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By Jonathan Cook

Nazareth: Last week Israeli military officials for the first time echoed what human rights groups and the United Nations have been saying for some time: that Gaza’s economy and infrastructure stand on the brink of collapse.

They should know.

More than 10 years ago the Israeli army tightened its grip on Gaza, enforcing a blockade on goods coming in and out of the tiny coastal enclave that left much of the 2 million-strong population there unemployed, impoverished and hopeless.

Since then, Israel has launched three separate major military assaults that have destroyed Gaza’s infrastructure, killed many thousands and left tens of thousands more homeless and traumatised.

Gaza is effectively an open-air prison, an extremely overcrowded one, with only a few hours of electricity a day and its ground water polluted by seawater and sewage.

After a decade of this horrifying experiment in human endurance, the Israeli army finally appears to be concerned about whether Gaza can cope much longer.

In recent days it has begun handing out forms, with more than a dozen questions, to the small number of Palestinians allowed briefly out of Gaza – mainly business people trading with Israel, those needing emergency medical treatment and family members accompanying them.

One question asks bluntly whether they are happy, another whom they blame for their economic troubles. A statistician might wonder whether the answers can be trusted, given that the sample group is so heavily dependent on Israel’s good will for their physical and financial survival.

But the survey does at least suggest that Israel’s top brass may be open to new thinking, after decades of treating Palestinians only as target practice, lab rats or sheep to be herded into cities, freeing up land for Jewish settlers. Has the army finally understood that Palestinians are human beings too, with limits to the suffering they can soak up?

According to the local media, the army is in part responding to practical concerns. It is reportedly worried that, if epidemics break out, the diseases will quickly spread into Israel.

And if Gaza’s economy collapses too, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians could be banging on Israel’s door – or rather storming its hi-tech incarceration fence – to be allowed in. The army has no realistic contingency plans for either scenario.

It may be considering too its image – and defence case – if its commanders ever find themselves in the dock at the International Criminal Court in the Hague accused of war crimes.

Nonetheless, neither Israeli politicians nor Washington appear to be taking the army’s warnings to heart. In fact, things look set to get worse.

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said last week there could be no improvements, no reconstruction in Gaza until Hamas agrees to give up its weapons – the only thing, in Hamas’s view, that serves as a deterrent against future Israeli attack.

Figures show Israel’s policy towards Gaza has been actually growing harsher. In 2017 exit permits issued by Israel dwindled to a third of the number two years earlier – and a hundredfold fewer than in early 2000. A few hundred Palestinian businesspeople receive visas, stifling any chance of economic revival.

The number of trucks bringing goods into Gaza has been cut in half – not because Israel is putting the inmates on a “diet”, as it once did, but because the enclave’s Palestinians lack “purchasing power”. That is, they are too poor to buy Israeli goods.

Netanyahu has resolutely ignored a plan by his transport minister to build an artificial island off Gaza to accommodate a sea port under Israeli or international supervision. And no one is considering allowing the Palestinians to exploit Gaza’s natural gas fields, just off the coast.

In fact, the only thing holding Gaza together is the international aid it receives. And that is now in jeopardy too.

The Trump administration announced last week it is to slash by half the aid it sends to Palestinian refugees via the UN agency UNRWA. Trump has proposed further cuts to punish Mahmoud Abbas, the increasingly exasperated Palestinian leader, for refusing to pretend any longer that the US is an honest broker capable of overseeing peace talks.

The White House’s difficuties are only being underscored as Mike Pence, the US vice-president, visits Israel as part of Trump’s supposed push for peace. He is being boycotted by Palestinian officials.

Palestinians in Gaza will feel the loss of aid severely. A majority live in miserable refugee camps set up after their families were expelled in 1948 from homes in what is now Israel. They depend on the UN for food handouts, health and education.

Backed by the PLO’s legislative body, the central council, Abbas has begun retaliating – at least rhetorically. He desperately needs to shore up the credibility of his diplomatic strategy in pursuit of a two-state solution after Trump recently hived off Palestine’s future capital, Jerusalem, to Israel.

Abbas threatened, if not very credibly, to end a security coordination with Israel he once termed “sacred” and declared as finished the Oslo accords that created the Palestinian Authority he now heads.

The lack of visible concern in Israel and Washington suggests neither believes he will make good on those threats.

But it is not Abbas’s posturing that Netanyahu and Trump need to worry about. They should be listening to Israel’s generals, who understand that there will be no defence against the fallout from the catastrophe looming in Gaza.

A version of this article first appeared in the National, Abu Dhabi.

Jonathan Cook won the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism.

23 January 2018

Source: https://countercurrents.org/2018/01/23/israeli-army-finally-worried-gaza/

By Countercurrents.org

Eight men own the same wealth as the 3.6 billion people who make up the poorest half of humanity, according to a new report published by Oxfam to mark the annual meeting of political and business leaders in Davos.

Oxfam’s report, ‘An economy for the 99 percent’, shows that the gap between rich and poor is far greater than had been feared. It details how big business and the super-rich are fuelling the inequality crisis by dodging taxes, driving down wages and using their power to influence politics. It calls for a fundamental change in the way we manage our economies so that they work for all people, and not just a fortunate few.

New and better data on the distribution of global wealth – particularly in India and China – indicates that the poorest half of the world has less wealth than had been previously thought. Had this new data been available last year, it would have shown that nine billionaires owned the same wealth as the poorest half of the planet, and not 62, as Oxfam calculated at the time.

Winnie Byanyima, Executive Director of Oxfam International, said:

“It is obscene for so much wealth to be held in the hands of so few when 1 in 10 people survive on less than $2 a day. Inequality is trapping hundreds of millions in poverty; it is fracturing our societies and undermining democracy.

“Across the world, people are being left behind. Their wages are stagnating yet corporate bosses take home million dollar bonuses; their health and education services are cut while corporations and the super-rich dodge their taxes; their voices are ignored as governments sing to the tune of big business and a wealthy elite.”

Oxfam’s report shows how our broken economies are funnelling wealth to a rich elite at the expense of the poorest in society, the majority of whom are women. The richest are accumulating wealth at such an astonishing rate that the world could see its first trillionaire in just 25 years. To put this figure in perspective – you would need to spend $1 million every day for 2738 years to spend $1 trillion.

Public anger with inequality is already creating political shockwaves across the globe. Inequality has been cited as a significant factor in the election of Donald Trump in the US, the election of President Duterte in the Philippines, and Brexit in the UK.

Seven out of 10 people live in a country that has seen a rise in inequality in the last 30 years. Between 1988 and 2011 the incomes of the poorest 10 percent increased by just $65 per person, while the incomes of the richest 1 percent grew by $11,800 per person – 182 times as much.

Women, who are often employed in low pay sectors, face high levels of discrimination in the work place, and who take on a disproportionate amount of unpaid care work often find themselves at the bottom of the pile. On current trends it will take 170 years for women to be paid the same as men.

‘An Economy for the 99 percent’ also reveals how big business and the super-rich are fuelling the inequality crisis. It shows how, in order to maximize returns to their wealthy shareholders, big corporations are dodging taxes, driving down wages for their workers and the prices paid to producers, and investing less in their business.

Oxfam interviewed women working in a garment factory in Vietnam who work 12 hours a day, 6 days a week and still struggle to get by on the $1 an hour they earn producing clothes for some of the world’s biggest fashion brands. The CEOs of these companies are some of the highest paid people in the world. Corporate tax dodging costs poor countries at least $100 billion every year. This is enough money to provide an education for the 124 million children who aren’t in school and fund healthcare interventions that could prevent the deaths of at least six million children every year.

The report outlines how the super-rich use a network of tax havens to avoid paying their fair share of tax and an army of wealth managers to secure returns on their investments that would not be available to ordinary savers. Contrary to popular belief, many of the super-rich are not ‘self-made’. Oxfam analysis shows over half the world’s billionaires either inherited their wealth or accumulated it through industries which are prone to corruption and cronyism.

It also demonstrates how big business and the super-rich use their money and connections to ensure government policy works for them. For example, billionaires in Brazil have sought to influence elections and successfully lobbied for a reduction in tax bills while oil corporations in Nigeria have managed to secure generous tax breaks.

Byanyima said: “The millions of people who have been left behind by our broken economies need solutions, not scapegoats. That is why Oxfam is setting out a new common sense approach to managing our economies so that they work for the majority and not just the fortunate few.”

“Governments are not helpless in the face of technological change and market forces. If politicians stop obsessing with GDP, and focus on delivering for all their citizens and not just a wealthy few, a better future is possible for everyone.”

Oxfam’s blueprint for a more human economy includes:

Governments end the extreme concentration of wealth to end poverty. Governments should increase taxes on both wealth and high incomes to ensure a more level playing field, and to generate funds needed to invest in healthcare, education and job creation.

