"Trickle Down Theory" - Martyn Turner, UK
Thursday, July 30, 2015
The Western Premise on Vietnam was dead wrong
Great opinion piece by Eric Margolis.
As the saying goes, "those who forget the history are doomed to repeat it," because we, humans, always think that other man was stupid & I won't make that mistake, & ironically, he makes that same mistake (at least the net result is same).
Other man was stupid or not (we can only justify it if you are better educated or know more than that guy or have some kind of a better knowledge about the case at hand than that other guy); the primary problem is the person, who is currently in change of the situation, has never tried to understand the situation, old or new.
US wouldn't have gone into Afghanistan, albeit in a fit of rage like a little kid or a teen with raging hormones, or Iraq, if the leadership would've sincerely looked at why did we ever fail in Vietnam. What was the real underlying causes for that failure & then try not to repeat those actions.
But, since, US never looked / analyzed those failures with a critical eye, they went, guns blazing, in both countries & after sacrificing manpower & billions of dollars on countries, whose citizens still hate US (America never won their "hearts & minds"), & the end result is that one country (Iraq) is in complete chaos, while in the other one (Afghanistan), Taliban have amassed enough power that Americans have to negotiate with them (just so they can still come out of the country unscathed & claim that "adventure" as a "win").
So, in a way, just like the lives of 250,000 American soldiers were wasted in the Vietnam conflict, the lives of some 4,000 American soldiers are now wasted in the Afghanistan conflict. I don't even know how many died in Iraq conflict. And I am not going to even put the numbers here for the injured soldiers, who are injured physically & mentally (PTSDs etc.). American economy is also in shambles that billions are spent in those countries but American veterans & own patriotic citizens are going hungry & homeless.
So who actually destroyed America? Foreign terrorists or the hubris of its own leadership?
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
LIFE CAN only be understood in retrospect. With the wisdom of hindsight, most people consider the 20-year long Vietnam War a terrible mistake, even a crime. But at the time, US military involvement in Indochina appeared to make sense. It certainly did to me. I was proud to wear my nation’s uniform.
General Douglas MacArthur warned Americans “never fight a land war in Asia.”
But that is exactly what the Kennedy administration foolishly did. At the time, US power was at its zenith. Washington was gripped by post-war arrogance & hubris.
There was also a very compelling geopolitical reason. At the time – the later 1960’s – it appeared certain that the Soviets & Red China were working together to dominate all of Indochina. “If we don’t make a military stand in SE Asia,” was the consensus, “the Reds will take the entire region.” So it looked in 1967. So we hear again today. Just replace “Reds” by Al Qaeda or Daesh.
But the basic Western premise back then – as now — was dead wrong. In one of history’s biggest intelligence failures, we failed to see the seismic split between the Soviet Union & Mao’s China, one so profound that the two super-powers almost went to war over their contested Manchurian borders in 1968-1969. Just as our intelligence services also missed the impending collapse of the Soviet Union three decades later.
Had the US been aware of the violent tensions between Moscow & Beijing, it would likely have avoided expanding the Vietnam War, or just left it to its own devices.
Instead, the US & its allies waged a long struggle against the Vietcong local guerillas & the battle-hardened North Vietnamese Army that had defeated some of France’s finest soldiers a decade earlier. President Lyndon Johnson drove the US deeper into the war by staging the phony Gulf of Tonkin naval incident.
It did not take long for US troops in South Vietnam to realise the war was a pointless bloodbath. Without the 24/7 support of US airpower, the American army & marines in Vietnam would not have been able to hold out. Today, without US airpower, American forces would be driven from Afghanistan. By the January, 1968 Tet offensive, it was clear to many of us in uniform that the war was lost (I was stateside at the time). The US won almost every battle thanks to air power, but it lost both the military momentum in the war, the strategic direction & the political struggle. America’s South Vietnamese allies often fought bravely but their political leaders were hopeless.
Much of Vietnam, Laos & Cambodia were ravaged by US bombing & toxic chemical defoliation. In the process, some 250,000 American soldiers were killed or wounded; 250,000 South Vietnamese soldiers died. At least three million Communist soldiers & Vietnamese civilians were killed, mostly by US air power. As I look back, it’s very painful to realise that the war was, to paraphrase the wicked Tallyrand, “worse than a crime, a mistake.”
The red hordes did not swamp Indochina nor did they march on Cleveland. Our side committed as many crimes as our enemies. The CIA-run Phoenix programme, for example, “liquidated” up to 41,000 communist cadres. Our “counter-terrorism” campaign today in Afghanistan, Iraq & Somalia follows the same pattern.
Today, the US & united Vietnam have $36 billion in bilateral trade & warm commercial & diplomatic relations. Vietnam is becoming an important ally for the US against China.
Alas, we seem to have forgotten everything about Vietnam & learned nothing. The new bogeyman is Iran instead of China, but the song remains the same.
As the saying goes, "those who forget the history are doomed to repeat it," because we, humans, always think that other man was stupid & I won't make that mistake, & ironically, he makes that same mistake (at least the net result is same).
Other man was stupid or not (we can only justify it if you are better educated or know more than that guy or have some kind of a better knowledge about the case at hand than that other guy); the primary problem is the person, who is currently in change of the situation, has never tried to understand the situation, old or new.
US wouldn't have gone into Afghanistan, albeit in a fit of rage like a little kid or a teen with raging hormones, or Iraq, if the leadership would've sincerely looked at why did we ever fail in Vietnam. What was the real underlying causes for that failure & then try not to repeat those actions.
But, since, US never looked / analyzed those failures with a critical eye, they went, guns blazing, in both countries & after sacrificing manpower & billions of dollars on countries, whose citizens still hate US (America never won their "hearts & minds"), & the end result is that one country (Iraq) is in complete chaos, while in the other one (Afghanistan), Taliban have amassed enough power that Americans have to negotiate with them (just so they can still come out of the country unscathed & claim that "adventure" as a "win").
So, in a way, just like the lives of 250,000 American soldiers were wasted in the Vietnam conflict, the lives of some 4,000 American soldiers are now wasted in the Afghanistan conflict. I don't even know how many died in Iraq conflict. And I am not going to even put the numbers here for the injured soldiers, who are injured physically & mentally (PTSDs etc.). American economy is also in shambles that billions are spent in those countries but American veterans & own patriotic citizens are going hungry & homeless.
So who actually destroyed America? Foreign terrorists or the hubris of its own leadership?
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
LIFE CAN only be understood in retrospect. With the wisdom of hindsight, most people consider the 20-year long Vietnam War a terrible mistake, even a crime. But at the time, US military involvement in Indochina appeared to make sense. It certainly did to me. I was proud to wear my nation’s uniform.
General Douglas MacArthur warned Americans “never fight a land war in Asia.”
But that is exactly what the Kennedy administration foolishly did. At the time, US power was at its zenith. Washington was gripped by post-war arrogance & hubris.
There was also a very compelling geopolitical reason. At the time – the later 1960’s – it appeared certain that the Soviets & Red China were working together to dominate all of Indochina. “If we don’t make a military stand in SE Asia,” was the consensus, “the Reds will take the entire region.” So it looked in 1967. So we hear again today. Just replace “Reds” by Al Qaeda or Daesh.
But the basic Western premise back then – as now — was dead wrong. In one of history’s biggest intelligence failures, we failed to see the seismic split between the Soviet Union & Mao’s China, one so profound that the two super-powers almost went to war over their contested Manchurian borders in 1968-1969. Just as our intelligence services also missed the impending collapse of the Soviet Union three decades later.
Had the US been aware of the violent tensions between Moscow & Beijing, it would likely have avoided expanding the Vietnam War, or just left it to its own devices.
Instead, the US & its allies waged a long struggle against the Vietcong local guerillas & the battle-hardened North Vietnamese Army that had defeated some of France’s finest soldiers a decade earlier. President Lyndon Johnson drove the US deeper into the war by staging the phony Gulf of Tonkin naval incident.
It did not take long for US troops in South Vietnam to realise the war was a pointless bloodbath. Without the 24/7 support of US airpower, the American army & marines in Vietnam would not have been able to hold out. Today, without US airpower, American forces would be driven from Afghanistan. By the January, 1968 Tet offensive, it was clear to many of us in uniform that the war was lost (I was stateside at the time). The US won almost every battle thanks to air power, but it lost both the military momentum in the war, the strategic direction & the political struggle. America’s South Vietnamese allies often fought bravely but their political leaders were hopeless.
Much of Vietnam, Laos & Cambodia were ravaged by US bombing & toxic chemical defoliation. In the process, some 250,000 American soldiers were killed or wounded; 250,000 South Vietnamese soldiers died. At least three million Communist soldiers & Vietnamese civilians were killed, mostly by US air power. As I look back, it’s very painful to realise that the war was, to paraphrase the wicked Tallyrand, “worse than a crime, a mistake.”
The red hordes did not swamp Indochina nor did they march on Cleveland. Our side committed as many crimes as our enemies. The CIA-run Phoenix programme, for example, “liquidated” up to 41,000 communist cadres. Our “counter-terrorism” campaign today in Afghanistan, Iraq & Somalia follows the same pattern.
Today, the US & united Vietnam have $36 billion in bilateral trade & warm commercial & diplomatic relations. Vietnam is becoming an important ally for the US against China.
Alas, we seem to have forgotten everything about Vietnam & learned nothing. The new bogeyman is Iran instead of China, but the song remains the same.
Wednesday, July 29, 2015
Have police departments across the US declared war on black people?
A great opinion piece. Simply fantastic. Left me speechless. Some points in it were similar to what I've been saying all along in my blog posts (for example, I've always said that slavery has not ended but immigration in the developed world is a form of slavery when migrants are considered second-class citizens, & regardless of how much US & the developed world lectures the developing world on human rights abuses, the developed world itself has a far worse continuing record in human rights abuses). A must-read piece.
Only thing I will add here is that although, this opinion piece is focused on African-Americans, I will add all minorities in it; be it South Asians or Latinos. Any & all minority, which is "coloured", is very adversely affected by North American racism on a daily basis. If you see there that I mentioned "North American," because racism is as much in US as in Canada. We, Canadians, may think there's no or far less racism in Canada than US, but ask any minority in Canada how they are faring in Canadian society, & they will tell you how racism has affected them.
A great line from the piece: "Rather than the land of the free, the United States of America is the land of cruelty & barbarity, a corporate dictatorship under which the poor & dispossessed are locked out of society, denied healthcare, housing, education, & life chances compatible with a humane system of government & economy."
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Organizers from the group, Ferguson Action, declared recently that, “The war on Black people in Baltimore is the same war on Black people across America. Decades of poverty, unemployment, under-funded schools & police terrorism have reached a boiling point in Baltimore & cities around the country."
The scenes of civil unrest in Baltimore over the death of Freddie Gray – the latest in an alarming number of young black man to end up dead at the hands of the police or while in police custody – broke with a recent pattern of non-violent protest & attempts to gain justice & redress through the system. Despite 6 of the cops involved in the Freddie Gray case being charged with Gray’s homicide, it remains to be seen whether the unrest in Baltimore is a one-off event or a deepening of a developing crisis that appears to have no end in sight.
According to figures compiled by the Free Thought Project – a US justice advocacy group – 136 people had been killed by the police across the country. It’s a figure that makes sober reading when we break it down into 1 victim every 8 hours, or 3 per day. No other industrialized nation compares in this regard, highlighting the extent to which social cohesion in a country that extends itself in lecturing other nations around the world on human rights is near non-existent.
