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By Andre Vltchek

Text and Photos: Andre Vltchek

Have you ever considered the possibility that almost everything that you have been told about the world by the Western mass media is a lie and fabrication?

I am sure you have, at least lately, when the insanity of Western propaganda is becoming very clear and obvious. But what about the extent of indoctrination you were subjected to?

If you live in Europe or North America, how poisoned are you by the lies about Cuba and Venezuela, Russia and China, North Korea and yes – about Iran? Are you beyond recovery? If you see the truth, if you were confronted by reality, would you still be able to recognize it, or would you perceive it as propaganda and lies?

I have just left Tehran, a city with a tremendous history and culture, overflowing with museums, theatres, wonderfully kept parks dotted with modern art sculptures. It is a city with modern and fully subsidized public transportation, consisting of high-tech metro, ecological bus ways, as well as suburban trains. A city of tall trees, and quiet squares, of elegant cafes, and extremely educated and kind people.

A city that could easily be part of the ‘top ten’ cities on Earth, were it not be the capital of a country that the West is trying to ruin, first with unjust and draconian sanctions, and then, who knows, even by a militarily invasion.

What do most Westerners know about Iran; what were they told? I think the image the mass media outlets want to project is of “Iran – a radical Muslim country, some sort of Shia Saudi Arabia”, or perhaps worse. Much worse, as Saudi Arabia, the closest Arab ally of London and Washington,cannot be touched in the West, no matter what barbarity and terror it spreads all around the world.

Those who know both Jeddah and Teheran would laugh at such a comparison. Saudi Arabia, and its semi-colony Bahrain, despite their wealth from oil, are some of the most compassionless societies on the planet, misery rubbing shoulders with repulsively vulgar and extreme showing off of wealth.

Iran is in its essence a socialist country. It is internationalist, in full solidarity with many oppressed and struggling nations on our planet. No, I am not talking about Syria, Yemen or Palestine only; I am talking about Cuba and Venezuela, among many others. You did not know? It is not surprising: you are not supposed to know!

You are also expected to remain ignorant about Iran’s social system, clearly socialist. Free education and medical care, greatly subsidized public transportation and culture, huge public spaces and to some extent, strong government and at least partially, central planning.

Despite those absolutely unjust, terrible sanctions imposed, with some interruptions, from Washington and its allies, Iran is standing tall, trying as much as it can to take care of its people. And despite the terrible ordeal Iranian people are being put through, they do not cheat and do not steal. The exchange rate collapsed after Washington imposed another round of bizarre sanctions, triggering frustration, even protests. But the majority of Iranians understands who the real culprit is. And it is no secret that the so-called opposition is often financed from the West.

Most visitors do not understand anything about the local currency or exchange rates. I am no exception. I simply give taxi drivers or waiters my wallet, and they only take what is due. I checked with my Iranian colleagues: and the amount that is being taken is always fair.

Iranians do not display ‘arrogant pride’; they only show the determined, decent and patriotic pride of a nation with thousands of years of great culture which knows perfectly well that it is on the right side of history.

You were told ‘how religious Iran is’; I am sure you were. But unlike in Saudi Arabia or Indonesia, religion is not ‘being thrown into your face’ here; it is not waved as a flag. In Iran, religion is something internal, deep, which is expressed humbly and without noise. While the mosques of Jakarta broadcast, for hours a day and usingpowerful loudspeakers, entire sermons, while people are now being thrown into jail for even criticizing this brutal imposition of religion on the general public, in Tehran I could hardlyeven detect Adhan(call for prayer). Most of the local female Teheran city-dwellers only cover their hair symbolically – one third or even just a quarter, keeping most of their hair exposed.

But the West would never inflict sanctions on Indonesia or antagonize it in any other way, no matter how brutal it is to its own people: Washington, London and Canberra already ruined its socialist direction after the US-orchestrated coup of 1965. Jakarta is now an obedient, turbo capitalist, anti-Communist, West-junk-food-and-crap-entertainment-loving society. It has nothing public left. The elites have fully robbed the country on behalf of the West. Religions in Indonesia are used to uphold the pro-Western fascist regime.

Iran is totally the opposite: its interpretation of religion is ‘traditional’, as it used to be before the West managed to derail its essence in so many parts of the world. It is socialist, compassionate, spiritual and yes – internationalist.

Unlike in places like Jeddah or Jakarta, where going out to eat is now the height of cultural life (and often the only option of how to ‘enjoy the city’), Tehran offers high quality art cinemas (Iranian films are some of the greatest and most intellectual in the world), world-class museums and galleries, vast public spaces, as well as a great number of sport and amusement public facilities, including beautifully maintained parks.

You want to hang from a rope and fly over a valley, near one of the tallest TV towers on Earth – you can do it easily in Teheran. You want to see a series of the latest Chinese art films –you can, at the magnificent palace called the Cinema Museum. Or maybe Chekhov or a Tennessee Williams theatre play, if you understand some Farsi? Why not?

Of course you can sit in a horrendous traffic jam, if you are in love with your car, as you would in Riyadh or Jakarta, but you can also zip through the city in comfort and cheaply, on board the super modern metro system. You can walk on beautiful sidewalks, under tall trees, some of which grow from the clean creaks that separate driveways from pedestrian areas.

What else were you told; that you cannot look into a woman’s eyes or you will be stoned to death? Couples are holding hands everywhere in Tehran, and annoyed girls are slapping the faces of their men, teasingly and sometimes even seriously.

But would you believe it, if you saw it? Or is it too late; have you reached the point of no return?

One day, a driver who was taking me from my hotel to the Press TV television studio, exclaimed in desperation:

“Europeans who come here, even for the first time: they don’t want to learn. Even if they come to Iran for the first time, they land at the airport, get into my car, and begin preaching; teaching me about my own country! They all come with the same story, with the same criticism of Iran. There is no diversity! How can they call themselves democratic countries, if they are all thinking the same way?”

In Teheran, the diversity of thought is absolutely striking. With my colleagues and comrades, we discuss everything from the war in Yugoslavia, to Latin America and of course, Iran itself. They want to know about Russia and China. I love what I see and what I hear – when people are curious and respectful of other cultures, it is always a great start!

Iran is bleeding, suffering, but it is strong. Not everyone agrees with government policies here (although most of them do support their government), but everybody is determined to fight and defend his or her country, if it is attacked militarily or by other means.

Whenever I come here, I have this impolite urge – I want to shout at my readers: Come here and learn something! Iran is not perfect, but this is real – here, life is real and so are the people. Thanks to their culture and history, they somehow know how to separate precious stones from junk, pure thoughts from propaganda, cheap and deadly capitalism from the great strive for a much better world. If you don’t believe me, just watch their films; one masterpiece after another.

Perhaps that is why the West wants to first ruin, and then to totally destroy this country. For the West, Iran is ‘dangerous’. Iran is dangerous, even deadly,for the imperialist arrangement of the world, as China is dangerous, as Russia is, as Cuba, Venezuela, Syria and Bolivia are.

To ruin Iran will not be easy, I would even say:it could prove impossible. Its people are too smart and determined and strong. Iran is not alone; it has many friends and comrades. And even Iran’s neighbors – Turkey and Pakistan – are now quickly changing direction, away from the West.

Don’t take my word for all this. Just come and see. But do no preach: ask questions, and then, please sit, listen and learn! This country has more than 7,000 years of tremendous history. Instead of bombing it, read its poets, watch its films, and learn from its internationalist stand! And then, only then, decide, whether Iran is really your enemy, or a dear comrade and friend.

*

[First published by NEO – New Eastern Outlook]

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

19 August 2018

Source: https://countercurrents.org/2018/08/19/hello-they-lied-to-you-about-iran/

By K M Seethi

The south Indian State of Kerala has been going through a calamity of unimaginable proportions following the unexpected turn in monsoon rains which played havoc with the state’s life and livelihood. Floods and landslides were unprecedented. Displacement too witnessed massive rescue operations and relocation. Nearly a million people are directly affected. It may take several months and years to restore roads, bridges and cultivable lands. Thousands of houses were perished in the disaster. Shops and local markets were completely gutted in many districts.  Rail, road and air transport routes were paralyzed for several days.

The situation being serious, there are persistent calls for declaring it a ‘national disaster.’ Except BJP, all major political parties have made repeated pleas to the Union Government to do so. But the Modi Government is reticent on the issue so far and some of the officials even make technical arguments for not declaring it as ‘national disaster.’

Everyone knows that a mere declaration of such a calamity as ‘National’ won’t serve any purpose. It should be effectively followed up with coordinated action at different levels – from the local, national, regional to international levels.

Regarding the technicality of a declaration, it is true that the National Disaster Management regime does not call for such a conceptualisation of calamities for effective intervention and action. The only conceptualization is in regard to its nature and type. The Disaster Management Act defines a ‘disaster’ in terms of ”a catastrophe, mishap, calamity or grave occurrence in any area, arising from natural or man-made causes, or by accident or negligence which results in substantial loss of life or human suffering or damage to, and destruction of, property, or damage to, or degradation of, environment, and is of such a nature or magnitude as to be beyond the coping capacity of the community of the affected area.” It does not specifically mention the intensity in terms of its locale. However, many officials in Delhi believe that a call for a disaster as ‘national’ is an attempt to shift the onus on the Union Government in terms of burden sharing.  Hence, it is ‘political.’ This is a one-sided view, undeniably.

