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Regrettably, China’s Explosive Growth Is Pushing a Desperate Washington Closer to War.

By Mike Whitney

Ukraine is the first flashpoint in a great power struggle between the United States and China. After years of shifting its industries to low-wage locations around the world, the US finds itself steadily losing market-share to a faster-growing and more resourceful China. By most estimates, China’s economy will overtake the United States by 2035 at which point, Beijing will be in a much better position to shape international trade relations in a way that promotes its own interests. With growth comes power, and that rule will certainly apply to China as well.

China has emerged as an industrial powerhouse that sits at the very epicenter of the most populous and fastest growing region in the world. It is for that reason that the United States has initiated a series of provocations on the island of Taiwan and in the South China Sea. The US has abandoned all hope of prevailing over China through conventional free market competition. Instead, the US plans to engage China militarily in a desperate attempt to drain its resources, garner broader support for economic sanctions and isolate isolate China from its regional trading partners. It is a risky and disruptive plan that could backfire spectacularly, but Washington is moving forward regardless. US foreign policy mandarins and their globalist allies will not accept an outcome in which China is the world’s biggest and most powerful economy. This is from an article at China Macro Economy:

Although the pace of China’s economic rise has slowed in recent years, it appears on track to end the United States’ lengthy run as the world’s largest economy by around 2035, according to the latest projection by economists at Goldman Sachs.

The new estimate is 10 years later than the investment bank had predicted in 2011. But economists Kevin Daly and Tadas Gedminas said that potential growth in China still remains significantly higher than in the US.

“China has already closed most of the gap with US GDP,” they said in a report published on Tuesday, adding that China’s gross domestic product has risen from 12 per cent of the US’ in 2000 to a little under 80 per cent.

China’s annual economic growth will be around 4 per cent from 2024 to 2029, compared with 1.9 per cent in the US, according to the report, which projects what the global economy will look like through 2075….

The US dollar’s exceptional strength over the past 10 years is another reason for the 10-year revision in when China’s economy will become No 1, Daly added… But the US dollar’s strength versus the Chinese yuan is likely to diminish over the coming decade,providing more ground for China to overtake the US, according to the report.

The report also projected that the weight of global GDP will shift more towards Asia over the next 30 years, and that the world’s five largest economies in 2050 will be China, the United States, India, Indonesia and Germany.” (“China GDP to surpass US around 2035, years later than previously expected, Goldman Sachs predicts”, China Macro Economy)

Naturally, the financialization of the US economy has greatly impacted America’s prospects for the future. The rise of Wall Street has led to a myriad of debt-leveraging scams that have enriched a handfull of wealthy bankers while diverting trillions in capital to unproductive activities. At the same time, the absence of any coherent industrial policy has triggered the flight of tens of thousands of businesses and factories that relocated to countries that offer an endless supply of low-wage labor. The problem, of course, is that mounting policy errors eventually lead to a drop-off in productivity which allows other, more ambitious countries to fill the void. In short, the Chinese Miracle is largely attributable to financialization and the short-sighted policies that allowed US corporations to move their industries elsewhere rather than provide incentives for them to stay in America. Bottom line: China’s economy is overtaking the US and there is nothing short of nuclear war that can reverse that situation.

In recent weeks, there has been a steady uptick in negative coverage of China in the media along with the predictable attacks on President Xi Jinping. Americans have seen this show many times before and should have a clear understanding of what it means. The demonization of foreign leaders is always the first step towards war. The media led the charge against Saddam, Qaddafi, Milosevic, Putin and countless others. Now China’s Jinping is in the imperial crosshairs. The names change, but the process remains the same. Already, the provocations, sanctions and slanders have begun to pile-up even while brainwashed Americans are led by-the-nose to another bloody conflict.

If there is a war between the two countries, the economic fallout is likely to be catastrophic. Consider, for a minute, how many American and European companies would be severely impacted by a US-China conflict. Here’s an excerpt from an article at Registration China:

By the end of 2020, a total of 1,040,480 foreign companies were registered in Mainland China, the Official data was provided by the Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM)…. According to the official data, China had established a total of 961,000 Foreign-Invested Enterprises (FIE) until the end of 2018, with the actual use of foreign capital of US $2.1 trillion…. The results show that the number of foreign-invested enterprises is keep on increasing in 2021… (“How many Foreign Companies in China?”, GWBMA

1 million foreign-owned companies in China? That is simply astonishing.

And how do these companies generate their profits?

They generate profits by selling their products to the people back home. Check out this excerpt from an older article at NBC News which explains how it works:

“If the United States does decide to impose tariffs on China, Chen said, American companies operating in China, which account for more than 60 percent of China’s exports to the United States, would surely be hurt the most. ‘In the end,’ Chen said, ‘America is the one that needs to adjust.’

“While some analysts have predicted that China would soon start to let the yuan appreciate, Chen’s interview illustrated the fact that there is a strong lobby in China opposing revaluation. One reason why a revaluation would be dangerous for China, Chen said, is that profit margins for Chinese exporters are tiny — ranging from 1.7 to two percentage points.” (“China’s commerce minister: U.S. has the most to lose in a trade war” NBC News)

“American companies… account for more than 60 percent of China’s exports to the United States”? Is that possible? In other words, US companies that moved to their businesses to China are making money off many of the same people they laid off in order to generate bigger profits.

And, at the same time, the profits for the host-nation (China) are a measly 1.7 percent; hardly enough to make it worth their while. The multinationals are making the windfall, not China. So why is China blamed for America’s shrinking share of global output? As Carolyn Bartholomew said in The American Prospect some years ago:

“China policy has, over the past two decades, been driven by the interests of the multinational corporations, and those global firms have benefited from many of China’s policies.Starting several decades ago, it was a handful of the exporting elite — Boeing, Motorola, and GE among them — who argued persuasively to the Bush, Clinton, and Bush administrations that U.S. economic interests would be served if only these companies had access to the Chinese consumer…… Today, of course, we see the result of that sort of thinking. With the global economic crisis, American workers have ended up without jobs and without pension funds.

“….At the behest of U.S. based multinationals, Washington has championed the causes of corporate interests masquerading as free trade.” (“The Great Industrial Wall of China”, Carolyn Bartholomew, The American Prospect)

So, the question is: Aren’t we blaming China for policies that were pushed through by powerful corporations and their plutocrat bosses?

It certainly looks that way. And, if that is the case, then we can assume that Washington’s drive to war is not fueled by anxiety over which country’s economy will be bigger than the others, but by the Chinese government’s resistence to the political meddling and machinations of foreign oligarchs. That’s what’s really going on. Billionaire elites want to insinuate themselves into the political apparatus just like they have nations across the west, but the Communist government won’t allow it. Take a look at this excerpt from an article that author Ron Unz wrote more than ten years ago:

The rise of China surely ranks among the most important world developments of the last 100 years…. and the Chinese economy poised to surpass our own before the end of this decade...

During the three decades to 2010, China achieved perhaps the most rapid sustained rate of economic development in the history of the human species, with its real economy growing almost 40-fold between 1978 and 2010. In 1978, America’s economy was 15 times larger, but according to most international estimates, China is now set to surpass America’s total economic output within just another few years….

Furthermore, the vast majority of China’s newly created economic wealth has flowed to ordinary Chinese workers, who have moved from oxen and bicycles to the verge of automobiles in just a single generation. While median American incomes have been stagnant for almost forty years, those in China have nearly doubled every decade, with the real wages of workers outside the farm-sector rising about 150 percent over the last ten years alone....

A World Bank report recently highlighted the huge drop in global poverty rates from 1980 to 2008, but critics noted that over 100 percent of that decline came from China alone: the number of Chinese living in dire poverty fell by a remarkable 662 million, while the impoverished population in the rest of the world actually rose by 13 million. ..

Over the last decade alone, China quadrupled its industrial output, which is now comparable to that of the U.S…

Against the backdrop of remarkable Chinese progress, America mostly presents a very gloomy picture. …Over the last 40 years, a large majority of American workers have seen their real incomes stagnate or decline. ...

