfired).
If the feds had been upfront about claiming a prerogative to arbitrarily ban any American from air travel at the time the bill was initially considered, far more people would have protested before REAL ID became law. But this is typical of the "camel's nose in the tent" style of surveillance.
REAL ID was also used to railroad through a vast expansion of the definition of terrorism. As Rep. Paul noted, the law "re-defines 'terrorism' in broad new terms that could well include members of firearms rights and anti-abortion groups, or other such groups as determined by whoever is in power at the time. There are no prohibitions against including such information in the database as information about a person's exercise of First Amendment rights or about a person's appearance on a registry of firearms owners."
Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wis.) complained that REAL ID "defined the term 'terrorist activity' so broadly that it basically covers anyone who has ever used a firearm." REAL ID's expansion of the definition of terrorist activity is especially perilous considering the hostility that some congressmen have towards gun owners.
And the danger is compounded because some Homeland Security Department officials have already labeled individuals who invoke the Constitution or support candidates like Ron Paul as radicals and extremists. This past April, a Homeland Security report entitled "Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Environment Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment" defined as "right wing extremism" groups and individuals who are "mainly antigovernment, rejecting federal authority in favor of state or local authority, or rejecting government authority entirely." Thus, anyone who firmly believes in the Tenth Amendment could be classified as a threat to public safety. Once the groundwork is laid, the feds could exploit REAL ID to block people to travel to political protests. (The federal No Fly list was exploited in a similar fashion in 2002 to block Wisconsin nuns from traveling to an antiwar protest in Washington).
Now, Obama's Homeland Security chief, Janet Napolitano, is urging Congress to enact what is portrayed as "REAL ID-Lite" -- the PASS Act (Providing for Additional Security in States' Identification Act of 2009).
But this bill contains many of the same risks as the REAL ID. And Napolitano is promoting requiring state drivers’ licenses to contain RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) chips with unique numbers for each individual. Katherine Albrecht, author of the bestseller Spychips, warns that this scheme could make it easy for the government to identify anyone who attends a gun show or an antiwar rally. Albrecht asks: "What happens to all those people when a government operator carrying a reading device makes a circuit of the event? They could download all those unique ID numbers and link them." And it would be a small step from this to putting all the names on watch lists.
But PASS ID sounds more innocuous than REAL ID. However, from another perspective, it sounds reminiscent of high school - when students had to get a hall pass from their teacher before being permitted to step out of the classroom.
Many REAL ID advocates insisted that there was no risk of the government using the new law as a launching pad to go further into people’s lives. But the experience with other federal surveillance efforts proves that things can get far more worse than even paranoids suspect. In the 1980s, when cell phones became popular, many people saw them as a way for people to enjoy a new freedom and mobility. But, in 1999, the Federal Communications Commission bowed to FBI demands and required that all new cellular telephones be de facto homing devices. Cell phones must now include components that allow law enforcement to determine the precise location of any caller using the device. As Electronic Design magazine noted, "Unlike the location feature being created for 911 emergency services, this capability will apply to all calls and users won't be able to turn it off."
There was no reason to pass Real ID, and there is no reason to enact a replacement after state legislatures shot REAL ID to pieces. Nothing has happened since 2005 to make the government more trustworthy or to make liberty less valuable. It is vital that we never permit our rulers to treat all Americans like criminal suspects all the time. The government's incompetence at protecting Americans must not be converted into a political entitlement to destroy all privacy.
Who would have thought that Dick Cheney was a follower of French fashion? When he defends the routine use of torture as a means of warfare, however, theirs is the most recent example. The French, in the Algerian War, were the last Western army to systematize the use of torture on detainees. Alistair Horne describes the methods and consequences wonderfully well in his history A Savage War of Peace. They don’t encourage imitation.
In fact, the lesson of the Algerian War, and of the Bush government’s experiment with the same sort of policies, is one that should be obvious and gratifying to any conservative: the traditional absolute ban on judicial torture is wiser than we can know.
Of course, in the hubris of the Bush and Cheney years, the U.S. was free of all the bonds of history. It seemed that the French lost Algeria because they were, well, French: torture helped them win the battle of Algiers, and if they had only been prepared to tough it out, it might have won them the war. Something like this lurks behind almost all the “pragmatic” defenses of torture—something in the spirit of the Stalinist poet Berthold Brecht’s great cry: “Sink down into the slime, embrace the butcher, but change the world—it needs it.”
