Sectarianism In Today's Muslim World

Sectarianism In The Muslim World In The 21st Century
by Chandra Muzaffar

There is no single universally endorsed definition of Sectarianism. But there is a certain understanding of the term, which has gained widespread acceptance. Sectarianism refers to differences between sub-divisions within a larger group, often accompanied by feelings of bigotry and hatred, rooted in discrimination that sometimes leads to open friction and physical conflict.

Differences between sub-divisions within the Muslim world (the Ummah) have always existed, in fact from the very dawn of the Ummah. These differences were never solely about theological or cultural issues. It was a conflict over power and authority immediately after the Prophet Muhammad’s death in 632 that evolved into a Sunni-Shia confrontation that climaxed in the terrible tragedy of Karbala in 680. Power and authority and control over wealth and resources have been at the base of much of the sectarianism in the Muslim world in the past. This is also true of the 21st century.

The bloody conflicts in Iraq, Syria and Yemen bear testimony to this. As do the conflicts in Bahrain and Lebanon. Even in Pakistan issues of power and authority cannot be divorced from theology in Sunni-Shia conflicts. However, because of the vested interests involved, the power or resource dimension of a conflict is almost always hidden from public scrutiny by both the elites and the media. What are highlighted are the theological aspects. Thus, in the case of the five year old Syrian conflict most people are not even aware that Syrian government opposition to a proposed gas pipeline from Qatar through Turkey and Syria and onto Europe which would have potentially reduced Europe’s dependence upon Russian gas is one of the reasons why there is such determination on the part of regional and Western actors to oust Bashar Al- Assad. What is dramatized instead is the so-called Shia (Alawite) oppression of the Sunni majority in Syria.

It is not just in relation to the Sunni-Shia chaos. Ethnic and /or nationalist rhetoric is also sometimes employed to conceal and camouflage the real situation. For instance, instead of dealing with the actual reasons that contributed towards the killing of 2,297 pilgrims in the 2015 haj stampede - 464 of whom were Iranians - a leading Saudi cleric has contemptuously described Iranians “as the children of Magi” alluding to their pre-Islamic identity. This is part of a larger attempt to make Arabs suspicious of Persians.

Indeed, the targeting of Persians by the Saudi elite has been going on since the Iranian Islamic Revolution of 1979. It is significant that before the Revolution the Saudi elite had no problem with either the Persian character of the Iranian monarchy or its version of Islam. The elites in both countries were on excellent terms, underscoring yet again that it is vested interests allied to power and not ethnicity or religion that explain the sectarian stances of various Muslim leaders.

If the interface between power and theology is a recurring theme in the sectarianism that has riddled the Muslim world for so long, is there anything that makes 21st century or contemporary sectarianism any different from its previous embodiments? For one thing, it is more widespread. But that is not what makes it unique. It is the active and direct involvement of actors external to the Ummah, which makes it different. Starting with the diabolical game of some Western powers of pitting Arabs against the Turks in the Ottoman Empire, which contributed to its eventual collapse in 1920, this fuelling of sectarian sentiments has continued right up to the 21st century.

Witness the role of US, British and French intelligence services and of course their media in Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Bahrain and Lebanon as they go all out to project the turmoil in these states as a Sunni-Shia conflict without making any attempt to bring to the fore its underlying causes. There is no need to emphasise that it is in their interest to paint the tragedies unfolding in these states as sectarian wars. This is why there is even talk in some circles of dividing states like Iraq and Syria along sectarian lines. When states are divided it makes it easier for external powers to control and dominate the region, which has always been their goal.

There is a state in the region itself, in West Asia and North Africa (WANA) that is also pushing for such an agenda. This is Israel. For Israel its security is guaranteed when it is surrounded by weak, divided and powerless entities.

This has been its strategic calculation vis-à-vis Lebanon for decades. This is why it also sought through its protectors, the US and Britain, to dismantle the Iraqi armed forces after the Anglo-American invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003 since it knew that it is the armed forces that had all along preserved the unity of the Iraqi state. This is also its aim in Syria today where it hopes the armed forces representing the different religious tendencies in Syria will be defeated thus paving the way for the disintegration of the state along sectarian lines. Is it any wonder then that the Israeli media is full of stories of sectarianism in the Muslim world?

Faced with these challenges from within and without, how have Muslim governments chosen to address the question of sectarianism? Of their responses, the one which is noteworthy is the AMMAN Message initiated by the King of Jordan and endorsed by almost all heads of state and government in the Muslim World, apart from a respectable array of Islamic scholars. The Message not only articulates the principles and practices that all Muslims, regardless of their doctrinal school or sect, subscribe to but also pleads for mutual respect and a sincere commitment to the wellbeing of the entire Ummah and indeed the human family. Unfortunately, very little has been done by Muslims everywhere to give meaning and substance to the Message.

It is obvious why the AMMAN Message was not translated into reality. The vested interests that thrive on sectarianism within and without the Ummah are overwhelmingly powerful. They are deeply entrenched in the structures of power at the regional and global level.

But their power is eroding. In WANA, Tel Aviv and Riyadh, the two actors who are determined to pursue their sectarian politics to advance their agendas, have been forced to concede ground in recent months.

The implementation of the Iran nuclear deal is a case in point. At the global level, the US has not been able to impose its proposed trade pacts upon Asia or Europe. In Asia in particular, it has had to come to terms with China’s growing economic clout. Similarly, US military power has discovered its limits. In WANA, in Ukraine, and in the South China Sea, for a variety of reasons, it has not been able to throw its weight around.

The decline of US global power means that its proxies and agents who have exploited the politics of sectarianism for so long will have no protector any more. Of course this does not mean that sectarianism will disappear from the Muslim world. Muslims will still have to harness their resources from within to immunise themselves from the bigotry and exclusiveness that have influenced a segment of the Ummah in recent decades. Nonetheless, the impact of external actors would have diminished - for the wellbeing of theUmmah.

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Dr Chandra Muzaffar is the President of the International Movement for a Just World (JUST). This paper was presented at the Second International Seminar on Islam Without Sectarianism organised by the Islamic Renaissance Front (IRF) at the Concorde V, Concorde Hotel, Kuala Lumpur, on 10th September 2016

Another embarrassing failure for election pollsters!

Election polling is facing yet another reckoning following its uneven-at-best performance in this year’s voting.

2020 is another embarrassing failure for election pollsters
A big embarrassment for an already shaky field.
By W. Joseph Campbell

Although the outcome in the 2020 presidential race remained uncertain the next day, it was evident that polls collectively faltered, overall, in providing Americans with clear indications as to how the election would turn out.

And that misstep promises to resonate through the field of survey research, which was battered four years ago when Donald Trump carried states such as Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, where polls indicated he had almost no chance of winning. Prominent, poll-based statistical forecasts also went off-target in 2016.

Those failings deepened the embarrassment for a field that has suffered through—but has survived—a variety of lapses and surprises since the mid-1930s. Many of those flubs and failings are described in my latest book, Lost in a Gallup: Polling Failure in U.S. Presidential Elections.

Criticism was intense in some quarters November 4. Politico’s widely followed “Playbook” newsletter was notably scathing. “The polling industry is a wreck,” it declared, “and should be blown up.”
Many surprises

While that assessment seems extreme, especially given polling’s resiliency over the decades, the poll-driven expectation that former vice president Joe Biden would lead Democrats in a sweeping “blue wave” went unfulfilled. Biden may still win the presidency, but it will not be in a landslide.

Biden’s overall polling lead, as compiled by RealClearPolitics.com, stood at 7.2 percentage points on the morning of Election Day. A little more than 24 hours later, his lead in the national popular vote was almost 3 percentage points.

Pollsters often seek comfort, and protection, from critics in asserting that preelection surveys are not predictions. But the nearer they are to the election, the more reliable polls ought to be. And a number of individual preelection polls were embarrassingly wide of the mark.

A notable example was the final Washington Post/ABC News poll in Wisconsin, released last week, which gave Biden a stunning 17-point lead. The outcome there was still undecided Wednesday morning, but the margin surely will not be close to 17 points.

Indeed, the polling surprises were many and included Senate races such as those in Maine, where Republican Susan Collins appears to have fended off a well-financed challenger to win a fifth term, and South Carolina, where Republican Lindsey Graham rather easily won reelection despite polls that indicated a much closer race. Graham declared after his victory became clear, “To all the pollsters out there, you have no idea what you’re doing.”

It appears that Republicans will keep control of the U.S. Senate despite expectations, fueled by polls, that control of the upper house was likely to flip to the Democrats.
Polling problems are not new

The 2020 election may represent another chapter in the controversies that have periodically surrounded election polls since George Gallup, Elmo Roper, and Archibald Crossley initiated their sample surveys during the 1936 presidential campaign. The most dramatic polling failure in U.S. presidential elections came in 1948, when President Harry S. Truman defied the pollsters, the pundits, and the press to win reelection over the heavily favored Republican nominee, Thomas E. Dewey.

The surprise this year is not remotely akin to the epic polling failure of 1948. But it is striking how polling missteps are so varied, and almost never the same—much as Leo Tolstoy said of unhappy families: Each “is unhappy in its own way.”

Factors that gave rise to this year’s embarrassment may not be clear for weeks or months, but it is no secret that election polling has been confronted with several challenges difficult to resolve. Among them is the declining response rates to telephone surveys conducted by operators using random dialing techniques.

That technique used to be considered the gold standard of survey research. But response rates to telephone-based polls have been in decline for years, forcing polling organizations to look to, and experiment with, other sampling methods, including internet-based techniques. But none of them has emerged as polling’s new gold standard.

One of polling’s most notable innovators was Warren Mitofsky, who years ago reminded his counterparts that there’s “a lot of room for humility in polling. Every time you get cocky, you lose.”

Mitofsky died in 2006. His counsel rings true today.

W. Joseph Campbell is a professor of Communication Studies at the American University School of Communication.

Big Tech made more money during pandemic!

