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By Peter Van Buren

You know the joke? You describe something obviously heading for disaster — a friend crossing Death Valley with next to no gas in his car — and then add, “What could possibly go wrong?”

Such is the Middle East today. The U.S. is again at war there, bombing freely across Iraq and Syria, advising here, droning there, coalition-building in the region to loop in a little more firepower from a collection of recalcitrant allies, and searching desperately for some non-American boots to put on the ground.

Here, then, are seven worst-case scenarios in a part of the world where the worst case has regularly been the best that’s on offer. After all, with all that military power being brought to bear on the planet’s most volatile region, what could possibly go wrong?

1. The Kurds

The lands the Kurds generally consider their own have long been divided among Turkey, Iraq, Syria, and Iran. None of those countries wish to give up any territory to an independence-minded ethnic minority, no less find a powerful, oil-fueled Kurdish state on their borders.

In Turkey, the Kurdish-inhabited border area with Iraq has for years been a low-level war zone, with the powerful Turkish military shelling, bombing, and occasionally sending in its army to attack rebels there. In Iran, the Kurdish population is smaller than in Iraq and the border area between the two countries more open for accommodation and trade. (The Iranians, for instance, reportedly refine oil for the Iraqi Kurds, who put it on the black market and also buy natural gas from Iran.) That country has nonetheless shelled the Kurdish border area from time to time.

The Kurds have been fighting for a state of their own since at least 1923. Inside Iraq today, they are in every practical sense a de facto independent state with their own government and military. Since 2003, they have been strong enough to challenge the Shia government in Baghdad far more aggressively than they have. Their desire to do so has been constrained by pressure from Washington to keep Iraq whole. In June, however, their military, the Peshmerga, seized the disputed, oil-rich city of Kirkuk in the wake of the collapse of the Iraqi army in Mosul and other northern cities in the face of the militants of the Islamic State (IS). Lacking any alternative, the Obama administration let the Kurds move in.

The Peshmerga are a big part of the current problem. In a near-desperate need for some semi-competent proxy force, the U.S. and its NATO allies are now arming and training them, serving as their air force in a big way, and backing them as they inch into territory still in dispute with Baghdad as an expedient response to the new “caliphate.” This only means that, in the future, Washington will have to face the problem of how to put the proverbial genie back in the bottle if the Islamic State is ever pushed back or broken.

Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city and now under the control of the Islamic State, is the most obvious example. Given the woeful state of the Iraqi army, the Kurds may someday take it. That will not go down well in Baghdad and the result could be massive sectarian violence long after IS is gone. We were given a small-scale preview of what might happen in the town of Hassan Sham. The Kurds took it back last month. In the process, some Shia residents reportedly sided with their enemies, the Sunni militants of IS, rather than support the advancing Peshmerga.

Worst-case scenario: A powerful Kurdistan emerges from the present mess of American policy, fueling another major sectarian war in Iraq that will have the potential to spill across borders. Whether or not Kurdistan is recognized as a country with a U.N. seat, or simply becomes a Taiwan-like state (real in all but name), it will change the power dynamic in the region in ways that could put present problems in the shade. Changing a long-held balance of power always has unintended consequences, especially in the Middle East. Ask George W. Bush about his 2003 invasion of Iraq, which kicked off most of the present mess.

2. Turkey

You can’t, of course, talk about the Kurds without discussing Turkey, a country caught in a vise. Its forces have battled for years against a Kurdish separatist movement, personified by the PKK, a group Turkey, NATO, the European Union, and the United States all classify as a terrorist organization. Strife between the Turks and the PKK took 37,000 lives in the 1980s and 1990s before being reduced from a boil to a simmer thanks to European Union diplomacy. The “problem” in Turkey is no small thing — its Kurdish minority, some 15 million people, makes up nearly 20% of the population.

When it comes to taking action in Syria, the Turks exist in a conflicted realm because Washington has anointed the Kurds its boots on the ground. Whatever it may think it’s doing, the U.S. is helping empower the Kurdish minority in Syria, including PKK elements arrayed along the Turkish border, with new weapons and training.

The Turkish ruling party has no particular love for those who run the Islamic State, but its loathing for Syrian ruler Bashar al-Assad is such that its leaders have long been willing to assist IS largely by looking the other way. For some time, Turkey has been the obvious point of entry for “foreign fighters” en route to Syria to join IS ranks. Turkey has also served as the exit point for much of the black-market oil — $1.2 to $2 million a day — that IS has used to fund itself. Perhaps in return, the Islamic State released 49 Turkish hostages it was holding, including diplomats without the usual inflammatory beheading videos. In response to U.S. requests to “do something,” Turkey is now issuing fines to oil smugglers, though these have totaled only $5.7 million over the past 15 months, which shows the nature of Turkey’s commitment to the coalition.

The situation in the IS-besieged town of Kobani illustrates the problem. The Turks have so far refused to intervene to aid the Syrian Kurds. Turkish tanks sit idle on hills overlooking the hand-to-hand combat less than a mile away. Turkish riot police have prevented Turkish Kurds from reaching the town to help. Turkish jets have bombed PKK rebels inside Turkey, near the Iraqi border.

Meanwhile, U.S. air strikes do little more than make clear the limits of air power and provide material for future historians to write about. American bombs can slow IS, but can’t recapture parts of a city. Short of destroying Kobani by air to save it, U.S. power is limited without Turkish ground forces. Under the present circumstances, the fighters of the Islamic State will either take the city or it will slowly burn as they slug it out with the Kurds.

The Turkish price for intervention, publicly proclaimed, is the creation of a U.S.-enforced buffer zone along the border. The Turks would need to occupy this zone on the ground, effectively ceding Syrian territory to Turkey (as a buffer zone occupied by Kurds would not do). This would involve a further commitment from Washington, potentially placing American warplanes in direct conflict with Syria’s air defenses, which would have to be bombed, widening the war further. A buffer zone would also do away with whatever secret agreements may exist between the U.S. and Assad. This zone would represent another open-ended commitment, requiring additional U.S. resources in a conflict that is already costing American taxpayers at least $10 million a day.

On the other hand, Washington’s present policy essentially requires Turkey to put aside its national goals to help us achieve ours. We’ve seen how such a scenario has worked out in the past. (Google “Pakistan and the Taliban.”) But with Kobani in the news, the U.S. may yet succeed in pressuring the Turks into limited gestures, such as allowing American warplanes to use Turkish airbases or letting the U.S. train some Syrian rebels on its territory. That will not change the reality that Turkey will ultimately focus on its own goals independent of the many more Kobanis to come.

Worst-case scenario: Chaos in Eastern Turkey’s future, while the sun shines on Assad and the Kurds. An influx of refugees are already taxing the Turks. Present sectarian rumblings inside Turkey could turn white hot, with the Turks finding themselves in open conflict with Kurdish forces as the U.S. sits dumbly on the sidelines watching one ally fight another, an unintended consequence of its Middle Eastern meddling. If the buffer zone comes to pass, throw in the possibility of direct fighting between the U.S. and Assad, with Russian President Vladimir Putin potentially finding an opening to reengage in the area.

3. Syria

Think of Syria as the American war that never should have happened. Despite years of calls for U.S. intervention and some training flirtations with Syrian rebel groups, the Obama administration had managed (just barely) to stay clear of this particular quagmire. In September 2013, President Obama walked right up to the edge of sending bombers and cruise missiles against Assad’s military over the purported use of chemical weapons. He then used an uncooperative Congress and a clever Putin-gambit as an excuse to back down.