The terrible lessons of all the 20th century’s bloody utopias, however, is that Brecht was wrong. We can always sink into the slime and embrace the butchers, but at the end of our embrace, the world has not changed at all, except to have lost a little more of our hard-won civilization.
None of this is to say that torture has no effects at all or that it’s good for nothing. The reason we need to be absolutist about torture is not that it is useless but that it uses and eventually consumes the torturers. It does not deliver what it promises to hygienically minded policy wonks who think they want the truth. It delivers only what torturers really want, whether they know it or not, which is the agony of their enemies.
Nowadays, of course, we pretend not to enjoy what we are doing, or what is done in our name, although I do not believe that anyone can long continue as a torturer without learning to enjoy it. Instead, we justify its use by the claim that it delivers confessions. “It worked,” as Dick Cheney recently told Fox News.
Here is a point that even an absolutist opponent of torture must concede. Of course torture delivers confessions. And even an absolutist will concede that some of these confessions will in fact be true. The problem is that there is no way for the interrogator to know which are which, and all the history of torture suggests that the false admissions will vastly outnumber the true.
No one but a psychopath sets out to torture in a spirit of disinterested inquiry. Normally torturers don’t want to know everything the victim knows or thinks but one particular thing that they believe is being concealed. And the overriding concern of the victim soon becomes to find what the torturer wants and deliver it, whether or not this is a delusion.
It often happens that what the torturer wants does not exist. The classic example is the witchcraft trials, in which thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of people confessed to intercourse with the devil and other practices even more unlikely. It’s worth noting that many of them did so without the use of the rack or of burning irons or other devices beloved by the Inquisition. The Scottish Calvinist witch-hunters used nothing more than cold, hunger, and denial of sleep to extract confessions, and in Salem not even that was necessary.
You may say that the world has moved on and that if we use advanced methods, we get better results. Dick Cheney believes in torture, but he doesn’t believe in witches. All right. Let us pretend that the great witch craze offers nothing in the way of helpful lessons about torture today. Look instead at the 20th-century regime that used torture in the largest possible scale: Stalin’s Russia.
One of the first disconcerting things to discover when you inquire into the interrogation habits of the KGB is that their practices weren’t defined as torture at all. This isn’t in fact surprising when you consider the history of the Bush administration’s enhanced techniques: they were taken from Army interrogation schools, which were concerned with preparing people for Chinese and North Korean methods of interrogation, which had in turn been learned from the KGB, or the NKVD as it then was. So there is a very direct line of transmission between the torturers who once threatened the free world and those who now claim to defend it.
But as I say, at all times and places there have been people who say that advanced techniques of interrogation are not torture. They don’t involve the rack. There are no red-hot pincers. The dogs are very seldom allowed to bite their victims, and hardly anyone is ever beaten all the way to death.
And if you read the great chroniclers of Stalin’s terror—Robert Conquest, Alexandr Solzhenitsyn—they freely concede that the most widespread and advanced techniques of interrogation were not defined as torture at all. With the single exception of waterboarding—apparently too advanced for Stalin’s taste—they were the same, simple techniques as were institutionalized under Bush and Cheney.
In particular, sleep deprivation and prolonged standing, or even sitting in one position, amount soon enough to torture as those who have suffered will testify. Of course, after a while they will also say anything to stop the pain. Solzhenitsyn argued that we should pity those who gave in under such methods and said more than they should; we should not presume to judge them, for what they suffered could well have been unendurable.
It may be objected that the women and girls hanged as witches in Massachussetts were innocent, whereas men like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed were thoroughly evil and had in fact done terrible things. But even evil people lie under torture as readily as they tell the truth. Consider the evidence against other genuinely evil people—the old Bolsheviks whom Stalin had murdered after the show trials of the ’30s. None of those men were innocents. All had approved the terror when it was their enemies being terrorized, and some, like Nikolai Yezhov, the discarded head of the NKVD, were monsters responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people. So it is an extraordinary achievement of Stalin’s regime to have shot them for some of the very few crimes of which they were almost certainly innocent.
Almost all of them confessed that they had been working, for decades, for British intelligence. Many confessed to involvement in plots to assassinate Comrade Stalin (on British orders, of course). In fact, it emerged during the course of the purges that every single member of the party’s central committee in 1929, except for Comrade Stalin, was taking directions from British or Polish intelligence, from Trotsky, or from some combination of these—except the ones lucky enough to die before the trials started.
