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By Glenn Greenwald

24 May 2021 – U.S. and E.U. governments are expressing outrage today over the forced landing by Belarus of a passenger jet flying over its airspace on its way to Lithuania. The Ryanair commercial jet, which took off from Athens and was carrying 171 passengers, was just a few miles from the Lithuanian border when a Belarusian MiG-29 fighter jet ordered the plane to make a U-turn and land in Minsk, the nation’s capital.

On board that Ryanair flight was a leading Belarusian opposition figure, 26-year-old Roman Protasevich, who, fearing arrest, had fled his country in 2019 to live in exile in neighboring Lithuania. The opposition figure had traveled to Athens to attend a conference on economics with Belarus’ primary opposition leader Svetlana Tikhanovskaya and was attempting to return home to Lithuania when the plane was forcibly diverted.

Protasevich, when he was teenager, became a dissident opposed to Belarus’ long-time authoritarian leader Aleksandr Lukashenko, and has only intensified his opposition in recent years. When Lukashenko last year was “re-elected” to his sixth term as president in a sham election, the largest and most sustained anti-Lukashenko protests in years erupted. Protasevich, even while in exile, was a leading oppositional voice, using an anti-Lukashenko channel on Telegram — one of the few remaining outlets dissidents have — to voice criticisms of the regime. For those activities, he was formally charged with various national security crimes, and then, last November, was placed on the official “terrorist list” by Belarus’ intelligence service (still called the “KGB” from its days as a Soviet republic).

Lukashenko’s own press service said the fighter jet was deployed on orders of the leader himself, telling the Ryanair pilot that they believed there was a bomb or other threat to the plane on board. When the plane landed in Minsk, an hours-long search was conducted and found no bomb or any other instrument that could endanger the plane’s safety, and the plane was then permitted to take off and land thirty minutes later at its intended destination in Lithuania. But two passengers were missing. Protasevich was quickly detained after the plane was forced to land in Minsk and is now in a Belarusian jail, where he faces a possible death sentence as a “terrorist” and/or a lengthy prison term for his alleged national security crimes. His girlfriend, traveling with him, was also detained despite facing no charges. Passengers on the flight say Protasevich began panicking when the pilot announced that the plane would land in Minsk, knowing that his fate was sealed and telling other passengers that he faces a death sentence.

Anger over this incident from American and European governments came swiftly and vehemently. “We strongly condemn the Lukashenko regime’s brazen and shocking act to divert a commercial flight and arrest a journalist,” U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken posted on Twitter on Sunday night, adding that U.S. officials “demand an international investigation and are coordinating with our partners on next steps.”

Because the E.U. includes as member states both the departing country of the flight (Greece) and its intended destination (Lithuania), and because Ryanair is based in another E.U. country (Ireland), its officials are expressing similar condemnations. EU Commission head Ursula von der Leyen denounced the forced landing as “outrageous and illegal behavior” and warned it “will have consequences”. The leaders of Lithuania and Ireland demanded serious retaliation and sanctions. It is unclear what retaliatory options are available given the strong international sanctions regime already imposed on Lukashenko and his allies.

There is little doubt that the forced landing of this plane by Belarus, with the clear intention to arrest Protasevich, is illegal under numerous conventions and treaties governing air space. Any forced landing of a jet carries dangers, and safe international air travel would be impossible if countries could force planes flying with permission over their air space to land in order to seize passengers who might be on board. This act by Belarus merits all the condemnation it is receiving.

Yet news accounts in the West which are depicting this incident as some sort of unprecedented assault on legal conventions governing air travel and basic decency observed by law-abiding nations are whitewashing history. Attempts from U.S. officials such as Blinken and E.U. bureaucrats in Brussels to cast the Belarusians’ behavior as some sort of rogue deviation unthinkable for any law-respecting democracy are particularly galling and deceitful.
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In 2013, the U.S. and key E.U. states pioneered the tactic just used by Lukashenko. They did so as part of a failed scheme to detain and arrest the NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. That incident at the time caused global shock and outrage precisely because, eight years ago, it was truly an unprecedented assault on the values and conventions they are now invoking to condemn Belarus.

In July of that year, the democratically elected President of Bolivia, Evo Morales, had traveled to Russia for a routine international conference attended by countries which export natural gas. At the time of Morales’ trip, Edward Snowden was in the middle of a bizarre five-week ordeal where he was stranded in the international transit zone of Sheremetyevo Airport in Moscow, unable to board a flight to leave Russia or exit the airport to enter Russia.

On June 23, Hong Kong officials rejected a demand from the U.S. Government that they arrest Snowden and hand him over to the U.S. Hong Kong was the city Snowden chose to meet the two journalists he had selected (one of whom was me) because of what he regarded as the city’s noble history of fighting against repression and for independence and free expression. When announcing their refusal to hand over Snowden, Hong Kong officials issued a remarkably defiant, even mocking statement explaining that Snowden had been permitted to leave Hong Kong “on his own accord.” That statement also accused the U.S. of having issued a legally improper and inaccurate extradition demand which they were duty-bound to reject, and then pointedly noted that the real crime requiring investigation was U.S. spying on the populations of the rest of the world.

Snowden thus left Hong Kong that day with the intent to fly to Moscow, then immediately board a flight to Cuba, and then proceed to his ultimate destination in a Latin American country — Bolivia or Ecuador — in order to seek asylum there. But even after then-President Barack Obama denied that the U.S. Government would be “wheeling and dealing” in order to get Snowden into U.S. custody — “I’m not going to be scrambling jets to get a 29-year-old hacker,” he dismissively claimed during a June press conference — the U.S. Government was, in reality, doing everything in its power to prevent Snowden from evading the clutches of the U.S. Government.

Led by then-Vice President Joe Biden, U.S. officials warned every country in both Europe and South America said to be considering shelter for Snowden of grave consequences should they offer asylum to the whistleblower. Threats to Havana caused the Cuban government to rescind its commitment of safe passage they had issued to Snowden’s lawyer. Under Biden’s pressure, Ecuador also reversed itself by proclaiming the safe passage document issued to Snowden was a mistake.

And on the day that Snowden had left Hong Kong, the U.S. State Department unilaterally cancelled his passport, which is why, upon landing in Moscow, he was barred from boarding his next international flight, destined for Havana. With the Russian government unable to allow him to board a flight due to his invalidated passport and with Snowden’s asylum requests pending both with Russia and close to two dozen other states, he was forced to remain in the airport until August 1, when Moscow finally granted him temporary asylum. He has lived there ever since. This has always been a staggering irony of the Snowden story: the primary attack on him by U.S. officials to impugn his motives and patriotism is that he lives in Russia and thus likely cooperated with Russian authorities (a claim for which no evidence has ever been presented), when the reality is that Snowden would have left Russia eight years ago after a 30-minute stay in its airport had U.S. officials not used a series of maneuvers that barred him from leaving.

(Obama’s claim to not care much about Snowden was issued at roughly the same time that the U.S. and U.K. governments were engaged in other extreme acts, including sending law enforcement agents into The Guardian‘s London newsroom to force them to physically destroy their computers used to store their copy of the Snowden archive, as well as detaining my husband, David Miranda, under a terrorism law at Heathrow Airport, with the advanced knowledge of the Obama administration).

While in Moscow, President Morales — on July 1, the day before he was scheduled to return to Bolivia — gave an interview to a local Russian outlet in which he said Bolivia would be open to the possibility of granting asylum to Snowden. The next day, Morales boarded Bolivia’s presidential jet to fly back to La Paz as scheduled, with a flight plan that including flying over several E.U. member states — including Austria, France, Spain, Italy and Portugal, as well as Poland and the Czech Republic — with a stop to refuel in Spain’s Canary Islands.

The Bolivian plane flew through Poland and the Czech Republic without incident. But flight records show that while flying over Austria toward France the plane suddenly took a sharp turn to the east, back to the Austrian capital of Vienna, where it made an unscheduled landing. Morales and his entourage were stranded there for twelve hours before re-boarding the plane and flying back to Bolivia.

Bolivian officials immediately announced that in mid-flight, they were told by France, Spain and Italy that their permission to fly over those countries’ air space had been rescinded. Without enough fuel to fly an alternative route, the Bolivian pilot was forced to make a U-turn and land in Vienna. Bolivian officials were told that the reason for the mid-air refusal of these E.U. countries to allow use of their airspace was because of assurances they were given by an unspecified foreign government that Snowden was on the plane with Morales, and that he was traveling because Bolivia had granted him asylum.

After Morales’ plane was forced to land at the Vienna airport, Austrian officials quickly announced that they had searched the plane and determined that Snowden was not on it. While Bolivia denied that they consented to any such search of the presidential plane, Bolivian officials angrily mocked the notion that Snowden would be secretly smuggled by Morales from Russia to Bolivia. The whole time this was happening, Snowden was in Moscow. Needless to say, had Snowden been on Morales’ plane that was forced to land in Vienna, Austrian officials would have instantly detained him and turned him over to the U.S., which had by then issued an international arrest warrant. The only reason Snowden did not suffer the same fate that day as the one Protasevich suffered on Sunday is because he happened not to be on the targeted plane that was forced to make an unscheduled landing in Vienna.

The international outrage toward the E.U. and U.S. over the forced downing of the Bolivian presidential plane poured forth just as swiftly and intensely as the outrage now coming from those states to Belarus. Bolivia’s U.N. Ambassador called it an attempted “kidnapping” — exactly the term which the states he so accused are now using for Belarus. Brazil’s then-President Dilma Rousseff expressed “outrage and condemnation.” Then-Argentine President Cristina Kirchner described the downing of Morales’ plane as the “vestiges of a colonialism that we thought were long over,” adding that it “constitutes not only the humiliation of a sister nation but of all South America.” Even the U.S.-dominated Organization of American States expressed its “deep displeasure with the decision of the aviation authorities of several European countries that denied the use of airspace,” adding that “nothing justifies an act of such lack of respect for the highest authority of a country.”

