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By Baher Kamal

1 Jul 2022 – While the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) Summit ended in Madrid on 30 June with net commitments to double spending on weapons and to increase by eight-fold the number of troops in Europe, the total of hungry people worldwide now marks an unprecedented record.

Conflict is still the biggest driver of hunger, with 60 percent of the world’s hungry living in areas affected by war and violence. Credit: Isaiah Esipisu/IPS

As advanced by IPS in its: NATO Summit Set to Further Militarise Europe, Expand in Africa? The Western military Alliance Declaration states that its member countries continue to face distinct threats from “all strategic directions.”

“The Russian Federation is the most significant and direct threat to Allies’ security and to peace and stability in the Euro-Atlantic area.”
Militarising migration policies?

Furthermore, the NATO Summit Declaration emphasises that terrorism, “in all its forms and manifestations, continues to pose a direct threat to the security of our populations, and to international stability and prosperity.”

The Summit, therefore, decided to increase its military deployment in Southern Europe, in particular in Spain and upon its request, as a way to prevent and combat terrorism.

From the Central American Dry Corridor and Haiti, through the Sahel, Central African Republic, South Sudan and then eastwards to the Horn of Africa, Syria, Yemen and all the way to Afghanistan, there is a ring of fire stretching around the world where conflict and climate shocks are driving millions of people to the brink of starvation

The decision was adopted by NATO leaders just four days after the massive entry of migrants to the Spanish cities of Ceuta and Melilla, both located in the North of Morocco, which was brutally stopped, killing around thirty migrants.

“Instability beyond our borders is also contributing to irregular migration and human trafficking,” says the Declaration.

In short, NATO has opted for further militarising its US, Canada and European countries’ migration policies, which they continue to claim that are based on international laws and human rights, etcetera.
Cyber, space threats?

The Madrid Declaration also says that NATO members “are confronted by cyber, space, and hybrid and other asymmetric threats, and by the malicious use of emerging and disruptive technologies.”

As expected, the NATO Declaration emphasises that the Russian Federation “is the most significant and direct threat to Allies’ security and to peace and stability in the Euro-Atlantic area.”

At the same time, NATO leaders have made a clear reference to China.

“We face systemic competition from those, including the People’s Republic of China, who challenge our interests, security, and values and seek to undermine the rules-based international order.”
Any mention of hunger?

Unless hunger has been dealt with by the Western military Alliance as a “top secret, confidential” topic, the NATO Declaration makes no clear mention of the current unprecedented hunger crisis.

Perhaps NATO includes the deadly hunger as part of its package of “threats” to their safety and security?

The fact is that right now 811 million people go to bed hungry every night, the Peace Nobel Laureate World Food Programme (WFP) warns.

The number of those facing acute food insecurity has soared – from 135 million to 345 million – since 2019. A total of 50 million people in 45 countries are teetering on the edge of famine.
Money for weapons, not for saving lives

While needs are sky-high, resources have hit rock bottom, warns WFP, while emphasising that it requires 22.2 billion US dollars to immediately reach 137 million people in 2022.

“However, with the global economy reeling from the COVID-19 pandemic, the gap between needs and funding is bigger than ever before.”

The urgently needed funding to face the pressing need to save lives is hard to be met. In its Nuclear-Armed Powers Squander $156.000 Per Minute on Their ‘MAD’ Policy, IPS reported on how nine nuclear-armed states spent 82.4 billion US dollars in just one year, prior to the unfolding war in Europe, on these weapons of mass destruction.

Now in view of the NATO Summit decision to further increase military spending to face not only Russia but also to more heavily spending on deadly arms to challenge what they now consider as the Chinese threat, there will be little chance to address the devastating hunger.
Why is the world hungrier than ever?

WPF mentions four causes of hunger and famine. This seismic hunger crisis, it explains, has been caused by a deadly combination of four factors:

• Conflict is still the biggest driver of hunger, with 60 percent of the world’s hungry living in areas affected by war and violence. Events unfolding in Ukraine are further proof of how conflict feeds hunger, forcing people out of their homes and wiping out their sources of income.
• Climate shocks destroy lives, crops and livelihoods, and undermine people’s ability to feed themselves.
• The economic consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic are driving hunger to unprecedented levels.
• And, last but not least, the cost of reaching people in need is rising: the price WFP is paying for food is up 30 percent compared to 2019, an additional US$42 million a month.

By the way, none of these factors has been caused by any of these millions of hungry humans.

Hunger hotspots: a ring of fire

By the way, none of these factors has been caused by any of these millions of hungry humans.

According to the Rome-based WFP, from the Central American Dry Corridor and Haiti, through the Sahel, Central African Republic, South Sudan and then eastwards to the Horn of Africa, Syria, Yemen and all the way to Afghanistan, there is a ring of fire stretching around the world where conflict and climate shocks are driving millions of people to the brink of starvation.

In countries like Nigeria, South Sudan and Yemen, WFP is already faced with hard decisions, including cutting rations to be able to reach more people. This is tantamount to taking from the hungry to feed the starving.

“The consequences of not investing in resilience activities will reverberate across borders. If communities are not empowered to withstand the shocks and stresses they are exposed to, this could result in increased migration and possible destabilisation and conflict.”

Is this why NATO leaders talk about pouring more billions and even trillions into their fight against “destabilisation and terrorism”?
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Baher Kamal, a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace Development Environment, is an Egyptian-born, Spanish national, secular journalist, with over 45 years of professional experience — from reporter to special envoy to chief editor of national dailies and an international news agency.

4 July 2022

Source: www.transcend.org

STATEMENT ISSUED BY NEW WORLD MATHABA:
BRUTAL ATTACKS ON AFRICANS IN MOROCCO HIGHLIGHTS CRISIS IN AFRICA

On June 24th, approximately 2000 African migrants made a desperate attempt at a mass border crossing, climbing the iron fence separating Morocco and the Spanish enclave of Melilla. Footage of African bodies piled up at the foot of the fence, many lifeless, while others were being savagely beaten by Moroccan Security Forces, went viral. To date, the number of African migrants who lost their lives has climbed to 37.

We join with those all over the world, to condemn, in the strongest possible terms, this horrific attack by Moroccan security forces. However, we know that in a matter of weeks, the statements of condemnation and outrage will be buried, and the incident will simply be added to the mountain of crimes against African humanity. The question is, what is to be done?

This brutal attack on Africans, on African soil, highlights the crisis that Africa is facing. The fundamental problem is that Imperialist forces have been able to install and sustain neo-colonial regimes throughout the continent, while rolling back and destroying all attempts by the African masses to rid themselves of the Imperialist’s stranglehold, from Ivory Coast and Zimbabwe to Libya.

One of the most serious setbacks for Africa was the destruction of the Libyan Jamahirya, and the assassination of revolutionary Pan-Africanist, Muammar Qaddafi. Utilizing the situation that had arisen in neighboring African countries, Egypt and Tunisia, the imperialists seized the moment to invade and destroy Libya, and murder Qaddafi. In so doing, they were able to neutralize what was a very real challenge to their continued plunder of African resources, and their continued exploitation and genocide of African peoples.

In addition, the destruction of the Libyan Jamahiriya dramatically changed the situation with regard to African migration. The Libyan Jamahiriya was the most prosperous country in all of Africa. Border restriction for Africans were relaxed which meant that Africans from all over the continent were free to live and work in Libya. From there, they were able to send money home to their families.

When people risk their lives and the lives of their families to flee their countries, it is because of the desperate and unbearable conditions they face at home. The crisis facing Africa is worsening by the day. Numerous African countries are experiencing a surge in attacks and sabotage by heretical, Islamic terrorist groups, aided and abetted by foreign powers from Qatar to the Western Imperial nations, with the aim of destabilizing and balkanizing the continent. The US and their allies are notorious for using these groups as foot soldiers, and as a justification for the imposition of USAFRICOM, which has relations and/or military bases in almost every African country.

Africa is experiencing climate shocks resulting in some of the worst droughts in East Africa in recent history. Food and fertilizer shortages, coupled with rising prices, caused by NATO’s proxy war against Russia, are exacerbating the already dire conditions. Poverty and hunger are on the rise, and the potential risk of famine across the continent looms large. Lack of access to potable drinking water is threatening the lives of millions of Africans.

