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By Jafar M Ramini

An innocuous phrase, meaning how welcome is the rain as it falls upon this earth beneath, full of goodness and sustenance, the nourishment of life. Not on Gaza.

Four days ago, when the people of Gaza heard the thunder in the heavens and looked towards the sky they saw surveillance drones, Apache helicopters and F-35 war planes bulging with state-of-the-art implements of war. Nothing and no-one was safe. There is no rain. There is only death and destruction, Mr Netanyahu promising more if the Gaza based resistance fighters do not submit. How can they submit, how can they not retaliate? Even when their only weapons are a barrage of rockets, primitive, ineffective and mostly glued together in the garden sheds and fields of Gaza.

Yes, the heavens have opened above Gaza and the harvest for Israel? Three days ago it was four Palestinian school children and their parents. I posted the pictures of the young, hopeful faces on this page. There were more already; fifteen including their parents and neighbours.

The next day the list of the dead had risen to thirty and before I had a chance to post it and show what these so-called enemies of Israel looked like, the tally has risen to thirty-four. I don’t believe that this will be enough for Mr Netanyahu or Mr Ben Gvir. They have promised total devastation and Mr Netanyahu certainly has the where-with-all to achieve it. He is also less popular than he used to be. But, there’s nothing like a good war to bring the people together under one banner.

Jafar M Ramini is a Palestinian writer and political analyst.

13 May 2023

Source: countercurrents.org

By Countercurrents Collective

The U.S. is meddling in Türkiye’s upcoming presidential and parliamentary elections, Ankara’s Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu claimed on Friday.

Speaking to CNN Turk, Soylu weighed in on the decision by presidential candidate Muharrem Ince, who leads the opposition Homeland Party, to drop out of the race on Thursday ahead of Sunday’s vote.

Ince attributed the withdrawal to a “slander campaign,” which involved the release of an alleged sex tape which he dismissed as fake.

The withdrawal of Ince came amid fears among opposition figures that his candidacy could damage the electoral chances of Kemal Kilicdaroglu, the CHP party chairman, who has emerged as the main rival to incumbent President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

“America has been interfering in this election from the very beginning. Biden said that we were not able to do this with a coup in 2016. This time we will do it with an election, not a coup,” Soylu claimed.

“That is basic logic. If we pull Ince we will get the votes that went to him,” he noted.

The minister went on to claim that Ince “was attacked in this election from outside. It is clear who produced it. The perpetrator is the Gulen movement and the U.S.,” Soylu added.

Turkish officials have insisted that the unsuccessful attempt to remove the Erdogan government from office in July 2016 was orchestrated by cleric Fethullah Gulen and his supporters. The failed coup, which resulted in thousands of arrests, also significantly strained U.S.-Türkiye relations as Ankara slammed Washington for harboring Gulen.

Türkiye’s presidential and parliamentary elections are scheduled for May 14. The race for the presidency is expected to largely be a battle between Erdogan and his main rival Kilicdaroglu. While the incumbent has pursued more conservative and independent policies, steering his country away from integration with the EU and fostering close ties with Russia, Kilicdaroglu champions a more Western-aligned approach.

Recent polls show the two locked in a close race. If neither of the candidates garners more than 50% of the vote in the first round, a run-off will be held on May 28.

In a 2020 interview to the New York Times, prior to being elected president, Biden described Erdogan as an “autocrat.” Washington should be “taking a very different approach to him now, making it clear that we support opposition leadership,” he added at the time, citing Erdogan’s crackdown on Kurds and his cooperation with Russia.

Erdogan Scolds Rival Over ‘Russian Interference’ Claim

Another media report said:

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has condemned rival Kemal Kilicdaroglu for claiming without evidence that Moscow is interfering in Türkiye’s upcoming elections. Erdogan claimed that the West, and not Russia, is “manipulating the elections in Turkiye.”

“Kilicdaroglu said that Russia is manipulating the elections in Turkiye. Shame on you!” Erdogan told a crowd of supporters in Istanbul on Friday.

In a Twitter post a day earlier, Kilicdaroglu accused the country’s “Russian friends” of being “behind the montages, conspiracies, deep fakes and tapes that were exposed in this country yesterday.”

“Get your hands off the Turkish state,” Kilicdaroglu warned the supposed Russian meddlers.

Kilicdaroglu was likely referring to the publication of a video showing another presidential candidate, Muharrem Ince, allegedly engaging in an extramarital affair. Ince dropped out of the race on Thursday, blaming followers of exiled cleric Fethullah Gulen, whose political movement Ankara claims orchestrated a failed coup in 2016.

There is zero evidence linking Russia with the publication or production of the tape, and the Kremlin said that it “firmly rejects” Kilicdaroglu’s claims.

“If I say ‘America is manipulating the elections in Turkiye, Germany is manipulating it, France is manipulating it, England is manipulating it’, what would you say?” Erdogan continued, addressing his remarks to Kilicdaroglu.

