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It is true, western sanctions have failed miserably in destroying Russia’s economy. To the contrary, Russia’s economy has been booming since 2022 and keeps doing well, also projected into the future. Why?

“We have exponentially increased our economic sovereignty”, President Putin commented at a recent meeting with aircraft factory employees in Ulan-Ude, Buryatia. The autonomous Republic of Buryatia is in the south of Eastern Siberia, along the border with Mongolia.

Its territory takes up two thirds of the water area of Lake Baikal (see map below). This just as an idea of the enormous landmass, called Russia, and what lays above and beneath her.

Economic sovereignty, is one of the main reasons for Russia’s economic growth during the time of the worst sanctions any country has ever undergone by the west led, of course, by the US and its puppet Europe. The latter has followed the sanction circus, even though it is self-destructive for Europe. This, indeed, is well known to those who have been put into the position of “leading” – or rather destroying – Europe as an economic force.

Not by coincidence, the two key figures in this scenario are two Germans, the unelected President of the European Commission (EC) Madame Ursula von der Leyen, who calls all the important shorts, almost unquestioned, and the Chancellor of Germany Olaf Scholz, who is supposed to be leading the European economic powerhouse to annihilation. Madame von der Leyen is also on the WEF’s Board of Trustees and Olaf Scholz is a graduate of the WEF’s Young Global Leader’s (YGL) Academy.

As usual, it is the European people at large who have been betrayed by their so-called leaders – most, if not all of them, scholars of Klaus Schwab’s school for YGL. By no means have they ever been “infiltrated” to serve the interests of the people, who supposedly “elected” them. The farce and betrayal is so bold, that most people cannot and will not believe it.

That is precisely what the powers of those funding and directing the WEF are banking on. They are helped by decades of social engineering, highly professional mind manipulation, by the bought western main stream media.

The masterminds behind social engineering are Tavistock, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), a Pentagon-linked think tank, and others, using most sophisticated technologies for bending people’s minds into directions they never wanted, but they have no saying.

Only once we recognize it, admit our laisser-faire “victimhood”, we may be able to react and resist. See this.

Paraphrased, “We are proud of having been able to infiltrate countries around the world with our YGLs”, is one of Klaus Schwab’s infamous sayings.

The point of these sanctions is much more to harm Europe than to destroy Russia. The prime objective is to cut Europe – primarily Germany – off the flow of cheap energy, gas from Russia, thereby ruining and possibly as much as deindustrializing Germany and by association Europe. The deliberate destruction by the US / NATO of the Nord Stream Pipelines is vivid testimony.

President Putin elaborated on the exponential success of Russia in the face of western sanctions,

“After all, what did our adversary count on? That we would collapse in two or three weeks or in a month? The expectation was that enterprises would cease due to our partners refusing to work with us, the financial system would collapse, tens of thousands of people would be left without work, take to the streets, protest, Russia would be shaken from the inside and collapse. That was their intention, but this did not happen”.

President Putin did, however, not explain one of the key underlying factors for Russia’s blooming rather than wilting, namely the almost complete dedollarization that Russia’s Central Bank has managed to carry out under top Russian economist and President Putin’s economic adviser, Sergey Glazyev’s guidance.

V. Putin and S. Lavrov

Through dedollarization which brings along in parallel a sizable de-euroization, Russia’s economy has grown stronger, more autonomous, and is now even closer linked to eastern economies, notably China.

A Ruble-Yuan swap agreement between Russia and China has been in force for many years and has been steadily expanded for mutual protection – thereby also extending Russia’s relation with other Asian economies, especially those within the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), covering almost half of the world population and about a third of the world’s GDP.

This means sanction-free trading with half the world – a friendly rather than a belligerent world. That alone is a significant advantage compared to dealing with the west – which always expects that their “partners” dance to their tune.

Russia plays a major role within the BRICS-plus, meaning Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, with the plus standing for Iran and many western countries having expressed interest in joining the group, with the ultimate expectation to integrate sooner or later into the “Eastern Fold”, mainly represented by the SCO.

Amazing, but given the above background, not surprising, is Russia’s significant trade surplus of over US$ 330 billion equivalent. Despite western Ukraine-related sanctions, Russia’s exports surged by nearly 20% in 2022.

Much of the trade surplus is driven by grain exports. Russia produces almost 12% of the world’s wheat, all non-GMO (2022/2023 est.). Total world wheat production for this period is estimated at about 781 million tons.

The combined BRICS-plus Iran output is almost half of global production. That of China (18%), India (13%), and Russia (12%), account for a combined 43% of total world production. Almost half of one of the world’s key food staples is produced by just three BRICS countries.

This fact is important – signaling that food leverage is not handled by the west.

Russia’s overall trade increased by 8.1% in 2022 over 2021, to US$ 850.5 billion equivalent. The bulk of Russia’s exports were energy products, gas and petrol, amounting to about two thirds of all exports, US$ 384 billion equivalent.

This is an almost 43% annual increase despite western sanctions. Moscow redirected energy that the west refused (sanctions) to China, India, and other Asian partners, at prices higher than the special low tariffs Germany and Europe benefitted from – and thus, made Europe’s economy more competitive worldwide. For details, see this.

The deliberate suicide attempt in Europe’s leadership (sic) against the will of the people, or rather by betraying the European population, becomes more than evident.

This trend is set out in the WEF’s Great Reset and UN Agenda 2030 – utmost possible destruction of the current mostly western economic system, so that it may be rebuilt according to WEF’s concept of a One World Order (OWO) which also includes massive population reduction. This may be precipitated over the coming years through the poisonous injections that were coerced upon the globe’s 8 billion people in the past two years. An estimated 70% were injected.

These jabs or “vaxxes”, with a variety of poisonous contents, were planned to bring death and infertility. The proof is slowly but surely seeping out. Now many even western politicians are no longer silent, as they are confronted with skyrocketing over-mortality and infertility.

With these overall plan and objectives of the WEF and its diabolical handlers from the shadows, it also becomes evident, that Russia and China become key targets for take-over, as the new planned OWO will need their energy and food – aside from a myriad of other life-supporting natural resources Russia and China possess.

What the Russian booming economy – because of the “sanctions” – and ever-growing trade surplus signals, is a more stabilizing independence of the east from the west, a shift in world leadership. The warmonger hegemon is gradually but ever more visibly fading. A new concept of peaceful multi-polarity is taking over. – That is humanity’s hope.

However, we must not forget that this concept of a constant western mode of aggression to govern the world, was designed already a century or more ago. It has been perfected by creating several weapons of mass destruction that may be used simultaneously worldwide – like the covid-scare and totalitarian measures, as long as the media-duped world sleeps. Alternatively, these weapons of mass destruction may be applied individually and by targeting specific countries and regions, to disguise their wanton damaging intent.

Other than a potentially all-destructive nuclear war – which may not be in the interest of those intending to run the world – there are a few other weapons of mass destruction:

(i) Artificial weather and climate modification which also includes triggering of deadly earthquakes – Environmental Modification Techniques, or ENMOD, which comprises the High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program, or HAARP system, as well as other DARPA developed technologies, see this and this. 
These technologies are fortunately not a western monopoly, but are also in control of Russia and China, and at least partially by a few other countries. This, despite Klaus Schwab’s (WEF) arrogant phantasy expressed during the recent World Government Summit in Dubai, that a small elite should control these world commanding technologies – see this;

(ii) The pharma-assault on the world, as we have witnessed with the covid-crime, where harming and deadly medication is forced upon the population; see this – and the impending all-nations overriding WHO supremacy with the revised International Health Regulations (IHR), of which the new Pandemic Treaty will be an integral part – tyrannizing the world with health measures that supposedly no government can oppose.
Though, police and military enforcement is foreseen, it is unlikely to hold against the power of the people. See this. The easiest and most effective answer is – EXIT WHO IMMEDIATELY; and

(iii) The global financial meltdown – which is largely and deliberately a derivative-based “financial weapon of mass destruction”. It may have started with the recent collapse of California’s Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), followed by the NYC Signature Bank – and the latest Credit Suisse (CS), just barely saved by the Swiss Central Bank with a US$ 54 billion equivalent lifeline credit. CS is one of the “Too Big to Fail” (TBF) banks. It may be just a matter of time, before the TBF banks will become too big of a tax-payer liability – and they must be dropped.
For details of the looming Financial Tsunami, see this and this.

These are but a few of the weapons of mass destruction that the west may want to use to maintain its Washington-led hegemony.

It is amazing but no coincidence, how the dots connect when analyzing the Russian booming economy, despite – NO, BECAUSE of western sanctions.

Aggressions, lies, deceit, deliberate killing are low vibrating deeds or behaviors. Sooner or later, they will succumb to higher spirituality, emitted by an awakened, an aware and a conscious society – We, the People.

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Peter Koenig is a geopolitical analyst and a former Senior Economist at the World Bank and the World Health Organization (WHO), where he worked for over 30 years around the world.

20 March 2023

Source: www.globalresearch.ca

By Dr Gideon Polya

The 20th anniversary of the war criminal US, UK and Australian invasion of Iraq in 2003 will fall on about 20 March 2023. On this occasion mendacious and racist Western media will at best remember the Iraq War as a US policy mistake. However decent people will remember the carnage. From 1990 onwards Iraqi deaths from US-imposed violence and deprivation have totalled about 5.0-5.5 million, similar to deaths in the WW2 Jewish Holocaust ( 5-6 million).

(A). Some important prefatory comments on violent deaths, avoidable deaths from imposed deprivation, and culpability.

One notes that “holocaust” implies a large number of deaths whereas  “genocide” is precisely defined by Article 2 of the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (the UN Genocide Convention) thus: “In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, as such: a) Killing members of the group; b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group” [1].

Further, deaths in war and occupation come from violence and from imposed deprivation. Whether a child dies from violence (bombs, bullets or bashing) or from being deprived of life-sustaining requisites (food, potable water and medicine), the death is just as final, and the culpability of the perpetrator just as real. However while deaths in war from violence are often hard to assess, avoidable deaths from imposed deprivation can be estimated from comparative demographic data (that have been provided for the years from 1950 onwards by the UN Population Division). The methodology used to estimate avoidable deaths from deprivation is described in detail  in my book “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950” [2].

Culpability for avoidable deaths from imposed deprivation is set out by Articles 55 and 56 of the Fourth Geneva Convention ( the Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons In Time of War) that state that the  Occupying Power  is obliged to supply the conquered Subjects with life-sustaining food and medical requisites “to the fullest extent of the means available to it”.These key injunctions of International Law have been grossly violated by the US and its degenerate and serial war criminal allies (notably the UK, Apartheid Israel, France and US lackey Australia) in the post-9/11 US War on Muslims [3, 4].

Scrupulously ignored by mendacious Mainstream media (M3) journalist, editor, politician, academic and commentariat presstitutes is the horrible reality that the ongoing Iraqi Genocide and Iraq Holocaust actually commenced 109 years ago with the British invasion of Iraq in 1914 for oil and imperial hegemony [2, 5]. The deaths in the various stages of the 109-year and ongoing Iraq Holocaust are succinctly set out below.

(B). Deaths from violence and deprivation in the ongoing, 109-year Iraqi Holocaust.

(a). British rule or hegemony (1914-1950): 4 million.

British interest in invading and conquering Iraq came from discovery of oil in adjacent Iran in 1908. Western violation of Iraq commenced with the British invasion for oil and imperial hegemony a mere 6 years later, in 1914 during WW1.  Churchill had forced the Ottoman Empire (1517-1924 Ottoman Caliphate) into WW1  by seizing British-built battleships that the Turks had already paid for. Assuming excess mortality of Iraqis under British rule or hegemony (1914-1950) was the same as for Indians under the British – interpolation from available data indicate Indian avoidable death rates in “deaths per 1,000 of population per year” of 37 (1757-1920), 35 (1920-1930), 30 (1930-1940) and 24 (1940-1950) –  one can estimate from Iraqi population data that Iraqi avoidable deaths from deprivation under British occupation and hegemony from 1914-1950 totalled about 4 million [2, 4-7].

(b). Gulf War (1990-1991) and Sanctions period (1990-2003): 1.9 million.

Violent deaths and avoidable deaths from violently-imposed deprivation in the Gulf War (1990-1991) and the Sanctions period (1990-2003) totalled  0.2 million and 1.7 million, respectively. During the Sanctions period the US, UK an Israeli air forces relentlessly bombed Iraqi infrastructure with consequent huge avoidable deaths from deprivation. On May 12, 1996, Madeleine Albright (US UN Ambassador and later US Secretary of State) defended UN sanctions against Iraq on a “60 Minutes” segment in which Lesley Stahl asked her “We have heard that half a million children have died. I mean, that’s more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?” Madeleine Albright replied “We think the price is worth it” [6]. This was a singular instance in which the US admitted to its genocidal carnage. Back in 1990 eminent Australian medical scientist  Professor Fred Mendelsohn (his industrial chemist father Oscar Mendelsohn befriended and employed my Jewish Hungarian refugee father,  Dr John Polya, in about 1940) argued for peace and warned in a letter published by The Age (Melbourne) that huge numbers of children would die in the looming Gulf War. This wonderful and inspiring pro-peace humanitarian  was right – Iraqi under-5 infant deaths under Sanctions totalled 1.7 million, a massive crime against Humanity.

(c). Iraq War (2003-2011): 2.7 million.

The US Just Foreign Policy organization estimated, based on the data of expert UK ORB analysts and top US medical epidemiologists, 1.5 million violent deaths in the Iraq War (2003-2011). UN Population Division data  indicate a further 1.2 million Iraqi avoidable deaths from war-imposed deprivation in this period. In 2003-2011 Iraqi deaths  from violence (1.5 million) and imposed deprivation (1.2 million) totalled 2.7 million [2, 4-7].

Iraqi deaths from violence (1.7 million) and war-imposed deprivation (2.9 million) in the period 1990-2011 totalled  4.6 million.

(d). Post-Iraq War (2011 onwards): 0.4 million.