There is only one way to overcome these problems, and that is to rid the continent of foreign military, economic and political interference and domination, and the neo- colonial governments installed to manage African nation-states on behalf of these foreign entities.

We, revolutionary Pan-Africanists, must intensify our efforts to come together with revolutionary and progressive forces worldwide, to accelerate the collapse of the US Empire and its West European, Canadian and Australasian surrogates. Their decline is without doubt underway, and the world is now at a critical tipping point. Despite the overwhelming challenges that confront us, both organizationally and personally, we must organize and mobilize as never before, to hasten the inevitable implosion and destruction of all those countries that built their economies on the backs of captured Africans and the plunder of Mother Africa.

There is nothing that White Power fears more than our united efforts and a united Africa,  free from foreign domination. It is the reason why they target every African leader and movement advocating this vision. They know that a united Africa would completely change the balance of power globally. A well-documented fact is that if Africa stopped the flow of all resources and raw materials to the Western nations for just one week, the United States and Europe would grind to a halt.

Almost every known natural resource needed to run contemporary industrial economies, uranium, gold, copper, cobalt, coltan (for cell phones, computers etc.), platinum, diamonds, bauxite, and especially large reserves of oil are located in Africa. Azania (South Africa) alone contains half the world's gold reserves. Democratic Republic of
Congo contains half of the world's cobalt and 80% of the world's known coltan reserves. One quarter of the world's aluminum ore is found in the coastal belt of West Africa and the continent is awash in petroleum reserves. These resources must be liberated and placed in the hands of the people, so that they can live decent and dignified lives in the land of their birth.

We cannot look to or expect anything from current African regimes with few exceptions, or to the impotent African Union, most aptly described by Zimbabwean writer, Reason Wafawarova, as “a bunch of cowardly bucolic boofheads, totally mesmerized by Western donor funding…What an unthinking lot of hopeless traitors!”

Gone are the days when that fiery club, formerly known as the Organization of African Unity, was graced by great freedom-fighters, including Kwame Nkrumah, Ahmed Sekou Toure, Ahmed Ben Bella, Kenneth Kaunda, Julius Nyerere, Jamal Abdel Nasser, Samora Machel, Thomas Sankara, Muammar Qaddafi, Robert Mugabe, Sam Nujoma,
Nelson Mandela and so many other African heroes.

We must now look to ourselves in this defining moment for Africa and indeed, for all of humanity. We must, no matter what the obstacles, work tirelessly to confront the core issues at stake. We must heed the words of Muammar Qaddafi, in an address to a large gathering in Niamey, Niger in 1997: “This is a scared battle, concerning our moral values… We cannot accept any undermining of these values. All barriers created by the colonialist armies must be demolished…we are stronger than them in terms of our moral values and material power… the wealth of Africa must be in the hands of the African masses. To achieve this, Imperialism and Neo-colonialism must be destroyed.”

And in the timeless words of Marcus Mosiah Garvey “Arise Ye Mighty Race – Accomplish what you will.”

Gerald A. Perreira On behalf of the International Directorate of the New World Mathaba

The New World Mathaba, formally established on African Liberation Day, May 25th, 2022, is a continuation of the original World Mathaba, launched in 1982 in Tripoli, Libya, by revolutionary Pan-Africanist and Martyr, Muammar Qaddafi. The word Mathaba is an ancient Afrabian word, and translates as “a meeting place, a point of convergence for people to exchange ideas and share experiences for the purpose of furthering a collective struggle for justice and that which is right.” Mathaba is more than a word – it is a profound concept. Our aim is to facilitate unity of purpose and strategy, and to coordinate our collective efforts to rid Africa, and the world, of Colonialism, Neo-colonialism, Imperialism, Racism and Zionism. Contact us at newworldmathaba@gmail.com

By Yanis Varoufakis

Inflation as a Political Power Play Gone Wrong – A half-century long strategy, led by corporations, Wall Street, governments, and central banks, is coming undone. As a result, the West’s authorities now face an impossible choice: push conglomerates and states into cascading bankruptcies or allow inflation to go unchecked.

22 Jun 2022 – The blame game over surging prices is on. Was it too much central-bank money being pumped out for too long that caused inflation to take off? Was it China, where most physical production had moved before the pandemic locked down the country and disrupted global supply chains? Was it Russia, whose invasion of Ukraine took a large chunk out of the global supply of gas, oil, grains, and fertilizers? Was it some surreptitious shift from pre-pandemic austerity to unrestricted fiscal largesse?

The answer is one that test-takers never encounter: All of the above and none of the above.

Pivotal economic crises frequently evoke multiple explanations that are all correct while missing the point. When Wall Street collapsed in 2008, triggering the global Great Recession, various explanations were offered: regulatory capture by financiers who had replaced industrialists in the capitalist pecking order; a cultural proclivity toward risky finance; failure by politicians and economists to distinguish between a new paradigm and a massive bubble; and other theories, too. All were valid, but none went to the heart of the matter.

The same thing is true today. The “we told you so” monetarists, who have been predicting high inflation ever since central banks massively expanded their balance sheets in 2008, remind me of the joy felt that year by leftists (like me) who consistently “predict” capitalism’s near-death —akin to a stopped clock that is right twice a day. Sure enough, by creating huge overdrafts for the bankers in the false hope that the money would trickle down to the real economy, central banks caused epic asset-price inflation (booming equity and housing markets, the crypto craze, and more).

But the monetarist story cannot explain why the major central banks failed from 2009 to 2020 even to boost the quantity of money circulating in the real economy, let alone push consumer price inflation up to their 2% target. Something else must have triggered inflation.

The interruption of China-centered supply chains clearly played a significant role, as did Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. But neither factor explains Western capitalism’s abrupt “regime change” from prevailing deflation to its opposite: all prices taking off simultaneously. This would require wage inflation to overtake price inflation, thus causing a self-perpetuating spiral, with wage rises feeding back into further price hikes which, in turn, cause wages to rise again, ad infinitum. Only then would it be reasonable for central bankers to demand that workers “take one for the team” and refrain from seeking higher wage settlements.

But, today, demanding that workers forgo wage gains are absurd. All the evidence suggests that, unlike in the 1970s, wages are rising much more slowly than prices, and yet the increase in prices is not just continuing but accelerating.

So, what is really going on? My answer: A half-century long power play, led by corporations, Wall Street, governments, and central banks, has gone badly wrong. As a result, the West’s authorities now face an impossible choice: Push conglomerates and even states into cascading bankruptcies, or allow inflation to go unchecked.

For 50 years, the US economy has sustained the net exports of Europe, Japan, South Korea, then China and other emerging economies, while the lion’s share of those foreigners’ profits rushed to Wall Street in search of higher returns. On the back of this tsunami of capital heading for America, the financiers were building pyramids of private money (such as options and derivatives) to fund the corporations building up a global labyrinth of ports, ships, warehouses, storage yards, and road and rail transport. When the crash of 2008 burned down these pyramids, the whole financialized labyrinth of global just-in-time supply chains was imperiled.

To save not just the bankers but also the labyrinth itself, central bankers stepped in to replace the financiers’ pyramids with public money. Meanwhile, governments were cutting public expenditure, jobs, and services. It was nothing short of lavish socialism for capital and harsh austerity for labor. Wages shrunk, and prices and profits were stagnant, but the price of assets purchased by the rich (and thus their wealth) skyrocketed. Thus, investment (relative to available cash) dropped to an all-time low, capacity shrunk, market power boomed, and capitalists became both richer and more reliant on central-bank money than ever.

It was a new power game. The traditional struggle between capital and labor to increase their respective shares of total income through mark-ups and wage increases continued but was no longer the source of most new wealth. After 2008, universal austerity yielded low investment (money demand), which, combined with plentiful central-bank liquidity (money supply), kept the price of money (interest rates) close to zero. With productive capacity (even new housing) on the wane, good jobs scarce, and wages stagnant, wealth triumphed in equity and real-estate markets, which had decoupled from the real economy.

