Why #SaudiArabia and #Russia Cannot Be Partners!

Why Saudi Arabia and Russia Cannot Be Partners ~ Petr Lvov, NEW EASTERN OUTLOOK, 05.11.2015.

 

One cannot help but notice the intensification of diplomatic contacts at the highest levels between Russia and Saudi Arabia. Deputy Crown Prince, Minister of Defense and the son of the king, Prince Mohammed bin Salman has recently visited Russia twice to meet with Russia’s President Vladimir Putin. There were also several phone discussions between the Russian leader and King Salman, primarily about the situation in Syria and Yemen. The Russian Foreign Minister carried out a number of discussions with his Saudi counterpart, meeting him last time in Vienna during talks about the Syrian conflict. Moreover, Riyadh has promised to invest 10 billion dollars in Russia’s economy, along with buying Russia’s military equipment and developing extensive cooperation in the fields of peaceful nuclear energy and space exploration.

There’s been a lot of speculations about the rapid rapprochement of the two countries and the alleged willingness of Moscow to abandon its partnership with Iran and along with the support it has been providing to Bashar al-Assad in exchange for Saudi petrodollars. However, such “analytical reports” are largely incorrect or exaggerated. To see this, one must take into account a number of key factors that determine the character of bilateral relations between Russia and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA).

The meeting of Saudi Prince Mohammed with Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, held in October of this year in Sochi, has put on display Riyadh’s concern over Tehran’s growing influence in the Middle East and the development of a Russian-Iranian strategic partnership in the region, particularly in Syria and Iraq . It is also clear that the Saudi ruling elites are irritated with Washington’s reluctance to play a more active role in the Middle East. But this does not mean that the KSA is prepared to change its allegiances, by aligning with Moscow instead of Washington. Although, of course, the Al-Saud family understands that Russia, along with Iran, Syria, Iraq, and the Lebanese “Hezbollah”, are pushing the US out of the region, while gaining more and more influence over the development of the situation in the Middle East. In these circumstances, Saudi Arabia can no longer ignore the growing influence of Russia, especially in light of Moscow’s ties with Tehran, its primal military and political ally in the region. But Saudi Arabia has been trying to prevent the Russian Federation from destroying the so-called “Islamic State” (ISIL), Jabhat al-Nusra, Ahrar al-Sham and Jaysh al-Islam far too proactively to simply accept some positive signals from Russia’s leadership.

The support that the Wahhabi kingdom has been providing to the above mentioned groups puts it in a tight corner. The leading elites of Saudi Arabia are nowhere near a political consensus on the key foreign policy issues. Some advocate the continuation of the hard-line approach towards Russia, while with others, there’s a comprehensive bilateral dialogue they see is needed to get positive results. It should be noted that the religious factor is playing an enormous role in Saudi policies. A month ago the Wahhabi religious authorities of the country have signed a call for jihad against Russia because of its intervention in Syria. The document has no official status, but it enjoys broad support in Saudi Arabia. This can be easily explained by the fact that regular Saudi citizens do not know a lot about Russia and their attitude towards Moscow is shaped by old stereotypes about the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan. The Saudi elites surely still remember that back in 1985, Riyadh did everything it possibly could to accelerate the destruction of the Soviet economy by provoking a sharp decline in oil prices. To some extent, one can argue that the results of these actions provoked the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Therefore, only the naive optimists and greedy “generals” of the Russian economy will overstate the significance of Saudi promises, since the KSA has allegedly been ready to invest 10 billion dollars in the Russian economy, along with buying weapons on hundreds of million dollars, for a while now. Yet, Russian weapons are incompatible with the US weapon systems dominating Saudi Arabia’s arsenals. Lucrative contracts that are being presented to Moscow are nothing more than a mere ploy for bargaining that lies in the heart of Saudi aspirations. It’s not hard to recall previous instances when Riyadh tried to deceive Russia into surrendering it’s positions. Back in 2008, Saudi Arabia promised Moscow that it would sign a handful of contracts regarding the purchases of tanks, helicopters and mobile anti-air (AA) missile systems (S-400s) if Russia reduced its military cooperation with Iran along with supporting new sanctions against Tehran. Moscow grabbed the bait… and received nothing. Over the period of 2013-2014. Prince Bandar, the head of Saudi intelligence services at the time, made several visits to Russia, promising Vladimir Putin multi-billion dollar deals on the purchase of Russian weapons in exchange for abandoning Damascus. But this time Russia was wise enough not to believe him. Riyadh also regularly  tries to manipulate Russia by discussing oil prices even though it was Saudi Arabia itself that intentionally brought down oil prices back in 2014, dealing a serious blow to Russia’s economy.

Saudi Arabia’s aggressive actions in the Middle East and its oil pricing policy damaging Russia’s economy leads to outright skepticism and distrust in Russia’s position towards Saudi Arabia. The Kremlin has understood that in the eyes of the Al-Saud family, Russia is just a player in the regional political games that has to be dealt with in one way or another. Saudi Arabia initiates negotiations on deliveries of Russian weapons only in specific cases:

• when the kingdom is unable to push the United States around with its energy policy;
• when the kingdom wants to spoil relations between Moscow and Tehran;
• when the kingdom wants to apply pressure on Israel and;
• when the kingdom notices that its relations with the US are rapidly deteriorating.

But time and time again these talks lead to nothing, because the Saudis have never been serious about Russian weapons in the first place. But at the same time Riyadh wants Washington to take into account the problems Saudi Arabia and its Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) allies face. After all, Riyadh is convinced that America depends on the internal stability of the kingdom.

One must always remember that the Saudi-American partnership has lasted for over 70 years. And despite all the ongoing diplomatic maneuvers of Riyadh, including flirting with Russia, the US and Saudi Arabia are tied by a close military and political alliance, while the political goals of the latter largely remain unchanged. Moscow will never be able to replace Washington, and, frankly speaking, it’s not going to. Moscow needs negotiations with Riyadh mainly for the acquisition of additional leverage in the Middle East. And they produce results. Only Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey have not given up on the goal of overthrowing Bashar al-Assad. And this goal completely contradicts the interests of Russia, because only the sitting government in Damascus is able to ensure the preservation of Moscow’s position in the Middle East. Apparently, Riyadh had already forgotten that is has provoked the war in Syria, given rise to ISIL, and encouraged and directly financed a wave of “color revolutions” across the Arab World.

It is clear that the KSA would like to see a new Russian policy in the Middle East. But they want this policy to be shaped on their own terms, without taking into account the national interests of Russia and its allies in the region. Therefore, at this stage, Russia’s bilateral relations with Iran will clearly stand in the way of the development of relations between Moscow and Riyadh.

If Saudi Arabia does sincerely want to have Moscow as a full partner, it must abandon its arrogant approach towards it, while taking into account that this strengthening world power has its own interests in the region, which are to be respected. As the events of recent months have shown, not a single regional problem, whether it is Syria, Iraq, the fight against ISIL or Yemen, can be solved without Russia. And the US will be of no help, especially at the start of the presidential race in Washington. Otherwise, Riyadh is seriously risking a taste of it own medicine, namely the “Arab Spring” phenomenon reaching the rotten structure of its own Saudi society.