Decay of Constitutional Democracy

The central theme of Why Nations Fail is that political institutions and the behavior of ruling elites largely determine the economic success or failure of countries. If most Americans have experienced virtually no economic gains for decades, perhaps we should cast our gaze at these factors in our own society….

Our Extractive Elites

When parasitic elites govern a society along “extractive” lines, a central feature is the massive upward flow of extracted wealth, regardless of any contrary laws or regulations. Certainly America has experienced an enormous growth of officially tolerated corruption as our political system has increasingly consolidated into a one-party state controlled by a unified media-plutocracy….

A society’s media and academic organs constitute the sensory apparatus and central nervous system of its body politic, and if the information these provide is seriously misleading, looming dangers may fester and grow. A media and academy that are highly corrupt or dishonest constitute a deadly national peril…. America’s own societal information system is vastly more skilled and experienced in shaping reality to meet the needs of business and government leaders, and this very success does tremendous damage to our country….

… we must admit that Richard Lynn, a prominent British scholar, has been correct in predicting for a decade or longer that the global dominance of the European-derived peoples is rapidly drawing to its end and within the foreseeable future the torch of human progress and world leadership will inevitably pass into Chinese hands.” (“China’s Rise, America’s Fall; Which superpower is more threatened by its “extractive elites”?, Ron Unz, The American Conservative

Prescient words, indeed, but not entirely unexpected given the deep polarization and political dysfunction in the western democracies. If similar divisions exist in China, they certainly aren’t apparent to the outsider. What an objective critic sees is a long-repressed country whose explosive energy has been skillfully harnassed by a ruling body that has raised nearly 800 million people out of poverty (an unprecedented and historic achievement) while– at the same time– creating a socially-unifying goal (The Belt and Road Initiative) that serves as the shared vision for the future.

The Biden administration is commited to containing China in a bid to maintain its predominance in the global order. But Washington has no grand multi trillion-dollar infrastructure plan that would serve as a substitute for China’s Belt and Road project. In fact, Washington has no vision for the future at all. What Washington offers is another century of sanctions, regime change and war. It would be far better for the world if China was allowed to move ahead with its massive global-integration project without the threat of US intervention, meddling or violence. Unfortunately, the Biden team has other things in mind.

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Michael Whitney is a renowned geopolitical and social analyst based in Washington State.

3 March 2023

Source: www.globalresearch.ca

Palestine Update 630
Comment

Israel mounts a glut of cruelties on Palestinians
The U.N. Security Council unanimously approved a watered-down statement strongly opposing Israel’s continued construction and expansion of settlements Monday. The vote came after high-stakes negotiations by the Biden administration succeeded in derailing a legally binding resolution that would have demanded a halt to Israeli settlement activity. The deal averted a potential diplomatic crisis, with the U.S. almost certainly vetoing the resolution, which would have angered Palestinian supporters at a time when the U.S. and its Western allies are trying to gain international support against Russia for its war with Ukraine. But U.S. support for the presidential statement angered Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.Meanwhile Palestinians face the heat of Israeli malice. Palestinians in the West Bank town of Huwara were left to deal with burned-out buildings and cars after hundreds of settlers ran riot while soldiers protected them. The attack by the settlers was billed as an act of revenge after a Palestinian gunman opened fire at a traffic junction near Huwara, killing two brothers who lived in a nearby Jewish settlement. That assault itself was likely retaliation for an Israeli military raid on the city of Nablus last week that saw 11 Palestinians – including militants and civilians killed. Elsewhere, Israeli forces killed at least 11 Palestinians and wounded more than 100 Wednesday in a daytime raid in the West Bank city of Nablus, Palestinian officials said. The operation, the deadliest such raid in years, left Nablus’s Old City riddled with bullets and was another escalation in counterterrorism tactics by Israel under its new far-right government. Israeli police violently dispersed protesters on as thousands marched in different cities to protest against a controversial government plan to overhaul the judicial system, amid growing political turmoil. Protesters warn that Israeli headlines have begun to read like a manual for future autocracies, with ministers seemingly handpicked to undermine the departments they run. The new justice minister intends to strip away the judiciary’s power.Palestinians living in East Jerusalem have for decades seethed under Israeli restrictions designed, residents say, to push them out of the disputed city. Palestinians living in East Jerusalem have for decades seethed under Israeli restrictions designed, residents say, to push them out of the disputed city. Since 1967, an estimated 58,000 settler homes have been built on the city’s east side compared to just 600 Palestinian dwellings, according to Daniel Seidman, an Israeli lawyer specializing in Jerusalem.

On behalf of MLN Palestine Updates

Ranjan Solomon

______________________________________

Huwara reels after night of settler terror under army’s watch

Palestinians in the West Bank town were left to deal with burned-out buildings and cars after hundreds of settlers ran riot while soldiers protected them.

“By Monday morning, Huwara, a centrally located town through which thousands of Palestinians and settlers travel every day, looked like a battlefield. The town council reported that settlers had torched eight homes, broken windows in 35 others, and set fire to 250 vehicles. More than 120 people were wounded, including one Palestinian with a serious head wound who is currently hospitalized in Nablus. An Israeli shot and killed Sami Aktash, 37, from the nearby village of Za’atara. It is still unclear whether he was gunned down by settlers or soldiers. Immediately following the murders of the two Israelis, which took place early Sunday afternoon, the army closed Tapuah Junction, a major traffic artery nearby, as well as the entrance to Huwara used by Israelis living in the Yitzhar settlement, just northwest of the town. However, despite these closures, numerous eyewitnesses reported that the army allowed settlers to enter Huwara on foot, while preventing journalists, medics, and Palestinian aid workers from doing the same. On Monday morning, after the rampage had ended, the roads were strewn with stones, tear gas grenades, and burned tires, which the settlers reportedly used to set homes on fire. Residents said they could not remember any comparable event ever taking place in their town.”
Read more in 972 Mag

Israel’s far-right government at the heart of a surge in violence

 “The attack by the settlers was billed as an act of revenge after a Palestinian gunman opened fire at a traffic junction near Huwara, killing two brothers who lived in a nearby Jewish settlement. That assault itself was likely retaliation for an Israeli military raid on the city of Nablus last week that saw 11 Palestinians — including militants and civilians — killed. On Monday, there were reports of new Palestinian attacks on Israeli-owned vehicles in the West Bank. The bloody wheel turns, the cycle of violence continues. But such logic obscures more immediate forces at play. The installation of the most right-wing government in Israel’s history at the beginning of the year has been accompanied by the marked rise in violence. Since the start of the year, Israeli soldiers and settlers have killed at least 61 Palestinians — civilians and militants. A new wave of militancy is stirring in the West Bank, which analysts say is fueled by anger at the Israeli military occupation and mounting settler violence as well as disillusionment with the prevailing political status quo represented by the deeply unpopular Palestinian Authority.”
Read more in Washington Post

11 Palestinians killed, 100 wounded in Israeli West Bank raid

 “Israeli forces killed at least 11 Palestinians and wounded more than 100 Wednesday in a daytime raid in the West Bank city of Nablus, Palestinian officials said. The operation, the deadliest such raid in years, left Nablus’s Old City riddled with bullets and was another escalation in counterterrorism tactics by Israel under its new far-right government. Among those killed were a 72-year-old man, a 16-year-old boy and a 66-year-old man who died of tear gas inhalation, the Palestinian Ministry of Health said. Palestinian armed groups said at least six of the dead were members of recently formed, loosely organized militant groups, including the Lion’s Den, the Nablus Brigade and the Balata Brigade, based in a neighboring refugee camp.”
Read more in Washington Post

Israel: Police assault protesters during anti-government marches
Demonstrators launch ‘national day of disruption’ as government presses on with controversial judicial overhaul

