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By Ranjan Solomon

In this issue of Palestine Updates, we bring you narratives of Palestinian farmers who speak with defiance and longing about the land they have lost. It is theirs but often stolen from under their very noses. They can gaze in gloom and hope. Many have grown old from the day they were driven from the land in the horrors of The Nakba; then the occupation. And now the Nakba grows as ethnic cleansing is pursued with impunity while the world watches in tacit acceptance of the war criminalities happen in front of our very own eyes. More land is stolen and settlements come up. We are complicit in that crime of ethnic cleansing by our hush and apathy. And yet, Palestinians will not budge from the highway of hope. Indian writer, novelist, and political commentator put it best when she argued: “The system will collapse if we refuse to buy what they are selling – their ideas, their version of history, their wars, their weapons, their notion of inevitability”.

Palestinian farmers are doing just this. They are asserting: “Land means life.”Despite Israel’s military superiority, they invest their hopes in the notion of justice and persistent resistance. “We need thousands of Palestinians to come here and defend this land with us,” they insist.

28 April 2019

Source: palestineupdates.com

By Kalinga Seneviratne

SINGAPORE (IDN) – “I gave leadership to the government that defeated the terrorists that no one thought could ever be defeated. From the moment this government came into power in January 2015, they have been persecuting the members of the armed forces and the intelligence services that ended that war,” said former President and Current Opposition Leader Mahinda Rajapakse in an emotional 10 minute address to parliament on April 23.

With his voice almost cracking up with emotion, the war-winning president said that “the armed forces personnel who carried out their duties on behalf of the nation were harassed and hunted down by this government”. He slammed the government for listening to foreign (western) powers and undermining national security.

“The government should at least now realise that you cannot run this country according to the dictates coming from foreign countries. We have to solve our own problems. Because the government was engaged in relentlessly persecuting its own armed forces, we became an easy target for terrorists,” pointed out Rajapakse, adding that “no other country in the world has persecuted and weakened their own armed forces and intelligence services in this manner”.

While social media is blocked by the government, his comments have triggered a debate in much of the mainstream media about how the government led by President Maitripala Sirisena and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe has been inept at protecting the security of the country, because they have allowed western governments, NGOs funded by them and UN organisations like the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) to dictate national security policies to them.

In September 2015, the government virtually surrendered the policy making process to the UNHRC when it co-sponsored a resolution calling upon the government to account for alleged war crimes and missing persons during the final push to eliminate one of the deadliest terrorist groups in the world at the time, Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).

This has led to pressure on the government to set up war crimes courts with foreign judges, set up a missing persons investigation centre and imprisonment of former intelligence officers and army personnel, many of whom are seen by most Sri Lankans as war heroes, who brought peace to the country. At the time of the Easter Sunday attack, the government was on the verge of repealing the ‘Prevention of Terrorism Act’ under the dictates of the West and UNHRC.

“If that had happened what position would we be at today?” asked Rajapakse.

In a video interview given by leading Constitutional Lawyer Manohara de Silva on April 23 that was widely circulated via email, he also slammed the government for giving the responsibility for the country’s security to the international community. He blamed the 2015 UNHRC resolution for the current situation where the country’s security guard was lowered.

He pointed out that the new anti-terror law that was presented to parliament recently, makes it impossible to pursue or charge anyone for terrorism activity if that person is a foreign national – even though he may have been a Sri Lankan national before.

“If the country he lives now don’t agree, we can’t charge him,” he notes. “So this law is going to be subservient to the West (because most of those who support terrorism in Sri Lanka have obtained asylum in Western countries, especially LTTE sympathisers)”. He accuses the government of trying to please the West rather than protecting “our citizens”.

Silva pointed out in the interview that about 40 intelligence officers who helped to end terrorism in Sri Lanka are now behind bars. “They are still held on remand when there is no sound evidence against them,” he notes. “If so they should be charged by now.”

This has led to a situation, argues Silva, that intelligence officers are afraid to investigate terrorism threats today because they are worried that they would be framed like those in jail. “We cannot operate our intelligence services this way. This is why we have to depend on Indian intelligence,” he argues.

Silva also points out that 54 bills have been passed against “our army” under pressure from UNHRC and the missing persons act passed does not allow the police to the investigations, but delegates it to the ‘Office of Missing Persons’ that is stacked with anti-national NGO types, one of whom is Dr Nilmalka Fernando, a well-known anti-Buddhist western-funded NGO activist.

