It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Saturday, September 18, 2021
Pfizer recalls anti-smoking drug Chantix due to potential carcinogen By HealthDay News Pfizer announced Friday it is recalling all lots of its anti-smoking drug Chantix due to levels of a potential carcinogen in the medication, though the company said it poses no immediate risk for users.
File Photo by ChameleonsEye/Shutterstock
Pfizer is expanding the recall of its anti-smoking drug Chantix, also known as varenicline, the company announced Friday.
The nationwide recall of all Chantix 0.5 mg and 1 mg tablets was prompted because they may contain levels of a nitrosamine, N-nitroso-varenicline, that are at or above levels approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
Long-term ingestion of N-nitroso-varenicline may be linked to a "theoretical potential increased cancer risk in humans," the company said, adding that no immediate risk to patients taking Chantix exists.
"The health benefits of stopping smoking outweigh the theoretical potential cancer risk from the nitrosamine impurity in varenicline," Pfizer said in its statement.
Nitrosamines are common in water and foods -- including cured and grilled meats, dairy products and vegetables -- so everyone is exposed to some level of these chemicals.
Patients taking Chantix should consult with their doctor about other treatment options. So far, Pfizer has received no reports of adverse events tied to this recall, the company stated.More information
Study Links Chantix to Suicide Risk, but FDA Disagrees. Researchers Say Anti-Smoking Drug Is Linked to Risk of Suicide; FDA and Drugmaker Disagree. Nov. 3, 2011 -- Just over a week after federal ...
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Foes, allies send fuel to ease crisis in Lebanon
By Dalal Saoud A woman prepares dinner in her kitchen by candlelight Saturday in Beirut, Lebanon, where fuel shortages have led to power blackouts.
Photo by Nabil Mounzer/EPA-EFE
BEIRUT, Lebanon, Sept. 17 (UPI) -- Fuel shipments have begun arriving in Lebanon, the efforts of foes and allies, to ease a shortage that has crippled life for months with limited electricity and gasoline.
Tankers from Iraq and Iran are rolling in, while the United States is sponsoring long-term solutions by transporting natural gas from Egypt.
Dozens of trucks carrying Iranian diesel crossed Thursday from Syria through an unofficial border crossing into northeastern Lebanon in the first delivery organized by the powerful Iran-backed Hezbollah.
The convoy was greeted by a jubilant crowd that lined the road in Al Ain village, including women clad in black and children, waving Hezbollah flags. Men fired gunshots and rocket-propelled grenades.
Banners that read "You Broke Their Siege," "From Victory to Victory" and "Thank you Islamic Iran, Thank You Assad's Syria" were raised.
Instead of docking in Beirut as Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah previously threatened in clear defiance of the United States and Israel, the first ship carrying the Iranian fuel to Lebanon headed to the Syrian port of Banyias to discharge its shipment. The move was meant to avoid "provoking anyone," Nasrallah said Monday, announcing the arrival of more such ships carrying petrol and diesel.
The fuel will be distributed free of charge to government hospitals, orphanages, nursing homes, municipalities, civil defense and the Lebanese Red Cross. Other institutions, including mills, bakeries and some private hospitals, will receive the rest at "below cost."
Lebanon received another boost when the first shipment of Iraqi fuel, which will help increase electricity availability by four to six hours a day, arrived in Lebanon on Wednesday.
Last July, Lebanon and Iraq finalized a fuel barter deal under which Baghdad will provide the state-run Lebanese electricity company, Electricite du Liban, with 1 million tons of heavy fuel oil over a one-year period.
The Iranian and Iraqi fuel will help ease Lebanon's acute fuel crisis. However, it will not solve the country's chronic power shortages or fix its acute electricity problem.
Transporting Egyptian natural gas through the Arab Gas Pipeline and possibly Jordanian electricity has recently emerged as a more secure long-term option.
Discussions to secure the Egyptian gas to Lebanon through Syria have been underway for months, with apparent acceptance from Washington and Jordan, which has excess electricity production capacity, the driving force behind it.
The discussions began to take formal shape when a Lebanese ministerial delegation visited Damascus on Sept. 4, with the implicit approval of Washington, for the first time in a decade. The energy ministers of Jordan, Egypt, Syria and Lebanon met in Amman a few days later to discuss the gas and electricity transit to Lebanon.
