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By Countercurrents Collective

China will become the biggest driver of global growth over the next five years and will contribute double what the U.S. adds, according to the International Monetary Fund.

Based on Bloomberg calculations from data in the IMF’s World Economic Outlook (A Rocky Recovery, April 2023, https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WEO/Issues/2023/04/11/world-economic-outlook-april-2023) released last week, China’s slice of global gross domestic product expansion will be at 22.6%, India’s will be 12.9%, and the U.S. will add 11.3%.

They are followed by Indonesia, Germany, Turkey, and Japan, each with a less than 3.6% contribution.

Three-quarters of global growth will stem from 20 countries, and over 50% will come from just China, India, the U.S., and Indonesia.

The IMF expects growth contributions from Brazil, Russia, India, and China to outpace Group of Seven nations.

Overall, the IMF anticipates global growth to expand about 3% over the next five years in a higher-interest-rate environment. It is the weakest outlook in over 30 years.

The group’s report highlighted that recent bank turmoil and sticky inflation have heightened recession risks. March brought the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature, in addition to trouble with Silvergate, Credit Suisse, and other names.

“Risks to the outlook are squarely to the downside,” the IMF said. “Much uncertainty clouds the short- and medium-term outlook as the global economy adjusts to the shocks of 2020–22 and the recent financial sector turmoil. Recession concerns have gained prominence, while worries about stubbornly high inflation persist.”

The World Economic Outlook is a survey by the IMF staff usually published twice a year. It presents IMF staff economists’ analyses of global economic developments during the near and medium term. It gives an overview as well as more detailed analysis of the world economy; considers issues affecting industrial countries, developing countries, and economies in transition to market; and addresses topics of pressing current interest.

The IMF said:

Tentative signs in early 2023 that the world economy could achieve a soft landing — with inflation coming down and growth steady — have receded amid stubbornly high inflation and recent financial sector turmoil. Although inflation has declined as central banks have raised interest rates and food and energy prices have come down, underlying price pressures are proving sticky, with labor markets tight in a number of economies. Side effects from the fast rise in policy rates are becoming apparent, as banking sector vulnerabilities have come into focus and fears of contagion have risen across the broader financial sector, including nonbank financial institutions. Policymakers have taken forceful actions to stabilize the banking system. As discussed in depth in the Global Financial Stability Report, financial conditions are fluctuating with the shifts in sentiment.

It said:

Debt levels remain high, limiting the ability of fiscal policymakers to respond to new challenges.

The IMF said:

The baseline forecast, which assumes that the recent financial sector stresses are contained, is for growth to fall from 3.4 percent in 2022 to 2.8 percent in 2023, before rising slowly and settling at 3.0 percent five years out –– the lowest medium-term forecast in decades. Advanced economies are expected to see an especially pronounced growth slowdown, from 2.7 percent in 2022 to 1.3 percent in 2023. In a plausible alternative scenario with further financial sector stress, global growth declines to about 2.5 percent in 2023 –– the weakest growth since the global downturn of 2001, barring the initial COVID-19 crisis in 2020 and during the global financial crisis in 2009 –– with advanced economy growth falling below 1 percent. The anemic outlook reflects the tight policy stances needed to bring down inflation, the fallout from the recent deterioration in financial conditions, the ongoing war in Ukraine, and growing geoeconomic fragmentation. Global headline inflation is set to fall from 8.7 percent in 2022 to 7.0 percent in 2023 on the back of lower commodity prices, but underlying (core) inflation is likely to decline more slowly. Inflation’s return to target is unlikely before 2025 in most cases. Once inflation rates are back to targets, deeper structural drivers will likely reduce interest rates toward their pre-pandemic levels.

It said:

Risks to the outlook are heavily skewed to the downside, with the chances of a hard landing having risen sharply. Financial sector stress could amplify and contagion could take hold, weakening the real economy through a sharp deterioration in financing conditions and compelling central banks to reconsider their policy paths. Pockets of sovereign debt distress could, in the context of higher borrowing costs and lower growth, spread and become more systemic. The war in Ukraine could intensify and lead to more food and energy price spikes, pushing inflation up. Core inflation could turn out more persistent than anticipated, requiring even more monetary tightening to tame. Fragmentation into geopolitical blocs has the scope to generate large output losses, including through its effects on foreign direct investment.

The IMF said:

Policymakers have a narrow path to walk to improve prospects and minimize risks.

U.S. Credit Crunch Has Started, Says Morgan Stanley

A media report said:

The collapse of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) and the ensuing banking crisis have triggered a credit crunch in the US, claims Morgan Stanley’s top stock strategist Mike Wilson. He pointed to data that shows a tightening of lending standards by financial institutions.

The warning comes over a month after massive deposit runs caused two lenders, Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank, to fail within days. A third lender, First Republic, ended up being the recipient of a $30-billion rescue from top Wall Street banks in the form of deposits. The big players stepped in over investor fears that First Republic would become the next institution to fail.

In a note seen by Business Insider, Wilson said that lending levels have seen the steepest decline on record over the past two weeks. He attributes the drop to US banks’ attempts to offset the breakneck pace of deposit flight in the month since the collapse of SVB.

“The data suggest a credit crunch has started,” the analyst said in a Sunday note, noting that $1 trillion in deposits has been withdrawn from U.S. lenders since the Federal Reserve began its series of rate hikes nearly a year ago.

According to Wilson, major stock indexes holding steady since the failure of SVB should not be taken as an indication of recovery, but rather a sign that stocks are at risk of a sudden drop similar to what has been seen in small caps and bank stocks since March.

“To those investors cheering the softer-than-expected inflation data last week, we would say be careful what you wish for,” Wilson warned, pointing to the March Consumer Price Index report that revealed the inflation rate has been climbing less than projected.

“If/when revenues begin to disappoint, that margin degradation can be much more sudden, and that is when the market can suddenly get in front of the earnings decline we are forecasting.”

In February, Wilson projected U.S. stocks that had previously soared to unsustainable highs could crash 26% within months.

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19 April 2023

Source: countercurrents.org

By Joshua Frank

It’s sure to be a blood-soaked spring in Ukraine. Russia’s winter offensive fell far short of Vladimir Putin’s objectives, leaving little doubt that the West’s conveyor belt of weaponry has aided Ukraine’s defenses. Cease-fire negotiations have never truly begun, while NATO has only strengthened its forces thanks to Finland’s new membership (with Sweden soon likely to follow). Still, tens of thousands of people have perished; whole villages, even cities, have been reduced to rubble; millions of Ukrainians have poured into Poland and elsewhere; while Russia’s brutish invasion rages on with no end in sight.

The hope, according to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, is that the Western allies will continue to furnish money, tanks, missiles, and everything else his battered country needs to fend off Putin’s forces. The war will be won, according to Zelensky, not through backroom compromises but on the battlefield with guns and ammo.

“I appeal to you and the world with these most simple and yet important words,” he said to a joint session of Great Britain’s parliament in February. “Combat aircraft for Ukraine, wings for freedom.”

The United Kingdom, which has committed well over $2 billion in assistance to Ukraine, has so far refused to ship fighter jets there but has promised to supply more weaponry, including tank shells made with depleted uranium (DU), also known as “radioactive bullets.” A by-product of uranium enrichment, DU is a very dense and radioactive metal that, when housed in small torpedo-like munitions, can pierce thickly armored tanks and other vehicles.

Reacting to the British announcement, Putin ominously said he would “respond accordingly” if the Ukrainians begin blasting off rounds of DU.

