Archives: Articles

By John Menadue

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo wants us to join with the U.S. in tackling the problems which Donald Trump created with Iran and presumably to soften us up to host missiles to protect the U.S. marines and port facilities in Darwin, writes John Menadue.

WE ARE BEING SOFTENED UP again, step-by-step, to support the U.S. military and industrial complex that promotes perpetual war.

The U.S. is the greatest threat to peace in the world. It is an aggressor across the globe. It is the most violent country, both at home and abroad. And people know it. The Pew Research Centre found in 2018 that 45% of people surveyed around the world saw ‘U.S. power and influence as a major threat’.

Retired U.S. Defence Secretary Jim Mattis complained that President Trump should show more respect for allies. But the U.S. shows the most respect for allies that do what they are told or supinely comply — like Australia. Our PM even gets an invitation to dinner with Trump and he cannot contain his eagerness. Our media join in the vicarious thrill of it all.

Apart from brief isolationist periods, the U.S. has been almost perpetually at war; wars that we have been foolishly drawn into. The U.S. has subverted and overthrown numerous governments over two centuries. It has a military and business complex, a “hidden state” that depends on war for influence and enrichment. It believes in its “manifest destiny” which brings with it an assumed moral superiority which it denies to others. The problems did not start with Trump. They are long-standing and deep-rooted.

Unfortunately, many of our political, bureaucratic, business and media “elites” have been so long on an American drip feed that they find it hard to think of a world without an American focus. We had a similar and dependent view of the UK in the past. That ended in tears in Singapore.

Conservatives rail about Chinese influence but they and we are immersed and dominated by all things American, including the Murdoch media. Our media do regard Australia as the 51st American state. Just look at the saturation coverage of the Democrat primaries with the Presidential Election still 15 months away. Easy and lazy news. It’s harder and nowhere near as interesting to cover much more important news in Indonesia and Malaysia.

In a blog titled ‘Is war in the American DNA?’ I have drawn attention to the risks we run in being “joined at the hip” to a country that is almost always at war. The facts are clear. The U.S. has never had a decade without war. Since its founding in 1776, the U.S. has been at war 93% of the time. These wars have extended from its own hemisphere to the Pacific, to Europe and most recently to the Middle East. The U.S. has launched 201out of 248 armed conflicts since the end of WWII. In recent decades, most of these wars have been unsuccessful. The U.S. maintains 700 military bases or sites around the world including in Australia. In our own region, it has a massive deployment of hardware and troops in Japan, the ROK and Guam.

U.S. fleets patrol in strength off the Chinese coast. The U.S. would have mass hysteria if the Chinese fleet patrolled off the Californian coast or Florida Keys, as it is legally entitled to do.

The U.S.-led illegal invasion of Iraq encouraged by John Howard has resulted, directly and indirectly, in the death of a million people and the displacement of millions of others. It has exposed historic religious, tribal and ethic tensions. Worldwide terrorism and ISIS are the direct results of U.S. aggression and our complicity. John Howard is never held responsible for the massive calamity that he helped facilitate. He remains a national hero, at least in the Liberal Party.

The U.S. has been meddling in other countries’ affairs and elections for a century. It tried to change other countries’ governments 72 times during the cold war. Many foreign leaders were assassinated.

In the piece reproduced in this blog (‘The fatal expense of U.S. Imperialism’), Professor Jeffrey Sachs said:

‘The scale of U.S. military operations is remarkable… The U.S. has a long history of using covert and overt means to overthrow governments deemed to be unfriendly to the US… Historian John Coatsworth counts 41 cases of successful U.S.-led regime change for an average of one government overthrow by the U.S. every 28 months for centuries.’

The overthrow, assassination, or interference in foreign governments are diverse, including Honduras, Guatemala, Iran, Haiti, Congo, Indonesia, Japan, Vietnam, Chile, Iraq, Afghanistan and, most recently, Syria.

And this interference continued with the undermining of the pro-Russian Government in the Ukraine by the U.S.-backed Maidan coup in 2014. Gorbachev and Bush agreed that in allowing the reunification of Germany, NATO would not extend eastwards. But with U.S. encouragement, NATO has now provocatively extended right up to the borders of Russia. Not surprisingly, Russia is resisting.

Despite all the evidence of wars and meddling in other countries’ affairs, the American Imperium continues without serious check or query in America or Australia.

There are several reasons why the American record of war and interference has not been challenged.

The first is what is often described as America’s “manifest destiny” — the God-given right to interfere in other countries’ affairs. This right is not given to others because many Americans see themselves as more virtuous and their system of government better than others.

Despite their assumed world role, many Americans have a limited understanding of other countries’ culture and life. Only 32% of Americans have passports. In the UK and Australia, it is 70%. Before he became President, George Bush had only been overseas once. That was to visit Beijing where his father was the Ambassador.

Professor Tom Nichols reported in this blog (‘How America lost its faith in expertise, and why that matters’), Public Policy Polling revealed that 43% of Republicans and 55% of Democrats supported bombing a place called “Agrabah”, which turned out to be a fictional place in a cartoon. Only an ignorant people could presume that their country should bomb a city that did not exist. To this day, 70% of registered Republicans doubt that Obama is an American citizen.

The U.S. has invaded countries it knew about and, in many cases, cultures and people it knew nothing about, who were assumed to be less virtuous and wise than the U.S.

In examining the failure in Vietnam, General Walter T Kerwin Jr observed that:

‘We never understood the Vietnamese. We think we know best. We tried to force on them what they should do…’

The ignorance of ordinary Americans and its politicians of other countries is legendary, but possibly just as important is their resistance to any relief of that ignorance. That may not seem unusual — but it is dangerous for a country with overwhelming military power employed around the globe.

The second reason why the American Imperium continues largely unchecked is the power of what President Eisenhower once called the “military and industrial complex” in the U.S. In 2019, I would add the intelligence community and politicians to that complex who depend heavily on funding from powerful arms manufacturers across the country and the military and civilian personnel in over 4,000 military facilities across the U.S. Democrats and Republicans both court these wealthy arms suppliers and their employees.

The intelligence community, universities and think tanks also have a vested interest in the American Imperium.

This complex which co-opts institutions and individuals in Australia is often called “the hidden state”. It has enormous influence. No U.S. President, nor for that matter any Australian Prime Minister would likely challenge it.

Australia has locked itself into this complex. Our military and defence leaders are heavily dependent on the U.S. Departments of Defence and State, the CIA and the FBI for advice. But it goes beyond advice. The “Five Eyes” led by the CIA applied pressure to us on 5G as part of a broader campaign to attack almost all things Chinese. We willingly respond and join the U.S. in disasters like Iraq and the Middle East. While the U.N. General Assembly votes with large majorities to curb nuclear proliferation, we remain locked into the position of the U.S. and other nuclear powers.

Our autonomy and independence are also at great risk because our defence/security “elites” in Canberra have as their holy grail the concept of “interoperability” with the U.S. This is mirrored in U.S. official and think tank commentary on the role they see for us in our region. So powerful is U.S. influence and our willing cooperation with it, that our foreign policies have been largely emasculated and sidelined by the defence and security views of both the U.S. and their acolytes in Australia.

The concept of interoperability does not only mean equipment. It also means personnel where increasingly large numbers of Australian military personnel are embedded in the U.S. military and defence establishments, especially in the Pacific Command in Hawaii. The last U.S. Commander in Hawaii very nearly became the new U.S. Ambassador in Australia. Instead, he was sent to Seoul to keep the ROK in line.

The U.S. military and industrial complex and its associates have a vested interest in America being at war and our defence establishment, Department of Defence, ADF, Australian Strategic Policy Institute and the “intelligence” community are locked-in American loyalists.

As Geoff Raby in this blog has argued, our security and intelligence agencies like ASIO and ASIS have led and bullied the Australian Government into hysteria over China. The collectors of intelligence have become the propagandists and policy makers. Paul Keating calls them “nutters”. DFAT has been sidelined. With our intelligence agencies out of control, it is not surprising to see the travesty of the prosecution of Bernard Collaery and Witness K. The wrong people are being charged.

The third reason for the continuing dominance of the American Imperium is the way the U.S. expects others to abide by a “rules-based international order” which was largely determined at Bretton Woods after WWII and embedded in various U.N. agencies. That “order” reflects the power and views of the dominant countries in the 1940s. It does not recognise legitimate interests of newly-emerging countries like China, who now insist on playing a part in an international rules-based order.

The U.S. only follows an international rules-based order when it suits its own interests. It pushes for a rules-based system in the South China Sea while refusing to endorse UNCLOS (Law of the Sea) or accept ICJ decisions. The invasion of Iraq was a classic case of breaking the rules. It was illegal. The resultant death and destruction in Iraq met the criteria for war crimes. But the culprits have gone scot-free.

It is a myth that democracies like America will behave internationally at a higher level of morality than other counties. Countries act in their own interests as they perceive them. We need to discount the noble ideas espoused by Americans on how they run their own country on the domestic front and look instead at how they consistently treat other countries. Consider how the Kurds are being treated. They led the fight against ISIS but are now largely abandoned by the U.S. and other “allies”. The Kurds are holding the Australian wives and children of ISIS fighters but we are so slow to decently help. The scrapping of the alliance with the Kurds is made the more dishonourable by the emergence of the new version of the US/Saudi alliance with its resulting tragedy in Yemen.

U.S. claims about how well they run their own country are challenged on so many fronts. 43 million U.S. citizens live in poverty, they have a massive prison population with its indelible racist connotations, guns are ubiquitous and they refuse to address the issue. Violence is as American as cherry pie. It is embedded in U.S. behaviour both at home and abroad.

The founding documents of the U.S. inspire Americans and many people throughout the world. ‘The land of the free and the home of the brave’ still has a clarion call. Unfortunately, those core values have often been denied to others. For example, when the Philippines sought U.S. support it was invaded instead. Ho Chi Minh wanted U.S. support for independence but Vietnam was invaded.

Like many democracies, including our own, money and vested interests are corrupting public life. Democracy in the U.S. has been replaced by “Donocracy”, with practically no restrictions on funding of elections and political activity for decades. Vested interests are largely unchecked. House of Representatives electorates are gerrymandered and poor and minority group voters are often excluded from the rolls. The powerful Jewish lobby, supported by fundamentalist Christians, has run U.S. policy off the rails on Israel and the Middle East.

The U.S. has slipped to number 21 as a “flawed democracy” in the Economist’s Intelligence 2016 Democracy Index. (NZ was ranked fourth and Australia tenth.) It noted that ‘public confidence in government has slumped to historic lows in the U.S.’ That was before Trump.

Many democracies are in trouble. U.S. democracy is in more trouble than most. There is a pervasive sickness.

Our risky dependence on the U.S. cannot be avoided or excused by laying problems at the door of Donald Trump. Malcolm Fraser warned us about a dangerous ally long before Donald Trump came on the scene. U.S. obsession with war and with overthrowing or undermining foreign governments goes back over a century. So does domestic gun violence.

