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By Laura Tiernan

The bodies of 39 migrants were found yesterday in the back of a freight lorry parked in Grays, Essex, in the United Kingdom. The deaths have evoked public outrage and revulsion toward the British government’s brutal “deterrence” regime against migrants and refugees.

Police were called to the Waterglade Industrial Park in Essex by East of England Ambulance Service at 1.40am. All 39 people—adults and a teenager—were pronounced dead at the scene.

The victims’ identities are not known. Police forensic teams last night transported the truck’s cabin and trailer to Tilbury Docks to begin the process of formal identification. Deputy Chief Constable Pippa Mills told reporters this would be “a lengthy process”.

Police escort the truck, that was found to contain a large number of dead bodies, as they move it from an industrial estate in Thurrock, south England, Wednesday Oct. 23, 2019. Police in southeastern England said that 39 people were found dead Wednesday inside a truck container believed to have come from Bulgaria. (AP Photo/Alastair Grant)

Details of the truck’s movements remain unclear. Police have confirmed only that the trailer arrived via ferry from Zeebrugge, Belgium, docking at Purfleet on the River Thames at 12.30am. The truck cabin and trailer left the port shortly after 1.05am.

It is not known where or at what time the 39 victims entered the truck’s freight container. Richard Burnett, chief executive of the Road Haulage Association, told the BBC the container appeared to be a refrigerated unit and that temperatures could reach as low as -25C. Conditions for anyone inside would be “absolutely horrendous”. Even if the container was not refrigerated, trucking experts explained that such cabins are sealed tight and lengthy confinement can lead to suffocation.

The truck’s cabin is registered in Northern Ireland. The driver, 25-year-old Mo Robinson from a village in County Armagh, was immediately arrested on suspicion of murder.

But the real authors of this immense crime reside in 10 Downing Street, along with the government and opposition parties in Westminster Palace and their accomplices in every European capital.

Their statements of condolence and crocodile tears are rank hypocrisy. Conservative Party Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s statement was issued via Twitter: “I’m appalled by this tragic incident in Essex… My thoughts are with all those who lost their lives & their loved ones.”

Home Secretary Priti Patel, whose entire career is built on anti-immigrant xenophobia, told parliament, “I’m shocked and saddened by this utterly tragic incident in Grays. My heart goes out to all those affected.”

Only last month, a smirking Patel told the Tory Party conference she was proud to be part of a Brexit government that was “taking back control of our borders” and “ending the free movement of people once and for all.” Johnson has described veiled Muslim women as “bank robbers” and “letter boxes”, deliberately stoking anti-immigrant racism.

The latest horrifying deaths are the direct outcome of a regime of deterrence that has involved a police-military operation on the English Channel and at key ports including Dover.

The truck allegedly driven by Robinson is believed to have arrived at Purfleet to avoid increased police checks and anti-migrant measures put in place at Dover in the leadup to Brexit. Five people have drowned in the English Channel this year.

Seamus Leheny, Northern Ireland policy manager for the Freight Transport Association, told the press, “People have been saying that security and checks have been increased at places like Dover and Calais, so it might be seen as an easier way to get in by going from Cherbourg or Roscoff, over to Rosslare, then up the road to Dublin. It’s a long way around and it’ll add an extra day to the journey.”

In recent months, migrant rights organisations have warned that the British government’s harsh deterrence regime is forcing refugees to resort to riskier methods of entry to the UK, including lorries. In December 2017, a 15-year-old Afghani boy was crushed by a truck he tried to jump on board at Calais, while an Iraqi man’s legs were severed by a train near Dunkirk. In June this year, the frozen body of a stowaway from Kenya fell from a plane onto a London garden. An investigation last November by BBC South East found there was a “pre-Brexit rush”, with people-smugglers warning migrants to enter now before “the borders shut properly.”

In January, former Tory Home Secretary Sajid Javid met with his French counterpart to agree new anti-migrant measures along the English Channel including £3.2 million for drones, radar, night goggles and number plate recognition along with additional border patrol boats.

One year earlier, the Sandhurst Treaty was negotiated by then Prime Minister Theresa May with French President Emmanuel Macron. Signed at Britain’s premier military academy, the treaty saw the UK commit an extra £44.5 million for fencing, CCTV and detection technology in Calais and other Channel ports.

The police measures agreed by the French and British governments were aimed at bolstering the European Union’s “Fortress Europe” policy against desperate migrants and refugees fleeing wars in the Middle East and North Africa and economic deprivation across large parts of Eastern Europe.

Yesterday’s atrocity was the worst in Britain since 2000, when the bodies of 58 Chinese people were found in a sealed airless container at Dover, Kent. An inquest was told the migrants banged frantically on the inside of the container as they suffocated.

More recently, in August 2015, 71 bodies were found decomposing in an abandoned lorry on the A4 motorway in Austria, near Parndorf. This produced a mass outpouring of sympathy for refugees across Europe. Overnight, thousands of ordinary people organised accommodation, transport, food, clothing and medical supplies, turning out to greet and welcome the convoys of refugees arriving from across the Mediterranean, from Turkey and North Africa.

It was this public sentiment which forced Angela Merkel’s government to open Germany’s borders and allow refugees right of entry. But the sympathy for refugees cut across the plans of the German ruling class for remilitarisation and for deepening austerity. Powerful forces in the government and intelligence services set about smothering and reversing this social opposition through the promotion of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) and manufactured scares such as the Cologne New Year’s Eve “sex attacks”.

Yesterday’s events in Britain are not only a tragedy for the family and loved ones of the 39 people who have perished. They are a crime perpetrated by the capitalist governments of Britain and Europe against the international working class. Over 19,000 people died or went missing in the Mediterranean between 2014 and October this year. A total of 92 migrant deaths were recorded on land in Europe in 2018. The 39 people murdered yesterday brings this year’s total to 91.

Originally published by WSWS.org

24 October 2019

Source: countercurrents.org

By Max Parry

Last month, on the 80th anniversary of the start of World War II, the European Parliament voted on a resolution entitled “On the Importance of European Remembrance for the Future of Europe.” The adopted document:

“…Stresses that the Second World War, the most devastating war in Europe’s history, was started as an immediate result of the notorious Nazi-Soviet Treaty on Non-Aggression of 23 August 1939, also known as the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, and its secret protocols, whereby two totalitarian regimes that shared the goal of world conquest divided Europe into two zones of influence; Recalls that the Nazi and communist regimes carried out mass murders, genocide and deportations and caused a loss of life and freedom in the 20th century on a scale unseen in human history, and recalls the horrific crime of the Holocaust perpetrated by the Nazi regime; condemns in the strongest terms the acts of aggression, crimes against humanity and mass human rights violations perpetrated by the Nazi, communist and other totalitarian regimes.”

For 75 years, we have been told that the war started on September 1st, 1939 when Germany invaded Poland, even though the Pacific Theater between Japan and China began two years earlier. Now we are to understand that it actually began eight days prior when the German foreign minister visited Moscow. Take no notice of the inherent doublespeak in the premise that a war could be the consequence of a peace agreement, which without any evidence provided is said to have contained “secret protocols”, not provisions. You see, unlike the other pacts signed between European countries and Nazi Germany — such as the Munich Betrayal of 1938 with France and Great Britain to which the Soviets were uninvited while Austria and Czechoslovakia were gifted to Hitler for the courtesy of attacking Moscow — Molotov-Ribbentrop was really a confidential agreement between Hitler and Stalin to conquer Europe and divide it between them.

This is pure mythology. The fact of the matter is that neither the Soviets or even Germany drew the dividing line in Poland in 1939, because it was a reinstatement of the border acknowledged by the League of Nations and Poland itself as put forward by the British following WWI. Even Winston Churchill during his first wartime radio broadcast later that year admitted:

“Russia has pursued a cold policy of self-interest. We could have wished that the Russian Armies should be standing on their present line as the friends and allies of Poland, instead of as invaders. But that the Russian Armies should stand on this line was clearly necessary for the safety of Russia against the Nazi menace.”

Yet according to the EU, even though Moscow was the last country to agree to a peace deal with Hitler, it was all part of a hidden plot between them. In that case, why then did Germany choose to invade the USSR in 1941? The EU leaves this question unanswered. Forget about its racial policies of enslaving slavs or that Hitler openly declared in Mein Kampf that Germany needed to conquer the East to secure the Lebensraum. Nevermind that in the Spring of 1941, less than two months before Operation Barbarossa, Stalin gave a speech to the Kremlin at a state banquet for recent graduates of the Frunze Military Academy to give warning of an imminent attack:

“War with Germany is inevitable. If comrade Molotov can manage to postpone the war for two or three months through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, that will be our good fortune, but you yourselves must go off and take measures to raise the combat readiness of our forces.”

The EU has redacted that the entire reason for the signing of the Nazi-Soviet pact in August 1939 had been to buy time for the Red Army’s attrition warfare strategy to adequately prepare its armaments against a future invasion by the Wehrmacht. The Soviet leadership well understood that Germany would eventually renege on the agreement, considering that in 1936 it had signed the Anti-Comintern Pact with Japan and Italy directed at the Communist International. For six years, the USSR was thwarted in its attempts to forge an equivalent anti-fascist coalition and to collectively defend Czechoslovakia by the British and the French, whose ruling classes were too busy courting and doing business with Germany. It had been the Soviets alone who defended the Spanish Republic from Franco in the final rehearsal before the worldwide conflict and only when all other recourses had run out did they finally agree to a deal with the Hitlerites.

Just a week prior to the signing of the neutrality treaty, Stalin gave a secretspeech to the Politburo where he explained:

“The question of war or peace has entered a critical phase for us. If we conclude a mutual assistance treaty with France and Great Britain, Germany will back off of Poland and seek a modus vivendi with the Western Powers. War would thus be prevented but future events could take a serious turn for the USSR. If we accept Germany’s proposal to conclude with it a non-aggression pact, Germany will then attack Poland and Europe will be thrown into serious acts of unrest and disorder. Under these circumstances we will have many chances of remaining out of the conflict while being able to hope for our own timely entrance into war.”

This latest resolution is part of a long pattern of misrepresentation of WWII by the Anglo-Saxon empire, but is perhaps its most egregious falsification that truly desecrates the graves of the 27 million Soviet citizens who were 80% of the total Allied death toll. Earlier this year, for the commemoration on the 75th anniversary of the Normandy landings, Russia and its head of state were excluded from the events in Portsmouth, England. As if the ongoing absence of Western European leaders from the May 9th Victory Day ceremonies held annually in Russia weren’t insulting enough, while it’s true that the Eastern Front was not involved in Operation Overlord, Russian President Vladimir Putin had previously been in attendance at the 70th anniversary D-Day events in 2014. No doubt the increase in geopolitical tensions between the West and Moscow in the years since has given the EU license to write out Russia’s role in the Allied victory entirely with little public disapproval, though many of the families of those who volunteered in the International Brigades were rightly insulted by this tampering of history and voiced their objection.

The EU motion‘s real purpose is to fabricate the war’s history by giving credit to the United States for the liberation of Europe while absolving the Western democracies that opened the door for the rise of fascism and tried to use Germany to annihilate the USSR. History itself should always be open to debate and subject to study and revision, but the Atlanticists have made this formal change without any evidence to support it and entirely for political purposes. Like the founding of the EU project itself, the declared aim of the proposal is supposedly to prevent future atrocities from taking place, even though the superstate was designed by former Nazis like Walter Hallstein, the first President of the European Commission, who was a German lawyer in several Nazi Party law organizations and fought for the Wehrmacht in France until his capture as a POW after the invasion of Normandy.

Rather than preventing future crimes, the EU has committed one itself by deceptively modifying the historical record of communism to be parallel with that of the Third Reich. Even further, that they were two sides of the same coin of ‘totalitarianism’ and that for all the barbarity committed during the war, the Soviets were equally culpable — or judging by the amount of times the text cites the USSR versus Germany, even more so. It remains unclear whether we are now to completely disregard the previous conclusions reached by the military tribunals held by the Allies under international law at Nuremberg of which all 12 war criminals sentenced to death in 1946 were German, not Soviet. The document doesn’t even attempt to hide its politicized direction at the current government in Moscow, stating that:

“Russia remains the greatest victim of communist totalitarianism and that its development into a democratic state will be impeded as long as the government, the political elite and political propaganda continue to whitewash communist crimes and glorify the Soviet totalitarian regime.”

This accusation does not stand up to critical observation, as Russia has since erected official memorials to those executed and politically persecuted during the so-called ‘Great Terror.’ However, the stark difference between the EU resolution and the Wall of Grief in Moscow is that the latter is based on evidence from the Soviet archives. It has become a widespread and ridiculous belief in the West that Stalin somehow killed as much as five times as many people as Hitler, an absurdity not reflected in the now disclosed and once highly secretive Soviet archives, which after two decades of examination show that over a period of three decades from the early 1920s to his death in 1953, the total recorded number of Soviet citizens executed by the state was slightly less than 800,000. While that is certainly a horrid number, how does it even begin to compare to an industrial scale extermination based on the race theory?

How can anyone believe Stalin killed tens of millions of people when even the most simple analysis of a population demographics chart shows that the Soviet population rate consistently increased each decade with the only reduction taking place during WWII as a result of their casualties? Socialists, who perhaps more than any other political tendency seem to suffer from autophobia, should defend their own history from such falsification. It is only when flaws occur under communist states that the entire political and economic system is to be denounced outright, but never capitalism which for five centuries has colonized half the world while enslaving and killing entire nations.

Most of the wildly exaggerated death figures stem from falsities written in The Black Book of Communism by a group of right-wing French academics in 1997,who did not conceal their apologism for the Nazi collaborationist self-proclaimed Russian Liberation Army (ROA) commanded by Gen. Andrey Vlasov who defected to Germany during the war:

“A singular fate was reserved for the Vlasovtsy, the Soviet soldiers who had fought under the Soviet general Andrei Vlasov. Vlasov was the commander of the Second Army who had been taken prisoner by the Germans in July 1942. On the basis of his anti-Stalinist convictions, General Vlasov agreed to collaborate with the Nazis to free his country from the tyranny of the Bolsheviks.”

The other highly cited work by the West for its overestimated portrayal of Soviet repression is the equally unreliable The Gulag Archipelago volumes by Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who as historian Ludo Martens noted also attempted to provide justification for Vlasov’s treason in his best-selling 1973 work:

“And so it was that Vlasov’s Second Shock Army perished, literally recapitulating the fate of Samsonov’s Russian Second Army in World War I, having been just as insanely thrown into encirclement. Now this, of course, was treason to the Motherland! This, of course, was vicious, self-obsessed betrayal! But it was Stalin’s. Treason does not necessarily involve selling out for money. It can include ignorance and carelessness in the preparations for war, confusion and cowardice at its very start, the meaningless sacrifice of armies and corps solely for the sake of saving one’s own marshal’s uniform. Indeed, what more bitter treason is there on the part of a Supreme Commander in Chief?”

The truth is located in the Soviet archives which indicate that Stalin’s successor, the Ukrainian-born Nikita Khrushchev, was as intent on absolving the entirety of the Soviet leadership as himself from any culpability in the purges of the 1930s so that blame for its excesses were placed squarely on his predecessor. In succession, Western historians like the British Foreign Office propagandist Robert Conquest followed his example and this account quickly became official doctrine. In hindsight, Khrushchev’s infamous 1956 secret speech, “On the Cult of Personality and Its Consequences”, was what planted the seeds of self-doubt in the Soviet system that would eventually lead to its undoing decades later. To the contrary, what the historical records show is most of those who were purged in that period were not necessarily perceived as political threats to Stalin himself, but were targeted because of an overall systemic paranoia held by the entire Soviet government regarding internal sabotage and counter-revolutionary activity by a real fifth column getting inspiration from a certain traitorous former Bolshevik in exile and a potential invasion originating from outside the country.

Many forget that during the Russian Civil War, exactly such a scenario had occurred when the Allies of World War I, including the United States, collectively intervened on the side of the Whites only to be driven out by the Red Army, making such fearful instincts not entirely unreasonable. Not to mention, the rapid industrialization of the entire nation in a single decade while in preparation for the growing threat of war with Germany. When Hitler began his Masterplan for the East, their worst fears came to fruition when tens of thousands of Banderite turncoats enlisted in the 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS (1st Galician) in Ukraine to collaborate with the German occupiers in the slaughter of their fellow countrymen and after the war ended, continued their treasonous struggle during the 1950s with assistance from the CIA. So the saying goes, just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t out to get you…

As for the accusation of “whitewashing”, it is true that recent polls indicate that 70% of Russians today hold a favorable view of Stalin — but just as many are nostalgic for communism itself and regret the breakup of the USSR on the basis that the socialist system ‘took care of ordinary people.’ Putin did once remark that despite Stalin’s legacy of repression, he doubted that the native Georgian statesman would have been willing to drop two atomic bombs on Japan like the United States, an atrocity that killed 225,000 innocent civilians (most of them instantly) which is more than a quarter of those capitally punished during the entire Stalin era. Was he wrong to say so? A significant amount of deaths also occurred in the Soviet-wide famines of the 1930s, but there is significantly more evidence to suggest that the British deliberately starved 3 million Bengalis to death then there is to support the Holodomor fraud concocted by the Ukrainian nationalist diaspora. If the West wants to talk about deliberate starvation, it should take a look at what the U.S. did with its economic sanctions in the 1990s killing half a million Iraqi children which former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright famously described as “worth it.”

