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creeping-shadow-heralds-storms · 4 years ago

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These political debates – which cite terrorism and political violence in the Middle East to argue that Islam is incompatible with modern society – reinforce stereotypes that the Muslim world is uncivilized.

They also reflect ignorance of Sharia, which is not a strict legal code. Sharia means “path” or “way”: It is a broad set of values and ethical principles drawn from the Quran – Islam’s holy book – and the life of the Prophet Muhammad. As such, different people and governments may interpret Sharia differently.

Still, this is not the first time that the world has tried to figure out where Sharia fits into the global order.

In the 1950s and 1960s, when Great Britain, France and other European powers relinquished their colonies in the Middle East, Africa and Asia, leaders of newly sovereign Muslim-majority countries faced a decision of enormous consequence: Should they build their governments on Islamic religious values or embrace the European laws inherited from colonial rule?

In the national archives and libraries of the Sudanese capital Khartoum, and in interviews with Sudanese lawyers and officials, I discovered that leading judges, politicians and intellectuals actually pushed for Sudan to become a democratic Islamic state.

They envisioned a progressive legal system consistent with Islamic faith principles, one where all citizens – irrespective of religion, race or ethnicity – could practice their religious beliefs freely and openly.

“The People are equal like the teeth of a comb,” wrote Sudan’s soon-to-be Supreme Court Justice Hassan Muddathir in 1956, quoting the Prophet Muhammad, in an official memorandum I found archived in Khartoum’s Sudan Library. ��An Arab is no better than a Persian, and the White is no better than the Black.”

Sudan’s post-colonial leadership, however, rejected those calls. They chose to keep the English common law tradition as the law of the land.

Why keep the laws of the oppressor?

My research identifies three reasons why early Sudan sidelined Sharia: politics, pragmatism and demography.

Rivalries between political parties in post-colonial Sudan led to parliamentary stalemate, which made it difficult to pass meaningful legislation. So Sudan simply maintained the colonial laws already on the books.

There were practical reasons for maintaining English common law, too.

Sudanese judges had been trained by British colonial officials. So they continued to apply English common law principles to the disputes they heard in their courtrooms.

Sudan’s founding fathers faced urgent challenges, such as creating the economy, establishing foreign trade and ending civil war. They felt it was simply not sensible to overhaul the rather smooth-running governance system in Khartoum.

The continued use of colonial law after independence also reflected Sudan’s ethnic, linguistic and religious diversity.

Then, as now, Sudanese citizens spoke many languages and belonged to dozens of ethnic groups. At the time of Sudan’s independence, people practicing Sunni and Sufi traditions of Islam lived largely in northern Sudan. Christianity was an important faith in southern Sudan.

Sudan’s diversity of faith communities meant that maintaining a foreign legal system – English common law – was less controversial than choosing whose version of Sharia to adopt.

Why extremists triumphed

My research uncovers how today’s instability across the Middle East and North Africa is, in part, a consequence of these post-colonial decisions to reject Sharia.

In maintaining colonial legal systems, Sudan and other Muslim-majority countries that followed a similar path appeased Western world powers, which were pushing their former colonies toward secularism.

But they avoided resolving tough questions about religious identity and the law. That created a disconnect between the people and their governments.

In the long run, that disconnect helped fuel unrest among some citizens of deep faith, leading to sectarian calls to unite religion and the state once and for all. In Iran, Saudi Arabia and parts of Somalia and Nigeria, these interpretations triumphed, imposing extremist versions of Sharia over millions of people.

In other words, Muslim-majority countries stunted the democratic potential of Sharia by rejecting it as a mainstream legal concept in the 1950s and 1960s, leaving Sharia in the hands of extremists.

But there is no inherent tension between Sharia, human rights and the rule of law. Like any use of religion in politics, Sharia’s application depends on who is using it – and why.

Leaders of places like Saudi Arabia and Brunei have chosen to restrict women’s freedom and minority rights. But many scholars of Islam and grassroots organizations interpret Sharia as a flexible, rights-oriented and equality-minded ethical order.

Religion is woven into the legal fabric of many post-colonial nations, with varying consequences for democracy and stability.

After its 1948 founding, Israel debated the role of Jewish law in Israeli society. Ultimately, Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion and his allies opted for a mixed legal system that combined Jewish law with English common law.

And throughout the 19th century, judges in the U.S. regularly invoked the legal maxim that “Christianity is part of the common law.” Legislators still routinely invoke their Christian faith when supporting or opposing a given law.

Political extremism and human rights abuses that occur in those places are rarely understood as inherent flaws of these religions.

When it comes to Muslim-majority countries, however, Sharia takes the blame for regressive laws – not the people who pass those policies in the name of religion.

Fundamentalism and violence, in other words, are a post-colonial problem – not a religious inevitability.

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freenewstoday · 4 years ago

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New Post has been published on https://freenews.today/2020/12/12/tigray-conflict-first-aid-convoy-reaches-capital-of-ethiopian-region-hit-by-fighting/

Tigray conflict: First aid convoy reaches capital of Ethiopian region hit by fighting

The first aid convoy has arrived in Mekelle, the capital of Ethiopia’s northern Tigray State, 10 days after Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s government said humanitarian organisations would have “unimpeded, sustained and secure access” to areas under its control.

Seven trucks belonging to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) were sent to the city’s main health care facility, Ayder Hospital, with desperately needed medicines and supplies for more than 400 trauma patients.

The hospital has been forced to shut its intensive care unit and surgical theatre due to the lack of drugs and basic provisions like surgical gloves.

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First shipment of aid sent to Ethiopia war zone

The facility also ran out of fuel required to generate electricity on site.

Patrick Youssef, regional director for Africa for the ICRC, said: “Doctors and nurses have been forced to make impossible choices of which services to continue, and which services to cut, after going weeks without new supplies, running water, and electricity.

“This medical shipment will inject new stocks, help patients, and reduce those impossible life-or-death triage decisions.”

The government imposed a communications blackout and blockade after fighting between government forces and the local Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) broke out five weeks ago.

The conflict, in one of Africa’s most ethnically diverse and populous countries, is thought to have displaced close to a million people and killed thousands.

Image: An Ethiopian refugee weeps as she arrives in Sudan

Mr Abiy has repeatedly claimed the government’s offensive has not caused any civilian deaths.

However, the arrival of the ICRC’s badly needed provisions at the area’s biggest hospital suggests an alternative reality of mass casualties and widespread devastation.

Human rights groups like Amnesty International are increasingly concerned that the conflict has triggered violent clashes between different ethnic groups in Ethiopia.

The most visible atrocity took place in the Tigrayan town of Mai-Kadra on 9 November when approximately 600 people were killed by attackers wielding machetes, knives and hatchets.

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Thousands flee violence in Ethiopia’s Tigray

According to Amnesty and the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission, witnesses said a TPLF youth militia called the ‘Samri’ attacked members of the ethnic Amhara community.

However, Tigrayan refugees who fled to Sudan told Sky News and other media organisations that responsibility lies with militiamen representing ethnic Amharas.

Amnesty has warned that the massacre in Mai-Kadre could be “just the tip of the iceberg”, with their research team receiving reports of similar attacks in the nearby town of Humera and in the capital Mekelle.

The UN human rights office has asked for independent investigations into the conflict, but Ethiopian officials have dismissed this call as interference, saying the government does not require a “babysitter”.

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worldpolitics2017-blog · 7 years ago

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Al-Qaeda and Daesh Have Changed the Rules: How the Yemeni Crisis Exemplifies the Failure of Collective Security

By Michelle Kempis and Alaris Dayzie

War has changed and it’s time to accept it. Western powers can no longer just throw their superior military at a conflict and deliver defeat by any means necessary. International rules and moral standards must be followed, the public must be notified and convinced of the conflict’s legitimacy, and the ever-changing enemy must be identified. While many of the power players in today’s wars remain the same (USA, Britain, Russia), non-state actors (UN, Daesh, Al-Qaeda) have disrupted the traditional state vs. state, direct confrontation model of the past. The UN introduced collective security as a goal and placed emphasis on human rights and security. Meanwhile, insurgency groups, terrorist groups, and belligerent nations refuse to play by the new international standards. Now, peace seems more out of reach than ever, overall numbers of global conflicts remain stagnant, and it’s becoming obvious that current diplomacy aimed at stopping conflict just isn’t working.

To understand why peace seems so unattainable presently, one needs to look at how war has changed and how different actors have reacted to these changes. WWI exemplifies the “total war” way of the past. A state vs. state conflict, WWI was motivated by nationalism and territorial gain and fought on traditional battlefields using traditional tactics of direct confrontation. Yes, the technology had advanced from the days of the Napoleonic Wars, but the thinking behind the war and battle strategy largely had not. Put simply, military members were still sent by their respective states to kill enemy military members for their own state’s gain, and they did so without international oversight. To the winner went the spoils of land and power, and it was obvious who the winners were. Looking back, the relative simplicity of this war can be admired when compared to modern wars fueled by politics, ethnicity, and ideology and fought by states and non-state groups alike.