In a statement released to the media today on April 25, Sri Lanka’s major Buddhist chapter, Asgiriya chapter, called upon the government to give an immediate pardon to all imprisoned intelligence officials and draft them back into the country’s national security framework. “Religious extremism spread in the country because experienced intelligence officials have been imprisoned for various reasons. They did an immense service to defeat terrorism. We need to consider our national security and they should be pardoned and released immediately,” the statement said.

Another Sri Lankan lawyer, Dharshan Weerasekare, author of ‘UN’s Relentless Pursuit of Sri Lanka’ in a commentary published in Lankaweb has called into question the timing and reason for the Easter Sunday attack.

“What is crucial is that the bombings not be permitted to become a pretext for the Government to join the U.S.’s ‘War on Terror.’ For the past four years, the U.S. and India (the U.S.’s new ally in Asia) have been busy trying to gain maximum indirect control over Sri Lanka in order to prevent the Chinese from establishing a presence in this country,” he argues.“They would have succeeded had it not been for the collapse of the ‘National Government’ and the subsequent collapse of the drive to enact a new Constitution”.

With both presidential and parliamentary elections due in Sri Lanka within the next 12 months, the nationalist alliance led by Rajapakse is strongly tipped to win both elections. Survival of the staunchly pro-Western Wickremasingle is crucial for the West to control Sri Lanka’s destiny.

In March 2018 when a no-confidence motion against the PM was gathering momentum a riot broke out between Muslims and Buddhists in Central Sri Lanka. Timely action by local community leaders of both communities prevented it becoming a major nationwide conflict.

Then when Sirisena sacked Wickremasinghe and appointed Rajapakse as PM in November 2018, Western ambassadors in Colombo openly interfered in the domestic political process to get Wickremasinghe reinstalled. Now come the terror attacks that have the potential to create chaos in the country so that Sri Lanka could be called a ‘failed state’, ripe for the West’s new-colonialism via the R2P (Right to Protect) framework.

“Sri Lanka which sits at a strategically vital spot in the Indian Ocean is crucial for both the Americans as well as the Chinese, the former in order to further entrench their control over this region, the latter to break out of the ‘encirclement’“ notes Weerasekare, pointing out that a new government that would take power after elections next year could be heavily pro-nationalist as well as pro-Chinese.

“In short, all the hopes that the Americans/Indians had in January 2015 are now in ruins, and the ‘gains’ they made in the last four years are very much in danger of being reversed.”

Sri Lanka’s oldest leftist party Lanka Sama Samaji Party (LSSP), while issuing a condolence message to victims of the bombing, said there was something more sinister than what meets the eye. “This whole attack has similarities with events abroad that have been attributed to the CIA of the USA,” the statement argued.

The statement added: “It is known that the CIA and USA think tanks are operating here with the support of the Government. With the blue print for a police state, the diabolical Counter Terrorist Act (CTA) available, to ensure that the UNF (governing alliance) can stay in power, without holding elections, the path to becoming a neo-colony of the USA can go ahead without interruption.”

Thus, what happened on Easter Sunday, may not be merely a jihadist attack on Christians and Western tourists to take revenge on the New Zealand Christchurch massacre in March 2019. This could well be part of the dirty geo-political wars being fought around the world by major powers with young brainwashed religious zealots as fodder. [IDN-InDepthNews – 25 April 2019]

Photo: The Kingsbury Hotel in Colombo, which was among three Colombo hotels hit by suicide bombers on Easter Sunday. CC BY-SA 4.0

IDN is flagship agency of the International Press Syndicate.

facebook.com/IDN.GoingDeeper – twitter.com/InDepthNews

25 April 2019

Source: www.indepthnews.net

By Mike Head

The United Nations special rapporteur on the right to privacy, Joe Cannataci, was finally permitted yesterday to meet with Julian Assange inside London’s Belmarsh prison.

The WikiLeaks journalist and publisher has been held virtually incommunicado, in denial of his fundamental legal and democratic rights, since the British police dragged him out of Ecuador’s embassy more than two weeks ago.

This has become a global battle for free speech and right of the public to know the truth about the crimes being committed by governments and their state agencies around the world.

Assange is being persecuted, and subjected to an unprecedented legal assault, for publishing millions of secret documents exposing political conspiracies and corporate crimes. Without this extraordinary record of authentic investigative journalism since 2006, this information would have remained suppressed.

