Opinion – Page 9 – praag.org

The great ‘non-story’ of Iraq

By Neil Clark

Another day and yet more death and destruction in the Middle East country.

The latest violence has killed at least 54 people and injured over 100 others. In July, over 1,000 people were killed and over 2,300 wounded.

You probably think I’m talking about Syria. But I’m not. I’m talking about Iraq. The country that George W. Bush and Tony Blair ‘liberated’ in 2003. The western military intervention was, we were told, going to usher in a wonderful era of democracy, freedom and human rights. Instead, it has ushered in an appalling decade-long blood-fest, with ordinary Iraqis having to endure a living nightmare of life in what has become one of the most dangerous countries on earth.

Rather like Sherlock Holmes’ The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, the silence of pro-war commentators and politicians when it comes to the ongoing bloodshed in Iraq is most revealing.

The same elite figures in the West who couldn’t stop writing or talking about Iraq in 2002 and early 2003, telling us what a terrible threat Saddam Hussein’s ‘weapons of mass destruction’ were to us all, and how we needed to go to war with Iraq not only to disarm its evil dictator but to ‘liberate’ its people, are now silent in the light of the continuing bloodshed and havoc that the illegal invasion caused. In the run up to the invasion of March 2003, you couldn’t switch on a television news program in Britain or America without seeing a neo-con or ‘liberal interventionist’ obsessing about Iraq. In the lead-up to war, these great ‘humanitarians’ feigned concern for the plight of Iraqis living under Saddam’s dictatorship – but today show little or no concern for the plight of Iraqis being blown to pieces by bombs on a regular, almost daily basis. There are no calls from the ‘usual suspects’ for a Western ‘humanitarian’ intervention to stop the killing in Iraq. For these serial interventionists, Iraq, post-invasion, has become the greatest ‘non-story’ of the modern era. Instead, the same people who couldn’t stop talking about Iraq in 2002-2003 now can’t stop talking about Syria – feigning concern over the plight of Syrians in the same way they shed crocodile tears over Iraqis in early 2003.

It’s interesting that when it comes to casualty tolls, pro-war politicians can tell us exactly how many people have died in Syria since the violence started there in 2011, (and of course for them, all the deaths are the personal responsibility of President Assad), whereas when it comes to Iraq and the number of people who have been killed there since March 2003, there’s a great deal more vagueness. “We don’t do body counts on other people” Donald Rumsfeld famously declared in November 2003. The Iraqis killed since March 2003 (and casualty figures vary from around 174,000 to well over one million) are, for our political elite, ‘non-people.’ In 2013, it’s only dead Syrians (and Syrians whose deaths can be blamed on Syrian government forces) that matter – not dead Iraqis.

Because Iraq is deemed a ’non-story’ and our leaders never talk about the situation there, it’s no surprise to see that public perceptions of the death toll are way below even the most conservative estimates. Sixty-six percent of Britons in a poll earlier this year estimated that 20,000 or fewer Iraqis had died since the invasion of 2003. Donald Rumsfeld would no doubt be delighted to hear that.

If they had any sense of shame, the people who have destroyed Iraq would at least have had the grace to retire from public life. But neo-cons and liberal imperialists don’t do shame or remorse. The same bunch of ’humanitarian’ interventionists and hawks who urged the invasion of Iraq in 2003 have spent the last two years propagandizing for an attack on Syria. These manic warmongers would rather we ‘move on’ from Iraq to focus on the next Middle Eastern country on their hit list. But we must never ’move on’ from Iraq until those who destroyed the country are put in the dock. The chaos and bloodshed we see in Iraq today is a direct consequence of the destabilizing and destructive neo-con policies of the US and Britain and those responsible for ‘the supreme international crime’ of waging a war of aggression against a sovereign state must be held to account for the enormous amount of human misery they have caused.

‘Osama bin Laden story is one big lie’

Seymour Hersh has got some extreme ideas on how to fix journalism – close down the news bureaus of NBC and ABC, sack 90% of editors in publishing and get back to the fundamental job of journalists which, he says, is to be an outsider.

It doesn’t take much to fire up Hersh, the investigative journalist who has been the nemesis of US presidents since the 1960s and who was once described by the Republican party as “the closest thing American journalism has to a terrorist”.

He is angry about the timidity of journalists in America, their failure to challenge the White House and be an unpopular messenger of truth.

Don’t even get him started on the New York Times which, he says, spends “so much more time carrying water for Obama than I ever thought they would” – or the death of Osama bin Laden. “Nothing’s been done about that story, it’s one big lie, not one word of it is true,” he says of the dramatic US Navy Seals raid in 2011.

Hersh is writing a book about national security and has devoted a chapter to the bin Laden killing. He says a recent report put out by an “independent” Pakistani commission about life in the Abottabad compound in which Bin Laden was holed up would not stand up to scrutiny. “The Pakistanis put out a report, don’t get me going on it. Let’s put it this way, it was done with considerable American input. It’s a bullshit report,” he says hinting of revelations to come in his book.

The Obama administration lies systematically, he claims, yet none of the leviathans of American media, the TV networks or big print titles, challenge him.

“It’s pathetic, they are more than obsequious, they are afraid to pick on this guy [Obama],” he declares in an interview with the Guardian.

He is certain that NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden “changed the whole nature of the debate” about surveillance. Hersh says he and other journalists had written about surveillance, but Snowden was significant because he provided documentary evidence – although he is sceptical about whether the revelations will change the US government’s policy.

“Duncan Campbell [the British investigative journalist who broke the Zircon cover-up story], James Bamford [US journalist] and Julian Assange and me and the New Yorker, we’ve all written the notion there’s constant surveillance, but he [Snowden] produced a document and that changed the whole nature of the debate, it’s real now,” Hersh says.

“Editors love documents. Chicken-shit editors who wouldn’t touch stories like that, they love documents, so he changed the whole ball game,” he adds, before qualifying his remarks.

“But I don’t know if it’s going to mean anything in the long [run] because the polls I see in America – the president can still say to voters ‘al-Qaida, al-Qaida’ and the public will vote two to one for this kind of surveillance, which is so idiotic,” he says.

The 76-year-old Hersh is on full throttle, a whirlwind of amazing stories of how journalism used to be; how he exposed the My Lai massacre in Vietnam, how he got the Abu Ghraib pictures of American soldiers brutalising Iraqi prisoners, and what he thinks of Edward Snowden.

He was hired by the New York Times to follow up the Watergate scandal and ended up hounding Nixon over Cambodia. Almost 30 years later, Hersh made global headlines all over again with his exposure of the abuse of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib.

For students of journalism his message is put the miles and the hours in. He knew about Abu Ghraib five months before he could write about it, having been tipped off by a senior Iraqi army officer who risked his own life by coming out of Baghdad to Damascus to tell him how prisoners had been writing to their families asking them to come and kill them because they had been “despoiled”.

“I went five months looking for a document, because without a document, there’s nothing there, it doesn’t go anywhere.”

Hersh is adamant that Obama is worse than Bush.

“Do you think Obama’s been judged by any rational standards? Has Guantanamo closed? Is a war over? Is anyone paying any attention to Iraq? Is he seriously talking about going into Syria? We are not doing so well in the 80 wars we are in right now, what the hell does he want to go into another one for. What’s going on [with journalists]?” he asks.

“Like killing people, how does [Obama] get away with the drone programme, why aren’t we doing more? How does he justify it? What’s the intelligence? Why don’t we find out how good or bad this policy is? Why do newspapers constantly cite the two or three groups that monitor drone killings. Why don’t we do our own work?

