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By John Pilger

Travelling with Hugo Chavez, I soon understood the threat of Venezuela. At a farming co-operative in Lara state, people waited patiently and with good humour in the heat. Jugs of water and melon juice were passed around. A guitar was played; a woman, Katarina, stood and sang with a husky contralto.

“What did her words say?” I asked.

“That we are proud,” was the reply.

The applause for her merged with the arrival of Chavez. Under one arm he carried a satchel bursting with books. He wore his big red shirt and greeted people by name, stopping to listen. What struck me was his capacity to listen.

But now he read. For almost two hours he read into the microphone from the stack of books beside him: Orwell, Dickens, Tolstoy, Zola, Hemingway, Chomsky, Neruda: a page here, a line or two there. People clapped and whistled as he moved from author to author.

Then farmers took the microphone and told him what they knew, and what they needed; one ancient face, carved it seemed from a nearby banyan, made a long, critical speech on the subject of irrigation; Chavez took notes.

Wine is grown here, a dark Syrah type grape. “John, John, come up here,” said El Presidente, having watched me fall asleep in the heat and the depths of Oliver Twist.

“He likes red wine,” Chavez told the cheering, whistling audience, and presented me with a bottle of “vino de la gente”. My few words in bad Spanish brought whistles and laughter.

Watching Chavez with la gente made sense of a man who promised, on coming to power, that his every move would be subject to the will of the people. In eight years, Chavez won eight elections and referendums: a world record. He was electorally the most popular head of state in the Western Hemisphere, probably in the world.

Every major chavista reform was voted on, notably a new constitution of which 71 per cent of the people approved each of the 396 articles that enshrined unheard of freedoms, such as Article 123, which for the first time recognised the human rights of mixed-race and black people, of whom Chavez was one.

One of his tutorials on the road quoted a feminist writer: “Love and solidarity are the same.” His audiences understood this well and expressed themselves with dignity, seldom with deference. Ordinary people regarded Chavez and his government as their first champions: as theirs.

This was especially true of the indigenous, mestizos and Afro-Venezuelans, who had been held in historic contempt by Chavez’s immediate predecessors and by those who today live far from the barrios, in the mansions and penthouses of East Caracas, who commute to Miami where their banks are and who regard themselves as “white”. They are the powerful core of what the media calls “the opposition”.

When I met this class, in suburbs called Country Club, in homes appointed with low chandeliers and bad portraits, I recognised them. They could be white South Africans, the petite bourgeoisie of Constantia and Sandton, pillars of the cruelties of apartheid.

Cartoonists in the Venezuelan press, most of which are owned by an oligarchy and oppose the government, portrayed Chavez as an ape. A radio host referred to “the monkey”. In the private universities, the verbal currency of the children of the well-off is often racist abuse of those whose shacks are just visible through the pollution.

Although identity politics are all the rage in the pages of liberal newspapers in the West, race and class are two words almost never uttered in the mendacious “coverage” of Washington’s latest, most naked attempt to grab the world’s greatest source of oil and reclaim its “backyard”.

For all the chavistas’ faults – such as allowing the Venezuelan economy to become hostage to the fortunes of oil and never seriously challenging big capital and corruption – they brought social justice and pride to millions of people and they did it with unprecedented democracy.

“Of the 92 elections that we’ve monitored,” said former President Jimmy Carter, whose Carter Centre is a respected monitor of elections around the world, “I would say the election process in Venezuela is the best in the world.” By way of contrast, said Carter, the US election system, with its emphasis on campaign money, “is one of the worst”.

In extending the franchise to a parallel people’s state of communal authority, based in the poorest barrios, Chavez described Venezuelan democracy as “our version of Rousseau’s idea of popular sovereignty”.

In Barrio La Linea, seated in her tiny kitchen, Beatrice Balazo told me her children were the first generation of the poor to attend a full day’s school and be given a hot meal and to learn music, art and dance. “I have seen their confidence blossom like flowers,” she said.

In Barrio La Vega, I listened to a nurse, Mariella Machado, a black woman of 45 with a wicked laugh, address an urban land council on subjects ranging from homelessness to illegal war. That day, they were launching Mision Madres de Barrio, a programme aimed at poverty among single mothers. Under the constitution, women have the right to be paid as carers, and can borrow from a special women’s bank. Now the poorest housewives get the equivalent of $200 a month.

In a room lit by a single fluorescent tube, I met Ana Lucia Ferandez, aged 86, and Mavis Mendez, aged 95. A mere 33-year-old, Sonia Alvarez, had come with her two children. Once, none of them could read and write; now they were studying mathematics. For the first time in its history, Venezuela has almost 100 per cent literacy.

This is the work of Mision Robinson, which was designed for adults and teenagers previously denied an education because of poverty. Mision Ribas gives everyone the opportunity of a secondary education, called a bachillerato.(The names Robinson and Ribas refer to Venezuelan independence leaders from the 19th century).

In her 95 years, Mavis Mendez had seen a parade of governments, mostly vassals of Washington, preside over the theft of billions of dollars in oil spoils, much of it flown to Miami. “We didn’t matter in a human sense,” she told me. “We lived and died without real education and running water, and food we couldn’t afford. When we fell ill, the weakest died. Now I can read and write my name and so much more; and whatever the rich and the media say, we have planted the seeds of true democracy and I have the joy of seeing it happen.”

In 2002, during a Washington-backed coup, Mavis’s sons and daughters and grandchildren and great-grandchildren joined hundreds of thousands who swept down from the barrios on the hillsides and demanded the army remained loyal to Chavez.

“The people rescued me,” Chavez told me. “They did it with the media against me, preventing even the basic facts of what happened. For popular democracy in heroic action, I suggest you look no further.”

Since Chavez’s death in 2013, his successor Nicolas Maduro has shed his derisory label in the Western press as a “former bus driver” and become Saddam Hussein incarnate. His media abuse is ridiculous. On his watch, the slide in the price of oil has caused hyper inflation and played havoc with prices in a society that imports almost all its food; yet, as the journalist and film-maker Pablo Navarrete reported this week, Venezuela is not the catastrophe it has been painted. “There is food everywhere,” he wrote. “I have filmed lots of videos of food in markets [all over Caracas] … it’s Friday night and the restaurants are full.”

In 2018, Maduro was re-elected President. A section of the opposition boycotted the election, a tactic tried against Chavez. The boycott failed: 9,389,056 people voted; sixteen parties participated and six candidates stood for the presidency. Maduro won 6,248,864 votes, or 67.84 per cent.

On election day, I spoke to one of the 150 foreign election observers. “It was entirely fair,” he said. “There was no fraud; none of the lurid media claims stood up. Zero. Amazing really.”

Like a page from Alice’s tea party, the Trump administration has presented Juan Guaido, a pop-up creation of the CIA-front National Endowment for Democracy, as the “legitimate President of Venezuela”. Unheard of by 81 per cent of the Venezuelan people, according to The Nation, Guaido has been elected by no one.

Maduro is “illegitimate”, says Trump (who won the US presidency with three million fewer votes than his opponent), a “dictator”, says demonstrably unhinged vice president Mike Pence and an oil trophy-in-waiting, says “national security” adviser John Bolton (who when I interviewed him in 2003 said, “Hey, are you a communist, maybe even Labour?”).

As his “special envoy to Venezuela” (coup master), Trump has appointed a convicted felon, Elliot Abrams, whose intrigues in the service of Presidents Reagan and George W. Bush helped produce the Iran-Contra scandal in the 1980s and plunge central America into years of blood-soaked misery.

Putting Lewis Carroll aside, these “crazies” belong in newsreels from the 1930s. And yet their lies about Venezuela have been taken up with enthusiasm by those paid to keep the record straight.

On Channel 4 News, Jon Snow bellowed at the Labour MP Chris Williamson, “Look, you and Mr Corbyn are in a very nasty corner [on Venezuela]!” When Williamson tried to explain why threatening a sovereign country was wrong, Snow cut him off. “You’ve had a good go!”

In 2006, Channel 4 News effectively accused Chavez of plotting to make nuclear weapons with Iran: a fantasy. The then Washington correspondent, Jonathan Rugman, allowed a war criminal, Donald Rumsfeld, to liken Chavez to Hitler, unchallenged.

Researchers at the University of the West of England studied the BBC’s reporting of Venezuela over a ten-year period. They looked at 304 reports and found that only three of these referred to any of the positive policies of the government. For the BBC, Venezuela’s democratic record, human rights legislation, food programmes, healthcare initiatives and poverty reduction did not happen. The greatest literacy programme in human history did not happen, just as the millions who march in support of Maduro and in memory of Chavez, do not exist.

When asked why she filmed only an opposition march, the BBC reporter Orla Guerin tweeted that it was “too difficult” to be on two marches in one day.

A war has been declared on Venezuela, of which the truth is “too difficult” to report.

