Below is Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah's speech of Nov. 14, the day after the Paris attacks and two days after the Beirut attacks. It's translated by Rania Masri @rania_masri and posted on her facebook page.] I didn't see any report of it in the U.S. media and only learned about it through As'ad AbuKhalil's "Angry Arab" blog.
A few passages bear particular note: "First: We condemn the attacks by ISIS in France. The people in this region that have suffered under the earthquake of ISIS -- including Lebanon -- are the most empathetic to the suffering that has befallen the French people yesterday. We express our empathy and our solidarity with all who have suffered under ISIS. ...
"All that I have said about our Palestinian brothers also applies to our Syrian brothers in Lebanon. If one of the bombers is Syrian, that gives no one any excuse to attack Syrian refugees. We have been responsible in this regard as well, but it bodes repeating. many of the refugees support us politically, and others are opposed to the regime and are opposed to ISIS also. Yes, of course, there are some among the refugees who may support ISIS. We cannot generalize against all the Syrian refugees -- such is an ethical and religious responsibility...
Here's the speech with some very brief comments from Rania:
First: We condemn the attacks by ISIS in France. The people in this region that have suffered under the earthquake of ISIS - including Lebanon - are the most empathetic to the suffering that has befallen the French people yesterday. We express our empathy and our solidarity with all who have suffered under ISIS
"Equally important, and this is a point that must be made – countries in the region like Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, UAE – countries of enormous wealth and resources – have contributed far too little in the fight against ISIS. That must change. King Abdallah [of Jordan] is absolutely right when he says that that the Muslim nations must lead the fight against ISIS, and that includes some of the most wealthy and powerful nations in the region, who, up to this point have done far too little.
"Saudi Arabia has the 3rd largest defense budget in the world, yet instead of fighting ISIS they have focused more on a campaign to oust Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen. Kuwait, a country whose ruling family was restored to power by U.S. troops after the first Gulf War, has been a well-known source of financing for ISIS and other violent extremists. It has been reported that Qatar will spend $200 billion on the 2022 World Cup, including the construction of an enormous number of facilities to host that event – $200 billion on hosting a soccer event, yet very little to fight against ISIS. Worse still, it has been widely reported that the government has not been vigilant in stemming the flow of terrorist financing, and that Qatari individuals and organizations funnel money to some of the most extreme terrorist groups, including al Nusra and ISIS." [emphasis added]
I won't rebut point for point what she writes, because I think it will continue to fuel the CrossTalk™ that began on the program -- she continues to alternate between talking about people "capable of questioning U.S. policy motives" on the one hand and then on the other referring to U.S. government policy as "blunders" and having "obvious flaws" -- tepid crits from my point of view.
I think that's a simplification of what I was saying, but the fact is that in the first segment of the program, at 6:30, I stated about U.S. government policy: "If you can't have subservient state -- and I think that's a difficult thing to do in countries like Libya, like Syria, like even Iraq under the circumstances -- then a failed state is a relatively positive outcome. That you have the Saudi ally/client, whatever you want to call it, being ever more dominant in the Middle East. You have Israel having evermore carte blanche in the Middle East. You have the alliance between Iran, Syria and Hezbollah being hit at its weakest point." [video]
I can understand her not having quite heard this given the CrossTalk™ on the program, I found it difficult to communicate under the circumstances as well, but she really should be able to have figured it out by watching the program after the fact. She'd then be free to respond to the substance.
I've gotten a number of emails from folks about the substance of my remarks and hope to write a longer piece on that.
Too bad this infernal new locomotive technology interfered with the audio...
But they are often not even transcribed, thus programs, including those from NPR and Democracy Now, become less accountable. This means in some respects, there's no record of the most powerful thing these outlets broadcast.
Two examples:
Wednesday morning (Oct. 28) -- before officer Ben Fields was fired -- NPR Morning Edition said at top of the hour about the video: "It seems to show a white officer slamming a black student to the floor." "Seems." A segment was aired later in the hour without the word "seems" -- and is available and transcribed online, but I'm unable to find the header online in any form, even on Nexis.
