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By Bernard Weiner

The Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Alexandra Corker’s much-awaited “The Restoration Years: America in the Post-Trump Era” jumped to the top of the best-seller lists almost immediately. The Harvard professor and I spoke in her Cambridge home about the revelations in that volume.

BW: Why don’t we start with the title of the book? Why “Restoration”?

Donald Trump, as many may remember, was, in historical terms, a kind of usurper of the crown. Not only was he installed into power by fraudulent means, but he was, how shall we say, a bit over his head in the job. He knew nothing, he didn’t want to know anything, he ignored those who did know something. In short, he surrounded himself mainly with incompetents and mean-spirited plutocrats like himself, and tried to keep his administration’s outrageous behaviors totally secret from any meaningful oversight.

The reason why Trump was adjudged widely as “the worst president ever,” even during his tenure, was a direct result of his unnecessary wars and chaos, bungling on a monstrous scale, elevating racist and misogynist arguments into the political mainstream as if they were normal discourse, the mangling of the Constitution, ideological extremism,  and out-and-out corruption and larceny. In other words, he and his cronies laid waste to the institutions of our democratic republic.

When he was finally gone, nothing less than a thoroughgoing cleansing of the foul-smelling stable was in order. That was “The Restoration” era, years of undoing the great damage his administration had foisted on the country. Restoring our country’s commitment to Constitutional rule and to sanity and realism in our foreign policy — that was the Herculean job of his successors.

THE GOOD, BAD & UGLY

BW: That sounds so harsh. Don’t you have anything good to say about the man and his administration?

One shouldn’t ignore the possibility that Trump sincerely believed himself to be, or at least convinced himself that he was, operating for the “good of the country.” But even if one accepts that possibility, rather than out-and-out moral corruption and hunger for power, Trump’s definitions of “good” and “country” flowed so narrowly out of such a circumscribed class-stratum, education, and limited experiences, that they bore little relevance to how almost everyone else interpreted those terms. Of course, one must also add a warped narcissistic pathology that made intelligent leadership difficult, if not impossible, for him.

So the short answer to your question is no. History and his own contemporaries judged him to be so reckless and incompetent with the power at his command that he brought the United States into severe disrepute around the globe. He nearly wrecked the economy in the process, laying humongous debts on succeeding generations. Even his own party’s leaders and members of Congress deserted him towards the end, feeling he did great damage to the country’s vital interests. History has rendered its judgment: His administration was an ugly stain on our country’s garment of decency.

BW: I seem to recall that even in his worst times at the end, he still maintained the support of about one out of four citizens in various polls.

Yes, there was a die-hard faction of the population, mainly centered around religious fundamentalists in the South and Rust Belt, and ill-informed blue-collar workers in the Midwest, who stuck with him, since they believed he had been anointed by God to lead this country into righteous rule. But that means that 75% had lost faith in him and just wanted him to depart the scene as quickly and quietly as possible. They felt similarly about his Vice President, Mike Pence, a weak, corrupted co-conspirator.

In other words, much of the citizenry longed for a Restoration of the rule of law and calm, orderly, competent, open government, operating not from the extremes but from the middle outwards, on some issues more to the right, some more to the left.
One would have thought that the country had learned its history lesson from the lawless behavior of Richard Nixon and then George W. Bush, but it would take the Trump catastrophe to convince Americans never to permit a president to amass so much power and control.
Still, even with those Restoration laws in place, here we are many years later after a disgraced Trump left office and we still have to remind ourselves that there always are demagogues who try to cut corners with the Constitution and the rule of law, and who try to frighten the population into reckless policies and dangerous wars of choice. The moral lesson is that the fight to preserve democracy inside America has to be waged every day, every generation, lest the forces of authoritarian self-righteousness once again rise to power.

And, since even the best-intentioned politicians find themselves abusing the power they possess — as Lord Acton said: “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely” — we must be alert to the necessity of cleaning out our political parties at regular intervals.

When appropriate, we also must be open to the founding of new alliances and parties, as happened in the final period of the Trump Administration when liberals and progressives from the Democratic and Green Parties, and traditional conservatives and business executives and military brass from the Republican Party, united to set the Restoration in motion and to return to the checks-and-balances system of government established by our founders that had worked so well for several hundred years.

PEEKING BEHIND POWER’S CURTAIN

BW: How do you explain why true conservatives and corporate leaders and military officers deserted their leader in such great numbers?

The historical record shows that there were practical reasons for doing so: While the wealthy and many huge companies reaped windfall profits from Trump policies, the overall economy really couldn’t return to real health with the debt-anchors dragging it down as a result of the trillions of dollars spent not only on climate change-engendered natural catastrophes but also on unnecessary wars of choice. The U.S. military was stretched so thin fighting all these wars of imperial aggression against native guerrillas that our military leaders rebelled in order to protect their troops and their services from more such adventuring abroad. The pre-eminent position that America had enjoyed for so long on the world stage began to deteriorate rapidly, with its negative impact on our exports, the health of the dollar, our economic stability, our lack of respect abroad, and the concomitant rise of other major countries such as China and India and the South Asia/Russia Alliance in general.

But the Restoration also can be explained this way: The powers that be in American society, those corporate and political forces that truly control the economy and parties, usually carry out their agendas so effectively because their goals and strategies are essentially hidden. But Trump and Pence and their cronies, with their bumbling policies and their arrogant in-your-face tactics, tore away the veils and revealed all too clearly the faces of those powers-that-be and what was really going on: corporate theft on a massive scale, rapacious imperialism abroad,  barely disguised racism, manipulation of the mass-media in hiding the truth, the ignoring of the rule of law and the Constitution, etc. Therefore, it was to the advantage of the elites to dump this incompetent, reckless crew and replace them with the usual type of smarter, more malleable leaders.

OPPOSING POLITICAL THUGGERY

BW: Can you help us understand why it took so long for that momentum to build in the body politic?

Part can be understood by the laws of inertia and entropy, part to how skillfully the Trump Administration and the corporate mass-media that supported them bamboozled the public, part to how the citizenry accepted this misinformation for a long, long time, out of fear and confusion. But deeper than that, I think a key factor was that the opposition was incapable of dealing with the kind of smash-mouth tactics practiced by the Trump Administration and their authoritarian-politics “experts.”

Throughout most of American political life, the various parties had fought each other long and hard but generally with a certain respect for the other side, and with a tendency to meet somewhere in the middle in order to get things done. But the far-right Trumpians — and their establishment-Republican enablers — decided to play a different kind of politics, aimed at the utter destruction and marginalization of their opponents in order to establish permanent one-party rule from an extremist ideological position.

It was a kind of political thuggery that was more reminiscent of Stalinist Russia and Hitler’s Germany. The Constitution was mangled; laws passed by the legislature were ignored; effective oversight of the leader was non-existent; voting rolls and elections were manipulated. In short, ideology, tribalism, authoritarianism, and Trump’s greed-obsessed self-promotion ruled all. In effect, our democratic presidency had become a kind of feudal monarchy, and for a country that had established itself in opposition to a tyrannical king, this contradiction in American political life could not last forever.

Most Americans, coming from a long tradition of more genteel political battles, for the longest time didn’t know how to confront this mendacious, authoritarian juggernaut that was rolling across the Constitution and distorting so many of our governmental institutions. Though the progressive blogosphere had agitated against the Trump administration early on, it took a long while before the general public caught on (aided by the constant revelations of new and more reprehensible scandals in key newspapers and websites) and the opposition built to critical mass. These oppositional alliances led to the demise of not only the Trump Administration but to the rapid decline of the ideological fanaticism and racist factions behind it.

