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By Vidya Bhushan Rawat

A portrait size painting of Diego Maradona was on display at certain ruins in war torn Syria where people were mourning the death of the legend. In the entire Latin American world, people are pouring their respect to Maradona who died in Buenos Aires, the Argentine Capital where his dead body is kept at the presidential palace as people continue to flock in to pay their last respect to the legend. The Argentine President has declared a three day moaning. Tributes are pouring in the world over whether it is nations or sports federations or political activists who Maradona supported through their causes.

On his passing away, we need to ponder this question as what separates giants like Diego Maradona or Mohammad Ali from rest of the sports icons who might have been hugely successful financially but the grief and outpouring of their passing away will never be the same. Ofcourse, we know, in our own country, there are cricketers who we worship but except for endorsing commercial brands and that too for their own purposes, they remain quiet. Most of the film stars and sports persons who join politics rarely take a stand except the official lines of their ‘parties’. Many of these wortheis who become members of parliament, don’t even attend the parliament.

So in such a scenario, we look at the outpouring of grief world over for the passing away of Maradona who definitely was an extraordinary player but there are many and it is not that he won Argentina many world cup. That glory is for the year 1986.

In the Western World, Maradona was a ‘cheater’ and he fell from grace in the cases of ‘drug addiction’ where he was denied admission in the hospital in his own country and it was Cuba which gave him shelter and brought him back to life after deep depression. Latin America has been hugely influenced by revolutionary Fidel Castro, the leader who built Cuba a great nation, a model for all the smaller countries to follow. Again, the same ‘liberal’ ‘independent’ western media would often call Castro a Mafia of Miami. For Maradona, the 1986 World Cup victory against England was far more satisfying because the way Britain used its power to control Falkland Island which Argentina claimed as their territory and British took it by their force.

Maradona’s political thoughts made him far superior to other players who rarely spoke. That makes him a superhero in the company of Mohammad Ali, who never let his stardom forget his community and the racial crimes that the Blacks in the United States have faced. It is not that persons from the marginalised background don’t reach the heights but soon the establishment capture them and use their successes as the success of ‘their model’. Most of these icons become part of the commercial interest which serves the power elite of the world. That is why, I say, the work done by Maradona or Mohammad Ali remain far powerful and world over people remember them for the cause they fought for.

Maradona used to call Fidel Castro his ‘second father’. On Castro’s death, it is reported, Maradona wept uncontrollably. We need to understand what are these qualities in these legends which set them apart. Fidel Castro was a treat to listen and read. A man of bigger ideas who could stand up to a mighty American empire that wanted to swallow the tiny nation of Cuba. Despite western world’s vilification, Fidel Castro not only influenced the culture and politics of Cuba but other nations. The way Cuba helped other countries and gave them self respect was unprecedented. Che Guevara was an Argentine international who along with Fidel Castro became iconic among all those nations victims of colonialism. Definitely, a person like Diego Maradona would not have grown up in his country without listening to the folklores of the political legends.

When Maradona was recuperating in Cuba, it is said that Fidel Castro would invite him for a morning walk and discuss various political issues. Later, Maradona organised a talk show and interviewed Fidel Castro. That political understanding made Maradona a believer in socialism and secularism. He decried the Vatican and pope once upon a time. He was aware how neoliberalism was a process of recolonisation of the poorer nations and therefore stood with all the leaders of the Latin American countries who were resisting the American interventions in their countries. Whether it was Evan Moralis of Bolivia or Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, the legend of Football, always stood with their cause.

Maradona never forgot his roots and he realised that even when he got stardom, it is time, this stardom is used to spread the political ideology which he felt would bring true socialism and restore rights to the people. This feeling of International solidarity made him speak in support of the cause Palestine. ‘ I am a Palestinaian by heart’, he said once and wanted to even coach their football team.

This internationalism took Che Guevara to various parts of the world to make people aware of their rights and inspire the young minds to work for the betterment of the world. And this was visible in Diego Maradona when he could stand with Evan Morales and Hugo Chavez to condemn George Bush’s effort to bully Venezuela.

And yes, he was not ‘contesting’ elections as happens in our part of the world. A sports star will keep quiet on important public issues and when want to join a political party will speak about ‘issues’ and keep quiet. That is why Mohammad Ali remains a legend as he never succumbed to this publicity of the capitalist media. He remain grounded to his identity and the discrimination done to it by the system of white suprmacy. The same was true about Maradona. Fortunately, Maradona’s political thoughts matured with guidance and advice of Fidel Castro and he became an internationalist.

Life of Maradona as well as Mohammad Ali shows us that sports icons can use their superstardom to encourage and promote progressive ideas and fight against injustices. They can be true heros of humanity if they use their stardom for undoing historic wrongs and raising uncomfortable questions. Unlike the new found love of ‘charity’ that the ‘stars’ do and promote their stardom, taking a political stand on important issues that impact us, remain the most important and it is here both Maradona and Mohammad Ali have left their contemporaries far behind.

Maradona will be remembered not merely for his golden goals but also for uncompromising stand against colonialism and exploitation by the mighty powers of the world. Hope sports icons will learn a few things from you that merely earning huge money will not make their lives worth remembering but standing for a cause makes you different from them. Every condolence and outpouring of grief that is coming from different parts of the world is an indication that not all of them would have known your sports skills, a large number of people are pained becauses they know an international hero is gone, who stood with the rights of the oppressed.

Salute to Comrade Diego Maradona.

Vidya Bhushan Rawat is a social activist. Twitter @freetohumanity

27 November 2020

Source: countercurrents.org

By Countercurrents Collective

India saw one of the biggest nationwide strikes by workers, joined by protesting farmers today. Several states saw a complete shutdown. Over 250 million workers across sectors participated in the strike, called by 10 central trade unions and hundreds of worker associations and federations.

Kerala, Puducherry, Odisha, Assam and Telangana witnessed a complete shutdown while normal life was partially affected in several other states as workers struck work and took to the streets, protesting against the “anti-worker” and pro-corporate policies and labour laws as well as the new farm laws brought in by the Narendra Modi-led Bharatiya Janata party government, among other demands.

“The states of Kerala, Puducherry, Odisha, Assam and Telangana have reported complete shut down. Tamil Nadu reported complete shut down in 13 districts, while the industrial strike continues in the rest of the districts. Punjab and Haryana have reported that the state road transport buses have not left their depots in the morning,” a joint statement issued by the trade unions said.

Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh reported 100% strike, including at BALCO, the statement said.

The joint platform incudes Indian National Trade Union Congress (INTUC), All India Trade Union Congress (AITUC), Hind Mazdoor Sabha (HMS), Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU), All India United Trade Union Centre (AIUTUC), Trade Union Co-ordination Centre (TUCC) and Self-Employed Women’s Association (SEWA), All India Central Council of Trade Unions (AICCTU) , Labour Progressive Federation (LPF) and United Trade Union Congress (UTUC).

The strike saw stoppage of work in banks, financial services, various government services, transport, steel units, port and docks, telecommunication services, plantations, power generating units, coal and other mines, oil and natural gas production units, and millions of other miscellaneous industries. Government offices, railways, post and telegraph services and scores of other government offices are also likely to be affected as employees will hold solidarity demonstrations. Several lakh women working as Anganwadi workers/helpers, healthcare workers, mid-day meal cooks and those employed in other government run schemes have also gone on strike.

“Reports of successful strike in coal and copper mines, including other mineral resource mines, have been received. The employees of postal, telecom and steel sector were also in action and gramin dak sevaks observed 100 per cent strike,” the statement said.

Farmers from across the country also marched to Delhi in protest against the new corporate-friendly farm laws and in solidarity with workers, braving arrests, teargas, water cannons and numerous barricades on the way, especially in Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh .

Almost five million labours from different sections including local government, union government, port, private companies, railway, anganwadi, banks in Maharashtra participated in the strike. This was the biggest strike in recent times.

Work in factories, refineries, banks, transport sector in Assam came to a standstill as workers, including in several tea gardens in Upper Assam participated in the strike. In Jorhat district, Jogibheta tea garden, Hindubari tea garden, Monomoi tea garden and Damayanti tea garden, workers organised protests and PM Modi’s effigy burning.

