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By Dr Ramzy Baroud

The Israeli official narrative regarding its conflict with the Palestinians is deliberately confounded because a muddled up discourse is a convenient one. It allows the narrator to pick and choose half-truths at will, in order to create a falsified version of reality.

For instance, this is part of what Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said at the United Nations on September 22:

“Ladies and Gentlemen: Israel fights this fateful battle against the forces of militant Islam every day. We keep our borders safe from ISIS, we prevent the smuggling of game-changing weapons to Hezbollah in Lebanon, we thwart Palestinian terror attacks in Judea and Samaria, the West Bank, and we deter missile attacks from Hamas-controlled Gaza.”

In just a single paragraph, Netanyahu has chosen to create an alternate reality, despite the fact that: ISIS’ main victims, thus far, have been Muslims, never Israelis; Hezbollah, which is embroiled in a sectarian fight in Syria is a Lebanese movement that is also at war with ISIS; the uprising in the West Bank has been largely led by desperate youth who were born under violent Israeli military Occupation and have no trust in their own leadership; Hamas has not lobbed any homemade rockets at Israel since the destructive Israeli war of 2014, which killed 2,251 Palestinians, mostly civilians.

While Netanyahu’s statements are not outright lies, the selection of these statements, not keen on dates, devoid of context and lacking in any Israeli accountability or even introspection, makes them simply untrue. Needless to say, utterly confusing as well, especially for those who rarely understand the nature of Israel’s conflict with the Palestinians and its other Arab neighbors.

The Israeli Prime Minister’s language at international forums are quite typical, if not predictable. Not only typical of him as a statesman, but of generations of Israeli leaders, past and present. Former Israeli Prime Minister and President, Shimon Peres, who died late September, mastered this Israeli style, bar none. Although he was the architect of the Middle East’s first and only nuclear bomb, he was eulogized by western governments and media, including many in the Left, as a peacemaker, a heroic figure and statesman.

But Peres was the last of the ‘founders of Israel’ generation. That generation’s approach to war and diplomacy was unique and cannot be repeated. They were mostly foreign-born; spoke various languages; followed a unified blueprint in politics and had clear, decisive goals.

In contrast, Netanyahu is the first Israeli Prime Minister to be born in the country, after its establishment on the ruins of Palestine in 1948. His diplomacy is as violent as is his conduct on the ground. He seems fearless insofar as his confidence in his benefactors – namely the United States government, which has recently pledged to Israel another $38 billion dollars in unconditional military aid over the course of ten years.

With no legal or political accountability whatsoever, and with unwavering US backing of Israeli actions, no matter how destabilizing or destructive, Netanyahu’s logic, however lacking, will always prevail.

But considering that Israel is achieving precisely its intended goals – expanding its illegal settlements, sustaining its Occupation of East Jerusalem and the West Bank, constantly building up its armament and advancing its strategic interests at the expense of its neighbors, and escaping any possibility of legal culpability, why does it always feel as if Israel is besieged and embattled?

Netanyahu’s words give the impression that his country’s very existence is imperiled. In fact, this is the same language that is constantly emanating from most Israeli circles – official, media, academic and even ordinary people. This perception has continued even after Israel expanded its borders by occupying the rest of historic Palestine following the disastrous war of 1967; even when Israel claimed massive swathes of Jordanian, Egyptian, Lebanese and Syrian territories.

It seems that the stronger Israel becomes, the larger in size and more destructive in its military capabilities, the weaker and more threatened it perceives itself.

Even with their tactless approach to diplomacy, the new generation of Israeli leaders is still pushing the same mantra: that of a besieged country facing an existential threat.

In 2015, following the signing of the Iran nuclear deal between Iran and the US – along with other countries – Israel was denied the central component of its ‘existential threat’ discourse. With an Iranian ‘nuclear holocaust’ averted – although never convincingly from the Israeli viewpoint – other imagined threats were pushed to the very top of the Israeli agenda.

Besieged, bombed out and impoverished tiny Gaza maintained its standing as a major cause for alarm and one of the greatest threats to Israel’s security. But, strangely, the civil society-led non-violent Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement (BDS), was quickly pushed to the top of the ‘existential threat’ pyramid.

Modeled around the anti-Apartheid South African boycott movement, BDS aims at isolating the Israeli Occupation of Palestine, and, using non-violent means, ending it.

The language used against Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas and others is now being utilized against BDS. In a conference organized by the Jewish National Fund (JNF) in New York last month, Israeli Justice Minister, Ayelet Shaked, called BDS a ‘terrorist organization.’

“BDS is the new face of terror,” she said. “While in Gaza (terrorists) are digging underground tunnels into Israel, the BDS movement is digging tunnels to undermine the foundations and values of Israel. We have to stop these tunnels as well.”

Like Netanyahu, Shaked too claimed to be “fighting Islamic extremism”, although BDS supporters come from many countries and profess no particular religion. In fact, many of them are Jewish activists.

Yet, that does not matter. It never did, because the enemy, for now, has to remain “Islamic terrorism”, even if it is neither Islamic nor terrorist.

In a response to the Israeli navy interception, arrest and deportation of a group of women who attempted to break the Israeli siege on Gaza by using a small boat, Israel’s Defense Minister, Avigdor Lieberman, spun his words to connect the non-violent activists with something else entirely.

“We will not accept any (rocket) fire, any provocation, against the citizens of Israel by whoever it might be, or any attack on Israel’s sovereignty. Not rocket fire, and not a flotilla,” Lieberman said in an army ceremony on October 07.

The activists atop the boat, included Nobel Peace Prize winner, Mairead Maguire, of Northern Ireland. In Lieberman’s logic, Maguire’s act to end a decade-long blockade on a poor region is equivalent to the firing of a rocket.

Regardless of the type of criticism Israel faces and the tactics used to end its Occupation of Palestine, Israel will always connect the proverbial dots to produce the same outcome: Israel’s existence is at stake, all acts of resistance, however symbolic, are terrorist, and Israel has to do whatever it takes to defend itself from looming destruction by rogue terrorists.

Nonetheless, unlike Shimon Peres and his generation of leaders, the Israeli story as told by Israel’s new leaders is no longer selling. Gaza, which is rendered uninhabitable by the United Nations come 2020, hardly threatens the existence of Israel, nor are BDS activists, who demand accountability, vile terrorists. Needless to say, a group of women atop a small boat, carrying a symbolic amount of supplies to impoverished Gaza, were not about to take the Middle East’s only nuclear power down.

“The Israeli army then took over the boat. The women showed no resistance as they wanted to emphasize that their mission was peaceful. The women cried because they could not reach Gaza,” Al Jazeera reported.

‘Terrorists’, indeed.

– Dr. Ramzy Baroud has been writing about the Middle East for over 20 years. He is an internationally-syndicated columnist, a media consultant, an author of several books and the founder of PalestineChronicle.com. His books include “Searching Jenin”, “The Second Palestinian Intifada” and his latest “My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza’s Untold Story”. His website is www.ramzybaroud.net.
13 October 2016

By Robert J Burrowes

As the evidence mounts that we are fast approaching the final point-of-no-return beyond which it will be impossible to take sufficient effective action to prevent climate catastrophe – see ‘The World Passes 400 PPM Threshold. Permanently’ http://www.climatecentral.org/news/world-passes-400-ppm-threshold-permanently-20738 – the evidence of ineffective official responses climbs too. See, for example, ‘Climate Con: why a new global deal on aviation emissions is really bad news’. https://corporateeurope.org/blog/climate-con-why-new-global-deal-aviation-emissions-really-bad-news

Even worse, we continue to be given response options that, even when they are well meaning, are naïve and inadequate whether they are suggested by individuals – see, for example, ‘Committing Geocide: Climate Change and Corporate Capture’ https://diem25.org/committing-geocide-climate-change-and-corporate-capture/ – or major environment organizations such as Greenpeace, 350.org and Friends of the Earth.

Moreover, given the myriad indications of progressive environmental breakdown in domains unrelated to the climate catastrophe, one must be terrified and delusional to suggest or even believe that anything less than a comprehensive strategy, which goes well beyond anything governments and corporations will ever endorse, gives us any chance of averting the sixth mass extinction event in planetary history. A mass extinction that will include us.

As an aside, if you believe the ‘end of century’ scenario (for human extinction) being driven by the same corporate interests that drove climate denial for so long, then you are simply a victim of their latest attempt to drive ‘business as usual’ while delaying action for as long as possible at any cost.

Another problem, if you understand anything about human psychology and political organization, is that mobilizing people in large numbers to act strategically and powerfully is not easy. Of course, if it wasn’t so difficult, this crisis would not have arisen in the first place. We would have responded intelligently and strategically decades ago as some aware individuals, starting with Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi 100 years ago, suggested.

To briefly recap the wider nature of the crisis we face: Consider our synergistic and devastating assaults on the environment through military violence (often leaving vast areas uninhabitable), rainforest destruction, industrial farming, mining, commercial fishing and the spreading radioactive contamination from Fukushima. We are also systematically destroying the limited supply of fresh water on the planet which means that water scarcity is becoming a frequent reality for many people and the collapse of hydrological systems is now likely by 2020. Human activity drives 200 species of life (plants, birds, animals, fish, amphibians, insects, reptiles) to extinction each day and 80% of the world’s forests and over 90% of the large fish in the ocean are already gone. Despite this readily available information, governments continue to prioritize spending $US2,000,000,000 each day on military violence, the sole purpose of which is to terrorize and kill fellow human beings.