That would not have been possible without U.S. willingness to loosen restrictions under the 2019 Caesar Act that sanctions any dealing with the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
Walid Khadduri, a Beirut-based oil and gas expert, said efforts to help Lebanon solve its energy crisis is being "worked on several levels."
"While Iraq and Iran oil have come, the gas from Egypt will take some time," depending on the status of the pipeline in Syria, Khadduri told UPI. "The gas from Egypt is the best option because you cannot smuggle gas and mafias cannot store it. It will go directly to the power station" in Deir Ammar in northern Lebanon.
He explained that the Iraqi agreement is for one year, and theoretically the 1 million tons of fuel oil should cover enough of Lebanese fuel demands but "don't know how much it will be smuggled to Syria, stored or stolen by the mafias."
Lebanon's severe fuel shortages have been partly blamed on smugglers who actively sneaked the country's subsidized supplies into Syria.
While the Iranian fuel was reportedly paid for by Lebanese Shiite traders close to Hezbollah and the Iraqi fuel will be in exchange for Lebanese medical services, the cost of the Egyptian gas will be covered through the World Bank, which closely coordinates with the United States on the matter.
"So Lebanon is not paying anything," Khadduri said. He, however, noted that "nobody gives oil for free."
Although the new fuel sources will not fulfill Lebanon's whole needs, it will close "a big gap" and the long queues at the gasoline stations and power cuts will be less.
Khadduri added that the three fuel sources came at the same time with different groups: the United States on one hand securing the gas from Egypt via the World Bank; Iraq signing a barter agreement with Lebanon; and Iran, through Hezbollah, securing diesel fuel and gasoline.
"It is rather strange that they are taking place at the same time and didn't start earlier," he said. "It is more than a coincidence... it is a competition with each one taking a different role: one gasoline, one gas and one heavy fuel... and so it is complementary."
Riad Tabbarah, Lebanon's former ambassador in Washington, said "there is an agreement" to avoid Lebanon's total collapse and "not let things go out of control and lead to militias re-emerging and a war with Israel."
"Would the Iranian ships [carrying fuel to Lebanon] cross the Suez Canal, sail in the Mediterranean Sea and reach the Baniyas port in Syria while trucks move the fuel from Syria to inside Lebanon... all that without an agreement?" Tabbarah told UPI. "Why they [the United States] turned a blind eye on that at a time Israel continues to bombard Iranian positions in Syria?"
He referred to "a new situation to ease things in the region within an international framework, but this has nothing to do with Iran-U.S. nuclear negotiations, which are at a much higher level, dealing with issues such as the ballistic missiles."
Tabbarah said the Egypt gas deal has been in the making for months and was being "arranged at different levels."
"Everyone plays its role, and when Nasrallah's turn came, he brought the Iranian fuel to Lebanon," he said.
Beating video puts Bulgaria police violence in spotlight
Issued on: 18/09/2021 -
CCTV footage showing Bulgarian student Evgeni Marchev, 23, being beaten by police at a demonstration has put the issue under the spotlight
Nikolay DOYCHINOV AFP
Sofia (AFP)
A series of blows and then blackness: Bulgarian student Evgeni Marchev was taking part in his first demonstration in Sofia when police detained and beat him until he lost consciousness.
The incident in July 2020 passed largely unnoticed until last month when CCTV footage of it was shown in parliament and then published in the media.
Despite a long history of police violence going unpunished in the EU country, the images have caused deep shock.
Marchev's case -- like others before it -- may well have remained overlooked.
Since 2000, the Strasbourg-based European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has condemned Bulgaria in 46 cases related to the use of force by police or inadequate investigation of alleged abuses.
Only Romania, whose population is three times bigger than Bulgaria's 6.9 million people, did worse, with 64 condemnations.
However in response to police violence during mass anti-graft protests just over a year ago, Bulgaria's parliament has set up a committee to look into it.
Thousands rallied mainly in Sofia against three-time prime minister Boyko Borisov who has been in office for almost a decade.
He has since been unable to clinch another term after two elections this year returned a fragmented parliament with no one party able to form a coalition government.