Then came the pandemic, which changed one big thing: Western governments were forced to channel some of the new rivers of central-bank money to the locked-down masses within economies that, over the decades, had depleted their capacity to produce stuff and were now facing busted supply chains to boot. As the locked-down multitudes spent some of their furlough money on scarce imports, prices began to rise. Corporations with great paper wealth responded by exploiting their immense market power (yielded by their shrunken productive capacity) to push prices through the roof.

After two decades of a central-bank-supported bonanza of soaring asset prices and rising corporate debt, a little price inflation was all it took to end the power game that shaped the post-2008 world in the image of a revived ruling class. So, what happens now?

Probably nothing good. To stabilize the economy, the authorities first need to end the exorbitant power bestowed upon the very few by a political process of paper wealth and cheap debt creation. But the few will not surrender power without a struggle, even if it means going down in flames with society in tow.

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Yanis Varoufakis, a former finance minister of Greece, is leader of the MeRA25 Party, professor of economics at the University of Athens, and co-founder of DiEM25 (Democracy in Europe Movement).

27 June 2022

Source: www.transcend.org

By Baher Kamal

24 Jun 2022 – They call it MAD: Mutual Assured Destruction. It is about the nuclear-armed powers’ doctrine of military strategy and national security policy. And they spent on their MAD policy more than 156.000 US dollars, every single minute, in just one year–2021.

According to their MAD doctrine a full-scale use of nuclear weapons by an attacker on a nuclear-armed defender, with second-strike capabilities, would cause the complete annihilation of both the attacker and the defender. In short: destruction.

Nine countries are classified as nuclear-armed powers, with the United States, Russia, China, the United Kingdom and France ranking at the top of the list. Others: India, Israel, Pakistan, and North Korea.

Already before the war now unfolding in Europe

In its report “Squandered: 2021 Global Nuclear Weapons Spending,” the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) reveals that in 2021 –the year before the Russian invasion of Ukraine– nine nuclear-armed states spent 82.4 billion US dollars on these weapons of mass destruction, that’s more than 156,000 US dollars… per minute.

Specifically, the United States spent three times more than the next in line- a whopping 44.2 billion US dollars, reports ICAN. China was the only other country crossing the ten billion mark, spending 11.7 billion US dollars.

Russia had the third-highest spending at 8.6 billion US dollars, though the United Kingdom’s 6.8 billion US dollars, and the French 5.9 billion, weren’t so far behind.

ICAN adds that India, Israel and Pakistan also each spent over a billion on their arsenals, while North Korea spent 642 million US dollars, according to the 2017 Nobel Peace laureate: ICAN.

Arsenals expected to grow

Another prestigious global peace research body, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) on 13 June 2022 launched the findings of its Yearbook 2022, which assesses the current state of armaments, disarmament and international security.

One key finding is that despite a marginal decrease in the number of nuclear warheads in 2021, nuclear arsenals are expected to grow over the coming decade.

The nine nuclear-armed states—the United States, Russia, the United Kingdom, France, China, India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea —continue to modernise their nuclear arsenals and although the total number of nuclear weapons declined slightly between January 2021 and January 2022, the number will probably increase in the next decade, SIPRI reports.

90% of all nukes, in the hands of Russia and the U.S.

Russia and the USA together possess over 90% of all nuclear weapons.

Of the total inventory of an estimated 12.705 warheads at the start of 2022, about 9.440 were in military stockpiles for potential use.

Of those, an estimated 3.732 warheads were deployed with missiles and aircraft, and around 2000—nearly all of which belonged to Russia or the USA—were kept in a state of “high operational alert,” according to SIPRI’s 2022 Yearbook Global nuclear arsenals are expected to grow as states continue to modernise.

Nuclear Weapons – The United States spent three times more than the next in line- a whopping 44.2 billion US dollars. China was the only other country crossing the ten billion mark, spending 11.7 billion US dollars. Russia had the third highest spending at 8.6 billion US dollars.

Technology adds greater risks

The study Emerging technologies and nuclear weapon risks explains that the specific risks posed by advancements in cyber operations and artificial intelligence are still being discovered, but some risks include:

• Cyber attacks could manipulate the information decision-makers get to launch nuclear weapons, and interfere with the operation of nuclear weapons themselves;

• The increased application of advanced machine learning in defence systems can speed up warfare – giving decision-makers even less time to consider whether or not to launch nuclear weapons;

• Countries may be eager to apply new artificial intelligence technologies before they understand the full implications of these technologies;

• It is impossible to eliminate the risk of core nuclear weapons systems being hacked or compromised without eliminating nuclear weapons.

‘Eliminate nuclear weapons before they eliminate us’

“These [nuclear] weapons offer false promises of security and deterrence – while guaranteeing only destruction, death, and endless brinkmanship,” UN Secretary-General António Guterres said on 20 June 2022 in a video messageto the First Meeting of States Parties to the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, in Vienna, Austria.

“Let’s eliminate these weapons before they eliminate us.”

The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons prohibits a full range of nuclear-weapon-related activities, such as undertaking to develop, test, produce, manufacture, acquire, or stockpile nuclear weapons, or other nuclear explosive devices.

It was adopted in July 2017 and entered into force in January 2021.

‘Recipe for annihilation’

The UN chief also said that the “terrifying lessons” of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are fading from memory, referring to the atomic bombing of these two major Japanese cities during the Second World War.

However, with more than 13,000 nuclear weapons still held across the globe, “the once unthinkable prospect of nuclear conflict is now back within the realm of possibility.”

“In a world rife with geopolitical tensions and mistrust, this is a recipe for annihilation. We cannot allow the nuclear weapons wielded by a handful of States to jeopardise all life on our planet. We must stop knocking at Doomsday’s door.”

The most destructive instruments of mass murder ever created

ICAN has been repeatedly warning that nuclear weapons are the most destructive, inhumane and indiscriminate instruments of mass murder ever created.

The term “catastrophic humanitarian consequences” describes their unique and horrifying effects on people, including lethal harm to those who are not part of the conflicts in which they are used.

The world at Doom’s doorstep

While the past year offered glimmers of hope that humankind might reverse its march toward global catastrophe, the Doomsday Clock was set at just 100 seconds to midnight, on 20 January 2022 warned the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.

The time is based on continuing and dangerous threats posed by nuclear weapons, climate change, disruptive technologies, and COVID-19.

“All of these factors were exacerbated by “a corrupted information ecosphere that undermines rational decision making.”

“US relations with Russia and China remain tense, with all three countries engaged in an array of nuclear modernization and expansion efforts—including China’s apparent large-scale program to increase its deployment of silo-based long-range nuclear missiles; the push by Russia, China, and the United States to develop hypersonic missiles; and the continued testing of anti-satellite weapons by many nations.”

Founded in 1945 by Albert Einstein and University of Chicago scientists who helped develop the first atomic weapons in the Manhattan Project, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists created the Doomsday Clock two years later, using the imagery of apocalypse (midnight) and the contemporary idiom of nuclear explosion (countdown to zero) to convey threats to humanity and the planet.

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Baher Kamal, a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace Development Environment, is an Egyptian-born, Spanish national, secular journalist, with over 45 years of professional experience — from reporter to special envoy to chief editor of national dailies and an international news agency.

27 June 2022

Source: www.transcend.org

By Navdanya International

16 Jun 2022 – Vandana Shiva, president of Navdanya International, visited Italy in early June 2022 to present her latest book, From Greed to Care (Dall’avidità alla cura – Emi). The tour started in Naples and continued through Rome and Florence to Turin. In particular, the Indian activist was the guest of the Berlingueriana event in Naples, of the Capital’s administration and the Italian Buddhist Union (UBI) in Rome, and in Turin of Cinemambiente.

We met her to talk about the global situation, rising inequalities and the worrying obesity figures released by the World Health Organisation (WHO). Global issues which have immediate repercussions on the local. This is the case with the war in Ukraine and the wheat crisis, but, Vandana Shiva warns, we must be very careful to avoid financial speculation on food. The Indian activist also dwells on the attempt to propose GMOs as a solution to the alleged food crisis and the organic law just approved by the Italian government.

