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By Dr Hakim

“I feel very angry, but I don’t want anything from the U.S. military,” said Khalid Ahmad, a 20 year old pharmacist who survived the U.S. bombing of the Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) / Doctors Without Borders Hospital in Kunduz on the 3rd of October, “God will hold them accountable.”

The actions of the U.S. military elicit the same contempt from Khalid and many ordinary Afghans as the actions of the Taliban or the ISIS.

Khalid was a little wary when Zuhal, Hoor and I were introduced to him in a ward of Emergency Hospital in Kabul, where he has been recuperating from a U.S. shrapnel injury to his spine that nearly killed him.

But, immediately, I saw his care for others. “Please bring a chair for him,” Khalid told his brother, not wanting me to be uncomfortable in squatting next to him, as we began our conversation in the corridor space outside the ward.

Having just recovered strength in his legs, he had walked tentatively to the corridor, making sure his urinary catheter bag wasn’t in the way as he sat down.

The autumn sun revealed tired lines on his face, as if even ‘skin’ can get permanently traumatized by the shock of bomb blasts.

“The Taliban had already taken control of all areas in Kunduz except the MSF Hospital and the airport. I felt I could still serve the patients safely because neither the Afghan /U.S. military forces nor the Taliban would bother us. At least, they’re not supposed to.” Khalid paused imperceptibly.

“As a neutral humanitarian service,” Khalid continued, “we treat everyone alike, as patients needing help. We recognize everyone as a human being.”

“I wasn’t scheduled to be on duty the night of the incident, but my supervisor asked me to help because the hospital was swarmed with larger numbers of patients that week.”

“I was sleeping when the bombing began at about 2 a.m. I went to see what was happening, and to my horror, I saw that the ICU was on fire, the flames appearing to shoot 10 meters up into the night sky. Some patients were burning in their beds.”

“I was petrified.”

“It was so frightening. The bombing and firing continued, and following after the bombs were showers of ‘laser-like flashes’ which were flammable, catching and spreading the fire.”

What were those laser-like flashes?

“With two other colleagues, I rushed to the guard house, which was about five metres from the hospital’s main gate. In the guard house were four security guards. We all decided to make a run for the hospital gate, to escape the bombing.”

Khalid’s eyes cringed a little, disappointment soaking his voice. Such shock can be too much for a human being to bear; irreparable disappointment at the U.S. military for attacking a humanitarian, medical facility, and an unfair guilty disappointment with self for having escaped death while colleagues were killed.

“The first person ran. Then another. It was my turn.”

“I took off and just as I reached the gate, with one foot outside the gate and one foot inside the hospital compound, a shrapnel hit me on my back.”

“I lost power in both legs, and fell. Dazed, I dragged myself to a nearby ditch and threw myself in.”

“I was bleeding quickly from my back, the blood pooling at my sides. Feeling that my end was near, I was desperate to call my family. My colleagues and I had taken out the batteries from our cell phones because the U.S. military has a way of tracking and target-killing people by picking up their cell phone signals. With one good arm, somehow, I pulled out my phone and inserted its battery.”

“Mom, I’m injured, and don’t have time. Could you pass the phone to dad?”

“What happened, my son?”

“Please pass the phone to dad!”

“What happened, my son?”

I could almost hear his distraught mother wondering what could have happened to her son who should have been safe in the hospital environment.

“Mom, there’s no time left. Pass the phone to dad.”

“I then asked my dad for forgiveness for any wrong I had done. I was feeling faint, and dropped the phone.”

“In my half-consciousness, the phone rang and it was my cousin. He asked me what had happened, and instructed me to use my clothes to stop the bleeding. I yanked a vest off myself, threw it behind my back and laid on it.”

“I must have passed out, as my next memory was of hearing my cousin’s voice and other voices, and being taken to the kitchen of the hospital where some basic first aid was being given to many injured persons.”

“I saw people with amputated limbs. Some of my colleagues, some of my colleagues….what wrong had we done? Is this what we get for serving people? ”

As I struggled emotionally to register Khalid’s story in my mind, I remembered my own training and practice as a doctor in hospitals, and I wished there was a global conversation about the failure of the Geneva Conventions to protect civilians, and health facilities. The European Council in Brussels in 2003 estimated that since 1990, almost 4 million people have died in wars, 90% of whom were civilians.

I also wished that more individuals could respond to UN High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres who declared in a June 2015 press release that “We are witnessing a paradigm change….It is terrifying that on the one hand there is more and more impunity for those starting conflicts, and on the other there is seeming utter inability of the international community to work together to stop wars and build and preserve peace.”

A positive way to respond would be to join MSF, as well as ICRC President Peter Maurer and UN Head Ban Ki Moon in saying, “Enough! Even war has rules!” , that is, we can sign MSF’s petition for an #independent investigation of the Kunduz MSF Hospital bombing.

Passively accepting the Pentagon’s confessional report of ‘human error’ resulting in the killing of 31 staff and patients in the Kunduz Hospital bombing would allow the U.S. and other militaries to continue breaching laws and conventions with impunity, like in Yemen right now.

The International Committee of the Red Cross reported in October that nearly 100 hospitals in Yemen had been attacked since March 2015. Just as recently as 2nd December, Khalid’s haunting story repeated itself in Taiz, Yemen, where an MSF clinic was attacked by the Saudi coalition forces, prompting Karline Kleijer, MSF operational manager for Yemen, to say that every nation backing the Yemen war, including the U.S., must answer for the Yemen MSF clinic bombing.

Khalid’s story was already haunting me, “To transport me, they used body bags meant for the dead. Feeble as I was, I panicked and made sure they heard me protesting, ‘I’m not dead!’ I heard someone say, “We know, don’t worry, we have no choice but to make do.”

“My cousin brought me to a hospital in Baghlan Province which had unfortunately been abandoned because of fighting in the area. So, I was taken to Pul-e-Khumri, and on the way, because I had slightly long hair, I heard shouting directed at us, ‘Hey, what are you doing with a Talib?’. My cousin had to assure them that I was not a Talib.”

So many possible fatal ‘human errors’ and mistakes….

“There was no available help in Pul-e-Khumri too, so I was finally brought to this hospital in Kabul. I’ve had five surgical operations so far,” Khalid said, his voice fading off a little, “and I needed two litres of blood in all.”

It struck me from Khalid’s account that the U.S. military could bomb a health facility by what Kate Clark of the Afghan Analysts Network suggested as ‘ripping up the rule book’, and then, not take any measures whatsoever after the bombing to treat casualties like Khalid and many others. If you are a civilian bombed by the U.S. military, you’ll have to fend for yourself!

Khalid sighed, “I’m grateful that I’ve been given a second life. Some of my colleagues…they weren’t so lucky.”

Khalid was exhausted. I understood from working in Afghanistan over the past years of a worsening war that his exhaustion wasn’t just physical. “I’m angry. The U.S. military is killing us just because they want to be the Empire of the world.”

Khalid asked why we wanted to take his photograph. His question reminded me of what we as individuals can do: taking and seeing his photo in this article isn’t going to be enough.

He steadied himself in the chair, placed his urine bag out of the camera’s view and said with full dignity, “I want my story to be heard.”

Hakim, ( Dr. Teck Young, Wee ) is a medical doctor from Singapore who has done humanitarian and social enterprise work in Afghanistan for the past 10 years, including being a mentor to the Afghan Peace Volunteers, an inter-ethnic group of young Afghans dedicated to building non-violent alternatives to war. He is the 2012 recipient of the International Pfeffer Peace Prize.

08 December, 2015
Countercurrents.org

 

By Robert J. Burrowes

What do the Pyrenean ibex, St. Helena olive, Baiji dolphin, Liverpool pigeon, Eastern cougar, West African black rhinoceros, Formosan clouded leopard, Chinese Paddlefish, the Golden Toad and the Rockland grass skipper butterfly all have in common but which is different from the Dodo?

The answer is that these species all became extinct since the year 2000, that is, in the last fifteen years. The Dodo became extinct in 1662.

The one thing that all of these species have in common is that the cause of their extinction was human beings.