It is too difficult to report the collapse of oil prices since 2014 as largely the result of criminal machinations by Wall Street. It is too difficult to report the blocking of Venezuela’s access to the US-dominated international financial system as sabotage. It is too difficult to report Washington’s “sanctions” against Venezuela, which have caused the loss of at least $6billion in Venezuela’s revenue since 2017, including $2billion worth of imported medicines, as illegal, or the Bank of England’s refusal to return Venezuela’s gold reserves as an act of piracy.

The former United Nations Rapporteur, Alfred de Zayas, has likened this to a “medieval siege” designed “to bring countries to their knees”. It is a criminal assault, he says. It is similar to that faced by Salvador Allende in 1970 when President Richard Nixon and his equivalent of John Bolton, Henry Kissinger, set out to “make the economy [of Chile] scream”. The long dark night of Pinochet followed.

The Guardian correspondent, Tom Phillips, has tweeted a picture of a cap on which the words in Spanish mean in local slang: “Make Venezuela fucking cool again.” The reporter as clown may be the final stage of much of mainstream journalism’s degeneration.

Should the CIA stooge Guaido and his white supremacists grab power, it will be the 68th overthrow of a sovereign government by the United States, most of them democracies. A fire sale of Venezuela’s utilities and mineral wealth will surely follow, along with the theft of the country’s oil, as outlined by John Bolton.

Under the last Washington-controlled government in Caracas, poverty reached historic proportions. There was no healthcare for those could not pay. There was no universal education; Mavis Mendez, and millions like her, could not read or write. How cool is that, Tom?

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

23 February 2019

Source: countercurrents.org

Mensaje urgente a las fuerzas políticas y sociales del continente:

Como enfatiza la Declaración del Gobierno Revolucionario de Cuba, del pasado 13 de febrero, “la escalada de presiones y acciones del Gobierno de los Estados Unidos para preparar una aventura militar disfrazada de intervención humanitaria”, no solamente constituye una amenaza real contra la Revolución Bolivariana, sino que entraña un peligro real para la paz continental. Washington no debería subestimar los costos de una agresión contra Venezuela. La posibilidad de una desastrosa regionalización del conflicto armado afectaría a nuestros pueblos y a todos sus sectores sociales, económicos y políticos.

Estamos ante una típica amenaza de guerra de agresión imperialista, se disfrace como se disfrace, cuyo objetivo principal es la apropiación, por parte de los Estados Unidos, de las mayores reservas certificadas de petróleo del planeta. Se evidencia, una vez más,el desprecio de Washington a las decenas de miles de víctimas civiles que podría producir una conflagración como la que está a la vista.

No sería solo un ataque contra la Revolución Bolivariana. En la lógica de los halcones que controlan la política de la administración de Trump hacia la América Latina, la acción es vista como una embestida final contra la izquierda y las fuerzas progresistas en el continente. Hoy es Venezuela, mañana serán Nicaragua, Bolivia o Cuba.

La defensa de la Revolución Bolivariana, en consecuencia, pasa a ser la primera trinchera en la lucha por la soberanía de Nuestra América, por el ideal de justicia social, paz con dignidad, y unidad latinoamericanista que nos legaran los fundadores de nuestras nobles naciones.

Reafirmamos la posición del Gobierno Revolucionario de Cuba, cuando recuerda que “se decide hoy en Venezuela la soberanía y la dignidad de América Latina y el Caribe y de los pueblos del Sur. Se decide también la supervivencia de las normas del derecho internacional y la Carta de las Naciones Unidas. Se define si la legitimidad de un gobierno emana de la voluntad expresa y soberana de su pueblo, o del reconocimiento de potencias extranjeras”.

Llamamos a la marcha unida y a mostrar al Imperio yanqui que los pueblos del continente sí tienen sentido de su independencia y soberanía.

Es momento oportuno para que las fuerzas del Foro de Sao Paulo reivindiquen el potencial político que representan. Nuestros pueblos lo demandan.
Los sectores políticos y sociales de izquierda, democráticos y patrióticos, tenemos por delante la posibilidad de demostrar que el mejor modo de decir, es hacer, como subrayó en su momento José Martí. Desde Cuba, les instamos a ganar la guerra: impidamos que se desate, garanticemos la paz para todos. Hagamos honor a esta histórica decisión de los antifascistas españoles: ¡no pasarán!

Partido Comunista de Cuba

(Unofficial translation)
Urgent message to the political and social forces of the continent:
As the Declaration of the Revolutionary Government of Cuba emphasizes, on February 13, “the escalation of pressure and actions of the United States Government to prepare a military adventure disguised as a humanitarian intervention”, not only constitutes a real threat against the Bolivarian Revolution , but it entails a real danger for continental peace.
Washington should not underestimate the costs of an aggression against Venezuela. The possibility of a disastrous regionalization of the armed conflict would affect our peoples and all their social, economic and political sectors.

We are facing a typical threat of imperialist aggression, disguised as it is disguised; whose main objective is the appropriation by the United States of the largest certified oil reserves on the planet. Once again, there is evidence of Washington’s contempt for the tens of thousands of civilian victims that a conflagration like the one in sight could produce.

It would not be just an attack against the Bolivarian Revolution. In the logic of the hawks that control the Trump administration’s policy toward Latin America, the action is seen as a final onslaught against the left and progressive forces on the continent. Today it is Venezuela; tomorrow it will be Nicaragua, Bolivia or Cuba.

The defense of the Bolivarian Revolution, consequently, becomes the first trench in the struggle for the sovereignty of Our America, for the ideal of social justice, peace with dignity, and Latin American unity that the founders of our noble nations bequeath to us.

We reaffirm the position of the Revolutionary Government of Cuba, when it recalls that “the sovereignty and dignity of Latin America and the Caribbean and of the peoples of the South are decided today in Venezuela. The survival of the norms of international law and the Charter of the United Nations are also decided. It will determine if the legitimacy of a government emanates from the express and sovereign will of its people, or from the recognition of foreign powers.”

We call for a united march to show the Yankee Empire that the peoples of the continent do have a sense of their independence and sovereignty. It is an opportune moment for the forces of the Sao Paulo Forum to reclaim the political potential they represent. Our people demand it. The political and social sectors of the left, democratic and patriotic, we have before us the possibility of demonstrating that the best way to say, is to do, as José Martí emphasized. From Cuba, we urge to win the war by preventing it from starting, let’s guarantee peace for all. Let us honor this historic decision of the Spanish antifascists: they will not pass!

Communist Party of Cuba

By Carla Stea

In a spectacular display of solidarity and strength, envoys from such distant capitals as Beijing and Havana, Moscow and Tehran, Pyongyang and Caracas, Damascus and Managua and numerous other states stood together, side by side, in front of the United Nations Security Council, declaring their determination to protect the UN Charter and International Law, and holding sacrosanct the sovereignty and inviolability of each member state.

All these present, and approximately 50 more aligned, are states whose combined populations comprise more than half the people of the world, and all have been victimized and pauperized by the predations of neoliberal capitalist states bleeding the wealth of their peoples.

As Venezuelan Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza read out their new statement, declaring the illegality of unilateral coercive economic sanctions, and territorial invasions, it became obvious that the power of this new solidarity, which includes China, Russia, Cuba, DPRK, Syria, Iran, Palestine, Nicaragua, Venezuela, etc. constitutes a formidable force which Western capitalism will antagonize at its own peril. This is a long overdue counterforce to Western domination of the United Nations, a domination based on money, on the large payments enabling the US and other capitalist powers to bribe, threaten and otherwise control the direction of the UN, and distort and destroy the independence, impartiality and integrity which the UN requires in order to maintain its legitimacy, and implement the sustained global peace and justice for which Franklin Delano Roosevelt created it.

Since the collapse of the USSR it has become blatantly clear at the UN (and virtually everywhere else) that money talks – indeed money shrieks . It therefore now seems obvious that the combined UN dues of these newly affiliated nations probably exceeds the contributions of the United States to the United Nations, and, if skillfully managed, this new organization of hitherto ravaged states will now have the power to threaten to withhold their combined dues, threatening a strike would could paralyze the United Nations unless their own interests, and not solely the interest of the United States and Saudi Arabia, are respected, and their own voices honored. There is incessant talk of the need for reform of the United Nations. It is probable that this new organization within the UN is the reform that is necessary – indeed inevitable.

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Carla Stea is Global Research’s correspondent at United Nations Headquarters, New York, N.Y.

16 February

Source: globalresearch.ca

By Giorgia Perletta

Using fixed categories to describe Iranian politics is often a risk. Western readings are frequently imbued with misconceptions and prejudices due to an Orientalist approach. At the same time, the official narrative of the Islamic Republic reflects a self-representation in conscious reaction to Western views of Iran. These two readings clash with each other at the expense of a deep and fair understanding of Iranian politics.

The Western interpretation of Iran’s politics and domestic dynamics is often based on a dichotomous reading that confines spaces and actors within two confronting dimensions. Political debates are described as a constant clash between conservatives and reformists, pragmatists and radicals, or moderates and hardliners.

