Archives: Articles

By Jan Oberg

15 Apr 2019 – You have certainly not heard much about this in the West. And it didn’t get a fraction of the media attention (and none of the hundreds of millions of Euro pledges by the perversely rich) that the Notre Dame fire did.

However, if disastrous floods had hit 28 out of 31 provinces and affected 10 million people in some European country or in the US, I believe you would have heard about it from Day One.

But now it is Iran. Only the Iranians.

The situation is disastrous but not so much because thousands have died. Rather, because floods of this magnitude are likely to have terrible long-term consequences for agricultural and other production, infrastructure, energy production, transport and daily lives (see pictures below and on the links).

The basic facts about 3 weeks into the disaster are:

28 of 31 provinces affected, the area around Shiraz the most. 78 people have died and 1076 have been injured. 10 million Iranians have been affected and 2 million seem to be in direct need of assistance. More can be studied at the UN OCHA’s Reliefweb.

Please enlighten yourself also by some Iranian media sources and Iranian foreign minister Javad Zarif’s statements here. And here.

This comes on top of economic sanctions that have already hit virtually every single Iranian very hard when going about their daily lives. The author has seen how this was already bad in 2012-2016 – since then, everything has grown worse.

Here some data by the IMF.

Yes, the corruption is everywhere in Iran but the US sanctions are extremely tight, the loss of oil export income is severe (to benefit Saudi Arabia and others).

And now this flood disaster on top of it all (more background and pictures from Iran’s Fars News Agency here).

The cruelty of not helping in this situation can only be condemned from a humanitarian, human rights and moral perspective no matter what one may otherwise think about Iranian politics and leadership.

Sanctions make humanitarian aid much more difficult

It is well known that the Trump administration wants others to think about Iran and how it puts pressure and threats to bear on other countries to prevent them from cooperating with Iran and bringing humanitarian aid in violation of these US sanctions.

Reuters reports the statement of the Iranian Red Crescent three weeks into the disaster:

“U.S. sanctions have prevented the Iranian Red Crescent from obtaining any foreign financial aid to assist victims of flooding that has killed at least 70 people and inundated some 1,900 communities, the group said on Sunday.”

As of today, the only Europeans to deliver assistance are Russia, Turkey, Switzerland, Germany and France according to the UN OCHA’s Reliefweb.

The main reason, one may assume, is that the US has imposed sanctions on Iran since 1979 and now applies the toughest sanctions ever on the Iranian people (after having withdrawn from the nuclear deal, the JCPOA, in clear violation of international law, since it was embedded in a UN Security Council resolution).

Iran, you may say, is being punished for having fulfilled all its obligations of the JCPOA and accepting the most severe inspections ever.

The US also applies so-called secondary sanctions – sanctions against other countries which do not adhere to US sanctions but continue to deal with Iran. The US believes, it seems, that it can intimidate and financially punish countries – including NATO and EU – should they not adhere to US laws (and diktats) on their own territory

Such extra-territorial application of US laws should, of course, be unacceptable for any other sovereign states. And it goes without saying that the US would never accept foreign laws to be implemented on its territory. But the US seems to believe that it is so exceptional that others should make exceptional decisions in favour of this exceptionally unlawful US policy.

The Trump administration – also defiant of the UN Court ruling

What few have noticed is that Iran won a case at the UN International Court of Justice in October last year. Read Newsweek’s report here. The ICJ ruled and ordered that the United States remove sanctions that target humanitarian trade, food, medicine and civil aviation.

But instead of abiding by the ICJ’s decision, Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo announces with what must be termed outrageous arguments that the U.S. couldn’t care less.

Mainstream US-obedient media of course politely refrained from putting such a law-defying US statement on their front pages – omission being much more important than fake as I have pointed out time and again before.

As if this should not be enough, the US announced on April 8, 2019 – i.e. also Pompeo – that the US places Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps on its list of terrorist organisations.

Listen very carefully to the justifications and the accusations. One doesn’t have to be psychologist or psychiatrist to get the thought that we are here witnessing a brilliant piece of psycho-political projection – projection of one’s own dark sides on somebody else.

This is also outrageous in the light of the fact that the Corps is a major agent in dealing with the flood disaster on the ground (as it has holds proportionately huge resources in the Iranian budget). Are we likely to soon hear the argument that no aid should go to Iran because it would go (also) to this “terrorist” organisation?

EU and NATO countries should practise civil disobedience in support of the Iranian people

One must wonder how much longer the United States will get away with such step-by-step measures and exceptional arrogance vis-a-vis the international “community” without loud and clear criticism and alternative action by EU and NATO countries.

As I say in the video above, it is high time that EU and NATO countries – and other countries for that matter – practise civil disobedience against US diktat. If only a few countries, companies and banks continue co-operating with Iran, it will be easy for US authorities such as US Treasury to pursue them legally and punish them in various ways.

But not so if some 25-30 countries, all their companies and banks simply ignored US policies and accelerated their civilian co-operation with Iran. It would, beyond the slightest doubt, be a win-win strategy on contrast to US policies which may look like win (US/West) and loose (Iran) but, sooner or later will – drag down these other countries in the decline and fall process of the US. That is – loose/loose

And I made a small donation to the Iranian Red Crescent on this link, also to try my Swedish bank. It went through.

You can do it too.

Actions and words go best together.
__________________________________________________

Further recommended reading and watching:

• Photos of the catastrophe from The Middle East Eye
• First assessment of the economic costs – Reuters
• Efforts to establish an insurance fund hampered by lack of resources – AlJazeera
• The Iranian Red Crescent

TFF Director Prof. Jan Oberg is a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace Development Environment.

22 April 2019

Source: www.transcend.org

By Ahed Tamimi

A year ago I was in an Israeli prison, denied my basic rights and stripped of my childhood. The crime that led to eight months of incarceration was not mine, but that of Israel’s continued occupation of Palestine.

As with so many child prisoners who are subjected to the horrors of Israeli military detention, one of the toughest daily struggles was being separated from my family. Last week, my family was torn apart once again: this time, Israeli forces came and took away my 15-year-old brother Mohammed.

This is the price we pay for Israel’s occupation. Every mother and father is forced to live in fear of their children being the next target. Palestinians in the West Bank are subjected to military law, which is used as a tool to repress, silence, and prevent our resistance to occupation.

We do not have equal rights to the Israeli settlers who live on stolen land in our neighbourhoods. This prevents us from living normal lives and threatens our existence, but it is protected by Israel’s legal system.

Across the West Bank exists a framework of dual legal systems: Jewish settlers are afforded rights under Israeli civilian law, while we Palestinians have ours taken away by military law – two very different processes and outcomes implemented on grounds of ethnicity. Experts say this meets the definition of apartheid, and children are not immune from this suffering.

There are currently more than 200 Palestinian children, including my brother, in Israeli jails. Each year, Israel arrests and prosecutes around 700 children, some as young as 12. They are usually accused of throwing stones. After being separated from their families, exposed to physical, psychological, and emotional abuse, a number of children are coerced into signing confessions put in front of them by Israeli interrogators – often in a language they do not understand. Very few children are granted access to a lawyer or allowed a family member present during interrogation.

With 99 per cent of court cases against Palestinians resulting in conviction, signing a confession and making a plea bargain is often presented as the fastest way of being released and reunited with family.

