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By Muhammed Mahmood

Gregory Stanton the founding President of Genocide Watch who predicted the Tutsi genocide in Rwanda years before it took place in 1994, has in recent times, raised an alarm that a genocide of 200 million Muslims in India is very much on its way. He asked “the US Congress to pass a resolution that warns genocide should not be allowed to occur in India”.

Targeted anti-Muslim policies

I predicted Rwandan Genocide & I Warn Same Could Repeat in India: Dr. Gregory Stanton

Stanton cited the revocation of the special autonomous status of Indian occupied Kashmir in 2019 which stripped Kashmiris of the special status that was granted by the UN in 1949 and was duly incorporated in the Indian constitution on 17 October 1949 (Article 370 which allowed Kashmir to have its own constitution) has now been annulled by the Modi government. This as well as the Citizenship Amendment Act in the same year that granted citizenship to religious minorities, but excluded Muslims are initiatives that as per Gregory Stanton are blatantly discriminatory and marginalising for the Muslims in India.

In fact, Genocide Watch began warning of an impending Muslim genocide in India in 2002, when a three day period of anti-Muslim violence in the state of Gujrat (Prime Minister Modi was chief minister of the state at that time) led to the massacre of more than 1000 Muslims including a Muslim member of the federal parliament.

Stanton points out that Modi did nothing to stop the massacre and said “In fact there is a lot of evidence that he (Modi) actually encouraged those massacres”.

There are credible evidence that tend to suggest since its inception as an independent state in 1947 with a significant Hindu majority state, often promotes the environment to provoke violence against Muslims and remarkably, the law enforcement agencies do little or nothing to stop these violence against Muslims. That was the case in Gujrat in 2002 and in Delhi in 2020 during the anti-Muslim riots in these places.

In fact, during the 2020 violence against Muslims in Delhi, Delhi police did the opposite, arrested hundreds of Muslims, the victims in Delhi violence and much worse charged some of them of violence against themselves.

Such police actions, Stanton, describes as the “denial”, the last stage in a genocide process. He then added that “Denial is the tenth (i.e. the last) stage of every genocide. That is what going on when they are charging Muslims with, would you believe it! killing themselves? I do not believe it! And I don’t think anybody should believe it”.

Stanton also mentioned that the demolition of Babri mosque and the construction of a Hindu temple there as “important in the development of cultural underpinnings for genocide”. It is to be noted that in the 1980s the BJP became the political voice for the destruction of Babri mosque to be replaced with a Hindu temple at Ayodhya.

Also, language used by Indian government against Muslims terming them as “terrorists” (and a term popularised by the US around the world since 9/11), separatists and criminals give further legitimacy and reinforce the hatred against Muslims in India even more.

In fact, the US sponsored term “terrorist” for “Muslims” has been earnestly embraced by Hindu supremacists in India so much so that in 2016, the BJP Minister of State for Skill Development and Entrepreneurship Shri Rajeev Chandrasekhar once said “ as long as there is Islam in the world, there will be terrorism. Until we uproot Islam, we can’t remove terrorism”.

Stanton compared the situation in India under Prime Minister Narendra Modi with the ethnic violence in Myanmar and Rwanda. He also emphasised that genocide is not an event but a process. In the context of Muslim persecution in India Stanton points out that there are early signs and processes of genocide that are clearly visible in India in general and more particularly, in the state of Assam and Indian occupied Kashmir.

He also said “what we have now though, an actual member of the RSS– this extremist, Hindutva oriented group – Mr Modi as prime minister of India. So, what we have here is an extremist who has taken over the government of India”. But Modi now commands enormous political support for his policies at home. In recent times in a global leadership popularity poll, Modi who has come out as the most popular leader of all among the Indians at a time when the economy is faltering, and hundreds and thousands are getting infected and dying from COVID 19 due to mismanagement. Modi is also failing measurably to control corruption which is widespread and rampant. In the backdrop of these failures Modi’s resounding popularity among his citizens which implies that in India Hindutva is winning, while ignoring his poor statecraft in favour of his anti-Muslim policies. This is ominous.

In the vanguard of the anti-Muslim crusade in India is the RSS, a Hindu supremacist organisation which was established in 1925 to establish a Hindu nation in India. Articulated in 1923 by its chief, V.D. Savarkar, RSS espouses an extremist ideology called Hindutva – a Hindu only state for India. Most alarmingly, both the BJP and its main arm RSS were inspired by both Hitler’s Nazi Germany and Mussolini’s fascist ideologies in Italy, respectively. Savarkar openly expressed his great admirations for both Hitler and Mussolini.

Shadvi Annapurna, who is affectionately called by her followers Maa (mother) is the general secretary of Hindu Mahasabha, – founded in 1915), another Hindu supremacist outfit – has been the central figure at the recent Haridwar event labelled as “Dharma Sansad” (Religious Parliament) where they gave open call to kill Muslims. The Hindu Mahasabha’s vision according to its official website is to make India the “National Home of Hindus”. The website also says that if it comes to power, it will not hesitate to force Muslims out of India.

Since Modi and his BJP ascended to power in Delhi and his Hindutva agenda emboldening other Hindu extremist groups like the Hindu Mahasabha, are now openly threatening, and posing extreme danger to the Muslims in India. Lack of any response from the law enforcement agencies for previous hate speeches and vitriols against Muslims was taken as tacit support of the government that have made these threats far more dangerous and brazen as has been reflected in the call for Muslim genocide at the Haridwar meeting last month – at the Haridwar gathering, among the saffron robed Sadhus (Hindu term for saints), Maa (Mother) Sadhvi Annapurna has been the most vitriolic and specific in the call for genocide against the Muslims.

While Genocide Watch does not rank countries, but the US Holocaust Memorial believes that India is the second most likely country for a genocide to take place among 162 countries on its list. The US Commission for International Religious Freedom which has for last two years asked the US State Department to place India on the list of Countries of Particular Concern.

Concerns within India Teesta Setalvad, a well-known human rights activist in India also believes that violence against Muslims worsens their socio-economic conditions and enables genocidal targeting. Aakar Patel, the former head of Amnesty International in India told Al Jazeera that the recoded history of civic violence in India showed that either the state did something that provoked the violence against Muslims or did not do enough to stop it.

Stanton in an interview with Karan Thapar of WIRE referred to the 10 stages genocide as developed by Genocide Watch and said that several of them had been fulfilled in India such as distinguishing between people as us and them and othering them, symbolisation (i.e. clothing and calling Muslims as Abbajaan), discrimination ( the list would be very long to record here but just one example is the Citizenship Amendment Act), dehumanisation (such as calling Muslims as termites) and polarisation (accusing them of love jihad and laws forbidding inter-faith marriage). Above all, he further added that there have been actual calls for genocide (i.e. Hardwar religious conference held in December 2021).

Commenting on Prime Minister Modi’s silence on the call for Muslim genocide at the Haridwar religious conference, he quoted Martin Luther King Jr, who said “We will know who is against us not by what they are saying but by their silence”. He also made an ominous prediction that if genocide happens “It won’t be the state and mobs that will carry it out”. In fact, since Modi came to power in 2014, all anti-Muslim violence have been carried out by the lynch mob aided by the law enforcement agencies, police in particular.

US-sponsored Islamophobia, a fillip to Modi’s Hindutva policy?

Modi’s open and brazen Hindutva policy – a crusade of a sort against Indian Muslims – cannot be looked at and understood without the US sponsored anti-Muslim hate campaign contributed to, with popular and legal endorsements, attacks on Muslims around the world including arbitrary arrests and harassments of Muslims and widespread surveillance of Muslim population and their places of worships in the US itself. Such Islamophobic policies and rhetoric of the US have significantly emboldened bigots like Modi and his cohorts in India and given much fillip to their own brand of Islamophobia with genocidal intent which until then was less open.

