Sudan slams Egyptian media’s provocation over Ethiopian dam

Ali Ahmed Karti, Minister for Foreign Affairs of the Republic of the Sudan, addresses a meeting of the Sudan/South Sudan Consultative Forum at UN headquarters in New York September 27, 2013 (UN Photo)

(KHARTOUM) – Sudanese foreign minister Ali Karti has criticised Cairo’s approach to dealing with the issue of Ethiopia’s Grand Renaissance Dam (EGRD), calling on the Egyptian media and other circles to stop what he described as “clowning”.

In statements to pro-government Ashorooq TV, Karti said that Sudan would have suffered the most if constructing the dam was done without environmental studies to prove its safety or economic feasibility to the three main Nile Basin countries .

Karti stressed that when his government felt that there was a slackening in examining these issues, it formed a national committee to study all aspects of the dam with the right to cooperate with any of the national committees in Ethiopia or Egypt.

He described Egyptian-Sudanese relations as good, emphasising that Sudan has refused to intervene in the ongoing political crisis in Egypt as it is an internal affair in which it respected the will of the Egyptian people and their choice towards change.

Meanwhile, Sudanese presidential assistant Ibrahim Ghandour lashed out at some sections of the Egyptian media, saying some journalists have been playing an increasingly negative role in the relationship between the two countries.

Ghandour said that the Sudanese people will never forget the abuses of some of those affiliated with the Egyptian media and their attempts to incite Cairo against Khartoum, as well as some of the statements peddled by some Egyptian politicians against Sudan.

He underscored that Sudanese people are intelligent and tolerant but never forget contempt.

Sudan has approved of Ethiopia’s bid to build the dam thus angering their Egyptian neighbour.

Egypt fears that the $4.6 billion hydropower plant will diminish its share of the river’s water flows, arguing its historic water rights must be maintained.

Ethiopia is the source of about 85% of the Nile’s water, mainly through rainfall in its highlands, with over 90% of Egyptians relying on water from the Nile’s flows.

In June, a panel of international experts tasked with studying the impacts of the Ethiopian dam on lower riparian countries, including Sudan and Egypt, found that the dam project will not cause significant harm to either country.

Cairo remains unconvinced and has sought further studies and consultation with Khartoum and Addis Ababa.

Ethiopia: My Takes on the Ethiopian Dam and the Addis Ababa Master Plan

Ethiopia: My Takes on the Ethiopian Dam and the Addis Ababa Master Plan

By Messay Kebede

The issue of the so-called “Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam” has proven very tricky for all those Ethiopians who oppose the present regime. On the one hand, no Ethiopian wants to see Ethiopia’s right to use the waters of Nile for its own development contested so that any interference from external countries appears as an unacceptable assault on its sovereignty. On the other hand, many Ethiopians are understandably apprehensive of the detrimental ecological and social impacts of such a huge project and are skeptical about its economic benefits, a skepticism based on the failures of the experience of huge dams in other African and non-African countries.

Recently, three eminent Ethiopian scholars, namely, Minga Negash, Mammo Muchie, and my dear friend Seid Hassan wrote an article in which they argue that Ethiopians must engage in a cost-benefit analysis instead of opposing the project based solely on its alleged negative consequences. They find that the dam will provide “valuable economic benefits,” but they also admit that it will have several negative “side-effects.” This admission led them to say that “Ethiopians may legitimately ask questions and raise concerns about the manner in which the Government of Ethiopia is handling the project.” Accordingly, while concerns are legitimate, a simple one-sided opposition is not.

Since the article was obviously written to help Ethiopians resolve the dilemma in which they find themselves, I must confess that I remain as perplex as before. After reading the article, I still wonder whether the opposition to the dam project is really misplaced. Precisely, the cost-benefit analysis that they advocate seems to show an imbalance in favor of cost because even if we concede that the dam will be economically beneficial, the question remains as to who will benefit from the project and at what costs. The three scholars are right when, dismissing the validity of colonial treaties, they defend the sovereign right of Ethiopia to use the waters of the Nile. Unfortunately, the question is not only about sovereignty, it is also about the misuse of the right by a ruling clique whose records in the defense of Ethiopian interests have been so far nil.

It is fair to say that people should not expect anything good coming from a ruling elite that so wholehearted landlocked Ethiopia. Moreover, the fragmented nature of Ethiopian society thanks to the ethnic divisions implemented by the TPLF puts us in no position to antagonize further our enemies. There is no doubt that Egypt will engage in destabilizing policy, short of a military attack, to either stop the construction or makes it very costly for Ethiopia. True, as concerns ecological consequences and social adversities, such as displacements of people, palliatives can be found to mitigate the damages. Nonetheless, can one seriously expect that the ruling elite, assuming that it is capable of such concerns, will take the necessary measures to alleviate the harmful downsides of the dam? 