From the moment of arrest, Palestinian children encounter abuse at the hands of Israeli forces. In 2013, UNICEF published a report into the widespread, systematic and institutionalised ill treatment of children in the military detention system. Of the 38 requirements they set out to protect Palestinian children, Israel has implemented only one. According to the charity Defence for Children International Palestine, three out of four experience physical violence, and nearly half suffer the traumatic experience of being ripped from their families in the middle of the night by armed soldiers.

The British government is aware of what is happening. A delegation of lawyers was sent by the Foreign Office to report on the situation in 2012. It came back with damning conclusions that mirrored those of UNICEF a year later.

More recently, the Palestine Solidarity Campaign submitted a petition with over ten-thousand signatures demanding urgent action, and MPs tabled an Early Day Motion (EDM 563) that is the fourth most supported in this Parliamentary session.

Today, on Palestinian Prisoners Day, I join them in asking the British government to hold Israel accountable and give Palestinians back their childhoods.

My case garnered international attention, and I’m thankful for the many messages of support I received from people in the UK during my nightmarish ordeal in prison. But I will not truly be free until we all are.

18 April 2019

Ahed Tamimi is a Palestinian activist who was imprisoned for assaulting an Israeli soldier in December 2017.

By Diana Darke

Few seem to know that the Parisian cathedral’s architectural design owes a vast debt to Middle Eastern predecessors

On Monday, as Notre Dame burned before our eyes, it was striking to note how few seemed to know that the Parisian cathedral’s original architectural design, its twin towers flanking an elaborate entrance, its rose windows, its rib vaulting and its spire (la fleche) owe their origins to Middle Eastern predecessors.

Tributes flowed in from round the world, praising the cathedral’s status as an icon of our shared European heritage and identity. “All of us are burning,” declared French president Emmanuel Macron, addressing the nation.

‘Heart of the Almond’

Let’s start with the twin tower design. The earliest example stands on a hillside in northwest Syria, in Idlib province, in a church built from local limestone in the mid-5th century.

It’s called Qalb Lozeh (‘Heart of the Almond’ in Arabic), and is rightly praised as one of the best preserved examples of Syrian church architecture, a magnificently proportioned broad-aisled basilica, the forerunner of what came to be known as the Romanesque period.

In a belated recognition of its importance, it was included in 2011 within a UNESCO World Heritage Site labelled Ancient Villages of Northern Syria. Locally they are known as the “Dead Cities”, clusters of nearly 800 Byzantine stone-built settlements with over 2,000 churches dating from the 4th to 6th centuries.

They were renamed the “Forgotten Cities” by the Syrian ministry of tourism before the war.

Inside, the church is divided into three, with a central nave, echoes of the Trinity everywhere in the design – the three aisles, three pillars on each side of the nave, three facade windows, three apse windows and three arches dividing the nave from the side aisles.

The nave would originally have had a wooden roof, long since gone, but the vaulted dome over the semi-circular apse still survives.

The Gothic arch

When Frankish crusaders saw these designs in the 12th century, they brought the idea back to Europe.

What we today call the Gothic arch, prevalent in Notre Dame and in all the great cathedrals of Europe, evolved from the pointed arch, was an architectural design first seen in the Ibn Tulun Mosque in Cairo and passed via Amalfi merchants to Sicily.

With their advanced knowledge of geometry and the laws of statics, Muslims developed both the horseshoe
(also known as Moorish arch, first seen in Damascus’s Umayyad Mosque, then further developed by the Umayyads in Andalusia in the Great Mosque of Cordoba) and the pointed arch to give more height than the classical arch.

The first building to use them in Europe was the Abbey of Monte Cassino in 1071, financed by Amalfi merchants. It then moved north to Cluny Abbey, which boasted 150 pointed arches in its aisles.

Muslim designs

The fashion quickly spread from these, two of the most influential churches in Europe, as this pointed “Gothic” arch was stronger than the rounded arch used by the Romans and the Normans, so allowed the construction of bigger, taller, grander and more complex buildings like the great cathedrals of Europe.

Other borrowings from Muslim designs, also to be found in Notre Dame, include ribbed vaulting (traced to the 8th century Abbasid Palace of Ukhaider in Iraq), rose windows (first seen at the 8th century Umayyad palace of Khirbat Mafjar in the West Bank near Jericho) and the spire (which collapsed so spectacularly on Notre Dame as the timber roof gave way beneath it).

The first known spire is on the Umayyad Mosque of Damascus, built in the early 8th century.

In England, the first ever spire was on top of St Paul’s Cathedral in 1221. It was destroyed in the Great Fire of London in 1666 then rebuilt in 1710 by Christopher Wren, an avowed admirer of Muslim architecture, who studied and extensively researched Moorish and Ottoman mosques.

“The Goths,” he said, talking of the “Gothic” style, “were rather destroyers than builders: I think it should with more reason be called the Saracen (Arab Muslim) style”.

The combination of dome and tower in his masterpiece of St Paul’s, together with the structure of the domes in the aisles, shows this strong Muslim influence, also clearly visible in Notre Dame.

This article first appeared in Diana Darke’s blog.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.

Diana Darke is a Middle East cultural expert with special focus on Syria.

17 April 2019

Source: www.middleeasteye.net

By Dr Ramzy Baroud

So, what have we learned from the Israeli legislative elections on April 9?

A whole lot.

To start with, don’t let such references as the “tight race” between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and his main rival, Benny Gantz, fool you.

Yes, Israelis are divided on some issues that are particular to their social and economic makeup. But they are also resolutely unified around the issue that should concern us most: the continued subjugation of the Palestinian people.

Indeed, ‘tight race’, or not, Israel has voted to cement Apartheid, support the ongoing annexation of the Occupied West Bank, and carry on with the Gaza siege.

In the aftermath of the elections, Netanyahu emerged even more powerful; his Likud party has won the elections with 36 seats, followed by Gantz’s Kahol Lavan (Blue and White) with 35 seats.

Gantz, the rising star in Israeli politics was branded throughout the campaign as a centrist politician, a designation that tossed a lifeline to the vanquished Israeli ‘left’ – of which not much is left anyway.

This branding helped sustain a short-lived illusion that there is an Israeli alternative to Netanyahu’s extremist right-wing camp.

But there was never any evidence to suggest that Gantz would have been any better as far as ending the Israeli occupation, dismantling the Apartheid regime and parting ways with the country’s predominantly racist discourse.

In fact, the opposite is true.

Gantz has repeatedly criticized Netanyahu for supposedly being too soft on Gaza, promising to rain yet more death and destruction on an a region that, according to the United Nations, will be unlivable by 2020.

A series of videos, dubbed “Only the Strong Survives”, were issued by the Gantz campaign in the run up to the elections. In the footage, Gantz was portrayed as the national savior, who had killed many Palestinians while serving as the army’s chief of staff between 2011 and 2015.

Gantz is particularly proud of being partly responsible for bombing Gaza “back to the stone age.”

It apparently mattered little to Israeli centrists and the remnants of the left that in the 2014 Israeli war on Gaza, dubbed Operation “Protective Edge”, over 2,200 Palestinians were killed and over 11,000 were injured. In that most tragic war, over 500 Palestinian children were killed, and much of Gaza’s already ailing infrastructure was destroyed.

But then again, why vote for Gantz when Netanyahu and his right-wing extremist camp are getting the job done?

Sadly, Netanyahu’s future coalition is likely to be even more extreme than the previous one.

Moreover, thanks to new possible alliances, Netanyahu will most likely free himself of burdensome allies, the likes of former Israeli Defense Minister, Avigdor Lieberman.