Governments cooperate rather than just compete. Governments should work together to ensure workers are paid a decent wage, and to put a stop to tax dodging and the race to the bottom on corporate tax.

Governments support companies that benefit their workers and society rather than just their shareholders. The multi-billion Euro company Mondragon, is owned by its 74,000 strong workforce. All employees receive a decent wage because its pay structure ensures that the highest paid member of staff earns no more than 9 times the amount of the lowest paid.

Governments ensure economies work for women. They must help to dismantle the barriers to women’s economic progress such as access to education and the unfair burden of unpaid care work.

Oxfam is also calling on business leaders to play their part in building a human economy. The World Economic Forum has responsive and responsible leadership as its key theme this year. They can make a start by committing to pay their fair share of tax and by ensuring their businesses pay a living wage. People around the global can also join the campaign at www.evenitup.org.

India Worst Hit

Last year’s survey had showed that India’s richest 1% held 58% of the country’s total wealth, which was higher than the global figure of about 50%. According to the latest survey, the wealth of this elite group increased by over Rs 20.9 lakh crore during the period under review-an amount close to the total expenditure estimated in the Union Budget 2017. India’s top 10% of the population now holds 73% of the wealth while 67 crore citizens, comprising the country’s poorest half, saw their wealth rise by just 1%.

“The billionaire boom is not a sign of a thriving economy but a symptom of a failing economic system. Those working hard, growing food for the country, building infrastructure, working in factories are struggling to fund their child’s education, buy medicines for family members and manage two meals a day. The growing divide undermines democracy and promotes corruption and cronyism,” said Oxfam India CEO Nisha Agrawal. Things certainly have gone very awry if, as the survey finds out, it will take 941 years for a minimum wage worker in rural India to earn what the top paid executive at a leading Indian garment firm earns in a year.

The report titled ‘Reward Work, Not Wealth’, also sheds light on gender inequality. “While in most countries the gender pay gap has received more attention, the gender wealth gap is usually even higher,” it says, adding that women provide $10 trillion in unpaid care annually to support the global economy.

23 Januarry 2018

Source: https://countercurrents.org/2018/01/23/eight-men-half-worlds-wealth-india-worst-hit/

By Middle East Monitor

Israel’s frosty relations with Ireland may get worse after news that it was considering closing its embassy in Dublin.

Sources in Israel reported that the Dublin embassy is the only western European mission on a list of seven embassies and consulates earmarked for closure by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, as part of a cost-cutting plan.

The ministry is currently undergoing negotiations to decide on the embassies that will be closed.  A committee is due to submit recommendations by the end of the month.

It is widely suspected that the Netanyahu government is reassessing its priorities on the world stage. Africa is recognised as the continent with most potential for diplomatic inroads. Disappointment following Israel’s defeat at the UN also encouraged the right-wing Knesset to punish states that voted against Trump’s unilateral and illegal declaration to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

The Israeli government moved to close down diplomatic missions in seven countries at the beginning of the year. The Jerusalem Post reported that under the new plan, the embassies will be closed over the next three years, with three closed the first year, and two during each of the next two years after that.

Read: Irish Foreign Minister visits Gaza Strip

According to the Post, the decision was announced as Netanyahu talked of opening new offices, especially in Africa. He told Rwandan President Paul Kagame at a meeting in Nairobi in November that Israel would open an embassy in Kigali in the near future. Rwanda was one of 35 countries that decided to abstain during the UN vote last December.

Ireland on the other hand maintained its tradition of supporting the Palestinian cause by voting to denounce Trump’s decision. With the Israeli government seeking to save money by reassessing its priorities abroad, Ireland is increasingly seen as a lost cause.

Despite opening its embassy in Dublin in 1996 after a long impasse, Ireland remains one of the most pro-Palestinian countries in the EU. Israeli officials have been expelled from the country and its policies are regularly denounced by Irish politicians.

It is a massive turnaround from Israel’s formative years when Ireland, having faced religious persecution of its own, identified with the Jewish cause. This sympathy has since disappeared as the Irish people saw greater parallels with their national experience of suffering under foreign occupation and the persecution of Palestinians.

This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

22 January 2018

Source: https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20180122-israel-to-close-embassy-in-ireland/

By Andre Vltchek

Here it goes again! Several countries of Oceania (also known as South Pacific Nations), or however you want to call that vast, beautiful but thoroughly devastated part of the world, have voted “for Israel”, “for the United States’ proposed resolution at the United Nations”, and therefore, “against Palestine”.

As reported on December 22, 2017 by Al Jazeera:

“The United Nations General Assembly has voted by a huge majority to declare a unilateral US recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital “null and void”.

At an emergency session of the General Assembly on Thursday, 128 countries voted in favour of a resolution rejecting US President Donald Trump’s controversial decision on December 6.

Nine countries voted against, while 35 abstained.

Trump had earlier threatened to cut aid to UN members who would vote against his decision.”

Did scarcely inhabited island-nations that are lost in the middle of a tremendous body of water, go crazy?

After all those horrific nuclear experiments committed there,against their people, by the United States, France and the UK; could local people sincerely believe that the truth as seen from Washington is the only legitimate truth on Earth?

After the naked modern-day colonialism, which is being implemented by Australia, New Zealand, and France, and, of course, by the United States, have the people of Polynesia, Melanesia and Micronesia become blind?

After total dependency, after decades of humiliation and virtual slavery, do the inhabitants of Oceania believe that their fellow victims in Palestine do not have the right to livein their own state, without barbed wire; that they shouldn’t have their own historical capital?

The answer to all these question is, actually: “No”.

They do what they are doing simply and only because they have no choice.

When working on my book. Oceania, travelling all over the South Pacific, I visited a Jesuit priestand the region’sprominent intellectual, Francis X. Hezel. Ourencounter took place in the capital of the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM) – Pohnpei.

Father Hezel has been amassing important materials and documents in his private archive, proving beyond any doubts that the US occupation of Micronesia after WWII led to a dramatic decrease of life expectancy and the standard of living of the islanders. He explained:

“Life here became shorter, and much worse than under the Japanese imperial rule. And this was not some ‘Communist propaganda’. It is written right here, in the report produced during that period by the US Department of State.”

But back to ‘voting’, or what is often called “vote selling”. Father Hezel offered a very explicit story to illustrate the reality:

“One day I had an entire television crew from Israel parked at my office. I had no idea what they were doing here. Why would they travel so far, to such a small and insignificant country? Finally I understood: the Israeli public was fascinated with this place; they wanted to know who are those people who keep voting in the U.N. against most of Security Council resolutions, in this way supporting Israel and the United States against the entire world…”

In my book Oceania, I later wrote:

“Pacific Island votes at the UN are openly for sale, especially when peace in the Middle East is at stake. To illustrate the absurdity of the game: at a time when several countries in the region are becoming uninhabitable as a result of global warming, both Nauru and Kiribati, itself one of the sinking nations and therefore a victim, voted against the Kyoto Protocol.

But it is not only profit that propels tiny nations in Oceania to sell their votes; it is also the fear of retribution.

“In the late 90’s our government voted at the UN against the US on the issue of landmines, recalled the then Foreign Minister of Marshall Islands (RMI), Tony deBrum. “As a result, our party lost the elections.””

In December 2017, out of the nine countries that voted against the UN resolution, one was the United States itself, while the other eight were: Guatemala, Honduras, Israel, Marshall Islands, FSM, Nauru, Palau, and Togo. Two were defactoUS semi-colonies in Latin America, ruled by brutal pro-Washington cliques, one a tiny and dependent African nation, while four were the Micronesian and Polynesian nations and of course, Israel.

The Pacific Island nations are selling their votes, for profit or out of fear.

The West is also using them in an attempt to isolate China.

Presently, six countries of Oceania, have fully established diplomatic relations with Taiwan, after being, as was described to me by the former Foreign Minister of RMI, Tony deBrum, “encouraged” by the West.

These countries are: Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Nauru, Palau, Solomon Islands, and Tuvalu.

At least three of them – Tuvalu, Marshall Islands and Kiribati – are at the frontline of the climate change disaster: they are becoming uninhabitable due to the global warming and consequent rising of sea level.

China is the only country that has been willing to, altruistically, help the countries of Oceania: by building anti-tsunami walls, by planting mangroves, by elevating schools, hospitals and government buildings, or by building sports facilities in places where around 90% of adults is suffering from diabetes, often due to dumping there some of the most unhealthy food from the US, Australia and elsewhere.

The more successful China got in helping South Pacific nations, the more ‘encouragement’ Taiwan received from the West; an ‘encouragement’ to come, to corrupt local ‘elites’, and to push China away. Any country that recognizes Taiwan as an independent nation gets diplomatic relations with China (PRC) broken immediately. Everyone knows it. And there is not one Western country that would take such an insane step.

