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By Chris Hedges

The decision by Amnesty International’s decision-making forum, the International Council Meeting, to call for the decriminalization of prostitution is another in a long line of triumphs for heartless neoliberal economics and the grotesque commodification of human beings that defines predatory capitalism.

Salil Shetty, secretary-general of Amnesty International, said: “Sex workers are one of the most marginalized groups in the world who in most instances face constant risk of discrimination, violence and abuse. Our global movement paved the way for adopting a policy for the protection of the human rights of sex workers which will help shape Amnesty International’s future work on this important issue.”

In the sickness of modern culture, the ability to exploit with impunity is distorted into a human right even by a renowned and respected humanitarian organization. That is quite a card trick. We live in a global culture where the wretched of the earth are chattel and where sexual slavery—which is what most prostituted women and girls around the globe endure—is sanctified by market forces. These women and girls are among our most vulnerable. After being crushed by poverty, racism and sexism, they are unable to find other ways to make a sustainable income. They are treated little better than livestock transported to markets for consumption. That a so-called human rights organization parrots vile justifications is emblematic of the depth of our moral degeneration and the triumph of misogyny.

Women and girls who are prostituted should be treated not as criminals but as victims. The criminals are the johns and the pimps and traffickers who profit from the sale of human flesh. Decriminalizing prostitution, which allows these modern slave masters to openly ply their trade, means the exploitation will grow explosively. We must work to create a world where those who are dispossessed of their human rights are not forced into this dilemma. We must not accept a world where poverty destroys the lives of the weak and the vulnerable, including children. Those who profit from prostituting women and girls must be driven out of business.

“In sheer numbers, it is the poor brown women of the world who pay with bruises, humiliation and deaths for this ignorant and hideous decision that has brought Amnesty International so low,” Lee Lakeman, the Canadian feminist, told me by email. “When Amnesty International’s ‘progressive leftists’ blithely refer to ‘free choice to prostitute,’ do they choose to forget prostitution as imperialism? Third world brothel cities, the tourist brothels sprung up where once armies were stationed, man-camps of resource thieves that overrun indigenous communities, UN troops buying sex from women in refugee camps by offering them food? Abandoned migrant addicted kids and women in the ghettos of the world’s cities being bought for the price of a quick hit? Or are they [Amnesty and those who support its decision] imagining this free choice: the women, babes in arms migrating from war zones and environmental deserts who are bought with rides, food, water or with a chance to save a child? Surely they know how indigenous girls are groomed with drugs and alcohol and rides to the city from hopeless homelands. But they cannot have missed the inherent racism of prostitution that exoticizes every racial stereotype of woman on the back pages and internet sites of the world. And those of us, women of the global north, who have food and shelter? We fight now for the public life of full citizens. Are we obliged every time we leave our houses to face a barrage of men bloated with entitlement of class and race and sex, who sit scanning as we pass for our price tag? Consciousness is in part knowing who is standing with you. We know Amnesty International sold us out.”

Among those, including women, who have no concept of what being prostituted really means, it has become hip and edgy to talk about the legitimacy of “sex work.” Movies like “Pretty Woman” and the pro-prostitution lobby’s slick portrayals of the “sex industry” bear as much resemblance to the reality of prostitution as “Sands of Iwo Jima” does to war. If you want an honest window into what the prostitution industry is like, read “Paid For: My Journey Through Prostitution” by Rachel Moran, who at 15 was prostituted on the streets of Dublin. She endured this nightmare for seven years.

Moran says, based on her experience, that there are three types of men who use prostitutes: those who treat women as if they do not have human emotions; those who are conscious of a woman’s humanity but choose to ignore it; and those who derive sexual pleasure from crushing the humanity of the women they buy.

Our culture, manipulated by sophisticated forms of propaganda, mesmerized by commercially created images that glorify violence and sexual exploitation and consumption, cannot untangle fantasy from reality. Many, maybe most, men have been indoctrinated by pornography. Pornography has taught them that their personal gratification at the expense and degradation of another is a human right. This indoctrination has twisted feminism, which once fought for oppressed women and girls, into an accessory to misogyny. Why would genuine feminists organize or consider taking part in “SlutWalks”? Why is the election of a female president or the appointment of a female CEO an advance when at the same time—often with the collaboration of elite women—social and governmental programs that provide assistance to poor and working women are abolished? The current generation of neoliberal “feminists” cite the empowerment of a tiny, predominantly white female elite as proof of feminist advance. Women and girls who are poor, racialized or part of the working class, like all of the vulnerable in our age of predatory capitalism, are ignored and discarded, along with most of their advocates. This is not an advance for women. It is a profound setback.

“Capitalism and prostitution are the new method of imperialism and colonization,” said Alice Lee, a member of the Asian Women Coalition Ending Prostitution, whom I reached in Vancouver. “It is no coincidence that pornography and prostitution use racial stereotypes to sell and exploit women. Prostitution is a tool that subjugates women, especially women of color, reinforcing sexism and the global racial hierarchy. The normalization of sexualized racism entrenches the idea that women of color and poor women are dispensable/disposable in all nations. The global north no longer has to occupy our lands. They can occupy our bodies and define our worth. This othering enables them to see us as less than human.”

The world has been turned upside down. Every sentence uttered by the pro-prostitution lobby—that prostitution is about choice, that prostitution is about empowerment, that legalizing prostitution protects women—is a lie. But we are a culture awash in lies, and amid this flood it is hard for many to separate illusion from reality.

Being prostituted is perpetual rape. Being prostituted means your orifices are penetrated a dozen or more times a night by strangers who often insult, maul and beat you. This happens in cars, in alleys, in “massage parlors,” in brothels, in motel rooms. And those who make the real money are not the exploited and the abused but the pimps, traffickers and brothel and massage parlor owners. Being prostituted means vaginal and anal tears, bruises, broken bones, sexually transmitted diseases including HIV, and severe psychological damage. And it can mean death. It almost always means early death. Those who must endure this abuse are almost always women of color, many shipped by traffickers from poor countries to relatively affluent countries for the sole purpose of being sexually exploited.

“Rape, wife battering and pornography serve to put women in their place,” Lee said. “That is the function of male violence against women. When women hear and see other women being raped, battered or prostituted, we know this could easily happen to us. Sometimes in the pro-prostitution argument you will hear that prostitution will prevent men from raping ordinary women. But by accepting prostitution we are accepting a class of women being expendable, as if that will prevent men from raping and beating us. Only when all women achieve liberty and autonomy can we be free.”

I suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder from my years as a war correspondent. I instantly recognized fellow sufferers of PTSD in prostituted women and girls when I interviewed them in refugee and displacement camps in Latin America, Africa and the Balkans. Prostituted women in and near war zones are as commonplace as corpses. Once a culture descends into the sickness of violence, once a culture allows human beings to become racialized objects of exploitation, there is an explosion of rape and prostitution, along with pornography. War, like neoliberal economics, sees only commodities, not sentient beings with the ability to feel pain and joy. And making war on people, as well as the planet, lies at the heart of neoliberal economics.

Prostituting women and girls is a lucrative business. Germany, which legalized prostitution in 2002, is now being called “Europe’s biggest brothel.” It has industrialized sexual exploitation with a terrifying corporate efficiency. Over a million men a day engage in these transactions, sexually exploiting women and girls who come mostly from poor countries in Africa and Eastern Europe. These women and girls have been shipped to Germany to satiate the physical desires of the affluent and enrich the pimps and traffickers who control them. The women and girls do not do this because it is a choice. They do this because they are desperate and poor. The German magazine Spiegel published an investigative piece that lays out this abuse in detail, “How Legalized Prostitution Has Failed.”

Amnesty International has, in essence, legitimized the weapon of male objectification and violence in the war against women. This weapon exists apart from the evils of global capitalism. The fight to end male violence against women has to be integral to those of us who also fight global capitalism. We need the liberation of women and girls, including those who are poor and of color. Women cannot join the fight for a better world until male violence and male entitlement are eradicated. Freedom from exploitation, especially for women and girls, will define the success or failure of our struggle. To be an anti-capitalist, to be a member of the authentic left who stands with all of the oppressed, is to embrace radical feminism—not the mock feminism of neoliberalism but the true feminism of Andrea Dworkin. It is to recognize that no assault against capitalism is possible, or morally permissible, unless it is accompanied by an assault against male violence and the exploitation of women and girls.

“Capitalism is not wicked or cruel when the commodity is the whore,” Dworkin wrote. “Profit is not wicked or cruel when the alienated worker is a female piece of meat; corporate bloodsucking is not wicked or cruel when the corporations in question, organized crime syndicates, sell cunt; racism is not wicked or cruel when the black cunt or yellow cunt or red cunt or Hispanic cunt or Jewish cunt has her legs splayed for any man’s pleasure; poverty is not wicked or cruel when it is the poverty of dispossessed women who have only themselves to sell; violence by the powerful against the powerless is not wicked or cruel when it is called sex; slavery is not wicked or cruel when it is sexual slavery; torture is not wicked or cruel when the tormented are women, whores, cunts. The new pornography is left-wing; and the new pornography is a vast graveyard where the Left has gone to die. The Left cannot have its whores and its politics too.”

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

17 August, 2015
Truthdig.com

By John Scales Avery

The direct and indirect costs of war

The costs of war, both direct and indirect, are so enormous that they are almost beyond comprehension. Globally, the institution of war interferes seriously with the use of tax money for constructive and peaceful purposes.

Today, despite the end of the Cold War, the world spends roughly 1.7 trillion (i.e. 1.7 million million) US dollars each year on armaments. This colossal flood of money could have been used instead for education, famine relief, development of infrastructure, or on urgently needed public health measures.

The World Health Organization lacks funds to carry through an antimalarial program on as large a scale as would be desirable, but the entire program could be financed for less that our military establishments spend in a single day. Five hours of world arms spending is equivalent to the total cost of the 20-year WHO campaign that resulted in the eradication of smallpox. For every 100,000 people in the world, there are 556 soldiers, but only 85 doctors. Every soldier costs an average of $20,000 per year, while the average spent on education is only $380 per school-aged child. With a diversion of funds consumed by three weeks of military spending, the world could create a sanitary water supply for all its people, thus eliminating the cause of almost half of all human illness.

A new drug-resistant form of tuberculosis has recently become widespread in Asia and in the former Soviet Union. In order to combat this new and highly dangerous form of tuberculosis and to prevent its spread, WHO needs $500 million, an amount equivalent to 1.2 hours of world arms spending.

Today’s world is one in which roughly ten million children die every year from starvation or from diseases related to poverty. Besides this enormous waste of young lives through malnutrition and preventable disease, there is a huge waste of opportunities through inadequate education. The rate of illiteracy in the 25 least developed countries is 80%, and the total number of illiterates in the world is estimated to be 800 million. Meanwhile every 60 seconds the world spends $6.5 million on armaments.

It is plain that if the almost unbelievable sums now wasted on the institution of war were used constructively, most of the pressing problems of humanity could be solved, but today the world spends more than 20 times as much on war as it does on development.

Medical and psychological consequences; loss of life

While in earlier epochs it may have been possible to confine the effects of war mainly to combatants, in the 20th century the victims of war were increasingly civilians, and especially children. For example, according to Quincy Wright’s statistics, the First and Second World Wars cost the lives of 26 million soldiers, but the toll in civilian lives was much larger: 64 million.

Since the Second World War, despite the best efforts of the UN, there have been over 150 armed conflicts; and, if civil wars are included, there are on any given day an average of 12 wars somewhere in the world. In the conflicts in Indo-China, the proportion of civilian victims was between 80% and 90%, while in the Lebanese civil war some sources state that the proportion of civilian casualties was as high as 97%.

Civilian casualties often occur through malnutrition and through diseases that would be preventable in normal circumstances. Because of the social disruption caused by war, normal supplies of food, safe water and medicine are interrupted, so that populations become vulnerable to famine and epidemics.

http://www.cadmusjournal.org/article/volume-2/issue-2-part-3/lessons-world-war-i

http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/27201-the-leading-terrorist-state

Effects of war on children

According to UNICEF figures, 90% of the casualties of recent wars have been civilians, and 50% children. The organization estimates that in recent years, violent conflicts have driven 20 million children from their homes. They have become refugees or internally displaced persons within their own countries.

During the last decade 2 million children have been killed and 6 million seriously injured or permanently disabled as the result of armed conflicts, while 1 million children have been orphaned or separated from their families. Of the ten countries with the highest rates of death of children under five years of age, seven are affected by armed conflicts. UNICEF estimates that 300,000 child soldiers are currently forced to fight in 30 armed conflicts throughout the world. Many of these have been forcibly recruited or abducted.

Even when they are not killed or wounded by conflicts, children often experience painful psychological traumas: the violent death of parents or close relatives, separation from their families, seeing family members tortured, displacement from home, disruption of ordinary life, exposure to shelling and other forms of combat, starvation and anxiety about the future.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2080482/

Refugees

Human Rights Watch estimates that in 2001 there were 15 million refugees in the world, forced from their countries by war, civil and political conflict, or by gross violations of human rights. In addition, there were an estimated 22 million internally displaced persons, violently forced from their homes but still within the borders of their countries.