One significant change in the likely makeup of the Israeli right is the absence of such domineering figures, who, aside from Lieberman also include former Education Minister, Naftali Bennett and former Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked.

All the grandstanding from Bennett and Shaked, who had recently established a new party called “The New Right”, didn’t even garner them enough votes to reach the threshold required to win a single seat in the Israeli Parliament, the Knesset. They needed 3.25 percent of the vote, but only achieved 3.22 percent. They are both out.

The defeat of the infamous duo is quite revealing: the symbols of Israel’s extreme right no longer meet the expectations of Israel’s extremist constituencies.

Now the stage is wide open for the ultra-orthodox parties, Shas, which now has eight seats, and United Torah Judaism, with seven seats to help define the new normal in Israel.

The Israeli left – if it was ever deserving of the name – received a final blow; the once prominent Labor Party, won merely six seats.

On the other hand, Arab parties that ran in the 2015 elections under the united banner of the “Joint List”, fragmented once more, to collectively achieve only 10 seats.

Their loss of three seats, compared to the previous elections, can be partly blamed on factional and personal agendas. But, that is hardly enough to explain the massive drop in Arab voter participation in the elections: 48 percent compared to 68 percent in 2015.

This record low participation can only be explained through the racist ‘Nation State Law”, which was passed by the right wing-dominated Knesset on July 19, 2018. The new Basic Law, declared Israel as the “nation state of the Jewish people” everywhere, relegating the rights of the Palestinian people, their history, culture and language, while elevating everything Jewish, making self-determination in the state an exclusive right for Jews only.

This trend is likely to continue, as Israel’s political institutions no longer offer even a symbolic margin for true democracy and fair representation.

But perhaps the most important lesson that we can learn in the aftermath of these elections is that in today’s Israel, military occupation and apartheid have been internalized and normalized as uncontested realities, unworthy of national debate. This in particular should summon our immediate attention.

During election campaigns, no major party spoke about peace, let alone provided a comprehensive vision for achieving it. No leading politician called for the dismantling of the illegal Jewish settlements that have been erected on Palestinian land in violation of international law.

More importantly and tellingly, no one spoke of a two-state solution.

As far as Israelis are concerned, the two-state solution is dead. While this is also true for many Palestinians, the Israeli alternative is hardly co-existence in one democratic secular state. The Israeli alternative is Apartheid.

Netanyahu and his future government coalition of like-minded extremists are now armed with an unmistakably popular mandate to fulfill all of their electoral promises, including the annexation of the West Bank.

Moreover, with an emboldened and empowered right-wing coalition, we are also likely to witness a major escalation in violence against Gaza this coming summer.

Considering all of this, we must understand that Israel’s illegal policies in Palestine cannot and will not be challenged from within Israeli society.

Challenging and ending the Israeli occupation and dismantling Apartheid can only happen through internal Palestinian resistance and external pressure that is centered around the strategy of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS).

It is now incumbent on the international community to break this vicious Israeli cycle and support the Palestinian people in their ongoing struggle against Israeli occupation, racism and apartheid.

Ramzy Baroud is a journalist, author and editor of Palestine Chronicle.

18 April 2019

Source: countercurrents.org

By Abdus Sattar Ghazali

President Donald Trump has rejected a resolution from the Congress to end the 4-year old Yemen war which has killed tens of thousands of people and spawned what the United Nations calls the world’s most dire humanitarian crisis, with the country on the brink of famine.

The resolution passed the House of Representatives in April and the Senate in March, marking the first time both chambers of Congress had supported a War Powers resolution, which limits the president’s ability to send troops into action.

Trump wrote explaining why he issued the veto: “This resolution is an unnecessary, dangerous attempt to weaken my constitutional authorities, endangering the lives of American citizens and brave service members, both today and in the future.”

The president also argued the resolution would “harm the foreign policy of the United States” and “harm our bilateral relationships.”

“Peace in Yemen requires a negotiated settlement,” the president said. He also highlighted that the US was not actively engaged in hostilities, except against al-Qaeda extremists.

The move marked the second time that Trump has used his veto power to reject a bill from the legislature. To override the president’s veto, the resolution would need a two-thirds majority, which it currently does not have in the deeply divided Congress.

The resolution’s approval in both the House of Representatives and the Senate had been seen as a historic milestone already, as it was the first time that a bill invoking the 1973 War Powers Resolution reached the president’s desk.

Trump issued his first veto last month on legislation related to immigration. Trump had declared a national emergency so he could use more money to construct a border wall. Congress voted to block the emergency declaration and Trump vetoed that measure.

President Trump also said that the measure would harm bilateral relations and interferes with his constitutional power as commander in chief.

He said the U.S. is providing the support to protect the safety of more than 80,000 Americans who live in certain areas of the coalition countries subject to Houthi attacks from Yemen.

“Houthis, supported by Iran, have used missiles, armed drones and explosive boats to attack civilian and military targets in those coalition countries, including areas frequented by American citizens, such as the airport in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia,” Trump said. “In addition, the conflict in Yemen represents a ‘cheap’ and inexpensive way for Iran to cause trouble for the United States and for our ally, Saudi Arabia.”

Tellingly, President Trump’s veto on Saudi-led war in Yemen came as Princess Reema Bint Bandar Bin Sultan, who took oath of office as the Kingdom’s first female ambassador to the US. Princess Reema is the daughter of Prince Bandar bin Sultan, who was Saudi ambassador from 1983 to 2005.

Not surprisingly, United Arab Emirates Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Anwar Gargash swiftly welcomed Trump’s veto. “President Trump’s assertion of support to the Arab Coalition in Yemen is a positive signal,” Gargash said on Twitter. The decision is both “timely and strategic” he added. The UAE is the Saudi Arabia’s principal ally in the coalition.

Ro Khanna: Trump was risking the lives of millions: Democratic Congressman Ro Khanna, sponsor of the resolution, said Trump was “risking the lives of millions of Yemeni civilians to famine, deadly airstrikes, and the war crimes of the Saudi regime.”

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi issued a statement saying: “The conflict in Yemen is a horrific humanitarian crisis that challenges the conscience of the entire world. Yet the President has cynically chosen to contravene a bipartisan, bicameral vote of the Congress and perpetuate America’s shameful involvement in this heartbreaking crisis.”

Pelosi added: “This conflict must end, now. The House of Representatives calls on the President to put peace before politics, and work with us to advance an enduring solution to end this crisis and save lives.”

International Rescue Committee president and CEO David Miliband said that vetoing the measure represents an “effective green light for the war strategy that has created the world’s worst humanitarian crisis to continue.”

The American Conservative:Writing under the title: “Trump’s Shameful Yemen Veto Defines His Presidency,” The American Conservative commented:

“Today Trump has proven once more to the people of Yemen just how cynical he and the other supporters of the war are. Support for the war on Yemen is the most disgraceful U.S. policy today, and it is one of the most despicable policies of the last fifty years. That is what Trump chooses to continue and defend. He has chosen again and again to cater to and indulge some of the worst governments on earth, and he has done so for the basest reasons of protecting future weapons sales. If we knew nothing else about him, this would tell us all we need to know about his contempt for the law, his cruelty, and his disregard for innocent life.”

Breitbart News: Not surprisingly, Writing under the title: “Trump was right to veto empty resolution against Saudi War in Yemen,” Joel B. Pollak, Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News wrote:

“….Yemen sits on the eastern side of the Bab el-Mandeb strait — a key shipping lane for traffic through the Suez Canal. The U.S. Navy has a major base across the strait, in Djibouti — as do many other countries, including China. Allowing an Iranian proxy to command the eastern side of the strait, across from a crucial U.S. Navy asset that helps control piracy and terror, and where China is challenging U.S. dominance, would be foolish to the point of lunacy….

