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By Dr Ramzy Baroud

2017 will be remembered as the year that the so-called ‘peace process’, at least in its American formulation, has ended. And with its demise, a political framework that has served as the foundation for US foreign policy in the Middle East has also collapsed.

The Palestinian leadership and its Arab and international allies will now embark on a new year with the difficult task of drumming up a whole new political formula that does not include the United States.

The Palestinian Authority entered 2017 with the slight hope that the US was in the process of moving away, however slightly, from its hardline pro-Israel attitude. This hope was the result of a decision made by the Barack Obama Administration in December 2016 not to veto United Nations Security Council Resolution 2334 that declared the status of illegal Jewish settlements in the Occupied Territories null and void.

But the new Donald Trump Administration suffocated all optimism as soon as it took over the White House, with a promise to relocate the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, thus recognizing, in defiance of international law, the Holy City as Israel’s capital.

Mixed messages from President Trump made it unclear whether he would go through with his campaign and early presidency promises, or remain committed to traditional US foreign policy. The appointment of extremist politicians, the likes of David Friedman as US Ambassador to Israel was juxtaposed with constant references to an ‘ultimate deal’ that would involve Palestinians, Israel and Arab countries.

The American ‘regional peace’, however, amounted to nothing, and Trump eventually fulfilled his promise to Israel and its allies by signing the Jerusalem Embassy Act of 1995.

By doing so, he has ended his country’s once-leading role in the US-espoused ‘peace process’ which advocated a ‘two-state solution’ based on a ‘land for peace formula.’

European countries had anticipated the American retreat from peace-making efforts as early as January 2017, yet it still pushed for the Paris Peace Conference on January 15. The conference brought nearly 70 countries together but, without US support and amid Israel’s rejection, it was merely a platform for rehashed language about peace, co-existence and so on.

Now that Trump has downgraded his country’s role, European powers, especially France, are likely to attempt to salvage peace talks. Such a possibility, however, is likely to prove equally fruitless since the rightwing Israeli government of Benjamin Netanyahu made it clear that neither freezing illegal settlements, a shared Jerusalem nor a Palestinian state are on the Israeli agenda. Without the enforcement of international law, Israel will not willingly change its position.

In fact, 2017 has been a year of unbridled Jewish settlement expansion with thousands of new housing units having been built – or are in the process of being completed – while brand new settlements are also in the offing.

Israel’s intransigence and the end of the US peace gambit has renewed interest in the Palestinian struggle, which has been cast aside for years due to regional conflicts and the Syria war. This has resulted in greater support for the Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement. Modeled after the South African anti-Apartheid boycott movement, BDS calls for direct action by global civil society to end the Israeli occupation of Palestine.

However, the rise of BDS has also meant a strong Israeli-US push back to outlaw the Movement and to punish its supporters. Nearly two dozen US states have passed laws to criminalize BDS, while the US Congress is finalizing its own law that makes boycotting Israel an act punishable by a hefty fine and a prison term.

Challenging both the Israeli Occupation and the PA, Palestinians in the Occupied Territories continued with their Intifada, although one that lacked the mass mobilization of previous uprisings.

Hundreds of Palestinians were killed and wounded, including many children, in Israel’s efforts to suffocate any protest against its military rule.

The siege on Gaza also remained in place despite Hamas’ efforts to end it through the rewriting of its constitution and the various overtures towards Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah Party, which dominates the PA government in Ramallah.

A unity agreement between Hamas and Fatah was signed in Cairo in October. It set an election date, and allowed for thousands of PA officials to return to Gaza to man border crossings and populate various ministries and government offices.

The nearly 2 million Palestinians in the besieged Strip, however, are yet to savor the fruit of that unity in their everyday life.

Although the reconciliation agreement was motivated by political expediency for both factions, the need for real unity among Palestinians is more urgent now than ever before, and not only because of Trump’s decision regarding Jerusalem.

The Israeli Knesset has passed, or is in the process of passing, various bills that seal the fate of Palestinians, regardless of their geographical location or political affiliation. One is the Jewish Nation-State Bill which defines Israel as the “nation home of the Jewish people” thus rendering millions of indigenous Palestinian Arabs as outcasts in their own homeland.

The ‘Greater Jerusalem Bill” was only shelved temporarily, despite the fact that it has the support of a majority in the Knesset. The Bill calls for the expansion of Jerusalem’s boundaries to include major illegal Jewish settlements in the West Bank, thus illegally annexing massive swathes of Palestinian land and reducing the Palestinian population in Jerusalem into an even smaller minority.

The Palestinian leadership must understand that the challenges at hand are far greater than its selfish need for political validation and monetary support. There is an urgent need for the revitalizing of all institutions of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO).  The new strategy should place Palestinians first, and must harness the energies of the Palestinian people at home or in ‘shatat’ – diaspora.

2018 promises to be a decisive year for the future of all Palestinians and it will be a difficult one. Not only did the US pull out of the ‘peace process’, it is expected to do its utmost to jeopardize any Palestinian initiative aimed at holding Israel accountable for its 50-year-old illegal military occupation.

If the Palestinian leadership fails to transition itself into a new role, it is likely to find itself in direct confrontation with the Palestinian people, who are ready to move on into a whole new type of struggle; one that is not beholden to the farce of a ‘two-state solution’, which was never truly on the agenda to begin with.

– Ramzy Baroud is a journalist, author and editor of Palestine Chronicle. His forthcoming book is ‘The Last Earth: A Palestinian Story’ (Pluto Press, London). Baroud has a Ph.D. in Palestine Studies from the University of Exeter and is a Non-Resident Scholar at Orfalea Center for Global and International Studies, University of California Santa Barbara. His website is www.ramzybaroud.net.

27 December 2017

Source: http://www.countercurrents.org/2017/12/27/year-review-will-2018-usher-new-palestinian-strategy/

By Dr Elias Akleh

During his national security speech last Monday, December 18th Trump introduced his administration’s new “America First” national security strategy in a surprisingly unaccustomed calm and calculated mannerism that is uncharacteristic of him. Although it seemed that he was well coached, yet, he couldn’t escape his narcissistic tendency and kept denunciating previous administrations while praising his own.

Trump accused the previous administrations of failing the American people by building the economy of foreign countries rather than the American economy. He accused the Trans Pacific Partnership as a “job killing deal” and the Paris Climate Accord of being expensive and unfair. Trump promised to withdraw America from both.

He accused Obama’s administration of creating ISIS and setting it upon Libya and Syria; an accusation that he emphatically asserted during his presidential campaign when he accused Obama and Hillary of creating ISIS. On the other hand, he praised his efforts, during his first trip abroad to the Middle East, to convince the Gulf States (the real supporters of ISIS) and other Muslim majority states to join together to fight radical Islamic ideology and terrorism. He took the credit that “we have dealt ISIS devastating defeats one after another” falsely claiming that the American coalition had recaptured almost 100% of the land that was held by the terrorists in Iraq and in Syria. Facts reveal that ISIS was defeated not by the American coalition rather by Syrian/Hezbollah/Russian coalition.

He blamed Obama’s administration for signing nuclear agreement with Iran calling it a bad deal. Then accuses Iran of terrorism throughout the Middle East when Iran has been fighting the American created and armed ISIS terrorist groups for the last seven years.  He boasted that he imposed an ineffective and meaningless sanctions against the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corp, and of declining to certify Iran deal to Congress. Trump ignores the fact that his administration is arming and supporting Saudi Arabia’s aggression against Yemen creating the worst humanitarian crisis in the recent history.

Trump accused previous administrations of tolerating North Korean regime allowing it to develop its missile system. He accused North Korea of threatening the US and the world, coerced its neighboring countries to join him in imposing economic sanctions, and sent carrier ships to threaten North Korea of nuclear attack and utter destruction. He in fact used North Korea’s deterrent missile system to spread fear in the hearts of the neighboring countries in order to sell them more American weapons.

After tooting his first year achievements, Trump focused on his national security strategy stating that it advances four national interests; at times called them pillars. The first is the protection of the American people, the homeland and the American way of life. He talked about the need to secure American borders in order to secure the American nation. So, he again called for the construction of a wall on the southern border, many parts of which had been built by previous administrations. This is an Israeli concept to separate “them” from “us”. He explained that this strategy is to enhance ICE (Immigration and Custom Enhancement) officers and homeland security personnel to stop Latinos, whom he previously called criminals, drug dealers, rapists and thieves.

This step also calls for confronting, discrediting and defeating what he called radical Islamic terrorism and ideology and preventing it from spreading into the US. Trump is spreading Islamophobia and is banning Muslims from five countries in this regard. A new vetting procedure has been implemented to keep Muslims out, and the vetting is getting tougher every month.

The strategy also calls for developing new ways to counter the use of cyber and social media to attack and threaten Americans. This is meant to destroy net neutrality, to enhance surveillance, to target internet users with brainwashing fake news, and to perpetrate more cyber attacks  as was done against Iranian nuclear centrifuges (Stuxnet virus).

This interest (pillar) aims at building a police state, divide the people, spread Islamophobia and hatred, increase surveillance, and killing net neutrality. By protecting the people and the American way of life Trump means protecting the richest 1% and their exploiting ways of life and separating them from the poor working class.

Trump’s second strategic pillar is the promotion of American economic prosperity that he recognizes as national security. Trump sees home economic growth as an absolute necessity for American power and influence abroad. “Any nation that trades away prosperity for security ends up losing both” Trump explained. So, his strategy calls for cutting taxes, rolling back unnecessary regulations against corporations, renegotiate/cancel trade agreements, and use firm actions against “unfair practice and intellectual property theft.” The strategy proposes a complete rebuilding of American infrastructure, and embraces a future American energy dominance and self-sufficiency.

The strategy, here, serves only the rich and the corporations, including, of course, Trump’s corporations, by cutting their taxes and rolling back regulations that were previously enforced to serve and to protect the consumers and the environment. Trump has already signed a tax bill reducing the corporate tax from 35% to 21% while the working class gets only crumbs. With the complete rebuilding of the infrastructure and huge military expenditure Trump is proposing there will be a definite huge budget deficit, that would require cuts in the infrastructure building (Puerto Rico Island in mind), reduction in social security benefits, and reduction in medicare and social services.

When talking about trade fairness and reciprocity Trump is alluding to renegotiating more aggressive trade agreements and imposing economic boycott or aggressive measures against those countries, who don’t play according to his rules.  Deregulations would allow the opening of federal land for mining and oil excavations.  The future American energy dominance and self-sufficiency are hints to allowing more oil fracking and running more oil pipe lines.

The third pillar of Trump’s strategy recognizes that “weakness is the surest path to conflict and our rivaled power is the surest mean of defense”, and “a nation that is not prepared to win a war is a nation not capable of preventing a war.”  Trump calls for “peace through strength”. He calls for the reversal of what he accuses previous administrations’ decisions to shrink the armed forces even as threats to national security grew. His strategy calls for massive building up of the military by breaking from what he called the damaging defense sequester, and calls for streamlining acquisition to eliminate bloated bureaucracy. Trump proposed the investment of $700 billion in defense next year praising, here, the “fundamental side benefit of creating millions and millions of jobs”, yet neglecting the side-harm of war, killings and destruction. Trump’s strategy recognizes space as a “competitive domain” and calls for multi-layered missile defense; a very dangerous call that will initiate space arms race and eventual star wars.