It is also true, as noted by another dear friend, Tecola Hagos, in a recent article, that the existing government was successful in removing the traditional opposition of Sudan. The question is, at what cost? Is the seceding of Ethiopian territories, which happen to be in the Amhara region, the price for the Sudanese support? Who has any idea of the secret deals between the Sudanese and the Ethiopian governments? Clearly, to change the dam into a project in which benefits would outweigh costs, the condition is to have in place a nationalist and democratic, that is, accountable, government.

Last but not least, is the project really economically viable? I am no expert in this matter, but plenty documented studies on the real benefits of grand dams exist that invite caution, if not outright skepticism. Caution is all the more advised since the project originated from the former prime minister whose dictatorial ethos and aspiration to personal grandeur have left Ethiopia in a state of shamble. As pointed out by Alemayehu G. Mariam’s article, dictators are consumed by vanity and the need to justify their rule. As a result, they launch grandiose projects whose purpose is both to flatter their aspiration to grandeur and hide the misery and pettiness of their rule. It is important that we resist the temptation of separating the dam from Meles’s megalomania if only because it gives the reason why alternative proposals that would be less costly and more in tune with the environment and the interests of surrounding people were discarded in favor of the Grand Renaissance Dam. I am not convinced by the argument that economic benefits are dependent on the size of the dam, and not on a smart, efficient, more manageable use of the water.

To the argument of economic benefits, Tecola adds that projects like the grand dam can work as antidotes to the ethnic division of Ethiopia. Projects with a national dimension counter the fragmentation of the country and serve as achievements around which people can rally and repair their torn unity and national identity. As a harsh critic of Meles and his regime, Tecola knows that national projects are not enough to patch up Ethiopian unity. Centuries of common existence did not deter the Tigrean TPLF from advocating and implementing an ethnonationalist agenda. To counter the trend, we need a government that expressly dismantles the institutions created to divide Ethiopia and promotes a national culture that permeates ethnic identities.

That is why Tecola supplements his support to the dam with the argument that “the current Government of Hailemariam Desalegn seems to be engaged in a subtle fight to reverse such disastrous course of national disintegration.” In thus making his support conditional, Tecola joins all those Ethiopians who have serious concerns about the good use of the dam, the only but important difference being that concerned Ethiopians, in which I include myself, are not as optimistic as Tecola in the belief that the actual prime minster has the necessary power to reform the regime. In light of this uncertainty about the reformist agenda of the prime minister, I maintain that it is still reasonable to oppose the construction of the dam.

The upshot of all this is that the mentioned articles, despite their good intention and estimable arguments, do not do the job of appeasing my original concerns. To support the construction of the dam, I require an open debate about the pros and cons and the release of all relevant official and secret documents. By debate I do not mean the defense of the project by the officials of the government, but the presentation of alternative projects. The goal must not be to obtain endorsement, but to allow people to exercise their free and enlightened judgments with no attachment of political significance that would be construed as supporting or opposing the regime. Of course, some such condition amounts to nothing else but a change of government, given that the present regime will never subscribe to an open debate. Anyway, the construction of the dam is on its way so that the time for open debate has already passed. Even so, I reserve the right to oppose a fait accompli if only to show that the dictatorial regime did not fool me a bit.

The second issue I want to deal with is the riots caused by the expansion plan of Addis Ababa into Oromo territory. University students from various towns located in Oromia have expressed their opposition to the expansion plan by engaging in peaceful demonstrations. Undoubtedly, a number of legitimate questions can be raised against the plan, the most important being the utility of such an expansion. Why expand Addis Abba further when already its disparity with other towns is only too wide? Why not use the available resources to expand other towns that badly need to grow? This focus on Addis Ababa seems to be a continuation of the policy of make-believe, so dear to dictatorial regimes. It is more about impressing tourists, foreign visitors, and supporters than implementing a policy of development that really benefits the country as a whole. More importantly, the plan does no more than expand what Addis Ababa has effectively become, namely, the secluded island of exclusive enrichment for the cronies of the regime.

Another legitimate concern has to do with the fate of the Oromo peasants who surround the town. Unsurprisingly, the government insists that the plan promotes the integrated development of Addis Ababa and its surroundings. But seeing the government’s previous records of forced displacement of peasants with no or inadequate compensation in other regions of Ethiopia, there is no reason to suppose that a different fate awaits Oromo peasants. One more time, what matters is not the declared good intention, but the reality of an implementation devoid of established process of accountability. Any more than in the case of the dam, Oromo students have little reason to take at face value what the government is saying or promising.