Does the title of your latest book express a wish or is something moving in this direction? How strong is the influence of multinationals on our lives?

The book is about both a growing trend of life-threatening emergencies and my vision of the better world we can create by abandoning greed as the driving force behind the economy, society and our relationship with nature. We can create this world by making caring for the earth and each other the guiding value. The influence of multinational corporations on our lives has grown over the last thirty years of neo-liberal globalisation. But people have resisted. The attempt to privatise and commodify movements was stopped by the struggle for water democracy in India and Italy. Navdanya and the Seed Freedom movement have resisted the patent system and the corporate monopoly on seeds. Corporations now want to control everything: our bodies, our minds, our food, our health. If we don’t resist, they will own nature and all its life-support systems. Which means they will take over our lives.

The number of billionaires in the world is increasing, as is the number of people living in poverty. A single individual like Bill Gates, with all his investments, has more power than many countries of the world. Is it possible to reverse this trend and the pattern that generates these inequalities?

Everything that has been made by men can be unmade by men. The rise of billionaire rulers like Gates is a repetition of the rule of robber barons like Rockefeller in the US a century ago. Billionaires break social rules and undermine democratic governance to expand their empires. That is why I wrote Oneness vs. the 1% – Shattering Illusions, Seeding Freedom (Chelsea Green Publishing). As Navdanya International, we published a citizens’ report on the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Reversing the trend is not only possible, but necessary if humanity wants to have freedom and a future. Citizens must become aware of the illegitimate power of corporations over our governments and our lives. We must use all the possibilities in our societies and countries to roll back corporate power, as was done in the US in the 1930s when the Rockefellers’ monopoly on oil through Standard Oil was dismantled. And we must create new possibilities to channel the power of the people through mobilising, organising, researching and nurturing alternatives free from corporate control, as we did with seeds, food and agriculture.

The world is shocked by the war in Ukraine. The food crisis, in particular the wheat crisis, has been indicated as a natural consequence of the war. Yet many are claiming that financial speculation is also behind the crisis. What is your position?

Every crisis in history was used by the wheat monopolies to increase their profits and control. The riots over bread in the Arab world, referred to as the ‘Arab Spring’, were the result of rising wheat and bread prices due to financial speculation. Food has been turned into a commodity, a financial asset. During the 2008 crisis, as Kaufman wrote in The Food Bubble: “Imaginary wheat bought anywhere affects real wheat bought everywhere”.

With around the clock electronic trading triggered by the algorithms of composite price indices and commodity derivatives, finances have grown along with the growth of hunger, as the Agribusiness Accountability Initiative has been pointing out since April 2008.

Financial growth and money growth generated by the finance casino do not lead to real growth in the processes that support and sustain life. Deregulation has destabilised the global financial and food system. It created asset management funds like Blackrock and Vanguard. Index management funds can multiply finances, not food.

The general impression is that there are some political parties, supported by the industry lobby, that are trying to take advantage of the war. For example, several are pushing for the deregulation of new GMOs in Europe as a solution to the food crisis. Does this equation really work?

Any disaster has been used as an opportunity by the GMO lobby, which represents the same conglomerate that also sells toxic agrochemicals. They tried to use the Haiti earthquake disaster to impose GMOs. The farmers there created a movement and resisted. When the super cyclone devastated Orissa in 1999, there was an attempt to impose GM maize and soya. We organised and our Ministry of Health banned GMOs. European citizens must rise up and defend their freedom to eat GM-free food, their right to biosafety. They must call the bluff of governments trying to use the war in Ukraine to dump untested and unregulated GMOs on European citizens.

There is an international consensus on the need to create an alternative to industrial agriculture and the large-scale distribution model. Italy has just passed a law for organic farming. Can agroecology contribute to the protection of biodiversity and the well-being of farmers and citizens?

From my 35 years of work in agroecology and biodiversity conservation on the Navdanya farm, I have developed the conviction that chemical-free agriculture, such as agroecology, is necessary to conserve and regenerate biodiversity and, through biodiversity, the wellbeing of farmers and citizens. Pesticides and insecticides are driving insects to extinction, herbicides such as RoundUp/ Glyphosate are driving plants, insects, and the soil organisms that depend on them, to extinction. The destruction of biodiversity in soil and plants is leading to the destruction of biodiversity in our gut microbiome, which is at the root of the increase in chronic diseases. Agroecology based on biodiversity produces more food when measured in terms of nutrition per acre and not in terms of yield per acre. Farmers’ net incomes are higher when they cultivate biodiversity for local food economies, instead of chemical-intensive monoculture products for global supply chains. Biodiversity, chemical-free and local food benefit farmers, citizens and the Earth.

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TRANSCEND Member Prof. Vandana Shiva is a physicist, ecofeminist, philosopher, activist, and author of more than 20 books and 500 papers.

27 June 2022

Source: www.transcend.org

By Media Lens

22 Jun 2022 – Last Friday’s decision by UK Home Secretary Priti Patel to authorise the extradition of Julian Assange to the United States is both deeply shameful and unsurprising. Her action paves the way for Assange to be tried under the 1917 Espionage Act, introduced by the US government shortly after entering World War I, with a sentence of 175 years if found guilty. In essence, the US wishes to set a legal precedent for the prosecution of any publisher or journalist, anywhere in the world, who reports the truth about the US.

Despite all the warnings from human rights groups, advocates of press freedom, Nils Melzer (then UN Special Rapporteur on Torture), doctors, lawyers and many other people around the world, it has long been clear that Washington is determined to punish Assange and make an example of him as a warning to others. As always, US allies will go along with what the Mafia Godfather wants.

US political journalist Glenn Greenwald noted that Patel’s act ‘further highlights the utter sham of American and British sermons about freedom, democracy and a free press.’ Assange is being persecuted relentlessly because he and WikiLeaks have arguably done more than anyone else to expose the vast extent of the crimes of US empire.

Greenwald added:

‘Free speech and press freedoms do not exist in reality in the U.S. or the UK. They are merely rhetorical instruments to propagandize their domestic population and justify and ennoble the various wars and other forms of subversion they constantly wage in other countries in the name of upholding values they themselves do not support. The Julian Assange persecution is a great personal tragedy, a political travesty and a grave danger to basic civic freedoms. But it is also a bright and enduring monument to the fraud and deceit that lies at the heart of these two governments’ depictions of who and what they are.’

Dissident Australian journalist Caitlin Johnstone made a similar point, that Assange’s ‘refusal to bow down and submit’ has:

‘exposed the lie that the so-called free democracies of the western world support the free press and defend human rights. The US, UK and Australia are colluding to extradite a journalist for exposing the truth even as they claim to oppose tyranny and autocracy, even as they claim to support world press freedoms, and even as they loudly decry the dangers of government-sponsored disinformation.’

Peter Oborne, an all-too-rare example of a journalist speaking out on behalf of Assange, called Patel’s decision a ‘catastrophic blow’ to press freedom. But, he said, it was a blow that had been carried out with:

‘the silent assent of much of the mainstream press. Too many British newspapers and broadcasters have treated the Assange case as a dirty family secret. They have failed to grasp that the Assange hearing leading up to the Patel decision is the most important case involving free speech this century.’

Not only was there ‘silent assent’, but much of the media actually cheered and applauded Assange’s arrest in the Ecuadorian Embassy in April 2019 ‘with undisguised glee’, as Alan MacLeod wrote at the time:

‘The Daily Mail’s front-page headline (4/12/19) read, “That’ll Wipe the Smile Off His Face,” and devoted four pages to the “downfall of a narcissist” who was removed from “inside his fetid lair” to finally “face justice.” The Daily Mirror (4/11/19) described him as “an unwanted guest who abused his hospitality,” while the Times of London (4/12/19) claimed “no one should feel sorry” for the “overdue eviction.”

‘The Mirror (4/13/19) also published an opinion piece from Labour member of Parliament Jess Phillips that began by stating, “Finally Julian Assange, everyone’s least favourite squatter, has been kicked out of the Ecuadorian embassy.” She described the 47-year-old Australian as a “grumpy, stroppy teenager.”’

