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By Andre Vltchek

First they manufacture monstrous lies, and then they tell us that we should be objective!

Is love objective; is passion?

Are dreams defendable, logically and philosophically?

When a house is attacked by brigands, when a village is overran by gangsters, when smoke, fire and cries for help are coming from every corner, should we award ourselves with the luxury of time to calculate, analyze and aim at complete logical, ethical, holistic and objective solutions?

I strongly believe no! We are obliged to fight those who are burning our dwellings, to hit with full force those who are attempting to rape our women, and to confront fire with fire when innocent beings are slaughtered.

When the most powerful and the most destructive force on earth employs all its persuasive might, utilizing everything from the mainstream media to educational facilities, in order to justify its crimes, when it spreads its poisonous propaganda and lies in order to oppress the world and suppress hope, do we step back and begin endless and detailed work on precise and objective narratives? Or do we confront lies and propaganda with our own narrative, supported by our intuition, passion and dreams for a better world?

The Empire lies continuously. It lies in the morning, during the day, in the evening, even at night, when most of the people are sound asleep. It has been doing it for decades and centuries. For grand deceits it relies on countless numbers of propagandists who pose as academics, teaches, journalists and “public intellectuals”. Perfection in the art of disinformation has been reached. Western advertising (so much admired and used by the German Nazis) has some common roots with propaganda, although propaganda is much older and “complete”.

It appears that even some leaders of the Empire now believe in most of their fabrications, and most of the citizens certainly do. Otherwise, how could they sleep at night?

The western propaganda apparatus is enormously efficient and effective. It is also brilliant in how it ensures that its inventions get channeled, distributed, and accepted in all corners of the world. The system through which disinformation spreads, is incredibly complex. Servile local media and academia on all continents work hard to guarantee that only one narrative is allowed to penetrate the brains of billions.

The results are: intellectual cowardice and ignorance, all over the world, but especially in the West and in its client states.

What are we, who oppose the regime, supposed to do?

First of all, things are not as hopeless as they used to be.

This is not the morbid unipolar world that we experienced in the early 90’s. Now Venezuela, Russia, China, and Iran support large media outlets that are opposed to the Empire. Powerful television stations emerged: RT, Press TV, TeleSUR and CCTV. Huge English language Internet-based magazines and sites in the United States, Canada and Russia are also exposing the lies of the official Western propagandists: Counterpunch, Information Clearing House, Global Research, Veterans News, Strategic Culture, New Eastern Outlook quickly come to mind. And there are hundreds of important sites doing the same in Spanish, Chinese, Russian, Portuguese and French languages.

The fight is on: the fight for an intellectually multi-polar world. It is a tough, mortal fight! It is a crucial battle, simply because the metastases of the Western propaganda cancer have spread everywhere, contaminated all continents, and even some of the most courageous countries and brains that are earnestly fighting against the Western imperialism and fascism! No one is immune. To be frank, all of us are contaminated.

Unless we win this battle, by first clearly identifying and proving “their narrative” as fraudulent, and later by offering humanist and compassionate perceptions, we cannot even dream about the revolution, or about any significant changes in arrangement of the world.

How do we achieve victory? How do we convince the masses, those billions of people? How do we open their eyes and make them see that the Western regime is dishonest, toxic, poisonous and destructive? Most of humanity is hooked on the Empire’s propaganda; that propaganda which is not only spread by mainstream media outlets, but also by pop music, soap operas, social media, advertisement, consumerism, ‘fashion trends’ and by many other covert means; cultural, religious and media junk that leads to total emotional and intellectual stupor and is administered like some highly addictive narcotic, regularly and persistently.

Do we counter the tactics and strategy of the destructive and ruthless Empire with our honesty, with research, with telling and writing meticulously investigated facts?

The Empire perverts facts. It repeats lies through its loudspeakers and tubes. It shouts them thousands and thousands of times, until they sink into the sub conscious of people, penetrate the skin, spread all through their brains.

Good will, naive honesty, “speaking truth to power”, could this change the world and the power itself? I highly doubt it.

The Empire and its power are illegitimate, and they are criminal. Is there any point of speaking truth to a gangster? Hardly! Truth should be spoken to people, to masses, not to those who are terrorizing the world.

By talking to villains, by begging them to stop torturing others, we are legitimizing their crimes, and we are acknowledging their power. By trying to appease gangsters, people are putting themselves at their mercy.

I absolutely refuse to be in such position!

To win over billions of people, we have to inspire them, to fire them up. We have to outrage them, embrace them, shame them, make them laugh and make them cry. We have to make sure that they get goose bumps when they see our films, read our books and essays, listen to our speeches.

We have to detox them, make them feel again, wake up natural instincts in them.

Simple truth as a detox agent will not work. The poison of our adversaries has sunk too deeply. Most of the people are too lethargic and too immune to simple, quietly stated truths!

We have tried, and others have tried as well. My acquaintance (but definitely not my comrade) John Perkins, former US apparatchik educated by the State Department, wrote a detailed account of his horrid deeds in Ecuador, Indonesia and elsewhere – “Confession of An Economic Hitman”. It is a meticulous, detailed account of how the West destabilizes poor countries, using corruption, money, alcohol, and sex. The book sold millions of copies, worldwide. And yet, nothing changed! It did not trigger a popular revolution in the United States. There were no protests, no demands for regime change in Washington.

In the recent past, I wrote and published two academic, or at least semi-academic books, packed with great details, quotes and tons of footnotes: one on Indonesia, a country used by the West as a model horror scenario for the rest of the world, after the 1965-US-sponsored military coup. The coup killed 2-3 million people, murdered all intellectualism, and lobotomized the 4th most populous country on earth. The book is called “Indonesia – Archipelago of Fear”. The second book, unique because it covers an enormous part of the world – Polynesia, Melanesia and Micronesia (“Oceania – Neocolonialism, Nukes and Bones”), showed how the US, UK, Australia, New Zealand and France, literally divided and destroyed the great South Pacific island cultures and the people. Now classes are being taught using my books, but only a very limited number of people are influenced by the facts exposed in them. The elites in both Indonesia and Oceania made sure that the books are not widely read by the people.

I have spent years and years compiling facts, researching, investigating. The revolutionary effectiveness of my academic work is – I have to admit – nearly zero.

It is easy to see the contrast: when I write an essay, a powerfully crafted, emotional essay, demanding justice, accusing the Empire of murder and theft, I get millions of readers on all continents, as well as translations to dozens of languages!