The US ostensibly withdrew from devastated Iraq in 2011 but returned in force to the region with a vengeance in 2012 to help Syria, Iraq and Iran deal with ISIS  in Syria (2012 onward)  and  thence in Iraq (2014 onwards) that has been associated with about 0.1 million violent Iraqi deaths, most notably in devastated Mosul (40,000 killed)  and in  twice US-demolished Fallujah [8-10]. One notes that the ruthless and barbarous ISIS subverted and took over the Sunni insurgency in Iraq against the corrupt, violent, US-installed Al Maliki Government, and similarly ISIS came to dominate the US Alliance-backed Sunni insurgency against the Assad Government in Syria. UN data indicate about 0.3 million avoidable Iraqi  deaths from deprivation in the period 2011-2020. Just as the US backed Islamists in Afghanistan  from 1978 onwards, so the US and its allies covertly supported ISIS Islamists in Iraq and Syria with the realized aims of a permanent  US presence in both countries, and the  Balkanizing of Iraq and Syria in the interests of Apartheid Israel. Only Russian support enabled the Syrian Government to survive.  Professor Michel Chossudovsky: “The Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham: An instrument of the Western Military Alliance…In August 2014, Obama launched a so-called “counter-terrorism operation” against the ISIS which was firmly entrenched in Mosul. This “fake” counter-terrorist operation was launched against terrorists who were supported and financed by the US, UK, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Israel (among others)” [11]. The Syrian and Iraqi Governments have demanded US withdrawal to no avail [12]. The Iraqi Genocide and Iraqi Holocaust continues.

 (e). Iraqi Holocaust deaths 5 million (1990 onwards) and 9 million (1914 onwards).  

Ignoring Iraqi deaths associated with the US-backed Iraq-Iran War, one can estimate about 9 million Iraqi deaths from UK or US violence and  imposed deprivation in the century after the 1914 invasion of Iraq by Britain, this constituting an Iraqi Holocaust,  and also an Iraqi Genocide as defined by Article 2 of the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide [1].

Consideration of (c) and (d) above indicates post-1990 Iraqi deaths from violence and deprivation totalling 4.6 million + 0.4 million = 5 million [2, 4-7].

The huge avoidable deaths from deprivation of Iraqis under the British, Americans and the US Coalition is evidence of gross violation of Articles 55 and 56 of the Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War that state unequivocally that an Occupier must provide its conquered Subjects with life-preserving food and medical requisites “to the fullest extent of the means available to it” [3, 4].

(f). Check: an alternative 2023 estimate of 5.5 million Iraqi deaths from violence and deprivation from 1990 onwards.

An alternative estimate of Iraqi deaths from violence and imposed deprivation from 2003 onwards in the period 2003-2023 can be made as follows:

(i). Violent deaths totalled 1.5 million (2003-2011) as determined by Just Foreign Policy based on direct polling surveys by US epidemiologists and the UK polling organization ORB. However the Americans and their allies did not completely leave in 2011 and indeed rejected demands of the Iraqi Parliament for them to do so [12].  The renewed violent killing in response to the Sunni ISIS (ISIL, Daesh) rebellion includes 40,000 killed in the destruction  of the western part of  Mosul alone [10], and one can accordingly estimate  a further circa  0.1 million violent Iraqi deaths from 2011 onwards. Thus violent deaths have totalled about 1.6 million in the period 2003-2023.

(ii). Avoidable deaths from imposed deprivation in the period 2003-2023 can be estimated from  UN Population Division demographic data [2]. Thus in 2003 under-5 infant deaths totalled 114,400. Using impoverished and sanctioned but nevertheless well governed and peaceful Cuba  as a baseline, the corrected Iraqi under-5 infant mortality in 2003 was 111,752 [2]. Likewise the corrected Iraqi under-5 infant mortality in 2020 was 27,889 [2]. The average under-5 infant mortality in the period 2003-2023 was 69,821 and  totalled 69,821 per year x 20 years = 1,396,420 for 2003 onwards. For impoverished Global South countries total avoidable deaths from deprivation are about 1.4 times the under-5 infant mortality [2], or 1,396,420 x 1.4 = 1,954,988 or about 2.0 million.

Accordingly Iraqi deaths from violence and imposed deprivation total 1.6 million + 2.0 million = 3.6 million (2003 onwards), 1.9 million + 3.6 million = 5.5 million (1990 onwards), and 4.0 million + 5.5 million = 9.5 million (1914 onwards).

(g). Comparing the Iraqi Holocaust (5.0-5.5 million deaths) with the WW2 Jewish Holocaust (5.1-5.8 million deaths) and about 70 other genocides and holocausts.  

As outlined above, estimates of deaths from violence and imposed deprivation are of 5.0-5.5 million such Iraqi deaths from 1990 onwards and 9.0 -9.5 million such deaths from 1914 onwards. How does this compare with deaths in the WW2 Jewish Holocaust?

Eminent Jewish British historian and fervent  Zionist, Professor Sir Martin Gilbert (fellow of Merton College, Oxford, author of 88 books, and expert on Winston Churchill, WW1, WW2 and Jewish history) [13] estimated  5.1 million WW2 Jewish Holocaust deaths in his “Jewish History Atlas” (1969)[14], and 5.8 million in his “Atlas of the Holocaust” (1982) [15].

Deaths from violence and imposed deprivation in the 1990 onwards Iraqi Holocaust (5.0-5.5 million) are commensurate with those in the WW2 Jewish Holocaust (5-6 million), the WW2 Polish Holocaust (6 million), and the WW2 Bengali Holocaust (WW2 Indian Holocaust, WW2 Bengal Famine; 6-7 million Indians deliberately starved to death for strategic reasons in Bengal, Bihar, Assam and Odisha by the British with food-denying Australian complicity), but much fewer than in the WW2 European Holocaust (30 million mostly Russian and other Slavic victims as well as Jewish and in Roma victims), and the WW2 Chinese Holocaust (35-40 million Chinese deaths from violence and deprivation under the Japanese, 1937-1945).

For detailed listings of about 70 genocides and holocausts see “Report Genocide” [16]  and  my books “US-imposed post-9/11 Muslim Holocaust and Muslim Genocide” [4] and “Jane Austen and the Black Hole of British History” [17]. The Iraqi Holocaust and Iraqi Genocide [2, 4-7] was part of a wider 21st century Muslim Holocaust and Muslim Genocide in which (as determined in 2015) 32 million Muslims died from violence (5 million) and imposed deprivation (27 million) in 20 countries invaded by the US Alliance since the US Government’s 9/11 false flag atrocity in which about 3,000 innocent Americans perished [18-20].

(h). Holocaust ignoring  and genocide ignoring by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) that is largely composed of US Alliance members including  the major  perpetrators of the Iraqi Holocaust.

The major perpetrators  of the Iraqi Holocaust (the US, UK and Australia) are  among the 35 members of the all-European, anti-Jewish anti-Semitic, anti-Arab anti-Semitic, pro-Apartheid, genocide-ignoring and holocaust-ignoring IHRA. Of these 35 soiled, pro-Apartheid  countries: (1) all are European; (2) the 5 located outside Europe (Argentina, Australia, Canada, Apartheid Israel, and the US) were all created based on the genocide of the Indigenous People; (3) 9 members were part of the genocidal WW2 Nazi Germany Alliance; (4) 4 (the US, UK, France and Apartheid Israel) are nuclear terrorist states; (5) 28 belong to the 30-member nuclear-armed NATO that accepts  mass incineration of billions of men, women and children as an acceptable military strategy; (6) 14 were notably involved in the brutal conquest and genocide of Indigenous non-European people over 5 centuries; (7) only 2 (Austria and Ireland) have had the moral decency to sign and ratify the Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW); and (8) all but 4 shockingly voted No to the annual UNGA Anti-Nazi Resolution in 2022 that condemns Nazism, neo-Nazism and related racist obscenities [21, 22].

The IHRA Definition of “antisemitism” lists 11 false examples of assertions (e.g. criticism of Apartheid Israel, Nazi-style Israeli policies and hugely disproportionate Zionist influence) that it regards as anti-Jewish anti-Semitic. All 11 examples can be shown to be utterly false assertions  designed to damage and defame anti-racist Jewish and non-Jewish critics of genocidally racist Zionism and of Apartheid Israel and its ongoing Palestinian Genocide. The IHRA Definition of anti-Semitism is anti-Jewish anti-Semitic (by falsely defaming anti-racist Jewish critics of Apartheid Israel as anti-Semites) , anti-Arab anti-Semitic (by falsely defaming anti-racist Palestinian, Arab and Muslim  critics of Apartheid Israel as anti-Semites) and holocaust-ignoring and genocide-ignoring  (by ignoring all WW2 holocausts and genocides other than the WW2 Jewish Holocaust and indeed ignoring 70 other holocausts and genocides) [21, 22].

Holocaust-ignoring and genocide-ignoring are far, far worse than repugnant holocaust denial and genocide denial because the latter can at least permit public refutation and public discussion, subject, of course, to censorship by the  mendacious Mainstream media (M3) presstitutes who dominate public life and public perception of reality in the Western Corporatocracies and Murdochracies. Not surprisingly, the racist and mendacious IHRA Definition has been condemned by scholars around the world and by over 40 anti-racist Jewish organizations [23]. However the IHRA holocaust ignoring has made great strides in Zionist-subverted US, UK and Australia, the major perpetrators  of the Iraqi Holocaust. Thus, for example, in Australia the  Australian Labor Government,  the Coalition Opposition, the Labor Government of South Australia,  the Labor Government  of Victoria, and 5 out of Australia’s 43 universities (Melbourne, Wollongong,  Macquarie, Monash, and Sunshine Coast Universities) have all adopted the egregiously false, racist, anti-Semitic and genocide-ignoring IHRA Definition of Anti-Semitism [21, 24- 26]. This attack on academic and societal  free speech  and Truth is just as bad in the Zionist-subverted UK and in the  Zionist-subverted US (notwithstanding  the First Amendment of the US Constitution that guarantees free speech for Americans).

Final comments.

On the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the illegal and war criminal US Alliance  invasion of Iraq on 20 March 2003 decent people will pause to reflect on the devastation inflicted on Iraq. Iraqi deaths from violence and war-imposed deprivation totalled about 5 million for the period 1990 onwards. The killing continues in US-devastated Iraq. In 2020, for example, the under-5 infant deaths as a percentage of total population for Iraq was 52 times greater than that for Japan, and 14 times greater than that for impoverished and sanctioned but peaceful Cuba [2, 27]. However this appalling and continuing carnage is resolutely ignored by the mendacious Mainstream media (M3) journalist, editor, politician, academic and commentariat  presstitutes of the countries that perpetrated the ongoing Iraqi Holocaust and Iraqi Genocide.

Decent anti-racist  folk around the world will demand truth-telling and justice for the devastated people of Iraq and will impose Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) on the perpetrators  just as BDS is applied to the Apartheid Israel and all its supporters complicit in the ongoing Palestinian Genocide (2.2 million deaths from violence, 0.1 million, and deprivation, 2.1 million, from  WW1 onwards) [28-30].

In 2005, when first expert reports on the growing carnage in Iraq were emerging,  anti-racist Jewish British writer Harold Pinter in his Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech stated: “The invasion of Iraq was a bandit act, an act of blatant state terrorism, demonstrating absolute contempt for the concept of international law. The invasion was an arbitrary military action inspired by a series of lies upon lies and gross manipulation of the media and therefore of the public; an act intended to consolidate American military and economic control of the Middle East masquerading as a last resort all other justifications having failed to justify themselves as liberation. A formidable assertion of military force responsible for the death and mutilation of thousands and thousands of innocent people. We have brought torture, cluster bombs, depleted uranium, innumerable acts of random murder, misery, degradation and death to the Iraqi people and call it ‘bringing freedom and democracy to the Middle East’. How many people do you have to kill before you qualify to be described as a mass murderer and a war criminal? One hundred thousand? More than enough, I would have thought. Therefore it is just that Bush and Blair be arraigned before the International Criminal Court of Justice” [31]. 5 million? Surely enough, I would have thought.

References.

[1]. Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide: https://treaties.un.org/doc/publication/unts/volume%2078/volume-78-i-1021-english.pdf .

[2]. Gideon Polya, “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950”, 2nd edition, Korsgard Publishing, Germany , 2021.

[3]. “Fourth Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War”, 12 August 1949: https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/documents/atrocity-crimes/Doc.33_GC-IV-EN.pdf .

[4]. Gideon Polya, “US-imposed, Post-9/11 Muslim Holocaust and Muslim Genocide”, Korsgard Publishing, Germany, 2020.

[5]. Gideon Polya , “20th Anniversary Of Huge Demonstrations Against Impending Iraq War”, Countercurrents, 15 February 2023: https://countercurrents.org/2023/02/20th-anniversary-of-huge-demonstrations-against-impending-iraq-war/?swcfpc=1  .

[6]. “Iraqi Holocaust Iraqi Genocide”: https://sites.google.com/site/iraqiholocaustiraqigenocide/ .

[7]. “Muslim Holocaust Muslim Genocide”: https://sites.google.com/site/muslimholocaustmuslimgenocide/ .

[8]. Gideon Polya, Review: “The Sacking Of Fallujah. A People’s History” – Ongoing Iraqi Genocide”, Countercurrents, 30 January 2021: https://countercurrents.org/2020/01/review-the-sacking-of-fallujah-a-peoples-history-ongoing-iraqi-genocide/ .

[9]. Ross Caputi, Richard Hil, and Donna Mulhearn, “The Sacking Of Fallujah. A People’s History”, University of Massachusetts Press, 2019.

[10]. Gideon Polya, “Mosul Massacre latest in Iraqi Genocide”, Countercurrents, 24 July 2017: https://countercurrents.org/2017/07/mosul-massacre-latest-in-iraqi-genocide-us-alliance-war-crimes-demand-icc-bds .