As the controversy exploded, the key E.U. states tried at first to falsely deny that they played any role in the incident, insisting that they had not closed their airspace to Bolivia’s plane. France had quickly claimed that while it had originally denied use of its airspace to the Bolivian plane while in mid-air, then-President Francois Hollande reversed that decision after he learned Morales was on board. Eventually, though, the French fully admitted the truth: “France has apologised to Bolivia after Paris admitted barring the Bolivian president’s plane from entering French air space because of rumors Edward Snowden was on board.”

Meanwhile, Spain also ended up apologizing to Bolivia. Its then-Foreign Minister cryptically admitted: “They told us they were sure… that he was on board.” Though the Spanish official refused to specify who the “they” was — as if there were any doubts — he acknowledged that the assurances they got that Snowden was on board Morales’ plane was the only reason they took the actions they did to force the plane of the Bolivian leader to land. “The reaction of all the European countries that took measures – whether right or wrong – was because of the information that had been passed on. I couldn’t check if it was true or not at that moment because it was necessary to act straight away,” he said. While denying Spanish authorities had fully “closed” its airspace to Morales, they acknowledged what they called “delays” in approving mid-flight air space rights forced Morales to land in Austria and apologized for this having been handled “inappropriately” by Madrid.

Along with numerous other countries, Bolivia had no doubt about who it was who told all these countries, falsely, that they were certain Snowden was on Morales’ plane and thus demanded it be forced to land. Its defense minister, who was on the plane, left no doubt on this question: “This is a hostile act by the United States State Department which has used various European governments.” The Bolivian foreign minister said that these countries, at the behest of the Obama administration, conspired to “put at risk the life of the president.”

Given that it was only the U.S. which was so desperate to get their hands on Snowden — they had already used Vice President Biden to lead a highly coercive effort to threaten countries with punishment if they gave him asylum — few doubted where this false intelligence originated and who was behind the unprecedented act of forcing a presidential plane to land. Indeed, all of this was so glaringly obvious that not even the U.S. government was willing to deny it.

The duty to answer international questions about this incident was left to the spokesperson for the Obama State Department. At the time, that position was occupied by Jen Psaki, now the Biden White House Press Secretary. As he so often does, the Associated Press’s State Department reporter Matt Lee led the way in relentlessly pressing Psaki, demanding answers to what role the U.S. played in this incident. As she so often does, Psaki did everything possible to refuse even minimal transparency — neither admitting nor denying that the U.S. was behind all of this — yet she nonetheless made critical concessions at the July 3 State Department Press Briefing:

QUESTION: Did the U.S. have any role in encouraging Western European countries to block the flight of the Bolivian President yesterday? Was there any communication between the U.S. and those countries in the affair?

MS. PSAKI: Well, as you know because we’ve talked about it quite a bit in here, the U.S. has been in touch – the United States, I should say, officials – have been in touch with a broad range of countries over the course of the last 10 days. And we haven’t – I haven’t listed those countries; I’m certainly not going to do that today.

Our position on Mr. Snowden has also been crystal clear in terms of what we want to happen, and that message has been communicated both publicly and privately in a range of these conversations we’ve had with countries. And let me just repeat: He’s been accused of leaking classified information. He’s been charged with three felony accounts and should be returned to the United States. I don’t know that any country doesn’t think that that is what the United States would like to happen. . . .

QUESTION: There’s been a great deal of criticism though from Latin American leaders about the decision, not least because Snowden doesn’t appear to have been on board. You don’t sound like you’re denying that there were conversations about this. I mean, they – a number of Latin American leaders today have specifically criticized the U.S. for intervening in a diplomatic flight. Are you – am I right in understanding you’re not denying there were conversations about that?

MS. PSAKI: I’m not going to get into diplomatic conversations that happened over the past 10 days and which countries they were with, but I would point you to the countries that you’re referring to and ask you to ask them about decisions that were made.

QUESTION: But Jen, were you in communication with those countries or alerted to the fact that they would be either – well, not allowing a certain plane to land – the President’s plane?

MS. PSAKI: We have been in contact with a range of countries across the world who had any chance of having Mr. Snowden land or even transit through their countries, but I’m not going to outline when those were or what those countries have been.

QUESTION: Jen —

QUESTION: Why isn’t it unseemly for any country to essentially deny a head of state safe passage through its airspace? Why – regardless of whether Snowden was on that plane, why isn’t that in and of itself patently offensive?

MS. PSAKI: Well, Roz, I would point you to those specific countries to answer that question.

QUESTION: But if the – if a similar situation were to happen involving Air Force One, it would be an international incident.

MS. PSAKI: I’m not getting into a hypothetical. That’s not something that is currently happening that we’re currently discussing. . . .

QUESTION: Can you say whether the United States or whether you are aware that the U.S. Government ever at some point had any information that Snowden might be on this plane?

MS. PSAKI: I’m not aware of – I’m not aware of, but not something I would get into even if I did know. . . .

QUESTION: At the airport, the Austrian authorities searched the plane of Morales. Did the U.S. ask for that?

MS. PSAKI: Again, we – I would point you to all of these individual countries to describe to you what happened and why any various decisions were made.

QUESTION: Did you consult with Austrian authorities when they let the plane touch down, when they let plane go on the ground?

MS. PSAKI: I think my last answer answered that question.

That exchange led to headlines confirming what most had already strongly suspected: “US admits contact with other countries over potential Snowden flights.” As Psaki put it, even while refusing to admit that the U.S. was behind the downing of Morales’ plane: “I don’t know that any country doesn’t think that that is what the United States would like to happen.”

Illustrating how little the U.S. cares about even pretending to abide by the standards it imposes on others, the Biden administration on Monday sent out Psaki herself to condemn Belarus’ conduct as “a shocking act” and “a brazen affront to international freedom and peace and security by the regime.” It would not even occur to Biden officials — just for the sake of appearances if nothing else — to try to find someone to do this other than the same person who, in 2013, obfuscated and defended the actions of the U.S. and E.U. in doing the same thing to Bolivia’s presidential plane. U.S. officials simply do not believe that they are bound by the same standards to which its adversaries must be subjected.

None of what happened with this Morales incident has any bearing on the justifiability of what Belarus did on Sunday. That the U.S. and its E.U. allies committed a dangerous international crime in 2013 does not mitigate the criminal nature of similar actions by Belarus or any other country eight years later. The dangers of forcing down airplanes in order to arrest someone who is suspected to be on that plane are manifest. The danger increases, not decreases, as more countries do it.

But no journalist, especially Western ones, should be publishing articles or broadcasting stories falsely depicting Sunday’s incident as an unprecedented assault that could be perpetrated only by a Russian-allied autocrat. The tactic was pioneered by the very countries who today are most vocally condemning what happened. Any reporting of this story that excludes this vital history and context in favor of a false narrative of this being “unprecedented” — as is true of the vast majority of Western media reports about what Belarus did — does a grave disservice to both journalism and the truth. If it is outrageously dangerous and criminal to force the downing of a plane to arrest the passenger Roman Protasevich, then it must be equally dangerous and criminal to do the same in an attempt to arrest suspected passenger Edward Snowden.

Indeed, the only two differences between these situations that one can locate are factors against the Western nations responsible for the downing of Morales’ plane. Unlike what Belarus did, the U.S. and its European allies obviously had no confirmation of Snowden’s presence on the plane. They forced it to land based on a guess, on rumor, on speculation, which turned out to be utterly false. The second difference is that there are obviously additional international and diplomatic implications from forcing the plane of a democratically elected president to land as opposed to a standard passenger jet: that is, at the very least, a profound attack on the sovereignty of that country. Again, there are no valid justifications for what Belarus did, but to the extent one wants to distinguish its actions from what US/EU nations did in 2013, those are the only identifiable differences.

The blatant double standards the U.S. and Europe have endlessly tried to impose upon the world — whereby they are freely permitted to do exactly what they condemn when done by others — is not just a matter of standard lawlessness and hypocrisy. While there was extensive coverage in the Western press on the downing of Morales’ plane, there was not even a fraction of the media indignation expressed over the actions by their own governments as they are now conveying when the same is done by Belarus. In Western media discourse, only Bad Countries are capable of bad acts; the U.S. and its allies are capable, at worst, only of well-intentioned mistakes. Thus do the exact same actions by each side receive radically different narrative treatment from the Western press corps.

When the U.S. media helps to perpetuate this narrative, it deceives and misleads the audience they purportedly inform by concealing the bad acts of the U.S. and implying if not stating that such acts are the sole province of the Bad Countries who are adverse to the U.S. Doing so both enables rogue nation behavior by Western powers and implants jingoistic propaganda. It is hard to imagine a case where this dynamic is more vividly present than this outpouring of outrage at Belarus for doing exactly that which the U.S. and Europe did to Bolivia in 2013.

Update, May 24, 2021, 12:58 p.m. ET:

This article was edited to include the new comments from White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki about this incident, delivered after original publication of this article.

Glenn Greenwald is one of three co-founding editors of The Intercept. He is a journalist, constitutional lawyer, and author of four New York Times best-selling books on politics and law.

31 May 2021

Source: www.transcend.org

By Richard Falk

The U.S. Is Leading a Coalition of Governments Committed to Democracy and Human Rights or Is It a Geopolitical Alliance?

Biden’s Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, has made U.S. adherence to a ‘rules-based-international-order’ the core of American foreign policy. It is being used as a sword against China, Russia, and some other countries that have antagonized Washington for a variety of reasons. It seems to be an aspect of what Biden must have in mind when he speaks about ‘building back better.’ Of course, part of this new wave of American ‘liberal internationalism’ is to get out from under the dark legacy of chauvinistic nationalism and transactional relations with foreign governments that Trump presidency left behind.