More than the technicalities, we need to have a collective ‘national’ mind-set in a diverse system like that of India to deal with such eventualities in states located far and wide. When we make such a declaration, it shows a collective social commitment to rescue a state from an impending collapse. It is true that even without an official declaration, other States in India have come up with generous support. However, a declaration will also help the State government seek international support from diverse sources. The reason why some GCC countries have come up with support is that the Keralites constitute a significant proportion in the GCC demographic base.

Admittedly, the central forces such as army, navy, air force, NDRF, CRPF etc have already been put in place at the disposal of the State government and they are effectively working under the State mechanism. That means, we don’t need to hand over the entire thing to the army. These are all for emergency rescue operations. And that is surely the top priority.

More than this, the second stage of ‘recovery operations’ is even vital and it needs well coordinated measures to bring the state back to normalcy. This is important for a state like Kerala which had, long back, earned international acclaim for its human development index, including life expectancy, literacy and education. Recently, even national agencies acknowledged Kerala as the top state in India in governance. Yet, even as the State’s performance in social and governance index remains high, the economy has been on a downturn path due to multiple reasons, including the reverse trends in global commodity trade. Since the demonetization and the introduction of GST regime, the economy has been struggling hard to meet even the basic requirements. This has been accelerated by the reverse trends in Kerala’s migration pay-off. Thousands and thousands of migrants are coming back to Kerala from the GCC countries every month, following the localization drive and austerity measures put in place in these countries. This would have a telling impact on the remittance scenario. The return migrants are already in distress conditions in many places.

Added to the complexity of these problems is the dwindling price of cash crops which constitute a significant percentage of the State’s agriculture sector and economy. What actually happened to the thousands and thousands of hectares of cultivable land in the wake of the disaster is known to everyone. It may take perhaps years for the people to recover their livelihood terrains. Poor and medium level farmers are the hard-hit people here. They lost their houses, farming land and local markets.

Kerala is the most dependent of all states in India for essential commodities such as rice and vegetables, medicines and other items, besides cloths, household articles, electronic and computer items, automobiles etc which sustain its social living standards. All South Indian States supply many of these essential items on a daily basis. These economies also depend on Kerala’s markets and hence they are also likely to lose ground if the state is not recovered immediately. The tragedy is that many of them have laboured for several months to make a reasonable income for the whole year through sales during the Onam season. They are literally shattered. More than 6 lakh people are already shifted to emergency camps. Nearly a million people are directly affected. Another three to four million people will have to bear the consequences at the secondary level. The number of people indirectly affected will be several millions. It’s not an exaggeration of numbers given the dependent nature of the social and economic exchange relations in Kerala.

The situation really calls for a coordinated action on the part of the State and Union Governments. The Union Government should also make an appeal to international agencies, including the UN to provide humanitarian assistance for the thousands of displaced people to restore their habitat.

The author is Professor, School of International Relations and Politics, Mahatma Gandhi University, Kerala.  The details of his profile are available @ http://kmseethi.com/ Prof Seethi can be reached at kmseethimgu@gmail.com

19 August 2018

Source: https://countercurrents.org/2018/08/19/why-the-calamity-in-kerala-is-a-national-disaster/

Text and Photos: Andre Vltchek

Where precisely,is Jordan now? Is it with the West, or with the Arab world? How independent is it, really, and what future lies ahead?

Recently, in the middle of the capital city – Amman – several sleek 5-star hotel towers grew towards the sky, including the trendy “W” and Rotana. Dressed to kill women from the Gulf, wearing high heels and suggestive make up, are now sipping cappuccinos in various cafes at the posh new pedestrian area called The Boulevard. Saudi men can be seen downing pints of beer and carafes of wine. It is a scene not unlike that commonly observed in Bahrain. The Gulf now comes to Amman to escape strict regulations, to play, to be careless, to enjoy life. Some people travel here for medical treatment, staying in overpriced private hospitals which resemble 4-star hotels more than medical facilities.

But predominately, here in Amman, it is all about fashion, about food and drinks, about showing off and being seen – the entire area doesn’t have one single decent bookstore (there is only a tiny kiosk at the entrance to the Abdali Mall), art cinema or a concert hall.

Unlike Beirut, with its vibrant international art scene and thirst for knowledge, Amman’s affluent residents and visitors are obsessed with consumerism. With half-closed eyes, The Boulevard could be located in some smaller city of Texas or Georgia.

*

Just a few kilometers away, at Al-Basheer Hospital (the biggest public medical facility in the country), doctors are on strike. They are exhausted, underpaid and depressed. Only emergency cases get treated. Blood is on the floor, patients look resigned.

I get pushed away as the Health Minister makes his visit with his entourage.

Ambulances keep howling, bringing casualties.

“Quality of public medical services in this country is appalling,” I am told by one of the patients.

I talk to two Syrian ladies who are waiting here with a sick boy. One of them laments:

“We had to travel here all the way from Al-Azraq. We are not insured in this country, and even UNHCR does not help us, when we are facing medical emergencies. We went to a private clinic where a simple series of tests cost us 300 JD (US$428). We are here now. It is uncertain whether we will be treated at all. We are totally desperate.”

Soon after, a plain-clothed cop begins interrogating me. “Do I have a permit to ask questions at the hospital?” I don’t. After I leave, two police officers try to intercept me. Pretending that I don’t understand, I smile like an idiot and they let me go.

*

In Jordan, people are afraid to talk. To be precise, they do talk inside their homes and cars, or in the backrooms of their offices, but not in public. They hardly ever give their full names.

In 2018, Jordan ‘exploded’ on various occasions. In February, riots broke in the city of Al-Salt, over the proposed 60% price hike of bread, but also over the increase of electricity and fuel prices as well as the cutting of subsidies for basic goods and services.

The infamous and brutal IMF structural adjustment had been gradually implemented in Jordan, which was suffering from a stagnating economy and bizarre misappropriation of funds. In 2017, Jordan’s recorded government debt stood at $32 billion, equivalent to 95.6% of the country’s GDP.

In June, massive protests shook the capital, Amman. Protesters were demanding the change of the government. They were outraged by planned tax hikes and the rapidly declining standard of living. They also called for the end of endemic corruption among government officials.

Scores of people were arrested.

In July, the government resigned, and King Abdullah asked Omar al-Razzaz, a former World Bank economist, to form a new government.

People dispersed. They were told that they had won, but almost nothing changed.

“Let me explain: before they were, for instance, threatening to introduce a 15% tax on cars,” my driver in Amman explained. “Now what they will do is introduce a tax hike of 5% this year and 10% in 2019. Everything is the same.”

In a desperate settlement, Kufrain Village, near the River Jordan and Dead Sea, a baker at Alihsan Bakery was much more outspoken:

“We don’t trust the government: new or old. They are all the same bullshitters.

The riots? Change of government? Don’t make me laugh: so-called ‘riots’ were organized and led by intelligence officers and by the government itself. They manipulated people. This government does precisely the same things as the previous one, but with the new alphabetic order.”

A day earlier, I had heard precisely the same lament from an upper-class Jordanian lady whom I met on the bank of the Jordan River, while visiting the Bethany Beyond Jordan Site (great opportunity to photograph fortified border with Israeli occupied Palestine (OPT).

She explained, cynically and in perfect English:

“Jordanian people had enough; this time they were ready to overthrow the regime in Amman. The elites knew it. They organized riots, made them look real but relatively orderly, then changed a few political players at the top, while saving the system. People felt that they won, but in fact, nothing changed, whatsoever”.

Jordan is a staunch ally of the West. Its ‘Elites’ are unconditionally pro-US.

The country has been, for decades, betting on collaboration with NATO.

It hosts several deadly military and air force bases of various Wester countries, the most lethal being Al-Azraq, where part of the war planes that were previously situated at the Turkish airbase Incerlik, have recently been re-located.

British and US Special Forces have been, for years, invading the Syrian state, from Jordanian territory.

Functioning as a service station of the West, has been securing the main income of the country and to its ‘elites’, but not necessarily to its people. Very little or nothing has been invested into science, research or production. It is all about the military bases, malls for the expats, medical tourism for the rich Gulf citizens, few maquiladoras, and of course the main privately own component of the local economy – tourism (some 14% of the GDP and growing).

Tourism primarily benefits the big Western hotel chains and is consistently ruining the fragile ecosystem of the Dead Sea and lately, the Gulf of Aqaba. At the same time, the Al-Azraqair force base is destroying and draining the precious water reserves of the desert oases.

Official unemployment in Jordan now stands around 18% but is in reality much higher.

The border with Syria remains closed, so cheap goods cannot come in (relatively poor Jordan is periodically ranked as the most expensive country to live in the Arab world).

The country is presently ‘hosting’ 670,000 Syrian refugees, although some are now determined to return home. The refugees (many of them live in despicable conditions and face various types of discrimination) are yet another source of foreign funding for Jordan, but on the streets of Amman, people keep complaining that ‘Syrians take jobs from the local people’. That does not prevent Jordanians from importing cheap labor from poor countries like the Philippines and Kenya. No matter how stretched and impoverished, Jordanians are not ready to do ‘dirty jobs’.

*

I spoke to a curator at the modest Jordan National Gallery of Fine Arts. There, a surreal and post-modernist installation called “Factory” was trying to shock by avant-garde forms and, it appeared to me, by very little substance.