[11]. Professor Michel Chossudovsky, “The Engineered Destruction and Political Fragmentation of Iraq. Third War against Iraq initiated by Obama”, Global Research, 16 March 2023: https://www.globalresearch.ca/the-destruction-and-political-fragmentation-of-iraq-towards-the-creation-of-a-us-sponsored-islamist-caliphate/5386998 .

[12]. Gideon Polya, “US, UK,  Australia, Canada & Germany Reject Iraqi Parliament’s Quit Iraq Demand”, Countercurrents, 16 January 2021: https://countercurrents.org/2020/01/us-uk-australia-canada-germany-reject-iraqi-parliaments-quit-iraq-demand/ .

[13]. Gideon Polya,  “UK Zionist Historian Sir Martin Gilbert (1936-2015) Variously Ignored Or Minimized WW2 Bengali Holocaust”, Countercurrents, 19 February 2015: https://countercurrents.org/polya190215.htm .

[14]. Martin Gilbert, “Jewish History Atlas”, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London, 1969.

[15].  Martin Gilbert “Atlas of the Holocaust”, Michael Joseph, London, 1982.

[16]. “Report Genocide”; https://sites.google.com/site/reportgenocide/home .

[17].  Gideon Polya,  “Jane Austen and the Black Hole of British History. Colonial rapacity, holocaust denial and the crisis in biological sustainability”, 3rd edition, Korsgaard Publishing,  2023.

[18]. Gideon Polya, “Paris Atrocity Context: 27 Million Muslim Avoidable Deaths From Imposed Deprivation In 20 Countries Violated By US Alliance Since 9-11”, Countercurrents, 22 November, 2015: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya221115.htm .

[19]. “Experts: US did 9/11”: https://sites.google.com/site/expertsusdid911/ .

[20]. Gideon Polya, “Lying Mainstream Media Ignore Expert New 9/11 WTC7 Demolition Report”, Countercurrents, 22 August 2020: https://countercurrents.org/2020/08/lying-mainstream-media-ignore-expert-new-9-11-wtc7-demolition-report/ .

[21]. Gideon Polya, “Melbourne University Adopts Anti-Semitic & Holocaust-Ignoring IHRA Definition Of Anti-Semitism”, Countercurrents, 5 February 2023: https://countercurrents.org/2023/02/melbourne-university-adopts-anti-semitic-holocaust-ignoring-ihra-definition-of-anti-semitism/ .

[22]. Gideon Polya, “Zionists & Pro-Zionist, US Lackey Australian Government Threaten Australian Academic Free Speech”, Countercurrents, 7 March 2023: https://countercurrents.org/2023/03/zionists-pro-zionist-us-lackey-australian-government-threaten-australian-academic-free-speech/?swcfpc=1 .

[23]. Jewish Voices for Peace, “First ever: 40+ Jewish groups worldwide oppose equating antisemitism with criticism of Israel”, 17 July 2018: https://jewishvoiceforpeace.org/first-ever-40-jewish-groups-worldwide-oppose-equating-antisemitism-with-criticism-of-israel/#english .

[24]. Gideon Polya, “85 Ways Zionist Australian Labor Government Betrays Palestinian Human Rights & Humanity”, Countercurrents, March 2023: https://countercurrents.org/2023/03/85-ways-zionist-australian-labor-government-betrays-palestinian-human-rights-humanity/?swcfpc=1 .

[25]. Michael Bradley, “Does being anti-Israel mean you’re anti-Semitic?”, Crikey, 14 March 2023: https://www.crikey.com.au/2023/03/14/anti-israel-anti-semitic-university-ihra-definition/  . .

[26], “Criticising the nation of Israel is justified. Demonising Jewish people is not”, Crikey, 17 March 2023: https://www.crikey.com.au/2023/03/17/anti-semitism-israel-jewish-people-ihra-definition/ .

[27]. Richard Hil and Gideon Polya, “Imperial power: The Iraq war, 20 years on”, Pearls & Irritations, 16 March 2023: https://johnmenadue.com/iraq-and-imperial-power-20-years-on/ .

[28]. BDS – Boycott Apartheid Israel: https://sites.google.com/view/bdsopinions/home .

[29]. “Palestinian Genocide”: https://sites.google.com/site/palestiniangenocide/ .

[30]. 2023, 75th Nakba Anniversary: 1948 Nakba (Catastrophe) & Palestinian Genocide: https://sites.google.com/site/palestiniangenocide/1948-nakba-catastrophe-palestinian-genocide .

[31]. Harold Pinter, “Art, Truth And Politics”, Countercurrents, 8 December, 2005: https://countercurrents.org/arts-pinter081205.htm .

Dr Gideon Polya taught science students at La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia over 4 decades.

19 March 2023

Source: countercurrents.org

By Junaid S Ahmad

“There is great chaos under heaven; [hence] the situation is excellent.”

-Mao Zadong

With staunch US support, Pakistan’s unelected “imported government” is trying to arrest former Prime Minister Imran Khan, the most popular politician in the country, to prevent him from running in elections. But protesters are protecting him.

If 2022 was the year of popular uprisings in Pakistan, raising hope for protesters fed up with a thoroughly corrupt and repressive civil-military regime, 2023 seems to be the year when the government is trying every dirty trick in the book to kill that hope.

After a US-backed regime change operation removed elected Prime Minister Imran Khan from power in April 2022, Pakistan witnessed an unprecedented phenomenon in the nation’s history: For the first time, a civilian politician who was ousted from power didn’t simply end up in the dustbin of history, alongside interchangeable corrupt politicians who for decades played musical chairs, competing to plunder the country.

On the contrary, what occurred were massive outpourings of support for Khan and widespread opposition to the ancien régime put in power by Washington’s mercenaries in the military high command.

The enormous popular rejection of the current “imported government”, as Khan calls it, has made Pakistan’s elites increasingly desperate. They want him eliminated.

Assassination was their first method of choice – but they fumbled. At a rally in November, a gunman shot Khan in the leg, injuring but failing to kill him.

In the meantime, Plan B is being implemented: Arrest Khan on bogus charges and disqualify him from politics forever.

The former prime minister has been relentlessly holding peaceful demonstrations, demanding elections. The government knows that Khan would easily win, so it wants to prevent him from running.

A Gallup poll in March found that Khan is by far the most popular politician in Pakistan, with a 61% approval rating, compared to 37% disapproval.

The current, unelected Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has the complete opposite: a 32% approval rating, compared to 65% disapproval.

The figures are clear: Nearly two-thirds of Pakistanis support Khan and oppose the unelected government.

Pakistan’s “imported government” orders the arrest of Imran Khan

Faced with its deep unpopularity, on March 8, Pakistan’s regime initiated Plan B.

Khan was leading a peaceful protest – one of the countless rallies he has organized since the April 2022 regime-change operation.

This time, massive state security forces went on a rampage and tried to arrest Khan. But they could not do it. Standing between them and Khan were tens of thousands of his supporters.

The only way to get to Khan would have been a bloodbath. This was avoided – although one Khan supporter was killed.

Then again, on March 13, Khan called for a rally in the city considered to be the heart of Pakistan: Lahore.

Despite the entire state security machinery targeting him and his supporters, the rally in Lahore was one of the biggest the city has seen.

Khan and the protesters marched confidently and peacefully in every corner of the city, where they seemed unstoppable, greeted with joy by ordinary Pakistanis of all walks of life.

The former prime minister was undeterred, committed to holding demonstrations in the provinces of the Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KPK), in the lead-up to what he hopes will be national elections.

On March 14, the regime escalated its crackdown. Police surrounded Khan’s house in Lahore and tried to arrest him.

In response, thousands of supporters gathered at Khan’s home, protecting him.

The police responded with extreme violence, wounding dozens of protesters.

From his house, Khan symbolically delivered a speech via video stream, sitting with the tear gas canisters that had been fired outside.

The regime tries to ban Khan from public life

Khan’s determination to relentlessly participate in mass mobilizations has led the regime to try to ban him from public life.

Even Western organizations that are often biased, such as Amnesty International, have condemned the unelected Pakistani government’s authoritarian tactics, which have included prohibiting all speeches and rallies by Khan, as well arresting people who criticize the military on Twitter.

There are two main factors preventing an all-out assault to arrest Khan: the wrath of the population that would ensue, and fear that significant ranks within the armed forces would revolt and turn their guns on their superiors, à la Vietnam.

Indeed, it has been because of Khan’s popularity not just among ordinary Pakistani civilians but within the military ranks as well that the former prime minister has survived so far.

Khan’s popularity among some parts of the army is easy to explain. Rank-and-file soldiers and the majority of the junior and mid-rank officer corps are not keen on Washington dictating a War on Terror 2.0. They have always appreciated Khan’s principled opposition, since day one, to any military solution to the militancy in Afghanistan and the northwest of Pakistan.

Throughout 2022, Khan’s political party, the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI, the “Movement for Justice”), exponentially rose in popularity, in contrast to the all-too-visible political shenanigans of the coalition of feudal family dynasties and other corrupt forces in power.

If it is true that Khan mismanaged both political and economic governance while in power, then the current lot has engendered a virtual implosion and collapse in the country.

Khan challenges Pakistan’s pro-Western elites

It is difficult to overstate how incensed ordinary Pakistanis are with the political mafias, significant sections of the military top brass, and the chief mafia don: Washington.

One of the most disturbing aspects of what has been happening is the virtual connivance of liberal-left forces and the Pakistani deep state in attempting to eliminate Khan from the Pakistani political scene.

The visceral hatred of Khan by Pakistan’s comprador elites cannot be explained by simply having differences with Khan on various policies – something that Khan’s own critical supporters have as well.

No, for this elite class of the liberal, pro-Western Pakistani intelligentsia, Khan has committed the ultimate crime: socio-cultural class betrayal.

Khan lived abroad for so long during his impressive cricket career. He studied at Oxford, and speaks perfect English. Thus, Pakistan’s ‘Westoxicated’ elites thought that Khan would behave just like them.

Instead, Khan has rejected the condescending attitude that the country’s Western-educated elites show toward ordinary Pakistanis.

Khan has mobilized tens of millions because of his sincerity to reimagine a new Pakistan, prioritizing social justice and an independent foreign policy.

The fact that one small, sectarian leftist party or the other is not being given the credit of leading the revolt against the unpopular regime has made them neurotically envious of Khan.

It is clear for all to see: Khan and the critical supporters both in and outside of his political party have become the most dangerous threat to Pakistan’s status quo.

That is why we have seen very unusual and fast-paced meetings between US officials and Pakistan’s generals and regime officials: Washington’s “friends again”.

Elimination of Khan is absolutely necessary for the troika of these power centers: local comprador political elites, the military high command, and Washington.

Why? Because they know that Khan and his party will sweep any elections that are held.

US encourages Pakistan to “continue working with the IMF”

In the meantime, Pakistan is enduring a deep economic crisis. The country has nearly exhausted its foreign exchange reserves.

The regime is in talks with the US-dominated International Monetary Fund (IMF) to save itself from bankruptcy. All of the corresponding policies of austerity and taxing the poor – “structural adjustment” – are to be expected.

CIA officer turned US State Department spokesman Ned Price said in a press briefing on March 8 that Washington wants Pakistan to “continue working with the IMF” to impose “reforms that will improve Pakistan’s business environment”, in order to “make Pakistani businesses more attractive and competitive”.

In other words, the US State Department wants Pakistan to double down on neoliberal economic policies, such as lowering wages and cutting social spending.

If hated before, the current “imported government” is now despised more than ever.

Imran Khan’s independent foreign policy angers the mafia don in Washington

Khan’s foreign policy was anathema to Washington.

He refused to recognize apartheid Israel as a legitimate state.

He improved ties with Russia for straightforward reasons of economic necessity (as well as promoting the geostrategic stability in the broader Central Asian region).

Khan mended ties and cooperated with Iran, even praising its revolutionary “dignity.”

He strengthened ties with China.

At the same time, Khan repeatedly said he desired friendly relations with Washington, proposing that they work together in peacebuilding in Afghanistan and the wider region.

But these other foreign policy aims were utterly unacceptable to the mafia don, which seems to be set on a war path with Beijing (and others).

Pakistan has been a close ally of China since the 1960s. But Islamabad’s intense obsession with pleasing Washington is a flagrant slap in the face of Beijing.

The meetings that top Pakistani military officials, including the powerful Chief of Army Staff, General Qamar Javed Bajwa, have held with officials in Washington and London are not being missed upon by Beijing or Moscow.

Though Pakistan is suffering through some of the worst economic woes in its history – thanks to the robber barons in power – the US still knows that the South Asian nation has one of the most formidable militaries in the world, and is a nuclear-powered country of 230 million.

Washington also knows that it can easily woo the military top brass by reminding them of how only the US and its weapons and fighter jets can allow Pakistan to stay apace with arch-rival India, trying to match its military supremacy in the region.

This is why the US is so keen on Pakistan participating in Joe Biden’s second “Summit for Democracy” in March 2023. (Despite the fact that Pakistan’s current government was not elected, and repeatedly resisted calls for holding a vote.)

As prime minister, Khan respectfully declined the invitation to the first summit in 2021, because he knew exactly what the intention was: A declining empire seeking to muster as many nations as it can to be a part of its “coalition of the willing” against official enemies like China, Russia, Iran, Venezuela, Cuba, etc.

According to leaks by Pakistan’s own ambassador to the US (who has a soft spot for Khan), Washington wants to reestablish its old military base in Pakistan, which was closed down in 2011.

The US is also reportedly dictating to Pakistan which militant groups to go after and which ones should be left alone – such as the anti-China East Turkestan independence movement or the ISIS elements giving trouble to Beijing and the Taliban government in Kabul.

Most importantly, Washington wants to compel Islamabad to do everything possible to significantly reduce or halt any progress on the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) and Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative.

Moreover, Washington and the Persian Gulf monarchies are having a splendid time in convincing the new favorable military-civilian regime in Islamabad to undertake a political 180 that Khan would never agree to: gradually normalizing relations with Tel Aviv.