A snap poll has been set for November to try to resolve the political crisis. - 'You will die' -
On July 10, 2020, Marchev attended one of the big anti-Borisov demonstrations with friends in front of the prime minister's office.
When suddenly bottles were hurled at police, they responded by grabbing the 23-year-old and other protesters from the crowd to drag them into the shadows of the government building, where they handcuffed and beat them with fists and kicks, the CCTV showed.
"A policeman kept saying: 'You will die.' I was terrified," Marchev, who remotely studies European law at a Dutch university, told AFP.
The incident in July 2020 went largely unnoticed until CCTV footage of it was shown in parliament and published in the media
Handout BULGARIAN PARLIAMENTARY COMMITTEE ON POLICE VIOLENCE/AFP
He blacked out and was hospitalised with concussion.
The beating still haunts him today, he said, adding that he didn't do anything to provoke the police.
Probing the protest violence a year later, lawyer and parliamentary committee chairman Nikolay Hadjigenov dug out CCTV footage -- previously unseen by the public -- of Marchev's arrest.
The video shown in the committee and released to the media "sincerely shocked" the country, Hadjigenov said.
Sofia prosecutors responded saying a probe had been opened in late 2020 into three out of 15 initial complaints of police violence during the protests.
The chief prosecutor Ivan Geshev also denounced the "unacceptable violence", although he had previously defended police actions during the protests that also targeted him personally. - 'Old totalitarian reflex' -
Lawyer Mihail Ekimdjiev, who has represented many Bulgarian victims of police violence at the ECHR, said impunity stemmed from the country's communist past.
The prosecution has long showed "solidarity (with the police) in line with the old totalitarian reflex", he told AFP.
The signal, he said, was to discourage protests, adding it was clear that "anyone who finds himself in the wrong place at the wrong time can be mistreated by those who are supposed to protect us."
Bulgaria's parliament set up a committee to probe police violence during last year's mass anti-graft protests
Nikolay DOYCHINOV AFP
Past cases have seen police cleared or freed due to the statute of limitations expiring.
They included a Roma man who died in detention in 1998, another Roma who choked during an arrest and a man killed when police fired grenades at his house while trying to arrest him.
The ECHR condemned Bulgaria in all three cases.
"What clearly distinguishes Bulgaria (from other countries with police violence) is the impunity," said Krasimir Kanev, chairman of the Bulgarian Helsinki Committee human rights group.
- No longer 'alone' -
The parliamentary committee this week published a list of proposals to reform law and order and end police impunity, including introducing checks and controls.
But it will now fall to MPs elected later in the year to take up the proposed changes.
Marchev says he doesn't hold out much hope from any prosecution probe but is relieved a public discussion is now under way.
Before the video sparked an outcry, he had spoken out about the beating and said he'd felt "alone".
Before the video sparked an outcry, Marchev said he'd felt 'alone' Nikolay DOYCHINOV AFP
Other victims did not, often "for fear" of jeopardising their work and future, he said.
"I had started to ask myself if I had not been exaggerating," he said, having faced accusations in the media and on social networks of "slandering police and staining Bulgaria's image".
But, he insisted, he did not regret his actions. "The battle will be long, the road to true democracy is strewn with many difficulties."
Documentary 'Sabaya' shows rescue of 'IS' sex slaves
Hogir Hirori's award-winning documentary portrays the struggles of activists determined to save Yazidi girls and women who were captured by the "Islamic State."
The niqab makes it difficult to identify Yazidis living in the camp
But the news doesn't have much impact on the task undertaken by Mahmud and Ziyad, volunteers of the Yazidi Home Center. They are on their way to the notoriously dangerous internment camp al-Hol, where an estimated 73,000 individuals from 58 countries — most of them suspected supporters and families of IS militants — are living in tents.
Hidden among them are Yazidi girls and women who were kidnapped by IS to serve as sex slaves, called "sabaya."
The abductions took place five years earlier, when IS captured the province of Sinjar in Iraq. The 2014 massacre against the Yazidis in the region marked the beginning of the genocide of the ancient religious minority.
Mahmud, Ziyad and the small team of the Yazidi Home Center work to locate and save the captive Yazidi — and filmmaker Hogir Hirori joined them to document their dangerous rescue missions.