If you would like to watch a video which evocatively showcases some of the extinct species of planet Earth, you can do so here: ‘Toll a bell on Remembrance Day for Lost Species 30th November 2015’. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xT1vp5HfBq4

The real tragedy is that the few species mentioned above do not begin to tell the story. Recent estimates indicate that 200 species of life (plants, birds, animals, fish, amphibians, insects, reptiles) are driven to extinction each day. Every day. This rate exceeds that during the last mass extinction event, when the dinosaurs vanished 65 million years ago.

In short, planet Earth is now experiencing its sixth mass extinction event and we are the cause. How so?

Well, human activity now impacts heavily all over the planet and we are using a variety of sophisticated industrial technologies to destroy other life forms in vast numbers and this inevitably results in the extinction of some species.

In some cases we simply hunt these life forms to extinction as a result of some misguided commerical imperative. Whether it is for food (such as whales and many species of fish), trophies (such as ‘big game’ animals), raw materials (such as the ivory of elephant tusks) or some delusional belief in their aphrodisiac or medicinal qualities (such as the horn of a rhinoceros), we kill them with sophisticated killing technologies such as harpoons, fishing nets and guns (against which they have no evolutionary defense). To give one example: sea turtles. Six out of the seven subspecies of sea turtles are endangered, according to Wildcoast. Why? ‘Sea Turtles are threatened due to the poaching and hunting of their shells, meat and eggs. Turtle eggs are sold as a snack…with the absurd belief that they possess aphrodisiac elements.’ See ‘Sea Turtles’. http://www.wildcoast.net/programs/5-sea-turtles

But mainly, it is two things that drive species over the edge: our systematic destruction of land habitat – forests, grasslands, wetlands, peatlands, mangroves… – in our endless effort to capture more of the Earth’s wild places for human use (whether it be residential, commercial, mining, farming or military) and our destruction of waterways and the ocean habitat by dumping into them radioactive contaminants, carbon dioxide, a multitude of poisons and chemical pollutants, and even plastic. There are now ‘dead zones’ in several oceans of the world, not to mention the great floating garbage patches.

Consider rainforests.

In an extensive academic study that was recently concluded, the more than 150 joint authors of the report advised that ‘most of the world’s >40,000 tropical tree species now qualify as globally threatened’. See ‘Estimating the global conservation status of more than 15,000 Amazonian tree species’. http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/1/10/e1500936.full Why are more than 40,000 tropical tree species threatened with extinction? Because ‘Upwards of 80,000 acres of rainforest are destroyed across the world each day, taking with them over 130 species of plants, animals and insects.’ See ‘Half of Amazon Tree Species Face Extinction’. http://www.discovery.com/dscovrd/nature/half-of-amazon-tree-species-face-extinction/

Or consider frogs.

Relatively speaking, we pay a lot of attention to big and colorful species but the species you have never heard about or which are less ‘exotic’ need to be valued too. Such as frogs which, among other invaluable services from a limited human perspective, eat malarial mosquitoes. ‘Frogs have survived in more or less their current form for 250 million years, having survived countless ice ages, asteroid crashes, and other environmental disturbances, yet now one-third of amphibian species are on the verge of extinction.’ See ‘Save the Frogs!’ http://www.savethefrogs.com/

But not all of our destruction is as visible as our vanishing rainforests and the iconic species that vanish with them. Have you thought about the Earth’s soil recently? Apart from depleting it, for example, by washing it away (sometimes in dramatic mudslides but usually unobtrusively) because we have logged the rainforest that held it in place, we also dump vast quantities of both inorganic and organic pollutants into it as well. Some of the main toxic substances in waste are inorganic constituents such as heavy metals, including cadmium, chromium, lead, mercury, nickel and zinc. Mining and smelting activities and the spreading of metal-laden sewage sludge are the two main culprits responsible for the pollution of soils with heavy metals. See ‘Soil-net’. http://www.soil-net.com/dev/page.cfm?pageid=secondary_threats_pollutants&loginas=anon_secondary

Far more common, however, is our destruction of the soil with organic based pollutants associated with industrial chemicals. Thousands of synthetic chemicals reach the soil by direct or indirect means, often in the form of fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides and other poisons that destroy the soil, by reducing the nutrients and killing the microbes, in which we grow our food. See, for example, ‘Glyphosate effects on soil rhizosphere-associated bacterial communities’. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S004896971530989X

Using genetically modified organisms, and the chemical poisons on which they rely, exacerbate this problem terribly. But two other outcomes of the use of such poisons are that the depleted soil can no longer sequester carbon and the poisons also kill many of the beneficial insects, such as bees, that play a part in plant pollination and growth.

And, of course, military contamination and destruction of soil is prodigious ranging from the radioactive contamination of vast areas to the extensive and multifaceted chemical contamination that occurs at military bases.

Like destroying the oceans, destroying the soil is an ongoing investment in future extinctions.

Anyway, if so far you have been unconcerned about the fate of our fellow species, you would be wise to reconsider. If you haven’t checked them lately, there are lists of critically endangered, endangered, vulnerable and near threatened species. But heading all of these lists, there should be one other: homo sapiens sapiens. With human extinction now possible by 2030 – see ‘Why is Near Term Human Extinction Inevitable?’ http://www.countercurrents.org/burrowes171214.htm – we do not have much time left to respond powerfully. Humans, as many ecologists have been noting for decades, are only one part of the web of life. Our fellow species make the Earth habitable. We cannot live here without them.

So the key question is not ‘Do you really want to live in a world without elephants?’ The key question is ‘Do you really want to live?’

If you do, then you need to act. At the simplest level, you can make some difficult but valuable personal choices. Like becoming a vegan or vegetarian, buying/growing organic/biodynamic food, and resolutely refusing to use any form of poison. But if you want to take an integrated approach, the biggest impact you can have as an individual is to systematically reduce your own personal ‘ecological footprint’ in consideration of our fellow species.

If you wish to consider such an approach, you are welcome to ponder joining those participating in ‘The Flame Tree Project to Save Life on Earth’ http://tinyurl.com/flametree which outlines an easy series of steps for reducing your consumption in seven key resource areas by 10% per year for 15 successive years while simultaneously building your self-reliance. You can also consider signing the online pledge of ‘The People’s Charter to Create a Nonviolent World’ http://thepeoplesnonviolencecharter.wordpress.com which obviously includes nonviolence towards our fellow species.

In addition, you can participate in ongoing campaigns by a multitude of organizations that campaign to preserve one or more threatened species from extinction. If we can save enough other species, we might just save ourselves.

Extinction might be howling outside our door but we don’t have to cower waiting for someone else to save us. What you do personally makes a vital difference.

And here’s one final thought. Four billion years ago there was no life on Earth. Then, in what can only be described as a miracle (and you can decide your own preference about the nature of that miracle), a single cell came to life. Perhaps this miracle was then repeated in subsequent years.

But however and how often it occurred, every living organism since that time, including every organism that lives today, is linked in an unbroken chain with that first living cell (or those first living cells). Four billion years of evolution which includes you as a unique individual.

There may be life elsewhere in the Universe. But it does exist here, on Earth. And it has had time to evolve to a complexity that includes us.

Until we understand, as Gandhi understood, that all life is one, we live disconnected from the most fundamental truth of our existence. If we kill something else, we kill a part of our self.

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

08 December, 2015
Countercurrents.org

 

By Chris Hedges

The charade of the 21st United Nations climate summit will end, as past climate summits have ended, with lofty rhetoric and ineffectual cosmetic reforms. Since the first summit more than 20 years ago, carbon dioxide emissions have soared. Placing faith in our political and economic elites, who have mastered the arts of duplicity and propaganda on behalf of corporate power, is the triumph of hope over experience. There are only a few ways left to deal honestly with climate change: sustained civil disobedience that disrupts the machinery of exploitation; preparing for the inevitable dislocations and catastrophes that will come from irreversible rising temperatures; and cutting our personal carbon footprints, which means drastically reducing our consumption, particularly of animal products.

“Our civilization,” Dr. Richard Oppenlander writes in “Food Choice and Sustainability,” “displays a curious instinct when confronted with a problem related to overconsumption—we simply find a way to produce more of what it is we are consuming, instead of limiting or stopping that consumption.”