Nevertheless, what all of these power centers conspiring against Khan overlook is that they are dealing with a different Pakistani population now. The people’s political consciousness has exponentially risen with the ouster of Khan from power.

Hence, whether Khan is assassinated or somehow arrested or disqualified from politics, the powers-that-be might get a rude awakening, and be surprised that they are dealing with a new Pakistan, with or without Khan – one that will have zero tolerance for their venality, corruption, and subordination to Washington.

Prof. Junaid S Ahmad teaches Religion and Global Politics and is the Director of the Center for the Study of Islam and Decoloniality, Islamabad, Pakistan.

18 March 2023

Source: countercurrents.org

By David Swanson

The peace movement did a great many things right in the first decade of this millennium, some of which we’ve forgotten. It also fell short in many ways. I want to highlight the lessons I think we’ve most failed to learn and suggest how we might benefit from them today.

1. We formed uncomfortably large coalitions. We brought together war abolitionists with people who simply adored every war in human history but one. We probably didn’t hold a single event at which there wasn’t somebody pushing a theory about 9-11 that required some level of lunacy just to understand. We didn’t put most of our effort into distinguishing ourselves from other peace advocates or seeking to get people canceled; we put most of our effort into trying to end a war.

 

2. It all began to fall apart in 2007, after Democrats had been elected to end the war and escalated it instead. People had a choice in that moment to stand on principle and demand peace, or to kneel before a political party and peace be damned. Millions made the wrong choice, and have never understood it. Political parties, especially when combined with legalized bribery and a subservient communications system, are deadly to movements. The war was ended by a movement compelling George W. Bush to sign an agreement to end it, not by electing Obama, who only ended it when that agreement made him do so. The point is not the idiotic strawman that one should ignore elections or pretend that political parties don’t exist. The point is to put elections second. You don’t even have to put them millionth, only second. But put policy first. Be for peace first, and make public servants serve you, not the other way around.

 

3. A “war based on lies” is simply a longwinded way of saying “a war.” There is no such thing as a war not based on lies. What distinguished Iraq 2003 was the ineptness of the lying. “We are going to find vast stockpiles of weapons” is a really, really stupid lie to tell about a place where you are very shortly going to fail to find any such thing. And, yes, they knew that was the case. In contrast, “Russia is going to invade Ukraine tomorrow” is a really smart lie to tell if Russia is about to invade Ukraine sometime in the next week, because nobody is going to care that you got the day wrong, and statistically practically nobody is going to have the resources to understand that what you’ve really said is “Now that we’ve broken promises, torn up treaties, militarized the region, threatened Russia, lied about Russia, facilitated a coup, opposed a peaceful resolution, supported attacks on Donbas, and escalated those attacks in recent days, while mocking utterly reasonable peace proposals from Russia, we can count on Russia invading, just as we’ve strategized to make happen including in published RAND reports, and when that happens, we are going to load the whole zone up with more weapons than we ever pretended Saddam Hussein had, and we’re going to block any peace negotiations in order to keep the war going as hundreds of thousands die, which we don’t think you’ll object to even if it risks nuclear apocalypse, because we’ve pre-conditioned you with five years of ludicrous lies about Putin owning Trump.”

 

4. We never said one word about the evil of the Iraqi side of the war on Iraq. Even though you may know, or suspect — pre-Erica Chenoweth — that nonviolence is more effective than violence, you aren’t permitted to utter one word against Iraqi violence or you’re accused of blaming the victims or asking them to lie down and be killed or some other stupidity. To simply state that Iraqis might be better off using exclusively organized nonviolent activism, even while you are working day and night to get the U.S. government to end the war, is to become an arrogant imperialist telling one’s victims what to do and somehow magically forbidding them to “fight back.” And so there is silence. One side of the war is evil and the other good. You can’t cheer for that other side without becoming an ostracized traitor. But you must believe, exactly as the Pentagon believes but with the sides switched, that one side is pure and holy and the other evil incarnate. This hardly constitutes ideal preparation of the mind for a war in Ukraine where, not only is the other side (the Russian side) clearly engaged in reprehensible horrors, but those horrors are the primary topic of corporate media. Opposing both sides of the war in Ukraine and demanding peace is denounced by each side as somehow constituting support for the other side, because the concept of more than one party being flawed has been erased from the collective brain through thousands of fairy tales and other content of cable news. The peace movement did nothing to counter this during the war on Iraq.

 

5. We never made people understand that the lies were not only typical of all wars, but also, as with all wars, irrelevant and off-topic. Every lie about Iraq could have been perfectly true and there would have been no case for attacking Iraq. The U.S. openly acknowledged having every weapon it pretended Iraq had, without creating any case for attacking the United States. Having weapons is not an excuse for war. It makes no difference whether it’s true or false. The same can be said of economic policies of China or anyone else. This week I watched a video of a former prime minister of Australia ridiculing a bunch of journalists for not being able to distinguish China’s trade policies from an imaginary and ludicrous fantasy of a Chinese threat to invade Australia. But is there a member of the U.S. Congress who can make that distinction? Or a follower of either U.S. political party who will be able to much longer? The war in Ukraine has been named by the U.S. government/media the “Unprovoked War” — quite obviously precisely because it was so clearly provoked. But this is the wrong question. You don’t get to wage a war if it was provoked. And you don’t get to wage a war if the other side was unprovoked. I mean, not legally, not morally, not as part of a strategy for preserving life on Earth. The question is not whether Russia was provoked, and not merely because the obvious answer is yes, but also because the question is whether peace can be negotiated and established justly and sustainably, and whether the U.S. government has been impeding that development while pretending that only Ukrainians want the war to continue, not Lockheed-Martin stock holders.

 

6. We didn’t follow through. There were no consequences. The architects of the murder of a million people went golfing and got rehabilitated by the very same media criminals who had pushed their lies. “Looking forward” replaced the rule of law or a “rules based order.” Open profiteering, murder, and torture became policy choices, not crimes. Impeachment was stripped from the Constitution for any bipartisan offenses. There was no truth and reconciliation process. Now the U.S. works to prevent the reporting of even Russian crimes to the International Criminal Court, because preventing any sort of rules is the top priority of the Rules Based Order, and it hardly makes news. Presidents have been given all war powers, and darn near everybody has failed to grasp that the monstrous powers given to that office are drastically more important than which flavor of monster occupies the office. A bipartisan consensus opposes ever using the War Powers Resolution. While Johnson and Nixon had to clear out of town and opposition to war lasted long enough to label it a sickness, the Vietnam Syndrome, in this case the Iraq Syndrome lasted long enough to keep Kerry and Clinton out of the White House, but not Biden. And nobody has drawn the lesson that these syndromes are fits of wellness, not illness — certainly not the corporate media which has investigated itself and — after a quick apology or two — found everything in order.

 

7. We still talk about the media as having been an accomplice to the Bush-Cheney gang. We look back condescendingly at the age in which journalists claimed that one could not report that a president had lied. We now have media outlets in which you cannot report that anyone at all has lied if they are a member of one criminal cartel or the other, the elephants or the donkeys. It’s time we recognize how much the media outlets wanted the war on Iraq for their own profit and ideological reasons, and that the media has played the leading role in building up hostility with Russia and China, Iran and North Korea. If anyone is playing supporting actor in this drama, it is government officials. At some point we’ll have to learn to appreciate whistleblowers and independent reporters and to recognize that corporate media as a mass is the problem, not just one part of the corporate meda.

 

8. We never did even really try to teach the public that the wars are one-sided slaughters. U.S. polling for years found majorities believing the sick and ridiculous ideas that U.S. casualties were somewhere near equivalent to Iraqi casualties and that the U.S. had suffered more than Iraq, as well as that Iraqis were grateful, or that Iraqis were inexcusably ungrateful. The fact that well over 90% of the deaths were Iraqis never got through, nor the fact that they were disproportionately the very old and young, nor even the fact that wars are fought in people’s towns and not on 19th century battlefields. Even if people come to believe that such things happen, if they are told tens of thousands of times that they only happen if Russia does them, nothing useful will have been learned. The U.S. peace movement made the conscious choice over and over and over again for years and years to focus on the damage the war was doing to U.S. troops, and the financial cost to taxpayers, and not to make ending a one-sided slaughter a moral question, as if people don’t empty their pockets for faraway victims when they learn that they exist. This was the boomerang result of the spitting lies and other wild tales and exaggerations of mistakes of blaming the rank-and-file troops who destroyed Vietnam. A smart peace movement, its elders believed, would stress sympathizing with troops to the point of not telling anyone what the basic nature of the war was. Here’s hoping that if a peace movement grows again it deems itself capable of walking while chewing gum.

 

9. The United Nations got it right. It said no to the war. It did so because people around the world got it right and applied pressure to governments. Whistleblowers exposed U.S. spying and threats and bribes. Representatives represented. They voted no. Global democracy, for all its flaws, succeeded. The rogue U.S. outlaw failed. Not only did U.S. media/society fail to begin listening to the millions of us who didn’t lie or get everything wrong — allowing the warmongering clowns to go on failing upward, but it never became acceptable to learn the basic lesson. We need the world in charge. We do not need the world’s leading holdout on basic treaties and structures of law in charge of law enforcement. Much of the world has learned this lesson. The U.S. public needs to. Foregoing one war for democracy and democratizing the United Nations instead would work wonders.

 

10. There are always options available. Bush could have given Saddam Hussein $1 billion to clear out, a reprehensible idea but far superior to giving Halliburton hundreds of billions in a campaign to ruin the lives of tens of millions of people, permanently poison vast swaths of territory, predictably generate terrorism and instability, and fuel war after war after war. Ukraine could have complied with Minsk 2, a better and more democratic and stable deal than it is likely to ever see again. The options always get worse, but always remain far better than continuing war. At this point, after openly admitting that Minsk was a pretense, the West would need actions rather than words merely to be believed, but good actions are readily available. Pull a missile base out of Poland or Romania, join a treaty or three, constrain or abolish NATO, or support international law for all. The options are not hard to think of; you’re just not supposed to think them.

 

11. The underlying, WWII-based mythology that teaches people that a war can be good is rotten to the core. With Afghanistan and Iraq it took a year-and-a-half each to get good U.S. majorities in polls saying the wars never should have been started. The war in Ukraine appears to be on the same trajectory. Of course, those who believed the wars shouldn’t have been started did not, for the most part, believe they should be ended. The wars had to be continued for the sake of the troops, even if the actual troops were telling pollsters they wanted the wars ended. This troopism was very effective propaganda, and the peace movement did not effectively counter it. To this very day, the blowback is minimized as so many believe it would be inappropriate to mention that U.S. mass shooters are disproportionately veterans. Slandering all veterans in the hollow minds of those who cannot grasp that 99.9% of people are not mass shooters at all is deemed a greater danger than creating more veterans. The hope is that U.S. opposition to the war in Ukraine may grow in the absence of the troopist propaganda, as U.S. troops are not involved in large numbers and not supposed to be involved at all. But the U.S. media is pushing heroic stories of Ukrainian troops, and if no U.S. troops are involved, and if the nuclear apocalypse will stay within a magic European bubble, then why end the war at all? Money? Will that be enough, when everyone knows that money is simply invented if a bank or a corporation needs it, whereas reducing money spent on weapons will not increase money spent on any enterprise that isn’t set up to recycle chunks of it into election campaigns?

 

12. The wars ended, mostly. But the money didn’t. The lesson was neither taught nor learned that the more you spend on preparing for wars, the more war you’re likely to get. The war on Iraq, which generated hatred and violence around the globe, is now credited with keeping the United States safe. The same tired old bullshit about fighting them over there or over here is regularly heard on the floor of Congress in 2023. U.S. generals involved in the war on Iraq are presented in the U.S. media in 2023 as experts on victories, because they had something to do with a “surge,” even though no surge ever produced any victory. Russia and China and Iran are held up as threatening evils. The need for empire is openly admitted in keeping troops in Syria. The centrality of oil is discussed without shame, even if pipelines are blown up with a wink. And so, the money keeps flowing, at a greater pace now than during the war on Iraq, at a greater pace now than at any time since WWII. And the Halliburtonization continues, the privatization, the profiteering, and the pseudo-rebuilding services. The absence of consequences has consequences. Not a single serious pro-peace Congress Member remains. As long as we continue to oppose only particular wars for particular reasons, we’ll lack the necessary movement to put a plug in the sewer drain that sucks down over half of our income taxes.

 

13. Thinking longer term while trying to prevent or end a particular war would impact our strategies in many ways, not by cartoonishly reversing them, but by significantly adjusting them, and not just in terms of how we talk about troops. A little long-term strategic thought is enough, for example, to create serious concerns about pushing patriotism and religion as part of advocating for peace. You don’t see environmental advocates pushing love for ExxonMobil. But you do see them shying away from taking on the U.S. military and war celebrations. They learn that from the peace movement. If the peace movement won’t demand the global cooperation in place of war that’s needed to avoid nuclear disaster, how can the environmental movement be expected to demand the peaceful cooperation necessary to slow and mitigate the collapse of our climate and ecosystems?

 

14. We were too late and too small. The biggest global march in history was not big enough. It came with record speed but was not early enough. And not repeated enough. In particular it was not big enough where it mattered: in the United States. It’s wonderful to have had such massive turnout in Rome and London, but the lesson mislearned in the United States was that public demonstrations do not work. This was the wrong lesson. We overwhelmed and won over the United Nations. We constrained the size of the war and prevented a number of additional wars. We generated movements that led into the Arab Spring and Occupy. We blocked the massive bombing of Syria and created a deal with Iran, as the “Iraq Syndrome” lingered. What if we had begun years earlier? It’s not as if the war wasn’t advertised ahead. George W. Bush campaigned on it. What if we had mobilized en masse for peace in Ukraine 8 years ago? What if we were to protest the predictable steps toward war with China now, while they are being taken, rather than after the war starts and it becomes our national duty to pretend they never occurred? There is such a thing as being too late. You can blame me for this message of gloom and doom or thank me for this motivation to get into the streets in solidarity with your brothers and sisters across the globe who want life to continue.