Trump’s strategy recognizes “a new era of competition … in vigorous military and economic and political contest” and his administration is in this competition to win the contest. His peace through strength is actually the process of bullying, intimidating, coercing, and subjugating other nations to the whims of the American president (dictator) under the threats of military destruction and annihilation. Let us not ignore Nikki Haley’s threat to North Korea in the United Nation: “if war comes, make no mistake, the North Korean regime will be utterly destroyed.” I don’t know what peace Trump was talking about when the US had destroyed in whole or part many countries around the world and had overthrown democratic governments and supported dictatorial regimes.

Previous administrations never had a defense sequester. On the contrary, the military budget grew immensely a year after year until it exceeded the military budgets of the next eight countries combined. Trump wants to eliminate any control or restrictions over military budget by streamlining military acquisitions. Under the justification of building a credible military deterrence Trump called for significant investment to maintain American nuclear arsenal and infrastructure capable of being deployed abroad. He is not satisfied with the almost 200 nuclear bombs stationed in different European countries. He does not see these as threat to world peace while considering North Korean missile and the non-existent Iranian nuclear weapons as the real threat to world peace. What a myopic vision!

Trump’s fourth strategic pillar is advancing American influence in the world by building partnerships based on cooperation and reciprocity with those who share American goals. Trump claimed that the US does not seek to impose the American ways of life on any one, but will champion these values without apology. Although his strategy will pursue a vision of strong, sovereign and independent nations that respect their citizens and respect their neighbors, it will not allow inflexible ideology to become an obsolete and obstacle to peace.

Trump seems to have forgotten that the US had destroyed many independent sovereign countries in order to spread its version of democracy. Last week his ambassador to the UN; Nikki Haley, had threatened member countries, virtually the whole world, not to vote for Jerusalem proposal, warning them that their vote will be remembered, their names will be taken and handed to Trump, who will consider this as a personal matter, and will cut US financial aid to these members. If this is not imposing one’s opinion, then what is?

“America first” and “peace through strength” are means for Trump’s administration to control and suppress American people through police state under the guise of national security, and to control foreign countries through nuclear military intimidation and bullying. It is the US that is threatening world peace not Iran or North Korea.

Trump had ridiculously attempted to conclude his speech by portraying an optimistic future vision of Americans returning to the wisdom of their founders forgetting that the founders’ so-called wisdom was based on genocide of indigenous people, on slavery and on racism. I could not stop myself from laughing when he concluded with “In America the people govern, the people rule, and the people are sovereign.” He must have been talking about the 1% elite.

Dr. Elias Akleh is an Arab American from a Palestinian descent. His family was evicted from Haifa, Palestine, after the 1948 Nakba when the Zionists stole his family’s property. Then the family was evicted again from the West Bank during the 1967 Naksah, after the Zionist, again, occupied the rest of Palestine.

26 December 2017

Source: http://www.countercurrents.org/2017/12/26/trumps-national-security-strategy-strategy-thuggery-intimidation/

By Dan Glazebrook

Presenting themselves as shocked bystanders to the growing famine in Yemen, the US and UK are in fact prime movers in a new strategy that will massively escalate it.

The protagonists of the war on Yemen – the US, UK, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates – have been beset by problems ever since they launched the operation in March 2015. But these problems seem to have reached breaking point in recent months.

First and foremost, is the total lack of military progress in the war. Originally conceived as a kind of blitzkrieg – or “decisive storm” as the initial bombing campaign was named – that would put a rapid end to the Houthi-led Ansarallah movement’s rebellion, almost three years later it has done nothing of the sort. The only significant territory recaptured has been the port city of Aden, and this was only by reliance on a secessionist movement largely hostile to ‘President’ Hadi, whose rule the war is supposedly being fought to restore. All attempts to recapture the capital Sanaa, meanwhile, have been exposed as futile pipe dreams.

Secondly, the belligerents have been increasingly at war with themselves. In February of this year, a fierce battle broke out between the Emiratis and Saudi-backed forces for control of Aden’s airport. According to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the struggle  “prevented an Emirati plan to move north to Taiz,” adding that “the risk of such confrontations remains…Lacking ground forces anywhere in Yemen, the Saudis worry that the UAE could be carving out strategic footholds for itself, undermining Saudi influence in the kingdom’s traditional backyard.” Notes intelligence analysts the Jamestown Foundation, “The fight over Aden’s airport is being played out against a much larger and far more complex fight for Aden and southern Yemen. The fighting between rival factions backed by Saudi Arabia and the UAE clearly shows that Yemen’s already complicated civil war is being made more so by what is essentially a war within a war: the fight between Saudi Arabia and the UAE and their proxies.” This tension flared up again in October, with Emirati troops arresting 10 members of the Saudi-aligned Islah movement, the Muslim Brotherhood’s Yemeni faction.

And finally, the war is undergoing a serious crisis of legitimacy. Aid agencies are usually doggedly silent on the political causes of the disasters they are supposed to ameliorate. Yet on the issue of the blockade – and especially since it was made total on November 6th this year – they have been uncharacteristically vocal, placing the blame for the country’s famine – in which more than a quarter of the population are now starving – squarely on the blockade and its supporters. Jamie McGoldrick, the UN’s humanitarian coordinator for Yemen, put it starkly: “150,000 will die before the end of the year because of the impact of this blockade” he told ABC news last month. Save the Children had already stated back in March 2017 that “food and aid are being used as a weapon of war”, and called for an end to UK arms sales to Saudi Arabia, whilst in November 2017, Oxfam’s Shane Stevenson said: “All those with influence over the Saudi-led coalition are complicit in Yemen’s suffering unless they do all they can to push them to lift the blockade.” Paolo Cernuschi, of the International Rescue Committee, added that: “We are far beyond the need to raise an alarm. What is happening now is a complete disgrace.” The governments of Donald Trump and Theresa May were being painted – by the most establishment-aligned of charities – as essentially mass murderers, accomplices to what Alex de Waal has called “the worst famine crime of this decade”. Even the Financial Times carried a headline that Britain “risks complicity in the use of starvation as a weapon of war”. “Is complicit” would be more accurate than “risks complicity”, but nevertheless: still a pretty damning indictment.

To confront these problems, a new strategy has clearly emerged. It appears to have been inaugurated by Theresa May and Boris Johnson on November 29th.  On that date, whilst the British Prime Minister met with King Salman and Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman in Riyadh, the Foreign Secretary was hosting a London meeting of the foreign ministers of Saudi Arabia and the UAE and the US under-secretary of state, representing all four of the belligerent powers in Yemen.

The first element of this strategy was for Britain and the US to pacify the NGO fraternity by distancing themselves from the blockade, as if it were somehow separate from the war in which they were so deeply involved. This actually came about in the days preceding those meetings, when Theresa May told the press she would “demand” the “immediate” lifting of the blockade during her forthcoming visit to the king. That was disingenuous; after all, had she really wanted the blockade ended, she could have achieved this immediately simply by threatening to cut military support for the Saudis until they ended it. According to War Child UK, arms sales to Saudi Arabia have now topped £6billion, and Britain runs a major training programme for the Saudi military, with 166 personnel deployed within the Saudi military structure. Former US presidential advisor Bruce Riedel is entirely correct when he states that “the Royal Saudi Air Force cannot operate without American and  British support. If the United States and the United Kingdom, tonight, told King Salman [of Saudi Arabia] ‘this war has to end,’ it would end tomorrow.”

In fact, the meeting seems to have been more about reassuring the Saudis that her words were but rhetoric for domestic consumption, and not meant to be taken seriously. In the event, far from an “immediate” end, the UK government website reported that May and Salman merely “agreed that steps needed to be taken” and that “they would take forward more detailed discussions on how this could be achieved”. Just to make it absolutely clear that the UK’s support for the war was not in question in any way, the very next line of the statement was “They agreed the relationship between the UK and Saudi Arabia was strong and would endure”. A deeply complicit press ensured that the actual contents of this meeting was barely reported; the last word on the matter, as far as they were concerned, was May’s pledge to “demand” an end to the blockade. Donald Trump followed suit last week, likewise calling on the Saudis to “completely allow food, fuel, water and medicine to reach the Yemeni people” whilst doing nothing to bring this about. Thus have the UK and US governments attempted to manipulate the media narrative such that the blockade they continue to facilitate no longer reflects badly on them.

The next aspect of the strategy became obvious before the Johnson and May meetings had even finished, as fighting broke out between the Houthis and forces loyal to former President Ali Abdullah Saleh the same day. Saleh had made an alliance with his erstwhile enemies the Houthis in 2015 in a presumed attempt to seize back power from his former deputy Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi, to whom he was forced to abdicate power in 2012. But he had never been fully trusted by the Houthis, and their suspicions were to be fully confirmed when on Saturday 2nd December he formally turned on them and offered himself up to the Saudis. Saleh had always been close to the Saudis whilst in power, positioning himself largely as a conduit for their influence; now he was returning to his traditional role. The swiftness and intensity of the Saudi airstrikes supporting his forces against the Houthis following his announcement suggests some degree of foreknowledge and collaboration had preceded it, as does the Saudi’s reported house arrest of their previous favourite Hadi the previous month. This restoration of the Saleh-Saudi alliance represents a victory for the UAE, who had been pushing the Saudis to rebuild its bridges with him for some time. Analyst Neil Partrick, for example, had written just weeks before the move that “The Emiratis are advising the Saudis to go back to the former Yemeni president Ali Abdullah Saleh, believing his growing disputes with the Houthis, his tactical allies, can be encouraged to become a permanent breach.” Thus was the problem of the military stalemate supposed to be solved by splitting the Houthis alliance with Saleh, paving the way for a dramatic rebalancing of forces in favour of the belligerents. The execution of Saleh two days later has only partially scuppered this plan, with many of his forces either openly siding with the invaders or putting up no resistance to them.

At the same time as the Saudis have finally been brought round to the UAE’s preference for a reconciliation with Saleh’s forces, the UAE have now, it seems, accepted an alliance with the Saudi-backed Islah party. Despite the Saudi’s usual antipathy to the Muslim Brotherhood, it has backed their Yemeni offshoot in this war, a move hitherto firmly opposed by the Emirates. Yet, following earlier meetings between Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman and Islah leader Abdullah al-Yidoumi, the two men met last Wednesday (13th December) with Emirati crown prince Mohammed bin Zayed. Maged Al Da’arri, editor of Yemen’s Hadramout newspaper, explained to The National that “the Gulf leaders are trying to combine the different sides in Yemen to work collaboratively in order to be able to liberate the provinces that are still held by the Houthis.”

It seems likely that Emirati support for Islah was a quid-pro-quo for Saudi support for Saleh, both moves suggesting perhaps that the two powers’ divisions were to some extent being overcome. But this rapprochement was formalised with the formal announcement of a new military alliance between them on December 5th, the day after Saleh’s death.

Thus, within a week of the London and Riyadh meetings, the coalition’s three seemingly intractable problems – the paralysing divisions between UAE and Saudi Arabia, the military stalemate, and the West’s legitimacy crisis over the blockade – had all apparently been turned around. This readjustment was and is intended to pave the way for a decisive new page in the war: an all-out attack on Hodeidah, as a prelude to the recapture of Sanaa itself.

This new strategy is now well under way. On December 6th – four days after Saleh switched sides, and one day after the new UAE-Saudi alliance was announced – the invaders’ Yemeni assets mounted “a major push…to purge Al Houthis from major coastal posts on the Red Sea including the strategic city of Hodeida.” The Emiratis had been advocating an attack on Hodeidah for at least a year, but, according to the Emirati newspaper The National, President Obama had vetoed it in 2016, whilst in March 2017, the Saudis got cold feet due to fears that the plan was “an indication of [the Emirates’] attempt to carve out strategic footholds in Yemen”. Now, it seems, it is finally under way.