  “Israeli police violently dispersed protesters on Wednesday [3/1/23] as thousands marched in different cities to protest against a controversial government plan to overhaul the judicial system, amid growing political turmoil….Protesters declared Wednesday a “national day of disruption”, blocking vital roads and burning tyres on highways. Marches were set to culminate in a large demonstration in Tel Aviv and in front of the residence of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem. Police have used stun grenades, water cannons and mounted officers to disperse demonstrators.”
Read more in Middle East Eye

Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel’s Minister of Chaos

 “Protesters warn that Israeli headlines have begun to read like a manual for future autocracies, with ministers seemingly handpicked to undermine the departments they run. The new justice minister intends to strip away the judiciary’s power. The communications minister has threatened to defund Israel’s public broadcaster, reportedly hoping to funnel money to a channel favorable to Netanyahu. The minister of heritage has called organizations representing Reform Jews an “active danger” to Jewish identity. No one, however, offends liberal and centrist Israelis quite like Itamar Ben-Gvir. Ben-Gvir, who entered parliament in 2021, leads a far-right party called Otzma Yehudit, or Jewish Power. His role model and ideological wellspring has long been Meir Kahane, a Brooklyn rabbi who moved to Israel in 1971 and…argued that “the idea of a democratic Jewish state is nonsense.” In his view, demographic trends would inevitably turn Israel’s non-Jews into a majority, and so the ideal solution was “the immediate transfer of the Arabs.”…His party, Kach (Thus), was finally barred from parliament in 1988. Jewish Power is an ideological offshoot of Kach; Ben-Gvir served as a Kach youth leader and has called Kahane a “saint.” Ben-Gvir, who is forty-six, has been convicted on at least eight charges, including supporting a terrorist organization and incitement to racism…”

Read more in the New Yorker.com

Jerusalem demolitions gain pace under Netanyahu, enraging Palestinians

 “Palestinians living in East Jerusalem have for decades seethed under Israeli restrictions designed, residents say, to push them out of the disputed city. But for Mohammed Bashir, 25, life has now hit “below zero” as Israel’s new far-right government and especially its Minister of National Security Itamar Ben Gvir have stepped up house demolitions and expulsions that could ignite the city just as violence is spreading in the surrounding occupied Palestinian territories… Earlier this month, Ben Gvir, who first made a name for himself in the extremist settler movement, announced a “Bring Back Order” campaign in East Jerusalem targeting buildings constructed without permits, which are almost impossible for Palestinians to obtain — even while settlers are allowed to build freely… Since 1967, an estimated 58,000 settler homes have been built on the city’s east side compared to just 600 Palestinian dwellings, according to Daniel Seidman, an Israeli lawyer specializing in Jerusalem… Already in 2023, the rate of home and building demolitions is the highest in years, with 39 structures toppled just in the last month, according to data from the United Nation’s humanitarian agency.” “Palestinians living in East Jerusalem have for decades seethed under Israeli restrictions designed, residents say, to push them out of the disputed city. But for Mohammed Bashir, 25, life has now hit “below zero” as Israel’s new far-right government and especially its Minister of National Security Itamar Ben Gvir have stepped up house demolitions and expulsions that could ignite the city just as violence is spreading in the surrounding occupied Palestinian territories… Earlier this month, Ben Gvir, who first made a name for himself in the extremist settler movement, announced a “Bring Back Order” campaign in East Jerusalem targeting buildings constructed without permits, which are almost impossible for Palestinians to obtain — even while settlers are allowed to build freely… Since 1967, an estimated 58,000 settler homes have been built on the city’s east side compared to just 600 Palestinian dwellings, according to Daniel Seidman, an Israeli lawyer specializing in Jerusalem…
Read more in Washington Post

4 March 2023

Source: nakbaliberation.com

By Emanuel Pastreich

Sputnik: What is your personal assessment of the new leaks concerning the origins of COVID-19? Specifically, we are referring to the Wall Street Journal article reporting US intelligence sources suspect a leak from a Chinese bio lab. Why this? Why now? Do you see anything special about the timing of these allegations? 

Emanuel Pastreich: There are several issues at play here. The first is that the entire COVID-19 project, and the medical and general policy enacted in the United States and around the world using COVID-19 as an excuse is increasingly subject to question. A lot of the policies are now being criticized, and all sorts of legal actions are being taken.

There’s a need to try and pin this mess on somebody. And China, the “rising threat” in Washington establishment chatter, is a perfect place to pin it on.

The second factor is what is happening in Ukraine and the numerous reports about US- funded bio labs. I’m not expert enough to judge the accuracy of those reports, but Russia has released considerable information concerning bio labs in Ukraine that they have captured.

There’s been a lot of discussion out there, the information is not classified, about DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) and other private corporations developing both viruses and vaccines, as well as working together, in a corrupt manner, with the World Health Organization and with multinational drug companies.

So clearly there is an incentive to try and pin all of this mess, this transnational global finance mess spilling over from the pandemic, to pin it all on China, and specifically on the Chinese Communist Party.

Sputnik: Michael Gordon played a central role in disseminating false allegations that Iraq possessed the weapons of mass destruction in 2003. Why might it be that the intelligence community turns to him this time again? And how trustworthy, in your view, is his reporting?

Emanuel Pastreich: I am not all that interested in individual operatives. Most of them don’t write the material that they put out. The larger question should be what exactly is this “intelligence community?”

I think there has been some transformation since the Iraq Invasion in 2003. Intelligence is increasingly privatized, run for the profit of multinationals.

Anyone with deep pockets these days can get these organizations to promote their storyline, and they’re extremely closely connected with the media now, even more deeply than was the case before. Intelligence represents multinational pharmaceutical companies and weapons manufacturers, etc.

What specifically was Gordon pushing here? I think there were two goals. To take attention away from the central role of multinational corporations, the World Health Organization, the United Nations, and the United States government in the push for a corona pandemic.

Blaming China is now a popular approach. There’s a recent discussion by Mike Gallagher, a Republican from Wisconsin who sits on the House Intelligence Committee. He wrote at length about how this intelligence report must be credible, that somehow COVID-19 came out of a lab in China, i.e. China is an aggressive power attacking the United States,  the leader of democracy.

There is a problem with this argument. I don’t rule out the possibility that China was involved at some level. There’s corruption in China, as there is in the United States, and around the world. But, it’s clear that the push for mandates, for lockdowns, for vaccines, and for masks did not come from China, although China followed the guidelines.

Clearly the United States, led by the nose by the global capital and technology nexus, was at the core of this operation.

I think we can look at Gordon as being the one selected to convey the message.

I wouldn’t blame him personally, but this move is similar, as you suggested, to the buildup for the war with Iraq. They want to create a false narrative.

They express this narrative in every possible media format. Perhaps in the back of the minds of those people deep in DARPA, in DoD, and at Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, and military intelligence contractors, they’re thinking they’ll use this as the lead up for some sort of major confrontation with China, which will allow them to kill two birds with one stone.

On the one hand, they will be able to pin all this stuff which originated with American-flavored multinational corporations, private equity, and multinational banks on China.

The second point is use it as a means to create some sort of new Cold War, or even some sort of actual military conflict, with China, which will allow them to stimulate the economy by creating demand for weapons, and that will save the asses of all these people who are potentially risk for how they tore the United States apart, by shifting to a military economy.

Sputnik: Jake Sullivan said on Sunday that there are a variety of views in the U.S. intelligence community about whether or not the virus originated naturally, or in the lab, and that he can’t confirm or deny according to The Wall Street Journal report. What do you think that “variety” could mean?

Why was he so reluctant here, do you think?

Emanuel Pastreich: There’s a variety of these “intelligence” organizations that have been radically privatized over the last 15 years. So, increasingly, it’s not the government that’s engaged in the collection of information, the analysis of the information, and the pushing of information (propaganda).

It’s a for-profit process in most cases. That said, within the larger intelligence community, including the Department of Energy in this case (which is what was quoted by Sullivan), there are individuals, or even groups, who are honestly trying to give an accurate story.

I would not dismiss all intelligence reports as being inaccurate. Sometimes people bravely state truths that have to be said and they can be more accurate than the media.

