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By teleSUR

1 Nov 2017 – The U.N. General Assembly has voted 191 to 2 for the lifting of the U.S. blockade on Cuba as the United States and Israel were the only countries to vote against the resolution.

Delegate after delegate called for the end of the blockade, highlighting the progressive and positive role Cuba plays in the international community.

Speaking at the General Assembly, titled, “Necessity of ending the economic, commercial and financial embargo imposed by the United States of America against Cuba,” the representative of African states called the hardline stance taken by the current U.S. administration against Cuba as being “a step backward” that hampers Cuba’s sustainable development.

He recalled Cuba’s proud history on the African continent, actively participating in liberation struggles and its ongoing contribution to improving healthcare.

“The people of Africa will continue to remember this contribution,” he said, adding that Cuba has long been a responsible member of the international community.

Cuba’s Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez approached the podium to an abundance of applause. He responded to U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley’s comments by stating that the United States has no moral ground to stand on in its condemnation of the Caribbean island due to its “flagrant violation of human rights,” citing the arrest and deportation of minors and undocumented immigrants; the killing of African-Americans by U.S. police; the lack of guarantees for education and healthcare and restrictions on union organization; and the refusal of U.S. companies to sell life-saving medical supplies to Cuban healthcare services.

The Venezuelan representative speaking on behalf of the Non-Aligned Movement expressed full opposition to the promulgation of the economic, commercial and financial blockade against Cuba, which has lasted for over 55 years. He noted that the blockade is not only a contravention of international law, it is also a “criminal act” perpetrated by the most powerful government in the world to prevent a small Caribbean island from creating its own society.

The diplomat added that the blockade violates Cuba’s right to interact with the international community, due to its extra-territorial reach in the forms of fines and restrictions on people and businesses that travel to and engage with Cuba.

After criticizing member states and their representatives for condemning the U.S. economic blockade and calling the annual vote “political theater,” Haley directed her speech to the Cuban people. In doing so, she declared that her government, though standing alone in its promulgation of the 55-year-old blockade, will express solidarity with all Cubans by voting in favor of maintaining it.

The representative of the Plurinational State of Bolivia responded to Haley’s speech by reminding U.N. members of Cuba’s contribution to humanity. He quoted Nelson Mandela who stated that Cuba’s role in the Angolan liberation struggle, which included the “decisive defeat of the aggressive apartheid forces destroyed the myth of the invincibility of the white oppressor.” Hence, Cuba has been, and continues to be, at the “service of others,” he said.

Sacha Sergio Llorenty Soliz emphasized that while the United States wants to teach everybody lessons on democracy and human rights, it turns its back on international law, believing that multilateralism is a farse and continues to promote torture and turns Guantanamo base into an illegal prison.

“They want us to believe that they are exceptional” despite harboring governments that run counter to the aspiration of all peoples who want to see an end to the 55-year-old economic blockade against Cuba.

Rodriguez noted that every single Cuban family and social service has been adversely affected by the blockade.

“Haley speaks on behalf of an empire,” Rodriguez emphasized, one that promotes global insecurity, tramples upon international law and the U.N. Charter, “which she cynically invoked.”

He noted that Haley at least recognized “the total isolation of the United States” in its continued support of the economic blockade, disregarding the “weight of truth” expressed by the international community.

Rodriguez reminded U.N. member states and representatives that the current U.S. administration “lost the popular vote” and its attempt at undermining the Cuban Revolution “is doomed to failure.”

He quoted Cuban President Raul Castro when asserting that the U.S. and Cuba can coexist recognizing their difference, but it should not be expected that in order to do this, Cuba would yield to U.S. demands or accept any preconditions. He reiterated that the Cuban people will never “renounce its purpose” of building a socialist, sovereign, sustainable country.

In closing, Rodriguez thanked the majority of the people of the United States for supporting the lifting of the blockade.

The United States vote follows an Oct. 3 decision to expel 15 Cuban diplomats following allegations of “sonic attacks” on U.S. diplomatic staff stationed in the U.S. embassy in Havana, which the Cuban government has investigated and denied.

Since 1992, successive administrations have voted “no” on the annual resolution before the general assembly. Former U.S. President Barack Obama broke with this predictability by abstaining from the vote in 2016 as part of a new strategy of thawing relations with the socialist country.

Trump has rebuked his predecessor’s decision to open relations with Cuba. The administration has planned to re-impose strict travel restrictions for U.S. citizens to the island nation and close holes in the blockade that made it possible for investment in certain areas of the Cuban economy, including agriculture, technology, and tourism.

The annual resolution has been all but universally supported by the 193-member body of the general assembly. Only two countries have consistently voted against the resolution in recent years — the U.S. and Israel.

Go to Original – telesurtv.net

Source: https://www.transcend.org/tms/2017/11/world-votes-to-lift-blockade-on-cuba-as-us-israel-vote-no/

By Bill Van Auken

The resignation of Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri, announced Saturday in Riyadh over Saudi state media, marks a further escalation of the US, Saudi and Israeli preparations for military confrontation with Iran.

After becoming prime minister for a second time in 2016—he previously held the office from 2009 to 2011—Hariri, the leader of the Lebanese Sunni Future Movement party, headed a so-called national unity government in which the Iranian-backed and Shia-dominated Hezbollah movement played a prominent role.

In his resignation speech, which he read out over the Saudi Al-Arabiya television, Hariri issued a virulent denunciation of both Hezbollah and Iran, rhetoric that echoed that of the Saudi monarchy. “Wherever Iran is found, we find disputes and war,” he asserted, adding that “we will cut any hand that causes harm in our region.”

“I point very clearly to Iran which spreads destruction and strife wherever it is, and witness to that its interventions in the internal matters of the Arab countries, in Lebanon and Syria and Bahrain and Yemen,” Hariri said.

Hariri’s sudden and unexpected resignation came on the same day that Riyadh was rocked by the summary arrests of close to a dozen Saudi princes and dozens of current and former state ministers on charges of corruption. Among those arrested—and who are being detained in the Ritz-Carlton Hotel rather than any Saudi jail—is Prince Miteb bin Abdullah, the son of the late King Abdullah and head of the National Guard. Also detained was the billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, whose Kingdom Holding company has extensive interests in the US and Europe.

Corruption is endemic to the Saudi monarchical system, providing a convenient pretext for the arrests. Their real purpose is to consolidate the power of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who heads up the “anti-corruption” campaign, and ensure his succession to the throne.

The arrests may also, however, have a direct connection to Hariri’s resignation. The Saudi royal family has been roiled in recent months by divisions over the protracted and bloody US-backed war in Yemen, with which Bin Salman is most closely identified. The arrests may be aimed at quelling any dissent in relation to both the war and the continuing escalation of Riyadh’s anti-Iranian crusade, which is being carried out in alliance with both Washington and Tel Aviv.

There is every indication that Hariri’s resignation was staged at the behest of and in direct collaboration with the Saudi regime.

