US foreign relations approach targets human beings, spurns acceptance, camaraderie — Mohammad Al-Shinqeeti

United States deadly obstructionism in Arab Spring World

From Mohammad Al-Shinqeeti’s “America’s interference in the fate of the Arab nations”

Excerpt, editing by 

Carolyn Bennett

There is a “huge gap between the fruits of the American wars in the Arab region and the fruits of its wars in Germany and Japan,” Mohammad Al-Shinqeeti wrote in an article late last year. “America’s wars on Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan were wars against the rulers and political elites, not wars against the people.…

“…Despite the atrocities committed by America during the war [World War II]—the ugliest of which was the use of nuclear weapons in Hiroshima and Nagasaki—America did not seek to control the German and Japanese people after the military defeat. Nor did the Americans want to keep them under tyranny or occupation or put them in a state of desperation that was charged with the spirit of revenge. Instead, the Americans helped both nations economically in order to reconstruct their countries and quickly recover from the plight of war, and helped them politically in order to establish a democratic system. The invading armies gave the two nations the freedom to choose their leaders and determine their own political fate.”

 

H

owever, US “wars in the Arab region … are wars on the people, not their leaders; and the results are the exact opposite of the results of US wars on Germany and Japan.

“Saddam Hussein ended up being hanged.… The Americans hanged the man who persecuted the Shias and replaced him with a man who has permitted the bloodshed of the Sunnis. They killed the man who used chemical weapons against the Kurds but he was replaced with a man who bombed the Sunnis with explosive barrels.  …” Imagine for the sake of comparison that America, after defeating Germany, appoints “a ruler who works for the CIA” as the “new chauvinistic dictator, like Hitler”; or that the US appoints a Japanese military dictator—as is today Al-Sisi (Abdel Fattah Saeed Hussein Khalil el-Sisi, sixth and current President of Egypt, 2014- )—who reports to the US Secretary of State. What would be the reactions of the Germans and Japanese? Would WWII have really ended?”

 

The negative consequences of US actions in the Arab World are as interminable as US wars in the region. Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was hanged, Mohammad Al-Shinqeeti recalls, but

…the Iraqi people are the ones who paid the price for the two American wars on Iraq. They [the Iraqi people] endured a suffocating economic blockade that killed half a million innocent Iraqi children while the dictator remained in power after the first invasion.

Then the Iraqi army was dissolved and chaos spread across the country after the second invasion.

This was followed by the fragmentation of the Iraqi community and authority was put in the hands of sectarian forces driven by historical hatred that was more concerned with revenge and settling scores than reconciliation and reconstruction.

“W

hen the Arab Spring started, which was a popular revolution with purely internal demands and fair political aspirations, the people in these countries never antagonized anyone other than the dictators oppressing the people.”

However, “America immediately enforced the strategy of obstruction and hindering, supporting the revolutions in words but fighting them in actions. In its war on the freedom of the Arab people, the United States also mobilized all the forces it is associated with in the region—including the military officer who is a pawn in the hands of the United States, the loyal dictator, the cozy scholar, the cowardly dervish and hypocritical media.”

US in Libya

When “the revolution was against a military official,” such as Libyan president Muammar al-Qaddafi, “who opposed American policies, America sought to replace him with Major General Khalifa Haftar, a man who openly admits he worked for the CIA for over two decades, as if Libyan bloodshed were merely a red carpet laid out for spies and those with no conscience.”

In a Wikipedia article the sorted career of Khalifa Belqasim Haftar, native of eastern Libya, includes its highest point of being Libyan general and principal commander of one side in Libya’s “ongoing Civil War” (2014). Haftar spent nearly two decades in the United States, gained US citizenship in 1993. While living in the United States, Haftar was convicted in absentia of crimes against the Jamahiriya (or the People’s Libyan Arab Republic) and sentenced to death. In his earlier years, he served in the Libyan army under Muammar Qaddafi, participated in a coup that brought Qaddafi to power (1960s). While a prisoner of war in Chad in the 1980s, Haftar and his fellow officers plotted an overthrow of Qaddafi. In the 1990s, a deal with the United States released Hafta from prison and granted him entry into the United States.   

US in Egypt

In this Arab state, the United States “turned Egypt’s revolution into a mere transfer of power from an old dictatorship loyal to America to a younger murderer who is even more loyal to the United States,” Mohammad Al-Shinqeeti’ wrote. This was done, he said, “at the expense of the Egyptian people’s blood, money, hopes, dreams, dignity and the status of their state among the nations.

“America then sought to change the course of all the Arab revolutions in the region in which they have no replacement, such as Syria, into a hell and eternal war where there are no winners or losers.”

