The short-lived attempt at a colour revolution in Kazakhstan has brought into focus the geo-political game being waged by the West in Central Asia. This clumsy attempt to once again destablise the region was quickly squashed thanks to the response of Kazakhstan’s fellow members of the CTSO, led by Russia. As all colour revolutions do, it tapped into genuine anger among the populace about rising fuel costs and other legitimate grievances. However any pretence that this was an organic, leaderless uprising was soon exposed, the beheadings were the giveaway.

The Central Asian region encompassing all the “Stans” has been largely at the periphery of world affairs until comparatively recently. Remote in the extreme, even during its time as a part on the USSR, it received little attention due to its strategic irrelevance. The emergence of China and Russia has changed that. Kazakhstan, sandwiched between them, along with its Central Asian neighbours, is now a battleground for the “great power politics” being played out. Kazakhstan is an essential component of China’s Belt and Road Initiative, and as such is a target of the Western powers, who are intent on doing all possible to stop it.

A cursory look at a map will show that China shares borders with 14 countries, seven of which are Islamic nations. It enjoys good relations with all of them. China itself has a large Muslim population, not concentrated in Xinjiang. They are to be found everywhere in China, along with the mosques at which they worship. Not alone as a minority group, China has five different ethnic groups inside its borders. All are free and encouraged to practice and celebrate their individual cultures and languages. In Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang, there are at least eight separate Muslim sects with their own mosques. Muslims are not forced to send their children to Chinese schools, and during the almost 40 years of China’s one child policy, the Muslims were the only group who were permitted to have more than one child. The suggestion that China persecutes Muslims is just a Western concoction.

Xinjiang is in the extreme N.W. of China, it borders six of the other central Asian Islamic countries. Once remote and undeveloped, it has in recent years received huge investment from the central government to help it modernise and develop a real economy for the first time. Parents there overwhelmingly want their children to go to Chinese schools, learn the language and have the prospect of a better life than the Islamic schools can offer. The enemy of the majority of the people there, is the same as it is in their neighbouring moderate Islamic countries, radical Islam.

Many Uyghurs have already been radicalised, they comprise a large part of the terrorist factions that have been present in Syria, Iraq, Libya and many more once stable countries that have been reduced to ashes. They are heavily armed and paid a $50 daily stipend, but by whom you may ask? That is not a question that need detain us for long. The Turkic Islamic army is one such faction that sprouted from Central Asia. The U.S. Government took them off the “terrorist” watchlist a year ago. They are just moderate terrorists apparently.

So, does China persecute Muslims? No. But it does have a genuine Western-backed radicalised Islamic faction looking to infect the youth of Xinjiang. It is a problem it shares with all the moderate, peaceful Central Asian countries. If China does indeed have re-education camps as the West claims, most Uyghur parents would prefer their children were there rather than waving an AK47 from the back of a Toyota pickup in a country they don’t belong.

As America continues to bleat on about human rights in China, it supports and promotes the head-choppers to whom it has granted a franchise. Many of the participants of the Kazakhstan violence were killed and many more were captured. In the coming days and weeks we can expect more revelations as to who the “instigators behind it were. It should make for interesting reading.

In part one, we were introduced to China’s surveillance state and broader social credit system and asked: Is this type of undemocratic behaviour justified in the modern world?

If the west were truly a beacon of liberty and if nation states were the only forces negotiating global policy between each other acting out of a concern for their citizens’ well being, and national interests then certainly the answer would be a loud negative.

However, when one accepts the reality of a supranational power structure operating above nation states committed to a specific dystopic formula for a world order, then the picture changes a bit.

In order to maintain the perception that China is a villain in the minds of credulous consumers of most conservative media, it is asserted that China is an atheistic monstrosity committed to crushing religion. If one wishes to practice religion in China, we are told the consequences are jail, draconian social credit scores or even the loss of one’s life.

Although popular, this perception is entirely bogus.

As far as freedom of religion is concerned, China is a land which is home to over 50 million Christians and has over 65,000 churches of protestant and catholic denominations. Muslims make up the majority of the population in Xinjiang which hosts over 24,000 Mosques which is a far greater per capita number than anything found in the USA. Buddhist and Daoist temples abound across China as well. For a refutation of the Uyghur genocide myth, click here.

While China is a secular state, it has come a long way from the anti-religious outlook dominant during the dark days of the 1966-1976 Cultural Revolution. Even China’s constitution protects freedom of religion (article 36), with the simple caveat that “No state organ, social organization or individual shall coerce citizens to believe in or not to believe in any religion, nor shall they discriminate against citizens who believe in or do not believe in any religion. The state shall protect normal religious activities. No one shall use religion to engage in activities that disrupt public order, impair the health of citizens or interfere with the state’s education system.” And most importantly: “Religious groups and religious affairs shall not be subject to control by foreign forces.”

So basically, freedom of worship is constitutionally protected as long as your religious group doesn’t have the smell of color revolution on it.

Despite the fact that it is required that Churches, Mosques, and Buddhist temples receive a government license to operate legally and conform to China’s overarching national priorities, thousands of underground Churches also exist across China and for the most part, government officials tend to look the other way.

When, however connections are made between those unlicensed churches and foreign intelligence agencies like the National Endowment for Democracy, Freedom House, or Open Doors (all having vast CIA connections), then they are promptly shut down. Christians, Muslims, Buddhists and Daoists are thus encouraged to find less insurrectionary venues to practice their faith.

Most westerners who criticize China’s non-liberal relationship to its religious institutions tend to overlook the fact that the form of modern warfare relies heavily on infiltration, cultural manipulation, psy ops, and asymmetrical warfare from within target nations. One such organization is the NED-sponsored ChinaAid (based in Washington and Texas) which finances and coordinates networks of underground Churches as weapons for broader cultural warfare across mainland China.

This technique of utilizing religious cells as a cover for undermining China is nothing new, and actually goes back to the Taiping Rebellion organized over 160 years ago.

The Taiping Rebellion Bloodbath

During this twelve-year bloodbath (1853-1864), a synthetic Christian cult led by a failed school teacher named Hong Xiuquan unleashed a civil war that put the British East India Company on a fast track to crushing China during the second Opium War (1856-1860).

Hailed as a man-god by his devoted followers, Hong Xiuquan was little more than a useful idiot recruited by western intelligence operatives masquerading as protestant missionaries in 1843 and soon became convinced that he was the brother of Jesus himself. With his revelation, Hong became fanatically committed to cleanse China of evil spirits. This evil was not, however the hand of the British Empire that had bled China in the first Opium War (1839-1842) nor the plague of drugs more generally that had destroyed the lives of millions of his brethren. The “evil spirits” which Hong became obsessed with eradicating were rather Confucian and Buddhist thinking in general and the ruling government specifically!

The year of Hong’s great revelation (1842), was the same year that China lost the first opium war giving over Hong Kong to the British Empire along with a vast expansion of drug flows into the impoverished and drug addicted nation. Opium imports skyrocketed to 3200 metric tons per year by 1850 with every province of China soon forced to grow opium to service the ever-growing demand. What was not produced within China was supplied from British controlled operations in India, and the Ottoman Empire.

The Chinese messiah managed to institute a new government called the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom which soon gained control of one third of China’s southern territory making Nanjing its capital by 1851. Its program attracted over 30 million adherents to Hong’s particular brand of Christianity among the impoverished peasants quickly became converts under this synthetic cult. Part of the attraction was found in the Taiping Kingdom’s policy of equal distribution of all property and no private possessions.