Oborne also noted that Patel’s decision:

‘turns investigative journalism into a criminal act, and licenses the United States to mercilessly hunt down offenders wherever they can be found, bring them to justice and punish them with maximum severity.’

Andrew Neil, the right-wing journalist and broadcaster, reflexively listed Assange’s supposed faults (‘reckless’, ‘stupid’, ‘narcissist’) in a Daily Mail opinion piece. But he still made clear his opposition to Assange’s extradition:

‘It is thanks to Assange that we know many appalling things that America would prefer we didn’t know. He does not deserve to spend the rest of his life in some high-tech American hellhole for doing what should come naturally to all good journalists — exposing what powerful people don’t want to be exposed.’

The BBC’s John Simpson and Mail on Sunday columnist Peter Hitchens have also been supportive of Assange.

But the few editorials that appeared in the British ‘mainstream’, while meekly and belatedly opposing extradition, were much less damning in their comments. According to our searches of the Lexis-Nexis newspaper database, the first edition of the Independent’s editorial was titled, ‘It’s time to release Assange – he has suffered enough’. By the time the editorial appeared online, the title had been watered down to:

‘Justice for Julian Assange should be tempered with mercy’

And an extra line had been added:

‘The WikiLeaks founder is no hero but nor should he be a martyr’

The paper’s praise for the vital work of Assange and Wikileaks was begrudging and limited, with the usual ‘mainstream’ caveats and distortions mixed in (see Johnstone’s powerful demolition of the multiple smears against Assange):

‘We were resolutely unsympathetic to Mr Assange’s claim to have been unfairly treated by the British and Swedish criminal justice systems. We urged him to face justice over the allegations of rape in Sweden, and considered his self-imprisonment in the Ecuadorian embassy in London to be a form of punishment for his refusal to do so.’

The Guardian, which had benefited enormously from Assange’s ground-breaking work – with many of its journalists publishing numerous snide articles and disparaging remarks about him – described Patel’s decision, with pathetic understatement, as ‘a bad day for journalism’. Of course, there was no mention in the editorial of the Guardian’s own shameful role in helping to create the conditions for Assange’s persecution; not least their fake front-page ‘news’ story in November 2018 claiming that Paul Manafort, Donald Trump’s former campaign manager, supposedly held secret talks with Assange in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London.

‘How Far Have We Sunk?’

As Nils Melzer packed up and moved on from his term as the UN Special Prosecutor on Torture, on the day that Patel announced Assange’s extradition, he said:

‘How far have we sunk if we prosecute people who expose war crimes for exposing war crimes?

‘How far have we sunk when we no longer prosecute our own war criminals because we identify more with them than we identify with the people that actually exposed these crimes?

‘What does that tell about us and about our governments?

‘How far have we sunk when telling the truth becomes a crime?’

The questions were left hanging in the air. But anyone with basic standards of ethics and wisdom knows that a society which has sunk this low is being governed by so-called ‘leaders’ who:

• are lacking in ethics and wisdom;
• are driven by concerns shaped by power and profit;
• will attempt to crush anyone who dares to expose their crimes;
• spout deceptive rhetoric – faithfully amplified and propagated by state-corporate media – proclaiming the West’s supposed virtues and respect for ‘freedom’, ‘human rights’ and ‘democracy’.

The persecution of Julian Assange has brought all this to the fore.

Yes, there are tiny windows in the ‘MSM’ for eloquent expressions of the truth; such as Peter Oborne’s Guardian opinion piece cited above. But the general drift of the ‘Overton Window’ – the ‘acceptable’, tightly limited range of news and debate – has shifted towards the hard right, with journalists and commentators squeezed out for being deemed ‘toxic’, ‘radioactive’ or otherwise ‘dangerous’.

Thus, in 2018, John Pilger, one of the finest journalists who has ever appeared in the British media, observed that:

‘My written journalism is no longer welcome in the Guardian which, three years ago, got rid of people like me in pretty much a purge of those who really were saying what the Guardian no longer says any more.’

The Guardian is a prime stoker of revitalised Cold War rhetoric about the ‘threat’ of Russia and China, mirroring what is prevalent across the whole ‘spectrum’ of ‘mainstream’ news. Indeed, as revealed by Declassified UK, an independent investigative news website, the UK’s leading liberal newspaper has essentially been ‘neutralised’ by the UK security services. Mark Curtis, editor and co-founder of Declassified UK, observed that the paper’s:

‘limited coverage of British foreign and security policies gives a misleading picture of what the UK does in the world. The paper is in reality a defender of Anglo-American power and a key ideological pillar of the British establishment.’

Selective Moral Outrage

In a recent interview, David Barsamian asked Noam Chomsky:

‘In the media, and among the political class in the United States, and probably in Europe, there’s much moral outrage about Russian barbarity, war crimes, and atrocities. No doubt they are occurring as they do in every war. Don’t you find that moral outrage a bit selective though?’

Chomsky responded:

‘The moral outrage is quite in place. There should be moral outrage. But you go to the Global South, they just can’t believe what they’re seeing. They condemn the war, of course. It’s a deplorable crime of aggression. Then they look at the West and say: What are you guys talking about? This is what you do to us all the time.’

So, when the long-suffering people of the Global South encounter western news reports about Putin being the worst war criminal since Hitler:

‘They don’t know whether to crack up in laughter or ridicule. We have war criminals walking all over Washington. Actually, we know how to deal with our war criminals. In fact, it happened on the twentieth anniversary of the invasion of Afghanistan. Remember, this was an entirely unprovoked invasion, strongly opposed by world opinion. There was an interview with the perpetrator, George W. Bush, who then went on to invade Iraq, a major war criminal, in the style section of the Washington Post — an interview with, as they described it, this lovable goofy grandpa who was playing with his grandchildren, making jokes, showing off the portraits he painted of famous people he’d met. Just a beautiful, friendly environment.’

In the UK, the war criminal Tony Blair – another key player in the post-9/11 ‘War on Terror’ that led to at least 1.3 million deaths in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan – was recently ‘honoured’ by the Queen. He became ‘a member of the Order of the Garter, the most senior royal order of chivalry’. This archaic nonsense is yet another symptom of the deeply-embedded, medieval stratification of British society, and the baubles that are handed out to preserve ‘order’ and ‘tradition’. This is revealing of the sickness at the heart of our society.

Chomsky gave another example of how the West’s war criminals are lauded:

‘Take probably the major war criminal of the modern period, Henry Kissinger. We deal with him not only politely, but with great admiration. This is the man after all who transmitted the order to the Air Force, saying that there should be massive bombing of Cambodia — “anything that flies on anything that moves” was his phrase. I don’t know of a comparable example in the archival record of a call for mass genocide. And it was implemented with very intensive bombing of Cambodia.’

The ‘justification’ for the extreme violence meted out by the West towards the Middle East and the Global South is always couched in propaganda terms proclaiming the protection of ‘human rights’, ‘democracy’ and ‘global security’. But, noted Chomsky:

‘The security of the population is simply not a concern for policymakers. Security for the privileged, the rich, the corporate sector, arms manufacturers, yes, but not the rest of us. This doublethink is constant, sometimes conscious, sometimes not. It’s just what Orwell described, hyper-totalitarianism in a free society.’

Chomsky concluded:

‘Meanwhile, we pour taxpayer funds into the pockets of the fossil-fuel producers so that they can continue to destroy the world as quickly as possible. That’s what we’re witnessing with the vast expansion of both fossil-fuel production and military expenditures. There are people who are happy about this. Go to the executive offices of Lockheed Martin, ExxonMobil, they’re ecstatic. It’s a bonanza for them. They’re even being given credit for it. Now, they’re being lauded for saving civilization by destroying the possibility for life on Earth. Forget the Global South. If you imagine some extraterrestrials, if they existed, they’d think we were all totally insane. And they’d be right.’

The appalling treatment of Julian Assange, especially set beside the ‘honouring’ and eulogising of the West’s war criminals, is symptomatic of this insanity.

In a brave and eloquent interview, Stella Assange, Julian’s wife and mother of their two young children, declared that:

‘We’re going to fight.’