“Some critics contend Trump is risking the support of an “anti-war coalition” in his base. But the anti-war movement is largely a left-wing phenomenon. Those elements of Trump’s base that approve his criticisms of previous wars, such as the Iraq war, are not opposed to war as such, but rather to war without victory, or end. Trump would create more, not fewer, political problems for himself by giving up Yemen to Iran — even as his sanctions have Iran on the ropes.

“For some members of Congress, the Yemen resolution is a principled objected to foreign entanglements. For most, it is a cheap way to criticize Trump. Few have been asked to explain why they are supporting an effective surrender to Iran that would endanger American lives and interests. That question must be asked if Congress tries to mount an override,” Breitbart concluded.

Humanitarian crisis in Yemen: Yemen has been devastated by a conflict that escalated in March 2015, when the rebel Houthi movement seized control of much of the west of the country and forced President Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi to flee abroad.

According to a UN report of February 2019, 14.3 million people are classified as being in acute need, with around 3.2 million requiring treatment for acute malnutrition; that includes two million children under-five, and more than one million pregnant and lactating women.

Highlighting that more than 20 million people across the country are food insecure, half of them suffering extreme levels of hunger, the report focuses on some key humanitarian issues: basic survival needs, protection of civilians and livelihoods and essential basic services.

“The escalation of the conflict since March 2015 has dramatically aggravated the protection crisis in which millions face risks to their safety and basic rights”, the UN report said.

The UN agency data shows that a total of 17.8 million people lack access to safe water and sanitation, and 19.7 million lack access to adequate healthcare. Poor sanitation and waterborne diseases, including cholera, left hundreds of thousands of people ill last year.

Meanwhile, grain which could help feed millions, is still at risk of rotting in a key Red Sea storage facility because conditions are too unsafe to reach it, UN Special Envoy Martin Griffiths and UN Emergency relief chief Mark Lowcock said.

During the past four years of intense conflict between Government forces and Houthi rebels have left tens of thousands dead or injured including at least 17,700 civilians as verified by the UN.

The agency adds that an estimated 3.3 million people remain displaced, up from 2.2 million last year, including 685,000 people who fled fighting in Hudaydah and on the west coast, from June onwards.

According to the UN Refugee Agency, the number of sites hosting displaced people has increased by almost half over the past 12 months.

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

18 April 2019

Source: countercurrents.org

Why is it that a Catholic cathedral in flames provokes more public grieving than the mass suffering and death of humans?

By Belen Fernandez

On 15 April, as news emerged of the fire raging at the iconic Notre Dame cathedral in Paris, social media was ablaze with hashtag-laden expressions of grief.

President Emmanuel Macron declared that the whole French nation was overwhelmed with “emotion”, while Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo could not find “strong enough words to express the pain” she felt.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Mayor of London Sadiq Khan, among bazillions of others, tweeted that the incident was “heartbreaking”. US President Donald Trump called it “horrible” and offered the helpful suggestion that “perhaps flying water tankers could be used” to extinguish the flames.

Meanwhile, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker bewailed the “sad spectacle” and “the horror” of the fire at Notre Dame, an institution allegedly belonging to “the whole of humanity”.

Granted, humans on the receiving end of French colonial oppression or of the Catholic church’s long history of crimes might fail to detect a common cause.

International heartbreak

I’m not going to argue that it’s impermissible to lament the demise of historically and globally significant architecture – or that anyone shedding virtual tears on behalf of Notre Dame automatically doesn’t give a damn about other global causes.

But the magnitude of blaze-induced grief is nonetheless unsettling given that far more serious human tragedies rarely elicit such a level of international “heartbreak”.

Where are the calls for flying water tankers or the all-pervasive despair when, for example, Israel periodically undertakes to set the Gaza Strip on fire? During Israel’s 50-day Operation Protective Edge in 2014, the United Nations calculated that the Israeli military killed no fewer than 2,251 Palestinians, among them 299 women and 551 children.

Talk about loss and destruction.

The Israeli ambassador to the US valiantly defended Israel’s “right” to bomb hospitals – and yet the literal “horror” of this objectively “sad spectacle” hardly drew a mob of Twitter-mourners.

Ditto for the year-long killing and maiming spree unleashed by Israeli soldiers in 2018 onto peaceful protesters near the Gaza fence, which resulted in the death of more than 260 people and the injury of close to 30,000 others.

Nor has Yemen found itself to be especially heartbreaking on the international scene, despite being under continuous assault by a Saudi-led coalition. Though the country does attract split-second attention here and there – as when a US-supplied bomb slaughtered 40 Yemeni children on a school bus last year – there’s been no sustained collective weeping over reports that, since the start of the Saudi onslaught in 2015, 85,000 children may have died of starvation.

And there seemed to be hardly any reaction when, on April 7, the Saudi-led coalition bombed yet another school in Sanaa, killing 14 children, just days after British Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt published an op-ed in Politico arguing that the UK should not halt its export of weapons to Saudi Arabia.

A ‘higher purpose’?

To be sure, it’s pretty emotionally straightforward to grieve – in social media solidarity – over a Very Symbolic Building, one that has been firmly established in the international consciousness and visited by loads of fellow humans, particularly those belonging to social classes that possess the economic wherewithal to travel.

For US citizens like me, at least, it’s certainly easier than contemplating how to go about grieving Palestinians or Yemenis when my own government is highly implicated in their murder.

And while former US president Barack Obama somberly mused re: Notre Dame that “it’s in our nature to mourn when we see history lost”, it’s apparently not in our nature to mourn when we drop 26,171 bombs on the world in a single year – which is what Obama did in 2016 and which would seem to constitute a destruction of history in its own right.

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, for her part, has also entered mourning mode with the following tweet: “My heart goes out to Paris. Notre Dame is a symbol of our ability as human beings to unite for a higher purpose.”

This is the same Clinton, of course, who once boasted of her willingness to “totally obliterate” the nation of Iran.

Raging empathy

The New York Times observes that the fire that tore through Notre Dame “generated an outpouring of grief in France and around the world as the symbol of French culture and history burned”.

As previously alluded to, however, French “history” has been none too inclusive, entailing instead blood-soaked colonial escapades founded on systematic torture and other forms of brutality.

Nowadays, Western colonial and imperial legacies continue to perniciously affect the livelihoods of much of the world’s population, and – what do you know? – refugees fleeing contexts of violence and poverty from Africa to Central America are often fatally blocked from joining that oh-so-cheery concept of “humanity”, as increasingly right-wing governments in Europe and the US endeavour to criminalise their very existence.

Hence the current heartless panorama, in which Guatemalan children die in US government custody and migrants drown by the hundreds in the Mediterranean.

Whatever your own attachment to Notre Dame might be, the fact that such tragic realities don’t elicit the same raging empathy as a cathedral fire is a tragedy unto itself.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

Belen Fernandez is a contributing editor at Jacobin Magazine.