Biden wants in contrast to reaffirm U.S. claims to be a benevolent global leader almost as if he is living in the years after World War II. Trump was as confrontational toward China as Biden/Blinken but he validated his hostile and bombastic diplomacy by exclusive efforts to advance the U.S. policy agenda of self-serving national interests. Implicitly, he was telling American Cold War allies including the European democracies that they would have to pay their fair share if they wanted the American NATO alliance to continue providing for their security. The Biden approach seems willing to buy back global leadership by investing whatever it costs to maintain the American global security system of 800 based around the world, navies in all oceans, and an edge in the distinctive weaponry resulting from innovations in cyber technology, robotics, and AI.

There is some foreign policy overlap between two presidencies; Biden like Trump has conceded that regime-changing interventions and prolonged occupation of a hostile society in the global South has compiled a record of costly failures. Biden’s withdrawal from Afghanistan in a few months, overriding Pentagon warnings, was a sign that there would be fewer ‘forever wars’ in the next few years. A second convergence with the Trumpism is to maintain an inflated military budget and to push foreign arms sales, thus ensuring retaining the dubious distinction of being by far the world’s leading annual spender on military preparedness and the dominant player in the lucrative global market place for weaponry.

Where Biden/Blinken diverges most strikingly from Trump/Pompeo is with respect to ideological and normative claims, relating to solidarity with democracies and a robust commitment to human rights. Even before Biden moved into the White House he made clear that his primary motivation in foreign policy would be to lead the democratically oriented governments in an ideological against the autocrats of the world, a division that promised to be divisive and to risk the second coming of the Cold War division of the world into friends and enemies. Worse than the rivalry with the Soviets, this new conflict patterning risks hot wars and diverts resources and energies at a time when other urgent needs, above all, climate change, deserve to be the focus of security concerns. In this important sense, Biden is living dangerously in a long gone past.

Furthermore, when the signifiers of democracy and human rights are examined critically, it turns out that in practice they are more about hostile propaganda than expressive of coherent commitments to democratic forms of governance or respect for human rights. The distinguishing criterion of diplomatic affinity for Biden is the willingness to be a compliant alliance partner, nothing more, nothing less.

In light of this what are we to make of this diplomatic language that sounds so idealistic? If it is carefully considered even from a sympathetic perspective, it is nothing more than a way of calling attention to normative bipolarity. It draws an imaginary line between democrats and autocrats, with the U.S. and its NATO allies leading the democracies and China and Russia leading the autocracies. In existential terms there are some full-fledged autocrats that are welcomed into the democratic tent despite their autocratic resume—for instance, Modi, Mohammed bin Salmon, Sisi, Bolsonaro, and for that matter Netanyahu.

When Israel flagrantly defied the rule of law in its recent military operation against Gaza the United States used its leverage to block calls for a ceasefire at the UN Security Council and blandly told the world that Israel ‘had the right to defend itself’ overlooking its provocative acts (evictions of Palestinian families from the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood, right-wing settlers marches protect by Israeli police shouting ‘Death to the Arabs,’ and interference with al-Aqsa worshipers at the height of Ramadan), which seemed intended to incite Hamas to attack with its primitive rockets, which would provide Israel with just enough legal cover to launch a massive military operation that caused 20 times the number of civilian deaths in Gaza than were Israelis killed by the Hamas rockets.. It has credibly conjectured that the domestically embattled Netanyahu sought the crisis with the Palestinians as a way to remain in power as the Israeli public has always backed the leadership if Israel was military engaged.

Living in a ‘Rule-Governed International Order’?

Against this background, one would have expected Biden and Blinken at least to couple their enthusiasm for alliance diplomacy with language that indicated respect for international law and support for a stronger United Nations. This is such an obvious oversight that it must be assumed to be deliberate. And it leads us to wonder further what sort of alternative ‘rules-governed international order’ was being put forward. One hypothesis is that Blinken was guilty of a repeated slip of the tongue, and what was intended all along was ‘a ruler governed world’ by ‘guess who?’Diplomatic practice in this early period of the Biden diplomacy makes this reformulation more than a semantic joke.

When it comes to China or Belarus their behavior justifies an opportunistic sounding the alarm due to their alleged failures to abide by the rules of international law. True, China declared an adverse judgment of the Permanent Court of Arbitration a few years with respect to its island resource disputes with the Philippines in the South China Seas. Rather than making China an outlier, such a show of contempt for the decision of an international tribunal makes it seem like it has learned to behave like other members of the geopolitical club. The United States recently flaunted international institutions when it officially repudiated a decision by the International Criminal Court that claimed the legal authority to investigate well-evidenced allegations of U.S. international crimes against humanity in Afghanistan. The reason to emphasize inconsistency in the Blinken claim that they play is to show that the commitment to a rule-based international order is based on moral hypocrisy, and should be perceived for what it is, hostile propaganda.

This pattern of seeing with one eye is even more blatant when it comes to human rights—when the silences scream and the screams are contrived to mobilize hostility. Do we hear from Washington about Duterte’s gangster tactics of governance in the Philippines or the denial of rights to Muslims in India, especially Kashmir? In contrast, the far lesser grievances of the populations of Hong Kong or Tibet become a major concern of Washington and the treatments of the Uyghurs in Xinjiang are inflammatorily portrayed as ‘genocide.’

The compliant Western mainstream media dutifully followed the unwritten guidelines as to erasures and trumpets, while Pentagon planners and think tank militarists urge Congress to increase arms expenditures, and seem to relish prospects of a confrontation in the waters surrounding the Chinese mainland, especially highlighting Chinese threats to the security of Taiwan and U.S. resolve to engage militarily in response. This war-mongering ethos is evident in the call for weapons rather than a plea for avoiding incidents that could lead to uses of force by establishing joint crisis management schemes.

Concluding Remarks

This emphasis on a ‘rules-governed’ world implicitly makes the polemical claim that the United States plays by the rules whereas our adversaries do not. But what can this mean? The United States has projected more deadly force outside its borders than has any state in the course of the last 75 years. It has also intervened repeatedly over the years in disrupting democracies and using its geopolitical prerogatives to block and sanction democratic forms of governance if they refuse U.S. tutelage or display proclivities that can be castigated as ‘socialist.’ The Snowden revelations suggest that the United States has invested more heavily than any government on the planet in developing intrusive surveillance capabilities. The U.S. record of manipulating foreign elections is notorious, and has long been a well-known part of the CIA’s portfolio.

Several conclusions emerge:

• Blinken’s stress on the virtues of a rules-governed world should not be confused with making a U.S. commitment to conduct its foreign policy in accord with international law:
• When this rule-governed language is used to criticize the behavior of others, the misleading claim is implied that the U.S. plays by the rules, but its adversaries don’t;
• Blinken should be pressed to clarify the concept and to explain why he refrains from references to international law and the UN Charter when describing U.S. foreign policy;
• It should be emphasized by foreign diplomats and international jurists that the only legitimate rules-governed international order is international law, even when critical account is taken of its hegemonic record and its selective enforcement. And more progressive civil society initiatives should use international law, where possible, as a counter-hegemonic tool on behalf of global justice.

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Richard Falk is a member of the TRANSCEND Network, an international relations scholar, professor emeritus of international law at Princeton University, Distinguished Research Fellow, Orfalea Center of Global Studies, UCSB, author, co-author or editor of 60 books, and a speaker and activist on world affairs.

31 May 2021

Source: www.transcend.org

By Sonia Qadir & Junaid S. Ahmad

As part of the ongoing Nakba, Israel has once again unleashed its latest reign of terror on Palestine over the past two weeks, in response to resistance by Palestinians against ethnic cleansing of the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood in East Jerusalem (meant to eviscerate both Palestinian social and cultural life from the city). During this time, Israel has razed Gaza’s residential buildings to the ground, bombed its refugee camps and demolished its already crumbling infrastructure.

Israeli tanks and artillery also launched a ground offensive, supposedly “fighting” a civilian population in northern Gaza, which has little ammunition other than pebbles and stones to defend itself with. Within 48’ Palestine (what are now Israeli cities), armed right-wing Israeli mobs, supported by Israeli police, forced their way into Palestinian homes, terrorizing families, and lynched Palestinians on live television. Palestinian businesses have been ransacked. The infamous “administrative detentions” of Palestinians (indefinite imprisonment without a charge or a trial) also began with renewed vigor.

Mainstream Western, and surprisingly at times even Al-Jazeera, have referred to these events as “clashes”, “a conflict” and “a civil-war”. Meanwhile, Palestinians, and those in solidarity with them, have pointed out that this terminology is grotesquely false, and an attempt to create absurd equivalences between an occupied population and its occupiers. Palestinian Australian scholar Lana Tatour, for instance, has argued that the use of the term “civil war” to describe what is taking place within 48’ Palestine obfuscates the racist, settler-colonial nature of the Israeli state and Israeli “citizenship”.

For a majority of ordinary Pakistanis, Palestine has always been an issue close to their hearts. There is a buried history of Pakistanis going to fight alongside the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), and of Pakistani writers and poets penning hundreds of songs of lament against Israeli occupation and its powerful supporters, and in solidarity with Palestinian freedom fighters. One of Yasser Arafat’s closest bodyguards and confidantes was a Pakistani. Large numbers of Palestinian students came to study in Pakistan. In addition, one of Pakistan’s greatest intellectuals, the late Eqbal Ahmad, was one of the closest friends of the most powerful intellectual voice of the Palestinian struggle – the late Edward W. Said. Eqbal was respected not only by Said but also by Yasser Arafat (and the entire leadership of the PLO), so much so that they actively insisted that he become one of their leading advisors, from the first Palestinian intifada onwards.

At the flip end of this coin, is the darker history of Black September. i.e. the 1970 massacre of Palestinians, in which Pakistan’s erstwhile General Zia-ul-Haq (who in 1977 launched a coup in Pakistan and become the military dictator for ten years) collaborated with the Jordanian monarchy in killing Palestinians. As Pakistanis, it is important to acknowledge and condemn this history – to see the face of significant elements of state institutions that would sell-out the oppressed the first opportunity they get, even as they wax lyrical about their commitment to the latter’s liberation.

