What About India’s Daughters In The Conflict Zones?

Devika Mittal

With the Government’s ban on “India’s documentary”, made around the 16 December gang rape case known as the Nirbhaya case, the case is once again in the public sphere. The BBC documentary was scheduled for release on the International Women’s day. The documentary led to a controversy pertaining to the statement of one of the rapists who still blamed the victim. Another controversy attached with it has been the permission issue, the Government denies having given the permission to interview the rapists. In the light of these controversies, the Government decided to ban it. However, the people have resisted the ban. Since its release online, the documentary claims a viewership of about a million.

The documentary has also been a point of talk because of the controversial statements. Since its release, people have shared their views, debated on the statement, on how the statement may not be an unusual mentality. The mentality is embedded in the patriarchal society. It is recognized that this mentality is also shared by people’s ‘representatives’, the politicians and those who are supposed to defend us or impart justice. People have also been suggesting that the system needs to be improved, needs to be empowered to curb these incidents. While this is true, what is still required to recognize and highlight is that not just the mentality to justify rape, the inefficiency of the system but how the very system has also used rape as a weapon to control dissent or voice against the oppression of the State.

This is to point at the cases of rape and sexual violence in the conflict zones of India – the North-East states (except Sikkim), Jammu & Kashmir and Naxalite zones. To tackle the challenges in the conflict zones, the Indian State has adopted draconian laws which in the garb of restoring law and order have led to gross violation of human rights’. One such law is the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA). Enforced in the North-East states (except Sikkim) and the state of Jammu & Kashmir, AFSPA gives the right to the armed forces to shoot at sight, torture, raid houses, arrest without warrant AFSPA also protects the army persons with legal impunity. These extra-ordinary and unrestrained powers to the armed forces have led to extra-judicial killings, fake encounters, extra-judicial disappearances, tortures and rapes.

This has been corroborated by the reports of the national and international human-rights’ commissions and organisations, Government’s own appointed committees and the Judiciary. The Justice J.S. Verma Committee that was set up to suggest amendments to laws relating to crimes against women, has recommended review of the continuance of the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act (AFSPA) in the context of extending legal protection to women in conflict areas. It also recommended that the security forces should not be able to take cover under the AFSPA in cases of rape and sexual assault and that cases of sexual violence against women by members of the armed forces or uniformed personnel should be brought under the purview of ordinary criminal law.

Similarly, the laws used to control naxalism have also led to the violation of human rights. Innocent tribals are falsely implicated in cases, tortured, raped and killed. While there are thousands of cases of sexual violence, known and unknown, reported and unreported, here are some of the known cases that still await justice:

Thangjam Manorama from AFSPA-affected Manipur – On 10 July 2004, Thangjam Manorama, a Manipuri woman, was picked up from her home by the Indian paramilitary unit, 17th Assam Rifles on allegations of being associated with a militant group. The next morning, her bullet-ridden corpse was found in a field. There were bullet marks even in her private parts. An autopsy revealed semen marks on her skirt suggesting rape and murder. It has been 10 years now but justice is yet to be done.

Rape and Killing of Asiya and Nilofar Jan - On 29th May 2009, in Shopian (J&K), two women named Asiya (age 17) and Neelofar (age 22) went missing. Their dead bodies were found next morning. The people alleged it to be a case of rape and murder by security forces who were camped nearby.

Initially, no FIR was lodged and police told that postmortem report cleared injuries over private parts. However, the people believed that police report about postmortem is fake and so they continued protests and forced J&K Government to form a judicial panel. Under judicial inquiry, the Forensic lab report established that they had been gang-raped. Apart from few suspension and transfers from police department, nothing has happened in this case.

Victims of the mass-rape of Kunan Posphora Village - During the intervening night of February 23 and 24 in 1991, the twin villages of Kunan and Poshpora in north Kashmir’s Kupwara district witnessed mass rape of over 40 women by the soldiers of the Army’s 4 Rajputana Rifles of 68 Brigade. The victims included young female children, pregnant women and even aged women. This incident has been acknowledged even by the Former Union External Minister, Salman Khurshid’s who said, “I am ashamed that it happened in my country. I am apologetic and appalled that it has happened in my country.” However, justice continues to evade them.

Sexual Harrasment of Soni Sori, an Adivasi Civil Rights’ Activist - Soni Sori, a 35-year-old Adivasi school teacher in Chhattisgarh, was alleged to be a Naxalite. While evidence shows that she was against them, she was framed by the Chhattisgarh police. She was sexually harassed by the police and was also given electric shocks. In the medical examination, small stones were found in her vagina and rectum. The main person who had supervised the torture was Ankit Garg, the Superintendent of Police. What did the state do? He was honored with the President's Award on Republic Day.

As stated previously, sexual violence in the conflict zones are not an aberration. They are widespread. Yet, they do not evoke the same outrage that this particular incident in a non-conflict zone has received. The Government, the judiciary and even those people who are aware of this reality remain silent. Aren’t these the daughters of India too? Aren’t they women as well? This hypocrisy needs to be addressed. Respect and rights cannot be exclusive or the entitlement of only a particular section of women.

Ahab’s Speech Before His Crew: The Face Of Falsehood

William A.Cook

A Reflection on the Congress of the United States

“What is it, what nameless, inscrutable, unearthly thing is it; what cozening, hidden lord and master, and cruel, remorseless emperor commands me; that against all natural lovings and longings, I so keep pushing, and crowding, and jamming myself on all the time …” (Ahab in Moby Dick)

How fiction foretells the future as the peoples’ Speaker brings his Captain to the podium to demand rebellion against their elected President, to exhort them to allegiance in his doomed quest to destroy yet another nation, to stand alone with him against the peoples of the world enticing them with fear and hate---rationalizing madness, obsessed with power, driven by hubris, twisted in his mind—a lone figure, with no position but the potential of reelection to govern a nation of six million,to dare to demand of the peoples representatives of this once great nation that they pay homage to him, obey him, to send their sons and daughters to yet another war for him, the leader of all the Jews who inhabit the earth.

