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By Andre Damon

On Friday, the Biden administration said it would send cluster munitions—weapons that scatter unexploded bomblets across a wide area, killing and maiming civilians for decades—to Ukraine.

Facing the failure of Kiev’s military offensive, the United States is desperately seeking to use the provision of ever more destructive and indiscriminate weapons to reverse its setbacks on the battlefield.

Critically, the announcement precedes next week’s NATO summit in Vilnius, at which the United States and NATO are planning to massively expand their involvement in the war. Driven into a corner by its miscalculations, the Biden administration is compelled to take ever more drastic measures.

The aim of the decision to use cluster bombs—regardless of its long-term impact on civilians—is to kill as many Russian soldiers as possible. The reasoning that led in the past to the use of Agent Orange and Napalm—and which will be used to sanction the use of tactical nuclear weapons—is presently at work.

The US, on the eve of Vilnius, is clearly sending a message to Russian president Vladimir Putin. NATO will stop at nothing.

In a briefing Friday announcing the move, US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan justified the decision to send cluster munitions to Ukraine as a means of staving off military disaster.

“There is also a massive risk of civilian harm if Russian troops and tanks roll over Ukrainian positions and take more Ukrainian territory and subjugate more Ukrainian civilians because Ukraine does not have enough artillery.”

Sullivan made this statement a little over one month after Ukraine launched its spring offensive, which the American press had touted as an “Endgame for Ukraine,” leading, in the words of retired Gen. David Patraeus, to “significant breakthroughs.”

Instead, the offensive has produced a bloody debacle. Far from inflicting a crushing defeat on Russia, the Biden administration has been driven to one escalatory move after another in an effort to shore up the Ukrainian military.

“We recognize the cluster munitions creating risk of civilian harm from unexploded ordnance,” Sullivan said. “But we had to balance that against the risk” that Ukraine might “not have sufficient artillery ammunition.”

In other words, the Biden administration weighed the cost of killing and maiming generations of Ukrainian civilians against the benefits of killing more Russian troops. It decided that the deaths of Ukrainian children from unexploded ordnance was a sacrifice America’s oligarchy was willing to make.

Managing to outdo himself in total callousness, Sullivan added that Ukraine would have to be “de-mined regardless.”

Every line employed by the White House to justify sending these weapons of terror to Ukraine could be used to justify the deployment, or even use, of tactical nuclear weapons in the conflict. Yes, the White House would argue, nuclear fallout poses a risk to civilians, but this risk must be “balanced” against the risk of Russian military advances.

The stationing of US tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine has already been directly raised by an American think tank. Moreover, the deployment and possible use of nuclear weapons in the conflict will no doubt be on the agenda at the upcoming summit in Vilnius.

Every official statement by the United States about its involvement in the war is justified on the basis that it is once again “saving” a country through military violence—this time Ukraine. But in sending cluster bombs and depleted uranium weapons to Ukraine, the United States has made clear that this is nothing but a hollow pretext for pursuing its aim of prevailing over Russia and China in “great power competition.”

The very words used by the United States and its allies to condemn Russia’s alleged use of cluster bombs in Ukraine now fully apply to the US decision to send this weapon to Ukraine.

In February 2022, the US envoy to the United Nations, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, accused Russia of using “cluster munitions” in Ukraine, “which are banned under the Geneva Convention” and have “no place on the battlefield.”

In March 2022, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said, “We have seen the use of cluster bombs… which will be in violation of international law.” He added, “We also have to make sure the International Criminal Court really looks into this.”

In fact, all of these denunciations of Russian actions on the part of the US and NATO were merely hypocritical pretexts for escalating US involvement in the war.

The decision by the United States to send cluster bombs to Ukraine exposes all of the pseudo-left defenders of US involvement in the war in Ukraine, including those in the Democratic Socialists of America who condemn “preemptive hostility to US imperialism,” as shameless apologists for the US military’s war crimes.

In fact, the US-led war against Russia in Ukraine is a war for American global hegemony, in which Ukrainians are mere cannon fodder. This is entirely in line with the series of criminal wars of aggression waged by the United States over the past half-century.

During the Vietnam War, the US dropped approximately 413,130 tons of cluster bombs in Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam. Many of these submunitions failed to explode on impact and continue to pose a significant threat to civilian populations, leading to countless injuries and deaths decades after the end of the war.

During the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, the United States regularly used cluster munitions to attack civilian areas, in what Amnesty International called “an indiscriminate attack and a grave violation of international humanitarian law.”

In Iraq, the devastation of cluster bombs was compounded by the use of depleted uranium munitions, which, according to one study, led the people of Fallujah to experience higher rates of cancer, leukemia, infant mortality and sexual mutations than those recorded among survivors in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the years after those Japanese cities were incinerated by US atomic bombs in 1945.

During the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan, cluster bombs killed and injured hundreds of civilians and littered the countryside with deadly unexploded ordnance. The United States has been implicated in the use of cluster munitions via its support for Saudi-led forces in the Yemen conflict.

Over 110 countries have ratified the Convention on Cluster Munitions (CCM), which prohibits the use, transfer and stockpiling of cluster munitions. The United States, which has killed more people with cluster munitions than any other country, is not a signatory.

A 2008 report by the United Nations explains the devastating impact cluster munitions have on the populations where they are used by the United States and its allies:

Over three decades after cluster munitions were used in Laos and Vietnam, they continue to cause death and injury, disrupt the economic activities of ordinary people, and hamper the implementation of development projects there. Even rapid large-scale clearance efforts, such as those that have been implemented in Kosovo and Lebanon, cannot prevent cluster munition contamination from having an impact. In Kosovo, civilian casualties from cluster munitions are still being reported, and in Lebanon, despite clearance beginning immediately after the 2006 conflict, it could not prevent casualties among the population as they returned to their homes and livelihoods.

The report continues:

Submunitions can prevent or hinder the safe return of refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs) and hamper humanitarian, peace-building, and development efforts. Unexploded cluster munitions also pose a physical threat to humanitarian workers and peacekeepers.

