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By Jon Queally

President Donald Trump realized the fears of many political observers Tuesday night by falsely claiming a “big win” in the U.S. presidential election despite many millions of votes yet to be counted and no clear victor even remotely in sight.

With the battle over crucial electoral college votes still potentially days or even weeks away—and just after Democratic nominee Joe Biden spoke to the nation in a televised address to urge patience for official results—Trump, just before 1:00 am ET, tweeted he would be “making a statement tonight” and then called it “a big WIN!”

Moments later, Trump falsely stated “We are up BIG”—even though at the time both the Associated Press and New York Times election desks had Biden up 213 to 174 in their electoral college projections. Trump then unleashed another lie, stating that the Democrats “are trying to STEAL the Election. We will never let them do it. Votes cannot be cast after the Polls are closed!”

Twitter immediately slapped a message on the Trump tweets warning that they contained overt misinformation, stating: “Some or all of the content shared in this Tweet is disputed and might be misleading about an election or other civic process.” In order for viewers to see the tweets, they would have to click through the warning.”

Firing back against Trump’s brazen misinformation, Biden himself tweeted: “It’s not my place or Donald Trump’s place to declare the winner of this election. It’s the voters’ place.”

In his earlier speech, Biden urged the nation to remain “patient” as all the votes are counted, but added that he was “optimistic about the outcome.”

“We believe we are on track to win this election,” Biden told supporters from his home city of Wilmington, Delaware. “It ain’t over until every vote is counted,” he said.

Trump emerged to supporters after 2:00 pm ET inside the East Room of the White House where he again falsely claimed victory in the election and lied repeatedly by equating the counting of votes with an effort by Democrats to steal the election.

“This is a fraud on the American public,” Trump asserted, with no evidence whatsoever to support such a claim. “This is an embarrassment to our country,” he continued. “We were getting ready to win this election—frankly, we did win this election.”

The president continued by saying his campaign’s “goal now is to ensure—for the good of this nation, and this is a very big moment—this is a major fraud in our nation. We want the law to be used in the proper manner. So we’ll be going to the U.S. Supreme Court.”

“We want all voting to stop,” Trump continued, though of course since polls closed in states on Tuesday evening, all voting has already ended. Trump then bizarrely claimed that phantom ballots might somehow appear “at four o’clock in the morning” that would be “added to the list,” apparently by Democrats.

“As far I’m concerned,” Trump said, “we already have won it.”

George Goehl, director of the progressive advocacy group People’s Action, was among those issuing immediate rebuke to any effort by Trump or the Republican Party to steal the election or misinform the American people before the tally of every vote is complete.

“Count every vote, no matter how long it takes,” said Goehl. “Democracy includes us all. Anyone running for office can say whatever they want to, but it’s the will of the voters that decides. Donald Trump and Republicans know they’re losing and like any cowards would, are doing everything they can to try and steal this election and block our votes and voices. The voters will decide our next president. And once every single vote is counted, the will of the people will be overwhelmingly clear.”

While progressives and pro-democracy watchdogs for weeks have warned that Trump would try pull such shenanigans on Election Night, in the end it played out much as many reported and predicted it might.

“You are as predictable as you are corrupt,” tweeted progressive organizer Kai Newkirk in response to the president’s tweet. “All the votes have been cast already. Now they just have to be counted. This is a democratic republic—not a dictatorship. And We the People intend to keep it. Every vote will be counted.”

Linda Sarsour, co-founder of the advocacy group M Power Change, said Trump’s efforts to subvert the election results would not be tolerated for even one moment.

“We must count every single vote—period,” Sarsour said in a statement late Tuesday night. “We must count every vote, and prepare for what’s coming. This is a crucial moment to defend democracy from fascism at home. We are committed to making sure every vote is counted, whether that means us hitting the streets, taking part in massive nonviolent civil disobedience, or showing up in Washington, D.C. ourselves.”

Originally published by CommonDreams

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4 November 2020

Source: countercurrents.org

By David Davidian

Every state makes decisions and enacts policies based on its interests and security perceptions. Some state decisions are more insidious than others in that the secondary effects can be devastating, especially by those states that can project sovereignty outside their own borders.

Undoubtedly, Israel’s decision to create a relationship with Azerbaijan was a well-thought-out process. Not that Israel has any long-term stratagem with Azerbaijan, but Azerbaijan having a border with Iran speaks for itself. Azerbaijan’s horrid human rights record, its oligarchic ruling structure, and money-laundering propensity culminated with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev being awarded the moniker “Corrupt Person of the Year.”

Regardless, Azerbaijan is the only state bordering Iran that Israel found compliant enough with whom to create an alliance of convenience. Azerbaijan doesn’t even have an embassy in Israel, yet both engage in trade in the billions of dollars. An embassy in Israel would not be welcomed by either Iran or a wide swath of Azerbaijani society. While no public documents exist detailing what synergistic relations exist between Azerbaijan and Israel, Aliyev described the relationship, “like an iceberg, nine-tenths … below the surface”. Over the past decade, Azerbaijan received well over an estimated six billion dollars (five billion as of the end of 2017) of Israeli high-technology weaponry. Israel receives about half of its crude oil supply from Azerbaijan. The same reference notes many military air flights occurring between Israel and Azerbaijan since the start of the war Azerbaijan inflicted on the Armenians.

So, suppose Israel wants a facility on Iran’s border to gather intelligence on Iran, or further, airbases with the ability to launch a strike on Iran without having to refuel its fighter jets. In that case, it has to give something to Azerbaijan in return. When asked about Israel’s activity in Azerbaijan during an interview on Russian TV, Yaakov Kedmi, the former Head of the Israel Defense Forces Program “Nativ” and, now a military and political expert, said, “I will answer carefully. There were reports in the Western media that very often drones flying from Azerbaijan fly over Iran. These are not Turkish drones. And for a reason, not out of love for aeronautics, Azerbaijan allows drones from Luxembourg to use Azerbaijan to fly over Iran,” Kedmi smiled as Luxembourg is the metaphor for Israel. Azerbaijan allows “Luxembourg’s” UAVs to fly over Iran, and in return, Azerbaijan is sold military hardware that it has clearly stated would be used to kill Armenians. In the current Azerbaijani offensive to capture Nagorno-Karabakh, Israeli-manufactured cluster bombs were used by Azerbaijan. It is still unclear where Azerbaijan purchased outlawed white phosphorus bombs that it has begun raining over Armenian Karabakh. Yet we know who manufactures them.

As reported in the Israeli media, Israel has access to at least one former Soviet airbase in Azerbaijan. The English-language version of this Israeli-media report is slightly different from the original Hebrew and refers to several Azerbaijani bases made available to Israel. In Figure 1, the pink balloon “A” is a former Soviet airbase in Sitalchay, Azerbaijan. Figure 2 is a satellite image with a caption claiming Sitalchay could be an Israeli base. Of course, publicly available documents that confirm any of this don’t exist.

