Vol 15, No.05 May 2015

Turn to next page

ARTICLES

MADE IN AMERICA

. NUCLEAR DEAL SPARKS RACE TO ENTER IRANIAN

MARKETS

BY NILE BOWIE..................................................P 7

.ENHANCING ASEAN BY CHANDRA MUZAFFAR.........................P4

.THE SCENE OF THE CRIME

BY SEYMOUR M. HERSH....................................P 9

. US INTEL STANDS PAT ON MH-17 SHOOT DOWN

BY ROBERT PARRY..........................................P 14

. THE 12TH ANNIVERSARY OF AAFIA SIDDIQUI’S

ABDUCTION

BY JUDY BELLO................................................P 17

STATEMENT

. EMPIRE AND COLONIALISM: RICH MEN IN LONDON

STILL DECIDING AFRICA’S FUTURE

BY COLIN TODHUNTER....................................P20

.INTERNATIONAL COURT, HAGUE, RULES IN FAVOUR

OF ECUADOR IN ITS CASE AGAINST U.S. OIL GIANT,

CHEVRON

BY ROBERT BARSOCCHINI.....................................P13

. OBAMA’S OUTRAGEOUS SNUB TO THE RUSSIAN

PEOPLE

BY BRYAN MACDONALD...................................P 5

As a lifetime student of classical mainline

Islamic jurisprudential school of thought called

“Sunni fiqh”, I feel saddened to note how the

Western mainstream media succumbed to the

Islamophobic propaganda of affixing the

epithet “Sunni” to the militia of the so-called

Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

I can confidently say that ISIS is not Sunni

because all that ISIS has done is to contravene

the ethical teachings of Sunni Islam.

I consider Sunni Islam as the normative Islam

practiced by the disciples of the Prophet

Muhammad, who are called Sahabah (model

companions) and the righteous caliphs “Al

KhalifahRashidun” (The Rightly Guided

Caliphs) who were democratically elected by

the whole Islamic Ummah (community).

When the Islamophobic Western media equates

ISIS barbarity and inhumanity to the normative

Islamic term “Sunni” (which literally means

followers of orthodox Islam), the Western

media is simply serving US Hegemonic

interests: by ensuring that neo-colonial and

hegemonic forces will continue unabated

the rising Islamophobia against Muslims and

by effectively maligning Sunni Islam which

is the prevalent school of Islamic

jurisprudence in the Middle East and the

rest of the Muslim world.

I can honestly attest that as per my readings

of Shariah principles of the Four Imams of

Sunni Islam (Imams Abu Hanifa, Shafi’i,

Malik and Ibn Hanbal) who were the

eminent jurisprudents of classical Sunni

Islam, I have never encountered any of

their treatise justifying barbarism and

inhumanity that are now being perpetrated

by ISIS.

In fact, these Four Imams of classical Sunni

Islam through their treatises strongly detest

the barbarity of the ISIS militia. Here are

six (6) reasons why the entire ISIS war

outfit cannot not be considered a ‘Sunni

movement” and should never be called

“Sunni” militia, and therefore Western

mainstream media should not and must

not commit Islamophobic name-calling,

and must therefore stop referring to ISIS

as “Sunni” militia:

1.) ISIS destroyed many holy shrines of

Sunni Muslims in Iraq and Syria,

including the shrine and mosque of the

Prophet Yunus (Jonah) of Ninawa

(Nineveh), Iraq and the shrine of Prophet

Ayyub (Job) in Oz, Mosul, Iraq; to

mention a few. They destroyed holy

graves of Sufi-Sunni Muslim saints in

and around Mosul and Kirkuk in Iraq and

in Damascus, Aleppo and Kobane in

Syria.

2.) The Holy Quran declares that

Muslims are forbidden to destroy places

.MEDITERRANEAN CATASTROPHES BY CHANDRA MUZAFFAR.........................P3

By Henry Francis B. Espiritu

I N T E R N A T I O N A L M O V E M E N T F O R A J U S T W O R L D

2

 

continued from page 1

L E A D A R T I C L E

continued next page

of worship of all religions; and particularly,

the shrines of the Ahl-ul-Kitab (literally,

“People with Sacred Scriptures”) i.e., Jews

and Christians must be held inviolable and

must even be secured by Muslims (Al-Qur-

an 22:40-41), and yet ISIS barbarically

destroyed Christian churches. Also, Islam

in the Holy Quran solemnly declares that

there should be no compulsion in religion

(Al-Qur’an 2:256), and yet this ISIS militia

are forcing Yezidis and Christians to convert

or else face death. This is very strange:

there is no news that records that Jews were

forcibly converted by ISIS and synagogues

around Mosul, Aleppo, Kirkuk and in cities

of North Iraq were never destroyed by ISIS,

even though there are resident Jews and

there are a number of synagogues in these

areas. This is a strange thing indeed! (See,

The Majlis: Council of Ulama in South

Africa; p. 8.)

3.) The Shariah Islamiyyah (Divine Law)

of classical Sunni Islam are found in the

Holy Qur’an and the Holy Qur’an clearly

says that civilians and non-combatants’ lives

are inviolable: (Al-Qur’an2:256, 5:69). As

of this juncture, to quote from the Holy

Qur’an is in order: “Allah forbids you to

fight those who did not oppress you, nor

threw you out of your homes, you ought

to show compassion on them and manifest

justice upon them. Verily Allah loves those

who are just” (60:8). The killing of innocent

non-combatants is forbidden in all Sunni

rulings concerning defensive warfare.

Sayyidina Abu Bakr al-Siddiq, the first Caliph

of Sunni Islam penned this ruling to the

armies of the Caliphate: “I instruct you in

ten matters: Do not kill women, children,

the old, or the infirm; do not cut down fruit-

bearing trees; do not destroy any town and

do not touch those who do not bear arms,

do not kill those who surrender and take

refuge in the designated places of refuge,

all who surrender to you must be safe in

your care.” (See Imam Malik’s Muwatta’,

“Kitab al-Fatawah-ul-Jihad-e-Abu Bakr

Siddiq” [The Book of Abu Bakr Siddiq on

the Proper Conduct of Warfare], pp. 37-

39.).

4.) As far as my research goes, there are

no Sunni scholars (ulama) and legitimate

Sunni muftis and fuqaha (Islamic jurists

and doctors of Islamic law) among the so-

called ISIS Caliphate to clearly establish

legitimate fatwas (Shariah rulings) on the

legitimacy of their jihad from the Sunni

Islamic perspective. There is not even an

ustadh (Islamic scholar) of eminence

among their ranks! The truth is that eminent

Sunni scholars of Iraq and Syria have

denounced ISIS for killing over 300 Sunni

imams: which effectively belied the ISIS

claim that it represents itself as the protector

of Sunnis in Iraq and Syria. Many Sunni

clerics in Iraq and the Levant declare ISIS

combatants as “outside the bounds of Islam

and are therefore excommunicated from

the Islamic faith” because of their brutality

inflicted on non-Muslims and on Sunni

Muslims

(See: www.breitbart.com/national-security/

2014/07/03/sunni-mufti-isis-and-affiliates-

have-killed-over-300-sunni-imams-and-

preachers/).

5.) Using the classical rulings of Sunni Islam

on governance as basis of legitimacy, the

so-called ISIS Caliphate is illegitimate.

Genuine and bona fide Sunni Caliphate is

established by the expressed consensus and

consent (al-mushshuw’ara al jamaah) of

the whole Islamic community by explicit

public allegiance (bay-ah) of the whole body

of Muslims. ISIS has unilaterally declared

their so-called caliph, Al-Baghdadi as

Khalifah-ul-Muslimin” (Caliph of all

Muslims) clandestinely and covertly, in

which the whole Muslim Ummah did not

participate in his election, nor choose him

to be its caliph, nor give him pledge of

allegiance!

6.) ISIS was only able to successfully

recruit combatants from Europe to wage

war in Iraq and the Levant, but it failed to

enlist the grassroot support of Iraqi and

Levantine Sunnis. Furthermore, it failed to

enlist allegiance of the Sunni Arab and

Kurdish clergies who strongly denounced

ISIS as outside the pale of the Islamic faith

(See: www.breitbart.com/national-security/

2014/07/03/sunni-mufti-isis-and-affiliates-

have-killed-over-300-sunni-imams-and-

preachers/).

In fact most of these ISIS militia are

Australians, British, Americans, Belgian,

French, German, Chechens, who mostly

came from Europe, so that most Iraqis and

Syrians regard ISIS as an alien power

forcing and imposing themselves and their

barbarity upon Arab lands with their

sophisticated weaponries and ammunition

that are mostly sourced from US, Britain

and the rest of Europe.

If ISIS is not a Sunni militia, then who are

they working for?

Who employed them to wreck havoc in

the Middle East?

Why is it that the US government and its

NATO allies cannot seriously fight ISIS in

Iraq, Syria and the rest of the Levant? ISIS

is US-made monster! ISIS Caliphate is

never an Islamic Caliphate.

It is a “U.S.-made Caliphate” that does not

have any binding authority whatsoever over

worldwide Muslims.

It is a known truth that CIA constantly

backs-up and supports all known so-called

jihadist groups from the Taliban of

Afghanistan and Pakistan, to even Jemaa

Islamiyya and Al-Qaeda in the Middle East,

and the Boko Haram of Nigeria.

That is why US will never seriously fight

these monsters it created.

US is the invisible director of all international

terrorism groups so that these monsters can

commit crimes mercilessly and with

impunity against humanity. These monsters

are made alive and sustained by American

dollars and ably, yet subtly directed by the

I N T E R N A T I O N A L M O V E M E N T F O R A J U S T W O R L D

3

continued from page 2

continued next page

master of the puppetry: US invisible

hegemonic hand!

NATO is in unholy partnership with the

CIA operators who are currently training,

arming, funding and equipping thousands

of ISIS combatants from Europe to

overthrow secular and socialist Syria as

part of the CIA ploy called “Arab

Spring”—which is nothing but a covert

ideological operation to to conquer the

Middle East and Central Asia, its oil

reserves, its pipeline corridors as part of

an imperial agenda. (On The Trans-

Afghan pipeline see Michel

Chossudovsky, “America’s War on

Terrorism”, chapter 5, pp. 65-91).

Therefore, who is supporting this ISIS

militia, who is equipping them, who is

funding them so heftily?

For what purpose are they doing these

despicable acts? If they are truly

Islamic fighters bent on fighting for

the rights of Islam and the Muslims,

then why do they bomb Sunni Muslim

mosques, Sufi Muslim shrines and

Shi’ite Muslim prayer halls of their co-

religionists?

Is this about establishing a war scenario in

the Middle East so that the global weaponry

business of the US military industrial

complex is at its best and profitable business

as usual?

These are relevant questions for our sober

reflection.

19 March 2015

Henry Francis B. Espiritu is Associate

Professor of Philosophy and Asian Studies

at the University of the Philippines, Cebu

City.

Source: http://www.globalresearch.ca/

STATEMENTS

MEDITERRANEAN CATASTROPHES: TIME THAT THE PEOPLE OF

EUROPE STOOD UP

About a fortnight ago — just before

midnight on the 18th of April 2015 — the

Mediterranean witnessed one of the greatest

catastrophes that has ever occurred on its

waters. More than 800 migrants in a small

fishing boat were drowned off the coast of

Libya as a result of a collision with another

vessel.

This was the latest in a series of tragedies

of this sort. Just before the 18th April episode,

there were two other shipwrecks that left

450 people dead. In September 2014, 500

migrants drowned when the traffickers

navigating their boat rammed it in an attempt

to force the passengers on board to get into

another smaller vessel. In October 2013,

360 Africans perished when their tiny boat

caught fire within sight of the Italian coast.