The National Gallery was desperately empty; people were most likely somewhere else, in cafes, malls or pubs.

I asked the curator whether she was planning to show some artwork depicting the recent riots, or to get to the core of what triggered the recent wave of desperation.

She looked at me, horrified:

“No, why? Of course not!”

I asked whether there is at least one gallery in Amman, that is reacting to the events?

“No,” she almost shouted at me. She was very angry. I was trying to understand, why?

It never pays to be a Western colony, in the Arab world or anywhere else. Some individuals or a group of people may get filthy rich, but the rest of the population will struggle. It will become ‘irrelevant’.

While neighboring Syria is winning its epic battle against the terrorists implanted there by the West and its allies, Jordan is living the sad reality of some Central American semi-colony of the United States.

Here, almost all ideology had been neutralized. Not even dreams of pan-Arab socialist unity that had been shaping, for decades, both Syria and Iraq, could be traced here.

Nobody in Jordan appears to be happy. Some complain, some don’t, but there are no concrete proposals on how to change the pro-Western regime.

In the meantime, the posh Boulevard area is ‘protected’ by metal detectors and guards, uniformed and plain-clothed. Hotels are turning into fortresses. Now even to enter some cafes at the Boulevard, one has to go through a second stage of security, including robust metal detectors. Amman is an extremely safe city. I wonder:

“Is it in order to stop terrorism? Or, perhaps, is it to prevent poor and desperate people from entering and seeing with their own eyes that the foreign interests and local collaborators are robbing them of their own country?”

I ask aloud. My local friend does not reply. In Jordan, there are some questions that should never be asked.

*

[First published by NEO – New Eastern Outlook]

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

17 August 2018

Source: https://countercurrents.org/2018/08/17/jordan-staunch-western-ally-angry-and-confused/

By Andrea Lobo

Monday evening, the English language page of the television network Telesur, which is published by the Venezuelan government, was taken down by Facebook in a direct act of censorship of content critical of US government policy. After administrators received a notice that the Telesur English page had violated Facebook’s “Terms of Use,” the page reappeared two days later, with Facebook claiming, in an unserious and unconvincing manner, “that there was instability on the platform, which caused this problem, but now everything should be in order.”

The Facebook page of another media outlet aligned politically with the Venezuelan government, Venezuela Analysis, which is based in New York, was also temporarily taken down on August 9, only four days before, for allegedly violating “Facebook Pages Terms.” The site’s administrators, however, have not received any explanation about the suspension.

Since last year, Facebook has been carrying out a campaign to censor information and perspectives at odds with the official narrative of the US government by expunging, intimidating and threatening users that publish such content. Facebook has justified these actions by charging users with arbitrary terms like being “divisive,” “extremist” and “inauthentic,” while not presenting any evidence to substantiate these charges.

The administrator of the popular Facebook page Revolution News, James Wood, received a “publishing authorization” request—a threat to shut down the page unless Wood confirmed his country location by August 28—seconds after posting an article about the removal of the Telesur English page. Several other Facebook pages that publish content critical of US policy, including Anti-Media, have reported receiving the same notice.

On July 31, Facebook announced that it was deleting 32 pages, including an event page promoting an anti-fascist demonstration and the page of a group organizing a rally against Trump’s separation of undocumented families, both in Washington D.C. The Atlantic Council, a think tank tied to the US intelligence apparatus that has been working closely with Facebook in conducting its censorship campaign, charged, without presenting any evidence, that the pages removed sought to advance “Russian information operations” and “to trigger standoffs between genuine Americans, bringing the risk of real-life violence from false stories.”

Such censorship measures, however, seek only to block the development of opposition to US militarism, the government’s fascistic attacks against immigrants, police violence, inequality, and other forms of social reaction.

While some of the pages censored by Facebook pertained to far-right groups, such as that of Alex Jones in the United States and accounts of the Free Brazil Movement, these steps seek fundamentally to establish the precedent for attacking freedom of speech and expanding censorship against left-wing political views and movements.

On the same day Telesur was suspended, Trump signed into law the National Defense Authorization Act, which defines a “United States-based foreign media outlet” as one that “produces or distributes video programming … that is transmitted, or is intended for transmission, by a multichannel video programming distributor to consumers in the United States,” suggesting that the outlet doesn’t need to be physically based in the US.

It adds that such an outlet would be considered a foreign agent and be required to provide the Federal Communications Commission with a description of its relationship with any foreign government.

News commentators have suggested that the Qatar-based Al Jazeera will be the first target. However, in the case of Telesur, US Attorney General Jeff Sessions received a letter from South Carolina Republican Congressman Joe Wilson in February requesting that he investigate whether Telesur can be required to register as a foreign agent. Last November, the network RT America, which is also critical of US foreign policy and receives funding from the Russian government, was forced to register as a foreign agent.

While not an independent media outlet, Telesur has reported critically on the catastrophes wrought by US foreign policy around the world. Currently, the Trump administration is escalating the use of trade war measures, economic sanctions, regime-change operations and military confrontations to advance US geopolitical interests worldwide, pushing entire economies off the abyss, including in Venezuela, Turkey, and Iran, and destroying entire societies, as in Yemen, Libya, Syria and Iraq.

Created in 2005, Telesur is based in Caracas, Venezuela, and is financed directly by the governments of Venezuela, Cuba, Bolivia, Nicaragua and Uruguay. The Argentine and Ecuadorian states stopped funding the network after the election of right-wing governments more closely aligned with Washington, respectively those of Mauricio Macri and Lenín Moreno.

The censorship by Facebook of the Chavista media outlets comes amid an intensified campaign by Washington to undermine the Venezuelan government of Nicolás Maduro. The US government has imposed economic sanctions against the financial operations of individual military and government officials and PDVSA, the state oil company, the main source of government income, deepening the social catastrophe in the already crisis-ridden economy.

In a statement last week, Venezuela Analysis inferred that Facebook’s suspension was a response to its recent coverage of the apparent drone assassination attempt against Maduro on August 4. Two days before being temporarily censored, the site charged the Venezuelan opposition, “its northern masters and the latter’s regional puppets,” with responsibility for the incident.

Meanwhile, top US administration officials have held increasingly frequent meetings this year with Latin American leaders to strengthen military ties, highlighting in each session efforts to coordinate further actions against the Maduro government, with reports that Trump himself has suggested to regional presidents a direct military intervention to overthrow the Venezuelan government.

As the crisis in Venezuela deepens, the Maduro administration has become increasingly dependent on loans from Chinese and Russian firms in exchange for shares in PDVSA and its subsidiaries and rights to exploit the petroleum deposits in the Orinoco River Basin, the largest in the world. Not only would US-based oil conglomerates like to regain control over these vast resources, but the Pentagon has made explicit its priority of undermining the economic interests of Beijing and Moscow in region, considering them “revisionist powers” that challenge the US-led international order.

The specific provision in the recent Defense Authorization Act calling for the identification of “foreign” media outlets that distribute content to “consumers in the United States” is significant. As opposition to capitalism, and interest in socialism and militancy grow among workers and youth in the United States, the ruling corporate and financial oligarchy fears above all a massive mobilization against the domestic and foreign policy of US imperialism.

In response, it has moved ever more aggressively to censor left-wing, progressive, socialist and anti-war media outlets, targeting, in particular, the World Socialist Web Site.

While this process has been spearheaded by the US intelligence and political establishment, regimes across the world, including the Maduro government in Venezuela, have been implementing their own online censorship against political opposition, with the collaboration of the same technology corporations.

This underscores the urgent and essential character of the fight against internet censorship and for the defense of all democratic rights as the international working class enters into struggle against the policies of the capitalist ruling class.

Originally published in WSWS.org

17 August 2018

Source: https://countercurrents.org/2018/08/17/facebook-censors-telesur-and-venezuela-analysis/

By Ishaan Tharoor

Beijing has long made it difficult to report in Xinjiang, a far-flung region along its mountainous borders with Pakistan and other countries in Central Asia. The foreign journalists who manage to make it there find themselves tracked by local security forces and burdened by the constant risk of endangering the sources they contact.

But this past week, senior Chinese officials were compelled to publicly account for what is taking place in Xinjiang. A Geneva-based panel of United Nations human-rights experts issued a report alleging that as many as 2 million people may have been forced into a vast network of detention camps there.

Xinjiang, the panel argued, has turned into “something resembling a massive internment camp, shrouded in secrecy, a sort of no-rights zone,” where Chinese authorities were seeking to “re-educate” its Muslim minorities. Those are chiefly Uighurs, a Turkic Muslim minority native to the region, but also ethnic Kazakhs, Kyrgyz and others.

The report suggested that Beijing views Muslims in Xinjiang as suspect “enemies of the state,” bent on terror and insurgency. “Inside the camps, detainees are bombarded with propaganda, forced to recite slogans and sing songs in exchange for food, and pressured to renounce Muslim practices,” noted an editorial on Wednesday in The Washington Post. “A statement released by Chinese dissidents last week said torture in the centers is common, as are deaths. In all, the campaign is the largest and most brutal repression the regime has undertaken since the Cultural Revolution. It rivals the ethnic cleansing Myanmar has conducted against the Muslim Rohingya minority, which has received far more attention.”