Among the places where picketing was reported since early morning were Digboi refinery, Guwahati refinery, India Carbon, Assam Carbon, Assam Asbestos etc. The Noonmati area, which has over 3,000 workers, joined the strike. Massive protests were also seen in Brahmaputra Cracker and Polymer Limited, ONGC Silchar and other small scale industries in Assam. – Sandipan Talukdar

In Tamil Nadu the strike was near complete in banking, insurance, BSNL, Salem Steel Plant BHEL, Thoothukudi VOC Port and Bharat Petroleum bottling plant. Government employees, employees of cooperative societies, local administration department and anganwadi workers participated in large numbers in the strike and demonstrations.

G Sukumaran, general secretary of Tamil Nadu unit of CITU said, “The strike saw massive participation from workers across various sectors against the policies pursued by the BJP government. More than 50,000 people were detained across the state with huge participation of women workers as well”.

Narendra Rao, general secretary of Water Transport Workers Federation of India (WTWFI) said, “The workers of major ports across the country took part in the strike while we withdrew the strike in Chennai port. We reiterate our demands on scrapping the Major Ports Act, 2020, withdrawal of New Stevedoring policy and the new pension scheme”.

Work in Salem Steel Plant came to a standstill as 98% of the employees participated in the strike. Panneer Selvam, president of SPEU said, “The employees of the SSP have resolved to defeat all privatisation moves carried out by the Union government.” –Neelambaran A

Andhra Pradesh and Telangana saw massive campaigns among workers across sectors against the new labour laws.

Saibabu, Telangana state general secretary of CITU said there was complete strike in public sector units, including Bharat Electronics Limited, Bharat Dynamics Ltd, Electronics Corporation of India Ltd, Defence Research and Development Laboratory, Bharat Petroleum Corporation Ltd, Indian Oil Corporation Ltd and Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Ltd among others.

“Among private entities, industries located around Hyderabad across Patancheru, Cherlapalli, Medchal and Sangareddy saw thousands of organised sector workers boycotting work and joined protest demonstrations,” he said.

Over 40,000 coal workers across units of the Singareni Collieries Company Ltd in Kothagudem, Bellampalli and Ramagundam too joined the strike, including contract and outsourced workers.

In the construction sector, “about 3 lakh construction workers, 2.5 lakh hamalis (loading and unloading workers) and about three lakh beedi workers have stopped work on Thursday,” said Paladugu Bashkar of CITU.

In Andhra Pradesh, despite Cyclone Nivar causing heavy rainfall, “response to the general strike has been overwhelming,” CH Narasinga Rao, Andhra Pradesh CITU president said.

PSUs in Visakhapatnam including steel plant, shipyard, Bharat Heavy Electronics Limited, Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Ltd, Visakha Port, Dockyards, Indian Oil Corporation, Dredging Corporation of India, National Thermal Power Corporation, Bharat Petroleum Corporation Limited and Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited were completely shut down except for essential purposes. “Over 90% workers in Adani Group’s Krishnapatnam port in Nellore stopped their work as part of the general strike,” said Rao. – Prudhviraj Rupawat

Thousands of people took to streets and staged protests in Bihar during the nationwide general. Employees of banks, insurance, income tax ,BSNL along with contractual employees of the health,e ducation and other department of the state government participated in the strike that badly hit the work in offices and in the field.

Employees of about 5,127 bank branches sans SBI in Bihar remained on strike.

“It was a complete strike in banks as employees of Bihar Gramin banks and Cooperative banks also joined us.We have protested against privatisation of public sector banks by the centre”, D N Trivedi,a leader of All India Bank Officers Association said.

More than 15 million workers in Kerala along with farmers took part in the nationwide strike affecting normal life, barring essential services.

“Few states have proposed 12-hour work day. The government wants to reinstate enchained working system,” said state CITU president Anathalavattam Anandan, adding that the workers won’t allow the governments to exploit them.

The general strike saw participation of unions and associations from all sections including banking, insurance, public sector undertakings, scheme workers- including ASHAs, Anganwadi Workers- plantation, motor vehicle, unorganized sectors etc.

The employees from private finances and non-banking sectors, also joined under the banner of Non-Banking and Private finance Employees Association. The employees from BPCL, Manappuram Finance, Muthoot finance and other firms also held protests.

The strike witnessed a significant support among the workers in the satellite cities of the national capital; Noida, Greater Noida, Ghaziabad and Faridabad.

The workers of the industrial units in Noida marched in Sector-2 and 8, Botanical Garden, Hosiery complex, Eco Third area and peacefully dispersed following the coronavirus guidelines.

Gangeshwar Dutt Sharma, Secretary, Noida CITU, said “trade unions, for long, have been demanding a liveable salary for factory workers. Currently, factory workers in Noida are being paid only Rs 8,400 as minimum salary.”

Sharma said workers’ anger was also against rampant privatisation of public sector undertaking that was snatching away employment.

Narendra Nath Pandey, Treasurer, Rehri Patri Karmakar Union affiliated to CITU, in Greater Noida said workers are being consistently fired from jobs after the nationwide lockdown was announced.

Roma Sharma, a street vendor at the March said that she has lost her confidence in the central government after it passed labour codes without consulting workers or their organisations. “We had no other option but to hit the street and we did it today.”

CITU West Bengal Committee secretary Anadi Sahoo and INTUC State President Kamrujjmann said 90% of Central government employees joined the strike while 60 -70% state government employees participated.

In military engineering services, 85% workers participated and ordinance factories saw only 20% attendance .

There was ‘huge ‘response in the jute, tea, coal steel and small and medium iron-based industries, too, the unions said.

The strike was also effective in Kolkata Port, cement, banking, wholesale markets and among medical representatives.

About 70% of vehicular traffic in Kolkata was off roads and picketing and blockades on suburban Railway lines were reported.

In Dumdum and Garia there were reports of skirmishes with police as well as in Jadavpur too.

The Police and administration had taken tough measures to foil the strike as the ruling Trinamool Congress did not supporting the workers and farmers strike, while backing the issues raised. – Sandip Chakraborty

Owing to the imposition of Section 144 in the various districts of State in a view of COVID-19 guidelines and cancellation of permission for rallies and processions, the nation-wide general strike got a lukewarm response in Madhya Pradesh.

Out of 52 districts, the strike got support in nearly 25-30 districts including Bhopal, Indore, Jabalpur, Sagar, Damoh, Dhar in various sectors and workers and labourers of the various trade unions and factories registered their disappointment and boycotted the work for the first couple of hours.

Madhya Pradesh farmers who were on their way to Delhi to picket Parliament have also been stopped on Agra-Delhi National Highway 2. Social activist Medha Patkar, CPI(M) leader Jaswinder Singh who were marching towards Delhi with the farmer’s convoy had been stopped from entering Delhi.

The strike was effective in banks, coal mines of of Singrauli, Anupur, Shahdol, Umaria, Baitul and Chhindwara districts and Cement plants of Rewa and Satna districts where 65-70 % of the workers either remain absent or boycotted the half-day work.

In nearly 20 districts including Sagar, Damoh, Panna, Chhattarpur, Indore the private buses and loading trucks were off the road till 12 pm, claimed trade unions.

Various factories of Special Economic Zones including Govindpura Industrial Area, Mandideep, Malanpur, Pithampura and Defense factories of Jabalpur and Itarsi remain closed for half-day in support of the strike. Aganwadi, ASHA-USHA workers, Krishi Upaj Mandis labourers and medical representatives also extended their support and carried out protests despite the imposition of section 144.—Kashif Kakvi

Jammu and Kashmir saw a huge participation of workers in support of the national general strike called jointly by 10 central trade unions. Hundreds of workers gathered in protest at Press Clubs, of Jammu division and Kashmir division, respectively.

Raja, a migrant labourer from Bihar in Jammu, who works as a casual labourer with Border Roads Organisation said since 2016, they are working even on Sundays with no payment for extra work.

“Are these good days that Modi ji had promised? By keeping us empty stomach,” he said.

Slogans like Inqilab Zindabad, Lal Jab Aayega, Inqalab Laayega, Hamari Maange Poori Karo, rent the air as Anganwadi workers joined the strike, too.

In Chenab valley including Kishtwar, Doda, Ramban, workers had picketed outside their work stations. Jai Lal Parihar, CITU leader from Kishtwar, said the primary demand of workers were minimum wages.

