No, this isn’t spam. It’s actually a novel form of crowdfunding, the latest fad in raising funds for new movies and community projects.

The Philippine government is asking for “kind hearted individuals” to assist in raising the 512,066.35 Saudi Arabian Riyals (approximately $1 million US) the Saudi government is demanding as blood money to halt the execution of a Filipino guest worker named Joselito Zapanta, convicted of killing his landlord in 2009. According to Filipino in death row, the man’s family and the Philippine government have raised approximately one-eighth of the required amount.

I see a clear moral dilemma here, especially for death penalty opponents. It seems similar to the dilemma western governments face in deliberating whether to ransom kidnap victims of Somali pirates. If we reward brutal thugs by paying them off, doesn’t it just encourage them?

The ability to “buy” justice is totally antithetical to most Americans’ thinking about the rule of law. Yet the reality is that justice in the US is bought and sold. Rich people hire the best lawyers available and get off. While the poor, stuck with badly paid, overworked public defenders, get long sentences and the death penalty.

Under the Obama administration, the US remains Saudi Arabia’s strongest ally in the developed world. In 2010, the Obama administration approved the biggest arms sale in American history: an estimated $60.5 billion purchase by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

 Here are the contact details for the Office of the President of the Philipines: http://www.president.gov.ph/contact-us-2/

I recommend you do as I did and email them first. Ask about getting your money back if this fundraising endeavor fails and the Saudis proceed with the execution. And be sure to get a receipt.

photo credit: SS&SS via photopin cc

Syrian "rebel" - note black al Qaeda flag in background

According to an October 14^th New York Times artice: “Most of the arms shipped at the behest of Saudi Arabia and Qatar to supply Syrian rebel groups fighting the government of Bashar al-Assad are going to hard-line Islamic jihadists, and not the more secular opposition groups that the West wants to bolster, according to American officials and Middle Eastern diplomats.”

Thanks to former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds at Boiling Frogs, most of the blogosphere knew the truth about the Syrian civil war twelve months ago. I guess the recent acknowledgement in the New York Times – the mouthpiece of the Pentagon, US State Department and CIA – makes it official.

So why now? Why would Obama suddenly decide to disclose the truth about Syria three weeks before an election?

The answer seems pretty obvious: to undercut a Republican opponent who has made Syria a campaign issue by promising to provide Syrian rebels with the more powerful weaponry, including antiaircraft and antitank weapons that the US and its allies have are thus far declined to provide.

The article stresses the dreadful consequences of such weapons ending up in the wrong hands. Unnamed officials even express concern that ousting President Assad could have extremely negative consequences: “American officials worry that, should Mr. Assad be ousted, Syria could erupt afterward into a new conflict over control of the country, in which the more hard-line Islamic groups would be the best armed.”

Imagine that. Sounds like what Americans of conscience – as well as Russia and China – have been saying all along.

Palestine's Arab Spring

A September 15^th article (Revolution in the Air at Last) in the highly conservative Economist is predicting possible revolution in Palestine. It’s extremely good news for antiwar activists, economists, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff General Martin Dempsey and all other halfway sane people seeking to thwart a threatened Israeli attack on Iran. A full blown Arab Spring uprising in Palestine (Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas has referred to growing unrest as the Palestinian Arab Spring) would hopefully keep Israeli war monger Binyamin Netanyahu too busy in his own back yard to start World War III.

Extreme Financial Hardship in the West Bank

In recent demonstrations across the West Bank, where the Palestinian Authority (PA) is supposedly in charge, protests over high food prices have escalated to calls for both Abbas and prime minister Salam Fayyad to step down. Tied into Israel’s economy under terms of the 1993 Oslo Peace Accords, residents of the West Bank pay Israeli prices for goods while earning a fifth of Israeli salaries. Meanwhile the PA, deeply in debt, limps along from month to month, as previously generous foreign aid slows to a dribble. Gulf donors, such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, have become reluctant as Palestinians to support an entity that seems incapable of ending Israel’s occupation. Thus most of their aid funds go to Gaza, where Israel ended the military occupation in 2005, and which has been fully run by Hamas Islamists since the 2007 elections.