A key role in the affair has been played by the Saudi Minister of State for Persian Gulf Affairs Thamer al-Sabhan, who last Sunday had publicly taken Hariri’s government to task for its “silence” on Hezbollah’s “war” against the Persian Gulf monarchy. He demanded that Hezbollah be “confronted by force,” adding, “All of those who work and cooperate with it politically, economically and through the media should be punished,” a category that clearly would include Hariri.

Hezbollah has increasingly drawn the ire of the Saudi regime for the role it has played in helping the government of Bashar al-Assad defeat the collection of Al Qaeda-linked Islamist “rebels” who laid waste to Syria with the aid of billions of dollars in arms and money provided by Riyadh and the other Sunni Gulf oil sheikdoms in collaboration with the CIA.

The Shia-based movement, which emerged in response to the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon, succeeded in driving the US out of Lebanon in 1983 with the bombing of the US Marine barracks in Beirut, and forced Israel to end its occupation of southern Lebanon in 2000. Again in 2006, it fought the Israeli military to a standstill in a month-long war.

While Hezbollah is a bourgeois movement, which upholds the interests of Lebanese Shia capitalists and merchants, its resistance to Israel and its populist appeals to the “oppressed” have won it support beyond its Shia base.

Two days after Sabhan’s implicit denunciation of his collaboration with Hezbollah, Hariri flew to Saudi Arabia, where his family’s multi-billion-dollar construction firm is based. He holds dual Lebanese-Saudi citizenship. There, he met with both Crown Prince Bin Salman and Al-Sabhan.

Afterwards, he went on Twitter to report his “extended meeting with his dear friend Sabhan,” while Sabhan himself tweeted that they had discussed “many issues concerning the well-being of Lebanon” and that “God willing, what is coming is better.”

What was coming, of course, was Hariri’s resignation, throwing Lebanon’s fragile sectarian-based political system into crisis and raising the specter of the country plunging once again into civil war.

Hariri, in explaining his resignation and his presence in the Saudi capital, claimed that there were threats to his life and that he feared a return to the environment in which his father was killed in 2005. The Saudi media amplified on this theme, claiming that there had been a botched assassination attempt on the Lebanese prime minister. Lebanese security forces roundly denied the existence of any such attempt or existing plots. Lebanese President Michel Aoun said he would not accept Hariri’s resignation until he returned to Beirut.

Hariri, while having long bitterly opposed Hezbollah, blaming the movement for the assassination of his father, the former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in 2005, had backed the selection of Hezbollah’s ally Aoun for president, and accepted the nomination to form a government together with the powerful Shia-dominated movement in what was seen as a break in Lebanon’s protracted political impasse. He had also previously praised Hezbollah for its role in driving Al Qaeda-linked militias from the Syrian-Lebanese border.

What has changed is the ratcheting up of the campaign against Iran waged by Washington in alliance with both Saudi Arabia and Israel. The Trump administration has signaled its willingness to upend the Iranian nuclear agreement, which would place it on path to war with Tehran, while the US Congress last month enacted a new series of sanctions against Hezbollah, including the placing of multimillion-dollar bounties on the heads of two of its officials.

Lebanon, which suffered a civil war that bled the country from 1975 to 1989, is threatened with being turned into a field of battle in the drive by US imperialism to destroy Iran as an impediment to establishing hegemony over the oil-rich Middle East. To this end, the US administration has deliberately sought to fan the flames of sectarian tensions between Sunni and Shia Muslims, with potentially catastrophic implications for Lebanon.

The Israeli regime has made no attempt to conceal its glee over Hariri’s actions. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hailed the Lebanese prime minister’s resignation and statements in Riyadh as “a wake-up call for the international community to act against Iranian aggression.”

The country’s thuggish Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman went on Twitter to write: “Lebanon=Hezbollah. Hezbollah=Iran. Lebanon=Iran. Iran is dangerous to the world. Saad Hariri has proved that today. Period.”

The Jerusalem Post was even more explicit, stating, “Now, it seems that Hariri has given Israel more legitimacy for a full-scale and uncompromising campaign against Iran and Lebanon, not only Hezbollah, should a war in the north break out.”

It approvingly quoted Yoav Gallant, a member of the security cabinet and former Israeli general, who vowed that should war begin, “Israel will bring Lebanon back to the stone age.”

Source: http://www.countercurrents.org/2017/11/06/lebanese-crisis-bound-up-with-war-drive-against-iran/

By Nick Turse

25 Oct 2017 – U.S. troops are now conducting 3,500 exercises, programs, and engagements per year, an average of nearly 10 missions per day, on the African continent, according to the U.S. military’s top commander for Africa, General Thomas Waldhauser. The latest numbers, which the Pentagon confirmed to VICE News, represent a dramatic increase in U.S. military activity throughout Africa in the past decade, and the latest signal of America’s deepening and complicated ties on the continent.

With the White House and the Pentagon facing questions about an Oct. 4 ambush in Niger in which four U.S. Special Forces soldiers were killed, Secretary of Defense James Mattis reportedly indicated to two senior members of the Senate Armed Services Committee Friday that these numbers are only likely to increase as the U.S. military shifts even greater attention to counterterrorism in Africa.

“The huge increase in U.S. military missions in Africa over the past few years represents nothing less than a shadow war being waged on the continent.”

“You’re going to see more actions in Africa, not less,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham after the briefing. “You’re going to see more aggression by the United States toward our enemies, not less; you’re going to have decisions being made not in the White House but out in the field.”

But the U.S. military has already seen significant action in Africa, where its growth has been sudden and explosive. When U.S. Africa Command, the umbrella organization for U.S. military operations on the continent, first became operational in 2008, it inherited 172 missions, activities, programs, and exercises from other combatant commands. Five years in, that number shot up to 546.

Today’s figure of 3,500 marks an astounding 1,900 percent increase since the command was activated less than a decade ago, and suggests a major expansion of U.S. military activities on the African continent. (VICE News requested 2016 numbers, but AFRICOM failed to answer phone calls or respond to email requests.)

“The huge increase in U.S. military missions in Africa over the past few years represents nothing less than a shadow war being waged on the continent,” said William Hartung, the director of the Arms and Security Project at the Center for International Policy.

These developments stand in stark contrast to early assurances that AFRICOM’s efforts would be focused on diplomacy and aid. In the opening days of the command, the assistant secretary of defense for African affairs, Theresa Whelan, said it would not “reflect a U.S. intent to engage kinetically in Africa.” AFRICOM, she said, was not “about fighting wars.”

But an increasing number of AFRICOM’s missions have the appearance of just that. The command has launched 500 airstrikes in Libya in the last year alone, and U.S. forces have regularly carried out drone attacks and commando raids in Somalia.

“When push comes to shove training missions can easily cross the line into combat operations.”

“This military-heavy policy,” said Hartung, “risks drawing the United States more deeply into local and regional conflicts in Africa and generating a backlash that could actually aid terrorist organizations in their recruitment.”