Not in this case. In this case, I think the “variety” is not a variety of interpretations, but a variety of propaganda strategies.

Different people are thinking, how are we going to solve this problem?

But the “problem” is what to do if the responsibility for the  COVID-19 pandemic might ultimately be pinned on American-affiliated multinational corporations and wealthy individuals. So they’re trying to come up with some storyline, but they can’t agree on it.

I think one of the major reasons is that the intelligence community, or the American military, is itself split. We have some Republicans who hate China and push for war with China. We have Democrats who hate Russia and are pushing for war with Russia.

And then we have all sorts of people in between, and people who are at war with everybody. They all have different interests.

I think there’s clearly a split within the establishment, the military defense establishment, as to how to deal with this COVID-19 crisis.

Those looking for a solution ranges from those who want to pin it on the Chinese Communist Party, or who prop up the experts who say we need even more vaccines. And there are other people who are saying on the inside that this story is just not going to hold, that it has come time to clean house.

All of this is going on beneath the surface. There are internal struggles taking place within the Pentagon and the CIA, and elsewhere, that we can’t really see directly.

Sputnik: The intel community is manipulating the public both here and abroad. Who knows what to believe anymore?

Emanuel Pastreich: The first thing I would say to people is be skeptical of everything. I would say that, for that matter, about the alternative media too.

We must be very skeptical about reports from the United States. But the same, about European sources and, for that matter, about Chinese, Russian or Iranian sources. They may be a little bit better, but each one of them has their own biases.

I recommend waiting to make any judgments about what’s an accurate story. I think that the scale of the deception that has taken place, and has involved all national governments in the world, is so large that moving to the next stage of sorting through the facts and finding out what really took place will be extremely difficult for us.

I think there is good reason to believe that there was an initial conspiracy between the United States and China to push in the COVID-19 narrative.

There is a “New Cold War” narrative presented in the media that is not without basis. But, at a higher level, between certain corrupt parts of sort of military industrial complex in the United States and in China, there is collaboration taking place that that is based not on national interest, but on class interest, on the interests of the super-rich and the small groups invested in private equity firms who want to make a fortune and to create a totalitarian system wherein these seemingly legitimate global organizations like the World Health Organization will be able to dictate medical practice for everyone in the entire world.

I think what we’re seeing is that this bid, that incredibly ambitious bid to take over the entire medical system and to corrupt it, although it was remarkably successful the first few years, ultimately was not successful. We are seeing some real push back now.

So Jake Sullivan and that whole team, are running around trying to find something to patch over the extremely high risk position they find themselves in.

There have been several reports out about bio labs found in the Ukraine disclosed. We do not know the details, but the possibility that this “Corona Pandemic” will ultimately come back to bite the United States itself, and for that matter, Israel, the U.K., and other affiliated countries, is quite real.

It’s best to see this move as a proactive attempt to cut off the possibility of a critique of, and investigation of, the United States and its allies, multinational corporations, and multinational global governance organizations. The best way to cut off that possibility is to go on the attack first.

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Emanuel Pastreich served as the president of the Asia Institute, a think tank with offices in Washington DC, Seoul, Tokyo and Hanoi.

3 March 2023

Source: www.globalresearch.ca

Junta has reneged on regional bloc’s ‘5-Point Consensus’ thus warranting disengagement at all security levels, civil society group says

By Riyaz ul Khaliq

ISTANBUL

Calling on Southeast Asia’s regional bloc to end “security cooperation” with the military junta ruling Myanmar, a civil society group on Thursday urged the member states to halt any supplies of lethal assistance to that country’s military.

Pointing to the Myanmar military leadership’s “apparent disregard” for repeated calls by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) to de-escalate violence and find peaceful resolutions through inclusive dialogue, the Canada-based group called on the regional countries to “suspend security cooperation” with Myanmar “at all levels.”

To commemorate the 61st anniversary of Myanmar’s first military coup in 1962, a 46-page report was released by the Associates to Develop Democratic Burma, a group founded in 1990 and works to promote the development of democracy in the Southeast Asian country.

“Evidently, the Commander-in-Chief of Myanmar military forces Senior General Min Aung Hlaing has not only reneged on his consent regarding the ASEAN 5PCs (Five-Point Consensus), but he has instead escalated the use of extreme violence by ramping up air strikes against civilians in armed conflict regions as part of the military’s strategy to terrorize communities of democratic resistance into submission,” said the group.

It called on the ASEAN to “ensure that none of the ASEAN member state is involved in supplying Myanmar military forces with lethal assistance and related support, such as the sale of aviation fuel” and “consider adopting stringent measures to prevent ASEAN-based commercial and financial institutions from financing Myanmar security ministries and their commercial affiliates.”

ASEAN is a political and economic union of 10 member states, including Myanmar, in Southeast Asia. It promotes intergovernmental cooperation and facilitates economic, political and sociocultural integration between its members in Asia-Pacific.

Soon after the February 2021 coup launched by the Myanmar’s military, locally known as the Tatmadaw, ASEAN issued the Five-Point Consensus plan, also called the 5PCs, when Brunei was at the helm of the regional grouping.

The military takeover triggered mass protests in Myanmar, with the junta’s forces killing more than 1,500 people in a crackdown on dissent, according to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, a local monitoring group.

Lately, the protests have died down.

ASEAN’s 5PCs called on all parties in the Buddhist-majority Myanmar to cease violence in the country and “exercise utmost restraint.”

Urging “constructive dialogue among all parties,” the regional bloc said that doing so would involve seeking “a peaceful solution in the interests of the people.”

It also appointed a special envoy of the ASEAN chair to facilitate mediation of the dialogue process. The envoy would be assisted by ASEAN secretary general.

Under the 5PCs, ASEAN also provides humanitarian assistance, through its Coordinating Centre for Humanitarian Assistance on Disaster Management (AHA Centre), to Myanmar, while the special envoy was assigned to undertake visits to Myanmar to “meet with all parties concerned.”

ASEAN has held several summits and meetings since the latest military coup in Myanmar but has stopped short of inviting junta representatives.

According to UNICEF, the number of displaced people has risen to more than 1.5 million in the last two years since the junta took power, while at least 2,890 people lost their lives at the hands of the military and those working with them.

2 March 2023

Source: www.aa.com.tr

By Dr Ramzy Baroud

Rarely does the Palestinian ambassador to the United Nations make an official remark expressing happiness over any UN proceeding concerning the Israeli occupation of Palestine.

Indeed, the Palestinian Ambassador Riyad Mansour is “very happy that there was a very strong united message from the Security Council against the illegal, unilateral measure” undertaken by the Israeli government.

The ‘measure’ is a specific reference to a decision, on February 12, by the far-right government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to construct 10,000 new housing units in nine illegal Jewish settlements in the Occupied Palestinian West Bank.

Expectedly, Netanyahu was angered by the supposedly ‘very strong united message’ emanating from an institution that is hardly known for its meaningful action regarding international conflicts, especially in the Palestinian-Israeli case.

Mansour’s happiness may be justified from some people’s perspective, especially as we seldom witness a strongly worded position by the UNSC that is both critical of Israel and wholly embraced by the United States. The latter has used the veto power 53 times since 1972 – per UN count – to block UNSC draft resolutions that are critical of Israel.

However, on examination of the context of the latest UN statement on Israel and Palestine, there is little reason for Mansour’s excitement. The UN statement in question is just that: a statement, with no tangible value and no legal repercussions.

This statement could have been meaningful if the language had remained unchanged from its original draft. Not a draft of the statement itself, but of a binding UN resolution that was introduced on February 15 by the UAE Ambassador.

Reuters revealed that the draft resolution would have demanded that Israel “immediately and completely cease all settlement activities in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.” That resolution – and its strong language – was scrapped under pressure from the US and was replaced by a mere statement that “reiterates” the Security Council’s position that “continuing Israeli settlement activities are dangerously imperiling the viability of the two-state solution based on the 1967 lines.”