It is generally argued that Islamophobia in the context of contemporary India and other Asian countries like Myanmar and others in general arose out of the post-colonial struggle of these countries with the economic and cultural challenges adapting to globalisation but most failing to face those challenges proactively.

India’s priority should be poverty alleviation and not persecution of Muslims

India is a stark example of that failure to address and take advantage of globalization and as a result, with a per capita income of US$2,191 in nominal terms (in 2021) India also recorded the highest poverty increase in the world during 2020-2021.

Among other things, Modi government’s obsession with anti-Muslim Hindutva policy seems to be detracting the regime’s attention away from where it is due – tackling poverty in India.

Islamophobia in India, the home to the largest number of poor in the world today (28% of global total), is a convenient way to distract attention away from poverty and squalor that pervade the country despite Modi’s promises of economic prosperity for his people just by feeding them with the most extreme form of anti-Muslim bigotry. Also, Faisal Devji, Professor of History at Oxford University observes that “Islamophobia’s brutality is most readily seen in Asia, a continent awaiting its recognition as capitalism’s new home”.

While “othering” of Indian Muslims has been the mainstay of Indian politics since the middle of the 19th century, has now become more pronounced especially since 1947 when India, a British colonial construct, got its independence and emerged as a Hindu majority state in the sub-continent.

The rise of the BJP to power in India simply and more brazenly furthered political marginalisation of Muslims in India, a process that had simmered since 1947. Currently, emboldened by the US-sponsored Islamophobia, othering and persecution of Muslims in India has become more audacious and sadly, popular as well.

Indeed, the plight of the Indian Muslims under the Modi regime’s populist anti-Muslim policies and actions have reached a stage which if something very urgent not done to ebb and completely reverse the policies that are deepening and expanding the spectre of persecution of Muslims, a genocide of Muslims in India, as predicted by Gregory Stanton, seems like a real possibility and this is deeply worrying.

Indeed, the World simply cannot stand by and look the other way, and watch unfolding of a man-made human disaster that may not just cause unimaginable sufferings to the Muslims in India and fracture India but may throw the entire region into an ocean of communal bloodbath!

Muhammed Mahmood is a retired Professor of Victoria University, Melbourne, Australia.

31 January 2022

Source: countercurrents.org

Palestine Update 524

What makes Amnesty’s apartheid report different?
What makes Amnesty International’s new report determining that Israel practices the crime of apartheid against Palestinians any different from those that came before it? Certainly, Israel’s “hysterical” reaction – (in the words of one Haaretz headline) – to the Amnesty study is notably different from its relatively understated response to similar reports recently issued by B’Tselem, a human rights group in Israel, and the New York-based Human Rights Watch. Palestinian human rights groups like Al-Haq, Adalah and Al Mezan have been advancing an apartheid framework for far longer and the reports from the above-mentioned Israeli and international groups build on their work.

Amnesty, Human Rights Watch and B’Tselem examined Israel’s system of control throughout historic Palestine that privileges Israeli Jews and marginalizes Palestinians and violates their rights by varying degrees, largely depending on where they live. And in contrast to the analyses published by Palestinian groups, those three reports, welcomed as groundbreaking and paradigm-shifting, fall short of placing Israel’s system of apartheid in the context of settler-colonialism. (A keyword search of Amnesty’s report yields three results for the terms “colonialism” and “colonial” – found in the titles of works cited in the footnotes.)

Amnesty repeatedly stresses Israel’s “intent to maintain this system of oppression and domination” without making the explicit point that apartheid is a means towards the end of settler colonization: removing Palestinians from the land so that they may be replaced with foreign settlers. The rights group does state that “since its establishment in 1948, Israel has pursued an explicit policy of establishing and maintaining a Jewish demographic hegemony and maximizing its control over land to benefit Jewish Israelis while minimizing the number of Palestinians and restricting their rights and obstructing their ability to challenge this dispossession.”

Credit where credit’s due: Amnesty blasts away Israel’s foundational mythology, acknowledging that it was racist from the beginning – a departure from the typical liberal attitude that Israel strayed from its ideals somewhere along the way. Amnesty even points out that “many elements of Israel’s repressive military system in the OPT [West Bank and Gaza] originate in Israel’s 18-year-long military rule over Palestinian citizens of Israel,” beginning in 1948, “and that the dispossession of Palestinians in Israel continues today.”

Amnesty also acknowledges that “in 1948, Jewish individuals and institutions owned around 6.5 percent of Mandate Palestine, while Palestinians owned about 90 percent of the privately owned land there,” referring to all of historic Palestine prior to the establishment of the state of Israel.
Source:

Why doesn’t the West accept that Israel is an ‘apartheid’ state?
Amnesty International released the findings of a detailed investigation on Wednesday, which has been conducted over the past four years. It concluded that the occupation state imposes “a system of oppression and domination against Palestinians” across all of the Palestinian territories under its control, those occupied in 1948 as well as those occupied in 1967.

The London-based human rights group stated that Israel does this “in order to benefit Jewish Israelis”, and pointed out that “this amounts to apartheid as prohibited in international law.” Amnesty is the third major human rights organisation after B’Tselem and Human Rights Watch to allege Israeli apartheid since January last year. “Laws, policies and practices which are intended to maintain a cruel system of control over Palestinians, have left them fragmented geographically and politically, frequently impoverished, and in a constant state of fear and insecurity,” said Amnesty.

Introducing the findings at a press conference in Jerusalem, Amnesty’s Secretary General, Agnès Callamard, said: “Whether they live in Gaza, East Jerusalem and the rest of the West Bank, or Israel itself [the parts of Palestine occupied in 1948], Palestinians are treated as an inferior racial group and systematically deprived of their rights. Israel’s cruel policies of segregation, dispossession and exclusion across all territories under its control clearly amount to apartheid.”
Read more

Why BBC insists on whitewashing Israeli crimes against Palestinians?

Early this week, the BBC published an article about a twitter campaign carried out by a group of Palestinians living abroad who are critical of the Palestinian Islamic Movement, Hamas, which is the de facto government in the Gaza Strip. The twitter campaign was under the heading “They Kidnapped Gaza”, a reference to the Hamas leadership. According to the BBC, “Hundreds of Palestinian activists have been taking part in a rare online event strongly criticising Hamas governance of the Gaza Strip.”

 I live and work in the Gaza Strip, and I believe that the aim of the campaign was clearly to whitewash Israeli crimes and blame Hamas for the “dire” living conditions. The BBC seems to have adopted this narrative, given that contentious claims by the online activists weren’t challenged. A Twitter post by the now Belgium-based Mahmoud Nashwan was quoted by the BBC: “Imagine your one-month-old son dies because of the cold. Imagine your son dying because there is no electricity, no money, no wages and no home.” The root cause of these problems, the Israeli occupation and, over the past 15 years, the siege imposed by Israel and its supporters, weren’t mentioned. The impression given is that Hamas is responsible; nobody else. And this impression looks very deliberate.
Source:

Washington ignores Amnesty Israel ‘apartheid’ report at its peril

Not holding partners to account for human rights abuses makes them burdens rather than assets to the U.S.
By blatantly ignoring the findings of human rights abuses against Palestinians as the United States did this week upon the release of a seminal report by Amnesty International, Washington is ultimately emboldening bad behavior while further entrenching itself in Middle East security crises. Here’s why.

Amnesty’s latest assessment on Israel’s treatment of the Palestinaians, deemed a “crime of apartheid,” stems from a five-year analysis of Israeli civilian and military law. The organization reached the same conclusion as Human Rights Watch and Israel’s own main human rights organization, B’Tselem (Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories). The Israeli government has presented no counter argument to these findings, except false accusations of antisemitism.

