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By Dr James M Dorsey

Donald J. Trump’s hitherto failed ‘maximum pressure’ approach to Iran, as well as for that matter North Korea, begs the question what the US president’s true objectives are and what options he is left with should the policy ultimately fail.

In the case of North Korea, it remains to be seen whether the country’s reported rebuilding of a rocket launch site after the US president last month walked away from his summit in Hanoi with Kim-Jong-un constitutes a negotiating tactic or a breakdown. The site was partially dismantled as a goodwill gesture after the two men first met in Singapore last year.

A breakdown coupled with even harsher sanctions that similarly may not do the job risks leaving Mr. Trump with few good options beyond some kind of military operation.

Mr. Trump has so far credibly conveyed his intent of wanting to fully denuclearize North Korea rather than ultimately change its regime, a further indication of the apparent comfort he finds in dealing with at least some autocratic and authoritarian leaders.

The picture with regard to North Korea and Iran is both similar and different.

Iranian resilience backed by key players in the international community determined to salvage the 2015 international agreement that curbed Iran’s nuclear program could blunt the impact of harsh US sanctions, again leaving the United States with few good options beyond either backing away from its maximalist approach or weighing overt or covert military action.

Mr. Trump’s intentions regarding Iran, in contrast to North Korea, are far less clear. Increasingly strident language by the president’s hard-line national security advisor, John Bolton, as well as his Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, coupled with the specific changes of Iranian policies that the US is demanding, suggest that regime change rather than reform may be the president’s true objective. It is hard to see how Iran could comply with the US demands without a change of regime.

For now, Iran’s strategy appears to be circumventing sanctions in every way it can, ensuring continued support by Europe, China and Russia, and waiting it out to see whether Mr. Trump gets a second term in the 2020 US elections in the hope that a Democratic president comes to office who would negotiate a return of the United States to the nuclear accord.

“A pressure campaign will only be effective if enough time is dedicated to it. In other words, there are no quick and easy victories, as the North Korean case demonstrates. And attempts to get them will only push the goalposts further away,” said political scientist Ariane M. Tabatabai.

In a twist of irony, carrot-and-stick-backed efforts by international regulators to get Pakistan and Iran to significantly upgrade their legal abilities to counter political violence potentially are proving to be more effective than maximum pressure.

Concern that Pakistan could be blacklisted by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), the international anti-money laundering and terrorism finance watchdog, compounded by mounting tension with India, prompted Pakistan in recent days to crackdown on long tolerated militant groups.

Blacklisting potentially would have a debilitating impact on Pakistan’s crisis-ridden economy. It would restrict the ability of multilateral organizations like the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank (ADB) to aid or lend to Pakistan.

The fact that Iran faces a similar dilemma has sparked intense debate in the Islamic republic about how to deal with FATF demands that it join the watchdog and significantly upgrade its legal anti-money laundering and terrorism finance infrastructure to evade being blacklisted.

Iran’s parliament has so far passed two of four bills required for membership and together with the Expediency and Discernment Council is debating Iranian accession to the Combating the Financing of Terrorism Convention (CFT) and the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime or Palermo Convention.

The FATF demands have put Iran between a rock and a hard place.

Iranian ratification of those conventions coupled with FATF membership holds out the promise of more effectively and more quickly than US maximum pressure curtailing Iran’s ability to fund regional proxies.

Failure to comply could significantly increase the pain of US sanctions by prompting those banks and financial institutions still willing to do business with Iran to rethink their positions.

It would also likely restrict the ability of supporters of the nuclear agreement to help Iran soften the impact of the sanctions.

“If you want us to succeed in the talks with Europe, at least the four proposed bills must be ratified,” said member of the Iranian parliament, Abulfazle Mousavi.

“By joining, Iranian banks will be under what will be unprecedented international scrutiny. This will make it more difficult, although not impossible, for Iran to transfer money to terror organizations… such as Hezbollah, Hamas and the Islamic Jihad. Additionally, Iranian membership in the FATF would weaken the financial strength of the Iranian hard-liners, who have always called for a more aggressive foreign policy in the region,” said Iran scholar Meir Javedanfar.

That is what has fuelled opposition in Iran to acceptance of FATF’s requirements. Hardliners have warned that FATF would effectively impair Iran’s ability to pursue a defense strategy focused on fighting the country’s foreign policy and military battles far beyond its borders and would give US sanctions more bite.

“Joining these conventions will lead to interference with Iran’s internal affairs, including financial and economic issues,” said Abolfazl Hasanbeygi, a member of the Iranian parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Commission.

Mr. Hasanbeygi warned that FATF would be the vehicle that the country’s detractors would use to gain access to the workings of Iran’s banking and economic system and its flows of funds.

As a result, Iran is at a crossroads more because of the application of a rules-based international and multilateral system than the coercion of punitive sanctions imposed by a world power. In reality, Iran is emerging as a litmus test of the effectiveness of varying forms of global governance.

If Iran “does not comply with the FATF regulations, the whole Iranian banking system could become thoroughly isolated from the global financial system. This means that it would be almost impossible to transfer the country’s oil revenue internationally and even into its national economy,” said political analyst Shahir Shahidsaless.

“And if it does comply, it will face complications such as the creation of an FIU, becoming exposed to sanctions as a result of its chaotic banking system, greater difficulty bypassing US sanctions and, finally, risk getting trapped in allegations of financing terrorism,” he added referring to FATF’s insistence that members create a financial intelligence unit that monitors and reports on the funding of political violence.

Dr. James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, co-director of the University of Würzburg’s Institute for Fan Culture.

9 March 2019

Source: countercurrents.org

By Mary Metzger

It takes a lot of courage to be who and what you are when who or what you are contradicts the values of your society. Thus, even under the best of circumstances it takes a lot of courage to be out and gay. No matter what laws may exist on the books to protect your rights, there are narrow minded, hateful, fearful and religious people in every corner of every nation, including America, who would do you harm, even go so far as to kill you, and get some deep sense of worth and satisfaction out of doing it. This is particularly true when the individual involved in transsexual. One in two transgender individuals are sexually abused or assaulted at some point in their lives. . This indicates that the majority of transgender individuals are living with the aftermath of trauma and the fear of possible repeat victimization. (https://www.ovc.gov/pubs/forge/sexual_numbers.html. A new report highlights just how perilous it is to be a transgender person in the United States. The Human Rights Campaign (HRC) in conjunction with the Trans People of Color Coalition (TPOCC) analyzed the known data surrounding the untimely deaths of transgender people and released the findings. At least 25 transgender people were killed in the United States in 2017 https://www.fastcompany.com/40498772/2017-was-the-deadliest-year-for-transgender-people

While 2018 was not as deadly, it did see some horrific murders of transgender people such as Blaze Bernstein who was stabbed more than 20 times by an avowed neo-Nazi and member of the Nazi group Atomwaffen Division. In another horrific case Amia Tyrae, a black transgender woman, was found dead in a motel room in Baton Rouge, Louisiana with multiple gunshot wounds. Nevaa White, a friend of Tyrae’s, said that Tyrae had lived her life as an openly trans woman since 2009. White also said Tyrae was bullied and “didn’t have an easy life. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_violence_against_LGBT_people_in_the_United_State

All things considered, how much courage did it take then for Bradley Manning to announce before the world that she was Chelsea Manning? A whole lot.

Then there is the issue of how much courage it takes to expose the crimes of one’s nation? How much courage did it take for Bradley Manning to become a whistle blower? How much courage did it take to turn over secret government files to Wikileaks knowing that he then would be charged with serious crimes and face the death penalty for?

Manning, 24, was arrested on May 29, 2010 at the Forward Operating Base Hammer where he was working as an intelligence analyst, and initially held for almost three months at Camp Arifjan in Kuwait, and then transferred in July 2010 to the Marine corps base at Quantico in Virginia. He was held there for another eight months in conditions that aroused widespread condemnation, including being held in solitary confinement for 23 hours a day and being made to strip naked at night. For a period of time he was held under Prevention of Injury rules meaning he is ‘deprived of sheets and a separate pillow’. In response to the harsh treatment of Manning Judge Juan Mendez, special rapporteur for the UN, completed a 14 – month .investigation and concluded “The special rapporteur concludes that imposing seriously punitive conditions of detention on someone who has not been found guilty of any crime is a violation of his right to physical and psychological integrity as well as of his presumption of innocence,”

In his opening letter to the US government on December 30 2010, Mendez said that the prolonged period of isolated confinement was believed to have been imposed “in an effort to coerce him into ‘cooperation’ with the authorities, allegedly for the purpose of persuading him to implicate others.” Mendez said that he could not reach a definitive conclusion as to whether Manning had actually been tortured because he had consistently been denied permission by the US military to interview the prisoner under acceptable circumstances, The Pentagon has refused to allow Mendez to see Manning in private, insisting that all conversations must be monitored. “You should have no expectation of privacy in your communications with Private Manning,” the Pentagon wrote. Mendez countered that “the lack of privacy is a violation of human rights procedures”, and so unacceptable to him.