As one expedition leads to a car chase and a shoot-out on a bumpy road, Hirori's camera stays still, not missing a second of the action. "But I didn't expect to survive that," the filmmaker told DW through an interpreter at the German premiere of his film.
Sabaya opened the Human Rights Film Festival Berlin, held as a hybrid online and on-site event from September 16-25. Even though the Berlin event was the first the director could personally attend due to COVID, Sabaya has already been shown at 30 international festivals, winning the 2021 World Documentary Directing Award at Sundance among other prizes.
Documentary filmmaker Hogir Hirori
The director, who has been living living in Sweden since 1999, was born in Kurdistan, not too far from Sinjar. Sabaya is his third film in a trilogy on the impact of war in the region, following The Girl Who Saved My Life (2014) and The Deminer (2017).
Through his immersive filmmaking style, Hirori offers the audience rare access to the al-Hol camp. Even though many of the detainees have since been relocated, it is estimated that there are still more than 60,000 refugees in the overcrowded camp controlled by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a Kurdish-led military alliance that served as a partner of the US in the war on IS in Syria.
To gain the trust of the Yazidi Home Center team and the people they rescue, the documentary filmmaker spent a long period with them: "When they accepted to let me film, they expected me to stay a day or two, or maybe a week, but I was with them for a year and a half," Hogir said. Children sold from one violent man to the other
What makes the documentary particularly poignant is the stories shared by the women and girls following their rescue from al-Hol.
Some of them were only 12 when they were abducted, right after they had to witness the killing of their entire family.
One survivor recounts how she was sold to 15 different men, who beat her up so badly she ended up with a hole in her head and missing teeth.
Another rescued Yazidi child shown in the film was taken as a 1-year-old baby. Mothers separated from their rape-born children
Before they return to Sinjar, the rescued women and children are temporarily taken care of by Mahmud's family. His mother cooks for them and his young son plays with them, offering a calming refuge from years of atrocities, but the survivors are caught between dealing with their past trauma and facing bleak perspectives for the future. Not only their family has been decimated, they fear being stigmatized as a former sabaya.
The situation is particularly wrenching for women with children born from IS fathers, since they cannot return to their community with the kids; the Supreme Yazidi Spiritual Council has determined they could not accept children born from rape.
Yazidi women cannot return to their community with a rape-born child
Complicating matters, as Hirori points out, according to Iraqi laws, those children are automatically born as Muslims and must therefore be raised as Muslims. For now, the filmmaker says, the only available solution is to relocate the Yazidi mothers and their children to another country.
Risking his life to make this film even though he also has young children, one of Hirori's main motivations was to reactivate the calls for action from the international community: "I wanted to make this documentary so no one could say I didn't know or never heard of it," he said at the film festival in Berlin.
Also risking their life are the volunteers of the Yazidi Home Center, which includes former sabaya agreeing to work as infiltrators in the al-Hol camp to track down Yazidi detainees amid the mass of IS women who are instrumental in keeping them captive.
Adding to the challenge of identifying the captive Yazidi, the women are to wear a niqab, the dress ultra-conservative female Muslims wear to cover the faces.
Activists collect photos of the missing Yazidi in their efforts to rescue them
In the film, Mahmud and Ziyad are in constant communication with the infiltrators, spending their days and nights preparing the next rescue mission, comparing pictures of the captive Yazidis, equipped only with a cell phone with a bad internet connection. Still thousands missing
The Yazidi Home Center managed to save 206 people. Of the estimated 7,000 Yazidi girls and women who have been enslaved by IS since 2014, there are between 2,000 - 2,800 still missing, according to various estimates.
Since the completion of the film, Ziyad, the director of the Yazidi Home Center had to flee Syria due to increased IS attacks, but he keeps on working on reuniting Yazidi mothers with their children from abroad. Mahmud's home is also a target and can no longer serve as a shelter for the girls.
Hirori hopes that larger government bodies will get involved to save these women who have been largely forgotten by the international community amid other crises: "If individual activists, only equipped with a mobile phone with a poor connection and a small gun can achieve so much, then a major organization can do much more."
THE PLIGHT OF THE YAZIDI MINORITY IN IRAQ
The Yazidis: A history of persecution
For hundreds of years, the Yazidi community has been persecuted for its religious views, an amalgamation of Zoroastrianism, Christianity and Islam. Throughout their history, they have been killed, forced to convert to other religions and even taken as slaves. While the Kurdish-speaking minority community in northern Iraq had been attacked before, 2014 marked a tragic turning point in history.