In 2001, 78% of all refugees came from ten areas: Afghanistan, Angola, Burma, Burundi, Congo-Kinshasa, Eritria, Iraq, the Palestinian territories, Somalia and Sudan. A quarter of all refugees are Palestinians, who make up the world’s oldest and largest refugee population. 45% of the world’s refugees have found sanctuaries in Asia, 30% in Africa, 19% in Europe and 5% in North America.

Refugees who have crossed an international border are in principle protected by Article 14 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which affirms their right “to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution”. In 1950 the Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees was created to implement Article 14, and in 1951 the Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees was adopted by the UN. By 2002 this legally binding treaty had been signed by 140 nations. However the industrialized countries have recently adopted a very hostile and restrictive attitude towards refugees, subjecting them to arbitrary arrests, denial of social and economic rights, and even forcible return to countries in which they face persecution.

The status of internally displaced persons is even worse than that of refugees who have crossed international borders. In many cases the international community simply ignores their suffering, reluctant to interfere in the internal affairs of sovereign states. In fact, the United Nations Charter is self-contradictory in this respect, since on the one hand it calls for non-interference in the internal affairs of sovereign states, but on the other hand, people everywhere are guaranteed freedom from persecution by the Charter’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

https://www.hrw.org/topic/refugees

Damage to infrastructure

Most insurance policies have clauses written in fine print exempting companies from payment of damage caused by war. The reason for this is simple. The damage caused by war is so enormous that insurance companies could never come near to paying for it without going bankrupt.

We mentioned above that the world spends roughly a trillion dollars each year on preparations for war. A similarly colossal amount is needed to repair the damage to infrastructure caused by war. Sometimes this damage is unintended, but sometimes it is intentional.

During World War II, one of the main aims of air attacks by both sides was to destroy the industrial infrastructure of the opponent. This made some sense in a war expected to last several years, because the aim was to prevent the enemy from producing more munitions. However, during the Gulf War of 1990, the infrastructure of Iraq was attacked, even though the war was expected to be short. Electrical generating plants and water purification facilities were deliberately destroyed with the apparent aim of obtaining leverage over Iraq after the war.

In general, because war has such a catastrophic effect on infrastructure, it can be thought of as the opposite of development. War is the greatest generator of poverty.

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2002/11/iraq-n04.html

Crimes against Humanity: The Destruction of Iraq’s Electricity Infrastructure. The Social, Economic and Environmental Impacts

http://www.afdb.org/fileadmin/uploads/afdb/Documents/Publications/00157630-EN-ERP-48.PDF

Ecological damage

Warfare during the 20th century has not only caused the loss of 175 million lives (primarily civilians) – it has also caused the greatest ecological catastrophes in human history. The damage takes place even in times of peace. Studies by Joni Seager, a geographer at the University of Vermont, conclude that “a military presence anywhere in the world is the single most reliable predictor of ecological damage”.

Modern warfare destroys environments to such a degree that it has been described as an “environmental holocaust.” For example, herbicides use in the Vietnam War killed an estimated 6.2 billion board-feet of hardwood trees in the forests north and west of Saigon, according to the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Herbicides such as Agent Orange also made enormous areas of previously fertile land unsuitable for agriculture for many years to come. In Vietnam and elsewhere in the world, valuable agricultural land has also been lost because land mines or the remains of cluster bombs make it too dangerous for farming.

During the Gulf War of 1990, the oil spills amounted to 150 million barrels, 650 times the amount released into the environment by the notorious Exxon Valdez disaster. During the Gulf War an enormous number of shells made of depleted uranium were fired. When the dust produced by exploded shells is inhaled it often produces cancer, and it will remain in the environment of Iraq for decades.

Radioactive fallout from nuclear tests pollutes the global environment and causes many thousands of cases of cancer, as well as birth abnormalities. Most nuclear tests have been carried out on lands belonging to indigenou peoples. Agent Orange also produced cancer, birth abnormalities and other serious forms of illness both in the Vietnamese population and among the foreign soldiers fighting in Vietnam

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2401378/Agent-Orange-Vietnamese-children-suffering-effects-herbicide-sprayed-US-Army-40-years-ago.html

https://www.google.dk/search?q=agent+orange&hl=en-DK&biw=1535&bih=805&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=
0CAYQ_AUoAWoVChMIvJmWp5CjxwIVyW0UCh3SfQ0U

The threat of nuclear war

As bad as conventional arms and conventional weapons may be, it is the possibility of a catastrophic nuclear war that poses the greatest threat to humanity. There are today roughly 16,000 nuclear warheads in the world. The total explosive power of the warheads that exist or that could be made on short notice is approximately equal to 500,000 Hiroshima bombs.

To multiply the tragedy of Hiroshima by a factor of half a million makes an enormous difference, not only quantitatively, but also qualitatively. Those who have studied the question believe that a nuclear catastrophe today would inflict irreversible damage on our civilization, genetic pool and environment.

Thermonuclear weapons consist of an inner core where the fission of uranium-235 or plutonium takes place. The fission reaction in the core is able to start a fusion reaction in the next layer, which contains isotopes of hydrogen. It is possible to add a casing of ordinary uranium outside the hydrogen layer, and under the extreme conditions produced by the fusion reaction, this ordinary uranium can undergo fission. In this way, a fission-fusion-fission bomb of almost limitless power can be produced.

For a victim of severe radiation exposure, the symptoms during the first week are nausea, vomiting, fever, apathy, delirium, diarrhoea, oropharyngeal lesions and leukopenia. Death occurs during the first or second week.

We can perhaps be helped to imagine what a nuclear catastrophe means in human terms by reading the words of a young university professor, who was 2,500 meters from the hypocenter at the time of the bombing of Hiroshima: “Everything I saw made a deep impression: a park nearby covered with dead bodies… very badly injured people evacuated in my direction… Perhaps most impressive were girls, very young girls, not only with their clothes torn off, but their skin peeled off as well. … My immediate thought was that this was like the hell I had always read about. … I had never seen anything which resembled it before, but I thought that should there be a hell, this was it.”

One argument that has been used in favor of nuclear weapons is that no sane political leader would employ them. However, the concept of deterrence ignores the possibility of war by accident or miscalculation, a danger that has been increased by nuclear proliferation and by the use of computers with very quick reaction times to control weapons systems.

Recent nuclear power plant accidents remind us that accidents frequently happen through human and technical failure, even for systems which are considered to be very “safe.” We must also remember the time scale of the problem. To assure the future of humanity, nuclear catastrophe must be avoided year after year and decade after decade. In the long run, the safety of civilization cannot be achieved except by the abolition of nuclear weapons, and ultimately the abolition of the institution of war.

It is generally agreed that a full-scale nuclear war would have disastrous In 1985, International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War received the Nobel Peace Prize. IPPNW had been founded in 1980 by six physicians, three from the Soviet Union and three from the United States. Today, the organization has wide membership among the world’s physicians. Professor Bernard Lowen of the Harvard School of Public Health, one of the founders of IPPNW, said in a recent speech:

“…No public health hazard ever faced by humankind equals the threat of nuclear war. Never before has man possessed the destructive resources to make this planet uninhabitable… Modern medicine has nothing to offer, not even a token benefit, in the event of nuclear war…”

“We are but transient passengers on this planet Earth. It does not belong to us. We are not free to doom generations yet unborn. We are not at liberty to erase humanity’s past or dim its future. Social systems do not endure for eternity. Only life can lay claim to uninterrupted continuity. This continuity is sacred.”

The danger of a catastrophic nuclear war casts a dark shadow over the future of our species. It also casts a very black shadow over the future of the global environment. The environmental consequences of a massive exchange of nuclear weapons have been treated in a number of studies by meteorologists and other experts from both East and West. They predict that a large-scale use of nuclear weapons would result in fire storms with very high winds and high temperatures, which would burn a large proportion of the wild land fuels in the affected nations. The resulting smoke and dust would block out sunlight for a period of many months, at first only in the northern hemisphere but later also in the southern hemisphere.

Temperatures in many places would fall far below freezing, and much of the earth’s plant life would be
killed. Animals and humans would then die of starvation. The nuclear winter effect was first discovered as a result of the Mariner 9 spacecraft exploration of Mars in 1971. The spacecraft arrived in the middle of an enormous dust-storm on Mars, and measured a large temperature drop at the surface of the planet, accompanied by a heating of the upper atmosphere. These measurements allowed scientists to check their theoretical models for predicting the effect of dust and other pollutants distributed in planetary atmospheres.

Using experience gained from the studies of Mars, R.P. Turco, O.B. Toon, T. Ackerman, J.B. Pollack and C. Sagan made a computer study of the climatic effects of the smoke and dust that would result from a large-scale nuclear war. This early research project is sometimes called the TTAPS Study, after the initials of the authors.

In April 1983, a special meeting was held in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where the results of the TTAPS Study and other independent studies of the nuclear winter effect were discussed by more than 100 experts. Their conclusions were presented at a forum in Washington, D.C., the following December, under the chairmanship of U.S. Senators Kennedy and Hatfield. The numerous independent studies of the nuclear winter effect all agreed of the following main predictions:

High-yield nuclear weapons exploded near the earth’s surface would put large amounts of dust into the upper atmosphere. Nuclear weapons exploded over cities, forests, oilfields and refineries would produce fire storms of the type experienced in Dresden and Hamburg after incendiary bombings during the Second World War. The combination of high-altitude dust and lower altitude soot would prevent sunlight from reaching the earth’s surface, and the degree of obscuration would be extremely high for a wide range of scenarios.

A baseline scenario used by the TTAPS study assumes a 5,000-megaton nuclear exchange, but the threshold for triggering the nuclear winter effect is believed to be much lower than that. After such an exchange, the screening effect of pollutants in the atmosphere might be so great that, in the northern and middle latitudes, the sunlight reaching the earth would be only 1 percent of ordinary sunlight on a clear day, and this effect would persist for many months. As a result, the upper layers in the atmosphere might rise in temperature by as much as 100 degrees Celsius, while the surface temperatures would fall, perhaps by as much a 50 degrees Celsius.

The temperature inversion produced in this way would lead to superstability, a condition in which the normal mixing of atmospheric layers is suppressed. The hydrological cycle (which normally takes moist air from the oceans to a higher and cooler level, where the moisture condenses as rain) would be strongly suppressed. Severe droughts would thus take place overcontinental land masses. The normal cleansing action of rain would be absent in the atmosphere, an effect which would prolong the nuclear winter.

In the northern hemisphere, forests would die because of lack of sunlight, extreme cold, and drought. Although the temperature drop in the southern hemisphere would be less severe, it might still be sufficient to kill a large portion of the tropical forests, which normally help to renew the earth’s oxygen.

The oxygen content of the atmosphere would then fall dangerously, while the concentration of carbon dioxide and oxides of nitrogen produced by firestorms would remain high. The oxides of nitrogen would ultimately diffuse to the upper atmosphere, where they would destroy the ozone layer. Thus, even when the sunlight returned after an absence of many months, it would be sunlight containing a large proportion of the ultraviolet frequencies which are normally absorbed by the ozone in the stratosphere, and therefore a type of light dangerous to life. Finally, after being so severely disturbed, there is no guarantee that the global climate would return to its normal equilibrium.

Even a nuclear war below the threshold of nuclear winter might have climatic effects very damaging to human life. Professor Paul Ehrlich, of Stanford University, has expressed this in the following words:

“…A smaller war, which set off fewer fires and put less dust into the atmosphere, could easily depress centigrade. That would be enough to essentially cancel grain production in the northern hemisphere. That in itself would be the greatest catastrophe ever delivered upon Homo sapiens, just that one thing, not worrying about prompt effects. Thus even below the threshold, one cannot think of survival of a nuclear war as just being able to stand up after the bomb has gone off.”

http://www.voanews.com/content/pope-francis-calls-for-nuclear-weapons-ban/2909357.html

http://www.cadmusjournal.org/article/issue-4/flaws-concept-nuclear-deterrance

http://www.countercurrents.org/avery300713.htm

https://www.wagingpeace.org/author/john-avery/

http://www.commondreams.org/news/2015/08/06/70-years-after-bombing-hiroshima-calls-abolish-nuclear-weapons

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article42488.htm

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article42492.htm

http://www.commondreams.org/views/2015/08/06/hiroshima-and-nagasaki-remembering-power

https://mail.google.com/mail/?shva=1#inbox/14f0211dde9b7acf

Israel, Iran and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty

Militarism’s Hostages

“The Path to Zero: Dialogues on Nuclear Dangers”, by Richard Falk and David Krieger

Europe Must Not Be Forced Into a Nuclear War with Russia

http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/32073-the-us-should-eliminate-its-nuclear-arsenal-not-modernize-it

http://www.cadmusjournal.org/article/issue-4/flaws-concept-nuclear-deterrance

http://www.cadmusjournal.org/article/issue-6/arms-trade-treaty-opens-new-possibilities-u

http://eruditio.worldacademy.org/issue-6/article/remember-your-humanity

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article42568.htm

https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/09/23/nobel-peace-prize-fact-day-syria-7th-country-bombed-obama/

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article42577.htm

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article42580.htm

http://cns.miis.edu/opapers/pdfs/140107_trillion_dollar_nuclear_triad.pdf

‘US Unleashing of Atomic Weapons against Civilian Populations Was a Criminal Act of the First Order’

Hiroshima and Nagasaki: Remembering the Power of Peace

Atomic Bombing – Hear the Story: Setsuko Thurlow

Atomic Bombing – Hear the Story: Yasuaki Yamashita

Why Nuclear Weapons?

http://www.commondreams.org/views/2015/08/13/wedge-nuclear-disarmament

Nuclear weapons are criminal! Every war is a crime!

