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By Mike Head

Anger over job losses and declining living conditions, combined with years of bitter political experiences with both Labor and Liberal-National Coalition governments, were the primary factors in the further collapse of support for the major parties in last Saturday’s Australian election.

With 1.5 million postal votes still to be counted, some of which will not arrive until July 15, it may be another 10 days before the outcome of the election is known. At least 13 seats in the 150-member lower house remain in doubt, leaving both parties well short of the required majority of 76 seats.

The most likely result is a hung parliament, only the third in Australia’s history, with the formation of a government dependent on deals struck with other parties and “independents.” Before the election, the Coalition government held 90 seats, due to its sweeping defeat of the Greens-backed Labor government in the 2013 election.

The deepening impact of the global economic crisis that erupted in 2008 has intensified the protracted breakup of the two-party system over the past three decades. Since 2007, in particular, voters have experienced six years of Labor government, supported by the Greens, and three years of Coalition government; both seeking to slash social spending to impose the burden of the global breakdown.

The most pronounced expression of the continuing haemorrhaging of support for the political establishment, including the Greens, came in the upper house, the Senate, where a record 26 percent of the valid votes went to other groups, mostly right-wing populists who postured as opponents of the major parties.

There was a 2-percentage point swing against the ruling Coalition, taking its vote down to around 35 percent, but Labor picked up only a 1-point swing to about 30 percent, and the Greens’ vote fell 0.35 points, losing at least one of their nine Senate seats as a result. Today’s 26 percent vote for “others” stands as another marker in the historic decline in support for the major parties. It stands in sharp contrast to the 4.25 percent recorded in 1990.

For now, the main beneficiaries were predominantly nationalist formations trying to channel the social and political discontent in protectionist and xenophobic directions, pitting Australian workers against their fellow workers internationally. Despite the disintegration of mining magnate Clive Palmer’s Palmer United Party (PUP), which secured 5.5 percent of the vote at the last federal election in 2013 with similar anti-establishment rhetoric, the vote for such parties grew.
Most prominently, Pauline Hanson’s right-wing, anti-immigrant One Nation obtained 4 percent, including nearly 10 percent in the mining state of Queensland. The Nick Xenophon Team, which pushes for protectionism and military spending, is based in South Australia, where the closure of the car industry is compounding the mining bust, secured 3.4 percent. Hanson and Xenophon could hold up to three seats each in the 76-member Senate.

In the House of Representatives, the largest shifts against Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull’s government came in areas of the country most devastated by the collapse of the country’s mining boom, the closure of auto and other manufacturing industries and soaring housing prices, which have taken home ownership out of the reach of many young working class people.

On average, the Coalition vote fell 3.68 percentage points to 41.8 percent, but its losses were considerably greater in the regions where the social reality was most starkly divorced from Turnbull’s constant refrain that Australians live in “exciting” times of “transition” to a new economy.

In northern and central Queensland, where thousands of jobs have been eliminated in coal mines and the Townsville nickel refinery, the anti-government swings exceeded 6 points. In electorates around the north and south of Brisbane, the state capital, where official unemployment rates are as high as 20 percent, the government’s vote fell by up to 8.5 points.

Across the western and southwestern suburbs of Sydney, where exorbitant house prices are hitting families facing high unemployment and under-employment rates, the anti-government swing reached as high as 9.3 percent, allowing Labor to regain several seats it lost in 2013.

In Tasmania, which has the second highest unemployment rate in the country, the government’s vote dropped by up to 10.8 percent, and it lost all three seats it held in the island state to Labor. Ex-PUP Senator Jacqui Lambie kept her Senate seat with a vote of 8.5 percent.

Across South Australia, where workers have been hit by closures of mines and auto-related plants, anti-government swings of around 8 percent opened the way for Xenophon’s group to pick up one or possibly two seats, as well as two or three Senate seats.

In Western Australia, where iron ore and other mine closures have eliminated thousands of jobs, the government lost more than 5 percentage points, with the largest swings in outer Perth suburbs.

While Labor has gained a number of seats, these were mainly ones it lost in the 2013 landslide, taking it back to near the total it obtained in the 2010 election, after which it formed a minority government with the Greens.

To gain votes, Labor conducted a desperate last-minute “save Medicare” campaign, falsely claiming it would defend the public health system, even as it repudiated previous promises to oppose social spending cuts worth $40 billion over four years, plus a $57 billion cut to public hospitals over the next decade.
Despite the cynical Medicare claims, Labor won only about a half of the lower house votes lost by the government, leaving it with Labor’s second lowest primary vote in a century.

In the lower house, the Greens’ vote increased marginally by just over 1 percent to 9.9 percent, but that remained well down from their peak of 11.8 percent in 2010, before they entered into a formal agreement to prop up the minority Labor government. That government, led by Julia Gillard, not only committed Australia to the US military “pivot” to Asia against China, including the basing of US marines in Darwin, but cut public spending by the greatest amount in history in 2012–13.

During this election, the Greens wanted to further cement their position in the political establishment, seeking ministerial posts in a Labor-led government and pledging to help stabilise the parliamentary set-up. Reflecting their upper-middle class and pro-business constituency, they concentrated their campaigns on largely gentrified and wealthy electorates.

For example, the Greens obtained 43 percent of the vote in inner Melbourne, 25 percent in Higgins, a well-to-do electorate held by the Coalition, and 19 percent in Kooyong, based on Melbourne’s richest neighbourhoods. In the now largely better-off electorates of Batman and Wills, they picked up 37 and 30.5 percent respectively. Likewise, the Greens polled 22 percent in Grayndler in inner Sydney, and nearly 20 percent in inner Brisbane, as well as 20 percent in the northern New South Wales rural electorate of Richmond, which includes the wealthy enclave of Byron Bay. By contrast, their vote in working class areas was generally less than 5 percent.

Hanson’s One Nation consciously targeted some of the most economically and socially devastated regions. Its vote exceeded 15 percent in central Queensland and outlying areas of Brisbane, where mining-related job losses have created virtual ghost towns and areas of deep poverty. It also picked up 8 percent in the western Brisbane electorate of Oxley, which has high levels of unemployment.

Hanson last won such levels of support during the late 1990s, when she gained from the landslide defeat of the Hawke and Keating-led Labor government of 1983-1996 that ruthlessly enforced the restructuring of the economy to satisfy the needs of global capital.

Hanson’s ability to make a political comeback, preying upon the social distress being suffered by broad layers of working people, is entirely bound up with the fact that the working class has been politically suppressed and straitjacketed for decades by the Labor Party and trade union apparatuses. They have enforced the ongoing destruction of jobs and conditions under the demand of making Australian-based employers competitive on the world market, peddling a nationalist line that dovetails with Hanson’s.