Europeans, struggling with their own economic crisis, have also drastically cut assistance to the PA. Meanwhile the Obama administration, which has promised $200 million, is making it conditional on a Palestinian promise not to seek the UN recognition of statehood (at least not before the November elections). Thus, at present, the PA relies on Israel for two-thirds of its operating expenses (through a transfer of tax revenues collected in the West Bank).

The Power Struggle in the PA’s Unelected Leadership

The protests also relate, in part, to a long-standing power struggle between Abbas, the Fatah leader who succeeded Yasar Arafat, and Fayyad, an economist trained in America and favored by Washington. What the Economist doesn’t mention is that both Abbas and Fayyad are “appointed” puppets the US and Israel installed in the West Bank after Hamas won the 2007 PA elections (see The Effect of Public Opinion in Palestine). Technically Hamas was the legitimately elected authority in the West Bank, as well as Gaza. Refusing to recognize the elections, the US and Israel replaced the Hamas leadership with Abbas, Fayyad and Fatah party officials. Hamas only retained power in Gaza by undertaking military action to expel the CIA-backed Fatah operatives who had seized crucial security outposts.

At the beginning of September, trade unions and taxi-drivers, who get their licenses from the Fatah-dominated intelligence services, declared a general strike and closed roads, paralyzing the city centers. Fatah-linked Palestinian security officers in plain clothes manned the barricades and lit tires.

By September 10th, the PA was facing the most popular and widespread protests in the 18 years since it was formed in 1993 Oslo accords. In the southern city of Hebron, gangs of youths threw rocks at a police station. In Nablus, they charged a security base. Although the Palestinian police dispersed them with tear gas, the uproar only died down when Fayyad made concessions promised to rescind price rises and pay a first installment of delayed salaries.

The popular uprising is far from over, with Israel’s recent threat to cut off power to the West Bank unless the PA comes up with $200m for unpaid electricity bills.

Read more here

(This second post relates to US media censorship of Obama’s hypocritical policy towards Bahrain’s pro-democracy movement.)

Amber Lyon

For the most part, the US media has been totally silent on the Bahraini pro-democracy movement and Obama’s decision to back the repressive regime that seeks to crush them. On September 4^th, Glenn Greenwald published an opinion piece in the Guardian blasting CNN International (CNNi), the most watched English language network in the Middle East, for refusing to air the hour long documentary their own crew –led by investigative correspondent Amber Lyon – filmed in Bahrain in the aftermath of the government crackdown. As Greenwald reports, the commentary features graphic video footage of regime forces arresting and shooting peaceful, unarmed demonstrators, as well as explicit descriptions by pro-democracy activists of the torture they received at the hands of police and security officials.

The video footage was obtained at great cost, both to the CNN crew and the activists who consented to talk to them. While they were filming, Lyon and her cameramen were violently detained by 20 heavily-armed men in black ski masks who forced them to the ground with machine guns, seized their cameras. They were then forcibly transported to detention facility and interrogated for the next six hours.

CNN International Suppresses “iRevolution”

On 19 June 2011 at 8pm, CNN’s domestic outlet in the US aired “iRevolution” for the first and only time. According to Lyons, the documentary was deliberately aimed at an international audience. Yet despite receiving several prestigious journalism awards, and despite the dangers their own journalists and their sources endured to produce it, CNN International (CNNi) still refuses to broadcast the documentary.

In March 2012, Lyon was laid off from CNN as part of an unrelated move by the network to outsource its investigative documentaries. Last month the investigative journalist, who has more than 20,000 followers, began tweeting about CNN’s blatant censorship. “CNNi’s refusal to broadcast ‘iRevolution’, she tweeted on August 16th, “baffled producers”. Linking to the YouTube clip of the Bahrain segment, she added “the censorship was devastating to my crew and activists who risked lives to tell [the] story.

The following day, a representative of CNN’s business affairs office called Lyon’s acting agent, George Arquilla of Octagon Entertainment, and threatened that her severance payments and insurance benefits would be immediately terminated if she ever again spoke publicly about this matter, or spoke negatively about CNN.