Similarly, with Democracy Now, on Monday's program (Oct. 26), at the top of the show, before a strong program featuring Charles Glass, host Amy Goodman talked about "international leaders meet in Vienna to find a solution to the conflict" in Syria. As if that's what the government representatives are clearly doing regarding Syria: trying to "find a solution to the conflict" -- when there's substantial evidence they've avoided that and have instead been pursuing their various geostrategic and political agendas. The segment with Glass is transcribed, the header isn't, though it is in video form, since Democracy Now does post entire programs, unlike NPR's Morning Edition.
I know Dimitri as a expert on Greece, but he's a partner at a Canadian corporate law firm and ran for a seat in the Canadian election with the Green Party.
He summarized the quandary of running as a third party quite well:
Well you know, I did knock on a lot the doors. I had a lot of interactions with voters through a variety of methods, including canvasing, but also online debates, other campaign events, and I was pummeled in the sentiment that we had to do whatever it takes to get rid of the Harper government. I would say that you know, some 60-65 percent of the people I spoke to were intensely hostile to the Harper government and that was their singular objective, and the strategic voting argument had a great deal of appeal to them. You know, if I had a dollar for every time I heard "I want to vote Green, but I want to beat Harper more" I would be richer than Bill Gates. I mean, it was something that was a constant refrain in the campaign, and you know, I think it's reflected in the results. The Liberal candidate won handily in her riding, the incumbent Ministry of Science Ed Holder after two terms has been soundly defeated.
The NDP candidate was a distant third, and I did not manage to improve substantially on our party's last result in the 2011 elections with 2.7 percent. I'm currently standing at about 3 percent with about 82 percent of the votes counted. so it was really the only way to describe it was a toxic environment for which a small party to operate in, this environment in which you have a "first-past-the-post" system and intense hostility to the conservative incumbent government, and everybody looking to the most viable option to defeat that government.
Unfortunately, most discussions by progressives, mirrored by discussions among conservatives, debate simply working within or outside either of the establishment parties without a real strategy.
Both these positions are wrong. The people saying you have to work with the Democratic party are entering a situation where they have no leverage -- they will end up backing whoever the nominee is and have little leverage over that person.
The ironic solution, in my view, is for disenchanted Democrats to team up with disenchanted Republicans so the bases have a chance at actually breaking down the two party system and actual victory -- and, regardless, some leverage over the party apparatus.
Just prior to the news conference this morning, Democracy Now was good enough to have Norman Solomon (my boss) and Holly Sterling on the program.
The problem is how Democracy Now introed -- and therefore, framed -- the segment: "Sterling is serving a three-and-a-half-year sentence for leaking classified information to New York Times reporter James Risen about a failed U.S. effort to undermine Iran’s nuclear program. Risen later exposed how the risky operation could have actually aided the Iranian nuclear program."
I had some suspicions along these lines, and had been cautioning people from accepting the keystone kop narrative without definitive evidence, but David Swanson is the person who really moved the ball on this. His piece “In Convicting Jeff Sterling, CIA Revealed More Than It Accused Him of Revealing,” which analyzes a secret cable that was made public in the course of the Sterling trial. Swanson writes: “During the course of Sterling’s trial, the CIA itself made public a bigger story than the one it pinned on Sterling. The CIA revealed, unintentionally no doubt, that just after the nuclear weapons plans had been dropped off for the Iranians, the CIA had proposed to the same asset that he next approach the Iraqi government for the same purpose.”
Swanson wrote back in January: “CIA on Trial in Virginia for Planting Nuke Evidence in Iran,” which states: “The stated motivation for Operation Merlin is patent nonsense that cannot be explained by any level of incompetence or bureaucratic dysfunction or group think.
“Here’s another explanation of both Operation Merlin and of the defensiveness of the prosecution and its witnesses … at the prosecution of Jeffrey Sterling which is thus far failing to prosecute Jeffrey Sterling. This was an effort to plant nuke plans on Iran.” (I featured David and former CIA analyst Ray McGovern -- and noted some interesting insights from Marcy Wheeler in "Operation Merlin: Did CIA Seek to “Plant a Nuclear Gun” on Iran and Iraq?"