Archives: Articles

By Rima Najjar

Chris Hayes’ incredulous tweet on the killing of Palestinian paramedic Razan al-Najjar in Gaza is being echoed everywhere it seems on social media.Hayes hosts All In with Chris Hayes, a weekday news and opinion television show on MSNBC.

On June 7, 2018 he tweeted:

“The wording of that [Israel Defense Forces] IDF video is so bizarre. Hamas “incited” a woman to…provide medical care to the wounded? That’s incitement?”

I wish to God it were only the wording that is bizarre in this latest chapter of the Palestinians’ long-running tragedy since the ungodly arrival of the Zionist Jewish state of Israel among them.

To decry the killing of Razan al-Najjar on the basis that she was unarmed and did not pose a threat, as some are provoked to do by the IDF tripe at which Hayes marvels, plays right into Israel’s “narrative” of defense rather than the reality of the aggression it needs to continue to exist as the exclusionist colonial-apartheid polity it is.

It means you cannot state that an armed Palestinian resisting the IDF who is then killed by them is also an unjustified killing.

Apologists and propagandists who try to justifyRazan al-Najjar’s killing are the same as those who justify Israel’s violent existence as a Jewish state in Palestine against the will of its indigenous people.

Israel’s repression of Palestinians is never justified. To Israel, such repression is standard operating procedure — because we exist and because we are not Jews. The exact circumstances are irrelevant hogwash.

The fact is that the mere existence of Palestinians is a threat to Israel — a so-called demographic threat. By and large, Israel justifies any and all resistance to its settler-colonial presence in the Arab world by pointing to its security and the sanctity of its non-existent borders.

Our existential threat to them is their justification for killing us — i.e., we don’t need to be armed to be killed or shoved into prison or ethnically cleansed. All we have to do is exist and procreate in a spot needed to build housing for Israel’s Jewish population.

They can and have been justifying their unconscionable actions against us through denial and deflection, turning the tables on us and feigning empathy where necessary, as described in the Al-Jazeera video clip [2:33 minutes]:How Israeli Propaganda Works: The Luntz Document/ Al-Jazeera.

‘If you want to understand how the propaganda works you need to read the Luntz document — “The key, [Frank] Luntz says, is the claim that the fight is over ideology, not land. About terror [Islamist terror in the form of Hamas, Iran or Hezbollah], and not territory.”’

Israel never fails to crank up its PR Machine whenever it fails to work as it is meant to do:

Groping for a convenient solution to its public relations problems, the Israeli government has turned to hasbara. The literal meaning of this Hebrew word is “explanation,” but when put into practice, most informed observers recognize it as propaganda. The more the State of Israel relies on force to manage the occupation, the more it feels compelled to deploy hasbara. And the more Western media consumers encounter hasbara, the more likely they are to measure Israel’s grandiose talking points against the routine and petty violence, shocking acts of humiliation and repression that define its treatment of the Palestinians.

And it isn’t just the 1967 occupation that is the problem with Israel for Palestinians; it is the whole racist and cruel Zionist idea of a settler-colonial Jewish state in Palestine dominating the Arab world in general.

As Steven Salaita writes:

Many of the people who defend Israel are consciously racist (clearly), but others dehumanize Arabs and Muslims by reproducing unexamined assumptions about Israel’s moral or civilizational superiority.

Beyond racism (Arabophobia), lies and deflection, there is Israel’s classic justification for its very existence as a settler-colonial Zionist Jewish state in Palestine, namely the “liberation” of the Jewish people. This central Zionist fabrication has long gained Israel impunity on the Western international front:

Writing in The Electronic Intifada, Ilan Pappe says, in ‘Finding the truth amid Israel’s lies’:

… [Palestinian] children were considered as part of the enemy, who had to be cleansed for the sake of a Jewish state or as Carmel put it — a day after he finished his Galilee tour — for the sake of liberation.
[ Moshe Carmel is the author of Northern Campaigns — first published in 1949, in which he describes the events of the Nakba thus: “Great sadness and suffering flooded the roads — convoy upon convoy of refugees making their way [to the Lebanese border’]]
,… Revisiting them [such books as Carmel’s], 70 years on, reveals an elementary truth: it would have been possible to write the “new history” of 1948 [i.e., a history of ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, colonization and Jewish Zionist usurpation by European Jews] without a single new declassified document, but only if these open sources, as I call them, had been read with non-Zionist lenses.

The crimes perpetrated during the Nakba and Israel’s ongoing crimes today are callous and unconscionable and equally unbearable for us Palestinians. They are connected by a thread no hasbara in the world can break.

In the first instance (the Nakba), we have a violent ethnic cleansing perpetrated against a mostly agrarian population in Palestine, whose aftermath is still with us today in the shape of the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, six million Palestinian exiles and refugees and, of course an Apartheid, Zionist, Jewish state, armed to the teeth, including with nuclear weapons.

In the second instance (Israel’s ongoing crimes today), we have a beautiful young woman (21), a paramedic wearing a uniform that identified her as such, fatally shot while evacuating and tending to the wounded east of Khan Younes.

In describing her funeral, Haaretzrefers to Razan’s “hometown of Khuza’a” in the Gaza Strip, rather than her true hometown of Salama, five km east of Jaffa, now documented by Visualizing Palestine in their updated infographic “Short Walk Home, Long Walk to Freedom”.

If you deny Razan’s fundamental human right to return to her hometown and call her protest a “riot”, if you believe that the existence of a Jewish state in Palestine trumps all else, no matter the price Palestinians must pay in dispossession and exile, then, like US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman, you can justify all violence against Palestinians by pointing to Israel’s security and simply debating how much violence is “justified” when pushing protesting Palestinians back into their camps (over 70% of the Palestinian population in the Gaza Strip are refugees). If a little violence doesn’t work, then by all means, use deadly violence:

Friedman said experts had told him tear gas, water cannons and other nonlethal means of crowd dispersal would not have been effective during the weeks of riots… “If what happens isn’t right, what is right? What do you use instead of bullets?” he asked rhetorically.’

Standard practice is to lie glibly about the Great March of Return, as this Fox news outlet does:

The Gaza protests are being organized by the territory’s militant Hamas leadership and are aimed at drawing attention to the decade-long Israeli-Egyptian blockade on the territory. The protesters are also demanding the “right of return” for Palestinian refugees from the 1948 war and their descendants.

Note how the Palestinian inalienable and internationally recognized right of return is in quotation marks. Note that the blockade is mentioned with no reference to the horrible conditions it has engendered in the Gaza Strip. But most of all, note how “militant Hamas leadership” are said to have organized the protests, when it is, in fact,

a grassroots movement calling for the right of return of Palestinian refugees to their homes, as per UN Resolution 194, from which they were expelled in 1948 when the state of Israel was created.

As Toufic Haddad, activist, academic and author of Palestine Ltd: Neoliberalism and Nationalism in the Occupied Territory, says in an interview, Hamas’ decision to abstain from governance opened the path

for popular forces, and particularly a younger generation of activists, to take the initiative and see what could be done to change the situation.

The tragedy, as Shane Wesbrockcomments on a post by Steve Salaita on Facebook, is that subliminal hasbara “justification” of Razan’s and all IDF killing is pervasive even on entertainment media outlets in the U.S.:

I just finished reading about Razan al-Najjar last evening and decided to watch some Netflix to redirect. I open up the page and there is a big advertisement for a “Netflix Original” where the Israeli hero is hunting the evil Palestinian “terrorist.” Talk about superior narratives! Its bloody invasive, not to mention aptly timed.

Israel and its Western allies want the whole world to celebrate Israel’s achievements as they define them and to hide its devastating failures and its crimes against humanity [yes, Palestinians are human]. Their advocates get angry when they realize that Palestinians will not lie still under the Zionist yoke — not 70 years hence, not a million years hence.