There is clear evidence now to show that

migrants packed into untrustworthy boats

dying in various disasters on the

Mediterranean is increasing at an alarming

rate. This year, up to the end of April, at

least 1750 of them were killed crossing the

Mediterranean. This is 30 times more than

for the same period in 2014!

These desperate, largely poor migrants are

from different countries. Libyans, Syrians,

Iraqis, Sudanese (both North and South),

Somalians, Eritreans, Malians and even

Bangladeshis would be some of the

nationalities involved. The vast majority of

them are fleeing to Europe from the turmoil

and chaos in their countries, often typified

by unbearable violence, or are seeking to

escape grinding poverty and gnawing

hunger. The media portrays their countries

as “failed or “failing” states.

What the media does not highlight is the

role of certain Western governments in

creating the chaos and violence in a number

of these so-called failed states. In the case

of Libya for instance which now supplies

some of the traffickers and generates many

of the migrants, it was the NATO

engineered ouster of Muammar Gaddafi in

2011 that set into motion the forces that

are responsible for the current upheaval in

the country, as a consequence of which

there is no functioning government.

Gaddafi’s violent overthrow — it is worth

emphasizing over and over again — was

primarily to enable French, American and

other Western companies to control Libya’s

vast oil reserves and to nip in the bud his

plans to ensure that Africa would not be

under the sway of Western imperial

interests.

Likewise, if hundreds of thousands of

Syrians have fled their country in the last

three years, including those who are trying

to cross the Mediterranean, it is mainly

because of a brutal, violent uprising

orchestrated by the US and Israel, with the

active collusion of regional actors such as

Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey and

executed on the ground by fanatical religious

bigots like the Jabhat al-Nusra and Da’ish (

ISIL ) which seeks to eliminate Bashar al-

Assad who is a critical link in the resistance

to Western-Israeli dominance over West

Asia.Yet another example, it is the Anglo-

American invasion and occupation of Iraq

in 2003 that triggered sectarian violence

leading to the present instability which has

now conduced to a situation where a group

like Da’ish is able to control a swathe of

territory further driving Iraqis from home

and hearth. Needless to say, the principal

reasons for the imperial conquest of Iraq

were control over oil and buttressing

By Chandra Muzaffar

S T A T E M E N T

I N T E R N A T I O N A L M O V E M E N T F O R A J U S T W O R L D

4

S T A T E M E N T Scontinued from page 3

continued next page

Israel’s position.

Turning to another country in the Arab world

which has produced a number of migrants

seeking refuge in Europe, it appears that by

helping to create South Sudan in pursuit of

their own agenda, Western powers and

Israel have only exacerbated an already dire

situation. Somalia is another country which

has known only perpetual instability since

the early nineties partly because of US

meddling through its proxies in the region.

The inevitable outcome of this is the exodus

of migrants as the Somali presence in a

number of boat tragedies in the

Mediterranean reveals. One can expect US

collaboration with Saudi Arabia in the latter’s

assault upon Yemen to give rise to yet

another exodus, a portion of which will find

its way to the Mediterranean.

As with Libya, Syria and Iraq, US direct

and indirect intervention in South Sudan,

Somalia, Yemen and other countries,

sometimes abetted by other Western

powers and Israel, has undoubtedly made

life much worse for the affected people

and in many instances forced them to brave

the treacherous waters of the Mediterranean

in search of security and certainty. In

looking for solutions to the tragedies

occurring in the Mediterranean, European

governments and European civil societies

should focus upon this paramount issue:

how US, Israeli and other Western agendas

aimed at control and dominance — or

hegemony — have been a fundamental

factor in creating chaos and instability thus

compelling millions of men, women and

children right across West Asia and North

Africa (WANA) to risk their lives in the

hope that they will reach other shores that

will provide them with shelter and succor.

This does not mean that there are no other

causes for the outflow of people from

WANA. Bad governance within a nation-

state, especially massive corruption,

oppression and religious and ethnic

discrimination have all contributed to the

exodus, to people fleeing the land of their

birth and ancestry. But incontrovertible

evidence convinces us that the determined

drive by the US and its allies to pursue their

hegemonic agenda in WANA and elsewhere

has been the principal — sometimes the root

— cause of people trying to cross the

Mediterranean and reach Europe for a better

life.

The people of Europe some of whom have

been deeply moved by the 18th April

catastrophe should demand that their

governments cease to support a hegemonic

power on the other side of the Atlantic or

participate in hegemonic adventures that

bring death to so many and cause so much

pain and misery to their fellow human beings.

1st May 2015

Dr. Chandra Muzaffar is the President of

the International Movement for a Just World

(JUST).

ENHANCING ASEAN

The Malaysian Minister of Foreign Affairs,

Dato Seri AnifahAman, has adopted the right

stance at the meeting of the ASEAN

Ministers of Foreign Affairs in conjunction

with the ASEAN Summit in Kuala Lumpur

by emphasizing the importance of

continuing with ASEAN’s non-

confrontational approach in dealing with

maritime disputes in the South China Sea

between certain ASEAN states and China.

A confrontational approach which forces

ASEAN as a collective entity into an

adversarial mode in its relations with China

will be detrimental to both sides. It will

undermine on-going efforts to formulate a

Code of Conduct governing ASEAN-China

relations especially in the context of the

South China Sea.

One hopes that the ASEAN Summit this

time will also facilitate the opening up of

yet another channel of communication

between ASEAN and China through think

tanks, research institutes and universities

which will explore in depth the many facets

in the interaction between the two sides.

Since the geopolitical and geo-economic

dimensions of this relationship will

undoubtedly figure prominently in an

exploration of this sort, the entities

concerned should also interface with US

think tanks and universities. A three way

interaction among ASEAN, China and the

US through this channel may make it a little

easier to surmount some of the challenges

that confront the three actors today. ASEAN

researchers and scholars should view this

interaction as an opportunity to strengthen

the cohesiveness and solidarity of ASEAN

as a distinct political community of

sovereign states that is determined to protect

its independence in the face of escalating

Sino-US rivalry.

The ASEAN Summit should also address

yet another challenge to its cohesiveness

and solidarity. The frayed relations between

segments of the Buddhist and Muslim

communities in Myanmar and Thailand call

for an earnest effort to address some of

the underlying causes of friction between

the two communities. While attempts to

overcome some immediate concerns should

continue through governments in both

states, civil society groups should also hold

substantive dialogues between Buddhists and

Muslims. It is significant that civil society

groups have been doing this for decades

below the radar screen. A platform has now

been created for Buddhist-Muslim relations

— the Buddhist-Muslim Forum established

in August 2013 — which seeks to promote

their shared values through action

programmes. The International Network of

Engaged Buddhists (INEB), the International

Movement for a Just World (JUST),

Muhammadiyah and Religions for Peace are

among the partners in this endeavour. We

have reached out to the ASEAN Secretariat

in Jakarta. The ASEAN Summit should give

a boost to this ASEAN citizens’ effort by

recognizing the importance of inter-faith

dialogue and action that goes beyond Muslim

and Buddhist communities and embraces

all the religions in the region.

Appreciating the role of civil society groups

in building bridges among communities

should be part of the larger goal of

transforming ASEAN into a people-centred

By Chandra Muzaffar

I N T E R N A T I O N A L M O V E M E N T F O R A J U S T W O R L D

5

continued next page

A R T I C L E S

continued from page 4

entity. Though some ASEAN governments

have long spoken of this aspiration, very

little concrete action has been taken —

outside business circles — to translate it

into reality. There are at least three areas

where this can be done. A pioneer

programme which brings together a

hundred upper secondary school students

between the ages of 15 and 17, ten from

each ASEAN country, should be launched

as soon as feasible with the eventual aim of

nurturing tens of thousands of young

people with genuine understanding of, and

real-life exposure to, ASEAN. Each student

selected for this programme should

immerse herself in a month long study

course on the various dimensions of

ASEAN, including its geography, history

and myriad cultures before she spends a

month staying in each of the other nine

ASEAN states, over a nine month period.

After she returns home, hopefully armed

with an ASEAN outlook, she would be

required to write a monograph or produce

a video on her nine month tour of ASEAN.

She should then be invited to visit secondary

schools throughout her own country to

disseminate information and knowledge

about ASEAN based upon her own

experience and her learning.Finally, student

participants and educationists in all ten

ASEAN states should do an assessment of

this pioneer programme to determine its

future.

An equally powerful arena for fostering an

ASEAN outlook and an ASEAN spirit would

be culture and entertainment. Wouldn’t it

be wonderful to popularize ASEAN

cuisines within ASEAN itself? Over time,

ASEAN citizens should be able to empathize

with ASEAN cuisines other than their own.

Could we also organize ASEAN cultural

exhibitions and shows in not only the cities

but also in the small towns that dot the

ASEAN landscape which will bring bits of

ASEAN to the remotest corners of this

region? Would it be possible to sponsor an

ASEAN –wide song contest which would

require each contestant to sing a song in

the language of her land? What about

increasing the screening of films and

documentaries from other ASEAN

countries in each and every ASEAN state?

Since the radio is still an influential medium

of communication in much of rural

ASEAN, could we expand broadcast hours

allotted to news and entertainment from our

ASEAN neighbours?

If culture and entertainment impact

upon people, so does sports. It is

somewhat surprising that ASEAN has

not established an ASEAN badminton

team, given the presence of so many

world-class badminton players in

individual ASEAN states. Such a

badminton team which could take on a

Chinese or Japanese or Danish team

would help in fostering an ASEAN

identity. The same could be done in

table-tennis or hockey or football or

basketball or netball. Even an ASEAN

athletics contingent which could

compete at the international level would

bring ASEAN citizens together.

When people are able to see ASEAN

perform as ASEAN, whether in the

sports field or the entertainment arena,

they will begin to identify with ASEAN.

Similarly, when an ASEAN

consciousness seeps into the minds of

school students, it is quite conceivable

that future generations will feel and think

ASEAN. It is at that point that ASEAN

would have become a people centred

entity, not a state based outfit.

26 April 2015.

ARTICLES

OBAMA’S OUTRAGEOUS SNUB TO THE RUSSIAN PEOPLE

Barack Obama’s decision to play political

games with the 70th anniversary of Victory

Day was probably intended as a snub to

Vladimir Putin. However, it’s actually an

outrageous insult to the Russian people.

I remember my first Russian May 9th very

well. For the simple reason that following

a rather raucous Saturday night, I plain

forgot about it. Waking up slightly the worst

for wear, I took Kris Kristofferson’s advice

and flung on my “cleanest, dirty shirt”

before heading to downtown Khabarovsk

on that Sunday morning sidewalk. The

problem was that the otherwise innocent

garment was something I’d picked up at

World Cup 2006 in Berlin. Emblazoned

across the front were the words,

“Deutschland” and on the rear “Germany”

for those who had initially missed the point.

Dozily trotting down the Far Eastern

capital’s wide central thoroughfare, Karl

Marx Street, I noticed a few strange looks

alright. By the time I passed the viewing

platform at Lenin Square, my paranoia levels

had peaked as people kept smiling at me, a

very un-Russian trait. Eventually, I reached

the Steakhouse where I’d arranged to meet

my friend Vova and his buddy Max. Seeing

my attire, they both laughed so hard that

they doubled over.

“Oh my god! Is there a shop open, I need

to buy a new T-Shirt,” I nervously said.

“No, you don’t. It’s just funny. You are not

doing anything wrong,” Vova replied.

“Are you sure? I won’t get attacked by

Russian nationalists or anything?”

“Not unless you put über alles after the

Deutschland!”

