Crescent Magazine

MD, Toronto, Crescent-online
June 29, 2010 - 1:00 pm EST

America's "experts" continue to live in a world of make-believe as far as Islamic Iran is concerned. For more than 30 years, American "experts" have been predicting its "imminent collapse". Gradually, ordinary people have now wisened up to this, so these so-called experts, led by the neo-cons, have changed their tune: instead of collapse, the neo-cons now say that Islamic Iran will weaken by 2025.

Speaking at the International Future Operational Environment Seminar in Virginia on June 22 and 23, Michael Rubin, resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), said “the Iranian military will remain a pivotal force in 2025, even as it undergoes a significant change in its force posture and strategy” and the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) will increase their influence.

The AEI “expert” claimed that as “the IRGC‘s economic interests become more entrenched, the chance for meaningful economic reform recedes. Iran's economy is doomed to disorder.”  Rubin indirectly conceded that the US neo-con/zionist hopes pinned on the idea of regime change through the so called “Green movement” cannot materialize. “Much public comment is made in the West about the tremendous social strains inside the Islamic Republic, and many Iranian-American academics act more as advocates for political reform or the Green Movement than as analysts. While analysts like to depict a reformist victory as inevitable, this is wishful thinking,” Rubin conceded.

The AEI “experts” predicted that “Iran in 2025 will be an increasingly ideological and militaristic nuclear power.”  This “analytical” conclusion attempts to indirectly promote military aggression against Islamic Iran. Rubin’s statement that “it is foolhardy to assume that the United States, Europe, or any regional state can accommodate the Islamic Republic of Iran as it will be in 2025” exposes this agenda clearly.

While Rubin implies that Iranian-American academics get trapped in wishful thinking while analyzing the possibility of regime change in Tehran, he himself falls into the same trap assuming that without being subservient to the strategic interests of the US, Islamic Iran will be on the verge of collapse.

Even the International Monetary Fund points out that unemployment and inflation though high, have started to fall. The IMF report notes that "in the past two years ... inflation stood at 25.4 and 10.3 [percent] respectively: however in 2010 this rate will fall to 8.5 percent for the first time." The IMF predicts that Iran’s foreign exchange reserves will increase from US$5 billion "and reach 88.5 [billion US$] in 2010."

Such large foreign exchange reserves stand in sharp contrast to the empty vaults and huge debts in many countries around the world. Rubin’s forecasts are, therefore, vacuous neo-con slogans that the world has heard since the first day of the victory of the Islamic Revolution.

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Toronto, Crescent-online
June 28, 2010 - 4:00 pm EST

As many as 500 protesters, perhaps twice as many, are believed to have been arrested by the 15,000 security personnel that were mobilised to provide "protection" to G20 leaders attending the two-day summit in Toronto (June 26-27). While more than 25,000 people marched peacefully despite pouring rain, drawing attention to many pressing problems afflicting the world, the heavily-armed security presence was intended to intimidate as well as provoke protesters.

And a handful did fall for the provocation, or were they agent provocateurs, according to some observers since those indulging in violent acts wore the same shoes as police and while police cars were being attacked, there was no police presence there? It was only later that the police moved in force to attack peaceful protesters in pre-designated areas such as Queen's Park. Large police contingents would swarm a single individual, wrestle him/her to the ground and tie their hands dragging them away.

Protesters have been locked up in a temporary jail located at the old Toronto Film Studios on Eastern Avenue on the eastern edge of town, converted into a series of cages in a huge warehouse. Many protesters had described Toronto as being turned into Guantanamo for the summit duration. The jail on Eastern Avenue resembled Camp X-Ray where the supposedly "worst of the worst" are permanently locked up in the real Guantanamo.
 
But Toronto's own Guantanamo North is little better: filthy and overcrowded where those that refused arrest have been especially humiliated. People have been denied legal representation and supporters/sympathisers that came to provide legal help, advice or simply moral support, have been threatened, attacked and beaten up by the police. Those refusing to leave the area, perfectly legal for them to be on, have also been arrested.

The brutal tactics unleashed by the police appeared to be deliberate: to prove to their political masters that the $1.2 billion spent on security was well worth it. The sky would have fallen if the police were not there. At the very least, protesters would have got within earshot of leaders meeting to discuss such weighty issues as saving the planet from economic disaster of their own making or that of their corporate masters.
 
It is a given that the next summit--wherever it may be held--will have an even larger security budget and even more oppressive measures put in place to keep ordinary people away from the conference venue. It was suggested by numerous peaceful protesters as to why these leaders did not meet in the middle of the ocean, far away from the annoying presence of people? If they do not want to listen to the concerns of ordinary people, why descend on their city and disturb their peace and quiet?

It would be difficult to describe Toronto as anything other than a Police State despite the sound bites being delivered by the likes of Toronto Mayor David Miller praising the police for their "exemplary service" and heroism. At one level such praise is justified; after all the police were there to protect politicians and their corporate masters that have messed up the world politically and ravaged its resources and the environment. The police were extremely "successful" in preventing people's voices from being heard by the assortment of war criminals and corporate thieves masquerading as world leaders.

The police were paid three times their regular wages for security duty at a time when wages are being frozen, unemployment has increased and taxes for corporations are being cut, supposedly to stimulate growth after the financial tsunami. All this money has come from the pockets of ordinary people that were kept well away from the conference site by concrete barriers and huge security fences, built with their money.

Comments since the summit ended have ranged from Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper congratulating himself for a 'job well done' to media outlets condemning the disaster that was visited upon a peaceful city whose residents' freedoms and rights were trampled. The police also were nowhere to be seen when store and shop windows were being smashed. Even European broadcasters noted that this was not in keeping with any real concern to prevent violence.

