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By Tamara Nassar

An Israeli military court has approved a plea deal which will see Palestinian teenager Ahed Tamimi serve an eight-month prison sentence on top of a fine of nearly $1,500.

Ahed, who turned 17 in January, was charged with assaulting soldiers and incitement after a video recorded by her mother Nariman circulated, showing Ahed and her cousin Nour slapping and shoving two heavily armed Israeli soldiers on 15 December.

Ahed was arrested in the middle of the night at her home in the occupied West Bank village of Nabi Saleh on 19 December.

Nour and Nariman were also detained by the army following the videotaped incident and have been sentencedto time served – 16 days in prison – and eight months in prison, respectively, after accepting plea deals.

“Something shameful”

The military court dropped several of its initial charges against Ahed, for which she faced up to 10 years in prison, according to the prisoners solidarity group Samidoun.

An Israeli military court ruled on Sunday that proceedings in Ahed’s case were to be held behind closed doors, rejecting her appeal for a public trial on the basis that it was for “the minor’s benefit.”

“It seems like it finally dawned on them that there’s something shameful about the proceedings against [Ahed], and that it is better to hold a secret trial rather than make public this legal farce,” Ahed’s lawyer Gaby Lasky told The Electronic Intifada prior to the ruling.

Israel’s military courts deny basic due process rights and have a near-100 percent conviction rate for Palestinians.

Concerned by these abuses, 21 members of US Congress are backing legislation to bar Israel from using American aid for the imprisonment and abuse of Palestinian children like Ahed Tamimi.

There are currently more than 300 Palestinian children in Israeli military detention.

Revenge campaign

Ahed’s viral videotaped confrontation with the soldiers occurred outside her home hours after Israeli soldiers shot in the head and seriously injured her 15-year-old cousin Muhammad Fadel Tamimi.

Muhammad was also arrested by Israeli soldiers on 26 January along with several other members of the Tamimi family, most of them children. Muhammad was released after being interrogated.

The Tamimi family is known for its unarmed resistance to Israel’s encroachment on their village of Nabi Saleh.

Ahed’s arrest made international headlines and rallied global support for her freedom, causing major embarrassment for Israel.

Israeli officials made bizarre and absurd claims about her family, with deputy minister Michael Oren positingthat the Tamimis were a group of “blond, blue-eyed and light-skinned” actors hired to “make Israel look bad.”

Yoav Mordechai, the general who oversees COGAT, the bureaucratic arm of Israel’s military occupation, claimed that the injury to Muhammad Tamimi’s head was caused not by an Israeli soldier’s bullet, but by the child falling off his bike – an outlandish story soon debunked by journalists and human rights defenders.

Discrimination

While Ahed Tamimi was sentenced to eight months for slapping and shoving occupation soldiers, Israeli army medic Elor Azarya will be released from prison in May after serving only nine months for executing a prone Palestinian who lay incapacitated on a Hebron street.

Azarya’s 18-month sentence was shortened to 14 months in September. This week a military parole board ordered Azarya’s release after serving two-thirds of his sentence.
https://twitter.com/benabyad/status/976499101717225473

An Israeli military court had ruled that Azarya’s act was motivated by revenge.

The chief prosecutor in the case stated Azarya has shown no remorse and taken no responsibility for his actions but poses no danger to the public, according to Haaretz.

Meanwhile, David Muial was sentenced to community service on Wednesday after participating in the lynching of Eritrean asylum seeker Haftom Zarhum in October 2015.

Zarhum, 29, was severely beaten and shot to death by a mob of Israeli soldiers, prison officers and police after they mistook him for the gunman who had opened fire moments earlier at the central bus station in Beer Sheva, a city in southern Israel.

Israel refused to recognize Zarhum as a “terror victim” on grounds that he had entered Israel illegally, preventing his family from claiming compensation.

Tamara Nassar is an assistant editor at The Electronic Intifada.

25 March 2018

Source: https://countercurrents.org/2018/03/25/israel-sentences-ahed-tamimi-to-eight-months-in-prison/

By Abdus Sattar Ghazali

China has sold Pakistan a powerful tracking system in an unprecedented deal that could speed up the Pakistani military’s development of multi-warhead missiles, South China Morning Post has reported.

News of the sale – and evidence that China is supporting Pakistan’s rapidly developing missile program  – comes two months after India tested its most advanced nuclear-ready intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) with a range long enough to hit Beijing or Shanghai, the paper said.

Chinese authorities declassified information about the deal on March 21. A statement on the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) website said China was the first country to export such sensitive equipment to Pakistan. Zheng Mengwei, a researcher with the CAS Institute of Optics and Electronics in Chengdu, Sichuan province, confirmed to the South China Morning Post that Pakistan had bought a highly sophisticated, large-scale optical tracking and measurement system from China.

The Pakistani military recently deployed the Chinese-made system “at a firing range” for use in testing and developing its new missiles, he said.

India and Pakistan are in a heated race to build up their nuclear weapons capabilities.

Agni-V

India’s January 18 test of its Agni-V ICBM, with a range of more than 5,000km (3,100 miles), is seen as a message that the South Asian giant can deploy a credible nuclear deterrent against China, the Chinese paper said.

While India’s single-warhead missiles are bigger and cover longer distances, Pakistan has focused its efforts on developing multiple independently targetable re-entry vehicles (MIRVs), a type of missile carrying several nuclear warheads that can be directed towards different targets.

Beijing’s powerful missile arsenal has driven New Delhi to improve its weapons systems in recent years, with the Agni-V believed to be able to strike nearly all of China.

Tension flared last year between the two neighbors over a long-disputed section of their border high in the Himalayas. India is also increasingly concerned about Beijing’s efforts to heighten its influence in the Indian Ocean.

India is already able to strike anywhere inside neighboring Pakistan, its arch-rival.

The Agni-V launch comes one day after India announced that it was spending US$553 million on new weapons for its border guards, including those on the borders of Tibet.

Ababeel missile

The US Defense Intelligence Agency officially confirmed in March that Pakistan conducted the first test launch of its nuclear-capable Ababeel missile in January 2017, “demonstrating South Asia’s first MIRV payload”, according to South China Morning Post .

Although the Ababeel missile has a range of only 2,200km, it can deliver numerous warheads to different targets. The technology has the potential to overwhelm a missile defense system, wiping out an adversary’s nuclear arsenal in one surprise attack.

There are growing concerns that MIRV technology will tip the strategic balance between India and Pakistan and destabilize the subcontinent, the Post said adding:

“India has so far not found success in building a system that can effectively deliver more than one nuclear warhead at a time.”

It has been a long-held notion that Beijing is supporting Islamabad’s missile development program. But solid evidence can seldom be found in the public domain, making the CAS statement a rarity.

“The system’s performance surpassed the user’s expectations,” it said, adding that it was considerably more complex than Pakistan’s home-made systems. It did not reveal how much Pakistan paid for the system.