Read more: The U.S. is waging a massive shadow war in Africa, exclusive documents reveal

Officially, the Pentagon says the 3,500 missions consist primarily of training and advisory efforts to build the “defense capabilities” of local partner forces, including the use of counterterrorism assistance efforts such as the Combating Terrorism Fellowship Program and Trans-Sahara Counterterrorism Partnership, according to spokesperson Maj. Audricia Harris. (Harris also confirmed that Waldhauser’s figures were accurate).

These programs are aimed at a plethora of terror groups that have sprung up across the continent since the 2000s, including 19 “active militant Islamist groups,”  — such as al Shabaab in Somalia, Boko Haram in the Lake Chad Basin region, and the Islamic State group in the Greater Sahara —  in AFRICOM’s area of operations, according to the Pentagon’s Africa Center for Strategic Studies. The ultimate aim, according to AFRICOM, is to defeat “transnational threats in order to advance U.S. national interests and promote regional security, stability, and prosperity.”

But AFRICOM uses extremely broad language to describe training missions, including those in which troops are killed in action. Missions carried out under the rubric of “security assistance,” “security cooperation,” “train-and-equip” or “building partner capacity” — can be indistinguishable from actual combat.

“We’ve seen a significant increase in U.S. military training to the African continent in recent years.”

“There is a notion,, in some circles at least, that training missions are ‘safe,’ and that U.S. troops are not exposed to the same level of risk as if they were engaged in direct combat,” said Hartung. “There may be an element of truth in this, but when push comes to shove, training missions can easily cross the line into combat operations.”

In May, for example, a Navy SEAL was killed by al Shabaab militants in Somalia while “assisting partner forces,” according to AFRICOM. Earlier this month, four Special Forces soldiers were killed in an ambush while providing “advice and assistance” to local forces in Niger.

U.S. troop deaths or scandals are frequently the only mechanism by which Americans come to know about military deployments to African nations like Niger, which according to Pentagon spokesperson Maj. Audricia Harris is home to more than 800 U.S. military personnel.

But Niger is hardly exceptional. Every day, 5,000 to 6,000 U.S. personnel are deployed across the African continent.

These near-constant training exercises, missions, and activities with troops from Benin and Burkina Faso, Cameroon and Chad, Gabon and Guinea Bissau, not to mention Mali, Nigeria, Senegal, the Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Togo and Uganda, among other nations, remain largely unknown to most Americans. So is the string of U.S. bases and outposts stretching from Djibouti to Tunisia, Cameroon to Kenya, Ghana to Niger.

“We’ve seen a significant increase in U.S. military training to the African continent in recent years,” Colby Goodman, the director of the Security Assistance Monitor, which tracks U.S. spending on foreign militaries, told VICE News. The number of African troops trained by U.S. military personnel jumped 89 percent, Goodman notes, from 22,825 trained in 2014 to at least 42,815 individuals a year later.

“I think we run the risk of working ourselves in more deeply — building dependence, rather than independence.”

Even before Mattis informed Sen. Graham and Sen. John McCain, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, there were indications that the counterterror missions would expand. This month, Donald Yamamoto, the acting assistant secretary of state for African Affairs, told the House Foreign Affairs Committee that the Trump administration’s proposed $5.2 billion African aid budget would address “key priorities” such as “assist[ing] partner nations to defeat ISIS branches and affiliates and other terrorist organization threats and networks in Mali and the Sahel, Nigeria and the Lake Chad Basin, Somalia and the Horn of Africa, and elsewhere.”

Recently, the acting U.S. Army Africa commander, Brig. Gen. Gene LeBoeuf, noted that so-called “theater security cooperation” activities — missions designed to “build relationships that promote specified U.S. interests” — are set to rise from 186 this year to 271 in 2018, with about 80 percent taking place in the Lake Chad Basin nations of Cameroon, Chad, Nigeria, and Niger. The recent attack on U.S. forces in Niger, believed to have been carried out by the Mali-based Islamic State in the Greater Sahara, suggest these missions pose increasing risks.

Experts warn this surge in U.S. military activities lacks strategic planning, and that providing training and equipment to such poor nations with fragile governments can result in greater instability.

“First, it’s very easy for our activities to overwhelm a country’s absorptive capacity for aid, which tends to result in elevated levels of corruption,” said Rebecca Zimmerman, a national security and foreign policy researcher at the RAND Corporation. “Next, by disproportionately funding the military and security apparatuses of these governments, we run the risk of militarizing or securitizing the country — elevating the militaries to a place of increased power relative to civilian government.”

Zimmerman warned this is particularly risky “in countries where there is inadequate civilian control of the military.” In 2012, for example, a U.S.-trained Army captain, Amadou Sanogo, overthrew Mali’s elected government. Two years later, Lt. Col. Isaac Zida, another U.S.-trained officer, seized power in Burkina Faso.

“With all of this,” Zimmerman said, “I think we run the risk of working ourselves in more deeply — building dependence rather than independence — which will make it hard for our forces to eventually conclude their mission.”

Spokespersons for Africa Command would not comment about the missions or such concerns, ignoring multiple emails from, and even hanging up on, this reporter.

“The U.S. government would do well to do serious risk assessments about its military activities in Africa,” Goodman warned. “These risk assessments must include the risks of U.S. military activities contributing to terrorist recruitment, especially in the Sahel, through increased U.S. military presence and by supporting corrupt military forces.”

Hartung shared similar concerns and said it was critical for the public to stay informed of the military’s often quiet expansion. “Congress and the public need to pay more attention to far-flung U.S. military train-and-equip missions, both in Africa and globally. They can too often sow the seeds of greater U.S. military involvement,” he said.

Nick Turse is an award-winning investigative journalist and a contributing writer for The Intercept, reporting on national security and foreign policy.

Source: https://www.transcend.org/tms/2017/10/the-us-military-is-conducting-secret-missions-all-over-africa/

By Dr Salim Nazzal

I believe that there is no political declaration throughout history that has had devastating effects such as the Balfour Declaration. The Balfour Declaration has ignited wars lasting 100 years in addition that it has posed a serious to the entire globe. The evidence is that during the 1973 Arab-Israeli war, The USA and the Soviet Union put their Nuclear weapons on alert. Also it   was recently revealed that Israel in the June war with Arabs in 1967   planned to blow up a nuclear bomb in the Sinai desert as a first warning, if the Egyptian forces were superior. Moreover, we have heard more than once that Israeli officials repeated words like that they are able to return the area to the Stone Age.

An important issue must be clarified in this regard

First, when Balfour gave his deadly promise, there was no persecution of the Jews in Europe because the promise came in 1917.

The second is that if there is persecution of an ethnic or religious group, it is natural to see refugee to escape from injustice. But the Zionist movement decided that the Jews should come to Palestine as invaders and not refugees. This is the main reason of the ongoing conflict with no prospects for its resolution so far.