So what are we to do?

Well, if you are inclined to assess the evidence and to design a response strategy that has the possibility of success built into it, then I invite you to consider the strategy outlined on the Nonviolent Campaign Strategy website. https://nonviolentstrategy.wordpress.com/ This strategy identifies all twelve components of a nonviolent strategy to end the climate catastrophe, including the myriad of strategic goals https://nonviolentstrategy.wordpress.com/strategywheel/strategic-aims/ necessary for such a strategy to be comprehensive and effective. You are very welcome to suggest improvements in this strategy and to invite other individuals and groups to participate in helping to implement it.

If you are happy to leave strategic responses to others but still wish to contribute powerfully, then you and others you know are welcome to participate in the simple fifteen-year program outlined in ‘The Flame Tree Project to Save Life on Earth’. http://tinyurl.com/flametree You might also consider signing the online pledge of ‘The People’s Charter to Create a Nonviolent World’. http://thepeoplesnonviolencecharter.wordpress.com

One final point: a tragic outcome of modern humans terrorizing their children into obedience (to maintain social control) is that most of the human population is (unconsciously) terrified, self-hating and powerless. For a full explanation of this, see ‘Why Violence?’ http://tinyurl.com/whyviolence and ‘Fearless Psychology and Fearful Psychology: Principles and Practice’. http://anitamckone.wordpress.com/articles-2/fearless-and-fearful-psychology/

So don’t wait around waiting for others to act first. It is your leadership that is required in this circumstance. And it is your leadership that might ultimately make the difference.

Robert J. Burrowes has a lifetime commitment to understanding and ending human violence. He has done extensive research since 1966 in an effort to understand why human beings are violent and has been a nonviolent activist since 1981. He is the author of ‘Why Violence?’ http://tinyurl.com/whyviolence His email address is flametree@riseup.net and his website is at http://robertjburrowes.wordpress.com

13 October 2016

By Abdus Sattar Ghazali

Turkey and Russia Monday (Oct 10) signed the Turkish Stream gas pipeline agreement.

The signing of the strategic deal came after a meeting between Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Russian President Vladimir Putin who was in Istanbul to attend the 23rd World Energy Congress which gathered 10,000 participants, including four presidents, 250 energy ministers, academia, policy­makers and CEOs of top energy companies.

This was Putin’s first trip to Turkey since a bilateral crisis sparked by Turkey’s shooting down of a Russian war plane over Syria last November. Putin and Erdoğan have met on two occasions – since a Turkish June initiative to normalize ties after the plane crisis – in Putin’s home city of Saint Petersburg and then on the sidelines of the G-20 in China.

In a bid to normalize relations with Russia, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in June expressed regret for the downing of a Russian warplane. “I would like to send my condolences to the family of the Russian pilot who lost his life and express one more time that I share their pain; may they excuse us,” Erdogan said in a statement. “I believe that we will leave behind this current situation, which is to the detriment of both countries, and rapidly normalize our relations,” Erdogan added in a speech later on in the day.

Russia’s Gazprom and Turkey’s BOTAŞ in 2014 signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) for the construction of the Turkish Stream gas pipeline, with a capacity of 63 billion cubic meters (bcm) of gas per year from Russia to Turkey across the Black Sea.

However, talks on the project were halted last year after Turkey shot down a Russian air force jet and Moscow retaliated with trade sanctions but since then the two countries have made significant progress to mend relations.

In August last at a joint news conference with his Russian counterpart in St. Petersburg, President Erdoğan said that building the gas pipeline quickly was a priority. In September Gazprom announced it had received first regulatory approvals from Turkey, allowing the project to move into implementation phase.

Putin said Monday the need to develop the Turkish Stream natural gas project had been stressed in his talks with Erdoğan, adding that Russia also actively planned to expand it hydrocarbon exports eastward to China, Japan and India. “Russia will further interact in energy with all interested parties for mutual beneficial partnerships on an equal footing,” he added.

“Gas cooperation between Russia and Turkey could be scary for the European Union,” said Akin Unver, assistant professor of international relations at Kadir Has University in Istanbul and an expert in regional energy.

“The EU wants to diversify suppliers and link eastern Mediterranean gas to Europe in the long run … if Russia bypasses all that with TurkStream that would not help.

EU officials fear that TurkStream will be expanded to bypass Ukraine as a transit route for supplies to Europe, increasing dependence on Russian gas export monopoly Gazprom and shutting in alternative supplies from the Caspian region.

Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak has said Turkey will “play a large role as a transit country” to supply Europe – the very prospect which worries EU officials. Brussels is instead promoting a chain of pipelines known as the Southern Gas Corridor to transport gas from the Shah Deniz field in Azerbaijan to European markets by 2020.

Akkuyu nuclear plant.

Turkey and Russia have also reached consensus on the acceleration of the process for the Akkuyu nuclear plant.

Erdoğan said on Monday that Turkey is seeking ways to implement plans for a third nuclear power plant and aims to produce 10 percent of its electricity from nuclear power in the coming years.
Russia is currently developing Turkey’s first nuclear plant by the Mediterranean.

In May 2010, Russia and Turkey signed an agreement that a subsidiary of Rosatom — Akkuyu NGS Elektrik Uretim Corp. (APC: Akkuyu Project Company) — would build, own, and operate a power plant at Akkuyu comprising four 1,200 MW VVER units.

The agreement was ratified by the Turkish Parliament in July 2010. Engineering and survey work started at the site in 2011.

The construction of the first unit was scheduled to begin in 2016, with the four units put into service in 2022–25. In 2013, Russian nuclear construction company Atomstroyexport (ASE) and Turkish construction company Ozdogu signed the site preparation contract for the proposed Akkuyu nuclear power plant.

The contract includes excavation work at the site. The official launch ceremony took place in April 2015, and the first unit is expected to be completed in 2022.

Relations between Ankara and Moscow were strained after Turkey brought down a Russian military jet on Nov. 24, 2015 after it allegedly violated Turkey’s airspace near the Syrian border.

However, Russian President Vladimir Putin said in December 2015, that the fate of the Akkuyu nuclear plant, which is planned to be built in Turkey by Russia, will be left to the companies involved in the project to decide.

Speaking at his annual press conference in Moscow, Putin said the decision over whether the Akkuyu nuclear power plant will be realized belongs to the Russian State Atomic Energy Corporation, Rosatom, and its partners in Turkey. “Russia will not take any step that would harm its economic interests,” he added.

The Russian president also spoke about the downing of a Russian warplane on Nov. 24. Putin said: “It cannot be said that we see Turkey as an enemy country, yet our relations deteriorated. I do not know how to get out of this situation,” adding that it was up to Turkey from now on. “If Turkey thought that we would retreat from Syria following the downing of the plane, Russia is not that country,” Putin added.

The thaw between Russio-Turkish relations began with the virtual apology of President Erdoğan in June and accelerated after the abortive coup against President Erdogan in July last. Russia was among the first countries to condemn the coup attempt.

==============

Turkey and Russia Monday (Oct 10) signed the Turkish Stream gas pipeline agreement.

The signing of the strategic deal came after a meeting between Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Russian n President Vladimir Putin who was in Istanbul to attend the 23rd World Energy Congress which gathered 10,000 participants, including four presidents, 250 energy ministers, academia, policy­ makers and CEOs of top energy companies.

This was Putin’s first trip to Turkey since a bilateral crisis sparked by Turkey’s shooting down of a Russian war plane over Syria last November. Putin and Erdoğan have met on two occasions – since a

Turkish June initiative to normalize ties after the plane crisis – in Putin’s home city of Saint Petersburg and then on the sidelines of the G-20 in China.

In a bid to normalize relations with Russia, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in June expressed regret for the downing of a Russian warplane. “I would like to send my condolences to the family of the Russian pilot who lost his life and express one more time that I share their pain; may they excuse us,” Erdogan said in a statement. “I believe that we will leave behind this current situation, which is to the detriment of both countries, and rapidly normalize our relations,” Erdogan added in a speech later on in the day.

Russia’s Gazprom and Turkey’s BOTAŞ in 2014 signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) for the construction of the Turkish Stream gas pipeline, with a capacity of 63 billion cubic meters (bcm) of gas per year from Russia to Turkey across the Black Sea.

However, talks on the project were halted last year after Turkey shot down a Russian air force jet and Moscow retaliated with trade sanctions but since then the two countries have made significant progress to mend relations.

In August last at a joint news conference with his Russian counterpart in St. Petersburg, President Erdoğan said that building the gas pipeline quickly was a priority. In September Gazprom announced it had received first regulatory approvals from Turkey, allowing the project to move into implementation phase.

Putin said Monday the need to develop the Turkish Stream natural gas project had been stressed in his talks with Erdoğan, adding that Russia also actively planned to expand it hydrocarbon exports eastward to China, Japan and India. “Russia will further interact in energy with all interested parties for mutual beneficial partnerships on an equal footing,” he added.