What inscrutable thing, indeed, drives this madness, what horror dwells where a heart should live, what blindness blunts the reason that should govern those who govern that they surrender themselves to insanity? What have our leaders become that they grovel before a man who lives in hate, who thrives on an illusion of power, whose sole purpose in life is to use others to quell the fear that infests his being?

He like Ahab owns in his own demented mind the oceans of the world;he stands before the nations of the world united to condemn those he has judged in his sickness to be evil; and he assembles the Congress of the United States to damn their President’s attempt to stand with the leaders of five fellow nations to bring a modicum of peace to a strained portion of the world while he castigates all who would disagree with him.

“What is it,” Ahab asks of himself, “what nameless, inscrutable, unearthly thing is it that drives me?” It is, is it not, the absence of human sympathy for his fellow humans that sees in them his executioner, that feels no compassion for any who are destined in his mind to inflict their wrath on him, that his existence depends on constant, never ending, volatile vengeance to be inflicted when and where he must to salve the fear that festers within his being and drives him beyond the path of human toil, and effort, and love. Like Ahab he has lost his soul. He lives to use others to his end.

When will he, like Jonah, find repentance, and like Jonah cry out “I am a Hebrew, I fear the Lord the God of heaven who hath made the sea and the dry land” … and leave his deliverance to God, and be grateful for his punishment? How prophetic Melville’s sermon at the outset of Ahab’s mad voyage when Father Maple ends with this lament: “Woe to him whom this world charms from Gospel duty! Woe to him who seeks to pour oil upon the waters when God has brewed them into a gale! Woe to him who seeks to please rather than to appall! Woe to him who, in this world, courts not dishonor! Woe to him who would not be true, even though to be false were salvation! Woe to him who while preaching to others is himself a castaway!” What then is the Almighty’s bidding? It is not to be the face of falsehood; it is to preach the Truth to the Face of Falsehood!

Palestinian Memory And Hope

Dan Lieberman

They are asking for only $14,000, and their request greatly strengthens recognition of the Palestinian cause. THEY are a group of dedicated activists who are devoting time and energy to create an initial Nakba Museum of Memory and Hope within a building of the Adam's Morgan neighborhood, Washington, D.C. Information on this worthwhile cause can be found at:

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/nakba-museum-project-of-memory-and-hope

Total exposure to a world that is apathetic to the violence committed on the Palestinians will require a huge but not impossible sum from the wealth in the bank accounts of those who sympathize with the Palestinians, which is probably 90 percent of the world's people. It is time to act and start obtaining funds for highlighting the ongoing destruction of the Palestinian people? The initial Nakba Museum of Memory and Hope is a test case.

Mass slaughter of a people by deliberate actions - medieval French Cathars, Central American Mayans, Native Americans, enslaved from Africa, Jews in the World War II holocaust, Tutsis from Rwanda, and many others - have distinctive characteristics. The destruction of the Palestinian people is unique; in a world of enhanced education and communication, several decades of intensive violence committed against the Palestinian community continues with no respite. Encompassing all aspects of life -  economic, social and psychological -  the suffering portends only one finish, the end of Palestinian culture, identity and life. The obvious characteristic that distinguishes the severe oppression of the Palestinian oppression from oppressions of the past is that it remains in motion, and, unlike the brutalities of the past, can be halted and rectified. This is not happening and the opposite is occurring. While the decades old World War II holocaust is constantly portrayed in media -  books, film, theater, video -  as if it is extant, the extent of the ongoing Palestinian tragedy is scarcely noted.

An earlier article, Palestinian Nationalism, at

http://www.alternativeinsight.com/Palestinian_Nationalism.html

described the effects of the constant violence committed upon the Palestinian community.

A state is not only a matter of borders; it is a matter of survival. The Palestinians want to gain what all peoples need for survival - a self- identity that derives from being part of a state that protects its citizens. Loss of safety results in loss of trust and loss of self-identity.

Nationality and religion enhance identity and provide an answer to ontological security. The latter two words are more than an esoteric expression. They define what the Palestinians lack and most need. An absence of ontological security has accelerated deterioration of the Palestinian community, a process caused by severe Israeli repression.

Ontological security "is a stable mental state derived from a sense of continuity in regard to the events in one's life…. Meaning is found in experiencing positive and stable emotions, and by avoiding chaos and anxiety. If an event occurs that is not consistent with the meaning of an individual's life, this will threaten that individual's ontological security. Ontological security also involves having a positive view of self, the world and the future."

Many of the 418 villages destroyed by Israel after the 1948 war and the remaining others are known from extensive village genealogy. Ancestral conversations recall village history and geography. History books, plays, songs, television and radio echo the repetition and awareness of the past. In Jordan refugee camps, shops and streets have been named after destroyed villages. After 1948, the names of fighters killed in the conflict have been suffixed with their ancestral locations. To emphasize a common identity, peasant attire has become national symbols. Many Palestinians, during a period when they were able to enter Israel, returned to their villages to retrieve artifacts and record the visits on video tape. And not to be undone, the youth find ways of keeping village memories alive. These memories connect the dispossessed Palestinians across their separated borders.

The Nakba Museum of Memory and Hope advances ontological security and deserves support. Start with this small group; observe how fast they proceed and how much money they raise. If they succeed, grassroots participation in promoting the urgency of the Palestinian cause will be satisfied. Continue the process to implement a multitude of similar actions, significant endeavors that raise the conscience of the world's population and challenge the oppression.

An immense amount of funds from the United States to Israel supports the oppression of the Palestinians.

Immense funds will be needed to counter the deceit that finances the oppression.

Meet The Planet’s Most Dangerous Nuclear Rogue State

Mickey Z.

Photo credit: Mickey Z.

Our history books and newspaper headlines portray an ever-benevolent United States as minding its own business, yet incessantly plagued by surprise events and unprovoked threats to test its celebrated patience.

This long record of conjuring up dubious rationales to wage war indicts those on both sides (sic) of the proverbial aisle -- equally.

As corporate-funded war criminal Barack Obama once declared: "We're leading the fight against nuclear dangers. We've applied the strongest sanctions ever on … nations that cannot be allowed to threaten the world with nuclear weapons."