Why do I write this; why do I share this with my readers? Because we should all be realistic. We have to see, to understand, what people want – what they demand. The people are unhappy and scared. Most of them don’t know why. They hate the system, they are lonely, frustrated, they know that they are lied to and exploited. But they cannot define those lies. And academic books, exposing the lies are too complex for them to read since the masses have no time to read thousands of indigestible pages or the necessary education to allow them to understand what they are reading.

It is our duty to address those people, the majority, otherwise what kind of revolutionaries are we? After all, we are supposed to create for our brothers and sisters, not for a few researchers at the universities, especially when we realize that most of the universities are serving the Empire by regurgitating official nomenclature and supporting demagogues.

The Empire speaks, writes and then repeats some outrageous lies, about its benevolence, and exceptionality of its rule, or about the “evils” of the Soviet Union, China, Iran, Venezuela, North Korea or Cuba. This is done daily. In fact it is designed so that almost every human being gets his or her dose of the toxin at least several times a day.

We feel we have to react – we begin spending years of our lives, meticulously proving, step by step, that the Empire’s propaganda is either one big fat lie, or exaggeration, or both. After we compile our arguments, we publish the results in some small publishing house, most likely in the form of a slender book, but almost nobody reads it because of its tiny circulation, and because the findings are usually too complex, too hard to digest, and simply because the facts do not shock anybody, anymore. One million more innocent people were murdered somewhere in Africa, in the Middle East, in Asia; what else is new?

Researching and trying to tell the truth, fully and honestly, we feel that we are doing great, professional, scientific work. All the while the propagandists of the Empire are dying of laughter watching us! We are representing little danger to them. They are winning effortlessly!

Why is that? Doesn’t the detailed truth matter?

It does – from the point of higher principles it matters. Ethically it matters. Morally it matters. Philosophically it matters.

But strategically, when one is engaged in an ideological war, it does not matter that much! The truth yes, always; the truth matters! But simplified, digestible truth, presented powerfully and emotionally!

When immorality is ravishing the world, when it is charging mercilessly, when innocent millions are dying, what matters is to stop the slaughter, first by identifying the murderous force, then by containing it.

Language has to be strong, emotions raw.

When facing murderous hordes, poetry, emotionally charged songs, and patriotic odes have always been more effective than deep academic studies. And so were political novels and films, passionate documentaries, even explicit cartoons and posters.

Some would ask: “Just because they are lying, should we lie as well?” No! We should try to be as truthful as we can. But our message should be often “abridged”, so the billions, not just those selected few, could understand it.

It does not mean that the quality of our work should suffer. Simplicity is often more difficult to achieve than encyclopedic works with thousands of footnotes.

Sun Tzu’s “Art of War” is short, just a pamphlet, straight to the point. And so is the “Communist Manifesto”, and ‘J’accuse!”

Our revolutionary work does not have to be necessarily brief, but it has to be presented in a way that could be understood by many. I am constantly experimenting with the form, while never compromising on substance. My recent book, “Exposing Lies of the Empire” has more than 800 pages, but I made sure that it is packed with fascinating stories, with testimonies of people from all corners of the globe, with colorful description of both victims and tyrants. I don’t want my books to collect dust in university libraries. I want them to mobilize people.

I truly believe that there is not much time for “objectivity” in any battle, including those ideological ones, especially when these are battles for the survival of humanity!

The lies of the enemy have to be confronted. They are toxic, monstrous lies!

Once the destruction stops, millions of innocent men, women and children will cease being sacrificed, and we can return to our complex philosophical concepts, to details and to nuances.

But before we win our final battles against imperialism, nihilism, fascism, exceptionalism, selfishness and greed, we have to fully and effectively utilize our most powerful weapons: our visions of a better world, our love for humanity, our passion for justice. Our determination and our beliefs have to be presented in a loud, potent, even “dogmatic” manner, our voice should be creative, artistic, powerful!

The house is on fire, comrades! The entire town is turning to ashes. The entire planet is plundered, devastated, lobotomized.

We cannot confront bigots with nukes and battleships. But our talents, our muses, and our hearts are here, with us, ready to join the battle.

Let us outsmart our enemies; let us make sure that the world begins laughing at them! Have you seen them, those pathetic losers, the buffoons – the CEO’s? Have you listened to those Prime Ministers and Presidents, those servants of the “market”? Let us convince the masses that their tyrants –the imperialists, the neo-colonialists and all their dogmatic preachers – are nothing more than pitiful, greedy, poisonous fools! Let us discredit them! Let us ridicule them.

They are robbing and murdering millions. Let us begin by at least pissing on them!

Let us fight Western propaganda by first exposing those who are really behind it. Let’s get personal.

Let’s turn this revolution into something creative, hilarious, truly fun!

Andre Vltchek is a philosopher, novelist, filmmaker and investigative journalist. He covered wars and conflicts in dozens of countries. His latest books are: “Exposing Lies Of The Empire” and “Fighting Against Western Imperialism”. Discussion with Noam Chomsky:On Western Terrorism.

15 May, 2015
Countercurrents.org

 

By Paul Craig Roberts

There is much speculation about US Secretary of State John Kerry’s rush visit to Russia in the wake of Russia’s successful Victory Day celebration on May 9. On May 11, Kerry, who was snubbing Russia on the 9th, was on his way to Russia, and Putin consented to see him on May 12.

As time passes we will find out why Kerry was snubbing Putin on May 9 and 3 days later was criticizing Washington’s puppet regime in Ukraine. For what is known at this time, a possible explanation is that Washington is coming to its senses.

If you watched the 1 hour 20 minute video of the Victory Day Parade, you are aware that the celebration sent a powerful message. Russia is a first class military power, and Russia is backed by China and India, whose soldiers marched with Russia’s in the parade.

So, while the increasingly irrelevant West, absorbed in its own self-importance, snubbed the celebration of the victory that the Red Army gave them over Hitler, the three largest countries in the world were present united. Russia has the largest land mass, and China and India, also large land masses, have the world’s largest populations.

The celebration in Moscow made it clear that Washington has failed miserably to isolate Russia. What Washington has done is to make the BRICS more unified.

With the President of China sitting at the right hand of Putin, the celebration also made it completely clear even to the morons in the Obama regime that Washington is no longer the Uni-power.