King Hamad’s $32 Million PR Campaign

Greenwald believes the call is inked to a massive, well funded PR campaign, the Bahraini Royal family has undertaken to improve its image. As reported by Bahrain Watch, the regime has spent more than $32 million in PR fees since the Arab Spring began in February, 2011. One of the regimes largest contracts was with the Washington DC firm Qorvis Communications. As Time reported last November, Qorvis also does extensive PR work for Bahrain’s close allies, the Saudi royal family. Some leaked a CNN internal email to the Guardian about a Qorvis representative calling about excessively favorable mention of neurosurgeon Dr Nabeel Rajab (see prior post).

CNN’s Business Relationship with Bahrain

While it’s common for US mainstream outlets to bend over backwards to portray White House policy (in this case backing repressive regimes in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain), Greenwald suggests that CNN also had powerful commercial reasons for suppressing Lyon’s documentary footage. Greenwald’s article about “iRevolution” is accompanied by a backgrounder outlining CNN’s business relationships with the Bahraini monarchy. At the same time as CNN was supposedly covering the Arab Spring, Bahrain was a major participant in CNN’s various “sponsorship” opportunities – i.e. paid “informercials” dedicated at improving the nation’s image around the world. As Greenwald documents in the second piece, the result was a number of propagandistic documentaries – promoting Bahrain as an attractive haven for western investors and King Hammad as an avid environmentalist. All were broadcast with no or minimal disclosure that the government of Bahrain had paid for the programming.

The 13 minute segment produced in Bahrain is available at i-Revolution

Robert Fisk

Legendary Middle East reporter Robert Fisk, the first western eyewitness to enter the massacre town of Daraya, writes in the Independent about eyewitness reports that Syrian rebels, not government forces, are responsible for the mass killing of 245 Darayan men, women and children. This contrasts with the version being told in rest of the western media, which predictably blames President Assad for the deaths.

Fisk links the massacre to a failed prisoner exchange between the Free Syrian Army and the government army. Residents told him about the Free Syrian Army kidnapping a number of civilians and off-duty soldiers when they first seized Daraya (six miles from center of Damascus) – how both sides subsequently engaged in talks about exchanging them for prisoners in the army’s custody. According to the witnesses he spoke to, when talks broke down, the government army stormed the town to take it back from rebel control.

One woman Fisk spoke to insists the killings were carried out by armed insurgents wearing hoods while the rebels still held the town. A second witness, a man, talks about the rebels targeting off-duty conscripts and government workers for assassination. He describes the “Free Army” forces taking over the home of a friend to use as a base, smashing the family crockery, burning carpets and beds and tearing the parts out of laptops and TV sets in the home.

Maybe with a credible, non-embedded reporter like Fisk on location in Syria, the western world will finally learn the truth about what’s happening there. Unless, of course, the Saudi-funded CIA-trained rebels decide to take him out, too. A pity there were no reporters of Fisk’s caliber in Libya.

Read more here

If you read/hear it in the US media, assume it's a lie.

Anyone who has followed the war in Iraq is aware of the bitter religious and political rivalry between Sunni and Shia Muslims. Thus it’s pity that the mainstream corporate media fails to enlighten us about the major sectarian conflict underlying the civil war in Syria. Yes, civil war. For thirteen months, the Muslim Brotherhood, which claims to represent the majority Sunni population, has been fighting to overthrow the predominantly Shiite government of Bashar al-Assad. The US media, which continues to perpetuate the myth that Syria’s only problem is a ruthless dictator who likes shooting unarmed civilians, omits important historical facts essential to understanding the current military conflict:

1. This is the second attempt by Syrian Sunnis, led by the Muslim Brotherhood, to overthrow the Shiite government. The first uprising of Sunni Islamists occurred in 1976 -1982, against the regime of Hafez al-Assad (father of the current dictator Bashar al-Assad).
2. The civil war in Libya was also Sunni-led, which is the main reason the Muslim Brotherhood, which runs post-Gaddafi Libya, has instituted strict sharia law. The latter is notorious for extremely harsh penalties (including death) for blasphemy, homosexuality, theft, adultery and use of intoxicants.
3. Both the Libyan and Syrian rebels have received major financial support from Sunni Gulf States in the Arab League, most notably Saudi Arabia and Qatar. Qatar also provided the bulk of military aid to the Libyan rebels. Both countries have approved weapons shipments to the Free Syrian Army. However at the request of Secretary of State Clinton, they have postponed delivery to avoid undermining the Annan peace process. At the same time, it’s a matter of public record that Sunni Gulf states are supplying the funds for Free Syrian Army salaries See Gulf States Warned Against Arming Syria. In addition, many former Libyan rebels have relocated to Syria with their weapons.