While Erdogan did not attempt to tie the leak of Ince’s sex tape with any of the Western countries he mentioned, his interior minister, Suleyman Soylu, did. “It is clear who produced it,” he told CNN Turk earlier on Friday. “The perpetrator is the Gulen movement and the U.S.”

Erdogan accused Western media outlets of trying to shift public opinion in Türkiye against him.

“What do all the magazines say on their covers? ‘Erdogan must go.’ Those published in Germany, France and England say so,” he said at Friday’s rally. “How do you put these words on the covers of these magazines? It is not you, not you, the West! It is my nation that will decide.”

This week’s edition of The Economist features the slogans “Erdogan must go” and “save democracy” on its cover, while France’s Le Point and L’Express magazines also featured anti-Erdogan covers.

Türkiye’s presidential and parliamentary elections will take place on Sunday. Recent polling shows Erdogan – a social conservative who steered his country away from integration with the EU – and Kilicdaroglu – a centrist who favors realignment with the West – within single digits of each other.

Moscow Responds To Claims Russia Interfering In Turkish Election

Another media report said:

Moscow has rejected claims made by Turkish opposition candidate Kemal Kilicdaroglu that Russian operatives were interfering in the country’s presidential race.

Russia has a general policy of not meddling in other nations’ elections and would certainly not do so in Türkiye, a nation whose friendship Moscow treasures and whose foreign policy it considers “very responsible, sovereign and thought-out,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Friday.

“We firmly reject such statements,” the Russian official added. “If somebody provided Mr. Kilicdaroglu with such information, they are liars.”

The leader of the Republican People’s Party (CHP) made the allegations on Twitter this week, without explaining what materials he was referring to. Kilicdaroglu, who is currently polling slightly ahead of incumbent President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, urged Moscow to “get its hands off Türkiye,” although he did reiterate his wish for the countries to have positive bilateral relations. The presidential election is set to take place on Sunday.

Erdogan Toprak, a close aide to Kilicdaroglu, told Turkish media that the CHP had monitored “rumors” of Russian interference, which he hoped were not true.

13 May 2023

Source: countercurrents.org

By Countercurrents Collective

Indian National Congress received a resounding victory in Karanataka Assembly Elections. Congress is now leading in 136 seats in the 224 seat Assembly. The ruling far-right Hindu nationalist party BJP is leading in 64 seats and Janata Dal (Secular) in 20 seats. Congress is set to form the government. The Karnataka elections hold broader implications for national politics. The outcome may impact the balance of power at the national level and shape the narrative leading up to the next general elections in the country.

The BJP had won the Karnataka assembly elections in 2018.

The outcome of the Karnataka election is a setback for Modi, who has been facing a series of challenges in recent months, including a slowing economy and rising unemployment.

The electoral battle witnessed a fierce competition between major political parties, including the BJP, Indian National Congress (INC), Janata Dal (Secular) (JD(S)), and regional outfits.

The Congress party has been campaigning on a platform of development and social justice.

The BJP has been campaigning on a platform of Hindutva, or Hindu nationalism.

The Congress party’s win the Karnataka is a major setback for the BJP and could encourage opposition parties to come together to oppose the ruling BJP in next national election in 2024.

13 May 2023

Source: countercurrents.org

By Rima Najjar

On the weekend of the 75th Nakba commemoration, I was in Toronto. A rally in support of Palestine was scheduled down the street from my hotel at Yonge and Dundas Square in the afternoon, not far from Trinity Square, where Canadians have erected a memorial commemorating their “glorious dead” of wars past.

At breakfast that morning, I couldn’t miss the CNN screen above the cereal stand silently flashing its ticker tape about the “Deadly clashes ongoing between Israel and Palestinians” and “1 Killed, 5 wounded as rocket hits Israeli Apartment Building.”

Over the heads of the oblivious hotel guests enjoying their breakfast, I fumed under my breath. No “clashes” these. Israeli raids on the besieged Gaza Strip were continuing for the 5th day “leaving at least 33 Palestinians dead, including children, the elderly and members of Palestinian armed resistance groups who responded to the attacks.”

As both Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Network and Masar Badil — Palestinian Alternative Revolutionary Path Movement have made clear, “these attacks are ongoing Zionist war crimes, funded and supported by US and Western imperialism, a key example of the ongoing colonial violence perpetrated against the Palestinian people, as well as the strength and steadfastness of the people and their resistance.”

Israel’s calculation was to conduct a ‘shock and awe’ campaign, slaughtering targeted families and terrorizing the Gaza Strip. But given how the Palestinian armed resistance has mobilized itself forcing Israel to evacuate at least 85 towns around the Strip, including Sderot in western Naqab, Israel’s terror tactics are once again falling on deaf ears.

As a settler-colonial state created by terrorism, including when Irgun blew up the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, Palestine in 1946 killing more than 90 people, Israel understands best the language of terror. Terrorism is imprinted in its DNA. As is a natural reaction for any usurper, Israel not only metes out terror, it also feels terrorized whether the Palestinian armed resistance is quiet or active.

