The Saudi Check

Tags

international response, Iraq, Israel and Saudis, Jamal Kashoggi murder, Kashoggi recording, Liberal Party, MBS wealth, Middle East, Mohammed bin Salman, Palestinians, paul william roberts, punish MBS, regime-change in Riyadh, Saudi arms deals, syria

The tragic debacle over the murder of journalist Jamal Kashoggi is like one of those infinitely disastrous moves on a chessboard that suddenly opens up your opponent’s men to any number of deadly threats, hopeless defense maneuvers, and an almost certainly forfeited game. Or it would do if you were determined to win at all costs, rather than intent on allowing him to hurriedly rearrange his board and continue on safely. Trump plays to his base with talk of job loss and multibillion dollar profits if a Saudi arms deal is scuttled. But what or who is the Canadian Liberal Party playing to with its own reluctance to sever an arms deal with the Kingdom? This contract was evidently negotiated and signed by the former Progressive Conservative government, so the Liberals won’t take any blame. There is apparently a clause citing punitive fines if delivery of the military vehicles involved is delayed for any reason. Another clause, furthermore, apparently prohibits details of the contract and deal from being made public. Ergo: the sale must go ahead, no matter what the Saudis have done or will do – is that it? We, the people, don’t like this at all. For a start, the unconscionable killing on foreign soil surely overrides any contractual arrangement, making the idea of Riyadh trying to collect a fine laughable. Secondly, we find the notion of secret deals and contracts within the arms business, or little military-industrial complex, both obnoxious and unconstitutional. The public has every right to know who Canada is selling military equipment to, whether it is a barbaric tyranny like Saudi Arabia or the most liberal of liberal democracies. We demand that the government take some severe, effective and globally just steps to express Canadian shock and dismay at this abominable act, along with numerous other recent Saudi abominations, from gross human rights abuses to the often-lethal persecution of minorities and dissidents, as well as all female citizens. A diplomatic wrist-slapping is very far from enough, although only regime-change, trade boycott and asset-seizure seem reasonably sufficient. I have little hope that anything at all will happen, because when a cover-up is covered up you can be sure something else altogether is afoot.

 

Mohammed bin Salman no doubt views himself as monarch of all he surveys, a courageous omnipotentiary and ultimate authority from Red Sea to Arabian Ocean. His belief in this case is relatively true enough. The country is indeed an absolutist monarchy posing as a constitutional one with rigged elections and a noisy fanfare about trifling freedoms now granted (women can drive – whoopee! – but there must always be an adult male in the vehicle too, which, I’d say, tarnishes the glory of freedom slightly). If MBS were intrinsically regal and even a little courageous, however, he’d admit sole responsibility for the assassination of Kashoggi, citing his reasons for unquestionably ordering the murder, no matter how unacceptable they might be to most of the world. He will not do this, of course, and not because his reasons would be unacceptable – his reasons would be humiliatingly shameful is why. There has been an attempt to vilify Kashoggi as a terrorist with ties to radical Islamists, but this has not yet worked, largely because it’s provably untrue. But even a fat-headed bully like MBS isn’t prepared to say, “I ordered his death because he insulted my ideas and abilities, which hurt my feelings…” No one is buying the fantastically lame explanation that Kashoggi started a fight in the Saudi consulate, partly because the crew of hitmen was sent to Turkey a day before Kashoggi had scheduled his visit to the consulate, but mainly because, even without knowing the journalist’s gentle nature, the idea of him or anyone intelligent alone in a consular building starting a fist-fight is ludicrously unlikely. What other rationalizations will emerge from these dunces? 18 men have apparently been arrested, so says MBS. But who are these men and what do they have to say for themselves? Where is the body, for example? MBS says the so-far-anonymous assassins – one an expert in autopsies with a bone saw in his luggage – handed over the corpse to Turkish allies, colleagues, whatever they were, and no one in the hit squad knows who these people, these contracted colleagues, maybe even random strangers, are or what they did with Kashoggi’s remains. Is this even vaguely believable, that a body is handed over to unknown locals? It might be tempting to think these puerile explanations are a nose-thumbing at the world, as was recently tempting with Czar Putiin’s GRU clowns and their botched murder in Salisbury; but, as it was with Putin’s operatives, the Kashoggi murder-cover-up-then-cover-up-cover-up is a cock-up of epic proportions. As Talleyrand said of Napoleon invading Russia, it’s worse than an mistake – it’s a blunder. But this blunder seems to be posing as many problems for the western liberal democracies as it is for Riyadh, because some sort of punitive response is increasingly necessary – or it is if you wish to continue enjoying credibility as a democracy and upholding your belief in rule of law. There have been frowns and tut-tutting from most western capitals, yet a curious inertia sets in when it comes to doing anything appropriate or even proposing a viable course of reaction. Why?

 

