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By Rima Najjar

When the President of Israel and the Jewish son-in-law of the President of the United States make surprisingly thoughtless statements about Palestine, they show us just how deliberately ignorant of history they are — and how uncaring they are for Palestinian suffering at a deeply subconscious level.

Hatim Kanaaneh, Palestinian doctor and author of A Doctor in Galilee: The Life and Struggle of a Palestinian in Israel and a collection of short stories entitled Chief Complaint , doesn’t know what to make of Reuven Rivlin’s slip of the tongue in addressing his guest Mohammad Kiwan, the chairman of the Council of Muslim Leaders in Israel, at an iftar (breaking the fast) meal the Israeli president hosted at his home in celebration of Ramadan. Rivlin says to the Palestinian (with a straight face, apparently), “Your Home Is My Home.”

Kanaaneh imagines Sheikh Kiwan responding: “Had you left it standing in Damoun (Kiwan’s village), you would be welcome to enter it.” Kanaanah goes on to “try to exonerate [Rivlin] of any conscious malicious intent.”

I wish I could do the same for Jared Kushner’s calculated, ignorant and orientalist comment in an interview about the deal to liquidate Palestinian claim to their homeland: “Donald Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner said in an interview that the Palestinians aren’t yet able to govern themselves and declined to promise them an independent state in the White House’s long-awaited Mideast peace plan.”

Malicious intent is all over that statement. He goes on to add condescendingly, “The hope is that they over time will become capable of governing.”

When Kushner says Palestinians are not ready “to govern themselves”, he is really calling upon their hasbara carefully-manufactured image as terrorists. Given Palestinian history of denial and desperation, they are not to be trusted, he is saying. They have yet to accept “civilized” behavior — i.e., mask their rage and pain — and reject “uncivilized behavior.”

Kushner’s statements are so outrageous, I hardly know where to begin to address them. Let me start almost exactly a hundred years ago when the Turks lost Palestine in 1918 and their rule was replaced by a “British Mandate”, an agreement between the Allied Powers in 1923, which also incorporated the ambiguous terms of the Balfour Declaration of 1917. Ever since then, Palestinian Arabs understood that the phrase “Jewish national home” with its religious connotations in the Declaration was merely a euphemism for a Jewish settler-colonial state and that ‘article 2’ of the Mandate, with its reference to “self-governing institutions”, was a fraud.

Similarly, today Kushner’s phrase implying that self-government would come later when the Palestinians were “ready” to govern is meant as a fraudulent “safeguard”. The British Mandate over Palestine of 96 years ago has simply evolved into an “Israeli Mandate”. It is blessed, not by the United Nations, but by an arm-twisting imperial power.

The deal of the 20th century (the Balfour Declaration) triggered the Great Palestinian Arab Rebellion, “probably the boldest challenge to Britain in her colonial half of the twentieth century”, according to Walid Khalidi. The deal of the 21st century will also inevitably inflame Palestinian rebellion — and for exactly the same reasons.

In the 20th century, the Arabs of all the Middle East States expected independence in return for their help to Britain during WWI. They fought against their co-religionists, the Turks, putting their faith in the principle of self-determination as enshrined then in the League of Nations. Eventually, when they were deemed “ready” for self-governance, all the Arab states eventually achieved independence, despite the negative colonialist imagery imposed on them — except for Palestine.

In the 20th century, as in the 21st, Palestine was excluded from the doctrine of self-determination in a clear strategy of dispossession. Balfour had explained to President Wilson in a memorandum: “we are dealing not with the wishes of an existing community but are consciously seeking to reconstitute a new community and definitely building for a Jewish numerical majority in the future.” [At the commencement of the Mandate, there were approximately 486,000 Muslims in Palestine, 84,000 Jews and 71,000 Christians.]

In today’s lingo “Jewish majority” also translates as “Jewish self-determination”, leaving the self-determination of Palestinian Arabs who were there and had always been there, nowhere. Pre-Zionist Palestine as well as the remnant pockets of Palestine today called the “occupied territories” have been portrayed as backward and unproductive awaiting “Western penetration and fecundation”, to use Ella Shoat’s disturbingly apt phrase, which is also morally superior to the Arab masses.

And underpinning the entire Zionist venture in Palestine, as Walid Khalidi explains, is a myth, that when “stripped down to its barest essentials may be presented as two sides of a coin. The obverse carries the Right of Return deriving from Divine Promise. The reverse carries explicitly, the dismissal of the millennia-old ‘Arab’ presence in Palestine.”

This myth played and it still does today a key role, beclouding the strategy of dispossession and tapping a huge reservoir of emotions in the West. Is Jared Kushner a White supremacist who just happens to be Jewish, or is he a Jewish supremacist as in a Jewish nationalist? Today the Jewish State which has sovereignty over all of Mandate Palestine minus Jordan has a Western ideological and political orientation despite the fact that 70% of its population is “Third-World derived” (Palestinians and Mizrahi/Sephardic Jews). Its character is anomalous, as Edward Said so often described it.

What are Trump’s motives and that of countless other American politicians for sponsoring Israel? The answers are deliberately beclouded with the myth, causing Western “purblindness” to use Walid Khalidi’s expressive word.

In Palestine under the Mandate, British policy, similar to U.S. policy today, was never to accept the principle of one-man-one-vote in Palestine, and no self-governing institutions were ever developed for the country at large. It was not possible to question the provisions of the Mandate then, just as it is impossible for Palestinian “negotiators” to question the Jewish national provisions of the Israeli government today.

During the failed Oslo process, money was poured into the occupied territories for “development” and “capacity building”. Numerous reports were and are still being written, with each one beginning, as a matter of framing, with a long list of the obstacles facing both economic development as well as capacity building in the occupied territories, and affirming that only final status negotiations could achieve an enduring development — both political and economic.

It turns out the long-awaited final status is … the status quo!

Rima Najjar is a Palestinian whose father’s side of the family comes from the forcibly depopulated village of Lifta on the western outskirts of Jerusalem. She is an activist, researcher and retired professor of English literature, Al-Quds University, occupied West Bank

6 June 2019

Source: countercurrents.org

By Countercurrents Team

The all-powerful U.S. Dollar is not that lovely thing now-a-days. Significant moves are on to dump the U.S. Dollar.

Media reports said:

Russia and China took another step away from the U.S. Dollar after the two countries agreed to develop bilateral trade using the Ruble and the Yuan.

It was one of the major deals reached after Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping, the presidents of the two countries, held talks in Moscow on Wednesday.

“Russia and China intend to develop the practice of settlements in national currencies,” Putin told journalists at the news conference following the talks.

Putin added that the states have signed intergovernmental agreements on expanding the use of the Yuan and the ruble in bilateral financial operations.

A draft government decree on the national currencies trade was released earlier during the day.

The document stipulates that the two countries will cooperate on development of national payment systems, and facilitate cross-border payments in national and other currencies.

In another major deal, the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF), China’s Alibaba, and Russia’s Mail.Ru Group agreed to invest $382 million into an e-commerce joint venture. Alibaba Group is to provide some $100 million while the Russian side will fund the rest.

Strategic stability

China and Russia vowed to strengthen contemporary global strategic stability in a joint statement signed by Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin.

China and Russia intend to deepen strategic mutual trust and strengthen strategic coordination to firmly safeguard global and regional strategic stability, according to the joint statement.

China and Russia note with alarm the extremely dangerous actions of certain states that, out of their own geopolitical and even commercial benefits, destroy or adapt the existing system of arms control and non-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction to their needs, the statement said.

Three pillars

Both sides urged actively promoting the three pillars – nuclear disarmament, non-proliferation of nuclear weapons and peaceful use of nuclear energy, it said.

The two sides reaffirmed their unwavering commitment to the unconditional implementation of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action on the Iran nuclear issue and declared their rejection of unilateral sanctions by the United States against Iran, according to the statement.

China and Russia also pledged to promote multilateralism and expressed commitment to working together to preserve the system of international mechanisms on non-proliferation and arms control.

Changes unseen in a century

Bottom of Form

Acknowledging the world is undergoing profound changes unseen in a century, Xi said China and Russia shoulder an even greater expectation from the peoples of the two countries and the international community.

Noting that the world today is becoming increasingly uncertain and unstable, Xi said enhancing the China-Russia relationship is the call of history, and a firm strategic choice by both sides.

BRI and EEU

The two sides, according to Xi, should actively push forward their cooperation to dock the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) to promote regional economic integration.

