Author Archives: News Sources

With state weak, Libyans look to God for help

Reuters reports: Students from all over Libya come to study Islamic law and to memorize the Islamic holy book, the Koran, at the university and school built around the shrine [which houses the tomb of the 15th-century Sufi scholar Abdel Salam al-Asmar in Zlitan, west of Tripoli]. Now, numbers are down.

In the school halls, the voices of young boys and girls echo in unison.

“We usually have 600 girls a day come to memorize Koran, but the parents are now afraid the Salafis will attack so only 100 show up,” said teacher Wafa al-Ati.

Sufism, a mystical strain of Islam, dates back to the faith’s early days. Apart from the standard prayers, Sufi devotions include singing hymns, chanting the names of God or dancing to heighten awareness of the divine.

Sufis also build shrines to revered holy men and scholars and make pilgrimages to them. There are hundreds of the shrines all over Libya. Even Gaddafi, with his ambivalent attitude to religion, did not try to interfere in a practice that is so deep-seated in Libyan culture.

But since the end of Gaddafi’s rule, a new trend has emerged to challenge Sufi traditions.

Under Gaddafi’s rule, many Salafis were jailed for their beliefs and those not imprisoned spent years avoiding any outward manifestation of their beliefs.

Files from Gaddafi’s internal security agency, seen by Reuters after the revolt, show there was a special department set up to track hardline Islamists. Anyone suspected of affiliation was denied the right to travel abroad, enroll in university or take public sector jobs.

Since that system of repression collapsed, Salafis have become emboldened. Some have acquired weapons and used them to enforce their ultra-purist view of Islam.

The Salafis believe Islam should be followed in the simple, ascetic form practiced by the Prophet Mohammed and his disciples. Any later additions to the faith — including tombs or lavish grave markings – are viewed by them as idolatry.

They have alarmed many secularist Libyans by trying to enforce their strict moral code. The Salafis have burned down halls were parties are held and harassed women who do not cover their heads.

In the eastern city of Benghazi, organizers of a rap concert featuring a famous Tunisian artist were forced to cancel the event after being threatened by a Salafi brigade called Libya’s Shield.

Worried that the Salafis would attack their joyful annual parades to celebrate the Prophet Mohammad’s birthday in February, Sufi mosques sought safety in numbers and held a joint procession in Tripoli’s walled old city. The event, which Salafis also consider idolatrous, went off without incident. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

A bombed Libyan village where NATO’s ‘collateral damage’ has a name and a face

Le Monde reports: Nine months have passed but the rubble has yet to be removed. Bombed by NATO last August, the house of the Gafez family in Majer, a town about 150 kilometers east of Tripoli, still looks like a shriveled soufflé. Fourteen people died in the explosion. Twenty others died a few minutes later when bombs struck the farm of the neighbors, the Jaroods. Men, women and children, struck dead in the middle of a Ramadan evening.

What about clearing away the debris? Rebuilding? Haj Ali, the patriarch of the Gafez family never considered it. There are questions of money and of health, but also of honor, says the friendly mustachioed man. That’s because NATO doesn’t want to hear about the martyrs of Majer. The military alliance continues to insist that the bombs dropped on Aug. 8 were aimed at “legitimate military targets.”

International human rights organizations disagree. New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) published a well-documented report this week citing numerous errors NATO committed during its 2011 Libya campaign. According to the authors, the seven months of bombings that led to the fall of the Muammar Gaddafi regime caused the death of 72 civilians. The “relatively low” toll “shows that NATO acted with caution” all along the operation, the report states. This said, HRW laments that the military organization did not recognize its faults, did not open any probes, and did not pay any compensation to the victims of its firepower.

