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THE CONSCIENCE OF SYRIA

An Interview with Activist and Intellectual Yassin al-Haj Saleh

by Danny Postel and Nader Hashemi, Boston Review

Yassin al-Haj Saleh is often called the conscience of the Syrian revolution. Born in Raqqa in 1961, he was arrested in 1980, while a medical student in Aleppo, and imprisoned for his membership in a left-wing organization. He remained a political prisoner until 1996, spending the last of his sixteen years behind bars in the notorious desert-prison of Tadmur (Palmyra).

Saleh has emerged as one of the leading writers and intellectual figures of the Syrian uprising, which began three years ago this week. In 2012 he was given the Prince Claus Award (supported by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs) but was unable to collect it, as he was living in hiding in Damascus. Now living in exile in Turkey, Salehwrites for a variety of international Arabic-language publications. Along with a group of Syrians and Turks, he recently established a Syrian Cultural House in Istanbul called Hamish (“margin” or “fringe”). Saleh has published several Arabic-language books, most recently Deliverance or Destruction? Syria at a Crossroads (2014).

—Danny Postel and Nader Hashemi, co-editors of The Syria Dilemma.

THE FAR RIGHT IN UKRAINE: A NEW ORDER?

by Cas Mudde, openDemocracy

The Euromaidan “revolution” will undoubtedly remain one of the key political events of 2014. Most domestic and foreign observers were completely taken by surprise by the events that followed President Viktor Yanukovych’s decision not to sign an integration treaty with the European Union (EU) in November 2013. While the initial demonstrations in downtown Kiev were somewhat expected, few had ever thought that they could spiral so out of control that, just three months later, a democratically elected government with one of the most popular politicians in the country was forced out of power.

Euromaidan has also been interesting in terms of the propaganda battle that has been fought in the traditional and social media. As is now standard for “revolutions” in the twenty first century, activists were quick to set up several Facebook pages, Twitter accounts, and other websites to provide their own positive view of the ‘revolution,’ countering the negative reports from the official Ukrainian media and, particularly, the largely Kremlin-controlled Russian media. They were very successful in disseminating their message, in part through networks of sympathizers in the west (including Ukrainian émigré communities in North America and post-Soviet scholars across the globe).

One of the main struggles has been over the importance of “fascists” in the Euromaidan. Almost from the beginning the pro-Kremlin media emphasized the importance of “Ukrainian fascists” among the anti-government demonstrators, and within days the whole uprising was to be portrayed as “fascist.” This was to be expected, as both Soviet and post-Soviet Russian elites have tended to equate Ukrainian nationalism with fascism, linking any and every anti-Soviet or anti-Russian movement to the infamous Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) of Stepan Bandera, which (temporarily) collaborated with Nazi Germany in a misguided attempt to gain Ukrainian independence from Stalin’s brutal Soviet regime.

At the same time, most domestic and foreign sympathizers of “Euromaidan” have minimalized the importance of the far right, arguing that Euromaidan was a genuine democratic and pro-European uprising in which far right elements were insignificant.

SLIPPERY JUSTICE FOR VICTIMS OF OIL SPILLS

Nigerian Villagers Lose Lawsuit Against an Oil Giant

by Yemisi Akinbobola, Africa Renewal

In a stunning and dramatic legal ruling that echoed from the serene court chambers in the Netherlands to the heart of rural Niger Delta in Nigeria, the District Court of The Hague dismissed all but one of the lawsuits brought against Royal Dutch Shell, an Anglo-Dutch oil and gas company, by a group of farmers seeking compensation for the environmental damage caused by the company.

The lawsuit was filed in 2008 by four fishermen and farmers accusing Shell of ruining their livelihoods through environmental degradation. The claims centred on oil spills that occurred between 2004 and 2007 at the Ibibio-I oil well in the village of Ikot Ada Udo in Akwa Ibom State. The villagers wanted Shell to repair the damages caused to their communities by cleaning up the oil spillage, adequately maintaining pipelines to prevent future leaks and paying compensation for loss of livelihoods.

THE RETURN OF BLACK MESA

Restoring Natural and Cultural Resources in Navajo Country

by Sam Koplinka-Loehr, Waging Nonviolence

As the Arizona sun crests the ridge of Big Mountain, it casts a deep red hue on Peabody Energy’s Black Mesa coal mine. Less than a hundred yards away, in the shadow of the towering coal processing plant, the Benally family gets ready for a day of school, work and sheepherding.

Black Mesa Mine is one of two coal mines located in the middle of the Navajo Nation in northeastern Arizona—the other is Kayenta Mine, just five miles down the road. Both mines opened in the late 1960s, but the Benally family has lived there for generations.

Norman Benally has been a community activist almost his entire life and remembers herding sheep on this land before Peabody arrived.

“I’ve seen the landscape change, literally,” he said.

POLICE IN THE PAY OF MINING COMPANIES

A Corporate Mineral-Security Complex in Peru

by Luis Manuel Claps, NACLA

Peru is a mining conflict country. In September of this year, the Defensoría del Pueblo (National Ombudsman Office) reported 223 social conflicts in September alone, with more than two thirds of them linked to minerals. The report also registers 196 dead and 2,369 injured in disputes over natural resources from 2006 to 2011. The database of the Latin American Observatory of Mining Conflicts (OCMAL) registers 34 cases across Peru. Even though the State has increased its presence in some mining areas and has its own Social Conflict Administration Office, the front line often becomes the ugliest side of corporate-community relations.