The re-emergence of Hanson, along with Xenophon, Lambie and similar “other” parties, who all defend the profit system, which is the ultimate cause of war, exploitation and social inequality, is a warning sign. It reinforces the need for workers and young people to turn to the genuine socialist perspective advanced by the Socialist Equality Party, to completely reorganise economic life to meet human need, not the insatiable profit appetites of the wealthy elite.

This article was first published in WSWS.org

5 July 2016

By Robert J Barsocchini

Frederick Douglass, one of the most brilliant minds in history, had many praises for the US and its founders. However, he experienced the nation more fully than any of them, beginning his life a victim of the totalitarian fascism they practiced and promoted, and ending it a statesman and a friend of President Lincoln. Thus his understanding and analysis of the complex country and its culture is more complete and balanced than most. Known as a dazzling orator, he had this to say in a 4th of July address in 1852:

[T]he character and conduct of this nation never looked blacker to me than on this 4th of July. Whether we turn to the declarations of the past, or to the professions of the present, the conduct of the nation seems equally hideous and revolting. America is false to the past, false to the present, and solemnly binds herself to be false to the future.

What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer; a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are, to Him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy-a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of the United States, at this very hour.

Go where you may, search where you will, roam through all the monarchies and despotisms of the Old World, travel through South America, search out every abuse, and when you have found the last, lay your facts by the side of the everyday practices of this nation, and you will say with me, that, for revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without a rival.

New York has become as Virginia; and the power to hold, hunt, and sell men, women and children, as slaves, remains no longer a mere state institution, but is now an institution of the whole United States. The power is co-extensive with the star-spangled banner, and American Christianity. Where these go, may also go the merciless slave-hunter. Where these are, man is not sacred. He is a bird for the sportsman’s gun.

Your broad republican domain is hunting ground for men.

You hurl your anathemas at the crowned headed tyrants of Russia and Austria and pride yourselves on your Democratic institutions, while you yourselves consent to be the mere tools and body-guards of the tyrants of Virginia and Carolina. You invite to your shores fugitives of oppression from abroad, honor them with banquets, greet them with ovations, cheer them, toast them, salute them, protect them, and pour out your money to them like water; but the fugitives from oppression in your own land you advertise, hunt, arrest, shoot, and kill. You glory in your refinement and your universal education; yet you maintain a system as barbarous and dreadful as ever stained the character of a nation-a system begun in avarice, supported in pride, and perpetuated in cruelty. You shed tears over fallen Hungary, and make the sad story of her wrongs the theme of your poets, statesmen, and orators, till your gallant sons are ready to fly to arms to vindicate her cause against the oppressor; but, in regard to the ten thousand wrongs of the American slave, you would enforce the strictest silence, and would hail him as an enemy of the nation who dares to make those wrongs the subject of public discourse.

Soon after this speech and the tumult that followed, Douglass would note how the war against the South was almost entirely based on preventing division of the empire, with actual anti-slavery, humanitarian sentiment only inspiring a minuscule minority of whites. He cheered the destruction of chattel institutions, but his knowledge that this destruction was driven far less by humanitarianism than practicality regarding maintaining the empire meant he would be horrified and disheartened, but perhaps not entirely shocked, to see slavery continue, again with the official blessing and participation of the North, after the South was subdued and infrastructure was rebuilt.

Historian and Wall Street Journal contributor Douglas Blackmon documents how slavery remained official US policy up to the early 1940s, and Amnesty International and various scholars document how it continues today, with many black men still slaving on cotton fields under a provision of the 13th amendment that maintains slavery as a still ‘legal’, multi-billion-dollar per year industry.

As an example of the power of the religion of US nationalism, I cite an attorney friend and graduate of the nation’s number one top law-school, who in conversation mentioned that the 13th amendment ‘abolished slavery’, and that every law-school student studies this in depth. I interjected that the amendment abolished slavery with an exception for people convicted of ‘crimes’ (ie loitering or marijuana possession). The attorney’s response was: “I didn’t know that.”

The 13th amendment is two sentences. What does it say about US culture that a graduate from the single top law-school in the country today does not know that the 13th amendment carries an exception?

It says Frederick Douglass is right.

Full text of the 13th amendment:

Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

Robert J. Barsocchini is an internationally published author who focuses on force dynamics, national and global, and acts as a cultural intermediary for the film and Television industry. Updates on Twitter. Author’s pamphlet ‘The Agility of Tyranny: Historical Roots of Black Lives Matter’.

5 July 2016

By Jeffrey D. Sachs

NEW YORK – Deadly terrorist attacks in Istanbul, Dhaka, and Baghdad demonstrate the murderous reach of the Islamic State (ISIS) in Europe, North Africa, the Middle East, and parts of Asia. The longer ISIS maintains its strongholds in Syria and Iraq, the longer its terrorist network will create such carnage. Yet ISIS is not especially difficult to defeat. The problem is that none of the states involved in Iraq and Syria, including the United States and its allies, has so far treated ISIS as its primary foe. It’s time they do.

ISIS has a small fighting force, which the US puts at 20,000 to 25,000 in Iraq and Syria, and another 5,000 or so in Libya. Compared to the number of active military personnelin Syria (125,000), Iraq (271,500), Saudi Arabia (233,500), Turkey (510,600), or Iran (523,000), ISIS is minuscule.

Despite US President Barack Obama’s pledge in September 2014 to “degrade and ultimately destroy” ISIS, the US and its allies, including Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Israel (behind the scenes), have been focusing instead on toppling Syria’s Bashar al-Assad. Consider a recent candid statement by Israeli Major General Herzi Halevy (quoted to me by a journalist who attended the speech where Halevy made it): “Israel does not want to see the situation in Syria end with [ISIS] defeated, the superpowers gone from the region, and [Israel] left with a Hezbollah and Iran that have greater capabilities.”

Israel opposes ISIS, but Israel’s greater concern is Assad’s Iranian backing. Assad enables Iran to support two paramilitary foes of Israel, Hezbollah and Hamas. Israel therefore prioritizes the removal of Assad over the defeat of ISIS.

For the US, steered by neoconservatives, the war in Syria is a continuation of the plan for global US hegemony launched by Defense Secretary Richard Cheney and Under Secretary Paul Wolfowitz at the Cold War’s end. In 1991, Wolfowitz told US General Wesley Clark:

“But one thing we did learn [from the Persian Gulf War] is that we can use our military in the region – in the Middle East – and the Soviets won’t stop us. And we’ve got about 5 or 10 years to clean up those old Soviet regimes – Syria, Iran (sic), Iraq – before the next great superpower comes on to challenge us.”