US in Yemen

Another Arab Spring that was growing in Yemen’s capital, Sanaa, “has fallen under America’s allies.” These forces “pulled the plug on the Yemeni revolution before it completed its natural growth.…”

O

verall, the United States can and is doing a great deal, directly and indirectly, in the Arab World; but, he says, the United States “chooses the morally and strategically wrong choice.

“It chooses to continue toying with the fate of Arab and Islamic peoples, hitting the Arab and Muslims’ points of physical and moral strength, and depriving them of the two most important shields for sovereignty in modern nations: liberty and arms.”

A Better approach, attitude in

US foreign relations

“The Arab peoples rebelling against injustice and tyranny are facing an obvious enemy in Russia and a disguised enemy in America,” he says; “and it is the disguised enemy that is the most dangerous because of its influence, its ability to maneuver, and its use of internal tools.”

Mohammad Al-Shinqeeti concludes that the United States “can continue to tamper with the fate of our people through its military intervention every decade or so.” It can “hinder the Arab Spring for a few years and force our people to pay a heavy price for it in the form of their blood and money“; and in the process  “achieve some situational and deceptive tactical gains”—through the use of “selective policies lacking any sense of morality or humanity.”

But the better course, he says, would be  “to lift its (America's) hands from the region.” Stop “toying with the fate of its people.” Stop “interfering to control the region’s strategic decisions.…”

At heart, what the United States should do, he says, is “accept a relationship of camaraderie with the Arabs” rather than insisting on “a relationship of dependency.” 

With this better approach and attitude in US foreign relations, “Arab societies bursting with hope and vitality can rid themselves of tyranny. Overcome the chronic structural contradictions and achieve dignity and prestige for themselves among nations of the world.”

These ideas are worthy of serious attention, especially but not only by Americans.

Sources and notes

“America’s interference in the fate of the Arab nations,” Mohammad Al-Shinqeeti, September 26, 2014, https://altahrir.wordpress.com/2014/09/26/americas-interference-in-the-fate-of-the-arab-nations

Arab World

An area stretching from the Atlantic Ocean in the west to the Arabian Sea in the east, from the Mediterranean Sea in the north to the Horn of Africa and the Indian Ocean in the southeast (a combined population of around 422 million people), the Arab World or Arab Nation is composed of the 22 Arabic-speaking countries of the Arab League. The standard definition of the Arab world comprises the 22 countries and territories of the Arab League. Wikipedia

Arab World Countries by Area

 1.      Algeria 2,381,741 919,595 18.1% Largest country in Africa and in the Arab world and also ranked 10th largest country in the world
2.      Saudi Arabia 2,149,690 830,000 16.4% Largest country in the Middle East
3.      Sudan 1,861,484 718,723 14.2% Formerly the largest country in Africa, before South Sudan's independence
4.      Libya 1,759,540 679,360 11.4%
5.      Mauritania 1,025,520 395,960 7.8%
6.      Egypt 1,002,000 387,000 7.6%, excluding the Hala'ib Triangle (20,580 km2/7,950 sq mi).
7.      Somalia 637,657 246,201 4.9%
8.      Yemen 527,968 203,850 4.0%
9.      Morocco 446,550 172,410 3.4% Does not include Western Sahara (266,000 km2/103,000 sq mi)
10.  Iraq 435,244 168,049 3.3%
11.  Oman 309,500 119,500 2.4%
12.  Syria 185,180 71,500 1.4%, including the part of the Golan Heights (1,200 km2/460 sq mi) currently occupied by Israel
13.  Tunisia 163,610 63,170 1.2%
14.  Jordan 89,342 34,495 0.7%
15.  United Arab Emirates 83,600 32,300 0.6%
16.  Djibouti 23,200 9,000 0.1%
17.  Kuwait 17,818 6,880 0.1%
18.  Qatar 11,586 4,473 0.08%
19.  Lebanon 10,452 4,036 0.08%
20.  State of Palestine 6,020 2,320 0.05%
21.  Comoros 2,235 863 0.01%
22.  Bahrain 758 293 0.005% 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_world

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khalifa_Haftar

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Libya_under_Muammar_Gaddafi#Etymology

