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By Oliver Wainwright

As Notre-Dame cathedral was engulfed by flames last year, thousands bewailed the loss of this great beacon of western civilisation. The ultimate symbol of French cultural identity, the very heart of the nation, was going up in smoke. But Middle East expert Diana Darke was having different thoughts. She knew that the origins of this majestic gothic pile lay not in the pure annals of European Christian history, as many have always assumed, but in the mountainous deserts of Syria, in a village just west of Aleppo to be precise.

“Notre-Dame’s architectural design, like all gothic cathedrals in Europe, comes directly from Syria’s Qalb Lozeh fifth-century church,” Darke tweeted on the morning of 16 April, as the dust was still settling in Paris. “Crusaders brought the ‘twin tower flanking the rose window’ concept back to Europe in the 12th century.”

It is not only the twin towers and rose window that have their origins in the Middle East, she pointed out, but also the ribbed vaults, pointed arches and even the recipe for stained glass windows. Gothic architecture as we know it owes much more to Arab and Islamic heritage than it does to the rampaging Goths. “I was astonished at the reaction,” says Darke. “I thought more people knew, but there seems to be this great gulf of ignorance about the history of cultural appropriation. Against a backdrop of rising Islamophobia, I thought it was about time someone straightened out the narrative.”

And so she has, with Stealing from the Saracens, an exhilarating, meticulously researched book that sheds light on centuries of borrowing, tracing the roots of Europe’s major buildings – from the Houses of Parliament and Westminster Abbey to Chartres cathedral and St Mark’s basilica in Venice – back to their Middle Eastern precedents. It is as much a story of political power, wealth and fashion as it is of religious belief, with tales of looting Crusaders, fashion-conscious bishops and globe-trotting merchants discovering new styles and techniques and bringing them home.

“Now we have this notion of east and west,” says Darke. “But back then, it wasn’t like that. There were huge cultural exchanges – and most came from the east to the west. Very little went the other way.”

Given their prevalence in the great cathedrals of Europe, it is easy to imagine that pointed stone arches and soaring ribbed vaults are Christian in origin. But the former dates back to a seventh-century Islamic shrine in Jerusalem, while the latter began in a 10th-century mosque in Andalucia, Spain. In fact, that first known example of ribbed vaulting is still standing. Visitors to the Cordoba Mezquita can marvel at its multiple arches intersecting in a masterpiece of practical geometry and decorative structure, never needing a repair in its thousand-year existence. The vaulted maqsura – the part of the mosque reserved for the ruling caliph – was designed to cast a sacred glow across the leader. However, the official leaflet will tell you little of the building’s Islamic origin, perhaps because it has been a Catholic church since 1236.

The pointed arch, meanwhile, was a pragmatic solution to a problem encountered by masons working on the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem. One of the holiest sites in the Muslim world, it was built in 691 by the ruler of Islam’s first empire. The challenge was how to line up an outer arcade of rounded arches with a smaller inner arcade, while maintaining a horizontal ceiling between them. For the openings to align, the masons had to give the inner arcade tighter arches, forcing them to become pointed. Another world first can be spotted higher up in the shrine, where encircling the dome is an arcade of trefoil arches, the three-lobed style of arch that went on to encrust practically every European cathedral, voraciously adopted as a symbol of the Holy Trinity.

“Again and again,” says Darke, “I am so struck by how much of this stuff that we think of as essentially Christian and European was based on ignorance and misinterpretation of much earlier Islamic forms.” She points out that the enormous influence of the Dome of the Rock was down to the Crusaders of the Middle Ages mistakenly thinking the building was the Temple of Solomon.

They used the domed, circular layout of this supposedly Christian shrine as the model for their Templar churches (like the City of London’s round Temple church), even copying the decorative Arabic inscription, which openly chastises Christians for believing in the Trinity rather than in the oneness of God. Their pseudo-Kufic calligraphic patterns went on to adorn French cathedral stonework and the borders of richly woven textiles, with no one aware of what they actually meant.

The confusion was spread further by the first printed map of Jerusalem, published in Mainz, Germany, in 1486. It not only mislabels the Dome of the Rock as the Temple of Solomon, but depicts the building with a fine onion dome – a pure orientalist fantasy from the mind of a Dutch woodcut artist named Erhard Reeuwich. The book containing the map became a bestseller, reprinted 13 times and translated into multiple languages, influencing the spread of onion-domed churches across Europe in the 16th century. It is a tale of mistaken identity and unintended consequence worthy of a Monty Python sketch.

The transfer of Islamic motifs to the west wasn’t always so simple, though. The pointed arch took a more circuitous route. Darke traces how the arches first spread to Cairo, becoming sharper and more pointed under the Abbasid empire, and were in turn admired by visiting merchants from the wealthy Italian port of Amalfi, who channelled discoveries from their travels into their eclectic 10th-century basilica. This exotic building caught the eye of Abbot Desiderius, who visited Amalfi in 1065 on a shopping trip for rare luxury merchandise, and decided to take the pointed window design for his monastery at Monte Cassino.

Those windows were then copied for the Benedictine abbey at Cluny in France, the largest church in the world at the time. Abbot Suger, an adviser to kings Louis VI and VII, liked how the windows let in more light, and immediately applied the same design to his Saint-Denis basilica in Paris. Regarded as the earliest fully gothic structure, the basilica was completed in 1144 and its architect went on to work at Notre-Dame. “They all just copied it,” says Darke. “These were the most powerful churches in Europe, so the style completely took off, as all fashions do. When powerful people adopt something, everyone wants one.”
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The list goes on. There are the early square minarets, found on such buildings as the Great Mosque of Damascus, that taper thinner and are crowned with a bulbous finial dome. These inspired such great Italian towers as those of Florence’s town hall and St Mark’s Campanile in Venice, prefiguring centuries of church bell-towers.

Drawing on architectural historian Deborah Howard’s research, Darke shows Venice to be more Arab than European, from its narrow winding passageways and courtyard homes with rooftop terraces, to the Islamic ornamentation of the Doge’s Palace (modelled on Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem) and the onion domes of St Mark’s. All are the fruit of trips made by Venetian merchants to Egypt, Syria, Palestine and Persia, fostering a level of influence that extended even to fashion: women in Venice were veiled in public and dressed in black from head to toe. “One cannot see their faces for all the world,” a 15th-century source commented. “They go about so completely covered up, that I do not know how they can see to go along the street.”

