Waking Up The American People Is The Most Important Thing
Mike Billington Interviews Dr. Chandra Muzaffar
30 October, 2014
Countercurrents.org
Malaysian scholar Dr. Chandra Muzaffar is the
president and founder of Just International
(http://www.just-international.org/); he is a
political analyst, specializing on the Islamic
world. Dr. Muzaffar gave an interview to EIR's
Mike Billington on Oct. 1, 2014, during his
visit to the U.S. The interview was videotaped
by LaRouchePAC and can be viewed at
[[http://larouchepac.com/node/31876]]. Here are
excerpts.
{{Michael Billington: }} Chandra, you've
long led efforts in Malaysia and
internationally to end war, and bring justice
to all nations and to all peoples. You share
with our organization the idea that peace and
justice are only possible through development,
and that ending poverty for all is addressing
the most fundamental human right of all. So,
how would you describe Just and its goals?
{{Chandra Muzaffar: }}Thank you, Mike, for
this interview. I am very happy to be here at
the headquarters of the LaRouche movement, and
I'm also very pleased that we have a chance to
explore some issues in this interview. Let me
respond to your question about Just by first
stating what Just's principle aims are. Just is
an organization anchored in Malaysia, but
international in its scope.
We have a small membership, but a big
portion of our members actually are
non-Malaysians, and they come from something
like 42 countries.... We are very concerned
about global hegemony, which is one of the
reasons why Just was established in the first
instance. Because when the Cold War ended, and
the Soviet Union collapsed, that was in
1990-1991, some of us felt that we should be
vigilant about the emerging unipolar world: the
dangers posed by this unipolar world, by the
politics of the sole superpower of the day. And
this is the rationale behind Just: to critique
the hegemony that has emerged from this
unipolar world, and to see how we can offer an
alternative, which is the second dimension of
our mission.
We feel that that alternative has to
emerge from the shared spiritual and moral
values of the human family. We believe that the
unipolar world, and hegemony in all its
manifestations--political, economic, social,
cultural, intellectual, spiritual--that this
hegemony is a threat to the enduring perennial
spiritual and moral values of the human family.
Values of love, justice, and compassion, caring
for one another, empathy for one another,
kindness as a human trait. These are perennial
values. And institutions that are part of this
value system: the family, respect for the
environment, for instance, as again a principle
of living is part of that value system....
`We See Hope on the Horizon'
{{Billington:}} The world has changed
quite dramatically this past year, I think you
could say; it begins in a sense with [Chinese
President] Xi Jinping's trip to Kazakstan, and
his announcement of the New Silk Road. And
then, visiting Indonesia and Malaysia, and
announcing the new Maritime Silk Road; and now
the very dramatic development by the BRICS
nations this past Summer in Brazil, announcing
enhanced cooperation amongst themselves and
much of the world: a New Development Bank,
China's new Asia Infrastructure Investment
Bank, creating truly a new paradigm where we
see all over the world nations launching new
rail connections, canals, enhanced agriculture,
nuclear power, joining in the space
program--the opposite of what you see
here in the United States and Europe, where
everything is falling apart. So, I wonder how
you would read this global situation, the
emergence of this new paradigm?
{{Muzaffar:}} You and I, Mike, we are able
to see what's emerging on the horizon, and we
are thrilled by it. We see hope on the horizon.
But lots of people don't see these changes.
They don't interpret these changes as important
developments, as milestones, in the human
journey. And I think there's a reason for it,
why people don't see things the way we see
them, or the way we feel they should be seen.
It is largely because of the media.
The media has downplayed all these major
developments that you referred to. I can't
think of any newspaper in Malaysia, or
television station, radio program, that has
highlighted the Maritime Silk Road, which
involves us directly in Malaysia. Or any media
that has highlighted the land Silk Road, or
the BRICS, for that matter, even though that is a
development which impacts on us; all the other
things that are happening, infrastructure
development program that China is involved in,
in so many parts of the world, in Africa, in
Latin America, in various parts of Asia....
