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By Rami G. Khouri

BEIRUT — The start of another calendar year brings with it the opportunity to look back and look ahead to try to understand the trends that define our Arab region. I have spent the last year steadily researching what I call in shorthand the 4 Ds that define the underlying trends that have slowly brought our region to its fractured and often traumatized state today: state dysfunction, socio-economic disparity, citizen political disempowerment, and individual and collective human despair.

This gruesome quartet of forces has continuously gnawed away at the former “stability” of Arab countries and societies for the past four decades, generating insurmountable obstacles to state integrity that has resulted in six war-ravaged countries and others where internal stresses seem to portend permanent draconian, security-first, responses by political elites that refuse to share power inclusively.

The rot gained wide traction since the 1970s, but the past decade indicates that we should not expect any quick improvements in the region. This decade has included continuing mass desperation, spontaneous uprisings, a few civil wars, much government counter-repression, and foreign military interventions everywhere you look. In fact, Arab and other Middle Eastern countries now join the trend of foreign militarism, with the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Iran leading the way in making war or establishing military bases in nearby countries.

I initially sought to understand the underlying reasons for our Arab region’s continuing slide into incoherent statehood and ravaged citizenship by exploring what drove otherwise ordinary young men and some women to support, like, or join the so-called Islamic State (ISIS) – perhaps as many as 50 or 60 million Arabs, according to some pollsters and analysts.

My initial research led me to the frightening conclusion about our Arab region suffering the grotesque realities of the 4 D’s mentioned above. I explored this in more depth by in two ways: the obvious signs that are visible to anyone like myself who travels around the region and interacts with both ordinary citizens and members of the power elites, and the findings of credible empirical research by Arab and international scholars who explore broad trends across the entire region.

Too often for comfort, the findings from my feet and my footnotes point out half a dozen trends that should cause grave concern across our region:

a) Conditions for many or most people have deteriorated in almost every important sector of life (water, education, employment, nutrition, poverty, environment, freedom of expression, political participation and accountability, socio-economic disparities, and a dozen others.)

b) All these dimensions of life link with one another to create an almost insurmountable cycle of obstacles to an individual achieving a better life, because deterioration in one dimension of life automatically triggers similar declines in other sectors; this reverses what happened to ordinary families across the Arab world in 1920-1970, when every generation saw its wellbeing improve.

c) Conditions in all these sectors have continued to deteriorate for the most part in the past decade since the 2010-11 uprisings’ explosion of mass popular despair sent the strongest signal of the past century of the unsustainable nature of current Arab statehood. The massive red flag of the uprisings has been ignored, so underlying conditions continue to worsen, generating new pressures that build up with unpredictable consequences.

d) The accumulated stresses in many sectors have reached a point where it is more and more difficult to stop or slow down the deteriorations and try to improve conditions. Many countries with their mediocre governance systems continue the same damaging policies just to stay in place – like over-pumping groundwater, passing on failing students to the next class, misdirecting subsidies in sectors that inhibit real and sustained economic growth or employment, ignoring the spontaneous explosion in unplanned urbanism, criminalizing free expression on social media, and refusing to allow ordinary citizens to participate in the challenges and thrills of designing state policies that actually respond to people’s needs, rather than the elite’s further enrichment.

e) This cycle of regression has led to severe splintering of Arab states’ populations, on the basis of ethnicity, sectarianism, wealth, and power. As the Arab region’s people fracture into smaller units, many of them also militarize, and seek foreign patrons and protectors. This causes massive new problems for the reconstitution of integrated and healthy states — a challenge that is exacerbated by the underlying socio-economic stresses and disparities mentioned above that continue to deteriorate.

f) All of this, serious and threatening as it is, madly seems to be ignored by both our governing power elites and the leading international powers that support them, whether regional powers like Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Iran, and Turkey, or global powers like the United States, Russia, U.K, France and others.

The cumulative consequences of these internal trends within many Arab countries strike me as the most serious threat that we confront (alongside the continued dual challenges of Zionist-Israeli colonialism and non-stop international military interventions). So for the coming months or more, I will ignore Donald Trump, Mohammad bin Salman, northern Syria, Aden, Benghazi, Egyptian jails, and other issues that preoccupy most Middle East watchers. Instead, in these weekly columns I will report on and analyze studies on the issues that I believe form the basis for the Arab region’s continuing deterioration, militarization, pauperization, polarization, and fragmentation. These will include trends in poverty, education, employment, pollution, water equity, housing, corruption, democratization, the rule of law, and disparities in many life dimensions.