The book comes at a charged time, when supposedly western architecture is being mobilised by right-wing nationalist groups to bolster their idealised vision of a “pure” European identity. There are now countless social media accounts promoting messages of white supremacy disguised as heritage appreciation, while recent government edicts about tradition and beauty carry similar overtones. Darke’s work takes an eloquent sledgehammer to such ignorant, dog-whistle propaganda, revealing how the monuments idealised by the alt-right have their roots in the very culture of which they are so suspicious.

The ignorance is widespread, and perhaps the most surprising thing in Stealing from the Saracens is how much of this should not come as a surprise to the modern reader. After all, throughout the book, Darke summons the words of Christopher Wren, who was well aware of the Middle Eastern origins of gothic architecture, and of the structural techniques he was using for St Paul’s Cathedral.

“Modern gothic,” he wrote in the 1700s, “is distinguished by the lightness of its work, by the excessive boldness of its elevations … by the delicacy, profusion and extravagant fancy of its ornaments … Such productions, so airy, cannot admit the heavy Goths for their author.” Instead, he concluded, “from all the marks of the new architecture, it can only be attributed to the Moors; or what is the same thing, to the Arabians or Saracens”.

The irony is in the name itself: in Wren’s day, Saracen was a pejorative term for the Arab Muslims, against whom the Crusaders had fought their “holy war”. It originated from the Arabic word “saraqa”, meaning “to steal”, as Saracens were seen as looters and thieves. Never mind the fact that the Crusaders plundered their way across Europe, Jerusalem and Constantinople – pilfering the wonders of Islamic architecture as they went, and airbrushing the origins of their booty in the process.

Oliver Wainwright is the Guardian’s architecture and design critic.

13 August 2020

Source: theguardian.com

By Michael Welch, Prof Michel Chossudovsky, and Greg Mitchell

“Not a particular country, not a particular city, and not a particular people.

The crux of the matter is whether total war in its present form is justifiable, even when it serves a just purpose. Does it not have material and spiritual evil as its consequences which far exceed whatever good might result? When will our moralists give us an answer to this question?”

John Hersey, Hiroshima [1]

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The two state of the art weapons released over the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki constituted the most devastating blasts of all time.

According to the best estimates of anti-nuclear weapons scientists, anywhere from 110,000 to 210,000 people died in the twin holocausts. Two thirds of the city of Hiroshima were wiped out in a single attack, the equivalent of 15,000 tons of TNT. [2]

These massive mushroom clouds would go on to become a symbol of the fate of humanity encapsulated in the threat of atomic horror. For all my life, I have contemplated the prospects of nuclear incineration and the aftermath that would follow if our leaders get caught up in a tragic misstep.

What has been the careful course of a wizened populace after 75 years of careful planning?

On January 23 of this year, the doomsday clock, created by the Bulletin of Atomic Scientist, announced the clock had revved up to 100 seconds before midnight. That is an all time record in the history of the time piece! Do the memories of the devastating attacks of Aug 6 and Aug 9, 1945 have some process of ever re-igniting the imaginations of a new generation of civilians and reversing the tide of Nuclear Armageddon? This is a subject we will explore on this special anniversary episode of the Global Research News Hour.

Our first guest is renowned academic and writer Professor Michel Chossudovsky. In the first half hour, he brings us up to date on how the U.S. has re-ignited interest in once again turning bombs like the ones dropped over Hiroshima and Nagasaki into “ready for use” weapons in the arsenal of conventional warfare.

Our second guest, Greg Mitchell, comes along in our second half hour. He elaborates on how early information about the nuclear warfare in Japan was concealed, and how a new blockbuster release from Hollywood served to falsify the news from the battlefields.

Professor Michel Chossudovsky is a professor of economics (emeritus) at the University of Ottawa, and the Founder and Editor of the Centre for Research on Globalization.

Greg Mitchell is an author and journalist. He was editor of the magazine Nuclear Times and has become an outspoken expert and the role and build up of nuclear arms in Japan.

7 August 2020

Source: www.globalresearch.ca

By Bhabani Shankar Nayak

The pandemic driven lockdowns have triggered worldwide growth of unemployment, hunger, homelessness and poverty. The speed of economic descent in world economy is extraordinary. The world is sleep walking into greater economic depression of the century and its impacts will reverberate for decades. The COVID-19 pandemic led economic crisis has been used by ruling and non-ruling classes to reconfigured the world economy to consolidate their wealth and punish the masses by spreading economic risks, insecurities and crises. The credit and consumerism led economic booms are no longer relevant strategies even for the short-term economic recovery due to inherent decline of trust of the masses on the existing economic and political institutions within capitalist system. The economic and political institutions within capitalism have lost their legitimacy in public eyes during this pandemic. The foundation of production, distribution, exchange and consumption are four pillars of any economic system irrespective of their ideological orientations. These four economic pillars survive on the foundation of trust. All economic activities run on the basis of trust. The level of trustworthiness determines economic revival and sustainability in all economic systems.

The deepening of capitalism and its deceptive culture of propaganda for last three centuries has eroded trust in the society, politics and economy. Trust in society is a product of interdependence whereas trust in an economic system is a production of free and open interaction between consumers and producers. The growth of capitalism led to the separation of producers from consumers, which led to the declining of the culture of trust in economy. The fourth industrial revolution led by digital capitalism has further eroded trust in economy by structurally delinking producers from the consumers. The consumerism as a project of capitalism has completely transformed economic trust into brand trust. The trust in system is transformed into trust in commodities (brands) based on its advertisement, brand value, peer acceptance and social visibility and respect. The culture of consumerism and advertisement has personalised trust. But leverage of trust in businesses and economic systems has declined over time due to the fact that trust is mutual and collective. It cannot be personalised. The corporatisation, individualisation and personalisation of trust is diminished trust.