At the same time, this incident does not undo the commitment that many ordinary Pakistanis have historically expressed, and often practiced, to the Palestinian cause. Unfortunately, the deep connections that were cultivated over decades, slowly died out as the era of third world decolonization and international solidarity withered away. Today, Pakistani ‘civil society’ and popular media have little recollection of involvement in global anti-colonial struggles.

Another important critique that has been made about Pakistan’s politics of solidarity with Palestine, is that here, much like in many other Muslim countries, the commitment to Palestine is due in large part to the issue being framed not only as something of concern for the Muslim ummah, but also as simply emanating from religious differences – or more bluntly, religious animosities. To some, this simply proves the “inherently” anti-Semitic nature of Muslim societies. The often casual anti-Semitism that characterizes public sentiment, commentary by certain analysts and politicians, as well as statements made by right-wing religious groups and parties in Pakistan, is indeed absolutely despicable. It is imperative that we combat it on every level.

Yet recent scholarship has demonstrated that the ‘religionization’ of Zionist colonization of Palestine really only picked up with an avalanche of anti-Semitic sentiments being exported to the Islamicate world from the deeply anti-Semitic Western world itself – in many ways tracing its origins to 1492. It is also worsened by the Israeli State’s own rabid racism and Islamophobia, most glaringly displayed by the military infiltration of the Al Aqsa compound during the month of Ramadan just two weeks ago (and once again at the Friday prayers right after the declaration of the ceasefire).

The scholar Gilbert Achcar, in his book The Arabs and the Holocaust, documents that the orientalist cliché of some inveterate Muslim anti-Semitism is erroneous. Indeed, it was largely in Muslim lands that Jews had felt safe to live for many centuries. It was primarily with the modern settler-colonial and secular nationalist ideology (and praxis) of ethnic cleansing of Arabs embedded in Zionism, as well as the thoroughly developed anti-Semitic ideology of Europe arriving in Muslim lands in the twentieth century; that we begin to see many Muslims join their European counterparts in anti-Jewish racism. A renewed investment in anti-colonial and decolonial struggles then is crucial for us to not only support Palestinian liberation, but also to struggle against anti-Semitism in our own communities.

To this end, it heartening to see the birth of a Palestine Solidarity campaign comprised of many progressive activists, public intellectuals, students and people from all walks of life in Pakistan. Many large and small protests for Palestine have been organized in Pakistan over the last week, and Pakistani mainstream media has reported on the bombardment of Gaza, and the larger issue of Palestinian liberation, with zeal.

Yet one cannot ignore the broader geopolitical juncture at which we stand, or forget that it was only last year that a somewhat different picture seemed to be at play within Pakistan. A number of Arab Muslim countries, most notably the United Arab Emirates (UAE), chose to normalize relations with Israel (finally revealing the open secret of the cozy relationship of the two countries), blatantly ignoring Palestinians’ call for “Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions” of Apartheid Israel. In turn, international pressure grew from the ‘brotherly Muslim countries of the Gulf’ on Pakistan to do the same. This included insidious threats to Islamabad from Riyadh, which under Muhammad Bin Salman (MBS) was very much at the forefront of the push for cementing ties with the Zionist regime.

The threats from MBS to deport Pakistani laborers, to halt oil supplies to Pakistan, to renege on its promised loans, and probably a whole bucket list of other antics that the rather sadistic Saudi Crown Prince could come up with – are in fact regurgitated every time that Islamabad does not prostrate itself completely to Saudi demands. MBS believed he could create enough wedges between Prime Minister Imran Khan who opposed normalizing relations with Israel on the one hand, and the Pakistani military high command on the other, which was keen on the idea, to achieve his goal. This back-dealing between MBS and some of his favored, pliant Pakistani generals also reignited interest on social media in Middle East Eye’s report from back in 2018 (around the same time that Israeli delegations were visiting the UAE and Jordan) of an Israeli plane (or more specifically a private plane that flew from Israel) landing in a Pakistani airbase – claims that were categorically denied by the Pakistani Government.

As the absurd theatrics intensified – obviously funded by the Zionist regimes of the Gulf – it was perhaps no surprise that out of the blue, a number of Pakistani journalists, including prominent establishment-cozy ones such as Kamran Khan of Dunya News and Mubashar Luqman of 24 News HD began discussing the possibility of normalizing relations with Israel. Kamran Khan’s tweet, for instance, declared that, “Nations don’t have permanent friends or enemies, only interests,” and therefore, “Pakistan must also revisit its Israel policy.” Similarly, Moeed Pirzada, a TV anchor and a putative ‘strategic analyst,’ stated on his Youtube channel that Pakistan’s refusal to have any relationship with Israel had depended on (i) Pakistan historically following the lead of Arab countries in order to show its solidarity with the larger Muslim world, (ii) “Israel”, “yahoodi (Jewish)” etc. were “trigger words” in Pakistan akin to Qadiani/Ahmedi and simply played on “emotions.”

Even as he explained that historically Jews and Muslims had amicable relations living side-by-side, he chose to make no distinction between Zionist and Jewish, and between a racist sentiment of Anti-Semitism and a politics of boycotting a brutal, warmongering Israeli settler-colonial state. Now that Arab countries had themselves changed their position, Pirzada argued, it was high time that Pakistan, too, makes a rational calculation and reconsiders its policy towards recognition of Israel.

Perhaps the more shocking, and least remarked upon contribution in this regard came from none other than Dr. Ayesha Siddiqa. A political scientist with a focus on security studies, and the famous author of “Military Inc: Inside Pakistan’s Military Economy,” Dr. Siddiqa is best known for her scathing criticism of the Pakistani military, its interference in politics, and its commercial and economic interests. Importantly, she is not just another International Relations (IR) and Security Studies academic: she identifies as a feminist and has written on the topic; and has a close relationship with many in progressive circles in Pakistan. She has no doubt earned her badge of honor for speaking against human rights abuses in Pakistan, especially where the military in involved – as in when it had engaged in wholesale internal colonization and displacement ventures such as in the Military Farms in Okara. On these matters, Dr. Siddiqa’s work has been laudable.

Yet in an article published in January 2021 on the Indian news site, The Print, Dr. Siddiqa appears to agree that it was in Pakistan’s best interests to recognize Israel. She starts by noting that Saudi Arabia wanted Pakistan to take this step, and that Pakistan’s military was willing to oblige. It was only Prime Minister Imran Khan who had refused, simply because “it would prove politically costly” for him.

The possibility that perhaps there could also be a principled reason for opposing normalizing ties with the Apartheid racist state of Israel seems to have eluded her. She then explains at length what Pakistan could gain from recognizing Israel both in terms of monetary and military aid directly from Israel; as well as diplomatic dividends vis-a-vis India (and a better ability to negotiate with the IMF) through a closer relationship with Israel and the “Jewish” (progressives are of course required to overlook our human rights-loving intellectual’s anti-Semitic language and pretend she simply meant Israeli or Zionist) lobby within the US. She elaborates that Pakistan should have taken this step when it was “more challenging,” i.e., under Trump’s regime when no reciprocal benefits for Palestinians could be negotiated and hence its significance for Israel, and therefore the diplomatic gains for Pakistan, would have been more. Instead, she laments, “Pakistan has certainly missed the moment, yet again.”

She then concludes, in an ever more direct voice, that PM Imran Khan and his party should take ownership of this policy (and ease the country into it); otherwise, if the military goes ahead with it anyway without prior warning, it would “have unpleasant consequences”. This was because Pakistanis have been “educated” that “Zionist-Jews” were Pakistan’s “worst enemies and a major source of all security threats to the country.” Not once does she speak of the lives and horrendous conditions of the Palestinians living under a brutal military occupation, but instead constantly centers the desires and wheeling and dealing of the Gulf states, Israel, the Pakistani PM and Pakistani military high command – all on the backs of the blood, suffering, and dead bodies of Palestinians whose existence she treats here as utterly irrelevant.

Anyone remotely involved in any form of solidarity with Palestinians would be appalled by such a take. The principal cover that Dr. Siddiqa wanted to employ in her defense of the article it seems, is of being an objective IR/Security Studies academic, simply analyzing things as they are. This is perhaps the last refuge of academics beholden to power but masquerading as impartial commentators. One is reminded here of the great American historian Howard Zinn, who, speaking of ostensible scholarly ‘neutrality’ and ‘objectivity,’ had this to say: “Objectivity is neither possible, nor desirable,” and that “You cannot be neutral on a moving train.”

No one should know this better than Dr. Siddiqa herself. One cannot help but wonder whether her commendable passion for exposing injustices was only reserved for the human rights abuses and excesses of the military-industrial complex within Pakistan? Now settled in an academic setting in the UK, does she feel the need to assuage the anxieties of the neoliberal, Eurocentric academy with writings that dare not challenge Zionism?

Over the last two weeks, as even a mainstream American news channel like CNN has been forced to cover the reality of Israeli occupation, it is not surprising perhaps that Dr. Siddiqa and most other analysts, journalists and Pakistani liberals (perhaps finding it untenable not to do so anymore) in addition to more principled progressives, are currently tweeting in support of Palestine. While this is a welcome move, it needs to be noted that Pakistani liberal (as well as conservative) elites failed to show solidarity with Palestine when it was needed most within a Pakistani context, i.e. when the State was close to deciding to build friendly diplomatic relations with Israel – without any commitment to the liberation of Palestine and a fair and just resolution for all Palestinians (as originally promised by Pakistan). Despite her valid penchant for critiquing Pakistan’s military, on the issue of normalizing relations with Israel, Dr. Siddiqa did not have a single word of admonishment for the institution, and instead chose to agree with it.

But why should solidarity with Palestine matter for Pakistanis? Is it simply a cause for bourgeois urbanites with some global awareness, or for the religious right? People from minority communities and those who are engaged in their own struggles of survival and liberation in Pakistan often ask: why invest our energies into solidarity with Palestine and not closer to home? Who will speak of the atrocities being wrought by a twenty-year war in Afghanistan or Waziristan, the internal colonization of Balochistan, the evictions and land theft in Karachi or the cultural and material marginalization of the Seraiki belt?