As an act of protest, the surviving members of the Gafez family have transformed the ruins of their house into a memorial museum. Visitors are greeted by a furious message painted on the front gate: “Is that human rights?” The words are in reference to the principle of “protecting the civilians” that French Foreign Minister Alain Juppé invoked when lobbying the U.N. Security Council to support the NATO bombing campaign. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

The NDAA’s section 1021 coup d’etat foiled

Naomi Wolf writes: On Wednesday 16 May, at about 4pm, the republic of the United States of America was drawn back – at least for now – from a precipice that would have plunged our country into moral darkness. One brave and principled newly-appointed judge ruled against a law that would have brought the legal powers of the authorities of Guantánamo home to our own courthouses, streets and backyards.

US district judge Katherine Forrest, in New York City’s eastern district, found that section 1021 – the key section of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) – which had been rushed into law amid secrecy and in haste on New Year’s Eve 2011, bestowing on any president the power to detain US citizens indefinitely, without charge or trial, “facially unconstitutional”. Forrest concluded that the law does indeed have, as the journalists and peaceful activists who brought the lawsuit against the president and Leon Panetta have argued, a “chilling impact on first amendment rights”. Her ruling enjoins that section of the NDAA from becoming law.

In her written opinion, the judge noted that she had been persuaded by what the lead plaintiffs – who include Pulitzer prize-winner Chris Hedges of the Nation Institute, editor Jennifer Bolen of RevolutionTruth, Noam Chomsky, Daniel Ellsberg, co-founder of Occupy London Kai Wargalla, Days of Rage editor Alexa O’Brien, and the Icelandic parliamentarian and WikiLeaks activist Birgitta Jónsdóttir – had argued. In their testimonies (in court and by affidavit), these plaintiffs compiled a persuasive case that they had “standing” to sue because it was reasonable for them to worry that they could conceivably could be detained indefinitely under the section 1021 law because their work requires them to have contact with sources the US government might assert were “terrorists” or “associated forces” of al-Qaida.

The key claim made by the plaintiffs – of which Judge Forrest was persuaded – was that the language in section 1021 is so vague that it could sweep up anyone. The law fails to define or specify what “associated forces” or the concept of “substantial support” actually mean. [Continue reading…]

Glenn Greenwald writes: The ruling was a sweeping victory for the plaintiffs, as it rejected each of the Obama DOJ’s three arguments: (1) because none of the plaintiffs has yet been indefinitely detained, they lack “standing” to challenge the statute; (2) even if they have standing, the lack of imminent enforcement against them renders injunctive relief unnecessary; and (3) the NDAA creates no new detention powers beyond what the 2001 AUMF already provides.

As for the DOJ’s first argument — lack of standing — the court found that the plaintiffs are already suffering substantial injury from the reasonable fear that they could be indefinitely detained under section 1021 of the NDAA as a result of their constitutionally protected activities. As the court explained (h/t Charles Michael):

In support of their motion, Plaintiffs assert that § 1021 already has impacted their associational and expressive activities–and would continue to impact them, and that § 1021 is vague to such an extent that it provokes fear that certain of their associational and expressive activities could subject them to indefinite or prolonged military detention.

The court found that the plaintiffs have “shown an actual fear that their expressive and associational activities” could subject them to indefinite detention under the law,and “each of them has put forward uncontroverted evidence of concrete — non-hypothetical — ways in which the presence of the legislation has already impacted those expressive and associational activities” (as but one example, Hedges presented evidence that his “prior journalistic activities relating to certain organizations such as al-Qaeda and the Taliban” proves “he has a realistic fear that those activities will subject him to detention under § 1021″). Thus, concluded the court, these plaintiffs have the right to challenge the constitutionality of the statute notwithstanding the fact that they have not yet been detained under it; that’s because its broad, menacing detention powers are already harming them and the exercise of their constitutional rights.