By Bryan MacDonald

I N T E R N A T I O N A L M O V E M E N T F O R A J U S T W O R L D

6

continued next page

A R T I C L E S

continued from page 5In my homeland, St Patrick’s Day is a very

big deal. The Irish have a love/hate attitude

to it and many resent its association with

heavy drinking. However, it remains our

national holiday and despite the odd cringe,

we are proud of its global appeal. To be

honest, I’m not sure how safe it would be

to wear an England soccer shirt in Dublin

or a provincial Irish city on March 17. For

what it’s worth, I wouldn’t personally be

inclined to volunteer as a guinea pig either.

Russians respect Germany

The point here is that Russians, despite the

horrors of the “Great Patriotic War,” as its

known there, don’t hate Germans. In actual

fact, they quite like them. I can only give

my personal experience, but I find that when

you ask Russians which foreign country

they most admire, a few will plump for the

USA, a couple more for Japan or France

but the majority will say Germany. Back

home, I’d have to travel a long way before

I’d find an Irishman who would admit to

reverence for England.

Angela Merkel knows this too. She also

understands how much “Victory Day”

means to Russians. For that reason, despite

humungous pressure from the US, which

effectively colonizes her nation militarily, she

will visit Moscow this weekend to

commemorate the dead. The Chancellor is

skipping the army parade on the 9th and

instead will lay a wreath at the Tomb of the

Unknown Soldier with President Putin the

following day. Of course, a lot of Russians

feel she should appear at both events.

Indeed, one Vadim Raskin, a doctor from

Novokuznetsk, organized a campaign which

saw thousands write to her Berlin address

expressing dismay.

While Merkel feels that the blowback from

the Ukraine crisis means she can’t attend

the military display, she’s at least

acknowledging Russia’s gigantic war

sacrifice. Smaller NATO members, Greece

and the Czech Republic, are sending their

heads of state and Slovakia will be

represented by its Prime Minister, Robert

Fico. Many in Moscow, including President

Putin, accuse the US of coercing other

European states not to send delegations.

However, while Europe cowers under

American duress, the leaders of China, India,

Brazil and South Africa will be present in

Moscow. What should have been a day for

solemn commemoration of humanity’s

most tragic waste of life, has been turned

into an interstate ‘brannigan’, worthy of a

putative new Cold War. The man

responsible for this is Barack Obama. It’s

less the “audacity of hope” and more the

timidity of doltishness.

Obama’s own goal

Like an Englishman taking a penalty at a

World Cup, Obama has snatched defeat

from the jaws of victory and handed his

great rival, Vladimir Putin, the moral high

ground. Let me explain why the White

House’s petty snub is a major strategic

blunder and also an error of principle.

What most European and North American

commentators don’t fully understand is just

how all-consuming memories of the “Great

Patriotic War” are for Russians. Defeating

German fascism and repelling the Nazi

invasion is regarded as their finest hour as a

people. Some in the West may perceive Yuri

Gagarin’s first space flight as the crowning

glory, but the natives don’t. There’s a simple

reason for this, almost every Russian either

has a living or dead relative who fought in

the conflict. On the other hand, not many

Russians can boast of a family member who

has been to outer space.

The UK and the USA also lean heavily on

the memory of World War Two, the latter

aided by Hollywood which often re-writes

the accepted history. While both made huge

contributions to the war effort, even the

most myopic would not dare suggest that

either’s suffering was comparable to what

the USSR endured. Total Soviet deaths

numbered around 27 million.

By comparison, Britain lost 450,000 and

the USA 420,000. The main aggressor,

Germany, counted around six million

casualties. In 2004, Russian historian Vadim

Erlikhman estimated that around 14 million

of the Soviet fallen were from Russia with

other massive losses sustained by Ukraine

(6.8 million) and Belarus (2.3 million). The

central Asian countries, former Soviet

republics of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan

suffered greater loss of life than the UK or

USA. Poland was also a victim of the war.

In 1987, Dachau survivor Franciszek Proch

concluded that 3.3 million ethnic Polish and

2.5 million Polish Jews died.

Obama - hope we can’t believe in

For Barack Obama to use the specter of a

civil war in a failed, corrupt state on the

edge of Europe as an excuse to water the

graves of Russia’s war dead is an absurdity.

Especially after his own representatives

promoted the violent coup - against a freely

elected government - which created the

conditions for the conflict.

A man who likes to preach about

democracy and freedom should surely

realize that those values he, outwardly, holds

dear survive in part because of the Russian

and Soviet sacrifice 70 years ago. I actually

suspect he doesn’t acknowledge this. US

policy towards Moscow is so harebrained

that one would venture that a team of

monkeys, armed with ‘ogham’ stones,

would do a better job than the State

Department’s current Russia team.

A country that celebrates its own national

holidays with such fervor as the Americans

exhibit on Thanksgiving and the 4th of July

should be aware of how other nations feel

I N T E R N A T I O N A L M O V E M E N T F O R A J U S T W O R L D A R T I C L E S

7

continued from page 6

continued next page

about theirs. That said, Victory Day is more

than a regular national holiday. It’s living,

breathing history.

This 70th anniversary is probably the last

major milestone that a significant number

of veterans will be able to attend. The fact

that Barack Obama was unable to find it in

his heart to come to Moscow and doff his

cap to men and women who did more for

the values he purports to hold dear than he

ever will, speaks volumes about his

character. The worst American President

since Jimmy Carter has not only destroyed

relations between the White House and the

Kremlin, he may also have obliterated any

residual goodwill that still existed from the

ordinary Russian people towards America.

That’s a poisonous legacy.

6 May 2015

Bryan MacDonald is an Irish writer and

commentator focusing on Russia and its

hinterlands and international geo-politics.

Source: rt.com

NUCLEAR DEAL SPARKS RACE TO ENTER IRANIAN MARKETS

By Nile Bowie

The deal reached in Lausanne between Iran

and major world powers represents a high

point in negotiations aimed at outlining the

future of Iran’s nuclear programme.

Considerable concessions have been made

by both sides, while Hassan Rouhani’s

government in Tehran has moved closer to

freeing Iran from almost all economic and

financial sanctions, a key goal of his

administration.

Though the full details of a comprehensive

deal will not be finalized until late June and

differences remain on various technical and

legal dimensions of the programme, a

successful settlement of the nuclear issue

could open the door to a new stage in the

US-Iran relationship, the effects of which

have already begun to slowly reshape the

region’s existing strategic order.

Iran must now fulfill a number of stringent

conditions over the next six to eight months

before Western states lift the sanctions

regime placed on the country, which have

weakened the Iranian economy and

wrought widespread human suffering. The

tasks are designed to reduce Iran’s breakout

capacity, by extending the period of time

Tehran would need to produce enough

fissile material for a nuclear warhead, if it

decided to do build one.

Due to the politicized nature of the issue, it

is necessary to address several preliminary

facts about Iran’s nuclear program. Though

Iran has accelerated its capacity to enrich

uranium in recent years, assessments that

represent the consensus view of America’s

intelligence agencies have continued to

maintain since 2007 that there is no hard

evidence of Iran’s intentions to develop a

nuclear weapon.

Al Jazeera has recently published a secret

cable that demonstrates how Israeli

intelligence assessments of Iran’s nuclear

program are consistent with those of

American intelligence agencies. The

International Atomic Energy Agency

(IAEA), which has conducted extensive

inspections of the Iranian program for years,

also concluded that Tehran was not seeking

to weaponize its nuclear program.

The Iranian government has consistently

renounced the use of nuclear weapons, but

has steadfastly upheld its right to maintain a

peaceful nuclear program and a capacity to

enrich uranium for civilian purposes, which

it is entitled to as a signatory of the Nuclear

Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Tehran

views the politicization of the nuclear issue

as an affront to its sovereignty and a pretext

for Western powers to enforce sanctions

to undermine and contain the Islamic

Republic.

Some of the tasks Iran must now adhere

to involve intrusive daily IAEA inspections,

a significant reduction of low-enriched

uranium stockpiles, disabling two-thirds of

installed centrifuges for a period of 10 years,

a pledge not to construct any new uranium

enrichment facilities or enrich above an

agreed percentage, among other stipulations.

Tehran must also cooperate and provide

access to the IAEA as it investigates evidence

of past work on nuclear weaponization.

Upon fulfilling these conditions, the

European Union has agreed to lift its embargo

on Iranian oil in addition to all other

economic and financial sanctions. The

Obama administration would then issue

waivers corresponding to US extra-

territorial sanctions that would deter banks

and European companies from financing

trade and investments within Iran. The

removal of economic sanctions will be a

huge boost to the Iranian economy and

mutually advantageous for western business

interests.

Global corporations view Iran as a largely

untapped market with a vast potential for

development. Swiss banks have begun

positioning themselves to prospective

investors as an alternative to European

banks that cannot conduct business with

A R T I C L E SI N T E R N A T I O N A L M O V E M E N T F O R A J U S T W O R L D

8

continued next page

continued from page 7Tehran until sanctions are formally

withdrawn. Oil and gas companies,

automakers, industrial manufacturers, and

global aviation giants such as Airbus and

Boeing have the potential to profit

enormously.

Iran possesses large oilfields along its border

with Iraq, as well as the South Pars offshore

gasfield in the Gulf along the maritime border

with Qatar, one of the largest gasfields in

the world. The Rouhani administration’s

business-friendly approach, along with

Iran’s potential for large oil and gas

discoveries and low cost of production, are

indications that Iran will resume its position

as one of the world’s biggest crude

exporters once sanctions are dismantled,

placing greater downward pressure on

energy prices.

Sanctions have reduced Iranian oil exports

by half, from 2.5m barrels a day in 2012 to

1.1m a day, while sources indicate that Iran

has a large backlog of at least 30m barrels

of unsold crude being stored. Ordinary

Iranians will not immediately feel the benefits

of sharp inflows of western money and

investment, though a strengthened Iranian

economy will lift the national mood and

solidify the victory of Iran’s pragmatists,

who have secured support from political

forces that cautiously endorsed the

negotiations, such as the Islamic

Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

In Washington, the Republican-controlled

Congress has shown vociferous opposition

to the Iranian deal, echoing the hardline

stance of Israel and Saudi Arabia. While

American companies stand to gain from

access to Iranian markets, there are clearly

more strategic considerations that have

motivated the Obama administration’s policy

shift toward Tehran to favor diplomacy on

the nuclear issue, when previously the

position was narrowly reliant on sanctions,

non-engagement and the threat of use of

force.

US Needs Iran to Offset Strategic Decline

Washington’s web of contradictory alliances,

overt and covert interventions, and attempts

to consolidate a pro-American regional order

throughout the Middle East have resulted in

that region becoming more sectarian and

violently unstable than at any point in modern

history, while the strategic position of the

United States more generally is in decline. It

is in this context that strategic rapprochement

between Washington and Tehran has

become more advantageous to American

interests than a policy of non-engagement

and open support for regime change.

Though engagement and communication

between the governments in Washington

and Tehran are at their highest point since

the Islamic Revolution in 1979, there is no

understating the mutual antipathy and distrust

that both governments hold toward one

another. While there are several areas where

the interests of Washington and Tehran align,

this strategic confluence does not imply that

any US-Iran cooperation on issues outside

the nuclear deal would be direct or even

coordinated.

The Obama administration sees Iran as a

potential tool that it can leverage to protect

American interests and investments in Iraq,

force Israel into greater restraint and

compliance, and reduce dependence on its

traditional Gulf ally, Saudi Arabia. However,

this would not imply that Washington would

scale back its attempts to curtail Iranian

influence in areas where it suits US strategic

interests, such as through support for anti-

Assad militias in Syria and Saudi intervention

in Yemen to reinstall a pro-American regime.

The Saudi monarchy feels deeply insecure

about US-Iran rapprochement after being

kept in the dark about the establishment of

diplomatic backchannels between

Washington and Tehran, while being

subsequently excluded from the nuclear

negotiations. Riyadh’s opposition to a

Western détente with Tehran is grounded in

the fear of competing with an economically

dynamic, energy-rich rival, which would

reduce its own strategic importance and

increase the vulnerability of the regime.