By never giving up on justice, we Palestinians cast terror in the heart of the enemy even while we are sleeping. In its call to the Palestinian people in the Shatat (diaspora) and the Palestine liberation and solidarity movement, Masar Badil affirmed the role of the Palestinian armed resistance:

“The Palestinian armed resistance are currently engaged in a major battle responding to the crimes of the occupation forces: assassination, siege, colonialism, the attacks on Jerusalem, racism, exploitation, oppression. Palestinians across Palestine, from the river to the sea, are suffering daily from these colonial policies.”

The Palestinian resistance is at the forefront of the battle against imperialism, Zionism and reaction. Glory to our martyred dead.

Note: First published on Medium

_____________
Rima Najjar is a Palestinian whose father’s side of the family comes from the forcibly depopulated village of Lifta on the western outskirts of Jerusalem and whose mother’s side of the family is from Ijzim, south of Haifa.

14 May 2023

Source: countercurrents.org

By Nilofar Suhrawardy

Defying opinion polls predicting a hung assembly, clear victory of Congress in Karnataka elections sends strong signals at several levels. It is as yet too early to view electoral potential of Congress as finished. Negative campaign indulged in by rivals of Congress against Rahul Gandhi and his party colleagues have apparently failed to carry any appeal for people at grass-roots. Use of religious card to arouse aggressive fervour among voters and sway them to favour Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) bears minimal electoral significance. Howsoever “effective” BJP-stalwarts’ fiery electoral speeches may appear to be, the limited electoral impact that they have on voters has been proved by their verdict in Karnataka. Extensive media coverage gained by these campaigns should not be expected to decide or even indicate who/what people choose to support.

Undeniably, people in Karnataka have voted extremely wisely and also shrewdly during these elections. Comparison of the present verdict with that of 2018 may be viewed as an indicator of this reality. Their turnout to cast votes – 73.19% was described by Chief Electoral Officer, Karnataka, as a “record.” The turnout in 2018 was 72.13%. Paradoxically, despite Congress having won more votes than BJP in 2018, it failed to win the needed number of seats. Congress and its allies won 38.14% votes against 36.35% won by BJP-led NDA. On its own strength, BJP failed to sweep the 2018 polls or even win the needed majority. The results led to a hung assembly with BJP as the single largest party. A different picture has been projected this time. Congress has been favoured by more than 43% voters against around 36% supporting BJP. In 2018, JD(S) won 37 seats on strength of around 18% votes. This time, JD(S) has won 19 seats with support of 13.3% voters.

Shrewdness of voters is marked probably by their choosing primarily to favour either Congress, BJP or JD(S) and not letting their votes be wasted by opting to vote for other parties, independents, etc. Had perhaps voters exercised a similar strategy in 2018, the results may not have led to a hung assembly then also. The importance of this fact is further supported by the present fight for 224 seats having been contested by 2,613 candidates of which 918 were independents and 685 from Registered Unrecognized Political Parties (RUPP). True, in 2018 also, around eight percent votes were not cast for either Congress, BJP or JD(S). What bears greater importance, as suggested earlier, is 92% voters’ decision not to let their votes be wasted. Clearly, statistics of a greater number having favoured Congress in 2018 polls cannot be dismissed lightly. It is possible, this reality was not ignored by voters. This is partly suggested by greater difference between votes won by Congress and BJP leading the former to sweep these polls. This is, however, one side of the Karnataka-verdict.

Equally significant is the statistical importance apparently given to 2018 results by Congress leaders. Decision to select Mapanna Mallikarjun Kharge as President of Congress was certainly guided with eye on winning Karnataka polls. Kharge’s Karnataka roots are marked by his having won Assembly elections for a record 10 times. The importance given to this state by Congress party at national level has probably been well received by voters in Karnataka. Even though nominally, at least, his being supported to head the post breaks the notions floated about only Gandhi family holding this authority.

Undeniably, Rahul Gandhi’s Bharat Jodo Yatra (Unite India March) has had a greater impact than expected on Karnataka results. He did not simply pass through the state, addressing a few rallies and similar gatherings. Nature of his march was marked by his literally reaching out to people and addressing them on issues which bear importance for them. The latter includes their economic problems. That this march was a crucial part of Congress campaign for Karnataka elections and coming parliamentary polls cannot be denied. Had the same march been timed just ahead of assembly elections, the impact may not have been the same. Congress has probably taken a leaf from BJP’s communication strategy, that of planning as well as working on its campaign a little ahead of elections. It has apparently learnt that rushing to states at virtually the last minute can be of little help in gaining electorally.

