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By Ilan Baruch and Alon Liel

“It is clearer than ever that the occupation is not temporary, and there is not the political will in the Israeli government to bring about its end.”

8 Jun 2021 – During our careers in the foreign service, we both served as Israel’s ambassador to South Africa. In this position, we learned firsthand about the reality of apartheid and the horrors it inflicted. But more than that – the experience and understanding we gained in South Africa helped us to understand the reality at home.

For over half a century, Israel has ruled over the occupied Palestinian territories with a two-tiered legal system, in which, within the same tract of land in the West Bank, Israeli settlers live under Israeli civil law while Palestinians live under military law. The system is one of inherent inequality. In this context, Israel has worked to change both the geography and the demography of the West Bank through the construction of settlements, which are illegal under international law. Israel has advanced projects to connect these settlements to Israel proper through intensive investment in infrastructure development, and a vast network of highways and water and electricity infrastructure have turned the settlement enterprise into a comfortable version of suburbia. This has happened alongside the expropriation and takeover of massive amounts of Palestinian land, including Palestinian home evictions and demolitions. That is, settlements are built and expanded at the expense of Palestinian communities, which are forced onto smaller and smaller tracts of land.

This reality reminds us of a story that former Ambassador Avi Primor described in his autobiography about a trip that he took with then-Minister of Defense Ariel Sharon to South Africa in the early 1980s. During the visit, Sharon expressed great interest in South Africa’s bantustan project. Even a cursory look at the map of the West Bank leaves little doubt regarding where Sharon received his inspiration. The West Bank today consists of 165 “enclaves” – that is, Palestinian communities encircled by territory taken over by the settlement enterprise. In 2005, with the removal of settlements from Gaza and the beginning of the siege, Gaza became simply another enclave – a bloc of territory without autonomy, surrounded largely by Israel and thus effectively controlled by Israel as well.

The bantustans of South Africa under the apartheid regime and the map of the occupied Palestinian territories today are predicated on the same idea of concentrating the “undesirable” population in as small an area as possible, in a series of non-contiguous enclaves. By gradually driving these populations from their land and concentrating them into dense and fractured pockets, both South Africa then and Israel today worked to thwart political autonomy and true democracy.

This week, we mark the fifty-fifth year since the occupation of the West Bank began. It is clearer than ever that the occupation is not temporary, and there is not the political will in the Israeli government to bring about its end. Human Rights Watch recently concluded that Israel has crossed a threshold and its actions in the occupied territories now meet the legal definition of the crime of apartheid under international law. Israel is the sole sovereign power that operates in this land, and it systematically discriminates on the basis of nationality and ethnicity. Such a reality is, as we saw ourselves, apartheid. It is time for the world to recognize that what we saw in South Africa decades ago is happening in the occupied Palestinian territories too. And just as the world joined the struggle against apartheid in South Africa, it is time for the world to take decisive diplomatic action in our case as well and work towards building a future of equality, dignity, and security for Palestinians and Israelis alike.

Ilan Baruch served as Israeli Ambassador to South Africa, Namibia, Botswana, and Zimbabwe.

Dr. Alon Liel served as Israeli Ambassador to South Africa and as Director General of the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

28 June 2021

Source: www.transcend.org

By Philip Weiss

19 Jun 2021 – In recent days, four pro-Israel writers have lamented that American Jews are turning against Zionism in the wake of the latest Gaza attack. Two speak of a “surge in anti-Zionism” among Jews.

In recent days, four pro-Israel writers have lamented that American Jews are turning against Zionism. Two speak of a “surge in anti-Zionism” among U.S. Jews.These writers are seeing just what I am seeing from the other side: Jews are bailing on Israel. The latest Gaza conflict, in which Israel attacked civilian targets for the fifth time in a dozen years, generated tremendous discomfort inside the American Jewish community. Many of them see that Israel has no idea about how to build a future of coexistence-and-equality with Palestinians.

“I always thought Israel was a mistake,” one associate of mine who has long supported Israel said privately.

The lamentations from four pro-Israel writers are all focused on Jewish “identity.” They say there is something wrong with how American Jews have built their social identification. That seems to me a helpful focus. Because it raises the obvious question: When did Judaism become the same thing as Zionism?

First here is David Harris of the American Jewish Committee saying in the Times of Israel that “some Jews” attacked Israel during the recent fighting.

“Some Jews seem to believe that distancing, if not detaching, themselves from any link with Israel will protect them or, at the very least, endear them to the anti-Israel, anti-Zionist mobs,” Harris writes somewhat overheatedly. “[S]ome Jews… think they can buy time or space or security by joining in the assault against Israel…”

More good news. Harris laments that during the recent conflict, some American political leaders “who purport to be friends of the pro-Israel community, were missing in action or resorting to whispered comments for fear they could otherwise potentially jeopardize their careers.” I bet he is talking about Chuck Schumer.

So things have gotten worse for Harris since 2017 when he was upset about young Jews’ disaffection with Israel. “Where did we go wrong in our homes and our schools?” Now it’s the older Jews who are turning…

And it’s a matter of Jewish identity for Harris: “affirming Jewish identity, Zionism, and pro-Israelism.”

Natan Sharansky and Gil Troy are even angrier/more despairing in Tablet. They describe a “surge in anti-Zionism” inside the Jewish community during the recent conflict. And they call these Jews “un-Jews” — a disgusting term.