The important thing I want to emphasize is that the United States under Trump/Pence came mighty close to a totalitarian, fascist society. Had the Democrats, and estranged Republicans and independents buoyed by public outrage, not stood up to the Trump Administration and confronted them time after time directly and with courage, there might well not have been a Restoration period in American history. Withdrawing funding for the Iraq and Afghan Wars, and the initiation of impeachment proceedings, appear to have been key precipitating factors that fomented the essential momentum for the swift exit of Trump and Pence from the scene. Without those moves, American democracy might well have been strangled, and even more destructive wars abroad might have been initiated.

“HARD IMPERIALISM” DAYS ARE OVER
BW: Finally, Professor Corker, could you sum up what your historical research reveals for our own time?

The forces of worldwide change were manifesting themselves before Trump and Pence, to be sure, but their Administration hastened the slide of American power and dominance in the world by their lack of creativity in dealing with these changes. They relied on the long-discredited and ineffective “hard imperialism” that did little but reveal their technological might’s inherent weakness in dealing with the many low-tech nationalist rebellions, and the scary reality of cyber warfare.

Thankfully, Restoration leaders toiled intelligently and mightily to undo much of the great damage done abroad, and to right the ship of state domestically as well, returning to the type of Constitutional rule that shone as a beacon and model for many societies abroad. It took many years to undo most of the damage done to our political system, but most citizens would agree that it has been well worth the difficult effort and has diluted the impact of worldwide terrorism.
But even in our more enlightened times, there still are, there always are, those forces frightened by major change and determined to try to control society through more draconian, authoritarian, racist measures. They exist in all three major parties. We all must resist that backward-looking movement with all our might, lest we return someday to a situation as bad or even worse than what history has revealed about the administration of Donald J. Trump.#
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Bernard Weiner, Ph.D., a playwright/poet, has taught government & international relations at universities in California and Washington, worked as a writer/editor at the San Francisco Chronicle for two decades, and since 2002 has served as co-editor of The Crisis Papers (www.crisispapers.org).
Copyright 2017, by Bernard Weiner
First published by The Crisis Papers October 9, 2017
http://www.crisispapers.org/essays17w/restoration.htm

Source: http://www.countercurrents.org/2017/10/10/the-post-trump-restoration/

By Jonathan Cook

Nazareth: At first glance, the decision last week by the Trump administration, followed immediately by Israel, to quit the United Nation’s cultural agency seems strange. Why penalise a body that promotes clean water, literacy, heritage preservation and women’s rights?

Washington’s claim that the UN’s Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco) is biased against Israel obscures the real crimes the agency has committed in US eyes.

The first is that in 2011 Unesco became the first UN agency to accept Palestine as a member. That set the Palestinians on the path to upgrading their status at the General Assembly a year later.

It should be recalled that in 1993, as Israel and the Palestinians signed the Oslo accords on the White House lawn, the watching world assumed the aim was to create a Palestinian state.

But it seems most US politicians never received that memo. Under pressure from Israel’s powerful lobbyists, the US Congress hurriedly passed legislation to pre-empt the peace process. One such law compels the United States to cancel funding to any UN body that admits the Palestinians.

Six years on, the US is $550 million in arrears and without voting rights at Unesco. Its departure is little more than a formality.

The agency’s second crime relates to its role selecting world heritage sites. That power has proved more than an irritant to Israel and the US.

The occupied territories, supposedly the locus of a future Palestinian state, are packed with such sites. Hellenistic, Roman, Jewish, Christian and Muslim relics promise not only the economic rewards of tourism but also the chance to control the historic narrative.

Israeli archaeologists, effectively the occupation’s scientific wing, are chiefly interested in excavating, preserving and highlighting Jewish layers of the Holy Land’s past. Those ties have then been used to justify driving out Palestinians and building Jewish settlements.

Unesco, by contrast, values all of the region’s heritage, and aims to protect the rights of living Palestinians, not just the ruins of long-dead civilisations.

Nowhere has the difference in agendas proved starker than in occupied Hebron, where tens of thousands of Palestinians live under the boot of a few hundred Jewish settlers and the soldiers who watch over them. In July, Unesco enraged Israel and the US by listing Hebron as one of a handful of world heritage sites “in danger”. Israel called the resolution “fake history”.

The third crime is the priority Unesco gives to the Palestinian names of heritage sites under belligerent occupation.

Much hangs on how sites are identified, as Israel understands. Names influence the collective memory, giving meaning and significance to places.

The Israeli historian Ilan Pappe has coined the term “memoricide” for Israel’s erasure of most traces of the Palestinians’ past after it dispossessed them of four-fifths of their homeland in 1948 – what Palestinians term their Nakba, or Catastrophe.

Israel did more than just raze 500 Palestinian towns and villages. In their place it planted new Jewish communities with Hebracaised names intended to usurp the former Arabic names. Saffuriya became Tzipori; Hittin was supplanted by Hittim; Muyjadil was transformed into Migdal.

A similar process of what Israel calls “Judaisation” is under way in the occupied territories. The settlers of Beitar Ilit threaten the Palestinians of Battir. Nearby, the Palestinians of Sussiya have been dislodged by a Jewish settlement of exactly the same name.

The stakes are highest in Jerusalem. The vast Western Wall plaza below Al Aqsa mosque was created in 1967 after more than 1,000 Palestinians were evicted and their quarter demolished. Millions of visitors each year amble across the plaza, oblivious to this act of ethnic cleansing.

Settlers, aided by the Israeli state, continue to encircle Christian and Muslim sites in the hope of taking them over.

That is the context for recent Unesco reports highlighting the threats to Jerusalem’s Old City, including Israel’s denial for most Palestinians of the right to worship at Al Aqsa.

Israel has lobbied to have Jerusalem removed from the list of endangered heritage sites. Alongside the US, it has whipped up a frenzy of moral outrage, berating Unesco for failing to prioritise the Hebrew names used by the occupation authorities.

Unesco’s responsibility, however, is not to safeguard the occupation or bolster Israel’s efforts at Judaisation. It is there to uphold international law and prevent Palestinians from being disappeared by Israel.

Trump’s decision to quit Unesco is far from his alone. His predecessors have been scuffling with the agency since the 1970s, often over its refusal to cave in to Israeli pressure.

Now, Washington has a pressing additional reason to punish Unesco for allowing Palestine to become a member. It needs to make an example of the cultural body to dissuade other agencies from following suit.

Trump’s confected indignation at Unesco, and his shrugging off of its vital global programmes, serve as a reminder that the US is not an “honest broker” of a Middle East peace. Rather it is the biggest obstacle to its realisation.

Jonathan Cook won the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His books include “Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East” (Pluto Press) and “Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair” (Zed Books). His website is www.jonathan-cook.net
A version of this article first appeared in the National, Abu Dhabi.

Source: http://www.countercurrents.org/2017/10/17/the-real-reasons-trump-is-quitting-unesco/

By Dr Binoy Kampmark

The Hillary Clinton mope tour, which should have reached a high water mark, has gone global. It entails drumming up her credentials (immaculate, we are told, but unnoticed), and pouring upon the man who beat her to the White house (a danger to the world).  The latter is the fundamental point: Donald Trump would not have won, not because of Clinton’s flaws but because of what others did.

One of those big others remains WikiLeaks.  The other, supposedly, is its Russian ally – no, employer, sponsor, even, there one say it peering into that dark mind of hers, director-in-chief.  Forget Assange, claims Clinton – the Kremlin is running the operation.

