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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

By Andre Vltchek

“Information Clearing House” – It is tough to fight any real war. And it takes true guts, discipline and determination to win it.

For years and decades, the so-called ‘left’ in the West has been moderately critical of North American (and sometimes even of European) imperialism and neo-colonialism. But whenever some individual or country rose up and began openly challenging the Empire, most of the Western left-wing intellectuals simply closed their eyes, and refused to offer their full, unconditional support to those who were putting their lives (and often even the existence of their countries) on the line.

I will never forget all those derogatory punches directed at Hugo Chavez, punches coming from members of the ‘anti-Communist left’, after he dared to insult George W. Bush at the United Nations in 2006, calling him a “devil” and choking, theatrically, from the sulfur that was still ‘hanging in the air’ after the US President’s appearance at the General Assembly.

I will not be dropping names here, but readers would be surprised if they knew how many of those iconic leaders of the US left described Chavez and his speech as ‘impolite’, ‘counter-productive’, and even ‘insulting’.

Tens of millions of people have died because of Western imperialism, after WWII. Under the horrid leadership of George W Bush, Afghanistan and Iraq have been reduced to ruins… But one has to remain ‘polite’, ‘objective’ and cool headed?

Well, that is not how real revolutions have been ignited. This is not how the successful anti-colonialist wars are fought. When the real battle begins, ‘politeness’ is actually mostly unacceptable, simply because the oppressed masses are endlessly pissed off, and they want their feelings to be registered and expressed by the leaders. Even the search for ‘objectivity’ is often out of place, when still fragile revolutions have to face the entire monumental hostile propaganda of the regime – of the Empire.

But the question is: do most of the Western leftists really support revolutions and anti-colonialist struggles of the oppressed world?

I believe they don’t. And this is clearly visible from reading most of the so-called alternative media in both North America and Europe.

Whoever stands up, whoever leads his nation into battle against the Western global dictatorship, is almost immediately defined as a demagogue. He or she is most likely christened ‘undemocratic’, and not just by the mass and ‘liberal’ media, but also on the pages of the so-called ‘alternative’ and ‘progressive’ Western press. Not all, but some, and frankly: most of it!

Chavez actually received very little support from Western ‘left-wing’ intellectuals. And now when Venezuela is bleeding, the ‘Bolivarian Republic’ can only count on a handful of revolutionary Latin American nations, as well as on China, Iran and Russia; definitely not on the robust, organized and militant solidarity from Western countries.

Cuba received even less support than Venezuela. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, no attempt was actually made by Western leftists to bail the heroic nation out. It was China, in the end, which ran to its rescue and saved Cuban socialism. (When I wrote about it, I got hundreds of Western leftists at my throat, and in the end it took Fidel to confirm, in his ‘Reflections’, what I was saying, to get them off my back). Then, when the Obama administration began making dangerous advances on Havana, almost everyone in the West began screwing those cynical grimaces: ‘you see; now everything will collapse! They will buy Cuba!’ They didn’t. I travelled to the beloved green island, and it was so clear from the first moment there, that the ‘revolution is not for sale’. But you will not read it often in the Western ‘progressive’ media.

It is of course not just Latin America that is ‘disliked’ by the progressives in the West. Actually, Latin America is still at least getting some nominal support there.

China and Russia, two powerful nations, which are now standing openly against Western imperialism, are despised by virtually all ‘liberals’ and by most of the Western ‘left’. In those circles, there is total ignorance about the Chinese type of democracy, about its ancient culture, and about it’s complex but extremely successful form of Communism (or calls it ‘socialism with Chinese characteristics’). Like parrots, the Western leftists repeat ‘liberal’ propaganda that ‘China is being capitalist’, or that it is being ruled by ‘state capitalism’. The internationalism of Chinese foreign policy is constantly played down, even mocked.

The hostility of the Western ‘left’ towards China has disgusted many Chinese leaders and intellectuals. I only realized the extent of this revulsion, when I spoke, last year, at the First World Cultural Forum in Beijing, and mingled with the thinkers at the China Academy of Social Sciences, the right (intellectual) arm of the government and the Party.

China can count on its allies in Russia, Latin America, Africa and elsewhere, but definitely not in the West.

It is pointless to even mention Russia or South Africa.

Russia, ‘the victim’ during the horrid Yeltsin years was ‘embraced’ by the Western left. Russia the warrior, Russia the adversary to Western imperialism, is, once again, loathed.