Yep, since Iran obviously has the audacity to make decisions without first asking for U.S. (or Israeli) permission, we are now faced with the spectacle of America -- the only nation to have used nuclear weapons on civilians -- warning the world about how nuclear weapons might be, well, used on civilians.

Of course, this is very familiar ground for the Land of the Free™.

I'll Take Manhattan

“With proper tactics, nuclear war need not be as destructive as it appears.” --Henry Kissinger

It was in 1942, at the University of Chicago, that physicists working under Arthur Compton, Enrico Fermi, and others produced fission of the uranium isotope U-235. In other words: a nuclear chain reaction. With an ultra-secret $2.2 billion investment (the equivalent of nearly $30 billion today), the Manhattan Project began that same year.

Nearly 200,000 workers toiled in 37 installations in 19 states and Canada. On July 16, 1945, an atomic bomb was successfully detonated at Alamogordo, New Mexico after which Senator Brien McMahon of Connecticut called it “the most important thing in history since the birth of Jesus Christ.”

While the long term effects of the Manhattan Project are still being calculated, the initial consequences of this Second Coming, of course, were felt by Japanese civilians. Sixty percent of Hiroshima, a city with a population of roughly 343,000, was destroyed on Aug. 6, 1945.

A Tokyo radio broadcast two days later described how “the impact of the bomb was so terrific that practically all living things, human and animal, were seared to death by the tremendous heat and pressure engendered by the blast.”

Tokyo radio went on to call Hiroshima a city with corpses “too numerous to be counted … literally seared to death.” It was impossible to “distinguish between men and women.”

The Associated Press carried the first eyewitness account: a Japanese solider who described the victims as “bloated and scorched -- such an awesome sight -- their legs and bodies stripped of clothes and burned with a huge blister.”

The dropping of the second bomb on Nagasaki on Aug. 9, 1945, has never been convincingly explained. “Was it because this was a plutonium bomb whereas the Hiroshima bomb was a uranium bomb?” asked Howard Zinn. “Were the dead and irradiated of Nagasaki victim of a scientific experiment?”

(If anyone is thinking right about now that those bombings were "necessary," feel free to contact me. I'll be happy to debunk that murderous myth for the thousandth time.)

The men that devised and carried out America's nuclear attacks on Japanese civilians are generally considered to be part of this country’s "greatest generation," yet, by any sane definition, what I just detailed is nuclear terrorism -- and it continues to this day.

Just DU It

“A world without nuclear weapons would be less stable and more dangerous for all of us.” --Margaret Thatcher

Nuclear weapons may be a hot topic when discussing Iran or North Korea, but how many know that the United States regularly uses depleted uranium (DU) when waging its seemingly endless wars (and when training in places like Vieques, Puerto Rico, for such wars)?

DU is the byproduct of uranium enrichment, a waste product of the nuclear industry. As the International Coalition to Ban Uranium Weapons explains: "Depleted uranium itself is a chemically toxic and radioactive compound, which is used in armor piercing munitions because of its very high density. It is 1.7 times denser than lead. This allows it to easily penetrate the steel armor of tanks and other vehicles when fired at high velocity."

"When fired," explains James Ridgeway in the Village Voice, "the uranium bursts into flame and all but liquefies, searing through steel armor like a white hot phosphorescent flare. The heat of the shell causes any diesel fuel vapors in the enemy tank to explode, and the crew inside is burned alive."

"Depleted uranium burns on contact," says Helen Caldicott, "creating tiny aerosolized particles less than five microns in diameter, small enough to be inhaled." These minute particles can travel "long distances when airborne," she adds.

John Gofman is a former associate director of Livermore National Laboratory, one of the scientists who worked on the atomic bomb, and co-discoverer of uranium-233. He knows a thing or three about radiation. "There is no safe dose or dose rate below which dangers disappear. No threshold-dose,'" Gofman says. "Serious, lethal effects from minimal radiation doses are not 'hypothetical,' 'just theoretical,' or 'imaginary.' They are real."

Also real: Seven decades of fallout from nuclear testing, the inherent dangers of nuclear power plants, the fact that nuclear power is not carbon-free, and U.S. plans for a new generation of nuclear-powered drones.

All of this radioactive reality comes courtesy not of Iran, Iraq, North Korea, or ISIS, but instead it's brought to you by none other than the Home of the Brave™

Know Yer History

“The nuclear arms race is like two sworn enemies standing waist deep in gasoline, one with three matches, the other with five.” --Carl Sagan

We're told we can't allow just anyone (except allies like Israel, of course) to acquire such lethal technology -- and we can't let anyone help arm men so evil they might, well, use nuclear weapons on civilians. We hear this while pretending that our tax dollars aren't funding the forces that regularly use nuclear weapons on civilians.

“Why did we drop (the bomb)?” pondered Studs Terkel in 1995, on the 50th anniversary of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings.

“So little Harry could show Molotov and Stalin we’ve got the cards,” Terkel explained. “That was the phrase Truman used. We showed the goddamned Russians we’ve got something and they’d better behave themselves in Europe. That’s why it was dropped. The evidence is overwhelming. And yet you tell that to 99 percent of Americans and they’ll spit in your eye.”

Translation: The United States will gleefully use depleted uranium weapons on Iranian civilians in the name of stopping Iran from developing nuclear weapons that they will allegedly use on (wait for it) civilians.

The cycle of violence that includes such deadly hypocrisy is a defining characteristic of our dominant culture. Thus, genuine and enduring social change will never happen "within the system" or from the top-down.

The path, as always, begins with us choosing to think for ourselves, us sharing our knowledge and skills, and us taking immediate and sustained action.

The "99 percent of Americans" Studs Terkel mentioned in 1995 still very much want to spit in someone's eye -- but this time around, we're aiming upward, at the top 1% and Obama himself.

ISIS destroys ancient sites near Mosul

Sandy English

The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) has reportedly used heavy equipment to demolish the site of the ancient Assyrian capital of Nimrud, 18 miles south of Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city. Reports describe ISIS militiamen trucking away statues and tablets from the site and the demolition of the area since last Thursday. The fundamentalist group considers pre-Islamic artifacts to be idolatrous and worthy of destruction.

