by KOUROSH ZIABARI
Diana Johnstone, the author of Fools Crusade: Yugoslavia, NATO and Western Delusions. PHOTO/Info Port
I read the article you co-authored with Jean Bricmont regarding the Norwegian Nobel Committee’s declaring EU the Nobel Peace Prize laureate of 2012. Why do you think they have made such a decision? I think they already knew that their choice will lead to widespread controversy, but they apparently selected the EU to help the European nations get out of the current economic crisis and depression. What’s your perspective on that?
DJ: The Norwegian Nobel Committee is made up of five or six Norwegian politicians, with a narrow, conformist Eurocentric view of the world. They completely ignore the instructions in the will of Alfred Nobel that the prize should go to an individual who has done most in the past year to reduce armaments and promote peace conferences. An Irish laureate has suggested that the choice should be turned over to international peace activists themselves. They would be qualified to select candidates who have actually worked for peace. That might save the prize from being the laughing stock it has become.
It is possible that the Norwegians thought their choice would avoid controversy rather than stirring it. The world is so polarized now that any choice is likely to be seen as propaganda in the new Cold War between the US-led West and its adversaries – Russia, China, Iran, Venezuela, and so on. This year, the most prominent, and probably most deserving candidate was Bradley Manning, who really did do something against war, by releasing military film showing a flagrant US war crime in Iraq. That choice would have pleased much of the world, but would have infuriated the United States government. Perhaps by choosing the European Union, the Norwegians were in fact running away from controversy. In their milieu, cut off from the reality of the greater world, honoring the European Union could seem like a kind-hearted gesture to a troubled institution.
Of course, this gesture can have absolutely no effect on the deepening crisis of the European Union.
One of the important news coming out of Europe these days is that the EU Commission has ordered the satellite provider Eutelsat SA to take Press TV and 18 other Iranian television stations off the Hot Bird frequencies, and now more than 200 million viewers across the world are denied access to Iranian channels. What do you think about this hypocrisy on the freedom of speech?
DJ: Of course this is outrageous, like all the sanctions against Iran. This is beyond hypocrisy about freedom of speech. The West is waging economic war against Iran, and respects none of the rights of the Iranian people. And although this is significant news, most Europeans are not aware of it.
What’s your viewpoint on the release anti-Islam movie “Innocence of Muslims” and the Western governments’ reaction to it? They refused to condemn it and demand Google and Youtube to remove it from internet, citing freedom of expression as an excuse. Is insulting the sacred beliefs of more than 1.5 billion people really equivalent to freedom of speech?
DJ: Western governments did not refuse to condemn that movie. They condemned it quite strongly. Everyone has condemned it, except the obscure individual who says he made it. I don’t think anyone has even seen the whole movie, only short fragments on the internet, and nobody would have even heard of that without the uproar of protests. Nobody, not even the actors themselves, would guess that those scenes were meant to show the life of the Prophet, except that words were apparently dubbed in later to make it seem that way, as a provocation.
To provoke what? Perhaps exactly the reactions we saw in Muslim countries. Why? Because that exacerbates the “conflict of civilizations”. The incident brought out a contrast in sensibilities.
That stupid movie could not turn one single person against Islam. Nobody thought it really portrayed the life of the Prophet or had anything to do with Islam, and the fact that it attempted to slander their religion could even arouse sympathy for Muslims. However, the mass demonstrations against the film did indeed give a very bad impression of Muslims in the West. It is hard for people in the West to understand how a religion of more than 1.5 billion people can have so little self-confidence as to be upset by something as trivial as that bit of trashy film. In the West, the riots were seen as a sign of weakness, not of strength.
Faced with such a deliberate provocation, some Muslim leaders realized that it is wiser to ignore it than to act precisely as the provocateur wanted and called for calm. The rioters were only a small minority of Muslims, after all.
There are so many better reasons for Muslims to be angry with the West – drone attacks that wipe out whole families, to start with. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the bombing of Libya, the interference in Syria, the sanctions against Iran.
The internet is full of very offensive material, but it can be ignored. It is not politically wise for Muslims to demand that the United States ban material that offends them, because even if Muslims are over a billion in the world, they are a minority in the United States. They need to support the rule of free speech for their own sake. Freedom of speech is a protection of those in weak positions from those in power, because if censorship is allowed, it is the powerful who will decide what is censored.
What’s your perspective on the NATO’s plans for going into war with Syria and the role Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey are playing in the fomentation of unrest in the country? What about Israel’s aggressive war rhetoric against Iran and its incitement of the United States to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities? Will these new wars take place after the horrendous wars on Afghanistan and Iraq?
DJ: Clearly there are divisions in Washington about getting involved in new wars. There are leading politicians who want war, and high ranking military officers who are against it. The politicians decide, but they have to pay attention to what the military consider possible. So far, the United States prefers to let Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkey do the dirty work in Syria, with help from the CIA. This at least weakens Iran’s ally and is thus part of the undeclared war against Iran. I cannot predict the course of a policy which seems to me completely irrational. The world should be grateful to Russia for its statesmanlike efforts to stop the drift toward World War III.
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