China’s Ambassador to US Reportedly Asks Biden Administration to ‘Please Shut Up’ in Zoom Call 據報導，中國駐美國大使在視像會議中要求拜登政府“請閉嘴” – Chinese ambassador to the United States Qin Gang speaks at an August 31, 2021, event – Sputnik International, 12.09.2021
China-US relations have degenerated considerably over the past five years, with the countries mired in an economic conflict involving trade, tariffs and technology transfers, and engaged in a diplomatic conflict over issues ranging from Hong Kong, Xinjiang and Taiwan to US ‘freedom of navigation’ missions in waters claimed by Beijing.
Qin Gang, China’s recently-appointed ambassador to the United States, has reportedly urged American authorities to keep quiet if the ongoing spat between the two economic superpowers cannot be resolved diplomatically.
“If we cannot resolve our differences, please shut up,” Qin reportedly said in a private Zoom meeting hosted by the National Committee on United States-China Relations, a New York-based nonprofit, late last month.
According to the National Review, which reported on Qin’s alleged remarks on the basis of a source said to be familiar with the exchange, the ambassador made the comments after Evan Medeiros, a Georgetown University prof and former Obama-era advisor on China issues at the National Security Council, asked what measures the US and China could take to improve relations.
Before advising US officials to “please shut up,” Qin reportedly asked Washington to stop deliberately exacerbating tensions between the two countries.
The National Review expressed shock over the senior Chinese diplomat’s comments, pointing out that the National Committee on United States-China Relations meeting included senior American China experts including former secretary of state Henry Kissinger and former Clinton and Obama staffer Jack Lew.
Chinese and US officials have not commented publicly on Qin’s alleged remarks in the call.
Qin, a former foreign ministry spokesman and vice minister of foreign affairs, was named China’s ambassador to the US in late July. In comments of the Zoom meeting which were made public earlier, the diplomat blasted leaders in Washington and policy thinkers for approaching the China-US competition as a new “cold war,” saying this was a “misjudgement.”
“The extreme China policy of the previous US administration has caused serious damage to our relations, and such a situation has not changed. It is even continuing,” Qin complained.
Despite initial hopes in the wake of Joe Biden’s victory in the November 2020 presidential elections that US policy toward China would shift post-Trump, the Democratic president has not publicly sought to alter the relationship with Beijing, demonstratively inviting Taiwan’s de facto ambassador to the United States to his inauguration in January, and continuing the multi-trillion dollar trade, tariff and tech transfer wars started by his predecessor. The Biden administration has also leveled accusations against China about “human rights abuses” and “genocide” in the province of Xinjiang, and increased military deployments near the country’s borders, including in the contested East and South China Seas. China rejected the allegations levelled by the US, recalling Washington’s own spotty human rights record, and calling on America to stop meddling in other countries’ internal affairs.
China-US tensions have escalated most significantly over Taiwan, which the People’s Republic considers an integral part of China, amid the consistent deployment of warships in the Taiwan Strait, and perceived US support for the island’s “separatist” authorities. Last month, President Biden’s promised that the United States would come to the defence of Taipei if was attacked by “bad guys,” with his comments prompting Chinese media to accuse him of making “empty” and “reckless” remarks, and to warn that Washington would “have to prepare for much greater storms” in the Taiwan Straits if it did not back away from the president’s position.
Laureates of ‘Nobel Prize of China’ announced, recognized for coronavirus studies and impact on COVID-19 fight by Liu Caiyu, Fan Anqi and Lu Yameng Sep 12 2021
Hong Kong-based scientists Kwok-Yung Yuen and Joseph Sriyal Malik Peiris won the prize in life sciences in the 2021 Future Science Prize, dubbed “China’s Nobel Prize,” for their major discoveries of SARS-CoV-1 as the causative agent of the global SARS outbreak in 2003 with impact on combating COVID-19 and emerging infectious diseases, the award organizer announced on Sunday.
The Future Science Prize is a privately funded science honor established by a group of renowned scientists and entrepreneurs in 2016, aiming at recognizing scientific breakthroughs and innovations in China with long-term significance to the world. The prize is given in three categories with $1 million for each award, namely the Life Science Prize, Physical Science Prize and Mathematics and Computer Science Prize.
Yuen, from the University of Hong Kong, told the Global Times in an exclusive interview on Sunday that “this is one of the most important prizes not just in China but also internationally. I am really honored and grateful to get the recognition of the very eminent scientists of the selection committee for the prize.”
Wang Xiaodong, one of the reviewers of the award, said at Sunday’s press conference that “Chinese scientists were able to quickly identify the cause of the COVID-19 pandemic thanks to their contributions.”
When asked how their discoveries affect people’s understanding of the cause of COVID-19, Yuen explained that since he and his team discovered in 2005 that the horseshoe bat was the natural animal reservoir for the ancestral SARS-CoV-1, they believe that SARS-CoV-2 “also went from bats to another mammal(s) before jumping into humans.”
Moreover, SARS-CoV-2 replicates very well in both bat and human intestinal organs, which further supports the bat origin of SARS-CoV-2, he said.
But there are also major differences between the two diseases, Yuen noted, in terms of “disease severity, asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic rates and the ability of the virus to suppress interferon and inflammatory responses.”
As world scientists call for the second phase of the coronavirus origins study, experts from the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention have suggested that investigations should be carried out in countries where horseshoe bats and pangolins reside, those with virus-positive animal data and which supplied Wuhan Huanan seafood market through cold-chain logistics, as more tests and molecular viral research suggest it is possible that the early outbreak in the Huanan market may have been sparked by cold-chain imports.
Jin Dongyan, a professor at the School of Biomedical Sciences at HKU, told the Global Times on Sunday that Yuen and his research team where a group of world-leading researcher are gathered are very valuable to the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region. “From SARS to COVID-19, the team has been engaged in coronavirus-related basic studies while combing through clinical studies. That working mode contributes the outstanding work of the university to the study of infectious diseases,” Jin said.