“Gas cooperation between Russia and Turkey could be scary for the European Union,” said Akin Unver, assistant professor of international relations at Kadir Has University in Istanbul and an expert in regional energy.

“The EU wants to diversify suppliers and link eastern Mediterranean gas to Europe in the long run … if Russia bypasses all that with TurkStream that would not help.

EU officials fear that TurkStream will be expanded to bypass Ukraine as a transit route for supplies to Europe, increasing dependence on Russian gas export monopoly Gazprom and shutting in alternative supplies from the Caspian region.

Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak has said Turkey will “play a large role as a transit country” to supply Europe – the very prospect which worries EU officials. Brussels is instead promoting a chain of pipelines known as the Southern Gas Corridor to transport gas from the Shah Deniz field in Azerbaijan to European markets by 2020.

Akkuyu nuclear plant.

Turkey and Russia have also reached consensus on the acceleration of the process for the Akkuyu nuclear plant.

Erdoğan said on Monday that Turkey is seeking ways to implement plans for a third nuclear power plant and aims to produce 10 percent of its electricity from nuclear power in the coming years.
Russia is currently developing Turkey’s first nuclear plant by the Mediterranean.

In May 2010, Russia and Turkey signed an agreement that a subsidiary of Rosatom — Akkuyu NGS Elektrik Uretim Corp. (APC: Akkuyu Project Company) — would build, own, and operate a power plant at Akkuyu comprising four 1,200 MW VVER units.

The agreement was ratified by the Turkish Parliament in July 2010. Engineering and survey work started at the site in 2011.

The construction of the first unit was scheduled to begin in 2016, with the four units put into service in 2022–25. In 2013, Russian nuclear construction company Atomstroyexport (ASE) and Turkish construction company Ozdogu signed the site preparation contract for the proposed Akkuyu nuclear power plant.

The contract includes excavation work at the site. The official launch ceremony took place in April 2015, and the first unit is expected to be completed in 2022.

Relations between Ankara and Moscow were strained after Turkey brought down a Russian military jet on Nov. 24, 2015 after it allegedly violated Turkey’s airspace near the Syrian border.

However, Russian President Vladimir Putin said in December 2015, that the fate of the Akkuyu nuclear plant, which is planned to be built in Turkey by Russia, will be left to the companies involved in the project to decide.

Speaking at his annual press conference in Moscow, Putin said the decision over whether the Akkuyu nuclear power plant will be realized belongs to the Russian State Atomic Energy Corporation, Rosatom, and its partners in Turkey. “Russia will not take any step that would harm its economic interests,” he added.

The Russian president also spoke about the downing of a Russian warplane on Nov. 24. Putin said: “It cannot be said that we see Turkey as an enemy country, yet our relations deteriorated. I do not know how to get out of this situation,” adding that it was up to Turkey from now on. “If Turkey thought that we would retreat from Syria following the downing of the plane, Russia is not that country,” Putin added.

The thaw between Russio-Turkish relations began with the virtual apology of President Erdogan in June and accelerated after the abortive coup against President Erdogan in July last. Russia was among the first countries to condemn the coup attempt.

Abdus Sattar Ghazali is the Chief Editor of the Journal of America (www.journalofamerica.net) email: asghazali2011 (@) gmail com

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11 October 2016

By Sarah Aziza

“If you’re listening to this, then you will know that myself and all the women who sailed on the Women’s Boat to Gaza have been arrested and are in detention in Israel.”

These pre-recorded words by Nobel Peace Laureate Mairead Maguire open a 2-minutevideo, released October 5, after Maguire and 12 female companions aboard the small sailing vessel the Olivia-Zaytouna were detained by Israeli forces about 40 miles off the coast of Gaza. The women aboard the Zaytouna launched their single-boat flotilla on September 23 under the banner Women’s Boat to Gaza, the latest attempt by theFreedom Flotilla Coalition to break the decade-long blockade of the Palestinian territory. A diverse group of women boarded alongside Maguire, including retired U.S. Army Colonel Ann Wright and Malaysian gynecologist Dr. Fauziah Hasan.

The women were well aware that their chances of actually reaching Gaza were slim. As the group neared the shore on October 5, spokeswoman Claude Leostic told the AFP“the Zaytouna-Oliva has passed the fatal line of 100 miles and everything is going well.” Within hours, however, several Israeli vessels surrounded the flotilla, boarding the Zaytouna and detaining those on board. The Israeli Navy reported that the intervention came after “exhausting all diplomatic channels” and that the detention proceeded without violence.

The women of the flotilla described their arrest as “illegal” and wrote on their website, “whilst the term ‘peaceful’ has been used in some media to describe the attack and capture of our boat, this is inaccurate. Peace is more than merely the absence of physical violence. Oppression, occupation, denial of human rights and taking a boat of unarmed, nonviolent women against their will are not peaceful activities.”

On the Gazan beach that morning, Palestinians prepared to greet the flotilla, assembling with flags and banners on the shore, but the women were taken by Israeli forces to the Ashdod port and later held in Givon Prison.

The use of flotillas to protest the siege in Gaza began in 2008, when a group of activists sought a way to defy the blockade using creative, nonviolent means. The group eventually decided to break the blockade directly by sending a flotilla to the port of Gaza, which had not been entered by an international vessel since 1967. After months of grassroots fundraising and organization, 47 activists representing 17 countries launched their mission in two small wooden boats, the SS Gaza and the SS Liberty. They were able to reach the Gaza port with supplies, including hearing aids for children whose hearing had been damaged in the sonic booms caused by military flyovers.

Subsequent attempts by activists to break the siege have been less successful — and in some cases, tragic. In 2010, the Turkish vessel the Mavi Marmara attempted to reach Gaza with humanitarian aid, but when Israeli forces intercepted the boat on May 31, violence ensued. The clash left nine Turkish activists dead (a 10th would die later, after a years-long coma) and 10 Israelis injured. The event sparked international outcry, but it has not deterred organizations like the Freedom Flotilla Coalition and theInternational Committee for Breaking the Siege of Gaza, from continuing similar attempts to reach Gaza.

The Women’s Boat to Gaza was the first all-female flotilla, and aimed to highlight the role of Palestinian women in the struggle for self-determination and the uniquelygendered effects of the occupation. Before the flotilla, Gazan women shared their perspectives on the siege through videos posted on the group’s site.

The activists also hoped that an all-female crew would be treated with less force, said spokesperson Claude Léostic. “We hope that with women on board they [the Israeli navy] will be deterred from being so violent,”she told Electronic Intifada, adding, “maybe it’s just wishful thinking.”

The women of the flotilla have confirmed their physical safety throughout, and the last of the 13 activists were released Friday. Yet even as they depart, the women of the flotilla have reiterated their reason for sailing: to raise awareness of the dire humanitarian situation in Gaza, where 80 percent of the 1.9 million residents rely on aid to survive. The 10-year blockade has crippled the economy, reducing trade to 15 percent of its pre-siege levels, while power outages, food shortages, rampant unemployment and undrinkable water perpetuate a state of crisis.

On their webpage, the Freedom Flotilla Coalition has pledged to continue its efforts “until Gaza is free.”

Sarah Aziza is an Arab-American writer, graduate student and activist based in NYC. She has previously worked among refugee populations in North Africa, Jordan and the West Bank. Her areas of focus include immigration, human rights, international politics, feminism and mental health. She is a lover of the story-less-told. Find her on Twitter@SarahAziza1 or www.sarahaziza.com

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

First published by CommonDreams.org

10 October 2016

By Matt Blitz

A CC reader,EM, who sent in this article writes,

My country is “nuts” to have a Christopher Columbus holiday today. It’s like having a holiday for Josef Mengele, Angel of Death.

Didn’t the native American serve as the first people, who discovered America? What about the Vikings and other groups, who preceded Columbus? …

People need to wake up to the “truth” instead of blinding going along with cultural conventions. How could anyone celebrate a human like this deplorably unethical one?

EM

“In fourteen hundred and ninety two, Columbus sailed the ocean blue….

Today, Christopher Columbus is celebrated as a mythical hero
by some – complete with songs, poems, and fictional tales about
his great adventure across the Atlantic to explore the majestic land
that would eventually be known as the Americas. There are fifty
four communities named after the explorer in the United States,
including the District of Columbia. “Hail, Columbia” was the
United States’ unofficial national anthem until 1931.
A federal holiday, “Columbus Day,” is celebrated every
second Monday in October.

Despite all of this, historians have begun to tear down the
Columbus myth: That he discovered America. That he proved
the world wasn’t flat. (That had been well-known for more than
a millennium in Columbus’ time. In fact, scholars had a
pretty good idea of what the circumference of the Earth
was, which was part of the dissent against Columbus making
his trip- Columbus thought Asia was bigger than it is and
the world much smaller, leading one of the scholars commissioned
by the monarchy to investigate the plausibility of Columbus’
journey succeeding to say, it was “impossible to any
educated person”). That he came to America in the name of
exploration. And, finally, that he came in peace.