Internal factionalism is defined and thus understood as a contradiction between more strict political forces, linked to unelected and cleric-dominated institutions, and more moderate ones that emerge from direct elections and are struggling to introduce gradual reforms.

Terms like radicalism and conservatism come from a Western historical-political process and do not always fit the Iranian context. Translation is also a problem as is evident in the use of the word “principalist,” from the Persian /usulgarayan/—followers of principles or /usul/. In Western literature about Iran, this term refers to hardliners who emerged in the political arena after 2004 and consolidated their power during the presidency of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. However, a group opposing Ahmadinejad in 2008 parliamentary elections used the word /usulgarayan/to distinguish itself from the president’s circle.

In the West, there is a deep misunderstanding of Persian nomenclature that leads to the misattribution of Western labels to Iranian political groups. Descriptions of the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei are emblematic of this shallow analysis. Khamenei has been labelled a conservative figure, suggesting orthodox adherence to revolutionary values and political factions linked to conservatism. What this label neglects is Khamenei’s ability to move within the political arena, maintaining a conservative posture but generally avoiding fractures and deep crises in the system (the post-2009 election period is an exception). During the presidency of Ahmadinejad’s successor, Hassan Rouhani, Khamenei has proven himself to be a pragmatic leader able to read the internal dynamics of the country and rejecting the intransigent posture often attributed to Iranian conservatives.

Orientalist readings also generate misconceptions about the relations between the state and society. Iranian society is often described as liberal, educated, modern and in an endless struggle with the political elite. The latter are labelled as oppressive, authoritarian and embracing religious traditionalism. When protests occur in the country, Western media disseminates images of women removing their veils to emphasize modernity and a demand for more personal freedom. However, Western media misinterpreted many of the protests that occurred at the end of 2017 and beginning of 2018 as political when the primary motivation was economic.

The image of women unveiling themselves embodies the Orientalist lens of the West in reading Iranian dynamics. Moreover, in the Western perspective, criticism of compulsory /hijab /is a symbol of social redemption in Iran and a priority for the emancipation of Iranian women. This perspective, however, tends to slight years of women’s activism for more rights in the family, in employment and in politics in which rejection of the compulsory veil is only a minor grievance and mainly an urban and middle-class phenomenon.

Iranian society, as well as the political elite, is active, pluralistic and in a constant redefinition of its identity. Trying to overcome fixed categories and biased interpretations could help create a more nuanced understanding of internal dynamics in place of the unconditional condemnation of the government and excessive praise of a part of society. Both the Iranian population and the government have witnessed profound transformation that cannot be ignored, nor be understood through dichotomous approaches.

At the official level, the Islamic Republic insists on concepts such as self-sufficiency and the economy of resistance. This narrative re-emerges every time relations with Western states are facing a phase of confrontation as they are now with the US withdrawal from the 2015 nuclear deal. There are important economic, political and rhetorical reasons behind the calls for self-sufficiency, which attempts to crystalize national identity /vis/-à-/vis/the outside world. In building its own political identity, post-revolutionary Iran inherited an anti-Western narrative. The emphasis on national traditions and Iran’s long history also provided a strong sense of distinctiveness that underlined the emphasis on independence. However, Tehran has also shown a deep commitment to try to overcome political and economic isolation, first by establishing a “critical dialogue” with the European Union in the 1990s, then a “comprehensive” dialogue in the 2000s and finally, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. These pragmatic policies, while emphasizing the need for dialogue with the West, never really abandoned the domestic rhetoric of confrontation and mistrust. The heritage of Jalal Al-e Ahmad’s “Westoxification” as a rejection of Western cultural paradigms is still evident at the official level.

Despite such antagonistic rhetoric, however, the Islamic Republic is in constant exchange with the West, from a cultural, political and economic point of view. The Western gaze should overcome partial readings to avoid diplomatic deadlock and try to understand Iran with more nuance and objectivity.

Giorgia Perletta is a PhD candidate in institutions and policies at Catholic University of Milan, Italy. She has been a visiting researcher at the University of Toronto and received her two MAs in international relations and in Middle Eastern studies at the Catholic University of Milan.

31 January 2019

By Michael T Klare

In his highly acclaimed 2017 book, Destined for War, Harvard professor Graham Allison assessed the likelihood that the United States and China would one day find themselves at war. Comparing the U.S.-Chinese relationship to great-power rivalries all the way back to the Peloponnesian War of the fifth century BC, he concluded that the future risk of a conflagration was substantial. Like much current analysis of U.S.-Chinese relations, however, he missed a crucial point: for all intents and purposes, the United States and China are already at war with one another. Even if their present slow-burn conflict may not produce the immediate devastation of a conventional hot war, its long-term consequences could prove no less dire.

To suggest this means reassessing our understanding of what constitutes war. From Allison’s perspective (and that of so many others in Washington and elsewhere), “peace” and “war” stand as polar opposites. One day, our soldiers are in their garrisons being trained and cleaning their weapons; the next, they are called into action and sent onto a battlefield. War, in this model, begins when the first shots are fired.

Well, think again in this new era of growing great-power struggle and competition. Today, war means so much more than military combat and can take place even as the leaders of the warring powers meet to negotiate and share dry-aged steak and whipped potatoes (as Donald Trump and Xi Jinping did at Mar-a-Lago in 2017). That is exactly where we are when it comes to Sino-American relations. Consider it war by another name, or perhaps, to bring back a long-retired term, a burning new version of a cold war.

Even before Donald Trump entered the Oval Office, the U.S. military and other branches of government were already gearing up for a long-term quasi-war, involving both growing economic and diplomatic pressure on China and a buildup of military forces along that country’s periphery. Since his arrival, such initiatives have escalated into Cold War-style combat by another name, with his administration committed to defeating China in a struggle for global economic, technological, and military supremacy.

This includes the president’s much-publicized “trade war” with China, aimed at hobbling that country’s future growth; a techno-war designed to prevent it from overtaking the U.S. in key breakthrough areas of technology; a diplomatic war intended to isolate Beijing and frustrate its grandiose plans for global outreach; a cyber war (largely hidden from public scrutiny); and a range of military measures as well. This may not be war in the traditional sense of the term, but for leaders on both sides, it has the feel of one.

Why China?

The media and many politicians continue to focus on U.S.-Russian relations, in large part because of revelations of Moscow’s meddling in the 2016 American presidential election and the ongoing Mueller investigation. Behind the scenes, however, most senior military and foreign policy officials in Washington view China, not Russia, as the country’s principal adversary. In eastern Ukraine, the Balkans, Syria, cyberspace, and in the area of nuclear weaponry, Russia does indeed pose a variety of threats to Washington’s goals and desires. Still, as an economically hobbled petro-state, it lacks the kind of might that would allow it to truly challenge this country’s status as the world’s dominant power. China is another story altogether. With its vast economy, growing technological prowess, intercontinental “Belt and Road” infrastructure project, and rapidly modernizing military, an emboldened China could someday match or even exceed U.S. power on a global scale, an outcome American elites are determined to prevent at any cost.

Washington’s fears of a rising China were on full display in January with the release of the 2019 Worldwide Threat Assessment of the U.S. Intelligence Community, a synthesis of the views of the Central Intelligence Agency and other members of that “community.” Its conclusion: “We assess that China’s leaders will try to extend the country’s global economic, political, and military reach while using China’s military capabilities and overseas infrastructure and energy investments under the Belt and Road Initiative to diminish U.S. influence.”

To counter such efforts, every branch of government is now expected to mobilize its capabilities to bolster American — and diminish Chinese — power. In Pentagon documents, this stance is summed up by the term “overmatch,” which translates as the eternal preservation of American global superiority vis-à-vis China (and all other potential rivals). “The United States must retain overmatch,” the administration’s National Security Strategyinsists, and preserve a “combination of capabilities in sufficient scale to prevent enemy success,” while continuing to “shape the international environment to protect our interests.”

In other words, there can never be parity between the two countries. The only acceptable status for China is as a distinctly lesser power. To ensure such an outcome, administration officials insist, the U.S. must take action on a daily basis to contain or impede its rise.

In previous epochs, as Allison makes clear in his book, this equation — a prevailing power seeking to retain its dominant status and a rising power seeking to overcome its subordinate one — has almost always resulted in conventional conflict. In today’s world, however, where great-power armed combat could possibly end in a nuclear exchange and mutual annihilation, direct military conflict is a distinctly unappealing option for all parties. Instead, governing elites have developed other means of warfare — economic, technological, and covert — to achieve such strategic objectives. Viewed this way, the United States is already in close to full combat mode with respect to China.

Trade War

When it comes to the economy, the language betrays the reality all too clearly. The Trump administration’s economic struggle with China is regularly described, openly and without qualification, as a “war.” And there’s no doubt that senior White House officials, beginning with the president and his chief trade representative, Robert Lighthizer, see it just that way: as a means of pulverizing the Chinese economy and so curtailing that country’s ability to compete with the United States in all other measures of power.