The White House claims to have discussed and deliberated the move with the utmost care. The decision-makers would have been fully briefed on these known consequences of cluster munitions, and proceeded with them regardless.

Reporting on the decision by Biden to send the weapons, the New York Times wrote, “Mr. Biden has come under steady pressure from President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, who argues that the munitions—which disperse tiny, deadly bomblets—are the best way to kill Russians who are dug into trenches and blocking Ukraine’s counteroffensive to retake territory.”

The role of Zelensky in promoting a decision to send weapons that will maim Ukrainian children for generations sums up the role of his government, which serves as an instrument in enforcing the will of the NATO powers over the Ukrainian population.

This latest escalation by the United States must be seen as a warning. Washington will stop at nothing to prevent further military setbacks for its proxy force in Kiev and achieve its military goal of inflicting a strategic defeat on Russia. The same homicidal logic that justifies the deployment of depleted uranium rounds and cluster bombs will be used to justify even greater and more reckless crimes, from the direct entry of NATO into the war to the deployment and use of nuclear weapons.

9 July 2023

Source: countercurrents.org

By Maung Zarni

As a lifelong activist & accidental genocide scholar – I trained as a sociologist of education and had no formal training in law or genocide studies –  I cannot be selective as to which population I remember, even if @UN #UnitedNations create a hierarchy of worth among human populations.”

All victims and survivors are fellow humans, whether I know their names or stories or not.  #srebrenicia I paid my Buddhist customary respect at the genocide memorial last year.  You cannot study genocides and atrocity crimes, out of necessity – because your own ethnic lot are perpetrators, like my situation as a Burmese –  or out of professional interrst – and not be emotionally effected by the subject matter.

Between 2013 and 2015, I spent 3 years conducting genocide education program which involved talking to the survivors in Cambodia and walking tours of killing fields – over 180 sites of mass killings in 4 years, as well as learning from legal experts at the Cambodian tribunal.   I even heard LIVE Khmer Rouge leaders pleading NOT guilty,  while sitting behind the glass wall in the audience gallery.

I heard  the stomach-turning genocide denial by Aung San Suu Kyi at the world’s court (of states) in the Hague in December before the 1st pandemic lockdown worldwide.   I paid multiple visits to Auschwitz, spoke at the biannual conference organised by Auschwitz Museum, and even produced a 50-mimutes film, “Auschwitz:  Lessons Never Learned”, with the able assistance from a Ukrainian filmmaker and his Uzbak colleague and director.  I recently spoke about the inconceivability of peace, truth or reconciliation in Myanmar at Melbourne’s Eco-Socialism Conference in Australia.

Sadly, countries/societies that perpetrate such heinous crimes did not end well, or did not return to normalcy of freedom, rights or bright future.   Many remain stuck in the vicious cycle of wars, and peacetime atrocities.   Sri Lanka, and Cambodia are two examples.  Myanmar is without a doubt one such country, after Sudan, where atrocities continue unabated. It is also a member of ASEAN, a regional bloc, with no regards for political or social rights,  concerns even for genocides (in its region, in Myanmar or Cambodia) , incomparably more impotent and without any principles to speak of, than EU or the African Union.

Bosnia and Herzegovina is another where the situation remains pregnant with pre-genicidal conditions, according to my local friends there.  Hope is an essential ingredient or fuel for grassroots activism.   But hope is typically constrained by the realities.  One ugly reality is outside interests tend to be too keen to rehabilitate genocidal organizations – if doing so advances there own organizations or state economic and strategic interests.

EU was financing Sudan’s recycling of the genocide militia – the Arab-dominated Janjaweed – as “border control” force, after the Sudan’s genocide (to prevent war, grinding poverty and drought-fleeing Africans from reaching the Fortress Europe). Myanmar’s genocidal regime of President Thein Sein was celebrated for opening up Burma as the last economic frontier (or “emerging market”).   Obama held up Myanmar as an example for Iran and N. korea to emulate!    ICG honored Thein Sein with its higest award.

Never mind that it was Thein Sein who officially declared the intent to commit the crime of mass deportation to the visiting   UNHCR head one Antonio Gueteress!  Future Sec. Gen did nothing.    Kofi Annan  shelved “the genocide cable” from Rwanda – because he knew his American Masters- Bill Clinton – M. Albright – had no concern or interest in the looming genocide of Rwandans, and he was promoted to the chief clerk of the UN, and the Norwegians even gave him the Nobel Peace prize.

UN continued with its time dishonoured tradition of promoting depraved and unprincipled bureaucrats or political appointees.   GUETERRESS got the top job, for ignoring the warnings of Rohingya genocide, straight from the horse’s mouth of reformist genocudaire!   Hope without any regards for such criminal realities is tantamount to delusions.

Prospects for genocides – note the plural – remain strong while fascist and militarist ideologies have increasingly become the order of the day, in many places in the world in 2023, including “Big Power” states.  Nazis even won elections in some places in Germany this year! Add the ecological crisis to these troubling global scenario and you get a pretty good idea of where we are heading as a human race.

Maung Zarni is a Burmese educator, academic, and human rights activist.

8 July 2023

By Eldar Emric

NEZUK, Bosnia-Herzegovina (AP) — A solemn peace march started on Saturday through the forests in eastern Bosnia in memory of the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, Europe’s only acknowledged genocide since World War II.

The annual 100-kilometer (60-mile) march retraces a route taken by thousands of men and boys from the Bosniak ethnic group, made up primarily of Muslims, who were slaughtered as they tried to flee Srebrenica after it was captured by Bosnian Serb forces late in the 1992-95 war.

The march is part of several events preceding the commemorations on the actual date of the massacre on July 11.

Nearly 4,000 people joined this year’s march, according to organizers. The event comes as ethnic tensions still persist, with Bosnian Serbs continuing to push for more independence and their open calls for separation.

“I come here to remember my brother and my friends, war comrades, who perished here,” said Resid Dervisevic, who was among those who took this route back in 1995. “I believe it is my obligation, our obligation to do this, to nurture and guard (our memories).”