While the UK’s decision to send depleted-uranium shells to Ukraine is unlikely to prove a turning point in the war’s outcome, it will have a lasting, potentially devastating, impact on soldiers, civilians, and the environment. The controversial deployment of DU doesn’t pose faintly the same risks as the actual nuclear weapons Putin and his associates have hinted they might use someday in Ukraine or as would a potential meltdown at the embattled Zaporizhzhia nuclear facility in that country. Still, its use will certainly help create an even more lethal, all too literally radioactive theater of war — and Ukraine will end up paying a price for it.

The Radioactive Lions of Babylon

Stuart Dyson survived his deployment in the first Gulf War of 1991, where he served as a lance corporal with Britain’s Royal Pioneer Corps. His task in Kuwait was simple enough: he was to help clean up “dirty” tanks after they had seen battle. Many of the machines he spent hours scrubbing down had carried and fired depleted uranium shells used to penetrate and disable Iraq’s T-72 tanks, better known as the Lions of Babylon.

Dyson spent five months in that war zone, ensuring American and British tanks were cleaned, armed, and ready for battle. When the war ended, he returned home, hoping to put his time in the Gulf War behind him. He found a decent job, married, and had children. Yet his health deteriorated rapidly and he came to believe that his military service was to blame. Like so many others who had served in that conflict, Dyson suffered from a mysterious and debilitating illness that came to be known as Gulf War Syndrome.

After Dyson suffered years of peculiar ailments, ranging from headaches to dizziness and muscle tremors, doctors discovered that he had a severe case of colon cancer, which rapidly spread to his spleen and liver. The prognosis was bleak and, after a short battle, his body finally gave up. Stuart Dyson died in 2008 at the age of 39.

His saga is unique, not because he was the only veteran of the first Gulf War to die of such a cancer at a young age, but because his cancer was later recognized in a court of law as having been caused by exposure to depleted uranium. In a landmark 2009 ruling, jurors at the Smethwick Council House in the UK found that Dyson’s cancer had resulted from DU accumulating in his body, and in particular his internal organs.

“My feeling about Mr. Dyson’s colon cancer is that it was produced because he ingested some radioactive material and it became trapped in his intestine,” Professor Christopher Busby, an expert on the effects of uranium on health, said in his court testimony. “To my mind, there seems to be a causal arrow from his exposure to his final illness. It’s certainly much more probable than not that Mr. Dyson’s cancer was caused by exposure to depleted uranium.”

By Countercurrents Collective

Brazilian President Lula da Silva said on Saturday: The U.S. and its allies should focus on promoting peace instead of fueling the Ukraine conflict by arming Kiev.

Lula has concluded a state visit to China, his country’s primary trading partner.

“The united States needs to stop encouraging war and start talking about peace,” Lula told reporters in Beijing. “The European Union needs to start talking about peace.”

He added that, in doing so, world leaders might be able to “convince” both Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Ukrainian counterpart Vladimir Zelensky that “peace is in the interest of the whole world.”

In contrast to many Western nations, neither Brazil nor China has imposed sanctions on Moscow following the onset of the conflict in Ukraine last year.

Prior to the trip, Lula, the left-wing leader who returned as Brazilian president after succeeding Jair Bolsonaro at the start of this year, had sought to position himself as part of a group that could mediate in the conflict. He did not elaborate on the nature of any such talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping following their meeting on Friday.

CNN reported earlier this week that Beijing had requested the removal of issues surrounding Ukraine from the list of topics to be discussed by the two leaders.

“It is important to have patience,” Lula suggested on Saturday. He said: “But above all, it is necessary to convince the countries that are supplying weapons, encouraging the war, to stop.”

China has been a key trading partner for Brazil since 2009. In 2022 alone, Beijing imported close to $90 billion worth of Brazilian commodities such as soy, iron ore and petrol. Brazil is also the largest single market for Chinese products on the South American continent.

Lula’s comments on Ukraine, as well as the strengthening of economic ties with Beijing, are likely to draw the attention of Washington, with whom Brasilia has sought a closer relationship under his rule. In February, he met with U.S. President Joe Biden in the White House, where they primarily discussed efforts to combat climate change and combat anti-democratic extremism.

Brazil Calls To Move Away From Dollar

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has stated that developing nations should move away from the U.S. dollar in favor of their own currencies in order to push back against U.S. dominance over the global financial system.

Speaking in Shanghai on Thursday during an official visit to China, Lula said the BRICS group – comprising Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – should look for an alternative currency to the dollar for trade.

“Every night I ask myself why all countries have to base their trade on the dollar. Why cannot we do trade based on our currencies?” he said. “Who was it that decided that the dollar was the currency after the disappearance of the gold standard?”

The leftist leader went on to lament that “everyone depends on just one currency,” referring to the dollar, and proposed “a currency to finance trade relations between Brazil and China, between Brazil and other countries.”

Lula kicked off his trip to China with an event to mark the appointment of former Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff as the head of the New Development Bank, also known as the ‘BRICS bank,’ which he said could free emerging economies “from submission to traditional financial institutions, which want to govern us.”

Brazilian Finance Minister Fernando Haddad also traveled with the president to China, where he told reporters that Brazil would aim to create trade mechanisms for developing countries to bypass the use of the dollar.

“The advantage is to avoid the straitjacket imposed by necessarily having trade operations settled in a currency of a country not involved in the transaction,” he said.

Lula’s visit to China comes as Beijing increasingly promotes the use of its own currency, the renminbi, to settle international transactions. Last month, Russia said it had adopted the yuan as one of its primary reserve currencies amid a massive sanctions campaign linked to the conflict in Ukraine, highlighting a gradual shift away from the Western financial system by some major powers.

Trade between China and Brazil has seen a significant boost over the last decade, with more than $150 billion in business recorded last year. Chinese firms have bought up large amounts of minerals and agricultural goods in the South American country, and invested in Brazilian infrastructure.

The Brazilian president arrived in China on Wednesday night. He stayed in China until April 15. After his speech in Shanghai, Lula headed off to Beijing, where he met with President Xi Jinping on Friday. The two leaders focused on issues related to trade and foreign policy – such as China’s Belt and Road Initiative, which aims to develop roads, highways and other infrastructure in foreign countries – according to the Financial Times.

A Blow To U.S. Dollar-powered Bullying

A commentary said:

China and Brazil have secured a deal to conduct bilateral trade in their own respective currencies, eliminating the U.S. dollar as an intermediary.

The decision by Brazil and China to pursue non-dollar trade is an important geopolitical moment, and a sign that countries are seeking to move away from using the U.S. currency, in direct response to Washington’s abuse of the global reserve currency for its own hegemonic aims. Although the U.S. Dollar will of course remain a prominent force in global trade and economics, the U.S.’s ability to use it as a tool with which to bully and quash other countries is diminishing.

16 April 2023

Source: countercurrents.org

By Dr Pedro Mzileni

21 year old American Air National Guard member Jack Teixeira has been arrested and charged in the US District Court in Boston for leaking highly classified intelligence documents of the US defence force concerning the NATO-led war in Ukraine. These documents have come to be known across international media as the “Pentagon leaks”. The top brass of the US military had earlier tried to minimise the extent of these leaks and going to the extent of labelling some of them as fake.

But the spokesperson of the Pentagon Chris Meagher has finally confirmed that the documents are similar to the ones they gave to their senior military leadership and, he said, “they pose a very serious risk to national security”. In addition, some of the documents show classified writings such as “top secret”, which is the highest level of classification in the US intelligence. Classifications and labels of such as kind on US defence force documents indicate that the files were prepared by the chief of staff of the US military.