He said China and Russia, both permanent members of the UN Security Council, are going to continue working with the international community to safeguard the international order that is based on the international law with the UN at the core, maintain multilateral trading system and make new contributions to the building of a community with a shared future for humankind.

Putin called on the two countries not to be complacent about what they have achieved, but be dedicated to bettering their bilateral relations.

Putin said Russia is ready to provide China with sufficient oil and gas, and export more soybeans and other farm produce to China, and expects a faster alignment between the Eurasian Economic Union and the BRI.

Xi and Putin exchanged views on the Korean Peninsula situation, the Iran nuclear issue and the Venezuela issue, among others.

Safeguard multilateralism

The two heads of state agreed to step up communication and coordination in the UN, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), the BRICS, the APEC, and the G20 to jointly safeguard multilateralism and the norms of international relations.

Chinese businesses consider moving production to Russia as trade war with US escalates

Small and medium-sized enterprises in China, under pressure from Washington’s trade war, are studying the possibility of moving production to Russia.

That’s according to the secretary general of the China Overseas Development Association (CODA), He Zhenwei, who talked to RIA Novosti ahead of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF).

Trade between China and the US mainly relies on small and medium-sized enterprises, while China’s bilateral trade with Russia accounts for large state-owned enterprises, He said.

“However, many Chinese export-oriented small and medium-sized enterprises are now facing difficulties. The US has already raised its duties on Chinese goods from 10 percent to 25 percent, which is tantamount to closing its doors. In case American consumers agree to pay more out of their pockets, these companies will be able to raise prices on products by 25 percent, which is hardly probable,” He said.

In such harsh conditions, Chinese companies are now struggling to maintain their existence. “They should think about moving production to Russia,” he said.

He added, “Chinese goods produced in Russia could be further sold in the United States and even in Europe.”

Trade between Russia and China saw historic growth last year of around 25 percent to US$108 billion, beating all forecasts.

According to Putin, China is and will continue to be Russia’s number one foreign trade partner.

Putin recently said that the two countries are enjoying their best trade and economic ties ever.

Russia buys quarter of World Yuan reserves in shift from Dollar

A January 9, 2019 Bloomberg report said:

Russia’s central bank dumped $101 billion in U.S. holdings from its huge reserves, shifting into Euros and Yuan last spring amid a new round of U.S. sanctions.

The central bank moved the equivalent of $44 billion each into the European and Chinese currencies in the second quarter, according to a report published on late Wednesday by the Bank of Russia, which discloses the data with a six-month lag. Another $21 billion was invested in the Japanese yen.

“Russia is making a strategic shift in its reserves towards holding fewer dollars and more assets in other currencies,” said Benn Steil, director of international economics at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.

The data reveal a dramatic acceleration in a policy Russia has been pursuing for several years of reducing exposure to assets that could be affected by U.S. restrictions.

Russian holdings of U.S. Treasuries dropped by about $81 billion in May and June of 2018, according to U.S. data.

Russia is not alone

Russia isn’t alone in its bid to reduce reliance on the world’s reserve currency amid increasing attempts by Washington to use economic leverage for geopolitical ends.

In a deepening trade war with America, China sold a large portion of its U.S. Treasury holdings last year and officials in Europe put forward proposals to increase the use of the euro in regional transactions.

“We aren’t ditching the dollar, the dollar is ditching us,” Russian President Vladimir Putin said in November. “The instability of dollar payments is creating a desire for many global economies to find alternative reserve currencies and create settlement systems independent of the dollar. We’re not the only ones doing it, believe me.”

Russia’s reserves are among the 10 largest in the world, totaling $458 billion at the end of June 2018. The data suggest Russia accounted for 90 percent of the inflows into the Chinese bond market in the first half of 2018, analysts at Morgan Stanley wrote in a research note published Thursday.

India and UAE agree to trade in local currencies

Citing the Indian Embassy in Abu Dhabi, an earlier report said:

India and UAE have inked a currency swap agreement to boost trade and investment without involvement of a third currency like the US dollar.

The swap is for an amount of two billion UAE dirham or 35 billion Indian rupees (US$495 million)

“The bilateral currency swap agreement between India and UAE is expected to reduce the dependency on hard currencies like the US dollar,” the embassy said.

“It is also expected to give a push for the local currencies of the two nations and may reduce the impact of volatility in exchange rate arising from the dependency on a third currency. It is also expected to reduce the transmission costs arising from exchange rate risk,” the embassy added.

With more than $50 billion in bilateral trade, the two countries are each other’s largest trade partners.

India’s foreign direct investment into the UAE was $6.6 billion in 2017 while the UAE’s investment in India stood at $5.8 billion

UAE is the sixth-largest oil exporter for India, with non-oil trade between them accounting for $34 billion.

Dollar-free monetary union: Russia-led free trade zone may adopt single currency

Another media report said:

The members of the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) may abandon border procedures and adopt a common currency in the future by analogy with the European Union (EU), according to the President of Kyrgyzstan Sooronbay Jeenbekov.

Jeenbekov noted, “Like in the European Union we have no borders, no border guards. All our nationals are freely traveling across the Union and are entitled to same services, no matter which – medical, educational.”

According to him, the EAEU member countries should work towards boosting competition with third countries.

Jeenbekov said, “I believe that in 2040, the economy of our countries will be the same as in the European Union, the US, Japan and in other leading nations.”

The EEU, which is based on the Customs Union of Russia, Kazakhstan, and Belarus, was established in 2015. Armenia and Kyrgyzstan later joined it. In 2016, Vietnam officially became the first non-regional country to join the bloc. The union is designed to ensure the free movement of goods, services, capital and workers between member countries.

More than 40 countries and international organizations including China, Indonesia, and Israel, as well as some South American countries, have expressed interest in a free-trade deal with the EEU. The trade bloc is also negotiating with South Korea, Egypt, and India.

In 2017, the Central Bank of Russia (CBR) proposed to create a joint digital currency for BRICS countries and the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU). It could replace the US dollar and other currencies used in settlements among the member states, CBR said.

6 June 2019

Source: countercurrents.org

By Kevin Reed

In a June 1 interview with ABC Radio Adelaide, UN Special Rapporteur on Torture Nils Melzer warned that Julian Assange could die in prison if his persecution is not stopped immediately.

Last week, Melzer issued a scathing denunciation of Assange’s persecution, calling it “psychological torture.”

Reporter Philip Williams asked Melzer, “If your calls are ignored, do you fear that he could actually die in prison?” Melzer replied, “Absolutely, yes. That’s a fear that I think is very real … the cumulative effects of that constant pressure, it will become unpredictable how this will end. What we see is that his health condition is currently deteriorating to the point that he cannot even appear at a court hearing. This is not prosecution; this is persecution and it has to stop here and it has to stop now.”

The full radio interview with Melzer can heard here. WikiLeaks publisher and journalist Julian Assange was sentenced to 50 weeks in jail on May 1 by a British court in a vindictive show trial on fabricated charges of “skipping bail.” Following his eviction from the Ecuadorian embassy on April 11, where Assange had sought asylum and was effectively detained for seven years, he was arrested by British authorities and is now held in Her Majesty’s Prison Belmarsh in southeast London.

Melzer’s comment about Assange’s dire condition follows a statement he issued on May 31 demanding an immediate end to the “collective persecution” by the United States and its allies.

The UN torture expert visited Assange in Belmarsh on May 9 along with a medical doctor and psychologist in order to evaluate the condition of the heroic journalist. Melzer issued his statement just one week after the US Justice Department announced 17 counts on charges of violating the Espionage Act—which carry up to 170 years in prison if convicted—and renewed the demand that the WikiLeaks publisher be extradited to the US for prosecution.

Melzer warned that the nine-year “persistent and progressively severe abuse” of Assange by US, British and Ecuadorian authorities and the threat of his being extradited to the US would pose “a real risk of serious violations of his human rights, including his freedom of expression, his right to a fair trial and the prohibition of torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.”

Speaking from Geneva during his interview with ABC Radio Adelaide, Melzer reiterated his warning that Assange cannot get a fair trial in the US “in light of the prevalent prejudice against him and the image of the public enemy that has been portrayed over there.”

In answering a question from Williams about the role of the Australian government in the unfolding attacks on Assange, Melzer said, “The Australian government has been the glaring absentee in this case from my perspective. I would have expected Australia to take steps to protect their national … to protect him from this excessive persecution that he is experiencing currently.”