The global elites have no intention of interfering with the profits, or ending government subsidies, for the fossil fuel industry and the extraction industries. They will not curtail extraction or impose hefty carbon taxes to keep fossil fuels in the ground. They will not limit the overconsumption that is the engine of global capitalism. They act as if the greatest contributor of greenhouse gases—the animal agriculture industry—does not exist. They siphon off trillions of dollars and employ scientific and technical expertise—expertise that should be directed toward preparing for environmental catastrophe and investing in renewable energy—to wage endless wars in the Middle East. What they airily hold out as a distant solution to the crisis—wind turbines and solar panels—is, as the scientist James Lovelock says, the equivalent of 18th-century doctors attempting to cure serious diseases with leeches and mercury. And as the elites mouth platitudes about saving the climate they are shoving still another trade agreement, the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), down our throats. The TPP permits corporations to ignore nonbinding climate accords made at conferences such as the one in Paris, and it allows them, in secret trade tribunals, to defy environmental regulations imposed by individual states.

New technology—fracking, fuel-efficient vehicles or genetically modified food—is not about curbing overconsumption or conserving resources. It is about ensuring that consumption continues at unsustainable levels. Technological innovation, employed to build systems of greater and greater complexity, has fragmented society into cadres of specialists. The expertise of each of these specialists is limited to a small section of the elaborate technological, scientific and bureaucratic machinery that drives corporate capitalism forward—much as in the specialized bureaucratic machinery that defined the genocide carried out by the Nazis. These technocrats are part of the massive, unthinking hive that makes any system work, even a system of death. They lack the intellectual and moral capacity to question the doomsday machine spawned by global capitalism. And they are in control.

Civilizations careening toward collapse create ever more complex structures, and more intricate specialization, to exploit diminishing resources. But eventually the resources are destroyed or exhausted. The systems and technologies designed to exploit these resources become useless. Economists call such a phenomenon the “Jevons paradox.” The result is systems collapse.

In the wake of collapses, as evidenced throughout history, societies fragment politically, culturally and socially. They become failed states, bleak and desolate outposts where law and order break down, and there is a mad and often violent scramble for the basic necessities of life. Barbarism reigns.

“Only the strong survive; the weak are victimized, robbed, and killed,” the anthropologist Joseph Tainter writes in “The Collapse of Complex Societies.” “There is fighting for food and fuel. Whatever central authority remains lacks the resources to reimpose order. Bands of pitiful, maimed survivors scavenge among the ruins of grandeur. Grass grows in the streets. There is no higher goal than survival.”

The elites, trained in business schools and managerial programs not to solve real problems but to maintain at any cost the systems of global capitalism, profit personally from the assault. They amass inconceivable sums of wealth while their victims, the underclasses around the globe, are thrust into increasing distress from global warming, poverty and societal breakdown. The apparatus of government, seized by this corporate cabal, is hostile to genuine change. It passes laws, as it did for Denton, Texas, afterresidents voted to outlaw fracking in their city, to overturn the ability of local communities to control their own resources. It persecutes dissidents, along with environmental and animal rights activists, who try to halt the insanity. The elites don’t work for us. They don’t work for the planet. They orchestrate the gaiacide. And they are well paid for it.

The Anthropocene Age—the age of humans, which has caused mass extinctions of plant and animal species and the pollution of the soil, air and oceans—is upon us. The pace of destruction is accelerating. Climate scientists say that sea levels, for example, are rising three times faster than predicted and that the Arctic ice is vanishing at rates that were unforeseen. “If carbon dioxide concentrations reach 550 ppm,” writes Clive Hamilton in “Requiem for a Species,” “after which emissions fell to zero, the global temperature would continue to rise for at least another century.” We have already passed 400 parts per million, a figure not seen on earth for 3 million to 5 million years. We are on track to reach at least 550 ppm by 2100.

The breakdown of the planet, many predict, will be nonlinear, meaning that various systems that sustain life—as Tainter chronicles in his study of collapsed civilizations—will disintegrate simultaneously. The infrastructures that distribute food, supply our energy, ensure our security, produce and transport our baffling array of products, and maintain law and order will crumble at once. It won’t be much fun: Soaring temperatures. Submerged island states and coastal cities. Mass migrations. Species extinction. Monster storms. Droughts. Famines. Declining crop yields. And a security and surveillance apparatus, along with militarized police, that will employ harsher and harsher methods to cope with the chaos.

We have to let go of our relentless positivism, our absurd mania for hope, and face the bleakness of reality before us. To resist means to acknowledge that we are living in a world already heavily damaged by global warming. It means refusing to participate in the destruction of the planet. It means noncooperation with authority. It means defying in every way possible consumer capitalism, militarism and imperialism. It means adjusting our lifestyle, including what we eat, to thwart the forces bent upon our annihilation.

The animal agriculture industry has, in a staggering act of near total censorship, managed to stifle public discussion about the industry’s complicity in global warming. It is barely mentioned in climate summits. Yet livestock and their byproducts, as Kip Andersen and Keegan Kuhn point out in their book, “The Sustainability Secret,” and their documentary,“Cowspiracy,” account for at least 32,000 million tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) per year, or 51 percent of all worldwide greenhouse gas emissions. Methane and nitrous oxide are rarely mentioned in climate talks, although those two greenhouse gases are, as the authors point out, respectively, 86 times and 296 times more destructive than carbon dioxide. Cattle, worldwide, they write, produce 150 billion gallons of methane daily. And 65 percent of the nitrous oxide produced by human-related activities is caused by the animal agriculture industry. Water used in fracking, they write, ranges from 70 billion to 140 billion gallons annually. Animal agriculture water consumption, the book notes, ranges from 34 trillion to 76 trillion gallons annually. Raising animals for human consumption takes up to 45 percent of the planet’s land. Ninety-one percent of the deforestation of the Amazon rain forest and up to 80 percent of global rain forest loss are caused by clearing land for the grazing of livestock and growing feed crops for meat and dairy animals. As more and more rain forest disappears, the planet loses one of its primary means to safely sequester carbon dioxide. The animal agriculture industry is, as Andersen and Kuhn write, also a principal cause of species extinction and the creation of more than 95,000 square miles of nitrogen-flooded dead zones in the oceans.

A person who eats a vegan diet, they point out, a diet free of meat, dairy and eggs, saves 1,100 gallons of water, 45 pounds of grain, 30 square feet of forested land, 20 pounds CO2 equivalent, and one animal’s life every day.

The animal agriculture industry has pushed through “Ag-Gag” laws in many states that criminalize protests, critiques of the industry, and whistleblowing attempts to bring the public’s attention to the staggering destruction wrought on the environment by the business of raising 70 billion land animals every year worldwide to be exploited and consumed by humans. And they have done so, I presume, because defying the animal agriculture industry is as easy as deciding not to put animal products—which have tremendous, scientifically proven health risks—into your mouth.

We have little time left. Those who are despoiling the earth do so for personal gain, believing they can use their privilege to escape the fate that will befall the human species. We may not be able to stop the assault. But we can refuse to abet it. The idols of power and greed, as the biblical prophets warned us, threaten to doom the human race.

Timothy Pachirat recounts in his book, “Every Twelve Seconds: Industrialized Slaughter and the Politics of Sight,” an Aug. 5, 2004, story in the Omaha World-Herald. An “old-timer” who lived five miles from the Omaha slaughterhouses recalled the wind carrying the stench of the almost six and a half million cattle, sheep and hogs killed each year in south Omaha. The sickly odor permeated buildings throughout the area.

“It was the smell of money,” the old-timer said. “It was the smell of money.”

“The Sustainability Secret,” a book quoted in this column, has an introduction by Truthdig columnist Chris Hedges and was ghostwritten by Truthdig’s books editor, Eunice Wong.

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.

© 2015 TruthDig

08 December, 2015
Truthdig.com

By Dr. Chandra Muzaffar

What could have persuaded a government that is facing a massive trust deficit problem to establish an entity called the National Security Council (NSC) which has unfettered discretionary powers in matters pertaining to national security?

There are perhaps two possible explanations.

Is it because there has been an alarming escalation in threats to national security in the last few months which warrants the establishment of the NSC? Is there evidence to support this hypothesis? The authorities continue to crack down on alleged Daesh operatives in the country. Their networks are under constant surveillance. In fact, by and large, our security personnel appear to be acutely alert to Daesh’s manoeuvres and to other similar forms of terrorist activities. To put it differently, they are in effective control of the security situation.