Because the Zionist cause is unjust and racist, Israel and its spokespeople can “justify” only through lies and deflections.

Rima Najjar is a Palestinian whose father’s side of the family comes from the forcibly depopulated village of Lifta on the western outskirts of Jerusalem.

11 June 2018

Source: https://countercurrents.org/2018/06/11/israel-and-its-spokespeople-can-justify-only-through-lies-and-deflections/

By Peter Koenig

Background

The war of words has intensified between the U-S and G-7 allies after President Donald Trump retracted his endorsement of the communiqué of the once-united group.

The German chancellor called Trump’s abrupt revocation of support for a joint communiqué sobering and depressing. Angela Merkel however said that’s not the end. France also accused Trump of destroying trust and acting inconsistently. Trump pulled the U-S out of the group’s summit statement after Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced the imposition of retaliatory tariffs on the U-S. The White House said Canada risked making the U-S president look weak ahead of his summit with the North Korean leader. But, Canada’s Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland later reiterated that her country will retaliate against U-S tariffs in a measured and reciprocal way.

PressTV:

What do you make of Mr. Trump’s decision to renege on the G7’s final statement?

PK:

Trump pulling out from the final G7 statement is just show; the usual Trump show. He signed it, then he pulled out. We have seen it with the Iran Nuclear Deal, with the North Korea meeting, on and off, with the tariffs – first – about two months ago – the tariffs were on for Europe, Mexico and Canada, as well as China – then they were off for all of them – and now they are on again…

How serious can that be? – Trump just wants to make sure that he calls the shots. And he does. As everybody gets nervous and talks about retaliation – instead of practicing the “politics of silence” strategy.

In the case of Europe, the tariffs, or the equivalent of sanctions, as Mr. Putin recently so aptly put it, may well serve as a means of blackmailing Europe, for example, to disregard as Trump did, the Iran Nuclear Deal, “step out of it – and we will relieve you from the tariffs.”

In the case of Canada and Mexico, it’s to make sure Americans realize that he, Mr. Trump, wants to make America Great again and provide jobs for Americans. – These tariffs alone will not create one single job. But they create an illusion and that – he thinks – will help Republicans in the up-coming Mid-term Elections.

In China – tariffs are perhaps thought as punishment for President Xi’s advising President Kim Jong-Un ahead of the June 12 summit – and probably and more likely to discredit the Yuan as a world reserve currency, since the Chinese currency is gradually replacing the dollar in the world’s reserve coffers. But Trump knows that these tariffs are meaningless for China, as China has a huge trade surplus with the US – and an easy replacement market – like – all of Asia.

PressTV:

How could the silence strategy by the 6 G7-partners have any impact on Trump’s decision on tariffs?

PK:

Well, the G6 – they are already now considered the G6+1, since Trump at the very onset of the summit announced that he was considering pulling out of the G7. – So, the remaining 6 partners could get together alone and decide quietly what counter measures they want to take, then announce it in a joint communiqué to the media.

It does not have to be retaliation with reciprocal tariffs, it could for example be – pulling out of NATO – would they dare? – That would get the world’s attention. That might be a much smarter chess move than copying the draw of one peon with the draw of another one. Because we are actually talking here about a mega-geopolitical chess game.

What we are actually witnessing is a slow but rapidly increasing disintegration of the West.

Let’s not forget, the G7 is a self-appointed Group of the “so-called” world’s greatest powers. – How can that be when the only “eastern power”, Russia, and for that – much more powerful than, for example, Canada or Italy, has been excluded in 2014 from the then G8?

And when the world’s largest economic power – measured by the real economic indicator, namely purchasing power parity – China – has never been considered being part of the G-Group of the greatest?

It is obvious that this Group is not sustainable.

We have to see whatever Trump does, as the result of some invisible forces behind the scene that direct him. Trump is a convenient patsy for them, and he plays his role quite well. He confuses, creates chaos – and on top of it, he, so far single handedly wants to re-integrate Russia in the G-7 – i.e. the remaking of the G-8.
So far the G6’s are all against it. Oddly, because it’s precisely the European Union that is now seeking closer ties with Russia. – Maybe because they want to have Russia all for themselves?

If that is Trump’s strategy to pull Europe and Russia together, and thereby creating a chasm between Russia and China – then he may succeed. Because the final prize of this Trump-directed mega political chess game – is China.

Trump, or his handlers, know very well that they cannot conquer China as a close ally of Russia. So, the separation is one of the chess moves towards check-mate. But probably both Presidents Putin and Xi are well aware of it.

In fact, the SCO just finished their summit in China’s Qingdao on 9 June, about at the same time as the G7 in Canada’s Charlevoix, Quebec Province, and it was once more very clear that this alliance of the 8 SCO members is getting stronger – and Iran is going to be part of it. Therefore, a separation of Russia from the Association is virtually impossible. We are talking about half the world’s population and an economic strength of about one third of the world’s GDP, way exceeding the one of the G7 in terms of purchasing power.

This, I think is the Big Picture we have to see in these glorious G7 summits.

Peter Koenig is an economist and geopolitical analyst.

11 June 2018

Source: https://countercurrents.org/2018/06/11/g7-vs-g61-the-war-of-words/

By Peter Koenig

Background
Brussels, June 6, 2018 (AFP)
The EU on Wednesday said a raft of retaliatory tariffs, including on whiskey and motorcycles, against painful metals duties imposed by the US would be ready as early as July.

The European Commission, which handles trade matters for the 28-country bloc, “expects to conclude the relevant procedure in coordination with member states before the end of June,” said European Commission Vice-President MarosSefcovic at a news briefing.

This would allow “that the new duties start applying in July,” he added.

“It is a measured and proportionate response to the unilateral and illegal decision taken by the US to impose tariffs on the European steel and aluminum exports which we regret,” said the former Slovak prime minister.

From blue jeans to motorbikes and whiskey, the EU’s hit-list of products targeted for tariffs with the US reads like a catalogue of emblematic American exports.

The European Union originally drew up the list in March but pledged not activate it unless US President Donald Trump followed through on his threat to impose 25 percent tariffs on steel imports and 10 percent on aluminum.

The Trump tariffs came into effect on June 1 and the EU now joins Mexico and Canada and other close allies that have announced their own wave of counter-duties against Washington.

The EU commission must now take their proposal to be signed off by the bloc’s member states amid divisions over what path to take against Trump’s unpredictable policies.

France and the Netherlands back a tough line against the US, while export powerhouse Germany has urged caution towards Trump’s “America First” policies.

PressTV
How do you think this will affect the US? Wouldn’t it create more unemployment in America?

Peter Koenig
First, I think we have to distinguish between the various trade blocks and trade wars, like China, Russia, the NAFTA partner countries, Mexico and Canada – and the European Union – the EU. They are all different in as much as they have different motives.

Second, there is much more behind the so-called trade wars than trade. Much of this trade war is propaganda, big style, for public consumption and public debate, where as in reality there are other negotiations going on behind closed doors.

And thirdly, there are mid-term elections coming up in the US this fall, and Trump must satisfy his home base, all the workers to whom he promised “Let’s Make America Great Again” – meaning bring back jobs, use US-made metals. So, Trump is also addressing those Americans who wait for jobs.As you know the unofficial but real figure of unemployment in the US is about 22% – and that does not even include the large segment of underemployed people, mostly youth.

I think we have to see the Big Picture here. And Trump, or rather those who give him orders, may not see all the risks that this complex multi-polar tariff war implies.

But for now, let’s stick to Europe.
It is very well possible that the EU will also impose import duties on US goods. But if it stays at that, it is very likely that this so-called trade war with the US is pushing Europe even faster than is already happening towards the East, the natural trading partners – Russia and China. As I said, its already happening.

But the Big Picture, in the case of Europe, I believe is IRAN. With tariffs on steel and aluminum – quite sizable tariffs, European producers of these metals, the second largest after China, would hurt. There may not be an immediate replacement market for America.