 As Covid-19 surges, the world’s biggest tech companies report staggering profits

Despite anti-trust investigations and a recession, Big Tech is doing great.
By Rani Molla
Vox, Oct 30, 2020

Despite a pandemic that’s shocked the entire economy and impending antitrust lawsuits, Big Tech is doing rather well. Amazon, Apple, Google, and Facebook raked in a huge amount of money last quarter: $38 billion in profits on nearly $240 billion in revenue. For the most part, this represents growth over what these companies made last year, despite the worst recession in the United States since World War II.

These numbers are striking not just for the tremendous amount of money these four companies are making but also because Amazon, Apple, Google, and Facebook seem to be defying this moment in history. Earlier this month, a long-awaited congressional report accused the companies of anti-competitive behavior, and some politicians are asking that they be broken up. Meanwhile, unemployment is double the rate it was in the beginning of the year, and numerous industries are struggling to stay afloat.

But as many of us have been stuck at home, Big Tech’s services have been more important than ever, becoming the primary way many of us interact with the outside world. So what’s been bad for restaurants, airlines, and countless other industries has been good for the world’s biggest tech companies.

In the quarter ending September 30, Amazon’s profits rose nearly 200 percent from a year earlier. Google’s profit grew about 60 percent and Facebook’s 30 percent. Even Apple, whose profits were down slightly, brought in a healthy $12.7 billion in profit.

Revenue was up for each of these companies. Amazon, which has seen its dominance rise especially sharply during the pandemic as people’s shopping habits shifted online, saw record revenue of $96 billion, a 37 percent increase compared with last year.

As a result of these earnings, Big Tech’s stocks are at or near all-time highs. This is a notable milestone, since Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Apple stock all took a big hit back in March. But unlike many other companies still suffering from that blow, these four companies’ stock prices have now more than recovered. On average, their market cap is up about 50 percent since then. Meanwhile, the Dow Jones Industrial Average is up about 5 percent (Apple is included in the index, helping buoy the whole average).

These massive numbers don’t mean much to the average person, since many Americans don’t have a real stake in the stock market. Instead, shareholders are the ones who benefit — as well as the companies themselves, who are able to reinvest these profits to become even bigger and make competition even harder. As the government ramps up its antitrust cases against Google, Apple, Amazon, and Facebook, their outsize profits are going to become more important.

Deaths caused by the unapologetic British!

What would it take for the UK to apologize for centuries of atrocities carried out under the British Empire?
Darius Shahtahmasebi
RT : 10 Oct, 2019

Any objective historian would concede that the British government has a centuries-long list of atrocities that it must one day apologize for. To this day, the British Empire has struggled with the notion of righting past wrongs.

The British government made a rare move last week: it expressed regret for the killing of Maori in New Zealand in 1769. When Captain James Cook “discovered” New Zealand, it wasn’t long before local Maori people were being attacked and killed by Cook and his band of merry men.

To be fair, the government only took this step because it wanted to push ahead with a government-funded commemoration of Cook’s initial landing, including replicating his sailing ship with an accompanying flotilla. In fact, New Zealand’s Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters (who has Maori ancestry, mind you), suggested that Maori had their own share of the blame.

Captain Cook and his gang didn’t just kill innocent natives. As my good friend and former rugby star Eliota Sapolu points out regularly, the captain took native Polynesian women as sexual slaves. Perhaps rejecting the commemoration of people who commit such acts is actually not a bad idea.

The British Empire spanned far and wide, often at the expense of the basic rights of the local populations that fell under British rule. So much so, that you would be hard-pressed to Google search a country and find that the British hadn’t interfered extensively in that neighborhood.

In South Africa, the British rounded up approximately one sixth of the Boer population (allegedly, the majority of whom were women and children) and detained them in camps during the Second Boer War. More than 22,000 of the 27,927 detainees who died were under the age of 16, while an unknown number of black Africans were also killed.

The Second Boer War was also infamous for Britain’s use of its devastating scorched earth policy, which saw it destroy farms and civilian homes to break the Boer’s resolve.

British forces also held thousands of Kenyans in camps during the 1950s Mau Mau Uprising, this particular event rife with allegations of sexual assault, rape and torture.

And when it comes to recognized and esteemed figures whose legacies would be better suited for review in The Hague, Great Britain certainly has an abundance of them. Winston Churchill’s international reign of terror as British prime minister comes to mind. Churchill’s rule is mired with an incredulous amount of bloodshed.

In 1921, Churchill launched a massive bombing tirade to counter unrest in Mesopotamia, allegedly cancelling out the existence of a village within 45 minutes (perhaps the world record). He also said, “I am strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against the uncivilized tribes; it would spread a lively terror.”

Yes, indeed it would. We call this terror a war crime.

Among his eclectic list of crimes, Churchill also called for the gassing of local Indians, who he aptly termed “a beastly people with a beastly religion.” With this racist logic, he successfully starved 4 million Bengalis to death, all the while blaming the locals for their plight for “breeding like rabbits.”

Speaking of India, British troops also once opened fire until they ran out of ammunition against a number of peaceful protesters, possibly killing 1,000 protesters and injuring 1,100 more. The brigadier in charge was treated as a hero by the British public, who donated £26,000 to say thank you.

Fast forward some decades later and the arrogance of the violent chess game played by the remnants of the British Empire continues even to this day. Prior to the NATO onslaught of Libya, the North African nation had the highest standard of living on the entire continent. Now it is a terrorist safe-haven; a lawless failed state where slaves are sold like commodities.

When then-Prime Minister David Cameron announced the success of the use of violent force in Libya in 2011, he told the world it was “necessary, legal and right.”

“It was necessary because Gaddafi was going to slaughter his own people - and that massacre of thousands of innocent people was averted,” Cameron famously stated. “Legal, because we secured a Resolution from the United Nations, and have always acted according to that Resolution. And right, because the Libyan people deserve to shape their own future, just as the people of Egypt and Tunisia are now doing.”

None of those points are correct. We already know that Muammar Gaddafi was embroiled in a battle with extremist jihadists who had fought against the British in Iraq. (These militias would eventually become ISIS). The idea that Gaddafi was massacring civilians for no apparent reason has been heavily disputed. Besides, the British government at the time had an interestingly cozy relationship with the Libyan regime and helped to capture Gaddafi’s opponents who were later sent back to Libya and tortured. The “no-fly zone” resolution did not authorise the removal of Gaddafi by force.

So no – it wasn’t legal, it wasn’t necessary and certainly wasn’t right.

The destabilization of Libya and the flow of arms following Gaddafi’s death helped prop up terror groups across the region, including Boko Haram in Nigeria.

The British have a history of destroying entire regions and justifying their actions with the same colonial mindspeak that they have always used. Centuries later, the best they can muster is a statement of “regret” – a meaningless gesture void of any meaning.

When you remove yourself from your bubble you realise how the rest of the world views the legacies you have left in your wake. A phrase I often hear while talking to people of different nationalities is “the British have a lot to answer for.” I recall one Iraqi friend telling me that in their part of the world, it is not necessarily the Americans who are despised the most, but the British.

The Iranian people, for example, can recall a CIA-backed coup in 1953 which removed their democratically elected leader, Mohammad Mosadegh, and changed the nation’s entire course of history. I haven’t met a single Iranian who is in denial about Britain’s central role in this operation.

This is from the Guardian, a British newspaper : “Britain, and in particular Sir Anthony Eden, the foreign secretary, regarded Mosaddeq as a serious threat to its strategic and economic interests after the Iranian leader nationalised the British Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, latterly known as BP. But the UK needed US support. The Eisenhower administration in Washington was easily persuaded.”

The Guardian noted: “US officials have previously expressed regret about the coup but have fallen short of issuing an official apology. The British government has never acknowledged its role.”

Forget asking for apologies, there are some crimes that the British will just flat-out ignore.

Before the gatekeepers attack me for being anti-British (if that is such a thing), I will just point out that I am in fact a British citizen, born and raised in the United Kingdom. I am also fortunate enough to have New Zealand citizenship. But life isn’t a sports game; I am not required to pick teams. Both the British government and the New Zealand government have a good share of deeds to acknowledge and apologize for – that’s just an objective truth, whether we like it or not.

The British certainly have a lot to answer for, and as a British person I can say this quite comfortably without feeling as though I have shot myself in the foot. At the end of the day, a nation battling a rising right-wing and anti-immigrant hysteria would do well to view the actions of its own government and military over the last few centuries, as it may even help tell the story of how the current state of Britain came into being. 

Deaths caused by British Empire should be condemned just like deaths under Stalin
Tomasz Pierscionek
RT : 5 Dec, 2019

Western historians who condemn the USSR for the deaths under Stalin’s dictatorship should shed a spotlight on the millions who died under British rule, including those in engineered famines across the Indian subcontinent.

The UK general election is a week away and a significant chunk of the country’s media, three-quarters of which is reportedly owned by a few billionaires, is hard at work digging up dirt on Jeremy Corbyn to prevent a Labour Party victory at all costs. However, this uphill task is becoming harder as recent polls show the frequently cited Conservative lead over Labour is rapidly decreasing. The possibility that Mr Corbyn will be Britain’s next prime minister, perhaps at the head of a minority government, is now grudgingly acknowledged.

When Corbyn launched Labour’s manifesto at the end of November, he pledged to conduct a formal enquiry into the legacy of the British Empire “to understand our contribution to the dynamics of violence and insecurity across regions previously under British colonial rule” and set up an organisation “to ensure historical injustice, colonialism, and role of the British Empire is taught in the national curriculum.”

The idea of teaching a population about the unsavoury aspects of its history, and in Britain’s case revealing how several of today’s geopolitical crises are rooted in the past folly and avarice-fuelled actions of its ruling class, is commendable.