The civil war in Yemen exemplifies the complexity of modern warfare and the changes in warfare that have prevented any reduction in global conflict. This conflict is by definition intra-state, yet Qatar, Kuwait, the UAE, Bahrain, Egypt, Morocco, Jordan, Sudan, Senegal, the US, Daesh, Al-Qaeda, the UK, France, and Iran have all invested money and/or military action in the war. Notably, actors are states and non-state groups of all sizes, all with their own motivations for involvement, some of which are outlined in the cartoon below. As a result, ending this conflict diplomatically wouldn’t just mean diving up land between the winning parties, like in WWI, or even just the Houthi rebels and Yemeni government coming to a compromise, it would require a compromise between every actor’s political, economical, and ideological wishes.

Many more differences besides the means to the end exist between this modern war and the traditional wars before it. Specifically, the nature of the insurgency and involvement of terrorist organizations means the line between civilian and combatant have become dangerously blurred making the war all the more difficult to fight. The target no longer necessarily wears a uniform marking a nation, rather it could be any man, women or even child on the street. Moreover, instead of being fought on battlefields, cities and homes have become combat zones. The violence has caused the displacement of more than 2.4 million Yemenis (as of mid-2016) and the death toll reached 7,600 in March of this year. 19.4 million people are without water, child malnutrition is up 200% and 50% of medical facilities have been destroyed. Yet, international public pressure to end the humanitarian crisis is relatively non-existent.

Why is there no public pressure to end one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world today? The answer is simply that people don’t know it’s happening. Media coverage of the war has been shockingly low. The senior UN official in the country, Jamie McGoldrick says: "Humanity doesn't work anymore here. The world has turned a blind eye to what's happening in Yemen.” This ‘blind eye’ exemplifies how the media has become another key non-state actor in today’s war and security. Without information, the public are unable to encourage their governments to intervene in the name of human security. Simultaneously, democratic governments cannot spend taxpayers’ money on a war they know nothing about. Without shared information, there is no driving force behind international co-operation. Three failed UN peace talks later, the Yemeni war rages on with no end in site. International actors continue to back local players who benefit their self-interest, and the Hadi government and Houthi rebels continue to grapple for power and resources while disregarding the needs of majority of the country. In short, no party is advocating for human security, non-state actors have changed the game, and the nations brought together to prevent crises like these are still playing by outdated rules.

If we want to see peace in Syria, Somalia, Yemen or any of dozens of ongoing conflicts the international system has to reflect the new state of war. Firstly, a new emphasis needs to be placed on international cooperation. Current cooperative efforts are marred by states acting out of self interest, global power plays, and domestic politics. Annan supposes that differing perspectives of what is a threat prevents international co-operation, but states need to recognize that today’s threats are interconnected and the only way to achieve global security is through global cooperation in the name of humanity, not self-interest. When it comes to military efforts against insurgencies or terrorists, states need to acknowledge that these groups won’t follow the rules. While the international powers should not and cannot blatantly disregard human rights the way dictators and terrorists have, they will have to adapt new tactics to counteract the unethical methods of these groups. It won’t be easy; after all, it seems impossible to fight a war to protect civilians when your adversary’s primary tactic is to place them at risk. However, the shared UN goal of collective security cannot be lost, it simply needs to be achieved with an understanding of the world as it is today, new wars and more, and an adaptation to fit the present world stage.

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ebenpink · 6 years ago

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World News Briefs -- January 21, 2019 (Evening Edition) http://bit.ly/2Czr4j5

Reuters: Israel strikes in Syria in more open assault on Iran BEIRUT/JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israel struck in Syria early on Monday, the latest salvo in its increasingly open assault on Iran’s presence there, shaking the night sky over Damascus with an hour of loud explosions in a second consecutive night of military action. Damascus did not say what damage or casualties resulted from the strikes. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor said 11 people were killed. Syria’s ally Russia said four Syrian soldiers had died and six were wounded. Read more ....

MIDDLE EAST

Israel increasingly goes public with its strikes in Syria. Israel strikes Iran's elite forces in Syria. Israel launches air strikes against Iranian forces in Syria. Turkey ready to take over Syria's Manbij, Erdogan tells Trump. Saudi-led coalition's planes pound Yemen's capital. Beirut summit: Arab leaders agree 29-item economic agenda. Pompeo: US 'absolutely not' getting out of the Middle East. Qatar says Gaza payouts on track after delay over border violence. Israel's PM Netanyahu signs deals with Chad's President Deby. IMF lowers growth forecast for Saudi Arabia, region.

ASIA

Taliban announces meeting with US officials in Qatar. Pompeo talks N.Korea with Tokyo and Seoul. Second Trump-Kim summit to take place in Vietnam: report. Trump says 'a lot of progress' with North Korea but economic sanctions to stay in place. Report finds another undisclosed North Korea missile site, says there are 19 more. Taliban says it pulls out of peace talks after refusing to release U.S. professor. Philippines' Muslim region votes on new autonomy law. Philippines holds autonomy referendum in restive Mindanao. China confirms birth of gene-edited babies, blames scientist He Jiankui for breaking rules. China's birth rate falls to historic low.

AFRICA

Libya militias agree to end clashes south of capital. President's inauguration in DR Congo may be postponed: party source. Zimbabwe: Mnangagwa ends foreign tour early amid domestic turmoil. Zimbabwe opposition accuses government of brutal crackdown. Congo's Martin Fayulu declares himself president, top court sides with Felix Tshisekedi. Libya: reconciliation conference delay could fuel military solution. Sudan president defiant as deadly protests continue. 10 UN peacekeepers killed in Mali terrorist attack. Kenyans face up to 'homegrown' threat after hotel attack. 170 migrants feared dead after two shipwrecks in Mediterranean.

EUROPE

After violence, Greek parliament debates deal with Macedonia. Kremlin says peace talks with Japan a 'drawn out' process. PM May tries to tweak defeated Brexit plan, refuses to rule out no-deal. UK PM Theresa May to take Brexit options back to EU negotiators. EU hits Russians, Syria with sanctions over chemical weapons. No second vote on Brexit deal likely before February, says No 10. Theresa May demands concessions from the EU as she abandons cross-party Brexit talks. Police link N. Ireland car bomb to 'New IRA'. Salisbury poisoning: EU sanctions Russian suspects. Germany deports record number of refugees to other EU states. Germany sanctions Iranian airline over spying claims. Polish PM calls for respect in public life after mayor slain.

AMERICAS

Giuliani backtracks on comments Trump sought Moscow deal throughout 2016. Kamala Harris announces presidential campaign. Murders in Mexico rise by a third in 2018 to new record. 'Mexico is doing NOTHING': Trump hits out at incoming caravans, days after the largest single group of migrants of 376 Central Americans entered the U.S. through burrow holes under the border wall. Trump says he's 'still thinking' about Pelosi's request to postpone State of the Union. Venezuelan soldiers steal weapons and call for coup against President Maduro on social media before being swiftly arrested. ELN claims responsibility for Bogota car bomb that killed 20 at a police academy. Colombia's ELN rebels claim deadly police academy attack. Colombia protest: Thousands march for peace after cadet killings. Death toll in Mexico gasoline pipeline explosion rises to 85. Nicaraguan journalist flees to Costa Rica after police raid newsroom.

TERRORISM/THE LONG WAR

Islamic State group targets US convoy in northeastern Syria. Al Qaeda-linked militants kill 10 U.N. peacekeepers in Mali. Experts warn of persistent ISIS threat after suicide bombing. US has increased military intervention against al-Shabab.

ECONOMY/FINANCE/BUSINESS

Global stock markets falter after China data confirms economic slowdown. World economy forecast to slow in 2019 amid trade tensions. Google is hit with $57 MILLION fine by France’s data watchdog for its murky use of personal information. Oxfam releases global inequality report amid ongoing controversy. International Monetary Fund update points to continuing global slowdown. Huawei's CEO threatens to axe 'mediocre' staff after global security worries. Chinese outbound projects plunge, investors pull back from US. from War News Updates http://bit.ly/2sG9lC2 via IFTTT

#IFTTT #Blogger

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96thdayofrage · 8 years ago

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Unspeakable: the Black Book of Imperial Terrorism

American “mainstream” journalists who want to keep their paychecks flowing and their status afloat know they must report current events in a way that respects the taboo status of the nation’s underlying inequality and oppression structures and its savage and relentless imperial criminality. Those topics are understood as off limits, as beyond the narrow parameters of acceptable and polite discussion. They are subjects that serious reporters and commentators have the deeply indoctrinated common sense to avoid.