So, Trump may want to blackmail Europe into accepting his new sanctions on Iran. In other words, “either tariffs or you follow my dictate – abandon the Nuclear Deal and impose sanctions”.

Frankly, I doubt very much that this will work, since EU corporations have already signed billions worth of contracts with Iran. On the other hand, Germany in particular, is keen in renewing political as well as trade relations with Russia.

And the recent remark of the new US Ambassador to Germany, Richard Grenell, that he will support conservative right-wing movements in Germany and in Europe – did certainly not go down well in Germany, with already a Parliamentary movement to expulse him – which certainly doesn’t help US-German relations.

As we speak, most likely this type of “blackmail” negotiations, “either tariffs or you go with us against Iran”, are going on with the EU behind closed doors.

Of course, nobody knows the outcome.
Trump is like a straw in the wind, bending to whatever seems to suit him best at the moment.

Remember, a couple of months ago he already imposed tariffs on Europe, along with everybody else, on steel and aluminum, then he lifted them again – and now we are on again. It’s like with most everything he does. It’s probably his business negotiation strategy.

But, this would just confirm, that this trade war is much more than meets the eye, more than a trade war – it’s about geopolitics – like “show me your card – which camp are you in?”

Trump and those who manage him may still be under the illusion of the last 70 years, that the whole world, especially Europeans, have to bend over backwards to please the US of A, because they saved Europe – and the world – from the Nazi evil.

Not only is it time to stop the vassalage and become autonomous again, but also, many European start understanding that whom they really have to thank for liberating them from the Nazis – is Russia.

Peter Koenig is an economist and geopolitical analyst.

7 June 2018

Source: https://countercurrents.org/2018/06/07/us-trade-war-with-the-european-union/

By Farooque Chowdhury

Putin’s latest assertion signals that the world imperialism is going to face tough days in future.

Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, said: “Either Russia is a sovereign country, or there is no Russia.”

The world imperialism is not habituated to listen to such assertions. It’s also a tough message to hirelings of the world imperialism. The masters and their lackeys have to review self-positions, both strategic and tactical, in light of Putin’s latest assertion: Not at the cost of sovereignty.

Putin was speaking to Chinese TV prior to his China visit. His statements, observations and claims are worth-reading.

The Russian president said: “And, of course, the Russian people will always opt for [a sovereign Russia]. I think the Chinese people will too. We have no other option.”

The statement shows the compulsion the world imperialism has created for Russia, for China, and for countries facing imperialist “friendship” – “sermons”, demands, pressures, interferences, intervention, conspiracies. Thence, these countries “have no other option” other than asserting sovereignty.

This signifies intensified contradiction within countries, and between countries as the world imperialism will not accept assertion of sovereignty by countries, which will lead imperialism to organize/renew/intensify conspiracy, subversion, interference and intervention. The world imperialism is going to boost up its old hirelings, hire new lackeys, engage them, and create subversion, social disturbance, “civil” disobedience, political turmoil, internal strife.

Referring to sanctions, Putin said: However harsh they may be, will not force Russia to abandon its independent stance in the world, Russians will never accept trade-offs at the expense of sovereignty.

Putin specifically mentioned the world imperialism’s target: The Russian economy. He added an extra note: The sanctions will eventually backfire on those who followed the US’ lead in “punishing” Russia.

Now, it’s the countries following their masters’ lead to consider whether to take into account assurances from their masters or to heed to Putin. It’s not in terms of pronouncements, but in terms of economic measures – trade, etc., and tradeoff.

To countries in Europe that depend on Russia to many extents including gas from the rising power, the question of being a follower of the world imperialism or not bears one type of action and consequence. To peripheral countries facing imperialist mastery, the question bears another type of measures.

To the first group, there’s question of collaboration/amalgamation of capitals. There are collusion, cooption, or, competition. There is collusion in one area while competition in another. Now-a-days, it’s an intricate arithmetic, or an amalgamation of arithmetic, algebra and geometry.

To the peripheral group, the question is different. It’s different from two aspects: from the aspect of ruling elites, and from the aspect of people. And, the two bear different meanings. In this case, the mathematics turns more intricate as opposing interests – of the ruling elites’ and of the people – are to operate within a reality of competing capitals trying to strengthen/establish respective grip. At the same time, for both the opposing interests, there’s a common ground – a space to maneuver. Then, the question comes: Which capital is the biggest/direst threat? None will differ: It’s the dominating imperialist camp.

The US-led sanctions against Russia hurt a number of economies in Europe. A number of European state leaders including Austrian vice-chancellor Heinz-Christian Strache have expressed opinion not favoring the sanctions. The new government in Italy also bears similar position.

The EU is not happy with its US friends on the issue of US-introduced import tariffs on steel and aluminum – a gift from a friend. It’s the imperialist system’s one of the inherent problems – components’ interests very often move in incoherent way. It also creates scope for peripheral economies.

The Putin-assertion case turns difficult for the world imperialist order as the Russian leader is close to the Chinese leader Xi Jinping.

Putin has described Xi Jinping as a “reliable partner and good friend”.

Their friendship is so strong that once they celebrated Putin’s birthday together: “Chairman Xi Jinping is the only one among all the world leaders, to have celebrated my birthday with me,” Putin said, referring to his 61st birthday, which he marked at the 2013-Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting in Bali.

Putin termed Xi Jinping as “very accessible”, “very sincere”, “very reliable”, “good friend”, “good analyst”, “it is interesting to discuss outstanding international issues, economy problems with him”, “we always strive to fulfill our obligations”.

This expression of friendship carries strong signal for all: enemy and ally. China is to be counted. It’ll be foolish to ignore China. And, it’ll be foolish to ignore the Putin-Xi friendship.

Putin informed: China is and will continue to be Russia’s number one foreign trade partner.

China is Russia’s largest trading partner. Trade between the two countries grew last year, according to Putin, to $87 billion, and the first four months of 2018 its growth “equaled the figure for the whole of last year.” It’s already a 30 percent increase. In 2016, the trade turnover between the two countries was $69.52 billion. Putin expressed the desire to accelerate it further.

There is possibility of alliance between China-led One Belt, One Road and Russia-led the Eurasian Economic Union.

The two countries are bypassing dollar and other western currencies, and trying to make settlements in ruble and yuan. In 2017, nine percent of payments for supplies from Russia to China were made in rubles, and Russian companies paid 15 percent of Chinese imports in the renminbi.

The two close strategic partners are coordinating their moves on regional and global issues, helping safeguard each other’s national interests, and supporting each other in taking up larger roles on the world stage.

General Wei Fenghe, China’s defense minister, said at the recently concluded Moscow International Security Conference:

“I am visiting Russia […] to show the world a high level of development of our bilateral relations and firm determination of our Armed Forces to strengthen strategic cooperation.”

The Chinese military leader added: The visit is “to show Americans the close ties between the Armed Forces of China and Russia, especially in this situation. We’ve come to support you.

“The Chinese side is ready to express with the Russian side our common concerns and common position on important international problems at international venues as well.

Wei said: The strengthened military cooperation between the two is important for international peace and security.

Reciprocating similar attitude General Sergei Shoigu, Russian defense minister, said: “The efforts of the leadership of the both countries […] today has reached principally new unprecedented level, and have become a critical factor in keeping peace and international security.”

The message is explicit. And, the message is for all. It’s for those facing imperialist disturbance and threat, and for those searching for sources of benefit from their imperialist masters. The message is also for the greatest imperialist power: The days of unilateral dominance is going to be over.

Dmitri Trenin, director, Carnegie Moscow Center, writes in his Should Fear Russia We? (November 2016):

“[M]ore of Russia’s natural and military-technological resources would be made available to China. […I]n the larger scheme of things concerning the world order, Beijing and Moscow will be on the same side.”