On the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s Four Corners programme, Clinton reiterated a range of views that have become dangerously presumed, mirrors, in fact, of the very man she detests, the world view she supposedly eschews.  In a post-truth world, anything goes, including Clintonian mendacity and delusion.  Blended with US patriotism and sour grapes, she becomes the ultimate embittered narcissist who cannot admit to deficiency.

According to Clinton, Assange had “become a kind of nihilistic opportunist who does the bidding of a dictator”.  Even more to the point, and here, the facts start to become puffs and fluffs, “WikiLeaks is unfortunately now practically a fully owned subsidiary of Russian intelligence.”[1]

No evidence is offered. For Clinton, nothing needs to be tested, her defeat obviously the result, not of an appalling election team (remember that slave to the algorithm, Robby Mook?) and her own woes as a candidate, but to the role played by information marshalled against her.

“There was a concerted operation between WikiLeaks and Russia and most likely people in the United States to, as I say, weaponize information, to make up stories, outlandish, often terrible stories that had no basis in fact, no basis even in the emails themselves, but which were used to denigrate me, my campaign people who supported me, and to help (Donald) Trump.”

Furthermore, Clinton, with a sense of supreme self-worth, insisted that she had been a direct target of the Kremlin.  “I think their intention, coming from the very top with Putin, was to hurt me and to help Trump.”

These observations beggar belief.  Bricks cannot be made without straw, and there was ample straw in the Podesta emails, not to mention the general trove of DNC material that revealed the tactics, methods and philosophies of the entitled.

Clinton’s method is one of permanent deflection and, when necessary, denial. What the emails revealed on her approach to security, or her sympathy for Wall Street, was not to be taken seriously.  It all had to do with that nasty business of “weaponized” information.  To assist her, she had the intelligence community, the vast complex of the establishment to boost her points.

Lapsing into electoral mode, and reflecting on her record, she claimed that, “Our intelligence community and other observers of Russia and [Mr] Putin have said he held a grudge against me because, as secretary of state, I stood up against some of his actions.”  Noble warrior, indeed.

If there is one golden thread that runs through conspiracy, linking up with false causality, the grand design must be one of them.  The grand design assumes a puppet master and watch maker. It also presumes standard impact and worth.

“I lost the electoral college by about 77,000, and what we’re finding out is that there had to be some very sophisticated help provided to WikiLeaks… to know how to target both their messages of suppression and their negative messages to affect voters.”  When a political figure is found out, blame the idiot voter.

This tactic ignores the ways and follies of the idiot politician, who can, in effect, lose against a figure such as Trump.  This is the most bruising of all, the most damning. The Clinton campaign’s own efforts at information warfare were paltry, presuming that the self-evident grotesquery of Trump would sway voters.

When the Washington Post published the 2005 Access Hollywood record of Trump’s “grab ’em by the pussy” remark, the effect of that revelation, argues Clinton, was shrouded by the release of over 2,000 emails from Clinton’s campaign chairman, John Podesta.

For the Clintons, the Podestas and the Mooks, the White House was in the bag of ambition and worth, and neither Bernie Sanders nor Trump was going to get their paws on it.  This was meant to be an establishment show – till the establishment was shown up.

As for Assange, the return volleys soon came.  Clinton was, in his view, a heartless defective.  “It is not just her constant lying.  It is not just that she throws off menacing glares and seethes thwarted entitlement.  Something much darker rides along with it.  A cold creepiness rarely seen.”

It was the sort of creepiness that had been spotted before.  Britain’s current foreign secretary, Boris Johnson, took unusually faultless aim at it in 2007 in the Daily Telegraph.  “She’s got dyed blonde hair and pouty lips, and a steely blue stare, like a sadistic nurse in a mental hospital.”  By all means, he insisted, vote for Clinton, if only to return her husband to the White House.  “If Bill can deal with Hillary, he can surely deal with any global crisis.”[2]

While it is entirely true that Trump readily traffics in hypocrisy and seems to be a comic monstrosity on various levels, a Clinton White House would have also made the world safe for hypocrisy.  There would have been usual American brashness, military interventions, toughness poorly dressed in silk and padded by soft power.  There would have also been graft, self-aggrandizement and the lying industrial complex.

To scold and condemn WikiLeaks in this affair is no better than dismissing the person who spots the fire as the arsonist gets away.  Citing the efforts of the Kremlin, information bots, and fake news, can only go so far.  The building still burns.

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

[1] http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-10-16/hillary-clinton-says-julian-assange-helped-donald-trump-win/9047944

[2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2016/07/13/boris-johnson-britains-new-top-diplomat-has-said-some-very-undiplomatic-things/?utm_term=.afcacb78f7f7

Source: http://www.countercurrents.org/2017/10/17/vengeful-in-defeat-hillary-clinton-fantasises-about-wikileaks/

By Jonathan Cook

Nazareth: There is something truly exasperating about digesting the steady flow of horror stories relating to Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein. In part, of course, it is because the reports that Weinstein allegedly raped and sexually assaulted women over decades are deeply disturbing. In part, it is because one can be certain that there are still young aspiring actresses desperate for a big break who are being exploited by the Hollywood system – both in “casting” sessions and in the movies they must make to get noticed.

But most of all, these stories are exasperating because the women who are speaking out – and one senses they are still just the tip of the iceberg – and the journalists who are feeding off their revelations are drawing precisely no political conclusions from these incidents.

In fact, the Weinstein story perfectly illustrates how politically disempowering identity politics can be. Certainly, there can be no doubt that Weinstein, who has admitted that he abused his position with many women, while denying many of the actual reports of sexual misconduct, exploited his power. It should hardly surprise us that a rich man who had the ability to give desperate young women a shot at stardom preyed on them. The Hollywood employment system is capitalism in microcosm, at its rawest and most naked.

The Weinstein revelations tell us much less about relations between men and women than they do about the nature of power and the ability of the strong to exploit the weak.

Under capitalism, the weak – the working class – eventually gained the consciousness and discovered the tools to assert their own form of power. As individuals they were vulnerable and exploitable. As a collective, they gained the power to bargain. That led to the trade union movements, and gradual improvements in wages and conditions.

The capitalist class has been trying to reverse those gains ever since. The new turbo-charged form we call neoliberalism has been atomising western societies since the 1970s to return us to new forms of economic dependency, culminating in zero-hours contracts and an Uber culture.

What does this have to do with Weinstein? This week Reese Witherspoon spoke out about her own sexual assault by a movie director when she was 16. She has joined a list of famous actors like Angelina Jolie, Jennifer Lawrence and Gwyneth Paltrow who have cited their own experiences. One suspects that most of Hollywood’s A-list could tell similar horror stories from their early years in search of stardom.

So what is the lesson that none of them is drawing? Precisely the one that workers learnt more than a century ago. You must get organised.

One can understand why teenage actresses, as Witherspoon was at the time, are fearful of speaking out in a system dominated by predatory men who can destroy their careers. One can also understand that, at the very bottom of the Hollywood food chain, they are in no position to organise against the Hollywood mogul class. But none of that is true for the now fabulously rich and well-connected Witherspoon, Jolie, Paltrow, Lawrence, and all the others who have yet to speak out – or for the A-list men who would surely want to be seen publicly supporting them.