China makes breakthrough in high-level radioactive waste disposal technique, achieves milestone in nuclear industry devt by Fan Anqi and Deng Xiaoci Sep 12 2021
China’s first high-level radioactive liquid waste disposal equipment, capable of melting waste into glass, has been officially put into use in Guangyuan, Southwest China’s Sichuan Province, on Saturday, making China one of the few countries in the world to have acquired such a technique.
Chinese experts believed that the technique could have been a better option for Japan to dispose the nuclear-contaminated Fukushima wastewater, but Japan “clearly does not want to pay the bill.”
The equipment is a milestone project at the back end of the nuclear industry chain, and is considered a major step forward in the safe and green development of China’s nuclear industry, the Global Times learned from the State Administration of Science, Technology, and Industry for National Defense on Sunday.
Nuclear waste treatment is the final part during the safe use of nuclear energy, of which the most difficult and technically advanced is the treatment of high-level radioactive liquid.
To tackle the challenge, China’s approach is to mix and melt liquid waste with glass materials at a temperature of 1,100 C or higher and then leave it to cool and form into glass, which can effectively and stably contain the radioactive elements inside, thanks to the low leaching and high strength of the glass, read a statement from the administration.
Such an approach to deal with the waste is by far the most advanced method in the world, the statement said. Only the US, France, Germany, and a few others have mastered the technique previously.
The difficulties and core capabilities of such a waste disposal mechanism lie in the consolidation formula with a high inclusive rate and stability to make sure the radioactive materials inside can be safely contained for more than 1,000 years, the statement said.
The project was approved by the China Atomic Energy Authority (CAEA) in 2004 and was designed jointly by China and Germany. The first batch of glass bodies consolidated from radioactive waste were rolled out for evaluation on August 27, and successfully passed the tests with all relevant technical indicators reaching international advanced levels.
The annual waste disposal amount is expected to reach several hundred cubic meters, and the glass produced from the waste will be buried in a repository hundred of meters beneath the ground, realizing the complete isolation of radioactive materials with the biosphere and laying a solid foundation for the safe use of nuclear energy in the future.
In April, the Japanese government made a startling decision to dump nuclear-contaminated Fukushima wastewater into the ocean, claiming the decision “the best option,” a remark that shocked and drawn fury not only from its neighboring countries but also the whole world.
Zhou Yongmao, an academician at the Chinese Academy of Engineering, who spent over 60 years in nuclear engineering, told the Global Times in a previous exclusive interview that leaving the nuclear wastewater deep underground after solidification is a relatively better option for safety and health concerns, though with higher costs. However, “the Japanese government clearly does not want to pay the bill, preferring to push the risk on to others.”
“China has always attached great importance to radioactive waste management, and it has maintained an open attitude for international cooperation,” the administration said. “China, as a responsible world nuclear power, has strengthened collaboration with the International Atomic Energy Agency and actively participated in experience exchanges with others.”
Now, China has acquired waste treatment capabilities with high-, medium- and low-level radioactivity. Liu Yongde, chief engineer at CAEA, said that the institute will accelerate the process of radioactive waste disposal to provide sound support for China’s commitment to peak carbon dioxide emissions before 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality before 2060.
Chinese Scientists whether American born or immigrants would be foolish to stay in US. Your Chinese heritage automatically made you enemies of US. Hu Anming, a renowned expert in nanotechnology, had all charges against him dropped last week after a US federal judge ruled no reasonable jury could convict him on the evidence presented. In July, US prosecutors were forced to dismiss cases against five other Chinese scientists accused of visa fraud. 中國科學家無論是美國出生的還是移民的，留在美國都是愚蠢的。 你的中國血統自然地讓你成為美國的敵人。 在美國聯邦法官裁定沒有合理的陪審團可以根據所提供的證據對胡安明定罪後，著名納米技術專家胡安明上週撤銷了對他的所有指控。 7 月，美國檢方被迫駁回針對另外五名被控簽證欺詐的中國科學家的案件。
My friend in Australia bought a copy of the Weekend Australian owned by Murdoch’s Newscorp. There were two big opinion pieces depicting China as Australia’s enemy in future wars. Some sections of Australian population and media have gone bonkers! US’s vassal states Australia together with Canada tried to outdo each other for treats, nice puppies. 我在澳大利亞的朋友買了一本默多克新聞集團旗下的《澳大利亞週末》。 有兩大觀點將中國描述為澳大利亞在未來戰爭中的敵人。 澳大利亞人口和媒體的某些部分已經瘋了！ 美國的附庸國澳大利亞和加拿大可愛的小狗試圖超越對方.
Half a century of crimes against humanity – Has US learned its lessons from post-9/11 wars? 美國半個世紀的危害人類罪 – 美國是否從 9/11 後中吸取了教訓 GT staff reporters Sep 11 2021
It has been 20 years after the world was shocked to see two planes struck the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York on September 11, 2001. It was a chaotic scene featuring fire and heavy smoke, the screaming and scattered crowds and people who were dumfounded by the fact that the US – a superpower – was attacked by terrorists on its ground.
This year’s commemoration of September 11 is different as the US just ended the war in Afghanistan and the Afghan Taliban – after being overturned by the US three months after 9/11 in 2001 – has taken over Afghanistan, again.
The past few weeks have seen the Western media making rolling reports to mourn victims of the terror attacks and some reflecting on the failures of the US domestic and diplomatic policies in the past two decades.
However, the fierce criticism and the apparent failures of the past two decades have not awakened the US political elites. They refused to learn. And soon they will be looking for a new enemy in a new region, but even bigger failures await them, observers said.
Seeking truth
The US President Joe Biden, heavily criticized for his hasty and disorganized withdrawal from Afghanistan from all fronts, may attempt to use the 20th anniversary of the September 11 to shift the public attention. According to the schedule released by the White House, Biden and his wife are scheduled to visit all three 9/11 memorial sites — ground zero in New York City, the Pentagon and the memorial outside Shanksville, Pennsylvania, where United Flight 93 was forced down — on Saturday.