The Chinese delegation sent to Geneva flatly rejected these claims. “The argument that 1 million Uighurs are detained in re-education centers is completely untrue,” said Chinese delegate Hu Lianhe, according to the Associated Press. He added that “there is no suppression of ethnic minorities or violations of their freedom of religious belief in the name of counterterrorism.”

But not even Chinese officials can deny the scope of their efforts there, which it portrays as a response to a spate of terrorist violence and riots over the past decade. A few years ago, President Xi Jinping called for “nets spread from earth to sky” — that is, a vast surveillance apparatus — in the region. Now, those living in the region cope with checkpoints and police informants, strict online censorship and constant government snooping.

Suspected Islamists detained in these camps are seen as “infected by an ideological illness,” as a recent communique from Xinjiang’s Communist Party Youth League put it. In Geneva, Hu warned that “those who are deceived by religious extremism … shall be assisted through resettlement and education.”

For China’s authoritarian leadership, the mantra of stability is paramount. When my colleague Emily Rauhala reported on the experiences of ethnic Kazakhs who had been swept into these camps, the Chinese foreign ministry insisted that “the overall situation of Xinjiang society is stable, the momentum of its economic development is good and ethnic groups live in harmony.”

Xinjiang may be on China’s geographical margins, but it’s at the heart of a lot of history. It was the crucible of Turkic culture, the original homeland of languages and peoples that spread to the shores of the Mediterranean. Its dusty Silk Road caravan towns, ringed by desert and mountains, were for centuries literal crossroads of commerce and civilizations.

But the region has rarely sat easily within the borders of China (it was first seized by the Qing dynasty in the 18th century). Cities like the historic oasis of Kashgar once felt more culturally akin to Kabul or Baghdad to the west than Beijing to the east. In recent years, though, China has gone to great lengths to subdue any trace of Uighur separatism. It bulldozed large sections of Old Kashgar — an architectural gem at the center of Uighur identity — and suppressed native languages spoken by Uighurs, Kazakhs and others in favor of Chinese.

Rights groups have protested Beijing’s increasingly draconian rule in Xinjiang, which has grown alongside China’s 21st-century prowess in surveillance technologies. According to one estimate, though the region comprises just 2 percent of China’s population, it accounted for more than a fifth of all arrests carried out in the country last year. And the Chinese dragnet now extends across borders, with officials threatening the relatives of Uighurs living abroad and disappearing Uighur academics who return from overseas.

“Under a new party boss, Chen Quanguo, appointed in 2016, the provincial government has vastly increased the money and effort it puts into controlling the activities and patrolling the beliefs of the Uighur population,” noted the Economist earlier this year, describing what it called “apartheid” with Chinese characteristics. “Its regime is racist, uncaring and totalitarian, in the sense of aiming to affect every aspect of people’s lives. It has created a fully-fledged police state. And it is committing some of the most extensive, and neglected, human-rights violations in the world.”

“We are really talking here about a humanitarian emergency,” said Adrian Zenz, a specialist on Xinjiang who lectures at the European School of Culture and Theology in Berlin, to the New York Times. China’s dystopian rule over its Muslim minorities

But while the deprivations of the Uighurs and other minorities are comparable to those faced by the Rohingya of Myanmar, the plight of the former receives far less global attention. And even as the citizens of dozens of majority-Muslim countries clamor for the freedom of Palestinians or Kashmiris, significantly less noise is made about the situation in Xinjiang.

All the while, China seems to be weaponizing its own form of majoritarianism at a time of heightened nationalism around the world. “The C.C.P., once quite liberal in its approach to diversity, seems to be redefining Chinese identity in the image of the majority Han — its version, perhaps, of the nativism that appears to be sweeping other parts of the world,” wrote James Millward, a noted historian of Xinjiang. “With ethnic difference itself now defined as a threat to the Chinese state, local leaders like Chen feel empowered to target Uighurs and their culture wholesale.”

17 August 2018

Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2018/08/17/chinas-dystopian-rule-over-muslim-minority/

By Tsvetana Paraskova

The rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Iran is becoming increasingly evident in the oil pricing policies of the two large Middle Eastern producers. The two countries are currently reigniting the market share and pricing war ahead of the returning U.S. sanctions on Iranian oil.

Saudi Arabia, OPEC’s largest producer, has been boosting oil production to offset supply disruptions elsewhere, including the anticipated loss of Iranian oil supply after U.S. sanctions on Tehran return in early November. The Saudis are also cutting their prices to the prized Asian market to lure more customers as they increase supply.

Iran, OPEC’s third-largest producer, is trying to convince its oil customers to continue buying Iranian oil despite stringent U.S. efforts to curb Iranian production.

Iran has slashed its official selling prices (OSPs) for all grades to all markets for September, looking to monetize what could be its last oil sales to some markets in Asia before the U.S. sanctions kick in. Tehran cut the prices for its flagship oil grades to more than a decade low compared to similar varieties of the Saudi crude grades, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Last week, the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) slashed the OSP for the Iranian Light crude grade to Asia by US$0.80 to US$1.20 a barrel above the Dubai/Oman average, used for pricing oil to Asia. The September prices for Iranian Light to Asia are at a 14-year-low compared to the similar Saudi grade sold to the world’s fastest-growing oil market, Bloomberg has estimated.

Earlier this month, the Saudis also slashed the September prices to Asia for their flagship grade, Arab Light, by US$0.70 to US$1.20 a barrel premium over the Dubai/Oman average. The reduction was slightly deeper than expected and the second consecutive monthly cut in pricing. The Saudis cut the prices for all their grades to all markets except for the United States.

Now Iran is also slashing prices for all grades to all markets, with the prices for Iranian Light, Iranian Heavy, Forozan, and Soroush grades to Asia, Northwest Europe, and the Mediterranean all cut by between US$0.50 and US$1.45, depending on the market and grades.

The OSPs for Iranian Heavy and Forozan to Asia were slashed against the similar Saudi grades to their lowest levels since at least 2000, the year in which Bloomberg started compiling the data.

Iranian Light and the Saudi Arab Light for Asia for September are now priced at the same level—US$1.20 a barrel above the Dubai/Oman average.

For the Saudis, the cut is aimed at enticing more buyers in order to take advantage of the refiners in Asia that are looking to cut Iranian oil intake for fear of running afoul of the U.S. sanctions. For Tehran, the cut in prices is an attempt to keep refiners buying by offering yet another incentive for them on top of the extended credit periods and nearly free shipping.

It has also been reported that Iran has started to offer India—its second-biggest oil customer after China—cargo insurance and tankers operated by Iranian companies as some Indian insurers have backed out of covering oil cargoes from Iran in the face of the returning U.S. sanctions on Tehran.

India’s imports from Iran could start to slow from August as some big Indian refiners worry that their access to the U.S. financial system could be cut off if they continue to import Iranian oil, prompting them to reduce oil purchases from Tehran.

The U.S. hasn’t been able to persuade Iran’s biggest oil customer China to reduce oil purchases, but Beijing has reportedly agreed not to increase its oil imports from Iran.

Other relatively large Asian buyers of Iranian oil—South Korea and Japan—are looking for U.S. guidance and (possibly) waivers before deciding how to proceed, but they are currently very cautious and on the lookout for alternative supplies.

Analysts, and reportedly the U.S. Administration itself, currently expect the sanctions to remove around 1 million bpd from the oil market.

Considering the intensity of efforts by the U.S. to cut off as much Iranian oil exports as possible, it is unlikely that even Iran’s significant discounts to Asian customers will save the country’s oil exports.

By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com

Link to original article: https://oilprice.com/Energy/Oil-Prices/Saudi-Arabia-And-Iran-Reignite-The-Oil-Price-War.html

15 August 2018

Source: https://countercurrents.org/2018/08/15/saudi-arabia-and-iran-reignite-the-oil-price-war/

By Federico Pieraccini

In the current multipolar world in which we live, economic and military factors are decisive in guaranteeing countries their sovereignty. Russia and China seem to be taking this very seriously, committed to the de-dollarization of their economies and the accelerated development of hypersonic weapons.

The transition phase we are going through, passing from a unipolar global order to a multipolar one, calls for careful observation. It is important to analyze the actions taken by two world powers, China and Russia, in defending and consolidating their sovereignty over the long term. Observing decisions taken by these two countries in recent years, we can discern a twofold strategy. One is economic, the other purely military. In both cases we observe strong cooperation between Moscow and Beijing. The merit of this alliance is paradoxically attributed to the attitude of various US administrations, from George Bush Senior through to Obama. The special relationship between Moscow and Beijing has been forged by a shared experience of Washington’s pressure over the last 25 years. Their shared mission now seems to be to contain the US’s declining imperial power and to shepherd the world from a unipolar world order, with Washington at the center of international relations, to a multipolar world order, with at least three global powers playing a major role in international relations.

The Sino-Russian strategy has shown itself over the last two decades to consist of two parts: economic clout on the one hand, and military strength on the other, the latter to ward off reckless American behavior. Both Eurasian powers have their respective strengths and weaknesses in this regard. If Russia’s economy can hardly be compared to China’s, China plays second fiddle to Russia’s conventional and nuclear deterrents, and is quite some way behind Moscow in terms of hypersonic weapons. The cooperation between Moscow and Beijing aims to synergize their respective strengths.