Why are they not organising? There are many things they can do. Here is one simple idea. They could set up a union, a sort of women’s Equity, that would allow actresses, in private, to register incidents of exploitation and sexual abuse with the union, naming those who committed the abuse and their modus operandi. By creating such a database, the union and its lawyers would be able to identify serial abusers and discover patterns of behaviour. The victims could then be encouraged to come forward in a group action, knowing that they would not be facing the Hollwood elite on their own. The union would redress, at least in part, the power of these male producers and directors. They, in turn, would grow more fearful of exposure.

That would be a political act of organised resistance to the power of Hollywood moguls It would have much more impact than the trickle of stories from immensely successful actresses bewailing their past abuse. Creating such a union would be loose change for Jolie, Witherspoon, Lawrence, Paltrow and the other A-listers.

And yet in the degraded political culture we live in, they prefer to remain disempowered individuals rather than become part of a much stronger collectivity. They prefer their confessionals in the corporate media that exploited and abused them to independent, organised action to curb the corporate system’s excesses.

As long as these household names nurse their individual pain rather than seek to bring about change through organised action, the next generation of young actresses will face the same exploitation and the same abuse they had to endure in their younger days.

Jonathan Cook won the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His books include “Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East” (Pluto Press) and “Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair” (Zed Books). His website is www.jonathan-cook.net

Source: https://www.countercurrents.org/2017/10/18/harvey-weinstein-and-the-politics-of-hollywood/

Co-Written By Rosemary Mason and Colin Todhunter

Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus is the new director general of the World Health Organization (WHO). With a $4 billion annual budget, WHO’s decisions affects us all and its decisions also affect the bottom line of some of the most powerful corporations on the planet.

Health is political. And health is big business. For instance, WHO makes dietary and nutrition recommendations that can affect the likes of Nestle, Unilever, Pepsi, Coca-Cola, General Mills and Kellogg’s. WHO devises a list of essential medicines that governments should stock for the health of their people, thereby affecting the sales of major pharmaceutical companies. It also helps other UN agencies procure billions of dollars of pharmaceutical products by vetting manufacturers to ensure they meet WHO standards and specifications.

WHO wants to place restrictions on the use of antibiotics in food and livestock production, and it also reviews scientific evidence to appraise the cancer-risk of agricultural chemicals, including Monsanto’s glyphosate-based Roundup and Dow’s 2,4-D.

As you might imagine, WHO recommendations can have massive ramifications for big corporations, which can fight tooth and nail to attack and discredit any WHO decision that could damage their strategic market positions and financial bottom line. And this is exactly what we are witnessing right now as Monsanto battles to protect is multi-billion-dollar money spinner Roundup with yet another smear campaign, this time against US toxicologist Dr Christopher Portier. Given what happened to Seralini and his team’s study, it’s all highly predictable.

Rosemary Mason writes to the WHO

Due the pivotal role of WHO, Dr Rosemary Mason has contacted Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus through an open letter expressing major concerns about role of transnational agrochemical/agritech corporations and the impacts of their products on human health and the environment.

With the focus clearly on Monsanto, Mason brings to the attention of Ghebreyesus the many lawsuits filed against the company alleging that Roundup causes cancer. These cases have forced Monsanto to reveal emails that show it employed ghost-writing, used scientists as paid lobbyists and targeted those that produced evidence that challenged the company in order to keep Roundup, its flagship herbicide, on the market by fraudulent science.

More than 250 lawsuits are pending against Monsanto in US District Court in San Francisco, filed by people alleging that exposure to Roundup herbicide caused them or their loved ones to develop non-Hodgkin lymphoma and that Monsanto covered up the risks  (Roundup is linked to cancers of the bone, colon, kidney, liver, melanoma, pancreas and thyroid). Additionally, at least 1,100 plaintiffs have made similar claims against Monsanto in state courts, and US attorneys recently came to the European Union with two plaintiffs to support the Members of the European Parliament in their Public Hearing on The Monsanto Papers and glyphosate.

WHO International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) has declared glyphosate as a 2A carcinogen. As glyphoaste comes up for re-licensing in Europe, in a public hearing in Brussels this month, Dr Christopher Portier and Dr Kate Guyton defended IARC’s position. Dr Portier drew attention to the significance of statistically significant tumor findings that have not been discussed in any of the existing reviews on glyphosate.

Portier concluded that as the regulatory bodies, the European Food Safety Authority and the European Chemicals Agency’s analyses were scientifically flawed. These organisations had also used industry studies that were not in the public domain for ‘reasons of commercial confidentiality’ to support their case that glyphosate was not carcinogenic.

Mason presents a strong case to argue that the US Environmental Protection Agency and European regulators are colluding with Monsanto and the European Glyphosate Task Force: despite the evidence (see Mason’s fully-referenced document ‘Monsanto’ Science is Fraudulent’), they all deny that glyphosate causes cancer.

Corporate hijack of food and farming

Dr Mason goes on to discuss the ‘Green Revolution’ – chemical warfare on plants, soil and biodiversity – which has been a financially lucrative venture for Monsanto, Bayer, Syngenta and the other major agrochemical companies.

She identifies the now well-document links between the Rockefeller Foundation and the Green Revolution and how J.D. Rockefeller’s ‘philanthropy’ was instrumental in helping to destroy traditional health care practices  by having pharmaceutical corporations and allopathic medicine take over healthcare with chemical ‘cures’.

By referring to my recent article, Mason brings the director general’s attention to how powerful, unscrupulous interests have hijacked and redefined both food and agriculture to the detriment of human health and the environment. Global corporations have destroyed thousands of years of agriculture; an ongoing destruction that today rests heavily on the renewal of the license for glyphosate!

She also documents at length scientific fraud, corruption by regulatory agencies and collusion at the highest levels of government that have all conspired to destroy human health. In doing so, she presents a good deal of scientific evidence that highlights the deleterious impacts of various agrochemicals on health.

Re-licensing glyphosate: the European Commission must be stopped

As the preeminent body for directing global health and helping people build a healthier, better future across the world (as stated on the WHO website), it the responsibility of WHO to act:

1) The World Health Organization must declare that the current system of pesticides assessment is corrupt.

2) The prosecutor of the International Criminal Court has stated his intention to introduce the crime of ecocide – the destruction of the environment – as a crime against humanity. It could be used against corporations as well as against individual governments.

3) WHO should press the prosecutor to complete the legislation so Monsanto can be prosecuted in the International Criminal Court in The Hague for crimes against humanity.

4) Other agrochemical corporations, the pesticide regulators and governments (including Britain) should follow.

“The power of the corporations over governments and over the scientific community is extremely important. If you want to deal with pesticides, you have to deal with the companies.” UN’s special rapporteur on the right to food, Hilal Elver

It not just about the companies. You also have to challenge the destructive system that fuels the global food and health crisis.

Appendix

Cancer Research UK statistics for the UK

In 2014 there were13,605 new cases of non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL) (4,801 deaths); 41,265 new cases of bowel cancer (15,903 deaths); 12,523 new cases of kidney cancer (4,421 deaths); 5,550 new cases of liver cancer (5,091 deaths); 5,419 new cases of melanoma (2,459 deaths); 3,404 new cases of thyroid cancer (376 deaths); and 10,063 new cases of bladder cancer (5,369 deaths)

There were 9,324 new cases of uterine cancer (2,166 deaths); 7,378 cases of ovarian cancer (4,128 deaths); 9,534 new cases of leukaemia (4,584 deaths); 55,222 new cases of invasive breast cancer (11,433 deaths); 46,690 new cases of prostate cancer (11,287 deaths); 8,919 new cases of oesophageal cancer (7,790 deaths); 2,418 new cases of testicular cancer (60 deaths); and 5,501 new cases of myeloma (2,928 deaths). In the US in 2014 there were 24,050 new cases of myeloma.