The problem of Balfour’s promise is that he promised to give Palestine to the Jews of Europe, which means, despite the diplomatic attempts to bring envelope it in a moral form, it meant in reality the expulsion of the natives of Palestine. In this sense, it can be said that the Balfour Declaration was an order of expulsion.

If the Jewish example is to be followed internationally, this mean that each oppressed group or each group unhappy where they live has the right to expel others from their home!

Britain took over Palestine after the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in the First World War, and the League of Nations gave Britain the authority to mandate Palestine. The mandate juridical meant to take care of the people of the country so that they could administrate themselves. Balfour’s declaration was completely contrary to the resolutions of the League of Nations.

The promise of Balfour is no longer addressing refugees to flee to Palestine from injustice. The promise was granted to the Zionist movement that had the power, influence and ambition aimed at establishing a state that would be a bridge between the European and Berber civilization, as hers said. It was the first time in history that migrants brought by Britain from Europe succeeded not only in establishing a state, not only in expelling indigenous populations but also in acquiring nuclear weapons within 15 years of its establishment.

At the time of the promise, in 1917, US President Wilson issued what was known as the right to self-determination of peoples. This statement, however, had no value for Palestine. The United States was not very serious about this statement, which remained worthless. The United States supported the Balfour Declaration, contrary to Wilson’s declaration. Therefore, the promise came in the colonial climate. In this climate, there was no respect or value for the opinion of the indigenous population regarding their future. The first and last say was to the British authorities and their ally the Zionist movement.

The story that often said that Britain promised the Zionists to Palestine in return for the Jews persuading America to join Britain in the war may be the direct factor to produce the promise. But this was preceded by the Sykes-Picot secrete agreement 1n 1916 that divided the Arab region in the defeated Ottoman Empire between England and France

The Balfour State of Israel was achieved with iron and fire. The results were disastrous for the original inhabitants of Palestine who lost their homeland and were a disaster for the Arab region that had entered endless war since Israel was forcefully planted

The British Prime Minister’s decision to mark (with pride) the 100th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration is a decision lacking political wisdom, adding salt to the wound. It shows that after 100 years all the oppression which Palestinians are subjected to do not change Britain which continues to play the role of a cruel state that undoubtedly planted the culture of terror in the Middle East and beyond.

Dr. Salim Nazzal, a Palestinian-Norwegian historian on the Middle East, He has written extensively on social and political issues in the region.

Source: http://www.countercurrents.org/2017/10/28/the-balfour-declaration-planted-terror-in-the-middle-east/

By Eric Li

SHANGHAI — As the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China draws to a close, analysts are parsing through President Xi Jinping’s 30,000-plus-word report — delivered in a three-and-a-half-hour address without breaks — to decipher the direction of the most populous nation in the world. It is a laborious effort, especially considering the report’s extensive official jargon and policy details.

But there is a much easier way. Read The Economist’s coverage of the congress, which is considerably shorter in length, and bet on the opposite being true. Let me explain.

In October 1992, while the party was holding its 14th Party Congress, The Economist editorialized that the party had “stepped backwards” and called the socialist market economy (which the congress espoused) an “oxymoron.” Five years later in 1997, during the 15th Party Congress, it characterized the gathering as where “hollow promise[s]” were made and broken, from privatization to unemployment goals. Dashing raised expectations was a “recipe for civil strife,” opined the magazine.

At the 16th Party Congress in November 2002, the magazine pronounced that the “familiar policy of trying to muddle through” was no longer an option for a party that faced looming troubles; words such as “crisis” and “unrest” were ominously used. Another five years would pass. The same magazine dutifully expressed dissatisfaction at the lack of reform during the 17th Party Congress: “Politically, little has changed.”

The Economist’s howl reached a crescendo in the fall of 2012; during the 18th Party Congress, China was “unstable at the grassroots, dejected at the middle strata and out of control at the top,” quoting an anonymous source. That could only be outdone by this year’s cover, which warned the world not to “expect Mr. Xi to change China, or the world, for the better.”

When the magazine said China had “stepped backwards” in 1992, it was precisely the year of Deng Xiaoping’s now famous southern tour that launched a new wave of reforms the likes of which the world had never seen in history. The “muddling through” years between 2002 and 2012 saw China’s GDP quadruple and its economy become the world’s largest by purchasing power. The Economist is not alone, of course. It is more or less representative of Western media’s coverage of arguably the most consequential development of our time: the Chinese renaissance.

Now let’s actually look into the content coming from this congress.

Usually a party congress provides a five-year blueprint. What distinguishes this congress is how far into the future it looks. This congress set the timeline for China from today through 2050. The last time we saw this scope in reforms was in the 1980s, when Deng Xiaoping set out to build a “xiaokang society.” Taken from Confucius, “xiaokang” means a country of general prosperity and orderly social norms. Deng set an interim goal of reaching $800-$1,000 annual per capita income by the year 2000. In 1980, Chinese per capita income was $220. A fourfold increase seemed like “vaulting ambition” indeed.

Today, the China that Deng envisioned has arrived and then some. By several measures, China is the most powerful economic engine in the world. Per capita income is approaching $10,000. It’s a burgeoning entrepreneurial society that has created some of the largest companies in the world. China has led improvements in health, education, science and overall standard of living at a speed and scale that is unprecedented in human history.

It is at this historic junction that the current party congress was held. As Xi said at the outset of the congress, the party plans to conclude the “xiaokang” project in the next five years. China stands at a new point of departure. Destination: comprehensive national renaissance. Date of arrival: 2050. This is no “Yes, we can” or “Make America great again” agenda. Xi’s report includes 12 sections, each breaking into numerous parts covering, with mind-boggling specificity, issues including housing, health, science, defense, artificial intelligence and the sharing economy.

Beyond “xiaokang,” the party presents a roadmap for a new 30-year journey to realize the dream of a Chinese renaissance — the plan for a new era of Chinese socialism. The plan — let’s call it the Xi plan, for short — can be broken down into the following four main points.

First, economics. The Xi plan projects the basic realization of socialist modernization by 2035, resulting in a major expansion of the middle class, with continuing growth through 2050. In the Chinese political lexicon, this means becoming the economic and technological equivalent of a developed nation. In GDP per capita terms, this would imply up to three times the current level, to between $20,000 and $30,000. With this performance, China will formally surpass the U.S. well before 2035.

Second, sustainability. Xi pointedly said that the primary contradiction of Chinese society has now shifted from underdevelopment to imbalanced development and sustainability. The Xi plan calls for a concentrated drive to eradicate poverty, as the increasing wealth gap resulting from rapid development is the enemy of long-term sustainability. In the five years since the 18th Party Congress, at least 60 million people were lifted out of poverty. If such a rate is sustained, the tens of millions currently living below the poverty line will all be lifted out of poverty in only a few years.

The environment is, of course, the other threat to sustainability. The Xi plan maps out major structural changes to the economy and energy usage and envisions a substantially cleaner environment in two decades.