The multiple US wars in the Middle East – Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, and others – have sought to remove the Soviet Union, and then Russia, from the scene and to give the US hegemonic sway. These efforts have failed miserably.

For Saudi Arabia, as for Israel, the main goal is to oust Assad in order to weaken Iran. Syria is part of the extensive proxy war between Shia Iran and Sunni Saudi Arabia that plays out in the battlefields of Syria and Yemen and in bitter Shia-Sunni confrontations in Bahrain and other divided countries in the region (including Saudi Arabia itself).

For Turkey, the overthrow of Assad would bolster its regional standing. Yet Turkey now faces three foes on its southern border: Assad, ISIS, and nationalist Kurds. ISIS has so far taken a back seat to Turkey’s concerns about Assad and the Kurds. But ISIS-directed terrorist attacks in Turkey may be changing that.

Russia and Iran, too, have pursued their own regional interests, including through proxy wars and support for paramilitary operations. Yet both have signaled their readiness to cooperate with the US to defeat ISIS, and perhaps to solve other problems as well. The US has so far spurned these offers, because of its focus on toppling Assad.

The US foreign-policy establishment blames Russian President Vladimir Putin for defending Assad, while Russia blames the US for trying to overthrow him. These complaints might seem symmetrical, but they’re not. The attempt by the US and its allies to overthrow Assad violates the UN Charter, while Russia’s support of Assad is consistent with Syria’s right of self-defense under that charter. Yes, Assad is a despot, but the UN Charter does not give license to any country to choose which despots to depose.

The persistence of ISIS underscores three strategic flaws in US foreign policy, along with a fatal tactical flaw.

First, the neocon quest for US hegemony through regime change is not only bloody-minded arrogance; it is classic imperial overreach. It has failed everywhere the US has tried it. Syria and Libya are the latest examples.

Second, the CIA has long armed and trained Sunni jihadists through covert operations funded by Saudi Arabia. In turn, these jihadists gave birth to ISIS, which is a direct, if unanticipated, consequence of the policies pursued by the CIA and its Saudi partners.

Third, the US perception of Iran and Russia as implacable foes of America is in many ways outdated and a self-fulfilling prophecy. A rapprochement with both countries is possible.

Fourth, on the tactical side, the US attempt to fight a two-front war against both Assad and ISIS has failed. Whenever Assad has been weakened, Sunni jihadists, including ISIS and al-Nusra Front, have filled the vacuum.

Assad and his Iraqi counterparts can defeat ISIS if the US, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Iran provide air cover and logistical support. Yes, Assad would remain in power; yes, Russia would retain an ally in Syria; and yes, Iran would have influence there. Terrorist attacks would no doubt continue, perhaps even in the name of ISIS for a while; but the group would be denied its base of operations in Syria and Iraq.

Such an outcome would not only end ISIS on the ground in the Middle East; it could lay the groundwork for reducing regional tensions more generally. The US and Russia could begin to reverse their recent new cold war through shared efforts to stamp out jihadist terrorism. (A pledge that NATO will not offer admission to Ukraine or escalate missile defenses in Eastern Europe would also help.)

There’s more. A cooperative approach to defeating ISIS would give Saudi Arabia and Turkey reason and opportunity to find a new modus vivendi with Iran. Israel’s security could be enhanced by bringing Iran into a cooperative economic and geopolitical relationship with the West, in turn enhancing the chances for a long-overdue two-state settlement with Palestine.

The rise of ISIS is a symptom of the shortcomings of current Western – particularly US – strategy. The West can defeat ISIS. The question is whether the US will undertake the strategic reassessment needed to accomplish that end.

Jeffrey D. Sachs, Professor of Sustainable Development, Professor of Health Policy and Management, and Director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University, is also Director of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network. His books include
The End of Poverty, Common Wealth, and, most recently, The Age of Sustainable Development.

5 July 2016

Prof Michel Chossudovsky

The first reports of shots came at 2.03am involving a confrontation between Mateen and a security guard at the entrance of the nightclub ”An off-duty cop working as a security guard at the club returned fire, prompting Mateen to retreat further into the hotspot and take hostages, officials said.” (New York Post, June 12, 2016).

According to police statements, there was, however, no “active shooter situation” at 2am in the morning, requiring an immediate police response. Moreover, there was no firm evidence that killings of hostages had taken place.

The Orlando police authorities initiated a process of negotiation with Mateen. When Mateen said that “there would be an imminent loss of life,” Orlando Police Chief John Mina (image right) was prompted “to end a three-hour standoff and ordered the assault that killed Mr. Mateen and freed dozens of people trapped in the club.” (New York Times, June 13, 2016).

Shortly after 5am, the police using an armored vehicle burst through the wall of the building. “A furious gunfight with 11 SWAT team members followed, during which Mateen was killed and a cop was saved from death when a shot struck his Kevlar helmet”. (New York Post ,June 12, 2016).

The Islamic State (ISIS) allegedly claimed responsibility for the attack in a statement released by its Amaq news agency, saying the onslaught “was carried out by an Islamic State fighter,” (Ibid).

What Really Happened?

The official FBI police report acknowledges shootings at 2am, it does not confirm the occurrence of killings of hostages prior to 5am. The killings started when the Police SWAT Teams stormed the Building at 5.13am. (see Timeline Below)

The Orlando Police Department Timeline summarized in an FBI Tampa Press release not only suggests that no one was killed before 5.13am when the SWAT team broke into the building, it also confirms that the first deadly shots were fired at 5.14am and that the suspect was killed one minute later at 5.15am. This assessment was confirmed by Judge Napolitano in a Fox News report.

The Police report does however acknowledge that individual SWAT members entered the building before 5am. According to the head of the SWAT team Capt. Mark Canty [image below] “both SWAT and patrol officers pulled “several” people out of the club during the three-hour standoff.”

The Killing of Omar Mateen

Mateen was allegedly involved in an exchange of gunfire with the SWAT team starting at 5.13am, While under attack of the SWAT team, Mateen could not have killed and injured over 100 people in 1-2 minutes; the FBI report confirms that he was killed at 5.15pm.

According to the Orlando Sentinel:

After most of the hostages got out, Mateen emerged from the first hole [in the wall] around 5:14 a.m.

There was a barrage of shots and Mateen was taken down in that hallway. [at 5.15am]

Possible Killings Perpetrated by the SWAT Team?