Most of these developments are widely ignored by the Arab and international media. Their impact, however, determines the wellbeing of most of the 400 million citizens in Arab countries, who know that they deserve more than the current dysfunction, disparity, disempowerment, and despair that many of them experience in their everyday lives. These issues also ultimately will determine if the violence, cruelty, suffering, and collapse of the past decade are the high-water mark that finally pushes us to repair our dysfunctions — or are just a hint of the much greater disruption, mass suffering, and state collapse that we can expect ahead.

Rami G. Khouri is senior public policy fellow and professor of journalism at the American University of Beirut.

23 January 2018

By Andre Vltchek

Afghanistan is now facing mortal danger. It has to survive, but it is not clear how it can manage.

Hotel Intercontinental in Kabul, which was attacked by gunmen last Saturday, used to fit like a glove, like a grandmother’s couch. Outside, the war has been raging. Millions of Afghan lives were aimlessly broken, hundreds of thousands lost. The price of more than 16 years of NATO occupation has exceeded $1 trillion, but instead of bringing peace and prosperity, it has reduced Afghanistan to rubble.

All that is still functioning in the country are structures and infrastructure built before and during the Soviet era, like irrigation ducts, canals and bread factories. Other tangible assistance came recently from China and India, but almost nothing was provided by the NATO occupation countries, except countless fences, wires and military installations.

Even before the siege at the Intercontinental Hotel, which left more than 20 people dead, Afghanistan’s President Ashraf Ghani confessed to ‘60 Minutes’ correspondent Lara Logan that he is unable to protect his own capital.

But it is not only the capital, of course. The entire country is spiraling into chaos. It is clear that it will soon be impossible to control it anymore, at least as one entity, from Kabul.

It can be heard more and more often on the streets of Kabul, Jalalabad and Herat that reducing this country to perpetual conflict and chaos may be the exact plan of the occupation forces.

I used to joke about Hotel Intercontinental – ‘This place feels like a Soviet three-star hotel in some provincial Siberian town. Bent shower bars, stained but otherwise clean carpets, indifferent but somehow friendly staff – you could wave as much as you wanted, but the waitress in the hotel’s cafe would only move after you’d come to her personally, smiled broadly, and pointed your finger at some particular item from the limited assortment of sweets.’

Despite everything, Hotel Intercontinental Kabul was always there, standing. It was crumbling, but still somehow majestic, full of history and old-fashioned charm. Its lobby was decorated with traditional Afghan landscapes and portraits. The vistas from the hotel rooms and balconies were breathtaking: the old Bagh-e Bala Palace with its vast public park, then the entire capital city down below as though sitting in a crater, and the great mountain range rising towards the sky right behind that urban sprawl.

During breakfast hours, a few tables near the window in the hotel restaurant were almost always occupied by Russian-speaking pilots and crew members from an Afghan passenger airline, Kam Air. I don’t know whether these people were Russian or Ukrainian, but they spoke Russian among themselves, and also to me. They were tall and muscular, as pilots operating in a war zone are expected to be.

We always exchanged greetings, as well as one or two jokes. No deep discussions, just that – a few jokes and a few very warm smiles.

Some time ago, I had to fly to the ancient city of Herat, and was traveling early in the morning with Kam Air on the same flight as the crew. My driver was late and I approached the airline minivan, which was just about to depart for the airport.

“Would you please take me with you to the airport, boys?” I asked.

“Yes, of course, of course – just jump in!” they grinned.

We were all part of a big family. Foreigners staying at Intercontinental – not rich and not poor, not part of any ‘government initiative’ or wealthy NGO. This hotel was for ‘working people’ – journalists, filmmakers, pilots. Those who required ‘special protection’ were staying behind the enormous concrete walls of their embassies, or in the only truly luxury hotel in the country – Serena.

Two hours later, we were flying over tremendous Afghan mountains and tiny ancient villages made of mud, miles below the wing. I was taking photographs, while imagining that insane US “mother of all bombs” that was dropped just a few days earlier on an identical hamlet, killing who knows how many innocent people.

The two powerful engines of an old but reliable MD-82 were purring reassuringly at the rear of the plane. Then, at some point, I closed my eyes and fell asleep. The next thing I experienced was a gentle pat on my shoulder, followed by friendly whisper: “Kofeiku ne khotite? Rebyata tut tol’koctosveziisvarili” (“Would you like some coffee? The guys here just brewed a fresh one…”)

I drank the aromatic brew, looking down at those stunning, enormous mountains covered by snow. Russian-speaking pilots were in the cockpit, steering the plane with great experience and confidence.

I thought: “If there is one crew in the world that is qualified to fly over this beautiful but complex and dangerous terrain, then it is this one.”