It appears that the ‘progressives’ in the United States and Europe really prefer ‘victims’. They can, somehow, feel pity and even write a few lines about the ‘suffering of defenseless women and children’ in the countries that the West is plundering and raping. That does not extend to all countries that are being brutalized, but at least to some…

What they don’t like at all, are strong men and women that have decided to fight: to defend their rights, to face the Empire.

The Syrian government is hated. The North Korean government is despised. The President of the Philippines is judged by Western liberal media measures: as a vulgar freak who is killing thousands of ‘innocent’ drug pushers and consumers (definitely not as a possibly new Sukarno who is willing to send the entire West to hell).

Whatever the Western ‘left’ thinks about North Korea and its government (and in fact, I think, it cannot really think much, as it is fully ignorant about it), the main reason why the DPRK is hated so much by the West regime, is because it, together with Cuba, basically liberated Africa. It fought for the freedom of Angola and Namibia, it flew Egyptian MIGs against Israel, it struggled in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) as well as in many other countries, and it sent aid, teachers and doctors to the entire continent devastated by the Western colonialist barbarity.

Much good it received in return! At best, indifference, at worse, total spite!

Some say that the Western ‘left’ doesn’t want to take power, anymore. It lost all of its important battles. It became toothless, impotent, and angry about the world and itself.

When in January 2016 I spoke at the Italian Parliament (ending up insulting the West for its global plunder, hypocrisy), I mingled a lot with the 5 Star Movement, which had actually invited me to Rome. I spent time with its radical left wing. There are some great people there, but overall, it soon became clear that this potentially the biggest political movement in the country is actually horrified of coming to power! It does not really want to govern.

But then, why call those weak bizarre selfish Western entities – the ‘left wing’? Why confuse terms, and by that, why discredit those true revolutionaries, those true fighters, who are risking, sacrificing their lives, right now, all over the world?

Wars are all extremely ugly. I have covered many of them, and I know… But some of them, those that are fought for the survival of humanity, or for survival of the particular countries, are inevitable. One either fights, or the entire Planet ends up being colonized and oppressed, in shackles.

If one decides to fight, then there has to be discipline and single-mindedness; total determination. Or the battle is lost from the very beginning!

When the freedom and survival of one’s motherland is at stake, things get very serious, ‘dead-serious’. Battle is not a discussion club. It is not some chat.

If we, as ‘leftists’, have already once decided that imperialism and colonialism (or ‘neo-colonialism’) are the greatest evils destroying our humanity, then we have to show discipline and join ranks, and support those who are at the frontline.

Otherwise we will become an irrelevant laughingstock, and history will and should judge us harshly!

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

30 September 2016

 

By Nikhilesh Giri

I HAVE seen the article titled “Kashmir: The world should stand up” published in theSun on Sept 22. The article has been authored by Dr Chandra Muzaffar, president of JUST, Malaysia.

I am constrained to say that the article is misinformed, misleading and lacks objectivity, particularly since it provides an excuse for terrorism and seeks dismemberment of a sovereign nation.

In this context, I would like to flag three specific points:
(i) The state of Jammu & Kashmir is an integral part of India. Democratic elections have been regularly held in the state, including in 2014 on the last occasion, where the people of Jammu & Kashmir have exercised their right of franchise in a free and fair manner to elect their representatives to the Jammu & Kashmir State legislature and the Parliament of India.
(ii) The recent upsurge in violence and terrorist activities in the state of Jammu & Kashmir is fomented by forces from across the border to disrupt peace and development activities in the state of Jammu & Kashmir. The people of the state have demonstrated commendable resilience in the face of disturbance.
(iii) Indian security forces have exercised maximum restraint in dealing with the violence that has been instigated from across the border.

The Government of India appreciates the understanding shown by the international community towards the difficulties being faced by the Government of India in facing the terror onslaught from groups based across the border.

Nikhilesh Giri
Deputy High Commissioner of India
Kuala Lumpur

2 October 2016

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“Jammu & Kashmir voters have their say”

I read the letter with the above title by Mr. Nikhilesh Giri, Deputy High Commissioner of India in Malaysia (the Sun daily, 2 October 2016) with interest. He wrote in response to JUST president Dr. Chandra Muzaffar’s article titled “Kashmir: The world should stand up” published in the Sun on Sept 22. He found the article “misinformed, misleading and lacks objectivity, particularly since it provides an excuse for terrorism.” As a student of history I feel compelled to write and highlight some facts on the subject.