Donald Trump excesses are not likely to significantly move American policies from what has become the norm over two centuries.

Hugh White has pointed out that the U.S. has, in effect, now given up looking after anyone but itself — “America first”. It could, of course, be argued that Trump is just being honest and saying what U.S. Presidents have always done, looking after their own interests even if they refused to admit it.

A major voice in articulating American extremism and the American Imperium is Fox News and Rupert Murdoch, who exert their influence not just in America but in its subservient “allies” like Australia. In the media, Fox News supported the invasion of Iraq and is mindless of the terrible consequences. Rupert Murdoch applauded the invasion of Iraq because it would reduce oil prices. Fox and News Corp are leading sceptics on climate change which threatens our planet. In April last year, the New York Times told us that outside the White House, Rupert Murdoch is Trump’s chief advisor. Rupert Murdoch runs political parties as much as media organisations.

But it is not just the destructive role of News Corp in the U.S., UK and Australia. Our media, including the ABC and even SBS, is so derivative. Our media seems to regard Australia as an island parked off New York. We are saturated with news, views, entertainment and sitcoms from the U.S. It is so pervasive and extensive, we don’t recognise it for its very nature. The last thing a fish recognises is water.

Mike Keating described (as Hugh White pointed out) that, based on Australian Treasury figures, by 2030, Chinese GDP is projected to be 70% larger than U.S. GDP. It is already 15% larger. The U.S. has record debt which the recent tax cuts, like those of Reagan and Bush, will only worsen.

One outcome of the declining comparative U.S. economic power is that the U.S. will ask its allies to do more. We saw the influence of U.S. budgetary pressures in its launch of the pivot to the Pacific. We have seen the first step with Marines in Darwin. There are a lot more big steps to come.

The U.S. may return, hopefully, to its brief periods of isolationism and leave its allies to their own devices. Maybe they will do us a favour.

Despite continual wars, often unsuccessful, the overthrow or subversion of foreign governments and declining U.S. economic influence, U.S. hegemony and domination of Australian thinking continues.

Despite all the evidence, why do we continue in denial?

One reason is that as a small, isolated and white community in Asia, we have historically sought an outside protector, first the UK and, when that failed, the U.S. We should not bury in Anzackery the enormous price we paid for British “protection”. We have not shaken off that dependence and subservience to distant empires.

We continue to seek security from our region through a U.S. protector rather than, as Paul Keating put it, security within our own region. Our long-term future depends on cooperation in our region and not reliance on a dangerous and distant ally.

Another reason why we are in denial about the American Imperium is, as I have described, saturation of our media with U.S. news, views and entertainment. We do not have an independent media. Whatever the U.S. media says about tax cuts for the wealthy, defence or climate change, it inevitably gets a good run in our media.

A further reason for the continuing U.S. hegemony in Australian attitudes is the galaxy of Australian opinion leaders who have benefitted from American largesse and support — in the media, politics, bureaucracy, business, trade unions, universities and think tanks. Thousands of influential Australians have been co-opted by U.S. money and support in “dialogues”, study centres and think tanks. The U.S. has nourished agents of influence in Australia for decades. China is a raw beginner in the use of soft power.

How long will Australian denial of U.S. policies continue? When will some of us stand up? When will our humiliation end?

Are our political leaders right in their assessment that any questioning of the threats posed by our interpretation of the benefits and obligations of the U.S. alliance will lose them an election?

Insofar as China is any sort of distant threat, it would be much less so if we were not so subservient to the U.S. The U.S. is determined to make China its enemy. We are cooperating in that process.

The U.S. is a very dangerous ally. It is more likely to get us into trouble than out of trouble.

We are joined at the hip to the most violent and dangerous country in the world.

John Menadue is a commentator, businessman and former diplomat.

15 August 2019

Source: independentaustralia.net

By Amir Zulhayyad

The dispute over Kashmir which involves Pakistan and India has been ongoing since the partition of India by the British colonial government. Kashmir was once a sovereign territory Without the consent from the Kashmiris the territory was divided into two by the colonial power and given over to India and Pakistan after which Kashmir became Azad Kashmir administered by Pakistan and the Indian administered Kashmir. Since then every dispute between India and Pakistan becomes one over Kashmir.

Do the voices of Kashmiris matter now that it is the 21st century?

In the mainstream media, the coverage ignores the people of Kashmir. There is very little to none relating to the population. The narrative of the media is mainly focused on issues regarding the two regional powers. It covers only the actions taken by the New Delhi and Islamabad governments both distant centres of power. As Nitasha Kaul (as cited by Naina Bajekal in TIME) says, “Kashmir was always seen as real estate, not a place with people”. This shows how India and Pakistan treated Kashmir. They launched missiles and fired heavy weapons on Kashmir without a thought for the Kashmiris themselves. The news will then always be about India attacking Pakistan or vice versa. Given this situation, we often forget that the one who suffers most are the Kashmiris. They are but victims of a war between two nations.

In the most recent event India revoked Article 370, the constitutional provision granting autonomy to Indian-administered Kashmir, thus downgrading Kashmir from being a state to federally administered union territories of Jammu and Kashmir further causing the under-representation of the Kashmiris.

Furthermore, the manner in which Article 370 was revoked is totally authoritarian. It was done without any consultations with Kashmiri leaders. New Delhi revoked the rights of the autonomous region. Then, they cut off the internet and line network connections in Kashmir, blocking out all communications. This move ensured that no information could leave or enter Kashmir giving New Delhi total control over the territories.

The voices of the Kashmiris were, over and over again, throughout the territorial disputes between India and Pakistan, ignored.

But the only way to have justice and peace in the valley is to involve the Kashmiris themselves. Let their voices and opinions be heard and give them what they want. The international community must take a a new position on Kashmir. Rather than thinking for them and be bogged down by the vicious circle of violence between India and Pakistan, we must think of the people of Kashmir. This is the only way to resolve the issue and bring peace to Kashmir. If the solution proposed continues to be one imposed on them by outsiders we will never see an end to this dispute. And the suffering of the Kashmiris will continue unabated.

23 August 2019

AMIR ZULHAYYAD BIN ZAKARIA
Intern
International Movement for a JUST World (JUST)

At the heart of the Tariq Ramadan case, a multitude of notorious intellectual opponents are suspected of collusion. While the investigating judges have never responded to the requests submitted by Ramadan’s lawyer, Emmanuel Marsigny, to interrogate the individuals most often cited in the case, many questions remain unanswered regarding their involvement.

Caroline Fourest: a central figure?

Caroline Fourest, a renowned opponent of Tariq Ramadan, was among the first to make a TV appearance when the case broke out. In her initial interventions, she lied and claimed she did not know Henda Ayari. She also minimized her relationship with Paule-Emma Aline. However, according to the investigation, Fourest had 156 and 116 telephone contacts respectively with Henda Ayari and Paule-Emma Aline, six months before Henda Ayari lodged her complaint in October 2017.

Fourest then admitted having met Paule-Emma Aline in 2009. According to the Journal du Dimanche newspaper, Fourest introduced Paule-Emma Aline to the prosecutor Michel Debacq (former antiterrorist unit’s chief at the prosecution department and one of Emmanuel Macron’s advisers). Both Debacq and Fourest say today that they have been aware of the rape charges since 2009 but did not deem it useful to lunch a judicial procedure while they say they were informed about a crime! Isn’t it illegal for a “journalist” and a prosecutor to remain silent when they know about a crime ?

Even more disturbing, the investigation into Paule-Emma Aline’s Skype calls has brought to light a strange discussion where Paule-Emma Aline explicitly said that Caroline Fourest is part of her “plan” to bring down Tariq Ramadan. In spite of lawyer Marsigny’s requests [to interrogate Fourest], she was never summoned for a hearing by the judges. Similarly, the phone fadettes (identifying dates and times of calls or SMS) have never been added to the court file. Fourest has also had proven contacts in Belgium with Majda Bernoussi, and the Swiss plaintiff whose pseudonym is “Brigitte” for the media and “Maimouna” on social networks.

Jean-Claude Elfassi, Alain Soral and the rest

The Israeli-French paparazzi known for his brutality, Jean-Claude Elfassi is all over this file. He still, however, has not been summoned for a hearing by the Criminal Brigade and the judges. He is suspected of having played a large role in the staging of complaints against Tariq Ramadan. In August 2017, three months before the case, he posted an ad on his blog asking women to send him intimate testimony to discredit Tariq Ramadan. As had been the case in the JeremStar affair, Elfassi could have pushed the third plaintiff to file a complaint and, according to her, he also pushed her to change her narrative. Today, she accuses him of having manipulated her with the complicity of her previous lawyer Francis Szpiner. Elfassi has long been in contact with Henda Ayari, who regularly posts pictures of them together. Their relationship seems strange as they have exchanged troubling messages in private which were later leaked and posted on the internet. Sometimes verbally violent, other times friendly or more, their messaging proves that they have been in close contact, before the complaint was lodged and throughout the court proceedings till the present time. Elfassi also had direct and indirect contacts with the Swiss plaintiff before and after she was convinced to file a complaint in April 2018.

Elfassi is also under investigation for several complaints in this case. These include; defamation of Tariq Ramadan’s witnesses, harassment and threats. Before going quiet on the social networks, Elfassi also harassed some of Tariq Ramadan’s family members, many supporters and witnesses by tweeting defamatory, often rude or sexual messages. Following his argument with the third plaintiff, Mounia Rabbouj, he posted nude photos of her, accompanied by a text that carried sexual connotation. Elfassi introduced Mounia Rabouj and Henda Ayari to his friend, lawyer Szpiner, who initially defended them. Later, Rabouj accused Szpiner of manipulation and raised money problems. This is confirmed by Rabbouj’s wiretaps that were investigated by the judges. The wiretap revealed that the plaintiff has received money from her lawyer but complained to one of her interlocutors about his non-compliance of their agreement.

Finally, other protagonists of the case, known to be notorious opponents of Tariq Ramadan, were in contact with the first two plaintiffs. Suspected of collusion, none of them was summoned for a hearing by the judges. This is particularly the case of Alain Soral; Henda Ayari often mentioned him in her messages to Tariq Ramadan. She lets Ramadan know that she had a relationship with Soral and that he wanted her to set him up. Additionally, according to Gamal Abina, a witness heard by the Criminal Brigade, Henda Ayari told him that she knew Soral very well and had been in regular contact with him. He testified: “She went so far as to give me her phone number and explained to me that at the time, he [Soral] had pushed her to seduce Tariq Ramadan into inviting her to the hotel room.”

Paule-Emma Aline was also in touch with Soral and his friend at that time, Salim Laïbi, “Le Libre Penseur” (the free thinker), both close to the far right movements. She had informed Tariq Ramadan of all that since 2009. Finally, according to a source close to the file, Alain Soral was the companion of Majda Bernoussi who revealed, by email, that Soral had also suggested to her to “trap Ramadan”. The Swiss complainant, “Brigitte” – “Maimouna” was also in contact with Soral through Dieudonné with whom she posted a very close and intimate relationship on social networks (posts and photos).