In plain language therefore, the documents are real and that is why Jack Teixeira was hunted down within a space of a few days and was brought to book. But the gain that we have received as the public out of these documents is a clear picture of what is going on in Ukraine and around the world concerning conflicts, wars and peace efforts.

For too long, we have relied on politicians driven by their interests and biased media who all have been providing distorted reports, exaggerations and minimisations about instances of violence, occupation, power and future projections about important issues such as the world economy.

Three things are now clear from these leaks.

Firstly, the US is highly involved in the invasion of Ukraine together with NATO. Their occupation of the Russian territory, the Eastern Europe border and the rest of Global North is a continuation of decades and centuries of imperialism, settler colonialism and genocide in the region. To achieve these evil deeds across many generations – from the Cold War, to the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Berlin Wall, and up to the present times – they have used wars and sanctions as weapons to dominate and control the colonised territories.

The coalition of the US and NATO to invade countries, steal land, occupy, kill and drive regime change in the name of protecting human rights is not a new phenomenon. In 2011, the US and NATO both invaded Libya, killing innocent civilians and children in the process, and they again drove regime change activities when US President Barack Obama executed the assassination of Libyan President Muammar Gaddafi.

Till today, Libya has never been the same place again. It is now ravaged by high levels of poverty, disease, malnutrition and child mortality. The International Criminal Court has never issued warrants of arrests against Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and Anders Fogh Rasmussen for committing these war crimes.

Today, Russia under President Putin has finally decided to use its own military force to resist this NATO-US cruel invasion of Ukraine and its territory – similarly to how the anti-apartheid movement of Palestine also decided to fight for its own land by taking up arms to fight against the settler colonialist state of Israel. Russia is involved in a war of resistance, an anti-Western war aimed at resisting and dismantling the neocolonial domination coalition of the US, the UK, the EU and NATO.

Secondly, the Pentagon leaks show that the coalition of the US and NATO was caught unprepared to stand against Russian forces. In addition, the Ukraine military itself is very small, inexperienced and so disorganised to match the force of the Russian military. This information is so different from the false public statements that have been made by Joe Biden and Volodymyr Zelenskyy lately whom present their side as being more powerful against Russian forces in the battlefield.

Thirdly, the Pentagon leaks shows that the US is spying on everyone involved in Ukraine – including its own allies. The US and NATO have huge egos of violent dominant and they want to perpetuate the war for as long as possible. They have no interest in ceasefire and peace agreements despite the devastating cost of the war on the people of Ukraine.

The Ukraine leadership is fully aware of this and it is willing to cooperate with US-NATO military violence propaganda in order to gain economic and political benefits from other Western allies in the EU – even if it means putting the lives of its people and children to achieve its selfish interests.

As Dr Matteo Capasso argued in the People’s Forum in New York last week, people must not be surprised when Ukraine leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy earns a Nobel Peace Prize soon for cooperating with the colonial intentions of the US and NATO on Russia. This is the same Nobel Peace Prize that was given to the biggest war criminals such as Barack Obama and the biggest Israel apologists and apartheid genocide architects such as FW De Klerk.

Therefore, the public needs to now understand that the war in Ukraine is supported by the EU, the US, NATO and all colonial powers as a proxy war to continue the Western domination of the world. The main target of the US in this conflict is China – and they are willing to use all means necessary to dethrone it, even if it means utilising nuclear weapons when their losses become more desperate. The sudden interest of the US in neighbouring Taiwan is the beginning of a gateway to occupy a vulnerable territory that can be used to invade China in the name of protecting human rights.

The US has realised that it is losing its world dominance to the alternative world order that China is providing in alliance with Russia and the rest of the Global South where the world’s majority resides supports an alternative world but they remain silenced with sanctions and threats of disinvestment.

This is precisely why South Africa, a BRICS partner under neocolonised Africa, is unable to speak confidently and in condemnation of the US-NATO war in Ukraine. Our domestic media perpetuates the Western propaganda of presenting Russia as the evil of the world that is responsible for the energy crisis and rising living costs. The Western agenda is actually much bigger and we must seek alternative sources of information to pay attention.

Dr Pedro Mzileni is a sociology lecturer at the University of the Free State, South Africa.

16 April 2023

Source: countercurrents.org

By Countercurrents Collective

French President Emmanuel Macron’s recent remarks to journalists on his way home from China visit about the three-way relationship between China, Europe and the U.S. did more to rile his EU partners. This incident is a show of condition within the EU and future possibilities.

An AFP report — Macron’s China remarks exasperate EU allies, April 13, 2023 — said:

French President Emmanuel Macron’s recent trip to Beijing was billed as a chance to showcase European unity and persuade Chinese leader Xi Jinping to help rein in Russian aggression.

But remarks that Macron made to journalists on his way home about the three-way relationship between China, Europe and the United States did more to rile his EU partners.

In an interview with French daily Les Echos and news platform Politico, Macron warned against Europe being dragged into a conflict between Washington and Beijing.

If the stand-off over Taiwan accelerates, he said, Europe might not have the time nor the resources to build the “strategic autonomy” to act without US leadership that France seeks.

Then, EU members would “become vassals, whereas we can be the third pole if we have a few years to build it.”

The Chinese government was delighted by its guest’s remarks. Brussels diplomats less so.

“The French president speaks always for the French Republic,” a senior EU official told reporters. “If the German Chancellor says something does also everybody say this is the policy of the European Union?”

Since the interview was published last weekend, French diplomats have scrambled to insist that Europe becoming a “third pole” does not mean seeking equidistance between an American democratic ally and an autocratic Chinese rival.

But Macron’s warning against subordination to U.S. interests, along with the perception — rejected by Paris — that he was suggesting that Europe should not stand up to China over Taiwan, annoyed many EU partners.

The report said:

EU members from the east of the bloc have long been wary of Europe escaping Washington’s embrace, seen as their key security guarantee against Russian aggression and as Ukraine’s most important defense.

Poland’s Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, on a visit to Washington, slammed fellow EU leaders like Macron, and before him Germany’s Chancellor Olaf Scholz, for seeking trade contracts in Beijing.

“Short-sightedly they look to China to be able sell more EU products there at huge geopolitical costs,” he said.

“Hence, I do not understand the concept of European strategic autonomy if it means the fact of shooting ourselves in our own knee.”

Lithuania’s foreign minister, Gabrielius Landsbergis was scathing about the argument that Europe can persuade Xi to intercede with Russia’s President Vladimir Putin to de-escalate Moscow’s war in Ukraine.

“I propose we recognize the benefits and necessity of trans-Atlantic unity. I do not suggest begging for dictators to help secure peace in Europe,” he tweeted.

The negative reaction in EU countries on Russia’s borders was perhaps to be expected, and Macron has never been shy of making provocative statements to stir debate on the future of European strategy.

But traditional French partners in western Europe were also skeptical of his diplomatic freelancing.

German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius said: “We have never been in danger of becoming or being a vassal of the United States.”

“I found this comment unfortunate but I think the Elysee has corrected it somewhat,” he told ZDF television.

Shortly after his return to Europe from China, Macron set off on a state visit to the Netherlands while debate still raged over his comments.

His host, Prime Minister Mark Rutte, was careful not to criticize his guest, but said “the US is indispensable and without that support it is inconceivable that Ukraine could have withstood the waves of violence of the past year.”

In Brussels there is regret that Macron’s comments have overshadowed the efforts of European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen to coordinate an EU stance on China.

Before setting off to accompany Macron on his Beijing visit, von der Leyen made a well-received speech on the need for the EU to “de-risk” itself from dependence on China while not “de-coupling” from its huge market.

But she was seen to have received a cold shoulder in China while Macron hogged the headlines.