 

15. The biggest lie is the lie of powerlessness. The reason the government spies on and disrupts and constrains activism is not that its pretense of paying no attention to activism is real, just the opposite. Governments pay very close attention. They know damn well that they cannot continue if we withhold our consent. The constant media push to sit still or cry or shop or wait for an election is there for a reason. The reason is that people have far more power than the individually powerful would like them to know. Reject the biggest lie and the others will fall like the imperialists’ mythical dominoes.

David Swanson is an author, activist, journalist, and radio host.

18 March 2023

Source: countercurrents.org

By Harsh Thakor

Last November we commemorated the 10^th anniversary of the death of Han Suyin who left us on November 2nd, in 2012.  Apart from the gratuitous obituaries in official newspapers her death was received with scant attention: passing away in obscurity, like so many revolutionary women. On her birth centenary, no noticeable commemoration meeting was staged.

Han Suyin carves a permanent niche amongst the most creative revolutionary writers from China and the world .The trademark in her writing was the simplistic style and natural  flow, that projected the essence of the Chinese Revolution and China after 1949.Han could touch the core of a readers soul in conveying  the extensive strides made in China .Without jargonised language or rhetoric she articulately illustrated how China after 1949 surpassed every other the world country  in heath, literacy, industrial and agricultural production and democratic power of the workers and peasants.

Han Suyin’s writings described how in the Chinese Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, revolutionary democracy touched heights unscaled and gave credibility to the mass movements. In the very thick of the skin she rebuked the Western media for wrongly cast in a negative picture of China. Han gave extensive coverage of the land reform movements, creation of people’s communes, and significance of Big Character posters in the Cultural Revolution, innovative experiments in education and production, workers and peasants running their revolutionary Commitees.etc.

Her works are significant today when the Western Media  and capitalist countries are leaving no stone unturned in heaping lies to discredit  Marxism  and distorting past history of USSR an China  .They work overtime in propaganda that horrific terror was the feature of China from 1956-78 ,projecting Mao Tse Tung as a dictator.

It is my firm wish that Han Suyin’s best book are re-printed to bring to light the truth about the Chinese Revolution and Socialism when the world is one verge of it’s most grave economic crisis  with globalisation engulfing every corner of the globe  like a Tsunami. Her great literary style could well be emulated by progressive writers today.

At one point Han Suyin was a mascot  for the Chinese Revolution.  Born Elizabeth Rosalie Chou, a “eurasian” woman who came of age in China on the eve of the revolution led by Mao, Han would eventually become one of the Revolution’s literary torchbearer’s of the western world.  She was a medical doctor and a novelist who, after she was gradually politically groomed by the revolution, would write social biographies of Mao Zedong and the Chinese Revolution––defending its imperative value from its beginning to the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, to the English-speaking world.  And though, at the end of the 1970s, like so many communists she made the mistake of harbouring faith that the China under Deng Xiaoping would continue the revolution––that China was not going down a capitalist road––she would soon become disillusioned by China’s path to state capitalism and retire, living in near anonymity, in exile in Europe.  In the mid-1990s she wrote a biography about Chou En lai and in this biography, upholding his great contribution as a Marxist.

Early Life

Han Suyin was born in Xinyang in the north-central province of Henan. Her father, who came from a landowning clan in Sichuan province, met his wife while studying abroad and took her home to semi-feudal China.

As a child in Beijing, she had fond memories of travelling to school by rickshaw and witnessing the gruesome sight of bodies of those who had died of starvation From the age of 12, she decided to become a doctor against the wishes of her mother who urged her to marry a foreigner – preferably an American because “all Americans are wealthy”.

After leaving school she paid for her fees at Yenching University in Beijing by learning to type. A Belgian businessman became her father substitute and arranged a scholarship for her to continue her medical studies in Brussels. In 1938 she returned to China to work in a French hospital in Yunnan, but was diverted on the way, meeting a handsome young officer, Tang Pao-huang (Pao), who moulded her in the Nationalist version of patriotism.

They were married that year in Wuhan, just before it was left to the mercy to the Japanese, and fled on the same boat as Chiang Kai-shek, head of the Nationalist government. They travelled west to Chongqing, the Nationalist wartime retreat, where she discovered her father’s relatives. There, she acquired her writing skill.

A missionary doctor, Marian Manly, encouraged her to sum up he story of her journey with Pao, refined the text and suggested avoiding subjects such as prostitution which might cause “misunderstanding”. The intention was to attract American readers to the Chinese cause. Bertrand Russell said that Destination Chungking (1942) – published under the pen name Han Suyin, which she kept – told him more about China in an hour than he had learned there in a year.

In 1942, when Pao was posted to London as military attache, she followed him with her adopted daughter and resumed her medical studies two years later. Through her publisher Jonathan Cape, she joined the circle of progressive Asia-minded intellectuals around Kingsley Martin, Dorothy Woodman, Margery Fry and JB Priestley. But medicine remained her goal.

Pao was posted to Washington and later to the Manchurian front where he died, fighting the communists, in 1947. Han Suyin remained in London to take her finals and then moved to Hong Kong. It was there that she met and had a passionate affair with the Times correspondent Ian Morrison. Their relationship laid the ground for ‘Many-Splendoured Thing’, which became a bestseller.

Five Volume Memoir

More important than her novels and historical biographies, however, was her five volume memoir that recounted her political evolution or crystallisation within China’s unfolding revolution. This was simply soul searching, tracing the inner or spiritual transformation of a Marxist revolutionary. A series of books where the personal was political aspects were completely mingled , these memoirs not only cashed on her  subjective experience to project t and justify the revolution led by Mao right along till  the end of the Cultural Revolution, but also manifested  protracted literary self-criticism.  They traced and illustrated her journey to communism where the older Han Suyin would critique the young and petty-bourgeois Elizabeth Chou while, at the same time, reflecting  the shadow of world historical events over her tiny and limited experience.

Although these memoirs were, by the publication of the third instalment (Birdless Summer), described as “a masterpiece in progress” by The Observer, by the 1990s they were largely out of print.  And by the 21st Century publishers, in a resurgence of anti-communist fever and the so-called capitalist “end of history”, would hardly give consideration in  touching a literary memoir that defended Mao and the Chinese Revolution––instead these publishers were flooding book stands with reactionary memoirs such as Jung Chang’s Wild Swans.  Han Suyin’s memoir counter attack to this backwards “wound literature” was considered anathema; no publisher was interested in a series of books, regardless of their literary value, where the author would place the Cultural Revolution in positive light.

Despite the fact that in 1968 The Daily Telegraph would claim that Han’s multi-volume memoirs would be “re-read two generations hence as one of the key documents of the twentieth century” these books are largely obliterated from public memory.  Now the Jung Changs of the world have replaced the Han Suyins and working overtime to tarnish the achievements of Mao Tse Tung  and the Chinese Revolution that  confirm everything westerners wish to project  revolutionary China s a ‘horror.’

Han should be resurrected by radical history because, far ahead of her time, her memoirs upheld the world historical revolution in China under Mao.

False Projection of Han Suyin

Regretfully she is remembered for the 1955 movie adaptation of her novel A Many Splendored Thing that also inspired a pop song and subsequent cliché. Still when people narrate that “love is a many splendored thing” one questions whether they had any genuine insight into Han Suyin or what she stood for.  She battled for much more than a terrible movie adaptation of a novel she wrote when she was young, let alone its even more terrible pop song and trite saying.

Unfortunately, due to the fact that the majority of her books are out of print, Han will mainly be remembered for A Many Splendored Thing––that semi-autobiographical novel that was written before she was a communist.  Even worse, she will probably be remembered for the movie adaptation where a white woman wearing eye make-up played her fictionalized self (since non-white women were not allowed to act as main characters in Hollywood at the time) and a complex novel about interracial love affairs in racial contexts was turned into another Hollywood romance.  However those of us who are Marxists or revolutionary democrats need to remember Han as a torchbearer for a world historical revolution––someone who invested every ounce of her energy in   projecting the Chinese Revolution in glowing light to her bourgeois readers in the west.

Biography of Mao

Indeed, her second historical biography on Mao, Wind in the Tower, has an appraisal of of Mao––which is redeeming in today’s anti-communist and anti-Marxist climate. Han Suyin clearly took a side––, in the moment of revolutionary upheaval, as a conscious catalyst of revolutionary ideology.  In respect of her more personal and critical memoirs where she discusses being attacked by Red Guards at certain points for her political failures, It s poignant that she would create books upholding both Mao and the GPCR. Regrettably all of these books are now out-of-print and Han Suyin is dead.

Incredibly detailed and extensively cited, Suyin’s work traces the development of China starting from directly after the People’s Liberation War in ’49 up until ’75, when the book was written. The  book has too strong of a tendency to shift the blame for the excesses of the Cultural Revolution onto Lin Biao- being a sharp  critique of his anarchism, along with the anarchist tendencies within the party and the youth movements as I thought both were mostly valid. The coverage of the treatment of USSR-PRC relations was fascinating and informative.

Most comprehensively Han Suyin sum s up the positive political role of the Cultural Revolution.

A possible weakness here is in making no comprehensive analysis of the 2 line struggle in the final stages o the Cultural Revolution after Lin Biao perishing, with no evaluation of the Gang of Four.

Morning Deluge

In The Morning Deluge Han Suyin concentrates on the condition of the people and on the task that Mao embarked himself upon, to liberate them from the hunger, disease and oppression which made many observers 50 years ago (and less) dismiss China as a decaying backwater of futility. These two books pose a general issue of whether “the truth” about a man like Mao comes most nearly from a portrait painted with passion in broad strokes, or from an agglomerated portrait of small lines deriving from the printed data we get from and about China. Han Suyin dips her ink boldly, retaining her novelist’s selectivity in assembling choices; which result in a moral tale with the extraordinary mixture of sentimentality toward what she likes and ferocity toward what she does not

The Morning Deluge “recounts the first 61 years of the chairman’s life, from his birth in 1893 at the tranquil village of Shaoshan to the end of the Korean War, and a second volume is promised to take the story on from 1954. Han Suyin brings to life  the studious nature of young Mao—he wrote more than one million words of notes and critiques during his five years of study in Changsha—and the boldness of his mind; he accepted only what he himself found to be true and then held to it unflinchingly.. She claims Mao had a “considerable following” among Changsha’s factory workers before 1919, and says a reproduction of the famous painting of him going in flowing robe with noble men in Hanyuan was hung by mistake in the Vatican in 1969 as a portrait of “a young Chinese missionary.” When Chou Enlai and others went off to study in France he stayed home because he felt he still had so much to learn about his own country.

She shows how Mao evolved, from his own unique combination of study and observation, the stress upon organizing peasants and the building of a broad front against imperialism which were the two points at which he was a torch bearer of Leninism even further from Marx than Lenin himself had done. Always Mao stressed integrating  with the masses (“the many‐millioned” is Han Suyin’s word) more than blueprints, and the book rightly pictures Mao as regularly in conflict with old styled  Marxists who wished to prematurely storm cities and slavishly ape Soviet models.

Being fresh from Moscow, these ultra‐leftists thought Mao was devoid in grasping “proletarian internationalism,” and were sceptical that there could be “Marxism in the mountains” where Mao was with incredible  foresight and patience embarked on building  guerrilla bases. Han Suyin, as a half Chinese, is understandably moved by the towering achievements of Mao, and in the chapters on the Long March and the Yenan years which followed she uses interviews conducted in China to unfold a readable drama of the new defining day in which the Chinese people finally “stood up” and re-wrote world history on equal terms.

Survivors told her how Long Marchers roped themselves together (“sleep flying”) to avoid sleep and collapse; how one marcher was perplexed when he came upon the Mao minority in Kwangsi: “I trotted up to a man I saw, but he did not understand me; I tried every word: Red Army, Jiuchin Soviet, Communist party: I called him old cousin in three dialects. He shook his head. Then thought: ‘That’s it, we’re out of China, and we’ve arrived in a foreign country where they can’t even speak Chinese.’”

The book in an organised manner touches on  the moral balance against the years of anti‐Peking propaganda fed to the American general reader, and it casts a fresh perspective across certain issues: The success or failure of a united front should not be judged, it is pointed out, by whether the relations between the parties remain good, for that is not its objective; Mao’s clashes with his father were not just a private or Freudian a matter but part of a social phenomena of revolutionary times; Mao’s military and physical training interests likewise .

‘China in the Year 2001’ and ‘Asia Today’.

Two other outstanding    books of Han Suyin are ‘China in the year 2001’ and ‘Asia Today.’ In ‘China  in theYear 2001’ in classical manner she illustrates  the essence of the ‘Great Leap Forward’, ‘The Great Proletarian   Cultural Revolution ‘,’Politics in Command,’,’The Atomic Bomb’ ‘Designing anew heaven nad Earth’ etc.  She delves into how China  attempted to create a fundamentally new Socialist man.In ‘Designing aNew heaven and earth’ she delves into the economic shphere and contrasts  the production methods to that of USSR placing emphasis on agriculture .In section on the Cultural Revolution she  illustratively describes the very relevance of Mao Tse Tung Thought and how in the practical sense it was dissected and penetrated in every sphere to revolutionise society .

Most poignant parts of this book were the manner  during the Cultural revolution China combined functions of a peasants ,worker an soldier,the democratic  initaive of the  communes,thetarnsformation of agriculture at the grassroots,and the democratic methods of introducing political ideology and  vivdly illustrated how the Peoples Liberation arm represnted the very soul of the workers  and peasants.

In ‘Asia Today’ she portrayed why China merited the tag of a genuine revolutionary democracy .In Chapter on ‘War and Peace’ she portrayed how china’s foreign policy was fairer thanany other nation.In chapter on Cultural Revolution’She made a subtle contrast with the approach in the Soviet Union when Stalin placed single handed emphasis on the base,neglecting the superstructure.She elaborated ho wthe Cultural Revolution was the greatest revolutionary mass movemnt and firstsone of it’s kind.Vividly she illustrated how the Peoples Liberation army repreesnted the very soul of the workers and peasnts.In a simplistic manner she sumarised the reviosnist pat of Khruschev after 1956 in USSSR.Articultealy she illustrated how great strides were accomplished,unpreecdented before.