Peter Lvov, Ph.D in political science, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

---

 

#BentBritain: #UK admits unlawfully monitoring legally privileged communications!

UK admits unlawfully monitoring legally privileged communications ~ Alan Travis and Owen Bowcott, The Guardian, Wednesday 18 February 2015.

Intelligence agencies have been monitoring conversations between lawyers and their clients for past five years, government admits

The admission comes ahead of a legal challenge brought on behalf of two Libyans, Abdel-Hakim Belhaj and Sami al-Saadi, over allegations that security services unlawfully intercepted their communications with lawyers.  Photograph: PA & AFP

The regime under which UK intelligence agencies, including MI5 and MI6, have been monitoring conversations between lawyers and their clients for the past five years is unlawful, the British government has admitted.

The admission that the activities of the security services have failed to comply fully with human rights laws in a second major area – this time highly sensitive legally privileged communications – is a severe embarrassment for the government.

It follows hard on the heels of the British court ruling on 6 February declaring that the regime surrounding the sharing of mass personal intelligence data between America’s national security agency and Britain’s GCHQ was unlawful for seven years.

UK-US surveillance regime was unlawful ‘for seven years’

The admission that the regime surrounding state snooping on legally privileged communications has also failed to comply with the European convention on human rights comes in advance of a legal challenge, to be heard early next month, in which the security services are alleged to have unlawfully intercepted conversations between lawyers and their clients to provide the government with an advantage in court.

The case is due to be heard before the Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT). It is being brought by lawyers on behalf of two Libyans, Abdel-Hakim Belhaj and Sami al-Saadi, who, along with their families, were abducted in a joint MI6-CIA operation and sent back to Tripoli to be tortured by Muammar Gaddafi’s regime in 2004.

A government spokesman said: “The concession the government has made today relates to the agencies’ policies and procedures governing the handling of legally privileged communications and whether they are compatible with the European convention on human rights.

“In view of recent IPT judgments, we acknowledge that the policies adopted since [January] 2010 have not fully met the requirements of the ECHR, specifically article 8 (right to privacy). This includes a requirement that safeguards are made sufficiently public.

“It does not mean that there was any deliberate wrongdoing on their part of the security and intelligence agencies, which have always taken their obligations to protect legally privileged material extremely seriously. Nor does it mean that any of the agencies’ activities have prejudiced or in any way resulted in an abuse of process in any civil or criminal proceedings.”

He said that the intelligence agencies would now work with the interception of communications commissioner to ensure their policies satisfy all of the UK’s human rights obligations.

Cori Crider, a director at Reprieve and one of the Belhaj family’s lawyers said: “By allowing the intelligence agencies free reign to spy on communications between lawyers and their clients, the government has endangered the fundamental British right to a fair trial.

“Reprieve has been warning for months that the security services’ policies on lawyer-client snooping have been shot through with loopholes big enough to drive a bus through.

“For too long, the security services have been allowed to snoop on those bringing cases against them when they speak to their lawyers. In doing so, they have violated a right that is centuries old in British common law. Today they have finally admitted they have been acting unlawfully for years.

“Worryingly, it looks very much like they have collected the private lawyer-client communications of two victims of rendition and torture, and possibly misused them. While the government says there was no ‘deliberate’ collection of material, it’s abundantly clear that private material was collected and may well have been passed on to lawyers or ministers involved in the civil case brought by Abdel hakim Belhaj and Fatima Boudchar, who were ‘rendered’ to Libya in 2004 by British intelligence.

“Only time will tell how badly their case was tainted. But right now, the government needs urgently to investigate how things went wrong and come clean about what it is doing to repair the damage.”

Government sources, in line with all such cases, refuse to confirm or deny whether the two Libyans were the subject of an interception operation. They insist the concession does not concern the allegation that actual interception took place and say it will be for the investigatory powers tribunal hearing to determine the issue.

An updated draft interception code of practice spelling out the the rules for the first time was quietly published at the same time as the Investigatory Powers Tribunal ruling against GCHQ earlier this month in the case brought by Privacy International and Liberty.

The government spokesman said the draft code set out enhanced safeguards and provided more detail than previously on the protections that had to be applied in the security agencies handling of legally privileged communications.

The draft code makes clear that warrants for snooping on legally privileged conversations, emails and other communications between suspects and their lawyers can be granted if there are exceptional and compelling circumstances. They have to however ensure that they are not available to lawyers or policy officials who are conducting legal cases against those suspects.

Exchanges between lawyers and their clients enjoy a special protected status under UK law. Following exposure of widespread monitoring by the US whistleblower Edward Snowden in 2013, Belhaj’s lawyers feared that their exchanges with their clients could have been compromised by GCHQ’s interception of phone conversations and emails.

To demonstrate that its policies satisfy legal safeguards, MI6 were required in advance of Wednesday’s concession to disclose internal guidance on how intelligence staff should deal with material protected by legal professional privilege.

The MI6 papers noted: “Undertaking interception in such circumstances would be extremely rare and would require strong justification and robust safeguards. It is essential that such intercepted material is not acquired or used for the purpose of conferring an unfair or improper advantage on SIS or HMG [Her Majesty’s government] in any such litigation, legal proceedings or criminal investigation.”

The internal documents also refer to a visit by the interception commissioner, Sir Anthony May, last summer to examine interception warrants, where it was discovered that regulations were not being observed. “In relation to one of the warrants,” the document explained, “the commissioner identified a number of concerns with regard to the handling of [legal professional privilege] material”.

Amnesty UK’s legal programme director, Rachel Logan, said: “We are talking about nothing less than the violation of a fundamental principle of the rule of law – that communications between a lawyer and their client must be confidential.

“The government has been caught red-handed. The security agencies have been illegally intercepting privileged material and are continuing to do so – this could mean they’ve been spying on the very people challenging them in court.

“This is the second time in as many weeks that government spies have been rumbled breaking the law.”

---

#Obama’s ‘Crusaders’ analogy veils the #West’s modern crimes!

Obama’s ‘Crusaders’ analogy veils the West’s modern crimes ~ Ben White, The Nation, February 14, 2015.

Like many children, 13-year-old Mohammed Tuaiman suffered from nightmares. In his dreams, he would see flying “death machines” that turned family and friends into burning charcoal. No one could stop them, and they struck any place, at any time.

Unlike most children, Mohammed’s nightmares killed him.

Three weeks ago, a CIA drone operating over Yemen fired a missile at a car carrying the teenager, and two others. They were all incinerated. Nor was Mohammed the first in his family to be targeted: drones had already killed his father and brother.

Since president Barack Obama took office in 2009, the US has killed at least 2,464 people through drone strikes outside the country’s declared war zones. The figure is courtesy of The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, which says that at least 314 of the dead, one in seven, were civilians.

Recall that for Obama, as The New York Times reported in May 2012, “all military-age males in a strike zone” are counted “as combatants” – unless “there is explicit intelligence posthumously proving them innocent”.

It sounds like the stuff of nightmares.

The week after Mohammed’s death, on February 5, Mr Obama addressed the National Prayer Breakfast, and discussed the violence of ISIL.

“Lest we get on our high horses”, said the commander-in-chief, “remember that during the Crusades and the Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ.”