That said, those included in the aforementioned number of victims of police violence are not only black people, & it is a fact that more white people have been killed by the police than black, until of course we break that statistic down to factor in the proportion of black victims from the population as a whole.
It would be a mistake to put this crisis down to a few rogue & racist cops. It runs much deeper than that, exposing the ugly truth of a society that operates according to the maxim of all against all. In other words, the culture of racism & brutality that pervades increasingly militarized police departments is a symptom of the foundation of injustice upon which the nation & its institutions rest. Rather than the land of the free, the United States of America is the land of cruelty & barbarity, a corporate dictatorship under which the poor & dispossessed are locked out of society, denied healthcare, housing, education, & life chances compatible with a humane system of government & economy.
The corollary to this is a male prison population of over 2 million that is disproportionately black, making the US, a country that makes up just 5% of the entire world's population, home to a quarter of the entire world’s prison population. This in itself is a withering indictment of a nation that extends itself in claiming exceptionalism based on its self-appointed status as the land of the free. This view is based on a belief that the majority of crimes are a product of poverty, alienation, & social exclusion. The black American novelist, Ralph Ellison, in his most famous novel – ‘Invisible Man’ – opines that, “Crime is an act of unconscious rebellion.”
In the US in 2015 there is much to rebel about.
I saw it for myself during a recent visit to Los Angeles, a city where the sheer number of homeless human beings is simply staggering. Everywhere I went I came across them shuffling up & down the street mumbling to themselves, carrying their earthly belongings in plastic bags or, if they’re lucky, pushing them in a shopping kart.
This huge colony of homeless people exists in the entertainment capital of the world, home to Hollywood, where the mythology of the American dream projects the lie that poverty & social exclusion are products of individual failure rather than systemic failure, while material wealth & success is a measure of human worth & moral rectitude. It is of course a lie, one that has succeeded in acting as a smokescreen to conceal the widening & deepening cracks in the nation's foundations.
Those suffering under the weight of this system should not expect to receive any succor from Washington anytime soon.
On the contrary, here resides a political culture & political class slavishly devoted to the rights, interests, & advancement of corporations & their very rich executives, shareholders, & investors – i.e. the rich. The by-product of this culture has been the normalization of social & economic injustice, which as mentioned is the foundation of a foreign policy of war, military intervention, & the blithe disregard for international law & national sovereignty as & when those aforementioned corporate interests dictate.
Some may question the validity of linking US foreign policy to the state of its society at home, but they'd be wrong. Both are inextricably linked, forging a circular relationship of injustice, violence, leading inexorably to atomization & crises. Malcolm X put it best when he said, “You can’t understand what’s going on in Mississippi if you don’t understand what’s going on in the Congo.”
In the US class & race constitute two sides of the same coin. Black people make up around 13% of the population, which translates to just over 30 million people, the majority of whom can trace their roots in the country to slavery, with the argument gaining traction that the plantation still exists for young black males today in the shape of a vast network of Federal & State correctional facilities.
No justice, no peace & black lives matter are the clarion calls of a movement that has emerged in response to a wave of violence committed by police departments viewed increasingly as forces of occupation rather than law & order.
Who will guard the guardians?
Only thing I will add here is that although, this opinion piece is focused on African-Americans, I will add all minorities in it; be it South Asians or Latinos. Any & all minority, which is "coloured", is very adversely affected by North American racism on a daily basis. If you see there that I mentioned "North American," because racism is as much in US as in Canada. We, Canadians, may think there's no or far less racism in Canada than US, but ask any minority in Canada how they are faring in Canadian society, & they will tell you how racism has affected them.
A great line from the piece: "Rather than the land of the free, the United States of America is the land of cruelty & barbarity, a corporate dictatorship under which the poor & dispossessed are locked out of society, denied healthcare, housing, education, & life chances compatible with a humane system of government & economy."
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Organizers from the group, Ferguson Action, declared recently that, “The war on Black people in Baltimore is the same war on Black people across America. Decades of poverty, unemployment, under-funded schools & police terrorism have reached a boiling point in Baltimore & cities around the country."
The scenes of civil unrest in Baltimore over the death of Freddie Gray – the latest in an alarming number of young black man to end up dead at the hands of the police or while in police custody – broke with a recent pattern of non-violent protest & attempts to gain justice & redress through the system. Despite 6 of the cops involved in the Freddie Gray case being charged with Gray’s homicide, it remains to be seen whether the unrest in Baltimore is a one-off event or a deepening of a developing crisis that appears to have no end in sight.
According to figures compiled by the Free Thought Project – a US justice advocacy group – 136 people had been killed by the police across the country. It’s a figure that makes sober reading when we break it down into 1 victim every 8 hours, or 3 per day. No other industrialized nation compares in this regard, highlighting the extent to which social cohesion in a country that extends itself in lecturing other nations around the world on human rights is near non-existent.
That said, those included in the aforementioned number of victims of police violence are not only black people, & it is a fact that more white people have been killed by the police than black, until of course we break that statistic down to factor in the proportion of black victims from the population as a whole.
It would be a mistake to put this crisis down to a few rogue & racist cops. It runs much deeper than that, exposing the ugly truth of a society that operates according to the maxim of all against all. In other words, the culture of racism & brutality that pervades increasingly militarized police departments is a symptom of the foundation of injustice upon which the nation & its institutions rest. Rather than the land of the free, the United States of America is the land of cruelty & barbarity, a corporate dictatorship under which the poor & dispossessed are locked out of society, denied healthcare, housing, education, & life chances compatible with a humane system of government & economy.
The corollary to this is a male prison population of over 2 million that is disproportionately black, making the US, a country that makes up just 5% of the entire world's population, home to a quarter of the entire world’s prison population. This in itself is a withering indictment of a nation that extends itself in claiming exceptionalism based on its self-appointed status as the land of the free. This view is based on a belief that the majority of crimes are a product of poverty, alienation, & social exclusion. The black American novelist, Ralph Ellison, in his most famous novel – ‘Invisible Man’ – opines that, “Crime is an act of unconscious rebellion.”
In the US in 2015 there is much to rebel about.
I saw it for myself during a recent visit to Los Angeles, a city where the sheer number of homeless human beings is simply staggering. Everywhere I went I came across them shuffling up & down the street mumbling to themselves, carrying their earthly belongings in plastic bags or, if they’re lucky, pushing them in a shopping kart.
This huge colony of homeless people exists in the entertainment capital of the world, home to Hollywood, where the mythology of the American dream projects the lie that poverty & social exclusion are products of individual failure rather than systemic failure, while material wealth & success is a measure of human worth & moral rectitude. It is of course a lie, one that has succeeded in acting as a smokescreen to conceal the widening & deepening cracks in the nation's foundations.
Those suffering under the weight of this system should not expect to receive any succor from Washington anytime soon.
On the contrary, here resides a political culture & political class slavishly devoted to the rights, interests, & advancement of corporations & their very rich executives, shareholders, & investors – i.e. the rich. The by-product of this culture has been the normalization of social & economic injustice, which as mentioned is the foundation of a foreign policy of war, military intervention, & the blithe disregard for international law & national sovereignty as & when those aforementioned corporate interests dictate.
Some may question the validity of linking US foreign policy to the state of its society at home, but they'd be wrong. Both are inextricably linked, forging a circular relationship of injustice, violence, leading inexorably to atomization & crises. Malcolm X put it best when he said, “You can’t understand what’s going on in Mississippi if you don’t understand what’s going on in the Congo.”
In the US class & race constitute two sides of the same coin. Black people make up around 13% of the population, which translates to just over 30 million people, the majority of whom can trace their roots in the country to slavery, with the argument gaining traction that the plantation still exists for young black males today in the shape of a vast network of Federal & State correctional facilities.
No justice, no peace & black lives matter are the clarion calls of a movement that has emerged in response to a wave of violence committed by police departments viewed increasingly as forces of occupation rather than law & order.
Who will guard the guardians?
Criminal Minds, S1E10 (quote 1)
This is my interpretation of this great quote by Sir Peter Ustinov.
When someone keeps pursuing their dreams, they keep raising the bar / stakes to achieve ever more of their dreams, to the point that they start to step onto others' dreams & start turning them into nightmares.
For instance, Steve Jobs had a dream of combining humans with beautiful & brilliant machines; to make human lives easier & more comfortable. But after achieving his first dream of making Apple 1, he raised the bar & moved on to his next dream of making Apple 2. Then, after achieving that dream, he moved on to his next dream of making Macintosh. After a few hiccups in his career, he then moved on to those colourful Macs, then iPods, iPhones, & iPads.
Reading / listening this story of a college-dropout-turned-entrepreneur is very inspiring for people around the world. But we forget how his "super abundance of dreams" turned the dreams of millions around the world into nightmares.
For example, cameras in iPhones (& then other OS based phones) destroyed the photographing film & camera businesses, like Kodak, for instance. Kodak employees were thinking of one day retiring into the sunset & seeing their kids go to colleges / universities & then be successful in their lives, but their dreams turned into nightmares, when Kodak went bankrupt.
We can take this example into any other latest tech entrepreneur's dreams & how his/her dreams created nightmares for millions of others; dreams of Travis Kalanick (Uber's CEO) & nightmares of taxi drivers, dreams of Kevin Systrom & Mike Krieger (Founders of Instagram) & nightmares of employees of photographic film & camera companies) etc.
We can also apply this quote to any one of the industries from tobacco to oil & gas to defence & military to financial services to even geopolitical affairs. Companies in all these industries, & politicians in the geopolitical arena, are trying to achieve the dreams of owners (single owner or multiple shareholders), management, employees, & politicians at all levels, at the expense of creating nightmares for millions around the world with climate change problems, wars, austerity measures, & adverse health conditions (i.e. cancers etc.).
Tuesday, July 28, 2015
Australia to probe foreign labour
There have been stories of "slave-labour" being used in American agriculture sector. There have been stories of migrant workers being used as slaves in the European agriculture sector (fruits & vegetables grown on Spanish & Portuguese farms were being sold in British supermarkets). Then, we also have stories of slaves working in Thai's fishing industry, which ultimately supplies seafood products all over North America & Europe. Now, we have "slave labour" on Australian farms.
Who says slavery is no more in this "modern" world?
Is it surprising that slavery still exists? (not to me, at least). Heck, that's why, immigration exists.
On one end, we have big supermarkets like WalMart, Costco, Aldi, Lidl etc which demand low-cost supplies of produce from their suppliers, because after all, they need to sell those at a low cost, too, to their customers (who are themselves are earning meagre wages, thanks to automation of their jobs).
Anyway, so, if the suppliers need to reduce their costs, then, after automating whatever processes they can automate, they will start hiring migrants & using them as "slave labour", which only means long hours of work at meagre wages with no benefits, whatsoever.
So, you can decide for yourself, where's the problem lies in this whole supply chain?
- Customers are always looking for the cheapest produce they can get their hands on.
- Retailers are looking for cheapest produce they can get their hands on.
- Distributors are looking for cheapest produce they can get their hands on.
- Producer is pressured to produce at as low a cost as possible.
Problem actually lies at the top; the business persons & owners of companies who are always looking to cut costs, & the biggest component of their costs, is always going to be their labour costs. It also includes all those shareholders / stockholders, esp. the large institutional ones, who pressure companies to lower their costs (to maximize their profits & ultimately, dividends to shareholders).
Companies have only one way to reduce labour costs, by automating whatever they can automate & reduce the workforce to as few a people as they can, to the point that the labour public has a choice to either accept working at meagre wages with no benefits or no job at all. So, that public will obviously go for the cheapest produce it can find in the supermarket, because, after all, that labour public needs to eat.