Nacira Menadi (“Vanessa” from BeurFM radio) was heard by the police but not by the judges. She has established phone contact with Ayari (57 times) and with Paule-Emma Aline (51 times) between May and November 2017 (six months before the complaints were lodged) according to the file facts. Since 2009, she has had many contacts on social networks with the Swiss plaintiff “Maimouna”. Menadi is also an intimate friend of Yasmine Kepel, Gilles Kepel’s partner, whose opposition to Tariq Ramadan has been long established. In 2015, two years before the case, he told an online journalist that Tariq Ramadanwould soon “fall from grace”.

Bloggers Maamar Metmati and Adeline Aragon (whose pseudonym is “Lucia Canovi” on the Net) have also not been summoned for a hearing by the judges. In a video posted almost six months before the case, Metmati offered to give 3000 € to anyone who would provide him with information on TariqRamadan’s private and sexual life. “Lucia Canovi” posted dozens of messages and videos on the internet calling on people to denounce Tariq Ramadan. She wrote a book against Ramadan a year before the case was lodged, in which she announced that she wanted to bring him down. Her book tells women’s stories and on a Facebook post, she gives distinctive signs of [Tariq Ramadan]’s anatomy in order, she claims, to help making “more credible” the testimonies of those who would like to lodge a complaint against Ramadan. She was in contact with the fourth plaintiff and the two witnesses “R” and “C” who testified against Tariq Ramadan. Finally, the retired journalist, Ian Hamel, the sociologist Vincent Geisser (who has exchanged many messages with Henda Ayari) and the prosecutor Michel Debacq were also indirectly involved in the case, but have not been summoned for a hearing by the judges till now.

In a case such as that of Tariq Ramadan, where so many well-known opponents have been or are in contact with the plaintiffs, it is legitimate to pose the question: is this affair primarily political? Why this double standard treatment with regards to litigant’s identity or the media coverage of the case? Why would individuals, so implicated in the case, are conspicuously absent from the judicial process and media questioning?

What are these absentees hiding? In a case of such a global impact like that of Tariq Ramadan, how come that none of the newspapers nor any investigative journalist has examined the absentees’ role and the high probability of a political collusion?

M.M

22 August 2019

Source: www.reveilcitoyenmedia.com

Personal impressions from the conference MH17: The Quest for Justice, Kuala Lumpur, 17 August 2019.

by Kees van der Pijl, Amsterdam

From 15 to 19 August I was in the capital of Malaysia for a conference organised by the International Movement for a Just World (JUST), the Perdana Global Peace Foundation (PGPF) and the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG). I had been invited as the author of Flight MH17, Ukraine, and the New Cold War, meanwhile in four languages. All signs were that this would be a landmark event because for the first time, critics of the Dutch-led investigation into the tragedy were coming together for what the organisers called ‘a modest endeavour to uphold the truth and to remain faithful to justice’. It would be much more than that and among those sharing that assessment was the Dutch embassy in Kuala Lumpur, which expressed its concern over the conference both to the Prime Minister’s office and to the organisers. In what follows, I give a brief account of what I see as the effective establishment of an international task force on MH17 solely motivated by the quest for justice, not by any political position adopted beforehand. Since I was only an invited speaker it will be obvious that the organisers are in no way responsible for these notes.

Preliminaries

On arrival at Kuala Lumpur International Airport I was met by a functionary of the Perdana Foundation, one of the organisations established at the initiative of Dr Mahathir (for other Malaysians I rely on the abbreviated names as used in the conference programme). The Perdana Foundation, I learned, is committed to the criminalisation of war, and in my book I actually refer to the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Tribunal, which in 2011, after extensive hearings, indicted George Bush and Tony Blair for crimes against the peace over the Iraq invasion of 2003. As was established at Nuremberg in 1945-46, all other crimes such as war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide, and the like, follow from the supreme crime against the peace. Although Mahathir had excused himself for the conference, his public remarks on the doubtful accusations made against Russia had been an obvious inspiration for the Kuala Lumpur event.

On the Friday evening before the actual conference there was a welcome dinner, an opportunity to meet with the organisers, their respective staffs, and the other speakers and moderators. The foreign guests were presented with a signed copy of Mahathir’s autobiography, ‘A Doctor in the House’ (he is a medical doctor). Luckily I had a copy of the Manchester University Press edition of my own book with me to return the gesture via the organisers, several of whom are close to Mahathir.

At this dinner I first heard of steps taken by the Dutch embassy with the Prime Minister’s office and with the organisers at the Perdana Foundation office (because the Dutch ambassador was new to the place, by his deputy) to express discontent and concern over the event. Apparently the deputy ambassador complained about holding this conference in the first place and extending an invitation to ‘conspiracy theorists’ (the label applied to all those doubting the JIT claim that Russia is guilty of the downing of MH17, a claim made already by Western politicians and media before any investigation had begun). I will come back to the possible role of the Dutch embassy when discussing the session at which two family members of Malaysian victims had been planned to speak.

Still at the dinner, I was seated next to the former Malaysian ambassador to the Netherlands, Dr Fauziah, who told me how the Dutch TV programme Nieuwsuur had approached her on the occasion of the fifth anniversary of the tragedy, only to castigate her for not being fully convinced of the validity of the JIT reading and then, why did she continue to defend the Russians?

The Conference: Introductions

The event was held in the main auditorium of the International Islamic University of Malaysia (since the country is constitutionally a multi-ethnic and multi-cultural society, this has no other relevance than that it is among Malaysia’s largest and most prestigious academic institutions, on a par with the University of Malaysia).

After the arrival of guests and registration of participants and media representatives, the opening remarks were made by Dr Chandra Muzaffar, president of JUST. Dr Chandra is one of the country’s leading intellectuals and besides his many academic credits, a well-known public figure since even a hotel assistant I spoke to, knew him. Chandra explained in his remarks that there were many justified doubts about the Dutch-led investigations and many issues had not been satisfactorily resolved. In contrast to the adherence to one official account in the West, this conference was meant to be an open-minded event to bring together some of those whose views could enlarge or contest the JIT account; it was not based on any a priori position regarding the downing of MH17 or the conflict in Ukraine.

Next the conference was officiated by Professor Tan Sri Dzul, the president of the university and a world-renowned expert on health and drug issues. Through his participation in Malaysian public life and media, he too is a well-known figure in the country. That he was also a former student of Chandra’s may have helped to make the facilities of the university available for this event, but his brief and lively introduction was testimony to a profound commitment to the cause of achieving justice for the victims of the disaster and their relatives.

Session 1. Documentary, MH17—Call for Justice

The title of this documentary makes clear how close its perspective is to the theme of the Kuala Lumpur conference. The documentary, which meanwhile has been seen by hundreds of thousands of viewers on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wkDWwYk4-Ho), was introduced by the director, Yana Yerlashova. She explained this was her third documentary on the topic and paid tribute to Max van der Werff, the investigative journalist with whom she made this one. With her on the podium was Akash Rosen, founder of OG IT Forensic Services, who as a certified audio specialist has demonstrated with his colleagues that the phone taps provided by the Ukrainian intelligence service SBU to the Dutch-led investigation had been extensively tampered with, cutting and pasting different segments etc. Besides their appearance in the documentary, Akash Rosen and his colleagues also produced a special 143-page report detailing their investigations, which is in the public domain.

The documentary, shown at the conference on a big screen, shares the spirit of the event in that there is no a priori attribution of guilt. It merely seeks to highlight the inconsistencies and falsehoods of the JIT investigation. Its shocking revelations on the intimidation of a Dutch lawyer willing to challenge the government, the tampering with evidence, the testimony of experts such as the German lawyer, Professor Giemulla, witnesses of Ukrainian air force activity, plus the fraudulent nature of SBU-supplied evidence, made a great impression and set the tone for the conference.

Session 2. Review of evidence and background

This session was moderated by Tan Sri Fuzi, former Secretary-General of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Malaysia, an accomplished diplomat and currently active in a wide range of businesses as chairman of the board and director.

The first speaker was Michel Chossudovsky, emeritus Professor of Economics at the University of Ottawa and director of the Centre for Research of Globalization, one of the three organisations behind the conference. I am familiar with Chossudovsky’s work from the time of the NATO intervention in the dissolution of Yugoslavia and his relation with Malaysia includes membership in the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Commission. The website of he CRG, Global Research.ca, is one of the most read alternative news media in the world.

Chossudovsky argued that there have in fact been four investigations on MH17. Besides the Dutch Safety Board and the JIT, there was first the investigation immediately after the event and leading to the assertion of Russian guilt. It was based on radar images mentioned by US Secretary of State John Kerry, which were not heard of again but which yet made a great impact on the political climate in which subsequent investigations transpired. Next there was the investigation by then-SBU-head Nalyvaychenko who claimed to have discovered a Russian plot to shoot down one of its own civilian airliners and thus provoke a Russian military intervention in Ukraine. Chossudovsky highlighted the political credentials of Nalyvaychenko and the absurdity of this assertion on several counts, although it did not apparently disqualify the SBU as a source for the subsequent two investigations (DSB and especially, JIT).

The second speaker was Peter Haisenko, a retired civil aviation pilot with a long career as captain on international flights with Lufthansa. Meanwhile also a prolific author and publisher and well-known on this particular dossier, he was interviewed by the JIT but nothing of his findings in the end made it into their conclusions, perhaps also because the DSB had already excluded any other outcome than a Buk impact.

Haisenko told the conference that he had studied photographs of the wreckage right after the MH17 disaster and discovered evidence of impact holes of 30 mm explosive shells in some of the high-definition pictures on the Internet. When he found these pictures had been removed the next day, he began his own investigation, among other things discussing the possibility of a Buk missile having exploded near the Boeing’s cockpit. Following conversations with experts including the former East German anti-aircraft officer and author, Bernd Biedermann, Haisenko came to the conclusion that the cause of the downing could not have been a Buk missile. Instead he claims an Su-25 ground-support fighter jet (which I in my book still rule out because it is subsonic and not fast enough to manoeuvre around a Boeing 777 at top speed) may have fired a heat-seeking air-to-air missile hitting an engine and slowing down the Boeing to around 600 km/h but not destroying it, after which the Sukhoi was able, flying at 0.9 Mach, to fire its cannon at the cockpit with the aforementioned shells (actually two types loaded alternately). With the pilots killed, the explosions of the anti-tank shells that are the standard armament of an Su-25, then caused the plane to break-up in mid-air.

After the presentations there was extensive Q & A and of course discussions continued in between sessions and after the conference. I suggested to Haisenko that for his account to be vindicated (it incidentally was the only express alternative theory of why MH17 was destroyed at the entire conference), we must know what was on the voice and flight recorders, a topic of dispute later.