These comments prompted a (brief) media storm, with Mr Obama accused of insulting Christians, pandering to the terrorist enemy, or just bad history.

In fact, the president was simply repeating a point often made by liberals since September 11, namely, that all religions have blots on their copy book through the deeds of their followers.

One of the consequences, however, of this invocation of the Crusades – unintended, and all the more significant for it – is to seal away the West’s “sins”, particularly vis-à-vis its relationship to the Middle East, in events that took place a thousand years ago.

The Crusades were, in one sense, a demonstration of raw military power, and a collective trauma for the peoples of the regions they marched through and invaded.

In the siege of Jerusalem in 1099, a witness described how the Europeans ordered “all the Saracen dead to be cast outside because of the great stench, since the whole city was filled with their corpses”.

He added: “No one ever saw or heard of such slaughter of pagan people, for funeral pyres were formed from them like pyramids.”

Or take the Third Crusade, when, on August 20, 1191, England’s King Richard I oversaw the beheading of 3,000 Muslim prisoners at Acre in full view of Saladin’s army.

Just “ancient history”? In 1920, when the French had besieged and captured Damascus, their commander Henri Gourard reportedly went to the grave of Saladin, kicked it, and uttered: “Awake Saladin, we have returned! My presence here consecrates the victory of the Cross over the Crescent.”

But the US president need not cite the Crusades or even the colonial rule of the early 20th century: more relevant reference points would be Bagram and Fallujah.

Bagram base in Afghanistan is where US soldiers tortured prisoners to death – like 22-year-old taxi driver and farmer Dilawar. Before he was killed in custody, Dilawar was beaten by soldiers just to make him scream “Allah!”

Five months after September 11, The Guardian reported that US missiles had killed anywhere between 1,300 and 8,000 in Afghanistan. Months later, the paper suggested that “as many as 20,000 Afghans may have lost their lives as an indirect consequence of the US intervention”.

When it was Iraq’s turn, the people of Fallujah discovered that US forces gave them funerals, not democracy. On April 28, 2003, US soldiers massacred civilian protesters, shooting to death 17 during a demonstration.

When that city revolted against the occupation, the residents paid a price. As Marines tried to quell resistance in the city, wrote The New York Times on April 14, 2004, they had “orders to shoot any male of military age on the streets after dark, armed or not”.Months later, as the Marines launched their November assault on the city, CNN reported that “the sky…seems to explode”.

In their bombardment and invasion of Iraq in 2003, the US and UK armed forces rained fiery death down on men, women and children. Prisoners were tortured and sexually abused. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis died. No one was held to account.

It is one thing to apologise for the brutality of western Crusaders a thousand years ago. It is quite another to look at the corpses of the victims of the imperialist present, or hear the screams of the bereaved.

In his excellent book The Muslims Are Coming, Arun Kundnani analysed the “politics of anti-extremism”, and describes the two approaches developed by policymakers and analysts during the “war on terror”.

The first approach, which he refers to as “culturalism”, emphasises “what adherents regard as inherent features of Islamic culture”. The second approach, “reformism”, is when “extremism is viewed as a perversion of Islam’s message”, rather than “a clash of civilisations between the West’s modern values and Islam’s fanaticism”.

Thus the American Right was angry with Mr Obama, because for them, it is about religion – or specifically, Islam. Liberals, meanwhile, want to locate the problem in terms of culture.

Both want to avoid a discussion about imperialism, massacres, coups, brutalities, disappearances, dictatorships – in other words, politics.

As Kundnani writes: when “the concept of ideology” is made central, whether understood as “Islam itself or as Islamist extremism”, then “the role of western states in co-producing the terror war is obscured”.

The problem with Mr Obama’s comments on the Crusades was not, as hysterical conservatives claimed, that he was making offensive and inaccurate analogies with ISIL; rather, that in the comfort of condemning the past, he could mask the violence of his own government in the present.

The echoes of collective trauma remain for a long time, and especially when new wounds are still being inflicted. Think it is farfetched that Muslims would still care about a 1,000-year-old European invasion? Then try asking them about Guantanamo and Camp Bucca instead.

Ben White is a journalist and author of Israeli Apartheid

Pep Montserrat for The National

Inside #ISIS: Report of first Western journalist ever given access to the ‘Islamic State!’

Inside Isis: The first Western journalist ever given access to the ‘Islamic State’ has just returned – and this is what he discovered ~ ADAM WITHNALL, The Independent.

The first Western journalist in the world to be allowed extensive access to Isis territories in Syria and Iraq has returned from the region with a warning: the group is “much stronger and much more dangerous” than anyone in the West realises.

Jürgen Todenhöfer, 74, is a renowned German journalist and publicist who travelled through Turkey to Mosul, the largest city occupied by Isis, after months of negotiations with the group’s leaders.

He plans to publish a summary of his “10 days in the Islamic State” on Monday, but in interviews with German-language media outlets has revealed his first impressions of what life is like under Isis.

Speaking to the website Der tz, Todenhöfer revealed that he actually stayed in the same hotel in Benghazi as James Foley, the US journalist who was beheaded on camera by Isis in August.

“Of course, I’ve seen the terrible, brutal video and it was one of my main concerns during the negotiations as to how I can avoid [the same fate],” he said.

Timeline: The emergence of Isis

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

Once within Isis territory, Todenhöfer said his strongest impression was “that Isis is much stronger than we think here”. He said it now has “dimensions larger than the UK”, and is supported by “an almost ecstatic enthusiasm that I have never encountered in any other warzone”.

“Each day, hundreds of willing fighters arrive from all over the world,” he told tz. “For me it is incomprehensible.”

Todenhöfer claims to have been able to move among Isis fighters, observing their living conditions and equipment. On hisFacebook page, he has posted images which he said show German Heckler & Koch MG3 machine guns in the hands of Isis. “Someday this German MG could be directed to us,” he said.

Isis’s fighters themselves sleep, he said, in barracks formed from “the shells of bombed-out houses”. They number around 5,000 in Mosul, and are spread so widely that were the US to bomb them all “they would have to reduce the whole of Mosul to ruins”, he said.

Todenhöfer says that this ultimately means Isis cannot be beaten by Western intervention or air strikes – despite US claims last week that they have proven effective. “With every bomb that is dropped and hits a civilian, the number of terrorists increases,” he said.

Speaking in a TV interview with RTL’s Nachtjournal programme two days after his return to Germany last week, Todenhöfer said Isis has worked hard to establish itself as a functioning state. He said it has “social welfare”, a “school system”, and that he was even surprised to see it has plans to provide education to girls.

Most concerning of all, he said, was Isis fighters’ belief that “all religions who agree with democracy have to die”.

He said the view that kept being repeated was that Isis want to “conquer the world” and all who do not believe in the group’s interpretation of the Koran will be killed. The only other religions to be spared, Todenhöfer said, were the “people of the book” – Jews and Christians.

“This is the largest religious cleansing strategy that has ever been planned in human history”, he told RTL.

Todenhöfer plans to use his first-hand experience of Isis in a book he is writing about the group. He says on Facebook that he has always “spoken to both sides” in his 50 years reporting from war zones, including interviews with Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad and al-Qaeda, with Afghanistan’s President Hamid Karzai and with leaders of the Taliban.