The culture of forgery is rampant with the growth of digital business, which further accelerated the decline of trust even on the bands (personalised trust based on class). The banks used to be the only economic institution within capitalist economic system, which was trusted by public. But the scandals of the Wall Streets and continuous failure to protect the consumer interests in different economic crises led to fall of trust on banking systems within capitalism. The devaluation and demise of trust led to the declining of abilities of various public and private institutions dealing with economic crises. The consumers and producers feel vulnerable due to lack of trustworthiness and transparency with the growth of digital revolution in economy. So, the short term and long-term economic recovery depends on revival of trust in economic and political institutions. It demands total systemic change and disengagement with capitalism as a system and its distrustful culture of plunder in which every producer and consumer experienced deception.

Is there any way to revive public trust in economic and political institutions? Can trust be rejuvenated and re-established? Is trust building possible in the post pandemic world? The answer to these questions is emphatically positive. There is no other answer. Trust each other to survive in peace and prosperity or perish together with the culture of distrust spread by capitalism.

The digitalisation of world economy for last three decades has entered into every aspect of economic systems. The reversal or dismantling of digital economy is neither possible nor a progressive alternative. It is important to democratise and develop cooperative models of digital economy, where the producers and consumers can participate with egalitarian openness. The direct interaction between producers and consumers can create a socially embedded market and economic system based on trust, which can ensure a sharing and caring economy free from institutional exploitation. The experience of the Mondragon Corporation as an alliance of worker cooperatives based in the Basque region of Spain offers an alternative. The core of the Mondragon success story is based on trust; the trust between producers and consumers. The sustainable trust within the Mondragon corporation is established by its workers, who are the shareholders. The corporation is owned by the workers and managed by the workers. Therefore, trust was an organic development based on direct interaction of workers both as producers and consumers.

Such alternative experiments are completely ignored and concealed by the mainstream media; the voice of capitalism. The data driven digital economy within contemporary capitalism promotes devaluation of trust by controlling individual data on every aspects of individual lives. There is no dignity and privacy when individual data is controlled by corporations without any form of inhibition. The capitalist systems have also formed alliance with reactionary religious and politically authoritarian forces to further control individual freedom. It intends to use reactionary aspects of religions, cultures, nationalisms and communities to enforce trust in economic and political system. Such attempts create superficial and short-term trust. It is the material conditions of people that determines the level of trust in long term. The development and enforcement of trust cannot be outsourced to reactionary religious and political forces. Trust grows organically, it cannot be reproduced by propaganda and enforced for a long time by these forces. The growth of fake news and false propaganda about products in the market and policies of the government has further eroded the culture of trust in economy and politics.

The centralisation of data driven and data dependent digital capitalism is accelerating treacherous world economy free from trust. The loss of citizen’s trust on state and governments, loss of consumer’s trust on products, and loss of producer’s trust on markets create a state of anarchy, which helps for the growth and consolidation of security state and authoritarian governments concomitant with the requirements of the capitalism. Such an economic and political project has failed in history. Its failure is immanent but its social and humanitarian cost is incalculable. Therefore, it is imperative for all thinking beings to work collaboratively towards trustworthy social and economic transformations based on mutual and collective trust. It is collective trust that helps in the mobility of both labour and capital without creating barrier for each other. It is mutual trust which can aid the economy to revive its global momentum without capitalism. Trust is the non-transactional new currency with both use and exchange value. The revival of trust in economy and politics is the answer to the multiple forms of capitalism crises. Trust is important for long term peace and prosperity.

Bhabani Shankar Nayak, Coventry University, UK

10 August 2020

Source: countercurrents.org

By Dr Ramzy Baroud

Protests against Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, have raged on for weeks, turning violent sometimes. Israelis are furious at their government’s mediocre response to the coronavirus pandemic, especially as COVID-19 disease is experiencing a massive surge throughout the country.

Netanyahu warned protesters, thousands of whom have been rallying outside his residence in Jerusalem, against “anarchy (and) violence”. Scenes of utter chaos and violent arrests have been a daily occurrence in a country that is already in the throes of a political crisis, largely, if not exclusively, linked to the Prime Minister himself.

Desperate to create any distractions from his many woes at home, Netanyahu has been pushing for a confrontation with the Lebanese resistance group, Hezbollah. But that, too, has failed, as Israeli media has denied earlier claims that a violent confrontation was reported at the Israel/Lebanon border.

Hezbollah insists that it would be the group, not Netanyahu, that will determine the time and place for its response to Israel’s recent killing of Hezbollah’s influential member, Ali Kamel Mohsen.

Mohsen was killed in an Israeli aerial raid targeting the vicinity of the Damascus International Airport, likely another desperate attempt by Netanyahu to deflect attention from his troubled coalition government and his corruption trial to an issue that often unifies most Israelis.

The turmoil in Israel is not just about an obstinate, divisive leader who is manipulating public opinion, the media and the various political groups to remain in power and to avoid legal accountability for his corruption.

The Disunited Coalition

Israel is suffering a crisis of political legitimacy, one that goes beyond the embattled Netanyahu, and his coalition with the head of the Kahol Lavan (Blue and White) centrist party, Benny Gantz.

The political marriage between Netanyahu’s Likud and Gantz’s Kahol Lavan last April was fundamentally odd and unexpected. The announcement that Gantz – who endured three general elections in less than a year to finally oust Netanyahu – was uniting with his archenemy has devastated the anti-Netanyahu political camp, forcing Gantz’s partners, Yair Lapid and Moshe Ya’alon, to abandon him.

But the new coalition government between the right and center became dysfunctional immediately after it was formed. Israel’s political marriage of convenience is likely to end in an ugly divorce.

The war between Netanyahu and his main coalition partner is now manifest in every aspect of Israel’s political life: in the Knesset (parliament), in media headlines and on the streets.

When the new government assumed its duties after one of the most tumultuous years in Israel’s political history, the mood, at least immediately, was somewhat calm; both Netanyahu and Gantz seemed united in their desire to illegally annex nearly a third of the occupied Palestinian West Bank. Israel’s rightwing camp was delighted; the center tagged along.

However, the international response to the annexation scheme forced Netanyahu to rethink his July 1 deadline. Now that annexation has been postponed indefinitely, Netanyahu is being denied a major political card that could have helped him replenish his fading popularity among Israelis, at a time when he desperately needs it.

On July 19, Netanyahu’s corruption trial resumed. Although the Prime Minister did not attend the opening session personally, his image – that of a strong commanding figure – was tarnished, nonetheless.