Optical system

An optical system is a critical component in missile testing. It usually comes with a pair of high-performance telescopes equipped with a laser ranger, high-speed camera, infrared detector and a centralised computer system that automatically captures and follows moving targets.

The device records high-resolution images of a missile’s departure from its launcher, stage separation, tail flame and, after the missile re-enters atmosphere, the trajectory of the warheads it releases.

The uniqueness of the Chinese-made system lay in its use of four telescope units, “more than normally required”, Zheng said.

Each telescope, with a detection range of several hundred kilometres, is positioned in a different location, with their timing synchronised precisely with atomic clocks. Together, the telescopes provide visual information of unprecedented detail and accuracy, which missile developers can use to improve designs and engine performance.

Using more telescopes allows the system to track more warheads simultaneously from different angles, reducing the risk of losing a target.

High-quality optics are essential in missile development, especially MIRVs, said Rong Jili, deputy director at the Beijing Institute of Technology’s School of Aerospace Engineering.

Other types of tracking devices, such as radar, can collect more precise data at longer distances, but the Chinese-made optical system provided the intuitive, close-up look at real-life action that missile developers craved, he said.

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

24 March 2018

Source: https://countercurrents.org/2018/03/24/china-provides-powerful-tracking-system-for-pakistans-icbm-program/

By Dr Binoy Kampmark

It might have made a bit more than a whimper had the US political scene not found itself in yet another paroxysm of the drama known as the Trump White House.  Fifteen years before, governments aligning with the dogs of war decided, in defiance of millions of protestors globally, to invade a sovereign state.  Papers cheered with blood lust; propagandists and public relations firms were hired to push the politics of regime change in a country that was already hemmed in by sanctions and surveillance.

The invasion of Iraq must, over time, be given its own specific criminal gravity.  It sundered the Middle East, it tore at the artificially imposed borders contrived by former colonial masters.  It emboldened new foes and generated further disagreements.  For generations, chaos will be guaranteed on the heaped folly of the 2003 decision.

“The results are in,” went a sombre Charles P. Pierce for Esquire.  “Iraq never recovered.  Syria devolved into civil war. We got closer than ever to the inhumane regime in Saudi Arabia, now engaged in mass slaughter in Yemen with weapons we supplied, because there’s never been a problem with that before.”

As Matt Taibbi reflected, the invasion had the element of “awesome drama, made more thrilling by the seemingly obvious craziness of it all.” The subtext was a lack of sensible reason, distorted by the mania that Iraq had somehow become a global threat with a trigger happy maniac. In place was ample hysteric delight, characterised by the opening phase of the campaign: “Shock and Awe”.

As with the Indochina War, the invasion mirrored an emerging malaise back home.  Invading Iraq was “one of the great crimes of this or any age and destined to be a crossroads event in the history of America’s decline”.  It was “a cold, calculated, opportunistic power grab, aimed as much at future targets, and even our own population, as at the Iraqi ‘enemy’.”

The US allies who, with unfazed enthusiasm went in with similar destructive intent, were also showing mixed degrees of reflection.  In Australia, former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd saw a chance to chastise his predecessor, John Howard, for having joined the US-led enterprise.  “John Howard’s decision to commit thousands of Australian troops to the invasion of Iraq 15 years ago,” began his opening salvo, “ranks as one of the two great failures of Australian foreign policy since the Second World War.”

Rudd can show periods of sensible reflection.  The decision to invade Iraq had to also rank alongside another US-led mission that was doomed: the Vietnam War.  Again, the leadership in Canberra felt it logical and automatic that the soldiers of the South Cross should shed blood alongside those of the Stars and Stripes.

In Rudd’s reflection, analysis of legitimacy and interest was lacking. There was no specific Australian take on it, not a consideration of “the credibility of American military strategy to both win the war and secure the peace, as well as the long-term consequences for Australian national interests.”

Being a former diplomat, Rudd’s survey of the grotesque consequences is even deeper than Pierce. Sectarian violence between the Shia majority and Sunni minority was unleashed; Christians, having co-habited with Muslims for some 1,300 years were, were brutally expelled; Iraq was pushed into Iran’s orbit while Iraq duly imploded, becoming the base for regional terrorist influences.

The apologist’s tactic in these instances is one tried in history.  We were sincere in inflicting our butcheries; we were solemn in making our errors of judgment.  We only did what was appropriate at the time.  Even if those weapons of mass destruction had never turned up, Saddam Hussein was vicious, a sadist, murderer and torturer. Never mind those who knew better.

For John Howard, it was a case of making a decision on “available evidence” from Australian intelligence agencies at the time tying the Saddam regime with those ultimately elusive weapons of mass destruction. Howard duly “concluded that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction” and insisted that Rudd place himself in “the shoes of the government at the time”.

In the case of the evangelised Tony Blair of Britain, such ham sincerity is pure theatre, even convincing the likes of Sir John Chilcot, chairman of the public inquiry examining the lead-up to the 2003 invasion.  While he was not “straight with the nation” about the reasons for invading Iraq, he was “emotionally truthful”.

As Chilcot explained to the BBC’s political editor, Laura Kuenssberg last July, “Tony Blair is always and ever an advocate.  He makes the most persuasive case he can.  Not departing from the truth but persuasion is everything.”

As for President George W. Bush, he remains, along with Howard and Blair, elusive from the judicial bench of any tribunal, foreign or domestic.  War criminals have received weighty sentences for less but this triumvirate are at little risk of being apprehended.  In the autumn of their lives, they are witnessing a conflagration they happily initiated when in office.

Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge.  He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne.  Email: bkampmark@gmail.com

23 March 2018

Source: https://countercurrents.org/2018/03/23/death-and-impunity-iraq-fifteen-years-after/

The human rights and Palestine solidarity organisation, BDS South Africa, condemns the racism by Israel’s Chief Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef who during his recent weekly sermon compared African people to monkeys.

In footage aired by the Israeli media house, Ynet news, Yosef (who is one of two Israeli state-elected rabbis) can be seen referring to black people by the word “kushi,” which in modern Hebrew has derogatory connotations, and comparing Africans to “monkeys.” Click here.

This is not the first time that Israel’s Chief Rabbi Yosef has used his position to justify and legitimize discrimination. In a sermon delivered in May 2017, he suggested that secular woman behave like animals because of the way they dress. In March 2016 Yosef declared that non-Jews should not live in Israel.

Israeli racism against African people is on the rise and is a view not only of the broader Israeli public, but also of the Israeli government and its officials. Currently Israel is expelling thousands of Africans, giving them an ultimatum: leave by 1 April 2018 or risk indefinite imprisonment. Israel has also offered one hundred thousand rands in bonuses to civilians who aide in hunting and forcibly deporting African asylum seekers. Click here

Israel has portrayed non-Jewish Africans as a threat to Israel’s Jewish character calling them “infiltrators” with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu repeatedly calling for their expulsion and saying that Africans “threaten the social fabric of society.” Israel’s Minister of Interior, Eli Yishai, has said that African immigrants “think the country doesn’t belong to us, the white man.” The Israeli Minister of Culture and Sport, Miri Regev, has compared Africans to “a cancer”. In 2013 Israel admitted to have forcibly sterilised African women without their consent. Click here.

