Remembering Operation Condor

Al Jazeera English

Four decades ago, on November, 25, 1975, the Chilean capital of Santiago hosted a meeting of South American intelligence chiefs, military officers, and government officials with a common commitment to exterminating leftism on the continent.

It was the launch of Operation Condor, a collaborative effort between six countries: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay, and Uruguay. With the United States' encouragement, the alliance would go on to torture and murder tens of thousands of civilians.

The codename "Condor", an avian emblem of various Andean nations, was darkly appropriate in other ways. In Argentina, for example, some 30,000 suspected leftists were disappeared during the "dirty war" waged by the military junta that seized power shortly after Operation Condor took off; many were dropped from aircraft into bodies of water.

In other words, this wasn't an innocent flight of the condor.

As historian Greg Grandin notes in his book, Kissinger's Shadow: The Long Reach of America's Most Controversial Statesman, the former US secretary of state offered the following - thinly veiled - murderous advice to the junta's foreign minister in 1976: "If there are things that have to be done, you should do them quickly."

And if the US view wasn't already clear enough, he added: "We understand you must establish authority." READ MORE AT AL JAZEERA ENGLISH.

Interpol on the frontlines against terrorism?

Middle East Eye

From 18-20 November, the Spanish city of Seville hosted the sixth Interpol Counter-Terrorism Working Group Meeting on Foreign Terrorist Fighters. Interpol is the world’s largest international police organisation.

According to the Interpol website, the encounter was meant to enable participants from approximately 40 countries “to exchange best practice on how to address and neutralize the threat posed by ISIS and other terrorist groups using expertise gained in the wider conflict zone as a platform to train and plan attacks against Western and other targets”.

Of particular concern are terrorists who, having departed from Europe itself to join the fight, later bring their expertise back home.

An article about the meeting in Spain’s El Pais newspaper reports Interpol’s calculation that, of an estimated 25,000 international fighters, less than one-fourth have been identified - the majority of them in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan. Hence the apparent need for ever-tighter collaboration and information-sharing between countries fighting on behalf of “civilization,” as Spanish Interior Minister Jorge Fernandez Diaz characterised the showdown at his inaugural address in Seville.

Interpol Secretary General Jurgen Stock stressed in his own speech that “information is key to the police battle”. Two days later, it seemed a key battle had already been won on that front; an Interpol news brief announced that Stock had “welcomed the decision by European Union ministers for all EU external border control points to be connected to Interpol’s global databases and for automatic screening of travel documents to be introduced by March 2016”.

In other words, welcome to the age of Even Bigger Brother - and even smaller spaces in which human rights and civil liberties may be asserted. READ MORE AT MIDDLE EAST EYE.

Catalonia's declaration of independence

Al Jazeera English

"They are trying to liquidate the unity of a nation with more than five centuries of history."

This dramatic proclamation was made by right-wing Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, up in arms over the resolution just passed by the parliament of Catalonia committing that region to proceed with preparations to secede from Spain.

With a population of more than seven million, Catalonia accounts for approximately one-fifth of Spain's economic output.

Of course, given the country’s long history of repression of Catalan identity and nationalism, the whole "unity" bit is rather disingenuous. As economist Daniel Raventos, a lecturer at the University of Barcelona, recalled to me in an email, the constitutional enshrinement of the "indivisible unity of the Spanish nation" is in fact a relic of the era of Francisco Franco.

Among his many claims to notoriety, the former dictator outlawed the Catalan language and even the use of Catalan names, as well as the Catalan national dance and other customs.

Meanwhile, if we want to talk about liquidating things, it's no doubt helpful to bring up the wanton elimination of Spanish livelihoods in the aftermath of the financial crisis, which saw youth unemployment soar to nearly 60 percent. READ MORE AT AL JAZEERA ENGLISH.

Syria Burning

WARSCAPES

Two of the four chapters of Charles Glass’ new book, Syria Burning: ISIS and the Death of the Arab Spring, begin with jokes. In the first joke, a relic of civil war-era Lebanon, a war-weary Lebanese dog escapes to Syria only to return a couple of months later, to the confoundment of the other dogs:

“Seeing him better groomed and fatter than before, they asked whether the Syrians had been good to him. ‘Very good.’ ‘Did they feed and wash you?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Then why did you come back?’ ‘I want to bark.’”

The second joke, which Glass describes as a Cold War favorite among Syrians, features a survey question posed to citizens of different nations: “What is your opinion of eating meat?” In Poland, the overwhelming response is, “What do you mean by ‘meat’?” In Ethiopia, it is, “What do you mean by ‘eating’?” The Syrian response, finally, is, “What do you mean by ‘what is your opinion’?”

To be sure, freedom of expression hasn’t exactly been the most salient characteristic of the Syrian Arab Republic under the leadership of the al-Assads—first Hafez, who ruled until his death in June of 2000, and now Bashar—although, as the Lebanese dog attests, there were certainly other comforts. Glass notes in his book that, prior to the 2011 onset of the Syrian civil war, the country not only “fed itself” but also boasted health care and educational services that were “among the best in the region.”