The irony of the whole case is that the regime is reaping what it has sown. The creation of ethnic regions and their definition as sovereign nations could only backfire at the plan to expand Addis Ababa into a territory considered as the exclusive property of the Oromo. In principle, the invention of nations within the Ethiopian state considerably limits the authority of the central government so that Oromo students are within their rights accorded by the ethnonationalist constitution of the TPLF. The crackdown on the students is just another proof that the TPLF has done nothing but trample its own constitution since it came to power. Accordingly, what is absolutely unacceptable is the violent repression of the students who did nothing but use their recognized right to express their demands in a peaceful way. This savage repression, which caused many deaths, should be emphatically denounced by all Ethiopians.

That said, it must be at the same time clear that the condemnation of repression does not mean the endorsement of ethnic politics and borders. Indeed, from what I have read so far, Oromo students oppose the expansion because it violates the sovereignty of Oromia. For unionists, this is not the right reason and they should say so openly. They must condemn the violation of Oromo students’ right to protest peacefully, but they also must make quite clear that the condemnation is not an approval of killil politics.

I take this opportunity to ask unionists to become more aggressively engaged in favor of Ethiopian unity. It is high time that unionists drop their timid approach to unity in the hope that their timidity will decrease the secessionist tendency of Oromo nationalists. Especially, the Amhara elite must shake off their sense of guilt over the marginalization and mistreatment of Oromo under the previous Amhara dominated regimes. The fall of these regimes, which would not have been possible without the active and multifarious participation of Amhara elites and people, exonerates, so to speak, the Amhara and celebrates their decisive input in the rise of a new Ethiopia in which ethnic groups with their language and characteristics will flourish in conjunction with their Ethiopianness. EPRDF and other ethnonationalist groups present the new Ethiopia as a political reality born against the will of the Amhara when we all know that nothing would have been possible without the primary rise of Amhara students and elites against the imperial regime. Indeed, the time has come to raise the mere defense of Ethiopian unity to the offensive level and this change begins with the work of unifying the unionist base and laying out a clear vision of what the new Ethiopia will be. Our rallying motto should be: unity in diversity versus diversity in disintegration!

Wake Up Unionists!

-----

Dr. Messay Kebede is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Dayton in the United States. He taught philosophy at Addis Ababa University from 1976 to 1993. He also served as chair of the department of philosophy from 1980 to 1991. He earned Ph.D., University of Grenoble, France

A Joint Resolution of the Assembly of California in support for the Nagorno Karabakh Republic՝s efforts to develop as a free and independent nation

On May 8, 2014 Assembly of California adopted a joint Resolution in
support for the Nagorno Karabakh Republic՝s efforts to develop as a free
and independent nation. Below is the full text of the Resolution.

WHEREAS, Nagorno-Karabakh, also known as Artsakh, has historically been
Armenian territory, populated by an overwhelming majority of Armenians,
and yet was illegally severed  from Armenia by the Soviet Union in 1921
and placed under the newly created Soviet Azerbaijani administration; and

WHEREAS, February 20, 1988, marked the beginning of the national
liberation movement in Nagorno-Karabakh, which inspired 8 people
throughout the Soviet Union to stand up against tyranny for their rights
and freedoms, helping to bring democracy to millions and contributing to
world peace; and

WHEREAS, The United States Congress has repeatedly  expressed support
for the legitimate aspirations for freedom of the people of
Nagorno-Karabakh, and on September 2, 1991, inli accordance with its
enacted law, the legislature of  Nagorno-Karabakh declared formation of
the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic; and

WHEREAS, On December 10, 1991, the people of the Nagorno-Karabakh
Republic voted in favor of independence, and on January 6, 1992, the
democratically elected legislature of the republic formally declared
independence; and

WHEREAS, Since proclaiming independence, the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic
has registered significant progress in democracy building, which was
most recently demonstrated during the July 19, 2012, presidential
elections that were assessed by the international observers as free and
transparent; now, therefore, be it

/Resolved /by the Assembly and the Senate of the State of California,
jointly, that the Legislature of California hereby encourages and
supports the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic’s continuing efforts to develop
as a free and independent nation in order to guarantee its citizens
those rights inherent in a free and independent society; and be it further

/Resolved/, That the California State Legislature urges the President
and Congress of the United States to support the self-determination and
democratic independence of the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic and its
constructive involvement with the international community’s efforts to
reach a just and lasting solution to security issues in that
strategically important region; and be it further

/Resolved/, That the Chief Clerk of the Assembly transmit copies of this
resolution to the President of the United States, to the Majority Leader
of the Senate, to the Speaker of the House of Representatives, to each
member of the California delegation to the Congress of the United
States, and to the Secretary of State of California.