Germany: Second climate activist on hunger strike hospitalized in Berlin
Another climate activist on hunger strike in Berlin has been taken to the hospital after fainting. Six activists calling themselves "the last generation" have not eaten since the end of August.
The activists want to meet candidates aiming to be the next chancellor of Germany
A 19-year-old climate activist on a weeks-long hunger strike outside the German parliament was taken to the hospital on Saturday, a spokesperson for the Charite hospital said.
The spokeswoman said it was unclear if the teen intended to continue her hunger strike.
Six climate activists began an open-ended hunger strike in front of the Reichstag building, home to the German lower house of parliament, on August 30.
German climate activists on hunger strike amid election
The activists have also called for the creation of a citizens' council to give politicians a list of measures that need to be adopted immediately to protect the climate.
"We are full of concern for the health of Lina and the rest of us and have to watch desperately as politicians close their eyes to the condition of the hunger strikers and of our planet," the group wrote on Twitter.
Second hospitalization
On Tuesday, a hunger striker was temporarily admitted to a hospital, but he continued his strike after being discharged.
All three candidates for chancellor have called on the hunger strikers to end their protest. The candidates said they were prepared to have private meetings with the strikers following the September 26 election.
Environmental organizations such as Greenpeace also urged the activists to end their hunger strike. The groups said they share the activists' concerns but appealed out of fear for their health and welfare "not to put young lives at risk."
Another activist was temporairly admitted to a hospital for treatment earlier this week
British Unions Call for Review of UK Gun Sales to Colombia
Trade Union Congress UK | Photo: TUC
Published 16 September 2021
Britain’s Trades Union Congress, which is currently holding its annual congress (10-13 September), has unanimously passed a motion in support of Colombian trade unionists, protesters and activists which called on the British government ‘to review security and trade partnerships with Colombia in response to human rights abuses’.
The motion also expressed support for the 2016 peace agreement, which continues to face many challenges, as well as for all member unions to support Justice for Colombia’s campaigning.
The motion was moved by the POA prison officers union and seconded by the BFAWU bakers union.
Read the full motion below.
>>>>
C17 Colombian government violence; justice for Colombia
Congress pays tribute to the Colombian people for their commitment to human rights, peace and social justice through trade union-led, national strike protests that have mobilised millions of people.
Congress condemns the horrific abuses against protesters committed by security forces under President Ivan Duque. Between 28 April and 30 June, human rights groups documented the police having committed over 4,000 acts of violence, 44 killings of protesters, 82 permanent eye injuries, 28 cases of sexual violence and over 2,000 arbitrary arrests.
Colombian government ministers made dangerous and unfounded insinuations linking protesters to criminal organisations and legitimising police violence against them.
Colombian trade unionists also face stigmatisation even as they are being killed. According to the International Trade Union Confederation, 22 Colombian trade unionists were murdered between March 2020 and April 2021, the world’s highest figure.
Congress is concerned that Britain’s free trade agreement with Colombia and its training of Colombian security forces is giving the green light to state violence, while impunity still surrounds most killings of trade unionists and social activists.
Congress resolves to:
i. call on the British government to review security and trade partnerships with Colombia in response to human rights abuses
ii. pressure the British government to demand accountability for perpetrators of state violence and full investigations into killings of trade unionists and social activists
iii. lobby the British government to increase its efforts to support full implementation of the 2016 peace agreement
iv. support the vital work of Justice for Colombia by affiliating at national, regional and branch levels.
Colombian President Duque is Rejected At The Madrid Book Fair
Citizens protest against Ivan Duque's presence in Madrid, Spain, Sept. 2021. | Photo: Twitter/ @La_Directa
Published 17 September 2021
He ratified his alliance with the U.S. by requesting the Biden administration not to relax the blockade against the Bolivarian revolution.
On Thursday, about 30 bookstores rejected the presence of President Ivan Duque in Spain arguing that Colombian writers who denounced State terrorism in their country have been banned from the Madrid book fair, where the far-right politician was expected to take part.