But nearly 1,800 people, including survivors of 9/11 and family members of the victims, are signing a joint letter asking Biden to not attend the memorial activities if he does not declassify documents related to the terror attacks.
Brett Eagleson was among them. His father Bruce Eagleson, who was on the 17th floor of the South Tower of the WTC, died in the collapse of the building, leaving his family unable to recover his remains even through DNA analysis. After luckily surviving when the planes hit the building, he chose to stay and assist more people to evacuate and was last seen going upstairs to retrieve a walkie-talkie to assist in communication between firefighters and the police.
Sorrow and bitterness have engulfed the better part of the last two decades of Brett’s life, but it’s mostly anger that stands out. The US government’s investigation into the 9/11 attacks has been shrouded in secrecy with detailed reports on one of the most shocking terrorist attacks having never been disclosed.
“We have been fighting for 20 years about the information that our government has always been keeping this information from us,” Brett Eagleson told the Global Times. “We have been fighting for so long; every family is tired and frustrated.”
Brett Eagleson said those 20 years have changed his perception of the US government. “We have seen our government block its own citizens from truth and justice for its own selfish interests and to grow its relationship with Saudi Arabia, and as time goes on, we get further and further away from the truth.”
Finally gathering up the courage to visit Ground Zero, the World Trade Center site in Lower Manhattan to see the changes in the place 20 years after it was hit by two planes, Mrs Tsou, a 50-year-old Chinese-American living in New York, remained calm but after seeing the smiling Muslim girls with headscarves painted on the fence not far from the square, she sighed with emotion.
“For the past 20 years, the American people have not seen much of the US counter-terrorism measures in Afghanistan and Iraq, but the fear of and discrimination against Muslims and people of color has grown within the US,” she told the Global Times.
Tsou was a software engineer who worked in the north Tower of the WTC. The vacation on September 11 two decades ago saved her life, but more than 30 of her colleagues were wounded or killed in the attack. Tsou quit her job after the 9/11 attacks and has been doing odd jobs at home since then. Rarely has she left the house or have any contact with her former colleagues.
“War is always intertwined with too much self-interest, and 20 years later, the truth about the attacks remains unanswered, and the American people have not been given the answer for ‘why do they hate us,’ but our government has created more conflict and hate in America and all around the world,” Tsou said.
Infographic: Wu Tiantong/Global Times Infographic: Wu Tiantong/Global Times
War on terror
Like Tsou, a lot of Americans are wondering why the US failed and whether the money and the American lives sacrificed in the war on terror in Afghanistan were worth it. But for many outside the US, the question remains how the world and the US were changed by 9/11.
Harvard University scholar Joseph S. Nye Jr. told the Global Times that “future historians will regard September 11, 2001 as important as Pearl Harbor was on December 7,1941.”
In the 2000 presidential election, George W. Bush advocated a humble foreign policy and warned against the temptations of nation-building, but after the shock of 9/11, he declared a “Global War on Terror” and invaded both Afghanistan and Iraq, the professor said.
“While the 9/11 attacks killed several thousand Americans, the ‘endless wars’ that the US launched as part of the global war on terror cost much more,” he said.
According to data from the Brown University Costs of War project, over 929,000 people have died in the post-9/11 wars due to direct war violence, and several times as many due to the reverberating effects of war. 38 million people became war refugees and displaced persons. The US is also conducting counterterror activities in 85 countries and the federal price tag for the post-9/11 wars is over 8 trillion.
All this money and lives invested in the post 9/11 wars under the banner of countering terrorism have not stopped terrorism from spreading globally. It has only caused more confrontations between different civilizations.
The rhetoric of the war on terror generated a geopolitical binary that divided the world into the uncivilized and civilized. Islam was posited as the enemy and the symbol of “the uncivilized world.” Many Muslim populations — including innocent civilians — were viewed as “suspect communities” targeted under the rubric of counterterrorism, Stefanie Kam, associate research fellow from the International Center for Political Violence and Terrorism Research (ICPVTR) S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, told the Global Times via an email.
The old conventional “war on terror” approaches to terrorism – militarized counterterrorism response — focused on short-term gains, rather than long-term gains attuned to the political realities and the social and historical forces on the ground, which was what largely defined the failure of US’ approach to terrorism, Kam said.
Kam thought that the political vacuum engendered in a post-US Afghanistan has the potential to complicate the security landscape by creating breathing space for terrorist groups to consolidate in Afghanistan, and to inspire a wave of foreign fighters — seeking militant training — into Afghanistan. Apart from Islamic extremism, the rise of right-wing extremism is an emerging area of concern for governments in Asia.
“In particular, the Southeast Asian region has seen a recent growth in terrorist attacks by ISIS-inspired, self-radicalized individuals, and the involvement of women, youth and family networks in militancy,” Kam said.
Echoing Kam, global experts have expressed concerns over the spread of terrorism over the past two decades. The fact that the number of terrorist groups in Afghanistan had grown from less than 10 to more than 20 during the US military occupation also indicates the irony of Bush’s words when starting the war.
“Our war on terror begins with al-Qaeda, but it does not end there,” former US President George W Bush told Congress days after the attacks, on September 20, 2001. “It will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped and defeated.”
US remains unchanged
For Adnan Akfirat, China Representative of the Patriotic Party (Turkey),it is the US that made an obscure concept of “international terrorism” to justify its occupations and military actions in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria and “cover up its imperialist aggression.”
The US is not fighting against terrorism but using terrorist groups in different regions to play its geopolitical tactics, Akfirat noted.
“With the liberation of Afghanistan, the US had to admit that the ‘Crusade’ it launched since 2001 ended in disappointment and disgrace only 20 years later,” Akfirat said, noting that all these failures could not wake up “the US ruling clique” who still thinks US “will subdue the peoples of the world with its terrible military power. Their class interests compel them to continue this madness.”