Mr. Giri claims that Kashmir is a part of “sovereign” state India and voters in Kashmir have their say.” Really? Does he know how Kashmir became part of India? Does he know that India landed its regular troops in Sri Nagar, Kashmir’s capital on October 27, 1947? If the people of Kashmir were to decide their fate why did India need to deploy troops there? My question 69 years later may sound irrelevant and outdated to Mr. Giri. That is why, as a student of history, I will only cite some facts and quote some international and Indian personalities on the issue.

The term ‘dispute’ to describe the subject was not coined by Pakistan but by the United Nations where India tabled the issue. It is well-known that the UN decided to hold a plebiscite but the chief of the UN mission Sir Owen Dixon, a senior Australian judge, later wrote in a report that he was not able to hold it because of the presence of “large numbers of regular soldiers of the Indian Army as well as the State Militia and police” in the state. “I could not expose a plebiscite conducted under the authority of the United Nations to the dangers which I believed certainly to exist,” he said.

Then in October 1949 the Indian Constituent Assembly incorporated an article in its constitution declaring Kashmir within Indian jurisdiction. In 1951 India conducted an election in which 73 out of 75 seats in Kashmir Assembly were elected uncontested. Why and how so many seats were won uncontested? The authorities simply didn’t allow any opposition to join any democratic process. Then in October 1956 the same Assembly adopted a resolution declaring Kashmir an integral part of India. Would Mr. Giri still claim that the voters in Kashmir have their say?

Is Mr. Giri aware of the opinion of Mr. B.K. Nehru, who served as Delhi’s appointed governor of the state of Kashmir? He is reported to have said, “From 1953 to 1975, Chief Ministers of that State [of J&K] had been nominees of Delhi. Their appointment to that post was legitimised by the holding of farcical and totally rigged elections in which the Congress party led by Delhi’s nominee was elected by huge majorities.” I would also strongly recommend Mr. Giri to read Arundhati Roy on the subject.

Mr. Giri has accused Dr. Chandra of providing “excuse for terrorism.” This is a very serious allegation at this juncture of history and this is no diplomacy. Accusing Dr. Chandra or “enemies” on the other side of the border will not help Indian diplomacy. If Mr. Giri is really objective in finding the truth about the current upsurge of violence in Kashmir, he should read not only history of the conflict objectively but do objective reading of some current affairs such as the Huffington Post article ‘Burhan Wani’ also written by an Indian journalist. 22 year old Burhan Wani became violent, as his father put it, not because he was born with Indian hatred, but because he felt humiliated by the Indian troops in Kashmir. Mr. Giri should learn from Dr. Chandra that every human being loves dignity as do the people of Kashmir.

3 September 2016

By Ghali Hassan

A recent Essential Research poll had found 49 per cent of Australians support a ban on Muslim immigration, including 60 per cent of Liberal-National Coalition voters, 40 per cent of Labor voters and 34 per cent of Greens voters agreed with the proposition that Muslim Australians were not integrating (assimilating) into “Australian culture” and pose a threat to Australia. It is the result of a steady diet of fear, and xenophobia fed to Australians by openly racist politicians and the mass media.

Australian politicians and the media are demonising an already marginalised small Muslim Community (2.2% of the total Australian population) to score point and win votes. It is true that Muslims have a strong Muslim identity, because Islam is not just a religion, Islam is a way of life. However, when compared with other minorities, Muslim Australians are the most integrated Australians in every field of life. They have succumbed to a repressive society that imposed its beliefs and values on them. It is nothing more than force assimilation justify by exaggerated fears of a fabricated threat.

Despite the daily racism and extreme hostility they face, nearly 86 per cent of Muslim Australians felt that relations between Muslims and non-Muslims were friendly and were not strained as politicians and the media allege, according to a study by the University of Western Sydney. The study ultimately revealed the “ordinariness of the Muslims” and their aspiration in Australia, said Professor Kevin Dunn of Western Sydney University. (The Study).

Muslim Australians have the right to live their lives without being vilified and discriminated against. As Uthman Badar writes in The Sydney Morning Herald: “Contrary to baseless claims otherwise, Muslims are not demanding that Australia become an Islamic state, or that sharia be enforced. They are not demanding to be outside the law or judged by another set of laws. They’re simply asking to be left alone to practice their faith; that their beliefs and values not be interfered with by the state; that if some Muslim does the wrong thing he be dealt like any other criminal, without the entire community being criminalised and Islam demonised; that they be able to participate in debates about the law, morality and government policy without being considered a fifth column”. How can a small minority of ordinary Australian Muslims pose a threat to “Australian culture”?