Quite simply, most of these “facts” are unequivocally false or
half-truths. Columbus sailed the ocean blue to look for
wealth and, officially, in the name of Christianity.
What he mostly did, though, was enslave and rape
the natives he met, sold girls (as young as nine by
his own account) into prostitution, and committed
numerous acts so heinous that he was forcibly
removed from power and sent back to Spain in
chains. Christopher Columbus was brutal,
even by the standards of his age, leading
Bartolome de las Casa, who accompanied
Columbus on one of his voyages, to write in his
The History of the Indies, “Such inhumanities
and barbarisms were committed in my sight
as no age can parallel… My eyes have seen
these acts so foreign to human nature that
now I tremble as I write.”

In August 1492, Columbus departed Spain with
three ships – the Santa Maria, the Pinta, and
the Santa Clara (nicknamed “the Nina”).
After two months on the high seas, land was
spotted. Now, before they had left, King Ferdinand
and Queen Isabella had promised to whoever
spotted land first a reward of a silken jacket and an
annuity of ten thousand maravedis. The lookout
on the Pinta was Rodrigo de Triana and he was
the first to spot land. He shouted to the rest of
the crew down below, and the Pinta’s captain
announced the discovery with cannon fire.
When it came time to receive the reward though,
Columbus claimed he actually saw a light in the
distance several hours prior to Triana’s shout,
“but it was so indistinct that I did not dare to
affirm it was land.” The reward reportedly
went to Columbus.

Upon landing on the island, which he would call
San Salvador (present-day Bahamas), Columbus
immediately went to work finding gold and
enslaving the native populations. Specifically,
Columbus, upon seeing the Arawaks
(the peoples of the region) come out of
the forests frightened of the men with
swords, but bearing gifts, wrote in his journal,

They do not bear arms, and do not know them,
for I showed them a sword, they took it by the
edge and cut themselves out of ignorance.
They would make fine servants . . . with fifty
men we could subjugate them all and
make them do whatever we want.

As other European visitors would observe, the Arawaks
were legendary for their hospitality and their desire to share.
Again saying Columbus about the Arawaks, “are so naive
and so free with their possessions that no one who has not
witnessed them would believe it. When you ask for
something they have, they never say no.
To the contrary, they offer to share with anyone.”

Columbus quickly took advantage of this. Seeing
that they wore gold studs in their ears, he rounded up
of a number of Arawaks and had them lead him to
where gold was. The journey took them to present day
Cuba and Haiti (but Columbus thought it was Asia),
where they found specks of gold in the river,
but not the enormous “fields” Columbus was
expecting. Nonetheless, he wrote back to Spain
saying that, “There are many spices, and great
mines of gold and other metals.” This report
earned him financing for a second voyage,
this time with 13 ships and twelve hundred men.
While he never ended up filling up these ships
with gold, he filled them with another “currency”
and one that would have a horrendous effect
on the world going forward – slaves.

In 1495, Columbus arrived back in the New World
and immediately took 1500 Arawaks as prisoners.
Of those 1500, he picked 500 to be shipped back to Spain
as slaves (about two hundred died on the journey back),
starting the transatlantic slave trade. The rest were
forced to find what little gold existed in the region.
According to noted historian Howard Zinn,
anyone over 14 had to meet a gold quota.
If they didn’t find enough gold, they would have
their hands cut off.

Eventually, when it was realized there wasn’t much
gold in the region, Columbus and his men just took
the rest as slaves and put them to work on their newly
established estates in the region. Many natives died
and their numbers dwindled. In the 15th century,
modern historians believe there were about
300,000 Arawaks. By 1515, there were only
50,000 left. By 1531, 600 and by 1650,
there were no longer any full-blooded
Arawaks left on the islands.

The way Columbus and his men treated the women
and children of these populations was even worse.
Columbus routinely used the raping of women as
a “reward” for his lieutenants. For example,
here’s an account from one of Columbus’ friends
and compatriots, Michele de Cuneo, who
accompanied Columbus on his second journey
to the New World, on what Michele did to
a native “Carb woman.” Michele wrote that,

While I was in the boat I captured a very beautiful
Carib woman, whom the said Lord Admiral [Columbus]
gave to me, and with whom, having taken her into my cabin,
she being naked according to their custom, I conceived
desire to take pleasure. I wanted to put my desire
into execution but she did not want it and treated
me with her finger nails in such a manner that
I wished I had never begun. But seeing that
(to tell you the end of it all), I took a rope and
thrashed her well, for which she raised such
unheard of screams that you would not have
believed your ears. Finally we came to an
agreement in such manner that I can tell you
that she seemed to have been brought up in a
school of whores…

Going further, Columbus wrote in a letter from 1500,

A hundred castellanos are as easily obtained for
a woman as for a farm, and it is very general and
there are plenty of dealers who go about looking
for girls; those from nine to ten are now in demand.

As illustrated in a recently discovered 48 page report
found in the Spanish archives written by
Francisco De Bobadilla (charged with investigating
Columbus’ rule at the behest of Queen Isabella
and King Ferdinand, who were troubled by
allegations of some of Columbus’ acts),
a woman who verbally insulted Columbus’ family
was stripped naked and made to ride around the
colony on a mule. After the trip was done, her tongue
was cut out by the order of Columbus’ brother,
Bartolomé, who Columbus then congratulated
for successfully defending the family’s honor.
Needless to say, these and numerous other
such acts ultimately resulted in De Bobadilla
having Columbus removed from power
and sent back to Spain in chains.

After Columbus came, and was forced out,
the Spaniards continued his policy of
enslavement and violence. In 1552,
the Spanish historian and friar
Bartolome de las Casas published
multiple volumes under the title
The History of Indies. In it, he described
the collapse of the non-European population.
Casas writes that when the men were captured
and forced to work in mines looking for gold,
rarely if ever returning home, it significantly
impacted the birth rate. If a woman did
give birth, she would be so overworked
herself and malnourished, that she often
could not produce enough milk for the baby.
He even reported that some of the women
“drowned their babies from sheer desperation.”

There are lot more examples, writings,
and research that points to one fact
– Christopher Columbus was a lamentable
individual. Nobody’s perfect- if we restricted
celebrated individuals to those who didn’t
have any major flaws, we’d have few humans
to celebrate- and it’s extremely important
to view things in the context of the time
individuals lived in. But even in his age,
many of his acts were considered deplorable
by his peers, which is in no small part why
Columbus was arrested for his conduct
in the New World. Combined with his
truly historic and widespread impact being
incidental to what he was actually trying to do
(so a little hard to celebrate him for even
that side of his life), maybe it is time that
we let go of the myths we learned about
Christopher Columbus in elementary school
and stop celebrating Columbus, the man.

First published in Todayifoundout.com
10 October 2016

By Franklin Lamb

Aleppo University Faculty of Law, Aleppo, Syria: Contrary to most recent media reports, and frankly to this observer’s surprise, forces defending both rebel controlled East Aleppo as well as government controlled West Aleppo during the unrelenting slaughter of this savage war, do sometimes appear restrained in their attacks.

This observer does occasionally sense some concern among belligerents for civilian casualties. But the few eye-witnessed cases of battlefield restraint pale when compared to the heavy and seemingly indiscriminate bombardment of civilian areas during which neither side appears hesitant when it comes to mass homicide.

Global demands to stop the bloodshed in Aleppo and across Syria have reached a crescendo unseen since the days of the 2003 U.S. non-UN sanctioned invasion of Iraq. UN Resolution 2139 recently demanded access to besieged areas in Syria and compliance with International Humanitarian Law including safe passage for civilians from conflict zones and the unimpeded passage for aid workers into those zones. These demands continue to be flagrantly ignored.

The United Nations humanitarian agency (OCHA) declared this week that eastern Aleppo now met all three criteria used to define an area as besieged in violation of International Humanity Law. The three criteria are military encirclement, lack of humanitarian access and the lack of free movement for civilians. East Aleppo becomes the 18th UN designated besieged area in Syria according to the U.N.
One of literally hundreds of examples in Aleppo of internationally-banned weapons which cause “superfluous injury or unnecessary suffering or which are “inherently indiscriminate” such as cluster bombs, barrel bombs, rebel ‘Hell Cannons’ or incendiary weapons. Photo: Franklin Lamb
According to a 10/5/2016 U.N. Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs Update on Aleppo, half of the estimated 275,000 Syrians intensely besieged in eastern Aleppo want to flee due to the non-stop intense air campaigns targeting hospitals, schools, markets, Mosques, Churches and other civilian institutions as food supplies run very thin. The UN claims that as cold weather approaches, people are being driven to burning plastic for cooking fuel as the blocking of cooking gas makes it essentially impossible to cook what little food remains.The same UN report documents countless civilians rummaging through the rubble of destroyed buildings to salvage any flammable material that can be used for cooking.Food prices in Aleppo continue to skyrocket on 10/5/2016 and siege blocked market inventories are near depletion. The UN reports that this week mothers are tying ropes around their stomachs or drinking large amounts of water to reduce the feeling of hunger and prioritize food for their children. Civilians are walking up to 2 km to fetch water, which is available only from boreholes, and the water situation across the city is “of grave humanitarian concern”, the UN claims.The cause of these conditions are war crimes.

The United States and other Western countries claim Moscow and Damascus are guilty of war crimes in deliberately targeting civilians, hospitals and aid deliveries for more than 250,000 people trapped under siege in Aleppo, but the Syrian and Russian governments insist they target only militants. The war in Syria increasingly postulates a war without end and without humanitarian law in which civilians are not just caught in the crossfire or are somehow collateral damage—Syrians are increasingly being besieged, targeted, starved and used as weapons of war.