Gantz, who already agreed to the annexation plan, was too clever to fully associate himself with the risky political endeavor. That task was left to Netanyahu who knew the risks affiliated with a failed political scheme, but with no option except to follow through with it.

Awaiting the right opportunity to pounce on his beleaguered ‘partner’, Gantz found his chance in a report published by the Israeli daily newspaper, Haaretz.

The Budget Conspiracy

On July 22, Haaretz reported that, “Netanyahu decided to not pass the budget for 2020 and to call a general election to take place on November 18,” to avoid the possibility of being forced to “handing over the keys to Defense Minister and Kahol Lavan Chairman, Benny Gantz” so that he, Netanyahu, may “attend legal proceedings” related to his corruption trial.

According to this claim, Netanyahu only agreed to swap the Prime Minister seat with Gantz come November 2021 just to buy time and to avoid a fourth election that would leave him vulnerable to an electoral defeat and to a corruption trial without a political safety net.

Despite the risk of yet another election, Netanyahu is keen to wrestle the Justice Ministry from Kahol Lavan’s hands, because whoever controls the Justice Ministry controls Netanyahu’s fate in Israeli courts. Leaving Gantz with such a powerful card is neither an option for the Likud nor for Netanyahu.

Hence, the Likud is insisting that the budget agreement can only last for one year, while Kahol Lavan is adamant that it must cover a period of two years. The Likud conspiracy, as revealed in Israeli media, suggests that the Likud Finance Minister, Israel Katz, plans to use the next budget negotiations as the reason to dismantle the right-center coalition and demand another election, thus denying Gantz his chance to serve his term as a prime minister, per the unity government agreement.

Crisis of a Fake Democracy

However, the crisis is larger than the dispute between Netanyahu and Gantz. While Israel has long prided itself on being “the only democracy in the Middle East”, the truth is that Israeli ‘democracy’ was, from the start, fraudulent, in that it catered to Israeli Jews and discriminated against everyone else.

In recent years, however, institutionalized racism and apartheid in Israel were no longer masked by clever political discourses. Netanyahu, in particular, has led the charge of making Israel the right-wing, chauvinistic, racist haven that it is today.

The fact that Netanyahu recently became Israel’s longest-serving Prime Minister, elected repeatedly by Israel’s Jewish citizens, indicates that the Israeli leader is but a reflection of the larger ailments that have afflicted Israeli society as a whole.

Reducing the discussion to Netanyahu’s many failures might be convenient, but the demonstrable truth is that corrupt leaders can only exist in corrupt and unhealthy political systems. Israel is now the perfect example of that truism.

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

8 August 2020

Source: countercurrents.org

By Countercurrents Collective

Citing the Israeli military media reports from Jerusalem said:

Israeli fighter jets and attack helicopters struck military targets in southern Syria belonging to the Syrian army Monday night, hours after thwarting an infiltration attempt from Syria by suspected militants trying to plant explosives.

In a rare statement acknowledging strikes in neighboring Syria, the Israeli army said the targets included “observation posts and intelligence collection systems, anti-aircraft artillery facilities and command and control systems” in Syrian army bases.

Syria acknowledged the strikes, saying that Israeli helicopters fired missiles at Syrian army outposts and reported unspecified “material damage.”

Syrian state media said Israeli helicopters fired at Syrian checkpoints in al-Qunaitra, on the Golan Heights. There was no immediate word of any casualties.

The incident comes amid heightened tension on Israel’s northern frontier following a recent Israeli airstrike that killed a Hezbollah fighter in Syria and amid anticipation that the militant Lebanese group would retaliate.

Earlier Monday, Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus, a military spokesperson, said Israeli troops spotted “irregular” activity in the Golan Heights. Israeli troops opened fire on the suspected militants, some of whom were armed, after observing them placing the explosives on the ground, Conricus said.

There was no official confirmation that the four suspected attackers were killed but a grainy video released by the army shows four figures walking away from barbed wire marking the frontier. The four then disappear in a large explosion that engulfed the area.

The Israeli military has not said if the four are suspected of ties to Iran or Hezbollah, two Syrian allies. However, Conricus said Israel held the Syrian government responsible for the incident.

Hezbollah denied being part of the operation.

Addressing Likud party lawmakers, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday that Israel “thwarted an attempted sabotage on the Syrian front” and would continue to “harm all those who try to harm us and all those who harm us.”

Israel captured the Golan Heights from Syria in 1967 and later annexed the territory. The U.S. is the only country to have recognized Israel’s annexation.

Tensions have been high on Israel’s northern frontier following the Israeli airstrike that killed the Hezbollah fighter in Syria last month. Following the airstrike, the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights was hit by explosives fired from Syria and Israel responded by attacking Syrian military positions and beefing up its forces in the area.

Israel has been bracing for further retaliation and last week it said it thwarted an infiltration attempt from Lebanon by Hezbollah militants, setting off one of the heaviest exchanges of fire along the volatile Israel-Lebanon frontier since a 2006 war between the bitter enemies.

Israel considers Hezbollah to be its toughest and most immediate threat. Since battling Israel to a stalemate during a month long war in 2006, Hezbollah has gained more battlefield experience fighting alongside the Syrian government in that country’s bloody civil war.

After 40 years of calm, the Israel-Syrian frontier has heated up in recent years as Iran has tried to establish a military foothold on Israel’s doorstep while helping Syrian President Bashar Assad in his country’s years long war. Hezbollah also has aided Assad.

The military targets Israeli jets struck included intelligence-collection systems, observation posts, antiaircraft artillery facilities, and command and control centers, the Israeli army announced in a statement.

There was no comment from Syria on the fence incident.

The overnight encounter occurred at the same spot where until two years ago, Israel had operated a field hospital to treat Syrians who had been wounded in the Syrian civil war, Conricus told reporters.

4 August 2020

Source: countercurrents.org

By Jonathan Cook

Demonstrations have yet to draw a connection between Netanyahu’s personal abuses of office and the systemic corruption of Israeli politics, with the occupation its beating heart

Nazareth: Israel is roiling with angry street protests that local observers have warned could erupt into open civil strife – a development Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appears to be encouraging.

For weeks, Jerusalem and Tel Aviv have been the scene of large, noisy demonstrations outside the official residences of Mr Netanyahu and his public security minister, Amir Ohana.

