Victim of police racism shows how to prepare to challenge injustice

SOURCE

Scotland Yard is facing a racism scandal after a black man used his mobile phone to record police officers subjecting him to a tirade of abuse in which he was told: "The problem with you is you will always be a nigger".

The recording, obtained by the Guardian, was made by the 21-year-old after he was stopped in his car, arrested and placed in a police van the day after last summer's riots.

The man, from Beckton, east London, said he was made to feel "like an animal" by police. He has also accused one officer of kneeling on his chest and strangling him.

In the recording, a police officer can be heard admitting he strangled the man because he was "a cunt". Moments later, another officer – identified by investigators as PC Alex MacFarlane – subjects the man to a succession of racist insults and adds: "You'll always have black skin. Don't hide behind your colour."

The Independent Police Complaints Commission referred the case to the Crown Prosecution Service on the basis that three officers, including MacFarlane, may have committed criminal offences.

The CPS initially decided no charges should be brought against any of the police officers. However on Thursday, the service said it would review the file after lawyers for the man threatened to challenge the decision in a high court judicial review. MacFarlane has been suspended.

The inquiry began after the victim handed his mobile phone to a custody desk in Forest Gate police station and told officers he had been abused.

Earlier, he had been driving through Beckton with a friend when he was stopped by a van containing eight police officers from Newham borough. London's streets were flooded with police who had been drafted in to contain the rioting.

The officers arrested the man on suspicion of driving under the influence of drugs and told him he was being taken to a police station to be searched. After being taken into the van, the man was also arrested for missing a previous magistrates court appearance. No further action is to be taken in relation to the suspected driving offence.

It was once inside the van and handcuffed that the man said he was assaulted by police. He described having his head pushed against the van window and said one officer placed his knees on his chest and began strangling him. "I couldn't breathe and I felt that I was going to die," he said.

The man said he decided to turn on the recording facility of his phone after MacFarlane allegedly made sexually explicit references about his mother and telling him he would be "dead in five years".

In the recording, the man sounds agitated; he raises his voice to complain about his treatment and in places insults the arresting officers. The verbal exchange lasts several minutes.

When the man tells an officer: "you tried to strangle me", the officer replies: "No, I did strangle you." The officer adds that he strangled him "'cos you're a cunt" and that the man had been "kicking out". In relation to the strangling, the officer says: "Stopped you though, didn't it?"

Minutes later MacFarlane, who is white, begins abusing the man. After a period of silence, he can be heard telling him: "The problem with you is you will always be a nigger, yeah? That's your problem, yeah."

The man reads out MacFarlane's badge number and complains that he had subjected him to racist comments: "I'll always be a nigger – that's what you said, yeah?"

MacFarlane replies: "You'll always have black skin colour. Don't hide behind your colour, yeah." He adds: "Be proud. Be proud of who you are, yeah. Don't hide behind your black skin."

Shortly before the recording ends, the man can be heard saying: "I get this all the time." He then tells the officer: "We'll definitely speak again about this … It's gonna go all the way, it's gonna go all the way – remember."

The man's lawyer, Michael Oswald, said: "By his own efforts our client has put before the CPS exceptionally strong evidence and we share his astonishment that the CPS have reached a decision that no police officer should be prosecuted on the basis of that evidence. We do welcome their agreement to review that decision and we now await the outcome of that review."

The CPS initially said charges should not be brought against MacFarlane because the remarks did not cause the man harassment, distress or alarm.

Grace Ononiwu, deputy chief crown prosecutor for CPS London, said: "Lawyers for [the complainant] have written to the CPS and asked us to review our decision. I have considered the matter personally and directed that all the evidence should be reconsidered and a fresh decision taken by a senior lawyer with no previous involvement in this matter."

Speaking to the Guardian, the 21-year-old was visibly shaken when recounting the ordeal. "It's hard to explain, but it makes you feel like a piece of shit – it makes you feel not even human," he said.

"I was glad that I had it on the recording. I knew that if I had it saved I could show that I had been abused.

"It's not right. We've just got different skin colour – underneath it we're all the same."

The Metropolitan police confirmed in a statement that it received a complaint on 11 August about alleged "racial" remarks and oppressive conduct.

"These are serious allegations; any use of racist language or excessive use of force is not acceptable."

The force said it had referred the case to the IPCC and that one officer had been suspended.

MacFarlane's solicitor, Colin Reynolds, said: "The officer has been the subject of an investigation, has co-operated in that and been advised he is not to be the subject of criminal proceedings."

Estelle du Boulay, director of the Newham Monitoring Project, said: "Sadly, the shocking treatment of this young man at the hands of police officers – both the physical brutality he describes and the racial abuse he claims he suffered – are by no means unusual; it compares to other reports we have received. What makes this case different is the victim had the foresight and courage to turn on a recording device on his mobile phone."

She compared the incident to the case of Liam Stacey, a student who was jailed for 56 days for posting offensive comments on Twitter after the on-pitch collapse of the Bolton Wanderers footballer Fabrice Muamba.

On Friday Swansea crown court rejected an appeal from Stacey, who used racist terms against other Twitter users.

When the student was sentenced in a magistrates court on Tuesday a senior lawyer at the CPS, Jim Brisbane, said: "Racist language is inappropriate in any setting and through any media. We hope this case will serve as a warning to anyone who may think that comments made online are somehow beyond the law."