It was one of those moments when I felt totally happy and alive, drunk with passion for what I had been doing: working in Afghanistan, exposing crimes committed there by the Western countries, falling head over heels in love with this ancient and proud nation, flying over its peaks into one of the most interesting cities of Central Asia – Herat.

On January 20, 2018, in the intensive care unit of Tokyo’s St. Luke’s Hospital, I was fighting for my life, months after my year-old foot wound reopened in Afghanistan, and had since refused to heal.

Through the fog of fever and IV, I observed coverage from Kabul on a television screen that was hanging above my bed. ‘My’ Intercontinental Hotel had been attacked. In fact, it was overrun by what was allegedly one of the most vicious branches of the Taliban, known as the Haqqani Network. At least that is what was tweeted by Javid Faisal, a spokesman for the Afghan government’s chief executive.

At least 21 people lost their lives during the 14-hour standoff. Almost immediately, several pilots and crew members from Kam Air were murdered in cold blood. So were two Venezuelan pilots. None of these people were ‘supporters of the government,’ nor were they collaborators with the invading NATO force.

They were simply a group of romantics, a group of rugged, brave but also very kind and gentle men who adored flying and who, like myself, fell in love with Afghanistan. I know this because they told me, and because it was just so obvious!

In case anyone is wondering, ‘my hotel in Kabul’ has nothing to do with the luxury US chain of the same name. It used to be part of the ‘real’ Intercontinental, but only from 1969, when its doors first opened, until 1980 (shortly after the Soviet Union intervention in Afghanistan). Now, it is a state-owned property, described as ‘luxury’ only by outsiders who are covering Afghanistan from afar. You can get a room there for a mere $50 if you negotiate very hard, and for $60 if your bargaining skills are somewhat limited.

The hotel had already been damaged on several occasions, particularly during the civil war of the 1990s, when it is said that at one point only 85 out its 200 rooms were inhabitable. As recently as 2011, 21 people died here during an attack for which the Taliban claimed responsibility.

Despite its macabre history, however, Intercontinental is still the favorite property of many locals and some foreigners in Kabul. This is where many conferences are held, and – during the fasting month of Ramadan – fast is broken here by members of local elites, close to the swimming pool overlooking the city. And there is music here almost every night: true Afghan traditional music, with local instruments and singers trained by renowned masters.

Security is, of course, everywhere. To return to this property from the city, I always have to go through three full security posts with my car. After all, Afghanistan is now considered one to be one of the most dangerous countries on Earth for foreigners.

In just one week, three deadly attacks shook Afghanistan: one in Kabul, another outside Herat, and a third inside the city of Jalalabad, in which ISIS targeted the NGO, Save the Children.

Last year, I traveled to many corners of this scarred, ancient land. I spoke to people, including those in the villages that were at least partially taken over by Taliban. People are increasingly realizing that they are living in perpetual conflict. Refugees (or internally displaced persons) from the east are talking about the carnage that comes with the arrival of ISIS.

Hard drugs and poppy seeds are everywhere in the center of Kabul, right under the nose of the US occupiers – poppy fields literally surround Bagram Airforce Base.

Soviets and Russians are now remembered with love and great nostalgia; something that I already described in my previous essays from the country.

Very soon, no foreigners will be left in Afghanistan. That may be the main goal of the latest attacks. No witnesses, no alternatives, no solutions.

Who will benefit? Definitely not the devastated Afghan people. Perhaps the warlords, the extremist mullahs, and the occupiers.

Kam Air crew, flying passenger jets all over the country, and the dilapidated Intercontinental were some of the last symbols of normality – a weak promise that one can still come and see what is really happening in this country.

From now on, there will be hardly any foreigners in the country. It will be only us – war correspondents, as well as foreign soldiers and mercenaries.

Afghanistan is now facing mortal danger. It has to survive, but it is not clear how it could manage. Those who love it should return, no matter what risk we’d be facing. A news blockade should be prevented. Alternative (non-Western) information has to flow. By all means, at any price.

*

[First published as OP-ED by RT]

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

28 January 2018

Source: https://countercurrents.org/2018/01/28/hotel-intercontinental-siege-kabul-falling/

By Margot Miller

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has asked a UK court to relinquish the arrest warrant that is keeping him confined to the Ecuadorian Embassy in Knightsbridge, London. If granted, he would be free to leave without fear of arrest, according to a spokesman for the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS).

“Hypothetically, yes. That would be our interpretation,” he said. Assange would then be able to seek the medical treatment he urgently needs.

First arrested in London in December 2010 under anti-democratic provisions of a European Arrest Warrant (EAW) issued by the Swedish authorities, Assange was never charged with any crime and was only required to return to Sweden in order to answer questions regarding trumped up allegations of sexual misconduct. He skipped bail to avoid extradition to Sweden—after being denied elementary democratic rights by the British legal system—seeking asylum in the Embassy in 2012.