Osman Salkic, another Srebrenica survivor, said, “Feelings are mixed when you come here, to this place, when you know how people were lying (dead) here in 1995 and what the situation is like today.”

The war in Bosnia erupted in 1992 after the former Yugoslavia broke up and Bosnian Serbs launched a rebellion and a land grab to form their own state and join Serbia. More than 100,000 people died before the war ended in 1995 in a U.S.-brokered peace agreement.

In July 1995, more than 8,000 Bosniak males were separated by Serb troops from their wives, mothers and sisters, chased through woods around Srebrenica and killed. Bosnian Serb soldiers dumped the victims’ bodies in numerous mass graves scattered around the eastern town in an attempt to hide the evidence of the crime.

Before Russia invaded Ukraine, Bosnia’s carnage was considered the worst in Europe since WWII. There have been fears that the separatist policies of pro-Russian Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik could fuel further instability as the war rages in Ukraine.

Despite rulings from two U.N. courts, Dodik has denied that genocide took place in Srebrenica, even as the remains of newly identified victims are continuously being unearthed from mass graves. They are reburied each year on July 11, the day the killing began in 1995.

A U.N. war crimes court in The Hague, Netherlands, has sentenced to life in prison both the wartime Bosnian Serb political leader Radovan Karadzic and the ex-military commander Ratko Mladic for orchestrating the genocide.

So far, the remains of more than 6,600 people have been found and buried at a vast and ever-expanding memorial cemetery outside Srebrenica. The remains of 30 more victims will be laid to rest there on Tuesday.

8 July 2023

Source: apnews.com

By Edward Curtin

Social psychosis is widespread. In the words of the British psychiatrist, R. D. Laing, “The condition of alienation, of being asleep, of being unconscious, of being out of one’s mind, is the condition of the normal man.”

He was not referring to raving, drooling, hitting-your-head-against-the-wall lunacy but a taken-for-granted acceptance of a world long teetering on the edge of nuclear extinction, to take the most extreme example, but surely only one of many. The insouciant acceptance and support of psychotic rulers who promote first-strike nuclear war is very common. First strike nuclear policy is United States policy.

I recently wrote an article about the dangers of the fourteen U.S. Trident submarines. These subs constantly cruise under the oceans carrying 3,360 nuclear warheads equivalent to 134,400 Hiroshima bombs. All are on first strike triggers. And of course these are supplemented by all the land and air based nukes. My point was not very complicated: now that the United States government has abrogated all nuclear weapons treaties and continues to escalate its war against Russia in Ukraine, we are closer to nuclear annihilation than ever before.

This conclusion is shared by many esteemed thinkers such as the late Daniel Ellsberg who died  on June 16, 2023 and whose 2017 book The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner, makes clear that nuclear war, waged intentionally or by mistake or accident, is very possible. In the months before he died, he warned that this is now especially true with the situation in Ukraine and the U.S. provocations against China.

The Grayzone’s Max Blumenthal recently addressed the UN Security Council on the danger of U.S. actions in Ukraine and asked:

Will we see another Douma deception, but this time in Zaporizhzhia?

Why are we doing this? Why are we tempting nuclear annihilation by flooding Ukraine with advanced weapons and sabotaging negotiations at every turn?

Finian Cunningham has just raised the specter of a thermonuclear catastrophe initiated by a U.S./Ukrainian false flag attack on the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant.

So my article was in no way unusual, except for my concentration on the Trident submarines.

When, against my better judgment, I read some commentators’ responses to my piece at a few websites where my article was posted, I was taken aback when I read the following [all emphases are mine]:

“Like many other boomers, Edward J Curtin Jr is caught up in ‘nuclear terror’ … whereas on 4chan you see that a large portion of the young generation has come to accept the massive evidence that Hiroshima & Nagasaki were chemically firebombed like Tokyo, and ‘nuclear weapons’ most likely do not exist at all. The 10 alleged ‘nuclear powers’ have had reasons to hoax together, just like the global collusion on ‘covid’ & ‘vaccines’.

So, the point is? Subs with nukes have been cruising around the world’s oceans for over 60 years, back to the time when they tried to scare us with the Cuban missile crisis. I was on a fast attack sub during the Vietnam war, friend of mine got boomer duty, which is what they call the ones that carry the missiles. They’re there for show, they aren’t going to use them. Yes, they should be banned internationally, just in case. But as with the Nuremberg trials and principles, that’s not nearly enough. We’re going to need to create our own New World Order

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper

     I vote for the bang!

The nuke is exaggerated. Reality is that too many will survive a nuclear WWIII.

There will still be too many useless eaters and psychos left in the underground bunkers no matter how many nukes we drop. Like Chernobyl it will only develop to paradises for animals, natives and homeless on food stamps, while we the exceptionals will suffer from an underground life for 50 years without seeing natural light .

A global virus and for double insurance a coupled vaxx, will be a much more effective tool to clean the filth and double shareholders profit..

Dear Ed the sea monsters about as real as nukes.

Another one of the “elites” hoaxes.”

To hear that there are no nuclear weapons and never were; to learn that some in their embrace of nihilism hope for a nuclear holocaust; to read that nuclear weapons are never going to be used because they only exist for show – well, this at least confirmed my suspicion that many who comment on articles are either bonkers or trolls or both.

Some probably have nothing better to do than inform writers how wrong they are.  It frightened me.  It made me wonder how many of the millions of silent ones think similarly or have come to embrace hopelessness as a way of life – the feeling that they have no power because that has been drilled into them from birth.  I have long thought that cultural normality can be understood as the use of one’s freedom to create a prison, a cell in which one can convince oneself that one is safe because the authorities have established a sacred umbrella to protect one from an apocalyptic hard rain that they never think is going to fall.

The Pew Research Center recently surveyed the American public on their sixteen greatest fears.  Nuclear war was not one them. 

It was as if nuclear weapons did not exist, as if they have been buried in the cellar of public awareness.  As if Mad Magazine’s  Alfred E. Newman’s motto was the national motto: “What? Me worry?”  No doubt more Americans are aware of the gross public spectacle of Joey Chestnut stuffing his mouth with sixty-five hot dogs in ten minutes than they are of the Biden administration’s insane escalation toward nuclear war in Ukraine.  We live in Guy Debord’s “Society of the Spectacle.”