Seats gained by BJP in comparison with victory of Congress and its “success” in 2018 also sends several important messages. Against 104 seats won in 2018, BJP has managed to retain only 65 seats. Undeniably, BJP stalwarts spared no efforts to retain its hold in southern India. Perhaps little importance was given by BJP leaders to people’s verdict in 2018. Karnataka is not Gujarat. Nor it is in the Hindi belt. Besides, had BJP swept the polls in 2018 with more votes than its key rival, it may have signalled the importance this party’s communication strategy holds for people in Karnataka. The present results have signalled quite emphatically Karnataka voters’ refusal to be guided by religious cards used by BJP leaders, negative campaign against their rivals and so forth. Hype raised about its stalwarts had limited impact in 2018 and hardly any now. These are just a few indicators suggesting that BJP can no longer bank on its own communication strategies at least in assembly elections in South India. Electoral rhetoric fails to sway voters when they choose to exercise shrewd wisdom as they seem to have in Karnataka Assembly elections!

Nilofar Suhrawardy is a senior journalist and writer with specialization in communication studies and nuclear diplomacy.

14 May 2023

Source: countercurrents.org

By Akbar E Torbat

The women-led anti-hejab movement that began after the death of Mahsa Amini on September 16, 2022, in Iran, is ongoing. Even though the street protests have subsided, many Iranian women defy to comply with wearing Islamic hejab in public. Nonetheless, the Islamic government is fighting to enforce hejab by various means, including closing stores that admit women without headscarves and preventing women without wearing hejab from entering metros and other public service places such as schools and universities. The government has also installed cameras in various places to monitor hejab enforcement. The enforcement of Islamic hejab has led to many anticlerical protests throughout Iran. The government has dealt with people’s protests by crackdowns, arrests, imprisonments, and executions. Consequently, a violent anticlerical wave has started in Iran.

Several clerics have been killed or injured in various places in Iran in the past few weeks. A senior Islamic cleric Abbas-Ali Suleimani was assassinated by a security guard on April 26, 2023, inside Bank Meli in Babolsar in the Mazandaran Province. Suleimani had previously served for 17 years as the representative of the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei in the province of Sistan-Baluchestan. This province has been the site of many anti-government protests in recent months. According to people who knew Suleimani, he was pro-gender separation in all public places. On the same day, a junior mullah was purposely run over by a car, and on April 29, another cleric was stabbed in the city of Qum. On April 30, Lieutenant Alireza Shahraki, the head of the Saravan District Awareness Police Department, was assassinated. On May 5, the body of a mullah, Ibrahim Fazel, who had been missing for four days, was dragged out of the water in the coastal village of Goldasht in the Province of Mazandaran. On May 7, a mullah was injured after a young man attacked him with a knife in Ahmedabad village of Saveh city in the Central province.

The clerical oligarchy has claimed that the anticlerical incidents have been instigated by the reformists and celebrities inside Iran who are supported by the Western powers. The pro-clerics daily newspaper Kayhan wrote: “These [terrors] and dozens of other examples are just a small part of the efforts of the pro-reform media or domestic-westernization process to complete the puzzle of the enemy in creating hatred in society and social disintegration of the country.”[1]

In recent years, the ruling clerics’ political base has shrunk tremendously. The Middle class is feeling resentment and has turned against the ruling clerics. The clerics and their family members have moved up to the wealthy upper class by accumulating wealth. They engage in rent-seeking activity under the guise of Islamic and anti-imperialist slogans. In contrast, the high rate of inflation has pushed down the middle class to become a part of the dispossessed underpaid laborer, and that has further intensified the anticlerical feelings.

The clerics opiate the masses with promises of rewards in another world after death. They preach to people to pray five times a day to be rewarded by God to go to heaven. Even so, most Iranians have turned against the ruling clergy, as they feel they have been deprived of basic living standards. The young generation of Iranians does not listen to the clerics’ superstitious preaching. Two Iranian political prisoners, Yousef Mehrdad and Sadrollah Fazeli Zari, who had managed a cable channel called “Critique of Superstition and Religion,” were sentenced to death for the charges of “insulting the Prophet and religious sanctities,” “promoting atheism,” and “apostasy.” They were hanged on May 8, 2023. Many other people have been executed on various charges. According to Abdorrahman Boroumand Center for Human Rights in Iran, there have been 798 executions in Iran since the beginning of 2022 to this date.[2]

Ebrahim Raisi became president in a low-turnout election engineered by Khamenei. The results of Raisi’s two years in office include the fastest decline in the national currency’s value, the highest growth of money supply, the highest historical rate of inflation, and the biggest historical collapse of Tehran’s stock indexes in a day. The high rate of inflation has pushed down real wages, which has brought teachers and factory workers to the street to demand higher pay for their work. The country is struggling through the collapse of the nation’s currency, the rial. President Raisi has used printed money borrowed from the Central Bank of Iran (Bank Markazi) to spend on promises he had made two years ago during his presidential campaign. Inflation and financial corruption caused by the clerical leadership and their cronies have intensified anticlerical feelings throughout Iran.