Han supporting Deng Xiapoing

Sadly after 1978 Han Suyin failed to diagnose China’s road towards capitalism and became a strong apologist of Deng Xiaoping. Han Suyin’s post-1976 endorsement of Deng Xiaopong, including her involvement in a hagiographic documentary of Deng in the 1990’s (even going as far as to say Jiang Qing was the one opposed to Deng, rather than Mao and that Deng was a great man etc); opposition to the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 (which she called, “poor young people who were misled” and explained the CPC’s dictatorship as, ““You have to have a dictatorship. How can you run a country with 22 percent of the world’s population without a strong hand?”); and even putting down Mao in comparison to Deng.I am not able to diagnose what transformed her thinking, to champion the line of the capitalist roaders.

Harsh Thakor is freelance journalist who has done extensive research on Liberation movements and Communism.

18 March 2023

Source: countercurrents.org

By Kathy Kelly

Those who have an insatiable appetite for war seldom heed the wreckage they have left behind.

The extraordinary March 10, 2023 announcement that China’s top diplomat, Mr. Wang Yi, helped broker a rapprochement between Saudi Arabia and Iran suggests that major powers can benefit from believing that, as Albert Camus once put it, “words are more powerful than munitions.”

This concept was also acknowledged by General Mark Milley, Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff who said on January 20^th, 2023, that he believes Russia’s war in Ukraine will conclude with negotiations rather than on the battlefield. In November of 2022, asked about prospects for diplomacy in Ukraine, Milley noted that the early refusal to negotiate in World War One compounded human suffering and led to millions more casualties.

“So when there’s an opportunity to negotiate, when peace can be achieved … seize the moment,” Milley told the Economic Club of New York.

Twenty years ago, in Baghdad, I shared quarters with Iraqis and internationals in a small hotel, the Al-Fanar, which had been home base for numerous Voices in the Wilderness delegations acting in open defiance of the economic sanctions against Iraq. U.S. government officials charged us as criminals for delivering medicines to Iraqi hospitals. In response, we told them we understood the penalties they threatened us with (twelve years in prison and a $1 million fine), but we couldn’t be governed by unjust laws primarily punishing children. And we invited government officials to join us. Instead, we were steadily joined by other peace groups longing to prevent a looming war.

In late January 2003, I still hoped war could be averted. The International Atomic Energy Agency’s report was imminent. If it declared that Iraq didn’t have weapons of mass destruction (WMD), U.S. allies might drop out of the attack plans, in spite of the massive military buildup we were witnessing on nightly television. Then came Secretary of State Colin Powell’s February 5, 2003, United Nations briefing, when he insisted that Iraq did indeed possess WMD. His presentation was eventually proven to be fraudulent on every count, but it tragically gave the United States enough credibility to proceed at full throttle with its “Shock and Awe” bombing campaign.
Beginning in mid-March 2003, the ghastly aerial attacks pounded Iraq day and night. In our hotel, parents and grandparents prayed to survive ear-splitting blasts and sickening thuds. A lively, engaging nine-year-old girl completely lost control over her bladder. Toddlers devised games to mimic the sounds of bombs and pretended to use small flashlights as guns.
Our team visited hospital wards where maimed children moaned as they recovered from surgeries. I remember sitting on a bench outside of an emergency room. Next to me, a woman convulsed in sobs asking, “How will I tell him? What will I say?” She needed to tell her nephew, who was undergoing emergency surgery, that he had not only lost both his arms but also that she was now his only surviving relative. A U.S. bomb had hit Ali Abbas’s family as they shared a lunch outside their home. A surgeon later reported that he had already told Ali that they had amputated both of his arms. “But,” Ali had asked him, “will I always be this way?”

I returned to the Al-Fanar Hotel that evening feeling overwhelmed by anger and shame. Alone in my room, I pounded my pillow, tearfully murmuring, “Will we always be this way?”

Throughout the Forever Wars of the past two decades, U.S. elites in the military-industrial-Congressional-media complex have manifested an insatiable appetite for war. They seldom heed the wreckage they have left behind after “ending” a war of choice.
Following the 2003 “Shock and Awe” war in Iraq, Iraqi novelist Sinan Antoon created a main character, Jawad, in The Corpse Washer, who felt overwhelmed by the rising numbers of corpses for whom he must care.
“I felt as if we had been struck by an earthquake which had changed everything,” Jawad reflects. “For decades to come, we would be groping our way around in the rubble it left behind. In the past there were streams between Sunnis and Shi͑ites, or this group and that, which could be easily crossed or were invisible at times. Now, after the earthquake, the earth had all these fissures and the streams had become rivers. The rivers became torrents filled with blood, and whoever tried to cross drowned. The images of those on the other side of the river had been inflated and disfigured . . . concrete walls rose to seal the tragedy.”
“War is worse than an earthquake,” a surgeon, Saeed Abuhassan, told me during Israel’s 2008-2009 bombing of Gaza, called Operation Cast Lead. He pointed out that rescuers come from all over the world following an earthquake, but when wars are waged, governments send only more munitions, prolonging the agony.
He explained the effects of weapons that had maimed patients undergoing surgery in Gaza’s Al-Shifa Hospital as the bombs continued to fall. Dense inert metal explosives lop off people’s limbs in ways that surgeons can’t repair. White phosphorus bomb fragments, embedded subcutaneously in human flesh, continue to burn when exposed to oxygen, asphyxiating the surgeons trying to remove the sinister material.
“You know, the most important thing you can tell people in your country is that U.S. people paid for many of the weapons used to kill people in Gaza,” Abuhassan said. “And this also is why it’s worse than an earthquake.”
As the world enters the second year of war between Ukraine and Russia, some say it’s unconscionable for peace activists to clamor for a cease-fire and immediate negotiations. Is it more honorable to watch the pile-up of body bags, the funerals, the grave digging, the towns becoming uninhabitable, and the escalation that could lead to a world war or even a nuclear war?
U.S. mainstream media rarely engages with professor Noam Chomsky, whose wise and pragmatic analysis rests on indisputable facts. In June 2022, four months into the Russia-Ukraine war, Chomsky spoke of two options, one being a negotiated diplomatic settlement. “The other,” he said, “is just to drag it out and see how much everybody will suffer, how many Ukrainians will die, how much Russia will suffer, how many millions of people will starve to death in Asia and Africa, how much we’ll proceed toward heating the environment to the point where there will be no possibility for a livable human existence.”
UNICEF reports how months of escalating devastation and displacement affect Ukrainian children: “Children continue to be killed, wounded, and deeply traumatized by violence that has sparked displacement on a scale and speed not seen since World War II. Schools, hospitals, and other civilian infrastructure on which they depend continue to be damaged or destroyed. Families have been separated and lives torn apart.”
Estimates of Russian and Ukrainian military casualties vary, but some have suggested that more than 200,000 soldiers on both sides have been killed or wounded.
Gearing up for a major offensive before the spring thaw, Russia’s government announced it would pay a bonus to troops that destroy weapons used by Ukrainian soldiers which were sent from abroad. The blood money bonus is chilling, but on an exponentially greater level, major weapons manufacturers have accrued a steady bonanza of “bonuses” since the war began.
In the last year alone, the United States sent $27.5 billion in military assistance to Ukraine, providing “armored vehicles, including Stryker armored personnel carriers, Bradley infantry fighting vehicles, Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles, and High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled vehicles.” The package also included air defense support for Ukraine, night vision devices, and small arms ammunition.
Shortly after Western countries agreed to send sophisticated Abrams and Leopard tanks to Ukraine, an adviser to Ukraine’s Defense Ministry, Yuriy Sak, spoke confidently about getting F-16 fighter jets next. “They didn’t want to give us heavy artillery, then they did. They didn’t want to give us Himars systems, then they did. They didn’t want to give us tanks, now they’re giving us tanks. Apart from nuclear weapons, there is nothing left that we will not get,” he told Reuters.

Ukraine isn’t likely to get nuclear weapons, but the danger of nuclear war was clarified in a Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists statement on January 24, which set the Doomsday Clock for 2023 to ninety seconds before the metaphorical “midnight.” The scientists warned that effects of the Russia-Ukraine war are not limited to an alarming increase in nuclear danger; they also undermine global efforts to combat climate change. “Countries dependent on Russian oil and gas have sought to diversify their supplies and suppliers,” the report notes, “leading to expanded investment in natural gas exactly when such investment should have been shrinking.”

Mary Robinson, the former U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, says the Doomsday Clock sounds an alarm for all humanity. “We are on the brink of a precipice,” she said. “But our leaders are not acting at sufficient speed or scale to secure a peaceful and livable planet. From cutting carbon emissions to strengthening arms control treaties and investing in pandemic preparedness, we know what needs to be done. The science is clear, but the political will is lacking. This must change in 2023 if we are to avert catastrophe. We are facing multiple existential crises. Leaders need a crisis mindset.”

As do we all. The Doomsday Clock indicates we’re living on borrowed time. We needn’t “always be this way.”

Over the past decade, I was fortunate to be hosted in dozens of trips to Kabul, Afghanistan, by young Afghans who fervently believed that words could be stronger than weapons. They espoused a simple, pragmatic proverb: “Blood does not wash away blood.”

We owe to future generations every possible effort to renounce all war and protect the planet.

Kathy Kelly, a peace activist and author, co-coordinates the Merchants of Death War Crimes Tribunal and is board president of World Beyond War.

14 March 2023

Source: countercurrents.org

By Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies

March 19th marks the 20th anniversary of the U.S. and British invasion of Iraq. This seminal event in the short history of the 21st century not only continues to plague Iraqi society to this day, but it also looms large over the current crisis in Ukraine, making it impossible for most of the Global South to see the war in Ukraine through the same prism as U.S. and Western politicians.

While the U.S. was able to strong-arm 49 countries, including many in the Global South, to join its “coalition of the willing” to support invading the sovereign nation of Iraq, only the U.K., Australia, Denmark and Poland actually contributed troops to the invasion force, and the past 20 years of disastrous interventions have taught many nations not to hitch their wagons to the faltering U.S. empire.

Today, nations in the Global South have overwhelmingly refused U.S. entreaties to send weapons to Ukraine and are reluctant to comply with Western sanctions on Russia. Instead, they are urgently calling for diplomacy to end the war before it escalates into a full-scale conflict between Russia and the United States, with the existential danger of a world-ending nuclear war.

The architects of the U.S. invasion of Iraq were the neoconservative founders of the Project for a New American Century (PNAC), who believed that the United States could use the unchallenged military superiority that it achieved at the end of the Cold War to perpetuate American global power into the 21st century.

The invasion of Iraq would demonstrate U.S. “full spectrum dominance” to the world, based on what the late Senator Edward Kennedy condemned as “a call for 21st century American imperialism that no other country can or should accept.”

Kennedy was right, and the neocons were utterly wrong. U.S. military aggression succeeded in overthrowing Saddam Hussein, but it failed to impose a stable new order, leaving only chaos, death and violence in its wake. The same was true of U.S. interventions in Afghanistan, Libya and other countries.

For the rest of the world, the peaceful economic rise of China and the Global South has created an alternative path for economic development that is replacing the U.S. neocolonial model. While the United States has squandered its unipolar moment on trillion-dollar military spending, illegal wars and militarism, other countries are quietly building a more peaceful, multipolar world.

And yet, ironically, there is one country where the neocons’ “regime-change” strategy succeeded, and where they doggedly cling to power: the United States itself. Even as most of the world recoiled in horror at the results of U.S. aggression, the neocons consolidated their control over U.S. foreign policy, infecting and poisoning Democratic and Republican administrations alike with their exceptionalist snake oil.

Corporate politicians and media like to airbrush out the neocons’ takeover and continuing domination of U.S. foreign policy, but the neocons are hidden in plain sight in the upper echelons of the U.S. State Department, the National Security Council, the White House, Congress and influential corporate-funded think tanks.

PNAC co-founder Robert Kagan is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and was a key supporter of Hillary Clinton. President Biden appointed Kagan’s wife, Victoria Nuland, a former foreign policy adviser to Dick Cheney, as his Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, the fourth most senior position in the State Department. That was after she played the lead U.S. role in the 2014 coup in Ukraine, which caused its national disintegration, the return of Crimea to Russia and a civil war in Donbas that killed at least 14,000 people.

Nuland’s nominal boss, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, was the staff director of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 2002, during its debates over the impending U.S. assault on Iraq. Blinken helped the committee chairman, Senator Joe Biden, choreograph hearings that guaranteed the committee’s support for the war, excluding any witnesses who did not fully support the neocons’ war plan.

It is not clear who is really calling the foreign policy shots in Biden’s administration as it barrels toward World War III with Russia and provokes conflict with China, riding roughshod over Biden’s campaign promise to “elevate diplomacy as the primary tool of our global engagement.” Nuland appears to have influence far beyond her rank in the shaping of U.S. (and thus Ukrainian) war policy.

What is clear is that most of the world has seen through the lies and hypocrisy of U.S. foreign policy, and that the United States is finally reaping the result of its actions in the refusal of the Global South to keep dancing to the tune of the American pied piper.

At the UN General Assembly in September 2022, the leaders of 66 countries, representing a majority of the world’s population, pleaded for diplomacy and peace in Ukraine. And yet Western leaders still ignore their pleas, claiming a monopoly on moral leadership that they decisively lost on March 19, 2003, when the United States and the United Kingdom tore up the UN Charter and invaded Iraq.

In a panel discussion on “Defending the UN Charter and the Rules-Based International Order” at the recent Munich Security Conference, three of the panelists–from Brazil, Colombia and Namibia–explicitly rejected Western demands for their countries to break off relations with Russia, and instead spoke out for peace in Ukraine.