The following day, the red sea town of Khokha, in Hodeidah province, was captured by Emirati forces and their Yemeni assets, backed by Saudi airstrikes. Gulf News reported that “Colonel Abdu Basit Al Baher, the deputy spokesperson of the Military Council in Taiz, told Gulf News that the liberation of Khokha would enable government forces and the Saudi-led coalition to circle Hodeida from land and sea”. The day after that, Houthi positions in Al Boqaa, between Khokha and Hodeidah, were taken by Emirati-backed forces.

The following Sunday, 10th December, Boris Johnson met with the Emirati crown prince and de facto ruler Mohammed bin Zayed in Abu Dhabi, where he “underlined the depth of strategic relations between the two countries and his country’s keenness on enhancing bilateral cooperation”, before attending another “Quartet committee” meeting with his Emirati and Saudi counterparts and the US acting secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs. The four of them “agreed to hold their meetings periodically, with the next meeting scheduled for the first quarter of 2018.”

This intensive activity in the space of just two weeks, bookended by high-level meetings of the ‘quartet’ on either side, is clearly coordinated. But what it heralds is truly horrifying. Presenting themselves as shocked bystanders to the growing famine in Yemen, the US and UK are in fact prime movers in a new strategy that will massively escalate it.

When an attack on Hodeidah was being contemplated back in March 2017, aid agencies and security analysts alike were crystal clear about its impact. A press release from Oxfam read: “Reacting to concern that Hodeidah port in Yemen is about to be attacked by the Saudi-led coalition, international aid agency Oxfam warns that this is likely to be the final straw that pushes the country into near certain famine…Mark Goldring, Oxfam GB Chief Executive said: “If this attack goes ahead, a country that is already on the brink of famine will be starved further as yet another food route is destroyed…An estimated 70 percent of Yemen’s food comes into Hodeidah port. If it is attacked, this will be a deliberate act that will disrupt vital supplies – the Saudi-led coalition will not only breach International Humanitarian Law, they will be complicit in near certain famine.” The point was reiterated by the UN’s World Food Programme, whilst the UN International Organisation for Migration warned that 400,000 people would be displaced were Hodeidah to be attacked.

“The potential humanitarian impact of a battle at Hodeidah feels unthinkable,” Suze Vanmeegen, protection and advocacy advisor at the Norwegian Refugee Council, told IRIN recently. “We are already using words like ‘catastrophic’ and ‘horrendous’ to describe the crisis in Yemen, but any attack on Hodeidah has the potential to blast an already alarming crisis into a complete horror show – and I’m not using hyperbole.”

In the Independent, Peter Salisbury  noted that “it is by no means certain that taking Hodeidah will be easy” as the (then) “Houthi-Saleh alliance is well aware of the plan” and preparing accordingly. He added that “While the Saudi-led coalition claims that taking the port would help alleviate the humanitarian crisis in the medium term, aid agencies fret that the short-term effect of cutting off access to a major port could be a killing blow to some of Yemen’s starving millions.” The Jamestown foundation were even more wary, writing that the city’s capture would be impossible without major US involvement and that  “Even with U.S. assistance, the invasion will be costly and ineffective. The terrain to the east of Hodeidah is comprised of some of the most forbidding mountainous terrain in the world. The mountains, caves, and deep canyons are ideal for guerrilla warfare that would wear down even the finest and best disciplined military.” Yet the US’s current efforts to argue that Houthis are being supplied with Iranian missiles via Hodeidah may well be aimed at legitimising just such direct US involvement in an attack on the port. After all, continues Jamestown, “the Saudi effort in Yemen hinges on the invasion of Hodeidah. The reasoning behind the invasion is that without Hodeidah and its port — where supplies trickle through — the Houthis and their allies, along with millions of civilians, can be starved into submission.”

This, then – the ramping up of the ‘weapon of starvation’ – is the ultimate end of this new phase in the war. Basic humanity demands it be vigorously opposed.

This article was originally published in Middle East Eye.

Dan Glazebrook is a political writer and editor of stopstarvingyemen.org. He is author of Divide and Ruin: The West’s Imperial Strategy in an Age of Crisis and blogs at danglazebrook.com.

21 December 2017

Source: http://www.countercurrents.org/2017/12/21/a-total-horror-show-the-new-plan-for-yemen/

By Nick Buxton

The bad news streaming through our media in 2017 has been relentless. However it doesn’t tell the full story. Beyond the headlines, there have countless amazing social movement struggles in different regions of the world that deserve to be celebrated. Here are ten stories showing that people power works:

1. El Salvador bans mining

In a classic David and Goliath tale, this small Central American state took on a vast Canadian transnational corporation to become the first country in the world to ban metals mining. Farmer communities led the struggle when they came together in 2004 to save the Lempa River watershed. They built a national coalition in the face of massive repression (including the assassination of several activists), formed alliances internationally, took on the Canadian corporation OceanaGold and finally secured a mining ban in March 2017.

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2. #Metoo campaign challenges impunity for sexual harrassment

Sexual harassment has been a constant reality for women everywhere for generations, but in 2017 the wall of impunity was suddenly breached.   Revelations of Hollywood mogul Weinstein’s repeated sexual abuses prompted 1.7 million #metoo tweets in 85 countries, prompting many women in every walk of life to come forward publicly to denounce sexual harassment. Many men have been forced to resign and there seems to be finally a consensus that sexual harassment must stop. This shift is not an accident or down to the work of a few journalists, it was the result of decades of tireless campaigning by women’s organizations worldwide fighting for equality.

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3. French law on multinationals

At a time when corporate power has become seemingly impregnable, French campaigners have shown that transnational corporations can be defeated. In a four year campaign, they mobilized for a new law approved in March 2017, which recognizes the responsibility of parent companies for human rights violations committed by subsidiaries, subcontractors and providers. The law was passed in the face of considerable corporate opposition and is a major step forward in the fight against impunity of transnational corporations (TNCs), addressing the legal complexity of their supply chains that has made it so difficult for affected communities to get justice. The law has also given a boost to ongoing efforts to create an international binding treaty on TNCs at the United Nations.

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4. Privatization is being rolled back, community by community

After many years  where privatization of services was the dominant trend, a wave of communities worldwide is successfully fighting off privatization and bringing formerly privatized services back under control. In 2017 in Cali, Colombia, for example, a  public sector workers union succeeded in defeating the proposed privatization of the municipal owned telecommunications company and then set up a public-public partnership (PuP) with a Uruguayan national public enterprise to improve the public service. In another case, Indonesia’s Supreme Court ruled in 2017 that privatization of water is a violation of human rights and annulled an agreement between Jakarta’s city-owned water operator PAM Jaya and two private companies. More than 835 communities worldwide have brought their public services back under public control in recent years.

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5. Trump’s agenda faces massive popular resistance

Trump’s election in 2017 was one of the most disturbing days in 2016, but it hasn’t gone so well for him since. From the very first day of office, Trump’s presidency has faced unprecedented popular resistance. In the first week, his blanket ban on Muslims from six nations was met with spontaneous protests at more than 20 major international airports across the USA – and has been blocked repeatedly by courts ever since and is now only temporarily enacted. Popular movements involved in fighting the white supremacy, corporate greed, and militarism that the Trump regime represents have reported a massive surge in engagement and support.

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6. Gambia autocrat overthrown

Military ruler, Yahya Jammeh, who ruled Gambia with an iron fist for 22 years was forced to step down at the beginning of 2017 after he lost the 2016 election. Jammeh predicted he would rule for a billion years, but young Gambians came out in large numbers and used social media to mobilize votes for his opponent, Adama Barrow. Jammeh tried to overrule the election results, but fierce opposition from trade unions, professional associations and pressure from outside states forced Jammeh to relinquish power.

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7. Almost two-thirds of Australian voters say yes to marriage equality

Australia became the 25th country to legally embrace marriage equality in 2017 after voters overwhelmingly voted in favor of changing the definition of marriage to include same sex relationships in an advisory referendum. Australia’s parliament then approved a bill almost unanimously. Popular and legal support for gay rights may seem unsurprising now, but it is worth remembering that just 20 years ago there was not one nation that treated same sex relationships as legally equal to heterosexual ones.

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8. Farmer rebellion in India

In November, tens of thousands of peasants and rural laborers from 20 states representing more than 180 peasant organizations gathered in Delhi for an unprecedented show of strength against the reactionary Modi Government. Facing rising production costs, increased droughts and falling incomes, the farmers demanded debt relief, better prices and effective crop insurance schemes. While the government did not immediately respond to their key demands, the united platform is likely to have an impact as it takes its campaign across the country in 2018 and 2019.

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9. Guatemala rises up against institutionalized corruption

Since 2015, a series of mass protests against corruption have rocked Guatemala. These came to a head in September when President Jimmy Morales attempted to expel a Colombian investigator of the U.N.-backed International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala. Indigenous communities have played a leading role in the protests and are also in a fight with Congress to approve a constitution that would recognize greater indigenous autonomy. In October, a national strike led by a coalition of social movements in twenty cities demanded the resignation of Morales in addition to calling for land reform and nationalisation of the energy sector.

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10. Rise of Momentum and transformation of UK Labour Party

In 2017, Momentum, a grassroots movement in the UK, defied the odds and brought a left candidate Jeremy Corbyn close to government. Focusing on door-to-door conversations and a sophisticated social media campaign, they substantially increased Labour’s vote in the General Elections and almost ended the ruling Conservative party’s majority. The movement, Momentum, made up of 30,000 active members showed how a mobilized grassroots operation could defy massive media hostility and win seats.  The movement has made the Labour Party the biggest membership party in Europe with a platform committed to bringing privatized services back under public ownership, abolishing university tuition fees and ending fracking. Momentum is now widely recognised as the most vibrant part of the party and is advocating greater participation in the party’s decision-making.

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These stories and others are taken from a recap of the year by Transnational Institute, a progressive research institute committed to building a just, democratic and sustainable world. Read the full rundown of social movement victories here.

Nick Buxton is a communications consultant, working as a publications editor and supporting  online learning and support of activist scholar communities for TNI.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License

21 December 2017

Source: http://www.countercurrents.org/2017/12/21/10-amazing-social-movement-struggles-in-2017-that-give-us-reason-to-hope/

By Maung Zarni

Truths and totalitarianism are irreconcilable.  They have never co-existed, they do not coexist, and they never will.

Whatever the exterior – fascist, corporatocracy (government of, for and by corporations), military, communist, or theocratic – the regimes of un-truths share a common hallmark, namely, their marked disdain for empirical facts that undermine their legitimacy.  Through manufactured falsehoods, they all try relentlessly to establish and maintain a monopoly grip on power and control the population, both bodies and minds.

The arrest of two Burmese Reuters journalists who were sniffing the military’s dark “top secrets” in Rakhine is just one evidential incident in a long series of frontal assaults on truths which Myanmar’s NLD-military hybrid regime seeks to conceal.  Myanmar government uses anachronistic colonial-era ‘security and anti-sedition’ laws to put in interrogation cells journalists or activists who attempt to uncover and expose them at great personal risk, while it labels some of us outside Myanmar as ‘national traitors’ and ‘enemies of the state’.  As a recipient of such high national honour, I speak from my own experience.

This is not news, however.   Astute students of politics know very well the hand-in-glove nature of falsehoods (official propaganda) and political repression, in all senses of the word.