The Islamic regime in Iran has become a Shi’a dictatorship by reactionary clerics. The clerics’ only concern is to remain in power. The Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, controls all three branches of the government directly or indirectly. The ruling clerics have used nepotism and marriage schemes to limit the important positions to themselves and their family members. For example, the current head of the parliament (Majles) Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf is a nephew of the Supreme Leader’s wife. The Supreme Leader’s daughter is married to the son of Ayatollah Mohamad Golpayegani, who is the chief of the Supreme Leader’s office. The Supreme Leader’s son Mujtaba Khamenei is married to a daughter of Gholam-Ali Haddad-Adel, the former head of the parliament. President Ebrahim Raisi is the son-in-law of Ayatollah Ahmad Alamolhoda, the Friday Prayer leader in Mashhad, the hometown of Khamenei. Alamolhoda is also the city’s representative in the Assembly of Experts.

On April 30, 2023, Reza Fatemi Amin, the minister of Industry, Mines, and Trade, was impeached in the parliament to be questioned for providing wrong statistics and prioritizing the interests of two major Iranian automobile companies. The minister was dismissed by the Majles due to the high prices of automobiles and rent-seeking corruption.

So far, the mullahs have not given up their enforcement of hejab, believing that yielding on that issue will open the door to other demands, and those could pave the way for ending the clerical rules, which they are unwilling to accept.

Akbar E. Torbat (atorbat@calstatela.edu) is the author of “Politics of Oil and Nuclear Technology in Iran.”

14 May 2023

Source: countercurrents.org

By Jafar M Ramini

May 15th, is the 75th anniversary of the Palestinian Nakba (Catastrophe). And counting. I say ‘and counting’ because the theft of our land, the occupation, the siege on Gaza, the disposition of our people, the ethnic cleansing of Palestine and replacement of the Palestinian nation, with Jews, often of dual nationality, from around the world, continues more aggressively than ever. So does the building of illegal settlements to house those interlopers. They too are still going on apace with no end in sight.

Add to that toxic mix, the total indifference of western leaders and the conniving and betrayal of some Arab leaders, not to mention the shameful capitulation and collaboration of the Palestinian Authority and the picture is complete.

Try as I may to look for the infamous light at the end of the long, dark tunnel, I can’t find even the tiniest glimmer.

And I haven’t even got around to mentioning the Israeli prisons which are full of Palestinian men, women and children, tortured and held in disgusting conditions without charge or legal recourse. As if all of this was not enough to emphasise the cruelty and inhumanity of the occupation of our land, the longest in history, the Israeli Occupation Forces continue to raid, unhindered, cities, towns and villages all over Palestine. And what does the ‘free, democratic world’ do about it? This is but a small example of what they do.

The President of the European Commission, Madame Ursula Von der Leyen lauded Israel’s democracy and its ties to Europe.

“Today, we celebrate 75 years of vibrant democracy in the heart of the Middle East,” the German politician said. “We also celebrate 75 years of friendship between Israel and Europe,” pointing out that; “We have more in common than geography would suggest: our shared culture, our values and hundreds of thousands of dual European-Israeli citizens have created a deep connection between us.”

Really, Mme Von der Leyen? Shared values? Is the European Union proud to share with the Israeli Government the concentration camps and the ghettos Israel created for us Palestinians, in our own land? Is Israel’s ‘Administrative Detention policy’ which allows the imprisonment of Palestinians, men, women and children, indefinitely, without charge or legal representation, or even family visits, one that Europe might embrace? Is this what you might call a shared value?

Mme Von der Leyen continued to regurgitate Israeli propaganda by claiming that “you truly made the desert bloom”. I wonder if she is aware of the geography of Palestine and where the ‘land of milk and honey’, mentioned in the bible actually is? I venture to say it was not Berlin.

In the last 75 years there were many attempts to settle the so-called Israeli/Palestinian conflict. Yet, to put it in those terms is misleading. A conflict is between two opposing powers and their armies. Israel has the power, has the army, has the airforce, has the navy. Not to mention three hundred nuclear warheads and the total and complete support of the United States of America. The Palestinians have none of these. So how can we call it a conflict?

It is genocide. It was designed to ethnically cleanse all of Palestine and turn it into a state for Jews only, rubber-stamped by the Nation State Bill that was passed in 2018, which emphatically states that the right of self-determination in Israel is exclusively a Jewish prerogative.

Yet all of this has been just a starter for a much more ambitious, well-planned and financed settler-colonial project, which was started back in 1882, under the Ottoman Empire.

First: Facilitate the immigration of Jews from around the world into Palestine. Get rid of the Palestinians, or corral them in bins, euphemistically referred to as ‘cantons,’ and keep them on a strictly limited diet and under tight military rule.

Second: Present to the world that Jews are the only victims and Israelis are the biggest victims of all.

Third: Blackmail friends and allies to support Israeli ambitions, come what may. Steal their technology. Kill their sailors. Blame it on others. Those who do not submit, smear them as ‘anti-semitic’.