Significantly, the court here repeatedly told the DOJ that it could preclude standing for the plaintiffs if they were willing to state clearly that none of the journalistic and free speech conduct that the plaintiffs engage in could subject them to indefinite detention. But the Government refused to make any such representation. Thus, concluded the court, “plaintiffs have stated a more than plausible claim that the statute inappropriately encroaches on their rights under the First Amendment.” [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

A pundit’s rosy view of the Pax Americana

Andrew Bacevich reviews Robert Kagan’s The World America Made: Call it a hallowed tradition. To invest their views with greater authority, big thinkers—especially those given to pontificating about the course of world history—appropriate bits of wisdom penned by brand-name sages. Nothing adds ballast to an otherwise frothy argument like a pithy quotation from John Quincy Adams or George F. Kennan or Reinhold Niebuhr. In The World America Made, a slim volume of mythopoeia decked out in analytic drag, the historian and pundit Robert Kagan cites all three of those renowned figures. For real inspiration, however, he turns to a different and altogether unlikely source: Hollywood director Frank Capra. The World America Made begins and ends with Kagan urging Americans to heed the lessons of that hoariest of Christmas fantasies, It’s a Wonderful Life.

Remember Clarence, the probationary guardian angel? Clarence saves George Bailey from suicidal despair (and earns his wings) by showing George what a miserable place Bedford Falls would have been without him.

As Kagan sees it, America’s impact on history mirrors George Bailey’s impact on Bedford Falls. Thanks to the power wielded by the United States, the entire postwar era has been “a golden age for humanity.” Among the hallmarks of this golden age have been the spread of democracy, a huge reduction in world poverty, and, above all, “the absence of war among great powers.” All of this Kagan ascribes to the United States and to what he calls the “American world order.”

Accept any diminution of American preeminence and you can kiss the golden age goodbye. Just like Bedford Falls without George Bailey, the world will inevitably become a dark and miserable place. Upstart nations will “demand particular spheres of influence,” and the weakened United States will “have little choice but to retrench and cede some influence.” China, Russia, India, and others will begin flexing their expansionist muscles, with doom and gloom sure to follow. “The notion that the world could make a smooth and entirely peaceful transition” to a new order, Kagan writes, is mere “wishful thinking.”

Fortunately, none of this need come to pass if only Americans will be of good heart and heed the counsel of their own guardian angel, whose name happens to be Robert Kagan. His self-assigned mission is to prevent the United States from “committing preemptive superpower suicide out of a misplaced fear of declining power.” After all, our decline is far from inevitable. The key is to believe. Once George Bailey recovers his faith, “he solves his [firm’s] fiscal crisis and lives happily ever after.” If Americans just keep the faith, they can do likewise. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Attacks by Taliban rise in surge areas

The Wall Street Journal reports: Taliban attacks are jumping in the southern Afghan areas that were the focus of the 2010 U.S. troop surge, posing a renewed challenge to the American-led coalition that hoped to pacify the crucial region before withdrawing from the country.

Making sure the fledgling Afghan security forces will be able to hold the Taliban at bay here in Kandahar and elsewhere after most American forces pull out over the next two years is the focus of a North Atlantic Treaty Organization summit that begins in Chicago on Sunday.

The summit unfolds as the coalition, after saying it has reversed the Taliban’s momentum, is gradually transferring security responsibilities across the country to the Afghan troops.

Over the past two years, the farming districts of Zhari, Panjway and Maiwand northwest of Kandahar city—the cradle of the Taliban movement—were the key battlefield of the U.S.-led military campaign in southern Afghanistan. The U.S. has held up its successes in routing the Taliban there as proof that it is winning the war.

Pushed out of these rural districts by the surge, the Taliban last year concentrated on Kandahar city, ramping up their campaign of assassinating government officials. This fighting season, however, they appear to have trickled back to their old home turf.

Facebooktwittermail

Israel becomes a target in Egypt’s presidential vote

Reuters reports: Israel has become a punchbag for politicians vying for votes in Egypt’s presidential race, playing on popular antipathy in Egypt towards its neighbor, but the realities of office are likely to ensure a 33-year-old peace treaty is not jeopardized.

An ex-air force commander in the race boasts of bringing down Israeli aircraft in 1973, the last of Egypt’s four wars with Israel. One Islamist often refers to Israel as the “Zionist entity”, rather than by name, and describes it as an “enemy”.