So, can we really blame the agriculture producer / farmer to hire migrant workers & use them like a "slave labour" when owners, like, Sam Walton's family (WalMart owners) are becoming billionaires?
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Allegations of unethical treatment & underpayment will be investigated by the state government of Victoria.
Victoria will also push for a national inquiry into what it has described as "a national shame".
Claims Australia has an underclass of foreign workers treated like "slave labour" were made by ABC TV ... .
The report by ABC's Four Corners programme detailed widespread abuses of Australia's 417 visa.
The visa is for people aged 18 to 30 years of age who want a working holiday of up to 12 months in Australia.
The investigation uncovered abuses of the popular visa, including what were described as "slave-like conditions" at farms & factories across Australia.
"No employee should ever be exploited, harassed or deprived of their basic liberties", said Victoria's Minister for Industrial Relations Natalie Hutchins.
"This is not just about the underpayment of wages; this is about creating an underclass of foreign workers," said Ms Hutchins in a statement.
Foreign underclass
"It's clear that Victoria needs a better system in place when it comes to regulating labour hire practices," she said.
The food being picked & processed by exploited workers was reportedly sold to consumers across the country by major supermarket chains & fast food outlets.
Queensland MP Keith Pitt last month called for an investigation of exploitation of foreign workers in the horticultural sector.
He said many farmers were at risk of prosecution because they were using labour hire companies that underpaid backpacker workers.
Migrant workers are essential to Australia's agriculture sector, according to the National Farmers' Federation (NFF).
"Without them, there would be a chronic labour shortage at peak harvest times of the year," said NFF President Brent Finlay.
But he said all farmers had a responsibility to adopt employment practices & use labour contractors that did not exploit workers.
"And it's not just farmers, this is a whole of supply chain issue," he said.
Who says slavery is no more in this "modern" world?
Is it surprising that slavery still exists? (not to me, at least). Heck, that's why, immigration exists.
On one end, we have big supermarkets like WalMart, Costco, Aldi, Lidl etc which demand low-cost supplies of produce from their suppliers, because after all, they need to sell those at a low cost, too, to their customers (who are themselves are earning meagre wages, thanks to automation of their jobs).
Anyway, so, if the suppliers need to reduce their costs, then, after automating whatever processes they can automate, they will start hiring migrants & using them as "slave labour", which only means long hours of work at meagre wages with no benefits, whatsoever.
So, you can decide for yourself, where's the problem lies in this whole supply chain?
- Customers are always looking for the cheapest produce they can get their hands on.
- Retailers are looking for cheapest produce they can get their hands on.
- Distributors are looking for cheapest produce they can get their hands on.
- Producer is pressured to produce at as low a cost as possible.
Problem actually lies at the top; the business persons & owners of companies who are always looking to cut costs, & the biggest component of their costs, is always going to be their labour costs. It also includes all those shareholders / stockholders, esp. the large institutional ones, who pressure companies to lower their costs (to maximize their profits & ultimately, dividends to shareholders).
Companies have only one way to reduce labour costs, by automating whatever they can automate & reduce the workforce to as few a people as they can, to the point that the labour public has a choice to either accept working at meagre wages with no benefits or no job at all. So, that public will obviously go for the cheapest produce it can find in the supermarket, because, after all, that labour public needs to eat.
So, can we really blame the agriculture producer / farmer to hire migrant workers & use them like a "slave labour" when owners, like, Sam Walton's family (WalMart owners) are becoming billionaires?
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Allegations of unethical treatment & underpayment will be investigated by the state government of Victoria.
Victoria will also push for a national inquiry into what it has described as "a national shame".
Claims Australia has an underclass of foreign workers treated like "slave labour" were made by ABC TV ... .
The report by ABC's Four Corners programme detailed widespread abuses of Australia's 417 visa.
The visa is for people aged 18 to 30 years of age who want a working holiday of up to 12 months in Australia.
The investigation uncovered abuses of the popular visa, including what were described as "slave-like conditions" at farms & factories across Australia.
"No employee should ever be exploited, harassed or deprived of their basic liberties", said Victoria's Minister for Industrial Relations Natalie Hutchins.
"This is not just about the underpayment of wages; this is about creating an underclass of foreign workers," said Ms Hutchins in a statement.
Foreign underclass
"It's clear that Victoria needs a better system in place when it comes to regulating labour hire practices," she said.
The food being picked & processed by exploited workers was reportedly sold to consumers across the country by major supermarket chains & fast food outlets.
Queensland MP Keith Pitt last month called for an investigation of exploitation of foreign workers in the horticultural sector.
He said many farmers were at risk of prosecution because they were using labour hire companies that underpaid backpacker workers.
Migrant workers are essential to Australia's agriculture sector, according to the National Farmers' Federation (NFF).
"Without them, there would be a chronic labour shortage at peak harvest times of the year," said NFF President Brent Finlay.
But he said all farmers had a responsibility to adopt employment practices & use labour contractors that did not exploit workers.
"And it's not just farmers, this is a whole of supply chain issue," he said.
The 40-hour work week is a thing of the past
This blog post confirms my opinion that there's no such thing as "work-life balance" any more. You are expected to work 24 hours a day & then some more. Heck, if there would've been 48 hours in the day, then we humans would've been required to work 48 hours.
It's ironic that how humans always create problems for themselves by themselves. Computers were invented by us, humans, to relieve us from work & have more "work-life balance," but now, you are considered as a good, diligent worker, if you are working with the same speed & energy, as the damn machine.
Now, the next level of machine automation is AI (Artificial Intelligence) & Internet of Things, where machines can talk to one another, & perhaps, perform & learn things on their own, freeing the humans to do other more strategic things.
But, then the question arises that if the machine is learning on its own & we all know that it can learn much more in quantity at a much better speed, then where does that leave us, humans? A human brain can't compete with a processor in speed & memory, esp. when it doesn't even need a human to input data in it; it is learning on its own.
Why would a business, which will of course, always try to reduce its costs, through efficiency & effective procedures, will hire people to crunch data or perform accounting work or draw engineering drawings & etc. etc.? Robotics & machines equipped with AI can & will do all that work & much more at a much faster speed at fraction of a cost of a human, & with much more efficiency & effectively.
What will be happening on the streets of developed countries then, when millions of young & old, who spent ages in studying & getting degrees, are unemployed & have no money to put food on their dinner tables? I think anyone can imagine the chaos in the cities, then.
At the moment, it is a mere "inconvenience" to work more than 40 hours for people, compared to where our society is headed. Then, working 50, 60, or 70 hours will seem nothing when your choices will be (assuming a worker will have a choice) to either work at the same speed as that machine at a much lower salary (hey, that machine doesn't even need any salary to support anyone) or leave the company.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The phrase “nine to five” is becoming an anachronism.
About half of all managers work more than 40 hours a week, according to a new survey from tax & consulting firm EY, & 39% report that their hours have increased in the past 5 years. Little wonder, then, that one-third of workers say it’s getting more difficult to balance work & life.
The survey, which fielded opinions from 9,699 full-time employees in 8 countries, raises some questions about the sustainability of the current pace of work, said Karyn Twaronite, who heads up diversity & inclusion efforts for EY & commissioned the study.
Employees report that their responsibilities at work have increased while wages have largely stayed flat. And while technologies like company-provided smartphones & remote-work software have bought workers some flexibility, they also keep “people tied to work 7 days a week,” Ms. Twaronite noted.
58% of managers in the US report working more than 40 hours a week, surpassed only by managers in Mexico, where 61% say they’re working those hours. By comparison, just over a third of UK managers & under a fifth of managers in China report working beyond 40 hours.
The reported shift in working hours appears to hit parents particularly hard. Some 41% of managers who have kids say they’ve seen their hours increase in the last 5 years, as compared to 37% of managers who do not have children. Working women & parents also rated the task of managing their work & personal lives as slightly more difficult than men & those without children, but respondents of both genders & all generations reported that they’re feeling the crunch. (That study also had some surprising findings about the Millennial generation as working parents.)
What’s making it so hard to navigate career & family? Participants blame flat salaries & rising expenses, along with the increased workload. Managers in the US say they have a hard time getting enough sleep, finding time for themselves & handling more responsibility.
That finding suggests corporate leaders need to think more about employees’ well-being, Ms. Twaronite said.
“There really isn’t any downtime any longer where people could sign off for the day & be done,” she said. “You can be done for the day but it will be morning in China & you need to be responsive to that.”
Some companies tout flexible scheduling–letting workers leave early or take off Fridays, for example—as one remedy. But some US workers say flex arrangements are an imperfect solution. Some 9% said that they have “suffered a negative consequence as a result of having a flexible work schedule,” such as being passed over for a promotion or losing a job.
It's ironic that how humans always create problems for themselves by themselves. Computers were invented by us, humans, to relieve us from work & have more "work-life balance," but now, you are considered as a good, diligent worker, if you are working with the same speed & energy, as the damn machine.
Now, the next level of machine automation is AI (Artificial Intelligence) & Internet of Things, where machines can talk to one another, & perhaps, perform & learn things on their own, freeing the humans to do other more strategic things.
But, then the question arises that if the machine is learning on its own & we all know that it can learn much more in quantity at a much better speed, then where does that leave us, humans? A human brain can't compete with a processor in speed & memory, esp. when it doesn't even need a human to input data in it; it is learning on its own.
Why would a business, which will of course, always try to reduce its costs, through efficiency & effective procedures, will hire people to crunch data or perform accounting work or draw engineering drawings & etc. etc.? Robotics & machines equipped with AI can & will do all that work & much more at a much faster speed at fraction of a cost of a human, & with much more efficiency & effectively.
What will be happening on the streets of developed countries then, when millions of young & old, who spent ages in studying & getting degrees, are unemployed & have no money to put food on their dinner tables? I think anyone can imagine the chaos in the cities, then.
At the moment, it is a mere "inconvenience" to work more than 40 hours for people, compared to where our society is headed. Then, working 50, 60, or 70 hours will seem nothing when your choices will be (assuming a worker will have a choice) to either work at the same speed as that machine at a much lower salary (hey, that machine doesn't even need any salary to support anyone) or leave the company.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The phrase “nine to five” is becoming an anachronism.
About half of all managers work more than 40 hours a week, according to a new survey from tax & consulting firm EY, & 39% report that their hours have increased in the past 5 years. Little wonder, then, that one-third of workers say it’s getting more difficult to balance work & life.
The survey, which fielded opinions from 9,699 full-time employees in 8 countries, raises some questions about the sustainability of the current pace of work, said Karyn Twaronite, who heads up diversity & inclusion efforts for EY & commissioned the study.
Employees report that their responsibilities at work have increased while wages have largely stayed flat. And while technologies like company-provided smartphones & remote-work software have bought workers some flexibility, they also keep “people tied to work 7 days a week,” Ms. Twaronite noted.
58% of managers in the US report working more than 40 hours a week, surpassed only by managers in Mexico, where 61% say they’re working those hours. By comparison, just over a third of UK managers & under a fifth of managers in China report working beyond 40 hours.
The reported shift in working hours appears to hit parents particularly hard. Some 41% of managers who have kids say they’ve seen their hours increase in the last 5 years, as compared to 37% of managers who do not have children. Working women & parents also rated the task of managing their work & personal lives as slightly more difficult than men & those without children, but respondents of both genders & all generations reported that they’re feeling the crunch. (That study also had some surprising findings about the Millennial generation as working parents.)
What’s making it so hard to navigate career & family? Participants blame flat salaries & rising expenses, along with the increased workload. Managers in the US say they have a hard time getting enough sleep, finding time for themselves & handling more responsibility.