This is how Mr Benjamin Netanyahu has kept his grip on power since the 1990s. He has lied, he has waged wars, he has inflicted more death and suffering on the Palestinians and he has pretended to make peace. What he was actually trying to do, and is still trying to do is establish a legacy as the man who put the Greater Israel project on a higher level than any other leader before him. This is why Israel, until now, does not have a declared constitution or a declared, definitive border.

The opposition to these expansionist, racial plans in Israel is minimal, as was clearly illustrated recently by the Israeli electorate choosing to vote in the most fascist, far-right government ever in the State of Israel.

So, dear reader, as the thundering juggernaut of power and destruction by Israel rolls on, waved through by international indifference, what do you think? Can this inhumanity and murder in Palestine really continue unabated for anniversary after anniversary? Hope is still there, fluttering bravely. But it is all we have.

Jafar M Ramini is a Palestinian writer and political analyst.

9 May 2023

Source: countercurrents.org

By Countercurrents Collective

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has criticized the UK for its treatment of Julian Assange. He said the WikiLeaks founder has been imprisoned for his professional activities as a journalist and called on the government to release him.

“It is an embarrassment that a journalist who denounced trickery by one state against another is arrested, condemned to die in jail and we do nothing to free him. It is crazy thing,” Lula told journalists after attending the coronation of King Charles III in London on Saturday.

He also told reporters that Assange’s is a case of freedom of expression, adding that the Australian national is behind bars merely “because he denounced wrongdoing.” Lula also lambasted the media for failing to back their colleague.

Australian PM

Media reports said:

While speaking to Australia’s ABC broadcaster from London on Thursday, the country’s prime minister, Anthony Albanese, argued that “there is nothing to be served’ by keeping Assange behind bars.

“This needs to be brought to a conclusion,” he stated, adding that Canberra is “working through diplomatic channels, we are making very clear what our position is on Mr. Assange’s case.”

Albanese, who has previously denounced Assange’s imprisonment on several occasions, acknowledged that the process is “frustrating.”

Assange’s Letter To The UK King

Another media report said:

On Friday, the WikiLeaks founder, who has been languishing in London’s Belmarsh high security prison since 2019, wrote a letter to King Charles III. Among other things, he invited the monarch to visit the facility.

“As a political prisoner, held at Your Majesty’s pleasure on behalf of an embarrassed foreign sovereign, I am honored to reside within the walls of this world-class institution,” the journalist wrote.

Assange was arrested by British authorities after Ecuador revoked his asylum status and allowed the UK police to remove him from the country’s embassy in London. The WikiLeaks founder had been sheltering in the diplomatic mission’s premises since 2012.

On the day of his arrest, the U.S. Department of Justice served Assange with 17 charges under the Espionage Act, which could potentially put him behind bars for 175 years. His defense team is currently fighting a US extradition request.

The charges stem from his publication of classified material obtained by whistleblowers, including classified documents alleging U.S. war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan. Although Assange did not personally hack these materials, he was still charged for his role in publishing them.

Biden Rival Pledges To Pardon Assange

A media report said:

U.S. presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has vowed to pardon “brave truth-tellers” including WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who is currently being held in a British high security prison as he fights extradition to America.

The U.S. “actively persecutes journalists and whistleblowers” instead of championing free speech, Democratic contender Kennedy tweeted on Tuesday.

The Australian-born Assange is effectively facing a lifetime sentence for his role in the leaks by US military whistleblower Chelsea Manning. Assange was arrested in Britain in 2019 after Ecuador revoked his political asylum, allowing police to enter its embassy in London, where he had been holed up for seven years.

Assange was then sent to Belmarsh prison, a facility ordinarily used to house some of the most dangerous criminals in the UK.

Kennedy, who is seeking the Democratic Party’s nomination for the 2024 presidential election, said he would pardon both Assange and Manning. The latter spent seven years in US custody after leaking troves of classified materials to WikiLeaks in 2010, but had her sentence commuted by then-President Barack Obama in 2017.

The U.S. government has accused Assange of encouraging and facilitating Manning and is aiming to extradite him for trial. Assange’s defenders have argued that his trial would set a dangerous precedent, and that his actions were no different from other publishers of classified documents who sought to protect their sources.

Kennedy named a number of “other brave truth-tellers” who deserve similar exoneration, including Edward Snowden, who now resides in Russia. Instead of prosecuting them, the presidential hopeful pledged he would “investigate the corruption and crimes exposed.”

Kennedy is among three people to have formally announced their bids for the Democratic nomination. While incumbent President Joe Biden is the frontrunner, Kennedy is polling at 19%, with author Marianne Williamson trailing at 9%, according to a recent Fox News survey.

The Biden administration has said it has no plans to drop the charges against Assange, despite calls by media freedom advocates. Critics have accused Washington of hypocrisy, citing its habit of lecturing other nations over press freedoms.

Democrats Urge Biden To Drop Assange Charges

Several Democrats in the U.S. House have penned a letter calling for the immediate release of WikiLeaks co-founder Julian Assange, urging the Department of Justice to drop its charges against the publisher and halt extradition proceedings aiming to bring him to the US to face prosecution under the World War I-era Espionage Act.