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abdel_Fattah_el-Sisi

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A lifelong American writer and writer/activist (former academic and staffer with the U.S. government in Washington), Dr. Carolyn LaDelle Bennett is credentialed in education and print journalism and public affairs (PhD, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan; MA, The American University, Washington, DC). Her work concerns itself with news and current affairs, historical contexts, and ideas particularly related to acts and consequences of U.S. foreign relations, geopolitics, human rights, war and peace, and violence and nonviolence. Dr. Bennett is an internationalist and nonpartisan progressive personally concerned with society and the common good. An educator at heart, her career began with the U.S. Peace Corps, teaching in Sierra Leone, West Africa. Since then, she has authored several books and numerous current-affairs articles; her latest book: UNCONSCIONABLE: How The World Sees Us: World News, Alternative Views, Commentary on U.S. Foreign Relations; most thoughts, articles, edited work are posted at Bennett’s Study: http://todaysinsightnews.blogspot.com/ and on her Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/carolynladelle.bennett. http://www.prweb.com/releases/2014/08UNCONSCIONABLE/prweb12131656.htm http://bookstore.xlibris.com/Products/SKU-000757788/UNCONSCIONABLE.aspx Her books are also available at independent bookstores in New York State: Lift Bridge in Brockport; Sundance in Geneseo; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center in Buffalo; Burlingham Books in Perry; The Bookworm in East Aurora
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“Break the silence of night”: Martin Luther King Jr.

US Lethal Drone Wars

King’s 1967 concerns about the US in Vietnam were disregarded and belligerence recklessly ingrained continues to escalate and expand against peoples of Africa, Asia, and Eastern Europe

This January day on which American activist Martin Luther King, Jr., is supposedly commemorated is nothing more than another demonstration of capitalism, commerce’s never taking a holiday. It moves into a final full-blast of winter wastefulness, corralling careless consumers into its clutches.. It moves into a final full-blast of winter wastefulness, corralling careless consumers into its clutches. All the while peoples in foreign lands, one of which King spoke passionately and eloquently—suffer unspeakable wounds caused by endless US bombs, threat and intimidation, sanctions and occupation.

Martin Luther King’s words as well as those of other activists and thinkers are salient today but I am under no illusions that my fellow-Americans give a tinker’s damn about substance, about the active nature of and commitment to love, care and nonviolence – in relations of any kind, let alone US foreign relations.

Nevertheless, I remember, as I have not the luxury of forgetfulness; and these thoughts are worth remembering. There comes a “time,” King said, “when silence is betrayal; and that time has come for us… ”

King was speaking of the US war on Vietnam; but in today’s context, THINK: US wars on peoples of Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Syria, Yemen, Bahrain, South and North Korea, Japan, Egypt, Libya, Somalia, Congo, Nigeria, Sudan, Ukraine, Philippines, Central America, and others. 

From Martin Luther King’s 1967 speech “Beyond Vietnam—A Time to Break Silence”

Excerpt, editing, comment by Carolyn Bennett

Speaking beyond silence, betrayal

The truth of these words is beyond doubt, but the mission to which they call us is a most difficult one. …

US theaters of
endless wars

[People] do not easily assume the task of opposing their government’s policy, especially in time of war. Nor does the human spirit move without great difficulty against all the apathy of conformist thought within one’s own bosom and in the surrounding world. Moreover, when issues at hand seem as perplexed as they often do in the case of this dreadful conflict, we are always on the verge of being mesmerized by uncertainty.

However, we must move on.

[Though] some of us have already begun to break the silence of the night [and have] found that the calling to speak is often a vocation of agony, we must speak. With all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, we must nevertheless speak. We must speak.

Think: Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Syria, Yemen, Bahrain, South and North Korea, Japan, Egypt, Libya, Somalia, Congo, Nigeria, Sudan, Ukraine, Philippines, Central America

Speaking to Americans

[Though the whole situation is ambiguous and presumed “enemies” must be part of a collective solution to the tragedy], this speech is not addressed to Hanoi or to the National Liberation Front, to China or to Russia – “I wish not to speak with Hanoi and the National Liberation Front, but rather to my fellow Americans.…

“…I have walked among [America’s] desperate, rejected, and angry young men [and] I have told them that Molotov cocktails and rifles will not solve their problems. I have tried to offer them my deepest compassion while maintaining my conviction that social change comes most meaningfully through nonviolent action. But they ask—and rightly so— what about Vietnam?

…‘Is not our own nation using massive doses of violence to solve its problems, to bring about the changes it wants’?

“Their questions hit home and I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world—my own government.

“For the sake of those boys, for the sake of this government, for the sake of the hundreds of thousands trembling under our violence—I cannot be silent.

“W

e are called to speak for the weak, for the voiceless, for the victims of our nation and for those it calls ‘enemy’; no document from human hands can make these humans any less our [equals, our fellow human beings].

“…I speak now not of the soldiers of each side, not of the ideologies…, not of the junta …; but simply of the people who have been living under the curse of war for … decades now. I think of them, too, because it is clear to me that there will be no meaningful solution there until some attempt is made to know them and hear their broken cries.”