Ostensibly, the aim of President Trump’s May 2018 decision to impose $60 billion in tariffs on Chinese imports (increased in September to $200 billion) was to rectify a trade imbalance between the two countries, while protecting the American economy against what is described as China’s malign behavior. Its trade practices “plainly constitute a grave threat to the long-term health and prosperity of the United States economy,” as the president put it when announcing the second round of tariffs.

An examination of the demands submitted to Chinese negotiators by the U.S. trade delegation last May suggests, however, that Washington’s primary intent hasn’t been to rectify that trade imbalance but to impede China’s economic growth. Among the stipulations Beijing must acquiesce to before receiving tariff relief, according to leaked documents from U.S. negotiators that were spread on Chinese social media:

• halting all government subsidies to advanced manufacturing industries in its Made in China 2025 program, an endeavor that covers 10 key economic sectors, including aircraft manufacturing, electric cars, robotics, computer microchips, and artificial intelligence;
• accepting American restrictions on investments in sensitive technologies without retaliating;
• opening up its service and agricultural sectors — areas where Chinese firms have an inherent advantage — to full American competition.

In fact, this should be considered a straightforward declaration of economic war. Acquiescing to such demands would mean accepting a permanent subordinate status vis-à-vis the United States in hopes of continuing a profitable trade relationship with this country. “The list reads like the terms for a surrender rather than a basis for negotiation,” was the way Eswar Prasad, an economics professor at Cornell University, accurately described these developments.

Technological Warfare

As suggested by America’s trade demands, Washington’s intent is not only to hobble China’s economy today and tomorrow but for decades to come. This has led to an intense, far-ranging campaign to deprive it of access to advanced technologies and to cripple its leading technology firms.

Chinese leaders have long realized that, for their country to achieve economic and military parity with the United States, they must master the cutting-edge technologies that will dominate the twenty-first-century global economy, including artificial intelligence (AI), fifth-generation (5G) telecommunications, electric vehicles, and nanotechnology. Not surprisingly then, the government has invested in a major way in science and technology education, subsidized research in pathbreaking fields, and helped launch promising startups, among other such endeavors — all in the very fashion that the Internet and other American computer and aerospace innovations were originally financed and encouraged by the Department of Defense.

Chinese companies have also demanded technology transfers when investing in or forging industrial partnerships with foreign firms, a common practice in international development. India, to cite a recent example of this phenomenon, expects that significant technology transfers from American firms will be one outcome of its agreed-upon purchases of advanced American weaponry.

In addition, Chinese firms have been accused of stealing American technology through cybertheft, provoking widespread outrage in this country. Realistically speaking, it’s difficult for outside observers to determine to what degree China’s recent technological advances are the product of commonplace and legitimate investments in science and technology and to what degree they’re due to cyberespionage. Given Beijing’s massive investment in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics education at the graduate and post-graduate level, however, it’s safe to assume that most of that country’s advances are the result of domestic efforts.

Certainly, given what’s publicly known about Chinese cybertheft activities, it’s reasonable for American officials to apply pressure on Beijing to curb the practice. However, the Trump administration’s drive to blunt that country’s technological progress is also aimed at perfectly legitimate activities. For example, the White House seeks to ban Beijing’s government subsidies for progress on artificial intelligence at the same time that the Department of Defense is pouring billions of dollars into AI research at home. The administration is also acting to block the Chinese acquisition of U.S. technology firms and of exports of advanced components and know-how.

In an example of this technology war that’s made the headlines lately, Washington has been actively seeking to sabotage the efforts of Huawei, one of China’s most prominent telecom firms, to gain leadership in the global deployment of 5G wireless communications. Such wireless systems are important in part because they will transmit colossal amounts of electronic data at far faster rates than now conceivable, facilitating the introduction of self-driving cars, widespread roboticization, and the universal application of AI.

Second only to Apple as the world’s supplier of smartphones and a major producer of telecommunications equipment, Huawei has sought to take the lead in the race for 5G adaptation around the world. Fearing that this might give China an enormous advantage in the coming decades, the Trump administration has tried to prevent that. In what is widely described as a “tech Cold War,” it has put enormous pressure on both its Asian and European allies to bar the company from conducting business in their countries, even as it sought the arrest in Canada of Huawei’s chief financial officer, Meng Wanzhou, and her extradition to the U.S. on charges of tricking American banks into aiding Iranian firms (in violation of Washington’s sanctions on that country). Other attacks on Huawei are in the works, including a potential banon the sales of its products in this country. Such moves are regularly described as focused on boosting the security of both the United States and its allies by preventing the Chinese government from using Huawei’s telecom networks to steal military secrets. The real reason — barely disguised — is simply to block China from gaining technological parity with the United States.

Cyberwarfare

There would be much to write on this subject, if only it weren’t still hidden in the shadows of the growing conflict between the two countries. Not surprisingly, however, little information is available on U.S.-Chinese cyberwarfare. All that can be said with confidence is that an intense war is now being waged between the two countries in cyberspace. American officials accuse China of engaging in a broad-based cyber-assault on this country, involving both outright cyberespionage to obtain military as well as corporate secrets and widespread political meddling. “What the Russians are doing pales in comparison to what China is doing,” said Vice President Mike Pence last October in a speech at the Hudson Institute, though — typically on the subject — he provided not a shred of evidence for his claim.

Not disclosed is what this country is doing to combat China in cyberspace. All that can be known from available information is that this is a two-sided war in which the U.S. is conducting its own assaults. “­The United States will impose swift and costly consequences on foreign governments, criminals, and other actors who undertake significant malicious cyber activities,” the 2017 National Security Strategy affirmed. What form these “consequences” have taken has yet to be revealed, but there’s little doubt that America’s cyber warriors have been active in this domain.

Diplomatic and Military Coercion

Completing the picture of America’s ongoing war with China are the fierce pressures being exerted on the diplomatic and military fronts to frustrate Beijing’s geopolitical ambitions. To advance those aspirations, China’sleadership is relying heavily on a much-touted Belt and Road Initiative, a trillion-dollar plan to help fund and encourage the construction of a vast new network of road, rail, port, and pipeline infrastructure across Eurasia and into the Middle East and Africa. By financing — and, in many cases, actually building — such infrastructure, Beijing hopes to bind the economies of a host of far-flung nations ever closer to its own, while increasing its political influence across the Eurasian mainland and Africa. As Beijing’s leadership sees it, at least in terms of orienting the planet’s future economics, its role would be similar to that of the Marshall Plan that cemented U.S. influence in Europe after World War II.

And given exactly that possibility, Washington has begun to actively seek to undermine the Belt and Road wherever it can — discouraging allies from participating, while stirring up unease in countries like Malaysia and Ugandaover the enormous debts to China they may end up with and the heavy-handed manner in which that country’s firms often carry out such overseas construction projects. (For example, they typically bring in Chinese laborers to do most of the work, rather than hiring and training locals.)

“China uses bribes, opaque agreements, and the strategic use of debt to hold states in Africa captive to Beijing’s wishes and demands,” National Security Advisor John Bolton claimed in a December speech on U.S. policy on that continent. “Its investment ventures are riddled with corruption,” he added, “and do not meet the same environmental or ethical standards as U.S. developmental programs.” Bolton promised that the Trump administration would provide a superior alternative for African nations seeking development funds, but — and this is something of a pattern as well — no such assistance has yet materialized.

In addition to diplomatic pushback, the administration has undertaken a series of initiatives intended to isolate China militarily and limit its strategic options. In South Asia, for example, Washington has abandoned its past position of maintaining rough parity in its relations with India and Pakistan. In recent years, it’s swung sharply towards a strategic alliance with New Dehli, attempting to enlist it fully in America’s efforts to contain China and, presumably, in the process punishing Pakistan for its increasingly enthusiastic role in the Belt and Road Initiative.

In the Western Pacific, the U.S. has stepped up its naval patrols and forged new basing arrangements with local powers — all with the aim of confining the Chinese military to areas close to the mainland. In response, Beijing has sought to escape the grip of American power by establishing miniature bases on Chinese-claimed islands in the South China Sea (or even constructingartificial islands to house bases there) — moves widely condemned by the hawks in Washington.

To demonstrate its ire at the effrontery of Beijing in the Pacific (once knownas an “American lake”), the White House has ordered an increased pace of so-called freedom-of-navigation operations (FRONOPs). Navy warships regularly sail within shooting range of those very island bases, suggesting a U.S. willingness to employ military force to resist future Chinese moves in the region (and also creating situations in which a misstep could lead to a military incident that could lead… well, anywhere).

In Washington, the warnings about Chinese military encroachment in the region are already reaching a fever pitch. For instance, Admiral Philip Davidson, commander of U.S. forces in the Pacific, described the situation there in recent congressional testimony this way: “In short, China is now capable of controlling the South China Sea in all scenarios short of war with the United States.”