Barely mentioned by the mainstream media, police officials have acknowledged that some of the killings could have been perpetrated (“accidentally”) by the SWAT officers.

“The Orlando Chief of Police John Mina and other law enforcement officers offered new details about the shooting, including the possibility that some victims may have been killed by officers trying to save them.” (Naples Daily News, June 14, 2016)

Killing them in order to save them? An upside down diabolical concept. Kill with a view to saving lives?

It should however be mentioned that Orlando Police Chief John Mine was not directly in charge of the SWAT operation per se. The latter was under the command of Capt. Mark Canty.

Police Chief John Mina intimated that 8-9 SWAT officers might have killed people in the nightclub by accident (see quote below).

This important “detail” revealed by the Orland Chief of Police did not make the headlines of the mainstream media. It was reported locally in Florida, (Florida Naples News). It was not picked up by the national news media:

Mina said his decision to enter the club with such violence was tough. “It was a hard decision to make, but it was the right decision,” he said. “Our No. 1 priority is on saving lives, and it was the right decision to make.”

… Orlando officers walked into the nightclub and found lifeless club patrons strewn about a bar and lounge area. More bodies were found in a nearby bathroom.

“Some of the Victims Could have Been Killed by Officers who Were Trying to Save Them”

Saving People by Killing them? “New Normal”? The SWAT police officers were celebrated as HEROES by the mainstream media “for having saved dozens of lives”.

Source London’s Daily Mail

The possibility of SWAT killings at the Pulse nightclub was acknowledged and then casually dismissed by the Washington Post (June 20, 2016).

“The FBI is still working to determine if any of the victims at Pulse were hit by police fire, according to a U.S. law enforcement official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation… The SWAT commander at Pulse said Sunday he was not sure if any victims may have been struck by officers’ gunfire, and the chief medical examiner has said he does not know.” (emphasis added)

No further investigation by the Washington Post was required.

Were the Victims shot by Omar Mateen or by the Police SWAT Team?

The Orlando Police Department Timeline (see below) (quoted by Judge Napolitano) suggests that no one was killed before 5.13am when the SWAT team stormed the building, it also confirms that the first deadly shots were fired at 5.14am and that the suspect was killed one minute later at 5.15am.

Within the scope of 1-2 minutes, Mateen is said to have killed 49 people and injured 53. And this happened while the suspect was been fired at by the SWAT team.

The reports are contradictory: First they say that the SWAT team was being fired upon by the suspect (see quote above) “who had hid in the bathroom” and then they acknowledge that he was killed when the hostages started pouring out of the building (through a hole in the wall, when they broke down the wall).

“A cop rammed his Bearcat armored vehicle through the club wall. Hostages poured out. So did Mateen, guns blazing. With quick efficiency, officers shot him dead.” (Naples Daily News, June 13, 2016)

What the above statement suggests is that Mateen was executed at point blank (“with efficiency”) upon exiting the building through a hole in the wall with members of the SWAT team waiting to kill him upon his exit through the hole. If Mateen had known that he was to be executed, he would not have attempted to exit the building through the hole in wall together with hostages.

Reports suggest that there was an extensive exchange of fire between Mateen and the SWAT team: “Omar Mateen, 29, was killed by police when he engaged them in a gun battle.” In the same Naples News report, quoting Chief of Police Mina:

“There’s a hole in the wall about two feet off the ground and three feet wide. We were able to rescue dozens and dozens of people who came out of that wall,” Mina said. “The suspect came out of that hole himself with a handgun and a long gun and engaged in a gun battle with officers where he was ultimately killed.”

Visibly this statement by Chief of Police Mina is convoluted to say the least: it would have been almost impossible for Mateen to have effectively engaged the SWAT officials upon exiting the hole in the wall. (See image). Mateen’s fate was similar to that of the dead (alleged ISIS-Daesh) terror suspects killed rather than arrested by the police in Brussels and Paris terror attacks.

The official story is that Mateen killed 49 people and injured 53 on the orders of the Islamic State (ISIS-Daesh).

And this allegedly took place –according to the OPD time line– in a lapse of 1-2 minutes before he was shot dead at 5.15am, while leaving the building through a hole in the wall.

There were eleven SWAT police officers who stormed the building at 5.13am; the suspect was reported dead at 5.15am. According to the Orlando Police Chief, 8 or 9 out of the 11 SWAT officers accidentally shot at the hostages. The statement of Orlando Police Chief Mina does not refer to an error of one or two SWAT officers, the entire SWAT team (8 or 9 out of 11) under the helm of SWAT Commander Capt. Canty “accidentally” fired at the nightclub patrons.

CCTV Camera Footage

Law enforcement officials have acknowledged that the CCTV footage from several cameras inside the Pulse nightclub were available and have been viewed and examined. Sofar the CCTV footage of what happened inside the nightclub including the “friendly fire” of the SWAT team, has not been released.

Did Mateen have the ability of shooting and killing 49 people and injuring 53 in the course of less than 2 minutes while also exiting the building through a hole in the wall at 5.14am and confronting the SWAT team in cross-fire. Is this corroborated by the CCCTV footage?

The autopsy reports as well as the ballistic reports have not been released.

Ballistics

It is worth noting that Mateen allegedly used the Sig Sauer MCX .223-caliber rifle with a magazine capacity of 30 rounds. He also had in his possession a Glock 17 9mm semi-automatic pistol with a standard magazine capacity of 17 rounds.

1. the semi-automatic parameters of the two weapons in his possession would not have allowed Omar Mateen to fire more than one hundred shots within a 1-2 minutes without magazine reloading. Note the time line: 5.13am-5.15am. 5.15am: Mateen is recorded dead.

See the video below which indicates the semi-automatic nature of the Sig Sauer MCX.

In this regard, the nature of Mateen’s semi-automatic weapons was acknowledged by a USA Today Report which intimates that some of killings were attributable to “friendly” police fire:

“It’s unclear how many rounds Mateen had with him, and authorities are investigating whether some of those killed were hit by friendly fire”. (emphasis added)

The USA Today’s couched statement tacitly recognizes that the SWAT officers might have been responsible for the some of the deaths inside the Pulse nightclub. But that truth has to be suppressed. It is not worthy of detailed investigation.

2. Both the SIG Sauer as well as the Glock 17 9mm firearms used by Mateen were also used by the police SWAT teams, which suggests that the ballistics for gunshot casualties in the Orlando nightclub (by Mateen and the SWAT team) would be hard to distinguish.

Bear in mind, irrespective of the number of magazine loads Mateen had in his possession, he would not have been able to kill and/or injure more than one hundred people in a time span of less than 2 minutes.