Yasir Habib Khan, founder and president of the Institute of International Relations and Media Research in Pakistan, thought that lop-sided war on terror architected by America “is the epitome of complete failure” and it is ironic to see the war under the banner of peace and stability prompted more wars and gave rise to “white supremacy” to which Americans’ lives are subjected to be more insecure and vulnerable.
In the eyes of some Chinese experts, the US debacles for the past 20 years also resulted in wrong policies and miscalculations as the US political elites failed to solve domestic problems on social polarization, rising economic disparities and other issues. Instead, the country focused on scrambling for power and playing geopolitical tactics in suppressing other countries.
The US’ strength and international reputation have been damaged for the past 20 years. Putting huge resources into military actions or “rebuilding” other countries has worsened the overall crisis domestically, including deteriorating political polarization and struggles, the flooding of popularism and racism, confrontations of different classes and people’s losing of recognition of national identity, Li Haidong, a professor at the Institute of International Relations of the China Foreign Affairs University, told the Global Times.
However, despite all these problems awaiting to be solved, the US hasn’t changed its tactic of seeking enemies to ensure its global status and define its international policies. The US should have coordinated the international community to counter terrorism and extremism after 9/11, but it took unilateral military actions in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria for geopolitical purposes, causing ever-lasting regional chaos, experts said.
After all these years, one would think the US has learned its lesson and can now embark on a journey of solving domestic issues and shifting the focus of its policies. Unfortunately, that’s not the case, the country has its eyes on a new “enemy” – China.
Khan said that 20 years after the September 11, the US should have built a broad-based global mechanism to promote counter-terrorism modalities and it should have snubbed impulsive of protectionism but unfortunately it did nothing. “It did not learn from the past. This makes the future of the world remain volatile.”
AFGHANISTAN, AMERICAN EMPIRE, ANALYSIS, BRITAIN, EGYPT, FOREIGN POLICY, HISTORY, INTELLIGENCE, INTERNATIONAL, IRAN, IRAQ, MEDIA, MIDDLE EAST, MILITARISM, SYRIA, TERRORISM, UNITED NATIONS 9/11: Why Americans Were Never Told Why They Were Attacked September 11, 2021
When Western media discusses terrorism against the West, such as 9/11, the motive is almost always left out, even when the terrorists state they are avenging longstanding Western violence in the Muslim world, reports Joe Lauria.
After a Russian commercial airliner was downed over Egypt’s Sinai last October [2015], Western media reported that the Islamic State bombing was retaliation against Russian airstrikes in Syria. The killing of 224 people, mostly Russian tourists on holiday, was matter-of-factly treated as an act of war by a fanatical group without an air force resorting to terrorism as a way to strike back.
Yet, Western militaries have killed infinitely more innocent civilians in the Middle East than Russia has. Then why won’t Western officials and media cite retaliation for that Western violence as a cause of terrorist attacks on New York, Paris and Brussels?
Instead, there’s a fierce determination not to make the same kinds of linkages that the press made so easily when it was Russia on the receiving end of terror. [See Consortium News’s “Obama Ignores Russian Terror Victims.”]
For example, throughout four hours of Sky News’ coverage of the July 7, 2005 attacks in London, only the briefest mention was made about a possible motive for that horrific assault on three Underground trains and a bus, killing 52 people. But the attacks came just two years after Britain’s participation in the murderous invasion of Iraq.
Prime Minister Tony Blair, one of the Iraq War’s architects, condemned the loss of innocent life in London and linked the attacks to a G-8 summit he’d opened that morning. A TV host then read and belittled a 10-second claim of responsibility from a self-proclaimed Al Qaeda affiliate in Germany saying that the Iraq invasion was to blame. There was no more discussion about it.
To explain why these attacks happen is not to condone or justify terrorist outrages against innocent civilians. It is simply a responsibility of journalism, especially when the “why” is no mystery. It was fully explained by Mohammad Sidique Khan, one of the four London suicide bombers. Though speaking for only a tiny fraction of Muslims, he said in a videotaped recording before the attack:
“Your democratically-elected governments continuously perpetuate atrocities against my people all over the world. And your support of them makes you directly responsible, just as I am directly responsible for protecting and avenging my Muslim brothers and sisters. Until we feel security you will be our targets and until you stop the bombing, gassing, imprisonment and torture of my people we will not stop this fight. We are at war and I am a soldier. Now you too will taste the reality of this situation.”
The Islamic State published the following reason for carrying out last November’s [2015] Paris attacks:
“Let France and all nations following its path know that they will continue to be at the top of the target list for the Islamic State and that the scent of death will not leave their nostrils as long as they partake part in the crusader campaign … and boast about their war against Islam in France, and their strikes against Muslims in the lands of the Caliphate with their jets.”
Claiming It’s a State of Mind
Sept. 12, 2001: President George W. Bush, center, with Vice President Dick Cheney and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice looking over a brief together in the White House. (U.S. National Archives) Ignoring such clear statements of intent, we are instead served bromides by the likes of State Department spokesman Mark Toner about the Brussels bombings, saying it is impossible “to get into the minds of those who carry out these attacks.”
Mind reading isn’t required, however. The Islamic State explicitly told us in a press statement why it did the Brussels attacks: “We promise black days for all crusader nations allied in their war against the Islamic State, in response to their aggressions against it.”
Yet, still struggling to explain why it happened, Toner said, “I think it reflects more of an effort to inflict on who they see as Western or Westerners … fear that they can carry out these kinds of attacks and to attempt to lash out.”
Toner ascribed the motive to a state of mind: “I don’t know if this is about establishing a caliphate beyond the territorial gains that they’ve tried to make in Iraq and Syria, but it’s another aspect of Daesh’s kind of warped ideology that they’re carrying out these attacks on Europe and elsewhere if they can. … Whether it’s the hopes or the dreams or the aspirations of a certain people never justifies violence.”
After 9/11, President George W. Bush infamously said the U.S. was attacked because “they hate our freedoms.” It’s a perfect example of a Western view that ascribes motives to Easterners without allowing them to speak for themselves or taking them seriously when they do.