That criticism, however, was not an isolated act. During the last few days, hundreds of citizens have held rallies in Madrid to denounce the violation of human rights and other crimes committed by the Duque administration. As a result of this environment, the Colombian president announced that he would not present his autobiographical book at the book fair.
"We come to Spain exclusively to strengthen cooperation in tourism, trade, and security," the right-wing politician said to justify his decision, implying that the Madrid fair no longer guaranteed the existence of "political neutrality."
"Neutral literature does not exist," the Spanish writers recalled, adding that the Colombian army, police, and paramilitary groups left 78 people dead, 800 citizens injured, and 91 people missing during the latest protests.
Despite this, the Spanish Council of Ministers approved to grant Duque the "Order of Isabella the Catholic," one of the highest recognitions that this country grants to foreigners.
During his official visit, the Colombian president took the opportunity to ratify his alliance with the United States by requesting the Biden administration not to relax the blockade against the Bolivarian revolution.
"A presidential election is needed as soon as possible in Venezuela," Duque said, thus evidencing his role within the U.S. strategy aimed at pressing for the departure of Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro.
Excessive Working Hours Kill Nearly 2 Million People Each Year A new WHO and ILO joint report finds that almost 2 million people die from work-related causes each year. | Photo: Twitter/@ilo
Published 17 September 2021
Occupational diseases and accidents cause the death of 1.9 million people every year, and in more than a third of the cases the death is linked to long working hours, warns a joint study by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the International Labor Organization (ILO).
The study, the first of its kind by the two organizations, points to exposure to air pollution as another important risk factor, as it is linked to 450,000 deaths annually.
The study, which uses data prior to the COVID-19 pandemic (from up to 2016), takes into account 19 occupational risk factors, including exposure to asbestos (linked to more than 200,000 deaths each year) and to a lesser extent to substances such as cadmium, arsenic, beryllium, nickel, silica, or formaldehydes.
According to the WHO and ILO, some 450,000 of these annual deaths are caused by chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, 400,000 from strokes, 360,000 due to trauma and 350,000 by ischemic heart disease (narrowing of the coronary arteries).
The study concludes that work-related deaths linked to heart disease increased by 41% between 2000 and 2016, while those linked to stroke grew by 19% over the same period.
The report warns that work-related illnesses and injuries "overburden health systems, reduce productivity, and can have a catastrophic impact on household incomes."
It therefore calls for action to ensure safer and healthier workplaces by combating problems such as excessively long working hours and air pollution in these environments.
Bukele Rules Out Abortion, Same-Sex Marriage in El Salvador
The president's announcement on same-sex marriage and abortion was swiftly flagged by his critics. | Photo: Twitter/@decryptmedia
Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele said on Friday a series of constitutional reforms the government will send soon to Congress will not contain decriminalization of abortion, legalization of same-sex marriage or steps to permit euthanasia.
The package of planned measures Bukele received this week from Vice President Felix Ulloa includes the extension and possible early termination of the presidential term as well as the creation of a new body to replace the electoral tribunal.
"I have decided, to dispel ANY DOUBT, NOT TO PROPOSE ANY KIND OF REFORM TO ANY ITEMS RELATED TO the RIGHT TO LIFE (from the moment of conception), to marriage (keeping only the original design, A MAN AND A WOMAN) or to euthanasia," Bukele wrote on his Facebook account, capitalizing certain parts.
The El Salvador president announced he plans to study the proposals, drawn up at Bukele's request by Ulloa with a team of lawyers in 2020 to overhaul human rights legislation, as well as the political and economic system, and the government's judicial structure.
El Salvador is known for having some of the strictest anti-abortion laws throughout the Americas.
"President @nayibbukele ruled out that he will propose any constitutional reform that has to do with abortion, euthanasia or same-sex marriage. The president made his statement on his Facebook wall after receiving a document from the Ad-Hoc commission."
Critics swiftly pounced on the president's announcement regarding same-sex marriage and abortion.
Highlighting the 40-year-old president's words, the executive director of the Americas division of Human Rights Watch, Jose Miguel Vivanco, said, for example, on Twitter: "Just in case any dupe still thought Bukele was a modern leader..."
Bukele made no mention of his plan to extend the presidential term from five to six years, nor of other contentious measures. He also failed to say when they would be sent to Congress, which his party and its allies control.