Although he was writing years ago, Ronald Laing’s words sound ironically prescient today after so many years of endless propaganda, the destruction of human experience resulting in destructive behavior, and the relentless diminishment of human beings to the status of machines:

At this moment in history, we are all caught in the hell of frenetic passivity. We find ourselves threatened by extermination that will be reciprocal, that no one wishes, that everyone fears, that may just happen to us ‘because’ no one knows how to stop it. There is one possibility of doing so if we can understand the structure of this alienation of ourselves from our experience, our experience from our deeds, our deeds from human authorship. Everyone will be carrying out orders. Where do they come from? Always from elsewhere. Is it still possible to reconstitute our destiny out of the hellish and inhuman fatality?

That is the key question now that more than fifty years have elapsed since Laing penned those words in his now classic book, The Politics of Experience(isbn.nu).  He said then, which is exponentially truer today, that “machines are already becoming better at communicating with each other than human beings with each other.”  Talking about deep things has become passé for so many.

If we don’t start worrying and unlove the machines, we are doomed sooner or later.  Sooner is probable.  Nuclear weapons are very real.  They are poised and ready to fly.

If we continue to live in denial of the madness of those who provoke their use while calmly promoting first-strike policies as the U.S. government does, we are worse than fools.  We are suicidal.

As Daniel Ellsberg told us, “Don’t wait ‘till the bombs are actually falling.”  That will be too late.  There is no doubt that before a nuclear war can happen, we must go insane, normally so.

Let’s make the few protest voices in the wilderness the cries of hundreds of millions:

End nuclear weapons now before they end us.

Stop escalating the war in Ukraine now.

Make peace with Russia and China now.

“There is such a thing as being too late,” Martin Luther King, Jr. told us on April 4, 1967, one year to the day before he was assassinated in a U.S. government plot.

“We still have a choice today: nonviolent coexistence or violent coannihilation.”

*

Edward Curtin is a prominent author, researcher and sociologist based in Western Massachusetts.

7 July 2023

Source: www.globalresearch.ca

By Iqbal Jassat

Pariah regimes are known to decay until they turn lifeless. South Africa under white minority rule is a perfect example. It stagnated both in morality and authority, despite claiming staunch Christian values and nuclear power.

Israel faces a similar ignominious end. As a replica of the South African National Party’s apartheid ideology, coupled with racist Zionism and underpinned by settler colonialism, Israel has reached the end of an inglorious reign.

Just as South Africa in its final throes committed horrendous atrocities in the foolish belief that the slaughter of anti-apartheid opponents would allow it to sustain its oppressive rule, Israel today is caught in the same rut.

Israel naively believes that possessing nukes along with a powerful army replenished with sophisticated weapons and having the back of the United States of America, makes it invincible.

The “go to hell” approach whereby it conducts daily rituals of cold-blooded assassinations has all the hallmarks of a rotten regime. Brute military force to punish Palestinians for daring to demand fundamental human rights epitomizes medieval tyranny.

As successive Israeli war criminals keep repeating blunders in pursuit of misplaced Jewish supremacy, they clearly are blinded by hate and prejudice against the indigenous Palestinian population of Muslims and Christians.

Foolhardy and stubborn adherence to policies that are not only in conflict with universally accepted norms of human rights but also at odds with divinely inspired religious and spiritual values is a mirror-reflection of the old South Africa.

Unlike rational understanding and acceptance of the inevitability of mistakes having an ability to come back to haunt, Israel persists doggedly to discriminate, oppress and punish Palestinians, with gusto and impunity.

Four decades ago in 1982, Israel miscalculated as it continues to do, by thinking that driving Yasser Arafat and his PLO fighters out of Beirut into exile in Tunisia, would annihilate Palestinian resistance.

In fact, Menachem Begin, an arch-terrorist responsible for genocidal acts resulting in ethnic cleansing, suggested during a speech as Prime Minister to the Knesset during the PLO’s expulsion, that Israel was on the verge of enjoying 40 years of peace.

Begin cited the Biblical passage “and the land was quiet for forty years,” saying it might well apply to Israel now that “the northern border threat had been dealt with.”

Exactly a repeat of South Africa’s false paradigm which Israeli leaders have followed since 1948: the narrative that applying military force will keep the colonial entity “safe and peaceful”.

The blunder of Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon not only failed to bring “peace”, it resulted in forty years of painful consequences.

According to a Haaretz report, Zionist leadership failed to recognize and acknowledge that resistance to Israeli occupation in general and by the Palestinian movement, in particular, was much bigger than the PLO.

To its cost, Israel’s War on Lebanon saw the emergence of Hezbollah, a potent adversary of the colonial regime’s invasion and horrendous massacres in Sabra and Shatila among others.

And all the while in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, grievous atrocities committed by Israel against a defenseless population, sowed the seeds of the first Intifada in 1987 and the rise of Hamas.

Israel’s calculation of weakening the PLO by exiling Arafat backfired as dismally as apartheid South Africa’s war on the liberation movements. Imprisoning leaders of the freedom struggle such as Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu, Ahmed Kathrada, Robert Sobukwe and cold-blooded execution of Steve Biko, Ahmed Timol, and many more cadres, failed to secure apartheid’s illegal reign.

Whether Israel assassinates journalists such as Shereen Abu Akleh; imprisons and tortures leaders of the Resistance; demolishes homes and destroys farmlands; raids, plunders and bombs Gaza; it cannot subdue Palestine’s spirited struggle to free itself from the yoke of Zionist brutality.

As South Africa learned so will Israel, that wielding military power to eliminate as many targets as it wants, will not attain “security” nor sustain any of Zionism’s ill-gotten gains.

Islamic Jihad’s successful thwarting of Israel’s unprovoked onslaught in Gaza, has allowed it to emerge victorious and an important component of Palestinian resistance.