But a lot of their trendspotting is spot-on. They point to a May 22 statement by Jewish and Israel studies scholars” that said Zionism reflects “ethnonationalist” thinking “shaped by settler colonial paradigms” that has “contributed to unjust, enduring, and unsustainable systems of Jewish supremacy.” They also cite a CUNY Jewish Law Students’ Association statement in support the Palestinian right of return and of “an end to the ongoing Nakba.”

Troy and Sharansky say the criticism from some inside American Jewry has moved “from what Israel did to what Israel is.” That’s true. Many former Zionists believe that Israel’s brutal response to non-Jews arises from its official definition as a “Jewish state” with higher rights for Jews.

Again, this is a matter of identity. In the 90s the Jewish community embraced “Israel and Israel experiences as central Jewish-identity building tools.” Now the anti-Zionists are willfully seeking to change that identity.

They are trying to disentangle Judaism from Jewish nationalism, the sense of Jewish peoplehood, while undoing decades of identity-building. In repudiating Israel and Zionism, hundreds of Jewish Google employees rejected what they call “the conflation of Israel with the Jewish people.” The voices of inflamed Jewish opponents of Israel and Zionism are in turn amplified by a militant progressive superstructure that now has an ideological lock on the discourse in American academia, publishing, media, and the professions that formerly respected American Jewry’s Zionism-accented, peoplehood-centered constructions of Jewish identity…

Where do I sign?

Lastly, Etan Nechin is a liberal Israeli Zionist living in Brooklyn who writes in Haaretz that he welcomes the “sea change” in American coverage of the conflict, including the Human Rights Report stating that Israel practices “apartheid” and the “mainstreaming U.S. media coverage of the Sheikh Jarrah protests.”

And yet Nechin is dismayed by “today’s rush to a wholesale critique of Israel” by leftwing Jews who have turned against the idea of a Jewish state. He says these Jews are detached from the Israeli experience and given to glib answers — such as support for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (or BDS), or the idea “that one state is the only morally acceptable solution.”

Nechin attacks Peter Beinart for his advocacy for one democratic state and “self-styled activist Rafael Mimoun’s Washington Post op-ed, ‘Zionism cannot produce a just peace. Only external pressure can end the Israeli apartheid.’” It’s an issue of identity for Nechin: Privileged, solipsistic writers have put criticizing Israel at the center of their identities and cut themselves off from the leftwing discussion inside Israel.

“Now should be an obvious opportunity for the U.S. Jewish left to talk to the Israeli left and not only at it.”

My answer to that is that the American left Jewish and non-Jewish is in close contact with the oppressed population in Israel/Palestine — taking their cues from Palestinians about the nonviolent pressure we can put on an apartheid society. It is a lot like freedom riders and solidarity activists from the north who worked with the civil rights movement in the south against Jim Crow.

Yet all these articles are good signs, of a war inside American Jewry over Zionism.

Over the last 30 years or so, the American Jewish establishment decreed that Jewish identity means supporting Israel, that miracle of “Jewish peoplehood”. This was an instrumental belief; the Israel lobby has buoyed Israel through the settlement/apartheid years.

It was a successful imposition in that these leaders now believe the delusion so thoroughly that they can maintain with utter sincerity that when someone criticizes Israel, they are antisemitic.

More than 95 percent of American Jews support Israel, Batya Ungar-Sargon and Bari Weiss both affirm. Or they did once. The number is slipping before our eyes.

Philip Weiss is Founder and Co-Editor of Mondoweiss.net.

28 June 2021

Source: www.transcend.org

By Chris Agee

24 Jun 2021 – On June 23rd, 184 countries at the United Nations voted yet again to condemn the U.S. blockade of Cuba, with 3 countries abstaining and 4 not voting. Every year since 1992—2020 being an exception when the vote was not held given COVID restrictions—Cuba has introduced a resolution to end the blockade. And every year, only two countries vote against it: the U.S. and Israel, with Bolsonaro’s Brazil joining them in 2019. Notwithstanding the ongoing nightmare Cubans continue to suffer under the blockade, the focus on health care and their advanced biotechnological and pharmaceutical industry may help them out of the pandemic.

For over 60 years, the U.S. blockade of Cuba has not stopped the island-nation from pursuing its goals of living independently from neocolonial and neoliberal control, using its own national resources for the benefit of the Cuban people and instituting social programs like free universal health care and education.
A group of women smiling Description automatically generated with low confidence

Yet the blockade continues to stifle the Cuban economy and harm the Cuban people. But further, the policy quashes all the productive potential normal relations with Cuba would foster, even for Americans.

According to some sources, conditions in Cuba are now worse than in the so-called “Special Period” in the 1990s after the fall of the Soviet Union. Food shortages were so dire then that malnutrition led to an epidemic disease of blindness afflicting tens of thousands.

With Cuba now facing the worst phase of the COVID-19 pandemic, lifting the blockade—not to mention easening it with the stroke of a pen—would clearly be the most rational and humanitarian act.

The dire situation in Cuba is in great part the result of U.S. policy: isolate nations like Cuba who rid themselves of U.S.-backed dictators and foreign control of their assets. This serves not only to punish those who go their own way and reject neoliberal policies but also serves to showcase struggling, blockaded economies while misleading the public on the causes. The policy is aggressively pursued for fear that successful examples will inspire others to rid themselves of the shackles of the U.S. empire and plutocratic interests.