This year’s model — ignore Assad, attack IS — evolved over just a few weeks as a limited humanitarian action morphed into a fight to the finish against IS in Iraq and then into bombing Syria itself. As with any magician’s trick, we all watched it happen but still can’t quite figure out quite how the sleight of hand was done.

Syria today is a country in ruins. But somewhere loose in that land are unicorns — creatures often spoken of but never seen — the Obama administration’s much publicized “moderate Syrian rebels.” Who are they? The working definition seems to be something like: people who oppose Assad, won’t fight him for now, but may in the meantime fight the Islamic State, and aren’t too “fundamentalist.” The U.S. plans to throw arms and training at them as soon as it can find some of them, vet them, and transport them to Saudi Arabia. If you are buying stock in the Syrian market, look for anyone labeled “moderate warlord.”

While the U.S. and its coalition attacks IS, some states (or at least wealthy individuals) in that same band of brothers continue to funnel money to the new caliphate to support its self-appointed role as a protector of Sunnis and handy proxy against Shia empowerment in Iraq. Vice President Joe Biden recently called out some of America’s partners on this in what was billed as another of his famous gaffes, requiring apologies all around. If you want to see the best-case scenario for Syria’s future, have a look at Libya, a post-U.S. intervention country in chaos, carved up by militias.

Worst-case scenario: Syria as an ungoverned space, a new haven for terrorists and warring groups fueled by outsiders. (The Pakistani Taliban has already vowed to send fighters to help IS.) Throw in the potential for some group to grab any leftover chemical weapons or SCUD-like surface-to-surface missiles from Assad’s closet, and the potential for death and destruction is unending. It might even spread to Israel.

4. Israel

Israel’s border with Syria, marked by the Golan Heights, has been its quietest frontier since the 1967 war, but that’s now changing. Syrian insurgents of some flavor recently seized border villages and a crossing point in those heights. United Nations peacekeepers, who once patrolled the area, have mostly been evacuated for their own safety. Last month, Israel shot down a Syrian plane that entered its airspace, no doubt a warning to Assad to mind his own business rather than a matter of military necessity.

Assumedly, the Obama administration has been in behind-the-scenes efforts, reminiscent of the 1991 Gulf War when Iraqi SCUDS began raining down on Israeli cities, to keep that country out of the larger fight. It is not 1991, however. Relations between the U.S. and Israel are far more volatile and much testier. Israel is better armed and U.S. constraints on Israeli desires have proven significantly weaker of late.

Worst-case scenario: An Israeli move, either to ensure that the war stays far from its Golan Heights frontier or of a more offensive nature aimed at securing some Syrian territory, could blow the region apart. “It’s like a huge bottle with gas surrounded by candles. You just need to push one candle and everything can blow up in a minute,” said one retired Israeli general. Still, if you think Israel worries about Syria, that’s nothing compared to how its leadership must be fuming over the emergence of Iran as an ever-stronger regional power.

5. Iran

What can go wrong for Iran in the current conflict? While in the Middle East something unexpected can always arise, at present that country looks like the potential big winner in the IS sweepstakes. Will a pro-Iranian Shia government remain in power in Baghdad? You bet. Has Iran been given carte blanche to move ground forces into Iraq? Check. Will the American air force fly bombing runs for Iranian ground troops engaged in combat with IS (in a purely unofficial capacity, of course)? Not a doubt. Might Washington try to edge back a bit from its nuclear tough-guy negotiations? A likelihood. Might the door be left ajar when it comes to an off-the-books easing of economic sanctions if the Americans need something more from Iran in Iraq? Why not?

Worst-case scenario: Someday, there’ll be a statue of Barack Obama in central Tehran, not in Iraq.

6. Iraq

Iraq is America’s official “graveyard of empire.” Washington’s “new” plan for that country hinges on the success of a handful of initiatives that already failed when tried between 2003-2011, a time when there were infinitely more resources available to American “nation builders” and so much less in the way of regional chaos, bad as it then was.

The first step in the latest American master plan is the creation of an “inclusive” government in Baghdad, which the U.S. dreams will drive a wedge between a rebellious and dissatisfied Sunni population and the Islamic state. After that has happened, a (re)trained Iraqi army will head back into the field to drive the forces of the new caliphate from the northern parts of the country and retake Mosul.

All of this is unrealistic, if not simply unreal. After all, Washington has already sunk $25 billion dollars into training and equipping that same army, and several billion more on the paramilitary police. The result: little more than IS seizing arsenals of top-notch Americans weaponry once the Iraqi forces fled the country’s northern cities in June.

Now, about that inclusive government. The United States seems to think creating an Iraqi government is like picking players for a fantasy football team. You know, win some, lose some, make a few trades, and if none of that works out, you still have a shot at a new roster and a winning record next year. Since Haider al-Abadi, the latest prime minister and great inclusivist hope, is a Shia and a former colleague of the once-anointed, now disappointed Nouri al-Maliki, as well as a member of the same political party, nothing much has really changed at the top. So hopes for “inclusiveness” now fall to the choices to lead the key ministries of defense and the interior. Both have been tools of repression against the country’s Sunnis for years. For the moment, Abadi remains acting minister for both, as was Maliki before him. Really, what could possibly go wrong?

As for the Sunnis, American strategy rests on the assumption that they can be bribed and coerced into breaking with IS, no matter the shape of things in Baghdad. That’s hard to imagine, unless they lack all memory. As with al-Qaeda in Iraq during the American occupation years, the Islamic State is Sunni muscle against a Shia government that, left to its own devices, would continue to marginalize, if not simply slaughter, them. Starting in 2007, U.S. officials did indeed bribe and coerce some Sunni tribal leaders into accepting arms and payments in return for fighting insurgent outfits, including al-Qaeda. That deal, then called the Anbar Awakening, came with assurances that the United States would always stand by them. (General John Allen, now coordinating America’s newest war in Iraq, was a key figure in brokering that “awakening.”) America didn’t stand. Instead, it turned the program over to the Shia government and headed for the door marked “exit.” The Shias promptly reneged on the deal.

Once bitten, twice shy, so why, only a few years later, would the Sunnis go for what seems to be essentially the same bad deal? In addition, this one appears to have a particularly counterproductive wrinkle from the American point of view. According to present plans, the U.S. is to form Sunni “national guard units” — up-armored Sunni militias with a more marketable name — to fight IS by paying and arming them to do so. These militias are to fight only on Sunni territory under Sunni leadership. They will have no more connection to the Baghdad government than you do. How will that help make Iraq an inclusive, unitary state? What will happen, in the long run, once even more sectarian armed militias are let loose? What could possibly go wrong?

Despite its unambiguous history of failure, the “success” of the Anbar Awakening remains a persistent myth among American conservative thinkers. So don’t be fooled in the short term by media-trumpeted local examples of Sunni-Shia cooperation against IS. Consider them temporary alliances of convenience on a tribe-by-tribe basis that might not outlast the next attack. That is nowhere near a strategy for national victory. Wasn’t then, isn’t now.

Worst-case scenario: Sunni-Shia violence reaches a new level, one which draws in outside third parties, perhaps the Sunni Gulf states, seeking to prevent a massacre. Would the Shia Iranians, with forces already in-country, stand idle? Who can predict how much blood will be spilled, all caused by another foolish American war in Iraq?

7. The United States

If Iran could be the big geopolitical winner in this multi-state conflict, then the U.S. will be the big loser. President Obama (or his successor) will, in the end, undoubtedly have to choose between war to the horizon and committing U.S. ground forces to the conflict. Neither approach is likely to bring the results desired, but those “boots on the ground” will scale up the nature of the ensuing tragedy.