Assange feared the Swedish authorities would immediately extradite him to the United States, which has conducted a cruel vendetta against him since WikiLeaks exposed criminal actions taken by the US during the wars of aggression in Iraq and Afghanistan. This included a video WikiLeaks posted on the Internet showing the 2007 “collateral murder” of 12 Iraqi civilians from the viewpoint of an Apache helicopter’s gun-sight.

The US administration has kept live a grand jury empowered in 2010 to bring secret, unspecified charges against Assange that could carry the death penalty.

On Friday, Westminster Magistrates’ Court were told by Mark Summers QC that because the Swedish case had been dropped, the European Arrest Warrant had “lost its purpose and its function.” Assange should be able to leave the embassy without fear of arrest or extradition.

Swedish authorities closed the case against Assange last year, only demonstrating it was a frame-up in the first place. The statute of limitations on some of the allegations, however, does not expire until 2020.

For more than five and a half years, Assange has been confined to a small, windowless room, 15 feet by 13, without access to sunlight, fresh air or exercise.

As Assange said in 2014, “The United Nations minimum standard for prisoners is one hour a day of outside exercise. Even when I was in Wandsworth prison in solitary confinement [in 2010], that was respected.”

Even though Assange has been given an Ecuadorian passport and ID, the British authorities have vindictively refused to grant him safe passage out of the country. The UK have acted in violation of international law according to a United Nations panel, which in 2016 declared Assange to be a victim of “arbitrary detention.”

Assange’s physical and psychological health has been severely compromised due to his confinement. By as early as 2014, Assange was suffering health problems. In an article for the Daily Mail, journalist Sarah Oliver described Assange’s appearance: “His usually pale skin is now almost translucent and on his face it is so puffy it looks as if it is lifting off his naturally sharp cheekbones. He has a chronic cough, which the installation of a humidifier to moisten the dry, air-conditioned atmosphere has done little to ease. His eyes have navy pools of shadow beneath them, suggesting that he’s shifted from nocturnal to sleep-deprived.”

She continued, “Assange is, according to a WikiLeaks source, suffering from the potentially life-threatening heart condition arrhythmia and has a chronic lung complaint and dangerously high blood pressure.”

Of the conditions in his living quarters, Assange told her, “I can’t even keep a pot plant alive for long in here.”

The UK government refused an earlier demand in 2015 for Assange to access hospital treatment without the threat of arrest.

Last October, Dr. Sondra Crosby, an associate professor at the Boston University’s school of medicine and public health, and Dr. Brock Chisholm, a London-based consultant clinical psychologist, entered the Embassy to examine Assange. In a letter they co-authored with Dr. Sean Love to the Guardian January 24 they write, “As clinicians with a combined experience of four decades caring for and about refugees and other traumatised populations, we recently spent 20 hours, over three days, performing a comprehensive physical and psychological evaluation of Mr. Assange … it is our professional opinion that his continued confinement is dangerous physically and mentally to him and a clear infringement of his human right to healthcare.”

Though unable to go into specific details for reasons of confidentiality, the letter explains, “Experience tells us that the prolonged uncertainty of indefinite detention inflicts profound psychological and physical trauma above and beyond the expected stressors of incarceration. These can include severe anxiety, pathological levels of stress, dissociation, depression, suicidal thoughts, post-traumatic stress disorder and chronic pain, among others.”

Assange is thought to be suffering from a serious shoulder issue requiring an MRI scan, impossible to organise inside the embassy. He is also said to have a lung problem. Clinicians who are prepared to visit Assange are severely handicapped in the care they can provide, because “At the embassy, there are none of the diagnostic tests, treatments and procedures that … he needs urgently.”

The letter continues, “It is unconscionable that Mr. Assange is in the position of having to decide between avoiding arrest and potentially suffering the health consequences, including death, if a life-threatening crisis such as a heart attack were to occur.”

The letter concludes by calling on the British Medical Association and UK clinicians to demand that Assange is granted safe access to medical care and that they oppose the “ongoing violations of his human right to healthcare.”

The demand to end the state persecution of Assange must be adopted by the international working class. His vilification and victimisation is part and parcel of government attacks on basic democratic rights, exemplified by Google and social media censorship of left-wing, anti-war and progressive websites and the attempt to portray opposition to government austerity and war policies as foreign interference.

In urging the formation of an International Coalition of Socialist, Antiwar and Progressive Websites, the World Socialist Web Site and the International Committee of the Fourth International urged as one of a specific set of principles that must be fought for: “Demanding the end to the persecution of Julian Assange and Edward Snowden and the complete restoration of their personal freedom.”