The president of the European Council, Charles Michel, took to the airwaves to defend — and to try to explain — Macron’s stance and Europe’s strategic ambitions.

“On strategic autonomy, there’s much more support than there was a few years ago,” he told French television.

The AFP report said:

The bond between Washington and Brussels were threatened during former president Donald Trump’s term, as the U.S. leader cosied up to Putin and threatened to quit NATO.

This focused European minds on the need to shore up their own defenses, for a while, but when Russia invaded Ukraine Washington’s military aid to Kyiv far surpassed the EU contribution.

Even supporters of a stronger united European geopolitical role, like centre-right French MEP Arnaud Danjean, fault Macron for pushing on without taking into account allies’ concerns.

While the idea that Europe should be better able to stand on its own two feet is accepted, any suggestion that the allies should distance themselves from the US before building up their own forces is unrealistic.

“We struggle to convince our partners essentially because we put the cart before the horse,” he tweeted.

“Without first focusing on developing the means of autonomy, making grand declarations by presenting it as a given can only irritate.”

Macron Holds His Position

An AP report — Emmanuel Macron says his position on Taiwan is unchanged, April 12, 2023 — said:

French President Macron commented on his published remarks on China and Taiwan that raised questions after he visited Beijing last week, insisting Wednesday that his views have not changed.

“The position of France and the Europeans on Taiwan is the same. We are for the status quo, and this policy is constant,” Macron told reporters in Amsterdam near the end of a two-day state visit to the Netherlands. “It has not changed. It’s the policy of one China and the peaceful settlement of the question.”

He was referring to remarks published Sunday from an interview with French newspaper Les Echos and Politico Europe. The remarks elicited doubts about whether Macron’s views were in line with the European Union’s position on Taiwan’s status. Beijing claims that the island is a Chinese territory that must be brought under its control, by force if necessary.

“The question we need to answer, as Europeans, is the following: is it in our interest to accelerate (a crisis) on Taiwan? No,” Macron was quoted as saying in the interview. “The worst thing would be to think that we Europeans must become followers on this topic and take our cue from the U.S. agenda and a Chinese overreaction.”

Macron said he spoke to U.S. President Joe Biden before he traveled to China. A string of foreign politicians have visited Taiwan in recent months, including then-U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and numerous politicians from the EU.

The French leader addressed other topics during his trip to the Netherlands. Earlier Wednesday, Macron said that protests in France and the Netherlands were a social price that has to be paid as governments in the two countries push ahead with reforms.

“We must sometimes accept controversy,” Macron said. “We must try to build a path for the future.”

He was speaking to members of the French community in Amsterdam, on the second day of a state visit that has been dogged by small protests against his deeply unpopular pension reform, which will raise the retirement age from 62 to 64.

The reforms have sparked massive and sometimes violent protests in France. In the Netherlands, farmers and their supporters protested for months about plans to rein in emissions of nitrogen oxide. At times last year, Dutch farmers used tractors to blockade supermarket warehouses, torched bales of hay alongside roads and dumped garbage including manure and asbestos on highways.

A populist, pro-farmer political party made major gains in recent provincial elections in the Netherlands.

“Sometimes in France we think that we are the only country where there are protests,” Macron said in his speech in Amsterdam. “You who live here know very well that there is also a strong, profound protest movement here.”

Earlier in the day, police tackled and detained a protester who ran, shouting, toward Macron as he arrived at a University of Amsterdam science campus.

It was the second straight day that protesters targeted Macron. On Tuesday, demonstrators shouted and held up banners at the start of a speech in The Hague.

Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte said that free speech is an important right but he regretted the protests.

“We are hosts, so you don’t want that,” he said, standing alongside Macron at the Amsterdam Mayor’s official residence.

Earlier, French and Dutch ministers signed an agreement to strengthen cooperation in moves to develop digital technology and make the countries’ industrial sectors more sustainable.

The Pact for Innovation and Sustainable Growth aims to promote partnerships in areas including “semiconductors, quantum, critical raw materials, sustainable mobility and energy infrastructure,” the Dutch government said in a statement.

Macron was wrapping up his two-day state visit with talks between the two countries’ government ministers and a visit to a sell-out exhibition of paintings by Dutch master Johannes Vermeer at Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum.

Macron’s Stronger Tone

Another report said:

Paris is an ally and not a “vassal” of Washington, French President Emmanuel Macron said on Wednesday, defending his comments about strategic autonomy” of the EU regarding the rising tensions between the U.S. and China.

“Being an ally does not mean being a vassal, does not mean that we do not have the right to think for ourselves,” Macron said in Amsterdam at a joint press conference with Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte.

Asked for the French position on Taiwan, Macron said Paris supports the status quo, meaning the “One Chine policy and the search for a peaceful resolution to the situation.”

Returning from his trip to China on Sunday, Macron argued that the EU can’t just be “America’s followers,” and that it is not in the bloc’s interest to stoke tensions over Taiwan. “The worst thing would be to think that we Europeans must become followers on this topic and take our cue from the U.S. agenda and a Chinese overreaction,” he told reporters.

The remarks earned a swift rebuke from U.S. Senator Marco Rubio, a Florida Republican on the foreign affairs committee, who suggested Washington might leave the EU to handle the Ukraine conflict by itself.

Taiwanese Parliament Speaker You Si-kun on Tuesday argued that France had forsaken its motto of ‘liberty, equality, fraternity’, and that advanced democracies should not “ignore the lives and deaths of people in other countries,” adding that Macron’s comments left him “puzzled.”

Meanwhile, French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said that Macron was “perfectly right to demand European independence and sovereignty,” while the president of the European Council, Charles Michel, noted that “quite a few” leaders of EU countries think like Macron, even though they “would not say things the same way.”

When asked about the French president’s comments on Monday, the U.S. State Department said France is a long-standing ally and that occasional disagreements do not detract from the “deep partnership” with Paris. As for the EU position, a State Department spokesman cited a recent speech by the bloc’s president, Ursula von der Leyen, which described China as “a national and economic security threat,” and said there is “immense convergence” between Washington and Brussels on the matter.

Truss Talks About Biden

A report by The Telegraph — Biden was part of resistance that ousted me from power, says Truss, April 13, 2023 — said:

Former UK PM Liz Truss said Joe Biden, the U.S. president, was part of the “coordinated resistance” she blamed for ending her brief premiership in a U.S. speech intended to revive her economic and political agenda.

The former prime minister also hit out at Emmanuel Macron, the French president, and Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission president, for showing “weakness” by meeting Xi Jinping, the Chinese premier.

Speaking at the Heritage Foundation in Washington DC, Ms Truss warned that a “new kind of economic model” was taking hold on both sides of the Atlantic, focused on “redistributionism”, “stagnation” and “the imbuing of woke culture” into businesses.

She cited Mr Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act – the $454 billion (£363.4bn) flagship bill aimed at tackling climate change, tax and healthcare – as an example, saying the legislation would “encourage US industry to spend their time rent-seeking”.

She added: “It’s also going to cut competitors out of the market, including companies in the United Kingdom.”

Ms Truss hit back at Mr Biden’s criticism of her tax-cutting policies while in Number 10, saying: “It is not a matter for the U.S. president, it is a matter for the UK Government how we best have tax rates that deliver for everybody across our country.”

She criticized the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development’s plans for a minimum corporation tax rate, first proposed by Mr Biden, saying: “We need a UK-U.S. trade deal, not a UK-U.S. tax deal.”

The former UK PM conceded that her ousting from Downing Street after just 49 days following the disastrous mini-Budget had been a “major setback”, but stressed that the point of her speech on Wednesday was to “take on those who resist change”.