Quoting Haaretz, in 2012,

“U.S. officials told Foreign Policy that they believe Israel has been granted access to these air bases through a “series of quiet political and military understandings. I doubt that there’s actually anything in writing,” said a former U.S. diplomat who spent his career in the region. “But I don’t think there’s any doubt – if Israeli jets want to land in Azerbaijan after an attack, they’d probably be allowed to do so. Israel is deeply embedded in Azerbaijan, and has been for the last two decades.”

As expected, Azerbaijan denies any of this.

Just as it was in Israel’s interest to covertly (Iran-Contra) sell arms to Iran during Iran’s battle with Saddam Husayn’s Iraq, Azerbaijan and Israel cooperate as their varied interests complement each other. Israel requires surveillance of and staging grounds for any potential offensive against Iran. Azerbaijan needs state-of-the-art offensive military weaponry from Israel. During September 2015, in one of many visits to Baku, Azerbaijan by Israeli Knesset members, the chairman of the parliamentary security commission Oren Khazan and the head of the Safadi International Diplomatic Center, Israeli politician Mendi Safadi brought a package of proposals to fight the Armenian lobby. Safadi stated, “I have always been on the side of Azerbaijan, and we are ready to provide protection and assistance to the Azerbaijani side in neutralizing the influence of the Armenian lobby in the U.S. Congress, EU structures and international organizations.” From this point on, an organized anti-Armenian media and political campaign strengthened.

Israeli policymakers had to weigh the potential benefits of a covert agreement with Azerbaijan that factored in billions of dollars-worth of arms sales, a crude oil supplier, and a base of operations against Iran versus any potential off-setting benefits that would take into account Armenia’s current status. Armenia lost. Could Israel have stipulated that its weapons sold to Azerbaijan could not be used against Armenia? It could have, but Azerbaijan would reject such conditions. Israeli calculations put Armenians and ethical matters at the bottom of the priority pile.

Israel has seen the usefulness of Turkey’s expansionist neo-Ottoman policy. Turkey itself and its use of Islamic jihadists against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad serves an Israeli goal of sending Syria decades back in development. Turkey’s Erdogan makes many anti-Israeli claims, including that Jerusalem is Turkey’s, but Israeli-Turkish trade has not suffered; instead, it has expanded.

Israel’s policymakers could see the writing on the wall after Azerbaijan demonstrated its military incompetence during last July’s border flare-up with Armenia. Immediately, Turkey took the initiative and engaged in substantial war games with Azerbaijan, keeping an unknown amount of material and advisors on the ground. On September 27, Azerbaijan began its most massive offensive against Nagorno-Karabakh and its indigenous Armenian population. Some Israelis pronounced support for Armenia; most others did not.

Some Israelis and agents of Israel still claim that Armenia supports Iran or visa-versa. Yet trade between Iran and Azerbaijan has expanded to well over twice that of Armenia’s and Iran’s. In any event, just as Erdogan claims Jerusalem, talk is cheap. Israeli arms and Turkish-Azerbaijani-Israeli-sponsored PR are destroying Nagorno-Karabakh and its people. The silly arguments that “guns don’t kill people, people do,” also breaks down as quickly as guns intercepted in tunnels under Gaza.

Erdogan’s lip service to the Palestinian Cause while discriminating against them is one thing, while his claim made on July 14, 2020, that “we will continue to fulfill this mission, which our grandfathers have carried out for centuries, in the Caucasus again,” is something else. Erdogan’s outburst is a reference to the Turkish genocide of the Armenians. Turkish arms and soldiers are killing Armenian civilians and not just military personnel. Turkey’s import of Islamic Jihadists from Syria and Libya into Azerbaijan are decimating Armenians with Israeli weapons and communications gear.

Without Turkey and its imported Jihadist thugs, Azerbaijan would never have attacked Nagorno-Karabakh, thus defining the limits of its sovereignty. Does Israel hope Turkey militarily penetrates the Caucasus, both cutting off Russia and perhaps fomenting an Azerbaijani-speaking Iran insurrection in Iran’s northwest? Perhaps.

Aliyev thought his blitzkrieg on the Armenians would be over in less than a week, yet the attempted Azeribaijani incursion has dragged into its fifth week. The Turks planned for at most two months of attacks. Perhaps with the Armenians fighting for their very existence, the result will be a government collapse in Azerbaijan. Sun Tzu, the renowned author of The Art of War, wrote, “There is no instance of a country having benefited from prolonged warfare.”

We might never know if Israel is directly providing intelligence to Azerbaijan in its war against the Armenians. The truth will eventually be revealed, as such secrets are the most fleeting.

In 1992, when I was an avid user of an early version of social media (the term hadn’t been invented yet) called UseNet, I was approached by an ex-coworker who was the chairperson of a local Zionist Council, just west of Boston, MA. I was asked why I still posted eyewitness accounts of Azerbaijani pogroms against Armenians in Soviet Azerbaijan that occurred two years earlier. I found this question odd and the tone arrogant, considering that we both spent much of our free time at work discussing common aspects of the Holocaust and the Turkish genocide of the Armenians. I told this person I was informing the world about what was happening to my people, just the way I thought she wished the world knew about what was happening to her people in Poland during WWII. In response, I was told that my postings had a harmful impact on Azerbaijan, which was developing a relationship with Israel. What was a friendship between us, in one phone call, degenerated into “we both will go our separate ways.” A rather foreshadowing incident.

David Davidian (Lecturer at the American University of Armenia. He has spent over a decade in technical intelligence analysis at major high technology firms. He resides in Yerevan, Armenia).

4 November 2020

Source: countercurrents.org

By Bharat Dogra

Our children and their children’s grandchildren have the right to hold us to a high standard of accountability when their future—and maybe their survival—is hanging in the balance. They too deserve something more than a generation of political leaders who look at the greatest challenge humankind has ever faced and then sit on their hands.

– Human Development Report

As the survival crisis of our planet reaches a critical stage, increasingly the most important task just now is to protect the basic life-nurturing conditions of earth for future generations. This task has to be accomplished within a framework of justice, peace and democracy.

We all care deeply for our children. So imagine how high should be the concern of parents who have come to know that their small children, when they grow towards teenage and youth years, are likely to face some very serious life-endangering threats? Surely they should give up everything else to try to do what they can to eliminate these threats, or reduce them as much as possible.

But the reality today is that millions and millions of parents know that their children will be facing such threats in the next two or three decades (as well as beyond this) and yet the potential of the combined strength of these millions and millions of parents is somehow not being realised to check the serious threats which await these children in the next few decades.

This is extremely sad, and will prove very costly. There needs to be much greater realisation of the enormity of the very serious threats and hazards we face and our children are likely to face more than us. These threats are so serious that these can be called a survival crisis.