Unfortunately, the public narrative on cancer has been hijacked by the very corporations responsible for much of the increase in these diseases, thereby conveniently diverting attention away from their role.

Rosemary Mason is an environmental campaigner

Colin Todhunter is an independent writer/campaigner

Source: https://www.countercurrents.org/2017/10/19/the-global-food-and-health-crisis-monsantos-science-is-bogus/

By Farhad Shahabi

There is a  necessity to change Western political literature in relation to Iran

In recent years, all references by the West in relation to Iran’s peaceful nuclear programme, have been constantly and invariably accusatory, using terms such as “nuclear threat” or “nuclear danger”.  The signing of the nuclear accord or the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPA) too has not been followed by a reduction in the use of such accusatory terminology by the West, both in formal and informal settings.  Recent examples are the statements from the British Foreign Minister, Boris Johnson, who whilst announcing his country’s support for the JCPA and emphasising the importance by all parties (particularly the US) to uphold their commitment to the nuclear accord, states in relation to Iran that “The nuclear deal was a crucial agreement that neutralised its nuclear threat”; and the statement from the head of EU’s Security and Foreign Policy, Federica Mogherini, who responding to the worrisome likelihood of the US leaving the agreement, comments that “The deal has prevented, continues to prevent, and will continue to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons“.

It is to be noted that Iran, very soon after the victory of the Islamic Revolution, reiterated its commitment to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).  In addition to this and despite many shortcomings of the NPT and the nuclear weapons non-proliferation regime, particularly its extremely discriminatory nature, the leader of the Revolution, issued a Fatwa banning at the highest level of state authority and without any proviso and discrimination, the production, storage, use, and threat of use of nuclear weapons and all other weapons of mass destruction.

Also in practice, looking at the tumultuous history of the 8 year imposed war by Saddam as the acting agent of the West against the Islamic Republic of Iran, it is possible to find numerous evidence that in the most pressing circumstances of the war and even in the face of terrible war crimes by the enemy (who was the aggressor in this war), such as its extensive and repeated use of chemical weapons, bombing of cities and other residential areas in Iran, Iranian armed forces never resorted to WMD and were extremely averse to the use similar methods and to retaliation in kind.

Those who accuse Iran of being a nuclear threat are countries who themselves are not merely “accused” but are definitely and undeniably “guilty” of having both threatened and used methods and weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear weapons.  Some of these Western countries who unbelievably shamelessly accuse Iran of posing a threat to international peace and security, have a shameful and extensive record of egregious crimes against humanity and war crimes, such as the nuclear bombing of Japan, the occupation and chemical bombardment of Vietnam, supporting the illegal occupation of Palestine and the violent repression of Palestinians, the persuasion, arming and total support of Saddam and his war crimes against Iran, the intentional downing of the Iranian passenger plane over the Persian Gulf and the public praise of the perpetrators of this unprecedented war crime, and of course, the keeping and continued expansion of their nuclear weapons production.

And finally, following the nuclear deal, all of the eight reports of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) based on extremely and painstakingly meticulous and extensive inspections of Iran’s nuclear activities, have testified, without exception, Iran’s total commitment to and observance of the nuclear deal.  Considering this undisputed and clear evidence of Iran’s commitment, the accusations of Iran’s nuclear threat is completely unwarranted and unfair, because they attempt at creating the impression in the minds of their audience that Iran is prone to deceitfully violate the NPT, and that it stands guilty of violation and of creating crisis in the international community.

It is therefore necessary that through diplomatic channels and in the first instance through discussion with the P5+1 members, particularly the EU members, to insist that such false labelling and falsely accusatory and humiliating terminology in relation to Iran has to be stopped.  Clearly, terminology such as the removal of “worries” or “concerns” in relation to Iran’s nuclear programme, are considerably less emphatic and offensive falsehoods than words such as the removal of “threat” or “danger” of Iran’s nuclear programme.

Currently in circumstances that, as stated by the German Foreign Minister, the US behaviour towards Iran has pushed Europeans towards Russian or Chinese positions, there might be a suitable opportunity to address this difficulty.

Farhad Shahabi is International Security and Arms Control Specialist

The Farsi version of this article appeared in Iran Diplomacy on 14 October 2017.

Source: http://www.countercurrents.org/2017/10/20/when-the-nuclear-violator-becomes-the-accuser/

By Pravit Rojanaphruk

BANGKOK — A famed social critic and intellectual elder accused of defaming the monarchy by questioning whether a royal elephant battle really happened four centuries ago said he’s been ordered to appear before military prosecutors.

Sulak Sivaraksa, 84, said Thursday night that he’s been told to report Monday morning to police who will take him to a military court to meet with prosecutors preparing a case against him for allegedly criticizing a king who reigned from 1590 to 1605.

“If the country was normal and there existed rule of law in this country, then there won’t be problems. The lese majeste law protects the current monarch and if someone is charged for criticizing a king who reigned 500 years ago, then something is not normal,” said Sulak, sounding disturbed and worried.

Sulak was referring to the specifics of Article 112 of the criminal code, which forbids defaming, insulting or threatening the current king, queen, heir apparent or regent. Although the law is narrowly written, it has been broadly interpreted in recent years as prosecutions surged following the 2014 coup.

Under the draconian law, anyone found guilty faces a maximum sentence of 15 years in prison per offense. Sulak said he was told by police they will recommend he be prosecuted by the military tribunal.

Defendants can languish in jail for years awaiting trials that are conducted in secret. Many confess in return for resolution and lighter sentencing.

Puangtip Boonsanong, Sulak’s lawyer, said Friday he didn’t understand how comments about a king who lived four centuries ago could ever be construed as violating the lese majeste law, which explicitly is written to cover only the reigning monarch, queen, heir apparent and regent.

“I don’t know too,” Puangtip said.

The lawyer added however that there are people who construe any criticism of past kings, no matter how remote, as criticism of the reigning monarch.

The case stems from comments Sulak made three years ago on Oct. 5, 2014, during a history discussion at Thammasat University. He questioned the historical accuracy regarding King Naresuan, who at the time was the subject of nationalist epic period films then being promoted by the newly installed junta.

He specifically cast doubt about whether the story of Naresuan routing an enemy army by defeating a Burmese prince in an elephant duel was true or an apocryphal tale and urged people “not to easily believe in things. Otherwise they will fall prey to propaganda.”

He was accused of defaming the monarchy after the military regime ordered that such cases be tried by military tribunals rather than civilian courts.

Although the junta rescinded that order a year ago, it was not retroactive, meaning existing cases would remain in the military system.

A self-proclaimed royalist, Sulak has often said he believes loyalty demands dissent. He’s been charged and acquitted of lese majeste twice in the past. Sulak also helped inspire a generation of students to overthrow a military dictatorship back in 1973.

Though retired, Sulak remains active and is involved with a foundation he founded, the International Network of Engaged Buddhists.

Clarification: This story was originally published with a headline stating prosecution of Sulak was certain. While the police have recommended he be prosecuted, the final determination is up to military prosecutors.