The scholar adds:

“The Greater Eurasia that they are constructing will not be run from a single center, but their continental entente will essentially be aimed at limiting US dominance on the edges of the continent and in the world at large.”

Coming days will hear more tough words, which will signal more complicated moves on the world stage.

Farooque Chowdhury writes from Dhaka.

7 June 2018

Source: https://countercurrents.org/2018/06/07/putin-asserts-world-imperialism-faces-difficult-times/

By Seyed Hossein Mousavian

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo laid out a list of demands on Iran in a speech threatening to “crush” the country on Monday. His bellicose words come weeks after President Donald Trump pulled the United States out of the Iran nuclear deal and are nothing short of an ultimatum demanding Iran’s total surrender to U.S. wishes.

“Sanctions are going back in full effect, and new ones are coming,” Pompeo declared, “The Iranian regime should know this is just the beginning.”

Pompeo’s twelve demands reflect a misunderstanding of Iranian foreign policy, international law, and the realities of the region.

The 12 Demands—Rebutted

First, Pompeo contended that Iran must “declare to the IAEA a full account of the prior military dimensions of its nuclear program.” However, as part of the nuclear deal (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action or JCPOA), the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) resolved the issue of “possible military dimensions” to Iran’s nuclear program after years of investigation, including visits to military sites. In December 2015, the agency issued its “final assessment on past and present outstanding issues regarding Iran’s nuclear program.”

Second, Pompeo called on Iran to “stop uranium enrichment and never pursue plutonium reprocessing,” including “closing its heavy water reactor.” Such a demand is in direct contravention to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which allows signatories to develop the nuclear fuel cycle for civilian purposes, including enrichment.

As an NPT member, Iran has developed a uranium enrichment program, as have other states such as Brazil, Argentina, and Japan. Iran’s enrichment program was also recognized by UN resolution 2231, which endorsed the JCPOA.

Third, Pompeo stated that “Iran must also provide the IAEA with unqualified access to all sites throughout the country.” With the JCPOA, Iran has already accepted the highest standards on nuclear transparency in the history of nonproliferation. This includes accepting the safeguards agreement, additional protocol, and subsidiary arrangement 3.1.

Fourth, Pompeo said that Iran “must end its proliferation of ballistic missiles and halt further development of nuclear-capable missiles.” As arms control experts at organizations such as the International Institute for Strategic Studies have explained, none of Iran’s modern missiles is designed to be “nuclear capable.” Importantly, the context of Iran’s missile program is its falling victim to Iraqi missiles during the eight-year Iran-Iraq War, when Iran did not have the means to deter Iraq. Indeed, no nation in recent history has fallen victim to missile attacks as thoroughly as Iran has. Furthermore, ballistic missiles are a conventional armament that Iran has a strategic need to develop, especially to balance the threat posed by Israel’s nuclear-tipped missiles and Saudi Arabia’s long-range Dong Feng-3 missiles and, moreover, as a deterrence to possible U.S. attack.

Fifth, Pompeo called on Iran to “release all U.S. citizens … detained on spurious charges or missing in Iran.” In this regard, Pompeo should respect that Iran is a sovereign country, just like the United States. His demand is just as illegitimate as if Iran asked the United States to release all Iranian prisoners held in U.S. jails.

Sixth, Pompeo said that Iran “must end support to Middle East terrorist groups, including Lebanese Hizballah, Hamas, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad” even though these organizations represent major constituencies with legitimate grievances. In the case of Hamas and Hezbollah, they both have participated in and won in elections, with the later most recently making gains in Lebanon’s parliamentary elections.

Of course, Trump himself recently quipped that U.S. regional allies such as the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar fund terrorism, adding that “we’re stopping it.” In June 2017, former Qatari Prime Minister al-Thani also acknowledged that Qatar, along with the United States and other regional countries, made “mistakes” in “supporting the same groups” in Syria, among which were “extremists.”

Seventh, Pompeo stated that “Iran must respect the sovereignty of the Iraqi government and permit the disarming, demobilization, and reintegration of Shia militias.” This demand is ironic given that the United States currently has thousands of troops in Iraq, and a coalition headed by Hadi al-Ameri, a popular militia commander, came in secondplace in Iraq’s parliamentary elections. Senior Iraqi officials have recognized that without Iranian support, the Islamic State (ISIS or IS) “would be standing on the doorsteps of Baghdad.”

By positioning himself against the Popular Mobilization Units (PMUs), which are not monolithically Shia and were created after a fatwa by Iraq’s Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani after IS overran large parts of the country in 2014, Pompeo has aligned the United States against the Iraqi people, not Iran.

Eighth, Pompeo asserted that Iran must “end its military support for the Houthi militia and work towards a peaceful political settlement in Yemen.” From the beginning of the Saudi-led coalition assault on Yemen in 2015, which the United Nations says has createdthe “world’s worst humanitarian crisis,” Iran has called for a political solution to the conflict. In April 2015, Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif issued a four-point plan that outlined a negotiated settlement to the conflict.

Ninth, Pompeo stated that “Iran must withdraw all forces under Iranian command from Syria.” Iranian forces, just like Russian forces, are in Syria at the invitation of the legal Syrian government to combat armed rebel groups. Only the Syrian government can ask for their withdrawal. On the other hand, U.S. forces are in Syria illegally under international law, and Pompeo’s demand further infringes on Syria’s right to fight terrorist groups and to defend its sovereignty.

Tenth, Pompeo said that “Iran must end support for the Taliban and other terrorists in Afghanistan and the region, and cease harboring Al Qaeda.” To accuse Iran of supporting groups such as the Taliban and al-Qaeda is baseless, given that Iran has actively fought the ardently anti-Iranian groups, both of which were for years the main proxies for U.S. allies such as Saudi Arabia in Afghanistan. Both were also a direct outcrop of U.S.-backed forces in Afghanistan in the 1980s, which former Secretary of States Hillary Clinton recognized in 2011, stating: “The people we are fighting today we funded 20 years ago.”

Eleventh, Pompeo stated that Iran “must end the IRGC Quds Forces’ support for terrorists and militant partners.” The Quds Force’s mandate is the same as U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) in the region. The difference is that Iran is in the region and has core national security interests to protect its borders and territorial integrity, while CENTCOM is operating thousands of miles away from American borders.

Twelfth, Pompeo said that Iran must “cease its threatening behavior against its neighbors.” He left out more than a little bit of history, such as how Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, an Arab country, invaded Iran in 1980 and received full support from the United States and most Arab states, including Saudi Arabia. The conflict cost hundreds of thousands of Iranian deaths and injuries. The reality is that the United States attacked Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya—sowing widespread instability and turmoil in the region.

What Pompeo Really Wants

Pompeo’s list of demands simply recycles many of the same coercive policies and statements made by past U.S. administrations. This U.S. approach has already proved to be counterproductive and self-defeating for U.S. interests and regional stability.

Despite Pompeo’s faux call for diplomacy, his speech amounted to an official declaration of a regime-change policy against Iran. His untenable demands eliminate the prospects for U.S.-Iran diplomacy and set the two countries up for a dangerous escalation cycle that may lead to a catastrophic war.

What the world needs is genuine diplomacy. Since the Iranian nuclear crisis was the only regional crisis resolved through diplomacy, this model needs to be used to diplomatically resolve other regional crises.

Seyed Hossein Mousavian is a Middle East security and nuclear policy specialist at Princeton University, former spokesperson for Iran in its international nuclear negotiations, and author of “Iran and the United States: An Insider’s View on the Failed Past and the Road to Peace.” @HMousavian

22 May 2018

By Matt Taibbi

31 May 2018 – Late in his new memoir, Reporter, muckraking legend Seymour Hersh recounts an episode from a story he wrote for the New Yorker in 1999, about the Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard.