Reflecting on her brief tenure, she said she had “simply underestimated the scale and depth of resistance” to her economic agenda.

She said: “We did not just face coordinated resistance from inside the Conservative Party, or even inside the British corporate establishment. We faced it from the IMF, and even from President Biden.”

Ms Truss was delivering the Right-wing think tank’s annual Margaret Thatcher freedom lecture in which she made the case for “Anglo-American capitalism”, espousing the values of privatization and limited government championed by Thatcher and Ronald Reagan.

“Last autumn, I had a major setback. But I care too much to give up on this agenda,” she said. “And over the coming months I will be setting out ideas about how we together can take this battle forward.”

Her fiercest criticism was reserved for Mr Macron and Ms von der Leyen, who travelled to Beijing last week to urge Mr Xi to “reason” with Russia and help end the war in Ukraine.

She said: “I believe that was a sign of weakness. It’s also why it’s wrong for President Macron to suggest that Taiwan is simply something not of direct interest to Europe. I do not agree with that at all. What we have seen is accommodation and appeasement by the West of these authoritarian regimes.”

She warned of the immediate danger China posed to the world order, saying that “the invasion of Taiwan could come sooner than we expect”.

German Foreign Minister On Way To China

A Reuters report — Germany foreign minister embarks on post-Macron ‘damage control’ in China trip, April 13, 2023 – said:

Germany’s foreign minister begins a visit to China on Thursday aiming to reassert a common European Union policy toward Beijing days after remarks by French President Emmanuel Macron suggested disarray in the continent’s approach to the rising superpower.

Macron provoked a backlash in the U.S. and Europe when he called on the European Union to reduce dependence on the U.S. and cautioned against being drawn into a crisis over Taiwan driven by an “American rhythm and a Chinese overreaction.”

Many European politicians, diplomats and analysts saw Macron’s comments in an interview with Politico and French daily Les Echos as a gift to what they called Beijing’s goal of dismantling transatlantic unity.

As a result, the stakes of the inaugural trip by German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock have risen, with many EU members hoping Berlin will use this opportunity to set out a clear and united EU line on China, analysts said.

Macron was widely seen as taking a weak line on Taiwan by warning Europe should not get “caught up in crises that are not ours” — although his office insisted this was not his intended meaning and his position on Taiwan and China had not changed.

“Now it is about damage control to a large degree … But the cloud of Macron’s visit is very big and still it is very unclear how this balance will play out in the end,” Alicja Bachulska, a China-EU relations researcher at the European Council on Foreign Relations in Warsaw, told Reuters.

Even without Macron’s remarks the trip would have been delicate for Baerbock, who has been more hawkish on China than Chancellor Olaf Scholz and is drafting a China policy aimed at reducing Germany’s economic dependence on Beijing.

“She was sort of perceived as being a troublemaker. I would be surprised if this does not play a role at all in her visit,” Tim Ruehlig, China expert at the German Council on Foreign Relations, told Reuters.

Baerbock must now make Germany’s position on Taiwan clear during her visit, German foreign policy parliamentarian Nils Schmid told Reuters, adding Macron’s remarks had destroyed a hoped-for impetus for a common European China policy.

The foreign minister is due to meet her counterpart Qin Gang and China’s top diplomat Wang Yi on the two-day trip.

Speaking ahead of her visit, Baerbock said the top of her agenda would be reminding China of its responsibility to influence Russia to end its invasion of Ukraine and underlining a common European conviction that a unilateral change in the status quo in the Taiwan Strait would be unacceptable.

Europe’s view of China as partner, competitor and systemic rival is the compass of its policy, she added.

“It is clear to me that we have no interest in economic decoupling, but we must take a more systematic look at the risks of one-sided dependencies and reduce them,” Baerbock said.

Some EU capitals – particularly those in Central and Eastern Europe, which cherish their ties with the U.S. – will be hoping Baerbock’s stance is closer to the one expressed by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen who visited Beijing at the same time as Macron.

Many analysts drew a contrast between Macron’s remarks and those from von der Leyen that were widely seen as more critical of Beijing. Just days before the visit she said Europe must “de-risk” diplomatically and economically with a hardening China.

“More von der Leyen than Macron should be her guideline,” conservative foreign policy lawmaker Johann Wadephul, who will join Baerbock on her trip, told Reuters.

In March the South African National Assembly downgraded the status of Tel Aviv’s diplomatic presence to that of a liaison office.

By Abayomi Azikiwe

As the Israeli government intensifies its efforts to win influence on the African continent and other geopolitical regions, several governments have responded by heightening their solidarity with the Palestinian people.

In South Africa, the National Assembly based in Cape Town voted in early March to further downgrade the diplomatic presence of Israel inside the country.

Since 2019 there has been no South African ambassador credentialed to its embassy in Tel Aviv. This measure stems directly from the failure of the Israeli government to negotiate a settlement to end the occupation of Palestine.

In fact, repressive policies against the Palestinians have worsened over the decades with massive bombing campaigns by the Israeli Air Force in Gaza killing thousands and displacing many more from their homes and refugee camps. Every year more Palestinian communities are being taken over by the Israelis through the building of settlements for Jewish households.

United States foreign policy towards Israel has not changed since the formation and recognition of the state 75 years ago. Billions of dollars in direct financial assistance along with trade, military and diplomatic support characterize the relations between Washington and Tel Aviv.

The National Assembly in Cape Town is the highest legislative body in the Republic of South Africa which has nearly 60 million people. South Africa’s ruling party, the African National Congress (ANC), has maintained fraternal relations with the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) while endorsing the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaigns domestically and internationally which are geared towards the complete isolation of the racist apartheid regime in Tel Aviv.

The resolution to reduce Israeli diplomatic status in South Africa was introduced by Member of Parliament Ahmed Munzoor Shaik Emam of a small opposition grouping called the National Freedom Party (NFP) and was supported by the majority ANC. This parliamentary action is not binding legally although symbolically it reflects the mass sentiment throughout South Africa and the continent as whole which views the oppression of the Palestinians as a struggle against racism and colonial rule.

Emam said of the vote in favor of his resolution that:

“This is a moment Madiba [Nelson Mandela] would be proud of. He always said our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of Palestinians. This resolution demands accountability from Israel. … As South Africans, we refuse to stand by while Apartheid is being perpetrated again.”

The Israeli Foreign Ministry responded rapidly to the South African parliamentary vote saying:

“The symbolic resolution taken yesterday (March 8) by the South African parliament calling for the downgrading of relations between South Africa and Israel is shameful and disgraceful. Even as a symbolic resolution, it does not contribute in the least to the promotion of any viable solution in the Middle East. At a time when many African and Muslim countries are strengthening and deepening ties with the State of Israel for the benefit of everyone’s common interests, it is unfortunate that South Africa continues to adhere to anachronism and the deterioration of relations, a move that will only harm South Africa itself and its standing.”

What the Israeli Foreign Ministry is referencing is the Abraham Accords, an initiative of Tel Aviv and Washington to undermine solidarity with the Palestinian people as well as those impacted by the military and economic policies of the Zionist regime. Several states among the Gulf monarchies, Egypt and Sudan in North Africa have normalized relations with Israel.

However, as these diplomatic maneuvers are ongoing, the repression against the Palestinians is resulting in brutality, imprisonment and death. In addition, there has been a series of aerial bombardments by Israeli fighter jets in Gaza along with neighboring Syria and Lebanon.

Israel and the African Union

During the African Union Summit in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia in February, the Israeli Foreign Ministry attempted another hostile disruption of the continental organization composed of 55 member-states representing 1.4 billion people. In 2021, the AU Commission Chair, Moussa Faki Mahamat, made a unilateral decision to grant Israel observer status within the body.