Besides, Malaysia already has strict security laws such as SOSMA 2012 and POTA 2015. There is also Article 150 in the Malaysian Constitution which enables the Yang Di-Pertuan Agong to issue a Proclamation of Emergency when “public order in the Federation or any part thereof is threatened.” There is nothing to indicate that existing laws are inadequate for the purpose of protecting national security.

If Malaysia can strengthen current security measures in any way, it is by pushing for more comprehensive efforts to curb and eradicate the funding sources of terrorist outfits at the regional and international level. Malaysian authorities, there is no doubt, possess some knowledge of how groups such as Abu Sayyaf and Daesh finance their terror agendas. The Malaysian government can also try to convince some of its close friends in the international arena of the importance of destroying terrorist funding sources. Ironically, these are friends who, according to independent investigators and terrorist experts, are linked to individuals and groups who are among the major funders and exporters of terrorism in the world today.

A couple of Malaysia’s friends can help in yet another manner. They should not disseminate blatantly false ideas on Islam aimed at sowing hatred within the Muslim ummah. It is this mainly sectarian bigotry that has driven thousands of Muslims from East and West to go to Iraq and Syria to fight in meaningless battles which in the end only serve the different political agendas of actors in West Asia and North Africa (WANA) and in the West. Some Malaysian religious bureaucrats and religious preachers have also contributed to the spread of hatred and bigotry through their sermons and activities. To eliminate such false and vile religious teachings one has to develop an authentic, alternative discourse on questions of theology, history and politics which is beyond the capacity of most religious bureaucracies. Setting up a security structure such as the NSC is not the solution either.

This brings us to the second possible explanation. If the NSC is not about the security of the nation, is it about the survival of an individual who is determined to perpetuate his power? There are many instances in history of how elites in power have created conditions and established mechanisms which are aimed at ensuring that they remain in power, especially when their moral credibility is at stake. In our own case, it is sad that when fundamental moral questions are raised about the operations of the strategic state investment company, 1MDB, especially by leaders within UMNO and by public officials within the nation’s administrative hierarchy, these brave human beings are often marginalized and sometimes removed from office. Even some of the agencies investigating 1MDB are under immense pressure. It is this that has eroded further the level of trust between the leadership and the people.

Instead of tightening the screws of control through entities such as NSC, the government should focus upon the restoration of public trust in the leadership. Apart from being honest and transparent about 1MDB and the related issue of 2.6 billion ringgit in the Prime Minister’s personal bank account, the ruling elites should demonstrate through actual deeds that they are sincere about combating high-level corruption and about maintaining a modest lifestyle. Effective measures designed to curb the rising cost of living and reduce unemployment are also necessary to close the trust deficit between the government and the people. It is equally critical that leadership proves that it is firm but fair each time an ethnic controversy surfaces whether in the form of some crass remark about citizenship or through some subtle attempt to undermine the position of Malay as the sole official and national language of the land. In a multi-ethnic society, firm, fair leadership invariably enhances trust between leader and led and among different communities.

Kuala Lumpur.

9 December 2015.

 

By Jon Queally

The COP21 climate talks in Paris reached their halfway point on Saturday, but a deal that experts and global justice campaigners would consider acceptable remains a long way off as the fossil fuel industry and wealthy nations maintain their powerful grip on the direction of the international summit.

Given the troubled history of the UN-sponsored talks, most members of civil society headed to Paris acknowledging the two-week gathering was unlikely to yield the kind of agreement that either the science of global warming, or the movement for climate justice, would find acceptable.

However, in the wake of released draft texts by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the body governing the talks, environmental campaigners and rights groups are expressing contempt for the negative influence that powerful corporations and the fossil fuel industry—backed by the world’s wealthiest and most polluting nations—are having on the progress towards reaching an ambitious and transformative deal.

“The enemies of a decent deal know they have one week to kill words in the text that commit the world to ‘full decarbonization,'” said Martin Kaiser, head of the international climate negotiations for Greenpeace. “They know that would set us on a path towards 100% renewables by the middle of the century. Those regressive forces will fight instead for words that call for a ‘low emission transformation,’ knowing that such a watered down phrase will do almost nothing to keep fossil fuels in the ground.”

At speech inside the conference hall on Saturday, Tony de Brum, the Foreign Minister for the Marshall Islands, gave what was described as a “rousing speech,” touching on the vulnerability of low-lying nations and the world’s poor as he vowed to press for ambitious emissions targets as well as adequate levels of financial assistance to pay for the damage already triggered by greenhouse gases.

“We cannot leave Paris with a minimalist agreement, we must build a coalition of high ambition,” declared de Brum. “I refuse to go home without an agreement that I can look my grandchildren in the eye and be proud of my contribution.”

Also on Saturday morning, the UNFCCC released the latest draft text (pdf) of the chapter focused on national financial commitments designed to deal with the impacts of global warming in the decades to come. As Fiona Harvey reports for the Guardian:

The world’s least developed countries face the greatest threat from climate change as they lack the technology to cut greenhouse gas emissions and their infrastructure is too fragile to cope with extreme weather. Under the proposed wording, developing countries with rapidly growing economies, such as China, would be included alongside established developed nations in being regarded as potential donors to poorer nations.

Rich countries argue that the wording merely reflects current reality, as at least eight governments classed as developing have already made “climate finance” contributions that will aid those poorer than them. China pledged $3bn (£2bn) to the Green Climate Fund in September, and has made further pledges to help Africa.

But some developing countries see the attempt to bracket them with the rich as a threat. They think it could be used in the future to force them to become donors alongside countries such as the US and the EU.

Tamar Lawrence-Samuel, associate research director for the U.S.-based Corporate Accountability International, responded to the latest draft by describing it as an affront to the “historical responsibility of the Global North” and said it offers only more proof that rich nations remain the key blockers of the urgently needed transition away from dirty energy.

Speaking on behalf of Friends of the Earth International, spokesperson Asad Rehman, said: “Rich, developed countries, led by the United States are negotiating in bad faith here in Paris – they are refusing to even discuss proposals brought by developing countries. The poorest, most vulnerable nations are being bullied behind closed doors and their issues are being railroaded out of this process. It is simply unacceptable that the USA won’t live up to its legal and moral responsibilities. At the same time civil society observers, the eyes and ears of global citizens, are being shut out of negotiating rooms. Not only are we seeing an ambition deficit, but we are seeing a fundamental lack of justice.”

“While the draft outcome released this morning for negotiation next week will likely be met with applause by Global North governments and their corporate board room backers,” explained Lawrence-Samuel, “it fails to deliver meaningfully toward the systemic transition climate change requires. At the core of this failure are the obstinate negotiating positions of the US and other Global North governments who are bent on deregulating the global rules applying to them and advancing the financial needs of big business over the survival needs of people.”

She continued by saying that even as the U.S. delegation and President Obama, who spent two days in Paris talking about climate earlier in the week, are framing their commitments at COP21 as grand and far-reaching, the contents of this latest draft betray such claims.

“The chasm between rhetoric and action continues to grow,” she said. “Whether it’s finance or technology, loss and damage or differentiation, the positions reflected in this text are heavily biased towards the US, Japan, EU and other Global North countries, and the emissions-intensive industries they represent.”

Highlighting the widely-held sentiment that corporations and the individually powerful continue to have an outsized and negative influence when it comes to the UN-sponsored climate talks, activist filmmakers debuted a short film in Paris on Friday night, entitled “La Fête est Finie (The Party is Over).” The black-and-white short depicts a private gathering of powerful members of industry and government officials in shadow of the Eiffel Tower as they indulge and celebrate.

In a statement released alongside the film, Mark Donne, one of the co-directors, said: “As with any party, the skill is in knowing when to leave. For decades fossil fuel extracting trans-nationals and western governments have continued to dance and partake long after the bright lights of climate science evidence were switched on and the deafening music of denial had its plug pulled.”