Increased US shale production and Iran’s

re-entry into global energy markets

weakens Riyadh’s leverage with

Washington, which may be beginning to

harbor doubts about the long-term durability

of the Saudi gerontocracy’s continued

control over the reins of state power. The

Obama administration undertook its policy

reversal on Iran because it almost certainly

sees the potential for the Saudi monarchy

to become a growing liability, an impression

that has been spurred on by policy

differences with regard to intervention in

Syria.

While the United States aided and abetted

Saudi Arabia’s export of weapons and

radical Salafism to fuel the insurgency

against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad,

the autonomy of the Islamic State (ISIS)

group and its expansion into Iraq threatens

US interests and energy investments in the

semi-autonomous Kurdish region, as well

as Saudi national security. Moreover, Iran

believes that the US is insincere about

fighting terrorist groups like ISIS because

it has enabled the rise and condoned the

conduct of similar groups in Syria – with

the goal of containing Iranian influence –

before they turned their guns against

Western interests.

Iran is widely seen as the only force

capable of defending Iraq from ISIS

through its ability to bring together Kurdish

troops, the Iraqi Army and the Shiite

militias into a coherent force. Iran’s military

involvement in Iraq has indirectly protected

American interests in Baghdad and Erbil

without the US having to deploy troops to

engage ISIS in direct combat. In other

words, Washington stands to gain by

letting Iran clean up the mess created by

US-Saudi policies that intended to constrain

Iranian influence.

Israel, like Saudi Arabia, is principally

opposed to Iran normalizing diplomatic and

business relations with the Western world

I N T E R N A T I O N A L M O V E M E N T F O R A J U S T W O R L D

9

A R T I C L E Scontinued from page 8

continued next page

– not over any fantastic existential threat

posed by Iran against the Jewish people –

because doing so would shift the regional

balance of power and constrain Israeli

impunity. Tel Aviv is well aware that a

nuclear deal that verifies Tehran’s peaceful

compliance serves to erode any justification

it could have to launch a military operation

against Iran’s nuclear facilities.

The Obama administration is clearly

aware that Iran poses no substantial

threat to Israel, which maintains an

undeclared nuclear arsenal that is entirely

unmonitored by the international

community. Therefore, the strategic

basis of the nuclear deal has more to do

with constraining the actions of Benjamin

Netanyahu’s government in Tel Aviv,

which has notoriously strained relations

with the White House, thus allowing

Washington to reap the aforementioned

benefits of a strategic rapprochement

with Iran.

Furthermore, the Obama administration

was inclined to reverse its policy on Iran

to avoid Russia and China displacing

American business interests as they

increasingly deepen strategic relations

with Tehran. Washington sees the

pragmatism of the Rouhani government

and its desire to open to the global

economy as the best bet of ensuring the

unimpeded flow of oil through the Strait

of Hormuz, at a time when the US is

drawing down its military presence in

the region. As long as the strategic utility

of cooperation with Iran remains greater

than the strategic utility of hostility, the

United States can be expected to

cautiously continue on its current

trajectory vis-à-vis Tehran.

11 April 2015

Nile Bowie is a Singapore-based political

commentator and columnist for the

Malaysian Reserve newspaper. His

articles have appeared in numerous

international media outlets, including

Russia Today (RT) and Al Jazeera, and

newspapers such as the International

New York Times, the Global Times and

the New Straits Times. He is a research

associate with the International

Movement for a Just World (JUST).

Source: RT.com

A SCENE OF THE CRIME

By Seymour M. Hersh

A reporter’s journey to My Lai and the

secrets of the past.

(This is the first part of a three part article.

The remaining two parts will appear in

subsequent issues of the Commentary …

Editor)

Part 1

There is a long ditch in the village of My

Lai. On the morning of March 16, 1968, it

was crowded with the bodies of the dead—

dozens of women, children, and old people,

all gunned down by young American

soldiers. Now, forty-seven years later, the

ditch at My Lai seems wider than I

remember from the news photographs of

the slaughter: erosion and time doing their

work. During the Vietnam War, there was

a rice paddy nearby, but it has been paved

over to make My Lai more accessible to

the thousands of tourists who come each

year to wander past the modest markers

describing the terrible event. The My Lai

massacre was a pivotal moment in that

misbegotten war: an American contingent

of about a hundred soldiers, known as

Charlie Company, having received poor

intelligence, and thinking that they would

encounter Vietcong troops or sympathizers,

discovered only a peaceful village at

breakfast. Nevertheless, the soldiers of

Charlie Company raped women, burned

houses, and turned their M-16s on the

unarmed civilians of My Lai. Among the

leaders of the assault was Lieutenant

William L. Calley, a junior-college dropout

from Miami.

By early 1969, most of the members of

Charlie Company had completed their tours

and returned home. I was then a thirty-

two-year-old freelance reporter in

Washington, D.C. Determined to

understand how young men—boys,

really—could have done this, I spent weeks

pursuing them. In many cases, they talked

openly and, for the most part, honestly with

me, describing what they did at My Lai

and how they planned to live with the

memory of it.

In testimony before an Army inquiry, some

of the soldiers acknowledged being at the

ditch but claimed that they had disobeyed

Calley, who was ordering them to kill. They

said that one of the main shooters, along

with Calley himself, had been Private First

Class Paul Meadlo. The truth remains

elusive, but one G.I. described to me a

moment that most of his fellow-soldiers, I

later learned, remembered vividly. At

Calley’s order, Meadlo and others had fired

round after round into the ditch and tossed

in a few grenades.

Then came a high-pitched whining, which

grew louder as a two- or three-year-old

boy, covered with mud and blood, crawled

I N T E R N A T I O N A L M O V E M E N T F O R A J U S T W O R L D

10

A R T I C L E S

continued next page

continued from page 9

his way among the bodies and scrambled

toward the rice paddy. His mother had likely

protected him with her body. Calley saw

what was happening and, according to the

witnesses, ran after the child, dragged him

back to the ditch, threw him in, and shot

him.

The morning after the massacre, Meadlo

stepped on a land mine while on a routine

patrol, and his right foot was blown off.

While waiting to be evacuated to a field

hospital by helicopter, he condemned Calley.

“God will punish you for what you made

me do,” a G.I. recalled Meadlo saying.

“Get him on the helicopter!” Calley shouted.

Meadlo went on cursing at Calley until the

helicopter arrived.

Meadlo had grown up in farm country in

western Indiana. After a long time spent

dropping dimes into a pay phone and calling

information operators across the state, I

found a Meadlo family listed in New

Goshen, a small town near Terre Haute. A

woman who turned out to be Paul’s mother,

Myrtle, answered the phone. I said that I

was a reporter and was writing about

Vietnam. I asked how Paul was doing, and

wondered if I could come and speak to

him the next day. She told me I was

welcome to try.

The Meadlos lived in a small house with

clapboard siding on a ramshackle chicken

farm. When I pulled up in my rental car,

Myrtle came out to greet me and said that

Paul was inside, though she had no idea

whether he would talk or what he might

say. It was clear that he had not told her

much about Vietnam. Then Myrtle said

something that summed up a war that I

had grown to hate: “I sent them a good boy

and they made him a murderer.”

Meadlo invited me in and agreed to talk. He

was twenty-two. He had married before

leaving for Vietnam, and he and his wife

had a two-and-a-half-year-old son and an

infant daughter. Despite his injury, he

worked a factory job to support the family.

I asked him to show me his wound and to

tell me about the treatment. He took off his

prosthesis and described what he’d been

through. It did not take long for the

conversation to turn to My Lai. Meadlo

talked and talked, clearly desperate to regain

some self-respect. With little emotion, he

described Calley’s orders to kill. He did not

justify what he had done at My Lai, except

that the killings “did take a load off my

conscience,” because of “the buddies we’d

lost. It was just revenge, that’s all it was.”

Meadlo recounted his actions in bland,

appalling detail. “There was supposed to

have been some Vietcong in [My Lai] and

we began to make a sweep through it,” he

told me. “Once we got there we began

gathering up the people . . . started putting

them in big mobs. There must have been

about forty or forty-five civilians standing

in one big circle in the middle of the village.

. . . Calley told me and a couple of other

guys to watch them.” Calley, as he recalled,

came back ten minutes later and told him,

“Get with it. I want them dead.” From about

ten or fifteen feet away, Meadlo said, Calley

“started shooting them. Then he told me to

start shooting them. . . . I started to shoot

them, but the other guys wouldn’t do it. So

we”—Meadlo and Calley—”went ahead

and killed them.” Meadlo estimated that he

had killed fifteen people in the circle. “We

all were under orders,” he said. “We all

thought we were doing the right thing. At

the time it didn’t bother me.” There was

official testimony showing that Meadlo had

in fact been extremely distressed by Calley’s

order. After being told by Calley to “take

care of this group,” one Charlie Company

soldier recounted, Meadlo and a fellow-

soldier “were actually playing with the kids,

telling the people where to sit down and

giving the kids candy.” When Calley returned

and said that he wanted them dead, the soldier

said, “Meadlo just looked at him like he

couldn’t believe it. He says, ‘Waste them?’

“ When Calley said yes, another soldier

testified, Meadlo and Calley “opened up and

started firing.” But then Meadlo “started to

cry.”

Mike Wallace, of CBS, was interested in

my interview, and Meadlo agreed to tell his

story again, on national television. I spent

the night before the show on a couch in

the Meadlo home and flew to New York

the next morning with Meadlo and his wife.

There was time to talk, and I learned that

Meadlo had spent weeks in recovery and

rehabilitation at an Army hospital in Japan.

Once he came home, he said nothing about

his experiences in Vietnam. One night,

shortly after his return, his wife woke up

to hysterical crying in one of the children’s

rooms. She rushed in and found Paul

violently shaking the child.

I’d been tipped off about My Lai by

Geoffrey Cowan, a young anti-war lawyer

in Washington, D.C. Cowan had little

specific information, but he’d heard that

an unnamed G.I. had gone crazy and killed

scores of Vietnamese civilians. Three years

earlier, while I was covering the Pentagon

for the Associated Press, I had been told

by officers returning from the war about

the killing of Vietnamese civilians that was

going on. One day, while pursuing Cowan’s

tip, I ran into a young Army colonel whom

I’d known on the Pentagon beat. He had

been wounded in the leg in Vietnam and,

while recovering, learned that he was to be

promoted to general. He now worked in

an office that had day-to-day responsibility

for the war. When I asked him what he

knew about the unnamed G.I., he gave me

a sharp, angry look, and began whacking

his hand against his knee. “That boy Calley

didn’t shoot anyone higher than this,” he

said.

I N T E R N A T I O N A L M O V E M E N T F O R A J U S T W O R L D A R T I C L E S

11

continued next page

continued from page 10

I had a name. In a local library, I found a

brief story buried in the Times about a

Lieutenant Calley who had been charged

by the Army with the murder of an

unspecified number of civilians in South

Vietnam. I tracked down Calley, whom the

Army had hidden away in senior officers’

quarters at Fort Benning, in Columbus,

Georgia. By then, someone in the Army had

allowed me to read and take notes from a

classified charge sheet accusing Calley of

the premeditated murder of a hundred and

nine “Oriental human beings.”

Calley hardly seemed satanic. He was a

slight, nervous man in his mid-twenties,

with pale, almost translucent skin. He tried

hard to seem tough. Over many beers, he

told me how he and his soldiers had engaged

and killed the enemy at My Lai in a fiercely

contested firefight. We talked through the

night. At one point, Calley excused himself,

to go to the bathroom. He left the door partly

open, and I could see that he was vomiting

blood.