A leftist candidate pledges to support the Palestinian resistance against Israel, where officials have watched Egypt’s political turmoil with increasing wariness after the downfall of Mubarak who oversaw a cold yet stable peace.

None of the candidates want to tear up the document signed in 1979 but they repeatedly warn in rallies and debates it should be reviewed. Many of them grumble at provisions in the U.S.-brokered deal they say are biased in Israel’s favor.

Yet, beyond the bluster of the campaign trail, the next president’s in-tray will be full of more pressing issues such reviving an economy on the ropes.

Facebooktwittermail

Israel’s ties to MEK terrorism

NBC News reported in February: “Deadly attacks on Iranian nuclear scientists are being carried out by an Iranian dissident group that is financed, trained and armed by Israel’s secret service, U.S. officials tell NBC News, confirming charges leveled by Iran’s leaders.”

Mohammad Javad Larijani, a senior aide to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, describes Israel’s role in training MEK operatives to conduct assassinations inside Iran:

Trita Parsi writes:

Exactly when Israel’s ties with the MEK were established is unclear. But by the early 1990s, as I describe in my book, a relationship was forming, though its full nature and extent remains unknown.

At the time, Deputy Defense Minister Ephraim Sneh pushed Yitzhak Rabin to signal Tehran that Israel could also play the terrorist card. Sneh argued that whenever Iran used Islamic Jihad or Hamas to blow up a bus in Jerusalem, Israel should use the MEK to respond in kind in Tehran.

But cooler heads prevailed. Rabin refrained from entering into a public relationship with the organization. But the Labor government left the door to the MEK half open: it permitted the Iranian terrorist group to use two Israeli satellites to beam their TV broadcasts into Iran.

Even the MEK’s alleged revelation of the Iranian nuclear facilities at Natanz in 2002 was based on information leaked to the organization by Israel, according to Israeli intelligence expert Ronen Bergman. Indeed, a former US State Department official told me recently that while Israel does not publicly acknowledge its ties to the MEK, Israeli officials privately tell the US that the MEK is “useful.”

All of this has fueled suspicions in DC that the current multi-million dollar lobbying campaign by the MEK to get off of the State Department’s terror list is bankrolled by Israeli sources. Dozens of former US officials have received tens and thousands of dollars in speakers’ fees from the MEK or its surrogates to speak out on their behalf. These former officials have likely violated US laws on material support to terrorist organizations, and several of them have had their records subpoenaed by the US Treasury in an ongoing investigation.

Facebooktwittermail

The next money: As the big economies falter, micro-currencies rise

Eric Garland writes: People everywhere are fed up with the status quo of the economy. With the passion our official institutions show for this tepid “recovery,” many are concluding that progress will come not from the current system, which is after all what got us here in the first place, but from their own ingenuity and inventiveness. In pockets around the world, folks are declaring economic independence by starting small, local, but potentially revolutionary alternative currencies that could change not only how we buy goods and services — but how we relate to one other in society. If these micro-currencies catch on, we could be witnessing the replacement of our monocultural monetary system, which emphasizes a certain sort of free market capitalism above all else, with a variety of currencies that will represent more diverse sets of values belonging to the groups that hold them.

The next time you’re in the southside of London, you might find yourself standing next to a man purchasing his chicken tikka with pounds sterling that feature, rather than the Queen of England, David Bowie in his Ziggy Stardust era. The man isn’t a counterfeiter with a love of 70s glam rock, but a resident of Brixton proudly using the Brixton Pound, a “complementary currency” meant to revitalize the famously tough London borough by encouraging people to spend their money as close to home as possible. Started in September 2009, the Brixton pound can now be used at 200 local businesses, some of which offer special deals to those who use the currency instead of plain-old pounds sterling. Not that normal British currency is useless: the Brixton pound is pegged directly to its national cousin, and all the notes in circulation are backed by sterling located at a local bank. The scheme is small in scope and totally transparent. And while the paper money is gorgeous and meaningful, it will soon be expanded to allow people to spend their Brixton pounds by text message.