Meanwhile, and despite evidence showing the deal reached in Paris will ultimately prove inadequate, Kaiser said Greenpeace remains “optimistic about the process” though “less so about the content,” though indicated room remains for negotiators to prove campaigners wrong. “At this point in Copenhagen we were dealing with a 300 page text and a pervasive sense of despair,” he said. “In Paris we’re down to a slim 21 pages and the atmosphere remains constructive. But that doesn’t guarantee a decent deal. Right now the oil-producing nations and the fossil fuel industry will be plotting how to crash these talks when ministers arrive next week.”

And according to Lucy Cadena, a campaigner for Friends of the Earth International, it remains important to remember that what happens outside of the halls of power—whether in Paris or around the world—is ultimately more important than what happens inside conference centers and meeting rooms.

“It is still unclear whether the warm words and half promises we’ve heard this week will yet lead to firm commitments,” Cadena said. “Will we really see a commitment to a more ambitious temperature threshold? There have been piecemeal pledges for finance for vulnerable countries to adapt, but nothing consistent or in line with rich nations’ fairshare of effort. Nor is there clarity on support to enable the poorest to recover from unavoidable impacts of climate change. Those who grew rich through a dirty climate-changing system and addiction to carbon pollution are leaving poorer countries to foot the bill as if they carry equal responsibility.”

She concluded, “The lack of progress in the halls is in complete contrast with the vibrancy and creativity of people on the streets and in alternative gatherings throughout Paris.”

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

06 December, 2015
CommonDreams.org

By Daniel de Vries

The United Nations climate change summit commenced this past Monday with 150 heads of state and tens of thousands of representatives from national governments, businesses and the NGO industry converging on Paris. Despite its supposedly historic significance, the 21st Conference of Parties, or COP 21, promises little more than the previous 20 failed annual conferences.

Regardless of whether a final agreement is reached, the most ambitious scenario demonstrates once again the inability to address climate change in any meaningful way under capitalism.

The centerpiece of negotiations in Paris consists of formalizing voluntary commitments to limit carbon pollution by individual countries made over the past several months. Yet even if every pledge is fully enacted, with all national sources honestly accounted for, global emissions would remain on a trajectory to increase global temperatures relative to pre-industrial levels by an average of 2.7C by century’s end. During the 2009 climate conference in Copenhagen, national governments resolved to remain below the 2 degree threshold, beyond which scientists caution catastrophic impacts are possible.

The agreement under discussion in Paris, however, would not legally require any country to actually achieve their targets. Instead, the most that is acceptable to the Obama administration and other major world leaders is a procedural obligation to pursue nonbinding goals. As economic or political conditions change, governments are free to revise or renege upon these commitments.

Nevertheless, politicians and pundits are playing up the summit as a potential turning point for climate change. “Never have the stakes on an international meeting been so high,” remarked French President Francois Holland in the opening plenary. German Chancellor Angela Merkel added, “Our very future as humankind hinges on this. … Billions of people are pinning their hopes on what we achieve here in Paris.”

Notwithstanding the rhetoric, there is no denying that the expected agreement falls woefully short, even in its ambition, of what is scientifically necessary to protect humanity from the worst consequences of a warming planet. Justifications that such is the limit of what is “technically feasible” or “politically practical” only serve as an indictment of the economic and political setup.

The industrial capacity exists to transition to entirely renewable sources of energy within a matter of a few decades or less, as a recent study by Stanford researcher Mark Jacobson concluded for the United States. However, the level of planning and coordination on an international basis needed to implement such a transition comes into immediate conflict with the division of the world into rival nation-states and private ownership of the world’s productive resources.

The pledges put forward correspond to the needs of the banks and major transnational corporations. Some establish absolute carbon reductions, others merely slow “business as usual” growth, or carbon intensity per economic output. Cumulatively they allow for continued global growth of greenhouse gas emissions, reaching a level 26 percent higher in 2030 than in 2010. Industry remains free to shift energy-intensive production to the most profitable areas, factoring in the lowest fossil energy costs.

COP 21 has continued the trend of growing participation and influence of businesses. With more than 180 business events over the two weeks, the summit resembles a trade show as much as a negotiating session. Corporate leaders joined political leaders to urge “bold” action at Paris. We Mean Business, a coalition representing 350 companies with $8 trillion in revenues, “aspires to an international agreement that stimulates the private sector and makes it a partner with governments in implementing ambitious climate action,” according to a statement on their web site. Even several fossil fuel companies, including Shell and Total, have—publicly, at least—argued for a price to carbon.

Behind this growing role of big business at the conference is a drive among a section of supposedly forward-thinking companies to shape the outcome of international climate policy in a way that minimizes the risk to profits and even opens up avenues for new spoils. The summit is not only an advertising opportunity to tout their “green” credentials, but the serious business of ensuring that any agreement advances market-based climate policies. All that is external to the market (carbon dioxide emissions, unexploited tropical forests) is to be allocated at market value, to be bought and sold, manipulated and profited from.

While expectations are high for a deal to pass next week, it is by no means guaranteed. Disagreements are arising over the extent to which the national commitments will be enforceable, the value of climate-related foreign aid from wealthy to poor countries and intellectual property rights. In the first week of discussions, India emerged as the most prominent voice of dissent, criticizing a proposed system to monitor and revise country-specific emission targets every five years. Indian negotiators stressed the historic responsibility of industrialized countries for the climate crisis, in an attempt to win concessions for native business interests in the form of access to advanced technology and increased development funding.

However, underlying these often staged disputes are bitter conflicts that extend far beyond environmental issues. Behind the scenes, the spying, threats and bribes revealed by WikiLeaks at the Copenhagen climate summit is without question continuing. The primary concern of the major powers is to emerge from the climate talks in a strengthened position relative to its rivals.

Despite a bilateral deal on emission reduction commitments last year, tensions between the U.S. and China are beginning to surface at the climate talks, albeit in a muted form thus far. The remarks by Obama and Xi on the opening day alluded to these conflicts: Obama stressed the need to hold countries accountable for their pledges, while Xi highlighted the needs of developing countries to reduce poverty.

A recurring component of the annual climate summits has been vocal street protests and other direct action. Organizers planed another large series of demonstrations in Paris, but the Socialist Party government in France used the terror attacks to impose police state measures. President Hollande has maintained a ban on all demonstrations, rounding up those who disobey and placing organizers under house arrest. Under conditions of soaring class tensions, the French ruling class is compelled to outlaw any form of opposition.

The organizations behind the planned protests in no way represented a political challenge to the dictates of the corporate and financial elite or their ministers and diplomats assembled in Paris. The common aim of the myriad of liberal environmental and activist groups is to apply pressure on capitalist governments, acting as a counterweight to the profit interests of the fossil fuel industry. They fundamentally represent the interests of sections of the middle class, seeking to temper the worst excesses of capitalism, to carve out a more comfortable (and sustainable) existence within the current setup.

After 21 years of failed conferences and impotent protests, political lessons must be drawn. The task confronting masses of workers and youth, whose future hangs in the balance, is to fight for the reorganization of society on the basis of human need, not private profit. Complex international issues like climate change cannot be addressed on the basis of an outmoded division of the globe into rival states. Such a struggle cannot be successful if it is confined to the protest politics of the pseudo-left. Rather it must be based on the working class, as the only force capable of socializing production on an international scale.

05 December, 2015
WSWS.org

By Mairead Maguire, Nobel Peace Laureate – TRANSCEND Media Service

Our delegation has just spent five days with the people of Syria visiting the cities of Damascus, Homs, Tartus, Qara and Ma’alula. We have been deeply moved by the kindness and warmth of the Syrian people whom we have had the privilege and joy of meeting. Although they have suffered unimaginable violence, they have inspired us by their vision of a peaceful Syria and deep commitments to solutions in their country. These are the findings of our delegation, consisting of eleven peace and human rights advocates from six countries. Over the course of five days, we met with internally displaced persons, refugees, affected communities, religious leaders, combatants, government representatives and many others in Syria.

We call on the international community to protect the territorial integrity of Syria and to respect the fundamental rights of Syria as a sovereign State. We deplore any intent to breach the integrity of Syria’s frontiers or to damage the unity and rich diversity of the Syrian people.

We recognize the legitimacy of the aspirations of the Syrian citizens for change, reforms and an end to all violence and we support those working for the implementation of a democratic life that respects and protects the fundamental rights of all citizens and we believe that effective and lasting reforms can only be achieved through non-violent means.

