SULPHUR SMELLS IN A PEACE PRIZE CEREMONY –
R Arun Kumar
20-12-2009 | By: | In: Environment
 
The speech delivered by Barack Obama, president of US while receiving his Nobel Peace Prize has attracted a lot of attention. Analysts termed it as ‘full of nuances’, combining ‘realism with idealism’ and ‘representing true American character’. Some had praised the speech as an example of an ‘evolving philosopher-statesman Obama’, tracing the influence of Reinhold Niebuhr, Obama’s “favourite philosopher”. Some termed it as the ‘most presidential’ of all his speeches and stated that “it marked the moment when Obama became a leader, defined as an individual who chooses the hard road because he believes it is the right one”.

His speech earned him praise from even conservatives, his arch-enemies in the US. On the other hand, it had disappointed his many supporters – that rainbow coalition that had worked for his victory in the presidential election. He lost quite a number of friends rather than earning them through this speech.

Obama used the opportunity to answer his critics who had questioned the awarding of Nobel Peace prize to him. He characterised the war the United States is waging in Afghanistan as a ‘just war’ and thus justify his decision to send additional troops.

Obama reiterated the imperial logic stating, “America has never fought a war against a democracy, and our closest friends are governments that protect the rights of their citizens”, meaning that all the countries where they had military interventions are not democracies. He continues “neither America’s interests — nor the world’s — are served by the denial of human aspirations… America will always be a voice for those aspirations that are universal”. According to his logic, US can invade Venezuela, as according to them it is an undemocratic country. Its closest friends are Israel Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, all known for their protection of ‘citizen’s rights’!

Obama seems to think “there is no history before me and after me, the deluge”. Or, he is rather poor in history. As the 44th President of the US and one who constantly evokes ‘American character’, he should not only be aware of its history but should also be able to express his interpretation of the events. He even seems not to have read Eduardo Galeano’s ‘Open Veins of Latin America’, gifted to him by Hugo Chavez or his ‘class interests’ prevent him from digesting its contents. His vision does not extend further than the 9/11 of 2001, rather, he is refusing to see the other 9/11 of 1973. On that day, Salvador Allende, democratically elected President of Chile was overthrown by the US inspired coup and he had to pay his “loyalty to the people” with his life. If Obama feels that this is not an ‘attack on democracy’, it would be nothing short of an affront on the people of Chile.

Similarly in Guatemala, Dominican Republic, Grenada, Haiti, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Brazil and many such countries of Latin America, elected democracies were toppled and dictatorships installed with the overt or covert involvement of the US military. US had pumped and is still pumping millions of dollars to topple the governments in the name of ‘regime change’ and for the ‘establishment of democracy’.

Obama cannot be oblivious of US role in Cuba. Hundreds of attempts were made on the life of Fidel Castro – a fact accepted by the CIA itself. Innumerable terrorist plots were hatched to topple the Cuban government, all with the connivance of the US government agencies. Posada Carlos, a notorious terrorist involved in many such plots is enjoying amnesty granted by the US.

It is during Obama’s presidency that US has once again voted against the UN resolution to lift the inhuman economic blockade imposed on Cuba. It is carrying out ‘economic warfare’ over Cuba, in order to ’snuff its life out’. Today, with these actions, it is US that stands isolated in the region and not Cuba, as was demonstrated to Obama during the OAS summit. The people of the region had resoundingly spoken, “the ‘interests of the US’ are invariably at variance with ours”.

Obama’s language reminds us of the colonial language – ‘the noble coloniser’, ‘civilisation mission’ ‘teaching values of democracy’ etc. There is no ‘change’ that Obama had ushered, as similar words were uttered by many US presidents before him.

On the question of human rights he said, “Promotion of human rights cannot be about exhortation alone”. Perhaps, he forgot that US has the largest incarcerated population and the highest per capita incarceration rate in the world. The crime of rape has the lowest arrest, prosecution and convictions rates. It has thousands of people languishing in jails without trail. Even the promise of closing the most notorious Guantanamo prison made by Obama is yet to materialise and apart from it, US maintains many secret CIA prisons across the world. So Obama, better not just “exhort”.