A Long War of Attrition

As Admiral Davidson suggests, one possible outcome of the ongoing cold war with China could be armed conflict of the traditional sort. Such an encounter, in turn, could escalate to the nuclear level, resulting in mutual annihilation. A war involving only “conventional” forces would itself undoubtedly be devastating and lead to widespread suffering, not to mention the collapse of the global economy.

Even if a shooting war doesn’t erupt, however, a long-term geopolitical war of attrition between the U.S. and China will, in the end, have debilitating and possibly catastrophic consequences for both sides. Take the trade war, for example. If that’s not resolved soon in a positive manner, continuing high U.S. tariffs on Chinese imports will severely curb Chinese economic growth and so weaken the world economy as a whole, punishing every nation on Earth, including this one. High tariffs will also increase costs for American consumers and endanger the prosperity and survival of many firms that rely on Chinese raw materials and components.

This new brand of war will also ensure that already sky-high defense expenditures will continue to rise, diverting funds from vital needs like education, health, infrastructure, and the environment. Meanwhile, preparations for a future war with China have already become the number one priority at the Pentagon, crowding out all other considerations. “While we’re focused on ongoing operations,” acting Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan reportedly told his senior staff on his first day in office this January, “remember China, China, China.”

Perhaps the greatest victim of this ongoing conflict will be planet Earth itself and all the creatures, humans included, who inhabit it. As the world’s top two emitters of climate-altering greenhouse gases, the U.S. and China must work together to halt global warming or all of us are doomed to a hellish future. With a war under way, even a non-shooting one, the chance for such collaboration is essentially zero. The only way to save civilization is for the U.S. and China to declare peace and focus together on human salvation.

Michael T. Klare, a TomDispatch regular, is the five-college professor emeritus of peace and world security studies at Hampshire College and a senior visiting fellow at the Arms Control Association.

18 February 2019

Source: countercurrents.org

By Vanessa Beeley

16 Feb 2019 – In an extraordinary turn of events, corporate media appears to have been exposed again as an extension of state foreign policy, by a member of the establishment media cabal, manufacturing consent for regime change in Syria.

Riam Dalati is on the BBC production team based in Beirut and describes himself, on his Twitter page, as an “esteemed colleague” of Quentin Sommerville, the BBC’s Middle East correspondent. Dalati broke ranks with his UK Government-aligned media, on Twitter, to announce that

“after almost 6 months of investigation, I can prove, without a doubt, that the Douma hospital scene was staged.”

The scenes in question are those manufactured by the White Helmet pseudo-humanitarian group and activists affiliated to Jaish al-Islam, the extremist armed group in charge of Douma at the time of the alleged chemical weapon attack on April 7, 2018. The scenes of children being hosed down, following a “chemical attack” were immediately accepted as credible and appeared alongside sensationalist headlines in most Western media outlets, including the BBC, CNN and Channel 4. Simon Tisdall of the Guardian wrote an opinion piece, with the headline ‘After Douma the West’s response to Syria regime must be military’ – only two days after Douma, effectively calling for all out war.

@bbclysedoucet will the #BBC take instructions fm regime change “troll” Idrees Ahmad? This is turning into a very interesting infight between those who were all on the same side until recently. How will the BBC manage this credibility crisis? @21WIRE@ukcolumn@RussiaUNpic.twitter.com/iF1N2Zxfsn

— vanessa beeley (@VanessaBeeley) 15 февраля 2019 г.

While Dalati’s tweets have clearly distressed some notables in the establishment camp, Dalati is no stranger to such controversy. Almost immediately after the alleged incident in Douma, he tweeted out his frustration that “activists and rebels” had used “corpses of dead children to stage emotive scenes for Western consumption.” The emotive wording of Dalati’s tweet, he was “sick and tired” of such manipulation of events, suggested that this was not the first time children had been used as props in a macabre war theatre designed to elicit public sympathy for escalated military intervention in Syria disguised as a necessary “humanitarian” crack down on “Assad’s gassing of his own people.”

Dalati had been referring to the arranging of two children’s corpses into a “last hug” still life composition, a photo that went viral, rocketed into the social media sphere by activists who had collaborated with the brutal Jaish al-Islam regime while it tortured and abused the Syrian civilians under its control.

Perhaps Dalati’s apparent outburst could be explained by his participation in the production of the controversial September 2013 BBC Panorama documentary, ‘Saving Syria’s Children’. An independent researcher, Robert Stuart, has made it his life’s work to present a compelling argument that

“sequences filmed by BBC personnel and others at Atareb Hospital, Aleppo on August 26, 2013 purporting to show the aftermath of an incendiary bomb attack on a nearby school are largely, if not entirely, staged.”

Perhaps Dalati had witnessed one too many stagings of events that would precipitate the potential for war in Syria between the US and Russia.

Whatever the reason for Dalati’s exasperation, the tweet was deleted before a watered down version appeared. Dalati claimed that a “breach of editorial policy” and lack of context was behind this alteration. Apparently BBC employees are not allowed to be “sick and tired” of the exploitation of children to promote a war that will inevitably kill more children. Simultaneously, Dalati’s account was protected, making tweets visible only to approved followers.

Here is an example of how BBC’s Riam Dalati, along with so many in US UK media, saw it as their role to smear those who raised legitimate questions suggesting for example that #Syria chemical attack scenes eg Douma may have been staged. Now, Dalati (see above) admits it was true pic.twitter.com/OIV2HFgoCs

— Charles Shoebridge (@ShoebridgeC) 13 февраля 2019 г.

On two significant occasions to date, Dalati appears to deviate from the BBC narrative road map in Syria. However, Dalati had participated in the corporate media lynching of journalists and academics who had dared to question the dominant “chemical attack” narrative, at the time of the alleged incident in Douma, dismissing them as conspiracy theorists. These “conspiracy theorists” included acclaimed journalist, Robert Fisk and Uli Gack, an experienced war correspondent with ZDF, a German public media outlet. Independent journalist, Eva Bartlett, and Pearson Sharpe of One American News Network also reported evidence of staging and mainstream media distortion of events in Douma.

Hey @mwendling remember this question you asked me before your smear puff piece? “Do you believe that the alleged chemical attack in Douma was staged, a “false flag” event, or was faked?” Any comment now? #BBC#Douma#WhiteHelmets@21WIRE@stranahan@GarlandNixon@RussiaUNpic.twitter.com/UZeqcrwPqQ

— vanessa beeley (@VanessaBeeley) 15 февраля 2019 г.

I visited Douma shortly after the alleged attack. I interviewed medical staff and civilians who were adamant that a chemical attack had not taken place. Doctors and nurses, some of whom were on duty on the night in question, told me that adults and children were suffering the effects of smoke inhalation. They described the panic generated by the activists and White Helmet operatives who arrived crying “chemical attack” before they hosed down the traumatised patients.

20-year-old Suleiman Saour told me:

“At 7pm we had been receiving wounded people all day long. At 7pm someone came in carrying a little boy, he laid him on a bed and said he had been hit with chemical weapons. Basically I checked the boy […] he was suffering from smoke inhalation [..] we washed his face, used a spray and Ventolin. Later on we found out the child had asthma and it got worse because of the smoke.”

Academics, Professors Piers Robinson and Tim Hayward, came under concerted attack as did other members of the Working Group on Syria, Propaganda and Media when they analysed the events and questioned the veracity of it being a chemical attack. In the UK, the Times published no less than four articles labeling myself and the “rogue” academics as “Assad’s useful idiots,” timed to perfection on the day that the UK, US and France launched their unlawful bombing campaign against Syria. A bombing campaign that was fully enabled by the ignominious rush to judgement by corporate media in the West.

It has taken Dalati six months to arrive at the same conclusion as those he condemned as compromised “conspiracy theorists,” therefore we must question his motives for suddenly releasing these conclusions. Peter Ford, former UK Ambassador to Syria, gave me his opinion on Dalati’s revelations.

“The UK joined Trump and Macron in illegally bombing Syria largely on the basis of a video clip shown ad nauseam on the BBC, which a BBC Syria producer has now said he has evidence was staged. The BBC in their statement are not denying the claim. The implications are shattering: firstly that the state broadcaster effectively connived at a manipulation of public opinion, and secondly that the British government launched its attack on Syria on a false and fabricated premise. This demands a public enquiry.”

Ford’s statement highlights the seriousness of Dalati’s statement which must surely raise questions about the possibility of previous “chemical attack” narratives also being manipulated, staged or fabricated. Swedish Doctors for Human Rights investigated the alleged chlorine gas attack in Sarmin, March 2015 and found the medical procedures conducted by doctors at the scene to be extremely questionable.