Our primary appeal is that all countries stop their interference in Syrian affairs, more specifically, that they halt the supply of arms and foreign combatants. If foreign countries agree to stop the influx of arms and fighters, we are confident that Syrians can find their own solutions to their problems and achieve reconciliation.

We consider it beyond debate that the Syrian people have the right to determine their own government and their own future. Foreign interference is currently preventing the Syrian people from exercising their right to self-determination. We are concerned that such pernicious intervention is tearing apart the fabric of the country itself, with long-term consequences that can only be imagined.

The cautionary examples of Iraq, Lybia, Yemen and other countries serve to remind us of the dire consequences of such international folly. This humanitarian crisis is already spilling into neighboring countries. A collapse of Syrian society will destabilize the entire region. We appeal to the international community that it can learn from history and make better choices in the case of Syria that will spare further tragedy for the courageous Syrian people.

Secondly we appeal to the international media to stop the flow of misinformation regarding the Syrian conflict. We believe that every Syrian should be given the right to be heard and we do not see this reflected in the international coverage of this crisis.

Thirdly, we urge the international community to review and reconsider the crippling sanctions that are taking such a heavy toll on Syrian people.

Fourthly, we urge the international community to take seriously the vast numbers of refugees and persons who have been internally displaced by this conflict.

We appeal to the entire religious community to call the faithful to nonviolence and peacemaking, and to reject all forms of violence and discrimination, and we express our admiration and respect for the many Syrian religious leaders who have refused to endorse the use of violence and have dedicated their lives to working for a peaceful solution to this conflict.

We pay tribute to the Patriarch Gregorios III Laham and Grand Mufti Ahmad Badreddin Hassoun for their inspirational work for peace and reconciliation for Syria and the Patriarch Gregorios III Laham for his kind invitation to our delegation. Our delegation would like to express to Mother Agnes Mariam and Sheik Sharif Martini our deep gratitude and appreciation for all their commitment to peace and reconciliation in beloved Syria.

As we leave Syria we are filled with hope that the Syrian people will have peace and so be a light of hope to the world.

Damascus, 30/11/2015

Mairead Corrigan Maguire, co-founder of Peace People, is a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace, Development and Environment. She won the 1976 Nobel Peace Prize for her work for peace in Northern Ireland. Her book The Vision of Peace (edited by John Dear, with a foreword by Desmond Tutu and a preface by the Dalai Lama) is available from www.wipfandstock.com. She lives in Belfast, Northern Ireland. See: www.peacepeople.com.

This article originally appeared on Transcend Media Service (TMS) on 30 November 2015.

30 November 2015

NOBEL LAUREATES

On November 29, 1947, after Great Britain–the mandatory power in Palestine–had asked the United Nations to meet in a special session to discuss the “problem of Palestine,” the General Assembly passed Resolution 181 (II) to end the British mandate by August 1, 1948. The centerpiece of this historic resolution, however, was to partition Palestine and call for the establishment, after a transition period, of “Independent Arab and Jewish States and the Special International Regime for the City of Jerusalem.”

This United Nations decision unleashed a catastrophe whose reverberations Palestinians continue to experience until today. Three-quarters of a million Palestinian Arabs–who were the majority of the population of historic Palestine–fled for their lives after experiencing or learning of massacres by Zionist paramilitary organizations, or were expelled from their homes during the ensuing Arab-Israeli war of 1948. By the 1949 armistice, the original partition lines had shifted violently so that Israel’s footprint became much larger than envisioned by the proposed partition plan–it was accorded 55 percent by the plan, but seized an additional 23 percent of Palestinian territory. At present, the drastically reduced Palestinian land continues to be occupied by the Israeli military and Jerusalem is occupied and divided with Israel controlling and limiting access to religious sites. Palestinians originally displaced during the Nakba (the Arabic word for Catastrophe–what the Palestinians call the 1948 war when they lost their homeland) are still prevented from exercising the right to return to their homes in what is now Israel. And contrary to the resolution (and to the Fourth Geneva Convention) Israel has expropriated additional vast tracts of Palestinian territory for its own use and especially for the building and transfer of its own Israeli citizens to illegal settlements on occupied Palestinian land.

Thirty years after the UN partition plan, the General Assembly passed a new resolution proclaiming an annual observation, on November 29th, to mark the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People. The particular date, the UN notes, “was chosen because of its meaning and significance to the Palestinian people… Of the two States to be created under this resolution, only one, Israel, has so far come into being.”

UN Resolutions and subsequent General Assembly mandates enshrine the annual International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People. The United Nations describes the day as providing “an opportunity for the international community to focus its attention on the fact that the question of Palestine remained unresolved and that the Palestinian people are yet to attain their inalienable rights as defined by the General Assembly, namely, the right to self-determination without external interference, the right to national independence and sovereignty, and the right to return to their homes and property from which they had been displaced.”

The fact is that this historic dislocation has resulted in a massive diaspora for the Palestinian people living in the Palestinian territories, Israel, Arab countries, and beyond. The total population of Palestinians numbered about 11.8 million as of the end of 2013, according to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics. This figure comprises 4.5 million in Palestine, 1.4 million in Israel, 5.2 million in Arab countries, and approximately 665,000 in other countries throughout the world.

Despite numerous declarations and resolutions by the United Nations concerning Israel and Palestine, the status of the Palestinian people remains unresolved, precarious, and unjust. They have not attained their rights to “self-determination without external interference, the right to national independence and sovereignty, and the right to return to their homes and property from which they had been displaced.” In fact, about half of the world’s Palestinian population continues to live as refugees and in exile. Those who are citizens of Israel are treated as second class citizens, while those in the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem live under various levels of repressive military occupation and witness, daily, the continued expansion of illegal Israeli settlements on Palestinian land.

Although UN member states have tried since the late forties to propose and gain support for resolutions that push for Palestinian human and national rights, their efforts have largely been derailed, particularly in the form of vetoes by powerful members such as the United States. At the same time, it is also important to remember that many UN agencies, especially UNRWA (the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees), have played a crucial role in providing assistance to the refugees since 1950; UNRWA continues to serve as a lifeline to Palestinian refugees in the West Bank, Gaza, Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan.

A wave of ongoing violence has included heinous attacks, stabbings, shootings and vehicular attacks causing immense suffering among Israeli and Palestinian families alike – but mostly on the Palestinian side. Illegal settlement activities and settler-related violence have continued, along with punitive demolitions of Palestinian- owned homes and structure.

136 countries recognize the State of Palestine and its flag flies at the United Nations next to those of all Member States. However, these advances are not felt by children in Gaza or by the residents of Nablus, Hebron and East Jerusalem …What they feel instead is a lack of hope that their lives will change for the better and that they will be citizens of a State able to ensure their freedom and well-being through peace with their neighbours.

The Palestinian leader Dr. Mustapha Barghouti has argued that International solidarity day “confirms the continuity of the Palestinian uprising”. International solidarity day has seen hundreds of demonstrations and activities in solidarity with Palestine take place across the world. This highlights the international solidarity with the Palestinian people alongside the tremendous growth of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions campaign.

International solidarity day yesterday was observed in the occupied Palestinian territories, where demonstrations swept the region. This confirms the continuity of the Palestinian uprising.

These were non-violent popular demonstrations, however, as usual; they were countered with Israel violence. The uprising is enhancing solidarity with Palestine all over the world.

Nelson Mandela, the late leader of South Africa’s anti-apartheid struggle, described the issue of Palestine as, “the greatest moral issue of our time.” The level of solidarity, on an international scale, reflects his message. On the other hand, Israeli oppression has now taken the lives of 103 Palestinians and injured 12000 since October. This oppression, which is now isolating and ghettoizing communities in the West bank and Jerusalem, is additional proof of the aggressive and racist policy of the Israeli occupation state. It will only lead to greater isolation of Israel in the international community.