But what is new, and deeply troubling, is the “Free World” of the West (that is, USA, Canada, EU, Japan and Australia, as well as certain UN agencies) are resorting to exactly the same type of totalitarian methodology insofar as their justifications offered in defence of their business-as-usual Myanmar policies are concerned.  That is, London, Washington, Brussels and other western regimes are crafting, promoting and defending a single lie, just as they put out ‘statements of grave concerns’ directed at their increasingly repressive Myanmar business partner.

This foundational lie of today’s western policies towards Myanmar goes something like this:

The country is in a fragile democratic transition under the leadership of Aung San Suu Kyi, who represents ‘the best hope’ for the people.  Accordingly, the West’s Myanmar policy delusion demands that we suspend our common sense and swallow its self-serving discourse of ‘balancing’ the need to address the country’s genocide of Rohingyas and stand with the Great Democratizer, that is, Aung San Suu Kyi.

These prevailing Myanmar policy discourses are self-serving at best and sinister at worst.  As a Burmese activist who has worked on Myanmar political and policy affairs for nearly 30 years, having lived in Washington and London, I smell a rat.

These discourses under their liberal veneer are self-serving because they enable Western commercial and strategic interests, however defined and whatever they are, to stay put in Myanmar despite the genocide.   And they are sinister because western policy-makers know that the road to democracy and human rights has never run through any totalitarian ideology or system.  Nazi Germany, fascist Japan, communist dictatorships of former USSR and the now deceased Eastern Bloc spring to mind.

And my country of birth today, both the ruling hybrid regime and the society at large, is progressively moving not towards any form of pro-human rights democracy, but towards what I call Buddhist Fascism.

In this sordid political climate in Myanmar, the formerly pro-human rights public, peaceful Buddhist Order and pro-human rights dissidents, from Aung San Suu Kyi and former student leaders of the Great Uprising of 8.8.88, have closed ranks with their former military jailors and torturers.  Their new-found mission is nothing short of building a Myanmar majoritarian ethnocracy where Buddhism is systematically misused as the state’s political ideology.  The Commander-in-Chief Senior General Min Aung Hlaing has repeatedly declared ‘defence of Buddhism’ as an additional duty of the armed forces, in addition to serving as the self-style institutional shepherd of what the generals call ‘Discipline Flourishing Democracy’.   His former titular boss, ex-general and President Thein Sein, enacted the Four Race and Faith Defence Laws, persecutorial and discriminatory towards millions of non-Buddhist citizens.

In addition, Myanmar military has accomplished its long-standing, if unwritten, objective of cleansing the armed forces of any officer who is not Buddhist. While the country’s most powerful institution is well-known for its Islamophobia, what is less known is that Christianity is widely mocked, being called “Virus C”, sufficient ground for discharging military officers from strategic positions.

To the dismay of many of its Muslim supporters, Aung San Suu Kyi’s NLD party, with the parliamentary majority has followed suit:  it has not a single Muslim representative, thanks to the autocratic Suu Kyi’s single-minded strategy of pandering to the racist Buddhist majority.

Consequently, for the first time in the country’s 1,000-years of recorded history, Myanmar now has Muslim-free armed forces, a Muslim-free parliament and a Muslim-free executive branch.  (The judiciary doesn’t count as its decisions are dictated by those in the executive branch and ultimately by the military).

Religion isn’t the only issue that drives both the NLD and the military’s policies and political moves. The Burmese majoritarian ethnic identity is inseparable from this institutionalisation of Buddhism as the country’s ruling political ethos, displacing, in effect, any secularist values such as respect for non-Buddhist and non-Burmese ethnic and religious minorities, multiculturalist pluralism, fundamental human rights, civil liberties and intellectual and press freedoms.

In response to a strong criticism by the UN Special Rapporteur on human rights situation in Myanmar Professor Yangee Lee directed at the country’s state actors, the NLD-controlled national parliament passed unanimously the NLD’s motion, specifically designed to condemn Ms Lee and her mission to investigate and highlight human rights violations.  Only in a totalitarian system of governance is such unanimity of views and votes conceivable and possible.

Indeed, Myanmar today is, in essence, more akin to Germany in the 1930’s where a single ethnic community, namely German Jews, were singled out and made scapegoats for all the fears and ills that the majoritarian public was reeling from.

It defies intelligence to paint, as western governments and regional blocs such as EU are doing now with a collective straight face, Myanmar’s emerging populist politics with its fascist characteristics as a ‘fragile democratic transition’.  This is against the backdrop of Rohingyas being singled out as ‘illegal Bengali migrants’, for extermination the way European Jewry were in the Nazi-occupied Europe.

What of Myanmar’s “best hope”, namely Aung San Suu Kyi, who had until recently been viewed worldwide as ‘Asia’s Mandela’ or an iconic leader in the mould of Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr.?

Suu Kyi’s abysmal record on human rights promotion since her release from house arrest in November 2010 speaks volumes. Dismissing any association of human rights with her leadership – “I am not a human rights defender, but have always been leader of the political opposition” –  the NLD leader has chosen not to stand up for the displaced Burmese farmers, the non-Bama ethnic minorities, for instance, Christian Kachins in the war zones of Eastern Myanmar, student dissidents who demanded democratic educational reforms, and even her own rank and file members who attempted to challenge the military-backed racial and religious discrimination.

And worse still, Suu Kyi has on more than one public occasion, expressed her ever-lasting ‘affection’ – which she qualifies as ‘genuine’ – for what she calls ‘my father’s army’, even when her former captors in general’s uniform have long been accused of commissioning all crimes in the international law book including war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide.

On Ms Suu Kyi’s role in these governmental crimes since she entered into a partnership with the military, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein recently told the BBC that “…there’s the crime of omission. That if it came to your knowledge that this was being committed, and you did nothing to stop it, then you could be culpable as well for that.”

One year ago, in the Foreign Policy article entitled ‘A Genocide in the Making’, Sir Geoffrey Nice, the lead prosecutor in the trial of Slobodan Milosevic, wrote these prophetic words: “Today we know enough about the conditions that give rise to genocide that no one in power can justifiably claim ignorance…. Suu Kyi should know that inactivity in the face of genocidal actions can carry moral, legal, and even criminal responsibility.”

Five years ago the world welcomed and held up the ‘Burmese Spring’ as a model democratic transition.  Now the only transition that my old society is undergoing is a transition to Buddhist fascism.

In today’s Myanmar former dissidents speak of ‘national security’ against Muslims – and particularly against vulnerable Rohingyas – and most local journalists use their hard-earned press freedom to promote the military’s brand of hatred.

It is well past time that the Western governments and international institutions stop peddling their twin delusions about my country’s ‘fragile democratic transition’ and its Nobel ‘woman of destiny’.

*Maung Zarni is a Burmese human rights activist, an adviser to the European Centre for the Study of Extremism based in Cambridge, UK and a Non-Resident Fellow at the Sleuk Rith Institute in Cambodia.  He blogs at maungzarni.net

22 December 2017

Source: http://en.prothom-alo.com/opinion/news/168319/Suu-Kyi-for-democracy-or-Buddhist-fascism

By René Wadlow

“Is not this what I require of you… to snap every yoke and set free those who have been crushed?” Isaiah, 58 v 6

There are many ways that an individual can be held in chains through his desires and emotions. These chains need to be broken by the development of the will and strong efforts of self-realization through mediation and therapy.

However, it is contemporary forms of slavery in its literal and not symbolic sense that must concern us today. The League of Nations on September 25, 1926 facilitated a Convention on Slavery which was a high-water mark in the world-wide consensus on the need to abolish slavery begun some 100 years before by small groups of anti-slavery activists in England, France and the USA. However as with many League of Nations conventions, there were no mechanisms written into the convention for monitoring, investigation and enforcement. Although the Slavery Convention outlawed slavery and associated practices, it not only failed to establish procedures for reviewing the incidences of slavery in States parties, but also neglected to create an international body which could evaluate and pursue allegations of violations.

Within the United Nations system, there have been advances made, especially in investigation both making public through official U.N. documents the investigations of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and through the work of Special Rapporteurs of U.N. human rights bodies.

Thus in a U.N. report on “Trafficking of Children and Prostitution in India” the authors write “Nepal appears to be the most significant, identifiable source of child prostitution for Indian brothels.  Thousands of Nepalese females under the age of 20 have been identified in India by various studies.  The average  age of the Nepalese girl entering an Indian brothel is said to be 10-14 years, some 5,000-7,000 of them being trafficked between Nepal and India annually.”

As Professor Vitit Muntarbhorn, a former U.N. Special Rapporteur on the Sale of Children has written “Gender discrimination victimizes the girl child.  Precisely because the girl child in seen in some communities as having lower priority, she is often denied access to such basic necessities as education which could ultimately protect her from exploitation.  Another disquieting form of discrimination is based upon race and social origin, interwoven with issues of class and caste.  It has become increasingly obvious that many children used in labor and sexual exploitation are lured from particular racial or social groups such as hill tribes, rather than the well-endowed groups in power.”

Today, it is the fate of migrants blocked in Libya, forced into forms of slavery one thought had disappeared, which rightly has focused U.N. and NGO concern. The U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, Prince Zeid Raad Al Hussein, has said that “the suffering of migrants detained in Libya is an outrage to the conscience of humanity.”  His evaluation is based in part on the in-depth field investigation of U.N. teams which have highlighted that the majority of the 34 detention centers in Libya are concentration camps in which abuse, torture, forced work and all sorts of violence are everyday occurrences.  Smugglers of people are often free to do as they please with the complicity of police officials at all levels.  The risk of women being captured and raped is so high that some women and girls who are often fleeing from conflict conditions in their home countries take massage doses of birth control pills before entering Libya so that they can avoid getting pregnant.  However, this can often cause irreversible injuries.

There have been reports and filming of “slave auctions” especially in Sabba, the capital of the Fezzan province where routes from Sudan, Chad, and Niger meet and where roads leading north to the Mediterranean start. The U.N. also has reports from NGOs, especially humanitarian organizations, and from investigators of the International Criminal Court.

The issue which faces us now is what can be done. The League of Nations and the U.N. anti-slavery conventions are based on the idea that a State has a government. Unfortunately, Libya is a “failed State”.  It has two rival governments, a host of armed groups, and more-or-less independent tribes.

The Association of World Citizens has proposed that there could be created a Libyan confederation with a good deal of regional autonomy but with a central government which would be responsible for living up to international treaties and U.N. standards.  For the moment there has been no progress in that direction or in the direction of any other constitutional system.

Slavery is a consequence of disorder.  Without a minimum of legal structure, there will always be those who arise to make short-term gains including by the selling of people.  The conscience of humanity of which the High Commissioner for Human Rights spoke must now speak out boldly to break the yoke of slavery.  NGOs need to take a lead. Governments are likely to follow.

Rene Wadlow, President, Association of World Citizens

15 December 2017

By Vidya Bhushan Rawat

Gujarat’s much awaited results are out. The fraudsters sitting in the mega ‘slaughterhouses’ have been exposed and myth related to invincibility is broken and perhaps shaken the Hindutva camp from inside. These results will have huge impact on the psyche of our nation and the fraudsters will start building up their narratives now about how ‘despite’ 25 years ruling, the BJP has still won the game but the fact is that Gujarat verdict has jolted them and it need to be understood in broad perspectives. Can Congress rebuild itself from Gujarat ? What are the lessons for other parties as well as what could be the future politics of three youngsters who actually won our ‘imaginations’ but before coming to analyse those points I have to speak about the absolute degradation and pathetic attempt to thwart the mandate by those fraudsters who claim themselves to be journalists and shouldn’t the Press Council if it is there or Editors Guild and others who are worried about the falling grace particularly of media, must now not only ponder but act too.