This move was roundly denounced by several African governments who are leading members of the AU. Algeria along with the South African government pointed to the illegal nature of the granting of observer status to Tel Aviv absent any discussion or debate in the AU Executive Council. At the following AU Summit, the decision was suspended and since 2021 the issue has not been debated publicly.

In 2021, South Africa described the surprising move as “unjust” and “shocking”. The Republic of Namibia, also in Southern Africa, said:

“granting observer status to an occupying power is contrary to the principles and objectives of the Constitutive Act of the African Union.”

However, an Israeli diplomatic official entered the AU Headquarters in Ethiopia at the February summit and took a seat. The person was soon removed by the security personnel guarding the meeting.

The incident at the most recent AU Summit represents the renewed independent foreign policy orientation of the continent. Along with the attempts by Israel to gain greater diplomatic status within individual African states and the AU, the western imperialist paymasters to Tel Aviv are also canvassing the continent seeking to persuade governments and mass organizations to become sympathetic to the U.S. positions on Ukraine, Russia, China and Israel.

Several high-level officials, including Vice-President Kamala Harris, have visited African countries which are important strategic players in continental and international affairs. During these recent calls on the capitals of Zambia, Tanzania, Ethiopia, Ghana, etc., spokespersons for the administration of President Joe Biden are careful not to criticize the Russian Federation and the People’s Republic of China directly. Comments related to the burgeoning global debt crisis occurring in a number of African states such as Egypt, Ghana and Zambia are framed to implicate Beijing and Moscow. Yet the major source of the world economic crisis is to be found in the geoeconomic policies emanating from Western Europe and North America.

Middle East Eye news website emphasized in relation to the ejection of Israeli officials from the AU Summit in Addis Ababa:

“An Israeli observer delegation was removed on Saturday (February 18) from the African Union summit being held in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa. A video shared online showed Sharon Bar-Li, the deputy director of the African Division at the Israeli foreign ministry, being escorted out at the opening ceremony of the two-day convention. An AU official told AFP the individual who was ‘asked to leave’ was not invited to attend the meeting, with a non-transferable invitation only issued to Aleli Admasu, Israel’s ambassador to the African Union. Israeli newspaper Haaretz, citing unnamed diplomatic officials, said Bar-Li had the proper authorization to attend the summit and that discussions are being held to allow her to return.”

Israel blamed South Africa and Algeria for engineering the removal of the diplomat from Tel Aviv at the AU gathering. The Israeli Foreign Ministry went as far as to say that Algeria and South Africa are controlled by the Islamic Republic of Iran. Such an absurd claim only highlights the failure of the regime to rationalize its presence in international forums within the Global South.

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa dismissed the statements by Israel saying they are unsubstantiated. Such an allegation implies that African states do not have their own reasons for being opposed to colonial occupation.

Africa has waged liberation struggles for many years for independence, unification and sovereignty. The alliance between the Palestinian national movement and the progressive forces in Africa are based upon mutual interests and concern for the emancipation of humanity from all forms of exploitation and oppression.

*

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Abayomi Azikiwe is the editor of the Pan-African News Wire. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

13 April 2023

Source: www.globalresearch.ca

By Bharat Dogra

There is increasing concern all over the world regarding the increasing and widespread use of economic and related sanctions by some of the richest and most powerful countries, led by the USA and other NATO member countries, taking undue advantage of their extraordinary privileged position in financial matters. This concern is reflected in several resolutions passed by international bodies, including UN organizations, against sanction regimes.

This may be the right time to revisit one of the most controversial sanction regimes, one imposed by the United Nations Security Council and pushed most by the US-UK combine, during the period 1990-2003, although traces of this continued even after this.

One of the most controversial aspects of these wide-ranging sanctions related to the very heavy costs these imposed very unjustly on ordinary people, including women, children, the elderly, the already sick and disability affected at a time when the 1991 Gulf War and the massive bombing, including of civilian infrastructure, had already left people in great distress. This should have been a time of healing of war-ravaged people led by the United Nations whose own studies had confirmed widespread devastation; instead the UN Security Council imposed cruel sanctions which further aggravated the adverse impacts of the destruction of essential infrastructure caused by war-time bombing.

There is no better way of understanding the impact of these sanctions than to recall what two of the most senior and highly respected UN humanitarian officials have said about these. The first of these is Denis J. Halliday who had 34 years of distinguished service at the United Nations in the course of which he had risen to the rank equivalent of UN Assistant Secretary General. He became the UN Humanitarian Coordinator for Iraq in 1997 and resigned in 1998. The second is an equally distinguished UN official of similar rank Hans von Sponeck who became the UN Human Coordinator in Iraq in 1998 and resigned in 2000. (Along with him Jutta Burghardt, the head of the World Food Program in Iraq also resigned). What prompted these resignations was the undoubted fact that sanctions were leading to unbearably high costs for people of Iraq, including children.

Some time after his resignation Denis J. Halliday, who received the Gandhi International Peace Prize stated very clearly—I was driven to resignation because I refused to continue to take orders of the same Security Council that had imposed and sustained genocidal sanctions on the innocent of Iraq…my innate sense of justice was, and still is, outraged by the violence these sanctions had brought upon, and continue to bring upon, the lives of children, families—extended families, the loved ones of Iraq.

Hans von Sponeck, who received the Coventry Peace Prize and other honors, was also very critical about the adverse impact of sanctions. He along with Denis Halliday co-authored an article titled ‘The Hostage Nation’ which was published in The Guardian dated November 29, 2001. In this article     the two former UN Humanitarian Coordinators stated that the economic sanctions had destroyed society in Iraq and caused the death of thousands, young and old. They wrote, “The UK and the US have deliberately pursued a policy of punishment since the Gulf War in 1991. The two governments have consistently opposed allowing the UN Secretary General to carry out the mandated responsibility to assess the impact of sanctions policies on civilians. We know about this first hand, because the governments repeatedly tried to prevent us from briefing the Security Council about it.”

Further they write, “The uncomfortable truth is that the west is holding the Iraqi people hostage, in order to secure Saddam Hussein’s compliance to ever-shifting demands. The UN Secretary General who would like to be a mediator has repeatedly been prevented from taking this role by the US and UK governments.”

Regarding the terrible impact on the people of Iraq and the responsibility for this, these former senior humanitarian officials with the most credible understanding of the reality they saw from very close up said, “The most recent report of the UN Secretary General in October 2001, says that the US and UK governments’ blocking of $4 billion of humanitarian supplies is by far the greatest constraint on the implementation of the oil for food program. The report says that in contrast the Iraqi government’s distribution of humanitarian supplies in fully satisfactory (as it was when we headed this program). The death of some 5-6000 children a month (five thousand to six thousand a month) is mostly due to contaminated water, lack of medicines and malnutrition. The US and UK governments’ delayed clearance of equipment and materials is responsible for the tragedy, not Baghdad.”

The two senior diplomats and humanitarian officials concluded on two notes. First, by stating—“ We are outraged that the Iraqi people continue to be made to pay the price for the lucrative arms trade and power politics. Secondly, they quote Martin Luther King’s famous words, “A time comes when silence is betrayal. That time is now.”