Dr Leif Elinder, a Swedish medical doctor and paediatric specialist, found that

“after examination of the video material, I found that the measures inflicted upon those children, some of them lifeless, are bizarre, non-medical, non-lifesaving, and even counterproductive in terms of life-saving purposes of children.”

his video, produced and presented by the White Helmets and their colleagues at the Syrian American Medical Society (SAMS), was shown during a UN Security Council “closed door” session to promote a no-fly zone which translates to protection for the US coalition-backed terrorist forces on the ground in Syria.

As BBC producer has stated publicly that the hospital scenes during the Douma “attack” are staged, the BBC has distanced itself by stating that these are the personal claims of an employee which do not mean an attack did not take place. The July 2018 OPCW interim report has already discredited the early sensationalism of western media reporting.

“No organophosphorus nerve agents or their degradation products were detected, either in the environmental samples or in plasma samples from the alleged casualties,” it stated. No Sarin.

The OPCW Fact Finding Mission (FFM) has not yet reached a conclusion that a chemical attack of any kind took place in Douma. The environmental samples were reported to contain chlorinated organic molecules such as trichloroacetic acid and chloral hydrate, which could be attributed to something as basic as chlorinated drinking water. Despite this ambiguity, the BBC initially ran with the headline that ‘Chlorine was used’ in the Douma attack before altering to ‘Possible Chlorine at Douma Attack Site’. Another mistake? Or another deliberate attempt to mislead and shore up the UK FCO regime change storyline in Syria?

Dalati’s revelations must also be viewed in context. They follow similar conclusions arrived at by corporate media colleague and journalist, James Harkin, a Guardian contributor who published a long-winded Douma investigation in the Intercept. Harkin also conceded that the Douma hospital scenes were likely staged and that the Sarin canard was a non-starter.

It is very unlikely, despite the BBC protestation, that Dalati would risk publishing his claims without approval from BBC hierarchy. Timing is always crucial when examining events that have the potential to expose colonial media, particularly the BBC, as the refined state PR agencies they are in reality.

Based on an informed and intelligent interpretation of events with historical context, we could speculate that the OPCW is about to release its final findings on the Douma attack. A report which has the potential to lay bare the full extent of the BBC’s deception and falsification of facts in Douma. A report which could raise unpleasant questions about corporate media reporting, particularly on alleged chemical weapon use by the Syrian government, throughout the 8 year conflict in Syria. Was Dalati’s shock information release nothing more than a damage limitation tactic by the BBC or is Dalati genuinely a rogue truth-teller? Only time will tell.

1/2 Important to note that Dalati #Douma revelation likely isn’t some mea culpa, but the start of a damage limitation process by preempting perhaps imminent @OPCW report, the likely inconvenient findings of which BBC & UK govt by now almost certainly awarehttps://t.co/EDSL8VYPgj

— Charles Shoebridge (@ShoebridgeC) 15 февраля 2019 г.

What Dalati has done is highlight the hypocrisy and bias of Western media and government officials. The BBC report on the Russian “production” of Douma-chemical-attack-denying witnesses at the HQ of the OPCW in the Hague emphasises the dismissal of the event as a “despicable stunt” by the UK, US and France who boycotted the proceedings. French ambassador to the Netherlands described the Syrian civilian testimonies as an “obscene masquerade.” The Guardian ran with this statement as its headline, reducing Russia’s attempt to bring some clarity to the Douma attack to the unveiling of “supposed witnesses” in order to discredit such attempts to derail their preferred narrative.

@patrickwintour#Guardian “Diplomatic” Editor – do you still claim the Russian presentation of #Douma witnesses at The Hague was “obscene masquerade”? You know, now the #WhiteHelmet hospital scenes are confirmed by BBC to be a really obscene masquerade. @21WIRE@PiersRobinson1pic.twitter.com/lASkPMTyAw

— vanessa beeley (@VanessaBeeley) 15 февраля 2019 г.

Now, it appears that the real obscene masquerade took place in the Medical Point in Douma, was constructed by the UK FCO-financed White Helmets, and was adopted by the BBC and other state stenographers as gospel in order to further criminalise the Syrian Arab Army just as the final liberation of Douma from Jaish al-Islam brutal rule was fast approaching. This obscene masquerade resulted in the unlawful bombing of Syria by the US, France and the UK. As Peter Ford stated, “this demands a public enquiry.”

Vanessa Beeley is an independent investigative journalist and photographer.

18 February 2019

Source: transcend.org

By Whitney Webb

Given the Israeli state’s rejection of their existence, government officials have called the Palestinians living in these villagers “violators” and “squatters” – accusing them of illegally occupying “state lands.”

1 Feb 2019 — According to an Israeli media report, the Israeli government has completed work on a massive, far-reaching plan that would expel an estimated 36,000 Palestinians from “unrecognized” villages in the Negev Desert. If the plan is approved by the Knesset, Israel’s legislative body, its implementation could begin as soon as this year and would take four years to complete. News of the plan was first published by Israel Hayom – Israel’s largest Hebrew-language newspaper, funded by Sheldon Adelson, the top donor to both U.S. President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The plan — compiled by Uri Ariel, Israel’s Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, and his staff — features the seizure of an estimated 260,00 dunams (64,247 acres) from Palestine’s Bedouins. The size of the territory in question and the high number of Palestinians set to be affected has led some to call the plan the largest “land grab” of Palestinian-inhabited land since 1948, when the state of Israel was founded.

Israel Hayom’s report stated that, per the new plan, the Palestinian villages would be demolished and the ruins of their homes would then become the sites of “national projects,” infrastructure projects, and “security” installations after the forcible “transfer” of the land’s current inhabitants to other “state-approved” settlements such as Tel Sheva, Abu Talul and Umm Batin. The report noted that a major motivation behind the plan’s creation was the transfer of an arms-industry factory from another part of Israel to the Negev, as well as the expansion of the “Trans-Israel Highway” system.

Furthermore, the plan involves calling for a budget increase to boost the presence of law enforcement officials involved in the forcible “transfer” and in the demolition of Palestinian villages.

Rights groups have yet to comment on the newly announced plan targeting Palestinian communities in the Negev. However, Human Rights Watch has previously condemned Israel’s targeting of “unrecognized” Palestinian villages in the region. In 2016, Sarah Leah Whitson, executive director of Human Rights Watch’s Middle East and North Africa Division, stated:

The forcible eviction of Bedouin residents to make way for a new Jewish town would be a blatant and ugly episode of discrimination mirroring Israel’s unlawful settlements. Long after most of the rest of the world has such rejected racist policies, the Israeli government keeps building and razing communities on the basis of religion and ethnicity.”

No recognition, no rights

The Bedouin Palestinians who inhabit these lands face an uphill battle in any effort to oppose the newly drafted plan. This is because their villages have long been “unrecognized” by the state of Israel, which has claimed that Palestinian Bedouins cannot “prove” their ownership or claim to the land. This has been used to justify the withholding of basic services, such as running water and electricity, from these areas. Residents, even though they are technically Israeli citizens, also lack addresses and their villages do not appear on official Israeli maps.

As a consequence of their lack of formal recognition, Israeli authorities do not regard the Palestinian inhabitants of these villages as having any rights to the land, even though many of the villages were established several decades ago by Palestinians forced from their homes following the creation of the Israeli state in 1948.

Given the state’s rejection of their existence, Israeli government officials have called the Palestinians living in these villagers “violators” and “squatters” – accusing them of illegally occupying “state lands.” As a result, these villages have constantly been under threat of demolition, with the Israeli government even forcing the inhabitants of demolished villages to pay for the destruction of their own homes.

Pushing towards complete annexation and ethnic cleansing

The newly announced plan is part of a wider Israeli government push to annex Palestinian territory and ethnically cleanse areas that have already been annexed by Israel. With the support of the Trump administration in the United States, right-wing Israeli politicians have been emboldened to introduce and promote measures that would result in the Israeli government’s complete annexation of Palestine’s West Bank, which has been under Israeli military rule since 1967 and has lost substantial amounts of land to the construction of illegal Jewish-only settlements supported by the Israeli government. Those efforts prompted the UN to warn last July that Israel’s government was poised to formally annex the West Bank in the coming years.

In addition, within areas already controlled by Israel, the effort to erase Palestinian communities is also picking up steam, as evidenced by the promotion of this new plan to expel 36,000 Palestinians with Israeli citizenship from their homes.

Last year, an Israeli Supreme Court ruling essentially authorized and justified the Israeli government’s demolition of “unrecognized” Palestinian villages after hearing the case of the Palestinian village of Khan al-Ahmar, located east of Jerusalem. That ruling has now set a precedent that critics claimed would allow the Israeli government to “ethnically cleanse” any Palestinian village within its territory, despite the fact that the practice is considered illegal by international law.

A man on a mission

It should be no surprise then that Uri Ariel, who drafted this latest plan, is one of the Israeli government’s top proponents of ethnic cleansing of Palestinian-inhabited territories. A member of the far-right Jewish Home party and vocal proponent of illegal settlements, Ariel stated last June that the Israeli government should forcibly annex 60 percent of the West Bank.