Whatever be the outcome of the Exit Polls and Opinion Polls, I think it is time we call for a complete ban on them. You cannot support such frauds that attempt to influence people’s mandate through mischievous means in the name of prime time discussions in their slaughter houses whose only aim was to demolish opposition. This so-called media became BJP and Hindutva’s  not merely polling agents but an instrument in spreading the poisonous propaganda of the SanghParivar that sought to polarize people on communal lines and created fictional issues. Times Now, and Republic TV apart from many others don’t even deserve to be called media houses and that is why I called them slaughter houses meant to humiliate those who disagree with Hindutva and its venomous agenda. It is great that all the attempt to sow seeds of this poison did not succeed in Gujarat. In putting the people’s agenda on political parties, the media can play a big role but sadly and rather dangerously, it was not merely setting agenda but it became part of the canard that divided people and create communal discord which is nothing but a seditious act. So election commission as well as political parties will have to think on whether these media houses should be allowed to steal people’s agenda and attempt to influence their opinion. In the ballot boxe games we had booth capturing and other things at regular intervals but in the current phase, media has become worse than those goons at the street who used to loot the booth to vote for a particular candidate. Media is engaged in bigger loot and denying people their right to set the agenda.

Prime Minister NarendraModi and BJP president Amit Shah has said that this victory of Gujarat is a ‘rejection’ of caste forces and politics of appeasement’ and a victory of ‘good governance’ and ‘developmental’ agenda of the government. It would be good for the media to ask BJP as how many times they talked about good governance and Vikas during this election. Prime Minister’s desperation started whether Congress wanted to make Ahmed Patel as chief minister of Gujarat who has every right to be so if his party had won the election and he were elected leader of the legislature party. Modiji then found conspiracy at Mani Shankar Aiyer’s home involving Dr Man Mohan Singh and Pakistanis together to put Ahmed Patel as chief minister of Gujarat. What do you make with such statement? If it was spoken by anyone else, we would have laughed at the silliness of such argument but  it came from Prime Minister makes it more serious. Question is if Pakistanis are attempting to intervene in our democratic process and conspiring with other Indians then the government must act.

Attempt to create a debate around Rahul Gandhi’s Hinduness was another low which the Congress failed to respond politically and meekly placed before us that Rahul Gandhi is a janeudhari, shiv-bhakt Brahmin. Now this became worst with the idiotic response of the Congress Party. Sangh or its musketeers have no right to ask any citizen of this country about their faith as these are personal matter. As long as I am citizen of India, I have a right to participate in its polity. Congress must come out becoming the B team of the BJP. Rahul Gandhi need to inform his team to project the party as progressive, liberal and secular which India deserve today. The crooked Brahmanical minds inside Congress don’t want it to become a party of all and hence they play all those games which they have been playing for years. These tricks have damaged Congress more than anything else. Congress and Rahul Gandhi must not engage in the Mandir Masjid debate and focus on good governance and India’s pluralistic cultural heritage. It is time, we talk about citizenship, making party more inclusive by involving and assigning the Dalits, Adivasis, Muslims and others fair role in party’s structure as well as in ticket distribution.

It is sad that even Ram Temple became an issue for the Bhartiya Janata Party in Gujarat. Actually the strategy of Shah – Modi duo was to raise deliberately all the issues which tend to polarize voters, avoid developmental and good governance debate and the lapdogs jumped on all the feeds. Every day, prime time crooks shouting shamelessly on these issues with equally provocative hashtags to build a narrative that SanghParivar is doing through their whatsapp university. So the role of these Slaughter Houses was nothing but to carefully craft a narrative around Narendra Modi and his invincibility while attacking Gandhi family through their choicest contempt. One is not here to defend the family but as political leaders they deserve same respect as anyone else and they have a right to defend themselves.

People of Gujarat actually have rejected the Modi Model so the narrative that they are weaving about 19 states under BJP must be rejected. Parties come to power and go. BJP had 2 seats too in Parliament. It got defeated too and in democracy it is fair. The narrative around Gujarat was about its invincibility and Hindutva’s laboratory of nationalism that was only helping the savarna Hindus and denying the Dalits , OBCs and adivasis their space in power structure and for that it weaved a hate Muslim agenda as that is the only work they could do. Gujarat became victim of this hate politics and development went somewhere else. The Patidar resentment was not merely because of jobs but also the aspirations of the community which dominated the political landscape of Gujarat once upon a time. Under Modi’s leadership Patidar were sidelined politically and hence the entire battle and resentment of Patidars was not merely jobs for the youths but aspiring leadership of the community.

Many stories are coming that Congress could have won more if BSP had not fielded its candidate in many seats. Similar things are said about Himachal Pradesh too. It is important for all of us to understand that in politics the bigger party has to take a call. I have been speaking for years that Congress and BSP should work together because despite her limited party base, Mayawati still has a Pan Indian appeal among the Dalits and BSP cadres could be found in each state. It was for the Congress to speak to all the parties and should have avoided this division.

With the win of Jignesh Mewani, many of friends feel as if BSP has become irrelevant. While we welcome the victory of Jignesh Mewani and hope he will concentrate on Gujarat and perhaps strengthen social movement and alliances there. We will have to take a decision whether he would remain independent candidate or join Congress. I suppose the second alternative is suitable for him and from that way he can strengthen the independent Dalit voices inside the Congress Party. It would not be advisable for him to develop a new party as some people are looking at him as a new icon of Dalit movement in India. Gujarat’s realities are far different than rest of the country and things are not that simple as our Facebook friends might think. Our advice to Jignesh would be to concentrate building bridges of Dalit-OBC-Muslims in Gujarat as a permanent base so that you have a government in 2023.He and all others have a bigger role for 2019 too to completely bury the hate propagandists in that election.

In a diverse country like ours, we must not shy away from having more political parties. BSP is a brand and it has come out of Ambedkarite thoughts with a noble mission. Ms Mayawati has here severe limitations too. She failed to bring the youngsters like Chandra Shekar Azad, Jignesh Mewani and other forces at the party or any social platform. It is time for her to nurture young leadership in the party. We don’t want BSP to be irrelevant as every party has a big role to play and it has a big mass base at least in Uttar Pradesh but the party must learn to work with other opposition parties. It can’t work on creating opportunistic alliances. If this Gujarat narrative goes in Uttar Pradesh, it would be difficult for BSP to get the Muslim and other OBC votes in the states but then it is also a reality that every state has a distinct nature and has to be dealt in that way but even then SP-BSP-Congress alliance in Uttar Pradesh and RJD-Congress alliance in Bihar, TMC-Congress in Bengal, DMK-Congress in Tamilnadu will work wonders. That apart Congress can also weave same alliances with leaders of social movements as it happened in Gujarat in the states where it has a direct fight with BJP or other regional parties such as Madhya Pradesh, Maharastra, Rajasthan, Jharkhand, Chhattishgarh, Odisha, Uttarakhand, Karnataka, Telangana and Andhra Pradesh. Congress must focus on other states too including North East.

The Gujarat results have rejuvenated the Congress Party which is passing through its toughest period as well as the opposition and if anyone is the winner in these elections, it is Rahul Gandhi. He won the heart of the people through his simplicity and hearty talks. His oratory is getting better day and the most important part is his modesty in admitting his mistakes and graciously accepting the defeat in Gujarat. We know, he is the one, who has become part of daily humiliation by the Sangh and its gappus daily including those sitting in their slaughter houses who would bring out things to target him individually. In independent India’s history, we have very few such examples where one individual was so much targeted and in the obscene way as Rahul has been and these elections have proved that his versions and narratives will be the biggest strength the Congress Party. Rahul Gandhi must build Congress Party from the ground develop a team of not only social media experts but also engage with social movements, opposition leaders, students groups, community leaders, opinion makers, intellectuals to build a strong case to defeat the hatemongering agenda of the SanghParivar. It is time that Congress Party must have these segments but at the same point of time, Congress Party must accept the changing nature of India and respect its diversity in terms of assertions of identities and political parties.

Congress should not think India in terms of a two party politics but must encourage secular political parties to acquire space. I have always respected former prime minister V P Singh’s often repeated statement that if we need to protect secularism and social justice in India or idea of liberal inclusive India then both the ruling as well as opposition space must be acquired by the secular parties. How is it possible to do that ? Will Congress start building up new narratives? Will it admit that it did nothing to remove those things which are still roaming in the web world about JawaharLal Nehru ? It did not act against those goons who spread such nasty photoshopped videos insulting political leaders of our independent movement particularly JawaharLal Nehru. So, it is important to spread your narrative. Sanghis are expert in spreading this as they had the monopoly but they have been defeated now.

It is time we build India brick by brick, defend its secular liberal space, not impose one identity on others but how will it happen? Can we make the Sangh irrelevant? If yes then how? Certainly not trying to be more conservative than them but what Rahul said that we will defend our values and will not be like them who spread hatred. Now Congress has to develop that narrative in action that they are different than the BJP and Hindutva forces in all aspects including their economic model and talk about breaking social barriers and creating a level playing field for all.

As far as the EVM’s are concerned, we have our reservation about it. These elections also, for the first time in last 20 years, showed how an autonomous institution like Election Commission has been compromised. Its credibility has been shaken and we need to work to restore it back. What is the use of EVM’s VVPT if they are not counted. It should be made mandatory to get them counted in several constituencies in each state during the LokSabha Polls to restore the credibility of the Commission otherwise conspiracy theory will continue which will be more dangerous for the health of democracy in our country.

It is clear that 2019 narratives of Sangh Parivar and its Gappus will not be on development and good governance but purely on Hindu Muslim binary. Congress and all other secular parties have to defend with great convictions the idea of India. There is no need for us to defend the wrongs of communities. Defend the rights of a citizen to be Indians and claim entitlement as an Indian citizen irrespective of his or her caste and religion. Focus on Good Governance and seek answer from Narendra Modi and his team on their track record of ‘Development’ and Good Governance’ and as Rahul did in Gujarat, he must focus on these issues and make his team of spokespersons more informed and progressive.

Regressive ideas of Sangh Parivar can’t be accepted by people in longer term hence Congress and all other political parties must focus on progressive attitude and those syncretic values of India where people lived together despite all their differences; above all, we must adhere to our faith in the original constitution of India, to resolve all our disputes. We must tell the people that the best way to solve our disputes is not at the slaughter houses or in the street but through the courts and negotiations. Rahul Gandhi showed exemplary leadership qualities through well organized campaign and involving the youth which is a good sign for the future of the country and we hope that battle 2019 now is wide open and the opportunity must not be lost at all.

Vidya Bhushan Rawat is a social and human rights activist. He blogs at www.manukhsi.blogspot.com twitter @freetohumanity Email: vbrawat@gmail.com

19 December 2017

Source: http://www.countercurrents.org/2017/12/19/invincibility-busted-in-gujarat-game-wide-open-for-2019/

By Dr Gideon Polya

Beatrice Fihn, Director of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), has delivered the Acceptance Speech for the Nobel Peace Prize award to ICAN. 2 months ago the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons was set for ratification and will enter into force 90 days after 50 countries have ratified it. Beatrice Fihn declared: “Will it be the end of nuclear weapons, or will it be the end of us? … Mutual destruction is only one impulsive tantrum away”. Nuclear Weapons ban now.