The conditions under which Manning found himself while in prison, particularly the humiliation of being stripped naked each night and kept on 23-hour lockdown, led him to attempt suicide twice. After his attempts he was forced to wear a suicide-proof suit. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1365493/Pentagon-tells-Obama-Bradley-Mannings-prison-treatment-appropriate–gets-just-hour-outside-cell.html

So, Chelsea Manning does know what it is like to be in prison; she knows that it can be bad enough to make you want to kill yourself. And knowing what it was like Manning once again stood up to the powers that be and refused to answer questions from a federal grand jury in Virginia knowing she would be put in jail for her defiance. She knew beforehand what would be asked of her, how she would respond, and what the cost would be, and accepted it all. She told reporters before she entered the courtroom that she was prepared to go to jail following the closed contempt hearing for her resistance to provide testimony. On Wednesday, Manning did appear before a grand jury in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia in an undisclosed case but refused to answer any questions.

She responded to each question with the following statement: ‘I object to the question and refuse to answer on the grounds that the question is in violation of my First, Fourth, and Sixth Amendment, and other statutory rights.”. US district judge Claude Hilton held Manning in contempt of court and ordered her jailed-on Friday after a brief hearing where Manning confirmed she has no intention of testifying. She told the judge she “will accept whatever you bring upon me”.

The judge said Chelsea will remain jailed until she testifies or until the grand jury concludes its work, which could be 18 months or more.

The justice department has been investigating WikiLeaks for some time. Last year, prosecutors in Alexandria inadvertently disclosed that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is facing unspecified, sealed criminal charges in the district. Assange has been living in the Ecuadorian embassy in London to avoid arrest.

“In solidarity with many activists facing the odds, I will stand by my principles. I will exhaust every legal remedy available,” she said. “My legal team continues to challenge the secrecy of these proceedings, and I am prepared to face the consequences of my refusal.”

That Chelsea Manning has a brave heart.

Mary Metzger is a 72 year old retired teacher who has lived in Moscow for the past ten years.

9 March 2019

Source: countercurrents.org

By Patrick Martin

A federal judge ordered Chelsea Manning to prison Friday morning for an indefinite period of time, after the former Army private, jailed for seven years for providing information to WikiLeaks exposing US war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan, refused on principle to answer any questions before a secret grand jury investigating the media organization and its founder Julian Assange.

“The Socialist Equality Party unequivocally condemns the US government’s vindictive and criminal persecution of Chelsea Manning,” said Joseph Kishore, the national secretary of the Socialist Equality Party (SEP) in the US.

“Chelsea suffered solitary confinement, abuse and torture, and over six years of imprisonment for letting the American and world population know the truth. Yesterday, she once again stood firm to fundamental democratic principle and refused to assist the Trump administration in its vendetta to falsely incriminate WikiLeaks and Julian Assange. She is a heroic figure and she must be defended.

“Working people all over the world will never forget Chelsea’s courageous exposure, at vast personal cost, of the crimes of American imperialism. Amid a growing global strike wave, the Socialist Equality Party will do everything in its power to mobilize the working class to defend Chelsea, and free Julian Assange and all other class war prisoners.”

The Socialist Equality Parties in the UK and Australia are participating in rallies on Sunday, March 10 outside Ecuador’s London embassy and at the State Library in Melbourne, called last month to oppose the continued confinement of Julian Assange at the London embassy, and demanding that the Australian government intervene on his behalf and obtain his release from Britain with the right to return home to Australia. The demonstrations will demand the immediate release of Manning as inseparable from the struggle to free Assange.

James Cogan, national secretary of the SEP in Australia, issued the following statement Friday:

“The Trump administration’s imprisonment of Chelsea Manning for refusing to give false testimony against WikiLeaks and Julian Assange is an outrage. She has suffered more than enough for her courage and service to the truth. American democracy rolls in the gutter and is rapidly descending into the sewer of dictatorship.

“The working class everywhere must come to Chelsea’s defence and take up the demand for the immediate release of Assange and all persecuted class war prisoners. The SEP in Australia will be redoubling our effort to secure Julian’s immediate return to this country with full protection. And we will be joining all international action to fight for the immediate restoration of Chelsea Manning’s freedom.”

The brief hearing before Judge Claude M. Hilton was the only part of the court proceedings involving Manning that was open to the public. Hilton rejected the argument by Manning’s lawyers that confining her to house arrest would better serve her medical needs. She has received gender reassignment surgery and requires complex medical attention. Hilton said the US Marshals Service would provide adequate care.

“I’ve found you in contempt,” Hilton declared, ordering Manning to jail immediately. The imprisonment in a federal facility in Alexandria, Virginia would continue indefinitely, he said, “either until you purge yourself [agree to testify] or the end of the life of the grand jury.”

The grand jury has been empaneled to bring espionage and conspiracy charges against Julian Assange and WikiLeaks. Manning revealed that the questions she had refused to answer on Thursday all concerned her interaction with the organization, which receives documents delivered to it anonymously and avoids learning the identity of contributors in order not to undermine their security.

Manning provided WikiLeaks more than 500,000 documents which she copied from military and government archives while serving as an intelligence analyst in Iraq during the US military occupation, in 2009. The material showed extensive war crimes in both Iraq and Afghanistan, including the notorious gun-camera video of a US helicopter gunship mowing down unarmed Iraqi civilians, including two Reuters reporters, later published by WikiLeaks under the title “Collateral Murder.”

Manning was arrested in 2010, convicted in a 2013 trial and sentenced to 35 years in prison, serving a total of seven years before her sentence was commuted by President Barack Obama three days before he left office.

Federal prosecutors subpoenaed Manning to testify before the grand jury and gave her immunity for her testimony, in the hopes of using it against Assange and WikiLeaks. But Manning has refused on principle to collaborate with the secret grand jury. She answered each question posed to her by invoking her rights under the First, Fourth and Sixth amendments to the US Constitution.

“All of the substantive questions pertained to my disclosures of information to the public in 2010—answers I provided in extensive testimony, during my court-martial in 2013,” she said.

A statement issued by Manning after being sent to prison reads:

“I will not comply with this, or any other grand jury. Imprisoning me for my refusal to answer questions only subjects me to additional punishment for my repeatedly-stated ethical objections to the grand jury system.

“The grand jury’s questions pertained to disclosures from nine years ago, and took place six years after an in-depth computer forensics case, in which I testified for almost a full day about these events. I stand by my previous public testimony.”

The statement concludes with Manning’s courageous declaration that she “will not participate in a secret process that I morally object to, particularly one that has been historically used to entrap and persecute activists for protected political speech.”

Manning’s lawyer, Moira Meltzer-Cohen, told the World Socialist Web Site after the decision, “Chelsea’s actions speak for themselves. She is a person of tremendous honor and courage, and this latest struggle is just the most recent in a long serious of principled stands she has taken.”

Asked if she is concerned about the conditions Chelsea will face in jail, Meltzer-Cohen said that the government has made assurances that her health needs will be taken care of, but that “we all need to be vigilant that those assurances are made good on.”

Manning’s lawyers said they expected to file an appeal of Hilton’s order jailing Chelsea, citing in particular the fact that jailing for refusal to testify can only be coercive, not punitive. In other words, if they can demonstrate that Manning will never agree to testify, no matter how long she is jailed, the court cannot simply keep her in prison to punish her for her silence.

The jailing of Chelsea Manning is a particularly outrageous attack on democratic rights, carried out by a federal judge who is a byword for reactionary pro-government, pro-police and pro-employer bias, and a longtime collaborator with the national security state.

Hilton was one of a relative handful of federal judges selected by Chief Justice William Rehnquist to serve on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court, the special judicial panel set up to secretly rubber-stamp requests for spying authorizations for the FBI, CIA, NSA and other intelligence agencies. The court is notorious for approving 99.9 percent of such requests. Hilton was on the panel from 2000 to 2007, during the period when the Bush administration set up secret CIA torture camps and enormously escalated the NSA spying on telecommunications and the internet.

Appointed to the bench by Ronald Reagan in 1985, Hilton proved his value to the military-intelligence apparatus early in his career, with a 1989 decision that cleared CIA operative Joseph Fernandez, charged with four criminal counts in the Iran-Contra affair, after the CIA refused to release documents required for the prosecution of the case. In effect, the intelligence apparatus ensured impunity for its own criminal operations by refusing to cooperate with the investigation by Special Counsel Lawrence Walsh, a legal dodge approved by Judge Hilton.

According to the website “The Robing Room,” which allows lawyers and litigants appearing before federal judges to rate their demeanor, legal knowledge, and bias, Hilton routinely incorporates prosecution and government briefs into his legal “opinions,” almost never rules in favor of individuals suing their employers, the police or the government, and frequently sleeps through oral arguments by defense attorneys.

