‘The hostage crisis in Algeria appears to be over. Algeria’s special forces stormed the gas plant in the middle of the Sahara desert, to end the four day standoff. Local media say seven hostages and 11 gunmen were killed in the latest operation. Britain’s defense minister says he’s appalled at the loss of life. Al Jazeera‘s Paul Brennan has this report on how this hostage crisis unfolded. (19 Jan 2013)’.
‘The Algerian army raided the remote gas plant where Al Qaeda-backed militants had taken hostages. (20 Jan 2013)’.
The mere phrase “Al Qaeda-backed” nowadays seems sufficient to inspire global interest and generate media attention. On this blog I posted the following in 2011: “As I wrote some time ago in Today’s Zaman: ‘In the absence of a Soviet threat, the Obama administration has now declared al-Qaeda and its, by now more than legendary and . . . defunct, leader bin Laden to be the US’s main military adversary. While making sure not to declare an outright crusade against Islam and Muslims worldwide, President Obama continues Cold War policies that ensure that the “military-industrial complex,” to use President Eisenhower’s famous 1961 phrase, is kept busy, happy and well fed. Quite some time ago, the independent journalist Pepe Escobar declared that “Osama bin Laden may be dead or not. Al-Qaeda remains a catch-all ghost entity.” In other words, his contention is that the name al-Qaeda is used by the US to suggest the presence of a threat that is then employed to justify military intervention. The flipside of that stance is now that terrorists and like-minded individuals opposing US dominance and interventionism equally cite the name al-Qaeda to gain credibility, notoriety and media exposure’”.[1] As a result, the fact that mainstream broadcasters like the BBC and Al Jazeera freely use the phrase in their reporting should not detract from the fact that the brand Al Qaeda is nothing but a fabricated fiction, as convincingly argued for by Adam Curtis’ documentary The Power of Nightmares (2004).[2]
What is happening in Mali, which just happens to be south of Libya where Colonel Gadhafi’s regime was so unceremoniously done away with by an “Assisted Rebellion”[3] recently??? Then Sarko was one of the prime-movers of the alliance backing the “Assisted Rebellion” and for good reason, as he was keen to secure access to Libyan oil and gas. At the moment, President Hollande seems to be at pains to secure his predecessor’s gains in the Maghreb, while equally also attempting to safeguard French access to Mali’s uranium reserves, one could argue.
Whereas the Al Qaeda is equally being used by both sides in the conflict today: ‘Back in the days prior to 9/11, Abu Musaab Abdulwadood used to head an organisation called Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat [‘al-Jamā‘ah as-Salafiyyah lid-Da‘wah wal-Qiṭāl’], which now carries the much more media-friendly name Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb [‘Tanẓīm al-Qā‘idah fī Bilād al-Maghrib al-Islāmī’]’.[4] The outspoken critic of U.S. foreign policy William Engdahl recently spoke to broadcaster RT: “Well, I think the intervention in Mali is another follow-up to the French role in other destabilizations that we’ve seen, especially in Libya last year with the toppling of the Gadhafi regime. In a sense this is French neocolonialism in action. But, interestingly enough, I think behind the French intervention is the very strong hand of the US Pentagon which has been preparing this partitioning of Mali, which it is now looming to be, between northern Mali, where al-Qaeda and other terrorists are supposedly the cause for French military intervention, and southern Mali, which is a more agricultural region. Because in northern Mali recently there have been huge finds of oil discovered, so that leads one to think that it’s very convenient that these armed rebels spill over the border from Libya last year and just at the same time a US-trained military captain creates a coup d’état in the Southern capital of Mali and installs a dictatorial regime against one of Africa’s few democratically elected presidents. So this whole thing bears the imprint of US Africom [US Africa Command] and an attempt to militarize the whole region and its resources. Mali is a strategic lynchpin in that. It borders Algeria which is one of the top goals of these various NATO interventions from France, the US and other sides. Mauritania, the Ivory Coast, Guinea, Burkina Faso. All of this area is just swimming in untapped resources, whether it be gold, manganese, copper”.[5]