Congressman Bobby Rush Kicked Off House Floor for Tribute to Trayvon Martin

The Atlantic's refusal to correct its fabrications

Amal Saad-Ghorayeb: "My friend Ibrahim al Mousawi, head of Hizbullah's media office, has allowed me to reproduce his exchange below with an editor at The Atlantic. The subject was regarding yet another journo who fabricated an interview with a Hizbullah official, in this case mis-attributing the interview to Mousawi himself. The editor's response is priceless. The White Man never lies, only the native lies. Period. The question of why Mousawi would grant an interview and then retract it, is obviously lost on him. Appeals to logic and common sense , official refutations by Hizbullah figures-- none of these qualify as "evidence" in the face of the White Man's word":


Dear all,

As the head of Hizbullah's media office, I wish to alert the editors of the Atlantic that one of its contributors, Thanassis Cambanis, has fabricated a quote attributed to me in his recent article Hezbollah Considers a Future Without Syria's Assad. 


I am referring specifically to this excerpt: One Hezbollah official, Ibrahim Mousawi, told me that at root, the interests uniting the resistance axis would persist.
"I don't like to make predictions based on a murky situation," he said. "But it's hard for me to imagine that a future regime in Syria would not see its interests aligned with the resistance."

In this connection, I would like to clarify the following points:

In the first place, I did not grant Mr Cambanis an interview with myself or anyone else in the party. Hizbullah's media freeze was made very clear to him from the outset of his visit both by myself and my assistant, Ms. Wafaa Hoteit. In fact, Mr Cambanis did not even request an interview with me once he had been informed of our recent media policy. Second, given Mr Cambanis knowledge of the media freeze, the brief and informal chat I had with him was clearly off the record.
Most importantly, in the brief course of our discussion, not once did I say anything along the lines of the quote he falsely attributed to me. To the contrary, I expressed my conviction that the majority of Syrians support their government and have always supported the resistance and would most likely continue to do so in the future. That is all. 

How he misconstrued this to mean that Hizbullah believes its interests would be aligned with a potential opposition-led regime is beyond my comprehension. I urge the Atlantic to rectify this deliberate falsification of facts on Mr Cambanis part so that its readers are not misled.

Sincerely,
Ibrahim al Mousawi

Ibrahim al Mousawi

The Atlantic's reply
Mr. Mousawi,

Thank you for your note regarding Thanassis Cambanis's article at TheAtlantic.com, for which I served as the article's editor. We take your letter seriously and have reviewed the article.

After looking into this matter, we believe that the article is correct and stand by its contents. Cambanis's notes reflect that the meeting was on the record and that his quotes are accurate. We have worked with him for several months and have no reason to doubt his account. While I appreciate your note, we will not be able to post a correction as requested.

Please let me know if I can assist you any way.

Thank you,
Max Fisher
International Editor
TheAtlantic.com

The west's endless war on humanity: after Libya – Syria, Iran

This article was written back in January by Nicaragua based Tortilla Con Sal editor Toni Solo. It is perhaps one of the most comprehensive analyses in the English language that covers the historical context of the current imperialist aggression's against Syria and Iran, the steps (including manufacture of public consent) that lead up to the west's wars, the lessons to be learnt from the war on Libya, the failure of the international "left" in mobilising solidarity for the victims of these wars and the implications of recent events for the entire "developing" world, with particular focus on progressive Latin America. - Lizzie Phelan

By Toni Solo

SOURCE

After Libya, the wealthy oligarchies of Europe and North America continue their centuries-old war on humanity, now attacking Syria and Iran. They and their regional allies will never concede an equitable share of the world's economic resources to the impoverished global majority. The inevitable consequence of that strategic global reality is endless aggression by NATO countries and their allies against any foreign government or political movement that resists their will.

The experience of Libya demonstrates that whenever conditions permit, the anti-democratic Western oligarchies will always destroy independent countries whose governments try to compromise or negotiate. Like Libya, Iran and Syria have long historical experience of imperialist perfidy by the major Western imperial powers, the United States, Britain and France. So these countries are unlikely to give way to NATO country demands.

The Iranians took back control of their country after their Islamic revolution in 1979. In Syria, that fierce nationalism took a secular form under a socialist government. Iran and Syria have both sought to promote strong economic development while managing complex religious, cultural and ethnic diversity.

Syria – historical context

Syria, now with a population of over 23 million, became independent from France in 1946. The first two decades of independence for the new republic were marked by a succession of unstable governments. An experimental political union with Egypt in the late 1950s proved unsuccessful. In the end, the socialist Ba'ath party took power in 1963. Later, in 1970, Hafez al Assad became President, after an internal power struggle within the government.

Under the government of Hafez al Assad, Syria consolidated its transformation through strong economic growth based mainly on agriculture and oil. After 2000, when his son Bashar al Assad, became President, Syria continued to sustain strong economic performance. But recent attempts to implement liberal reforms in response to both internal opposition criticism and foreign pressure have had limited success. The United States and its allies have sought to exploit aggressively the very opportunities created by the Syrian government's attempts at reform.

Syria has constantly been menaced by Zionist military aggression since Israel was founded in 1948 and has suffered air strikes from Israel at various times over the last decade. Israel's invasion and occupation of neighbouring Lebanon in 1982, seriously threatened Syria's interests. The Syrian government countered with a military intervention of its own. Israel's occupation of south Lebanon only ended in 2000, after decades of bitter resistance largely organized by the Islamic political-military movement Hezbollah. Hezbollah is a key ally both of Syria and of Iran.

Parallel with the threat posed by Israel's occupation of Lebanon, Syria has also constantly been threatened by Israel's continued occupation of the Golan Heights, a Syrian territory captured by Israel in 1967 and held illegally ever since. That occupation was condemned in UN Resolution 497, one of numerous UN Resolutions contemptuously violated by Israel's Zionist government under the protection of its main military allies, the United States, France and Britain. For all practical purposes, Israel has long been a de facto member of NATO. It was in this historical context that Syria maintained a significant military presence in Lebanon until 2005.