Confronted by worldwide protests and petitions against the illegal termination of Assange’s political asylum and the immediate launching of proceedings to extradite Assange to the US, the British government felt compelled to grant the UN access. Cannataci became the first person allowed into Belmarsh prison to visit Assange, who has even been denied his right to speak to his family.

For weeks, the UN has been investigating the blanket surveillance conducted by Ecuador’s government against Assange inside its embassy.

On April 10, WikiLeaks revealed that hundreds of thousands of documents, audio recordings, videos and photos were taken in the embassy. Assange was arrested the very next day, preventing a scheduled April 25 visit by Cannataci.

Ecuadorian officials spied on every aspect of Assange’s life for more than a year, including his medical consultations and confidential meetings with his lawyers. The obvious purpose of this illegal operation was to gather or concoct evidence that the Trump administration could use to indict and extradite Assange on manufactured conspiracy and espionage charges.

Outside the prison yesterday, Cannataci told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation: “There are strong indications that some elements of his privacy may have been breached.” He added: “The case is important because it concerns a very special set of circumstances where a person who is not formally under detention yet was subjected to surveillance.”

Having met with Assange for two hours, the UN special envoy reported that Assange was “in fairly good shape and certainly very cogent in replying to our questions.” This is another indication of Assange’s defiant determination to fight his removal to the US, despite the damage done to his health by his seven-year confinement inside the Ecuadorian embassy.

Interviewed by the Italian newspaper Repubblica, Cannataci pointed to the far-reaching nature of the spying. He said he was seeking access to the material currently held by the Spanish police, who are investigating an attempt to extort WikiLeaks for copies of the documents and videos.

“If and when my access is granted, that evidence might consist of thousands of hours of surveillance footage, which will take some time to watch.”

The UN rapporteur agreed with the Repubblica journalist, Stefania Maurizi, that the spying operation against Assange threatened an entire range of human rights, including lawyer-client confidentiality. “[T]here are many dimensions to the case, including freedom of expression, including whistleblowing, protection of journalistic sources,” he said.

The UN is investigating whether Ecuador violated Assange’s privacy under two cornerstones of international law—the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights—by placing him under strict surveillance.

Jennifer Robinson, a lawyer representing Assange, an Australian citizen, said in a statement that his legal team welcomed the UN’s continued engagement in the case. “It is a matter of grave concern that Ecuador expelled Mr Assange from the embassy before the scheduled UN visit could take place,” she said.

Robinson said the legal team had also requested a visit to Assange by the UN special rapporteur on torture. She recalled that the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention had ruled in late 2015 that Assange was “arbitrarily detained,” as a result of having to remain in the embassy to protect himself from US extradition, and called for his release.

Chelsea Manning, the courageous whistleblower who leaked the infamous “Collateral Murder” video and many thousands of incriminating US diplomatic cables to WikiLeaks, has been held in solitary confinement for over six weeks because she has refused to give perjured testimony against Assange before a Grand Jury. Her continued detention is a transparent attempt to force her to cooperate in the US-led vendetta against Assange.

If Assange is dispatched to the US on bogus computer hacking charges, he will soon face additional charges, carrying a maximum sentence of life imprisonment or the death penalty. This would set an international precedent for the jailing of journalists everywhere who expose government crimes and wrongdoing.

Since Assange’s arrest, numerous corporate publications have lined up directly behind this offensive. They have brazenly used Ecuador’s video footage and other illegal surveillance material to repeat the personal smears against Assange fabricated by the corrupt Ecuadorian regime to justify its termination of his political asylum.

These lies and slanders against Assange are in contrast to the immense support that he enjoys among the millions of workers, students and young people internationally who regard him and Manning as heroes. The mass opposition to Assange’s persecution must be transformed into a political movement to prevent his extradition and secure his freedom. The WSWS and the Socialist Equality Parties (SEP) around the world are playing a central role in this decisive fight.

Over the past 18 months, the SEP (Australia) has held a series of rallies, demanding that the Australian government immediately fulfil its obligations to Assange, as an Australian citizen, by securing his return to Australia, with a guarantee against extradition to the US.

Another rally, aimed at placing this demand at the centre of the May 18 Australian federal election, will be held in Sydney this Saturday, followed by meetings in a number of cities.