Explaining his motive behind 9/11, Osama bin Laden, in his Letter to America, expressed anger about U.S. troops stationed on Saudi soil. Bin Laden asked: “Why are we fighting and opposing you? The answer is very simple: Because you attacked us and continue to attack us.” (Today the U.S. has dozens of bases in seven countries in the region.)
During a Republican presidential debate in 2008 Rudy Giuliani, who was New York mayor on 9/11, became incensed and demanded Ron Paul withdraw his remark that the U.S. was attacked because of U.S. violent interventions in Muslim countries.
“Have you ever read about the reasons they attacked us?” Paul said. “They attacked us because we have been over there. We’ve been bombing Iraq for ten years. I’m suggesting we listen to the people who attacked us and the reason they did it.”
“That’s an extraordinary statement,” responded Giuliani. “As someone who lived through the attack of Sept. 11, that we invited the attack, because we were attacking Iraq. I don’t think I’ve ever heard that before. And I’ve heard some pretty absurd explanations for Sept. 11.”
The audience had never heard it either, as they heartily cheered Giuliani.
“And I would ask the Congressman to withdraw that comment and tell us that he didn’t really mean that,” Giuliani said.
“I believe very sincerely when the CIA teach and speak about blowback,” Paul responded. “If we think that we can do what we want around the world and not incite hatred, then we have a problem. They don’t come here to attack us because we are rich and we are free. They attack us because we are over there.”
So why won’t Western officials and corporate media take the jihadists’ statements of intent at face value? Why won’t they really tell us why we are attacked?
It seems to be an effort to cover up a long and ever more intense history of Western military and political intervention in the Middle East and the violent reactions it provokes, reactions that put innocent Western lives at risk. Indirect Western culpability in these terrorist acts is routinely suppressed, let alone evidence of direct Western involvement with terrorism.
Some government officials and journalists might delude themselves into believing that Western intervention in the Middle East is an attempt to protect civilians and spread democracy to the region, instead of bringing chaos and death to further the West’s strategic and economic aims. Other officials must know better.
1920-1950: A Century of Intervention Begins
A few might know the mostly hidden history of duplicitous and often reckless Western actions in the Middle East. It is hidden only to most Westerners, however. So it is worth looking in considerable detail at this appalling record of interference in the lives of millions of Muslims and peoples of other faiths to appreciate the full weight it exerts on the region. It can help explain anti-Western anger that spurs a few radicals to commit atrocities in the West.
French diplomat Francois George-Picot, who along with British colonial officer Mark Sykes drew lines across a Middle East map of the Ottoman Empire after World War I, carving out states with boundaries that are nearly the same as they are today. French diplomat Francois George-Picot and British colonial officer Mark Sykes drew lines across a Middle East map of the Ottoman Empire after World War I, carving out states with boundaries that are nearly the same today.
The history is an unbroken string of interventions from the end of the First World War until today. It began after the war when Britain and France double-crossed the Arabs on promised independence for aiding them in victory over the Ottoman Empire. The secret 1916 Sykes-Picot accord divided the region between the European powers behind the Arabs’ backs. London and Paris created artificial nations from Ottoman provinces to be controlled by their installed kings and rulers with direct intervention when necessary.
What has followed for 100 years has been continuous efforts by Britain and France, superseded by the United States after the Second World War, to manage Western dominance over a rebellious region.
The new Soviet government revealed the Sykes-Picot terms in November 1917 in Izvestia. When the war was over, the Arabs revolted against British and French duplicity. London and Paris then ruthlessly crushed the uprisings for independence.
France defeated a proclaimed Syrian government in a single day, July 24, 1920, at the Battle of Maysalun. Five years later there was a second Syrian revolt, replete with assassinations and sabotage, which took two years to suppress. If you walk through the souk in Old Damascus and look up at the corrugated iron roof you see tiny specks of daylight peeking through. Those are bullet holes from French war planes that massacred civilians below.
Britain put down a series of independence revolts in Iraq between 1920 and 1922, first with 100,000 British and Indian troops and then mostly with the first use of air power in counterinsurgency. Thousands of Arabs were killed. Britain also helped its installed King Abdullah put down rebellions in Jordan in 1921 and 1923.
London then faced an Arab revolt in Palestine lasting from 1936 to 1939, which it brutally crushed, killing about 4,000 Arabs. The next decade, Israeli terrorists drove the British out of Palestine in 1947, one of the rare instances when terrorists attained their political goals.
Germany and Italy, late to the Empire game, were next to invade North Africa and the Middle East at the start of the Second World War. They were driven out by British imperial forces (largely Indian) with U.S. help. Britain invaded and defeated nominally independent Iraq, which had sided with the Axis. With the Soviet Union, Britain also invaded and occupied Iran.
After the war, the U.S. assumed regional dominance under the guise of fending off Soviet regional influence. Just three years after Syrian independence from France, the two-year old Central Intelligence Agency engineered a Syrian coup in 1949 against a democratic, secular government. Why? Because it had balked at approving a Saudi pipeline plan that the U.S. favored. Washington installed Husni al-Za’im, a military dictator, who approved the plan.
1950s: Syria Then and Now
Before the major invasion and air wars in Iraq and Libya of the past 15 years, the 1950s was the era of America’s most frequent, and mostly covert, involvement in the Middle East. The first coup of the Central Intelligence Agency was in Syria in March 1949. The Eisenhower administration then wanted to contain both Soviet influence and Arab nationalism, which revived the quest for an independent Arab nation. After a series of coups and counter-coups, Syria returned to democracy in 1955, leaning towards the Soviets.
A 1957 Eisenhower administration coup attempt in Syria, in which Jordan and Iraq were to invade the country after manufacturing a pretext, went horribly wrong, provoking a crisis that spun out of Washington’s control and brought the U.S. and Soviets to the brink of war.