Key points raised in Beatrice Fihn’s speech [1] are set out below together with my amplifying comments:

1. Anti-nuclear weapons Nobel Peace Prizes.

Beatrice Fihn: “Today, it is a great honour to accept the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of thousands of inspirational people who make up the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons. Together we have brought democracy to disarmament and are reshaping international law…”

Comment. The Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded to many anti-nuclear weapons activists, namely Linus Pauling, (1962; anti-nuclear testing), International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (1985), Joseph Rotblat and Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs (1995, for anti-nuclear weapons stance) , the  International Atomic Energy Agency and Mohamed El Baradei (2005, anti-nuclear weapons),  and to the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear weapons (ICAN) (2017) (in similar vein it was  also awarded to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons in 2013) [2, 3].

One notes sadly that the Nobel Peace Prize has also been awarded to numerous leaders of nuclear-armed, nuclear terrorist states, namely  Barack Obama (US, 2009), Jimmy Carter (US, 2002), Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin (Apartheid Israel, 1994), Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev (Russia, 1990), Menachem Begin (Apartheid Israel, 1978), Henry A. Kissinger (US, 1973), and to further leaders involved in making war and/or  genocide, namely Aung San Suu Kyi (Myanmar, 1991), Thomas Woodrow Wilson (US, 1919), and Theodore Roosevelt (US, 1906) [3, 4].

2. 15,000 nuclear weapons.

Beatrice Fihn: “At dozens of locations around the world – in missile silos buried in our earth, on submarines navigating through our oceans, and aboard planes flying high in our sky – lie 15,000 objects of humankind’s destruction…”

Comment. The upper  estimates of stored  nuclear weapons  are as follows: US (7,315), Russia (8,000), Apartheid Israel (400), France (300), UK (250), China (250), Pakistan (120), India (100), and North Korea (less than 10). India , Pakistan, Apartheid Israel and North Korea have not ratified the Nuclear non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) [2, 5]. Serial war criminal, homicidally greedy neoliberal, psychopathic racist and ignorant, anti-science buffoon Donald Trump has repeatedly threatened to totally destroy North Korea and there is great fear that nuclear terrorist Apartheid Israel might use such a genocidal attack to wipe out non-nuclear armed Iran using nuclear weapons from Germany-supplied submarines [6-9].

3. Risk – “insanity… mutual destruction is only one impulsive tantrum away”.

Beatrice Fihn: “It is insanity to allow ourselves to be ruled by these weapons. Many critics of this movement suggest that we are the irrational ones, the idealists with no grounding in reality. That nuclear-armed states will never give up their weapons. But we represent the only rational choice. We represent those who refuse to accept nuclear weapons as a fixture in our world, those who refuse to have their fates bound up in a few lines of launch code. Ours is the only reality that is possible. The alternative is unthinkable. The story of nuclear weapons will have an ending, and it is up to us what that ending will be. Will it be the end of nuclear weapons, or will it be the end of us? One of these things will happen. The only rational course of action is to cease living under the conditions where our mutual destruction is only one impulsive tantrum away…”

Comment. As far as we know, the world narrowly evaded a nuclear holocaust on at least 2 occasions. Thus Vasili Alexandrovich Arkhipov (30 January 1926 – 19 August 1998) was a Soviet Navy officer during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.  As Commander of the Soviet submarine flotilla near Cuba, he prevented the launch of a nuclear torpedo from a Soviet submarine being threatened by US depth charges, and therefore prevented a possible nuclear war. Thomas Blanton (then director of the National Security Archive) said in 2002 that “a guy called Vasili Arkhipov saved the world” [10, 11].  Stanislav Yevgrafovich Petrov (born in 1939) was a  lieutenant colonel of the Soviet Air Defence Forces when on 26 September  1983 he was the duty officer at the command center for the Oko nuclear early warning system.  When the system reported a missile being launched from the United States, Petrov concluded that the report was a false alarm and did not press the button to end the world. This decision by Stanislav Petrov may have prevented an erroneous retaliatory nuclear attack on the United States and its Western allies. Investigation later confirmed that the satellite warning system had malfunctioned [12, 13].

It is speculated from an evidential basis that the US may have used a neutron bomb to capturer Baghdad Airport intact in 2003 [14, 15]. It appears that Harry Truman considered  launching a nuclear attack on China during the Korean War [16, 17]. The “empirical annual probability” of nuclear weapons use  is very low i.e. as far as is publicly known, there have been only 2  such nuclear weapons use events in the last 72 years (Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945).  However this low  “empirical annual probability” must be balanced against the existential reality that 7.5 billion human beings will die immediately  or soon thereafter as a result of a general  nuclear exchange today [18].

4. Speciescidal, ecocidal, omnicidal, terracidal Nuclear Winter.

Beatrice Fihn: “A calculated military escalation could lead to the indiscriminate mass murder of civilians. If only a small fraction of today’s nuclear weapons were used, soot and smoke from the firestorms would loft high into the atmosphere – cooling, darkening and drying the Earth’s surface for more than a decade. It would obliterate food crops, putting billions at risk of starvation. Yet we continue to live in denial of this existential threat…”

Comment. A nuclear exchange would wipe out most of Humanity (current population about 7.5 billion) , successively through the initial instantaneous destruction of cities, subsequent deaths from burns and  radiation sickness from radioactive fallout, and  finally  through a “Nuclear Winter” decimating agriculture, photosynthesis and photosynthate-based life in general [2]. Fred Mendelsohn (Emeritus Professor,  the Florey Institute of Neuroscience & Mental Health at the University of Melbourne) (2014): “Despite the end of the Cold War, we still live under the dark shadow of some 16,300 nuclear weapons, 1,800 of them on high alert. Each is capable of levelling a city in a flash, killing hundreds of thousands – if not millions – of innocent people. Each is designed to destroy indiscriminately on a vast scale, leaving a toxic radioactive legacy for decades. Collectively, nuclear weapons pose the greatest immediate threat to the health and welfare of humankind and the future of the planet. Such was the conclusion of the world’s leading medical authority, the World Health Organization… Climate scientists now predict that even a so-called “limited” nuclear war would put up to two billion people at risk of famine from an unnatural prolonged winter. A war fought using 5 per cent of all nuclear weapons in the world today would render the planet completely and permanently uninhabitable… The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), which originated in Melbourne seven years ago, has been instrumental in putting a nuclear weapons ban firmly on the global political agenda” [19].

The late Malcolm Fraser (former PM in 1975-1983 of an Australia that in 2017 fervently supports US and Israeli nuclear terrorism) and Dr Tilmann Ruff (a co-founder of ICAN in Melbourne and Associate Professor at the Nossal Institute for Global Health, University of Melbourne ): “New and overwhelming evidence has been added at successive conferences about what nuclear weapons actually do to human beings and the Earth that supports all species including us. Key conclusions from all three conferences were unequivocal. Any nuclear explosion/war would have long-term catastrophic effects in almost every sphere, not constrained by borders, that could threaten the very survival of humankind. Radioactive contamination, disproportionately harming women and children, would cause genetic mutations and cancer over countless generations. The risks of nuclear weapons being used are real, and have previously been underestimated. Aggravated by international tensions, there are many circumstances in which nuclear weapons could be used by intent; or by accidental, mistaken, unauthorised or malicious use, including through machine failure, human error and increasingly, cyberattack. Limiting the role of nuclear weapons to deterrence – their claimed role in the “defence” of Australia – does not remove the danger of their use. On the contrary, the vulnerability of nuclear command and control systems, maintaining arsenals on high alert, ready to be fired within minutes, forward deployments and continuing modernisation of nuclear arsenals, increase the risks over time. Every weapon developed has been used in war. In August 1945 only two nuclear weapons existed; both were used. Despite reductions, there are now 16,400, most of them many times more powerful than the weapons which destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing close to a quarter of a million people. The only assurance against nuclear war is the total elimination of nuclear weapons” [20].

5. UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons – “nuclear weapons are now illegal”.

Beatrice Fihn: “This year the hypothetical marched forward towards the actual as 122 nations negotiated and concluded a UN treaty to outlaw these weapons of mass destruction. The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons provides the pathway forward at a moment of great global crisis…”

Comment. 127 nations out of the 193 UN members states have formally endorsed the Pledge to outlaw nuclear weapons. In addition, 23 nations have voted in favour of the Pledge resolution. [21].  Those refusing to take the Pledge or to be in favour of the Pledge resolution are nearly all European countries and allies of the nuclear terrorist nations of the US,  the UK, France  and Apartheid Israel, degenerate nations prepared to mass murder billions of human beings for some crazily  perceived profit . The European nations formally endorsing the Pledge include  Andorra, Austraia, Cyprus, Ireland, Liechtenstein, Malta and San Marino; in addition, Belarus, New Zealand, Sweden and Switzerland have voted in favour of the Pledge resolution [2, 21].

According to Wikipedia (2017): “The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, or the Nuclear Weapon Ban Treaty, is the first legally binding international agreement to comprehensively prohibit nuclear weapons, with the goal of leading towards their total elimination. It was passed on 7 July 2017. In order to come into effect, signature and ratification by at least 50 countries is required. For those nations that are party to it, the treaty prohibits the development, testing, production, stockpiling, stationing, transfer, use and threat of use of nuclear weapons, as well as assistance and encouragement to the prohibited activities. For nuclear armed states joining the treaty, it provides for a time-bound framework for negotiations leading to the verified and irreversible elimination of its nuclear weapons programme. According to a mandate adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in December 2016, negotiations on the treaty began in the United Nations in March 2017 and continued from 15 June to 7 July 2017. In the vote on the treaty text, 122 were in favour, 1 voted against (Netherlands), and 1 abstained (Singapore). 69 nations did not vote, among them all of the nuclear weapon states and all NATO members except the Netherlands” [2, 22].

As of 22 September 2017, 3 states have ratified the Nuclear Weapon Ban Treaty (Guyana, Thailand and Vatican City )  and 53 states have signed the Treaty: Algeria, Austria, Bangladesh, Brazil, Cape Verde, Central African Republic, Chile, Comoros, Congo (Democratic Republic of; Congo-Kinshasa, Zaire), Congo (Republic of; Congo-Brazzaville), Costa Rica, Cote D’Ivoire, Cuba, Ecuador, El Salvador, Fiji, Gambia (The), Ghana, Guatemala, Guyana, Honduras, Indonesia, Ireland, Kiribati, Laos, Libya, Liechtenstein, Madagascar, Malawi, Malaysia, Mexico, Nepal, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Nigeria, Palau, Palestine, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Samoa, San Marino, Sao Tome and Principe, South Africa, Thailand,  Togo, Tuvalu, Uruguay, Vanuatu, Vatican City, Venezuela, and Vietnam [2, 22].

Dr Tilman Ruff: “[In September 2017]  a historic ceremony will take place in the UN General Assembly – the opening for signature of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. The treaty will enter into force 90 days after 50 countries have ratified it. More than 40 are expected to sign today, and more will sign over the coming weeks and months. As it was adopted by a vote of 122 to one, it can be expected that close to 100 countries will sign before year’s end and it will enter into force in 2018… No human should have the power to end the world in an afternoon. If nuclear weapons are retained they will eventually be used. The crisis relating to North Korea, for which there is no military solution, highlights again that our luck could run out any day. The countries that have foresworn biological and chemical weapons now need to do the same for nuclear weapons. The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons provides a credible pathway to the verified, time-bound elimination of weapons posing the most acute existential threat to people everywhere. All countries – including North Korea, the US and Australia – should join the treaty” [23].