While Obama’s policy of engagement, among other remedies, renewed diplomatic relations and eased restrictions on travel and remittances to the island, Trump reversed that trend and issued unprecedented aggressive policies against Cuba culminating in its inclusion on the unilateral State Sponsors of Terrorism list.

On the campaign trail last September, Biden slammed Trump’s policies, calling them an “abject failure,” and promised that he would, if elected, “…reverse the failed Trump policies that inflicted harm on Cubans and their families.” Indeed, Cuba is no mystery to the Bidens. Biden’s wife, Jill, now First Lady, actually traveled to Cuba on an educational and cultural trip in 2016.

Will Biden Keep His Promise?

It is no surprise to seasoned CAM readers that Biden’s position seems to have evaporated under the pressures of U.S. electoral politics, particularly from the Cuban-American lobby that has kept Cuba locked in isolation for decades. While Biden has rescinded dozens of Trump’s policies, on Cuba he has remained silent. Of the 240-plus measures adopted by Trump to toughen the blockade against Cuba, Biden has not rescinded even one.

Indeed, Biden’s finite political capital and razor-thin margin in the Senate leaves him wary of upsetting even one Democrat, including anti-Castro hawks like Cuban-American Bob Menendez (D-NJ), not to mention Republican hawks like Cuban-American Marco Rubio (R-FL).

Mounting Pressures

Pressures to get Biden to fulfill his promise are mounting in the U.S. and include Cuban-Americans. Organizations like Bridges of Love and other solidarity groups have staged rallies, protests and caravans nationwide in hopes of pushing the Biden administration to soften its strategy.

Dozens of nonprofit groups, from Oxfam to the DC Metro Coalition, have asked the U.S. to “…act as soon as possible to normalize relations with Cuba…” and lift the blockade on humanitarian grounds. Various leading think tanks, including the Council for Democracy in the Americas (CDA), the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA) and the Cuba Study Group (CSG) have asked the new administration to restore Obama’s policy of rapprochement and critical engagement. The National Network on Cuba has produced a Hands Off Cuba Map! that can be clicked on to see the particular organizations around the U.S. working to end the blockade.

To defend the ongoing illegal and cruel blockade, Biden’s Secretary of State Antony Blinken ratcheted up the rhetoric at the 51st Conference of the Council of the Americas stating that Washington “…will defend the human rights of the Cuban people…” to which the Cuban Minister of Foreign Affairs Bruno Rodríguez responded: “If Secretary Blinken was interested in the human rights of the Cuban people, he would lift the embargo and the 243 measures adopted by the previous government…”

Cuban Permanent Representative to the United Nations Pedro Luis Pedroso Cuesta added: “All those measures remain in force today, and are a reflection of the unprecedented levels that the economic war against Cuba has reached, bringing about hardships of all kinds and material shortages in the daily lives of every Cuban.”

Pedroso continued: “Our challenges in terms of human rights, like those of any other country, are known to our people and our government and we will continue to work on their solution on the basis of our Constitution,” he said. “But Cuba is equally concerned about the human rights situation in the United States. Flagrant violations are committed here [in the U.S.] on a daily basis, which arouse concern within the international community.”

Pedroso issued an additional statement on Tuesday, June 22, before the vote:

“The entire world knows that the US blockade against Cuba is a genocidal and criminal policy, which really harms the Cuban people especially amid the Covid-19 pandemic…”

It is “…an act of genocide under the 1948 Convention for the Prevention and Punishment of Crime of Genocide, due to its declared purpose and the political, legal and administrative framework it is based on.”

Rodriguez’s and Pedroso’s statements are especially compelling given the pandemic. Maintaining a blockade on Cuba at this time—much less on any country—is particularly anti-humanitarian, especially when Cuba is currently facing the worst phase of the COVID-19 outbreak since the start of the pandemic.

How is Cuba supposed to battle the pandemic? Venezuela, for example, tried to acquire vaccines by actually paying for them; shockingly the remittances were rejected given the economic blockade on Venezuela.

Cuba’s Health Care, Biotechnology and Pharmaceutical Industry

The Cubans, however, are in a unique situation. Since the 1959 revolution, Cuba has focused on health care, among other social programs. They send more doctors around the world than the World Health Organization and have implemented programs like Doctor de la Familia which house doctors in communities around the island-nation in two-floor homes.

Typically, the doctor de la familia lives with his/her family on the second floor, and the practice resides on the ground floor. In addition to receiving patients at the local clinic, doctors and healthcare workers visit community neighbors in their homes and provide an overall more holistic service.

The Cuban government has made the obvious choice not to rely on foreign vaccines. In spite of the blockade, they are advancing their own vaccine development, testing, and delivery with their own advanced pharmaceutical industry which has exported vaccines for decades.

On Monday, BioCubaFarma announced that its three-shot Abdala vaccine had proved 92.28% effective against the coronavirus in last-stage clinical trials. Soberana 2, announced days earlier, has proven to be 62% effective with just two of its three doses. Both vaccines are expected to be granted emergency approval.

Cuba will likely be in a position to vaccinate its own population and further burnish its own scientific reputation by exporting vaccines against coronavirus. This will provide much-needed currency not to mention assist in the world-wide vaccination effort. Numerous countries, from Argentina and Jamaica to Mexico, Vietnam and Venezuela, are interested in buying Cuba’s vaccines. Iran started producing Soberana 2 earlier this year.