Bill Clinton was believed to be preparing a pardon for Pollard. This infuriated the rank and file of the intelligence community, who now wanted the press to know just what Pollard had stolen and why letting him free would be, in their eyes, an outrage.

“Soon after I began asking questions,” Hersh writes, “I was invited by a senior intelligence official to come have a chat at CIA headquarters. I had done interviews there before, but always at my insistence.”

He went to the CIA meeting. There, officials dumped a treasure trove of intelligence on his desk and explained that this material – much of which had to do with how we collected information about the Soviets – had been sold by Pollard to Israel.

On its face, the story was sensational. But Hersh was uncomfortable. “I was very ambivalent about being in the unfamiliar position of carrying water for the American intelligence community,” he wrote. “I, who had worked so hard in my career to learn the secrets, had been handed the secrets.”

This offhand line explains a lot about what has made Hersh completely embody what it means to be a reporter. The great test is being able to get information powerful people don’t want you to have. A journalist who is handed something, even a very sensational something, should feel nervous, sick, ambivalent. Hersh never stopped feeling that way, remaining an iconoclast and a thorn in the side of officialdom to this day.

Hersh became famous in the late-’60s and early-’70s, at a time when the country was experiencing violent domestic upheaval and investigative reporters were for the first time celebrated like rock stars.

Hersh was best known back then for his reporting on American atrocities in Vietnam, in particular the massacre of hundreds of unarmed Vietnamese in the village of My Lai. The story did a great deal to puncture the myth of American beneficence in Southeast Asia.

A significant theme of Hersh’s work is that Americans are human beings, not immune from the horrific temptations of power that throughout history have afflicted and shamed those who have dominion over others.

For this, he has often been denounced as a traitor. In advance of a speech at Tulane in the wake of My Lai, for instance, the Times-Picayune called him a “communist sympathizer” and ran an editorial literally bordered in red protesting his appearance (de-platforming was a thing even then).

Being “more than a little pissed off at the cheap shot” (an unerring sense of pissed-off-edness is another of Hersh’s gifts), he gave the speech at Tulane and decided to improvise “with a purpose in mind.”

The room was full of Vietnam vets. Hersh asked if anyone in the audience had been a helicopter pilot in a certain Vietnamese province in 1968 or 1969. A man came onstage. Once Hersh reassured him that he had no interest in his name, he asked the soldier what chopper pilots sometimes did to “cope with the rage.”

The soldier, while claiming he didn’t do it personally, said he knew what Hersh was talking about. The practice involved spotting a civilian farmer on the way back after a mission, flying low and attempting to decapitate the fleeing figure with rotor blades. The crews would have to land short of the base to “wash the blood off the rotors.”

“I did not like what I did to the vet, who was stunningly honest,” he writes, “but I wanted to get back, in some way, at the Times-Picayune.”

Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein of the Washington Post will be remembered by history as the “whiz kids” who cracked Watergate, but Hersh also wrote 40 front-page articles on the affair for the Times in the space of months. Many of those pieces “[moved] the needle closer to the president,” as he puts it here.

Hersh and Woodward in particular will likely forever be linked in a Magic-Bird sort of way. The two reporters continued after the Vietnam and Watergate years to crank out heavy tomes full of secrets about everyone from Henry Kissinger (in Hersh’s case) to CIA chief Bill Casey (in Woodward’s), solidifying reputations as the country’s top investigative reporters.

But Hersh and Woodward represented two starkly different approaches to the job. Woodward is the quintessential access journalist, able to write books like Bush at War that seem to place the reader practically inside the Oval Office during crucial moments in history.

But Woodward’s information often came from the very celebrity politicians who were chief characters in these books. Piecing together these insider versions of history, probably recounted over expensive lunches off the Mall, was a more institutionalized version of “being handed the secrets.”

Hersh, on the other hand, has had success mining the middle and lower ranks of agencies. He constantly keeps an eye out for sources among the lesser-known (but still powerful) officials who are leaving the game. Many of these techniques are detailed in Reporter.

“One of my quirks,” he writes, “has been to keep track of the retirement of senior generals and admirals; those who did not get to the top invariably had a story to tell in explaining why.”

He even watches for obituaries, which often let slip surprising information about the pasts of, say, deceased CIA operatives. And he will call wives or relatives and search for information that way.

Hersh, in other words, works from the edges inward, developing a grapevine of faceless sources that in turn generate rumors and stories of things he isn’t supposed to know – a secret program to recover a sunken Russian submarine, an incident of soldiers using fire ants to torture a terror suspect – anything.

These techniques were very much on display during the post-9/11 years. Hersh put out a spate of some of the most impactful reporting on the War on Terror, lifting a lid on some of America’s most barbaric practices. The Abu Ghraib stories were the best known, and the inside tale of how those came to light is told here.

Hersh learned a great deal from a three-day visit in Damascus with an Iraqi general who’d “retired” after the Iraq army was banned. The general was making a living selling vegetables from his garden when he decided to reach out to old U.N. contacts about troubling things he’d seen and heard about. This ex-general ended up in touch with Hersh and told many “sad tales, mostly secondhand, of the horrors of the American occupation.”

He described American soldiers raiding houses and robbing the inhabitants (many Iraqis kept their savings in dollars). He described tales of arrestees who were set free for a kickback. And he told of a regime of abuse in American detention centers so horrific that men would “write to their fathers and brothers and beg them to come kill them in jail.”

Much of this couldn’t be confirmed easily, but the tales squared with reports from human rights groups. Besides, Hersh writes, “his account also smelled right” (having a sense of who is and is not lying is a key skill, often the difference between giving up and continuing to dig). Hersh kept at it and uncovered a key internal report about the abuse, and his New Yorker story was an international sensation that changed the course of another war.

An interesting side-note is that Hersh was instrumental in getting the story out before his own story ran. He knew that 60 Minutes had photos of the Abu Ghraib abuse and was “skittish” about publishing them “after being urged by the Bush administration not to do so.” Hersh, in his inimitable pain-in-the-ass way, called a CBS producer on the story and essentially told her that if CBS didn’t run the story soon, “I would have no choice but to write about the network’s continuing censorship in the New Yorker.”

The photos aired in the next 60 Minutes broadcast, and Dan Rather – who, Hersh knew, had been fighting to get the story out – made a point to say on air that CBS only published when they learned other media had the story.

“It wasn’t hard to guess that he had been ordered to make such an asinine excuse for an important news story,” Hersh writes.

Hersh was also among the first to describe a burgeoning American assassination program that to this day is poorly understood.

Within weeks of 9/11, for instance, Hersh quoted a “C.I.A. man” claiming the U.S. needed to “defy the American rule of law… We need to do this – knock them down one by one.” He later reported on the existence of a “target list” and cited an order comparing the new tactics to El Salvadoran execution squads, reporting that much of this was going on without Congress being told.

Despite his reputation for irascibility and for troubled relationships with editors, it shines through in the book that he always felt tremendous loyalty to people like Abe Rosenthal of the Times and David Remnick of the New Yorker, and to the great organizations they represented.

But, as Hersh puts it in the end, “Investigative reporters wear out their welcome… Editors get tired of difficult stories and difficult reporters.”

At the end of Reporter, he recounts his falling out with the New Yorker. Hersh says he became concerned when he heard Remnick was planning on writing a biography of new president Barack Obama.

Earlier in his career, Hersh himself had actually worked for the campaign of antiwar Democrat Eugene McCarthy. And he himself liked candidate Obama. But this was a church-and-state issue. He had a thing about wearing two hats at once.

Regarding Remnick’s relationship to Obama, he writes:

“I had learned over the years never to trust the declared aspirations of any politician, and was also enough of a prude to believe that editors should not make friends with a sitting president.”

Ultimately, Hersh and the New Yorker fell out over the story of the assassination of Osama bin Laden. The magazine – with the input of then-Obama counter-terrorism adviser John Brennan – ended up running the “inside” account of the operation much as the Obama administration has always told it.