This past December, Ariel then stepped up his rhetoric regarding Palestinian Bedouins in the Negev, stating:

I am happy to announce a revolution in the Negev regarding the illegal construction. The enforcement agencies, together with the proper activities of the Bedouin Settlement Authority according to my instructions, created a new situation in the Negev: in 2019, we will aspire to zero illegal construction in the Negev.

We have increased the means of enforcement, we have demonstrated the validity of an attack along with significant land marketing, and we are on the right path to dramatically reduce and later eliminate the illegal takeover of state land in the Negev. The Negev will no longer be a no-man’s-land area without governance.”

Ariel reiterated this policy in January, stating that he would implement a “zero tolerance” policy for “illegal” Bedouin construction on Bedouin land, and again accusing Bedouin Palestinians of “taking over” Israeli state land.

A recent Haaretz report found that Ariel has been drafting plans to evict Palestinian Bedouins from their homes since the 1970s. Now, with a top post in Netanyahu’s government, Ariel seems to have finally garnered the power and the political support to make his long-planned push to ethnically cleanse Palestinian communities a reality.

Whitney Webb is a MintPress contributor who has written for several news organizations in both English and Spanish; her stories have been featured on ZeroHedge, the Anti-Media, 21st Century Wire, and True Activist among others – she currently resides in Southern Chile.

18 February 2019

Source: transcend.org

By Romana Rubeo & Ramzy Baroud

Decades of Israeli efforts to demolish, destroy, rename, rewrite and erase everything Palestinian have been in vain

“Everything Palestinian in Jerusalem is targeted by Israeli occupation,” said Palestinian Archbishop of Jerusalem’s Greek Orthodox Church, Atallah Hanna on January 29 during a meeting with a delegation from the medical aid organisation Doctors without Borders. “The Islamic and Christian holy sites and endowments are targeted in order to change our city, hide its identity and marginalise our Arabic and Palestinian existence,” the archbishop added. Hanna, who has been at the forefront of the Palestinian Muslim and Christian struggle against Israel’s Judaisation schemes, is, of course, correct in his assertion that Jerusalem is targetted. But the truth is that there is a systematic campaign to strip not just the holy city off of its Palestinian character, but also the whole of Palestine. A few days after the Palestinian Christian leader made his comments, Israeli authorities carried out excavations in the historic al-Bahr Mosque in the city of Tiberias, on the western shores of the Sea of Galilee. In its place, Israel aims to establish a museum, a practice it has used many times in the past in order to erase historic symbols of Palestinian existence.

An ‘invented people’
Israel’s disregard for the historical rights of Palestinians is deeply rooted in Zionist ideology. Indeed, from the very start, Zionist ideologues promoted the idea that Palestine was a place bereft of culture or heritage – an arid desert, waiting for Zionist pioneers to make it “bloom”. For those claims to acquire a degree of plausibility and for the myth of Palestine as “a land without a people for a people without a land” to be solidified, the Zionist movement needed to erase the very existence of the Palestinian people.

After the establishment of the Israeli state, its leaders never made it a secret that this is indeed their intention. “It is not as though there was a Palestinian people in Palestine considering itself as Palestinian people and we came and threw them out and took their country away from them. They did not exist,” Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir (1969-74) said in an interview with the Sunday Times in June 1969. The notion that Palestinians are not a people with a collective sense of nationhood has remained a defining concept of Zionism until this day and has spread well beyond Israel’s borders. American Christian evangelicals are particularly avid supporters of the idea, which has led some American politicians to also publicly embrace it. In 2011, for example, then US presidential candidate Newt Gingrich told the Jewish Channel that the Palestinians were an “invented people”.

The practical application of this idea has meant that the construction of anything Jewish Israeli – whether it is cities, settlements, bypass-roads or numerous edifices of art, culture, religion and so on – has had to take place in parallel to the demolition and erasure of Palestinian cities, villages, streets, homes, cultural and religious sites.

Erasing Palestinian existence
On July 19, 2018, the Israeli Knesset passed the “nation-state bill”, practically making apartheid official by defining Israel as the national homeland of the Jewish people and marginalising Palestinians, their history and language. However, that bill was the mere culmination of decades-long efforts.

During the British mandate, the colonial authorities, for example, were using predominantly Arabic names of localities, towns and villages; there were some about 3,700 of them. By contrast, there were just 200 Hebrew toponyms, most of them being names of Jewish settlements, including new ones that were being built under the patronage of the Zionist movement. This was quite indicative of the demographic distribution and land ownership in Palestine at the time (at the beginning of the British mandate in the 1920s, the Jews, including newly arrived settlers, were just 11 percent of the total population).

However, as soon as the Israeli state was created against the will of the Palestinians and the rest of the Arab population of the Middle East, a vicious campaign to “remap” Palestine was launched. A 1948 letter sent to first Israeli Interior Minister Yitzhak Gruenbaum read: “The conventional names should be replaced by new ones … since, in an anticipation of renewing our days as of old and living the life of a healthy people that is rooted in the soil of our country, we must begin in the fundamental Hebraicization of our country’s map.” Soon after, a government commission was created and tasked with renaming everything Palestinian so the new state can lay its claim on towns, villages and various other geographical areas.

Another letter written in August 1957 by an Israeli foreign ministry official urged the Israeli Department of Antiquities to speed up the destruction of Palestinian homes conquered during the Nakba. “The ruins from the Arab villages and Arab neighbourhoods, or the blocs of buildings that have stood empty since 1948, arouse harsh associations that cause considerable political damage,” he wrote. “They should be cleared away.”

For Israel, erasing Palestine and writing the Palestinian people out of the history of their own homeland have always been a strategic endeavour. “Considered as a major accomplishment of modern Jewish nationalism, the ‘Hebraicization of Israel’ usually refers to the revival of the Hebrew language undertaken by and associated with Zionism as a restorative project of nation-building,” Israeli academics Maoz Azaryahu and Arnon Golan wrote in their paper “(Re)naming the Landscape: the Formation of the Hebrew Map of Israel”.

“A lesser known aspect of the ‘Hebraicization of Israel’, however, has been the ‘Hebraicization of the map’, a state-promoted national project whose objective was “To Judaize (sic) the map of Israel and to affix Hebrew names to all geographical features in the map of Israel”. This is as true in the case of Palestine, as it was in the case of all colonised nations. And like other settler-colonialist powers, Israel is well aware of the important rapport between places, names and collective identities of the indigenous, colonised people. As Canadian historian Kaleigh Bradley pointed out in a recent essay: “For indigenous peoples, place names act as mnemonic devices, embodying histories, spiritual and environmental knowledge, and traditional teachings. Place names also serve as boundary markers between home and the world of outsiders.”

The Israeli Zionist campaign to rename Palestinian places, destroy Palestinian heritage sites, claim Palestinian culture, undermine the Arabic language and erase cultural contributions of the Palestinian people has continued for over 70 years now. More recently, the Israeli army has used its violent military assaults on Palestinians not only to take Palestinian lives but also to destroy cultural monuments and places of worship of historical significance. According to official Palestinian reports, Israel destroyed 73 mosques in the 51-day war on the besieged Gaza Strip in 2014.

Some of these mosques, like al-Omari Mosque in Jabaliya, are ancient structures that date back more than a thousand years. Al-Omari Mosque was built nearly 1365 years ago and has served as a symbol of hope for Palestinians in Gaza, a reminder of past grandeur. The Israeli authorities have also increased pressure on Islam’s third-holiest site: al-Aqsa Mosque. It has facilitated the forceful incursions of the Temple Mount Faithful, an extremist Jewish group, into the Haram al-Sharif compound, where the mosque is located. The group has declared that it is keen on destroying al-Aqsa Mosque in order to build a “Third Temple on Temple Mount” – something the Israeli government clearly also wishes for. There have been various attacks on Palestinian cultural heritage in Nablus, al-Khalil (Hebron), Ariyha (Jericho), Yaffa (Jaffa), Haifa and many other Palestinian towns and villages.

Yet, despite all of this destruction, on intellectual and political levels, Israel still remains insecure about its past and uncertain of its future.

Palestinian ‘sumud’
In an interview with the Israeli newspaper, Haaretz, prominent Israeli historian Benny Morris predicted a grim future for his country. “This place will deteriorate into a Middle Eastern state with an Arab majority,” he said referring to Israel and Palestine. “The violence between various populations inside the state will continue to increase … The Arabs will demand the return of the refugees. The Jews will remain as a small minority in a large Arab sea of Palestinians – a persecuted minority or a slaughtered minority, as it was when they lived in Arab countries…In another 30 to 50 years, they will overcome us, one way or another,” he added.