What You Can Do To Help

Get involved in the solidarity campaigns with Cuba listed above. There are many. One organization I worked with in the 1990s was Global Health Partners (GHP): They are particularly efficient and have been sending medicines and medical supplies to Cuba since the 1990s.

Now that the Cubans have potentially developed viable vaccines, they need syringes. Go to the GHP website and support them in getting syringes to Cuba.

The Cuban government is planning to produce 100 million vaccines for its population and to share with developing countries around the world. As GHP notes: “Over the past year alone, Cuba has sent 3,700 health workers, in 52 international medical brigades, to 39 countries overwhelmed by the pandemic. Cuba’s international medical brigades have treated patients and saved lives for the past 15 years in 53 countries confronting natural disasters and serious epidemics, such as the Ebola crisis in West Africa.”

In spite of Cuban advances in health care, biotechnology and pharmaceuticals, the blockade is a daily nightmare for most of the 11.3 million people on the largest Caribbean island-nation. While the pandemic is a deadly layer added to the suffering, the promise of change comes at a crucial moment for Cubans. Will Biden fulfill his promise to relax the blockade and join the rest of the world, or will he carry on with the old Cold War rhetoric against Cuba that has only harmed the Cuban people and exacerbated the anti-humanitarian U.S. image worldwide?

U.S. diplomat Rodney Hunter rhetorically told the U.N. General Assembly before the vote that ‘sanctions were one set of tools in Washington’s broader effort toward Cuba to advance democracy, promote respect for human rights and help the Cuban people exercise fundamental freedoms.’ It seems, given this latest U.S. vote at the United Nations, that the Biden Administration is not yet interested in fulfilling its promise to tear down the cruel wall.

Chris Agee is Executive Editor of CovertAction Magazine.

28 June 2021

Source: www.transcend.org

Thousands of Palestinians turned out on Friday in the occupied West Bank city of Hebron to attend the funeral of Nizar Banat, an outspoken critic of the Palestinian Authority (PA), who died in the custody of PA forces on Thursday.

Mourners travelled from across the occupied West Bank to attend Banat’s funeral prayers at Wasaya al-Rasool Mosque in Hebron and marched through the streets along with his family and friends before he was buried. The funeral began with the transfer of Banat’s body to his family home for a final farewell.

“People here are incredibly angry at the Palestinian Authority,” Al Jazeera’s Stefanie Dekker said, speaking from Hebron. “They are calling for the downfall of the regime, and are saying they are under a double occupation. They accuse the PA of being hand in hand with Israel.”

The chants also included calls for PA President Mahmoud Abbas to resign. Abbas, who has been president since 2005, technically finished his mandate in 2009, but continued to rule in the absence of new elections.

Banat, 43, intended to run in parliamentary elections before they were cancelled earlier this year. He was a harsh critic of the PA, which governs parts of the Israeli-occupied West Bank, and called on Western nations to cut off aid to it because of its growing authoritarianism and human rights violations.

The PA receives millions of dollars in foreign aid as it is recognised by the West to represent the Palestinian people.

Banat was in bed in his home in Dura in southern Hebron, when some two dozen PA officers broke into his home and started beating him in the early hours of Thursday morning, according to his family. He was dragged away screaming, local media quoted them as saying, and he was beaten on the head with batons and pieces of metal.

After conducting an autopsy, a Palestinian rights group said Banat took blows to the head, adding the wounds indicated “an unnatural death”.

Since Banat’s death, Palestinians have been widely sharing his previous writings and videos.

Protests against PA

Videos shared on social media on Friday showed large crowds of mourners protesting against the PA following Banat’s funeral.

Armed men present vowed to avenge Banat’s death from those who killed him.

Many chanted “leave, leave Abbas” and “the people want the overthrow of the regime” as anger continued to mount against the Palestinian Authority.

In occupied East Jerusalem, hundreds of worshippers who attended Friday prayers in the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, also protested against the killing of Banat.

A statement by the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) said the investigation into Banat’s death will be “transparent and impartial”, and the results of the investigation will be announced “at the earliest opportunity”.

Hours after Banat’s death on Thursday, large crowds of Palestinians also took to the streets in the occupied West Bank city of Ramallah to protest against his killing, but they were met with batons and tear gas fired by dozens of PA forces dressed in riot gear.

“The people want the downfall of the regime,” the protesters chanted at the city’s main al-Manara Square while others screamed, “traitors, traitors” at the security forces.

Outspoken critic

Banat was an advocate of free speech and an outspoken critic of the PA’s alleged corruption and security coordination with the Israeli military. He was known for posting his views on social media, with more than 100,000 people following his Facebook page.

He accused prominent Fatah supporters of waging an incitement campaign against him, after he was accused of collaborating with Israel – a serious allegation that amounts to treason. He denied the accusation.

He also accused PA forces of perpetrating the torture of political dissidents inside its prisons.

Banat was a former member of the Fatah movement, the de facto ruling party of the PA. In the legislative elections initially scheduled in May, Banat campaigned as a candidate on the Freedom and Dignity list party.

In April, Abbas cancelled the elections, the first to be scheduled in 15 years, ostensibly because Israel would not let Palestinians in occupied East Jerusalem vote for the new Palestinian leadership. East Jerusalem is seen as the capital of a future Palestinian state as part of a two-state solution.

Many have argued, though, that the true motive was Abbas’s fear that the fractured Fatah party would suffer another humiliating defeat to Hamas, the group that governs the Gaza Strip.