The group of progressive lawmakers, known as ‘the Squad’, addressed their letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland on Tuesday to mark the fourth anniversary since Assange’s 2019 arrest, saying the charges against him represent a serious threat to the free press.

“We write you today to call on you to uphold the First Amendment’s protections for the freedom of the press by dropping the criminal charges against Australian publisher Julian Assange and withdrawing the American extradition request currently pending with the British government,” the lawmakers said.

They went on to cite warnings from a long line of human rights, civil liberties, and press freedoms groups – among them the ACLU, Amnesty International, Reporters Without Borders, the Committee to Protect Journalists, Defending Rights and Dissent, and Human Rights Watch – which have argued Assange’s case poses “a grave and unprecedented threat to everyday, constitutionally protected journalistic activity.”

Assange was arrested by the British authorities in 2019 after losing political asylum status at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, where he was holed up for more than seven years for fear of prosecution by the US due to WikiLeaks’ publication of large amounts of classified material. Under then-President Donald Trump, the U.S. Department of Justice unsealed a multi-count indictment against Assange on April 11, 2019 – the same day of his arrest – slapping him with 17 charges under the Espionage Act, which can potentially carry the death penalty.

He has been held at the UK’s maximum-security Belmarsh Prison in the years since, as Washington presses an extradition request to bring Assange to the U.S. to face his charges. The publisher’s legal team has appealed a prior ruling in favor of extradition on the grounds of Assange’s declining health, a process which continues to play out in the British courts.

The Democratic lawmakers argued that Assange’s prosecution would “greatly diminishes America’s credibility” as a defender of human rights around the globe and set a dangerous legal precedent “whereby journalists or publishers can be prosecuted.”

“In the future the New York Times or Washington Post could be prosecuted when they publish important stories based on classified information. Or, just as dangerous for democracy, they may refrain from publishing such stories for fear of prosecution,” they continued.

Assange’s charges stem from the 2010 publication of a massive trove of classified documents obtained by US army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning, including material suggesting U.S. forces committed war crimes in Iraq and elsewhere. Manning was charged and sentenced to 35 years in prison, but was later released after President Barack Obama commuted Manning’s sentence.

CIA’s Surveillance Methods On Assange Revealed

The CIA used private Spanish security company UC Global to secretly install microphones inside the Ecuadorian Embassy in London to monitor WikiLeaks co-founder Julian Assange, El Pais reported recently, citing the company’s internal communications.

UC Global was hired to provide security for the embassy. Assange, who was granted asylum by Ecuador at the time, resided in the diplomatic compound from 2012 to 2019, before he was forcibly removed by British police. The Spanish company’s alleged links to U.S. intelligence agencies were first reported by El Pais in 2019.

According to the newspaper, UC Global founder and head David Morales first came into contact with the CIA in 2017. Around that time, Morales informed his employees that the company would have to provide a new American client named ‘X’ with remote access to the server that collected the data from the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, which was referred to as the ‘Hotel’.

“Regarding the Hotel work, I would like to offer our information collection and analysis capability to the American client,” Morales wrote in a September 2017 email. “We must try to make it attractive and easy to interpret.”

The information shared reportedly included profiles of Assange’s visitors, including lawyers and diplomats, as well as cell phone data. Morales was quoted as saying in a chat message that “the people in control are our friends in the USA.”

One of microphones that Morales’ team secretly planted inside the embassy was hidden in the base of a fire extinguisher in order to listen in despite Assange’s habit of using a white noise machine to prevent surveillance, El Pais said. Stickers were attached to window corners to avoid vibrations and allow sound to be recorded through laser microphones. “I know it is of the utmost interest and that the USA wants to do it,” Morales reportedly wrote to his employees.

According to El Pais, UC Global’s work helped Washington foil a plan to sneak Assange out of the embassy in December 2017. Lenin Moreno, Ecuador’s president at the time, allegedly wanted to grant the WikiLeaks co-founder Ecuadorian citizenship and get him out of Britain in a diplomatic car.

Morales’ team reportedly recorded a conversation between Assange and Ecuadorian officials and then quickly sent it to the U.S. Washington responded by issuing an arrest warrant for Assange to Britain, which apparently prompted organizers to abort the plan.

In 2019, the Spanish authorities launched an investigation into Morales’ company and briefly detained him. He has since been released on bail.

9 May 2023

Source: countercurrents.org

By Richard D Wolff

Future historians will likely look back at the debt ceiling rituals being reenacted these days with a frustrated shaking of their heads. That otherwise reasonable people would be so readily deceived raises the question that will provoke those historians: How could this happen?

The U.S. Congress has imposed successive ceilings on the national debt, each one higher than the last. Ceilings were intended to limit the amount of federal borrowing. But the same U.S. Congress so managed its taxing and spending that it created ever more excesses of spending over tax revenues (deficits). Those excesses required borrowing to cover them. The borrowings accumulated to hit successive ceilings. A highly political ritual of threats and counterthreats accompanied each rise of the ceiling required by the need to borrow to finance deficits.