In November, 1969, I wrote five articles

about Calley, Meadlo, and the massacre. I

had gone to Life and Look with no success,

so I turned instead to a small anti-war news

agency in Washington, the Dispatch News

Service. It was a time of growing anxiety

and unrest. Richard Nixon had won the

1968 election by promising to end the war,

but his real plan was to win it, through

escalation and secret bombing. In 1969, as

many as fifteen hundred American soldiers

were being killed every month—almost the

same as the year before.

Combat reporters such as Homer Bigart,

Bernard Fall, David Halberstam, Neil

Sheehan, Malcolm Browne, Frances

FitzGerald, Gloria Emerson, Morley Safer,

and Ward Just filed countless dispatches

from the field that increasingly made plain

that the war was morally groundless,

strategically lost, and nothing like what the

military and political officials were

describing to the public in Saigon and in

Washington. On November 15, 1969, two

days after the publication of my first My

Lai dispatch, an anti-war march in

Washington drew half a million people. H.

R. Haldeman, Nixon’s most trusted aide,

and his enforcer, took notes in the Oval

Office that were made public eighteen years

later. They revealed that on December 1,

1969, at the height of the outcry over Paul

Meadlo’s revelations, Nixon approved the

use of “dirty tricks” to discredit a key witness

to the massacre. When, in 1971, an Army

jury convicted Calley of mass murder and

sentenced him to life at hard labor, Nixon

intervened, ordering Calley to be released

from an Army prison and placed under

house arrest pending review. Calley was

freed three months after Nixon left office

and spent the ensuing years working in his

father-in-law’s jewelry store, in Columbus,

Georgia, and offering self-serving

interviews to journalists willing to pay for

them. Finally, in 2009, in a speech to a

Kiwanis Club, he said that there “is not a

day that goes by that I do not feel remorse”

for My Lai, but that he was following

orders—”foolishly, I guess.” Calley is now

seventy-one. He is the only officer to have

been convicted for his role in the My Lai

massacre.

In March, 1970, an Army investigation filed

charges ranging from murder to dereliction

of duty against fourteen officers, including

generals and colonels, who were accused

of covering up the massacre. Only one

officer besides Calley eventually faced

court-martial, and he was found not guilty.

A couple of months later, at the height of

widespread campus protests against the

war—protests that included the killing of

four students by National Guardsmen in

Ohio—I went to Macalester College, in St.

Paul, Minnesota, to give a speech against

the war. Hubert Humphrey, who had been

Lyndon Johnson’s loyal Vice-President, was

now a professor of political science at the

college. He had lost to Nixon, in the 1968

election, partly because he could not

separate himself from L.B.J.’s Vietnam

policy. After my speech, Humphrey asked

to talk to me. “I’ve no problem with you,

Mr. Hersh,” he said. “You were doing your

job and you did it well. But, as for those

kids who march around saying, ‘Hey, hey,

L.B.J., how many kids did you kill today?’

“ Humphrey’s fleshy, round face reddened,

and his voice grew louder with every phrase.

“I say, ‘Fuck ’em, fuck ’em, fuck ’em.’ “

I visited My Lai (as the hamlet was called

by the U.S. Army) for the first time a few

months ago, with my family. Returning to

the scene of the crime is the stuff of cliché

for reporters of a certain age, but I could

not resist. I had sought permission from

the South Vietnamese government in early

1970, but by then the Pentagon’s internal

investigation was under way and the area

was closed to outsiders. I joined the Times

in 1972 and visited Hanoi, in North Vietnam.

In 1980, five years after the fall of Saigon,

I travelled again to Vietnam to conduct

interviews for a book and to do more

reporting for the Times. I thought I knew

all, or most, of what there was to learn

about the massacre. Of course, I was

wrong.

My Lai is in central Vietnam, not far from

Highway 1, the road that connects Hanoi

and Ho Chi Minh City, as Saigon is now

known. Pham Thanh Cong, the director of

the My Lai Museum, is a survivor of the

massacre. When we first met, Cong, a stern,

stocky man in his late fifties, said little about

his personal experiences and stuck to stilted,

familiar phrases. He described the

Vietnamese as “a welcoming people,” and

he avoided any note of accusation. “We

forgive, but we do not forget,” he said.

Later, as we sat on a bench outside the small

museum, he described the massacre, as he

remembered it. At the time, Cong was

eleven years old. When American

helicopters landed in the village, he said, he

and his mother and four siblings huddled in

a primitive bunker inside their thatch-roofed

home. American soldiers ordered them out

of the bunker and then pushed them back

in, throwing a hand grenade in after them

I N T E R N A T I O N A L M O V E M E N T F O R A J U S T W O R L D A R T I C L E S

12

continued from page 11and firing their M-16s. Cong was wounded

in three places—on his scalp, on the right

side of his torso, and in the leg. He passed

out. When he awoke, he found himself in a

heap of corpses: his mother, his three sisters,

and his six-year-old brother. The American

soldiers must have assumed that Cong was

dead, too. In the afternoon, when the

American helicopters left, his father and a

few other surviving villagers, who had come

to bury the dead, found him.

Later, at lunch with my family and me, Cong

said, “I will never forget the pain.” And in

his job he can never leave it behind. Cong

told me that a few years earlier a veteran

named Kenneth Schiel, who had been at

My Lai, had visited the museum—the only

member of Charlie Company at that point

to have done so—as a participant in an Al

Jazeera television documentary marking the

fortieth anniversary of the massacre. Schiel

had enlisted in the Army after graduation

from high school, in Swartz Creek,

Michigan, a small town near Flint, and, after

the subsequent investigations, he was

charged with killing nine villagers. (The

charges were dismissed.)

The documentary featured a conversation

with Cong, who had been told that Schiel

was a Vietnam veteran, but not that he had

been at My Lai. In the video, Schiel tells an

interviewer, “Did I shoot? I’ll say that I shot

until I realized what was wrong. I’m not

going to say whether I shot villagers or not.”

He was even less forthcoming in a

conversation with Cong, after it became

clear that he had participated in the

massacre. Schiel says repeatedly that he

wants to “apologize to the people of My

Lai,” but he refuses to go further. “I ask

myself all the time why did this happen. I

don’t know.”

Cong demands, “How did you feel when

you shot into civilians and killed? Was it

hard for you?” Schiel says that he wasn’t

among the soldiers who were shooting

groups of civilians. Cong responds, “So

maybe you came to my house and killed

my relatives.”

A transcript on file at the museum contains

the rest of the conversation. Schiel says,

“The only thing I can do now is just

apologize for it.” Cong, who sounds

increasingly distressed, continues to ask

Schiel to talk openly about his crimes, and

Schiel keeps saying, “Sorry, sorry.” When

Cong asks Schiel whether he was able to

eat a meal upon returning to his base, Schiel

begins to cry. “Please don’t ask me any

more questions,” he says. “I cannot stay

calm.” Then Schiel asks Cong if he can

join a ceremony commemorating the

anniversary of the massacre.

Cong rebuffs him. “It would be too

shameful,” he says, adding, “The local

people will be very angry if they realize that

you were the person who took part in the

massacre.”

Before leaving the museum, I asked Cong

why he had been so unyielding with Schiel.

His face hardened. He said that he had no

interest in easing the pain of a My Lai veteran

who refused to own up fully to what he

had done. Cong’s father, who worked for

the Vietcong, lived with Cong after the

massacre, but he was killed in action, in

1970, by an American combat unit. Cong

went to live with relatives in a nearby village,

helping them raise cattle. Finally, after the

war, he was able to return to school.

There was more to learn from the

comprehensive statistics that Cong and the

museum staff had compiled. The names

and ages of the dead are engraved on a

marble plaque that dominates one of the

exhibit rooms. The museum’s count, no

longer in dispute, is five hundred and four

victims, from two hundred and forty-seven

families. Twenty-four families were

obliterated—–three generations murdered,

with no survivors. Among the dead were a

hundred and eighty-two women, seventeen

of them pregnant. A hundred and seventy-

three children were executed, including

fifty-six infants. Sixty older men died. The

museum’s accounting included another

important fact: the victims of the massacre

that day were not only in My Lai (also

known as My Lai 4) but also in a sister

settlement known to the Americans as My

Khe 4. This settlement, a mile or so to the

east, on the South China Sea, was assaulted

by another contingent of U.S. soldiers,

Bravo Company. The museum lists four

hundred and seven victims in My Lai 4 and

ninety-seven in My Khe 4.

The message was clear: what happened

at My Lai 4 was not singular, not an

aberration; it was replicated, in lesser

numbers, by Bravo Company. Bravo was

attached to the same unit—Task Force

Barker—as Charlie Company. The

assaults were by far the most important

operation carried out that day by any

combat unit in the Americal Division,

which Task Force Barker was attached

to. The division’s senior leadership,

including its commander, Major General

Samuel Koster, flew in and out of the

area throughout the day to check its

progress.

There was an ugly context to this. By

1967, the war was going badly in the

South Vietnamese provinces of Quang

Ngai, Quang Nam, and Quang Tri, which

were known for their independence from

the government in Saigon, and their

support for the Vietcong and North

Vietnam. Quang Tri was one of the most

heavily bombed provinces in the country.

American warplanes drenched all three

provinces with defoliating chemicals,

including Agent Orange.

*An earlier version of this article

misstated the organization for which Neil

Sheehan was a reporter.

27 March 2015

Seymour M. Hersh wrote his first piece

for The New Yorker in 1971 and has

been a regular contributor to the magazine

since 1993.

I N T E R N A T I O N A L M O V E M E N T F O R A J U S T W O R L D A R T I C L E S

13

By Robert Barsocchini

INTERNATIONAL COURT, HAGUE, RULES IN FAVOR OF ECUADOR IN

ITS CASE AGAINST U.S OIL GIANT, CHEVRON

Telesur:

The International Court of Justice (CIJ)

ruled Thursday a prior ruling by an

Ecuadorean court that fined the U.S.-

based oil company Chevron US $9.5

billion in 2011 should be upheld.

The money will benefit about 30,000

Ecuadorians, most of them indigenous.

Background from Amazon Watch:

In 1964, Texaco (now Chevron),

discovered oil in the remote northern

region of the Ecuadorian Amazon,

known as the Oriente; the East. The

indigenous inhabitants of this pristine

rainforest, including the Cofán, Siona,

Secoya, Kichwa and Huaorani tribes,

lived traditional lifestyles largely

untouched by modern civilization.

They had little idea what to expect or

how to prepare when oil workers

moved into their backyard and founded

the town of Lago Agrio, or “Sour

Lake”, named after the town in Texas

where oil company Texaco was

founded.

In a rainforest area roughly three times

the size of Manhattan, Chevron carved

out 350 oil wells, and upon leaving the

country in 1992, left behind some1,000

open-air, unlined waste pits filled with

crude and toxic sludge. Many of these

pits leak into the water table or overflow

in heavy rains, polluting rivers and

streams that tens of thousands of

people depend on for drinking, cooking,

bathing and fishing. Chevron also

dumped more than 18 billion gallons

of toxic wastewater called “produced

water” – a byproduct of the drilling

process – into the rivers of the Oriente.

At the height of Texaco’s operations,

the company was dumping an

estimated 4 million gallons per day, a

practice outlawed in major US oil

producing states like Louisiana, Texas,

and California decades before the

company began operations in Ecuador

in 1967. By handling its toxic waste in

Ecuador in ways that were illegal in its

home country, Texaco saved an

estimated $3 per barrel of oil produced.

A public health crisis of immense

proportions grips the Ecuadorian

Amazon, the root cause of which is

massive contamination from 40 years

of oil operations. Texaco [Chevron]

dumped 18 billion gallons of toxic

wastewater directly into the region’s

rivers and streams depended upon for

drinking, cooking, bathing and fishing.