Many people believed this story at the time, among them the American ambassador to Moscow. They had good evidence: the evidence of the confessions extracted by Comrade Stalin’s advanced techniques of interrogation.
Two years ago, the Bush government released the confessions of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in which—after prolonged interrogation using techniques even more advanced than those of the KGB—he admitted that he plotted to assassinate Pope John Paul II, Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter, and Pervez Musharraf. Everyone now agrees that he was tortured. In fact, he is exactly the sort of person whom the advocates of torture have in mind as someone who should be waterboarded, beaten, frozen, deprived of sleep, and then waterboarded again until he tells us what we need to hear.
So one simple question arises: Do we have any good reason to believe that anything he said was true? It is clear that Khalid’s confession has exactly the same evidentiary value as the confession of Yezhov and Beria, successive heads of the KGB, that they plotted to assassinate Comrade Stalin on the orders of British intelligence. The evidence that Khalid tried to blow up the Empire State Building, Heathrow Airport, Canary Wharf, Big Ben, and the Panama Canal is exactly as good as the evidence that Trotskyist saboteurs and wreckers were responsible for the failings of the Soviet economy in the 1930s. In all these cases, we have the confessions of the men responsible. In all these cases, they have been extracted by torture.
The argument against torture, then, is both moral and prudential. The prudential flaws arise from the moral ones. Torture does not reliably deliver the truth because we, the torturers, are flawed and sinful creatures who do not greatly want the truth and certainly don’t want it more than reassurance. This is not, by the way, an argument for outsourcing it to computers, although there is a strain of modern utopianism that would say that if people are flawed, we must replace them with machines that aren’t.
The kind of absolutism that this problem calls for is a clear-sighted recognition of our own flaws and limitations, which leads to an absolute ban on the practice under any circumstances. Torture is a means of forcing people to lie to us, under circumstances that compel us to believe them, because otherwise we would have to face the truth about ourselves. __________________________________________
Andrew Brown writes for the Guardian and is author of several books. His latest, Fishing in Utopia: Sweden & The Future That Disappeared, won this year’s Orwell Prize.
The basic hierarchy and theology of the Catholic Church is a recipe for the abuse of power.
By Greta Christina, Greta Christina's Blog. Posted July 4, 2009. Courtesy Of ALterNet
It's not like I didn't know this stuff. I knew it.
But somehow, this movie made it real, and bore the full reality of it in on me, in a way that it hadn't been before.
"Deliver Us From Evil" is a documentary about the extensive child- molestation scandal in the Catholic Church. And it transforms the horror of what happened into a full-scale moral outrage. Not just the obvious outrage over child molestation and the lives it ruins. Not just the outrage at the priest at the center of this particular scandal, Oliver O'Grady, and his repulsive and baffling lack of moral compass (it's like he knows what morality is supposed to look and sound like, but doesn't understand what it feels like or what it means). Not even just the outrage over how the Catholic Church consistently and at the highest levels acted to protect itself and its priests rather than to protect the children who were being put in harm's way: moving molesting priests around the country, lying to law enforcement, concealing evidence, even paying off witnesses. (And, of course, trying to blame it all on the gays.)
No, what this movie filled me with anew was an outrage over the very foundation of the Catholic Church: the essential nature of its theology and its organization.
NOTE: The following videos were not part of the above article, but were included by me.
Trailer:
LionsGate has requested from YouTube, that it disable the embedding option. Therefore, click on the links below so you can be taken to YouTube's site, so you can view the videos there.
Obama's Refusal To Dub Israeli Settlements Illegal Is Undermining Any Hope Of Middle East Peace.
BY FLYNT LEVERETT, HILLARY MANN LEVERETT JULY 1, 2009 Courtesy Of Foreign Policy
This week, Barack Obama's Middle East peace envoy George Mitchell met in New York with Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak to begin discussing a potential "compromise" regarding the continued expansion of Israeli settlements in occupied Palestinian territory. Israel's continued settlement expansion has been at the top of America's Middle East agenda since Obama's Cairo speech in June, when he declared that "the United States does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements."
Obama's statement has been heralded (and criticized) as a striking departure from the policy of George W. Bush. In fact, the Cairo speech squandered Obama's best opportunity to revitalize U.S. policy in the Arab-Israeli arena by describing Israeli settlement activity not merely as violating previous agreements and undermining efforts to achieve peace, but as "illegal," because the settlement of Israeli civilians in occupied territory violates the Fourth Geneva Convention.