The statement also expressed “deep concern”, actually, “dismay” with Israel’s February 12 announcement.

Netanyanu’s angry response was mostly intended for public consumption in Israel, and to keep his far-right government allies in check; after all, the conversion of the resolution into a statement, and the watering down of the language were all carried out following a prior agreement among the US, Israel and the PA. In fact, the Aqaba conference held on February 26 is a confirmation that that agreement has indeed taken place. Therefore, the statement should not have come as a surprise to the Israeli prime minister.

Moreover, US media spoke openly about a deal, which was mediated by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken. The reason behind the deal, initially, was to avert a “potential crisis”, which would have resulted from the US vetoing the resolution. According to the Associated Press, such a veto “would have angered Palestinian supporters at a time that the US and its western allies are trying to gain international support against Russia.”

But there is another reason behind the Washingtron’s sense of urgency. In December 2016, then US Ambassador to the UN, Susan Rice, refrained from vetoing a similar UNSC resolution that strongly condemned Israel’s illegal settlement activities. This occurred less than a month before the end of Barack Obama’s second term in the White House. For Palestinians, the resolution was too little, too late. For Israel, it was an unforgivable betrayal. To appease Tel Aviv, the Trump Administration gave the UN post to Nikki Haley, one of the most ardent supporters of Israel.

Though another US veto would have raised a few eyebrows, it would have presented a major opportunity for the strong pro-Palestine camp at the UN to challenge US hegemony over the matter of the Israeli occupation of Palestine; it would have also deferred the issue to the UN General Assembly and other UN-related organizations.

Even more interesting, according to the Blinken-mediated agreement – reported by AP, Reuters, Axios and others – Palestinians and Israelis would have to refrain from unilateral actions. Israel would freeze all settlement activities until August, and Palestinians would not “pursue action against Israel at the UN and other international bodies such as the World Court, the International Criminal Court and the UN Human Rights Council.” This was the gist of the agreement at the US-sponsored Aqaba meeting as well.

While Palestinians are likely to abide by this understanding – since they continue to seek US financial handouts and political validation – Israel will most likely refuse; in fact, practically, they already have.

Though the agreement had reportedly stipulated that Israel would not stage major attacks on Palestinian cities, only two days later, on February 22, Israel raided the West Bank city of Nablus. It killed 11 Palestinians and wounded 102 others, including two elderly men and a child.

A settlement freeze is almost impossible. Netanyahu’s extremist government is mostly unified by their common understanding that settlements must be kept in constant expansion. Any change to this understanding would certainly mean a collapse of one of Israel’s most stable governments in years.

Therefore, why, then, is Mansour “very happy”?

The answer stems from the fact that the PA’s credibility among Palestinians is at an all-time low. Mistrust, if not outright disdain, of Mahmoud Abbas and his Authority, is one of the main reasons behind the brewing armed rebellion against the Israeli occupation. Decades of promises that justice will eventually arrive through US-mediated talks have culminated in nothing, thus Palestinians are developing their own alternative resistance strategies.

The UN statement was marketed by PA-controlled media in Palestine as a victory for Palestinian diplomacy. Thus, Mansour’s happiness. But this euphoria was short-lived.

The Israeli massacre in Nablus left no doubt that Netanyahu will not even respect a promise he made to his own benefactors in Washington. This takes us back to square one: where Israel refuses to respect international law, the US refuses to allow the international community to hold Israel accountable, and where the PA claims another false victory in its supposed quest for the liberation of Palestine.

Practically, this means that Palestinians are left with no other option but to carry on with their resistance, indifferent – and justifiably so – to the UN and its ‘watered-down’ statements.

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

2 March 2023

Source: countercurrents.org

By Tony Robinson

In Europe, North America and a few other countries that feed themselves with information from the western media, it can have escaped no one’s attention that we are actually on the march towards World War III.

The similarities with the 1930s are terrifying:

• Multiple fronts of military activity are opening up; one in Ukraine and two more on the way in Iran and Taiwan.
• Extreme nationalism is on the rise, together with violent scapegoating of migrants of all kinds and, in fact, of anyone who is not a white, cis-gendered, heterosexual, male.
• A deteriorating economic situation is leaving vast swathes of people impoverished even in the world’s “richest” countries,
• Propaganda is spewing from the media of all factions, dehumanising those who live in countries on the other side of the conflict, and,
• Any attempt at raising voices for peace and negotiated settlements to conflicts is silenced or vilified and those who attempt to do so are labelled as “appeasers”.

Yes, all the ingredients are here for the outbreak of an all-out world war from which human civilisation will not survive.

At this critical juncture in human history we find the “peace” movement in the west to be totally fragmented and unable to give a clear and unified response. In the run-up to the war in Iraq in 2003, millions of people around the world marched against a war that they understood would never affect them personally because it was too far away geographically. Now when we are on the brink of a war that will affect the entire planet, the world is silent!

We can identify two tendencies in this fragmented panorama; those who blame everything on the West, NATO and their military pretensions to global hegemony on the one hand and justify the invasion as an unfortunate but necessary evil; and those who blame everything on Vladimir Putin and his pretensions to re-establish the old Soviet Union. Both sides justify the bloodshed and even go as far as to call for more weapons to be sent to the region. Both factions put the value of “the State” above human life and in both cases, the last thing to be considered is the welfare of the people of the conflict region who never asked for this war, and who are being slaughtered in their thousands. Both sides see this conflict as a zero-sum game; someone must win and someone must lose. Both sides ignore the fact that the end to every conflict is eventually negotiated around a conference table. Both sides would prefer to see mass slaughter rather than negotiate a solution in which further deaths are prevented.

In this context, maybe now is the time to launch a call for a new peace movement that is centred on the welfare of human beings and the planet, first and foremost.

The foundations of a new peace movement

Before asking what would the foundations of a new peace movement be, we must ask, what does the world that we aspire to look like? It is not an abstract question because a world where conflict is not resolved through the armed act of war is not the world we live in today. If we want a world where people behave differently, we need an image of something different, a new utopia, a Universal Human Nation.

Today, more than ever before, ordinary citizens across the planet must come together and stand on a common platform of rights and responsibilities that have nothing to do with gender, economic status, religion, colour of skin, sexual orientation or nationality.

But what would this platform look like? What are the principles, what are the conditions, what are the rights and responsibilities that underpin a world in which everyone can live in harmony?

The need to start from the absolute sacredness of life and the planet

Firstly, it must be clear that the world that we aspire to must be sustainable. We only have one planet. It is illogical and detrimental to the survival of the human species to continue to allow activity that exhausts the planet’s resources. Planet Earth has to be cared for so that all forms of life can be sustained, not just for five years until the next election, but for hundreds of millions of years.

Secondly, however we are organised, there can be no other value above human life and the sustainability of the planet. The Nation State, lines on maps, religions, monarchs, money, the free market and other abstract concepts have all been used as the basis on which to organise society. All of them have resulted in incredible violence and cruelty against both human beings and the planet. A future system of global governance must be based on the principle that human life is the central value.

Thirdly, the right to a dignified life for all human beings must be enshrined in the constitution of a new world. A world which allows individuals or groups of human beings to subjugate other human beings to a life of pain and suffering is what have now and it doesn’t work.

Fourthly, the constitution of the new world must be based on the agreement that war and weapons of war are illegal. We can never again allow a small group of human beings to impose their will on the vast majority under the threat of war and violence. It is unlikely in the near future that human beings will develop the capacity to prevent conflict from happening at source, but we can develop the capacity through a legal framework to abolish violence and the use of weapons as a means to resolve conflict.

Finally, we must recognise that violence is not only the physical act of harming another person. Violence is also economic, psychological, sexual, cultural, religious, moral, etc. Violence in all its forms must be abolished and we must educate the future generations with the tools for resolving conflict through nonviolent personal and social transformation.

The time is now; the situation is urgent

A massive awakening of public consciousness to the danger that we are threatened with is urgent!