In his view, Isis will soon come to the West to negotiate a level of co-existence. “The only ones who could stop this now are the moderate Iraqi Sunnis,” he said, adding: “If you want to defeat an opponent, you must know him.”

  

* Makes sense Jürgen Todenhöfer got access to ISIS. He has a history of connections with Sunni insurgents, even wrote a book about it!  

#CIA #Torture and the Myth of Never Again: The Persecution of John Kiriakou!

Torture and the Myth of Never Again: The Persecution of John Kiriakou ~ Peter Van Buren Thursday December 11, 2014, FIREDOGLAKE.

No one except John Kiriakou is being held accountable for America’s torture policy. And John Kiriakou didn’t torture anyone, he just blew the whistle on it.

In a Galaxy Far, Far Away

The United States sanctioned acts of torture by the Central Intelligence Agency and others. The acts took place in secret prisons (“black sites”) against persons detained indefinitely without trial. They were described in detail and explicitly authorized in a series of secret torture memosdrafted by John Yoo, Jay Bybee, and Steven Bradbury, senior lawyers in the DOJ’s Office of Legal Counsel. (Office of Legal Counsel attorneys technically answer directly to the DOJ, which is supposed to be independent from the White House, but obviously was not in this case.) Not one of those men, or their Justice Department bosses, has been held accountable for their actions.

Some tortured prisoners were killed by the CIA. Attorney General Eric Holder announced recently that no one would be held accountable for those murders either. “Based on the fully developed factual record concerning the two deaths,” he said, “the Department has declined prosecution because the admissible evidence would not be sufficient to obtain and sustain a conviction beyond a reasonable doubt.”

Jose Rodriguez, a senior CIA official, admitted destroying videotapes of potentially admissible evidence, showing the torture of captives by operatives of the U.S. government at a secret prison thought to be located at a Vietnam-War-era airbase in Thailand. He was not held accountable for deep-sixing this evidence, nor for his role in the torture of human beings.

John Kiriakou Alone

The one man in the whole archipelago of America’s secret horrors who went to jail is former CIA officer John Kiriakou. Of the untold numbers of men and women involved in the whole nightmare show of those years, only one.

And of course, he didn’t torture anyone.

The charges against Kiriakou alleged that in answering questions from reporters about suspicions that the CIA tortured detainees in its custody, he violated the Espionage Act, once an obscure World War I-era law that aimed at punishing Americans who gave aid to the enemy. It was passed in 1917 and has been the subject of much judicial and Congressional doubt ever since. Kiriakou is one of six government whistleblowers who have been charged under the Act by the Obama administration. From 1917 until Obama came into office, only three people had ever charged in this way.

The Obama Justice Department claimed the former CIA officer “disclosed classified information to journalists, including the name of a covert CIA officer and information revealing the role of another CIA employee in classified activities.”

The charges resulted from a CIA investigation. That investigation was triggered by a filing in January 2009 on behalf of detainees at Guantanamo that contained classified information the defense had not been given through government channels, and by the discovery in the spring of 2009 of photographs of alleged CIA employees among the legal materials of some detainees at Guantanamo. According to onedescription, Kiriakou gave several interviews about the CIA in 2008. Court documents charge that he provided names of covert Agency officials to a journalist, who allegedly in turn passed them on to a Guantanamo legal team. The team sought to have detainees identify specific CIA officials who participated in their renditions and torture. Kiriakou was accused of providing the identities of CIA officers that may have allowed names to be linked to photographs.

The real “offense” in the eyes of the Obama administration was quite different. In 2007, Kiriakou became a whistleblower. He went on record as the first (albeit by then, former) CIA official to confirm the use of waterboarding of al-Qaeda prisoners as an interrogation technique, and then to condemn it as torture. He specifically mentioned the waterboarding of Abu Zubaydah in that secret prison in Thailand. Kiriakou also ran afoul of the CIA over efforts to clear for publication a book he had written about the Agency’s counterterrorism work.

If Kiriakou had actually tortured someone himself, even to death, there is no possibility that he would be in trouble. In the national security state that rules the roost in Washington, talking out of turn about a crime has become the only possible crime.

Facing decades away from his family and young children, Kiriakou agreed to a plea bargain and is still in prison serving a 30-month sentence.

Never Again

For years it was the policy of the United States of America to torture and abuse its enemies or, in some cases, simply suspected enemies. It has remained a U.S. policy, even under the Obama administration, to employ “extraordinary rendition” — that is, the sending of captured terror suspects to the jails of countries that are known for torture and abuse, an outsourcing of what we no longer want to do.

Techniques that the U.S. hanged men for at Nuremburg and in post-war Japan were employed and declared lawful. To embark on such a program with the oversight of the Bush administration, learned men and women had to have long discussions, with staffers running in and out of rooms with snippets of research to buttress the justifications being so laboriously developed. The CIA undoubtedly used some cumbersome bureaucratic process to hire contractors for its torture staff. The old manuals needed to beupdated, psychiatrists consulted, military survival experts interviewed, training classes set up.

Videotapes were made of the torture sessions and no doubt DVDs full of real horror were reviewed back at headquarters.

Torture techniques were even reportedly demonstrated to top officials inside the White House. Individual torturers who were considered particularly effective were no doubt identified, probably rewarded, and sent on to new secret sites to harm more people.

America just didn’t wake up one day and start slapping around some Islamic punk. These were not the torture equivalents of rogue cops. A system, a mechanism, was created. That we now can only speculate about many of the details involved and the extent of all this is a tribute to the thousands who continue to remain silent about what they did, saw, heard about, or were associated with. Many of them work now at the same organizations, remaining a part of the same contracting firms, the CIA, and the military. Our torturers.

What is it that allows all those people to remain silent? How many are simply scared, watched what happening to John Kiriakou and thought: not me, I’m not sticking my neck out to see it get chopped off.They’re almost pathetically forgivable, even if they are placing their own self-interest above that of their country.

But what about the others, the ones who remain silent about what they did or saw or aided and abetted in some fashion because they still think it was the right thing to do? The ones who will do it again when another frightened president asks them to? Or even the ones who enjoyed doing it?

The same Department of Justice that hunted down the one man who spoke against torture from the inside still maintains a special unit, 60 years after the end of WWII, dedicated to hunting down the last few at-large Nazis. They do that under the rubric of “never again.” The truth is that same team needs to be turned loose on our national security state. Otherwise, until we have a full accounting of what was done in our names by our government, the pieces are all in place for it to happen again. There, if you want to know, is the real horror.

————————–

Peter Van Buren writes about current events at blog. His book,Ghosts of Tom Joad: A Story of the #99Percent, is available now from Amazon. 

Imprisoned Former #CIA Agent John #Kiriakou Speaks About #Torture, Prison, and the Future!

Imprisoned Former CIA Agent John Kiriakou Speaks About Torture, Prison, and the Future ~ Natalia Megas, Capital Comment, Washingtonian.

A jailhouse interview with the man whose disclosures prompted this week’s damning torture report.

John Kiriakou in the documentary Silenced. Photograph courtesy AFI Docs.

Do you think the Obama’s administration’s record is better than Bush’s?