Only Israel can reasonably claim Saudi Arabia as an ally (an ally against Iran mainly), and there have been solid back-channel relationships between Riyadh and Jerusalem for decades. The Saudis of course don’t want this cozy hypocrisy to be broadcast to other Arabs, because a tribal solidarity is supposed to persist, and the only rallying-cry Arab nationalism has ever managed to concoct is an anti-Israel bias – not that this heals the Shia-Sunni schism, or indeed does much at all beyond fanning the sputtering flames of Palestinian dreams. So Washington’s Israel Lobby has some justifiable strategic concerns about a souring of relationship with the Saudis. But all anyone else has as an excuse for inaction is the vastness of Saudi investments in their nations’ industries and corporations. Someone else can determine how many trillions exactly are in Canada, and who they’re with, maybe even who they control, but you can be sure it’s an awful lot of petrodollars. Are we worried they might sell out and invest elsewhere? Reduce the story to a murder-mystery and you will see how such a response looks in the microcosm of reality, where clarity is always clearer. But this so far is the only response we can descry, and amid the vacillation you can tell deals are being done while damage-control creates more damage than it controls. MBS has photo-op with Kashoggi’s son – a harrowing ordeal if ever there was one for a mourning child of any age. What next? Faked videos of MBS and Jamal as bosom-buddies? Not many foreign leaders are in much of a position to make demands on Riyadh, but Erdvan in Turkey is one of them. Initially, he seemed to hold a lot of cards. There was the search of the Saudi consulate, with its freshly-painted-over walls, and then something about Kashoggi’s belongings found in the trash, but not much comes of this. More significantly, though, is the sudden silence about the recording allegedly broadcast from Kashoggi’s Apple wristwatch to the I-Phone he’d left with his fiancé outside the consulate. It supposedly records what happened inside before and during the murder. There are many in Washington who claim people in the NSA, or one of its many wings, have heard some or all of this horrific recording. If so, it can only have come from the fiancé, or else Turkish authorities. Only Erdvan would have the power to confiscate or appropriate the I-Phone recording, and failing that he must know where it is – but where is it? We hear no more about it in the media, this recording that supposedly makes clear what happened in that consulate. Will we soon hear no more about the whereabouts of Kashoggi’s remains? The pompous blabbering lies of MBS currently embarrass anyone who would agree to believe them, so consequently no one does claim they’re completely believable – although Trump and others have managed somehow to make MBS laudably credible while at the same time doubting whatever explanation he floats for the murder he can never reasonably explain. If you don’t like the way this is going, then demand to know from your MP or MPP, Congressperson or Senator, the full extent of Saudi investment in your country and how it would be impacted by any punitive measures taken against Riyadh, or even specifically against MBS, who is, inter alia, one of the world’s richest men, through no effort of his own, naturally.

 

If you look at a map of the Middle East, you will notice all the states there mostly have straight lines as frontiers, a sure sign of the colonial cartographer at work, rather than nature’s natural boundaries, the usual frontier markers. This map was essentially created in 1919 at the Versailles Conference to carve up empire in the wake of World War One, regardless of ancient tribal enmities or even their loyalties. The British, with their propensity for class distinctions, created the monarchies and emirates, largely to reward collaboration during wars with Ottoman Turks. One glance at the shape accorded frontiers of Jordan tells you a slapdash cartography, or perhaps malice aforethought was at play. Given the current lamentable state of the major Arab states – the ex-monarchy of Iraq, and the chaos of Syria – is it not time to correct the imperialist blundering with something a little more equitable, redrawing the map of Arabia to make smaller autonomous tribally-sensitive regions? Not that I favor a two-state solution to the insoluble Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but a viable Palestinian state could be carved from Jordan-Syria-and-Saudi Arabia without anyone in those countries even noticing the loss of territory, and providing something more than empty rhetoric for the Arabs to give to the Palestinians they privately say are not Arabs at all (and thus excluded from the benefits of pan-Arab nationalism, if there ever are any benefits from it).  Besides the south-western area that could be part of a potential Palestine, Saudi Arabia needs to be divided into a Shia province, a Sunni province, and possibly also a Yemeni province, with resources and wealth divvied up equally. Not all Arab states are still living in the 16^th century in terms of sensibility and governance, but Saudi Arabia is, with MBS a sort of Henry VIII-figure, murdering critics, or anyone at all, with impunity, no check existing for his power or enormities. Is it not time to do Saudi citizens a big favor by freeing them from this atavistic kleptocracy and the foul Wahhabi cult it has generated for a religion? Wahhabism is analogous to Nazism in having hate at its core. The opportunity to make tragedies result in triumphs is not to be squandered when it comes, and it is palpably here with this outrageous and despicable crime. Pack MBS off to London with a few billion to spend, and see how his subjects manage on their own? It is possible today, but the window is narrow. Yet such a response would be adequately appropriate to the behavior of MBS and his cronies, as well as making a tragic and unnecessary death serve some higher purpose. Returning West Asia to its old tribal domains would, I think, return the area to some stability. All the Saudi elites have is their money, and stripping their assets is the least their actions warrant, so regime-change brings no danger or deprivation to the Saudi masses, and it potentially offers enormous advantages. This conflict between money and principles will prove riveting, and involving a journalist, as it does, is going to be irresistible content for the media. I’m backing Money as the favorite.

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The International Caucasian Court

Tags

Afghanistan, gambia, international criminal court, Iraq, Israel, syria, war crimes

 

Gambia has threatened to withdraw its ratification of the International Criminal Court in the Hague, citing concerns over racial bias. So far, South Africa is the only African state to actually withdraw. Are these concerns of bias valid? Well, no – the Court only indicts at the request of involved nations. But, on the other hand, yes – because the most notorious potential villains are senior politicians in the UK, Israel and the United States. Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine remain areas where the most egregious of apparent war-crimes have occurred. Why, then, have individuals or groups in the countries implicated not brought forward relevant charges for the Court? It is a good question, and one for which nobody seems to have an answer. Tony Blair, G.W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz – after Hitler and the Nazis, these are the most appalling war-criminals the world has ever known. And they also know it. I will be most surprised to learn that any of them has ever left his cushioned continent since 2001. It is the same with that arch-demon, Henry Kissinger. He cannot travel far from home, because there are warrants for his arrest all over the place. You have not heard this? Read my dear late old friend, Christopher Hitchens’ book, The Trial of Henry Kissinger. And, while you’re at it, read his book on the Clintons. The contents are deeply disturbing, and, since neither book was ever sued, one must assume that these diabolical accusations are true. In Hilary’s case, this is who America will elect as President – and that, perhaps, explains why none of its previous criminal leaders were suggested for the ICC’s prosecution? In the West, we have an intrinsic bias – but only because we no longer know our own history. There is nothing to be proud of in it. For America, there is a vast delusion, going back to the Beginning and those most grandiose of documents. “All men are born equal and independent”? I don’t think so. Do the black slaves, or the Indigenous – or, for that matter, women – have certain “inalienable rights”? Or certain unalienable ones? Evidently not. And who exactly are, “We the people”? It would seem that they are the signees to this ridiculously pompous, self-aggrandizing screed: the cabal of oligarchic, land-owning faux-aristocrats who had managed to steal the British colonies before the Motherland knew they’d done it. Much as I hate to admit Donald J. Trump is right, he is right in claiming this election to be stolen. Confessedly, I would also steal it from him if I controlled America. But the hordes who will wail when Trump loses – as he will – ought, perhaps, to wonder why they have not dispatched their alleged war-criminals to the ICC. It is, as Gore Vidal used to say, because of the United States of Amnesia. Just going back to Vietnam, I could name a dozen people who deserve a criminal trial – if only to clear their names. Yet American – or really global – media focus their concerns on the present moment. All that seems to matter today is November the 8^th. Yet, when that arrives, and Hilary is the next President, these concerns will change. No one will ever resurrect past worries, because we are not supposed to dwell on those. Thus, the lame ICC is left prosecuting tribal malfeasants, or possibly the odd east European despot. The world, however, is always left wondering if real justice is ever going to be served.