The contamination of water essential

for the daily activities of tens of

thousands of people has resulted in an

epidemic of cancer, miscarriages, birth

defects, and other ailments.

When Texaco arrived in Ecuador in

1964, the company found a pristine

rainforest environment.

This story also has relevance to the US

interest in exerting control over

Venezuela, which has some of the

world’s largest oil reserves.

Glenn Greenwald:

Venezuela is one of the very few

countries with significant oil reserves

which does not submit to U.S. dictates,

and this simply cannot be permitted

(such countries are always at the top

of the U.S. government and media list

of Countries To Be Demonized).

A study conducted by the Universities

of Portsmouth, Warwick and Essex

recently found:

…foreign intervention in a civil war is

100 times more likely when the afflicted

country has high oil reserves than if it

has none.

…hydrocarbons were a major reason for

the [US/UK/FR/CA] military intervention

in Libya … and the current US campaign

against Isis in northern Iraq.

“Before the Isis forces approached the

oil-rich Kurdish north of Iraq, Isis was

barely mentioned in the news. But once

Isis got near oil fields, the siege of Kobani

in Syria became a headline and the US

sent drones to strike Isis targets”

The major political science study on the

topic, conducted out of Cornell and

Northwestern universities,recently

found, after studying nearly 2,000 policy

issues (essentially any issue one can

imagine), that the majority of the US

population has statistically zero influence

on US policy, while the wealthiest

portions of society – ie owners of

corporations such as Chevron –

essentially dictate policy – a political

system called “oligarchy”.

15 March, 2015

Robert Barsocchini is an internationally

published researcher and writer who

focuses on global force dynamics and

also writes professionally for the film

industry.

Source: Countercurrents.org

I N T E R N A T I O N A L M O V E M E N T F O R A J U S T W O R L D A R T I C L E S

14

continued next page

By Robert Parry

US INTEL STANDS PAT ON MH-17 SHOOT DOWN

Almost eight months after Malaysia Airlines

Flight 17 was shot down over eastern

Ukraine – creating a flashpoint in the

standoff between nuclear-armed Russia and

America – the U.S. intelligence community

claims it has not updated its assessment

since five days after the crash.

Despite the high stakes involved in the

confrontation between nuclear-armed

Russia and the United States over Ukraine,

the U.S. intelligence community has not

updated its assessment on a critical turning

point of the crisis – the shooting down of

Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 – since five days

after the crash last July 17, according to

the office of the Director of National

Intelligence.

On Thursday, when I inquired about

arranging a possible briefing on where that

U.S. intelligence assessment stands, DNI

spokesperson Kathleen Butler sent me the

same report that was distributed by the DNI

on July 22, 2014, which relied heavily on

claims being made about the incident on

social media.

So, I sent a follow-up e-mail to Butler

saying: “are you telling me that U.S.

intelligence has not refined its assessment

of what happened to MH-17 since July 22,

2014?”

Her response: “Yes. The assessment is the

same.”

I then wrote back: “I don’t mean to be

difficult but that’s just not credible. U.S.

intelligence has surely refined its assessment

of this important event since July 22.”

When she didn’t respond, I sent her some

more detailed questions describing leaks that

I had received about what some U.S.

intelligence analysts have since concluded,

as well as what the German intelligence

agency, the BND, reported to a parliamentary

committee last October, according to Der

Spiegel.

While there are differences in those analyses

about who fired the missile, there appears

to be agreement that the Russian

government did not supply the ethnic

Russian rebels in eastern Ukraine with a

sophisticated Buk anti-aircraft missile system

that the original DNI report identified as the

likely weapon used to destroy the commercial

airliner killing all 298 people onboard.

Butler replied to my last e-mail late Friday,

saying “As you can imagine, I can’t get into

details, but can share that the assessment

has IC [Intelligence Community]

consensus” – apparently still referring to the

July 22 report.

A Lightning Rod

Last July, the MH-17 tragedy quickly

became a lightning rod in a storm of anti-

Russian propaganda, blaming the deaths

personally on Russian President Vladimir

Putin and resulting in European and

American sanctions against Russia which

pushed the crisis in Ukraine to a dangerous

new level.

Yet, after getting propaganda mileage out of

the tragedy – and after I reported on the

growing doubts within the U.S. intelligence

community about whether the Russians

and the rebels were indeed responsible –

the Obama administration went silent.

In other words, after U.S. intelligence

analysts had time to review the data from

spy satellites and various electronic

surveillance, including phone intercepts, the

Obama administration didn’t retract its

initial rush to judgment – tossing blame on

Russia and the rebels – but provided no

further elaboration either.

This strange behavior reinforces the

suspicion that the U.S. government

possesses information that contradicts its

initial rush to judgment, but senior officials

don’t want to correct the record because

to do so would embarrass them and

weaken the value of the tragedy as a

propaganda club to pound the Russians.

If the later evidence did bolster the Russia-

did-it scenario, it’s hard to imagine why

the proof would stay secret – especially

since U.S. officials have continued to

insinuate that the Russians are guilty. For

instance, on March 4, Assistant Secretary

of State for European Affairs Victoria

Nuland fired a new broadside against Russia

when she appeared before the House

Foreign Affairs Committee.

In her prepared testimony, Nuland slipped

in an accusation blaming Russia for the

MH-17 disaster, saying: “In eastern Ukraine,

Russia and its separatist puppets unleashed

unspeakable violence and pillage; MH-17

was shot down.”

It’s true that if one parses Nuland’s

testimony, she’s not exactly saying the

Russians or the ethnic Russian rebels in

eastern Ukraine shot down the plane. There

is a semi-colon between the “unspeakable

continued from page 14

I N T E R N A T I O N A L M O V E M E N T F O R A J U S T W O R L D A R T I C L E S

15

continued next page

violence and pillage” and the passive verb

structure “MH-17 was shot down.” But

she clearly meant to implicate the Russians

and the rebels.

Nuland’s testimony prompted me to submit

a query to the State Department asking if

she meant to imply that the U.S. government

had developed more definitive evidence that

the ethnic Russian rebels shot down the

plane and that the Russians shared

complicity. I received no answer.

I sent a similar request to the CIA and was

referred to the DNI, where spokesperson

Butler insisted that there had been no

refinement in the U.S. intelligence

assessment since last July 22.

But that’s just impossible to believe. Indeed,

I’ve been told by a source who was briefed

by U.S. intelligence analysts that a great deal

of new information has been examined

since the days immediately after the crash,

but that the problem for U.S. policymakers

is that the data led at least some analysts to

conclude that the plane was shot down by

a rogue element of the Ukrainian military,

not by the rebels.

Yet, what has remained unclear to me is

whether those analysts were part of a

consensus or were dissenters within the

U.S. intelligence community. But even if

there was just dissent over the conclusions,

that might explain why the DNI has not

updated the initial sketchy report of July

22.

It is protocol within the intelligence

community that when an assessment is

released, it should include footnotes

indicating areas of dissent. But to do that

could undermine the initial certitude that

Secretary of State John Kerry displayed on

Sunday talks shows just days after the crash.

Pointing Fingers

Though the DNI’s July 22 report, which

followed Kerry’s performance, joined him

in pointing the blame at the Russians and

the ethnic Russian rebels, the report did not

claim that the Russians gave the rebels the

sophisticated Buk (or SA-11) surface-to-

air missile that the report indicated was used

to bring down the plane.

The report cited “an increasing amount of

heavy weaponry crossing the border from

Russia to separatist fighters in Ukraine”; it

claimed that Russia “continues to provide

training – including on air defense systems

to separatist fighters at a facility in southwest

Russia”; and its noted the rebels “have

demonstrated proficiency with surface-to-

air missile systems, downing more than a

dozen aircraft in the months prior to the

MH17 tragedy, including two large

transport aircraft.”

But what the public report didn’t say –

which is often more significant than

what is said in these white papers –

was that the rebels had previously only

used short-range shoulder-fired

missiles to bring down low-flying

military planes, whereas MH-17 was

flying at around 33,000 feet, far beyond

the range of those weapons.

The assessment also didn’t say that

U.S. intelligence, which had been

concentrating its attention on eastern

Ukraine during those months, detected

the delivery of a Buk missile battery

from Russia, despite the fact that a

battery consists of four 16-foot-long

missiles that are hauled around by

trucks or other large vehicles.

I was told that the absence of evidence

of such a delivery injected the first

doubts among U.S. analysts who also

couldn’t say for certain that the missile

battery that was suspected of firing the

fateful missile was manned by rebels.

An early glimpse of that doubt was

revealed in the DNI briefing for several

mainstream news organizations when

the July 22 assessment was released.

The Los Angeles Times reported, “U.S.

intelligence agencies have so far been

unable to determine the nationalities or

identities of the crew that launched the

missile. U.S. officials said it was

possible the SA-11 was launched by a

defector from the Ukrainian military

who was trained to use similar missile

systems.” [See

Consortiumnews.com’s “The Mystery

of a Ukrainian ‘Defector.’”]

The Russian Case

The Russians also challenged the rush

to judgment against them, although the

U.S. mainstream media largely ignored

– or ridiculed – their presentation. But

the Russians at least provided what

appeared to be substantive data,

including alleged radar readings

showing the presence of a Ukrainian

jetfighter “gaining height” as it closed

to within three to five kilometers of

MH-17.

Russian Lt. Gen. Andrey Kartopolov

also called on the Ukrainian government

to explain the movements of its Buk

systems to sites in eastern Ukraine and

why Kiev’s Kupol-M19S18 radars,

which coordinate the flight of Buk

missiles, showed increased activity

leading up to the July 17 shoot-down.

The Ukrainian government countered

by asserting that it had “evidence that

the missile which struck the plane was

fired by terrorists, who received arms

and specialists from the Russian

Federation,” according to Andrey

continued from page 15

I N T E R N A T I O N A L M O V E M E N T F O R A J U S T W O R L D A R T I C L E S

16

Lysenko, spokesman for Ukraine’s

Security Council, using Kiev’s

preferred term for the rebels.

Lysenko added: “To disown this

tragedy, [Russian officials] are drawing

a lot of pictures and maps. We will

explore any photos and other plans

produced by the Russian side.” But

Ukrainian authorities have failed to

address the Russian evidence except

through broad denials.

On July 29, amid this escalating

rhetoric, the Veteran Intelligence

Professionals for Sanity, a group of

mostly retired U.S. intelligence

officials, called on President Barack

Obama to release what evidence the

U.S. government had, including satellite

imagery.

“As intelligence professionals we are

embarrassed by the unprofessional use

of partial intelligence information,” the

group wrote. “As Americans, we find

ourselves hoping that, if you indeed

have more conclusive evidence, you

will find a way to make it public without

further delay. In charging Russia with

being directly or indirectly responsible,

Secretary of State John Kerry has been

particularly definitive. Not so the

evidence.”

But the Obama administration failed to

make public any intelligence

information that would back up its

earlier suppositions.

Then, in early August, I was told that

some U.S. intelligence analysts had

begun shifting away from the original

scenario blaming the rebels and Russia

to one focused more on the possibility

that extremist elements of the Ukrainian

government were responsible, funded

by one of Ukraine’s rabidly anti-

Russian oligarchs. [See

Consortiumnews.com’s “Flight 17

Shoot-down Scenario Shifts”and “Was

Putin Targeted for Mid-air

Assassination?”]

German Claims

In October, Der Spiegel reported that

the German intelligence service, the

BND, also had concluded that Russia

was not the source of the missile

battery – that it had been captured from

a Ukrainian military base – but the BND

still blamed the rebels for firing it. The

BND also concluded that photos

supplied by the Ukrainian government

about the MH-17 tragedy “have been

manipulated,” Der Spiegel reported.