Israeli racism against Palestinians as well as Africans in particular was the focus of this year’s #IsraeliApartheidWeek campaign. Although #IsraeliApartheidWeek activities took place primarily between the 12th and 18th of March there are still certain events taking place in various cities and towns. Click here for the ongoing #IsraeliApartheidWeek schedule

ISSUED BY KWARA KEKANA ON BEHALF OF BDS SOUTH AFRICA

22 March 2018

Source: http://www.bdssouthafrica.com/post/israels-chief-rabbi-calls-black-people-monkeys/

By abc.net.au

Myanmar is fortifying its border with Bangladesh, where thousands of Rohingya refugees are sheltering after fleeing persecution in Myanmar’s Rakhine state.

The military has built a new barbed wire fence, installed land mines and placed hundreds of security forces on the shared border.

More than 5,000 Rohingya are living on a narrow strip of land between the two countries since some 700,000 Rohingya fled Myanmar last August.

Bangladesh has warned the military build up will escalate tensions but Myanmar’s focus right now is on its own political future after the country’s president quit yesterday.

22 March 2018

Source: http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/breakfast/myanmar-blocks-returning-rohingya/9574810

By Chris Hedges

Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, along with 18 members of the House of Representatives—15 Republicans and three Democrats—has sent a letter to Attorney General Jeff Sessions demanding that the Qatari-run Al-Jazeera television network register as a foreign agent under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA). The letter was issued after Al-Jazeera said it planned to air a documentary by a reporter who went undercover to look into the Israel lobby in the United States. The action by the senator and the House members follows the decision by the Justice Department to force RT America to register as a foreign agent and the imposition of algorithms by Facebook, Google and Twitter that steer traffic away from left-wing, anti-war and progressive websites, including Truthdig. It also follows December’s abolition of net neutrality.

The letter asks the Justice Department to investigate “reports that Al Jazeera infiltrated American non-profit organizations.” It says that the “content produced by this network often directly undermines American interests with favorable coverage of U.S. State Department-designated Foreign Terrorist Organizations, including Hamas, Hezbollah, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and Jabhat al-Nusra, al-Qaeda’s branch in Syria.”

“American citizens deserve to know whether the information and news media they consume is impartial, or if it is deceptive propaganda pushed by foreign nations,” the letter reads.

The ominous assault on the final redoubts of a free press, through an attempt to brand dissidents, independent journalists and critics of corporate power and imperialism as agents of a foreign power, has begun. FARA, until recently, was a little-used regulation, passed in 1938 to combat Nazi propaganda. The journalists Max Blumenthal and Ali Abunimah do a good job of addressing the issue in this clip on The Real News Network.

Those who challenge the dominant corporate narrative already struggle on the margins of the media landscape. The handful of independent websites and news outlets, including this one, and a few foreign-run networks such as Al-Jazeera and RT America, on which I host a show, “On Contact,” are the few platforms left that examine corporate power and empire, the curtailment of our civil liberties, lethal police violence and the ecocide carried out by the fossil fuel and animal agriculture industries, as well as cover the war crimes committed by Israel and the U.S. military in the Middle East. Shutting down these venues would ensure that the critics who speak through them, and oppressed peoples such as the Palestinians, have no voice left.

I witnessed and was at times the victim of black propaganda campaigns when I was a foreign correspondent. False accusations are made anonymously and then amplified by a compliant press. The anonymous site PropOrNot, replicating this tactic, in 2016 published a blacklist of 199 sites that it alleged, with no evidence, “reliably echo Russian propaganda.” More than half of those sites were far-right, conspiracy-driven ones. But about 20 of the sites were progressive, anti-war and left-wing. They included AlterNet, Black Agenda Report, Democracy Now!, Naked Capitalism, Truthdig, Truthout, CounterPunch and the World Socialist Web Site. PropOrNot charged that these sites disseminated “fake news” on behalf of Russia, and the allegations became front-page news in The Washington Post in a story headlined “Russian propaganda effort helped spread ‘fake news’ during the election, experts say.” Washington Post reporter Craig Timberg wrote in that article that the goal of “a sophisticated Russian propaganda effort,” according to “independent researchers who have tracked the operation,” was “punishing Democrat Hillary Clinton, helping Republican Donald Trump and undermining faith in American democracy.”

To date, no one has exposed who operates PropOrNot or who is behind the website. But the damage done by this black propaganda campaign and the subsequent announcement by Google and other organizations such as Facebook last April that they had put in filters to elevate “more authoritative content” and marginalize “blatantly misleading, low quality, offensive or downright false information” have steadily diverted readers away from some sites. The Marxist World Socialist Web Site, for example, has seen its traffic decline by 75 percent. AlterNet’s search traffic is down 71 percent, Consortium News is down 72 percent, and Global Research and Truthdig have seen declines. And the situation appears to be growing worse as the algorithms are refined.

Jeff Bezos, the owner of The Washington Post and the founder and CEO of Amazon, has, like Google and some other major Silicon Valley corporations, close ties with the federal security and surveillance apparatus. Bezos has a $600 million contract with the CIA. The lines separating technology-based entities such as Google and Amazon and the government’s security and surveillance apparatus are often nonexistent. The goal of corporations such as Google and Facebook is profit, not the dissemination of truth. And when truth gets in the way of profit, truth is sacrificed.

Google, Facebook, Twitter, The New York Times, The Washington Post, BuzzFeed News, Agence France-Presse and CNN have all imposed or benefited from the algorithms or filters—overseen by human “evaluators.” When an internet user types a word in a Google search it is called an “impression” by the industry. These impressions direct the persons making the searches to websites that use the words or address the issues associated with them. Before the algorithms were put in place last April, searches for terms such as “imperialism” or “inequality” directed internet users mostly to left-wing, progressive and anti-war sites. Now they are directed primarily to mainstream sites such as The Washington Post. If you type in “World Socialist Web Site,” which has been hit especially hard by the algorithms, you will be directed to the site—but you have to ask for it by name. Searches for associated words such as “socialist” or “socialism” are unlikely to bring up a list in which the World Socialist Web Site appears near the top.

There are 10,000 “evaluators” at Google, many of them former employees at counterterrorism agencies, who determine the “quality” and veracity of websites. They have downgraded sites such as Truthdig, and with the abolition of net neutrality can further isolate those sites on the internet. The news organizations and corporations imposing and benefiting from this censorship have strong links to the corporate establishment and the Democratic Party. They do not question corporate capitalism, American imperialism or rising social inequality. They dutifully feed the anti-Russia hysteria. An Al-Jazeera report on this censorship begins at 14:07 in this link.