Turkey put 50,000 troops on the Syrian border, threatening to invade. Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev threatened Turkey with an implied nuclear attack and the U.S. got Ankara to back off. This sounds eerily familiar to what happened last month when Turkey again threatened to invade Syria and the U.S. put on the brakes. The main difference is that Saudi Arabia in 1957 was opposed to the invasion of Syria, while it was ready to join it last month. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Risking Nuclear War for Al Qaeda?“]
In the 1950s, the U.S. also began its association with Islamic religious extremism to counter Soviet influence and contain secular Arab nationalism. “We should do everything possible to stress the ‘holy war’ aspect,” President Eisenhower told his Secretary of State John Foster Dulles. After the Cold War, religious extremists, some still tied to the West, became themselves the excuse for U.S. intervention.
Despite U.S. regional ascendance in the 1950s, Britain and France weren’t through. In 1953, an MI6-CIA coup in Iran replaced a democracy with a restored monarchy when Mohammed Mossadegh, the elected prime minister, was overthrown after seeking to nationalize British-controlled Iranian oil. Britain had discovered oil in Iran in 1908, spurring deeper interest in the region.
Three years later Britain and France combined with Israel to attack Egypt in 1956 when President Gamal Abdel Nasser, who had taken over from the ousted British-backed King Farouk, moved to nationalize the Suez Canal. The U.S. stopped that operation, too, denying Britain emergency oil supplies and access to the International Monetary Fund if the Brits didn’t back down.
Suez represented the final shift in external power in the Middle East from the U.K. to the U.S. But Washington couldn’t (or wouldn’t) stop Britain from trying and failing to assassinate Nasser, who had sparked the Arab nationalist movement.
In 1958, the U.S. landed 14,000 Marines in Lebanon to prop up President Camille Chamoun after a civil conflict broke out against Chamoun’s intention to change the constitution and run for reelection. The rebellion was minimally supported by the United Arab Republic, the 1958-61 union between Egypt and Syria. It was the first U.S. invasion of an Arab country, excluding the U.S.’s World War II intervention in North Africa.
1960 to 2003: Interventions Post Colonial
The 1954-1962 Algerian rebellion against French colonialism, which Paris brutally tried to suppress, included Algerian acts of terrorism. Exhibiting the same cluelessness displayed by State Department spokesman Toner, the French attitude towards the uprising was expressed by an exasperated French officer in film The Battle of Algiers when he exclaimed, “What do you people want?”
From the 1960s to the 1980s, U.S. intervention in the region was mostly restricted to military support for Israel in the 1967 and 1973 Arab-Israeli wars. From an Arab perspective that represented a major U.S. commitment to protect Israeli colonialism.
The Soviet Union also intervened directly in the 1967-70 War of Attrition between Egypt and Israel when Nasser went to Moscow to say he’d resign and have a pro-Western leader take over if the Russians didn’t come to his aid. In backing Nasser, the Soviets lost 58 men.
The Soviets were also involved in the region to varying degrees and times throughout the Cold War, giving aid to Palestinians, Nasser’s Egypt, Syria, Saddam’s Iraq and Muammar Gaddafi’s Libya — all countries and leaders charting an independent course from the West.
During the 1970 Black September conflict between Jordan and Palestinian guerrillas, the U.S. had Marines poised to embark in Haifa and ready to secure Amman airport when Jordan repelled a Syrian invasion in support of the Palestinians.
In the 1980s the U.S. backed Saddam Hussein in his brutal, eight-year war with Iran, supplying him with arms, intelligence and chemical weapons, which he did not hesitate to use against Iranians and Kurds. President Ronald Reagan also bombed Libya in 1986 after accusing it without conclusive evidence of a Berlin bombing ten days earlier that killed a U.S. soldier.
The U.S. returned more directly to the region with a vengeance in the 1991 Gulf War, burying alive surrendering Iraqi troops with bulldozers; shooting thousands of soldiers in the back as they retreated on the Highway of Death, and calling for uprisings in the Shia south and Kurdish north and then leaving them to Saddam’s revenge.
Iraq never recovered fully from the devastation, being crushed for 12 years under U.N. and U.S. sanctions that then U.N. Ambassador Madeleine Albright admitted contribute to the deaths of half a million Iraqi children. But she said it was “worth it.”
Iraq’s sanctions only ended after the 2003 full-scale U.S. and British invasion of the sovereign Arab nation, an assault justified by bogus claims about Iraq hiding stockpiles of WMD that could be shared with Al Qaeda. The invasion killed hundreds of thousands of people and left Iraq devastated. The invasion also unleashed a civil war and gave rise to the terrorist group, the Islamic State in Iraq, which later merged with terrorists in Syria to become ISIS.
Throughout this century of intervention, Britain, France and the U.S. managed the region through strong alliances with dictators or monarchs who had no regard for democratic rights. But when those autocrats became expendable, such as Saddam Hussein had, they are disposed of.
The Biggest Invasion Yet
While most Americans may be unaware of this long history of accumulated humiliation of Muslims, Christians and other religious minorities in the region — and the resulting hatred of the West — they can’t ignore the Iraq invasion, the largest by the West in the region, excluding World War II. Nor is the public unaware of the 2011 intervention in Libya, and the chaos that has resulted. And yet no link is made between these disasters and terror attacks on the West.
The secular strongmen of Iraq, Libya and Syria were targeted because they dared to be independent of Western hegemony — not because of their awful human rights records. The proof is that Saudi Arabia’s and Israel’s human rights records also are appalling, but the U.S. still staunchly stands by these “allies.”
During the so-called Arab Spring, when Bahrainis demanded democracy in that island kingdom, the U.S. mostly looked the other way as they were crushed by a combined force of the nation’s monarchy and Saudi troops. Washington also clung to Egyptian strongman Hosni Mubarak until the bitter end.
However, under the pretext of protecting the Libyan population, the U.S. and NATO implemented a bloody “regime change” in Libya leading to anarchy, another failed state and the creation of one more ISIS enclave. For the past five years, the West and its Gulf allies have fueled the civil war in Syria, contributing to another humanitarian disaster.