On Saturday night around 13,000 marched through Jerusalem shouting “Anyone but Bibi”, Netanyahu’s nickname. Their calls were echoed by tens of thousands more at locations across the country.

Turnout has been steadily growing, despite attacks on demonstrators from both the police and Netanyahu’s loyalists. The first protests abroad by Israeli expats have also been reported.

The protests, in defiance of physical distancing rules, are unprecedented by Israeli standards. They have bridged the gaping political divide between a small constituency of anti-occupation activists – disparagingly called “leftists” in Israel – and the much larger Israeli Jewish public that identifies politically as on the centre and the right.

For the first time, a section of Netanyahu’s natural supporters is out on the streets against him.

In contrast to earlier protests, such as a large social justice movement that occupied the streets in 2011 to oppose rising living costs, these demonstrations have not entirely eschewed political issues.

The target of the anger and frustration is decidedly personal at this stage – focused on the figure of Netanyahu, who is now Israel’s longest-serving prime minister. Protesters have renamed him Israel’s “crime minister”.

But also fuelling the protests is a larger mood of disenchantment as doubts grow about the state’s competence to deal with multiple crises unfolding in Israel. The virus has caused untold social and economic misery for many, with as much as one fifth of the labour force out of work. Netanyahu’s supporters in the lower middle-classes have been hit hardest.

Now well into a second wave, Israel has a per capita rate of infection that outstrips even the US. The shadow of a renewed lockdown amid government mishandling of the virus has undermined Netanyahu’s claim to be “Mr Security”.

There are concerns too about police brutality – starkly highlighted by the killing in May of an autistic Palestinian, Eyad Hallaq, in Jerusalem.

Police crackdowns on the protests, using riot squads, undercover agents, mounted police and water cannon, have underlined not just Netanyahu’s growing authoritarianism. There is a sense too that the police may be ready to use violence on dissenting Israelis that was once reserved for Palestinians.

After manipulating his right-wing rival, the former military general Benny Gantz, into joining him in a unity government in April, Netanyahu has effectively crushed any meaningful political opposition.

The agreement shattered Gantz’s Blue and White party, with many of his legislators refusing to enter the government, and has widely discredited the ex-general.

Netanyahu is reportedly preparing for a winter election – the fourth in two years – both to cash in on his opponents’ disarray and to avoid honouring a rotation agreement in which Gantz is due to replace him late next year.

According to the Israeli media, Netanyahu may find a pretext for forcing new elections by further delaying approval of the national budget, despite Israel facing its worst financial crisis in decades.

And, of course, overshadowing all this is the matter of the corruption charges against Netanyahu. Not only is he the first sitting prime minister in Israel to stand trial, but he has been using his role and the pandemic to his advantage, including by delaying court hearings.

In a time of profound crisis and uncertainty, many Israelis are wondering which policies are being pursued for the national good and which for Netanyahu’s personal benefit.

The government’s months-long focus on the annexation of swaths of Palestinian territory in the West Bank has looked like pandering to his settler constituency, creating a dangerous distraction from dealing with the pandemic.

Similarly, a one-off handout this week to every Israeli – over the strenuous objections of finance officials – looks suspiciously like an electoral bribe. As a result, Netanyahu is facing a rapid decline in support. A recent survey shows trust in him has fallen by half – from 57 per cent in March and April, when the Covid-19 pandemic began, to 29 per cent today.

Many Israelis increasingly see Netanyahu less as a father figure and more as a parasite draining resources from the body politic. Capturing the popular mood is a new art work called the “Last Supper” that was covertly installed in central Tel Aviv. It shows Netanyahu alone, gorging on a vast banquet by stuffing his hand into an enormous cake decorated with the Israeli flag.

In another move designed to highlight Netanyahu’s corrupt politics, better-off Israelis have been publicly organising to donate this week’s state handout to those in need.

Netanyahu’s repeated incitement against the protesters – disparaging them as “leftists” and “anarchists”, and suggesting they are spreading disease – appears to have backfired. It has only rallied more people to the street.

But the incitement and Netanyahu’s claims that he is the true victim – and that in the current climate he faces assassination – have been interpreted as a call to arms by some on the right. Last week five protesters were injured when his loyalists used clubs and broken bottles on them, with police appearing to turn a blind eye. Further attacks were reported at the weekend. Protest organisers said they had begun arranging defence units to protect demonstrators.

Ohana, the public security minister, has called for a ban on the protests and urged a heavy hand from the police. He has delayed appointing a new police chief – a move seen as incentivising local commanders to crack down on the protests to win favour. Large numbers of protesters have been forcefully arrested, with reports that police have questioned some on their political views.

Observers have wondered whether the protests can transcend party political tribalism and develop into a grassroots movement demanding real change. That might widen their appeal to even more disadvantaged groups, not least the one fifth of Israel’s citizens who belong to its Palestinian minority.

But it would also require more of the protesters to start drawing a direct connection between Netanyahu’s personal abuses of office and the wider, systemic corruption of Israeli politics, with the occupation its beating heart.

That may yet prove a tall order, especially when Israel faces no significant external pressure for change, either from the US or from Europe.

A version of this article first appeared in the National, Abu Dhabi.

Jonathan Cook won the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism.

3 August 2020

Source: countercurrents.org

Co-Written by Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J S Davies

Tensions between the United States and China are rising as the U.S. election nears, with tit-for-tat consulate closures, new U.S. sanctions and no less than three U.S. aircraft carrier strike groups prowling the seas around China. But it is the United States that has initiated each new escalation in U.S.-China relations. China’s responses have been careful and proportionate, with Chinese officials such as Foreign Minister Wang Yi publicly asking the U.S. to step back from its brinkmanship to find common ground for diplomacy.

Most of the U.S. complaints about China are long-standing, from the treatment of the Uighur minority and disputes over islands and maritime borders in the South China Sea to accusations of unfair trade practices and support for protests in Hong Kong. But the answer to the “Why now?” question seems obvious: the approaching U.S. election.

Danny Russel, who was Obama’s top East Asia expert in the National Security Council and then at the State Department, told the BBC that the new tensions with China are partly an effort to divert attention from Trump’s bungled response to the Covid-19 pandemic and his tanking poll numbers, and that this “has a wag the dog feel to it.”