The corporate oligarchs, lacking a valid response to the discrediting of their policies of economic pillage and endless war, have turned to the blunt instrument of censorship and to a new version of red baiting. They do not intend to institute reforms or restore an open society. They do not intend to address the social inequality behind the political insurgencies in the two major political parties and the hatred of the corporate state that spans the political spectrum. They intend to impose a cone of silence and the state-sanctioned uniformity of opinion that characterizes all totalitarian regimes. This is what the use of FARA, the imposition of algorithms and the attempt to blame Trump’s election on Russian interference is about. Critics and investigative journalists who expose the inner workings of corporate power are branded enemies of the state in the service of a foreign power. The corporate-controlled media, meanwhile, presents the salacious, the trivial and the absurd as news while fanning the obsession over Russia. This is one of the most ominous moments in American history. The complicity in this witch hunt by self-identified liberal organizations, including The New York Times and MSNBC, will come back to haunt them. When the voices for truth are erased, they will be next.

The steps to tyranny are always small, incremental and often barely noticed, as Milton Mayer wrote in “They Thought They Were Free: The Germans 1933-1945.” By the time a population wakes up, it is too late. He noted:

But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds or thousands will join you, never comes. That’s the difficulty. If the last and the worst act of the whole regime had come immediately after the first and the smallest, thousands, yes, millions would have been sufficiently shocked. If, let us say, the gassing of the Jews in ’43 had come immediately after the “German Firm” stickers on the windows of non-Jewish shops in ’33. But of course this isn’t the way it happens. In between come all the hundreds of little steps, some of them imperceptible, each of them preparing you not to be shocked by the next. Step C is not so much worse than Step B, and if you did not make a stand at Step B, why should you at Step C? And so on to Step D.

And one day, too late, your principles, if you were ever sensible of them, all rush in upon you. The burden of self-deception has grown too heavy, and some minor incident, in my case my little boy, hardly more than a baby, saying “Jew swine,” collapses it all at once, and you see that everything, everything has changed and changed completely under your nose. The world you lived in—your nation, your people—is not the world you were born in at all. The forms are all there, all untouched, all reassuring, the houses, the shops, the jobs, the mealtimes, the visits, the concerts, the cinema, the holidays. But the spirit, which you never noticed because you made the lifelong mistake of identifying it with the forms, is changed. Now you live in a world of hate and fear, and the people who hate and fear do not even know it themselves; when everyone is transformed no one is transformed. Now you live in a system which rules without responsibility even to God. The system itself could not have intended this in the beginning, but in order to sustain itself it was compelled to go all the way.

Despots, despite their proclaimed ideological, national and religious differences, speak the same language. Amoral, devoid of empathy and addicted to power and personal enrichment, they are building a world where all who criticize them are silenced, where their populations are rendered compliant by fear, constant surveillance and the loss of basic liberties and where they and their corporate enablers are the undisputed masters.

The Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported that the Qatari government is seeking to improve relations with the Trump administration by forging alliances with right-wing Jewish organizations in the United States. It has promised Jewish leaders, the paper reported, not to air the Al-Jazeera documentary about the Israel lobby. Al-Jazeera in 2016 shut down Al-Jazeera America, which broadcast to U.S. audiences. With no broadcaster in the U.S., the program would have reached few American viewers even if Al-Jazeera had put it on the air.

Haaretz reported that Jewish organizational leaders who have visited Qatar in recent months include Mort Klein of the Zionist Organization of America; Malcolm Hoenlein, the executive vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations; Jack Rosen of the American Jewish Congress; Rabbi Menachem Genack of the Orthodox Union; Martin Oliner of the Religious Zionists of America; and attorney Alan Dershowitz.

“What these leaders share is that none of them are considered critics of the right-wing Netanyahu government in Israel or the Trump administration in Washington,” Haaretz correspondent Amir Tibon wrote in the newspaper.

The despotism of the United States and the despotism of Israel have found an ally in the despotism of Qatar. Professed beliefs are meaningless. Israel is bonded with the regime in Saudi Arabia and the Christian right in the United States, each of which is virulently anti-Semitic. Dissidents, including Jewish and Israeli dissidents, are attacked as “self-hating Jews” or anti-Semites only because they are dissidents. The word “traitor” or “anti-Semite” has no real meaning. It is used not to describe a reality but to turn someone into a pariah. The iron wall is rising. It will cement into place a global system of corporate totalitarianism, one in which the old vocabulary of human rights and democracy is empty and where any form of defiance means you are an enemy of the state. This totalitarianism is being formed incrementally. It begins by silencing the demonized. It ends by silencing everyone.

“You walk into the room with your pencil in your hand,” Bob Dylan sang in “Ballad of a Thin Man.” “You see somebody naked and you say, ‘Who is that man?’ You try so hard but you don’t understand just what you will say when you get home. Because something is happening here, but you don’t know what it is, do you, Mr. Jones?”

Chris Hedges writes a regular column for Truthdig.com.

21 March 2018

Source: https://countercurrents.org/2018/03/21/google-facebook-algorithms-and-the-building-of-the-iron-wall/

We, people from the United States, join the people and government of Venezuela, and people and their governments across Latin America, Canada, and the Caribbean in calling on the U.S. government to cease interference into the independent, sovereign, and self-determined affairs of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela.

We call on all people and governments to support peaceful debate and negotiations and to urgently and unequivocally denounce violent opposition, economic sabotage, biased media critiques, calls for foreign military intervention and regime change supported by U.S. rightwing politicians and the Trump-Administration State Department and military.

We make this urgent appeal in full acknowledgement that the people of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela are in the midst of an intense internal and conflicting self-defining moment. One that runs across ideological and political lines to determine constructive pathways forward in crafting their own national citizen-centered democracy and social justice development project. The process was launched by a majority vote under the mandate of the Bolivarian Revolution, the leftist political process, initiated by late Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez, and led by the current elected President Nicolas Maduro. Their internal differences are great and serious and are of profound importance for their nation’s future and for the future of participatory democracy and social justice development throughout Latin America and the Caribbean.

The government and people of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, guided by the philosophy and practice of participatory democracy established in1999, achieved in less than two decades unprecedented levels of development in the active exercise of citizenship by its most marginalized, discriminated, and impoverished citizens. At one point under the Bolivarian Revolution Venezuela achieved the status of the country in the region with the lowest inequality level (measured by the Gini Coefficient) having reduced inequality by 54%, poverty by 44%. Extreme poverty was reduced from 40% (1996) to a very low level of 7.3% (2010). UNESCO recognized that under the Participatory Democracy citizen-government collaboration illiteracy was eliminated in Venezuela. Venezuelans became the 3rd county in the region whose population read the most. Governmental policies instituted tuition free education from daycare to university; 72% of children attended public daycares and 85% of school age children attended school. Venezuela became the 2nd country in Latin America and 5th in the world with the greatest proportions of university students.