Assange is the target of an international campaign of vilification, persecution and silencing due to WikiLeaks’ exposure to the people of the world both the war crimes American imperialism and its allies.

Melzer’s warning points to the urgent need to organize a struggle to defend Assange. We urge all of our readers to take up this fight .

Originally published by WSWS.org

6 June 2019

Source: countercurrents.org

By Binu Mathew

Eid Mubarak!

I’m writing this article on the eve of Eid. Two weeks after the Modi 2.0 government was installed in India.

When the election results came out on May 23 I was baffled. How come a government which put India through enormous pain through its anti-people policies like Demonetisation which killed over 200 people and destroying small scale industries with job loss for millions, ignoring of farmer’s distress which killed over 300,000 farmers through suicide, divisive policies which divided India on religious, ethnic and linguistic lines, painful Good and Services Tax (GST) which put small traders under severe stress, can come back to power?

Several theories were floated. Electronic Voting Machine (EVM) tampering, the willful support of Election Commission of India for the ruling regime, money power, mass media support, fake news….All these must have played a part. However, none of these arguments are convincing.

Then why? How?

I believe the RSS project of Hindu Rashtra is reaping rich dividends for their loyal work for over nine decades. RSS or Rashtriya Swayam Sevak Sangh has about 60,000 branches across India and its ideology is to make India into a Hindu Rashtra. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is the political wing of RSS.

RSS openly challenges the constitution of India and wants to make Manusmriti (Manu’s code) as the constitution of India. Manusmriti dehumanizes everyone except the upper castes, including women of all castes.

RSS ideologue Golwalkar wrote in his book “Bunch of Thoughts”

“The most important and effective step will be to bury deep for good all talk of a federal structure of our country’s Constitution, to sweep away the existence of all ‘autonomous’ or semi-autonomous ‘states’ within the one state viz., Bharat and proclaim ‘One Country, One State, One Legislature, One Executive’ with no trace of fragmentational, regional, sectarian, linguistic or other types of pride being given a scope for playing havoc with our integrated harmony. Let the Constitution be re-examined and re-drafted, so as to establish this Unitary form of Government and thus effectively disprove the mischievous propaganda indulged in by the British and so unwittingly imbibed by the present leaders, about our being just a juxtaposition of so many distinct ‘ethnic groups’ or ‘nationalities’ happening to live side by side and grouped together by the accident of geographical contiguity and one uniform supreme foreign domination.”

Golwalker also wrote in his book “We or our nationhood defined”,

“From the standpoint sanctioned by the experience of shrewd nations, the non-Hindu people in Hindustan must either adopt the Hindu culture and language, must learn to respect and revere Hindu religion, must entertain no idea but the glorification of Hindu nation i.e. they must not only give up their attitude of intolerance and ingratitude towards this land and its age long traditions, but must also cultivate the positive attitude of love and devotion instead; in one word, they must cease to be foreigners or may stay in the country wholly subordinated to the Hindu nation, claiming nothing, deserving no privileges, for less any preferential treatment, not even the citizen’s rights.”

This is actually happening NOW. A de facto HINDU RASHTRA is here. Whether it will stay or not is OUR choice.

By the way who are the Indians? The name India is derived from Indus river, which originates from the Old Persian word Hindush. The ancient Greeks referred to the Indians as Indoi which translates as “The people of the Indus”. Actually it was the colonial westerners gave the name “India” to the subcontinent. There is no historical evidence that India belongs to Hindus.

Tony Joseph in his path breaking book “Early Indians” proved that India is a land of migrants. All Indians are migrants. The earliest civilization, “The Indus Valley civilization” was kick started by West Asian migrants. All others, including the Aryan Hindus are migrants. India in its millennia old history has accepted migrants from all parts of the world and absorbed religion, culture and languages. This is this history that RSS and BJP want to rub aside.

India is a land of varied cultures. Originator of great religions like Budhism and Jainism and Sikhism. A great number of Indians adopted Islam, making it the second-largest Muslim population in the world after Indonesia. Indian constitution has recognized 22 official languages. Thousands of other languages are being spoken by, from a few thousand to many millions. RSS and BJP want to rub it all away. Their motto is ‘’HINDU, HINDI, HINDUSTAN’’.

This kind of monolithic culture is the foundation of the Hindu Rashtra envisioned by the RSS ideologues. It seems like decades long hard work by RSS is coming to fruition. Unless we step up!

Only way to keep India as we know it is to celebrate the cultural, linguistic, religious diversity of India. That’s the only way we can undermine the Hindu Rashtra project by the RSS. If we cannot do it we can say good bye to India and welcome HINDUSTAN.

So, once again I say Eid Mubarak. Let’s celebrate each other’s festivals more than ours. That’s the only way we can save India from falling into a fascist, Hindu theocratic, failed state.

Binu Mathew is the Editor of www.countercurrents.org. He can be reached at editor@countercurrents.org

4 June 2019

Source: countercurrents.org

By Abdus Sattar Ghazali

The 14th Islamic Summit Conference ended Friday Night (May 31) in Mecca. A final statement accused Iran of supporting Yemen’s Houthi rebel group; illegally occupying three islands in the Persian Gulf; and “interfering” in the domestic affairs of both Syria and Bahrain.

Not surprisingly, the Mecca summit reiterated support for Saudi/western-backed Yemeni government of President Abdu Rabuh Mansour Hadi which is fighting the Houthi rebels.

The OIC summit condemned a “terrorist attack” on Saudi Arabia’s oil pumping stations which targeted global oil supplies. The summit statement also condemned “sabotage operations” against four vessels near the territorial waters of the United Arab Emirates, which it said threatened international maritime traffic safety.

Tehran rejects OIC statement

Iran on Friday rejected a final communique issued following a Mecca-hosted summit of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), saying it did not reflect the views of all OIC member-states, according to Iran’s state-run IRNA news agency.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Abbas Mousavi accused summit host Saudi Arabia of “exploiting the holy month of Ramadan, and the holy city of Mecca, to level allegations against Iran.”

Mousavi also reportedly accused Riyadh of “missing the opportunity provided by International Quds Day and the OIC summit to press for the rights of the Palestinian people… and choosing instead to sow discord among Muslim and regional countries”.

Saudi Arabia’s behavior at Thursday’s summit, he added, “are in line with the futile efforts of the U.S. and the Zionist regime against… Iran”.

Mousavi went on to voice hope that leaders of OIC member-states “will not allow the Palestinian issue to be overshadowed by divisive policies”.

Syria also rejects OIC statement

Syria is rejecting the final statement of the Arab emergency summit held in Saudi Arabia, which criticizes what it calls Iranian intervention into Syrian affairs.

Syria says the statement is an unacceptable interference in the internal affairs of Syria.

A Syrian Foreign Ministry statement said the Iranian presence is “legitimate because it came at the request of the Syrian government and contributed to support Syria’s efforts in combating terrorism supported by some of the participants in this summit.”

The Syrian statement said the summit should instead condemn the involvement of other countries in Syrian affairs, “which lacked legitimacy and legality” and provided “unlimited support in various forms to terrorist groups and prolonging the crisis in Syria.”

The leader of the Iranian-backed Hezbollah group told supporters in Lebanon on Friday the Mecca summits are a Saudi call for help from Arab countries after Saudi Arabia failed to win in Yemen, where the kingdom and its allies have been at war since 2015 against Iranian-allied Yemeni rebels.

“It is a sign of failure,” Hassan Nasrallah said. “These summits are calls for help …that express the failure and the inabilities in confronting the Yemeni army, popular resistance and people.”

OIC summit condemns any decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital

The OIC summit condemned any position adopted by an international body that supports prolonging occupation, including a U.S. decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, it said on Saturday.

The Mecca summit also refused all illegal Israeli measures aimed at changing facts in occupied Palestinian territories including Jerusalem, and undermining the two-state solution, it said in a statement.

The summit urged member countries to take “appropriate measures” against countries that move their embassies to Jerusalem, it added.

The summit refused any proposal for peaceful settlement that did not accord with Palestinians’ legitimate inalienable rights, the statement said.

Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani had his own message for OIC leaders ahead of the summit, urging them to stay focused on the rights of Palestinians.

In a letter published online Friday, Rouhani said Muslim leaders should not let the importance of Palestinian statehood be “marginalized” in the face of the Trump administration’s forthcoming Israeli-Palestinian plan.