War was always madness, always immoral, always the cause of unspeakablke suffering, economic waste and widespread destruction, always a source of poverty, hate, barbarism and endless cycles of revenge and counter-revenge. It has always been a crime for soldiers to kill people, just as it is a crime for murderers in civil society to kill people. No flag has ever been wide enough to cover up atrocities.

But today, the development of all-destroying modern weapons has put war completely beyond the bounds of sanity and elementary humanity. Today, war is not only insane, but also a violation of international law. Both the United Nations Charter and the Nuremberg Principles make it a crime to launch an aggressive war. According to the Nuremberg Principles, every soldier is responsible for the crimes that he or she commits, even while acting under the orders of a superior officer.

Nuclear weapons are not only insane, immoral and potentially omnicidal, but also criminal under international law. In response to questions put to it by WHO and the UN General Assembly, the International Court of Justice ruled in 1996 that “the threat and use of nuclear weapons would generally be contrary to the rules of international law applicable in armed conflict, and particularly the principles and rules of humanitarian law.” The only possible exception to this general rule might be “an extreme circumstance of self-defense, in which the very survival of a state would be at stake”. But the Court refused to say that even in this extreme circumstance the threat or use of nuclear weapons would be legal. It left the exceptional case undecided. In addition, the Court added unanimously that “there exists an obligation to pursue in good faith and bring to a conclusion negotiations leading to nuclear disarmament in all its aspects under strict and effective international control.”

Can we not rid ourselves of both nuclear weapons and the institution of war itself? We must act quickly and resolutely before our beautiful world and everything that we love are reduced to radioactive ashes.

http://www.fredsakademiet.dk/library/collected4.pdf

John Avery received a B.Sc. in theoretical physics from MIT and an M.Sc. from the University of Chicago. He later studied theoretical chemistry at the University of London, and was awarded a Ph.D. there in 1965. He is now Lektor Emeritus, Associate Professor, at the Department of Chemistry, University of Copenhagen. Fellowships, memberships in societies: Since 1990 he has been the Contact Person in Denmark for Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs. In 1995, this group received the Nobel Peace Prize for their efforts. He was the Member of the Danish Peace Commission of 1998. Technical Advisor, World Health Organization, Regional Office for Europe (1988- 1997). Chairman of the Danish Peace Academy, April 2004.http://www.fredsakademiet.dk/ordbog/aord/a220.htm. He can be reached at avery.john.s@gmail.com

17 August, 2015
Countercurrents.org

By Prof. Tim Anderson

Syria is winning. Despite ongoing bloodshed and serious economic pressure, Syria is advancing steadily towards a military and strategic victory that will transform the Middle East. There is clear evidence that Washington’s plans – whether for ‘regime change’, for rendering the state dysfunctional or for dismembering the country on sectarian lines – have failed.

That failure will fatally wound the US dream, announced a decade ago by Bush junior, for a subservient ‘New Middle East’. Syria’s victory is a combination of coherent popular support for the national army, in face of a vicious sectarian Islamists (takfiris), firm backing by key allies, and fragmentation of the international forces lined up against them.

The economic hardships, including regular blackouts, are now worse but have not broken the Syrian people’s will to resist. The government ensures basic foods are affordable and maintains education, health, sports, cultural and other services. A string of formerly hostile states and UN agencies are resuming their relations with Syria. An improved security situation, the recent big power agreement with Iran and other favourable diplomatic moves are all signs that the Axis of Resistance has strengthened.

You wouldn’t know much of this by reading the western media, which has lied persistently about the character of the conflict and developments in the crisis. Key features of that deception have been to hide NATO’s backing for the takfiri groups, yet trumpet their advances and ignore the Syrian Army roll-backs. In fact, these western-backed terrorists have made no real strategic advance since a flood of foreign fighters helped them take parts of northern Aleppo, back in mid-2012.

In my second visit to Syria during the crisis, in July 2015, I could see how security had improved around the major cities. In my first visit in December 2013, although NATO’s throat-cutters had been ejected from much of Homs and Qsayr, they were in the ancient village of Maloula and along the Qalamoun Mountains, as well as attacking the road south to Sweida. This year we were able to travel freely by road from Sweida to Damascus to Homs to Latakia, with just one minor detour around Harasta. In late 2013 there was daily mortaring of eastern Damascus; this year it was far less common. The army seems to control 90% of the heavily populated areas.

Fact check one: there never were any ‘moderate rebels’. A genuine political reform movement was displaced by a Saudi-backed Islamist insurrection, through March-April 2011. In the first few months of the crisis, from Daraa to Homs, key armed groups like the Farouq brigade were extremists backed by Saudi Arabia and Qatar, who practised public atrocities and blew up hospitals, using genocidal slogans and practising sectarian ethnic cleansing (1). Syrians these days call them all ‘Daesh’ (ISIL) or just ‘mercenaries’, not bothering too much with the different brand names. The recent statement by ‘moderate rebel’ leader Lamia Nahas that Syria’s ‘minorities are evil and must be disposed of’, just as Hitler and the Ottomans disposed of minorities (2), only underlines that fact. The character of the armed conflict has always been between a confrontation between an authoritarian but pluralist and socially inclusive state, and Saudi-style sectarian Islamists, acting as proxy armies for the big powers.

Fact check two: almost all the atrocities blamed on the Syrian Army have been committed by western-backed gangs, as part of their strategy to attract deeper western intervention. That includes the discredited chemical weapons claims (3) and the collateral damage claims of the so-called ‘barrel bombing’. US journalist Nir Rosen wrote back in 2012, ‘Every day the opposition gives a death toll, usually without any explanation … Many of those reported killed are in fact dead opposition fighters but … described in reports as innocent civilians killed by security forces’ (4). Those opposition reports are still relied on by partisan groups such as Amnesty International (US) and Human Rights Watch, to bolster the war propaganda. The Syrian Army has indeed executed captured terrorists, and the secret police continue to detain and mistreat those suspected of collaborating with those terrorists. But this is an army which enjoys very strong public support. The Islamist gangs, on the other hand, openly boast of their atrocities and have minimal public support.

Fact check three: while there is a terrorist ‘presence’ in large parts of Syria, neither Daesh/ISIL nor any other armed group ‘controls’ much of the populated Syrian territory. Western agencies (such as Janes and ISW) regularly confuse presence with control. Notwithstanding the Daesh/ISIL offensives in Daraa, Idlib and Eastern Homs, the heavily populated areas of Syria are under noticeably stronger army control than they were in 2013. Only a few areas have been held for months or years. In any sustained confrontation, the Army generally wins; but it is under pressure and not infrequently makes a tactical retreat, because it is fighting on dozens of fronts.

The Syrian Army has tightened its cordon around northern Aleppo, Douma and Harasta, and has had recent victories in Hasaka, Idlib and Daraa. With Hezbollah forces the Army has virtually eliminated Daesh/ISIL and its squabbling partners from the Qalamoun mountains, along the border with Lebanon.

Despite years of mass terrorism and western sanctions the Syrian state is functioning surprisingly well. In July 2015 our group visited large sports centres, schools and hospitals. Millions of Syrian children attend school and hundreds of thousands still study in mostly fee-free universities. Unemployment, shortages and power blackouts plague the country. Takfiri groups have targeted hospitals for demolition since 2011. They also regularly attack power plants, leading to government rationing of electricity, until the system is back up. There are serious shortages and widespread poverty but, despite the war, everyday life goes on.

For example, there was controversy in 2014 over building the ‘Uptown’ complex in New Sham, a large satellite city outside Damascus. The facility comprises restaurants, shops, sports facilities and, at the centre, children’s rides and other entertainment. ‘How could the state spend so much money on this, when so many people were suffering from the war?’ one side of the argument ran. On the other side it was said that life goes on and families have to live their lives. After Ramadan, during Eid, we saw thousands of families making use of this very child-friendly complex.

Security procedures have become ‘normal’. Frequent army checkpoints are met with remarkable patience. Syrians know they are for their security, especially against the car and truck bombs used by the Islamists. Soldiers are efficient but human, often exchanging friendly chat with the people. Most families have members in the Army and many have lost loved ones. Syrians do not endure curfews or cower from soldiers, as so many did under the US-backed fascist dictatorships of Chile and El Salvador, in the past.

In the north, the Mayor of Latakia told us that this province of 1.3 million now has over three million, having absorbed displaced people from Aleppo, Idlib and other northern areas affected by incursions of sectarian terrorists. Most are in free or subsidised government housing, with family and friends, renting or in small businesses. We saw one group of about 5,000, many from Hama, at Latakia’s large sports complex. In the south, Sweida has been hosting 130,000 displaced families from the Daraa area, doubling the population of that province. Yet Damascus holds the greater part of the six million internally displaced people and, with a little help from the UNHCR, the government and army are the main ones organising their care. The western media only tells you about the refugee camps in Turkey and Jordan, facilities mostly controlled by the armed groups.

The ‘regime attacking civilians’ or ‘indiscriminately’ bombing civilian areas only has a basis in the Islamist propaganda on which much of the western media relies. The fact that, after three years, Syrian planes and artillery have not flattened hold-out areas like Jobar, Douma and parts of northern Aleppo, gives the lie to claims against the Army. You can be almost certain that the next time western media say ‘civilians’ are being killed by ‘indiscriminate’ Syrian government bombing, it is the Islamist sources themselves who are under attack.

This war is being fought on the ground, building to building, with many army casualties. Many Syrians we spoke to said they wished the government would indeed flatten these ghost towns, saying that the only civilians left there are the families of and collaborators with the extremist groups. The Syrian Government proceeds with greater caution.

Regional states see what is coming, and have begun to rebuild ties with Syria. Washington still pushes its chemical weapons lies (in face of the independent evidence), but lost its stomach for any major escalation back in late 2013, after the confrontation with Russia. There is still much sabre rattling (5), but it is noteworthy that Egypt and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), enemies of Syria just a little while back, are now normalising their diplomatic relations with Damascus.

The UAE, perhaps the most ‘flexible’ of the Gulf monarchies, but also linked by Vice President Joe Biden to support for Daesh/ISIL (6), has its own worries. It recently arrested dozens of Islamists over a plot to turn the absolutist monarchy into an absolutist caliphate (7). Egypt, back in military hands after a short-lived Muslim Brotherhood Government that wanted to join in the attacks on Syria, is now dealing with its own sectarian terrorism, from that same Brotherhood. The largest of Arab countries now defends the territorial integrity of Syria and backs (at least verbally) the Syrian campaigns against terrorism. Egyptian analyst Hassan Abou Taleb calls this message ‘a condemnation and rejection of Turkey’s unilateral moves’ against Syria (8).

The Erdogan Government tried to position Turkey at the head of a Muslim Brotherhood region, but has lost allies, is often at odds with its anti-Syrian partners and faces dissent at home. Washington has tried to use the separatist Kurds against both Baghdad and Damascus, while Turkey sees them as key enemies and the Saudi-backed Islamists slaughter them as ‘apostate’ Muslims. For their part, the Kurdish communities have enjoyed greater autonomy and acceptance under Iran and Syria.

Washington’s recent agreement with Iran is an important development, as the Islamic Republic remains the most important regional ally of secular Syria and a firm opponent of Saudi-style Islamists. Affirmation of Iran’s role in the region upsets the Saudis and Israel, but bodes well for Syria. All commentators see a diplomatic jockeying for position after the Iran deal and – despite Iran’s recent exclusion from a meeting between Russian, US and Saudi foreign ministers – there can be little doubt that Iran’s hand has been strengthened in regional affairs. An unusual meeting between Syria’s intelligence chief, Brigadier-General Ali Mamlouk, and the Saudi Defence Minister, Prince Mohammed Bin Salman (9), also shows that the Syrian Government has resumed direct discussions with the major sponsor of terrorism in the region.

Syria is winning because the Syrian people have backed their army against sectarian provocations, mostly fighting their own battles against NATO and Gulf Monarchy sponsored multi-national terrorism. Syrians, including most devout Sunni Muslims, will never accept that head-chopping, vicious and sectarian perversion of Islam promoted by the Gulf monarchies.