Those admirable national humanistic achievements have been undermined mainly by the global economic crisis that diminished social spending and economic sabotage by U.S. led economic sanctions and limitations on the Venezuelan government’s normal access to global finance protocols.

We respect the right of people outside of Venezuela to express and to debate sincere and intense critical opinions about Venezuela’s internal affairs as long as they do not interfere with or compromise the rights and obligations of Venezuelans to mediate their own differences and to unite through their constitution around issues of mutual interests to establish their sovereign will and national development. The efficacy of the Maduro elected government, which the U.S. government is constantly maligning and attempting to overthrow, is solely a matter of evaluation and decision at the ballot box by the Venezuelan people. Therefore we support the Venezuelan constitutional mandate for the upcoming presidential elections in May and call a halt to U.S. imperial condemnation of the election before it takes place.

There is no justification based in international protocols between nations or of ethical solidarity among progressive and peace loving people for such illegal, injurious outside interference, threats of invasion, or regime change now dangerously underway by the U.S. government in Venezuela.

In the interests and integrity of the Venezuelan nation and for preservation of stability, respectful lawful engagement, mutual interests, and peace in the Americas we must support the negotiation process between Venezuelans of widely varying ideological and political perspectives to achieve self-determined resolutions. We must support the upcoming May presidential elections and implore the U.S. government to halt interference in Venezuelan people’s decisions to express their will—-as they have peacefully done in accordance with their Constitution and respectfully accepted as majority will at the ballot box time and time again since 1998.

Network of Intellectuals, Artists and Social Movements in Defense of Humanity, U.S. Chapter

We invite all other national chapters and nodes of the Network in Defense of Humanity, as well as any other intellectual, artist or social fighter who agrees with this statement, to join us by sending an email to: indefenseofhumanity.us@gmail.com

This urgent call was endorsed by: Network of Intellectuals, Artists and Social Movements in Defense of Humanity, Cuba Chapter

20 March 2018

By Robert J. Burrowes

In 2014 I wrote an article titled ‘The Global Elite is Insane’. I want to elaborate what I explained in the earlier article so that people have a clearer sense of what we are up against in our struggle to create a world of peace, justice and ecological sustainability.

Of course, as I explained previously, it is not just the global elite that is insane. All those individuals – politicians, businesspeople, academics, corporate media editors and journalists, judges and lawyers, bureaucrats…. – who serve the elite, including by not exposing and resisting it, are also insane. And it is important to understand this if we are to develop and implement effective strategies to resist elite violence, exploitation and destruction but also avert the now-imminent human extinction driven by their insane desire for endless personal privilege, corporate profit and political control whatever the cost to Earth’s biosphere and lifeforms (human and non-human alike).

But first, who constitutes the global elite? Essentially, it is those extremely wealthy individuals – notably including the Rothschild family, Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Amancio Ortega, Mark Zuckerberg, Carlos Slim, the Walton family and the Koch brothers – as well as the world’s other billionaires and millionaires. See ‘Bloomberg Billionaires Index’.

Testament to their secretly and long-accumulated wealth and power, a 2012 investigation concluded that rich individuals and their families have as much as $32 trillion of hidden financial assets – which excludes non-financial assets such as real estate, gold, yachts and racehorses – in offshore tax havens. See the Tax Justice Network.

If this sum was devoted to programs of social uplift then starvation, poverty, homelessness and other privations would vanish immediately and environmental restoration projects as well as research, development and implementation of visionary sustainability initiatives would flourish instantly. The idea of an ‘underdeveloped’ or ‘developing’ national economy would vanish from the literature on Africa, Asia and Central/South America.

In addition to these individuals, however, the global elite includes the major multinational corporations, particularly including the following – although, it should be noted, this list simplifies the picture considerably by ignoring the conglomerate nature of many of these corporations and not including many of the (more difficult to identify) private corporations that should be listed in any comprehensive presentation:

* the major weapons manufacturers (such as Lockheed Martin, Boeing, BAE Systems, Raytheon, Northrop Grumman and General Dynamics)

* the major banks (including Industrial & Commercial Bank of China, China Construction Bank, HSBC Holdings, JPMorgan Chase, Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group and Bank of America) and their ‘industry groups’ like the International Monetary Conference

* the major investment companies (including BlackRock, Capital Group Companies, FMR, AXA, and JP Morgan Chase)

* the major financial services companies (including Berkshire Hathaway, AXA, Allianz and BNP Paribas)

* the major energy corporations including coal companies (such as Coal India, Adani Enterprises, China Shenhua Energy, China Coal Energy, Mechel, Exxaro Resources, Public Power, Glencore and Peabody Energy) as well as the oil and gas corporations (such as Saudi Aramco, Gazprom, Rosneft, PetroChina, ExxonMobil, Lukoil, BP, Royal Dutch Shell, Petrobras, Chevron, Novatek, Total S.A. and Eni)

* the major media corporations (including Alphabet [Google owner], Comcast, Disney, AT&T, News Corporation, Time Warner, Fox, Facebook, Bertelsmann and Baidu)

* the major marketing and public relations corporations (including Edelman, W2O Group, APCO Worldwide, Deksia, BrandTuitive, Fearless Media, and Citizen Group)

* the major agrochemical (pesticides, seeds, fertilizers) giants (including Bayer, Syngenta, Dow, Monsanto and DuPont)

* the major pharmaceutical corporations (including Johnson & Johnson, Roche, Pfizer, Novartis, Sanofi and GlaxoSmithKline)

* the major biotechnology (genetic mutilation) corporations (again including Johnson & Johnson, Roche, Pfizer and Novartis)

* the major mining corporations (including Glencore Xtrata, BHP Billiton, Rio Tinto, Vale, Anglo American, China Shenhua Energy, Freeport McMoRan Copper & Gold, and Barrick Gold)

* the major nuclear power corporations (including Areva, Rosatom, General Electric/Hitachi, Kepco, Mitsubishi, Babcock & Wilcox, BNFL, Duke Energy, McDermott International, Southern, NextEra Energy, American Electric Power, and Westinghouse)

* the major food multinationals (including Cargill, Archer Daniels Midland Company [ADM], Nestlé, PepsiCo, Coca-Cola, Unilever, Danone, General Mills, Kellogg’s, Mars, Associated British Foods and Mondelez)

* the major water corporations (including Veolia, Suez Environnement, ITT Corporation, United Utilities, Severn Trent, Thames Water, American Water Works).

Of course, the global elite also includes elite fora where various combinations of elite individuals from the corporate, political, media and academic worlds gather to plan their continuing violence against, and exploitation of, the Earth and its inhabitants. This is intended to consolidate and extend t heir control over populations, markets and resources to maximize their privilege, profit and power at the expense of the rest of us and life generally. Among intergovernmental organizations, it includes the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

A quick perusal of the agenda of such elite gatherings – including the World Economic Forum, the Bilderberg Group and the Trilateral Commission – reveals a comprehensive lack of interest, despite rhetoric and the occasional token mention, of pressing issues ranging from the threat of nuclear war and the climate catastrophe to the many ongoing wars, deepening exploitation within the global economy, extensive range of environmental threats and the refugee crisis, each of which they generated and now continue to deliberately exacerbate. See, for example, the agenda of the recent WEF meeting in Davos.

