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By Alan Hart

04 December, 2013

@ Alanhart.net

Following the interim agreement with Iran the next six months will tell us whether or not the American-led Zionist lobby and Zionism itself has played its last card and lost. If it does lose President Obama will be free to use the leverage he has to try to cause Israel to be serious about peace on terms almost all Palestinians and most other Arabs and Muslims everywhere could accept (and which would not pose any threat to the wellbeing and security of those Jews now living in Palestine that became Israel and who wanted to stay). The stakes could not be higher.

As I write I am recalling what former President Carter said to my wife and I when we met with him and Rosalyn, words I quote in my book Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews and which bear repeating. “Any American president has only two windows of opportunity to take on the Zionist lobby – in the first nine months of his first term and the last year of his second term if he has one.”

Before the interim agreement with Iran there was a case for saying that Obama was in danger of going down in history as one of the least effective and worst presidents America has had. It’s now possible that he’ll have the opportunity to become a real peacemaker and go down in history as one of America’s greatest presidents.

Also in my mind as I write are the words of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu when he was denouncing and rejecting the interim agreement with Iran. “Today the world became a much more dangerous place because the most dangerous regime in the world has made a significant step in obtaining the most dangerous weapons in the world.” This, about a country which does not possess nuclear weapons and doesn’t want them, from the man whose state possesses hundreds of nuclear warheads and tactical battlefield nuclear weapons. No, Mr. Netanyahu, while it is led by you and/or your kind, Israel has the most dangerous regime in the world.

I remain puzzled by what Netanyahu really is. Does he believe all the nonsense he talks about Iranian and Arab and other Muslim military threats to Israel’s existence, in which case he has become the victim of his own propaganda and is deluded to the point of clinical madness; or does he know he is spouting propaganda nonsense every time he opens his mouth? (When making a judgement keep in mind the Mossad’s motto – “By way of deception thou shall do war.”)

In any event, if there was a Nobel Prize for Nonsense, it would have to be awarded to Netanyahu. He’s light years ahead of any other contender. If Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s propaganda chief, was still alive, I imagine he’d say in private, “Netanyahu makes me look like an amateur.”

A recent Kevin Barrett article was headlined Iran Deal Fallout: Top Ten Ways Netanyahu Will Try To Sabotage Peace. One of the ways was “Announce that earth is under invasion by aliens and that Iran is on the side of the aliens.” That made me smile but with Netanyahu anything except peace on terms the Palestinians could accept is possible.

And what about those who to date have been most prepared to do Netanyahu’s bidding? In theory Israel’s stooges in the U.S. Congress, if they commanded a two-thirds majority, could override a presidential veto on imposing tough new sanctions on Iran for the purpose of wrecking the prospects of a final agreement with it. The question is – will they dare to do it in the next six months?

My speculation is that they will huff, puff and threaten but won’t actually do it. Why not? If they did they would expose themselves like never before for what they really are – not merely stooges of the Zionist lobby, AIPAC in particular, but agents acting against America’s own best interests and therefore traitors.

I am happy to go public with this positive speculation in part because of an article by Philip Weiss. In it he noted that Netanyahu has been playing the Iran threat card “to keep the world’s eyes off the West Bank and Jerusalem.” Then, commenting on Netanyahu’s statement that Israel will not allow Iran to attain nuclear capability, he wrote this. “The ardent supporters of the Jewish state in the U.S. have never been in a worse position. They are largely supportive of this deal (as are a majority of all Americans, I add). They will have to throw Netanyahu under the bus.”

Not long ago the proclaimed view of some American supporters of Israel right or wrong was that Obama was throwing Israel under a bus. The idea that American Jews should now throw Netanyahu under it appeals to me, as I am sure it does to Obama.

If Congress does back away from doing Zionism’s bidding to wreck the prospects for a new-start American and European accommodation with Iran, what options if any will Netanyahu’s Israel have to distract the world’s media and political attention from Zionism’s on-going colonization – ethnic cleansing slowly and by stealth – of the occupied West Bank?

Only one that I can see. War.

Shortly after he stepped down earlier this month as Netanyahu’s national security adviser, Yaakov Amidror told The Financial Times that Israel can stop Iran’s nuclear program militarily and can do so on its own. He said the Israeli Air Force has been conducting “very long-range flights…all around the world” in preparation for a potential strike on Iran, which could set back its nuclear program “for a very long time.” He went on: “There is no question the prime minister would make the unilateral decision to use military force should it become necessary. We don’t need permission from anyone – we are an independent state. We have our own sovereignty. If Israel is in a position in which Israel must defend itself, Israel will do it.”