Nimrud, built over 3,000 years ago, was the capital of the Neo-Assyrian Empire after 883 BC. The Neo-Assyrian Empire, whose rulers spoke a language distantly related to Arabic and Hebrew, ruled Mesopotamia, the ancient name for Iraq and parts of Syria, from about 900 BC to 600 BC.

The site along the Tigris River contained monumental statues, frescos, temples, private dwellings and a ziggurat, the stepped pyramid characteristic of Mesopotamian civilizations. Nimrud boasted some of the most extensive carvings in ivory of any site in the world, most of which had been removed and placed in museums in Iraq and Britain.

A week earlier, the Islamic State released video showing men smashing statues with sledgehammers in the Nineveh Museum, about 20 miles from the site of Nimrud. Nineveh was the capital of the Neo-Assyrian Empire after 705 BC.

In recent weeks, ISIS has also set off incendiary devices around Mosul Central Library. Estimates of the books and manuscripts destroyed range from 8,000 to 10,000. Bookshops on the central Al-Nujaifi Street have been burned, and ancient Christian monasteries have been vandalized.

Over the weekend, the Associated Press reported that residents near Hatra, 68 miles southwest of Mosul, saw ISIS fighters removing artifacts form the 2,000-year-old city. Hatra was built during the Seleucid Empire in the second or third century BC and changed hands over the next several hundred years, belonging in turn to the Parthians, the Romans and Araba, one of the first pre-Islamic Arab kingdoms.

Next to the tremendous loss of life, the destruction of the past is one of the most grievous products of the conflict that was initiated by the American invasion of Iraq in 2003. A whole people is being cut off from its historical roots and the study of the Mesopotamian past by historians has suffered a serious blow.

The plunder of Iraq began on April 10, 2003, when American occupation forces in Baghdad, in spite of warnings by archaeologists, allowed the National Museum to be looted of tens of thousands of historical artifacts of great artistic and scientific value. Only about half the artifacts have been recovered. The American military, in violation of cultural heritage regulations, fired on the museum.

In that first month of the occupation, dozens of other museums and libraries were burned or looted, including the Mosul Museum, where the 2,000-year-old statue of Parthian King Saqnatroq II was stolen.

In 2003-2004, American troops occupied the site of ancient Babylon, where they dug ditches across excavated areas, filling sandbags with ancient bricks labeled with cuneiform writing of the Mesopotamian civilization. The occupation forces built a heliport, and vibrations from American aircraft caused the bases of temples to collapse.

“The damage to Babylon is both extensive and irreparable,” Columbia University archeologist Zainab Bahrani said in 2007. “The occupation has resulted in a tremendous destruction of history, well beyond the museums and libraries that were looted and destroyed at the fall of Baghdad. At least seven historical sites have [like Babylon] been used by US and coalition forces since 2003, one of them being in the historical heart of Samarra, where the Askari shrine built by Nasr al Din Shah was bombed in 2006.”

The destruction and looting of Iraqi archaeological sites has been going on nonstop ever since. Iraq’s archeological sites and tells—unexcavated mounds of earth that cover formerly inhabited areas—have been dug up with earth-moving equipment and the spoils have been sold on the antiquities market for private gain.

In 2010, the New York Times noted the collusion of the police with antiquities thieves in southern Iraq, areas controlled by Shia sectarian militias. One of the great cultural crimes brought on by the American occupation of Iraq was the bombing of al-Mutinabbi Street, Baghdad’s historic street of booksellers, on March 5, 2007.

Both Nimrud and Nineveh were plundered several times during the American occupation. Before ISIS’s destruction last week, the advanced state of decay of the Nimrud site was causing archaeologists great concern.

The American and European media have expressed “shock” and “outrage” over ISIS’s cultural destruction. Irina Bokova, director of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESO) said, “We cannot remain silent. The deliberate destruction of cultural heritage constitutes a war crime.”

The Iraqi government, somewhat more forthrightly, has used the ISIS vandalism to call for stepped-up intervention by the American and coalition air forces in Iraq.

But the corporate-controlled media, UNESCO, and the miserable servants of the US in the Iraq government conceal the essential causes and nature of this barbarism, and omit even naming the force that is chiefly responsible for the destruction of the past: American imperialism.

This exercise in unbridled hypocrisy assumes that the people of the world have forgotten the destruction of Iraqi, and now Syrian, heritage sites, museums and libraries as the result of 12 years of almost continuous imperialist military intervention in the region.

Over a million Iraqis have died as a result of the American invasion and occupation, and the sectarian fighting stoked up by US imperialism. Tens of millions remain internally displaced and mired in poverty. The utilities infrastructure and the Iraqi health care system have been destroyed and have yet to recover. The World Socialist Web Site has accurately defined this process as “sociocide,” “the deliberate and systematic murder of an entire society.”

The same is true for the devastation wrought by right-wing political movements such as ISIS, and the destruction of Iraq’s cultural heritage. Just as there was no presence of Al Qaeda in Iraq before the American invasion, there was no plunder of the country’s archaeology or cultural institutions.

Those above all responsible for the destruction of Nimrud, Nineveh and Hatra bear the names of Bush, Cheney, Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld, Rice and Powell. One must add to this list Barack Obama, who continued the occupation for nearly three years and has now launched a new war in Iraq and Syria that can only lead to the further destruction of the region’s historical and cultural legacy, in addition to more civilian deaths and an increase in the number of refugees.

In a more direct sense, the vandalism of ISIS is an American production. In its eagerness to implement regime-change in Syria, the CIA, working with American allies among the Gulf monarchies, as well as Turkey and Jordan, armed the Islamists fighting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. The American-stoked civil war in Syria led to the widespread destruction of antiquities.

Last year, the UN found that 24 archaeological sites have been completely destroyed, 189 severely or moderately damaged, and a further 77 possibly damaged. All six of Syria’s World Heritage sites have been damaged.

Egyptian junta begins executions of Islamists

Alex Lantier

With Saturday’s execution of an Islamist defendant, the first state killing of the hundreds of people sentenced to death in mass show trials following the July 2013 military coup, the US-backed Egyptian junta is stepping up its campaign of police-state terror against the people.