Mapping The Earth's Trouble Spots And The People Who Live There

By: John M. Doyle

There's more to geography than maps or the statistics on population and exports that are found in almanacs.

In an era of low intensity conflicts and asymmetric warfare, grassroots diplomacy and cultural sensitivity can be as important as attack helicopters, night vision goggles and satellite imagery.

“You can't understand economics without understanding the culture, how the society is organized, what are the power relationships,” said Lt. Col. Andrew Lohman, an associate professor in the Geography Department at the US Military Academy at West Point, NY.

At a human geography conference last fall in Arlington, Va. Lohman explained how the study of geography is making a comeback in Army circles. Its popularity is growing at West Point where every year 50 to 60 cadets pick it as their major, he said.

 Human geography is a multi-discipline study of the Earth and how people move across it, where they gather and how they interact there. It combines numerous fields including history, political science, economics, geology, urban studies and anthropology. Studying human geography can be very important for soldiers, Lohman said, noting on-the-ground knowledge can indicate what is normal and what is out of place in a society, a province or a village.

In five deployments to Iraq with Special Forces, Lohman said, “we learned everything about an area before going there.” The important part of that learning, wasn't just the facts like what percentage of the populations was urban or who the local power players were, but “how is this going to affect what we're doing when we're there.” In short, area analysis and mission analysis, he said.

While human geography isn't a panacea for every military challenge, “it can provide a greater understanding of this world we live in and hopefully, we'll make fewer mistakes,” he said.

A cultural misunderstanding can lead to a confrontation that can get you killed, but it can also lead to the failure of assistance and development programs – even ones as basic as agriculture education.

After decades of war, farming is still the largest source of income in Afghanistan – although only 12 percent of the land is arable, and only half of that is currently under cultivation. Fruit orchards were cut down or bombed out during the Soviet occupation in the 1980s. Forests were decimated and irrigation canals destroyed or allowed to deteriorate.

Now, the Afghans lack everything, says retired Army Lt. Col. Craig Beardsley, including basic education in agriculture. Beardsley is administrator of a program at Kansas State University that trains National Guard teams from farm states how to teach better farming and livestock raising to the Afghans.

The National Agricultural Biosecurity Center has trained four Kansas National Guard Agribusiness Development Teams and two from the South Carolina National Guard. They have also trained several units assigned to the 1st Infantry Division – including a Female Engagement Team.

The emphasis is on keeping instruction simple and practical – something the Afghans can continue and maintain after the US advisors leave. For example, Beardsley said, it's a mistake to assume the introduction of US agricultural techniques, equipment and seed “will solve all problems.”

Beardsley said the teams his school send to Afghanistan are educated in Afghanistan culture and economics. They're also trained in business development and business management to help Afghan farmers market their products and manage their resources.

“In the home, the women have more influence than we give credit for,” Beardsley said, noting that's where the Female Engagement Teams – squads of female soldiers or Marines who accompany patrols – prove their value. The can glean a lot of information, both military and economic, by talking to Afghan  women, something their male counterparts cannot do because of cultural taboos.

While doing research years ago at the US Naval Historical Center on a possible naval solutions to piracy off the Horn of Africa, Gary Weir says he learned that one factor that drove many fishermen in Somalia to take up piracy was the collapse of their government and its inability to deter large commercial foreign factory ships from coming in and taking away their livelihood.

“Now this does not justify piracy,” Weir, chief historian of the National Geo-spatial Intelligence Agency (NGIA), told a recent conference at the Council on Foreign Relations.

But he noted, it illustrates that a solution to East African piracy has got to be on land, not the sea. “The land is the problem, the political instability and difficulties they've had there. That's the real problem,” Weir said, stressing that he was not speaking for the NGIA or the US government.

He noted that NGIA had a major pilot project on human geography in Africa, “understanding the people of the region as intimately as we possibly can, because strategic threats emerge in those areas, and that knowledge is an advantage.” NGIA also has a support team at US Africa Command “giving them the advantage of our human geography work and all the other things that we do so well that I can't possibly talk about here,” he said.

The integration of technology and cultural studies were among the issues that were discussed at the Human Geography conference sponsored by the Institute for Defense and Government Advancement (IDGA) in Arlington, Va. May 6-8.