Not just uranium, but now there has also been found oil in Mali, as indicated by Engdahl. But there is really so much more at stake with regard to France’s nuclear energy needs, as demonstrated by the writer, activist, and subversive Doctoral researcher at the University of Oxford Adam Elliott-Cooper: “Like its neighbour, Niger, Mali is rich in a number of resources, including uranium. Following the ‘oil shock’ of 1973 in which the oil producing nations sharply increased the price of oil, the French decided an alternative route was needed. This alternative was nuclear energy, and over the 15 years following the shock, France built 56 nuclear reactors, more than any other country in the world. France now has 59 nuclear reactors, generating nearly 80% of its electricity, making it the world’s largest net electricity exporter. In 1999, the French parliament confirmed three objectives in relation to this newly found wealth, the first: security of supply”.[6] Elliot-Cooper has this warning and note of hope: “The echoes of the scramble for Iraq’s resources, and the humanitarian catastrophe which followed are stark. The curbs on civil liberties in the West which the so-called War on Terror forces upon citizens is part of the same struggle that activists in West Africa are fighting against uranium mining corporations. Only by building links of solidarity between our continents can people begin to resist the disastrous intersection of the energy industries and state militarism both at home, and abroad”.[7]
While the world is watching the war in Syria and the supposed imminent deployment of chemical agents or the civil unrest in Egypt, the United States went ahead and performed another nuclear test in the desert: on ‘Friday [, 7 December] it was announced that the Nevada National Security Site had successfully detonated plutonium in a deep shaft Wednesday [, 5 December] to test the safety and effectiveness of US nuclear weapons, National Nuclear Security Administration officials said. The Pollux subcritical experiment was carried out by scientists at the Los Alamos, New Mexico national laboratory and the Sandia National Laboratories and involved a tiny sample of plutonium bomb material. Subcritical nuclear experiments have been conducted in the US since 1997 in order to help scientists understand how plutonium ages in the stockpile. They use chemical explosives to blow up bits of nuclear materials designed to stop just short of erupting into a nuclear chain reaction, also known as a criticality. The latest test used new diagnostic equipment that enabled researchers to collect more data then ever before’.[1]
While the man on the street is as clueless as always, some governments do know: ‘Iran has strongly condemned the US for carrying out a nuclear test in Nevada this week, saying the move threatens world peace and shows a hypocritical set of double standards set by Washington when it comes to nuclear research. The Iranian Foreign Ministry said the Wednesday detonation proves that US foreign policy relies heavily on the use of nuclear weapons, disregarding UN calls for global disarmament, PressTV reports. The experiment also drew criticism from Japan, with Hiroshima Mayor Kazumi Matsui wondering why the Obama administration carried out the test, despite saying he would “seek a nuclear-free world”’.[2]
The trusting & open spirit in which today’s talks took place and the level of our trade and economic ties give us every reason to consider that we have come to a friendly country. We have come not only to visit a partner and neighbour, but truly have come to a country that is our friend. The High-Level Cooperation Council, which just held its third meeting, has once again confirmed its importance as a bilateral partnership mechanism that has already proven its worth.
The Council’s sector-specific expert groups have done a lot of preparation and ensured that we had a very substantive agenda indeed. We discussed in detail a wide range of issues.
I note that our bilateral trade continues to develop fast. Russia is now in solid second place among Turkey’s trade and economic partners. Last year, despite the general decrease in global trade, our bilateral trade increased by 26 percent, and by a further 14 percent over the first nine months of this year. This is an excellent trend and a good result, especially when set against the global economy’s current difficulties. Our objective, as the Prime Minister just said, is to raise our bilateral trade to the $100-billion mark in the coming years. This is a completely realistic goal.
We just signed the trade & economic and science and technology cooperation programme through to 2015. The programme aims to bolster our industrial cooperation and develop bilateral ties in construction, the metals industry and agriculture. It also contains measures to promote cooperation in science-intensive sectors such as telecommunications, space exploration and developing satellite systems.