17 April 2019

Source: aljazeera.com

By Shamsul Islam

Contemporary documents of the brutal massacre and people’s heroic resistance remain hidden in National Archives

Today India has turned into a grazing field for all kinds of religious bigots led by the Hindutva gang. Even PM of the country who took oath to uphold democratic-secular polity is identifying himself as a Hindu nationalist as if he is in office to serve the cause of Hindutva. The RSS/BJP rulers are openly declaring their commitment to turn India into a Hindu state where Brahmanical Codes of Manu which reduce women and Dalits to sub-human status would be the law of the land. For them India is Fatherland and Holyland for Hindus only. It is to be noted that as per the Hindutva definition only those can be considered as Hindus who have Aryan blood, believe in Casteism, are of fair colour and treat Sanskrit as a holy language. These are not Muslims and Christians only who are out of Hindu nation, even faiths as Sikhism, Buddhism and Jainism can survive only as sects of Hinduism.

However, it was not the scenario 100 years back when the British rulers perpetrated one of the worst massacres in the modern history; the Jallianwala Bagh massacre. People of India shackled by the most powerful imperialist power of the world, Britain, presented a heroic united resistance. It is not hearsay but proved by the contemporary official, mostly the British documents. These amazing documents were part of the British archives which became National Archives of India after Independence. As a pleasant surprise these documents were made public to mark the 75th commemoration of the Jallianwala Bagh massacre as part of an exhibition titled, ‘Archives and Jallianwala Bagh: A Saga of Independence’.

The most documents, concerning the most volatile period of the Indian freedom struggle, not only showed the Britishers brazenly flouting democratic norms, indulging in barbarism while suppressing the mass discontent but also brought to light hitherto hidden aspects of Indian people’s united heroic fight-back. The documents exhibited were both saddening and amazing. It was immensely saddening to watch the ‘civilized’ British indulging in acts of unprecedented violence against Indians and amazing way the people of India, collectively and individually, belonging to different faiths and Castes, rose in revolt.

The saddest part has been that this treasure of visual and written narratives was put back in dark rooms of the National Archives, never exhibited again. It was not taken out even at the centenary commemoration under way currently. It seems the rulers and managers do not want that coming generations should know about the barbarism of the colonial masters as well as united great heroic resistance of the people of India.

The barbarism of the British rulers

Photographs in the show recorded heart-wrenching scenes of the barbarity of the British rulers in coping with the unrest in Punjab during 1914-1919. Punjabis, specially, Sikhs, tied on the wooden/metal frames being flogged or forced to crawl on their bellies on public roads, their naked body in full view of the public, filling all with shame and anger. Punjab had become a military camp. The rulers aiming at crushing the self-esteem of patriotic Indians forced Indians to salute every Englishman/woman, not to ride cycles and forcibly pulling moustaches and beards. There is no doubt that such repression produced revolutionaries like Bhagat Singh and his comrades.

The records narrated the story of newly married Rattan Devi had spent the night of April 13-14, 1919 by the side of her husband. Only, he was dead, lying amid the hundreds strewn all over the Bagh. The place was overflowing with blood, as she narrates in the chilling statement on display, and after removing the body of her husband to a comparatively dry place,

“I sat by his side… I found a bamboo stick which I kept in my hand to keep off dogs. I saw three men writhing in great pain and an injured boy, about 12 years old, entreated me not to leave the place, I told him that I would not go anywhere leaving the dead body of my husband. I asked him if he was feeling cold, if he wanted a wrapper I could spread it over him. He asked for water, but that could not be produced at that place…”

In this exhibition a stunning story from a Hindi daily, ‘Abhiuday’ (October 4, 1919) was included which narrated the story and photographs of two friends, 18 year old Abdul Karim and 17 year old Ramchander who came together from Lahore to attend meeting at the Bagh against Rowlatt Act. Both were martyred here. After the martyrdom of Abdul Karim when results of Punjab University [Lahore] came out it was found that he had passed the matriculate examination in the first class.

Air bombardments

But what really startles viewers is the hitherto unknown fact that the British government had, during the disturbances in 1919, used Royal Air force planes to bombard the interiors of Punjab. A top secret document-again, made public for the first time–was a Task 14.4.1919. It reads thus:

“Aero plane No. 4491 Type BO E-2.E. Squadron No. 31. Pilot captain Carbery. Hour at which flight started from Lahore: 14.20. Hour at which flight concluded: 16.45. [The details] 15.20: village two miles north west of Gujranwala (now in Pakistan)-dropped three bombs on party of natives 150 strong…50 rounds machine gun fired into village. 15.30 Village one mile south of above-party of 50 natives outside village. Two bombs dropped…25 rounds machine gun fired into village. About 200 natives in fields near a building. One bomb dropped, 30 rounds MG fired into party who took over in house. 15.40: Gujranwala-Bombs dropped on large crowd of natives in south of town. 100 rounds MG fired into parties of natives in the streets. At 15.50 when machine left for Lahore no natives could be seen on the streets…”

Another highlight of the exhibition was the hand-written original of Rabindra Nath Tagore’s letter to the viceroy renouncing his Knighthood to protest the repression in Punjab. He wrote:

“The time has come when badges of honors make our shame glaring in their incongruous context of humiliation, and I for me part wish to stand, shorn of all special distinctions, by the side of those of my countrymen who, for their so called insignificance, are liable to suffer degradation not fit for human beings.”

Another heartening document was the original facsimile of the resignation letter dated March 28, 1919 of MA Jinnah from the Imperial Legislative Assembly in protest against Jallianwala Bagh massacre and repression in Punjab. His letter openly blamed the British rulers for atrocities and passing Rowlatt Act. He wrote:

“A government that passes or sanctions such a law [Rowlatt Act] in times of peace forfeits its claim to be called a civilized government.”

It is sad that Jinnah later joined the bandwagon of two-nation protagonists.

How much anger Rowlatt Act generated in every part of India could be gauged by the violent resistance the Gujarat area generally considered to be compliant. The displayed documents showed that in Gujarat within 2 days (11-12 April, 1919) protesting mobs burnt only in Ahmedabad and its vicinity offices of Collector, city judge, flag staff, Jail, main telegraph centre and 26 police stations.

Resistance literature banned

On display were the copies of voluminous literature, poetry, prose and plays which were written and circulated against the British barbarism but banned. This treasure again depicted the united and all pervasive character of the resistance. It is not possible to discuss even a fraction of it while also noting that the exhibition must have displayed a fraction of the banned literature available in the Archives. Some of the important banned books were; Bagh-e-Jallian, a lyrical play in Hindi authored by Ram Saroop Gupta, Jallianwala Bagh, a long poem in Gurmukhi penned by Firoziddin Sharf, Punjab kaa Hatyakand, a full-fledged play in Urdu and Jallianwala Bagh, a long Gujarati play. The last two were by unknown authors in order to avoid identification by the repressive regime.

Some of the representative lyrics read:

जुल्म डायर ने किया था रंग जमाने के लिए

हिंद वालों को मुसीबत में फंसाने के लिए।

[zulm Dyer ne kiya thaa rang jamane ke liye/Hind walon ko museebat maen phansane ke liye.]

खून से पंजाब के डायर की लिखी डायरी

रुबरु रख दी मेरी तबियत जलाने के लिए।

[khoon se Punjab ke Dyer kee likhee diary/roo-baroo rakh dee mere tabiyat jalane ke liye.]

बाग़े जलियां में शहीदों की बने गर यादगार

जायेंगे अशिके-वतन आंसू बहाने के लिए।

[Bagh-e-Jallian maen shahidon kee baney gar yaadgaar/jayenge aashiq-e-watan aansoo bahane ke liye.]