28 January 2018

Source: https://countercurrents.org/2018/01/28/julian-assange-challenges-warrant-arrest-doctors-confirm-worsening-health/

By Eric Zuesse

On January 20th, CBS News bannered “Terrorism no longer the military’s top priority, Mattis says” and opened: “There is a major change in U.S. military strategy. On Friday, more than 16 years after the 9/11 attacks, U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said terrorism is no longer the No. 1 priority.” The report said, “Maintaining a military advantage over China and Russia is now Defense Secretary Mattis’ top priority.”

On January 18th, the Trump Administration had issued its crucial document about how it will implement America’s national defense from now on. This document, the National Defense Strategy 2018, represents a continuation of U.S. President Barack Obama’s vision and intentions, but extends Obama’s hostility toward Russia, by adding Trump’s hostility toward China.

In December 2017, U.S. President Donald Trump had issued his National Security Strategy 2018 (the NSS2018); but, in keeping with his prior commitment to leaving to the generals the implementation of his national security policy, the Pentagon has now issued this National Defense Strategy 2018 (the NDS2018), which is signed only by Trump’s minister for war (Secretary of ‘Defense’), “Jim Mattis”; and it’s considerably more informative on what the practical meaning of NSS2018 will be. The meaning is: replacing hostility against “radical Islamic terrorism,” by hostility against Russia and China. This — building upon Obama’s imperial vision — is now Trump’s ‘Defense’ policy. Trump’s campaign talk had been against ‘radical Islamic terrorism’, but was merely bumper-sticker lying, to win votes, from an electorate that believed the differences between today’s Democratic and Republican Parties are more than bumper-sticker deep (which might once have been the case, but no longer really is).

In continuation from Obama’s National Security Strategy 2015, which had accused Russia 18 times of “aggression,” Trump’s National Defense Strategy 2018 (NDS2018) effectively declares at least an economic war against Russia (as if economics were also in General Mattis’s portfolio), but it goes even further to include China as being now also America’s enemy. It thus officially restores, in effect, the Cold War — the war against communism — that had existed until U.S. President Richard Nixon’s visit to China, during 21 to 28 February 1972. It also intensifies the war against Russia, even now, 37 years after the 1991 breakup of the Soviet Union and end of its Warsaw Pact and end of its communism, had ended the Cold War (but only on Russia’s side, not really on America’s).

Trump’s new document (through his agent Mattis) says that non-state terrorism (Al Qaeda, etc.) is no longer the biggest threat to America’s security; these two “authoritarian” nations pose the biggest threat to America, says the NDS2018. This document asserts: “It is increasingly clear that China and Russia want to shape a world consistent with their authoritarian model — gaining veto authority over other nations’ economic, diplomatic, and security decisions.” (“Authoritarian” is now what “communist” once was — the U.S. Government’s verbal bugaboo, and America’s official excuse, for invasions and coups.) It continues:

The central challenge to U.S. prosperity and security is the reemergence of long-term, strategic competition by what the National Security Strategy classifies as revisionist powers. It is increasingly clear that China and Russia want to shape a world consistent with their authoritarian model — gaining veto authority over other nations’ economic, diplomatic, and security decisions.

China is leveraging military modernization, influence operations, and predatory economics to coerce neighboring countries to reorder the Indo-Pacific region to their advantage. As China continues its economic and military ascendance, asserting power through an all-of-nation long-term strategy, it will continue to pursue a military modernization program that seeks Indo-Pacific regional hegemony in the near-term and displacement of the United States to achieve global preeminence in the future. The most far-reaching objective of this defense strategy is to set the military relationship between our two countries on a path of transparency and non-aggression.

Concurrently, Russia seeks veto authority over nations on its periphery in terms of their governmental, economic, and diplomatic decisions, to shatter the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and change European and Middle East security and economic structures to its favor. The use of emerging technologies to discredit and subvert democratic processes in Georgia, Crimea, and eastern Ukraine is concern enough, but when coupled with its expanding and modernizing nuclear arsenal the challenge is clear.

It then says, “Rogue regimes such as North Korea and Iran are destabilizing regions through their pursuit of nuclear weapons or sponsorship of terrorism.” So: those four countries — China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran — are now the top targets for the U.S. military to defeat.

The NDS2018 document continues, “Both revisionist powers and rogue regimes are competing across all dimensions of power. They have increased efforts short of armed conflict by expanding coercion to new fronts, violating principles of sovereignty, exploiting ambiguity, and deliberately blurring the lines between civil and military goals.”