This isn’t the first time the Anglosphere has historically omitted the Soviet role in the Allied victory or conflated the USSR with the Third Reich. On previous occasions the European Parliament has issued resolutions declaring August 23rd “a European day of remembrance of the victims of the Nazi-Soviet alliance.” This is all an attempt by the Atlanticists to depict communism as somehow worse than fascism while disconnecting the Nazis from the lineage of European settler colonialism whose racism was its source of inspiration. Why is that which befell the Jews not considered an extension of what was already done to the Herero-Nama tribes for which Namibia is now suing Germany a century later?

The neoliberal political establishment in Europe and its anti-EU populist opponents are fond of appearing dead-set against one another, but it seems they share the same fairytale beliefs about WWII that the Nazis and Soviets were equivalent evils as inscribed in this latest decree. It has always been ironic that the liberal billionaire “philanthropist” and currency manipulator George Soros is so derided by right-wing populists when it was his Open Society Institute NGOs which engineered the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe. Soros may be averse to the anti-immigrant brand of right-wing nationalism currently on the rise in Western Europe, but as a fanatical Russophobe he is willing to make strange bedfellows with ultra-nationalists in Kiev to undermine Moscow’s sphere of influence and that includes revising WWII history to a version favored by the Banderites which took power during the pro-EU 2014 coup d’etat in Ukraine.

The Nazi junta regime in Kiev has since instituted Russophobic ‘de-communization’ laws erasing the remaining traces of Ukraine’s Soviet past while replacing them with memorials to their wartime foes. A recentexample was the city of Vinnitsa renaming a street that paid tribute to the Soviet spy and war hero Richard Sorge to that after Omelyan Hrabetsk, a commander of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army which cooperated with Germany during the war and killed thousands of Poles and Jews. Sorge posed as a German journalist in Tokyo and famously provided timely intelligence to Moscow that Japan did not plan to attack the USSR, allowing Stalin to transfer essential reinforcements to the Battle of Moscow which proved to be a major turning point in the war. He was executed by the Japanese in 1944 and posthumously awarded the Hero of the Soviet Union.

Now the EU is ‘decommunizing’ history in its own legislation. Meanwhile, Soros’s influence over the EU cannot be overstated as his lobbying power has enabled him to provide direct council to its executive branch more than any official head of state in the political and economic union. The hedge fund tycoon made a fortune as an investor during Russia’s mass privatization in the 1990s after enlisting Jeffrey Sachs and the IMF to apply ‘shock therapy’ to its economy as it did in Poland and his native Hungary. Under Putin, however, Soros’s NGOs have since been barred from Russia. Perhaps the reason he can so cynically provide support to fascist elements in Ukraine to undercut Moscow is that he did so personally in his upbringing in Hungary.

Born Gyorgy Schwartz, during WWII he was a teenager from an affluent Jewish family which survived the Axis occupation by using their wealth to bribe a government official from the collaborationist Arrow Cross government who provided the Soros’s forged documents identifying them as Christians, while the adolescent by his own admission delivered deportation notices to other Jews. A short time later, the young Soros impersonated the adopted gentile son of an official who inventoried the stolen valuables and property from Jewish estates and even accompanied him during his work. One would assume as a Jew he would have been haunted by these experiences, but Soros has repeatedly stated he has no regrets and even disturbingly compared it to his future work as an investor.
Like Soros, the EU has no ideology except an unquenchable thirst for greed and is fond of Nazis when they are the kind that hate Russia. For its own political interests, it is willing to dangerously foster a version of history invented by a rebranded far right where the quislings who collaborated with the Axis powers elude guilt and the Soviets who courageously defeated them are maliciously slandered. Fascism was never fully eradicated only because the West continued to nurture it during the Cold War and even now that capitalism has been reinstated in Eurasia, it continues to do so to undermine a resurgent Moscow on the world stage.

As the world appears increasingly on the brink of WWIII, one is reminded of the expression by Karl Marx who famously stated that “history repeats itself…first as tragedy, then as farce” in The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon, when comparing Napoleon Bonaparte’s seizure of power in the French Revolution with the coup by his nephew half a century later which brought an end to the French Revolution. Equally fitting is the humorous line by the legendary writer and noted anti-imperialist Mark Twain who reputedly said, “history doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme.” Both are applicable to the unquestionable tragedy of WWII and the farcical mockery of its history by the EU whose policies continue to make another global conflict that much more likely.

Max Parry is an independent journalist and geopolitical analyst.

23 October 2019

Source: countercurrents.org

By Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers, Popular Resistance

The crisis in Syria has taken a new direction with the Turkish invasion into the Northeast ostensibly to push the Kurdish peoples out. The US has added to this crisis by its green light to Turkey to attack after using the Kurds as a proxy force in the battle against ISIS.

The US’ role in Syria and in the greater Middle East has been destructive throughout this century. The invasion and occupation of Iraq have left destruction and chaos. The illegal bombing of Libya and the brutal murder of its prime minister, Muammar al-Gaddafi, have created a failed state. The US’ alliance with Saudi Arabia in the war against Yemen has resulted in mass murder and destruction. The ongoing conflicts with Iran through illegal unilateral coercive measures (sanctions), regime change attempts, threats of war and military skirmishes have created more instability in the region. And, the US’ ‘special relationship’ with Israel has allowed continued ethnic cleansing and land theft from the Palestinians and has been a tool for instability in the region. The never-ending war in Afghanistan continues to cause destruction as the US remains even though it has been defeated.

These actions have resulted in more than a million deaths and mass migration, which has not only impacted the region but also Europe, causing political instability and the advance of right-wing, anti-immigrant forces. The Middle East was better off, more stable and wealthier before the disastrous US actions of this century. The illegal wars have cost the US trillions of dollars with no benefit. US policy has not served any positive purposes but has caused instability, conflict, and destruction. It is time for the US to get out of Syria and out of the Middle East.

Syria: A Major Defeat for the US and a Geopolitical Game Changer

The bi-partisans in Washington, DC and the foreign policy establishment are furious at Donald Trump for pulling out of the Kurdish region of Syria and allowing Turkey to invade. These groups were united when the US’ goal was removing President Assad from power, but with the culmination of this failed policy, there is political division.

Pepe Escobar describes Syria as the biggest defeat for the CIA since Vietnam. It is a significant defeat, but US losses in Iraq and Afghanistan are in the running for the worst defeat since Vietnam. Escobar describes the failure “as a massive geopolitical game-changer” that strengthens Assad as he retakes control of Northeast Syria. Russia benefits as a guarantor for Syria and key player in the victory over US regime change. The losers are the United States and Kurds.

The US’ contribution to the current chaos and destruction precedes Trump. While the brutal attacks by Turkey in Syria are being blamed on Trump, in reality, they go back to President Obama. Max Blumenthal reports in The Grayzone that “many [of the Turkish fighters] were former members of the Free Syrian Army, the force once armed by the CIA and Pentagon and branded as ‘moderate rebels.’” Blumenthal cites a research paper published this October by the pro-government Turkish think tank, SETA: “Out of the 28 factions [in the Turkish mercenary force], 21 were previously supported by the United States, three of them via the Pentagon’s program to combat DAESH. Eighteen of these factions were supplied by the CIA ….” Further, the leader of this force is Salim Idriss, who hosted John McCain when the late senator made his infamous 2013 incursion into Syria.

The Turkish attack in Syria has been filled with ugly extreme violence that is causing outrage. Mercenaries are sawing the heads off of Kurdish fighters they have killed, a Syrian Kurdish legislator was pulled from her car and executed along with her driver, unarmed Kurdish captives were filmed as they were murdered, the corpse of a female Kurdish fighter was vandalized, ISIS captives were deliberately freed from unguarded prisons, and in a video message, one of the invading fighters promised mass ethnic cleansing if Kurds in the area refused to convert to his Wahhabi strain of Sunni Islam.

Ajamu Baraka points out that the US created the “Free Syrian Army” (FSA), who were the good guys when they were overthrowing Assad, but have now been turned into the “Turkish supported FSA,” especially after the gruesome graphic videos of the Turkish invasion emerged. In reality, Baraka points out, “many of us knew, along with the CIA and most of the honest foreign policy community, that the FSA was always al-Qaeda’s Syria operation in the form of Jabhat al-Nusra and other jihadist militias.”

Blumenthal concludes: “Left out of the coverage of these horrors was the fact that none of them would have been possible if Washington had not spent several years and billions of dollars subsidizing Syria’s armed opposition.”

These recent events need to be viewed through the context of sixty years of on-again, off-again coups and regime change campaigns that have failed. Timber Sycamore, the regime change project of the Obama administration, was a “secret” plan that allowed the CIA to arm terrorists in Syria. Timber Sycamore, which included Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Jordan, and Turkey working with the US, officially began in late 2012 and ended in failure in 2017. The secret program trained future ISIS members as part of covert aid to the insurgents targeting Bashar al-Assad. The US was duplicitous and used terrorism as a tool as documented in the book “The Management of Savagery”.

When Obama’s regime change strategy failed, the US switched to occupying one-third of Syria, including the oil region in the Northeast. In January, Secretary of State Tillerson announced the US was creating a de facto Kurdish State there with a 30,000-strong Syrian Defense Force (SDF) troop, US air support, and eight new US bases. In April 2018, UN Ambassador Nikki Haley announced the US planned to maintain its illegal presence in Syria.

Obama’s effort to dominate Syria was rooted in the Bush-era. In 2001, former NATO commander Wesley Clark was on record stating that Syria was on a list of targeted nations to be toppled by the US. In 2002, former Secretary of State John Bolton said, in a speech titled “Beyond the Axis of Evil”, that Syria was among a handful of nations the US was targeting. The 2011 protests in Syria were quickly manipulated by the US and foreign powers who sought to destabilize Syria. CIA-backed Muslim Brotherhood assets were in place to snipe at both police and protesters when the demonstrations broke out and Saudia Arabia provided weapons to aid regime change.

Caitlan Johnstone points to more evidence that Syria was not an organic uprising but a foreign regime change effort from the beginning:

“The former Prime Minister of Qatar said on television that the US and its allies were involved in the Syrian conflict from the very beginning. A WikiLeaks cable and a declassified CIA memo both show the US government plotting to provoke an uprising in Syria exactly as it occurred, years before it happened. Former Foreign Minister of France Roland Dumas stated that he was informed that the UK was engineering an uprising in Syria two years before the violence erupted.”

Even the Obama era regime change goal needs to be put in the context of over sixty years of the US trying to control Syria. The first coup attempt by the CIA after it’s creation was in Syria in 1949. Controlling Syria has been a consistent policy objective. CIA documents from 1986 describe how the US could remove the Assad family.

Each of Trump’s efforts to get out of Syria has been opposed by bipartisan war hawks. In March 2018, Trump tweeted that the US would soon be withdrawing from Syria. One month later Secretary of Defense Mattis told Congress the US was not withdrawing testifying, “We are continuing the fight, we are going to expand it and bring in more regional support.” In January, Trump called for withdrawal from Syria, which was met with a firestorm of opposition. He was outmaneuvered by war hawks in his administration and Congress.

There continues to be resistance to withdrawal today. The US is not leaving Syria but is merely moving troops from the Northeast to other areas. David Macilwain reports, “The truth of US intentions – to remain in Eastern Syria until they are driven out militarily – has now been emphasized by US Defence secretary Mark Esper. At a press conference where he confirmed the US intention to withdraw 1000 troops from Syria, when asked whether this meant from all of Syria he simply repeated what he had said –’from Northern Syria.’”

It is past time for the US to leave Syria and end its longterm desire to dominate the country. People in the United States and around the world must insist on the US obeying international law, which means the US must leave Syria as it has no legal grounds for being in that sovereign nation.

Kurds in Syria Negotiate Their Future With Damascus

Kurds, who live in Turkey, Syria, Iraq , and Iran, are often regarded as “the largest ethnic group without a state.” With the US withdrawal from Northeast Syria, the Kurds in Syria are now working with Damascus to repel the Turkish invasion and negotiate their future.

In mid-2012, Assad’s forces largely withdrew from the Kurdish area, and the battle against ISIS was left to the Kurdish militias: the YPG (People’s Protection Units) and the YPJ (Women’s Defense Forces), the autonomous women’s militias. When the Free Syrian Army failed, the US funded the Syrian Kurdish militias known as the Peoples Protection Unit using a new name, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). The Kurdish never targeted the Syrian government but focused on ISIS.

The Kurdish Rojava cantons are a liberated area in Syria led by socialist-feminists and a population that makes decisions through local councils. Their economy is based on a cooperative model with thousands of co-ops, but private businesses are allowed. The co-ops are initiated and controlled by the communes, i.e. the community assembly structures. Their basic principle is the participation of everyone in production. In the words of a minister of economics: “If a single loaf of bread is manufactured in Rojava, everyone will have contributed to it.”

Their governing model is direct democracy governance without a state, built on local assemblies. There are multiple levels with neighborhood councils, District Councils and a People’s Council for the entire region. And there is also ‘Democratic Self-Administration,’ which is a more conventional government structure of legislative and executive bodies as well as municipal administration. These bodies are not limited to Kurds but open to all religions and ethnicities. Women hold 40 percent of leadership positions at all levels. Three leftist enclaves make up an area slightly smaller than the state of Connecticut.

Some see Rojava’s governance without hierarchy, patriarchy or capitalism as a model for the future of the Middle East and beyond, and as an antidote to capitalism. It is the Communalist Model of Democratic Confederalism, an adaptation of the ideas of the Zapatistas in Chiapas and the work of Murray Bookchin.

In Turkey, Kurds remain part of Turkey and “have formed a political party (Peoples Democratic Party – HDP), which unites progressives of all ethnicities. In the 2015 Turkish election, HDP emerged as the third most popular party and stopped Erdogan’s election domination.” The HDP opposes Turkey’s invasion of Syria.

Turkey is concerned that the Kurds will use the territory they’ve captured to establish an independent Kurdish state for the region’s 25 to 35 million Kurds, roughly 15 million of whom reside in Turkey. Four percent of Kurds reside in Syria, approximately 1.6 million people. Kurds are the fourth largest ethnic group in the region after Arabs, Persians, and Turks. After the Ottoman Empire’s defeat in World War I, they were not granted a homeland.

Peace activists and popular movements around the world should be in solidarity with the Kurdish people’s desire for a semi-independent territory. A contiguous Kurdish state is an impossible dream and negotiation will be required by each population in the country where they reside.

US Out of Syria and Out of the Middle East

We agree with the US Peace Council, which urges “the US peace movement to organize a united national campaign in support of the Syrian people and demand the total withdrawal of all occupying forces from Syria. Leave Syria to the Syrian People!”

The movement’s first demand must be the US out of Syria and out of the Middle East because the US is not yet leaving Syria or the region. Reports indicate between 200 and 300 U.S. troops will remain at the southern Syrian outpost of Al-Tanf and 1,000 troops will shift into western Iraq adding to the more than 5,000 US troops in Iraq. US forces may conduct operations in Syria from Iraq.

On October 11, the US announced it was sending an additional 1,800 troops to Saudi Arabia. An additional 14,000 US troops have been deployed to the Middle East since spring, including more than 6,000 who are part of a naval strike group. The US is fighting in at least seven countries in the Middle East and North Africa: Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Niger, Somalia, Syria, and Yemen.

We must also be in solidarity with the Kurdish people and call for an end to the Turkish invasion of Syria. The Turkish invasion is already backfiring and people mobilizing against the invasion will lead to its retreat.

And, we must accept immigrants from Syria, Libya, Iraq, and Afghanistan where migration crises have been caused by US wars. Rebuilding nations destroyed by the United States is a costly endeavor that the US owes to the region. These countries do not want the US meddling in their efforts so compensation must be made through the United Nations without any strings attached.

Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers are directors of Popular Resistance

22 October 2019

Source: countercurrents.org

By Peter Koenig

“I don’t want to be the best President in the history of Bolivia, I want to be the President of the best Bolivia in history.”So proclaimed Evo Morales in a pre-election rally a few days before general elections, today, 20 October 2019. At the same time, Evo declared that ever since the Tribunal Constitucional Plurinacional (TCP–Plurinational Constitutional Tribunal) in November 2017 rejected an appeal by the opposition that he could run for a fourth term for President, and approved his candidacy for 20 October elections, US interference on a daily basis was rampant.

The United States has not stopped trying to change public opinion with false propaganda and making incredibly ludicrous promises to the population. For example, US Embassy people – maybe Fifth Columnists on US payroll, promised the population of the poor Yungas region of Bolivia, new and asphalted roads, if they didn’t support Evo Morales in the upcoming elections. There are also flagrant lies circulating, that Evo and his families had stolen hundreds of millions of dollars and deposited them in a secret account in the Bank of the Vatican. Similar lies as are being spread about Nicolas Maduro, the Castro family, North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, the leaders of Iran and Syria and many more, who oppose the dictate of Washington.

The Bolivian Minister of the Presidency, Juan Ramón Quintara, referring to the US attempts to sabotage the elections, mentioned a few days ago on a Bolivian public TV channel, “There is not one day the US is not interfering in Bolivian political internal affairs.” He added, warning his compatriots, “In the last 50 years the United States has put its dirty hand in the Bolivian electoral process. Today the interference is worse than ever. For this reason, brothers Bolivianos, be aware and don’t allow your vote being highjacked by foreign meddling.”

This is in total disrespect of international law, of international diplomacy and ethics. But what to expect from the only rogue state on our “Mother Earth”? Not to mention the flagrant, aberrant and hardly hidden corruption going on in the current and previous US governments for the last at least 100 years, and the Pentagon’s and White House’s constant interference in elections around the world. It is amazing that anybody would still go for these lies – spread by an emperor who is wheezing on his last breath.