It would be prudent to inform UK citizens about the British Empire’s divide and conquer tactics across the Indian subcontinent and Africa, the stirring up of Hindu-Muslim antagonism in the former, or the impact of the Sykes-Picot agreement that precipitated instability across the Middle East which continues to the present day. Doing so might enable the public to gain a better understanding of how past actions affect present realities, in turn making them more eager to hold contemporary politicians to account so past mistakes are not repeated. As Spanish philosopher George Santayana said: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

Some right-wingers may be quick to dismiss Corbyn’s manifesto promise as self-indulgent politically-correct onanism. Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage commented: “I don’t think I should apologise for what people did 300 years ago. It was a different world, a different time.” Yet, some of the violence perpetuated in the name of protecting the empire’s interests is not exactly ancient history, having occurred within living memory for some. The Malayan Emergency, Kenya’s Mau Mau uprising, the Suez Crisis, or the deployment of British troops to Northern Ireland are a few examples.

Segments of the intelligentsia may also feel unease at Corbyn’s manifesto promise, namely those academics who still view the British Empire as the UK’s legacy and ‘gift’ to the world. This includes those who, by extension, consider modern Britain (and the West in general) as bestowed with a cultural superiority that makes it the unchallenged arbiter of global affairs and the indisputable defender of ‘human rights’ and ‘democracy’, regardless of what these laudable terms have been corrupted into justifying. The invasion of Iraq, the destruction of Libya, and the civil wars in Syria and Ukraine are a few manifestations of Western intervention.

Some Western historians fall over themselves condemning the USSR for the millions who died under the dictatorship of Stalin, with a significant proportion of these victims perishing during famines. The people of the former Soviet Union need to come to terms with their history, just like any other country. In the meantime, Western historians should shine a spotlight closer to home. Engineered famines across the Indian subcontinent reportedly killed up to 29 million in the late 19th century and a further 3 million in 1943.

The Indian subcontinent was only one of the regions under British rule and the deaths mentioned above do not include those violently killed by occupying forces. Unlike the USSR, which kept oppression confined within its borders and those of neighbouring countries under its sphere of influence, Britain together with the American Empire (to which it handed over the baton of imperialism after WWII) has interfered on pretty much every continent except Antarctica. In modern times we see the UK, now a vassal of the US-led NATO empire, condemn nations that refuse to submit to Western hegemony.

Apologists for Empire claim it brought ‘progress’ such as railways, infrastructure, education, cricket, as well as free trade and order (i.e. Pax Britannica). Irrespective of whether such ‘gifts’ were appreciated by occupied nations, this line of reasoning opens up a dangerous precedent. For example, supporters of Stalin overlook his despotism by crediting him with rapidly industrializing an underdeveloped nation that later played a major role in defeating Nazism, bestowing upon him an honour that instead belongs to millions of rank and file soldiers, officers, and commanders of the Red Army.

During the time of the British Empire, as was the case with other European empires and many dictatorships, the majority of working people were not personally enriched by the plunder of imperialism and their descendants are not to blame for the actions of the former ruling class. Nevertheless, learning one’s history is the first step to understanding the present, ensuring today’s leaders are held to account, and preventing the same mistakes from being repeated.

Tomasz Pierscionek is a medical doctor and social commentator on medicine, science, and technology.

Most Britons 'proud' of colonial legacy they know little about
Danielle Ryan
RT : 18 Feb, 2016

A recent poll conducted in the UK found that 44 percent of British people are “proud” of the British Empire, while only 21 percent of respondents “regretted” that it existed.

The YouGov poll found 43 percent of respondents felt the empire had been a “good” thing while 19 percent said it was “bad”.

At its peak in 1922, the British Empire governed one-fifth of the world’s population and one-quarter of the world’s land area. Slave-trading, famine, concentration camps, massacres; those all sound like a history that would evoke a sense of shame, not pride.

But this isn’t about bashing Britons for being proud of their history and telling them to feel ashamed instead. It’s about the fact that they — too many of them — don’t actually know their history. The history of the empire is not widely taught in UK schools — and what is taught is a watered-down or varnished version of the truth.

As British-Nigerian historian and writer David Olusoga put it: “The empire has become reduced to the abolition of slavery, the building of the Indian railways and some vague talk about the rule of law, British values and the spread of the English language.”

Calls for an overhaul

Last year, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn called for an overhaul of the country’s national history curriculum to include more teaching about the crimes of the empire. He also called for more teaching on the rise of the trade unions and “socialist tradition” in Britain. On the subject of the British Empire, he said: “You need to get the story from the people where the empire expanded into, rather than those that came there to take control of it.”

But Corbyn is not the only one to take issue with Britain’s history curriculum. Leading historians have called for an unvarnished approach to teaching about the country’s past. Ashley Jackson, Professor of Imperial and Military History at King's College London, told the Independent that, understandably, “a lot of British people would like to think that the imperial past was generally okay, but unfortunately if you look at the record of empire it’s very difficult to say that overall it was a good thing.”

Andrea Major, an associate professor in British colonial history at the University of Leeds said there was a “collective amnesia about the levels of violence, exploitation and racism involved in many aspects of imperialism” and that “better education” and “more open public debate” was needed.

The results of the YouGov poll were released last month on the same day as a UN report into the violence committed by the Islamic State terror group in Iraq, which led to some uncomfortable comparisons on Twitter.

Look over there!

Countries deal with traumatic histories and legacies in much the same way. Let’s call it the “Look over there!” approach. The bad is downplayed to near irrelevance, while the good is magnified. This is a kind of natural default displayed by great powers. At the same time, the crimes committed by others take on a disproportionate level of importance. A barely audible mumble of ‘yes we made some mistakes’ is quickly followed up with ‘but look at how awful [insert other country] is!’

A present day example can be found in Syria. When bombs dropped by the US or UK kill civilians, it is denied or passed off as a terrible mistake. No one bats much of an eyelid at the BBC or CNN. But when Russian bombs kill civilians, they suddenly change their tunes and it becomes must-read news. Look over there! Look what they did! To save myself from shouts of “hypocrisy” let’s be clear: This happens in Russian media, too.

Cameron and the Empire vs. Putin and Stalin

While former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair apologized in 2006 for Britain’s role in the early slave trade, current PM David Cameron has been somewhat less critical of the country’s colonial past, notably refusing to apologize for the Amritsar massacre of 1919, which saw British troops open fire on crowds of Indian nationalists, killing nearly 400 and wounding many more. Visiting Amritsar in 2013, Cameron argued that it would not be right to “reach back into history” and reasoned that it was enough that the event had already been “rightly criticized” at the time, adding that there was still an “enormous amount” to be proud of in what the empire was responsible for.

In some ways, we could compare the results of the YouGov poll to Russian public opinion on Stalin. There is much criticism in the West for Vladimir Putin’s alleged “rehabilitation” of the dictator. Westerners are astounded to learn that Russians could have any positive feelings at all regarding the Stalin era — and they’re not shy about blaming Putin and labeling him a modern-day reincarnation of the dictator himself. However, Cameron’s comments about pride in the empire don’t get quite the same treatment. That is for many reasons — but the overriding one is simply that we in the West are allowed to be unapologetically proud of our histories. It’s always ‘others’ who should hang their heads in shame, groveling for acceptance.

Looking in the mirror

But is there really any use in comparing and contrasting? Britons are proud of an empire they know little about. Americans still haven’t managed to build a national slavery museum. Russians are still grappling with the legacy of Stalin and even Lenin. Wouldn’t we all just be better off worrying more about our own histories than everyone else’s?

History is delicate. It can rarely be discussed in ‘all good’ or ‘all bad’ terms. Its subtleties and nuances are as important to our understanding of the past as they are to informing our understanding of the present. I recently visited Moscow’s state-run Gulag Museum. On one of the walls in the museum it was written: "We have yet to fully study, understand and accept this history".

The same can be said for modern-day Britain and its understanding of the Empire.

Facebook built a new fiber-spinning robot!

The robot's code name is Bombyx, which is Latin for silkworm, and pilot tests with the machine begin next year.

Facebook built a new fiber-spinning robot to make internet service cheaper
Shara Tibken, Queenie Wong
Cnet, July 13, 2020

The robot rests delicately atop a power line, balanced high above the ground, almost as if it's floating. Like a short, stocky tightrope walker, it gradually makes its way forward, leaving a string of cable in its wake. When it comes to a pole, it gracefully elevates its body to pass the roadblock and keep chugging along. This isn't a circus robot. Facebook developed the machine to install fiber cables on medium-voltage power lines around the globe. The aim is to make it cheaper for internet service providers to build out their networks using super-fast and reliable fiber connections. Installing fiber is a pricey endeavor, limiting where it can be deployed. If the cost of installation goes down, says Facebook, so too does the cost of service for the end user.

The social network and Mark Zuckerberg, its chief executive and founder, have long wanted to expand access to the internet. The fiber-installation robot -- code-named Bombyx, which is Latin for silkworm -- and a slimmer fiber-optic cable that's housed inside the machine's body are part of that push. The robot crawls along power lines and weaves its streamlined fiber cables around the lines already in place. It "dramatically lowers" the cost of fiber deployment by using existing electrical infrastructure, Facebook says.

The social networking giant plans to nonexclusively license the technology and will launch a pilot program with partners next year. It won't be building the robot  -- which doesn't have a set retail price -- but will count on partners to manufacture and sell it.

"Half the world's population is not connected," said Karthik Yogeeswaran, a wireless systems engineer in Facebook's connectivity group and the brains behind the new robot. About 80% of those people live under existing 3G or better networks but still aren't online because they can't afford it, he said in an interview with CNET.

"Fiber has orders of magnitude more bandwidth than basically any other technology," Yogeeswaran said. "We want to allow abundance so that more people can get more data."

While carriers are busy rolling out super-speedy 5G wireless service, pockets of the world still have slow internet, and 3.5 billion people have no access at all. The novel coronavirus pandemic has made the need for high-speed, broadband internet even more obvious. In some places, hospitals, schools and other critical organizations don't have fast-enough internet to function. As people work from home, they require steady connections to get their tasks done, and kids need internet access to complete their digital coursework. Without connectivity, none of that is possible, disadvantaging people who live in places without reliable, fast internet access. Facebook wants to help, but it'll be hard-pressed to succeed where many others have failed.