Obama claims, “The world must remember that it was not simply international institutions – not just treaties and declarations – that brought stability to a post-World War II world. The United States of America has helped underwrite global security for more than six decades with the blood of our citizens and the strength of our arms”. He continues, “The sacrifice of the US armed forces” was “not because we seek to impose our will. We have done so out of enlightened self-interest”. Nothing can be more audacious than this.

The US wanted ‘regime changes’ because its ’self-interest’ was so ‘enlightened’ than that of the respective peoples of that countries. It had caused such bloodshed and mayhem in Vietnam; with an ‘enlightened self-interest’, which even the citizens of US too didn’t understand, leave alone that of Vietnam and the world over.

Obama also wants us to forget facts that had led to the growth of Al-Qaeda and Taliban. It is the CIA that had nurtured this Frankenstein. It is with ‘enlightened self-interest’ that the US had armed and encouraged Israel. And of course, Israel’s attack on Gaza, Lebanon, Syria had enhanced ‘global security’. How secure US had made the world for our ‘children and grandchildren’ can be understood just by looking at Iraq, Somalia, Yemen, Bosnia and the list goes on. And hear this, “terrible wars have been fought…But there has been no Third World War”. Thank you, Mr President!

A little later he promises to the world that “America’s commitment to global security will never waver” and in a world where ‘threats’ are becoming more ‘complex’, as “America cannot act alone” he states “that’s why NATO continues to be indispensable”. He goes further and pats his own shoulders stating that they are “not makers of war” but “wagers of peace”. The role of UN in peacekeeping comes after NATO in Obama’s speech. This illustrates the trust Obama places on the UN – ‘an architecture’ that “America led the world in constructing to keep the peace”.

NATO has far exceeded its brief of being an alliance of the cold war era. With the end of cold war this alliance too should have seen a burial. Instead, what is happening is the steady expansion of the NATO. For the US, acting in ‘alliance with international community’ is just an excuse to involve NATO in military conflicts and does not in anyway mean the involvement of the UN.

Ironically the president of the Nobel Prize committee while introducing Obama has stated that under Obama’s presidency, “USA is now paying its bills to the UN” and “acceding to important conventions”. According to official UN reports “As of May 31, 2009, members’ arrears to the Regular Budget topped $1282 million, of which the United States alone owed $857 million”. And as for its ‘acceding to important conventions’ the verdict would be out from Copenhagen in a few more days. The pointers indicate that US would not respect world opinion even on climate change.

Obama also keeps with the US the right to interfere in the internal affairs of any country, in order to “prevent the slaughter of civilians by their own government, or to stop a civil war whose violence and suffering can engulf an entire region”. This is indeed far reaching and refuses to see that there are people in the country and it is their sovereign right to elect, defend or fight the government of their land. If the elected government oppresses the people of that land, it is for the people there to fight against this oppression and people outside can express their solidarity to their struggle. The entire history of Latin America is replete with anecdotes of US interventions in the internal affairs of those countries and even today in spite of the rhetoric and open posturing, the role of US in the coup against Zelaya in Honduras is not ruled out. Moreover, the very purpose of starting seven military bases in Colombia encircling Venezuela and Bolivia is also intended to threaten the democratically elected governments of these countries.

Now, to his ‘just war’ in Afghanistan. We should remember that more Predator drone strikes were carried out under his one year presidency than during the eight years of Bush presidency.