Evo Moralesis running for the fourth time with his Vice-President, Álvaro Marcelo García Linera, on the MAS Party (MAS – Movimiento al Socialismo), the Movement for Socialism,for the Presidency and Vice-Presidency of Bolivia. The MAS was created in 1998 by Evo Morales. According to the latest polls, Evo has just under 40% of people’s support, against about 22% of Carlos Mesa, the strongest opponent, who is running second, from the right-wing Civic Community party.

According to Bolivian’s Constitution, with 40% of the votes, the candidate wins in the first round. Evo could indeed, win the election in the first round. However, if he gets less than 40%, they are headed for a second-round run-off election. That’s usually where the dangers lay – that’s where US interference is the most ferocious, in elections worldwide, where they want the winning candidate defeated. Washington spends untold millions in smearing the winning candidate and promoting “their” candidate. And often they are successful. Examples abound. One of the most flagrant one is the 2016 Presidential election in Peru, when in the first round the second candidate from the Socialist Party, the most likely overall winner, was pushed back by election fraud to third place, and the right-wing US-supported candidate was made second – and “won” in the run-off. Today he is under house-arrest, awaiting trial for corruption, linked to illegal business arrangements with the US.

If Evo Morales does not receive the 40% necessary to win the first round, compliments of US interference, it would be the first time in his four runs for President that he would be forced into a second round. He won both the 2009 and 2014 elections with a landslide first round, 61% and 64% respectively.

AlJazeera reports from La Paz, today, in the early morning hours of Election Day, that millions of Bolivians are expected to “cast their ballots amid a climate of uncertainty as President Evo Morales seeks a controversial fourth term.”

Why controversial? – Because the 2009 Constitution allows a President to serve only two terms. But Evo argued that his first term didn’t count because it took place before the new Constitution entered into effect. So, why a fourth term? – Evo realizes that his opposition, especially under his chief contender, Carlos Mesa, would reverse the socioeconomic achievements (see below) of the last 13 years.

Mesa would return the country to the IMF austerity dictate of which Bolivia has been free for 13 years – a main reason for Evo having been able to carry out social reforms, not only benefitting all of Bolivia’s “plurinational” indigenous people, but also to advance Bolivia in macro-economic terms, i.e. renegotiating and partially nationalizing Bolivia’s gas contracts, reducing foreign debt and amassing huge foreign exchange reserves.
Evo is observing closely what is happening in neighboring Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Peru and Ecuador. It is clear, leaving the elections free without his candidacy, Washington’s dirty hands would manipulate the elections – as they have “successfully” done in the countries mentioned before – to bring in a US favorable candidate, i.e. Carlos Mesa – and the country would be cooked. It is not difficult to foresee such a disaster, just watch what is happening in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador and Peru, where poverty and unemployment, and related crime, is rampant.

For a bit of history – Carlos Mena was Vice-President under President Sánchez de Lozada, called “Goni” (August 2002 to October 2003), a businessman, educated by the neoliberal School of Economics of the University of Chicago. Sánchez de Lozada was a built-in representative of Washington, who spoke Spanish with a strong English accent, representing blatantly US over Bolivian interests. He was forced out of office in 2003 by people’s protests over the so-called ‘Bolivian Gas Conflict’ (“Goni” was practically giving away Bolivia’s huge natural gas reserves to foreign petrol corporations, mostly US, for a pittance).

The bloody confrontations forcing Goni to flee the country to the US, claimed the lives of 59 protesters, soldiers and policemen. Goni was succeeded by his Vice-President, Carlos Mesa, who followed in Goni’s footsteps, continuing Goni’s policies on Bolivia’s natural gas. Carlos Mesa, after less than 2 years in office, was also forced to resign in 2005, under incessant people’s demonstrations and protests.
New elections at the end of 2005 brought in Evo Morales, who was presiding over the country from the beginning of 2006 to this day. – Watch also the documentary, “Our Brand is Crisis”, depicting how Sanchez de Lozada was made to win the 2002 elections over Evo Morales, by a special US propaganda team – https://www.bustle.com/articles/119572-watch-the-our-brand-is-crisis-doc-online-before-you-see-sandra-bullocks-movie-in-theaters.

A look at Bolivia’s socioeconomic achievements should further convince anybody who thinks for the people, that Evo did very well, insisting on his candidacy for the 2019 elections. The Center for Economic Policy Research (CEPR) in Washington, finds that Bolivia’s remarkable gains have been largely the result of wise policy choices, rather than just a “commodities boom”.

Bolivia was the fastest growing economy in Latin America over the past five years, about 5.2% on average (double the Latin-American average) and was able, under Evo Morales, to reduce poverty by 42% and extreme poverty by 60% since 2006, when Evo took office. The country also ended 20 years of IMF “rule”, by Evo’s eviction of the infamous Bretton Woods institution.

Other remarkable achievements include:

· A 50% increase in real terms of per capita GDP in 2018, over 2005;

· From 2006 – 2011 the government revenues from hydrocarbon increased seven-fold to US$ 4.95 billion, mostly from nationalization and associated policy changes. This was the driving force for the Government’s reaching macroeconomic stability and achieving its socioeconomic targets;

· Unemployment has dropped from 7.7% to 4.4.% in 2008 – and has remained stable through 2018;

· Public investments have increased along with Bolivia’s economic growth; Bolivia has the highest public investment as a percentage of GDP of the region;

· Overall investments have reached almost 22% of GDP on average per year over the past 5 years;

· In 2010 Bolivia has started applying a policy of “quantitative easing” to purchase state-owned financial instruments, i.e. bonds and similar debt certificates. At the end of 2018, the Central Bank’s balance sheet showed 44% were invested in public assets, a 12% increase since 2010.

Lots of challenges remain, as Bolivia still figures as the poorest country in South America, followed by Guyana, Paraguay, Ecuador and Peru. Evo knows that his job is far from finished – and American forced “regime change” is certainly not in order.
Viva Bolivia! Viva Evo!

Peter Koenig is an economist and geopolitical analyst. He is also a water resources and environmental specialist.

21 October 2019

Source: countercurrents.org

By Richard Falk

13 Oct 2019 – It took the withdrawal of the Nelly Sachs Prize to make me familiar with the fine literary achievements and compassionate politics of Kamila Shamsie. Selfishly, I cannot thank the Dortmund City Council enough for its outrageous behavior, evidently canceling the award because a right-wing newspaper outed Shamsie as a supporter of the BDS Campaign. I can imagine Shamsie’s feeling of hurt as well as disappointment as this incident unfolded. In her novels, she has manifested an uncannny awareness, more so than any writer I have encountered, of the precarious existence of ethnic, gender, and civilizational outsiders, especially Muslims, if they happen to reside in the supposedly once more tolerant West. Her words of eloquent response to the Dortmund about face express both her magnetic literary personality and moral intelligence:

“It is a matter of great sadness to me that a jury should bow to pressure and withdraw a prize from a writer who is exercising her freedom of conscience and freedom of expression; and it is a matter of outrage that the BDS movement (modelled on the South African boycott) that campaigns against the government of Israel for its acts of discrimination and brutality against Palestinians should be held up as something shameful and unjust.”

Germany seems particularly susceptible these days to Islamophobic tropes, especially those given traction at the expense of Muslims, Palestinians, and immigrants. It seems that even 75 years after the Holocaust the German political establishment is still attempting to convince themselves, as well as the State of Israel, that the Holocaust was a national anomaly. Seeking to prove the unprovable, Germany and Germans have chosen to fall in love with Israel precisely because it is the nation state of the Jewish people, and for this reason alone it can do no wrong as we all know that love is blind. In their vain effort to make such a surreal posture credible, Germany insists on going even further, as if to drive the point home to any doubters, by converting Israel’s critics into Germany’s adversaries, somehow forgetting that the locus of the anti-Semitic gene present in the German body politic is situated on its far right, and is definitely not to be found even among the most uncompromising supporters of the BDS Campaign. To suggest otherwise, as is the inescapable implication of the Dortmund action, is to slander a writer of exquisite moral sensitivity. Her actions as a citizen exhibits a strong bond between her sense of right and wrong that infuses her novels and her nonviolent engagements on the side of justice for the Palestinian people. Bonds of this nature are what keep democracy alive, and should be celebrated now more than ever, not condemned.

Evaluated from a more humanistic perspective, this incident confirms the impression that Germany as a nation has learned nothing from its past. To side with Israel is to side with an apartheid government that imposes a regime of daily victimization upon the Palestinian people (treating them as enemy aliens in what once Palestine!). To regard those who oppose this Israeli behavior as if they are the miscreants is to learn nothing from the rightly repudiated German past. It is to be complicit in its repetition.

Under these circumstances, my expression of personal gratitude to Dortmund may seem odd, yet it is quite easy to explain. If it had not been for the withdrawal of the prize, I would not have become an avid reader of Shamsie. The prize might have caught my wandering eye, as should earlier some of the dazzling reviews of Home Fire, but with a busy life along with an array of self-indulgent distractions, I would almost certainly not have taken such a drastic step as to acquire the novel, and then find myself so overwhelmed by its literary quality and brilliant commentaries on the human condition that I immediately obtained, and then read with uncharacteristic concentration, Burnt Shadows in two ten hour days of uninterrupted reading. Reflecting on this experience, which I wish is being replicated by others shocked into a similar response to mine, I became appreciative that, depending on circumstances, we sometimes become more intellectually and culturally indebted to acts of negation than to those of affirmation. It may be that those favoring the Dortmund jury reversal supposed that withdrawing the prize would have the valued added of lessening interest in Shamsie’ writing, and instead it seems to be spreading the word that she is a great writer!

Perhaps, if writers in Britain had not organized a joint letter of solidarity with Shamsie to the London Review of Books, the abstraction of learning about a cancelled prize would not have overcome my habitual sloth, and I would have moved on. I was also drawn to look for myself at the work in question by Shamsie’ unrepentant response, defending her BDS support as something she did as a citizen, which in any event should have had no bearing on whether her novel was more deserving of recognition than were the other short listed competitors for the prize. Until this happened, I would have thought the Nelly Sachs Prize honored literature, rather than kneeling at the altar of political correctness. From now on whenever Germany does something similar, I will do my best to make them pay, not only by joining the protest, but by embracing the work that they repudiated. Let these prizes remain noteworthy, but only if future cancellations serve more as magnets than as repellents. My fear is that foundations and selection groups that give such prizes will in the future become more wary, do their homework better, and bypass candidates whose sympathies with the Palestinian struggle might stir the waters of controversy. It is worth realizing that much of the evil in the world is what is done off camera, behind closed doors, and we who wish for other realities, never get wind of what is going on. Self-censorship may be more destructive of freedom of expression than censorship. Dortmond’s rationale for retraction can be discussed, rejected, overcome. If Home Fire had been quietly put aside by the jurors in their deliberations, it would have aroused no protest, enlisted no new circle of admirers, and no positive voices reminding us that BDS is dedicated to nonviolent liberation, nothing more, nothing less.

Yet before touching on the qualities that make me so admiring of House Fire, I would comment a bit more on what seems like a panic attack. We need to ask what made the folks in Dortmund act so inappropriately as to make themselves appear both craven and foolish? At first glance, it seems that these days right-wing pressure works more often than it should, although ironically, it is the far right that is the incubator of real anti-Semitism. The true face of Jew hatred revealed itself in the very recent Halle incident in which a right-winger aimed to slaughter Jews at a German synagogue on the Yon Kippur holiday. Further, even granting the Zionist feverish campaign to brand BDS as expressive of the so-called ‘new anti-Semitism,’ to treat Shamsie’ support of a cultural boycott as enough to induce the city of Dortmund to withdraw the prize seems to signal societal panic, maybe a reaction to the rise of the anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim AfD (Alternative for Germany). It is of more than passing interest that the AfD was not content as were the mainstream German parties in the Bundestag with calling BDS ‘anti-Semitic’ but wanted the non-violent movement formally banned altogether. The resolution adopted in May 2019 by a rare cross-alliance of political parties was itself a lamentable response to pressures being exerted by Zionist groups may have set the stage for the Dortmund retreat. It was followed shortly by a similar action in Aachen where an award was withdrawn from Walid Raad, an Lebanese innovative artist with a world reputation because he reportedly refused to denounce BDS, carrying the imperative of political correctness a menacing step further.

*****

Part of the dark charm of House Fire is a tribute to Shamsie’ ‘see it all eyes’ that illuminate the complexities of Islamic jihadism, how it appeals to those ‘out of place’ around the world, wounding and rupturing the flow of life for those burdened and blessed with a hybrid ethnic, religious, and class identity. Shamsie tells us that her narrative inspiration for Home Fire is the Greek play of Antigone where a heartbroken sister defies her uncle, Creon, the king of Thebes, by burying her rebellious brother who died on a field of battle, and thus declared a traitor by Creon; by law he was denied the right of burial and his body left to rot on the battlefield until he was restored to dignity by the defiant Antigone. Sophocles depicted this classic instance of overriding the law of the land by acting in obedience to the transcendent law of the human heart, given concreteness over the centuries by natural law jurisprudence and more recently, by the universal principles of human rights. Shamsie imparts her meaning by choosing a tag line from Sophocles that appears alone on a page preceding the novel: “The ones we love… are enemies of the state.”

Reading Shamsie made me recall my experience 30 years ago when I read Toni Morrison’s Beloved. The novel made me realize, although growing up in the racially self-righteous, self-segregated liberal confines of Manhattan, that until I read Beloved, I had never grasped the existential horrors of post-slavery racism in the United States, especially throughout the South, and more subtly in the rest of the country. Similarly, until I read Home Fire I never thought empathetically about the intimate lives of terrorists and their loved ones, pitting love within a family against what the state decrees as the limit of acceptable conduct and the moral ambiguities arising from the dreadful harm done to innocent others by terrorist violence, whether by the state or its enemies. The perpetrators are also victims, and the victims can become perpetrators propelled by a vicious retaliatory logic that finds words to justify even beheadings; a jihadist in Home Fire says this: “..what you do to ours we will do to yours..” In other words, when we free ourselves from liberal forms of political indoctrination to experience the radical and reactive otherness that produces delicate negotiations between love and law the simple verities of moral truisms evaporate before our eyes. If we nurture our spiritual selves, a formidable challenge, those brave enough would almost always choose the path cleared by the heart rather than mechanically adhering to the cold logic of those who insist on observing the law however unjust. A signal achievement of Home Fire is to weave a credible tale of such nurturing through the selfless passions of Aneeka, a luminous being, compelled by sibling love to respond to her hapless terrorist twin brother, Pervais. The fact that Aneeka is studying in London to become a lawyer, while Pervais is enchanted by digital mysteries of recorded sounds, somehow heightens the tension between law and love, with a romanticized forgetfulness when it comes to prudence in a public domain of discriminatory vigilance in the world after the 9/11 attacks.

Shamsie’ has produced a moral fable for our times. It is given novelistic and societal complexity by the apparent innocence of the twins, Pervais killed by a colleague in the course seeking to come home to Britain because after becoming disillusioned by his exposure to ISIS, and Aneeka herself defying a vindictive British law denying any right of return even to British citizens if officially declared to be terrorist suspects. With deep symbolic resonance, the corpse of Pervais was sent to his ‘ethnic home,’ Pakistan, where Aneeka traveled to perform her own version of a sacred burial ritual. We are told in a sprightly Note of Acknowledgement at the very end of the book, in case it did not earlier cross our minds, that Shamsie’s work was foreshadowed by the exploration of these themes in Sophocles’ most memorable play, Antigone. Even though I studied Greek theater literature as a student some decades ago, I admit that I never on my own drew the connections between Home Fire and Antigone, and when instructed, I found it worth knowing, but quite irrelevant to my intense enjoyment of this extraordinary novel. The idea of loyalty to love by performing a proper burial may retain a certain symbolic relevance in our world, but it is less inscribed in the modern sensibility than it was in ancient times when such ritual matters were regarded as concerns of ultimate significance, although Shamsie brings it to life because the characters and plot are so emotionally enveloping.

I found Shamsie’s electric feel for language, including the radiance of the conversational dialogue and the creation of vivid and sympathetic characters interacting in the course of an ingenious plot that addressed several distinctive themes of this particular historical moment are some of the elements that make this novel so exciting as a de-Orientalizing work of fictive art. By reading Home Fire we learn what is excluded from reading newspapers or listening to politicians. Shamsie has a special talent for conveying the wonderfully non-conformist dimensions of human lives struggling for meaning and love in our chaotic, confused, and violent world. Even the older sensible sister of the twins, Isma, burdened with parenting them from their childhood, gives principled prudence its due, and yet the book opens ironically with Isma’s own interrogation ordeal at Heathrow as she departs Britain to earn a graduate degree at an American university. Her extremely unpleasant exit experience results from nothing more incriminating than her racial and religious identity, and more plausibly, by her being marked for special attention at immigration portals due to their awareness that her abandoning father died an al Qaeda militant en route to Guantanamo.

This novel was for me an experience of adult education at its best as well as an absorbing artistic reading pleasure. What we learn, above all, is that judging and assessing others from their outside appearances and external criteria produces false impressions that often lead to tragic outcomes. We also learn that grief, forgiveness, and empathy are among the most powerful private emotions that contrast favorably with the cruel opportunism of those who hitch their wagon to the conventional wisdom of state power as intrusively enacted in ways that disrupt the lives of gentle people.

Dortmund was quite right to select Home Fire for a literary award, which also informs us deeply about the vulnerability and fragile live of those at the Muslim edge of Western societies, especially if they are unwilling or unable to compromise beliefs and identity. Kamila Shamsie teaches us by her artistry to understand better the worlds we so unknowingly inhabit. We should also pause long enough to notice her way of living, feeling, and acting as if humanity was her true native country.

__________________________________________

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 40 books, and a speaker and activist on world affairs.