“Our job is to find out ourselves.”

Asked what the solution is for the sorry state of journalism, Hersh says: “I’ll tell you the solution, get rid of 90% of the editors that now exist.”

Hersh is currently on a break from reporting, working on a book which undoubtedly will make for uncomfortable reading for both Bush and Obama.

“The republic’s in trouble, we lie about everything, lying has become the staple.” And he implores journalists to do something about it. – The Guardian

Washington’s Tyranny

By Paul Craig Roberts.

The war criminal Barack Obama has declared his “outrage” over the 62 deaths associated with the takeover of a Nairobi, Kenya, shopping mall by al-Shabaab fighters. But the attack on the shopping mall was Obama’s fault. Al Shabaab spokesmen said that the attack on the Nairobi mall was a retaliatory response to the Kenyan troops sent to fight against them in Somalia. The Kenyan troops, of course, were sent to Somalia as a result of pressure from Washington.

Just as the outbreak of violence in Mali resulted from the fighters that Obama used against Gaddafi moving into Mali, Washington’s violence against Somalia has resulted in the terrorist attack on the Nairobi mall.

This fact again raises the never asked question: What is the real agenda of Washington’s “war on terror”? The western presstitutes never ask this question, nor do western legislative bodies.

Washington has offered a variety of justifications for its twelve years of wars. One is that Washington is rooting out terrorism in order to protect Americans from 9/11 type events. Another is that “dictators” must be overthrown and replaced with “freedom and democracy.” Still another is false claims of the possession of “weapons of mass destruction” (Iraq) and the use of “weapons of mass destruction” (Syria).

None of Washington’s claims can withstand the barest scrutiny. None of the governments that Washington has overthrown and seeks to overthrow are terrorist states. Indeed, some are not even Islamist governments. Saddam Hussein’s Iraq had a secular government, as does Assad’s Syria.

Washington’s explanations for murdering Pakistanis and Yemenis with drones are even more nebulous. Moreover, using military means to kill citizens of countries with which the US is not at war lacks all legality.

When Obama gets on the moral high horse about deaths in Syria or Nairobi, his hypocrisy is astounding. A person would think Obama would be ashamed. The Egyptian military, which is financed with $2 billion annually from Washington, has just overthrown the first elected president in Egypt’s history, banned the political party that Egyptians elected to power, and confiscated the political party’s assets, money, and buildings.

The Washington sponsored Egyptian military shot down in the streets many more Egyptians protesting the overthrow of their government by a military coup than died in the Nairobi mall. But we hear nothing from Washington or Obama about the need to support democracy in Egypt.

When the British Parliament voted down providing cover for Obama’s criminal attack on Syria, Parliament created space for Russia’s President Putin to resolve the Syrian situation by obtaining Syrian President Assad’s agreement to join the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons and to turn over all Syrian chemical weapons to an international body.

The war monger Obama regime was outraged that Washington’s military attack on Syria had been blocked. Washington and the Israel Lobby went into full scale demonization of President Putin for orchestrating peace instead of war. The Obama regime is trying to block the agreement by insisting on incorporating into the UN resolution an opportunity for attacking Syria if Washington is not convinced that all chemical weapons are turned over.

The entire world knows that Washington will again lie through its teeth, assert that all the weapons were not turned over and use the wedge that Washington is attempting to force into the UN resolution to start another war. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has publicly stated that Washington is trying to blackmail Russia into accepting the potential for military intervention in Syria as part of the agreement.

Until the 21st century, Washington carried out its relentless nefarious activities against other peoples and countries under cover and out of sight. In the 21st century the criminal Bush and Obama regimes have brazenly demonstrated their disregard for US law, international law, and human rights.

Hubris and arrogance have run away with the “superpower.” The US stands reviled by the world. At the UN summit on September 23, the president of Brazil denounced the Obama regime for its “breach of international law” revealed by the spy scandal. Bolivian President Evo Morales is filing a lawsuit against the Obama regime for “crimes against humanity.”

When the world looks at Washington, it cannot differentiate Washington from the dictatorships that Washington attributes to other countries. The Washington regime has declared that it is above both law and Constitution and possesses the power to detain citizens indefinitely and to murder them without due process of law. These powers comprise the necessary and sufficient conditions for dictatorship.

Who will liberate Americans from Washington’s tyranny, overthrow the executive branch dictatorship, and bring freedom and democracy to America?

Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. He was columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators Syndicate. He has had many university appointments. His internet columns have attracted a worldwide following. His latest book, The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and Economic Dissolution of the West is now available.

Five factors that will shape SA’s future: FW de Klerk

Former President says country continues to present an anomalous picture to the world

SPEECH BY FORMER PRESIDENT FW DE KLERK FOXHILLS RESORT, ENGLAND, September 13 2013

SOUTH AFRICA: PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE

I should like to talk about South Africa: our past, our present and our future -‐ about

where we have come from since the 1980s;
where we now find ourselves; and
where we are going.

It is especially appropriate to do so now -‐ because I can recall no time since 1994 when so many South Africans have been so despondent.

We should remember 1994 -‐ not only because it was the birth of our new society -‐ but because it provides an important reminder that we South Africans have the ability to solve even the most intractable problems.

It is easy to forget now how desperate our situation was in the mid-1980s:

Our efforts to reform apartheid -‐ including the scrapping of more than 100 apartheid laws and the introductions of the tricameral parliament had simply redoubled demands for “one-‐man, one vote”;
We were beset with internal unrest and increasingly violent protests;
Scenes of chaos and insurrection in our streets dominated TV screens throughout the world;
After the Rubicon speech the rand had plummeted through the floor;
Unsure of the government’s ability to control the situation, international banks had pulled the plug on us by refusing to roll over our short-‐term debt;
Demands for comprehensive economic sanctions were reaching crescendo pitch;
Our armed forces were confronting increasing attacks on our borders and the borders of Namibia -‐ attacks that were supported by 50 000 Cuban troops.

There were no signs of light on the dark and stormy horizon.

And yet -‐ by 1990 -‐ we had clawed our way back from the precipice.

The victory of our forces at the battle of the Lomba River in September 1987 had finally convinced the Soviets, the Cubans and the Angolans that there was no prospect of a military victory.

The following year we began negotiations on the withdrawal of Cuban forces from Angola and the parallel implementation of the UN independence process in Namibia;
Also by 1987 the ANC had accepted that there would not be a revolutionary outcome in South Africa and that the only path to the future lay through negotiations;
The successful independence process in Namibia in 1989 showed that it was possible to negotiate successful outcomes with enemies;
Finally, the collapse of the Soviet Union -‐ symbolized by the fall of the Berlin Wall in November, 1989 -‐ signaled the arrival of an entirely new global paradigm.

By the beginning of 1990 these events had opened a historic window of opportunity for a peaceful and negotiated settlement. We did not hesitate. We jumped through -‐ and after almost four years of roller-‐coaster negotiations we were able to reach a national accord on our future.

It was our proudest moment.

Our 1993 and 1996 constitutions were the outcome of the genuine give and take process inherent in all negotiations. The final agreement was at least as close to original negotiating positions of the non-‐ANC parties as it was to that of the ANC.

It contains all the basic rights that we need to maintain a free and prosperous society.

It articulates the values of human dignity, equality, fundamental rights and non-‐ discrimination on which the new South Africa has been established.

It acknowledges the supremacy of the Constitution and the rule of law.

It makes provision for all the institutions and mechanisms that are necessary for multiparty democracy based on accountability, openness and responsiveness.

It has served us well for the past 19 years. Which brings me to the present.