On the side of hope, it must be noted that Palestine is currently witness to a wave of genuine solidarity initiatives. . In this month alone, the European Commission adopted new guidelines for labeling products and goods produced in the illegal settlements in Occupied Palestine (This move is a modest first step, and such labeling should develop into a total boycott of all settlements and settlers); the American Anthropological Association became the largest U.S. academic organization to approve a boycott of Israeli institutions and to affirm the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement; and the British Labour Party’s National Executive Committee voted to boycott private security company G4S for its direct involvement with Israeli prisons. Hanan Ashrawi describes these actions as ones that “send an important message of hope and encouragement to our people – the popular non-violent struggle for Palestinian inalienable rights in the face of the belligerent occupier is possible, and our continued steadfastness and commitment to freedom will not end in vain”.

Israeli oppression has now taken the lives of 103 Palestinians and injured 12000 since October.
This oppression, which is now isolating and ghettoizing communities in the West bank and Jerusalem, is additional proof of the aggressive and racist policy of the Israeli occupation state. It will only lead to greater isolation of Israel in the international community.

The International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People honors all those who have struggled for Palestinian independence and all the Palestinians who have lived and died in wars, under occupation, as refugees, and in exile. A dedicated and concerted global effort will, hopefully, isolate Israel and come up with punitive measures that will compel it to surrender its asymmetric power and draw up lines of action which see the dawn of a just and lasting settlement.

Editor : Ranjan Solomon

Palestine Update
Edition 2: No. 130

 

By Dan Glazebrook

Nigeria’s Boko Haram are now officially the deadliest terror group in the world. That they have reached this position is a direct consequence of Cameron and co’s war on Libya – and one that was perhaps not entirely unintended.

According to a report just released by Global Terrorism Index, Boko Haram were responsible for 6,644 deaths in 2014, compared to 6,073 attributed to ISIS, representing a quadrupling of their total killings in 2013. In the past week alone, bombings conducted by the group have killed eight people on a bus in Maiduguri; a family of five in Fotokol, Cameroon; fifteen people in a crowded marketplace in Kano; and thirty-two people outside a mosque in Yola.

In 2009, the year they took up arms, Boko Haram had nothing like the capacity to mount such operations, and their equipment remained primitive; but by 2011, that had begun to change. As Peter Weber noted in The Week, their weapons “shifted from relatively cheap AK-47s in the early days of its post-2009 embrace of violence to desert-ready combat vehicles and anti-aircraft/ anti-tank guns”. This dramatic turnaround in the group’s access to materiel was the direct result of NATO’s war on Libya. A UN report published in early 2012 warned that “large quantities of weapons and ammunition from Libyan stockpiles were smuggled into the Sahel region”, including “rocket-propelled grenades, machine guns with anti-aircraft visors, automatic rifles, ammunition, grenades, explosives (Semtex), and light anti-aircraft artillery (light caliber bi-tubes) mounted on vehicles”, and probably also more advanced weapons such as surface-to-air missiles and MANPADS (man-portable air-defence systems). NATO had effectively turned over the entire armoury of an advanced industrial state to the region’s most sectarian militias: groups such as the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and Boko Haram.

The earliest casualty of NATO’s war outside Libya was Mali. Taureg fighters who had worked in Gaddafi’s security forces fled Libya soon after Gaddafi’s government was overthrown, and mounted an insurgency in Northern Mali. They in turn were overthrown, however, by Al Qaeda’s regional affiliates – flush with Libyan weaponry – who then turned Northern Mali into another base from which to train and launch attacks. Boko Haram was a key beneficiary. AS Brendan O’ Neill wrote in an excellent 2014 article worth quoting at length: “Boko Haram benefited enormously from the vacuum created in once-peaceful northern Mali following the West’s ousting of Gaddafi. In two ways: first, it honed its guerrilla skills by fighting alongside more practised Islamists in Mali, such as AQIM; and second, it accumulated some of the estimated 15,000 pieces of Libyan military hardware and weaponry that leaked across the country’s borders following the sweeping aside of Gaddafi. In April 2012, Agence France-Presse reported that ‘dozens of Boko Haram fighters’ were assisting AQIM and others in northern Mali. This had a devastating knock-on effect in Nigeria. As the Washington Post reported in early 2013, ‘The Islamist insurgency in northern Nigeria has entered a more violent phase as militants return to the fight with sophisticated weaponry and tactics learned on the battlefields of nearby Mali’. A Nigerian analyst said ‘Boko Haram’s level of audacity was high [in late 2012]’, immediately following the movement of some of its militants to the Mali region.”

That NATO’s Libya war would have such consequences was both thoroughly predictable, and widely predicted. As early as June 2011, African Union Chairman Jean Ping warned NATO that “Africa’s concern is that weapons that are delivered to one side or another…are already in the desert and will arm terrorists and fuel trafficking”. And both Mali and Algeria strongly opposed NATO’s destruction of Libya precisely because of the massive destabilisation it would bring to the region. They argued, wrote O’Neill, “that such a violent upheaval in a region like north Africa could have potentially catastrophic consequences. The fallout from the bombing is ‘a real source of concern’, said the rulers of Mali in October 2011. In fact, as the BBC reported, they had been arguing since ‘the start of the conflict in Libya’ – that is, since the civil conflict between Benghazi-based militants and Gaddafi began – that ‘the fall of Gaddafi would have a destabilising effect in the region’.” In an op-ed following the collapse of Northern Mali, a former Chief of Staff of UK land forces, Major-General Jonathan Shaw, wrote that Colonel Gaddafi was a “lynchpin” of the “informal Sahel security plan”, whose removal therefore led to a foreseeable collapse of security across the entire region. The rise of Boko Haram has been but one result – and not without strategic benefits for the West.

Nigeria was once seen by the US as one of its most dependable allies on the African continent. Yet, following a pattern that is repeated across the entire global South, in recent years the country has been moving ever closer to China. The headline grabbing deal was the $23 billion contract signed in 2010 with the Chinese to construct three fuel refineries, adding an extra 750,000 barrels per day to Nigeria’s oil producing capacity. This was followed up in 2013 with an agreement to increase Nigerian oil exports to China tenfold by 2015 (from 20,000 to 200,000 barrels per day). But China’s economic interests go far beyond that. A Nigerian diplomat interviewed by China-Africa specialist Deborah Brautigam told her that “The Chinese are trying to get involved in every sector of our economy. If you look at the West, it’s oil, oil, oil and nothing else.” In 2006, China issued an $8.3billion low-interest loan to Nigeria to fund the building of a major new railway, and the following year China built a telecommunications satellite for Nigeria. Indeed, of last year’s $18 billion worth of bilateral trade between the two countries, over 88% was in the non-petroleum sector, and by 2012 Nigerian imports from China (it’s biggest import partner) totalled more than that of its second and third biggest import partners, the US and India, combined. This kind of trade and investment is of the type that is seriously aiding Africa’s ability to add value to its products – and is thereby undermining the Western global economic order, which relies on Africa remaining an under-developed exporter of cheap raw materials.

Not has China’s co-operation been limited to economics. In 2004, China supported Nigeria’s bid for a seat on the UN Security Council, and in 2006, Nigeria signed a Memorandum of Understanding on the Establishment of a Strategic Partnership with China – the first African country to do so. It is a partnership with a solid base of support – according to a BBC poll conducted in 2011, 85% of Nigerians have a positive view of China; perhaps not surprising when even pro-US security thinktanks like the Jamestown Foundation admit that “China’s links with Nigeria are qualitatively different from the West’s, and as a result, may potentially produce benefits for the ordinary people of Nigeria”. Symbolising the importance of the relationship, current Chinese Premier Li Keqiang made Nigeria his first foreign destination after taking up the role in 2013.

This growing South-South co-operation is not viewed positively by the US, which is witnessing what it once saw as a dependable client state edge increasingly out of its orbit. The African Oil Policy Initiative Group – a consortium of US Congressmen, military officials and energy lobbyists – had already concluded in a 2002 report that China was a rival of the US for influence in West Africa that would need to be deterred by military means, and China has been increasingly viewed by US policymakers as a strategic threat to be contained militarily ever since. A report by US Chief of Staff Martin Dempsey just this July highlighted China as one of the major ‘security threats’ to US domination, for example – although Obama’s ‘Pivot to Asia’ policy had already made this clear back in 2013.