The SEP in the UK has taken part in protests and vigils calling for an all-out mobilisation against the moves to extradite Assange. It will participate in a London public meeting, called by the Julian Assange Defence Committee, today.

This crucial struggle is entirely bound up with the fight for genuine socialism. As the all-out assault on Assange and Manning by governments and the corporate media conglomerates demonstrates, securing fundamental democratic rights requires nothing less than the worldwide transformation of society by the working class to meet social needs, not the profit interests of the financial aristocracy.

This internationalist and socialist perspective animates the 2019 International Online May Day Rally, organised by the International Committee of the Fourth International and the World Socialist Web Site. We urge our readers to register today.

Originally published in WSWS.org

26 April 2019

Source: countercurrents.org

By Rene Wadlow

On Tuesday, 23 April 2019, the United Nations Security Council voted resolution N° 2467 concerning the use of rape as a weapon in times of armed conflict. This resolution builds on an earlier resolution of 24 June 2013 which called for the complete and immediate cessation of all acts of sexual violation by all parties in armed conflicts. The new resolution introduced by Germany contained two new elements, both of which were eliminated in the intense negotiations in the four days prior to the vote of 13 in favor and two abstentions, those of Russia and China.

The first new element in the German proposed text concerned help to the victims of rape. The proposed paragraph was “urges United Nations entities and donors to provide non-discrimatory and comprehensive health services including sexual and reproductive health, psychosocial, legal and livelihodd support and other multi-sectoral services for survivors of sexual violence, taking into account the special needs of persons with disabilities.”

The U.S. delegation objected to this paragraph claiming that “sexual and reproductive health” were code words that opened a door to abortion. Since a U.S. veto would prevent the resolution as a whole, the paragraph was eliminated. There had been four days of intense discussions among the Security Council members concerning this paragraph, with only the U.S. opposed to any form of planned parenthood action. After the resolution was passed with the health paragraph eliminated, the Permanent Representative of France, Ambassador Francois Delatte spoke for many of the members saying “It is intolerable and incomprehensible that the Security Council is incapable of acknowledging that women and girls who suffered from sexual violence in conflict and who obviously didn’t choose to become pregnant should have the right to terminate their pregnancy.”

The second concept of the German draft that was eliminated was the proposal to create a working group to monitor and to review progress on ending sexual violence in armed conflict. Such a working group was opposed by the diplomats of Russia and China, both of which have the veto power. Thus, for the same reason as with the U.S. opposition, the idea of a monitoring working group was dropped. Both China and Russia are opposed to any form of U.N. monitoring, fearing that their actions on one topic or another would be noted by a monitoring group. The Russian diplomat had to add that he was against the added administrative burden that a monitoring group would present but that Russia was against sexual violence in conflict situations.

Thus the new U.N. Security Council resolution 2467 is weaker than it should have been, but is nevertheless a step forward in building awareness. The Association of World Citizens first raised the issue in the U.N. Commission on Human Rights in March 2001 citing the judgement of the International Criminal Tribunal for Former Yugoslavia which maintained that there can be no time limitations on bringing an accused to trial. The Tribunal also reinforced the possibility of universal jurisdiction that a person can be tried not only by his national court but by any court claiming universal jurisdiction and where the accused is present.

The Association of World Citizens again stressed the use of rape as a weapon of war in the Special Session of the Commission on Human Rights Violations in the Democratic Republic of Congo citing the findings of Meredeth Turshen and Clotilde Twagiramariya in their book What Women Do in Wartime: Gender and Conflict in Africa. (London: Zed Press, 1998). They write “There are numerous types of rape. Rape is committed to boast the soldiers’ morale, to feed soldiers’ hatred of the enemy, their sense of superiority, and to keep them fighting: rape is one kind of war booty; women are raped because war intensifies men’s sense of entitlement, superiority, avidity, and social licence to rape: rape is a weapon of war used to spread political terror; rape can destabilize a society and break its resistance; rape is a form of torture; gang rapes in public terrorize and silence women because they keep the civilian population functioning and are essential to its social and physical continuity; rape is used in ethnic cleansing; it is designed to drive women from their homes or destroy their possibility of reproduction within or “for” their community; genocidal rape treats women as “reproductive vessels”; to make them bear babies of the rapists’ nationality, ethnicity, race or religion, and genocidal rape aggravates women’s terror and future stigma, producing a class of outcast mothers and children – this is rape committed with consciousness of how unacceptable a raped woman is to the patriarchal community and to herself. This list combines individual and group motives with obedience to military command; in doing so, it gives a political context to violence against women, and it is this political context that needs to be incorporated in the social response to rape.”