Alongside Hamas and Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad has entrenched itself as a force capable to deter Israeli aggression. More importantly, the message it proclaims is that the Palestinian people will neither retreat nor surrender.

Iqbal Jassat is an Executive Member of the South Africa-based Media Review Network.

22 August 2022

Source: palestinechronicle.com

By Sandeep Pandey

The sharp reaction to Wall Street Journal journalist Sabrina Siddiqui and the online harassment faced by her on asking a question of Prime Minister Narendra Modi during his recent joint press conference with President Joe Biden in Washington D.C. on the discrimination against religious minorities and silencing of critics is just a taste of attack on press freedom in India. Had she been in India she would have lost her job by now and would be looking to start her own portal as most senior independent minded reputed journalists in India are doing now. Hence, it was no surprise when Reporters Without Borders ranked India 161 out of 180 countries on Press Freedom Index earlier this year.

This article will analyse Modi’s address to the Congress, in which democracy has been hailed as the cornerstone of India United States partnership.

Talking about the tradition of debate in house, Modi said, ‘Being a citizen of a vibrant democracy myself, I can admit one thing Mister Speaker – you have a tough job! I can relate to the battles of passion, persuasion and policy. I can understand the debate of ideas and ideology.’ Compare this to the reality where most bills have been passed in the Indian Parliament in recent years without any debate. The manner in which farmers’ bills were passed made the entire opposition sit in protest overnight in the premises of Parliament complex. And while the opposition was absent from the house the government took advantage and got the Labour Codes approved doing away with a number of Labour laws. Even the ruling party members of parliament do not get a chance to express their opinion. They are supposed to blindly vote in favour of any resolution moved by the government as a favour to Modi and his Home Minister Amit Shah who have ensured their victory and a seat in Parliament.

When praising American Democracy Modi said, ‘The foundation of America was inspired by the vision of a nation of equal people. Throughout your history, you have embraced people from around the world. And, you have made them equal partners in the American dream. There are millions here, who have roots in India. Some of them sit proudly in this chamber. There is one behind me, who has made history!’ He should have been asked if he considers assimilation a strengthening feature of democracy then why in India Muslims are being hounded and have been reduced to second grade citizens. The ruling Bhartiya Janata Party does not have a single Muslim Member of Parliament. Does it not consider 14% population of the country, which is mostly indigenous – not immigrants, worth being represented in the nation’s legislature? Kamala Harris is a minority in U.S., just as Muslims are in India.

Referring to the cherished values of democracy he said, ‘Over two centuries, we have inspired each other through the lives of great Americans and Indians. We pay tribute to Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Junior. We also remember many other who worked for liberty, equality and justice.’ It is amazing that Modi can talk about these values with temerity when at least six Muslim students and youth are in jail in Delhi on false charges of having a role in 2020 riots related to anti-Citizenship Amendment Act protests and twelve intellectuals, lawyers, professors, activists, journalists are in jail on false charges related to Bhima Koregaon case of 2018, all of them under Unlawful Activities Prevention Act in which it is extremely difficult to get bail and the trail has not even begun.

Talking about the diversity of India he said, ‘We have over 2,500 political parties. About 20 different parties govern various states of India. We have 22 official languages and thousands of dialects, and yet, we speak in one voice.’ If diversity is a reality of Indian State, it has existed from before and the credit for it goes to the freedom fighters and the makers of our Constitution. Had BJP or its parent organisation Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh played any role in laying the foundations of our country or drafting the Constitution we don’t know how much of the diversity would have reflected today. Modi’s favourite international leader was Xi Jinping until Xi ordered Chinese incursions in the India territory. Modi probably fantasised the one party rule and an authoritarian ruler in India based on the Chinese design. Given a chance Modi, Shah and BJP would not allow opposition parties to be in power anywhere. They are busy carrying out their machinations between the elections so that opposition governments can fall and be replaced by ones where BJP has a key role. Also, who doesn’t know the obsession of RSS with Hindu, Hindi, Hindustan. Had it not been for the strident opposition from Tamil Nadu, BJP would have gone ahead with imposing Hindi as the national language. This is the vision of RSS/BJP of country speaking in one ‘voice.’

He informed that, ‘Today, there are more than 850 million smart phones and internet users in the country,’ but forgot to add that India is a country which has enforced most number of internet shutdowns in the last five years. He further said, ‘We protected our people with 2.2 billion doses of made-in-India Covid vaccines, and that too free of cost.’ The reality that the world would remember of India during Covid times is walking millions on roads trying to reach their homes, inadequate beds in hospitals, shortage of Oxygen supply, dead bodies lining up outside crematoriums or floating in river Ganga and PM addressing crowded election rallies in West Bengal while the government was enforcing masks and safe distancing.

Talking of women he said, ‘India’s vision is not just of development which benefits women. It is of women led development, where women lead the journey of progress. A woman has risen from a humble tribal background, to be our Head of State.’ Modi has the audacity to talk about this so soon after the entire world has witnessed how women wrestlers had to face harassment at the hand of police when fighting against sexual misconduct of a BJP leader. They were dragged by police as if they were miscreants and cases were filed against them. They still haven’t got justice and the accused Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh is roaming around free. Not long back the country has witnessed with the complicity of the Home Ministry the pre-mature release of 11 rapists of Bilkis Bano and murderers of her family members. Who is going to take the claims of Modi seriously who humiliated the President by not inviting her to the inauguration ceremony of the new Parliament building the same day when female wrestlers were being dragged on streets of Delhi?

On Environment Modi said, ‘A spirit of democracy, inclusion and sustainability defines us. It also shapes our outlook to the world, India grows while being responsible about our planet…..At the Glasgow Summit, I proposed Mission LiFE – Lifestyle for Environment. This is a way to make sustainability a true people’s movement. Not leave it to be the job of governments alone.’ Yet, when distinguished scientist-saint Professor G.D. Agrawal aka Swami Gyan Swaroop Sanand fasted for saving Ganga in Haridwar in 2018 and wrote four letters to Modi for intervention, he did not get a response. Only after his death on the 112th day Modi tweeted a condolence message. In reality, Modi government has relaxed the environmental norms to make it easier for the businesses. It should be a matter of shame that in 2022 India finished last among 180 countries on Environment Performance Index of the World Economic Forum.