In February of that year a massive car bomb was used to murder leading Lebanese politician Rafik Hariri, a noted critic of Syria. The Western powers on the UN Security Council pushed for a Special Tribunal to investigate the murder. Hariri's assassination was exploited by the NATO countries' political allies in Lebanon and in the region to force Syria's withdrawal from Lebanon. Ever since then, the NATO countries and their regional allies, including Saudi Arabia and its fellow feudal monarchies in the Gulf States, have used the UN Special Tribunal to intimidate and threaten Syria and its regional allies, principally Lebanon's Hezbollah.

The UN Special Tribunal, after initially levelling suspicion against Syria, has recently shifted its aim to target Hezbollah. It has never considered very serious evidence that plausibly suggests Israeli involvement in Hariri's murder. This behaviour by the UN Special Tribunal on Lebanon parallels very closely what happened with the dishonest politically motivated manipulation of the Lockerbie terrorist bombing investigation in the case of Libya.

Unlike Libya, but like Iran, Syria has found quite strong diplomatic support from Russia and China, as well as from Latin American countries including, Brazil, Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela. While the NATO countries and their allies apply sanctions, Russia has recently signed arms deals with Syria in a clear practical sign that it rejects NATO country policy towards its regional allies, Syria and Iran. Russian diplomats have publicly condemned as counterproductive the sanctions applied to Syria.

China's position is less clear-cut, given its heavy dependence on reliable oil supplies. Persistent US and allied country provocations may lead Iran to retaliate against sanctions by closing the strategically important Hormuz Strait. In this way, the NATO powers create uncertainty about the security of China's oil supply and the stability of the oil price in international markets. What happens in Syria is directly relevant in terms of how it may affect Iran's policy.

The recent visit of Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao to Saudi Arabia, Qatar y the Arab Emirates was directly related to that dilemma. Clearly, it is the NATO powers and these local NATO allies who are provoking serious instability in the international oil markets. That instability may well hurt the US and Europe as much as their Asian rivals should Iran itself retaliate economically.

Syria's Muslim neighbour, Turkey, has played a more complex double game over the years than the region's feudal Arab tyrannies antagonistic to socialist Syria. It has tried to balance its regional interests as a major Central Asian Muslim power against its long standing aspirations to join the European Union and its status as a member of NATO. For some years, prior to the war against Libya, Turkey seemed to be interested in developing a strategic relationship with both Syria and Iran.

The Israeli 2010 attack on the Mavi Marmara vessel carrying peace activists to Palestine seemed to exacerbate Turkey's differences with its NATO partners. But during the current crisis in Syria, Turkey has decisively supported NATO's aggression against its neighbour. The government of Prime Minister Erdogan has permitted the establishment of terrorist groups attacking Syria from Turkish territory.

The Turkish government has also advocated and implemented damaging sanctions against Syria and its people as part of the increasingly sinister campaign to bring down the Syrian Ba'ath party government led by Bashar al Assad. But Turkey also has a strong interest in a stable relationship with Iran. Its complicated regional interests may ultimately force Prime Minister Erdogan to moderate Turkey's current policy on Syria.

The Syrian crisis now

Disturbances began in Syria in January 2011 as part of a region-wide attempt by the NATO powers and their local allies to exploit popular pressure for political change. In March of that same year, events in the city of Deraa provoked dubious allegations of government forces shooting on unarmed protestors, just as happened in Libya. Terrorists encouraged, trained and supplied by Saudi Arabia and allies like Qatar and protected by Turkey, have attacked government security forces in Baniyas, Homs, and Hama, among other cities.

But popular support for the Syrian government and for President Assad remains over 50% despite a massive international disinformation campaign led by NATO country corporate media and human rights organization. The NATO powers and their regional allies have long sought to destabilize Syria's independent socialist government. The pattern of their intervention is similar to that used to destroy Libya. They have encouraged, trained and supplied subversive terrorist groups, using a comprehensive psy-warfare campaign to both conceal and justify the extent of their aggressive intervention.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon has again demonstrated beyond any doubt that he is an abject servant of the United States and its allies. He has dragged his office and the UN itself deep into disrepute as a blatant tool of colonial intervention around the world in the service of Western corporate elites. Under Ban Ki Moon, the UN organization is currently violating its own Charter, as it did in Libya, by working in complicity with NATO and the Arab League, dominated by Saudi Arabia, to guarantee the conditions necessary for military aggression against Syria, perhaps led by Turkey.

Imperial repression

The crisis in Syria results mainly not from popular calls for reform but from foreign pressure and intervention. The techniques used against Syria by the Western powers and their regional allies are far from new. They have been used over the last fifty years to brutalize and dehumanize the Palestinians, to demonize Cuba and North Korea and to justify an interminable programme of aggression around the world.

Now the NATO powers, with their long and shameful history of colonial conquest, have updated and refined that tool kit of imperial repression. Prior to Syria, they have used it against Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, Sudan, Haiti, Honduras, Ivory Coast and, most recently, Libya. The campaign always begins with extensive psychological warfare by the Western machinery of corporate media and non-governmental organizations to justify aggressive government measures against the target country.

The propaganda war always consists of exaggerated and distorted accusations of human rights violations, corruption and lack of democracy. These accusations usually escalate to include claims that the target country's government provokes regional destabilization. When the conditions prepared by this psychological warfare permit, the aggression moves into the economic sphere with calls for sanctions, either legal or illegal.