The Security Council resolution opens the door to civil society organizations to build on the concepts eliminated from the governmental resolution itself. Non-governmental organizations must play an ever-more active role in providing services to rape victims with medical, psychological and socio-cultural services. In addition, if the U.N. is unable to create a monitoring and review of information working group, then such a monitoring group will have to be the task of cooperative efforts among NGOs. It is always to be hoped that government acting together would provide the institutions necessary to promote human dignity. But with the failure of governments to act, our task as non-governmental representatives is set out for us.

Rene Wadlow, President, Association of World Citizens

26 April 2019

Source: countercurrents.org

By Israel Today News

Tactical nukes and ground invasion planned for Iran, according to whistleblower.

18 Apr 2019 – President Donald Trump and his inner circle are planning an extensive invasion of Iran, according to a source working in the White House.

The plan involves a ground invasion and the use of tactical nuclear weapons, in a campaign planned for the Fall of 2019. Iran will be “wiped off the map” according to the source, and the war effort is expected to cost “two and half times the Iraq War.”

The war will be promoted by the news media and Trump will go right along with it, after an “expected False Flag pinned on Iran, probably something involving the boats in the Strait of Hormuz.” The False Flag is an “integral part of the plan” as Iran has reportedly no desire or intent to start a war, according to the whistleblower.

The war plans have the White House staff “in an excited tizzy” as war-hawks like John Bolton put the “finishing touches” on the planned strike. President Trump initially showed resistance to the plan, but has since jumped on board with enthusiasm, convinced Iran is an “existential threat to Israel” and as such, a war is required to “eliminate them.”

Further details have been revealed, including:

• 100 tactical nukes will be used to eliminate the Iranian military.
• 120,000 U.S. ground troops will be used in the invasion.
• France, the U.K., Canada, Saudi Arabia and Israel are expected to join a “coalition” in support of the war.
• CIA assets and counter-intel efforts have been ramped-up over the past year in preparation.
• A “False Flag” is being prepared to be used before the war with Iran.
• Propaganda is being prepped by White House and Israeli counterparts.
• Israel will support the effort and Benjamin Netanyahu was reportedly “smiling ear to ear” during a recent meeting with John Bolton.
• There are concerns Trump’s “base” may resist or criticize the efforts, so further propaganda efforts are being made to “shore up support” for the war.
• Expected casualties range between 1.2 Million and 2 Million Iranians and 5,000 US troops.

Due to President Trump’s close relationship with Jared Kushner, a sense of “sober import” has been placed on the war effort, which is being as a fulfillment of “Jewish prophecy” within White House circles. Many in the White House believe Jared Kushner is the “Messiah” or Jewish “Moshiach” who cannot attain his “throne” until Iran is wiped out.

The White House source is a high level official who has been right about many other things in the past, and their identity has been verified.

The information in this article was provided to David Goldberg, a Jewish advocate and fellow at the Jewish Center for Antisemitic Study, by a former White House employee only known by the name of “Isabel”. Her story has been aired on Mr. Goldberg’s YouTube channel, and she continues to provide valuable information about what is going on in the Trump White House.

Antisemitic attacks against Mr. Goldberg continue, and are documented in his video series. Efforts to block this information and shut down the social media accounts of Mr. Goldberg continue to be an issue.

Israel Today News

22 April 2019

Source: www.transcend.org

By Paul Rogers

They armed Gadaffi and the forces that ousted him alike – now they’re repeating that profitable trick.

18 Apr 2019 – Top of FormIn the shadow world of the arms trade there is one business model that outshines all others: selling arms to both sides in the same war. Ideally it works best when weapons you have sold to one side destroy weapons you have sold to the other. Thus if one side uses air-launched precision-guided missiles to destroy the other’s aircraft (or tanks, armoured personnel carriers or whatever), then it will need to buy replacement missiles, will need to have your people service its aircraft and, if it ‘wins’ the war it will most likely buy new planes from you as it rearms. The other side will need to replace the materiel destroyed, will want to upgrade its weapons and also buy in heavily for the next phase of the conflict.