As the third speaker in this session I relied for the greater part on my book, which deals primarily with the geopolitical and economic context of the tragedy. About the actual event, in contrast to DSB and JIT, I only list the different possible scenarios, so who had Buks, what do specialists say about the effect of a Buk hit, who had fighter jets, what are the characteristics of such jets, and so on. Ultimately I cannot say with certainty what was the cause of the downing except that all circumstantial considerations, so who had a motive, who profited, and so on, would seem to point to the coup regime in Kiev and its Atlantic backers. I also mentioned how the DSB Final Report has lied about the presence of 1.3 tons of lithium ion batteries right behind the cockpit, which if on fire, produce high explosive gases.

Also I asked why the Su-25 pilot, Voloshin, whom an airbase mechanic declared had returned from a sortie in great distress on 17 July, had never been interviewed by the DSB or JIT before he died, supposedly by suicide, in March 2018. That the DSB and JIT investigations are profoundly compromised because of the veto granted to the Kiev coup regime, is in my book, and here I also mentioned that the law establishing the DSB already rules that facts harmful to Dutch foreign relations will not be reported. Finally I asked why the JIT did not accept the evidence offered by the German investigator, Josef Resch, whilst relying extensively on the proven falsehoods of the amateur Internet collective, ‘Bellingcat’ (instead of one or more of the 17 US intelligence agencies)—claims which I show in my book had been previously dismissed by the JIT as ‘unfit for evidence’.

Session 3. MH17: Legal dimensions

This session was moderated by Professor Mary George of the Faculty of Law, University of Malaysia, and a specialist on law of the sea and air and space law. In hindsight I would think this was the most important session determining the outcome of the entire conference. For whereas the other sessions gave details adding up to serious doubts about the tenability of the conclusions of the Dutch-led investigations, which led to the recent indictment of four individuals for murder and the announcement of a trial held in the Netherlands in March 2020, this session resulted in the recommendation to prevent that trial from taking place in the first place.

The first speaker, Canadian criminal defence lawyer John Philpot, a specialist in international criminal law with 35 years of experience including the tribunal for Rwanda and the International Criminal Court (ICC), brought his experience to bear on the MH17 case. In all the recorded cases of international criminal justice, the dedicated courts dealing with the Rwanda genocide, with the violent dissolution of Yugoslavia, and the ICC (which in practice turned out a court limiting its prosecution to criminal actions by Africans), Philpot had established that this is a highly politicised form of justice, far removed from the presumed neutrality of a normal court and with a prosecution which has to be mistrusted most because its role, too, differs fundamentally from a national prosecutor’s office. Since on the long flight back I read a large part of an edited collection on international criminal justice that he gave me as a present in Kuala Lumpur, I recognised many of the characteristics of the JIT (tunnel vision, prejudice, political pressure notably by the US and Western governments) in the cases analysed in that book (‘Justice Belied. The Unbalanced Scales of International Criminal Justice’).

The second speaker, Dr Gurdial Singh Nijar, a solicitor, former Professor of Law at the University of Malaysia, and president of the Malaysian Human Rights Society, covered a different legal aspect, the question of a possible civil suit against the Kiev regime for keeping open the air space above a war zone (along the lines of the lawsuit on behalf of the German victims’ relatives by Professor Giemulla, as in the ‘Call for Justice’ documentary). Since Kiev obviously did not fulfil its international obligations in this domain, there should be good grounds for a successful civil suit, Gurdial argued.

Session 4. Ground Zero: The Unsung Heroes

This session, chaired by former Reuters staff correspondent Amy Chew, featured Colonel Sakri, who also appears in the ‘Call for Justice’ documentary. Col. Sakri was instructed by then Prime Minister Najib to fly to Ukraine and gain hold of the data recorders of the plane (black boxes) besides ensuring that the bodies of the Malaysian victims would be collected in a proper manner. Col. Sakri gave a chilling account of the operation he led, which included crossing ten checkpoints between the Ukrainian government-held territory and the rebel areas, against the will of the coup government in Kiev. As a military officer, he knew he exposed himself and his men to grave danger, but having reached the rebels, he was handed the black boxes without further ado, a sign they had nothing to hide. I was impressed by Sakri’s sober account even of anecdotes that might have been presented with bravado. The same for the moment, also in the documentary, when he was confronted by FBI agents demanding the black boxes upon his return to Kharkov and said ‘no’. His telephone conversation with Prime Minister Najib, in which the latter implored him to secure the black boxes at all cost, if only for the sake of national dignity after the successive disasters of MH370 and MH17, was very moving, certainly when Sakri, again in the most modest of terms, related how he effectively pledged his life. Whether MH370, lost in March 2014, was really the reason for Malaysia to turn down the offer to lead the (technical) MH17 probe, as maintained by the former head of the Civil Aviation Department, Mr Azharuddin, who made two long interventions at the conference in reply to questions, was a matter much discussed in the corridors. The same for the question of whether Malaysia had ever been allowed to listen to the original tape recordings of the voice and data recorders, referred to already.

Session 5. In Memory

This session had been planned to be dedicated to the victims and their families. However, although the two relatives, the widow of the first officer and the daughter of the chief stewardess, had been closely involved in the planning, including how they would be presented in the programme booklet (which was printed in accordance with their wishes), they withdrew two days before the conference (a single line in the booklet was printed just in time to this effect, below their portraits). The letter in which they conveyed the decision to withdraw was cast in what the organisers told me was an uncharacteristically bitter and vehement mould. But not only did the letter unexpectedly complain about the lack of professionalism and transparency of the conference organisers, it so happened that the Dutch deputy ambassador knew about the letter and also, on his visit to the Perdana Foundation office, was able to report that a copy had been sent round to all foreign embassies in Kuala Lumpur.

The Malaysian organisers told me that it was certainly surprising that the previously cooperative family members would suddenly change their minds about participation, and also that they would be able to circulate their letter at such short notice to the foreign embassies, of which the addresses are not readily available outside the diplomatic milieu. The organisers also expressed their disquiet about the extent to which the Dutch had access to and were able to influence the victims’ relatives more generally. Somebody else told me that a Malaysian cameraman filming commemorative ceremonies on the fifth anniversary of the tragedy, had reported that a statement praising the JIT work, read out by a young Malaysian victims’ relative at an event in the Australian embassy, had just been handed to her by somebody else in the room. I was left with the feeling that the ‘quest for justice’ as interpreted by the Dutch (and Australian) diplomatic representation(s) may not be of the same quality as that which impressed me so much in the conference. The Dutch embassy had been given the assurance that the conference was a public event and that the deputy ambassador was most welcome to raise questions, express dissent, or whatever. However, I was told that the promise he made to call back later regarding the invitation was not honoured and nobody turned up in the end.

Nevertheless ambassador Fauziah, who had agreed to chair this session, volunteered to do it on her own. Her account of how the Malaysian embassy in The Hague dealt with the tragedy when it happened, the harrowing details of sorting the body parts that kept coming in once the recovery of the bodies began, the negotiations with the relatives about repatriation, all of it was presented with professional sang froid. At the same time, she told us, the embassy had to continue its other work too, as in the field of economic, especially agricultural matters, for which it has special attachés (at the dinner Dr Fauziah had told me more than 100 Dutch companies are active in Malaysia).

Session 6. Formulation of an Action Plan

This was the closing session of the conference, chaired by Mr Tan Sri Jawhar, a senior government official in the foreign affairs area, with a long list of distinctions awarded on account of his international activities for Malaysia in the fields of security, in ASEAN, and the Asia-Pacific Leadership Network for Nuclear Non-Proliferation.

In this final session, Dr Zulaiha Ismail, a trustee of the Perdana Foundation who earned her Ph D in Human Resource Development at George Washington University in the US, was joined by Ms Askiah Adam, a lead writer in the New Straits Times and the executive director of JUST, and Dr Chandra Muzaffar. It was at this session that the plans for further action were formulated first, I assume on the basis of ideas that had already been explored previously. At the centre is the idea of seeking to obtain a suspension of the preparations for a trial, rightly seen as premature given the flawed, one-sided nature of the evidence presented so far. This was discussed in its various aspects with an energy that was most surprising given that this was one of the longest one-day conferences I have attended, with hardly a break except for lunch. Whether it was at this point that the intention to present the outcomes of the conference, including the proposal to have the Malaysian prime minister contact his Dutch counterpart directly, to Dr Mahathir, or whether I heard it later or read it in the Sunday papers the next day, I don’t recall because my energy certainly was at a low ebb.

With Dr Zulaiha, one of the driving forces of the conference, I had spoken before about another plan to come to Malaysia, earlier in August, for a conference proposed by friends and colleagues I had met in Moscow when presenting the Russian translation of my MH17 book in May. This had clearly been an initiative for which the time to prepare had been too brief. Dr Zulaiha told me that she had been aware of it, but that Malaysia as a long-standing non-aligned country would always have preferred to organise an event like this on its own, also to avoid being seen as a channel of Russian concerns. For the present conference the Russian embassy had been invited (like all other embassies, the media, etc.) and three junior diplomats had indeed turned up but they had no active role.

The third speaker in this closing session, Dr Chandra Muzaffar, also used the occasion to respond to questions posed by young reporters of Malaysian newspapers, which I found provocative by their lapidary form and insistence. Thus one young reporter asked, where was our ‘rock-solid evidence’ that the JIT investigation was flawed. To this Chandra replied by going over a number of instances of how Kiev was given a veto, and also how Malaysia had been kept out of the JIT until, effectively, March 2015, almost a year after the tragedy. He patiently explained that such a course of events, which is beyond dispute, is itself evidence too. He also went over to the counter-attack, asking why the newspapers had unanimously refused to carry the announcement of the conference, so that few people outside the circles associated with the organisers knew of it. As a result, the public turnout was limited, although this did not of course affect the quality of the debate.

I can only say that Chandra’s role in this matter was impressive by his consistent courtesy and eloquence in the face of arrogant, puerile questioning. Whether that may have helped the turnabout of the media the next day, when all the major newspapers carried the key message that came out of the conference, viz., that the trial should be suspended, I don’t know. The Sunday edition of the New Straits Times had a two page report covering various aspects in depth, with pictures of several speakers, the audience, and the same conclusion in the headline, ‘Bid to Halt Prosecution of MH17 Suspects’.

Whatever the actual success of this aim, I do feel that with this conference a momentous step has been taken to establish an international alternative task force on the topic of the downing of MH17. With each of the foreign participants relying on their own associates at home, further research can be made part of a collective resource base now that face-to-face contact and mutual confidence have been established at Kuala Lumpur. As to myself, I will make an effort to get my contacts in Russia and in the other countries where my book has been translated, also on board of this enterprise. In this and in other respects this inspiring, flawlessly organised conference has brought the quest for justice for the victims and relatives of the MH17 tragedy a huge step forward.

The author is a senior academic in The Netherlands.

17 August 2019

By Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers

11 Aug 2019 – “We oppose the extraterritorial application of unilateral measures.” That is not Cuba, Nicaragua, Iran, Russia, or China talking about the most recent unilateral coercive measures imposed by the United States against Venezuela, i.e. economic sanctions that have become an economic blockade, but the European Union. Even allies who have embarrassed themselves by recognizing the phony “interim president” Juan Guaido are saying the US has gone too far.