Primary servants of the global elite include political leaders in major industrialized countries (who legislate to progressively expand elite power, profit and privilege, such as Donald Trump’s recent tax cuts for the wealthy at the expense of social programs), the judges and lawyers (who defend elite power using the elite-designed and manipulated legal system: ever heard of a wealthy individual convicted in court and given any serious punishment or of any major corporation genuinely held to legal account for its exploitation of indigenous peoples or destruction of the natural environment?), as well as corporate media editors and journalists, entertainment industry personnel, academics, industry organizations (such as the European Round Table of Industrialists) that represent the interests of major corporations, so-called ‘think tanks’ (such as the Council on Foreign Relations and the Brookings Institution) and ‘philanthropic trusts’ (such as the Rockefeller, Carnegie and Ford foundations) all of which justify, ignore or divert attention from elite violence and exploitation.

Importantly too, primary servants of the global elite include those who work within elite-directed agencies, notably including those in the so-called ‘intelligence community’ (such as the US CIA, British MI6, Russian SVR RF, Chinese Ministry for State Security and Israeli Mossad), who perform elite functions in relation to spying, surveillance and secret assassinations (particularly of grassroots activists), ostensibly under the direction of national governments. But it also includes many lower-level servants such as those who work as political lobbyists or in the bureaucracy as well as the education, police and prison systems.

So why do I claim that the elite and those who serve them are insane?

Any dictionary will offer a simple definition of ‘sanity’ along the lines of ‘soundness of judgment or reason’ and ‘the ability to think and speak in a reasonable way and to behave normally’.

But if we use this definition of sanity then, obviously, ‘sanity’ must be interpreted to mean that it is ‘sound judgment, reasonable and normal’ to further perpetrate the violence and exploitation that are overwhelmingly characteristic of our world. After all, most people powerlessly accept this incredibly violent state of affairs and, if they discuss it, do so in terms of its merits, politically, economically, morally or otherwise. Few people argue, simply, that violence is just insane.

So I would like to propose a more rigorous definition of sanity: Sanity is the capacity to consider a set of circumstances, to carefully analyze the evidence pertaining to those circumstances, to identify the cause of any conflict or problem, and to respond appropriately, both emotionally and intellectually, to that conflict or problem with the intention of resolving it, preferably at a higher level of need satisfaction for all parties (including those of the Earth and all of its living creatures).

Clearly, my proposed definition of sanity is designed to imply that any conceptions we have of ‘sound judgment’, ‘reasonable’ and ‘normal’ mean that they are qualities we associate with individuals who possess the desirable capacity to improve the overall state of human affairs, whether an interpersonal relationship or geopolitically. This means, as an absolute minimum, the capacity to reduce violence or exploitation in one context or another.

You might, of course, accuse me of writing a definition of ‘sanity’ that serves my agenda to dramatically improve world order in the direction of peace, justice and sustainability. And you are right! But whose interest does it serve to have sanity defined as behavior that involves ‘sound judgment’ and is considered ‘reasonable and normal’ in the context of perpetuating extraordinary violence?

Alternatively, you might argue that my definition of insanity is too broad. Surely, you might say, we can account for many of the behaviors outlined above in terms of different belief systems, ideologies and religions. Doesn’t a person who believes in killing people to win wars (or for other reasons) just have a worldview different from those who believe that people should resolve conflict nonviolently? Doesn’t a capitalist just have a worldview different from those who believe that people should share resources equally? Doesn’t a person who believes in the unlimited accumulation of wealth just have a worldview different from those who believe in ecological sustainability?

But there is a more fundamental issue here. As I explained in my original article, cited at the beginning of this one: Do you really believe that someone who is capable of perpetrating extraordinary violence, inequity and biosphere-threatening behavior – and thus clearly incapable of experiencing and expressing the love, compassion, empathy and sympathy that would drive a nonviolent approach to the world – is sane? Given that emotional qualities such as love, compassion, empathy and sympathy are an evolutionary gift to those not seriously damaged during childhood, what happened to those individuals who do not possess them? See ‘Why Violence?’ and ‘Fearless Psychology and Fearful Psychology: Principles and Practice’.

Or, to explain it based on my longer definition of sanity highlighted above: Casual observation of the state of our world, including the primary threat of near-term human extinction through climate catastrophe or nuclear war – see ‘On Track for Extinction: Can Humanity Survive?’ – clearly reveals that none of the elite is paying considered attention to the perilous state of our world, analyzing the evidence in relation to it, identifying the cause(s) driving it or responding powerfully to end it. Why is this?

In essence, it is because one manifestation of their insanity drives them to deny reality to make huge profits from weapons production used to kill people, the burning of climate-destroying fossil fuels, environmental destruction (through, for example, mining and rainforest logging), commercial farming based on the poisoning and genetic mutilation of foods, the mass production and sale of poisoned, processed and nutritionally-depleted foods, the consumption of health-destroying and dependency-creating drugs, and control over the sale of water, once considered a human right. Moreover, insanity makes the elite do everything in its power to maintain this highly profitable state of affairs. See ‘Profit Maximization is Easy: Invest in Violence’.

Moreover, of course, there is no evidence of committed elite engagement in efforts to end the many local wars (from which they make huge profits), end corporate exploitation of human beings (which kills, through starvation alone, 100,000 people every day but from which they make huge profits) and nonhuman beings (which drives 200 species of life to extinction daily but from which they make huge profits) or end local environmental destruction in a myriad ways (from which they make huge profits).

So, in summary, given our ongoing rush to extinction, it is clear that those who exacerbate this threat through failure to consider and act with awareness (as well as encourage aware action by others) fail to satisfy the definition of sanity that I offered above. In short: Gambling on the future of humanity is not sane.

As an aside, it should be noted: Often enough too, the elite can rely on a largely insane population to mindlessly consume the latest consumer product, no matter how unnecessary, or they can rely on their marketing and advertising agents to persuade those of us who show the slightest reluctance to buy the latest inanity.

So with an insane global elite and its many insane servants as well as a largely insane consumer population, what can those of us who have the sanity to respond powerfully to the many threats to our survival do?

Well, if you want a child who is emotionally and intellectually engaged with the world and therefore capable of responding powerfully to their circumstances (which includes being able to resist the lure of serving the elite and being suckered by its marketing), then terrorizing the child into obedience is not the way to go about it. So, you might like to consider making ‘My Promise to Children’.

If you are sane enough to investigate the evidence and to act intelligently and powerfully in response to it, I encourage you to do so. One option you have if you find the evidence in relation to one or more of the threats mentioned above compelling, is to join those participating in ‘The Flame Tree Project to Save Life on Earth’.