It is important to remember the many, many successes that we have achieved since 1994 -‐ many of them as a result of government action:

We have experienced 19 years of economic growth -‐ interrupted only briefly by the global economic crisis of 2008.
The regulation of our security exchanges and our reporting standards are the best in the world;
Our banks are the second soundest in the world and our corporate boards are the second most efficacious. Our financial services and protection of minority shareholders are third best in the world and our ability to finance local equity is the fourth best internationally.
We are one of the primary gateways to Africa -‐ and are now the fifth largest investor in the continent.

We have also made significant social progress:

The percentage of the population living in absolute poverty has declined to less than 20% -‐ largely because of social grants.
More than three million housing units have been built -‐ enough to house almost a quarter of the population -‐ with another million units in the pipeline;
More than three quarters of the population now have access to electricity, drinkable water and sanitation
We have experienced moments -‐ like the 2010 Soccer World Cup -‐ when we have lived up to Archbishop Tutu’s characterization of us as the Rainbow Nation of God;
We have seen the rapid growth of new and self-‐confident black middle class. Whites now comprise less than 40% of the top decile of income earners.

At the same time we are beset by serious problems. One can hardly disagree with the diagnosis of the National Planning Commission regarding the nature of these challenges. They include:

High unemployment -‐ closer to 40% than the official figure of 25,6%;
Poor education -‐ especially for black South Africans -‐ who fare badly in comparative tests with children from the poorest African countries;
Poor public service delivery -‐ which has led to virtually daily protests throughout the country;
rising levels of corruption; and
the fact that South Africa is still a divided society.

Another growing problem is the increasingly destructive role that is being played by our militant trade unions. It is one of the main causes of unemployment and of our failure to attract the foreign investment that we need for sustained economic growth:

South Africa has the worst labour relations in the world. According to the World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Report it is the worst of 144 countries assessed in terms of co-‐operation in labour-‐employer relations;
COSATU has continuously raised labour costs without commensurate productivity increases -‐ which has inevitably resulted in job losses. South Africa’s flexibility of wage determination is the fourth worst in the world.
Our labour legislation is amongst the most onerous anywhere. South Africa’s hiring and firing practices are the second worst in the world.
COSATU’s campaign to abolish labour brokers would lead to the loss of more than half a million jobs.
COSATU has steadfastly opposed proposals to open labour markets to the unemployed.
It is destroying jobs by alienating foreign and domestic investors through its confrontational stance and open support for nationalisation.
On top of all this came the Marikana massacre of 16 August last year; the subsequent wave of violent and uncontrolled wildcat strikes and hopelessly unrealistic wage demands. All this has been compounded by the precipitate fall of the rand against the US dollar.

So South Africa continues to present an anomalous picture to the world:

on the one hand a picture of failing governance; out of control trade unions; rising corruption and daily service delivery protests -‐ and
on the other hand, a picture of economic dynamism, enormous opportunities and a counter-‐intuitive sense of optimism -‐ particularly in bustling Johannesburg.

But what of the future?

Predicting the future is one of the most risky of all endeavours -‐ since we live in such rapidly changing times. Nevertheless one can identify some of the salient factors that will undoubtedly influence the course of events:

Whatever happens in South Africa will take place within the framework of macro-‐ developments on the global stage -‐ just as they have always done in the past;
Secondly, current developments within the ANC’s ruling alliance will play a key role. The question is whether the leadership will be able to hold together an alliance which now encompasses the whole spectrum
- from Stalinism to social democracy;
- from exclusive black nationalism to inclusive non-‐racialism;
- from genuine commitment to sound governance to pervasive crony capitalism and entrenched kleptocracy?

Will the ANC be able to continue to plaster over these increasing obvious cracks -‐ or will it split?
Thirdly, will it be possible to moderate the behavior of our rampant and wildly irresponsible trade unions?
Fourthly, will the government break away from its race-‐based ideology and accept the idea that the skills of all South Africans must be used to enable the country to address its problems and achieve its potential?
Finally, a critical factor will be our ability to maintain the excellent Constitution that we South Africans negotiated between 1990 and 1996 and the institutions that it mandates including
free and impartial courts;
an independent National Prosecuting Authority; and
government that is accountable, transparent and responsive.

So, these are the factors that will play significant roles in determining our future:

What will happen on the global stage?
What will happen within the ANC Alliance?
Will we be able to control the trade unions?
Will we be able to liberate ourselves from race-‐based ideologies? And,
Will we be able to uphold our Constitution and achieve the vision that it articulates?

Personally, I remain an optimist -‐ and believe that we shall be able to surmount the challenges that confront us now -‐ just as we were able to overcome the much greater problems that we faced 25 years ago.

Issued by the FW de Klerk Foundation, September 16 2013

The ‘Syria expert’ that never was

The Syria “researcher” at the center of a week-long controversy surrounding her academic credentials and her work with the Syrian opposition, admitted for the first time to The Daily Beast she was never enrolled in a Ph.D. program despite representations she made to the press and multiple organizations for whom she worked.

She nevertheless asked reporters to call her “doctor”.

Elizabeth O’Bagy, whose work on the Syrian opposition was hailed by Secretary of State John Kerry and Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), was suddenly fired from her job as the lead Syria researcher at the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) on Sept. 10 after her bosses came under scrutiny.

O’Bagy confirmed to The Daily Beast that she was only enrolled in a master’s program at Georgetown and had applied to join the joint MA/Ph.D. program but was never accepted.

The controversy surrounding O’Bagy first began after she published an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal Aug. 30 that included her affiliation with ISW but did not mention her work with the Syrian Emergency Task Force, a nonprofit organization that works directly with the Syrian opposition as well as with the State Department. Some reports accused the Journal and O’Bagy of hiding her work with the Syrian rebels.

The Task Force initially waited to make any judgment about O’Bagy, but asked for her resignation on Monday after conducting their own internal investigation.

“The Syrian Emergency Task Force announced officially today that Elizabeth O’Bagy is no longer working with the organization,” the group’s executive director Mouaz Moustafa told The Daily Beast in a statement Monday.

O’Bagy’s latest admission, that she was never a Ph.D. student in any way, comes after a series of articles in which O’Bagy claimed, falsely, that she was enrolled in the joint MA/Ph.D. program.

Kim Kagan, the Neo-Conservative president of ISW, told The Daily Beast that when she made the decision to fire O’Bagy, she was still under the impression O’Bagy’s deception was solely about defending her Ph.D. dissertation. Only after dismissing her did Kagan learn from Georgetown that O’Bagy had never been enrolled in the joint MA/Ph.D. program in the first place. Kagan’s version is hard to believe though.

O’Bagy went from a graduate student and intern to a pundit making regular appearances on Fox News and being published in Foreign Policy, The Atlantic, and well, The Wall Street Journal. She was promoted to Senior Analyst and then to Syria Team Lead at ISW, and had become known as a go-to expert on the Syrian rebels among foreign policy experts.

Kagan, friend and hagiographer to David Petraeus, counselor to Stanley McChrystal, sister-in-law to Robert Kagan and wife of Frederick Kagan, pro-war hawk and author of the so-called “surge strategy” that convinced a failure-stunned George W. Bush to put 20,000 more troops in harms way in Iraq in 2007, should know better. Rumours abound that O’Bagy never even made it to Syria.

Kagan, the consumate imperialist, often likened American generals to Napoleon and Patton, but doesn’t have the same credibility these days, now that Afghanistan and Iraq are largely viewed as failures by the American public.

O’Bagy obviously provided a fresh face and the right tone to sell war.