 

Think: Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Syria, Yemen, Bahrain, South and North Korea, Japan, Egypt, Libya, Somalia, Congo, Nigeria, Sudan, Ukraine, Philippines, Central America

Speaking for the sufferers

The homeless suffering want, failed infrastructure, clean water, disease, insecurity

As our troop deployments increase and leaflets rain down together with promises of peace and democracy and land reform, the people languish under our [US] bombs and they come to consider us—not [those we call enemy]—as the real enemy.

Knowing they must move or be destroyed by our bombs, [the suffering people] move sadly and apathetically as we herd them off the land of their fathers and into concentration camps where minimal social needs are rarely met.

Most sufferers are women and children and the aged, witnessing endless desecration. They watch as we poison their water, as we kill a million acres of their crops. … They wander into the towns and see thousands of the children, homeless, without clothes, running in packs on the streets like animals. They see the children degraded by our soldiers as they beg for food. They see the children selling their sisters to our soldiers, soliciting for their mothers. They wander into hospitals where scores of casualties caused by US firepower far exceeds ‘enemy’-caused injuries. Millions have died, mostly children.

 

Think: Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Syria, Yemen, Bahrain, South and North Korea, Japan, Egypt, Libya, Somalia, Congo, Nigeria, Sudan, Ukraine, Philippines, Central America

Unspeakable suffering, unhealed wounds 

We have destroyed their most cherished institutions, the family and the village. We have destroyed their land and their crops.

We have cooperated in crushing the nation’s only noncommunist revolutionary political force, the unified Buddhist Church. We have supported the enemies of the peasants … We have corrupted their women and children and killed their men. Now, there is little to build on, except bitterness; and soon the only solid physical foundations remaining will be [US] military bases and … the concentration camps we call ‘fortified hamlets.’ Can we blame the peasants’ wondering if we (the United States) plan to build our new Vietnam on these foundations?

They are our [fellow human beings] and we must speak for them and raise the questions they cannot raise.

Think: Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Syria, Yemen, Bahrain, South and North Korea, Japan, Egypt, Libya, Somalia, Congo, Nigeria, Sudan, Ukraine, Philippines, Central America

Restorative value: seeing through their eyes

What must they think of the United States of America when they realize that we have permitted repression and cruelty [against them]…? What do they think of our condoning the violence that led to their own taking up of arms? How can they believe in our integrity when now we speak of ‘aggression’ [from ‘them’] as if there were nothing more essential to the war? How can they trust us when now we charge them with violence after a murderous reign… and charge them with violence while we pour every new weapon of death into their land?

Surely, we must understand their feelings, even if we do not condone their actions. Surely, we must see that [those] we supported pressed them to their violence. Surely, we must see that our own computerized plans of destruction simply dwarf their greatest acts.… They question our political goals and deny the reality of a peace settlement from which they [are] excluded.

Their questions are frighteningly relevant. Is our nation again planning to build on political myth and then shore it up upon the power of new violence?

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Think: Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Syria, Yemen, Bahrain, South and North Korea, Japan, Egypt, Libya, Somalia, Congo, Nigeria, Sudan, Ukraine, Philippines, Central America

  

Love, nonviolence: neither romantic essence nor state of being; but active and continuous

T

he “true meaning and value of compassion and nonviolence,” King said, “[is] when it helps us to see the ‘enemy’s’ point of view, to hear [those] questions, to know [others’] assessment of ourselves. 

“From [those other views] we may see the basic weaknesses of our own [position]. And if we are mature, we may learn and grow and profit from the wisdom of [those] whom we call the opposition.”

And if we Americans year after year paid serious attention to the wisdom, the common sense, the common humanity in the words of King and other activists, and indeed in the words of those who suffer our rising ruthlessness around the world; if we translated substantive meaning into personal action, the world would progress into a better place for all peoples.  It is a thought worth pondering instead of shopping.

Sources and notes

“Beyond Vietnam -- A Time to Break Silence” by Martin Luther King Jr., delivered April 4, 1967, at a meeting of Clergy and Concerned Laity, Riverside Church, New York City [alt title “Time to Break Silence (Declaration Against the Vietnam War)”], American Rhetoric, http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkatimetobreaksilence.htm

[AUTHENTICITY CERTIFIED Text version transcribed directly from audio]