All this is a matter of routine business and the results of a war will often be reflected in marketing afterwards. In 1982 the UK fought a short and bitter war with Argentina for control of the Falklands/Malvinas; in the months that followed military magazines carried full-page adverts for ship-based anti-aircraft missiles that had been successfully used to shoot down Argentine aircraft. The adverts were the same as those published before that war but for the words ‘combat proven’ stamped across them.

There was bitter irony in this when it was learned that one such missile, fired from a British Type 42 destroyer, had shot down a British army helicopter by mistake, killing all four people on board. To add to the bitterness, two Type 42s had also been sold by Britain to Argentina before the war.

Arms companies maintained teams in Libya upgrading planes and armoured vehicles until just a few days before the western bombing campaign started

Arming both sides happens more often than is realised. One of the classic examples was Libya towards the end of the Gaddafi regime in 2011. What makes this particularly relevant just now is that it looks like happening again as Khalifa Haftar’s forces move slowly towards Tripoli.

For and against Gaddafi

First, though, look at the earlier example. As far as western countries were concerned, the autocratic Gaddafi regime had come in from the cold in 2004 after the war in Iraq. The previous arms embargo had been lifted in 2005 and within a couple of years this oil- and gas-rich state was seen as a prime customer for arms. From 2005 to 2009 the EU granted €834.5m of arms export licences, Italy being the largest seller at €276.7m, with the UK also doing well at €119.35m. Then a British company, NMS International, organised the UK Pavilion at the Tripoli Arms Fair in November 2010, barely four months before the west went to war with Gaddafi on 19 March 2011.

The connection got even closer for some countries, with French and Italian arms companies maintaining teams in Libya upgrading Mirage planes and armoured vehicles until just a few days before the western bombing campaign started – with one aim being to destroy those same planes and armoured vehicles.

It is a hidden war that is very good indeed for business

From the arms industry’s point of view, what should have happened then was that western states would have spent plenty of money replacing the expensive missiles and guided bombs they used, while a pro-western Libya established after Gaddafi had been lynched would have wanted to build a modern air force, army and navy, buying lots of weapons from those friendly western states that had helped terminate the previous regime.

A lucrative desert war

The first part worked fine but the second didn’t. Libya descended into disarray – but even that disaster was not all bad news for the arms trade. One of the grim results of the 2011 war was that arms cascaded out of Libya across the Sahara and Sahel, greatly boosting the numerous Islamist paramilitary movements across the region. To counter this, thousands of western troops are now deployed across the region, air and drone strikes are commonplace, millions of dollars’ worth of precision-guided munitions are being used and vast amounts of equipment are being provided to many governments.

It is a hidden war that is very good indeed for business and is now being enhanced by a sudden escalation of the burgeoning civil war to the north in Libya itself. There, the UN-backed Government of National Accord in Tripoli is facing the forces of the self-styled Libyan National Army from the east of the country, headed by Haftar, a former Gaddafi military leader. In the past few days Haftar’s army has moved closer to Tripoli itself as it tries to take over the whole of the country, even as UN personnel seek vainly to arrange a ceasefire.

The government has recently been equipped by western states. In one episode over the weekend government forces shot down a Libyan National Army aircraft. Since then, the LNA has moved close enough to Tripoli to fire artillery that has killed at least four people and wounded twenty in the southern district of Abu Salim. Thousands of people have been displaced from their homes with at least 150 killed in this most recent bout of the war.

Wealthy supporters

One aspect of the war is particularly good news for the arms industry. While the conflict is between the government and the LNA, above them are outside actors. Much of the weaponry of the UN-backed government comes from western states, with Italy being the most prominent. That is one of the reasons why the government is proving more resilient than some had expected, although there are also regional supporters involved, including Qatar.

On the other side, the insurgent LNA is strongly backed by Egypt and the United Arab Emirates. They both want a united Libya under Haftar or another strong leader who will suppress dissent and be especially hard on Islamist paramilitaries. This backing extends to their direct military involvement, with UAE air force strike aircraft aiding the rebels as they move towards the capital.

This is where history repeats itself: the UAE is one of the heaviest buyers of western aircraft and munitions in recent years, second only to Saudi Arabia among the Arab states across the Middle East. In short, the western-backed government is fighting the western-equipped LNA. However it ends, and however many people are killed, injured or displaced, the arms companies and their shareholders will come out of it well.

Paul Rogers is professor in the department of peace studies at Bradford University, northern England.