Is it such a stretch, then, to think that the US might actually want to cripple its strategic rival, China, by destabilising her allies, such as Nigeria? After all, despite continued US links to Nigeria, it is China, more than any other foreign partner, who has the most to lose from the Boko Hara insurgency, as the Jamestown Foundation makes clear: “Unlike most other foreign actors in the country, [the Chinese] are investing in fixed assets, such as refineries and factories, with the intention of developing a long-term economic relationship. Consequently, stability and good governance in Nigeria is advantageous for Beijing because it is the only way to guarantee that Chinese interests are protected”. If the US increasingly sees its own strategy in terms of undermining Chinese interests – and there is every sign that it does – the corollary of this statement is surely that instability in Nigeria is the only way to guarantee that Chinese interests are threatened – and, therefore, that US strategic goals are served. The US’s lacklustre efforts in backing Nigerian efforts against Boko Haram – from blocking arms deliveries last year, to funding the fight in all of Nigeria’s neighbours, but not Nigeria itself – as well as its suspension of Nigerian crude oil imports from July 2014 (“a decision that helped plunge Nigeria into one of its most severe financial crises”, according to one national daily) would certainly indicate that.

Dan Glazebrook is author of Divide and Ruin: The West’s Imperial Strategy in an Age of Crisis

This piece originally appeared at RT.com

28 November, 2015
Countercurrents.org

By Ramzy Baroud

I still remember that smug look on his face, followed by the matter-of-fact remarks that had western journalists laugh out loud.

“I’m now going to show you a picture of the luckiest man in Iraq,” General Norman Schwarzkopf, known as ‘Stormin’ Norman, said at a press conference sometime in 1991, as he showed a video of US bombs blasting an Iraqi bridge, seconds after the Iraqi driver managed to cross it.

But then, a far more unjust invasion and war followed in 2003, following a decade-long siege that cost Iraq a million of its children and its entire economy.

It marked the end of sanity and the dissipation of any past illusions that the United States was a friend of the Arabs. Not only did the Americans destroy the central piece of our civilizational and collective experience that spanned millennia, it took pleasure in degrading us in the process. Their soldiers raped our women with obvious delight. They tortured our men, and posed with the dead, mutilated bodies in photographs – mementos to prolong the humiliation for eternity; they butchered our people, explained in articulate terms as necessary and unavoidable collateral damage; they blew up our mosques and churches and refused to accept that what was done to Iraq over the course of twenty years might possibly constitute war crimes.

Then, they expanded their war taking it as far as US bombers could reach; they tortured and floated their prisoners aboard large ships, cunningly arguing that torture in international waters does not constitute a crime; they suspended their victims on crosses and photographed them for future entertainment.

Their entertainers, media experts, intellectuals and philosophers made careers from dissecting us, dehumanizing us, belittling everything we hold dear; they did not spare a symbol, a prophet, a tradition, values or set of morals. When we reacted and protested out of despair, they further censured us for being intolerant to view the humor in our demise; they used our angry shouts to further highlight their sense of superiority and our imposed lowliness.

They claimed that we initiated it all. But they lied. It was their unqualified, inflated sense of importance that made them assign September 11, 2001 as the inauguration of history. All that they did to us, all the colonial experiences and the open-ended butchery of the brown man, the black man, any man or woman who did not look like them or uphold their values, was inconsequential.

All the millions who died in Iraq were not considered a viable context to any historical understanding of terrorism; in fact, terrorism became us; the whole concept of terror, which is violence inflicted on innocent civilians for political ends, abruptly became an entirely Arab and Muslim trait. In retrospect, the US-Western-Israeli slaughter of the Vietnamese, Koreans, Cambodians, Palestinians, Lebanese, Egyptians, South Americans, Africans, was spared any censure. Yet, when Arabs attempted to resist, they were deemed the originators of violence, the harbingers of terror.

Furthermore, they carried out massive social and demographic experiments in Iraq which have been unleashed throughout the Middle East, since. They pitted their victims against one another: the Shia against the Sunni, the Sunni against the Sunni, the Arabs against the Kurds, and the Kurds against the Turks. They called it a strategy, and congratulated themselves on a job well done as they purportedly withdrew from Iraq. They disregarded the consequences of tampering with civilizations that have evolved over the course of millennia.

When their experiments went awry, they blamed their victims. Their entertainers, media experts, intellectuals and philosophers flooded every public platform to inform the world that the vital mistake of the Bush administration was the assumption that Arabs were ready for democracy and that, unlike the Japanese and the Germans, Arabs were made of different blood, flesh and tears. Meanwhile, the finest of Arab men were raped in their jails, kidnapped in broad daylight, tortured aboard large ships in international waters, where the Law did not apply.

When the Americans and their allies claimed that they had left the region, they left behind bleeding, impoverished nations, licking their wounds and searching for bodies under rubble in diverse and macabre landscapes. Yet, the Americans, the British, the French and the Israelis, continue to stage their democratic elections around the debate of who will hit us the hardest, humiliate us the most, teach the most unforgettable lesson and, in their late night comedies, they mock our pain.

We, then, sprang up like wild grass in a desert, multiplied, and roamed the streets of Rabat, Baghdad, Damascus and Cairo, calling for a revolution. We wanted democracy for our sake, not Bush’s democracy tinged with blood; we wanted equality, change and reforms and a world in which Gaza is not habitually destroyed by Israel and children of Derra could protest without being shot; where leaders do not pose as divinities and relish the endless arsenals of their western benefactors. We sought a life in which freedom is not a rickety dingy crossing the sea to some uncertain horizon where we are treated as human rubbish on the streets of western lands.

However, we were crushed; pulverized; imprisoned, burnt, beaten and raped and, once more, told that we are not yet ready for democracy; not ready to be free, to breathe, to exist with even a speck of dignity.

Many of us are still honorably fighting for our communities; others despaired: they carried arms and went to war, fighting whoever they perceive to be an enemy, who were many. Others went mad, lost every sense of humanity; exacted revenge, tragically believing that justice can be achieved by doing unto others what they have done unto you. They were joined by others who headed to the West, some of whom had escaped the miseries of their homelands, but found that their utopia was marred with alienation, racism and neglect, saturated with a smug sense of superiority afflicted upon them by their old masters.

It became a vicious cycle, and few seem interested now in revisiting General Schwarzkopf’s conquests in Iraq and Vietnam – with his smug attitude and the amusement of western journalists – to know what actually went wrong. They still refuse to acknowledge history, the bleeding Palestinian wound, the heartbroken Egyptian revolutionaries and the destroyed sense of Iraqi nationhood, the hemorrhaging streets of Libya and the horrifying outcomes of all the western terrorist wars, with blind, oil-hungry dominating foreign policies that have shattered the Cradle of Civilization, like never before.

However, this violence no longer affects Arabs alone, although Arabs and Muslims remain the larger recipients of its horror. When the militants, spawned by the US and their allies, felt cornered, they fanned out to every corner of the globe, killing innocent people and shouting the name of God in their final moment. Recently, they came for the French, a day after they blew up the Lebanese, and few days after the Russians; and, before that, the Turks and the Kurds, and, simultaneously, the Syrians and the Iraqis.

Who is next? No one really knows. We keep telling ourselves that ‘it’s just a transition’ and ‘all will be well once the dust has settled’. But the Russians, the Americans and everyone else continue bombing, each insisting that they are bombing the right people for the right reason while, on the ground, everyone is shooting at whoever they deem the enemy, the terrorist, a designation that is often redefined. Yet, few speak out to recognize our shared humanity and victimhood.

No – do not always expect the initials ISIS to offer an explanation for all that goes wrong. Those who orchestrated the war on Iraq and those feeding the war in Syria and arming Israel cannot be vindicated.

The crux of the matter: we either live in dignity together or continue to perish alone, warring tribes and grief-stricken nations. This is not just about indiscriminate bombing – our humanity, in fact, the future of the human race is at stake.

Dr. Ramzy Baroud has been writing about the Middle East for over 20 years. He is an internationally-syndicated columnist, a media consultant, an author of several books and the founder of PalestineChronicle.com. His books include ‘Searching Jenin’, ‘The Second Palestinian Intifada’ and his latest ‘My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza’s Untold Story’. His website is: www.ramzybaroud.net.
26 November, 2015
Countercurrents.org