To answer this, it is imperative to recognize that the struggle for Palestinian liberation is linked to struggles for justice, self-determination and liberation across the world, from Kashmir to Waziristan to Balochistan. While there is an obvious moral imperative here, there is also a significant material reason, one Dr. Siddiqa inadvertently hints at in her article. That is, a crucial reason why certain factions within Pakistan’s military have been keen to normalize relations with Israel is to gain access to Israeli weapons and military technology! Israeli arms manufacturer Elbit Systems for instance sells all kinds of military and surveillance equipment, “field-tested on Palestinians,” to any willing buyer.

Israeli military and police are also infamous for providing training to other militaries and police departments in “counter-terrorism” and “crowd-control” – and have already done this for the US, UK, and countries in Latin America. In plain language, the Zionist state is willing to train security personnel of all fellow repressive states in police and security tactics meant for what Israel knows best: military occupation.

If Pakistan’s military and security forces receive this additional training and equipment, on top of what they already receive from the Unites States and other European countries, where does one reckon it would be used, if not to further suppress the struggles of various communities and social movements within Pakistan itself? It is not hard to see then that the struggle of progressive and liberatory movements in Pakistan have everything to gain and nothing to lose from taking a principled stance against the racist, apartheid, settler-colonial state that is Israel.

In the latest round of the Zionist festival of slaughter in Palestine, it is appreciable that PM Imran Khan bluntly tweeted about the carnage being perpetrated against the Palestinians, especially when most world leaders, including Arab stooges, made tepid statements about de-escalation (and which led Pakistani mainstream media to hail the PM as “the voice of Palestinians internationally” in a rather self-congratulatory manner).

It is also an encouraging development that there has been a powerful display of demonstrations in various cities of Pakistan against Zionist settler colonialism. But it is vital to note that the outpouring of support for Palestine the world over this time, including in Pakistan, has everything to do with how Palestinians have refused to back down in the harshest and most vicious of circumstances, and how they have worked tirelessly to form solidarities with anti-racist movements like Black Lives Matter in the US and Aboriginal rights struggles in Australia.

As the narrative and the sentiment on the ground in a number of Western countries has shifted, and it is no longer “cool” to ignore Palestine, it has also affected opinion among the young and old, progressive and ordinary people in Pakistan. A buried sentiment that always existed, has now returned with renewed anger, disgust, and demonstrations of solidarity.

But ultimately, we must remember: the real voice of Palestine, and the real heroes of this story, are the Palestinians themselves. And we must commit to centering their voices, learning from their struggle, and showing up for them – now and always.

– Sonia Qadir is from Lahore, Pakistan and is a PhD Candidate in Law at the University of New South Wales, Sydney.

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

28 May 2021

Source: palestinechronicle.com

By Bharat Dogra

On May 26 farmers in India observed the completion of six months of their protest dharna (sit-in) at Delhi borders. This was observed as a protest day against the union ( central) government, symbolized by waving of black flags, as the government has all through refused to accept their main demand of taking back three highly controversial farm laws of year 2020. These laws, the protesting farmers have said, move farming in India rapidly towards corporate control while moving away from a system of independent farmers supported by government purchase of farm produce at a fair price. The existing system, they argue further, has enabled India to produce plenty of staple grain (wheat and rice), leaving enough for subsidized public distribution (PDS) as well as nutrition schemes.

These arguments of farmers have received support from a wide section of activists, workers, scholars and most opposition parties. This support is the widest in the so-called green revolution (G.R.) belt of North-West India including Punjab, Haryana and Western Utter Pradesh, fertile areas which received special support of the union government to promote them as granaries of the country by concentrating technology based on abundant irrigation , chemical fertilizers, pesticides and exotic seeds here. From here the protests have travelled to many other parts of the country including Haryana , Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, W.Bengal etc. but the protests remain the strongest in this belt of North-West India ,which is also very influential in political terms.

The protest has been peaceful, strong and resilient, refusing to vacate ground in the face of repression, threats and adverse weather conditions. A significant number of farmers, now called martyrs, have died in the various strenuous activities relating to the movement in conditions of often adverse weather and an ongoing pandemic. In fact if one looks at not just the protest sit-in at the Delhi borders but the various scattered but strong protests which preceded it, then the protests have completed around 10 months or more. In the process, several wider problems of the farmers have also been highlighted and their issues have come more to the centre-stage.

Most farmers in India are small farmers and traditionally their problems related to low incomes and small resource base, the resulting resort to debts taken at exploitative high rates, a cycle of interest payments and debt resulting in mortgage of crops and eventually land in many cases. The response of the government, supported to the extent of even being pushed rather heavily by several important western aid agencies, has been to promote higher yields based on heavy doses of chemical fertilizers and pesticides used on exotic seeds. But this also brought ecological ruin and adversely affected natural fertility based on organic content of soil, also destroying earthworms, other soil organisms and natural pollinators like bees and butterflies on a massive scale, while also hugely increasing repeated expenditure of small, low-resources farmers on expensive external inputs. At the same time as the new technology came, farmers took, or in fact were cajoled to take, new loans for tractors and other farm machinery. While debts of farmers increased hugely, the farm-related businesses of big industrialists increased as never before. Some of the subsidies meant for farmers were in fact given to agribusiness interests.

As debts of farmers increased, the more distressed among them lost their land and status as independent farmers, instead becoming tenants or farm workers, or pushed more towards migrant work. Comparison of census data reveals that farmers have been losing their land at the rate of 100 farmers becoming landless per hour. Today India’s villages on the whole are likely to have more landless ( or almost landless) households compared to land-owning farmer households. This sorry situation has been aggravated by the government increasingly giving more attention to finding land for corporate interests, while going back on its commitments of providing land to landless peasants, which was a fairly strong commitment for the first three decades after independence and had also led to a non-violent campaign by Gandhian activists for obtaining voluntary gifts of land ( bhoodan) for the landless.

Hence despite the much flaunted farm development claims of the government, in reality the costs, debts, tensions and crisis of most farmers have been rising, aggravated by the fact that the support systems provided by the government to lessen the difficulties of the expensive technology can at best reach only a limited number of farmers ( particularly those outside the main green revolution belt may be left out more).

In these conditions the three laws brought by the government with undue hurry in 2020 would have further strengthened corporate control over farming, an ongoing process which has been accelerated by the present government’s excessive closeness to some chosen billionaires, and so the farmers movement has been right in opposing these laws, as confirmed by the support for this demand by several senior scholarly persons, including those with a long and distinguished record of serving in government or government-supported institutions.

However the last six months of the movement have also brought forth some of its limitations. Its main demand of repeal of three laws, as well as other demands of a better price for more crops and some other reliefs, while justified, do not go far enough in the direction of resolving the crisis of farmers and for ensuring longer-term conditions of sustainable livelihoods in conditions of protected environment. There is a compelling need for widespread adoption of those farming methods which protect environment and hence sustainability; which protect soil and conserve water, which protect soil dwelling organisms and pollinators, which reduce costs greatly by reducing external inputs, which make best use of local/ traditional skills and resources, which revive lost good cultivation practices and diversity of traditional seeds, which use mixed farming systems that are mutually supportive of each other, which draw on mutual better help and cooperation among communities. India is a land of many diversities and these practices will be implemented in diverse highly decentralized ways, bringing out the skills and genius of local people, particularly women, in highly creative ways, but the common thread will be to increase environment protection, sustainability and self-help, while reducing costs and debts.

Hence it is important for the farmers’ movement to move in this direction of agro-ecology, and to declare clear opposition to highly disruptive technologies, like those of GM Crops, which conflict with this agro-ecology approach.

In addition it is important to announce more clearly accommodation of welfare of landless rural households, by agreeing to some smaller plots of farmland and kitchen gardens for them, supported by better and more secure employment for them in several schemes of rural development , such as regeneration of forests, pastures, ponds, wetlands and other ecosystems and reclamation of degraded farmland ( such as land spoiled by excessive water and erosion).

All this will be even more useful in times of climate change, as increase of green cover, water conservation and increase of organic content of soil can contribute much to climate change mitigation and adaption. Agro-ecology will also contribute greatly to reducing the use of fossil fuels in farming by drastically cutting dependence on chemical fertilizers, pesticides, diesel etc . Hence farmers who walk this path can hope to get financial help from the international funds that are set up to help the efforts of developing countries in achieving climate change mitigation and adaption.

Hence after six months of admirable, non-violent resistance for rather limited objectives, it is time for the farmers’ movement to take up a much wider and longer-term agenda, which will ensure a much more secure future for all rural households, including the poorest ones, and will get more support at national as well as world level.

Bharat Dogra is a journalist and author who has been close to several social movements.

27 May 2021

Source: countercurrents.org

By Dr Ramzy Baroud

The ‘Palestinian Revolt of 2021’ will go down in history as one of the most influential events that irreversibly shaped collective thinking in and around Palestine. Only two other events can be compared with what has just transpired in Palestine: the revolt of 1936 and the First Intifada of 1987.

The general strike and rebellion of 1936-39 were momentous because they represented the first unmistakable expression of collective Palestinian political agency. Despite their isolation and humble tools of resistance, the Palestinian people rose across Palestine to challenge British and Zionist colonialism, combined.

The Intifada of 1987 was also historic. It was the unprecedented sustainable collective action that unified the occupied West Bank and Gaza after the Israeli occupation of what remained of historic Palestine in 1967. That legendary popular revolt, though costly in blood and sacrifices, allowed Palestinians to regain the political initiative and to, once more, speak as one people.

That Intifada was eventually thwarted after the signing of the Oslo accords in 1993. For Israel, Oslo was a gift from the Palestinian leadership that allowed it to suppress the Intifada and use the then newly invented Palestinian Authority (PA) to serve as a buffer between the Israeli military and occupied, oppressed Palestinians.