Third, expansion. For the rest of the world, China is coming to a theater near you. With the Belt and Road Initiative, which is larger than the Marshall Plan both in size and geography, China brings its considerable experience and capacity in infrastructure-led economic development to a vast number of developing and developed countries alike.

China’s active engagement with the world is based on a qualitatively different proposition than the one championed by the West in the recent past. Instead of a universalist approach seeking to standardize the world with the same set of neoliberal economic and political rules and values, Xi advocates a new version of globalization under which increased interconnectedness does not come at the expense of national sovereignty. He calls for a global “community of common destiny” but one that fosters a competition of ideas, which — given the trouble globalization is in — makes sense.

And last but not least, identity. With the 19th Party Congress, Xi is formally launching a project to provide a new narrative to current events. The prevailing theories that have guided the world’s thinking about the rise and fall of nations no longer make sense. If elections and privatization are the prerequisites to development, why has China succeeded without them, while so many others have failed after taking these prescriptions? In the past 30 years, China has effectively combined socialism and the market economy. In other words, what The Economist called an “oxymoron” has become an extraordinary success.

But how? No leader in the history of the People’s Republic has so emphasized the importance of Chinese traditional culture as Xi. Yet, he is adamant in preserving a Marxist outlook in modern China. Can we weave together a coherent narrative that absorbs modern Marxism into 5,000 years of China’s heritage? China has actually done it before, by absorbing foreign Buddhism into its Confucian cultural polity more than a millennium ago. That process took more than a hundred years. And now it has been more than a century since modern Western ideas, including Marxism, have begun to influence China.

Paradigm shifts in fundamental narratives take a very long time, and China’s is only at its formative stage. Xi seems determined to accelerate the initial phase of this project. He calls it the “sinicization of Marxism.” The exploration of ideas that this entails may be China’s most significant contribution to the 21st century. Not since the European Enlightenment has the world been so hungry for new approaches.

All in all, the party’s ability to adapt to changing times by reinventing itself is extraordinary. Five years ago, corruption was seen as the biggest threat to its hold on power. The 18th Party Congress then engineered a strict anti-corruption campaign, with a breadth and depth few anticipated. China does not have multiparty elections — the Chinese Communist Party is China’s political system. The health of the former is the barometer for the future of the country. All indications at this point are that it remains vital.

We have now come to the space where writers of op-eds like this one tend to hedge bets. I could write a long list of what could go wrong — like a list of risk factors in an IPO prospectus that no one reads. But I will skip it. Given the track record of the party and that of The Economist, my bet is that Xi will indeed “change China, and the world, for the better.”

This was produced by The WorldPost, a partnership of the Berggruen Institute and The Washington Post.

Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/theworldpost/wp/2017/10/24/china-congress-western-media/?utm_term=.4c64afde463f

By Salwa Samir

“The Sultan and the Saint,” an award-winning film about a historic dialogue between different faiths, has premiered to wide applause in Egypt, the home of its central character, Sultan Mohammad Malik Al-Kamel ibn Al-Adel Al-Ayoubi.

The 60-minute docu-drama was first screened Oct. 12 by the Cairo-based Al-Ahram Weekly, an English-language newspaper, to a small audience of religious leaders, intellectuals, writers and historians. On Oct 17, it was screened again in the Bibliotheca Alexandrina in Egypt’s coastal city of Alexandria.

“The Sultan and the Saint” is a true story of peaceful discussions between two men of faith, the Muslim ruler Sultan Al-Kamel and the Christian Francis of Assisi, who later became one of Christianity’s most revered saints. Their encounter took place during the Crusades in 1219, at the height of east-west tensions, in Damietta, about 160 kilometers (100 miles) north of Cairo.

The film is narrated by Academy Award-winner Jeremy Irons and stars Zack Beyer as Sultan Al-Kamel and Alexander McPherson in the role of Francis. Written and directed by Alex Kronemer, the film is based on Paul Moses’ book “The Saint and the Sultan: The Crusades, Islam, and Francis of Assisi’s Mission of Peace.”

Combining fast-paced action and interviews with renowned historians and religious scholars who comment on the events and dialogue between the two men, the film illuminates the desire of the two main characters for peace and their love of God. Francis, who is a traveling preacher at the time and has yet to become one of the most important scholars of the Christian faith, keeps warning against war and urges forgiveness — views in sharp contrast with those of many other Christians. The film shows Sultan Al-Kamel, the nephew of the great Muslim ruler Saladin, as holding beliefs similar to those of Francis and as sharing a warm relationship with the Copts. “God creates us to get to know each other, not to quarrel,” says the sultan in one scene.

When Francis comes to meet the sultan in the heat of the Crusades to ask him to bring an end to the long-running conflict, the sultan, close to victory, welcomes Francis and treats him with hospitality and generosity and the two men spend a week together. In the sultan’s camp, Francis engages in one of the great moments of inter-religious dialogue with the sultan and his followers, observing rituals of faith such as prayers. He departs with a deeper understanding of Islamic spirituality that inspires him later in his writings that urged Catholics to treat Muslims with great respect.

“The film reveals the possibility of coexistence, open-mindedness and dialogue in that period,” Rev. Antonio Adeeb, the secretary of the Franciscan Order in Egypt, told Al-Monitor.

He said that the film showed that the “other” must be respected. “What Francis had found out was that Muslims are not severe, but the contrary — they pray, fear God and are merciful, as it was clear in the scene of distributing bread to the defeated crusaders,” he said. “At the same time, the sultan saw that among the crusaders, there was a man who called for peace and dialogue.”

Adeeb added, “We really want more films like this. It must be screened in universities and schools so that we can see religion as a factor that helps us get to know each other, not as dividing us.”

Farida el Naqqash, a well-known Egyptian writer and journalist, said the film carried a humanitarian, moral and civilized message that calls for interfaith dialogue. “It also aims to fight extremism and sectarianism,” she told Al-Monitor.

However, Naqqash said that the film contains a historical mistake as it has Arabs use the word “crusaders.” At that time, Arabs called crusaders “frenja” (the Franks).

“Egyptians at that time called them frenja because they were invaders. It was not a Muslim-Christian issue but colonization,” she said.

Naqqash called for the film to be screened widely in order for people to know their history and discuss it.

Ezzat Ibrahim, the editor-in-chief of Al-Ahram Weekly, said the film is important and relevant to today’s conflicts. “The docu-drama work presents the history of the relationship between East and West,” Ibrahim said after the screening, which was organized in collaboration with the Baltimore-Luxor-Alexandria Sister City Committee.

He said the cooperative screening of the film at one of Egypt’s state-owned press foundations reinforces the power to build bridges with cultural institutions in the West and opens channels for further cooperation.

Salwa Samir is an Egyptian journalist. She has been writing about human rights, social problems, immigration and children’s and women’s issues since 2005.

Source: http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2017/10/the-sultan-and-saint-relaunch-interfaith-dialogue-in-egypt.html#ixzz4wJCUsiJm

By Hannah Brockhaus

Vatican City, Oct 23, 2017 / 10:20 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Pope Francis preached Monday about the idolatry of money, which causes us to ignore those in need, allowing others to go hungry and die while we turn money and worldly possessions into false gods.