After China leaves, the countries of Oceania can only rely onthe pathetic, cynical and hypocritical “foreign aid” offered by the West, while their corrupt leaders negotiate with New Zealand and Australia the final ‘evacuation project’. Entire countries like Tuvalu may soon be forced to move abroad.

The selling of votes by South Pacific Island nations appears to be shameful, but in fact it is nothing else than an act of total desperation.

The Empire has reached great mastery in implementing the “divide and rule” strategy.

The victims, often defenseless and robbed of everything, are forced to vote against those who are suffering similar fate at the opposite side of the world.

Palestinians are involuntarily living in a cage.

People of Oceania, who used to be the greatest seamen, are surrounded by the vastest expanse of water on Earth, but in the same timethey are confined to tiny specks of land, often scarred by Western military bases. Trash and decay are everywhere. Hopelessness rules.

Oceania knows almost nothing about ‘modern Palestine’. Palestinians know almost nothing about Oceania.

Empire looks dumb but it is not. It is ‘only’ evil. It knows everything about both parts of the world. And it is torturing them relentlessly and with perverse sadistic delight.

[Original version published by New Eastern Review]

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

22 January 2018

Source: https://countercurrents.org/2018/01/22/palestine-israel-us-south-pacific-countries-selling-votes/

By Nauman Sadiq

During the last 24 hours, 72 Turkish jets have reportedly struck 150 targets inside the Kurdish-controlled Afrin district in north-western Syria in which six civilians and three Kurdish militiamen have lost their lives. And today, Turkish ground troops in armoured vehicles have intruded five kilometres inside Afrin from Syria’s northern border with Turkey.

In addition, Turkey has also mobilised the Syrian militant groups under its tutelage in Azaz and Idlib in Syria, and in Kilis and Hatay provinces of Turkey, the latter of which has a substantial presence of Arabs and Syrian refugees, hence the Kurdish-controlled Afrin enclave has been surrounded from all sides by Turkey and its proxies.

Well-informed readers who have been keenly watching Erdogan’s behaviour since the failed July 2016 coup plot must have noticed that Erdogan has committed quite a few reckless and impulsive acts during the last couple of years.

Firstly, the Turkish air force shot down a Russian Sukhoi Su-24 fighter jet on the border between Syria and Turkey on 24 November 2015 that brought the Turkish and Russian armed forces on the brink of a full-scale confrontation in Syria.

Secondly, the Russian ambassador to Turkey, Andrei Karlov, was assassinated at an art exhibition in Ankara on the evening of 19 December 2016 by an off-duty Turkish police officer, Mevlut Mert Altintas, who was suspected of being a Muslim fundamentalist.

Thirdly, the Turkish military mounted the seven-month-long Operation Euphrates Shield in northern Syria immediately after the attempted coup plot from August 2016 to March 2017 that brought the Turkish military and its Syrian militant proxies head-to-head with the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces and their US bakers.

And lastly, before Turkey’s intrusion in Afrin, the Turkish military invaded Idlib in north-western Syria in October last year on the pretext of enforcing a de-escalation zone between the Syrian militants and the Syrian government, despite official protest from the latter that the Turkish armed forces are in violation of Syria’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.

Regarding the July 2016 coup plot, instead of a serious attempt at overthrowing the government, the coup plot was actually a large-scale mutiny within the ranks of the Turkish armed forces. Although Erdogan scapegoated the Gulenists to settle scores with his one-time ally, but according to credible reports, the coup was in fact attempted by the Kemalist liberals against the Islamist government of Turkey.

For the last several years of the Syrian civil war, the Kemalists had been looking with suspicion at Erdogan administration’s policy of deliberately training and arming Sunni militants against the Shi’a-dominated government of Bashar al-Assad in the training camps located on Turkey’s borders with Syria in collaboration with CIA’s MOM, which is a Turkish acronym for military operations centre.

As long as the US was on-board on the policy of nurturing Sunni Arab jihadists in Syria, the hands of Kemalists were tied. But after the US declared a war against one faction of Sunni militants, the Islamic State, in August 2014 and the consequent divergence between Washington’s policy of supporting the Kurds in Syria and the Islamist government of Turkey’s continued support to Sunni jihadists, it led to discord and adoption of contradictory policies.

Moreover, the spate of bombings in Turkey claimed by the Islamic State and separatist Kurds during the last couple of years, all of these factors contributed to widespread disaffection among the rank and file of Turkish armed forces, which regard themselves as the custodians of secular traditions and guarantors of peace and stability in Turkey.

The fact that one-third of 220 brigadiers and ten major generals were detained after the coup plot shows the level of frustration shown by the top and mid-ranking officers of the Turkish armed forces against Erdogan’s megalomaniac and self-destructive policies.

Regarding the split between Washington and Ankara, although the proximate cause of this confrontation seems to be the July 2016 coup plot against the Erdogan administration by the supporters of the US-based preacher, Fethullah Gulen, but this surprising development also sheds light on the deeper divisions between the United States and Turkey over their respective Syria policy.

After the United States reversal of ‘regime change’ policy in Syria in August 2014 when the Islamic State overran Mosul and Anbar in Iraq in early 2014 and threatened the capital of another steadfast American ally Masoud Barzani’s Erbil in the oil-rich Iraqi Kurdistan, Washington has made the Kurds the centrepiece of its policy in Syria and Iraq.

It would be pertinent to mention here that the conflict in Syria and Iraq is actually a three-way conflict between the Sunni Arab militants, the Shi’a-led governments and the Kurds. Although after the declaration of war against a faction of Sunni Arab militants, the Islamic State, Washington has also lent its support to the Shi’a-led government in Iraq, but the Shi’a Arabs of Iraq are not the trustworthy allies of the United States because they are under the influence of Iran.

Therefore, Washington was left with no other choice but to make the Kurds the centrepiece of its policy in Syria and Iraq after a group of Sunni Arab jihadists, the Islamic State, transgressed its mandate in Syria and overran Mosul and Anbar in Iraq in early 2014 from where the United States had withdrawn its troops only a couple of years ago in December 2011.

The US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces are nothing more than the Kurdish militias with a symbolic presence of mercenary Arab tribesmen in order to make them appear more representative and inclusive in outlook. As far as the regional parties to the Syrian civil war are concerned, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and the rest of the Gulf states may not have serious reservations against this close cooperation between the United States and the Kurds in Syria and Iraq, because the Gulf states tend to look at the regional conflicts from the lens of the Iranian Shi’a threat.

Turkey, on the other hand, has been more wary of the separatist Kurdish tendencies in its southeast than the Iranian Shi’a threat, as such. And the recent announcement by Washington of training and arming 30,000 Kurdish border guards to patrol Syria’s northern border with Turkey and prolonging the stay of 2000 US troops embedded with the Kurds in Syria indefinitely must have proven a tipping point for the Erdogan administration.

Nauman Sadiq is an Islamabad-based attorney, columnist and geopolitical analyst focused on the politics of Af-Pak and Middle East regions, neocolonialism and petro-imperialism.

22 January 2018

Source: https://countercurrents.org/2018/01/22/afrin-offensive-erdogans-madness-continues/

By Eric Zuesse

In a recent article, I documented that “U.S. Again Supports Al Qaeda in Syria”.

In a prior article, I had documented that since 2012 the U.S. Government has cooperated with the Sauds’ plan to install in Syria a fundamentalist-Sunni government to replace Syria’s existing secular Government, and that the fundamentalist-Sunni organization Al Qaeda has been the U.S. Government’s chief organization on the ground in Syria providing the leadership to that Saudi-U.S. effort. Part One of that report is especially important in order to understand the continuity between the policies of the current U.S. President Donald Trump and the prior U.S. President Barack Obama, in Syria.

The present article will provide the broader historical documentation behind this, starting in 1949, when the U.S. CIA, under President Harry S. Truman, did its second coup d’etat, overthrowing a democratically elected progressive Government (the first having been Thailand 1948, where the CIA had installed an extremely barbaric dictator replacing the democratically elected government that had been headed by a staunch anti-fascist, and simultaneously set up the CIA’s off-the-books supplementary funding mechanism from the international narcotics-trade — a CIA practice which has continued till perhaps the present; and, furthermore, the infamous Nugan-Hand affair, which involved Thailand, definitely involved the CIA’s Michael Hand and William Colby; so, clearly, the CIA is funded off-the-books from the narcotics business, and America’s anti-narcotics laws thus are actually keeping drug-prices and resultant burglaries and CIA profits artificially high, funneling that illicit money into CIA coffers; and any method to defund the CIA down to its core intelligence-gathering function and to eliminate its coup-function, which is the function that took control in Thailand and Syria and then Iran and many more, would need to regulate — instead of to continue outlawing — drugs, which might be the main reason why it hasn’t yet been done: illegal drugs provide wealth to the CIA and other gang-lords, including some U.S. Government officials).