That finding suggests corporate leaders need to think more about employees’ well-being, Ms. Twaronite said.
“There really isn’t any downtime any longer where people could sign off for the day & be done,” she said. “You can be done for the day but it will be morning in China & you need to be responsive to that.”
Some companies tout flexible scheduling–letting workers leave early or take off Fridays, for example—as one remedy. But some US workers say flex arrangements are an imperfect solution. Some 9% said that they have “suffered a negative consequence as a result of having a flexible work schedule,” such as being passed over for a promotion or losing a job.
Monday, July 27, 2015
Air Pollution costs Europe $1.6 Trillion a year in early deaths & disease, say WHO
Unfortunately, that day is not far when people will be buying portable personal oxygen tanks & breathers for themselves & their families. Going outside of their homes would require a little breather just like shoes & shirts are worn before getting outside of homes.
With the European countries pledging to end their dependence on fossil fuels in the next 85 years (by 2100), these oxygen tanks & breathers will be required in the next 25-40 years, especially with the way, the air pollution is spreading in large, metropolitan cities, from Shanghai to Delhi to London to Los Angeles.
We will be seeing "Lorax" being played in real-life around the world.
However, who will lose most adversely with these air pollution & climate change problems? The poor. The rich will buy their way out of these problems, but the poor, which are the general masses, won't be able to escape these problems all around the world. They can't relocate themselves or won't be able to buy loads & loads of oxygen tanks or breathers for themselves.
So, although, ONLY about half-a-million people prematurely died in Europe (only continent which is supposed to be leading the fight against climate change & pollution) due to air pollution, we will be seeing these tragedies played out in much larger numbers all over the world.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The financial cost of air pollution in Europe stands at more than $1.6tn (£1.5tn) a year, a study by the World Health Organisation (WHO) has found, equating to about a tenth of the GDP of the continent.
The costs come in the form of 600,000 premature deaths each year, & the sickness caused to hundreds of thousands of other people from preventable causes, such as pollution from small particles that come from the exhausts of diesel vehicles, & nitrogen dioxide, a gas that can inhibit breathing in vulnerable people.
The figures are from 2010, the latest year for which full data is available, & cover the whole of the European region, including non-EU states such as Norway & Switzerland, & are compiled by the WHO Regional Office for Europe & the Organisation for Economic Co-operation & Development (OECD).
Zsuzsanna Jakab, regional director for Europe at the WHO, said: “Curbing the health effects of air pollution pays dividends. The evidence we have provides decision-makers across the whole of government with a compelling reason to act.”
In many east European countries, the WHO data shows, the economic costs of dirty air are more than 10% of their GDP. On absolute economic costs, the top 10 list is dominated by major economies including the UK, Germany & Italy.
In the UK, air pollution has become so bad in London that the European Union is to levy fines on local government, reflecting years in which the extent of pollution has been in excess of EU standards. The Supreme Court is expected to issue judgment ... on a case brought against the UK government for its breach of EU pollution limits.
The WHO report found that air pollution was the single biggest environmental health risk in Europe, with the damage from outdoor risks such as diesel exhaust pollution accounting for 482,000 deaths in 2012 from heart & respiratory diseases alone. The deaths or sickness of at least 1 in 4 Europeans can be traced to environmental pollution, according to the organisation.
In March, the European Environment Agency warned that hundreds of thousands of people would die prematurely over the next 2 decades from air pollution because of governments’ failure to act.
With the European countries pledging to end their dependence on fossil fuels in the next 85 years (by 2100), these oxygen tanks & breathers will be required in the next 25-40 years, especially with the way, the air pollution is spreading in large, metropolitan cities, from Shanghai to Delhi to London to Los Angeles.
We will be seeing "Lorax" being played in real-life around the world.
However, who will lose most adversely with these air pollution & climate change problems? The poor. The rich will buy their way out of these problems, but the poor, which are the general masses, won't be able to escape these problems all around the world. They can't relocate themselves or won't be able to buy loads & loads of oxygen tanks or breathers for themselves.
So, although, ONLY about half-a-million people prematurely died in Europe (only continent which is supposed to be leading the fight against climate change & pollution) due to air pollution, we will be seeing these tragedies played out in much larger numbers all over the world.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The financial cost of air pollution in Europe stands at more than $1.6tn (£1.5tn) a year, a study by the World Health Organisation (WHO) has found, equating to about a tenth of the GDP of the continent.
The costs come in the form of 600,000 premature deaths each year, & the sickness caused to hundreds of thousands of other people from preventable causes, such as pollution from small particles that come from the exhausts of diesel vehicles, & nitrogen dioxide, a gas that can inhibit breathing in vulnerable people.
The figures are from 2010, the latest year for which full data is available, & cover the whole of the European region, including non-EU states such as Norway & Switzerland, & are compiled by the WHO Regional Office for Europe & the Organisation for Economic Co-operation & Development (OECD).
Zsuzsanna Jakab, regional director for Europe at the WHO, said: “Curbing the health effects of air pollution pays dividends. The evidence we have provides decision-makers across the whole of government with a compelling reason to act.”
In many east European countries, the WHO data shows, the economic costs of dirty air are more than 10% of their GDP. On absolute economic costs, the top 10 list is dominated by major economies including the UK, Germany & Italy.
In the UK, air pollution has become so bad in London that the European Union is to levy fines on local government, reflecting years in which the extent of pollution has been in excess of EU standards. The Supreme Court is expected to issue judgment ... on a case brought against the UK government for its breach of EU pollution limits.
The WHO report found that air pollution was the single biggest environmental health risk in Europe, with the damage from outdoor risks such as diesel exhaust pollution accounting for 482,000 deaths in 2012 from heart & respiratory diseases alone. The deaths or sickness of at least 1 in 4 Europeans can be traced to environmental pollution, according to the organisation.
In March, the European Environment Agency warned that hundreds of thousands of people would die prematurely over the next 2 decades from air pollution because of governments’ failure to act.
Saturday, July 25, 2015
Israeli soldiers cast doubt on legality of Gaza military tactics
Well, Muslims already dislike Israeli occupation of Palestine, but reading these kinds of stories / articles, I wonder how come others still support the occupation, wholeheartedly. Heck, saying anything against the Israeli occupation is considered "anti-Semitic" & many developed countries are outlawing it, outright (Canada, included). And then the whole world considers the developed countries of the West as fair, just, & humane?
But then, is it fair to solely blame the West for supporting Israel in its illegal occupation of Palestine? After all, the leader of the country, where Islam's 2 holiest sites are located, who is also known as, "custodian of the 2 holy mosques," collaborated with Israelis against Iran, for its own geopolitical agenda.
It was not that surprising to read the gung-ho, radicalized, extreme hateful attitudes of the Israeli soldiers towards Palestinians. It wasn't surprising to read how bombings were conducted or civilians were killed ("shoot in memory of our comrade" who was killed by friendly fire). It was not surprising that how sites which should not have been bombed (UN schools being used as refugee centers, for example) were bombed & reported in the world media that they were never bombed (because the firing order was given for a few hundred meters out of the supposedly-protected site, & then given a "correction order" to fire again at the site, & only the first firing order is logged in the records, not the "correction fire.")
It wasn't surprising, at least to me, & I assume that to millions more around the world, because these kinds of stories about Israel are not uncommon. There are news articles, opinion pieces, movies, etc. for as long as I can remember. Heck, with internet, it's becoming even easier to spread these kinds of stories around. But, the situation on the ground have only gotten worsen in the past half century, & not become better in any way.
Be it any war waged by anyone (US, UK, NATO, Israel etc.) for any reason (usually to kill a threat), it usually achieves the opposite. The threat never goes away & actually, increases much more. Because, the person whose innocent family has been killed off right before him/her, has no reason or hope to keep living. Then, that person becomes a suicide bomber & joins a party which allows it to take revenge.
On top of that, actions like these by countries waging wars make their own populace further insecure, since now, they don't know if & when that person will strike back. This was all very nicely portrayed in a Canadian movie, "Inch'Allah". It even showed how adversely these hardline tactics affect Israeli soldiers themselves, since their hearts know what they are doing is wrong (assuming they are conscientious enough), but they have to follow orders. This long-term conflict between the hearts & minds give them PTSDs. So nobody is winning with this illegal occupation of Palestine.
People who have their eyes closed will keep defending Israel & dismiss stories like these, even though, these are accounts of the war from soldiers who were themselves involved in that uni-lateral Gaza war of 2014. These people don't just stop there but take away anyone's right to criticize Israel, too.
As George Orwell said, "The further a society drifts from truth, the more it will hate those that speak it."
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Testimonies provided by more than 60 Israeli soldiers who fought in last summer’s war in Gaza have raised serious questions over whether Israel’s tactics breached its obligations under international law to distinguish & protect civilians.
The claims – collected by the human rights group Breaking the Silence – are contained in dozens of interviews with Israeli combatants, as well as with soldiers who served in command centres & attack rooms, a quarter of them officers up to the rank of major.
They include allegations that Israeli ground troops were briefed to regard everything inside Gaza as a “threat” & they should “not spare ammo”, & that tanks fired randomly or for revenge on buildings without knowing whether they were legitimate military targets or contained civilians.
In their testimonies, soldiers depict rules of engagement they characterised as permissive, “lax” or largely non-existent, including how some soldiers were instructed to treat anyone seen looking towards their positions as “scouts” to be fired on.
The group also claims that the Israeli military operated with different safety margins for bombing or using artillery & mortars near civilians & its own troops, with Israeli forces at times allowed to fire significantly closer to civilians than Israeli soldiers.
Phillipe Sands, professor of law at University College London & a specialist in international humanitarian law, described the testimonies as “troubling insights into intention & method”.
“Maybe it will be said that they are partial & selective, but surely they cannot be ignored or brushed aside, coming as they do from individuals with first-hand experience: the rule of law requires proper investigation & inquiry.”
Describing the rules that meant life & death in Gaza during the 50-day war – a conflict in which 2,200 Palestinians were killed – the interviews shed light for the first time not only on what individual soldiers were told but on the doctrine informing the operation.
Despite the insistence of Israeli leaders that it took all necessary precautions to protect civilians, the interviews provide a very different picture. They suggest that an overarching priority was the minimisation of Israeli military casualties even at the risk of Palestinian civilians being harmed.
While the Israel Defence Forces Military Advocate General’s office has launched investigations into a number of individual incidents of alleged wrongdoing, the testimonies raise wider questions over policies under which the war was conducted.
Post-conflict briefings to soldiers suggest that the high death toll & destruction were treated as “achievements” by officers who judged the attrition would keep Gaza “quiet for 5 years”.
The tone, according to one sergeant, was set before the ground offensive into Gaza that began on 17 July last year in pre-combat briefings that preceded the entry of 6 reinforced brigades into Gaza.
“[It] took place during training at Tze’elim, before entering Gaza, with the commander of the armoured battalion to which we were assigned,” recalled a sergeant, one of dozens of Israeli soldiers who have described how the war was fought last summer in the coastal strip.
“[The commander] said: ‘We don’t take risks. We do not spare ammo. We unload, we use as much as possible.’”
“The rules of engagement [were] pretty identical,” added another sergeant who served in a mechanised infantry unit in Deir al-Balah. “Anything inside [the Gaza Strip] is a threat."
The area has to be ‘sterilised,’ empty of people – & if we don’t see someone waving a white flag, screaming: “I give up” or something – then he’s a threat & there’s authorisation to open fire ... The saying was: ‘There’s no such thing there as a person who is uninvolved.’ In that situation, anyone there is involved.”