{{Billington:}} And of course while the
media is not presenting that, what they are
presenting is, the fact that the old imperial
forces in London, and New York, and Washington,
are continuing their self-destruction, as well as their destruction
globally. And that to preserve this bankrupt
financial system, it's clear they're willing to
risk a global war, perhaps a war of
annihilation.
You can see that in the developments
around Ukraine, around Syria and Iraq, and in
Asia as well, around the South China Sea and so
forth. And the wars that President Obama has
continued to wage, unilaterally, without even
appealing to the UN for support, or even to
the U.S. Congress.
Helga Zepp-LaRouche has called for a new,
inclusive world security architecture, for all
nations, based on these great development
projects, which are now in the process of
coming into being around the BRICS. I wonder if
you can comment on that, on the continuing
disaster in the West, and how we can turn the
United States around, or what's needed from the
rest of the world, like from Malaysia, in order
to help to turn America around.
{{Muzaffar:}} Let me begin with trying to
wake up the American population, because I
think that is what is most important. American
citizens should realize what is happening. You
have a society where there are multiple
channels of communication, and yet, the truth
is not known. People don't know, for instance,
why Ukraine is in crisis. They just believe
what the mainstream media has told them. They
don't know the truth behind this fac@alade.
So, we'll have to find ways and means of
reaching people, of informing them, of
educating them, or enlightening them about what
is happening. For instance, if you take
Ukraine: What is the root cause of what is
happening in Ukraine? Is it because of Crimea?
Is it because [Russian President] Putin decided
that he would act? Is this the reason behind
the crisis? Or is it because he was reacting,
rather than just igniting a crisis? He was
reacting to a situation? And what was the
situation he was reacting to?
Wasn't he reacting to the eastward push of
NATO? Something that should not have happened
at all. Because the President of the United
States of America in 1991-1992, George Bush,
Sr., he had agreed with Mikhail Gorbachov, the
Soviet leader at that time, that once the
Warsaw Pact was dissolved (and the Russians had
agreed to dissolve the Warsaw Pact established
in 1955), NATO would not expand eastwards. NATO
would not gobble up states that were part of
the old Soviet Union, or part of Eastern
Europe, which was linked to the old Soviet
Union. This was the understanding.
But the U.S. leadership went back on its
word, and they started expanding eastwards. And
you expand eastwards to a point where you are,
there in Russia, and there is Crimea, Russia's
warm-water port. Crimea is so much a part of
Russia's history. And we know that the
capital of Ukraine, Kiev, was actually once the
capital of Russia. So we're not talking of any
other state. We're talking of a state which is
so much a part of the heart and soul of Russia.
And you expand to that point and say,
``Well, we want Ukraine to be a part of NATO,
and part of the European Union.'' What is a
Russian leader supposed to do in such
circumstances? He was bound to react. So it was
the West that created this crisis. But this is
something that a lot of Americans are not aware
of. So, making Americans aware of what is
really happening is critical.
ISIS Grew Out of the U.S. Invasion of Iraq
And same thing with ISIS. The impression
given is, this is some sort of monster that has
suddenly emerged, and is threatening human
civilization. But what is the history behind
ISIS? It grew out of the American
invasion/occupation of Iraq. It was created,
al-Qaeda was created, because we know that
during Saddam Hussein's time, there wasn't a
single terrorist organization in Iraq; al-Qaeda
was created in order to fight what the U.S.
itself, in a sense, helped to create, a
Shi'a-led government in Baghdad, which emerged as
part of the democratic process, with Shi'as as
the majority. They came to power as a consequence
of the invasion, and the Shi'as had very good
relations with Iran, every Shi'a leader of
consequence in Baghdad, very good
relations with Tehran, which the
Americans are not happy about. So, what do they
do? They decide to strengthen al-Qaeda, the
Sunnis against the Shi'as; first the Shi'as
against the Sunnis, now the Sunnis against the
Shi'as.