Consider now the impact on Washington’s vassal states in Europe, the crux of the American Empire. Europeans are aware that two of the most powerful military states in history did not survive their invasions of Russia. Napoleon lost the Grande Army in Russia, and Hitler lost the Wehrmacht in Russia. It has dawned on Europeans that they are being shoved into conflict with Russia in the interest of Washington’s claim to be the World Hegemon. Europeans are accustomed to obey Washington, but when it came to being forced into conflict with Russia, Europeans began to express dissent. Signs of an independent European foreign policy appeared with Merkel and Hollande’s meeting with Putin to resolve the Ukrainian crisis orchestrated by Washington.

Faced with the failure of its policy of isolating Russia and the emergence of an independent foreign policy in Europe, Washington sent Kerry as a supplicant to Putin to work out a way to de-escalate the Ukrainian crisis. Putin being a peacemaker will permit Washington to save face. But this will not please the neoconsevatives or the military/security complex. The former are invested heavily in claims of Amerika Uber Alles, and the latter are lusting for the abundant revenues from a new cold, or hot, war.

Obama, Kerry, and Cameron have to become magicians. They have to transition from demonizing Putin to working with him.

Having failed with force against Russia, the West is now employing seduction. If Western peoples hope to escape from the Police State that Washington has imposed on the entire Western World, we must pray that Putin does not fall for the seduction.

There is no world leadership in the West. There is only selfishness and hubris. Western “leadership” is exploitative. The West loots the non-West and is now turning on itself with its looting of Ireland and Greece, with Italy, Spain, and Portugal the next targets for looting. The American public itself has been looted of its jobs, career aspirations, and civil liberties.

The Western model of “democratic capitalism” turns out to be neither democratic nor capitalist, but a form of fascism ruled by an oligarchy. The United States is where regime change is most badly needed.

Dr. Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. He was columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators Syndicate. He has had many university appointments. His internet columns have attracted a worldwide following.

15 May, 2015
Paulcraigroberts.org

 

By Ilan Pappe

The 15th of May is usually a trigger for a journey back in time. And for an unfathomable reason each such journey conjures up a different aspect of the Nakba. This year, more than anything else, I am preoccupied with the continued apathy and indifference of the Western political elite and media to the plight of the Palestinians. Even the horror of the Yarmuk camp did not associate in the minds of politicians and journalists alike the possible connection between saving the refugees there and their internationally recognised right of return to their homeland.

Israeli medical treatment of Islamists fighting the Assad regime, mending them and resending them to the battlefield is hailed as a humanitarian act by the Jewish state; its exceptional refusal, compared to all the other – and much poorer – neighbours of Syria to accept even one refugee from the Syrian mayhem has gone unnoticed.

It is this international exceptionalism and intentional blindness that throws me back to 1948 and to the period between June and October of that year. On 11 June, a truce was announced by the UN between the Zionist forces and the units of the Arab armies that entered Palestine on 15 May. The truce was needed for both sides to rearm, which benefited the Jewish side and disadvantaged the Arab side, as Britain and France embargoed the arms shipments to the Arab states, while the Soviet Union and the Czech republic re-armed the Jewish forces.

By the end of that truce it transpired clearly that the all-Arab initiative to salvage Palestine was doomed to fail. The truce enabled UN observers to see for the first time, at close inspection, the reality on the ground in the wake of the organisation’s peace plan

What they saw was ethnic cleansing at high gear. The principal preoccupation of the new Israel at that moment was to utilise the truce to accelerate the de-Arabisation of Palestine. This began the moment the guns were silenced and was enacted in front of the eyes of the United Nations observers.

By that second week of June, urban Palestine was already lost and with it hundreds of the villages around the main towns were gone. Towns and villages alike were emptied by the Israeli forces. The people were driven out, many of them long before the Arab units entered Palestine, but the houses, shops, schools, mosques and hospitals were still there. What could not have escaped the UN observers is the sound of the tractors flattening these buildings and countryside landscape, now that there was no clatter of shooting around them.

What they heard and saw was adequately described as an “operation of cleansing” by the person appointed by the new regime of the land to oversee the whole operation, the head of the settlement division in the Jewish National Fund (JNF), Yosef Weitz. He duly reported to the leadership: “We have begun the operation of cleansing, removing the rubble and preparing the land for cultivation and settlement. Some of these [villages] will become parks.” He proudly scribbled in his diary his amazement of how unmoved he was by the sight of tractors destroying villages.

This was not an easy or a short operation. It continued also when the fighting resumed for 10 days, at the end of the first truce, during a second truce and in the final stages of the war when the troops that came from Iraq, Syria and Egypt were retreating – wounded and defeated – back home. The “war” in the autumn of 1948 was prolonged because Palestinian villagers, volunteers from Lebanon and some Arab army units tried in vain to defend isolated Arab villages in the north and south of Palestine.

Thus, more villages came under the boot of the JNF and its tractors. The UN observers recorded quite methodically the dramatic transformation of Palestine from an Arab East Mediterranean countryside into a kaleidoscope of new Jewish colonies surrounded by European pine trees and huge water pipe systems draining the hundreds of creeks that flowed through the villages – erasing a panorama that can only be imagined today from several relatively untouched corners of the Galilee and the West Bank.

In the beginning of October 1948, the UN observers had had enough. They decided to write an accumulative report to their secretary general. It was summed up in the following way. The Israeli policy, they explained to their boss, was made of “uprooting Arabs from their native villages in Palestine by force or threat”. It recorded the process quite in full and was sent to all the heads of the Arab delegations in the UN. The observers and the Arab diplomats tried to convince the UN secretary general to publish the report but to no avail.

But the report featured once more. A unique American diplomat, Mark Ethridge, the US representative in the Palestine Conciliation Commission (the body appointed by the UN in resolution 194 from 11 December 1948 to prepare a peace plan for post-Nakba Palestine) tried desperately to convince the world that some facts on the ground were still reversible and one of the means of stopping the transformation was repatriation of the refugees. When the PCC convened a peace conference in Lausanne in Switzerland in May 1949, he was the first American diplomat who pointed clearly to Israeli policy as the main obstacle to peace in Palestine. The Israeli leaders were arrogant, euphoric and unwilling to compromise or make peace, he told John Kimchi, the British journalist working at the time for Tribune.

Ethridge did not give up easily on the issue of repatriation. He had some original ideas. He thought that if he could satisfy Israel’s territorial appetite, it would enable some sort of normalisation in post-Mandatory Palestine. He therefore suggested that Israel would annex the Gaza Strip and cater for the refugees there, by allowing them to return to their homes in the villages and town of Palestine. Ben-Gurion liked the idea, as did most of his ministers. The Egyptian government was also in favour. One doubts whether Ben-Gurion would have allowed the refugees to stay in Gaza, but of course there is no telling.