More broadly, Obama's rhetoric in Cairo strongly suggests that his Middle East diplomacy will extend America's decades-long record of ineffectual efforts at Arab-Israeli peacemaking -- a record that has its origins in the Reagan administration's 1981 decision to abandon the Johnson, Nixon, Ford, and Carter administrations' characterization of Israeli settlements in occupied Arab territory as "illegal." While the European Union and most of the rest of the world have consistently done so, the last four U.S. administrations have not -- a position Obama is continuing.
By shrinking from declaring Israeli settlement activity illegal, Obama has guaranteed that, in substance, his Middle East policy cannot depart significantly from that of George W. Bush. Obama's insipidly favorable response to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's conditional "acceptance" of the two-state formula underscores an unfortunate continuity in America's Middle East policy. In the end, Obama's Middle East policy is rooted in his predecessor's profoundly flawed 2003 road map for a two-state solution and the feckless process that Bush's secretary of state, Condoleeza Rice launched at Annapolis in 2007. Worse, in contrast to other policy mistakes made early in his presidential tenure, Obama will be hard put to reverse the damage done by his lack of clarity and courage on the settlements issue by coming back at a later date and arguing that Israeli settlements in occupied territory are, in fact, illegal.
To appreciate the full significance of Obama's obfuscation of the legal status of Israeli settlements, it is necessary to understand the road map's fundamental weaknesses. Among its many deficiencies are two especially damaging flaws.
First, in its initial phase, the road map makes restrictions on Israeli settlement activity contingent on Palestinian security performance. As senior director for Middle East affairs at the National Security Council in 2002 and early 2003, when the road map was being prepared, coauthor Flynt Leverett argued that the call for Israel to halt settlement activity in the first phase needed to stand on its own - just as the call for Palestinians to take action against terror and violence was not contingent on improvements in Israeli behavior. However, under pressure from the Sharon government, President Bush and his senior national security team retreated on this pivotal issue.
In the real world, Palestinian security performance will never be perfect, so, under the road map, Israel will never be obliged to stop settlement activity -- not even through the kind of settlement "freeze" that was theoretically entertained by Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert (with ample allowance for the "natural growth" of existing settlements). Had President Obama explicitly declared Israeli settlements illegal, however, his call for a halt to settlement activity would not be based on a (disputable) judgment that such activity is "unhelpful" or creates "facts on the ground" that prejudge final negotiating outcomes. Instead, the U.S. call to end settlement activity would be grounded in a straightforward argument: Because Israeli settlements are illegal, no negotiating process rooted in international law could responsibly tolerate their expansion.
Beyond its mishandling of the settlements issue, the road map's most significant flaw comes in its third and final phase, where not a single word is presented regarding the parameters for resolving the "final status" issues -- borders, Jerusalem, and Palestinian refugees -- at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. We all know what these parameters are: 1967 boundaries will be the starting point for negotiating final borders, with the possibility of marginal and mutually agreed adjustments. Jerusalem will be shared as the capital of both Israel and Palestine, with special arrangements for the holy sites in the center of the Old City. Whatever arrangements are made to recompense and resettle Palestinian refugees, perhaps even with the theoretical acknowledgement of a "right of return," those arrangements will not be implemented in a way that threatens Israel's Jewish-majority character.
Without such final-status parameters, there can be no credible political horizon for resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But their omission was no accident. Again, during 2002 and early 2003, Flynt Leverett argued vociferously within the White House that such parameters were essential. But President Bush and his senior national-security team believed them to be unfairly demanding of Israel, and refused to include them.
By explicitly declaring Israeli settlements illegal, Obama could have transcended this fatal flaw in the road map. If settlements are illegal, then no negotiating process grounded in international law could take any starting point other than the 1967 boundaries for negotiating final borders. Similarly, if settlements are illegal, then any negotiating process grounded in international law would have to start from the premise that all of Jerusalem cannot remain under exclusive Israeli control.
Obama could have reinforced a declaration that Israeli settlements in occupied territory are illegal by embracing the 2002 Arab League peace initiative -- perhaps even proposing to make it the basis for a new U.N. Security Council resolution to jump start a revived Middle East peace process. Among other benefits, embracing the Arab initiative would have provided solid grounding for a U.S. position on Palestinian refugees. By stipulating that there should be a "just and agreed" resolution to the refugee issue, the Arab initiative acknowledges that the issue will not be resolved in a way that undermines Israel's Jewish-majority character. (We have confirmed this reading of the Arab initiative through discussions with Arab diplomats who were deeply involved in its preparation.)