What is at stake is a coverup of what happened inside the nightclub which is casually acknowledged and at the same time denied by the mainstream media.

The unspoken truth is dismissed, the facts are twisted.

Conclusion

What we are dealing with is an orchestrated coverup. The Forbidden Truth has to be suppressed.

Lies, “half truths” and innuendos in mainstream media reporting. Nonetheless, straight from “The Horse’s Mouth”, the SWAT police team was allegedly involved in the Orlando Pulse nightclub killings:

“Officers may have shot Orlando Club patrons”

“the possibility that some victims may have been killed by officers trying to save them.” (Naples Daily News, June 14, 2016)

… [A]uthorities are investigating whether some of those killed were hit by friendly fire”. (emphasis added)

“The FBI is still working to determine if any of the victims at Pulse were hit by police fire,

“The SWAT commander [Capt. Canty] at Pulse said Sunday he was not sure if any victims may have been struck by officers’ gunfire”

Mina said his decision to enter the club with such violence was tough. “It was a hard decision to make, but it was the right decision,” he said. “Our No. 1 priority is on saving lives, and it was the right decision to make.”

The Obama Administration, the FBI, the Media have casually dismissed the possibility of police involvement in the killings despite the statements emanating from police sources. Theater of the absurd: The official story is that the killings were ordered by the Islamic State (ISIS, ISIL, Daesh) based in Raqqa, Northern Syria, which happens to be supported and financed by two of America’s staunchest allies, Turkey and Saudi Arabia in close liaison with Washington.

The CCTV camera footage which is available to law enforcement officials will, most probably, not be made public.

https://www.fbi.gov/tampa/press-releases/2016/investigative-update-regarding-pulse-nightclub-shooting

Michel Chossudovsky is an award-winning author, Professor of Economics (emeritus) at the University of Ottawa, Founder and Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), Montreal, Editor of Global Research.

2 July 2016

By Karim El-Bar

Muhannad said he couldn’t keep the cash he had discovered in the wardrobe because his religion forbids it

A Syrian refugee living in Germany discovered €150,000 ($166,500) in an old wardrobe donated by a charity earlier this week – then handed the cash over to police, German media reported.

The 25-year-old, who has been identified only as Muhannad M, told reporters that his religion forbade him from keeping the money.

“For the police and city, he is the hero of the day,” police spokesman Ralf Steinmeyer, 55, said in a statement released on Tuesday.

Muhannad, whose family is still living in Syria, hails from al-Houla, near Homs.

Al-Houla was the site of one of the Syrian uprising’s bloodiest massacres in 2012, when the army and pro-government militias killed 108 people, including 34 women and 49 children, according to UN figures. Most victims were summarily executed.

Muhannad reportedly reached Germany last October before gaining refugee status and being transferred to the town of Minden.

It was in this community of about 83,000 people, in western Germany, that the Syrian made his extraordinary discovery.

Muhannad had just moved into a flat paid for by a job centre and started to furnish his apartment with donations from charities.

While assembling and cleaning the donated wardrobe, he found a secret compartment made up of two boards screwed together. Inside he found the money.

“They were all new €500 notes. I thought it was fake money,” he told the German newspaper Bild, describing the €50,000 in cash he found inside the compartment.

He also found five savings books worth €100,000, bringing the total amount to €150,000.

After a brief internet search, and a crash course in telling fake money from real ones, he realised the cash was genuine.

If he was uncertain at first whether the money was real, he certainly had no qualms about what to do next.

“I am a Muslim. I’m not allowed to keep this money. My religion forbids it,” he told Radio Westphalia.

He alerted the local migration authorities who, in turn, informed the police.

“Allah would never allow me to finance my own interests with someone else’s wealth,” he added.

Police have identified the owner of the money, according to German daily Die Welt, and are still attempting to make contact.

“People often report small amounts of money found to the police,” Steinmeyer said. “But such a large sum is absolutely exceptional.”

“This young man has behaved in an exemplary manner and deserves great credit,” he added.

Muhannad is currently enrolled in a German language course and aims to study for a master’s degree in Germany, having finished his university studies in Syria in communications technology.

No good deed goes unpaid, however, as he will receive three percent of the value of the money he handed over – €4,500.

But Bild reported that it is possible the finder’s fee will be offset against the job centre’s overheads. Perhaps no good deed goes unpunished.

Karim El-Bar is an Egyptian-British, London-based staff writer/editor focused on the Middle East.

29 June 2016

 

By George Monbiot

Let’s sack the electorate and appoint a new one: this is the demand made by MPs, lawyers and the 4 million people who have signed the petition calling for a second referendum. It’s a cry of pain, and therefore understandable, but it’s also bad politics and bad democracy. Reduced to its essence, it amounts to graduates telling nongraduates: “We reject your democratic choice.”

Were this vote to be annulled (it won’t be), the result would be a full-scale class and culture war, riots and perhaps worse, pitching middle-class progressives against those on whose behalf they have claimed to speak, and permanently alienating people who have spent their lives feeling voiceless and powerless.

Yes, the Brexit vote has empowered the most gruesome collection of schemers, misfits, liars, extremists and puppets that British politics has produced in the modern era. It threatens to invoke a new age of demagoguery, a threat sharpened by the thought that if this can happen, so can Donald Trump.

It has provoked a resurgence of racism and an economic crisis whose dimensions remain unknown. It jeopardises the living world, the NHS, peace in Ireland and the rest of the European Union. It promotes what the billionaire Peter Hargreaves gleefully anticipated as “fantastic insecurity”.

But we’re stuck with it. There isn’t another option, unless you favour the years of limbo and chaos that would ensue from a continued failure to trigger article 50. It’s not just that we have no choice but to accept the result; we should embrace it and make of it what we can.

It’s not as if the system that’s now crashing around us was functioning. The vote could be seen as a self-inflicted wound, or it could be seen as the eruption of an internal wound inflicted over many years by an economic oligarchy on the poor and the forgotten. The bogus theories on which our politics and economics are founded were going to collide with reality one day. The only questions were how and when.

Yes, the Brexit campaign was led by a political elite, funded by an economic elite and fuelled by a media elite. Yes, popular anger was channelled towards undeserving targets – migrants.

But the vote was also a howl of rage against exclusion, alienation and remote authority. That is why the slogan “take back control” resonated. If the left can’t work with this, what are we for?

So here is where we find ourselves. The economic system is not working, except for the likes of Philip Green. Neoliberalism has not delivered the meritocratic nirvana its theorists promised, but a rentiers’ paradise, offering staggering returns to whoever grabs the castle first while leaving productive workers on the wrong side of the moat.