Encouraged, Ethridge asserted that now his government could convince the Israelis to repatriate an additional significant number of refugees. Israel refused and the Americans denounced the “obstinacy” of the Israeli politicians and demanded that Israel would allow the return of many more Jews. The Americans decided to suspend the peace effort all together, unless Israel changed its mind; hard to believe today.

The Israeli Foreign Minister, Moshe Sharett, was worried about the American pressure that was accompanied by a threat of sanctions, and suggested that Israel would accept 100,000 refugees (but would drop the Gaza proposal). What is remarkable in hindsight is that American diplomats such as McGhee regarded both numbers – 250,000 refugees of Gaza and the 100,000 offered by Sharett – as insufficient. McGhee genuinely wished to see as many refugees return as possible since he believed the reality on the ground was still reversible.

The months went by and by the end of 1949, US pressure subsided. Jewish lobbying, the escalation of the cold war around the world and a UN focus on the fate of Jerusalem as a result of Israel’s defiance of its decisions to internationalise the city were probably the main reasons for this. It was only the Soviet Union that kept reminding the world through its ambassador to the UN, and Israel through bilateral correspondence, that the new reality Zionism created on the ground was still reversible. By the end of the year, Israel also retracted from its readiness to repatriate the 100,000 refugees.

Jewish settlements and European forests were hurriedly planted over the hundreds of villages in rural Palestine and the Israeli bulldozers demolished hundreds of Palestinian houses in the urban area to try and wipe out the Arab character of Palestine.

Israeli bohemians, yuppies and desperate newly arrived Jewish immigrants “saved” some of these houses, settled in them and their possession was approved in hindsight by the government. The beauty of houses and their location made them excellent real estate bonanzas; rich Israelis, international NGOS and legations favoured them as their new headquarters.

The daylight pillage that began in June 1948 moved the representatives of the international community but was ignored by those who sent them: be they editors of journals, captains of the UN or the heads of international organisations. The result was a clear international message to Israel that the ethnic cleansing of Palestine – as illegal, immoral and inhuman as it was – would be tolerated.

The message was well received in Israel and immediately implemented. The land of the new state was declared exclusively Jewish, the Palestinians remaining in the land were put under military rule that denied them basic human and civil rights, and plans to take those parts of Palestine not occupied in 1948 were put into motion. When they were occupied in 1967, the international message was already incorporated into the Zionist DNA of Israel: even if what you do is watched and recorded, what matters is how the powerful people in the world react to your crimes.

The only way to ensure that the pen of recording would be mightier than the sword of colonisation is to hope for a change in in the power balances in the West and in the world in general. The actions of civil societies, conscientious politicians and emerging new states have not yet changed that balance.

But one can take courage from the old olive trees in Palestine that succeed in resurfacing beneath and between the Europeans pine trees; and from the Palestinians who now populate exclusive Jewish towns built on the ruins of the villages in the Galilee; and the steadfastness of the people of Gaza, Bilin and Araqib, and hope that this balance will one day change for the better.

Ilan Pappe is Professor of History, Director of the European Centre for Palestine Studies and Co-Director for the Exeter Centre for Ethno-Political Studies at the University of Exeter.
15 May, 2015
Middleeasteye.net

 

John Reed in Jerusalem and Charles Clover in Beijing

When Israel held its biggest agricultural technology conference, Agrivest, last month, one in 10 of the delegates who travelled to the central city of Rehovot to attend came from China.

A few weeks before, a large delegation from Alibaba, the Chinese e-commerce giant, had been in Tel Aviv to attend Cybertech, Israel’s main conference on cyber security, an area in which the security-conscious Jewish state excels. Alibaba in January invested an undisclosed sum in Visualead, an Israeli company specialising in QR code technology.

Chinese companies are pushing deeper and further into Israel than ever before, and Israeli companies and government officials are returning the embrace. “There seems to be a kosher stamp from the government on both sides to let these trade relations blossom and bloom,” says Jon Medved, founder and chief executive of OurCrowd, the Israeli crowdfunding company.

A decade ago, Chinese overseas investment was primarily focused on securing supplies of natural resources in places such as Africa and Latin America, and was driven by state-owned energy and mining companies.

Now the huge surge of outbound investment is increasingly targeting brands and technology that China lacks in its home market, with private as well as state companies ponying up cash. China’s outbound investment is expected to exceed incoming foreign investment, which totalled about $128bn in 2014, for the first time this year.

“The interest stems from a clear strategic objective of China, and that is to become a power not only in copying and doing what others do — but more cheaply — but in coming on to the list of investors itself,” says Oded Eran, who runs the China forum at Tel Aviv’s Institute of National Security Studies.

China’s Bright Food recently won official approval from its own government to buy control of Tnuva, Israel’s biggest dairy company, from the private equity firm Apax Partners in a deal that values the target at $2bn.

The Chinese are eating more cheese than ever before. However, the company has said it was investing in Tnuva because “Israel is well known for its agriculture and the quality of its agricultural management”.

The deal was the biggest Chinese buyout of an Israeli company since 2011, when China National Chemical Corporation bought Adama, the pesticides and crop protection company then known as Makhteshim Agan, for $2.4bn.

Chinese money has arrived in Israel only recently, and so far it has run into relatively little political backlash, even on critical infrastructure projects such as the new 3.3bn shekel port being built in the Mediterranean city of Ashdod, by contractor China Harbor.

The Chinese experience in Israel stands in contrast with the US, where the officials blocked a Chinese investment in wind farms in 2012 and more recently raised concerns that the Chinese government is linked to hacking attacks on US defence contractors.

In fact, Benjamin Netanyahu — who is set to take the helm of a new government in a few days — has been actively pursuing a policy of pivoting trade relations away from Europe, still Israel’s biggest commercial partner by far, and toward emerging markets.

The goal is both pragmatic, as Israel does relatively little trade with the Brics, and political. some European countries have been sharply critical of what they see as Israeli intransigence in the unresolved conflict with the Palestinians, and Israeli officials fear political repercussions.

“Sometimes you say ‘the state of Israel’ in other regions of the world, and there are other things that come up in their minds,” says Ophir Gore, Israel’s trade attache in Beijing. “When you say ‘Israel’ in China they think innovation, they think high technology — so in that aspect, my job here is pretty easy.”

Israel’s trade turnover with China reached $11bn last year, about double the amount recorded in 2010. However, China still accounts for less than 10 per cent of overall Israeli trade, while a third goes to Europe, and a quarter to North America

Israel’s economy ministry says that, in addition to the big deals like Adama and Tnuva, Chinese investment is going into smaller companies, notably in technology, agrotechnology and water management.