One attorney, posting on the site, called Hilton, “The most prejudiced judge with regard to average and below average income United States citizens that I have ever observed. This judge has no sense whatsoever of the search for Truth and Justice and he clearly avoids any reasonable search for Truth and Justice, especially if a large corporation or the federal government is the defendant!”

The SEP in the United States and its youth movement, the International Youth and Students for Social Equality (IYSSE), will announce a series of meetings and demonstrations to demand the immediate release of Chelsea Manning. The World Socialist Web Site urges all of its readers and supporters to join our mailing list to get meeting announcements and updates on the campaign to free Chelsea.

Originally published by WSWS.org

9 March 2019

Source: countercurrents.org

By Seyed Hossein Mousavian

A termination of hostilities will be impossible as long as Washington thinks it can coerce Tehran into submission

In a statement issued on 20 February, more than 50 pro-diplomacy organisations representing millions of American voters urged US policymakers to respect the Iran nuclear deal, which verifiably blocks Iran’s pathway to a nuclear weapon, supports good-faith diplomacy and opposes war with Iran.

Earlier last month, as millions of Iranians rallied to mark the 40th anniversary of the 1979 revolution that ended 2,500 years of monarchy in Iran, US President Donald Trump tweeted in Persian and English: “40 years of corruption. 40 years of repression. 40 years of terror. The regime in Iran has produced only #40YearsofFailure. The long-suffering Iranian people deserve a much brighter future.”

In response, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif tweeted: “#40YearsofFailure to accept that Iranians will never return to submission. #40YearsofFailure to adjust US policy to reality. #40YearsofFailure to destabilize Iran through blood & treasure.”

Nuclear fallout

Both Iranian and US leaders concur that Washington has imposed the most biting sanctions ever on Tehran. It bears noting, however, that with the exception of the brief period from 2013 to 2016, when Tehran and Washington negotiated at the highest levels to resolve one of their most complicated disagreements – the nuclear issue – US policy towards Iran has been constantly focused on economic sanctions, pressure and regime change.

The question remains whether Trump wants to continue on this ineffective and costly path, or pursue a new approach with Iran to break decades of deadlock in their bilateral relations. “Change and our attitude will change,” Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has said. Trump could, in fact, end decades of US-Iran animosity by adopting a five-pronged strategy.

First is intention. Washington must convey to Tehran its intention to abandon its regime-change policy, something that is only attainable if Washington shows its sincerity through both words and actions. Empty words followed up by hostile actions would only demonstrate Washington’s disingenuousness and lack of seriousness, likely leading to the opposite of the intended results.
Second is language. The US has always talked down to Iran, employing disrespectful and offensive language towards the country, calling it a “pariah state” and adding it to the “axis of evil”. To be fair, Iran has used the same derogatory language in reference to the US, which it brands as the “Great Satan”.

Even if Washington and Tehran want to remain eternal enemies, at least they could refrain from insulting each other’s people, history and culture. Khamenei recently clarified that Iranians would chant “Death to America” as long as Washington’s hostile policies continued, but noted that the slogan is directed at US leaders, not the American nation.

Diplomatic approach

Third is approach. A termination of hostilities will be impossible as long as Washington thinks it can coerce Iran into submission. A diplomatic approach must replace the threat of war and coercive policies – but diplomacy is not about issuing maximalist demands to a sovereign state and expecting total capitulation.

Fourth is having a pragmatic plan of action. A number of reports by US think tanks have recommended a “grand bargain, big for big” approach, but this is not realistic. A more practical approach is to begin with “small for small” measures.

The existing mistrust between Iran and the US runs deep, and Trump’s unilateral withdrawal from the nuclear deal has only exacerbated the situation. Therefore, the more realistic path forward involves smaller confidence-building steps, such as Iran-US cooperation on counter-narcotic and anti-piracy operations.

Fifth is the end state. Washington and Tehran will only enter such a roadmap if they can see the end state. During nuclear negotiations, the end state for the US was to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon; for Iran, it was “nuclear rights” under the non-proliferation treaty and the lifting of sanctions. Negotiating for the mere purpose of negotiating is not in the interests of either country.

Resolving the current animosities between Iran and the US can be based on non-intervention and a joint respect for sovereignty. There can also be win-win solutions for some of the ongoing practical issues, such as a fair regional arrangement for conventional and unconventional weapons in the Middle East.

Sustainable peace

While Iran has voluntarily limited the range of its ballistic missiles to 2,000 kilometres, Israel and Saudi Arabia both possess missiles with more than double that range. And while Israel is the only country in the Middle East with a nuclear weapons arsenal, Iran – which does not have any nuclear weapons – is under pressure and biting sanctions.

Repeated UN resolutions have called for establishing nuclear-weapon-free zones in the Middle East. The implementation of UN resolutions, without double standards, will open the path towards sustainable peace, potentially resolving many of the disputes between Tehran and Washington.

A day after Trump’s hostile remarks about Iran during his State of the Union address, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said Iran was ready to establish “friendly relations” with the US if it apologised for past wrongs.

A change in relations is possible, but it requires patience and the right approach. A real change – a big change – would take many years, requiring both sides to embrace the obligations and opportunities that come under the banner of peace.

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

Seyed Hossein Mousavian is Middle East security and nuclear policy specialist at Princeton University and a former spokesman for Iran’s nuclear negotiators.

4 March 2019

Source: www.middleeasteye.net

By Andre Vltchek

For a while, all the guns have fallen silent.

I am near Idlib, the last stronghold of the terrorists in Syria. The area where the deadliest anti-government fighters, most of them injected into Syria from Turkey, with Saudi, Qatari and Western ‘help’, are literally holed up, ready for the final showdown.

Just yesterday, mortars were falling on villages near the invisible frontline, separating government troops and the terrorist forces of Al Nusra Front. The day before yesterday, two explosions rocked the earth, only a couple of meters from where we are now standing.

They call it a ceasefire. But it’s not. It is one-sided. To be more precise: the Syrian army is waiting, patiently. Its cannons are pointing towards the positions of the enemy, but the orders from Damascus are clear: do not fire.

The enemy has no scruples. It provokes, endlessly. It fires and bombs, indiscriminately. It kills. Along the frontline, thousands of houses are already ruined. Nothing gets spared: residential districts, sport gymnasiums, even bakeries.There is an established routine: assaults by the terrorists, rescue operations organized by Syrian armed forces (SAA – Syrian Arab Army) and Syrian National Defense Forces, then immediate rebuilding of the damage.

Hundreds of thousands of Syrian people have lost their lives in this war. Millions had to leave their homeland. Millions have been internally displaced. For many, the conflict became a routine. Rescue operations became routine. Rebuilding tasks became routine, too.

Now, it is clear that the final victory is near. Syria survived the worse. It is still bleeding, but most of its territories are beginning to heal. People are slowly returning home, from Lebanon and Turkey, from Germany and elsewhere. They go through rubble – their former homes. They sit down and cry. Then, they get up and start rebuilding. That’s in other parts of the country: Duma, Homs, Aleppo, Deir ez-Zur.

But in the villages and towns north of Hama and towards Idlib, the war is far from being over.

In the town of Squalbiah, Commander Nabel Al-Abdallah of the National Defense Forces (NDF) explained to me:

“SAA could easily use force and win militarily; it could take Idlib. But the SAA operates under command of President Assad, who believes in negotiations. If we take the city now, there would be huge casualties.”

The situation is not as simple, as we would like it to be. Victory may be near, but the West is not giving up, nor is Turkey. There are still pockets that are held by the US and French troops, and around Idlib (including Manbij), a large area is still controlled by the terrorists, who were transported here from all corners of Syria, under the Russian-sponsored agreement.

And there is more to it: My sources in Syria shared the latest:

“Some 4 months ago, the ’new ISIS’ appeared in the south of Idlib, not far from where we are right now. They were injected into Syria by the Turks. They were wearing brand new uniforms, white long dresses. Before, they were recognizable by black or gray outfits – ‘Afghan-style’. They now call themselves ‘HurrasAldeen’, or ‘The Guardians of Religion’. Why? In order for the United States, and the West in general, to continue to support them. The ISIS are officially on the list of the terrorist organizations’, but this new ‘brand’ is not.”

I ask Commander Nabel Al-Abdallah, what the West really wants? He replies, immediately:

“The West wants terrorism to spread to Russia and China. Many terrorists work and fight directly for the interests of the United States.

We need to take care of the innocent civilians. But we also have to find the solution, very quickly. If we fail, terrorism will spread all around the world.”

We sit in the Commander’s provisory headquarters, having a quick cup of tea, before moving to the frontline.

He wants to say something. He thinks, how. It is not easy. Nothing is easy under the circumstances, but he tries, and what he utters makes sense:

“If we don’t have solution, soon, terrorists will damage the world. Our problems are not just the ISIS, but above all, the ideology that they represent. They use Islam, they say that they fight in the name of Islam, but they are backed by the United States. And here, the SAA, our military and our defense forces, are fighting for the world, not just for Syria.”