Source: http://www.khaosodenglish.com/news/international/2017/10/06/military-try-historian-doubting-16th-century-elephant-duel/

By Dr. Ghulam Nabi Fai

“Only on paper has humanity yet achieved glory, beauty, truth, knowledge, virtue, and abiding love.”  George Bernard Shaw

It is tragic that civilized nations have fallen from their lofty calling: namely, human rights for all mankind. There is a sad commentary on the state of human rights all over the globe. It seems to me that until there evolves a generally accepted moral duty among peoples and nations to assist all victims of widespread human rights violations by force or other stiff retaliation, human rights enforcement mechanisms will operate haphazardly and whimsically for reasons unrelated to the harm to the victims or the villainy of the perpetrators. It is the job of all human rights defenders to jump-start that moral evolution.

It might be said that never have so many human rights been proclaimed yet been so routinely violated. Think of the ongoing human rights atrocities at present that are going unsanctioned. Myanmar, where civilians are routinely driven from homes and cities are consistently destroyed. Tragic genocide in Syria. Kashmiris brutalized by 700,000 Indian military and paramilitary forces.  The list goes on and on.

The life for Kashmiris has oscillated between grisly and gruesome. Human rights violations are frightful: extrajudicial killings, torture, rape, abductions, arson, and arbitrary detentions. Since 1989, more than 100,000 Kashmiris have been killed. Indian forces routinely commit war crimes with impunity under emergency laws. They do so because the likelihood of punishment by the Indian government is slim to none. The scale of gripping wrongdoing in Kashmir dwarfed what was witnessed in Bosnia, Kosovo, East Timor and Southern Sudan prior to international intervention, yet the United States and the United Nations have watched the Kashmiris suffer like spectators at the Roman Coliseum.

Apart from the magnitude of violence unleashed by the Indian military forces against peaceful protesters in Kashmir, the most poignant aspect of the situation is the acute suffering of the whole population caused by the frequent curfews, disregard of normal life, arrests, detentions and sometimes disappearances of innocent civilians by the authorities. This is a situation without precedent in the south Asian subcontinent and with few parallels in the world today. That complacency gives at least the impression that Kashmiri lives and hopes are worth less than those of others. If India believed its rule in Kashmir was by consent rather than by coercion, it would hold a plebiscite with alacrity, just as the Great Britain routinely permits the Scotland to vote for independence

If, however, the world powers and the United Nations are unmoved by international law and moral justice to act, then Kashmiris will be forced to organize their own referendum like in Catalonia, Spain with the assistance of eminent persons of international standing and NGOs to decide their future. If that last alternative is forced upon them, Kashmiris hope that India, with the urging and moral suasion of the international community, will put no obstacles in the way and that the world will honor the results of the free and fair vote.

It is universally acknowledged that Kashmir is a global danger because of spiraling nuclear and missile proliferation in both India and Pakistan, coupled with their respective domestic political instabilities and historical animosities.  A similar consensus agrees that the bilateral India-Pakistan formula for resolving the 70-year-old Kashmir conflict has proven empty, achieving no progress during those long years. For the Kashmir conflict to end, authentic representatives of the Kashmiri people – All Parties Hurriyet Conference — must be senior partners at the negotiating table along with India and Pakistan. No solution will endure without their consent voiced in a referendum.

The gruesome status quo in Kashmir is both legally and morally unacceptable and militarily and economically frightening.  There is no time for further complacency.

In sum, the ingredients of a Kashmir solution are there. What remains are healthy doses of statesmanship and magnanimity of world powers including United States.

Dr. Fai can be reached at: 1-202-607-6435  or  gnfai2003@yahoo.com

By Aída Chávez and Ryan Grim

9 Oct 2017 – Britain’s broadcasting regulator today concluded that Al Jazeera did not violate any rules in its controversial undercover investigation exposing the Israeli embassy’s campaign to target British citizens critical of Israel, a campaign that included attempts to destroy the careers of pro-Palestinian British politicians.

The move by the communications regulator, known as Ofcom, clears the way for a follow-up documentary focused on Israeli influence in the U.S., the existence of which has previously been suspected but had yet to be made public. Clayton Swisher, director of investigative journalism for Al Jazeera Media Network, confirmed it to The Intercept on Monday. The goal of the British complaint may partly have been to delay publication of the follow-up American version, he said. “At the very same time [as the London investigation] — and we can safely reveal this now — we had an undercover operative working in tandem in Washington, D.C. With this U.K. verdict and vindication past us, we can soon reveal how the Israel lobby in America works through the eyes of an undercover reporter,” he said.

The four-part series, “The Lobby,” dug into the Israeli embassy in London, as well as several other pro-Israel lobby groups, and their campaign to “take down” British Foreign Office Minister Sir Alan Duncan.

The investigation led to the resignation of a top Israeli official in London, as well as a high-profile complaint that Al Jazeera had broken broadcasting regulations in the United Kingdom. One of the complaints charged the investigation with anti-Semitism, but the government board ruled that imputing such a motive to a film critical of Israel would be akin to calling a series on gang violence racist.

Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn wrote to Prime Minister Theresa May in January, calling for a probe into Shai Masot, the Israeli embassy’s then-senior political officer. An undercover reporter secretly filmed Masot discussing a plot to “take down” Duncan, which Corbyn described as “improper interference in this country’s democratic process.” Masot resigned shortly after the recordings were made public.

Swisher, whose writing has also appeared in The Intercept, said that his outlet turned over reams of unpublished audio and video files to demonstrate that its report had not been unfairly edited. “For several months, we were put through the equivalent of an editorial colonoscopy. Turning over emails, different edits, all the raw footage, photos, cellphone messages — basically anything the investigators found of interest,” said Swisher.

Ofcom received complaints about the series from pro-Israel British activists and a former Israel embassy employee. It dismissed all charges, which included anti-Semitism, bias, unfair editing, and the infringement of privacy.

It ruled that as per the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s guidance: “It did not consider that such a critical analysis of the actions of a foreign state constituted anti-Semitism, particularly as the overall focus of the programme was to examine whether the State of Israel was acting in a manner that would be expected of other democratic nations.”

All other charges were also dismissed as Ofcom found the program maintained due impartiality, the footage was not edited in a way which resulted in unfairness, and there was no unwarranted infringement of privacy.

In January, pro-Israel activists in the U.S. began to suspect they’d been infiltrated when footage in America appeared in the British version of “The Lobby.” Tablet began piecing things together and identified the likely hoaxer as a highfalutin British intern who’d dissonantly been renting a fully furnished $5,460 a month corporate apartment.

Swisher wouldn’t confirm or deny the identity of the American operative, but he said that with the American political class focused on foreign intervention in the affairs of the United States, now is an appropriate time to run the follow-up investigation. “I hear the U.S. is having problems with foreign interference these days, so I see no reason why the U.S. establishment won’t take our findings in America as seriously as the British did, unless of course Israel is somehow off limits from that debate,” he said.

Source: https://www.transcend.org/tms/2017/10/an-al-jazeera-reporter-went-undercover-with-the-pro-israel-lobby-in-washington/

By Gerald A. Perreira

October 20th, 2017, marks the sixth anniversary of the martyrdom of Muammar  Qaddafi, revolutionary Pan-Africanist and champion of the Global South. This day also marks the sixth anniversary of the historic battle of Sirte, where Qaddafi, along with an heroic army, including his son Mutassim Billal Qaddafi, and veteran freedom fighter,  Abu-Bakr Yunis Jabr, fought until their convoy was bombed by French fighter planes. Wounded and demobilized, they were captured by Qatari scavengers and executed by Al-Qaeda operatives

The courageous men of the original Free Officers’ Union, who were guides and leaders of the then 42 year-old Al-Fatah Revolution, demonstrated extraordinary revolutionary fortitude, heroism and audacity in the face of their enemies. As young men in their twenties, they overthrew the Western-installed Libyan monarchy and ushered in the Jamahiriya, and as elders in their seventies, they refused to leave Libya, and instead, fought to the bitter end, on the frontlines, alongside their people. Their example will forever shine as an eternal light in the hearts of all those who struggled alongside them to build the closest thing to a real democracy, and a United States of Africa, that modern history has ever seen. The execution of Muammar Qaddafi and those that fought alongside him, and the destruction of the Libyan Jamahiriya is one of the greatest crimes of this century.