All of the countries listed above and many more have stated their opposition to the escalation of the US economic war against Venezuela. Venezuela, along with Iran, has become a prime target of US regime change, and both are uniting the world in opposition to US bullying behavior, which is hastening the demise of US domination. Popular social movements are growing against US unilateralism and violations of international law.

Countries of the World are Uniting against the United States

Six months ago, the US sought to install a puppet government led by Juan Guaido. Guaido, trained by the US, was an unknown personality to most Venezuelans. He is a minor politician who barely won election to the defunct National Assembly. Today, the failure of the US coup attempt is evident. Repeated efforts by Guaido, his allies and the United States to rally support for Guaido from the people and Venezuelan military have failed.

A large rebuke on the international stage occurred in July when delegations from 120 countries of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) united to oppose US policy against Venezuela, saying in a statement that only Venezuela can decide its fate, no other state can intervene in accordance with the United Nations Charter. The UN General Secretary pointed out the importance of the Non-Aligned Movement when she spoke at the beginning of the conference, stating that “two-thirds of the United Nations members and 55% of the world’s population” are represented by it, making it the second-largest multinational body in the world after the UN.

Javad Zarif, the Foreign Minister of Iran, put the US intervention against Venezuela in context, declaring upon his arrival for the meeting: “The resistance of the people of Venezuela against the United States is very important for all the countries of the world.”

The economic blockade, announced last week, has also escalated opposition to dollar domination. There are now 21 countries on the US sanctions list and scores of other countries are impacted by US sanctions. In reality, what the US is doing is imposing unilateral coercive measures against these countries, which violate the United Nations Charter. Sanctions imply there was a formal action that justified punishment, but that is not the case here.

The Caracas Declaration was passed at the NAM meeting. As Anya Parampil reported in the Grayzone, “the delegates unanimously affirmed their pursuit of a multipolar world and a desire to construct an international financial system independent of US control.”

The Declaration also contained a clause calling for following the Vienna Convention, which includes a provision to protect diplomatic missions. No doubt this was in response to the US seizure of Venezuelan diplomatic properties, highlighted by the work of the Embassy Protection Collective to uphold international law.

Sanctions Are Economic Terrorism

At the NAM meeting, representatives of various countries described the impacts of the US’ economic war on their people. Zarif of Iran made the point clear: “Just Google ‘terrorism.’ This is the definition that the dictionary will give you: ‘unlawful use of violence or intimidation, especially against civilians, in pursuit of political gains’… so please friends, stop using [the term] ‘sanctions’… sanctions have a legal connotation. This is economic terrorism… we have to say it again and again.”

Illegal unilateral coercive measures have contributed to the deaths of 40,000 Venezuelans in 2017 and 2018. A leading Venezuelan Economist, Francisco Rodríguez, says the Trump Administration’s sanctions are costing Venezuela $16.9 billion annually and threaten a famine that could cause hundreds of thousands of deaths. Two days after Trump’s new Executive Order was signed, a ship carrying 25 thousand tons of soy-made products for food production in Venezuela was blocked.

The NAM conference agreed to study and report on the impact of US sanctions, ensuring that the movement against illegal unilateral coercive measures by the United States will continue.

Russia, an observer of the NAM, was represented by Vice Minister Sergey Ryabkov who said the US was strangling Venezuela with one hand through sanctions while pick-pocketing it with the other by freezing its assets held in Western banks. Ryabkov told The Grayzone, “the US has sanctioned almost 70 countries in recent decades, impacting the lives of over one-third of the world’s population.”

The US tried to threaten diplomats to convince them not to attend the meeting, but was unsuccessful. Jorge Arreaza, the Venezuelan Foreign Minister, described the successful summit as “a failure of US diplomacy” driven home by “120 countries [that] are not aligned with the US… they want to be free, they want to be independent.” He described the Non-Aligned Movement as a “vaccine against unilateralism.”

President Maduro spoke at the meeting. He underscored the march of history toward freedom and the end of US empire describing the 21st Century as “the century of freedom, it is the century of the end of empires, and it is just beginning in 2019…nothing, nor anyone will stop us…no one can stop the course of the new story that is making its way!”

People’s Movements Organizing against US’ Violations of International Law

The US blockade against Venezuela and continued threats of military attack galvanized worldwide protests this weekend. Popular Resistance joined with other social movements and civil society organizations in denouncing the blockade.

In addition to the Non-Aligned Movement’s renewed commitment to the United Nations Charter, popular movements are organizing along similar lines. This week, we launched the Global Appeal to Save International Law, an effort to create a global network of people and social movements to demand respect for the United Nations Charter and its use as a tool for maintaining peace, guaranteeing human rights and protecting the sovereignty of nations.

From September 20-23, a coalition of organizations is holding the People’s Mobilization to Stop the US War Machine and Save the Planet. The Mobe will highlight the role of US militarism as the largest polluter on the planet during the Global Climate Strike on Friday, September 20 and join in calling for decolonization at the Puerto Rico Independence March on September 21. The People’s Mobe will hold a rally at Herald Square at 2:00 pm on Sunday, September 22. On Monday the 23rd, we will hold an evening event: “A Path To International Peace: Realizing the Vision of the United Nations Charter,” which will feature social movements and government representatives working for an end to US violations of international law. Registration is free, but is required. Register here.

Opposition to US violations of international law were also evident at the Sao Paulo Forum held in Caracas from July 25-28 with the participation of 190 organizations, political parties, social movements, workers’ movements, parliamentarians and intellectuals from Latin America, the Caribbean and several continents. Seven hundred people participated in the four-day event showing unity across Latin America against US aggression.

A dozen members of the Venezuelan Embassy Protection Collective attended the forum, spoke to the conference and were received with standing ovations for their work to uphold international law. The Collective had challenges getting to the Forum, due to US airlines no longer flying to Venezuela, and one member was harassed at the US border when he returned.

A Final Declaration was issued by the Forum in support for Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua and other progressive governments under attack by US imperialism and for a demand to free Lula and other left-wing leaders imprisoned for political reasons.

Rising Resistance

People are standing up to US interventions in many other countries. In Honduras, there are widespread protests against the US-installed coup president, Juan Orlando Hernandez, who was indicted last week in the US for drug trafficking. US-trained police are responding to protests with violence. A hunger strike by political prisoners turned into a call for Hernandez’s resignation. Embassy Protector Adrienne Pine is there and reporting via Twitter.

In Nicaragua, peace has prevailed after a US coup attempt last year. A US-funded Human Rights Director was accused of massive theft of US regime change dollars and inflating death tolls. To understand Nicaragua, read this excellent book by social movement leaders. There is a great deal happening in Cuba, Colombia, Brazil, Ecuador and other countries responding to US domination. Stephon Sefton writes that the next five years will be pivotal for the Left in Latin America.

Another top target is Iran where the US has escalated its economic war after Trump violated the nuclear arms agreement. Iran is being very strategic in responding to US aggression in the Strait of Hormuz and the US has been unable to get traditional allies like France and Germany to join with it, causing concerns within the US foreign policy establishment. The US economic war is undermining the Iranian economy and causing tens of thousands of deaths annually.

Iran has never attacked another country nor invaded a country to steal its resources. They are proud of their skills in diplomacy and negotiation, as a veteran of the Iraq-Iran war wrote to President Trump in an open letter. He warns that the initiator of war is the loser, and attacks on Iran will backfire. Foreign Minister Zarif made a similar point with regard to the unilateral coercive measures saying US economic terrorism will backfire against the US.

The Loss of US Supremacy

Aggressive US actions being put in place by Trump, John Bolton, and Mike Pompeo are backfiring. Responses are being put in place that will unravel US economic power, which is more fragile than it seems.

Foreign Minister Zarif summarizes the situation saying, “Last year we did 35 percent of our bilateral transactions with Turkey in our own currencies. And this is happening between us and China, between us and India, between us and Russia, and between us and the countries in the region.”

Countries are responding to dollar domination by trading without the US dollar. JP Morgan’s private bank advised clients that “the US dollar could lose its status as the world’s dominant currency” and urged investors to diversify their currency holdings. New financial structures are being created by Europe, Russia, Iran, China, and others to trade without the dollar. The value of the dollar is in decline and last month Credit Suisse predicted it would continue to fall.

The US political leadership seems unable to change course. The bi-partisans in Washington, DC passed a record-setting two-year military budget that continues to misspend US resources on an arms race and never-ending war rather than on critical needs at home. The failure to rebuild infrastructure, make education from pre-school through college free and available to all, confront the lack of investment in cities and rural areas and confront the crisis of healthcare with national improved Medicare for all will cause a downward US spiral.

The myth of American Exceptionalism is being exposed, as we discuss with Danny Haiphong on Clearing the FOG. We need to prepare for a new era as the 2020’s offer potential for significant social and political transformation if we work at it.

Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers co-direct Popular Resistance.

19 Aug 2019

Source: www.transcend.org

By Richard Falk

18 Aug 2019 – The decision to ban, Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, two sitting members of the U.S. House of Representatives, disgraces the leaders of both the United States and Israel, confirms the illegitimacy of both political parties by their tepid responses, and confirms once more the unhealthy relationship that has evolved between Trump and Netanyahu, these two most reactionary of political figures, and badly reflects on the political atmosphere in the countries they represent. For an American president to encourage a foreign government to deny entry to elected members of Congress is not only unprecedented, harmful to the quality of democratic life in America, and represents a wrongful and extremely distasteful use of his position to engage in nasty partisan reelection politics aimed at the 2020 elections. This outrageous display of further impeachable behavior by Trump is further accentuated by the defamatory, as well as maliciously and demonstrably false assertions in this notorious tweet that Ilhan Omar and Rashid Tlaib hate Israel and all Jews, and nothing can alter their views.

For Netanyahu, the leader of Israel, to reverse an earlier decision to allow these U.S. officials to enter the country in response to Trump’s tweet has just the reverse effect of what is claimed. By seeming to forego Israel sovereign rights in response to an inappropriate interference in Israeli public policy by the American Head of State, Netanyahu reveals to the world Israel’s weakness, not its strength, and in the process casts a dark shadow over Israel own claims of political legitimacy. As well, to give way in this unseemly manner to Trump may also prove to be a tactical blunder in the Israeli context even if it contributes one more sordid chapter to their quid pro quo relationship. Such a craven move by Netanyahu might turn off just enough Israeli voters to tip the balance against the Likud Party in the forthcoming September 17thelections. Not only was Trump’s tweet an effective assault on Israeli sovereign rights, but it also undermines the long absurd propaganda claims of Israel to be a democratic state that values and protects freedom of expression.