________________________________________________________

A lifelong American writer and writer/activist (former academic and staffer with the U.S. government in Washington), Dr. Carolyn LaDelle Bennett is credentialed in education and print journalism and public affairs (PhD, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan; MA, The American University, Washington, DC). Her work concerns itself with news and current affairs, historical contexts, and ideas particularly related to acts and consequences of U.S. foreign relations, geopolitics, human rights, war and peace, and violence and nonviolence. Dr. Bennett is an internationalist and nonpartisan progressive personally concerned with society and the common good. An educator at heart, her career began with the U.S. Peace Corps, teaching in Sierra Leone, West Africa. Since then, she has authored several books and numerous current-affairs articles; her latest book: UNCONSCIONABLE: How The World Sees Us: World News, Alternative Views, Commentary on U.S. Foreign Relations; most thoughts, articles, edited work are posted at Bennett’s Study: http://todaysinsightnews.blogspot.com/ and on her Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/carolynladelle.bennett. http://www.prweb.com/releases/2014/08UNCONSCIONABLE/prweb12131656.htm http://bookstore.xlibris.com/Products/SKU-000757788/UNCONSCIONABLE.aspx Her books are also available at independent bookstores in New York State: Lift Bridge in Brockport; Sundance in Geneseo; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center in Buffalo; Burlingham Books in Perry; The Bookworm in East Aurora
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Settle differences “not with arms but intellect, decent purpose” -- Ike’s January 17 warnings

Security and liberty depend on an alert, knowledgeable citizenry capable of properly weaving an industrial military machinery with peaceful methods and goals

Excerpt, minor edit by Carolyn Bennett

Essential roundtable of equals

…During the long lane of the history yet to be written … this world of ours, growing ever smaller, must avoid becoming a community of dreadful fear and hate; and must instead be a proud confederation of mutual trust and respect.

Such a confederation must be one of equals. The weakest must come to the conference table with the same confidence as do [those] protected by … moral, economic, and military strength. Though scarred by many fast frustrations of the battlefield – that table, despite past frustrations, cannot be abandoned for the certain agony of disarmament.…

W

e pray that peoples of all faiths, all races, all nations may have their great human needs satisfied 

 …That those now denied opportunity shall come to enjoy it to the full

…That all who yearn for freedom may experience its few spiritual blessings.

…That those who have freedom will understand, also, its heavy responsibility

That all who are insensitive to the needs of others will learn charity;

 

…That … scourges of poverty, disease, and ignorance will be made [to] disappear from the earth

…That in the goodness of time, all peoples will come to live together in a peace guaranteed by the binding force of mutual respect and love.

The United States of America’s Thirty-Fourth President: Dwight David Eisenhower (b.1890, d. 1969); Supreme Allied Commander Europe (1952); US president (January 20, 1953-January 20, 1961); his Farewell Address on this date in 1961 [Excerpt].

Beware public-private collusion manufacturing violence

U

ntil the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense.… [But] Akin to, and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our industrial-military posture, has been the technological revolution during recent decades. In this revolution, research has become central; it also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of the Federal government.… [And] …We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet, we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources, and livelihood are all involved. So is the very structure of our society.

[Therefore] In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes…

 

…America’s leadership and prestige depend not merely upon our unmatched material progress, riches, and military strength; but on how we use our power in the interests of world peace and human betterment.

Ensure free yet balanced learning, scholarship, inquiry

T

he free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity.

For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers. The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present -- and is gravely to be regarded.  Yet, in respecting scientific research and discovery, as we should, we must also be alert to an equal and opposite danger, that public policy can itself become captive to the scientific-technological elite.

It is the task of [those who exercise political leadership wisely and without narrow partisanship] to mold, to balance, and to integrate these and other forces, new and old, within the principles of our democratic system -- ever aiming toward the supreme goals of our free society.

Ever care, conservation, moderation

…Maintaining balance involves the element of time. As we peer into society's future, we -- you and I, and our government -- must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering for our own ease and convenience the precious resources of tomorrow.

We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without risking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage. We want democracy to survive for all generations to come; not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow.

D

isarmament, with mutual honor and confidence, is a continuing imperative. Together we must learn how to compose [settle] differences, not with arms, but with intellect and decent purpose. Because this need is so sharp and apparent, I confess that I lay down my official responsibilities in this field with a definite sense of disappointment.

As one who has witnessed the horror and the lingering sadness of war, as one who knows that another war could utterly destroy this civilization which has been so slowly and painfully built over thousands of years, I wish I could say tonight that a lasting peace is in sight. …

Left to the citizen 

 

O

nly an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.