John M. Doyle is a Washington-based defense and homeland security writer. A former congressional editor at Aviation Week & Space Technology, he has written about military and homeland security issues for Defense Technology International, Seapower, Smithsonian Air & Space and Unmanned Systems. Before that he was an editor and reporter with the Associated Press in the Midwest, New York and Washington. He now blogs about unconventional warfare and where it crosses paths with terrorism, technology, energy, international development and disaster relief at 4gwar.wordpress.com. He can be reached at 4gwarblog@gmail.com

What is a Canadian supposed to do when a friend confides he’s about to travel overseas to join a terror group?

Mohamed Hersi arrives with an unidentified woman to testify at his trial at the Brampton courthouse, April 24, 2014

BRAMPTON, Ont. —  What is a Canadian supposed to do when a friend confides he is about to travel overseas to join an armed extremist group committed to suicide bombings, government overthrow and war against the West?

When Mohamed Hersi found himself in that situation almost four years ago, it wasn’t unfamiliar territory: Two of his school friends from Toronto had joined the Somali faction Al-Shabab the previous year, and one of them was dead.

But when a third man he befriended disclosed that he was also heading to Somalia to join Al-Shabab, Mr. Hersi did not report him to the authorities. Instead, according to conversations recorded by police, he gave him advice on how to avoid getting caught.

Mr. Hersi told him to be discreet when talking about his plans, to join a gym to get in shape, to buy his plane ticket at least a month in advance, and to pay for it with a credit card to avoid arousing any suspicion.

He told him to concoct a cover story for his trip, to pack light and not to carry more than $10,000 cash. He told him he could make “connections” in Nairobi, that he could easily cross the Kenyan border into Somalia, and that it was cheaper to buy guns once he got to Africa.

He gave him a U.S. sniper training manual and a copy of The Anarchist Cookbook, which explains how to build homemade bombs. He talked about the Al-Qaeda propaganda magazine Inspire and the lectures of pro-Al-Qaeda ideologue Anwar Al-Awlaki. And he told him not to be frightened.

The “friend,” however, turned out to be an undercover Toronto police officer, and this week, the surreptitious recordings of their conversations were replayed for a jury that must decide whether Mr. Hersi committed a crime — namely counselling another person to take part in terrorist activity.

He has also been charged with attempting to leave Canada to join Al-Shabab, an Al-Qaeda-aligned group fighting to impose its militant version of Islamic law on Somalis. He has denied the charges and said he was on his way to Cairo to study Arabic when he was arrested at Toronto’s Pearson airport in March 2011.

The first of its kind for Canada, the trial is a test of the tactics police officers can use when they believe someone is preparing to travel abroad to take up arms — an issue that has gained urgency as more Canadians have left for Syria to fight in that country’s civil war.

This week, Abu Dujana al-Muhajir, part of a small circle of Calgary youths in Syria, taunted Canada in a blog post, saying that “so-called radical Islamists” were gaining in popularity and that fighting jihad was becoming “as Canadian as maple syrup.”

Following the deaths of several Canadian extremists in Syria, Somalia and North Africa, and amid concerns those who survive their misadventures could return home to wage violence, police have been encouraging Canadians to let them know if a friend or family member is becoming radicalized.
Mr. Hersi, 28, testified that while he had not done so, he had tried four or five times to dissuade his “friend” from joining Al-Shabab — although he said that was before police began recording their conversations in January 2011.

Only after accepting that the undercover officer was determined to join did Mr. Hersi begin to give him advice, he said. “He was a friend, he was intent on going, so least I could do was help him not get caught,” he testified on Friday.

He said it would have been absurd and Orwellian to report someone for something they might do in the future, and that there was never any danger to Canada. “He wasn’t a threat to anyone in Toronto,” Mr. Hersi testified.

But I’m not telling him to shoot anybody, would you agree?

But Crown prosecutor Iona Jaffe played recordings in which Mr. Hersi told the officer not to “burn any bridges in Canada” because Al-Shabab might send him back to “take care of” someone who had insulted the Muslim prophet Muhammad.

“But I’m not telling him to shoot anybody, would you agree?” Mr. Hersi said under cross-examination Friday. “No,” Ms. Jaffe countered.

Mr. Hersi said he had not pressed the officer to change his mind because he felt intimidated by him and also indebted to him for gifts his “friend” had showered on him such as a book, a T-shirt and Toronto Raptors tickets.

But Ms. Jaffe said Mr. Hersi had another motive. “The reason why you didn’t do that was because you and the officer shared a common goal — and that common goal is to make your way to Somalia to join Al-Shabab,” she said.

Related

• At trial, Mohamed Hersi denies accusations that he tried to join Al-Shabab
• Mohamed Hersi wanted to move to Muslim country to escape Canada’s ‘Islamophobia,’ terror trial hears

Source: National Post

What does Ethiopia do to prevent explosions?