“We’ve Done Enough as a Country”

An excellent example is a recent CNN report on how U.S. President Donald Trump’s Muslim travel ban is playing out in the small Vermont city of Rutland. A CNN reporter spoke to two local players on different sides of the question of whether Syrian refugees should be settled in Rutland. The first source was the town’s mayor, Chris Louras, who has been leading an effort to make Rutland a refugee resettlement hub that would welcome 25 Syrian families in 2017. When asked about why he’s been pushing for this, the mayor cited humanitarian concerns (“it’s the right thing to do”) but also (and above all) mentioned economic considerations. Rutland’s unemployment rate of 3 percent is “dangerously low,” making it hard for companies to find workers and thereby inhibiting investment and “growth,” the mayor told CNN.

CNN also featured an interview with Rutland doctor Timothy Cook, a Trump fan and an opponent of the mayor’s refugee resettlement plan. “I think we’ve done enough as a country,” Cook told CNN. “I’m tapped out and this nation is tapped out. We need to fix our own problems first and then we can reconfigure and see if we can rescue the rest of the world.” Cook naturally supports Trump’s travel ban.

Capitalism 101

It was fine reporting as far as it went but notice what was, to use the title of Chris Hedges’ latest book, Unspeakable. One unmentionable topic was capitalism’s reliance on what Karl Marx called “the reserve army of labor” – a mass of job-seeking unemployed people sufficiently large to keep the price of labor power to guarantee profitable exploitation of the working class. Is it unthinkable that Rutland might consider turning their town into a labor magnet that might attract workers by, say, raising the local minimum wage to $15 an hour? Sadly, it probably is because local employers – including the global megacorporation and leading corporate welfare recipient and “defense” contractor General Electric (GE), which employs more than a thousand workers across two Rutland plants – want to keep wages as low as possible in the interest of sustaining an “acceptable” rate of profit. Grow the “reserve army” and grow the local tax base.

We can be sure Louras doesn’t want to give GE reason to shift its Rutland operations elsewhere in pursuit of cheaper labor. That’s Capitalist Labor Market economics 101 and Corporate Power 102.

Guns v. Butter: Spiritual Death

A second forbidden topic is the role of U.S. militarism in, to use Dr. Cook’s term, “tapping out” America. It is beyond the parameters of acceptable debate and commentary to note that the nation is impoverished thanks in no small part to the massive Pentagon budget (54% of federal discretionary spending), which pays for the global empire that has wreaked havoc, fueled jihadism, and generated massive refugee streams in places like Iraq, Yemen, Sudan, Libya, Syria, and Iran (more on this below), all on Trump’s travel ban. It’s a taboo topic in dominant media: the role of the military budget in hollowing out American society from the inside.

Hedges gets this right in the following exchange in Unspeakable, a compilation of interviews with left journalist David Talbot:

Talbot: “[Bernie Sanders] promised to impose much higher taxes on the wealthy and Wall Street speculators.”

Hedges: “Yes, but if we don’t get control of our military spending we are finished…Our infrastructure, our public educational system, our social services – everything is crumbling for a reason, we don’t have money for it. It is being consumed by the war machine. And Sanders didn’t touch the military-industrial complex. That would have been political suicide…There will be no socialism until we dismantle imperialism and dramatically sash military spending power. Martin Luther King understood that.”

And look what happened to Dr. King, who was assassinated (or perhaps executed) exactly one year to the day after giving a celebrated speech in which he made a deep connection between his opposition to poverty and racism at home and his opposition to the U.S. war on Southeast Asia. In explaining his decision to follow his conscience and speak out against U.S. militarism, King said, “I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic destructive suction tube. So I was increasingly compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor and to attack it as such… A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift,” King warned, “is approaching spiritual death” (emphasis added).

Don’t take it just from left radicals past (King) and present (Hedges). In his recent magisterial study of the overlapping “deep state” concentrations of corporate, financial, and governmental power that control American society beneath and beyond the nation’s quadrennial electoral carnivals, the former longtime Republican Congressional staffer Mike Lofgren notes that the U.S. struggles with widespread poverty, rotting infrastructure, inadequate health care, and deficient pubic services (schools, transportation, and more) not because the government lacks money but because too much of its money goes to serve entrenched interests. Top among those interests is the nation’s enormous military-industrial complex, funded by a Pentagon budget that accounts for more than half of U.S. federal discretionary spending and nearly half the world’s military outlay. As Lofgren notes in his indispensable book The Deep State: The Fall of the Constitution and the Rise of a Shadow Government (2016):

“Even as commentators decry a broken government that cannot marshal the money, the will, or the competence to repair our roads and bridges, heal our war veterans, or even roll out a health care website, there is always enough money and will, and maybe just a bare minimum of competence to overthrow foreign governments, fight the longest war in U.S. history, and conduct dragnet surveillance over the entire surface of the planet (p.4)…It is as if Hadrian’s Wall was still fully manned and the fortifications along the border with Germania were never stronger, even as the city of Rome disintegrated from within and the life-sustaining aqueducts leading down from the hills began to crumble.” (p.216)

A Proven History of Terrorism

Also unspeakable is the criminality of what the America Empire – accurately described by Dr. King in 1967 as “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world” – does abroad. It is unthinkable that CNN might challenge Dr. Cook’s notion of the U.S. as a nation that tries to “rescue the rest of the world.”

The correction would include confronting Washington’s role in criminally devastating some of the very nations from which Trump has tried to ban travelers and refugees. Iraq, for one leading example, has been subject to two mass-murderous U.S. invasions along with an intervening decade plus of deadly economic sanctions that have combined to kill millions, maim millions, and displace millions more.

Yemen has been ravaged by joint U.S, and Saudi Arabian air assaults, U.S. Special Forces, and U.S. drone attacks.

Sudan has long been tortured by the U.S., which has played a central in political dissolution and civil war there.

Libya was collapsed with U.S. and NATO bombs, miring that country in civil war and jihad.

Syria has been torn apart by an epically murderous Civil War that Washington has fueled along with the jihadism that the U.S. and its oil-rich Arab state allies and Pakistan have spread there and across the Muslim world.

“During his campaign,” CNN reported when the president announced his travel ban, “Trump vowed to ban Muslim immigrants from countries with a ‘proven history’ of terrorism against the United States or its allies.”

Orwell might have enjoyed that statement in light of the United States’ proven history of mass-murderous Superpower terrorism against the countries Trump has imposed his travel ban against.

Meritorious Service

Journalists and others looking for such a history might want to go back and review the July 3, 1988 incident in which U.S. Navy warship Vincennes shot down a civilian Iranian airliner (Iranian Air Fight 655) with a guided cruise missile, killing all 300 people on board, 71 of whom were children. This monstrous assault was perpetrated in Iranian airspace, over Iran’s territorial waters in the Persian Gulf. Six years later, the Navy awarded special commendation medals for “meritorious service” to the Vincennes’ commander, Capt. Will Rogers III and to his weapons systems officer. Lt. Cmdr. Scott E. Lustig.

Iranians are likely recalling that horrendous crime now that Trump is saber-rattling against Teheran. The new fascist president’s National Security Advisor Michael Flynn has put Iran “officially on notice” that Washington is considering action against it. He says that “we are considering a whole range of options.” Meanwhile, U.S., British, French, and Australian warships are engaged in provocative “naval exercises” off Iran’s shores.

Highway of Death

Journalists and others looking for proven histories of terrorism might also want to reflect on the hideous carnage wreaked by the U.S. military on Iraq’s notorious “Highway of Death,” where U.S. forces massacred tens of thousands of surrendered Iraqi troops retreating from Kuwait on February 26 and 27, 1991. The Lebanese-American journalist Joyce Chediac testified that:

“U.S. planes trapped the long convoys by disabling vehicles in the front, and at the rear, and then pounded the resulting traffic jams for hours. ‘It was like shooting fish in a barrel,’ said one U.S. pilot. On …miles of coastal highway, Iraqi military units sit in gruesome repose, scorched skeletons of vehicles and men alike, black and awful under the sun…U.S. forces continued to drop bombs on the convoys until all humans were killed. So many jets swarmed over the inland road that it created an aerial traffic jam, and combat air controllers feared midair collisions…. The victims were not offering resistance…it was simply a one-sided massacre of tens of thousands of people who had no ability to fight back or defend.”