The junta chose to begin the executions with a defendant, Mahmoud Ramadan, who was personally involved in a gruesome crime: the killing of a young man in the Sidi Gaber district of Alexandria during mass protests against Egypt’s Islamist president, Mohamed Mursi, in the run-up to the 2013 coup. It doubtless calculated that the selection of such a target would lend a veneer of legitimacy to its show trials and summary death sentences handed down over the last year.

Ramadan was one of a group of Islamist thugs who assaulted the teenager, who allegedly had thrown rocks at pro-Mursi protesters, and threw him off of a roof—a crime that was captured in a widely-viewed online video. In the video, Ramadan has a black flag inscribed with the Shahada, the Islamic profession of faith—a flag often associated with Al Qaeda.

However heinous the Sidi Gaber murder was, the Egyptian junta of General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has no political standing to execute Ramadan. It is guilty of far greater crimes against the Egyptian masses, carried out with the support of Washington and the major European powers. After overseeing countless acts of violence against protesters under Mursi prior to the July 2013 coup, the army shot thousands of peaceful protesters opposing the coup in the streets of Cairo and other cities.

In killing Ramadan, the junta’s purpose is the same as in its murder in January of 18 protesters as they marched on the fourth anniversary of the toppling of US-backed Egyptian military dictator Hosni Mubarak. It aims to prevent a renewed revolutionary upsurge of the working class against the military through sheer police terror, making it clear that all political opponents face a potential death sentence.

Ramadan’s trial was a mockery of justice. According to court documents, Ramadan was found guilty of “killing a child by stabbing him and throwing him off the roof.” He was condemned to death in May 2014, a sentence subsequently upheld by Egypt’s Grand Mufti Shawqy Allam, as required by Egyptian law.

The ruling apparently relied on Ramadan’s televised confession following his arrest by the military in which he acknowledged his involvement in the crime. However, Ramadan later admitted only to stabbing the youth, denying that he had thrown him from the roof of the building. The online video does not show Ramadan throwing the youth off the roof.

Ramadan’s lawyers therefore requested that prosecutors provide evidence to prove their client’s involvement in the killing. The prosecutors and the judge simply ignored their requests.

Human rights groups denounced the trial. “The execution happened after an unfair trial where not all the [testimonies] were included, and where the conviction depended on very fragile evidence,” Amnesty International-Egypt researcher Mohamed Elmessiry said. “The execution should not have happened, and a retrial should have been ordered.”

The Arab Organization for Human Rights (AOHR) also condemned the ruling. “The court viewed fabricated evidence and refused to look into evidence that denies the charges from the defendants,” it declared.

A spokesman for Mursi’s Muslim Brotherhood (MB) also condemned the execution. “There is no difference between a murderer with a rifle and a murder on a court bench,” said Mohamed Montaser, adding: “The death sentences are political.”

The counterrevolutionary terror of the Sisi junta relies above all on the support of Washington and its imperialist allies in Europe, who have maintained a deafening silence on Ramadan’s execution. They gave the green light for the mass death sentences last year, handed down in summary rulings issued after show trials of alleged members or supporters of Mursi’s Muslim Brotherhood (MB)--529 in March 2014, 683 in April, and 185 in December.

Though the mass death sentences fell primarily on a right-wing Islamist movement, their political target was the continuing opposition of the working class, the leading force in the revolutionary struggles that broke out four years ago in Tunisia and Egypt.

Between the July 2013 coup and the first mass death sentence in March 2014, the junta attacked waves of strikes and protests that culminated in a strike by workers at textile factories in Mahalla. The junta feared broad popular opposition to its dictatorial methods and free market measures, such as the slashing of food and fuel subsidies for working people as demanded by the International Monetary Fund and the imperialist powers. The subsidy cuts were ultimately introduced by Sisi last July.

Washington and its European allies piled on their support for the Sisi junta as it rained down social cuts and death sentences, rewarding Cairo with ever-closer ties and growing military supplies. The Obama administration delivered Apache attack helicopters to the junta after the March 2014 death sentences and greeted Egyptian Foreign Minister Nabil Fahmy when he visited Washington the day after the April death sentences.

Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair became a top advisor to the Sisi junta in July, and France’s Socialist Party government signed billions of dollars in weapons contracts with the junta in Paris shortly before the announcement of December’s mass death sentences.

The role of the Sisi junta as a counterrevolutionary agent of imperialism across the entire Middle East has emerged ever more clearly. Its targeting of Islamists to justify counterrevolutionary violence at home aligned it with the deepening imperialist intervention in the Middle East against the Islamic State (IS) militia and its regional proxies after IS victories in Iraq and Syria last spring.

The Sisi junta has been increasingly integrated into imperialism’s military operations against Islamist militias across the region. As Western military forces began deploying troops back to Iraq and bombing the country, Egypt bombed areas of Libya held by Islamist guerrillas since the 2011 NATO war that toppled the regime of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi.

The bloodletting across the region is dragging Egypt itself deeper into conflict, as the junta faces threats that Islamist groups or domestic militias will retaliate against its show trials with armed struggle or terrorist actions.

“The reply to Ramadan’s execution is an uprising and the [declaration] of jihad,” said Mohamed Galal, a leader in the Islamist Salafi Front.

Egyptian press outlets cited statements by political movements, such as the Popular Resistance in Giza and Revolutionary Punishment, vowing to avenge Ramadan’s execution.

EU Increasingly Abandons Obama On Ukraine

Eric Zuesse

As reported on Saturday March 7th by both German Economic News, and Spiegel magazine, the ongoing lies and arrogance from U.S. President Barack Obama's Administration regarding Ukraine and Russia have finally raised to the surface a long-mounting anger of Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel and her Government. 

This is especially the case with Germany's Foreign Minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, who comes from Germany's Social Democratic Party, which is far less conservative (and far less anti-Russian) than the Christian Democratic Union Party, Chancellor Merkel's party. The CDU has traditionally been hostile toward Russia, but the SDP has instead favored an unprejudiced policy regarding Russia, after the breakup of the Soviet Union and the end of communism there.

Steinmeier has always been skeptical of Obama's intentions regarding Ukraine and Russia, but now it appears that even Merkel is veering away from the United States on these policies. 