Hence Modi’s speech in U.S. Congress was rhetoric without substance. In fact, it was misleading and illusory.

Sandeep Pandey is General Secretary of Socialist Party (India) E-mail: ashaashram@yahoo.com

4 July 2023

Source: countercurrents.org

By Rokhaya Diallo

Since the video went viral of the brutal killing by a police officer of Nahel, a 17-year-old shot dead at point-blank range, the streets and housing estates of many poorer French neighbourhoods have been in a state of open revolt. “France faces George Floyd moment,” I read in the international media, as if we were suddenly waking up to the issue of racist police violence. This naive comparison itself reflects a denial of the systemic racist violence that for decades has been inherent to French policing.

I first became involved in antiracist campaigning after a 2005 event that had many parallels with the killing of Nahel. Three teenagers aged between 15 and 17 were heading home one afternoon after playing football with friends when they were suddenly pursued by police. Although they had done nothing wrong (and this was confirmed by a subsequent inquiry) these terrified youngsters, these children, hid from the police in an electricity substation. Two of them, Zyed Benna and Bouna Traoré, were electrocuted. The third, Muhittin Altun, suffered appalling burns and life-changing injuries.

Those boys could have been my little brothers, or my younger cousins. I remember the sense of incredulity: how could they simply lose their lives to such terrible injustice? “If they go in there [to the power plant], I don’t fancy their chances of making it” were the chilling words spoken by one of the police officers as he watched this horrific event play out.

France was ablaze for weeks with the rioting that followed – the worst in years. But just as now, with the death of Nahel, the initial media and political reaction in 2005 was to criminalise the victims, to scrutinise their past, as if any of it could justify their atrocious deaths. As if responsibility for their tragedy lay in their own hands. Nicolas Sarkozy, who was interior minister at the time, sullied the memory of young people whose fear had led to their death with the remark: “If you have nothing to hide, you don’t run when you see the police.”

The numbers of cases of police brutality grow relentlessly every year. In France, according to the Defender of Rights, young men perceived to be black or of north African origin are 20 times more likely to be subjected to police identity checks than the rest of the population. The same institution denounced the absence of any appeal against being checked as a form of systemic police discrimination. Why would we not feel scared of the police?

In 1999, our country, the supposed birthplace of human rights, was condemned by the European court of human rights for torture, following the sexual abuse by police of a young man of north African origin. In 2012 Human Rights Watch said: “the identity check system is open to abuse by the French police … These abuses include repeated checks – “countless”, in the words of most interviewees – sometimes involving physical and verbal abuse.” Now, after the death of Nahel, a UN rights body has urged France to address “profound problems of racism and racial discrimination” within its law enforcement agencies.

Even our own courts have condemned the French state for “gross negligence”, ruling in 2016 that “the practice of racial profiling was a daily reality in France denounced by all international, European, and domestic institutions and that for all that, despite commitments made by the French authorities at the highest level, this finding had not led to any positive measures”. More recently, in December 2022, the UN committee on the elimination of racial discrimination denounced both the racist discourse of politicians and police ID checks “disproportionately targeting certain minorities”.

Despite such overwhelming findings, our president, Emmanuel Macron, still considers the use of the term “police violence” to be unacceptable. This time, Macron has unequivocally condemned an act that he called “unacceptable” – which is significant. Yet I fear that the focus is being placed on an individual police officer instead of questioning entrenched attitudes and structures within the police that are perpetuating racism. And not a single one of the damning reports and rulings has led to any meaningful reform of the police as an institution.

Worse, a law passed in 2017 has made it easier for police to resort to the use of firearms. Officers can now shoot without even having to justify it on the grounds of self-defence. Since this change in the law, according to the researcher Sebastian Roché, the number of fatal shootings against moving vehicles has increased fivefold. Last year, 13 people were shot dead in their vehicles.

Nahel’s death is another chapter in a long and traumatic story. Whatever our age, many of us French who are descended from postcolonial immigration carry within us this fear combined with rage, the result of decades of accumulated injustice. This year, we commemorate the 40^th anniversary of a seminal event. In 1983, Toumi Djaïdja, a 19-year-old from a Lyon banlieue, became the victim of police violence that left him in a coma for two weeks. This was the genesis of the March for Equality and Against Racism, the first antiracist demonstration on a national scale, in which 100,000 people took part.

For 40 years this movement has not stopped calling out the violence we see targeted at working-class neighbourhoods and more broadly black people and people of north African origin. The crimes of the police are at the root of many of the uprisings in France’s most impoverished urban areas, and it is these crimes that must be condemned first. After years of marches, petitions, open letters and public requests, a disaffected youth finds no other way to be heard than by rioting. It is difficult to avoid asking if, without so many uprisings in cities across France, Nahel’s death would have garnered the attention it has. And as Martin Luther King rightly said: “A riot is the language of the unheard.”

Rokhaya Diallo is a writer, journalist, film director and activist

4 July 2023

Source: countercurrents.org

By Jean Shaoul

Israel’s military launched an aerial and armoured vehicle attack on the northern West Bank city of Jenin and the city’s densely populated refugee camp in the early hours of Monday morning, killing at least 10 Palestinians, including three children, and wounding dozens more. With 10 of the wounded in serious condition, the death toll is expected to mount.

Some 2,000 Israeli soldiers are involved in a mass arrest operation, with at least 20 Palestinians thus far detained for further interrogation.

Israel’s air strikes on Jenin have hit homes, the city’s utilities, a hospital and a mosque, with ground troops storming the Al-Ansar Mosque, claiming—falsely—that armed men were holed up inside it and others were preventing ambulances from transporting people to the hospital. Israeli forces have surrounded the refugee camp that is home to 14,000 Palestinians and are not allowing anyone to enter or leave. Connections to the internet, the electricity network and water supplies have been cut. Soldiers attacked journalists wearing press vests, including staff from Al Araby TV, who were covering the offensive and their video cameras set on fire.