We embrace and I go. His men drive me in a military vehicle to the outskirts of As Suqaylabiyah (also known as Squalbiah). From there, I photograph a hospital and the positions of Al Nusra Front. They are there, right in front of me, just a couple of hundreds of meters.

I am told that I am like a sitting duck, exposed. I work fast. Luckily, today the terrorists are not in the mood for shooting.

Before returning to the vehicle, I try to imagine how life must bethere, under Al Nusra Front or the ISIS occupation.

From the hill where I stand, the entire area looks green, fertile and immensely beautiful. But I know, I clearly understand that it is hell on earth for those who live in those houses down below; in the villages and towns controlled by some of the most brutal terrorists on earth.

I also know that, these terrorist monsters are here on foreign orders, trying to destroy Syria, simply because its government and people have been refusing to succumb to the Western imperialist dictates.

Here, it is not only about theory. The lives of millions have been already destroyed. Here it isall concrete and practical – it is reality.

We can hear explosions, in a distance. The war may be over in Damascus, but not here. Not here, yet.

My friend Yamen is from the city of Salamiyah, some 50 kilometers from Hama. Only recently the area around his hometown was liberated from the extremist groups.

Twenty kilometers west from Salamiyah lies the predominantly Ismaili village of Al Kafat,which used to be surrounded by both Al-Nusra Front and the ISIS.

Mr. Abdullah, President of local Ismaili Council, recalls the horrors which his fellow citizens had to endure:

“In the past, we had two car bomb explosions here. In January 2014, 19 people were killed, 40 houses totally destroyed and 300 damaged. Fighting was only 200 meters away from here. Both Al-Nusra Front and ISIS surrounded the village, and were cooperating. We are very close to one of the main roads, so for the terrorists, it was an extremely important strategic position. This entire area was finally liberated only in January 2018.”

Whom do they blame?

Mr. Abdullah does not hesitate:

“Saudis, Turks, the USA, Europe, Qatar…”

We walk through the village. Some homes are still lying in ruins, but most of them have at least been partially restored. On the walls and above several shops, I can see the portrait of a beautiful young woman, who was killed during one of the terrorist assaults. 65 villagers were slaughtered, in total. Before the war, the population of the village was 3,500, but traumatized and impoverished by war, many decided to leave and now only 2,500 inhabitants live here, cultivating olive trees, herding sheep and cows.

Before my visit here, I was told that education played an extremely important role in defending this place, and in keeping morale high during the darkest days of combat and crises. Mr. Abdullah readily confirmed it:

“The human brain has the capacity to solve problems, and to defuse crises. During a war like this, education is extremely important. Or more precisely, it is mainly about learning, not only about education. Al-Nusra and ISIS – they are synonymous with ignorance. If your brain is strong, it easily defeats ignorance. I think we succeeded here. And look now: this poor village has at this moment 103 students attending universities, allover Syria.”

As we drive on, east, large portraits of a brother of my friend Yamen decorate many military posts. He was one of the legendary commanders here, but was killed in 2017.

Then I see a castle: monstrous, more than two millennia old, overlooking the city of Salamiyah. There are green fields all around,so much beauty, in all the corners of Syria.

“Come back and visit all these marvels when the war is over,” someone around me jokes.

I don’t see it as a joke.

“I will,” I think. “I definitely will”. But we have to win, and win very soon,as soon as possible! To make sure that nothing else goes up in flames.

I drop my bag in at a local inn in Salamiyah, and ask my comrades to drive me on, further east. I want to see, to feel how life was under ISIS, and how it is now.

There are ruins, all around us. I saw plenty of terrible urban ruins during my previous visit: all around Homs and the outskirts of Damascus.

Here I see rural ruins, in their own way as horrifying as those scarring all the major cities of Syria.

This entire area had recently been a frontline. Or it was screaming in the hands of the terrorist groups, mainly ISIS.

Now it is a minefield.The road is cleared, but not the fields; not the remains of the villages.

I photograph a tank that used to belong to the ISIS; burned and badly damaged. It is an old Soviet tank, which used to belong to the Syrian army. It was captured by the ISIS, and then destroyed by either the SAA or a Russian airplane. Next to the tank – a chicken farm burned to the ground.

The Lieutenant, who is accompanying me, goes on, monotonously, with his grizzly account:

“Today, outside Salamiyeh, 8 people were killed by the landmines.”

We leave the vehicle, and walk slowly down the road, which is full of craters.

Suddenly, the Lieutenant stops without any warning:

“And here, my cousin was killed by another mine.”

We reach Hardaneh Village, but almost no one is left here. There are ruins everywhere. Before – 500 people lived here, now only 30. This is where heavy fighting against the ISIS took place. 13 local people were killed, 21 soldiers ‘martyred’. Other civilians were forced to leave.

Mr. Mohammad Ahmad Jobur is the local administrator (el muchtar), 80 years old:

“First, we fought ISIS, but they overwhelmed us. Most of us had to leave. Now some of us returned, but only few…Yes, now we have electricity; at least 3 hours a day, and our children can go to school. The old school was destroyed by the ISIS, so kids are now collected and taken to a bigger town for education. Every villager wants to come back, but most of the families have no money to rebuild their houses and farms. The government made a list of the people whose dwellings were destroyed. They will get help, but help will be distributed gradually, stage by stage.”

Naturally: almost the entire country lies in ruins.

Are villagers optimistic about the future?

“Yes, very optimistic,” declares the village chief. “If we get help, if we can rebuild, we will all come back.”

But then, they show me the water wells, destroyed by the ISIS.

It is all smiles through tears. So far only 30 have come back. How many will come home this year?

I asked the chief what the main aim of the ISISwas?

“No aim, no logic. ISIS was created by the West. They tried to destroy everything, this village, this area, this entire country. They made no sense… they do not think like us… they only brought destruction.”

*

Soha, a village even further east,a place where men, women and children were forced to live under the ISIS.

I am invited into a traditional house. People sit in a circle. Several younger women are hiding their faces, not wanting to be photographed. I can only guess why. Others don’t care. What happened here; what horrors took place? Nobody will pronounce it all.

This is a traditional village inhabited by a local tribe; very conservative.

Testimonies begin to flow:

“First, they banned us from smoking, and shaving. Women had to cover their faces and feet; they had to wear black… Strict rules were imposed… education was banned. The ISIS created terrible prisons… They were often beating us with rubber hoses, in public. Some people were beheaded. Severed heads were exhibited above the main square.”

“When ISIS arrived, they brought with them their slaves – kidnapped people from Raqqah. Some women got stoned in public, alive. Other women were thrown to their death from the roofs and from other high places. They were amputating hands… Various women were forced to marry ISIS fighters…”

An uncomfortable silence followed, before the topic got changed.

“They killed 2 men from this village…”

Some say more, many more.

Several youngsters joined the ISIS. 3 or 4… ISIS would pay $200 to each new combatant who subscribed. And of course, they were promising heaven…

In one of the villages, I am shown a big rusty cage for ‘infidels’ and “sinners”. People were locked in there like wild animals, and kept exposed, in the open.

I see the destroyed ‘police’ building of the ISIS. At one point I am offered some papers – documents – which are just scattered all over the floor. I don’t want to take any with me, not even as a ‘souvenir’.

Testimonies continue to flow:

“They were beheading people for being in possession of mobile phones… Local villagers were disappearing… they were kidnapped…”

At some point, I have to halt this flow of testimonies. I can hardly process all that is being said. People are shouting over each other. One day, someone should take it all down, to record it, to file it. I do what I can, but I realize that it is not enough. It is never enough. The scale of the tragedy is too great.

By now it is getting dark… and then it is dark. I have to return to Salamiyeh, to rest a bit; to sleep fora few hours, and then to return to the frontline, where both the Syrian and Russian soldiers are bravely facing the enemy. Where they are doing all that is humanly possible to prevent those gangsters sponsored by the West and their allies, from returning to the already liberated areas of the country.

But before I fall asleep, I recall; I am haunted bythe image of a little girl who survived the occupation of her village by the ISIS. She stood resting her back against the wall. She looked at me for a while, then lifted her hands and moved her fingers quickly across her throat.

The next day, the Commander of the National Defense Forces in Muhradah, Simon Al Wakel, drives me all around the city and the outskirts, Kalashnikovresting next to his seat. It is a quick and matter-of-fact ‘tour’:

“This is where the mortars landed two days ago, there is a power plant which was liberated from the terrorists, and this is a huge gymnasium attacked by the terrorists simply because they hate that our girls excel in volleyball and basketball.”

We talk to locals. Commander Simon gets stopped in the middle of the streets, embraced by total strangers, kissed on both cheeks.

“I have been targeted more than 60 times,” he tells me. One of his former cars is rotting at a remote parking lot, after it was hit and burned by the terrorists.

He shrugs his shoulders:

“Russians and Turks negotiated the ceasefire, but obviously, terrorists do not respect any agreements.”

We return to the frontline. I am shown the Syrian cannons pointing towards the positions of Al Nusra Front. The local headquarters of the terrorists is clearly visible, not too far from the magnificent ruins of theSheizar Citadel.