Those responsible, including Nicolas Sarkozy, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, David Cameron, King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud and Emir Tamin bin Hamad Al Thani should be tried for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

What we knew all along is now a substantiated and indisputable fact – there was never a mass uprising in Benghazi or anywhere in Libya. The Libyan people in their millions made it clear that they supported the Al-Fatah Revolution.

A coalition of the wicked, comprising US/NATO forces, the semi-feudal Arab regimes of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, United Arab Emirates and Sudan, and a rag-tag bunch of monarchists and al-Qaeda linked terrorists inside Libya, that had been working with the CIA and M15 for decades, was assembled, and united in their goal. For them, total destruction was the only solution.

Every attempt was made by Qaddafi and his supporters to negotiate a peaceful solution, including inviting international observers into the country to see for themselves what was really taking place, something the imperialists could not allow to happen. This was their golden opportunity to destroy Qaddafi and the Jamahiriya, a plan they had been waiting to execute for years. There were mass uprisings on either side of Libya, in Tunisia and Egypt. The West had already coined the term “Arab Spring” and was busy hijacking revolts elsewhere. Time was of the essence. In fact, in what can only be described as a frenzy, they may have set a world record for the speed with which they managed to push through the illegal resolution at the UN, their cover for the invasion. The fake news and false narrative machine was in full swing. Within 24 hours
, UN bodies had transformed Qaddafi from a person about to receive the UN Human Rights Award into a man killing his own people. The Jamahiriya was targeted for destruction and nothing was going to stop them.

Foreign forces, including the CIA, Dutch Marines, French and Sudanese military personnel, Qatari Special Forces, Al Qaeda fighters – facilitated by the Saudis, as they are facilitating Al Qaeda in Yemen today, were all in place weeks before the staged protests began in Benghazi in February 2011. This was a well-planned and coordinated operation.

“Sometimes the enemy is the best teacher”

Kwame Ture, revolutionary Pan-Africanist and former executive member of the World Mathaba, opined that sometimes the enemy is the best teacher. He instructed us to study the enemy’s strategy and tactics and to remember that the enemy only goes after those whom they deem to be a real threat to their imperial interests. Pan-Africanist and former president of Guinea, Ahmed Sekou Toure, said that, “if the enemy is not bothering with you, then know that you are doing nothing”.

The forces of US-EU imperialism were always bothering Muammar Qaddafi. They were bent on discrediting, demonizing and finding a way to obliterate him and the Libyan Jamahiriya from its inception in 1969, until they finally achieved their nefarious objective in 2011.

Referring to Qaddafi as “the mad dog of the Middle-East”, Ronald Reagan, in a nationwide broadcast, said that Qaddafi’s goal was “world revolution”, claiming that he (Qaddafi) was promoting “a Muslim fundamentalist revolution, which targeted many of his own Arab compatriots.”

There is an African saying: “Mouth open, story jump out”. What Ronald Reagan was describing sounds like the imperialist plan. It was Ronald Reagan who welcomed leaders of the Afghan Mujahadeen who were fighting the Soviets at the time, to the Oval Office and referred to them as Jihadi freedom fighters. Today as we face Al Qaeda and their various offshoots, including the infamous ISIL, we are witnessing the devastating results of this sinister imperialist game plan. Ever since the days when the British colonial forces facilitated the creation of the Wahhabi kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the imperialists have encouraged, supported and funded the growth of Islamic fundamentalist groups. They understood that this was imperative if they were to counter the resurgence of an Islamic theology of liberation, in the revolutionary tradition of Abu Dharr al Ghifari, and as propounded in contemporary times by outstanding Islamic thinkers, such as Muammar Qaddafi, Ali Shariati, Kaukab Siddique, Ayatollah Mahmoud Taleghani, Muhammad Iqbal and Mahmoud Ayoub.

Again, we can learn from the enemy. Just as the imperialists and right-wing Christian fundamentalists waged an unrelenting war against the Social Gospel Movement and Christian liberation theology, as articulated by revolutionary theologians such as Gustavo Gutierrez, Miguel Bonino, James Cone and Enrique Dussel, they knew very well that Islamic liberation theology must be countered. The enemy understood the power of this theology in term of its ability to act as a bulwark against the imperial hegemon. They knew that this authentic and revolutionary Islam would prevent them from exercising control over an awakened Muslim World.

Reagan was right about one thing, Muammar Qaddafi indeed had a goal of world revolution – it was a revolution that would put the tenets of Islamic liberation theology into practice. Qaddafi’s conception of this revolution was holistic. His revolution would challenge every aspect of Eurocentric epistemology and its inherent racism. The Libyan revolution was more than a social, political and economic revolution; it was nothing short of a spiritual and cultural revolution. This confounded not only the imperialist powers but also their reactionary Arab satraps.

The World Mathaba

The World Mathaba, established by Muammar Qaddafi in 1982, had as its stated mission, “to resist imperialism, racism, fascism, zionism, colonialism and neo-colonialism”. The Mathaba denotes a place where people gather for a noble purpose. Based in Libya, it became a meeting place for revolutionary and progressive forces from all over the world. Similar to the House of Wisdom in Baghdad, which became a major intellectual center during the Islamic Golden Age and the University of Sankore in Timbuktu, where scholars of the day converged to discuss and debate ideas and formulate new ideas, the Mathaba became a forum for the advancement of a Third Universal Theory beyond Capitalism and Communism. Prior to the Mathaba, the only international formations for progressive and revolutionary organizations had been the Soviet dominated Comintern, that demanded an ideological allegiance to Marxism-Leninism and the Socialist International, which brought together social-democratic parties. The ideological rigidity of these two international formations excluded organizations and movements that rejected Eurocentric ideologies, including many Indigenous and Pan-African organizations who found a home in the World Mathaba.

Through the Mathaba, Qaddafi assisted all those who were fighting for liberation and self-determination, regardless of whether or not it was in Libya’s geo-political interests to do so. Under Qaddafi’s visionary leadership, material assistance and moral support was provided to the oppressed from every corner of the earth, regardless of religion or ideology. All were helped – from the Roma people of Eastern Europe to the Kanak people of New Caledonia in the Southwest Pacific, to the Rohinga people, who are presently being ethnically cleansed by the Buddhist chauvinists of Myanmar, and who the UN recently referred to as “the most friendless people”. What the hypocritical UN body failed to mention was that they once had a friend in Muammar Qaddafi.

Qaddafi noted on many occasions that the Libyan Revolution had a sacred duty to help all those who were in legitimate need and suffering persecution, since this was in accordance the teachings of the Quran, which was Libya’s constitution The bedrock of Islam is to enjoin that which is good and condemn that which is wrong and unjust. Any Muslim, regardless of their interpretation of Quranic teachings, will admit that the Quran clearly states that the weakest response to injustice is to hate it in your heart, the second weakest response is to speak against it and the strongest response is to oppose it in every way possible.