It is elementary economics to note that if Congress raised more taxes or cut federal spending—or both—there would be no need to borrow and thus no ceiling on borrowing to worry about. The ceiling would become irrelevant or merely symbolic. Further, if taxes were raised enough and spending cut enough, the existing U.S. national debt could be reduced. That situation has happened occasionally in U.S. history.

The real issue then is that when borrowing approaches any ceiling, the policy choices are these three: raise the ceiling (to borrow more), raise taxes, or cut spending. Of course, combinations of them would also be possible.

In contrast to this reality, U.S. politics deceives by constricting its debate. Politicians, the mainstream media, and academics simply omit—basically by refusing to admit or consider—tax increases. The GOP demands spending cuts or else it will block raising the ceiling. The Democrats insist that raising the ceiling is the better choice than cutting spending. Democrats threaten to blame the GOP for the consequences of not raising the debt ceiling. They paint those consequences in lurid colors depicting U.S. bondholders denied interest or repayment, Social Security recipients denied their pensions, and government employees denied their wages. The unspoken agreement between the two major parties is to omit any serious discussion of raising taxes to avoid hitting the debt ceiling. That omission entails deception.

Here are some tax increases that could help solve the problem by avoiding any need to raise the debt ceiling. The social security tax could be applied to all wage and salary incomes, not only those of $160,000 or less as is now the case. The social security tax could be applied to nonwage income such as interest dividends, capital gains, and rents. The corporate profits tax could be raised back to what it was a few decades ago: near or above 50 percent versus the current 37 percent rate. A property tax could be levied on property that takes the form of stocks and bonds. The current property tax in the United States (levied mostly at the local level) includes land, houses, automobiles, and business inventories, while it excludes stocks and bonds. Perhaps that is because the richest 10 percent of Americans own roughly 80 percent of stocks and bonds. The current property tax system in the United States is very nice for that 10 percent. Another logical candidate is the federal estate tax which a few years ago exempted under $1 million of an estate from the tax, but now exempts over $12 million per person (over $25 million per couple). That exemption makes a mockery of the idea that all Americans start or live their lives on a level playing field where merit counts more than inheritance. The U.S. could and should go back from that tax giveaway to the richest. There are many more possible tax increases.

Of course, there are strengths and weaknesses entailed in raising every tax, positive and negative consequences. But the exact same is true of raising the debt ceiling and thereby increasing the U.S. national debt. Likewise cutting spending has its pluses and minuses in terms of pain and gain. There is no logical or reasonable basis for excluding tax increases from the national debate and discussion about raising the debt ceiling and thereby the national debt.

It is rather the shared political commitments of both major parties that require and motivate the exclusion. There is no reason for U.S. citizens to accept, tolerate, endorse, or otherwise validate the debt ceiling deception perpetrated against us.

Nor is the debt ceiling deception alone. The previous national debate over responding to inflation by having the Federal Reserve raise interest rates provides another quite parallel example. That debate proceeded by debating the pros and cons of interest rate increases as if no other anti-inflationary policy existed or was even worth mentioning. Once again elementary economics teaches that wage-price freezes and rationing have been used against inflations in the past—including in the United States—as alternatives to raising interest rates or alongside them. U.S. President Nixon in 1971 used wage-price freezes. U.S. President Roosevelt used rationing during World War II. But the government, Federal Reserve, major media, and major academic leaders carried on their recent policy debates as if those other anti-inflationary tools did not exist or were not worth including in the debate.

Wage-price freezes and rationing have their strengths and weaknesses—just as tax increases do—but once again the same applies to raising interest rates. No justification exists for proceeding as if alternative options are not there. The U.S. national debate over fighting inflation was deceptive in the same way that the debate over the debt ceiling is.

Nor is the deception any less if it is covered by a claim of “realism.” Those who grasp elementary economics enough to know that tax increases could “solve” the debt ceiling issue become complicit in the deception by invoking “realism.” Since the two major parties are jointly subservient to corporations and the rich, they rule out tax increases on them. It thus becomes “realistic” to exclude that option from the debt ceiling debate. What is best for corporations and the rich thus gets equated to what is “realistic.” It is worth remembering that throughout history ruling classes have discovered, to their shock and surprise, that the ruled can and often do quickly alter what is “realistic.”

The debt ceiling deceptions favor corporations over individuals and the richest individuals over the rest of us. In our thinking and speaking too, the nation’s class structure and class struggles exhibit their influential power. The mainstream debt ceiling debate deceives by lying by omission rather than commission.

Richard D. Wolff is professor of economics emeritus at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and a visiting professor in the Graduate Program in International Affairs of the New School University, in New York. Wolff’s weekly show, “Economic Update,” is syndicated by more than 100 radio stations and goes to 55 million TV receivers via Free Speech TV.

9 May 2023

Source: countercurrents.org