21 October 2019

Source: www.transcend.org

By Robert J. Burrowes

Dear fellow signatories of the Nonviolence Charter,

How are you all? And welcome to our most recent signatories and organizations!

This is the latest six-monthly report on progress in relation to ‘The People’s Charter to Create a Nonviolent World’ – with the Spanish translation, kindly done by Antonio Gutiérrez Rodero in Venezuela, here – together with a sample of news about Charter signatories and organizations.

Happily, our collective effort to build a worldwide consensus against the use of violence in all contexts continues to make progress.

Our last report on 30 April 2019 was kindly published by Antonio C.S. Rosa in the TRANSCEND Media Service Weekly Digest and by Karina L. Santillan at the Pressenza International Press Agency. Many thanks to you both!

At the time of today’s report, we have signatories in 105 countries. We also have 118 organizations/networks from 39 countries, with The Asia Institute the most recent endorsing organization. If you wish, you can see the list of organizational endorsements on the Charter website.

If you wish to see individual signatories, click on the ‘View signatures’ item in the sidebar. You can use the search facility if you want to look for a specific name.

The latest progress report article ‘Human Violence: Pervasive, Multi-dimensional and Extinction-threatening’, showcasing the efforts of several Charter signatories, was recently distributed to many progressive news editors: it has been published by a number of outlets in 11 countries so far, thanks to very supportive editors, several of whom are Charter signatories: special thanks to Antonio C.S. Rosa at TRANSCEND, Gifty Ayim-Korankye at Ghana web Online and Karina L. Santillan at Pressenza.

If you feel inclined to do so, you are welcome to help raise awareness of the Nonviolence Charter using whatever means are easiest for you.

And our usual invitation and reminder: You are most welcome to send us a report on your activities for inclusion in the next report. We would love to hear from you!

Anyway, here is another (inadequate) sample of reports of the activities of individuals and organizations who are your fellow Charter signatories:

To begin, our friends Hakim (Dr Teck Young Wee) and the Afghan Peace Volunteers, based in Kabul, continue their challenging work to build a peaceful future in Afghanistan and the world. In their latest distribution, ‘#We Want to Know You Too! Relational Learning Project’, they noted that ‘We human beings are disconnected from one another’s lives, and deaths. Despite our smart phones, the internet and Facebook, we don’t really know one another…. To us, this is a social emergency like the climate emergency. They share the same roots, that we’re disconnected from Nature and one another. So we wanted to do something together!… the Afghan Peace Volunteers have organized the Relational Learning Project and we need your help. We hope that as millions arise to care for our planet, we can also arise to care for one another. So join us!’ And, in the immediate instance, that means to check out the website immediately above and complete their survey. You are inspirational, as always, APVs! And if you want to listen to a song about the APVs, written by Anita McKone, you can do so here: ‘Nonviolence They Choose For Afghanistan’.

Kathy Kelly, a frequent international guest of the APVs, talks about her experience in Afghanistan and other war zones with World Beyond War Director, David Swanson. You can hear David’s recent interview of Kathy, and access all of his other weekly interviews, on ‘Talk Nation Radio’ here: ‘Kathy Kelly on Peace, Afghanistan, Yemen, Ireland, and the United States’. Subsequently and pondering a fall that led to Kathy breaking a hip, she also reflected comparatively on her plight and those in Afghanistan. See ‘The Wounds of War in Afghanistan’.

And if you would like to read a terrific book by Australian Mark Isaacs about ‘The Kabul Peace House: How a Group of Young Afghans are Daring to Dream in a Land of War’, which is (highly favourably) reviewed here – ‘The Struggle for Peace in Afghanistan: Is Community Engagement the Key?’ – you will be well rewarded with an inspiring story by a remarkable group of young people and their mentor.

Iona Conner can make a claim that few can match: ‘She has been active in the environmental movement for more than 50 years.’ Iona lives in the USA and, in one of her more recent initiatives, started The Go-Back Club in 2013 to educate readers about the climate crisis and encourage Americans to minimize their use of fossil fuels and preserve natural resources. The Go-Back Club is a simple-living/action brigade and, among other things, Iona is editor of its ‘Groundswell News’. But if you would like to read more about her long-standing commitment and efforts, you will get a taste from Iona’s CV. Sadly, too, Iona reports, ‘the world [has] lost a champion for justice’. John Bruce Conner ‘My amazing husband, who worked tirelessly for social, economic, and environmental justice, died in my arms August 18’. John spent his life working in various ways to benefit humanity and the environment. We share the sadness of your loss Iona. There are too few people like John in this world.

Emeritus Professor David Hardiman was born in Rawalpindi in Pakistan but grew up in the UK. As a historian, he specializes in the history of Modern India. He has taught at the University of Leicester, the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, the University of Oxford, and from 1996 to 2013, the University of Warwick. He worked as a Research fellow at the Centre for Social Studies, Surat, India during the 1980s, and has held visiting fellowships at the Australian National University, the Institute of Commonwealth Studies in London, Princeton University and the University of Manchester. He is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. If you would like to know more about David, you can read about his research and publications here. His latest book is The Nonviolent Struggle for Indian Freedom, 1905-19 which is reviewed here: ‘Non-violent movements that preceded Gandhi’.

As you might guess, Ela Gandhi is the granddaughter of a famous peacemaker but is also a great leader herself. Ela was under house arrest for a decade while resisting apartheid in South Africa, worked on the transitional task force with Nelson Mandela following the liberation of South Africa from apartheid, and she served for a decade in the South African parliament. Long committed to resisting injustice, she is also committed to doing it through nonviolence. Like others, she is horrified by the atrocities of war and is concerned about the plight of the poor and the deprived of our world. ‘In my own life, I have found that peace does not only mean protesting and resisting injustice, but also living our everyday lives doing big and small things to bring greater harmony to the world. Helping sick and injured children, protecting the voiceless animals, preserving the plants and trees that are being eliminated by development, and contributing in little ways to save the world by conserving, reusing, recycling, and reducing both what we need and what we discard, in the hope that the already distended Mother Earth will absorb it. We need to appreciate the richness of our diverse heritage and begin to see the value of global citizenship, so that peace and social and political justice may prevail in the world…. We all have power and when we get together, we have more power.’

Activist journalist Abby Martin recently completed her debut feature film ‘Gaza Fights for Freedom’. Directed, written and narrated by Abby, the film had its origins while Abby was reporting in Palestine, where she was denied entry into Gaza by the Israeli government on the accusation she was a ‘propagandist’. Connecting with a team of journalists in Gaza to produce the film through the blockaded border, this collaboration shows you Gaza’s protest movement like you’ve never seen it before. Filmed during the height of the Great March Of Return protests, it features riveting footage of demonstrations and is a thorough indictment of the Israeli military for war crimes, and a stunning cinematic portrayal of the heroic resistance by Palestinians.

The film is currently being shown in a series of venues in the United States and Canada with Abby presenting the film in each location. If you would like to see the locations and dates for these film showings, you can do so here: ‘Nationwide Tour: New Film “Gaza Fights for Freedom” with Abby Martin!’

Better still, particularly for those not in Canada or the United States, you can watch a preview here: ‘Gaza Fights for Freedom preview’. And if you would like to buy or rent the film (and support Abby’s work in that way) you can do so here: ‘Gaza Fights for Freedom’. Fine work Abby in support of our Palestinian friends.

Continuing his lifetime commitment to expose hidden truths to the light of day, Professor Noam Chomsky was recently interviewed about the ongoing US threats against Iran. For his insightful commentary on the forces driving US actions in relation to Iran, this interview is quite compelling: ‘We Must Stop War with Iran Before It’s Too Late’. And in another interview, effectively asking him a series of questions to update his thoughts on the ‘manufacture of consent’ first systematically documented in his book with Edward Herman 30 years ago, Noam was clear in his reaffirmation that the corporate media, now including Google, Facebook and Twitter, is ‘Still Manufacturing Consent: An Interview With Noam Chomsky’. ‘I don’t think the internet and social media changes the propaganda model at all. The propaganda model was about the major media institutions and they remain, with all the social media and everything else, the primary source of news, information and commentary. The news that appears in social media is drawn from them. So, if you look at the news on Facebook, it comes straight from the major media. They don’t do their own investigations.’ Once again, in deep appreciation of your truth-telling, Noam.

Of course, in relation to Iran, Noam was not the only person concerned about US provocations of that country.

Professor Chandra Muzaffar, President of JUST International based in Malaysia, also wrote an insightful commentary. See ‘Iran: Neither Military Action nor Economic Sanctions’.

Based on her extensive experience of the impact of sanctions on the people of Iraq between 1991 and 2003, Kathy Kelly, co-convenor of Voices for Creative Nonviolence offers an evocative case for ‘An Honorable Course in Iran: End Sanctions, Resume Dialogue’.

And Professor René Wadlow, President of the Association of World Citizens headquartered in France, reflects thoughtfully on the ‘Iran Crisis: Dangers and Opportunities’ by drawing attention to opportunities for citizen engagement through NGOs to influence how the conflict plays out. ‘The dangers are real. We must make the most of the opportunities.’

René also continues to examine issues and throw light on subjects well outside the spotlight of the corporate media, such as conflicts in Africa. See, for example, his article ‘Sahel Instability Spreads’. And for an insightful look at an opportunity to deal creatively with the conflict in Yemen, this article is well worth reading: ‘Signs of Hope for Persian Gulf Conflicts: Serious Negotiations Needed’.

Of course, Iran has not been the only flashpoint threatening to explode. Venezuela continues to be a point of contention with ongoing US threats to the country’s democratically elected government. Canadian scholar Yves Engler is one of those who has been active in efforts to prevent a US-led military intervention in Venezuela. In this thoughtful article, ‘Canada Hires Hitman to Overthrow Venezuelan Government’, Yves explains that ‘Canadian taxpayers are paying a hardline pro-corporate, pro-Washington, former diplomat hundreds of thousands of dollars to coordinate the Liberal government’s bid to oust Venezuela’s government.’

Ella Polyakova and her colleagues at the Soldiers’ Mothers of Saint-Petersburg in Russia continue their fine work to defend the rights of servicemen and conscripts by making sure that individuals are equipped with knowledge of their rights, the law and all relevant circumstances to be able to take responsibility for defending themselves from abuse. ‘We clearly understood what a soldier in the Russian army was – a mere cog in the state machine, yet with an assault rifle. We felt how important hope, self-confidence and trust were for every person. At the beginning of our journey, we saw that people around us, as a rule, did not even know what it meant to feel free. It was obvious for us that the path towards freedom and the attainment of dignity was going through enlightenment. Therefore, our organization’s mission is to enlighten people around us. Social work is all about showing, explaining, proving things to people, it is about convincing them.’

Christophe Nyambatsi Mutaka is Director of the Martin Luther King Group in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Christophe recently distributed a news release in celebration of the International Day of Nonviolence and 150th anniversary of the birth of Mohandas K. Gandhi. The Martin Luther King Group, which is based in Goma, North Kivu province in the east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, is an association of Congolese people committed to active nonviolence, human rights, peace and reconciliation and remains convinced that active nonviolence is the only way that can lead humanity to lasting peace.

Noting that humanity is ‘immersed in a culture of violence’ and that many people have ‘positioned themselves in our communities through violence’ he points out that ‘young people miss models!’ Everywhere the talk is about assassinations, rapes, torture, recruitment of child soldiers, trafficking in human beings, embezzlement of public funds, non-payment of wages, poverty, kidnapping…. Indeed, it is violence that is in the news! Faced with the failure of violence around the world to achieve worthwhile goals, especially in Syria, Palestine, Israel, the United States, Ukraine, Democratic Republic of Congo, Iraq, Mali, CAR, Nigeria… ‘we strongly believe in active nonviolence’ and ask for the following:

• That active nonviolence – that is, respect for human dignity and creation – be taught from kindergarten to university;
• That all those who massacre in the province of North Kivu in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo and all over the world stop doing this dirty work;
• That nations work to make law and justice work in order to contribute to building lasting peace through active nonviolence;
• That people do what they say and get out of their hypocritical rhetoric that poisons new generations; and
• That each and every one of us strives to achieve consistency between thoughts and feelings and our behaviour, thus modeling a coherent life and escaping the contradiction that generates the violence.

Jill Gough and our other friends at CND Cymru (Wales) continue their campaign with like-minded souls both in Wales and around the world ‘to rid Britain and the world of all weapons of mass destruction’. They also campaign for peace and justice for humanity and the environment, and against the arms trade. In the latest edition of their magazine ‘Heddwch’ (Welsh for ‘Peace’), the usual range of issues is discussed but you can access past issues from this link: ‘Heddwch Magazine’.

Professor Ammar Banni in Algeria is a retired professor of education, an author and researcher in pedagogical innovation and international development. He is also a member of the International Diplomatic Commission of the International Association of Educators for World Peace (IAEWP) – Africa. Ammar reports that since February 2019 and even following their successful removal from office of 20-year President Abdelaziz Bouteflika in April, Algerians continue to gather weekly in Algiers and other major cities to call for the removal of the country’s ruling elite and the establishment of a ‘free and democratic Algeria’. Angry at the corruption of the elderly elite unresponsive to the needs of ordinary people, activists have been protesting weekly in an attempt to force removal of all remnants of a secretive political and military establishment that has dominated the country for decades.

The problem, Ammar reports, is not so much the Algerian constitution. The problem lies in the institutions responsible for the application of it. The constitutional texts are manipulated and interpreted in accordance with the interests of the elite that governs.

Professor Richard Jackson reports that The National Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Otago in New Zealand continues to work for peace in the academic arena. It teaches around 50 Masters and PhD students drawn from more than 20 countries, and its staff continue to do research and publish in the areas of conflict analysis, conflict resolution, pacifism, nonviolence and peacebuilding. Following the terrorist attack in March in Christchurch, the Centre responded with a public statement, extensive media engagement, a submission to the Commission on the attacks, a research project into and a variety of other local initiatives aimed at the promotion of anti-racism and strengthening multiculturalism. Recently, a group of students and staff traveled to the island of Rekohu to spend time with members of the Hokotehi Moriori Trust and develop a stronger relationship with them. The Hokotehi Trust represents the interests of the Moriori people, a group who maintain one of the oldest peace traditions in the world. In November 25-27, 2019, the Centre will be holding a special conference entitled ‘Peace in Aotearoa New Zealand: Past, present, future’ to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the Centre’s founding.

As a result of a conference on revolutionary nonviolence held in 2017, a forthcoming book Revolutionary Nonviolence: Concepts, Cases and Controversies, of which Richard is one of the authors and editors, is nearing publication. The next report will include a link to the book, which one reviewer endorsed with these words: ‘In this era of “endless” violence and interrelated political marginalization, economic inequality, social dislocation and ecological (including climate) breakdown, this book explains why revolutionary nonviolence is the most fruitful path for generating the grassroots, community-led structural change needed to transcend this complex and multi-faceted crisis. An insightful and compelling read.’

Ramesh Agrawal is a prominent social and environmental activist in India who has devoted many years to educating and organizing local village people, including adivasi communities, to defend their homes and lands from those corporations and governments that would deprive them of their rights, livelihoods, health and a clean environment for the sake of mining the abundant coal in the state of Chhattisgarh. However, because his ongoing efforts to access and share key information and his organization of Gandhian-inspired grassroots satyagrahas (nonviolent campaigns) have been so effective, he has also paid a high price for his activism, having been attacked on many occasions. In 2011, for example, he was arrested despite ill-health at the time and chained to a hospital bed. A year later he was shot in the leg, which required multiple operations. He still has difficulty walking with six metal rods inserted through his thigh.

The Jan Chetna (‘people’ awareness’) movement started by Ramesh has spread to several parts of Chhattisgarh as well as other states of India. For the latest account of his efforts including the recent ‘coal satyagrapha’ focused on coal blocks owned by state power companies but being developed and operated by Adani Enterprises, see ‘Thousands Hold “Coal Satyagraha”, Allege Manufacturing of Consent at Public Hearing’. For his nonviolent activism, Ramesh was awarded the Goldman Environmental Prize in 2014. See ‘Ramesh Agrawal: 2014 Goldman Prize Recipient Asia’ and ‘Chhattisgarh activist, Ramesh Agrawal, bags Goldman prize’.

Pakistani Canadian scholar Dr Mahboob A. Khawaja continues to cast his penetrating eye on world affairs. In this article, he exposes the superficiality of ‘world leaders’: ‘Global Peace and Security: World Leaders Betray the Canons of Truth, Wisdom and Humanity’.

Meanwhile, Mahboob’s son, Mohammad Momin Khawaja, unjustly imprisoned by a corrupt Canadian legal system, has outlined the circumstances of his predicament caught up in the hysteria of the war on terror. See ‘Canada’s War on Terrorism and Momin Khawaja’s Fight for Freedom’.

Since 2017 Dr Marthie Momberg in South Africa has been working with international colleagues to address Zionism amongst Christians. Dr. Mark Braverman (Executive Director, Kairos USA) and Marthie offered, for example, a seminar entitled ‘Christianity and the Shifting of Perceptions on Zionism’ at Stellenbosch University’s Beyers Naudé Centre. ‘With some other colleagues we are also in the midst of a research project at this Centre to understand how to sensitise Christians on the nature of Zionism and how it serves as an important lens on so many other struggles in our world. I am also in the process of writing a number of scholarly articles on ethics and religion in the context of Israel and the Palestinian struggle. Some of these are still in the process of being peer reviewed.’ One recently published article (in Marthie’s home language, Afrikaans), however, is titled ‘Israeliese en Suid-Afrikaanse burgers se redes vir toetrede tot die Palestynse stryd’.