A recent poll showed plummeting support for Abbas, who is facing both a loss of popularity and increasing opposition within his party.

Western nations continue to view Abbas as a key partner in the long-moribund peace process, and the European Union (EU) has provided hundreds of millions of dollars in direct aid to the PA over the years.

Crackdown

According to his family, Banat had been imprisoned by the PA eight times – each time for several months.

In early May, gunmen fired bullets, stun grenades and tear gas at Banat’s home, where his wife was inside with their children. No one seemed to have been hurt in the incident.

He blamed the attack on Fatah, which dominates the security forces.

“The Europeans need to know that they are indirectly funding this organisation,” Banat told The Associated Press in May, in an interview at a location where he was hiding out.

“They fire their guns into the air at Fatah celebrations, they fire their guns in the air when Fatah leaders fight each other, and they fire their guns at people who oppose Fatah.”

Last November, the EU denounced Banat’s arrest at the time after he had published a video critical of Palestinian politicians.

On Thursday, United Nations Middle East peace envoy Tor Wennesland tweeted that he was “alarmed and saddened” by Banat’s death.

25 June 2021

Source: www.aljazeera.com

By Countercurrents Collective

Climate crisis has pushed communities in Madagascar to the verge of starvation. The World Food Programme (WFP) says resources are scarce in the country after the worst drought in four decades.

The WFP said more than a quarter of people are suffering in one area. And $78.6 million is needed to fight the crisis.

Climate change is the driving force of a developing food crisis in southern Madagascar, the UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) has warned.

Acute malnutrition in Madagascar has almost doubled in just the last four months.

A mother of three said about children she takes care: “I rely on God. Today we have absolutely nothing to eat except cactus leaves that we are trying to clean up. We have nothing left. Their mother is dead and my husband is dead. What do you want me to say? Our life is all about looking for cactus leaves again and again to survive.”

David Beasley, WFP’s executive director, said: “It’s seven times worse than it was just a year ago. Seven times more children are in trouble. Why? Because of drought. We’re facing the worst drought in over 40 years, and this is an area where people depend on their own agriculture; home-grown school meals, smallholder farmers, this is how they live down here but with drought back to back to back, people can’t survive and so the government partnering with WFP and others we’re doing the best we can, but it’s a terrible situation.”

The African island has been plagued with back-to-back droughts — its worst in four decades — which have pushed 1.14 million people “right to the very edge of starvation,” said David Beasley in a news release Wednesday.

“I met women and children who were holding on for dear life, they’d walked for hours to get to our food distribution points. These were the ones who were healthy enough to make it,” Beasley said.

“Families are suffering and people are already dying from severe hunger. This is not because of war or conflict, this is because of climate change. This is an area of the world that has contributed nothing to climate change, but now, they’re the ones paying the highest price.”An estimated 14,000 people are already in catastrophic conditions, according to the WFP, a number that is predicted to double to 28,000 by October. Thousands in southern Madagascar have left their homes in search of food, while those who remain are resorting to extreme measures such as foraging for wild food to survive, the WFP said.

“This is enough to bring even the most hardened humanitarian to tears. Families have been living on raw red cactus fruits, wild leaves and locusts for months now. We can’t turn our backs on the people living here while the drought threatens thousands of innocent lives,” said Beasley.

“Now is the time to stand up, act and keep supporting the Malagasy government to hold back the tide of climate change and save lives.”

Beasley’s warning came a day after the WFP said 41 million people in 43 countries were now teetering on the edge of starvation, with 584,000 already experiencing famine-like conditions across Madagascar, Ethiopia, South Sudan, Nigeria, Burkina Faso and Yemen. This number has increased from 27 million in 2019.

Conflict, climate change and economic shocks are all driving the rises in hunger, the WFP said, with those pressures on food security compounded by steep price increases for basic foods this year.

“Global maize prices have soared almost 90% year-on-year, while wheat prices are up almost 30% over the same period. In many countries, currency depreciation is adding to these pressures and driving prices even higher. This in turn is stoking food insecurity in countries such as Lebanon, Nigeria, Sudan, Venezuela and Zimbabwe,” said the WFP statement.

The WFP needs about $6 billion to provide 139 million people this year with life-saving food and nutritional assistance, it said, in what the UN agency describes as “the biggest operation in its history.”

25 June 2021

Source: countercurrents.org

Written by Leticia Martínez and René Tamayo León

A three-dose regimen of Cuba’s Abdala candidate vaccine has demonstrated an efficacy of 92.28 percent, placing it well above the World Health Organization (WHO) requirement of at least 50 percent, to be recognized as an anti-COVID-19 vaccine.

Over the course of 48 hours, from Saturday to Monday, Cuba, a small, poor country, has shaken the world, noted Party First Secretary and President of the Republic Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez, in a meeting, June 21, 2021 afternoon, with researchers at the Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology (CIGB), where Abdala was developed.

The President decided to meet with the scientists after learning about the efficacy analysis of Abdala at Monday’s meeting of the government’s COVID-19 prevention and control group. He had visited the Finlay Vaccine Institute on Saturday, after learning that its Soberana 02 candidate vaccine, with just two doses, had demonstrated 62% efficacy – without a third booster dose of Soberana Plus, which should produce an superior response.