Instead, while acknowledging the Arab peace initiative as a positive step, Obama argued in Cairo that the initiative was not the end, but rather just the "beginning" of Arab states' responsibilities to promote Middle East peace. In particular, he called on Arab states to "front load" their promise of normalized ties to Israel, before Israel has to take any concrete steps toward ending the occupation of Palestinians (or of the Golan Heights). This is a delusion, driven by a willful misreading of the Arab Peace Initiative. It is also a sad replay of George W. Bush's indifferent reaction to what in our view is the most significant diplomatic move in Arab-Israeli diplomacy since the 1991 Madrid peace conference, which relaunched the peace process after 12 years of stasis following the 1979 Camp David accords between Israel and Egypt.
There will be many who claim that all this will only make Israel feel less secure and therefore less likely to take "risks for peace." But the proposition that Israel becomes relatively forthcoming in peace negotiations only when it feels assured of unquestioning U.S. support -- a pillar of the Clinton administration's ultimately failed approach that is unfortunately being resurrected under Obama -- is not supported by the historical record. After all, no Israeli prime minister could have felt more assured of unquestioning U.S. support than Ariel Sharon, whom George W. Bush notoriously hailed as a "man of peace" -- a description that, in retrospect, seems puzzling at best.
On the other hand, during the Nixon and Ford administrations, when U.S. policy clearly defined Israeli settlements as illegal, Henry Kissinger was able to broker the disengagement agreements between Israel and neighboring Arab states that laid the groundwork for future peacemaking. Building on that foundation, Jimmy Carter -- who was arguably more forthright than any U.S. president in calling Israeli settlements illegal -- produced the historic Camp David accords between Egypt and Israel, the most important Arab-Israeli peace treaty to date.
In response to pressure from the Netanyahu government, Mitchell is reportedly already considering a "new" definition of "natural growth" in existing settlements -- a definition that would allow Israel to complete construction that has already been started. One can only imagine how many construction permits will be pulled out of drawers in Israeli settlements throughout the West Bank in anticipation of such an arrangement; the practical effect of such "limits" will be as meaningless as the Bush administration's "understandings" with Sharon and Olmert. For those genuinely interested in a negotiated two-state solution, Obama is hardly proving to be "change we can believe in."
MENAHEM KAHANA/AFP/Getty Images
Flynt Leverett is senior fellow at the New America Foundation and teaches international affairs at Penn State. Hillary Mann Leverett is CEO of Stratega, a political risk consultancy. Both are former National Security Council staff members with long experience working on Middle East issues in the U.S. government.
By Dan Williams Fri Jul 3, 2009 1:27pm EDT Courtesy of Reuters News
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - An Israeli submarine sailed the Suez Canal to the Red Sea as part of a naval drill last month, defense sources said on Friday, describing the unusual maneuver as a show of strategic reach in the face of Iran.
Israel long kept its three Dolphin-class submarines, which are widely assumed to carry nuclear missiles, away from Suez so as not to expose them to the gaze of Egyptian harbormasters.
It was unclear when last month the vessel left the Mediterranean. One source said the voyage was planned for months and so was not related to unrest after the June 12 re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, whom the Israelis see as promoting the pursuit of nuclear weapons to threaten them.
Sailing to the Gulf without using Suez would oblige the diesel-fueled Israeli submarines, normally based in the Mediterranean, to circumnavigate Africa -- a weeks-long voyage. That would have limited use in signaling Israel's readiness to retaliate should it ever come under an Iranian nuclear attack.
Shorter-term, the submarines' conventional missiles could also be deployed in any Israeli strikes on Iran's atomic sites, which Tehran insists have only civilian energy purposes.
A defense source said the Israeli navy held an exercise off Eilat last month and that a Dolphin took part, having traveled to the Red Sea port though Suez. Israel has a naval base at Eilat, a 10-km (6-mile) strip of coast between Egypt and Jordan, but officials say it has no submarine dock there.
"This was definitely a departure from policy," said the source, who declined to give further details on the drill or say whether the Dolphin had undergone Egyptian inspections in the canal, through which the submarine sailed unsubmerged.