Syria’s victory will have wider implications. It spells an end to Washington’s roller coaster of ‘regime change’ across the region, from Afghanistan to Iraq to Libya. Out of the death and misery caused by this dirty war we are seeing the emergence of a stronger ‘Axis of Resistance’. Syria’s victory will also be that of Iran and of the Lebanese Resistance, led by Hezbollah. Further, the conflict has helped built significant measures of cooperation with Iraq. The gradual incorporation of Baghdad into this Axis will seal the humiliating defeat of plans for a US-Israel-Saudi dominated ‘New Middle East’. This regional unity comes at a terrible cost, but it is coming, nonetheless.

References

(1) Tim Anderson (2015) ‘Daraa 2011: Syria’s Islamist Insurrection in Disguise’, Global Research, 5 June, online:http://www.globalresearch.ca/daraa-2011-syrias-islamist-insurrection-in-disguise/5460547

(2) The Angry Arab (2015) ‘This is what the candidate for Syria’s provisional (opposition) government wrote on Facebook: a holocaust’, 4 August, online: http://angryarab.blogspot.fr/2015/08/this-is-what-candidate-for-syrias.html

(3) Tim Anderson (2015) ‘Chemical Fabrications: East Ghouta and Syria’s Missing Children’, Global Research, 12 April, online:http://www.globalresearch.ca/chemical-fabrications-east-ghouta-and-syrias-missing-children/5442334

(4) Nir Rosen (2012) ‘Q&A: Nir Rosen on Syria’s armed opposition’, Al Jazeera, 13 Feb, online: http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2012/02/201221315020166516.html

(5) Press TV (2015) ‘Syria ‘should not interfere’ in militant ops by US-backed groups’, 3 August, online: http://www.presstv.com/Detail/2015/08/03/423141/us-syria-isis-isil-assad-josh-earnest

(6) Adam Taylor (2014) ‘Behind Biden’s gaffe lie real concerns about allies’ role in rise of the Islamic State’, Washington Post, 6 October, online: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2014/10/06/behind-bidens-gaffe-some-legitimate-concerns-about-americas-middle-east-allies/

(7) Bloomberg (2015) ‘U.A.E. to Prosecute 41 Accused of Trying to Establish Caliphate’, 2 August, online:http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-08-02/u-a-e-to-prosecute-41-accused-of-trying-to-establish-caliphate

(8) Reuters (2015) Egypt defends Syria’s territorial unity after Turkey moves against IS’, 2 July, online: http://uk.reuters.com/article/2015/07/29/uk-mideast-crisis-syria-egypt-idUKKCN0Q31AY20150729

(9) Zeina Karam and Adam Schreck (2015) ‘Iran nuclear deal opens diplomatic channels for Syria’, AP, 6 August, online:http://news.yahoo.com/iran-nuclear-deal-opens-diplomatic-channels-syria-161740195.html

Tim Anderson has degrees in economics and international politics, and a doctorate on the political economy of economic liberalisation in Australia.

12 August 2015

By Ayelett Shani

Itay Mack, a Jerusalem-based human rights lawyer and activist, seeks greater transparency and public oversight of Israel’s military exports.

“There are a few huge government corporations that are active in this field, such as Rafael [Advanced Defense Systems]. The others are completely private companies, created to make money. There are more than 1,000 firms and more than 300 individuals licensed to deal with sales. All the companies are under the umbrella of the Defense Ministry, which must authorize their activity.”

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Israel is known to be a powerhouse in military exports, but what does “military exports” actually mean?

It’s a very broad term, encompassing arms and security equipment, as well as know-how, such as that involving combat doctrines or the training of militias and regular forces.

As I understand it, we’re among the top 10 in the world in this regard.

All countries engage in military exports. The problem is that Israel is involved in places that the United States and Europe decided to avoid exporting weapons to. We know Israel is selling arms to Azerbaijan, South Sudan and Rwanda. Israel is training units guarding presidential regimes in African states. According to reports, this is happening in Cameroon, Togo and Equatorial Guinea – nondemocratic states, some of them dictatorships, that kill, plunder and oppress their citizens.

What is clear is that military exports are perhaps identified with Israel, but it’s not just government companies that are involved.

There are a few huge government corporations that are active in this field, such as Rafael [Advanced Defense Systems]. The others are completely private companies, created to make money. There are more than 1,000 firms and more than 300 individuals licensed to deal with sales. All the companies are under the umbrella of the Defense Ministry, which must authorize their activity.

I understand that there are several types of permits.

There’s a budget “pie” that’s made up of states and others that want to buy arms. The Defense Ministry decides who gets the permits and how to divide the pie. Naturally, that’s done in accordance with its interests and those of its cronies. There’s concern about partiality here, as some of those involved [in requesting permits] are [former] senior Israel Defense Forces officers, former Defense Ministry employees and ex-politicians, or politicians who are taking a break from politics. In the end, the pie is divided among the old-boy network.

So we can assume that supervision and enforcement are not strict.

Out of a staff of some 30 employees at the Defense Export Controls Agency, there are only people in charge of examining the 400,000 annual permits. They are also responsible for ensuring that the recipients of the permits do not violate the terms. They are also supposed to oversee real-time developments on the ground, such as violent conflicts that might require the annulment or suspension of permits.

So, does anyone know if there are violations?

The state comptroller found that most of the enforcement of the terms is the result of companies informing on one another. There are about 160 violations [reported by the Defense Ministry] each year, of which only a few are investigated. There is administrative enforcement with negligible fines imposed. Criminal sanctions are not imposed and permits are not revoked – according to the information the ministry delivered to the Knesset. Effectively, DECA is customer service for exporters.

For the same exclusive club.

Right. Who has the courage to stand up to any of these former generals? And even if someone were to do this, the general would simply call someone higher up in the Defense Ministry and arrange things. Besides which, you can make money from arms exports without a permit, by being a go-between, as [former Prime Minister Ehud] Olmert claimed was done by [former Prime Minister] Ehud Barak. That’s where the really big money is.

‘Raking in big bucks’

In one of the recorded conversations between former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and his bureau chief, Shula Zaken, he says Barak took huge bribes as part of these deals.

I’ve been asked about that, and I replied that I have no information about bribes, but the brokering itself – if indeed Barak took part in it – is legal. That’s because neither Barak, who was defense minister from 2009 to 2013, nor his predecessors nor those who followed him, took the time to set regulations or introduce an organized procedure for receiving permits to broker arms deals. This is a completely open and unsupervised field, and those involved in it are raking in the really big bucks.

Are countries that need such an intermediary unable to buy directly, for example, due to arms embargoes?

Generally speaking, yes. Take Nigeria, for example. The U.S. torpedoed arms deals between Israel and Nigeria in 2014, because elements in the Nigerian army are perpetrating war crimes. But at the same time there was a report about an Israeli who brokered a deal. Under the aegis of Nigerian intelligence, he flew from Nigeria to South Africa to buy arms there. Being a middleman makes it possible to bypass all the inspection mechanisms.

How does it work?

A general or senior politician goes to a country – let’s say, Ivory Coast – and tells them that with his connections, he can arrange for an Israeli company to get a permit to transfer weapons to Ivory Coast. Or, he tells them that even if they are subject to restrictions in many countries, he has connections with General X from Country X.

And the amounts involved are incredible.

Unbelievable.

But that will all change now, won’t it? I understand that in December, Israel signed an international treaty to regulate the arms trade.

Israel signed the treaty, but hasn’t ratified it, so all it has to do is not breach the spirit of the treaty. When [Meretz MK] Tamar Zandberg and I urged the Defense Ministry to join the treaty, they told us the implications of signing are less cardinal for exports but could be damaging for imports.

In other words, countries that sign the treaty will not be able to sell arms to Israel.

Yes. I think this is the first time the Defense Ministry admitted to feeling threatened. A group of American senators and congressmen objected to the treaty and told Secretary of State Kerry that under its conditions, the U.S. would be limited in terms of arms sales to Israel. We saw that during Operation Protective Edge in Gaza last summer, Britain and Spain declined to supply certain types of arms to Israel. Theoretically, if it’s determined that Israel is perpetrating war crimes, the countries that are signatories to the arms treaty, such as France, Germany and England, will not be able to sell us arms.

Israel’s ‘ticket’

How did Israel become a major arms exporter?

Israel was on the verge of annihilation in the 1973 Yom Kippur War. There was a huge foreign currency crisis and a crisis in arms and ammunition. The government decided to kill two birds with one stone and began developing the military industries, both to ensure that we would have our own means of production and not be dependent on others, and also to sell abroad. Israel was able to exploit its relative advantage: experience in managing an occupied population and coping with guerrilla organizations. On that “ticket” – know-how and means for suppressing a population – Israel entered South America and afterward Central America. The generals in Guatemala grasped that their confrontation with the [local] Indian population is very similar to the situation in Israel.

In the overall ranking of military exports, we are in sixth or seventh place, but in proportion to our size we are actually first, right?

Correct, and in terms of our involvement in human rights violations and aid in war crimes, the amounts are not relevant – in Africa, for example, even a few rifles can cause tremendous damage. In the Central African Republic, a civil war marked by horrific crimes erupted because a group of rebels obtained machine guns, mounted them on jeeps and attacked the capital.

Since 2008, Israeli military exports have soared, from $3 billion to somewhere between $7 billion and $8 billion.

Yes, that’s the average since Operation Cast Lead, in Gaza.

Israel, then, can sell battle-proven weapons.

Yes. There are some who maintain that Israel carries out certain operations in order to test weapons. That’s my opinion, too, though there is no proof for it. If I’m asked how I have the gall to think that Israel is conducting weapons tests in the territories, I reply that the allegation is not that Israel initiates wars to test weapons, but that the industries ‘hitch a ride’ on them and profit – it’s the arms exporters who market the weapons as battle-proven. That’s what they tell people at the international fairs. I heard it with my own ears: “It’s Cast Lead battle-proven,” “It’s Defensive Shield battle-proven.”

The leap in sales after Cast Lead was also due to the cynicism of the international community, which first condemned the operation and then came here to learn how Israel conducted it. [Maj. Gen. (res.)] Yoav Galant, who was then the head of Southern Command [and now housing minister] made an amazing remark in this connection: “They came to see how we turn blood into money.”

Every such war is utilized for a massive introduction of new technologies. In the West Bank, too, in the regular areas of demonstrations – Bil’in, Kadoum, Qalandiyah – we constantly see new or upgraded weapons and means of crowd dispersal. The military industries also exploit Israel’s activity in the territories, especially in the Gaza Strip, to promote sales.

How, for example?

There were reports about the use of the Tamuz missile [a long-range anti-personnel and antitank weapon] against Syrian positions. Complete technological specifications were made available. Reporters noted that such information is usually censored. But a few months later, a report noted that Israel was going to display the Tamuz at the Paris Air Show. Sometimes the information is in the background of an article about Israeli and Palestinian casualties – they report on what types of shells were used – and there are also articles that are pure promotion.

Does the Defense Ministry “sell” marketing content to journalists?

The Defense Ministry makes information available to journalists, who are happy to get it and aren’t aware of the damage. Something else I’ve noticed concerns the humanitarian missions. It’s a bit like Naomi Klein’s “shock doctrine.” They send [people out on] a mission, and suddenly there are foreign reports about arms deals. That was the case in the Philippines, for example [after the monsoons in 2013].

What do you know about Israeli involvement in South Sudan?

According to reports of international organizations and human rights activists, Israel has violated the embargo and sold arms during the civil war. There are reports that the security forces are armed with Galil and Tavor rifles. We know about South Sudan forces who are trained by Israelis, both there and in Israel, and about a defense mission from South Sudan that visited Israel about half a year ago. We know that Israel built and is operating a surveillance system in South Sudan and is cooperating with the local secret service.

I find this appalling. It recalls Chile during the Pinochet period. Chile was a democracy and didn’t have a secret service when the coup took place, and according to reports Israel trained and prepared the Chilean secret service, which conducted the most brutal torture. Again we see ties with an organization in a country that commits crimes against its citizens.

How many countries does Israel sell arms to?

Israel currently sells arms to 130 countries. We know that among the countries authorized by the Defense Ministry there is a list of special countries with which Israel has no public ties. Israel would be deeply embarrassed if it were known that it’s selling arms to these countries.

Let’s talk about the good sides of our being a military exports power.

I am not a pacifist. I believe countries have to defend themselves. I only think that there have to be clear rules for military exports. Part of the damage that Israel is causing internationally is that it’s bringing about the militarization of civilian forces. In Brazil, for example, the police force is undergoing a rapid militarization process.

Under Israeli sponsorship?

With Israeli assistance. The Brazilians are now starting to realize that this is harmful: The wilder the police become, because of the training they get and the equipment they receive – the more “military” the crime gangs become, because they have the money and means to smuggle in weapons. The police complain about increasing physical and property assaults, and the people object, because their favelas have simply become a Gaza Strip. Israel is contributing significantly to militarization everywhere.

But military exports bring in a lot of money.