We are all Amy Biehl now

The white American exchange student, Amy Elizabeth Biehl, died just over 20 years ago on August 25, 1993. The circumstances of her death read like a chronicle foretold to the current racial animosity in South Africa where singing struggle songs like “Kill a Boer” and attacking white farms continue unabated.

The graduate from Stanford University and anti-Apartheid activist was murdered by black Cape Town residents while a black mob shouted racial slurs. The four men convicted of her murder were released as part of the Truth and Reconciliation process.

Biehl was a student at the University of the Western Cape in Cape Town as a scholar in the Fulbright Program.

As she drove a friend home to the black township of Guguletu, outside Cape Town, on August 25, 1993, a black mob pulled her from the car and stabbed and stoned her to death. She probably tried to remind them how much she hated white Afrikaners while she was dying.

The attack on the car driven by Amy Biehl was one of many incidents of general lawlessness in NY1, blamed on the “lack of opportunity as a result of Apartheid” as was fashionable then. These days the reigning anarchy in NY1 is attributed to lacking “service delivery”. Any explanation which ignores a racial motive will do.

To sane South Africans Biehl’s death was simply the result of ignoring the racial divide. Had she gone into NY1 last week, she probably would have met with the same fate. But blinding ideology comes at a price, everywhere in Africa, also in places where no one has ever heard of Apartheid.

Bands of toyi-toying black youths threw stones at delivery vehicles and cars driven by whites. One delivery vehicle was toppled over and set alight and only the arrival of the police prevented more damage. A quick scrutiny of any South African newspaper today would inform the reader of the lasting legacy that Mandela’s release had on black urban violence.

Black urban youths, born well after Apartheid, do not suffer from Mandela’s oft cited “terrible past”. They suffer instead from a terrible example set by the likes of Biehl: Proof that killing whites are rewarded, hate crimes are lauded.

Amy Biehl’s possessions in her car were stolen. According to Rex van Schalkwyk, in his 1998 book One Miracle is Not Enough: “Supporters of the three men accused of murdering [her] … burst out laughing in the public gallery of the Supreme Court today when a witness told how the battered woman groaned in pain.” (pp. 188–89.)

Four people were convicted of killing her. In 1998, all were pardoned by South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, a travesty to hide the ANC’s past crimes and future intentions.The usual suspects, Britain and the US, gave their firm support to the shameless whitewash.

Amy Biehl’s killing was pardoned at the TRC when the four stated that their actions had been “politically motivated^.”.Biehl’s family supported the release of the killers,and her father shook the murderers’ hands, smiling.

“Among those we remember today is young Amy Biehl. She made our aspirations her own and lost her life in the turmoil of our transition, as the new South Africa struggled to be born in the dying moments of apartheid. Through her, our peoples have also shared the pain of confronting a terrible past, as we take the path towards the reconciliation and healing of our nation.”

There was no “terrible past” however. There was only bad faith in depicting a system designed to protect minorities. The smiling handshake would sadly be a prescient gesture of our terrible future, the one that the Biehls enabled by their bought forgiveness.

In 1994, Biehl’s parents, Linda and Peter, founded the Amy Biehl Foundation Trust “to develop and empower youth in the townships, in order to discourage further violence.” The money must have eased the pain of losing a child to such a useless cause.

Two of the men who had been convicted of her murder also received money from the foundation. In 1999, Biehl’s parents were honored with the Aline and Norman Felton Humanitarian Award.

In his speech accepting the Congressional Gold Medal on 23 September 1998, Nelson Mandela said:
“Among those we remember today is young Amy Biehl. She made our aspirations her own and lost her life in the turmoil of our transition, as the new South Africa struggled to be born in the dying moments of apartheid. Through her, our peoples have also shared the pain of confronting a terrible past, as we take the path towards the reconciliation and healing of our nation.”

There was never a path towards reconciliation, never any healing. Mandela simply rubberstamped racial hate crimes.

On August 25, 2010, on the 17th anniversary of Biehl’s death, a bronze plaque mounted on a stone was unveiled by the U.S. Ambassador, Donald Gips, and Biehl’s mother, Linda Biehl, at the Cape Town site where she was killed. It was yet another effort by the US to displace the blame, but this time with little enthusiam.

The faces of laughing black killers had been visited on too many by 2010.

Did Mandela’s friend supply chemical weapons to Syrian rebels?

Prince Bandar bin Sultan and Nelson Mandela

by Terry Crawford-Browne

REPORTS from Syria by Jordanian journalists allege that it was Prince Bandar bin Sultan of Saudi Arabia who distributed those chemical weapons to the Syrian rebels.( Here he is shown with that other unrepentant terrorist)

If true, it indicates the chemical attack in Damascus to have been a false-flag operation by the American war business.

This would be entirely in keeping with Prince Bandar’s history of organising the Afghan mujahideen in the 1980s, the Iran-Contra weapons exchanges, Libya in 2011, the suppression of the Shia uprising in Bahrain, Saudi support for the coup d’etat in Egypt and support for Syrian rebels.

Other reports confirm that Prince Bandar also went to see Russian President Vladimir Putin last month and offered to buy $15bn worth of Russian weapons provided Mr Putin abandoned Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Mr Putin gave him short shrift.

Prince Bandar was not only the Saudi ambassador in Washington for 22 years and friends of Ronald Reagan and the Bush family, but he also negotiated the 1985 £43bn Al-Yamamah weapons deal with Margaret Thatcher, which Tony Blair renewed in 2007 with the Al-Salaam weapons deal.

When the British Serious Fraud Office investigated the bribes which BAE Systems paid him, Prince Bandar allegedly threatened blood in the streets of London.

Mr Blair squelched the investigation citing “national security.” The Guardian newspaper revealed a couple of months later how BAE with collusion of the British government had laundered bribes to Prince Bandar of over £1bn through Riggs Bank in Washington DC and other US banks.

Most importantly, Prince Bandar and Ms Thatcher negotiated the Al-Yamamah deal under the British Official Secrets Act, meaning that it cannot be investigated in Britain.

Saudi Arabia ships thousands of barrels per day of oil consigned to the Bank of England, which is then distributed to Shell and BP.

Over the years a surplus has developed, which is guesstimated to be worth over $150bn. Its purpose is a) to guarantee British and US support for the Saudi royal family against domestic insurrection and b) to fund covert destabilisation of resource-rich countries in Asia and Africa under the guise of the war on terror.

Having targeted Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Yemen, Somalia, Libya and other countries over the years, Syria and Egypt are Prince Bandar’s current targets. When will SA be targeted by the American and British “war business” given our country’s mineral wealth?

Saudi Arabia made lavish donations to the African National Congress. Prince Bandar was also the only foreigner present at Nelson Mandela’s secret wedding to Graca Machel, and was a frequent visitor to SA when the arms deal was being negotiated.

Apartheid wasn’t conceived in a vacuum

Expose entrenched racism as it manifests in contemporary South Africa but don’t assume your authority to equate (“all but small dissident groups of alternative”) Afrikaners with white supremacy. It was the British that united all of South Africa as the political entity we know today, just over 100 years ago, after they showed zero white solidarity towards the Afrikaners and just before they passed the Natives Land Act of 1913. It only needed a name when the NP came to power: Apartheid wasn’t conceived in a vacuum.

Furthermore, dressing the experience of whiteness in a costume of irrational racial hatred that sprang from thin air might impress your Elizabethan audiences in the enchanted forest (for whom Englishness may have been the only conceivable “default”) but it will do nothing towards our understanding of how things came to be the way they are, which is crucial for reconciliation in this country and all over the world.