These strong words of UN officials with the most intimate knowledge of the Iraqi sanctions makes it clear that the sanctions led to untold sufferings and avoidable deaths of many thousands of people , including children. This happened despite the fact that the Iraqi government, functioning in very adverse circumstances and facing pressures from the most powerful countries, had succeeded in increasing local food production, implementing a functional ration system and ensuring an efficient distribution of limited humanitarian supplies they could still access in the middle of crippling and cruel sanctions. Hence there is a strong case for reopening the issue and the Security Council of the United Nations making adequate compensation for the immense harm caused to the people of Iraq. This compensation fund can be administered by a group of persons, including representation of women and minorities, of impeccable reputation and honesty within Iraq, helped by experienced UN officials or former UN officials like Halliday and Sponeck, who will ensure that the fund is spent keeping in view the urgent and real priorities of the people of Iraq, with emphasis on the poor and the vulnerable people, women and children.

Bharat Dogra is Honorary Convener, Campaign to Save Earth Now. His recent books include Planet in Peril, A Day in 2071 and Protecting Earth for Children.

13 April 2023

Source: countercurrents.org

By Dr Ramzy Baroud

By ordering a brutal attack against Palestinian worshipers inside Al-Aqsa Mosque on the 14th day of the holy Muslim month of Ramadan, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu knew very well that the Palestinians would retaliate.

Netanyahu’s motive should be clear. He wanted to generate a distraction from the mass protests that have rocked Israel, starting in January, and divided Israeli society around ideological and political lines, in ways never witnessed before.

Unwilling to relinquish his hard-earned achievement of finally winning a decisive election and forming an entirely rightwing coalition, while fearing that major concessions to his political rivals could eventually dissolve his government, Netanyahu set his sights on the Al-Aqsa Mosque.

History has proven that Israeli attacks on Palestinian holy places are a guarantor of a Palestinian response. For Netanyahu, and also his National Security Minister, Itamar Ben Gvir, the price of Palestinian retaliation was worth the political gains of unifying Israelis of all political backgrounds behind them. For Ben-Gvir, in particular, the attack against Al-Aqsa would reassure his far-right religious constituency of his commitment to restoring full Israeli Jewish sovereignty over Palestinian Muslim and Christian holy places in the occupied city.

What Netanyahu and his allies may have not anticipated, however, is the intensity of the Palestinian response as hundreds of rockets were fired, not only from besieged Gaza but, even more strategically important, from South Lebanon, towards the northern and southern parts of the country.

Though some damage was reported, the attacks were a political game changer, as it was the first time in years that fighters in two Arab countries coordinated their retaliatory action against Israel and hit back simultaneously.

It will be difficult for Netanyahu to claim any kind of victory after this, unless he takes his country to a major war on two fronts – three, if we are to consider the rise of armed resistance in the Occupied Palestinian West Bank.

However, even a major war could backfire. During the Israeli attack on Gaza in 2014, Israel struggled to sustain a single military front as the war lasted 51 days, leading to an Israeli munition crisis. Were it not for the decision of the Barack Obama Administration to ship massive supplies of munition to Israel to fill its depleted arsenal, Israel could have found itself in an unprecedentedly difficult situation.

The United States, however, is no longer able to play the role of the emergency weapons supplier, at least for now, due to its own ammunition shortage resulting from the Ukraine war. Hence, Israel was careful not to exaggerate in its response to Palestinian and Lebanese rockets. This episode, however, shall prove decisive, as it will empower Israel’s regional enemies, and, instead of boosting, it could potentially undermine Netanyahu’s credibility among his own right-wing camp.

But how could Israel’s most experienced leader in history commit such an obvious strategic error?

Aside from desperately making the decision to attack Al-Aqsa – and likely under pressures from Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich – Netanyahu and other Israeli leaders often miscalculate the significance of the spiritual component of the Palestinian struggle, and how it ties to Arab and Muslim solidarity with Palestine.

What is currently taking place in Palestine is not a religious war, but some Israeli officials and political parties are keen on turning it into one.

Though warnings against ‘religious wars’ in Palestine – in fact, the entire region – have been mostly linked to Israel’s current “most rightwing government in history”, religious discourses have been the most dominant since the establishment of Israel’s founding ideology, Zionism, in the late 19th century.

Despite the historical fact that Zionism has been situated within a religious context,  the founders of the movement were mostly atheists. They merely used religion as a political tool to unify Jews globally around their new ideology and to romanticize in the minds of their followers what is essentially a violent settler colonial movement.

Yet, over the years, the center of power within the Zionist movement has shifted, from liberal Zionism to Zionist Revisionism to, in the last twenty years or so, religious Zionism. For Israel’s current generation of Zionist leaders, religion is not a political tool, but an objective. This is precisely why, as Palestinian men and women were being attacked with ferocity inside the holiest of all mosques, Israeli Jews were attempting to enter the Muslim shrine to sacrifice animals as part of the Passover tradition. Although not many of them have succeeded in doing so, the event suggests that a new kind of conflict is taking shape.

Historically, Israel targeted Muslim and Christian sites to acquire political capital. Late Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon did just that when he conducted a provocative ‘visit’ inside Haram Al-Sharif with hundreds of soldiers in September 2000, and when the Israeli military completely destroyed or seriously damaged 203 mosques during its so-called “Operation Protective Edge” against Gaza in 2014.

Christian sites have also been attacked and oftentimes confiscated. The targeting of Palestinian Christians led many community leaders, the likes of Archbishop Atallah Hanna, to warn against “an unprecedented conspiracy against the Christian existence”.

The attack on Palestinian religious symbols goes further than the Occupied Territories into historic Palestine, today’s Israel. The 13th-century architectural marvel, Al-Ahmar Mosque in Safad, for example, was turned by Israeli authorities into a nightclub. A study published by the High Follow-up Committee for Arab Citizens in Israel revealed, in July 2020, that scores of mosques were turned into synagogues, barns, bars or restaurants.

Israel’s targeting of the Arab and Muslim identity of Palestine is now being accelerated under Netanyahu’s leadership. But this strategy is a double-edged sword as witnessed in recent days.

In the video that went viral of Israeli soldiers beating up Muslim worshipers, the distressed pleas of a Palestinian woman groaning in pain were heard. “Oh Allah, Oh Allah,” she repeated. Many in Palestinian media and social media have commented that the response by Palestinian Resistance was specifically to answer the call of the unidentified woman. This is the power of spirituality – the kind of logic that Netanyahu and his allies cannot possibly understand.

On April 3, the Jordanian King rightfully stressed that “it is the duty of every Muslim to deter Israeli escalations against Islamic and Christian holy sites in Jerusalem.” When this happens, instead of isolating and browbeating Palestinians, it is Israel that will find itself even more isolated.

Though Palestinians do not see themselves fighting a religious war, protecting their religious symbols stands at the core of their larger fight for freedom, justice and equality.

Dr. Ramzy Baroud is a journalist, author and the Editor of The Palestine Chronicle.

13 April 2023

Source: countercurrents.org

By John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead

We’re not living the American dream.

We’re living a financial nightmare.

The U.S. government is funding its existence with a credit card.

The government—and that includes the current administration—is spending money it doesn’t have on programs it can’t afford, and “we the taxpayers” are the ones being forced to foot the bill for the government’s fiscal insanity.

According to the number crunchers with the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, the government is borrowing roughly $6 billion a day.

As the Editorial Board for the Washington Post warns:

“The nation has reached a hazardous moment where what it owes, as a percentage of the total size of the economy, is the highest since World War II. If nothing changes, the United States will soon be in an uncharted scenario that weakens its national security, imperils its ability to invest in the future, unfairly burdens generations to come, and will require cuts to critical programs such as Social Security and Medicare. It is not a future anyone wants.”

Let’s talk numbers, shall we?

The national debt (the amount the federal government has borrowed over the years and must pay back) is $31 trillion and will grow another $19 trillion by 2033. That translates to roughly $246,000 per taxpayer or $94,000 for every single person in the country.