Hong’s cousin and partner in crime was an anglophile trained by the British in Hong Kong name Hung Jen-kan. When Jen-kan returned to Taiping headquarters in Nanjing in 1859 he wrote:

“At present England is the mightiest nation of the world, owing to its superior laws. The English are noted for their intellectual power and national strength, are proud by nature and averse to being subordinate.”

Noted historian Michael Billington cited letters which Caleb Cushing’s agent, and protestant missionary in China, W.A.P. Martin had written to his handler amidst the chaos of the rebellion saying: “The Tartars [Qing] dynasty, too far gone in senility to afford any encouraging prospect of reformation, will now, perhaps, consider the expediency of recognizing its youthful rival [the Taiping] which, catching the spirit of the age, may be prevailed upon toe unlock the treasures of the interior and throw open its portals to unrestricted trade… Divide and conquer is the stratagem to be employed in storming the citadels of oriental exclusiveness”.

It is important to hold in mind that Cushing was a leading figure among the Boston Brahmins who made fortunes working with the British in the global opium trade and were always antagonistic to the spirit of the U.S. Constitution itself. Cushing and his fellow Brahmins had been hard at work by this time preparing the groundwork for a parallel Civil War in the USA while the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom were still active in the east.

One of the bargaining chips the British empire used in negotiating the terms of China’s humiliating defeat was the threat to recognize the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom as the legitimate government of China. Beijing was so deeply bled from years of internal civil war that they easily bent to this threat and agreed to every condition demanded by the British resulting in the 1858 Treaty of Tien Tsin and Convention of Peking which granted unlimited access to foreign missionaries (again often covers for foreign intelligence operations), unlimited drug production, and free trade among other abuses that crippled China for years.

By the time the second Opium war ended in 1860, the British saw no more use in maintaining their synthetic cult and like a silk farmer who extracted all the silk from his worms, proceeded to work with the government to burn the cult which was finally exterminated by 1865.

In all, this civil war resulted in 30 million Chinese deaths, and still weighs heavily on China’s mind.

In the wake of the rebellion and broader Opium War, life expectancy sank as 22.6 thousand tons of opium were being produced within China for domestic use by 1900. Poverty ran rampant, and Anglophile freemasonic groups shaped the policy of Triads in Hong Kong where HSBC pioneered global narcotics economics. The crushing of the spirits of the Chinese resulted in the backlash of the anti-Christian Boxer Rebellion that itself became a convenient excuse for western imperial powers to carve up China even further in retribution for damages to houses, rail lines and lives.

By 1910, only one year before Sun Yat-sen’s Lincoln-inspired republican revolution broke China free from the unwinnable Great Game, European and Japanese imperial interests had taken control of vast portions of China’s territory.

Whether we are looking at religious sects masquerading as Christian or Muslim fronts, or Asian scientology-esque Falun Gong cults run by nutty exiled messianic characters like Li Hongzhi who literally believes he is ordained by God to save humanity from interdimensional aliens, Xi Jinping has some messy problems to deal with both within China and abroad. Living in a 400 acre compound in upstate New York and controlling a vast array of cultural/intelligence platforms including Epoch Times, Li Hongzhi’s continuing role as an influence shaper tied to the worst elements of China’s exiled community (including criminal billionaire and Bannon partner Guo Wengui) should lead any rational person to understand why China has taken the position it has on cults like Falun Gong and religious groups more broadly.

In the next installment, we will look more deeply at one more aspect of psy ops in China with a focus on Jesuits, London’s Tavistock and other spiritual poisons threatening the free world.

The author can be reached at matthewehret.substack.com

The evacuation of Americans and at least some vulnerable Afghans from Kabul has ended without further mishap, though questions remain about who might have been left behind in the poorly planned and executed operation. A badly damaged President Joe Biden has sought to regain the high ground by swearing vengeance against the presumed perpetrators of the suicide bombing that killed 13 American marines and sailors and the Pentagon has already claimed the assassination by drone of two possible accomplices. But exactly how additional retribution will play out given the absence of any significant applicable military resources in the states surrounding landlocked Afghanistan is not clear. Some are even questioning the attribution of the attack to a group identified as IS-Khorasan, which, it is claimed, has taken credit, even suggesting that there were others who might have benefitted from a signal being sent to the departing United States as well as to the Taliban, which is struggling somewhat to form a viable and recognized government.

At a minimum, security screening by the Taliban on their side of the airport would seem to have been either lax or deliberately porous. As far as is known, Taliban irregulars and their allied militiamen from the Haqqani group provided the security screen that might have been able to identify and isolate suicide bombers as they approached the entrances to the airport. Indeed, there should have been a high alert status in place as there had been multiple warnings about a possible bombing atempt, apparently based on highly reliable intelligence that was fully shared with the Taliban.

The Taliban denied any role in the bombings and it is being widely reported that they are enemies of the IS-K, making the attack an internal matter between Afghans and an international group of terrorists, but that judgement is not exactly cast in concrete. One assumes that as there was solid intelligence on the impending attack, it would be helpful if it were to be made public to enable one to review some of it, if only to provide some clarity as to who was behind the bombing. Otherwise, the U.S. national security state will yet again respond with force and will be tasked with going around the world searching for dragons, which would serve no interest apart from the desire for revenge.

Retired U.S. Army Colonel Pat Lang, who has extensive experience in counterterrorism in the Middle East and Central Asia and is a keen observer of developments in Afghanistan, suggests that there has been a historic “willingness of the jihadi groups to cooperate…to demonstrate to the Islamic world what victory looks like. The jihadis hope this will generate a worldwide wave of recruitment and action that will cause the countries of the West to crumble as the Weimaresque Afghan government crumbled. The Biden Administration clearly wanted to think that they could split off the Taliban from the other jihadi groups through their self interest in material goals such as international recognition, foreign aid money, access to the banking world, etc. In fact the jihadis want the destruction of what I have described as the post Treaty of Westphalia world of rule bound nation-states in favor of whatever version of sharia they favor in a world wide ‘umma (Islamic theocracy) Do they believe that is possible? They do… Should we expect more and bigger attacks? We should.”

Indeed, Lang’s observation is supported by the developments that led to the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 in the first place, where a Taliban government was accused of providing a refuge as well as other material benefits to Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda. Bin Laden, then as now, was widely believed to be behind the 9/11 attacks, though there is considerable and growing skepticism about what actually took place twenty years ago. Indeed, there have been persistent reports that the Taliban has been protecting and even cooperating with al-Qaeda affiliated remnants since then to this day.

So where will all of this go? First of all, one must reckon with the political aspect of what is taking place. Biden’s evacuation is now perceived very negatively by the American people, even if many agree that getting out of Afghanistan was and is the right thing to do. Biden’s defense, which is being echoed by all the government players involved in the fiasco as well as the media, is that what took place could not have been foreseen. That is, of course, a lie as the intelligence was quite clear and has been accumulating for the past ten years regarding Afghan government corruption and the dismal condition of the country’s army. Did no one in Washington read the doleful reports issued by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) or the CIA and Embassy sitreps?

To recover politically Biden and his team must do something kinetic that will be cheered on by the media and public alike, which means something risky or particularly bold. That is where the danger comes in. It means that there will be intervention or bombing somewhere and, unfortunately, the Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett just happened to be in Washington late last week as the crisis in Afghanistan was unfolding and he undoubtedly gave Biden and Blinken advice, most particularly about Iran and a developing power vacuum in the region that the Iranians might seek to exploit. Time to attack is now, per Bennett, but can a fearful and vulnerable Biden be convinced? One suspects we will have the answer to that very soon.