 

Pondering this perpetual calamity, I am left thinking about what might be truly interesting to readers. Would it, perhaps, be a glimpse of what goes on, much of the time, in the writer’s head? If such is the case – and I do not insist it is – then a new novel begins like this:

 

When I died, things really got interesting. Which is to say they were definitely not interesting before this. I had been a scientist, an expert in earthworms, and a teacher of my expertise. It was even said, at one glorious point, that I was the 5^th most knowledgeable person on earthworms in the world. I objected to this attestation. McFinn was far less knowledgeable than I. But, after death, there was much to distract me from petty concerns. I must say that death was unexpected – who knew that lorry was skidding out of control on the icy road ahead? Not me. But, instead of this, I found myself wondering about all the lives I had previously lived. I must admit I had never, not for a moment, believed in reincarnation – and I did not now. I was forced to accept it, though, because it was true. In the same way, I was obliged to accept all the musings and ponderings I had ever had regarding the past. Amongst these – and I scarcely recalled it – was the questioning of Shakespeare’s identity. In my youth, I imagine, I had become obsessed, for a week or a month, with the specious issue of who wrote those plays. To be frank, I don’t think I had cared about this in half a century. Yet there I was, moments after death, plunged into the London of a very late 16^th-century. Of course, it had never crossed my mind that one of my earlier selves had been involved in the Globe Theatre, and in Shakespeare’s life. Admittedly, I was not that involved – but I was there. And this revelation was not without its vast surprises. As I find my diary records: September 9^th, 1593, Deptford, London:

 

And so it goes…

 

Paul William Roberts      

The End of Iraq

Tags

arab history, cia, foreign policy, george w bush, Iraq, ISIS, washington

 

In my book, A War Against Truth, mercilessly persecuted by the scum running America, I outline in great detail the nefarious deeds and self-serving decisions that led up to George W. Bush’s illegal invasion of Iraq, and its calamitous consequences, all of them obvious to any clod-brained half-wit in the State Department, or even in the CIA – where intelligence may be the middle-name, but is rarely the modus operandi. I added an epigraphic chapter to the paperback version of that book, following these consequences a further few years on, when the chaos was becoming entrenched, a way of life for the victims of a deplorable and poisonous foreign policy, one that is the sole cause of most man-made misery on earth – and has been for over half a century. In Iraq, back in 2003, I did have hopes that the situation would resolve itself – not high hopes, but still hopes. Arabs are a resilient people, accustomed to being cheated and abused by the West, yet always enduring with pride.

Now we have the murderous attacks in Baghdad and elsewhere, blamed on US, the Unislamic State, a useful acronym since the rise of these bloodthirsty, pseudo-Islamic psychopaths can be blamed on the US of A, and Washington’s fuck-witted, addle-pated, thoughtless, febrile plot to overthrow Saddam and replace him with… what? This lame-brained non-idea was hatched by wealthy Shia emigres, who viewed themselves as the rightful heirs, the inheritors of Iraq, yet changed their minds when they saw the vicious mayhem erupting after Ba’athism fell – a mayhem easily predictable, had anyone thought it through, or even thought at all.  The oppressed Shia Muslim Iraqis had been trodden under jackboots of a powerful Sunni Muslim minority for well over a generation, and were bound to seek a gory revenge when Sunni chips were down. But who was to blame for the Ba’athist tyranny? Well, that would be the greedy French and British colonizers who carved up West Asia in the wake of World War One, conveniently forgetting that Feisal and his Hashemites had been promised their own Arabia as the reward for helping defeat Ottoman Turks, under the supervision of T.E. Lawrence – who probably committed suicide out of shame for a promise reneged on. That promise still exists on paper in a letter filed at the British Arab Office. The wantonly disastrous Euro-Mid-East policy was bequeathed to oil-fevered Americans, who populated Arab governments with their own dictatorial military brutes, propped up by aid in the billions and an army to watch their vulnerable puppet-backs.

So the trail of blame ends right in the Oval Office, or really in the Pentagon and out at Langley. The purpose of this blunder through a history of which scarcely an American is aware may well now elude everyone in those festering rat-holes. Or this chaos may be that elusive purpose. Every time I concede that these Neanderthal oafs are clever, however, they do something egregiously stupid to change my mind.