The age of enterprise has become the age of unearned income, the age of the market the age of market failure, the age of opportunity a steel cage of zero-hours contracts, precarity and surveillance.

The political system is not working. Whoever you vote for, the same people win, because where power claims to be is not where power is.

Parliaments and councils embody paralysed force, gesture without motion, as the real decisions are taken elsewhere: by the money, for the money. Governments have actively conspired in this shift, negotiating fake trade treaties behind their voters’ backs to prevent democracy from controlling corporate capital.

Unreformed political funding ensures that parties have to listen to the rustle of notes before the bustle of votes. In Britain these problems are compounded by an electoral system that ensures most votes don’t count. This is why a referendum is almost the only means by which people can be heard, and why attempting to override it is a terrible idea.

Culture is not working. A worldview that insists both people and place are fungible is inherently hostile to the need for belonging. For years now we have been told that we do not belong, that we should shift out without complaint while others are shifted in to take our place.

When the peculiarities of community and place are swept away by the tides of capital, all that’s left is a globalised shopping culture, in which we engage with glazed passivity. Man was born free, and he is everywhere in chainstores.

In all these crises are opportunities – opportunities to reject, connect and erect, to build from these ruins a system that works for the people of this country rather than for an offshore elite that preys on insecurity.

If it is true that Britain will have to renegotiate its trade treaties, is this not the best chance we’ve had in decades to contain corporate power – of insisting that companies that operate here must offer proper contracts, share their profits, cut their emissions and pay their taxes? Is it not a chance to regain control of the public services slipping from our grasp?

How will politics in this sclerotic nation change without a maelstrom? In this chaos we can, if we are quick and clever, find a chance to strike a new contract: proportional representation, real devolution and a radical reform of campaign finance to ensure that millionaires can never again own our politics.

Remote authority has been rejected, so let’s use this moment to root our politics in a common celebration of place, to fight the epidemic of loneliness and rekindle common purpose, transcending the tensions between recent and less recent migrants (which means everyone else). In doing so, we might find a language in which liberal graduates can talk with the alienated people of Britain, rather than at them.

But most importantly, let’s address the task that the left and the centre have catastrophically neglected: developing a political and economic philosophy fit for the 21st century, rather than repeatedly microwaving the leftovers of the 20th (neoliberalism and Keynesianism). If the history of the last 80 years tells us anything, it’s that little changes without a new and feracious framework of thought.

So yes, despair and rage and curse at what has happened: there are reasons enough to do so. But then raise your eyes to where hope lies.

George Monbiot is the author of the bestselling books The Age of Consent: A Manifesto for a New World Order and Captive State: The Corporate Takeover of Britain, as well as the investigative travel books Poisoned Arrows, Amazon Watershed and No Man’s Land.

28 June 2016

 

By Jeffrey Sachs

NEW YORK – The Brexit vote was a triple protest: against surging immigration, City of London bankers, and European Union institutions, in that order. It will have major consequences. Donald Trump’s campaign for the US presidency will receive a huge boost, as will other anti-immigrant populist politicians. Moreover, leaving the EU will wound the British economy, and could well push Scotland to leave the United Kingdom – to say nothing of Brexit’s ramifications for the future of European integration.

Brexit is thus a watershed event that signals the need for a new kind of globalization, one that could be far superior to the status quo that was rejected at the British polls.

At its core, Brexit reflects a pervasive phenomenon in the high-income world: rising support for populist parties campaigning for a clampdown on immigration. Roughly half the population in Europe and the United States, generally working-class voters, believes that immigration is out of control, posing a threat to public order and cultural norms.

In the middle of the Brexit campaign in May, it was reported that the UK had net immigration of 333,000 persons in 2015, more than triple the government’s previously announced target of 100,000. That news came on top of the Syrian refugee crisis, terrorist attacks by Syrian migrants and disaffected children of earlier immigrants, and highly publicized reports of assaults on women and girls by migrants in Germany and elsewhere.

In the US, Trump backers similarly rail against the country’s estimated 11 million undocumented residents, mainly Hispanic, who overwhelmingly live peaceful and productive lives, but without proper visas or work permits. For many Trump supporters, the crucial fact about the recent attack in Orlando is that the perpetrator was the son of Muslim immigrants from Afghanistan and acted in the name of anti-American sentiment (though committing mass murder with automatic weapons is, alas, all too American).

Warnings that Brexit would lower income levels were either dismissed outright, wrongly, as mere fearmongering, or weighed against the Leavers’ greater interest in border control. A major factor, however, was implicit class warfare. Working-class “Leave” voters reasoned that most or all of the income losses would in any event be borne by the rich, and especially the despised bankers of the City of London.

Americans disdain Wall Street and its greedy and often criminal behavior at least as much as the British working class disdains the City of London. This, too, suggests a campaign advantage for Trump over his opponent in November, Hillary Clinton, whose candidacy is heavily financed by Wall Street. Clinton should take note and distance herself from Wall Street.

In the UK, these two powerful political currents – rejection of immigration and class warfare – were joined by the widespread sentiment that EU institutions are dysfunctional. They surely are. One need only cite the last six years of mismanagement of the Greek crisis by self-serving, shortsighted European politicians. The continuing eurozone turmoil was, understandably, enough to put off millions of UK voters.

The short-run consequences of Brexit are already clear: the pound has plummeted to a 31-year low. In the near term, the City of London will face major uncertainties, job losses, and a collapse of bonuses. Property values in London will cool. The possible longer-run knock-on effects in Europe – including likely Scottish independence; possible Catalonian independence; a breakdown of free movement of people in the EU; a surge in anti-immigrant politics (including the possible election of Trump and France’s Marine Le Pen) – are enormous. Other countries might hold referendums of their own, and some may choose to leave.

In Europe, the call to punish Britain pour encourager les autres – to warn those contemplating the same – is already rising. This is European politics at its stupidest (also very much on display vis-à-vis Greece). The remaining EU should, instead, reflect on its obvious failings and fix them. Punishing Britain – by, say, denying it access to Europe’s single market – would only lead to the continued unraveling of the EU.

So what should be done? I would suggest several measures, both to reduce the risks of catastrophic feedback loops in the short term and to maximize the benefits of reform in the long term.

First, stop the refugee surge by ending the Syrian war immediately. This can be accomplished by ending the CIA-Saudi alliance to overthrow Bashar al-Assad, thereby enabling Assad (with Russian and Iranian backing) to defeat the Islamic State and stabilize Syria (with a similar approach in neighboring Iraq). America’s addiction to regime change (in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria) is the deep cause of Europe’s refugee crisis. End the addiction, and the recent refugees could return home.