Playing the brutish white off against the helpless black conjures up images of a 19th-century representation of “Bongo bongo land” and your call on “us whites” to unite in our collective white guilt is just outright supremacist. Welcome to the African renaissance. It isn’t up to “us whites” anymore. – Guest on Mail & Guardian

Syria: Another Western war crime in the making

by Paul Craig Roberts

Update:

The war criminals in Washington and other Western capitals are determined to maintain their lie that the Syrian government used chemical weapons. Having failed in efforts to intimidate the UN chemical inspectors in Syria, Washington has demanded that UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon withdraw the chemical weapons inspectors before they can assess the evidence and make their report. The UN Secretary General stood up to the Washington war criminals and rejected their demand. However, as with Iraq, Washington’s decision to commit aggression against Syria is not based on any facts.

The US and UK governments have revealed none of the “conclusive evidence” they claim to have that the Syrian government used chemical weapons. Listening to their voices, observing their body language, and looking into their eyes, it is completely obvious that John Kerry and his British and German puppets are lying through their teeth. This is a far more shameful situation than the massive lies that former Secretary of State Colin Powell told the UN about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. Colin Powell claims that he was deceived by the White House and did not know that he was lying. Kerry and the British, French, and German puppets know full well that they are lying.

The face that the West presents to the world is the brazen face of a liar.

Washington and its British and French puppet governments are poised to yet again reveal their criminality. The image of the West as War Criminal is not a propaganda image created by the West’s enemies, but the portrait that the West has painted of itself.

The UK Independent reports that over this past week-end Obama, Cameron, and Hollande agreed to launch cruise missile attacks against the Syrian government within two weeks despite the lack of any authorization from the UN and despite the absence of any evidence in behalf of Washington’s claim that the Syrian government has used chemical weapons against the Washington-backed “rebels”, largely US supported external forces, seeking to overthrow the Syrian government.

Indeed, one reason for the rush to war is to prevent the UN inspection that Washington knows would disprove its claim and possibly implicate Washington in the false flag attack by the “rebels,” who assembled a large number of children into one area to be chemically murdered with the blame pinned by Washington on the Syrian government.

Another reason for the rush to war is that Cameron, the UK prime minister, wants to get the war going before the British parliament can block him for providing cover for Obama’s war crimes the way that Tony Blair provided cover for George W. Bush, for which Blair was duly rewarded. What does Cameron care about Syrian lives when he can leave office into the waiting arms of a $50 million fortune.

The Syrian government, knowing that it is not responsible for the chemical weapons incident, has agreed for the UN to send in chemical inspectors to determine the substance used and the method of delivery. However, Washington has declared that it is “too late” for UN inspectors and that Washington accepts the self-serving claim of the al Qaeda affiliated “rebels” that the Syrian government attacked civilians with chemical weapons. See also Syria Accepts UN Inspectors, US Spurns Call as ‘Too Late’.

In an attempt to prevent the UN chemical inspectors who arrived on the scene from doing their work, the inspectors were fired upon by snipers in “rebel” held territory and forced off site, although a later report from RT says the inspectors have returned to the site to conduct their inspection.

The corrupt British government has declared that Syria can be attacked without UN authorization, just as Serbia and Libya were militarily attacked without UN authorization. In other words, the Western democracies have already established precedents for violating international law. “International law? We don’t need no stinking international law!” The West knows only one rule: Might is Right. As long as the West has the Might, the West has the Right.

In a response to the news report that the US, UK, and France are preparing to attack Syria, the Russian Foreign Minister, Lavrov, said that such unilateral action is a “severe violation of international law,” and that the violation was not only a legal one but also an ethical and moral violation. Lavrov referred to the lies and deception used by the West to justify its grave violations of international law in military attacks on Serbia, Iraq, and Libya and how the US government used preemptive moves to undermine every hope for peaceful settlements in Iraq, Libya, and Syria.

Once again Washington has preempted any hope of peaceful settlement. By announcing the forthcoming attack, the US destroyed any incentive for the “rebels” to participate in the peace talks with the Syrian government. On the verge of these talks taking place, the “rebels” now have no incentive to participate as the West’s military is coming to their aid.

In his press conference Lavrov spoke of how the ruling parties in the US, UK, and France stir up emotions among poorly informed people that, once aroused, have to be satisfied by war. This, of course, is the way the US manipulated the public in order to attack Afghanistan and Iraq. But the American public is tired of the wars, the goal of which is never made clear, and has grown suspicious of the government’s justifications for more wars.

A Reuters/Ipsos poll finds that “Americans strongly oppose U.S. intervention in Syria’s civil war and believe Washington should stay out of the conflict even if reports that Syria’s government used deadly chemicals to attack civilians are confirmed.” However, Obama could not care less that only 9 percent of the public supports his warmongering. As former president Jimmy Carter recently stated, “America has no functioning democracy.” It has a police state in which the executive branch has placed itself above all law and the Constitution.

This police state is now going to commit yet another Nazi-style war crime of unprovoked aggression. At Nuremberg the Nazis were sentenced to death for precisely the identical actions being committed by Obama, Cameron, and Hollande. The West is banking on might, not right, to keep it out of the criminal dock.

The US, UK, and French governments have not explained why it matters whether people in the wars initiated by the West are killed by explosives made of depleted uranium or with chemical agents or any other weapon. It was obvious from the beginning that Obama was setting up the Syrian government for attack. Obama demonized chemical weapons–but not nuclear “bunker busters” that the US might use on Iran. Then Obama drew a red line, saying that the use of chemical weapons by the Syrians was such a great crime that the West would be obliged to attack Syria. Washington’s UK puppets, William Hague and Cameron, have just repeated this nonsensical claim. The final step in the frame-up was to orchestrate a chemical incident and blame the Syrian government.

What is the West’s real agenda? This is the unasked and unanswered question. Clearly, the US, UK, and French governments, which have displayed continuously their support for dictatorial regimes that serve their purposes, are not the least disturbed by dictatorships. They brand Assad a dictator as a means of demonizing him for the ill-informed Western masses. But Washington, UK, and France support any number of dictatorial regimes, such as the ones in Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and now the military dictatorship in Egypt that is ruthlessly killing Egyptians without any Western government speaking of invading Egypt for “killing its own people.”

Clearly also, the forthcoming Western attack on Syria has nothing whatsoever to do with bringing “freedom and democracy” to Syria any more than freedom and democracy were reasons for the attacks on Iraq and Libya, neither of which gained any “freedom and democracy.”

The Western attack on Syria is unrelated to human rights, justice or any of the high sounding causes with which the West cloaks its criminality.

The Western media, and least of all the American presstitutes, never ask Obama, Cameron, or Hollande what the real agenda is. It is difficult to believe than any reporter is sufficiently stupid or gullible to believe that the agenda is bringing “freedom and democracy” to Syria or punishing Assad for allegedly using chemical weapons against murderous thugs trying to overthrow the Syrian government.

Of course, the question wouldn’t be answered if asked. But the act of asking it would help make the public aware that more is afoot than meets the eye. Originally, the excuse for Washington’s wars was to keep Americans safe from terrorists. Now Washington is endeavoring to turn Syria over to jihad terrorists by helping them to overthrow the secular, non-terrorist Assad government. What is the agenda behind Washington’s support of terrorism?

Perhaps the purpose of the wars is to radicalize Muslims and, thereby, destabilize Russia and even China. Russia has large populations of Muslims and is bordered by Muslim countries. Even China has some Muslim population. As radicalization spreads strife into the only two countries capable of being an obstacle to Washington’s world hegemony, Western media propaganda and the large number of US financed NGOs, posing as “human rights” organizations, can be counted on by Washington to demonize the Russian and Chinese governments for harsh measures against “rebels.”