Is there a solution to West Asia’s serial nightmare? Yes, and it’s the same solution we would want for ourselves if the diabolism were in our back yard. Communicate with the Unislamic State, and tell them to leave the world alone and, if they do, they’ll be left with their own problems. Assuming they agree to this – by no means certain with slobbering maniacs –then leave those turbulent nations to work out their own catastrophes. If war and slaughter is their choice, stand back and let them bring it on. The fittest always survive, right? So when the dust settles and the blood drains from the alleys, what will remain must be the fittest society to which they can aspire. If it not, they’ll change that one too, and keep on until they get it right – or until everyone’s dead. But, whatever happens, we won’t be involved, our money will not be squandered, and our people won’t needlessly die.

Should the sociopaths and drooling killers professing to be an Unislamic State – their leaders mainly now-full-bearded ex-Republican Guardsmen from the old Sunni Iraq, if the truth be told – should they decline this generous offer, then, of course, off with their heads, hang ‘em high. But, all the same, it does seem mysterious that a military alliance once capable of defeating and trashing the mighty Nazi war machine, along with its homeland, cannot handle a few hundred lightly-armed lunatics, does it not? It makes you wonder if the plan – assuming these dolts still have plans – is not to destroy Iraq entirely and lease the remnants out to whoever wants or needs them, remembering, naturally, that the big oil kleptocracies already have contracts for the bits they want.

 

Paul William Roberts

 

The Great American Divide

Tags

Afghanistan, america, hilary, hiroshima, iran, Iraq, racism, trump, vietnam

 

During the American Civil War, when fathers fought against sons, brothers against brothers, and families against families, a profound psychic divide in US society was first concretized. By ‘psychic divide’ I mean a pronounced mental proclivity to seek out fundamental social divisions. Of course, the rich-poor division exists in all societies. But it is innate in them, an inequity that can be addressed without necessarily tearing the social fabric. In the US these divisions always threaten social strife, sometimes apocalyptically – and I use the word in its original sense of ‘a revealing’. Perhaps the earliest division was between the Puritan Fathers and a settlement of avowed hedonists who lived along the shore from them and practised free love, as well as, one assumes, free speech. Naturally, these sybarites were termed ‘demonic’ by the purist Christians. The next major division was between white European settlers and the indigenous tribes, where countless fabricated tales were told of Indian atrocities to make the white population amenable to their extermination – which, after all, was the project. There is a reason indigenous peoples are not mentioned in the republic’s foundational documents, where all men are born free and independent. The African slaves aren’t mentioned there either, and they would go on to constitute another great divide which, lamentably, still exists – black-white. Nowhere are the rancid politics of division more apparent than in the US, in Washington, where partisan rhetoric is bitter and hateful, and, although there is little difference between Democrats and Republicans in terms of policies, one party is always the Devil, the other the Lord. In Canada, and in most western democracies, there is always a race between opposing parties – and there are usually more than two of them – yet when the race is run peaceful co-existence reigns. Not so in America, where shout-shows on far-right media even skirmish with the other media that are, at best, centre-right. And perceptions always trump issues in these so-called public debates.

One of the great unsolved riddles of American social history is the issue of why the working-class invariably votes against its own best interests by casting a ballot for the Republicans. Theoretically at least, the Democrats are more concerned with workers and the middle-class, and certainly don’t advocate tax cuts for corporations or the super-rich – although the party behaves differently when in power. As Noam Chomsky has observed, it is not difficult to win a US election: you simply promise what everyone wants – subsidized education and health-care. The working-class majority, however, votes emotionally along carefully delineated lines of division, including black-white, Christian-or not, salt of the earth-toff, pro-or-anti-immigrant, gay-straight, liberal-conservative, and, ironically, rich-poor. Sadly, it usually counts for more that a candidate seems like ‘the kinda guy you can have a beer with’ than he does the kinda guy who can intelligently run a country. And, although you could probably have a beer with Donald Trump – not necessarily an enjoyable one – you actually couldn’t have had one with George W. Bush, unless it was de-alcoholised. Again, the perception not the reality rules. Why? It is tempting to conclude that the lumpen proletariat is stupid, easily led by the nose. Yet why can’t a left-wing candidate lead them? It is, I think, the us-and-them divide, where ‘us’ means good old-time religion, traditional values, no blacks, no Jews, no immigrants, and ‘them’ means the opposite, a psychic break-up of the Union by the advocacy of change. It is no wonder that politicians are increasingly exploiting this polarised view of society. ‘Change’ has often been an appealing slogan, yet change is not really what 100 million citizens seem to want. What they do want is a politician who’s not a politician.

The politics of division do not stop at home either. US Foreign Policy deals only in angels and demons. Starting with the Axis Powers, and moving on through communism, the Axis of Evil, Islamic extremism, drug lords, and now Isis and terrorism in general, the attitude is not rational and certainly not open to diplomacy or debate. They’re always the Devil, we’re always the Lord. It is often said in war that you become like your enemy, and America has come to bear an eerie resemblance to totalitarian states, to a drug lord, and to international terrorism of the state-sponsored variety. For example, we now find that the CIA was responsible for the arrest of Nelson Mandela in South Africa – because he was a suspected communist. The us-and-them divide controls and directs such erroneous thinking. There is now a foreign minister in Israel who has threatened to blow up Egypt’s Aswan Dam, and to ‘flatten Gaza like a soccer-field’. We are outraged, no? Yet we are scarcely bothered by infinitely worse US aggression and mayhem in countless other countries – why? Because almost all western media play along with the American version of divide and conquer: we can do no harm, they can do no good. It is insidious, and only the few independent media, like the BBC and CBC, stand between us and the deluge of warped thinking.