Second, stop NATO’s expansion to Ukraine and Georgia. The new Cold War with Russia is another US-contrived blunder with plenty of European naiveté attached. Closing the door on NATO expansion would make it possible to ease tensions and normalize relations with Russia, stabilize Ukraine, and restore focus on the European economy and the European project.

Third, don’t punish Britain. Instead, police national and EU borders to stop illegal migrants. This is not xenophobia, racism, or fanaticism. It is common sense that countries with the world’s most generous social-welfare provisions (Western Europe) must say no to millions (indeed hundreds of millions) of would-be migrants. The same is true for the US.

Fourth, restore a sense of fairness and opportunity for the disaffected working class and those whose livelihoods have been undermined by financial crises and the outsourcing of jobs. This means following the social-democratic ethos of pursuing ample social spending for health, education, training, apprenticeships, and family support, financed by taxing the rich and closing tax havens, which are gutting public revenues and exacerbating economic injustice. It also means finally giving Greece debt relief, thereby ending the long-running eurozone crisis.

Fifth, focus resources, including additional aid, on economic development, rather than war, in low-income countries. Uncontrolled migration from today’s poor and conflict-ridden regions will become overwhelming, regardless of migration policies, if climate change, extreme poverty, and lack of skills and education undermine the development potential of Africa, Central America and the Caribbean, the Middle East, and Central Asia.

All of this underscores the need to shift from a strategy of war to one of sustainable development, especially by the US and Europe. Walls and fences won’t stop millions of migrants fleeing violence, extreme poverty, hunger, disease, droughts, floods, and other ills. Only global cooperation can do that.

Jeffrey D. Sachs, Professor of Sustainable Development, Professor of Health Policy and Management, and Director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University, is also Director of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network.

25 June 2016

 

APRN Statement on Protests vs US Military Troops in Japan

The Asia Pacific Research Network (APRN) vehemently opposes the continued presence of US military troops in Okinawa Prefecture, Japan and condemns the Abe Administration’s continued negligence to the voices of the Okinawan people that led to the recent murder and rape of a 20-year-old Okinawan woman by a former US Marine.

Last May 19, Kenneth Franklin Shinzato was arrested by Okinawan authorities over the death of Rina Shumabukuro whose body was found beside a road in central Okinawa after being reported missing last April 28. The former US Marine confessed to raping Shimabukuro before strangling and stabbing her to death after which he transported her body in a suitcase. This is not the first time this happened in Okinawa – in 1995, three US Marines gang-raped a 12-year old Okinawan schoolgirl which marked the groundswell of peoples opposition against military bases in Japan [1]. Massive demonstrations in 1995 prompted the US to publicly ‘pledge’ in reducing its military footprint in Okinawa which ironically until now still serves as a linchpin to US’ security relations with Japan and a strategic location for the US to pursue its pivot to East Asia.

The recent killing and rape of a local Okinawan woman sparked yet again simultaneous mass protests across the country that gathered tens of thousands of people in Japan calling for the ouster of US military bases in the country.

The heavy US military presence in Okinawa operates under the US-Japan Security Treaty first signed in 1952 which allows the US to take unfettered military actions in Japan in the interest of ‘maintaining peace’ in East Asia. The security treaty was further amended in 1960 to include a separate pact called the SOFA (Status of Forces Agreement) agreement which unduly protects US military personnel, servicemen, base employees and certain civilian workers who commit crimes in the country by giving the US jurisdiction over such cases [2]. It must be noted that in this case of violence against Rina, the former US Marine was arrested by the Okinawan authorities, and is expected to face criminal court under the local authority. However, that may not have been possible had he fled into the US bases, or if the violence had occurred while on duty.

The continued US military presence this treaty perpetuates puts the Japanese peoples at risk as it allows free reign for US soldiers and service people to commit crimes with impunity, and provides the US with unrestricted access to Japan’s resources to secure its geopolitical interests in the region. For seven decades now since the end of World War II, the people continue to bear the weight of vast US military bases in Okinawa along with the numerous human rights violations associated with them.

In addition, Okinawa’s land mass is less than 1 percent of Japan’s but it is home to 74% of exclusive-use US military facilities in the country [3]. Okinawa currently hosts 26,000 US military personnel, 32 US military installations, 20 air spaces and 28 water areas that serve as training zones exclusive for US military use [4].

This over burden is, in part, due to the ignorance by the Japanese Government to let this go on. As an island on the peripheries of the Japanese Archipelago, the Okinawan people have historically been subject to discrimination by Tokyo. Nearly 80 percent of people in Okinawa have always demanded that the burden be at least matched by other prefecture’s share of US bases. However, the voices only fell into deaf ears of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, especially under the current Abe Administration, who himself is aggressively leading the militarization of the Far East.

APRN stands in solidarity with the Okinawan people demanding justice for the death of Rina and the immediate pullout of US military troops from their land. We likewise urge our members, partners and the international community at large to continue opposing the presence of US military bases across the Asia Pacific region.

OPPOSE MILITARY BASES IN JAPAN!

US TROOPS OUT NOW!

RESIST MILITARISM IN THE ASIA PACIFIC REGION!

June 24, 2016

 

By Geoffrey Robertson

It’s not over yet. A law that passed last year to set up the EU referendum said nothing about the result being binding or having any legal force. “Sovereignty” – a much misunderstood word in the campaign – resides in Britain with the “Queen in parliament”, that is with MPs alone who can make or break laws and peers who can block them. Before Brexit can be triggered, parliament must repeal the 1972 European Communities Act by which it voted to take us into the European Union – and MPs have every right, and indeed a duty if they think it best for Britain, to vote to stay.

It is being said that the government can trigger Brexit under article 50 of the Lisbon treaty, merely by sending a note to Brussels. This is wrong. Article 50 says: “Any member state may decide to withdraw from the Union in accordance with its own constitutional requirements.” The UK’s most fundamental constitutional requirement is that there must first be the approval of its parliament.

Britain, absurdly, is the only significant country (other than Saudi Arabia) without a written constitution. We have what are termed “constitutional conventions”, along with a lot of history and traditions. Nothing in these precedents allots any place to the results of referendums or requires our sovereign parliament to take a blind bit of notice of them.

It was parliament that voted to enter the European Economic Community in 1972, and only three years later was a referendum held to settle the split in Harold Wilson’s Labour party over the value of membership. Had a narrow majority of the public voted out in 1975, Wilson would still have had to persuade parliament to vote accordingly – and it is far from certain that he would have succeeded.