26 November 2020

Source: countercurrents.org

By Abdus Sattar Ghazali

The United Nations has overwhelmingly approved a resolution calling for Palestinian self-determination and end to Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory since 1967. The resolution was approved on Thursday by the UN General Assembly’s Third Committee — the committee that deals with human rights and humanitarian affairs. It was passed 163 to 5, with 10 abstentions.

Those who voted against were: the United States, Israel, the Marshall Islands, Micronesia and Nauru also voted against the resolution.

Australia, Cameroon, Guatemala, Honduras, Kiribati, Palau, Papa New Guinea, Rwanda, Togo and Tonga all abstained.

The resolution emphasized “the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination, including the right to their independent State of Palestine” and “stressed the urgency of achieving without delay an end to the Israeli occupation that began in 1967 and a just, lasting and comprehensive peace settlement between the Palestinian and Israeli sides,” based on a two-state solution.

It is part of a large package of 20 pro-Palestinian resolutions that are passed by the General Assembly every year.

Palestinian Representative

The Palestinian representative thanked those countries that supported their right to self-determination. He pushed back at the charge that such UN resolutions were problematic.

“Support for this resolution is the only possible option for any country that believes in international law. The right to self-determination was enshrined in the UN charter,” he said.

Many UN countries have also been victims of colonialism and thus have an affinity with the Palestinian cause, he continued, adding: “The problem is not UN resolutions: The problem is their lack of implementation,” he said.

“A two-state solution based on the pre-1967 lines is a critical element for peace with Israel, and therefore all countries have an obligation not to support Israeli actions over the pre-1967 lines,” he said adding: “There is no doubt that the last day of Israel’s occupation of our land will be the first day of peace for all.”

UN resolution reaffirms peoples’ self-determination right

Meanwhile, the United Nations General Assembly’s (UNGA) Third Committee which deals with social, humanitarian and cultural issues Saturday unanimously a passed resolution on the right to self-determination of all people.

Co-sponsored by 71 countries, the resolution, submitted by Pakistan, was adopted without a vote in the 193-member Assembly’s Third Committee. The resolution, which Pakistan has been sponsoring since 1981, serves to focus the world’s attention on the struggle by peoples still struggling for their inalienable right to self-determination, including those in Kashmir and Palestine.

The resolution also declared the General Assembly’s firm opposition to acts of foreign military intervention, aggression and occupation, since these have resulted in the suppression of the right of peoples to self-determination and other human rights in certain parts of the world.

It called on those states responsible to cease immediately their military intervention in and occupation of foreign countries and territories, as well as all acts of repression, discrimination, exploitation and maltreatment. The resolution also deplored the plight of millions of refugees and displaced persons who have been uprooted as a result of these acts and reaffirms their right to return to their homes voluntarily in safety and honor.

It urges the Human Rights Council to give special attention to the violation of human rights, especially the right to self-determination, resulting from foreign military intervention, aggression or occupation. It also requests the Secretary-General to report to the next Session of the General Assembly on this question.

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

26 November 2020

Source: countercurrents.org

By Kalinga Seneviratne

SYDNEY (IDN) – The release of a report into a landmark four-year investigation into the behaviour of Australians special forces known as the SAS (Special Air Service) in Afghanistan, seem to have shocked the nation, judging from newspaper headlines on November 20. Yet, for many who opposed Australia’s involvement in the Afghanistan war, this is not surprising and such a report came too late. A whistle blower who leaked information to the media in 2018 of these atrocities is facing criminal charges for stealing state secrets.

Pip Hinman, of the Sydney ‘Stop The War Coalition’ is not too surprised by the findings. “The nearly 20-year war has been largely hidden (from the Australia public),” she told IDN.

“The media has not been able to go to Afghanistan unless they were embedded with the Australian Defence Force (ADF). Only a handful of independent journalists have managed to get in, and they too would only want to report on the good soldiers because otherwise they would never get back.”

Hinman added: “The federal government has and is actively trying to stop army whistle blowers. Thanks to those brave people, Australians have been getting a better understanding of the nature of this war and Australia’s role there.”

For the last four years, the Inspector-General of the ADF has been looking into such whistle blowing that Australian elite forces in Afghanistan were committing war crimes. The inquiry has now handed down its final report, completed by New South Wales Justice Paul Brereton, who is also a Major General in the Army Reserve.

The findings reveal that some of Australia’s most elite soldiers in the SAS have been involved in unlawful killing, blood lust, a warrior culture and cover-up of their alleged atrocities. It comes as a surprise to an Australian public, who believe that Australian military engagement in Afghanistan was designed to keep the world safe from terrorists. Australia first committed military personnel to Afghanistan in October 2001 to support US’s ‘war on terror’ campaign.

Alex Bainbridge, of the Socialist Alliance, which is opposed to Australia’s involvement in “imperialist wars” in foreign countries believes that the report could help to debunk a myth. “The government tries to pretend that the Australian military is ‘professional’ and only fights for noble causes, but this is a propaganda myth to win public support for unjust wars,” he told IDN.

The report’s most staggering revelation is that 39 Afghans were allegedly murdered by Australian special forces in 23 incidents. None of the alleged victims were combatants. Brereton said that the circumstances of each, were they to be eventually accepted by a jury, would constitute the war crime of murder.

The report has described a process, where young special forces soldiers would be instructed by their patrol commander to execute a detainee. Weapons or radios, known as “throwdowns”, were placed on the body and a cover story allegedly created to mask the crime and deflect any scrutiny. Operational reports were allegedly sanitized to make it appear as though special forces were complying with the laws of engagement.

Some of these incidents took place in 2009 and 2010, with the majority occurring in 2012 and 2013. ADF Chief General Angus Campbell has expressed shocked by the revelations, saying that it is damaging to the moral authority of the military force. “I would never have conceived an Australian would be doing this in the modern era,” he told a media briefing.

This is not the first time that such activities have come into the public domain. In 2018, David McBride, a former Australian Army lawyer, leaked ADF documents on activities of the SAS in Afghanistan to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) which did a series of 7 stories based on these. In response to these stories, Australian Federal Police (AFP) raided the offices of the national broadcaster in Sydney in June 2019 and spent some 8 hours going through computers and confiscating all document related to the matter.

In June 2020, AFP instructed the Office of the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutor to lay charges against journalist Dan Oakes. But, last month (October), the office announced that though they may succeed in obtaining a conviction on several charges, they will not proceed with the case.

McBride, who is facing charges on theft of Commonwealth (Government) property, in a tweet on Thursday said “ a thorough examination of unit command and delegated authority is vital, extending to the very top. This includes the actions of those highly decorated senior officers who provided command during the Afghanistan campaign.”

But, despite these mechanisms being put in place, there are still serious questions about how potential criminal prosecutions would work, argues Professor David Letts, director of the Centre for Military and Security Law at the Australian National University.

“Investigating and prosecuting alleged crimes of this nature is incredibly difficult due to the passage of time, fading memories and inconsistency of witnesses. There are also practical challenges obtaining evidence in a country with a fragile security situation,” he notes in a commentary published by Canberra Times.

He also adds that the standard of proof required to convict an individual “beyond a reasonable doubt” in a criminal trial is quite high, meaning any successful prosecution might require stronger evidence than what has been included in the inquiry report.

Dr Rateb Jneid, President of the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils believes that Australia has made the right decision to investigate these crimes. But, this should be the start of a process where “we make a solemn commitment to stop invading other nations and we must stop supporting invaders and occupiers’ of other nations,” he said in a statement given to IDN.

“We must own up to our crimes and proceed with fair and just persecutions against the perpetrators and those who ordered them to commit such atrocious murders.”

But, the military may see the issue differently. “Our SAS fight against an enemy that wears no uniform and who can easily conceal weapons under the folds of their peasant garbs. Telling friend from foe is nigh impossible and split-second decisions are often needed to counter possible threats,” argues retired Lieutenant Colonel Derek Gogh, in a letter published by Canberra Times on November 20.

“Many of our soldiers have already been murdered by traitorous Afghani soldiers and our SAS troopers also have to cope with frequent roadside bombs and IEDs (improvised explosive devices). They constantly operate under extreme stress, not likely to be appreciated by those who have not walked in their shoes.”