By As`ad ABUKHALIL

The monarchical-sounding declaration by Kaïs Saïed eight days ago was stunning: the president who was freely elected in 2019 (for only the second time in Tunisian history) was basically proclaiming a coup d’etat by dismissing the prime minister and suspending parliament.

Saïed was elected nine years after the overthrow of President Zine Ben Ali, who in 1987 as the security chief launched a coup against Habib Bourguiba, the founding president of Tunisia.  The 1987 coup was classified in Arab political terminology as a “medical coup”, because Ben Ali stated that Bourguiba was no longer mentally fit to assume the duties of the office.

As is well-known, the protests against the corruption and repression of Ben Ali (a darling of Western governments and lending institutions) sparked the Arab uprisings in December 2010.

Kaïs Saïed arriving as president at Palace of Carthage in October 2019. (Houcemmzoughi, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons)

Surprise Winner

Kaïs Saïed was an unexpected victor in the 2019 presidential election. He was a professor of constitutional law, did not belong to a political party and was not affiliated with any political ideology.

He won support in television debates largely due to his strong command of classical Arabic in a country where French influence remains strong.

Furthermore, Saïed’s campaign was noted for his firm and categorical denunciation of any normalization with Israel.  His answers regarding Palestinian rights and rejection of Israel were a hit on social media, and helped propel him to the top job.

Saïed attracted support among Tunisian youth because he represented a new genre of politicians who have not been tainted by the corrupt system.

The political system that emerged after the end of the Ben Ali rule suffered from many weaknesses; the divide between the secularists and the Islamists only widened, and the regional, political wars between the UAE and Saudi Arabia on the one hand, and Qatar and Turkey on the other hand, raged inside Tunisia, just as they did in Libya and elsewhere.

UAE Versus Muslim Brotherhood

The UAE regime now leads the battle against the Muslim Brotherhood across the Arab world, even in Palestine, for instance, where a UAE puppet, Muhammad Dahlan, a former Fatah chief, has championed the agenda of his boss, Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Muhammad Ben Zayid.

The Muslim Brotherhood was probably the largest opposition group in several Gulf countries for many years until Sept. 11 convinced Gulf rulers that the elimination of any presence of the Brotherhood was essential for improving relations with the U.S. (and later with Israel).  Saudi interior minister, Prince Nayif (who questioned the U.S. government’s account of Sept. 11), loudly blamed Saudi problems on the Muslim Brotherhood.

When Egyptian leader Gamal Abdul-Nasser banned the Brotherhood after 1954 for trying to kill him, Brotherhood leaders and activists sought refuge in Gulf countries where they were given prominent positions in education, religion and endowment. The UAE even sought the help of a Sudanese Islamist, Hasan Turabi, to draft its constitution.

Essentially, Nasser represented secularism and socialism, while the Gulf regimes represented religious conservatism and obscurantism (naturally, the U.S. and all Western governments were on the side of Gulf regimes — and remain so to this very day).

After the uprising in 2010, Tunisia had a chance to establish a new democratic government. Tunisia became known as the second Arab democracy after Lebanon. (Lebanon remains the freest Arab country in terms of freedom of expression but has a political system marred by horrific corruption and sectarian allocation of government posts.)

In response to the 2010 uprisings, the UAE led the Arab counter revolution — or one side of it, as the Qatari regime and Turkey a led different counter-revolution, which sought to install the Muslim Brotherhood in power in possibly all Arab countries.

The UAE and Saudi regimes (likely with Israeli and U.S. blessings) united their efforts to:

• prevent the establishment of a vibrant democracy anywhere in the Arab world;
• thwart the electoral success of the Brotherhood in any Arab country.

By funneling money and direct intervention through various sectors of the state, Saudi Arbia and the UAE were keen on restoring the ancien regime in Tunisia.  The Gulf alliance (presumably with the West) wanted to prevent a rise of any Islamist government in the region.

Islamists Reassured the West 

April 10, 2015: Antony Blinken, then undersecretary of state in the Obama administration, meeting with Al-Nahda President Rashid al-Ghannushi in Tunis, Tunisia. 

But the Islamists quickly adjusted and reassured the West, especially about their intentions toward Israel. The Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood suddenly abandoned its previous calls for the elimination of the peace treaty with Israel, and the Tunisian Al-Nahda party sent its leader, Rashid Ghanoushi, to reassure AIPAC (in a talk at WINEP) that Nahda would not support the popular Tunisian demand for criminalization of normalization with Israel.

True to its word, for all the years since 2011, the Brotherhood has lowered its rhetoric on Palestine, and the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood was part of a Syrian opposition coalition which did not harbor much ill-will toward the Israeli occupation.

Yet, no matter how much the Brotherhood has been accommodating to Israeli and Western interests, the Saudi-UAE alliance refused to accept the very existence of Islamist governments. One reason has been because the political clout of the Brotherhood reflected the influence of the Turkish-Qatari alliance, which sponsors and funds the Brotherhood in the region.

June 16, 2012: Street in Cairo during second round of Egypt’s presidential elections, where Muslim Brother’s candidate Mohamed Morsi faced SCAF/Mubarak’s candidate Ahmed Shafik. (Jonathan Rashad, Flickr, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

In Tunisia, the local variant (Nahda) won successive elections and their rule was not in any way characterized by competence or good governance.  But that was not what the UAE cared about; they just wanted to bring the rule of the Brotherhood down, by force (as in Libya) or by electoral interference as in Tunisia.  The UAE and Saudi regimes funded the most reactionary (and ostensibly secular) groups and personalities, and promoted leftovers from the ancien regime of Ben Ali, and even Bourguiba before him.

The victory of Saïed in 2019 dealt a blow to the Nahda. His victory also coincided with an economic crisis that was only accentuated with the onset of the coronavirus.  Gulf regimes withheld financial aid, except to those governments that normalized with Israel like Sudan. (Last month, Saudi Arabia and the UAE announced that 60 percent of Sudanese debt to their countries would be forgiven, and that each country would provide $3 billion in aid to Sudan.)

Sudan is ruled by a military junta and the U.S. and Israel ordered Gulf countries to reward those regimes which normalize with Israel.  By contrast, Tunisia is a democratic country and people in all Arab countries (according to all reliable public opinion polls) vehemently reject any normalization with Israel.

Jan. 18. 2011: Protesters run away from tear gas during a demonstration against former Tunisian President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in the center of Tunis. (Nasser Nouri, Flickr, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

Tug of War

The tug of war in Tunisia between the Islamist Nahda-controlled parliament and the independent president has been going on for a year.  The coronavirus and the shutdowns have strained the Tunisian economy, which traditionally relied on tourism and foreign aid.  The UAE and the Saudi regime now withhold traditional financial aid except in those cases where regimes (like Egypt) are of service to the Israeli agenda.

President Saïed contacted Saudi and UAE leaders only days before his coup, which he denies is a coup because the article 80 of the Tunisian constitution allows for emergency powers to dissolve parliament and to dismiss the cabinet in the event of a threat to the state and peace.  The president has failed to show evidence of such a threat.

It was not clear at first that this coup enjoyed foreign backing.  But it would have been close to impossible that Saïed would have dared strike at the parliament and government if he did not have the support of the Saudi and UAE regimes (and possibly the U.S.).