And, the BND disputed Russian

government claims that a Ukrainian

fighter jet had been flying close to MH-

17, the magazine said, reporting on the

BND’s briefing to a parliamentary

committee on Oct. 8. But none of the

BND’s evidence was made public —

and I was subsequently told by a

European official that the evidence was

not as conclusive as the magazine

article depicted. [See

Consortiumnews.com’s “Germans

Clear Russia in MH-17 Case.”]

When the Dutch Safety Board

investigating the crash issued an interim

report in mid-October, it answered few

questions, beyond confirming that MH-

17 apparently was destroyed by “high-

velocity objects that penetrated the

aircraft from outside.” The 34-page

Dutch report was silent on the “dog-

not-barking” issue of whether the U.S.

government had satellite surveillance

that revealed exactly where the

supposed ground-to-air missile was

launched and who fired it.

In January, when I re-contacted the

source who had been briefed by the

U.S. analysts, the source said their

thinking had not changed, except that

they believed the missile may have been

less sophisticated than a Buk, possibly

an SA-6, and that the attack may have

also involved a Ukrainian jetfighter

firing on MH-17.

Since then there have been occasional

news accounts about witnesses

reporting that they did see a Ukrainian

fighter plane in the sky and others

saying they saw a missile possibly fired

from territory then supposedly

controlled by the rebels (although the

borders of the conflict zone at that time

were very fluid and the Ukrainian

military was known to have mobile anti-

aircraft missile batteries only a few

miles away).

But what is perhaps most shocking of

all is that – on an issue as potentially

dangerous as the current proxy war

between nuclear-armed Russia and the

United States, a conflict on Russia’s

border that has sparked fiery rhetoric

on both sides – the office of the DNI,

which oversees the most expensive and

sophisticated intelligence system in the

world, says nothing has been done to

refine the U.S. assessment of the MH-

17 shoot-down since five days after

the tragedy.

15 March 2015

Investigative reporter Robert Parry

broke many of the Iran-Contra stories

for The Associated Press and

Newsweek in the 1980s.

Source: Consortium News

continued next page

I N T E R N A T I O N A L M O V E M E N T F O R A J U S T W O R L D A R T I C L E S

17

THE 12TH ANNIVERSARY OF AAFIA SIDDIQUI’S ABDUCTION: WHAT

HAPPENED TO AAFIA SIDDIQUI AND WHERE IS SHE NOW?

By Judy Bello

A Pakistani Woman named Aafia

Siddiqui was abducted from a taxi in

Karachi, Pakistan along with her 3

children 12 years ago on March 30,

2003. At the time she was vulnerable,

recently divorced from an abusive

husband; living with her mother; her

father had just died of a heart attack.

The youngest child was an infant.

Following her abduction, Aafia Siddiqui

and her children disappeared from view

for 5 years. She spent those years in

US Black Site prisons in Afghanistan

and Pakistan. One can only imagine the

torment she suffered there, in a system

created to enable the torture and abuse

of terrorism suspects. She was a

woman alone. They took her children,

and threatened them when personal

torture was not enough to gain her

acquiescence.

They say other women came and went

from Bagram and the secret prisons in

Afghanistan, but Aafia Siddiqui is the

only one whose story is known. This

is true in part because she had lived,

studied and worked in the United States

for more than a decade, but even more

so because of the devoted persistence

of her family, he mother Ismet, and

sister Fowzia, who never for one

moment ceased their efforts to find her

and bring her home. Using their

standing as an upper middle class

family in Karachi, a conservative

Muslim family, well educated, known

for their involvement in various aspects

of civil society, the Siddiqui women

engaged with the government at all

levels, engaged the press to publicize

Aafia’s disappearance and to investigate

her whereabouts and the circumstances

of her disappearance.

Ismet says that shortly after her

daughter’s disappearance, a man came

to her door and threatened her. He told

her to drop the search for her missing

daughter or ‘else’. The two women,

Ismet and Fowzia, were convinced

that Aafia and her children had been

detained by either Pakistani Intelligence

(ISI) or the CIA. This is not surprising

because Pakistani citizens were

frequently disappeared during that

period, mostly by the Pakistani Secret

Police and Intelligence forces complicit

with the American CIA and FBI who

were casting a broad net to fish for

‘terrorists’ after 9/11/2001. Thousands

were abducted and imprisoned for long

or short periods of time. A few

eventually landed in Guantanamo, but

who knows what happened to the rest?.

Many never returned. Thousands of

Muslim immigrants were rounded up

and questioned here in the United States

as well. Many of them were tortured.

Many were held for months and years

with no accessto legal aid or their

families. Many were eventually

deported despite having committed no

crime.

No, Aafia Siddiqui wasn’t the only

person rendered during the first years

of the Global War on Terror, nor was

she the only Pakistani disappeared

under the Musharraf regime. We now

know that thousands were rendered

from the streets of Pakistan and around

the globe during the first years

following the 9/11 attacks on the World

Trade Center and Pentagon. We know

that torture was ubiquitous during that

period, while brutal violence against

civilians characterized the wars in

Afghanistan and Iraq. What is

extraordinary about Aafia Siddiqui’s

case is that she was a woman, and was

taken with her children. Also somewhat

unusual is the fact that she had spent

many years in the US where she went

to college and eventually obtained a

PhD from Brandeis, married a Pakistani

Doctor and had 2 children; and worked

for various charities generally leading

a conscientious life of goodwill. She

sent Qurans to prisoners, and taught

children at a Mosque in an impoverished

city neighborhood.

But after 9/11 it all fell apart. She and

her husband were not abducted, but

they were interrogated. A young Saudi

the government was pursuing had

stayed for a while in their apartment

building. Her husband had used his

credit card to buy night vision goggles,

he said for hunting. The marriage was

becoming increasingly stressed and at

times, violent. Aafia had a long scar on

her cheek from a cut caused by a baby

bottle her husband admitted to

throwing at her. Aafia took her children

and returned to her parents’ home in

Karachi. She was pregnant with their

third child when her husband divorced

her and remarried. We are told she

seemed nervous and agitated during

this period. Who wouldn’t be nervous

and agitated under those

circumstances? And then, one day she

set out for a family visit with her uncle,

got in the taxi with her children, and

disappeared.

In July of 2008, Aafia Siddiqui arrived

in Manhattan a week after abdominal

surgery to remove a couple of bullets

from her intestines, and was brought

directly into a courtroom in her

wheelchair for arraignment on charges

continued from page 17

I N T E R N A T I O N A L M O V E M E N T F O R A J U S T W O R L D A R T I C L E S

18

continued next page

of attacking US military personnel in

Afghanistan. After a highly publicized

trial during which the press

consistently referred to her as ‘Lady

al Qaeda’, she was sentenced to 86

years in prison and sent to Carswell

Medical Center, a high security federal

prison in Texas, where she remains to

this day, so we are told.

At the trial, no physical evidence was

presented by the prosecution. There

was none. Basic questions related to

context were neither asked nor

answered. Where was Aafia Siddiqui

between the time of her disappearance

5 years earlier, and her encounter with

the soldiers in Ghazni, Afghanistan?

Why wasn’t she believed when she said

she had been rendered and tortured?

Why did the Pakistani Government

allow her to be extradited from

Afghanistan, then pay a small fortune

for lawyers for her, lawyers that she

did not want or trust because,

whatever their qualifications, they had

been selected and paid for by the

Pakistani government? Why, when a

fragile woman, who was obviously

physically and mentally broken, said

that she had been tortured, did no one

investigate her story?

Between 2003 and 2008, US officials

repeatedly denied having Aafia Siddiqui

in custody. They insisted that she was

not in the system anywhere. But, when

she showed up in 2008, they had a

story all ready to tell about her

involvement with al Qaeda, conferring

with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and

some of his associates. They actually

said she was married to his nephew

Ammar al Baluchi, a charge her family

absolutely denies. She was only

recently divorced, and had just birthed

a child when she disappeared. The

specific accusation against Siddiqui

was that she had got a mailbox in

Maryland for Majid Khan, a young man

who had associated with Khalid Sheikh

Muhammed in Karachi He had allowed

his visa to lapse while he was visiting

family in Karachi, and needed a US

mailbox address to reapply for it so he

could return to the US. . Khan was

accused of plotting to commit terrorist

attacks on returning to the USA.

But this isn’t the crime Aafia Siddiqui

was tried for, just a story leaked to the

press. At the time of Aafia Siddiqui’s

trial, Majid a few weeks before Siddiqui

and her children were, but had lived in

the United States and attended high

school here. Raised in a middle class

suburb of Baltimore, he was restless

and unable to decide what to do with

his life, so he went to Karachi to visit

the extended family and married there.

Members of his family were initially

detained with him, then later released.

According to his brother, Majid Khan

was tortured and beaten during this

period, and coerced into making

unreliable and false confessions

Although he may have known KSM and

his nephew, Khan was never proven

to do anything other than talk and spin

stories. After touring the black sites and

being tortured for a couple of years,

Khan landed in Guantanamo where he

apparently continued talking and

spinning stories. Majid Khan was

eventually released from Guantanamo

in 2012 in exchange for testimony

against Khalid Sheikh Muhammad,

Ammar Al Baluchi and others. Perhaps

Siddiqui did help Majid Khan with his

immigration problem. He was a kid

who needed help. That is an

immigration violation that might keep

her from returning to the US. But we

don’t even know for sure that she even

did that. We do know that Khan told a

lot of stories in return for a plea deal in

2012 that capped his sentence at 19

years.

The government, however, claimed

that she spent the 5 years she was

missing in a terrorist cell developing

chemical and biological weapons. She

was a scientist, after all, with a PhD.

When she was arrested in Pakistan,

there were some chemicals in her bag

along with some recipes for biological

and chemical weapons written in her

handwriting and a picture of the statue

of liberty, an odd choice for someone

who had lived many years in Boston

area and Texas before that. These items

were brought into evidence. Again,

when Aafia Siddiqui explained that she

wasn’t that kind of scientist, that she

was an educator, she was ignored. Her

PhD was in neuroscience as it pertains

to learning capabilities. This is a matter

of public record at Brandeis University.

She was Dr. Aafia Siddiqui, but neither

a physician, a chemist nor even a

biologist except in a narrow tangential

sense. She said she wrote in the

documents what she was told to write

by men who threatened to harm her

children if she did not do as they

wished.

Aafia Siddiqui suffered from severe

PTSD which made it difficult for her

to present a consistently calm and

pleasant demeanor during trial. She told

the court she had been tortured during

the time she was missing, but this

testimony was dismissed as untrue and

irrelevant. The government, of course,

had denied it. She didn’t want the highly

paid lawyers hired on her behalf by the

Pakistani government because she

didn’t trust the motivation of the

Pakistani government, and she didn’t

continued from page 18

I N T E R N A T I O N A L M O V E M E N T F O R A J U S T W O R L D A R T I C L E S

19

like the way they were building her

case. But the judge chose to ignore her

protest and allowed those lawyers to

continue. Judge Berman was privately

informed of the details the US held

against Siddiqui. The story was

apparently leaked to the press as well.

But it wasn’t told in open court where

she might have refuted it. The jury

convicted despite the lack of physical

evidence on charges normally bringing

a sentence of around 15 years. They

did not convict on the charge of

premeditation, but Judge Berman added

a ‘terrorism’ enhancement to her

verdict, and sentenced Aafia Siddiqui

to 86 years in a federal prison.

Today, Aafia Siddiqui remains in the

psychiatric division of Carswell, seven

years into her 86 year sentence. She

had a hard time early on, and apparently

was beaten at one point, by the guards?

Other inmates? That we don’t know.