Two months before he had delivered his speech in Oslo, one of the ‘outstanding officers’ of the US army and administration in Afghanistan, Matthew Hoh has resigned from service. His four-page resignation letter thoroughly refutes Obama. He clearly states “my resignation is based not upon how we are pursuing this war, but why and to what end” (emphasis added). Hoh said that he had resigned to call upon the people to question their congressmen, “Listen, I don’t think this is right”. He writes, “the insurgency appeared to have arrived in strength only after the Americans did” and that the insurgency “is fed by what is perceived by the Pashtun people as a continued and sustained assault, going back centuries, on Pashtun land, culture, traditions and religion by internal and external enemies. The US and NATO presence in Pashtun valleys and villages, as well as Afghan army and police units that are led and composed of non-Pashtun soldiers and police, provide an occupation force against which the insurgency is justified”. Open your eyes and ears Obama, it is wrong for the US to be there in Afghanistan, leave that country immediately.

It is here worth recalling what Senator Obama had said way back in 2002. “Let’s finish the fight with Bin Laden and Al Qaeda, through effective, coordinated intelligence, and a shutting down of the financial networks that support terrorism, and a homeland security program that involves more than colour-coded warnings”(emphasis added). But alas he was then not President Obama.

All the good intentions he expresses like “we respect the unique culture and traditions of different countries”, “ true peace is not just freedom from fear, but freedom from want”, “it is also true that security does not exist where human beings do not have access to enough food, or clean water, or the medicine and shelter they need to survive. It does not exist where children can’t aspire to a decent education or a job that supports a family” do not appear to carry enough conviction.

It is the US which is primarily responsible for depriving majority of people of the world their access to ‘enough food, clean water, medicine and shelter’ through the conditions imposed on the third world countries by the IMF and World Bank. It is the US that is primarily responsible for trampling upon the unique culture and traditions of various sections of people world over and creating discontent amongst those people. As far as Obama’s actions as president for the past one year are concerned, he did not initiate any measures to correct these mistakes.

We have to indeed agree with Obama when he says “We make mistakes, and fall victim to the temptations of pride, and power, and sometimes evil. Even those of us with the best of intentions will at times fail to right the wrongs before us”. Obama should realise that what he is doing in Afghanistan, Latin America and West Asia is a terrible and costly mistake. The Oslo speech is just an elaboration of his “I am not against all wars” idea. It only acted as an opener for those who harboured illusions on Obama’s presidency to usher in a real, radical change in world affairs.

Obama’s goal might not be to “win awards and popularity contests”, but now that he was given the Peace prize; he should strive to earn it. For getting a positive evaluation from history.

Nabbing two Atlanta youths, FBI smashes a jihadi web
Vinay Kumar

NEW DELHI, December 20, 2009
Even as the Headley-Rana case, linked to 26/11, is being probed in India and the U.S., the Federal Bureau of Investigation has smashed a terror network which was trying to strike root in the U.S., where two American youths had been lured into the “jihadi” web and who had travelled to Pakistan and Bangladesh.

Last week, the two youths were sentenced to prison terms by a U.S. court. The FBI posted the details of the case and its probe on its website. Acknowledging that it was a tip from a foreign intelligence partner that set the case in motion, the FBI said it learnt in the summer of 2005 that a central player in a terrorism investigation in another country was in e-mail contact with someone in the Atlanta area.

Armed with court orders, the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force in Atlanta tracked down that person, who turned out to be 19-year-old Ehsanul Sadequee. He was also exchanging regular e-mails with a 20-year-old Georgia Tech student, Syed Haris Ahmed.

“Northern Exposure”

“Initially, our investigation — codenamed “Northern Exposure”—was focussed on finding out what the two young men were up to and why Sadequee was trading e-mails with a terrorism suspect. We began both electronic and physical surveillance on each one and began tracking their financial and travel patterns with the help of partner agencies in the U.S.” The FBI team found that both Sadequee and Ahmed were in touch with terror suspects in nearly a dozen nations. A great deal of this contact was via the Internet.

The probe revealed that Sadequee and Ahmed ended up casing U.S. targets, supporting and sharing information with terrorists around the globe, and travelling overseas to act on their desire to wage a violent jihad. Some of FBI’s intelligence came from its overseas partners, who discovered links from their terror suspects to Sadequee and Ahmed. The FBI shared its intelligence on terror suspects uncovered during its investigation of the two Atlanta extremists.