Washington’s post-9/11 fantasy has always been that military power — whether at the level of full-scale invasions or “surgical” drone strikes — can change the geopolitical landscape in predictable ways. In fact, the only certainty is more death. Everything else, as the last 13 years have made clear, is up for grabs, and in ways Washington is guaranteed not to expect.

Among the likely scenarios: IS forces are currently only miles from Baghdad International Airport, itself only nine miles from the Green Zone in the heart of the capital. (Note that the M198 howitzers IS captured from the retreating Iraqis have a range of 14 miles.) The airport is a critical portal for the evacuation of embassy personnel in the face of a future potential mega-Benghazi and for flying in more personnel like the Marine Quick Reaction Force recently moved into nearby Kuwait. The airport is already protected by 300-500 American troops, backed by Apache attack helicopters and drones. The Apache helicopters recently sent into combat in nearby Anbar province probably flew out of there. If IS militants were to assault the airport, the U.S. would essentially have to defend it, which means combat between the two forces. If so, IS will lose on the ground, but will win by drawing America deeper into the quagmire.

In the bigger picture, the current anti-Islamic State coalition of “more than 60 countries” that the U.S. patched together cannot last. It’s fated to collapse in a heap of conflicting long-term goals. Sooner or later, the U.S. is likely to once again find itself alone, as it eventually did in the last Iraq war.

The most likely outcome of all this killing, whatever the fate of the Islamic State, is worsening chaos across Iraq, Syria, and other countries in the region, including possibly Turkey. As Andrew Bacevich observed, “Even if we win, we lose. Defeating the Islamic State would only commit the United States more deeply to a decades-old enterprise that has proved costly and counterproductive.” The loss of control over the real costs of this war will beg the question: Was the U.S. ever in control?

In September, Syria became the 14th country in the Islamic world that U.S. forces have invaded, occupied, or bombed since 1980. During these many years of American war-making, goals have shifted endlessly, while the situation in the Greater Middle East only worsened. Democracy building? You’re not going to hear that much any more. Oil? The U.S. is set to become a net exporter. Defeating terrorism? That’s today’s go-to explanation, but the evidence is already in that picking fights in the region only fosters terror and terrorism. At home, the soundtrack of fear-mongering grows louder, leading to an amplified national security state and ever-expanding justifications for the monitoring of our society.

Worst-case scenario: America’s pan-Middle Eastern war marches into its third decade with no end in sight, a vortex that sucks in lives, national treasure, and Washington’s mental breathing room, even as other important issues are ignored. And what could possibly go wrong with that?

Peter Van Buren blew the whistle on State Department waste and mismanagement during the Iraqi reconstruction in his first book, We Meant Well: How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People.

17 October, 2014
Countercurrents.org

 

By Amy Goodman

The headlines shift hourly between Ebola and ISIS. The question is often asked, “Should we put boots on the ground?” The answer is yes—but not in the Middle East. We need tens of thousands of boots on the ground dealing with Ebola: boots of doctors, nurses, health professionals, dealing with this wholly preventable global health disaster.

Ebola is a small virus that is revealing very large problems with the world’s public health systems. The few known cases here in the United States have provoked a climate of fear and a growing awareness of just how vulnerable we are to a virulent illness let loose in our society. Imagine how people feel in the impoverished West African nations of Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia, where the number of cases is in the thousands, and the infrastructure is simply incapable of dealing with the burgeoning number of infected people.

“This is an international humanitarian and health crisis. It threatens the stability of the region politically, economically, and, of course, human health matters most,” said Lawrence Gostin, faculty director at the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law at Georgetown University. Speaking on the “Democracy Now!” news hour, he said, “For the second time in the history of the United Nations, the U.N. Security Council called a health threat—AIDS was the first, Ebola is the second.” He was speaking as news arrived that a second health worker in Dallas tested positive for Ebola. “We should be mobilizing much, much more,” he said. “We should have done it earlier. We should do it now.”

The World Health Organization announced the latest Ebola outbreak in Guinea on March 23 of this year. The outbreak grew, spreading to neighboring countries and jumping over several to reach Africa’s most populous country, Nigeria. It killed tens, then hundreds, but largely stayed off the world stage until two white, American aid workers contracted the disease. Dr. Kent Brantly and missionary Nancy Writebol were separately flown back to the United States. With the first Ebola patients ever to set foot in the U.S. shrouded in isolation suits, the disease became the lead story across the country.

Remarkably, as people were dying en masse of Ebola in West Africa, these two Americans survived, treated to some of the few existing doses of the experimental drug known as ZMapp. These are positive outcomes made possible with a well-funded health-care system.

Enter Thomas Eric Duncan. He, too, had been infected by the Ebola virus. His illness progressed quite differently. His nephew, Josephus Weeks, summed it up eloquently in a piece published by The Dallas Morning News:

“On Friday, Sept. 25, 2014, my uncle Thomas Eric Duncan went to Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Dallas. He had a high fever and stomach pains. He told the nurse he had recently been in Liberia. But he was a man of color with no health insurance and no means to pay for treatment, so within hours he was released with some antibiotics and Tylenol.”

Duncan went home to be cared for by his family, but got progressively sicker. Two days later, he went back to the hospital, where he was admitted with suspicion of Ebola. He rapidly declined and died on Oct. 8, as Weeks wrote, “alone in a hospital room.” Within days, we learned that one of his health-care workers, critical-care nurse Nina Pham, had contracted Ebola. Then another nurse, Amber Vinson, showed symptoms. Hours before she was diagnosed, she was on a plane with more than 130 people, flying back from Cleveland to Dallas. What if we had a health-care system that guaranteed thorough treatment, regardless of whether or not patients have private health insurance?

Republican Congressman Pete Sessions, who represents part of Dallas, told CNN that he wanted to block flights from West Africa from entering the U.S., though he said he would allow U.S. citizens through. I asked Lawrence Gostin for his response: “That is such a bad idea. … We live in a modern, globalized world; you can’t put a cellophane wrapper around a whole region and expect to keep germs out. It doesn’t work that way. And so, we think we’re trying to save ourselves, but actually we’re making ourselves at greater risk.”

The small island nation of Cuba has sent more than 160 doctors to West Africa to treat patients and help stem the spread of this epidemic. We should learn from Cuba. Instead, President Barack Obama sent in the Marines. They will soon be building field hospitals. But who will staff these new facilities? United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has created an emergency task force to confront the Ebola crisis. The world must come together to save lives and stop this preventable catastrophe that threatens us all.

Denis Moynihan contributed research to this column.

Amy Goodman is the host of “Democracy Now!,” a daily international TV/radio news hour airing on 1,100 stations in North America.

17 October, 2014
TruthDig

 

By Colin Todhunter

Today is World Food Day . This year’s theme is ‘Family Farming: Feeding the world, caring for the earth’.

According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization’s website:

“The 2014 World Food Day theme – Family Farming: “Feeding the world, caring for the earth” – has been chosen to raise the profile of family farming and smallholder farmers. It focuses world attention on the significant role of family farming in eradicating hunger and poverty, providing food security and nutrition, improving livelihoods, managing natural resources, protecting the environment, and achieving sustainable development, in particular in rural areas.” [1]

Family farming should be celebrated because it really does feed the world. This claim is supported by a 2014 report by GRAIN, which revealed that small farms produce most of the world’s food [2].

Around 56% of Russia ‘s agricultural output comes from family farms which occupy less than 9% of arable land. These farms produce 90% of the country’s potatoes, 83% of its vegetables, 55% of its of milk, 39% of its meat and 22% of its cereals [3].