Our democracy does not allow, much less require, decision-making by referendum. That role belongs to the representatives of the people and not to the people themselves. Democracy has never meant the tyranny of the simple majority, much less the tyranny of the mob (otherwise, we might still have capital punishment). Democracy entails an elected government, subject to certain checks and balances such as the common law and the courts, and an executive ultimately responsible to parliament, whose members are entitled to vote according to conscience and common sense.

Many countries, including Commonwealth nations – vouchsafed their constitutions by the UK – have provisions for change by referendums. But these provisions are carefully circumscribed and do not usually allow change by simple majority.

In Australia, for example, a referendum proposal must pass in each of the six states (this would defeat Brexit, which failed in Scotland and Northern Ireland). In other countries, it must pass by a very clear majority – usually two-thirds. In some US states that permit voting on public legislative proposals, there are similar safeguards. In the UK (except, under a 2011 act in the case of an EU expansion of power), referendum results are merely advisory – in this case, advising MPs that the country is split almost down the middle on the wisdom of EU membership.

So how should MPs vote come November, when prime minister Boris Johnson introduces the 2016 European Communities Act (Repeal) Bill? Those from London and Scotland should happily vote against it, following their constituents’ wishes. So should Labour MPs – it’s their party policy after all.

By November, there may be other very good reasons for MPs to refuse to leave Europe. Brexit may turn out to be just too difficult. Staying in the EU may be the only way to stop Scotland from splitting, or to rescue the pound. A poll on Sunday tells us that a million leave voters are already regretting their choice: a significant public change of mind would amply justify a parliamentary refusal to Brexit. It may be, in November, that President Donald Trump becomes the leader of the free world – in which case a strong EU would become more necessary than ever. Or it may simply be that a majority of MPs, mindful of their constitutional duty to do what is best for Britain, conscientiously decide that it is best to remain.

There is no point in holding another referendum (as several million online petitioners are urging). Referendums are alien to our traditions, they are inappropriate for complex decision-making, and without careful incorporation in a written constitution, the public expectation aroused by the result can damage our democracy. The only way forward now depends on the courage, intelligence and conscience of your local MP. So have your say in the traditional way: lobby him or her to vote against the government when it tries to Brexit, because parliament is sovereign.

Geoffrey Robertson QC is founder and head of Doughty Street Chambers and has argued many landmark human rights cases in British and Commonwealth Courts and the European Court of Human Rights.

27 June 2016

By Saleh el Namey

A group of Gaza fishermen were working an early morning shift when the Israeli navy opened fire.

Rajab Abu Riyala and his brother Khaled were shot during that 31 May incident. A bullet had to be removed from Rajab’s knee as a result.

They were among five fishermen arrested on two vessels by Israel. All were brought to Ashdod, a port in present-day Israel, and were detained for most of the day. Both of the vessels were confiscated. “Every Gaza fisherman who is arrested undergoes a long and cruel process of interrogation and strip searches,” said Bashir Abu Riyala, one of the five.

Bashir, a cousin of Rajab and Khaled, questioned why Israel behaves as if fishermen are a security threat. “The way they harass us cannot be tolerated,” he said. “Each time they arrest fishermen, they fail to get the information they are looking for. We do not know anything. All we want is to fish freely and safely.”

Bashir thinks it is unlikely that the vessel will be returned to them.

Due to the confiscation, he and his cousins are now out of work.

The fishermen were within three nautical miles of the Gaza coast, a zone in which Israel theoretically allows fishing to take place.

Israel has repeatedly attacked fishermen working within those limits.

The limits have also been subject to a number of changes.

Boost to economy?

In April, it was reported that fishing would be permitted within nine nautical miles off certain parts of the Gaza coast. Citing Israeli officials, The New York Times suggested that Israel was allowing fishermen to work in a wider area as part of efforts to boost Gaza’s economy.

Any benefits to Gaza’s population would have been short-lived.

Israeli authorities subsequently stated they were reimposing a limit of six nautical miles for the entire Gaza Strip.

That limit is considerably less than the 20-mile zone established for Gaza’s fishermen under the Oslo accords, which Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization signed in the 1990s.

Last year, Maher Baker and his son Khader were fishing near Gaza’s coastline when Israeli forces shot at them repeatedly.

Khader was wounded in the arm and the two men were taken to Ashdod. After being shackled and forced to take off their clothes, the father and son were subjected to an aggressive interrogation.

“Even though we were fishing within three miles of the coast, the Israelis accused us of fishing in a dangerous and prohibited area,” Maher told The Electronic Intifada. “Simply, they do not want us to fish. They want the sea for themselves.”

The Bakers’ vessel has still not been returned to them. Since the incident occurred, they have been trying to scrape together enough money to buy a new one.

“I have just spent my whole day running from the union [for Palestinian fishermen] to charities, to the UN, looking for some kind of financial support,” said Khader.

The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights recorded 139 incidents in which Gaza’s fishermen were shot at by Israeli naval forces during 2015. Twenty-four fishermen were wounded.

There were also six incidents in which boats were shelled and chased.

More than 70 fishermen were arrested last year and 22 vessels were confiscated.

These incidents are part of the economic warfare Israel wages against Gaza’s fishermen.

Deprived of coast

The nine-year blockade of Gaza means that motors, spare parts and fiberglass — all essential for maintaining and repairing vessels — are scarce. Fuel is often unaffordable.

Muflih Abu Riyala, a member of the Palestinian Fishermen’s Syndicate, said that Gaza has suffered from equipment shortages for so long that fishermen “have gotten used to it.”

“Israeli procedures are suffocating the fishing industry,” he said. “Catches have fallen dramatically. Why are we deprived of fishing off our own coast?”

Before Israel imposed its siege, Gaza fishermen could catch as much as 4,500 tons per year, some of which was exported to the occupied West Bank. Catches since the imposition of the siege have fallen below 1,500 tons per year, according to Abu Riyala.

Forcing fishermen to operate within such strict limits has depleted many fish stocks in the waters next to the coast.

Amer al-Qaran, a fisherman from the Deir al-Balah area of central Gaza, works with his three sons for at least 15 hours a day.

The best time of day to fish is the early morning, he said. Yet because of Israeli restrictions, the most he can expect to catch in a six-hour morning shift is around 7 kilograms of fish. “That is sometimes not enough to cover the amount of fuel my boat uses during a shift,” he said.

“Sometimes I spend long hours at sea without catching any fish,” he said. “I am afraid that I will come under Israeli fire if I advance another mile.”

Isra Saleh el-Namey is a journalist from Gaza.

This article was first published by Electronic Intifada

26 June 2016