Sources and notes

Dwight D. Eisenhower Farewell Address delivered January 17, 1961, American Rhetoric (transcript), Audio mp3 of Address, http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/dwightdeisenhowerfarewell.html

  

“Contractors 'raping' government for profit, & do sanctions on Russia work?” (E162),  January 17, 2015 08:30, Afshin Rattansi goes underground (in part) with Kirk Wiebe, an NSA veteran and whistleblower, who warns that private contractors are destroying intelligence agencies and ‘raping’ governmental institutions for profit. http://rt.com/shows/going-underground/223603-human-rights-nsa-uk/

Also in the January 17, 2015, edition of “Going Underground,” Afshin Rattansi with author Harry Gibson on “the power of sanctions”; and too “an airstrike on Al-Bab in Syria which according to a Syrian human rights group killed over 50 civilians; UK Prime Minister’s Questions highlighting “David Cameron struggling with questions over Saudi Arabia’s decision to lash a blogger, saying ‘no harm’ came to 57 people who reportedly died in East Anglia because ambulances did not arrive, and a report suggesting UK tax may have been funding extremist groups”; also a look at “Britain’s response to a regime (in Egypt) that allegedly murdered 1,400 political opponents, and has another 500 waiting to find out if they will be hanged – sending the largest trade delegation for a decade.” Going Underground http://fb.me/GoingUndergroundRT

Going Underground https://www.youtube.com/user/GoingUndergroundRT

 Going Underground on Twitter http://twitter.com/Underground_RT

 Afshin Rattansi on Twitter http://twitter.com/AfshinRattansi

 on Instagram http://instagram.com/officialgoingundergroundrt

 on SoundCloud https://soundcloud.com/rttv/sets/going-underground

American author, astronomer, cosmologist, astrophysicist, astrobiologist Carl Edward Sagan (1934 –1996)

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A lifelong American writer and writer/activist (former academic and staffer with the U.S. government in Washington), Dr. Carolyn LaDelle Bennett is credentialed in education and print journalism and public affairs (PhD, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan; MA, The American University, Washington, DC). Her work concerns itself with news and current affairs, historical contexts, and ideas particularly related to acts and consequences of U.S. foreign relations, geopolitics, human rights, war and peace, and violence and nonviolence. Dr. Bennett is an internationalist and nonpartisan progressive personally concerned with society and the common good. An educator at heart, her career began with the U.S. Peace Corps, teaching in Sierra Leone, West Africa. Since then, she has authored several books and numerous current-affairs articles; her latest book: UNCONSCIONABLE: How The World Sees Us: World News, Alternative Views, Commentary on U.S. Foreign Relations; most thoughts, articles, edited work are posted at Bennett’s Study: http://todaysinsightnews.blogspot.com/ and on her Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/carolynladelle.bennett. http://www.prweb.com/releases/2014/08UNCONSCIONABLE/prweb12131656.htm http://bookstore.xlibris.com/Products/SKU-000757788/UNCONSCIONABLE.aspx Her books are also available at independent bookstores in New York State: Lift Bridge in Brockport; Sundance in Geneseo; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center in Buffalo; Burlingham Books in Perry; The Bookworm in East Aurora
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A matter of massacre: Whose death, whose life, who’s mourned; whose truth, whose lies?

Yemeni suffer drone attacks

Reflecting also on impunity

Excerpts, editing, end comment by 

Carolyn Bennett

Complicit in violence, terrorism

A

uthor Teju Cole in the aftermath of an attack on a French magazine peddling "satire" reflected on relatively current and unending massacres.

“France is in sorrow today and will be for many weeks come,” he wrote. “We mourn with France. We ought to but it is also true that violence from ‘our’ side continues unabated.

France's Motto

“By this time next month (February 2015), in all likelihood, many more ‘young men of military age’ and many others, neither young nor male, will have been killed by US drone strikes in Pakistan and elsewhere. If these strikes in the past are anything to go by, many of (the dead and wounded) will be innocent of wrongdoing. Their deaths will be considered as natural and incontestable (and) those of us who are writers will not consider our pencils broken by such killings.

“But that incontestability, that unmournability – as much as the massacre in Paris – is the ‘clear and present danger’ to our collective liberté.”

Selective grieving selective victims; selective villains

“The scale, intensity, and manner of the solidarity that we are seeing for the victims of the Paris killings, encouraging as it may be, indicates how easy it is in Western societies to focus on radical Islamism as the real, or the only, enemy.

“This focus is part of the consensus about mournable bodies, and it often keeps us from paying proper attention to other, ongoing, instances of horrific carnage around the world: abductions and killings in Mexico, hundreds of children (and more than a dozen journalists) killed in Gaza by Israel last year, internecine massacres in the Central African Republic, and so on.

“Even when we rightly condemn criminals who claim to act in the name of Islam, little of our grief is extended to the numerous Muslim victims of their attacks, whether in Yemen or Nigeria—in both of which there were deadly massacres this week—or in Saudi Arabia, where, among many violations of human rights, the punishment for journalists who ‘insult Islam’ is flogging.

“We may not be able to attend to each outrage in every corner of the world but we should at least pause to consider how it is that mainstream opinion so quickly decides that certain violent deaths are more meaningful, more worthy of commemoration than others.”