The Lion’s Den, a Palestinian militant group based in Jenin, called on people across the West Bank and Gaza to mobilise and demonstrate in support of the people in Jenin, urging them to close the roads and routes used by Israeli forces and settlers to get their supplies into the city. Palestinians in Gaza have responded by gathering along the border with Israel, waving flags and setting fire to tyres to protest Israel’s attack on Jenin. They were met with tear gas from Israeli troops.

This criminal operation is the largest since Israel’s siege of the Jenin refugee camp in April 2002 that killed at least 52 Palestinians and left many homeless. Twenty-three Israeli soldiers lost their lives in that battle. It follows repeated demands from the fascistic forces in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition government for the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) to launch a large-scale military operation to suppress the Palestinians—similar to its murderous assaults on the besieged Gaza Strip—in the West Bank, which Israel has occupied illegally since the 1967 Arab-Israeli war. Such an operation, which would meet fierce resistance, would lead to mass killings and devastation. National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir said the army needed to “demolish buildings” and kill “thousands of terrorists,” while encouraging his supporters to “run to the hill tops and settle them.”

IDF Chief Spokesman Brigadier General Daniel Hagari said the operation was a “wide scale effort against terror”, referring to the militant Palestinian groups, including Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Lions’ Den, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and others. While it was focused on Jenin, it could expand to other parts of the northern West Bank. He refused to say how long the operation would last but gave the impression it would last at least a week. He added that the military was on high alert in case Gaza, Lebanon’s Hezbollah or other groups tried to intervene or attack Israel.

Israel’s National Security Advisor Tzachi Hanegbi claimed that “the intelligence that has been accumulated has indicated that there is an effort by Iran and its proxies, Hamas and Islamic Jihad, to transfer a lot of money and weapons to terrorists.”

Major General Yehuda Fox, the chief of the IDF’s Central Command, insisted the Jenin operation was not going to be a one-off. “There is a series of operations here, just like we were here a week ago and two weeks ago, we will finish this operation, and we will come back in a few days or a week, and we will not allow this city of refuge for terror.”

Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, only recently lionised by opposition leaders for criticizing Netanyahu’s plans to overhaul the judiciary, approved the attack. He said the military operation in the West Bank city of Jenin “is progressing as planned.” The troops “will receive full support to do whatever is necessary and to operate on the ground and in the air, in order to protect the citizens of Israel and preserve full freedom of action throughout [the West Bank].”

This was tantamount to announcing a military dictatorship over the West Bank, including in areas designated under the 1993 Oslo Accords as under the full control of the Palestinian Authority (PA). Furthermore, it makes explicit what has long been implicit, the PA’s complete irrelevance as far as Israel—and Washington—is concerned.

According to Ha’aretz, Israel informed the US of its intention of carrying out the operation in Jenin and was evidently given the green light. On Monday, the White House National Security Council stated, “We support Israel’s security and right to defend its people against Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and other terrorist groups.”

Far-right forces have repeatedly demanded the annexation of the West Bank—as has Netanyahu himself—in pursuit of their aim of establishing a Jewish supremacist state in both Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories. Monday’s attack on Jenin follows a series of murderous military raids in the West Bank, constant settler violence watched over and protected by the Israel Defense Forces, and the government’s announcement of 13,000 new settlement homes since the start of the year. The IDF’s deployment of an Apache helicopter and armed drones in Jenin two weeks ago marked a significant escalation in Israeli aggression, which has seen around 190 Palestinians in the West Bank, Gaza, East Jerusalem and Israel killed since Netanyahu’s far-right coalition took office.

Monday’s assault on Jenin, following months of near nightly raids on Jenin and Nablus, comes as Palestinians in the West Bank face an increasingly desperate economic situation. The 1993 Oslo Accords, which saw foreign direct investment in Israel soar and in practice ended the Arab League boycott of Israel, have crippled the Palestinian economy. Israel imposed restrictions on the movement of people, labour and goods, fragmented the territories with settlements, settler-only access roads and nature reserves, confiscated land, water and other natural resources, tied the Palestinian economy to the Israeli economy and cut it off from international markets.

Industry has withered, farmers have been driven off their land and per capita income has remained stagnant since 1994. The PA is utterly dependent upon international aid, even as the UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, announced last month that the $107 million in new funds falls significantly short of the $300 million needed to support millions of Palestinians in the occupied territories and refugee camps in neighbouring countries.

Thirty percent of the young people in the West Bank—where 50 percent of the population is under 30 years of age—are unemployed. More than one-third of young people who are employed work in the informal sector, while more than half of those working in the formal sector have no social security, medical insurance or entitlement to sick and holiday leave.

Netanyahu has deliberately stoked war, targeting the Palestinians in the Occupied Territories, Israel’s Arab citizens and neighbouring states, above all, Iran and Syria, as he faces widespread opposition to his efforts to assume dictatorial powers by neutering a largely compliant judiciary that has provided cover for Israel’s expansionist drive and relentless attacks on the Palestinians. His aim is to deflect social tensions outwards against a perceived external enemy.

For 25 consecutive weeks, hundreds of thousands of Israelis have turned out to protest his judicial coup. But this movement is led by bourgeois Zionist parties whose opposition to Netanyahu reflects only their fears that he is endangering the interests of the state. They refuse to link the emerging fascist threat in Israel with opposition to the oppression of the Palestinians. Indeed, on Monday morning, the heads of the biggest opposition parties rushed to support the IDF’s offensive against Jenin.

The Palestinians in Israel and the occupied territories live under a regime of savage economic and military repression and brazen vigilante and settler violence—all upheld by Israel’s judicial system. It is impossible to defend the democratic rights of Jewish Israelis at the same time as defending military dictatorship in the West Bank and Gaza. The main task is to overcome the reactionary Zionist leadership of the protest movement and fight to unite Arab and Jewish workers in a common struggle to defend jobs, living standards and democratic rights, including the national rights of the Palestinian people. This can only be done based on the programme and perspective of international socialism.