By David K. Cheruiyot  Ethiopian troops on the boarder      

Photo: english.alarahiya.net It is now official. We are living in dangerous times. Nowadays, not a week passes without an explosion in either Nairobi or Mombasa. In all these cases, lives of Kenyans are needlessly snuffed out. 
Kenyans now live in fear, not knowing when the next attack will happen. 

Every time an attack occurs we are told it is the consequence of having the KDF presence in Somalia; some political quarters are making noises claiming Kenya should withdraw its forces in Somalia if we are to be spared the wrath of the terrorists. 

However, before we acquiesce to demands of Al Shaabab we need to test the veracity of this statement; is it really true we are being attacked because of KDF’s presence in Somalia? Have we heard of similar attacks in Ethiopia and Burundi? Yet these countries contribute the bulk of Amisom troops in Somalia. Even before AU troops were sent there Ethiopia had made numerous forays into Somalia, and at one point routing the Islamic Courts Union. 

Ethiopia, like Kenya, shares a border with Somalia and they also harbour a huge population of ethnic Somalis. So why aren’t they attacked by Al Shaabab? Simple, they take a no-nonsense approach to criminality and terrorism. Unlike Kenya, Ethiopia guards its borders jealously and officials don’t sell citizenship to anyone with money to bribe and burn. 

There have been suggestions that the attacks in Kenya, and especially in Eastleigh have nothing to do with religious extremism but criminality and control of resources; and that they are funded by people interested in expanding their hold over businesses in the area.


Source: standardmedia.co

Ethiopia-Djibouti Railway Begins Laying

HONG KONG - First overseas electric railway with a whole set of Chinese technology standards begins laying in Dire Dawa, an eastern city in Ethiopia.

Connecting Ethiopia capital Addis Ababa and Djibouti capital Djibouti city, the railway is another cross-nation one constructed by China overseas after the Uhuru Railway in 1970s. Length is 740 kilometres. Designed per-hour speed is 120 kilometres. 

Total investment is about USD 4 billion, of which about 70% is loans from the Export-Import Bank of China. It started construction in April 2012 and is expected to run into operation in October 2015.

CCECC of China Railway Construction Corp. General Manager Yuan Li said the laying marked a major periodic achievement.

Source: www.people.com.cn (May 09, 2014)

A 9/11 book the world needs to read

Ray Hanania

In 39 years of professional journalism, I have never come across something more shocking than what I have read in the book “Dirty Wars: The World is a Battlefield” by author Jeremy Scahill.

Scahill observes that the US government must go before a Federal judge in order to wiretap the phone of an American citizen. But no such order or review is needed to issue an order to kill an American citizen overseas. The book highlights the absurdities of America’s exaggerated and flawed morality and its hypocritical obsessive fear of Arabs and Muslims. At least five American citizens who have been murdered without judicial review have been Arab and or Muslim.

American democracy is driven by a “relativity” of morality, ethics and freedom that twists its fundamental precepts when it is convenient. And hating Arabs and Muslims and denying them judicial rights has been very convenient.

The American Declaration of Independence declares: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” But American “equality” is “relative.” All men are created equal, but some are more equal than others. More appropriately, some are less equal than others, especially if they are Arab or Muslim.

Scahill’s book, published in April 2013, reads like a formal indictment that could literally be presented to the International Criminal Court for prosecution. It details how President George W. Bush and President Barack H. Obama are complicit in framing, persecuting and eventually murdering four American citizens that we know of. There could easily be more.

On Sept. 30, 2011, Anwar Al-Awlaki, an American citizen born in New Mexico of Yemeni immigrant parents, and Samir Khan, an American of Pakistani parents, were assassinated on Obama’s orders. Two weeks later on Oct. 14, US Predator drones killed Al-Awlaki’s son, Abdur Rahmn, who was born in Colorado. At least six other teenagers were killed in the US attack with him in a home in Yemen.

Al-Awlaki was an imam in Churchill Falls, Virginia when Osama Bin Laden’s Muslim outlaws crashed three planes into the World Trade Center’s Twin Towers and the Pentagon killing nearly 3,000 American citizens. Some of the terrorism victims were Muslim themselves.

Both Al-Awlaki and Khan got into trouble when they began blogging criticism of the American “War on Terrorism,” and the administration, and began questioning US foreign policy including the use of torture, extrajudicial killings (the Israeli created practice of murdering people without giving them a trial), and the increasing bigotry against Muslims. Both opposed violence, until they were harassed by the US military’s Black Ops and its secret, undeclared wars in Yemen, Somalia and Pakistan.