But Bainbridge argues that the need of the hour is a fundamental change in the military thinking to “curtail their capacity to wage wars of aggression abroad”. “The people of Afghanistan have never threatened Australia,” adds Hinman. “They have told us they can handle their own despots and regimes (like Taliban) themselves, but the very presence of occupying Western forces, which helped ferment new terrorist gangs like the IS (Islamic State), made that struggle (to fight terror) even harder.”

Bainbridge believes that every exposure of imperialist war crimes and human rights abuses makes it easier to make an anti-war argument. “A million people protested against the Iraq war in February 2003 and around half the population were opposed to that war,” he points out. “So it is definitely possible to build a strong and successful anti-war movement in this country.”

Photo: Two Australian soldiers during the Shah Wali Kot Offensive in Afghanistan. CC BY 2.0

IDN is flagship agency of the Non-profit International Press Syndicate.

20 November 2020

Source: www.indepthnews.net

By Jan Oberg

13 Nov 2020 – We are blessed by having a number of peace and future scholars, world-leading in their professions, who have followed world events over many decades and continue to be committed to world order change and public education.

I say “blessed” because I assume that the reader share my reverence for high age and the sharing of long life experience as well as the wisdom that may accompany it in the midst of the youth-worshiping which characterises the ageing and increasingly grumpy West itself – also sometimes called age discrimination.

Last month we celebrated Johan Galtung at 90. And today, Richard Falk at 90 – both world-renowned mega-productive scholars restlessly seeking ways to make the world a more peaceful place. And both TFF Associates, mentors and friends of the founders even before we set up TFF in 1985.

As a student of sociology, peace and world affairs in the 1970s, I had been drawn to Falk’s pioneering writings and textbooks – and the “relevantly utopian” World Order Models Project, WOMP, that he participated in. I then met him in Lisbon for that project’s meeting in 1980 and have benefited ever since from his academic/law perspectives, peace thinking as well as from his sophisticated, elegantly complex style of writing.

To write this heart- and brain-felt homage, I went back first to TFF Associate’s “Treasures” section 1998-2005 and found 43 articles by Richard. Then on to TFF’s homepage – 2006-2012 and found 46 articles by him. Continuing to TFF Associates’ blog 2012-2017, I find that we published no less than 243 articles by Richard during those five years. And finally to our present site, The Transnational from 2018 where there are some 50.

In sum, more than 380 pieces of theory, visions, commentaries, analyses and debate articles. Although this is only a fraction of his total production, I allow myself to interpret this publication result as a modest token of my deep gratitude and my joy of paying back a little of what he has so generously given TFF and me personally during all these years – not the least, I may add, by reading and editing all these articles before I posted them!

It isn’t easy, perhaps actually impossible, to pin down who Richard Falk is, incessantly writing and speaking around the world, over so many years. But it suffices here to just celebrate the incredible diversity. Richard’s lifelong engagement with the Palestinian people stands out – as do critical analyses of USand NATO militarism and interventionism; Middle Eastern developments and wars, of course; international law and the UN in particular – we share a big heart for its basic idea and role in the world – as well as nonviolence and peace and analysis of topical issues such as this from just a couple of days ago. . .

Richard Falk is Jewish and explains what this identity means to him and, in passing, why he cannot in spite of his critical attitude to Zionism be categorized as he has been, as a self-hating Jew. He speaks rather from an ecumenical perspective – of great significance for world peace thinking:

“In a more fundamental respect my own evolution has always been suspicious of those who give priority to tribalist or sectarian identities. In other words, it is fine to affirm being Jewish, but it should not take precedence over being human or being open and receptive to the insight and wisdom of other traditions. We have reached a point in the political and cultural evolution that our future flourishing as a species vitally depends upon the spread of a more ecumenical ethos. We have expressed this embrace of otherness in relation to food, with the rise of ‘fusion’ cuisines, and with regard to popular culture, particularly music, where all kinds of borrowing and synthesis are perceived as exciting, authentic, valuable.”

And…

“In my experience what is most appropriate in our historical circumstances is an ecumenical and inclusive spiritual identity, and associated ethical and political commitments. In effect, what would awaken the collective sensibilities of the peoples of the earth to the challenges confronting humanity is a movement of spiritual and ethical globalization that approaches the universal through an immersion in a variety of particularities.

In this sense, I want to say, yes I am Jewish, and proud of it, but I am equally indigenous, Sufi, Hindu, Buddhist, Muslim, and Christian to the extent that I allow myself to participate in their rituals, partake of their sacred texts, and seek and avail myself of the opportunity to sit at the feet of their masters. Many persons living deprived lives do not have or desire such ecumenical opportunities, and can best approach this universal ideal, by seeking out the inclusive potentialities of their own religious and cultural reality.”

Of course, like many other experts critical of Israel’s policies in general and policies vis-a-vis the Palestinians, he has been accused of anti-Semitism. In this short video from autumn 2019, you’ll see how he – careful with formulations around the complexity of the issue – explains how Zionism’s rejection/diversion of all criticism as anti-Semitism has more dimensions and purposes than we may have thought of. Indeed, this short sequence a pearl of pedagogics.

Richard Falk on Zionism and anti-Semitism

Richard’s style of writing has literary qualities way beyond the normal academic text – and without losing its precision and attempted rational reasoning. That may very well have to do with his reading of fiction and his own writing of poetry.

You’ll see in Memoir sketch – Championing lost causes how literary-philosophical classics such as Albert Camus influences his thinking, not only about external academic issues and the world but what it means to be an intellectual acting responsibly into that world and – even in dark times – avoid the traps of losing hope and being overtaken by fear.

In this article he pays tribute to one of his dearest friends, literature professor Edward Said (1935-2003) taking as his point of departure Said’s 1997 essay “On lost causes”, something which he elaborates further on in this 2014 article in The Nation about the future of Palestine.

It wasn’t before he turned 80 that Falk started his personal blog, Global Justice in the 21st Century which contains posts of a fascinating diversity and in a quantity that makes you wonder whether the man ever sleeps (he maintains that he does but gives the impression that to him sleep is an unfortunate, necessary waste of time; it’s a feeling we share).

Not to be missed, throughout this blog, he explores directly and indirectly what it means to be what he calls a citizens pilgrim. He defines that as

an identity shaped through an appreciative reference to ‘the citizen pilgrim,’ that is, to the citizen whose conscience is directed at others without heeding boundaries of space or time, or such contingent features of identity as nationality, ethnicity, race, religion, gender, class. The citizen pilgrim has embarked upon what is essentially a spiritual journey or pilgrimage, seeking an inspirational future that seems neither feasible nor impossible. Such an inspirational dedication also minimizes the imaginative foreclosures of mortality, making the certainty of death a part of life, and accepting this destiny without seeking the comfort of metaphysical fictions, and thus not deeply disconcerted by ‘the dying of the light.’

As I’ve hinted above, parallel with his academic and political production, Richard has consistently grappled with what it means to be a responsible intellectual – over the moral aspects of his lifelong project and its meandering path. “Responsible scholarship in dark times” from 2007 is but one of many such thoughtful pieces – rare in the academic world – with the greatest relevance for today’s – no less dark – world in which true knowledge, not to mention wisdom, seems to have lost out to the fast market’s banality-driven timespan-contracting and impulsive clicking fad that gives priority to fast, smart opinions rather than the slower knowledge-building – in short, a new illiteracy.

The world as a whole and as we experience it today in a macro-historical perspective has not progressed to the better, towards what he has struggled and hoped for. But is he frustrated?

Anti-war and pro-peace

This little tribute to one of the most prolific and elegantly-reasoning social scientists of our time cannot be anything but kaleidoscopic. The reader is advised to explore the Falk universe and its enlightenment on their own, perhaps through some of the links provided in this article.

Of particular importance for our relations with him is, naturally, his deep belief in and advocacy of using all the civilian means at humanity’s disposal and only use violence as the last resort, completely in unison with the UN Charter’s Article 1 – the promotion of which is TFF’s mission.

An example. Already in September 2002 – about half a year before the U.S. invasion and destruction of Iraq with its allies under Goerge W. Bush, Falk pulled the entire project apart, intellectually, legally, politically and morally in this short article on TFF – “A roadmap to war: A flawed debate.”