Speaking recently before the UN General Assembly, the UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon drew a bleak but accurate picture of the Syrian crisis: “Present in this hall today are representatives of governments that have ignored, facilitated, funded, participated in or even planned and carried out atrocities inflicted by all sides of the Syria conflict against Syrian civilians. Many groups have killed innocent civilians and are suspected of committing war crimes …”

Despite the growing international demand for an immediate ceasefire and full accountability for war crimes in Syria, there are plenty of sectarian and other partisans, as well as paid political water carriers on both sides of the conflict asserting that there have been no war crimes committed by their forces. Constant denials of responsibility for war crimes are widely disbelieved yet disrespect for the UN and its institutions is a spreading problem, as seen by the apparent impunity enjoyed by those who increasingly attack or hinder UN aid workers and humanitarian organizations.These claims of no war crimes in Syria are politically peddled despite the collection and documentation of massive crimes by highly skilled and experienced forensic and prosecutorial investigators working across Syria perhaps more than during any armed conflict in history.They are gathering volumes of direct eyewitness, forensic, circumstantial, relevant, material and probative evidence documenting war crimes.Their findings will be submitted to anincreasingly likely International Tribunal on Syria.

There is an ample and effective body of international treaty and customary humanitarian law to achieve justice for victims of war crimes in Syria. A brief summary includes the International Treaties on the Laws of War first formulated in the mid-1800s. Most, including The Hague Conventions, adopted in 1899 and in 1907, dealt mainly with the treatment of combatants not civilians. Following World War II the UN system sponsored the 1949 Geneva Conventions and then the 1977 Protocol which for the first time articulated a general internationally agreed category of “war crimes” protecting civilians as well. The 1977 Protocols added to the body of international humanitarian law were specifically designed to erase any distinction between civilian and combatant.

In broad terms, the Geneva Conventions and Protocol form the basis of the 1998 Rome Statute, the founding treaty of the world’s only permanent court for prosecuting war crimes — the International Criminal Court (ICC).Article 8 of the Rome Statute sets out more than 50 examples of war crimes. They include, but are not limited to the willful killing, torture, taking of hostages, unlawful deportations, intentionally directing attacks against civilians not taking part in hostilities, and deliberately attacking aid and peacekeeping missions. In addition, they outlaw the use of poisonous gases; internationally-banned weapons which cause “superfluous injury or unnecessary suffering or which are “inherently indiscriminate” such as cluster bombs or incendiary weapons. International law is clear. The systematic use of indiscriminate weapons in densely populated areas is a war crime as is the use of bullets “which expand and flatten inside the human body.”

Other war crimes being widely committed in Syria include, “acts committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population.” (Rome Statute) War crimes include acts committed in detention centers: torture, murder, rape, enforced disappearance, illegal imprisonment, and persecution. Every time one of the warring parties blocks the U.N. or NGO’s or ICRC or Syrian Arab Red Crescent Society (SARCS) aid from reaching civilians under siege—as has been done routinely in Syria since early 2012, it’s a punishable War Crime. These acts are equally a Crime against Humanity as they are acts of extermination, encompassing the deprivation of access to food and medicine, calculated to bring about the destruction of part of a population.

Other war crimes being committed daily, indeed seemingly hourly, in Syria include the willful killing; wanton and excessive destruction of property beyond military necessity; compelling prisoners of war to fight on behalf of their captors; intentional attacks directed against civilians; intentional attacks directed against humanitarian personnel such as SARCS and the White Helmets rescue volunteers, and attacked against installations, and vehicles; bombardment of undefended towns, villages, or buildings; murdering prisoners of war; intentionally attacking markets, schools, and hospitals; mutilations; pillaging; the use of chemical weapons, including “asphyxiating gases”; and intentionally starving civilians as a method of warfare, while willfully impeding relief supplies and using civilian suffering as a weapon of war as in“surrender and you can eat again.”

This observer rejects the arguments being heard these days that the world is not ready, legally or politically, for broader and stricter international humanitarian law accountability. On the contrary, the international judicial community has had ample experience in achieving justice for many civilian victims of war crimes by applying international humanitarian law. And over the past twenty years it has increased dramatically.

The first high-profile war crimes trials of the modern era were held in Nuremberg and Tokyo in tribunals set up by the Allies to try German and Japanese leaders. In May 1993, at the height of the Balkans wars, the United Nations established the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) based in The Hague. Since its inception, the ICTY has indicted 161 people, of whom 83 have been sentenced, including former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic. Following the genocide in Rwanda, the UN then set up the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda in 1994 in Arusha to prosecute those behind the killings of at least 800,000 people. Both courts highlighted the need for a permanent war crimes tribunal, which gave rise to the International Criminal Court.

Prosecutions at the ICC began work in The Hague in 2003; a year after its statute came into force. To date, 124 countries have signed up to the statute, including 34 from Africa — the biggest regional group — and 28 from Latin America and the Caribbean. A country that has signed up to the treaty or whose citizens have been the victims of crimes may refer cases to the ICC’s chief prosecutor, for investigation. Cases may also be referred by the United Nations Security Council or the prosecutor can initiate her own investigations with permission from the judges providing member states are involved, or a non-member state can agree to accept the court’s jurisdiction. Any group or individual can report alleged crimes, but it is up to prosecutor to first see whether they fall under her jurisdiction. So far 23 cases have been brought before the court, and four verdicts — three guilty, one acquittal — have been issued. Preliminary inquiries or full investigations are also ongoing into situations in 19 countries or territories, with charges yet to be brought. So far 23 cases have been brought before the court, and four verdicts — three guilty, one acquittal — have been issued. Preliminary inquiries or full investigations are also ongoing into situations in 19 countries or territories, with charges yet to be brought.

With respect to Syria, none of the major players in the complex conflict — Russia, the United States, Iran and Saudi Arabia have ratified the Rome Statute so an ICC prosecutor would need a UN mandate to investigate any alleged crimes committed by the government or the rebels, including the use of chemical weapons. Earlier attempts to refer Syria to the ICC were vetoed at the UN Security Council in 2014 by Russia and China, to the dismay of human rights groups. Neither country is likely to change its stance in the short term with respect to Syria..

So will any of the alleged war crimes in Syria ever be tried in an international court with criminal jurisdiction such as the ICC?

This observer believes they will be. Recent rejections of international accountability by various parties should be viewed against the growing global demand for war crimes accountability in Syria and elsewhere. It is submitted that the clear trend of history is toward the expansion and application of international humanitarian law and those who seek to block it for political purposes, currently Russia and China, may subject themselves to biting international sanctions. Indeed, there is some reason to believe that even the perfidious UN Security Council “veto problem” can be resolved as part of a package of much demanded, needed and overdue and UN reforms.For example, on 10/4/2016, U.N. rights chief ZeidRa’ad Al Hussein urged the Security Council to introduce a limit on its five permanent members’ veto power, to prevent countries from blocking the referral of conflicts to the International Criminal Court in The Hague and to uphold International Humanitarian Law

In summation, a Special Tribunal for Syria will have available to it ample solid international humanitarian law and solid compelling prosecutorial evidence of massive crimes committed in Syria since March 2011. In the vast majority of cases it will very likely be able to adjudicate who individually committed war crime and/or under whose command, the heinous crimes were committed.

The problem with bringing some justice to the victims of the war is Syria is not for want of applicable international humanitarian law pertaining to the nearly two dozen categories of war crimes. Nor is it an absence of evidence of who committed the crimes. A Special Tribunal for Syria will likely exhibit the judicial professionalism and competence of preceding International Tribunals including the Special Tribunal for Lebanon. That International Tribunal has been working painstakingly for years, and while some have criticized the STL, claiming it’s a political witch-hunt of some kind, the STL’slaborious work, which this observer has been studying, employsthe highest international judicial standards of due process and may well bemodel for a future International Tribunal seeking accountability for war crimes in Syria.

What a SpecialTribunal for Syria will surely face is geopolitical maneuvering on the part of some countries to avoid justice for themselves and/or selected proxies. Butthe Tribunal can deal with such procedural issues and will have the backing of the UN General Assembly, which more accurately that the Security Council reflects the values and aspirations of the global community.

One area in which work can begin today that will help achieve significant justice for victims of warcrimes committed in Syria, would be for the UN and global community to encourage the following four concrete steps that this observer believes can significantly facilitate the application of international humanitarian law before a Special Tribunal for Syria.

Firstly, each of the five permanent members of the Security Council,China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States should immediately appoint a full-time Humanitarian Envoy with the personal mandate of their head of government. The Humanitarian Envoys would work closely with the UN Humanitarian Coordinator, supporters of the belligerents and other third parties and NGO’s to gather facts and pool information from the ground about violations of UN resolutions and breeches international humanitarian law, including but not limited to those discussed above. Their full time humanitarian mandate would be the implementation of UN Resolutions and International Humanitarian Law as opposed to the political work of the Special Envoy for Syria or the UN Envoy for Syria.

Secondly, the Humanitarian Envoys of the UN Security Council’s five permanent members would be tasked with expanding access and support for cross-border transfers of relief supplies quickly and safely to civilians in rebel-held areas as demanded in various UN resolutions and the Fourth Geneva Convention and its related protocols.