In the US, the federal and state governments have provided billions of dollars to companies to build out
speedy fiber networks, but the installation is still pricey and time consuming. Digging up ground and putting fiber in can cost tens of thousands of dollars per mile to install. In emerging markets, lack of access to broadband can be even more pronounced. Even if service is available, it can be too pricey for many people to afford beyond low data-cap, pay-as-you-go plans.

"While the pandemic isn't responsible for the digital divide, it's exposing ... the hard truth of the
significance of that," Yael Maguire, vice president of engineering for Facebook's Connectivity Lab, said in an interview. "The pandemic is certainly unprecedented for all of us in many ways."

While the timing of Facebook's announcement may raise eyebrows given all of the controversy surrounding the company, it's important to note that the social network's mission to expand internet connectivity started long before COVID-19 ravaged the globe. The company envisions the entire world connected to the internet. It's worked on programs like internet-beaming drones and apps that let users briefly browse text on any mobile website for free.

Facebook isn't the only tech company working on fiber. Google, as well as traditional carriers like Verizon, have rolled out fiber but have struggled along the way. Like Google, Facebook benefits when more people are online and able to use its services, whether it's the core social network, Instagram or messaging service WhatsApp.

Cables and robots

Three years ago, Facebook started looking at a more affordable way to deliver high-speed internet through fiber-optic cables. Yogeeswaran said the idea of using power lines to support the fiber cables came to him while he was traveling through rural Africa. Uganda was filled with medium-voltage power lines that emit between 10,000 to 35,000 volts, and he envisioned fiber installed alongside those cables.

Building a robot to install the fiber, high above the ground, made sense. While doing more research,
Yogeeswaran learned about a method developed in the 1980s in which a machine would wind fiber cable around power lines.

"It never really caught on as a commercial success and that was partially because it was built using '80s
technology," he said. "You had gas-powered motors and they kind of relied on humans moving these things across obstacles. You had to shut the power off."

One product developed in the UK called SkyWrap winds cable around power lines in remote areas and places where it would be tough for a human to reach the poles, such as above a river. Traditionally, workers will lash a fiber cable to a wire attached to a pole rather than wrap it around. But there's a lot of preparation work that needs to be done beforehand to support the fiber cable. The task requires large crews of people and heavy equipment, which drives up the cost, Yogeeswaran said. Wrapping fiber
cable around power lines cuts this time-consuming work because workers no longer need to make new space on the pole or pull the cable with a lot of tension so it doesn't fall. Facebook's approach would require two or three electric utility linemen, a pickup truck, spools of fiber cables only a few kilometers long, a robot and several other tools.

Medium-voltage power lines are also "thinner and weaker," so Facebook had to create a lighter robot, along with slimmer fiber cable that can resist damage from high temperatures and wind but still be small enough to be wound inside the robot's body. Working with veteran cable designer Wayne Kachmar and other academic advisors and companies, Facebook and its partners created a fiber cable that's 4 millimeters in diameter. A typical aerial fiber cable can be between 10 to 13 millimeters in diameter. Cable used to wrap around power lines is about 7 millimeters in diameter.

Facebook then teamed up with New York-based ULC Robotics to design a robot that can wrap a cable around a power line as it moves forward, and clear obstacles such as an insulator and other objects on the pole without the help of a human. Instead of using a round heavy spool loaded with a kilometers' worth of cable, workers shed weight by forming the cable into a horseshoe shape and attaching it to the robot. That also makes it possible for the robot to clear obstacles by lifting up the fiber cable. As the robot passes an obstacle, it regains its balance, lowers the fiber cable and continues wrapping.

Importantly, Bombyx can safely wrap fiber around power lines that carry electricity, something that's
difficult for humans to do. There's no need to cut power service to customers served by the line to install
fiber using the robot. And it can install more than a kilometer of fiber in about an hour and a half.

Still, there's more work to be done before Facebook and its partners launch a pilot project. That includes
making sure the robot can get the job done without requiring an engineer to oversee its work, working with electric companies and creating safe operating procedures.

Fiber's price tag

Today, millions of Americans lack broadband internet, defined as download speeds of 25 megabits per second and upload speeds of 3 mbps. The latest estimate from the US Federal Communications Commission says 18 million Americans, or roughly 5.6% of the population, go without fast connections. But certain segments are hit even harder. About 30% of people in rural areas lack broadband, as do 40% of the nation's schools and 60% of health care facilities outside major metropolitan areas.

US federal and state officials have made nationwide broadband access a priority, offering grants and other incentives to big internet service providers and small-town telephone companies to upgrade their networks. In February, the FCC approved a $20 billion fund to ensure that residents in rural areas of the US have access to broadband internet connections. But differing opinions exist about how best to deploy those funds, and outdated maps with insufficient detail make it tough to determine where the true need really is.

The situation in developing nations is even worse, with wide swaths of countries having little or no
connectivity. Fiber-optic lines typically are the best solution for spreading high-speed internet. Even 5G networks, which are being turned on around the globe, rely on fiber as their backbone. Fiber can deliver gigabit speeds and is more reliable than wireless connections. The preferred way to deliver such high speeds to users is to build fiber straight to their homes. But that gets expensive fast.

A decade ago, many companies turned to fiber as the way to deliver internet to their customers. In 2010,
Google launched its big push with fiber, promising to deliver service more than 100 times faster than what most Americans could access. ISPs in cities Google served lowered their prices and boosted speeds to compete. But in an illustration of the cost and difficulty of deploying fiber, Google in 2016 "paused" plans to roll out its internet service to new cities to explore other wireless options. Verizon also stopped rolling out its Fios fiber-optic internet service, which likewise connected to individual houses.

Life lessons from a story

Once a man saw in his dream, that a lion was chasing him.

The man ran to a tree, climbed on to it and sat on a branch.

He looked down and saw that the lion was still there waiting for him.

The man then looked to his side where the branch he was sitting on was attached to the tree and saw that two rats were circling around and eating the branch. One rat was black and the other one was white.

The branch will fall on the ground very soon.

The man then looked below again with fear and discovered that a big black snake had come and settled directly under him.The snake opened its mouth right under the man so that he will fall into it.

The man then looked up to see if there was anything that he could hold on to.

He saw another branch with a honeycomb. Drops of honey were falling from it. The man wanted to taste one of the drops. So, he put his tongue out and tasted one of the falling drops of honey. The honey was amazing in taste. So, he wanted to taste another drop and then another and as a result, he got lost into the sweetness of the honey.

He forgot about the two rats eating his branch away, the lion on the ground and the snake that is sitting right under him. Suddenly when the branch broke he remembered all the dangers woke up from his sleep.

Since this was an unique dream, the man went to a pious scholar of Islam to know its meaning.

The scholar said "The lion you saw is your death.

It always chases you and goes where ever you go.

The two rats, one black and one white, are the night and the day.

Black one is the night and the white one is the day.

They circle around, coming one after another, to eat your time as they take you closer to death.

The big black snake with a dark mouth is your grave.

It's there, just waiting for you to fall into it.

The honeycomb is this world and the sweet drops of honey are the luxuries of this world.

We like to taste a little of the luxuries of this world and it's very sweet. Then we want to taste little more and then more.

Meanwhile, we get lost into it and we forget about our time, we forget about our death and we forget about our grave."

Reflection on German reunification after 30 years...

Many said only west Germany could have afforded to take over east Germany - there was not another country in Europe that could have pulled it off. But the 'short' term unification tax stayed and the 'purchase' took massive steam out of west Germany both economically and politically. Add to that the fact that they are not one Volk now with massive immigration and you can forgive the east German's who have been left in their 'quiet cities' that they are not second, but third class citizens.

In reality unification caused the lowest birth rate of any country in the world. Mama Merkel paid women to have kids - and still the population dropped. The million immigrants was the solution. Pity they were the wrong culture. Humans, like plants, have favourite conditions to grow. And generations to adapt to new conditions. The high crime rate is directly at the feet at their East German leader, Merkel. By allowing in millions of 3rd world migrants that will never be German. By importing the 3rd world you become the 3rd world. Just like in the United States. There is no magic dirt.

West Germans still like to moan about the expense of reunification. But reunification without negotiations meant that factories in the East that were actually run by the workers after the collapse were no longer able to get products to market since Western firms made the sale of their items contingent on not selling Eastern products.  Wolfgang Schäuble determined that since the State had owned everything in the East it meant that the West government owned nearly everything. And so they began the fire sale.  Also, it took no time for Easterners to be fleeced of their apartments that they then owned by unscrupulous speculators.  Homelessness became a problem in the East for the first time. As I have told some West Germans, the East offered itself in marriage but the West preferred rape. Maybe Merkel is the East's revenge.

Communism does not work.
Capitalism does not work.
But  country can combine practices from each to produce a working government.
We are born socialist, grow into capitalists, then revert to socialist at life's close.

Less than the sum of its parts: German reunification thirty years on
Neil Clark
RT : 3 Oct, 2020

A country that combined the best aspects of the old West and East Germany would have been a great place to live, but Germany has lost its way since the reunification of October 1990 and the hopes haven‘t been realised since.

Thirty years ago today, on 3rd October 1990, ‘Germany’ was reborn. The division of Germany into East and West was supposed to have been permanent, following the end of the Second World War, and this division was recognised again in the 1975 Helsinki Accords. Nevertheless, just fifteen years later, the separation was over.

Some would say this was inevitable, following the demise of communist rule in the GDR, but nothing is
inevitable until it happens. East and West Germany could, conceivably have continued as separate states, at least for a number of years. Indeed, that is what many, including UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who was very apprehensive about reunification, hoped for.

The turning point was undoubtedly Helmut Kohl, the West German Chancellor at the time, declaring 'Wir sind doch ein volk!' (We are one people!) on 10th November 1989. ‘Deutsche Wiederervereinigung’ (German reunification) thereafter became a juggernaut that proved impossible for anyone to stop. Of course, as Kohl said, self-determination was paramount, but if reunification had to take place, it could have been done in a different way. Rather than being a ‘merger’ between East and West, what actually happened was that the West ‘took over’ the East. The Federal Republic of Germany was never ‘put to sleep’, but the German Democratic Republic was. In other words, reunification didn’t create a ‘third’ country, but simply enlarged the Federal Republic. And that arguably, is where things went wrong.