The Great Game of Smashing Nations
John Pilger: Courtesy The Consortium News
More than a generation ago, Afghanistan won its freedom, which the U.S., Britain and their allies” destroyed.
As a tsunami of crocodile tears engulfs Western politicians, history is suppressed. More than a generation ago, Afghanistan won its freedom, which the United States, Britain and their allies” destroyed.
In 1978, a liberation movement led by the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) overthrew the dictatorship of Mohammad Dawd, the cousin of King Zahir Shah. It was an immensely popular revolution that took the British and Americans by surprise.
Foreign journalists in Kabul, reported TheNew York Times, were surprised to find that nearly every Afghan they interviewed said [they were] delighted with the coup.” TheWall Street Journal reported that 150,000 persons … marched to honor the new flag … the participants appeared genuinely enthusiastic.”
TheWashington Post reported that Afghan loyalty to the government can scarcely be questioned.” Secular, modernist and, to a considerable degree, socialist, the government declared a program of visionary reforms that included equal rights for women and minorities. Political prisoners were freed and police files publicly burned.
Under the monarchy, life expectancy was 35; 1-in-3 children died in infancy. Ninety percent of the population was illiterate. The new government introduced free medical care. A mass literacy campaign was launched.
For women, the gains had no precedent; by the late 1980s, half the university students were women, and women made up 40 percent of Afghanistan’s doctors, 70 percent of its teachers and 30 percent of its civil servants.
Women at university in Afghanistan in the 1970s. (Amnesty International U.K.)
Backed by the West
So radical were the changes that they remain vivid in the memories of those who benefited. Saira Noorani, a female surgeon who fled Afghanistan in 2001, recalled:
Every girl could go to high school and university. We could go where we wanted and wear what we liked … We used to go to cafes and the cinema to see the latest Indian films on a Friday … it all started to go wrong when the mujahedin started winning … these were the people the West supported.”
For the United States, the problem with the PDPA government was that it was supported by the Soviet Union. Yet it was never the puppet” derided in the West, neither was the coup against the monarchy Soviet backed,” as the American and British press claimed at the time.
Zbigniew Brzezinski in 1977. (Library of Congress)
President Jimmy Carter’s secretary of state, Cyrus Vance, later wrote in his memoirs: We had no evidence of any Soviet complicity in the coup.”
On July 3, 1979, unknown to the American people and Congress, Carter authorized a $500 million covert action” program to overthrow Afghanistan’s first secular, progressive government. This was code-named by the CIA Operation Cyclone.
The $500 million bought, bribed and armed a group of tribal and religious zealots known as the mujahedin. In his semi-official history, Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward wrote that the CIA spent $70 million on bribes alone. He describes a meeting between a CIA agent known as Gary” and a warlord called Amniat-Melli:
Gary placed a bundle of cash on the table: $500,000 in one-foot stacks of $100 bills. He believed it would be more impressive than the usual $200,000, the best way to say we’re here, we’re serious, here’s money, we know you need it … Gary would soon ask CIA headquarters for and receive $10 million in cash.”
Recruited from all over the Muslim world, America’s secret army was trained in camps in Pakistan run by Pakistani intelligence, the CIA and Britain’s MI6. Others were recruited at an Islamic College in Brooklyn, New York – within sight of the doomed Twin Towers. One of the recruits was a Saudi engineer called Osama bin Laden.
The aim was to spread Islamic fundamentalism in Central Asia and destabilize and eventually destroy the Soviet Union.
‘Larger Interests’
In 1985, Afghan mujahideen cross into Afghanistan from a border region of Pakistan. (Erwin Franzen, CC BY-SA 1.0, Wikimedia Commons)
In August 1979, the U.S. embassy in Kabul reported that the United States’ larger interests … would be served by the demise of the PDPA government, despite whatever setbacks this might mean for future social and economic reforms in Afghanistan.”
Read again the words above I have italicized. It is not often that such cynical intent is spelt out as clearly. The U.S. was saying that a genuinely progressive Afghan government and the rights of Afghan women could go to hell.
Six months later, the Soviets made their fatal move into Afghanistan in response to the American-created jihadist threat on their doorstep. Armed with CIA-supplied Stinger missiles and celebrated as freedom fighters” by Margaret Thatcher, the mujahedin eventually drove the Red Army out of Afghanistan.