Right now, the U.S. is militarily occupying, as an uninvited invading power violating the sovereignty of parts of the sovereign nation of Syria, whose internationally recognized (except by the U.S. and its vassal-states) Government is the one that had won internationally monitored elections in 2014, and whose incumbent President Bashar al-Assad won, in those elections, 89% of the vote throughout the entire country. Even independent Western-sponsored polling in Syria has repeatedly shown that Assad would easily win any national election in his country, and that 82% of Syrians blame the U.S. Government (not Assad) for having brought the tens of thousands of jihadists into their country and caused the Syrian war that destroyed the nation. On 31 October 2015, U.N. Secretary General Ban ki-Moon twice criticized U.S. President Barack Obama’s refusal to allow the Syrian people to determine whom their President would be. Ban said, “The future of Assad must be determined by the Syrian people,” but the U.S. Government kept ignoring him on that; and U.S. President Trump’s minister of war now says that the way to defeat countries that are “violating principles of sovereignty” is to continue occupying countries that never invited them in.

Under the heading “Build a More Lethal Force,” the NDS2018 document says, “The surest way to prevent war is to be prepared to win one.” To do this, it will rely on “the Joint Force” (which the document fails to define) in this way:

Prioritize preparedness for war. Achieving peace through strength requires the Joint Force to deter conflict through preparedness for war. During normal day-to-day operations, the Joint Force will sustainably compete to: deter aggression in three key regions — the Indo-Pacific, Europe, and Middle East; degrade terrorist and WMD threats; and defend U.S. interests from challenges below the level of armed conflict. In wartime, the fully mobilized Joint Force will be capable of: defeating aggression by a major power; deterring opportunistic aggression elsewhere; and disrupting imminent terrorist and WMD threats. During peace or in war, the Joint Force will deter nuclear and non-nuclear strategic attacks and defend the homeland. To support these missions, the Joint Force must gain and maintain information superiority; and develop, strengthen, and sustain U.S. security relationships.

The document sub-heads “Strengthen Alliances and Attract New Partners,” and says, “By working together with allies and partners we amass the greatest possible strength for the long-term advancement of our interests, maintaining favorable balances of power that deter aggression and support the stability that generates economic growth.” This includes “Fortify the Trans-Atlantic NATO Alliance” but is global.

This document thus actually embodies, but in some ways extends and amplifies, U.S. President Barack Obama’s 28 May 2014 statement to America’s graduating class at the West Point Military Academy:

The United States is and remains the one indispensable nation. That has been true for the century passed and it will be true for the century to come. … Russia’s aggression toward former Soviet states unnerves capitals in Europe, while China’s economic rise and military reach worries its neighbors. From Brazil to India, rising middle classes compete with us, and governments seek a greater say in global forums. … It will be your generation’s task to respond to this new world.

To Obama, all nations other than the U.S. — even America’s allies — are “dispensable”; only the U.S. is not. Hitler’s version was “Deutschland über alles”; and, like Amerika’s version, it comes from the accepted popular culture, not from the imperialist’s own overheated imagination. In fact, Americans respect the military above all other institutions — more than all the rest of the Government — just like Germans did, leading up to Hitler. And, just like Donald Trump himself does; in his militarism, Trump unfortunately does authentically represent his nation’s values. Amerika isn’t Athens; it is Sparta.

As I had previously noted under the headline “Trump Continues Obama’s Wars Against Democracy”: “He was telling the military that America’s economic competition, against the BRICS nations, is a key matter for America’s military, and not only for America’s private corporations.”

However, even General Mattis has now acknowledged that one important component of achieving this global empire will be to “Strengthen Alliances and Attract New Partners,” which now seems less likely under Trump than it was under Obama.

Perhaps the Trump Administration will try to compensate for that area of increasing U.S. weakness, by increasing even more its weaponry and troop-numbers. Anything to win what all of these documents refer to as being, not America’s enmity, but America’s ‘competition’ — against Russia, China, and the other BRICS countries. However, when a military official talks of “competition,” the reference is actually to his enemies, which are to be either defeated or else killed — it’s not like an economist, referring to an entity that offers the same or better product or service but at a lower price, to some consumer — a third party to the relationship between those competitors. In military matters, an “ally” is no such third party, but is on one of the two sides — it’s part of one of the two sies. The verbiage that’s being borrowed from economics is simply intended to deceive the public, instead of to inform them.

Here, to close, are highlights from Secretary Mattis’s speech, on January 19th, introducing NDS2018:

This defense strategy was framed … by President Trump’s National Security Strategy. … It is, as was noted by the dean, our nation’s first National Defense Strategy in 10 years. …

We will continue to prosecute the campaign against terrorists that we are engaged in today, but Great Power competition, not terrorism, is now the primary focus of U.S. national security. …

We face growing threats from revisionist powers as different as China and Russia are from each other, nations that do seek to create a world consistent with their authoritarian models, pursuing veto authority over other nations’ economic, diplomatic and security decisions.