“In March 2006, we approached Ahmed to see if he would cooperate in the case. Though he tried to deny his illegal activities, Ahmed made incriminating statements and secretly contacted Sadequee to warn him of our investigation. We arrested Ahmed soon after, and Sadequee was arrested in Bangladesh the following month.” Both were convicted in separate trials this year.

Global cooperation in probe

The FBI said the investigation had a far broader and more significant outcome: thanks to unprecedented global cooperation, governments in nearly a dozen nations have arrested more than 40 individuals and disrupted an untold number of terror plots.

“Sadequee and Ahmed never pulled a trigger or set off a bomb, but they were making plans and working with known terrorists worldwide,” said Atlanta special agent in-charge Gregory Jones. “By using an intelligence-driven approach, we not only stopped these guys from doing harm, we took out a larger web of extremists.”

The terror network was smashed by a determined group of law enforcement and intelligence agencies from around the world working in unison to share information, compare evidence, and disrupt terror plots.

The FBI said the two middle-class boys, barely out of high school, lived seemingly normal lives in and around Atlanta while secretly donning the mantle of violent jihad, and in the space of a year went from being extremist wannabes to trusted brothers of terror operatives across the globe.
When Sadequee and Ahmed met at a midtown Atlanta mosque, neither was yet 21. Ahmed, who was born in Pakistan and who moved to the U.S. at about 12, was a mechanical engineering student at Georgia Tech. Sadequee, a Bangladeshi-American born in Virginia, was working in an Atlanta non-profit organisation while living at home with his mother and siblings in the suburb of Roswell.

Interest in violent jihad

The two soon became friends, finding that they shared a similar interest: violent jihad. They started spending hours online — chatting with each other, watching terrorist recruitment videos, and meeting like-minded extremists.

But they clearly wanted to do more than just stand on the sidelines. Fuelled by their growing connections in cyberspace, Sadequee and Ahmed made a series of journeys that drew them further and further into a web of terror. In April 2005, they drove a pickup truck to the nation’s capital and cased a series of landmarks — including the Capitol and the Pentagon — making more than 60 short video clips to help establish their extremist credentials. Sadequee sent several clips to Younis Tsouli — aka “Irhabi007” (“Terrorist 007” in Arabic), an al-Qaeda webmaster, recruiter and propagandist — and to Aabid Hussein Khan, a facilitator for two Pakistan-based terrorist groups. Both Tsouli and Khan have since been convicted of terror offences in the United Kingdom. That summer, Ahmed and Sadequee took separate trips overseas. Ahmed went to Pakistan, meeting with Khan and asking him to attend a training camp and engage in jihad (he was talked out of it by his family). Sadequee was off to Bangladesh, where he joined Tsouli and a Swedish extremist, Mirsad Bektasevic, to form a violent jihadist organisation known as “Al-Qaeda in Northern Europe.” In October, just a few days after being in contact with Sadequee, Bektasevic, armed to the teeth, was arrested in Sarajevo. He was later convicted of terrorism.

What Sadequee and Ahmed didn’t know was that for some time, they had been tracked by the FBI and its partners.

“With their words and their actions, these defendants supported the wrongheaded but very dangerous idea that armed violence aimed at American interests will force our government and our people to change our policies. That is terrorism, and it will not succeed,” said Sally Quillian Yates, acting U.S. Attorney for the northern district of Georgia.

David Kris, Assistant Attorney-General for National Security, said: “This case serves as another reminder of the global nature of the terrorism threat and the importance of international and domestic cooperation in addressing it. These defendants, who conducted surveillance of potential terror targets at home and pursued terrorist training overseas, were part of an online network that connected extremists in North America, Europe and South Asia.”

The judge sentenced Sadequee to 17 years in prison, to be followed by 30 years of supervised release. Ahmed was given 13 years in prison, also to be followed by 30 years of supervised release.

The two cased U.S. targets including the Capitol and Pentagon

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