First, I see the Syrian soldiers, operating slightly outdated Soviet as well as newer Russian equipment: armed vehicles, tanks, “Katyushas”. Then I spot several Russian boys settling down in two houses with a commanding view of the valley and the enemy territory.

Both the Syrian and Russian armies, shoulder to shoulder, are now facing the last enclave of the terrorists.

I wave at the Russians, and they wave back at me.

Everyone seems to be in a good mood. We are winning. We are ‘almost there’.

We all also know that it is still too early to celebrate. Terrorists from all over the world are hoarded in the area in and around the city of Idlib. The US, UK and French “Special Forces” are operating in several parts of the country. The Turkish military keeps holding big chunk of the Syrian land.

The weather is clear. The green fields are fertile and beautiful. The nearby citadel is imposing. Just a little bit more of determination and endurance, and this wonderful country will be fully liberated.

We all realize it, but no one is celebrating, yet. Nobody is smiling. The facial expressions of the Syrian and Russian comrades are serious. Men are looking down towards the valley, weapons ready. They are fully concentrated. Anything may happen; anytime.

I know why there are no smiles; we all know: Soon, we may defeat the enemy.Soon, the war may end. But hundreds of thousands of Syrian people have already died.

Reportage first published by NEO – New Eastern Outlook

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

8 March 2019

Source: www.informationclearinghouse.info

By Prof. James Petras

“The Western Hemisphere is our Region” Michael Pompeo, US Secretary of State

Introduction

Not since the US pronounced the Monroe Doctrine proclaiming its imperial supremacy over Latin America, nearly 200 years ago, has a White House regime so openly affirmed its mission to recolonize Latin America.

The second decade of the 21st century has witnessed, in word and deed, the most thorough and successful US recolonization of Latin America, and its active and overt role as colonial sepoys of an imperial power.

In this paper we will examine the process of recolonization and the strategy tactics and goals which are the driving forces of colony- building. We will conclude by discussing the durability, stability and Washington’s capacity to retain ownership of the Hemisphere.

A Brief History of 20th Century Colonization and Decolonization

US colonization of Latin America was based on direct US military, economic, cultural and political interventions with special emphasis on Central America, North America (Mexico) and the Caribbean. Washington resorted to military invasions, to impose favorite trade and investment advantages and appointed and trained local military forces to uphold colonial rule and to ensure submission to US regional and global supremacy.

The US challenged rival European colonial powers – in particular England and Germany, and eventually reduced them to marginal status, through military and economic pressure and threats.

The recolonization process suffered severe setbacks in some regions and nations with the onset of the Great Depression which undermined the US military and economic presence and facilitated the rise of powerful nationalist regimes and movements in particular in Argentina, Brazil, Chile Nicaragua and Cuba.

The process of ‘decolonization’ led to, and included, the nationalization of US oil fields, sugar and mining sectors; a shift in foreign policy toward relatively greater independence; and labor laws which increased workers’ rights and leftwing unionization.

The US victory in World War II and its economic supremacy led Washington to re-assert its colonial rule in the Western Hemisphere. The Latin American regimes lined up with Washington in the Cold and Hot wars, backing the US wars against China, Korea, Vietnam and the confrontation against the USSR and Eastern Europe.

For Washington, working through its colonized dictatorial regimes, invaded every sector of the economy, especially agro-minerals; it proceeded to dominate markets and sought to impose colonized trade unions run by the imperial-centered AFL-CIO.

By the early 1960’s a wave of popular nationalist and socialist social movements challenged the colonial order, led by the Cuban revolution and accompanied by nationalist governments throughout the continent including Argentina, Bolivia, Venezuela, Peru, Ecuador and the Dominican Republic. US multi-national manufacturing firms were forced to engage in joint ventures or were nationalized, as were oil, mineral and energy sectors.

Nationalists proceeded to substitute local products for imports, as a development strategy. A process of decolonization was underway!

The US reacted by launching a war to recolonize Latin America by through military coups, invasions and rigged elections. Latin America once more lined up with the US in support of its economic boycott of Cuba,and the repression of nationalist governments. The US reversed nationalist policies and denationalized their economies under the direction of US controlled so-called international financial organizations – like the International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank (WB) Inter-American Development Bank.

The recolonization process advanced, throughout the 1970’s and 1980’s, under the auspices of newly imposed military regimes and the new ‘neo-liberal’ free-market doctrine.

Once again recolonization led to highly polarized societies in which the domestic colonized elites were a distinct minority. Moreover, the colonial economic doctrine allowed the US banks and investors to plunder the Latin countries, impose out- of -control debt burdens, de-industrialization of the economies, severe increases in unemployment and a precipitous decline in living standards.

By the early years of the 21st century, deepening colonization led to an economic crisis and the resurgence of mass movements and new waves of nationalist-popular movements which sought to reverse – at least in part – the colonial relationship and structures.

Colonial debts were renegotiated or written off; a few foreign firms were nationalized; taxes were increased on agro-exporters; increases in public welfare spending reduced poverty ; public investment increased salaries and wages. A process of de-colonization advanced, aided by a boom in commodity pieces.

Twenty-first century decolonization was partial and affected only a limited sector of the economy; it mainly increased popular consumption rather than structural changes in property and financial power.

De-colonization co-existed with colonial power elites. The major significant changes took place with regard to regional policies. Decolonizing elites established regional alliance which excluded or minimized the US presence.

Regional power shifted to Argentina and Brazil in Mercosur; Venezuela in Central America and the Caribbean; Ecuador and Bolivia in the Andean region.

But as history has demonstrated, imperial power can suffer reverses and lose collaborators but while the US retains its military and economic levers of power it can and will use all the instruments of power to recolonize the region, in a step by step approach, incorporating regions in its quest for hemisphere supremacy.

The Recolonization of Latin America: Brazil, Argentina, and the Lima Pact Against Venezuela

As the first decade of the 21st century unfolded numerous Latin American governments and movements began the process of decolonization, displacing US client regimes, taking the lead in regional organizations, diversifying their markets and trading partners.

Nevertheless, the leaders and parties were incapable and unwilling to break with local elites tied to the US colonization project.

Vulnerable to downward movements in commodity prices, composed of heterogeneous political alliances and unable to create or deepen anti-colonial culture, the US moved to reconstruct its colonial project.

The US struck first at the ‘weakest link’ of the decolonization process. The US backed coups in Honduras and Paraguay. Then Washington turned to converting the judiciary and congress as stepping stones for launching a political attack on the strategic regimes in Argentina and Brazil and turning secondary regimes in Ecuador, Chile, Peru and El Salvador into the US orbit.

As the recolonization process advanced, the US regained its dominance in regional and international organizations. The colonized regimes privatized their economies and Washington secured regimes willing to assume onerous debts, previously repudiated.

The US advances in recolonization looked toward targeting the oil rich, dynamic and formidable anti-colonial government in Venezuela.

Venezuela was targeted for several strategic reasons.

First, Venezuela under President Chavez opposed US regional and global colonial ambitions.

Secondly, Caracas provided financial resources to bolster and promote anti-colonial regimes throughout Latin America especially in the Caribbean and Central America.

Thirdly, Venezuela invested in, and implemented, a profound and comprehensive state social agenda, building schools and hospitals with free education and health care, subsidized food and housing. Socialist democratic Venezuela contrasted with the US abysmal dismantling of the welfare state among the reconstructed colonial states.

Fourthly, Venezuela’s national control over natural resources, especially oil, was a strategic target in Washington imperial agenda.

While the US successfully reduced or eliminated Venezuela’s allies in the rest of Latin America, its repeated efforts to subdue Venezuela failed.

An abortive coup was defeated; as was a referendum to impeach President Chavez.

US boycotts and the bankrolling of elections failed to oust the Venezuelan government

Washington was unable to pressure and secure the backing of the mass of the population or the military.

Coup techniques, successful in imposing colonial regimes elsewhere, failed.

The US turned to a multi-prong, continent-wide, covert and overt military, political, economic and cultural war.

The White House appointed Juan Guaido, a virtual unknown, as ‘interim President’. Guaido was elected to Congress with 25% of the vote in his home district. Washington spent millions of dollars in promoting Guaido and funding NGOs and self-styled human rights organization to slander the Venezuelan government and launch violent attacks on the security forces.

The White House rounded up its recolonized regimes in the region to recognize Guaido as the ‘legitimate President’.

Washington recruited several leading European Union countries, especially the UK, France and Germany to isolate Venezuela.

The US sought to penetrate and subvert the Venezuelan populace via so-called humanitarian aid, refusing to work through the Red Cross and other independent organizations.

The White House fixed the weekend of Feb. 23 – 24 as the moment to oust President Maduro. It was a total, unmitigated failure, putting the lie to all of Washington’s fabrications.

The US claimed the Armed Forces would defect and join with the US funded opposition – only a hundred or so , out of 260,000 did so. The military remained loyal to the Venezuelan people, the government and the constitution despite bribes and promises.