The 1949 coup in Syria overthrew the democratically elected Syrian Government, which had blocked construction of a U.S.-Saudi oil pipeline through Syria into Europe. The CIA imposed upon Syrians a military dictatorship which was so bad, Syria’s military decided that their being stooges of the U.S. wouldn’t really work for them, after all; so, the generals allowed the democratically elected President to run again in 1955, and he won again. In 1957, the CIA tried to overthrow him yet a second time, but failed. The generals wouldn’t cooperate this second time around. In 1958, that democratic Syrian President merged Syria into Egyptian President Gamel Abdel Nasser’s United Arab Republic, which ended in 1960. Thereafter, a series of frequently replaced Syrian leaders ended in 1970, when the popular head of the institutionally secular Arab Socialist Ba’ath Party – Syria Region, Hafez al-Assad, came to power, and he included, in his Government, leaders from the Sunni, Shiite, and Christian, communities, in order to achieve a national Government that would be acceptable to all three of those communities, as well as to Syria’s many seculars. The CIA’s consistent plan has been to break Syria into religiously warring sub-states so that the Sunni one would allow the Sauds’ pipeline; and this plan became placed on-hold until the CIA’s plan for the “Arab Spring” rebellions succeeded in 2011 and seemed to make possible the U.S. regime’s ’democracy’ in Syria, this time meaning a breakup of Syria into Kurdish, versus fundamentalist-Sunni (Saudi-controlled), versus Shiite (pro-Iranian) nations. This also would please another U.S. and Saud ally, Israel, because then the Golan Heights part of Syria which Israel stole in 1967 would be able to become legally Israeli territory.

That 1949 coup in Syria was to enable America’s Bechtel Corporation to construct through Syria the proposed Trans-Arabian Pipeline for the Sauds’ and Rockefellers’ oil from Saudi Arabia to supply European countries and thus to crowd out oil from Russia. The EU is the world’s biggest energy-importer, and by far the largest energy-supplier to the EU is Russia. As Robert F. Kennedy Jr. recently headlined, regarding all of the Saudi-U.S. aristocracies’ grabs for Syria, “Syria: Another Pipeline War”. Syria has important (to the oil and gas industries) real estate. And the destruction of Syria by these foreign thugs has unfortunately resulted from this fact.

Syria is the most secular of all governments in the Middle East, and is the only government that’s committed, both in philosophy and in practice, to separation between church (or clergy) and state (government). I documented in that previous article America’s determination to overthrow the decidedly secular Ba’athist-Party Syrian Government, which is headed by Bashar al-Assad, whom both Riyadh and Washington demand to become “regime-changed” — replaced by a regime that’s acceptable to the rulers of Saudi Arabia (the royal Saud family) and of those rulers’ vassal-nation, the United States. In the present article I shall document that the Sauds have even been allowed by the U.S. regime to select the people who supposedly represent the Syrian public at the U.N.-sponsored Syrian peace talks — those are actually ‘peace’ talks not between the Syrian people and the Syrian Government (to settle a civil war, like the U.S. and its allies claim it is), but instead between the Saud family and the Syrian Government (to stop a foreign invasion, which it really is); this is what the U.S. regime actually supports: the Sauds, against Syria — the invader and its allies, against the victim and its allies. It’s the reality, even if all the ‘news’media are portraying it to be anything but a foreign invasion of the sovereign nation of Syria (which they, of course, are).

Europe — the EU — gets the refugees from America’s invasions and coups (including not only from the Middle East but also from America’s 2014 coup in Ukraine), but still allies itself with the U.S. Government, which nominally represents the American people, though actually representing only the billionaires in three countries: Saudi Arabia, Israel, and the United States. (What’s especially key to understanding U.S. foreign policies is that whereas the U.S. aristocracy is primarily focused against Russia, the Saudi-Israeli alliance is primarily focused against Iran.) Europe subordinates itself to that group of billionaires, but especially to the American ones, since the American ones control the NATO alliance and basically created the EU. (Whether America ever wears-out its welcome amongst European publics will be shown by the extent to which those publics repudiate both NATO and the existing EU, since those two organizations are the immediate agencies of U.S. control there; and the IMF and other U.S.-created entities are global, not merely European entities of these billionaires’ empire.)

Also documented in the prior article was an important part of the back-story to the present one, that:

The U.S., and the royal family of Saudi Arabia, had created Al Qaeda back in 1979, to be their “boots on the ground” against the Soviet Union, and used them not only in Afghanistan but also in Russia’s own Chechnya region, to weaken, first the Soviet Union itself, helping to break it up, and then, after the Cold War ended on the Russian side in 1991 when the Soviet Union and its communism and its Warsaw Pact military alliance all ended, America and the Sauds continued arming and funding Al Qaeda, so as to create terror in Russia, and to overthrow Russia’s allies abroad, such as Assad.

This U.S.-Saudi support of jihadists, in order to topple allies of Russia’s Government, and ultimately even to overthrow Russia’s Government itself, continues till the present day, under U.S. President Donald Trump.

What’s most important to make clear up-front, in order to show that America is waging the Sauds’ war against Syria — that the Sauds aren’t waging America’s war there — is that the U.S.-supported U.N.-managed peace talks in Geneva on the Syrian war are between the Syrian Government and the Saud family; the U.S. ceded to the Sauds the right to select the individuals who represent “the Syrian opposition” at those ongoing ‘peace talks’:

On 9 December 2015, as was reported to Europeans by AFP, the Saud family held an international conference in the Saudi capital, Riyadh, which AFP said was “Saudi-organized talks.” AFP said that these “talks” aimed “to go some way towards establishing an opposition negotiating team” against the Syrian Government. The Saud family had selected this conference’s invitees, in order to consider their applications to become the leaders, or even merely members, of this negotiating team under U.N. auspices, which would be called by the U.N. the “High Negotiations Committee” or “HNC” supposedly representing the people of Syria. However, no one was invited to this two-day Riyadh conference who “argues that Assad’s fate should be decided by the Syrian people.” The U.S. Government and the royal Saud family who own Saudi Arabia, and the royal Thani family who own Qatar, had previously established something they had called the “National Coalition.” Its deputy head was Hisham Marwa, who utterly rejected the idea that “Assad’s fate should be decided by the Syrian people.” AFP’s report said that Marwa was delighted at being surrounded at this conference by “the presence of military and political figures. This is the real opposition.” To him, the Syrian people were not. He was pleased that the Syrian people “will not affect the equation.” And they didn’t — but the royal Saud family did: they actually ran the HNC. Assad’s Government has been ‘negotiating’ against King Saud. That’s the reality, in the U.N.’s ‘peace talks.’

On 20 January 2016, the BBC headlined “Syria conflict: Islamist rebel named opposition chief negotiator” and reported that “A Syrian opposition committee has named an Islamist rebel as its chief negotiator at peace talks that the UN hopes to convene in Geneva on Monday. Mohammed Alloush is the political leader of the powerful, Saudi-backed group Jaysh al-Islam (Army of Islam).”

On 3 February 2016, the Saud-affiliated UAE’s The National newspaper bannered, “Why Jaish Al Islam and Ahrar Al Sham are at the heart of Geneva squabbles: While the groups both oppose ISIL [otherwise called ISIS], they are allies of Al Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate Jabhat Al Nusra,” and reported that “Jaish Al Islam … already has a central role in the discussions, with its leader Mohammed Alloush acting as chief negotiator for the opposition’s High Negotiations Committee team in Geneva. … Jaish Al Islam’s former leader Zahran Alloush spoke of Alawites and Shiites in derogatory terms and at times advocated that they be cleansed from parts of Syria.” The Alloushes, who had always been jihadists and pro-Saud Syrians, hated Shia just like the Sauds have hated Shia for hundreds of years (since 1744).

So: that’s how the U.S. Government ended up supporting, as constituting the supposed ‘representatives of the Syrian people’ ‘negotiating’ against Syria’s Government, in these U.N.-sponsored ‘peace’ talks, a team consisting of, and even being led by, agents who had been selected by the Saud family, who were determined to impose Sharia Law upon Syria.

It continues a lengthy U.S.-and-Saudi history of trying to replace Syria’s secular Government.

Here are key passages from historian Douglas Little’s excellent “1949-1958, Syria: Early Experiments in Covert Action”:

Declassified records confirm that beginning in November 1948, [CIA operative Stephen] Meade met secretly with Syrian Army Chief of Staff Col. Husni Zaim at least six times to discuss the “possibility [of an] army supported dictatorship.” U.S. officials realized that Zaim was a “‘Banana Republic’ dictator type” with a “strong anti-Soviet attitude.”

Building the Arabian American Oil Company’s Trans-Arabian Pipe Line from Saudi Arabia to Syria.