Amidror’s stated position, like that of his former master, is nonsense – perhaps disingenuous is a more appropriate term – because there is no Iranian military threat Israel will have to defend itself against. (As I have noted in previous articles, even if Iran did posses nuclear bombs, no Iranian leadership would launch a first strike against Israel because doing so would result in Iran being devastated and quite possibly wiped off the face of the earth). And that’s why I remain, on balance, convinced that Netanyahu’s implicit threat to go it alone with an attack on Iran is a bluff. But that said there is actually no telling what Netanyahu might do when trapped in a corner of his own construction with no way out.

Question: Why do I believe Netanyahu’s assertion that Iran is a threat to Israel’s existence (when it isn’t) is Zionism’s last card?

My answer is not complicated. From the moment of Israel’s creation mainly by Zionist terrorism and ethnic cleansing, Zionism’s guiding strategy has been to present and have Israel perceived in the Western world as the VICTIM when it was and is the AGGRESSOR and OPPRESSOR. In the context of Jewish history, Zionism’s calculation was that so long as Israel was perceived in the Western world as the victim, it could do what it liked to impose its will on the Palestinians and the whole region in the name of “self-defense”.

For most of the second half of the 20th century, and thanks in large part to the mainstream media’s refusal to come to grips with the truth of history, Zionism succeeded in getting its lie accepted as truth. (I say “lie” without fear of contradiction because, as I document in detail in my book, the Arab regimes never, ever had any intention of fighting Israel to liberate Palestine). So, conned into believing that Israel really did live in constant danger of annihilation, the “driving into the sea” of its Jews, most people in North America and Western Europe were content to go along with the notion that whatever Israel as the “victim” did to protect itself was understandable and acceptable.

But with time, as the truth began to trickle out and nuclear-armed Israel demonstrated that it was the region’s military superpower which could defeat any combination of Arab force, the perception of Israel being in danger of annihilation began to fade, and its leaders, Netanyahu especially, realized that they needed a new enemy if they were to maintain the fiction that Israel was the victim.

It has to said that Netanyahu’s effort to sell the idea of Iran as a threat to Israel’s existence was assisted by some stupid rhetoric from President Ahmadinejad though, to be fair to him, he did not say, as the mainstream Western media still insists that he did, that Israel should be “wiped off the map”. That phrasing clearly implies that he wanted to see all Israeli Jews slaughtered. What he actually said was that he wanted Zionism to disappear as the Soviet Union had done – i.e. without violence, peacefully. Put another way, he was saying he wanted to see Palestine de-Zionized. In reality there was absolutely no implication in what he said that Israeli Jews should be sent packing from Palestine or killed. (One of Ahmadinejad’s problems is that he did not know how to talk to the West, and as a consequence he had no idea of how what he said could and would be twisted and misrepresented by Israel’s leaders).

In summary, the alleged Iran threat is Zionism’s last card because there is no other enemy it could present as a military threat to Israel’s existence in order to justify its criminal policies and actions in the name of self-defense.

Though events may prove me wrong, my overall speculation is that Zionism’s last card is not a winner and that Obama will succeed in getting, six months or so from now, what he wants – a new-start and mutually beneficial relationship with Iran. And defeat for the Zionist lobby will, as I indicated in my opening paragraph, free him to use the presidential leverage to try to oblige Israel to be serious about peace on terms the vast majority of Palestinians could accept.

In my view the best way for him to make a start down that road if and when the time comes would be to say publicly to Israel and all Jewish Americans what President Kennedy said privately to Golda Meir when he was suggesting to her by obvious implication that she and her leadership colleagues should dump Ben-Gurion as prime minister and have him replaced by Levi Eshkol. (That much happened as Kennedy wanted, and if he had been allowed to live he was planning very early in his second term to invite Eshkol and Egypt’s President Nasser to the White House for peace talks). At the time, and with the help of the Zionist lobby, Ben-Gurion was blocking Kennedy’s efforts to prevent Israel possessing nuclear weapons. IN OTHER WORDS, KENNEDY WAS SEEKING TO PREVENT ISRAEL ACTUALLY DOING, FOR REAL, WHAT ISRAEL IS FALSELY ACCUSING IRAN OF DOING!

To give readers of this article something of the full flavour of what Kennedy said to Golda and the considerations which made him say it, I am now going to quote two and a bit pages from Chapter 11 of Volume Two of the American edition of my book which is sub-titled David Becomes Goliath. The title of the chapter is Turning Point – The Assassination of President Kennedy. The conversation between the young president and the aging Mother Israel took place on 27th December 1962 on the veranda of the Kennedy holiday home in Palm Springs. The only other person present to keep a note of what was said was Philips Talbot, an assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern Affairs. He had he been relieved the day after Kennedy entered the White House to get a message from the new president saying that although he had received nearly 90 percent of the Jewish votes, he was “not in their pockets”. For his part Kennedy really trusted Talbot. Only selected parts of his eight-page memorandum of the conversation were de-classified in 1979. Some of what he wrote was deleted and some remains classified, for which read suppressed, to this day for “security reasons”. (Ha! Ha!). The text I am quoting and the whole chapter from which it comes begs the question of how different the history of what used to be called the Arab-Israeli conflict might have been if Kennedy had been allowed to live and serve a second term.