If you are self-aware enough to know that you are inclined to avoid ‘difficult issues’ and to take the action that these require, then perhaps you could tackle this problem at its source by ‘Putting Feelings First’. Unfortunately, as mentioned above, few of us had a childhood that nurtured our sanity.

If you want to mobilize people to campaign effectively on the climate, war, rainforest destruction or any other elite-driven violence that threatens our future, consider developing a comprehensive nonviolent strategy to do so. See Nonviolent Campaign Strategy.

And if you want to participate in the worldwide effort to end the insanity we call violence in all of its manifestations, you are welcome to consider signing the online pledge of ‘The People’s Charter to Create a Nonviolent World’.

Elite insanity, if not stopped, will drive us out of existence. If you believe that the elite and their servants will ‘see the light’ before it is too late, I invite you to seek out the evidence to justify your belief. I have found none.

I also see no evidence that individual members of the elite will do the emotional healing necessary to be able to act sanely in response to the extinction-threatening crisis it has generated.

So it is up to those of us who can think and act sanely to stop the rush to extinction before it is too late.

Are you one of those people?

Robert J. Burrowes has a lifetime commitment to understanding and ending human violence. He has done extensive research since 1966 in an effort to understand why human beings are violent and has been a nonviolent activist since 1981.

21 March 2018

By Dr. Abdullah Al- Ahsan

The government of Sri Lanka has just lifted the nationwide emergency imposed about two weeks ago to stop anti-Muslim communal violence in the country. Couple of decades ago it would have been inconceivable to ımagıne of any anti-Muslim violence in Sri Lanka. Approximately about ten percent of the total population, the Muslims are very much part of the Sri Lankan society for centuries. They have participated in business, politics, education and humanitarian activities along with theır majority Sinhalese compatriots. However, after the defeat of LTTE, the Tamil separatists, in 2009 Muslims seem to have become target as an antagonist group of people and the recent violence has prompted the government to declare emergency in country. Why has this happened? What does this violence indicate? Who benefits from this violence? What should one learn from this conflict? Let us examine these questions in the light of latest developments.

Origin of the Conflict

Undoubtedly, Sri Lankan Muslims are the maın sufferer in this conflict. But wouldn’t this conflict affect the Sinhalese community too? Loosing trust of a companion that has made significant contribution to country’s economy for centuries will definitely impinge upon the whole nation. Agaın the question is – who is going to benefit from this violence? This questıon should lead us to examine how this latest flare up has occurred. According to some reports, an extremist group called Bodu Bala Sena or Buddhist Power Force and some similar other entities are responsible for this development. According to one researcher from the International Crisis (ICG) “These attacks are organised, well-planned … And there is good reason to believe they are partly designed to provoke a Muslim response, which would then justify more violence against Muslims.” This observation makes sense because this explains why all of a sudden the Sri Lankan Muslim community has become a target for provocation. Sri Lanka has fought a long war agaınst the Tamil separatists and durıng this long war Srı Lanka has wıtnessed some sort of unity among the Sinhalese population. It seems that after the defeat of the Tamil separatists some Sinhalese nationalist leaders felt the need for a new enemy for the continuation of the Sinhalese nationalist feelings for national unity. Among these nationalist leaders, the former president and current opposition leader Mahindra Rajapakse seems to be at the forefront. But is it wise on his part to target the Muslim community for the purpose? Is it going to work?

Following the Clash of Civilizations Thesis

Rajapakse seems to have been motivated by the political theory that one needs a common enemy in order to stimulate collective unity of a gıven political community. Former Harvard University professor Samuel P Huntington’s successful application of this theory in defining international relations in post cold war world in the name of clash of civilizations seems to have convinced Rajapakse to find a new enemy in his Sri Lankan context. But has he been wise in his selection of the Muslim community for this purpose? Has the application of the clash of civilizations thesis reduced violence around the world? Has the Muslim community’s role in history of Sri Lanka been the same as the Tamil community? No, Muslims in Sri Lanka have never demonstrated any separatist tendency. In fact, on the contrary they have generally participated along with Sinhalese based political parties for ındependence and natıonal development. Even now they have representation in most national political parties. Why then have the Sinhalese extremists targeted Muslims as their adversaries? Thıs questıon leads us to look for specific reasons for the conflict.

Allegation against Muslims

Muslims have been accused of being unpatriotic, being involved in drugs and narcotics, producing children much faster than theır Sinhalese counterparts and thus converting Sri Lanka Sinhalese minority by the year 2050. Muslıms also have been accused of selling sterilization drugs to infertile Sinhalese women, Islamizing Sri Lanka by importing, selling and exporting ‘halal’ goods in Sri Lanka and by doing so bringing Shari’ah in Sri Lanka etc. There are also reports of extremist Buddhist monks going around complaining about Muslims controlling businesses and purchasing commercially valuable lands. However, no evidences have been produced to support the accusations and, of course, some accusations do not make any sense at all.

Nevertheless, the fact remains that these accusations would perhaps provoke some Muslims to respond as dıd three drunken Muslims did ın the case of the recent flare up of vıolence. This is what exactly had happened in the case of the proposition of the clash of civilizations thesis where Muslims were identified as adversaries to US ınterests. The ICG researcher quoted above has rightly pointed out that the objective of the Sinhalese extremists is to provoke some Muslim response so that more violence could be initiated against Muslims. The clash of civilizations thesis, proposed immediately after the cold war, has defınıtely ıncreased vıolence all over the world. Researchers have rıghtly pointed out that, “India’s Intelligence service, known as the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), is believed to have provided training and weaponry to the LTTE up until the mid-1980s” and most observers belıeve that LTTE has not died down yet. It is always possible for different spy agencies to use these terrorists to recruit individuals from various backgrounds to conduct subversive activities in various parts of the world. The LTTE, whıch has successfully introduced suicide activities ın the world stage sınce the late 1980s, has been reported to have close contact with other terrorist groups including the Abu Sayyaf group in the Philippines, Taliban and its affiliates in Pakistan, PKK and other Kurdish groups west Asia. Therefore, there are strong possibilities for the Sri Lankan conflict will not only to further explode; it may also spread to other parts of the world.

How to Stop the Violence

However, there are some positive signs as well. The ICG researcher has pointed out that the Muslim community has “been admirably restrained” so far and also the Sri Lankan Buddhist monks have rallied in the capital city Colombo against the anti-Muslims riot in the country. Both the ICG and the peace loving Buddhist monks who have demonstrated their courage to oppose ultra-nationalist sentiments must be appreciated. But the role of the United Nations on the conflict commended most.

Commendable Role of the UN

Within days after the declaration of the emergency the UN dispatched its Under Secretary General for political affairs to Sri Lanka and the visiting diplomat categorically “condemned the breakdown in law and order and the attacks against Muslims and their property.” The lessening of violence and lifting of the emergency seems to be a direct result of the UN intervention on the issue. The Sri Lankan government is reported to have established enquiries, but the government’s seriousness to find a solution will depend on how the enquiry report is handled. If the government fails to make the report public, it will only mean that the government is not serious in resolving the conflict. If such activities are encouraged, facilitated and followed, we would know that we have learned from history.