Meade and Zaim completed plans for the coup in early 1949. On 14 March, Zaim “requested U.S. agents [to] provoke and abet internal disturbances ‘essential for coup d’ etat’ or that U.S. funds be given him [for] this purpose.” Nine days later, Zaim “promised a ‘surprise’ within several days” if Meade could secure U.S. help. As rumors of a military coup grew stronger, Assistant Secretary of State George McGhee arrived in Damascus, ostensibly to discuss resettling Palestinian refugees but possibly to authorize U.S. support for Zaim. Shortly thereafter, … Meade reported on 15 April that “over 400 Commies [in] all parts of Syria have been arrested. … On 16 May, Zaim approved ARAMCO’s TAPLINE. … However, on 14 August, Zaim was overthrown and executed by Col. Sami Hinnawi. … On December 19, 1949, Col. Adib Shishakli ousted Hinnawi in Syria’s third coup in nine months. … Shishakli had a “cordial 2 hour discussion” with the CIA’s Miles Copeland and others at the U.S. embassy on November 23, 195l. When Ma’aruf Dawalibi, long regarded by U.S. observers as pro-Soviet, announced a week later that he would head Syria’s eighth cabinet in less than two years, Shishakli dissolved parliament and set up a military dictatorship. [This was the CIA’s 2nd Syrian coup; and it, too, established a dictatorship there.] … In short order, Syria initiated mutual defense talks with Turkey and renewed the TAPLINE concession. Shishakli was willing to consider a peace treaty with Israel and the resettlement of Palestinian refugees in Syria provided substantial U.S. financial and military aid was forthcoming. In 1952, the Truman administration pressed the World Bank to expedite Syria’s request for a $200 million loan. … CIA director Allen Dulles agreed that “the situation in that country is the worst of all the countries in that area.”  … U.S. Ambassador Moose suggested on 8 January [1955] that “thought be given to other methods,” including an “anti-Communist coup” engineered by the SSNP. In March, Allen Dulles and CIA Middle East chief Kermit Roosevelt flew to London, where they worked out the details for the [third CIA Syrian] coup with Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service (SIS). …

During an unprecedented New Year’s  [1957] Day meeting with key legislative leaders, Eisenhower requested congressional authorization to use U.S. troops to counter Soviet subversion in the Middle East. He “cited Syrian developments as evidence of Russian intent.” The House approved, 355 to 61 on January 30, 1957, and the Eisenhower Doctrine went into effect.

In August, Washington apparently gave authorization for Operation Wappen, the code name for the new U.S. covert operation against Syria. Howard Stone, a CIA political action specialist with experience in Iran and Sudan, had been planning a coup with dissidents inside the Syrian army for three months. Meanwhile, Shishakli assured Kermit Roosevelt [author of the CIA’s plan] that he was ready to reassume power in Syria. …

Syrian counterintelligence chief Sarraj reacted swiftly on August 12, expelling Stone and other CIA agents, arresting their accomplices and placing the U.S. embassy under surveillance. Left-wing Colonel Bizri used the fiasco as an excuse to wrest control of the army from his moderate rivals.

The U.S. encouraged Turkey and Iraq to mass troops along their borders with Syria. …

Eisenhower gradually edged away from the provocative scheme but the Turks refused to demobilize the 50,000 troops they had massed along the Syrian frontier. …

On July 15, Eisenhower pondered U.S. problems in the Arab world. “The trouble is we have a campaign of hatred against us, not by the governments but by the people.”

The U.S. regime’s enemies here were not any government, but instead “the people.” These people had good reason for hating America’s Government. Syrians didn’t want American thugs to control their lives. Already, the U.S. had become a dictatorship; and not only was it that: it became a dictatorship which is determined to be dictators to the entire world. The U.S. aristocracy demanded this, and still does.

The U.S. gang (the U.S. Government) weren’t dealing with a sufficiently psychopathic military in Syria; so, America’s rule over that country didn’t last long. But, finally, the born CIA asset Barack Obama tried his best to conquer Syria, and he too failed; and, now, the businessman Trump is settling for controlling merely portions of Syria, which the Sauds and the billionaires in Israel and in the U.S. still are demanding.

Thus, Syria hasn’t been sufficiently corrupt to satisfy the U.S.-Israeli-Saudi gang. Syria’s Government still represents the Syrian people. (Even Western polls of Syrians confirm it. And 72% of Syrians are opposed to the U.S. regime’s demand that Assad be removed from power prior to the next Syrian election and not be allowed to run again for the Presidency. And yet the U.S. says it supports democracy — even while trying to block it in Syria.) America’s aristocrats have tried mightily in Syria, many times, but have failed, each time.

What brought down the Soviet Union — Al Qaeda, supported by the aristocracies of the U.S. and Saudi Arabia — has consistently failed to bring down Syria, except to destroy it — and the perpetrators of that destruction (not only America’s dictators, but the Sauds, plus the Thanis who own Qatar, plus Turkey’s Erdogan) even have the gall now to blame their victims, for that $250-billion-plus reconstruction expense. That’s the perfection of conservatism: it’s the epitomization of the blame-the-victim ideology. It is fascism.

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of  They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of  CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity.

22 January 2018

Source: https://countercurrents.org/2018/01/22/americas-deceitful-secret-support-al-qaeda/

By Abdus Sattar Ghazali

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said the United States “does not want to keep Syria as a state in its current borders”, accusing Washington of seeking to establish a Kurdish-controlled entity along Turkish and Iraqi border zones.

Speaking at an annual press conference in Moscow to review the past year’s diplomatic activities on Monday Jan 13, Lavrov said:

“The [US’] actions that we have been observing indicate that the US does not want to keep Syria as a state in its current borders … The US wants to help the Syrian Democratic Forces to set up some border security zones,” he said, referring to a US-backed rebel alliance dominated by Syrian Kurds, known as the SDF. What it would mean is that vast swaths of territory along the border of Turkey and Iraq would be isolated, it’s to the east of the Euphrates river. There are difficult relations between Kurds and Arabs there. If you say that this zone will be controlled by the forces supported by the US, there will be a force of 30,000 people.”

Erdogan: US trying to form ‘terror army’ in Syria

Commenting on reports of the US plan to establish a 30,000-strong new border security force with the involvement of Kurdish fighters in northern Syria, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that the US was working to form a “terror army” on his country’s southern border by training a new force in Syria that includes Kurdish fighters.

“What we are supposed to do is to drown this terror army before in comes into being,” he said in an address in the capital Ankara on Jan 15, calling the Kurdish fighters “backstabbers” who will point their weapons to the US in the future.

According to media reports quoting US officials, the US-led coalition fighting the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL also known as ISIS) will recruit around half of the new force from the Syrian Defense Forces (SDF), an umbrella group of fighters dominated by the People’s Protection Units (YPG).

Ankara considers Kurdish YPG fighters as a “terrorist” organization with links to to the banned Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which has waged a decades-long fight inside the country. PKK is blacklisted as a terrorist organisation by Turkey and its Western allies. The US views the YPG as a highly effective fighting force against ISIL.

Erdogan said that Turkey’s armed forces had completed preparations for an operation against the Kurdish-controlled region of Afrin in northwest Syria and the town of Manbij.

He warned Turkey’s allies against helping “terrorists” in Syria and said: “We won’t be responsible for consequences.”

“The establishment of the so-called Syria Border Protection Force was not consulted with Turkey, which is a member of the coalition,” the Turkish foreign ministry said.

US backtracks on Syrian ‘border guard’

The United States continues to train local security forces linked to the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces in Syria, but will not create a ‘border guard force’ and understands the concerns of Turkey, the U.S. Department of Defense said in a statement on Wednesday Jan 17.

“The training is designed to enhance security for displaced persons returning to their devastated communities,” the Pentagon said. “It is also essential so that ISIS cannot reemerge in liberated and ungoverned areas. This is not a new “army” or conventional ‘border guard’ force.”

The statement added that the U.S. was “keenly aware of the security concerns of Turkey, our Coalition partner and NATO ally.”

Noting that Turkey’s security concerns are legitimate, the Pentagon said it would continue to be transparent with Ankara about its efforts to defeat ISIS in Syria, “and stand by our NATO ally in its counter-terrorism efforts.”

“The military campaign against ISIS in Syria is not over and heavy fighting is still underway in the Middle Euphrates River Valley,” the Pentagon said adding:

“These security forces are internally-focused to prevent ISIS fighters from fleeing Syria and augment local security in liberated areas. These forces will protect the local population and help prevent ISIS from launching new attacks against the U.S. and its allies and partners, pending a longer-term political solution to the Syrian civil war in Geneva.”

Will Syria’s conflict redraw the map of the Middle East?