Obama’s intelligence policy is essentially an extension of the Bush administration, but bloodier. Especially the use of drones … I’m disappointed because the administration has turned its back on human rights. Obama has surrounded himself with true hawks.

---

In 2007, 15-year CIA veteran John Kiriakou told an ABC News reporter that his agency had waterboarded an Al Qaeda detainee, Abu Zubaydah, whom Kiriakou was involved in capturing in 2002. His revelation confirmed to the American public the CIA’s torture program and helped spur a years-long Senate investigation and a damning, 6,000-page report, the abstract of which was released this week.

Kiriakou pleaded guilty in 2012 to disclosing classified information, including the name of a fellow CIA operative, to a New York Times reporter. In early 2013, he reported to the a federal prison in Loretto, Pennsylvania, to begin serving a 30-month sentence. Kiriakou, along with supporters that include his congressman, Virginia Democrat Jim Moran, says the real point of his prosecution was to silence him and others from talking about torture. (Kiriakou case is the subject of the documentary Silenced, which screened last summer at AFI Docs.)

Kiriakou will be transferred to home confinement for the final three months of his term in February. Earlier this month, as the Senate debated releasing its report, I went to Loretto to talk to Kiriakou about his experience in prison, his feelings about the government, and his future.

Jim Moran recently asked President Obama to pardon you, calling you an “American hero.”

Moran has gone out on a limb. He’s really done right by me. He has really been there through the whole nightmare.

What do you think was misunderstood about your case?

The most important issue is my case wasn’t about leaking [the name of a CIA operative]. It was about torture. CIA never forgave me for telling the American people that torture was part of official US government policy.

Do you think the Obama’s administration’s record is better than Bush’s?

Obama’s intelligence policy is essentially an extension of the Bush administration, but bloodier. Especially the use of drones … I’m disappointed because the administration has turned its back on human rights. Obama has surrounded himself with true hawks.

You’ve just finished writing a new book, Doing Time Like A Spy: How the CIA Taught Me to Survive and Thrive in Prison. Can you give us a sneak peek?

Admit nothing, deny everything, make counter accusations. If calm is not to your benefit, chaos is your friend. And don’t trust anyone.

How has that helped you survive prison?

I’ve “survived and thrived” here based on my wits, by forming strategic alliances, by relying on myself, by trusting nobody. They made me appear more “seasoned,” more commanding of respect.

What challenges do you face coming out?

The biggest challenge will be finding permanent work. I recognize I’m controversial. Some companies dislike controversy. I’ll have to find a place that will fit both of us.

What do you want to do?

I’d like to sit at a desk at a think tank, think the big thoughts and write provocative articles and books. I think I can do more good with writing and speaking. I hope to speak a lot about prison reform.

What kinds of changes do you envision?

Europe makes good use of house arrests [especially for non-violent crimes]. First-time, non-violent offenders get no second chances in the US. You do hard time from the first moment. Nothing’s correctional about it.

What are your living arrangements like?

We live in open cubicles—10-by-16 made for four. There are 250 people in my unit and we have ten sinks, 11 showers, six toilets, six telephones. We stand in line for everything. Everyone is sick all the time. Overcrowding leads to short tempers and increased violence. There’s no legal effort to depopulate federal prisons.

How do the other inmates treat you?

At first, they stayed away. Thought I was a hit man.

If a movie were made about you, what would it be about?

It would focus on the fact that I’m a regular guy doing decidedly irregular things, who found himself in historic situations. If it happened to me, it could happen to anybody.

How so?

Americans didn’t understand that after 9/11 the national security state would be permanent in our lives. Certainly, reasonable people can agree to disagree on the civil liberties that we should or should not give up to remain safe. But the government has imposed a regime where we’ve lost our liberties without debate, and we’re not supposed to complain about it. Indeed, you risk an Espionage Act charge if you do.

Natalia Megas is a freelance journalist who has written for numerous publications in the United States and abroad.

7 Most Shocking Things in the CIA Torture Report!

7 Most Shocking Things in the CIA Torture Report ~  Cliff Weathers, AlterNet.

The Senate Intelligence Committee report shows that the CIA acted improperly in the wake of 9/11.

December 9, 2014. The Senate Intelligence Committee’s $50 million investigation into Bush-era CIA interrogation tactics on detainees after the September 11 terrorist attacks was released today.

The report, which was long-delayed, finds that “enhanced interrogation techniques” by the U.S. government did not lead to “actionable intelligence,” according to Sen. Angus King, a member of the committee.

However, this is not the final report, but a redacted 480-page executive summary. The complete report totals more than 6,000 pages. The Senate Republicans also released a counter-assessment. While some critics say that there is the possibility of retaliation from terrorist groups, others are saying that the fallout over the report will be mostly political.

“Did we torture people? Yes. Did it work? No.,” Sen. King, the Maine independent told CNN.

“The greatness of this country is that we can examine mistakes and remedy them and that is the hallmark of a great and just society” Sen. Diane Feinstein, chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said to CNN moments before the report’s release. Here are the most shocking findings from the report:

1. Some detainees died as a result of interrogation. 

In November 2002, an otherwise healthy detainee who had been held partially nude and chained to a concrete floor died from suspected hypothermia at the facility. The CIA’s leadership acknowledged little knowledge of advanced interrogation techniques at the detention site where he was held.

2. The techniques were far more brutal than previously known. 

Multiple CIA detainees subjected to the techniques suffered from hallucinations, paranoia, insomnia and tried to mutilate themselves, the report says. On one occasion, a high-value al Qaeda suspect named Abu Zubaydah became completely unresponsive after a period of intense waterboarding. He had “bubbles rising through his open full mouth,” the report says.

Additionally, detainees were subjected to forced “rectal feeding” or “rectal hydration” even if they did not have medical need for them.

3. Other techniques used in addition to waterboarding. 

These interrogation practices included extended exposure to cold temperatures, slapping and sleep deprivation. Waterboarding was especially harsh. “In many cases, the most aggressive techniques were used immediately, in combination and non-stop,” the report says. “Sleep deprivation involved keeping detainees awake for up to 180 hours, usually standing or in painful stress positions, at times with their hands shackled above their heads.”

4. The CIA’s use of its enhanced interrogation techniques was not an effective means of acquiring intelligence or gaining cooperation from detainees. 

The Committee found that the use of the CIA’s enhanced interrogation techniques was not an effective means of obtaining accurate information.

For example, seven of the 39 CIA detainees known to have been subjected to the CIA’s enhanced interrogation techniques produced no intelligence while in CIA custody. Other detainees provided significant, accurate intelligence prior to, or without having been, subjected to these torture.

5. The CIA’s Lied About Effectiveness. 

The CIA lied to the White House and Congress that its enhanced interrogation techniques thwarted specific terrorist plots and falsely claimed terrorists were captured as a result of the use of the techniques. The CIA used these examples to claim that its methods were not only effective, but also necessary to acquire “otherwise unavailable” actionable intelligence that “saved lives.”
6. Inexperienced contract pscyhologists devised the techniques.

The report shows that contract psychologists devised the CIA’s enhanced interrogation techniques and played a central role in the operation, assessments, and management of the detention and interrogation program.