Falk stated his factual and intuitive pre-war criticism succinctly as did other TFF Associates such as Hans von Sponeck, Johan Galtung, Brian Martin, David Krieger, Burns Weston, Birgitte Rahbek, Else Hammerich and myself to mention some of the more vocal anti-intervention voices at the time.

It’s noteworthy that all TFF Associates who advised strongly against that war before it started also predicted its catastrophic consequences it would have in Iraq as well as for the possibility of a new and more benign world order that had been made possible by the demise of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact. But few politicians and media in the US and NATO countries had any wish or capacity to listen. Today the consequences of that insensitive and self-destructive militarism causes the decline of the US and NATO itself.

Falk’s devotion to Gandhi, to eclecticist nonviolent thinking and policies, can be enjoyed in this article on TFF’s homepage “Mahatma Gandhi and the revival of nonviolent politics at the end of the 20th century” – as early as 1998.

If a Nobel Peace Prize should, for the first time, be awarded to a peace and conflict scholar, Richard Falk would be on top of the shortlist. Fortunately, he is on the list of the Nobel Peace Prize Watch. Here you may read the motivation for his nomination, every year over the last 12.

However, like Johan Galtung and the other qualified people on that list, Falk is probably too central to the essential peace concerns as Alfred Nobel expressed them in his will to ever even be considered – not that I think it bothers him the slightest.

My wife and co-founder Christina – and many other TFF Associates – join you today to say thank you, dear Richard, for your friendship, mentorship and TFF Associateship over more than 40 years.

As we look forward, we wish you and you wife Hilal Elver everything good in years to come, good health in particular so you can continue happily your citizen’s pilgrimage which will, beyond a doubt, continue to inspire way beyond your own time and space. And do continue your daily ping-pong matches too…

You may congratulate Richard Falk by Joining the Discussion below or write him at either falk@global.ucsb.edu or rfalk@princeton.edu

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.

Prof. Jan Oberg, Ph.D. is director of the Transnational Foundation for Peace and Future Research, TFF and a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace Development Environment.

16 November 2020

Source: www.transcend.org

By Richard Falk

9 Nov 2020 – The victory by the Biden/Harris ticket in the 2020 American National Elections is basically good news for the country and the world, although not as good as expected (by pollsters or enthusiasts) or nearly as decisive as desirable given the dreadfully regressive behavior of Trump and the Republican Party over the past four years. And there is some bad news, as well, lurking just beneath the surface. Not only the strength of Trumpism in America, but the likely drift toward the center-right of the Biden presidency.

Why Good News?

Above all, Trump’s reelection would have meant a tighter embrace of an American version of fascism with constitutionalism, the rule of law, and human rights repudiated, and an autocratic/plutocratic style of leadership consolidated around an ideology of chauvinistic or nativist nationalism.

The vote was not as one-sided as anti-fascists might have hoped, but the Biden ticket did prevail in the popular vote by an almost 5 million margin, and won the electoral college by a comfortable margin. This achievement is even greater than the statistical results if account is taken of the various Republican voter suppression efforts.

In policy terms, the result seems clearly beneficial with respect to the short-term domestic agenda. The CORONA pandemic is likely to be immediately handled in accord with guidelines by health specialists rather than by the macho whims of the Trump White House, which means that the virus is likely to be brought under control as rapidly and humanely as possible, assuming that the inauguration of Biden occurs on January 20th. Beyond this, presuming some Congressional flexibility, a stimulus package beneficial to the poor and unemployed, as well as to small businesses is likely to be quickly forthcoming. Such policies should pave the way to a broader, more sustainable and fairer economic recovery, although the second wave COVID spike in Europe warrants caution as to what the future will bring.

Looking beyond these immediate challenges, it would seem reasonable to expect improvements in health care, public education, judicial appointments, racial and gender equality from the Biden presidency, with a realistic prospect of progress toward realizing such goals, especially if the two Georgia runoff elections on January 5th go the Democratic Party way, which seems possible, but not yet probable.

Internationally, the Biden victory will be greeted by world leaders around the world with a huge sigh of relief. It will have, additionally, some positive impacts on global problem-solving, giving rise overall to a more cooperative atmosphere. A revived posture of U.S. global activism is certain to be welcomed at first raising hopes of crafting compromise solutions to common problems. It seems also like to produce some increased appreciation of the role of the United Nations and international law, highlighted by reactivating membership in and refunding of the WHO. This kind of participation by the United States is likely to a partial renewal of the global leadership role that the U.S. played in the decades after the end of World War II, although in a more muted manner, due to preoccupations with domestic challenges, and in a spirit more related to functional concerns, above all, climate change and health, than to ideologically adversary geopolitical relations.

Now, the Bad News

While the referendum on Trump as leader and fascism as ideology were formally repudiated, the threats posed remain existentially viral, likely to become entrenched in some kind of organizational Trumpist format that will stalk the future of governance and quality of political life in the United States during the years ahead. It is chastening to acknowledge that if the pandemic had not struck the country so hard or Trump had handled it more prudently, he likely would have been reelected. The stock market would have attained a record high, while unemployment would have remained at record lows. As it was, as Republicans gleefully point out, their party won the 2020 elections except for the presidency—so far holding their Senate majority, even picking up several seats in the House of Representatives, gaining in Federal contexts, meaning greater influence among the legislatures and leadership in the 50 states. I can only imagine the dire morning after had there been no health crisis, no economic downturn, and no crazy leader in the White House!

Less obvious, but no less serious, the Biden victory is also a victory for the American deep state, which has presided over the implementation of an evolving bipartisan consensus that has shaped American foreign policy ever since the wartime unity governments of 1941-1945. This foreign policy consensus can be identified with four overlapping dimensions:

1. a global military security system consisting of hundreds of overseas military bases, all-oceans naval presences, operational intelligence capabilities in every strategically important country in the world, and a hegemonic control of nuclear weaponry;

2. a string of formal and informal alliances and special relationships that connect U.S. diplomacy and geopolitical muscle with strategic priorities such as the defense of Europe, Taiwan, and Israel;

3. a shifting continuing need to identify sufficient global security threats and interest to satisfy private sector arms sales interests and to ensure Congressional support for high defense budgets; the promotion of such goals tend to magnify security threats and induce geopolitical confrontations;

4. a support structure for a market-driven world economy premised on ‘Neoliberal Globalization,’ premised on facilitating transnational capital investments and beneficial trading frameworks, and backed up by international economic institutions (World Bank, IMF, World Trade Organization), and supplemented as necessary by various hostile responses by the U.S. Government in reaction to displays of foreign economic nationalism, including reliance on sanctions, covert interventions, and coercive diplomacy.

It is notable that the bureaucratic managers of the deep state, retirees from the CIA and Pentagon, were not comfortable with the Trump presidency because its leadership lacked a disciplined adherence to these four dimensions of the deep state consensus that had managed the transitions from World War II to the Cold War, from the Cold War to the War of Terror, and hopes perhaps for a new transition that generates tensions with Russia and/or China. It is not that Trump defied the consensus at the level of policy, but that he led with an unsteady hand less responsive to the nuances of geopolitical management of an increasingly complex global setting. With Biden the deep state has a reliable veteran adherent of the deep state consensus, someone who can be trusted to follow its signals as to policy initiatives, especially in the domains of foreign economic and security policy. In the present setting, Biden has almost total freedom to opt for the center-right on foreign policy as the political mood is currently dominated by how he delivers on the home front.

Finally, on the domestic scene, there is now a probable surfacing of post-Trump strife among the Democratic winners in the recent elections. The issue is one of policy influence as reflected by high profile appointments, policy priorities, and presidential tone. Will the progressive wing of the Democratic Party that preferred Bernie Sanders over Joe Biden as the anti-Trump candidate be given its due or will it be boxed in by the center-right leadership that blames the center-left for its setbacks in the 2020 elections? These self-styled Democratic moderates insist that progressive advocacy of the Green New Deal, Medicare for All, debt forgiveness for student loans were ‘socialist’ or hard left proposals that drove many Independents to vote Republican except for Biden/Harris. It seems doubtful that ‘the center will hold’ as Democrats on the left and right vie for influence, and it is quite possible that The Squad will go it alone, championing movement politics, while almost giving up on the two-party approach to American politics. We already finding the two wings each claiming credit for the Biden victory. The center-right contending that only a candidate of Biden’s conservative record could have won, and all other Democrat alternatives would have gone down to defeat. The center-left counters with the claim that without the progressive ground game and mobilization of voter turnout among minorities and youth, Biden/Harris would have been beaten by Trump/Pence.