Rogue regimes like North Korea and Iran persist in taking outlaw actions that threaten regional and even global stability.  Oppressing their own people and shredding their own people’s dignity and human rights, they push their warped views outward. …

We’re going to build a more lethal force.  We will strengthen our traditional alliances and building [that ing-ending is his error, from Mattis — not added here] new partnerships with other nations. …

The second line of effort I noted was to strengthen alliances as we build new partnerships, as well. … History proves that nations with allies thrive.

He wants his audience to identify with ‘our’ team of billionaires, against ‘their’ team of billionaires. He wants maximum “lethality” against ‘the other side’s’ people, and for ‘our side’s’ people. The opposite side are the ‘revisionist powers’ and ‘rogue regimes’; and ‘our’ side are — the ‘good’ people, who should coerce, or else kill, them. Mattis’s speech said: “It is incumbent upon us to field a more lethal force if our nation is to retain the ability to defend ourselves and what we stand for.” That’s what ‘we’ will ‘stand for’, if we will stand for it.

Adolf Hitler’s rhetoric was more direct, less hypocritical. However, the result, this time around, could turn out to be even worse, because a war between the U.S. and Russia would constitute World War III and would be a nuclear war, which would destroy the entire world. This might be what America’s billionaires are planning and preparing for. (Why are super-rich people now buying nuclear bunkers, such as here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and here? Are these people investors in ‘defense’ corporations such as Lockheed Martin?) But no public is. This is very much a super-rich person’s war ‘game’, which Amerika’s ‘Defense’ Establishment is preparing for. No public is — not even a public that reveres its military Establishment more than it reveres any other of the nation’s institutions.

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

26 January 2018

Source: https://countercurrents.org/2018/01/26/trump-officially-restores-cold-war/

The Swiss resort of Chateaux-d’Oex is known for its hot air balloons. The Swiss resort of Davos is known for hot air. Or at least for one week a year, when some of the world’s biggest windbags meet to discuss ‘significant’ issues.

This year, the cool and trendy thing to express concern over at the World Economic Forum is ‘inequality.’ OK, ya? Everyone seemed to agree that something needs to be done to narrow the “staggering” gap between rich and poor – to repeat the phrase used by Canada’s liberal hipster PM Justin Trudeau, the man with those cute yellow and purple ducky socks.

French President Emmanuel Macron, who we’re told was greeted like a “rock star,” declared: “In the global process, capitalism has become a capitalism of superstars, the spreading of value (to those lower down the ladder) is no longer equitable.”

But solutions which would actually reduce inequality were less forthcoming. It reminded me of the annual expressions of ‘concern’ when above-inflation increases in train fares are announced in Britain – the country with the highest fares in Europe. Government-supporting politicians say “this is disappointing” – and guess what – the next year the fares go up again. No one wants to be quoted as saying that they’re in favor of 82 percent of the wealth going to the top 1 percent, but at the same time, they’re unwilling to take the steps which would actually make that an impossibility.

Take this extract from the speech made by British Prime Minister Theresa May:

“We have to do more to help our people in the changing global economy, to rebuild their trust in technology as a driver of progress and ensure no one is left behind as we take the next leap forwards… We have to remember that the risks and challenges we face do not outweigh the opportunities. And in seeking to refresh the rules to meet the challenges of today, we must not miss out on the prize for tomorrow.”

Does anyone know understand what May was actually saying? There was verbiage aplenty in her address, but practical solutions?

It’s the easiest thing in the world to say that “we must ensure that no one is left behind as we take the next leap forwards,” but quite another thing to deliver on it.

In a way, Davos makes one nostalgic for the hard-nosed Thatcherites of yesteryear who at least were honest about what they were hoping to achieve. Now we’ve got Thatcherites masquerading as touchy-feely ‘centrists’ in a jet-set Alpine resort where the cost of a hamburger platter has reached US$59 and a hotel room over $500 a night – and it doesn’t feel right.

Those in power voice their concern over inequality but pursue crony-capitalist, neo-liberal, pro-globalization policies which are expressly designed to enrich the well-connected 1 percent with links to government and leave large numbers of people behind. Don’t forget that Emmanuel Macron, the man who criticized“the capitalism of superstars,” gave the super-rich in France a big tax cut back in October.