Meanwhile, Democratic Presidential candidate Joe Biden has been going toe-to-toe with Trump and Secretary Pompeo in a potentially dangerous “tough on China” contest, which could prove difficult for the winner to walk back after the election.

Elections aside, there are two underlying forces at play in the current escalation of tensions, one economic and the other military. China’s economic miracle has lifted hundreds of millions of its people out of poverty, and, until recently, Western corporations were glad to make the most of its huge pool of cheap labor, weak workplace and environmental protections, and growing consumer market. Western leaders welcomed China into their club of wealthy, powerful countries with little fuss about human and civil rights or China’s domestic politics.

So what has changed? U.S.high-tech companies like Apple, which were once only too glad to outsource American jobs and train Chinese contractors and engineers to manufacture their products, are finally confronting the reality that they have not just outsourced jobs, but also skills and technology. Chinese companies and highly skilled workers are now leading some of the world’s latest technological advances.

The global rollout of 5G cellular technology has become a flashpoint, not because the increase and higher frequency of EMF radiation it involves may be dangerous to human health, which is a real concern, but because Chinese firms like Huawei and ZTE have developed and patented much of the critical infrastructure involved, leaving Silicon Valley in the unfamiliar position of having to play catch-up.

Also, if the U.S.’s 5G infrastructure is built by Huawei and ZTE instead of AT&T and Verizon, the U.S. government will no longer be able to require “back doors” that the NSA can use to spy on us all, so it is instead stoking fears that China could insert its own back doors in Chinese equipment to spy on us instead. Left out of the discussion is the real solution: repeal the Patriot Act and make sure that all the technology we use in our daily lives is secure from the prying eyes of both the U.S. and foreign governments.

China is investing in infrastructure all over the world. As of March 2020, a staggering 138 countries have joined China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), a massive plan to connect Asia with Africa and Europe via land and maritime networks. China’s international influence will only be enhanced by its success, and the U.S.’s failure, in tackling the Covid-19 pandemic.

On the military front, the Obama and Trump administrations have both tried to “pivot to Asia” to confront China, even as the U.S. military remains bogged down in the Middle East. With a war-weary public demanding an end to the endless wars that have served to justify record military spending for nearly 20 years, the U.S. military-industrial complex has to find more substantial enemies to justify its continued existence and budget-busting costs. Lockheed Martin is not ready to switch from building billion-dollar warplanes on cost-plus contracts to making wind turbines and solar panels.

The only targets the U.S. can find to justify a $740-billion military budget and 800 overseas military bases are its familiar old Cold War enemies: Russia and China. They both expanded their modest military budgets after 2011, when the U.S. and its allies hi-jacked the Arab Spring to launch covert and proxy wars in Libya, where China had substantial oil interests, and Syria, a long-term Russian ally. But their increases in military spending were only relative. In 2019, China’s military budget was only $261 billion compared to the U.S.’s $732 billion, according to SIPRI. The U.S. still spends more on its military than the ten next largest military powers combined, including Russia and China.

Russian and Chinese military forces are almost entirely defensive, with an emphasis on advanced and effective anti-ship and anti-aircraft missile systems. Neither Russia nor China has invested in carrier strike groups to sail the seven seas or U.S.-style expeditionary forces to attack or invade countries on the other side of the planet. But they do have the forces and weapons they need to defend themselves and their people from any U.S. attack and both are nuclear powers, making a major war against either of them a more serious prospect than the U.S. military has faced anywhere since the Second World War.

China and Russia are both deadly serious about defending themselves, but we should not misinterpret that as enthusiasm for a new arms race or a sign of aggressive intentions on their part. It is U.S. imperialism and militarism that are driving the escalating tensions. The sad truth is that 30 years after the supposed end of the Cold War, the U.S. military-industrial complex has failed to reimagine itself in anything but Cold War terms, and its “New” Cold War is just a revival of the old Cold War that it spent the last three decades telling us it already won.

“China Is Not an Enemy”

The U.S. and China do not have to be enemies. Just a year ago, a hundred U.S. business, political and military leaders signed a public letter to President Trump in the Washington Post entitled “China Is Not an Enemy.” They wrote that China is not “an economic enemy or an existential national security threat,” and U.S opposition “will not prevent the continued expansion of the Chinese economy, a greater global market share for Chinese companies and an increase in China’s role in world affairs.”

They concluded that, “U.S. efforts to treat China as an enemy and decouple it from the global economy will damage the United States’ international role and reputation and undermine the economic interests of all nations,” and that the U.S. “could end up isolating itself rather than Beijing.”

That is precisely what is happening. Governments all over the world are collaborating with China to stop the spread of coronavirus and share the solutions with all who need them. The U.S. must stop pursuing its counterproductive effort to undermine China, and instead work with all our neighbors on this small planet. Only by cooperating with other nations and international organizations can we stop the pandemic—and address the coronavirus-sparked economic meltdown gripping the world economy and the many challenges we must all face together if we are to survive and thrive in the 21st century.

Medea Benjamin is cofounder of CODEPINK for Peace, and author of several books, including Inside Iran: The Real History and Politics of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Nicolas J. S. Davies is an independent journalist, a researcher with CODEPINK and the author of Blood On Our Hands: the American Invasion and Destruction of Iraq.

3 August 2020

Source: countercurrents.org

By Richard Falk

1 Aug 2020 – Moved by the iconic recognition of John Lewis’ exceptional courage and perseverance on behalf of human rights, nonviolence, and opposition to American militarism, I recall a weekend spent together in Stockholm. We were the two invited American speakers at a conference opposing the American War in Vietnam. Although I spoke at many events devoted to these themes this may have been my most memorable occasion because Lewis made such an indelible impression. We shared meals together, and were hosted at the same hotel.

It was the very late 1960s not long after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy, a time when these bloody events, including the Selma march and many others, brought success to the Civil Rights Movement, but far from a decisive victory that finally banished systemic racism from the American political and societal landscape. Lewis was the most radical figure in the movement against racial injustice I had encountered. At the time he was the activist leader of the Southern Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, better known as SNCC, which was seen as both dedicated to nonviolent struggle but more confrontational than the sort of national leadership provided by King.