After that phase of economic warfare, the next stage is one of armed subversion through local proxies. The loss of life provoked by that terrorist subversion can then be used to activate measures through the international legal system, if possible via the International Criminal Court, self-evidently a tool of Western imperialism. This whole process prepares the way for outright military intervention, proposed preferably to the UN Security Council by a regional body dominated by Western allies.

The Arab League served that purpose against Libya and is being used now in the NATO countries' efforts to destroy Syria. It will almost certainly be used to complete preparations for the developing aggression against Iran. But Iran is a far more complex target than Syria because it is one of the biggest countries in the world both in territorial extension and with a population of over 70 million.

Iran

Iran's history in the last century, common to most of the region, was one of colonial oppression and foreign exploitation. After the anti-democratic coup in 1953, the country endured over 25 years of neocolonial dependency, abetted by the dictatorship of Mohammed Reza Pahlavi. Pahlavi was an unconditional NATO country ally in the mould of dictators like Anastasio Somoza, Sese Mobutu or Ferdinand Marcos. Nicaragua's President Daniel Ortega often refers to the twin revolutions of 1979 to recall that both the Iranian and the Nicaraguan peoples liberated their countries from cruel dictatorship that same year.

Following the Islamic Revolution in Iran, the NATO powers supported Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's long war against Iran which lasted from 1980 to 1988. It is commonly forgotten that Syria was one of the only Arab countries to support Iran during that war. NATO's regional allies, Israel, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf tyrannies, all fear Iran because it has a powerful government committed to regional change based on the ideals of its own Islamic revolution.

Despite Iran's moderation of its revolutionary regional policy after the war with Iraq, it defends its sovereignty uncompromisingly. The cynical foreign policy of the NATO countries towards Iran has gone through various phases of uneasy accommodation, opportunism and hostility culminating in the current phase of outright aggression just short of armed conflict. The United States in particular has exploited Iran's development of nuclear power as a cause for war.

Iran has sought to develop nuclear power since the 1950s. But the United States and Israel first began to exploit Iran's nuclear power programme as pretext for aggressive sanctions in 2003, the same year as the NATO powers and their allies invaded Iraq on the false pretext that they feared Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. The United States and its allies have consistently exploited the UN's International Atomic Energy Authority politically against Iran, using its procedures to create pretexts for economic and military aggression.

The current IAEA Director General is Yukiya Amano, regarded as even more susceptible to pressure from the NATO country governments than his predecessor Mohamed al Baradei. Possible ways of attacking Iran's nuclear program are openly discussed in the corporate Western media as part of the constant psychological warfare against Iran. Armed attacks have included terrorist assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists as well as other terrorist attacks facilitated by NATO's de facto member Israel.

The notorious extreme hypocrisy of NATO country governments is has reached unprecedented extremes in the case of Iran. The NATO powers protect Israel's illegal nuclear weapons program but attack Iran for developing peaceful nuclear power. They and their allies wage blatant terrorist war against Iran using terrorist organizations they themselves condemn such as the Mojahedin-e Khalq, just as they have used Al Qaeda in Lebanon, Libya and now Syria.

Similarly, the US and Israel have used their highly developed cyber-warfare capacity to sabotage Iran's industrial and research capacity, using the Stuxnet worm malware to damage Iranian computer systems. This pattern of psychological warfare, bogus pretexts for aggression, economic sanctions and outright terrorism is used against every government targeted by the NATO country corporate elites and their allies. In the 1930s, similar behaviour by Germany and Italy was called by its true name – fascism.

However, Iran enjoys many advantages over Syria in terms of its ability to defend itself. The most obvious of those advantages is its size, both in terms of its territory and its population. It's role as a major international provider of oil and gas to China and many other countries, complicates NATO country plans for a military attack. Over 30% of international oil supplies pass through the Hormuz Strait, controlled by Iran. Iran's geography also works in its favour because, again, the narrow Hormuz Strait is a potentially dangerous trap for any attacking NATO naval forces.

Iran's missile technology and capability is formidable. Its mastery of electronic warfare was evident in the 2006 war between Israel and Lebanon. There, Iran's ally Hezbollah effectively neutralized Israeli electronic warfare and constantly monitored Israeli military communications. For all these reasons, any attack on Iran will certainly be far more complex in its planning and execution and far more costly in financial terms and in terms of casualties for the aggressors than the wars against Afghanistan,Iraq or Libya.

Also, several powerful countries strongly reject NATO's clear preparations for military aggression. Of those countries, Russia and China are the most forthright, but Brazil and India too have expressed their rejection of armed aggression. All these countries, in particular Russia and China understand very well that the aggression against Syria and Iran is how the Western powers of North America and Europe hope to arrest their relative decline in global power and influence, especially in relation to Asia.

For its part, India has a very strong trading relationship with Iran which supplies around 14% of India's current total oil needs. India is also partnering Iran in a major gas pipeline project carrying Iranian gas as far as Pakistan. Although it has recently complied with US pressure to vote against Iran in the International Atomic Energy Authority over the matter of Iran's nuclear programme, India supports Iran's right to develop nuclear power.

India would be unlikely to take sides in any potential armed conflict between Iran and the NATO countries and their local allies. Likewise, Brazil has strongly supported Iran's right to develop nuclear power and Dilma Rousseff is likely to maintain that position. In an interesting recent twist to regional complications, Turkey has refused to support new NATO country sanctions against Iran unauthorized by the UN.

This is emphatic confirmation that Iran is far from the caricature isolated pariah presented in the Western corporate media. It is easy to forget that Iran is a likely candidate to join the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. Iran is engaged in major railway construction projects with SCO members Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan.