Another advantage of the radicalization of Muslims is that it leaves former Muslim countries in long-term turmoil or civil wars, as is currently the case in Iraq and Libya, thus removing any organized state power from obstructing Israeli purposes.

Secretary of State John Kerry is working the phones using bribes and threats to build acceptance, if not support, for Washington’s war crime-in-the-making against Syria.

Washington is driving the world closer to nuclear war than it ever was even in the most dangerous periods of the Cold War. When Washington finishes with Syria, the next target is Iran. Russia and China will no longer be able to fool themselves that there is any system of international law or restraint on Western criminality. Western aggression is already forcing both countries to develop their strategic nuclear forces and to curtail the Western-financed NGOs that pose as “human rights organizations,” but in reality comprise a fifth column that Washington can use to destroy the legitimacy of the Russian and Chinese governments.

Russia and China have been extremely careless in their dealings with the United States. Essentially, the Russian political opposition is financed by Washington. Even the Chinese government is being undermined. When a US corporation opens a company in China, it creates a Chinese board on which are put relatives of the local political authorities. These boards create a conduit for payments that influence the decisions and loyalties of local and regional party members. The US has penetrated Chinese universities and intellectual attitudes. The Rockefeller University is active in China as is Rockefeller philanthropy. Dissenting voices are being created that are arrayed against the Chinese government. Demands for “liberalization” can resurrect regional and ethnic differences and undermine the cohesiveness of the national government.

Once Russia and China realize that they are riven with American fifth columns, isolated diplomatically, and outgunned militarily, nuclear weapons become the only guarantor of their sovereignty. This suggests that nuclear war is likely to terminate humanity well before humanity succumbs to global warming or rising national debts.

Dr. Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. He was columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators Syndicate. He has had many university appointments. His internet columns have attracted a worldwide following. His latest book, The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and Economic Dissolution of the West is now available.

Originally published on Paul Craig Roberts – Institute for Political Economy. Reproduced with the author’s permission. Contact information for syndication rights.

Does Obama know he’s fighting on al-Qaida’s side?

By Robert Fisk.

If Barack Obama decides to attack the Syrian regime, he has ensured – for the very first time in history – that the United States will be on the same side as al-Qaida.

Quite an alliance! Was it not the Three Musketeers who shouted “All for one and one for all” each time they sought combat? This really should be the new battle cry if – or when – the statesmen of the Western world go to war against Bashar al-Assad.

The men who destroyed so many thousands on 9/11 will then be fighting alongside the very nation whose innocents they so cruelly murdered almost exactly 12 years ago. Quite an achievement for Obama, Cameron, Hollande and the rest of the miniature warlords.

This, of course, will not be trumpeted by the Pentagon or the White House – nor, I suppose, by al-Qaida – though they are both trying to destroy Bashar. So are the Nusra front, one of al-Qaida’s affiliates. But it does raise some interesting possibilities.

Maybe the Americans should ask al-Qaida for intelligence help – after all, this is the group with “boots on the ground”, something the Americans have no interest in doing. And maybe al-Qaida could offer some target information facilities to the country which usually claims that the supporters of al-Qaida, rather than the Syrians, are the most wanted men in the world.

There will be some ironies, of course. While the Americans drone al-Qaida to death in Yemen and Pakistan – along, of course, with the usual flock of civilians – they will be giving them, with the help of Messrs Cameron, Hollande and the other Little General-politicians, material assistance in Syria by hitting al-Qaida’s enemies. Indeed, you can bet your bottom dollar that the one target the Americans will not strike in Syria will be al-Qa’ida or the Nusra front.

And our own Prime Minister will applaud whatever the Americans do, thus allying himself with al-Qa’ida, whose London bombings may have slipped his mind. Perhaps – since there is no institutional memory left among modern governments – Cameron has forgotten how similar are the sentiments being uttered by Obama and himself to those uttered by Bush and Blair a decade ago, the same bland assurances, uttered with such self-confidence but without quite enough evidence to make it stick.

In Iraq, we went to war on the basis of lies originally uttered by fakers and conmen. Now it’s war by YouTube. This doesn’t mean that the terrible images of the gassed and dying Syrian civilians are false. It does mean that any evidence to the contrary is going to have to be suppressed. For example, no-one is going to be interested in persistent reports in Beirut that three Hezbollah members – fighting alongside government troops in Damascus – were apparently struck down by the same gas on the same day, supposedly in tunnels. They are now said to be undergoing treatment in a Beirut hospital. So if Syrian government forces used gas, how come Hezbollah men might have been stricken too? Blowback?

And while we’re talking about institutional memory, hands up which of our jolly statesmen know what happened last time the Americans took on the Syrian government army? I bet they can’t remember. Well it happened in Lebanon when the US Air Force decided to bomb Syrian missiles in the Bekaa Valley on 4 December 1983. I recall this very well because I was here in Lebanon. An American A-6 fighter bomber was hit by a Syrian Strela missile – Russian made, naturally – and crash-landed in the Bekaa; its pilot, Mark Lange, was killed, its co-pilot, Robert Goodman, taken prisoner and freighted off to jail in Damascus. Jesse Jackson had to travel to Syria to get him back after almost a month amid many clichés about “ending the cycle of violence”. Another American plane – this time an A-7 – was also hit by Syrian fire but the pilot managed to eject over the Mediterranean where he was plucked from the water by a Lebanese fishing boat. His plane was also destroyed.

Sure, we are told that it will be a short strike on Syria, in and out, a couple of days. That’s what Obama likes to think. But think Iran. Think Hezbollah. I rather suspect – if Obama does go ahead – that this one will run and run. – The Independent

Why don’t you have black friends?

by Tanner Colby

“So, how many black friends do you have now?”

It’s a question I get asked a lot, ever since I set out five years ago to find out why I, your typical middle-class white person, had no black friends at all.

I do have black friends now, actually. Several. But I rarely offer that information when asked, because to ask white people how many black friends they have is to pose the wrong question.

Recently, a Reuters poll came out showing that 40% of white Americans have zero nonwhite friends, and only 20% of white Americans have five or more nonwhite friends. People seemed shocked that the numbers were so bad.

Personally, I was surprised that they were so good. America remains a deeply segregated and divided country. Even accounting for institutional and socioeconomic barriers, in the places we have the opportunity to integrate—the high school cafeteria, for instance—we largely don’t.

The Reuters survey itself is misleading, lumping all minorities together under the vague heading of “nonwhite.” Depending on what part of the country you live in (e.g, anywhere but Minnesota or Wyoming), it’s not uncommon to have Asian or Hispanic friends.

But the social divide between whites and those groups is more a function of the slow-rolling, generational process of immigrant assimilation. That is a wholly different phenomenon from the social divide between whites and blacks, which is the product of 400 years of slavery and segregation. That’s the social divide we should worry about, and if the poll had focused on that, the numbers would surely have been much worse.

The reason why “How many black friends do you have?” is such a terrible question is because it shows how we typically talk when we talk about race. Even when we try to talk about race in a constructive way, we usually make black people the object of the sentence, rarely the subject.

Black friends are the things to be acquired to prove one is not racist. The way the question is asked accords black people no agency, nor does it reveal anything about the real character of the white person being queried.

What you really want to know is not “How many black friends do I have?” but rather, “Have I become the type of individual that a black person might choose to be friends with?” That’s a real question. Poll a couple thousand white people with that and you might start to get some interesting answers, or at least some confused and befuddled looks.