Brazilian Foreign Minister Mauro Vieira called on all the warring parties to “build the possibility of a solution. We cannot keep on talking only of war.” Vice President Francia Márquez of Colombia elaborated, “We don’t want to go on discussing who will be the winner or the loser of a war. We are all losers and, in the end, it is humankind that loses everything.”

Prime Minister Saara Kuugongelwa-Amadhila of Namibia summed up the views of Global South leaders and their people: “Our focus is on solving the problem…not on shifting blame,” she said. “We are promoting a peaceful resolution of that conflict, so that the entire world and all the resources of the world can be focused on improving the conditions of people around the world instead of being spent on acquiring weapons, killing people, and actually creating hostilities.”

So how do the American neocons and their European vassals respond to these eminently sensible and very popular leaders from the Global South? In a frightening, warlike speech, European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell told the Munich conference that the way for the West to “rebuild trust and cooperation with many in the so-called Global South” is to “debunk… this false narrative… of a double standard.”

But the double standard between the West’s responses to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and decades of Western aggression is not a false narrative. In previous articles, we have documented how the United States and its allies dropped more than 337,000 bombs and missiles on other countries between 2001 and 2020. That is an average of 46 per day, day in day out, for 20 years.

The U.S. record easily matches, or arguably far outstrips, the illegality and brutality of Russia’s crimes in Ukraine. Yet the U.S. never faces economic sanctions from the global community. It has never been forced to pay war reparations to its victims. It supplies weapons to the aggressors instead of to the victims of aggression in Palestine, Yemen and elsewhere. And U.S. leaders–including Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Barack Obama, Donald Trump, and Joe Biden—have never been prosecuted for the international crime of aggression, war crimes or crimes against humanity.

As we mark the 20th anniversary of the devastating Iraq invasion, let us join with Global South leaders and the majority of our neighbors around the world, not only in calling for immediate peace negotiations to end the brutal Ukraine war, but also in building a genuine rules-based international order, where the same rules—and the same consequences and punishments for breaking those rules—apply to all nations, including our own.

Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies are the authors of War in Ukraine: Making Sense of a Senseless Conflict, published by OR Books in November 2022.

15 March 2023

Source: countercurrents.org

Palestine Update 635
Comment

Israel acts without any sense of discretion
Israel has no sense of discretion when it takes to bombing Gaza. The bombing in 2021 of a studio, called ‘Hollywood beach’, sent shockwaves because no one expected the studio to be a target. “Built without a roof, it was clearly not much of a hiding place for anyone or anything, and it should have been obvious to any drones flying overhead what the site was used for”.

There is surprise and amusement among BDS activists over how boycotts, divestments, and sanctions — though not explicitly named as such — have become central strategies of the Israeli protest movement. “Large swathes of society are not just distancing themselves from the government’s agenda, but are actively pursuing nationwide disruption and international intervention to stop it. The stability of the economy, security, and day-to-day life are all necessary sacrifices in the name of saving “democracy.” At this scale, the movement has gone beyond merely ending public complicity; it is, in effect, a civil revolt”.

Rather surprisingly, until recently, the EU elite were smug over the patterns of Israeli “democracy” merely because they conducted frequent elections to conclude who had the right to rule Israel (and misrule Palestinian territories). The EU deemed, rather naively, that the sheer “regularity of elections was proof that freedom reigned in Israel.  It was only when the current ruling coalition began its assault on the judiciary that the EU began to treat Israeli “democracy” as an endangered species. “In this world of myth and illusions, nobody acknowledges that Israel was set up to prevent Palestinians having any democratic rights.”

As if to prove the point, Right-wing politicians have demanded vigorous measures against Palestinians in response to a terror attack that seriously wounded an Israeli man in the northern West Bank town of Huwara, the second shooting attack there in three weeks. A spokesperson for a far-right coalition urged the government to “wipe out” the entire town as revenge.

Anglican bishop Husam Naoum expressed grief over finding that more than 30 tombstones and crosses were smashed to pieces by at least two Jewish extremists.  A Palestinian man has thwarted an attempted Israeli attack on a Christian church in occupied East Jerusalem on Sunday, the Palestinian Authority (PA) said. Two Israelis entered the Church of Gethsemane and attempted to damage items inside. A Palestinian man at the scene stopped them. The occupation is taking more and more illegal forms of punitive actions that are illegal and totally beyond political morals.

On behalf of MLN Palestine Updates

Ranjan Solomon

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Hollywood Beach, the photo studio Israel keeps bombing
It was while rebuilding his photography studio a third time that Muhammad Hajjaj, 23, decided to see the repeated destruction of his dream project in a new light. An English-language business administration graduate, Hajjaj always conceived of running a business of his own that did not rely on his certificate or a boss, a consequence of the high unemployment rate and low prospects in Gaza’s battered and captive economy.

Further, he also chose to work with his passion. Since childhood, Hajjaj was relentlessly positive; interested in fashion and design and in making others smile. “I wanted to offer a service for people that helps them keep some beautiful memories,” Hajjaj told The Electronic Intifada. A photography studio was the perfect fit, and a good enough idea – not least because, as Hajjaj said, “there are always weddings in Gaza” – that in 2021, he and a friend, Muhammad Nassar raised $30,000 with support from their families to turn it into reality.

They built the studio on the beachfront in Gaza City. They took great care to fill it with trees, plants and flowers, colorful walls and photo backdrops. The design and decor, unusual in Gaza, as well as the location on the beach, made it unique. And in addition to photos, the studio also planned to offer a video service for weddings, graduation ceremonies, and birthday parties. Hajjaj named the studio Hollywood Beach to impart a sense of glamor and style.

Just two days before the studio was due to open, Israel launched its 11-day aggression on the Gaza Strip in May 2021. On the third day of the onslaught, an airstrike hit the studio. When reports of the bombing came, people were shocked because no one expected the studio to be a target. Built without a roof, it was clearly not much of a hiding place for anyone or anything, and it should have been obvious to any drones flying overhead what the site was used for.
Read more in Electronic Intifada

Israelis, welcome to BDS
Though not named as such, BDS tactics have been central to Israel’s anti-government protests. And the hypocrisy is not lost on Palestinians.

It took only two months for Israelis to shatter one of their biggest political taboos in the fight against the far-right government. Riled by the coalition’s relentless power trip, Jewish opposition parties have pledged not to participate in the Knesset’s final votes on legislation aimed at overhauling the judiciary. Israeli diplomats and envoys are quitting their posts in protest. Army reservists are objecting to service en masse, affecting every unit from combat troops to the air force. Tech companies and venture capital firms are relocating abroad and transferring out hundreds of millions of dollars. Artists, writers, and intellectuals are calling on world leaders to shun meetings with senior Israeli officials, including the prime minister. None of these groups will admit it, but this is, by all accounts, one of the most impressive BDS campaigns ever witnessed.

In the topsy-turvy Israel of today, boycotts, divestments, and sanctions — though not explicitly named as such — have become central strategies of the Israeli protest movement. Large swathes of society are not just distancing themselves from the government’s agenda, but are actively pursuing nationwide disruption and international intervention to stop it. The stability of the economy, security, and day-to-day life are all necessary sacrifices in the name of saving “democracy.” At this scale, the movement has gone beyond merely ending public complicity; it is, in effect, a civil revolt.
Read more in 972 Mag

Why is the EU suddenly worried about Israeli “democracy”?
I had a flashback upon hearing that the European Parliament will voice grave concern this week about how Israeli “democracy” is deteriorating. Suddenly, I found myself transported back to that distant month of January 2023. Visions of the same European Parliament flooded my mind. Immaculately dressed, its top representatives were queuing up to have their photographs taken with a visiting Israeli president. Just a few hours earlier Israel had committed a massacre in the occupied West Bank city of Jenin. That did not perturb the great and the good in Brussels. They were completely fixated on celebrating how the European Union and Israel are entwined by history and values. Welcome to a world of myths and illusions.

Until quite recently, the EU elite were complacent about Israeli “democracy.” The regularity of elections was considered proof that freedom reigned in that little oasis. It was only when a crude coalition began its assault on the judiciary that the EU began to treat Israeli “democracy” as an endangered species. In this world of myth and illusions, nobody acknowledges that Israel was set up to prevent Palestinians having any democratic rights.

Israel’s police force has played an essential role in strangling democracy. Long before the far-right pyromaniac Itamar Ben-Gvir became the minister in charge of that force, its officers were attacking Palestinian gatherings – even funerals – and carrying out extrajudicial executions.
Read full narrative in Electronic Intifada

Coalition lawmakers urge escalation against Palestinians following terror attack
Huwara must be ‘wiped out’; Ben Gvir urges death penalty for culprits
Right-wing politicians called Sunday for forceful measures against Palestinians in response to a terror attack that seriously wounded an Israeli man in the northern West Bank town of Huwara, the second shooting attack there in three weeks. A spokesperson for a far-right coalition MK urged the government to “wipe out” the entire town as revenge. David Stern from the settlement of Itamar, a former US Marine in his 40s who works as a weapons instructor, was seriously hurt after sustaining gunshot wounds to his head and shoulder in the attack on the Route 60 highway.

A woman in the car, identified as Stern’s wife, was also taken to a hospital suffering from traumatic shock. She was not hit by the gunfire, medics said. The Israel Defense Forces said the Palestinian terrorist was shot by both the victim and soldiers immediately after the attack, before he fled the scene on foot. After a brief chase, troops located and detained the gunman, who had been wounded by the victim’s and troops’ gunfire, the IDF said, adding that his makeshift submachine gun was seized. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he was praying for the “wounded hero” who succeeded in shooting the terrorist attacker, adding: “Whoever tries to harm Israeli citizens will bear the responsibility.”
Read full report in Times of Israel

Palestinian man thwarts Israeli attack on East Jerusalem church
A Palestinian man has thwarted an attempted Israeli attack on a Christian church in occupied East Jerusalem on Sunday, the Palestinian Authority (PA) said. Two Israelis entered the Church of Gethsemane and attempted to damage items inside. A Palestinian man at the scene stopped them. The attempted attack came after two Israeli radicals defaced a Christian cemetery in East Jerusalem on New Year’s Day. “It really grieves us to see what happened over the New Year holiday when we discovered that more than 30 tombstones and crosses were smashed to pieces by at least two Jewish extremists,” Anglican bishop Husam Naoum said at the time. “I ask for action to be taken; the perpetrators brought to the law and are a lesson for others.” The bishop attributed the attack to increased hate speech within Israeli society. Palestinians in Jerusalem experience frequent violence from Israeli settlers and forces and both Christian and Muslim holy places come under attack. The Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, which is the third-holiest site in Islam and the most-sacred Muslim place in Palestine, often faces raids.
Read more from The New Arab

20 March 2023

Source: nakbaliberation.com

Palestine Update 634
Comment

Israel’s continuing settler colonial legacy grows crueler

In a very recent issue of Al Jazeera we read that “what happened in Huwara is seen simply through the prism of Netanyahu’s right-wing coalition government… a regrettable symptom of the Israeli regimes shift to the right and the inevitable emboldening of Israeli settlers in the West Bank. This is an astoundingly deluded take on reality. After all, as many scholars in colonial studies have argued, settlers, unlike migrants, do not come to a country to assimilate with the indigenous people who are already living there; rather, they come to replace a population that is living on land that they see as rightfully theirs.

Settler cruelties visit peace activists from overseas too: Cassandra Auren, a peace activist from Wisconsin, was standing with an Italian activist on land that belongs to the residents of the Palestinian village Tuba, when a group of settlers from a nearby outpost, Havat Ma’on, ran toward them. Auren saw one of the attackers stood behind her, and as she was turning to face him, he hit her in the head with a weapon that she described as looking “like a baseball bat.” Barbarism, we would call that. Hard to think of parallels elsewhere in the civilized world!

Haaretz in a sharp and stunning report narrates how the “Negev has seen a sharp increase in home demolitions and the issuing of demolition orders and warnings. A few weeks ago, the Israel Land Administration land preservation unit issued 450 pre-demolition warnings throughout the Negev – for residential buildings, fences, sheep pens and other structures – as part of an operation dubbed Southern Hawk. The administration said the unusual increase was thanks to the launch of an AI-based system to locate unauthorized structures built within the previous three years. Buildings that fall under this category can be demolished without a judicial process”.

The Palestinian sense of dignity never allows them to surrender: Palestinian prisoners announced plans to step up their protest against the harsh treatment they have received since Itamar Ben Gvir was appointed Israel’s national security minister. Ben Gvir, whose portfolio includes overseeing prisons within the Green Line, has promised a brutal crackdown on Palestinian prisoners’ conditions, bringing an end to what he calls “the summer-camp conditions of murderous terrorists.”

Please read and disseminate widely.

For MLN Palestine Updates

Ranjan Solomon

Israel was built on burned Palestinian villages

“For these Israelis and Zionists, what happened in Huwara is seen simply through the prism of Netanyahu’s right-wing coalition government. In other words, as a regrettable symptom of the Israeli regimes shift to the right and the inevitable emboldening of Israeli settlers in the West Bank. This is an astoundingly deluded take on reality. Indeed, portrayals of Israeli settlers in the West Bank as completely separate and inherently different to the rest of Israel are a demonstration of cognitive dissonance par excellence. One does not have to dig that deep to discover that the burning of Palestinian villages is not a new tactic in the Zionist playbook, rather it is a core feature…While the discourse of the far right has undoubtedly led to more settler attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank in recent years…the erasure of the Palestinian people is in the essence of the Israeli regime. To separate the actions of settlers in the West Bank from the rest is an attempt to conceal the reality of Israeli settler colonialism that exists from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. That is why the pogrom in Huwara has to be understood as a simple continuation of a settler colonial legacy.”