Since those years, the history of Palestine has taken on a dismal trajectory, one of disunity, factionalism, political rivalry and, for the privileged few, massive wealth. Nearly four decades have been wasted on a self-defeating political discourse centered on American-Israeli priorities, mostly concerned with ‘Israeli security’ and ‘Palestinian terrorism’.

Old but befitting terminologies such as ‘liberation’, ‘resistance’ and ‘popular struggle’, were replaced with more ‘pragmatic’ language of ‘peace process’, ‘negotiation table’ and ‘shuttle diplomacy’. The Israeli occupation of Palestine, according to this misleading discourse, was depicted as a ‘conflict’ and ‘dispute’, as if basic human rights were the subject of political interpretation.

Predictably, the already powerful Israel became more emboldened, tripling the number of its illegal colonies in the West Bank along with the population of its illegal settlers. Palestine was segmented into tiny, isolated South-African-styled Bantustans, each carrying a code – Areas, A, B, C – and the movement of Palestinians within their own homeland became conditioned on obtaining various colored permits from the Israeli military. Women giving birth at military checkpoints in the West Bank, cancer patients dying in Gaza while waiting for permission to cross to hospitals, and more, became the everyday reality of Palestine and the Palestinians.

With time, the Israeli occupation of Palestine became a marginal issue on the agenda of international diplomacy. Meanwhile, Israel cemented its relationship with numerous countries around the world, including countries in the Southern hemisphere which have historically stood beside Palestine.

Even the international solidarity movement for Palestinian rights became confused and fragmented, itself a direct expression of Palestinian confusion and fragmentation. In the absence of a unified Palestinian voice amid Palestine’s prolonged political feud, many took the liberty of lecturing Palestinians on how to resist, what ‘solutions’ to fight for and how to conduct themselves politically.

It seemed that Israel had finally gained the upper hand and, this time, for good.

Desperate to see Palestinians rise again, many called for a third Intifada. Indeed, for many years, intellectuals and political leaders called for a third Palestinian Intifada, as if the flow of history, in Palestine – or elsewhere – adheres to fixed academic notions or is compelled by the urging of some individual or organization.

The rational answer was, and remains, that only the Palestinian people will determine the nature, scope and direction of their collective action. Popular revolts are not the outcome of wishful thinking but of circumstances, the tipping point of which can only be decided by the people themselves.

May 2021 was that very tipping point. Palestinians rose in unison from Jerusalem to Gaza, to every inch of occupied Palestine, including Palestinian refugee communities throughout the Middle East and, by doing so, they also resolved an impossible political equation. The Palestinian ‘problem’ was no longer that of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem alone, but also of Israeli racism and apartheid which have targeted the Palestinian communities inside Israel. Further, it was also the crisis of leadership and the deep-seated factionalism and political corruption.

When Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, decided on May 8 to unleash the hordes of police and Jewish extremists on Palestinian worshippers at Al-Aqsa Mosque, who were protesting the ethnic cleansing of the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood in East Jerusalem, he was merely attempting to score a few political points among Israel’s most chauvinist right-wing constituencies. He also wanted to remain in power or, at least, to avoid prison as a result of his corruption trial.

He did not anticipate, however, that he was unleashing one of the most historic events in Palestine, one that would ultimately resolve a seemingly impossible Palestinian quandary. True, Netanyahu’s war on Gaza killed hundreds and wounded thousands. The violence he perpetrated in the West Bank and in Arab neighborhoods in Israel killed scores. But, on May 20, it was the Palestinians who claimed victory, as hundreds of thousands of people rushed to the streets to declare their triumph as one unified, proud nation.

Winning and losing wars of national liberation cannot be measured by gruesome comparisons between the number of dead or the degree of destruction inflicted on each side. If this was the case, no colonized nation would have ever won its freedom.

Palestinians won because, once more, they emerged from the rubble of Israeli bombs as a whole, a nation so determined to win its freedom at any cost. This realization was symbolized in the many scenes of Palestinian crowds celebrating while waving the banners of all Palestinian factions, without prejudice and without exception.

Finally, it can unequivocally be asserted that the Palestinian resistance scored a major victory, arguably unprecedented in its proud history. This is the first time that Israel is forced to accept that the rules of the game have changed, likely forever. It is no longer the only party that determines political outcomes in occupied Palestine, because the Palestinian people are finally a force to be reckoned with.

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

27 May 2021

Source: countercurrents.org

By Dr Binoy Kampmark

The Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response was never likely to hand down a rosy report with gobbets of praise. Organised by the World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus last May, the panel’s gloomy assessment was grim: the COVID-19 pandemic could have been avoided.

Almost nothing in the main report could be seen as remarkable in these jaded times. It reads like a sharp vision of looking backwards, a history of folly and stumbles. The protagonist, SARS-CoV-2, proved wily, moving more rapidly than surveillance could detect it, ducking the monitors and seducing the examiners. The rest of the actors in the show proved, to varying degrees, to be inept, indifferent and even callous.

Such attitudes were shared in a climate of prior warning. Humanity has already faced events of mass viral mortality. That there would eventually be a pandemic of this scale was being discussed well ahead of the novel coronavirus march. But governments, planners and policy makers seemed unmoved. When action took place, it was tardy. “Although public health officials, infectious disease experts, and previous international commissions and reviews had warned of potential pandemics and urged robust preparations since the first outbreak of SARS, COVID-19 still took large parts of the world by surprise.”

The WHO itself is not spared a few chastising blows by the panel members. The organisation’s Emergency Committee should have, they argued, declared the outbreak a Public Health Emergency of International Concern a week earlier than it did: on January 22, at its first meeting, rather than January 30, by which time there were already 98 cases in 18 countries outside China. Not doing so also caused critical delays in mustering a global response. “The meeting of the WHO IHR Emergency Committee called to discuss the outbreak on 22-23 January was split on whether to recommend that the outbreak be declared a PHEIC.”

A central theme emerges: communication. And it is rather unsatisfactory. “It is glaringly obvious that February 2020 was a lost month,” the report states. Various Asian countries speedily responded, introducing intense testing and tracking regimes. But the WHO remained tentative. Evidence was weighed, balanced, and considered. Standard and sober as this was, the WHO did not consider convincing material that would prove to be beneficial. One was the importance of wearing masks.

The result: a pandemic that busily infected 150 million people, killed over three million people, and exposed deep inequalities. (Pandemics remain, historically, the great unmaskers.) “Division and inequality between and within countries have been exacerbated, and the impact has been severe on people who are already marginalized and disadvantaged.”

The report, and its authors, are stern in mood. “If travel restrictions,” former New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark and panel co-chair combatively insists, “had been imposed more quickly, more widely, again that would have been a serious inhibition on the rapid transmission of the disease that remains the same today.” Clark, for all the merit of that assertion, ignores the logistical nightmares, hub routes, transit points and freedom of movement principles of such blocs as the European Union.

Not all actors in the COVID-19 disaster show receive a lashing. The conduct of clinicians within the last two weeks of December 2019 and January 2020 receives a nod of approval. They showed “diligence” in noticing “clusters of unusual pneumonia”. They sent samples for screening and “escalated their concerns about this cluster of unexplained disease to local health authorities.”

The panel also makes an assortment of recommendations. They call “for an all-out-effort to reach the world’s population with vaccines within a year and set in place the infrastructure needed for at least 5 billion booster doses annually.” They urge the application of “non-pharmaceutical public health measures systematically and rigorously in every country at the scale the epidemiological situation requires.” High income countries should commit “at least one billion vaccine doses no later than 1 September 2021 and more than two billion doses by mid-2022” through the GAVI COVAX Advance Market Commitment.

The conventional model behind the making of vaccines is also challenged, with the panel insisting on establishing “a truly global end-to-end platform for vaccines, diagnostics, therapeutics, and essential supplies”. Rather than leaving innovation to the market, vaccines and related products should be seen as public goods. Unequal access to such products could be overcome through technology transfer, voluntary licensing and financing of regional manufacturing capacity.

Other suggestions point to a broader, health surveillance system that will not be hostage to national interests and clunky sovereignty. “The emergence of COVID-19,” the report notes, “was characterized by a mix of some early and rapid action, but also by delay, hesitation, and denial”. From this, an epidemic grew; from that, a pandemic. To that end, it was suggested that “surveillance and alert systems at national, regional and global levels must be redesigned”, all should be “able to function at near-instantaneous speed.” The WHO should be given greater powers and a higher budget. Its officials should be permitted access with minimal notice. Many governments are unlikely to agree.

Of some interest is the suggested Global Health Threats Council. Stacked with former presidents and prime ministers of various high-, middle- and low-income countries, it would perform the role of moralising guardian, taking governments to task for not preparing for, or responding to, the public health emergencies as designated by health specialists. Such a body, however, risks becoming a toothless entity with a megaphone.

The panel’s report has a title that sounds much like previous inquiries drawn from despair and destined to be lost: COVID-19: Make it the Last Pandemic. It will be filed in the vault of aspirations along with those noble wars that went wrong with criminal stupidity, the victory by Christmas that never took place, and efforts of failed solidarity in sharing scientific discoveries. “They are trying to grab a moment that everyone knows will pass pretty fast,” suggested Stephen Morrison of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, DC. Global public health responses, sporadic, erratic and politically divided, will do everything to impair any such realisation. Nationalism continues to throb and disrupt. However well contained the novel coronavirus is, another threat to public health will be lurking.

Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge.

27 May 2021

Source: countercurrents.org

By Michael Welch, Richard Falk, Richard Silverstein, and Laith Marouf

“What they need to do is they need to occupy the bases of the Canadian Armed Forces! They need to occupy the military hardware factories! They need to occupy their courts and stop the shipping of these weapons to apartheid Israel! Anything less than that will not actually cleanse them from the blood on their hands as Canadians!”

– Laith Marouf, from this week’s interview

LISTEN TO THE SHOW

The Third Intifada. Israel’s Crimes. Palestine’s Wrath. Ray of Hope?