The 274-page report has also further embarrassed the United States, which also rejected Amnesty’s report, all the while regularly citing Amnesty and HRW when those organizations issue reports on the human rights abuses of countries not aligned with Washington. This episode further highlights two ways in which this approach undermines U.S. national security.

First, the United States loses further credibility on human rights when it applies it selectively. Some rules are for our partners — and an entirely different standard for our adversaries. This selectivity instrumentalizes and undermines the very concept of human rights. It is not a value to be upheld but a stick to use against those we don’t like, while turning a blind eye to partners such as Saudi Arabia, Israel, and other systematic human rights abusers. Second, Biden’s Mideast strategy is increasingly defined by the goal of “strengthening alliances.” Biden views America’s security partnerships as a critical asset in the competition against China. But two negative and mutually reinforcing developments follow from this approach:

To begin with, U.S. partners will behave increasingly recklessly and in contrast to American values as they correctly perceive Washington as having given them a permanent carte blanche, and because they calculate that the U.S. — because of the China competition — cannot afford to be tough on them.  Case in point: Israel’s de facto annexation of Palestinian territory and elimination of any viable two-state solution is partly the result of decades of American deference to Israel even though the U.S. itself has defined a two-state solution as central to American interests.

Moreover, Washington will be forced to more frequently defend the worsening  behavior of its partners. Whatever double standards we saw in the past, it is likely to get substantially worse going forward. Forget the rhetoric about centering human rights or pursuing more prudent goals.Ironically, it is difficult to see how this approach, which fuels recklessness among U.S. partners and makes them even greater burdens rather than assets to Washington, ultimately strengthens America’s position vis-a-vis China. Rather, this will further entangle the United States in the problems and conflicts these partners have started or are embroiled in. The day America will come home from the Middle East is being pushed further and further away.
Source:

Amnesty International Defends Report on Israeli Apartheid, Rejecting Criticism from U.S. & Israel

Amnesty International has become the third major human rights organization to accuse Israel of committing the crime of apartheid against Palestinians in a new report released on Tuesday. Amnesty finds Israel’s system of apartheid dates back to the country’s founding in 1948 and has materialized in abuses including massive seizures of Palestinian land and property, unlawful killings, forcible transfer, drastic movement restrictions, and the denial of nationality and citizenship to Palestinians — all of which constitute apartheid under international law. We speak with Amnesty International USA’s executive director Paul O’Brien, who calls on the United States to “put pressure on the Israeli government to dismantle this system of apartheid,” despite both the Biden administration and the Israeli government rejecting the report’s findings.

Source

4 February 2022

Source: palestineupdates.com

By Nury Vittachi

In a stunning and unexpected outburst this week, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that his country’s current problems came from the west rather than the east.

The fears of a looming war were built on news stories that Russia had troops on the border it shares with the country—but this was not unusual, and there had been a similar assembly of soldiers a year ago, he said.

The truth was that threat level had not changed, he told a press conference this week.

Furthermore, the real threat to Ukraine was not Russia, but the “destabilisation of the situation inside the country” he told journalists.

The cause of the panic was the press itself, Zelensky said.

Correspondents at the event were discomfited. The event was “a slightly surreal encounter” said the BBC’s Sarah Rainsford.

The Ukrainian leader went on to slam the US, British and other Western diplomats who were fleeing the country, as if the much-described war was actually real.

He denied that Ukraine was a sinking ship, but even if they saw it that way, “diplomats are like captains. They should be the last to leave a sinking ship.”

What’s Really Happening?

The Western powers appear to be repeating their Taiwan strategy in the Ukraine.

• Step one is to travel to someone’s territory and alter the status quo until the neighbors react.
• Step two is to angrily accuse the neighbors of being aggressive and expansionist—even though they literally haven’t left their own territory (unlike the accusers).
• Step three is to work with the press to mislead the world about which side is destabilizing the situation, and thus justify military expansion.

Ultimately, the aim is to push NATO borders eastwards, justify increased spending on the military, and attempt to further unite the world against communities which the West feels need to be “contained”.

It’s Working

The plan is working. Russia is being universally painted as the aggressor, and military activity from the west is rising. The UK government is sending weapons and troops to Ukraine, and calling on other NATO members to “unite”. The US says it has 8,500 troops ready to go.

On the media front, the message is virtually identical in every outlet: Russia is suddenly being threatening, so the good guys are being forced to respond. US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin said the US was committed to helping Ukraine “defend itself”.

The BBC rolled out politician Tobias Ellwood to explain that all the problems are Russia’s fault. (The same man is used by the media as a source of negative comments on China.) The BBC newsroom always “forgets” to mention Ellwood’s background. He served as part of the 77th Brigade, a British army propaganda unit focused on psychological warfare, media operations, and “special influence methods”.

How differently viewers would see the news if they knew the full story: “We are the media, and we are about to showcase the views of a person trained in spreading disinformation via the media.”

Problems with the Narrative

Just as the carefully balanced relationship between Taiwan and mainland China has been in place for years, with alternating periods of calm and tension, the same has been true in Ukraine. Russia has regularly placed troops on its border with Ukraine, and vice versa.

As Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said, the military tensions were a long-term fact of life between the two countries, and the threat level had not changed, despite every Western media outlet saying that it had.

But the underlying issue is this: NATO promised not to expand eastwards. It has done so repeatedly. It is never called out for this.

Yet those exact promises are well documented in history books – in the west as well as the east, as all students of recent European history know. Let’s look at them below.

By Michael Jansen

Yair Golan is not the first retired Israeli general to become a peacenik, nor will he be the last. This has become a pattern among Israel’s generals, a pattern set by generals, like Matti Peled and Motta Gur, regarded by Israelis as heroes during their military careers.

As a former deputy military chief and commander in the West Bank defending Israeli colonies, Golan is now a Knesset member for the dovish Meretz party, which favours Palestinian statehood, and speaks out against colonist attacks on Palestinians. He recently referred to violent colonists as “subhuman,” eliciting sharp criticism from colleagues in the right-leaning coalition and complaints from other quarters. Frankness is nothing new. As deputy military chief, he voiced concerns that Israel was becoming fascistic and compared it to Nazi Germany. This is also not a new approach as such terms were adopted decades ago by Israeli scientist and dedicated human rights activist, Israel Shahak, a survivor of Nazi death camps in Poland.

In an interview with the Associated Press Golan stated, “You can’t have a free and democratic state so long as we are controlling people who don’t want to be controlled by us. What kind of democracy are we building here long term?”

He argued that separating from the Palestinians is the only way Israel can remain democratic and based on Jewish values. This is also old hat. Even former Likud Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in 2007 urged Israel to negotiate a separation deal with the Palestinians in order to avoid becoming an “apartheid” state like South Africa.

While serving in the West Bank, Golan focused on combatting Palestinians resisting the occupation and continues to argue that most of the 650,000 colonists living illegally in the occupied territories are law-abiding. His favourable view of the colonists whose presence prevents the emergence of a viable Palestinian state contradicts his contention that Israelis and Palestinians should live separately.

Breaking the Silence, a group of former Israeli soldiers who oppose Israel’s occupation policies, responded to his stance by saying, “Yair Golan knows full well what settler violence looks like and what our violent control over the Palestinian people looks like. That is why his criticism is valuable, but it is not enough.” Indeed, fine words have never been enough to halt the late 19th century Zionist project of colonising the whole of Palestine and any other territory conquered by Israel.

The most high- profile general to break with Israel’s policy of ethnically cleansing or ruling Palestinians was Matti Peled who fought in Israel’s 1948-1949, 1956 and 1967 wars. Having played a role in the conquest of Palestine, Peled served as governor of conquered Gaza for six months after the tripartite Israeli, British and French aggression against Egypt. Unable to speak Arabic and having no knowledge of Palestinian history and customs, Peled found himself at a loss to deal with the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in the strip until US President Dwight Eisenhower ended the occupation in 1957. He was the last US president who dared to tackle Israel and its US friends and allies.