The Humanitarian Envoys would have the sole authority to negotiate, mediate and arbitrate access across conflict lines during Syria’s civil war with credible interlocutors and would pressure all sides to comply with relevant UN Resolutions and provisions of International Humanitarian Law.

The five UN Humanitarian Envoys would also be mandated to work with all governments involved in the Syrian crisis who are to be held accountable for the humanitarian consequences of their funded and armed proxies on the ground.

And finally the UN Humanitarian Envoys will work with NGOs inside opposition-held areas of Syria with respect to logistical and supply chain support, including capacity mapping of transport providers and vetted partners. All work to be designed and applied to help the civilian population of Syria and to encourage Syrian refugees forced to flee to other countries to return to their beloved Syria, our globally shared Cradle of Civilization.

People of good will cannot simply walk away from Syria when the fighting ends. Any peace agreement must include International Humanitarian Law accountability. Perhaps administered bya hybrid Special Tribunal Court based in Syria with local and international prosecutors and judges.

And what will also help guarantee much, if not perfect justice for the innocent victims of Syria’s nearly unprecedented 68 month carnage, and assure its future relevance post-Aleppo,is our mutual respect for, and the application of, the principles, standards and rules of existing International Humanitarian Law.

In the end it is up to all of us, from 197 populations whosecountries have UN Membership and who share a commondutyto help achieve the UnitedNations mandateofArticles 41 and 42 of the UN Charter which is to maintain or restore international peace and security for all of us. As well as to support the main motivation for the 1945 creation of the United Nationssystemwhich is:“To save succeeding generations from the scourge of war.”

Franklin Lamb volunteers with the Lebanon, France, and USA based Meals for Syrian Refugee Children Lebanon (MSRCL) which works to provide hot nutritional meals to Syrian and other refugee children in Lebanon.http://mealsforsyrianrefugeechildrenlebanon.com. He is reachable c/o fplamb@gmail.com.

7 October 2016

By Chris Hedges

A decade ago left-wing governments, defying Washington and global corporations, took power in Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay, Venezuela, Uruguay, Bolivia and Ecuador. It seemed as if the tide in Latin America was turning. The interference by Washington and exploitation by international corporations might finally be defeated. Latin American governments, headed by charismatic leaders such as Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in Brazil, Evo Morales in Bolivia and Rafael Correa in Ecuador, won huge electoral victories. They instituted socialist reforms that benefited the poor and the working class. They refused to be puppets of the United States. They took control of their nations’ own resources and destinies. They mounted the first successful revolt againstneoliberalism and corporate domination. It was a revolt many in the United States hoped to emulate here.

But the movements and governments in Latin America have fallen prey to the dark forces of U.S. imperialism and the wrath of corporate power. The tricks long practiced by Washington and its corporate allies have returned—the black propaganda; the manipulation of the media; the bribery and corruption of politicians, generals, police, labor leaders and journalists; the legislative coups d’état; the economic strangulation; the discrediting of democratically elected leaders; the criminalization of the left; and the use of death squads to silence and disappear those fighting on behalf of the poor. It is an old, dirty game.

President Correa, who earned enmity from Washington for granting political asylum toJulian Assange four years ago and for closing the United States’ Manta military air base in 2009, warned recently that a new version of Operation Condor is underway in Latin America. Operation Condor, which operated in the 1970s and ’80s, saw thousands of labor union organizers, community leaders, students, activists, politicians, diplomats, religious leaders, journalists and artists tortured, assassinated and disappeared. The intelligence chiefs from right-wing regimes in Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Paraguay, Uruguay and, later, Brazil had overseen the campaigns of terror. They received funds from the United States and logistical support and training from the Central Intelligence Agency. Press freedom, union organizing, all forms of artistic dissent and political opposition were abolished. In a coordinated effort these regimes brutally dismembered radical and leftist movements across Latin America. In Argentina alone 30,000 people disappeared.

Latin America looks set to be plunged once again into a period of dictatorial control and naked corporate exploitation. The governments of Ecuador, Bolivia and Venezuela, which is on the brink of collapse, have had to fight off right-wing coup attempts and are enduring economic sabotage. The Brazilian Senate impeached the democratically elected President Dilma Rousseff. Argentina’s new right-wing president, Mauricio Macri, bankrolled by U.S. hedge funds, promptly repaid his benefactors by handing $4.65 billion to four hedge funds, including Elliott Management, run by billionaire Paul Singer. The payout to hedge fundsthat had bought Argentine debt for pennies on the dollar meant that Singer’s firm made $2.4 billion, an amount that was 10 to 15 times the original investment. The previous Argentine government, under Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, had refused to pay the debt acquired by the hedge funds and acidly referred to them as “vulture funds.”

I interviewed Guillaume Long, Ecuador’s minister of foreign affairs and human mobility, for my show “On Contact” last week. Long, who earned a doctorate from the Institute for the Study of the Americas at the University of London, called at the United Nations for the creation of a global tax regulatory agency. He said such an agency should force tax-dodging corporations, which the International Monetary Fund estimates costs developing countries more than $200 billion a year in lost revenue, to pay the countries for the natural resources they extract and for national losses stemming from often secret corporate deals. He has also demanded an abolition of overseas tax havens.

Long said the neoliberal economic policies of the 1980s and ’90s were profoundly destructive in Latin America. Already weak economic controls were abandoned in the name of free trade and deregulation. International corporations and banks were given a license to exploit. “This deregulation in an already deregulated environment” resulted in anarchy, Long said. “The powerful people had even less checks and balances on their powers,” he said.

“Neoliberalism is bad in most contexts,” Long said when we spoke in New York. “It’s been bad in Europe. It’s been bad in other parts of the world. It has dismantled the welfare state. In the context where we already have a weak state, where institutions are not consolidated, where there are strong feudal remnants, such as in Latin America, where you don’t really have a strong social contract with institutions, with modernity, neoliberalism just shatters any kind of social pact. It meant more poverty, more inequality, huge waves of instability.”

Countries saw basic services, many already inadequate, curtailed or eliminated in the name of austerity. The elites amassed fortunes while almost everyone else fell into economic misery. The political and economic landscape became unstable. Ecuador had seven presidents between 1996 and 2006, the year in which Correa was elected. It suffered a massive banking crisis in 1999. It switched the country’s currency to the U.S. dollar in desperation. The chaos in Ecuador was mirrored in countries such as Bolivia and Argentina. Argentina fell into a depression in 1998 that saw the economy shrink by 28 percent. Over 50 percent of Argentines were thrust into poverty.

“Latin America,” Long said, “hit rock bottom.”

It was out of this neoliberal morass that the left regrouped and took power.

“People came to terms with that moment of their history,” Long said. “They decided to rebuild their societies and fight foreign interventionism and I’d even say imperialism. To this day in Latin America, the main issue is inequality. Latin America is not necessarily the poorest continent in the world. But it’s certainly the most unequal continent in the world.”

“Ecuador is an oil producer,” Long said. “We produce about 530,000 barrels of oil a day. We were getting 20 percent royalties on multinationals extracting oil. Now it’s the other way around. We pay multinationals a fee for extractions. We had to renegotiate all of our oil contracts in 2008 and 2009. Some multinationals refused to abide by the new rules of the game and left the country. So our state oil company moved in and occupied the wells. But most multinationals said OK, we’ll do it, it’s still profitable. So now it’s the other way around. We pay private companies to extract the oil, but the oil is ours.”

Long admitted that there have been serious setbacks, but he insisted that the left is not broken.

“It depends on how you measure success,” he said. “If you’re going to measure it in terms of longevity, and how long these governments were in power—in our case we’re still in power, of course, and we’re going to win in February next year—then you’re looking at, more or less in Venezuela 17 years [that leftist governments have been in power], in Ecuador now 10, and in Argentina and Brazil it’s 13.”

“One of the critiques aimed at the left is they’re well-meaning, great people with good ideas but don’t let them govern because the country will go bust,” he said. “But in Ecuador we had really healthy growth rates, 5 to 10 percent a year. We had lots of good economics. We diversified our economy. We moved away from importing 80 percent of energy to [being] net exporters of electricity. We’ve had big reforms in education, in higher education. Lots of things that are economically successful. Whereas neoliberal, orthodox economics was not successful in the previous decade.”

Long conceded that his government had made powerful enemies, not only by granting political asylum to Assange in its embassy in London but by taking Chevron Texaco to court to try to make it pay for the ecological damage its massive oil spills caused in the Amazon, where the company drilled from the early 1960s until it pulled out in 1992. It left behind some 1,000 toxic waste pits. The oil spills collectively were 85 times the size of the British Petroleum spill in the Gulf of Mexico and 18 times the size of the spill from the Exxon Valdez. An Ecuadorean court ordered Chevron Texaco to pay $18.2 billion in damages, an amount later reduced to $9.5 billion. The oil giant, however, has refused to pay. Ecuador has turned to international courts in an attempt to extract the money from the company.