Of course, nowhere has the Great American Divide been more apparent than in the current and catastrophic race to the next White House. There have been some pretty repulsive presidential candidates, but I can think of none so flamboyantly revolting than Donald Trump – but I don’t like Hilary much either. At best, she’d be dirty business as usual. They’re both up against an avowed socialist who, I fear, knows little about economics. Indeed, they’re all big on denunciatory rhetoric, and fanciful promises, or threats, but almost invisibly small on policies. When Trump says he’s going to make America great again, does he mean greater than it is with him in it? When, in fact, was America ‘great’? Hiroshima? Civil Rights? The Cold War? Korea? Vietnam? South and Central America? The useless War on Drugs? Iran? Afghanistan? Iraq? And now the Syrian vacillation? Forgive me, but I don’t perceive much greatness. I do, however, see divisive politics opening up a chasm amounting to a Cold, possibly Hot, Civil War. One is forced to wonder if there’s a way out of this dilemma. You can lead a cowboy’s horse to water but you can’t make the rider think. It’s not as if the Internet isn’t choc-a-bloc with insightful articles revealing the real issues at stake.

When I was in Iraq, writing for Harper’s magazine, I witnessed new levels of cunning in military intelligence. I wasn’t embedded, and you had to get permission from the army authorities to travel here or there. I was never refused, but the BBC and many national newspapers had a dreadful time. I realised that the Pentagon didn’t care what a few hundred thousand Harper’s­-reading intellectuals got to think about the war, but they cared tremendously what millions of BBC-watchers or New York Times-readers got to think – and this they monitored carefully. It does not augur well for the health of a society that nearly half of its members base their voting decisions on slogans and not the intricacy of issues. Trump supporters have said that there is nothing he could do to change their minds about voting for him. Nothing? Well, the good news is that he won’t win, and the bad news is that Hilary will. Where will this leave America? It will leave a gaping wound in which the divide between have-brains and don’t-care-to- think has never been more apparent, and will not easily be healed. It is not even really a question of education. No society has been able to deal effectively with those elements which simply don’t wish to participate in the advantages a democratic government offers them. In Canada we have the Hell’s Angels; in America you’ve got 100 million Trump supporters. Welcome to the Grand Canyon…

 

 Paul William Roberts

 

Harper’s Wars

Tags

Canada, harper, Iraq, neo-conservatism, politics, syria

O Canada! Where did our home and native land go? We used to be peacekeepers and reliably unbiased mediators; now we are neo-imperialist interloping warmongers, a dependable, if small, wing of the ever-covert and increasingly confused aims of long term US-UK foreign policy, which has no connection to come-and-go governments, being something hatched in the back-rooms of the deep state’s permanent and most un-democratic tyranny. It is surely time for the citizens of fading Western powers to admit our lives and taxes are part of a system which does not remotely resemble a democracy. Significant decisions are taken with no reference to the public will, and with, if any, no acceptable explanation. Canadian Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, whose soft, warm, reassuring voice increasingly resembles that of disgraced talk-show host and violent sexual sadist Jian Gomeshi, has exerted an unprecedented control over the media amounting to censorship and a violation of our Charter of Rights regarding free speech. No one gets to ask him probing and relevant questions. A gag-order silences nearly all politicians in his party, as well as such people as scientists – most of who work for the government or rely on federal funding. Environmental and social concerns take a remote back-seat to allegedly lower taxes and statistical legerdemain about the health of our economy. We are so easily fooled by appearances. As far as I know, the only politician here to have seen through Harper’s carefully stage-managed façade was ex-Premier of Newfoundland and Labrador, Danny Williams, who recounted a blunt conversation with the Prime Minister where Harper told him, “Don’t fuck with my country.” Williams described him, when met in private, as “a nasty man” – much as Gomeshi’s staff and female acquaintances characterized the seemingly mellow and liberal talk-show yacker.

Having just waded through the slough of tax-time, I wonder why more Canadians are not questioning the cost to us of our ill-advised involvement in frosty-war ventures like the Russo-Ukrainian conflict, the meddling in someone else’s civil war in Syria, and the intervention to protect Iraqi oil-fields from their erstwhile owners and an element of fanatical Sunni Islamists – a situation created by the illegal US-UK invasion of Iraq in 2003. We can overlook the catastrophe in Afghanistan, which western forces have now shrugged off, achieving less than nothing for the years and expense of their involvement – an outcome anyone with a cursory knowledge of history could and did predict.