An appeal to Britain’s High Court will be lodged within 14 days of Patel’s decision by Assange’s lawyers. As Stella Assange noted, one of the many unjust aspects of the US case against her husband is that, under the Trump administration, the CIA had plotted to assassinate Assange:

‘Extradition to the country that has plotted his assassination is just – I have no words. Obviously, this shouldn’t be happening. It can never happen.’

She continued:

‘That is just the tip of the iceberg of the criminal activity that has gone on, on behalf of those putting Julian in prison. For example, inside the [Ecuadorian] Embassy his legal meetings – his confidential privileged legal conversations with his lawyers – were being recorded and shipped to the United States.

‘All these elements have come out since Julian’s arrest and incarceration. And we now know so much about the abuse and outright criminality that has been going on against Julian. There’s no chance of a fair trial’.

She added:

‘And then you have the actual case. He’s charged under the Espionage Act. He faces 175 years. There is no public interest defence under the Espionage Act. It’s the first time it’s being repurposed; it’s being used against a publisher. It’s an Act that’s been repurposed in order to criminalise journalism, basically. And, of course, if you say that publishing information is a crime, then Julian’s guilty. He published information and he faces a lifetime in prison for it.’

In conclusion, she said:

‘The case is a complete aberration. That’s why you have all these major press freedom organisations and human rights organisations saying that this has to be dropped.’

We can take a significant step towards a saner society by shouting loudly for Julian Assange to be freed immediately. A good start would be to share widely this video from Double Down News in which Stella Assange describes the importance of the case and how we can all help.

____________________________

Media Lens is a UK-based media watchdog group headed by David Edwards and David Cromwell. In 2007, Media Lens was awarded the Gandhi Foundation International Peace Prize.

27 June 2022

Source: www.transcend.org

By Ben Norton

22 May 2022 – How does socialism with Chinese characteristics differ from Western neoliberal capitalism?

Multipolarista editor Benjamin Norton discussed China’s socialist model with economist John Ross, a senior fellow at the Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies at Renmin University of China.

Ross criticized Western left-wing academics like David Harvey, who have argued that China’s economy is capitalist or even neoliberal.

“The Chinese model has nothing to do whatever with neoliberalism. And that’s why it produced totally different results,” Ross said.

“China has raised, by World Bank criteria, since 1978, 850 million people out of poverty,” he emphasized. “This is the greatest contribution to human rights in the entire world.”

“There has never been such an alleviation of poverty in the whole of world history,” he noted. “It’s more than 70% of all those people taken out of poverty on the world scale.”

What is ‘socialism with Chinese characteristics’? Inside China’s economic model

20 June 2022

Source: www.transcend.org

By Dr Ramzy Baroud

One of the reasons that Russian media has been completely blocked in the West, along with the unprecedented control and censorship over the Ukraine war narrative, is the fact that western governments simply do not want their public to know that the world is vastly changing.

Ignorance might be bliss, arguably in some situations, but not in this case. Here, ignorance can be catastrophic as western audiences are denied access to information about a critical situation that is affecting them in profound ways and will most certainly impact the world’s geopolitics for generations to come.

The growing inflation, an imminent global recession, a festering refugee crisis, a deepening food shortage crisis and much more are the kinds of challenges that require open and transparent discussions regarding the situation in Ukraine, the NATO-Russia rivalry and the responsibility of the West in the ongoing war.

To discuss these issues, along with the missing context of the Russia-Ukraine war, we spoke with Professor Noam Chomsky, believed to be the greatest living intellectual of our time.

Chomsky told us that it “should be clear that the (Russian) invasion of Ukraine has no (moral) justification.” He compared it to the US invasion of Iraq, seeing it as an example of “supreme international crime.” With this moral question settled, Chomsky believes that the main ‘background’ of this war, a factor that is missing in mainstream media coverage, is “NATO expansion”.

“This is not just my opinion,” said Chomsky, “it is the opinion of every high-level US official in the diplomatic services who has any familiarity with Russia and Eastern Europe. This goes back to George Kennan and, in the 1990s, Reagan’s ambassador Jack Matlock, including the current director of the CIA; in fact, just everybody who knows anything has been warning Washington that it is reckless and provocative to ignore Russia’s very clear and explicit red lines. That goes way before (Vladimir) Putin, it has nothing to do with him; (Mikhail) Gorbachev, all said the same thing. Ukraine and Georgia cannot join NATO, this is the geostrategic heartland of Russia.”

Though various US administrations acknowledged and, to some extent, respected the Russian red lines, the Bill Clinton Administration did not. According to Chomsky, “George H. W. Bush … made an explicit promise to Gorbachev that NATO would not expand beyond East Germany, perfectly explicit. You can look up the documents. It’s very clear. Bush lived up to it. But when Clinton came along, he started violating it. And he gave reasons. He explained that he had to do it for domestic political reasons. He had to get the Polish vote, the ethnic vote. So, he would let the so-called Visegrad countries into NATO. Russia accepted it, didn’t like it but accepted it.”

“The second George Bush,” Chomsky argued, “just threw the door wide open. In fact, even invited Ukraine to join over, despite the objections of everyone in the top diplomatic service, apart from his own little clique, Cheney, Rumsfeld (among others). But France and Germany vetoed it.”

However, that was hardly the end of the discussion. Ukraine’s NATO membership remained on the agenda because of intense pressures from Washington.

“Starting in 2014, after the Maidan uprising, the United States began openly, not secretly, moving to integrate Ukraine into the NATO military command, sending heavy armaments and joining military exercises, military training and it was not a secret. They boasted about it,” Chomsky said.

What is interesting is that current Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky “was elected on a peace platform, to implement what was called Minsk Two, some kind of autonomy for the eastern region. He tried to implement it. He was warned by right-wing militias that if he persisted, they’d kill him. Well, he didn’t get any support from the United States. If the United States had supported him, he could have continued, we might have avoided all of this. The United States was committed to the integration of Ukraine within NATO.”

The Joe Biden Administration carried on with the policy of NATO expansion. “Just before the invasion,” said Chomsky, “Biden … produced a joint statement … calling for expanding these efforts of integration. That’s part of what was called an ‘enhanced program’ leading to the mission of NATO. In November, it was moved forward to a charter, signed by the Secretary of State.”

Soon after the war, “the United States Department acknowledged that they had not taken Russian security concerns into consideration in any discussions with Russia. The question of NATO, they would not discuss. Well, all of that is provocation. Not a justification but a provocation and it’s quite interesting that in American discourse, it is almost obligatory to refer to the invasion as the ‘unprovoked invasion of Ukraine’. Look it up on Google, you will find hundreds of thousands of hits.”

Chomsky continued, “Of course, it was provoked. Otherwise, they wouldn’t refer to it all the time as an unprovoked invasion. By now, censorship in the United States has reached such a level beyond anything in my lifetime. Such a level that you are not permitted to read the Russian position. Literally. Americans are not allowed to know what the Russians are saying. Except, selected things. So, if Putin makes a speech to Russians with all kinds of outlandish claims about Peter the Great and so on, then, you see it on the front pages. If the Russians make an offer for a negotiation, you can’t find it. That’s suppressed. You’re not allowed to know what they are saying. I have never seen a level of censorship like this.”

Regarding his views of the possible future scenarios, Chomsky said that “the war will end, either through diplomacy or not. That’s just logic. Well, if diplomacy has a meaning, it means both sides can tolerate it. They don’t like it, but they can tolerate it. They don’t get anything they want, they get something. That’s diplomacy. If you reject diplomacy, you are saying: ‘Let the war go on with all of its horrors, with all the destruction of Ukraine, and let’s let it go on until we get what we want.’”

By ‘we’, Chomsky was referring to Washington, which simply wants to “harm Russia so severely that it will never be able to undertake actions like this again. Well, what does that mean? It’s impossible to achieve. So, it means, let’s continue the war until Ukraine is devastated. That’s US policy.”

Most of this is not obvious to western audiences simply because rational voices are “not allowed to talk” and because “rationality is not permitted. This is a level of hysteria that I have never seen, even during the Second World War, which I am old enough to remember very well.”

While an alternative understanding of the devastating war in Ukraine is disallowed, the West continues to offer no serious answers or achievable goals, leaving Ukraine devastated and the root causes of the problem in place. “That’s US policy”, indeed.