Long said that the different between the massive oil spills elsewhere and the Ecuadorean spills was that the latter were not accidental. “[They were done] on purpose in order to cut costs. They were in the middle of the Amazon. Normally what you’d do is extract the oil and you’d have these membranes so that it doesn’t filter through into the ground. They didn’t put in these membranes. The oil filtered into the water systems. It polluted all of the Amazon River system. It created a huge sanitary and public health issue. There were lots of cancers detected.”

Long said his government was acutely aware that Chevron Texaco has “a lot of lobbying power in the United States, in Wall Street, in Washington.”

“There are a lot of things we don’t see,” he said of the campaign to destabilize his government and other left-wing governments. “Benefits we could reap, investments we don’t get because we’ve been sovereign. In the case of [Ecuador’s closing of the U.S.] Manta air base, we’d like to think the American government understood and it was fine. But it was a bold move. We said ‘no more.’ We declared it in our constitution. We had a new constitution in 2008. It was a very vibrant moment of our history. We created new rules of the game. It’s one of the most progressive constitutions in the world. It actually declares the rights of nature. It’s the only constitution that declares the rights of nature, not just the rights of man. We made Ecuadorean territory free of foreign military bases. There was no other way. But there are consequences to your actions.”

One of those consequences was an abortive coup in September 2010 by members of the Ecuadorean National Police. It was put down by force. Long charged that many of the Western NGO’s in Ecuador and throughout the region are conduits for money to right-wing parties. Military and police officials, along with some politicians, have long been on the CIA’s payroll in Latin America. President Correa in 2008 dismissed his defense minister, army chief of intelligence, commanders of the army and air force, and the military joint chiefs, saying that Ecuador’s intelligence systems were “totally infiltrated and subjugated to the CIA.”

“There is an international conspiracy right now, certainly against progressive governments,” he said. “There’s been a few electoral setbacks in Argentina, and Venezuela is in a difficult situation. The media frames it in a certain way, but, yes, sure, Venezuela is facing serious trouble. There’s an attempt to make the most of the fall of prices of certain commodities and overthrow [governments]. We just saw a parliamentary coup in Brazil. [President Rousseff had been] elected with 54 million votes. The Labor Party in Brazil [had] been in power for 13 years. The only way they [the rightists] managed to get rid of it was through a coup. They couldn’t do it through universal suffrage.”

Long said that even with the political reverses suffered by the left it will be difficult for the rightists to reinstate strict neoliberal policies.

“You have a strong, disputed political ground between a traditional right and a radical left,” he said. “A radical left, which has proved it can reduce poverty, it can reduce inequality, it can run the economy, well, it’s got young cadres that have been [government] ministers and so on. I reckon that sooner or later it will be back in power.”

Corporate leviathans and the imperialist agencies that work on their behalf are once again reshaping Latin America into havens for corporate exploitation. It is the eternal story of the struggle by the weak against the strong, the poor against the rich, the powerless against the powerful, and those who would be free against the forces of imperialism.

“There are no boundaries in this struggle to the death,” Ernesto “Che” Guevara said. “We cannot be indifferent to what happens anywhere in the world, for a victory by any country over imperialism is our victory; just as any country’s defeat is a defeat for all of us.”

Chris Hedges writes a regular column for Truthdig.com. Hedges graduated from Harvard Divinity School and was for nearly two decades a foreign correspondent for The New York Times. He is the author of many books, including: War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning,What Every Person Should Know About War, and American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America. His most recent book is Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle.

First published by Truthdig

© 2016 TruthDig

4 October 2016

By Robert Parry

The U.S. news media flip-flops on whether international law is inviolate or can be brushed aside at America’s whim – and similarly whether killing civilians is justified or not depending on who’s doing the killing, says Robert Parry.

Over the past few decades, the U.S. mainstream media has failed the American people in a historic fashion by spinning false or misleading narratives on virtually every important global issue, continuing to this day to guide the nation into destructive and unnecessary conflicts.

To me, a major turning point came with the failure of the major news organizations to get anywhere near the bottom of the Iran-Contra scandal, including its origins in illicit contacts between Republicans and Iranians during the 1980 campaign and the Reagan administration’s collaboration with drug traffickers to support the Contra war in Nicaragua. (Instead, the major U.S. media disparaged reporting on these very real scandals.)

If these unsavory stories had been fully explained to the American people, their impression of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush would be far less favorable and the rise of Reagan’s neocon underlings might well have been halted. Instead the neocons consolidated their dominance over Official Washington’s foreign policy establishment and Bush’s inept son was allowed to take the White House in 2001.

Then, one might have thought that the disastrous invasion of Iraq in 2003 – justified by a legion of lies – would have finally doomed the neocons but, by then, they had deeply penetrated the national news media and major think tanks, with their influence reaching not only across the Republican Party but deeply into the Democratic Party as well.

So, despite the Iraq catastrophe, almost nothing changed. The neocons and their liberal interventionist chums continued to fabricate narratives that have led the United States into one mess after another, seeking more and more “regime change” and brushing aside recommendations for peaceful resolution of international crises.

Cognitive Dissonance

As part of this phenomenon, there is profound cognitive dissonance as the rationales shift depending on the neocons’ tactical needs. From one case to the next, there is no logical or moral consistency, and the major U.S. news organizations go along, failing again and again to expose these blatant hypocrisies.

The U.S. government can stand for a “rules-based” world when that serves its interests but then freely violate international law when it’s decided that “humanitarian warfare” trumps national sovereignty and the United Nations Charter. The latter is particularly easy after a foreign leader has been demonized in the American press, but sovereignty becomes inviolate in other circumstances when Washington is on the side of the killing regimes.

George W. Bush’s administration and the mainstream media justified invading Iraq, in part, by accusing Saddam Hussein of human rights violations. The obvious illegality of the invasion was ignored or dismissed as so much caviling by “Saddam apologists.” Similarly, the Obama administration and media rationalized invading Libya in 2011 under the propagandistic charge that Muammar Gaddafi was planning a mass slaughter of civilians (though he said he was only after Islamic terrorists).

But the same media looks the other way or make excuses when the slaughter of civilians is being done by “allies,” such as Israel against Palestinians or Saudi Arabia against Yemenis. Then the U.S. government even rushes more military supplies so the bombings can continue.

The view of terrorism is selective, too. Israel, Saudi Arabia and other U.S. “allies” in the Persian Gulf have aided and abetted terrorist groups, including Al Qaeda’s Nusra Front, in the war against the largely secular government of Syria. That support for violent subversion followed the U.S. media’s demonization of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Thus, trying to avoid another Iraq-style morass, President Obama faces heavy criticism from neocon-dominated Washington for not doing more to force “regime change” in Syria, although he actually has authorized shipments of sophisticated U.S. weaponry to the supposedly “moderate” opposition, which often operates under Nusra’s command structure.

In other words, it’s okay to intervene overtly and covertly when Official Washington wants to do so, regardless of international law and even if that involves complicity with terrorists. But it’s different when the shoe is on the other foot.

In the case of Ukraine, any Russian assistance to ethnic Russian rebels under assault from a Ukrainian military that includes neo-Nazi battalions, such as the Azov brigade, is impermissible. International law and a “rules-based” structure must be defended by punishing Russia.

The U.S. news media failed its readers again with its one-sided coverage of the 2014 coup that overthrew elected President Viktor Yanukovych, who had undergone another demonization process from U.S. officials and the mainstream press. So, the major U.S. news outlets cheered the coup and saw nothing wrong when the new U.S.-backed regime announced an “Anti-Terrorism Operation” – or ATO – against ethnic Russian Ukrainians who had voted for Yanukovych and considered the coup regime illegitimate.

Early in the crisis, New York Times columnist Nicholas D. Kristof, who has cultivated a reputation as a caring humanitarian, was eager to send more weapons to the Kiev regime and to western Ukrainians (who include his father’s relatives) so they could kill their ethnic Russian neighbors in the east – or “go bear-hunting,” as Kristof put it. By calling Russians “bears,” Kristof was likening their slaughter to the killing of animals.

Yet, in a recent column, Kristof takes a very different posture regarding Syria, where he wants the U.S. military to invade and create so-called “safe zones” and “no-fly zones” to prevent the Syrian army and air force from operating against rebel positions.

Sovereignty means one thing in Ukraine, even following a coup that removed the elected president. There, national borders must be respected (at least after a pro-U.S. regime had been installed) and the regime has every right kill dissenters to assert its authority. After all, it’s just like hunting animals.

But sovereignty means something else in Syria where the U.S. government is called on to intervene on one side in a brutal civil war to prevent the government from regaining control of the country or to obviate the need for a negotiated settlement of the conflict. In Syria, “regime change” trumps all.

Selective Outrage

In the column, Kristof noted other conflicts where the United States supposedly should have done more, calling the failure to invade Syria “a stain on all of us, analogous … to the eyes averted from Bosnia and Rwanda in the 1990s, to Darfur in the 2000s.”

Note again the selectivity of Kristof’s moral outrage. He doesn’t call for a U.S. invasion of Israel/Palestine to protect the Palestinians from Israel’s periodic “mowing the grass” operations. Nor does he suggest bombing the Saudi airfields to prevent the kingdom’s continued bombing of Yemenis. And, he doesn’t protest the U.S.-instigated slaughter in Iraq where hundreds of thousands of people perished, nor does he cite the seemingly endless U.S. war in Afghanistan.