Hersh, meanwhile, had sources indicating a very different version of bin Laden’s end, one in which the U.S. killed bin Laden with the assent of the Pakistani intelligence agency ISI, which had had him in captivity for years.

In the end, Hersh was forced to publish his account in the London Review of Books, which is where he’s been publishing on and off ever since.

The journalism business is undergoing radical changes. Media figures are more famous than ever before, but those with the biggest profiles tend to be associated with one particular political demographic.

The job in many quarters has devolved into feeding captive audiences a steady stream of revelations framed to fit their preconceived ideas about the world, in order to keep them coming back. From Fox to MSNBC, the slant of programming has become more predictable, because audiences hate surprises and dislike being challenged.

As Hersh puts it, in such an environment, one of the first casualties is investigative reporting, “with its high cost, unpredictable result, and its capacity for angering readers…”

Hersh’s career is a tribute to the pursuit of the “unpredictable result.” We used to value reporters who were willing to alienate editors and readers alike, if that’s the way the truth cut. Now, as often as not, we just change the channel. This has been bad for both reporters and readers, who are losing the will to seek out and face the unpredictable truth.

When it comes time for the next generation of journalists to re-discover what this job is supposed to be about, they can at least read Reporter. It’s all in here.

Matt Taibbi is a contributing editor for Rolling Stone.

4 June 2018

Source: https://www.transcend.org/tms/2018/06/seymour-hershs-memoir-is-full-of-useful-reporting-secrets/

By Richard Falk

1 Jun2018 – Ten days ago, while attending the opening ceremony of a conference in Vienna commemorating the 25thanniversary of the Vienna Declaration ofHuman Rights, I was struck by the simple words and sad demeanor of Nadia Murad, a Yazidi survivor of ISIS captivity featuring sexual slavery and institutionalized rape. [For an illuminating commentary on the Yazidi ordeal see Cathy Otten, “Slaves of Isis: the long walk of the Yazidi women,” The Guardian, 25 July 2017]

Nadia Murad’s words contained a single message: “Sympathy is not enough. Sympathy does not create change. We need action.” Her manner as a speaker was exceptionally calm, her intonation almost without inflection. Her words were enveloped in an aura of resignation and despair, but her talk avoided the shocking details of her experience, the details where horror resides. I grasped her words as they were being spoken as the gentlest of indictments. Her meaning came across. Empathy although welcome, does not save lives. Sympathy does not stop crimes against humanity. Action might. Action could be relevant. Action was not forthcoming when needed by the Yazidi communities in northern Iraq.

Her words were a muted cry for help, but after the fact. It is true that understanding must precede action, but most of us are content to brood over the human condition that let’s such brutality pass almost unnoticed. Despite the War on Terror the Yazidis were compelled to depend on their own meager resistance capabilities to survive to tell their latest story of abuse, and survival.

The Yazidis are an old syncretist religion that draws inspiration from Christianity via baptism, Islam via circumcision, and Zoroastrianism via fire. The religion is not theological. Its main practices consist of visiting sacred places and telling stories of their endurance and affliction. The ethnicity of Yazidis is primarily Kurdish, and they accept neither converts nor dilution of Yazidi identity (if a Yazidi marries outside the religion, it is assumed she or h has converted). The Yazidis were often persecuted by the Ottoman Empire as an infidel sect, somewhat similar to the perception of Bahi’as by Iran after 1979. The Yazidis number less than one million, many fleeing to Europe and elsewhere after the ISIS takeover of their region. The long history of the Yazidi people is one of struggle, persecution, and persistence of which this latest phase is perhaps the most excruciating.

Listening to the soft-spoken Arabic words of Nadia Murat I could not refrain from thinking of Palestinian suffering. Sympathy for Palestinians is widespread these days in response to the Jerusalem embassy move by the United States and IDF massacre of unarmed Palestinian demonstrators at the Gaza fence, yet still far less intense than Palestinian prolonged suffering and subjugation deserves. Action on their behalf remains anemic, and is subject to social, and even legal, pushback, even punishment. Israel shirks   responsibility. Israeli leaders offer allegations and inducements intended to distract onlookers, and heaps denunciation on those who do choose to act, however mildly.

Nadia Murad’s words were best heard as a non-accusatory lament, although inevitably also a commentary on the human condition: So long as evil is bold and good is pacified by its benign intentions, genocides will continue to happen. The Genocide Convention is there waiting to be implemented in more than a dozen places, but who among the movers and shakers of this world cares enough to lift a finger?

I believe that is what Nadia Murad’s brave witnessing was trying to teach us during her brief remarks in Vienna.

Richard Falk is a member of the TRANSCEND Network, an international relations scholar, professor emeritus of international law at Princeton University, author, co-author or editor of 40 books, and a speaker and activist on world affairs.

4 June 2018

Source: https://www.transcend.org/tms/2018/06/sympathy-is-not-enough/

By Orly Noy

The 21-year-old paramedic was shot and killed by Israeli soldiers while trying to aid wounded protesters near the Gaza-Israel separation fence. Many Israelis either refuse to believe she was actually killed or claim that her killing was somehow justified.

Around two weeks ago, a Facebook friend of mine proposed an experiment to a small group of us. Social media has become a boxing ring, she said. The two sides, left and right, dig into their positions and slug it out in the comments — and that’s if they don’t just “block” each other. My friend suggested that for a month, we try to engage in a productive dialogue with right-wingers on Facebook, even with the most combative of commenters. After all, our aim is to change what and how people think, and to do that, we need to speak to other side. Let’s try it, I said, if only for a month — to see what happens.

For the past two days, I’ve been thinking about Razan al-Najjar, the 21-year-old paramedic shot and killed by Israeli soldiers Friday near the Gaza-Israel separation fence. According to witnesses, she was wearing her white paramedic’s uniform, attempting to treat protesters near the fence when she was shot. Immediately following Razan’s death, her picture appeared everywhere on my Facebook newsfeed. I, too, shared a post with her picture.

The angry responses came quickly.

Here was an opportunity to try out the dialogue experiment my friend had suggested, I thought. Maybe because Razan in her white uniform was so different from the image of the terrorist that the Israeli collective imagination assigned the protesters in Gaza, I hoped there would be an opening for compassion, for second thoughts, for a discourse free from blind hatred.

I was wrong.

Instead, the following responses came pouring in:

“What was she doing there in the first place? “Why didn’t she wait for the wounded in the hospital?” “You really think our soldiers kill protesters on purpose?” “That’s how it is in war.” “Hamas makes them to go to these protests.”

I tried to respond with calm, level-headed answers.

She didn’t wait for the wounded at the hospital because the Israeli army’s massive use of live fire made it necessary for first responders to be in the field — just like Israeli medics would at a mass casualty event.

And no, this is not “how it is in war.” Firstly, this is not a war. This is heavily armed soldiers facing down unarmed protesters. Secondly, even in war there are rules, and sniper fire against medics, journalists and children is a war crime. Hamas did not force her to be there, either; numerous interviews with Razan were published in recent weeks in which she explains why she volunteered as a medic during the protests.

Then the more violent responses came, in public and in private messages — bizarre death threats, a lot of toxic invective. What kind of a dialogue is possible when faced with that?

Someone asked,

“How do you know this is true, were you there?”

He added a picture from 2001 suicide bombing of the Dolphinarium, a beach-front nightclub in Tel Aviv, to prove some inexplicable point. Another commenter responded,

“How do you know there was an attack on the Dolphinarium, were you there?”

Another yet claimed that the entire story of Razan was fabricated, that they put a paramedic’s uniform on her body only after she died. No amount of photos showing Najjar treating wounded protesters over the past month could convince him. Palestinians, to him, are liars by definition.