Of course, one of our big cooperation areas is the energy sector, and here, our work together is not limited to fossil fuels, even if they do play a very important part. As the Prime Minister knows, Russia is always ready to give our Turkish partners a shoulder to rely on at difficult times, and if there are any glitches with energy supplies from other countries, we will increase our deliveries at the first demand.
We thank our Turkish friends for their decision on the South Stream project. Construction work will begin in a couple of days, and our Turkish partners and friends have been invited to attend this event too.
I note too our joint plans to build Turkey’s first nuclear power plant at Akkuyu. This is a big and promising project involving substantial investment – $20 billion. Russia is taking care of the project financing completely. At least a quarter of the total amount will be spent on creating new jobs in Turkey itself.
We have just overseen the signing of a number of financial sector agreements. Russia’s Sberbank acquired DenizBank, Turkey’s ninth-biggest bank, in September this year, in a deal worth a total of $3.6 billion. This is one of the biggest deals, if not the biggest, in Europe’s banking sector over the last year.
The Council also discussed humanitarian matters at today’s meeting. Our bilateral public forum is beginning its practical work now.
As far as humanitarian issues go, education and science are both important areas. I spoke about the nuclear project before, and I want to note that more than 100 students from Turkey are studying in this particular field in Russia. In other words, if the project goes ahead — and so far it is going to schedule — it will help to create a whole new high-tech professional sector in Turkey.
There is the tourism sector too. As the Prime Minister noted, 3.5 million Russian tourists visit Turkey every year, and the figure will be even higher this year. This is a sign of our trust in Turkey and its government, a sign of our confidence in your country’s stability. This is what you could call ‘voting with one’s feet’ in the good sense of the term.
Russia & Turkey are neighbours and we share many common pages in history, sometimes dramatic pages. It is very important that we treat this heritage with respect.
We have gone through all manner of events in our history, but this is all part of the past now, and we must look toward the future. It makes me very happy to see that our Turkish friends share this view and that this is what we do.
Of course, as was mentioned too, we also discussed the international agenda, including the settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Syria, and the situation in North Africa and the Middle East in general.
Let me conclude by once more thanking the Prime Minister and all of our Turkish friends for these very constructive and productive talks. We have agreed to hold the fourth meeting of High-Level Cooperation Council in Russia in 2013.
It was a well-known secret, but now Press TV has incontrovertible proof: a ‘report says the United States keeps about 70 B61 nuclear bombs at a military base in southern Turkey. According to a recent report published by the Arabic Nakhel news agency, Turkish sources said the bombs are kept at Turkey’s Incirlik Air Base in Adana province. The thermonuclear bomb, which is 3.53 meters long and weighs 320 kilograms, is considered as one of the most strategic weapons of the US. Between 10 to 20 of the bombs were stored at Turkey’s Balikesir and Ekinci airbases before they were transferred to Incirlik, the report said. Turkey is also home to a controversial NATO radar base manned by US forces, which is part of a larger US-led missile system. The missile system became operational in Turkey’s eastern province of Malatya in early 2012’.[1]
The missile defence system could very well be the beginning of a New Cold War, as I indicated in piece published last year.[2] The Iranian propaganda broadcaster adds that the ‘stationing of the US-sponsored radar system in Turkey was hailed by American officials as the most significant military cooperation between Washington and Ankara since 2003, when Turkey refused to allow a US armored division to cross Turkish territory to join the military invasion of Iraq from the north’.[3] In view of the dearth of information on the nuclear bombs stored in Turkey, Press TV presents really rather irrelevant information about the projected NATO Missile Defense Shield to deflect from the fact that more information on the U.S. nuclear weapons stationed in Turkey is just not available. On the other hand, the ironically named Voice of Russia radio station adds that the ‘greater part of these bombs is the property of the U.S. army, and Washington reserves the right to use them in case of need. Until 1995 from 10 to 20 B61 bombs were deployed on the two other air bases in the country but later all of them were transferred to the Incirlik Air Base’.[4]
In the end, it now transpires that the U.S. is deploying a number of atomic bombs on NATO ally Turkey’s territory. The Turkish news channel Habertürk adds that the majority of these missiles are under U.S. control, but that Turkey could also deploy some of them. Additionally, the channel indicates that these B-61 missiles can only be fired from high-speed airplanes and that they weigh about 320 kg.[5] Therefore it seems that the real scoop that has been achieved now is that the presence of nuclear weapons on Turkish soil has been finally confirmed, once and for all.