The bulk of that debt has been amassed over the past two decades, thanks in large part to the fiscal shenanigans of four presidents, 10 sessions of Congress and two wars.

It’s estimated that the amount this country owes is now 130% greater than its gross domestic product (all the products and services produced in one year by labor and property supplied by the citizens).

In other words, the government is spending more than it brings in.

The U.S. ranks as the 12th most indebted nation in the world, with much of that debt owed to the Federal Reserve, large investment funds and foreign governments, namely, Japan and China.

Interest payments on the national debt are estimated to top $395 billion this year, which is significantly more than the government spends on veterans’ benefits and services, and according to Pew Research Center, more than it will spend on elementary and secondary education, disaster relief, agriculture, science and space programs, foreign aid, and natural resources and environmental protection combined.

According to the Committee for a Reasonable Federal Budget, the interest we’ve paid on this borrowed money is “nearly twice what the federal government will spend on transportation infrastructure, over four times as much as it will spend on K-12 education, almost four times what it will spend on housing, and over eight times what it will spend on science, space, and technology.”

In ten years, those interest payments will exceed our entire military budget.

This is financial tyranny.

We’ve been sold a bill of goods by politicians promising to pay down the national debt, jumpstart the economy, rebuild our infrastructure, secure our borders, ensure our security, and make us all healthy, wealthy and happy.

None of that has come to pass, and yet we’re still being loaded down with debt not of our own making while the government remains unrepentant, unfazed and undeterred in its wanton spending.

Indeed, the national deficit (the difference between what the government spends and the revenue it takes in) remains at more than $1.5 trillion.

If Americans managed their personal finances the way the government mismanages the nation’s finances, we’d all be in debtors’ prison by now.

Despite the government propaganda being peddled by the politicians and news media, however, the government isn’t spending our tax dollars to make our lives better.

We’re being robbed blind so the governmental elite can get richer.

In the eyes of the government, “we the people, the voters, the consumers, and the taxpayers” are little more than pocketbooks waiting to be picked.

“We the people” have become the new, permanent underclass in America.

Consider: The government can seize your home and your car (which you’ve bought and paid for) over nonpayment of taxes. Government agents can freeze and seize your bank accounts and other valuables if they merely “suspect” wrongdoing. And the IRS insists on getting the first cut of your salary to pay for government programs over which you have no say.

We have no real say in how the government runs, or how our taxpayer funds are used, but we’re being forced to pay through the nose, anyhow.

We have no real say, but that doesn’t prevent the government from fleecing us at every turn and forcing us to pay for endless wars that do more to fund the military industrial complex than protect us, pork barrel projects that produce little to nothing, and a police state that serves only to imprison us within its walls.

If you have no choice, no voice, and no real options when it comes to the government’s claims on your property and your money, you’re not free.

It wasn’t always this way, of course.

Early Americans went to war over the inalienable rights described by philosopher John Locke as the natural rights of life, liberty and property.

It didn’t take long, however—a hundred years, in fact—before the American government was laying claim to the citizenry’s property by levying taxes to pay for the Civil War. As the New York Times reports, “Widespread resistance led to its repeal in 1872.”

Determined to claim some of the citizenry’s wealth for its own uses, the government reinstituted the income tax in 1894. Charles Pollock challenged the tax as unconstitutional, and the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in his favor. Pollock’s victory was relatively short-lived. Members of Congress—united in their determination to tax the American people’s income—worked together to adopt a constitutional amendment to overrule the Pollock decision.

On the eve of World War I, in 1913, Congress instituted a permanent income tax by way of the 16^thAmendment to the Constitution and the Revenue Act of 1913. Under the Revenue Act, individuals with income exceeding $3,000 could be taxed starting at 1% up to 7% for incomes exceeding $500,000.

It’s all gone downhill from there.

Unsurprisingly, the government has used its tax powers to advance its own imperialistic agendas and the courts have repeatedly upheld the government’s power to penalize or jail those who refused to pay their taxes.

While we’re struggling to get by, and making tough decisions about how to spend what little money actually makes it into our pockets after the federal, state and local governments take their share (this doesn’t include the stealth taxes imposed through tolls, fines and other fiscal penalties), the government continues to do whatever it likes—levy taxes, rack up debt, spend outrageously and irresponsibly—with little thought for the plight of its citizens.

To top it all off, all of those wars the U.S. is so eager to fight abroad are being waged with borrowed funds. As The Atlantic reports, “U.S. leaders are essentially bankrolling the wars with debt, in the form of purchases of U.S. Treasury bonds by U.S.-based entities like pension funds and state and local governments, and by countries like China and Japan.”

Of course, we’re the ones who have to repay that borrowed debt.

For instance, American taxpayers have been forced to shell out more than $5.6 trillion since 9/11 for the military industrial complex’s costly, endless so-called “war on terrorism.” That translates to roughly $23,000 per taxpayer to wage wars abroad, occupy foreign countries, provide financial aid to foreign allies, and fill the pockets of defense contractors and grease the hands of corrupt foreign dignitaries.

Mind you, that’s only a portion of what the Pentagon spends on America’s military empire.

The United States also spends more on foreign aid than any other nation, with nearly $300 billion disbursed over a five-year period. More than 150 countries around the world receive U.S. taxpayer-funded assistance, with most of the funds going to the Middle East, Africa and Asia. That price tag keeps growing, too.

As Forbes reports, “U.S. foreign aid dwarfs the federal funds spent by 48 out of 50 state governments annually. Only the state governments of California and New York spent more federal funds than what the U.S. sent abroad each year to foreign countries.”

Most recently, the U.S. has allocated nearly $115 billion in emergency military and humanitarian aid for Ukraine since the start of the Russia invasion.

As Dwight D. Eisenhower warned in a 1953 speech, this is how the military industrial complex continues to get richer, while the American taxpayer is forced to pay for programs that do little to enhance our lives, ensure our happiness and well-being, or secure our freedoms.

This is no way of life.

Yet it’s not just the government’s endless wars that are bleeding us dry.

We’re also being forced to shell out money for surveillance systems to track our movements, money to further militarize our already militarized police, money to allow the government to raid our homes and bank accounts, money to fund schools where our kids learn nothing about freedom and everything about how to comply, and on and on.

There was a time in our history when our forebears said “enough is enough” and stopped paying their taxes to what they considered an illegitimate government. They stood their ground and refused to support a system that was slowly choking out any attempts at self-governance, and which refused to be held accountable for its crimes against the people. Their resistance sowed the seeds for the revolution that would follow.

Unfortunately, in the 200-plus years since we established our own government, we’ve let bankers, turncoats and number-crunching bureaucrats muddy the waters and pilfer the accounts to such an extent that we’re back where we started.

Once again, we’ve got a despotic regime with an imperial ruler doing as they please.

Once again, we’ve got a judicial system insisting we have no rights under a government which demands that the people march in lockstep with its dictates.

And once again, we’ve got to decide whether we’ll keep marching or break stride and make a turn toward freedom.

But what if we didn’t just pull out our pocketbooks and pony up to the federal government’s outrageous demands for more money?

What if we didn’t just dutifully line up to drop our hard-earned dollars into the collection bucket, no questions asked about how it will be spent?

What if, instead of quietly sending in our tax checks, hoping vainly for some meager return, we did a little calculating of our own and started deducting from our taxes those programs that we refuse to support?

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, if we don’t have the right to decide what happens to our hard-earned cash, then we don’t have any rights at all.

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John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute.

Nisha Whitehead is the Executive Director of The Rutherford Institute.

12 April 2023

Source: www.globalresearch.ca