“The rules of engagement for soldiers advancing on the ground were: open fire, open fire everywhere, first thing when you go in,” recalled another soldier who served during the ground operation in Gaza City. The assumption being that the moment we went in [to the Gaza Strip], anyone who dared poke his head out was a terrorist.”
Soldiers were also encouraged to treat individuals who came too close or watched from windows or other vantage points as “scouts” who could be killed regardless of whether there was hard evidence they were spotting for Hamas or other militant groups. “If it looks like a man, shoot. It was simple: you’re in a motherfucking combat zone,” said a sergeant who served in an infantry unit in the northern Gaza strip.
“A few hours before you went in the whole area was bombed, if there’s anyone there who doesn’t clearly look innocent, you apparently need to shoot that person.” Defining ‘innocent’ he added: “If you see the person is less than 1.40 metres tall or if you see it’s a lady ... If it’s a man you shoot.”
In at least one instance described by soldiers, being female did not help 2 women who were killed because one had a mobile phone. A soldier described the incident: “After the commander told the tank commander to go scan that place, & 3 tanks went to check [the bodies] ... it was 2 women, over the age of 30 ... unarmed. They were listed as terrorists. They were fired at. So of course they must have been terrorists.”
The testimonies raise questions whether Israel fully met its obligations to protect civilians in a conflict area from unnecessary harm, requiring it not only to distinguish between civilians & combatants but also ensure that when using force, where there is the risk of civilian harm, that it is “proportionate”.
“One of the main threads in the testimonies,” said Michael Sfard, an Israeli human rights lawyer & legal adviser to Breaking the Silence, “is the presumption that despite the fact that the battle was being waged in urban area – & one of most densely populated in the world – no civilians would be in the areas they entered.”
That presumption, say soldiers, was sustained by virtue of warnings to Palestinians to leave their homes & neighbourhoods delivered in leaflets dropped by aircraft & in text & phone messages which meant – in the IDF’s interpretation – that anyone who remained was not a civilian.
Even at the time that view was deeply controversial because – says Sfard & other legal experts interviewed – it reinterpreted international law regarding the duty of protection for areas containing civilians.
Sfard added: “We are not talking about a [deliberate] decision to kill civilians. But to say the rules of engagement were lax gives them too much credit. They allowed engagement in almost any circumstances, unless there was a felt to be a risk to an IDF soldier.”
If the rules of engagement were highly permissive, other soldiers say that they also detected a darker mood in their units that further coloured the way that soldiers behaved. “The motto guiding lots of people was: ‘Let’s show them,’ recalls a lieutenant who served in the Givati Brigade in Rafah. “It was evident that was a starting point. Lots of guys who did their reserve duty with me don’t have much pity towards [the Palestinians].”
He added: “There were a lot of people there who really hate Arabs. Really, really hate Arabs. You could see the hate in their eyes.”
A second lieutenant echoed his comments. “You could feel there was a radicalisation in the way the whole thing was conducted. The discourse was extremely rightwing ... [And] the very fact that [Palestinians were] described as ‘uninvolved’ rather than as civilians, & the desensitisation to the surging number of dead on the Palestinian side. It doesn’t matter whether they’re involved or not … that’s something that troubles me.”
And the testimonies, too, suggest breaches of the IDF’s own code of ethics – The Spirit of the IDF – which insists: “IDF soldiers will not use their weapons & force to harm human beings who are not combatants or prisoners of war, & will do all in their power to avoid causing harm to their lives, bodies, dignity & property.”
Contrary to that, however, testimonies describe how soldiers randomly shelled buildings either to no obvious military purpose or for revenge.
One sergeant who served in a tank in the centre of the Gaza Strip recalls: “A week or two after we entered the Gaza Strip & we were all firing a lot when there wasn’t any need for it – just for the sake of firing – a member of our company was killed.
“The company commander came over to us & told us that one guy was killed due to such-and-such, & he said: ‘Guys, get ready, get in your tanks, & we’ll fire a barrage in memory of our comrade” … My tank went up to the post – a place from which I can see targets – can see buildings – [and] fired at them, & the platoon commander says: ‘OK guys, we’ll now fire in memory of our comrade’ & we said OK.”
How Israeli forces used artillery & mortars in Gaza, says Breaking the Silence, has raised other concerns beyond either the rules of engagement or the actions of specific units.
According to the group’s research during the war, the Israeli military operated 2 different sets of rules for how close certain weapons could be fired to Israeli soldiers & Palestinian civilians.
Yehuda Shaul, one of the founders of Breaking the Silence, & himself a former soldier, explains: “What our research during this project uncovered was that there were 3 designated ‘Operational Levels’ during the conflict – numbered 1 to 3. What the operational level was was set higher up the chain of command. Above the level of the Gaza division. What those levels do is designate the likelihood of civilian casualties from weapons like 155mm artillery & bombs from ‘low’ damage to civilians to ‘high’.
“What we established was that for artillery fire in operational levels 2 & 3 Israeli forces were allowed to fire much closer to civilians than they were to friendly Israeli forces.”
Ahead of the conflict – in which 34,000 shells were fired into Gaza, 19,000 of them explosive – artillery & air liaison officers had been supplied with a list of sensitive sites to which fire was not to be directed within clear limits of distance. These included hospitals & UN schools being used as refugee centres, even in areas where evacuation had been ordered.
“Even then,” explains Shaul, “we have a testimony we took that a senior brigade commander issued order how to get around that, instructing that the unit fired first outside of the protected area & then calling for correction fire on to the location that they wanted to hit.
“He said: “If you go on the radio & ask to hit this building, we have to say no. But if you give a target 200 metres outside then you can ask for correction. Only thing that is recorded is the first target not the correction fire.”
And in the end, despite the high number of civilian casualties, the debriefings treated the destruction as an accomplishment that would discourage Hamas in the future.
“You could say they went over most of the things viewed as accomplishments,” said a Combat Intelligence Corps sergeant. “ “They spoke about numbers: 2,000 dead & 11,000 wounded, half a million refugees, decades worth of destruction. Harm to lots of senior Hamas members & to their homes, to their families. These were stated as accomplishments so that no one would doubt that what we did during this period was meaningful.
“They spoke of a five-year period of quiet (in which there would be no hostilities between Israel & Hamas) when in fact it was a 72-hour ceasefire, & at the end of those 72 hours they were firing again.”
Without responding to the specific allegations, the Israeli military said: “The IDF is committed to properly investigating all credible claims raised via media, NGOs, & official complaints concerning IDF conduct during operation Protective Edge, in as serious a manner as possible.
“It should be noted that following Operation Protective Edge, thorough investigations were carried out, & soldiers & commanders were given the opportunity to present any complaint. Exceptional incidents were then transferred to the military advocate general for further inquiry.”
But then, is it fair to solely blame the West for supporting Israel in its illegal occupation of Palestine? After all, the leader of the country, where Islam's 2 holiest sites are located, who is also known as, "custodian of the 2 holy mosques," collaborated with Israelis against Iran, for its own geopolitical agenda.
It was not that surprising to read the gung-ho, radicalized, extreme hateful attitudes of the Israeli soldiers towards Palestinians. It wasn't surprising to read how bombings were conducted or civilians were killed ("shoot in memory of our comrade" who was killed by friendly fire). It was not surprising that how sites which should not have been bombed (UN schools being used as refugee centers, for example) were bombed & reported in the world media that they were never bombed (because the firing order was given for a few hundred meters out of the supposedly-protected site, & then given a "correction order" to fire again at the site, & only the first firing order is logged in the records, not the "correction fire.")
It wasn't surprising, at least to me, & I assume that to millions more around the world, because these kinds of stories about Israel are not uncommon. There are news articles, opinion pieces, movies, etc. for as long as I can remember. Heck, with internet, it's becoming even easier to spread these kinds of stories around. But, the situation on the ground have only gotten worsen in the past half century, & not become better in any way.
Be it any war waged by anyone (US, UK, NATO, Israel etc.) for any reason (usually to kill a threat), it usually achieves the opposite. The threat never goes away & actually, increases much more. Because, the person whose innocent family has been killed off right before him/her, has no reason or hope to keep living. Then, that person becomes a suicide bomber & joins a party which allows it to take revenge.
On top of that, actions like these by countries waging wars make their own populace further insecure, since now, they don't know if & when that person will strike back. This was all very nicely portrayed in a Canadian movie, "Inch'Allah". It even showed how adversely these hardline tactics affect Israeli soldiers themselves, since their hearts know what they are doing is wrong (assuming they are conscientious enough), but they have to follow orders. This long-term conflict between the hearts & minds give them PTSDs. So nobody is winning with this illegal occupation of Palestine.
People who have their eyes closed will keep defending Israel & dismiss stories like these, even though, these are accounts of the war from soldiers who were themselves involved in that uni-lateral Gaza war of 2014. These people don't just stop there but take away anyone's right to criticize Israel, too.
As George Orwell said, "The further a society drifts from truth, the more it will hate those that speak it."
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Testimonies provided by more than 60 Israeli soldiers who fought in last summer’s war in Gaza have raised serious questions over whether Israel’s tactics breached its obligations under international law to distinguish & protect civilians.
The claims – collected by the human rights group Breaking the Silence – are contained in dozens of interviews with Israeli combatants, as well as with soldiers who served in command centres & attack rooms, a quarter of them officers up to the rank of major.
They include allegations that Israeli ground troops were briefed to regard everything inside Gaza as a “threat” & they should “not spare ammo”, & that tanks fired randomly or for revenge on buildings without knowing whether they were legitimate military targets or contained civilians.
In their testimonies, soldiers depict rules of engagement they characterised as permissive, “lax” or largely non-existent, including how some soldiers were instructed to treat anyone seen looking towards their positions as “scouts” to be fired on.
The group also claims that the Israeli military operated with different safety margins for bombing or using artillery & mortars near civilians & its own troops, with Israeli forces at times allowed to fire significantly closer to civilians than Israeli soldiers.
Phillipe Sands, professor of law at University College London & a specialist in international humanitarian law, described the testimonies as “troubling insights into intention & method”.
“Maybe it will be said that they are partial & selective, but surely they cannot be ignored or brushed aside, coming as they do from individuals with first-hand experience: the rule of law requires proper investigation & inquiry.”
Describing the rules that meant life & death in Gaza during the 50-day war – a conflict in which 2,200 Palestinians were killed – the interviews shed light for the first time not only on what individual soldiers were told but on the doctrine informing the operation.
Despite the insistence of Israeli leaders that it took all necessary precautions to protect civilians, the interviews provide a very different picture. They suggest that an overarching priority was the minimisation of Israeli military casualties even at the risk of Palestinian civilians being harmed.
While the Israel Defence Forces Military Advocate General’s office has launched investigations into a number of individual incidents of alleged wrongdoing, the testimonies raise wider questions over policies under which the war was conducted.
Post-conflict briefings to soldiers suggest that the high death toll & destruction were treated as “achievements” by officers who judged the attrition would keep Gaza “quiet for 5 years”.
The tone, according to one sergeant, was set before the ground offensive into Gaza that began on 17 July last year in pre-combat briefings that preceded the entry of 6 reinforced brigades into Gaza.
“[It] took place during training at Tze’elim, before entering Gaza, with the commander of the armoured battalion to which we were assigned,” recalled a sergeant, one of dozens of Israeli soldiers who have described how the war was fought last summer in the coastal strip.
“[The commander] said: ‘We don’t take risks. We do not spare ammo. We unload, we use as much as possible.’”
“The rules of engagement [were] pretty identical,” added another sergeant who served in a mechanised infantry unit in Deir al-Balah. “Anything inside [the Gaza Strip] is a threat."