The reality of the corporate-controlled world is dawning on more and more people. The time to storm the Bastille may be drawing near.

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MD, Toronto, Crescent-online
June 28, 2010 - 2:00 pm EST

US right-wingers, of whom there is no shortage, never tire of demonizing Islam and presenting it as a "threat" to everybody in the world. Having firmly planted the idea that Islam and Muslims are "enemies" of the US, thereby justifying every conceivable crime against them, American right-wingers are now trying to scare Chinese about the "Islamic" threat.
 
The latest example of this was an op-ed piece by researchers at the rightwing Hudson Institute for the equally rightwing Wall Street Journal Asia edition, under the title, "Beijing's Islamic Complex".  The Hudson “experts” attempted to present Islam as the main threat to China.

The op-ed's aim appeared to be to align the Chinese state apparatus with US policies of aggression in the Muslim world. The article said: “China's reticence will eventually need to give way to something else—either to some manner of coordinated action with the US, or its own route to a proverbial separate peace. But one senses that China, for all its experience with Islam within its own domains, has yet to come to grips with the dilemmas that its new involvements in the wider Muslim world have created.”

Projecting Islam as the main threat to everything Chinese, Hudson's "experts" went on: “twenty-first century Islam as an idea does not fit readily into any of China's received wisdoms—either into a Marxist or post-communist perspective, or into China's older, Confucian governing creed.”

While China’s policy towards Muslims in the Turkic region of Eastern Turkestan, otherwise known as Xinjiang, are unjust, Beijing does not present the same level of threat to Islamic revival on the global stage as does the US. It is the US not China that is the main sponsor of corrupt and despotic regimes in the Muslim world that serve as the key obstacle to the realization of Muslim aspirations.

The fact that US neo-cons are trying to co-opt China into their aggressive policies towards Muslims reflects US political and military failures in its wars against Islamic revival.

 

The absence of large scale Chinese hostility towards the Islamic movement does not mean that China can be counted on as a strategic partner. China is too intertwined into the US designed global order. However, Chinese ambitions for a greater role in global leadership can be utilized in countering US hegemony in the Muslim world.

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Toronto, Crescent-online
June 26, 2010 - 16:30 EST

In one of the biggest demonstrations in Toronto's history, tens of thousands of people from all walks of life came out in pouring rain to denounce leaders attending the G20 summit on June 26. Just a day earlier, G8 members had held their meeting in Huntsville, a small holiday resort about 100 miles north of Toronto.

It was the G20 summit in Toronto that aroused the most anger not least because the city was turned into an armed prison camp. Vast areas of the city were placed out of bounds for ordinary people. The subway  system was shut down on police orders along the Yonge and University Ave lines south of Bloor Street. This meant the downtown core of the city had not public transport.

Tens of thousands of people, including this Crescent correspondent, who had left cars outside the city because of severe parking restrictions and fears of traffic chaos because so many streets were blocked off, were left stranded in the city. Taxi cabs were hard to come by since everyone trying to leave the city hoped to catch one.

The protesters came from all walks of life. Sprearheaded by the Canadian Peace Alliance, a large number of labour, student and faith-based groups, among them the Muslim Unity Group, a leading Muslim group in Canada, endorsed the rally. Sid Lacombe of the Canadian Peace Alliance was ecstatic with the turnout and said it sent a clear message to Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper that Canadians want the troops out of Afghanistan immediately and not waste one more life or dollar on that lost cause.

Among the rally participants were not only thousands of Native (First Nations) people but also Kashmiri groups denouncing Indian atrocities in Kashmir. The Sikh community was also out in the streets with their banners as were students and labour movement activists.

At times it was impossible to march in the street in pouring rain because of the number of people.

The three-day summit cost $1 billion, a figure roundly denounced by all segments of society as extremely extravagant at a time when so many social services have had their budgets slashed drastically. An estimated 15,000 police officers from all over Canada were deployed to provide protection to leaders who call themselves representatives of the people. Yet they preferred to stay behind concrete barricades and steel fences while the people were told they could not come near the area.

A number of speakers at the rally pointed out that $1 billion could take care of all the costs for child welfare. It could also feed each and every Canadian for an entire month yet this vast sum was wasted on wining and dining leaders from 20 countries and a number of others to tell the world what responsible fiscal steps they are going to take to address the problem of poverty in the world.

It was this kind of hypocrisy that aroused so much anger among so many people. A few protesters went on a rampage and set on fire police vehicles at Bay and King Streets, that is at the heart of the Toronto business district. Another car was torched at Queen and Spadina near the summit site.

Store owners and cab drivers in the downtown core complained that their businesses had been severely affected by the lockdown, especially with heavily armed police taking over the city. The police came in cars, motorbikes, on horse backs and on bikes. Many of them wore steel helmets and wore face masks as well as wielded steel clubs and shields, not to mention guns and bullet proof vests. All this show of force was intended to intimidate people. Many said Canada had become a police state.

Toronto had become Guantanamo Bay North. As one protester quipped, if they wanted to turn Toronto into Guantanamo, why didn't they meet in the real Gitmo? One billion dollars could have been saved and thismoney spent on really worthwhile projects, such as alleviating poverty and suffering.

Several issues stood out in the protests: Protesters said no to war mongering; the immediate withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan and Iraq, end to the siege of Gaza, No war against Iran, and end all the occupations. Protesters wanted nothing to do with the warmongering policies of the war criminals masquarading as world leaders.

That is one message that the so-called world leaders did not want to hear because their corporate masters want them to wage more wars. But it is becoming clear that people in Canada, the US, Britain and elsewhere in the west are beginning to realize that their leaders are hypocrites; they talk about peace but wage wars; and they have usurped the hard won rights of people with their warmongering policies that have bankrupted their societies.

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