Within hours of the announcement of the coup, Saudi and UAE regime media published laudatory coverage and fiercely attacked the Nahda as remnants of the “terrorist Ikhwan (Brotherhood).”

The U.S. Department of State was slow in reacting to the coup and indicated the matter is purely one of political science, and that legal experts were consulted to decide if this was a coup or not.  When it comes to threats to U.S. client regimes, U.S. official experts are quick to denounce and condemn a coup.

This one enjoyed support among some of the secularist forces in Tunisia (including the leftist workers’ unions) but the secular progressives have long been tools of repressive regimes, such as Sisi in Egypt or MbS in Saudi Arabia and MbZ in the UAE.

A youth counsel suddenly emerged in Tunisia to express support for the coup; this immediately drew resonance to the Egyptian youth group, Tamarrud, which was later found to be a tool of the UAE regime to bolster support for the Sisi coup.  The UAE, Saudi Arabia, Israel, and the U.S. just don’t want democracy in the Arab world.  Repressive regimes are far more convenient for their interests.

consortiumnews.com

(Click on the image to enlarge)

Is there no end to Emmanual Macron’s gaffes in the Muslim world? It almost feels as though they roll in on a weekly basis and have given journalists a new Trump-like subject to busy them, distracted away of course from the more serious subjects of the day.

But attacking Islam is no joke. And one has to wonder whether the sanity of Macron is all there, a point made by the Turkish President recently when he suggested the French President was losing his mind. Macron’s response, if anything, was both a strong indication that there may be a grain of truth in the accusation plus an inglorious display of Macron’s sensational loathing of the free press. He immediately recalled the French ambassador from Ankara. The tantrums also seem to be like a never-ending stream which hardly do anything for Macron’s credibility in the region. Oh là là.

And credibility is key.

Whilst the author Tarek Cherkaoui is bang on to point out how this Islamophobia subterfuge by Macron is doomed from the off – reminding us of what happened with Nicolas Sarkozy back in the day when he tried the same stratagem with disastrous consequences – he misses the point about Macron and the Arabs.

Macron sees himself as some kind of T E Laurence figure, revered by the unruly Arabs who can lead them to build their own destiny and restore their dignity. But Lawrence, lived with these people, learnt their languages and was so adored by them, that they anointed him as one of their own ultimately making him a subject of hate and ridicule by the British themselves.

Macron by contrast is woefully ignorant of the peoples, the history and the region and comes across as a political tourist lost in the smoke and ashes of the Beirut bomb explosion. Who can forget his reaction to a lady heckler who chastised him? He moved quickly to smother her with his Gallic hug, squeezing the air out of her lungs to silent here therein. Genius. Deft. Desperate.

The real problem with Macron and the Arab world is that he hasn’t done his homework and can’t be bothered to learn about Arabia and Islam. And the Arabs feel it and see it. They know when they’re presented with fake goods. This is the heart of the malaise now which he is facing with some countries boycotting French goods. Speaking so unfavourably towards Islam and tarnishing so many with the same spoiled brush without even being able to recite one line of the Koran or knowing anything about the history of the Islamic world, is a gross insult which will be remembered for a long time and surely won’t get him the vote from millions of Muslims in France, but might get him some votes from the hard right. If he really understood Islam, or even the terrorism ideology which attaches itself to it, he might have guessed that his comments about the religion might have sparked an Al Qaeda call for a jihadist attack on France, following both Macron’s comments about Islam and a teacher’s caricature of the prophet.

Of course, shoring up the hard-right vote might have been his intention right from the start. Beleaguered by polls which show that he’s in real trouble in securing a second term, he has opted for the nationalistic vote.

Political shenanigans are really all that Macron is all about. And spin. We don’t expect much, certainly not in the Middle East anyway, from the French leader who proves time and time again he only has the requisite soundbite to contribute to the troubles of the region and not the meat-and-gravy of any solid strategy.

Of course, his recent spat with President Erdogan of Turkey runs deeper each day that passes with Turkish exploration in the Mediterranean remaining unchallenged, pushes deeper the thorn in the side of the French president.

And yet Macron’s failures in the Arab world, including this recent tone-deaf anti-Islam rant, are remarkable in that they are compounded by his failure to seize opportunities. Isn’t that, after all, the feral, singular purpose of all politicians? To grasp opportunities when they are presented. Like a fat trout, facing the current, motionless, who seizes the fly which drifts past his nose? Strike!

Oh Lebanon! What now?

But not Macron. Lebanon could have been an opportunity for him to rise above the stench of rank impotence and achieve something. All the ingredients were there. The world’s media for a few days was camped there and was ready for the Macron walkabout. The Macron sound bites. And the Macron bold statements.

But even the Christians of Lebanon find Macron’s intervention repugnant. The Lebanese are deeply complexed and complicated people who really do borrow money they can’t afford to pay back, to buy modern day trappings to impress their neighbours who they despise. Yes, this is the Lebanese. Frail, sensitive, vulnerable and probably the most self-conscious people of the entire region who think first about their profile and public image before anything else. The Lebanese who go to the tanning spa before they go to the beach clad in make-up; the Lebanese who buy an expensive car to park at the front of the apartment block to impress the neighbours, but can’t afford to drive it so ride to work on a moped each day; the Lebanese who are so insecure, that they cannot cope with any kind of professional criticism without practically having an ugly breakdown of some sort while attacking those who offer the advice. The Lebanese who have invented a non-confrontational society where friends and colleagues enter a sort of ‘Truman show’ zone each day of faking everything in front of one’s contemporaries; the same Lebanese who have surely the largest inferiority complex in the entire Arab world in the proximity of westerners who they are attracted to, like a moth to a flame, but also hate so virulently.

How did Macron imagine he could just rock up and tell Aoun, Hariri, Berri et al to stop stealing the money and get better at hiding corruption?

The problem Macron has is not only with the corrupt elite, but those who support them. Many Lebanese just reject Macron’s offer of helping, simply because of these complexes which are just one of the many insecurity pangs which make them so unique. An anti-colonialist mentality has been wheeled out (yawn), perhaps even encouraged by political leaders who can’t see the brown envelope of cash for them in the Macron offer, so reject it, naturally. The word ‘connerie’ (which translates to English, literally, as arsehole-ery) has been modified to Macronerie by these same feeble people who presumably would stand tall and defiant and chant their colonial clap trap when all of their children have died before them, when the hospitals close and antibiotics are so expensive that are only for the elite to purchase. Are these the same people who supported the protest movement (in the early days when it was more of a street party) and demanded change, but weren’t really able to articulate what type of change they wanted?

Macron is a buffoon, yes, but this racist, desperate rejection by many Lebanese, trumps him on gargantuan stupidity. The inferiority/superiority complex (as both are one of the same thing) is partly what has created the crisis in Lebanon in the first place. The unique frail condition of the Lebanese made it possible for the elite to run the country into the ground and then organise at the eleventh hour to ship wholesale their stained wealth out of the country – and get even richer into the bargain. It’s this same complex which supported the militia-political system whereby people were comforted by their respective leaders helping themselves to the billions of dollars (which could have been spent on building the country), while they drew solace from the system which supposedly “protected” them from their neighbours.

And it’s that same complex which fuelled the protest movement whose followers were convinced that the West – or even the Gulf Arab countries – wouldn’t let Lebanon fall into the abyss.