In Brazil, 84% of farms are small and control 24% of the land, yet they produce: 87% of cassava, 69% of beans, 67% of goat milk, 59% of pork, 58% of cow milk, 50% of chickens, 46% of maize, 38% of coffee, 33.8% of rice and 30% of cattle [4].

In Cuba, with 27% of the land, small farmers produce: 98% of fruits, 95% of beans, 80% of maize, 75% of pork, 65% of vegetables, 55% of cow milk, 55% of cattle and 35% of rice [5].

In Ukraine, small farmers operate 16% of agricultural land, but provide 55% of agricultural output, including: 97% of potatoes, 97% of honey, 88% of vegetables, 83% of fruits and berries and 80% of milk [6].

Similar impressive figures are available for Chile, Hungary, Belarus, Romania, Kenya, El Salvador and many other countries.

The evidence shows that small peasant/family farms are the bedrock of global food production. The bad news is that they are squeezed onto less than a quarter of the world’s farmland and such land is under threat. The world is fast losing farms and farmers through the concentration of land into the hands of the rich and powerful.

The report by GRAIN also revealed that small farmers are often much more productive than large corporate farms, despite the latter’s access to various expensive technologies. For example, if all of Kenya’s farms matched the output of its small farms, the nation’s agricultural productivity would double. In Central America, it would nearly triple. In Russia, it would be six fold.

Yet in many places, small farmers are being criminalised, taken to court and even made to disappear when it comes to the struggle for land. They are constantly exposed to systematic expulsion from their land by foreign corporations [7], some of which are fronted by fraudulent individuals who specialise in corrupt deals and practices to rake in enormous profits to the detriment of small farmers and food production [8].

Imagine what small farmers could achieve if they had access to more land and could work in a supportive policy environment, rather than under the siege conditions they too often face. For example, the vast majority of farms in Zimbabwe belong to smallholders and their average farm size has increased as a result of the Fast Track Land Reform Programme. Small farmers in the country now produce over 90% of diverse agricultural food crops, while they only provided 60 to 70% of the national food before land redistribution.

Throughout much of the world, however, agricultural land is being taken over by large corporations. GRAIN concludes that, in the last 50 years, 140 million hectares – well more than all the farmland in China – have been taken over for soybean, oil palm, rapeseed and sugar cane alone.

By definition, peasant agriculture prioritises food production for local and national markets as well as for farmers’ own families. Big agritech corporations take over scarce fertile land and prioritise commodities or export crops for profit and markets far away that cater for the needs of the affluent. This process impoverishes local communities and brings about food insecurity. The concentration of fertile agricultural land in fewer and fewer hands is therefore directly related to the increasing number of people going hungry every day and is undermining global food security.

The issue of land ownership was also picked up on by another report this year. A report by the Oakland Institute stated that the first years of the 21st century will be remembered for a global land rush of nearly unprecedented scale [9]. An estimated 500 million acres, an area eight times the size of Britain , was reported bought or leased across the developing world between 2000 and 2011, often at the expense of local food security and land rights.

A new generation of institutional investors, including hedge funds, private equity, pension funds and university endowments, is eager to capitalise on global farmland as a new and highly desirable asset class. Financial returns, not food security, are what matter. In the US, for instance, with rising interest from investors and surging land prices, giant pension funds are committing billions to buy agricultural land.

The Oakland Institute argues that the US could experience an unprecedented crisis of retiring farmers over the next 20 years, leading to ample opportunities for these actors to expand their holdings as an estimated 400 million acres changes generational hands.

The corporate consolidation of agriculture is happening as much in Iowa and California as it is in the Philippines, Mozambique and not least in Ukraine.

As indicated earlier in this piece, Ukraine’s small farmers are thriving in terms of delivering impressive outputs, despite being squeezed onto just 16% of arable land. But the US-backed toppling of that country’s government may change all that. Indeed, part of the reason behind destabilizing Ukraine was for US agritech concerns like Monsanto to gain access to its agriculture sector, which is what we are now witnessing.

Current ‘aid’ packages, contingent on austerity reforms, will have a devastating impact on Ukrainians’ standard of living and increase poverty in the country [10]. Reforms mandated by the EU-backed loan include agricultural deregulation that is intended to benefit agribusiness corporations. Natural resource and land policy shifts are intended to facilitate the foreign corporate takeover of enormous tracts of land. The EU Association Agreement also includes a clause requiring both parties to cooperate to extend the use of biotechnology. Frederic Mousseau, Policy Director of the Oakland Institute states:

“Their (World Bank and IMF) intent is blatant: to open up foreign markets to Western corporations… The high stakes around control of Ukraine’s vast agricultural sector, the world’s third largest exporter of corn and fifth largest exporter of wheat, constitute an oft-overlooked critical factor. In recent years, foreign corporations have acquired more than 1.6 million hectares of Ukrainian land.”

As World Food Day approaches in celebration of the role of the family farm in feeding the world, from India to Ukraine powerful US agritech corporations continue to colonise agriculture and undermine the continued existence of small farms. This is achieved by various means, including militarism, ‘free’ trade agreements, commodity market price manipulations, loan/aid packages, the co-optation of political leaders and the hijack of strategic policy-making bodies. As a result, food security and local/regional food sovereignty is being threatened.

Colin Todhunter : Originally from the northwest of England, Colin Todhunter has spent many years in India.

16 October, 2014
Countercurrents.org

 

By Ali Abunimah

The Palestinian Authority in Ramallah was ecstatic last weekend after Sweden’s new center-left Prime Minister Stefan Löfven announced in his inaugural address to parliament what appeared to be a break with Western orthodoxy: his country would recognize the “State of Palestine.”

“We salute the announcement by the Swedish prime minister,” crowed Saeb Erekat, the PA “chief negotiator.”

Although dozens of countries already recognize the “State of Palestine,” including several in Europe, Israel’s staunchest backers – the US, Canada, Australia and most of the European Union states – do not.

For the PA, with no achievements – and many losses – to show for more than two decades of a “peace process,” such diplomatic recognition is a coveted prize that gives the false impression of progress.

But American objections and Israeli fury quickly pushed the Swedes to try to cool expectations.

On Friday, US State Department spokesperson Jennifer Psaki criticized the Swedish move as “premature.”

The Swedish ambassador in Tel Aviv was summoned to the Israeli foreign ministry for a scolding on Monday – but Sweden’s government would not reveal the content of his discussion with Israeli officials.

And the Swedish prime minister was subjected to the usual insults by Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman who suggested that Löfven did not understand the region.

“If what concerns the prime minister of Sweden in his inaugural address is the situation in the Middle East, he would better focus on the more urgent problems in the region, such as the daily mass murder taking place in Syria, Iraq and elsewhere in the region,” Lieberman advised.

Publicly, the Swedes did their best to soothe Israel’s anger.

Prime Minister Löfven spoke with Israeli opposition leader Isaac Herzog, chair of Israel’s Labor Party, a “sister party” to Löfven’s Social Democrats.

Herzog told Haaretz that Löfven stressed that Sweden “wasn’t going to recognize a Palestinian state tomorrow morning” and “wants to speak first with all the relevant parties, including Israel, the Palestinians, the United States and other EU states.”

So much for a big, bold break.

Vague statement

Also on Sunday, Sweden’s foreign ministry tweeted out Löfven’s exact words apparently to underline Sweden’s support for the sterile “peace process” and the “two-state solution.”

And this statement was posted on the website of the Swedish embassy in Tel Aviv:

The following text is a quote from the Prime Minister Stefan Löfven’s declaration on the government policy in the parliament on 3 October.