A Spiritual Revolution

Leader of the Philippine based Moro National Liberation Front, Nur Misuari, in a lecture he delivered in 1990 at the Green World Institute in Tripoli, explained that inserting the word “Islamic” into the name of a country or organization, like the ‘Islamic Republic of Pakistan’ or ‘Moro Islamic Liberation Front’ did not make the country or organization Islamic.

Declaring yourself an “Islamic” country like Saudi Arabia and Qatar does not make you Islamic. To be a truly Islamic society and nation, there has to be a spiritual revolution. A revolution that raises the spiritual consciousness of the people. A revolution that counters the false Islam that the oppressors promote, that abolishes capitalism and the  semi-feudal social relations sustained by the ruling elites in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the UAE and Sudan. This is why Qaddafi was such a threat to the imperialists and their Muslim surrogates. He was not only propounding dangerous ideas, he was building a new society – a Jamahiriya – a state of the masses, a real democracy based on the revolutionary teachings of the Quran, which according to South African political scientist, Themba Sono, “created conditions for the many to rule themselves”. Sono goes on to explain, “For Qaddafi, this is part of the natural order in which the majority rules themselves rather than for a minority to exercise power over a majority… Qaddafi denies that the emanations from the activity of electoral participants can never be called rule, not only because such rule would be unethical and thereby unstable, but also because it would contradict the very essence and fundamental tenet of democracy, which is, to be tautological, that, naturally, free people must and can rule themselves.”

It was a dangerous precedent that the imperialists could not allow to continue.

As Sono notes in his book, The Qaddafi Green Syndrome: Shaking the Foundations: “Qaddafi does not care to investigate whether or not the people are capable of ruling themselves, for he asks the question, how do we do that without giving the people, not only the right but the opportunity to do so? Who is to know beforehand and therefore to decide a priori that the people are not qualified to rule themselves?”

Dangerous Ideas Indeed

Applying the principles of Qaddafi’s Third Universal Theory transformed Libya from one of the poorest countries in the world, to not only one of the most prosperous countries in Africa, but in many respects, one of the most prosperous countries worldwide. Facts and figures substantiate this claim. Libya had no foreign debt and actually deposited payments from oil revenue into the bank accounts of its citizens. As is by now well documented, Libyans had access to free quality healthcare, free education from nursery  to university level, rent free housing, free electricity, subsidized food – a very high standard of living. Imperialists hate these types of precedents. What if, upon seeing these achievements, other nations decided to disregard the Western-style systems of governance and the neo-liberal capitalist model that simply widens the gap between have and have-nots? What if countries in Africa, seeing Libya’s advancement and prosperity, decided to rid themselves of the bogus liberal-democratic tradition that empowers 1% of humanity to rule over 99%? What if others decided to reject the multi-party electoral circus, designed to divide and fragment our countries along ethnic and tribal lines, and instead, opted for a Jamahiriya or State of the Masses?

Once asked by a journalist, what was the one thing he wanted to achieve most in his lifetime, Qaddafi replied, “to change the world”. And he was coming close. Muammar Qaddafi and the empowered Libyan Jamahiriya were leading the movement to establish a United States of Africa, with a united military and a single currency, a dinar backed by Africa’s gold reserves. This would have actually dethroned the US dollar and shifted the global economic imbalance.  This would have indeed changed the world.

So, on October 20, 2011, the Satanic forces that had been at war with Qaddafi and the Libyan Jamahiriya from its inception in 1969, dealt their final blow to the man known to revolutionaries throughout the world as the Brother-Leader, and to revolutionary Muslims throughout Africa and the world, as the “Commander of the Faithful”.

“If they get past Libya, they are coming for you…”

Six years later and the fallout from this criminal act is still being felt everywhere. Key development projects throughout Africa, financed by Libya, have all grounded to a halt. Saudi Arabia and Qatar, key players in Libya’s demise, are now busy grabbing large tracts of land in Africa. This would not have been possible if Qaddafi was alive. The expansion of AFRICOM, the expansion of US military bases, and the building of new military bases by the Chinese and the Turks in Africa would also not have been possible if Qaddafi was alive. Indeed, there would have been a fierce resistance to the current recolonization and re-carving of Africa if Muammar Qaddafi was alive and the Libyan Jamahiriya was flourishing as before.

Of course, the urgent need to recolonize an Africa that was awakening to its own power and ability to unite and self-determine was the very reason for the overthrow of Qaddafi and the Libyan revolution. It is not surprising that the French led the charge. In March 2008, former French president, Jacques Chirac said, “Without Africa, France would slide down into the rank of a Third World power”. As early as 1957, long before he became president, Francois Mitterrand said, “Without Africa, France will have no history in the 21st century”.

Libya has been transformed into a dysfunctional neo-colonial entity, where an array of militias squabble over territory and spoils. Its vast landmass has become a safe haven and training ground for ISIL and other Al-Qaeda offshoots. Thousands of Libyans and other African nationals are still detained without trial in what can only be described as concentration camps. Many have been tortured and executed in these same camps, their only crime, being Qaddafi loyalists. Those now in control of Libya hated Qaddafi’s Pan-African objectives. They are Arab supremacists and are persecuting Black Libyans and other African nationals.

Africans who once travelled to Libya to work and send back much needed funds to their families are now crossing the Mediterranean. Entire boatloads of people, including women and children are drowning as they make the perilous journey.  Our ancestors were once captured and forced on to boats against their will, many perished during that crossing, today, we are clamoring to secure a place on boats that are not even seaworthy to escape the conditions created by our former enslavers. Many are still perishing.

Qaddafi would often lament, “the world shakes, but it doesn’t change”.

Workers from as far afield as the Philippines, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, China, Turkey, Germany, England, Italy, Malaysia and Korea lost their jobs.

The entire refugee crisis across Europe is a result of the destruction of the Jamahiriya.

The push to establish a United States of Africa, which prior to Libya’s demise was a dynamic and energized initiative, is presently a dream deferred. Revolutionary Pan-Africanism has suffered a huge setback. Today’s African leaders, with the exception of a few, are only good for talking Pan-Africanism in the halls of the African Union headquarters. Outside of these confines, they are committed to maintaining the old neo-colonial relationships that keep Africa in bondage.

We Salute You

On this day, all those who resist oppression and tyranny worldwide, salute the great freedom fighter and our Brother-Leader, Muammar Qaddafi and the other revolutionary leaders of Al Fatah. We pay homage to their dedicated and life-long struggle for human emancipation and dignity. We are forever inspired by their steadfast and courageous fight to the end, and by their unwavering faith in, and service to God. We are grateful for their undying love for the African continent and all of humanity. We salute the millions of Libyan men and women who heroically resisted the invasion of their country, and who continue to suffer to this day. We stand in solidarity with the family of Muammar Qaddafi and the families of all the martyrs. We stand in solidarity with the thousands of political prisoners inside Libya and the more than 1.5 million Qaddafi loyalists exiled from their country. We commit our full support to the struggle being waged by the patriotic and nationalist forces to liberate and reunify Libya once again. For the Green revolutionary, death is not the end, but the doorway to a new beginning. Martyrs never die.

20 October 2017

Gerald A. Perreira is chairperson of the Guyanese organizations Black Consciousness Movement Guyana (BCMG) and Organization for the Victory of the People (OVP). He is an executive member of the Caribbean Chapter of the Network for Defense of Humanity. He lived in Libya for many years, served in the Green March, an international battalion for the defense of the Al Fatah revolution, and was a founding member of the World Mathaba, based in Tripoli, Libya. He can be reached at mojadi94@gmail.com.