The Lebanese know now that the world won’t bail them out and that the biggest lie of the last twenty years has been the ‘protection racket’ narrative from militia leaders but it is the same complex which is now preventing them from forgetting their sectarian lineage and forming a cross-party opposition party with a shadow cabinet of ministers and a leader to represent their interests in Washington, Brussels, Strasbourg, Berlin and Paris. The chilling photograph of Hariri, Berri and Aoun must have made many want to weep when it was circulated in mid-October immediately after Hariri was sworn in as PM. It used to be said, ‘pity the Lebanese, as all they have is money’. But this has been replaced, it seems, by ‘all they have are these three stooges’.

Macron’s anti-Muslim rant was ill-timed and stupid. But if it can humour the complexed Lebanese to put aside their moronic ‘colonial’ chanting, it might have achieved something in the Arab world. His intervention in Lebanon, if it comes with genuine reform of the political system, might be the only strand of hope the Lebanese can cling to as, surely, the answer to the country’s problems are not to be found with these three men who practically wrote the manual on How To Make Money Out of A Failed State.

As British India began moving toward independence after World War II, there were those in Britain and on the Indian sub-continent who argued that Britain had established international treaties with the various princely states and that Britain, by having overall responsibility for the defense and foreign affairs of these states, could not automatically transfer that role to the newly-independent Dominions of Hindustan and Pakistan. However, war-weary Britain was in no mood to continue to militarily protect these monarchical protectorates. The British government, in a move that continues to have ramifications in Kashmir and northeastern India, transferred control over the princely protectorates to the new dominions of India and Pakistan.

Nehru and the INC argued that granting independence to the individual Indian princely states would lead to the “Balkanization” of India. However, why should the Indian sub-continent have been any different than Africa? After all, Africa saw the emergence of small independent kingdoms in Lesotho, Rwanda, Burundi, Swaziland, and Zanzibar. In the 1930s, Indian independence leader Mahatma Mohandas K. Gandhi was quite content with the prospect that forward-thinking democratically-inclined royal states could rule themselves. However, as the INC began subscribing to the socialist tendency within its ranks, the princely states were put on notice that they would be forced to join an Indian federation with the same degree of autonomy they enjoyed within British India.

The INC convinced the post-war British viceroy, Viscount Mountbatten, that the partition of the sub-continent between India and Pakistan should be the last partition into independent states. It also helped the cause of an all-inclusive Indian union that Nehru had another line of communication to Mountbatten via Edwina Mountbatten, the viceroy’s wife. It was no secret that Nehru had been engaged in an ongoing affair with the Lady Mountbatten.

The rise to power in a united India of Hindu nationalist leaders like Modi was the nightmare of the leaders of the royal states of India. Modi’s political ascendancy to prime minister was fueled by anti-Muslim agitation he promoted among radical Hindus in his native Gujarat, where he served as chief minister prior to heading the Indian government. Some Indian princely states favored remaining totally independent of either India or Pakistan. Others favored forming a union of princely states tethered neither to India nor Pakistan. Twenty-two such states, including Gwalior and Indore, formed the Malwa Union.

Where Muslim rulers governed, Hindu extremists, the ideological forbearers of Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) – which adheres to Hindu rights and a liberalized free-market economy stance – charged that Muslim leaders were nothing more than agents of Pakistan. Muslim leaders like Sir Hamidullah Khan, the Nawab of Bhopal, who fought alongside British forces in North Africa’s Battles of Keren and El Alamein, was fearful of his state’s domination by Hindu nationalists, some of whom, like Subhas Chandra Bose and his followers, were allied with Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and Imperial Japan during the war.

In homage to the Indian pro-Nazis and pro-Japanese Hindus, Modi has been involved in a major project to rehabilitate Bose as a national hero of India. Modi has also praised Donald Trump, the closest the United States has seen to a fascist president throughout its entire history.

It appears that the fears of Sir Hamidullah Khan about Bhopal, long a center of Buddhist culture, being ruled by a Hindu nationalist India ultimately proved to be warranted. The Bhopal monarchy was abolished on June 1, 1949 when it became the State of Bhopal ruled by an Indian bureaucrat appointed by the president of India. In 1956, Bhopal lost its identity when it was merged with Madhya Bharat state. In 1984, Bhopal was the scene of an horrific Union Carbide chemical disaster that killed as many as 16,000 and injured at least 558,000. Unregulated actions of corporations, foreign and domestic, is a major guiding principle of Modi’s BJP.

Some princely states, tiny Cochin, for example, maintained a Cabinet answerable to an elected legislature and Indore had been heading in that same direction. The state of Baroda had instituted social legislation that was superior to that being proposed by either the INC or Muslim League. Baroda, Bikaner, and Rewa had functioning prime ministers answerable to democratic legislative assemblies. Fifteen of the principalities maintained their own postal systems. Others had their own coinage. The Gaekwar of Baroda was one of the world’s wealthiest men.

Popular sentiment against joining India was also strong in Hyderabad, governed by the Nizam, ruled by Nizam Osman Ali Khan, and Travancore, ruled by a Maharajah. The Prime Minister of Travancore, Sir C.P. Ramaswamy Ayer, declared that Travancore intended to become independent of both Britain and India, regardless of the pressure applied by the pro-INC Travancore State Congress. In 1948, the Nizam of Hyderabad, a Muslim and a close ally of Britain in World War II, appealed to both the United Nations and the International Court of Justice to save his nation from an imminent Indian invasion. Hyderabad’s case had the support of Pakistan, Argentina, and Egypt. The appeal was not successful. On September 13, 1948, Indian forces invaded Hyderabad in Operation Polo. The Indians met little resistance, Prime Minister Mir Laiq Ali was arrested by the Indian troops, and the Nizam was forced to sign an agreement that left him as head of state of what became an Indian constituent state. The Nizam was also forced to repudiate his appeals to the UN and International Court of Justice.

Indian troops put down by force a revolt of the Hindu Jat people of the princely state of Bharatpur, who did not want to be merged with the states of Alwar, Dholpur, and Karauli into the United State of Mataya.

In 1943, Leopold Amery, the British Secretary of State for India, told an audience at London’s Overseas Club, at which Maharajah Jam Sahib of Nawanagar was also a speaker, that the princely rulers of India were “not merely, as is sometimes suggested, museum pieces reproducing the splendor and chivalry and also perhaps the casualness of the Middle Ages . . . They are responsible rulers of territories, some of them equal in population and extent to major European nations, and their responsibilities are by no means small. Their primary responsibility is the good governance of their own people . . .”

Two rulers of the Rajput border states in western India, Maharajah Hanwant Singh of Jodphur and Maharawal Jawahir Singh of Jaisalmer – their nations located between the newly-partitioned India and Pakistan – saw some utility in having their kingdoms remain as neutral buffer states between India and Pakistan. Muhammad Mahabat Khanji III, the Muslim Nawab of Junagadh, a primarily Hindu border state, opted to join Pakistan with the support of his dewan or prime minister, Shah Nawaz Bhutto. However, the Hindu majority revolted and in a plebiscite the people opted to join India. The Nawab fled to Pakistan. Dewan Bhutto’s son, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, became prime minister of Pakistan. Zulfiqar was later executed by a military tribunal. His daughter, Benazir Bhutto, also became prime minister. She was later assassinated. The Muslim Nawab of Tonk, the Muslim leader of a Rajputana princely state, opted to merge with India.