22 April 2019

Source: www.transcend.org

By Soraya Sepahpour-Ulrich

The world reacted with shock to the fire that engulfed the Notre Dame Cathedral. A symbol of Paris, this 13th Century architectural marvel is home to precious historical religious relics and artwork; made even more famous throughout the world by Victor Hugo’s famous novel, The Hunchback of Notre-Dame.

World leaders were quick to react to the tragedy of this fire. News headlines around the world brought this disastrous incident to every living room around the globe and nations commiserated with the French. The inaudible sigh of relief was palpable when the structure was saved and with it, the history that laid within the walls. The past was not lost.

But another fire may well stop the future. Concurrent with the fire that ravaged Notre Dame, another historical place of worship, the al Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem fell victim to a fire of an unknown origin. The Mosque which was completed in 705 CE, is the third holiest site in Islam. But its fate is not shared by Moslems alone – it touches us all.

The world can be forgiven for their ignorance of this tragedy – and the importance of al Aqsa. The media simply dismissed it, as it does with all things that must be kept from the general public. This is not the first fire that was left unmentioned by mainstream media (MSM). A previous fire set to the Mosque by a zealous Australian Christian in 1969 failed to capture headlines. Indeed, the threats to al Aqsa Mosque have accelerated over the years to a point of no return. Given that the fate of this Mosque holds the fate of us all, how can the media be forgiven for their deafening silence?

In 2006, the Israeli government began work on an exact replica of the Hurva synagogue on its original site. The rebuilding of the Hurva is designed to usher in the rebuilding of the Third Temple. Rabbis were tailored for the special kind of garments they would be wearing in a “rebuilt temple” – the ‘end of time’. But the Mosque still stands in the way of building the Third Temple – for now.[i]

It took four years to complete the work on Hurva. When presidential candidate, Barack Obama promised AIPAC an undivided Jerusalem in 2008, the building of the Hurva synagogue was well on the way – which signaled continued future attacks on the al-Aqsa Mosque to make way for construction of the Third Temple.

In 2009, Israeli news headlines reassured Israelis that “Netanyahu would build the Third Temple”. Soon after, in 2010, JTA reported that “Our Land of Israel” party had put posters on 200 city buses in Jerusalem showing an artist’s rendition of the Third Temple on the al-Aqsa Mosque site with the slogan, “May the Temple be built in our lifetime.”

Donald Trump deliverance on Obama’s promise has made these fanatics more hopeful. How could they not be with Senator Broxon telling a cheering crowd

“Now, I don’t know about you, but when I heard about Jerusalem — where the King of Kings where our soon coming King is coming back to Jerusalem, it is because President Trump declared Jerusalem to be capital of Israel”.

And how do we ignore Benjamin Netanyahu taking ownership of Jerusalem stating that the Bible, the holy book for Jews and Christians, had justified it. Should we then be surprised that rabbis sent a letter of gratitude to Trump, praising him for “fulfilling prophecies”.

In March, as Israeli elections were approaching, it was reported that “The Israeli Third Temple” party had gained traction. And while the mainstream media can ignore the latest fire that broke out at the al Aqsa mosque on April 15, can we afford to ignore the blazing headlines of the same day: “END OF THE WORLD: Jerusalem third temple ‘fulfills Biblical prophecy’ of the end times” and other Israeli news ushering in the building of the Third Temple and the ‘end of times’?

Some may take comfort in the fact that this is all sheer madness, but one cannot ignore the insanity of which we were warned of by Warner D. Farr, LTC, U.S. Army who in 1999 reported his findings in the “Counterproliferation papers, Future Warfare Series No. 2, USAF Counterproliferation Center”. This fascinating report, among other things, sounded the alarm over the probability of Gush Emunim, a right- wing religious organization, or others, hijacking a nuclear device to “liberate” the Temple Mount for the building of the third temple. This is powerful insanity with insane powers enabling it.

Is the world ready to embrace this madness and accept this fate at this juncture? Are you?

NOTE:

[i] Tom Mountain. Preparing for the Third TempleJewish Advocate. Boston:Aug 22, 2008. Vol. 199, Iss. 34, p. 9 (1 pp.)

__________________________________________________________

Soraya Sepahpour-Ulrich is an independent researcher and writer with a focus on U.S. foreign policy and the role of lobby groups in influencing US foreign policy.

22 April 2019

Source: www.transcend.org

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