Not necessarily. The height of the chutzpah is that the military industries are included under the Encouragement of Capital Investments Law – which is supposed to induce companies like Teva or Intel to stay in Israel. Well, the Israeli military industries can’t actually leave Israel, can they? But the law stipulates that a company in which more than 25 percent of the turnover is intended for export, receives huge tax breaks. According to the Defense Ministry, 75 percent of the military industries’ production goes abroad, so that all these companies are entitled to tax breaks totaling billions. At least they took the government companies off the list; until five years ago, Rafael and Israel Military Industries also enjoyed the tax exemptions. Absurd.

How did you become interested in this subject?

By chance. A few years ago, while trekking in South America, I met a girl from Ireland who was wearing [Israeli-made] Source sandals. She told me she was planning to hike in the jungles of Colombia, where Israelis train the security forces, and she bought the sandals so they would think she was Israeli and not shoot her by mistake. I started to ask myself whether I was safe there as an Israeli, and if I were not an Israeli, would I be under threat? And without Source sandals, would I be shot?

Good questions.

Ultimately, we are on the wrong side of history in most places. And the memory persists. It persists in Latin America. That’s why I decided to open an office and deal with it, because no one else wants to and there’s no funding for it. I understood that when Israel secures a dictator, the public that’s oppressed by the dictator identifies Israel as having chosen a side. Israel chose a side for us all, without asking us.

What do you say to people who allege that you’re unpatriotic, that you are endangering the country’s security?

Israel’s citizens are important to me, and I think I am acting in their interest, whereas the Defense Ministry is not and prefers its cronies. We need transparency and public oversight, because for decades all the mechanisms that were supposed to act as checks simply did not work. We see this in military exports that violate UN Security Council embargoes.

Surely no country conducts its military exports in full transparency.

Military exports are not completely open in any country, but there is a far higher level of transparency in both the U.S. and Europe. When arms were sold to Pakistan during the Bangladesh genocide, Congress established investigative committees. It’s understood in the West that this subject cannot be left exclusively to security personnel, because their considerations are inadequate. The public has moral considerations as well.

The transparency you’re after could entangle Israel diplomatically.

Obviously, not everything can be revealed, but the sweeping refusal to provide any information is also wrong. What does it look like when the Defense Ministry tries to protect its people and whitewash Israel’s involvement in places where war crimes are being perpetrated, and the courts abet this? There is proof that Israel sold arms during the genocide in Rwanda. The Defense Ministry never denied it. It’s absurd that Israel, which was established in the wake of the Holocaust in Europe, is hiding documents relating to genocide.

What would you like to see happen?

I want legislation to be enacted that restricts military exports to countries where there are serious human rights violations, torture, rape for religious, political or ethnic motives, executions without trial and so on. Something like American law that imposes clear limitations on military exports to all kinds of elements in Africa; already today the dramatic change it caused is visible.

It’s all very depressing, isn’t it?

Why depressing? I am optimistic. I think that what went on until now will not be able to continue, because things cannot be silenced. There will be no choice, because the testimonies are accumulating, and more and more people are joining the struggle. That’s the direction, and I am constantly telling the Defense Ministry that in my discussions with them: Remember that there is no statute of limitations on war crimes and on crimes against humanity. If it doesn’t happen now or in a couple of years, it will happen in another 30 years. We will not give up.

Ayelett Shani

Haaretz Contributor

7 August 2015

By Brian Terrell

In recent weeks, I have been part of a haphazard and ad hoc process to compose an open Letter to Pope Francis in advance of his September, 2015 visit to the United States. The promotion of this letter has been taken up by Friends of Franz Jagerstatter, a community of peacemakers inspired by the Austrian Catholic farmer who was martyred for his refusal to fight in the German Army during World War II.

Pope Francis’ recent comments regarding war, the environment and economic justice inspire our letter, which cites segments of his new encyclical, Laudato Si. “War always does grave harm to the environment and to the cultural riches of peoples,” Pope Francis writes, “risks which are magnified when one considers nuclear arms and biological weapons.” In the light of this reality, our letter suggests that Pope Francis avail himself of the challenging opportunity to acknowledge that the United States is “the most prolific polluter and, not coincidentally, the greatest war maker on the globe.”

Encouraged by his naming the mass killing of Armenians by the Ottoman Turks one hundred years ago “the first genocide of the 20th century,” our letter begs Pope Francis “to speak out just as clearly and (to) publicly denounce the terrorism and genocide that your host country, the United States, is even now inflicting on the Muslim and Christian Arab people of the Middle East and the people of Afghanistan,” and it states that “decades of aggression including sanctions, bombings, invasions, arming of insurgents, have left millions dead, many more millions displaced and homeless. Thousands have been imprisoned and tortured. Many lands are being made desolate and poisoned, and ancient communities are being devastated.”

In composing this letter and subsequently seeking individuals and organizations to sign on to this letter, which will appear in a paid advertisement in the September 11 issue of The National Catholic Reporter, the biggest controversy and stumbling block for many is our use of the word “genocide” to describe the terror the U.S. is inflicting on the earth and in Arab and Muslim lands in particular. It is not surprising that this word evokes a strong response.

Since comments and signatures were sought first from among a small set of friends and colleagues in the peace movement, few of these argued that U.S. policy is benign. Some even fear that the language of our letter is too weak to be commensurate to the horror of the present reality. The belief has also been voiced that, while U.S. actions do indeed rise to the level of genocide, the pope’s use of the word to describe Turkey’s policies against the Armenians is an unfortunate overstatement. Some accept that a U.S. genocide is being perpetrated, but warn that speaking this terrible word to people unprepared to hear it is counter-productive, however true it is.

The strongest objections to the use of the word come from those who deny that U.S. war policies are genocidal. While U.S. actions may be violent and illegal, “it is not genocide, as I see it,” or, “not genocide in my opinion,” some tell us. This position reflects a prevalent concept in the U.S. media and in the government and public discourse that the word genocide is subjective, only vaguely defined and malleable, that it can be applied according to one’s opinion or interest. Others cite another popular definition of genocide that covers only deliberate actions aimed at exterminating an entire race.

The word genocide, however, does have a definite legal definition independent of one’s perspective or opinion. It is codified in the 1948 United Nations Convention On the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide that says in Article II, “In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such :(a) Killing members of the group;(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.”

Some peace activists base their denial of U.S. genocide on their understanding of the Convention’s use of the word “intent”. The stated intention of the sanctions in Iraq between 1990 and 2003, for example, was to apply pressure on the Iraqi government to allow weapons inspectors into Iraq. Because the intent was not to kill Iraqi people in vast numbers, the sanctions were not genocidal, in this view, despite the deaths of millions, including more than 500,000 children under age 5 from August, 1990 to the end of 1995 alone. Economic sanctions remained in place for seven more years, inflicting merciless punishment on innocent civilians. This theory doesn’t account for the fact that the sanctions stayed in place for years after UN inspectors had repeatedly certified that they found no evidence of a program to develop weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. One correspondent offers that even if the real but unstated reason for the sanctions was to spur the Iraqi people to overthrow Saddam, the intent would still not have been “to destroy, in whole or in part” the Iraqi people. Again this does not account for the U.S. forces allowing Saddam’s military access to helicopter gunships to put down a people’s rebellion after the Gulf War in 1991.

Since the war currently being waged is a war against an insurgency and not aimed at a civilian population, some reason that its intent cannot be called genocidal. This does not account for the fact that many of those actually targeted to be killed in drone attacks are not combatants in the first place and that these attacks kill a disproportionate number of “unintended” victims.

These objections are due to a misunderstanding of the word “intent.” Just as the word genocide has a specific legal meaning regardless of popular or personal understandings of the word, so the word “intent” has a definition in domestic and international law that is not the same as what one might use in everyday language. Simply put, intent is not the same thing as motive. The opposite of an intentional result is an accidental one. If a certain bad result of an action can reasonably be foreseen, that bad result is intentional, regardless of the motive. An internationally recognized test of intention says that “when planning their actions, people may be aware of many probable and possible consequences,” so the decision to proceed with a planned action “means that all the foreseen consequences are to some extent intentional, i.e. within and not against the scope of each person’s intention.”

One example that the U.S. Supreme Court decided in 1999, Holloway v. The United States, concerns a carjacking case: “Petitioner’s accomplice testified that their plan was to steal cars without harming the drivers, but that he would have used his gun if any of the victims had given him a ‘hard time.’” The claim that the defendant’s intent was only to steal a car and not to harm or kill its occupants was not accepted by the court. The prosecution does not need “to prove that the defendant had an unconditional intent to kill or harm in all events, but merely requires proof of an intent to kill or harm if necessary to effect a carjacking.”

Millions are dying and nations are being destroyed by recent and current U.S. policy. To accept this as true and still object that these actions are not genocidal because their “intention” is not to kill but only to extend political clout and steal natural resources is to take the part of the carjacker’s accomplice. Of course, the tragic consequences of these policies are foreseen and so they are intentional and they are criminal. As much as they do result in the destruction “in whole or in part,” of “a national, ethnical, racial or religious group,” they are genocidal.

Madeleine Albright, then U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, testified that the lethal consequences of U.S. policy are foreseen and intentional in a 1996 interview on CBS’s 60 Minutes. She was asked by Lesley Stahl, “We have heard that half a million children have died. I mean, that’s more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?” To this Ms. Albright replied: “I think this is a very hard choice, but the price — we think the price is worth it.”

When Pope Francis made his statement about the Armenian genocide on April 12, it was predictably met with controversy and indignation, straining relations between the Catholic Church and the Turkish state in particular. His use of the word to refer to current U.S. policy would necessarily be even more provocative and distressing, but all the more necessary for that fact. “Concealing or denying evil is like allowing a wound to keep bleeding without bandaging it,” the pope said addressing this issue in April.

“There were no Catholic chaplains in the Turkish military in 1915” we remind Pope Francis, “and the banners of ISIS are not displayed today in Catholic churches. The U.S. military, on the other hand, is predominantly Christian with one-third of the force Catholic, so that it might be hoped that your denunciation of terrorism and genocide might have a more positive effect here and now.”

Beyond the quibbles about the definitions of “genocide” and “intent,” I believe that there is a deeper reason behind this reticence to call our country’s policies genocide. In 1967, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., addressed the need to speak “clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today–my own government.” This was hard to swallow then, harder even now. Genocide is a horrible word. It is far easier to use it in the context of an accusation, it seems, than in a confession.

Our letter commends Pope Francis for naming the crimes of the (Muslim) Ottoman Turks against the (Christian) Armenians genocide. Since we wrote it, Pope Francis used the word in reference to (Muslim) ISIS brutalities against Christians in areas they control. The word genocide is new, coined only in 1944 in reference to Nazi extermination of Jews. The word needs to be used thoughtfully and judicially, but sometimes it needs to be used. If it is employed exclusively to name crimes that other people commit against us and people like us, and never to name the crimes we and people like us commit against others, then the word genocide is merely a weapon of retribution and it has no potential to heal.

Whether or not the pope gives the proper name to U.S. war policies (as we sincerely hope that he will) it is also important that we in the United States, the Christians among us especially, do not neglect to call genocide by its right name. Our plea to Pope Francis ends with an exhortation from the French existentialist, Albert Camus, “What the world expects of Christians is that Christians should speak out, loud and clear, and that they should voice their condemnation in such a way that never a doubt, never the slightest doubt, could rise in the heart of the simplest person.”

Brian Terrell is lives on a Catholic Worker farm in Maloy, Iowa

10 August, 2015
Countercurrents.org

 

By Paul Craig Roberts

Do you remember when real reporters existed? Those were the days before the Clinton regime concentrated the media into a few hands and turned the media into a Ministry of Propaganda, a tool of Big Brother. The false reality in which Americans live extends into economic life. Last Friday’s employment report was a continuation of a long string of bad news spun into good news. The media repeats two numbers as if they mean something—the monthly payroll jobs gains and the unemployment rate—and ignores the numbers that show the continuing multi-year decline in employment opportunities while the economy is allegedly recovering.

The so-called recovery is based on the U.3 measure of the unemployment rate. This measure does not include any unemployed person who has become discouraged from the inability to find a job and has not looked for a job in four weeks. The U.3 measure of unemployment only includes the still hopeful who think they will find a job.

The government has a second official measure of unemployment, U.6. This measure, seldom reported, includes among the unemployed those who have been discouraged for less than one year. This official measure is double the 5.3% U.3 measure. What does it mean that the unemployment rate is over 10% after six years of alleged economic recovery?

In 1994 the Clinton regime stopped counting long-term discouraged workers as unemployed. Clinton wanted his economy to look better than Reagan’s, so he ceased counting the long-term discouraged workers that were part of Reagan’s unemployment rate. John Williams (shadowstats.com) continues to measure the long-term discouraged with the official methodology of that time, and when these unemployed are included, the US rate of unemployment as of July 2015 is 23%, several times higher than during the recession with which Fed chairman Paul Volcker greeted the Reagan presidency.

An unemployment rate of 23% gives economic recovery a new meaning. It has been eighty-five years since the Great Depression, and the US economy is in economic recovery with an unemployment rate close to that of the Great Depression.