A military spokeswoman had no immediate comment on the voyage, first reported on Friday by the Jerusalem Post.
EGYPTIAN POSITION
Egyptian officials at Suez said they would neither confirm nor deny reports regarding military movements. One official said that if there was such a passage by Israelis in the canal, it would not be problematic as Egypt and Israel are not at war.
Egypt is one of only two Arab states to have signed a peace treaty with Israel, but relations remain cool. However, Arab states that are allies of the United States appear to share some of Israel's concerns about non-Arab Iran's nuclear program.
Israel is assumed to have the Middle East's only atomic arsenal, but does not discuss this under an "ambiguity" policy billed as deterring its enemies while avoiding provocations.
Another Israeli defense source with extensive naval experience said the drill "showed that we can far more easily access the Indian Ocean, and the Gulf, than before."
But the source added: "If indeed our subs are capable of doing to Iran what they are believed to be capable of doing, then surely this is a capability that can be put into action from the Mediterranean?"
Each German-made Dolphin has 10 torpedo tubes, four of them widened at Israel's request -- to accommodate, some independent analysts believe, nuclear-tipped cruise missiles. But there have been questions about whether these would have the 1,500-km (1,000-mile) range needed to hit Iran from the Mediterranean.
Israel plans to acquire two more Dolphins early next decade. Naval analysts say this could allow it to set up a rotation whereby some of the submarines patrol distant shores while others secure the Israeli coast or dock to undergo maintenance.
(Additional reporting by Yusri Mohamed in Ismailia; Editing by Samia Nakhoul)
New IAEA Head: No Evidence Iran Seeking Nuclear Weapons
By Jason Ditz, July 03, 2009 Courtesy Of Anti-War News
New International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director-General Yukiya Amano may have been the candidate of choice for Western nations, and in particular Israel, but he sought to assure the world today that he would remain independent and would seek to de-politicize the office.
Amano seems less inclined, at least so far, to rely on his gut and is looking for hard evidence to back up the allegations by Western nations in general and Israel in particular, that the Iranians have a covert program.
He did however claim that the Iranian government had an ‘obligation’ to abandon its civilian program, despite the lack of evidence of anything untoward in the program, citing demands from the UN Security Council. Those demands are separate from any Iranian obligations under the IAEA’s protocols however, under which Iran would seem to have every right to civilian energy generation.
But in an almost unfathomable change in directions from the nation that has generally spearheaded the pro-sanctions position, diplomats say that the United States is opposed to the new sanctions, which would punish oil companies that do business in Iran.
Advocates are seeking to punish Iran for its crackdown on protesters against last month’s disputed election, but US officials are reportedly concerned that sanctions on the basis of the election could actually harm the opposition’s position and might also keep them from negotiations on their nuclear program.
The Iranian government and the state media have repeatedly accused the opposition of being organized by foreign governments, and would likely spin the sanctions as an attempt by the international community to force their candidate of choice into office, despite investigations by the Guardian Council insisting no evidence of massive voter fraud exists.
With President Barack Obama and other world leaders now talking about building a nuclear-free world, it is time to consider whether that would be a good idea.
Six reasons for supporting nuclear abolition are particularly cogent.
The first is that nuclear weapons are morally abhorrent. After all, they are instruments of widespread, indiscriminate slaughter. They destroy entire cities and entire regions, massacring civilian and soldier, friend and foe, the innocent and the guilty, including large numbers of children. The only crime committed by the vast majority of victims of a nuclear attack is that they happened to live on the wrong side of a national boundary.
The second reason is that nuclear war is suicidal. A nuclear exchange between nations will kill millions of people on both sides of the conflict and leave the survivors living in a nuclear wasteland, in which—as has been suggested—the living might well envy the dead. Even if only one side in a conflict employed nuclear weapons, nuclear fallout would spread around the world, as would a lengthy nuclear winter, which would lower temperatures, destroy agriculture and the food supply, and wreck what little was left of civilization. As numerous observers have remarked, there will be no winners in a nuclear war.
The third reason is that nuclear weapons do not guarantee a nation's security. Despite their nuclear weapons, the great powers over the decades became entangled in bloody conventional wars. Millions died in Korea, in Algeria, in Vietnam, in Afghanistan, in Iraq, and numerous other lands—including large numbers of people from the nuclear nations. As the leaders of the nuclear powers learned, their nuclear arsenals did not help them a bit in these conflicts, for other peoples were simply not cowed by their nuclear might. Nuclear weapons simply weren't useful.