Like many other mainstream pundits, Kristof tailors his humanitarianism to the cause of U.S. global dominance. After all, how long do you think Kristof would last as a well-paid columnist if he advocated a “no-fly zone” inside Israel or a military intervention against Saudi Arabia?

Put differently, how much professional courage does it take to pile on against “black-hatted” U.S. “enemies” after they’ve been demonized? Yet, it was just such a “group think” that cleared the way for the U.S. invasion of Iraq to remove Saddam Hussein, a decision embraced by “liberal hawks” as well as neoconservatives and touching off mass suffering across the Mideast and now into Europe. Some estimates put the Iraqi dead at over one million.

So, it’s worth remembering how The New Yorker, The New York Times and other supposedly “liberal” publications hopped on George W. Bush’s Iraq War bandwagon. They became what Kristof’s former boss, Bill Keller, dubbed “the I-Can’t-Believe-I‘m-a-Hawk Club.” (Keller, by the way, was named the Times executive editor after the Iraq WMD claims had been debunked. Like many of his fellow hawks, there was no accountability for their gullibility or careerism.)

Kristof did not join the club at that time but signed up later, urging a massive bombing campaign in Syria after the Obama administration made now largely discredited claims accusing Bashar al-Assad’s government of launching a sarin gas attack outside Damascus on Aug. 21, 2013.

We now know that President Obama pulled back from those bombing plans, in part, because he was told by U.S. intelligence analysts that they doubted Assad was responsible. The preponderance of evidence now points to a provocation by Al Qaeda-connected rebels to trick the United States into intervening in the civil war on their side, but the mainstream U.S. media continues to report as “flat fact” that Obama failed to enforce his “red line” against Assad using chemical weapons.

Though the Kristof-endorsed bombing campaign in 2013 might well have played into Al Qaeda’s hands (or those of the Islamic State) and thus unleashed even a worse tragedy on the Syrian people, the columnist is still advocating a U.S. invasion of Syria, albeit dressed up in pretty “humanitarian” language. But it should be clear that nice-sounding words like “safe zones” are just euphemisms for “regime change,” as we saw in Libya in 2011.

Forgetting Reality

The U.S. news media also often “forgets” that Obama has authorized the training and arming of so-called “moderate” Syrian rebels with many of them absorbed into the military command of Al Qaeda’s Nusra Front and with sophisticated U.S. weapons, such as TOW anti-tank missiles, showing up in the arsenals of Nusra and its jihadist allies.

In other words, beyond the selective outrage about morality and international law, we see selective reporting. Indeed, across American journalism, there has been a nearly complete abandonment of objectivity when it comes to reporting on U.S. foreign policy. Even liberal and leftist publications now bash anyone who doesn’t join the latest version of “the I-Can’t-Believe-I’m-a-Hawk Club.”

That means that as the neocon-dominated foreign policy establishment continues to push the world toward ever greater catastrophes, now including plans to destabilize nuclear-armed Russia (gee, how could that go wrong?), the U.S. news media is denying the American people the objective information needed to rein in the excesses.

Virtually nothing has been learned from the Iraq War disaster when the U.S. government cast aside negotiations and inspections (along with any appreciation of the complex reality on the ground) in favor of tough-guy/gal posturing. With very few exceptions, the U.S. media simply went along.

Today, the pro-war posturing has spread deeply within the Democratic Party and even among some hawkish leftists who join in the fun of insulting the few anti-war dissenters with the McCarthyite approach of accusing anyone challenging the “group think” on Syria or Russia of being an “Assad apologist” or a “Putin stooge.”

At the Democratic National Convention, some of Hillary Clinton’s delegates even chanted “USA, USA” to drown out the cries of Bernie Sanders’s delegates, who pleaded for “no more war.” On a larger scale, the mainstream U.S. news media has essentially ignored or silenced anyone who deviates from the neocon-dominated conventional wisdom.

Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest book, America’s Stolen Narrative,either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnobl e.com).

17 August 2016

By Nick Beams

Eight years after the eruption of the global financial crisis, the conditions are being created for another meltdown of even bigger proportions, amid rising geo-political and economic tensions between the major capitalist powers.

This is the implication of three reports issued by the International Monetary Fund in preparation for its annual meeting, which begins in Washington today. The World Economic Outlook reported lower growth in all the advanced economies, underscoring the lack of a genuine recovery in the global economy, while two financial reports pointed to mounting instability resulting from the injection by central banks of trillions of dollars into the world financial system.

Taken together, the reports point to the underlying economic contradictions that are fuelling a series of crises. These include slowing world trade and rising protectionist measures, the row between the US and the European Union over tax payments by Apple, the move by the US Justice Department to impose a $14 billion penalty on Deutsche Bank, the breakdown in talks on the US-sponsored Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, and accusations from politicians in Berlin that the US is waging “economic warfare.”

The increasing instability of the financial system was highlighted in the IMF’s twice-yearly Fiscal Monitor report issued on Wednesday. It found that debt in the nonfinancial sector of the world economy had doubled in nominal terms since the turn of the century, reaching $152 trillion last year and continuing to rise.

Current debt levels are 225 percent of global gross domestic product (GDP), rising from 200 percent in 2002. The IMF said that while there was no consensus on how much debt was too much, current debt levels, of which two-thirds is privately held, were at a record high.

There was a need for deleveraging, but the current low-growth environment was making “the adjustment very difficult, setting the stage for a vicious feedback loop in which lower growth hampers deleveraging and the debt overhang exacerbates the slowdown.”

The report said the debt overhang problem, characterised as a situation in which the borrower’s debt service liability exceeds its future repayment capacity, “resides squarely within advanced economies’ private sector.”

While the IMF did not make the point, its analysis exposes the claim that too much government spending is the cause of mounting financial problems. According to the Fiscal Monitor report, the easing of restrictions on credit meant that nonfinancial private-sector debt in the major economies increased by 35 percent of GDP in the years leading up to the global financial crisis.

Significantly, there was a rapid rise in household debt in this period. The report did not point to the reasons, but two major factors undoubtedly were the low level of wage increases, forcing increased borrowing, and the surge in house prices in a number of countries, itself a product of credit expansion. The IMF noted that in some countries—Australia, Canada and Singapore—private-sector debt had continued to accumulate at a fast pace.

The report found that public debt, which makes up one-third of the total, had risen from 70 percent of global GDP to 85 percent. But almost half of this increase was a result of low nominal growth. In other words, far from the rise in government debt being the result of “profligate” spending on health, pensions and social services—the mantra of those demanding austerity—its expansion is rooted in the ongoing stagnation following the 2008 financial crisis.

A second financial report, Global Financial Stability, drew out the growing risks to the financial system. It said that while short-term risks had abated since the previous report in April, “the medium-term risks are building.” The continued slowdown in global growth had prompted financial markets to expect a continued period of low inflation, low interest rates and “an even longer delay in normalizing monetary policy.”

It warned, however, that some monetary policies, such as negative interest rates, were “reaching the limits of their effectiveness, and the medium-term side effects of low rates are rising for banks and other financial institutions.”

Pension funds and insurance companies, which are dependent for their financing on investment in long-term government bonds, were particularly adversely affected, with their solvency “threatened by a prolonged period of low interest rates.”

Financial institutions as a whole in the advanced economies faced a “number of cyclical and structural challenges and need to adapt to the new era of low growth and low interest rates.” If these challenges were left unaddressed, it “could undermine financial soundness.”

These problems go to the very heart of the capitalist financial system—the banks. The report stated that weak profitability could “erode banks’ buffers and undermine their ability to support growth.” Even if there were a cyclical recovery in the economy, this would not resolve the problems of low profitability. “Over 25 percent of banks in advanced economies (about $11.7 trillion in assets) would remain weak and face significant structural challenges,” with the problems concentrated in the European and Japanese banking sector.

“In the euro area,” the report stated, “excessive nonperforming loans and structural drags on profitability require urgent and comprehensive action.” Reducing nonperforming loans and addressing deficiencies in capital were a priority.

The mounting financial problems, while concentrated in the advanced economies, are not confined to them. The report found that in emerging market economies, around 11 percent of corporate debt, over $400 billion, was held by firms with “weak repayment capacity.”

High debt levels and excess capacity made it difficult for these companies to “grow out of the problem” which left them “sensitive to downside external or domestic developments,” and if interest rates started to rise and earnings fell, “such a scenario would exhaust bank capital buffers in some emerging markets.”

Another area of concern was China, where “continued rapid credit growth… and expanding shadow banking products pose mounting risks to financial stability.” The rapidly growing financial system “is becoming increasingly leveraged and interconnected, and a variety of innovative vehicles and products are adding to the complexity.” Corporate debt at risk remained high and “underlying risks from non-loan credit exposures add to these challenges.”

The three reports point to the deepening contradictions of the global capitalist system. The IMF has insisted that in the absence of any cyclical rise of the economy, monetary policy alone cannot bring about a recovery, and government infrastructure and other spending is necessary to provide a boost.

But such spending would increase debt and would depend on interest rates remaining low. Ultra-low interest rates, however, are increasingly undermining the stability of banks and other financial institutions, creating the conditions for another financial crisis, which will further inflame the already high level of geo-political and economic conflict.

First published in WSWS.org

7 October 2016