White people are products of their own whitewashed, sanitized environment. Black people have been systematically excluded from white neighborhoods. Black stories rarely surface in popular culture. The history of race in high school textbooks has been boiled down to a handful of bedtime stories about Jackie Robinson and Rosa Parks. Try to tap into the average white person’s feelings on race and you won’t necessarily find feelings of hate and antipathy. You just won’t find much of anything, no fully formed or well-considered thoughts about race of any kind. There’s nothing really there. Even white people who want black friends don’t know where to start.

America’s lack of integration wouldn’t be such a big deal except for the fact that relationships and social networks are vital to economic advancement.

Even when programs like school busing and affirmative action give black people access to white spaces, when those people go to climb the social ladder there’s nothing there for them to grab onto, because there’s very little reciprocal effort coming from the other direction. It’s high effort and low reward.

The result is that black people end up with integration fatigue. Many black writers responded to the Reuters poll with essays on why they didn’t want white friends, and didn’t need them. White friends weren’t worth the bother.

This is their prerogative, but ultimately, it’s to society’s disadvantage because white people control the access to, well, just about everything. If you don’t have white friends, you might have a decent job and a comfortable life, but all the doors of opportunity in this country are not open to you. “I may do well in a desegregated society,” the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. said, “but I can never know what my total capacity is until I live in an integrated society.”

Interracial friendships, social bonds across the color line, are a key factor in putting the sins of America’s past behind us. But it’s not something that’s accomplished by white people knowing lots of black people. It helps if white people know how to be better white people. – CNN.COM

Tanner Colby is the author of Some of My Best Friends Are Black: The Strange Story of Integration in America.

Oprah: Just because you’re not racist doesn’t mean you’re not a racist

by Ben Shapiro, FrontPage Magazine

Oprah Winfrey is a cultural mover and shaker. That much is clear after her historically inaccurate film The Butler, which portrays Ronald Reagan as a doddering racist and ignores the legacy of bigotry of Southern Democrats, finished first last week at the box office. Seventy-two percent of those who went to see the film cited Oprah’s participation as a factor in favor of their buying a ticket. Sadly, Oprah has used that power to push a false racial narrative directly at odds with the racial narrative pushed by The Butler.

First, The Butler’s racial narrative. The movie, as Oprah has said, begins with a lynching in 1926 and ends with President Barack Obama in the White House. The notion is that Obama marks the culmination of a centuries-long movement toward equality for blacks in America, a popular perspective that largely explains Obama’s election in 2008.

Then there’s Oprah’s actual racial narrative. In her view, President Obama remains an exception to a broader racist rule. Trayvon Martin, Oprah says, is just today’s Emmitt Till, murdered in 1955 by the Ku Klux Klan. So what if racism in America is at an all-time low? So what if the vast majority of Americans are not only not racist, but actively anti-racist? That’s not enough for Oprah. “A lot of people think if they think they’re not using the n-word themselves, they physically aren’t using the n-word themselves, and do not harbor ill will towards black people that it’s not racist,” she said in a comment that is as challenged syntactically as it is intellectually.

This is paranoia of the highest sort. And it is absolutely crippling to America’s future. If a huge number of Americans believe that racism that is not present in action nonetheless lurks beneath the surface of our life, waiting to burst forth in a conflagration of hate such as that which allegedly claimed Trayvon, there can be no shared future.

But many on the left, including Oprah, apparently don’t want a shared future. They want emotional blackmail. The corollary to the belief that racism hides in the nooks and crannies of the white personality is the belief that the only way to expunge such racism by embracing the philosophy of people like Oprah. If you see The Butler, you’re buying a racial indulgence; if you vote Obama, you’re buying a racial indulgence. Lee Daniels, director of The Butler, told CBS News that white extras cried during the filming of the movie. Presumably, in his view, that meant they were not racist. But what about all the Americans who will never shed tears over The Butler? How will they demonstrate their non-racism, even if there has never been a shred of evidence that they are in fact racist?

That seems to be the perspective not just of many black Americans like Oprah and Daniels, but the perspective of many in various minority communities. For example, in California, Governor Jerry Brown recently signed a law declaring that transgender children must be allowed to enter bathrooms of their choice and join sports teams of their choice. The idea here is that this will minimize bullying, as though most Americans bear children with gender identity issues some sort of ill will. The truth is far simpler: Americans have a right to worry that their children will feel uncomfortable in a bathroom next to someone of the opposite sex, no matter what that person believes him or herself to be. That’s not wrong. That’s normal. But the onus has now been placed on children without gender identity issues to explain why they feel uncomfortable at the urinal next to a girl, even if they’ve never bullied a transgender child.

That’s nasty. More than that, it’s an attempt to shape values by implying that everyone is in need of having their fundamental racism, sexism, homophobia overcome by government action. Americans have nothing left to discuss. America is now a country where whites are often perceived as racist until proven innocent. And the only way to prove yourself innocent is to perform acts approved by the leftist establishment.

None of this helps black Americans. All it does is perpetuate power for those who divide us in pursuit of political gain. Hillary Clinton, who has begun touring the country invoking the supposed racism of voter ID supporters, is merely the latest race hustler to attempt this pernicious trick. Unfortunately, it seems to work. And that means that Oprah’s racial narrative is far more influential than The Butler’s.

Ben Shapiro is an attorney and writer and a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, and author of the new book “Primetime Propaganda: The True Hollywood Story of How The Left Took Over Your TV” from Broadside Books, an imprint of HarperCollins.

Journalism under threat

By Alan Rusbridger
Guardian Editor

On Sunday morning David Miranda, the partner of Guardian columnist Glenn Greenwald, was detained as he was passing through Heathrow airport on his way back to Rio de Janeiro, where the couple live. Greenwald is the reporter who has broken most of the stories about state surveillance based on the leaks from the former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. Greenwald’s work has undoubtedly been troublesome and embarrassing for western governments. But, as the debate in America and Europe has shown, there is considerable public interest in what his stories have revealed about the right balance between security, civil liberties, freedom of speech and privacy. He has raised acutely disturbing questions about the oversight of intelligence; about the use of closed courts; about the cosy and secret relationship between government and vast corporations; and about the extent to which millions of citizens now routinely have their communications intercepted, collected, analysed and stored.

In this work he is regularly helped by David Miranda. Miranda is not a journalist, but he still plays a valuable role in helping his partner do his journalistic work. Greenwald has his plate full reading and analysing the Snowden material, writing, and handling media and social media requests from around the world. He can certainly use this back-up. That work is immensely complicated by the certainty that it would be highly unadvisable for Greenwald (or any other journalist) to regard any electronic means of communication as safe. The Guardian’s work on the Snowden story has involved many individuals taking a huge number of flights in order to have face-to-face meetings. Not good for the environment, but increasingly the only way to operate. Soon we will be back to pen and paper.

Miranda was held for nine hours under schedule 7 of the UK’s terror laws, which give enormous discretion to stop, search and question people who have no connection with “terror”, as ordinarily understood. Suspects have no right to legal representation and may have their property confiscated for up to seven days. Under this measure – uniquely crafted for ports and airport transit areas – there are none of the checks and balances that apply once someone is in Britain proper. There is no need to arrest or charge anyone and there is no protection for journalists or their material. A transit lounge in Heathrow is a dangerous place to be.

Miranda’s professional status – much hand-wringing about whether or not he’s a proper “journalist – is largely irrelevant in these circumstances. Increasingly, the question about who deserves protection should be less “is this a journalist?” than “is the publication of this material in the public interest?”