According to Wikipedia’s richly sourced account:

“The 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing’s A-6 Intruder aircraft blocked Highway 80, bombarding a massive vehicle column of mostly Iraqi Regular Army forces with Mk-20 Rockeye II cluster bombs, effectively boxing in the Iraqi forces in an enormous traffic jam of sitting targets for subsequent airstrikes…journalist Robert Fisk …‘lost count of the Iraqi corpses crammed into the smoldering wreckage or slumped face down in the sand’ at the main site and [saw] hundreds of corpses strewn up the road all the way to the Iraqi border….Some independent estimates go as high as 10,000 or more casualties (even ‘tens of thousands’).”

“Tempering Qualities of Humility and Restraint”

Truth be told, Uncle Sam was only getting warmed up building its Iraqi and Muslim Body Counts in early 1991. Washington had yet to enforce the economic sanctions that killed at least a million Iraqis or to undertake the 2003 invasion that killed more than a million more and devastated Iraq beyond repair. It had yet to ravage the Iraqi city of Fallujah (more on that below), as it did in 2004, using (among other things) radioactive ordnance that produced an epidemic of child leukemia there. It had yet to launch Barack Obama’s massive drone war across the Muslim world, recently described by Noam Chomsky as “the most extensive global terrorism campaign the world has yet seen.” It had yet to kill thousands upon thousands of innocent villagers and farmers in Afghanistan. It had not yet targeted a Doctors Without Borders hospital for repeated lethal bombing or undertaken the systematic torture and rape of Iraqi and other Muslims, including children, in places like Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, and Bagram Air Force base.

“Our security,” Barack Obama said during his first Inaugural Address, “emanates from the…tempering qualities of humility and restraint.” No responsible “mainstream” U.S. commentators dared to question the Orwellian language of the new president’s speech. Uncle Sam can do no evil in the eyes of properly indoctrinated and/or fearful U.S. media and educational “elites” (coordinators and operatives).

The same deafening media silence was heard when George H.W. Bush said the following less than a year after his airborne armed forces turned vast stretches of a purposely blocked Middle Eastern highway into an epic monument of one-sided imperial criminality: “A world once divided into two armed camps now recognizes one sole and pre-eminent power, the United States of America. And they regard this with no dread. For the world trusts us with power, and the world is right. They trust us to be fair and restrained. They trust us to be on the side of decency.”

“The Streets of Fallujah”

As a soon-to-be fully declared presidential candidate, then-U.S. Senator Obama had this to say to the Chicago Council on Global Affairs in the fall of 2006: “The American people have been extraordinarily resolved [in support of the occupation of Iraq, P.S]…They have seen their sons and daughters killed or wounded in the streets of Fallujah” (emphasis added).

It was a spine-chilling selection of locales. Fallujah was the site for colossal U.S. war atrocity by the U.S. military in April and November of 2004. The crimes included the indiscriminate slaughter of civilians, the targeting even of ambulances and hospitals, and the practical leveling of an entire city. The town was designated for destruction as an example of the awesome state terror promised to those who dared to resist U.S. power. Not surprisingly, Fallujah became a powerful and instant symbol of American imperialism in the Arab and Muslim worlds. It was a deeply provocative and insulting place for Obama to have chosen to highlight American sacrifice and “resolve” in the imperialist occupation of Iraq.

A Shocking Scene

Obama would write his own name in the black book of U.S. imperial terrorism, later telling White House aides that “it turns out I’m pretty good at killing people” while commanding a drone program that became “the most extreme terrorist campaign of modern times” (Noam Chomsky). Among the many grisly scenes Obama will carry to his well-heated grave, one occurred early in his presidency in the first week of May 2009, a U.S. air-strike killed more than ten dozen civilians in Bola Boluk, a village in western Afghanistan’s Farah Province. Ninety-three of the dead villagers torn apart by U.S. explosives were children. Just 22 were males 18 years or older. As the New York Times reported:

“In a phone call played on a loudspeaker on Wednesday to…the Afghan Parliament, the governor of Farah Province, Rohul Amin, said that as many as 130 civilians had been killed, according to a legislator, Mohammad Naim Farahi…. The governor said that the villagers have brought two tractor trailers full of pieces of human bodies to his office to prove the casualties that had occurred…. Everyone was crying…watching that shocking scene.’ Mr. Farahi said he had talked to someone he knew personally who had counted 113 bodies being buried, including…many women and children” (NYT, May 6, 2009).

The initial response of the Obama Pentagon to this horrific incident—one among many mass U.S. aerial civilian killings in Afghanistan and Pakistan beginning in the fall of 2001—was to blame the deaths on “Taliban grenades.” Obama’s Secretary of State Hillary Clinton expressed “regret” about the loss of innocent life, but the Administration refused to issue an apology or to acknowledge U.S. responsibility. By contrast, Obama had just offered a full apology and fired a White House official for scaring New Yorkers with an ill-advised Air Force One photo-shoot flyover of Manhattan that reminded people there of 9/11.

“Peace prize? He’s a killer.” So said a young Pashtun man to an Al Jazeera English reporter on December 10, 2009—the day Obama was given the Nobel Peace Prize. “The man,” the reporter wrote, “spoke from the village of Armal, where a large crowd gathered around the bodies of twelve people, one family from a single home, all killed by U.S. Special Forces during a late-night raid.”

Murdering a Family One at a Time

Five months later, Obama would order the CIA to assassinate an American citizen in Yemen, the charismatic Islamic cleric Anwar al-Awlaki. The cleric was killed in a September 2011 drone strike “despite the fact that he had never been charged with (let alone convicted of) any crime” (Glenn Greenwald), but Obama’s lust for killing al–Awlakis still burned. Two weeks later, a shiny new CIA drone killed the cleric’s 16-year-old and American-born son, Abdulrahman, “along with the boy’s 17-year-old cousin and several other innocent Yemenis.”

It’s nice to hear that Obama has voiced support for the mass protests of Trump’s Muslim travel ban but it’s a hard to believe that he could care less about Muslim lives in light of his bloody foreign policy in the Middle East, northern Africa, and Southwest Asia.

Herr Trump ordered a drone assault and commando raid in Yemen last Sunday. The operation was set up and handed to him by the Obama administration. It killed 30 people. Among the murdered: Anwar’s 8-year old daughter, Abdulrahman’s little sister. She bled to death two hours after a U.S. Special Forces warrior shot her in the neck. Call it the orange-haired beast’s first imperial blood, scored with a big assist from the previous Child Killer-in-Chief, Barack Obama.

“What the Hell is Going On–

Candidate Trump said that he wanted a Muslim ban “until we can figure out what the Hell is going on” to cause fear and hatred of the United States in the Muslim world. As if there is some mystery about that.

Selective Revulsion

In its breathless coverage of mass protests of a leading American “alt-right” fascist scheduled to speak on the campus of the University of California at Berkeley last Wednesday night, CNN anchors and commentators were horrified to see windows broken and a bonfire started by Black Bloc anarchists. CNN and the rest of the corporate media have yet to convey the slightest hint of revulsion over the Obama-Trump murder of 30 people in Yemen, including many women and children and an 8-year-old girl. Also evading media disgust is the recent escalation of police state violence against the heroic water- and climate-protectors in Standing Rock.

“We’ve Done Enough”

So, yes, Dr. Timothy Cook and CNN, “we’ve done enough as a country” – well, as a murderous empire – not “for” but rather to the Muslim world. With “rescuers” like Uncle Sam, who needed the Third Reich?

“Fix our own problems first”? It might surprise many mass-mediated-mind-marinated Americans to know that transferring taxpayer dollars from the U.S. War Machine (the world’s greatest single institutional planet warmer and carbon-burner, by the way) to the meeting of basic social and civic needs in “the homeland” (lovely imperial term, that) would simultaneously help U.S. and global citizens fix a great problem they share: American militarism and imperialism.

Empire, it is worth recalling, is a great upward distributer of wealth and power, something to keep in mind in a nation (the U.S., that is) where the top thousandth (the 0.1 percent) has as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent. As Noam Chomsky noted in 1969, “There are, to be sure, costs of empire that benefit no one: 50,000 American corpses or the deterioration in the strength of the United States economy relative to its industrial rivals. The costs of empire to the imperial society as a whole may be considerable. These costs, however, are social costs, whereas, say, the profits from overseas investment guaranteed by military success are again highly concentrated in certain special segments of the society. The costs of empire are in general distributed over the society as a whole, while its profits revert to a few within.”

In the meantime, here’s something CNN will never tell Donald Trump, his fan Dr. Cook, and the many Democrats and Republicans who’ve been trained to stick their heads in Orwellian sand on Superpower’s crimes: the simplest and most reliable way to stem the Muslim refugee flow is to stop waging criminal wars against Muslim countries. The vast taxpayer largesse squandered on these unwarranted and racist wars should instead be given to the nations the U.S. and NATO have destroyed – and to addressing social, civic, and environmental needs at home.