Economic sovereignty

Both de-dollarization and the development of hypersonic weapons serve the purpose of defending both countries’ sovereignty. Economic sovereignty entails, among other things, elimination of dependence on the US dollar, the abandonment of an international banking system based on the SWIFT payment system, the inclusion and increase in the share of the yuan in the basket of international currencies, the reduction of dollar-denominated public debt, the constant accumulation of gold, and, of course, the elimination of any residual debt with international institutions that are part of the world governance model controlled and manipulated by Washington for its own interests.

Beijing, rather than seeking to replace the central role of the United States, seeks instead to expand its influence in existing organizations like the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), the World Bank, and the World Trade Organization (WTO).

From an economic point of view, the international order is very similar to a duopoly rather than anything multipolar, without forgetting that the European Union has an important role to play should it regain some form of sovereignty by freeing itself from dependence on Washington. For Moscow and Beijing, reducing public debt is one of the best ways of achieving strong economic sovereignty. The Russian Federation has reduced its public debt in relation to GDP from 92% at the beginning of 2000 to 12.9% today. The People’s Republic of China, over 20 years, has increased its public debt from 20% of GDP to around 48%. Compared to the public debt of European countries (Italy and Greece are over 120%, France 100%, the EU average is 85%), Japan (240%) and the United States (110%), Beijing and Moscow have paid particular attention to keeping their accounts in order. Another important strategy involves the steady accumulation of gold in the reserves of these two countries.

China and Russia are once again trending in an opposite direction to that of the West. Since 2005, Russia and China have accumulated huge amounts of gold, with the clear intention of diversifying their reserves. Both Moscow and Beijing are among the top 10 countries in terms of gold reserves, with an exponential increase over recent years.

Thanks to a limited public debt, huge quantities of gold, and a progressive reduction in the amount of US government bonds held, Moscow and Beijing have embarked on the path of full economic sovereignty, independent of the US dollar system and strongly protecting themselves against any future financial crises. In this respect, the creation of international financial bodies, to be added to those already existing, has the clear purpose of diluting Washington’s institutional influence over the economic affairs of the world.

A decided acceleration in this general direction was made following the exclusion of the Islamic Republic of Iran from the SWIFT system, a ringing alarm bell for the Eurasian duo. Despite their reduction of public debt and significant de-dollarization, both countries remain dependent on, and therefore vulnerable to, an economic and financial system that orbits around Washington and London. The workaround has therefore been to create two alternative bank-payment systems to SWIFT. In the case of Russia, there is the so-called system for the transfer of financial messages (SPFS), and in China, the Cross-Border Inter-Bank Payments System (CIPS). Initially conceived as a fallback in the event of exclusion from the SWIFT system, the SPFS and CIPS projects currently strongly intertwine with the energy agreements reached in 2015. Moscow’s selling of liquid natural gas (LNG) to Beijing takes place through an international payment system based on Chinese renminbi that is immediately converted into gold thanks through the innovative mechanism inaugurated at the Shanghai Gold Exchange. It is not excluded that these operations could not directly occur through the SPFS or CIPS systems in the future. Never mind the petrodollar system that is one of the main problems that China and Russia face when dealing with the international financial system. Efforts to progressively switch from USD to Yuan in paying oil commodities have been in place for years especially by Beijing.

This is an example of how countries like Russia and China have found ways of circumventing the means used to limit their sovereignty. The inclusion of the yuan in the IMF basket of world reserve currencies is associated with the Chinese strategy of supporting the renminbi for export, reducing the share of the US dollar. The strategy adopted by Moscow and Beijing seems to leave Washington unable to stop the protective measures of these two Eurasian powers.

In practice, we are already beginning to see the effects of this alternative economic world order. The sanctions imposed by Washington and her satraps on Moscow and Tehran are easily circumvented by Russia and Iran, with exchanges denominated in currencies other than the dollar (often gold), or simply through bartering.

China and Russia, with strongly diversified economies, with treasuries chock full of gold, and with minimal public debt, leave very little room for international speculators to have an effect on their domestic economies with actions that amount to financial terrorism.

Being able to minimize the impacts and risks of a new financial crisis, or resist the threats and blackmail of the international bodies steered largely by Washington and London, are the key means of being able to chart an economically independent course and ensure national sovereignty.

The military is the definitive guarantor of sovereignty

Without a clear and inviolable military sovereignty, the economic measures implemented can become ineffective in the event of war. For this reason, China and Russia continue to implement nuclear-weapons strategies, the ultimate and definitive deterrent. Moscow is at least equal to Washington in this regard, just as Beijing is at least equal to Washington in the economic field. China and the United States have an interconnected economy, but in the event of total war, Washington would suffer the greatest damage. The transfer to China of almost all American industry has a cost, and in the case of a complete rupture in relations between the two countries, Washington is well aware of its economic vulnerability to China.

In military terms, the strategy for ensuring territorial sovereignty focuses on certain key areas, namely the defense of airspace and maritime borders, and the ability to discourage any nuclear attack by guaranteeing a second-strike capability.

I have written about this in the past, noting that Russia and China have implemented complex and advanced systems in recent years to close the technological gap with the West, Moscow being at least equal to Washington in this regard, and sharing with Beijing some of its most important innovations. The sale of S-400s to China paves the way for a future joint defense of Eurasian airspace. As the process of union and cooperation between the two countries increases, their respective militaries will have the task of discouraging outside attempts to destabilize the region. This is the reason why the United States sees the sale of the S-400 systems (to Turkey, for example) as a red line not to be crossed. The ability to prevent access to one’s airspace upsets one of Washington’s principal doctrines of war. Without air supremacy and the ability to operate in an uncontested airspace, the American way of war is severely hobbled, it becoming practically impossible for the United States to impose its will militarily.

The second military focus for the Eurasians concerns the defense of their maritime borders, reflecting Moscow and Beijing’s need to keep the US Navy a good distance from their shores. The development of anti-ship weapons has been a priority for Beijing in recent years, as has been the development of islets in the South China Sea to ensure a constant protection of its borders, given the aggressive presence of the US Navy. Beijing aims to create areas of denial for the US military. Initially keeping US forces about 180 miles from their coast, the future intention is to push them even further back, to a distance of about 700 miles, thus obtaining an effective anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) space that prevents any amphibious assault or a maritime blockade of China’s sea lines of communication.

In the same way that de-dollarization represents an economic nuclear weapon in the hands of Russia and China, the development of hypersonic weapons is the linchpin of the Sino-Russian alliance’s ability to defend its territorial sovereignty. I wrote two very detailed articles on these amazing weapons, and so did my colleagues at the Strategic Culture Foundation. It is an exciting topic because for the first time in years, Washington has faced the accomplished fact of its geopolitical adversary’s impressive technological progress. Hypersonic weapons have no present weaknesses, and Moscow is the only country in the world capable of producing and using them. With this new capability, the range of action of the Russian Federation reaches unprecedented levels.

Hypersonic weapons have the crucial advantage of being able to hit mobile or fixed targets with unprecedented speed and power. The ability to obliterate in a matter of minutes a US Navy carrier group or ABM systems in Romania and Poland undoubtedly has a sobering effect on the US military. This is to leave aside the fact that the future S-500 system will have anti-satellite capabilities as well as ballistic-missile defense, and the new SS-28 Sarmat will not be able to be stopped by any current or future ABM system.

With the use of hypersonic weapons (some already operational) and the sophisticated S-400 and S-500 systems, US naval and air power is being strongly challenged. With nuclear weapons, even the Russian first- and second-strike capabilities become impossible for the US to overcome.

It is only a matter of time before hypersonic technology is brought to bear by the People’s Republic of China, probably with Moscow’s crucial assistance. The level of mutual trust and cooperation has never been so high between the two countries, and it is natural for them to collaborate militarily and economically, spurred by their common opponent.

Conclusion

The challenge for Russia and China is complex and ongoing. The transition from a unipolar to a multipolar world order is occurring as we speak, enabled by economic and military sovereignty. The challenge for these two Eurasian countries will be to increase their military and economic power, and correct the obvious imbalances in the current world order, without destroying it.

If this strategy proves successful, it will only be natural to start offering other countries the opportunity to hop onto the Eurasian train, enabling those willing to shift their military, economic and diplomatic leaning from the Atlantic to the Eurasian world. Given the momentous significance of India and Pakistan’s accession to the Shanghai Cooperation Organization as permanent members, it would seem that Moscow and Beijing are on track to eliminating the central role of the United States in international relations in favor of a multilateralism that will benefit everyone.

*

Federico Pieraccini is an independent freelance writer specialized in international affairs, conflicts, politics and strategies. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

4 August 2018

Source: https://www.globalresearch.ca/two-knockout-blows-to-us-imperialism-de-dollarization-and-hypersonic-weapons/5649482

By Rebecca Stead

10 Aug 2018 – For 11 years, Israel has imposed an unforgiving siege on the Gaza Strip. With severely restricted access in and out of the enclave — via land, air and, notoriously, sea — Gaza has effectively been sealed off from the world. The Strip is only 360 square kilometres in size, about the same as Las Vegas in the US or one-quarter the size of London. It is now home to almost two million Palestinians, making it one of the most densely populated areas in the world and leading some to dub Gaza “the world’s largest open-air prison.”