I spent time in both West and East Germany in the summer and autumn of 1989. I had been to West Germany a number of times in the 1980s and on each occasion I was impressed by what I saw. There was a high standard of living, great art and culture and a pretty vibrant society.

In September 1989 I visited East Germany for the first time. Travelling by train from Frankfurt, the contrast was quite incredible. Everything seemed quieter. There were no advertising hoardings. The roads had about a quarter of the traffic on them as in the West. It was, to use a cliché, like stepping back in time. But that doesn’t mean the country was ‘backward’, far from it. Again, as in the West, the arts and cultural life was strong. The people were friendly, engaging and very well-educated. There seemed to be a strong community spirit. Pubs and restaurants were packed. My visit coincided with the official 40th birthday celebrations of Europe’s youngest state. Yet for the GDR, life didn’t begin at 40, but ended. No one could have predicted how quickly events would unfold.

Staying in Wernigerode I became friends with a charming married couple who shared my love of vintage detective fiction. When the Berlin Wall came down, they sent me an ecstatic letter, which ended with the words ‘FREIHEIT!’ (Freedom).

No one who has enjoyed the freedom to travel can criticise anyone else for yearning for it. Yet thirty years later, the German government’s annual report on reunification showed that almost 60% of citizens in Eastern Germany regarded themselves as ‘second-class citizens’, and only 38% of those polled thought German reunification had been a success.

It’s not just the citizens of the former East Germany who are ‘Ostalgic’ for the past. There’s the phenomenon of ‘Westalgie’ too- ie nostalgia for the old West Germany and the prosperous, comfortable lives that people once lived there.

Today’s Germany is not the sum of its parts. It is still two nations in all but name. If anything, the last
thirty years proves that competition is a good thing. The existence of a communist East meant those in power in the West had to raise their game. They did, via Adenauer and Erhard’s ‘Social Market’ economy. Who could be tempted by communism when considering all that the Federal Republic offered its citizens: a strong economy, social security and a very high level of personal freedom? Similarly, pressure from the West, meant that East Germany’s leaders had to pull their finger out too, with increased production of consumer goods, and some - albeit cautious - liberalisation.

Shorn of the competition that East and West Germany provided for each other, the eagle of a united Germany hasn’t soared to the great heights many expected in 1990.

In 2018, a report showed that the risk of being poor had risen to a record high in Germany.

Both East and West Germany were very safe countries, where violent crime was rare, but the number of murders in united Germany has risen from 630 in 2012 to 901 in 2018. Rape and sexual assault cases have also risen during the last decade.

Things don’t seem to be going too well at the workplace either. A 2019 report revealed that the Germans were the most dissatisfied employees in Europe, after Hungarians. Again, it’s all a far cry from the hopes and dreams of 1990.

Whichever way it was done, German re-unification was never going to be easy. Forty years is a significant period of time, and by the late 1980s both the FRG and the GDR had established their own distinct identities, their own national cultures, their own way of life, their own brands, their own iconography.

A hurried ‘takeover’ of the East by the West, and then the gradual dismantling of what made the West so special, as well as the positive aspects of the East- all against the disorienting backdrop of greed-fuelled turbo globalisation, has unsurprisingly left many Germans with a sense of loss and unease. There’s also been a worrying diminution of the freedoms the West once enjoyed, such as freedom of speech, under the guise of countering ‘hate speech’.

Did we need communism in the East to keep the West ‘up to the mark’? It looks like it.

From Bubonic Plague To Typhoid Mary

With this new quarantine effort in the news, we offer a look at quarantine use — and abuse — over the ages.

A History of Quarantines, From Bubonic Plague To Typhoid Mary
Eleanor Klibanoff
NPR, January 26, 2020

In the 1890s, travelers from Switzerland were quarantined in Italy to make sure they didn't have cholera.

The idea of putting a possibly sick person in quarantine goes back to the ancient texts. The book of Leviticus tells how to quarantine people with leprosy. Hippocrates covered the issue in a three-volume set on epidemics, though he came from a time in ancient Greece when disease was thought to spread from "miasmas," or foul-smelling gas that came out of the ground.

Bubonic plague in Venice (1370)

The so-called Black Death killed 20 million Europeans in the 14th century. So Venice, a major trade port, grew nervous. If a ship was suspected of harboring plague, it had to wait 40 days before any passengers or goods could come ashore. Venice built a hospital/quarantine center on an island off its coast, where sailors from plague-infested ships were sent either to get better, or, more likely, to die. This 40-day waiting period became known as quarantinario, from the Italian word for 40. As opinions about the disease changed, the isolation period shrank to trentinario — 30 days — but the original name stuck.

Yellow fever in Philadelphia (1793)

Almost 5,000 people died over the course of two years, about a tenth of the city's population. Thousands fled for the countryside, and at the height of the epidemic, when nearly 100 people were dying every day, the city government collapsed. Philadelphia was the capital of the country, but the federal government evacuated rather than face the scourge. The best known cure at the time was to "bleed" patients of infected blood and give them wine — and a popular theory on stopping the disease was to quarantine sailors at the Lazaretto, a hospital outside the city. But the disease is spread through mosquitoes, so quarantine was not as effective as the cold snap that eventually killed the infected insects.

Typhus in New York (1892)

In 1892, a boat carrying many Russian Jewish immigrants arrived at Ellis Island. Passengers in steerage class had developed such bad cases of body lice that the harbor inspector declared he had "never seen a more bedraggled group," according to medical historian Howard Markel. Lice led to typhus, but by the time that disease was discovered, the passengers had spread out to boarding houses and family homes across New York's Lower East Side. At least 70 were rounded up and quarantined in tents on North Brother Island in the East River. An outbreak of cholera followed in New York, from a ship bringing more Russian Jewish immigrants. According to Markel, the front page of The New York Times ran a piece saying, "We don't need this kind of riff-raff on our shores," referring to Russian Jews. It wasn't an op-ed, he notes.

Bubonic plague in San Francisco (1900)

City authorities strung rope and barbed wire around a 12-square-block section of Chinatown (after allowing all Caucasian residents to leave). The cause: fear of bubonic plague, after a Chinese immigrant was found dead in a hotel basement. The quarantine was lifted after a few days, but not before countless Chinese laborers had lost their jobs. This "bubonic bluff," as it became known in the press, prompted ugly discussion — never put into action — about mass deportation of Chinese immigrants.

Typhoid in New York City (1907)

You've probably heard of Mary Mallon, better known as "Typhoid Mary." She was an Irish-born cook who carried the bacteria that causes typhoid fever, a form of salmonella that can cause fever, diarrhea and death. But Mallon herself was immune to the disease. When authorities figured out that her work as a cook had caused the city's typhoid outbreak, she was sent to North Brother Island for a three-year quarantine. She promised never to cook for others again. But she broke her word. (She was especially fond of making peach ice cream.) When apprehended in 1915, she was sent back to the island for the rest of her life — 23 more years.

Venereal disease in the United States (1917)

With World War I raging, the U.S. military became concerned about the number of young men ineligible for the draft because of sexually transmitted diseases like syphilis and gonorrhea. They also noticed an uptick in "camp girls," prostitutes and other women hanging around U.S. training grounds and military recruitment centers. A federal order allowed for the incarceration of prostitutes and camp girls until they were deemed STD-free via mandatory testing. Harvard University medical historian Allan Brandt estimates at least 30,000 women were picked up in raids. "There's no evidence that this impacted the rates of transmission," he says. "But there was this notion that these women constituted a serious threat to our success in the war." He notes that while the women were being rounded up and held in prison, often long after they'd tested negative, the Army was issuing condoms to soldiers shipping off to France.

Flu epidemic in Europe and U.S. (1917-1919)

This global pandemic, which killed an estimated 50 million, prompted quarantine and isolation, as well as school cancellations in Europe and a ban on public gatherings in parts of the U.S. These methods merely held the disease at bay temporarily and were "hugely socially disruptive," according to medical historian Markel. Influenza is one of the most contagious diseases in the world. A few minutes with a patient who is coughing and sneezing can be enough to transmit the disease. For comparison, Markel says, you'd need to spend eight hours with a tuberculosis patient to be infected.

SARS in Canada (2003)

Though the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) pandemic of 2003 led to quarantines in many different countries, Canada's response was the most disproportionate to the risk. According to the U.S. National Institutes of Health, Canada quarantined almost 100 people for every confirmed SARS case in the country. Though Toronto only had 250 probable cases, about 30,000 people were confined in hospitals and their homes. A comparable number were quarantined in Beijing, which had 2,500 cases.

Bubonic plague in China (2014)

China took a page from San Francisco's turn-of-the-century playbook when it faced a single case of the bubonic plague. A man died of the disease after feeding a dead, plague-infected marmot to his dog in the northwestern city of Yumen. Over 150 people who had contact with the man were placed in quarantine; several districts of the city were sealed off, isolating thousands. Yanzhong Huang, a fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations, said in an interview with The Guardian, "SARS taught Chinese leaders ... the wrong lesson — that quarantine was the magic bullet in addressing any major infectious disease outbreak." After two days, the quarantine was lifted; no other cases were reported.

Ebola in Liberia and Sierra Leone (2014)

In Liberia, the neighborhood of West Point was cordoned off for 10 days in August after residents raided a center for suspected patients. Patients fled into the densely populated slum, prompting the government's decision to isolate the neighborhood for 21 days, the incubation period for the disease. Protests ended the quarantine after 10 days. In neighboring Sierra Leone, a three-day quarantine in September asked everyone to stay at home while health workers went door to door, looking for the sick and delivering bars of soap. Doctors Without Borders, the medical organization that played an important role in the fight against Ebola, said, "It has been our experience that lockdowns and quarantines do not help control Ebola, as they end up driving people underground and jeopardizing the trust between people and health providers."