The time has come for all the good people all around the world to reject the violence imposed by the global system in which we live.

The time has come to create the new world that we aspire to and to move in that direction through social organisation.

Perhaps this call to action from Europe for Peace can be a step in the right direction?

Will we be able to do it? The alternative doesn’t bear thinking about.

#EuropeForPeace

Bio: Tony Robinson tony.robinson@pressenza.com
Humanist Movement Activist, ex-Director of the Middle East Treaty Organization and coordinating committee member of Abolition 2000 – Global Network to Eliminate Nuclear Weapons, author of the book “Coffee with Silo and the quest for meaning in life” and producer of the film “The Beginning of the End of Nuclear Weapons”.

2 March 2023

Source: countercurrents.org

By Johannes Stern

In a disgraceful act of political and artistic censorship, the Frankfurt municipal administration, known as the Magistrat, decided on Friday to ban Roger Waters’ concert scheduled for May 28. The Magistrat, led by a coalition of the Social Democrats, Greens, and Free Democrats, who are in a coalition at the federal level, and the pro-EU Volt party, instructed the Frankfurt Messe venue to terminate Waters’ concert “immediately and for good cause.”

The governing parties in Frankfurt were effectively ordering themselves to carry out the ban. The hall is jointly owned in a 60-40 split between the city and the state of Hesse, whose Christian Democrat/Green government also approved the decision. The order will be implemented, emphasized the press spokesman for the Frankfurt Messe, Markus Quint, to the Frankfurter Rundschau.

This aggressive act is justified by brazen and baseless accusations of anti-Semitism against Waters. “The background to the cancellation is the persistently anti-Israeli appearances by the former Pink Floyd front man, who is considered one of the anti-Semites with the largest reach in the world,” stated a report on the official website of the Frankfurt municipality on Friday.

The denunciation of Waters as an anti-Semite is a brazen lie that he has repeatedly firmly rejected. “I am not, never have been and never will be,” he wrote on Facebook last autumn, when the campaign against his concerts in Germany—including in Frankfurt, Hamburg, Cologne, Munich and Berlin—took off. “I am known as a passionate supporter of peace movements in general and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in particular, and I stand up for equal human rights for all my brothers and sisters around the world, regardless of their ethnicity, religion or nationality.”

In a recent interview with the Berliner Zeitung, Waters once again rejected the attempt to defame him as an anti-Semite by Frankfurt city authorities, who accused him of using anti-Semitic symbolism on a previous tour. The fact that during the song “Goodbye Blue Sky” during “The Wall” show, an inflatable pig with a Star of David flew over the stage, had “nothing anti-Semitic either intended or expressed” about it.

The real message was absolutely clear in the context of the show. Waters explained, “And to explain the context, you see B-52 bombers, on a circular screen behind the band, but they don’t drop bombs, they drop symbols: Dollar signs, Crucifixes, Hammer and Sickles, Star and Crescents, the McDonalds sign—and Star of Davids. This is theatrical satire, an expression of my belief that unleashing these ideologies, or products onto the people on the ground, is an act of aggression, the opposite of humane, the opposite of creating love and peace among us brothers and sisters. I’m saying in the wrong hands all the ideologies these symbols represent can be evil.”

Waters also supported the BDS campaign (boycott, divestment and Sanctions) against Israel, which has nothing to do with anti-Semitism. The musician explained that he is concerned with the struggle for the rights of the oppressed Palestinians and for democracy in Israel itself. “Yes, Israel could change its laws. They could say: We have changed our mind, people are allowed to have rights even if they are not Jewish. That would be it, then we wouldn’t need BDS anymore,” he told the newspaper.

The method employed against Waters by the Frankfurt magistrate with the support of the state and federal governments is as filthy as it is well-known. Under the false accusation of anti-Semitism, any opposition to the brutal and essentially fascist policies of the Israeli government, in which openly right-wing extremist forces set the tone, is to be silenced.

The World Socialist Web Site has repeatedly made it clear that criticism of Israel’s oppression of the Palestinian population has nothing to do with anti-Semitism. On the contrary, the claim that the Zionist regime’s violent action against a largely defenseless population is carried out in the name of Judaism has a decidedly anti-Semitic character.

In addition, the accusation of anti-Semitism is used above all in Germany by the same extreme right-wing and militarist forces from which the real fascist and anti-Semitic danger emanates. Significantly, the so-called “anti-Semitism resolutions” adopted by the German Bundestag (federal parliament) in recent years have all been supported by the fascist AfD (Alternative for Germany), a party whose leaders trivialize the Holocaust and glorify the Nazi Wehrmacht.

It is the height of cynicism for the city of Frankfurt, in its communication against Waters, to recall that “after Kristallnacht 1938, 3,000 Jewish men from Frankfurt and the Rhine-Main area were brought to the Messe, mistreated and later deported to concentration camps.” It is not Waters’ art that draws on the fascist traditions and crimes of the Nazi era, but the ruling class in Germany.

90 years after Hitler took power, the ruling class is pursuing the declared goal of making Germany the leading military power again and sending German battle tanks to fight Russia. Not only does it openly court and strengthen fascist forces in Ukraine, but also in Germany itself. Waters is a thorn in the side of the ruling parties above all because he is one of the few artists to bravely confront this dangerous development and the politics of war.

Waters’ current tour, “This Is Not a Drill,” which is now coming to Europe and Germany after a successful first leg in North America, is not only a musical but also a strong political statement. As the WSWS commented in its review, almost every song “is directed toward pressing issues of our time: imperialist war, fascism, the poison of nationalism, the plight of refugees, the victims of state oppression, global poverty, social inequality, the attack on democratic rights, and the danger of nuclear annihilation.”

In particular, Waters places the fight against the escalating NATO war against Russia in Ukraine at the center of his current work. Speaking to the Berliner Zeitung, he said:

“All I am trying to achieve with my new recordings, my statements and performances is that our brothers and sisters in power stop the war—and that people understand that our brothers and sisters in Russia do not live under a repressive dictatorship, any more than you do in Germany or I do in the US. I mean would we choose to continue to slaughter young Ukrainians and Russians if we had the power to stop it?”

The cancellation of Waters’ concert in Frankfurt is a serious warning. The turn of the ruling class towards war and militarism is accompanied, as in the past, by massive attacks on democratic and social rights and the suppression of any opposition at home. The WSWS, the Socialist Equality Party and the IYSSE strongly condemn the action against Waters and will lead a campaign in his defense. The fight against censorship is an elementary part of building a new powerful international anti-war movement of the working class and youth.

28 February 2023

Source: countercurrents.org

By Pratap Antony

Wherever we live in this world, whatever business we are in, our first priority is to take care of our life-giving ecosystem and the biodiversity that sustains us.

Nothing else on earth matters as much as taking care of our planet.

We have been and are still causing, through our actions, acid rain, smog in our cities, environmental pollution and climate change.

We destroy forests, lakes and rivers; we pollute the air we breathe. We use fertilizers and destroy soil; we pollute water and we emit carbon.

We degrade our forests – we cut down vast expanses of forests and convert and alter habitats from their natural state for so-called development and agriculture.

We are a species threat – killing and reducing our genetic biodiversity, species biodiversity and ecological biodiversity.

We clear wetlands and mangroves to build residential buildings, for salt harvesting, aquaculture, agricultural land, and for harbours docks and industrial zones.

We still are land grabbing, destroying rainforests and abusing human rights.

We are doing this throughout our living planet, unrelentingly, ever since the industrial revolution which we say was the beginning of the Anthropocene age’, the age of man.

We are in the Anthropocene epoch: human-influenced, or anthropogenic, the most recent geologic period in Earth’s history during which human activity causes a substantial impact on our planet.

 We’ve got to change and turn things around. Urgently. We must develop in ourselves an awareness, understanding and consciousness of the fragility of the environment and of the interdependence between the environment and mankind, and our connectedness, co-dependence and co-relatedness with it.