According to UNRWA, the UN body responsible for Palestinian refugees, 1.3 million of Gaza’s 1.9 million inhabitants are refugees. Most were expelled from their homes in 1948 when the State of Israel was created, and many were uprooted again when Israel occupied the West Bank, Gaza Strip, Golan Heights, Sinai Peninsula and Jerusalem during the 1967 Six Day War. A further 23,500 people continue to be internally displaced following Israel’s “Operation Protective Edge” military offensive against Gaza in 2014.

So what does the daily reality of the siege look like? Here are 11 aspects, one for each year that the siege has been imposed by Israel.

Movement of people is heavily restricted

Under the siege, the Palestinian residents of Gaza are required to obtain a permit to leave. Israel repeatedly refuses to issue such permits for exit via the Erez/Beit Hanoun Crossing. In the first quarter of 2018 alone, Israel denied 833 exit permit applications “on grounds of having family ties to Hamas,” the group which has ruled the Strip since winning the last Palestinian elections held in 2006. Compare this with 2017, when 21 applications were refused on such grounds throughout the whole year.

These restrictions also prevent those in need of medical attention from leaving Gaza via Israel. According to Al Jazeera, “Israel was responsible for at least 54 Palestinian deaths in 2017,” having rejected hundreds of medical permit applications by people needing treatment in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, Israel itself or abroad. A report by the United Nations Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs for the occupied Palestinian territories (OCHA OPT) found that the rate of denied or delayed permit applications to access health care outside Gaza reached 45 per cent in October 2017.

Crossings into and out of Gaza are closed

Israel has closed almost all of the Gaza Strip’s entry and exit points. There were formerly six crossings in and out of Gaza: Erez/Beit Hanoun, Nahal Oz, Karni, Sufa, Kerem Shalom/Karm Abu Salem and Rafah.

Until recently, only one commercial route into and out of Gaza remained: Kerem Shalom. However, in July, Israel also closed this crossing, citing incendiary kites and balloons flown into Israel from inside Gaza as part of the Great March of Return protests. Whereas previously 300-400 trucks would pass through the crossing every day, only 150 trucks of essential medical and humanitarian supplies were being allowed to pass. Only a week later, cooking gas distribution companies in the besieged Strip announced that they had “run out of backup”.

In the south of the Strip is Rafah, the only pedestrian crossing open to Palestinians (Erez crossing, in the north, is reserved for journalists, medical staff, international diplomats and those in need of medical attention). An almost complete closure of the Rafah crossing has been imposed by Egypt since 2013, for “security” reasons but almost certainly at Israel’s behest. In 2017, the Rafah crossing was closed for 337 days.

Gaza’s access to the sea is restricted

On top of the restrictions Israel enforces on land, it also restricts access to the sea. According to an OCHA map (included in UNRWA’s report “Gaza in 2020”), since Israel’s three-week assault on Gaza in 2009 it has imposed a limit of three nautical miles on fishermen working out of the territory. This has been tightened consistently, even though a limit of 20 nautical miles was recommended by the Oslo Accords in the early 1990s. A no-entry zone of one and one and a half nautical miles, in the south and north respectively, has also been imposed, extending out from each of Gaza’s frontiers with Israel and Egypt.

In 2017, OCHA estimated that over 35,000 Palestinians still depended on the fishing industry for their livelihoods, but Israeli restrictions have all but destroyed Gaza’s once thriving fishing industry. Israel also targets Gazan fishermen, with international charity Oxfam noting that “in the first half of 2014, there were at least 177 incidents of naval fire against fishermen.” Many have been killed or wounded, and had their boats destroyed or seized by the Israeli navy.

Some have speculated that Israel’s restrictions are motivated by the presence of gas reserves in the Mediterranean Sea. In 2015, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu signed a deal to allow companies to begin extraction from the gas field. Thought to contain some 22 trillion cubic feet of gas, the discovery was hailed as a “gift from God” which could turn Israel into a “regional energy powerhouse.” Most of the gas fields are situated off Gaza’s shore, meaning that the gas reserves and their revenue would belong to Gaza were it not for Israel’s occupation, naval restrictions and blockade.

Israel imposes a strict naval blockade

Israel’s naval siege also includes blockading vessels seeking to enter or leave Gaza. In July 2018, an international convoy carrying humanitarian and medical supplies, dubbed the Freedom Flotilla, tried to break Israel’s siege of Gaza. Consisting of two ships – Al-Awda and Freedom – the flotilla was intercepted by Israeli naval forces in international waters amid accusations of violence by the troops involved.

This is not the first time that such flotillas have been hijacked in what have been called acts of piracy on the high seas. Infamously, in 2010 Israeli commandos boarded the Mavi Marmara taking humanitarian aid to Gaza and killed nine Turkish citizens; a tenth died later of his wounds.

Earlier this month (August 2018), images were revealed showing the construction of an underwater barrier stretching some 200 metres into the Mediterranean, separating Palestinian and Israeli territorial waters. Consisting of an underwater structure, an armoured stone base and a six-metre-high barbed wire fence, and at an estimated to cost the Israeli government of $6.7 million, the barrier adds to the land and sea restrictions already imposed on Gaza under the siege.

A strangled economy means high unemployment

A recent report by the World Bank revealed a drop in Gaza’s growth, from eight per cent in 2016 to 0.5 per cent in 2017. Much of this has been caused by Israel’s prohibition on goods and raw materials being allowed into Gaza, which has prevented the reconstruction necessary after three major Israeli military offensives waged on the enclave over the past decade. The World Bank also noted that the cuts to UNRWA funding announced early in 2018 have further hampered the chances for economic recovery.

Unemployment in the Gaza Strip is therefore one of the highest in the world; Israeli human rights organisation B’Tselem notes that the unemployment rate in Gaza reached 46.6 per cent in the third quarter of 2017. Among those aged 20 to 24, unemployment reached 67.8 per cent, and among women the rate was 71 per cent. Overcrowding and a predominantly young population have contributed further to this problem.

Gaza’s agricultural potential is stifled

Gaza has huge agricultural potential, but much of this is stifled by the siege. Highly-fertile land means that fresh fruit including strawberries, tomatoes, peppers, as well as herbs, used to be huge contributors to Gaza’s economy.

In his book Gaza: Preparing for Dawn, former Jerusalem bureau chief for the Independent Donald Macintyre noted that even before the siege began officially, intensive Israeli security inspections often meant fresh produce “had rotted by the time [it] left Gaza.” With commercial crossings now closed; the lack of any potential for exporting via sea routes; and the lack of fresh water for irrigation purposes, much of this industry has failed.

Israeli herbicides kill Palestinian crops

Compounding the problem is Israel’s practice of spraying herbicides near the Gaza fence, which kills crops inside the territory. OCHAopt quotes the Palestinian Ministry of Agriculture as saying, “A spraying operation in January 2018 affected some 550 acres of agricultural lands belonging to 212 farmers, with an estimated loss of $1.3 million.” Israel insists the spraying is done on the Israeli side of the boundary, but has refused to consider claims made by Palestinian farmers for damage to their farmland.

Gaza receives only four to six hours’ electricity per day

Gaza receives just four to six hours of electricity per day because repairs have not been allowed to the territory’s only power plant, damaged by successive Israeli offensives. Fuel for the plant and emergency generators is also subject to tight import restrictions imposed by the Israeli siege. In 2017, OCHAopt reported that electricity shortages were directly affecting 14 hospitals and more than 140 health clinics in the Strip. In July 2018, patients from across Gaza’s hospitals staged a sit-in in front of the Erez crossing to highlight the shortages in medical equipment and resources, which prevent patients from receiving adequate care. These electricity shortages also impact schools’ capacity to provide education to Palestinian children, families’ ability to store food at home and employment opportunities in Gaza.

96% of Gaza’s water is undrinkable

According to OCHA OPT, 40 per cent of Gaza’s population receives just three to five hours of water supply every five days. In addition, over 96 per cent of water extracted from Gaza’s aquifers is unfit for human consumption; the aquifers have been contaminated by sea water as well as chemicals from fertilisers washed down by rainfall from Israeli settlements. This means that 90 per cent of Gazans have to buy desalinated or bottled water, imposing an additional cost burden on families already living under the poverty line. The water problem has been compounded by outages in electricity, which have led to sanitation difficulties and left untreated sewage to flow into the sea, contaminating 73 per cent of the shoreline.

Education is strained and graduates are jobless

Education has come under strain during the siege, with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) reporting that to cope with ever-increasing demand, 70 per cent of public and UNRWA schools teach in double shifts, where one group of students attends in the morning and another in the afternoon. Yet despite the challenges facing Gaza’s students, literacy rates remain among the highest across the Middle East-North Africa (MENA) region.

However, unemployment is particularly acute among those with college and university education, with B’Tselem noting that among residents of Gaza with post-secondary education, unemployment in late 2017 was 52.3 per cent.

Israel didn’t ‘disengage’ from Gaza

The official Israeli narrative states that Israel disengaged from Gaza in 2005, when it forced almost 8,000 illegal settlers to leave 21 settlements. Many settler families were given generous compensation packages in exchange, some amounting to almost $200,000, but others had to be removed by force.

However, the extent to which Israel disengaged from Gaza has been undermined by its implementation of the siege since 2007. Some have suggested that Israel simply replaced its direct control of Gaza with a remote control occupation, squeezing the economy, natural resources and movement of people all without maintaining boots on the ground.