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

26 June 2022

Source: countercurrents.org

By Jean Shaoul

A report commissioned by the United Nations’ Human Rights Council states that Israel’s “perpetual occupation” of Palestinian areas and its refusal to end it underpin the tensions between Palestinians and Israelis.

The authors insist that ending of the occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza since their capture by Israel in the 1967 Arab Israeli war in full conformity with the UN’s Security Council resolutions is essential to end “the persistent cycle of violence.”

The report, published June 7, is the first by a Commission of Inquiry headed by former UN human rights chief Navi Pillay and two other experts from India and Australia, set up last year following an 11-day war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza. That war killed at least 261 people, including 67 children, in Gaza, and 14 people, including two children, in Israel.

The Commission is the first to have an “ongoing” mandate from the UN human rights agency. This includes alleged human rights abuses before and after the war and the investigation of the “root causes” of the tensions.

The report states, “What has become a situation of perpetual occupation was cited by Palestinian and Israeli stakeholders to the commission as the one common issue” that amounts to the “underlying root cause” of recurrent tensions, instability and protracted conflict. The evidence convincingly indicates that Israel has no intention of ending the occupation. Instead, it is pursuing “clear policies for ensuring complete control” over the Occupied Palestinian Territories, including East Jerusalem, and is taking steps to alter the demography through its creation of a repressive environment for the Palestinians and a favourable one for Israeli settlers.

The Commission says that Israel has failed to uphold international law and conventions relating to war and human rights and carry the UN’s previous recommendations. These include ending the occupation, ceasing settlement expansion, ending forced evictions, ceasing the policy of administrative detention, particularly of children, lifting the restriction of freedom of movement that fragment Palestinian society, including by lifting the blockade on Gaza, allowing Palestinians access to their natural resources, and eliminating laws and practices that discriminate against Palestinians, including road segregation for the exclusive use of the Israeli population.

The commission accuses Israel of affording “different civil status, rights and legal protection” for Palestinians living in Israel, noting that Israel operates a three-tier system of laws granting different rights to Jewish Israeli citizens, Palestinian citizens of Israel and East Jerusalem’s Palestinian residents. It cites Israel’s Nation-State of the Jewish People Law (2018) as effectively constituting racial discrimination by granting nationality rights only to its Jewish as opposed to Palestinian citizens and the recent renewal of a law that denies citizenship to Palestinians married to Israelis, calling for action to ensure equal human rights.

Last week, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett’s fragile coalition lost its razor-thin majority and was unable to secure the first reading of a bill renewing civilian legal rights for Jewish settlers in the West Bank. Opposition leader and former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s political bloc had opposed it trying to bring down the government. If the bill does not pass by the end of this month, Israeli settlers will be formally placed, like the Palestinians, under military law and denied entry into Israel.

The report warns that “impunity” for perpetrators of violence is feeding resentment among Palestinians in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem. This is an implicit indictment of Washington and the major European powers that have built up Israel’s military and provided political and diplomatic support, particularly at the UN Security Council where the US has vetoed scores of resolutions condemning Israel’s actions. The commission will, it concludes, examine the responsibilities of “third States in ensuring respect for and full compliance with international humanitarian law and human rights law in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, in Israel and in the occupied Syrian Golan.”

The report will be discussed at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva next week, which has no power to make legally binding decisions.

Israel predictably dismissed the report. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs called it “a waste of money and effort” that amounted to a witch-hunt. Israel had boycotted the inquiry, accusing it of bias, and barred entry to its investigators.

State Department spokesperson Ned Price cynically reiterated the US’s opposition to the inquiry, saying the report does nothing to alleviate US concerns over “a one-sided, biased approach that does nothing to advance the prospects for peace.” The Trump administration pulled out of the UN Human Rights Council in 2018 over what it described as its “chronic bias” against Israel, with the Biden administration only fully rejoining this year.

The world’s mainstream press has not seen fit to comment on the UN’s report, including those champions of human rights imperialist intervention the New York Times and the Guardian. Their silence underlines the hypocrisy of US/NATO claims to be defending “democracy” in Ukraine while they provide support for an apartheid and militarist regime in Israel.

The commission’s report comes as Bennett’s coalition government, made up of parties across the political spectrum including those ostensibly supporting a Palestinian statelet, is unleashing a torrent of repression against the Palestinians in the West Bank, including deliberate killings and injuries, arbitrary arrests, torture, persecution and collective punishment. Last Wednesday and Thursday, Israeli forces killed four Palestinians across the West Bank in just 24 hours, bringing the total number of Palestinians killed this year to 62. Riot police and mounted units have injured hundreds of protesters and arrested hundreds more as they crack down on those protesting Israeli brutality and unbearable social conditions.

As far as Israel is concerned, no one is immune from its murderous activities. Last month, the Israeli military deliberately shot and killed Shireen Abu Akleh, the widely respected veteran Al Jazeera Arabic reporter, who was clearly visible and wearing a press identifier. According to Reporters Without Borders, this brings to 35 the number of journalists killed while working in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories since 2000. Abu Akleh’s murder and the police’s attack on her funeral procession make clear that Israel will not tolerate the reporting of its brutal suppression of the Palestinians.

Bennett has issued orders to shoot Palestinians who pose no immediate threat and called for the formation of armed vigilante groups, based in part on civilian volunteers, including from the “New Hashomer” (The New Guardian), a far-right militia.

The silence of the imperialist powers confirms the cynicism of their use of “human rights” rhetoric to justify wars, military interventions, coups, regime change operations, referral to the International Criminal Court and sanctions against those who threaten their predatory interests.

The US and NATO have denounced Russia for “war crimes” in Ukraine and China for committing “crimes against humanity and genocide against Muslim Uyghurs” based on unconfirmed or non-existent evidence. Washington’s support for Israel is bound up with Tel Aviv’s role as its attack dog against its rivals in the region and its own policy of normalising wars of conquest, occupation and repression. It signifies that the brutal methods used by Israel in suppressing the Palestinians will be used against the working class and youth that revolt against the ruling elites’ dictates putting the pursuit of corporate profit before human need.

10 June 2022

Source: countercurrents.org

By Chris Hedges

The global ruling class is cementing into place a world where they govern without accountability, we are reduced to serfdom, the climate crisis accelerates, and mass death is normalized.

It is hard to be sanguine about the future. The breakdown of the ecosystem is well documented. So is the refusal of the global ruling elite to pursue measures that might mitigate the devastation. We accelerate the extraction of fossil fuels, wallow in profligate consumption, including our consumption of livestock, and make new wars as if we are gripped by a Freudian death wish. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse—Conquest, War, Famine and Death—gallop into the 21rst century.

Those who rule, servants of corporations and the global billionaire class, accompany the suicidal folly by cementing into place corporate tyranny. The plan is not to reform. It is to perpetuate the corporate pillage. This pillage, more and more onerous for the global population, necessitates a new totalitarianism, one where the billionaire class lives in opulence, workers are serfs, rights such as privacy and due process are abolished, Big Brother watches us all the time, war is the chief business of the state, dissent is criminalized and those displaced by conflicts and climate breakdown are barred entry into the climate fortresses in the global north. Portions of the human species, the most privileged, will, in theory, hold out a little longer before they succumb to the great die off.

The persecuted and the abandoned, now in the tens of millions, know the future. For them, the future has already arrived. Julian Assange, the most important publisher of our generation, whose extradition to the US was approved on Friday by the British Home Secretary Priti Patel, is an example of what will befall all publishers and journalists that expose the inner workings of power. His imprisonment for revealing the war crimes, mendacity, cynicism, and corruption of the ruling class, including the Democratic Party, heralds a new era. Investigations into the centers of power, the life blood of journalism, will be a criminal offense.

It does not matter that Assange, who suffered a stroke and is in poor physical and psychological health, is not a U.S. citizen or that WikiLeaks is not a US-based publication. It does not matter that all of Assange’s meetings with his attorneys were recorded by UC Global, the Spanish security firm at the Ecuadorian Embassy where Assange lived for seven years, and turned over to the US, obliterating attorney-client privilege. The campaign against Assange, and I have sat in on hearings in London, is a Dickensian farce, the persecution of an innocent and heroic man, far more reminiscent of the Lubyanka than the best of British jurisprudence. He is being used to send a message— if you expose what we do we will destroy you.