A couple of days ago, the guys at FKN NEWZ uploaded this video, published on Oct 19, 2012 by MsMilkytheclown1. In fact, quite some time ago, Thom Hartmann and also Greg Palast separately reported on the issues raised by the FKN NEWS crew, and I posted these items on my blog.[1]
But, there is more. The Russian propaganda machine that is RT came out with this report: ‘TEPCO, operator of the Fukushima nuclear facility, failed to confirm that radiation leaks at the plant had fully stopped. This came after a US report that irradiated fish are still being caught off the coast of Japan following the 2011 meltdown. The Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) told journalists Friday [, 24 October] they could not confirm that radiation had stopped leaking from the nuclear power plant struck by a massive earthquake and tsunami in March 2011. Still, they said that radiation levels in the seawater and seabed soil around the plant were declining. A recent article in the academic journal Science revealed that 40 percent of bottom-dwelling marine species in the area show cesium-134 and 137 levels that are still higher than normal. “The numbers aren’t going down. Oceans usually cause the concentrations to decrease if the spigot is turned off,” Ken Buesseler, study author and senior scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution told the Associated Press. “There has to be somewhere they’re picking up the cesium. Option one is the seafloor is the source of the continued contamination. The other source could be the reactors themselves,” Buesseler added. Radioactive cesium is a human-made radioactive isotope produced through nuclear fission of the element cesium. It has a half-life of 30 years, making it extremely toxic. TEPCO confirmed that the radioactive water used to cool the plant’s reactors leaked into the ocean several times, most recently in April. The plant is struggling to find space to store the tens of thousands of tons of highly contaminated water used to cool the broken reactors and prevent it from a meltdown. The company managed to collect the water used to cool the spent fuel rods and circulate it back into reactor cores, so the reactors are now being cooled with recycled water. However, groundwater is still seeping through cracks in basement where the reactor and turbine are stored, posing further dangers. With the groundwater seeping in, the volume of decontaminated water collected and stored at the Fukushima Daiichi plant could triple within three years, TEPCO told the AP. The accident at the Fukushima-1 nuclear power plant was triggered by a 9.0-magnitude earthquake that struck northeastern Japan on March 11, 2011. An enormous tsunami crashed onto the land, resulting in the flash-flooding of four of the plant’s six reactors, shattering the cooling system. This led to a series of oxygen blasts, and a partial meltdown of the reactor core. The incident was the biggest nuclear disaster in 25 years since the tragedy at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. Multiple cases of contamination of air and seawater by radioactive material have been reported. Over 140,000 people were forced to leave an evacuation area 40 kilometers in diameter around the plant. Most of those people are still living in shelters. Full management of the disaster, including dismantling the reactors, is expected to take around 40 years’.[2]
The director of research at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy Patrick Clawson makes an amazing statement in the below clip of one of his recent speeches.
Clawson did not mention 9/11 in his little handy list, thereby implying that it was a justified casus belli in his view, and not an orchestrated event. Will we now witness another atrocity soon??? Will another disaster occur giving the U.S. and Israel sanction to commence hostile acts against the Islamic Republic of Iran???
‘Is there a fog of war? After years of threat, will Israel attack Iran? And is Iran really a danger to Israel? What role will the US play in this? Is Netanyahu terrified of Obama? And how will the US-Israeli relations evolve? CrossTalking with Miko Peled and Gideon Levy (27 September 2012)’.