Leading Where?

Too many uncertainties exist to support any confident assessment as to how these clashing tendencies will play out. What seems clear is that there were two outcomes of the American elections: Trump was beaten, but Trumpism was not, garnering the support under the most unfavorable circumstances of over 70 million voters and a heightened sense of militancy under circumstances of higher political stakes. Will Trumpists, and the Republican leadership, interpret the election as a defeat because Trump lost or as a mandate because Republican conservative policy positions despite the adverse presidential tide made gains at the Congressional and federal levels of government.

One unknowable issue is whether Trumpism can flourish without Trump in the White House, and closely related, whether Trump after returning to private life will seek to lead the movement he inspired or resume his life as freewheeling business magnate.

Another area of uncertainty is whether the deep state will opt for a geopolitical confrontation with China or will be content to promote economic growth and political stability at least for an interim period during which the U.S. recovers its geopolitical composure. It seems safe to assume that Biden will govern in light of a new articulation of a deep state consensus responsive to its reading of the global scene, but how that will be weighted is far from clear at this time.

Biden’s clarion call has been to bring civility, if not a spirit of unity, back to the ebb and flow of American politics. This is an understandable response to the slash and burn presidency of Trump, but if it persists, it could lead to some discrediting compromises, with respect to stimulus, health care, immigration, unlikely to appease Trumpists or even non-Trump Republicans, and foster an image of the Biden presidency as out of touch with the harsh realities of American politics in their present configuration. Obama made this mistake, and was outmaneuvered by Republicans who took all they could get without giving away anything in return. It will be important to watch closely Biden’s attempts to induce a more cooperative atmosphere and, especially, how he handles a non-responsive Republican Senate. Indications remain strong that the last thing Trump-oriented Republicans want is compromise. Forgetting that it takes two to tango could quickly alter the welcome image of Biden the unifier into that of Biden the dangerous fool who fails to understand the ethics and politics of polarization. Unless a presently unseen and almost unimaginable will emerges on the political right to seek some level of reconciliation with the Democratic establishment, wasting energy on finding common ground is like looking for sunlight deep inside a cave.

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.

16 November 2020

Source: www.transcend.org

By Richard Falk

12 Nov 2020 – What follows is my contribution to a forthcoming publication bearing the title Shared Struggle: Stories of Palestinian and Irish Hunger Strikers. This is an important collection of writing prepared by Norma Hashim and Yousef M. Aljami. It appeared by way of exclusive arrangement on October 27, 2020 in the online magazine Politics Today. My essay speaks to the hunger strikes as political resistance of a sublime character, and at the same time to the selective silence of the Western media when it comes to heroic moments in the Palestinian struggle. Just days ago Maher Al-Akhras ended his 103 day hunger strike when Israel finally agreed to his release from prison after repeated confinement without charges under colonialist ‘administrative detention’ rulings.

Desperate circumstances give rise to desperate behavior. If by states, extreme violent behavior tends to be rationalized as ‘self-defense,’ ‘military necessity,’ or ‘counterterrorism,’ and claims of legal authorization are treated as appropriate. If even nonviolent acts of resistance by individuals associated with dissident movements, then the established order and its supportive media will routinely describe such acts as ‘terrorism,’ ‘criminality,’ and ‘fanaticism,’ and the behavior is criminalized, or at best exposed to scorn by the established order of sovereign states. Statist forms of combat almost always rely on violence to crush an enemy, while the desperation of resistance sometimes takes the form of inflicting hurt upon the self so as to shame an oppressor to relent or eventually even surrender, not due to empathy or a change of heart, but because fearful of alienating public opinion, intensifying resistance, losing international legitimacy, facing sanctions. It is against such an overall background that we should understand the role of the hunger strike in the wider context of resistance against all forms of oppressive, exploitative, and cruel governance. The long struggles in Northern Ireland and Palestine are among the most poignant instances of such political encounters that gripped the moral imagination of many persons of conscience in the years since the middle of the prior century.

Those jailed activists who have recourse to a hunger strike, either singly or in collaboration, are keenly aware that they are choosing an option of last resort, which exhibits a willingness to sacrifice their body and even life itself for goals deemed more important. These goals usually involve either safeguarding dignity or honor of subjugated people or mobilizing support for a collective struggle on behalf of freedom, rights, and equality. A hunger strike is an ultimate form of non-violence, comparable only to politically motivated acts of self-immolation, physically harmful only to the self, yet possessing in certain circumstances unlimited symbolic potential to change behavior and give rise to massive displays of discontent by a population believed to be successfully suppressed. Such desperate tactics have been integral to the struggles for basic rights and resistance to oppressive conditions in both Palestine and Northern Ireland.

An unacknowledged, yet vital, truth of recent history is that symbolic politics have often eventually controlled the outcomes of prolonged struggles against oppressive state actors that wield dominant control over combat zones and uncontested superiority in relation to weapons and military capabilities. And yet despite these hard power advantages thought decisive in such conflict, they go on in the end to endure political defeat. It may be helpful to remember that it was the self-immolation of Buddhist monks in Saigon during the 1960s was considered a scream of the culture in reaction to the American led military intervention. It led Vietnamese scholars to interpret these extreme acts of solitary individuals, endowed with the highest civilizational authority, as actually shifting the balance of forces in Vietnam in ways that then and there doomed the seemingly irresistible American military resolve to control the political future of Vietnam. These acts didn’t end the war, but to those with insight into Vietnamese culture it did signal an outcome contrary to what the war planners in Washington expected. Tragically before acknowledging defeat, the Vietnam war persisted for a decade, ravaging the land and bringing great suffering to the people of Vietnam. Self-immolation, setting oneself on fire as an irreversible instance of self-sacrifice, carries the logic of a hunger strike to its conclusion. Depending on the actor and context, self-immolation can be interpreted either as an expression of hopeless despair or as a desperate appeal for a just peace.

It was the self-immolation of a simple fruit and vegetable vendor, Mohamed Bouazizi in the Tunisian town of Sidi Bouzid on December 17, 2010 that called attention to the plight of the Tunisian people, igniting a nationwide uprising that drove a corrupt dictator, Ben Ali, from power. Bouazizi, without political motivation or spiritual authority of the Buddhist monks, sparked populist mobilizations that swept across the Arab world in 2011. Somehow Bouazizi’s entire personal self-immolation set the region ablaze. Such a reaction could not have been predicted and was not planned, yet afterwards it was interpreted as somehow generating revolutionary responses to intolerable underlying conditions.

Without doubt, the supreme example of triumphant symbolic politics in modern times was the extraordinary resistance and liberation movement led by Gandhi that merged his individual hunger strikes unto death with spectacular nonviolent forms of collective action (for instance, ‘the salt march’ of 1930), accomplishing what seemed impossible at the time, bringing the British Empire to its knees, and by so doing, restoring independent statehood and sovereignty to India.

Both the oppressed and the oppressors learn from past successes and failures of symbolic politics. The oppressed view it as an ultimate and ennobling approach to resistance and liberation. Oppressors learn that wars are often not decided by who wins on the battlefield but by the side that gains a decisive advantage symbolically in what I have previously called ‘legitimacy wars.’ With this knowledge of their vulnerability, oppressors fight back, defame and use violence to destroy by any means the will of the oppressed to resist, especially if the stakes involve giving up the high moral and legal ground. The Israeli leadership learned, especially, from the collapse of South African apartheid not to take symbolic politics lightly. Israel has been particularly unscrupulous in its responses to symbolic challenges to its abusive apartheid regime of control. Israel, with U.S. support, has mounted a worldwide defamatory pushback against criticism at the UN or from human rights defenders around the world, shamelessly playing ‘the anti-Semitic card’ in its effort to destroy nonviolent solidarity efforts such as the pro-Palestinian BDS Campaign modeled on an initiative that had mobilized worldwide opposition to South African apartheid. Notably, in the South African case, the BDS tactic was questioned for effectiveness and appropriateness, but its organizers and most militant supporters were never defamed, much less criminalized. This recognition of the potency of symbolic politics by Israel has obstructed the Palestinian liberation struggles despite what would seem to be the advantageous realities of the post-colonial setting.