All about a sumptuous food dish Biryani...

There is a variety of opinions about the origin of this popular dish as there is variance in its taste in various regions!

Of Spice, Home and Biryani
Written by Alia Yunis
Aramco, September/October 2020

A common biryani origin story begins in the early 1600s with Mumtaz Mahal, wife of Mughal emperor Shahab-ud-din Muhammad Khurram, better known as Shah Jahan. While visiting soldiers at their barracks and seeing them underfed, the story goes, she ordered the cooks to prepare a dish of rice and meat, which they prepared over a wood fire with aromatic spices. “Soldiers had to have their stomachs filled to have the energy to fight,” says Chef Raman Khanna, who learned to cook biryani in the 1980s at the Oberoi Hotel in New Delhi alongside the Oberoi family’s personal chef, Baba Lul. The way the legends go, he says, “at night, military cooks would prepare a big pot of meat and rice and bury it and place coals on top. The next day, the soldiers who survived would come back and dig out the pot and eat.”

The general speculation about the dish’s origins among chefs and food historians includes a belief that Ottoman allies of the Mughals brought pilaf (rice with meat and other ingredients) to the subcontinent, where chefs infused it with local spices and experimented with its method of cooking. Others maintain that a more sophisticated version of the soldiers’ cooking was already popular with the the Mughals themselves when they came from Persia to what is now Afghanistan and that the spice trade that so enriched India’s ports also gave birth to biryani’s flavors. From the imperial palace to the estates of local landowners, those who could afford it employed cooks who refined and even personalized the dish with combinations of saffron, cardamom, rosewater and a host of other spices and aromatics.

When I think of making it or even eating it, the fundamental thing about biryani is that it speaks to love, time, patience. ... That is why it is such a celebratory dish. —Sumayya Usmani

“That’s why there is always this feeling of something royal in eating biryani,” says Khanna.

Two fundamental cooking methods for biryani emerged from the palaces of two regions of India.

The first is Kucchi biryani, which is considered Hyderabad-style, he explains. Here, raw meat is marinated for hours, placed in a dum (pot), “layered with rice in varying degrees of doneness” and then steamed.

“The flavors rise and impregnate the rice,” says Kripal Amanna, host of the YouTube show, Food Lovers TV.

The second is Pukki biryani, which is considered Lucknow-style. “Meat and spices are cooked separately until almost done, then layered with rice that is almost cooked, then placed on the dum.”

In both, the biryani is made with equal parts meat and rice, and in the case of potato biryani, 25 percent meat and 25 percent potato, according to Lakhani’s mother, Najma Rafiq. Traditionally, the top of the dum is lined with dough before ingredients are placed inside, and then the biryani takes a half hour to an hour to cook, depending on the size of the pot and biryani type, she says.

Khanna adds that regional biryani chefs may top the pots with coal, wood embers, charcoal or coconut husk, creating additional flavors specific to each region.

“The beauty of this in the Nizam and Nawab Palaces was that when the biryani was ready, the dough was lifted off and the whole dining room was filled with the aroma of the spices. That revelation is what made it into a signature item of India,” Khanna says.

In Lucknow, some versions cook the rice in milk, says Amanna, which makes it “subtler in their flavor notes.”

“The Hyderabad biryani is a brash, grab-your-palate biryani, whereas the Lucknow biryani is shy and more demure. You have to make more of an effort to know it,” Amanna says, explaining also how the Lucknow versions include essences like pandan extract that enhance aroma. “They are like a lady splashing on some perfume, as opposed to that robust Hyderabad biryani with its aggressive onion, garlic and ginger, which let the other spices play second fiddle.”

The variations of these two methods have expanded across the subcontinent. Amanna has filmed 25 shows that revolve around biryani, but that’s not nearly enough, he says.

“Biryani travels every 100 kilometers that you travel. I could easily do 200 episodes on biryani across India and not repeat a particular style,” he says.

He finds the best way to encounter new biryani culinary styles is when he’s traveling by motorcycle.

“You have to take a break every 100 or 150 kilometers. So, you stop and take in the sights and the aromas. You smell some rice and you follow it,” he says, pointing out how this method has allowed him to access hundreds of biryani establishments and recipe variations.

Amanna favors family-owned restaurants that have been making biryani for decades, if not more than a century, including the Rahamaniya Briyani Hotel in Ambur in the state of Tamil Nadu, which adds homemade curd to the meat and spices. He also highlights the Shivaji Military Hotel in Bangalore, where every day about 200-300 kilograms of meat are turned into donner (boat) biryani, which is served in a banana leaf basket that softens to flavor the dish.  

Long before the motorcycle, there were ships, and that is how spices came to the Indian subcontinent, often via Arab traders. Pakistani cookbook author Sumayya Usmani spent much of her childhood on the ship her father captained, and her first memory of biryani is her mother stirring together the ingredients in an electric frying pan in the boat’s galley kitchen. Traveling by sea, Usmani’s mother took short cuts with the dish to preserve the limited number of ingredients that could survive the long journeys. Preparing biryani at sea also offered opportunities to add squid, mussels and prawns. Seafood variations often include a green masala of mint, coriander and chilis.

“When I think of making it or even eating it, the fundamental thing about biryani is that it speaks to love, time, patience,” Usmani tells me. “That is why it is such a celebratory dish.”

Usmani now lives in Scotland, where she teaches others to make biryani, including her 11-year-old daughter. Her own mother, Usmani says, taught her to use only basmati rice aged one to two years, because it fluffs, separates and tastes better.

“My mother has drilled this in my head. Unless your rice, after cooking, isn’t as long as one segment of your finger, it’s not worth cooking,” she says, laughing.

Khanna, too, agrees the best biryani cooking class is in a family kitchen.

“Indian chefs do not like to share their recipes,” Khanna says, remembering his early cheffing days at the Oberoi Hotel working for chef Lul. “I had to peel up to 60 kilos of onions every day and pound pastes until my knuckles actually bled in order to get his trust.”

Khanna says the two most important things he learned from Lul were to grind the spices the day they’re used and to wash the rice several times, whether short- or long-grained, so that every single grain will stay separated when cooked.

Meat also varies by region. Goat—often called mutton in India—is the most traditional for biryani, but lamb and chicken are also used. In India’s south, in the state of Kerala, beef biryani is also a specialty. Kerala’s biryani was also much influenced by centuries of trade with the Arabian Gulf.

I asked Khanna, who has catered biryanis for royal weddings and vip events in the uae for a decade, including cooking the dish in the middle of the desert for 2,500 people during the first World Cup of Horse Racing, why so many people in the Gulf think of biriyani as a local dish.

“The spices and rice came to India through the Arabian trade routes, and we brought them back as biryani,” he says, noting that many chefs throughout the Arabian Peninsula hail from Kerala.

The dish continues to vary through time and across regions depending on environment, culture and availability (or lack) of ingredients. With some 30 percent of India eating vegetarian diets—and the popularity of meatless recipes in restaurants worldwide—meatless biryani is increasingly acceptable to biryani purists. But it comes with challenges: Vegetables, Ammana says, struggle to survive the heat of the dum. There are solutions though, like frying the vegetables first or adding them in at the end.

“The beautiful thing about biryani is that everyone can stake claim to it,” he says. “Biryani is one of the very few dishes in which people across the world can say, ‘This is our biryani.’ Everyone can make it their own.”

Leaked docs expose massive Syria propaganda by the West!

So many gullible Muslim individuals, leaders and countries have been fooled by the Western propagandists on the state of affairs in Syria!!! Extreme shia-hatred by the Sunnis & hadths regarding end time prophecies have also helped to promote their cause in this instance. These tactics have also been employed in the past on other issues that we didn't even realise!!!

Western government-funded intelligence cutouts trained Syrian opposition leaders, planted stories in media outlets from BBC to Al Jazeera, and ran a cadre of journalists. A trove of leaked documents exposes the propaganda network.

Leaked docs expose massive Syria propaganda operation waged by Western govt contractors and media
By Ben Norton
GrayZone, September 23, 2020

Leaked documents show how UK government contractors developed an advanced infrastructure of propaganda to stimulate support in the West for Syria’s political and armed opposition.

Virtually every aspect of the Syrian opposition was cultivated and marketed by Western government-backed public relations firms, from their political narratives to their branding, from what they said to where they said it.

The leaked files reveal how Western intelligence cutouts played the media like a fiddle, carefully crafting English- and Arabic-language media coverage of the war on Syria to churn out a constant stream of pro-opposition coverage.

US and European contractors trained and advised Syrian opposition leaders at all levels, from young media activists to the heads of the parallel government-in-exile. These firms also organized interviews for Syrian opposition leaders on mainstream outlets such as BBC and the UK’s Channel 4.

More than half of the stringers used by Al Jazeera in Syria were trained in a joint US-UK government program called Basma, which produced hundreds of Syrian opposition media activists.

Western government PR firms not only influenced the way the media covered Syria, but as the leaked documents reveal, they produced their own propagandistic pseudo-news for broadcast on major TV networks in the Middle East, including BBC Arabic, Al Jazeera, Al Arabiya, and Orient TV.

These UK-funded firms functioned as full-time PR flacks for the extremist-dominated Syrian armed opposition. One contractor, called InCoStrat, said it was in constant contact with a network of more than 1,600 international journalists and “influencers,” and used them to push pro-opposition talking points.

Another Western government contractor, ARK, crafted a strategy to “re-brand” Syria’s Salafi-jihadist armed opposition by “softening its image.” ARK boasted that it provided opposition propaganda that “aired almost every day on” major Arabic-language TV networks.

Virtually every major Western corporate media outlet was influenced by the UK government-funded disinformation campaign exposed in the trove of leaked documents, from the New York Times to the Washington Post, CNN to The Guardian, the BBC to Buzzfeed.

The files confirm reporting by journalists including The Grayzone’s Max Blumenthal on the role of ARK, the US-UK government contractor, in popularizing the White Helmets in Western media. ARK ran the social media accounts of the White Helmets, and helped turn the Western-funded group into a key propaganda weapon of the Syrian opposition.