The area has to be ‘sterilised,’ empty of people – & if we don’t see someone waving a white flag, screaming: “I give up” or something – then he’s a threat & there’s authorisation to open fire ... The saying was: ‘There’s no such thing there as a person who is uninvolved.’ In that situation, anyone there is involved.”
“The rules of engagement for soldiers advancing on the ground were: open fire, open fire everywhere, first thing when you go in,” recalled another soldier who served during the ground operation in Gaza City. The assumption being that the moment we went in [to the Gaza Strip], anyone who dared poke his head out was a terrorist.”
Soldiers were also encouraged to treat individuals who came too close or watched from windows or other vantage points as “scouts” who could be killed regardless of whether there was hard evidence they were spotting for Hamas or other militant groups. “If it looks like a man, shoot. It was simple: you’re in a motherfucking combat zone,” said a sergeant who served in an infantry unit in the northern Gaza strip.
“A few hours before you went in the whole area was bombed, if there’s anyone there who doesn’t clearly look innocent, you apparently need to shoot that person.” Defining ‘innocent’ he added: “If you see the person is less than 1.40 metres tall or if you see it’s a lady ... If it’s a man you shoot.”
In at least one instance described by soldiers, being female did not help 2 women who were killed because one had a mobile phone. A soldier described the incident: “After the commander told the tank commander to go scan that place, & 3 tanks went to check [the bodies] ... it was 2 women, over the age of 30 ... unarmed. They were listed as terrorists. They were fired at. So of course they must have been terrorists.”
The testimonies raise questions whether Israel fully met its obligations to protect civilians in a conflict area from unnecessary harm, requiring it not only to distinguish between civilians & combatants but also ensure that when using force, where there is the risk of civilian harm, that it is “proportionate”.
“One of the main threads in the testimonies,” said Michael Sfard, an Israeli human rights lawyer & legal adviser to Breaking the Silence, “is the presumption that despite the fact that the battle was being waged in urban area – & one of most densely populated in the world – no civilians would be in the areas they entered.”
That presumption, say soldiers, was sustained by virtue of warnings to Palestinians to leave their homes & neighbourhoods delivered in leaflets dropped by aircraft & in text & phone messages which meant – in the IDF’s interpretation – that anyone who remained was not a civilian.
Even at the time that view was deeply controversial because – says Sfard & other legal experts interviewed – it reinterpreted international law regarding the duty of protection for areas containing civilians.
Sfard added: “We are not talking about a [deliberate] decision to kill civilians. But to say the rules of engagement were lax gives them too much credit. They allowed engagement in almost any circumstances, unless there was a felt to be a risk to an IDF soldier.”
If the rules of engagement were highly permissive, other soldiers say that they also detected a darker mood in their units that further coloured the way that soldiers behaved. “The motto guiding lots of people was: ‘Let’s show them,’ recalls a lieutenant who served in the Givati Brigade in Rafah. “It was evident that was a starting point. Lots of guys who did their reserve duty with me don’t have much pity towards [the Palestinians].”
He added: “There were a lot of people there who really hate Arabs. Really, really hate Arabs. You could see the hate in their eyes.”
A second lieutenant echoed his comments. “You could feel there was a radicalisation in the way the whole thing was conducted. The discourse was extremely rightwing ... [And] the very fact that [Palestinians were] described as ‘uninvolved’ rather than as civilians, & the desensitisation to the surging number of dead on the Palestinian side. It doesn’t matter whether they’re involved or not … that’s something that troubles me.”
And the testimonies, too, suggest breaches of the IDF’s own code of ethics – The Spirit of the IDF – which insists: “IDF soldiers will not use their weapons & force to harm human beings who are not combatants or prisoners of war, & will do all in their power to avoid causing harm to their lives, bodies, dignity & property.”
Contrary to that, however, testimonies describe how soldiers randomly shelled buildings either to no obvious military purpose or for revenge.
One sergeant who served in a tank in the centre of the Gaza Strip recalls: “A week or two after we entered the Gaza Strip & we were all firing a lot when there wasn’t any need for it – just for the sake of firing – a member of our company was killed.
“The company commander came over to us & told us that one guy was killed due to such-and-such, & he said: ‘Guys, get ready, get in your tanks, & we’ll fire a barrage in memory of our comrade” … My tank went up to the post – a place from which I can see targets – can see buildings – [and] fired at them, & the platoon commander says: ‘OK guys, we’ll now fire in memory of our comrade’ & we said OK.”
How Israeli forces used artillery & mortars in Gaza, says Breaking the Silence, has raised other concerns beyond either the rules of engagement or the actions of specific units.
According to the group’s research during the war, the Israeli military operated 2 different sets of rules for how close certain weapons could be fired to Israeli soldiers & Palestinian civilians.
Yehuda Shaul, one of the founders of Breaking the Silence, & himself a former soldier, explains: “What our research during this project uncovered was that there were 3 designated ‘Operational Levels’ during the conflict – numbered 1 to 3. What the operational level was was set higher up the chain of command. Above the level of the Gaza division. What those levels do is designate the likelihood of civilian casualties from weapons like 155mm artillery & bombs from ‘low’ damage to civilians to ‘high’.
“What we established was that for artillery fire in operational levels 2 & 3 Israeli forces were allowed to fire much closer to civilians than they were to friendly Israeli forces.”
Ahead of the conflict – in which 34,000 shells were fired into Gaza, 19,000 of them explosive – artillery & air liaison officers had been supplied with a list of sensitive sites to which fire was not to be directed within clear limits of distance. These included hospitals & UN schools being used as refugee centres, even in areas where evacuation had been ordered.
“Even then,” explains Shaul, “we have a testimony we took that a senior brigade commander issued order how to get around that, instructing that the unit fired first outside of the protected area & then calling for correction fire on to the location that they wanted to hit.
“He said: “If you go on the radio & ask to hit this building, we have to say no. But if you give a target 200 metres outside then you can ask for correction. Only thing that is recorded is the first target not the correction fire.”
And in the end, despite the high number of civilian casualties, the debriefings treated the destruction as an accomplishment that would discourage Hamas in the future.
“You could say they went over most of the things viewed as accomplishments,” said a Combat Intelligence Corps sergeant. “ “They spoke about numbers: 2,000 dead & 11,000 wounded, half a million refugees, decades worth of destruction. Harm to lots of senior Hamas members & to their homes, to their families. These were stated as accomplishments so that no one would doubt that what we did during this period was meaningful.
“They spoke of a five-year period of quiet (in which there would be no hostilities between Israel & Hamas) when in fact it was a 72-hour ceasefire, & at the end of those 72 hours they were firing again.”
Without responding to the specific allegations, the Israeli military said: “The IDF is committed to properly investigating all credible claims raised via media, NGOs, & official complaints concerning IDF conduct during operation Protective Edge, in as serious a manner as possible.
“It should be noted that following Operation Protective Edge, thorough investigations were carried out, & soldiers & commanders were given the opportunity to present any complaint. Exceptional incidents were then transferred to the military advocate general for further inquiry.”
Friday, July 24, 2015
Deadly blooms of Helmand
Ghulam Hassan is in the mood to celebrate Eid ... 3 months early. His 1.5-acre farm in a small village in Helmand province has been blooming with white & crimson flowers. Now the petals are just beginning to drop, giving way to round, sticky, pungent green pods. In a few more days the pods will swell to the size of a bulb. This is when Mr Hassan’s family of 14 will move in. They will carefully slice open the bulbs & collect the oozing white latex or resin – the main ingredient in heroin.
“This is a bumper crop. The yield will be enough to feed my family for more than a year,” Mr Hassan said, gazing gleefully at his poppy field just outside the village of Hajj Alam in the Nehri Saraj district.
He is one of thousands of Afghan farmers who, despite the best efforts first of the US-led coalition & now of the country’s own anti-narcotics department, are growing more poppies than ever before.
Not only is the income from opium up to $1,800 (£1,200) per acre, some 12 times higher than that from conventional crops, but there is another, more insidious factor at work. Last year, like the year before that, Hassan had sown wheat.
“I borrowed from relatives & friends to buy seeds & fertilisers. The harvest was good,” he said. “But that’s where the good news ended. Because of the Taliban threat, truck drivers were not willing to carry the produce to bigger markets. As a result, most of my wheat rotted in the field. The crop was lost & I was left with a $4,000 debt.”
Dozens of Mr Hassan’s neighbours too have discarded wheat, maize & vegetable crops for opium poppies, which not only gives them easy access to credit & protection from the Taliban, but also fetches more money.
There is no sign that the Afghan government, now supposed to be policing the whole country itself since the formal conclusion of the US-led combat operation last year, is bringing the Taliban under control. More than 7 months after President Ashraf Ghani took office, Afghanistan still does not have a Defence Minister, & the security situation is deteriorating nationwide.
Meanwhile, the prospect of a higher income at a time of growing insecurity is driving more & more farmers to take up poppy cultivation. Last year, according to official Afghan & UN figures, the total area under opium poppy cultivation in the country rose by 7%, to more than 550,000 acres. Helmand, with almost 300,000 acres, had the dubious distinction of being Afghanistan’s biggest poppy-growing province.
Officials in the ministry of counter-narcotics say that Helmand is on course to set a record for poppy-growing this year, with the area under the crop rising a further 16%.
It is bad news for Colonel Mohamed Abdali, head of the interior ministry’s counter-narcotics police team in Helmand, whose already difficult job is becoming ever more challenging. Colonel Abdali is responsible for eradicating the province’s poppy fields. For the past 4 months, he & his 80-man team have been gathering information, mapping & photographing the fields. “We have prepared our own database – location of the fields, area under the crop, owners, etc,” Colonel Abdali said. “We send this data to the counter-narcotics ministry & on its clearance, destroy the fields.
“We have only a small, one-and-a-half month window to destroy the crop. It’s best to clear the field when the poppy has blossomed. Eradicating the crop before that allows a farmer to replant & regrow.” As he spoke, he signalled his men to mount 4 US-made Massey Ferguson tractors. Escorted by 15 armed soldiers in 3 police vans, they began to roll towards Trikh Nawar, ... some 20 miles from where Mr Hassan was preparing to harvest his crop.
The convoy makes its first stop at Haji Mamoon Khan’s field, & soldiers jump out to take up defensive positions. On Colonel Abdali’s signal, 5 men set off carefully to search for mines or any hidden improvised-explosive devices. “We always follow this drill. We are the enemies of both the Taliban & the drug dealers, said Colonel Abdali. “The villagers are also hostile to us. We have to keep our eyes & ears open for lurking Taliban fighters, roadside bombs & IEDs. We can’t take any chances.”
When a whistle from the field gave an “all-clear” signal, 2 tractors set about ploughing up Mr Khan’s poppies.
“They have ruined me & my family,” said the farmer, contemplating the crop that he had nurtured for months. “The produce would have helped me pay for my wife’s surgery & for my son’s wedding. But it’s all gone now. I can’t bring home happiness.”
His quiet sobs seem to unsettle the young colonel. “I know I am destroying someone’s livelihood. An entire family was depending on this crop,” Colonel Abdali said. “But it would have destroyed so many other families.”
The next day, as the team prepared to enter another poppy farm, Colonel Abdali received a phone call back at his Lashkar Gah HQ. “There’s been a landmine explosion,” the caller said. “One officer is dead, one is wounded.”
“Do not touch anything. Come out of the farm. Tread only on the tractor tyre marks,” Colonel Abdali warned.