Fabrice Balanche, associate professor and research director at the University of Lyon 2, wrote in June 2017: “The global resonance of the Syrian war has a precedent from some four centuries ago: the conflict in Bohemia (1618–23), which initiated the Thirty Years’ War. Today, world powers such as Russia, China, the United States, and Europe are assessing their regional interests and the measures they will take to achieve them. The conflict itself, meanwhile, can only grow, as the Yemen example shows, given the freeing up of local actors. But amid the great instability, a new Westphalian order is emerging in the Middle East. Rather than erasing the mistakes of the past a new territorial division could end up being superimposed upon the Sykes-Picot line by which the departing colonial powers split the region.”

Not surprisingly, Michael Hayden, a former director of America’s Central Intelligence Agency told CNN in February 2016, that the international agreements made after World War Two are starting to fall apart, and may change the borders of some countries in the Middle East.

“What we see here is a fundamental melting down of the international order,” Michael Hayden said adding:

“We are seeing a melting down of the post-WWII Bretton Woods American liberal order. We are certainly seeing a melting down of the borders drawn at the time of Versailles and Sykes-Picot. I am very fond of saying Iraq no longer exists, Syria no longer exists; they aren’t coming back. Lebanon is teetering and Libya is long gone.”

Hayden described the current situation as a “tectonic” moment. “Within that we then have the war against terrorism; it is an incredibly complex time.”

Argument for greater Kurdistan

Lt. Col. Ralph Peters wrote in June 2006, the most arbitrary and distorted borders in the world are in Africa and the Middle East. Drawn by self-interested Europeans (who have had sufficient trouble defining their own frontiers), Africa’s borders continue to provoke the deaths of millions of local inhabitants. But the unjust borders in the Middle East — to borrow from Churchill — generate more trouble than can be consumed locally.

Yet, for all the injustices the borders re-imagined here leave unaddressed, without such major boundary revisions, we shall never see a more peaceful Middle East, Peters argued and added:

“The most glaring injustice in the notoriously unjust lands between the Balkan Mountains and the Himalayas is the absence of an independent Kurdish state. There are between 27 million and 36 million Kurds living in contiguous regions in the Middle East (the figures are imprecise because no state has ever allowed an honest census). Greater than the population of present-day Iraq, even the lower figure makes the Kurds the world’s largest ethnic group without a state of its own. Worse, Kurds have been oppressed by every government controlling the hills and mountains where they’ve lived since Xenophon’s day.

“The U.S. and its coalition partners missed a glorious chance to begin to correct this injustice after Baghdad’s fall. A Frankenstein’s monster of a state sewn together from ill-fitting parts, Iraq should have been divided into three smaller states immediately. We failed from cowardice and lack of vision, bullying Iraq’s Kurds into supporting the new Iraqi government — which they do wistfully as a quid pro quo for our good will. But were a free plebiscite to be held, make no mistake: Nearly 100 percent of Iraq’s Kurds would vote for independence.

“As would the long-suffering Kurds of Turkey, who have endured decades of violent military oppression and a decades-long demotion to “mountain Turks” in an effort to eradicate their identity. While the Kurdish plight at Ankara’s hands has eased somewhat over the past decade, the repression recently intensified again and the eastern fifth of Turkey should be viewed as occupied territory. As for the Kurds of Syria and Iran, they, too, would rush to join an independent Kurdistan if they could. The refusal by the world’s legitimate democracies to champion Kurdish independence is a human-rights sin of omission far worse than the clumsy, minor sins of commission that routinely excite our media. And by the way: A Free Kurdistan, stretching from Diyarbakir through Tabriz, would be the most pro-Western state between Bulgaria and Japan.”

Lt. Col. Ralph Peters further argued: “A just alignment in the region would leave Iraq’s three Sunni-majority provinces as a truncated state that might eventually choose to unify with a Syria that loses its littoral to a Mediterranean-oriented Greater Lebanon: Phoenecia reborn. The Shia south of old Iraq would form the basis of an Arab Shia State rimming much of the Persian Gulf. Jordan would retain its current territory, with some southward expansion at Saudi expense. For its part, the unnatural state of Saudi Arabia would suffer as great a dismantling as Pakistan.”

His article was published in the Armed Forces Journal under the title: Blood borders: How a better Middle East would look.

Abdus Sattar Ghazali is the Chief Editor of the Journal of America (www.journalofamerica.net).

22 January 2018

Source: https://countercurrents.org/2018/01/22/redrawing-map-syria/

By Jan Oberg

19 Jan 2018 – Most media covering the speech that US Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, gave at the Hoover Institution on January 17, 2018 merely points out that he said that the United States would stay in Syria – open-ended – in the future and until President Bashar al-Assad has left the scene. Read the full speech here.

Reuters even twists it all to mean that the US is now more patient about Assad’s removal.

Before I continue, it is a significant sign of the Western crisis, including moral and legal decay, that it raises few eyebrows – and none in NATO circles – that a top official of the leader of the Western world:

1. expresses no regrets about anything done so far in this conflict or in the larger Middle East,

2. states clearly that it will continue what must in legal terms be characterized as foreign military aggression and presence on the territory of a legal state member of the UN,

3. that it will work for regime change (there too) and

4. will make various kinds of aid dependent on Assad’s demise. Remember it is one of the largest post-1945 humanitarian crises – in the category of, say, Vietnam, Cambodia, Iraq and Yemen – all of which have, by no coincidence, US and allied warfare as their main feature.

Irrespective of what we may think of Syria, this is little but a full-scale assault on international law and the normative system embedded in the UN Charter that has taken decades of hard work to build, a fundamental cornerstone of the management and civilizational development of the world order system.

Seen in comparison with the other attempts at undermining the UN – which began in the 1990s in Bosnia-Herzegovina – this should be a cause of deep concern among people in the truly civilizational corners of our world.

And it can’t be sold to the world under the headline of a Responsibility to Protect. But it does provoke the question: Shouldn’t there be a Responsibility to Protest – even among those allies that Tillerson seems to take for granted are all lining up behind the US (and perhaps they are)?

If there is anyone who can talk the US to some sense these days, it must be allies and friends predominantly in NATO and the EU. But will they?

Although held at Stanford University – and therefore supposed to contain some kind of decent academic-intellectual analysis – Tillerson’s presentation is from such perspectives incredibly poor.

Although he says that he will give “a broad historical and political context”, there is neither broadness, nor history nor context. Indeed, just a few words later he starts out in this manner which offers the framework for the rest of what he says:

For nearly 50 years, the Syrian people have suffered under the dictatorship of Hafez al-Assad and his son Bashar al-Assad. The nature of the Assad regime, like that of its sponsor Iran, is malignant. It has promoted state terror. It has empowered groups that kill American soldiers, such as al-Qaida. It has backed Hizballah and Hamas. And it has violently suppressed political opposition…

and on an on it goes.

If this is the best history, context and analysis of what the underlying conflicts and the reasons for all the violence in Syria are that the United States of America’s top foreign policy official can muster you may ask at least two questions: What is so terribly deficient, narrow-minded and self-serving about US academia in this field? Or is that academic world actually excellent but not listened to at all in decision-making circles and why did he make that speech at a university?

I don’t know what the answer is, perhaps it is a combination of the two? But as a professor in peace and conflict studies I would ask an undergraduate student making writing such a piece of history and conflict analysis to read a couple of books more and come back to me with a revised paper. I would not let that student pass the exam.

Interestingly, the transcript of the speech reveals that the audience had no chance to ask questions or otherwise debate with the speaker. After Tillerson’s speech there is only a conversation between him and former foreign secretary,  Condoleezza Rice. That’s unusual at a university where free debate should reign.

Secondly, there is nothing that indicates that Tillerson has a grasp on how his “strategy” for Syria relates to a more comprehensive policy for the Middle East region as a whole.

He doesn’t mention – for understandable reasons, you may say – that the US also has some other policies and goals for its future presence in Syria such as building permanent bases – in a kind of base race with Russia – and supporting Kurdish forces in the Syrian side of the border to Turkey – the second largest military power in NATO that is of course furious and calls it a terrorist army that it is ready to fight.

It will only push Turkey closer to Russia and eventually and predictably Turkey will turn its back completely on Europe and leave NATO.

We’ve of course seen it all before. It’s about bases (like, say, Kosovo), about control of resources (like, say, Iraq), about regime change (like, say Saddam Hussein and Moamar Khadafi) and it’s about the exceptionalist belief that God’s own country has God’s mandate to create US Imperial peace everywhere – no matter how many times it has already gone madly wrong and no matter how many innocent people are killed and wounded in the process.

He also does not mention that the US under the Trump administration has chosen to promote and support the new fundamentalist Islamist-Zionist team, Saudi-Arabia and Israel, supported by the Gulf States, to gang up against the Iran that is seen as a huge threat to the US, the world and the region. But which – unfortunately for that view – isn’t.

It is conspicuous in that this otherwise totally split and in-fighting administration/Deep State is united in basically in one thing: hating Iran. Iran is also about the only issue where President Trump holds the same views while he was in the campaign as he does now he is in the White House.