Dr Marty Branagan at the University of New England in Australia reports as follows: ‘Peace Studies at UNE is hanging in despite constant threats by a more corporatized and under-resourced university sector. We have a large number of international PhD students from places like Rwanda, Kenya, Nigeria, Nepal, India and Bangladesh. We are holding a conference at our Parramatta Campus in Sydney on the theme Rethinking Peace, Conflict and Governance to reflect on peacebuilding issues in the 21st century’, from 12–14 February 2020.

And in an evocative reflection on the state of the world, Marty gave the keynote presentation at the 34th NSW Environmental Education Conference on 4 October, on the topic ‘Protest and Survive’.

Lily Thapa continues her key role as the inspirational founder and leader of Women for Human Rights, Single Women Group (WHR) in Nepal. With a mission to achieve ‘Empowered single women living dignified lives with a sustainable livelihood, social acceptance, recognized nationally and globally’ WHR has an enviable record of achievement, recognized by the long list of awards the network has won since its foundation, in its remarkable work to empower widowed women throughout Nepal, South Asia and around the world. If you would like to read a simple 8-line poem, that poignantly evokes what it means to be a widow in this social context, try ‘Broken Bangles, shattered dreams’. As always Lily, in sincere appreciation of your vision and commitment.

Vijay Mehta, Cofounder of Uniting for Peace in the UK was invited to speak at a seminar jointly hosted by the Nuclear Free Local Authority (NFLA) and Mayors for Peace at the Manchester Central Library. The title of the conference was ‘The Humanitarian Impacts, Costs and Dangers of Nuclear Weapons in the Wider Campaign for a more Peaceful World’ and Vijay spoke about this recently published book How not to go to War: Establishing Departments for Peace and Peace Centres Worldwide. You can see more about the conference on the UfP website.

Environmental journalist and freelance writer Robert Hunziker continues his tireless efforts to raise awareness of the full dimensions of our environmental crisis and, in this radio interview on 1 October, responds to questions about the ongoing climate and Fukushima disasters and the negative role of the corporate media from Professor Guy McPherson and Kevin Hester on the program ‘Nature Bats Last’ or at this audio link. Little of critical importance climatically or environmentally escapes Robert’s scrutiny. For his most recent article, which discusses the recently discovered methane leaks from the East Siberian Arctic Shelf, see ‘Methane SOS’. Is this a big deal? According to Robert the East Siberian Arctic Shelf is ‘jammed full of methane buried at sea beneath underwater permafrost. But, it’s starting to leak big time, and this could be one of the biggest problems of all time for civilization, with staggering consequences.’ Unfortunately, if you think that is bad, read the rest of the article. And weep for humanity.

Ina Curic in Romania is ‘both a Dragon Tamer and a Fire Spitting Dragon myself, knowing there is magic for hurt people that hurt others and the planet.’ Following extensive education-related work in the past twenty years, mainstreaming cross-cutting issues in development, facilitating training and group processes with teenagers and adults in different peacebuilding and post war contexts, Ina now focuses on writing her illustrated children’s books which teach vital lessons for life that you will not find in any mainstream education setting. Why? Ina answers:

‘I want to live in a world where:

• every child is told stories about war in past tense;
•  every teenager realizes that slaying enemies is an inside job;
•  and every adult leaves behind fighting – both in flesh and metaphor – to step into emotional maturity and recognition of everyone’s full humanity.’

You can read more about Ina on her website Imagine Creatively or on her formal CV.

In a reflection on the 150th birth anniversary of Mohandas K. Gandhi on 2 October, Professor Ram Puniyani discusses those, such as Hindu nationalists like the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) in India, who deliberately misrepresent Gandhi in support of their own communally divisive ends. For a thoughtful commentary on communalism in India today, see ‘Gandhi Anniversary: An Occasion to Gain legitimacy for Some’.

Palestinian, Professor Mazin Qumsiyeh, and his wife Jessie, will be visiting Australasia on a speaking tour for about three weeks in May-June 2020. Mazin teaches and undertakes research at Bethlehem and Birzeit Universities, Palestine. He has previously served on the faculties of Duke and Yale Universities, and the University of Tennessee, USA. He and his wife returned to Palestine in 2008, where they established a number of institutions and projects, including a clinical genetics laboratory that benefits cancer patients and others. They founded, and run as full-time volunteers, the Palestine Institute for Biodiversity and Sustainability (PIBS) at Bethlehem University.

Mazin has published over 140 scientific papers and several books on topics ranging from cultural heritage to biodiversity to cancer and the Palestinian struggle for liberation. Information about these and other documents can be accessed at his website. Mazin is an accomplished speaker and has given hundreds of talks in 45 countries around the world, on an expenses-only basis. As an activist, he has been harassed and arrested for his nonviolent actions, but has also received a number of prestigious awards for these same actions.

If any signatory in Australia or New Zealand would like to help organize Mazin and Jessie’s tour or host an event as part of it, your support will be sincerely appreciated. Please contact “Chris Faisandier” <cjfaisandier@hotmail.com> or Mazin himself: “Prof. Mazin Qumsiyeh” <mazin@qumsiyeh.org>

In Guatemala, Daniel Dalai continues his visionary role providing opportunities for girls to develop their leadership capacities at Earthgardens. If you haven’t previously been aware of their work, including in Bolivia and Nicaragua, you will find it fascinating to read how girls – including Carmen, Angelica, Reyna, Katiela, Yapanepet, Zenobia, Deysi, Rosalba, Charro, Katarina, Marleni – in this community changed their society.

The Asia Institute is the most recent organization to endorse the Nonviolence Charter. ‘The Asia Institute is the first truly pan-Asian think tank. A research institution that addresses global issues with a focus on Asia, the Asia Institute is committed to presenting a balanced perspective that takes into account the concerns of the entire region. The Asia Institute provides an objective space wherein a significant discussion on current trends in technology, international relations, the economy and the environment can be carried out.’ Focused on research, analysis and dialogue, and headed by president Emanuel Yi Pastreich, the Institute was originally founded in 2007 while Emanuel was working in Daejeon, South Korea. Emanuel writes extensively on culture, technology, the environment and international relations with a focus on Northeast Asia. He also serves as president of the Earth Management Institute, a global think tank dedicated to developing original approaches to global governance in this dangerous age. But for more on this remarkable organization, see the website above.

Annette Brownlie and The Independent and Peace Australia Network recognize that ‘a truly peaceful and independent Australia cannot be achieved without resolving the past cruel and unjust takeover of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander lands, and works to address these injustices, which began under British Law, and have continued under Australian Governments, since Federation’ in 1900). You can read more on this page of their website: ‘First People’.

Sami Awad and the The Holy Land Trust in Palestine build communities of resilience through grassroots movements of nonviolent resistance. Why is the Holy Land Trust unique? ‘We seek to practice and live a life motivated by unconditional love and not fear. We believe in the possibility of truth and goodness between all people and their ability to relate to each other with empathy and compassion.

‘We do not promote any political agenda. The land should not be divided and separated, and the peoples of the land must not be segregated from each other out of fear and racism.

‘While we realize that there has to be a political framework for justice to be materialized, we engage in understanding the core and deeper issues that prevent a real and just peace from being realized. While many want to build the house, we want to help in building the foundation.’

Dr Gary G. Kohls continues his investigations and writing on various topics of importance. A recent article drew particular attention to Donald Trump’s authoritarian friends: ‘Authoritarian Donald J. Trump, Bibi Netanyahu and a few of his other “Favorite Dictators/Authoritarians”‘.

Marianne Perez de Fransius maintains that peace is sexy, possible, profitable and fun. Based on her extensive experience and research, she teaches just this in a variety of fora. She aims to make ‘Peace is Sexy’ a ‘successful mainstream media production company, producing innovative, engaging and entertaining content for web, TV, film, whatever new medium emerges, and portrays values of peace, collaboration, community, communication, compassion.’ You can check out Marianne’s work at Peace is Sexy.

Steve Varatharajan, Vice President of the International Association of Educators for World Peace (IAEWP) was the driving force behind organization of the ‘Walk For World Peace 2019’ in Malaysia on 21 September. Engaging a number of community organizations including youth clubs and scouting groups, and producing simple video lessons on dealing creatively with conflict – see, for example, ‘Promo Video’ – you can read more about this event on the ‘Walk for World Peace’ website.

Bob Cable wrote an evocative reflection to commemorate the nuclear attack on Hiroshima. You can read his poetry here: ‘August 6, 1945 – For our children’.

Dr Sohan Lal Gandhi, the international president of Anuvrat Global Organization (ANUVIBHA) based in Jaipur, India, extends a warm invitation for signatories to attend the International Conference on Nonviolence Education and Training to be held in New Delhi from 17-20 Dec 2019. Why this conference?

‘The world today is mired in violence, hatred, fanaticism and religious intolerance. Moral and spiritual values have reached their nadir in all sections of society globally. What is most alarming and worrying is that many children and youth are being systematically indoctrinated to commit heinous crimes in the name of religion. You will agree that the children and youth of today are being deliberately exposed to a culture of violence and hatred and no attempt is being made to reverse this trend by educating and training them in a culture of ahimsa (nonviolence).’

If you would like further information or to book attendance, please contact “Dr S.L. Gandhi” <slgandhi@hotmail.com>

Tess Burrows in the UK has a mission ‘to focus on the potential for peace and environmental harmony on our planet, by carrying out climbs or treks, each one a pilgrimage to watch for the Earth; bringing together heart messages from thousands of individuals, making a difference both at an individual and a collective level.’ Despite having completed 15 ‘peace climbs’ since 1998 – see ‘Peace Climbs’ – including two this year, and raising vast amounts of money for many charities in the process, Tess notes that ‘my claim to fame is as the first and only grandmother to race to the South Pole!’ Tess is now in her 70s but, as you will no doubt agree, she is an awfully fit ‘peace adventurer’!

Jim Prues works in video production and earlier this year put together a video for World Beyond War: ‘Say No To NATO’. But Jim also reports a ‘new effort to help with our awakening’ called ‘First Monday’, the idea being that like-minded citizens get together on the first Monday of the month to ‘Fix Stuff in Cincinnati’ or, more accurately, to enable our new operating system: ‘World 5.0: Healing Our Life Together’.

If you would like to watch Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese report their experience as part of the (Venezuelan) Embassy Protection Collective in the USA, including while it was under threat from people supportive of the coup attempt in Venezuela, you can see an excellent interview here: ‘Despite Arrest, Embassy Protectors Say They Aren’t Backing Down’.

While still awaiting trial for their illegal eviction from the embassy by US authorities, Kevin and Margaret organized the People’s Mobilization to Stop The US War Machine – the People’s MOBE – which took place from 20-23 September while the United Nations General Assembly was meeting in New York.

Daniel Jakopovich – ‘a sociologist, philosopher, poet, and a campaigner for peace, human and animal liberation’ – who was formerly with the Stop the War Coalition and is now the Peace and Disarmament Programme Manager for the Quakers in Britain, has recently completed and had published a book titled Revolutionary Peacemaking: Writings for a Culture of Peace and Nonviolence. The book is a collection of interdisciplinary political and philosophical writings ‘which explore some of the key issues of peace research, including the character and roots of various major forms of structural and cultural violence in contemporary capitalist society… and political strategies for deep, transformative progressive change.’ The book also contains several pieces of Daniel’s peace poetry and contributes to formulating ‘the philosophical and strategic foundations of revolutionary peacemaking… to advance the ennoblement of human beings and the creation of a truly democratic, humane and peaceful society which would foster compassion and nonviolence towards all sentient beings.’ With some fine endorsements, the book represents years of consideration and commitment by Daniel.

Charles Johnson is a peace activist and adult educator in Chicago, U.S.A. A few years ago, he learned of a practice called Unarmed Civilian Protection (UCP), which brings protection and reconciliation to deadly conflicts. In 2017, Charles took a U.N. course on UCP. This led him to interact with a UCP provider named Nonviolent Peaceforce. He then joined others to form a Chicago chapter of Nonviolent Peaceforce in 2018.

Like dozens of UCP groups worldwide, Nonviolent Peaceforce’s work is nonviolent, nonpartisan, nonprofit, and led by local civilians. The peace it brings is empowering rather than belittling, sustainable rather than fleeting, and constructive rather than destructive. Nonviolent Peaceforce’s goal is to increase the use of unarmed methods and to raise awareness of their efficacy, so that armed forms of protection are questioned, and eventually discarded.

Kathie Malley-Morrison is professor of psychology at Boston University in the USA. Kathie specializes in ‘peace studies and in life-span human development’ and maintains her own website ‘Engaging Peace’. Like others in this report, Kathie is concerned about the renewed threat of nuclear war so is playing her part in exposing the risks and what we can do about it. See the brief article ‘Dr. Strangelove redux – still loving the bomb and scarier than ever!’ and the short video it features, that ‘packs a wallop’.

We are happy to report that Joám Evans Pim, director of the Center for Global Nonkilling, was successful in his defense of his PhD at Åbo Akademi University in Finland. The CGNK continues its work ‘to promote change toward the measurable goal of a killing-free world by means open to infinite human creativity’. You can read about their remarkable range of programs at their website. Congratulations Joám!

Professor Marc Pilisuk has had a lifetime preoccupation: ‘the role of ordinary people facing an unjust, often uncaring, global technological society.’ Professor Emeritus at Saybrook University, Marc has long worked to expose the truths hidden within and by violence. With a long academic career behind him, which involved teaching a great many subjects and having six books and 120 academic articles published (on topics such as community mental health, conflict resolution, military-industrial power, social action, globalization, torture, poverty and perceptions of a contaminated world), he is a clinical and social psychologist. Notably, in his jointly-authored book The Hidden Structure of Violence: Who Benefits from Global Violence and War he ‘marshals vast amounts of evidence to examine the costs of direct violence, including military preparedness and the social reverberations of war, alongside the costs of structural violence, expressed as poverty and chronic illness. It also documents the relatively small number of people and corporations responsible for facilitating the violent status quo, whether by setting the range of permissible discussion or benefiting directly as financiers and manufacturers. The result is a stunning indictment of our violent world and a powerful critique of the ways through which violence is reproduced on a daily basis, whether at the highest levels of the state or in the deepest recesses of the mind.’ You can read more about the book here: The Hidden Structure of Violence. In sincere appreciation of a lifetime of effort Marc.

David Polden in the UK continues to publish his highly informative ‘Non-Violent Resistance Newsletter’ reporting news on campaigns of nonviolent resistance in the UK and elsewhere, notably Europe and Palestine. The latest newsletter included updates on Ende Gelände’s anti-coal campaign in Germany, including their effort to mobilize 6,000 activists in June to block parts of Germany’s giant opencast coalmine at Garzweiler in the Rhineland. It also included an update on the actions, arrests and court processes by members of the climate organization Extinction Rebellion in the UK and several reports on anti-military and antinuclear nonviolent actions as well. If you would like to receive this valuable Newsletter, you can do so by contacting David at <davidtrpolden@gmail.com> and he will add you to his email list.

Under the leadership of Leon Simweragi of the AJVDC Youth Peace group & Green Brigade in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the AJVDC aims for ‘the meaningful participation and sustainable involvement of young people in shared [decision-making] in matters which affect their lives and those of their community, including planning, decision-making and program delivery.’ To achieve this, the AJVDC engages in advocacy to promote youth engagement and protection of the environment, training to enhance innovative capacity and management by youth, networking to connect young entrepreneurs, mentoring to enhance capacity and volunteering for humanitarian and environmental actions. In essence, their work focuses on empowering disadvantaged groups – former child soldiers and women farmers – through environmental education and reforestation projects, hoping to plant one million trees in the Lake Kivu Basin in an effort to restore degraded lands adversely impacted by war, other conflicts and climate change. By doing this, the project will reduce poverty and fight climate change. You can see more of their wonderful work on their website: Association de Jeunes Visionnaires pour le Développement du Congo.

‘Environmentalists Against War’ is a network of environmental organizations and individuals that opposed the US attack on Iraq. ‘We continue to oppose the social and environmental impacts of war and militarism, in the US and internationally.’ You can check out the fine efforts of Gar Smith and his fellow activists on their website at Environmentalists Against War.

At the recently held World Beyond War conference in Ireland, Nobel Peace Laureate Mairead Maguire made a presentation titled ‘Pathways to Peace: Mairead Maguire’s remarks at #NoWar2019’. You can read a report on this international gathering here: ‘Report on NoWar2019 Pathways to Peace Conference, Limerick, Ireland’.

Bruce Gagnon, Dave Webb and other members of the Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space continue their efforts to prevent the militarization of Space. In this excellent one hour audio interview of Bruce, you can hear him critiquing current US moves on this issue: ‘STAR WARS Revisited: Trump’s Plans to Make Space the Ultimate Battleground: conversations with Tamara Lorincz and Bruce Gagnon’. If you like, you can also see a list of Bruce’s own broadcast interviews at Bruce Gagnon TV.

Joan McTeigue is another person focused on local, sustainable ways of living. ‘My goal is to help people who are on very low incomes (many here in Midland including myself and also many very rich who like to come up here to enjoy the beautiful Georgian Bay area). As a result, housing costs here have tripled in the past 10 years, starving out many. Many seniors have barely enough for food and have become prisoners in their homes because of poverty. It’s sad.

‘Therefore, I am trying to compile a strategy for food that is doable for these people (and anyone else interested). Most organic food is beyond reach of the many. However, there is always a way if we are determined enough and have that fire! Therefore, I am thinking in terms of a step by step, community strategy.’ So Joan seeks out simple recipes from people to share. ‘You see, I have many books, etc. but there is nothing quite like receiving a recipe from a person. In this manner, one recipe at a time, I hope to slowly compile a whole week’s worth. Then a month’s worth. Then, a shopping list and perhaps a get together…. In this manner, we are building community awareness through something basic and non-threatening – food. Plus, each person will surely have at least one favorite recipe. We can build on that.