It doesn’t matter whether Morris’ offensive prediction was meant to manipulate existing fears among his countrymen, to hype the sense of victimisation that continues to define the collective Israeli Jewish mindset, or to communicate his honest feelings. Either way, his statement explains why Israel acts against the Palestinian identity with such a great sense of urgency, intensifying attacks on Palestinian culture, speeding up annexation of Palestinian land, expanding Jewish settlements and Jewish-only roads, renaming streets, marginalising the Arabic language or, to use Archbishop Hanna’s, targeting “everything Palestinian”.

But the foretold demise of Israel as a “Jewish state” will come not as a result of the Arab majority “slaughtering” the “persecuted minority”, but as a result of Israel’s own reckless actions. Before the Zionists, there were many other invaders. Many fled, but many others chose to stay and were naturally integrated into the fabric of the diverse Palestinian society. Israel refuses to accept the fact that the Palestinians’ relationship with their land cannot be dictated or terminated by violence, Knesset bills or army decrees. To the contrary, the more aggression is unleashed onto the Palestinians, the stronger the Palestinian sense of nationhood grows.

The late Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish in his seminal poem, “ID Card” was able to capture brilliantly this Palestinian spirit of resistance:

I am a name with no honorific.
Patient in a land
Where everything lives in bursting rage
My roots were planted before time was born
Before history began
Before the cypress and the olive trees
Before grass sprouted

Early Zionists were wrong. Destroying Palestinian villages, changing street names and demolishing mosques and churches cannot succeed in erasing a nation’s sense of identity.

Palestinian “sumud” (steadfastness) has turned out to be far superior and more powerful than any and all of Israel’s military and political stratagems. And it is this steadfastness that will guarantee that Morris’ prediction comes true. The great Palestinian sea will swallow the occupier.

Romana Rubeo is a writer and freelance translator based in Italy.

Ramzy Baroud is an internationally-syndicated columnist, a media consultant, an author.

17 February 2019

Source: palestineupdates.com

By Binu Mathew

The Pulwama attack is not a time for revenge as is already happening in many parts of the country. Yesterday, vehicles from Kashmir valley were attacked and set on sire. Curfew was declared in Jammu. Today, students from Kashmir valley were attacked in different parts of the country. Let me make it clear at the outset that Kashmiris in general have nothing to do with the Pulwama attack. The failure of Kashmir is collective failure of the country. To put the blame on Kashmiris alone is lying to ourselves.

Coming to the particular attack in Pulwama is due to the failure of security agencies, as the attacker was under the radar of J&K security agencies.

The Print reported ,

“According to sources in the Jammu & Kashmir police, Dar, a local from Gandibagh, Pulwama, was a class 11 student when he joined the JeM. A police source said he had been on the radar of J&K police ever since he started “ground work” for the terror outfit and was among those who were part of the early stone-throwers in the Valley. “He was highly radicalised and joined JeM while he was a student,” said the police source.”

The Quint reported that CRPF demanded that the Jawans be airlifted but was refused permission

“A grieving CRPF jawan told The Quint on the condition of anonymity after the fidayeen attack on a CRPF convoy in Pulwama, Jammu & Kashmir on 14 February which killed 40 jawans. The convoy comprised over 2,500 CRPF personnel travelling in 78 vehicles. It turns out the CRPF had indeed requested air transit for the jawans to the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) earlier this week. However, the request was ignored.”

How come the attacker procured hundreds of kgs of explosives, procured a car, planned this elaborate terrorist attack on a high security convoy? There was intelligence information from the 8th February about such an attack. Why it was overlooked and why responsible officers did not act?

The responsibility should not be left to just the officers in charge. Remember J & K is under Governor’s rule. Home minister Rajnath Singh is directly responsible for this intelligence failure. So is National Security Advisor to the Prime Minister of India, Ajit Doval. Ultimately Prime Minister Narendra Modi is responsible for this intelligence failure. The Modi government should answer these questions, take responsibility and Modi should resign.

Even after the tragedy, the Prime Minister Narendra Modi did not take it as a priority. As the event happened he was on capaign trail in Jhansi, Uttar Pradesh. There he made some rhetorical statements against the terrosists. However, he didn’t find time to attend the all party meeting convened in Delhi to discuss about the attack. Instead he was campaigning in Maharashtra! Modi was on his 56 inch mode, while the opposition parties were in Delhi propping up his 56 inch chest!

Kashmirs living in Jammu and Indian main land don’t have to bear the brunt of this failure. Why don’t the opposition parties don’t question the security failure? Time is not for revenge but for soul searching and accountability for whoever failed in their responsibilities. That’s what India should do in memory of the poor departed souls.

Binu Mathew is the editor of Countercurrents.org

16 February 2019

Source: Countercurrents.org

By Andrew Korybko

Pakistan’s promising economic potential, international connectivity capabilities, and unparalleled geostrategic location combine with its world-class military and proven diplomatic finesse over the decades to turn the South Asian country into the global pivot state of the 21stcentury.

As astounding as it may sound to most observers, the global pivot state of the 21st century isn’t China, the US, nor Russia, but Pakistan. The South Asian state regrettably has a terrible international reputation as a result of the joint Indo-American infowar that’s been waged against it over the past few decades, but an objective look at the country’s geostrategic and domestic capabilities reveals that it’s in a prime position to influentially shape the contours of the coming century. It therefore shouldn’t be surprising that China had the foresight to partner with it decades before anyone else did, but other Great Powers like Russia are finally awakening to its importance, and this is in turn making Pakistan the most strategically sought-after country in the world.

The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) is Beijing’s flagship project of its world-changing Belt & Road Initiative (BRI) because it crucially enables the People’s Republic to avoid the South China Sea and Strait of Malacca hotspots and obtain reliable access to the Mideast and Africa, which provide China with energy resources for its economy and growing consumer markets for its products, respectively. BRI is redirecting global trade routes from West to East and literally building the basis for the emerging Multipolar World Order, so considering Pakistan’s irreplaceably important role in this process by virtue of CPEC, China’s South Asian partner can be reconceptualized as the cornerstone of Beijing’s future world vision. This in and of itself makes Pakistan pivotal, but there’s actually much more to it than just that.

CPEC isn’t just a “highway” from Xinjiang to the Arabian Sea but a series of megaprojects through which Pakistan can transform itself from being a passive object of International Relations to a leading subject of the rapidly changing global order if it creatively expands this central corridor throughout the rest of the supercontinent in order to become the Zipper of Eurasia. The country’s domestic economic potential is extremely promising when remembering that it’s a nation of over 200 million people uniquely positioned at the crossroads of China’s future trade route with the rest of the “Global South”. With this in mind, Prime Minister Khan recently told the world at the UAE’s World Government Summit not to “miss the boat” and lose out on their chance to capitalize off of his country’s expected growth.

It’s little wonder then that major investment players such as Saudi Arabiaand the UAE are jumping at the opportunity to take part in this before any of their competitors can, wanting to get ahead of the race by establishing a premier presence in Pakistan as it becomes the shortest trade route between their economies and China’s. That’s not all there is to it, however, since Pakistan is capable of expanding CPEC in the Northern, Western, and Southern directions via the CPEC+ branch corridors to connect itself with Central Asia and Russia, the rest of West Asia (Iran, Turkey), and Africa, which could altogether make it the Convergence of Civilizations and the antidote to Huntington’s poisonous attempt to divide and rule the Eastern Hemisphere through his “Clash of Civilizations” thesis.

Building off of its CPEC+ civilizational-geostrategic connectivity prospects, Pakistan can institutionalize its role as the Zipper of Eurasia by bringing together the two incipient multilateral strategic partnerships that it’s a part of – the Multipolar CENTO with Iran and Turkey, and the Multipolar Trilateral with China and Russia – to form the Golden Ring of Multipolar Great Powers smack dab in the center of Eurasia, greatly aided as it would be by the instrumental role that Islamabad will naturally play in the post-American multipolar blueprint for Afghanistan. Pakistan can pull this off because it has a proven track record of diplomatic success in balancing between various powers, be it the US and China or Saudi Arabia and Iran, and its world-class nuclear-armed military is an impressive partner for all.

Simply put, Pakistan is the pivot state upon which all of China’s future plans depend, therefore recasting it as the kingmaker of the New Cold War and the world-changing multipolar processes of the 21st century. That said, Pakistan is also a pivot state in its own right, one that’s capable of zipping together the various forces of Eurasia and becoming the convergence point of the Eastern Hemisphere’s many diverse civilizations, which can be institutionalized through the Golden Ring framework that it’s the key component of. Prophetically, Pakistani founding father Muhammad Ali Jinnah predicted all of this when he famously proclaimed in 1948 that “Pakistan is the pivot of the world, placed on the frontier on which the future position of the world revolves”, and each passing day proves that he was right.

DISCLAIMER: The author writes for this publication in a private capacity which is unrepresentative of anyone or any organization except for his own personal views. Nothing written by the author should ever be conflated with the editorial views or official positions of any other media outlet or institution.

14 February 2019

Source: eurasiafuture.com