The failure of the British to grant independence to the Sikh states of Patiala, Kapurthala, Jind, Faridkot, Malerkotla, Nalagarh, Kalsia, and Nabha as the Phulkian Union would later serve as a point of contention that Sikhs were not given the same independence were the Hindus and Muslims upon partition of India. There was mild resistance to joining either Hindustan or Pakistan from states like Bikaner and Mysore, as well as the Punjab Hill States. Similarly, the large Christian minorities of Travancore and Cochin feared the ultimate direction of Hindu rule. Later, that would be manifested in deadly attacks by Hindu radicals on Christian churches.

The princely state of Jammu and Kashmir, ruled by a Muslim Maharajah, opted to accede to India with guarantees of special autonomy guaranteed by the Indian Constitution. Although that guarantee was recognized by all previous Indian prime ministers, INC and BJP, alike, Modi abrogated it and turned the state into an Indian union territory, abolishing the state government in the process. Had India and Pakistan permitted the continued sovereignty of the western border states, they could have served as safety valves between the two nuclear-armed nations. However, even the Himalayan border states separating India and China – Bhutan, Sikkim, Ladakh, and Nepal – have not fared very well. India invaded and annexed the Kingdom of Sikkim in 1975 and Nepal, which became a federal republic after abolishing its monarchy, and the Kingdom of Bhutan remain wary buffer states on guard against Indian expansionism. As part of Modi’s abrogation of Jammu and Kashmir’s special status, the largely Buddhist region of Ladakh was made a union territory.

Both India and Pakistan underestimated the determination of royal leaders in the remote areas of the northwestern part of British India to be left alone by Britain, India, and Pakistan. Even prior to the outbreak of World War II, the Faquir of Alingar and the Nawab of Dir fought relentlessly against British land and air forces. This initial resentment by the tribal leaders of the Northwest Frontier Hindu Kush region, including the leaders of the princely states of Amb, Chitral, and Dir, as well as the Wali of Swat, to accede to Pakistani demands would continue to inflame the political-religious situation in modern times, such as when the region became host to various Islamist extremists, including Al Qaeda.

Like India, Pakistan also dissolved the sovereignty of its ten princely states even though Jinnah had supported the princely states opting for independence upon partition of India. The first state to experience pressure was the largest, Bahawalpur, which saw its entire government, including the Amir, who claimed direct descendance from the Prophet Muhammad, dismissed by the central government of Pakistan. The dissolution of the princely states of Khairpur, Las Bela, Kharan, Makran, and Khanate of Kalat soon followed.

Many of the states of northeast India, where local inhabitants joined British forces in repelling the Japanese invasion in the war, felt slighted when their legitimate demands for independence were ignored by Mountbatten and the British Colonial Office. These states included Manipur, Tripura, Nagalim, and Cooch Behar.

Successive Indian and Pakistani governments moved to obliterate any vestiges of the princely states. Small states, including Bilbari and its population of 27, were relegated to the history books in short order. In 1961, India moved to arrest and strip the Maharajah of Bastar of his royal titles. Maharajah Gajapati Pravin Chandra Bhanj Deo was found to have been in contact with the rulers of other former princely states and attempted to form an alliance to demand the restoration of their principalities. The people of Bastar were aboriginal tribesman with extreme loyalty to their maharajah.

One world leader saw some unfairness in what Nehru and his Congress Party had done to the princely rulers. In March 1962, the First Lady of the United States, Jacqueline Kennedy, wife of President John F. Kennedy, made it a point to spend part of her visit to India with five Indian princes and two princesses representing the former princely states of Mewar, Bikaner, Kotah, and Udaipur. The meetings represented JFK’s pointed jab at Nehru, who did not mask his dislike of Indian royalty.

One thing that was not endemic among the rulers of the princely states was religious extremism. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of the current prime minister of India and his most avid supporters and the radical Islamist political leaders of Pakistan.

Guillaume DUROCHER

With the beginning of the trial of 11 Muslims accused in the 2015 Charle Hebdo massacre, the notorious French newspaper is republishing the cartoons of Mohammed which got 12 of their colleagues murdered. Bernard-Henri Lévy and secularist establishment are celebrating this brave expression of free speech as a triumph of the Values of the Republic.

Meanwhile, this same politico-media establishment is condemning en masse the right-wing magazine Valeurs actuelles for publishing an alternative history in which a left-wing Black MP is portrayed as being enslaved by her fellow Africans. This, of course, was racist, not a legitimate expression of the spirit of Voltaire.[1]

But are the Muslims of France really assimilating to Republican secularism? A recent poll by the highly-respected IFOP institute suggests not and that there is a growing cultural cleavage between Muslims and non-Muslims in France.

The pollsters asked: “Do you understand the indignation regarding the publication of the Mohammed cartoons?” 73% of Muslims said yes, as against 29% of French people at large (including Muslims).

69% of Muslims believe the press was wrong to publish such cartoons as “a useless provocation,” as against 31% for the general population.

66% of Muslims believe it is right to prosecute Charlie Hebdo for publishing such cartoons, as against only 21% for the general population.

18% of Muslims – about 2 million people – “do not condemn” or “are indifferent to” the Charlie Hebdo terrorist attacks. The figure rises to 26% for young Muslims (aged 15-24). Interestingly, the proportion of Muslims aged 15-17 refusing to condemn the attacks rose from 1% in 2016 to 22% in 2020. This makes for a very large pool of terrorist sympathizers and potential Islamic terrorists.

Finally, 40% of Muslims in France “put their religious convictions ahead of the [French] Republic’s values.”

The figure rises to 74% for Muslims under 25.

All this raises dire questions for France’s future as a society divided along ethno-religious lines. In 2016, Jérôme Fourquet – a leading pollster – estimated that 18% of babies in France were given Muslim first names. This constantly-rising figure represents a critical mass easily large enough to sustain a religious subculture quite at odds with of the old generation of aging left-wing secularist and “assimilationist” Boomers and Jews.

For left-wing Boomers and Jews, anti-racist colorblindness and the holocaust are effectively a religion – that’s why they support State censorship against what amounts to blasphemy against the sacred tropes. Muslims have their own concerns and religion however.

This has long caused problems for the French left – divided between White secularists and Arab/Turkish Muslims. As the French working class has defected en masse to nationalism, the far-left in particular has had to turn from militant colorblind secularism to left-wing racial and religious identity politics which resonates more with Blacks and Muslims.

The French racial nationalist website Démocratie participative writes:

[Far-left leader Jean-Luc] Mélenchon knows very well how his bread is buttered, and it isn’t with Bernard-Henri Lévy. He does not hesitate to encourage this political realignment by comparing Charle Hebdo with the far-right because of its attacks against Islam. His goal is to forge a banlieu populism combining the leftism of smalltime bureaucrats and the Islamism of immigrant riffraff.

Mélenchon had explained the travails of another far-left party in 2012 saying: “Do you know why is the [New Anticapitalist Party] is screwed? Because you cannot transform a micro-movement of Jewish intellectuals of the Latin Quarter [in Paris] in a mass party of the Muslim banlieues.”

Mélenchon has in the past criticized Jewish activist organizations in France and has often ignored the Jews’ sensibilities. This is a sign of a decline of Jewish influence over a large portion of the increasingly Afro-Islamic French far-left.

It is hard for me to judge the state of play among Muslims in France.

Will French Arabs and Turks become the functional equivalent of Hispanics? That is to say, a fairly low-functioning and apolitical group, prone to educational failure, welfare use, and crime, but not particularly capable of revolutionary activity. In this scenario, Islam and headscarves become of no more than folkloric interest and politically Muslims become little more than voters at the social-democratic trough.