Rouhani also noted in the letter he was not invited to the Islamic summit, but expressed Iran’s readiness to work with all Muslim leaders to confront the White House’s so-called “Deal of the Century.”

Syrian Golan Heights

The Islamic summit condemned President Trump’s decision to annex the occupied Syrian Golan Heights into Israeli territory. Paragraph 17 of the joint communiqué said:

“The conference called for Israel’s full withdrawal from the Occupied Syrian Golan to the borders of 4 June 1967, in accordance with Security Council Resolutions Nos. 242 (1967) and 338 (1973), the principle of ‘land for peace, the terms of reference of the Madrid Peace Conference and the Arab Peace Initiative adopted by the Arab Summit in Beirut in 2002. It also affirmed non-recognition of any decision or action aiming to change the legal and demographic status of the Golan. The Conference specifically rejected and condemned the American President’s decision to annex the Golan into Israeli territory, dismissing it as null and void and of no legal effect.”

Tellingly, the US State Department spokesperson Morgan Ortagus confirmed Thursday that the State Department has changed its maps to show the disputed Golan Heights as Israeli territory. Ortugas statement came after Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he had received one of the updated versions.

“I know we have for sure we updated the maps,” Ortagus said when asked whether the State Department had taken such steps after President Donald Trump in March officially recognised the Golan Heights as part of Israel.

Fifty years on

The Islamic summit convenes every three years to make decisions about how to confront and contain conflicts and crises in Muslim-majority countries. This year it coincides with two emergency summits – The Arab League and Gulf Cooperation Council summits- called for by Saudi King Salman Ben Abdulaziz amid heightened tensions with Iran.

On September 25, 1969, representatives from 24 Muslim-majority countries held a summit in Rabat, Morocco, in response to the burning of al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem. Fifty years later, the summit still regularly convenes, with the latest set to take place in Mecca on May 31, 2019.

The historic Rabat meeting resulted in a decision to establish the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), which was designated to handle the Islamic Summit, turning it into a permanent and fundamental executive body.

At the 13th Summit, held in Istanbul in 2016, a statement was issued stressing the need for “cooperative relations” between Iran and Islamic countries, including “abstaining from the use or threat of force.”

The OIC is the second largest intergovernmental institution, just after the UN, with 57 member states from four continents. It is the voice of 1.5 billion Muslims around the world.

OIC members represent 22 per cent of the world population, have 2 per cent of the world’s GDP, 1.3 per cent of the world trade and only 1.5 per cent of the investments. Twenty five per cent of OIC population does not have access to medical facilities or safe drinking water.

Half of the population lives below the poverty line classified as the most poor. No Muslim country is in the top list of the Human Development Index or in any other global economic indicators.

This depressing picture of the Islamic countries is not limited to the economic and social spheres, in the realm of education and technology the facts are equally disappointing.

The OIC member countries possess 70 per cent of the world’s energy resources and 40 per cent of available raw material but their GDP is only 5 per cent of the world GDP. Muslim countries miserably lag behind in education and technology.

They produce only 500 PhDs each year as compared to 3,000 in India and 5,000 in the United Kingdom. None of their educational or research institutions or centres of excellence find place in the top 100 in the world.

The OIC today has 57 Muslim member-states and has held 14 summits in response to the challenges confronting the Muslim world. Since its establishment, the Islamic world has suffered several major catastrophes which have reduced it to almost a non-factor in international politics.

The breakup of Pakistan through armed intervention by India in 1971, the invasion of Lebanon by Israel in 1982, the Iran-Iraq war (1980-88), the US invasion of Iraq 2003, recent US attempts for regimes change in Iran and Syria have dealt a mortal blow to the unity, dignity and sovereignty of the Muslim world.

The OIC has failed to respond meaningfully to any of these crises or demonstrate any unity of thought and action apart from issuing high-sounding declarations at the end of each summit. Nothing was done to contain the crises or avert the tragedies. The OIC remained merely a silent spectator.

Limited influence

While the OIC has been known for its cultural and social projects, its political influence has been relatively limited.

“Typically, in the past, the OIC has been effective in promoting cultural and educational projects across the Muslim world,” Sami Hamdi, a Middle East expert, told Al Jazeera. “However, its political capabilities remain severely limited.”

According to Mamoon Alabbasi, a political analyst focusing on the Middle East and North Africa region, while the OIC has relative political weight, its rhetoric does not always translate into action on the ground.

“With 57 member states… the OIC carries a [relatively] heavy political weight… [and] impact. But how much change that makes on the ground is not always clear,” said Alabbasi.

Adding to its political limitations is its inability to unify its stance on issues, say experts.

“Like other international organizations, such as the UN General Assembly, the OIC is supposed to have a unified voice but it does not because policies of the individual countries greatly differ,” said Alabbasi.

“Most importantly, the OIC doesn’t have a unified voice because most of its member countries are not democracies. So, while their populations may be in agreement [over an issue] they do not always represent the views of their populations.”

Hamdi agrees: “The OIC has a broad spectrum of different cultures. This means that on the political front, even if there is a united stance, it means very little, practically.”

Final Analysis

The Palestinian cause and support for Somalia, Djibouti, poor Islamic countries, and oppressed minorities have been permanent points in the Islamic Summit’s resolutions during its 50 years history. The 14th Islamic summit issued three documents: A joint communiqué of 18 pages with 102 paragraph, a special resolution on the Cause of Palestine and Al-Quds and a three page Mecca Declaration.

Among other issues, the Mecca Declaration stressed “the importance of standing by those Muslims in non-Islamic countries who suffer persecution, injustice, coercion and aggression; extending full support to them and adopting their causes in international forums to ensure the realization of their political and social rights in their countries and develop programs and mechanisms that would guarantee their integration in their societies without any discrimination.”

Rohingya Muslims of Myanmar

The Conference condemned the inhumane situation in which the Rohingya Muslim community lives and called for urgent action to end acts of violence and all brutal practices targeting this minority and give it all its rights without any discrimination or racial profiling. It emphasized that the Government of Myanmar is fully responsible for the protection of its citizens and underscored the need to stop the use of military power in Rakhine State immediately.

The Conference urged the Government of Myanmar to take practical, time bound and concrete steps to restore the citizenship of Rohingya IDPs and forcibly displaced Rohingya Muslim Minority Community who were deprived of their nationality, with all associated rights, especially the right to full citizenship, and to allow and facilitate the return in safely, security and dignity of all Rohingyas internally and externally displaced, including those forced into taking shelter in Bangladesh.

The Conference condemned the inhumane situation in which the Rohingya Muslim community lives and called for urgent action to end acts of violence and all brutal practices targeting this minority and give it all its rights without any discrimination or racial profiling. It emphasized that the Government of Myanmar is fully responsible for the protection of its citizens and underscored the need to stop the use of military power in Rakhine State immediately.

The Conference urged the Government of Myanmar to take practical, time bound and concrete steps to restore the citizenship of Rohingya IDPs and forcibly displaced Rohingya Muslim Minority Community who were deprived of their nationality, with all associated rights, especially the right to full citizenship, and to allow and facilitate the return in safely, security and dignity of all Rohingyas internally and externally displaced, including those forced into taking shelter in Bangladesh.

The Conference insisted on the importance of conducting international, independent and transparent investigations into the human rights violations in Myanmar, including sexual violence and aggression against children, and to hold accountable all those responsible for these brutal acts in order to make justice to the victims. The Conference affirmed its support for the ad hoc ministerial committee on human rights violations against the Rohingyas in Myanmar, using all international legal instruments to hold accountable the perpetrators of crimes against the Rohingya. In this connection, the Conference urged upon the ad hoc Ministerial Committee led by the Gambia to take immediate measures to launch the case at the International Court of Justice on behalf of the OIC. It further called for ensuring free and unrestricted access to humanitarian assistance by affected persons and communities.

Sri Lanka

The Conference expressed deep concern and strong condemnation of the recent acts of violence against Muslims in Sri Lanka and urged the Government of this country to hold accountable to perpetrators of these acts, bring them to justice and counter firmly the spread of rhetoric of hatred and intolerance, while ensuring the security and safety of the Muslim community in Sri Lanka.