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sneaksite · 4 years ago

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Warning that Islamic extremists want to impose fundamentalist religious rule in American communities, right-wing lawmakers in dozens of U.S. states have tried banning Sharia, an Arabic term often understood to mean Islamic law. These political debates – which cite terrorism and political violence in the Middle East to argue that Islam is incompatible with modern society – reinforce stereotypes that the Muslim world is uncivilized. They also reflect ignorance of Sharia, which is not a strict legal code. Sharia means “path” or “way”: It is a broad set of values and ethical principles drawn from the Quran – Islam’s holy book – and the life of the Prophet Muhammad. As such, different people and governments may interpret Sharia differently. Still, this is not the first time that the world has tried to figure out where Sharia fits into the global order. In the 1950s and 1960s, when Great Britain, France and other European powers relinquished their colonies in the Middle East, Africa and Asia, leaders of newly sovereign Muslim-majority countries faced a decision of enormous consequence: Should they build their governments on Islamic religious values or embrace the European laws inherited from colonial rule? The big debateInvariably, my historical research shows, political leaders of these young countries chose to keep their colonial justice systems rather than impose religious law. Newly independent Sudan, Nigeria, Pakistan and Somalia, among other places, all confined the application of Sharia to marital and inheritance disputes within Muslim families, just as their colonial administrators had done. The remainder of their legal systems would continue to be based on European law. To understand why they chose this course, I researched the decision-making process in Sudan, the first sub-Saharan African country to gain independence from the British, in 1956.In the national archives and libraries of the Sudanese capital Khartoum, and in interviews with Sudanese lawyers and officials, I discovered that leading judges, politicians and intellectuals actually pushed for Sudan to become a democratic Islamic state. They envisioned a progressive legal system consistent with Islamic faith principles, one where all citizens – irrespective of religion, race or ethnicity – could practice their religious beliefs freely and openly.“The People are equal like the teeth of a comb,” wrote Sudan’s soon-to-be Supreme Court Justice Hassan Muddathir in 1956, quoting the Prophet Muhammad, in an official memorandum I found archived in Khartoum’s Sudan Library. “An Arab is no better than a Persian, and the White is no better than the Black.” Sudan’s post-colonial leadership, however, rejected those calls. They chose to keep the English common law tradition as the law of the land. Why keep the laws of the oppressor?My research identifies three reasons why early Sudan sidelined Sharia: politics, pragmatism and demography.Rivalries between political parties in post-colonial Sudan led to parliamentary stalemate, which made it difficult to pass meaningful legislation. So Sudan simply maintained the colonial laws already on the books. There were practical reasons for maintaining English common law, too. Sudanese judges had been trained by British colonial officials. So they continued to apply English common law principles to the disputes they heard in their courtrooms. Sudan’s founding fathers faced urgent challenges, such as creating the economy, establishing foreign trade and ending civil war. They felt it was simply not sensible to overhaul the rather smooth-running governance system in Khartoum.The continued use of colonial law after independence also reflected Sudan’s ethnic, linguistic and religious diversity.Then, as now, Sudanese citizens spoke many languages and belonged to dozens of ethnic groups. At the time of Sudan’s independence, people practicing Sunni and Sufi traditions of Islam lived largely in northern Sudan. Christianity was an important faith in southern Sudan. Sudan’s diversity of faith communities meant that maintaining a foreign legal system – English common law – was less controversial than choosing whose version of Sharia to adopt. Why extremists triumphedMy research uncovers how today’s instability across the Middle East and North Africa is, in part, a consequence of these post-colonial decisions to reject Sharia. In maintaining colonial legal systems, Sudan and other Muslim-majority countries that followed a similar path appeased Western world powers, which were pushing their former colonies toward secularism. But they avoided resolving tough questions about religious identity and the law. That created a disconnect between the people and their governments.In the long run, that disconnect helped fuel unrest among some citizens of deep faith, leading to sectarian calls to unite religion and the state once and for all. In Iran, Saudi Arabia and parts of Somalia and Nigeria, these interpretations triumphed, imposing extremist versions of Sharia over millions of people.In other words, Muslim-majority countries stunted the democratic potential of Sharia by rejecting it as a mainstream legal concept in the 1950s and 1960s, leaving Sharia in the hands of extremists.But there is no inherent tension between Sharia, human rights and the rule of law. Like any use of religion in politics, Sharia’s application depends on who is using it – and why.Leaders of places like Saudi Arabia and Brunei have chosen to restrict women’s freedom and minority rights. But many scholars of Islam and grassroots organizations interpret Sharia as a flexible, rights-oriented and equality-minded ethical order. Religion and the law worldwideReligion is woven into the legal fabric of many post-colonial nations, with varying consequences for democracy and stability.After its 1948 founding, Israel debated the role of Jewish law in Israeli society. Ultimately, Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion and his allies opted for a mixed legal system that combined Jewish law with English common law. In Latin America, the Catholicism imposed by Spanish conquistadors underpins laws restricting abortion, divorce and gay rights.And throughout the 19th century, judges in the U.S. regularly invoked the legal maxim that “Christianity is part of the common law.” Legislators still routinely invoke their Christian faith when supporting or opposing a given law. Political extremism and human rights abuses that occur in those places are rarely understood as inherent flaws of these religions. When it comes to Muslim-majority countries, however, Sharia takes the blame for regressive laws – not the people who pass those policies in the name of religion.Fundamentalism and violence, in other words, are a post-colonial problem – not a religious inevitability. For the Muslim world, finding a system of government that reflects Islamic values while promoting democracy will not be easy after more than 50 years of failed secular rule. But building peace may demand it.This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts.Read more: * What Sharia means: 5 questions answered * How Islamic law can take on ISIS * Trump’s travel ban is just one of many US policies that legalize discrimination against MuslimsMark Fathi Massoud has received fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Andrew Mellon Foundation, Fulbright-Hays, and the University of California. Any views expressed here are the author's responsibility.

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itssquidwarsjournal · 4 years ago

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lorajackson · 4 years ago

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Don't blame Sharia for Islamic extremism — blame colonialism

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hardeepcox · 4 years ago

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That one time America started imploding.

Wow... umm...I’m not really sure where to start with this one. I wish that I could go back home at this moment. Like it or not, USA, specifically Northern Virginia, that fucking mirror-image of purgatory is my hometown. “Suburbia is an oxygenated void, as a result, it either prepares you for depression or space travel,” in the words of the philosopher and comedian Lewis Black. But... I digress. I wish more than anything that I could go and experience these protests with you guys right now. The shit has really hit the fan huh? Shit, we thought the beef with Iran was bad enough, we thought starvation in Yemen was bad enough, we thought genocide in Sudan and the collapse of Venezuela’s economy was bad enough, we thought the popularity of ‘Despacito’ was bad enough, we thought the FUCKING CORONAVIRUS was bad enough! But no, of course America had to go to infinity and beyond like fucking Buzz Lightyear.

Guys, we can’t say that we didn’t see this coming. Racial tension and discrimination has been pushed under the rug by fake smiles, never fully socially accepting all Americans as equals, but most interestingly the complete disregard to even attempt to improve the mental health of our country’s poorer communities. Of course this includes Americans of all “races” (there is only one human “race”, but here we go having to to use these labels to be understood) but you would think that a good place to start would be with the descendants of people who were once LITERALLY sold and purchased like merchandise and whose bloodlines were maintained under slavery until the end of the American Civil War. Are you telling me that with our “superiority” among all nations of the world, no top official ever seriously tried to integrate the descendants of slaves into the supposed brotherhood that is America?* Instead it was the opposite, right? Why not put their arms around our shoulders and make them feel as part of this team which we call America while doing our best to decrease the hereditary baggage and trauma that can follow after multiple generations of slavery. Instead their communities ended up being poisoned with drugs and violence typically found in developing countries. Of course anger due to mistreatment will emerge, and as the years have gone by every escalation of brutality and unfair treatment has fed more fuel into this collective anger.

What happens when you blow too much air into a balloon?

It pops.

What happens when the accumulated pressure from within a volcano has no where else to go?

It erupts.

What happens when a country founded by slave-owners permits over 200 years of continued mistreatment towards the descendants of slave?

America literally right now.

This shit has blown up and now many innocent people are the collateral damage. People that are looting and damaging houses, I understand that you are angry as FUCK but stop for a second, take a step back, and ask yourself if the energy produced by your anger is being used in the most productive way possible or if you are simply taking your anger out on your surroundings. What good will it do to burn down an apartment with families inside? What good will it do to damage the properties of your local mom & pop shops and okay even big chain stores? YOU ARE BETTER THAN THAT. And keep your eyes peeled for instigators. Those sneaky bastards do exist and they will be trying to mess up your peaceful protests.