Baidu, China’s largest search engine, has put $3m into Pixellot, an Israeli video capture start-up, and it provided funds to Carmel Ventures, an Israeli venture capital firm, last year.

In November Shouguang, on China’s coastal plain, launched a “Water City” project meant to showcase Israeli innovations for water reuse and desalination. The first contracts are expected to be signed by the end of this year, and should be operational by 2017.

China, with its billion-plus population, can in turn serve Israel as both consumer market and commercial partner. “We are great inventors and brilliant at developing things,” says Todd Dollinger of Trendlines, a technology investment company that organised Agrivest. But our production capabilities are nowhere near the ability of China, and we are very far from major markets — we are effectively an island, and we do best when we partner.”

Additional reporting by Jamil Anderlini

14 May 2015

http://www.ft.com/

By Shamus Cooke

The Syrian war stalemate appears to be over. The regional powers surrounding Syria — especially Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Qatar, and Jordan — have re-ignited their war against the Syrian government. After over 200,000 dead and millions of refugees, the U.S. allies in the region recently re-committed to deepening the war, with incalculable consequences.

The new war pact was made between Obama’s regional darlings, Saudi Arabia and Turkey, who agreed to step up deeper military cooperation and establish a joint command in the occupied Syrian region of Idlib.

Turkey and Saudi Arabia are now openly backing Islamic extremists under the newly rebranded “Conquest Army.” The on-the-ground leadership of this “new” coalition consists of Jabhat al-Nusra — the “official” al-Qaeda affiliate — and Ahrar al-Sham, whose leader previously stated that his group was the “real al-Qaeda.”

The Huffington Post reports:

“The Turkish-Saudi agreement has led to a new joint command center in the northeastern Syrian province of Idlib. There, a coalition of groups — including Nusra and other Islamist brigades such as Ahrar al-Sham that Washington views as extremist — are progressively eroding Assad’s front. The rebel coalition also includes more moderate elements of the Free Syrian Army that have received U.S. support in the past.”

The article admits that the Free Syrian Army — that Obama previously labeled as “moderates” and gave cash and guns to — has been swallowed up by the extremist groups.

This dynamic has the potential to re-engulf the region in violence; deep Saudi pocketbooks combined with reports of looming Turkish ground forces are a catastrophe in the making.

Interestingly, the Saudi-Turkish alliance barely raised eyebrows in the U.S. media. President Obama didn’t think to comment on the subject, let alone condemn it.

The media was focused on an odd narrative of Obama reportedly being “concerned” about the alliance, but “disengaged” from what two of his close allies were doing in a region that the U.S. has micromanaged for decades.

It seems especially odd for the media to accept that Obama has a “hands off” approach in Syria when at the same time the media is reporting about a new U.S. program training Syrian rebels in Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey.

It’s inconceivable that Obama would coordinate deeply with Turkey to set up a Syrian rebel training camp on Turkish soil, while at the same time be “disengaged” from the Turkish-Saudi war coalition in Syria.

One possible motive behind the fake narrative of “non-cooperation” between Obama and his Turkish-Saudi allies is that the U.S. is supposed to be fighting a “war on terrorism.”

So when Turkey and Saudi Arabia announce that they’re closely coordinating with terrorists in Syria — like al-Nusra and Ahrar al-Sham — Obama needs an alibi to avoid being caught at the crime scene. He’s not an accomplice, simply “disengaged.”

This is likely the reason why Obama has insisted that his new “moderate” rebels being trained in Turkey will fight ISIS, not the Syrian government. But this claim too is ridiculous.

Is Obama really going to throw a couple hundred newly-trained “moderate” Syrian rebels at ISIS while his Turkish-Saudi allies focus all their fire on the Syrian Government? The question answers itself.

The media has made mention of this obvious conundrum, but never bothers to follow up, leaving Obama’s lame narrative unchallenged. For example, the LA Times reports:

“The White House wants the [U.S. trained rebel] proxy force to target Islamic State militants, while many of the Syrian rebels — and the four host nations [where Syrian rebels are being trained] — want to focus on ousting Syrian President Bashar Assad.”

The article simply shrugs its shoulders at the irreconcilable. The article also fails to mention that Obama’s “new” training camps aren’t new at all; he’s been arming and training Syrian rebels since at least 2012, the only difference being that the “new” training camps are supposedly meant to target ISIS, compared to the training camps that were openly used to target the Syrian government.

Here’s the LA Times in 2013:

“The covert U.S. training [of Syrian rebels] at bases in Jordan and Turkey began months before President Obama approved plans to begin directly arming the opposition to Syrian President Bashar Assad, according to U.S. officials and rebel commanders.”

This is media amnesia at its worse. Recent events can’t be understood if the media doesn’t place events in context. In practice this “forgetfulness” provides political cover to the Obama administration, shielding his longstanding direct role in the Syrian war, allowing him to pretend to a “passive,” “hands off” approach.

When it was reported in 2012 that the Obama administration was funneling weapons to the Syrian rebels, the few media outlets that mentioned the story didn’t bother to do any follow up. It simply fell into the media memory hole. After the weapons funneling report came out, Obama incredulously stated that he was only supplying “non lethal” support to the rebels, and the media printed his words unchallenged.

Consequently, there was no public discussion about the consequences of the U.S. partaking in a multi-nation proxy war against Syria, a country that borders war ravaged Iraq.

In 2013 when Obama announced that he would be bombing the Syrian government in response to a supposed gas attack, the U.S. media asked for no evidence of the allegation, and strove to buttress Obama’s argument for aggression.

And when Pulitzer Prize winner Seymour Hersh wrote an article exposing Obama’s lies over the aborted bombing mission, the article didn’t see the light of day in the U.S. media. Critically thoughtful voices were not welcome. They remain unwelcome.

In 2015 direct U.S. military intervention in Syria remains a real possibility. All the conditions that led to Obama’s decision to bomb Syria in 2013 remain in place.

In fact, a U.S. intervention is even more likely now that Turkey and Saudi Arabia are fighting openly against the Syrian government, since the Saudi-Turkish alliance might find itself in a key battle that demands the special assistance that only the U.S. air force can offer.

Unsurprisingly, there has been renewed discussion of a U.S. enforced “no fly zone” in Syria. ISIS doesn’t have an air force, so a no fly zone would be undeniably aimed at the Syrian government to destroy its air force. The new debate over a “no fly zone” is happening at the same time as a barrage of new allegations of “chemical weapons” use are being made against the Syrian government.