Today there are people who are greedy for more money and worldly goods, people who have “so much,” but walk by “hungry children who have no medicine, who have no education, who are abandoned,” he said Oct. 23 during his homily at Mass at the chapel of the Vatican’s Casa Santa Marta.

This is “an idolatry that kills,” that makes “human sacrifices” to the god of money, the Pope said.

“This idolatry causes so many people to starve,” he stated, pointing to the example of the hundreds of thousands of Rohingya people who have been displaced from their home in Burma, also known as Myanmar, due to ethno-religious persecution.

There are 800,000 Rohingya people in refugee camps, the Pope said. And of these, 200,000 are children. They are “malnourished, without medicine,” he said.

“Even today this happens,” he emphasized, noting how our prayers against idolatry “must be strong.”

We should pray: “Lord, please, touch the hearts of these people who worship… the god of money. Touch also my heart so I do not fall into” the same thing, that I can see everything clearly, he said.

The Rohingya are a predominantly Muslim ethnic group who reside in the Rakhine state of majority-Buddhist Burma. They have been denied citizenship for nearly 40 years, and their persecution by the government has intensified in recent years.

Pope Francis has spoken out on behalf of the minority many times in recent years. In November he will visit Burma, as well as Bangladesh, where he will undoubtedly speak out for the rights of religious and ethnic minorities.

In his homily, he reflected on the words of Christ in the day’s Gospel from St. Luke: “Take care to guard against all greed, for though one may be rich, one’s life does not consist of possessions.”

God who ultimately puts a limit on our attachment to money, Pope Francis said, since at the end of life it becomes worthless.

Many men worship money and make money their god, he continued, but their life has no meaning. “Thus will it be for the one who stores up treasure for himself but is not rich in what matters to God,” Francis said, quoting from the Gospel of Luke.

God underlines this with “gentleness” in the end, he said. To make ourselves rich in what matters to God, “that is the only way. Wealth, [yes], but in God.”

Source: https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/an-idolatry-that-kills-pope-francis-on-greed-76687?utm_source=CNA&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=daily_newsletter

By Ali Abunimah

Myanmar has been showing off its new gunboats, confirming that Israel is supplying the country with weapons in spite of official secrecy around the matter.

The Tel Aviv newspaper Haaretz highlighted photos posted on Facebook by Myanmar’s navy of its Israeli-made Super Dvora Mk III gunboats.

“Welcome to Myanmar Navy,” the post states.

“The post is from April, only half a year ago, when the Myanmar (Burmese) army was already being accused of war crimes,” Haaretz notes.

Last month, Israel’s high court granted a government request to keep a blanket of secrecy over Israeli military sales to Myanmar.

The court issued a secret ruling on a petition by human rights lawyer Eitay Mack demanding a halt to such sales.

Both Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch say that the military in Myanmar, also known as Burma, is committing crimes against humanity.

“The military has committed forced deportation, murder, rape and persecution against Rohingya Muslims in northern Rakhine State, resulting in countless deaths and mass displacement,” Human Rights Watch said.
Ethnic cleansing

Last week, top UN officials estimated that 500,000 Rohingya refugees had crossed into neighboring Bangladesh in less than five weeks, many “fleeing discrimination, violence and persecution, as well as isolation and fear.”

The UN’s top human rights official has called the Myanmar military’s campaign a “textbook example of ethnic cleansing.”

According to Haaretz, the pictures of the boats on Facebook “also reveal the weapons that have been installed on them, all blue-and-white products.”

These include a remote weapons station for firing heavy machine guns, made by Elbit Systems, Israel’s biggest arms maker.

“The new patrol boats are only part of a larger transaction signed between Israel and Myanmar,” according to the newspaper.

In 2015, Min Aung Hlaing, a senior general from Myanmar, posted pictures on Facebook showing him and other officials on a shopping spree at various Israeli weapons companies.
“We don’t connect the two things”

In an interview with The Myanmar Times earlier this month, Israeli ambassador Daniel Zonshine said Israel was determined not to let the mass expulsions of the Rohingya interfere with growing bilateral trade.

The ambassador said he would continue to “differentiate the economic relations and the situation in Rakhine. At the moment, we don’t connect the two things.”

According to The Myanmar Times, Israeli exports to Myanmar reached $34 million in the first half of this year, already outpacing the $23 million for all of 2016.

This trade is reportedly concentrated in telecoms and electronics, as well as irrigation and medical devices.

But these figures presumably exclude the arms sales which Israel keeps secret. Haaretz estimates that the military trade alone is worth tens of millions of dollars.

Zonshine offered Myanmar some advice – undoubtedly based on Israel’s own propaganda tactics – on how to whitewash its bloodsoaked image.

“When the story in the international media is framed as it is today, it doesn’t help to create more markets. It doesn’t help promote the [country’s] image,” Zonshine said. “It is something that should receive some attention from the government in order to show that although there are problems, Myanmar is still Myanmar. In other words, not to let the conflict define who or what Myanmar is.”

Ali Abunimah Co-founder of The Electronic Intifada and author of The Battle for Justice in Palestine, now out from Haymarket Books.

Source: https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/myanmar-shows-its-israeli-weapons

By Robert J Burrowes

Around the world activists who are strategic thinkers face a daunting challenge to effectively tackle the multitude of violent conflicts, including the threat of human extinction, confronting human society in the early 21st century.

I wrote that ‘activists who are strategic thinkers face a daunting challenge’ because there is no point deluding ourselves that the insane global elite – see ‘The Global Elite is Insane’ – with its compliant international organizations (such as the UN) and national governments following orders as directed, is going to respond appropriately and powerfully to the multifaceted crisis that it has been progressively generating since long before the industrial revolution.

For reasons that are readily explained psychologically – see ‘Love Denied: The Psychology of Materialism, Violence and War’ and, for more detail, see ‘Why Violence?’ and ‘Fearless Psychology and Fearful Psychology: Principles and Practice’– this insanity focuses their attention on securing control of the world’s remaining resources while marginalizing the bulk of the human population in ghettos, or just killing them outright with military violence or economic exploitation (or the climate/ecological consequences of their violence and exploitation).

If you doubt what I have written above, then consider the history of any progressive political, social, economic and environmental change in the past few centuries and you will find a long record of activist planning, organizing and action preceding any worthwhile change which was invariably required to overcome enormous elite opposition. In short, if you can identify one progressive outcome that was initiated and supported by the global elite, I would be surprised to hear about it.

Moreover, we are not going to get out of this crisis – which must include ending violence, exploitation and war, halting the destruction of Earth’s biosphere and ongoing violent assaults on indigenous peoples, ending slavery, liberating occupied countries such as Palestine, Tibet and West Papua, removing dictatorships such as those in Cambodia and Saudi Arabia, ending genocidal assaults such as those currently being directed against the people of Yemen and the Rohingya in Myanmar, and defending the rights of a people, such as those in Catalonia, to secede from one state and form another – without both understanding the deep drivers of conflict as well as the local drivers in each case, and then developing and implementing sound and comprehensive strategies, based on this dual-faceted analysis of each conflict.