Jammu and Kashmir

The Conference reaffirmed its principled support for the people of Jammu and Kashmir for the realization of their legitimate right to self-determination, in accordance with relevant UN resolutions. It condemned the recent outbreaks of violence in the region and invited India to implement the relevant Security Council resolutions to settle its protracted conflict with its neighbor. It further welcomed the recommendations included in the UN report on Kashmir issued in June 2018; called for the expedited establishment of a UN commission of inquiry to investigate into the grave human rights violations in Kashmir, and called on India to allow this proposed commission and international human rights organizations to access Indian-administered Kashmir.

Islamophobia is a form of racism

The Conference noted with concern that Islamophobia, as a form of racism and religious discrimination today, has spread across the world, as evidenced by the increase in religious intolerance, negative stereotyping, hatred and violence against Muslims. In this connection, the Conference encouraged the United Nations and other regional and international organizations to declare 15 March an international day to combat Islamophobia.

It condemned roundly the horribly appalling terrorist attack, perpetrated out of hatred for Islam, against innocent worshipers at Al-Noor and Linwood mosques in the New Zealand city of Christchurch on 15 March 2019. In the meantime, it expressed appreciation to the Government of New Zealand for its unequivocal condemnation of the terrorist attacks, hailing the firm and clear position of the Prime Minister of New Zealand, who displayed compassion toward and sympathy with the Muslim community in their bereavement. The Conference equally paid tribute to the wider New Zealand society for showing such a deep empathy with the families of the victims and the Muslim community.

The Conference urged all countries with Muslim minorities, communities and migrants to refrain from all policies, statements and practices associating Islam with terrorism, extremism or dangers posing a threat to society.

The Conference called upon all Member States, in coordination with the General Secretariat, to adopt a comprehensive OIC Strategy on Combating Islamophobia, in order to establish a legally binding international instrument to prevent the growing trend of intolerance, discrimination and hatred on the grounds of religion and faith.

The Conference welcomed the establishment of the OIC Contact Group on Peace and Dialogue and called on the Contact Group to develop a Plan of Action on Combating Islamophobia in preparation to the Contact Group meeting at the ministerial level at the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in September 2019.

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

3 June 2019

Source: countercurrents.org

By Jeffrey Sachs

公众号【侃英语】整理（id：KanEnglish）

(CNN) China is not an enemy. It is a nation trying to raise its living standards through education, international trade, infrastructure investment, and improved technologies. In short, it is doing what any country should do when confronted with the historical reality of being poor and far behind more powerful countries. Yet the Trump administration is now aiming to stop China’s development, which could prove to be disastrous for both the United States and the entire world.

China is being made a scapegoat for rising inequality in the United States. While US trade relations with China have been mutually beneficial over the years, some US workers have been left behind, notably Midwestern factory workers facing competition due to rising productivity and comparatively low (though rising) labor costs in China. Instead of blaming China for this normal phenomenon of market competition, we should be taxing the soaring corporate profits of our own multinational corporations and using the revenues to help working-class households, rebuild crumbling infrastructure, promote new job skills and invest in cutting-edge science and technology.

We should understand that China is merely trying to make up for lost time after a very long period of geopolitical setbacks and related economic failures. Here is important historical background that is useful to understand China’s economic development in the past 40 years.

In 1839, Britain attacked China because it refused to allow British traders to continue providing Chinese people with addictive opium. Britain prevailed, and the humiliation of China’s defeat in the First Opium War, ending in 1842, contributed in part to a mass uprising against the Qing Dynasty called the Taiping Rebellion that ended up causing more than 20 million deaths. A Second Opium War against Britain and France ultimately led to the continued erosion of China’s power and internal stability.

Toward the end of the 19th century, China lost a war to the newly industrializing Japan, and was subjected to yet more one-sided demands by Europe and the United States for trade. These humiliations led to another rebellion, followed by yet another defeat, at the hands of foreign powers.

China’s Qing Dynasty fell in 1911, after which China quickly succumbed to warlords, internal strife and Japan’s invasion of China beginning in 1931. The end of World War II was followed by civil war, the creation of the People’s Republic of China in 1949 and then the upheavals of Maoism, including millions of deaths from famine in the Great Leap Forward, which ended in the early 1960s, and the mass destabilization of the Cultural Revolution and its aftermath until 1977.

China’s rapid development on a market basis therefore started only in 1978, when Deng Xiaoping came to power and launched sweeping economic reforms. While China has seen incredible growth in the past four decades, the legacy of more than a century of poverty, instability, invasion and foreign threats still looms large. Chinese leaders would like to get things right this time, and that means they are unwilling to bow to the United States or other Western powers again.

China is now the second-largest economy in the world, when GDP is measured at market prices. Yet it is a country still in the process of catching up from poverty. In 1980, according to IMF data, China’s GDP per capita was a mere 2.5% of the United States, and by 2018 had reached only 15.3% of the US level. When GDP is measured in purchasing-power-parity terms, by using a common set of “international prices” to value GDP in all countries, China’s income per capita in 2018 was a bit higher at 28.9% of the United States.

China has roughly followed the same development strategy as Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore before it. From an economic standpoint, it is not doing anything particularly unusual for a country that is playing catch up.The constant US refrain that China “steals” technologies is highly simplistic.

Countries that are lagging behind upgrade their technologies in many ways, through study, imitation, purchases, mergers, foreign investments, extensive use of off-patent knowledge and, yes, copying. And with any fast-changing technologies, there are always running battles over intellectual property. That’s true even among US companies today — this kind of competition is simply a part of the global economic system. Technology leaders know they shouldn’t count on keeping their lead through protection, but through continued innovation.

The United States relentlessly adopted British technologies in the early 19th century. And when any country wants to close a technology gap, it recruits know-how from abroad. The US ballistic missile program, as it is well known, was built with the help of former Nazi rocket scientists recruited to the United States after World War II.

If China were a less populous Asian country, say like South Korea, with a little more than 50 million people, it would simply be hailed by the United States as a great development success story — which it is. But because it is so big, China refutes America’s pretensions to run the world. The United States, after all, is a mere 4.2% of the world’s population, less than a fourth of China’s. The truth is that neither country is in a position to dominate the world today, as technologies and know-how are spreading more quickly across the globe than ever before.

Trade with China provides the United States with low-cost consumer goods and increasingly high-quality products. It also causes job losses in sectors such as manufacturing that compete directly with China. That is how trade works. To accuse China of unfairness in this is wrong — plenty of American companies have reaped the benefits of manufacturing in China or exporting goods there. And US consumers enjoy higher living standards as a result of China’s low-cost goods. The US and China should continue to negotiate and develop improved rules for bilateral and multilateral trade instead of stoking a trade war with one-sided threats and over-the-top accusations.

The most basic lesson of trade theory, practice and policy is not to stop trade — which would lead to falling living standards, economic crisis and conflict. Instead, we should share the benefits of economic growth so that the winners who benefit compensate the losers.

Yet under American capitalism, which has long strayed from the cooperative spirit of the New Deal era, today’s winners flat-out reject sharing their winnings. As a result of this lack of sharing, American politics are fraught with conflicts over trade. Greed comprehensively dominates Washington policies.

The real battle is not with China but with America’s own giant companies, many of which are raking in fortunes while failing to pay their own workers decent wages. America’s business leaders and the mega-rich push for tax cuts, more monopoly power and offshoring — anything to make a bigger profit — while rejecting any policies to make American society fairer.

Trump is lashing out against China, ostensibly believing that it will once again bow to a Western power. It is willfully trying to crush successful companies like Huawei by changing the rules of international trade abruptly and unilaterally. China has been playing by Western rules for the past 40 years, gradually catching up the way that America’s Asian allies did in the past. Now the United States is trying to pull the rug out from under China by launching a new Cold War.

Unless some greater wisdom prevails, we could spin toward conflict with China, first economically, then geopolitically and militarily, with utter disaster for all. There will be no winners in such a conflict. Yet such is the profound shallowness and corruption of US politics today that we are on such a path.

A trade war with China won’t solve our economic problems. Instead we need homegrown solutions: affordable health care, better schools, modernized infrastructure, higher minimum wages and a crackdown on corporate greed. In the process, we would also learn that we have far more to gain through cooperation with China rather than reckless and unfair provocation.

27 May 2019

Jeffrey David Sachs is an American economist, public policy analyst and former director of The Earth Institute at Columbia University, where he holds the title of University Professor, the highest rank Columbia bestows on its faculty.

By Peter Koenig

The 67th Bilderberg Meeting is taking place in Montreux, Switzerland from 30 May – 2 June 2019, where the about 130 invitees – so far confirmed – from 23 countries, are staying at one of Switzerland’s most luxurious venues, the Montreux Palace hotel. About a quarter of the attendees are women.