It is hard to say what is worse: a public broadcaster ultimately controlled and under-funded by a corrupt and deceiving government, or a massive media complex owned by and beholden to vast multi-national corporations deeply involved in big oil and the arms business. Both entail a warping, distorting and withholding of facts and context relating to any sensitive situation. For example: today we hear of ISIS ‘militants’ slaughtering 300-odd members of a ‘minority sect’ referred to as Yezidis. No broadcast I am aware of saw fit to explain just how minor a ‘sect’ the Yezidis really are – in anyone’s context. Having spent some time with Yezidis in Iraq, I can tell the reader that, in everyday parlance, they actually worship Satan, represented in their few temples by the idol of a gigantic snake. In reality they are an intriguing remnant of Gnostic cults which maintained that, after being expelled from heaven, Lucifer or Satan created the world in order to prevent himself from falling through all eternity. Ergo, the Devil is Lord of this world and the true God. Who has not experienced moments in their life when this thesis has not seemed persuasive? Either way, would it hurt the media to explain that Yezidis are not exactly a ‘minority sect’ of Islam? Similarly, would it hurt to explain the historical background to the ostensibly Shia-Sunni conflicts in Iraq and Syria? If we had a free media the truth would hurt no one, besides informing citizens about the squandering of their tax dollars and pounds on ventures of dubious merit and impossible resolution. But it would hurt the deep state back-room warmongers, whose motives would be seriously called into question. I have dealt with these issues in my two books on Iraq – The Demonic Comedy and A War Against Truth – yet am well aware that more and more people are unable to read books and need their news in a bite-sized form to which genuine information cannot conform. Most have trouble enough grasping the concept of two major Islamic factions, the Sunni and the Shia, which bear little resemblance to Protestant and Catholic divisions, let alone the existence of more minor branches on the tree of Islam, such as the Aluwites, the Ismailis, the Sufis, and so on. The advantage of being old is that much history is within personal memory. When I was a teenager Islam had no association with terrorism and appeared to be an attractive and exotic religion inextricably related to The Arabian Nights and other spoils from the colonial period. What changed? Well, as I keep saying, the Wahhabite sect – essentially an Islamic heresy – began to exert its influence over the faith on a global scale. This is the religion of Saudi Arabia, concocted in the 18^th century, and a perversion that reduces orthodox Islam to a prison code, banning music, dancing, singing, and regarding women as chattels, as well as condemning other forms of Islam, especially the Shia and Sufis, to the status of non-Islamic. Like Saudi royalty, the Wahhabite priesthood is hereditary and shares equally in the Kingdom’s oil wealth. What the princes did with their loot is well known; what the clerics did with their billions is not. In fact they established free schools all over the so-called Third World, from Africa, through Afghanistan and Pakistan, to the Philippines and beyond. In these free schools – hard to turn down by impoverished nations – is taught the pernicious Wahhabite doctrine, including a vehement anti-Shia bias and the proselytising of a holy war called ‘Jihad’ – something previously interpreted as the inner struggle between our higher and lower selves, but now distorted to represent a literal war against all unbelievers. A thousand years ago Islam was the world’s great civilizing influence, advancing science and classical learning in an empire stretching from Spain to China; but the Crusades ended all that, and Islam’s subsequent history has been one of steady decline. All highly militant or fanatical movements, from Al-Quaeda to Al-Shebab, are both funded and inspired by Saudi Wahhabi sources. This is a fact. Anyone sincerely interested in ending this minor reign of terror would merely have to trace the money behind various movements and web-sites back to their Saudi sources. It was very telling when the mother of the boy responsible for murdering an honour guard at Ottawa’s war memorial said that her son wanted to go to Saudi Arabia to ‘study Islam’. Again, the media failed to pick up on the fact that anyone wishing to study orthodox Islam would go to Al-Ahram in Cairo, not Saudi Arabia, where all one could ‘study’ would be the Wahhabite heresy. To me, it proved that the web-site or sites behind the radicalising of this boy were expounding Wahhabism, not Islam. It seemed to beg for a close examination of such sites and an attempt to trace them back to their origins. None came, of course. Saudi Arabia seems to possess an immunity from condemnation and prosecution. Sealed off within its own time-warped bubble, the Kingdom issues no tourist visas, stifles all dissent, and, in general, makes other notorious tyrannies, like North Korea, seem positively Utopian. Why the protective cloak? Obviously, the answer is bound up with oil and a knee-bending obsequiousness to western interests. The regal or princely half of the story is an open book – Saudi Ambassador to the US, Prince Bandar, is so close to the Bush family that he’s affectionately known as ‘Bandar Bush’, and the only foreign country EVER visited by George W. in a private capacity was Saudi Arabia (no tourists allowed) – but the other half, the equally oil-rich Wahhabi priesthood is unknown. No one can name the presiding Imam or High Priest; and no one seems willing to explore the global reach of Wahhabi indoctrination or its funding of exclusively Sunni-oriented terror cells. The Iraqi ‘insurgency’ – said to be some 30,000 strong, yet largely consisting of disaffected Sunnis ousted from power after the fall of Saddam’s Sunni tyranny – could be eradicated in a week, if the will to do it were there. The reason it is not there is because no one, least of all the Saudis, wants to see a Shia power block extending from Iran through Iraq to Syria (still controlled by the Aluwite Shia minority headed by the Assad dynasty).

The only conclusion one can draw from the current situation is that western interests are in maintaining a controlled destabilising Sunni element which will guarantee the kind of foggy chaos in which the US and UK prefer to operate, and which justifies an ongoing western military presence to ensure the safety of the fabulously rich (and still not fully explored) Iraqi oil fields, widely thought to exceed the rapidly dwindling trove of black gold in Saudi Arabia. Anyone who believes these nefarious neo-imperial ventures are not entirely about oil is an idiot.

Little wonder Harper’s day-long visit to Iraq swiftly took him to Kurdistan, where he bravely stood not ten kilometres from the so-called ‘front-line’: the Kurdish Peshmurga warriors are the only reliable soldiers in this manufactured struggle. They too suffered under Saddam – although it was Winston Churchill who advocated the first gas attack against them. Much like the Armenians, the Kurds have long awaited a homeland of their own, thus can be relied upon to hang onto it no matter what the cost. Those who once suggested a division of Iraq into three states – Kurdish, Sunni and Shia – were clearly forgetting that such a division would leave the Kurds and the southern Shia with all the oil, and a central Sunni homeland with…well, dates (37 varieties and the best dates on earth notwithstanding). The idea was no more viable than that of an Iraqi democracy, stemming from the same ignorance of internal ethnic and religious divisions.