6. Choice – “the end of nuclear weapons or the end of us?”

Beatrice Fihn: “Nuclear weapons, like chemical weapons, biological weapons, cluster munitions and land mines before them, are now illegal. Their existence is immoral. Their abolishment is in our hands. The end is inevitable. But will that end be the end of nuclear weapons or the end of us? We must choose one. We are a movement for rationality. For democracy. For freedom from fear. We are campaigners from 468 organisations who are working to safeguard the future, and we are representative of the moral majority: the billions of people who choose life over death, who together will see the end of nuclear weapons”.

Comment. Campaigning on the basis of rationality and humanity has so far failed to sway the nuclear terrorist states. As detailed below, the nuclear terrorist states and other  nuclear terrorism-supporting states should be utterly stigmatized and subject to sensibly and selectively applied Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS).

Final comments.

What can existentially nuclear weapons-threatened Humanity do in addition to pleading for rationality and humanity? The inescapable horrible reality is that those committed to nuclear weapons and “nuclear deterrence” are committed to the mass murder of non-combatant men, women and children and thence likely terracide – the wiping out of most terrestrial life. World fail to describe such evil – in short, they are degenerate scum who have no place in any decent society.

Complete nuclear disarmament is technically possible with resolute goodwill and commitment. Demands for (a) abolition of or intervening drastic reductions in nuclear weapons, and (b) Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) for non-compliance should be selectively applied to all nuclear terrorist states, noting that  (a) huge countries with huge numbers of nuclear weapons have more “space” for massive arms  reductions,  and (b) countries with smaller populations  and without global imperial imperatives may be more susceptible  to selectively applied, BDS-based persuasion.

Nuclear  powers with populations under 100 million like France (population 66.9 million, 290 warheads),  the UK (population 65.6 million, 120 warheads), Apartheid Israel (Jewish Israeli population 6.4 million, 400 warheads) and North Korea (population 25.4 million, circa 10 warheads) are most susceptible to pressure and may be variously persuaded by BDS impositions  to abandon nuclear weapons. Thus the UK and France have no empires left to defend,  are remote from conceivable invaders.   and should be particularly  susceptible  to Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) as were successfully applied to  Apartheid South Africa and are currently being applied against Apartheid Israel. North Korea, that lost 28% of its population to US bombing in the Korean War [24],  could be granted a guarantee of safety and territorial integrity by its neighbours China and Russia. US-backed, nuclear terrorist, racist Zionist-run, genocidally racist, democracy-by-genocide Apartheid Israel is already subject to Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS)  over its obscene, Nazi-style Apartheid race laws,  and must also be condemned for its  ongoing Palestinian Genocide, its complicity in other  genocides,  and its subversion of Western democracies [25-33]. Apartheid Israel should be de-nuclearized immediately  by overwhelming global consensus after the example of Apartheid South Africa (that obtained nuclear weapons with the help of pro-Apartheid US  and  Apartheid Israel) [34, 35].

Numerous countries that (a) host US bases, (b) host US  nuclear weapons, (c) host  nuclear-armed warships, or (d) host nuclear terrorism-related communications facilities should face Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS). Thus  when a US nuclear-armed warship is in an Australian port,  Australia is effectively hosting US nuclear weapons  and making Australia a nuclear target,  as well as through Australia hosting a US Marine base in Darwin, hosting nuclear-armed warships in general, and hosting  joint US-Australian  nuclear terrorism-related communications facilities such as that at Pine Gap in Central Australia.

Nuclear disarmament is possible as exampled by Belarus, Kazakhstan, Ukraine and South Africa [36]. All nuclear terrorist countries and all of  the mostly European and US-allied countries that refuse to join the present 127 nations who support the Nuclear Weapons Ban or the 23 supporting the anti-nuclear weapons Pledge, should be subject to Boycotts, Divestment & Sanctions (BDS).   Decent people must vote out all politicians and parties complicit in nuclear terrorism. Thus Australians who utterly abhor mass murder will utterly reject the Zionist-subverted, US lackey, US nuclear terrorism-complicit  Lib-Labs (Coalition and Labor Right), vote 1 Green and put the Coalition last.

There must be zero tolerance for racism, violence and mass murder whether actual or prospective. The world must save itself and ban all nuclear weapons now.

References.

[1]. Beatrice Fihn, “Nobel Peace Prize Speech by ICAN leader Beatrice Fihn”, The Mainichi, 11 December 2017: https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20171211/p2a/00m/0na/004000c .

[2]. “Nuclear weapons ban, end poverty and reverse climate change”: https://sites.google.com/site/300orgsite/nuclear-weapons-ban  and https://sites.google.com/site/drgideonpolya/nuclear-weapons-ban .

[3]. “All  Nobel Peace Prizes”, Nobelprize.org: https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/ .

[4]. “Gideon Polya, “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950”, including an avoidable mortality-related history of every country from Neolithic times and is now available for free perusal on the web : http://globalbodycount.blogspot.com.au/  .

[5]. “List of states with nuclear weapons”, Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_states_with_nuclear_weapons  .

[6]. “Nuclear weapons and Israel”, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_weapons_and_Israel .

[7]. Victor Gilinsky, “Israel’s sea-borne nukes pose risks”, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 8 February 2016: http://thebulletin.org/israel%E2%80%99s-sea-based-nukes-pose-risks9151 .

[8]. Gideon Polya, “Hitler, Churchill, Trump, Aung San Suu Kyi & Genocidal Intent To Destroy”, Countercurrents, 29 September 2017: http://www.countercurrents.org/2017/09/29/hitler-churchill-trump-aung-san-suu-kyi-genocidal-intent-to-destroy/ .
[9]. “Article 2 of the UN Genocide Convention”: http://www.edwebproject.org/sideshow/genocide/convention.html .

[10]. “Vasili Arkhipov”,  Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasili_Arkhipov .

[11]. “Are we doomed?”: https://sites.google.com/site/300orgsite/are-we-doomed .

[12]. “Stanislaw Petrov”, Wikipedia:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Petrov .

[13]. “On this date [26 September] 1983, Stanislav Petrov single-handedly prevented nuclear war”, Mental Floss, 26 September 2012: http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/143192 .

[14]. Gideon Polya, “Review: “Genocide In Iraq Volume II. The Obliteration Of A Modern State” By Abdul-Haq Al-Ani & Tariq Al-Ani”, Countercurrents, 15 March, 2015: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya150315.htm .

[15]. Abdul-Haq Al-Ani and Tariq Al-Ani “Genocide in Iraq Volume II. The Obliteration of a Modern State” (Clarity Press, 2015).

[16]. Robert Farley, “What id the United States had used the bomb in Korea”, The Diplomat, 5 January 2016: https://thediplomat.com/2016/01/what-if-the-united-states-had-used-the-bomb-in-korea/ .

[17]. Carl A. Posey, “How the Korean War almost went nuclear”, Air & Space Magazine,  July 2015: https://www.airspacemag.com/military-aviation/how-korean-war-almost-went-nuclear-180955324/ .

[18]. Gideon Polya, “Rational risk management, science and denial”: http://rationalriskmanagement.blogspot.com.au/2008/02/risk-management-science-denial.html .

[19]. Fred Mendelsohn, “Working to abolish nuclear weapons… Now, with a nuclear weapons ban on the horizon, there is a historic window of opportunity for all of us to amplify our call for a nuclear-weapons-free world – and to hold our governments to account to ensure that they deliver this to us.”, ABC Radio National Ockham’s Razor, 10 August 2014: http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/ockhamsrazor/working-to-abolish-nuclear-weapons/5650138#transcript  .

[20]. Malcolm Fraser and Tilman Ruff, “2015 is the year to ban nuclear weapons”, The Age, 19 February 2015: http://www.theage.com.au/comment/2015-is-the-year-to-ban-nuclear-weapons-20150219-13jali.html .

[21]. ICAN, “Humanitarian Pledge. Stigmatize, prohibit and eliminate nuclear weapons”: http://www.icanw.org/pledge/ .

[22]. “Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons”, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_on_the_Prohibition_of_Nuclear_Weapons .

[23]. Tilman Ruff, “Australia must sign the prohibition of nuclear weapons and here’s why”, The Conversation, 20 September 2017: https://theconversation.com/australia-must-sign-the-prohibition-on-nuclear-weapons-heres-why-83951 .

[24]. Michel Chossudovsky, “Know the facts: North Korea lost neatly 30% of ots population as a resut of  US bombinbgs in the 1950s”, Global Research, 27 November 2010: http://www.globalresearch.ca/know-the-facts-north-korea-lost-close-to-30-of-its-population-as-a-result-of-us-bombings-in-the-1950s/22131 .

[25]. Gideon Polya, “Palestinian Genocide–imposing Apartheid Israel Complicit In Rohingya Genocide, Other Genocides & US, UK & Australian State Terrorism”, Countercurrents, 30 November 2017: http://www.countercurrents.org/2017/11/30/palestinian-genocide-imposing-apartheid-israel-complicit-in-rohingya-genocide-other-genocides-us-uk-australian-state-terrorism/  .

[26]. Gideon Polya, “Racist Zionism and Israeli State Terrorism threats to Australia and Humanity”, Palestinian Genocide: https://sites.google.com/site/palestiniangenocide/racist-zionism-and-israeli .

[27]. Kevin Barrett, “Buying Sharon – and “We  Jews control America””” , Veterans Today, 11 January 2014: http://www.veteranstoday.com/2014/01/11/burying-sharon/ .

[28]. Gideon Polya, “Apartheid Israel buries serial war criminal, genocidal racist and nuclear terrorist Shimon Peres”, Countercurrents, 1 October 2016: http://www.countercurrents.org/2016/10/01/apartheid-israel-buries-serial-war-criminal-genocidal-racist-and-nuclear-terrorist-shimon-peres/ .

[29]. Gideon Polya, “Israeli-Palestinian & Middle East conflict – from oil to climate genocide”, Countercurrents, 21 August 2017: http://www.countercurrents.org/2017/08/21/israeli-palestinian-middle-east-conflict-from-oil-to-climate-genocide/ .

[30]. Gideon Polya, “End 50 Years Of Genocidal Occupation & Human Rights Abuse By US-Backed Apartheid Israel”, Countercurrents,  9 June  2017: http://www.countercurrents.org/2017/06/09/end-50-years-of-genocidal-occupation-human-rights-abuse-by-us-backed-apartheid-israel/ .

[31]. William A. Cook (editor), “The Plight of the Palestinians: a Long History of Destruction”, Palgrave Macmillan, 2010.

[32].  Gideon Polya, “Review: “The Plight Of The Palestinians. A Long History Of Destruction””,   Countercurrents, 17 June, 2012: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya170612.htm .

[33]. “Palestinian Genocide”: https://sites.google.com/site/palestiniangenocide/ .

[34]. “South Africa and weapons of mass destruction”, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Africa_and_weapons_of_mass_destruction .

[35]. Gideon Polya, “Nuclear Weapons Ban & Boycotts, Divestment & Sanctions (BDS) To Save World From  Nuclear, Poverty & Climate Threats”, Countercurrents, 11 August 2014: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya110814.htm .

[36]. “Arms control Association”: http://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/Nuclearweaponswhohaswhat .