To understand the very critical times through which all inhabitants of planet earth are passing, the concept of a survival crisis is of crucial importance. Briefly, this concept refers to a range of serious problems which taken together can badly disrupt the special life-nurturing conditions of earth due to which such a wide diversity of life has flourished here. This disruption can take place within the 21st century, in fact as early as within the next few decades. Several very senior scientists have argued along these lines in several statements in recent times.

The serious problems which constitute the survival crisis include nuclear weapons, other weapons of mass destruction including robot or AI weapons, climate change, ocean acidification, freshwater crisis, air pollution , disruption of food safety and around half a dozen other serious environmental and safety problems. Most discussion on these dozen or so survival problems takes place in isolation from each other but in the practical world we are more likely to face the combined threat of several of them taken together, increasing the risks .

From the point of view of the welfare of all living beings on earth this survival crisis constituted by all these problems taken together is clearly the most important issue. This is true for this generation but this is even more true regarding the welfare of future generations, our children and grandchildren as well as the next generations of other life-forms.

The present world leadership and international institutions have miserably failed to find timely and credible solutions for this survival crisis taken as a whole. There are several statements by leading scientists, experts and statesmen testifying to this. In fact some of the problems which constitute the survival crisis have worsened rapidly in the recent past.

Where then can we find hope? In my recent books on these issues titled Survival Crisis–Planet in Peril; People’s Response the Only Way Forward (Vitasta Publishers, Delhi), and One Decade to Protect Life (Published by our own cottage scale publishing effort called Social Change Papers, Delhi) I have argued that the greatest importance must now be accorded at world level to finding solutions for the survival crisis within the framework of justice, democracy and peace. While very significant reforms in governance at world level are needed to find and implement solutions which work, these can come only if there is a great resurgence of people’s movements at the grassroots and a yearning for social values in tune with the big challenges ahead. More specifically I have suggested the coming together of the movements of justice (including gender justice), peace, environment protection, democracy and sincere spirituality to make it possible for people to respond adequately to the challenges ahead. It is tough, it is possible.

A very encouraging recent development has been that a large number of school students started coming out in many countries to protest against lack of adequate action to check climate change. Thousands of scientists and researchers issued statements supporting these children.

This inspired me to write two new books in which I took forward the concerns of my previous books but with more focus on specific solutions which can create a safer future for the generations to come. The first book is appropriately titled ‘Protecting Earth for Children – Crucial Role of New Decade’ while the second, smaller companion book is titled ‘Earth Without Borders – One World for Protecting All.” (both published by Social Change Papers). A Gandhian perspective on such issues was provided in another book ‘Man Over Machine’ (Vitasta). This was followed by a Hindi book which brought together the concerns of all these books written in English (Dharti Ki Raksha Ke Liye Nirnayak Hoga Agla Dashak, Social Change papers).

One particular idea which I advocate very strongly in some of these books and on which I have been campaigning in recent times is to declare the decade of 2021-31 as the Decade of Saving Earth at the world level. This is the most immediate demand at present of the ‘Save the Earth Campaign with SED Demand ( Demand for declaring next ten years as the decade for saving earth’ which I am co-ordinating. This will help to focus attention on the most urgent tasks of resolving the survival crisis issues within a framework of justice,peace and democracy. (Campaign statement can be seen at bharatdogra.in)

Bharat Dogra is a freelance journalist who has been involved with several social movements.

3 November 2020

Source: countercurrents.org

The European Muslim Network is deeply saddened by the recent terrorist attacks in France and Vienna, which have cost precious lives and caused fear and terror. At the same time, we do mourn the loss of precious lives in the Afghan capital of Kabul, where at least 42 students were murdered in an attack that was nurtured by the same anti-Islamic ideology which brought about the terror in European cities. Terrorists have no religion, they hate and betray all religious beliefs. The background of these incidents need to be fully investigated and those responsible for these acts of gross inhumanity must be met with the full force of the law. At the same time, the EMN is concerned about the recent hike of Islamophobic statements from key political figures aimed at the Muslim communities, especially in France. In times of societal tensions and populistic threats, we believe that a compassionate approach is the only way forward for true unity. We do welcome the statement of Austria’s chancellor Kurz who stated that the terrorist attack does not constitute a battle between Christians and Muslims but a battle between the vast majority of human beings who believe in Peace and the few who desire War. It is our hope that his statement after the horrendous attack in Vienna will translate into a modern and inclusive understanding of WE not only in Austria but also in the whole of Europe.

By Yanis Iqbal

The Bolivarian-socialist project in Venezuela is in a critical conjuncture. External imperialist aggressions – spearheaded by the US – are continuously growing in their magnitude. Importers of Venezuelan crude including India’s Reliance Industries Ltd, Spain’s Repsol SA and Italy’s Eni SpA have skipped oil purchases in October 2020. The three companies took a combined 9.7 million barrels in September 2020, accounting for more than half of that month’s exports.

Their decision to steer clear of Venezuelan oil is a direct result of a hostile atmosphere created against the Latin American country. The US administration is moving to set an October deadline for winding down all trade of Venezuelan oil, including swaps and payments of pending debt with crude. Till now, exemptions to US sanctions allowed a handful of European and Asian customers to continue taking Venezuelan oil under specific authorizations granted in 2019 by the US Treasury for transactions that do not involve cash payments to Maduro’s administration. With the further stiffening of sanctions, the collapse of Venezuela’s entire economic base would accelerate, leading to the tightening of the imperialist noose around common citizens.

Washington war-mongers are least bothered about the grave impacts of sanctions on Venezuela and are in fact, rejoicing about the destructive capacity of sanctions. In September 2020, Elliot Abrams, US Special Representative for Iran and Venezuela, said that Washington “will not hesitate to apply the full force of U.S. sanctions” on Maduro’s socialist administration. He further praised US sanctions as “increasingly effective” in economically suffocating the Venezuelan government, adding that Washington “appreciates the cooperation” of oil corporations. With people like Abrams in charge of USA’s foreign policy towards Venezuela, it is not hard to conceive that the American empire’s imperialist offensive will keep on accelerating.

Hybrid Warfare

USA’s hybrid warfare against Venezuela – consisting of Executive Orders, oil and trade embargoes, official designations from the United States Department of Treasury and unconventional military activities – is intensifying as the latter’s December 2020 parliamentary elections near. The Venezuelan opposition (which is already unpopular among Venezuelans due to its unashamed support for sanctions and military intervention) is rife with internal divisions and it is unlikely whether an American stooge would get to replace the Chavista administration. One of the main divisions in the opposition is between those who are calling for the boycott of the upcoming elections (self-declared president Juan Guaidó and a group of opposition parties) and those who are considering participating in the parliamentary elections (Henrique Capriles, Iván Stalin González and Henri Falcón).