The labor force participation rate has declined over the “recovery” that allegedly began in June 2009 and continues today. This is highly unusual. Normally, as an economy recovers jobs rebound, and people flock into the labor force. Based on what he was told by his economic advisors, President Obama attributed the decline in the participation rate to baby boomers taking retirement. In actual fact, over the so-called recovery, job growth has been primarily among those 55 years of age and older. For example, all of the July payroll jobs gains were accounted for by those 55 and older. Those Americans of prime working age (25 to 54 years old) lost 131,000 jobs in July.

Over the previous year (July 2014 — July 2015), those in the age group 55 and older gained 1,554,000 jobs. Youth, 16-18 and 20-24, lost 887,000 and 489,000 jobs.

Today there are 4,000,000 fewer jobs for Americans aged 25 to 54 than in December 2007. From 2009 to 2013, Americans in this age group were down 6,000,000 jobs. Those years of alleged economic recovery apparently bypassed Americans of prime working age.

As of July 2015, the US has 27,265,000 people with part-time jobs, of whom 6,300,000 or 23% are working part-time because they cannot find full time jobs. There are 7,124,000 Americans who hold multiple part-time jobs in order to make ends meet, an increase of 337,000 from a year ago.

The young cannot form households on the basis of part-time jobs, but retirees take these jobs in order to provide the missing income on their savings from the Federal Reserve’s zero interest rate policy, which is keyed toward supporting the balance sheets of a handful of giant banks, whose executives control the US Treasury and Federal Reserve. With so many manufacturing and tradable professional skill jobs, such as software engineering, offshored to China and India, professional careers are disappearing in the US.

The most lucrative jobs in America involve running Wall Street scams, lobbying for private interest groups, for which former members of the House, Senate, and executive branch are preferred, and producing schemes for the enrichment of think-tank donors, which, masquerading as public policy, can become law.

The claimed payroll jobs for July are in the usual categories familiar to us month after month year after year. They are domestic service jobs—waitresses and bartenders, retail clerks, transportation, warehousing, finance and insurance, health care and social assistance. Nothing to export in order to pay for massive imports. With scant growth in real median family incomes, as savings are drawn down and credit used up, even the sales part of the economy will falter.

Clearly, this is not an economy that has a future.

But you would never know that from listening to the financial media or reading the New York Times business section or the Wall Street Journal.

When I was a Wall Street Journal editor, the deplorable condition of the US economy would have been front page news.

Dr. Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal.

10 August, 2015
Countercurrents.org

 

By Hassanal Noor Rashid

In the midst of the nation’s current woes, there is a plan ostensibly for the growth of global commerce which deserves our serious attention. This is the Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement.

A lot of the criticisms levelled against the TPPA have to do with its highly secretive nature, with much of its negotiations done behind proverbial closed doors whereby access and transparency are not taken into account.

Its secretive nature strips the TPPA of any legitimacy. How can a trade agreement that will ultimately affect the lives of millions of people on both sides of the Pacific ignore the people’s views and sentiments? And yet the nation that is leading the negotiations is supposed to be a democracy?

It has been noted that the TPPA will not be ratified, until after each state member has gone through its own domestic process and signed the document. While this may be the case, it is still highly disconcerting that the public of each member state has had little to no say whatsoever on the clauses and terms that will constitute the agreement itself.

Malaysian academic and lawyer Gurdial Singh Nijar pointed out on July 20th 2015, that many of the clauses of the TPPA were only made known due to Wikileaks disclosing some chapters and since then, the text is being made available on a limited “need-to-know” basis to selected groups and people, who then sign a non-disclosure agreement which applies for up to five years after the treaty has been ratified and comes to full force.

The President of the United States of America Barrack Obama has secured ‘Fast Track authority’ from Congress which allows the U.S Congress to vote “Yes or No”, but disallows any changes to the text of the agreement, a move aimed at thwarting any meaningful criticism of the TPPA by members of Congress.

Datuk Seri Mustapa Mohamed, Minister of International Trade and Industry of Malaysia, has assured Malaysians that the “Constitution, sovereignty, and core policies such as government procurement, state-owned enterprises and the Bumiputra agenda will be safeguarded.” His statement seeks to address the various concerns of the public with regards to the TPPA.

Economist, Ramon Navaratnam, director of the Asian Strategy and Leadership Institute (ASLI), has also issued his own statements calling for Malaysians to support the TPPA on the basis that “….if we opt out of the TPPA, we will also find it much more difficult to break out from our present middle income trap. Our capacity to innovate and compete at higher levels, to increase our domestic and foreign investment, and to raise our technology, incomes, employment and quality of life can be seriously affected” while at the same time dismissing ad hominem critics of the TPPA by stating that”…we could regress by looking at the short term and narrow minority interests and opting out of the vital TPPA.”

There are numerous articles and online resources which cover extensively what the TPPA is and a whole multitude of well-argued critiques against it by some notable analysts in Malaysia which the defenders of the TPPA appear to have ignored. What is striking is that the likes of Ramon Navaratnam seem to cherry-pick clauses in the TPPA, while failing to acknowledge some of the more pressing and well grounded grievances that have been made by critics of the TPPA.

To exemplify this, the following are some key points as observed by the Consumers Association of Penang on the clauses negotiated under the TPPA.

• The Investor to State Dispute System (ISDS) whereby foreign companies are able to claim billions of ringgit from Governments for any loss of future profits due to introduction of changes in national or state policies , or even through the implementation of new laws and policies. Former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is also of the view that the ISDS mechanism empowers investors to sue foreign governments to weaken their environmental and public health rules. If approved, the ISDS may supplant the role of the judiciary as an arbiter in disputes. One such example would be the case of Thailand which had lost a suit to a tobacco company, Phillip Morris, on the grounds that the country’s anti-smoking regulation, namely the graphic health warnings on cigarette packs, which had increased in size, had adversely affected the brand image of the tobacco company, undermining Thailand’s efforts in progressing its social health policies.

• The Sovereign right of the nation to make policies and of Parliament to enact laws and the judiciary to interpret laws may be jeopardized because of the TPPA’s ISDS system whereby foreigners can sue the government in a foreign tribunal which has been shown to be biased in favour of foreign investors. Even if the ISDS cuts both ways in this regard whereby Malaysian investors abroad can utilize the same protection mechanisms in the TPPA countries, by virtue of agreeing to the TPPA, we still open up the Malaysian economy and regulatory policies to be circumvented by stronger and larger multi-national corporations who will be able to dictate policies and regulations.

• Restriction on government’s ability to regulate flow of funds in and out of the country, thus losing crucial policy tools to ensure financial stability and avoid financial crises, increasing vulnerability to any global financial crisis.

• The elimination of tariffs across the board will threaten the viability of many local industries, and jeopardise the jobs and livelihoods of thousands of local people.
Like many others, Ramon Navaratnam has also alluded to fact that failing to join the TPPA will deny Malaysia’s full access to the markets within the new Free Trade Area, which includes countries such as the United States, Canada, Mexico and Peru. Malaysia already enjoys market access to the United States and other developed countries for almost all important products, whereas our trade within the ASEAN region and Asian Countries has already surged through mainly bilateral trade agreements, as emphasized by the president of the Consumers Association of Penang.

What these key factors indicate is that the biggest beneficiaries of the TPPA are not the individual member states and their people, but instead the large multi-national corporations, a factor which seems to be missing in much of the analysis of the staunch TPPA supporters who are either oblivious to the power and influence that these big corporations exercise upon nation-states, or worse are in favour of the deceptively short term gains they bring.

Gurdial Singh Nijar has asserted that “the TPPA will be a charter for Multi-Nationals and big Businesses” whereby foreign companies can sue governments for regulatory policies that are seen as damaging their profits, receiving huge payouts in the process. This is further compounded by the strict Intellectual Property (IP) regulatory mechanisms within the clauses of the TPPA that directly affect the ability of local pharmaceutical companies to produce cheap generic medications, arising from potential patent suits by the larger pharmaceutical corporations. These firms are determined to protect their monopoly and their profits. By pushing generic drugs out of the market, the TPPA adversely affects the accessibility of life saving generic medicines to poorer communities. Indirectly, it also means the loss of jobs for those employed in local industries manufacturing these medicines.

Even the claims about growth and benefits in trade revenue, are contestable. In 2014, a senior economist in the United Nations, Rashmi Banga, showed evidence that the TPPA may prove detrimental for Malaysia and its local industries. His paper had noted that while there may be an increase in Malaysia’s exports to TPPA countries, its import rates may also further increase. Industries like steel, electrical machinery and automotives will also face stiff competition that may affect the jobs of tens of thousands of Malaysians. These are industries which are dependent on government support that can now be circumvented by the pro-Multi-National Corporation’ policies of the TPPA.

Foreign policies are also affected by this agreement which undermines directly and indirectly the sovereignty of governments, should there be any policies which are not acceptable to foreign corporations and even certain powerful governments. The most notable of which — as stated by Gurdial Singh Nijar — is a provision in the negotiating texts which prevents imposing trade sanctions against the state of Israel that transgress the United-States –Israel Trade and Commercial Enhancement Act which requires U.S trade agreements to “discourage politically motivated actions to boycott, divest from, or sanction Israel and seeks to eliminate the politically motivated non-tariff barriers on Israel’s commerce”. Such texts within the drafts of the TPPA suggest that this trade agreement is far more politically biased than initially thought of, and explains why the United States is aggressively pushing through this trade agreement, even though it yields marginal economic benefits for the U.S.

These criticisms against the TPPA are but some of the examples which illustrate that its motives are more political than economic. Obviously, it is a tool to extend the hegemonic influence of powerful nations and foreign corporations to undermine policies of foreign governments deemed unfavourable to, or incompatible with, their own agendas.

Ultimately however, as other analysts such as Nile Bowie have opined the TPPA is a trade pact to address the “the rising influence of China, which is not a participant [in the Trade agreement] despite being the region’s largest economy and the largest trading partner of Asia-Pacific Economies”. It is a policy of containment wilfully perpetuated by the United States in its own interest to curb China’s own influence in the economic sphere and ”lure” other countries away from China .

The conclusion which can be drawn from all these arguments is that on the surface, the TPPA paints a rosy picture with an allurement that promises growth and wealth to countries that would embrace its terms. Hidden within this proverbial Trojan horse however, is a juggernaut whose agenda is to maintain its dominant economic and political hegemony, caring very little for those it may trample upon in the process.

Hassanal Noor Rashid
JUST Program Coordinator
10 August 2015

 

By Israel Shamir

Summer reigns all over Europe, from Greece to Sweden. Vacations have emptied the offices, and filled the beaches. Flowers bloom all over, and their fragrance flows like a river. Endless festivals, performances and art compositions embellish the quaint old cities. But things are not as ever before. The old continent is sick. Living is easy, but not for you. Fish are jumping, and unemployment is high.

‘Austerity for all but banksters and the corrupt politicians’ is the motto of the day. The welfare state shrinks, but military budgets expand, and NATO grows despite the austerity. The EU member countries (save Germany) are de-industrialised, their workers lose skills and go into services. A golf caddy is less likely to cause trouble than an industrial worker. Never has democracy felt so much a sham as nowadays.

After the Syriza debacle of Greece, there is a very little trust for left-wing rhetoric. In the whole modern history of Europe, there was not such a shameful surrender, or even treason. ‘Alexis Tsipras’ is a Greek translation of ‘Vidkun Quisling’ or of ‘Maréchal Pétain’. The man received the full support of his people, and chickened out. (The first step of Syriza after the fiasco was to enter into military cooperation with Israel.) Now only the far-right Golden Dawn speaks loudly against surrender to the bankers, but this is a party in opposition, and it risks nothing by speaking out.

The parties of the left and of the right are now quite similar. Europe has neither true Left nor true Right anymore. The pseudo-Left supports imperialist wars and unmans the man. The pseudo-Right supports imperialist wars and cuts taxes for the wealthy. It was more fun with the traditional parties, with the Right hating financiers, supporting tradition, church, and family, and the Left fighting the bourgeoisie, caring for workers, and aiming for social justice. In Douglas Adams’ words, “men were real men, women were real women and small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri were real small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri.” Now they all promote women to the boards of multinationals, compete for Jewish donations and argue who is better for the gays.

In important questions, they are same-same, as my Chinese landlady used to shrill. Both left and right stands for more immigration, though the left explains that by humanitarian reasons and by anti-racism, while the right looks for a cheap work force to keep native workers obedient. The bottom line is the same.

People threatened by mass immigration often vote for the right, as they mistakenly think some token racism will be translated into action. Alas, in vain. Consider Nicolas Sarkozy, the former French President. He would drop a racist line, to flirt with his electorate, but by bombing Libya he sent more immigrants to France than any left-winger would. Well, perhaps François Hollande, the present President, can compete with him, as his support for Syrian rebels did send a million refugees to Europe.