Or will Muslims in France maintain a distinct culture, a parallel society, at once alien and capable of domination? That is the Soumission scenario.

And while I have lived in many multicultural neighborhoods and had many exchanges, typically productive, with Arabs, I cannot tell you which scenario is more likely.

Anyway, expect many more aging French leftist secularist cartoonists to bite the dust at the hands of their Muslim guests. As the Boomers and their inane obsessions pass away, things will simultaneously get much worse and somewhat better. The hegemonic postwar culture will dissolve and in its wake a thousand stupidities, and few truths, will bloom.

The French colorblind secularist left to make way for left-wing ethno-religious identity politics. As Blacks and Muslims in France assert themselves as Blacks and Muslims, more and more native French will awaken to their own identity and organize on that basis.

Note

[1] Even Marine Le Pen’s National Rally piled on against Valeurs, proving yet again that her “nationalist” party is an epiphenomenal manifestation of the French politico-media system and exists only by the tolerable limits set by that system.

unz.com

On July 10th, the BBC bannered “Hagia Sophia: Turkey turns iconic Istanbul museum into mosque” and reported that the biggest, oldest, and the most important, cathedral in all of Orthodox Christendom — and the world’s most important Byzantine building, which was constructed as the Saint Sophia Cathedral by the Byzantine Roman Emperor Justinian I in Constantinople (now Istanbul) in the year 537, and which stands on the site that had been consecrated in the year 325 by the Roman Emperor Constantine (and which cathedral was relabelled the Hagia Sophia “museum” in 1935 by Turkey’s Constitutionally secularist Government) — has now become, officially, at last, designated, by the restored Islamic Government of Turkey, a Muslim house of worship, a mosque, a Muslim house of worship.

This signals the end of Turkey’s being ruled by a secular Government, which it had been, ever since 1923. It is the end of Turkey’s secular Government and the restoration of the Islamic Mehmed the Conqueror’s 1453 order that it be a mosque. That ended the Byzantine Roman Catholic Empire, and started Islamic-ruled Turkey. It ended Constantinople and started Istanbul. Mehmet, however, allowed Christianity to continue, in the Islamic Ottoman Empire, but only as an accepted part of the Greek East (“Orthodox”), not as part of the Roman West (imperialistic), Christianity (which he had just then conquered with the fall of Constantinople on that same date, 29 May 1453). And now, even the Orthodox Christians are being marginalized in Turkey, because the Hagia Sophia had been “for almost 1,000 years the most important Orthodox cathedral.”

This is an act with huge international implications. It is an important event in human history.

Turkey’s strongman, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whose entire actual education was only in Islamic schools though he lies about it and claims to have received a degree from a non-Islamic university, is in the process of transforming Turkey back again into a specifically Islamic type of dictatorship, a Sharia-law-ruled state. The secularist Turkish Republic that was instituted in 1923 by the Enlightenment-inspired Kemal Attaturk has now decisively ended. The widespread speculations that Erdogan has been aiming to restore Turkey to being the imperial nation and ruler of a restored Islamic Ottoman Empire are now decisively confirmed by this brazen act of insult to Orthodox Christians, and even to Roman Christians, because — as Wikipedia notes — “Justinian has sometimes been known as the ‘Last Roman’ in mid-20th century historiography.” The Orthodox Church in America titles him as “Saint Justinian The Emperor”. However, Wikipedia also notes that Constantine XI Palaiologos, who was killed by Mehmet’s forces on that date, 29 May 1453, was actually the last Roman Emperor. That ended the Roman Empire.

In other words: the Turkish Government’s official change of Saint Sophia Cathedral, which Justinian had created in 537, into now and henceforth a mosque, is a taking ownership of, and a Turkish-Muslim declaration of supremacy over, a different religion’s main house of worship. It’s a historical dagger into the heart of Orthodox Christianity, as well as being an insult to Roman Christianity.

This is not merely an isolated act, either; it is, instead, something to which Erdogan has long been building. Erdogan’s grab of land from secularist-ruled (committedly anti-sectarian) Syria, and his recent sending of troops to help conquer the formerly secularist Libya, which land had been turned into a hellish civil war by a U.S.-and-allied invasion in 2011 and which chaos there continues to this day, all are consistent with an understanding of Erdogan in which his foremost objective is a restoration of the Ottoman Empire. And the U.S. Government has supported this objective of his (but only as Turkey being a branch of the U.S. empire), and tried to get the EU to accept it.

The question now — since the United States Government has been pushing against European resistance to accepting a military alliance with an Islamic dictatorship — is whether continuation of the NATO alliance will be ended because of the path that Erdogan and the United States Government have jointly been taking to re-impose a decidedly Sunni Islamic dictatorship upon Turkey (by means of which, Turkey will serve as a wedge against both Shiite controlled Iran, and an increasingly Orthodox-dominated Russia). However, there has been a split between Erdogan and the U.S. regime, because he does not intend his restored Ottoman empire to be a part of the U.S. or any other empire. Erdogan’s independent streak is what now threatens to break-up the Western Alliance — the U.S. empire (which is actually the Rhodesist UK-U.S. empire).

The United States Government has been preferring Erdogan’s former political partner but now enemy, Erdogan’s fellow Sunni Islamist Fethullah Gulen, who cooperates with the U.S. and is a CIA protégé (including rabidly against Shiite Iran and against Iran’s main ally Russia). Gulen is passionately endorsed by America’s aristocracy. The U.S. regime has been preferring Gulen to impose this transformation of Turkey into an Islamic U.S. satellite, because Gulen models his operation (and he has even described it in remarkable detail) upon U.S. and UK ‘intelligence’ practices (CIA & MI6), whereas Erdogan has insisted upon an independent Turkey with its own nationalistic ‘intelligence’ organization — a nationalistically transformed version of Turkey’s existing MIT or National Intelligence Organization — an ‘intelligence’ organization that’s cleansed of what the CIA praises as “Gulen is interested in slow and deep social change, including secular higher education; Erdogan as a party leader is first and foremost interested in preserving his party’s power, operating in a populist manner, trying to raise the general welfare.” (The CIA actually knows that this has nothing whatsoever to do with “trying to raise the general welfare” — the U.S. regime’s goal is to extend everywhere the U.S. empire, and Erdogan’s Turkish regime has that same goal for the Turkish empire, which doesn’t yet even exist, though it once did as the Ottoman Empire, and he wants to restore it.) Erdogan insists upon Turkey’s not being merely a vassal-state or colony within a foreign-led empire, but instead the leading nation of its own empire, starting perhaps with gobbling up Syria and Libya, but extending ultimately more globally. There is a soundly documented article titled “Why Are Gulenists Hostile Toward Iran?” and it provides much of the reason why the CIA supports Gulen (they do largely because Erdogan isn’t so obsessive against Iran — which country America’s aristocracy crave to conquer again, as they had done in 1953, and Erdogan doesn’t support that as passionately as they require).

The question now for Europe is whether it wants to be again a participant in various aristocracies’, and clergies’, imperialistic designs, or instead to declare itself finally non-aligned and to lead thereby a new global non-aligned movement, not militaristically, but instead by providing, to the entire world, an anti-imperialistic and truly democratic model, a re-start and replacement of today’s United Nations, and one that will reflect what had been Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s anti-imperialist intention, and not Harry S. Truman’s American-imperialist intention — a start from scratch that has FDR’s statements to guide it, and not Truman’s actions to guide it (such as has been the case). Perhaps even the U.S., NYC-based, U.N. would ultimately sign onto that new international global federation; but the only basis upon which nations in the old U.N. should be accepted into its successor would be if the old U.N. were gradually to dissolve itself as its individual nations would, each on its own, sign onto the new one. Ultimately, this option must be made available to all Governments, to choose to either continue in Truman’s U.N., or else join instead a new, and authentically FDR-based, authentically anti-imperialistic, replacement of it.