The explosion, in Trikh Nawar, came as Sayed Shah, a counter-narcotics officer, was trying to defuse a mine. His body, covered by a tarpaulin, was lying in an ambulance, & 2 soldiers were bleeding from head wounds. As the ambulance was about to pull away, a phone rang in the dead soldier’s pocket. Colonel Abdali pulled out the phone to answer it. The caller was the soldier’s brother. “Sayed Shah is a martyr now. We are bringing him home,” Colonel Abdali told him.
Who is bombing whom in the Middle East?
Reading this piece from Robert Fisk amazed me that Muslims have dropped, & keep dropping, in a hole with no bottom. 3 of the first 4 paragraphs will confound you beyond your beliefs (I challenge you if you don't get confused with who is bombing whom). Muslims, who apparently follow Islam, killing each other, without showing any mercy, & mercy was the way of the beloved Prophet. They are not all bombing ISIS, but also bombing each other, like Egyptians bombing Libyans, & Saudis bombing Yemenis.
What's the point of praying taraweehs all Ramadan or reciting Quran with a very beautiful voice (because, that's very much mandatory ... sarcasm)?
What happened to the sanctity of a Muslim's blood?
How low is the value of blood of a Muslim?
But, hey, we, Muslims, gotta ask Snapchat to show the world how peaceful we Muslims are, by showing Mecca live all around the world, even though, the country where Mecca is located (Kingdom of Saudi Arabia) is indiscriminately spilling the blood of innocent Yemeni Muslims (just because, those Muslims are Shia).
And as this piece points out, who is rolling in the cash with all these indiscriminate bombings: the true "Lords of War"; weapons-manufacturers & defense companies. Companies, like Lockheed Martin, BAE, Raytheon etc. And, we, Muslims, are letting them do that to us.
I don't know what to cry about anymore: the state of Muslims' physical situation or how the West has made us Muslims blind to the fact that how we are completely willing to follow where & how the West leads us.
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The Saudis are bombing Yemen because they fear the Shia Houthis are working for the Iranians. The Saudis are also bombing Isis in Iraq & the Isis in Syria. So are the United Arab Emirates. The Syrian government is bombing its enemies in Syria & the Iraqi government is also bombing its enemies in Iraq. America, France, Britain, Denmark, Holland, Australia & ... Canada are bombing Isis in Syria & Isis in Iraq, partly on behalf of the Iraqi government (for which read Shia militias) but absolutely not on behalf of the Syrian government.
The Jordanians & Saudis & Bahrainis are also bombing Isis in Syria & Iraq because they don’t like them, but the Jordanians are bombing Isis even more than the Saudis after their pilot-prisoner was burned to death in a cage. The Egyptians are bombing parts of Libya because a group of Christian Egyptians had their heads chopped off by what might – notionally – be the same so-called Islamic State, as Isis refers to itself. The Iranians have acknowledged bombing Isis in Iraq – of which the Americans (but not the Iraqi government) take a rather dim view. And of course the Israelis have several times bombed Syrian government forces in Syria but not Isis (an interesting choice, we’d all agree).
It amazes me that all these warriors of the air don’t regularly crash into each other as they go on bombing & bombing. ...
The sectarian & theological nature of this war seems perfectly clear to all who live in the Middle East – albeit not to our American chums. The Sunni Saudis are bombing the Shia Yemenis & the Shia Iranians are bombing the Sunni Iraqis. The Sunni Egyptians are bombing Sunni Libyans ... & the Jordanian Sunnis are bombing Iraqi Sunnis. But the Shia-supported Syrian government forces are bombing their Sunni Syrian enemies & the Lebanese Hezbollah – Shia to a man – are fighting the Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s Sunni enemies, along with Iranian Revolutionary Guards & an ever-larger number of Afghan Shia men in Syrian uniforms.
...
And then, of course, there are the really big winners in all this blood, the weapons manufacturers. Raytheon & Lockheed Martin supplied £1.3bn of missiles to the Saudis only last year. But 3 years ago, Der Spiegel claimed the European Union was Saudi Arabia’s most important arms supplier & last week France announced the sale of 24 Rafale fighter jets to Qatar at a cost of around £5.7bn. Egypt has just bought another 24 Rafales.
It’s worth remembering at this point that the Congressional Research Services in the US estimate that most of Isis’s budget comes from “private donors” in ... Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the UAE & Kuwait.
But blow me down if the Yanks are back to boasting. More than a decade after “Mission Accomplished”, General Paul Funk (in charge of reforming the Iraqi army) has told us that “the enemy is on its knees”. Another general close to Barack Obama says that half of the senior commanders in Isis have been liquidated. Nonsense. But it’s worth knowing just how General Pierre de Villiers, chief of the French defence staff, summed up his recent visits to Baghdad & Iraqi Kurdistan. Iraq, he reported back to Paris, is in a state of “total decay”. The French word he used was “decomposition”. I suspect that applies to most of the Middle East.
What's the point of praying taraweehs all Ramadan or reciting Quran with a very beautiful voice (because, that's very much mandatory ... sarcasm)?
What happened to the sanctity of a Muslim's blood?
How low is the value of blood of a Muslim?
But, hey, we, Muslims, gotta ask Snapchat to show the world how peaceful we Muslims are, by showing Mecca live all around the world, even though, the country where Mecca is located (Kingdom of Saudi Arabia) is indiscriminately spilling the blood of innocent Yemeni Muslims (just because, those Muslims are Shia).
And as this piece points out, who is rolling in the cash with all these indiscriminate bombings: the true "Lords of War"; weapons-manufacturers & defense companies. Companies, like Lockheed Martin, BAE, Raytheon etc. And, we, Muslims, are letting them do that to us.
I don't know what to cry about anymore: the state of Muslims' physical situation or how the West has made us Muslims blind to the fact that how we are completely willing to follow where & how the West leads us.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Saudis are bombing Yemen because they fear the Shia Houthis are working for the Iranians. The Saudis are also bombing Isis in Iraq & the Isis in Syria. So are the United Arab Emirates. The Syrian government is bombing its enemies in Syria & the Iraqi government is also bombing its enemies in Iraq. America, France, Britain, Denmark, Holland, Australia & ... Canada are bombing Isis in Syria & Isis in Iraq, partly on behalf of the Iraqi government (for which read Shia militias) but absolutely not on behalf of the Syrian government.
The Jordanians & Saudis & Bahrainis are also bombing Isis in Syria & Iraq because they don’t like them, but the Jordanians are bombing Isis even more than the Saudis after their pilot-prisoner was burned to death in a cage. The Egyptians are bombing parts of Libya because a group of Christian Egyptians had their heads chopped off by what might – notionally – be the same so-called Islamic State, as Isis refers to itself. The Iranians have acknowledged bombing Isis in Iraq – of which the Americans (but not the Iraqi government) take a rather dim view. And of course the Israelis have several times bombed Syrian government forces in Syria but not Isis (an interesting choice, we’d all agree).
It amazes me that all these warriors of the air don’t regularly crash into each other as they go on bombing & bombing. ...
The sectarian & theological nature of this war seems perfectly clear to all who live in the Middle East – albeit not to our American chums. The Sunni Saudis are bombing the Shia Yemenis & the Shia Iranians are bombing the Sunni Iraqis. The Sunni Egyptians are bombing Sunni Libyans ... & the Jordanian Sunnis are bombing Iraqi Sunnis. But the Shia-supported Syrian government forces are bombing their Sunni Syrian enemies & the Lebanese Hezbollah – Shia to a man – are fighting the Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s Sunni enemies, along with Iranian Revolutionary Guards & an ever-larger number of Afghan Shia men in Syrian uniforms.
...
And then, of course, there are the really big winners in all this blood, the weapons manufacturers. Raytheon & Lockheed Martin supplied £1.3bn of missiles to the Saudis only last year. But 3 years ago, Der Spiegel claimed the European Union was Saudi Arabia’s most important arms supplier & last week France announced the sale of 24 Rafale fighter jets to Qatar at a cost of around £5.7bn. Egypt has just bought another 24 Rafales.
It’s worth remembering at this point that the Congressional Research Services in the US estimate that most of Isis’s budget comes from “private donors” in ... Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the UAE & Kuwait.
But blow me down if the Yanks are back to boasting. More than a decade after “Mission Accomplished”, General Paul Funk (in charge of reforming the Iraqi army) has told us that “the enemy is on its knees”. Another general close to Barack Obama says that half of the senior commanders in Isis have been liquidated. Nonsense. But it’s worth knowing just how General Pierre de Villiers, chief of the French defence staff, summed up his recent visits to Baghdad & Iraqi Kurdistan. Iraq, he reported back to Paris, is in a state of “total decay”. The French word he used was “decomposition”. I suspect that applies to most of the Middle East.
Thursday, July 23, 2015
'Islam at war' vs 'War within Islam'
A great opinion piece.
Everyone in the West, from the TV pundits, liberals or neo-conservatives, to the general masses, always have the same comments, "Muslims are not doing enough against extremism in the Middle East."
As the piece correctly points out that Muslims in the Middle East can't even protest for their basic rights to, for instance, jobs, & the people in the West are asking them to protest against ISIS & Al Qaeda. After all, being a moron has no limits.
On top of that, as the piece correctly points out, if Muslims are being asked to speak out against extremism in Islam, then why aren't Christians, Jews, agnostics, & atheists are being asked to protest against Zionism & Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands. Many people consider Israel as an occupier but can't say a damn word against it. Heck, in many Western countries, saying anything against Israeli occupation is labelled as, "anti-Semitism," & it's illegal to be an anti-Semitic in North America (but it's ok to be a racist).
As I have blogged previously that if the world wants peace anywhere, & especially in the Middle East, the Western powers should stop interfering in internal matters of those countries. Muslims in those countries can, & would love to protest, but thanks to the armament supply from UK, US, China, Russia, Israel, Sweden, Germany, France etc. that the citizens & residents of those Middle Eastern countries are forcibly sent home or to prisons.
If the Western developed countries stop supporting the Middle Eastern countries or Central American countries or South American countries or SouthEast Asian countries or African countries today, by stopping their weapons sales, political analysts & envoys, & of course, spies from ever entering into these developing countries, & let these developing countries develop & learn by themselves, then we will have peace in this world at that moment.
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Not a day passes without certain pundits sharing their newfound "insights" about Islam; "Islam at war", "Islam's war within", or "Islam's inherent violence", etc.
These headlines & their derivatives are neither new nor original, & despite being repeated countless times in the West, they remain fashionable. Partly because of what they say about the continued escalation in violence in the region, but more importantly for what they say about their manufacturers.
These can be divided into 2 opposing camps, but they have more in common than meets the eye.
The first camp claims "Islam is at war" & demands that the West respond with more of the same, war. It advocates deliberate, sustained & wide ranging use of force against Islamic radicals & their sponsors anywhere they might be.
Its proponents criticise the Obama administration's strategic restraint & condemn its withdrawal from Iraq & its retreat or redeployment in the rest of the region.
'ISIL is not Islamic'
They also question US President Barack Obama's judgement that ISIL "is not Islamic" & ridicule his administration's claim that the terrorists are the "enemies of Islam".
In their mind, Islamism is an ideology that preaches extremism & terrorism & must be confronted & eradicated by force. Some go as far as to claim that Islam as a religion spouts hate & breeds violence & therefore must be radically reformed and/or confronted head on.
The most vocal among these are the ultra Zionists & neo-conservatives. They reckon "cowardice & multiculturalism" is partially to blame for the leadership failure to confront Islam, & warn against the dangers of abandoning "moderate" allies & emboldening the Islamic radicals throughout the world.
They insist the West must emulate Israel's aggressive tactics & war strategies throughout the globe.