Click to download the audio (MP3 format)

As of 2:00 am on May 21 by the Israel-Palestine hour this morning, or 7:00pm EDT on Thursday, the two sides of the disputing rivals had ceased hostilities – at least for the time being.[1]

By the standard account, the bitter eruption rose up on May 6 when Palestinians rose up in protest to a Supreme Court of Israel ruling on the matter of evicting six Palestinian families from their housing units in Sheikh Jarrah in East Jerusalem. This was followed the next day by Israeli police storming the Al-Aqsa mosque, the third holiest site in Islam and firing stun grenades, rubber bullets and tear gas at the worshippers in attendance.

Then on May 10, Hamas, the militant force governing over Gaza, wanted Israeli security forces removed from Sheikh Jarrah and the Temple Mount complex, location of the holiest site in Judaism which also housed Al-Aqsa Mosque. When Israel refused they fired rockets on targets in Israel. What followed was a campaign of airstrikes by Israel.

What followed was the most destructive period of violence in years.. [2]

The following clip recorded by Middle East Eye is just a sample of what the last two weeks were like:

Regrettably, violence in the region tends to spring up from time to time. And absent being held to account for past crimes by the UN, Washington, or really anyone, Israel will most likely continue on setting up more shelters on occupied land, and besieging the beleaguered Gaza, and ignoring the human rights of their Palestinian neighbours frankly at levels well beyond the harsh treatment of Blacks in modern day America.

But something is a little different this time. Despite Israel’s ‘Iron Dome’ technology taking out as many as 90 percent of rockets, some projectiles, cruise missiles no less, are punching through and hitting Israel stronger than ever. The Palestinians in Israel are themselves taking action in the streets, in businesses, and synagogues. And even in the United States, while the President continues to disappoint with his tepid remarks about the right of Israel to defend itself, sharp and popular critics in Congress such as Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are speaking out loudly against continuing to arm Israel despite its ongoing abuses against Palestinians.

Do these and other unique scenarios marking this 11 day period of terror mean things will be different now or in the long term? This is the question running through this Global Research News Hour and its sixty minute broadcast.

On the show in our first half hour, Richard Falk, professor emeritus of law at Princeton university talks to listeners highlighting some of the less talked about elements of the past month, including how it was incited by right wing settlers and during the Islamic holy period known as Ramadan. He also discussed attacks on media and the prospects for victory for Palestinians in the long term.

Following that, we hear from Richard Silverstein, a progressive blogger focused on the Israel-Palestine conflict. He will dwell on the growth in Hamas’ arsenal, the growth of Palestinian solidarity in Israel, and the potential ability of the International Criminal Court to wound Israel’s prospects.

Finally, Palestine activist and commentator Laith Marouf joins us again to dwell on the motives of the new Palestinian resistance, the prospects for the conflict to intensify, and the goals of Canadians wishing to show their solidarity with the damaged but determined victims of 73 years of Israeli confrontation.

Richard Falk is an international law and international relations scholar who taught at Princeton University for forty years and holds the title of professor emeritus. In 2008 he was also appointed by the UN to serve a six-year term as the Special Rapporteur on Palestinian human rights. He contributes regularly to Global Research.

Richard Silverstein is a political writer and commentator. Since 2003 he has authored the progressive Jewish blog Tikun Olam, which focuses on exposing the excesses of the Israeli national security state. He contributes regularly to Middle East Eye, and has contributed in the past to Truthout, Alternet, Haaretz, Mint Press News, Jewish Forward, Los Angeles Times, Comment Is Free and Al Jazeera English.

Laith Marouf is a long time multimedia consultant and producer and currently serves as Senior Consultant at the Community Media Advocacy Centre (www.cmacentre.org) and the coordinator of ICTV, in Canada (www.tele1.ca). Laith derives much of his understanding of Middle Eastern Affairs from his ancestral background of being both of Palestinian and of Syrian extraction. He is currently based in Beirut.

(Global Research News Hour Episode 317)

LISTEN TO THE SHOW

Click to download the audio (MP3 format)

The Global Research News Hour airs every Friday at 1pm CT on CKUW 95.9FM out of the University of Winnipeg. The programme is also podcast at globalresearch.ca .

Other stations airing the show:

CIXX 106.9 FM, broadcasting from Fanshawe College in London, Ontario. It airs Sundays at 6am.

WZBC 90.3 FM in Newton Massachusetts is Boston College Radio and broadcasts to the greater Boston area. The Global Research News Hour airs during Truth and Justice Radio which starts Sunday at 6am.

Campus and community radio CFMH 107.3fm in Saint John, N.B. airs the Global Research News Hour Fridays at 7pm.

CJMP 90.1 FM, Powell River Community Radio, airs the Global Research News Hour every Saturday at 8am.

Caper Radio CJBU 107.3FM in Sydney, Cape Breton, Nova Scotia airs the Global Research News Hour starting Wednesday afternoon from 3-4pm.

Cowichan Valley Community Radio CICV 98.7 FM serving the Cowichan Lake area of Vancouver Island, BC airs the program Thursdays at 9am pacific time.

Notes:

www.bbc.com/news/57200843
www.reuters.com/article/us-israel-palestinians-idUSKCN2D12SV

22 May 2021

Source: www.globalresearch.ca

By Countercurrents Collective

An estimated $150 billion of stolen money has been smuggled out of Iraq in corrupt deals since the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, Iraqi President Barham Salih said Sunday.

CNN and The New Arab reports said:

“Of the close to a thousand billion dollars made from oil since 2003, an estimated $150 billion of stolen money has been smuggled out of Iraq,” Salih said in a televised speech.

The statement came as the Iraqi President submitted a draft Corrupt Funds Recovery Act to the Iraqi Parliament.

“The draft law seeks to strengthen the powers of Iraqi nation in order to recover money stolen in corrupt deals, to hold corrupt people accountable and bring them to justice,” according to Salih.

He urged Iraqi lawmakers to discuss and approve the proposed legislation “to help curb this dangerous scourge that has deprived our people of enjoying the wealth of their country for many years.”

Salih said the stolen money would be enough to significantly improve Iraq’s finances.

According to Salih, the legislation would seek to recover the misappropriated funds through the cooperation of other governments and in partnership with international bodies.

“Here I reiterate Iraq’s call, which we have previously issued at the United Nations General Assembly, for the formation of an international coalition to fight corruption along the lines of the international coalition against ISIS,” Salih said.

Salih said the challenge of corruption is no less dangerous than terrorism.

“Terrorism can only be eliminated by draining its sources of funding based on corruption money as a political economy of violent,” Salih added.

Since 2019, hundreds of people have died in violent protests across Iraq against government corruption, unemployment and a lack of basic services, including electricity and clean water, as the country has failed to achieve stability following decades of sanctions and war.

The Biden administration is eying an eventual withdrawal of US troops from Iraq as the country’s security forces grow more capable and the threat of ISIS wanes, the two countries announced in a joint statement in April.

The US currently has some 2,500 troops in Iraq focused on the mission to defeat ISIS as part of Operation Inherent Resolve, the global coalition to defeat what remains of the ISIS caliphate that controlled parts of Iraq and Syria.

The troops have now shifted to training and advisory tasks, “thereby allowing the for the redeployment of any remaining forces from Iraq,” the joint US-Iraq statement said.

Salih presented the draft law to parliament to fight corruption, recover stolen funds and hold perpetrators to account, a statement read.

He called “on parliament to adopt this crucial piece of legislation, in order to curb this pervasive practice that has plagued our great nation.”

Transparency International ranks the country 21st from bottom in its Corruption Perceptions Index.

Endemic corruption was one of the drivers of protests that shook Iraq from October 2019 to June 2020.

“Corruption is an impediment to any nation’s economic and social development,” the Iraqi head of state said, whose powers are limited under the constitution.

Salih said violence and terrorism, which have plagued Iraq for years, “are deeply intertwined with the phenomenon of corruption.”

The draft law targets those who have held positions of director general and above in both government and public companies since the establishment of a new regime in 2004.

Under the law, transactions over $500,000 would be scrutinized as well as bank accounts, particularly those that held over $1 million, and contracts or investments obtained through corruption would be cancelled.

But security and politics expert Fadel Abo Ragheef was skeptical the law would be passed.

“It’s certainly one of the best pieces of legislation proposed by the executive branch since 2003. But will it be adopted? I doubt it,” he told AFP.

“The political parties the lawmakers belong to will act to sabotage it, so it doesn’t pass,” he said.

“In public they will support it, but behind the scenes, they will do everything to prevent its adoption, because many of the politicians are involved in this racket.”

An Iraqi banking source said politicians have smuggled $60 billion out of the country.

However, much of that was via Lebanon, a move now likely to their detriment, as the country is mired in a severe economic crisis, and it is almost impossible to get money out of its banks.

26 May 2021

Source: countercurrents.org

The last few days have been a rollercoaster — let me tell you a bit about it.

Over the past two weeks, like so many people around the world, I couldn’t tear myself away from the terrible violence against Palestinians. I couldn’t stop scrolling through the images and videos of families being massacred by airstrikes, worshippers being attacked in one of the holiest sites for Muslims in the world, children being arrested, entire residential buildings being bombed to the ground, tens of thousands being forced from their homes, hundreds of people killed, and thousands wounded.

Last week in Toronto I organized fellow Jewish community members and allies to stand up with me in solidarity with Palestinians. We felt a need to respond not only to the Israeli government’s militarized violence but also to the Canadian government’s complicity in it — through its diplomatic support, the Canada-Israel arms trade, and allowing the Israeli embassy to go so far as to illegally recruit Canadians to join the Israeli military.

It felt like the type of rare moment where everyone was seeing the horrific violence of a military superpower for what it was and we had to drop everything to take action.

On Friday we gathered outside the Israeli consulate in Toronto and spilled a river of blood (washable paint) from the building’s doors right down to the street. We made the bloodshed from Israel’s brutal occupation, military attacks, and ethnic cleansing in Gaza and across historic Palestine visible right on the consulate’s doorstep.