After further political turmoil, Israel appeared to relent, but by affixing humiliating conditions, and then only with respect to Rashida Tlaib. The Israeli Minister of Interior, Aryeh Deri, agreeing to a ‘humanitarian’ visit provided the Congresswoman agreed not to promote boycotts of Israel while in the country, her visit restricted to the sole purpose of visiting her 90-year-old grandmother in a small Palestinian village not far from Ramallah. After initially accepting these constraints over the intense objections of her supporters and even her family back in Palestine, Rep. Tlaib reversed her own acceptance of the Israeli conditions, issuing a statement denouncing the constraints she earlier accepted, and refusing to restrict her time in her own Palestinian homeland to a personal visit. Of course, an Israeli rebuke followed from Deri, claiming that her rejection of Israel’s humanitarian gesture exhibits the Israeli-bashing intent that motivated the fact-finding visit. Deri hammered one more nail in Tlaib’s already exposed flesh: “Apparently her hate for Israel overcomes her love for grandmother.” More understandably, Tlaib also was rebuked by many Palestinians for initially accepting Israel’s conditions intense objections to her face from supporters, alleging that she fell into Israel’s trap, “and accepted to demean herself and grovel.”

Seeking to thread this needle separating an ill-timed family ties from her high-profile political image, Tlaib chose these words, “Silencing me and treating me like a criminal is not what she [her grandmother] wants for me—it would kill a piece of me.” Although Tlaib used poor judgment by first agreeing to Israel’s acceptance, her statement explaining her reversal a short time later, had a redemptive effect. Perhaps, more disturbing, was Tlaib’s failure to sustain a posture of public solidarity with Ilhan Omar, whose relevance was ignored in Tlaib’s three-step dance movement.

The distractions caused by this secondary development involving Tlaib should not be allowed to divert attention from the primary outrage resulting from the Trump tweet and Israeli gag order imposed on nonviolent advocates of the BDS Campaign, which in this instance meant banning entry to elected U.S. government officials, supposedly a super-ally.

In my view, Israel’s decision to ban these two members of Congress can at best be considered ‘an unfriendly act’ by Israel toward its unconditional ally. This alone should persuade a self-respecting U.S. Congress to react with much more than a few empty words of disapproval. At the very least, a message of censure should be formally endorsed by the House of Representatives, and delivered to the Israeli government, which strongly discourages further visits to Israel by members of Congress until Israel announces a policy of allowing entry any American official to visit Israel without restrictions. Perhaps, a more suitable alternative would be to urge banning members of the Knesset until Israel welcomes as visitors any and all members of the UN Congress without conditions. A further appropriate step would be to condition any approval of future military or economic assistance to Israel on lifting the ban on future visits by government officials, but also ideally by all American citizens regardless of political views; After all, American taxpayers have long paid their share of the annual aid package of at least $3.8 billion, the greatest per capita amount given to any country in the world.

I believe that by singling these two members of Congress, who happen to be the first two Muslim women ever elected to the House of Representatives, in the manner of Trump’s tweet is a clear instance of racism and hate speech, especially considered in light of his past hostile statements directed at prominent women of color who dare enter political life and oppose his presidency, including his past slanders of these two brave individuals. The language of Trump’s tweet also sought successfully to interfere with their effort to engage in a legitimate legislative undertaking in a discriminatory manner, and included this inflammatory and false allegation: “They hate Israel & all Jewish people, & there is nothing that can be said or done to change their minds.” The tweet ends with this shocking expression of hostility that demeans Trump and the Office of the Presidency rather than its intended targets, Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib. Trump’s final tweeted words– “They are a disgrace!” It is best understood as “You are disgraced.”

The media at least gave major attention to this unfolding political drama, although more in the spirit of narrating a human interest story than offering a damning commentary on the anti-democratic moves of these two ‘illiberal democrats.’ Tom Friedman, never foregoing a chance to deliver fence-setting know-it-all lectures to whomever would listen, managed staked out some liberal territory by condemning the tactical damage to their own countries and especially to the ‘special relationship’ between them as a result of making the Republicans the true friends of Israel, and the Democrats not so clear, hence fraying the edges of bipartisanship when it comes to support for Israel. Friedman also took the opportunity to make it clear that in his view Tlaib and Omar were not better due to their ill-considered support for BDS, which he argued dooms to two-state liberalism, and implies that by their criticism of Israel, the excluded officials are widening Jewish/Islamic cleavages rather than building bridges. [See Friedman, “If You Think Trump is Helping Israel, You’re a Fool,” Aug. 16, 2019]

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.

19 August 2019

Source: www.transcend.org

By Mehdi Hasan

14 Aug 2019 – Forget uranium enrichment: Has Iran mastered time travel?

Last month, the Trump White House put out a typically Orwellian statement, chock-filled with lies, distortions, and half-truths about Iran and the 2015 nuclear deal. One line in particular stood out from the rest: “There is little doubt that even before the deal’s existence, Iran was violating its terms.”

Huh? The Iranians were violating an agreement — before it even existed?

Is it any surprise that even the foreign minister of Iran took to Twitter to join the online ridiculing of the White House?

The Trump administration’s lies on the topic of Iran are now beyond parody. There is, however, nothing funny about them. U.S. government lies can have deadly consequences: Never forget that hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqi men, women, and children, not to mention more than 4,400 U.S. military personnel, are dead today because of the sheer volume of falsehoods told by the George W. Bush administration.

So it is incumbent upon journalists to do in 2019 what we collectively did not do in 2003: Check the facts, challenge the lies, debunk the myths.

Here’s my contribution: a refutation of five of the most dishonest and inaccurate claims from the hawks — claims that brought the United States and Iran to the brink of conflict only a few weeks ago.

Lie #1: Iran Is Building a Nuclear Weapon

President Donald Trump has referred to Iran’s “quest for nuclear weapons” and claimed the Islamic Republic will soon be “on the cusp of acquiring the world’s most dangerous weapons.” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has argued, “Even after the deal, Iran continued to preserve and expand its nuclear weapons program for future use.”

The truth is that while it is accurate to speak of an Iranian nuclear program, which is legal under the Non-Proliferation Treaty, it is an utter lie to speak of an Iranian nuclear weapons program — as countless news organizations have also done.

As long ago as 2007, the U.S. intelligence community produced a National Intelligence Estimate on Iran which offered what then-President George W. Bush would later describe in his memoir as a “stunning” and “eye-popping” conclusion that “tied my hands on the military side”: “We judge with high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program.”

Nothing has changed since then. In January, then-Director of National Intelligence, Trump appointee, and former Republican congressman Dan Coats reaffirmed the consensus view of 16 U.S. intelligence agencies when he told the Senate: “We continue to assess that Iran is not currently undertaking the key nuclear weapons-development activities we judge necessary to produce a nuclear device.”

Nuclear weapons program? What nuclear weapons program?

Lie #2: Iran Violated the Nuclear Deal

The Trump administration has repeatedly claimed that Iran was not sticking to the terms of the agreement — prior to the administration itself violating the agreement by unilaterally pulling out and reimposing economic sanctions on Iran.

The president claimed Iran “committed multiple violations.” Hawkish Republican Sen. Tom Cotton accused Tehran of having “repeatedly violated the terms of the deal.” So did Mark Dubowitz, head of the neoconservative Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, who said, “Iran is incrementally violating the deal.”

In fact, the U.N.’s nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, published more than a dozen reports confirming that Iran was fully complying with the terms of the deal. In April 2018, then-Defense Secretary James Mattis described the nuclear agreement as “pretty robust.” Even the then-head of the Israeli military, Gen. Gadi Eisenkot, said in March 2018 that the deal “with all its faults” was “working.”

Last month, Iran’s foreign minister, Javad Zarif, announced that the country’s stockpiles of enriched low-grade uranium would exceed the 300-kilogram limit laid out in the nuclear agreement — provoking a flurry of condemnations from Western governments and op-ed columnists. But let’s be clear about the order of events: The Iranian violation of one particular aspect of the deal came more than a year after the United States violated the entire deal.

Lie #3: Iran Is the Leading State Sponsor of Terror

“Iran remained the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism,” declared the State Department in September 2018. The Islamic Republic has been “the world’s central banker of international terrorism since 1979,” claimed national security adviser John Bolton a few weeks later. In June, Trump called Iran the “number one terrorist nation” in the world.

This makes no sense. Few would dispute the fact that Tehran has provided support, funds, and weaponry to Hamas and Hezbollah, both of which have been designated “Foreign Terrorist Organizations” by the U.S. government (though it is also worth noting that millions of Palestinians and Lebanese see them as resistance groups that are fighting against Israeli occupiers).

Yet the “war on terror” declared by Bush in the wake of the 9/11 attacks has been fought against Sunni jihadist groups such as Al Qaeda, ISIS, and the Shabab — none of which are backed by Shia-majority Iran.

According to the Global Terrorism Index 2018, compiled by the Institute for Economics & Peace, more than half of the deaths caused by terrorists around the world in 2017 were a result of attacks by four groups: ISIS, the Taliban, the Shabab, and Boko Haram. Again, the experts agree that none of these groups are sponsored by Iran.

In fact, it is Iran’s biggest regional rival, Saudi Arabia, which has been accused of arming, funding, and providing Salafi ideological cover for many of these jihadists — including by this president.

“Who blew up the World Trade Center?” Trump asked on Fox News during the 2016 election campaign. “It wasn’t the Iraqis, it was Saudi — take a look at Saudi Arabia, open the documents.”

If any nation deserves the dubious distinction of being “the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism,” it is the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, not the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Lie #4: Iran Working with Al Qaeda

By conjuring up a fictitious alliance between Iran and Al Qaeda, the Trump administration has found a novel way of both justifying the “number one terrorist nation” tag and providing legal cover for a future U.S. attack on Tehran.

The president has claimed that Tehran “provides assistance to Al Qaeda.” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, during his tenure as CIA chief, suggested it is an “open secret” that “there have been relationships” and “there have been times the Iranians have worked alongside Al Qaeda.”

The Bush administration’s attempt to link secular Saddam Hussein with the theocratic fanatics of Al Qaeda sounded preposterous to many of us back in 2002 and 2003. It was a dumb lie. Yet the Trump administration, and its hawkish outriders at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, now want us to believe that the sectarian Sunni killers of Al Qaeda have formed an alliance with Iran, a hard-line Shia theocracy.

“I’ve never seen any evidence of active collaboration,” Jason Burke, author of “Al-Qaeda: Casting a Shadow of Terror,” told me in 2017. The relationship between Al Qaeda and Iran is “not one of alliance” but “highly antagonistic,” concluded a report by the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point in 2012.

The Iran-Al Qaeda conspiracy theory is an especially dangerous one. The 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force, passed by Congress in the wake of 9/11, allows the president to “use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons.” As Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine told the New York Times in June, Trump administration officials “are looking to bootstrap an argument to allow the president to do what he likes without coming to Congress, and they feel the 2001 authorization will allow them to go to war with Iran.”

Lie #5: War on Iran Would Be Easy

This is perhaps the dumbest lie of all. Trump has threatened “the official end of Iran.” His pal in the Senate, Tom Cotton, has predicted that the United States could win a war with Tehran with just two strikes: “The first strike and the last strike.”