‘You see, I did not feel right about starting the community groups on a political or environmental focus. So I have been looking for another way to bring small groups of people together. At this point, we need to try anything we can think of because the global situation really is dire!’ Good on you Joan!

In this illuminating interview on a subject that gets far less attention than it needs, Pat Elder talks about ‘Military Bases Poisoning Ground Water’. Pat is also the author of Military Recruiting in the United States, and the Director of the National Coalition to Protect Student Privacy (from where you can download Pat’s book) which works to counter the alarming militarization of United States’ high schools.

On another subject of critical importance that also gets far less attention that it deserves, Professor Peter Phillips has given us a wonderful explanation of how the world works in his book Giants: The Global Power Elite. And in this highly informative 23 minute interview by Abby Martin, Peter is asked about the essence of his book: ‘Abby Martin sits down with Peter Phillips’.

In this circumstance, reflecting on services to those with disabilities, John McKenna again offers an insightful look at this subject by interviewing two people heavily involved. Among other topics, the interview explored improving disability inclusion in the volunteering community sector and broader topics about the pros and cons for services and people with disabilities when considering volunteering. You can access this thoughtful interview from John’s website: ‘Inclusive Meaningful Volunteering, goes beyond stuffing envelopes’.

‘The Nuclear Resister’ coordinators Felice and Jack Cohen-Joppa worked with the Tucson, Arizona chapter of Physicians for Social Responsibility to introduce a resolution in support of the Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons to the Tucson City Council. It was unanimously approved by the Mayor and Council on 6 August, the 74th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki!

In October, Felice and Jack will be attending the trial of the Kings Bay Plowshares at the federal courthouse in Brunswick, Georgia. If convicted of all four charges – conspiracy, destruction of property, depredation of government property and trespass – the seven nuclear disarmament activists (of whom two – Elizabeth McAlister and Martha Hennessy – are Charter signatories) face up to 25 years in prison for their April 2018 action at the Kings Bay Trident nuclear submarine base.

Also in October, there will be a screening in Tucson of ‘The Nuns, The Priests and The Bombs’ to celebrate the 39th anniversary of the ‘Nuclear Resister’. The documentary film covers the actions of the Disarm Now Plowshares (2009) at the Bangor Trident nuclear submarine base and Transform Now Plowshares (2012) at the Y-12 nuclear weapons complex. There are also plans in the works for an international nuclear abolition gathering in Tennessee on 22-25 May 2020, including a demonstration at Y-12. It will be hosted by the Oak Ridge Environmental Peace Alliance and mark the 40th anniversaries of the ‘Nuclear Resister’, Nukewatch and the Plowshares movement.

Jonathan Power in Sweden continues his 40-plus years career as an international foreign affairs journalist and author. In yet another of his revealing brief biographies, Jonathan Power exposes another prominent national leader to scrutiny: ‘Who is president Xi of China?’

But for access to all of Jonathan’s research, writing and films, check out his website. And, on a more personal note, as we have flagged previously, you might be wise to angle for an invitation to Jonathan’s Christmas Eve party in Sweden this year. Offering coffee and home-made mince pies which he makes personally at 6am, based on an 800 year-old recipe, it is one of the most sought-after social engagements on the European calendar!

Pía Figueroa in Chile reports on ‘Pressenza’, the international news agency, which continues to develop and promote a journalism focused on peace and nonviolence, ‘to a world in which all human beings have a place and their rights are fully respected, in a framework of disarmed and demilitarized societies, capable of re-establishing the ecological balance through governments of real and participatory democracy.’

Since her last report, Pía has organized and, together with many grassroots and social organizations, participated in the Latinamerican Humanist Forum in Santiago, Chile, in an ongoing effort to ‘build convergences’ among more than twenty networks of nonviolence.

In June, Pía went to New York City where she presented ‘Pressenza’s’ documentary ‘The Beginning of the End of Nuclear Weapons’, a film that is being screened in several cities and is available for projection and further discussions in order to create consciousness of the urgent need for disarmament.

Currently ‘Pressenza’ is preparing new documentaries, television and radio programs, as well as maintaining its usual coverage given to all kinds of nonviolent actions and news around the world.

In Ghana, the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF), organized a two weeks training course on negotiation and mediation as a tool for conflict resolution for women in the Upper West region, particularly three districts: Lawra, Nadowli and Lambussie. The training was aimed at providing local NGOs, community elders, administrators and others with the skills and knowledge to further improve their capacity in the work they do. It is very important to deal with trust, identity and relationship building issues, handle passive and/or active resistance towards the mediator and develop a strategy on how to effectively manage the process of resolving conflicts. The key resource persons were professional mediators, including the President of WILPF Ghana and Charter signatory, Dr. Ayo Ayoola-Amale, a certified mediator and peacebuilder. Ayo stressed the importance of understanding parties’ interests and group dynamics in choosing the right interventions at the right time. She quoted Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. ‘Life and history give eloquent testimony to the fact that conflicts are never resolved without trustful give and take on both sides.’

WILPF Ghana was also happy for Ayo to continue her peace and active nonviolence education projects in rural Ghana such as the project at Okyereko Methodist Junior High School. It was a three day workshop on peacemaking and mediation skills for the teachers. The Peace Education Project of WILPF Ghana is derived from a strong belief in promoting peaceful behavior through the learning and practice of peace-related skills so it aims to teach peace building skills, the acquisition of positive values and attitudes, and understanding, while teaching mediation and negotiation techniques for conflict resolution in a simplified form for students and their teachers.

The method used to achieve this was through our skills acquisition program which includes skills such as communication (listening, speaking, silence), cooperation, trusting, empathy, responsibility, reconciliation and problem solving.

Ayo also used her story telling skills to convey an understanding of what it means to be a responsible person and how that puts us in charge of our lives. She reveals some of the personal benefits that come from being honest, reliable, and principled. She also conveys an understanding of how treating people with respect helps us get along with each other, avoid and resolve conflicts, and create a positive social climate. And, importantly, that trust is the basis of all good relationships and a cornerstone of good character and that they should understand what it takes to be a person others can trust. She talked about the need to respect and love humanity, be content, and honest saying ‘we become good people by doing good things’. She told the students that every choice they make helps define the kind of person they are choosing to be and their character is defined by what they do, not what they say or believe.

Leonard Eiger and our many other friends (including Cheryl Eiger, Mary Gleysteen, Mack Johnson and Elizabeth Murray) at the Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action in the US continue their longstanding efforts to end nuclear weapons. You can check out their latest Newsletter, detailing a series of activities including nonviolent actions, gatherings and speakers here: Ground Zero Newsletter. For a delightfully matter of fact but evocative court statement, try reading the one by Mack Johnson: ‘Someone’s Gotta Do It!’ on page 9. But Leonard and Mary offer compelling accounts of nonviolent actions and their consequences too.

Professor John Scales Avery continues his effort, among his many activities, to document ‘Lives in the Peace Movement’. For the book, which you can download, see Lives in the Peace Movement.

Alice Slater, who is a member of the Board of World Beyond War, UN NGO Representative of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, and a longtime member of CODEPINK, recently penned this thoughtful article reminding everyone that ‘The US has been driving the nuclear arms race with Russia from the dawn of the nuclear age’. See ‘Hiroshima Unlearned: Time to Tell the Truth About US-Russia Relations and Finally Ban the Bomb’. But if you would like to know more about Alice’s long-standing commitment as an activist, you can also hear a fine interview of Alice by David Swanson here: ‘An Interview with Alice Slater’.

In one of his regular columns, Philip Farruggio, ‘son and grandson of New York longshoremen’, describes the problems confronted by many who cannot afford their own housing in his thoughtful and entertaining article ‘The Nature of the (Absentee Landlord) Beast’. Really appreciate your entertaining way of conveying the truth Philip.

And in one of his regular articles, Graham Peebles, offers an insightful and sympathetic account of the ongoing struggle in Ethiopia to unite the 80 tribal groups and to forge a distinct and shared Ethiopian identity when tribal allegiance, particularly among the largest groups – Oromo, Amhara and Tigrinian – has been such a divisive factor historically. With a heavily-armed civilian population and the largest number of internally displaced persons (IDPs) in the world there are enormous challenges to tackle but, unfortunately, only a weak and indecisive government trying (not very well so far) to deal with it although it has made some progressive moves, compared to its predecessor, since coming to power in April 2018. The fear is that every eruption of ethnic violence could be the spark that ignites a wider conflagration, even civil war. Anyway, you can read Graham’s highly informative account in his recent article ‘The Need for Unity in Ethiopia’.

Rosie Jackson in Germany has been very busy lately with her book that deals with how to transition to a peaceful world. The book, titled ‘Seraphin’s Spirituality School. Your Divine Role: Creating an Era of Peace’, is based on the proposition that ‘our world requires a drastic makeover, and this will be fueled by a universal change of heart, by widening our perspectives, and by reconnecting to the divine core within us, which impels us to develop our skills in service to humanity. Seraphin is an angel who sends us messages of hope and inspiration, as well as advice and practical suggestions. His statements provide remarkable insights, provoke intense reflection, and challenge our limited viewpoint. With great clarity, he points out the necessity for radical change, while encouraging us that we have the power to implement it.’ The messages selected for this book were received telepathically by the artist and writer, Rosie Jackson between 2010 and 2019.

‘The FULL PANORAMA of your weaknesses will be mapped out before you with crystal clarity. And in this BRIGHTEST OF SHINING LIGHT which exposes everything, the OPPOSITE will also be very clearly defined – the TORCH BEARERS, the BRINGERS OF TRUTH, those who sacrificed their lives in their attempts to challenge the ruling iron fist cudgelling all people of all nations into obedience. You will see the REAL HEROES AND HEROINES who pierced the lies and tried to warn you. You will see the real COMPASSIONATE WORKERS who already caught a glimpse of the panorama, and who tried to direct your gaze towards it’.

In this thoughtful article, Bangladeshi Anwar A. Khan exposes what the CIA is really about with its straightforward and oft-repeated program to expand US elite interests at the expense of ordinary people everywhere. See ‘CIA – A disdainful killing squad’.

And in a touching tribute to a fellow Bangladeshi, Anwar writes wonderfully about the long-term contributions of the Gandhian social worker Jharna Dhara Chowdhury who died in June. You can read his lovely tribute to a remarkable woman here: ‘Bangladesh: Jharna Dhara Chowdhury: Her legacy is every life she has touched’.

In yet another evocative reflection on his own life playing a part in, and then resisting, the incredibly violent US empire, Brian Willson superbly exposes the deep character of the United States in his article ‘”USA Pretend” Unmasked’. ‘Traveling to a number of nations in Latin America, Asia, and the Middle East has exposed me to details of hundreds of US overt interventions, and thousands of covert destabilization actions. These policies have caused the murders of millions, 20 to 30 million alone since WWII during the so-called “Cold War”. Only five of these nearly 600 military interventions have been declared wars as required by the Constitution, clearly indicating our sacred document is not taken seriously. This also tells us the system has no interest in being accountable to its own Constitution, or international law. Speaking with peasants in these victim-countries invariably reveals the horrendous cruelty of US interveners and their surrogates. Does the US possess any intentions to be law-abiding? Does the US possess any feelings for others, or only selfish imperial ambitions? And does anyone care?’

Continuing his remarkable scholarly output on subjects of vital concern to the people of Nepal but also elsewhere, Professor Bishnu Pathak has published two substantial research reports in recent months. The first, titled ‘Generations of Transitional Justice in the World’ examines issues in relation to the role of transitional justice in various contexts including war crimes and people who are ‘disappeared’. The second report ‘Nepal Maoist Leaders: The Hague Journey!’ examines issues in relation to child soldiers in Nepal. Obviously, both reports deal with complex and emotionally-distressing subjects but provide plenty to engage those concerned about these issues. In appreciation Bishnu.

Gifty Ayim-Korankye reports the ongoing success of the two websites she edits: GhanaWeb Online, which reports news about Ghana and Africa, and Daughters of Africa, which showcases the success stories of African women.

Gifty reports that GhanaWeb Online will celebrate its seventh year this month, having attracted an increase from 400 likes the year it started, to 30,000, in just a span of six years. ‘I’m happy to announce our newest column, “Dear Yaw”, which deals with feelings in relationships. My colleague, Robert J. Burrowes, has contributed immensely to this project by helping our audience solve problems that weigh heavily on them. At first, I had a difficult time understanding his strategies for resolving certain situations. For instance, I’ve been taught to comfort my child when he or she cries, but Robert says to listen to them while allowing them to cry, as it is their way of expressing themselves. I wish I had known this sooner. My son started having temper-tantrums at the age of 2. As a baby, regularly, I would put a pacifier in his mouth to prevent him from crying, so I can finish the daily chores. Not only was I suppressing his feelings with the pacifier, but I was also creating anger in him, by not allowing him to express his feelings. After using the strategies Mr. Burrowes provided, my son had matured mentally and academically. In conclusion, his nonviolence strategies have helped my family, and I believe it could be the solution to the violence we see today in our society.’

Dr Jason MacLeod continues his work accompanying the nonviolent struggle for freedom in West Papua. Here is his report: ‘In August and September there was a nationwide uprising sparked by a racist attack on students. Predictably the media focused on violence by the Indonesian police-military-militia and spontaneous riots that saw parliament in Manokwari burnt to the ground and shops and banks torched. What has been missing from media accounts is a systematic analysis of some stunning nonviolent action, particularly from Pasifika’s alumni, the organisation my colleagues and I set up to resource nonviolent struggle. The militant mass-based civilian group KNPB, known in English as the West Papua National Committee, repeatedly emphasized that they were against a racist colonial occupation, not ordinary people. Despite KNPB’s own members being fatally shot or hacked to death by militia, they maintained nonviolent discipline. Not a single Indonesian person was physically harmed. Another Pasifika alumni, Sayang Mandabayan, organised mass noncooperation in Sorong. She and her colleagues ceremoniously lowered the Indonesian flag outside the parliament building in Sorong, folded it up and handed it back to representatives of the Indonesian government. Sayang was later arrested with 1500 banned Morning Star flags in her possession, the symbol of the West Papuan movement for self-determination. She has been charged with treason and faces the death penalty. Others charged with treason include my friends Buchtar Tabuni and Agus Kossay and many other Papuans. It is important to note that Indonesian allies also joined in the uprising. One of them is my friend and comrade Surya Anta. As I write this he is sitting in an Indonesian jail for his role as spokesperson of the Indonesian People’s Front for West Papua (FRI-WP). Papuan student dormitories across Java have emptied as thousands travel back to West Papua. Although journalists lack the vocabulary to describe and analyse it, this mass exodus is a form of nonviolent non-cooperation led by the Alliance of Papuan University Students (AMP). They are physically withdrawing their consent and cooperation from the Indonesian state. The students say they no longer feel safe in Indonesia. They are returning home to organise resistance.

‘Of course, the uprising was not perfect. It was largely spontaneous, lacked coordination at times, and was not guided by a strategy. However, it is clear the movement is also learning and growing. So too is Pasifika’s understanding of how to better support the struggle. West Papuans seized on a specific issue – racism – that was widely and deeply felt, to channel people’s aspirations for freedom. And although the state and their militia proxies are reasserting control in the only way they know how, through violence, something has changed. As Filep Karma said in a recent interview with The Guardian, West Papua may be controlled by the Indonesian government, but in our hearts we know it is ours. That knowledge fuels the kind of determination that erodes empires.’

Somehow in all this Jason also found time to continue strategy training with climate activists in Asia.

Kristin Christman has been heavily engaged in a larger writing project and has submitted the manuscript to a publisher. Despite this, she still found time to write an oped under the title ‘Exceptionally Insulated’ in which she offered a searing critique of US exceptionalism. It was published in her local newspaper: Albany’s Times Union. We look forward to news of the book in due course Kristin.

Gary Corseri has been working on some ‘bigger projects’ on which we will report in future. In the meantime, however, his evocative poem that ‘I hope will last 1,000 years’ appears here: ‘In a Time of Endless War’. And here is ‘an article in which I try to deal with some of the thorny questions of our present Zeitgeist, with some historical context and, hopefully, logical persuasiveness’: ‘The US Needs “Eureka!” Moments Re: “Vetting”; “Displacement”; “Discernment”; “Integration”!’

Ariel Ky in Mexico has been a peace activist online for many years, and she considers herself ‘a peace visionary. We cannot achieve a different future if we can’t envision taking a different direction. So I think my role is important in the world today, as I always endeavor to envision positive outcomes to what is happening. That is why I appreciate your work so much because you provide a roadmap to doing things differently in a way that will impact what happens.’

Ariel is 65, retired and free to finally devote herself to writing. She studied Spanish off and on for over 40 years, and she is now engaged in a ‘big push to finally master the language and get fluent enough to converse easily and also to write in Spanish’. Originally from the USA, she is very interested in learning more about the culture and history of Mexico, and to discover the important people in the arts. She has made a local friend who is Purupecha ‘and learning about these descendants of the ancient Tarascan empire has been fascinating’. She has also been taking a class in traditional medicine (using plants that grow locally), which has given her some experience with this tight-knit community.

‘Since I learned about capitalism as a teenager, I have had the understanding that it is an unfair economic system which exploits people and the planet. As I’ve seen it grow even worse over the decades of my life, I have done everything I can to understand how it could be changed….