हम उजड़ते हैं तो उजड़ें, वतन आबाद रहे,

मर मिटे हैं हम के अब वतन आजाद रहे।

वतन की खातिर जो अपनी जान दिया करते हैं,

मरते नहीं हैं वो हमेशा के लिए जिया करते हैं।

[hum ujadte haen tau ujdaen, watan aabaad rahe/murr mitey haen hum ke aab watan azad rahe.

Watan kee khatir jo apnee jaan diya karte haen/marte naheen haen who hamesha ke liye jiya karte haen.]

British rulers overlooked martyrs, Independent India too remained/remains indifferent

These documents make shocking revelations about the reprehensible attitude of the foreign rules towards victims of its perpetrated massacre at Jallianwala Bagh. In June 1919 the home department came out with the statement which described the British causalities but kept mum on the count of Indian deaths raising an idiotic argument that whatever number would be made public by the British government would not be acceptable to Indians!

However, when government repression in Punjab drew world-wide condemnation, the British government appointed a commission of enquiry for investigating violence in Punjab on October 14, 1919, headed by a jurist from Scotland, Hunter. This commission came to be known as Hunter Commission. It came to the conclusion that at Jallianwala Bagh 381 Indians, including males, females and even a 6 month old baby were killed by the General Dyer’s force. This count was highly disputable as the unidentified bodies (of the people who were not Punjabis but were in Amritsar as it was a famous business/religious centre where also people from other states constantly came in search of livelihood) were disposed off.

Shockingly, even after Independence of the country nothing changed for the surviving members of the martyrs and grievously injured. They remained discarded. In India where persons who were behind bars during Emergency (1975-77) for less than a month, receives INR 10000 and less than 2 months as INR 20000 as family pension, the demand of the families of the martyrs that at least they should be entitled for pension and railway concession have not been accepted. Disgusted, ‘the Jallianwala Bagh Shaheed Parivar Samiti’ wrote a letter to the British PM that England should compensate their loss! It only shows the helplessness and hopelessness of the families of the martyrs but surely shamelessness and spinelessness of the Indian rulers.

Unsung martyr: Udham Singh who avenged the Jallianwala Bagh massacre

This exhibition displayed a telegram that went out on April 16 1940. That was the date of Udham Singh’s trial in London. It read:

“We understand that during the trial the accused intends to pose as a martyr and indulge in heroics. We would be glad if steps are taken to secure that press in England do not report substantially and that Reuters only carry as brief and unsensational a summary as possible.”

This telegram from the Governor General in New Delhi to the Secretary of State for India clearly showed that the Britishers, glorified as great believers in the fair-play and rule of law, germane to democracy, were masters in manipulating the fourth estate.

For more than 47 years this telegram remained a secret document in the British intelligence files and kept hidden by the free India’s governments also till 1994. There were other amazing documents displayed in 1994 which pieced together, the complete story of Udham Singh which was so far known only in tidbits.

“I did it because… he deserved it. He… wanted to crush the spirit of my people, so I have crushed him. For full 21 years I have been trying to wreak vengeance. I am happy I have done the job. I am not scared of death. I am dying for my country.”

He continued,

“I do not care about sentence of death…I am dying for a purpose.. We are suffering from the British Empire…I am proud to die to free my native land and I hope that when I am gone…in my place will come thousands of my countrymen to drive you dirty dogs out; to free my country…you will be cleansed out of India. And your British imperialism will be smashed…I have nothing against the English people at all…I have great sympathy with the workers of England. I am against the imperialist government. DOWN WITH BRITISH IMPERIALISM!”

These words of Mohammad Singh Azad rang out through a London courtroom on March 13, 1940 where he was produced immediately after killing Michael O’Dyer, the Lt. Governor of Punjab, the architect of the Jallianwala massacre who order the crackdown. Mohammad Singh Azad was none other than Udham Singh. Born in a Dalit Sikh family and brought up in an orphanage, Udham Singh was present in the public meeting at Amritsar on the fateful bloody Baisakhi day of 1919.

Having fallen under a heap of dead bodies, Udham Singh had miraculously survived the carnage. But so deep was the hatred evoked by the 20-year old vowed not to rest until he had avenged the killing of the innocent hundreds. He achieved his target 21 years later. And ‘Mohammad Singh Azad’-the name he adopted-underscored the fact that the overthrow of the British rule was impossible without the unity was impossible without the unity of the Hindu, Muslim and Sikh populace of the land.

It was 79 years ago (July 31, 1940) Udham Singh died on the gallows in the Pentonville prison of London. Through the documents so far prohibited we also got to know that before reaching London he had been to Mesopotamia, Kenya, Uganda, USA and USSR, all in quest of Indian revolutionaries and ammunitions. It was on reaching the English shores that he took the alias of Mohammad Singh Azad. He even attempted to organize fellow English laborers. Udham Singh’s choice of the name as Mohammad Singh Azad was not a fluke. He chose it to underline the cardinal fact that India could be liberated only by collective and united efforts of all Indians. There is a reasonable apprehension that if Udham Singh returns to India with this name today he may be lynched.

The list of martyrs only underlines the multi-religious and multi-Caste character of the anti-British freedom struggle

The Hunter Commission list of martyrs makes it clear that the protest meeting at Jallianwala Bagh held in protest against Rowlatt Act and arrests of renowned Congress leaders, Dr Satyapal and Saifuddin Kitchlew (whose son Toufique Kitchlew, an author died in penury) was attended by men, youth, women of all religions and Castes. According to the list there were 381 died due to the firing of the British army under the command of Brigadier General Reginald Dyre. His invading force mainly consisted of Nepali Gurkhas, Baluch Regiment (manned by Punjabi Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs), the 54th Sikhs and the 59th Sind Rifles soldiers making it clear that the British ruled India with the help of Indian stooges.

Out of 381 martyrs, 222 were Hindus, 96 Sikhs and 63 Muslims. Another significant aspect of this gathering, which reflected in the list of martyrs too, was that if on the one hand businessmen, lawyers, journalists, literary persons, government employees, intellectuals were present, on the other hand large number of audience belonged to the professions like ironsmith, weavers, barbers, helpers, daily-wage earner, carpet knitters, masons, cobblers and safai karamcharis. Many women were also present. A notable presence was of Udham Singh. This reality once again underlined the fact that before the appearance of protagonists of Hindu and Muslim separatism, Indian freedom struggle was a united movement over-riding religious and Caste divisions. It was a true anti-colonial movement for an inclusive India.

It is sad that such narratives of joint struggle and joint martyrdom of Indian people lie hidden in the dark rooms of the National Archives. If only these are made accessible to the younger generation, they might quell many of the communal, Casteist and sectarian agendas running in the country.

On the centenary of Jallianwala Bagh massacre the hypocrisy of the Indian rulers was to be seen and believed. This lot condemned the brutal repression by the British government and passing of draconian Rowlatt Act. Nobody questioned them about far worst draconian laws like DIR, MISA, TADA, POTA, UAPA, AFSPA and many others using which they have put India under Iron Heel which even the British rulers did not try.

Shamsul Islam is a retired Professor of University of Delhi.Email: notoinjustice@gmail.com

17 April 2019

Source: countercurrents.org

By Andre Vltchek

Throughout history, dark and reactionary forces have always attempted to control the world; by violence, by deceit, by kidnapping and perverting the mainstream narrative,or by spreading fear among the masses.

Consistently, brave and honest individuals have been standing up, exposing lies, confronting the brutality and depravity.Some have fought against insane and corrupt rulers by using swords or guns; others have chosen words as their weapons.

Many were cut down; most of them were. New comrades rose up; new banners of resistance were unveiled.