The West’s motive for all this meddling is often pinned on oil. But obedience is a strong factor. Hans Morgenthau wrote in Politics Among Nations (1968), that the urge of empires to expand “will not be satisfied so long as there remains anywhere a possible object of domination – a politically organized group of men which by its very independence challenges the conqueror’s lust for power.”
Tariq Ali, in his 2003 book Bush in Babylon, writes about Gnaeus Julius Agricola, the Roman general responsible for much of the conquest of Britain in the First Century: “On one of his visits to the outer reaches of [Britain], Agricola looked in the direction of Ireland and asked a colleague why it remained unoccupied. Because, came the reply, it consisted of uncultivable bog lands and was inhabited by very primitive tribes. What could it possibly have to offer the great Empire? The unfortunate man was sternly admonished. Economic gain isn’t all. Far more important is the example provided by an unoccupied country. It may be backward, but it is still free.”
Cloaking Motives
Little of this long history of Western manipulation, deceit and brutality in the Middle East is known to Americans because U.S. media almost never invokes it to explain Arab and Iranian attitudes towards the West.
Muslims remember this history, however. I know Arabs who are still infuriated by the Sykes-Picot backstabbing, let alone the most recent depredations. Indeed fanatics like the Islamic State are still ticked off about the Crusades, a much earlier round of Western intervention. In some ways it’s surprising, and welcomed, that only the tiniest fraction of Muslims has turned to terrorism.
Nevertheless, Islamophobes like Donald Trump want to keep all Muslims out of the U.S. until he figures out “what the hell is going on.” He says Muslims have a “deep hatred” of Americans. But he won’t figure it out because he’s ignoring the main cause of that hatred – the past century of intervention, topped by the most recent Western atrocities in Iraq and Libya.
Stripping out the political and historical motives renders terrorists as nothing more than madmen fueled by irrational hate of a benevolent West that says it only wants to help them. They hate us simply because we are Western, according to people like Toner, and not because we’ve done anything to them.
Israel and its Western enablers likewise bury the history of Israel’s ethnic cleansing and piecemeal conquest of Palestine so they can dismiss Palestinians who turn to terrorism as motivated only by hatred of Jews for being Jews.
I’ve asked several Israelis why Palestinians tend to hate them. The more educated the Israeli the more likely the answer was because of the history of how Israel was established and how it continues to rule. The less educated my respondent, the more likely I heard that they hate us simply because we are Jews.
There’s no excuse for terrorism. But there is a practical way to curb it: end the current interventions and occupations and plan no more.
The Psychology of Terror
Of course, anger at the West’s history of exploiting Muslim lands isn’t the only motivation for terrorism. There are emotional and group pressures that push some over the line to strap on bombs and blow up innocent people around them. Thankfully, it takes a very unusual type of individual to react to this ugly history with ugly acts of terror.
Money also plays a part. We’ve seen waves of defections as ISIS has recently cut fighters’ pay in half. Anger at Western-installed and propped-up local rulers who oppress their people on behalf of the West is another motive. Extremist preachers, especially Saudi Wahhabis, also share the blame as they inspire terrorism, usually against Shia.
President Obama and King Salman Arabia stand at attention during the U.S. national anthem as the First Lady stands in the background with other officials on Jan. 27, 2015, at the start of Obama’s State Visit to Saudi Arabia. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza). (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)
Wading into the psychology of why someone turns to terrorism is an unenviable task. The official Western view is that Islamist extremists merely hate modernity and secularism. That might be their motive in wanting to backwardly transform their own societies by removing Western influence. But it’s not what they say when they claim responsibility for striking inside the West.
To ignore their words and dismiss their violent reaction to the long and ongoing history of Western intervention may shield Americans and Europeans from their partial responsibility for these atrocities. But it also provides cover for the continuing interventions, which in turn will surely produce more terrorism.
Rather than looking at the problem objectively – and self-critically – the West ludicrously cloaks its own violence as an effort to spread democracy (which never seems to materialize) or protect civilians (who are endangered instead). To admit any connection between the sordid historical record and anti-Western terrorism would be to admit culpability and the price that the West is paying for its dominance.
Worse still, letting terrorists be perceived as simply madmen without a cause allows the terrorist response to become justification for further military action. This is precisely what the Bush administration did after 9/11, falsely seeking to connect the attacks to the Iraqi government.
By contrast, connecting terrorism to Western intervention could spark a serious self-examination of the West’s behavior in the region leading to a possible retreat and even an end of this external dominance. But that is clearly something policymakers in Washington, London and Paris – and their subservient media – aren’t prepared to do.
This article was first published in Consortium News on April 9, 2016.
[For more on this topic, see Consortiumnews.com’s “Why Many Muslims Hate the West” and “Muslim Memories of Western Imperialism.”]
Joe Lauria is editor-in-chief of Consortium News and a former UN correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe, and numerous other newspapers. He was an investigative reporter for the Sunday Times of London and began his professional work as a stringer for The New York Times. He can be reached at joelauria@consortiumnews.com and followed on Twitter @unjoe
Professor Ling-chi Wang of UC Berkeley on 9-11-2020: I often wonder how many more blows can the body of the U.S. take before the bubble burst or before Humpty Dumpty has its final fall. Being the 19th anniversary of the Sept. 11 shock today, I am led to think about what has been happening in the U.S. since then. Here is what I think.
Up until Sept. 11, the mainland U.S. – the heart and the symbol of U.S. global financial power – has never experienced direct external and physical assault. On that day, the World Trade Center – the belly of the beast – was blown up and wiped off the surface of the earth by a small handful of people. How could such a catastrophe happen to the most powerful nation on earth, we collectively wondered in shock? As powerful as we were then, the sole power in the world, we were reminded of how vulnerable we were, how much we were hated by some people in the Middle East, and how urgently we needed to rethink and change our approach to that part of the world, including and especially our policy toward Israel at the belly of the region. Instead of heeding the warning and reformulating our worldview and policies toward the Middle East, we doubled down and initiated two perpetual wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and reinforced the same failed policy in Israel to this date. We also became totally obsessed with homeland security. After trillions of dollars spent and thousands of American lives sacrificed needlessly at the expense of much-needed domestic development. we are still at war and we remain convinced that might is right and we will prevail.