Abdala’s efficacy places it among vaccines with the best results in the world, which have all been produced in the principal laboratories of the most developed countries with financing of hundreds of millions and billions of dollars, something that for Cuba is impossible, even more so given the tightening of the economic, commercial and financial blockade during the pandemic. Dr. Marta Ayala Avila, CIGB director, explained that efficacy is the most important objective of any vaccine. “It is its effect in real life,” she stated.

In presenting the findings, she highlighted the work of the teams of scientists who conducted Phase I/II and III clinical trials in Santiago de Cuba, Bayamo, Guantanamo and Havana, and thanked the 48,000 volunteers, who participated in the study.

The final analysis of Abdala’s efficacy in preventing symptomatic cases of COVID-19, which was conducted by an independent group led by the Institute of Cybernetics, Mathematics and Physics, showed not only a response to the initial strain of SARS-CoV-2 (DG614G), but also the Alpha, Beta and Gamma mutations, she explained.

Dr. Ayala recalled that the clinical trial included a placebo group and a vaccinated group, with three administrations over a period of 0-14-28 days. She noted that the studies continue, that new evaluations and conclusions will continue to be drawn.

She also highlighted the work of the Immunoassay Center, AICA Laboratories and other scientific centers, as well as the public health workers, who conducted a rapid, high quality vaccination process, difficult to achieve in other countries around the world. The researchers, she added, are gratefully dedicating this accomplishment to Comandante en jefe Fidel Castro Ruz, founder of the CIGB, Army General Raúl Castro Ruz, Party First Secretary Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez, and the center’s pioneer scientists.

After listening to the findings, the First Secretary commented, “One feels proud to be Cuban and to have compatriots like you.”

The results are really impressive, he reiterated and recalled the early days of the pandemic, when “I was convinced that poor countries were not going to have access to vaccines within a short period time, that the rich world was producing to prioritize the rich.

“This is why I asked our scientists (to assume the task), with the conviction, with the certainty that we could do it, that it was necessary to have Cuban vaccines to be sovereign in this situation, as well.”

We, he added, are among the few who, having the vaccines to resolve Cuba’s problems, are thinking about how, with these same vaccines, we can solve the problems of millions in the world, and above all of the millions who have less and live today in tremendous uncertainty caused by the disease.

“On behalf of Cuba, congratulations,” Díaz-Canel concluded, thanking the CIGB researchers who have worked on the creation of Abdala, meeting the highest standards as an anti-COVID-19 vaccine.

The report was first published in Granma, official voice of the Communist Party of Cuba, on June 22, 2021.

23 June 2021

Source: countercurrents.org

By Dietrich Fischer

Nine physically and mentally disabled contestants at a Special Olympics assembled at the starting line for the 100-meter dash. As they heard the gunshot, they all began to move as rapidly as they could, not really in a dash, but with joy to try to be the first to reach the finish line and win.

But one boy stumbled, fell down and began to cry. The others heard him and stopped. Then they all turned back. One girl with Down Syndrome kissed the boy and said,

“This will make it better.”

Then all nine linked arms and walked together to the finish line. Everyone in the stadium stood up and cheered for ten minutes, some with watery eyes.

And we keep calling them ‘disabled’.

Dietrich Fischer (1941-2015) from Münsingen, Switzerland, got a Licentiate in Mathematics from the University of Bern 1968 and his Ph.D. in Computer Science from New York University 1976.

21 June 2021

Source: www.transcend.org

By Pepe Escobar

16 Jun 2021 – For those spared the ordeal of sifting through the NATO summit communique, here’s the concise low down: Russia is an “acute threat” and China is a “systemic challenge”.

NATO, of course, are just a bunch of innocent kids building castles in a sandbox.

Those were the days when Lord Hastings Lionel Ismay, NATO’s first secretary-general, coined the trans-Atlantic purpose: to “keep the Soviet Union out, the Americans in, and the Germans down.”

The Raging Twenties remix reads like “keep the Americans in, the EU down and Russia-China contained”.

So the North Atlantic (italics mine) organization has now relocated all across Eurasia, fighting what it describes as “threats from the East”. Well, that’s a step beyond Afghanistan – the intersection of Central and South Asia – where NATO was unceremoniously humiliated by a bunch of Pashtuns with Kalashnikovs.

Russia remains the top threat – mentioned 63 times in the communiqué. Current top NATO chihuahua Jens Stoltenberg says NATO won’t simply “mirror” Russia: it will de facto outspend it and surround it with multiple battle formations, as “we now have implemented the biggest reinforcements of our collective defense since the end of the Cold War”.

The communiqué is adamant: the only way for military spending is up. Context: the total “defense” budget of the 30 NATO members will grow by 4.1% in 2021, reaching a staggering $1.049 trillion ($726 billion from the US, $323 billion from assorted allies).

After all, “threats from the East” abound. From Russia, there are all those hypersonic weapons that baffle NATO generals; those large-scale exercises near the borders of NATO members; constant airspace violations; military integration with that “dictator” in Belarus.

As for the threats from China – South China Sea, Taiwan, the Indo-Pacific overall – it was up to the G7 to come up with a plan.

Enter “green”, “inclusive” Build Back Better World (B3W), billed as the Western “alternative” to the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). B3W respects “our values” – which clownish British PM Boris Johnson could not help describing as building infrastructure in a more “gender neutral” or “feminine” way – and, further on down the road, will remove goods produced with forced labor (code for Xinjiang) from supply chains.
The White House has its own B3W spin: that’s a “values-driven, high-standard, and transparent infrastructure partnership” which will be “mobilizing private-sector capital in four areas of focus – climate, health and health security, digital technology, and gender equality – with catalytic investments from our respective development institutions”

The initial “catalytic investments” for BW3 were estimated at $100 billion. No one knows how these funds will be coming from the “development institutions”.

