Peace and Justice Post

 The dynamic of democratic, nationalist and class struggles throughout the Moslem world has set in motion a new constellation of alliances between the imperial West (US and European Union) and Islamist parties, leaders and regimes, dubbed “moderate” by US officials, propagandists and academics.

by James Petras, Veterans Today, Dec 12, 2011

This essay analyzes the changing contemporary context of imperial domination, especially the demise of longstanding client regimes.  It then examines the previous significant ties between western imperial powers and Islamist movements and regimes and the basis of ‘historical collaboration’.

The third part of the paper will outline the political circumstances in which the imperial powers embrace “moderate” Islamists in government and utilize “armed fundamentalists” in opposition to secular regimes.  We will critically analyze how “moderate” Islam is defined by the Western imperialist powers.  Is this a tactical or strategic alliance?  What are the political “trade-offs”?  What do imperialism’s neo-liberal clients and their new ‘moderate’ Muslim allies have in common and how do they differ?

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Dr  Ola Tunander, Nytt Norsk Tidsskrift/ 2011, No. 04

Sammendrag

Norske forskere spekulerte i Dagserevyen den 22. juli 2011 om et islamistisk angrep, men det viste seg snart at den ansvarlige, Anders Behring Breivik, hadde blitt inspirert av et helt annet politisk miljø. Denne artikkelen ser nærmere på gjerningsmannens inspiratorer og på hvilke aktører som kan ha hatt interesse av å bruke ham. Her framheves ikke minst voldelige nettverk og finansielle bånd som Breiviks manifest og andre vitnesbyrd peker mot.

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The City, London . . . Britain’s finance sector contributes less to the country than manufacturing. Photograph: Andy Rain/EPA

The national interest. It’s a phrase we’ve heard a lot recently. David Cameron promised to defend it before flying off last week to Brussels. Eurosceptic backbenchers urged him to fight for it. And when the summit turned into a trial separation, and the prime minister walked out at 4am, the rightwing newspapers took up the refrain: he was fighting for Britain. In the eye-burningly early hours of Friday morning, exhausted and at a loss to explain a row he plainly hadn’t expected, Cameron tried again: “I had to pursue very doggedly what was in the British national interest.”

As political justifications go, the national interest is an oddly ceremonial one. Like the dusty liqueur uncapped for a family gathering, MPs bring it out only for the big occasions. And when they do, what they mean is: forget all the usual fluff about ethics and ideas; this is important.

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We’re being lied to about the purported Iranian nuclear threat, and the war party knows it.

In ways eerily reminiscent of the 2002 buildup to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, the American people are being fed a steady diet of war propaganda about Iran and its alleged quest for a nuclear weapon.

As with Iraq’s president, Saddam Hussein, comparisons to Hitler circa 1938 abound. Max Boot, the neoconservative columnist, is just one of many propagandists working to agitate Americans into supporting a military attack on Iran. He wrote recently, “After the failure to stop Hitler and Bin Laden, among others, Westerners were said to have suffered a ‘failure of imagination.’ We are suffering that same failure today as we fail to face up to the growing threat from the Islamic Republic.”

The message is unmistakable: Time is running out. Get Iran now before it’s too late.

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By Glenn Greenwald, Salon, Dec 10, 2011

The FBI yesterday announced it has secured an indictment against Faruq Khalil Muhammad ‘Isa, a 38-year-old citizen of Iraq currently in Canada, from which the U.S. is seeking his extradition. The headline on the FBI’s Press Release tells the basic story: “Alleged Terrorist Indicted in New York for the Murder of Five American Soldiers.” The criminal complaint previously filed under seal provides the details: ‘Isa is charged with “providing material support to a terrorist conspiracy” because he allegedly supported a 2008 attack on a U.S. military base in Mosul that killed 5 American soldiers. In other words, if the U.S. invades and occupies your country, and you respond by fighting back against the invading army — the ultimate definition of a “military, not civilian target” — then you are a . . . Terrorist.

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by Stephen Lendman, opednews.com, Dec 12, 2011

Deepening Eurozone crisis spreads globally.

From inception, Eurozone monetary union was an idea doomed to fail. Nonetheless, it was engineered fraudulently to look workable.

In 1979, Europe’s Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM) was introduced as part of the European Monetary System (EMS) to propel the continent to one European currency unit (ECU).

ERM never worked. ECU is failing. At issue is duplicity, conflicts of interest, and uniting 17 dissimilar countries under rigid euro straightjacket rules. Doing so usurps their monetary and fiscal autonomy disastrously.

Nonetheless, banking giants partnered with EU, ECB and IMF Troika power decide everything. Policies require lowering living standards, sacking public workers, and selling off state assets lock, stock and barrel at fire sale prices.

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By Sybille Fuchs , wsws.org, 12 December 2011

Journalists from the Süddeutsche Zeitung and the German television magazine “Panorama” have uncovered the location of one of the chain of notorious secret torture prisons run by US Central Intelligence Agency in Europe. The prison is situated in a residential area of the Romanian capital, Bucharest.

The prison in Bucharest began operations following the closure in 2003 of a similar torture centre in Poland. The prison was located in a building housing the Romanian National Registry Office for Classified Information (Official Registrului National al Informatiilor Secrete de Stat) authority. The transport of prisoners to the prison from Bucharest’s airport was carried out in inconspicuous minibuses.

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Liu Xiaobo was jailed in 2009, while his wife Liu Xia has been under illegal house arrest© Private

“Chinese citizens are living in a straitjacket as the authorities imprison and ‘forcibly disappear’ those who speak out for political reform”

—Catherine Baber, Amnesty International’s Asia-Pacific Deputy Director, Dec 9, 2011

China must release jailed Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo along with others imprisoned for dissent, Amnesty International said today – one year after the Chinese activist won the award.

Liu Xiaobo has remained in prison since he was awarded the prize in absentia on 10 December 2010, while his wife Liu Xia has been under illegal house arrest.

Meanwhile, other government critics, such as veteran democracy activist Liu Xianbin, have also received long jail terms for speaking out on the same spurious charge of “inciting subversion of state power”.

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Tahrir Square, epicenter of the earthquake that ousted Egypt’s western-backed dictator, Husni Mubarak, is quiet – for the moment.

There are banner-wavers, speakers, and youngsters milling about. But the by now world-famous square has a forlorn, leftover look, with more street people than revolutionaries. Violence crackles like static electricity.

Heavily armed riot and security police and their armored vehicles are massed nearby. In the ancient Khan al-Khalili Bazaar, I saw vanloads of government thugs waiting to attack demonstrators. I was almost arrested when I started taking photos.

Demonstrators at Tahrir showed me cans of expended tear gas that caused some deaths and many casualties. Whether they were the usual anti-riot CS gas, or the six times stronger, carcinogenic CR that can kill or blind, I could not tell. But the canisters were marked, “Made in the USA” and everyone knew it.

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Writing from the very region that produces more clichés per square foot than any other “story” – the Middle East – I should perhaps pause before I say I have never read so much garbage, so much utter drivel, as I have about the world financial crisis.

But I will not hold my fire. It seems to me that the reporting of the collapse of capitalism has reached a new low which even the Middle East cannot surpass for sheer unadulterated obedience to the very institutions and Harvard “experts” who have helped to bring about the whole criminal disaster.

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