The SCO is made up of China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, countries comprising almost a quarter of the world's total population. Any attack on Iran, a large, influential regional power, will have extremely volatile and unpredictable effects on the world economy and devastating repercussions in the region. This reality may well lead more sober minds in the NATO countries to resist pressure from local allies like Israel and Saudi Arabia to unleash a military assault on Iran

Lessons from Libya

For their part, Iran and Syria may well be regretting the support they gave to NATO's counter-revolutionary putsch and colonial war of aggression in Libya. NATO's puppet NTC regime in Libya repaid Iran and Syria by closing the Syrian government embassy in Tripoli and recognising Syria's own opposition SNC as Syria's legitimate government. CEPRID's Alberto Cruz has noted that British special forces even boast on their web site that they have armed and trained Libyan Al Qaeda fighters on Turkish territory to attack the Syrian people.

Libya's recent experience has reinforced the long standing lesson that the North American and European oligarchs will always destroy independent countries who resist their will. The Libyan war also demonstrated that, paradoxically, Iran shares the NATO powers' abandonment of the UN's basic principles of non-aggression and self-determination of peoples. That abandonment permitted the disingenuous application of the ill-conceived principle of the Responsibility to Protect.

It led directly to the destruction of Libya, the current aggression against Syria and the developing military assault on Iran. Like Russia and China, Iran is now in part suffering the fallout from its support for the destruction of Libya. It is fair to argue that if Russia, China and Iran had defended the principle of non-aggression in the case of Libya, the NATO powers would never have been able to destabilize Syria so readily.

Iran's failure to defend the UN's founding principles was matched by the complete collapse of what is commonly referred to as the international Left. With very few exceptions, radical, progressive, anarchist and socialist opinion either openly supported NATO's colonial war on Libya or washed their hands of it. Figures as diverse as Noam Chomsky, Ignacio Ramonet, Gilbert Achcar, Ramsy Baroud and Al Giordano, among many others, supported the pretext for the war against the Libyan government even though it clearly enjoyed majority support in the country.

The failure of the international Left was twofold, both moral and intellectual. The intellectual failure was one of Garbage In-Garbage Out. In their different ways, Chomsky, Ramonet, Giordano and the rest have in large part made their reputations by criticising the mechanisms that create mainstream opinion. On Libya, they uncritically accepted information produced in total consonance with the style and content of the major international corporate psy-warfare outlets.

That deep intellectual inauthenticity was matched by the international Left's utter moral collapse in failing to defend Libya and its people against vicious colonial military aggression. In general, the international Left adopted a range of neocolonial positions. Those positions all shared the neocolonial assumption that their own culture and their own societies offered better models for people in Libya than the system most Libyans supported and which they had worked out for themselves.

No serious effort was made to support peaceful negotiations as proposed by the African Union and the ALBA countries. In North America, the Black Left's support for the Libyan government was ignored. In Europe, prestigious left-wing media outlets like Rebelión censored opinion arguing against the Libyan CNT counter-revolutionary putsch.

The demonization of Muammar Ghaddafi and censorship by omission on the Left was indistinguishable from that in the corporate media. Anyone declaring solidarity with the Libyan government and its people was smeared as supporting dictatorship. Libya demonstrated that the systemic function of the intellectual-managerial class of the international Left is to camouflage their accommodation, complicity and ultimate legitimation of the very system they ostensibly reject.

They accepted false information totally in line with imperialist propaganda. They collaborated in the abandonment of the founding principles of the UN. They effectively accepted the aggressive introduction of the imperialist principle of Responsibility to Protect. Arguments about NATO's conquest of Libya demonstrated that in North America and Europe. the international Left is essentially an agglomeration of fictions of varying effectiveness and relevance.

The utility of the fictions purveyed by the networks around individuals like Ramonet, Chomsky and the rest is that they serve as intermediaries with liberal progressive networks loyal to corporate capitalism and with the centres of imperial power itself. Measured by their ability to achieve significant political power, the North American and European varieties of Left fictions have lived with failure for decades. Their moral and intellectual collapse on Libya should have come as no surprise.

What has been and remains so striking is the extent of the international Left's identification with the false rhetoric of the very structures they purport to criticize. For people in Nicaragua, that goes a long way in explaining the grudging recognition of the marked progress on behalf of the impoverished majority achieved under President Daniel Ortega's government. Like Libya, Nicaragua too has been the victim of the class/cultural prejudices of the internacional neocolonial Left.

Implications for Latin America

Those prejudices have made it impossible for most of what passes for the Left in North America and Europe to remake themselves convincingly enough to win majority support despite the chronic economic crisis in their countries. The West's systemic crisis threatens the future ability of the United States and its allies to project their power globally and put a brake on their relative decline against Asian countries like China and India. That is why NATO and its allies have destroyed Libya and now menace Syria and Iran .

Such a volatile international context presents enormous challenges to the peoples of Latin America and to their leaders. It demonstrates the strategic wisdom and tactical acumen of the political leadership of the ALBA countries in rapidly developing solidarity-based trade and development cooperation and in strengthening longer term regional integration. Clearly, Central America and the Caribbean are vulnerable targets of future aggression from the United States.

The United States and their allies supported the successful coups in Haiti and Honduras and were active in the attempted coups in Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador. They may well fail to overthrow the government in Syria and decide the odds are against them in the case of a military attack on Iran. Whether or not they attack Iran, the United States and its European allies are very likely to sharpen their aggressive stance against independent governments in Latin America.

Another Open Letter to US President Obama From The People of China

Source

Part I – Prelude 

Sir:

We noted with some surprise a recent announcement in The Washington Post of your intention to openly engage in political subversion in our country.

