Thursday, June 26, 2014
Empowering HBCUs
An International NGO in Consultative Status with the United Nations
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ISSUES TO BE ADDRESSED
and African American institutions
Sponsored by:
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Watching the World Destroy Itself
Published on Thursday, June 26, 2014 by Common Dreams
Watching the World Destroy Itself
The video opens with a few bars of adrenalin-pumping music. We see a topsy-turvy camera angle, sky, trees, darkness, then a staccato pop pop pop that blends rhythmically with the music, but of course it’s gunfire, lots of gunfire, followed by a few urgent words in Arabic, then English. “Down here! Down here!”
(Photo: Wikimedia Creative Commons / AustralianMelodrama)
(Photo: Wikimedia Creative Commons / AustralianMelodrama)
This chaotic excitement is Iraq, the evening’s International Hot Spot, brought to us by ABC. It’s the news, but it’s also reality TV and big league sports, rolled into an entertainment package of shocking cluelessness. OMG, ISIS is on the move. It’s winning. Stay tuned!
Iraq, Iraq. This is a disaster stamped “made in USA.” Worse than that. It’s a bleeding stump of a nation that we destroyed in our pursuit of empire, at the cost of multi-trillions of dollars, hundreds of thousands or perhaps a million Iraqi lives, and spiritual and physical damage to American troops so profound a new phrase had to be coined: moral injury. And now, our official, moneyed media serve up what’s left of Iraq to us as geopolitical entertainment: the moderates (our guys, sort of) vs. the insurgents. Go, U.S.-trained troops! Stand tough and die for American interests, OK?
Of course, as the Washington Post reported earlier this month: “Fighters with the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), an al-Qaeda offshoot, overran the western bank of the city (of Mosul) overnight after U.S.-trained Iraqi soldiers and police officers abandoned their posts, in some instances discarding their uniforms as they sought to escape the advance of the militants.”
This is our terrible baby, but hear the words of another Washington Post story:
“For both sides,” write Gregg Jaffe and Kevin Maurer, referring to sides within the U.S. military, “the debate over who lost Iraq remains raw and emotional. Many of today’s military officers still carry fresh memories of friends killed in battle.”
They add, however: “Iraq and the Iraqi people remain something of an abstraction. For much of the war, U.S. troops patrolled Iraq’s cities in lumbering armored vehicles and lived on heavily fortified bases surrounded by blast walls and barbed wire.”
That line — “Iraq and the Iraqi people remain something of an abstraction” — was quoted recently by former CIA analyst (and current member of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity) Ray McGovern in an extraordinary essay that cries out — stop! — to American militarism and American indifference. We can’t continue to play this game. We can no longer not know that we murder children, that we murder innocent people with lives to lead, in our pursuit of oil and strategic advantage and war and empire: in our pursuit of militarized “peace.”
The debate about the current civil war in Iraq is not about how many troops we should send into the fray, or how many drones or missiles; nor is it about whether President Obama should have withdrawn most of the U.S. military presence from Iraq and terminated the occupation at the end of 2011; nor is it, good Lord, about whether we won or lost the war (“. . . just a few years ago,” wrote Jaffe and Maurer, the war “seemed on the brink of going down in history as a success”).
The debate is about whether or not, at long last, enough people in this country and on this planet are sick to death of war and want to deal with human conflict in a different way.
“As we can see from simply looking at a flower, nature knows how to organize itself,” Marianne Williamson wrote recently. “And this same force would organize human affairs if we would allow it to. This allowance occurs whenever we place our minds in correct alignment with the laws of the universe — through prayer, meditation, forgiveness and compassion. Until we do this, we will continue to manifest a world that destroys rather than heals itself. Iraq is a perfect example.”
We can try to align ourselves with “the natural intelligence of the universe” — the intelligence of life and healing — or we can remain stuck in simplistic certainty, aggression and an impulse to dominate.
“We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality.”
These, of course, are the immortal words of Karl Rove, who uttered them anonymously a dozen years ago to journalist Ron Suskind. As Tom Engelhardt points out, the folly of this extraordinary hubris — this smirking desire to play God — has not been left to historians of the future to uncover. The Bush administration’s all-out war on evil, inherited and modified, but continued, by the Obama administration, has been a total disaster almost from the moment W stepped onto the flight deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln and announced to the world: “mission accomplished.” The reality these war criminals created has been global destabilization and perpetual war. They’ve manifested a world hell-bent on destroying itself.