I found Lewis engaging, brash, funny, charming, and above all, projecting a kind of radical aura that in the course of his life caused him, despite his lifelong adherence to principled nonviolence, to be the victim of repeated violent assaults by white supremacists, KKK members, and law enforcement as well as enduring 45 arrests and frequent jail time. I only learned later to appreciate his unswerving dedication to challenging racist moves to sustain the cruelties of white privilege throughout the South in every sphere of human existence, flagrantly trampling on both the rule of law and the U.S. Constitution.

In my experience of Lewis, he was as passionate about opposing American war making in Vietnam as he had been previously celebratory of African liberation struggles. He famously often asked the rhetorical question as to why Lyndon Johnson was willing to send American troops to kill Vietnamese peasants thousands of miles away but unwilling to order Federal troops to protect African Americans seeking to uphold their most basic human rights within their own country. He gave such a talk along this general theme in Stockholm, exhibiting anger about the long-embedded injustices he was devoting his life to struggle against in America, and declaring this commitment as inseparable from his opposition to the unlawful devastation and suffering being visited upon the Vietnamese, a distant people of color.

As much as I enjoyed and learned from John Lewis as he came across in Sweden on that weekend it never occurred to me that he would become a member of Congress, and even less, that he was destined to emerge as the most widely revered African American leader and inspirational figure since MLK. Of course, his death in the midst of the pandemic and in the wake of the eruption of the most sustained protests against systemic racism added a special poignancy to his death, making it a symbolic complement to the police murder of George Floyd weeks earlier. The funeral for John Lewis featured emotional eulogies by Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and Nancy Pelosi, whose collective eloquence lived up to this historic occasion, recognizing Lewis’ extraordinary dignity, persistence, and leadership. It could said that of his generation no single person better personified ‘the better angels’ of the American spirit that Lincoln summoned all of us to nurture than did John Lewis.

Thinking back to that weekend in Stockholm I marvel at how John Lewis reinvented himself, and rose to a position of moral preeminence and unsurpassed political wisdom and maturity, a progressive beacon for people like myself yet becoming mindful enough of the mainstream to win respect and exert influence almost across the entire political spectrum. The firebrand I had the precious experience of meeting over 50 years ago kept the fires within him burning brightly throughout his long life, while transforming his style so that all would listen and many would heed.

Unlike the other fallen heroes of the past century John Lewis realized the imminence of his death, and seized the opportunity to write a will and testament of faith and commitment to the American people as a whole, without a shred of bitterness or a trace of ethnic exclusiveness.

The text of his deathbed essay provide the guidance we so desperately need as a people, and an endangered species, to move toward the light despite the darkness of the hour.

I end with quotations from his essay that are so translucent as to make words of commentary or interpretation superfluous:

“Ordinary people with extraordinary vision can redeem the soul of America by getting in what I call good trouble, necessary trouble.”

“Continue to build a broad union between movements stretching across the globe because we must put away our willingness to profit from the exploitation of others.”

“So I say to you walk, walk with the wind, brothers and sisters, and let the spirit of peace and the power of everlasting love be your guide.”

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.

3 August 2020

Source: www.transcend.org

By Robert Kowalczyk

Reflections on Our Tenuous Future

3 Aug 2020 – The year 2020 will long be remembered as the year of the coronavirus, unless more dramatic scenarios lie just ahead. Covid-19 has touched, perhaps transformed, humanity’s consciousness, and it will never be the same. Never before have so many of us been brought so close together while being requested to stay so far apart.

Over the first half of this year, most of the 8 billion of us have been advised to practice social distancing while experiencing the fear of being locked down.

All this long while, we find ourselves reflecting on our individual solitudes, along with pondering our children’s futures.

“It is our suffering that brings us together. It is not love. Love does not obey the mind, and turns to hate when forced. The bond that binds us is beyond choice. We know that there is no help for us but from one another, that no hand will save us if we do not reach out our hand. And the hand that you reach out is empty, as mine is. You have nothing. You possess nothing. You own nothing. You are free. All you have is what you are, and what you give.”
— Ursula K. Le Guin

The Hibakusha, those who 75 years ago survived the fires and black rains of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, know this well. They’ve lived through hell and have brought the world a message, a prayer to humanity that remains unanswered. A softly spoken hope, now nearly gone.

“What has kept the world safe from the bomb since 1945 has not been deterrence, in the sense of fear of specific weapons, so much as it has been memory. The memory of what happened at Hiroshima (and Nagasaki).”
— ­John Hersey

If John Hersey is correct, then perhaps we need to ask, how well do we remember? Have we evolved as quickly as necessary, towards what has long been so very essential? Have we now become more conscious of our fragility as a species?

If so, why have we so inadequately addressed this most existential issue, especially since the threat has been constant all these years, right up to this writing. Could it be mere complacency?

Or perhaps it’s the inherent pathological crack in our thought process, “Unless we possess the bomb we will not be safe.” / “Possession of the bomb will make all of us safe.” Belief in this madness makes us all perpetrators of a deadly serious yet global fallacy, nuclear deterrence.

“Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in.”
(Leonard Cohen)

WATCH: Leonard Cohen – Anthem (w/lyrics) London 2008 -> YouTube

Many of the Hibakusha and their dependents have long held a light over the horrors of the August 1945 atomic bombings of their homes, families, cities . . . their existence. While doing so, they have never pointed any fingers of blame at either side of those engaged in that long and bitter war. For the Hibakusha were the humble accepting victims, along with countless others throughout the world who suffered in other ways.

However, only the Hibakusha have experienced a first instant of collective mass horror. A blinding yet illuminating flash that has lasted throughout their entire lives.

Mrs. Koko Kondo of Kobe, whose father, Reverend Kiyoshi Tanimoto, who inspired John Hersey’s writings, was one of them.

Perhaps the man often called The Father of the Atomic Bomb, J. Robert Oppenheimer expressed it most eloquently when explaining the results of the first testing of the bomb,

“We knew the world would not be the same, (a) few people laughed, (a) few people cried, most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, The Bhagavad-Gita. Vishnu is trying to persuade the Prince that he should do his duty. And to impress him, (He) takes on His multi-armed form and says, ‘Now, I’m become death, the destroyer of worlds.’ I suppose we all thought that, one way or another.”

Atomic Age – J. Robert Oppenheimer Quote – YouTube:

Thus, the human story somehow carries on.