We’re told you are “very, very interested in how to reach into China, how to (bypass our government and) reach Chinese citizens directly”, and that you have enlisted help from apparent Chinese “dissidents”, asking where and how you should use your leverage.

As we understand it, you mean to try to corrupt the allegiance of our people by attempting to destroy our loyalty and patriotism, to turn us against our own government, and to use us as pawns to undermine the foundation of our own country.

We are writing to express our objection.

Thanks, but You’ve Done Enough for us Already

We have watched you, your cabinet, and your politicians as you daily condemn our country and our people, for the sake of what appears to be cheap political gain.

We have watched as your media publish twisted, biased and unfair ‘news’ of our country, as they fabricate events and photos that are not real and never happened. We have watched the simple-minded in your country being stoked with bigotry, racism and even hatred, of our country and our people, by twisted stories and knowingly false accusations.

We have watched your military and political efforts to encircle, contain, and destabilise our country. Today we watch you reclaim your “rightful place” as “The Leader of All Asia”, and attempt to gather Japan, Vietnam, [South] Korea, Thailand, Indonesia, Philippines into your new “China is our enemy” group.

We watched you try to gather Brazil and the other G-20 Finance Ministers to turn against our country. We watched your incessant attempts to bully our country on our currency and trade practices, and we watched admiringly as our government (unlike Japan with the Plaza Accord) refused to obediently commit economic suicide for you.

We have watched your arms sales to Taiwan, your ships and aircraft spying off our coastlines, and your interference in our few tiny offshore islands, including Diao YuTai.

We watched with interest as you repeatedly invoked your ‘national security’ excuse to deny our companies access to your firms and contracts, on everything from electronics to dishwashers.

Many of us have taken note of your unwavering respect for religious freedoms, especially for the … how did Hillary Clinton put it … “the unregistered ones” … the Scientologists and Moonies, the Ku Klux Klan, the Manson Family and Branch Davidians, the Heaven’s Gate UFO group. To say nothing of our own Falun Gong and Dalai Lama.

For years we have watched you stoke the “Free Tibet” fires, with your CIA causing violence there since the 1950s, and we noted your CIA-planned and financed violence in Tibet as your country’s gift to us for the Beijing 2008 Olympics.

We know that you planned and financed the violent riots in our province of Xinjiang in 2009, through Rebiya Khadeer’s NED-CIA-funded Uighur Congress, and we watched you then hypocritically condemn our government for ‘cracking down’ on your handiwork.

We have for years watched your NED-CIA financing Liu Xiaobo, stoking his seditious rantings, then throwing him away when you were done with him. For a man with no job, he lived a high life for years on his CIA funding, and now this naive, unsuspecting flake will spend well-deserved years in prison for your bit of political theater.

Most recently we watched you attempt to inflame unrest and create civil disobedience in our country with your “Jasmine Revolution” – sadly, the one that never was. And we watched your Ambassador Jon Huntsman sneaking around WangFuJing like a weasel in sunglasses and, when challenged openly, run with his tail between his legs. The photos and videos will always remind us – and him too, if he ever returns.

We’re Surprised

We look in amazement at your apparently pathological determination to meddle in our country’s internal affairs, to presume to dictate what we should want, how we should think, what kind of government we should have, what our values should be.

And yet in spite of all this, you apparently believe you can offer the Chinese people some vague bait about “freedom”, and magically incite us to sedition – encourage us to betray our country, turn against our government and destroy our own nation – all to satisfy your own imperial agenda.

Mr Obama, we’re sorry to say this, but either you’re very stupid or you must believe we are.

You appear to harbor some grotesque picture of us as the product of some brutal, god-forsaken commie dictatorship, living in a grey world with no rights, no freedom, no hope. You seem to believe we are stifled, unhappy, miserable, the product of enforced slave labour, living our lives under oppression and fear, lacking all manner of liberties.

And that we hold you in such high regard that we will happily run to you – our beacon of hope and angel of salvation.

We think you may be receiving bad advice.

We Didn’t Know You Cared

I think we have to tell you that the Chinese people are much better informed than the typical American, much more aware, and few are as naive or gullible as you and Mrs. Clinton seem to assume. Most of us can even find our own country on a world map.

In an NYT blog by Nicholas Kristof there was a comment that the recent tragic earthquake in China’s Sichuan Province was “just nature’s way of telling us there are too many Chinese in the world”. It seems to us this comment more accurately reflects the real US position than do all the fancy words about freedom, democracy and human rights.

It’s our humble conviction that only the terminally naive would believe that anyone in the US government much cares about the well-being of the Chinese people.

Hillary Clinton said, “Many in China resent or reject our advocacy of human rights as an intrusion on their sovereignty”. And she’s right, because it isn’t human rights that’s being advocated. But she apparently has no idea how many of us resent it.

Your interest in our internal affairs is not to help China or to ‘liberate’ the Chinese people, but to force China to become part of the US camp, and you begin by trying to force a change in the political system, not to free the people but to collapse the government and open it to your influence and control.

You certainly preach freedom, but the only freedom you really want for us, is the freedom to serve you. This may be hard for you to accept, but we don’t want to serve you, nor do we want to be like you. We want to be like us.

Part II – Some Things You Should Know

The Presence of Government and Multi-Party Democracy

You questioned your ‘human rights activists’ on how we feel about “the arbitrary exercise of power in our everyday lives”, and “how the omnipresence of the state affects the lives of real people (like us)”.

You won’t want to hear this, but power is not exercised arbitrarily in our country as often as we see it being exercised in yours. And, to be honest, our state is not only not ‘omnipresent’ but sometimes a bit too ‘absentpresent’ for our liking.