If a no fly zone is eventually declared by the Obama Administration it will be promoted as a “humanitarian intervention, that strives to create a “humanitarian corridor” to “protect civilians” — the same rhetoric that was used for a massive U.S.-led NATO bombing campaign in Libya that destroyed the country and continues to create a massive refugee crisis.

As the Syrian war creates fresh atrocities the Obama administration will be pressured to openly support his Saudi-Turkish allies, just as he came out into the open in 2013 when he nearly bombed the Syrian government.

History is repeating itself. But this time the stakes are higher: the region has already been destabilized with the wars in Iraq, Libya, and Syria, and the regional conflicts have sharpened between U.S. allies on one hand, and Iran, Syria, Hezbollah and Russia on the other.

Such a volatile dynamic demands a media willing to explain the significance of these events. The truth is that Obama has been a proxy war president that has torn apart the Middle East as badly as his predecessor did, and if the U.S. public remains uninformed about developing events, an even larger regional war is inevitable.

Shamus Cooke is a social service worker, trade unionist, and writer for Workers Action

14 May, 2015
Countercurrents.org

By Dr Salim Nazzal

When I was a kid, my father used to summon me on the 15th of May to tell me about the events of Nakba that I did not witness. Like all my generation, I paid the price of the Nakba that I did not live. I inherit it from my family so to speak. I remember how my parents were sentimental while remembering its events. At school, our teachers all witnessed the Nakba recalled its events. At that age, it was difficult to understand its implications on those who lived it.But we naturally felt it through many things. The hardest feeling of all this is the knowledge that we see everybody has a home expect us.

Like all Palestinians, I grew up with pain, bitterness, and anger about the unjust which took place in Palestine like these days in 1948.Like these days in May 1948,East European Jewish terrorists, did all sorts of atrocities, from murder to rape, to burning houses, and to expel Palestinians from their cities and villages.

Like all generation of Palestinian who lived the Nakba and who did not, we never understand the level of hypocrisy the west has reached. We know very well that the Zionist state get support by most of the western world. In other word, the most powerful western states stood against my small nation and wanted it to die.

The declaration of the death of Palestine and the birth of Israel is the worst nightmare that happened to my nation. A culture that lived thousands of years was brutaly destroyed.The holy land was covered of innocent Palestinian blood. Palestinians never stop asking the question why a Jew from Poland or Ukraine or Russia or the US has the right to live in our home country, and we denied that right. Why any Jew can live free in my home and my nation either under occupation or in exile?

My people did no wrong to anybody .They were engaged to plant and harvest their fields to feed their families. But they had to suffer almost a century because Europe wanted to solve the European Jewish problem outside Europe. And Palestinians had to pay the price.

Many Palestinians were not even aware of the Jewish history in Europe, this history which my nation has paid and still pays for it.

Zionist Jews need to know that not by any way Palestinians accept less than their rights. Yes, Zionist Jews are powerful now but things will change one day.

It will change for sure. My generation may be dead then, but I’m sure that a new generation of Palestinians will walk freely in Haifa and Yaffa, and all Palestine. And Zionism will be no more than a nightmare in the history of Palestine.

Dr. Salim Nazzal, a Palestinian-Norwegian historian on the Middle East, He has written extensively on social and political issues in the region.

14 May, 2015
Countercurrents.org

CSID condemns death sentences againt Dr. Emad Shahin, Elected President Mohamed Morsi, and over 120 other political opponents of the military regime in Egypt.

Washington D.C., May 18, 2015 – The Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy (CSID) condemns in the strongest possible terms the death sentences meted out today against its respected board member and world renowned scholar Dr. Emad Shahin, along with elected Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi and over one hundred twenty others convicted for their peaceful opposition to the July 2013 coup, for their political views, or for their roles in the 2011 revolution. This manipulation of the justice system by mass incarceration and arbitrary and careless pronouncement of death sentences to silence political dissent and punish opposition to the current regime is happening at a pace and on a scale rarely, if ever, seen in human history. This miscarriage of justice further invites ridicule on account of its arbitrary nature; according to a statement issued today by our colleague Emad Shahin, “Ironically, two defendants sentenced to death today [are] already … dead and one has been in prison for the past 19 years.”

Dr. Emad Shahin is a renowned and respected scholar, board member at CSID, and professor with positions at esteemed universities around the world, including Georgetown, Harvard, and the American University in Cairo. His long commitment to the struggle for democracy, human rights, and national reconciliation in Egypt is a glowing and honorable record that speaks volumes.

CSID joins other international human rights organizations, such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, in condemning this shameful affront to justice and human decency and calls on Egyptian authorities to overturn these convictions and set Egypt back on a course towards justice, freedom, and democracy. Under the guise of fighting terrorism, Egypt has elected instead to intimidate political dissenters, members of Egypt’s political elite, and the general citizenry in a cynical quest to maintain power. By pursuing this policy, Egypt actually increases its domestic terrorist threat by offering no legal outlet for legal political dissent and change. Peaceful protesters, academics, students, journalists, and members of over 400 recently banned civil society organizations have been subject to this assault by the current regime. Young people are increasingly lamenting the apparent futility of peaceful protest; the risk that some might abandon peaceful dissent and turn to violence is real. Anyone associated with the 2011 revolution, as well as the tens of millions who voted for opposing political parties in the free and fair elections following the revolution, are now subject to these draconian policies. It is out of deep respect for Egyptians and Egypt’s great civilization and heritage that CSID calls on all Egyptians to seek to right the Egyptian ship of state in a peaceful manner and calls on the international community to endeavor to support democracy, peace, and justice in Egypt.

For more information: please visit Emad Shahin’s webpage
or contact him by e-mail at: emad.shahin@georgetown.edu

About CSID:

CSID is a Washington DC-based think tank and advocacy non-profit organization that seeks to promote freedom, democracy, and human rights in the Arab and Islamic World, and seeks to assist democratic transitions in the countries of the Arab Spring by promoting national dialogue and national unity between moderate Islamists and secularists and modern tolerant, and a progressive interpretation of Islam for the 21st century.

 

By Joseph E. Stiglitz

NEW YORK – The United States and the world are engaged in a great debate about new trade agreements. Such pacts used to be called “free-trade agreements”; in fact, they were managed trade agreements, tailored to corporate interests, largely in the US and the European Union. Today, such deals are more often referred to as “partnerships,”as in the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). But they are not partnerships of equals: the US effectively dictates the terms. Fortunately, America’s “partners” are becoming increasingly resistant.