We do know she was in solitary after

that. She hasn’t been allowed to receive

mail.. I, myself, have sent her many

letters, all returned. Early on they came

back unopened, marked

‘undeliverable’. When I called the

prison to inquire whether I had the

wrong address, the person who

answered went off to ask advice on

what to tell me. He said, when he

returned to the phone, that she refused

her mail. A few months later when I

was in jail myself (for direct action

protest at the gate of Hancock AFB) I

received a letter from my attorney, and

realized that they have to open your

mail and inspect it before offering it to

you. After I called again to question

this issue, my letters started coming

back opened.

Aafia Siddiqui hasn’t spoken to her

family in more than a year. She has a

brother, also in Texas, but he has not

been able to see her. No one has had

contact with her for over a year now.

The last time she was given a chance

to talk to her family, to her mother and

sister, and the 2 children returned to

them after she was imprisoned in the

US, was following a national press

conference outside the Pakistani

Embassy in Washington DC and a well-

publicized protest outside Carswell

Prison. At the time, Fowzia asked her

why she was refusing her mail, and

she replied ‘What mail?”

Last year Robert Boyle, a new attorney

hired by the family, submitted a motion

to vacate to Judge Berrman, requesting

that he throw out the verdict because

Aafia’s repeated requests for an

adjournment of the proceedings so she

could find an acceptable attorney were

ignored. The motion lays out a detailed

argument that Siddiqui’s request was

sane and reasonable, and described the

potential bias of the Pakistani

government and the ways in which

their choice of attorneys, even well-

known human rights lawyers, might

not have been in her best interest. Judge

Berman called the lawyers in a few days

later and said that Aafia Siddiqui had

written a letter to him, asking that the

motion be dismissed, and that he was

therefore required to dismiss it. He went

on to say that he had, in any case, no

intention of granting the motion.

Since then, another six months have

passed with no word to anyone from

Aafia Siddiqui. It’s true she is likely

depressed. Is she sick? Is she being

heavily medicated? Is she alive? An

appeal that had earlier been rejected which

focused on procedural issues. This

motion that Judge Berman says she asked

to have dismissed very directly mirrored

her own concerns at the time of the trial.

It’s true; she may have done this out of

depression or despair. But if she was too

disturbed for the Judge to support her

initial request in the court room, why was

her current request honored without a

hearing?

Aafia Siddiqui said that she had been

tortured and raped. Why her assertion

was dismissed as a fabrication with no

investigation, and why were any

investigations into her claims treated as

collateral conspiracy theories? How did

she neatly fall into the hands of US

soldiers just as the family felt their

sources were near locating her? Why did

the Pakistani Government allow her to

be extradited if they thought she was

innocent? Where is Aafia Siddiqui now

and what is her status?

The fact is that Aafia Siddiqui’s story is

not so different than many of the other

Pakistani, Afghan and Arab men swept

up after 9/11. Why is it so unbelievable?

All of the evidence is in her favor except

for the ‘secret’ evidence and the fact that

the US denies her assertions. Would we

expect anything different from them? We

have heard the stories of others illegally

swept up in the rendition program. But

maybe we don’t want to believe they

would do that to a woman. We’ve heard

a lot of stories about horrors visited on

women by US soldiers in Iraq and

Afghanistan, in Vietnam, but maybe we

don’t want to think that might happen to

a vulnerable middle class housewife with

a PhD in Education. What would they

do to cover up committing these

atrocities against this kind, well educated,

English speaking woman who had spent

nearly half her life in the US when she

was detained? And to cover up the cover

up?

30 March, 2015

Judy Bello is a Peace and Justice activist

who has recently traveled to Syria, Iran,

Iraq and Pakistan where she spent time

with the family of Aafia Siddiqui. She is

a member of the Administrative

Committee of the United National

Antiwar Coalition.

Source: Countercurrents.org

continued next page

I N T E R N A T I O N A L M O V E M E N T F O R A J U S T W O R L D A R T I C L E S

20

By Colin Todhunter

EMPIRE AND COLONIALISM: RICH MEN IN LONDON STILL DECIDING

AFRICA’S FUTURE

Some £600 million in UK aid money

courtesy of the taxpayer is helping

big business increase its profits in

Africa via the New Alliance for Food

Security and Nutrition. In return for

receiving aid money and corporate

investment, African countries have to

change their laws, making it easier

for corporations to acquire farmland,

control seed supplies and export

produce.

Last year, Director of the Global

Justice Now Nick Dearden said:

“It’s scandalous that UK aid money

is being used to carve up Africa in

the interests of big business. This is

the exact opposite of what is needed,

which is support to small-scale

farmers and fairer distribution of land

and resources to give African

countries more control over their

food systems. Africa can produce

enough food to feed its people. The

problem is that our food system is

geared to the luxury tastes of the

richest, not the needs of ordinary

people. Here the British government

is using aid money to make the

problem even worse.”

Ethiopia, Ghana, Tanzania, Burkina

Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, Mozambique,

Nigeria, Benin, Malawi and Senegal

are all involved in the New Alliance.

In a January 2015 piece in The

Guardian, Dearden continued by

saying that development was once

regarded as a process of breaking

with colonial exploitation and

transferring power over resources

from the ‘first’ to the ‘third world’,

involving a revolutionary struggle

over the world’s resources.

However, the current paradigm is

based on the assumption that

developing countries need to adopt

neo-liberal policies and that public

money in the guise of aid should

facili tate this. The notion of

‘development’ has become hijacked

by rich corporations and the concept

of poverty depoliticised and separated

from structurally embedded power

relations.

To see this in action, we need look

no further to a conference held on

Monday 23 March in London,

organised by the Bill & Melinda Gates

Foundation and the United States

Agency for International

Development (USAID). This

secretive, invitation-only meeting

with aid donors and big seed

companies discussed a strategy to

make it easier for these companies

to sell patented seeds in Africa and

thus increase corporate control of

seeds.

Farmers have for generations been

saving and exchanging seeds among

themselves. This has allowed them a

certain degree of independence and

has enabled them to innovate,

maintain biodiversity, adapt seeds to

climatic conditions and fend off plant

disease. Big seed companies with

help from the Gates Foundation, the

US government and other aid donors

are now discussing ways to increase

their market penetration of

commercial seeds by displacing

farmers own seed systems.

Corporate sold hybrid seeds often

produce higher yields when first

planted, but the second generation

seeds produce low yields and

unpredictable crop traits, making

them unsuitable for saving and

storing. As Heidi Chow from Global

Justice Now rightly says, instead of

saving seeds from their own crops,

farmers who use hybrid seeds

become completely dependent on the

seed, ferti l iser and pesticide

companies, which can (and has) in

turn resulted in an agrarian crisis

centred on debt, environmental

damage and health problems.

The London conference aimed to

share findings of a report by Monitor

Deloitte on developing the

commercial seed sector in sub-

Saharan Africa. The report

recommends that in countries where

continued from page 20

A R T I C L E S

21

I N T E R N A T I O N A L M O V E M E N T F O R A J U S T W O R L D

farmers are using their own seed

saving networks NGOs and aid

donors should encourage

governments to introduce intellectual

property rights for seed breeders and

help to persuade farmers to buy

commercial, patented seeds rather

than relying on their own traditional

varieties. The report also suggests

that governments should remove

regulations so that the seed sector is

opened up to the global market.

The guest l ist comprised

corporations, development agencies

and aid donors, including Syngenta,

the World Bank and the Gates

Foundation. It speaks volumes that

not one farmer organisation was

invited. Farmers have been imbued

with the spirit of entrepreneurship for

thousands of years. They have been

“scientists, innovators, natural

resource stewards, seed savers and

hybridisation experts” who have

increasingly been reduced to

becoming recipients of technical

fixes and consumers of poisonous

products of a growing agricultural

inputs industry. So who better than

to discuss issues concerning

agriculture?

But the whole point of such a

conference is that the West regards

African agriculture as a ‘business

opportunity’, albeit wrapped up in

warm-sounding notions of ‘feeding

Africa’ or ‘lifting millions out of

poverty’. The West’s legacy in Africa

(and elsewhere) has been to plunge

millions into poverty. Enforcing

structural reforms to benefit big

agribusiness and its unsustainable

toxic GMO/petrochemical inputs

represents a continuation of the neo-

colonialist plundering of Africa. The

US has for many decades been using

agriculture as a key part of foreign

policy to secure global hegemony.

Phil Bereano, food sovereignty

campaigner with AGRA Watch and

an Emeritus Professor at the

University of Washington says:

“This is an extension of what the

Gates Foundation has been doing for

several years – working with the US

government and agribusiness giants

like Monsanto to corporatize Africa’s

genetic riches for the benefit of

outsiders. Don’t Bill and Melinda

realize that such colonialism is no

longer in fashion? It’s time to support

African farmers’ self-determination.”

Bereano also shows how Western

corporations only intend to cherry-

pick the most profitable aspects of

the food production chain, while

leaving the public sector in Africa to

pick up the tab for the non-profitable

aspects that allow profitabili ty

further along the chain.

Giant agritech corporations with their

patented seeds and associated

chemical inputs are ensuring a shift

away from diversified agriculture that

guarantees balanced local food

production, the protection of people’s

livelihoods and agricultural

sustainability. African agriculture is

being placed in the hands of big

agritech for private profit under the

pretext of helping the poor. The Gates

Foundation has substantial shares in

Monsanto. With Monsanto’s active

backing from the US State

Department and the Gates

Foundation’s links with USAID,

African farmers face a formidable

force.

Report after report suggests that

support for conventional agriculture,

agroecology and local economies is

required, especially in the Global

South. Instead, Western governments

are supporting powerful corporations

with taxpayers money whose thrust

via the WTO, World Bank and IMF

has been to encourage strings-

attached loans, monocrop cultivation

for export using corporate seeds, the

restructuring of economies, the

opening of economies to the vagaries

of land and commodity speculation

and a system of globalised trade

rigged in favour of the West.

In this vision for Africa, those

farmers who are regarded as having

any role to play in all of this are

viewed only as passive consumers of

corporate seeds and agendas. The

future of Africa is once again being

decided by rich men in London

24 March, 2015

Colin Todhunter : Originally from

the northwest of England, Colin

Todhunter has spent many years in

India.

Source: Countercurrents.org

INTERNATIONAL MOVEMENTFOR A JUST WORLD (JUST)P.O BOX 288Jalan Sultan46730 Petaling JayaSelangor Darul EhsanMALAYSIAwww.just-international.org

Bayaran Pos JelasPostage Paid

Pejabat Pos BesarKuala Lumpur

MalaysiaNo. WP 1385

Please donate to JUST by Postal Order or Cheque

addressed to:

International Movement for a Just World

P.O. Box 288, Jalan Sultan, 46730, Petaling Jaya,

Selangor Darul Ehsan, Malaysia

or direct to our bank account:Malayan Banking Berhad, Petaling Jaya Main

Branch, 50 Jalan Sultan, 46200, Petaling Jaya,

Selangor Darul Ehsan,MALAYSIA

Account No. 5141 6917 0716

Donations from outside Malaysia should be made

by Telegraphic Transfer or Bank Draft in USD$

The International Movement for a Just World isa nonprofit international citizens’ organisationwhich seeks to create public awareness aboutinjustices within the existing global system.It a lso attempts to develop a deeperunderstanding of the struggle for social justiceand human dignity at the global level, guided byuniversal spiritual and moral values.

In furtherance of these objectives, JUST hasundertaken a number of activities includingconducting research, publishing books andmonographs, organising conferences andseminars, networking with groups and individuals and participating in public campaigns.

JUST has friends and supporters in more than130 countries and cooperates actively withother organisations which are committed to

similar objectives in different parts of the world.

About the International Movement for aJust World (JUST)

It would be much appreciated if you

could share this copy of the JUST Com-

mentary with a friend or relative. Bet-

ter still invite him/her to write to JUST

so that we can put his/her name on our

Commentary mailing list.

TERBITAN BERKALA