Washington claimed ‘the people’ in Venezuela would launch an insurrection and hundreds of thousands would cross the border. Apart from a few dozen street thugs, tossing Molotov cocktails there was no uprising and less than a few hundred tried to cross the border.

Tons of US ‘aid’ remained in the Colombian warehouses. The Brazilian border patrol sent the US funded ‘protestors’ packing for blocking free passage across the frontier

Even US provocateurs who incinerated two trucks carrying ‘aid’ were exposed, the vehicles in flames remained on the Colombian side of the border. US sponsored boycotts of Venezuelan oil exports partially succeed because Washington illegaly seized Venezuela export revenues.

The recolonized Lima Group passed hostile resolutions and re-anointed Trump’s President Guaido, but few voters in the region took their pronouncements serious.

Conclusion

What are the colonized states expected to serve? Why has the White House failed to recolonize Venezuela as it did in the rest of Latin America?

The recolonized states in Latin America serve to open their markets to US investors on easy terms, with low taxes and social and labor costs, and political and economic stability based on repression of popular class and national struggles.

Colonized regimes are expected to support US boycotts, coups and invasions and to supply military troops as ordered.

Colonized regimes take the US side in international conflicts and negotiations; in regional organizations they vote with the US and meet debt payments on time and in full.

The recolonized nations ensure favorable results for Washington by manipulating elections and judicial decisions and by excluding anti-colonial candidates and officials and arresting political activists.

The colonized regimes anticipate the needs and demands of Washington and introduce resolutions on their behalf in regional organizations.

In the case of Venezuela, they promote and organize regional bloc like the Lima Group to promote US led intervention.

As Washington proceeds to destabilize Venezuela the colonized allies recycle US mass media propaganda and offer sanctuaries for opposition defectors and refugees.

In sum the recolonized elites facilitate domestic plunder and overseas conquests.

Venezuela success in resisting and defeating the US drive for reconquest is the result of nationalist and socialist leaders who re-allocate private wealth and re-distribute public expenditures to the workers, peasants and the unemployed.

Under President Chavez, Venezuela recruited and promoted military and security forces loyal to the constitutional order and in line with a popular socio-economic and anti-colonial agenda. Venezuela ensured that elections and judicial appointments were free and in-line with the politics of the majority.

The Venezuelans ensured that military advisers were independent of US military missions and aid agencies which plot coups and are disloyal to the nationalist state.

Venezuelan social democracy, its social advances and the massive reduction of poverty and inequality, contributed to reinforcing commitments to endogenous cultural values and national sovereignty.

Despite the US accumulation of colonial vassals throughout Latin America and Europe, Venezuela has consolidated mass support. Despite Washington’s capture of the global mass media it has not influenced popular opinion on a world scale. Despite US threats of a ‘military option’it lacks global support. In the face of prolonged and large scale resistance ,Washington hesitates. In addition the Latin Americans colonized states face domestic social and economic crises and political resistance. Europe confronts a regional break-up. Washington is riven by partisan divisions and a constitutional crisis.

The failure of the imperialist ultra’s in Washington to defeat Venezuela can set in motion a new wave of decolonization struggles which can force the US to look inward and downward – in order to decolonize its own electorate.

*

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Award winning author Prof. James Petras is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.

6 March 2019

Source: www.globalresearch.ca

By John Wight

Hezbollah has earned a formidable reputation for military prowess on the battlefield and political nous off it. It’s no wonder ‘they’ want to ban it.

Attaining to the status of rule of thumb is that whenever a military and/or political organization is proscribed in the West, prudence demands a closer look; this on the basis that in most cases (though not all) what ‘they’ deem worthy of being proscribed and banned is in truth worthy of support.

Take Hezbollah, for example, and the British government’s decision to criminalise the Shiite group’s political wing. Previously only the group’s military wing had been banned in the UK. Is there anyone left in the room that seriously believes this constitutes anything other than another feeble manifestation of the UK’s servile toadying to Washington?

In what stands as a monument to opportunism, the Trump administration has consistently placed Hezbollah in same terrorism box as Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS) and Al-Qaeda, conveniently eliding the small detail that the Lebanese resistance and national liberation movement has done as much as, if not more than, any single military force in fighting and defeating IS and Al-Qaeda in Syria.

Author of ‘The Battle For Syria’, Christopher Phillips, writes, “Given Hezbollah’s reputation as the most impressive military force in the Arab world, [the group’s involvement in the conflict] sapped rebel morale and boosted the regime. By offering expertise that Assad lacked, such as light infantry and urban warfare expertise, training, or directing military tactics, from 2013 [Hezbollah] became a vital component of Assad’s forces and greatly shaped the conflict.”

The move to ban Hezbollah’s political wing in the UK combines with the organization’s consistent demonization in Washington as part of the ongoing neocon crusade against Iran. It is a crusade that attests to the Shia behemoth’s resolute stance in resistance to and defiance of US hegemony and its regional proxies, Israel and Saudi Arabia.

Joining Iran in what has come to be known as an axis of resistance in the region is Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, where it enjoys overwhelming support and allegiance, and Syria.

Hezbollah, it is worth remembering, is also an electoral force of note in Lebanon, playing a full and transparent part in the country’s politics. In fact the group’s legitimacy in Lebanon is not in doubt, reflected in its endorsement by the country’s Christian president, Michel Aoun, no less.

A proper accounting of Hezbollah requires a grasp of the organization’s roots as a child of Israeli militarism and aggression over the course of repeated military incursions and invasions into Lebanon by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), stretching back to the late 1970s.

Veteran Middle East correspondent David Hirst, in his work ‘Beware Of Small States,’ delineates the factors responsible for the group’s birth in the mid-1980s, revealing that “Israel, with its invasion” [of southern Lebanon] supplied “the provocation, the anger, the turmoil, or, as Israel’s like-minded American friends, the neoconservatives, might have put it, the ‘constructive chaos’ out of which new orders grow.”

Confirming Hirst’s analysis are the words of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah himself, whom Hirst quotes, “Had the enemy [Israel] not taken this step, I don’t know whether something called Hizbullah (sic) would have been born.”

Hezbollah’s establishment in resistance to an apartheid state bears an historical comparison with the African National Congress (ANC) in South Africa. British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s branding of the ANC as a terrorist organization in the 1980s is no surprise either, considering the British establishment’s long tradition of standing on the side of the oppressor against the oppressed.

Hezbollah is, then, the Middle East’s answer to the ANC; like its African counterpart born of apartheid, along with the militarism and aggression it spawns.

The group’s formidable military reputation was elevated to near legendary status during its short conflict against Israeli forces in 2006. Hezbollah is widely perceived to have out-thought and outfought its IDF adversary.

Former MI6 officer Alastair Crooke, in a comprehensive analysis of the conflict, revealed, “Hezbollah’s fighters proved to be dedicated and disciplined. Using intelligence assets to pinpoint Israeli infantry penetrations, they proved the equal of Israel’s best fighting units. In some cases, Israeli units were defeated on the field of battle, forced into sudden retreats or forced to rely on air cover to save elements from being overrun.”

Hezbollah’s victory over the IDF in 2006 mirrors the victory of Cuban forces against the forces of white apartheid South Africa at the Battle of Cuito Cuanavale in Angola between 1987-88.

Nelson Mandela, a totemic and towering symbol of the struggle against apartheid in South Africa, described the outcome of Cuito Cuanavale as “a historic turning point in the struggle for the total liberation of the region from racist rule and aggression.”

Though too soon to assert that Hezbollah’s victory over the apartheid forces of Israel in 2006 marked a similar historic turning point, it is impossible to argue that it went some way to demoralizing the Israeli military and political establishment, which hitherto operated on the basis of the invincibility of Israeli military power in the region, bolstered by its close alliance with Washington and other Western states, the UK among them.

Crooke says “Hezbollah’s military defeat of Israel [in 2006] was decisive, but its political defeat of the United States – which unquestioningly sided with Israel during the conflict and refused to bring it to an end – was catastrophic and has had a lasting impact on US prestige in the region.”

One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter, goes the well-worn truism, and is ineffably appropriate when it comes to the standing of Hezbollah.

Organized on the basis of non-sectarianism, the organization has been at the forefront of resistance to Islamic State and other Salafi-jihadi groups in the region, while enjoying a vaunted reputation as a positive force in Lebanon itself for its dedication to upholding the country’s sovereignty and dignity, defending it from Israeli aggression and militarism.

Taking all these factors into account, and seasoning them with Britain’s own regressive role in the region, Hezbollah’s UK ban has to count as a badge of honor.

John Wight has written for a variety of newspapers and websites, including the Independent, Morning Star, Huffington Post, Counterpunch, London Progressive Journal, and Foreign Policy Journal.