It is not hard to see why. These agreements go well beyond trade, governing investment and intellectual property as well, imposing fundamental changes to countries’ legal, judicial, and regulatory frameworks, without input or accountability through democratic institutions.

Perhaps the most invidious – and most dishonest – part of such agreements concerns investor protection. Of course, investors have to be protected against the risk that rogue governments will seize their property. But that is not what these provisions are about. There have been very few expropriations in recent decades, and investors who want to protect themselves can buy insurance from the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency, a World Bank affiliate (the US and other governments provide similar insurance). Nonetheless, the US is demanding such provisions in the TPP, even though many of its “partners” have property protections and judicial systems that are as good as its own.

The real intent of these provisions is to impede health, environmental, safety, and, yes, even financial regulations meant to protect America’s own economy and citizens. Companies can sue governments for full compensation for any reduction in their future expected profits resulting from regulatory changes.

This is not just a theoretical possibility. Philip Morris is suing Uruguay and Australia for requiring warning labels on cigarettes. Admittedly, both countries went a little further than the US, mandating the inclusion of graphic images showing the consequences of cigarette smoking.

The labeling is working. It is discouraging smoking. So now Philip Morris is demanding to be compensated for lost profits.

In the future, if we discover that some other product causes health problems (think of asbestos), rather than facing lawsuits for the costs imposed on us, the manufacturer could sue governments for restraining them from killing more people. The same thing could happen if our governments impose more stringent regulations to protect us from the impact of greenhouse-gas emissions.

When I chaired President Bill Clinton’s Council of Economic Advisers, anti-environmentalists tried to enact a similar provision, called “regulatory takings.” They knew that once enacted, regulations would be brought to a halt, simply because government could not afford to pay the compensation. Fortunately, we succeeded in beating back the initiative, both in the courts and in the US Congress.

But now the same groups are attempting an end run around democratic processes by inserting such provisions in trade bills, the contents of which are being kept largely secret from the public (but not from the corporations that are pushing for them). It is only from leaks, and from talking to government officials who seem more committed to democratic processes, that we know what is happening.

Fundamental to America’s system of government is an impartial public judiciary, with legal standards built up over the decades, based on principles of transparency, precedent, and the opportunity to appeal unfavorable decisions. All of this is being set aside, as the new agreements call for private, non-transparent, and very expensive arbitration. Moreover, this arrangement is often rife with conflicts of interest; for example, arbitrators may be a “judge” in one case and an advocate in a related case.

The proceedings are so expensive that Uruguay has had to turn to Michael Bloomberg and other wealthy Americans committed to health to defend itself against Philip Morris. And, though corporations can bring suit, others cannot. If there is a violation of other commitments – on labor and environmental standards, for example – citizens, unions, and civil-society groups have no recourse.

If there ever was a one-sided dispute-resolution mechanism that violates basic principles, this is it. That is why I joined leading US legal experts, including from Harvard, Yale, and Berkeley, in writing a letter to President Barack Obama explaining how damaging to our system of justice these agreements are.

American supporters of such agreements point out that the US has been sued only a few times so far, and has not lost a case. Corporations, however, are just learning how to use these agreements to their advantage.

And high-priced corporate lawyers in the US, Europe, and Japan will likely outmatch the underpaid government lawyers attempting to defend the public interest. Worse still, corporations in advanced countries can create subsidiaries in member countries through which to invest back home, and then sue, giving them a new channel to bloc regulations.

If there were a need for better property protection, and if this private, expensive dispute-resolution mechanism were superior to a public judiciary, we should be changing the law not just for well-heeled foreign companies, but also for our own citizens and small businesses. But there has been no suggestion that this is the case.

Rules and regulations determine the kind of economy and society in which people live. They affect relative bargaining power, with important implications for inequality, a growing problem around the world. The question is whether we should allow rich corporations to use provisions hidden in so-called trade agreements to dictate how we will live in the twenty-first century. I hope citizens in the US, Europe, and the Pacific answer with a resounding no.

13 May 2015

Joseph E. Stiglitz, a Nobel laureate in economics and University Professor at Columbia University, was Chairman of President Bill Clinton’s Council of Economic Advisers and served as Senior Vice President and Chief Economist of the World Bank.

By Hassanal Noor Rashid

It is imperative that the Rohingya issue be addressed as soon as possible.

The plight faced by these persecuted people has been thrust into the headlines of international news recently, following cases of thousands of boat people stranded at sea as well as reports of slave labour camps and mass graves.

These Rohingya immigrants who sought to escape persecution from a country that has long eroded their cultural identity and civil rights, entrusted themselves to opportunistic and deceitful human traffickers who see their plight not as a humanitarian issue, but as nothing more than a lucrative opportunity. This has resulted in extreme cases where people were allegedly thrown overboard, or whole ships left abandoned, its passengers left to fend for themselves against the harsh elements of the sea, many suffering and succumbing to malnutrition.

At least 30 graves mass graves have been discovered at the identified slave camps near the south of Thailand in the Songkla province. Survivors of such camps report of the deplorable conditions they have been forced to live in as well as the alleged use of coercion and violence to extort more money from the Rohingya families.

As Malaysia shares the borders close to where this incident has happened, it is feared that such camps may exist within Malaysia’s boundaries and perhaps Malaysia has unknowingly facilitated the trafficking and abuse of the Rohingya people.

However while the responses have been mainly aimed towards the human traffickers, with military action being considered, there is a far greater crime being played out that demands justice for these people who have to suffer so much unnecessary hardships.

The Myanmar government is equally, if not wholly responsible, for the sorry state of affairs the Rohingyas find themselves in.

As noted by the report published by the Equal Rights Trust, the Rohingyas trace their ancestral roots in the Rakhine region several centuries back, long before the creation of modern day Myanmar. The term is derived from the word Rohang which is the name of the Rakhine state.

This claim to historical ancestry is rejected on many levels in Myanmar. The Myanmar government claims that the Rohingyas are in fact migrants from Bangladesh and have no rights to indigenous identity in Myanmar. The term “ Rohingya” is not recognized by the government and the Rohingya people — in spite of their protest and rejection — are referred to as Bengali.

The result of this unwillingness to recognize that the Rohingyas are part of the Myanmar demographic landscape, coupled with their contentious religious relationship with the majority Buddhist populace which denies much of the historical Muslim influences upon Rakhine state, have led to the purposeful and systematic deprivation of the civil rights of the Rohingya community.