The mainstream media cover bits and pieces of the destruction as pumped-up entertainment, with the Iraqis and everyone else trapped in the planet’s various International Hot Spots remaining abstractions and curiosities. This is journalistic malfeasance of the highest order. And it couldn’t be more at odds with the natural intelligence of the universe.
© 2014 Tribune Content Agency, Inc.
Muslim News: NO2ISIS
Battle of social media between ISIS and #NO2ISIS campaign goes viral
25th Jun 2014
Sara Asaria, London (The Muslim News)
A propaganda war is escalating across the social media between members of the ISIS and a growing number of its opponents, who are publicly countering the terrorist organization through a successful #NO2ISIS campaign.
ISIS, formally an insular group, based in Syria and now Iraq, is now using the social media to create a global platform and have instigated a viral recruitment strategy or ‘one billion campaign’ for an Islamist state.
ISIS is employing online platforms such as Facebook Twitter, YouTube and Instagram to recruit new members, promote their terrorist activity via a live stream updates and instil fear amongst Iraqi citizens. The sophisticated infiltration of online platforms, by ISIS members and its supporters, is an attempt to carry out ISIS’s long-term aims, as described in their annual report: to eclipse Al Qa’ida, achieve global support and secure funding.
The #NO2ISIS campaign has been created as a direct response to this online terrorist strategy.
Director of Ahlul Bayt TV, Amir Taki, and analyst and researcher on Iraq, Sajad Jiyad, initiated the spread of the hashtag #NO2ISIS across online platforms, on Tuesday June 17. This hashtag reached instant virality, with over 100,000 shares in under 4 days and has led to the co-ordination of Anti-ISIS activity across the globe, from a protest outside of the White House, to a demonstration outside the BBC headquarters in London and a demonstration outside Australia’s Parliament in Melbourne.
Global participants of the #NO2ISIS Campaign are showing their support online, via Instagram, with #NO2ISIS Selfies, with YouTube videos and across Twitter, with the creation of other connective hashtags including #iraqisunitedagainstterror, #yestoiraq, #PrayforIraq and #stop_terror_on_twitter.
Sajad Jiyad told The Muslim News that the aim of the #NO2ISIS hashtag is to “Unite all groups against a particular enemy and prevent the danger of their spread and influence”.
The campaign is capitalizing on the sharing potential of social media to provide a more accurate and alternative account of the Iraqi conflict than that of the mainstream media: “We are countering the mainstream propaganda’s message that this is a sectarian conflict. We want to make it clear that this is not a struggle of Sunnis versus Shias, the Iraqi public are all united together against the extreme organisation, ISIS,” Jiyad said.
One of the most retweeted messages of the campaign, “This is not a Shia-Sunni War…#NO2ISIS” can be found on a twitter account attributed to Iran’s Ayatullah Seyed Ali Khamenei.
Jiyad attributes the success of this global citizen resistance project, to the “simple message” being put forward and the ease of fast communication, afforded by social media: “Now even people who would not normally engage with politics are taking part in this positive and unifying campaign for the Iraqi people and international supports.”
However, he is sceptical that the substantial online presence of this campaign will have any direct influence over foreign policy of countries: “We remain independent from the Iraqi government in our efforts against ISIS. As for the UK and US governments, they have been directly and indirectly supporting ISIS for some time now, from failing to act when they learnt that the Turkish Government was funding the organisation, to US forces training ISIS fighters in Syria”.
Jiyad further criticized the lack of official response from Twitter and Facebook, who “don’t seem to do much” in the way of preventing the ISIS domination of social media: “Our followers are reporting ISIS accounts, but there is only so much we can do”.
The #NO2ISIS campaign is competing against the numerous Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube accounts that individual ISIS members are constantly updating with details of operations, including the number of bombings, suicide missions and assassinations at the hands of the organisation.
A large number of pro-ISIS tweets originate in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and other Gulf countries, from where much of the funding is allegedly sourced.
ISIS supporters have gone one step further in sending direct messages to Muslims living in the West, via Twitter and by using the trending twitter hashtags include #Baghdad_is_liberated and #Iraq_is_ liberated and #AllEyesOnISIS, to connect followers.