The Bilderberg meetings started at the onset of the Cold War, as a discussion club of American and European leaders, a fortification against communism, in clear text, against the Soviet Union. The first event took place in 1954 at the Bilderberg hotel in the Dutch town of Oosterbeek. Ever since, meetings of the Bilderberg Group were held annually, in different locations in the western world, most of them, though, in North America.

It’s not a coincidence that the Bilderbergers meet in Switzerland. Switzerland is one of the Group’s favored host country outside the US. Switzerland hosted their gatherings at least five times before this upcoming Montreux event (1960 – Palace Hotel, Bürgenstock; 1970 – Grand Hotel Quellenhof, Bad Ragaz, St. Gallen; 1981 – Palace Hotel, Bürgenstock; 1995 – Palace Hotel, Bürgenstock; 2011 – Suvretta House, St. Moritz).

The conferences of the Bilderbergers are the most secretive events, managed by those who pull the strings behind world leaders – politicians, corporate CEOs, big finance, and other business execs – artists, and the who-is-who of the world elite. And we are talking of the western world. Other than about ten attendees from Turkey, Poland, Bulgaria and Estonia, participants are North Americans or Europeans. The rest of the world doesn’t count.

The Bilderbergers are strictly a western dominion. The farthest east they go is Turkey. It’s like the carrot to Erdogan, hoping to draw NATO Turkey back into the camp of the west. But how much longer? – Turkey, forever wavering between east and west, has more than one leg already in the east – eyeing entry into the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) – not exactly the eastern version of the Bilderbergers, because the SCO is an open forum for economic development policies and defense strategies, no secrets, no manipulation western style.

This year’s Bilderberg meeting will be chaired by Henri Castries, France,Chairman of the Paris-based Institut Montaigne, a non-profit thinktank working on public policy and social cohesion. Other prominent attendees include Mike Pompeo, US Secretary of State, and the driving force of these events and protégé of Rockefeller’s, former US Secretary of State (and war criminal), Henry Kissinger; France’s Minister of Economy and Finance, Bruno Le Maire; Mark Rutte, Dutch Prime Minister, from the far-right People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy; Ursula von der Leyen, Germany’s Defense Minister from the conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU); – and, perhaps most noteworthy, Jared Kushner, personal advisor and son-in-law of US President Donald Trump, and intimate friend of Israel’s Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu.

This means that Israel will be represented at the highest level. From Switzerland attending will be – among others – the current President, Ueli Maurer, who, it is rumored, will hold behind closed-doors talks with Mike Pompeo about Iran whom Switzerland is representing vis-à-vis Washington. The Presence of Kushner, Pompeo, secretive Iran talks – smells a rat.

The Bilderbergers are associated and its members are overlapping with those of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), the Trilateral Commission and the London-based Chatham House which makes the rules for the meetings – and let’s not forget, the World Economic Forum, the infamous WEF that takes place every January in Davos, Switzerland. The WEF represents a relatively transparent window to the world, with, of course, also its secret, behind closed doors meetings, whereas the Bilderbergers are an all-round secret organization. The Bilderberg meetings – so they say – are informal talks, allowing the participants to freely use the information they receive. But they are not allowed to reveal the identity or the affiliation of the speakers, nor of any participant in the particular talks.

Switzerland, one of the most secretive countries in the world – the world of banking, the world of big finance, safe haven for international corporations which not only get away with low taxes, but also escape standards of ethics they otherwise may have to apply doing business, exploiting natural resources, in developing countries. They are privileged, just by being domiciled in Switzerland. The Helvetic Confederacy is a country run by the fiefs of western money, of the western FED-directed and debt-based pyramid monetary system, a Ponzi scheme that has survived for the last hundred years – led by the Rothschild banking clan an Co.

They are closely associated and control the western banking system’s gold bunker, the Bank for International Settlement (BIS) in Basle, also called the central bank of central banks. The BIS is intimately linked to Swiss finance. The BIS, located conveniently close to the German border, has also served as intermediary for the FED to finance Hitler’s war against the Soviet Union.

What better place for the Bilderbergers to concoct – not to say conspire – their vision of the world’s future?

It is no coincidence that Switzerland was spared from the destruction of both WWs. It’s the only OECD country, where laws are made directly by big-finance and big-business, i.e. where parliamentarians are sitting on the Boards of Directors of corporations and financial institutions, while making the laws for the people, a country where basic business and corporate ethics get short-shrifted and are overruled by flagrant conflicts of interest, a country where a white collar interest group makes the laws that suit big capital. Again, what better place for the Bilderbergers to meet?

Switzerland has become the epicenter of neoliberalism over the past 30 years or so – and is ideal for the behind the scene discussions and agreements, visions of New World Order strategies. The first item in this year’s Bilderberg meeting’s agenda is “A Stable Strategic Order”, a euphemism for One World Order or New World Order.

Other official agenda items include “The Future of Capitalism”, “Russia”, “China”, “Weaponizing Social Media”, “BREXIT”, “What’s Next for Europe”; “Ethics of Artificial Intelligence” – and of course, not to be missed in conferences of such importance, “Climate Change”. – Imagine, with such a benign agenda, what will take place behind closed doors?

One of the permanent agenda items which is close to Rockefeller’s heart, the current thriving force behind the Bilderbergers, and is being propagated, by his disciple, Henry Kissinger, is the reduction of world population – so that the few on top may live better and longer with the world’s rapidly diminishing resources.

So – what are not agenda items, but might certainly enter the realm of population reduction, are, permanent “wars on terror” – that justify mass killings and the related horrendous, never-spoken about quantities CO2 and other greenhouse gases they emit; 5G (the 5th Generation of deadly radiation) to facilitate our communication, meaning more effective surveillance, imposed artificial intelligence (AI), more efficient digitalization of money – and likely though delayed, but exponentially increasing cancer rates; Bayer-Monsanto’s poisonous GMOs and glyphosate products; artificially planted deadly epidemics, like Ebola; the US Air Force’s High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program(HAARP) for weaponizing climate change, bringing about famine and misery by droughts, floods, hurricanes, tornadoes and other climatic calamities – and probably much more.

This is of course, only speculation, being deducted from the Master Goal of the Bilderbergers, i.e. population reduction.

But perhaps I’m totally wrong.

As everything is secret and most likely nothing of the behind the scene talks and decisions will penetrate into the media, only hear-say and, of course, conspiracy theories, it is well possible that the Bilderbergers are what they propagate to be – a peaceful, dialogue seeking group of people, who is committed to the values of democracy and freedom – and entrepreneurship.

And – hear-hear! – “Talking about the future of capitalism does not mean that we consider it to be the only possible system,” as organizer André Kudelski told the Swiss newspaper 24 Heures.

In that he is right. Capitalism is not the only viable system. In fact, it is THE system that is NOT viable, as it spreads injustice, inequality, crime and misery around the globe and, therefore, is certainly not sustainable. Yes, Bilderbergers, start thinking of an alternative, one that brings social justice, inclusion, equal opportunities and spreads wealth more evenly around the globe – one that brings PEACE, so that we all may live well, not wealthy, but well.

Peter Koenig is an economist and geopolitical analyst. He is also a water resources and environmental specialist. He worked for over 30 years with the World Bank and the World Health Organization around the world in the fields of environment and water. He lectures at universities in the US, Europe and South America. He writes regularly for Global Research; ICH; RT; Sputnik; PressTV; The 21st Century; TeleSUR; The Saker Blog, the New Eastern Outlook (NEO); and other internet sites. He is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed – fiction based on facts and on 30 years of World Bank experience around the globe. He is also a co-author of The World Order and Revolution! – Essays from the Resistance.

Peter Koenig is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.

30 May 2019

Source: www.globalresearch.ca

By Jonathan Cook

24 May 2019 – By any reckoning, the claim made this week by al-Qaeda-linked fighters that they were targeted with chemical weapons by the Syrian government in Idlib province – their final holdout in Syria – should have been treated by the western media with a high degree of scepticism.

That the US and other western governments enthusiastically picked up those claims should not have made them any more credible.

Scepticism was all the more warranted from the media given that no physical evidence has yet been produced to corroborate the jihadists’ claims. And the media should have been warier still given that the Syrian government was already poised to defeat these al-Qaeda groups without resort to chemical weapons – and without provoking the predictable ire (yet again) of the west.