Sustained provocation

Victims of the crimes in Paris that killed more than a dozen people “are being mourned worldwide: they were human beings, beloved by their families and precious to their friends.” Twelve of the victims had been “targeted by (assassins) for their affiliation with satirical French magazine Charlie Hebdo.”

This magazine “has often aimed (its ridicule) at Muslims and has taken particular joy in flouting the Islamic ban on depictions of the Prophet Muhammad.”

The magazine has also targeted political, Christian and Jewish icons; “depicted the ‘Father, Son, and Holy Ghost’ in a sexual threesome. … In recent years the magazine has gone specifically for racist and Islamophobic provocations.  Its numerous anti-Islam images have been inventively perverse, featuring hook-nosed Arabs, bullet-ridden Korans, variations on the theme of sodomy; and mockery of the victims of a massacre.”

Cole concludes, “It is not always easy to see the difference between a certain witty dissent from religion and a bullyingly racist agenda, but it is necessary to try.”

Sustained massacre of innocents, Impunity without mourning

T

BIJ reports

Pakistanis suffer drone attacks

“In January 2014, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism published a leaked Pakistani government document showing details of more than 300 CIA drone strikes between 2006 and 2013.” TBIJ challenged some of the United States’ “rare public statements on its drone campaign in Pakistan.

“In one particularly glaring discrepancy, the document recorded the deaths of 10 people during a 2012 attempt to kill Abu Yahya al Libi, al Qaeda’s second-in-command. Congressional aides told LA Times reporter Ken Dilanian however that the CIA had shown footage of the strike to politicians in which only one person was seen to be killed.”  These are excerpts from the Bureau of Investigative Journalism’s “Monthly Updates on the Covert War: US drone war” … The CIA Pakistan drone campaign reported to have killed nearly five times more people under US President Barack Obama than under the previous president, George W. Bush. Published in All Stories, Covert Drone War, Monthly Updates on the Covert War by Jack Serle and Abigail Fielding-Smith, January 7, 2015, 2014 in numbers:

No confirmed civilian casualties in Pakistan for second year running 

Domestic buildings continue to be the most frequently hit target in Pakistan 

Highest ever number of drone strikes in a year in Somalia 

Total people killed per strike in Yemen hits highest level 

 Pakistan

Drones were reported to have killed at least 114 people in 2014, more than in all of the previous year. The number of people killed per strike, or casualty rate, also increased slightly.

December 2014 actions

Total CIA strikes in December: 4

Total people reported killed: 14-20

All 2014 actions

Total strikes: 25

Total reported killed: 114-183

Civilians reported killed: 0-2

Children reported killed: 0-2

Total reported injured: 44-67

All actions 2004 – 2014

Total Obama strikes: 357

Total US strikes since 2004: 408

Total reported killed: 2,410-3,902

Civilians reported killed: 416-959

Children reported killed: 168-204

Total reported injured: 1,133-1,706

Yemen

Yemenis suffer US drone attacks

Except one, all of these actions have taken place during the Barack Obama presidency. … Though “the frequency of strikes may have fallen in 2014, more people were killed, on average, per strike than in any previous year. The casualty rate for last year even outstrips 2012 – the bloodiest year recorded in the US’s drone campaign in Yemen when at least 173 people were reported killed in 29 strikes. In 2014 at least 82 people were reported to have died in just 13 strikes.”

December 2014 actions

Confirmed US drone strikes: 1

Other US operations: 1

Total reported killed in all US operations: 20-21

Civilians reported killed in all US operations: 8

All confirmed drone strikes in 2014

US drone strikes: 13-15

Total reported killed: 82-118

Civilians reported killed: 4-9

Children reported killed: 1

Reported injured: 7-14

All actions 2002 – 2014

Confirmed US drone strikes: 72-84

Total reported killed: 371-541

Civilians reported killed: 64-83

Children reported killed: 7

Reported injured: 81-199

Possible extra US drone strikes: 101-120

Total reported killed: 345-553

Civilians reported killed: 26-68

Children reported killed: 6-11

Reported injured: 90-123

All other US covert operations: 16-81

Total reported killed: 168-404

Civilians reported killed: 68-97

Children reported killed: 26-28

Reported injured: 22-115

Somalia

“There were three confirmed US drone strikes in 2014, the most reported in any year. Each US attack reportedly killed a senior al Shabaab figure.” The first drone strike (January 26), reportedly targeting al Shabaab leader Ahmed Abdi Godane, missed” its target and reportedly killed “Sahal Iskudhuq – said to be one of Godane’s senior aides and a leading figure in Amniyat, al Shabaab’s intelligence unit.” The second drone attack (September 1, 2014) reportedly killed Godane. “[But] it was not clear if Godane had been killed and there was feverish speculation about whether the US had got its man in the days after the strike.”