Israel’s version of an apartheid regime evolved as a necessary side effect of establishing an exclusivist Jewish state in a non-Jewish state. This Zionist project required that the Palestinian people become victims of colonialist displacement in their own homeland. Israel learned from the South African experience techniques of racist hierarchy and repression, but they were also aware of the vulnerabilities of oppressors to sustained forms of non-violence that validated the persevering resistance of those oppressed. Israel is determined not to repeat the collapse of South African apartheid, and to do so requires not only repression of resistors but the demoralization of supporters.

A similar reality existed in Northern Ireland where the memories of colonies lost to weaker adversaries slowly taught the UK lessons of accommodation and compromise, which led the leaders in London to shift their focus from counterterrorism to diplomacy, with the dramatic climax of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998. Israel is not the UK, and the Irish are not the Palestinians. Israel shows no willingness to grant the Palestinian people their most basic rights, yet even Israel does not want to be humiliated in ways that can arouse international public opinion to move beyond the rhetoric of censure in the direction of sanctions. The Israeli Prison Service doesn’t want Palestinian hunger strikers to die while in captivity, not because of empathy, but to avoid bad publicity. To prevent such outcomes, Israeli prison authorities will make concessions, including even release, when a hunger striker is feared at the brink of death, and earlier attempts at force feeding have failed. Palestinian prospects are more dependent than ever on waging and winning victories in the domain of symbolic politics, and Israel, with the help of the United States, will go to any length to hide defeat in this longest of legitimacy wars.

It is against such a background that Palestinian and Irish contributions came to surface to underscore the essential similarity of these two epic anti-colonial struggles. What gives the stories of Palestinian and Irish hunger strikers the authority and persuasive power is the authenticity derived from words of those brave men and women who chose to undertake hunger strikes in situations of desperation and experienced not only their own spirit-enhancing ordeal but the pain of loss of martyred fallen comrades, grieving families, and their common effort to engage the wider struggles for rights and freedom being carried on outside the prison walls. Despite the vast differences in their respective struggles against oppression, the similarities of response created the deepest of bonds, especially of the Irish toward the Palestinians whose oppressive reality was more severe, and has proved more enduring, although the dreams of the Irish hunger strikers remain largely unrealized. At the same time, the inspirational example of the Irish hunger strikers who did not abandon their quest for elemental justice at the doorstep of death was not lost on the Palestinians.

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.

16 November 2020

Source: www.transcend.org

By Mazin Qumsiyeh

Girls exploring nature at the Palestine Institute for Biodiversity and Sustainability

12 Nov 2020 – How do we individually cope, keep our sanity in a spiraling crisis, and help others?

It is almost a year since the start of this global pandemic with over 50 million who were infected and over one million died from. Everyone of us can count personal loss economic and human. Countries like India, Brazil, and the US were especially hit hard because of their corrupt leadership. But every country and region in the world suffered.

Here in Palestine as an example, the viral infection rates are still on the rise especially in Gaza. Many Gaza Palestinians lost hope. Many young people are committing suicide. It is not only a pandemic of a virus but the pandemic of systematic racism and colonialism that spread. While Zionists spread hate and divisiveness to advance its goals around the world (via Hollywood, Bloomberg and Fox News etc), even they are starting to rethink what world are they making and will it be livable even for the billionaires. The stock market watched by the rich and powerful like Trump and Netanyahu went up because of the supposed potential vaccine. But this vaccine is no magic bullet. Its distribution will be a nightmare since it must be shipped on dry ice and stay very cold (freezer facilities of that kind are not found in most areas).

The virus is also mutating and there will be new viruses. As a biologist and medical geneticist I can tell you there are simply too many humans and lots of viruses around us evolving. Everyone also knows that the current economic system (capitalism/consumerism) is not only unable to deal with the new realities (pandemics, climate change, catastrophic wars) BUT IS ACTUALLY THE CAUSE OF THESE. Hence the challenge for common people: how to survive and create a better world to ensure our neighbors, friends, and children also live decent lives?

Most people of course at the most basic instinct want to survive as individuals and try to adapt as best as they could in times of crisis. I have seen people previously with decent jobs reduced to begging on the streets to survive. Debts are rising (individual, corporate, government) around the world. Few are doing well either by exploiting other people (I call it parasitic) or by having learned self sustenance (like intentional communities, farming to produce our own food etc). There are lessons to learn from indiginous/native people. Even in places that have forgotten their ancient ways, these can be revived.

For example our Canaanitic ancestors and even my own ancestors as recent as 3 generations back were able to sustain themselves fully from the land (their immediate surrounding). This even when the green season is but 3-4 months of the year in Palestine. I know it is doable. We developed a community garden and with few simple (permaculture techniques) we produce >70-80% of our (including volunteer) food. Very little waste is produced. This brings us satisfaction and a sense of control (keys to what is called happiness). Yet this is not sufficient because all around us people are unable to have decent jobs, feed their families, support themselves or feel a sense of empowerment. Personal satisfaction of even creating a team success (as at palestinenature.org) still seems deficient when our ecosystem is falling apart. A small batch of healthy forest cannot really survive long term when the rest of the forest is being destroyed. In this case it is even the rest of the global ecosystem.

As I started to write this on a sleepless night I was not sure where to go with it. But then I thought the best is merely to ask readers for their thoughts. There is so much negativity in this world (justifiable by the state of our world). There are few positive foci doing good things (and we should be proud of those). We do want to promote the latter while realistically dealing with the former. Psychology plays a great factor in that as anyone realizes: you cannot help yourself, or others if you are depressed. The motto we came up with for our Palestine Institute for Biodiversity and Sustainability is “Respect: for ourselves, for others, for our environment”. This is not easy. Many (including me who are still unsure of direction) would be curious to hear how different people help each other to develop these three levels of respect.

We all are learning. We all need emotional and intellectual feedback/support especially in these difficult (actually existential to our species) times. Homo sapiens is a social species. The (western) capitalist world system while packing us into urban areas (increasing urbanization) has ironically also isolated us in separate compartments/ apartments (physically and mentally). COVID-19 exacerbated this isolation. How do we cope with that? How do we support each other? How do we connect and communicate even more (online)? What is the new economic and social system that we should be building to replace the decaying/failing system we inherited? Please put your thoughts in the comments section of this blog or email me and I will post them.

Mazin Qumsiyeh, associate professor of genetics and director of cytogenetic services at Yale University School of Medicine, is founder and president of the Holy Land Conservation Foundation and ex-president of the Middle East Genetics Association.

16 November 2020

Source: www.transcend.org

By Peter Lackowski

Traveling around Venezuela in 2005, it occurred to me that the paint merchants must be doing very well. There had been a recall referendum the year before. The question on the ballot was a simple yes or no: Shall President Hugo Chávez be recalled? The word “NO” was still painted on walls, pillars, even random rocks along the highway everywhere I went, reflecting the fact that he had won the vote, 59 to 41 percent, more than a year before.

But the opposition refused to accept those results, saying that there had been electoral fraud. The Carter Center and other international observers said they did not see any, and when they tried to investigate stories circulating, nothing factual turned up.

In 2005, Venezuela was still trying to recover from the employer lockout, and a massive popular uprising thwarted corporate strike that crippled the economy after the anti-Chávez coup of 2002. There were signs of poverty everywhere — people sleeping in doorways, begging, sitting at tables on the street hoping to sell a few trinkets to be able to eat.

I was struck though, by how many street vendors had racks of books with laws — basic laws about the rights of workers, education, land reform, indigenous and other minorities, elections, fisheries, and on and on. The biggest seller was the Bolivarian Constitution, in editions of every size, including little pocket sized ones that people carried around. I saw people buying those books on the street and reading them on the subway and in parks, a constitution that said that they have a human right to a job, housing, health care, education, and everything else that people need. Studying the new laws intended to make those rights real.

An election was coming up on December 4, 2005; the country was getting ready to elect a new National Assembly, the legislative body. There were people in line at street corner registration centers signing up to get a cédula, the official identity number that is used for voting, as well as everything else that involves filling out forms, like credit cards, bank accounts, etc. Many poor people had never had a cédula, but now there were reasons to get one, to fully participate in all the things that had previously been reserved for the middle class.