Peled was among the hawkish generals who pressed Israeli Prime Minister Levi Eshkol to wage a preemptive attack against Egypt in the spring of 1967. This led to the seizure of East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza and the strategic colonisation of these areas to deny Palestinians their state.

He retired from the military in 1968 and continued to study Arabic which he had begun while in the army. He co-founded the Arabic Literature department at Tel Aviv University, was recognised as a scholar in this field, and gradually drifted left-wards.

In 1975, Peled helped establish the Israeli Council for Israeli-Palestinian Peace and in 1977 became a founder of the Left Camp. In 1982, Peled supported reserve army officers who refused to fight in Israel’s war on Lebanon which galvanised the Israeli peace camp and led to the creation of the Jewish, Palestinian Progressive List for Peace. Peled was elected a Knesset member in 1984 and helped form the Gush Shalom, peace bloc, which played a key role in the period following the 1982 Israeli war in Lebanon and led to the Norwegian-brokered negotiations with the Palestinians in 1992-93.

Paratrooper general Mordechai “Motta” Gur became another hard-line military man to oppose Israeli policies after retirement. He did not become a peacenik like Peled but, like him, took a stand against the 1982 campaign in Lebanon at a time the Israeli peace camp was strongly supported by military officers and frontline soldiers as well as centrist and leftist civilians. The peace option survived for more than a decade.

Gur joined the Zionist underground army in 1946, fought in the 1948-49 war of establishment and the 1956 war in Sinai. He commanded the 55th Paratroopers Brigade which seized East Jerusalem in 1967, served in Gaza and the northern front with Syria and commanded the 1978 Israeli occupation of portions of southern Lebanon. He was appointed lieutenant general and in 1974 became army chief-of-staff. After leaving the military, he was elected to the Knesset as a Labour party member, served as minister of health and on the Knesset’s foreign affairs committee. After Labour, under former General Yitzak Rabin, who was not a peacenik, won the 1992 election on a peace platform, Gur was appointed defence minister and worked closely with Rabin who was under popular pressure to pursue accords with both Palestinians and Syrians.

Spurred to end the conflict with the Palestinians by the First Intifada (1987-1993) Foreign Minister Shimon Peres’ deputy Yossi Beilin supervised the Israeli team negotiating a secret peace deal with the Palestinians in Norway.

In September 1993, Rabin and Palestinian Liberation Organisation chairman Yasser Arafat agreed to the Oslo Accord which was meant to lead to the creation of a Palestinian state but failed due to Rabin’s refusal to halt Israeli colonisation and negotiate on Palestinian refugees, Israeli colonies, Jerusalem and other key issues. He was murdered in November 1995 by an Israeli extremist who believed, wrongly, Rabin was in the process of handing over occupied territory to the Palestinians.

26 January 2022

Source: www.globalresearch.ca

By Ted Snider

6 Jan 2022 – On January 10, American and Russian officials will meet to discuss Putin’s proposal on mutual security guarantees. Western media and political analysts have cast Putin’s demands that NATO not expand further east to Ukraine and that NATO not establish military bases in former Soviet states nor use them to carry out military activity as bold and impossible.

Here are six crucial pieces of background that the western media will not tell you.

The NATO Promise

Putin’s demands are only bold if it is bold to ask NATO to keep its promises; his demands are only impossible if it is impossible for NATO to keep its promises.

On February 9, 1990, Secretary of State James Baker assured Gorbachev that if NATO got Germany – a huge concession – NATO would not expand one inch east of Germany. The next day, West German Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher made the same promise to his Soviet counterpart, Eduard Shevardnadz. Earlier, on January 31, 1990, Genscher had already publicly declared in a major speech that there would not be “an expansion of NATO territory to the east, in other words, closer to the borders of the Soviet Union.”

Recently declassified documents make it clear that all the western powers, including not only the US and Germany but also the UK and France, repeatedly made Russia the same promise.

Seven years later, when the US had already broken that promise, Clinton made Russia a second promise. Having expanded NATO far east of Germany, at least they would not permanently station substantial combat forces. That was the promise the US signed in the NATO-Russia Founding Act on Mutual Relations. It was a reiteration of the earlier February 1990 promise that, not only NATO membership, but NATO troops would not extend east.

So, far from being bold or asking the ridiculous, what the media will not tell you is that Putin is not asking for any new Western concessions. He is asking only that the West honor the commitments it has already made.

The Coup

The catalyst for the crisis today in Ukraine was the 2014 coup. That coup was set up and supported by the US. Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych was faced with the choice of economic alliance with the European Union or with Russia. Polls at the time clearly showed that Ukrainians were nearly evenly split on which economic alliance to choose. Yanukovych’s choice of either package would have divided the country. Putin offered Yanukovych a way out: both Russia and the EU could help Ukraine and Yanukovych doesn’t have to be forced to choose. The US and EU rejected Putin’s peace offering. According to Stephen Cohen, Professor Emeritus of Russian Studies at Princeton, “it was the European Union, backed by Washington, that said in November to the democratically elected President of a profoundly divided country, Ukraine, ‘You must choose between Europe and Russia.’”

The stage was now set for strife in Ukraine. And the US stoked that strife. Led by Senator John McCain and Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian affairs Victoria Nuland, the US publicly endorsed and supported the coup protesters. The White House then provided cover and legitimacy to the violent protesters in the streets. Through The National Endowment for Democracy, the US also funded projects that helped fuel the coup.

More sinister than that even, the US was deeply involved in the plotting of the coup itself. Nuland was caught plotting who the Americans want to be the winner of the regime change. She can be heard on an intercepted call telling the American ambassador in Kiev, Geoffrey Pyatt, that Arseniy Yatsenyuk is America’s choice to replace Yanukovych (and he did). Most importantly, Pyatt refers to the West needing to “midwife this thing,” a metaphorical admission of America’s role in leading the coup. At one point, Nuland even seems to say that then Vice President Biden, himself, would be willing to do the midwifery.

Nuland then pressured security forces to stop guarding government buildings and allow the coup protesters in. The opposition then took advantage of the absence of MPs from the south and east because of a pre-scheduled congress of regional politicians and of intimidation that forced many others to flee to ensure that it had the numbers to take over parliament in a coup disguised as democracy.

So instead of a Russian puppet president betraying his people and abandoning an economic alliance with the European Union in favor of an economic alliance with Russia, what the media will not tell you is that the catalyst of the current crisis was a US engineered and supported coup of a democratically elected president.

The Connection

The media will also not tell you about the crucial connection between the NATO promise not to expand east and the coup in Ukraine. The economic alliance with the EU was not the benign package presented to the Western pubic. It was not just an economic offer. According to Professor Emeritus of Russian Studies at Princeton, Stephen Cohen, the European Union proposal also “included ‘security policy’ provisions . . . that would apparently subordinate Ukraine to NATO.” The provisions compelled Ukraine to “adhere to Europe’s ‘military and security’ policies.” So the proposal was not a benign economic agreement: it was a security threat to Russia in economic sheep’s clothing.

Professor of Russian and European Politics at the University of Kent Richard Sakwa says, “EU enlargement paves the way to NATO membership” and points out that, since 1989, every new member of the EU has become a member of NATO. It’s not only that the EU package subordinated Ukraine to NATO, since the EU Treaty of Lisbon went into effect in 2009, all new members of the EU are required to align their defense and security policies with NATO.

Far from being just an economic agreement, Article 4 of the EU’s Association Agreement with Ukraine says the Agreement will “promote gradual convergence on foreign and security matters with the aim of Ukraine’s ever-deeper involvement in the European security area.” Article 7 speaks of the convergence of security and defense, and Article 10 says that “the parties shall explore the potential of military and technological cooperation.”

