Demonstrations in Muslim majority lands against secular leaders who are widely seen as puppets of the West rarely have a happy outcome from the modern, western, pluralist democratic point of view - no matter how enthusiastically the ever-optimistic liberals have taken part in them. No trouble, they can always be 'eliminated' afterwards. Iran, where demonstrations began a whole year before the final overthrow, should be a textbook case.
A survey which should give liberals pause for thought before cheering demonstrations on, was conducted by the Pew Research Centre's Global Attitudes Project as recently as December 2010 (PDF here), which found that:
"At least three-quarters of Muslims in Egypt and Pakistan say they would favor making each of the following the law in their countries: stoning people who commit adultery, whippings and cutting off of hands for crimes like theft and robbery and the death penalty for those who leave the Muslim religion. Majorities of Muslims in Jordan and Nigeria also favor these ... punishments."
Showing posts with label human rights. Show all posts
Showing posts with label human rights. Show all posts
Thursday, 3 February 2011
Friday, 12 November 2010
Civilians More Dangerous than Armed Opposition
Prior to his attendance at the G20 conference in client state South Korea, US President Obama was in Indonesia proclaiming that country as “an example to the world”.
Oh really?
Not according to those less intimate with power than Barack Hussein. People like the civilian population of Indonesia.
So when Obama says: “as president, I’m here to focus not on the past, but on the future—the Comprehensive Partnership that we’re building between the United States and Indonesia” remember that actually “part of that relationship involves the renewed support of Kopassus, which has been denied since the armed forces burned then-Indonesian-occupied East Timor to the ground in 1999, killing more than 1,400 Timorese.”
Journalist Allan Nairn reports on his blog: “Secret documents have leaked from inside Kopassus, Indonesia's red berets, which say that Indonesia's US-backed security forces engage in "murder [and] abduction" and show that Kopassus targets churches in West Papua and defines civilian dissidents as the "enemy."
“The documents include a Kopassus enemies list headed by Papua's top Baptist minister and describe a covert network of surveillance, infiltration and disruption of Papuan institutions.”
In the Indonesian security forces view, "civilians are much more dangerous than armed opposition."
So if this is Obama’s idea of a good example to the world then we are in for a very nasty future. However the likelihood is that, like the membership of the G20 our leaders’ words are just doublespeak to cover a hideous reality with pretty speeches, and that what they say and do is governed by a cynicism as pure as poison, as Naomi Klein explained over the origins of the G20:
“[T]hey … wrote on the back of the manilla envelope a list of countries. And by Paul Martin’s admission, those countries were not simply the twenty top economies of the world, the biggest GDPs. They were also the countries that were most strategic to the United States. So Larry Summers would make a decision that obviously Iran wouldn’t be in, but Saudi Arabia would be. And so, Saudi Arabia is in. Thailand, it made sense to include Thailand, because it had actually been the Thai economy, which, two years earlier, had set off the Asian economic crisis, but Thailand wasn’t as important to the US strategically as Indonesia, so Indonesia was in and not Thailand. So what you see from this story is that the creation of the G20 was an absolutely top-down decision, two powerful men deciding together to do this, making, you know, an invitation-only list.”
More on the Indonesian rulers’ exemplary way with citizens and environment is to be seen on this video of Heather Rogers, author of “Green Gone Wrong”, talking about the destruction of the forest and indigenous communities in the pursuit of oil-palm for agrofuels.
And I know I’m not the only one smelling a rat over international aid being ring-fenced. Don’t try and kid us this is from the goodness of our leaders hearts (do they have any of either?) Overseas ‘aid’, especially post-911, is all about covering the securocrats as they keep on helping themselves in a rapidly shrinking world where ‘national security’ equates to little more than their own selfish interests. Like the absolutists they replaced with their bourgeois revolutions, l’etat c’est moi is their cry.
Oh really?
Not according to those less intimate with power than Barack Hussein. People like the civilian population of Indonesia.
So when Obama says: “as president, I’m here to focus not on the past, but on the future—the Comprehensive Partnership that we’re building between the United States and Indonesia” remember that actually “part of that relationship involves the renewed support of Kopassus, which has been denied since the armed forces burned then-Indonesian-occupied East Timor to the ground in 1999, killing more than 1,400 Timorese.”
Journalist Allan Nairn reports on his blog: “Secret documents have leaked from inside Kopassus, Indonesia's red berets, which say that Indonesia's US-backed security forces engage in "murder [and] abduction" and show that Kopassus targets churches in West Papua and defines civilian dissidents as the "enemy."
“The documents include a Kopassus enemies list headed by Papua's top Baptist minister and describe a covert network of surveillance, infiltration and disruption of Papuan institutions.”
In the Indonesian security forces view, "civilians are much more dangerous than armed opposition."
So if this is Obama’s idea of a good example to the world then we are in for a very nasty future. However the likelihood is that, like the membership of the G20 our leaders’ words are just doublespeak to cover a hideous reality with pretty speeches, and that what they say and do is governed by a cynicism as pure as poison, as Naomi Klein explained over the origins of the G20:
“[T]hey … wrote on the back of the manilla envelope a list of countries. And by Paul Martin’s admission, those countries were not simply the twenty top economies of the world, the biggest GDPs. They were also the countries that were most strategic to the United States. So Larry Summers would make a decision that obviously Iran wouldn’t be in, but Saudi Arabia would be. And so, Saudi Arabia is in. Thailand, it made sense to include Thailand, because it had actually been the Thai economy, which, two years earlier, had set off the Asian economic crisis, but Thailand wasn’t as important to the US strategically as Indonesia, so Indonesia was in and not Thailand. So what you see from this story is that the creation of the G20 was an absolutely top-down decision, two powerful men deciding together to do this, making, you know, an invitation-only list.”
More on the Indonesian rulers’ exemplary way with citizens and environment is to be seen on this video of Heather Rogers, author of “Green Gone Wrong”, talking about the destruction of the forest and indigenous communities in the pursuit of oil-palm for agrofuels.
And I know I’m not the only one smelling a rat over international aid being ring-fenced. Don’t try and kid us this is from the goodness of our leaders hearts (do they have any of either?) Overseas ‘aid’, especially post-911, is all about covering the securocrats as they keep on helping themselves in a rapidly shrinking world where ‘national security’ equates to little more than their own selfish interests. Like the absolutists they replaced with their bourgeois revolutions, l’etat c’est moi is their cry.
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