Most of this background, about Syria’s sectarian divisions and the major support Syrian rebels receive from Sunni Gulf states (as well as CIA trainers and US special operations forces – see Why the US Wants Regime Change in Syria), receives fairly good coverage in the British and international press. In contrast, the US media merely functions as the propaganda arm of the Obama administration.

The Political Agenda of Wahhabi Sunnis

As Tariq Ali outlines in his book the Clash of Fundamentalisms: Crusades, Jihads and Modernity, the Sunni Wahhabism practiced in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Oman and Kuwait, is a conservative and austere form of Islam that insists on a literal interpretation of the Koran. Strict Wahhabis believe that Muslims who don’t practice their form of Islam are heathens and enemies. Part and parcel of Wahhabism is the belief that their religious doctrine must also have political expression. This translates into the view of many Sunnis that the only form of government acceptable to Allah is an Islamic state operating according to strict Sharia law.

Wahhabism’s explosive growth began in the 1970s when Saudi and United Arab Emirate (UAE) charities (and US intelligence) began funding Wahhabi schools (Madrassas) throughout the Islamic world. The US government strategically supported the rise of Wahhabism and the Muslim Brotherhood to counter the secular Arab leftists and nationalists who controlled most of the Middle East prior to 1967 (see Israel’s Role in Creating Hamas). The latter were understandably unsympathetic to the corporate interests of US oil companies who were heavily invested in the region.

The spread of Madrassas in Pakistan led to the gradual islamization of a state that was largely secular at the time of its separation from India (see Wikileaks: Saudi Arabia, UAE funded jihadi networks). This was accompanied by increasing religious intolerance and the creation of a jihadist mujaheddin army (funded and trained by the CIA) to repel the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. These CIA freedom fighters would later become the Taliban, who would come to occupy all of Afghanistan and enact an extremely oppressive version of Sharia law.

The US Role in Bringing Sharia Law to Libya

The US and NATO have recently been complicit in bringing a similar Wahhabi government to Libya. Owing to Syria’s close relationship with Iran’s Shia-led government, Obama is extremely gung-ho about pursuing a similar agenda in Syria. Fortunately, thanks to the refusal of China and Russia to go along with UN-sanctioned regime change, the truth about Syria’s civil war is gradually coming out (at least in the international media). Many Syrian civilians, especially Shias, Christians, Sufis and other minorities, are terrified of the Muslim Brotherhood coming to power and subjecting them to the same intense persecution these minorities experience in Saudi Arabia, Libya and other states governed by Whahhabi Sunnis.

Disunity in the Syrian Opposition

It has also come out that there are deep divisions in both the Syrian National Council (SNC) and the Free Syrian Army. Both veteran opposition leaders and a new generation of young activists are deeply critical of the lack of support they receive from the Muslim Brotherhood leaders and Syrian exiles who run the SNC. Many of the SNC’s critics are Sunni Muslims who see strong advantages to continuing secular rule in Syria. They just want to end the hereditary dictatorship of the Assad family.

Likewise, members of the Free Syrian Army who have defected from Assad’s forces feel that their military experience makes them the natural leaders of the rebel forces. Yet they are continually overruled by religious zealots who control the purse strings, thanks to their links to Sunni governments in Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

A few analysts have speculated that this disunity was the main rationale for the SNC’s urgent request for NATO support. Their leadership believes an international bombing campaign would serve to unify a hopelessly fragmented opposition, as it did in Libya.

The body of Brig Gen Dr Issa al-Kholi

(This is the first of two blogs about the covert US war against Syria. The case Obama is making for sanctions and “humanitarian” intervention in Syria is a total fabrication. The US goal in Syria is regime change. The people Assad is attacking aren’t unarmed protestors. They are Islamic militants that the US and NATO have been funding and training for at least ten months.)