The Twitter accounts @alfurqan2013 and @hashtag_isis are among those that post pictures of ISIS torturing and executing prisoners and other highly graphic images. Photoshop is used to enhance violent images.
In an attempt to draw further attention to the campaign and gather support, many ISIS supporters are attaching world cup related hashtags to these tweets, such as #Brazil2014 and #ENG.
Tweets concerning ISIS seizures across Syria similarly employ hashtags relating to the English Premier league clubs, such as #MUFC #WHUFC, and #THFC.
More worrying, is the significant virality of the official ISIS videos, being shared via international mainstream media sources and social media platforms. These high-definition calls for appeal show ISIS members, welcoming supporters in England, Tunisia, Algeria, Libya, Egypt, through their respective languages, to join ISIS forces in Iraq.
The online ISIS recruitment campaign also involves an official theme song, ‘Let’s go for Jihad’, produced by AlHayat Media Centre and a promotional image outlining several “duties” for ISIS supporters. The duties include tweeting “about the lies that enemies try to pin on ISIS” and to “tweet the talks of Sheikh Al Baghdadi”, an ISIS chief. The image also asks supporters to post translations of their messages in English.
An hour long ISIS video, “The Clanging of the Swords” showcases killings, roadside bombings and other acts of terror for which ISIS has claimed credit. Propaganda videos of ISIS’ human rights’ work in Rakka, Syria, have also been released. The official ISIS free mobile ‘app’ ‘The Dawn of Glad Tidings’, which provided a live stream of ISIS activities has since been removed from the ‘Google Play store’, but is being promoted by several major ISIS twitter accounts, including @Minbar_s and @mgholl112.
The overall sophisticated approach of the ISIS viral recruitment strategy confirms a 2012 study by Gabriel Weiman, from the University of Haifa, which found that nearly 90% of organized terrorism on the internet now takes place via social media.
The ISIS mini-films mark a strong contrast from the amateurish quality of videos produced Al-Qa’ida in the early 2000s, which were shot from remote locations, with care given to protect the anonymity of participants. In contrast, British ISIS fighters in the ISIS mini-films have made little or no effort to conceal their identities.
Following restricted access to conventional social media platforms in Iraq, online campaigners on both sides are increasingly turning to Whisper, a mobile application that allows members to post anonymous messages. Whisper usage in Iran has more than doubled, since June 12.
Ajamu Baraka on Iraq, Libya, Syria--Why African Americans should oppose U.S. intervention in Africa
Iraq, Libya, Syria: Three reasons African Americans should oppose U.S. intervention in Africa
by BAR editor and columnist Ajamu Baraka
As the U.S. tightens its military grip on Africa, “it is absolutely imperative that we embark on a massive educational campaign with our folks that will expose the real intentions of the U.S. on the continent and worldwide.” There is nothing “humanitarian” about U.S. intentions. “The plan for Africa is being written in the blood of the people in Iraq, Syria and Libya.”
“Obama’s deployment as the smiling face of imperial power has had a devastating impact.”
Mass slaughter, rape, torture, pillage, perpetual war, cultural degradation, creating social divisions, psychological manipulation – the essential tools employed by Western powers to establish their 522-year domination over many of the peoples of the world – are still being used with frightening efficiency and effect to maintain that dominance.
Just over the last decade and a half the orgy of violence unleashed by the U.S. and the gangster states of NATO in the name of promoting democracy and the racist absurdity of a “responsibility to protect” has been incalculable. Masked by the oxymoronic language that connects the White West with humanitarianism, the U.S. and its NATO allies have been on a killing spree in more than a dozen countries. President Obama has conducted imperialism’s version of a drive-by shooting with his drone warfare where wedding parties, funerals and even family gatherings are subject to being blown to bits just because the U.S. has the technology to do so and the power to get away with mass murder.
In “normal” times the racist megalomania of the U.S. that produced and is producing the carnage in Iraq, Libya, Syria and throughout the world would have been enough to caution African Americans against any pleas to the U.S. to militarily intervene to “bring back our girls” in Nigeria. But of course these are not normal times.
A brief historical recap of U.S. policy in Africa
There have been two factors that help to explain the relative success of white supremacist capitalist power to construct and impose an historical narrative in which they have been absolved of their criminal activities in Africa: the post 9/11 focus on counter-terrorism, and the election of the first black president of the U.S.