The detention of Miranda has rightly caused international dismay because it feeds into a perception that the US and UK governments – while claiming to welcome the debate around state surveillance started by Snowden – are also intent on stemming the tide of leaks and on pursuing the whistleblower with a vengeance. That perception is right. Here follows a little background on the considerable obstacles being placed in the way of informing the public about what the intelligence agencies, governments and corporations are up to.

A little over two months ago I was contacted by a very senior government official claiming to represent the views of the prime minister. There followed two meetings in which he demanded the return or destruction of all the material we were working on. The tone was steely, if cordial, but there was an implicit threat that others within government and Whitehall favoured a far more draconian approach.

The mood toughened just over a month ago, when I received a phone call from the centre of government telling me: “You’ve had your fun. Now we want the stuff back.” There followed further meetings with shadowy Whitehall figures. The demand was the same: hand the Snowden material back or destroy it. I explained that we could not research and report on this subject if we complied with this request. The man from Whitehall looked mystified. “You’ve had your debate. There’s no need to write any more.”

During one of these meetings I asked directly whether the government would move to close down the Guardian’s reporting through a legal route – by going to court to force the surrender of the material on which we were working. The official confirmed that, in the absence of handover or destruction, this was indeed the government’s intention. Prior restraint, near impossible in the US, was now explicitly and imminently on the table in the UK. But my experience over WikiLeaks – the thumb drive and the first amendment – had already prepared me for this moment. I explained to the man from Whitehall about the nature of international collaborations and the way in which, these days, media organisations could take advantage of the most permissive legal environments. Bluntly, we did not have to do our reporting from London. Already most of the NSA stories were being reported and edited out of New York. And had it occurred to him that Greenwald lived in Brazil?

The man was unmoved. And so one of the more bizarre moments in the Guardian’s long history occurred – with two GCHQ security experts overseeing the destruction of hard drives in the Guardian’s basement just to make sure there was nothing in the mangled bits of metal which could possibly be of any interest to passing Chinese agents. “We can call off the black helicopters,” joked one as we swept up the remains of a MacBook Pro.

Whitehall was satisfied, but it felt like a peculiarly pointless piece of symbolism that understood nothing about the digital age. We will continue to do patient, painstaking reporting on the Snowden documents, we just won’t do it in London. The seizure of Miranda’s laptop, phones, hard drives and camera will similarly have no effect on Greenwald’s work.

The state that is building such a formidable apparatus of surveillance will do its best to prevent journalists from reporting on it. Most journalists can see that. But I wonder how many have truly understood the absolute threat to journalism implicit in the idea of total surveillance, when or if it comes – and, increasingly, it looks like “when”.

We are not there yet, but it may not be long before it will be impossible for journalists to have confidential sources. Most reporting – indeed, most human life in 2013 – leaves too much of a digital fingerprint. Those colleagues who denigrate Snowden or say reporters should trust the state to know best (many of them in the UK, oddly, on the right) may one day have a cruel awakening. One day it will be their reporting, their cause, under attack. But at least reporters now know to stay away from Heathrow transit lounges.

Hillary polarizing racial politics

Hillary Clinton began her 2016 march to the White House last week, and it wasn’t a promising debut. The former first lady and Senator used her first big policy speech since leaving the State Department to portray American election laws as fundamentally racist. The speech was longer on anecdotes than statistics, so allow us to fill in some of the holes.

“In 2013, so far, more than 80 bills restricting voting rights have been introduced in 31 states,” Mrs. Clinton told her political base of lawyers at the American Bar Association. She portrayed these laws as part of an effort reaching back years to “disproportionately impact African-Americans, Latino and young voters.” And she threw the Supreme Court in as part of this racist conspiracy, assailing its recent decision finding the “preclearance” section of the Voting Rights Act to be unconstitutional.

She claimed the High Court had “struck at the heart” of the law, though all it did was eliminate a section that had forced such states as Mississippi to meet higher legal burdens for election laws than other states with a worse current record of minority voter participation. “Now not every obstacle is related to race,” Mrs. Clinton added, “but anyone who says that racial discrimination is no longer a problem in American elections must not be paying attention.”

No one thinks racial discrimination has vanished from American life or the human condition. But as for minority voting, Mrs. Clinton is the one who hasn’t been paying attention. In particular, she must have missed the May 2013 Census Bureau study on “The Diversifying Electorate—Voting Rates by Race and Hispanic Origin in 2012 (and Other Recent Elections).”

The study, based on data from the November 2012 Current Population Survey, shows that minority voter turnout nationwide has been rising—dramatically so. Take blacks, who as recently as 1996 had a low voter turnout rate of 53%.

As the nearby chart shows, black turnout has jumped in each of the last four presidential elections. In 2012, black turnout as a share of all eligible voters exceeded the turnout of non-Hispanic white voters—66.2% to 64.1%. Nearly five million more African-Americans voted in 2012 (17.8 million) than voted in 2000 (12.9 million). In both 2008 and 2012, black voters even exceeded their share of the eligible black voting age population. In 2012, blacks made up 12.5% of the eligible electorate but 13.4% of those voting.

Having Barack Obama at the top of the ticket no doubt helped this black voter mobilization, but the trend shows that the surge preceded his candidacy. Remember when liberals portrayed Bill Clinton as “America’s first black President”? The black turnout surge accelerated after Mr. Clinton’s last election. Such a large increase in black voter turnout over 16 years would seem to refute the claim by Mrs. Clinton that racial obstacles to voting are increasing.

Mrs. Clinton ignores all of this and focuses instead on anecdotes, while raising alarm about the voter ID laws that have passed in the last decade. She specifically raises fears about North and South Carolina. Yet the same Census Bureau study shows that black turnout exceeded non-Hispanic white turnout by statistically significant rates in both Carolinas, and was higher in most states east of the Mississippi River outside of New England.

North Carolina, she says, has this year “pushed through a bill that reads like the greatest hits of voter suppression.” But that supposed horror show merely reduces early voting by a week, and bars same-day registration and extending voting hours by political whim. All of these are designed to preserve ballot integrity, which is as vital as voter access to public confidence in honest elections. Voters without an ID can get one free at the Department of Motor Vehicles and they can also cast a provisional ballot pending confirmation that they are legally registered.

By the way, Georgia, Indiana and Tennessee have some of the strictest voter ID laws of the more than 30 states that have such laws, yet the Census report says black turnout exceeded that of non-Hispanic whites in 2012 in all three. Where is the evidence that voter ID laws keep minorities from voting?

The disconnect between these facts and Mrs. Clinton’s assertions suggests that she is the one playing racial politics. The current narrow Democratic majority is largely a coalition based on gender and racial identity. It requires big turnout among single women and non-whites. As the Obama era winds down, the fear among Democrats is that these voters won’t have the same enthusiasm.

Mrs. Clinton can play the “first woman President” card, but she also needs large minority turnout. If she can’t motivate that turnout based on rising economic optimism or opportunity, which is hard given the Obama economic record, she and Democrats will play to racial fears to drive it. She wants a racially polarized electorate.

This is a tragedy for the country, and Republicans like Mitt Romney share the blame for doing so little to attract minority votes. But this strategy and Mrs. Clinton’s speech don’t bode well for a less polarized politics as Democrats try to extend their electoral dominance.

Mrs. Clinton billed her speech last week as the first of a series addressing what she called “eroding public trust” in government. Government could use the help, though note the irony that Mrs. Clinton’s party has been running the government even as its reputation sinks. In any case, stoking racial fears based on imaginary government racism won’t make Americans feel better about politics or government.

A version of this article appeared August 19, 2013, on page A16 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Hillary’s Racial Politics.