In addition, if like Mohandas K. Gandhi, many others and me you accept the evidence that violence is inherently counterproductive and has no countervailing desirability in any context – expressed most simply by the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. when he stated ‘the enemy is violence’ –  then we must be intelligent, courageous and resourceful enough to commit ourselves to planning, developing and implementing strategies that are both exclusively nonviolent and powerfully effective against extraordinarily insane and ruthlessly violent opponents, such as the US government.

Equally importantly, however, it is not just the violence of the global elite that we must address if extinction is to be averted. We must also tackle the violence that each of us inflicts on ourselves, our children, each other and the Earth too. And, sadly, this violence takes an extraordinary variety of forms having originated no later than the Neolithic Revolution 12,000 years ago. See ‘A Critique of Human Society since the Neolithic Revolution’.

Is all of this possible?

When I first became interested in nonviolent strategy in the early 1980s, I read widely. I particularly sought out the literature on nonviolence but, as my interest deepened and I tried to apply what I was reading in the nonviolence literature to the many nonviolent action campaigns in which I was involved, I kept noticing how inadequate these so-called ‘strategies’ in the literature actually were, largely because they did not explain precisely what to do, even though they superficially purported to do so by offering ‘principles’, ‘guidelines’, sets of tactics or even ‘stages of a campaign’.

I found this shortcoming in the literature most instructive and, because I am committed to succeeding when I engage as a nonviolent activist, I started to read the work of Mohandas K. Gandhi and even the literature on military strategy. By the mid-1980s I had decided to research and write a book on nonviolent strategy because, by then, I had become aware that the individual who understood strategy, whether nonviolent or military, was rare.

Moreover, there were many conceptions of military strategy, written over more than 2,000 years, and an increasing number of conceptions of what was presented as ‘nonviolent strategy’, in one form or another, were becoming available as the 1980s progressed. But the flaws in these were increasingly and readily apparent to me as I considered their inadequate theoretical foundations or tried to apply them in nonviolent action campaigns.

The more I struggled with this problem, the more I found myself reading ‘The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi’ in a library basement. After all, Gandhi had led a successful 30 year nonviolent liberation struggle to end the British occupation of India so it made sense that he had considerable insight regarding strategy. Unfortunately, he never wrote it down simply in one place.

A complicating but related problem was that among those military authors who professed to present some version of ‘strategic theory’, in fact, most simply presented an approach to strategic planning (such as using a set of principles or a particular operational pattern) or an incomplete theory of strategy (such as ‘maritime theory’, ‘air theory’ or ‘guerrilla theory’) and (often largely unwittingly) passed these off as ‘strategic theory’, which they are not. And it was only when I read Carl von Clausewitz’s infuriatingly convoluted and tortuously lengthy book On War that I started to fully understand strategic theory. This is because Clausewitz actually presented (not in a simple form, I hasten to admit) a strategic theory and then a military strategy that worked in accordance with his strategic theory. ‘Could this strategic theory work in guiding a nonviolent strategy?’ I wondered.

Remarkably, the more I read Gandhi (and compared him with other activists and scholars in the field), the more it became apparent to me that Gandhi was the only nonviolent strategist who (intuitively) understood strategic theory. Although, to be fair, it was an incredibly rare military strategist who understood strategic theory either with Mao Zedong a standout exception and other Marxist strategists like Vladimir Lenin and Võ Nguyên Giáp understanding far more than western military strategists which is why, for example, the US and its allies were defeated in their war on Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia.

Some years later, after grappling at length with this problem of using strategic theory to guide nonviolent strategy and reading a great deal more of Gandhi, while studying many nonviolent struggles and participating in many nonviolent campaigns myself, I wrote The Strategy of Nonviolent Defense: A Gandhian Approach. I wrote this book by synthesizing the work of Gandhi with some modified insights of Clausewitz and learning of my own drawn from the experience and study just mentioned. I have recently simplified and summarized the presentation of this book on two websites: Nonviolent Campaign Strategy and Nonviolent Defense/Liberation Strategy.

Let me outline, very simply, nonviolent strategy, without touching on strategic theory, as I have developed and presented it in the book and on the websites.

Nonviolent Strategy

You will see on the diagram of the Nonviolent Strategy Wheel that there are four primary components of strategy in the center of the wheel and eight components of strategy that are planned in accordance with these four central components. I will briefly describe the four primary components.

Before doing so, however, it is worth noting that, by using this Nonviolent Strategy Wheel, it is a straightforward task to analyze why so many activist movements and (nonviolent) liberation struggles fail: they simply do not understand the need to plan and implement a comprehensive strategy, entailing all twelve components, if they are to succeed.

So, to choose some examples almost at random, despite substantial (and sometimes widespread) popular support, particularly in some countries, the antiwar movement, the climate justice movement and the Palestinian and Tibetan liberation struggles are each devoid of a comprehensive strategy to deploy their resources for strategic impact and so they languish instead of precipitating the outcomes to which they aspire, which are quite possible.

Having said that a sound and comprehensive strategy must pay attention to all twelve components of strategy it is very occasionally true that campaigns succeed without doing so. This simply demonstrates that nonviolence, in itself, is extraordinarily powerful. But it is unwise to rely on the power of nonviolence alone, without planning and implementing a comprehensive strategy, especially when you are taking on a powerful and entrenched opponent who has much to lose (even if their conception of what they believe they will ‘lose’ is delusional) and may be ruthlessly violent if challenged.

For the purpose of this article, the term strategy refers to a planned series of actions (including campaigns) that are designed to achieve the two strategic aims (see below).

The Political Purpose and the Political Demands

If you are going to conduct a nonviolent struggle, whether to achieve a peace, environmental or social justice outcome, or even a defense or liberation outcome, the best place to start is to define the political purpose of your struggle. The political purpose is a statement of ‘what you want’. For example, this might be one of the following (but there are many possibilities depending on the context):

To secure a treaty acknowledging indigenous sovereignty between [name of indigenous people] and the settler population in [name of land/country] over the area known as [name of land/country].

To stop violence against [children and/or women] in [name of the town/city/state/country].

To end discrimination and violence against the racial/religious minority of [name of group] in [name of the town/city/state/country].

To end forest destruction in [your specified area/country/region].

To end climate-destroying activities in [name of the town/city/state/country].

To halt military production by [name of weapons corporation] in [name of the town/city/state/country].

To prevent/halt [name of corporation] exploiting the [name of fossil fuel resource].

To defend [name of the country] against the political/military coup by [identity of coup perpetrators].

To defend [name of the country] against the foreign military invasion by [name of invading country].

To defend the [name of targeted group] against the genocidal assault by the [identity of genocidal entity].