Furthermore, the Trump administration is doing nothing but undermining the welfare of the Iranian people (and supporting the hardliners and corrupt sectors) by means of the sanctions that are still in function through financial mechanisms. And coming up repeatedly with nonsensical perceptions of the country and permanent threat à la all options are on the table.

That is going to go madly wrong too, sooner or later.

Much can be said about Tillerson’s speech. If it wasn’t coming out of the world’s strongest military power – but now losing on all other power scales – nobody would bother to read it. But you should! (Or see it below on video which also reveals how ritualistic the whole event is from the intro by the Hoover president and onwards).

Heartbreakingly, it spells prolonged hell for fellow human beings in Syria and – open-ended – troubles for Iran and its people.

Its peace-and-military stability philosophy is a fake as fake can be. Peace means war, open-ended war.

Can anything good be said about it?

Probably only that this type of policy will eventually become the famous nail in the US Empire’s coffin. Thereafter, both the US Republic and the world will be a much better place.

But wouldn’t it be so much better for all of us if that piece of history could unfold in a peaceful, intellectually honest and moral manner instead of open-ended warfare to the end?

TFF Director Prof. Jan Oberg is a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace Development Environment.

22 January 2018

Source: https://www.transcend.org/tms/2018/01/the-us-syria-strategy-recipe-for-continued-disaster-even-for-the-us/

By Richard Falk

There are many reasons for persons with very different worldviews to feel disillusioned by, if not angry at, the United Nations. These negative feelings arise usually because the UN stands idly by the sidelines while terrible national and human tragedies unfold as the world media visually narrates horrific events in real time. At other times the hostile feelings toward the UN arise because the Organization is seen as a plaything of geopolitics, as bowing to crude leverage wielded by major funding governments, and in the process violating the letter and spirit of the UN Charter. Such behavior undermines the UN’s constitutional foundations and casts doubt on the central claim that the Organization is dedicated to the cause of war prevention.

No people have more reason to be disappointed with the UN, international law, and the precepts of international morality than do the people of Palestine. From the moment the UN was established up until the present moment, the Palestinians have been victimized either by the use of the UN to pursue geopolitical goals or by the inability of the UN to implement its own decisions and assessments that are responsive to Palestinian grievances or supportive of Palestinian aspirations.

Obviously, there is present a world order puzzle that needs solving. Many believe, especially here in the United States, that it is Israel that is the victim of UN bashing and bias, being singled out at the UN for continuous censure and criticism, and it is the Palestinians that have over the years received aid and comfort in the halls of the UN for their contentions, however inflammatory. For our dualistic Western minds, incapable of reconciling opposites, something must be wrong. It seems impossible for both the Palestinians and Israelis to be both victimized at the UN.

Yet this is precisely the case. The Palestinians are victimized because the UN doesn’t mean what is says, at least not on the plane of action. The UN gives the Palestinians the pabulum of words, while refraining from the reality of deeds, which over time gives rise to resentment and cynicism summarized by the sentiment: ‘what good are words, if nothing happens, and the situation on the ground even deteriorates.

At the same time, partly in reaction to this sense of impotence when it comes to imposing its views effectively on behavior, the UN slaps, sometimes strongly, the defiant Israelis. And the Israelis, never above playing the anti-Semitic card, keep telling the world that they are singled out for bashing even though their wrongs are far less bad than that of others. Of course, never far in the background is the weight of geopolitics, with the United States wielding a punitive stick on Israel’s behalf.

History needs to be taken into account in sifting through the complexities of argument and counter-argument carried on now for decades about the performance of the UN in relation to Palestinians and Israelis. With respect to the geopolitical explanation of Palestinian disillusionment, the UN already in 1946 accepted the responsibility to supersede the United Kingdom, which had been administering Palestine on behalf of the international community since the fall of the Ottoman Empire after World War I., in working out a solution on behalf of the two peoples. Yet instead of consulting the resident population of Palestine on its wishes with respect to the implementation of the right of self-determination, the UN on its own initiative proposed an Orientalizing solution that gave Israel 55% of Palestine despite less than 33% of the population being Jewish. This demographic disparity existed despite several decades of Jewish immigration spurred by energetic Zionist efforts around the world as well as by the British, eager for strategic reasons of their own to carry out the Balfour pledge of 1917. Jewish immigration was also greatly encouraged by the rise of Nazism, which intensified the search for a sanctuary that could protect Jews, especially those fleeing Hitler’s Germany.

Then to compound this imposition of a settler colonialist outcome, repugnant from the outset to the majority Arab population, the UN proceeded in 1948 to accept Israel as a member of the UN without first making obligatory provision to ensure an equitable future for the Palestinian people. This flawed UN response to the end of the British mandate has been compounded by years of Israeli expansionism, especially since 1967. Such an internationally tilted outcome reflected intense liberal guilt toward Jews in the aftermath of the Holocaust combined with the skill and tactics of the Zionist movement in influencing the Jewish diaspora as well as government policy in Europe and North America. It was an early demonstration of geopolitics triumphing over international law and global justice within the UN. It should not be forgotten that the UN was established in ways that gave leading states a geopolitical comfort zone, more familiarly known as ‘the veto,’ a blunt instrument for opting out of responsibilities, and useful to protect friends and batter enemies.

Turning to the impotence of the UN when it comes to its resolutions and decisions that encounter geopolitical resistance, the pattern has been evident all along. After the outcome of the 1967 War, the international community by way of the UN acquiesced with hardly a whimper to the extension of Israeli territorial claims from 55% to 78% of mandate Palestine. Ever since, this enlargement of Israeli territorial expectations has formed the basis for the two-state consensus, and was even accepted by the Palestinians as the realistic territorial baseline for a compromise solution.

Beyond this central issue of territorial allocation, the UN General Assembly affirmed the right of return of Palestinians forced to leave their homes in the 1947-48 War in General Assembly Resolution 194, and a second wave dispossessed in the 1967 War. The resolution has been pointedly rejected by Israel without any adverse consequences.

In similar fashion, the expansion and annexation of Jerusalem has been strongly condemned, most canonically, by the UN Security Council in Resolution 478 (1980), a unanimous vote except for the U.S. abstention. Finally, despite this, and the periodic Security Council denunciations of Israeli settlements on occupied Palestine territory, Israel has continued year upon year to build and increase the settler population. Against this background, it is to be expected that the Palestinians feel that having their rights affirmed at the UN is a worthless exercise, if not a feeble way to obscure UN impotence, given that the Palestinian ordeal has worsened year after year, decade after decade.

And yet despite all this the Jerusalem resolution of last December (passed by a vote of 128-9 with 35 abstentions and 21 absences) repudiating the Trump initiative is significant, partly because symbols are of great, if indirect, importance in international life. Symbolic victories at the UN do on occasion have subtle, yet real, behavioral impacts. The UN for all its weaknesses has long been the primary source for authoritative determinations of the legitimacy and illegitimacy of internationally recognized claims and grievances. This resolution is illustrative, supported by every important country in the world including the closest allies of the United States, with the symbolic and unequivocal rejection of the Trump diplomatic gesture of recognition being clear and consequential.

The Jerusalem resolution seems likely to produce a series of consequences: it greatly weakens, if not terminates, the central role that the United States has played as the only recognized third party mediator between Israelis and Palestinians, thereby creating an opportunity for the EU and individual European states to fill the diplomatic vacuum that seems to have formed; besides this, demonstrations around the world opposing the U.S. recognition initiative are translating support throughout the world for the Palestinian global solidarity movement that is likely to be expressed in several ways, especially by way of a more robust Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) Campaign. And at least for the moment, the Palestinian Authority, and its leadership, has moved away from adopting a quasi-collaborative stance in its relations with Israel, insisting that Trump’s move caused a damaging rupture. In effect, if diplomacy is to go forward in the future, it will have to proceed under new auspices, possibly Europe, maybe even China or the UN. Such radical expectations, while expressing a welcome refusal to be coopted by the Tel Aviv/Washington charade carried on for so long within the Oslo framework, is totally unrealistic in the near term. Israel would much rather be a pariah state than to submit its fate to Chinese or UN diplomacy, or for that matter, any intermediary that would seem fair to the Palestinians rather than partisan as in the past in favor of Israel. For so long Israel has been coddled by American leaders that it became a hardened expectation with little wiggle room as Barack Obama found out early in his presidency when he dared to take baby steps in search of a middle ground.

It is worth recalling the anti-apartheid campaign against the South African racist regime that achieved prominence in the decades after 1945. The UN played a crucial role by its authoritative condemnation of apartheid as a crime against humanity and by its indirect encouragement of nonviolent resistance to South Africa racism throughout the world. This anti-apartheid experience is an instructive precedent, raising hope for the eventual success of the Palestinian national struggle, although the South African leadership had been far less creative and effective than the Israelis in insulating their governing process from external pressures.