So, the EU economic alliance was an aggressive package that hid in it NATO’s expansion right up to Russia’s border. The media won’t tell you that either.

What Crimea Wants

What made Russia’s annexation of Crimea so threatening to the US was not the annexation itself. In itself, Crimea is not so important to the US. What was so threatening was what the annexation meant in terms of Russia’s relationship to the US and in terms of its changing role in the world order.

Alexander Lukin, who is Head of Department of International Relations at National Research University Higher School of Economics in Moscow and an authority on Russian politics and international relations, explains that the reason the annexation of Crimea was crucial is that, prior to that, since the end of the Cold War, Russia had been considered a subordinate partner of the West. In all disagreements between Russia and the US up to then, Russia had compromised, and the disagreements were resolved rather quickly. “The crisis in Ukraine and Russia’s reaction to it have fundamentally changed this consensus,” Lukin says. “Russia refused to play by the rules.” Crimea marked the end of the unipolar world of American hegemony. Russia drew the line and asserted itself as a new pole in a multipolar world order. That is why the US is so threatened by Russia’s response to the events of 2014 and the US coup. It is the battle over which US hegemony will be fought.

The coup in Ukraine led to the Russian annexation of Crimea. But that was not an act of aggression. It was a defensive reaction to Western encroachment deep into its sphere of influence and right up to its borders. It was a defensive reaction to the oppression of Russian-speaking people on its borders. NATO expansion had knocked on Russia’s doors. In 2014, “it came to ‘brotherly’ Ukraine,” as Lukin puts it, “a region for which Russia has special feelings and most of whose residents consider themselves Russian.” That was Russia’s red line, and it annexed Crimea. But not as an act of aggression. Rather the annexation was “in response to the aspirations of a majority of its residents.”

Sakwa says that “It is clear that the majority of the Crimean population favored unification with Russia.” A majority voted for unification with Russia when the question was put to a referendum. The accuracy of the exact result has been the subject of debate, but Sakwa says that “even in perfect conditions a majority in Crimea would have voted for union with Russia.”

So, far from being an act of Russian aggression in seizing Crimea, what the media will not tell you is that Russia was responding to Western aggression and answering the call of the majority of the people of Crimea.

What the Donbas and Russia Want

While the US and the Western media exaggerate the threat of an unprovoked Russian invasion of Ukraine – an invasion Noam Chomsky has recently said that “most serious analysts doubt” – what they won’t tell you is that Russia wants very badly not to invade Ukraine. That’s why they haven’t for the past seven years. Anatol Lieven, who is a senior research fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, points out that “Russia has not annexed Donetsk and Luhansk (the two Ukrainian provinces that make up the Donbas) or recognized their independence.” He says that “annexation is not Russia’s preferred option for the future of the [Donbas] region,” and adds the important reminder that “Moscow could have annexed the Donbas (as it did Crimea) at any time during the past seven years but has refrained from doing so.”

When the Donbas region of Eastern Ukraine tried to follow Crimea’s path back to Russia, Putin tried to prevent their referendums, even while he accepted Crimea’s. Sakwa reports in Frontline Ukraine that “Putin showed little sign of wanting a Crimea-style takeover of the region, repeatedly rejecting requests to accept the territory as part of Russia.” When Donbas did hold elections, though Putin “respected” the results, he declined to accept them or be bound by them.

In addition to Russia’s actions being defensive and not expansionist, there are a number of reasons Putin would be hesitant to invade Ukraine. One is the US promise that it “will respond decisively.” Another is the difficulty in winning, controlling and holding the Donbas region. But another is that it is strategically more beneficial for Russia not to annex the Donbas. Anatol Lieven told me in a personal correspondence that “it makes much more sense for Russia to leave the Donbas as part of Ukraine and use it as a lever first to block NATO expansion and secondly (if it can be made an autonomous part of Ukraine) to influence Ukrainian politics from within.” As long as the Donbas is part of Ukraine, it can vote against NATO membership; if Russia annexes it, it loses that vote.

So, contrary to the media message, Russia doesn’t even want to annex the Donbas. And what do the people of the Donbas want?

The US maintains that it is helpless to promise that Ukraine won’t join NATO because it is up to the people of the Ukraine to make that decision. That is ironic because it is not clear that the people of Ukraine want to join NATO, and it is certainly unclear that the people of the Donbas do.

Contrary to the portrayal in the media of a people desperate to escape Russian and to run into the arms of NATO, Volodymyr Ishchenko, research associate at the Institute of East European Studies, Freie Universität Berlin, reports that “Ukrainians are far from unified in support of NATO membership.” Ishchenko says that the majority of Ukrainians do not favor NATO membership. He reports that support stands at about 40% but that even that minority number is misleadingly bloated. The number has swelled to 40% by no longer including Ukrainians from the pro-Russian regions of Crimea and Donbas in the surveys. He adds that even where support for an alliance with Russia has dropped, it has not migrated to the NATO camp but to the neutral camp.

So the real picture is one the media won’t tell you: Russia doesn’t want the Donbas and the Donbas, and possibly even Ukraine, don’t want NATO.

Hypocrisy

Russians also feel the sting of hypocrisy when it comes to Ukraine and Crimea. They point to Kosovo and Cuba.

In 2008, the US supported the secession of Kosovo over Russia’s objections, but they call Crimea’s secession a gross violation of international law by Russia. “As a result,” Lukin says, “Russia sees the West’s position on Crimea . . . as nothing more than a case of extreme hypocrisy.”

Sakwa points out in Frontline Ukraine that Kosovo unilaterally declared independence from Serbia without even having a referendum. Yet “many Western countries, with the US in the lead, had recognized Kosovo’s independence despite repeated UN resolutions upholding the territorial integrity of Yugoslavia.” Sakwa also points out that the US endorsed “the infamous advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice . . . that Kosovo’s declaration of independence ‘did not violate general international law’.” Why is what’s fair for Kosovo not fair for Ukraine?

And what about NATO troops and weapons pushing right up to Russia’s borders? How would the US respond if Russia placed troops and weapons on America’s border? The Munro doctrine tells us clearly how the US would interpret Russian encroachment into the American sphere. And the Cuban missile crisis tells us clearly how the US would react to Russian troops and weapons on America’s border.

The annexation of Crimea was not a Russian act of expansionist aggression or intervention. It was the defense of a red line against US expansionism that broke a foundational US and NATO promise and against an interventionist US supported coup. Russia has been unwilling to annex the Donbas and responsive to the will of the majority in annexing Crimea. The US is threatened by Russia’s activity because Russia has drawn the line and is no longer playing a submissive and cooperative role in the US led world order. The Eastern Ukraine-Russian border is the line over which the battle of US hegemony is being fought. But the Western media won’t tell you that.

______________________________________________

Ted Snider has a graduate degree in philosophy and writes on analyzing patterns in US foreign policy and history.

24 January 2022

Source: www.transcend.org

By Edward Curtin

16 Jan 2022 – Two of the greatest speeches ever delivered by an American president bookend this extraordinary documentary film. It opens with President John F. Kennedy giving the commencement speech at American University on June 10, 1963 and it closes with his civil rights speech to the American people the following day. It is a deft artistic touch that suggests the brevity of JFK’s heroic efforts for world peace and domestic racial equality and justice before he was assassinated in a public execution in Dallas, Texas on November 22, 1963.

In the former anti-war speech, he called for the end to the Cold War with the Soviet Union, the halt to the arms race, and the abolishment of war and its weapons, especially nuclear. He said:

What kind of peace do I mean? What kind of peace do we seek? Not a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war. Not the peace of the grave or the security of the slave. I am talking about genuine peace, the kind of peace that makes life on earth worth living, the kind that enables men and nations to grow and to hope and to build a better life for their children – not merely peace for Americans but peace for all men and women – not merely peace in our time but peace for all time.