To establish the independent entity/state of [name of proposed entity/state] by removing the foreign occupying state of [name of occupying state].

To establish a democratic state in [name of country] by removing the dictatorship.

This political purpose ‘anchors’ your campaign: it tells people what you are concerned about so that you can clearly identify allies, opponents and third parties. Your political purpose is a statement of what you will have achieved when you have successfully completed your strategy.

In practice, your political purpose may be publicized in the form of a political program or as a list of demands. You can read the five criteria that should guide the formulation of these political demands on one of the nonviolent strategy websites cited above.

The Political and Strategic Assessment

Strategic planning requires an accurate and thorough political and strategic assessment (although ongoing evaluation will enable refinement of this assessment if new information emerges during the implementation of the strategy).

In essence, this political and strategic assessment requires four things. Notably this includes knowledge of the vital details about the issue (e.g. why has it happened? who benefits from it? how, precisely, do they benefit? who is exploited?) and a structural analysis and understanding of the causes behind it, including an awareness of the deep emotional (especially the fear) and cultural imperatives that exist in the minds of those individuals (and their organizations) who engage in the destructive behavior.

So, for example, if you do not understand, precisely, what each of your various groups of opponents is scared of losing/suffering (whether or not this fear is rational), you cannot design your strategy taking this vital knowledge into account so that you can mitigate their fear effectively and free their mind to thoughtfully consider alternatives. It is poor strategy (and contrary to the essence of Gandhian nonviolence) to reinforce your opponent’s fear and lock them into a defensive reaction.

Strategic Aims and Strategic Goals

Having defined your political purpose, it is easy to identify the two strategic aims of your struggle. This is because every campaign or liberation struggle has two strategic aims and they are always the same:

1. To increase support for your campaign by developing a network of groups who can assist you.

2. To alter the will and undermine the power of those groups who support the problem.

Now you just need to define your strategic goals for both mobilizing support for your campaign and for
undermining support for the problem. From your political and strategic assessment:

1. Identify the key social groups that can be mobilized to support and participate in your strategy (and
then write these groups into the ‘bubbles’ on the left side of the campaign strategy diagram that can be
downloaded from the strategy websites), and

2. identify the key social groups (corporation/s, police/military, government, workers, consumers etc.)
whose support for the problem (e.g. the climate catastrophe, war, the discrimination/violence against a
particular group, forest destruction, resource extraction, genocide, occupation) is vital (and then write
these groups into the columns on the right side of the campaign strategy diagram).

These key social groups become the primary targets in your campaign. Hence, the derivative set of specific strategic goals, which are unique to your campaign, should then be devised and each written in accordance with the formula explained in the article ‘The Political Objective and Strategic Goal of Nonviolent Actions’. That is: ‘To cause a [specified group of people] to act in the [specified way].’

As the title of this article suggests, it also explains the vital distinction between the political objective and the strategic goal of any nonviolent action. This distinction is rarely understood and applied and explains why most ‘direct actions’ have no strategic impact.

You can read appropriate sets of strategic goals for ending war, ending the climate catastrophe, ending a military occupation, removing a dictatorship and halting a genocide on one or the other of these two sites: Nonviolent Campaign Strategic Aims and Nonviolent Defense/Liberation Strategic Aims.

The Conception of Nonviolence

There are four primary conceptions of nonviolence which have been illustrated on the Matrix of Nonviolence. Because of this, your strategic plan should:

1. identify the particular conception of nonviolence that your campaign will utilize;

2. identify the specific ways in which your commitment to nonviolence will be conveyed to all parties so
that the benefits of adopting a nonviolent strategy are maximized; and

3. identify how the level of discipline required to implement your nonviolent strategy will be developed.
This includes defining the ‘action agreements’ (code of nonviolent discipline) that will guide activist
behaviour.

It is important to make a deliberate strategic choice regarding the conception of nonviolence that will underpin your strategy. If your intention is to utilize the strategic framework outlined here, it is vitally important to recognize that this framework is based on the Gandhian (principled/revolutionary) conception of nonviolence.

This is because Gandhi’s nonviolence is based on certain premises, including the importance of the truth, the sanctity and unity of all life, and the unity of means and end, so his strategy is always conducted within the framework of his desired political, social, economic and ecological vision for society as a whole and not limited to the purpose of any immediate campaign. It is for this reason that Gandhi’s approach to strategy is so important. He is always taking into account the ultimate end of all nonviolent struggle – a just, peaceful and ecologically sustainable society of self-realized human beings – not just the outcome of this campaign. He wants each campaign to contribute to the ultimate aim, not undermine vital elements of the long-term and overarching struggle to create a world without violence.

This does not mean, however, that each person participating in the strategy must share this commitment; they may participate simply because it is expedient for them to do so. This is not a problem as long as they are willing to commit to the ‘code of nonviolent discipline’ while participating in the campaign.

Hopefully, however, their participation on this basis will nurture their own personal journey to embrace the sanctity and unity of all life so that, subsequently, they can more fully participate in the co-creation of a nonviolent world.

Other Components of Strategy

Once you have identified the political purpose, strategic aims and conception of nonviolence that will guide your struggle, and undertaken a thorough political and strategic assessment, you are free to consider  the other components of your strategy: organization, leadership, communication, preparations, constructive program, strategic timeframe, tactics and peacekeeping, and evaluation.

For example, a vital component of any constructive program ideally includes each individual traveling their own personal journey to self-realization – see ‘Putting Feelings First’ – considering making ‘My Promise to Children’ to eliminate violence at its source and participating in ‘The Flame Tree Project to Save Life on Earth’ to preserve Earth’s biosphere.

Needless to say, each of these components of strategy must also be carefully planned. They are explained in turn on the nonviolent strategy websites mentioned above.

In addition to these components, the websites also include articles, photos, videos, diagrams and case studies that discuss and illustrate many essential elements of sound nonviolent strategy. These include the value of police/military liaison, issues in relation to tactical selection, the importance of avoiding secrecy and sabotage, how to respond to arrest, how to undertake peacekeeping and the 20 points to consider when planning to minimize the risk of violent police/military repression when this is a possibility.

Conclusion

The global elite and many other people are too insane to ‘walk away’ from the enormous violence they inflict on life.

Consequently, we are not going to end violence in all of its forms – including violence against women, children, indigenous and working peoples, violence against people because of their race or religion, war, slavery, the climate catastrophe, rainforest destruction, military occupations, dictatorships and genocides – and create a world of peace, justice and ecological sustainability for all of us without sound and comprehensive nonviolent strategies that tackle each issue at its core while complementing and reinforcing gains made in parallel struggles.

If you wish to declare your participation in this worldwide effort, you are welcome to sign the online pledge of ‘The People’s Charter to Create a Nonviolent World’.

Given the overwhelming violence that we must tackle, can we succeed? I do not know but I intend to fight, strategically, to the last breath. I hope that you will too.

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. He is the author of ‘Why Violence?’ His email address is flametree@riseup.net and his website is here.