In the UK, Tony Blair destroyed Labour. He turned the old party of workers and miners into Tory Lite. Blair supported every American military campaign and earned the honourable title of the British Poodle. A great friend of Israel and of the Israel Lobby is another of his titles. Blair is out, but his party supporters are still in. And they keep losing.

The Labour rank-and-file would like to see Jeremy Corbyn as their leader. Blair hates him, and this is surely a good recommendation. He is supposed to be a new Michael Foot, who was a great man in pre-Thatcher Britain. Corbyn stands for nuclear disarmament, he spoke positively of Hamas and Hezbollah, voted against American Drang nach Osten wars. Littlewood called him “the antidote to zionist bite”. He would change things, if he ever makes it. Probably they will keep him out: the people behind the parties prefer weak and wet politicians.

The far-right BNP claims to be the heir of true Labour. They say the British workers vote for them. Their claim is not entirely without merit. True Left – whether the Soviet variety, the Chinese or the Cuban one – was strictly against immigration. But immigration is only one issue among many, while the BNP narrowed its field to anti-Muslim politics. They do not even try to deal with the real problem – the excessive wealth of the few built upon the impoverishment of the many.

The Front National in France has more redeeming features, and more supporters. In reality, the FN is probably the only alive and kicking French party, the rest are dead. The FN is for taking France out of NATO and out of the EC, for friendship with Russia and for regaining France’s lost sovereignty. Their arrival at Palais d’Elysée would change things in Europe: if it would ever occur.

The main problem of Europe is American occupation. This is the source of trouble. In 1945, the continent was shared between the US and the USSR. In 1991, the Russians moved out, but no freedom came: the Americans moved in, occupying the whole of Europe from Narva in Estonia to Oeiras in Portugal, from Souda Bay on Crete to Ørland in Norway. Beside military hardware, they enforced their political agenda. Their yoke lies heavy upon Europe’s grey stones. The steps they force the European leaders to take hurt the continent. The leaders make wrong decisions, and the people pay for them.

Europe had a great buyer for its output. Russia bought its machinery and cheeses, abundant wine and cars, and delivered cheap gas and oil. The US stopped this profitable trade in its tracks. Now the Europeans dump their apples and cheese, spend more on military purchases and import expensive American gas.

Europe had a maverick friend over the sea, a retired colonel Kaddafi. He sold cheap oil, imported European goods for his prosperous small population, and kept millions of Africans occupied in Libya. Under American guidance, NATO bombed Libya, the colonel was sodomized by a gun barrel and lynched, his country destroyed. Africans went to Europe on every small boat they could find.

Europe had a friend in Damascus, an ex-eye doctor from London. He bought European goods, kept his country ship-shape, visited Paris. Under American guidance, this gentle man was called a ‘génocidaire’; weapons were delivered to his enemies, the fanatic Muslim takfiris. His country was devastated, and millions of Syrian refugees escaped to Europe.

They followed the Iraqis, whose country was laid low by the US invasion of 2003. The most advanced country of the Middle East, with free education and free medical care, with best engineers and a strong army, was turned into a nest of sectarian strife, while millions of Iraqis went to Europe. The Afghanis, Palestinians, Arabs, Africans pour into Europe from their countries smashed by the iron fist of the US Armed Forces.

My friend, Roger van Zwanenberg of Pluto books, thinks that terrible destruction of the Middle East in the US-led wars is due to Zionist influence and it serves Israel’s desire to fragment the region and subdue it in the Greater Land of Israel from Nile to Euphrates paradigm. It is a plausible thought, bearing in mind the recent scene of Netanyahu’s veneration in the US Congress. The promoters of the wars were mainly Israel-firsters, neocons, Wolfowitz, Perle et al. They pushed for invasion of Iraq, they demanded war on Iran.

But why would these megalomaniacs limit their dreams of dominance to the Middle East? Why not world dominance? If they want to break into pieces the old societies of the Middle East, they can do it in Europe as well, by the same coin. Europe is a victim of the conflict. Without these wars, waves of immigration would not cover Europe. So whoever planned and executed these wars probably intended to undo Europe as well as the Middle East, and Europe was the most important intended victim, as it needed to be subdued on the path to world dominance. And the Middle East is not the only source of refugees and immigrants.

Once the EU was a union of successor states of Charlemagne’s empire, and perhaps, a conceivable idea. But the US took control over Brussels, and forced them to accept East European states, all led by anti-communist devotees of America. Within the EU, the developed countries of the old union devoured the less developed outsiders. The Baltic states lost over third of their populations. Latvia went down from 2.7 million in the end of Soviet days to 1.9 million now. Lithuania went down from 3.7 to 2.9 million. Romania, once freed by the iron will of Nicolae Ceausescu from its debts, now once again is indebted to the hilt. Their impoverished citizens crowded the cities of the Western Europe.

Consider Sweden. This is coldest summer for many years in Sweden. July was as cool as April, but the cold did not stop the inflow of refugees. In front of every supermarket, of every underground and rail station of Sweden, from Kiruna to Lund, sits a gypsy beggar with a plastic cup for alms in his or her hand. They came from Romania and Hungary, fellow EU states, with quite a low standard of living, but within the Schengen Zone, so they do not need a visa. They do not come by their volition, they were sent by their barons who build huge castles and furnish them in the best garish gypsy style on the levy the beggars pay them. After three months on the Swedish pavements, they go home to be replaced by another bunch of beggars.

The Swedish police does not interfere with these beggars. They say there is no law to stop gypsies. They are afraid to be condemned for race profiling if they will. The gypsies are colourful; there are men and women, old and middle age, no more than two at every place. Logistics can’t be easy: so many people so evenly distributed, but the gypsy barons manage it smoothly: I never observed a fight, or even a quarrel, between the beggars. They have been trained to smile; something you never see in Eastern Europe, where beggars are as grim as 1950s buildings.

Refugees from Somalia and Sudan, victims of previous US interventions, do not beg. They crowd smaller Swedish towns; the Swedish state pays for their accommodation and provides some small money for their living. They are not allowed to work, and there is no demand for their labour anyway. They just sit and wait while their applications for refuge are being processed and (usually) declined. Then they disappear from the radar.

Do not weep for all the Swedes, though. The landlords make a fortune from this arrangement, so do officials. The Swedish state pays SEC 500 (€50) per night per room for the refugees. This is a very good business in small far-away towns. Usually, the state prefers bigger landlords with many rooms to offer, and they are able to offer a kick-back to the official in charge of the accommodation. Amusingly, the man considered “the most outspoken Swedish racist” and a fighter against immigration, Bert Karlsson, made mega-bucks renting rooms for the Somalis.

In addition to refugees and immigrants delivered to Sweden by the US wars and US-dictated enlargement of the EU, Sweden and other West European countries are undermined by the US-led gender rearrangement of life. There are few children; schools are being closed. Gays have their fullest rights; women have priority in taking jobs. Boys have fewer opportunities: from state TV to barbershops, the jobs are taken by women. The priests of the Swedish church are mainly females; the state appointed bishops known for their support for female priesthood.

“Sweden is the Saudi Arabia of feminism”, quipped Julian Assange, the Wikileaks’ founder, imprisoned for the third year in the Ecuador embassy in London. He is an expert: two Swedish girls complained he raped them because he had consensual but unprotected sex with them. The Swedish prosecutor Marianne Ny said that in such cases, a man should be in jail, even if it turns out he is innocent. Sweden has the highest rate of rape complaints, and the highest rate of these complaints dismissed as untrue. This does not promote love between sexes.

The education amounts to unmanning of men, and gorgeous Swedish girls often prefer more masculine foreign males. (I know, as a tanned and moustachioed foreign male, I married a gorgeous Swedish girl, many years ago). Swedes marry less and less, and have fewer children, despite very generous government assistance.

Many conservative observers put the blame on feminists. Yet even though men have clearly lost the war, the victory of women wilts under examination. Once upon a time women had a choice: they could join the business world or stay at home with the kids. Once upon a time women could raise a family without guilt. Once upon a time women could enjoy being flirted with. Not any more. The unmanning of man was quickly followed by the un-womaning of woman.

There is an understanding between the holders of power that feminised men are easier to control – this is a reason why they encourage homosexuality. Unmanning men is a linchpin in the reprogramming of mankind into an obedient herd, because strong men are unpredictable. Strong men are prone to rebellion, ready for sacrifice and primed for action. It is no coincidence that the enemies of Empire are all masculine males, be they Qaddafi, Castro, Chavez, Lukashenko, Putin – or Julian Assange. It appears the men have been targeted for elimination; the working ants need no sex.

Swedes have made a cult of blacks, also imported from the US, if we can judge by Rachel Dolezal. The blacks are supposed to be better and smarter than whites. In the Terminator movie, it is a black scientist who invents the marvellous chip; he fights together with the white woman-fighter against evil white men. A black Morpheus in the Matrix is a Zion (sic!) operative, saving human race. There was a black President in the Fifth Element before Obama. Many childless Swedes adopt imported black and Asian children, another American cultural trend established by Angelina Jolie. This reverse racism is no different from the ordinary variety. Blacks are fine, but in no way they are better than pink-and-white Swedes.

Ordinary Swedes are unhappy. In a small town with high percent of refugees and immigrants, some 40% vote for the far right party, the Sweden Democrats. They have got 12% in the whole of the country despite a ferocious campaign against them in the media.

The Left received a relative majority of the seats in the Parliament, after years of Right rule. After the election, the mainstream Left and Right joined forces on a compromise agenda, ostensibly – to keep the Sweden Democrats out. The Left voters felt cheated. Why bother and vote, if the result is a compromise between the parties?

Do not weep over the Sweden Democrats’ fate, either. This is a timid pro-Zionist party whose best known political action to-date was to stage a gay parade through a Muslim neighbourhood. They extoll the Jewish state, as their brethren in other European countries do. They accept the gender agenda of the New World Order. They are against immigrants and refugees, never against those who send the waves of the immigrants to Sweden. The other way around: they support the Kiev regime, this pet bastard of the Neocons, and hate Russia as every good NWO supporter should.

So, it is difficult to see where the freedom of the continent will come from, and whether it can come at all.

Israel Shamir, also known by the names Jöran Jermas and Adam Ermash, is a citizen of Sweden and Russian writer and journalist.

8 August 2015

By Shlomo Sand

His past was Jewish, but today he sees Israel as one of the most racist societies in the western world. Historian Shlomo Sand explains why he doesn’t want to be Jewish anymore

During the first half of the 20th century, my father abandoned Talmudic school, permanently stopped going to synagogue, and regularly expressed his aversion to rabbis. At this point in my own life, in the early 21st century, I feel in turn a moral obligation to break definitively with tribal Judeocentrism. I am today fully conscious of having never been a genuinely secular Jew, understanding that such an imaginary characteristic lacks any specific basis or cultural perspective, and that its existence is based on a hollow and ethnocentric view of the world. Earlier I mistakenly believed that the Yiddish culture of the family I grew up in was the embodiment of Jewish culture. A little later, inspired by Bernard Lazare, Mordechai Anielewicz, Marcel Rayman and Marek Edelman – who all fought antisemitism, nazism and Stalinism without adopting an ethnocentric view – I identified as part of an oppressed and rejected minority. In the company, so to speak, of the socialist leader Léon Blum, the poet Julian Tuwim and many others, I stubbornly remained a Jew who had accepted this identity on account of persecutions and murderers, crimes and their victims.

Now, having painfully become aware that I have undergone an adherence to Israel, been assimilated by law into a fictitious ethnos of persecutors and their supporters, and have appeared in the world as one of the exclusive club of the elect and their acolytes, I wish to resign and cease considering myself a Jew.

Although the state of Israel is not disposed to transform my official nationality from “Jew” to “Israeli”, I dare to hope that kindly philosemites, committed Zionists and exalted anti-Zionists, all of them so often nourished on essentialist conceptions, will respect my desire and cease to catalogue me as a Jew. As a matter of fact, what they think matters little to me, and still less what the remaining antisemitic idiots think. In the light of the historic tragedies of the 20th century, I am determined no longer to be a small minority in an exclusive club that others have neither the possibility nor the qualifications to join.

By my refusal to be a Jew, I represent a species in the course of disappearing. I know that by insisting that only my historical past was Jewish, while my everyday present (for better or worse) is Israeli, and finally that my future and that of my children (at least the future I wish for) must be guided by universal, open and generous principles, I run counter to the dominant fashion, which is oriented towards ethnocentrism.

As a historian of the modern age, I put forward the hypothesis that the cultural distance between my great-grandson and me will be as great or greater than that separating me from my own great-grandfather. All the better! I have the misfortune of living now among too many people who believe their descendants will resemble them in all respects, because for them peoples are eternal – a fortiori a race-people such as the Jews.

I am aware of living in one of the most racist societies in the western world. Racism is present to some degree everywhere, but in Israel it exists deep within the spirit of the laws. It is taught in schools and colleges, spread in the media, and above all and most dreadful, in Israel the racists do not know what they are doing and, because of this, feel in no way obliged to apologise. This absence of a need for self-justification has made Israel a particularly prized reference point for many movements of the far right throughout the world, movements whose past history of antisemitism is only too well known.