The liberal or realist camp argues that Islam is waging a war with itself, which the West cannot hope to win & therefore shouldn't get involved in, except when US national security is directly threatened.
When it comes to Islamism, its advocates reckon military force is not sufficient or adequate to fight an ideology; & that only Muslims can, & should, engage in their own battles militarily & otherwise. The West can only help them fight.
In the words of Washington Post columnist Jim Hoagland, the realists are right about this: The US & its NATO partners cannot "win" the war inside Islam.
This is ever more so when it comes to the cross-regional sectarian conflict between Shia Muslims & Sunnis. Whether Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, etc, the liberals warn it's short-sighted as it's dangerous to interfere militarily in what essentially is a civil war within Islam.
They argue the West must draw the right conclusions from its failures over the past dozen years & avoid overextending its military footprint in the greater Middle East region.
Where are the Muslims?
Liberals & especially liberal Zionists, who oppose direct interference, have criticised Muslims for shying away from getting directly involved against religious extremists.
"There is a cancer of extremism within Islam today," wrote Fareed Zakaria. "A small minority of Muslims celebrates violence & intolerance & harbours deeply reactionary attitudes towards women & minorities. While some confront these extremists, not enough do so, & the protests are not loud enough."
"Islam is in crisis, a religion at war with itself," argued Roger Cohen & added: "The West is a spectator to this internal conflict & a victim of it. Up to now, the reaction of Muslims to the horrors committed in the name of an ideology of hate & death drawn from a certain reading of Islamic texts has been pitiful."
His colleague, Thomas Friedman went further. Muslims need to organise "a million-person march against the jihadists across the Arab-Muslim world, organised by Arabs & Muslims for Arabs & Muslims, without anyone in the West asking for it".
I don't know where these Western liberals (who don't speak any of the regional languages) get the idea that Muslims do not speak out against extremists. If anything, Muslims are the harshest enemies, bravest fighters & worst victims of extremism.
Are they at least aware that Muslims cannot demonstrate in much of the Arab World?
On the other hand, if it's so easy to demonstrate in New York & Los Angeles, why aren't they calling on the Jewish majorities to demonstrate against Zionism & in favour of peace & a two-state solution.
That's not to say there are no radicals, extremists & fundamentalists like ISIL & al-Qaeda, but the real major problems facing the Arab today goes beyond religious texts.
Frustrating frustration
There's something terribly annoying about the repetitiveness & recklessness of those who invoke Islam with each & every issue confronting the greater Middle East region. Even more irritating is their attempt to repackage their arguments in an aura of originality.
But while doing my research, I drew solace from the fact that I am not alone in my frustration. As Rami Khouri put it: "We suffer enough stress & danger in the Arab region from political violence, ageing tyrants, foreign invasions, local criminal & militia groups, colonial settler expansions, & frayed, haemorrhaging socioeconomic systems that we do not need this added intellectual bludgeoning by the international battalions of perplexity & confusion who find comfort in old-fashioned wholesale racism & reductionism ['Islam is this, Islam is that'] that explains nothing other than their own bewilderment."
I wonder whether it's bewilderment or opportunism.
Remember, the Friedmans & the Zakarias of Western punditry, who supported the 2003 invasion of Iraq among other post 9/11 military adventures, are scapegoating Muslims for theirs & their government's follies.
They deflect Western geopolitical failures on Islam; failures & blunders that culminated in evermore antagonisms & divisions.
And they complain about how Muslims don't speak loud enough against the extremists, when Muslims are the foremost victims of extremism.
It's the context, dummy
It's rather cruel to ask Muslims to demonstrate against the recent killings in Paris, for example, when they can't even demonstrate against the mass murder in their own homelands. They can't even demonstrate for jobs & justice.
Moreover, why are Muslims asked to demonstrate against religious extremism while Christians, Jews, agnostics, atheists, & Muslims are not asked to demonstrate against Israeli occupation or speak against Western wars & global injustice?
There's no doubt that unlike the neo-conservatives, liberals' approach to the Muslim world tends to be more rational, less militarist & less racist, albeit with hypocritical twist of self-endowed surplus morality.
However, both camps look at the region through imperial lenses. Both evade responsibility for their role in the terrible state of affairs in the greater Middle East.
But after decades of colonial invasions, interventions, & occupations, neither camp should be surprised that Muslims have a long memory & deep distrust of Western motives when it comes to provoking war or invoking Islam.
Marwan Bishara is the senior political analyst at Al Jazeera.
Everyone in the West, from the TV pundits, liberals or neo-conservatives, to the general masses, always have the same comments, "Muslims are not doing enough against extremism in the Middle East."
As the piece correctly points out that Muslims in the Middle East can't even protest for their basic rights to, for instance, jobs, & the people in the West are asking them to protest against ISIS & Al Qaeda. After all, being a moron has no limits.
On top of that, as the piece correctly points out, if Muslims are being asked to speak out against extremism in Islam, then why aren't Christians, Jews, agnostics, & atheists are being asked to protest against Zionism & Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands. Many people consider Israel as an occupier but can't say a damn word against it. Heck, in many Western countries, saying anything against Israeli occupation is labelled as, "anti-Semitism," & it's illegal to be an anti-Semitic in North America (but it's ok to be a racist).
As I have blogged previously that if the world wants peace anywhere, & especially in the Middle East, the Western powers should stop interfering in internal matters of those countries. Muslims in those countries can, & would love to protest, but thanks to the armament supply from UK, US, China, Russia, Israel, Sweden, Germany, France etc. that the citizens & residents of those Middle Eastern countries are forcibly sent home or to prisons.
If the Western developed countries stop supporting the Middle Eastern countries or Central American countries or South American countries or SouthEast Asian countries or African countries today, by stopping their weapons sales, political analysts & envoys, & of course, spies from ever entering into these developing countries, & let these developing countries develop & learn by themselves, then we will have peace in this world at that moment.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Not a day passes without certain pundits sharing their newfound "insights" about Islam; "Islam at war", "Islam's war within", or "Islam's inherent violence", etc.
These headlines & their derivatives are neither new nor original, & despite being repeated countless times in the West, they remain fashionable. Partly because of what they say about the continued escalation in violence in the region, but more importantly for what they say about their manufacturers.
These can be divided into 2 opposing camps, but they have more in common than meets the eye.
The first camp claims "Islam is at war" & demands that the West respond with more of the same, war. It advocates deliberate, sustained & wide ranging use of force against Islamic radicals & their sponsors anywhere they might be.
Its proponents criticise the Obama administration's strategic restraint & condemn its withdrawal from Iraq & its retreat or redeployment in the rest of the region.
'ISIL is not Islamic'
They also question US President Barack Obama's judgement that ISIL "is not Islamic" & ridicule his administration's claim that the terrorists are the "enemies of Islam".
In their mind, Islamism is an ideology that preaches extremism & terrorism & must be confronted & eradicated by force. Some go as far as to claim that Islam as a religion spouts hate & breeds violence & therefore must be radically reformed and/or confronted head on.
The most vocal among these are the ultra Zionists & neo-conservatives. They reckon "cowardice & multiculturalism" is partially to blame for the leadership failure to confront Islam, & warn against the dangers of abandoning "moderate" allies & emboldening the Islamic radicals throughout the world.
They insist the West must emulate Israel's aggressive tactics & war strategies throughout the globe.
The liberal or realist camp argues that Islam is waging a war with itself, which the West cannot hope to win & therefore shouldn't get involved in, except when US national security is directly threatened.
When it comes to Islamism, its advocates reckon military force is not sufficient or adequate to fight an ideology; & that only Muslims can, & should, engage in their own battles militarily & otherwise. The West can only help them fight.
In the words of Washington Post columnist Jim Hoagland, the realists are right about this: The US & its NATO partners cannot "win" the war inside Islam.
This is ever more so when it comes to the cross-regional sectarian conflict between Shia Muslims & Sunnis. Whether Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, etc, the liberals warn it's short-sighted as it's dangerous to interfere militarily in what essentially is a civil war within Islam.
They argue the West must draw the right conclusions from its failures over the past dozen years & avoid overextending its military footprint in the greater Middle East region.
Where are the Muslims?
Liberals & especially liberal Zionists, who oppose direct interference, have criticised Muslims for shying away from getting directly involved against religious extremists.
"There is a cancer of extremism within Islam today," wrote Fareed Zakaria. "A small minority of Muslims celebrates violence & intolerance & harbours deeply reactionary attitudes towards women & minorities. While some confront these extremists, not enough do so, & the protests are not loud enough."
"Islam is in crisis, a religion at war with itself," argued Roger Cohen & added: "The West is a spectator to this internal conflict & a victim of it. Up to now, the reaction of Muslims to the horrors committed in the name of an ideology of hate & death drawn from a certain reading of Islamic texts has been pitiful."
His colleague, Thomas Friedman went further. Muslims need to organise "a million-person march against the jihadists across the Arab-Muslim world, organised by Arabs & Muslims for Arabs & Muslims, without anyone in the West asking for it".
I don't know where these Western liberals (who don't speak any of the regional languages) get the idea that Muslims do not speak out against extremists. If anything, Muslims are the harshest enemies, bravest fighters & worst victims of extremism.
Are they at least aware that Muslims cannot demonstrate in much of the Arab World?
On the other hand, if it's so easy to demonstrate in New York & Los Angeles, why aren't they calling on the Jewish majorities to demonstrate against Zionism & in favour of peace & a two-state solution.
That's not to say there are no radicals, extremists & fundamentalists like ISIL & al-Qaeda, but the real major problems facing the Arab today goes beyond religious texts.
Frustrating frustration
There's something terribly annoying about the repetitiveness & recklessness of those who invoke Islam with each & every issue confronting the greater Middle East region. Even more irritating is their attempt to repackage their arguments in an aura of originality.
But while doing my research, I drew solace from the fact that I am not alone in my frustration. As Rami Khouri put it: "We suffer enough stress & danger in the Arab region from political violence, ageing tyrants, foreign invasions, local criminal & militia groups, colonial settler expansions, & frayed, haemorrhaging socioeconomic systems that we do not need this added intellectual bludgeoning by the international battalions of perplexity & confusion who find comfort in old-fashioned wholesale racism & reductionism ['Islam is this, Islam is that'] that explains nothing other than their own bewilderment."
I wonder whether it's bewilderment or opportunism.
Remember, the Friedmans & the Zakarias of Western punditry, who supported the 2003 invasion of Iraq among other post 9/11 military adventures, are scapegoating Muslims for theirs & their government's follies.
They deflect Western geopolitical failures on Islam; failures & blunders that culminated in evermore antagonisms & divisions.
And they complain about how Muslims don't speak loud enough against the extremists, when Muslims are the foremost victims of extremism.
It's the context, dummy
It's rather cruel to ask Muslims to demonstrate against the recent killings in Paris, for example, when they can't even demonstrate against the mass murder in their own homelands. They can't even demonstrate for jobs & justice.
Moreover, why are Muslims asked to demonstrate against religious extremism while Christians, Jews, agnostics, atheists, & Muslims are not asked to demonstrate against Israeli occupation or speak against Western wars & global injustice?
There's no doubt that unlike the neo-conservatives, liberals' approach to the Muslim world tends to be more rational, less militarist & less racist, albeit with hypocritical twist of self-endowed surplus morality.
However, both camps look at the region through imperial lenses. Both evade responsibility for their role in the terrible state of affairs in the greater Middle East.
But after decades of colonial invasions, interventions, & occupations, neither camp should be surprised that Muslims have a long memory & deep distrust of Western motives when it comes to provoking war or invoking Islam.
Marwan Bishara is the senior political analyst at Al Jazeera.
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