Nor has the vast nuclear arsenal of the United States protected it from terrorist assault. On September 11, 2001, nineteen men—armed only with box cutters—staged the largest terrorist raid on the United States in its history, in which some 3,000 people died. Of what value were U.S. nuclear weapons in deterring this attack? Of what value are they now in "the war on terror"? Given the fact that terrorists do not occupy territory, it is difficult to imagine how nuclear weapons can be used against them, either as a deterrent or in military conflict.
The fourth reason is that nuclear weapons undermine national security. Of course, this contention defies the conventional wisdom that the Bomb is a "deterrent." And yet, consider the case of the United States. It was the first nation to develop atomic bombs and, for some years, had a monopoly of them. But in response to the U.S. nuclear monopoly, the Soviet government built atomic bombs. And so the U.S. government built hydrogen bombs. Whereupon the Soviet government built hydrogen bombs. Then the two nations competed in building guided missiles, and missiles with multiple warheads, and on and on. Meanwhile, other nations built and deployed their nuclear weapons. And, each year, all these nations felt less and less secure. And they were less secure, because the more they threatened others, the more they were threatened in return!
Moreover, as long as nuclear weapons exist there remains the possibility of accidental nuclear war. Over the course of the Cold War and in the years since then, there have been numerous false alarms about an enemy attack that have nearly led to the launching of a nuclear response with devastating potential consequences. Furthermore, nuclear weapons can end up being exploded in one's own nation. For example, in the summer of 2008 the top officials of the U.S. Air Force were dismissed from their posts because, thoughtlessly, they had allowed U.S. flights with live nuclear weapons to take place over U.S. territory.
The fifth reason is that, while nuclear weapons exist, there will be a temptation to use them in wars. Waging war has been an ingrained habit for thousands of years and, therefore, it is unlikely that this practice will soon be ended. And as long as wars exist, governments will be tempted to draw upon their stockpiles of nuclear weapons to win them.
Admittedly, nuclear armed nations have not used nuclear weapons for war since 1945. But this reflects the development of massive popular resistance to nuclear conflict, which stigmatized the use of nuclear weapons and pushed reluctant government officials toward arms control and disarmament agreements. But we cannot assume that, in the context of bitter wars and threats to national survival, nuclear restraint will continue forever. Indeed, it seems likely that, the longer nuclear weapons exist, the greater the possibility that they will be used in a war.
The sixth reason is that, while nuclear weapons remain in national arsenals, the dangers posed by terrorism are vastly enhanced. Terrorists cannot build nuclear weapons by themselves, as the creation of such weapons requires vast resources, substantial territory, and a good deal of scientific knowledge. The only way terrorists will attain a nuclear capability is by obtaining the weapons or the materials for them from the arsenals of the nuclear powers—either by donation, by purchase, or by theft. Therefore, as long as governments possess nuclear weapons, the potential exists for terrorists to secure access to them.
What, then, is holding us back from nuclear abolition? Certainly it is not the public, which poll after poll shows in favor of building a nuclear-free world. Even many government leaders now agree that getting rid of nuclear weapons is desirable. The real obstacle is the long-term habit of drawing upon the most powerful weapons available to resolve conflicts among hostile nations. This habit, though, has proved a deeply counter-productive, irrational one—worse than smoking, worse than drugs, worse than almost anything imaginable, for it places civilization on the brink of destruction. It is time to kick it—and create a nuclear-free world.
Dr. Lawrence Wittner is Professor of History at the State University of New York/Albany. His latest book is Confronting the Bomb: A Short History of the World Nuclear Disarmament Movement (Stanford University Press).
NOTE: Luar na Lubre is a celtic music ensemble from Galicia.
* Luar is Galician for moonlight; lubre was a kind of magic forest in Celtic culture.