To live in such a society has become increasingly intolerable to me, but I must also admit that it is no less difficult to make my home elsewhere. I am myself a part of the cultural, linguistic and even conceptual production of the Zionist enterprise, and I cannot undo this. By my everyday life and my basic culture I am an Israeli. I am not especially proud of this, just as I have no reason to take pride in being a man with brown eyes and of average height. I am often even ashamed of Israel, particularly when I witness evidence of its cruel military colonisation, with its weak and defenceless victims who are not part of the “chosen people”.

Earlier in my life I had a fleeting utopian dream that a Palestinian Israeli should feel as much at home in Tel Aviv as a Jewish American does in New York. I struggled and sought for the civil life of a Muslim Israeli in Jerusalem to be similar to that of the Jewish French person whose home is in Paris. I wanted Israeli children of Christian African immigrants to be treated as the British children of immigrants from the Indian subcontinent are in London. I hoped with all my heart that all Israeli children would be educated together in the same schools. Today I know that my dream is outrageously demanding, that my demands are exaggerated and impertinent, that the very fact of formulating them is viewed by Zionists and their supporters as an attack on the Jewish character of the state of Israel, and thus as antisemitism.

However, strange as it may seem, and in contrast to the locked-in character of secular Jewish identity, treating Israeli identity as politico-cultural rather than “ethnic” does appear to offer the potential for achieving an open and inclusive identity. According to the law, in fact, it is possible to be an Israeli citizen without being a secular “ethnic” Jew, to participate in its “supra-culture” while preserving one’s “infra-culture”, to speak the hegemonic language and cultivate in parallel another language, to maintain varied ways of life and fuse different ones together. To consolidate this republican political potential, it would be necessary, of course, to have long abandoned tribal hermeticism, to learn to respect the Other and welcome him or her as an equal, and to change the constitutional laws of Israel to make them compatible with democratic principles.

Most important, if it has been momentarily forgotten: before we put forward ideas on changing Israel’s identity policy, we must first free ourselves from the accursed and interminable occupation that is leading us on the road to hell. In fact, our relation to those who are second-class citizens of Israel is inextricably bound up with our relation to those who live in immense distress at the bottom of the chain of the Zionist rescue operation. That oppressed population, which has lived under the occupation for close to 50 years, deprived of political and civil rights, on land that the “state of the Jews” considers its own, remains abandoned and ignored by international politics. I recognise today that my dream of an end to the occupation and the creation of a confederation between two republics, Israeli and Palestinian, was a chimera that underestimated the balance of forces between the two parties.

Increasingly it appears to be already too late; all seems already lost, and any serious approach to a political solution is deadlocked. Israel has grown used to this, and is unable to rid itself of its colonial domination over another people. The world outside, unfortunately, does not do what is needed either. Its remorse and bad conscience prevent it from convincing Israel to withdraw to the 1948 frontiers. Nor is Israel ready to annex the occupied territories officially, as it would then have to grant equal citizenship to the occupied population and, by that fact alone, transform itself into a binational state. It’s rather like the mythological serpent that swallowed too big a victim, but prefers to choke rather than to abandon it.

Does this mean I, too, must abandon hope? I inhabit a deep contradiction. I feel like an exile in the face of the growing Jewish ethnicisation that surrounds me, while at the same time the language in which I speak, write and dream is overwhelmingly Hebrew. When I find myself abroad, I feel nostalgia for this language, the vehicle of my emotions and thoughts. When I am far from Israel, I see my street corner in Tel Aviv and look forward to the moment I can return to it. I do not go to synagogues to dissipate this nostalgia, because they pray there in a language that is not mine, and the people I meet there have absolutely no interest in understanding what being Israeli means for me.

In London it is the universities and their students of both sexes, not the Talmudic schools (where there are no female students), that remind me of the campus where I work. In New York it is the Manhattan cafes, not the Brooklyn enclaves, that invite and attract me, like those of Tel Aviv. And when I visit the teeming Paris bookstores, what comes to my mind is the Hebrew book week organised each year in Israel, not the sacred literature of my ancestors.

My deep attachment to the place serves only to fuel the pessimism I feel towards it. And so I often plunge into despondency about the present and fear for the future. I am tired, and feel that the last leaves of reason are falling from our tree of political action, leaving us barren in the face of the caprices of the sleepwalking sorcerers of the tribe. But I cannot allow myself to be completely fatalistic. I dare to believe that if humanity succeeded in emerging from the 20th century without a nuclear war, everything is possible, even in the Middle East. We should remember the words of Theodor Herzl, the dreamer responsible for the fact that I am an Israeli: “If you will it, it is no legend.”

As a scion of the persecuted who emerged from the European hell of the 1940s without having abandoned the hope of a better life, I did not receive permission from the frightened archangel of history to abdicate and despair. Which is why, in order to hasten a different tomorrow, and whatever my detractors say, I shall continue to write.

Shlomo Sand is an Israeli emeritus professor of history at Tel Aviv University, known to the general public for his best-selling book The Invention of the Jewish People.

10 October 2014

By Franklin Lamb

Wadi Al Nasera, (Valley of the Christians), Syria: Wadi al Nasera (Valley of the Christians) encompasses approximately 40 picturesque Christian hamlets in western Syria, located amidst the green plush rolling hills between Homs and the Lebanese border. Thirty of its villages are Christian, four are mainly populated by Alawi Muslims and one, Al Qalaa (aka Hosn village), just under the Crak des Chevaliers medieval fortress, was Sunni Muslim. It was literally pulverized by heavy and sustained government forces aerial bombardment once it became a supply base in 2013 for rebels inside the medieval crusader fortress.

I spent the past week visiting some of the oldest Wadi al Nasara Christian villages which include Marmarita, Al-Hwash , Zweitina, Muzina, Nasra, Mqaabra, al Mishtiaya, Blat,Tanurin, Anaz, Joir al-Afes, Hab Nimra, `Ash al-Shuha, `Amar al-Husn, `Ayn al-Barda, `Ayn al-Ajuzi, `Ayn al-Ghara, Kafra, Mashta Aazar, Al-Qllatia, Kayma, Masraa, Muklous, Bahzina, Joineyat, Al-Talla, Daghla, Amar, Mishtayeh and Rabah, agrees with many who come to Wadi al Nasera (Valley of the Christians) that the valley is most beautiful and welcoming area of Syria or of anyplace in the Middle East that he has visited. Its people who include Syrian Orthodox, Syrian Catholics, Greek Orthodox, Greek Catholics and Armenian Orthodox among others, add to its splendor. Some visitors come repeatedly, others annually for summer holidays or to experience one or more of the valleys seasonal cultural festivals that makes this part of Syria a major tourist attraction.

Nonetheless, Wadi Nasera has suffered much, as has most of Syria from the continuing conflict and the devastating loss of loved ones from terrorist acts. For a variety of reasons, the proportion of Christians in the Middle East has contracted from around 20 percent at the start of the 20th century to around 5 percent currently. Less than 1 percent of the world’s more than 2 billion Christians currently live in the Middle East, and it is likely that number will decrease even further.

From the very start of the current conflict, history and religion have fueled passions on both sides in Syria. This has become more pronounced as the conflict drags on, turning bloodier and more vicious by the month. The main target of the most sectarian-minded rebels isn’t Christians, but rather Alawites, the minority group who make up about 12% of Syria’s population, about the same as Christians until recently. The Alawites are a heterodox sect that branched off from Islam, and are considered by Muslim takfiri extremists more heretical than Christians.

Approximately one quarter of the Christian valley’s population have been forced to flee as refugees, according to Roman Catholic Priest, Father Hanna Salloum, owner of the Al Wadi Hotel in the village of Mishtayeh, who generously gave this observer his time and insights into have life has been like for Wadi al Nasara over the past few years. Soon the places of those who fled the valley were taken by other arriving refugees who correctly believed they would be welcomed in the Valley of the Christians. Father Salloum, a devout Christian and Syrian nationalist, insisted that all the rooms in his large 5-star hotel be made available without charge to refugees fleeing Homs and elsewhere. Arriving Christians, Muslims or non-believers were given shelter gratis on a first come first served basis. For more than one year his hotel was a teeming home to his countryman until jihadists were expelled from their stronghold less than two kilometers from his Al Wadi Hotel. Father Hanna Salloum is my kind of Christian.

According to an aide to His Beatitude, Kyrios Youhanna X, formerly, Youhanna X Yaziji, Patriarch of Antioch and All The East, who briefed this observer on 8/4/2015 at the 6th century monastery of St. George, before the current crisis there were approximately 1.2 million Christians in Syria. Today there are estimated to be fewer than 400,000. The population of Wadi Nasera was reduced by approximately 20% during 2012-2013, many fleeing to Christian areas of nearby Lebanon as well as internally. This main exodus followed the early 2012 arrival of al Qaeda affiliated militants including Jund al Sham. The jihadists occupied the medieval fortress, Crac des Chevaliers which towers above the southern entrance to the Wadi, until the Syrian Army was able to evict them in March of 2014. Villages below were regularly targeted by jihadist snipers and mortars as well as middle of the night terrorists slipping down from Krac des Chevaliers fortress, sometimes using tunnels, to slit throats of unsuspecting villagers. This observer has repeatedly heard from residents of Wadi Nasera that while every house has a light weapon, such as an AK-47, the terrorists were heavily armed with a variety of weapons and it was difficult to overpower them when they attacked. Recently, the population of Wadi al Nasera has swollen by more than 150,000, mainly Christians, who view the Wadi as among the safest places in Syria.

I do not believe the current suffering and atrocities being committed against Christians in Syria will not break the will of Al Wadi Nasera, the Valley of the Christians. Rather, it will fortify their resolution and beliefs in the New Testament. And I agree with the sages whom I have met among this close-knit, vital, highly educated, large family community that the future of the Christians in this great country and beyond is with the Muslims. This has been the case since the advent of Islam and its movement into this region 600 years after the arrival of Christianity. Historically, local Christian communities have sometimes welcomed Muslim ‘overlords’ when they freed them from the oppressive rule of Constantinople or Rome. In many places in Syria the two groups continue to reach out to each other. Even many rebel extremists, to the dismay of skeptics, claim that “personally” they don’t have anything against Christians.

Neither massive emigration of Christians to the West nor establishing a Christian state is a long term solution to the current conflict. Throughout history invaders have arrived here, they have committed unspeakable atrocities, ruled for a period and disappeared while the Christian community has endured, prospered relatively and, in a sense, prevailed over the invaders. To wit, the Ottoman Turks, who ruled Syria from 1516 until World War I, relegated Christians to a second-class citizen status. Christians were allowed to practice their religion and govern themselves in matters that didn’t concern Muslims. But they were also required to pay special taxes to Constantinople, and there were plenty of restrictions on them when it came to interactions with Muslims. Wahhabism, the ascetic and harshly conservative form of Islam practiced in Saudi Arabia, is even tougher on Christians. And many others seeking hegemony have passed through this country—the Byzantines, Tamerlane, the Mongols, Mamluks, the Persians. Their likes have failed to subjugate the Christians of Wadi al Nasera.

Among the factors unifying the residents of Wadi al Nasera is the presence of a group of Nuns who operated an orphanage at Mar Takla monastery in Ma’loula to the south. The group of Greek Orthodox nuns was kidnapped in December of 2013 and held for three months by Jabhat al and before being released three month later in a prisoner exchange. Their new temporary home is St. George Monastery across from Krac de Chaveliers. This observer was honored to spend time with this charming, passionate, energetic, group of sisters on 8/4/2015 and we discussed many subjects. I was happy to share with Mother Superior, Pelagia Sayyaf, head of the Mar Takla monastery in Maaloula and her sisters recently acquired updated information about restoration work being done to their orphanage in preparation for their early return. One of the Nuns asked me about the condition of their large kitchen. By chance, two weeks ago I took a special interest, and some photos which I shared with the Nuns, of the kitchen where I painted some doors. The reason was that as a wannbe chef, I could not fail to examine their 6 foot by maybe 4 foot steel stove which has two large ovens and eight cooking rounds on its surface. They were happy to learn it was in excellent shape and that volunteers had cleaned up the large kitchen. They seem unconcerned that the roof of the kitchen had been hit by a rebel mortar as was no more. The sisters want to return to Ma’loula as soon as possible and hopefully before the end of August. They promise to return regularly to St George Monastery in Wadi al Nasara and stay connected with their new family.

To paraphrase the words of a teacher this observer crossed paths with on 8/5/2015 at the Amigo grocery store on the main street of the village of al-Mishtayeh near, the Al Wadi Hotel at the base of Krac Des Chevaliers, ‘We shall fight for our freedom and fight for our faith. Many may die on the battlefield but no one surrenders. We are the defenders of faiths, ours and others, we will die or be free.”

Franklin Lamb is a visiting Professor of International Law at the Faculty of Law, Damascus University and volunteers with the Sabra-Shatila Scholarship Program (sssp-lb.com).

08 August, 2015
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