There are also divisions among the sector calling for boycotts, as is the case between Guaidó and María Corina Machado, the latter questioning the role played by the former throughout 2019 when his coup strategy against the Chavista president Nicolas Maduro failed. In another indication of the fragmented nature of the Guido-headed faction, the Venezuelan opposition leader Leopoldo López, who had been staying at the Spanish embassy since the failed coup he attempted in April 2019, fled Venezuela on 25 October, 2020. Descending from one of Venezuela’s wealthiest families, Lopez played a leading role in the 2014 violent street protests which left 43 people dead.

In order to perpetuate a condition of suspended catastrophe and use it to target Maduro, the US is using a tactic of multiform aggression. On 22 September, 2020, USA sanctioned five leaders of local opposition parties in an attempt to pressure them to pull out of the election in December. According to the US Department of Treasury, the politicians from the Venezuelan opposition “have acted as part of a broader scheme to manipulate parliamentary elections taking place in December 2020 by placing control of Venezuela’s opposition parties in the hands of politicians affiliated with Nicolas Maduro’s regime, undermining any credible opposition challenge to that regime.” In this statement, we can comprehend the desperation with which Washington strategists have been stung. Unable to topple Maduro’s government with the help of the coup-mongering faction of the internal opposition, they are now attempting to sabotage the non-abstentionist bloc which – through its act of electoral participation – will recognize Maduro’s administration and erode the state of disequilibrium promoted by USA.

In an October 2020 report authored by Joseph M. Humire, – a writer for the Atlantic Council (a think tank that has participated in every political and military crime of US imperialism over the past half-century) who served in the US Marine Corps during its full-blown war on Iraq and Middle East – the discursive component of USA’s multi-faceted assault on Venezuela is put on full display. The report discusses the so-called “Maduro-Hezbollah Nexus” and attempts to prepare an ideological background for the sustained strangulation of Venezuela. In an exceedingly hawkish tone, the report states: “Hezbollah has helped the Maduro regime become the central hub for the convergence of transnational organized crime and international terrorism in the Western Hemisphere…In order to neutralize the threat, the United States must engage in a counter-threat network approach that equally attacks convergence points throughout the world from which Iran, Hezbollah, and the Maduro regime benefit.” Here, we can see the attempts made by imperialists to justify USA’s aggressions against Venezuela by using the traditional narrative of “War on Terror”. With the help of this narrative, the American empire would get the opportunity to ideologically adorn its hybrid war against Venezuela in the trumpery of a counter-terror operation aiming at the supposed restoration of democracy at gunpoint.

America’s Strong-arm Tactics

In April 2002, the US imperialists cooperated with the Venezuelan oligarchy in a failed coup against socialist president Hugo Chavez. The 48-hour President Pedro Carmona – a national business leader – had promptly issued a decree doing away with 49 pieces of social legislation, suspending the Supreme Court, the Chavez National Assembly, dismissing governors, etc. Chávez soon returned following a powerful struggle waged by working class citizens and soldiers who were loyal to him. In the post-coup period, the opposition initially paralyzed the economy with a strike, and thereafter sought to remove Chávez through a recall referendum. The referendum occurred, but Chávez prevailed and later won the 2006 presidential elections.

The recall referendum and 2006 presidential elections in Venezuela were not entirely free from imperialist influence. During those times, strategized attempts were made by USA to perforate Chavez’s socialist hegemony. In a diplomatic cable, Ambassador Brownfield described US Agency for International Development (USAID)’s Office for Transition Initiatives (OTI) country‐wide strategy “to guide embassy activities in Venezuela for the period … specifically, from the referendum to the 2006 presidential elections,” which included “1) Strengthening Democratic Institutions, 2) Penetrating Chavez’ Political Base, 3) Dividing Chavismo, 4) Protecting Vital US business, and 5) Isolating Chavez internationally”. In the current period, one is witnessing the replication of such a strategy as the US tries to reverse the gains made by the working class under the Chavista administration through hybrid warfare strategies.

On 19 September, 2020, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro said that authorities had detained Matthew John Heath, a former United States Marine and CIA operative, in the northwestern state of Falcon. The detainee is a former marine who served as a communications operator in a “secret CIA base” in Iraq for ten years between 2006 and 2016, where he was hired by private security firm MVM. MVM was founded by a former US Secret Service agent and continues to work with the US. Heath was attempting to sabotage the Amuay and Cardon refineries in the west of the country and was carrying a submachine gun, a grenade launcher, four blocks of C4 explosives, a satellite phone, and stacks of US dollars. Referring to the sabotage plan, Maduro said, “They [American officials] have given the CIA the green light to come with direct agents to [conduct] covert and terrorist operations against oil, electricity, military, electoral targets, and other dirty covert actions like those used by the CIA”.

All the belligerent acts against Venezuela are singularly motivated by one major factor: imperialism. In September 2020, the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) published a report where it pompously talked about the “transition” of Venezuela from Maduro. Throughout the report, “transition” is meant to be synonymous with the US-led reconstruction of Venezuela. To give an example, the CFR report states: “Although it is up to the Venezuelan transitional government to manage its relations with U.S. competitors, a constructive relationship between the transitional government and the United States and other democracies through generous security and development assistance would ensure a basis for democratic reforms.” In other words, the transitional government would subordinate itself to the ordinances of the American empire and subserviently accept the principles of free market fundamentalism in the name of democracy.

The dreams of a neatly arranged capitalist order in Venezuela are constantly thwarted by the Venezuelan masses who always rise to the occasion to defend their right to live with dignity. The present-day sentiments of Venezuela’s subaltern classes are perfectly captured by the following poem which Mao Zedong wrote a month after he launched the Cultural Revolution:

“Green pines point fiercely at the clear blue sky,

dead leaves drift away upon the stream.

A clap of thunder shakes the world,

bright banners are paraded through the streets…

The nation’s people yearns for action.”

Yanis Iqbal is a student and freelance writer based in Aligarh, India and can be contacted at yanisiqbal@gmail.com.

1 November 2020

Source: countercurrents.org

By Abdus Sattar Ghazali

A rift between the Muslim world and France is widening, as leaders and the public in Muslim countries respond to the October 2 speech of President Emmanuel Macron saying Islam was “in crisis” globally. The fallout deepened with renewed Macron support to show caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad and anti-France demonstrations on Friday in several Muslim countries.

Tens of thousands of Muslims, from Pakistan to Lebanon to the Palestinian territories, poured out of prayer services to join anti-France protests on Friday, according to media reports.

About 10,000 people marched through Karachi, Pakistan’s biggest city. Demonstrations in Pakistan’s capital Islamabad turned violent as some 2,000 people who tried to march towards the French embassy were pushed back by police firing tear gas and beating protesters with batons, Al Jazeera reported

Crowds of demonstrators hanged an effigy of French President Emmanuel Macron from a highway overpass after pounding it furiously with their shoes. Several demonstrators were wounded in clashes with police as authorities pushed to evict them from the red zone, a security area that houses Pakistan’s diplomatic missions.