To call such statements absurd would be an understatement. Iran isn’t Iraq. As Col. Larry Wilkerson, former chief of staff to Colin Powell, told me on a recent episode of my podcast, Deconstructed, a conflict with the Islamic Republic “would be horrible”:

Four times almost the size of Iraq, 80 million, not 26 million people, homogeneity to the population that Iraq certainly didn’t have, 51 percent Persian. Terrain … that’s just inhospitable, almost killed Alexander the Great, for example. This would be a vicious, long-term guerrilla campaign waged by the Iranians over 10 or 15 years. And at the end of it, it would look about like Iraq did in 2011. And it would cost $2 trillion and lots of lives and more than anything else, it would require at least a half a million troops.

In other words, it would be a disaster of epic proportions. Let’s be clear: Many of the accusations leveled by Western governments and Western media organizations against Iran — it is a serial violator of human rights; it is complicit in Bashar Assad’s murderous attacks on his own people; it backs Hamas and Hezbollah, it is a promoter of anti-Semitism — are undeniably true. But the five lies that are constantly deployed by politicians and pundits to justify military action against Iran, and even regime change in Tehran, are flat-out false. And if they are not called out, we will soon find ourselves embroiled in another bloody Middle East conflict that will make the war in Iraq look like a walk in the park.

Mehdi Hasan – mehdi.hasan@​theintercept.com

19 August 2019

Source: www.transcend.org

By Sara Flounders

The demonstrations in Hong Kong, now an open confrontation with the People’s Republic of China, have a global impact. What are the forces behind this movement? What provides the funds and who stands to benefit?

The increasingly violent demonstrations in Hong Kong are completely embraced and enthusiastically supported in the U.S. corporate media and all the imperialist political parties in the U.S. and Britain. This should be a danger sign to everyone fighting for change and for social progress. U.S. imperialism is never disinterested or neutral.

The disruptive actions involve helmeted and masked protesters using gasoline bombs, flaming bricks, arson and steel bars, random attacks on buses, and airport and mass transit shutdowns. Among the most provocative acts was an organized break-in at the Hong Kong legislature where “activists” vandalized the building and hung the British Union Jack flag.

U.S., British and Hong Kong’s colonial flags are prominent in these confrontations, along with defaced flags and other symbols of People’s China.

The New York Times described the airport shutdown: “The protests at the airport have been deeply tactical, as the largely leaderless movement strikes at a vital economic artery. Hong Kong International Airport, which opened in 1998, the year after China reclaimed the territory from Britain, serves as a gateway to the rest of Asia. Sleek and well run, the airport accommodates nearly 75 million passengers a year and handles more than 5.1 million metric tons of cargo.” (Aug. 14)

U.S. media have consistently labeled these violent actions “pro-democracy.” But are they?

Even if the leaders of these reactionary actions decide to pull back from the brink and recalibrate their tactics, based on the Chinese government’s strong warnings, it is important to understand a movement that has such strong U.S. support.

China has a right to intervene

It must be strongly stated that China is not invading Hong Kong if it moves against these violent disruptions. Hong Kong is part of China. This is an internal matter, and the call for independence for Hong Kong is an open attack on China’s national sovereignty.

Under Hong Kong’s Basic Law, the constitution for the city, the government is legally allowed to request help from the Chinese People’s Liberation Army.

The Chinese government has announced that it will intervene militarily to defend China’s sovereignty. Top government officials have labeled the most extreme acts as “terrorism” and denounced U.S. support. Several times officials raised the analogy to the Western “color revolutions” that violently overturned governments in Serbia, Ukraine, Libya and Haiti and were attempted in Venezuela and Syria.

“The ideologues in Western governments never cease in their efforts to engineer unrest against governments that are not to their liking, even though their actions have caused misery and chaos in country after country in Latin America, Africa, the Middle East and Asia. Now they are trying the same trick in China,” China Daily explained on July 3.

Liu Xiaoming, China’s ambassador to Britain, told reporters that their country was still acting as Hong Kong’s colonial master. (nbcnews.com, July 4)

“A spokeswoman for China’s Foreign Ministry claimed Tuesday that recent comments from American lawmakers Pelosi (D-Ca.) and McConnell (R-Ky.) demonstrate that Washington’s real goal is to incite chaos in the city,” according to CNBC. “By neglecting and distorting the truth, they whitewashed violent crimes as a struggle for human rights and freedom” (Aug. 14)

Where is U.S. support for other resistance?

Hong Kong police are denounced in the U.S. media for violence, but actually have shown great restraint. Despite months of violent confrontations, with flaming bottles constantly thrown, no one has been killed.

There is no such favorable media coverage or support from U.S. politicians for demonstrations of desperate workers and peasants in Honduras, Haiti or the Philippines, or for the yellow vest movement in France. There is never an official condemnation when demonstrators are killed in Yemen or Kashmir or in weekly demonstrations in Gaza against Israeli occupation.

These struggles receive barely a mention, although in every case scores of people have been killed by police, targeted for assassination or dissappeared.

While Hong Kong protests receive widespread attention, there is no similar coverage of or political support for Black Lives Matter demonstrations in the U.S. or the masses protesting racist Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids and roundups of migrants.

U.S. pressure continues

Despite China’s warnings of possible martial law, strict curfews and military intervention to restore order, protesters have shown no signs of retreat. The U.S. and Britain are determined to propel forward those hostile political forces they have cultivated over the past two decades.

The escalating demonstrations are linked to the U.S. trade war, tariffs and military encirclement of China. Four hundred — half — of the 800 U.S. overseas military bases surround China. Aircraft carriers, destroyers, nuclear submarines, jet aircraft, Terminal High Altitude Area Defense missile batteries, and satellite surveillance infrastructures are positioned in the South China Sea, close to Hong Kong. Media demonization is needed to justify and intensify this military presence.

Encouraging the demonstrations goes hand-in-hand with international efforts to bar Huawei 5G technology, the cancelation of a joint study of cancer and the arrest of Chinese corporate officers. All these belligerent acts are designed to exert maximum pressure on China, divide the leadership, destabilize economic development and weaken China’s resolve to maintain any socialist planning.

Martial law in Hong Kong, a major financial center, especially for international investment funds coming into China, would impact China’s development.

Capitalist economic “freedom”

British imperialism, in the 155 years it ruled Hong Kong, denied rights to millions of workers. There was no elected government, no right to a minimum wage, unions, decent housing or health care, and certainly no freedom of the press or freedom of speech. These basic democratic rights were not even on the books in colonial Hong Kong.

For the past 25 years, including this year, Hong Kong has been ranked No. 1 in the right-wing Heritage Foundation’s list of countries with the “greatest economic freedom” — meaning the least restraints on capitalist profit taking. Hong Kong’s ranking is based on low taxes and light regulations, the strongest property rights and business freedom, and “openness to global commerce and vibrant entrepreneurial climate … no restrictions on foreign banks.” For this Hong Kong is the “freest society in the world.”

This “freedom” means the world’s highest rents and the greatest gap between the super-rich and the desperately poor and homeless. This is what Hong Kong youth face today. But the youth are consciously being misdirected to blame the city administration for the conditions Hong Kong is locked into under the “One Country, Two Systems agreement.”

An unequal colonial treaty

Hong Kong is stolen land. This spectacular deep water port in the South China Sea at the mouth of the Pearl River, a major waterway in south China, was seized by Britain in the 1842 Opium Wars. After negotiations with Britain had dragged on through the 1980s, the British imposed another unequal treaty on the People’s Republic of China.

Under the 1997 “One Country, Two Systems” agreement that officially returned Hong Kong, Kowloon and the New Territories to the PRC, Britain and China agreed to leave “the previous capitalist system” in place for 50 years.

China, determined to reassert its sovereignty over land stolen by imperialist invasion, also needed funds for development. Most money in Asia moved through the Hong Kong banking system. So in 1997 China was anxious to reach a smooth transition that would not destabilize the transfer of investment funds into the 99.5 percent of China that had previously been denied development funds. Since the victorious Chinese Revolution in 1949, China had been sanctioned and blockaded from accessing Western investment and technology.

U.S. and British imperialism took full advantage of the 1997 concession that maintained their economic control of the former colony. Their hope was that Hong Kong could serve, as it had in the past, as an economic battering ram into China.

Their hopes were not realized. In 1997 Hong Kong’s gross domestic product was 27 percent of China’s gross domestic product. It is now a mere 3 percent and falling. Much to U.S. and British frustration, the world’s largest banks are now in China and they are state-owned banks.

What confounds the capitalist class, far more than China’s incredible growth, is that the top 12 Chinese companies on U.S. Fortune 500 list are all state-owned and state-subsidized. They include massive oil, solar energy, telecommunications, engineering and construction companies, banks and the auto industry. (Fortune.com, July 22, 2015)

U.S. corporate power is deeply threatened by China’s level of development through the Belt and Road Initiative and its growing position in international trade and investment.

U.S., Britain built a network of collaborators

When Britain and China signed the One Country, Two Systems agreement, all foreign intervention and colonial claims on Hong Kong were supposed to end. Full sovereignty was to return to China.

However, U.S. and British efforts to undercut Hong Kong’s return began in advance of the signing. Just before the transfer of sovereignty, Britain hastily set up, after 150 years of appointed officials, a partially elected, although still mainly appointed, government. They quickly established and funded political parties, composed of their loyal collaborators.

Millions of dollars were openly and secretly funneled into a whole network of protected social service organizations, political parties, media and social media, student and youth organizations, and labor unions established to undercut support for China and the Communist Party of China.

The Hong Kong Confederation of Trade Unions receives U.S. National Endowment for Democracy (NED) funding, along with British support. It promotes “pro-democracy, independent unions” throughout China. The HKCTU was established in 1990 to counter and undercut the Hong Kong Federation of Trade Unions founded in 1948, which is still the largest union organization with 410,000 members.

The HKFTU suffered years of brutal repression under British colonial rule as it fought for basic protection of workers’ rights. A strike organized by the HKFTU shook British colonial rule in 1967. The strike became a citywide rebellion sparked by mass layoffs of workers from the plastic flower factory. British colonial authorities harshly suppressed the uprising, resulting in 51 deaths and hundreds injured and disappeared. The HKFTU supports China and opposes the reactionary demonstrations.

NED funding = CIA support

Allen Weinstein, a founder of the NED, told the Washington Post in 1991, “A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA.” (Sept. 21, 1991) The NED funds, coordinates and weaponizes nongovernmental organizations and social organizations with the capacity to put tens of thousands of misdirected, idealistic and alienated youth on the streets.

Funding from the NED, the Ford, Rockefeller, Soros and numerous other corporate foundations, christian churches of every denomination, and generous British funding, is behind this hostile, subversive network orchestrating the Hong Kong protests.

The NED bankrolls the Hong Kong Human Rights Movement, the Hong Kong Journalists Association, the Civic Party, Labor Party and Democratic Party. They are members of the Civil Human Rights Front that coordinates the demonstrations.