“Resistance to the US strategy toward Russia is growing in the EU,” reports GDN, which names especially U.S. General Philip Breedlove, NATO's Supreme Commander, as the major source of this turn-about, because Breedlove has "exaggerated the military role of Russia in Ukraine.”

Spiegel provides the details on Breedlove, but especially blames Victoria Nuland, the Obama official who actually ran the February 2014 coup in Ukraine and who selected the person who would steer the new, post-coup, Ukrainian Government in the ways that President Obama wants.

Spiegel's headline is “Breedlove's Bellicosity: Berlin Alarmed by Aggressive NATO Stance on Ukraine." GDN's is (as auto-translated by Google's Chrome browser) "Ukraine Policy: First open conflict between Germany and NATO.”

Spiegel notes that, after the second — which was the Merkel-Hollande — Ukrainian ceasefire was reached at Minsk in late February, Breedlove announced that "well over a thousand combat vehicles, Russian combat forces, some of their most sophisticated air defense, battalions of artillery” had just been sent to the conflict-region, Donbass, from Russia. "What is clear," Breedlove said, "is that right now, it is not getting better. It is getting worse every day.” All of that was fictitious. 

Spiegel continues: "German leaders in Berlin were stunned. They didn't understand what Breedlove was talking about. And it wasn't the first time. Once again, the German government, supported by intelligence gathered by the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), Germany's foreign intelligence agency,” heard Breedlove lie and were shocked by it.

But Spiegel then goes on to subhead “The 'Super Hawk',” when describing Victoria Nuland's role. Spiegel says there: 

"She and others would like to see Washington deliver arms to Ukraine and are supported by Congressional Republicans as well as many powerful Democrats. Indeed, US President Barack Obama seems almost isolated. He has thrown his support behind Merkel's diplomatic efforts for the time being, but he has also done little to quiet those who would seek to increase tensions with Russia and deliver weapons to Ukraine.”

Spiegel has always tried to portray U.S. President Obama as being trapped by conservatives, such as Breedlove and Nuland, who somehow became parts of his Administration and who are, supposedly, independent actors in the roles that they perform — as if they weren't instead his employees. For Spiegel, Nuland's (and they spell it out there, so I will here) "Fuck the EU” statement, was only speaking for herself, as if she weren't Obama's hire, though Spiegel does note there that, "Her husband, the neo-conservative Robert Kagan, is, after all, the originator of the idea that Americans are from Mars and Europeans, unwilling as they are to realize that true security depends on military power, are from Venus.” Precisely why Mr. Obama selected Dick Cheney's former chief foreign-policy advisor, Nuland, to become the person who would carry out his Administration's polices regarding Ukraine and Russia, the ever-‘tactful' Spiegel ignores. Instead, Spiegel goes on to say, "When it comes to the goal of delivering weapons to Ukraine, Nuland and Breedlove work hand-in-hand.”

Throughout, Spiegel ignores that Obama has been driving his entire Administration to marginalize, weaken, and crush Russia, and that this overriding goal of his foreign policies does not originate with his hires but with himself: he chooses these “Super Hawks” regarding Russia, because this is who he secretly is. When he plays the good cop in the good-cop bad-cop routine on Russia, it's an act, which is designed to fool the public. Obama bombed Libya because Muammar Gaddafi was friendly to Russia; he bombs Syria because Bashar al-Assad is friendly to Russia; he overthrew Ukraine's Government because Viktor Yanukovych was friendly to Russia; and he has been and is squeezing Iran because Iran is friendly to Russia. Israel is no different than the U.S.: it's rabidly anti-Russian (and most of the large political donations to there come from American billioinaires; Israel is America's 51st state, which has lots more than one-fifty-first of the power over the American Government — it's the most powerful of the 51 actual states, even though it has no fealty to the U.S. Constitution and no constitution of its own); and both the U.S. and Israel are allied with Saudi and other Arab royals because they're all anti-Russian. America's ally is Saudi Wahhabist jihadist Islam, not the EU. America created Al Qaeda, and ISIS. Everything else than the obsession to isolate and destroy Russia is just an act, for the American aristocracy (including the ones who own Israel) — and especially for all Republican politicians and for the top Democratic ones.

Maybe the EU will finally decide that they've had enough of it, and invite Russia to join with them, and will tell Ukraine that they're a bit too American for European tastes, after all: Europe has had enough experience with fascism and nazism, so that they don't want to invite it back in again.

But will Germany actually do this? Will France actually do this? Have they had enough of Sunni jihad, and of Christian nazism (both just aristocratic ploys), to decide that they want no part of either one? Maybe goodbye, U.S.; hello, Russia? What type of Europe would that be? Might it out-compete the U.S.? Would it be the best thing for Europeans?

That's the big strategic question in our time. And it's not America's to answer. Either Europe will go with democracy and peace and abandon NATO (i.e., abandon the U.S. military), or else it will go with nazism and war and abandon democracy (like the U.S. itself has done, especially in Ukraine).

Which will it be? Europe will need to choose between Russia and the United States. If it goes with the U.S., Europeans will become servants to America's aristocracy — to the people who are now actually running Ukraine. If it goes with Russia, then perhaps a United States of Europe will become possible so that no nation's aristocracy will have either the inclination or the ability to dictate to the governments of Europe.

Stay tuned. These are exciting times: the stakes for future history have never been higher.

It's not really Obama who is on the fence. It is Europe. And the decision will be for Europe's leaders — not for America's, nor for Russia's — to make.

They are in the driver's seat, for Europe's future — and for the entire world's.

Selma and the legacy of the US civil rights movement

Fred Mazelis & Joseph Kishore

Over the weekend, President Barack Obama headed an official 50th anniversary commemoration of “Bloody Sunday.” On that day, March 7, 1965, hundreds of civil rights marchers demanding the right to vote were set upon and beaten by police as they marched over the Edmund Pettus Bridge from Selma, Alabama, heading for the state capital, Montgomery.

Obama’s ceremony was a political farce, a state-sanctioned exercise aimed at sanctifying a corrupt apparatus with the blood of those who made great sacrifices—in many cases, the ultimate sacrifice—as part of the civil rights movement. While many thousands of ordinary people attended, the commemoration was presided over by representatives of the corporate and financial elite, including 100 members of Congress of both parties, as well as George W. Bush, who left office the most despised president in US history.