Let’s call a spade a spade. What is “Australian culture”? There is no unique white Australian culture. Australia is not known for its vibrant culture. Australia is a pretentious society addicted to punching far above its weight. There is an old Indigenous Culture with unique languages and cultural adaptations that most non-Indigenous Australians know nothing about. How many non-Indigenous Australians know where the Anindilyakwa people live? We all know how brutally Indigenous Australians are treated. They are despised by non-Indigenous Australians. Most non-Indigenous Australians choose the privilege of turning a blind eye. Outside Indigenous Culture, everything else is imported and repackaged – not AFL football. Australia is a colonial outpost, dominated by white Anglo-American culture. The so-called “Multiculturalism” – where each ethnic group put in its designated box – is racially-promoted ghettoization designed to enforce white privilege and white supremacy. To the contrary, Australia has a concocted image that is the exact opposite of its ugly reality. After the election of Pauline Hanson, Australia can claim to be the world’s most anti-Muslim and systemically racist societies where victims (mostly Muslims) of white racism have no protection. As victims of racism, Muslims are on their own. There is noone (nations or organisations) that has the courage to stand up for Muslims and defend them. Most of the so-called “Islamic nations” (with majority Muslims population) are U.S. clients ruled by despotic regimes. It is the reason Muslims are discriminated against and attacked in Australia with ease.

While many Australians are blaming Pauline Hanson and her gang for promoting racism, racism is deeply-entrenched in Australia. Australia was built on Racism and violence. It is elite racism – coated with the language of “tolerance” and multiculturalism – imposed by the white dominant class. The media, the education system, sport, the police, the justice system and Australian politics are systemically racist and plagued by rampant corruption. Most Australians breathe racism and cannot live without it. It is in their DNA makeup. From early childhood, Australians are conditioned by the corporate media (TV in particular), politicians and even their parents, to objectify others – non-white people and women. Unlike in other countries, racism in Australia is a well-managed subtle kind of racism. It is structural form of racism that, have a far larger impact on people’s lives: where religious, cultural or ethnic minorities are made to feel they do not belong in Australia.

Most people know that, “anti-Muslim sentiment did not begin with Pauline Hanson. A more sophisticated, highbrow anti-Muslim sentiment was used to justify the mandatory indefinite detention of Muslim [refugees]. It was used to justify the torture of Australian citizens in Guantanamo Bay. It was, and is used to justify wars in Muslim countries like Iraq and Afghanistan, [Libya and Syria]. It is used to justify our support for Israel’s subjugation of the Palestinians. It is used to justify our support for murderous tyrants in Muslim countries, who oppress their Muslim citizens. A lot of anti-Muslim argument has come from the elite’s need to defend their anti-Muslim policies. As Eric Hoffer observed, ‘when power is wedded to chronic fear… it becomes formidable”. (A. McQuire, M. Brull, & S. Sabawi, New Matilda, 22 July 2016).

Muslims are discriminated against because they are Muslims. It has absolutely nothing to do with Muslims are not integrating into Australian culture. Most Australians have never met a Muslim in their lives and most Australians know nothing about Islam. Indeed, according to a recent study by Deakin University: “people who don’t know any Muslims or interact with any Muslims in the community felt the most fear around terrorism. People who know Muslims and more about Islam as a religion are the ones who don’t feel threatened”, said the researcher, Dr Matteo Vergani.

All what Australians know about Muslims in Australia is from racist politicians and the media. For example, more often Australian TV channels devote time to “discuss” (denounce and demonise) Muslims and Islam without a Muslim voice to respond, denying Australians a rare opportunity to hear two sides. When the elitist Sydney Writers’ Festival invites an illiterate and ignorant Somali-born refugee (the anti-Muslim Ayaan Hirsi Ali) and promotes her as an expert on Muslims and Islam, you know there is something wrong with Australian society. As Professor As’ad AbuKhalil of California State University observes, “Hirsi has no relevant expertise on Islam – she is ‘only because of her bigotry… treated as an expert on Islam’. Hirsi has identified Islam as ‘a destructive, nihilistic cult of death.’ This sounds a lot like the language of Tony Abbott on ISIS terrorists. Yet while right-thinking progressives in Australia have mocked Abbott’s rhetoric, Hirsi gets a warmer reception” (Michael Brull, New Matilda). Hirsi, validates what the anti-Muslim white bigots already believe: that Islam is bad and the West is inherently good.