The psychologists’ prior experience was at the U.S. Air Force Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape school. Neither had any experience as an interrogator. They did not have specialized knowledge of al-Qa’ida, a background in counterterrorism, or any relevant cultural or linguistic expertise.

Accordng to the report, “By 2005, the CIA had overwhelmingly outsourced operations related to the program.”

7. Those who were not suspects were interrogated.

Of the 119 known detainees, at least 26 were wrongfully held and did not meet the detention standard. These included an “intellectually challenged” man whose CIA detention was used solely as leverage to get a family member to provide information, two individuals who were intelligence sources for foreign liaison services and were former CIA sources, and two individuals whom the CIA assessed to be connected to al-Qa’ida based solely on information fabricated by a CIA detainee subjected to the CIA’s enhanced interrogation techniques. These detainees, however, often remained in custody for months after the CIA determined that they did not meet the MON standard. CIA records provide insufficient information to justify the detention of many other detainees.

U.S. armed forces are currently on a heightened state of alert overseas because of a concern of violent backlashes at key areas on foreign soil such as military bases and embassies. The U.S. embassy in Cairo, a site of particular concern, has not commented on its security concerns to the media.

Cliff Weathers is a senior editor at AlterNet, covering environmental and consumer issues. He is a former deputy editor at Consumer Reports. His work has also appeared in Salon, Car and Driver, Playboy, Raw Story and Detroit Monthly among other publications. Follow him on Twitter @cliffweathers and on Facebook.

______________________________________________________________

Here it is finally! [pdf] 
The 500-page executive summary of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s 6,300-page report into the CIA’s post-9/11 torture program.

CIA report details ‘brutal’ post-9/11 interrogations ~ BBC.

Its main points include the following:

• At no time did coercive interrogation techniques lead of collection of intelligence on imminent threats

• None of 20 cases of counterterrorism “successes” attributed to the techniques led to unique or otherwise unavailable intelligence

• The CIA misled politicians and public, giving inaccurate information to obtain approval for using techniques

• The CIA claimed falsely that no senators had objected to the programme.

• Management of the programme was deeply flawed, for example the operation of the second detention facility, known as COBALT

• At least 26 of 119 known detainees in custody during the life of the programme were wrongfully held, and many held for months longer than they should have been

• Aggressive techniques were used on suspects from the start, despite CIA claims that interrogations would begin with less coercive methods

• Methods included sleep deprivation for up to 180 hours, often standing or in painful positions

• Waterboarding was physically harmful to prisoners, causing convulsions and vomiting

Planetary birth revealed in best image yet from world’s most powerful telescope!

Planetary birth revealed in best image yet from world’s most powerful telescope ~ Rachel Feltman, The Washington Post’s Speaking of Science blog.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/posttv/c/embed/7ec7bd08-6530-11e4-ab86-46000e1d0035

http://wapo.st/1vOgY0Z

ESOcast 69 presents the result of the latest ALMA observations, which reveal extraordinarily fine detail that has never been seen before in the planet-forming disc around the young star HL Tauri. (ESO)

Protoplanetary disks are the source of planet formation, but until now we’ve only seen them as fuzzy blobs, or in artistic renderings. But in a new image from ALMA (the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array), we see the disk left behind after a star birth in stunning new clarity.

Stars form when gas and dust are crushed together by gravity. The leftover particles gather around the new star, forming the concentric disks you can see in the image above. Over time, these tiny particles group together to form rocks, and eventually asteroids — and even planets — can be born from the dust.

Observing protoplanetary disks is important for obvious reasons: The closer we get to watching a planet actually being born, the better we’ll understand our own planet’s origins.

This particular disk surrounds a young star named HL Tau, located around 450 light years from Earth in the constellation Taurus. The incredible resolution of the image is impressive, but we could see ALMA’s images get even more focused.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/posttv/c/embed/8a60cd04-652f-11e4-ab86-46000e1d0035

This video takes you 450 light-years away to HL Tauri in the constellation of Taurus and reveals the astonishing depth and detail that ALMA can now attain. The start of the sequence shows a wide view, including the Pleiades and Hyades naked eye star clusters. Zooming reveals detailed visible-light image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope and the final part shows the new ALMA image at millimeter wavelengths. (ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)/NASA/ESA/N. Risinger)

ALMA, which is run as an international partnership between Europe, North America and East Asia, is a telescope made up of 66 high-precision antennas that can be moved into different configurations. These antennas capture radio waves from space, and when their data is combined, they can create images with five times the resolution of the Hubble Space Telescope.

But while ALMA is close to its final configuration, it’s not quite running at its maximum resolution yet. Researchers spaced the antennas as much as 15 kilometers apart to get the image above. In earthly terms, this configuration would allow the telescope to take a shot of a penny from 110 kilometers away.

In the near future, the satellites will be moved another full kilometer apart — further increasing the resolution.

For once, it’s not an illustration. (ALMA/ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)

Here’s the new image nestled into a shot that the Hubble took of its neighborhood, showing the improvement in resolution. (ALMA/ESO/NAOJ/NRAO, ESA/Hubble and NASA)

This image shows the region in which HL Tauri is situated. HL Tauri is part of one of the closest star-forming regions to Earth and there are many young stars, as well as clouds of dust, in its vicinity. (ESO/Digitized Sky Survey 2)

Uprising could trigger #Isis undoing, says study!

Uprising could trigger Isis undoing, says study ~ Mark Townsend, home affairs editor, The Observer, Saturday 1 November 2014.

Former counter-terror head at MI6 says Islamic State’s biggest challenge will be controlling dissent.

Mehdi Army fighters loyal to Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. He has said Sunnis and Shias should rally behind the authorities to prevent Isis destroying Iraq. Photograph: Stringer/iraq/Reuters

A large-scale uprising from people living under the totalitarian regime of Islamic State (Isis) is the most likely trigger that will lead to the undoing of the self-declared caliphate, according to an authoritative report into the jihadi group by the former head of counter-terrorism at MI6.

A detailed appraisal of the organisation, obtained by the Observer, says that, although Isis has performed strategically well so far, its biggest challenge will be controlling dissent and coping with the difficulties of administration in the vast territory it governs.

The report by Richard Barrett, who headed the UN’s al-Qaida and Taliban monitoring team and helped establish the UN’s working group on terrorism, is one of the most comprehensive portraits yet of the group and examines its genesis, revenue streams and cohort of foreign fighters along with its ambitions.

The social media platforms that Isis has exploited successfully to disseminate propaganda will also play a key role in its demise by rapidly spreading discord among the six million people under its rule, the report states.

It adds: “The thirst for change that Islamic State has managed to exploit will not be slaked by its totalitarian approach towards its subjects. In today’s world, no state, however remote, can hope to control its population by limiting its access to information or suppressing its ability to think. It will be no more able to harness the social, economic, and political forces around it than were the states that, through their failure, allowed the space for Islamic State to grow.”

Barrett said that international agencies had recently noted a “slowdown” in the volume of foreign fighters joining Isis, partly because some that had returned home had talked negatively about their experiences. “The fact that many people have gone home and are starting to talk about how bad things are means there’s a counter-narrative going on which has helped slow numbers,” said Barrett, whose report for security analysts the Soufan Group will be used by governments as an intelligence briefing about Isis.