But most of all scepticism was required because these latest claims arrive just as we have learnt that the last supposed major chemical attack – which took place in April 2018 and was, as ever, blamed by all western sources on Syria’s president, Bashar Assad – was very possibly staged, a false-flag operation by those very al-Qaeda groups now claiming the Syrian government has attacked them once again.

Addicted to incompetence

Most astounding in this week’s coverage of the claims made by al-Qaeda groups is the fact that the western media continues to refuse to learn any lessons, develop any critical distance from the sources it relies on, even as those sources are shown to have repeatedly deceived it.

This was true after the failure to find WMD in Iraq, and it is now even more true after the the international community’s monitoring body on chemical weapons, the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), was exposed this month as deeply dishonest.

It is bad enough that our governments and our expert institutions deceive and lie to us. But it is even worse that we have a corporate media addicted – at the most charitable interpretation – to its own incompetence. The evidence demonstrating that grows stronger by the day.

Unprovoked attack

In March the OPCW produced a report into a chemical weapons attack the Syrian government allegedly carried out in Douma in April last year. Several dozen civilians, many of them children, died apparently as a result of that attack.

The OPCW report concluded that there were “reasonable grounds” for believing a toxic form of chlorine had been used as a chemical weapon in Douma, and that the most likely method of delivery were two cylinders dropped from the air.

This as good as confirmed claims made by al-Qaeda groups, backed by western states, that the cylinders had been dropped by the Syrian military. Using dry technical language, the OPCW joined the US and Europe in pointing the finger squarely at Assad.

It was vitally important that the OPCW reached that conclusion not only because of the west’s overarching regime-change ambitions in Syria.

In response to the alleged Douma attack a year ago, the US fired a volley of Cruise missiles at Syrian army and government positions before there had been any investigation of who was responsible.

Those missiles were already a war crime – an unprovoked attack on another sovereign country. But without the OPCW’s implicit blessing, the US would have been deprived of even its flimsy, humanitarian pretext for launching the missiles.

Leaked document

Undoubtedly the OPCW was under huge political pressure to arrive at the “right” conclusion. But as a scientific body carrying out a forensic investigation surely it would not simply doctor the data.

Nonetheless, it seems that may well be precisely what it did. This month the Working Group on Syria, Propaganda and Media – a group of academics who have grown increasingly sceptical of the western narratives told about Syria – published an internal, leaked OPCW document.

A few fays later the OPCW reluctantly confirmed that the document was genuine, and that it would identify and deal with those responsible for the leak.

The document was an assessment overseen by Ian Henderson, a senior OPCW expert, of the engineering data gathered by the OPCW’s fact-finding mission that attended the scene of the Douma attack. Its findings fly in the face of the OPCW’s published report.

Erased from the record

The leaked document is deeply troubling for two reasons.

First, the assessment, based on the available technical data, contradicts the conclusion of the final OPCW report that the two chemical cylinders were dropped from the air and crashed through building roofs. It argues instead that the cylinders were more likely placed at the locations they were found.

If that is right, the most probable explanation is that the cylinders were put there by al-Qaeda groups – presumably in a last desperate effort to persuade the west to intervene and to prevent the jihadists being driven out of Douma.

But even more shocking is the fact that the expert assessment based on the data collected by the OPCW team is entirely unaddressed in the OPCW’s final report.

It is not that the final report discounts or rebuts the findings of its own experts. It simply ignores those findings; it pretends they don’t exist. The report blacks them out, erases them from the official record. In short, it perpetrates a massive deception.

Experts ignored

All of this would be headline news if we had a responsible media that cared about the truth and about keeping its readers informed.

We now know both that the US attacked Syria on entirely bogus grounds, and that the OPCW – one of the international community’s most respected and authoritative bodies – has been caught redhanded in an outrageous deception with grave geopolitical implications. (In fact, it is not the first time the OPCW has been caught doing this, as I have previously explained here.)

The fact that the OPCW ignored its own expert and its own team’s technical findings when they proved politically indigestible casts a dark shadow over all the OPCW’s work in Syria, and beyond. If it was prepared to perpetrate a deception on this occasion, why should we assume it did not do so on other occasions when it proved politically expedient?

Active combatants

The OPCW’s reports into other possible chemical attacks – assisting western efforts to implicate Assad – are now equally tainted. That is especially so given that in those other cases the OPCW violated its own procedures by drawing prejudicial conclusions without its experts being on the ground, at the site of the alleged attacks. Instead it received samples and photos via al-Qaeda groups, who could easily have tampered with the evidence.

And yet there has been not a peep from the corporate media about this exposure of the OPCW’s dishonesty, apart from commentary pieces from the only two maverick mainstream journalists in the UK – Peter Hitchens, a conservative but independent-minded columnist for the Mail on Sunday, and veteran war correspondent Robert Fisk, of the little-read Independent newspaper (more on his special involvement in Douma in a moment).

Just as the OPCW blanked the findings of its technical experts to avoid political discomfort, the media have chosen to stay silent on this new, politically sensitive information.

They have preferred to prop up the discredited narrative that our governments have been acting to protect the human rights of ordinary Syrians rather than the reality that they have been active combatants in the war, helping to destabilise a country in ways that have caused huge suffering and death in Syria.

Systematic failure

This isn’t a one-off failure. It’s part of a series of failures by the corporate media in its coverage of Douma.

They ignored very obvious grounds for caution at the time of the alleged attack. Award-winning reporter Robert Fisk was among the first journalists to enter Douma shortly after those events. He and a few independent reporters communicated eye-witness testimony that flatly contradicted the joint narrative promoted by al-Qaeda groups and western governments that Assad had bombed Douma with chemical weapons.

The corporate media also mocked a subsequent press conference at which many of the supposed victims of that alleged chemical attack made appearances to show that they were unharmed and spoke of how they had been coerced into play-acting their roles.

And now the western media has compounded that failure – revealing its systematic nature – by ignoring the leaked OPCW document too.

But it gets worse, far worse.

Al-Qaeda propaganda

This week the same al-Qaeda groups that were present in Douma – and may have staged that lethal attack – claimed that the Syrian government had again launched chemical weapons against them, this time on their final holdout in Idlib.

A responsible media, a media interested in the facts, in evidence, in truth-telling, in holding the powerful to account, would be dutybound to frame this latest, unsubstantiated claim in the context of the new doubts raised about the OPCW report into last year’s chemical attack blamed on Assad.

Given that the technical data suggest that al-Qaeda groups, and the White Helmets who work closely with them, were responsible for staging the attack – even possibly of murdering civilians to make the attack look more persuasive – the corporate media had a professional and moral obligation to raise the matter of the leaked document.

It is vital context as anyone tries to weigh up whether the latest al-Qaeda claims are likely to be true. To deprive readers of this information, this essential context would be to take a side, to propagandise on behalf not only of western governments but of al-Qaeda too.

And that is exactly what the corporate media have just done. All of them.

Media worthy of Stalin

It is clear how grave their dereliction of the most basic journalistic duty is if we consider the Guardian’s uncritical coverage of jihadist claims about the latest alleged chemical attack.

Like most other media, the Guardian article included two strange allusions – one by France, the other by the US – to the deception perpetrated by the OPCW in its recent Douma report. The Guardian reported these allusions even though it has never before uttered a word anywhere in its pages about that deception.

In other words, the corporate media are so committed to propagandising on behalf of the western powers that they have reported the denials of official wrongdoing even though they have never reported the actual wrongdoing. It is hard to imagine the Soviet media under Stalin behaving in such a craven and dishonest fashion.

The corporate media have given France and the US a platform to reject accusations against the OPCW that the media themselves have never publicly raised.

Doubts about OPCW

The following is a brief statement (unintelligible without the forgoing context) from France, reported by the Guardian in relation to the latest claim that Assad’s forces used chemical weapons this week: “We have full confidence in the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons.”

But no one, except bloggers and academics ignored by the media and state authorities, has ever raised doubts about the OPCW. Why would the Guardian think these French comments worthy of reporting unless there were reasons to doubt the OPCW? And if there are such reasons for doubt, why has the Guardian not thought to make them public, to report them to its readers?

The US state department similarly came to the aid of the OPCW. In the same Guardian report, a US official was quoted saying that the OPCW was facing “a continuing disinformation campaign” from Syria and Russia, and that the campaign was designed “to create the false narrative that others [rather than Assad] are to blame for chemical weapons attacks”.