7 March 2019

Source: www.rt.com

By Azad Essa

The hue of ‘democracy’ has given India and Israel special gravitas and legitimacy, while human rights violations continue unchecked

Hundreds march in Kashmir in May 2018 to support the Palestinian struggle (MEE/Fahad Shah)

In a back alley in downtown Srinagar, the capital of India-controlled Kashmir, a string of words splashed on a wall reads: “Long Live Palestine”. Nearby, “Free Gaza” screams from a shutter on a store. Across a tiny gulley, graffiti on a sidewall has been scratched off. If you stare hard enough, the words “Free Kashmir” rise like an apparition.

For many Muslims around the world, Palestine holds a special place in their political consciousness. Al-Aqsa Mosque, after all, is one of the most important sites in Islam. Those on the left – whether millennial radicals or grey-bearded Marxists – have also supported the Palestinian cause over the zealous imperialism of Zionist settler-colonialism, ethnic cleansing, displacement and war-mongering.

A personal matter
Israel’s invasions of Gaza over the past decade have repeatedly fuelled protests in countries as diverse as South Africa, the UK and Malaysia. But in Muslim-majority, India-controlled Kashmir, the subjugation of Palestinians is a personal matter – a reminder of their own condition. Kashmiris emerge on the streets with banners, and seeing no difference between their overlords and Israeli soldiers, they throw stones at Indian troops. While the Indian state tries to remove all graffiti that references Kashmiri liberation from the walls and steel shutters, there is little attempt to remove the spray paint that spells “Free Gaza”. The state apparently thinks that pro-Palestinian slogans are inconsequential and uninspiring.

Kashmiris have been among the first to organize and demonstrate. They emerge on the streets with banners, and seeing no difference between their overlords and Israeli soldiers, they throw stones at Indian troops. When the last Gaza offensive began in July 2014, Kashmiris took to the streets daily to protest against the Israeli bombardment. In one incident, Indian armed forces fired live ammunition at protesters in a district 60km from Srinagar, killing ninth-grader Suhail Ahmed.

Historical meditation
For decades, Kashmiris in Indian-controlled Kashmir have been demanding freedom, or at least the right to self-determination as promised by the 1948 UN Security Council Resolution 47. Kashmir has been claimed in full by both India and Pakistan since 1947. A de facto border separates the Indian-controlled from the Pakistani-controlled parts of Kashmir. Three out of the four wars fought between the two countries have been over the dispute.

Since the armed resistance began in 1988, more than 70,000 people have been killed, and thousands more are unaccounted for through enforced disappearances. Today, with around 700,000 troops amid a population of 14 million, Kashmir is the most militarized place on earth.

This is a society harassed by checkpoints and army convoys, terrorized by troops able to operate with impunity under the Armed Forces Special Powers Act, and mired in a legal malaise called the Public Safety Act that allows young boys to be picked up and held indefinitely without charge. This is not dissimilar to the Israeli policy of “administrative detention” that has seen thousands of Palestinians held indefinitely. For years, Indian forces have used lead-plated pellets as a method of “crowd control”. These have blinded 1,000 people and wounded 10,000 others, with injuries ranging from torn tissue to internal organ damage. As if violence was not enough, the Indian state regularly disconnects the internet and telephone services to discourage grassroots organizing and the dissemination of information, and to cut off Kashmiri people from the rest of the world.

Oppressors-in-arms
Though the strengthening of ties between India and Israel is a fairly recent phenomenon, they have rapidly developed an effective partnership based on strategic interests. India has repeatedly sent its police and Special Forces to Israel for training. Between 2013 and 2017, India was the largest importer of Israeli arms. Israeli Rafael’s Spice 2000 missiles as well as Heron drones reportedly played a significant role in India’s recent “surgical strike” in Pakistan on 26 February. Just days before the strike, India ordered 50 more drones in a deal worth $500m.

Crucially, Israel continues to collaborate with India to ensure that Kashmiris remain a subjugated people. And while the occupations of Palestine and Kashmir are not identical – there are certainly differences – Israeli and Indian ambitions are not dissimilar. In some ways, they feed off each other.

Israel has systematically ethnically cleansed Palestinians, taking over their homes, buying off resistance, quelling dissent, and appropriating elements of their culture – even cuisine – as part of a larger bid to remove the Palestinian footprint from these lands. As a result, Palestinians are essentially second-class non-citizens. In comparison, India, through a policy of “domestication” – or to use BJP leader Ram Madhav’s words, “instilling India” into Kashmiri Muslims – seeks to make Kashmiri Muslims relinquish their political identities and submit to the larger Indian project. They would then become “Indian Muslims”, who, by all measures of success and equity in Indian society, are second-class citizens. The endgame is to facilitate a demographic shift in Kashmir itself, bringing in more Hindus from India to settle into Kashmir.

Manufacturing consent
Then, there is the matter of language and manufacturing consent. Both Israel and India employ a sophisticated, securitized, statist language – parroted by their jingoistic media – that helps to legitimize the occupation, along with related human rights violations and crackdowns.

The quick resort to Islamophobia is an easy sell to justify their actions. Just as Israel describes its invasions of Gaza as a “defence” against “radical Islamist” Hamas members, Indians are still able to invoke their international brands of “Gandhi” and “yoga” while unleashing ammunition into protests by Kashmiri youth, saying that they are Pakistan-sponsored terrorists or radical jihadists. Israelis famously picnicked on hilltops to watch as the bombs rained down on Gaza in 2014. This week, as Indian jets flew over Pakistani territory to kickstart war, Indian celebrities cheered them on Twitter. It is a willful use of language, the blind loyalty of an elite, and the disconnection of local and international media that allows both Palestinians and Kashmiris to be vilified at any given opportunity.

Just as Israelis or Zionists intimidate academics, journalists and intellectuals who question Israeli policies, so too do the strong, often nationalistic Indian diaspora in media houses and schools around the planet attempt to suppress any discussion of Kashmir. Like Palestinians, many young Kashmiris, powerless in the face of state machinery, have resorted to stone-pelting. The fact that Indian authorities use disproportionate force – including burning down villages, homes and crops of those loosely acquainted with rebel fighters – is also conveniently ignored.

Public sentiment
Both Palestine and Kashmir have neighbours operating primarily on self-interest. If Palestine has Jordan and Egypt undermining its cause, Kashmir has Pakistan, which seeks little more than allegiance and a worthy alibi in India to deflect from the real and legitimate concerns of Kashmiris.

Finally, it’s a matter of public sentiment. When it comes to the larger Israeli and Indian publics, the vulgarity of the occupation has stripped them of their humanity to the point that they cheer for death and war. Israelis famously picnicked on hilltops to watch as the bombs rain down on Gaza in 2014. This week, as Indian jets flew over Pakistani territory to kick start war, Indian celebrities – including writers, actors, cricket stars, a former undersecretary at the UN, and a current UNICEF ambassador – cheered them on Twitter.

*Azad Essa is a reporter for the Middle East Eye based in New York City.

4 March 2019

Source: palestineupdates.com

By John Pilger

Whenever I visit Julian Assange, we meet in a room he knows too well.

There is a bare table and pictures of Ecuador on the walls. There is a bookcase where the books never change. The curtains are always drawn and there is no natural light. The air is still and foetid.

This is Room 101.

Before I enter Room 101, I must surrender my passport and phone. My pockets and possessions are examined. The food I bring is inspected.

The man who guards Room 101 sits in what looks like an old-fashioned telephone box. He watches a screen, watching Julian. There are others unseen, agents of the state, watching and listening.

Cameras are everywhere in Room 101. To avoid them, Julian manoeuvres us both into a corner, side by side, flat up against the wall. This is how we catch up: whispering and writing to each other on a notepad, which he shields from the cameras. Sometimes we laugh.

I have my designated time slot. When that expires, the door in Room 101 bursts open and the guard says, “Time is up!” On New Year’s Eve, I was allowed an extra 30 minutes and the man in the phone box wished me a happy new year, but not Julian.

Of course, Room 101 is the room in George Orwell’s prophetic novel, 1984, where the thought police watched and tormented their prisoners, and worse, until people surrendered their humanity and principles and obeyed Big Brother.

Julian Assange will never obey Big Brother. His resilience and courage are astonishing, even though his physical health struggles to keep up.

Julian is a distinguished Australian who has changed the way many people think about duplicitous governments. For this, he is a political refugee subjected to what the United Nations calls “arbitrary detention.”

The UN says he has the right of free passage to freedom, but this is denied. He has the right to medical treatment without fear of arrest, but this is denied. He has the right to compensation, but this is denied.

As founder and editor of WikiLeaks, his crime has been to make sense of dark times. WikiLeaks has an impeccable record of accuracy and authenticity which no newspaper, no TV channel, no radio station, no BBC, no New York Times, no Washington Post, no Guardian can equal. Indeed, it shames them.

That explains why he is being punished.

For example: Last week, the International Court of Justice ruled that the British Government had no legal powers over the Chagos Islanders, who, in the 1960s and 70s, were expelled in secret from their homeland on Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean and sent into exile and poverty. Countless children died, many of them from sadness. It was an epic crime few knew about.

For almost 50 years, the British have denied the islanders’ the right to return to their homeland, which they had given to the Americans for a major military base.