In the latter address to the American people, having just sent National Guard troops to the University of Alabama to make sure two black students were admitted despite the racist objections of Governor George Wallace, his words transcended the immediate issue at the university and called for the end to the immoral and illegal discrimination against African Americans in every area of the nation’s life. He said:

One hundred years of delay have passed since President Lincoln freed the slaves, yet their heirs, their grandsons, are not fully free. They are not yet freed from the bonds of injustice. They are not yet freed from social and economic oppression. And this Nation, for all its hopes and all its boasts, will not be fully free until all its citizens are free.

Having framed the documentary thus, Oliver Stone and the screenwriter James DiEugenio do a masterful job of explaining what really happened in the years of Kennedy’s short presidency, why he was such a great threat to the CIA and the military industrial complex, what really happened when they killed him, and how the Warren Commission, the CIA, and the corporate media have worked hand-in-hand to this day to cover up the truth. The current two-hour version of JFK Revisited: Through the Looking Glass will be followed in a month or so by a more detailed four-hour version.

The importance of this film is twofold: It establishes an updated historical record since the Assassination Records Review Board (AARB) was established as a result of Stone’s 1991 breakthrough film, JFK, which forced the release of previously hidden documents, and, more importantly, it emphatically shows why JFK’s assassination is crucial for understanding the United States today. For without a clear and unambiguous accounting of why he was killed and by whom (I do not mean the actual shooters), and who in the government and media has covered it up, we are doomed to repeat the past as this country has been doing ever since.

Because JFK Revisited assiduously documents the essential claims of Stone’s 1991 film and adds to it with the latest factual material released since the ARRB required the release of the previously secret documents, the film, like the JFK film before it, will be denounced by the same media/intelligence forces that slammed the earlier movie. Back then the bogus critiques claimed Stone’s imagination had gone wild and he distorted history, so now the best way for those critics to rip this evidence-filled documentary is to omit mentioning its contents and to continue calling him a conspiracy obsessed guy still intent on promoting his fantasies.

Once it was his “fictions” that were ridiculous; now it is his facts, despite his research colleague and screen writer James DiEugenio’s exhaustive confirmation of the facts that will be released later this year when the annotated script is published. JFK Revisited proves with facts that Stone was right in 1991. Even then, but little known, is that JFK was also accompanied by a book of the film that included copious research notes. But facts don’t seem to matter to Stone’s critics, then or now. They are too damning.

So let’s examine the documentary.

It opens with Kennedy speaking at American University and quickly switches to a montage of condensed news reports of the shooting in Dallas, Kennedy’s death, people’s reactions, Oswald’s arrest, his claim that he’s a “patsy,” Ruby’s killing of Oswald, JFK’s funeral, reports that Kennedy was shot from the front and the rear, the formation of the Warren Commission and the naming of its members, including most significantly the former Director of the CIA Allen Dulles whom Kennedy had fired, the Commission’s finding that Oswald alone killed the president, that there was no conspiracy, the Zapruder film, and NBC’s Chet Huntley saying that the assassination is thoroughly documented (in the Warren Commission Report) and it’s all there for anyone who would like to pursue it.

Huntley’s ironically false statement is followed by a jump cut to Oliver Stone in Dealey Plaza telling how it wasn’t all there at all, that The Warren Report was a sham, and how in the intervening years plenty of new information and evidence has been revealed by the Church Commission Hearings in 1975 that uncovered the CIA and FBI’s machinations in assassination plots at home and abroad; followed a decade later by the public showing of the Zapruder film and the subsequent House Select Committee on Assassinations’ (HSCA) finding that there was probably a conspiracy in Kennedy’s murder.

Although the Warren Report came under questioning during these years, the HSCA sealed half a million “dangerous records” until 2029. But as a result of Stone’s JFK film in 1991, the government was pressured to pass The John F. Kennedy Records Collection Act with its Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB). The ARRB ordered the release of the secret documents within four years. Over two million pages were released and they are housed at the National Archives, although certain documents are still being withheld.

One could argue that the truth about the assassination was obvious from the start and that only elements within the U.S. government could have carried out this crime and covered it up. That only simple logic was needed to solve the crime because from the start the Warren Commission made no sense with its magic bullet explanation, and that only national security operatives could have withdrawn the president’s security protection, etc. That new documents are not needed. That arguing any of this is just a pseudo-debate and a waste of time.

There is cogency to that argument, but Stone prefers to take a different route and use the released records to bolster his argument and establish a cinematic record for future generations. He is making accessible in a two-hour movie a powerful historical lesson that should be seen by everyone; it is one absent from the history books students read in school.

That his enemies will try to dissuade the public from viewing the film is not surprising, for doing so with the supporting testimonies of so many experts and the presentation of the suppressed official documents make these critics look like fools, or simply the tools they are. For while this film relies on many documents forced out of the government’s own vaults and therefore hoists the critics with their own petard, it is also a reminder that the media is deeply infiltrated with CIA plants and assets, as has been shown by the revelations of Operation Mockingbird, a program that surely never ended but has only intensified today’s propaganda.

One glance at the headlines of reviews of this film since its release two months ago reveals the vituperative personal nature of the attacks on Stone, showing that the film’s evidentiary content is of no interest to the reviewers. Ad hominem attacks will suffice. Even the one review I read previous to writing this – sent to me by someone who considered it to be positive – was a sly piece of disinformation disguised as praise. The enemies of truth are not just vulgar morons but very sophisticated tricksters.

Let me break down the evidence presented in the film in order of appearance. First, the so-called three bullets and the magic bullet. Second, the alleged rifle and new evidence confirming that Lee Oswald was not on the 6th floor of the Texas School Book Depository. Third, the autopsy, its faked photographs, and the pressure placed on the Parkland Hospital doctors to change what they saw with their own eyes. Fourth, Oswald’s history working with the CIA and FBI, his fake defection to the Soviet Union, the coverup of the intelligence agencies’ use of Oswald from start to finish, and the other plots to assassinate Kennedy in Chicago and Tampa that follow the same template as Oswald in Dallas. Fifth, why Kennedy was murdered.

None of these issues are analyzed in some half-assed theoretical way, but are supported by documentary facts – evidence, in other words. As Stone says, “Conspiracy theories are now conspiracy facts.” Nevertheless, those writers whose review headlines I mentioned prefer to call Stone “looney,” a “conspiracy quack,” etc. as they ignore the facts, new and old.

The Magic Bullet

The Warren Report claimed that since three empty shells were found on the floor of the sixth floor of The Texas Book Depository that only three bullets were fired, and from that spot. The FBI claimed that all three bullets hit inside the car, two hitting Kennedy and one Gov. Connolly. But evidence showed that one bullet missed the car, striking an underpass.

This forced the Commission into a dilemma, and so Arlen Specter, the future long-standing senator, conjured up the so-called Magic Bullet Theory, claiming that one bullet hit and passed through Kennedy only to hit Connolly, zigzagging absurdly and causing seven wounds. It was ridiculous but conveniently avoided admitting that there had to be more shots and therefore a conspiracy. The Magic bullet – CE 399 – was said to have been found in pristine condition on a stretcher in Parkland Hospital. This bullet was foundational to the Warren Commission’s case, but Stone shows with released documents that there was no chain of custody for this bullet and that lies were told about it. He further shows how this magically found pristine bullet could not have passed through two men and emerge like new.

The film immediately demolishes the Warren Commission’s basic premise.

The “Rifle” with No Oswald on the Sixth Floor

And then this: the film shows that the rifle Oswald is alleged to have used and ordered through the mail with its paper trail (he could have walked into a store and bought one without leaving evidence) does not look like the famous highly questionable photos of Oswald posing with a rifle in the back yard. But more importantly than various other anomalies concerning the rifle(s-?), such as the absence of Oswald’s hand prints, is the new evidence the film documents about Oswald’s non-presence on the sixth floor.