We’ve got to save water. Water is drying up due to competition from various quarters – agriculture, industry, domestic use, drinking and energy generation. This precious natural resource, is drying up. On top of that, we are polluting rivers, streams and the air with industrial wastes. We are eroding wetlands. Water bodies – oceans, rivers, lakes and streams are being polluted with toxic effluents. And we are damming rivers.

Dams that we build to supposedly create better distribution of water and for power and energy supply, in reality, damns rivers and the entire ecosystem.

When rivers are dammed, water-flow is disturbed and so are the deposits of nutrients. Reduced water-flow affects the riverbed and downstream floodplains, leading to increased flood risk, lower groundwater tables and the accumulation of toxic materials. Entire ecosystems are affected including coastal deltas, which over time, increase salinity and make the water unusable for drinking and irrigation.

Damming also affects the transportation of sediment along the river. Sedimentation build-up in reservoirs reduces a dam’s capacity and operational lifetime.

We must save our oceans too from the release of Industrial effluents and toxic wastes which effect sea creatures near the coast lines and the corals.

Corals are very important to our planet, because they control the carbon dioxide in ocean water. Corals also act as barriers between the ocean and the shore, slowing down strong ocean currents and protecting coastlines.

We must save our wetlands & mangroves – Wetlands are areas such as swamps, marshes and bogs that are filled or soaked with water at least part of the year and are a habitat for a variety of plants, trees, grasses, shrubs or moss and are amongst the most productive ecosystems in the world. Wetlands act like kidneys for other ecosystems. They absorb wind and tidal forces, collect and hold flood waters, and filter, clean and store water.

Mangroves are salt-tolerant plants of tropical and subtropical intertidal regions of the world at the intersection of land and sea, nature has provided a shoreline ecosystem. Mangrove forests play a vital role in trapping sediments, thereby stabilizing coastlines, protecting coral reefs and act as a catalyst in reclaiming land from seas, preventing soil erosion, saving lives and property during natural hazards such as cyclones, storm surges and erosion.

Forests are sources of water. Forests soak up water like a sponge and conserve, retain and distribute it in the form of rivers and lakes, ponds and aquifers which are our source of fresh, potable water, and, with which nature renews itself and keeps the ecology in balance. Yet we cut down forests systematically destroying Earth’s natural ecosystems bit by bit.

The web of life – Everything is connected. We are all part of what is called the web of life. All of us humans, animals and everything in nature are closely connected and co-dependent on each other, we are co-dependent and interdependent on the lives of various creatures on earth.

The solution – We must realize that we are not separate, individual people who exist in isolation from our world, from animals, and from the abundant biodiversity that sustains us.

 We must realise that Earth is not a resource for humans, and resources, whatever they may be, are not inexhaustible. They are finite.       

We must be mindful of the impact of human interactions and its effect on biodiversity that surrounds us and learn to be aware of our impact on our soils, forests, fresh water, atmosphere and oceans.

 We must eschew the belief that human beings have a higher moral status, superior intelligence or a ‘value’ higher than that of other creatures on the planet.

We must stop our consumption-induced environmental degradation, as conspicuous consumption/consumerism has major environmental impacts and is not ecologically sustainable

It is never too early to learn to live in peace. As indigenous activist for rights, climate action, and human rights. Mita Xipaya, from Altamira, Brazil says, “We are all from the same Earth, from the same world. And all of us have the responsibility to take care of our planet. We cannot dream of a future if we cannot guarantee a present”

Pratap Antony is a Passive activist. Active pacifist freelance thinker and writer.

28 February 2023

Source: countercurrents.org

By Richard Falk

I found it sad that when David Ray Griffin died on November 2022 so little public notice was taken to report on the death of one of the most important thinkers of our time who illuminated our understanding of many crucial scholarly and academic concerns. He did so in a consistently independent and progressive manner, fully using the work of others, whether ally or adversary.

Late in life Griffin achieved fame; for some, shameful notoriety, for others as the leading exponent of an alternative narrative of what really happened on 9/11 when the key symbolic sites of US wealth and power, the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, were attacked by terrorists in 2001, resulting in the death of over 3,000 persons. To those who knew him, whether or not persuaded by his dissenting views of 9/11, there was never a loss of respect for Griffin, the probing thinker and scholar who fearlessly followed the evidence wherever it led, and whose scholarly effort was directly linked to his sense of an US intoxicated by its power imperiling itself and the world.

Griffin’s friendship and exemplary role as a public intellectual was influential and inspirational for me and many others in several realms of thought long before he became obsessed with his strong sense of duty to expose the realities of the 9/11 controversy.  His earlier work had focused on a philosophical and social rethinking of the nature of religion, with a full awareness of its economic, political, civilizational, and ecological implications under conditions of modernity. It is impossible to summarize his wide-ranging interests and scholarly achievements.

Yet one feature of almost all of his voluminous writing is unusual and stands out: Griffin’s willingness to go beyond the boundaries of what was deemed by conventional opinion to be ‘responsible thought’ or ‘acceptable dissent’ as interpreted by the self-censoring filters relied upon by the most influential media platforms that made Griffin’s death a public happening that never happened. I have come to believe that it was not mainly because his views aligned with the main currents of progressive thought in the United States and abroad. Something more and different was at stake that is worth reflecting upon as a result of his public persona being linked so closely to views on 9/11 that governing elites not only wanted to be discredited but forgotten.

Like Noam Chomsky, or Jean-Paul Sartre before him, Griffin had distinguished himself by way of breakthrough scholarship long prior to venturing onto the precarious terrain of controversial politics. Yet Chomsky, eminent as a linguist before he ventured into public space with devastating critiques of the U.S. role in the world, will be recognized and even celebrated whether dead or alive as a progressive public intellectual almost everywhere in the world, raising the elusive question as to what are the elusive differences among notable public intellectuals.

In my view there are certain ‘no-go’ zones that Chomsky and Sartre more or less respected, not from prudence, but due to their beliefs and interests. In contrast, Griffin continuously breached such limits during his long productive scholarly life, even in his early philosophical and theological works that took seriously the truth claims of parapsychology and reports confirming life after death, anathemas to those who believed that modern science with its mechanistic views of causation were decisive criteria of the real.

Griffin’s early creativity centered on stripping religion of supranaturalism, while enlarging our understanding of more expansive views of scientifically verified reality. He proceeded by affirming the continuous relevance in the modern world of the stress on the experientially validated philosophical assessments associated with the philosophical work of Alfred North Whitehead and Charles Hartshorne. If Griffin had stopped here, his contributions would be appreciated by devoted followers in a few relatively esoteric academic circles, and there would be little reason to be puzzled as to why his unconventional work and life did not receive wider public recognition. Actually, a respected obit writer might have been impressed by Griffin’s work and depicted his life as centering on a maverick’s challenge to the dogmas of truth, currently strictly adhered to by the scientific community.

Chomsky and Sartre were certainly controversial and denounced by right-wing critics, but their stature as world class intellectuals fully entitled to comment on global issues was never called into serious question. Some critics insisted that their views were expressions of radical thought and neither Chomsky nor Sartre had the benefit of specialized training in international affairs, but attacks on their opinions were seen as part of the normal give and take encountered in any liberal democratic society, and especially in Chomsky’s case were largely confined to the tightly knit professional class of foreign policy experts and their bureaucratic counterpart.

True, Chomsky’s sharp criticisms of Israel and Zionism are second only to 9/11 in the pushback they receive, but Chomsky has moved on to emphasize broader issues of policy, that indict the judgment of elites, but do not question their behavior and integrity in the Griffin manner. These considerations foreground the question as to why Griffin’s later work on 9/11 set off a different set of alarms that produced this ‘conspiracy of silence’ with respect to his scholarly achievements, which were easily sufficient to have earned Griffin sufficient eminence to make his passing a public event worthy of notice and commentary.