Brixton is one of four “Transition Towns” in the United Kingdom — the others are Totnes, Lewes, and Stroud — currently using local currencies. The effort to energize local merchants and inspire local consumers to incorporate their values into their commerce may also be inspiring others. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

In Egypt, Mubarak’s repression machine is still alive and well

Hossam el-Hamalawy writes: A little over a week ago, in Obour City, hundreds of Egypt’s notorious Central Security Forces (CSF) conscripts mutinied over torture received at the hands of their officers. The conscripts took to the highway, blocked the road, and even started chanting a famous anti-police song composed by the Ultras White Knights, one of the country’s football fan groups. The mutiny was put down quickly by the army, together with concessions and promises offered.

This was not the first time such a mutiny has occurred since the January 2011 revolution. Several mutinies occurred on the “Friday of Anger“. The following day, I met a guy in Mohamed Mahmoud Street while marching on the interior ministry who was a CSF conscript who escaped from his camp to join the protesters. Repeated mutinies were reported in Cairo, Alexandria and elsewhere over the course of the following months, over ill treatment by officers, long working hours and bad food.

The CSF is the interior ministry’s army, and its central arm in crushing street dissent. Those conscripts are poorly paid, poorly fed, tortured, and made to do the state’s dirtiest job. The last time they undertook a full-scale mutiny was in 1986. It was brutally crushed by Mubarak who sent in the army. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Top 10 facts you probably didn’t know about the Nakba

Yousef Munayyer writes:

1. Nakba is the Arabic word for catastrophe. It is used to describe the Palestinian loss of land and property during the depopulation of Palestine from 1947-1949 and does not refer simply to the declaration of a state of Israel.
Residents of Yaffa Pushed Into The Sea Prior to May15th, 1948

2. 212 localities depopulated and at least half of the refugees created during the Nakba were created prior to May 15th, which is, prior to the entry of armies of other Arab states. The largest Palestinian cities at the time, Yaffa and Haifa, were emptied of the vast majority of their inhabitants before May 15th, 1948. The idea that refugee creation happened only after, or only as a result of, the mobilization of Arab armies is patently false.

3. At every stage of the war, the Yishuv/Israeli forces were superior in training, equipment and numbers to the combined Arab armies.

4. The Zionists prepared extensive data collection efforts to map out intelligence relating to the Palestinian villages for a decade prior to the war. Detailed information about each village was kept including information on the number of inhabitants, the village’s resources, the potential activists that resided within it and what its political affiliations were. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Rebel fighters build shadow state in Syria’s countryside

The Independent reports: In the rolling blue hills and lush olive groves of the north Syrian countryside, a fledgling rebel state is forming, as opponents of Bashar al-Assad’s regime attempt to take control.

The winding roads are criss-crossed with regular Free Syrian Army (FSA) checkpoints and although some are simply lines of rocks scattered across the road, others have kiosks painted with the colours of the opposition flag. Plain-clothes FSA men co-ordinate with short-wave radios, checking the roads ahead are clear and searching passing vehicles for weapons and regime forces.

“The army can’t come to here,” said Abu Mari, an FSA commander, recently returned from 30 years in exile. Driving through the streets of these villages, he receives salutes of recognition. He openly carries a gun, its butt taped with the colours of the new Syrian flag.

At the secret headquarters of the al-Haq brigade, hidden in a cave complex in the mountains, he outlined the plans for a future free zone here, modelled on the area around Benghazi in last year’s Libyan war. “First thing, we make checkpoints,” he explained. “Anyone who is working with the government, we capture him.”

“Idlib is our Benghazi,” agreed the dozen or so men slouched on the Persian carpets and cushions that lined the rocky walls and floor of the cave. A mix of army defectors and local volunteers, they’re part of a brigade of armed men. Their headquarters is equipped with a satellite dish powered by a stolen generator and routed through neighbouring Turkey. There’s satellite television and high-speed wireless internet. But it’s a long way from the Libyan safe haven protected by Nato air strikes, which was the springboard to the overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi.

Facebooktwittermail