Until there’s a clean break from the present economic model, and a return to something like the more ethical and democratic system which dominated in the immediate post-war years, all talk of ‘fighting inequality’ is just virtue-signaling. Just how hegemonic neoliberalism has become can be seen in the fact that even the charities and NGOs who attack inequality, such as Oxfam, whose annual report on global inequality coincides with Davos each year, have CEOs and top executives earning eye-watering amounts. Charity, like almost everything else, has become Big Business, with the pyramid structure the norm. Just over 70 percent of the people on this planet own just 2.7 percent of total wealth; 0.7 percent of the population control 45.9 percent of global household wealth.

You don’t have to be Che Guevara to acknowledge that this is totally obscene and morally unjustifiable.

One book that does show us a way out is ‘New World Order in Action’ by the Greek political philosopher and economist Takis Fotopoulos, which I reviewed here. (Fotopoulos explains how austerity policies, which have greatly increased inequalities, are not merely a ‘bad’ choice made by ‘bad’ politicians but in fact a key feature of neoliberal globalization. Austerity is insisted on by the powerful global financial and corporate economic elites who call all the shots. Fotopoulos calls for the formation of ‘national and social liberation fronts’ to make a clean front with neoliberal globalization and its institutions. It’s doubtful he got an invite to Davos.

One man who did though was John McDonnell. Labour’s shadow chancellor, an unapologetic democratic socialist, said he was going to the World Economic Forum for the first time with “a warning for the global elite.”

“Just as Davos faces the risk of an avalanche this week, growth for a few risks a political and social avalanche unless there is fundamental change to our rigged economic system,” he declared.

Of course, this led to an attack on him from defenders of the status quo. Conservative Party vice chairman James Cleverly was quoted in City A.M. as saying: “Not that long ago John McDonnell was praising Venezuela as an economic model. His ideas have consistently failed, condemning people to poverty and hardship.”

But cheap jibes about the Bolivarian Republic – which has been under economic attack for many years now for defying ‘The Washington Consensus’ and having an independent foreign policy – can’t be allowed to deflect from the growing poverty and hardship back home.

This week we learnt that more than 4,000 people have been sleeping rough on England’s streets, a rise of 16 percent in the past year. Overall, the number of homeless families has risen by more than 60 percent since 2010/11. Both child and pensioner poverty are also sharply on the increase.

While in September it was reported that UK households were at ‘breaking point’ as real wages continue to fall.

But hey, let’s keep banging on about Venezuela to scare people from calling for a fairer system, shall we?

Growing inequality is the defining characteristic of the era of neoliberal globalization. Culture wars and identity politics have been promoted by the corporate/financial elites to divert our attention: while we march for or against taking down historical statues, and argue over signage on toilets, money is, all the time, being siphoned upwards, from us to them. Donald Trump – also a speaker at Davos – is merely the latest sideshow.

There will only be change if those who have been swindled by the current iniquitous system (and that’s the vast majority of the world’s population) start demanding their fair share of the cake. It’s worth noting that the great social and economic advances of the 20th century were won because the working classes became organized, and there was an alternative economic model – communism – fear of which persuaded the ruling classes to make concessions. Wartime experiences and deep-held religious beliefs too led many conservatives – like Britain’s Harold Macmillan and France’s Charles de Gaulle – to support policies which put the interests of the majority first.

It was because of strong trade unions, political parties which represented the working class, and the existence of competing economic systems, that inequality in most countries, including the US, had fallen to historically low levels by the mid-1970s. Can we get back to that? Yes – but only if ‘Davos Man’, wedded to elite-friendly neoliberal globalization and virtue signaling on ‘inequality’ while munching on a $59 burger, is not in the driving seat.

The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.

Neil Clark is a journalist, writer, broadcaster and blogger. He has written for many newspapers and magazines in the UK and other countries including The Guardian, Morning Star, Daily and Sunday Express, Mail on Sunday, Daily Mail, Daily Telegraph, New Statesman, The Spectator, The Week, and The American Conservative.

26 January 2018

source: https://www.rt.com/op-edge/417087-davos-inequality-uk-economy/

By Jonathan Cook

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

They should know.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jonathan Cook won the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism.

23 January 2018

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

By Countercurrents.org

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

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

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

Winnie Byanyima, Executive Director of Oxfam International, said:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Oxfam’s blueprint for a more human economy includes:

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

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

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

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

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

India Worst Hit

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

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

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

23 Januarry 2018

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

By Middle East Monitor

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

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

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

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

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

Read: Irish Foreign Minister visits Gaza Strip

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

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

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

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

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

22 January 2018

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

By Andre Vltchek

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

As reported on December 22, 2017 by Al Jazeera:

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

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

Nine countries voted against, while 35 abstained.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In my book Oceania, I later wrote:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Palestinians are involuntarily living in a cage.

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

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

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

[Original version published by New Eastern Review]

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

22 January 2018

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

By Nauman Sadiq

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

22 January 2018

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