In Pakistan’s eastern city of Lahore, an estimated 10,000 followers of the Tehreek-e-Labbaik party celebrating the Mawlid, the birthday of the Prophet Muhammad, took to the streets. .

In Multan, a city in eastern Punjab province, thousands more torched an effigy of Macron and demanded that Pakistan sever ties with France and boycott French goods.

A few hundred demonstrators in Lebanon’s capital Beirut flocked toward the Palais des Pins, the official residence of the French ambassador to Lebanon, but found their way blocked by lines of police officers in riot gear. Waving black and white flags peoplr cried, “At your service, oh prophet of God.” Some slung stones at police who responded with smoke and tear gas, according to the Associated Press.

In Istanbul, Turkey’s largest city, worshippers thronged a mosque after Friday prayers, chanting religious slogans and holding signs lampooning Macron. Turkey has led regional condemnation of the French president, with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s verbal attacks on Macron prompting France to recall its ambassador to Turkey last weekend.

Hundreds of Palestinians also protested against Macron outside the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, the third holiest site in Islam, chanting, “With our souls and with our blood we sacrifice for our prophet, Muhammad.” Some youths scuffled with Israeli police as they exited the esplanade into the Old City. Israeli police said they dispersed the gathering and detained three people, according to Associated Press.

Scores more turned out in the Gaza Strip, where the Hamas group organized anti-France rallies at mosques across the territory that it controls. Fathi Hammad, a Hamas official, addressed a demonstration at the Jabaliya refugee camp, vowing “to stand together to confront this criminal offensive that harms the faith of about two billion Muslims,” referring to depictions of the Muslim prophet. He reiterated Hamas authorities’ appeal for Palestinians to boycott all French products.

In a Friday sermon aired live on Egyptian state TV, the country’s minister of religious endowments appeared to denounce any violent retaliation for the cartoons. “Love of the prophet cannot be expressed by killing, sabotaging or responding to evil with evil,” said Mohamed Mokhtar Gomaa, addressing dozens of worshippers at a mosque in Egypt’s Delta province of Daqahleya.

In Afghanistan, members of Hezb-i-Islami set the French flag ablaze. Its leader, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, warned Macron if he does not “control the situation, we are going to a third world war and Europe will be responsible”. Cries of “Death to France” rang out in Afghanistan’s capital of Kabul and several other provinces as thousands filled the streets. Demonstrators trampled on portraits of Macron and called on Afghan leaders to shut down the French embassy, sever ties and ban French citizens from the country. In the country’s western Herat province, protesters hoisted an effigy of Macron on a crane and set it alight.

An estimated 50,000 people in Bangladesh marched after Friday prayers in the capital Dhaka. The angry protesters carried signs reading “World Muslims united,” “Macron will pay a high price,” “Stop Islamophobia,” “boycott French products” and “Macron is Satan.”

In Madhya Pradesh’s Bhopal, thousands of Muslims led by Congress MLA Arif Masood staged a protest against France, raising slogans against Macron, according to ZEE News. An FIR has been registered against the Congress MLA and 2000 others who took part in the demonstrations. Protesters in Aligarh of Uttar Pradesh, raised slogans of the death sentence of the President of France. In a Muslim-majority district of India’s financial hub Mumbai, some 100 posters showing Macron with a boot on his face and calling him a “demon” were pasted on pavements and roads, according to Reuters.

Thousands in Somalia turned up for Friday prayers in mosques where sermons were dominated by curses and condemnation of Macron and his government. Abdirahman Hussein Mohamed,, a shopkeeper in the capital Mogadishu, set aside all French products including face wash, perfumes and other cosmetics with a large sign, “NOT FOR SALE”. “I will never sell those products…as long as France does not apologise. France insulted our Prophet,” Mohamed told Reuters.

Russian police detained around 15 people in Moscow after dozens gathered outside the French Embassy to protest against Macron. Some of the protesters stamped on portraits of Macron and chanted “Allahu Akbar, according to Reuters.

Several leaders in Asia, including Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, expressed solidarity with Macron and France, Reuters said.

“It is just the most callous and cowardly and vicious act of barbarism by terrorists and should be condemned in the strongest possible way,” Morrison said. “We share values (with France). We stand for the same things.”

He also condemned as absurd comments by ex-Malaysian premier Mahathir Mohammad that Muslims had a right to be angry and kill “millions of French people for the massacres of the past”. Mahathir said Friday that his comments were taken out of context and criticizes Facebook, Twitter for ‘deliberately’ deleting parts of his statement on Islamophobia.

Abdus Sattar Ghazali is the Chief Editor of the Journal of America (www.journalofamerica.net) email: asghazali2011(@) gmail.com

31 October 2020

Source: countercurrents.org

By Dr Binoy Kampmark

Whatever stance taken by followers of the British Labour Party on the subject of antisemitism within its ranks, the suspension of Jeremy Corbyn must be seen as an exercise of muscle on the part of Sir Keir Starmer. Since coming to the leadership, Starmer’s popularity has risen, catching up to that of Prime Minister Boris Johnson. But Corbyn and the Corbynistas lingered, irritating reminders of a previous revolution of the left to be subjugated and marginalised. The report on antisemitism in the British Labour Party by the Equality and Human Rights Commission presented a chance.

In July 2019, the EHRC announced that it was investigating the party “after receiving a number of complaints of allegations of antisemitism within the Party.” It proceeded to look at whether the Party had committed unlawful acts; handled complaints of antisemitism “in a lawful, efficient and effective way”; had adequate complaints handling, investigatory and disciplinary processes that were efficient and effective, “including whether appropriate sanctions have been or could be applied”; and whether steps were taken by the Party “to implement the recommendations made in the Chakrabarti, Royall and Home Affairs Committee Reports.”

The EHRC report released on October 29 identified, in the words of the Interim Chair, Caroline Waters, “specific examples of harassment, discrimination and political interference in our evidence” and “a lack of leadership within the Labour Party on these issues, which is hard to reconcile with its stated commitment to a zero-tolerance approach to antisemitism.” The executive summary pointed to “serious failings in leadership and an adequate process for handling antisemitism complaints” across the Party”, including “multiple failures in the systems it uses to resolve them.” Three breaches of the Equality Act were identified, covering political interference in complaints of antisemitism complaints; the inadequate provision of training to those handling such complaints and cases of harassment.

The report identifies two specific instances of harassment against its members on antisemitic grounds: former London Mayor Ken Livingstone and local Rossendale Borough Councillor Pam Bromley. Livingstone was singled out for his claims in 2016 that attacks on MP Naz Shah for purported antisemitic social media posts were “part of a smear campaign by ‘the Israel Jewish lobby’ to stigmatise critics of Israel as antisemitic” designed to “undermine and disrupt the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn MP.” Bromley, for her part, was taken to task for using antisemitic tropes: the Jewish conspiracy, manipulating political processes and being a “fifth column.”