Taken together, the responses reflected the depressing fact that for most of the Israeli public, Palestinians killed by Israeli soldiers are guilty by default. The identity of the deceased or the circumstances of the killing are irrelevant. Many of the commenters who responded to my post made the effort to stress that they were were not right-wingers. One even identified as a supporter of Meretz, the dovish left-wing party.

I gave up on the conversation because it was too frustrating and instead continued to look for interviews conducted with Razan. There are quite a few online. The young medic, it seems, was of significant interest to numerous international media outlets. In one of the interviews, Razan says:

People ask my father what I’m doing here, and getting a salary. He tells them, ‘I’m proud of my daughter, she provides care to the children of our country.’ And because in our society, women are often judged, but society has to accept us . If people don’t want to accept us by choice, they will be forced to accept us. Because we have more strength than any man. The strength that I showed as a first-responder on the first day of the protests — I dare you to find it in anyone else.

After that, I watched a short video of young men and women, perhaps Razan’s friends, perhaps her family members, in tears, their piercing cries announcing her death. One of them held his head and shouted her name over and over again.

I then returned to the comments that had accumulated under the picture of the young woman who went to care for wounded protesters and came back in a shroud. My heart struggled to contain the sadness.

I apologize to my well-intentioned friend. The bitter truth is that the Israeli collective consciousness is light-years away from a place where it can even begin speak about the basic concepts of justice, human rights, and human equality before God. I doubt that years of occupation and moral corruption can be corrected.

I also apologize to Razan, the young Gazan woman who lived her whole life under occupation, more than half under the brutal siege. She did not taste a single day of freedom in her short life. She went out into the Valley of Death by the separation barrier to care for her wounded countrymen and never came back. With shame beyond words, I apologize. Rest in peace Razan, may your memory bring freedom and justice to your people.

Orly Noy is a political activist who has worked in the past through frameworks like the Women’s Coalition for Peace and the Mizrahi Democratic Rainbow.

3 June 2018

By William Whiteman

The student-led anti-government movement in Nicaragua is unlike other recent attacks on the Latin American socialist bloc; it emanates mainly from the left of the political spectrum. But that doesn’t mean the US isn’t behind it.

The so-called marea rosa, or ‘pink tide’, of allied leftist governments which held sway across Latin America in previous years is being rolled back. Brazil’s Dilma Rousseff was removed from power in a right-wing coup, co-conspirators of which have now managed to imprison the current presidential frontrunner, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. Ecuador’s Lenin Moreno has stabbed his former leader Rafael Correa in the back by barring him from seeking re-election, while seemingly purging his cabinet of remaining Correa loyalists and beginning the process of allowing the US military back into the country. Alongside other democratic and not-so-democratic removals of leftist governments from power, NATO has nabbed itself a foothold in the region, now that Colombia has joined the obsolete yet aggressively expanding Cold War alliance, in a thinly veiled threat to neighboring Venezuela.

And now it’s Nicaragua’s turn under the boot. Again. The student-led anti-government movement in Nicaragua is unlike other recent attacks on the Latin American socialist bloc; it emanates mainly from the left of the political spectrum. But that doesn’t mean the US isn’t behind it.

The so-called marea rosa, or ‘pink tide’, of allied leftist governments which held sway across Latin America in previous years is being rolled back. Brazil’s Dilma Rousseff was removed from power in a right-wing coup, co-conspirators of which have now managed to imprison the current presidential frontrunner, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. Ecuador’s Lenin Moreno has stabbed his former leader Rafael Correa in the back by barring him from seeking re-election, while seemingly purging his cabinet of remaining Correa loyalists and beginning the process of allowing the US military back into the country. Alongside other democratic and not-so-democratic removals of leftist governments from power, NATO has nabbed itself a foothold in the region, now that Colombia has joined the obsolete yet aggressively expanding Cold War alliance, in a thinly veiled threat to neighboring Venezuela.

And now it’s Nicaragua’s turn under the boot. Again.

Over 100 people have been killed since unrest broke out in mid April. Student demonstrations began in the capital Managua as a reaction to the country’s failure to handle forest fires in one of the most protected areas of the Indio Maiz Biological Reserve. The situation was then exacerbated when, two days later, the ruling Sandinista National Liberation Front announced it was slashing pensions and social security payments, sparking further anti-government protests. Targeted opposition violence along with police repressions have led to a mounting body count on both sides. Violence persists in the country, despite the fact that President Ortega has now ditched the proposed welfare reforms and has been engaging in talks with the opposition.

The government has adamantly denied it was responsible for snipers killing at least 15 people at a recent demonstration. And, while we may never know what really happened, it’s fair to say an embattled national leadership in the midst of peace talks has little to gain from people being gunned down in front of the world’s media at an opposition march on Mother’s Day. All I’ll say on the matter is it’s not like we didn’t have mysterious sharpshooters picking off protesters during US-supported coups in Venezuela and Ukraine.

With his approval ratings recently reaching as high as 80 percent during the 2017 presidential campaign, Nicaragua’s President Daniel Ortega is far from a dictator. As a Guerrilla leader, Ortega’s leftist Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional (FSLN) overthrew Anastasio Somoza Debayle’s brutal regime in 1979, thereby ending the Somoza family dynasty which had ruled Nicaragua since the mid-1930s. The US responded by arming, funding and training right-wing death squads, in an insurgency that would ultimately cost the lives of more than 60,000 people over the course of a decade. While all this was going on, Ortega called a free and open presidential election in 1984 and won with 67 percent of the vote. Under Ortega’s Sandinistas, Nicaragua went through a hugely successful literacy campaign and land reform process.

Ortega was then defeated in the 1990 presidential elections and remained an opposition figure until 2007, when he was reelected. He has been back at the helm of the country now for over 10 years. Despite his Marxist past, Ortega’s embracing of populist politics has seen him pander to conservative religious attitudes. In a country whose national identity has been so shaped in recent history by iconic revolutionary movements, Ortega’s moves to appease the right have alienated some on the left, most noticeably among the nation’s younger cadres.

It is unsurprising then that the US is apparently capitalizing on growing discontent, stoking dissent among the youth in a deliberate attempt to destabilize the Sandinista government. Infamously nefarious US soft power organizations such as the National Endowment for Democracy, also known as the CIA’s ‘legal window’, have set up extensive networks in Nicaragua.

Among the leading Nicaraguan student activists currently touring Europe to garner support for the anti-government movement is Jessica Cisneros. Cisneros is a member of the Movimiento Civico de Juventudes, which is funded by Madeline Albright’s National Democratic Institute (NDI). You remember Albright, right? She’s the former US Secretary of State that said that 500,000 Iraqi Children dying as a result of US sanctions against Saddam Hussein was “worth it”.

According to the NDI’s website, the organization “has partnered with Nicaraguan universities and civic organizations to conduct a youth leadership program, which has helped to prepare over 2,000 current and future young leaders from across the country” in order to improve the “country’s democratic development”.

Joining Cisneros on tour in Europe is Yerling Aguilera. At the time of writing this article Aguilera’s LinkedIn profile has her listed as a former employee and consultant for Instituto de Estudios Estratégicos y Políticas Públicas (IEEPP) in Nicaragua. IEEPP has received extensive funding from the National Endowment for Democracy.

If the idea of Washington supporting progressive anti-government forces in Latin America confuses you, then you’re failing to grasp the nature of US interference. During the Cold War, for example, the US supported both the Mujahideen in Afghanistan as well as eastern European trade unionists against the Soviet Union. Indeed, throughout the Syrian conflict, Washington has been arming leftist groups alongside jihadist organizations. It goes without saying that, despite US politicians getting all dewy-eyed over “freedom fighters,” the likes of Jihadists or even trade unionists are not welcome in US society. Certainly not if they receive foreign funding to carry out anti-government activities.