The intrepid Mister Palast spins his tale like this: “On March 12 [2011], as I watched Fukushima melt, I knew: the “SQ” had been faked. Anderson Cooper said it would all be OK. He’d flown to Japan, to suck up the radiation and official company bullshit. The horror show was not the fault of Tokyo Electric, he said, because the plant was built to withstand only an 8.0 earthquake on the Richter scale, and this was 9.0. Anderson must have been in the gym when they handed out the facts. The 9.0 shake was in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, 90 miles away. It was barely a tenth of that power at Fukushima. I was ready to vomit. Because I knew who had designed the plant, who had built it and whom Tokyo Electric Power was having rebuild it: Shaw Construction. The latest alias of Stone & Webster, the designated builder for every one of the four new nuclear plants that the Obama Administration has approved for billions in federal studies. But I had The Notebook, the diaries of the earthquake inspector for the company. I’d squirreled it out sometime before the TradeCenter [where the documents were kept] went down. I shouldn’t have done that. Too bad. All field engineers keep a diary. Gordon Dick, a supervisor, wasn’t sup- posed to show his to us. I asked him to show it to us and, reluctantly, he directed me to these notes about the “SQ” tests”.[1]
And in his inimical style, Palast enlightens us next: “SQ is nuclear-speak for “Seismic Qualification.” A seismically qualified nuclear plant won’t melt down if you shake it. A “seismic event” can be an earthquake or a Christmas present from Al Qaeda. You can’t run a nuclear reactor in the USA or Europe or Japan without certified SQ. This much is clear from [Gordon Dick’s] notebook: This nuclear plant will melt down in an earthquake. The plant dismally failed to meet the Seismic I (shaking) standards required by U.S. and international rules”.[2] Fukushima was a disaster waiting to happen . . . and now four nuclear plants of the same type are set to be built in the U.S. Palast continues, “Here’s what we learned: Dick’s subordinate at the nuclear plant, Robert Wiesel, conducted the standard seismic review. Wiesel flunked his company. No good. Dick then ordered Wiesel to change his report to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, change it from failed to passed. Dick didn’t want to make Wiesel do it, but Dick was under the gun himself, acting on direct command from corporate chiefs. From The Notebook: ‘Wiesel was very upset. He seemed very nervous. Very agitated. [He said,] “I believe these are bad results and I believe it’s reportable,” and then he took the volume of federal regulations from the shelf and went to section 50.55(e), which describes reportable deficiencies at a nuclear plant and [they] read the section together, with Wiesel pointing to the appropriate paragraphs that federal law clearly required [them and the company] to report the Category II, Seismic I deficiencies. Wiesel then expressed his concern that he was afraid that if he [Wiesel] reported the deficiencies, he would be fired, but that if he didn’t report the deficiencies, he would be breaking a federal law’. . . . [Palast then goes on: ] The law is clear. It is a crime not to report a safety failure. I could imagine Wiesel standing there with that big, thick rule book in his hands, The Law. It must have been heavy. So was his paycheck. He weighed the choices: Break the law, possibly a jail-time crime, or keep his job”.[3] What did Bob Wiesel do???
Palast ends his piece on Fukushima and SQ thus: “I think we should all worry about Bob. The company he worked for, Stone & Webster Engineering, built or designed about a third of the nuclear plants in the United States”.[4] The good folks at Wikipedia tell us that ‘Stone & Webster is an American engineering services company based in Stoughton, Massachusetts. Stone & Webster was founded as an electrical testing lab and consulting firm by electrical engineers Charles Stone and Edwin Webster in 1889. It was acquired by The Shaw Group in 2000. The company provides engineering, construction, environmental services, and plant operation and maintenance. The company has long been involved in power generation projects and has worked on most American nuclear power plants’.[5] Not content with simply endangering the world with unsafe nuclear power plants, The Shaw Group recently proudly announced that ‘it has achieved substantial completion of the new Virginia City Hybrid Energy Center, a 585-megawatt clean coal-fired generating plant in Virginia for Dominion Virginia Power. As part of substantial completion, the plant was operated at its rated capacity and released to Dominion for commercial operation’.[6] Nuclear energy is an unsafe method of boiling water, given that the nuclear waste material will have to be safely deposited . . . which seems like a contradiction in terms. At the same time, the company is also busy purveying other means to boil water using “clean coal”, a fuel that has been proven not to exist.