Despite these purplish standouts, the EHRC, while considering a “significant number” of other complaints demonstrating “what we considered to be antisemitic conduct”, found insufficient evidence showing that the Labour Party had been legally responsible or the conduct; that it was from an “ordinary” member of the Party, for which it could not be responsible for under equality law; and insufficient evidence that “the harmful effect of the conduct” had outweighed “the freedom of the expression rights of the individual concerned.”

In responding to the report, Corbyn accepted that, “Jewish members of our party and the wider community were right to expect us to deal with it,” expressing “regret that it took longer to deliver that change than it should.” Those claiming there was no antisemitism in the Labour Party were wrong. “Of course there is, as there is throughout society, and sometimes it is voiced by people who think of themselves as on the left.”

He pointed out that many of the processes scrutinised and criticised as wanting in the report were already there prior to his leadership. Firmer measures were put in place after 2018, in the face of party bureaucracy. But a large, and for his opponents gaping opening, was left with his insistence that “the scale of the problem was dramatically overstated for political reasons by our opponents inside and outside the party, as well as by much of the media.” That “combination … hurt Jewish people and must never be repeated.”

As Ronan Burtenshaw, editor of Tribune, is right to note, Corbyn has some merit in making reference to exaggeration for political purposes. Individual complainants had, in some cases, been responsible for a veritable tsunami of grievance, most unfounded. There were unsubstantiated statements from various MPs, including Margaret Hodge, who herself filed a hundred antisemitism complaints, eighty of which involved people with no connection with Labour or its party structures.

With factional considerations now lit, Labour Party general secretary David Evans, a close ally of Starmer, suspended Corbyn within a matter of hours, despite being unable to say which party rule had been breached. “I was very disappointed in Jeremy Corbyn’s statement,” claimed the Labour leader, “and appropriate action has been taken, which I fully support.” A satisfied Hodge felt that suspending Corbyn was the “right thing decision” following his “shameful reaction to the EHRC report.”

Evans assumed the mantle as the torchbearer of the right faction of the party, replacing Corbyn’s ally Jennie Formby in May. Spokesman of Labour Against Antisemitism Euan Philips had words of cautious praise for the appointment at the time: not only was it a relief to have a figure from “outside the hard left” in that role, Evans had “a huge job to tackle institutional anti-Jewish racism in the party”.

With such sentiments in mind, both Evans and Starmer have essentially manoeuvred the party into a position where the mere hint of scepticism about the scale of antisemitism within Labour will be excoriated and expunged. As Starmer explained on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, “I made it clear the Labour Party I lead will not tolerate antisemitism, neither will it tolerate the argument that denies or minimises antisemitism in the Labour Party on the basis that it’s exaggerated or a factional row.” This is despite the acceptance by the EHRC that Article 10 of the European Convention of Human Rights protecting freedom of expression “will protect Labour Party members who … make legitimate criticisms of the Israeli government, or express their opinions on internal Party matters, such as the scale of antisemitism within the Party, based on their own experience and within the law.”

While the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg saw no “deliberately designed collision between the current party boss and his predecessor” it is hard to ignore the alignment of the stars. Starmer wants to cement his credentials and iron out the creases; Corbyn, with his obstinacy and loyal defenders, present potential future obstacles to his plans. A civil war beckons, with antisemitism fashioned as factional spear tips.

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

31 October 2020

Source: countercurrents.org

October 29th, 2020

Fellow Africans of Brazil, Colombia and Guyana,

We, the undersigned representatives of Pan-African formations and progressive organizations based in South America and the Caribbean region, call on the descendants of captured Africans in Brazil, Colombia and Guyana, to refuse to be used by the regimes in our respective countries against our brothers and sisters in Venezuela.

The neo-colonial regimes in Brazil, Colombia and Guyana are covertly and overtly facilitating the US Empire’s encirclement of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. The US objective is clear – to effect regime change.

Many of our brothers and sisters in Brazil, Colombia and Guyana are unaware of the tremendous achievements made by the Bolivarian Revolution. This revolution has enabled First Peoples, including Africans, to move themselves from the margins to the centre of Venezuelan society. For the first time in Venezuela’s history, African Venezuelans are now well placed in the higher echelons of the armed forces, government agencies and the diplomatic service.

On the other hand, in Brazil, Colombia and Guyana, Africans remain economically and socially marginalized as a result of entrenched systemic racism. According to AfricanGlobe, an African is killed every 23 minutes in Brazil, in what Lindbergh Farias of the Workers’ Party of Brazil referred to as “a true genocide against Black youth”. In Brazil and Colombia, thousands of Africans, including high-profile political and community activists, have been murdered by State-sponsored para-military death squads in recent years. Some of these illegal arms of the Brazilian and Colombian regimes are working hand-in-hand with similar counter-revolutionary and racist organizations in Venezuela to persecute and kill leaders and activists of African-Venezuelan organizations supportive of the Maduro government.

Fellow Africans, we cannot and must not allow ourselves to be used by the forces of white supremacy against our brothers and sisters in Venezuela. The Bolivarian Revolution and the Maduro Government are not our enemies. Our enemies are those who are trying to destabilize this revolution and cause death, destruction and chaos in Venezuela and the region. We must stand firm and united against their divide and ruin tactics. We are therefore calling on all descendants of captured Africans in Brazil, Colombia and Guyana to resist their respective government’s collusion with US imperialism. Let us join forces to do all that we can to stop any military or non-military activity conducted by these US satellite-states against the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, and our brothers and sisters in that sovereign and independent nation-state.

In Unity and Struggle,

1) Assembly of Caribbean People
2) Black United Front, Trinidad and Tobago
3) Caribbean Movement for Peace and Integration
4) Caribbean Network in Defense of Humanity
5) Caribbean Pan-African Network (CPAN), All Chapters
6) Caribbean Regional Coordinating Committee of the Pan African Federalist Movement (PAFM) and the following National Initiating Committees: Antigua Barbuda, Barbados, Cuba, Dominica, Guyana, Jamaica, Haiti, Trinidad & Tobago, Virgin Islands
7) Clement Payne Movement, Barbados
8) Cross Rhodes Freedom Project, Trinidad & Tobago
9) Emancipation Support Committee, Trinidad & Tobago
10) Global Afrikan Congress, All Chapters
11) Global Confederation of Indigenous People
12) Nation of Islam, Trinidad & Tobago
13) Organization for the Victory of the People (OVP), Guyana
14) Pan-African Coalition of Organizations, Barbados
15) Pan-African Federalist Movement (PAFM), South America
16) Pan African Movement, Barbados
17) Pan-African Movement, Guyana
18) Twelve Tribes of Israel (All Mansions),
19) Universal Negro Improvement Association – African Communities League (UNIA-ACL)

By Nick Dearden

18 Oct 2020 – For months, experts have repeatedly told us that no one is safe from coronavirus until we are all safe. If that is true, we should be going all out to ensure the world’s resources are used to bring treatments and vaccines to the whole world as soon as possible.