It’s all well and good saying things like ‘let Nicaraguans decide their future for themselves without foreign interference’, but criticism of Nicaragua’s young activists, based purely on the grounds of their acceptance of foreign backing, misses the point. Doing so ignores the historic fact that the Sandinistas also received extensive foreign support from the Cuban intelligence service (DGI) during the revolution. The difference between the two, however, are the stringent financial and economic conditions that go hand-in-hand with US support. When it comes to Washington backing your fight, there’s no such thing as a free ride.

Ortega’s government is far from perfect, but Nicaragua’s progressive opposition must be made to recognize the dangerous path down which they are leading their country. Yes, on the surface the organizations funding them may well have liberal-sounding mission statements that stress the need to “increase women’s political participation and initiatives to decrease discrimination against LGBTI people”, but they should know the destructive role that Washington non-profit foundations such as the NED or NDI have played around the world. They literally share the same agenda as the CIA.

Nicaraguans struggled against Washington’s subjugation of the country for most of the 20th century. Revolutionary Augusto C. Sandino, whose name Ortega’s Sandinistas incorporated, led an iconic guerilla war against US military occupation of the country between 1927-1933. He was eventually assassinated by the forces of General Anastasio Somoza Garcia (Anastasio Somoza Debayle’s grandfather), who went on to seize power two years later in a military coup. It was through Somoza that Washington first perfected its soft power form of imperialism, breaking with the European military occupation model. Somoza, armed and funded by Washington, crushed all opposition while making himself and his cohorts fantastically rich on the condition that he kept the country open to any and all US financial interests. Washington began to replicate this model all over Latin America, modernizing its tactics from the 80s onwards, all towards fostering corrupt neoliberal governments.

With the David and Goliath-style struggle for freedom and dignity their nation has waged over the years, the tens of thousands of Nicaraguans turning out into the streets for pro-government rallies undoubtedly want to preserve the security and relative prosperity they have known in recent years. Handing the keys of their country back over to Washington negates both of those things.

William Whiteman is an award-winning British war correspondent and political commentator, currently working for teleSUR English in South America.

4 June 2018

Source: https://www.rt.com/op-ed/428718-nicaragua-unrest-us-fingerprint/

By Will Morrow

On Friday, Google Cloud CEO Diane Greene announced at a meeting with employees that the company will not renew its contract with the Pentagon for Project Maven following its expiry in 2019. Under the program, which Google entered in September last year, the company has provided the military with artificial intelligence software to perform real-time analysis of drone surveillance footage. The technology allows the Pentagon to develop its illegal drone assassination program that has killed thousands across the Middle East and North Africa.

Yesterday’s announcement is a response to widespread and mounting opposition from Google employees and the public to its collaboration with the military. The program only came to light as a result of opposition by employees, of whom approximately 4,000 have signed an internal petition demanding that Google cancel the project contract and institute a formal policy against taking on future military work.

Around a dozen employees have also resigned in protest. A report published on Tuesday by the New York Times, based on interviews with current and former employees, claimed the program has “fractured Google’s workforce, fueled heated staff meetings and internal exchanges,” and “touched off an existential crisis.” Among the employees who have resigned, one engineer “petitioned to rename a conference room after Clara Immerwahr, a German chemist who killed herself in 1915 after protesting the use of science in warfare.”

The Huffington Post reported yesterday that there were discussions among employees this week for a physical demonstration. An engineer who was due to leave the company on Friday posted on its internal online forum—in a thread titled “Maven conscientious objectors” that includes hundreds of employees—describing Maven as “the greatest ethical crisis in technology of our generation,” and suggesting that employees go to an upcoming Google conference in July with the aim of “making some noise.”

In comments to the World Socialist Web Site, academics Lucy Suchman and Peter Asaro, two of the authors of a recent open letter signed by more than 1,000 academics demanding that Google end its participation in the illegal drone murder program, said they were “gratified to see Google take the decision not to renew its contract for Project Maven, and to make the decision public.” They demanded that Google take “a clear and consistent stand against the weaponization of its technologies.”

“I do think it’s significant, in other words, that there was sufficient resistance inside the company that Google has had to respond, and it’s posed a tangible obstacle to growing relations with the DoD,” said Dr. Suchman. “The fact that those who entered into this contract attempted to do so quietly, if not actually in secret, shows that they anticipated how contested it would be (and then of course went ahead with it anyway).”

While Google claims it will not renew the contract, it will be involved with the project for the rest of the year, and will continue to deepen its intimate collaboration with the Pentagon. The company will also keep bidding for other contracts with the military not directly involving the use of artificial intelligence. Dr. Suchman added, “I suspect they’ll continue to look for ways of sustaining their Pentagon relations and spinning them as benign.”

It should be noted that Google’s previous statements in response to the revelations about Project Maven have been exposed as lies.

Internal emails between Google staff, portions of which were published by the New York Times, Gizmodo and the Intercept over the past three days, show that Google conspired to conceal its role in Project Maven from the beginning.

An email chain including Scott Frohman and Aileen Black—both defense and intelligence sales leads—as well as Dr Fei-Fei Li, the chief scientist for artificial intelligence at Google Cloud, discussed how the company should present the project publicly. Writing under the subject line “Communications/PR Request—Urgent,” Frohman asked for direction on the “burning question” of how the collaboration should be reported.

Li replied on September 24 that Google was “already battling privacy issues when it comes to AI [artificial intelligence] and data; I don’t know what would happen if the media starts picking up a theme that Google is secretly building AI weapons or AI technologies to enable weapons for the Defense industry”—i.e., precisely what Google is doing. Li said the issues would be “red meat” to the media.

Google eventually decided to silence reporting on the collaboration altogether. It also reached a non-disclosure agreement with the Pentagon, requiring that public communications first be approved by Google. Black also noted that the contract was “not direct with Google but through a partner,” ECS Federal, in order to conceal Google’s role.

Greene, who pledged yesterday not to renew the project, has also absurdly claimed that the program cannot be used for “lethal purposes.” This is directly contradicted by an email published yesterday by Gizmodo from Frohman, in which he calls Maven a “large government program that will result in improved safety for citizens and nations through faster identification of evils such as violent extreme activities and human rights abuses”—code words used by the Pentagon for activities justifying drone strikes.

Greene also previously claimed that the project was “small” and only worth $9 million. Another internal email from Aileen Black and published by the Intercept, however, shows the project was expected to grow rapidly, and “as the program grows expect spend is budgeted at 250 M per year.”

The real significance of Project Maven for Google is to secure a foothold into the tens of billions of dollars available in the arms race between the world’s major powers to incorporate Silicon Valley’s technology to develop next-generation weaponry, and to gain a competitive advantage against the other technology giants. The other bidders for the contract included Amazon and IBM.

All three companies, along with Microsoft, are competing to secure a $10 billion contract to build and administer Pentagon Cloud’s computing network. The network has been described by military officials as a “global fabric” for its warfighters. Every submarine, jetfighter, missile launch station and special operations soldier will be connected via computer systems that will be directly administered by one of the giant technology corporations.

The website Defense One reported that unlike Amazon and Microsoft, Google has “kept its own interest” in the contract “out of the press,” and the company has “even hidden the pursuit from its own workers.” Participating in Project Maven allowed Google to receive government clearance to host secure government data on its servers, and to compete for further cloud military projects in the future. Another internal email from Aileen Black called the clearance “priceless” for the company.

Google, along with the other technology giants, is intimately integrated into the US military and intelligence apparatus. Google representatives such as vice president Mike Medin and former Alphabet CEO Eric Schmidt sit on US military advisory boards and discuss the use of their technology for major wars and suppression of domestic political opposition. Google changed its search ranking algorithms in April last year to reduce traffic to and censor left-wing and anti-war websites, including the World Socialist Web Site.

3 June 2018

Source: https://countercurrents.org/2018/06/03/google-says-it-will-not-renew-project-maven-but-collaboration-with-pentagon-will-continue/