The leaked documents consist mainly of material produced under the auspices of the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office. All of the firms named in the files were contracted by the British government, but many also were running “multi-donor projects” that received funding from the governments of the United States and other Western European countries.

In addition to demonstrating the role these Western intelligence cutouts played in shaping media coverage, the documents shine light on the British government program to train and arm rebel groups in Syria.

Other materials show how London and Western governments worked together to build a new police force in opposition-controlled areas.

Many of these Western-backed opposition groups in Syria were extremist Salafi-jihadists. Some of the UK government contractors whose activities are exposed in these leaked documents were in effect supporting Syrian al-Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra and its fanatical offshoots.

The documents were obtained by a group calling itself Anonymous, and were published under a series of files entitled, “Op. HMG [Her Majesty’s Government] Trojan Horse: From Integrity Initiative To Covert Ops Around The Globe. Part 1: Taming Syria.” The unidentified leakers said they aim to “expose criminal activity of the UK’s FCO and secret services,” stating, “We declare war on the British neocolonialism!”

The Grayzone was not able to independently verify the authenticity of the documents. However, the contents tracked closely with reporting on Western destabilization and propaganda operations in Syria by this outlet and many others.

UK Foreign Office and military wage media war on Syria

A leaked UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office report from 2014 reveals a joint operation with the Ministry of Defence and the Department for International Development to support “strategic communications, research, monitoring and evaluation and operational support to Syrian opposition entities.”

The UK FOC stated clearly that this campaign consisted of “creating network linkages between political movements and media outlets,” by the “building of local independent media platforms.”

The British government planned “Mentoring, training and coaching for enhanced delivery of media services, including digital and social media.”

Its goal was “to provide PR and media handling trainers, as well as technical staff, such as cameramen, webmasters and interpreters,” along with the “production of speeches, press releases and other media communications.”

An additional 2017 government document explains clearly how Britain funded the “selection, training, support and communications mentoring of Syrian activists who share the UK’s vision for a future Syria… and who will abide by a set of values that are consistent with UK policy.”

This initiative entailed British government funding “to support Syrian grassroots media activism within both the civilian and armed opposition spheres,” and was targeted at Syrians living in both “extremist and moderate” opposition-held territory.

In other words, the UK Foreign Office and military crafted plans to wage a comprehensive media war on Syria. To establish an infrastructure capable of managing the propaganda blitz, Britain paid a series of government contractors, including ARK, The Global Strategy Network (TGSN), Innovative Communication & Strategies (InCoStrat), and Albany.

The work of these firms overlapped, and some collaborated in their projects to cultivate the Syrian opposition.

Western government contractor ARK plays the media like the fiddle

One of the main British government contractors behind the Syria regime-change scheme was called ARK (Analysis Research Knowledge).

ARK FZC is based in Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates. It brands itself as a humanitarian NGO, claiming it “was created in order to assist the most vulnerable,” by establishing a “social enterprise,? empowering local communities through the provision of agile and sustainable interventions to create greater stability, opportunity and hope for the future.”

In reality ARK is an intelligence cutout that functions as an arm of Western interventionism.

In a leaked document it filed with the British government, ARK said its “focus since 2012 has been delivering highly effective, politically-and conflict-sensitive Syria programming for the governments of the United Kingdom, United States, Denmark, Canada, Japan and the European Union.”

ARK boasted of overseeing $66 million worth of contracts to support pro-opposition efforts in Syria.

On its website, ARK lists all of these governments as clients, as well as the United Nations.

In its Syria operations, ARK worked together with another UK contractor called The Global Strategy Network (TGSN), which is directed by Richard Barrett, a former director of global counter-terrorism at MI6.

ARK apparently had operatives on the ground inside Syria at the beginning of the regime-change attempt in 2011, reporting to the UK FCO that “ARK staff are in regular contact with activists and civil society actors whom they initially met during the outbreak of protests in spring 2011.”

The UK contractor boasted an “extensive network of civil society and community actors that ARK has helped through a dedicated capacity building centre ARK established in Gaziantep,” a city in southern Turkey that has been a base of intelligence operations against the Syrian government.

ARK played a central role in developing the foundations of the Syrian political opposition’s narrative. In one leaked document, the firm took credit for the “development of a core Syrian opposition narrative,” which was apparently crafted during a series of workshops with opposition leaders sponsored by the US and UK governments.

ARK trained all levels of the Syrian opposition in communications, from “citizen journalism workshops with Syrian media activists, to working with senior members of the National Coalition to develop a core communications narrative.”

The firm even oversaw the PR strategy for the Supreme Military Council (SMC), the leadership of the official armed wing of Syria’s opposition, the Free Syrian Army (FSA). ARK created a complex PR campaign to “provide a ‘re-branding’ of the SMC in order to distinguish itself from extremist armed opposition groups and to establish the image of a functioning, inclusive, disciplined and professional military body.”

ARK admitted that it sought to whitewash Syria’s armed opposition, which had been largely dominated by Salafi-jihadists, by “Softening the FSA Image.”

ARK took the lead in developing a massive network of opposition media activists in Syria, and openly took credit for inspiring protests inside the country.

In its training centers in Syria and southern Turkey, the Western government contractor reported, “More than 150 activists have been trained and equipped by ARK on topics from the basics of camera handling, lighting, and sound to producing reports, journalistic safety, online security, and ethical reporting.”

The firm flooded Syria with opposition propaganda. In just six months, ARK reported that 668,600 of its print products were distributed inside Syria, including “posters, flyers, informative booklets, activity books and other campaign-related materials.”

In one document spelling out the UK contractors’ communications operations in Syria, ARK and the British intelligence cutout TGSN boasted of overseeing the following media assets inside the country: 97 video stringers, 23 writers, 49 distributors, 23 photographers, 19 in-country trainers, eight training centers, three media offices, and 32 research officers.

ARK emphasized that it had “well-established contacts” with some of the top media outlets in the world, naming Reuters, the New York Times, CNN, the BBC, The Guardian, the Financial Times, The Times, Al Jazeera, Sky News Arabic, Orient TV, and Al Arabiya.

The UK contractor added, “ARK has provided regular branded and unbranded content to key pan-Arab and Syria-focused satellite TV channels such as Al Jazeera, Al Arabiya, BBC Arabic, Orient TV, Aleppo Today, Souria al-Ghadd, and Souria al-Sha’ab since 2012.”

“ARK products promoting HMG (Her Majesty’s Government) priorities by fostering attitudinal and behavioural change are broadcast almost every day on pan-Arab channels,” the firm bragged. “In 2014, 20 branded and un-branded Syria reports were produced on average by ARK each month and broadcast on major pan-Arab television channels such as Al Arabiya, Al Jazeera, and Orient TV.”

“ARK has almost daily conversations with channels and weekly meetings to engage and understand editorial preferences,” the Western intelligence cutout said.

The firm also took credit for placing 10 articles per month in pan-Arab newspapers such as Al Hayat and Asharq Al-Awsat.

US-UK program Basma cultivates Syrian media activists

The Syrian opposition media war was organized within the framework of a project called Basma. ARK worked with other Western government contractors through Basma in order to train Syrian opposition activists.

With funding from both the US and UK governments, Basma developed into an enormously influential platform. Its Arabic Facebook page had over 500,000 followers, and on YouTube it built up a large following as well.

Mainstream corporate media outlets misleadingly portrayed Basma as a “Syrian citizen journalism platform,” or a “civil society group working for a ‘liberatory, progressive transition to a new Syria.'” In reality it was a Western government astroturfing operation to cultivate opposition propagandists.

Nine of the 16 stringers used by Al Jazeera in Syria were trained through the US/UK government’s Basma initiative, ARK boasted in a leaked document.

In an earlier report for the UK FCO, filed just three years into its work, ARK claimed to have “trained over 1,400 beneficiaries representing over 210 beneficiary organisations in more than 130 workshops, and disbursed more than 53,000 individual pieces of equipment,” in a vast network that reached “into all of Syria’s 14 governorates,” which included both opposition- and government-held areas.

The Western contractor published a map highlighting its network of stringers and media activists and their relationships with the White Helmets as well as newly created police forces across opposition-controlled Syria.

In its trainings, ARK developed opposition spokespeople, taught them how to speak with the press, and then helped arrange interviews with mainstream Arabic- and English-language media outlets.

ARK described its strategy “to identify credible, moderate civilian governance spokespeople who will be promoted as go-to interlocutors for regional and international media. They will echo key messages linked to the coordinated local campaigns across all media, with consortium platforms able to cover this messaging as well and encourage other outlets to pick it up.”

In addition to working with the international press and cultivating opposition leaders, ARK helped develop a massive opposition media super-structure.

ARK said it was a “key implementer of a multi-donor effort to develop a network of FM radio stations and community magazines inside Syria since 2012.” The contractor worked with 14 FM stations and 11 magazines inside Syria, including both Arabic- and Kurdish-language radio.

To propagate opposition broadcasts across Syria, ARK designed what it called “Radio in a Box” (RIAB) kits in 2012. The firm took credit for providing equipment to 48 transmission sites.

ARK also circulated up to 30,000 magazines per month. It reported that “ARK-supported magazines were the three most popular in Aleppo City; the most popular magazine in Homs City; and the most popular magazine in Qamishli.”

A Syrian opposition propaganda outlet directly run by ARK, called Moubader, developed a huge following on social media, including more than 200,000 likes on Facebook. ARK printed 15,000 copies per month of a “high-quality hard copy” Moubader magazine and distributed it “across opposition-held areas of Syria.”

The British contractor TGSN, which worked alongside ARK, developed its own outlet called the “Revolutionary Forces of Syria Media Office (RFS),” a leaked document shows. This confirms a 2016 report in The Grayzone by contributor Rania Khalek, who obtained emails showing how the UK government-backed RFS media office offered to pay one journalist a staggering $17,000 per month to produce propaganda for Syrian rebels.

Another leaked record shows that in just one year, in 2018 – which was apparently the final year of ARK’s Syria program – the firm billed the UK government for a staggering 2.3 million British pounds.