Seasoned Global South observers already bet they will be essentially provided by IMF/World Bank “green” loans tied to private sector investment in selected emerging markets, with an eye on profit.

The White House is adamant that “B3W will be global in scope, from Latin America and the Caribbean to Africa and the Indo-Pacific”. Note the blatant attempt to match BRI’s reach.

All these “green” resources and new logistic chains financed by what will be a variant of Central Banks showering helicopter money would ultimately benefit G7 members, certainly not China.

And the “protector” of these new “green” geostrategic corridors will be – who else? – NATO. That’s the natural consequence of the “global reach” emphasized on the NATO 2030 agenda.

NATO as investment protector

“Alternative” infrastructure schemes already proliferate, geared to contain “Russia bullying” and “Chinese meddling” off from the EU. That’s the case of the Three Seas Initiative, where 12 EU member-states from Eastern Europe are supposed to better interconnect the Adriatic, Baltic and Black Seas.

This initiative is a pale copy of China’s 17+1 mechanism of integrating Eastern Europe as part of BRI – in this case forcing them to build very expensive infrastructure to receive very expensive American energy imports.

The offensive against “threats from the East” is bound to fail. Dmitry Orlov has detailed how “Russia excels at building and operating huge energy, transportation and materials production systems” and, in parallel, how “the technosphere…has quietly relocated and is now busy telecommuting between Moscow and Beijing.”

As every geek knows, China is way ahead in 5G and is the world’s top market for chips. And now the Anti-Foreign Sanctions Law – significantly approved right before the G7 in Cornwall – will “safeguard” Chinese companies from “unilateral and discriminatory measures imposed by foreign countries” and the US “long arm jurisdiction”, thus forcing Atlanticist capital to make a choice.

It’s China as a rising global power that in fact has proposed an “alternative” to the Global South in the first place, a counterpunch to the endless IMF/World Bank debt trap of the past decades. BRI is a highly complex sustainable development trade/investment strategy with the potential to integrate vast swathes of the Global South.

That’s a direct connection to Chairman Mao’s famous theory on the division of the Three Worlds ; the emphasis then on the post-colonial Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), of which China was a stalwart, now encompasses the whole Global South. In the end, it’s always about sovereignty against neocolonialism.

B3W is the Western, essentially American, reaction to BRI: try to scotch as many projects as possible while harassing China 24/7 in the process.

Unlike China or Germany, the US hardly manufactures products the Global South wants to buy; manufacturing accounts for only 5% of a US economy essentially propped up by the US dollar as reserve currency and the – dwindling – Pentagon’s Empire of Bases.

China churns out ten top engineers for every US “financial expert”. China has perfected what is known among bilingual tech experts as an effective system to make SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound) development plans – and implement them.

The notion that the Global South will be convinced to privilege B3W – a hollow PR coup at best – over BRI is ludicrous. Yet NATO will be regimented to actively protect those investments that follow “our values”. One thing is certain: there will be blood.

Pepe Escobar is a Brazilian independent geopolitical analyst.

21 June 2021

Source: www.transcend.org

By Jon Schwarz

15 Jun 2021 – Yesterday’s summit showed how the “North Atlantic” Treaty Organization has decided it has an extremely expansive global mission.

In a stop last week on his way to Belgium for Monday’s NATO summit, President Joe Biden visited a Royal Air Force base in eastern England. “In Brussels,” he told the assembled crowd, “I will make it clear that the United States’s commitment to our NATO alliance and Article 5 is rock solid. It’s a sacred obligation that we have under Article 5.”

These lines were aimed at a tiny number of human beings. Certainly almost no Americans have any idea what “Article 5” is part of or what it says.

But Biden’s words were genuinely significant. Article 5 is a clause in the North Atlantic Treaty, the founding document of NATO, which states that any armed attack against any member of the alliance “shall be considered an attack against them all.”

This is at the core of how the U.S. runs the world and intends to keep running it in the future. It also signifies that should we face the prospect of sharing power with others — today that mostly means China — we may end up destroying the world.

The North Atlantic Treaty is also known as the Washington Treaty, which tells you most of what you need to know about it. It was written in 1949, a time when U.S. power was so overweening that it could simply dictate terms to its allies. Most of whatever little discussion there was with other countries’ diplomats took place in secret over two weeks at the Pentagon. It was co-written by the delightfully-named Thomas Achilles, a State Department official who later said his boss had told him, “I don’t care whether entangling alliances have been considered worse than original sin ever since George Washington’s time. We’ve got to negotiate a military alliance with Western Europe in peacetime and we’ve got to do it quickly.”

The public rationale for NATO was that it was a defensive alliance necessary to stop the Soviet Union from invading Western Europe. The private rationale, as articulated by Achilles, was somewhat different:

At that point Western Europe was devastated, prostrate and demoralized and it badly needed confidence and energy within. With the Soviet armies halfway across Europe and still at their full wartime strength and the Communist parties the largest single political elements in France and Italy, something to inspire Soviet respect was equally essential.

Some top U.S. officials did honestly think that the Soviet Union was poised to stage a military attack. Whether that belief had any basis in reality is extremely debatable; about 27 million Russians, or 1 in every 6 people in the country, had just died in World War II. The equivalent for the U.S. today would be 50 million dead Americans. Even Joseph Stalin might have had a tough time motivating the country to immediately embark on another such event.