Several initiatives have attempted just that, but efforts have been stymied by the self-interest of big business, and by the leaders of rich countries who are terrified of undermining rules designed to keep their countries at the top of the pecking order.

A recent ground-breaking proposal by India and South Africa could change all that. Those governments have lodged a proposal at the World Trade Organization (WTO) to suspend international patent laws for an extended period, allowing countries to share technology and produce their own versions of patented medicines, treatments and protective equipment without being held to ransom by the corporations which own those patents. It is a game-changer, which challenges one of the most shameful aspects of modern trade rules.

Intellectual property – essentially patents and copyright – first became a trade issue in the mid-1990s when the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights, or TRIPS, was negotiated at the WTO. TRIPS extended Western-style patent protections across the whole world, allowing the business to sit on patents for a minimum of 20 years, during which time they are able to dictate who can use their creations and at what price.

At a stroke, it meant that one of the main benefits of trade for developing countries – the ability to learn from and copy technologies developed in richer countries – was lost. Just as bad, corporations started worrying more about extending these patents, for instance making tiny changes to products that were of no benefit to the consumer, than they did developing new and useful products.

Nowhere did this have a more devastating impact than in the development of medicines. TRIPS was concluded as the HIV/AIDS crisis reached epidemic proportions in Southern Africa. While drugs had been developed that could lengthen life, reduce suffering and help prevent the transmission of HIV, most people in the world could not afford those medicines, and the new trade rules prevented countries from simply taking the technology and producing the drugs themselves. Millions died unnecessarily in one of the most obscene examples of corporate profits trumping the right to life.

Today, Big Pharma, as these corporations are collectively known, is a dysfunctional industry. While modern medicine risks collapsing because of antibiotic resistance, these companies spend more resources inflating their stock price than developing new medicines. What useful medicines are produced depend on massive injections of cash from the public sector, which normally comes without any conditions constraining the prices these megacorporations can charge for the final drugs produced.

Little wonder then that India and South Africa are sceptical about the ability of Big Pharma to help us deal with coronavirus. In fact, there have already been attempts to design a system which can help the world provide coronavirus medicines which would be available to all on a fair basis. Costa Rica proposed allowing countries and researchers to share their technologies, collaborate on research and produce patent-free medicines back in the spring.

Despite gaining broad support from around the world, Big Pharma howled in protest. Pfizer called it “nonsense”. British companies working on coronavirus treatments, AstraZeneca and GlaxoSmithKlein, refused to participate, backed by the British government which tried to water down the proposals. When asked whether he would attend the launch of the Costa Rican scheme, the director of a prominent Big Pharma lobbying group, said he was “too busy”.

The scheme is up and running, but its voluntary nature means that its impact will be limited. And while there are global programmes to support “fair distribution” of medicines across the world, these schemes are all based on Big Pharma keeping its patents intact. The fact that rich countries are spending billions of dollars buying as many potential vaccines as possible suggests they do not have much faith in these schemes. They are, it seems, just for poor countries who have no better choice.

It is true that some companies have promised to produce medicines “without profit” during the pandemic, but even here we have every reason to be sceptical, with companies themselves left to define when the pandemic is “over” and near-total secrecy surrounding their pricing. What we do know is that one company, Gilead, which produces Donald Trump’s favourite drug remdesivir, tried to get special patent protection on the basis that their medicine had a limited potential market; an astonishing claim in a drug you hope will help in a pandemic.

Another company, Moderna, released suspiciously early test findings on its contender for a vaccine, in a move suspected of helping its executives cash in on rising share prices rather than get its medicine out to as many people as possible. And British company Astra-Zeneca made a deal with Oxford University, which has trumped Oxford’s initial promise to make their research available without patents. All of these drugs have received significant amounts of public money.

But perhaps this behaviour is not surprising. After all, what else can be expected of a system which hands no-strings public funds over to the some of the richest corporations in the world, and allows them to charge whatever the market will bear for life-saving medicines for at least 20 years? It is the model itself which is broken, and the Indian-South African proposal aims to change this.

There are already exemptions within TRIPS, hard-fought-for by campaigners in the 1990s, under which countries can override patents in certain circumstances. Indeed, a number of countries in recent months from Germany to Ecuador, Chile to Israel, have said they will use this option if forced to. But there are huge limitations to these exemptions, most notably that they leave individual countries to fight over every individual drug that they need to get hold of, against the full might of Big Pharma and their Western government backers. Far better, given how fundamentally broken the system is, to use this opportunity to do things differently.

If coronavirus has shown us anything, it is how reliant we are on each other, and on public services. Many of us in the West enjoy a health system which is protected from the whims of the market. If this applies to our hospitals, why should it not also apply to the medicines we are given when we are in hospital? And if it is good enough for the rich world, it is surely even more important in countries where so many die every year simply because Big Pharma does not find it sufficiently profitable to research the medicines that could save those lives, or to charge a low enough price that those in need could afford them. It is time for a transformation. The Indian-South African proposal must be supported as a vital first step.

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Nick Dearden is director of the UK campaigning organisation Global Justice Now.

26 October 2020

Source: www.transcend.org

By Caitlin Johnston

25 Oct 2020 – The US-centralized empire functions like a giant blob that absorbs nations and turns them into imperial client states. Once absorbed, it is rare for a country to escape and rejoin other genuinely sovereign nations.

The new president-elect of Bolivia, Luis Arce, has told the Spanish international news agency EFE that he intends to restore the nation’s relations with Cuba, Venezuela and Iran. This reverses the policies of the US-backed coup regime which immediately began closing embassies, kicking out doctors and severing relations with those nations after illegally seizing power last year.

Arce also spoke of warm relations with Russia and China.

“We are going to re-establish all relations,” he told EFE. “This government has acted very ideologically, depriving the Bolivian people of access to Cuban medicine, to Russian medicine, to advances in China. For a purely ideological issue, it has exposed the population in a way that is unnecessary and harmful.”

Arce expressed a willingness to “open the door to all countries, the only requirement is that they respect us and respect our sovereignty, nothing more. All countries, no matter the size, who want a relationship with Bolivia, the only requirement is that we respect each other as equals. If that is so, we have no problem.“

If you know anything about US imperialism and global politics, you will recognize that last bit as brazen heresy against imperial doctrine.

The unofficial doctrine of the empire-like cluster of international allies that is loosely centralized around the United States does not recognize the sovereignty of other nations, much less respect them as equals. This empire takes it as a given that it has every right to determine what every nation in the world does, who their leaders will be, where their resources will go, and what their military posture on the world stage will be. If a government refuses to accept the empire’s right to determine these things, it is targeted, sabotaged, attacked, and eventually replaced with a puppet regime.