A report by the UN security council, revealed on Friday that 15,000 foreign jihadis have travelled to Syria and Iraq from more than 80 countries to fight alongside Isis and other groups.

Barrett’s report also quotes the 15,000 figure, adding “over half come from Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Jordan, and Turkey”. However, it adds that, if Isis begins to lose its foreign cohort, it will be weakened to the point it might be overrun. “If these [foreign] fighters desert it, Islamic State will probably be unable to maintain momentum and so be an easier target for its enemies.”

Around 500 Britons are thought to have travelled to Syria and Iraq, although they are not listed among its ranks of suicide bombers in the report which during 2014 has included “Danes, Egyptians, French, Iranians, Jordanians, Libyans, Moroccans, Pakistanis, Russians (Chechens), Saudi Arabians, Syrians, Tajiks, Tunisians, Turks and Uzbeks”.

The UN report on Friday identified the use of social media by Isis as “unhindered by organisational structures”. It is this approach that Barrett believes will contribute to the break- up of Isis by quickly spreading internal criticism. Isis has been adept at using social media such as Twitter along with newer, smaller platforms – Ask.fm and Kik, Quitter and Diaspora – to broadcast its message. Barrett notes the group is “intolerant of any opposition or divergence from its worldview, and has set up networks of informers and a heavy security apparatus, managed from the centre, to ensure that no challenge to its authority can grow”.

This system has meant that those living under Isis have “begun to see it as merely a new form of oppression”, with residents recently revealing that conditions inside Mosul, the largest city under Isis control, have deteriorated. Barrett also says that the “hostility of Islamic State to individuality has also driven away many members of the professional classes, leaving hospitals without staff or medicines and schools without teachers”.

It is this, the administration of territory, that will play a key role in the longevity of Isis, emphasising the importance of agencies such as Isis’s Islamic administration of public services including electricity, sanitation and water.

However, the complexity of the challenge facing Isis is encapsulated by the fact that, while the seizure of grain stores has lowered prices, and keep bakeries running, many farmers have fled, meaning the crop for next year remains unplanted. The report adds that the amount of money required to run the caliphate “may equate to those of the Iraqi government before Islamic State took control”.

ISIS FACTS

■ Around six million people are currently living under its rule.

■ Employs between 20,000 and 31,500 fighters, according to US intelligence estimates, and another army of administrators to keep Isis functioning.

■ Controls land in Iraq that accounts for 40% of national wheat production.

■ Its latest annual report, which covers the 12 months to November 2013, demonstrates an increase in capability, with more than 9,000 military operations recorded, many indicating a high level of tactical flexibility.

■ Reportedly pays fighters between $200 and $600 a month.

■ Administration employees paid around $300 rising to $2,000 for senior managers.

■ More than four million mentions of the English acronym Isis between 17 September and 17 October 2014 on Twitter; the Arabic acronym mentioned 1.9m times over the same period.

Palestinian Youth Organization: Confrontation of the Zionist/Imperialist Project in the Arab Region!

Palestinian Youth Organization: Confrontation of the Zionist/Imperialist Project in the Arab Region ~ PFLP.

Comrade Khaled Yamani of the Palestinian Youth Organization delivered the following paper at the Anti-Imperialist Youth of World Conference in Istanbul, Turkey in October 2014: 

Confrontation of the Zionist/Imperialist Project in the Arab Region

Imperialism is the main enemy of the people. Imperialism stems from multiple sources, and not only one; while the largest, most influential, sophisticated and aggressive is U.S. imperialism, which may conflict and struggle over interests with other imperialisms, this does not mean that other imperialisms are an ally for our struggle. It also does not mean that all imperialisms are equal; clarity in what is our primary struggle, against U.S. imperialism, will only deepen the conflicts between U.S. imperialism and other imperialist forces.

In order to build on our clarity around this concept, we must turn to look at the role that we should play in practice: challenging illusions of peace with the Zionist state and exposing the terrorism of U.S. imperialism in its drive to control the Arab world and Central Asia (the expanded area labelled the “Middle East”) in order to control the oil markets in order to exercise its dominance over the world.

We are at war with imperialism, which is led by the U.S. state terror, with the Zionist state playing an organic and critical role, and supported by other imperialist states. These forces have the goal of destroying all of the progress that has been achieved in our region since independence and decolonization, which is illustrated by the destruction of infrastructure, and the overall economy, in Palestine, Iraq, Lebanon and Syria. This comes in addition of the promotion of sectarian conflict in order to dismantle and undermine social structures and social cohesion in targeted societies. While its control is incomplete, imperialism exploits these conflicts to keep us suppressed, disadvantaged and disunited, because this is the situation most advantageous to imperialism’s achieving control and perpetuating occupation.

The imperialist Zionist occupation entity

The primary objective of the Zionist invasion was to transplant a human base to undergird imperialist armed might, to confront and push back the Arab liberation movement, which constitutes a major threat to the interests of imperialism, which seeks victory in this vital region of the world. It is not true that the Zionist movement was a result of the persecution of Jews in Europe, and there is no true separation between the plans of the Zionist movement and those of imperialism for the region. There is a strategic cohesion between “Israel” and the Zionist movement and global imperialism. The battle with the Zionist entity is key to the overall conflict in the region: between the masses on the one hand, and global imperialism on the other hand.

The Palestinian revolutionary forces raise the slogan: “No coexistence with Zionism.” The end of the Zionist entity is necessary in order to achieve a just and lasting peace in the region. Zionism requires a serious response and confrontation equal or greater in measure to the imperialists’ promotion of the Zionist entity in the region.

This approach must be fundamental and constant in our discourse – especially of the Arab left, and must be at the base of building our strategy of confrontation. Our independence, development and unity as Arabs will not be achieved except through struggle, force, and power. The achievement of social progress is in fact a battle against the imperialist/Zionist juggernaut. Our well-being as a society is not possible without struggle and victory against the imperialist powers.

This is the basis of a clear strategy to build resistance, but it also requires the achievement of internal change in order for it to become possible to build a force that is capable of implementing this strategy and achieving its aims. Thus, the overlap of internal and external conflicts: we cannot build power and strength to confront imperialism with the ongoing presence of internal groups attached to the imperialist project. At the same time, we cannot overlook or minimize the direct threat from imperialism and Zionism engaging in wars against us, seeking control and occupation.

The development of a strategy to resist the imperialist/Zionist project in our region and the world must take into account the following:

1. There has become one battle, from Palestine, to Iraq, to all Arab countries. This struggle is intertwined with that of the peoples of Turkey, Iran, Central Asia, as well as Latin American nations and the rest of the world in general. The Palestinian people are standing on the front lines, and struggling in the trench of the various oppressed peoples and classes affected by the colonial capitalist system, in the struggle of the people in the greater battle against imperialism and its associated forces.

2. Palestinians and the Arab world must note that the Zionist state is an organic part of the politics of imperialism, a colonial settler entity, and an army of “mercenaries” to confront the movement and development of Arab progress. It is an economic center for the corporations of monopoly capitalism and imperialism. We affirm the illegitimacy and illegality of the racist Zionist entity and refuse all attempts to view it as a natural and normal state permanently accepted in the Arab region. The natural, former, present and future relationship of the Arab region with this entity is the relationship between the resistance and the dismantling of the occupation and the settlement. The primary contradiction in our region is between the Arab liberation project on the one hand and imperialism, Zionism and their projects on the other hand. This conflict cannot be resolved by any settlement that leaves imperialism and Zionism in place; it is a struggle until victory.