A more reasonable concern for the American government was a political, rather than military, threat. As Achilles said, there were powerful communist parties across Europe, especially in France and Italy — ones that could plausibly win honest elections. The anti-communist forces in those countries needed the “confidence and energy” of NATO to fight back. Meanwhile, NATO would “inspire Soviet respect” that would hopefully lessen Russian support, material and moral, for Europe’s communist parties.

Something else is notable about NATO’s founding. The original 12 members were Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, the U.K., and the U.S. — in hindsight, something of an all-star league of European colonialism. It’s difficult today not to notice the blindingly alabaster complexion of the officials who signed the treaty. The original version of the treaty even specifies that it applied to any attack on “the Algerian Departments of France.”

A fuller reading of history suggests that the formation of NATO helped intensify and institutionalize the Cold War.

In any case, the architects of NATO would say that they were simply responding to the Cold War, already in progress at the instigation of the Soviets. A fuller reading of history suggests that the formation of NATO helped intensify and institutionalize the Cold War. The Warsaw Pact, after all, was not created until 1955, six years later, and its text is in many ways a replica of that of NATO’s treaty. It even has its own Article 5 language, except it’s in Article 4.

The unstated logic of both NATO and the Warsaw Pact was also the same. Indeed, it’s identical to that of similar alliances for thousands of years going back to the Delian League, founded in 478 B.C. and led by Athens. Providing protection is one key way for powerful countries to bind less powerful ones to them. The U.S. didn’t create NATO because we believed that we’d someday need Luxembourg’s military might to save us, nor did the Soviets come up with the Warsaw Pact because they felt that way about Albania. Rather, both superpowers knew that if they didn’t promise smaller countries protection, the smaller countries would feel compelled to protect themselves — which would lead to them wandering off on their own with their own foreign policies. That’s no way to run a sphere of influence.

NATO worked during the Cold War, both in the sense that there was no Soviet invasion and that the U.S. was able to corral Western Europe into following our instructions most of the time. A smattering of new countries joined during this period: Greece and Turkey in 1952, West Germany in 1955, and Spain in 1982.

Then came the dissolution of the Soviet Union, beginning in the late 1980s. If NATO’s champions were correct, it would have similarly been disbanded, its purported purpose now moot. But NATO’s more skeptical critics, who claimed that it was largely an aggressive instrument of U.S. power, have clearly been proven right by time.

As Mikhail Gorbachev attempted to peacefully dismantle the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact, he sought assurances from the U.S. that NATO would not expand into the areas the Soviets were vacating. James Baker, President George H.W. Bush’s secretary of state, told Gorbachev not once but three times that wouldn’t happen. “Not an inch of NATO’s present military jurisdiction will spread in an eastern direction,” Baker promised.

NATO’s goals have expanded along with its territory.

Instead, in 1999 NATO incorporated the Czech Republic, Poland, and Hungary, a big chunk of what had been the Warsaw Pact. Then in 2004 Bulgaria, Romania, and Slovakia, more of the Warsaw Pact, joined, along with Latvia and Lithuania, which had actually been part of the Soviet Union. Other Eastern European countries followed, bringing NATO’s current membership to 30.

NATO’s goals have expanded along with its territory. The U.S. has found it particularly useful as a way to create legitimacy for wars when the United Nations won’t authorize them, as with the bombing of Serbia in 1999 and Libya in 2011. In both cases, the American government pointed to NATO’s involvement as making the wars “multilateral” — that is, not unilateral acts by the U.S. — even though the U.S. provided the crucial firepower and neither war would have happened if America hadn’t wanted them to.

Russia has greeted these events with the same enthusiasm that the U.S. would if Mexico, Canada, and a newly independent Texas joined a Russian-led military alliance. Of particular concern to Russia is the possibility of Ukraine, another huge chunk of the former Soviet Union, becoming part of NATO.

NATO is also looking farther afield, to the entire planet. It just released “NATO 2030,” which describes an “an ambitious agenda to make sure NATO remains ready, strong and united for a new era of global competition. … NATO needs to adopt a more global approach to tackle global challenges to Atlantic security.” The head of NATO recently discussed this need with Lloyd Austin, the new U.S. secretary of defense.

Oddly, it turns out that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s “Atlantic security” now is largely about China, a country famously located on the Pacific. After Tuesday’s summit, NATO released its formal communiqué, which said, among other things, that “China’s stated ambitions and assertive behaviour present systemic challenges to the rules-based international order and to areas relevant to Alliance security.”

It now seems quite possible that NATO will accomplish in the near future what it did 70 years ago — that is, push countries outside it into their own alliance in what they perceive as necessary self-defense. Thus just as NATO helped create the Cold War then, it’s well on its way to creating a sequel now.

Ominously, there is essentially no discussion about this in the U.S. and Europe. As Biden said, the small number of elites who are involved in these discussions see NATO as “sacred.” Similarly, when advocating for the creation of NATO, then-British Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin said it was necessary for “the salvation of the west.” As strange as it may seem for normal people, NATO is an institution of religious fervor for Western elites and therefore cannot be debated, any more than the Pope is open to debate about the Holy Trinity. And we all know how religions can lead to war.

Jon Schwarz – jon.schwarz@​theintercept.com

21 June 2021

Source: www.transcend.org