Then came the second blow: the spectacular collapse of the U.S. financial capitalism we built in Wall Street for the world in 2008, an unprecedented event resulting in untold sufferings of not just the people of the U.S. but the peoples and countries around the world. China was about the only country that was left standing and to whom we begged for help. Fortunately, China was willing and able to lead the global recovery with massive infrastructure investment but at great cost to the people of China.
Did Obama-Biden express appreciation for China’s helping hand? Not at all. Instead, the collapse did not lead to a national soul-searching. We allowed the house we built to continue to deteriorate and dilapidate, as the rich got richer and the poor got poorer. “Too big to fail” was the slogan in response. Abroad, China’s helping hand was treated as a threat to the global domination of the U.S. and a threat as well to our national security. Pivot to Asia and containment of China by economic, military, and political means became the foundation of our policies toward China in the second term of the Obama administration. These policies have now been carried out fully by the Trump administration in what most scholars ave dubbed a “New Cold War” with China.
Not only did we fail to rethink the unfair design and foundation of the house we built for ourselves and for the compliant world, we rushed to reinforce and double down in massive divestment in health, education, and welfare, deferred maintenance of our infrastructure, and, above all, in income transfer to enrich the top 1% and impoverish the 99%, paving the way for the rise of the “left-behind” of Donald Trump, a demagogue and an destructive emperor without clothes in 2016, who is bent on protecting and enriching himself, dismantling institutions at home and abroad, placing himself above the law, and offering to take America back to the good, old days when the U.S. ruled the Western world during the Cold War.
As if these two major blows that have hit us weren’t enough, we were visited this year, 2020, by yet another major blow: the deadly coronavirus pandemic from coast to coast, affecting every American, rich and poor, white and colored. The public health crisis was followed by a nationwide shutdown of businesses, factories, offices, transportation, schools, and government, resulting in unprecedented massive unemployment and overnight, steepest economic recession in history. Only the stock market, the playground for the wealthy and corporate America, was rationally exuberant. The pandemic nakedly exposed not just how ill-prepared and incompetent the richest and technologically most advance country was in dealing with the most serious public health crisis in our history has ever faced but also how racial minorities and the poor have been disproportionally devastated the infectious disease, unemployment, and business bankruptcy, and how race and class inequity and injustice have been deeply entrenched in our social, economic, political, and cultural systems since the founding of the nation. Americans collectively spontaneously stood up in protests. “Make America great again” was quickly overwhelmed by “Black lives matter” in the streets in virtually all cities and towns across the nation, as people of all ages, colors, and national origin marched and demanded equality and justice for weeks.
Not even such spontaneous mass uprising across the nation aroused the conscience of our political class and push them into action. Instead, White House lost no time in denouncing the protests with provocative racist attacks and in deploying the national guards and the military force to suppress the peaceful marchers with with violence on the one hand. In the mean time, the U.S. Congress went home in the midst of a national crisis without offering any solution to fight the worsening public crisis and economic recession on the other hand. Politics and government are effectively paralyzed, incapable of offering hope and relief to a severely wounded and possibly dying nation, so to speak,
In less than two months, the most consequential presidential and Congressional elections will take place and decide the future fate of the nation. This time, the American brand of pay-to-play democracy will be severely tested and watched worldwide. Will the U.S. survive another severe blow? Billions are being spent by both parties in the election or, shall I say, auction. Both parties are prepared to spent hundreds of millions to challenge the outcomes of the elections. Already, Trump has threatened to ignore the outcome of the election if he loses. Democrats are preparing to challenge whatever action Trump will take. If the outcome of the election cannot be decided quickly, Trump has already threatened to declare himself the victor on election night and refuse to vacate the White House.
Whatever the outcome of the election in November, it looks like the nation is heading for another deadly blow and potentially, chaos or anarchy.
Let me end this email with the same question I raised at the beginning of this email: How many more blows can the U.S. take since September 11, 2001 before it becomes a fallen Humpty Dumpty? If the results turn out to be a free-for-all political, legal or violent brawl, will the U.S. end in civil disorder, declaration of martial laws by Trump, and its constitution tattered? Will it spell the end of American brand of pay-to-play democracy as we know it?
US Government reintroduced the spirits of 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act, racially motivated to prosecute Professor Anming Hu. The Judge throw the case out as US Government manufacturers a criminal case out of nothing just like Subrina Meng of Huawei. This is how US promote the fake freedom democracy human rights and rules of laws. We lives in US don’t believe the lies. Our Government is controlled by the 1% elites and Fortune 500 companies catering primarily to the AngloSaxon, only these people truly enjoying the freedom democracy human rights and rules of laws, laughing to the bank everyday. Chinese and People of Color in US are 2nd class citizens. China’s rise gave the racist Americans especially US politicians a free pass to reign in terrors to promote Asian Hates in America using the fake excuses of homeland security. 美國政府重新引入1882年排華法案的精神，以種族動機起訴胡安明教授。 法官將案件駁回，因為美國政府像華為的孟晚舟一樣是無中生有地製造了刑事案件。 這就是美國如何宣傳虛假的自由民主人權和法律規則。 我們住在美國從來不相信這種謊言。 我們的美國政府被 1% 的精英和財富 500 強公司控制，主要服務西人，只有這些西人才真正享受自由民主人權和法治，而且賺大錢每天對著銀行笑。 在美國的華人和有色人種是二等公民。 中國的崛起給了種族主義的美國人，尤其是美國政客一個自由通行證免死金牌，他們可以利用國土安全的虛假藉口，在美國對華人煽動進行恐怖攻擊，在美國宣揚亞洲仇恨!
Johnson Choi Biz 