The mujahedin were dominated by war lords who controlled the heroin trade and terrorized rural women. Later, in the early 1990s the Taliban would emerge, an ultra-puritanical faction, whose mullahs wore black and punished banditry, rape and murder but banished women from public life.
In the 1980s, I made contact with the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan, known as RAWA, which had tried to alert the world to the suffering of Afghan women. During the Taliban time they concealed cameras beneath their burqas to film evidence of atrocities, and did the same to expose the brutality of the Western-backed mujahedin. Marina” of RAWA told me, We took the videotape to all the main media groups, but they didn’t want to know ….”
April 28, 1998: Demonstration of the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan in Peshawar, Pakistan, to condemn the sixth anniversary of swarming of fundamentalists into Kabul.” (RAWA, CC BY 3.0, Wikimedia Commons)
In 1992, the enlightened PDPA government was overrun. The president, Mohammad Najibullah, had gone to the United Nations to appeal to for help. On his return, he was hanged from a street light.
The Game
I confess that [countries] are pieces on a chessboard,” said Lord Curzon in 1898, upon which is being played out a great game for the domination of the world.”
The viceroy of India was referring in particular to Afghanistan. A century later, Prime Minister Tony Blair used slightly different words.
This is a moment to seize,” he said following 9/11. The Kaleidoscope has been shaken. The pieces are in flux. Soon they will settle again. Before they do, let us re-order this world around us.”
On Afghanistan, he added this: We will not walk away [but ensure] some way out of the poverty that is your miserable existence.”
July 17, 2019: Former U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair, left, with U.S. Secretary of State Michael Pompeo. (State Department)
Blair echoed his mentor, President George W. Bush, who spoke to the victims of his bombs from the Oval Office: The oppressed people of Afghanistan will know the generosity of America. As we strike military targets, we will also drop food, medicine and supplies to the starving and suffering …
Almost every word was false. Their declarations of concern were cruel illusions for an imperial savagery we” in the West rarely recognize as such.
Orifa
In 2001, Afghanistan was stricken and depended on emergency relief convoys from Pakistan. As the journalist Jonathan Steele reported, the invasion indirectly caused the deaths of some 20,000 people as supplies to drought victims stopped and people fled their homes.
Eighteen months later, I found unexploded American cluster bombs in the rubble of Kabul which were often mistaken for yellow relief packages dropped from the air. They blew the limbs off foraging, hungry children.
In the village of Bibi Maru, I watched a woman called Orifa kneel at the graves of her husband, Gul Ahmed, a carpet weaver, and seven other members of her family, including six children, and two children who were killed next door.
An American F-16 aircraft had come out of a clear blue sky and dropped an Mk82 500-pound bomb on Orifa’s mud, stone and straw house. Orifa was away at the time. When she returned, she gathered the body parts.
Months later, a group of Americans came from Kabul and gave her an envelope with 15 notes: a total of $15. Two dollars for each of my family killed,” she said.
The invasion of Afghanistan was a fraud. In the wake of 9/11, the Taliban sought to distant themselves from Osama bin Laden. They were, in many respects, an American client with which the administration of Bill Clinton had done a series of secret deals to allow the building of a $3 billion natural gas pipeline by a U.S. oil company consortium.
In high secrecy, Taliban leaders had been invited to the U.S. and entertained by the CEO of the Unocal company in his Texas mansion and by the CIA at its headquarters in Virginia. One of the deal-makers was Dick Cheney, later George W. Bush’s vice president.
In 2010, I was in Washington and arranged to interview the mastermind of Afghanistan’s modern era of suffering, Zbigniew Brzezinski. I quoted to him his autobiography in which he admitted that his grand scheme for drawing the Soviets into Afghanistan had created a few stirred up Muslims”.
Do you have any regrets?” I asked.
Regrets! Regrets! What regrets?”
When we watch the current scenes of panic at Kabul airport, and listen to journalists and generals in distant TV studios bewailing the withdrawal of our protection,” isn’t it time to heed the truth of the past so that all this suffering never happens again?
Posted on August 27th, 2021
John Pilger’s 2003 film, Breaking the Silence, about the war on terror” is available to view here.