So Washington too was rejecting accusations against the OPCW that have never been reported by the state-corporate media.

Interestingly, in the case of US officials, they claim that Syria and Russia are behind the “disinformation campaign” against the OPCW, even though the OPCW has admitted that the leaked document discrediting its work is genuine and written by one of its experts.

The OPCW is discredited, of course, only because it sought to conceal evidence contained in the leaked document that might have exonerated Assad of last year’s chemical attack. It is hard to see how Syria or Russia can be blamed for this.

Colluding in deception

But more astounding still, while US and French officials have at least acknowledged that there are doubts about the OPCW’s role in Syria, even if they unjustifiably reject such doubts, the corporate media have simply ignored those doubts as though they don’t exist.

The continuing media blackout on the leaked OPCW document cannot be viewed as accidental. It has been systematic across the media.

That blackout has remained resolutely in place even after the OPCW admitted the leaked document discrediting it was genuine and even after western countries began alluding to the leaked document themselves.

The corporate media is actively colluding both in the original deception perpetrated by al-Qaeda groups and the western powers, and in the subsequent dishonesty of the OPCW. They have worked together to deceive western publics.

The question is, why are the media so obviously incompetent? Why are they so eager to keep themselves and their readers in the dark? Why are they so willing to advance credulous narratives on behalf of western governments that have been repeatedly shown to have lied to them?

Iran the real target

The reason is that the corporate media are not what they claim. They are not a watchdog on power, or a fourth estate.

The media are actually the public relations wing of a handful of giant corporations – and states – that are pursuing two key goals in the Middle East.

First, they want to control its oil. Helping al-Qaeda in Syria – including in its propaganda war – against the Assad government serves a broader western agenda. The US and NATO bloc are ultimately gunning for the leadership of Iran, the one major oil producer in the region not under the US imperial thumb.

Powerful Shia groups in the region – Assad in Syria, Hizbullah in Lebanon, and Iraqi leaders elevated by our invasion of that country in 2003 – are allies or potential allies of Iran. If they are in play, the US empire’s room for manoeuvre in taking on Iran is limited. Remove these smaller players and Iran stands isolated and vulnerable.

That is why Russia stepped in several years ago to save Assad, in a bid to stop the dominoes falling and the US engineering a third world war centred on the Middle East.

Second, with the Middle East awash with oil money, western corporations have a chance to sell more of the lucrative weapons that get used in overt and covert wars like the one raging in Syria for the past eight years.

What better profit-generator for these corporations than wasteful and pointless wars against manufactured bogeymen like Assad?

Like a death cult

From the outside, this looks and sounds like a conspiracy. But actually it is something worse – and far more difficult to overcome.

The corporations that run our media and our governments have simply conflated in their own minds – and ours – the idea that their narrow corporate interests are synonymous with “western interests”.

The false narratives they generate are there to serve a system of power, as I have explained in previous blogs. That system’s worldview and values are enforced by a charmed circle that includes politicians, military generals, scientists, journalists and others operating as if brainwashed by some kind of death cult. They see the world through a single prism: the system’s need to hold on to power. Everything else – truth, evidence, justice, human rights, love, compassion – must take a back seat.

It is this same system that paradoxically is determined to preserve itself even if it means destroying the planet, ravaging our economies, and starting and maintaining endlessly destructive wars. It is system that will drag us all into the abyss, unless we stop it.

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

27 May 2019

Source: www.transcend.org

By Institute for Public Accuracy

21 May 2019 – The British-based Working Group on Syria, Propaganda and Media recently revealed an internal engineering assessment by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons that undermines claims justifying U.S. attacks on Syria.

Last year, many claimed that the Syrian government had launched a chemical weapons attack on Douma on April 7. This was used to justify strikes on Syrian government targets on April 14. The British Guardian claimed: “Syria: U.S., U.K. and France launch strikes in response to chemical attack.” NPR headlined a story: “U.S., Allies Hit 3 Syrian Sites Linked To Chemical Weapons Program.”

Theodore Postol, professor of science, technology, and international security at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, provided the Institute for Public Accuracy with his initial assessment of the newly revealed OPCW document:

“The OPCW engineering assessment unambiguously describes evidence collected by the OPCW Fact-Finding Mission (FFM) that indicates two analyzed chlorine cylinder attacks were staged in April 2018 in Douma. The holes in the reinforced concrete roofs that were supposedly produced by high-speed impacts (impact at speeds of perhaps 100 m/s or more, 250 mph) of industrial chlorine canisters dropped from helicopters were instead created by earlier explosions of either artillery rockets or mortar shells. In one event a chlorine canister that was damaged on another occasion was placed on the roof with its head inserted into an existing crater hole, and in the other case a damaged chlorine cylinder was placed on a bed supposedly after it penetrated the building roof and bounced from its original trajectory into a bed. In both cases the damage to the chlorine cylinders was incompatible with the damage to the surroundings that was allegedly caused by the cylinder impacts.

“As such, 35 deaths that were originally attributed to these staged chlorine events cannot be explained and it cannot be ruled out that these people were murdered as part of the staging effort.

“The evidence provided in the OPCW report is quite clear. For example, rebar in the cement roof slabs was splayed out from the forces of an intense supersonic shockwave that produced the holes. The only source of such a violently impulsive force in this environment would be that of the shockwave from the forward end of an explosive warhead that impacted and detonated on the roof. The forward end of the explosive charge in the warhead would have been touching or nearly-touching the roof surface when it detonated. Under these conditions the near-in shockwave generated from the forward end of the cylinder shaped explosive produces a shockwave that is traveling at a very high Mach number. Such a shockwave creates a reflected shock that is tremendously hotter and more intense than the incident shock due to the extreme compression of the supersonic incident shock as it violently decelerates during its encounter with a rigid surface.

“The net result of the shock interactions is that the incident and tremendously amplified reflected shocks coalesce together to produce an extremely intense impulse at the surface of the concrete slab. This impulse is so intense that it might well cut through rebar and readily splay the rebar in the forward direction in a geometry like that of the petals of a flower pointing downward.

“This is what is described in the report.

“I will have a much more detailed summary of the engineering report later this week. For now, it suffices to say that the UN OPCW engineering report is completely different from the UN OPCW report on Khan Sheikhoun, which is distinguished by numerous claims about explosive effects that could only have been made by technically illiterate individuals. In very sharp contrast, the voices that come through the engineering report are those of highly knowledgeable and sophisticated experts.

“A second issue that is raised by the character of the OPCW engineering report on Douma is that it is entirely unmentioned in the report that went to the UN Security Council. This omission is very serious, as the findings of that report are critical to the process of determining attribution. There is absolutely no reason to justify the omission of the engineering report in the OPCW account to the UN Security Council as its policy implications are of extreme importance.”

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The Institute for Public Accuracy was founded by Norman Solomon and opened its national office in San Francisco in October 1997.

27 May 2019

Source: www.transcend.org

By teleSUR

23 May 2019 – The U.N.’s World Health Organization (WHO) praised Bolivia’s newly implemented universal health care system, known in the country as the Single Health System (SUS). The WHO pointed out that Bolivia’s leftist government has given generous funding and resources to health, ensuring free treatment for all.

Alfonso Tenorio, a representative of the WHO and the Pan American Health Organization, spoke Wednesday in Geneva, in praise of Bolivia’s health system and the country’s health minister Gabriela Montaño.

Tenorio spoke afterwards with state radio company Red Patria Nueva, saying: “Bolivia has become an important model for the world … the minister is always taking advantage of the strength of others and the exchange of knowledge to strengthen the SUS.”

The day before, Carina Vance, UNASUR representative, also praised Bolivia’s leftist government, saying that they have “deepened the right to healthcare.”

The SUS was officially formed on March 1, 2019, ensuring that millions of previously uninsured Bolivians now have access to free treatment. In the first 20 days of the system being launched, it was announced that over 30,000 had already received free treatment. The SUS has also initiated vaccination campaigns across the country, in one such campaign, over 80,000 were inoculated in just one week, in the department of Cochabamba. Experts have argued that such social programs are possible thanks to the nationalization of much of the country’s natural resources in 2006.

Other leftist governments in the region have also achieved significant results in health. On Tuesday, the Sandinista government in Nicaragua announced a 40% drop in infant mortality in the first few months of 2019.

Go to Original – telesurenglish.net

27 May 2019

Source: www.transcend.org