Don’t know what else to say for now except to tell all the protesters to be safe. And if for some reason you happen to think that bringing your CHILD to a protest is a good idea, don’t let her or him get maced for fuck’s sake.

*At the moment important civil rights leaders do come to mind like MLK Jr, JFK, and his bro RFK. Unfortunately, we all know how they ended up.

#america #peace #protest

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her-culture · 5 years ago

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How Sudan Created the Blueprint For the 21st Century Revolution

June 30th marked the day Sudanese people rewrote their history.

On the thirtieth anniversary of the coup installing dictator Omar al-Bashir, Sudanese activists renewed their calls for a civilian-led government. An estimated hundreds of thousands of protesters marched through the country, demonstrating that--despite internet blackouts and violent crackdowns, Sudan will not be silenced.

“June 30th reaffirmed all I personally know and believe about this revolution,” Sudanese humanist Dimah Mahmoud said to Her Culture. “It’s emboldened why I believe in this revolution more than anything else in this life.”

Many Sudanese gathered in what they called a “Millions March” to demand a transfer of power from the current ruler—the Transitional Military Council (TMC)—to the civilians. This followed a successful coup that deposed al-Bashir in April and left military rule in his place. It was the first large-scale protest since the violent massacre of the opposition that occurred on June 3, which left over 118 dead.

“June 30 was [and] is the amplifier to our resilience showing how we, in the most effective and beautiful way, activated the human agent and fought their Internet blackout by word of mouth, met their torture with healing memories of peace, and faced their live ammunition with open arms,” Mahmoud said. “Not to welcome the bullets, but [to] welcome the only two options we know we have at this point: freedom or joining our martyrs.”

Seven were reported killed and over 180 wounded in the Millions March protest.

Sudan has been under a total internet blackout for over a month now, but still managed to organize the march without use of social media, which has been a crucial tool in propelling the uprising. Sudanese abroad used social media to organize global protests in solidarity and raised awareness with the hashtag #WatchSudanOnJune30.

It’s clear that the world should have watched Sudan before June 30, and there are several reasons it should still hold our attention: it is a revolution led by women in a country that enforces laws limiting their agency. It is a revolution led by young working professionals, who, in many cases, have known nothing but al-Bashir’s rule. It marks the toppling of one of Africa’s most notorious dictators, who has been charged by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for war crimes, human rights violations, and genocide in the Darfur region. But mostly because in weaponizing social media, uniting under a common message, and holding their government accountable through peaceful protest, Sudan has created a blueprint for the modern revolution.

“There has been a miracle happening on our soil and within our diaspora since December in the name of freedom, peace, and justice,” Mahmoud said. “There has been pure magic coming out of our nonviolent resistance, millions getting on the streets, and people around the world have no idea. Why? Because who really cares about Africa? Because politics trumps people and interest overshadows right.”

The Sudanese broadcasted much of their revolution to a scant audience while Western media cycled news about Donald Trump, the race for the 2020 U.S. presidency, and continued progress for Brexit.

“For the last 6 months, almost every single day of the Sudanese uprising has been meticulously documented on social media,” Sudanese writer Sara Elhassan said in an article she penned for Okay Africa, “We made sure of it--more so for the world, we did it for ourselves, and for the millions of Sudanese scattered across the globe thanks to this regime.”

The country’s unrest first began in December of 2018 after Bashir’s government imposed austerity measures in an attempt to avoid economic collapse. Declining living standards and cuts to bread and fuel subsidies resulted in protests that began in the east and quickly spread to the capital city, Khartoum. As four months of protests gained traction, the demands of the people expanded to the removal of al-Bashir’s government and an end to his 30-year reign.

Their common message was that they wanted freedom, peace and justice—a message that reached all Sudanese, regardless of their ethnic background. In an attempt to create division among the protesters, the Sudanese government initially accused Darfurian student activists of inciting violence.

“Sudanese protesters rejected that claim in what they saw as an age-old method to use ethnicity to deflect attention from real problems,” The Atlantic reported. “‘You Arrogant Racist, We Are All Darfur!’ became a rallying cry in the capital, Khartoum, a city whose residents had long looked down on people from the conflict-wracked region.”

Sudanese also took note from their country’s history of successful civic resistance, with civilian-led movements in 1964 and 1985 ending military rule. Strikes have been cornerstones of today’s protests, bringing the country to an economic standstill as people have heeded the WhatsApp messages and widespread calls to demonstrate in the street.

SKY News correspondent Stuart Ramsey recently reflected on his time in Sudan. For his team and for him, it wasn’t an issue of audience disinterest that hindered the delivery of the news. It was instead the difficulty in gaining access to the country while the uprising was occurring.

“Every moment that we had almost got [SIC] visas to go to the country, security would intervene and to [SIC] say no,” Ramsey said. “The best you could hope for was social media.”

Though the government blocked most major social media sites within the country in hopes of extinguishing the protests, citizens were able to circumvent that measure by use of virtual private networks (VPNs). By February, Buzzfeed News reported that women who once used Facebook as a way to discuss their crushes were now using it to dox national security officers who beat activists.

“Changing the government can’t be achieved by using WhatsApp or Facebook,” al-Bashir told his supporters in a televised conference.

He was ousted in a military-led coup three months later.

And while al-Bashir’s arrest in April marked a milestone for the pro-democracy opposition, their cause was not fully realized. The TMC, which took control after al-Bashir was arrested, delayed its transfer of power to civilians, leading to renewed protests and increased pressure from the opposition. This culminated in a large-scale sit-in in Khartoum during Ramadan.

But on the morning of June 3, their sit-in and chants for civilian rule were met with a hail of bullets.

According to residents, the attack on the protesters that left over a hundred dead and nearly 400 wounded was carried out by the paramilitary group, Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in conjunction with the TMC. Amnesty International notes that the RSF is a rebranded version of Janjaweed, the same militia that committed genocidal atrocities in Darfur.

“The RSF raped and gang raped women, men, young, old, dead and alive. No one was or is safe,” Mahmoud said. “They’ve dumped over 118 bodies into the Nile so we don’t know how many of us they killed. They weighed the bodies down with cement blocks. They’ve burned homes, hearts and souls. They’ve painted over our murals of the Sudan we want and those honoring our martyrs. Then, [they] cut off the internet saying, it was a national security threat. The threat, of course, is that the world knows and that humanity wakes up and banishes them into oblivion.”

The U.S. and the United Kingdom both condemned the attack officially. And instead of silencing the protesters, the RSF’s crackdown amplified their message. Sudanese abroad in the diaspora demanded accountability, urging their followers to pay attention and spread the word with the hashtags #IAmTheSudanRevolution. Campaigns like #BlueForSudan permeated social media. News reached celebrities like Rihanna, George Clooney, and Demi Lovato, who used their platforms to raise awareness for the revolution.

“I’d say this is the point in our revolution that woke humanity up and it resented and rejected any effort to silence it, to silence its pain and silence its truth in being violated,” Mahmoud said. “Social media is proving that our revolution isn’t just waking Africa up; it’s waking up humanity itself. There is a thirst for knowledge and people have started asking questions.”

The awareness led to action. The United States has appointed a special envoy to Sudan, and the African Union banned Sudan until the TMC transferred power to civilians.

“Those people [the RSF] should not be negotiated with, only overthrown,” Sudanese artist and illustrator Alaa Satir wrote for Vogue UK, “At first, we were thinking that the government would have a mix of military and civilian representation, but now we just want to take our country back. We want a government that represents us without military representation, and we want to see them prosecuted.”

Elhassan notes in her Okay Africa piece that there is a danger in something as fragile and complex as a country’s revolution “going viral.” Social media loans itself mostly to surface-level stories and clickbait, leaving little room for political context and the deep understanding needed to relay a clear, correct narrative.

“Worldwide, celebrities, activists and people from all walks of life were raising awareness about Sudan,” Elhassan wrote. “But without much of an understanding of Sudan, awareness turned into misinformation. For most people, the June 3rd attack was not only the focal point, it was the only point of reference. Just like a great game of telephone, the story morphed from ‘massacre’ to ‘humanitarian crisis’ to ‘feed the children of Sudan,’ and what started off as an opportunity for the revolution to gain global recognition and worldwide support quickly devolved into a scramble to keep the narrative of the movement from derailing completely (and keep clout chasers from hijacking the wave—@sudanmealproject is a scam).”

Though Sudan’s revolution seems far from over, the TMC and the opposition alliance reached a power-sharing agreement on July 5 that will put into place a sovereign council for three years composed of 5 military leaders and 5 civilian leaders and one civilian-elected leader who will be agreed upon by both sides.