That is what this dictatorial Islamization of Turkey is really all about, and only Europe can make the decision — no other land can. However, such a decision will only fail if any such organization as a new U.N. is to be at all involved in the particular national issues that now are so clearly coming to the fore in the transformation of Turkey into a Sunni Islamist dictatorship.

The “international community” should have no say in Turkey’s intranational (or “domestic”) affairs — regardless of whether Turkey is in or out of Europe. Sectarian and nationalistic concerns cannot rule in the formation of any authentically democratic new international order — an authentically non-imperialistic international order. All such concerns, domestic concerns, must be strictly the domain of the authority and power of each one of the individual constituent units, each individual national Government itself controlling its own internal affairs. FDR was adamant about that. He was insistent that the U.N. not get involved in individual nations’ internal affairs. The profoundly anti-FDR, “Responsibility to Protect” idea (which now has even acquired the status of being represented by an acronym “R2P” catch-phrase), has increasingly arisen recently to become a guiding principle of international relations, and must be soundly and uncompromisingly rejected in the formulation and formation of any replacement-organization — any authentically democratic international federation of nations. Otherwise, everything would be futile, and there will be a WWIII. We are heading in exactly the opposite direction from that which FDR had intended — which was to prevent any Third World War.

This decision will be made by the individual nations of Europe. Only they collectively hold this power. They will be able to exercise it only if they will terminate their alliances outside of Europe, and proceed forward no longer bound by external alliances, but instead become a free and independent European federation of European states. Only they, collectively, will be able to make this decision, as Europeans, for the entire world, regarding what the world’s future will be. And only they will hold the ultimate responsibility — and it’s NOT the “responsibility to protect”. It is instead the responsibility to protect the future of the entire world. It’s the responsibility to protect a future for the world. And if Europe fails it, then the world will inevitably move forward to WWIII, as it is doing. A new international order is needed, and only Europe can lead it, if Europe will.

In order for Europe to do that, Europe must first define itself. Is Turkey part of Europe? Is Russia? What is Europe? If Europeans won’t be able to agree on that, then the world will continue to move forward towards WWIII, because the world will then have no center, it will continue to have only contending empires — exactly what FDR had aimed to prevent.

Europe is the key. But will Europe’s leaders place the key in the lock, and open, finally, the door to a non-imperialistic world? The present, U.S.-empire-aligned, Europe, won’t do that. Turkey’s action on the Hagia Sophia, which is an insult to all Christians, and especially to Orthodox ones, might finally force the issue — and its solution.

Other than that, however, the official designation of the Hagia Sophia as being a mosque is entirely a domestic, Turkish, matter.

If Mr Erdogan was so keen on tinkering with the status of this major Orthodox holy place, instead of pursuing short-sighted electoral advantage in a state presumably without a future, he should have done better had he chosen – as Americans are fond of saying –to be on the right side of history. He could have done that simply by returning the temple to the religious community which erected it and to which it rightfully belongs.

But, of course, it would be fatuous to expect from a mere politician with declining ratings a gesture of such dazzling magnanimity.

Hagia Sophia was built and consecrated as an Orthodox place of worship in the 6^th century by the Eastern Roman Emperor Justinian I. It is a structure of great architectural beauty and even greater symbolic value for world Orthodoxy, as its prime cathedral. Upon the conquest of Constantinople and demise of the Byzantine empire in 1453, it was turned into a mosque by the commander of the conquering army, sultan Mehmed II, and functioned in that capacity until 1934, when the reformist President of the Turkish Republic, Kemal Ataturk, made it a museum. The magnificent structure is under the protection of UNESCO (for whatever that is worth) and is the most visited historical site in Turkey.

What is the significance of the second forced reconversion of the Orthodox cathedral of Hagia Sophia into a mosque? It has to do entirely with internal Turkish politics. It is part of a larger design of the current rulers to reconfigure Turkey back from a secular republic to a resurgent neo-Ottoman state, reinforced with a strong religious identity. Given that the local economy is in poor shape and that the government’s foreign policy initiatives have been generally unsuccessful across the board, descending to religious demagoguery is a more or less natural and predictable recourse. For Orthodox Christians and, hopefully, civilized people of all backgrounds this crude reassertion of the right of conquest, targeting not material goods suitable for pillage, but the spiritual patrimony of one of the great world religious traditions, is nothing short of an act which constitutes the fusion of vandalism and blasphemy.

Of course, it could also be said with some justice, this issue is larger than Erdogan and will outlive him. It is clothed in the garb of a regular court order invalidating Ataturk’s earlier decree, and it was confirmed by a cabinet decision after a meeting lasting all of 17 minutes. As far as provocations go, it could also be argued that in terms of bellicosity it is far less dangerous than shooting down a Russian fighter jet in Syria. Also, as worldly logic might have it, the Hagia Sophia ceased to function as a consecrated church and has not served as consecrated Orthodox Cathedral for more than 550 years. Even before the Ottomans arrived it was ransacked and desecrated during the Western Fourth Crusade, and was then turned into a Roman Catholic cathedral during the Latin occupation of the city. Its history has been long and harsh. A friend of mine has argued that “frankly at least as a mosque it will serve as place of worship and fulfil a spiritual and religious function and not be a tourist attraction, which is a greater desecration, literally speaking.”

“Buildings are buildings,” he has asserted, “they are monuments to faith but no substitute for living faith or a living church which is the Body of Christ. [In the large sense, he does have a point there.] This will only happen when Hagia Sophia is reconsecrated, Orthodox Liturgy is held, the sacred mysteries enacted, and of course when the Eucharist is served once again.”

All these, arguably, are good points. But they miss the emotions this symbolically charged act (going to its core, beyond short-term and short-sighted electoral consideration) evokes among the Balkan Orthodox who still have vivid collective memories of Ottomanism (never mind its neo- variety that is being reinvented today). Nor do they fully take into account the emotions of the Russian Orthodox believers whose faith goes back, in a direct historical line, to that very spot in Constantinople where Vladimir’s bedazzled emissaries, while observing the religious services and magnificent decorations, wondered whether they were on earth or in heaven.

So besides the purely practical and realpolitik aspects to this, there is also a much deeper dimension that challenges Orthodoxy to its core. Its chief representative in Constantinople, the “Ecumenical Patriarch” with a plethora of impressive titles but hardly any flock, a man who few would be so naïve as to regard as a designated vessel of the Holy Spirit, but who certainly is an agent and close collaborator of Western intelligence services to whom he owes his precarious position in an increasingly hostile environment, has been resoundingly silent. Shockingly, Patriarch Bartholomew has been hiding in his Fanar rabbit hole while controversy over what should be his main cathedral has been raging all around him. He is more concerned, one imagines, about avoiding a potential indictment for involvement in the Turkish coup attempt several years ago than in reclaiming the jewel of his ecclesiastical heritage or at least protesting for the record its renewed desecration. The setting up of a false and heretical “church” in the Ukraine under his patronage was apparently a matter he thought more pressing and deserving of his public attention that an outrage to his communion being perpetrated literally in his back yard.