During my own first visit to Syria in 2006, part of an extended and somewhat aimless hitchhiking journey with my friend Amelia, Syrians we spoke to who were not fond of al-Assad generally refrained from criticizing him too loudly. They were, however, less hesitant to voice their negative opinions of our souvenir preferences: colorful posters and decals of the ruling family, which we found amusingly ridiculous, and fake Syrian military epaulettes that we sewed onto wife-beaters.

Now, of course, Syria is far from a joking matter. More than 200,000 people have been killed in the war over the past four years, and millions have been displaced. As Patrick Cockburn remarks in the foreword to Syria Burning, it’s difficult to find an account of the conflict that isn’t hopelessly biased in favor of one side—and indeed, it’s Glass’ defiance of this tradition that makes his work valuable. READ MORE AT WARSCAPES.

Beirut and Paris: A Tale of Two Terror Attacks

TeleSUR English

Where was the global sympathy when a terror attack left at least 44 people dead and 239 others injured in Lebanon?

As news arrived yesterday of terror attacks in Paris that ultimately left more than 120 people dead, U.S. President Barack Obama characterized the situation as “heartbreaking” and an assault “on all of humanity.”

Presidential sympathy had been conspicuously absent the previous day when terror attacks in Beirut left more than 40 dead. Predictably, Western media and social media were much less vocal about the slaughter in Lebanon. And while many of us are presumably aware, to some degree, of the discrepancy in value assigned to people’s lives on the basis of nationality and other factors, the back-to-back massacres in Beirut and Paris served to illustrate without a doubt the fact that, when it comes down to it, “all of humanity” doesn’t necessarily qualify as human.

Of course, there’s more to the story than the relative dehumanization of the Lebanese as compared with their French counterparts. There’s also the prevailing notion in the West that — as far as bombs, explosions, and killings go — Lebanon is simply One of Those Places Where Such Things Happen. The same goes for places like Iraq, to an even greater extent, which is part of the reason we don’t see Obama mourning attacks on all of humanity every time he reads the news out of Baghdad.

The situation in Iraq is also obviously more complicated — not to mention the ones in Afghanistan, Yemen, and other locations on the receiving end of U.S. military atrocities. Why doesn’t it break the president’s heart to order drone attacks and other life-extinguishing maneuvers?

Short answer: because it’s not the job of superpowers to engage in self-reflection. Thus, Obama’s selective vision enables him to observe in the case of Paris: “We've seen an outrageous attempt to terrorize innocent civilians.” READ MORE AT TeleSUR ENGLISH.

Where was the global sympathy when a terror attack left at least 44 people dead and 239 others injured in Lebanon?
As news arrived yesterday of terror attacks in Paris that ultimately left more than 120 people dead, U.S. President Barack Obama characterized the situation as “heartbreaking” and an assault “on all of humanity.”

Presidential sympathy had been conspicuously absent the previous day when terror attacks in Beirut left more than 40 dead. Predictably, Western media and social media were much less vocal about the slaughter in Lebanon. And while many of us are presumably aware, to some degree, of the discrepancy in value assigned to people’s lives on the basis of nationality and other factors, the back-to-back massacres in Beirut and Paris served to illustrate without a doubt the fact that, when it comes down to it, “all of humanity” doesn’t necessarily qualify as human.

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The ‘Hezbollah stronghold’: Dehumanising Dahiyeh

Middle East Eye

Imagine, for one moment, that on 11 September 2001, you turned on your television set to find the following news headlines: “Headquarters of murderous American war machine hit by attacks”; “Epicentre of US financial exploitation rocked by blasts”; “Many deaths as planes hit belligerent global hegemon”.

Chances are you’d view such renderings as al-Qaeda-inspired propaganda and a repulsive affront to the civilians who perished.

When it comes to brutal attacks on cities further from home, however, this exact sort of media approach is shamelessly allowed to fly. It helps, of course, when the people on the receiving end of the attacks have already been so dehumanised as to eliminate the option for civilian identity. Think Iraq or Afghanistan - where, in November of 2001, New York Times foreign affairs columnist Thomas Friedman took the liberty of placing “Afghan ‘civilians’” in quotation marks in order to excuse their slaughter by the US.

Nowadays, Lebanon is an increasingly frequent victim of media efforts that are at once sloppy and pernicious. This is particularly true in the case of Dahiyeh, the southern suburbs of Beirut, which are reduced ad nauseam to a “Hezbollah stronghold”. Google “Hezbollah stronghold” and you’ll see what I mean.

The most recent Google results will pertain to yesterday’s double suicide bombings in the neighbourhood of Burj al-Barajneh, which killed more than 40 people and wounded more than 200. The attacks were claimed by the Islamic State (IS) group. READ MORE AT MIDDLE EAST EYE.