In sum, given all the new voters and the level of enthusiasm for the revolution among the poor—a big majority—there was every reason to believe that Chavistas would do very well. But there was a problem.

The Chavista government had introduced a new voting system, intended to make elections secure. The voter puts their thumb into a fingerprint-reading device that matches their thumbprint to their name and cédula. Their vote is registered on a machine, which also prints a slip of paper saying how they voted. The voter can check to see that the votes printed on the paper are the same as the ones entered into the machine, and that slip of paper is deposited in a ballot box. After the election, 54 percent of all ballot boxes are randomly selected and opened in the presence of representatives of all the parties, so the paper printouts can be matched to the figures reported from the machines. (The Carter Institute declared this Venezuelan system to be the best in the world.)

The opposition, however, raised objections to the system, claiming, among other things, that the government was going to somehow figure out how people had voted by matching the machines’ record with the order in which they voted. After a long process of negotiation, the National Electoral Council agreed to many opposition demands, and the country prepared for the contest on Sunday, December 4.

I happened to be in the mountain city of Merida on Thursday, December 1, when the news came: The opposition was pulling out of the election, telling their supporters to stay home! They claimed the election was rigged, the Chavistas were going to engage in massive fraud, and they refused to participate.

Given that the government was making progress on most problems, and that the opposition parties had tried so hard to sabotage the economy, it seemed obvious that the lower classes were set to deliver a big majority of delegates to the Chavistas. Crying “Fraud!” was a ploy to avoid another humiliating electoral defeat.

The position of the United States government, and the corporate media who promote its point of view, has been that Venezuelan elections are so corrupt that the opposition has no chance of winning. They have passed on wild stories of violent intimidation and blatant fraud that turn out to have no substance when they are investigated — just internet rumors.

Proof that Chávez was willing to accept electoral defeat came in 2007, when he proposed a package of reforms involving more than sixty changes in the constitution. The proposal failed by a 51 to 49 percent vote. Chávez accepted the results with the remark that it was better to lose than to win by such a close vote.

Claims of fraud have been advanced to excuse violence. After Enrique Capriles lost a close election to President Maduro in 2013 he told his followers to ‘discharge their rage,’ which they did by attacking Cuban staffed medical centers, killing several defenders, based on the bizarre rumor that ballots were being hidden in them.

The accusation of electoral fraud has been a standard feature of U. S. promoted regime change efforts. If it is backed up with sufficient violence, it can be an effective propaganda cover for a coup, as happened in Bolivia. But even in cases like Venezuela, where it is widely understood to be “fake news,” it can have a destabilizing effect, undermining the authority of elections and providing justification for violence.

The United States has used fake claims of electoral fraud to destabilize other countries; now Donald Trump is using this same weapon against the United States itself.

It is a strategy that has come home to roost.

Peter Lackowski, a retired teacher living in Burlington, Vermont, as a friend of the Bolivarian Venezuela regularly writes on Venezuela.

16 November 2020

Source: countercurrents.org

By David Palumbo-Liu

Palestinians aren’t just kept in misery and degradation by the Israeli occupation – they’re also silenced, at home and abroad. Palestinian activists and their supporters are trying to change that.(An important 7-minute read)

In her January 19, 2020 op-ed in the New York Times, Michelle Alexander argued that it is “Time to Break the Silence on Palestine.” After recounting the many ways people have been forced into silence on Palestine, she ends with this resolution: “In this new year, I aim to speak with greater courage and conviction about injustices beyond our borders, particularly those that are funded by our government, and stand in solidarity with struggles for democracy and freedom. My conscience leaves me no other choice.”

I greatly admire Alexander’s op-ed and stance. The occasion of her essay was Martin Luther King Day, prompting her to reflect on the stance he might have taken on Palestine. “Breaking the silence on Palestine,” however, did not include a single Palestinian voice. Alexander referred to the case of Bahia Amawi, a Palestinian who was fired for not signing an anti-boycott pledge, and she names the good work of several Palestinian organizations. But not a single quote from a Palestinian voice.

The tendency has been to refer to Palestinians as victims of oppression, but also omit the fact that they are among the most resilient and courageous peoples of the world, having endured that oppression and resisted it for decades. The media has been consistently awful at even recognizing the accomplishments of Palestinians and Palestinian Americans as human beings, and the stories of those accomplishments and histories have been erased and repressed everywhere.

Not everyone has a platform in the New York Times, so we should be immensely grateful to Alexander for using her column to say what she did. But we also need to note how rare this kind of statement is — and that there is no Palestinian or even Arab voice at the Times. Censored, shut down, and denied mainstream means to tell the Palestinian story with Palestinian voices, Palestinians and their supporters go to other places, media, venues, and invent their own.

For instance, since 2016, graduating Palestinian architecture students have competed for the prestigious “Reconstruction of Destroyed Palestinian Villages” award. As reported in the Middle East Monitor, “the architectural competition, organised by the Palestine Land Society, brings together history, politics and contemporary architecture as young students compete to reconstruct over 500 villages destroyed during the Nakba in order to preserve and restore their heritage and draw a realistic, future blueprint for the return of Palestinian refugees.” And the Arab World Institute in Paris hosts an annual exhibit called “For a Palestinian National Museum,” which collects Palestine art, photography, and graphics in a series of galleries that stands in as a temporary “national museum” for Palestine.

Acknowledging the tremendous burden placed on Palestinians to create a counter to the erasures and distortions they have faced, Palestinian scholar and activist Edward Said once said, “The Palestinian must make the present since the present is not an imaginative luxury but a literal, existential necessity.”

Last year, a group of Palestinian, Palestinian-American, and US activists raised enough funds to produce a three-day event in New York City, “Palestine Writes,” with exactly the aim of creating a Palestinian present and presence at the heart of US cultural life. They raised enough funds to bring some of the most esteemed writers from Palestine; pay for visas and lodging; and put them in dialogue with US writers and activists such as Angela Davis, historian Robin D. G. Kelley, indigenous scholar and Red Nation activist Nick Estes, and others on translation, incarceration, indigeneity, and more; along with a series of workshops and events for children.

The event sold out all three days. And then the pandemic hit. The event organizers have regrouped and are doing an online event from December 2–6. Headlining the festival are luminaries of Palestinian writing in Arabic and English, including literary giants Ibrahim Nasrallah, two-time winner of the Arabic Booker Prize (Katara), and Mahmoud Shukair; acclaimed novelists Hala Alyan and Randa Jarrar; and notable Palestinian visual artists, including Samia Halaby.

And for the first time ever, Hanan Ashrawi, Jeremy Corbyn, and Angela Davis will share a stage to discuss culture, solidarity, and internationalism. All told, more than seventy international scholars, writers, artists, and activists will take part, including Kenyan poet and playwright Shailja Patel, Robin D. G. Kelley, Oglala Lakota educator and poet Mark Tilsen, and Nick Estes. Conference organizer and novelist Susan Abulhawa says, “Palestine Writes is part of a terrain where our humanity, creative genius, and ancient culture can thrive, as the physical land of our ancestors, our belonging, is being pulled from beneath our feet by colonizers.”

Like the Reconstruction of Destroyed Palestinian Villages project, Palestine Writes does not claim to restore Palestine, but it will aim to open space for thinking about Palestine’s history, present, and future in a uniquely Palestinian-grounded manner. Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish, once said, “Poems can’t establish a state. But they can establish a metaphorical homeland in the minds of the people. I think my poems have built some houses in this landscape.”

“Breaking the silence” on Palestine will require pressing the issue in multiple venues. Given the recent presidential election, one of the key areas will be in the new Joe Biden administration. Neither Biden nor Kamala Harris has shown even a modicum of concern for Palestinian rights, and it will be a test of the progressive wing of the Democratic Party to place conditions on any continuance of military and diplomatic support for Israel. Palestine Writes is an essential part of bringing a fuller spectrum of Palestinian life onto the world stage, so that politicians know the people whose rights and lives hang in the balance.

David Palumbo-Liu is the Louise Hewlett Nixon Professor at Stanford University

17 November 2020

Source: palestineupdates.com