While the world is now watching the violence in Syria, where supposed freedom fighter are constantly perpetrating acts to apparently goad the West to intervene and government forces seem to have lost the plot, Israel seems to be getting ready for the big one: “According to reports in Israeli newspapers, the U.S. and Israel are going to hold their largest ever joint military exercise in October [2012], shortly before American voters decide whether to give Obama a second term in the White House or replace him with Mitt Romney. The exercise, involving thousands of soldiers and the most advanced anti-missile defense systems, will simulate simultaneous attacks from Iranand Syria. Given that there is no prospect of Iran initiating missile strikes or other military action against Israel – I mean that it will only fire in response to an Israeli or an American-and-Israeli attack – what is the real purpose of the forthcoming exercise?”, as written by Alan Hart in the Opinion Maker, the online publication of the virtual think tank O. M. Center for Policy Studies.[1]
Rumour has it that Israelis planning a unilateral attack on Iranbefore the upcoming U.S.Presidential elections . . . Bibi, the ever detestable Israeli premier Netanyahu, has been urging the world to attack Tehransince the last century. As I posted in January 2011: ‘Bibi has been at it for a really long time. His hatred and distrust of Iranis nothing new. Back in mid-November 1997, the BBC reported that the ‘Israeli Prime Minister, Benyamin Netanyahu, has said that Irancould pose a bigger danger than Iraq. He said the situation could develop where Iranhad nuclear weapons aimed at Britainand the United States’.[2] In the same post, I added: ‘Netanyahu’s ridiculous claims were unable to move the world into action at the end of the 20th century. At the time, Bill Clinton was in the White House, and the U.S. was somewhat averse to overseas adventures. In order to appreciate fully the extent to which Bibi is a fear-mongering advocate of military aggression, here are some of the choice things he said at the close of the previous century: “Iran, unseen, unperturbed and undisturbed is building a formidable arsenal of ballistic missiles, actually ICBM’s (Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles). Stage One would reach our area, Stage Two it would reach Britain and Stage Three, believe it or not, they actually plan to reach the eastern seaboard of the United States, Manhattan. This sounds fantastic but Iran wants to be a world power with a world ideology of fundamentalist domination, seeing the West as its great enemy. It seeks to have weapons to back up that ideology and that is even more dangerous than Saddam because there is a fanaticism, an ideological fanaticism attached to the acquisition of these weapons”’.[3] The Black Hawk down incident as well as Monica Lewinsky at the time ensure that the U.S. did not rush where fools fear to tread.
But now we are living in a different world, a post-9/11 world to be exact. The Bush II Presidency has also vividly illustrated that failure in war is no reason not to commence another . . . Hart opines: “My speculation is that President Obama may have approved [the joint military exercise] for a self-serving reason of (American) domestic politics. Romney’s Republican Party is painting Obama as a president who is putting Israelat risk by being soft on Iran– by not doing enough to prevent it acquiring nuclear weapons and by restraining Israelfrom attacking Iran. In a very tight or close race for the White House, and fully exploited by the Zionist lobby and its evangelical Christian allies, the Republican assertion that Obama is a threat to Israeljust could tip the balance in Romney’s favour. With that possibility in his mind, Obama might well have approved the exercise to simulate Iranian and Syrian missile attacks on Israel in order to have, when the exercise is underway, a headline-grabbing way of exposing the Republican charge against him for the partisan propaganda nonsense it is. With television footage of the exercise in the background behind him, I can almost hear Obama saying something like, “No American president, Democrat or Republican, has done more than me to best protect and guarantee Israel’s security.” It could also be that Obama has calculated that such a demonstration of his support for Israel’s security at the end of his first term will give him enough credibility in the bank of American Jewish opinion to allow him to continue to prevail on Israelnot to attack Iranin his second term”.[4]
Japan’s Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda announced that he had approved the restarting of two nuclear reactors to avoid an imminent energy crisis. All fifty of the country’s reactors were shut down following the meltdown at Fukushima. Before that, atomic energy produced nearly thirty percent of Japan’s electricity. Despit recent surveys showing most people in Japanwant to abandon atomic energy, the prime minister said he had no choice — parts of the country are facing a severe power shortage. After the prime minister’s announcement, thousands of angry protesters gathered outside Noda’s official residence to show their discontent. Ministers say the alternative to nuclear energy, fossil fuels, would drive up electricity bills, harm small businesses and still leave a severe power deficit. Noda is hoping that the promise of tougher safety measures will help avoid another Fukushima– but many do not agree with his decision. Al Jazeera‘s Dominic Kane reports (8 June 2012).