To resist is to dream of a better world. And to dream is to live.

The bravest of the brave never fought for just their own countries and cultures; they fought for the entire humanity. They were and they are what one could easily define as “intuitive internationalists”.

Julian Assange, an Australian computer expert, thinker and humanist, had chosen a new and mostly untested form of combat: he unleashed an entire battalion of letters and words, hundreds of thousands of documents, against the Western empire. He penetrated databases which have been storing the evidence of the most atrocious crimes the West has been committing for years and decades. Toxic secrets were exposed; truths revealed. To those who have been suffering in silence, both face and dignity were finally returned.

Julian Assange was a ‘commander’ of a small team of dedicated experts and activists. I met some of them, and was tremendously impressed. But no matter how small in numbers, this team has been managing to change the world, or at least to give the Western public an opportunity to know, and consequently to act.

After WikiLeaks, no one in New York, Berlin, London or Paris has any right to say “we did not know”. If they do not know now, it is because they have decided not to know, opportunistically and cynically.

Julian Assange and his comrades published all that the West was doing to the Afghan people, as well as to those suffering from neo-colonialism and imperialism all over the Middle East, Africa, Asia and Latin America.

What is it that the critics of Wikileaks are holding against Mr. Assange? That the snitches and the agents of the Western empire got ‘exposed’? Is the world expected to feel pity for them? Are tens of millions of victims supposed to be forgotten just sothat the members of the Western intelligence services and their lackeys could feel safe and protected?

*

A few days before this essay went to print, Julian Assange was cynically betrayed by a country which used to be governed by a socialist administration, and which gave him political asylum and citizenship, both. Its current ruler, Lenin Moreno, will be judged extremely harshly by history: he’ll be remembered as a man who began dismantling the socialist structure of Ecuador, and who then literally sold (to the twisted British and US judiciary systems) a man who has already sacrificed more than his life for the truth as well as for survival of our planet.

As the Metropolitan Police dragged Julian Assange from the Ecuadorian embassy in London into a van, the entire world could catch a glimpse of the naked essence of the Western regime; the regime in action – oppressive, gangrenous, murderous and vindictive.

But we should not forget: the regime is not doing it because it is confident and strong. It is actually terrified. It is in panic. It is losing. And it is murdering, wherever it feels ‘vulnerable’, which is, all over the world.

Why? Because the millions, on all continents, are waking up, ready to face Western terror, ready to fight it, if there is no other way.

It is because they now know the truth. It is because the reality cannot be hidden; the brutality of Western global dictates is something that no one can deny any longer. Thanks to the new media in countries that have managed to free themselves from Western influence. And of course, thanks to heroes like Julian Assange, and his comrades.

*

Julian Assange has not fallen. He was stabbed, betrayed. But he is here, he is alive, with us; with the millions of those who support him, admire him, and are grateful to him for his honesty, courage and integrity.

He confronted the entire Empire; the most powerful, evil, destructive and brutal force on earth. And he managed to damage its secret organizations, consequently spoiling some of the plans, therefore saving lives.

All this can be considered a victory. Not the final victory, but a victory nevertheless.

By arresting Assange, the empire showed its weakness. By dragging him from the embassy into a police van, it has admitted that it already has begun sewing its own funeral gown.

*

[First published by NEO – New Eastern Outlook]

Andre Vltchek is a philosopher, novelist, filmmaker and investigative journalist.

17 April 2019

Source: countercurrents.org

By Oscar Grenfell

An affidavit unsealed by US prosecutors on Monday has underscored the unlawful character of the Trump administration’s request that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange be extradited to the US in the wake of his illegal expulsion from Ecuador’s London embassy and arrest by the British police last Thursday.

The affidavit was made by Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) special agent Megan Brown on December 21, 2017, in support of two charges which had been secretly filed against Assange, under her name.

The charges accuse Assange of participating in a “conspiracy” with whistleblower Chelsea Manning to gain unauthorised access to a US government computer.

Brown’s document demonstrates that the Trump administration does not have a legal case against Assange that would withstand judicial scrutiny in the US, or in any other country that claims to be a democracy. It brands the US extradition request as a pseudo-legal fig leaf for an extraordinary rendition operation, aimed at silencing a publisher, for his lawful journalistic activities.

The sole “evidence” against Assange is chat logs, in the possession of the US government, which Brown and US prosecutors claim are of online conversations between the WikiLeaks founder and Chelsea Manning.

Brown’s affidavit, and the charge sheet, do not provide any direct evidence that the person Manning was speaking to was Assange.

The “case” against Assange is that Manning, and whoever she was allegedly conversing with in March 2010, discussed cracking a “hash,” or password, that would have allowed her to access US Defence Department material on an account that was not her own.

Manning, as a US army intelligence analyst, had access to the material that she leaked to WikiLeaks. She had already leaked thousands of documents, including the US army’s Afghan and Iraq war logs. The only purpose of accessing the password would have been to help protect her identity.

Brown’s affidavit indicates that the password was never cracked. It quotes Manning, allegedly asking, “any more hints about the IM hash?” The person Manning was conversing with replied: “No luck so far.” Brown then stated: “There is no other evidence as to what Assange did, if anything, with respect to the password.”

Brown also draws attention to portions of the chat logs, in which Manning and her interlocutor discuss the contents of material she had read and leaked to WikiLeaks.

All of the substantive material in the affidavit has been in the possession of the US authorities since at least 2011, following Manning’s arrest the previous year.

The Obama administration viciously pursued Assange and convened a secret Grand Jury to concoct charges against him. It did not, however, press charges over the alleged conversation logs, in an apparent recognition that such a prosecution would violate the US Constitution’s First Amendment freedom of the press protections.

As one of Assange’s US based lawyers, Barry Pollack, stated this week: “Encouraging sources to provide information, and using methods to protect their identity, are common practices by all journalists.” Another of Assange’s lawyers, Jennifer Robinson, noted that the material showed “the kinds of communications journalists have with sources all the time.”

Brown’s affidavit demonstrates that the Trump administration is using the case against Assange to try and prevent journalists from speaking to any sources within the US state apparatus, who wish to disclose evidence of American imperialism’s criminal operations domestically and around the world.

The affidavit declares that WikiLeaks “solicited submissions of classified, censored, or otherwise restricted information,” as though there was something illegitimate about this centuries-long journalistic practice.

It stated that Assange “never possessed a security clearance or need to know” and was “prohibited from receiving classified information of the United States.” This line alone brands the indictment against Assange as a frontal assault on freedom of the press in the US and internationally.

Significantly, Brown’s affidavit condemns Assange for WikiLeaks’ publication of information that they “had reason to believe would cause injury to the United States.”

This is nothing less than a call to establish a legal precedent that journalists must function as de facto agents of the government, including by suppressing truthful information that is in the public interest.

The documents referenced in that section of the affidavit are the Iraq and Afghan war logs. Those publications exposed, for the first time, the extent of the war crimes carried out by US occupying forces in both countries.

The Iraq war logs documented the deaths of almost 110,000 people, including more than 66,000 people labelled by the US military as civilians. This included 15,000 civilian deaths, which were known to the US authorities, but publicly suppressed.

The war logs from both countries demonstrated that torture was a common practice for the US and its proxies. They documented extra-judicial killings and the cover-up of war crimes extending to the highest levels of military command.

The affidavit further demonstrates that it is for exposing these historic crimes, as a journalist and publisher, that Assange has been pursued and charged by the US government.