What is really astonishing about Australians (the elites) is that, Donald Trump, the Republican U.S. presidential candidate, has been criticised in Australia by the Australian political and media establishments, who are rubbing shoulders with Pauline Hanson and her gang. Trump hasn’t said anything that Australia is not doing or not supporting. He is demonised thoroughly simply because he said he will do what Australia is already doing. May be because he said that if elected he will talk to President Vladimir Putin of Russia. The Australian Greens Party leader Richard Di Natale said recently: “I think [Trump] is dangerous for the U.S. and dangerous for the global community, and you just need to look at those clashes that we have seen recently between anti-Trump and pro-Trump supporters”. What a cynical propaganda? Take a look in your own backyard, Mr Di Natale. The Clintons war criminals have been (and will be if elected) disastrous for world’s peace and prosperity.

Like in the U.S. and in many parts of Europe, Australian Muslims are living in fear. People do not know when the Police and Special Forces will raid their homes, arrest and imprisoned their loved ones indefinitely. The policy is reminiscent of Kristallnacht, the night of horror in 1938 when rampaging Nazis smashed Jewish homes and businesses in Germany and killed scores of Jews. Muslims are unfairly targeted and accused of terrorism, because terrorism is framed as a Muslim problem. Hence, too many anti-Muslims draconian laws are predicated on the false and racist assumption that Muslims are more likely to engage in terrorism. To the contrary, Muslims are the victims of well-orchestrated terrorism.

For more than five years, the Syria people have paid dearly for the crimes of terrorists. It is well-documented that terrorist networks like ISIS [Daesh], al-Qaeda, al-Nusra Front and their affiliates are U.S.-Israel proxy terror networks. They are labelled by Western governments and Western media as “moderate rebels”, “militants” and “opposition forces”, but not terrorists. They have been trained, financed, armed, directed and protected by the U.S. and U.S. allies, including Turkey, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Britain, France, Qatar, Jordan among others. In addition, the U.S. and its allies air forces acting as the terrorists’ air force and provided air cover for the terrorists. The recent deliberate air strikes (17 Sep. 2016) by the U.S. and its allies on the positions of the Syrian troops at Deir ez-Zor, south east Al-Raqqa – which more than 60 troops were killed and hundreds were injured –, is a case in point. It allowed ISIS terrorists to occupy the heights around the airport. The criminal air attacks designed to sabotage the ceasefire agreement and strengthen the terrorists (ISIS, al-Qaeda and al-Nusra Front) against the democratically-elected Syrian Government. Before this dirty war on Syria, Syria was an Oasis of civilisation and religious tolerance.

The so-called “Islamic Terrorism” is a Western-concocted pretext to manipulate the public (instil fear) and justify discrimination against Muslims. The ongoing demonisation of Muslims and Islam in Australia, the U.S. and Europe is part of the policy to divert attention away from Western nations roles in creating and supporting terrorism. As the violence increase in their homelands, Muslims who manged to flee and seek refuge abroad are demonised and used as scapegoat by politicians and the media.

Australia which is reached by only a trickle of Muslim refugees, has turned into a nightmare for them. Australia prides itself on its widely-condemned and inhumane anti-Muslim “White Australia’s” refugee policy. The New York Times has recently called Australia’s draconian refugee policy as “unconscionable”, and urged European policymakers not to look at Australia’s “ruthlessly effective effort to stop boats” as an option. No decent human being like to associate with a society that sells cruelty and treat dogs better than humans. The current Muslim refugee crisis is the predictable results of U.S.-led Western war of terror in the Middle East and Africa, to which Australia is a party.

In Australia refugees – mostly Muslims – are stopped at sea by the Australian Navy and Borders Control Forces (Operation Sovereign Borders) and shipped to grotesque Concentration Camps in poor Island nations like Nauru and Papua New Guinea. The voiceless refugees, including children, women and men have been sexually abused, tortured, exploited and some have been murdered. Journalists and media who visited the refugee Camp on Manus Island have been ordered (and threatened) to delete footages. It is the Government’s view that anything that contradict the Government narrative is unacceptable and should not be made available to Australians.