Still, for all the yet-to-be answered questions about the political future of the country, there seems to be a constant: the spirit of the resilience and revolution hums through the Sudanese soil.

“I have never in my life been prouder to say I am Sudanese and my connection, my culture and my purpose is that #IAmTheSudanRevolution,” Mahmoud said. “This revolution will not be silenced and will not rest and will not stop. This is the revolution that keeps going and we are the people that will wake up everyday for the rest of our lives saying #IAmTheSudanRevolution.”

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mideastsoccer · 5 years ago

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Defying authority: Arab, Russia and Pakistan protesters learn lessons of 2011

By James M. Dorsey

A podcast version of this story is available on Soundcloud, Itunes, Spotify, Stitcher, TuneIn, Spreaker, Pocket Casts and Tumblr

Demonstrators in Sudan, Algeria and nations beyond the Middle East such as Pakistan and Russia are applying lessons learnt from the 2011 popular Arab revolts as the Sudanese military uses an apparent Saudi-United Arab Emirates template to crack down.

This week’s crackdown in the Sudanese capital of Khartoum, in which reportedly some 100 people were killed as of this writing and hundreds wounded, has all the tell-tale signs of the Saudi-UAE assisted repression of a 2011 revolt in Bahrain.

The deaths have also sparked comparisons to a crackdown on protesters on a Cairo square in 2013 by Saudi-UAE-backed general-turned president Abdel Fattah al-Sisi that left up to 1,000 people dead.

The crackdown, despite an apology by Lieutenant General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, the head of Sudan’s Transitional Military Council (TMC), like in Bahrain, involved not only the shooting of protesters but also attacks on hospitals treating the wounded and the beating up of medical staff.

General Al-Burhan and the TMC took power in April after months of protests forced president Omar al-Bashir to resign after 26 years in office.

Protesters and analysts noted that the crackdown came on the heels of visits to the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Egypt by General Al-Burhan. It also followed Saudi Arabia and the UAE pledging US$3 billion to help Sudan weather the crisis.

UAE crown prince Mohammed bin Zayed promised General Al-Burhan to help “preserve Sudan’s security and stability.”

The US State Department signalled its belief that Gulf states may have inspired the violence by describing it as a “brutal crackdown” and stressing to Saudi deputy defense minister Khalid bin Salman “the importance of a transition from the Transitional Military Council to a civilian-led government in accordance with the will of the Sudanese people.”

The degree to which Sudanese protesters are willing to implement lessons learnt from the 2011 revolts will be determined by their willingness and ability to sustain their protests in the face of violence.

The opposition this week rejected an offer by General Al-Burhan to reopen negotiations and hold elections within nine months.

“We believe that the matter is now in the hands of the Sudanese people. This regime will fall, no matter what,” said Khalid Omar Yousef, a leader of the Declaration of Freedom and Change Forces (DFCF), an alliance of opposition groups.

The protesters, like their counterparts in Algeria who in April forced the resignation of president Abdulaziz Bouteflika, have vowed to sustain their protests until their demand has been met that the old regime has been dismantled and replaced by civilian rule.

Protesters in 2011 that toppled the leaders of Egypt, Tunisia, Libya and Yemen declared victory and surrendered the street once they had forced their leaders to step down.

The surrender helped successful efforts to rollback the revolts’ success in three of the four countries with Tunisia, where civilian rule and democracy prevailed, constituting the only exception.

The years between the rollback of the achievements of the revolts and the eruption of mass anti-government demonstrations in Algeria and Sudan were pockmarked by small-scale, issue-oriented protests across the Middle East and North Africa.

A military squashing of the Sudanese protests, if Bahrain is the model, could introduce not only a period of sustained small-scale protests but also of low-level violence.

The threat of sustained instability in Sudan is enhanced by the fact that this week’s crackdown was carried out by the feared Rapid Support Forces (RSF), paramilitaries accused of systematic human rights abuses during the war in Darfur.

The force is led by General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti, who also serves as deputy head of the TMC and, like General Al-Burhan, has close ties to the UAE and Saudi Arabia.

The Middle Eastern and North African model of smaller-scale, issue-oriented protests has been replicated in Pakistan and Russia with the government in Moscow adopting a more conciliatory tone than the Pakistani military.

The military appears determined to put an end to sustained peaceful protests by the Pashtun Tahafuz Movement (PTM) or Pashtun Protection Movement, an ethnic rights group that is demanding that security forces be held accountable for extrajudicial killings and other injustices.

Trying to stop a rights demonstration in the troubled region of Waziristan, security forces on Sunday killed at least eight people and detained Ali Wazir, one of the movement’s leaders and a member of parliament.

PTM leaders, like protesters in Sudan, Algeria and Russia, are increasingly less intimidated by security force violence or dire warnings that they risk exposing their country to the fate of Libya, Syria or Yemen, that have been wracked by civil war and foreign military intervention since the 2011 protests.

“PTM members are nonviolent but prepared to die to speak the truth — and our security forces have no answer,” said Afrasiab Khattak, a retired politician and commentator.

Protesters across Russia express similar degrees of fearlessness.

“Rallies and protests are now occurring with increasing frequency, primarily because Russians no longer care if the authorities refuse to sanction a given gathering, making it and participation in it illegal.

Indeed, protesters are becoming radicalized. They now refuse to buckle under pressure, and they are willing to take to the streets over issues as non-political as the environment and as local as the construction of a cathedral,” said Russian journalist Andrey Pertsev.

For now, Russia compared to Sudan, Pakistan and Algeria is the exception. Authorities, apparently so far unwilling to use violence, have sought to accommodate protesters and in some cases have met their demands.

Unlike the 2011 Arab protests that often started in second and third tier cities before going nationwide, a well-placed source in Moscow said the Russian protests were unlikely to spread to the Russian capital where security was far tighter.

If there is one fundamental lesson to be learnt, it is that the most recent wave of protests signals that an era of dissent and defiance that started in 2011 is far from over.

Each wave takes in the lessons of the mistakes of its predecessor. Violence, repression and ever starker authoritarianism delays the process but does little to end it.

Accommodation helps defuse immediate tensions but is likely to fuel dissent.

Speaking in the wake of the crackdown, Mohammed Yousef al-Mustafa, a spokesman for the Sudanese Professionals Association, which has spearheaded the protests, asserted that "we have no choice but to continue our protests and civil disobedience until the fall of the military council."

Dr. James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at Nanyang Technological University’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, an adjunct senior research fellow at the National University of Singapore’s Middle East Institute and co-director of the University of Wuerzburg’s Institute of Fan Culture.

#Russia #sudan #algeria #pakistan #saudi arabia #saudi #uae #bahrain #protest

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ebenpink · 6 years ago

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World News Briefs -- January 21, 2019 http://bit.ly/2R3ohUr

Guardian: Israeli military strikes Iranian targets inside Syria Damascus rocked by explosions on second night of attacks, reportedly killing 11 A second night of Israeli airstrikes have hit targets inside Syria in a tit-for-tat exchange that included the launch of a medium-range missile from the outskirts of Damascus towards the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. The sharp increase in tensions between Israel and Syria, and its key backer, Iran, comes at a time when the security situation in Syria is rapidly changing owing to the recently announced US troop drawdown and a jockeying for influence on all sides. Read more ....

MIDDLE EAST

Israel strikes Iran's elite forces in Syria. Israel launches air strikes against Iranian forces in Syria. Turkey ready to take over Syria's Manbij, Erdogan tells Trump. Saudi-led coalition's planes pound Yemen's capital. Beirut summit: Arab leaders agree 29-item economic agenda. Pompeo: US 'absolutely not' getting out of the Middle East. Qatar says Gaza payouts on track after delay over border violence. Israel's PM Netanyahu signs deals with Chad's President Deby.

ASIA

Second Trump-Kim summit to take place in Vietnam: report. Trump says 'a lot of progress' with North Korea but economic sanctions to stay in place. Report finds another undisclosed North Korea missile site, says there are 19 more. Taliban says it pulls out of peace talks after refusing to release U.S. professor. Philippines' Muslim region votes on new autonomy law. Philippines holds autonomy referendum in restive Mindanao. China confirms birth of gene-edited babies, blames scientist He Jiankui for breaking rules. China's birth rate falls to historic low.

AFRICA

Zimbabwe: Mnangagwa ends foreign tour early amid domestic turmoil. Zimbabwe opposition accuses government of brutal crackdown. Congo's Martin Fayulu declares himself president, top court sides with Felix Tshisekedi. Libya: reconciliation conference delay could fuel military solution. Sudan president defiant as deadly protests continue. 10 UN peacekeepers killed in Mali terrorist attack. Kenyans face up to 'homegrown' threat after hotel attack. 170 migrants feared dead after two shipwrecks in Mediterranean.