‘I am a journalist and the ‘infotainment in the U.S. that passes as news today really staggers me. I spent three months over the holidays recently with my mother, who watches the news on TV nightly. I couldn’t believe how they’ve elevated mundane break-ins and minor accidents into major news for broadcast, the kind of stories that were once relegated to short sentences in the police blotter.

‘Any major stories were presented with such a twist to influence the minds of viewers that I was truly shocked. In the past, these kinds of stories would have been seen as public relations press releases, which never passed as news before. Of course, it’s been a lifetime of not watching the TV news for me, so I haven’t gotten used to it degree by degree the way people who have always gotten their news that way have done.

‘Most Americans don’t even know that they’ve been routinely cheated of real news and true facts. I consider Americans to be brain-washed, controlled, and heavily manipulated. It’s certainly not the land of the free, if it ever was. I can barely endure being in the U.S. any more. I doubt very much that I will ever live there again, not unless things change dramatically.

‘Oh, I also teach an English class to teenagers Friday evenings. I like spending time with young people, which my ESL career gave me the opportunity to do since I graduated with my master’s degree in TESOL (teaching English to speakers of other languages).

‘I did live in China for four years, during which time I studied Chinese, and have continued studying it in a desultory fashion until I decided to come to Mexico over a year ago…. I like to watch Chinese period dramas in the evening, and I can understand much of what I hear.

‘There are things that I both love and hate about China just like there are things that I love and hate about the U.S. I don’t like how working people are treated in the workplace in either country. And I don’t like how agribusiness has taken hold, and how it is destroying ancient practices that continually restored the soil.’

Nick Rogers reports his recent reflections on 9/11. ‘As the 18th anniversary of 9-11 came and passed, I found the day as nauseating and shameful as it ever was. No, not because of the gory images of that day, but because people (for the most part) still believe the lie. I have read Christopher Bollyn’s 9-11: The Deception that Changed the World. I highly recommend it. It lays out, in no uncertain terms, who is responsible for planning and carrying out the attacks. David Icke has recently come out with a book called Trigger. Apparently, he comes to the same conclusion as Bollyn. People love deriding Icke, calling him the ‘reptile guy’ because of his belief in Archons, a reptilian inter-dimensional race who have inverted our reality (the Matrix we live in). I’ve read another of Icke’s books, ‘Perception Deception’, and I can tell you that the Archon argument seems extremely plausible and backs it with evidence (certainly more plausible than any or all of the lies spewed to us from history books and the mainstream media propaganda machine).

‘As long as we believe the official lie of 9-11, and as long as we believe that wars are just and are, inherently, the reason that we’re “free”, (the greatest and darkest joke of them all) and as long as the dehumanization of brown people the world over is allowed to take place which allows for the genocide to take place unhindered, then we are doomed to continue on this treadmill of insanity. Accepting the truth about 9-11 is just about the hardest thing I can think of to stomach. I don’t enjoy it. It’s ugly truth. It’s disgusting truth. But it’s the truth. The fact that all war – yes ALL – is a racket, and has been since the concept was created, is also a tough pill to swallow. Tell that to the veteran whose legs were blown off, or the one who saw his friend get shot in the face, or to the family of any number of invaded countries whose children were slaughtered. Tell them that it was all just for bankers and leaders of secret (often Satanic) societies. Think they’ll take kindly to your “opinion”?

‘As Icke was told by a voice in a ayahuasca-induced vision in the Amazon, “Infinite Love is the only truth. Everything else is an illusion.” I can’t think of a greater truth than that.’

Cheryl Anne reports on her need to defend herself against the US medical system. ‘This year, I fell prey to a medical malaise that resulted in a first hand experience of what can only be called weaponized health care by a network run the same way as any other predatory corporate entity…. Silence, “letting it go”, was not an option; silence empowers evil. I filed a claim with the medical board; the health care network sent a letter threatening me with the police (whose help I had already sought) and kicked me out of their network, refusing to even refill a long-standing prescription. The trauma of the ordeal sent me into weeks of research, and my observations connecting a string of incidents over this last year or so in particular were confirmed.’

Questioning the psychology that was driving this behaviour, as well as the fact that ‘for far too long, too few have stood up to evil for fear of being clobbered’ Cheryl concludes that ‘If we don’t collectively figure out a way to fix broken psyches or at least stop rewarding them by letting them be in positions of authority – and especially parental authority – that demand we kneel to our undoing or be punished for disobedience’ then it ‘spells extinction for humanity’. ‘Deceit, exploitation, and destruction for fun and profit is the name of the game…. Punishment or not, we must all stand up to evil; what is there to lose?’

Well, as always in these reports, an inadequate summary but it gives you some idea of our shared efforts.

Finally, if you or someone you know has the means and inclination to do so, any financial support for Anita and Robert to help us do this work will be much appreciated. You can see how here.

In appreciation of all of your efforts (including all of those not mentioned above)…

And don’t forget to write to us with a report on what you do!

For a world without violence; Robert, Anita and Anahata

P.S. This Charter progress report is being emailed, in a sequence of emails, to all signatories of the Nonviolence Charter for whom we have a current email address. It will also be published in the next TRANSCEND Media Service Weekly Digest and by Pressenza too.

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

Anita McKone, Anahata Giri and Robert J. Burrowes – Australia – Email: flametree@riseup.net

21 October 2019

Source: www.transcend.org

By Chris Hedges

14 Oct 2019 – Immanuel Kant coined the term “radical evil.” It was the privileging of one’s own interest over that of others, effectively reducing those around you to objects to be manipulated and used for your own ends. But Hannah Arendt, who also used the term “radical evil,” saw that it was worse than merely treating others as objects. Radical evil, she wrote, rendered vast numbers of people superfluous. They possessed no value at all. They were, once they could not be utilized by the powerful, discarded as human refuse.

We live in an age of radical evil. The architects of this evil are despoiling the earth and driving the human species toward extinction. They are stripping us of our most basic civil liberties and freedoms. They are orchestrating the growing social inequity, concentrating wealth and power in the hands of a cabal of global oligarchs. They are destroying our democratic institutions, turning elected office into a system of legalized bribery, stacking our courts with judges who invert constitutional rights so that unlimited corporate money invested in political campaigns is disguised as the right to petition the government or a form of free speech. Their seizure of power has vomited up demagogues and con artists including Donald Trump and Boris Johnson, each the distortion of a failed democracy. They are turning America’s poor communities into internal militarized colonies where police carry out lethal campaigns of terror and use the blunt instrument of mass incarceration as a tool of social control. They are waging endless wars in the Middle East and diverting half of all discretionary spending to a bloated military. They are placing the rights of the corporation above the rights of the citizen.

Arendt captured the radical evil of a corporate capitalism in which people are rendered superfluous—surplus labor as Karl Marx said—and pushed to the margins of society where they and their children are no longer considered to have value, value always determined by the amount of money produced and amassed. But as the Gospel of Luke reminds us, “what is prized by human beings is an abomination in the sight of God.”

Who are those who would sacrifice us on the altar of global capitalism? How did they amass the power to deny us a voice, to insist that the earth is an inert commodity they have a right to exploit until the ecosystem that sustains life collapses and the human species, along with most other species, becomes extinct?

These architects of radical evil have been here from the beginning. They are the slaveholders who crammed men, women and children into the holds of ships and sold them in auctions in Charleston and Montgomery, rending families apart, taking from them their names, language, religion and culture. They wielded the whips, the chains, the dogs and the slave patrols. They orchestrated the holocaust of slavery, and when slavery was abolished, after a war that left 700,000 dead, they used convict leasing—slavery by another name—along with lynching and black codes, to carry out a reign of terror that continues today in our deindustrialized cities and our prisons. Black and brown bodies are worth nothing to our corporate masters when on the streets of our decayed cities, but locked in cages they each generate 50 or 60 thousand dollars a year. Some people say the system does not work. They are wrong. The system works exactly as it is designed to work.

These architects of radical evil are the white militias and Army units that stole the land, decimated the herds of buffalo, signed the treaties that were promptly violated and carried out a campaign of genocide against indigenous people, penning the few who remained in prisoner of war camps. They are the gun thugs, Baldwin-Felts and Pinkerton agents who gunned down, by the hundreds, American workers struggling to organize, forces of the kind that today oversee the bonded labor of workers in China, Vietnam and Bangladesh. They are the oligarchs, J.P. Morgan, Rockefeller and Carnegie, who paid for these rivers of blood, and who today, like Tim Cook at Apple and Jeff Bezos at Amazon, amass staggering fortunes from human misery.

We know these architects of radical evil. They are the DNA of American capitalism. You can find them on the commodity desks at Goldman Sachs. The financial firm’s commodities index is the most heavily traded in the world. These traders buy up futures of rice, wheat, corn, sugar and livestock and jack up the commodity prices by as much as 200% on the global market so that the poor in Asia, Africa and Latin America can no longer afford basic staples, and starve. Hundreds of millions of people go hungry to feed this mania for profit, this radical evil that sees human beings, including children, as worth nothing.

These architects of radical evil extract the coal, oil and gas, poisoning our air, soil and water, while demanding huge taxpayer subsidies and blocking the urgent transition to renewable energy. They are the massive corporations that own the factory farms, egg hatcheries and dairy farms where tens of billions of animals endure horrendous abuse before being needlessly slaughtered, part of an animal agriculture industry that is one of the leading multifactorial causes of climate catastrophe. They are the generals and arms manufacturers. They are the bankers, hedge fund managers and global speculators who looted $7 trillion from the U.S. treasury after the pyramid schemes and fraud they carried out imploded the global economy in 2007-2008. They are the goons in state security who make us the most spied-upon, watched, monitored and photographed population in human history. When your government watches you 24 hours a day you cannot use the word “liberty.” This is the relationship between a master and a slave.

Corporate culture serves a faceless system. It is, as Hannah Arendt wrote, “the rule of nobody and for this very reason perhaps the least human and most cruel form of rulership.” It will stop at nothing. Anyone or any movement that attempts to impede their profits will be targeted for obliteration. These architects of radical evil are incapable of reform. Appealing to their better nature is a waste of time. They don’t have one. They have rigged the system, elections dominated by corporate money, the courts, the press a vast burlesque show for profit, which is why they spend so much time focused on Trump. There is no way to vote against the interests of Goldman Sachs or Exxon, Shell, BP and Chevron, which along with the other top 20 fossil fuel corporations have contributed 35% of all energy-related carbon dioxide and methane emissions worldwide—480 billion tons of carbon dioxide equivalent since 1965.

We know these architects of radical evil. They have been and always will be with us.

But who are those who resist? Where do they come from? What historical, social and cultural forces created them?

They too are familiar. They are Denmark Vesey, Nat Turner, John Brown, Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass. They are Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse and Chief Joseph. They are Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony and Emma Goldman. They are “Big Bill” Haywood, Joe Hill and Eugene V. Debs. They are Woody Guthrie, Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, Ella Baker and Fannie Lou Hamer. They are Andrea Dworkin and Caesar Chavez. They are those who from the beginning fought back, often to be defeated by this radical evil but knowing they were called to defy it, even at the cost of their own reputations, financial security, social standing and sometimes their lives.

The architects of radical evil are disemboweling every last social service program funded by the taxpayers, from education to Social Security, because lives that do not swell their profits are considered superfluous. Let the sick die. Let many of the poor—41 million people, including children—go to bed hungry. Let families be tossed into the streets. Let the young graduate have no meaningful employment. Let the U.S. prison system, with 25% of the world’s prison population, swell. Let torture continue. Let assault rifles proliferate to fuel the epidemic of mass shootings. Let the roads, bridges, dams, levees, power grids, rail lines, subways, bus services, schools and libraries crumble or close. Let the rising temperatures, the freak weather patterns, the monster cyclones and hurricanes, the droughts, the flooding, the tornadoes, the wildfires, the melting polar ice caps, the poisoned water systems and the polluted air worsen until the species dies.

Many in the church are complicit in this radical evil, failing to name it and denounce it, just as we failed to see in the thousands of men, women and children who were lynched the very crucifixion itself, as James Cone pointed out. And this complicity and silence condemns us. It is why W.E.B. Du Bois called “white religion” a “miserable failure.”

“Black people did not need to go to seminary and study theology to know that white Christianity was fraudulent,” Cone wrote in “The Cross and the Lynching Tree.” “As a teenager in the South where whites treated blacks with contempt, I and other blacks knew that the Christian identity of whites was not a true expression of what it means to follow Jesus. Nothing their theologians and preachers could say would convince us otherwise. We wondered how whites could live with their hypocrisy—such blatant contradiction of the man from Nazareth. (I am still wondering about that!) White conservative Christianity’s blatant endorsement of lynching as a part of its religion, and white liberal Christians’ silence about lynching placed both outside of Christian identity. I could not find one sermon or theological essay, not to mention a book, opposing lynching by a prominent liberal white preacher. There was no way a community could support or ignore lynching in America, while still representing in word and deed the one who was lynched by Rome.”

We have failed to denounce the Christian fascists who peddle a magic Jesus who will make us rich, a Jesus who blesses America above other countries and the white race above other races, a Jesus who turns the barbarity of war into a holy crusade, for the heretics they are. And we have failed, as well, to confront the radical evil of corporate capitalism. Let us not once again render our faith a miserable failure.

Defying evil cannot be rationally defended. It makes a leap into the moral, which is beyond rational thought. It refuses to place a monetary value on human life or the natural world. It refuses to see anyone as superfluous. It acknowledges human life, indeed all life, as sacred. And this is why, as Arendt points out, the only morally reliable people are not those who say “this is wrong” or “this should not be done,” but those who say “I can’t do this.”

Those who come out of a religious tradition, any religious tradition, have a responsibility to fight this latest iteration of radical evil, which is swiftly ensuring that our species and many other species will not have a future on this earth. It is our religious duty to place our bodies in front of the machine, as many of us did in the protests organized by Extinction Rebellion last week around the globe.

“The law, as presently revered and taught and enforced, is becoming an enticement to lawlessness,” Dan Berrigan wrote. “Lawyers and laws and courts and penal systems are nearly immobile before a shaken society, which is making civil disobedience a civil (I dare say a religious) duty. The law is aligning itself more and more with forms of power whose existence is placed more and more in question. … So, if they would obey the law, [people] are being forced, in the present crucial instance, either to disobey God or to disobey the law of humanity.”

Let us not in this present historical period replicate our sins of the past. Let us affirm our faith by affirming our defiance, our willingness to engage in the acts of sustained civil disobedience against the forces of radical evil. Let future generations say of us that we tried, that we were not complicit through our collaboration or our silence. There will be a cost. History shows us that. All moral battles have a cost, and if there is not a cost then the battle is not moral. Accept becoming an outcast. Jesus, after all, was an outcast. We are called by God to defy radical evil. This defiance is the highest form of spirituality.

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Chris Hedges spent nearly two decades as a foreign correspondent in Central America, the Middle East, Africa and the Balkans.

21 October 2019

Source: www.transcend.org

By Jonathan Cook

18 Oct 2019 – There is something profoundly deceitful in the way the Democratic Party and the corporate media are framing Donald Trump’s decision to pull troops out of Syria.

One does not need to defend Trump’s actions or ignore the dangers posed to the Kurds, at least in the short term, by the departure of US forces from northern Syria to understand that the coverage is being crafted in such a way as to entirely overlook the bigger picture.

The problem is neatly illustrated in this line from a report by the Guardian newspaper of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s meeting this week with Trump, who is described as having had a “meltdown”. Explaining why she and other senior Democrats stormed out, the paper writes that “it became clear the president had no plan to deal with a potential revival of ISIS in the Middle East”.

Hang on a minute! Let’s pull back a little, and not pretend – as the media and Democratic party leadership wish us to do – that the last 20 years did not actually happen. Many of us lived through those events. Our memories are not so short.

Islamic State, or ISIS, didn’t emerge out of nowhere. It was entirely a creation of two decades of US interference in the Middle East. And I’m not even referring to the mountains of evidence that US officials backed their Saudi allies in directly funding and arming ISIS – just as their predecessors in Washington, in their enthusiasm to oust the Soviets from the region, assisted the jihadists who went on to become al-Qaeda.

No, I’m talking about the fact that in destroying three key Arab states – Iraq, Libya and Syria – that refused to submit to the joint regional hegemony of Saudi Arabia and Israel, Washington’s local client states, the US created a giant void of governance at the heart of the Middle East. They knew that that void would be filled soon enough by religious extremists like Islamic State – and they didn’t care.

Overthrow, not regime change

You don’t have to be a Saddam Hussein, Muammar Gaddafi or Bashar Assad apologist to accept this point. You don’t even have to be concerned that these so-called “humanitarian” wars violated each state’s integrity and sovereignty, and are therefore defined in international law as “the supreme war crime”.

The bigger picture – the one no one appears to want us thinking about – is that the US intentionally sought to destroy these states with no obvious plan for the day after. As I explained in my book Israel and the Clash of Civilisations, these haven’t so much been regime-change wars as nation-state dismantling operations – what I have termed overthrow wars.

The logic was a horrifying hybrid of two schools of thought that meshed neatly in the psychopathic foreign policy goals embodied in the ideology of neoconservatism – the so-called “Washington consensus” since 9/11.

The first was Israel’s long-standing approach to the Palestinians. By constantly devastating any emerging Palestinian institution or social structures, Israel produced a divide-and-rule model on steriods, creating a leaderless, ravaged, enfeebled society that sucked out all the local population’s energy. That strategy proved very appealing to the neoconservatives, who saw it as one they could export to non-compliant states in the region.

The second was the Chicago school’s Shock Doctrine, as explained in Naomi Klein’s book of that name. The chaotic campaign of destruction, the psychological trauma and the sense of dislocation created by these overthrow wars were supposed to engender a far more malleable population that would be ripe for a US-controlled “colour revolution”.