“The conflict between Israel and Palestine can only be resolved through a two-state solution, negotiated in accordance with the principles of international law. It must guarantee the legitimate demands of both the Palestinians and the Israelis for national self-determination and security. A two-state solution requires mutual recognition and a will to coexist peacefully. Therefore, Sweden will recognize the State of Palestine.”

Löfven’s commitment has no specific date attached to it, leaving, at best, confusion over his government’s intentions.

Sweden’s new foreign minister Margot Wallström added to the confusion, tweeting cryptically: “Recognizing Palestine: Important step towards a two-state solution. Both sides must be respected.”

By “both sides,” she presumably means the occupier and colonizer on the one hand, and its victims, on the other.

Sweden’s misguided motives

Wallström elaborated on Sweden’s intentions in comments to the newspaper Dagens Nyheter on Sunday.

The minister said that the strong Israeli reaction was unsurprising: “This I can understand and respect even if I do not share it.”

She said she didn’t think the planned move would “have any serious impact on relations between Sweden and Israel,” stressing “We have good relations.”

She rejected criticism that the move was too early: “I would say that the risk is that it is too late.”

But why float this step at all? “It is important that we take an initiative that hopefully will inspire other countries,” Wallström said.

Wallström is right: it is too late. It is too late to revive the dead “peace process” and there is no point talking about a “two-state solution” anymore. She’s also right to suggest that things cannot go on as they are and something must be done.

But moving from quiet complicity with Israel to antagonizing it with symbolic recognition of a Palestinian state – while maintaining “good relations” – will do absolutely nothing to change the Palestinian reality, even if other states followed Sweden’s lead (if and when it comes).

“State” harms Palestinians

As I have explained in my book The Battle for Justice in Palestine and in an article for Al-Shabaka, recognition of a Palestinian “state” in a fraction of Palestine actually negates the rights of most Palestinians and conflicts with the Palestinian right of self-determination.

While recognizing the “State of Palestine” excites and pleases many who support the Palestinian cause, people should not to get carried away with the aesthetics of “statehood” in what would amount to a bantustan.

Instead, I have argued, they should focus on the negative consequences for the right of return and the rights of Palestinian citizens of Israel.

The main purpose of the so-called two-state solution is not to restore Palestinian rights, but rather to preserve and recognize Israel’s so-called “right to exist as a Jewish state.”

As I further explain in this excerpt from my book, Israel’s claimed “right to exist as a Jewish state” can only be exercised by violating in perpetuity the rights of millions of Palestinians – Palestinian citizens of Israel who will retain second-class status if not expelled outright, and Palestinian refugees who will never be allowed back home. And even the rights of Palestinians in the so-called “state” would barely be realized since Israel insists that this state have extremely curtailed sovereignty.

So from my perspective, I do not see recognition of a Palestinian “state” in the context of the so-called two-state solution as anything to celebrate. Indeed, it may well be harmful to Palestinians in the long run.

What Sweden could do

But I do applaud Sweden’s desire to show leadership, initiative and to break with a stifling consensus. So, here are some ideas for Sweden’s new government that might actually do that:

Lead a campaign for the immediate, unconditional end to Israel’s illegal siege of Gaza, which amounts to “collective punishment.”

End Sweden’s arms purchases from Israel and call on all countries to impose an arms embargo.

End Sweden’s military collaboration with Israel.

Stop Swedish and EU financial support for Israeli occupation.

Stop EU research support to Israeli occupation.

Support efforts to bring Israeli war criminals to justice by arresting war crimes suspects who set foot in Sweden and by encouraging other countries to do the same.

Ban the import to Sweden of all Israeli settlement goods, and encourage EU countries to do the same.

Urge EU countries to suspend the EU-Israel Association Agreement.

Sweden led the way among European countries in opposing apartheid in South Africa. That included rejecting the regime’s bantustans which were designed to preserve apartheid by disguising it as “independence” for Blacks.

It is also past time for Sweden and other countries to stop concealing their complicity with Israeli apartheid behind the so-called “two-state solution” and to openly support full rights and equality for all Palestinians throughout historic Palestine.

Ali Abunimah is Co-founder of The Electronic Intifada and author of The Battle for Justice in Palestine, now out from Haymarket Books.

14 October, 2014
Electronicintifada.net

 

By Garikai Chengu

On Monday, America’s government offices, businesses, and banks all grind to a halt in order to commemorate Columbus Day. In schools up and down the country, little children are taught that a heroic Italian explorer discovered America, and various events and parades are held to celebrate the occasion.

It has now become common knowledge amongst academics that Christopher Columbus clearly did not discover America, not least because is it impossible to discover a people and a continent that was already there and thriving with culture. One can only wonder how Columbus could have discovered America when people were watching him from America’s shores?

Contrary to popular belief, African American history did not start with slavery in the New World. An overwhelming body of new evidence is emerging which proves that Africans had frequently sailed across the Atlantic to the Americas, thousands of years before Columbus and indeed before Christ. The great ancient civilizations of Egypt and West Africa traveled to the Americas, contributing immensely to early American civilization by importing the art of pyramid building, political systems and religious practices as well as mathematics, writing and a sophisticated calendar.

The strongest evidence of African presence in America before Columbus comes from the pen of Columbus himself. In 1920, a renowned American historian and linguist, Leo Weiner of Harvard University, in his book, Africa and the discovery of America, explained how Columbus noted in his journal that Native Americans had confirmed that “black skinned people had come from the south-east in boats, trading in gold-tipped spears.”

One of the first documented instances of Africans sailing and settling in the Americas were black Egyptians led by King Ramses III, during the 19th dynasty in 1292 BC. In fact, in 445 BC, the Greek historian Herodotus wrote of the Ancient Egyptian pharaohs’ great seafaring and navigational skills. Further concrete evidence, noted by Dr. Imhotep and largely ignored by Euro-centric archaeologists, includes “Egyptian artifacts found across North America from the Algonquin writings on the East Coast to the artifacts and Egyptian place names in the Grand Canyon.”

In 1311 AD, another major wave of African exploration to the New World was led by King Abubakari II, the ruler of the fourteenth century Mali Empire, which was larger than the Holy Roman Empire. The king sent out 200 ships of men, and 200 ships of trade material, crops, animals, cloth and crucially African knowledge of astronomy, religion and the arts.

African explorers crossing the vast Atlantic waters in primitive boats may seem unlikely, or perhaps, far fetched to some. Such incredible nautical achievements are not as daunting as they seem, given that
numerous successful modern attempts have illustrated that without an oar, rudder or sail ancient African boats, including the “dug-out,” would certainly have been able to cross the vast ocean in a matter of weeks.

As time allows us to drift further and further away from the “European age of exploration” and we move beyond an age of racial intellectual prejudice, historians are beginning to recognize that Africans were skilled navigators long before Europeans, contrary to popular belief.

Of course, some Western historians continue to refute this fact because, consciously or unconsciously, they are still hanging on to the 19th-century notion that seafaring was a European monopoly.

After all, history will tell you that seafaring is the quintessential European achievement, the single endeavor of which Europeans are awfully proud. Seafaring allowed Europe to conquer the world. The notion that black Africans braved the roaring waters of the Atlantic Ocean and beat Europeans to the New World threatens a historically white sense of ownership over the seas.

When most people think about ancient Mexico, the first civilizations that come to mind are the Incas, Aztecs and the Maya. However, during the early 1940’s archeologists uncovered a civilization known as the Olmecs of 1200 BC, which pre-dated any other advanced civilization in the Americas.

The Olmec civilization, which was of African origin and dominated by Africans, was the first significant civilization in Mesoamerica and the Mother Culture of Mexico.