Researcher Barry Ernest went to the National Archives to find the original testimony of Victoria Adams who worked on the fourth floor and knew Oswald. He discovered that it was missing and that the Warren Commission had destroyed the tapes. So he went and found Adams, and what she told him contradicted the Commission’s findings. It was claimed that after shooting Kennedy, Oswald quickly went down the back stairs to the second floor lunch room. Adams told Ernest that immediately after the assassination she went down the back stairs from the fourth floor and saw no one. Ernest found corroborating evidence from two other women, Sandra Styles who accompanied Vicki Adams down the stairs and Vicki’s supervisor Dorothy Garner who saw them descend, to back Adams’ testimony, about which the Warren Commission lied. Further proof that Oswald could not have shot Kennedy from the sixth floor window since he wasn’t there.

The Head Wound and the Autopsy Coverup

With video testimonies from Doctors Perry, Clark, and Crenshaw from Parkland Hospital, Stone shows how the original testimonies placed the neck and head wounds to Kennedy coming from the front, but that pressure was applied to Perry to recant, which he did, only to later to admit his recantation was a lie and that the wound in Kennedy’s neck was an entrance wound.

Then with the autopsy, we learn how it was controlled not by forensic pathologists experienced in doing autopsies on gunshot victims, but by shadowy military and intelligence figures. We learn of another magic bullet that allegedly was found in Parkland Hospital where it was claimed it fell out of a back wound of the president. But this bullet later turns out to be The Magic Bullet after further legerdemain by Warren Commission member Gerald Ford.

This stuff is highly comical if it weren’t so sinister, and it is surely “unbelievable” as the eminent forensic pathologist Dr. Cyril Wecht tells the viewer. That one of the autopsy doctors burned his notes and another had his disappear might not be new knowledge, but to learn that two honest FBI agents who witnessed the autopsy and were not called as witnesses by the Warren Commission – James Sibert and Francis X. O’Neill, Jr. – were shown the autopsy photos in depositions taken by the Assassinations Record Review Board in 1997 and claimed that Kennedy’s head had been doctored to conceal his gaping rear head wound is startlingly new evidence.

As is the important diagram Sibert drew of a large head wound in the back of the head supporting a shot from the front.

As is the ARRB’s declassification of forty witnesses’ testimony that they saw a gaping hole in the back of the President’s head consistent with a shot from the front.

As is the White House photographer Robert Knudsen’s admission thirty-years later that the photos he took were after the head had been doctored to conceal the wound.

As is the evidence that the autopsy photos of JFK’s brain in the National archives are fakes.

Thus, the film emphatically shows that the new forensic evidence proves that there were multiple shooters and that Oswald, who was not on the sixth floor, was not one of them. Oswald, because he was killed by the F.B.I. affiliated Jack Ruby two days later, never had a trial, but if he did, in light of all we know now, he would never be convicted, yet the media, led by The New York Times, Washington Post, CBS, etc., have spent decades covering up the truth and claiming Oswald killed Kennedy, just as they have with their equally bogus claim that Sirhan Sirhan killed RFK. They can not be so ignorant not to know they are spouting absurdities, so one can only conclude they are lying to protect the killers. That they are accomplices after the fact.

Oswald the Patsy and his Connections to the CIA and FBI

This section contains much evidentiary information about Oswald that is in the 1991 film. That he was associated with David Ferrie, Guy Bannister, and Clay Shaw (alias Betrand), all of whom were FBI and CIA affiliated. That he was a provocateur playing multiple roles, one day an anti-Castro protester and the next day a Castro supporter. That he was trained as a Marine at a top secret Military base in Japan that ran U-2 spy flights run by the CIA over the Soviet Union. That his defection to the Soviet Union was likely a part of a CIA defector program. That after marrying a Russian wife, he was welcomed back into the U.S. by the government he “betrayed” and greeted upon his arrival by an intelligence asset who got him to Dallas to hook up with another CIA operative, George de Mohrenschildt.

Everything we learn about Oswald makes it clear he was working for the CIA and FBI while simultaneously being on their watch list for years. The CIA denials that this was true were lies. We learn that the ARRB had a hard time getting the CIA to hand over documents on Oswald, that both the FBI and CIA lifted flashes on Oswald in early October 1963 which allowed him access to the Dallas parade route without attention. We learn that the Secret Service destroyed their threat sheets for 1963, those being reports of JFK’s prior trips and threats associated with them.

Essentially, we learn again with documentation what was in the earlier film, JFK, and more; all of which proves that Oswald was being run by the CIA and that he was used as a patsy after the assassination. We see the similarities to the earlier plots on the President’s life in Chicago (see JFK and the Unspeakable by James W. Douglass re the Chicago plot) and Tampa that are eerily alike to that in Dallas. We learn everything essential, and yet this is just the two-hour version of the film.

Why Was Kennedy Killed, Who Benefited, and Who Had the Power to Cover it Up?

In the conclusion of the film, we are told all the things that Kennedy did that made him an arch-enemy of the CIA and the military. Kennedy, who was hated by the CIA even before the Bay of Pigs disaster, afterwards fired the CIA Director Allen Dulles and his subordinates and promised to splinter the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it to the winds after he realized that they tricked him with the Bay of Pigs.

In 1961, they also killed those Kennedy greatly admired and was working with on issues of decolonialization: Patrice Lumumba of the Congo and the Secretary General of the United Nations, Dag Hammarskjöld. Less than eleven months into office, JFK was faced with a savage enemy from within that he didn’t control. He told the French ambassador that he was in no way involved in the CIA’s attempts to assassinate French President Charles de Gaulle, his ally, and that he had no control over the CIA.

After JFK’s assassination, Allen Dulles told journalist Willie Morris that Kennedy “thought he was a god.” This from the man who had his henchmen kill with impunity and loved the Nazis with whom he worked and brought into the U.S. government (see David Talbot’s The Devil’s Chessboard). In a document uncovered by the ARRB called the Northwoods Document, the Joint Chiefs of Staff recommended to Kennedy that he approve a false flag operation to start a war with Cuba by blowing up an empty plane over Cuba and blaming it on Castro and setting off bombs in American cities killing Americans for the same purpose. Of course, Kennedy refused, only intensifying their hatred of him. Then when he wouldn’t bomb Cuba during the missile crisis in October 1962, gave his American University speech the following June, sought reconciliation with the Soviet Union, and decided to withdraw from Vietnam, the die was cast: He had to die.

Who has benefited from his death?

The war manufacturers first and foremost, for they have been reaping their bloody profits ever since. The war against Vietnam was just the start, for the wars and alarms of war have never stopped.

And the CIA, working as the leading edge for the military around the world, continuing the Pax Americana for Wall St. and the power hungry millionaires and billionaires who hate democracy.

And of course, the media companies that are stenographers for the CIA, the politicians who pimp for them, and the vast interconnected power elites who cash in while playing innocent.

Finally, without having to explicitly say it, JFK Revisited makes it emphatically clear by presenting evidence that the criminals who committed this terrible crime, together with their media accomplices, were the only ones able to cover it up.

Of course, there is more to this powerful and important film than I have mentioned here, all carefully laid out and documented. Those who criticized Stone’s earlier movie and continue to hurl insults at him rather than consider the evidence he and DiEugenio present are the worst kind of anti-intellectual sycophants. If they were forced to dispute the content of this film step-by-step, that would simply expose their agendas, something they must keep hidden to safeguard their establishment credentials.

JFK Revisited ends with an important reminder from David Talbot that the truth of this film about an event that took place long ago is so essential to understand because of its contemporary relevance. It is not dead history. The “horror show” we are now experiencing has its roots in JFK’s public execution on the streets of Dallas, when the killers sent the most obvious message:

Obey or you will suffer the same fate.