And you create al-Qaeda, a group that was
brutal, violent, but there was a faction that
felt that al-Qaeda was not radical enough. They
broke away and formed ISIL, at that time; moved
to Syria to fight a very similar war against
Shi'as, the so-called Shi'a minority in power,
and what they saw as a secular government.
The funding for these terrorists came
from within the region, we know
that: Saudi Arabia, from some of the other
monarchies; Turkey played a very big role in
terms of facilitating the growth of this group.
In other words, Turkey was helping to transport
weapons and other military hardware to this
ISIL group training ground, headquarters, or
political activities. Jordan was a very
important training ground; the CIA was involved,
MI6 was involved.
So they created this huge monster. And
suddenly, when the monster decides to move into
Irbil, where all the oil companies are ...
they decided to respond.
And then, of course, the beheadings take
place and all the rest of it. And they decided
they must now start bombing the ISIS, or what
is now known as IS group in Iraq and in Syria.
Now, what the ending is, we don't know.
Maybe they're trying to topple the Bashar Assad
regime [in Syria], perhaps. Or, maybe some
faction around President Obama wants to do
this. Perhaps there is resistance from others
within the U.S. establishment who know the
situation and they feel that this should not be
done, to stop that bombing of IS centers in Syria.
But whatever it is, they created a huge crisis,
a crisis of their own making, with the help of
their allies and their agents,
their proxies.
- Malaysian Airliner MH370 -
{{Billington:}} As a leading
political-strategic analyst in Malaysia, you've
been quite outspoken about the failures to
investigate the shootdown of the Malaysian
airliners--both the one that disappeared
somewhere [MH370]; and the more outrageous
shootdown of the MH17 over Ukraine. What have
you--and I understand Dr. Mahathir [bin
Mohamad, former prime minister], also--had to
say and do about this, and what do you propose?
{{Muzaffar:}} You're right, they're both
shrouded in mystery. The case of
MH370, which happened on the 8th of March,
2014: that particular aircraft is supposed to
have crashed in the southern part of the Indian
Ocean. They had searched for something like two
months, and now the search is at a different
stage. But they've not come up with anything
substantial so far, to indicate that the
wreckage is in the southern part of the Indian
Ocean.
There's been a lot of speculation about
who did it, why, and so on. I
don't have to go through the whole lot of
speculations that have been floating around,
that some people link it with the pilot; and
some people say that it is something to do with
an accident that took place on the aircraft;
others think that there is something else that
happened, it could be some sort of shooting,
perhaps--we don't know.
But there is also this other theory that's
going around, that someone outside the aircraft
had deliberately turned it around; that the
capacity to turn around an aircraft from
outside--in other words, you turn off the
transponder, you turn off the communications
system, without being in the aircraft
itself--that this is something that can be done
now, and this is what Dr. Mahathir raised, in a
blog article of his, about three months ago.
He argued that, based upon an article that
had appeared in a scientific journal that
talked about Boeing's capacity to turn aircraft
around from outside, that this was something
that was developed as a way of ensuring that
9/11-type incidents don't happen; that you
should be able to prevent it, by turning an
aircraft around from outside. And Dr. Mahathir
asked whether this is true, whether it's
something that could be done. Is there such a
technology that's available? And who has access
to this sort of technology? Is it possible that
some intelligence networks had access to this
sort of technology, the CIA, perhaps, or MI6,
Mossad, whoever, has access to this
sort of technology? And why would they have
wanted to turn the plane around?
Now, as far as the technology is
concerned, I'd hope that Boeing would have
responded to Dr. Mahathir. We waited and waited
and waited; Boeing has not really responded to
him. They came out with a very general
statement saying they are cooperating with
the authorities.
But that is a specific allegation, about a certain
technology, an invention, which has horrendous
implications for aviation, travel....
There's nothing from Boeing, which makes
us very suspicious.... So MH370, very
suspicious, to this day, and the suspicion
remains.
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