We are told that one of the great things about your country is that anyone, even a person with no education, training, knowledge, experience, ability, or even intelligence, can rise to become the President.

Well, the number of our citizens interested in your US-style multi-party democracy is about the same as the number of Americans interested in communism.

Most educated Chinese (and that means most of us) don’t see the Western model as particularly appealing because we don’t look on politics (as you do) as a team sport where everybody can play. Most of us don’t feel we have the knowledge or experience to affect the course of our country in any positive way – and we believe we’re correct.

Our Country’s one-party democratic (meritocratic) government is in for the long term and makes no decisions for political expediency, in contradistinction to what we see in the US. We make decisions for the good of the whole country.

The Internet and Social Platforms

You appear to hope that the lack of a Twitter or a Google is just cause for widespread unrest and social disorder. But to tell you the truth (and I apologise for resorting to the vernacular) most of us really don’t give a shit. Your internet platforms were developed by Americans for Americans and we don’t want them as our standard. We have our own, designed by us for us, and we’re happy with them.

You promulgate the hope that we’ll see a bit of internet censorship as a violation. Mr. Obama, we opened the window expecting to receive fresh air and a breeze, but mostly what we got was flies coming in. So naturally, we put up a screeen. We are quite aware of your CIA’s connections with Twitter and Google. Maybe you should think about that.

We are Happy

In a recent Article in The Economist, the writer, in deep shock, bemoaned the fact that “a disconcertingly high percentage of China’s population appear very happy with their government”, or words to that effect. And that’s true. In a recent survey by your own Pew International, 86% of the people in China are happy with our government and our system – compared to 23% for your country.

And in the latest Edelman poll, 88% of our people trust our government – compared to less than 40% of yours. In fact, your country was just above last-place Russia on these scores.

Of Course We Have Things That Need Fixing

You have criminals in your country, and you have corrupt politicians too, but it would be mean-spririted and dishonest of us to suggest that their actions represent the moral standards of all America. Do you agree? Why are you so eager to believe it’s different for us?

We were just as shocked and appalled as you, to learn that some of our milk was contaminated with melamine, and you may be surprised to learn that Chinese dogs don’t like poisoned food any more than American dogs do.

Our country is still developing. We have made enormous progress, but for sure we still have a long way to go. However, we look forward to our future. We have changed many things, and will change many more. But we want to do it ourselves.

We believe we see ourselves, our country and our future, much more clearly than you do. We know what needs to be done, and don’t feel we need anyone directing us, and especially not a country that is in many ways in worse condition than ours.

Is it Possible that Our Way is Better than Your Way?

Maybe your “Free World” could learn a lot from our government system. We know you don’t want to hear this, but our government works, beautifully. It has transformed our economy and brought hundreds of millions of us out of poverty.

It has put our men into space, built the world’s fastest trains, the longest undersea tunnels, the world’s longest bridges, the largest dams. It is rapidly creating the world’s largest genuine middle class. And we’ve hardly begun.

China is a pluralistic society. You don’t understand that, and you may never understand. We don’t want winners and losers; we want a consensus that everyone can live with.

Truth be told, many of our Chinese values, attitudes, virtues, are arguably more desirable than yours. The family, relationships, saving and thrift, the avoidance of conflict and search for harmony. If you had these, you wouldn’t want to change them either, and for sure not because some arrogant foreigners were telling you how superior they were.

Instead of us changing all our values to suit you, maybe some of your values should change to be more like ours.

Something Interesting to Do

Our letter to you is not yet complete, but we offer you here a brief informational interlude before moving on to the conclusion.

We recommend these brief articles to you. They will help you to understand us, and to understand more clearly how we see you.

The first is a photo essay about China and its people today, titled, If We’re Going to Learn About China, Let’s First Meet Some Real People: A Look at China and its People the Way They Really are Today。 We recommend it to all Americans. You can access it here.

The next is a short poem written by a Chinese, directed to Americans. It’s titled “What Do You Want From Us Anyway? Enough is enough。” You can read it here

The next one is a brief list of some of our country’s recent accomplishments, things of which we are proud. You can read it here.

And we’re sure you will enjoy this next one. It’s titled What’s Good For the Goose … A Humorous Look at Foreign Policy, if China Were to Copy the USA. You can read it here.

The last one is not so amusing. It contains facts that reflect the image of the US from outside your borders. You no doubt already know all of this, but reading it may help you to understand that we also know all of it. You can access it here.

Part III – Where do We go From Here?

Notwithstanding all of the above, there are a couple of “civil liberties” that are very important to us, ones we don’t seem to have at the moment:

The freedom to decide for ourselves how we will think, what we should want, what kind of government we should have, what our values should be.

The freedom and the right to choose our own course of development without outside interference.

Mr. Obama, we know we cannot influence your values, your American Exceptionalism, your attitudes or your intentions. We know we cannot influence your CIA who are tasked with the job of destabilising our country. However, we find your interference in our country’s internal affairs unacceptable, and feel that something must be done.

Some Interesting News

You may not know this, but our country has an amazingly efficient multi-channel communications system. When something interesting happens in our country, people send SMS or QQ messages and make blog posts, and often we know about things before the media are aware of them. Valuable, important, (or simply juicy) news can reach almost everyone in this country within hours.

And this news is not ignored. There was recently a nasty China article in one of your US papers that received quite a lot of attention here. It was translated into Chinese, then posted on blogs and other sites across the country, and while I personally did not visit all of them, I do recall one site that attracted 320,000 posts – mostly negative – toward the US. Can you believe that? More than 320,000 posts on only one article.