Puerto Rican activist and writer Aurora Levins Morales reminds us that as the oppressed gain agency in their fight against dominance, memory is a site of struggle: “One of the first things a colonizing power or repressive regime does is attack the sense of history of those they wish to dominate by attempting to take over and control their relationship to their own past.”
African American internationalism has always been a central component of the African American radical tradition. That approach to politics always linked the struggle for African American liberation with that of the anti-colonial struggle in Africa and throughout the colonial world. A critical read of U.S. policy on Africa from that perspective, one that is alien to the pro-imperialist perspective of Barack Obama, suggests that throughout the post-World War II anti-colonial struggles that took place in Africa there is not one instance of the U.S. being on the side of African independence, not one.
In fact, in every struggle on the part of Africans to free themselves from the oppressive yoke of European colonialism, the U.S. aligned with the colonial powers across the continent to undermine African independence. U.S. policy in Africa was consistently pro-white power, from its continued support for the white settler regimes in Algeria, Kenya, Rhodesia, and South Africa to its direct logistical and military support to the Portuguese through NATO to fight against African freedom fighters in Angola and Mozambique.
This support for colonial white supremacy in Africa was consistently executed by both corporate parties in the U.S.
“Throughout the post-World War II anti-colonial struggles that took place in Africa there is not one instance of the U.S. being on the side of African independence, not one.”
The assault on historical memory continued and intensified with the election of Barack Obama. Obama’s election not only blurred a critical perspective on U.S. policy in Africa and globally on the part of many in the black communities, but did so at a historical moment when the U.S. state was undergoing a severe crisis of legitimacy and strategic confusion. That confusion was marked by vacillation between the use of aggressive, hard power that characterized the large-scale use of the military under the Bush administration, and more nuanced, soft power, i.e. the ideological, symbolic and diplomatic manifestations of state power.
The institutional developments and key decision-making over the last six years has reflected the inchoate character of that ongoing strategic confusion. But even with that confusion, Obama’s deployment as the smiling face of imperial power has had a devastating impact. His deployment has made it exceptionally difficult to demystify the elite interests embedded in his policies. The confusion is such that, for the first time in U.S. history, it has become possible to win majority black support for the retrograde policies of U.S. imperialism.
The Strategic Plan for Africa under Obama
By the fall of 2008, many among the capitalist elite and within the agencies of the U.S. government had concluded that the U.S. would have its first (and hopefully only) black president. It was also in the fall that the U.S. Strategic Command (AFRICOM) was created.
The clear objective of U.S. policy in Africa, as spelled out by U.S. State Department advisor to AFRICOM Dr. J. Peter Pham in 2007, was “protecting access to hydrocarbons and other strategic resources which Africa has in abundance, a task which includes ensuring against the vulnerability of those natural riches and ensuring that no other interested third parties, such as China, India, Japan, or Russia, obtain monopolies or preferential treatment.”
Therefore, while the Chinese were involved in economic activities that resulted in direct investments in infrastructural and technological development as well as access to low interest loans, the objective of U.S. policy was to encourage what the U.S. does best – introduce death and destruction through destabilization and militarization.
In line with the historic role of capitalist development in Africa, a capitalist relationship that at its core has always been dependent on violence and plunder, is it an incredulous position to conclude that the real interest of the U.S. policy in Nigeria is less a concern with the lives of Nigerian girls and more with bringing key strategic areas in Africa under their control in order to block the Chinese?
And while all of us mourn for the more than 200 girls who have been kidnapped and can only imagine what their families must be going though, we also have to make sure that we don’t allow the very real emotion of the issue to cloud our analysis – something that is probably easier for us who are not directly impacted. We have to do this because it is precisely at these moments that we have to be clear-eyed and not allow ourselves to be manipulated.
Militarization in the name of fighting terrorism – the terror phenomenon seems to develop in whatever country the U.S. has a strategic interest – is the cornerstone of the “new” strategy of counter-terrorism partnerships that President Obama revealed in his famous (or infamous, depending on one’s view) speech at West Point on May 28.
“U.S. policy was to encourage what the U.S. does best – introduce death and destruction through destabilization and militarization.”