A recent article, entitled “Is Australia engaged in torturing asylum seekers? A cautionary tale for Europe,” co-authored by John-Saul Sanggaran, a medical officer, who worked at one of such camps which was published in the Journal of Medical Ethics found that the Australian government is creating unbearable conditions at these Concentration Camps to send a message to others would be refugees not to come to Australia. The criminal policy is supported by the majority of Australians. Can you imagine the outrage if Australian women and children are treated in the same way as refugees are treated?

Although most Australians know that the Government’s refugee policy is cruel and in flagrant violation of international law, a poll in January 2014 found that 60 per cent of Australians support the Government policy of harsh treatment of refugees and urge the Government to “increase the severity” of the policy. As Henry Giroux writes: “Shallow consumerisms coupled with an indifference to the needs and suffering of others has produce a politics of disengagement and a culture of moral irresponsibility” in the Australian society. Any society in which politicians and the media appeal to bigotry, promoting hatred and promising to terrorise refugees to win elections is a sick society.

The onus is on the other half of Australians to begin the dismantling of the Hansonism culture of ignorance and racism. Australia needs to evolve beyond the façade of multiculturalism into a cohesive nation for every Australians. The 49 per cent of Australians who support this racist and backwards policy against Muslims are doing Australia great harm. As McQuire and colleagues rightly argue: “We don’t have a Muslim problem in Australia. We have a racism problem, and it is an emergency. We urge readers to take this as a wake-up call, to build stronger ties across communities, and to challenge racism, whether it comes from the top or from the bottom”. Only together, the contagious virus of racism will be defeated.

Ghali Hassan is an independent political analyst and researcher living in Australia.

30 September 2016

Ilan Pappe

The obituaries for Shimon Peres have already appeared, no doubt prepared in advance as the news of his hospitalization reached the media.

The verdict on his life is very clear and was already pronounced by US President Barack Obama: Peres was a man who changed the course of human history in his relentless search for peace in the Middle East.

My guess is that very few of the obituaries will examine Peres’ life and activities from the perspective of the victims of Zionism and Israel.

He occupied many positions in politics that had immense impact on the Palestinians wherever they are. He was director general of the Israeli defense ministry, minister of defense, minister for development of the Galilee and the Negev (Naqab), prime minister and president.

In all these roles, the decisions he took and the policies he pursued contributed to the destruction of the Palestinian people and did nothing to advance the cause of peace and reconciliation between Palestinians and Israelis.

Born Szymon Perski in 1923, in a town that was then part of Poland, Peres immigrated to Palestine in 1934. As a teenager in an agricultural school, he became active in politics within the Labor Zionist movement that led Zionism and later the young State of Israel.

As a leading figure in the movement’s youth cadres, Peres attracted the attention of the high command of the Jewish paramilitary force in British-ruled Palestine, the Haganah.

Nuclear bomb
In 1947, Peres was fully recruited to the organization and sent abroad by its leader David Ben-Gurion to purchase arms which were later used in the 1948 Nakba, the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, and against the Arab contingents that entered Palestine that year.

After a few years abroad, mainly in the United States, where he was busy purchasing arms and building the infrastructure for the Israeli military industry, he returned to become director general of the defense ministry.

Peres was active in forging Israel’s collusion with the UK and France to invade Egypt in 1956, for which Israel was rewarded by France with the needed capacity to build nuclear weapons.

Indeed it was Peres himself who largely oversaw Israel’s clandestine nuclear weapons program.

No less important was the zeal Peres showed under Ben-Gurion’s guidance and inspiration to Judaize the Galilee. Despite the 1948 ethnic cleansing, that part of Israel was still very much Palestinian countryside and landscape.

Peres was behind the idea of confiscating Palestinian land for the purpose of building exclusive Jewish towns such as Karmiel and Upper Nazareth and basing the military in the region so as to disrupt territorial contiguity between Palestinian villages and towns.

This ruination of the Palestinian countryside led to the disappearance of the traditional Palestinian villages and the transformation of the farmers into an underemployed and deprived urban working class. This dismal reality is still with us today.

Settlers’ champion
Peres disappeared for a while from the political scene when his master Ben-Gurion, Israel’s founding prime minister, was pushed aside in 1963 by a new generation of leaders.