Africa Update: Mali, Algeria & Libya or Al Qaeda All Around
‘The hostage crisis in Algeria appears to be over. Algeria’s special forces stormed the gas plant in the middle of the Sahara desert, to end the four day standoff. Local media say seven hostages and 11 gunmen were killed in the latest operation. Britain’s defense minister says he’s appalled at the loss of life. Al Jazeera‘s Paul Brennan has this report on how this hostage crisis unfolded. (19 Jan 2013)’.
‘The Algerian army raided the remote gas plant where Al Qaeda-backed militants had taken hostages. (20 Jan 2013)’.
The mere phrase “Al Qaeda-backed” nowadays seems sufficient to inspire global interest and generate media attention. On this blog I posted the following in 2011: “As I wrote some time ago in Today’s Zaman: ‘In the absence of a Soviet threat, the Obama administration has now declared al-Qaeda and its, by now more than legendary and . . . defunct, leader bin Laden to be the US’s main military adversary. While making sure not to declare an outright crusade against Islam and Muslims worldwide, President Obama continues Cold War policies that ensure that the “military-industrial complex,” to use President Eisenhower’s famous 1961 phrase, is kept busy, happy and well fed. Quite some time ago, the independent journalist Pepe Escobar declared that “Osama bin Laden may be dead or not. Al-Qaeda remains a catch-all ghost entity.” In other words, his contention is that the name al-Qaeda is used by the US to suggest the presence of a threat that is then employed to justify military intervention. The flipside of that stance is now that terrorists and like-minded individuals opposing US dominance and interventionism equally cite the name al-Qaeda to gain credibility, notoriety and media exposure’”.[1] As a result, the fact that mainstream broadcasters like the BBC and Al Jazeera freely use the phrase in their reporting should not detract from the fact that the brand Al Qaeda is nothing but a fabricated fiction, as convincingly argued for by Adam Curtis’ documentary The Power of Nightmares (2004).[2]
What is happening in Mali, which just happens to be south of Libya where Colonel Gadhafi’s regime was so unceremoniously done away with by an “Assisted Rebellion”[3] recently??? Then Sarko was one of the prime-movers of the alliance backing the “Assisted Rebellion” and for good reason, as he was keen to secure access to Libyan oil and gas. At the moment, President Hollande seems to be at pains to secure his predecessor’s gains in the Maghreb, while equally also attempting to safeguard French access to Mali’s uranium reserves, one could argue.