This enormous ARK propaganda operation was directed by Firas Budeiri, who had previously served as the Syria director for the UK-based international NGO Save the Children.

40 percent of ARK’s Syria project team were Syrian citizens, and another 25 percent were Turkish. The firm said its Syria team staff had “extensive experience managing programmes and conducting research funded by many different governmental clients in Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, Yemen, Turkey, the Palestinian Territories, Iraq and other conflict-affected states.”

Western contractor ARK cultivates White Helmets “to keep Syria in the news”

The Western contractor ARK was a central force in launching the White Helmets operation.

The leaked documents show ARK ran the Twitter and Facebook pages of Syria Civil Defense, known more commonly as the White Helmets.

ARK took credit for developing “an internationally-focused communications campaign designed to raise global awareness of the (White Helmets) teams and their life saving work.”

ARK also facilitated communications between the White Helmets and The Syria Campaign, a PR firm run out of London and New York that helped popularize the White Helmets in the United States.

It was apparently “following subsequent discussions with ARK and the teams” that The Syria Campaign “selected civil defence to front its campaign to keep Syria in the news,” the firm wrote in a report for the UK Foreign Office.

“With ARK’s guidance, TSC (The Syria Campaign) also attended ARK’s civil defence training sessions to create media content for its #WhiteHelmets campaign which launched in August 2014 and has since gone viral,” the Western contractor added.

In 2014, ARK produced a long-form documentary on the White Helmets, titled “Digging for Life,” which was repeatedly broadcast on Orient TV.

While it was running the White Helmets’ social media accounts, ARK bragged that it was boosting followers and views on the Facebook page for Idlib City Council.

The Syrian city of Idlib was taken over by al-Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra, which then went on to publicly execute women who were accused of adultery.

While effectively aiding these al-Qaeda-aligned extremist groups, ARK and the British intelligence cutout TGSN also signed a document with the FCO hilariously pledging to follow “UK guidance on gender sensitivity” and “ensure gender is considered in all capacity building and campaign development.”

Setting the stage for lawfare on Syria

Another leaked document shows the Western government-backed firm ARK revealing that, back in 2011, it worked with another government contractor called Tsamota to help develop the Syrian Commission for Justice and Accountability (SCJA). In 2014, SCJA changed its name to the Commission for International Justice and Accountability (CIJA).

The Grayzone exposed CIJA as a Western government-funded regime-change organization whose investigators collaborated with al-Qaeda and its extremist allies in order to wage lawfare on the Syrian government.

ARK noted that the project initially worked “with seed funding from the UK Conflict Pool to support investigative and forensic training for Syrian war crimes investigators” and has since “grown to become a major component of Syria’s transitional justice architecture.”

Since the US, European Union, and their Middle East allies lost the military phase of their war on Syria, CIJA has taken the lead in trying to prolong the regime-change campaign through lawfare.
InCoStrat creates media network, helps them interview al-Qaeda

In the leaked documents, another UK government contractor called Innovative Communications Strategies (InCoStrat) boasted of building a massive “network of over 1600 journalists and key influencers with an interest in Syria.”

InCoStrat stressed that it was “managing and delivering a multi donor project in support of UK Foreign Policy objectives” in Syria, “specifically providing strategic communication support to the moderate armed opposition.”

Other funders of InCoStrat’s work with the opposition in Syria, the firm disclosed, included the US government, the United Arab Emirates, and anti-Assad Syrian businessmen.

InCoStrat served as a liaison between its government clients and the Syrian National Coalition, the Western-backed parallel government that the opposition tried to create. InCoStrat advised senior leaders of this Syrian shadow regime, and even ran the National Coalition’s own media office from Istanbul, Turkey.

The Western contractor took credit for organizing a 2014 BBC interview with Ahmad Jarba, the then-president of the opposition National Coalition.

The firm added that “journalists have often reached out to us in search of the appropriate people for their programmes.” As an example, InCoStrat said it helped plant its own Syrian opposition activists in BBC Arabic reports. The firm then added, “Once making the initial connections we encouraged the Syrians to maintain the relationships with the journalists in the BBC instead of using ourselves as the conduit.”

Like ARK, InCoStrat worked closely with the press. The firm said it had “extensive experience in engaging Arab and international news media,” adding that it worked directly with “heads of regional news in major satellite TV networks, press bureaus and print media.”

“Key members of InCoStrat have previously worked as Middle East correspondents for some of the world’s largest news agencies including Reuters,” the Western contractor added.

Also like ARK, InCoStrat established a vast media infrastructure. The firm set up Syrian opposition media offices in Dera’a, Syria; Istanbul and Reyhanli, Turkey; and Amman, Jordan.

InCoStrat worked with 130 stringers across Syria, and said it had more than 120 reporters working inside the country, along with “an additional five official spokesmen who appear several times a week on international and regional TV.”

InCoStrat also established eight FM radio stations and six community magazines across Syria.

The firm reported that it penetrated the armed opposition by developing “strong relationships with 54 brigade commanders in Syria’s southern front,” that involved “daily, direct engagement with the commanders and their officers inside Syria,” as well as defected officers Free Syrian Army (FSA) units in government-held Damascus.

In the leaked documents, InCoStrat boasted that its reporters organized interviews with many armed opposition militias, including the al-Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra.
Don’t just plants media stories; “initiate an event” to create your own scandals

In its media war on Damascus, InCoStrat pursued a two-pronged campaign that consisted of the following: “a) Guerrilla Campaign. Use the media to create the event. b) Guerrilla Tactics. Initiate an event to create the media effect.”

The intelligence cutout therefore sought to use the media as a weapon to advance tangible political demands of the Syrian opposition.

In one case, InCoStrat took credit for a successful international campaign to force the Syrian government to lift its siege of the extremist-held opposition stronghold of Homs. The Grayzone contributor Rania Khalek reported on the crisis in Homs, which was besieged by Damascus after the far-right Sunni fundamentalists that controlled it began carrying out sectarian massacres against religious minorities and kidnapping Alawite civilians.

“We connected international journalists with Syrians living in besieged Homs,” InCoStrat explained. It organized an interview between Britain’s Channel 4 and a doctor in the city, which helped raise international attention, ultimately leading to an end to the siege.

In another instance, the UK contractor said it “produced postcards, posters and reports” comparing the secular government of Bashar al-Assad to the fundamentalist Salafi-jihadists in ISIS. Then it “provided a credible, Arabic-English speaking Syrian spokesperson to engage the media.”

The campaign was very successful, according to InCoStrat: Al-Jazeera America and The National published the firm’s propaganda posters. The British contractor also organized interviews on the topic with The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, The Guardian, The Times, Buzzfeed, Al-Jazeera, Suriya Al-Sham, and Orient.

After regime change comes Nation Building Inc.

InCoStrat has apparently been involved in numerous Western-backed regime-change operations.

In one leaked document, the firm said it helped to train civil society organizations in marketing, media, and communications in Afghanistan, Honduras, Iraq, Syria, and Libya. It even trained a team of anti-Saddam Hussein journalists inside Basra, Iraq after the joint US-UK invasion.

In addition to contracting for the United Kingdom, InCoStrat disclosed that it has worked for the governments of the United States, Singapore, Latvia, Sweden, Denmark, and Libya.

After NATO destroyed the Libyan state in a regime-change war in 2011, InCoStrat was brought in in 2012 to conduct similar communications work for the Libyan National Transitional Council, the Western-backed opposition that sought to take power.
Coordinating with extremist militias, cooking news to “reinforce the core narrative”

The leaked documents shed further light on a UK government contractor called Albany.

Albany boasted that it “secured the participation of an extensive local network of over 55 stringers, reporters and videographers” to influence media narratives and advance UK foreign policy interests.

The firm helped create an influential Syrian opposition media outfit called Enab Baladi. Founded in 2011 in the anti-Assad hub of Daraya, at the beginning of the war, Enab Baladi was aggressively marketed in the Western press as a grassroots Syrian media operation.

In reality, Enab Baladi was the product of a British contractor that took responsibility for its evolution “from an amateur-run entity into one of the most prominent Syrian media organizations.”

Albany also coordinated communications between opposition media outlets and extremist Islamist opposition groups by hiring an “engagement leader (who) has deep credibility with key groups including (north) Failaq ash-Sham, Jabha Shammiyeh, Jaysh Idleb al Hur, Ahrar ash-Sham, (center) Jaysh al Islam, Failaq al Rahman, and (south) Jaysh Tahrir.” Many of these militias were linked to al-Qaeda and are now recognized by the US Department of State and European governments as official terrorist groups.

Unlike other Western government contractors active in Syria, which often tried to feign a semblance of balance, Albany made it clear that its media reporting was nothing more than propaganda.

The firm admitted that it trained Syrian media activists in a unique “newsroom process” that called to “curate” news by “collecting and organising stories and content that support and reinforce the core narrative.”

In 2014, Albany boasted of running the Syrian National Coalition’s communications team at the Geneva Peace talks.

Albany also warned that revelations of Western government funding for these opposition media organizations that were being portrayed as grassroots initiatives would discredit them.

When internal emails were leaked showing that the massive opposition media platform Basma Syria was funded by the United States and Britain, Albany wrote, “the Basma brand has been compromised following leaks about funding project aims.”

The leaks on social media “have damaged the credibility and trustworthiness of the existing branded platform,” Albany wrote. “Credibility and trust are the key currencies of the activities envisaged and for this reason we consider it essential to refresh the approach if the content to be disseminated is to have effect.” The Basma website was taken down soon after.

These files provide clear insight into how the Syrian opposition was cultivated by Western governments with imperial designs on Damascus, and was kept afloat with staggering sums of cash that flowed from the pockets of British taxpayers – often to the benefit of fanatical militiamen allied with Al Qaeda.

While Dutch prosecutors prepare war crimes charges against the Syrian government for fighting off the onslaught, the leaked files are a reminder of the leading role that Western states and their war-profiteering companies played in the carefully organized destruction of the country.