*******************************

Peace Mask Project, a Kyoto City registered international NPO worked with 100 of the Hibakusha (from Japan, Korea, Taiwan and the USA) and their descendants, (ages ranged from 8 to 92 years old) from October 2015 to March 2017. The goal was to create 100 Peace Masks, Washi paper facial impressions for exhibition. These Peace Masks were exhibited in Hiroshima with an event at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum on March 26, 2017, that included a talk by Professor Ikuro Anzai, Honorary Director of the Kyoto Museum for World Peace and current General Coordinator of the International Network of Museums for Peace.

Two of the goals of that endeavor have been completed. The first was the making of the 100 Peace Masks with a subsequent exhibition and event program in Japan.

The second goal was the exhibiting of the Hibakusha Peace Masks at an appropriate international location. This was achieved at the Inaugural Summit of Emerging Leaders, November 28 to 30, 2018 at the United Nations Conference Center, Bangkok.

Along with the 100 Hibakusha Peace Masks exhibited behind the 347 participants from 46 countries, one of five Keynote Addresses was given by Kya Kim, Director of Peace Mask Project. The Founding Artist of PMP, Myong Hee Kim was also invited there to set up the exhibition and to conduct a demonstration mask-making workshop.

The third and final goal of the Hibakusha Peace Mask Project is to find a permanent home for the 100 Hibakusha Peace Masks at a meaningful and most appropriate international location. Peace Mask Project believes that the successful completion of this goal will contribute to a visible metaphoric presence of the Hibakusha as a reminder of their contributions to the grand endeavor to both limit and eventually abolish nuclear weapons.

It is sincerely believed that such a presence would greatly add to the expression and spirit of their 75-year prayer.

Peace Mask Project heartily welcomes all independent anti-nuclear organizations and individuals in the fulfillment of this meaningful goal.

Hiroshima Nagasaki Peace Mask Project | PEACE MASK PROJECT

Peace Summit 2018

For further information and consideration, please write to the International Coordinator of Peace Mask Project, Robert Kowalczyk at journey04@mac.com.

Robert Kowalczyk is a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace Development Environment.

3 August 2020

Source: www.transcend.org

By David Adams

The American empire is crashing. What will it be like. Let us look at recent precedents.

1 Aug 2020 – The last empire to crash was the Soviet empire 30 years ago. At the time it was led by Mikhail Gorbachev, a man of peace and harmony, its population was not seriously divided or heavily armed, and the army stayed in their barracks. As a result, there was very little physical violence when the empire collapsed, although in the ensuing years there was great economic suffering because of the devaluation of the ruble (by a factor of almost 10,000) and in subsequent years, there were armed conflicts with the Ukraine and Georgia. In the end, the oligarchs (Russian mafia, etc.) and the secret police (Putin had been head of the KGB) consolidated their power.

The American empire is dying in the hands of Donald Trump, and the situation is completely different.

In recent months, we have said that to survive the United States needs the resignation of Trump and a non-violent revolution, but that does not seem to be coming soon. Many city administrations are progressive and progressive Congressional candidates are being nominated, and some elected. However, that, by itself, will not change a system where the electoral process is mostly in the hands of big money. Progressive mayors and Congressional candidates would have to be supported by mass movements in city halls, town meetings and on the streets if the military priorities of American society can be transformed into a new national unity that puts the priorities on racial and economic equality and full employment.

What seems more likely in the short term is a risk of civil war, as discussed in this article in The Nation and this Youtube video. Here’s why this must be taken seriously.

Trump’s campaign was formally endorsed recently (July 16) by the National Rifle Association, which claims over 5 million members, and they are armed, not just with hunting rifles, but often with military-grade weapons designed to kill efficiently large numbers of people. They are mostly white males without higher education, a group that supports Trump according to the polls. I suppose it is safe to assume that they live more in rural areas than in the big cities. With increasing unemployment and impoverishment they are angy against the bankers of New York and the entrepreneurs of Silicon Valley who are gaining enormous wealth during this crisis, but they take out their anger on women, Blacks and Hispanics who are more accessible.

The American military, on the other hand, has not agreed with Trump’s attempts to engage it in his support. It is perhaps relevant that the proportion of active military personnel that is Black and Hispanic has been growing, and as of 2017 it was already 43%, not to mention a growing proportion of women. Their families are more urban than rural.

The Trump presidency has made racism a major tactic in its campaign strategy for re-election. And while Trump is trailing in the polls, there are serious suggestions circulating that he and his supporters may refuse to accept an election result that is not in his favor.

Meanwhile, the rate of unemployment and families being thrown into poverty has reached proportions in the United States not seen since the 1930’s, and it seems likely to grow further, given the continued need for shutdowns to counter the coronavirus epidemic.

When the Soviet Union collapsed, it reverted to its constituent republics where there were relatively unified cultures, nurtured over the decades by Soviet support for cultural development. There is no such history of culturally uniform states and regions in the United States. One suggestion, that of Johan Galtung, is that there will be an East-West divide with the West Coast linking to Asia and the East Coast linking to Europe. But Galtung does not consider what will happen with the rest of the country, the South and the Middle West. It is there that we may expect the greatest risk of violence, rural versus urban.

A civil war would be bloody, but hopefully not to the extent of the first American Civil War in the 1860’s when tens of thousands were slaughtered in terrible battles between two distinct armies.

Perhaps more relevant that the crash of the Soviet Empire was the crash of Syria. When a revolt broke out against the government, the Syrian military split with some supporting the government and some going to the opposition. The civil war was especially bloody because of external interventions. The opposition received major support, though covert, from the United States and several Arab States, while the government received support from the Lebanese Hezbollah, Iran and Russia.

Unlike Syria, it seems less likely that an American civil war at this moment will receive much external intervention, and it is more likely that it will be decided by the balance of forces in the US. The need for a nonviolent revolution would then become more evident than ever.

What would be the effects in the rest of the world in the face of an American civil war? Would it reinforce the idea and make possible the reformation of the United Nations into a force for the culture of peace? Or would it look more like the 1930’s with the rise of fascist governments and the threat of another World War? We are at a turning point in human history!

Dr. David Adams is a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace Development Environment and coordinator of the Culture of Peace News Network.

3 August 2020

Source: www.transcend.org