What is analyzed with reference to Palestine and the Jerusalem resolution can be understood as a template for a general appreciation of both what the UN can and cannot do. The UN has this central role to play in either confirming or dismissing symbolic claims associated with the grievances and rights of subjugated peoples in the world. It is for this reason that governments fight so hard to have their policies accepted at the UN, or at least not criticized, censured, or punished, none more so than the government of Israel. Israel’s vicious attacks on the UN should be understood as disclosing the Israeli appreciation that, despite everything, the UN is a crucial site of struggle in the contemporary world order. Its findings of legitimacy and illegitimacy, especially if they resonate with feelings of justice around the world, impact strongly on civil society and often exert a strong influence on international public opinion and media coverage.

At the same time even if there is intense support for a symbolic outcome, it will rarely be self-enforcing, and it will be almost impossible to enforce at all absent a rare supportive geopolitical consensus. For instance, with respect to imposing sanctions on North Korea given its provocative nuclear program and accompanying diplomacy, it has been possible for all 15 members of the Security Council to agree sometimes on a common course of action, although as worried by Trump’s blustering belligerence that increases the danger of a universally unwanted and feared war. The geopolitical divergencies that were present at the UN were temporarily overcome by compromises. In this instance, the shared goal of avoiding a war on the Korean Peninsula encouraged governments to find some common ground.

The role of the UN in the Middle East has been particularly lamentable; first, the legacies of colonialism have left artificial political communities throughout the region. The Middle East also suffered from the geopolitical ambitions of the U.S., including its Cold War containment policy, strategic priorities accorded Gulf oil reserves and the security of Israel, and since the Iranian Revolution of 1979, its resolve to limit the spread of Islamic influence and political extremism. In effect, when the geopolitical stakes are high and associated with the policy priorities of dominant states, then the UN becomes marginalized, playing only trivial roles as in the long international civil wars that have caused such massive suffering in Syria and Yemen.

The conclusion to be reached is to view the UN realistically, affirming its central role with regard to symbols of legitimacy and its relative impotence if geopolitical forces are mobilized against any UN calls for action. Sometimes, arguably, the UN can be too effective, as when geopolitical forces turn a blind eye to issues of sovereignty and justice in a weaker country. This happened when in 2011 the Security Council was hoodwinked into endorsing a NATO regime-changing intervention in Libya undertaken in the name of freedom and democracy, but resulting in chaos, violent strife, and ethnic tensions.

The prospects for a stronger UN presence in international life involve tethering geopolitics by taking steps that now seem politically impractical: abolishing the veto power of the five permanent members of the Security Council, making resolutions of the General Assembly binding if supported by ¾ of UN members, basing UN funding on an independent tax base tied to international civil aviation or transnational financial transactions, and removing the selection of the Secretary General from the filter of P-5 approval. These steps have been long advocated by those seeking a more effective UN, but have been blocked by states that do not want to diminish their international status or their geopolitical leverage.

Until the international system experiences a shock or intense stress, it is hard to imagine such steps being taken. In fact, given Trump’s regressive approach to global policy and thinly disguised hostility to the UN, it is more likely that the UN will be even more constrained in the near future as to what it can do to make the world more peaceful, prosperous, sustainable, and just. The diplomatic rebuff of the UN after its irresponsible Jerusalem unilateralism, including the failure of its bullying tactics, has undoubtedly made the Trump presidency realize that the UN will not be a venue in which to push its regressive version of ultra-nationalist militarism.

Despite understandable degrees of disillusionment, people of good will dedicated to UN ideals should not give up on the Organization or its potentiality, but work harder to make the UN come closer to fulfilling its original promise, needed now more than ever. Justice for the Palestinian people, however long deferred, remains the defining moral prism by which to assess the shifting balance between achieving global justice and bowing to the whims of geopolitics at the UN and elsewhere.

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.

22 January 2018

Source: https://www.transcend.org/tms/2018/01/why-the-united-nations-matters-even-for-the-palestinians/

By Gunnar Rundgren

It is possible to feed more than 9 billion people with organic production methods with a small increase in the required crop acreage and with decreased greenhouse gas emission. But this assumes considerable reduction in food wastage and in the quantities of feed grown to animals.

That is the conclusion in the paper Strategies for feeding the world more sustainably with organic agriculture in Nature Communications by researchers from the Research Institute of Organic Agriculture in Switzerland, the Institute of Environmental Decisions in Switzerland, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) in Italy, Institute of Social Ecology Vienna in Austria and the Institute of Biological and Environmental Sciences in the UK.

The research builds on assumptions of a 25% reduction in yield with organic methods, the continued increase in global population up to more than 9 billion 2050 as well as different scenarios of impact of climate change on agriculture yields. The model doesn’t assume any change in the area used for grazing. The researchers acknowledge that different research show big variation in the ”yield gap” between organic and conventional. It is primarily research from Europe that shows big yield gaps, while other studies show much smaller gaps, if any. In general their assumptions are conservative and could hardly be accused of being biased in favour of organic.

Obviously, if consumption patterns are equal and yields are lower and population increases, more land would be needed with a large-scale conversion to organic agriculture. But if food waste is reduced with 50% and this is combined with a 50% reduction in the use of human-edible crops as animal feed, less land would be used compared to a reference scenario (the assumed population, consumption and production as per 2050 in FAO:s analysis) – still more than today though.

The biggest agronomic challenge for such a large scale conversion to organic would be the supply of nitrogen. On the up-side of that, the reactive nitrogen overload of the whole biosphere, one of the biggest changes in local and global biological cycles, would be reduced and gradually disappear. The researchers acknowledge that recycling of human waste and food waste into the agriculture system could reduce the nitrogen deficiency in agriculture, but they have not included that in the model.

The exclusion of synthetic fertilizers leads to big reductions of greenhouse gas emissions, as both the use and production of Nitrogen fertilizers are major causes for emissions. Emissions from ruminants (cows, sheep and goats) will increase somewhat as their total numbers will increase (but less than the increase of population). Similarly, the greenhouse gas emissions from rice cultivation will increase because of more rice being produced.

The combination of the lower yields and the increase of leguminous plants (beans etc) in order to fix nitrogen makes the availability of animal feed lower. So the decreased use of human-edible crops as feed for animals is rather a production necessity than something triggered by consumption changes. The reduction of animals will mainly be for monogastric animals such as pigs and chicken as they are the ones that mainly eat human-edible crops.

The results of the study coincides with similar results on a national and regional level. For instance, researchers from the Nordic countries concluded that it would be possible to feed between 31 and 37 million people (compared to the current 26 million) in the Nordic countries, with organically produced food assuming substantial reduction in meat consumption.

One can claim that the results also show that you can’t convert the agriculture system to organic without increasing the cultivated lands considerably. Because, despite the conclusions of the authors, that is also a result from their scenarios. If nothing else is changed land demand will increase with 33%.

Ultimately, all this modelling and scenario-building has limited value and the results are very much fixed by the assumptions and input data. The food system is a dynamic system where you can’t change just one or two parameters and keep the rest the same. But models and scenarios can still help us to identify certain critical conditions.

The choice of the authors to change food wastage and the proportion of food fed to animals is a rather reasonable choice and not taken out of the blue. One can assume that food will become more expensive with a large-scale conversion to organic and that will reduce waste considerably. Similarly, using human-edible food as feed for animals will be less interesting from a commercial perspective when they become more expensive. The dramatic increase of consumption of pig and chicken meat is as much a result of cheap grains and soy beans as of consumer demand.  The increased consumption of pulses to compensate for the reduction of meat coincide with a need to increase the cultivation of such crops to adjust to nitrogen shortages.

There are also other assumptions that could be included in models. The total calories produced under the scenarios are far above what people need to eat and as obesity is now a big global problem, one could have reduced calories available and thus be able to show even better results AND an improved health status of the world’s population. Improvements in the utilization of grasslands could also have been a parameter to consider.

Finally, the economic feedback loops are very important. There are several ways to increase yields in agriculture, of which the use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides are just two. They are admittedly important, but one can increase productivity by deploying more work, other nature resources (e.g. water), by switching crops or taking more crops per year. What is done is mainly determined by economic factors. Very few farms, organic or non-organic, produce at their maximum, but they produce what is optimal given prices of factors of production and output prices. In most cases, production per person has been much more important that production per unit of land. But in a world with limited land resources and 9 billion people, this will sooner or later change.

So yes, we can. If we want to.

Gunnar Rundgren has worked with most parts of the organic farmer sector – from farming to policy – since 1977, starting on the pioneer organic farm, Torfolk.

21 January 2018

Source: https://countercurrents.org/2018/01/21/yes-can-feed-9-billion-organic-agriculture/