The Rohingyas are prevented from using the term in official documentation including identity cards, passports and were even disqualified from the country’s census of March 2014 unless they agreed to the term Bengali.

The consequence of this can be seen now as many Rohingyas, who possess no legal documentation, have become stateless and have been forced to flee Myanmar in order to escape persecution in a country that has become — as some have described it — an open-air prison.

The Rohingyas have no other alternatives than to procure the services of smugglers, who they pay a significant amount of money in order to obtain passage to another country. The problem then morphs into human trafficking. These refugees are unknowingly trading one prison for another.

It is therefore not enough to address the issue of human trafficking by bringing the traffickers themselves to justice. It is necessary to make the Myanmar government accountable for this travesty, addressing the problem of ethnic persecution within the country itself and ensuring that the civil rights of the Rohingyas are restored, or, at the very least, their basic human rights respected.

The only significant hindrance would be the strict adherence to the non-interference policy which ASEAN governments have maintained. Malaysia and Indonesia have turned away many of the boats opting to send these refugees back to the country that does not recognize their basic humanity. The Malaysian and Indonesian governments do not want to be inundated with illegal immigrants that they just cannot cope with.

There is a distinction that needs to be made between refugees and illegal immigrants, as the current discourse labels the Rohingyas mainly as the latter, when in fact given the mentioned historical and political context, it would be more appropriate to term the Rohingyas as political refugees.

With the increasing outflow of these refugees from Myanmar, the ASEAN policy of non-interference has proven to be untenable, given the humanitarian crisis which has gotten far worse over the years.

The Malaysian, Indonesian and Thai governments should apply diplomatic pressure immediately upon the Myanmar government to address the root problem which is the persecution of the Rohingyas. Once the persecution stops, the massive exodus of refugees through land and sea will also come to an end.

Hassanal Noor Rashid is the Program Coordinator of the International Movement for a Just World (JUST)
15 May 2015

By Ram Puniyani

In contemporary times, religions’ identity is being used as cover for political agenda. Be it the terrorist violence or the sectarian nationalism in various parts of the World, religion is used to mask the underlying politics. While one was talking of separation of religion and politics many decades earlier, the times have been showing the reverse trends, more so in South Asia. Globally one came across the news that American President sent a chador [a ceremonial sheet of cloth] to the annual observation at the shrine of Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti at Ajmer. (April 2015). Later one also read (April 22, 2015) that Sonia Gandhi, Atal Bihari Vajpeyi, and Narendra Modi has also offered chadors at the shrine.

Keeping the relation between state, politics and religion apart, it is interesting that some traditions within religion have appeals cutting across the religious boundaries. The Sufi and Bhakti tradition in Pakistan-India, South Asia are two such humane trends from within Islam and Hinduism respectively, which harp more on unity of humanity as a whole overcoming the sectarian divides. The saints from these traditions had appeal amongst people of different religions and they were away from the centers of power, unlike the clergy which was close ally of the rulers in medieval times. We have seen rich traditions of people like Kabir, Tukaram, Narsi Mehta, Shankar Dev, Lal Dedh, clearly from within Hindu tradition, while Nizamuddin Auliya, Moinuddin Chishti, Tajuddin Baba Auliya, Ajan Pir, Nooruddin Noorani (also known as Nund Rishi) coming from a clear Islamic Sufi tradition and Satya Pir, Ramdev Baba Pir, having a mixed lineage where Bhakti and Sufi themselves are deeply intertwined.

Sant Guru Nanak did try a conscious mixing of the two major religions of India, Hinduism and Islam. He traveled up to Mecca to learn the wisdom of Islam and went to Kashi to unravel the spiritual moral aspects of Hinduism. His first follower was Mardan and Miyan Mir was the one who was respectfully invited to lay the foundations of Golden Temple; the holy Sikh Shrine. The Guru Granth Sahib has an inclusive approach to religious wisdom and it takes the verses from Koran, couplets from Kabir and other Bhakti saints. No wonder people used to say of him ‘Baba Nanak Sant Fakir, Hindu ka Guru Musalman ka Pir’ (Saint Nanak is sant for Hindus and pir for Muslims)

In today’s scenario the global discussion has been centered round religion due to its use in political sphere. Now the renewed interest in Sufi tradition at one level is heartening. Sufism has been prominent in South Asia from last ten centuries. Word Sufi means coarse wool fabric, the type of clothes which were worn by Sufi mystics. It grew within Shiaism but over time some Sunnis also took to this sect. It has strong streaks of mysticism and gave no importance to rituals and tried to have understanding of God by transcending the anthropomorphic understanding of Allah, looking at him more as a spiritual authority. This is so similar to the belief held by Bhakti saints also. Many Sufi’s had pantheistic beliefs and they articulated their values in very humane way.

In the beginning the orthodox sects started persecuting them but later compromises were struck. The Sufis formed the orders of roving monks, dervishes. People of all religions in many countries frequent their shrines, this again is like Bhakti saints, who have following amongst people of different religions.

On parallel lines Bhakti is probably the most outstanding example of the subaltern trend in Indian religious history. The Bhakti saints came from different streams of society, particularly from low caste. Bhakti opposed the institutionalization of religion, tried to decentralize it, and declared that religion is a private matter. It gave respectability to the separation of state power and religion and merged the concept of God worship with the process of getting knowledge. Travails of poor people are the focus of bhakti saints’ work. Bhakti traditions gave respectability to many low castes. This tradition had inclusive approach towards Muslims as well. This tradition posed a challenge to upper caste hegemony.

Bhakti tradition opposed the rituals, hegemony of elite of society. They adopted the languages more popular with the masses. Also they talked of one God. In India in particular Hindu Muslim unity has been one of the concerns expressed by many of the saints from this tradition.

What one needs to realize is that there are various tendencies with every religion. The humane one’s as represented by Bhakti and Sufi are the ones’ which united Humanity and harped on morality-spirituality of religions. The intolerant tendencies have been usurped by political forces for their political agenda. In sub continent during the freedom movement the declining sections of society, Rajas, Nawabs, Land lords came up with Muslim and Hindu Communalism to begin with. This nationalism in the name of religion had nothing to do with morality of religions. It was use of religion’s identity for political goals. In the national movements we had people like Gandhi, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad who were religious but opposed to religious nationalism.

The essence of Sufi and Bhakti tradition are reminders to us that spirituality, morality part of the religion has been undermined in the current times. The inclusive-humane nature of these traditions needs to be upheld and the divisive-exclusionary versions of religions have to be ignored for better future of humanity.

08 May, 2015
Countercurrents.org