Workers, whether in the vast sweatshops in China or the decayed ruins of the rust belt, struggle on subsistence wages without job protection or unions. They are cursed by trade deals, deindustrialization, austerity, rising interest rates and rising prices. They, too, know the future.

The decision to raise interest rates by three-quarters of a percentage point, with new rate hikes on the way, will further depress wages, which have stagnated for decades, increase unemployment and personal debt and make food and other basic necessities more expensive. Raising interest rates usually induces a recession. But the oligarchs are more than willing to extract blood from the working class. Inflation reduces investment returns. It disrupts leveraged financial strategies.

Prices are not rising because of wages. They are rising because of supply shortages and price gouging by corporations and oil conglomerates. US corporations posted their biggest profit growth in decades by raising prices during the pandemic. Corporate pretax profits rose last year by 25 percent to $2.81 trillion, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis. That’s the largest annual increase since 1976, according to the Federal Reserve. When taxes are included, last year’s corporate profit rose to 37 percent, more than any other time since the Fed began tracking profits in 1948.

Antitrust laws and breaking up monopolies would ease the strain of inflation and lower prices. Rationing would break inflation. So would a wage-price freeze. Nationalization, reversing the capture of public utilities, the health care system, banking, and other services by corporations, would also blunt price rises. But the billionaire class is not about to impose measures that diminish their profits. They will keep their monopolies. They will keep their grip on what were once public assets. The message from the billionaire class is this: the economy is run for our benefit, not yours.

Ukrainians, enduring a war of attrition with the infusion of tens of billions of dollars of weapons from the US and Europe, know the future. War is the chief business of the state. It enriches the arms industry. It expands the military budget. The US now sends $130 million a day in military aid and assistance to Ukraine, part of the $55 billion in aid promised by Washington.

The US, struggling with societal breakdown and an ailing economy, sees its military as the only mechanism left to destroy global competitors, especially Russia and China. Russia, hemmed in by an expanding NATO in Central and Eastern Europe, and China harassed by a succession of carrier groups in the South China Sea, which Washington has called a “national interest,” have been united as US adversaries. China sees the waterways of Asia and the Pacific as part of its sphere of influence, as Russia sees Ukraine and other neighboring states. The aggressive military posturing of the US on the borders of China and Russia has provoked an unnecessary cold war, one many Washington policy makers nonchalantly expect may evolve into a hot war amongst nuclear armed nations that would potentially obliterate life on the planet.

There is an intensifying scramble for control, with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and China’s building of air bases from Japan to Australia along the Asian littoral, giving it the ability to attack warships, including aircraft carriers, in the western Pacific. The refusal of the U.S. to accommodate itself to a multipolar world and to chase the chimera of unrivaled global hegemony has seen Russia and China solidify an alliance, an alliance cold warriors worked hard to prevent. The hostilities, a self-fulfilling prophecy by U.S. warmongers, delights the Washington establishment whose goal is to perpetuate endless war.

You know you are in trouble when Henry Kissinger, who has called for Ukraine to cede territory to Russia and open negotiations with Moscow “in the next two months before it creates upheavals and tensions that will not be easily overcome,” is a voice of sanity.

Despotic governments need an enemy to justify the repression of dissidents, the reduction and cancellation of social programs and the iron control of information. Wars justify the unjustifiable—black sites, kidnapping, torture, targeted assassinations, censorship, and arbitrary detention—off-the-book war crimes. War induces a state of perpetual paranoia and fear. It demands mass obedience.

“The war is not meant to be won, it is meant to be continuous,” George Orwell writes in 1984. “Hierarchical society is only possible on the basis of poverty and ignorance. This new version is the past and no different past can ever have existed. In principle the war effort is always planned to keep society on the brink of starvation. The war is waged by the ruling group against its own subjects and its object is not the victory over either Eurasia or East Asia, but to keep the very structure of society intact.”

The message of endless war is—if you defy the ruling class, the militarists and the government, you are a traitor.

The 140 million people across the globe suffering from acute hunger, a result of the pandemic, the climate crisis and the war in Ukraine, know the future, along with the families of the 15 million people who died from the pandemic, hundreds of thousands of whom with proper prevention and medical care could have been saved. The refugees fleeing failed states and climate disasters—there could be 1.2 billion climate refugees by 2050 – in the global south know the future.

The message imparted to the poor, the vulnerable, the sick and the weak is this: your lives and the lives of your children do not matter.

The oligarchs in the Democratic Party and the establishment wing of the Republican Party are aware they are in political trouble. Is it due to Russian meddling? Is it due to Donald Trump and his proto-fascist minions? Is it caused by journalists and publishers like Assange who give them a bad name? Is it a failure of messaging? Is it a lack of rigorous censorship of the far-right and leftist critics?

The Democratic Party, now united with the establishment Republican Party, is flailing around for a solution. They are bankrolling far right candidates in the Republican primaries, a tactic that backfired on Hillary Clinton when her campaign worked during the primaries to promote Donald Trump as the Republican nominee. Retrograde Republicans, de facto members of the Democratic Party because they voted to impeach Trump, are being lionized as true patriots, as if they can lure people away from Trump and Trump-like clones. Robert Reich, along with other Democratic leaders, argues that Rep. Cheney—who voted for Trump policies 93 percent of the time as a member of the House but now looks set to lose her bid for reelection in Wyoming—has “demonstrated more courage and integrity than any other politician in America” and might just be “the best president of the United States for the perilous time we’re entering.” Jonathan V. Last, in an article headlined “Mike Pence is an American Hero” in The Atlantic, writes that Pence “did more to protect democracy—both on January 6 and since—than any other person inside the Trump administration.”

Perhaps the expected Supreme Court ruling that will overturn Roe v. Wade will work in their favor. Perhaps the televised hearings on the January 6th assault on the Capitol, an extended campaign commercial, will convince voters to support them. Perhaps the promise of more stringent gun laws will excite the electorate.

What can we expect from a party leadership that believed Michael Bloomberg, who has switched allegiance between the Democratic and Republican parties several times, would save them from progressives such as Bernie Sanders? What can we expect from a party leadership that anointed Joe Biden, who spent his political career dispossessing working men and women, building the world’s largest prison system, militarizing police, destroying the welfare system and funding military fiascos in the Middle East, as president?

The Biden administration is defined by failed expectations, from its stymied Build Back Better Plan to its refusal to raise the minimum wage. It is running on fumes, using gimmicks, empty rhetoric, spectacle and fear to intimidate the electorate.

The descent is pathetic to watch, reminiscent of the moment Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu tried desperately to placate an unruly crowd from the Balcony of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Romania building by offering to raise pension and family allowance by $2 a month. He and his wife were executed four days later. The discredited East German Communist Party, which like the Romanian revolution I also covered as a reporter, made similar empty gestures, promising to open its closed party headquarters to the public long after anyone cared.

The billionaire class, or at least many of them, would prefer to loot and pillage under the cover of the old political decorum and rhetoric. They like the fiction of paying homage to an emasculated democracy. It gives them the veneer of respectability.

But this is not to be. The rage of the betrayed is articulated by imbecilic demagogues vomited up from the social and political swamp. Corporations and the billionaire class will continue to exploit, but under a cruder and crueler authoritarianism. The social, political, economic, and environmental breakdown will accelerate. Reality, increasingly unpalatable, will cease to exist in public discourse. It will be replaced by Millenarian cults, such as the Christian fascists, and bizarre conspiracy theories, a retreat into magical thinking where evil is embodied in demonized individuals and groups that must be eradicated. Truth and lies will be indistinguishable. The vulnerable will be cast aside, blamed for their own misery, as well as ours. Those who resist will be criminals. Mass death will sweep across the planet. This is the world our children will inherit unless those who control us are wrenched from power.

Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist who was a foreign correspondent for fifteen years for The New York Times, where he served as the Middle East Bureau Chief and Balkan Bureau Chief for the paper.

21 June 2022

Source: countercurrents.org