21 March 2018

Dr. Abdullah Al- Ahsan is a JUST member.

 

By Nile Bowie

Brunei’s ruler, Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah, is in a race against time as his nation’s once deep stores of oil and gas rapidly run dry. While other foreign investors up stakes, China is giving the Southeast Asian sultanate a new lease on economic life.

International banks such as HSBC and Citibank have recently ceased operations in Brunei in sight of its contracting oil and gas business, driven down by years of depressed global energy prices. But one major financial institution has filled the vacuum: Bank of China (BOC).

BOC established a branch in Brunei in 2016 to facilitate Beijing’s foreign direct investments. Yang Jian, China’s ambassador to Brunei, last year described the sultanate as an important node in the US$1 trillion Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), President Xi Jinping’s signature continental and maritime infrastructure development initiative.

Some observers believe China intends to leverage its major investments and close political ties with Brunei’s ruler to sway the country’s stance on territorial disputes in the South China Sea, where the sultanate is also a rival claimant. That, they say, would deter other Southeast Asian claimants from reaching consensus on the issue.

“China is placing huge pressure on Brunei to concede ‘joint development’ in its exclusive economic zone (EEZ). These are rights that clearly belong to Brunei by any reading of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS),” says Bill Hayton, associate fellow at the Asia-Pacific Program at Chatham House.

“Brunei would be happy to take investment from Japan, other Southeast Asian states, the United States or Europe. However, at the moment, only Chinese entrepreneurs are looking at the opportunities,” he told Asia Times, noting that Brunei was so far “standing firm” with regards to upholding its rights to maritime resources.

Beijing has deepened diplomatic ties with other regional governments by offering investment projects, generous aid packages and trade deals. Those moves have sometimes spurred opposition and anti-Chinese sentiment on sovereign concerns. Until now, Brunei’s oil wealth had enabled it to avoid economic dependence on China.

But unless new sources are discovered, those reserves will be depleted within two decades at the current pace of extraction, according to various research projections. Though it has supported regional free trade and promoted non-energy sector investments, observers believe the small country is ill-prepared for the hurdles ahead.

Brunei’s monarch, long wary of the country’s unhealthy reliance on the energy sector, now appears to see Beijing’s checkbook diplomacy as necessary to jumpstart diversification. He is thus allowing the sultanate to become a regional outpost for Chinese business, if not strategic, interests.

The two sides established the Brunei-Guangxi Economic Corridor (BGEC) in 2014 to boost bilateral trade and investment. BGEC is slated for over US$500 million in joint investments that will deepen economic engagement with China’s southern Guangxi Zhuang region, which has direct access to the South China Sea.

China is by far Brunei’s largest foreign investor, with total investments estimated at around US$4.1 billion. The China-backed Muara Besar refinery and petrochemical complex, the largest foreign investment project in Brunei’s history, will fortify that position. Chinese investment has paid the first phase of construction worth US$3.4 billion; the second phase will cost an estimated US$12 billion.

Hengyi Industries International Pte Ltd, a privately run Chinese company based in Bandar Seri Begawan, is constructing the facility and expects to start operations by the first quarter of 2019. The complex is expected to create more than 10,000 jobs and includes a 175,000-barrel-per-day capacity that will produce gasoline, diesel and jet fuel.

A new strategic joint venture between China’s Guangxi Beibu Gulf Port Group and Darussalam Assets Sdn Bhd, a government-linked investment company, began operating last year the Muara Container Terminal, Brunei’s largest port. Chinese companies are also invested in the sultanate’s telecommunications and agriculture sectors.

“Brunei’s government is well-aware of the risks of over-close engagement with China. It coordinates very closely with the government of Singapore on such matters,” says Hayton. “The UK also has a special defense arrangement with Brunei and the Anglo-Dutch energy company Royal Dutch Shell dominates the country’s oil industry.”

Britain’s military presence in Brunei has persisted since the country’s independence, achieved in 1984, at the request of the sultan. London’s last remaining military base in the region is seen by British authorities as an important outpost against the backdrop of the percolating South China Sea disputes.

The sultan, the world’s second-longest reigning monarch, also directly finances Britain’s military presence and entrusts a Gurkha unit retired from the British army with his personal security. He rules through a Cabinet of Ministers similar to the British system and pegs Brunei’s national currency to the Singapore dollar in the absence of a central bank.

Speaking at Brunei’s annual session of parliament earlier this month, the Muslim monarch called for greater diversification of the economy to reverse the country’s declining fortunes. “Wawasan 2035,” or Vision 2035, aims to transform the country into a regional trading and financial hub within the next two decades.

The launch of a long-planned Brunei stock exchange, slated to open in coming years, will lay the groundwork for promoting more investment outside of the energy sector and provide an alternative funding source for fledgling small businesses. Telecom, downstream energy firms and financial institutions are expected to list on the market.

Sultan Hassanal, 71, holds the portfolios of prime minister, defense minister, finance minister and minister of foreign affairs and trade. He marked 50 years in power last October with a golden jubilee procession. Though revered among his subjects, the citizenry appears frustrated with a sluggish economy, corruption and unemployment.

Hydrocarbon revenues have until now financed generous subsidies and welfare policies, including free education and healthcare for its largely ethnic Malay population. But as energy reserves and national finances dwindle, those policies could soon give way to austerity measures.

After four years of a downturn, Brunei’s economy is expected to see a modest recovery in 2018, linked to recovering global oil prices. The sultanate collected US$3.76 billion in revenues last year, with 75% derived from hydrocarbons, but will still record a US$1.5 billion fiscal deficit. In 2016, the deficit hit US$2.6 billion.

Attracting more FDI is the sultanate’s current prerogative. Brunei is a signatory to the TPP-11, or the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), trade pact and a party to ongoing negotiations for the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) regional trade deal advanced by China.

China’s substantial string of investments represent an important vote of confidence for Brunei’s monarch. Dwindling hydrocarbon reserves and pressing diversification needs have tilted the sultanate decidedly into China’s corner, where it is seen as a potential key ally to Beijing as it pursues its own strategic maritime objectives.

“Vietnam, Singapore, the Philippines, Malaysia and Indonesia are either US treaty allies or China-wary countries. Brunei is the only place where Beijing would least likely meet any resistance to its blue-water naval aspirations,” says Maung Zarni, a former associate professor of Asian Studies at the University of Brunei.

“In light of recent geopolitical and strategic developments, this tiny sultanate with apparent insignificance as a consumer market and limited resource potential has become important to China’s planners and strategists,” he said.

Nile Bowie (@NileBowie). Writer and journalist with @asiatimesonline covering current affairs in Singapore and Malaysia.

18 March 2018

Source: http://www.atimes.com/article/china-throws-sinking-brunei-lifeline/