EUROPE

EU hits Russians, Syria with sanctions over chemical weapons. No second vote on Brexit deal likely before February, says No 10. Theresa May demands concessions from the EU as she abandons cross-party Brexit talks. Police link N. Ireland car bomb to 'New IRA'. Salisbury poisoning: EU sanctions Russian suspects. Germany deports record number of refugees to other EU states. Germany sanctions Iranian airline over spying claims. Polish PM calls for respect in public life after mayor slain.

AMERICAS

Kamala Harris announces presidential campaign. 'Mexico is doing NOTHING': Trump hits out at incoming caravans, days after the largest single group of migrants of 376 Central Americans entered the U.S. through burrow holes under the border wall. Trump says he's 'still thinking' about Pelosi's request to postpone State of the Union. Venezuelan soldiers steal weapons and call for coup against President Maduro on social media before being swiftly arrested. ELN claims responsibility for Bogota car bomb that killed 20 at a police academy. Colombia's ELN rebels claim deadly police academy attack. Colombia protest: Thousands march for peace after cadet killings. Death toll in Mexico gasoline pipeline explosion rises to 85. Nicaraguan journalist flees to Costa Rica after police raid newsroom.

TERRORISM/THE LONG WAR

Al Qaeda-linked militants kill 10 U.N. peacekeepers in Mali. Experts warn of persistent ISIS threat after suicide bombing. US has increased military intervention against al-Shabab.

ECONOMY/FINANCE/BUSINESS

Oxfam releases global inequality report amid ongoing controversy. International Monetary Fund update points to continuing global slowdown. Huawei's CEO threatens to axe 'mediocre' staff after global security worries. Chinese outbound projects plunge, investors pull back from US. from War News Updates http://bit.ly/2HpVcmq via IFTTT

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esprit-de-corps-magazine · 6 years ago

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PEACEKEEPING BY THE BOOK: Surely There Are Better Ways To Ensure Peace?

By Col. (ret’d) Pat Stogran

Dag Hammarskjold, Secretary General to the United Nations from April 1953 until his death in a plane crash in September 1961, once said “Peacekeeping is not a job for soldiers, but only soldiers can do it.” That statement was considered profound back in the day but has long since lost its meaning.

Peacekeeping as it was conceived and practiced during the latter half of the 20th Century were operations conducted by conventional forces under the auspices of the United Nations; however, it was a misnomer. Peacekeeping was invariably conducted in active theatres of war where there was no peace to keep. It was generally agreed that the situation had to be relatively stable and the warring parties, which were normally sovereign states and most often members of the UN General Assembly, had to agree to the deployment of peacekeeping forces. Those conditions were more-or-less universally present in peacekeeping missions although the objectives, methods, and configurations varied wildly. Peacekeeping was but a label for almost any military operation conducted in a conflict area other than war.

If we take the term in its literal sense of “preserving peace”, however, it most certainly is a job for soldiers. More than one intellectual has suggested that readiness for war is a way of preserving the peace. When Canada joined battle in the World Wars it was to re-establish the peace that had already been violated by German aggression. Similarly, we joined the war in Korea in response to an act of aggression by Soviet-backed troops of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea when they invaded the pro-Western Republic of Korea in the south of the Korean Peninsula. Our contribution to United States Operation ENDURING FREEDOM was also a manifestation of that ethos, in that peace was violated on 11 September. Normally as soon as peace was reestablished we would pick up our pieces and go home, except in Afghanistan we were forced out long before there was any sign of a peaceful outcome.

Our deployment to Afghanistan represented the end of the peacekeeping tradition. Under the so-called “Bush Doctrine” the United States left the operation in Afghanistan to languish and turned its attention to invading Iraq and six other countries in the region. The government of Canada adroitly managed to avoid participating with the initial US act of aggression in Iraq but with the operation to rid Libya of the Qaddafi regime we became full-fledged partners of the Imperial powers, at least in the eyes of the indigenous population. The Trudeau government contributed to the combat operations but also promised to roll the clock back and re-establish the perception of Canada as a peace-loving nation, graciously offering up 600 troops to the UN to embark on a peacekeeping mission. The offer was quickly accepted, but not before stirring up the hornets’ nest of pundits and military professionals here at home who were adamant that peacekeeping missions are a thing of the past.

It didn’t take long for the Trudeau government to realize that it may have made a misstep, that any contemporary military intervention would be exceedingly dangerous, nothing like the relatively bloodless offerings of 20th Century. Notwithstanding, they went through the reconnaissance and consultation process but it was taking so long that it became apparent the government was dragging its feet. Then in March 2018 they announced Canada would deploy two Chinook helicopters for airlift and four armed Griffon helicopters for escort operations to the United Nations mission in Mali. It is expected that 200 to 250 personnel could be deployed as air crews, medical crews, support staff and, of course, special forces. With the exception of the latter it amounts to a pretty pedestrian deployment, although the government is quick to point out they include specialist’s skills and aircraft that are key enablers and force multipliers the United Nations is in desperate need of.

The other problem with Secretary General Hammarskjold’s depiction of peacekeeping is that it is no longer a job that only soldiers can do. Civilian police have become key players for contemporary peace operations and, while I have been critical of how conventional forces have continued to fight industrial-style battles while the threat of this digital age has become more of an asymmetric global insurgency,non-government organizations have continued to develop non-violent ways of resolving conflict that are relevant in this new security environment. General Dallaire’s initiative to eradicate the employment of child soldiers is an example of doctrines that developed and practiced by NGOs known as DDR, or Disarmament, Demobilization, and Reintegration.

As the threat has become increasingly non-conventional in a military sense the scope of DDR doctrines has expanded to include protocols to prevent and counter violent extremism (PVE/CVE). In Haiti the U.N. have taken the concept further with a Community Violence Reduction programme. CVR was so successful in that theatre of operations that they have expanded it to five other peacekeeping missions in the Central African Republic (CAR), Mali, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Sudan and Cote d’Ivoire.

On the heels of the announcement of our deployment to Mali and representing the Canadian Peacekeeping Veterans Association at the Standing Committee on National Defence for the 42nd Parliament, retired Brigadier General Gregory Mitchell — one of my warfighter role models as a young officer — stressed the importance of quality leadership at all levels of peace support operations. He recommended Canada develop an international peace support training centre and went on to reflect on the great utility that the Pearson Peacekeeping Centre, (PPC) which really resonated with me.

I was seconded briefly as the Vice President of the PPC along with a half dozen military officers just as the Canadian Armed Forces were ramping up operations in Kandahar in 2004/2005. Working in civilian attire alongside civilians dedicated to conflict resolution operations I was impressed with the expertise within the PPC and the influence we enjoyed in the NGO community. PPC played a key role in the research and development of conflict resolution doctrine and provided a vast array of training for military and civilian audiences. Police were also an important client of the Centre because, unlike military forces who maintain a huge capacity to train and develop doctrine for themselves, few police services possess such a luxury. Unfortunately, the Harper government was determined to get rid of the Centre.

I was so taken by the potential that PPC offered as a sort of a multidisciplinary and interagency “staff college” for the whole-of-government operations in Afghanistan and the NGO community, (who are reticent to be seen co-operating with military forces in a mission area), that I approached the then Conservative government to relay my impressions. I marched myself in to meet with then-Minister of Defence Gordon O’Connor, the Chief of Staff to Minister of Foreign Affairs Peter MacKay, Robert Fonberg in his capacity as a deputy secretary to Cabinet (Operations) at the Privy Council Office, David Mulroney who was the Deputy Minister responsible for overseeing inter-departmental coordination of all aspects of Canada’s engagement in Afghanistan, and then-Lieutenant General Walt Natynczyk who was the Vice Chief of Defence Staff at the time. As can be expected my sales pitch fell upon deaf ears, but General Natynczyk’s response was especially disappointing. “Pat,” he said, “I can’t afford to put fuel in the bellies of our CF-18s or send ships to sea, so I can’t support keeping Pearson Peacekeeping Centre.” My aim was to help win a war, not balance a budget.

So, with the lack of innovation that seems to characterize senior management in the CAF National Defence Headquarters sought to satisfy the desire of their political masters to be seen to doing “peacekeeping” without stepping too far from their personal comfort zones. It is ironic that they seemed to trip over themselves to mount combat operations in accordance with the Bush or Weinberger Doctrines (the latter of which I wrote about in a previous article) like their American colleagues, but incapable of designing campaigns that reflect a Canadian ethos, our place and potential as a middle power in the world.

No doubt that our troops going over to Mali will do an outstanding job! It is just too bad they are a fire-and-forget asset dispatched by a system that cares more about managing perceptions than preserving peace. W

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