You want to reach into China, bypass the government and talk directly to the people? No problem. We do it every day. Now, I hate to raise your hopes and then dash them, but this is something only we can do. You don’t know where, you don’t know how, and you wouldn’t know what to say anyway.

And then, Something Unexpected Happened

You have a saying in your country that “You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink.” We translated that into Chinese, and then back into English, and do you know how it came out? “You can put American products into all the stores in China, but you can’t make Chinese people buy them.”

It occurred to us that your government and your military exist primarily to serve the commercial imperial interests of your large corporations – of which we have an abundance in our country. And this may be something we can affect. You don’t know this, but we’ve done it before.

GM, your great American monolith, once boasted “What’s good for General Motors is good for America”, but is solvent today only because of its sales in China. If those sales die, GM will be bankrupt worldwide.

And we wonder why your American GM should be able to depend and rely on China to save its very life, for us to be GM’s only reprieve from the hangman, only to have GM’s government surreptitiously doing everything possible to destabilise our country and destroy its rise and development. Now, that can’t make sense even to you.

You may know that our airlines in China use both Boeing and Airbus aircraft. But it appears that the Chinese prefer flying on Airbus planes – we’re told they are quieter and more comfortable. And people are telling us that before booking a flight, they first inquire as to the aircraft and, if they have any choice, they will book an Airbus flight.

The empty seats might encourage our airlines to reconsider any purchases from Boeing – who we understand is one of the corporations contributing to the manufacture of weapons you intend to sell to Taiwan.

You probably know that China is rapidly transforming from a cash to a credit card society; we already have hundreds of millions of cards. A new consumer trend is that Chinese apparently prefer cards issued by domestic banks. Of course that’s unfortunate for US companies like Citibank.

And even our “dictatorial, authoritarian, omnipresent” government cannot make us buy a Buick if we prefer a BYD or (Chinese) Volvo. Nor would they care to argue with us if we prefer a Chinese brand of shampoo to a US brand, or Lenovo to Dell.

We have such a plethora of foreign brands already available to us, that the elimination of a (relatively) few US brands would cause little inconvenience and no hardship to anyone. Of course, that wouldn’t help your trade balance.

You might want to consider that the number of our people (probably about 90%) who will work hard and make real sacrifices for the overall good of our country is likely in inverse proportion to the number of your Americans (probably about 10%) who would give up anything or make any kind of sacrifice for the good of your country.

And, Let’s Be Honest

We harbor no illusions about our power or influence. We do not believe we can kill the sales of GM cars in China. But we do think we can reduce them. We do not believe we can kill Boeing sales in China; but we do think that when Boeing sees warning signs it might lose 50 billion in sales to our airlines, they might be able to explain this to you in a way that you (and your CIA) can understand.

And when Citibank, with its large investment and high hopes in China, discovers things are not going according to plan, perhaps they (and 100 other companies) can help GM and Boeing with the explanation. We will pay special attention to those US companies who advertise in your more biased and hateful media, like the NYT and CNN.

There will be no organised, country-wide boycott of American goods in China. There will be no protests, no demonstrations, no public appeals. The Chinese might be noisy in restaurants, but they tend to be quiet otherwise. We will simply be “monitoring” consumer purchasing trends, and possibly reporting on them from time to time.

You may want to refer to our comments earlier about the efficiency of China’s communication system. From our collective past experience, we are confident this letter (Chinese version) and its attached information will be read by 100 million people. We know we can get it that far. Our challenge is to extend that total to 300 million or perhaps even 400 million. With our huge population, every 1% of consumers experiencing a ‘change in preference’ will mean many tens of millions of purchases.

We know we cannot produce any instant victory over foreign interference in our affairs and that we will have to continue our monitoring, perhaps indefinitely. But we think it’s important for the sake of our country that we succeed.

It should be noted that our government is not involved in this. In fact, we have avoided any contact with any part of the government in case they want to be more prudent and … how did you put it … something about … “the risk of further destabilizing an important relationship …”

This is a grassroots nationwide issue involving only “the Chinese people” whom you so much want to “reach out to”. It has no central focus, no head office, no place to direct a silver bullet.

Conclusion

Mr. Obama, China’s internal affairs are none of your business. We didn’t ask your advice on what kind of government we should have, just as we didn’t ask your advice on how to develop our economy. And none of us want our country to join your empire, directed only by your own narrow self-interest, based on greed and conflict, exporting revolution and bent on global domination.

We are reminded of Ronald Reagan’s quote when your country was devastating Nicaragua: “Make the economy scream.” Well, if that was good for you then, it’s good for us now.

We are aware that unsought advice is often unwelcome and spurned. But nevertheless, our advice to you and all your friends who think we in China should change our system of government is this: Give it a rest. Drop it. Mind your own business. Go clean your kitchen, or cut the grass. Wipe your own kid’s snotty nose and stop meddling in the affairs of people who don’t want to know what you think.

You wanted to find a way to “reach into China”, you wanted to “engage the Chinese public”. Well, you’ve done it. In fact, you may have succeeded beyond your wildest expectations. We are wide awake and engaged.

You wanted a Jasmine Revolution, and you will have it. But it isn’t free; we will now ask your American companies to pay for it.

Sincerely, The “People”

p.s.

We noted your recent legislative amendments that now permit virtually anyone to contribute to your domestic election campaigns without identification of the source of funds. Has it occurred to you that we (and 200 million of our closest friends) might each donate maybe $10 to ensure the elimination of US candidates (like Jon Huntsman) who are unacceptable to us?

Is it possible that meddling is morally righteous and fun only when you’re the one doing it?

John Lee <john.lee@minister.com>