Whereas the Al Qaeda is equally being used by both sides in the conflict today: ‘Back in the days prior to 9/11, Abu Musaab Abdulwadood used to head an organisation called Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat [‘al-Jamā‘ah as-Salafiyyah lid-Da‘wah wal-Qiṭāl’], which now carries the much more media-friendly name Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb [‘Tanẓīm al-Qā‘idah fī Bilād al-Maghrib al-Islāmī’]’.[4] The outspoken critic of U.S. foreign policy William Engdahl recently spoke to broadcaster RT: “Well, I think the intervention in Mali is another follow-up to the French role in other destabilizations that we’ve seen, especially in Libya last year with the toppling of the Gadhafi regime. In a sense this is French neocolonialism in action. But, interestingly enough, I think behind the French intervention is the very strong hand of the US Pentagon which has been preparing this partitioning of Mali, which it is now looming to be, between northern Mali, where al-Qaeda and other terrorists are supposedly the cause for French military intervention, and southern Mali, which is a more agricultural region. Because in northern Mali recently there have been huge finds of oil discovered, so that leads one to think that it’s very convenient that these armed rebels spill over the border from Libya last year and just at the same time a US-trained military captain creates a coup d’état in the Southern capital of Mali and installs a dictatorial regime against one of Africa’s few democratically elected presidents. So this whole thing bears the imprint of US Africom [US Africa Command] and an attempt to militarize the whole region and its resources. Mali is a strategic lynchpin in that. It borders Algeria which is one of the top goals of these various NATO interventions from France, the US and other sides. Mauritania, the Ivory Coast, Guinea, Burkina Faso. All of this area is just swimming in untapped resources, whether it be gold, manganese, copper”.[5]
Not just uranium, but now there has also been found oil in Mali, as indicated by Engdahl. But there is really so much more at stake with regard to France’s nuclear energy needs, as demonstrated by the writer, activist, and subversive Doctoral researcher at the University of Oxford Adam Elliott-Cooper: “Like its neighbour, Niger, Mali is rich in a number of resources, including uranium. Following the ‘oil shock’ of 1973 in which the oil producing nations sharply increased the price of oil, the French decided an alternative route was needed. This alternative was nuclear energy, and over the 15 years following the shock, France built 56 nuclear reactors, more than any other country in the world. France now has 59 nuclear reactors, generating nearly 80% of its electricity, making it the world’s largest net electricity exporter. In 1999, the French parliament confirmed three objectives in relation to this newly found wealth, the first: security of supply”.[6] Elliot-Cooper has this warning and note of hope: “The echoes of the scramble for Iraq’s resources, and the humanitarian catastrophe which followed are stark. The curbs on civil liberties in the West which the so-called War on Terror forces upon citizens is part of the same struggle that activists in West Africa are fighting against uranium mining corporations. Only by building links of solidarity between our continents can people begin to resist the disastrous intersection of the energy industries and state militarism both at home, and abroad”.[7]
[1] Cfr. “SPECTRE Speaks: Al Qaeda Issues a Statement”A Pseudo-Ottoman Blog (07 May 2011). http://sitanbul.wordpress.com/2011/05/07/spectre-speaks-al-qaeda-issues-a-statement/ and C. Erimtan, “A frontline in the war against Islamic Extremism or A Crucial Part of the Eurasian chessboard?” Today’s Zaman (25 January 2011) — http://tiny.cc/h3b5g.
[2] Cfr. “Killing a Monster: OBL and the War on Terror” A Pseudo-Ottoman Blog (15 May 2011). http://sitanbul.wordpress.com/2011/05/15/killing-a-monster-obl-and-the-war-on-terror/.
[3] Cfr. “Libya: Assisted Rebellion or Humanitarian Intervention???” A Pseudo-Ottoman Blog (07 April 2011). http://sitanbul.wordpress.com/2011/04/07/libya-assisted-rebellion-or-humanitarian-intervention/.
[4] Cfr. “Propaganda: Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and Mali” A Pseudo-Ottoman Blog (29 November 2012). http://sitanbul.wordpress.com/2012/11/29/propaganda-al-qaeda-in-the-islamic-maghreb-and-mali/.
[5] “‘Pentagon’s hand behind French intervention in Mali’” RT (19 January 2013). http://rt.com/news/mali-intervention-pentagon-conflict-303/.
[6] Adam Elliott-Cooper, “Blood for Uranium: France’s Mali intervention has little to do with terrorism” Ceasefire (17 January 2013). http://ceasefiremagazine.co.uk/blood-uranium-frances-mali-intervention-terrorism/.
[7] Adam Elliott-Cooper, “Blood for Uranium: France’s Mali intervention has little to do with terrorism”.
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