In Al-Awlaki’s case, the US had the Yemeni government arrest and imprison and brutalize him for nearly two years. The US released exaggerated information based on the coincidences that two of the 9/11 terrorists had attended his mosque in Virginia, and that Nidal Hasan, who murdered 13 American soldiers at Fort Hood, had sent him emails asking him about the Islamic interpretation of certain issues.

Al-Awlaki and Khan both turned to embrace and advocate violence in response to the persecution by the US government. The more the US tried to kill them, the worse they got. The US government lied about the son, claiming he was an adult of 21 and involved in terror planning. The truth is Abdur Rahman was 16 and was in Yemen to try to find his father.

Vengeance was the American mantra in the years that followed the 9/11 terrorism. An entire generation of American children has been reared on hysterically inaccurate depictions on television and in the biased mainstream American news media of Muslims being traitors. They are also taught that Muslims also include “Christian Arabs,” Arabs in general, and anyone who has dark skin.

In the months after 9/11, several American citizens were singled out because they “looked” Middle Eastern, and were killed. None of the victims of the post-9/11 hate crimes were ever acknowledged as victims of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorism, though they should be viewed that way.

American hatred is often more powerful than American reason. Its morality is often blind. Prejudice becomes more powerful than facts, especially when addressing Muslims and Arabs.

Two more Americans living overseas were murdered by US Army Special Forces. Kamal Derwish was killed on orders from President Bush in Yemen on Nov. 3, 2002, and Jude Kenan Mohammad was killed in Pakistan in November 2011. In each case, American officials denied involvement, then lied about the murders. They claimed “national security” as a defense to prevent releasing details of American involvement in the murders of American citizens.

Yet, both Bush and Obama did not hesitate to release false information to the biased, unethical mainstream American media, which is complicit in the murders, in order to make the public believe the murder victims deserved to die. Why go through the process of a court hearing and a judicial process, when these men could just be killed?

What once made America great was that it was founded on the belief that equal men face equal justice. But we know today that in America, men are not equal, and neither is justice.

— Ray Hanania is an award-winning Palestinian American columnist. He is the managing editor of The Arab Daily News at www.TheArabDailyNews.com. Follow him on Twitter @RayHanania.

New documents point to CIA rendition network through Djibouti

Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images

Investigators mapped flight paths of private contractor planes that stopped in Djibouti, a suspected CIA ‘black site’

by Michael Pizzi @michaelwpizzi

 

New evidence culled from a court case involving CIA contractors has revealed flight paths through Djibouti that appear to indicate the country’s role as a hub of the CIA’s rendition network in Africa, according to documents released by the U.K.-based human rights group Reprieve and New York University’s Global Justice Clinic.

The documents could support the case of Mohammad al-Asad, a former CIA detainee who is suing the government of Djibouti for its alleged role in hosting CIA “black sites” — specifically the one where he says he was detained and tortured for two weeks between December 2003 and January 2004. A Senate investigation into the agency’s “detention and interrogation program” had previously confirmed that several individuals had in fact been detained in Djibouti, according to two officials who read the still-classified report and spoke to Al Jazeera.

Investigators behind the document release combed through contracts, invoices and letters put into evidence for a court case — which involved CIA contractors and was separate from the Djibouti allegations — and pieced together a series of rendition circuits, or flight paths, between 2003 and 2004. They include legs through Djibouti — even though the Horn of Africa did not appear to be a convenient stopover between the United States and Afghanistan, the circuits' endpoints.

“Djibouti was not on the way, it was a destination,” said Margaret Satterthwaite, al-Asad's attorney and a professor at the Global Justice Clinic. “That’s kind of a telltale sign of a rendition circuit.”

The evidence also implicated private companies — including Computer Sciences Corp. (CSC), DynCorp Systems and Solutions (which was purchased by CSC in 2003 and later divested), Richmor Aviation and First Flight — in the Africa rendition program for the first time.

“These documents provide further evidence of how U.S. corporations played a crucial role in the CIA’s torture network, rendering people to torture around the world far from public scrutiny and even further from the rule of law,” said Kevin Lo, corporate social responsibility advocate at Reprieve.

A spokesman for Computer Sciences Corp. said his company did not comment on "speculation about its clients or their activities" but added in an email to Al Jazeera: "CSC has had the privilege for over fifty years of supporting governments and private sector organizations worldwide, and has done so within the law."

Richmor Aviation and First Flight did not respond to Al Jazeera's requests for comment in time for publication.

Al-Asad’s case is currently under consideration by the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights. In an exclusive interview with Al Jazeera, al-Asad, who is now 54 years old, said he was taken from his home in Tanzania to Djibouti, where he was detained for two weeks. He was then rendered to Afghanistan, where he says he was tortured at various points over the course of more than a year at several CIA black site prisons.