The United States is still controlled by the forces that killed President Kennedy – the CIA and those who comprise the national security state that wage war at home and abroad in contradistinction to everything JFK was trying to accomplish. Their cowardly allies in the media are everywhere.

There is a reason why, as Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. tells the viewer near the film’s end, that all across the world there are streets named and statues erected to honor President Kennedy: for people know that he was a brave man of peace and human reconciliation and that he died at the hands of scoundrels intent on stopping his work.

With JFK Revisited, Oliver Stone has truly honored this fallen hero. Like Jim Garrison in JFK, he offers this film as his closing statement to the jury, which is all of us. Here is the evidence. Consider it closely. Render your verdict.

By doing so, we may yet take back the country from the forces of evil.

Bravo to Stone and DiEugenio! They have created a tour de force.

______________

Edward Curtin is a widely published author and a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace Development Environment.

24 January 2022

Source: www.transcend.org

By Baher Kamal

18 Jan 2022 – The Asia-Pacific region is experiencing growing inequality even while registering impressive economic growth and poverty reduction. Such sharp inequalities continue to be persistent in the region, with nearly 2 in 4 people still unable to afford a healthy diet.

“The gains from socioeconomic development have favoured the wealthiest, with the wealthiest 5% of the population controlling close to 70% of total wealth in the region,” reports the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP).

The Asia-Pacific region, comprising 58 countries and territories, has over the past few decades registered the fastest rate of economic growth globally and achieved gains in human and social development, informs the Commission.
“In the Asia and Pacific region, 1.9 billion people are unable to afford a healthy diet, driven by high prices of fruits, vegetables and dairy products, making it impossible for the poor to achieve healthy diets”

And it provides some examples: life expectancy has increased significantly. While poverty eradication efforts have released approximately a billion people from poverty, both income poverty and multidimensional poverty continue to exist alongside affluence within and between countries.

Despite these gains, “inequalities persist, with income, consumption and wealth concentrated among the top deciles of the population. Non-monetary inequalities exist between regions, gender, race, ethnicity, geography and age, as well as in access to services, including sexual and reproductive health services.”

The Asia-Pacific region is home to approximately 4.5 billion people, and its demographic landscape is diverse in terms of population growth and size, composition by age and sex, and spatial distribution, ESCAP explains in report about this region.

The largest world’s region’s multidimensional poverty is made up of several factors that constitute poor people’s experience of deprivation, such as poor health, lack of education, inadequate living standards, lack of income, disempowerment, poor quality of work and threat from violence.

Perpetuating inequality

“These circumstances often shape, accentuate and perpetuate inequalities in income and wealth.” For example, the outcome can be influenced by efforts made in education or the labour market.

The last category, inequality of impact, relates to the differential impact of certain events or phenomena, such as a natural disaster, on different groups.

The impact has often been greater on poor people, women, older persons, persons with disabilities and other marginalised groups.

High fertility

The report also explains that poverty, inequality and high fertility are closely associated. Poor households tend to have many children owing mainly to lack of access to and knowledge of contraceptives, low autonomy among women, and the demand for children for economic or household support.

Contraception is less accessible to women who are poor, less educated and living in rural areas. These fertility differentials perpetuate inter-generational poverty and inequalities.

No decent jobs for the young

In countries where the number of youths seeking jobs is high relative to employment opportunities, and where their skills do not match market requirements, young people often cannot find decent jobs, ESCAP adds.

“The share of workers in unpaid jobs in Asia is twice as high for young people aged 15–24 as for adults aged 25–29 years.

For example, youth unemployment rates in 2016 were as high as 39% in Armenia, 30% in the Islamic Republic of Iran and 18.8% in Fiji.

Human trafficking

“Workers’ fundamental rights, especially those of women and marginalised populations, have also been challenged by the rise in vulnerable employment, especially concentrated in agriculture, and affects women more than men.”

In South Asia and East Asia, approximately 40% and 30%, respectively, of identified victims of human trafficking and forced labour are children, the report alerts. Vulnerable employment covers jobs involving inadequate pay, low productivity and adverse working conditions.

Migration, an escape from inequalities

“Migration often occurs as an escape from inequalities of opportunity, including decent work in home countries, or a flight from persecution, climate change, conflict or poverty. There is migration for marriage and domestic work too.”

Many migrants, however, face other forms of inequalities such as precarious working conditions, human rights abuses and irregular employment in their countries of destination. A considerable proportion of international migration within and from the Asia-Pacific region is irregular.

Discriminated, Exploited…

“Migrants are also vulnerable to coercion, discrimination, exploitation and substandard labour conditions and benefits.”

Female migrants are often victimised on the grounds of both being female and being migrants. They face labour exploitation, including confinement, lack of pay and lack of rest days. Undocumented female migrants also have no access to sexual and reproductive health services, explains ESCAP.

Internal migration

Another defining megatrend is internal migration, which has increased in volume in the past few decades.

Increased internal migration has been due to fewer work opportunities in traditional agriculture and better employment opportunities in urban areas, manufacturing in urban areas and high-production agriculture.

Unprecedented urbanisation

According to the report, there has been unprecedented urbanisation as a result of a combination of natural population increase, rural-urban migration and reclassification.

“By 2050, two out of three people are expected to live in urban areas, with about 10% of the urban population living in megacities, and the rest living in medium-sized and small cities.”

Meanwhile, “approximately half of all urban dwellers in South Asia live in slums. In large countries such as Bangladesh, China, India, Indonesia, Pakistan, the Philippines, Thailand and Viet Nam, 30 to 60% of the urban population lives in slums.”

People in slums face such challenges as poor health conditions, lack of sanitation and risk of exposure to pollution, including high carbon emissions.

The COVID factor

The Asian Development Bank reports that according to its Outlook 2020 report, tourism-driven economies—including the Cook Islands, Fiji, Palau, Samoa, and Vanuatu—were the hardest hit by the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Asia and Pacific region, alone, was expected to lose almost 70 million jobs and 1.1 trillion US dollars in GDP—more than any other region in the world.

Gender inequalities persistent

Meanwhile, gender inequalities continue to be persistent in Asia and the Pacific. In particular in the Pacific, women and girls face fewer opportunities for development.

Gender inequalities also intersect and overlap with age, ethnicity, wealth status, and residence, inter alia. Many of these inequalities have been discussed earlier, such as the differential access to maternal health services by less educated, rural and poorer women.

Hunger, malnutrition

For its part, the 2020 report: Asia and the Pacific – Regional Overview of Food Security and Nutrition provides an update on progress towards the 2030 targets at the regional and country level.

While the region continues to work towards ending all forms of malnutrition and achieving Zero Hunger, progress on food security and nutrition has slowed, and the Asia and Pacific region is not on track to achieving 2030 targets, warns the report, elaborated by the UN Food and agriculture Organisation (FAO), the World Food Programme (WFP), and the World Health Organisation (WHO).

About 350.6 million people in the Asia and Pacific region are estimated to have been undernourished in 2019, about 51% of the world’s total of undernourished people.

Children stunted, wasted

“An estimated 74.5 million children under five years of age were stunted and a total of 31.5 million were wasted in the Asia and Pacific region. The majority of these children in the region live in Southern Asia with 55.9 million stunted and 25.2 million wasted children.”

Estimates predict a 14.3% increase in the prevalence of moderate or severe wasting among children under 5 years of age, equal to an additional 6.7 million children, due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Two billion people unable to afford healthy diet

With basic food prices and disposable incomes influencing household decisions on food and dietary intake, they are critical to improve food security and nutrition in the region, the joint report adds.

“However, in the Asia and Pacific region, 1.9 billion people are unable to afford a healthy diet, driven by high prices of fruits, vegetables and dairy products, making it impossible for the poor to achieve healthy diets.”

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.

24 January 2022

Source: www.transcend.org