Olmecs are perhaps best known for the carved colossal heads found in Central Mexico, that exhibit an unmistakably African Negroid appearance. Ancient African historian Professor Van Sertima has illustrated how Olmecs were the first Mesoamerican civilization to use a written language, sophisticated astronomy, arts and mathematics and they built the first cities in Mexico, all of which greatly influenced the Mayans and subsequent civilizations in the Americas. “There is not the slightest doubt that all later civilizations in [Mexico and Central America], rest ultimately on an Olmec base,” once remarked Michael Coe, a leading historian on Mexico.

Africans clearly played an intricate role in the Olmec Empire’s rise and that African influence peaked during the same period that ancient Black Egyptian culture ascended in Africa.

A clear indicator of pre-Columbus African trans-Atlantic travel is the recent archeological findings of narcotics native to America in Ancient Egyptian mummies, which have astounded contemporary historians. German toxicologist, Svetla Balabanova, reported findings of cocaine and nicotine in ancient Egyptian mummies. These substances are known to only be derived from American plants. South American cocaine from Erythroxylon coca and nicotine from Nicotiana tabacum. Such compounds could only have been introduced to Ancient Egyptian culture through trade with Americans.

Similarities across early American and African religions also indicate significant cross-cultural contact. The Mayans, Aztecs and Incas all worshipped black gods and the surviving portraits of the black deities are revealing. For instance, ancient portraits of the Quetzalcoatl, a messiah serpent god, and Ek-ahua, the god of war, are unquestionably Negro with dark skin and wooly hair. Why would native Americans venerate images so unmistakably African if they had never seen them before? Numerous wall paintings in caves in Juxtlahuaca depict the famous ancient Egyptian “opening of the mouth” and cross libation rituals. All these religious similarities are too large and occur far too often to be mere coincidences.

Professor Everett Borders notes another very important indication of African presence, which is the nature of early American pyramids. Pyramid construction is highly specialized. Ancient Egypt progressed from the original stepped pyramid of Djosser, to the more sophisticated finished product at Giza. However, at La Venta in Mexico, the Olmecs made a fully finished pyramid, with no signs of progressive learning. Olmecian and Egyptian pyramids were both placed on the same north-south axis and had strikingly similar construction methods. Tellingly, all of these pyramids also served the same dual purpose, tomb and temple.

Ancient trans-Atlantic similarities in botany, religion and pyramid building constitute but a fraction of the signs of African influence in ancient America. Other indicators include, astronomy, art, writing systems, flora and fauna.

Historically, the African people have been exceptional explorers and purveyors of culture across the world. Throughout all of these travels, African explorers have not had a history of starting devastating wars on the people they met. The greatest threat towards Africa having a glorious future is her people’s ignorance of Africa’s glorious past.

Pre-Columbus civilization in the Americas had its foundation built by Africans and developed by the ingenuity of Native Americans. Sadly, America, in post-Columbus times, was founded on the genocide of the indigenous Americans, built on the backs of African slaves and continues to run on the exploitation of workers at home and abroad.

Clearly, Africans helped civilize America well before Europeans “discovered” America, and well before Europeans claim to have civilized Africa. The growing body of evidence is now becoming simply too loud to ignore. It’s about time education policy makers reexamine their school curriculums to adjust for America’s long pre-Columbus history.

Garikai Chengu is a scholar at Harvard University.

14 October, 2014
Countercurrents.org

 

By Jon Queally

The top one percent of the wealthiest people on the planet own nearly fifty percent of the world’s assets while the bottom fifty percent of the global population combined own less than one percent of the world’s wealth.

Those are the findings of an annual report by the investment firm Credit Suisse released Tuesday—the 2014 Global Wealth Report (pdf)—which shows that global economic inequality has surged since the financial collapse of 2008.

According to the report, “global wealth has grown to a new record, rising by $20.1 trillion between mid-2013 and mid-2014, an increase of 8.3%, to reach $263 trillion – more than twice the $117 trillion recorded for the year 2000.”

Though the rate of this wealth creation has been particularly fast over the last year—the fastest annual growth recorded since the pre-crisis year of 2007—the report notes that the benefits of this overall growth have flowed disproportionately to the already wealthy. And the report reveals that as of mid-2014, “the bottom half of the global population own less than 1% of total wealth. In sharp contrast, the richest decile hold 87% of the world’s wealth, and the top percentile alone account for 48.2% of global assets.”

Campaigners at Oxfam International, which earlier this put out their own report on global inequality (pdf), said the Credit Suisse report, though generally serving separate aims, confirms what they also found in terms of global inequality.

“These figures give more evidence that inequality is extreme and growing, and that economic recovery following the financial crisis has been skewed in favour of the wealthiest. In poor countries, rising inequality means the difference between children getting the chance to go to school and sick people getting life saving medicines,” Oxfam’s head of inequality Emma Seery, told the Guardian in response to the latest study.

In addition to giving an overall view of trends in global wealth, the authors of the Credit Suisse gave special attention to the issue of inequality in this year’s report, noting the increasing level of concern surrounding the topic. “The changing distribution of wealth is now one of the most widely discussed and controversial of topics,” they write, “Not least owing to [French economist] Thomas Piketty’s recent account of long-term trends around inequality. We are confident that the depth of our data will make a valuable contribution to the inequality debate.”

According to the report:

In almost all countries, the mean wealth of the top decile (i.e. the wealthiest 10% of adults) is more than ten times median wealth. For the top percentile (i.e. the wealthiest 1% of adults), mean wealth exceeds 100 times the median wealth in many countries and can approach 1000 times the median in the most unequal nations. This has been the case throughout most of human history, with wealth ownership often equating with land holdings, and wealth more often acquired via inheritance or conquest rather than talent or hard work. However, a combination of factors caused wealth inequality to trend downwards in high income countries during much of the 20th century, suggesting that a new era had emerged. That downward trend now appears to have stalled, and posssibly gone into reverse.

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

14 October, 2014
CommonDreams.org

 

By Thomas C. Mountain

It is no longer a secret that the USA is attempting to carry out regime change in South Sudan. Why? It’s because South Sudanese President Salva Kiir is determined to continue supporting Chinese oil production in his country, China’s only majority owned energy project in Africa.

The USA managed to get the Chinese oil fields shut down a couple years back by promising to provide upwards of $200 million a month in “aid” during the dispute between Sudan and South Sudan over pipeline transit fees if the oil fields were closed.

When the oil shipments were subsequently stopped and the aid money failed to materialize, President Kiir, to avoid complete bankruptcy, for his only independent income is from oil revenue, went hat in hand to Beijing and a $8 billion Chinese rescue package was the result. The Chinese oil fields reopened amidst the gnashing of teeth by Pax Americana and regime change became the USA’s solution to this vexation.

As in all to many crimes committed by Pax Americana in Africa a particularly bloodstained warlord was chosen to do the dirty deed and in close cooperation with its local gendarme, Ethiopia, a coup attempt was launched earlier this year by one Riek Machar, former Vice President of the country.

Riek Machar is no stranger to ethnic cleansing and mass murder going back to at least 1991. At that time he sent his Nuur ethnic militias on a killing spree that saw many thousand’s of the Dinka ethnic group slaughtered. His denials at the time for his responsibility for his crimes mimics his protestations of innocence for the latest round of bloodshed his followers have carried out.

The fact is Riek Machar is the tool of US empire in its war against Chinese penetration of Africa’s energy resources, something so obviously contrary to the USA’s “national interest” that only the most truth challenged in the western media still try to deny.