There are many things no journalist is not allowed to ask Stephen Harper, but the most disturbing of them is surely the question of his close affiliation with the neo-conservative philosophy of Leo Strauss, who can be said to have founded the ideology during his tenure at the University of Chicago, where most leading lights in the neo-con movement – including Paul Wolfowitz, among other less well-known but immensely powerful back-room figures – were gathered. These people formed the American Enterprise Institute, principal advocate of the Iraq invasion, and strangely silent since the debacle they had sponsored became self-evident. Other leading neo-cons gravitated to Calgary, Harper’s home turf, and he was known to attend quasi-covert gatherings there that included several obvious journalists and media moguls. Those who have waded through Leo Strauss’s turgid tomes will have noticed that his political philosophy closely resembles fascism. Hardly surprising since he was a significant figure in the early German Nazi movement (before the overt emphasis on anti-Semitism), and his sponsor for US citizenship was Carl Schmidt, who crafted Hitler’s judiciary.  The Holocaust was not envisaged in this early period, and the more alarming rants in Mein Kampf were edited out. We now forget that fascism had a wide appeal at one point, and even early Zionists like Jabotinski were great admirers of Mussolini. The broad tenets of fascism are clear in Strauss’s work, just as they reveal themselves in Harper’s thinking and mode of governance. Lie to the people (they are fools who deserve no more); control the message and the media; conceal the decision-making process; appear to be concerned about the things most people are concerned with: taxes, the economy, security. Keep up a level of fear, and the suggestion of an enemy within – the most frightened populations have the strongest governments. Concoct incidents to generate fear if necessary. Make sure there is a need for greater and greater policing and security (be certain to broadcast all violent crimes, and make citizens believe criminal threats are increasing, particularly if they are not). It is all in Strauss, and it is all evident in the Harper governments actions; yet no one, to my knowledge, has ever questioned him about his neo-con connections or his adherence to Straussian ideology. Behind that mellow reassuring voice is “a nasty man”, many of whose hirelings have come to loathe him, and who has led this country far away from its cherished ideals, making us just another rapacious and hated western power. He has done this by subverting our democracy with complete disregard for our Constitution and the parliamentary process – to the point where the system is effectively broken, perhaps beyond repair. His achievement was only possible through an appeal to our basest instincts of self-interest; yet there is more to Canadian life than this – or I would hope so. It is surely time to rid ourselves of this would-be tyrant, and possibly even the entire system that has allowed such dark elements to take control of our nation and our lives. “Those willing to sacrifice freedom for a little security deserve neither freedom nor security.”

 

With love as always, Paul William Roberts.

Is Thought Dead?

Tags

Canada, egyptology, harper, Iraq, Middle East, oil, shia, sunni, war

I am continually asked if I am anti-American, pro-or-anti Israel, pro-or-anti Muslim, homophobic or pro-gay, pro-life or pro-choice, pro this or anti that. It becomes annoying to find that people need you to subscribe utterly to one cause and all of its beliefs, idiocies, nooks and, often, dark crannies. They become annoyed if you cannot be easily categorized. I have been called, through my writing, everything from a bleeding-heart liberal to a fascist (for suggesting people ought to answer a simple multi-choice questionnaire before they are allowed to vote, just to establish that they know the candidates and the issues upon which they are voting). These labels essentially enable people who prefer not to think to accept or dismiss a writer – or anyone else – without having to fret over troublesome arguments that may not support their own opinions – and I stress ‘opinions’ because, increasingly, people who imagine they have an interest in current affairs merely have opinions on issues which they often cannot defend, except by such gobbledegook as, “I don’t care what you say; that’s what I believe.” The term ‘belief’ is interesting in this context, because, like ‘faith’, it is really saying, “That’s what I want to be true.” There used to be discussions and debates, in public, or on the media. Now there seem to be little more than opinions stated as facts, angry monologues or harangues by TV or radio ‘hosts’ who have forgotten that a host treats his or her ‘guest’ with courtesy – such is the traditional relationship, rather than bully and victim – or merely the brief and dreary interview with a politician skilled in the art of staying ‘on-message’ no matter what the question may be. Debate is where someone states an argument, and someone else opposes it. The person whose case cannot withstand the arguments opposing it loses the debate and, ideally, their point of view along with it. This would seem to be straightforward. Yet where did these discussions and debates go? Where are the public forums? In answer to the pro-anti questions, I have no knee-jerk views on any subject at all. If it interests me, I study everything I can find on a topic, from as many points of view as possible, and then make up my own mind about what strikes me as the truth regarding that issue. I am happy to debate with anyone about anything I feel capable of contributing some rational thought towards; and am equally willing to admit I am wrong when proved so. I do not, of course, mean discussions about such follies as so-called Creationism, where the argument against dinosaur bones and fossils consists of, “Satan placed them there to lead us astray.” An argument must be provable – such as the earth revolves around the sun. Instead of discussions, now we have TV documentaries which all too often present a tautological case for some mysterious phenomenon, setting out to ‘seek’ the evidence for what the producers already ‘know’ to be true. A good example is Egyptology, which, when it failed to refute Dr. Robert Schoch’s argument for a far, far earlier date for the origins of Ancient Egyptian civilization at the American Association for the Advancement of Science conference, in my view lost its entire science, along with the spurious chronology upon which it is largely based. To adequately counter the Schoch thesis, Egyptologists would have to dig down to far deeper levels, where the evidence of this far earlier civilization – and we are talking 7000 to possibly 30,000 BCE – would be found. In countless irritating Discovery Channel docs, we find the self-styled ‘experts’ rejecting the notion of much deeper digs because they know there is nothing there to be found. This is not science; it is tautological pseudo-science (see my book River in the Desert for a fuller account of this academic travesty). These docs do not even scratch the tautological iceberg’s tip when it comes to such risible irrelevancies as Noah’s Ark: Found! Being blind, I’m no great TV watcher; but I can still hear the torrent of nonsense, and am possibly more attuned to the verbal balderdash usually hidden behind flash-cuts and mosaic images designed to keep the short attention span on life support. It is such irresponsible programming that has afflicted the contemporary mind with a widespread inability to think for itself. For every newspaper headline or media lead-story there are at least 100 books which could be regarded as essential reading to provide a context for the 700 word story. Some of these may alter that story entirely; some may explain why an event, tragic or otherwise, actually occurred; others may explain a history of multitudinous causes leading up to what appears to be an isolated event. Admittedly, some newspapers and journals – never the most widely-read ones, it would appear – do still take pains to provide in-depth context; but you cannot read it in a minute, and no politician would dream of plumbing such depths, even if he or she were aware of them. I have discussed Iraq here too often, but only because I have written two books on the subject and become infuriated by politicians who still appear to view public ignorance of the issues involved as mandatory – or else share that ignorance. Listening to Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s lies and evasions on the question of Canadian involvement in a war today – and no doubt we shall hear the same from Obama tomorrow – is simply maddening, As I speculated here a few days ago, our ‘advisers’ will in fact be Special Forces troops, and they will be armed, boots on the ground, after all. Let us call ISIS, ISOS, and IS, SS instead – for ‘Sunni State (and for a certain historical resonance), since ‘Islamist State’ misleads people into imagining the enterprise involves Shia, Sufi, or any other branch of Islam. Ruled for decades by the nominally Sunni tyranny of Saddam Hussein, Iraq was suddenly turned by the US invasion into an allegedly democratic Shia state – under the misguided impression that the long-oppressed Shia majority would be undyingly grateful to their saviour, not to mention obey Washington’s dictates whenever required to. Let’s be honest: the US was solely interested in controlling the vast wealth of high-grade oil. It certainly was not thinking of how the dispossessed Sunnis would feel about their new situation under a government dominated by Shia. Since the Sunni used to wield all the power, controlled the army, and had most of the money, besides being better educated, it must surely have occurred to someone in a so-called Think Tank that, if the Sunni were unhappy with their lot they would be far more able to organize and start a civil war. This is in fact that civil war, aided by more radical factions funded, as I have tirelessly stated, by the fabulously rich Saudi Arabian Wahhabite theocrats, who have no wish to find a Iranian-Iraqi Shia block on their doorstep. They also view the Shia as heretical infidels. These grievances go back two hundred years, and involve many complexities as well as unresolved territorial disputes (remember, it was mainly the British who created nations in Arabia, which is why the boundaries are all straight lines, and still ignored by the nomadic Bedu tribes). Thus, many boots, and even shoes, will be on the ground for a very long time, unless someone makes a deal with the SS moderates to turn over the more barbaric radical elements – few of them probably Iraqis anyway – in exchange for a government in which they have proportional representation. This fantasy government is unlikely given the deep-rooted Shia-Sunni hatred. Alternatives? None really, since creating an autonomous Sunni State would place it where it currently is, in the north, where the oil is not. The Kurds have their own area, to the north-west, but they also have oil there. Would the Shia divide equally the oil cash? On paper perhaps, but not in reality. This leaves the US share of Iraq oil – exact figures unknowable, because private companies are involved. Is it possible that the US would oblige those companies to compensate the SS for a peaceful resolution to what could otherwise escalate into a pan-Arabian war? Hardly likely, since these companies essentially own America, started the war, and have fingers in every American pie – especially Military-Industrial Pie. There may be big money in keeping this chaos running, as long as it can be contained. Special Forces from three countries specialising in such forces could, with a few hundred men, and some fancy weaponry and air cover, contain such a situation indefinitely, while generating enough global fright to jack up the price of oil very nicely. Is this the plan? If so, no wonder we, the people, aren’t allowed to know about it. Mr. Harper spouted the usual national security crap – the all-purpose excuse for every abomination – but can he seriously believe that violent meddling in Muslim Arab disputes will help make Canada safer? The consequences faced by other meddlers – notably the one to our south and its English crony – would seem to refute that theory. A maple leaf lapel button used to guarantee safe passage through the hell-holes of this world; now it does not. This looming fiasco in Iraq is going to make Canadians less safe everywhere, Mr. Harper. Do you want that as your legacy, or will the lucrative sinecures on oil company boards be more than satisfying enough?   With love, as always, Paul William Roberts.