THE VEIL: FLAG OF THE MUSLIM FAR RIGHT

An Interview with Marieme Helie Lucas

by Maryam Namazie, Fitnah

Marieme Helie Lucas is an Algerian sociologist and founder of the organizations Women Living Under Muslim Laws and Secularism is a Women’s Issue. In this interview, conducted by Iranian exiled feminist leader Maryam Namazie, she presents a provocative view of the controversy over the face-veil ban in France—an issue which has paradoxically seen Western progressives making common cause with Muslim conservatives, and Western conservatives purporting to act in the name of feminism. This interview is presented in the spirit of airing iconoclastic perspectives and broadening the scope of debate on an issue where conflicting definitions of civil liberties have created much confusion. —World War 4 Report

NAGASAKI CALL FOR NUCLEAR ABOLITION

by Ramesh Jaura, IDN

NAGASAKI — More than 50,000 nuclear weapons have been eliminated since the historic Reykjavík Summit between the then-US President Ronald Reagan and his counterpart from the erstwhile Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev, which culminated in the groundbreaking Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) in December 1987. But 17,300 nukes remain, threatening many times over the very survival of human civilization and most life on earth, as the 2013 Nagasaki Appeal points out.

MORE MARKET, MORE DICTATORSHIP

China’s Third Plenum Signals New ‘Paramount Leader’

from chinaworker.info

“More market, less freedom, and much more power to Xi Jinping”—this was the verdict of Beijing-based journalist Ola Wong, on the decisions of the recently concluded third plenary meeting of the CCP’s 18th Central Committee. Third Plenum meetings have a special status in China’s authoritarian system, because of the key 1978 meeting (11th Central Committee’s Third Plenum), which sealed the triumph of Deng Xiaoping over Mao Zedong’s designated heir Hua Guofeng and launched the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) onto the path of pro-capitalist “reform and opening.” Expectations among the capitalists in China and globally have accordingly been high.

URANIUM MINING AND NATIVE RESISTANCE

For the Uranium Exploration and Mining Accountability Act

by Curtis Kline, Intercontinental Cry

Native Americans in the northern Great Plains have the highest cancer rates in the United States, particularly lung cancer. It’s a problem that the United States government has woefully ignored, much the horror of the men and women who must carry the painful, life-threatening burden. The cancer rates started increasing drastically a few decades after uranium mining began on their territory.

According to a report by Earthworks (PDF), “Mining not only exposes uranium to the atmosphere, where it becomes reactive, but releases other radioactive elements such as thorium and radium and toxic heavy metals including arsenic, selenium, mercury and cadmium. Exposure to these radioactive elements can cause lung cancer, skin cancer, bone cancer, leukemia, kidney damage and birth defects.”

Today, in the northern great plains states of Wyoming, Montana and the Dakotas, the memory of that uranium mining exists in the form of 2,885 abandoned open pit uranium mines. All of the abandoned mines can be found on land that is supposed to be for the absolute use of the Great Sioux Nation under the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty with the United States.

SYRIA: THE STRUGGLE CONTINUES

The Grassroots Civil Opposition Survives

by Leila Shrooms, Tahrir-ICN

The discourse on Syria has been dominated by discussions of militarization, Islamization, sectarianism and geopolitical concerns. Conversely there has been relatively little focus on Syria’s grass roots civil opposition. This has led to a lack of knowledge outside of Syria for activists who want to stand in solidarity with Syria’s revolutionaries but don’t know where to start. This article attempts to provide an introduction to some of the many civil resistance initiatives taking place on the ground and efforts at revolutionary self-organization.

BURMA: OPEN FOR BUSINESS OF GENOCIDE

by Burkely Hermann, World War 4 Report

“It’s not ethnic cleansing. The world needs to understand that the fear is not just on the side of the Muslims, but on the side of the Buddhists as well.”

No high-ranking US State Department official spoke these words. It was Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi, in an interview with BBC, dismissing credible claims of the genocide of Burma’s Muslim Rohingya people, put forward by Genocide Watch, Foreign Policy in Focus, UN Dispatch, Der Spiegel writer Jürgen Kremb, the Kassandra Project, Ramzy Baroud of the Pakistani publication The Nation, and many others. Suu Kyi continued, saying that she condemns “any movement that is based on hatred and extremism,” that “the reaction of Buddhists is also based on fear,” that the government should deal with these extremists so it isn’t her responsibility, and finally that “Burma now needs real change…a democratic society.” These comments are deeply disturbing coming from someone given the Nobel prize in 1991 for “her non-violent struggle for democracy and human rights.” Some have even asked if she should be stripped of her Peace Prize for statements such as this one.

The struggle of the two stateless peoples in Burma—the Rohingya and Shan—and broader geopolitical issues such as the race for dirty energy tie into one central question: is Burma really open for the business of exploitation and genocide?

GLOBAL WARMING AND THE END OF GROWTH

by Carmelo Ruiz-Marrero, World War 4 Report

Two landmark scientific reports on climate change have just been published. File them under “H” for “horror.”

The first one is a digest of the most recent findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which was formed in 1988 to advise the United Nations on all scientific information relevant to the implementation of the UN Climate Change Convention. The Panel periodically publishes a summary of the latest climate science for policymakers, which is subject to line-by-line approval by the 195 participating governments.

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