Djibouti has vehemently denied “knowing” participation in any U.S. rendition or torture programs in the country. Its ambassador to the U.S., Roble Olhaye, called al-Asad a "liar."
"Everything about his case relies on hearsay and conjecture. There were no flights that came to Djibouti on that day he said he was brought to my country from Tanzania," Olhaye said. "That was checked by our lawyers."

Human rights researchers say that after the 9/11 attacks, dozens of suspects captured by the U.S. were secretly detained, interrogated and tortured in Djibouti. Although President Barack Obama signed an executive order in 2009 banning the CIA’s use of black-site prisons, the order states that it does “not apply to facilities used only to hold people on a short-term, transitory basis.”

And while Djibouti says it is not aware the CIA had ever operated a black-site prison on its soil, Olhaye pointed out: "If something was done in the context of the American base there, how would we know?"

Camp Lemonier in Djibouti, which hosts the Combined Joint Task Force–Horn of Africa, is a known hub for U.S. drone operations against Al-Qaeda in Yemen and Al-Shabab in Somalia.

Satterthwaite said the choice of Djibouti for a black site is logical not only because the country has been a strategic partner in the U.S. "war on terror" for more than a decade, but also because the country has a long history of silencing human rights advocates and journalists. "It's not hard to keep things secret there," she said.

Jason Leopold contributed reporting.

Source: america.aljazeera.com

The Mediterranean Has Become the Grave of Migrants

The wrecked hulk of a boat in which six illegal immigrants died lies on the beach near the Calabrian town of Roccella Jonica (Reuters)

Maria Margaronis

Sea, you’ve drowned the girl’s husband
And she’s young, and black doesn’t suit her
Sea and salt water, I can’t forget you
Sea, little sea, you are my only joy.
                    —Song from the Dodecanese Islands.

For those who lived by it, the sea was once everything: provider and destroyer, the link to the rest of the world and the force that fenced them in. Even now, for Mediterranean people, it quenches a deep thirst. Many Greeks surviving the interminable crisis (don’t think it’s over because it’s fallen off the world’s front page) have clung to that reliable delight: the summer days counted in swims, the ride in the sweaty bus to feel the sun on your back and the coolness at your feet, the return half-sleepy and caked with salt, the slow hush of the waves and the body’s oblivion. Because nobody is allowed to own the shoreline; though everything else might have a price, the water and light are free.

But even the sea—the ultimate commons—is now darkening. The Mediterranean has become the grave of countless migrants fleeing war and poverty: last week yet another small vessel capsized in the North Aegean, carrying people from Syria, Somalia and Eritrea. At least twenty-two were drowned, most of them women and children; some of them died trapped underwater in the cabin.

These catastrophic shipwrecks are a regular occurrence, in the Aegean and in the Mediterranean south of Italy. Last month an Amnesty International report published yet more evidence of the horrifying treatment of migrants by Greek state agents: routine illegal pushbacks across the border, sometimes by hooded men; live rounds fired at boats; beatings, threats and extreme humiliation by the coast guard and police.

Amnesty calls on the EU to sanction Greece for its violations of international law, but also acknowledges the EU’s responsibility.

Between 2011 and 2013 the European Commission gave Greece €227,576,503 to keep the migrants out, but only €19,950,00 to help with their reception. The EU uses its border states as a barrier and prison camp for the frightened, impoverished people it would rather drown than save. The Mediterranean is now the moat surrounding Fortress Europe.

Meanwhile, a disastrous new bill before the Greek parliament would allow privatisation of the seashore and remove restrictions on development, in a myopic attempt to monetize Greece’s greatest environmental and imaginative treasure.

The outcry against the bill from across the political spectrum and the frenzy of Internet organizing suggests that for many people this feels like the last straw.

Beyond the well-founded rational objections—that building concrete high-rises on hitherto empty beaches is environmentally catastrophic, economically shortsighted and politically suspect, cementing as it does the long-established back-room bonds between politicians and the construction industry, now with added foreign investment—there’s a deep resistance to what feels like the plundering of the country’s soul. Jobs and pensions and health and homes and dignity have gone, but until now there’s been a place that the hand of the market can’t reach, that everyone can go to and nobody can own.


The migrants who risk and lose their lives to cross the water couldn’t care less, of course, if the longed-for shore is lined with hotels or turtle eggs. But these two realities are part of the same thing, promoted under the sign of Europe’s economic crisis: the protection of privilege, the subordination of human life to profit, the loss of everything that we once called the commons.