It is warning that if Assange is extradited to the US, espionage and other charges, carrying a maximum sentence of life imprisonment or the death penalty, will likely be added to his charge sheet. Brown indicated that she became involved in the investigation against Assange, after having been assigned to an FBI “counter-espionage squad” in Washington.

The timeline presented by Brown, also provides new evidence of the motives behind the stepped-up US pursuit of Assange.

She began working with the “counter-espionage squad” targeting Assange in February 2017, the same month WikiLeaks announced that it was preparing to release a massive trove of documents from the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), dubbed Vault 7.

The documents, published over March 2017, were the most extensive exposure of the criminal methods of the CIA in more than 30 years.

They detailed the activities of a secretive division within the agency, tasked with hacking computers all over the world. The documents demonstrated that the division had developed techniques to hack into computer systems and leave “tell-tale” markers, attributing the attacks to other countries, including Russia and Iran.

Vault 7 revealed that the agency was spying on people through smart televisions and other household devices. The CIA was also seeking to develop capabilities to remotely take control of the computer systems in modern cars. Such abilities could be used in assassination operations.

The US government response to the exposures was apoplectic. In April 2017, CIA director Mike Pompeo declared that Assange was a “demon” and that WikiLeaks was a “non-state hostile intelligence service” without any first amendment rights.

The same month, US Attorney General Jeff Sessions said arresting Assange was a “priority.” He told a news conference: “We’ve already begun to step up our efforts and whenever a case can be made, we will seek to put some people in jail.”

Just weeks before Pompeo and Sessions made their statements, the corrupt Ecuadorian regime of President Lenín Moreno, acting at the behest of Washington, cut-off all of Assange’s communications and his internet access, in its London embassy.

In court testimony last October, challenging the Ecuadorian government’s attempts to isolate and gag him, Assange explained that the escalating attacks against him had resulted from the publication of Vault 7.

Brown’s affidavit, and the timing of the 2017 investigation into WikiLeaks, demonstrate the urgency of transforming the immense support that exists for Assange among workers, students and young people, into a mass political movement to secure his freedom.

Everything must be done to prevent the extradition of the courageous journalist to the US, where he would be at the mercy of the CIA torturers and war criminals he has done so much to expose.

Originally published by WSWS.org

17 April 2019

Source: countercurrents.org

By Afro-Middle East Centre (AMEC)

Khalifa Haftar’s 4 April announcement declaring his march on Tripoli, and the subsequent of the Libyan capital by his forces, threaten to gravely impact the already tenuous process of placing the country on a more inclusive and representative trajectory, and highlights his intention to subjugate all of Libya to his rule. As a result of the Haftar threat, the Libyan National Conference planned by the UN, and which was to be held this week, was postponed. Significantly, unlike in relation to his rapid capture of the South between December 2018 and March 2019, Haftar’s move westwards is likely to be fraught with challenges; even if it is successful, his grip on power will continue to be subject to low-level insurgent warfare.

Haftar’s decision to march on Tripoli was likely influenced by the announcement of the UN’s national conference, which was to be held in the southwestern town of Ghadamis. It was hoped the conference would agree on a roadmap for Libya’s future that would include a provision for elections to be held before the end of this year. Haftar’s likely fear was that the diverse, and fairly representative 120-person conference would have opposed to his super-sized role in the country’s future, especially since he wants to become the supreme military commander in any future settlement. Significantly, a February meeting in the UAE between Haftar and the head of the internationally-recognised Government of National Accord (GNA), Fayez al-Sarraj, sought to formulate a compromise, and proposed reducing the Presidential Council (PC) that controlled the GNA from nine members to three, and tacitly acknowledging that Haftar would be one of the three. Indeed, the proposed compromise was too heavily weighted in Haftar’s favour for it to be implemented by the GNA.

Haftar calculated that his march on Tripoli would spur militia groups in the West to quickly change sides, joining his forces and allowing him to rapidly conquer the city. His previous such offensive was in the South where, through crafting opportune alliances and by instigating rivalry and warfare between southern tribes, he was able rapidly to capture much of that part of the country, even though his hold on the area is tenuous. With the fall of the South, Haftar now controls all Libya’s oil resources, which empowers him in any future negotiations.

However, he had miscalculated; a few smaller towns, such as Rujban and Surman, shifted allegiances, but most militia groups mobilised to defend the capital. Significantly, the large Bunyan Marsus militia from the city of Misrata dispatched troops to defend Tripoli, even though Haftar attempted to involved it in local skirmishes around Sirte. Further, militia form the city of Zintan also joined the Misratans, even though Zintan’s leadership is divided on whether to support the GNA. After Haftar’s initial approach to Tripoli, the frontlines have remained constant, just outside the city, with his self-styled Libyan National Army being unable to breach its barriers.

Foreign powers, especially France, Russia, the UAE and Egypt, continue to support Haftar, even though French diplomats claim they did not authorise the march on Tripoli, and despite the fact that these countries issued a statement on the 4 April asking Haftar to halt his offensive. An example of this support is that a 6 April UNSC formal statement condemning Haftar was blocked by Russia, with the result that the UNSC issued just a press statement that called on ‘all forces’ to halt activities. Echoing that sentiment, the French foreign minister, Jean-Yves Le Drian, said, ‘both sides will have to come to a new understanding’.

It is likely that the UAE, Egypt and Saudi Arabia green lighted Haftar’s march on Tripoli. In his visit to Cairo on 6 and 7 April, he received unequivocal support from Egypt’s president, Abdul Fattah El-Sisi. France is unlikely to halt its support to Haftar; Paris is keen to control Libya’s vast oil resources, and Haftar’s counter terrorism rhetoric that paints all Islamists as terrorists appeals to Macron. Paris is also attracted by the ‘stability’ that a Haftar victory would bring, especially since France maintains strong interests in former colonies Niger and Chad, which have been negatively impacted by Libya’s current chaos.

Moscow dispatched troops, equipment and private contractors to support Haftar; Russia ‘s interest is resuming the large military contracts it had lost after Gadhafi’s ouster, which it believes Haftar will revive. In general, Moscow also favours strongmen, which it, like France, believes would ease its re-entry into the continent; it has thus supported Sisi’s Egypt and Bashir’s Sudan.

Highlighting the fact that Libya has become a battle ground between foreign powers, Russia warned against outside interference, fearing that the USA and Italy might strengthen support for the GNA. Matteo Selvini, Italy’s deputy prime minister, recently intensified criticism of French activities in Libya in support of Haftar. Meanwhile, the EU’s statement on Libya, which would have condemned Haftar, similar to the US statement, was blocked by Paris.

The African Union continues to be a non-player, restricting itself to monitoring events. The continental organisation had planned a July reconciliation conference on Libya, but it is now uncertain whether it will go ahead or have much impact, despite the AU’s insistence that there were no plans for a postponement. Algeria, one of the key actors influencing the AU on Libya is currently involved in its own leadership transition.

If Haftar’s move on Tripoli intensifies into a battle, Libya’s civil war will enter a deadlier phase, especially since weapons’ proliferation in the country is ubiquitous. It will also increase destabilisation in the region, where contestation over power is occurring in Sudan and Algeria, and where conflicts in Mali, Burkina Faso and, to an extent, Egypt continue. The international community must ensure that the Libyan National Conference goes ahead as soon as possible.

AMEC briefs is a fortnightly commentary on a current issue in the Middle East and North Africa region, providing short but trenchant analyses.

16 April 2019

Source: amec.org.za