People may have noticed that the official narrative concerning Syria changes on a daily basis – except for continuing to heap contempt and scorn on the Russians and Chinese for their Security Council veto. To be frank, this veto makes more and more sense as events on the ground unmask US culpability in the civil war in Syria. Yes, civil war. That’s what you call it when an armed resistance takes up arms against a sovereign government. The interim report by the Arab League Observer Mission (although the Arab League declined to “approve” the report, it was leaked) clearly confirms the presence of an “armed entity” in Syria. Detailed descriptions of militants firing on government forces, as well as planting bombs and blowing up government and civilian infrastructure tend to support Assad’s claims that militant Islamists are attempting to overthrow his government. You can read the Report of Arab League Observer Mission for yourself on the Columbia University website

At first the Obama administration explained all this away by asserting that Syrian’s nonviolent protestors had become some frustrated with Assad’s intransigence that they joined forces with defectors from the Syrian Army. A day and a half ago, when two bomb blasts in Alepo killed twenty-five people, we were told the Syrian government had done this in a devious ploy to discredit the Free Syrian Army. This story wouldn’t wash after militants assassinated a Syrian general, a doctor responsible for running a military hospital in Damascus. Now the current line is that Iraqi members of Al Qaeda are taking advantage of Syrian civil unrest to cross the border and become Syrian Al Qaeda

NATO Support for Syria’s Armed Militants

The problem with this new version of events is that a number of credible Middle East analysts, including former FBI interpreter and whistle blower Sibel Edmunds, former CIA officer Philip Giraldi, British author and foreign correspondent John R Bradley, and Canadian economist and globalization analyst Michel Chossudovsky have been reporting on Syrian’s armed resistance for many months. Moreover all four also cite a growing body of credible evidence that the US, Turkey and other NATO forces, along with Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Qatar are supplying these armed militants with funding, arms and training.

Edmonds first broke the story last November that the US and NATO were involved in arming and training Syrian militants. On November 21, 2011 sources in Turkey informed her of the presence of secret training camps at the US air force base in Incirlik. They were reportedly established in April-May 2011 to organize and expand the dissident base in Syria. According to her sources, these support activities included smuggling US weapons into Syria, participating in US psychological warfare inside Syria and opening a humanitarian/medical corridor between Syria and Turkey to assist opposition groups.

On December 11 she reported, based on Jordanian sources that included a Jordanian military officer, that hundreds of foreign speaking troops had been observed near the Jordan-Syria border. Her informants also revealed that NATO had established a second secret training camp near Mafraq Jordan to train the armed wing of Syria’s Islamic brotherhood. She was also informed, by a London-based Iraqi reporter, that an unknown number of US troops had been deployed from Iraq to Mafraq Jordan.

Eight days later former CIA officer Philip Geraldi essentially confirmed Edmonds’ assertions in NATO vs Syria. This was an article he wrote for the American Conservative, based on information leaked by CIA analysts concerned by the Obama administration’s apparent “march to war” in Syria. According to Geraldi, the CIA was refusing to sign off on the frequently cited UN report that more than 3,500 civilians had been killed by Assad’s soldiers. In their view, this information was based on rebel sources and uncorroborated. They also asserted that the Syrian government’s claims of being assaulted by rebels armed, trained, and financed by foreign governments were more true than false.

Unnamed CIA sources also informed him that NATO warplanes were arriving at Turkish military bases near Iskenderum on the Syrian border, with weapons from the late Muammar Gaddafi’s arsenals, as well as volunteers from the Libyan Transitional National Council. There, the latter, along with French and British special forces, engaged in training members of the Free Syrian Army. Reportedly the CIA and US Special Ops role in all this was to provide communications assistance and intelligence.

To be continued.

My last blog suggested that the current US wars in the Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia are really proxy wars with China over oil and gas resources. I continue the discussion by outlining the crucial Chinese and US alliances in the region.

The prime ministers of China and Pakistan

China‘s Strategic Alliance with Pakistan

Obama’s and Hillary Clinton’s recent threats against Pakistan for allegedly promoting Taliban terrorism are pure rhetoric. Their purpose is to conceal the strategic importance of Pakistan (and Afghanistan) in US competition with China over oil and national gas resources. It also conceals the reality that the undeclared US war against Pakistan (approximately 2,000 civilians have been killed since the drone attacks started in 2004 – see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drone_attacks_in_Pakistan) is really a proxy war against China.