Dr Gideon Polya taught science students at a major Australian university for 4 decades. He published some 130 works in a 5 decade scientific career, most recently a huge pharmacological reference text “Biochemical Targets of Plant Bioactive Compounds” (CRC Press/Taylor & Francis, New York & London , 2003). He has published “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950” (G.M. Polya, Melbourne, 2007: http://globalbodycount.blogspot.com/ ); see also his contributions “Australian complicity in Iraq mass mortality” in “Lies, Deep Fries & Statistics” (edited by Robyn Williams, ABC Books, Sydney, 2007: http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/ockhamsrazor/australian-complicity-in-iraq-mass-mortality/3369002#transcript

13 December 2017

Source: http://www.countercurrents.org/2017/12/13/ican-nobel-peace-prize-acceptance-speech-nuclear-weapons-ban-now/

By Dr Ludwig Watzal

President Trump’s unilateral decision to declare Jerusalem as Israel’s capital earned him worldwide criticism and condemnation, except for Israel. Benjamin Netanyahu’s so-called charm offensive in Brussels, where he wanted to convince the EU to follow Trump’s example, was shunt by Federica Mogherini, the EU’s foreign policy chief, saying that “this move will not come.” She stressed the support of the EU for a two-state solution with Jerusalem as the capital of both states.

By the way, Netanyahu was not invited by the EU but asked himself to read the EU the riot act. Instead of kicking him out, the EU representatives endured him and became prominent and firm after he left the stage. Community, which tries to act as a global player, would have shown such a political rascal the door. Instead, they got insulting by Netanyahu and took it with a smile.

There have been widespread demonstrations all across the Muslim world, especially in occupied Palestine. Demonstrators also went into the streets in Lebanon, Turkey, Morocco, Sweden, and Berlin, protesting before US Embassies calling anti-American and anti-Israeli slogans.

Turkish President Erdogan uttered harsh criticism about Trump’s decision and Israel in particular, calling Israel a “terrorist state” and a “killer of children” slamming the Zionist regime as an “oppressive, occupation state.” And the US is a “partner in bloodshed” in the Middle East, so Erdogan. At a meeting of the Arab League in Cairo, Lebanon’s foreign minister Gebran Bassil, a Maronite Christian, called for sanctions against the US.

In Berlin, two thousand demonstrators gathered at the Brandenburg Gate close to the US Embassy, shouting anti-Israeli slogans and burning a self-made Israeli flag. This childish symbolism originated out of frustration, anger, lack of power and despair, created a hype among German politicians who branded it an act of “anti-Semitism.” One can ask why the demonstrators didn’t burn the American flag too, which would have made much more sense. The burning of flags is not a crime and falls under the right to demonstrate, as long as it’s not attached to a foreign embassy, which is considered a crime in Germany.

What criticism of Israel’s criminal behavior is concerned, the exercise of freedom of speech is in great danger. Among German politicians and the fawning media, the anti-Semitism-club is always at hand to make critics silence or stigmatize any Israel critics as “anti-Semites.” It still works, although we are living in the 21st century and not in the Middle Ages. With reference to Karl Marx one can say; a ghost is going around in Germany, the specter of anti-Semitism!

Unanimously, the German political class condemned the burning of the Israeli flag as a form of “anti-Semitism and xenophobia”, how Chancellor Merkel called it. Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière stated: “We don’t accept it when Jews or the state of Israel are disgraced in this way.” He continued saying: Germany is “bound in a special way to the state of Israel and people of Jewish belief.” And Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel  said that despite understandable criticism of Trump’s decision, “there is no right and also no justification to burn Israeli flags, incite hatred against Jews or question the right of Israel to exist.” Not enough of this political nonsense, Gabriel claimed that such acts do not only oppose Israel but also “the constitutional order of Germany.” None of the demonstrators denied Israel’s right to exists and nobody called the “constitutional order” into question, Mr. Gabriel. Perhaps the Foreign Minister doesn’t understand democracy.

Justice and “Censorship” Minister Heiko Maas was in on it declaring “Every form of anti-Semitism is an attack against us. There is no place for any anti-Semitism.”  Rightly so, but there has been no anti-Semitism at the Berlin rally only criticism against the Israeli occupier and its ally the US. Jens Spahn, a politician from Merkel’s CDU, wrote on Twitter: “We have been looking at imported anti-Semitism for too long out of the misreading of misunderstood tolerance.” One could continue this kind of political rhetoric on pages without any gain of knowledge.

The President of the Central Council of Jews in German, Josef Schuster, also added his two cents to it. According to him, the burning of the self-designed Israel flag was pure Anti-Semitism and a threat to Israel’s existence. Schuster never criticized Israel’s brutal occupation and the mistreatment of the Palestinian people. Not only the Central Council of Jews but also other Jewish functionaries are fighting tooth and nail against criticism of Israel. Even Jewish critics of Israel such as the editor-in-chief of the online magazine “the Semit,” Abraham Melzer, was slandered by the chairperson of the Jewish community in Munich, Charlotte Knobloch, as a “notorious anti-Semite.”  A court in Munich has forbidden her this slander, but Knobloch appealed the judgment.

One tenor in many articles was a kind of anti-Semitism that came with the refugees from the Arab world, although it was stressed that there is a latent anti-Semitism in Germany of about 20 percent among the population. It comes to no one’s surprise that all the headlines linked the demonstrations to “Anti-Semitism.” On a regular basis, many of the anti-Semitic “scandals” are initiated by infamous Jewish journalists. Too often, the press jumps on their bandwagon and the slander of innocents take its course.

The reaction of the political class is pure hypocrisy and ingratiation to Israel. The politicians kept mum when Israel committed war crimes against the population of the Gaza Strip killing several thousand. No word against settlements, house demolitions, land theft, random killings, settler inflicted terror, demolitions of institutions financed by the EU et cetera. Across-the-board, the German political class has no empathy for the oppressed Palestinians but only for the Zionist oppressor.

Dr. Ludwig Watzal works as a journalist and editor in Bonn , Germany . He runs the bilingual blog between the lines. http://between-the-lines-ludwig-watzal.blogspot.de/

13 December 2017

Source: http://www.countercurrents.org/2017/12/13/german-politicians-condemn-anti-israel-protest-as-anti-semitism/

By Nauman Sadiq

On the campaign trail, in his speeches as well as on TV debates with other presidential contenders, Donald Trump repeatedly mentioned that he has a ‘secret plan’ for defeating the Islamic State without elaborating what the plan is? To the careful observers of the US-led war against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, however, the outlines of Trump’s ‘secret plan’ to defeat the Islamic State, particularly in Syria, have now become obvious.

As far as the fight against the Islamic State in Iraq is concerned, the Trump administration has continued with the policy of its predecessor. The Trump administration’s policy in Syria, however, has been markedly different from the regime change policy of the Obama administration. Unlike Iraq, where the US has provided air and logistical support to Iraq’s armed forces and allied militias in their battle to retake Mosul from the Islamic State militants, the conflict in Syria is much more complex that involves the Syrian government, the opposition-affiliated militant groups and the Kurds.

Regarding the recapture of Palmyra from the Islamic State by the Syrian government forces, a March 2 article in the Washington Post carried a rather paradoxical headline: “Hezbollah, Russia and the US help Syria retake Palmyra” [1]. The article by Liz Sly offers clues as to how the Syrian conflict has transformed under the new Trump administration. Further, according to a March 31 article [2] for the New York Times by Michael Gordon, the US ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, and the Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, have stated on the record that defeating the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq is the first priority of the Trump administration and the fate of Bashar al-Assad is of least concern to the new administration.

Under the previous Obama administration, the evident policy in Syria was regime change, and any collaboration with the Syrian government against the Islamic State was simply not on the cards. The Trump administration, however, looks at the crisis in Syria from an entirely different perspective, a fact which is obvious from Donald Trump’s statements on Syria during the election campaign, and more recently by the statements of Nikki Haley and Rex Tillerson. Moreover, unlike the Obama administration which was hostile to Russia’s interference in Syria, the Trump administration is on friendly terms with Assad’s main backer in Syria, Vladimir Putin.

It is stated in the aforementioned article by Liz Sly that the US carried out 45 air strikes in the vicinity of Palmyra against the Islamic State’s targets in the month of February alone, which must have indirectly helped the Syrian government troops and the allied Hezbollah militia recapture Palmyra along with Russia’s air support.

Although expecting a radical departure from the six-year-long Obama administration’s policy of training and arming Sunni militants against the Shi’a-led Syrian government by the Trump administration is unlikely, however, the latter regards Islamic jihadists as a much bigger threat to the security of the US than the former. Therefore, some indirect support and a certain level of collaboration with Russia and the Syrian government against radical Islamists cannot be ruled out.

What has been different in the respective Syria policy of the two markedly different US administrations, however, is that while the Obama administration did avail itself of the opportunity to strike an alliance with the Kurds against the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, but it was simply not possible for it to come up with an out of the box solution and use the Shi’a-led government and allied militias against the Sunni Arab militant groups, particularly the Islamic State. The Trump administration, however, is not hampered by the botched legacy of the Obama administration in Syria, and therefore it has been willing to some extent to cooperate with the Kurds as well as the Russians and the Syrian government against the Islamic jihadists in Syria.

Two obstacles to such a natural alignment of interests, however, are: first, Israel’s objections regarding the threat that Hezbollah poses to its regional security; and second, Turkey, which is a NATO member and has throughout nurtured several Sunni militant groups during the six-year-long conflict, would have serious reservations against the new US administration’s partnership not only with the Russians and the Syrian government but also with the PYD/YPG Kurds in Syria, which Turkey regards as an offshoot of the separatist PKK Kurds in southeast Turkey.

Therefore, in order to allay the concerns of Washington’s traditional allies in the Middle East, the Trump administration has conducted a cruise missiles strike on al-Shayrat airfield in Homs governorate on April 6 after the chemical weapons strike in Khan Sheikhoun, but that isolated incident was nothing more than a show of force to bring home the point that the newly elected president, Donald Trump, is a ‘powerful and aggressive’ president, while behind the scenes he has been willing to cooperate with Russia in Syria in order to contain and eliminate the threat posed by Islamic jihadists to the security of the US and the rest of the world.

It would be pertinent to mention here that unlike the dyed-in-the-wool politicians, like Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, who cannot look past beyond the tunnel vision of political establishments, it appears that Donald Trump not only follows news from conservative mainstream outlets, like the Fox News, but he has also been familiar with alternative news perspectives, such as Breitbart’s, no matter how racist and xenophobic.

Thus, Donald Trump is fully aware that the conflict in Syria is a proxy war initiated by the Western political establishments and their regional Middle Eastern allies against the Syrian government. And he is also mindful of the fact that the militants have been funded, trained and armed in the training camps located in the Turkey-Syria border regions to the north of Syria and the Jordan-Syria border regions to the south of Syria.

Finally, Karen De Young and Liz Sly made another startling revelation in a March 4 article [3] for the Washington Post that: “Trump has said repeatedly that the US and Russia should cooperate against the Islamic State, and he has indicated that the future of Russia-backed Assad is of less concern to him.” Thus, it appears, that the interests of all the major players in Syria have converged on defeating the Islamic jihadists, and the Obama era policy of regime change has been put on the back burner for all practical purposes.

Sources and links:

1- Hezbollah, Russia and the US help Syria retake Palmyra:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/syrian-army-retakes-the-ancient-city-of-palmyra-from-the-islamic-state/2017/03/02/fe770c78-ff63-11e6-9b78-824ccab94435_story.html

2- White House Accepts ‘Political Reality’ of Assad’s Grip on Power in Syria:

3- Pentagon plan to seize Raqqa calls for significant increase in U.S. participation:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/pentagon-plan-to-seize-raqqa-calls-for-significant-increase-in-us-participation/2017/03/04/d3205386-00f3-11e7-8f41-ea6ed597e4ca_story.html

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

13 December 2017

Source: http://www.countercurrents.org/2017/12/13/trump-administrations-turnaround-in-syria/