The recalcitrant states would be made an example of, broken apart, asset-stripped of their resources and eventually remade as new dependent markets for US goods. That was what George W Bush, Dick Cheney and Halliburton really meant when they talked about building a New Middle East and exporting democracy.

Even judged by the vile aims of its proponents, the Shock Doctrine has been a half-century story of dismal economic failure everywhere it has been attempted – from Pinochet’s Chile to Yeltsin’s Russia. But let us not credit the architects of this policy with any kind of acumen for learning from past errors. As Bush’s senior adviser Karl Rove explained to a journalist whom he rebuked for being part of the “reality-based community”: “We’re an empire now and, when we act, we create our own reality.”

The birth of Islamic State

The barely veiled aim of the attacks on Iraq, Libya and Syria was to destroy the institutions and structures that held these societies together, however imperfectly. Though no one likes to mention it nowadays, these states – deeply authoritarian though they were – were also secular, and had well-developed welfare states that ensured high rates of literacy and some of the region’s finest public health services.

One can argue about the initial causes of the uprising against Assad that erupted in Syria in 2011. Did it start as a popular struggle for liberation from the Assad government’s authoritarianism? Or was it a sectarian insurgency by those who wished to replace Shia minority rule with Sunni majority rule? Or was it driven by something else: as a largely economic protest by an under-class suffering from food shortages as climate change led to repeated crop failures? Or are all these factors relevant to some degree?

Given how closed a society Syria was and is, and how difficult it therefore is to weigh the evidence in ways that are likely to prove convincing to those not already persuaded, let us set that issue aside. Anyway, it is irrelevant to the bigger picture I want to address.

The indisputable fact is that Washington and its Gulf allies wished to exploit this initial unrest as an opportunity to create a void in Syria – just as they had earlier done in Iraq, where there were no uprisings, nor even the WMDs the US promised would be found and that served as the pretext for Bush’s campaign of Shock and Awe.

The limited uprisings in Syria quickly turned into a much larger and far more vicious war because the Gulf states, with US backing, flooded the country with proxy fighters and arms in an effort to overthrow Assad and thereby weaken Iranian and Shia influence in the region. The events in Syria and earlier in Iraq gradually transformed the Sunni religious extremists of al-Qaeda into the even more barbaric, more nihilistic extremists of Islamic State.

A dark US vanity project

As Rove and Cheney played around with reality, nature got on with honouring the maxim that it always abhors a vacuum. Islamic State filled the vacuum Washington’s policy had engineered.

The clue, after all, was in the name. With the US and Gulf states using oil money to wage a proxy war against Assad, ISIS saw its chance to establish a state inspired by a variety of Saudi Arabia’s Wahhabist dogma. ISIS needed territory for their planned state, and the Saudis and US obliged by destroying Syria.

This barbarian army, one that murdered other religious groups as infidels and killed fellow Sunnis who refused to bow before their absolute rule, became the west’s chief allies in Syria. Directly and covertly, we gave them money and weapons to begin building their state on parts of Syria.

Again, let us ignore the fact that the US, in helping to destroy a sovereign nation, committed the supreme war crime, one that in a rightly ordered world would ensure every senior Washington official faces their own Nuremberg Trial. Let us ignore too for the moment that the US, consciously through its actions, brought to life a monster that sowed death and destruction everywhere it went.

The fact is that at the moment Assad called in Russia to help him survive, the battle the US and the Gulf states were waging through Islamic State and other proxies was lost. It was only a matter of time before Assad would reassert his rule.

From that point onwards, every single person who was killed and every single Syrian made homeless – and there were hundreds of thousands of them – suffered their terrible fate for no possible gain in US policy goals. A vastly destructive overthrow war became instead something darker still: a neoconservative vanity project that ravaged countless Syrian lives.

A giant red herring

Trump is now ending part of that policy. He may be doing so for the wrong reasons. But very belatedly – and possibly only temporarily – he is closing a small chapter in a horrifying story of western-sponsored barbarism in the Middle East, one intimately tied to Islamic State.

What of the supposed concerns of Pelosi and the Democratic Party under whose watch the barbarism in Syria took place. They should have no credibility on the matter to begin with.

But their claims that Trump has “no plan to deal with a potential revival of ISIS in the Middle East” is a giant red herring they are viciously slapping us in the face with in the hope the spray of seawater blinds us.

First, Washington sowed the seeds of Islamic State by engineering a vacuum in Syria that ISIS – or something very like it – was inevitably going to fill. Then, it allowed those seeds to flourish by assisting its Gulf allies in showering fighters in Syria with money and arms that came with only one string attached – a commitment to Sunni jihadist ideology inspired by Saudi Wahhabism.

ISIS was made in Washington as much as it was in Riyadh. For that reason, the only certain strategy for preventing the revival of Islamic State is preventing the US and the Gulf states from interfering in Syria again.

With the Syrian army in charge of Syrian territory, there will be no vacuum for ISIS to fill. The jihadists’ state-building project is now unrealisable, at least in Syria. Islamic State will continue to wither, as it would have done years before if the US and its Gulf allies had not fuelled it in a proxy war they knew could not be won.

Doomed Great Game

The same lesson can be drawn by looking at the experience of the Syrian Kurds. The Rojava fiefdom they managed to carve out in northern Syria during the war survived till now only because of continuing US military support. With the US departure, and the Kurds too weak to maintain their improvised statelet, a vacuum was again created that this time risks sucking in the Turkish army, which fears a base for Kurdish nationalism on its doorstep.

The Syrian Kurds’ predicament is simple: face a takeover by Turkey or seek Assad’s protection to foil Turkish ambition. The best hope for the Kurds looks to be the Syrian army’s return, filling the vacuum and regaining a chance of long-term stability.

That could have been the case for all of Syria many tens of thousands of deaths ago. Whatever the corporate media suggest, those deaths were lost not in a failed heroic battle for freedom, which, even if it was an early aspiration for some fighters, quickly became a goal that was impossible for them to realise. No, those deaths were entirely pointless. They were sacrificed by a western military-industrial complex in a US-Saudi Great Game that dragged on for many years after everyone knew it was doomed.

Nancy Pelosi’s purported worries about ISIS reviving because of Trump’s Syria withdrawal are simply crocodile fears. If she is really so worried about Islamic State, then why did she and other senior Democrats stand silently by as the US under Barack Obama spent years spawning, cultivating and financing ISIS to destroy Syria, a state that was best placed to serve as a bulwark against the head-chopping extremists?

Pelosi and the Democratic leadership’s bad faith – and that of the corporate media – are revealed in their ongoing efforts to silence and smear Tulsi Gabbard, the party’s only candidate for the presidential nomination who has pointed out the harsh political realities in Syria, and tried to expose their years of lies.

Pelosi and most of the Democratic leadership don’t care about Syria, or its population’s welfare. They don’t care about Assad, or ISIS. They care only about the maintenance and expansion of American power – and the personal wealth and influence it continues to bestow on them.

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Jonathan Cook is an award-winning British journalist based in Nazareth, Israel, since 2001.

21 October 2019

Source: www.transcend.org

By Brian Terrell

Current events concerning Turkey and the Kurds in Syria remind me of a conversation I had with a US Air Force colonel almost 17 years ago in a courtroom in Des Moines. To refresh my memory, I dug deep into my closet and dusted off the transcript of the case, “STATE OF IOWA, plaintiff vs. CHRISTINE GAUNT et al.,” in which I was a defendant, heard in February, 2003, the month before the US invasion of Iraq. The following quotes from that dialogue are verbatim per the transcript.

The case concerned an alleged trespass at the headquarters of the 132nd Tactical Fighter Wing of the Iowa Air National Guard, based at Des Moines International civilian airport, on October 26, 2002. Activists from around Iowa blocked the gates of the base in protest of the 132nd’s participation in Operation Northern Watch, the no-fly zone over northern Iraq imposed by the US after the Gulf War that lasted until the Iraq War in 2003. Pilots and crews of the Guard’s F-16 fleet went to Turkey to participate in patrolling northern Iraq or to Kuwait to patrol in Operation Southern Watch for a month during most of the years those no-fly zones were in place.

One of the witnesses called by the state was Colonel Douglas Pierce, Vice Commander of the Iowa Air National Guard. Until a few weeks before our protest, Col. Pierce was commander of the 132nd and had personally led several deployments of the Iowa Air Guard to Operation Northern Watch.

Under direct questioning by the prosecutor, Col. Pierce described how the 132nd was under federal control as part of the US Air Force while posted overseas and how the no-fly zones were authorized and conducted under a United Nations resolution. The resolution that Col. Pierce cited did not exist. Secretary General of the UN, Boutros Boutros-Ghali insisted that the no-fly zones were “illegal”, but US government and the Air Force often used this fiction to justify their almost daily incursions into Iraqi airspace that often resulted in civilian casualties.

Another fiction that Col. Pierce swore to under oath is the purpose of the no-fly zone. Defending myself, I had the opportunity to cross examine the Colonel, “Do you have any knowledge of what the purpose of that no-fly zone—the northern watch is?” Predictably, Colonel Pierce testified according to the official narrative: “Primary Purpose is, obviously, to reinforce the no-fly zone in northern Iraq and primarily to keep Saddam Hussein from attacking the Kurds who live in northern Iraq in which he had done on numerous occasions prior to the establishment of those no-fly zones.”

The base of operations for the US Air Force patrols over Iraq was Incirlik Air Base, the colonel affirmed. “So this Incirlik Air Base is – whose air base is it?” I asked. “Is it the United States air base?” “No. It belongs to Turkey,” he answered. “There are Turkish forces there too?” “Yes sir.”

“Have US Air Force enforcement of no-fly zones ever been interrupted so that the Turkish Air Force can go into Iraq and bomb Kurdish cities there?” I asked. “I don’t have personal knowledge of that,” Col. Pierce replied, followed by an eloquent and perfect example of Orwellian doublespeak: “All I can tell you is that our activities in northern Iraq have been restricted when supposedly events like that took place. And the reason our activities were restricted is that they didn’t want to have any black eye, if you will, on the United States or UN forces that they could accuse us of doing that if that’s what they did.”

What the colonel told the court in is that he did not know about the Turkish Air Force bombing Kurds in the very zone he swore that the US Air Force was there to protect, but he testified that when, not if but when, “supposedly events like that took place,” US Air Force activities in the zone were restricted. And the reason for that restriction was “they (the US and UN) didn’t want to have any black eye” for anything that the Turkish forces did to the Kurds.

“So if I got this right,” I asked just to be sure, “the watch is primarily to protect the Kurds. However, the watch is lowered when Turkey wishes to attack the Kurds, is that correct?” Col. Pierce had no answer, but taking a cue from the Nuremberg trials he demurred: “You are asking me to make foreign policy decisions, and that’s well above my pay grade.” Rather than allow proceedings to edge any nearer to the truth, the prosecutor intervened, “Objection, Your Honor” and the judge complied, “Okay, I’ll sustain that objection.”

The “green light” that the US regularly gave Turkish armed forces to attack Kurdish communities in northern Iraq during the years of Operation Northern Watch has recently allowed Turkish forces into northern Syria to attack Kurds there previously under US protection. As President Trump understands the situation at present, using the language of ethnic cleansing, “they (Turkey) had to have it cleaned out.” Trump, in his cynical callousness toward the Kurds, stands in illustrious company. It was not Saddam Hussein who first used chemical weapons against the Kurds of northern Iraq (with assistance and approval of the US). That distinction belongs to Winston Churchill, who as Britain’s Secretary for War and Air in 1920 answered his critics: “I do not understand this squeamishness about the use of gas. I am strongly in favour of using poison gas against primitive tribes.”

Incirlik Air Base is again in the news. On Wednesday, October 16, President Trump publicly affirmed the open secret that the US, in a NATO nuclear sharing agreement, has up to 50 B61 nuclear bombs stored in bunkers at Incirlik. In these tense times, Trump was asked, are those nuclear warheads safe? Whereas Douglas Pierce, Vice Commander of the Iowa Air National Guard testifying in court in 2003, had to stick to the official narrative that Incirlik “belongs to Turkey,” Trump is under no such restraints and was able to boast about Incirlik as our own: “We’re confident, and we have a great — a great air base there, a very powerful air base. That air base alone can take anyplace. It’s a large, powerful air base.”

The number of overseas US military bases, estimated at more than 800 in some 70 countries, is hard to gauge, given that they often are camouflaged as bases of the host country. The constitution of Honduras, for one example, does not permit a foreign military presence and officially, no US troops are based there. Under a “hand shake” agreement with the US, however, Palmerola Air Base today unofficially houses some 600 US troops, down from a peak of thousands in the 1980s. In violation of Irish neutrality, the civilian airport at Shannon is a virtual US air base, with more than 3 million US soldiers and their weapons having passed through since 2001. Menwith Hill, in Yorkshire, United Kingdom, officially a Royal Air Force Base, is the nerve center of the US National Security Agency’s full spectrum surveillance and targeted assassination programs with only a token RAF presence. The US has the same nuclear sharing arrangement under which US nuclear warheads are maintained in Turkey with five other NATO member nations. No nation hosts a US military base without surrendering its sovereignty and its integrity to some extent.

Trump’s confidence is well placed. Along with Incirlik, the US has many “great” and “very powerful” military bases around the world. In 2003, Col. Pierce’s courtroom testimony revealed the purpose behind this great game of smoke and mirrors: it is to keep the US from getting a “black eye,” so that no one “could accuse us of doing that if that’s what they did.”

Trump says that “We’re getting out of the endless wars” but that is a lie. While exposing the Kurds to Turkish aggression, roughly 1,000 U.S. troops remain in Syria and there are 5,000 troops across the border in Iraq. Now Trump is sending 1,800 more US troops to Saudi Arabia.

Trump is already claiming his place in history now for a cease fire that Turkey says isn’t one. “And you know what? Civilization is very happy. It’s a great thing for civilization,” he boasts. “There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people,” said the historian Howard Zinn, and there is no lie that can cover the black eye of US complicity in genocide.

Brian Terrell (brian@vcnv.org) co-coordinates Voices for Creative Nonviolence

19 October 2019

Source: countercurrents.org

By Daisaku Ikeda

“That which is common to the greatest number has the least care bestowed upon it,” observed Aristotle, highlighting an all-too-common human tendency. His warning is still relevant today, especially in our fight against climate change.

The Paris Agreement, adopted in December 2015, is an international framework to strengthen efforts to mitigate global warming. However, as UN Secretary-General António Guterres warns, “climate change is moving faster than our efforts to address it,” and is posing a threat to the very survival of humankind. This year alone has seen strong heat waves sweeping over Europe and India, and record high temperatures in the Arctic region including Alaska and Siberia.

According to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), the long-term trend of rising global temperatures is undeniably related to many of the extreme weather events seen all over the world, and this is likely to continue for some time.

As the phrases climate crisis and climate emergency ring in our ears more and more, the UN Climate Action Summit 2019 will take place in New York on September 23. Our world stands at a crucial crossroads: Will governments be able to step up their concerted efforts to reduce the causes of global warming such as greenhouse gas emissions, and effectively respond to the impact of rising temperatures including loss and damage caused by extreme weather?

The rising sea levels due to the melting of the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets, as well as heat waves, torrential rain and other extreme weather events have had devastating effects on economies and businesses. Moreover, the effects of climate change are driving more and more people into forced displacement.

The Toda Peace Institute, which I founded in 1996, has been working in recent years on a research program on Climate Change and Conflict that focuses on forced migration. The research has highlighted the extremely grave situation that the people of the Pacific Islands are facing. Affected by rising sea levels, people and communities in the region are being forced to consider relocation, while little attention has been given to what this means to them emotionally and spiritually.

To many Pacific Island societies, one’s ancestral land is like a mother. Being forced to move from the land to which one is deeply connected is almost equivalent to losing one’s fundamental identity. Ontological security that our native land provides cannot be replaced by material security guaranteed by resettlement to a new site. The research program urges that such inseparable connections between people and their lands be included as a vital perspective in planning action to combat climate change.

I am reminded of the Buddhist teaching of the Four Views of the Sal Grove, which illustrates how differences in people’s mental or spiritual state or perspective will cause them to see the same thing in completely different ways.

For example, the sight of the same forest might inspire one person to be moved by its natural beauty and another to calculate its economic value. The problem is that what is missing in one’s perspective will also be completely lacking in one’s overall worldview.

Consequently, the loss of something irreplaceably precious to a certain community can cause great suffering and deprivation without even being noticed by the overwhelming majority of people.

As we develop responses to climate change challenges, we must consider and incorporate the needs and perspectives of those who are affected by the impact of global warming around the world and who are also vulnerable to gender inequalities and other forms of structural discrimination, rather than simply focusing on economic costs that are more easily quantified.

In this regard, I hope that the leaders of governments who will be attending the Climate Action Summit in New York will reexamine the way they engage with the world, and strengthen collaborative action through their deliberations on global warming challenges.

In order to powerfully advance the Paris Agreement, they must take the initiative to find ways to cut greenhouse gases in every sector from power generation and transportation to food production and distribution, as well as finding ways to increase carbon dioxide absorption, including the planting of trees.

As part of the lead-up to the Summit, the UN Climate Youth Summit will take place on September 21, bringing together young people from around the world.

It is certainly not an easy task to halt global warming. But if we take youth initiatives seriously as a starting point from which to develop a hope-inspiring scenario that engages more people to take action, I believe it will certainly be possible to open a way to build a sustainable global society. Indeed the fate of humanity in this century rests on our relentless efforts to follow the lead of our youth in this respect.

Daisaku Ikeda is a Budhist philosopher, peace builder and educator

19 October 2019

Source: countercurrents.org