After much puzzlement, I have come to explain this neglect of such an outstanding scholar as an indirect consequence of Griffin daring to challenge the official version of the 9/11 attacks of 2001 on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. Not only did he mount this challenge by publishing a book provocatively entitled The New Pearl Harbor: Disturbing Questions about the Bush Administration and 9/11 (2004), but he followed this carefully crafted critique with an incredible additional eleven books that debunked every facet of the official version of these events, and gained a worldwide following for what had become a crusade to bring the truths he discovered about what happened on 9/11 to the public arena in ways that would produce a reliably objective inquiry rather than a thinly rationalized whitewashing of official culpability.

What may have been even more inflammatory than the accusation that the government and the media had orchestrated a massive coverup were Griffin’s views of the motivations and consequences involved. What was undoubtedly most incriminating from the perspective of Washington and the threats posed by Griffin to its matrix of ideological control was his well-evidenced belief that this denial of 9/11 truth was tied to an underlying foreign policy agenda that had fueled past war-making and imperial interventions, and were integral to implementing the post-Cold War neoconservative resolve to fill permanently the geopolitical vacuum created by the Soviet implosion. By doing so, the U.S. could exert control over the whole world on behalf of financially-oriented world capitalism operating under the security blanket of US militarism masked as ‘democracy promotion.’

9/11 truth tellers are generally portrayed as crazy enemies of the people animated by mental disorder, which in Griffin’s case is totally false, whose personal life possessed all the attributes of middle class normalcy, including a lively involvement with a loving family. By using their pervasive influence, the overlords of public belief succeed in painting Griffin, and others who subscribed to his deconstruction of the main rationale for the War on Terror as wing nuts the established order survived the Griffin storm.

I think it was the successful branding of the 9/11 skeptics as ‘wacky’ that proved more useful in squelching their influence than by labeling them as ‘dangerous,’ ‘subversive,’ and ‘radical’ or ‘socialist.’ It might be understood as the advent of a more advanced, more sophisticated version of McCarthyism, a discrediting ploy that George Orwell would have immediately understood. I experience a touch of this treatment when the US ambassador to the UN at the time, John Bolton, called me ‘a fruitcake’ in the course of a rant opposing my appointment in 2008 as Special Rapporteur for Occupied Palestine. He called my appointment as illustrative of all that was wrong with the UN.

Griffin found his audiences around the world through well attended lectures, foreign media outlets, and most of all through his defiant books on why it was vital to get the true story of 9/11 as widely disseminated as possible. He fully earned his international celebrity by linking the exposure of the 9/11 events to the before and after stories of US foreign policy in a series of outstanding books: Bush and Cheney: How They Ruined the United States and the World (2015); The American Trajectory: Divine or Demonic (2018). Both of these books connect the grandiosity of the past US claims of Manifest Destiny and ‘exceptionalism’ to the neoconservative determination to make the entire world subject to U.S. hegemony.

Griffin’s passion and talent were saved for his dying days in a hospice when he was nearly paralyzed by pain but determined to make one last attempt to alert the North American people about the disastrous future that is being scripted in the manner of responding to the Ukraine War.

His book soon to be available to the public bears the graphic title America on the Brink: How U.S. Foreign Policy Led to the War in Ukraine (2023). This book is indispensable reading for all who want to understand why the current behavior of the United States is dooming the prospects of the human species for a peaceful and ecologically stable future.

Richard Falk is a member of the TRANSCEND Network, Albert G. Milbank Professor Emeritus of International Law at Princeton University, Chair of Global Law, Faculty of Law, at Queen Mary University London,  Research Associate the Orfalea Center of Global Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and Fellow of the Tellus Institute.

27 February 2023

Source: www.transcend.org

By Amy Goodman and Denis Moynihan

23 Feb 2023 – Malcolm X was assassinated 58 years ago, on 21 Feb 1965, standing at the podium before a crowd in Harlem’s Audubon Ballroom. His wife Betty Shabazz, pregnant with twins, and his four daughters, aged 6, 4, 2 and five months, were in the ballroom, looking on. As Malcolm began speaking, a man shouted, accusing another of picking his pocket, creating a disturbance. A smoke bomb was thrown. Amidst the confusion, three gunmen at the front of the hall opened fire. Malcolm was hit 17 times in the ensuing hail of bullets. He died on the stage as chaos erupted.

Talmadge Hayer (a.k.a. Mujahid Abdul Halim) was shot in the leg by one of Malcolm X’s bodyguards as he fled the ballroom. He was caught on the scene with ammunition that matched one of the murder weapons. In the days that followed, two other men, Khalil Islam and Muhammad Aziz, were arrested and accused of being the two additional shooters, even though they were nowhere near the ballroom that day and could prove it. Hayer testified under oath that his two codefendants were innocent but was ignored.

Aziz would go on to spend 20 years in prison, and Islam, 22 years. Then, in 2021, more than 56 years after Malcolm X’s assassination, these two wrongfully convicted men were exonerated. Muhammad Aziz was 83 years old. Khalil Islam died in 2009. Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance, Jr. opened a reinvestigation of the assassination and prosecution, complementing years of dogged research by journalists, historians and independent researchers that pointed not only to the innocence of Aziz and Islam, but to the guilt of others.

The reinvestigation spanned almost two years, and uncovered previously undisclosed FBI and New York Police Department (NYPD) documents. It was revealed, more than half a century later, that the FBI had up to ten informants inside the Audubon Ballroom. The NYPD had at least three undercover officers there as well, one of whom was actually on Malcolm X’s security team. Evidence gathered by both the FBI and the NYPD that was exculpatory was “deliberately withheld” from Aziz and Islam. This information and more, the Manhattan DA argued, “would have resulted in verdicts more favorable to the defendants.” The court agreed, and vacated the convictions in late 2021.

Muhammad Aziz and the estate of Khalil Islam sued both the City and State of New York for wrongful conviction and imprisonment, and, in late 2022, they reached a combined settlement of $36 million.

Which brings us to 2023. Today, the Audubon Ballroom has been restored, and is the Malcolm X & Dr. Betty Shabazz Memorial & Education Center. On February 21st, the 58th anniversary of Malcolm’s assassination, the family, along with their lawyers, held a press conference there to announce a forthcoming $100 million wrongful death lawsuit. The suit will name the City of New York, the District Attorney, the NYPD, the FBI, the U.S. Justice Department, and, interestingly, the Central Intelligence Agency.

“We intend to have vigorous litigation of this matter,” civil rights attorney Benjamin Crump said. “To have discovery, to be able to take depositions of the individuals who are still alive 58 years later, to make sure that some measure of justice can be given to Malcolm X’s daughters, who in this very room were present with their mother when he was shot at 21 times, 17 bullets hitting him. If anybody deserves justice after these decades, it is these women.”

Malcolm X’s third daughter of six, Dr. Ilyasah Shabazz, an educator and author, spoke next, her voice shaking:

“On February 21st, 1965, my mother came here excited to see her husband, because a week prior her home had been firebombed. She walked in here happy, and she left shattered.”

Ilyasah was also there that day, just two years old.

She continued,

“For years our family has fought for the truth to come to light concerning his murder, and we’d like our father to receive the justice that he deserves. The truth about the circumstances leading to the death of our father is important not only to his family but to many followers, many admirers, many who looked to him for guidance, for love. And it is our hope that litigation of this case will finally provide some unanswered questions. We want justice served for our father.”

Malcolm X was just 39 years old when he was assassinated, as was Martin Luther King, Jr. three years later when felled by a sniper’s bullet in Memphis. Both men were leading revolutionary movements for Black liberation, and both were heavily surveilled and targeted by J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI.

The time for knowing the full truth behind Malcolm X’s assassination is long past due. May this lawsuit provide the answers, and the overdue justice, that his daughters, and this country, deserve.

Amy Goodman is the host of “Democracy Now!” a daily international TV/radio news hour airing on more than 900 stations in North America.

Denis Moynihan is the co-founder of Democracy Now! Since 2002, he has participated in the organization’s worldwide distribution, infrastructure development, and the coordination of complex live broadcasts from many continents.

27 February 2023

Source: www.transcend.org