This role of the NED in China is increasingly harder to obscure. Alexander Rubinstein reported in “American Gov’t, NGOs Fuel and Fund Hong Kong Anti-Extradition Protests” (mintpressnews.com, June 13): “It is inconceivable that the organizers of the protests are unaware of the NED ties to some of its members.” (tinyurl.com/y6nhmapz)

The goal is to promote a hostile and suspicious attitude toward China and toward communism and to foster the false concept of a past democratic Hong Kong with a distinct identity. China Daily warns: “In recent years, there have been warnings that color revolutions are emerging as a new form of warfare employed by the West to destabilize certain countries.” (Aug. 12)

Which system works better?

The Aug. 13 New York Times refers to Hong Kong as a “bastion of civil liberties” to counter “Beijing’s brand of authoritarianism.”

British colonial past is deeply mythologized. Twenty-two years of constant nostalgia for this past, supposedly glorious time has influenced increasingly impoverished youth.

Despite decades of multimillion-dollar Western funding, Hong Kong has a poverty rate of 20 percent (23.1 percent for children) compared to less than 1 percent in mainland China. In the past 20 years, mainland China has lifted countless millions of people out of poverty

Just across the river from Hong Kong sits the city of Shenzhen. It is one of the Special Economic Zones established to lure Western technology. These zones, originally with thousands of labor-intensive factories and millions of workers earning low wages, were centers of capitalist exploitation and enormous profits for U.S. and other global capitalists.

Shenzhen grew from a city of 30,000 in 1979 to a megacity of 20 million, with the largest migrant population in China. Shenzhen had a population three times the size of Hong Kong. With investments via Hong Kong, this new city became a massive polluted factory town with sweatshops spewing out clouds of dark toxic smoke.

In the past five years, through city and national urban planning, Shenzhen is today one of the most livable cities in China, with extensive parks, tree-lined streets and the largest fleet of electric buses in the world (16,000), along with all-electric cabs. Shenzhen aims to have 80 percent of its new buildings green-certified by 2020. It is full of apartment blocks, office towers and modern factories with advanced equipment manufacturing, robotics, automation and giant tech startups.

For the last 10 years wages have been stagnant in Hong Kong while rents have increased 300 percent; it is the most expensive city in the world. In Shenzhen, wages have increased 8 percent every year, and more than 1 million new, public, green housing units at low rates are nearing completion.

The U.S. is demanding that China abandon state support of its industries, the ownership of its banks and national planning. But contrasting the decay, growing poverty and intense alienation in Hong Kong with the green vibrant city of Shenzhen across the river shows that there are two choices for China today, including the angry forces mobilized in Hong Kong: modern socialist planning or a return to the super-exploitation and imperialist domination of the colonial past.

For decades Britain and the U.S. used the people of Hong Kong for cheap labor. Now they are using the same population for cheap political propaganda. This cynical maneuver is just one more weapon in a desperate effort to disrupt China’s further development.

U.S. corporate power is incapable of meeting any of the desperate needs for housing, health care, education and a healthy environment for people here. Instead, in a relentless drive for profits, enormous resources are squandered on militarism to threaten countries around the world.

We must demand: U.S. Hands Off China! U.S. Out of Hong Kong!

Sara Flounders is an American political writer who has been active in progressive and anti-war organizing since the 1960s. She is a member of the Secretariat of Workers World Party, as well as a principal leader of the International Action Center.

16 August 2019

Source: www.workers.org

By Abdus Sattar Ghazali

Shi Jiangtao, a former diplomat writing in the South China Morning Post, says a fresh row between Beijing and New Delhi over India’s decision to split the hotly contested region of Kashmir into two territories could cast fresh uncertainty over bilateral ties amid signs of growing strategic competition.

Parts of Kashmir are claimed by the two regional giants as well as India’s arch-rival Pakistan, and the dispute is one of a number of border issues that have for decades dogged relations between Beijing and New Delhi, according to Shi Jiantao.

Chinese analysts challenged the Modi government’s stance that Kashmir was a domestic issue, Shi Jiangtao said and quoted Zhao Gancheng, a researcher with the Shanghai Institutes for International Studies, as saying that while India’s move appeared to be a change to its domestic law, any attempt to alter the status of Kashmir had international implications, including for Pakistan, which condemned the move as an infringement of a United Nations resolution on the question of Kashmir’s sovereignty.

“Without consulting China or Pakistan in advance, Modi’s move, largely based on his domestic political needs, has further complicated the relations with China,” Zhao said.

“But their different stances on long-lasting border disputes are nothing new and it does not necessarily mean their relations would deteriorate inevitably if both sides manage their conflicting interests well,” said Zhao Gancheng.

Both Zhao and Wang Dehua, an expert on India at the Shanghai Municipal Centre for International Studies, said that with no solutions to their bitter, decades-old border issues in sight, the priority for both countries remained how to prevent their widening competition from spiralling out of control.

“I’m confident that bilateral ties will not be affected by lingering border disputes and other strategic differences, especially amid the escalating rivalry between China and the United States,” Wang said.

A series of high-level China-India exchanges are planned for the coming weeks, including a visit to China on Sunday by Indian External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar.

Observers say his trip is expected to pave the way for Chinese President Xi Jinping’s informal summit with Modi in his parliamentary constituency Varanasi on October 12.

Jammu & Kashmir is controlled by China, India and Pakistan

Brahma Chellaney, professor of strategic studies at the New Delhi-based Centre for Policy Research, said China’s protest busted a widely disseminated fiction on the Kashmir dispute.

“The original princely state of Jammu and Kashmir is divided not just between India and Pakistan. China occupies one-fifth of the original Jammu and Kashmir state,” he said.

Chellaney said the Aksai Chin Plateau, a sparsely populated area about the size of Switzerland in China’s western Xinjiang region, was part of the new Ladakh federal territory.

“China not only holds Aksai Chin but also lays claim to several other areas in Ladakh. Chinese military incursions into Ladakh have increased in recent years,” he said.

Shi Jiangtao quoted Madhav Das Nalapat, director of the Department of Geopolitics at India’s Manipal University, as saying that Beijing should not treat his country as an inferior power to be “lectured to on matters that are wholly within its own purview and competence”.

“Beijing’s comments on India’s domestic decision to fulfil the long-pending demand of the people of Ladakh for administrative separation from Kashmir have harmed the trajectory of Sino-Indian relations,” he said.

On Tuesday, China’s foreign ministry voiced “serious concern” about a highly contentious move a day earlier by India’s parliament, controlled by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ruling party, to split the state of Jammu and Kashmir – which includes the Kashmir Valley and the Ladakh area – into two federal territories.

Jammu and Kashmir will have a state legislature, and Ladakh – which includes Aksai Chin, a Chinese-claimed and held disputed territory – will be ruled directly by New Delhi.

Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said the decision to create a separate territory for Ladakh was unacceptable and undermined China’s territorial sovereignty.

China’s Ambassador to Pakistan Yao Jing, on Wednesday, reiterated China’s stance that Jammu and Kashmir was an “internationally recognized disputed territory”, and criticized the Indian government for unilaterally revoking its special status.

Yao, speaking to journalists, also stressed on the need for compliance with international laws and hoped that both Pakistan and India would “take a suitable decision for the betterment of the Kashmiri people”, Ary News reported.

Yao said that de-escalating tension between Islamabad and New Delhi would be beneficial for the entire region. He said that being a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, China.

Protest Demonstration in Washington

Muslim rights activists, including members of Pakistani-American community, held demonstrations outside the Indian Embassy in Washington to protest against the scrapping of special status to Jammu & Kashmir, The First Post of India reported Wednesday.

Accusing India of human rights violations in Kashmir, protestors sought the intervention of US President Donald Trump and the UN to solve the vexed issue.

They raised slogans against India and PM Narendra Modi. People of Kashmir “deserve independence, deserve their rights and deserve justice, ”Nihad Awad, national executive director of Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), said outside Indian Embassy in Washington.

“There is a humanitarian crisis brewing in the Kashmir valley. The State Department should urge the Indian Govt to immediately reinstate the protected status, lift the siege, and enter into peaceful negotiations,” said Awad.

CAIR is the largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization in US.

The protest was organized by Chicago-based Sound Vision, which claims to be the pioneering Muslim-media organization of North America. Muslim activists also held demonstration outside the Indian Consulate in Chicago.

Members of other Muslim organizations, including the Islamic Leadership Institute of America, Burma Task Force which is working among Rohingya Muslims, and those representing Palestine groups, also participated in demonstration.

The US Council of Muslim Organizations expresses concern

The US council of Muslim Organizations (USCMO), a conglomerate of more than two dozen American Muslim organizations, said in a statement Thursday It is beyond doubt that the longer the uncertainties continue and the longer the United Nations and world powers ignore Jammu & Kashmir, the more dangerous and intractable the crisis becomes in light of the fact that both Indian and Pakistan are nuclear powers. The crisis requires immediate diplomacy that recognizes the explosive situation on the ground in Jammu and Kashmir and takes immediate measures to avert it before it explodes.

The USCMO said Kashmir is under siege and silence is no longer an option. It called the Indian move to change Kashmir’s status as a crisis for the entire humanity.

The organization urged the 7-million strong Muslim American community to write letters and make phone calls to the White House and key members of Congress asking them to support peace in Kashmir and an end to the carnage.

It also advised the American Muslims to request one of the more than 200 World Affairs Councils (WAC) in the United States to arrange a program on Kashmir because of the nuclear danger there the greatest in the world-and unspeakable daily sufferings.

The USCMO statement pointed out that for more than five decades, the people of Indian Held Kashmir have been denied their inalienable right to self-determination. The people of Kashmir are helpless. The international community has abandoned them to the Indian repression.

More than 100,000 killed during the last decade, over 15,000 Kashmiri women violated, over 5,000 Kashmiri youths imprisoned in India, interrogation center and torture cells, more than 20,000 kids orphaned, 8,000 to 10,000 involuntarily disappeared, over 200 totally blinded with pellet guns.

The US council of Muslim Organizations (USCMO) members are:

The American Muslims for Palestine, Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA), Muslim Alliance of North America (MANA), Muslim American Society (MAS), Muslim Legal Fund of America (MLFA), Muslim Ummah of Northern America (MUNA),The Mosque Cares (Ministry of W. Deen Mohammed), Islamic Shura Council of Southern California, Majlis Ash-Shura (Islamic Leadership Council of New York), The Council of Islamic Organizations of Greater Chicago (CIOGC), Muslim Forum of the Pacific Northwest (MFPNW), The North American Imams Federation, United Muslim Relief, ICNA Relief, Baitulmaal, Helping Hands, Mercy Without Limits, United Hands Relief, The Mosque Foundation, Islamic Center of Wheaton (ICW) IL, Islamic Society of Boston, Dar Al-Hijrah Islamic Center Virginia, Islamic Community Center of Illinois, (ICCI), Islamic Center of Detroit (ICD), Together We Serve Inc, International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT), Burmese Rohingya Association of North America, American Muslim Alliance, Islamic Association of North America (IANA) and Islamic Center of Naperville IL.

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

9 August 2019

Source: countercurrents.org