Read more in Al Jazeera

The Rapid and Predictable Rise of Israeli Settler Violence against Palestinians

“As many scholars in colonial studies have argued, settlers, unlike migrants, do not come to a country to assimilate with the indigenous people who are already living there; rather, they come to replace a population that is living on land that they see as rightfully theirs. This inherently entails devising some way of forcing said population to abandon the land. While prominent Israeli politicians have been more willing to publicly acknowledge their goals of territorial expansion and settlement in recent years, the totality of Israeli policy over the past 75 years leaves little doubt that Israel does not now, nor has it ever seen a sovereign Palestinian state as a realistic prospect. In light of this fact, the violence of settlers should not be seen as an anomaly that merely requires stricter law enforcement, but rather must be understood as a tool of Israeli colonial violence that is all but openly encouraged by the state itself. As Israeli NGO B’Tselem argues, the Israeli state should not be seen as a potential solution to settler violence, but as an enabler, in large part due to its retroactive legalizations of land takeovers and its legitimization of physical violence against Palestinians. Only by fully acknowledging the central role that settler expansion and violence play in the Israeli state’s broader goals can the situation be resolved. Mere calls for “de-escalation” are insufficient and unjust.”
Read more in Arab Center

See also (Humans of Masafer Yatta)

‘Who hits a 64-year-old woman with a bat?’, +972

“A 64-year-old American citizen was attacked last Tuesday by a group of masked settlers in the South Hebron Hills of the occupied West Bank. Cassandra Auren, a peace activist from Wisconsin, was standing with an Italian activist on land that belongs to the residents of the Palestinian village Tuba, when a group of settlers from a nearby outpost, Havat Ma’on, ran toward them. Auren said that one of the attackers stood behind her, and as she was turning to face him, he hit her in the head with a weapon that she described as looking “like a baseball bat.” She immediately passed out from the blow and was hospitalized with a fractured skull and internal bleeding in her head…Israeli authorities have yet to make any arrests for the assault”
Read report in 972 Mag

Israel’s Government Is a Clear and Present Danger for Its Arab Palestinian Citizens
“Below the frantic headlines about the attempted judicial capture, the government has advanced laws that target Arabs in far more dangerous ways, by marking those convicted of terrorism for deportation, or even death. One of the laws, which has already passed, allows Israel to strip the citizenship of citizens convicted of acts of terror who receive financial support from the Palestinian Authority, and deport them to the West Bank or Gaza…Another bill has been called “barbaric,” by Israel Democracy Institute scholar Amir Fuchs. That’s because it requires the death penalty for terrorists”
Read more in Haaretz

Sharp Increase in Demolition Orders Raises Suspicion and Fear among Israeli Bedouin

“Residents and activists say that since the government was sworn in at the end of December, the Negev has seen a sharp increase in home demolitions and the issuing of demolition orders and warnings. A few weeks ago, the Israel Land Administration land preservation unit issued 450 pre-demolition warnings throughout the Negev – for residential buildings, fences, sheep pens and other structures – as part of an operation dubbed Southern Hawk. The administration said the unusual increase was thanks to the launch of an AI-based system to locate unauthorized structures built within the previous three years. Buildings that fall under this category can be demolished without a judicial process. The land administration said that warnings and orders were given only to structures less than three years old. But Haaretz found that in some cases, they were given to decades-old structures. One example is the case of the Aloul family, which is considered precedent-setting…The orders and demolitions gave rise to a protest at the Be’er Sheva court that issued them, with over 1,000 Negev Bedouin and about 100 Jews participating. The coordinator of the Regional Council of Unrecognized Villages in the Negev said: “The ministers have bad intentions and want to remove us from our land by force. There isn’t a day that they don’t come and demolish. That’s new and much worse than before. In recent weeks, there are daily demolitions.”
Read more in Haaretz

As crackdown intensifies, Palestinian prisoners gear up for Ramadan protest

“On March 5, Palestinian prisoners announced plans to step up their protest against the harsh treatment they have received since Itamar Ben Gvir was appointed Israel’s national security minister. Ben Gvir, whose portfolio includes overseeing prisons within the Green Line, has promised a brutal crackdown on Palestinian prisoners’ conditions, bringing an end to what he calls “the summer-camp conditions of murderous terrorists.” Prisoners have launched a series of actions in defiance of these threats, which will culminate in a collective hunger strike beginning on the first day of the fasting month of Ramadan. According to Palestinian sources who spoke to +972, as well as reports in Palestinian media, the prisoners’ coordinated efforts could compel Palestinians throughout the West Bank and Gaza to join in resisting other forms of Israeli oppression.”
Read more in 972+ Mag

17 March 2023

Source: nakbaliberation.com

 

By Maung Zarni

‘Nalanda: The university that changed the world,  an essay by  Sugato Mukherjee (23rd February 2023), published as a part of the ‘BBC Travel series looking into how a destination has made a significant impact on the entire planet’, was a rather fascinating read, with fresh information – like the invention of Zero, the world as we know as a representation or reflection of mind, maths, medicine and astronomy, logic (Reason) and philosophy.

In this era of decolonization (of both social and institutional relations and popular Consciousness, most importantly, in the vast world of formerly Europe-colonized societies), the wealth of information this ‘little’ essay offers, and a tiny window it  flings open for readers is long overdue and very much welcome.

The Pursuit of Knowledge and Human Understanding based on ‘Reason’ and what is termed ‘empiricism’ also took place outside the Greco-Romanic World, typically presumed to be the philosophical cradle of Western Civilization and the European Enlightenment.

To belabour the obvious, centres of intellectual enlightenment move around the globe, and centuries before the standard view that Scientific/Empirical Knowledge is the exclusive domain of what has come to be known as The West.

From Harvard’s star psychologist Steven Pinker and Oxford’s evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins to Cambridge’s deceased anthropologist Ernest Gellner, advanced human understanding takes place within what they falsely believe in the Secular West with its Reason and Rationality.

In his Minute on Education (dated 2nd February 1835), the Oxford-educated historian and a Scotsman who served on the Council of India, wrote his rather conceited, but profoundly ignorant view on the knowledge systems outside the Franco-English language world.   After insisting that French and English were keys to unlock what he considered real/empirical knowledge of the world – as opposed to myths and mystical views about ancient deities in the worlds of Arabic, Sanskrit and Egyptian traditions, the Hon’ble Macaulay proceeded to write:

‘I have no knowledge of either Sanscrit or Arabic. But I have done what I could to form a correct estimate of their value. I have read translations of the most celebrated Arabic and Sanscrit works. I have conversed, both here and at home, with men distinguished by their proficiency in the Eastern tongues. I am quite ready to take the oriental learning at the valuation of the orientalists themselves. I have never found one among them who could deny that a single shelf of a good European library was worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia. The intrinsic superiority of the Western literature is indeed fully admitted by those members of the committee who support the oriental plan of education (italics added).’

[See Minute on Education (1835) by Thomas Babington Macaulay (columbia.edu), 1835.]

At the close of the 19th century, a principal of Balliol College was quoted, in the university’s alumni magazine published in 2008, as saying, ‘I know knowledge.  If I know not (something), that is not knowledge.’

So when Richard Dawkins, Professor for Public Understanding of Science at New College, Oxford, sent his deeply racist and arrogant tweet that reads ‘All the world’s Muslims have fewer Nobel Prizes than Trinity College, Cambridge. They did great things in the Middle Ages, though’, Dawkins is merely echoing the foundational thought of Euro-Supremacy.  Ironically, Dawkinsian Euro-Supremacy emerged after the Middles Ages during which peoples in Europe were slaughtering one another as their favourite pastimes, to paraphrase Noam Chomsky’s pointed observation about the Old Europe.

[See ‘Richard Dawkins’ tweets on Islam are as rational as the rants of an extremist Muslim cleric’ Nesrine Malik  The Guardian, 8 August 2013.]

In the elite scholarly discourses peddled in prestigious university circles, it is the Greek (and the Romans) that were the intellectual founders of ‘Western Civilization’ and Givers of Logic, Philosophy, Law, and all that that is considered worth learning as a matter of discipline.  Think of the countless number of high priests of western university tradition who have made a meal of expounding on Plato’s Republic and Socrates’ dialogues.

Gellner for one got carried away, when he in effect attempted to make the case for Reason as if it were the exclusive property that was found in the advanced civilizations – you guessed it! – of Europe.   On Freedoms and Democracy, you have Timothy Garton Ash, Professor of European Studies at St Antony’s College, Oxford and proud adviser to US Presidents (such as George W. Bush) and UK Prime Ministers (such as the late Lady Thatcher) who cannot conceal his view that both freedoms and democracy are exclusively European.

Against this pathetic backdrop of the quintessentially Eurocentric Ignorance dressed up as the Established Wisdom of the grey eminences of Oxbridge and the Ivy League, Nalanda stands out as an empirical challenge.

Nalanda (427 CE-1197 CE) the renowned ancient monastic university is only one of the best known amongst several major centres of Buddhist learning.  Vikramashila, again in present-day Bihar, and Takshashila or Taxila in Pakistan are among the cluster of old centres of higher learning.  These were important pillars of the Buddhist world of ideas and intellectual practices – including modes of sifting and winnowing of fact from fiction, knowledge from hearsay, knowledge of Self and the external World – not simply the faith-based devotional places.

On a personal level, a child in the predominantly Buddhist heartland of Burma, I took an interest in Plato and Socrates, whatever limited Burmese translations of their work, however half-baked my understanding of their work may have been.   But I was made aware of an equally important intellectual tradition and modes of Knowing (or Epistemologies, if you like), which serve as the theoretical bedrock of ‘the Burmese Mind’, ancient India of Buddhism and Buddhist scholar-practitioners.

Admittedly, there are genocidal Buddhists, including scripturally versed Saffron-robed monks in Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Thailand.  But they fall outside the intellectual tradition which seeks to advance not only Understanding but also Being.  The Dalai Lama’s valid criticism of Western schooling as the education exclusively of the mind not the heart applies to these Buddhist scholars who miss the central tenet of Buddhist intellectual advancement.   Knowledge is about not simply Knowing Self and the world, but transforming both.

When you have Buddhist monks who can recite the mantra of Loving Kindness but do not have the wisdom nor the heart developed or advanced enough to apply their scriptural expertise on Metta Sutra to Muslims, minorities, women, the LGBTQ and, broadly, Others, then we have ‘Buddhists’ turning their lands of Enlightenment into genocidal slaughterhouses and killing fields.  This was evidenced in Sinhalese Buddhists in Sri Lanka in their war of subjugation against the Tamil Hindu minority.  And more recently, in my native Myanmar, the Rohingya genocide of 2017.

Towards that end of the pursuit of Knowledge as vehicle for the dual purpose of Understanding and Transforming Self and the World, the Buddhist intellectual tradition established a very clearly articulated principle of Intellectual Freedom – for rejection and acceptance of Truth Claims.

The best known articulation of this principle of free inquiry is encapsulated in the answer which the founder Buddha the Enlightened offered, when he was confronted with a group– known as Kalamas or residents of the town called Kesaputta, who openly expressed doubt and uncertainty on his teachings.

‘Come, Kalamas. Do not go upon what has been acquired by repeated hearing; nor upon tradition; nor upon rumour; nor upon what is in a scripture; nor upon surmise; nor upon an axiom; nor upon specious reasoning; nor upon a bias towards a notion that has been pondered over; nor upon another’s seeming ability; nor upon the consideration, “The monk is our teacher”. Kalamas, when you yourselves know: “These things are good; these things are not blamable; these things are praised by the wise; undertaken and observed, these things lead to benefit and happiness”, enter on and abide in them.’

This was something I grew up with – Buddhist paradigm as radical empiricism, something that requires independent thinking.   As my late father told me, with some concealed pride, when I became a known dissident against Myanmar’s military dictatorship, ‘Son, you always talked back since you were a young boy.’   Thinking for oneself, and ‘talking back’ are habits cultivated through the intellectual tradition that dates back to the time of Kalama – 2,600 years ago.

So, reading Mukherjee’s concise but well-researched essay triggers a rush of memories not only of my childhood stories told by the elders in our extended Buddhist family of three-generations but more immediately a visit to Nalanda I made about six years.

I spent three years at Oxford University on its margins as a visiting scholar from 2006-09.  One of the things that struck me about Oxford was how magnificent the general architecture of its 30-plus colleges is.   I have also been to a large number of famed campuses of universities, ancient and modern, in Europe, N. America and Asia.

When I stepped into the demarcated compound of Nalanda University – much of the original structures remain unexcavated – I felt a familiar sense of awe every time I feel at any great modern university.  In addition to Oxbridge, I have seen Bologna (built in AD 1088). I have seen the Sorbonne.  I have seen the Thomas Jefferson-designed University of Virginia – and many other comparable institutions.

But the impression I felt walking among the ruins of Nalanda far surpassed these latter-day institutions of higher learning.    The sheer numbers of what must have been magnificent lecture halls, meditation sites (where one meditates to gain insights into Self and the World/Principles of Impermanence), the residential rooms (with charred beams from the arson by invading troops that destroyed the great university), the geometric symmetrically arranged open spaces that dot the ruins, and so on would leave a lasting favourable impression of the great residential university.

And above all, the intellectual freedom that was Nalanda’s foundational stone– as articulated in Kalama Sutra – stands in sharp contrast to the intellectual censorship which culminated in the Inquisition of the Church, and the Church-controlled  European centres of learning at Bologna, the Sorbonne, and Oxford, just to name a few.    The breach of intellectual freedom that had put Harvard University Kennedy School of Government in the widely reported denial of a senior visiting fellowship to Human Rights Watch director Ken Roth – because he calls Israel or The Jewish State apartheid – speaks volumes about how in the year 2023 the spirit and principle of Free Inquiry  remain an issue.

Buddhist intellectual tradition institutionalized Freedom of Inquiry and Debate 2,600 years ago.   Nalanda was an institutional embodiment of this principle.

It is a shame that the worthwhile intellectual project, with Amartya Sen as its founding chair, to revive this 2,600-years old tradition of Free Inquiry – at the new Nalanda University has gone aground as Prime Minister Modi attempted to bend it for his Hindu fundamentalist ends.

17 March 2023

Maung Zarni is a Burmese educator, academic, and human rights activist. He is noted for his opposition to the violence in Rakhine State and Rohingya refugee crisis.