Even though the speech was attacked by the Washington Post, New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, the strategy of reducing the U.S. footprint by relying on small numbers of special forces – Delta force, Seals, Green Berets etc. – and not committing massive ground forces, thus reducing the possibility of U.S. casualties and the attention of the public, reflects a serious strategic threat to the cause of peace and anti-interventionism. It is not only a strategy that commits the U.S. to a permanent war posture, especially since the connection of covert U.S. support to these terrorist operations is now well established, it also means that the plan for Africa is being written in the blood of the people in Iraq, Syria and Libya.
Similar to its policies in those countries, the U.S. has embarked on a strategy of destabilization in Africa, operating through non-state terrorist operations like their al Qaeda proxy’s directly, or al Qaeda linked organizations like Boko Haram in Nigeria. The objective is to create security emergencies that weaken the state and creates a situation where the U.S. then comes to the aid of the embattled states and is able to entrench itself within the life of various nations on the African continent.
The educational and organizational imperative:
The aggressive posture of U.S. imperialism over the last few years has proceeded with very little organized opposition from the capitalist center in the U.S. Not just because of the institutional weakness of left and progressive forces but, even more ominously, because of the ideological collaboration and alignment by left forces with the imperial project. This latter phenomenon is more characteristic of positions taken by some of the more chauvinistic elements of the white left than our ranks, but even within our ranks the confusion seems to be increasing when, for example, you look at the positions taken by some on Nigeria, Zimbabwe and the U.S. NATO assault on Libya.
As a consequence of this theoretical and ideological confusion, we are not able to meet the challenges posed by the new strategic innovations introduced in Obama’s speech at West Point, innovations that not only have a military component but powerful cultural and ideological elements. The confusion generated by the “bring our girls back” campaign where we have African Americans calling on the U.S. to intervene in Nigeria is understandable. But what it dramatically demonstrates is that it is absolutely imperative that we embark on a massive educational campaign with our folks that will expose the real intentions of the U.S. on the continent and worldwide.
Black Left forces must engage in respectful ideological discussions with our people at every level, from community organizations and youth groups to church groups where we once again attempt to determine “who is a friend and who is an enemy” related to U.S. policies. Global militarism and the growing domestic police state are fundamentally linked: Both are expressions of the desperate moves by capital to maintain its hegemony. But its growing dependence on military options, as dangerous as that is, still provides revolutionary forces some strategic educational and organizing opportunities.
“We can no longer dance around the need to level direct and devastating criticism of the oligarchical and imperialistic interests being championed by Barack Obama.”
That is why in my humble offerings I have been attempting to make the links between all of these various global maneuvers so that we can connect them theoretically and devise the correct response politically and organizationally as we struggle to rebuild and unite the black left. The imperialist machinations in Iraq, Syria, Libya and even the Ukraine are not exotic issues disconnected from our concerns but part of the global right-wing collaboration the U.S. is leading to undermine national anti-colonial projects in the global South and the militarization of working class and nationally oppressed communities and peoples’ in the U.S. Making these connections and grounding ourselves in the global struggle against white supremacist, colonial/capitalist patriarchy is a central element of the Black radical tradition.
The explosion of death and destruction that we see from Kenya and Somalia across the Sahel to Nigeria and down to the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and now developing in Mozambique, reflects the emergency situation that we face today. We can no longer dance around the need to level direct and devastating criticism of the oligarchical and imperialistic interests being championed by Barack Obama. Critical revolutionary consciousness does not emerged spontaneously from de-politicized “practice.”
We must arm our people with the critical theoretical tools needed to wage the life-and-death struggle that we and the people of the world are waging against a rapacious enemy willing to destroy the planet in order to maintain their unearned privilege. As brother George Jackson reminded us, “International capitalism cannot be destroyed without the extremes of struggle. The entire colonial world is watching the blacks inside the U.S., wondering and waiting for us to come to our senses.” It is time that we let the world know that we are back and that massa’s days are numbered.
Ajamu Baraka is a human rights activist, organizer and geo-political analyst. Baraka is an Associate Fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) in Washington, D.C. and editor and contributing columnist for the Black Agenda Report. His latest publications include contributions to two recently published books “Imagine: Living in a Socialist USA” and “Claim No Easy Victories: The Legacy of Amilcar Cabral.” He can be reached atinfo.abaraka@gmail.com and www.AjamuBaraka.com
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