He came back after the 1967 War and the first portfolio he held was as minister responsible for the occupied territories. In this role, he legitimized, quite often retroactively, the settlement drive in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

As so many of us realize today, by the time the pro-settlement Likud party came to power in 1977, the Jewish settlement infrastructure, in particular in the West Bank, had already rendered a two-state solution an impossible vision.

In 1974, Peres’ political career became intimately connected to that of his nemesis, Yitzhak Rabin. The two politicians who could not stand each other, had to work in tandem for the sake of political survival.

However, on Israel’s strategy toward the Palestinians, they shared the Zionist settler-colonial perspective, coveting as much of Palestine’s land as possible with as few Palestinians on it as possible.

They worked well together in quelling brutally the Palestinian uprising that began in 1987.

Peres’ first role in this difficult partnership was as defense minister in the 1974 Rabin government. The first real crisis Peres faced was a major expansion of the messianic settler movement Gush Emunim’s colonization effort in and around the West Bank city of Nablus.

Rabin opposed the new settlements, but Peres stood with the settlers and those colonies that now strangulate Nablus are there thanks to his efforts.

In 1976, Peres led government policy on the occupied territories, convinced that a deal could be struck with Jordan, by which the West Bank would be within Jordanian jurisdiction but under effective Israeli rule.

He initiated municipal elections in the West Bank but to his great surprise and disappointment, the candidates identified with the Palestine Liberation Organization were elected and not the ones loyal to Jordan’s Hashemite monarchy.

But Peres remained faithful to what he named the “Jordanian option” as an opposition leader after 1977 and when he returned to power in coalition with the Likud in 1984-1988. He pushed forward the negotiations on the basis of this concept until King Hussein’s decision to cede any political connection between Jordan and the West Bank in 1988.

Israel’s international face
The 1990s exposed to the world to a more mature and coherent Peres. He was Israel’s international face, whether in government or outside it. He played this role even after the Likud ascended as the main political force in the land.

In power, in Rabin’s government in the early 1990s, as prime minister after Rabin’s 1995 assassination, and then as a minister in the cabinet of Ehud Barak from 1999 to 2001, Peres pushed a new concept for what he called “peace.”

Instead of sharing rule in the West Bank and Gaza Strip with Jordan or Egypt, he now wished to do it with the Palestine Liberation Organization. The idea was accepted by PLO leader Yasser Arafat, who may have hoped to build on this a new project for the liberation of Palestine.

As enshrined in the 1993 Oslo accords, this concept was enthusiastically endorsed by Israel’s international allies.

Peres was the leading ambassador of this peace process charade that provided an international umbrella for Israel to establish facts on the ground that would create a greater apartheid Israel with small Palestinianbantustans scattered within it.

The fact that he won a Nobel Peace Prize for a process that advanced the ruination of Palestine and its people is yet another testimony to world governments’ misunderstanding, cynicism and apathy toward their suffering.

We are fortunate to live in an era in which international civil society has exposed this charade and offers, through the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement and the growing support for the one-state solution, a more hopeful and genuine path forward.

Qana
As prime minister, Peres had one additional “contribution” to make to the history of Palestinian and Lebanese suffering.

In response to the endless skirmishes between Hizballah and the Israeli army in southern Lebanon, where Hizballah and other groups resisted the Israeli occupation that began in 1982 until they drove it out in 2000, Peres ordered the bombing of the whole area in April 1996.

During what Israel dubbed Operation Grapes of Wrath, Israeli shelling killed more than 100 people – civilians fleeing bombardment and UN peacekeepers from Fiji – near the village of Qana.

Despite a United Nations investigation that found Israel’s explanation that the shelling had been an accident to be “unlikely,” the massacre did nothing to dent Peres’ international reputation as a “peacemaker.”

In this century, Peres was more a symbolic figurehead than an active politician. He founded the Peres Center for Peace, built on confiscated Palestinian refugee property in Jaffa, which continues to sell the idea of a Palestinian “state” with little land, real independence or sovereignty as the best possible solution.

That will never work, but if the world continues to be committed to this Peres legacy, there will be no end to the suffering of the Palestinians.

Shimon Peres symbolized the beautification of Zionism, but the facts on the ground lay bare his role in perpetrating so much suffering and conflict. Knowing the truth, at least, helps us understand how to move forward and undo so much of the injustice Peres helped create.

The author of numerous books, Ilan Pappe is professor of history and director of the European Centre for Palestine Studies at the University of Exeter.

First published in The Electronic Intifada

30 September 2016