With its complete control of Gaza’s air, land and sea borders, Israel remains technically and legally an occupying power in the territory. The occupation is still very much in place. This means, among other things, that Israel cannot claim that its military offensives are simply acts of self-defence; there is no such claim under international law for states involved in a military occupation, which those living under occupation have every right to resist.

Rebecca Stead – An MA student at SOAS University of London studying Middle Eastern Studies with Arabic, Stead focuses on the history, culture and politics of Israel-Palestine specifically and the Levant more broadly.

13 August 2018

Source: https://www.transcend.org/tms/2018/08/what-everyone-should-know-about-israels-siege-of-the-gaza-strip/

By Asa Winstanley

4 Jul 2018 – Israeli arms are being sent to a heavily armed neo-Nazi militia in Ukraine, The Electronic Intifada has learned.

Azov Battalion online propaganda shows Israeli-licensed Tavor rifles in the fascist group’s hands, while Israeli human rights activists have protested arms sales to Ukraine on the basis that weapons might end up with anti-Semitic militias.

In a letter “about licenses for Ukraine” obtained by The Electronic Intifada, the Israeli defense ministry’s arms export agency says they are “careful to grant licenses” to arms exporters “in full coordination with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and other government entities.”

The 26 June letter was sent in reply to Israeli lawyer Eitay Mack who had written a detailed request demanding Israel end all military aid to the country.

Azov’s official status in the Ukrainian armed forces means it cannot be verified that “Israeli weapons and training” are not being used “by anti-Semitic or neo-Nazi soldiers,” Mack and 35 other human rights activists wrote.

They had written that Ukrainian armed forces use rifles made in Israel “and are trained by Israelis,” according to reports in the country.

The head of the Israeli arms export agency declined to deny the reports, or to even discuss cancellation of the weapons licenses, citing “security” concerns.

But Racheli Chen, the head of the agency, confirmed to Mack she had “carefully read your letter,” which detailed the fascist nature of Azov and the reports of Israeli arms and training.

Both the defense ministry letter and Mack’s original request can be read in the original Hebrew below.

Israeli rifles in Ukraine

The fact that Israeli arms are going to Ukrainian neo-Nazis is supported by Azov’s own online propaganda.

A photo on Azov’s website also shows a Tavor in the hands of one of the militia’s officers.

The rifles are produced under licence from Israel Weapon Industries, and as such would have been authorized by the Israeli government.

IWI markets the Tavor as the “primary weapon” of the Israeli special forces.

It has been used in recent massacres of unarmed Palestinians taking part in Great March of Return protests in Gaza.

Fort, the Ukrainian state-owned arms company that produces the rifles under license, has a page about the Tavor on its website.

The Israel Weapon Industries logo also appears on its website, including on the “Our Partners” page.

Starting as a gang of fascist street thugs, the Azov Battalion is one of several far-right militias that have now been integrated as units of Ukraine’s National Guard.

Staunchly anti-Russian, Azov fought riot police during the 2013 US and EU-supported “Euromaidan” protests in the capital Kiev.

The protests and riots laid the ground for the 2014 coup which removed the pro-Russian president Viktor Yanukovych.

When the civil war began in eastern Ukraine against Russian-backed separatists, the new western-backed government began to arm Azov. The militia soon fell under the jurisdiction of the Ukrainian interior ministry, and saw some of the most intense frontline combat against the separatists.

The group stands accused in United Nations and Human Rights Watch reports of committing war crimes against pro-Russian separatists during the ongoing civil war in the eastern Donbass region, including torture, sexual violence and targeting of civilian homes.

Today, Azov is run by Arsen Avakov, Ukraine’s interior minister. According to the BBC, he pays its fighters, and has appointed one of its military commanders, Vadym Troyan, as his deputy – with control over the police.

Avakov last year met with the Israeli interior minister Aryeh Deri to discuss “fruitful cooperation.”

Azov’s young founder and first military commander Andriy Biletsky is today a lawmaker in the Ukrainian parliament.

As journalist Max Blumenthal explained on The Real News in February, Biletsky has “pledged to restore the honor of the white race” and has advanced laws forbidding “race mixing.”

According to The Telegraph, Biletsky in 2014 wrote that “the historic mission of our nation in this critical moment is to lead the white races of the world in a final crusade for their survival. A crusade against the Semite-led untermenschen.”

At a military training camp for children last year, The Guardian noticed that several Azov instructors had Nazi and other racist tattoos, including a swastika, the SS skull symbol and one that read “White Pride.”

One Azov soldier explained to The Guardian that he fights Russia because “Putin’s a Jew.”

Speaking to The Telegraph, another praised Adolf Hitler, said homosexuality is a “mental illness” and that the scale of the Holocaust “is a big question.”

An Azov drill sergeant once told USA Today “with a laugh” that “no more than half his comrades are fellow Nazis.”

An Azov spokesperson played that down, claiming that “only 10-20 percent” of the group’s members were Nazis.

Nonetheless, the sergeant “vowed that when the war ends, his comrades will march on the capital, Kiev, to oust a government they consider corrupt.”

After Azov’s founder Andriy Biletsky entered parliament, he threatened to dissolve it. “Take my word for it,” he said, “we have gathered here to begin the fight for power.”

Those promises were made in 2014, but there are early signs of them being fulfilled today.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=444&v=hE6b4ao8gAQ

This year the battalion has founded a new “National Militia” to bring the war home.

This well-organized gang is at the forefront of a growing wave of racist and anti-Semitic violence in Ukraine.

Led by its military veterans, it specializes in pogroms and thuggish enforcement of its political agenda.

Earlier this month, clad in balaclavas and wielding axes and baseball bats, members of the group destroyed a Romany camp in Kiev. In a YouTube video, apparently shot by the Azov thugs themselves, police turn up towards the end of the camp’s destruction.

They look on doing nothing, while the thugs cry, “Glory to the nation! Death to enemies!”

Israel’s military aid to Ukraine and its neo-Nazis emulates similar programs by the United States and other NATO countries including the UK and Canada.

So obsessed are they with defeating a perceived threat from Russia that they seem happy to aid even openly Nazi militias – as long as they fight on their side.

This is also a throwback to the early Cold War, when the CIA supported fascists and Hitlerites to infiltrate from Austria into Hungary in 1956, where they began slaughtering Hungarian communist Jews and Hungarian Jews as “communists.”

Recent postings on Azov websites document a June meeting with the Canadian military attaché, Colonel Brian Irwin.

According to Azov, the Canadians concluded the briefing by expressing “their hopes for further fruitful cooperation.”

Irwin acknowledged receipt of an email from The Electronic Intifada, but did not answer questions about his meeting with the fascist militia.

A spokesperson for the Canadian defense department later sent a statement claiming that their “training of Ukrainian Armed Forces through Operation Unifier incorporates strong human rights elements.”

They said Canada is “strongly opposed to the glorification of Nazism and all forms of racism” but that “every country must come to grips with difficult periods in its past.”

The spokesperson, who did not provide a name, wrote that Canadian training “includes ongoing dialogue on the development of a diverse, and inclusive Ukraine.”

The statement said nothing about how alleged Canadian diversity training goes down with the Azov Battalion.

Also part of Colonel Irwin’s meeting was the head of Azov’s officer training academy, an institution named after right-wing Ukrainian nationalist Yevhen Konovalets.

Konovalets is one of the group’s idols, whose portrait frequently adorns its military iconography.

Konovalets was the founder of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), which later allied itself to Nazi Germany during its invasion of the Soviet Union.

The OUN took part in the notorious 1941 Lviv massacre, when the Nazis invaded Soviet territory.

During the pogrom, thousands of Jews were massacred in the now-Ukrainian city.

US aid to Nazis

Canada is of course not the only NATO “ally” to be sending arms to Ukraine.

As Max Blumenthal has extensively reported, US weapons, including rocket-propelled grenades, and training have been provided to Azov.

Under pressure from the Pentagon, a clause in the annually renewed defense bill banning US aid to Ukraine from going to the Azov Battalion was repeatedly stripped out.

This went on for three straight years before Democratic lawmaker Ro Khanna and others pushed it through earlier this year.

For his trouble Khanna was smeared in Washington as a “K Street sellout” who was “holding Putin’s dirty laundry.”

Despite the ban finally passing, Azov’s status as an official unit of the Ukrainian armed forces leaves it unclear how US aid can be separated out.

In 2014, the Israel lobby groups ADL and the Simon Wiesenthal Center refused to help a previous attempt to bar US aid to neo-Nazi groups in Ukraine.

The ADL argued that “the focus should be on Russia,” while the Wiesenthal Center pointed to the fact that other far-right leaders had met at the Israeli embassy in Ukraine – as if that somehow absolved their anti-Semitic views.

Attempts by some in Congress to bar US military aid to Nazis in Ukraine may explain military aid from Israel.

Israel’s “deepening military-technical cooperation” with Ukraine and its fascist militias is likely a way to help its partner in the White House, and is another facet of the growing Zionist-White Supremacist alliance.

Israel has historically acted as a useful route through which US presidents and the CIA can circumvent congressional restrictions on aid to various unsavory groups and governments around the world.

In 1980s Latin America, these included the Contras, who were fighting a war against the left-wing revolutionary government of Nicaragua, as well as a host of other Latin American fascist death squads and military dictatorships.

It also included the South African apartheid regime, which Israeli governments of both the “Zionist left” and Likudnik right armed for decades.