4 July 2023

Source: countercurrents.org

By Hyab Yohannes

On October 3, 2013, a devastating tragedy off the coast of Lampedusa resulted in the loss of over 365 lives. Among those who drowned was my dear childhood friend, Alex, whose final text message to me reads: “Born rightless, die rightless”. These were the last words I received from him before he tragically perished without a trace. Alongside Alex was Yohanna, who passed away with her new-born baby still attached to her by the umbilical cord. In the last ten years, I have lost dozens of close relatives, childhood friends, and former colleagues. The homes of the drowned still quiet and empty, filled with the shrieks of their grieving loved ones. This sense of stillness and emptiness, alongside the haunting pain of the bereaved, continue to devour my conscience. It feels as though I am stuck in a limbo between night and day, as if I am still dreaming. Despite the sun rising, the darkness of the night still lingers.

Since 2014, the IOM Missing Migrants Project has reported that more than 56,216 forced migrants have disappeared in perilous journeys, including crossing violent borders, lifeless deserts, treacherous waters, and impoverished refugee camps. More than 23,437 bodies have not been recovered at all. Before the latest tragic incident along the Mediterranean coast of Greece, just this year alone, over 2,091 forced migrants have lost their lives. Now we have more people to add to that tally. The Guardian reports that hundreds of migrants, including 100 children, are believed to have died in this latest incident. Only 78 deaths have been confirmed according to reports, and it remains uncertain whether the remaining bodies will ever be recovered. All of these numbers represent human beings who have suffered torturous deaths. These bodies once contained lives, before they were “discounted” in “unimaginable worlds and uninhabitable places”. They once had hopes for a better life, but their yearning for freedom ended tragically.

I want to remind the reader a few things about these human calamities.

First, we must grasp the severity of the situation. The conditions faced by forced migrants in the Mediterranean Sea and elsewhere are no different from those experienced by slaves during the transatlantic slave trade between the 16th and 19th centuries. Evoking the slave condition is not just a symbolic reference to enslaved people in the past, but rather a reminder that refugees are currently experiencing similar conditions before our very eyes. We must come to terms with the fact that the dehumanisation of these racialised bodies remains endlessly normalised. It only takes a glimpse at the apocalyptic images of bodies floating in the sea, innocent people brutally tortured by traffickers in torture camps, children killed during perilous journeys, and families consumed by grief at the loss of their loved ones to imagine the gravity of the human calamity. If we cannot recognise these deaths as human deaths and their suffering as human suffering, I doubt there is an iota of humanity left in us. I truly doubt that humanity will hold any meaning beyond those few who benefit from its destruction.

Second, it is time to recognise that our fate is inextricably intertwined with the lives of those who die. With each death, we lose a significant portion of our humanity. If we get accustomed to these suffering and normalise them, it is because we have lost sight of our own humanity and mortality. This might sound like an emotional plea, but it’s actually a warning. It is a warning against an irrevocable exodus from humanity to catastrophic raciality.

Thirdly, overcoming this human calamity is not the responsibility of only those who suffer its consequences or those who smuggle them. Rather, it is the responsibility of all humanity. Those who create the conditions for this necropolitical spectacle bear the greatest responsibility towards those whom their (in)actions dehumanise.

Finally, dealing with this challenge necessitates a profound change. It requires warmongers, dictators, and their masters to silence their guns and stop creating refugees in the first place. It requires acknowledging the violence of (b)ordering and sharing culpability for this human calamity. It requires governments to take responsibility for their catastrophic abdication of responsibility and for transforming politics into a politics of death. The media and journalists can come out of the shadows of political scandals and speak up for, and with, those yearning to breathe. Ordinary citizens must demand justice for all.

Hyab Teklehaimanot Yohannes, Research Associate, University of Glasgow.

16 June 2023

Source: blogs.law.ox.ac.uk

By Sandeep Banerjee

Naël Merzouk (17) dropped out of school to earn a little and became a pizza delivery boy some months back. His mother is single, his father left her before Nahel saw this earth. On June 27 morning he was driving a hired car with two passengers when he was signalled to stop in a traffic crossing at Nanterre, the Parisian outskirt where he lived; it was very apparent that he was too young to get a driving license. What shocked France was a video captured by a passerby who posted it in social media and it was somewhat after the big media houses showed only the first police version of the event: that the policeman shoot being afraid of getting run over by the car when Naël was trying to escape, a story that the video had smashed. People saw that the boy was killed point-blank while he tried to run his car away. Naël had Algerian/Muslim lineage and he is the third person to die this year in police shootout in traffic crossing, last year the figure was 22! And no wonder, most of the victims were Black and/or Muslim, while the French police has already gained a racist/islamophobe fame.

As usual the big media is showing and lamenting ‘riots’, ‘violence’, ‘loss of business’ and etc. But what was unusual that President Macron would say the incident was “inexcusable and unforgivable” and the National Assembly would observe a minute’s silence! This was unacceptable, naturally, to fascist party head Madame Le Pen and many far-right groups. The pent-up anger within the lower depth of the society usually gets expressed as ‘riots’ or ‘violence’ as aftermath of such incidents, and this time also it is happening, though nobody guessed it would continue so long. Thousands of cars and dozens of police stations were torched. Also, when rage is expressed like this there are times it crosses ‘limit’.

Naël’s mother and grandma expressed their anger and mother called for a protest via tik-tok, which thousands joined.

As it is still illegal to collect race/religion/ethnicity data of persons in France even by national census authority, there can only be estimates and once such estimate says about 40% of French people might be partly foreign-descent, though it is taken as a guesswork.

However, as far as poll results can show, it was seen that angry France, the poorer in France has been shifting towards far-right – and thus is dangerous. During the Gillet Jaunes (yellow-vests) protest we have seen far rights assembling and trying to make real racist riot in a few places. It is to be seen whether a Jacobin France, whether a Communard Paris can resurface in coming days and history starts taking forwards steps again.

Sandeep Banerjee is an activist who writes on political and socioeconomic issues and also on environmental issues.

2 July 2023

Source: countercurrents.org