*Canto: a long epic poem, Latin cantus, "song" (Wikipedia) *Andar: to walk, to function, to do, to go along, to be (About.com)
The following is an amazing Galician Love Song:
Amence paseniño nas terras do solpor As brétemas esváense coas raiolas do sol
Meu amor, meu amor, imos cara o maior Miña amada, meu ben, imos polas terras do alén
Acariña o silencio e escoita o corazón Que moitos dos teus soños latexan ao seu son
É tempo de camiño andar e de non esquecer Que o futuro que ha de vir é o que has de facer
E o sol vai silandeiro deitándose no mare Facéndonos pequenos con tanta inmensidade
A Rough English Translation:
It is dawning slowly in the lands of the sunset the -- fade with the first sun rays My love, my love, we go to face the age My beloved, my sweetheart we're going through the lands of Alen. Caress the silence and listen to your heart Because most of your dreams beat at the same song And it's time to go across the way And not to forget the time that will come and what you have to do. And the sun goes silent, delighting in the sea, Making us small with so much immensity.
By NICOLA NASSER July 2, 2009 Courtesy Of CounterPunch
In his speech at Bar Ilan University on June 14, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu proposed a new Israeli “peace plan,” with preconditions that a Palestinian negotiator must first meet before he would “promptly” engage in “unconditional” bilateral talks to meet an international consensus demanding the creation of a Palestinian state alongside Israel. His preconditions added to the fourteen conditions the former Israeli government of comatose Ariel Sharon attached to Israel’s adoption in grudge of the 2003 Road Map blueprint for peace with the Palestinian side, on the basis of which the U.S. administration of President Barak Obama and his presidential envoy George Mitchell are now urging an early resumption of “immediate” Israeli – Palestinian peace talks, which Mitchell on June 26 hoped “very much to conclude this phase of the discussions and to be able to move into meaningful and productive negotiations in the near future."
Sharon’s conditional approval of the Road Map has condemned the blueprint as a non-starter, led to the Israeli military reoccupation of the Palestinian autonomous areas, aborted former U.S. President George W. Bush’s promise to Palestinians to have their own state twice in 2005 and 2008, and doomed the twenty – year peace process since the Madrid conference in 1991 to its current impasse that Obama and Mitchell are trying to break through. It is a forgone conclusion that Netanyahu’s preconditions -- Palestinian recognition of Israel as a “Jewish state,” “demilitarization” of the prospective Palestinian less-than-a-sovereign state and preserving Israel’s illegitimate “right” to expand its illegal colonial Jewish settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories -- will fare worse than Sharon’s conditions.
Netanyahu demanded that the “Palestinian population,” and not the Palestinian people -- who live “in Judea and Samaria,” and not in the Israeli – occupied Palestinian territory, where there is an “Israeli presence,” and not an Israeli military occupation -- should first agree to a “public, binding and unequivocal” recognition that Israel is “the nation state of the Jewish people” worldwide, and not the nation state of the Israelis. His demand was an arrogant precondition ridiculed by Gideon Levy in Haaretz on June 15 as an “excessive demand that Palestinians recognize the Jewish state by one who has failed to recognize the Palestinians as a people,” sarcastically welcomed the next day by Ma'ariv’s chief political columnist, Ben Caspit, who wrote: “Welcome, Mr. Prime Minister, to the 20th century. The problem is that we're already in the 21st.” Moreover, such a precondition “is almost humiliating and it is unlikely to be met,” by the Palestinian Authority (PA), according to Avi Issacharoff, writing in Haaretz on June 17.
Israeli analyst M.J. Rosenberg wrote on June 19: Acceptance of Israel as a “Jewish state” is a non-starter at this point. And Netanyahu knows it. If that is a precondition for negotiations, there will be no negotiations. But without any definition of borders and with Netanyahu committed to expanding settlements in the West Bank, how can anyone seriously expect Palestinians to recognize Israel as a “Jewish state?” Aaron David Miller, a former senior U.S. negotiator in the Mideast, said Netanyahu’s speech “was less about pursuing Arab-Israeli peace and much more about pursuing the U.S.-Israeli relationship.”
PA’s Prime Minister in Ramallah, Salam Fayyad, noted in a speech at Al-Quds (Jerusalem) University on June 22 that his Israeli counterpart’s speech missed all reference to the Road Map blueprint as well as to the thorny issue of expanding settlements and described the speech as "a new blow to efforts to salvage the peace
Biden said the United States would make no effort to dissuade the Israeli government from launching an attack on Iran, but was deliberately evasive on the question of whether the US would provide Israel with access to Iraqi airspace for the strike, saying he didn’t want to “speculate.”
The blueprint says: "The United States has for decades sought to play a more permanent role in Gulf regional security. While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein." 
But in an almost unfathomable change in directions from the nation that has generally spearheaded the pro-sanctions position, diplomats say that the