The event was designed to obscure the significance of Selma, the civil rights movement as a whole, and the trajectory of American politics during the five decades since.

The repression meted out on “Bloody Sunday” was one episode in a campaign of police violence aimed at crushing protests against the system of Jim Crow segregation in the American South. Southern blacks faced a raft of discriminatory measures, such as the poll tax, that effectively disenfranchised them.

While the specific aim of the civil rights movement was to end racial discrimination, it was part of a wave of social conflict that engulfed the United States during the 1960s and 1970s. It came only a few decades after the explosive battles out of which the industrial unions were formed in the 1930s. It was followed by powerful workers’ strikes in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the urban rebellions against discrimination and poverty, and the mass protest movement against the Vietnam War.

American capitalism was in deep crisis. The underlying momentum for the civil rights movement was imparted by the immense social struggles of the working class. The masses of workers and youth, black and white, who participated in the civil rights struggle saw it as one component of a broader social movement, carried out in the face of bitter resistance from the ruling class and its political representatives.

The form the struggle took was complicated, however, by the abstention of the AFL-CIO trade unions, politically aligned with the Democratic Party and American imperialism. The Democrats, based at the time on an alliance between northern liberals and southern racists, worked for a protracted period to undermine all attempts to end legally enforced racial segregation. The unions avoided any actions that would disrupt their political alliance with the Democrats, including blocking efforts to organize black workers in the south.

In the face of the social upheavals of the period, however, the American ruling class reluctantly moved to grant legal reforms, including those enshrined in the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the 1965 Voting Rights Act, signed by President Lyndon B. Johnson five months after Selma. A number of significant social reforms were also enacted during this period, including Medicare and other anti-poverty programs.

The reforms wrenched from the ruling class during the 1960s, however, marked the last gasp of liberal reformism in the United States. The American ruling class responded to the deepening crisis of the capitalist system with a two-pronged strategy. Beginning in the 1970s and escalating in the 1980s, it carried out an unrelenting assault on the working class. Jobs were destroyed, living standards were driven down, public services were slashed.

To better carry out this offensive, the ruling class worked deliberately to integrate a small minority of the African American population into positions of power and privilege. Particularly after the 1968 assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.—who, while remaining within the framework of the Democratic Party, had begun to focus his attention increasingly on the issues of social inequality and war—a section of the civil rights establishment was brought into the apparatus of state power. This included the likes of Andrew Young, Jesse Jackson and John Lewis, now a congressman, who was among the leaders of the 1965 Selma march.

During his 1968 election campaign, Richard Nixon called for giving a section of the African American population a “piece of the action.” As president, he initiated a program of “black capitalism.” He signed an executive order to form the Office of Minority Business Enterprise in March 1969, declaring that its aim was to “demonstrate that blacks, Mexican Americans, and others can participate in a growing economy on the basis of equal opportunity at the top of the ladder as well as on its lower rungs.”

Affirmative action, promoted by the Republican Nixon and then adopted as a central plank of the Democratic Party program, was aimed at bringing forward—in business, the military, local government, the police and academia—a privileged layer that would identify with American capitalism and facilitate the assault on the working class as a whole. Black nationalism became an ideological means for the restructuring of class rule on the basis of identity politics.

What have been the consequences of these policies? While the system of Jim Crow segregation was ended, the social position of the majority of black workers today is worse today than 50 years ago. According to official statistics, a third of African Americans live in poverty and hunger. Unemployment and underemployment are pervasive, in the northern states as much as, or even more, than in the south.

These conditions are fundamentally an expression not of racism, as claimed by the Democrats and their periphery, when they acknowledge the social crisis at all, but of class oppression.

This is evident in Selma itself. The town’s population has fallen sharply over the past 50 years, while median income is a shocking $22,418, one half of the already low figure for the state of Alabama as a whole. Even by the government’s own insultingly low threshold for poverty, 41.9 percent of Selma falls below it.

All of this is overseen by an African American mayor and police chief, and a City Council and school board that are overwhelmingly African American in composition.

Selma is hardly unique. The poverty rate in the city of Detroit, which has lost almost two-thirds of its population in recent decades, is even higher than in Selma. The city has been run by a predominantly African American political establishment for decades. A similar dynamic is repeated in city after city throughout the United States.

Obama, the first African American president, represents something of a culmination of these processes. The lies and demagogy in Obama’s Selma speech cannot conceal the huge class gulf between the government he heads and the self-sacrificing workers and youth who led the fight for civil rights. They fought for equality. He represents privilege.

In his remarks, Obama quoted the immortal words from the Declaration of Independence, “All men are created equal,” but he presides over a level of inequality previously unheard of in American history.

While Obama spoke of the need to “honor the courage of ordinary Americans willing to endure billy clubs and the chastening rod, tear gas and the trampling hoof,” he stands at the apex of a military-intelligence-police apparatus of immense brutality, which carries out a virtual reign of terror against working class youth of all races.

Just last week, the Obama administration announced its decision not to charge the police officer who killed Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager, in Ferguson, Missouri last August. Over the weekend, another unarmed young man was shot dead in cold blood by police in Madison, Wisconsin.

In his Selma speech, Obama noted the abysmal turnout of one-third or less of eligible voters in recent elections. “What’s our excuse today for not voting?” he asked.

He did not, and could not, answer, but there is a powerful “excuse.” Through bitter experience, millions of workers are beginning to conclude that there is no difference between the two big business parties, nor, for that matter, between the big business politicians of whatever skin color.

Perhaps the biggest lie of all is Obama’s claim, echoed by the many liberal and “left” organizations orbiting the Democratic Party, that the “unfinished business” of the civil rights movement is defined by race.

At the time of the Selma marches, systematic, state-sanctioned racism was a major factor of American political life. Even then, however, racism was subordinate to, and a product of, class rule. It was used as a means of dividing workers and preventing a unified struggle against the capitalist system.