Somalis suffer US drone attacks

All Somalia actions in 2014

Total US drone strikes: 3

Total reported killed: 10-18

Civilians reported killed: 0

Children reported killed: 0

Somalia December 2014 actions

Total reported US operations: 1

Total reported killed: 2-3

All Somalia actions 2007 – 2014

Drone strikes: 7-10

Total killed: 18-33

Civilians killed: 0-1

Children killed: 0

Injured: 2-3

Other covert operations: 8-11

Total killed: 40-141

Civilians killed: 7-47

Children killed: 0-2

Injured: 11-21

http://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/2015/01/07/us-drone-war-2014-in-numbers/

The status quo is not only to be mourned but moved, stopped straightaway.

The lives of all people, not some people, are equally valuable; and should not be taken or threatened or even ridiculed under some misguided notion or license termed individual or press "freedom".

What's more, the behavior of the United States of America, my beloved country, through its foreign relations practice, the acts and orders of officials in government and other sectors, is unspeakably cruel, criminal, murderous, indeed UNCONSCIONABLE. And it must change by changing both the guard and the ethos.  

Sources and notes

“Unmournable Bodies” by Teju Cole, New Yorker, January 9, 2015, http://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/unmournable-bodies

At Stop the War Coalition

“Charlie Hebdo: why are some deaths meaningful”: Teju Cole asks “How is it that mainstream opinion so quickly decides that certain violent deaths are more meaningful and more worthy of commemoration than others?” January 10, 2015, Posted in News, http://stopwar.org.uk/news/charlie-hebdo-why-are-some-deaths-meaningful-and-to-be-mourned-and-others-not

Teju Cole

Nigerian-American author, writer, photographer, and art historian, Teju Cole was born in the United States to Nigerian parents, raised in Nigeria; and at 17, returned to the United States. Cole is “Distinguished Writer in Residence at Bard College”  and before this appointment he was “‘writer in residence’ of the Literaturhaus Zurich and the PWG Foundation in Zurich.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teju_Cole

Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité

Originating in the French Revolution, example of a tripartite motto, ‘Liberty, equality, fraternity’, became the national motto of France and of the Republic of Haiti. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libert%C3%A9,_%C3%A9galit%C3%A9,_fraternit%C3%A9

See also

Comment with George Galloway: “Which of this week’s terror attacks will you remember?”

January 9, 2015, http://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2015/01/09/392296/Which-terror-attack-will-you-remember

“George Galloway on the Paris massacre” posted by mondeoman, January 8, 2015

Independent Leyton Orient Forum, The Completely Unofficial and Independent Leyton Orient Message Board, http://leytonorientforum.co.uk/topic6663.html

NBC News

PARIS MAGAZINE ATTACK 116 STORIES Headline:"Charlie Hebdo Shooting: 12 Killed at Muhammad Cartoons Magazine in Paris," http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/paris-magazine-attack/charlie-hebdo-shooting-12-killed-muhammad-cartoons-magazine-paris-n281266

Time dot com

"Pris Jews Reel After Deadly Kosher Supermarket Attack," Vivienne Walt / Paris @vivwalt Jan. 11, 2015, http://time.com/3663060/paris-terror-attack-jews-kosher-supermarket-siege/
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A lifelong American writer and writer/activist (former academic and staffer with the U.S. government in Washington), Dr. Carolyn LaDelle Bennett is credentialed in education and print journalism and public affairs (PhD, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan; MA, The American University, Washington, DC). Her work concerns itself with news and current affairs, historical contexts, and ideas particularly related to acts and consequences of U.S. foreign relations, geopolitics, human rights, war and peace, and violence and nonviolence. Dr. Bennett is an internationalist and nonpartisan progressive personally concerned with society and the common good. An educator at heart, her career began with the U.S. Peace Corps, teaching in Sierra Leone, West Africa. Since then, she has authored several books and numerous current-affairs articles; her latest book: UNCONSCIONABLE: How The World Sees Us: World News, Alternative Views, Commentary on U.S. Foreign Relations; most thoughts, articles, edited work are posted at Bennett’s Study: http://todaysinsightnews.blogspot.com/ and on her Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/carolynladelle.bennett. http://www.prweb.com/releases/2014/08UNCONSCIONABLE/prweb12131656.htm http://bookstore.xlibris.com/Products/SKU-000757788/UNCONSCIONABLE.aspx Her books are also available at independent bookstores in New York State: Lift Bridge in Brockport; Sundance in Geneseo; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center in Buffalo; Burlingham Books in Perry; The Bookworm in East Aurora

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