We knew we had made a powerful statement but we did not expect the deluge of media. Our protest was covered in dozens of local, national, and international outlets, and translated into many languages. In this CTV news article Israel’s Consul General was even forced to go on the defensive and answer to why a river of blood was coming out of her office.

On Friday night an interview with me was broadcast on the evening TV and radio news by Canada’s national public broadcaster. Here’s a clip.

And right when things were starting to calm down on Saturday evening, we found out the Toronto police were pressing charges on Rabbi David Mivasair.

I was honoured to stand beside Rabbi David on the steps of the Israeli consulate on Friday morning as this longtime solidarity activist and member of Independent Jewish Voices powerfully shared how his Judaism is a part of his resistance (watch this clip filmed live at the consulate). The coverage of his arrest has put the story of our solidarity action all over the media again.

We know Rabbi David’s arrest is an attempt to stifle solidarity with Palestine. Help us make sure this backfires by giving the movement for a #FreePalestine even more press! Please share this post on twitter and on facebook.

We’d love to help you organize similarly powerful actions where you are — simply reply to this email to get in touch.

We also need your help to make sure we can continue to take the bold actions like these that push the antiwar movement forward in those key moments where new things are possible.

Actions like what we did on Friday take organizers. They take ongoing skill-building and training with local activists. They take connecting with legal resources, media strategizing, and building our own power so we can take on powerful institutions, be they government, military, or weapons manufacturers.

That’s why I’m asking you to concretely support us now by giving what you can.

As I was quoted saying in this CBC article, “I come to my solidarity with Palestinians very much as a Jewish person, also as a parent and as a human who will not stand by and allow this to happen.” I feel incredibly fortunate to work somewhere where I can bring my full self to my organizing, and also where I can take risks and mobilize others in struggles for justice and against violence — and where I know that my colleagues and the whole World BEYOND War movement has my back.

Thanks for your solidarity and for all that you do.

Rachel Small
Canada Organizer, World BEYOND War

25 May 2021

Source: worldbeyondwar.org

By Sonali Kolhatkar

18 May 2021 – Days after he publicly opposed the waiving of patents for lifesaving COVID-19 vaccines, billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates had a change of heart. He released a statement saying, “No barriers should stand in the way of equitable access to vaccines, including intellectual property, which is why we are supportive of a narrow waiver during the pandemic.” His statement came after President Joe Biden, in a surprising move, and in contrast to his European allies, backed a temporary waiver on COVID-19 vaccine patents. U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai released a statement saying, “extraordinary circumstances… call for extraordinary measures.” Immediately, the big drugmakers’ share prices fell, and they shot back in anger with a litany of dire predictions.

Gates had been singing a different tune just a few weeks earlier, expressing opposition to vaccine patent waivers when he said in an interview, “The thing that’s holding things back in this case is not intellectual property. There’s not like some idle vaccine factory, with regulatory approval, that makes magically safe vaccines.”

Gates’ initial opposition echoes the pharmaceutical industry’s staunch resistance to waiving the intellectual property rights to COVID-19 vaccine technology. In a letter to the Biden administration, members of an industry group called Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) wrote, “Eliminating those protections would undermine the global response to the pandemic, including ongoing effort to tackle new variants, create confusion that could potentially undermine public confidence in vaccine safety, and create a barrier to information sharing.” The signatories added, “Most importantly, eliminating protections would not speed up production.”

Walden Bello, co-founder of the advocacy organization Focus on the Global South and an international adjunct professor at SUNY Binghamton, told me in an interview from Manila, Philippines, that “these arguments are really quite spurious.” Bello had penned an opinion column in the New York Times saying, “A short-term Trips waiver would allow developing nations to quickly ramp up vaccine production and save lives at an affordable cost.”

The demand for vaccine patent waivers originated in October 2020 when the governments of India and South Africa proposed a temporary suspension of the World Trade Organization’s 1995 TRIPS agreement. Now, more than 100 nations support the call. TRIPS stands for the “Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights,” and for years has been a boon to corporations that have manufactured products with the help of public investment and reaped massive profits through the 20-year monopolies that the agreement grants them.

Bello pointed out that even though the U.S.-based vaccine manufacturer Moderna had said it would not enforce its patent on the COVID-19 vaccine, “if others use its patents and its processes, there’s no guarantee. Nobody touches it unless there is an official government waiver. And Moderna knows that, and Pfizer knows that.” Bello’s characterization is not an exaggeration. The United States has been one of the most ardent enforcers of the TRIPS agreement, bringing aggressive cases on behalf of American manufacturers against other governments.

Indeed, Gates, who sees himself as a self-appointed global health leader, has been an ardent supporter of monopolies on vaccine patents. Still, wealthy elites like him know that it is a morally reprehensible position to overtly back profits over public health, and so they have an alternative to sharing know-how: charity. Developing nations need only wait until wealthy countries and corporate boards are done prioritizing themselves before being able to access vaccines and other lifesaving medication and treatments through donations and diplomatic channels.

In his interview with Sky News, Gates said as much. He expressed patronizingly, “some of the rich countries including the U.S. and the UK, even this summer will get to high vaccination levels and that’ll free up so that we’re getting vaccines out to the entire world in late 2021 and through 2022.” In other words, poorer nations must simply wait for the crumbs of the wealthy to fall off their table in order to be fed.

Pharmaceutical companies have also echoed this sentiment, pretending to care about the well-being of billions of people in the Global South and preferring to distribute finished vaccines through COVAX, a World Health Organization initiative. In their letter to President Biden, PhRMA members wrote, “current estimates are that COVID-19 vaccine manufacturers will supply approximately 10 billion doses by the end of 2021, enough to vaccinate the entire current global vaccine eligible population.” Birgitte Markussen, the EU ambassador to the African Union, also said she supports COVAX over a TRIPS waiver. In other words, she and the drugmakers prefer that African nations wait for a handout from wealthier nations rather than be empowered to produce their own lifesaving vaccines. Developing nations know that such offers can easily be revoked or hinged to other conditions.

Western Pharmaceutical companies have also asserted that waiving vaccine patents will strain the supply chain for raw materials. Indeed, in order to mass-produce the new mRNA-based vaccines, raw materials are going to be needed on an unprecedented scale. But if Pfizer and Moderna claim they can produce enough vaccines for the entire world’s population, then clearly there are enough ingredients. What the companies want is a monopoly on the materials, the vaccines, and the resultant profits.

Another spurious argument from billionaires like Gates and pharmaceutical companies against waivers is that sharing vaccine technology will “stifle innovation.” In this neoliberal capitalist worldview, profit-seeking companies are essentially saying they will not strive for excellence unless there is a very large financial carrot dangled in front of them. Only pure market forces, we are led to believe, can spark the best possible innovation in medical technology. Yet it has been massive public spending to the tune of tens of billions of dollars by the governments of the U.S., the EU, Japan, South Korea, and others that fueled the production of COVID-19 vaccines. Similarly, the new mRNA technology on which Pfizer and Moderna based their vaccines was produced through billions of dollars in public investment.

Bello pointed out that a majority of the money that drug manufacturers spend “is going toward marketing, not innovation, and also to executive pay.” He’s right. For example, Pfizer spent nearly twice as much on marketing and sales as it did on research and development in 2019. Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla was rewarded with a $21 million compensation package in 2020—a jump of 17 percent from the year before. Vaccines are a “cash cow” for companies, said Bello. He maintains, “we need to show the real face of these guys. They are robber barons.”

Perhaps the most insulting of all arguments against waivers is the idea that generic vaccines produced in the factories of developing nations could erode public trust in vaccines because of the possibility of counterfeit products or a lowering of quality and standards. “It’s a red herring,” said Bello. He argued that it is deeply condescending “if you say that… Indian or Brazilian manufacturer[s] who have already been through the licensing processes in their own countries will somehow screw up during the manufacturing” of a vaccine. He pointed out that “this is all speculative and it goes against their record where many of these manufacturers have been producing generics for years which are as good [as] if not better than the original brands.”

In 2019, the Serum Institute of India was cited as the world’s “largest producer of affordable vaccines,” combating diseases like measles, rubella, diphtheria, tetanus, H1N1 influenza, polio, and more. To suggest that non-Western vaccine manufacturers would screw up the process of producing COVID-19 vaccines borders on racism.

Furthermore, there have been instances of Western drugmakers making mistakes in manufacturing COVID-19 vaccines, such as the Baltimore-based plant run by Emergent BioSolutions, which has partnered with Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca and which contaminated 15 million vaccine doses because of “human error.” Another 62 million doses that were produced at the same plant, were, according to the New York Times, “in jeopardy until it can be determined whether they were also contaminated.” Almost 12,000 doses of Moderna vaccine were thought to be compromised while en route to Michigan in January because the shipping company McKesson stored them at the wrong temperature. Ultimately, the government regulatory processes in place in the U.S. ensured that such screw-ups did not impact the public, and there is no reason to suggest the same would not be true in developing nations with a long history of creating and distributing other vaccines.

Bello welcomed President Joe Biden’s decision to back a TRIPS waiver for COVID-19 vaccines, saying he “did the right thing.” But the WTO still has to either come to a consensus or, if need be, vote on the TRIPS waiver. The task has become politically easier with the U.S. on board. And even if the waiver comes through, it will only be the first step before developing nations can begin manufacturing generic vaccines.

Bello rightly pointed out, “you’re running out of time. You have to start right now. The industry people are just creating all of this nonsense in order to hold on to their cash cows, which are the patents, and the processes of manufacturing.” In the meantime, hundreds of thousands of lives are at risk in the Global South as Western nations are reaching stability via mass vaccinations.

Sonali Kolhatkar is the founder, host and executive producer of “Rising Up With Sonali,” a television and radio show that airs on Free Speech TV and Pacifica stations.

24 May 2021

Source: www.transcend.org