Pakistan is China’s strongest ally in protecting the oil supply critical to its booming economy is Pakistan. At present China imports 46% of its oil. In contrast the US imports 60%. (See http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/90001/90778/90860/6891500.html). Twenty percent of Chinese oil imports come from Saudi Arabia and somewhat less from Angola (see http://www.presstv.ir/detail/183746.html.) Ten percent of China’s oil imports come from Iran.

Growing Military Tension in Pakistan

Until recently, all oil originating from Saudi Arabia and Iran had to be transported via the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz, which is under the control of the US Navy (see http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/62604/dennis-blair-and-kenneth-lieberthal/smooth-sailingthe-worlds-shipping-lanes-are-safe). To counterbalance this de facto US control over their oil transhipments, China built a port in Gwadar (in Balochistan province) Pakistan to facilitate overland oil transport – via an extensive Chinese-built super highway and eventually the IPIC (the Iran- Pakistan- India-China) pipeline.

Since 2002, covert CIA support for the Baloch separatist movement and daily “terrorist” bombings and assassinations have seriously disrupted operations at the Gwadar Port (see “Our CIA Freedom Fighters in Pakistan” at http://stuartbramhall.aegauthorblogs.com/2011/03/07/our-cia-freedom-fighters-in-pakistan/). As this obviously has more effect on the Pakistan economy than on China, the Pakistani government has recently given China permission to build a naval base in Gwadar http://corredorbioceanico.wordpress.com/2011/06/14/great-game-in-the-indian-ocean/.This move is also partly motivated by continued US violation of Pakistan’s sovereignty with CIA drone strikes in Waziristan.

China’s Other Strategic Alliances

As US influence in Saudi Arabia declines (in 2003 they demanded the US withdraw their troops from Saudi military bases – see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_withdrawal_from_Saudi_Arabia), the Chinese also strengthen political and economic ties with the Saudis.

Meanwhile as the US prepares to withdraw from Afghanistan, the US State Department is extremely concerned about growing Chinese investment and influence in Afghanistan, especially in view of China’s strong alliance with Pakistan and the latter’s historic links with the Taliban (which seems positioned to take power following US withdrawal). Important context often omitted by the US media is that the CIA collaborated with Pakistan to create the Taliban in CIA-funded Madrassas (fundamentalist Islamic schools) to fight the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan (1979-1988). The subsequent Taliban takeover was fully supported by both Bush senior and Clinton, in the belief that they had the ability to bring peace and stability to a country devastated by decades of civil war. Both were essential to enable US oil companies to employ Afghanistan as a transit route for newly discovered Caspian Sea oil and gas. It was only when the Taliban balked at the Bush administration’s proposed oil-gas pipeline in 2001 that they became the enemy.

It’s no surprise that China is also one of the strongest political and economic supporters of Hamas and the Palestinian peace process (see http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2011-03/26/content_12231765.htm). At present Israeli terrorist victims are suing a Chinese bank that provided major financial support to Hamas (http://www.jpost.com/International/Article.aspx?id=228728).

US Allegiances in the Middle East

India, Pakistan’s long time enemy, is a strong ally of the US (second only to Israel) in this strategic war over resources. Indian intelligence (RAW) is a longstanding supporter of Afghanistan’s Northern Alliance. With US military support, the Northern Alliance install Hamid Karzai as president of Afghanistan following the US invasion, although Karzai only controls a small area around Kabul. RAW provided the Northern Alliance with weapons, training and financial support while the US and Pakistan were still supporting the Taliban. In addition, RAW provides major support for the Baloch separatist movement in Pakistan (see “Our CIA Freedom Fighters in Pakistan” at http://stuartbramhall.aegauthorblogs.com/2011/03/07/our-cia-freedom-fighters-in-pakistan/). According to many Pakistani analysts, it’s also responsible for cross border terrorism on the Kashmir-Pakistan border (see http://www.newscenterpk.com/indian-double-game-with-bangladesh.html).