As quoted in Andrew and Leslie Cockburn’s book Dangerous Liaison, one former member of the Israeli parliament, General Mattityahu Peled, put it succinctly: “In Central America, Israel is the ‘dirty work’ contractor for the US administration. Israel is acting as an accomplice and an arm of the United States.”

Amid an alarming rise in anti-Semitism and neo-Nazism, Israel now appears to be reprising this role in Eastern Europe.

With translation from Hebrew by Dena Shunra.

Asa Winstanley is an associate editor with The Electronic Intifada.

13 August 2018

Source: https://www.transcend.org/tms/2018/08/israel-is-arming-neo-nazis-in-ukraine/

By Chris Hedges

5 Aug 2018 – The problem with Donald Trump is not that he is imbecilic and inept—it is that he has surrendered total power to the oligarchic and military elites. They get what they want. They do what they want. Although the president is a one-man wrecking crew aimed at democratic norms and institutions, although he has turned the United States into a laughingstock around the globe, our national crisis is embodied not in Trump but the corporate state’s now unfettered pillage.

Trump, who has no inclination or ability to govern, has handed the machinery of government over to the bankers, corporate executives, right-wing think tanks, intelligence chiefs and generals. They are eradicating the few regulations and laws that inhibited a naked kleptocracy. They are dynamiting the institutions, including the State Department, that served interests other than corporate profit and are stacking the courts with right-wing, corporate-controlled ideologues. Trump provides the daily entertainment; the elites handle the business of looting, exploiting and destroying.

Once democratic institutions are hollowed out, a process begun before the election of Trump, despotism is inevitable. The press is shackled. Corruption and theft take place on a massive scale. The rights and needs of citizens are irrelevant. Dissent is criminalized. Militarized police monitor, seize and detain Americans without probable cause. The rituals of democracy become farce. This is the road we are traveling. It is a road that leads to internal collapse and tyranny, and we are very far down it.

The elites’ moral and intellectual vacuum produced Trump. They too are con artists. They are slicker than he at selling the lies and more adept at disguising their greed through absurd ideologies such as neoliberalism and globalization, but they belong to the same criminal class and share many of the pathologies that characterize Trump. The grotesque visage of Trump is the true face of politicians such as George W. Bush, Bill and Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. The Clintons and Obama, unlike Bush and Trump, are self-aware and therefore cynical, but all lack a moral compass. As Michael Wolff writes in “Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House,” the president has “no scruples.” He lives “outside the rules” and is “contemptuous of them.” And this makes him identical to those he has replaced, not different. “A close Trump friend who was also a good Bill Clinton friend found them eerily similar—except that Clinton had a respectable front and Trump did not,” Wolff writes.

Trump, backed by the most retrograde elements of corporate capitalism, including Robert and Rebekah Mercer, Sheldon Adelson and Carl Icahn, is the fool who prances at the front of our death march. As natural resources become scarce and the wealth of the empire evaporates, a shackled population will be forced to work harder for less. State revenues will be squandered in grandiose projects and futile wars in an attempt to return the empire to a mythical golden age. The decision to slash corporate tax rates for the rich while increasing an already bloated military budget by $54 billion is typical of decayed civilizations. Empires expand beyond their capacity to sustain themselves and then go bankrupt. The Sumerian, Egyptian, Greek, Roman, Mayan, Khmer, Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian empires all imploded in a similar fashion. The lessons of history are clear. But the illiterate charlatans who seize power in the dying days of empire know nothing of history. They are driven by a primal and inchoate lust for wealth, one that is never satisfied no matter how many billions they possess.

The elites in dying cultures turn everything into a commodity. Human beings are commodities. The natural world is a commodity. Government and democratic institutions are commodities. All are mined and wrecked for profit. Nothing has an intrinsic value. Nothing is sacred. The relentless and suicidal drive to accumulate greater and greater wealth by destroying the systems that sustain life is idolatry. It ignores the biblical injunction that idols always begin by demanding human sacrifice and end by demanding self-sacrifice. The elites are not only building our funeral pyre, they are building their own.

The elites, lacking a vision beyond satiating their own greed, revel in the intoxicating power to destroy. They confuse destruction with creation. They are agents of what Sigmund Freud calls the death instinct. They find in acts of national self-immolation a godlike power. They denigrate empathy, intellectual curiosity, artistic expression and the common good, virtues that sustain life. They celebrate a hyper-individualism embodied in celebrity, wealth, hedonism, manipulation and the ability to dominate others. They know nothing of the past. They do not think about the future. Those around them are temporarily useful to their aims and must be flattered and rewarded but in the end are ruthlessly cast aside. There is no human connection. This emotional numbness lies at the core of Trump’s personality.

“[Stephen] Bannon described Trump as a simple machine,” Wolff writes. “The On switch was full of flattery, the Off switch full of calumny. The flattery was dripping, slavish, cast in ultimate superlatives, and entirely disconnected from reality: so-and-so was the best, the most incredible, the ne plus ultra, the eternal. The calumny was angry, bitter, resentful, ever a casting out and closing of the iron door.”

The elites in a dying culture confuse what the economist Karl Polanyi calls “real” and “fictitious” commodities. A commodity is a product manufactured for sale. The ecosystem, labor and money, therefore, are not commodities. Once these fictitious commodities are treated as real ones for exploitation and manipulation, Polanyi writes, human society devours itself. Workers become dehumanized cogs. Currency and trade are manipulated by speculators, wreaking havoc with the economy and leading to financial collapse. The natural world is turned into a toxic wasteland. The elites, as the society breaks down, retreat into protected enclaves where they have access to security and services denied to the wider population. They last longer than those outside their gates, but the tsunami of destruction they orchestrate does not spare them.

As long as Trump serves the interests of the elites he will remain president. If, for some reason, he is unable to serve these interests he will disappear. Wolff notes in the book that after his election there was “a surprising and sudden business and Wall Street affinity for Trump.” He went on: “An antiregulatory White House and the promise of tax reform outweighed the prospect of disruptive tweeting and other forms of Trump chaos; besides, the market had not stopped climbing since November 9, the day after the election.”

The Russia investigation—launched when Robert Mueller became special counsel in May and which appears to be focused on money laundering, fraud and shady business practices, things that have always characterized Trump’s financial empire—is unlikely to unseat the president. He will not be impeached for mental incompetence, over the emoluments clause or for obstruction of justice, although he is guilty on all these counts. He is useful to those who hold real power in the corporate state, however much they would like to domesticate him.

Trump’s bizarre ramblings and behavior also serve a useful purpose. They are a colorful diversion from the razing of democratic institutions. As cable news networks feed us stories of his trysts with a porn actress and outlandish tweets, the real work of the elites is being carried out largely away from public view. The courts are stacked with Federalist Society judges, the fossil fuel industry is plundering public lands and the coastlines and ripping up regulations that protected us from its poisons, and the Pentagon, given carte blanche, is engaged in an orgy of militarism with a trillion-dollar-a-year budget and about 800 military bases in scores of countries around the world.

Trump, as Wolff describes him in the book, is clueless about what he has unleashed. He is uninterested in and bored by the complexities of governance and policy. The faster Trump finds a member of the oligarchy or the military to take a job off his hands the happier he becomes. This suits his desires. It suits the desires of those who manage the corporate state. For the president there is only one real concern, the tumultuous Trump White House reality show and how it plays out on television. He is a creature solely concerned with image, or more exactly his image. Nothing else matters.

“For each of his enemies—and, actually, for each of his friends—the issue for him came down, in many ways, to their personal press plan,” Wolff writes of the president. “Trump assumed everybody wanted his or her fifteen minutes and that everybody had a press strategy for when they got them. If you couldn’t get press directly for yourself, you became a leaker. There was no happenstance news, in Trump’s view. All news was manipulated and designed, planned and planted. All news was to some extent fake—he understood that very well, because he himself had faked it so many times in his career. This was why he had so naturally cottoned to the ‘fake news’ label. ‘I’ve made stuff up forever, and they always print it,’ he bragged.”

Yes, the elites wish Trump would act more presidential. It would help the brand. But all attempts by the elites to make Trump conform to the outward norms embraced by most public officials have failed. Trump will not be reformed by criticism from the establishment. Republican Sens. Jeff Flake of Arizona and Bob Corker of Tennessee, who denounced Trump, saw their approval ratings plummet and have decided not to run for re-election. Trump may have public approval of only 39 percent overall, but among Republicans the figure is 78 percent. And I don’t think those numbers will decrease.

The inability of the political establishment and the press to moderate or reform Trump’s egregious behavior is rooted in their loss of credibility. The press, along with political and intellectual elites, spent decades championing economic and political policies that solidified corporate power and betrayed and impoverished American workers. The hypocrisy and mendacity of the elites left them despised and distrusted by the victims of deindustrialization and austerity programs. The attempt to restore civility to public discourse and competency to political office is, therefore, fruitless. Liberal and establishment institutions, including the leadership of the two main political parties, academia and the press, squandered their moral authority. And the dogged refusal by the elites to address the engine of discontent—social inequality—ensures that they will remain ineffectual. They lay down the asphalt for the buffoonery of Trump and the coming tyranny.

Chris Hedges spent nearly two decades as a foreign correspondent in Central America, the Middle East, Africa and the Balkans.

13 August 2018

Source: https://www.transcend.org/tms/2018/08/the-useful-idiocy-of-donald-trump/