Politocrisy

Tags

9/11, Afghanistan, Iraq, Israel, Osama bin Laden, Palestine, politics, Saddam Hussein

After the travesty of 9/11, the United States attacks Afghanistan ferociously, and then invades. Many civilians are killed; nothing is achieved. The twin-towers terrorists are Egyptians and Saudi Arabians, not Afghans. But the U.S. is after Osama bin-Laden, who they believe to be the mastermind behind the 9/11 attacks. He is not, as it turns out, but he’s also not entirely innocent. Eventually he’s found, in Pakistan, not Afghanistan, and murdered, or, rather, executed without a trial. In 2003, the U.S. invades Iraq, having shamelessly concocted a flimsy excuse, not to mention persuaded many, if not most, Americans that Saddam Hussein was behind 9/11. He was not, yet Iraq is reduced to chaos and rubble, both of which conditions still persist over a decade later. The civilian death-toll exceeds one million; nothing is achieved, although America pretends to build schools, etc., none of which are completed.

The political world does not really protest these unwarranted and criminal actions.

Israel responds savagely to rocket attacks from Hamas militants in Gaza, however, and the world is appalled because many civilians are killed – a result of them being used by Hamas as human shields. Israel is merely defending itself, as it has a right to do, and as you or I would do if attacked. America was not defending itself in Afghanistan or Iraq. This is political hypocrisy – politocrisy.

Imagine the fuss there would be if Israel attacked Jordan and invaded Saudi Arabia, using some flimsy excuse about national security!

If Quebec separatist militants fired rockets into Ontario, how would Ottawa respond? With diplomacy? Through the U.N.? Unlikely. The army – or the Anglophone portion of it – would go in heavy, as they say, and take out the militants and their launchers. Pierre Trudeau suspended habeas corpus during the F.L.Q. crisis, which was a barroom rumpus compared with what Israel is currently enduring.

Naturally, one grieves for the innocent victims; yet one senses less grief for innocent Israelis than one does for innocent Palestinians. The Israelis can only defend themselves, however; but the Palestinians can vote Hamas out of existence, if they so choose. Knowing, as they must, that Hamas militants deliberately put civilians at risk, by launching rockets from heavily-populated zones, it is only a wonder that Palestinians do not produce a Ghandi, someone capable of achieving all their desired goals through non-violent means.