In 2009, the British Foreign Office concocted a “marine reserve” around the Chagos archipelago.

This touching concern for the environment was exposed as a fraud when WikiLeaks published a secret cable from the British Government reassuring the Americans that “the former inhabitants would find it difficult, if not impossible, to pursue their claim for resettlement on the islands if the entire Chagos Archipelago were a marine reserve.”

The truth of the conspiracy clearly influenced the momentous decision of the International Court of Justice.

WikiLeaks has also revealed how the United States spies on its allies; how the CIA can watch you through your i-phone; how presidential candidate Hillary Clinton took vast sums of money from Wall Street for secret speeches that reassured the bankers that if she was elected, she would be their friend.

In 2016, WikiLeaks revealed a direct connection between Clinton and organised jihadism in the Middle East: terrorists, in other words. One email disclosed that when Clinton was US Secretary of State, she knew that Saudi Arabia and Qatar were funding Islamic State, yet she accepted huge donations for her foundation from both governments.

She then approved the world’s biggest ever arms sale to her Saudi benefactors: arms that are currently being used against the stricken people of Yemen.

That explains why he is being punished.

WikiLeaks has also published more than 800,000 secret files from Russia, including the Kremlin, telling us more about the machinations of power in that country than the specious hysterics of the “Russia-gate” pantomime in Washington.

This is real journalism—journalism of a kind now considered exotic: the antithesis of Vichy journalism, which speaks for the enemy of the people and takes its sobriquet from the Vichy government that occupied France on behalf of the Nazis.

Vichy journalism is censorship by omission, such as the untold scandal of the collusion between Australian governments and the United States to deny Julian Assange his rights as an Australian citizen and to silence him.

In 2010, Prime Minister Julia Gillard went as far as ordering the Australian Federal Police to investigate and hopefully prosecute Assange and WikiLeaks—until she was informed by the Australian Federal Police that no crime had been committed.

Last weekend, the Sydney Morning Herald published a lavish supplement promoting a celebration of “Me Too” at the Sydney Opera House on 10 March. Among the leading participants is the recently retired Minister of Foreign Affairs, Julie Bishop.

Bishop has been on show in the local media lately, lauded as a loss to politics: an “icon,” someone called her, to be admired.

The elevation to celebrity feminism of one so politically primitive as Bishop tells us how much so-called identity politics have subverted an essential, objective truth: that what matters, above all, is not your gender but the class you serve.

Before she entered politics, Julie Bishop was a lawyer who served the notorious asbestos miner James Hardie, which fought claims by men and their families dying horribly with asbestosis.

Lawyer Peter Gordon recalls Bishop “rhetorically asking the court why workers should be entitled to jump court queues just because they were dying.”

Bishop says she “acted on instructions … professionally and ethically.”

Perhaps she was merely “acting on instructions” when she flew to London and Washington last year with her ministerial chief of staff, who had indicated that the Australian Foreign Minister would raise Julian’s case and hopefully begin the diplomatic process of bringing him home.

Julian’s father had written a moving letter to the then Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, asking the government to intervene diplomatically to free his son. He told Turnbull that he was worried Julian might not leave the embassy alive.

Julie Bishop had every opportunity in the UK and the US to present a diplomatic solution that would bring Julian home. But this required the courage of one proud to represent a sovereign, independent state, not a vassal.

Instead, she made no attempt to contradict the British Foreign Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, when he said outrageously that Julian “faced serious charges.” What charges? There were no charges.

Australia’s Foreign Minister abandoned her duty to speak up for an Australian citizen, prosecuted with nothing, charged with nothing, guilty of nothing.

Will those feminists who fawn over this false icon at the Opera House next Sunday be reminded of her role in colluding with foreign forces to punish an Australian journalist, one whose work has revealed that rapacious militarism has smashed the lives of millions of ordinary women in many countries: in Iraq alone, the US-led invasion of that country, in which Australia participated, left 700,000 widows.

So what can be done? An Australian government that was prepared to act in response to a public campaign to rescue the refugee football player, Hakeem al-Araibi, from torture and persecution in Bahrain, is capable of bringing Julian Assange home.

The refusal by the Department of Foreign Affairs in Canberra to honour the United Nations’ declaration that Julian is the victim of “arbitrary detention” and has a fundamental right to his freedom, is a shameful breach of the letter and spirit of international law.

Why has the Australian government made no serious attempt to free Assange? Why did Julie Bishop bow to the wishes of two foreign powers?

Why is this democracy traduced by its servile relationships, and integrated with lawless foreign power?

The persecution of Julian Assange is the conquest of us all: of our independence, our self-respect, our intellect, our compassion, our politics, our culture.

So stop scrolling. Organise. Occupy. Insist. Persist. Make a noise. Take direct action. Be brave and stay brave. Defy the thought police.

War is not peace, freedom is not slavery, ignorance is not strength. If Julian can stand up to Big Brother, so can you: so can all of us.

John Pilger is an Australian journalist and documentary maker, based in London.

4 March 2019

Source: countercurrents.org

By Samreen Mushtaq & Mudasir Amin

Amid all the talks of India-Pakistan war, the issue at the very heart of present tensions has been completely ignored.

2 Mar 2019 – “What are they saying about jung [war] over there? Does it look like it will happen?” For days now our families in Kashmir have been asking us the same questions, hoping that here in New Delhi, we would have some answers.

Uncertainty and fear took over our home region on February 14, when a suicide attack in the Pulwama district of Indian-administered Kashmir killed more than 40 Indian soldiers. We were quickly and collectively denounced as national traitors, harassed and attacked across Indian cities. The Indian media and political elite called for “revenge” and started beating the drums of war.

The Indian government imposed a curfew, cut down the speed of the internet and deployed more troops in Kashmir. The police and security agencies carried out hundreds of overnight raids, arresting political leaders and activists. Jamaat–e-Islami, a political and religious organisation, was banned.

Meanwhile, the Indian military was put on high alert and raids were launched on targets in Pakistan, which prompted a Pakistani response. Heavy shelling across the Line of Control (LoC) which separates Indian- from Pakistan-administered Kashmir began.

Many Kashmiris were forced to flee, others started to stock up on food and other basic goods, fearing an escalation. Big red crosses were painted on rooftops of hospitals in the hope that the fighter jets constantly circling above would not hit them.

The Kashmiri people, who have already lived through decades of daily aggression against their bodies, homes, psyches, and memories, are now facing the real possibility of an all-out war.

It is in such circumstances that our families have been calling and messaging us from miles away, hoping to hear from us some soothing words. Every day, they have been recounting how their nights are spent counting the number of jets in the sky. Every day, we have been wondering if we should go home and face the war together with our loved ones.

Meanwhile, headlines about an India-Pakistan “confrontation”, “escalation” and an “impending war” have been dominating local and international media. News broadcasts have followed every detail of the Indian and Pakistani military actions, the attacks and the counter-attacks, the claims and the counter-claims. Reporters have documented every statement, every new development. Pundits have dissected every aspect of the conflict – from war capabilities to army structure, to weaponry and from military strategies to geopolitical realities.

Yet somewhere in all this noise about conflict and war, a simple fact has been left out: that Kashmir is the place where it is all being fought out. The Kashmir issue and the plight of Kashmiri people have been somehow rendered irrelevant, even though the current conflict between India and Pakistan has everything to do with the disputed region.

When international media talks of the history of India-Pakistan antagonism, it fails to recognise the fact that Kashmiris have borne the brunt of it. When Indian media talks about “terrorism”, it fails to mention the fact that Kashmir is one of the most heavily militarised zones in the world.

There was a certain irony in calls by Indian officials and public figures calling for Pakistan to uphold the Geneva Convention in its treatment of the captured Indian pilot. In Kashmir, India has failed to apply not just the Geneva Convention, but much of international law for that matter. Kashmiris are still being jailed on political charges and used as human shields, while the United Nations resolution which mandates a referendum on self-determination to be conducted in Kashmir is yet to be implemented.

The current anti-war activism in India is limited to small demonstrations and #NoToWar posts on social media. The elephant in the room is once again being ignored. No one is talking about what true peace would actually entail.

Dominant narratives propagated by the Indian state and the mainstream media are muffling Kashmiri voices. At this moment, it is important to hear them speak and tell their stories of war. The killings, torture, enforced disappearances, sexual violence, mass blinding through the use of pellet shotguns, and everyday harassment in Kashmir cannot be swept under the carpet and ignored. This violence needs to be made visible because continuing or escalating the current security policies of the Indian government will only result in disaster.

Indians have to realise that there will be no peace until the Kashmir issue is resolved. If they truly want “no war”, then they have to push first and foremost for the demilitarisation of Kashmir. And if they want international law respected, they should do so as well and hold the plebiscite mandated by the UN. Kashmiris should be allowed to decide their own fate.

Samreen Mushtaq is a researcher based in New Delhi.

Mudasir Amin is a researcher based in New Delhi.

4 March 2019

Source: transcend.org