The US-centralized empire functions like a giant blob that slowly works to absorb nations which have not yet been converted into imperial client states. It is rare that a nation is able to escape from that blob and rejoin the unabsorbed nations like China, Russia, Iran, Venezuela and Cuba in their fight for self-sovereignty, and it is encouraging that it was able to do so.

We saw the dynamics of the imperial blob explained quite vividly last year by American political analyst John Mearsheimer at a debate hosted by the Australian think tank Center for Independent Studies. Mearsheimer told his audience that the US is going to do everything it can to halt China’s rise and prevent it from becoming the regional hegemon in the eastern hemisphere, and that Australia should align with the US in that battle or else it would face the wrath of Washington.

“The question that’s on the table is what should Australia’s foreign policy be in light of the rise of China,” Mearsheimer said. “I’ll tell you what I would suggest if I were an Australian.”

Mearsheimer said China is going to continue to grow economically and will convert that economic power into military power to dominate Asia “the way the US dominates the western hemisphere,” and explained why he think the US and its allies have every ability to prevent that from happening.

“Now the question is what does this all mean for Australia?” Mearsheimer said. “Well, you’re in a quandary for sure. Everybody knows what the quandary is. And by the way you’re not the only country in East Asia that’s in this quandary. You trade a lot with China, and that trade is very important for your prosperity, no question about that. Security-wise, you really want to go with us. It makes just a lot more sense, right? And you understand that security is more important than prosperity, because if you don’t survive, you’re not gonna prosper.

“Now some people say there’s an alternative: you can go with China,” said Mearsheimer. “Right, you have a choice here: you can go with China rather the United States. There’s two things I’ll say about that. Number one, if you go with China you want to understand you are our enemy. You are then deciding to become an enemy of the United States. Because again, we’re talking about an intense security competition.

“You’re either with us or against us,” he continued. “And if you’re trading extensively with China, and you’re friendly with China, you’re undermining the United States in this security competition. You’re feeding the beast, from our perspective. And that is not going to make us happy. And when we are not happy you do not want to underestimate how nasty we can be. Just ask Fidel Castro.”

Nervous laughter from the Australian think tank audience punctuated Mearsheimer’s more incendiary observations. The CIA is known to have made numerous attempts to assassinate Castro.

If you’ve ever wondered how the the US is so successful in getting other nations around the world to align with its interests, this is how. It’s not that the US is a good actor on the world stage or a kind friend to its allies, it’s that it will destroy you if you disobey it.

Australia is not aligned with the US to protect itself from China. Australia is aligned with the US to protect itself from the US. As a Twitter follower recently observed, the US doesn’t have allies, only hostages.

As the recently released Palace Letters illustrated, the CIA staged a coup to oust Australian Prime Minister Gough Whitlam because he was prioritizing the nation’s self-sovereignty. Journalist John Pilger wrote in 2014 after Whitlam’s death:

Australia briefly became an independent state during the Whitlam years, 1972-75. An American commentator wrote that no country had “reversed its posture in international affairs so totally without going through a domestic revolution.” Whitlam ended his nation’s colonial servility. He abolished royal patronage, moved Australia towards the Non-Aligned Movement, supported “zones of peace” and opposed nuclear weapons testing.

The primary difference between the coup in Australia and the one in Bolivia was that the Bolivians refused to roll over and take it while we shrugged and said ‘No worries mate.’ We had every option to become a real nation and insist on our own self-sovereignty, but we, unlike the Bolivians, were too thoroughly propagandized and placid. Some hostages escape, some don’t.

The US empire got rid of Whitlam, and then when we elected in 2007 a prime minister who was considered too friendly with China they did it again; in order to facilitate the Obama administration’s “pivot” against Beijing the pro-China Kevin Rudd was replaced by the compliant Julia Gillard. World Socialist Website reports:

Secret US diplomatic cables published by WikiLeaks in December 2010 revealed that “protected sources” of the US embassy were pivotal figures in Gillard’s elevation. For months, key coup plotters, including senators Mark Arbib and David Feeney, and Australian Workers Union (AWU) chief Paul Howes, secretly provided the US embassy with regular updates on internal government discussions and divisions within the leadership…

Rudd had proposed an Asia-Pacific Community, attempting to mediate the escalating strategic rivalry between the US and China, and opposed the formation of a quadrilateral military alliance between the US, India, Japan and Australia, aimed against China.

Gillard, who had cultivated her pro-US credentials through Australia-US and Australia-Israel leadership forums, was literally selected by the US embassy as a reliable replacement to Rudd. In her first public appearance after knifing Rudd, she demonstrated her devotion to Washington by posing for a photo op with the US ambassador, flanked by US and Australian flags. She soon had a phone call with Obama, who had previously twice postponed a planned visit to Australia under Rudd.

The centrality of Australia to the US preparations for war against China became apparent in November 2011, when Obama announced his “pivot to Asia” in the Australian parliament, rather than the White House. During the visit, Gillard and Obama signed an agreement to station American Marines in Darwin and allow greater US access to other military bases, placing the Australian population on the front line of any conflict with China.

Gillard’s government also sanctioned the expansion of the major US spying and weapons-targeting base at Pine Gap, agreed to the US military’s increased use of Australian ports and airbases, and stepped up Australia’s role in the US-led top-level “Five Eyes” global surveillance network, which monitors the communications and online activities of millions of people worldwide.

Rudd’s removal marked a turning point. US imperialism, via the Obama administration, sent a blunt message: There was no longer any room for equivocation by the Australian ruling elite. Regardless of which party was in office, it had to line up unconditionally behind the US conflict with China, no matter what the consequences for the loss of its massive export markets in China.

This is what we’re seeing all around the world now: a slow motion third world war being waged by the US power alliance against the remaining nations which have resisted being absorbed into it. As the most powerful of the unabsorbed nations by far, China is the ultimate target of this war. If the empire succeeds in its ultimate goal of stopping China, it will have attained a de facto planetary government which no population will be able to oppose or dissent from.

I don’t know about you, but I never consented to a world where powerful nuclear-armed forces wave Armageddon weapons at each other while fighting for planetary domination and subverting less powerful nations if they don’t play along with their Cold War games. Detente and peace must be sought and obtained, and we must all work to live together on this planet in collaboration with each other and with our ecosystem.

This omnicidal, ecocidal way of living that the oligarchic empire has laid out for us does not suit our species, and it will drive us to extinction along with God knows how many other species if we do not find a way to end it. Rulers historically do not cede their power willingly, so we ordinary human beings as a collective are going to have to find a way to destroy their propaganda engine, force an end to imperialism, and build a healthy world.

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Caitlin Johnstone, an independent journalist based in Melbourne, Australia.

26 October 2020

Source: www.transcend.org