Any project that includes the integration of this entity in the Arab region is a project of domination that must be resisted. It is necessary to resist normalization of relations at all levels throughout the Arab world; normalization is an important mechanism to install and uphold Zionist hegemony. It is also essential to uphold the right of return of the Palestinian Arab people to their homeland, to their cities of villages of origin, as an absolute, unconditional, personal and collective right that is inalienable, and no authority is entitled or authorized to bargain or waive that right in any form. We emphasize here the Arab character of this right, as it is part of the Arab liberation project.

3. We must rebuild our society on the basis of resistance and the need to build democratic systems that represent the popular classes, in order to confront the imperialist Zionist schemes. We are concerned as revolutionary leftists that all projects of renaissance, renewal and resistance must be centered in the popular classes, in order to defeat capitalism and its subsidiaries who hold authority, and to confront and defeat the Zionist imperialist project.

4. Dependence on the so-called “international legitimacy” reflects and demonstrates imperialist hegemony and U.S. domination of the world. It is this supposed legitimacy that allows these forces to deny and disregard the natural, historical and moral rights of the people of the world. Legitimacy instead must be measured by the people’s right to accept or reject international resolutions approved by the imperialist powers engaged in a global war against the people.

5. In order to form and activate the front of resistance to imperialism and Zionism, in our case, the Palestinian struggle with the imperialist Zionist occupation, we must ask ourselves important questions. (How can the resistance intensify contradictions and class fissures in the Zionist occupier society? What is the tool best suited for pressure to escalate these contradictions?) Certainluy the answer is: The most effective and appropriate tool is the resistance, and the popular liberation war in all of its forms, and at the head, armed resistance. The only language that is understood by the enemy is that of revolutionary violence. The armed struggle is the principal approach that will make our land a key battlefield to the victory in the long struggle against the occupation and its attempts to liquidate our cause. With the masses and their conviction to achieve their goals of liberation at the forefront, this strategy ensures the resistance will achieve its objectives by multiplying the losses of the enemy and inflicting economic losses. The embrace of the resistance fighters who engage in armed struggle and revolutionary violence by the masses is a protective shield so that the enemy cannot isolate them or truly prepare to cope with their strikes.

6. Based on our understanding that the concept of the national democratic revolution is a scientific concept closely associated with the class struggle and national struggle, it is a revolution of national liberation and resistance to the presence of imperialism and Zionism, in order to end their presence in our nation. At the same time and place, there is a democratic revolution against despotic regimes of exploitation and dependency, that continues the struggle for complete liberation and sovereignty in economy, politics, culture and all of the issues of our people which primarily target the poor, the oppressed and the workers. Our vision of development is based on the principle of independent development, self-reliance, revolution and popular democracy. In our current condition as an Arab nation, the basis of revolution is a commitment to a vision and a program that reflects the interests and goals of workers, poor peasants, and the poor and oppressed masses, and it is from this understanding that we confront rulers.

Liberation requires liquidation of the comprador economic structure, the abolition of the domination of the market in the economic field and of the domination of right-wing neoliberalism in the economic, social and cultural spheres on a superstructural level. This means restructuring and building institutions of cultural and social resistance in line with the class interests of the masses of workers, poor and oppressed peoples, and hard and dedicated work to abolish social, economic and cultural backwardness and oppression, and to build instead on foundations of progress, enlightenment and democracy. Industrial and economic development must be planned, on the basis of equal opportunity, in order to provide a minimum income that ensures security for the people, meeting the needs of workers and the poor, and must come alongside the development of healthcare, social security, and cultural programs to serve the people, meet the needs of the masses, and achieve the principles of revolutionary social justice.

7.  On the importance and role of youth in revolution and social justice: there is no doubt that the youth represents a significant and distinct social group in various communities. They are strong and vital, and constitute an important source of prosperity, progress, development and sustainability in the community. When young people are absent from the social arena, the signs of stagnation and decline, accelerate toward collapse.

Perhaps the most important characteristic of young people as a force of social change is that they are, in general, the most ambitious group in a community. The process of change and progress does not stop, and any political party, youth organization or social group seeking political and social change must prioritize attracting the energies of young people and employing these energies toward specific goals.

There is a consensus that the power of youth is a double-edged sword, youth are innovative, creative, and productive if they are supported and are given strength and investment; but with no investment and engagement, they can become an unproductive sector if society fails to deal with its problems and find effective solutions. Young people as a resource depend in the first and last place on the willingness of the community, with all of its components, to support them at various levels, economically, socially, politically, culturally, intellectually and otherwise.

Young people are an important social force and a key sector in this community, and this sector has the means to win in the battle for change. There are many examples of this; the world felt the importance of the youth and students for decades in the countries of the developing world, where the vanguard of revolutionary youth in the national liberation movements led their countries to freedom from colonialism.

It is also the responsibility of leftist forces to take up the task of promoting and deepening awareness of a national culture of democracy among young people, of accommodating the advances of society, and bringing together cultural, national and human projects to defend a democratic and revolutionary culture to confront obscurantist, narrow-minded and oppressive extremist cultural projects. The national democratic identity, affiliation and culture is one that inspires among youth national commitment and democratic vision based on the history and struggle of Arab liberation movements, and leftist liberatory goals.

The Left and Marxist parties and the forces of the Arab left must push to crystallize a new policy that reflects the aspirations of Arab youth. This comes first through political programs and organizing of young people, that express the concerns, interests and aspirations of young people themselves and the challenges they confront at the domestic and external levels, along with attention to the issues of democracy, freedom and social justice. This also means taking up economic struggle; there is a high unemployment rate among youth in the Arab world, in some places over 50%, in addition to issues of education, literacy and health care, which should be at the forefront of daily struggles and party programs. The state of poverty, underdevelopment, illiteracy, the absence of democracy and the suppression of individual and collective freedoms in the Arab world are the results of the dominance of imperialism and the control of the Arab reactionary regimes associated with it, which are one of the key barriers to advancing the Arab national project. The continuation of this deteriorating situation only furthers the continuation of imperialist hegemony and that of its reactionary and bourgeois allies among the Arab ruling class.

8. The liberation of women is a prerequisite to the liberation of our society. Arab women confront two intertwined persecutions, social injustice and discrimination; and Arab women are a full partner in life and share fully in the daily suffering and struggle at all levels. Arab women must be supported to contribute fully as members and leaders of leftist organizations and youth movements, and our organizations must struggle for the liberation of Arab women, at political, social and class levels.

The elimination of imperialist hegemony, exploitation and capitalist greed, and the defeat of global imperialism and its military, economic and cultural control over our countries, which produces extreme poverty, widespread unemployment, hunger, and destruction in poor and developing nations and regional ethnic conflicts, will not occur, and victory over the imperialist onslaught will not be achieved, except through the formation of a democratic global movement to confront imperialism and its consequences, and seek dialogue between the peoples of the world on an equal basis, away from the policy of annexation, subordination and domination.

Palestinian Youth Organization