But deny they do. They continue to try to hide Riek Machar’s links to the Ethiopian regime, who are so completely dependent on aid provided and micro managed by the USA and its western vassals that even if the regime didn’t want to be involved it has no choice (as in its disastrous invasion of Somalia in 2007).

It is no secret that Riek Machar is getting the arms, fuel and funds to continue his rebellion for almost a year now from outside South Sudan. Even the western media has to admit this but from just who is he getting the wherewithal to continue his bloodletting?

The answer to this question is now pretty obvious and its not from Sudan (badly hurt by the Chinese oil field closure), Uganda or Kenya. Only Ethiopia is left, and the regional anger against the regime is now an “open secret”.

Ethiopia’s involvement has led South Sudan to demand the moving of the so called “peace talks” (which have yet to result in any such thing) from Addis Ababa to Nairobi, Kenya.

President Kiir’s inner circle are regularly sourced charging Ethiopia with supporting Riek Machar’s death squads. Matters have gotten so bad that recent reports speak of large cash injections being provided to Ethiopian rebel forces operating on the South Sudan/Ethiopian border by the South Sudanese government in an attempt to disrupt the camps being operated there by the Ethiopia regime that are arming and training Mr. Machar’s death squads.

Ethiopia has done a really good job of pissing off its neighbors, with Sudan (whose economy has been badly hurt by the latest oil field closures), Egypt (threatened by the new damn Ethiopia is building on the Nile River that will cut critical amounts of the water it depends on), Uganda (South Sudan’s largest trading partner whose economy was already in dire straits even before the civil war destroyed trade between the two) and even Kenya, which also lost a major trading partner following the USA backed coup growing increasingly estranged from the regime.

Uganda has a significant military force supporting Salva Kiir’s government and it is being reported that Egypt has set up a military base in South Sudan as well.

The UN response has been predictable with the USA’s lapdog Secretary General Ban Ki “slippery eel” Moon having appointed the former head of Ethiopian military intelligence to run the UN “peacekeeping” operation in South Sudan. This is the guy who used to run the genocidal counterinsurgency in the Ethiopian Ogaden and was past commander of
the almost 10,000 Ethiopian “peacekeepers” stationed around the Sudanese oil fields (where UN staff held press conferences last year complaining about the Ethiopians providing weapons to local militias, now fighting under Riek Machar leadership).

Ethnic cleansing, mass murder, famine, you name it, the list of crimes being committed against the people of South Sudan in the “national interests” of the good old USA in an attempt to deny China access to African oil should come as no surprise for the history of Pax Americana and its indentured servant Ethiopia in the Horn of Africa is nothing new. Patience with the Ethiopian regime is running short amongst its neighbors and many are hoping that regime change in Ethiopia rather than in South Sudan may soon come to fruit.

Thomas C. Mountain has been living and writing from Eritrea since 2006.

15 October, 2014
Countercurrents.org

 

By Alan Hart

For me the most depressing thing about the debate in the British House of Commons on a non-binding motion to recognise Palestine as a state alongside Israel was that all MPs who participated, including those who made informed and honest contributions, still seem to believe that a two-state solution is possible. It isn’t.

One MP, Crispin Blunt, a Conservative and one of the two chairmen of the Palestine All-Party Parliamentary Group, went some way to indicate why it isn’t but he didn’t complete the journey. He said, “The settlers are a problem for any Israeli government.”

The reality behind that statement was defined for me as far back as 1980 by Shimon Peres when he accepted me as the linkman in a secret, exploratory dialogue between him and Arafat. (The full story of that initiative is told in The Blood Oath, Chapter 12 of Volume Three of the American edition of my book Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews).

Though he welcomed the initiative Peres said he feared it was “already too late” (for a two-state solution). I asked him why. He replied:

“Every day that passes sees new bricks on new settlements. Begin is not stupid. He knows exactly what he is doing. He is stuffing the West Bank with settlers to create the conditions for a Jewish civil war. He knows that no Israeli prime minister is going down in history as the one who gave the order to the Jewish army to shoot large numbers of Jews out of the West Bank.” Pause. “I’m not.”

The question I would put to all British MPs (and elected members of parliaments everywhere) is this.

If it was too late in 1980 when they were only about 70,000 illegal Jewish settlers on the occupied West Bank, how much more too late is it today when there are about 600,000, with that number rising on an almost daily basis?

There is a case for saying that if ever the governments of the U.S. and Western Europe indicated that they were prepared to subject Israel to real pressure (isolation and sanctions) to try to cause it to end the occupation, a significant number of illegal Jewish settlers would be prepared to take their leave of the West Bank in return for compensation; but very many would not. So, as Egypt’s President Sadat said to me a few months before he was assassinated, “For there to be peace, there has to be a Jewish civil war.” In principle that’s the case but it will not happen for the reason Peres gave me all those years ago.

Another aspect of the unreality of the House Commons debate was the assumption and assertion of virtually everyone who participated that “peace can only come through negotiations.” The reality this ignores is that Zionism is not interested in good faith negotiations to produce an acceptable amount of justice for the Palestinians. Zionism is committed to obtaining for keeps the maximum amount of land with the minimum number of Arabs on it.

The question the British House of Commons (and parliaments everywhere) ought to be debating is this.

Are we to go on allowing Israel to defy international law or not?

Footnote

It was not at all surprising that Conservative MPs who are content to read from Zionism’s script spoke the most nonsense.

One of them, British-born, Jewish Robert Halfon, a former Political Director of Conservative Friends of Israel and currently Principal Private Secretary to Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne, said “the Palestinians already have a state – Jordan.”

He also asserted that if Israel did not have the Iron Dome, “hundreds of thousands” of Israelis would have been killed by Hamas’s rockets.

And he was on the same page as Netanyahu and those to the neo-fascist right of him who prefer to ignore the fact that Hamas’s top leaders have been on the public record for some years with the statement that while Hamas will never recognise Israel’s “right” to exist, it is prepared to live with it in a two-state solution provided that is the wish of the Palestinians as confirmed by a referendum. Halfon asserted that Hamas wanted “only the destruction of Israel.” If he really believes that Hamas could destroy Israel, he’s as nuts as Netanyahu.
Alan Hart is a former ITN and BBC Panorama foreign correspondent. He is author of Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews.

15 October, 2014
Alanhart.net

 

By Mairead Maguire

BELFAST – How can we explain that in the 2lst century we are still training millions of men and women in our armed forces and sending them to war?

There are more choices than war or peace, there are multi-optional choices and a civilian-based non-military diplomatic-political policy has more chance of succeeding in solving a violent conflict.

In war, the cost in civilian lives is incalculable, not to mention the many military personnel whose lives are destroyed. Then there is the cost to the environment and the cost to human potential as our scientists waste their lives planning and researching even more horrific weapons which increasingly, in modern war, kill more civilians than combatants.

For example, the United States and the United Kingdom committed genocide against the Iraqi people when, between 1990 and 2012, they killed 3.3 million people – including 750,000 children – through sanctions and wars.

We all also watched our television screens in horror in July and August this year as the Israeli military bombarded civilians in Gaza for 50 days.

But, why are we surprised at this cruelty of military when they are doing what they are trained to do – kill, at the behest of their politicians and some people?

It is shocking to listen to politicians and military boast of their military prowess when in lay persons’ terms what it means is killing of human beings.

Every day through our television and local culture, we are subjected to the glorification of militarism and bombarded with war propaganda by governments telling us we need nuclear weapons, arms manufacturers, and war to kill the killers who might kill us.

However, too many people do not have peace or the basics to help them achieve peace.