In relation to the explosive class battles of the time, the trade unions, the civil rights establishment, the array of middle class organizations worked to obscure the fundamental class issues and maintain the political domination of the ruling class and its political representatives. The basic question then was the need to forge a revolutionary leadership to unite the working class against the root cause of repression, inequality and war—the capitalist system itself.

Fifty years later, the fundamental class questions are all the more evident. While racism still exists and plays a role in American life, it is now accompanied by the state-sanctioned identity politics that serve a similar purpose: to pit workers against one another and block a united movement of the working class. As we enter a new period of working class upsurge, the burning question remains that of leadership. The “unfinished business” of Selma is the building of the revolutionary leadership of the working class needed to carry out the socialist reorganization of society.

Dimapur Lynching: Mirror to Nagaland’s Security Scene

Wasbir Hussain

In a blatant defiance of the country’s justice system and the rule of law, a 5000-strong mob stormed the central jail in Nagaland’s commercial hub, Dimapur, on 05 March, dragged a rape accused out, paraded him through the streets after stripping him naked, and then watched him succumb to a fatal assault by the frenzied men. Not satisfied with his death, the attackers hanged the body on the clock tower in the middle of the dusty, garbage-filled town, with many clicking photographs of the macabre scene on their mobile phones. For a long time, one had heard of the murderous ISIS carrying out such merciless assaults or the Taliban meting out instant justice.

The charge against Syed Farid Khan alias Sarifuddin (27), who hailed from Bosla village, under Badarpur police station in southern Assam’s Karimganj district, was that he had raped a 20-year old Naga girl at a hotel in Dimapur on 23 February. Following a complaint, the police arrested Farid, who ran a small automobile shop in the town, the next day. A local court forwarded him to judicial custody. It was from the supposedly high-security Dimapur Central Jail, where the accused was lodged, that the mob extricated him after breaking open two of the prison gates. The jail security remained a mute witness to the rampage. Farid’s family have since claimed he was innocent and that the alleged ‘victim’, the 20-year-old girl who was known to the family, was blackmailing him with a demand of Rs 200,000.

The entire episode has once again exposed the poor governance and extremely poor law and order situation in Nagaland. Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh has called for a report and the Nagaland Government has instituted a probe, but the investigations must go beyond where the police or the local Dimapur district administration had erred. It is a fact that tension had been mounting since 24 February, the day Farid was arrested on the basis of the rape charge. Despite this, no additional precautionary measure was taken by the administration or the jail authorities to boost security around the prison complex. A local student group had even held a rally on the morning of the jail break-in to seek justice following the alleged rape. Even this did not move or shake the Dimapur administration. It is fine that the moribund Nagaland government, currently facing a political tug of war for chief ministership, has since placed the Dimapur Deputy Commissioner, the Superintendent of Police and the jailor on suspension, but the probe needs to examine whether more serious factors were behind the jail break by the mob and whether a section of the jail staff, as suspected, are hand-in-glove with the protestors.

One must factor in the fact that Dimapur is virtually Nagaland’s crime capital. Various factions of the rebel NSCN (National Socialist Council of Nagaland) and other Naga insurgent groups raise ‘annual tax’ from traders and businessmen who operate in Dimapur. This is an open secret. Nagaland’s new Governor, PB Acharya, told this writer in the last fortnight, although in a different context, that the daily turnover in Dimapur is to the tune of Rs 500 crore. One must also note that the headquarters of the Isak-Muivah faction of the NSCN or the NSCN-IM, called Camp Hebron, is on the outskirts of Dimapur. The NSCN-IM’s writ runs large in Dimapur. It is another matter that the rebel group has not been able to clinch an agreement with New Delhi after 18 years of the so-called ‘peace negotiations’.

The NSCN-IM may not have triggered the mob upsurge that led to the jail break-in but its influence in the area may be the prime reason for the emergence of other rag-tag outfits around Dimapur. A couple of months ago, a new group called ‘Survival Nagaland’ has come up. Largely comprising Sema Nagas, the group has been going around preparing lists of people from outside Nagaland working or carrying out business in Dimapur. According to officials in the Union Home Ministry, which is aware of the development, members of the group have been issuing ‘residence certificates’ to such people for a fee. The MHA has since provided the Nagaland Government with the details of this group called ‘Survival Nagaland’ as well as the names of around four of its key leaders. It is important to crackdown on such loose groups because they help spread and channelise xenophobia in volatile areas like Dimapur.

The Centre’s inability to clinch an acceptable Naga peace agreement even after engaging in talks with the NSCN-IM for 18 years has added to the deteriorating situation in Nagaland. Therefore, it is heartening to find Prime Minister Narendra Modi calling for fixing a time frame by which to end peace talks with all insurgent groups, and to not engage in such talks with new groups or factions. Rampant corruption is another major reason for lawlessness and lack of public order in Nagaland, particularly in Dimapur. As Nagaland Governor Acharya said during the conversation with this writer, “There is king size corruption in the Northeast.” Unless measures are initiated to tackle all these issues holistically, the problems in Nagaland, too, would turn king size, so much so that it may veer out of control.

Already, groups and individuals in Assam are engaged in protests and blocking roads leading to Nagaland. With tension along the Assam-Nagaland border over disputed territory becoming a constant phenomenon, the situation needs a holistic management. Another dimension to the ‘insider-outsider’ issue in Nagaland is the general perception that all Bengali-speaking Muslims are illegal ‘Bangladeshi’ migrants. Even Farid, who was lynched, was dubbed a ‘Bangladeshi’, which is far from the truth. His father had served in the Indian Army and currently, two of his brothers are with the Army. The question is simple: the Nagas must realise that Nagaland is a part of India and just as the Nagas are free to move about or work in any part of India, those from outside Nagaland, too, are free to do the same in Nagaland. Moreover, Nagaland has the Inner Liner Permit system that requires a non-Naga to obtain such a document to enter the state. That itself is a provision to restrict the entry of non-Nagas to Nagaland. Of course, Dimapur is outside the purview of the ILP and, if necessary, the Nagas may persuade their Government to extend it to Dimapur as well to check the entry of new people in search of work. The Centre must examine all these aspects to restore a semblance of order in a chaotic and virtually unadministered town like Dimapur.