They live their lives struggling with the roots of violence, some of which are poverty, war, militarism, occupation, racism and fascism. They have seen that they release uncontrollable forces of tribalism and nationalism. These are dangerous and murderous forms of identity which we need to transcend.

To do this, we need to acknowledge that our common humanity and human dignity are more important than our different traditions; to recognise that our lives and the lives of others are sacred and we can solve our problems without killing each other; to accept and celebrate diversity and otherness; to work to heal the ‘old’ divisions and misunderstandings; to give and accept forgiveness, and to choose listening, dialogue and diplomacy; to disarm and demilitarise as the pathway to peace.

In my own country, in Northern Ireland, when faced with a violent and prolonged ethnic/political conflict, the civil community organised to take a stand, rejected all violence and committed itself to working for peace, justice and reconciliation.

Through unconditional, all-inclusive dialogue, we reached peace and continue to work to build up trust and friendship and change in the post-conflict era. The civil community took a leading role in this journey from violence to peace.

I hope this will give an example to other countries such as Ukraine, where it is necessary for an end to the war, and a solution of the problem on the basis of the Charter of the United Nations and the Helsinki Accords.

We are also challenged to continue to build structures through which we can cooperate and which reflect our relations of interconnection and interdependence. The vision of the founders of the European Union to link countries together economically in order to lessen the likelihood of war among nations is a worthy endeavour.

Unfortunately instead of putting more energy into providing help for E.U. citizens and others, we are witnessing the growing militarisation of Europe, its role as a driving force for armament and its dangerous path, under the leadership of the United States/NATO, towards a new ‘cold’ war and military aggression.

The European Union and many of its countries, which used to take initiatives in the United Nations for peaceful settlements of conflict, are now one of the most important war assets of the U.S./NATO front. Many countries have also been drawn into complicity in breaking international law through U.S./U.K./NATO wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and so on.

It is for this reason that I believe NATO should be abolished and that steps be taken towards disarmament through non-violent action and civil resistance.

The means of resistance are very important. Our message that armed groups, militarism and war do not solve our problems but aggravate them challenges us to use new ways and that is why we need to teach the science of peace at every level of society.

The whole of civilisation is now facing a challenge with the growth of what President Dwight Eisenhower (1953-1961) warned the U.S. people against – the military/industrial complex – saying that it would destroy U.S. democracy.

We know now that a small group made up of the military/industrial/media/corporate/academic elite, whose agenda is profit, arms, war and valuable resources, now holds power worldwide and has a stronghold on elected governments. We see this in the gun and Israeli lobbies, among others, which wield great power over U.S. politics.

We have witnessed this in ongoing wars, invasions, occupations and proxy wars, all allegedly in the name of “humanitarian intervention and democracy”. However, in reality, they are causing great suffering, especially to the poor, through their policies of arms, war, domination and control of other countries and their resources.

Unmaking this agenda of war and demanding the implementation of justice, human rights and international law is the work of the peace movement.

We can turn our current path of destruction around by spelling out a clear vision of what kind of a world we want to live in, demanding an end to the military-industrial complex, and insisting that our governments adopt policies of peace, just economics and cooperation with each other in this multi-polar world.

Mairead Corrigan Maguire won the 1976 Nobel Peace Prize for her work for peace in Northern Ireland.

15 October, 2014
Inter Press Service

 

By John Wight

Che Guevera died 47 years ago, but he continues to inspire millions around the world. The popularity he enjoys so many years after his death is proof that though “they” may have killed the man, “they” will never extinguish the ideas for which he died.

On 9 October 1967, Ernesto “Che” Guevara was executed by a Bolivian army officer at the end of his ill-fated attempt to foment revolution throughout Latin America. He was executed at the behest of the CIA, who hoped his death would deal a shattering blow to the influence of the Cuban Revolution in a part of the world traditionally viewed as America’s backyard; its role to provide the cheap labor, raw materials, and markets required to maintain the huge profits of US corporations.

But the CIA were wrong, just as successive US administrations have been wrong, in thinking that the ideas for which Che Guevara fought and died could ever be ended with a bullet. On the contrary, over four decades on from his death the Cuban Revolution continues as a beacon of inspiration and hope to the poor of the undeveloped world.

That a tiny island nation with a population of just over 11 million people, located 90 miles off the coast of Florida, should have the temerity to assert its right to political and economic independence from the United States and survive for so long is nothing short of immense. Indeed, many believe that not only have the ideas for which Che Guevara gave his life survived, they have never been more potent, illustrated by the left turn taken throughout the region in recent years. It is a political turn responsible for transforming a part of the world traditionally associated with military juntas, right wing autocracies, and US puppet regimes into the very opposite.

Today Latin America is a part of the world where democracy has taken root, where the tenets of the Washington neoliberal consensus have been rejected in favor of social and economic justice as the objective of government.

Undeniably, Che’s legend has not only continued unabated since his death it has grown. In every town and every city, from Los Angeles to London, Beirut to Bethlehem, from Nairobi to New Delhi, the iconic image of him carrying that expression of burning defiance, captured by Alberto Korda in 1960, is as ubiquitous as it is powerful, found on everything from T-shirts to coffee mugs, rugs, posters and a myriad other items. For many it represents something transcendent in the human experience, an idea that stands in opposition to the values of individualism and materialism which are drummed into us every minute of every day in the West.

A read through Che’s writings brings home the fierce determination of a man who burned with anger at the injustice, oppression and exploitation suffered by the world’s poor. In his address to the United Nations General Assembly in1964, he said:

“All free men of the world must be prepared to avenge the crime of the Congo. Perhaps many of those soldiers, who were turned into sub-humans by imperialist machinery, believe in good faith that they are defending the rights of a superior race. In this assembly, however, those peoples whose skins are darkened by a different sun, colored by different pigments, constitute the majority. And they fully and clearly understand that the difference between men does not lie in the color of their skin, but in the forms of ownership of the means of production, in the relations of production.”

Not satisfied with merely delivering such a powerful affirmation of solidarity with the poor and oppressed of another land, Che embarked for the Congo in an attempt to give meaning to them, in the process abandoning the relative comfort and status earned him by the success of the Cuban Revolution to risk his life in a mission to spread the revolution throughout the developing world.

In a later speech to the Afro-Asian Conference in February 1965, he offered this admonition:

“There are no borders in this struggle to the death. We cannot be indifferent to what happens anywhere in the world, because a victory by any country over imperialism is our victory, just as any country’s defeat is a defeat for all of us.”

For Che Guevara the struggle against imperialism and exploitation could only be won gun in hand, utilizing in his view the same kind of violence used without compunction by the oppressor. Not for him non-violence and peaceful protest. His experience, his observation of the poverty and truncated lives suffered by millions throughout Latin America and Africa instilled in him a rage and a desire to visit retribution on the system he considered responsible.

In this he was very much a product of his time, when people of the developing world were locked out of the democratic process in parts of the world where right-wing dictatorships made recourse to violence inevitable.

Despite the myriad articles, analysis, and commentary produced on Che Guevara and his life, much of it hostile and withering, one incident sums up more than any article ever could the enduring force of the Cuban Revolution whose ideas he died trying to spread.

In 2006 Mario Teran, an old man living in Bolivia, was treated by Cuban doctors volunteering their services free of charge to Bolivia’s poor, just as they have and do to the poor in every corner of the developing world in medical missions that have transformed the lives of millions. They performed an operation to remove cataracts from Mario’s eyes, which succeeded in restoring his sight.

Mario Teran is not just any old man, however. He is the Bolivian army officer who executed Ernesto “Che” Guevara in 1967.

John Wight is a writer and commentator specializing in geopolitics, UK domestic politics, culture and sport.

9 October 2014