QUOTE FROM MY BOOK

President Kennedy’s message to Golda was to the effect that he was ready, willing and able to give Israel an irrevocable commitment that America would guarantee Israel’s security and survival, but that the giving of such a commitment was conditional. The U.S. could not and would not give it to a nuclear-armed Jewish state. Israel had to agree to IAEA inspection of Dimona and if that proved, as he suspected it would, that Israel was in the process of producing a nuclear bomb of its own, work on the project would have to be stopped. Terminated. And… if that meant Golda and her colleagues getting rid of Ben-Gurion, they should do it.

That was not, of course, how President Kennedy would have put it. No American President could have spoken in such terms, even in private on the secluded veranda of his holiday home. But it was the message Golda could extract from what he did say to her; and he knew she was more than smart enough to do the extracting.

The known record of what Kennedy said to Golda indicates that he started out by defining what he called “the limitations of America’s relationship with Israel.” It was the case, he said, that “the United States has a special relationship with Israel in the Middle East really comparable to that which it has with Britain over a wide range of world affairs. But for us to play properly the role we are called upon to play, we cannot afford the luxury of identifying Israel as our exclusive friend.”

The best way for the United States to effectively serve Israel’s national security interests, he went on, “is to maintain and develop America’s relations with other nations in the region. Our influence could then be brought to bear, as needed in particular disputes, to ensure that Israel’s essential interests are not compromised. If we pulled out of the Arab Middle East and maintained our ties only with Israel this would not be in Israel’s interests.”

The idea of America “pulling out” of the Arab Middle East was not on anybody’s public agenda, so why did President Kennedy feel the need to talk about it? The implication is that he was under mounting pressure from the Zionist lobby and its stooges in Congress to abandon Eisenhower’s policy of even-handedness, and to look upon Israel as America’s only true friend and reliable ally in the region.

On the subject of America’s relations with the Arabs, the President said this: “Israel’s actions and policies are making it difficult for the United States to maintain good relations with the Arabs and support Israel.” The examples he cited were the diversion of the Jordan River waters, reprisal attacks and cross-border raids, and the continuing refusal to address the Palestinian refugee problem. Those matters, together with the U.S. sale to Israel of advanced Hawk missiles, were “putting severe strain on American relations with Arab countries.”

Though she would not have liked hearing it, Kennedy was also frank about what he regarded as an essential element of Israel’s security. It was Israel’s own behaviour towards the Arabs.

Of course there would be differences about how to handle certain matters, Kennedy said. He believed, for example, that greater use should be made of the UN in dealing with border problems. (They both knew that Ben-Gurion and Dayan and their fans had nothing but contempt for the UN).

Then, with a firmness no doubt masked to some extent by his charm, the President told Golda that the United States required Israel to recognize that American and Israeli security interests were not always one and the same. He said:

“We know that Israel faces enormous security problems but we do, too. We came almost to direct confrontation with the Soviet Union last spring and again recently in Cuba. Because we have taken on wide security responsibilities, we always have the potential of becoming involved in a major crisis not of our own making.” And that was why “we have got to concern ourselves with the whole Middle East. We would like Israel’s recognition that this partnership we have with it produces strains for the United States in the Middle East… when Israel takes such action as it did last spring, whether right or wrong, those actions involve not just Israel but also the United States.”

The particular action to which Kennedy was referring was the massive Israeli reprisal attack on Syria that had embarrassed the Soviet Union and for which Israel was condemned by the Security Council.

President Kennedy’s bottom-line was that Israel had to consider the interests of the United States. He said: “What we want from Israel arises because our relationship is a two-way street.”

Never before had an American President dared to speak so frankly to an Israeli leader. The tragedy was that – because of pork-barrel American politics – it had to be said in private.

As he indicated to Golda, Kennedy’s real fear was that Israel’s policy of seeking to impose its will on the Arabs by force could provoke a superpower confrontation. He knew that Soviet leaders did not want a Hot War with the U.S. over the Middle East, and that they were every bit as frightened as he was by the prospect of it happening; but he was wise enough to know that they might have to respond if Israel went on humiliating the Arabs with demonstrations of military superiority. It was a matter of face for the Soviets as well as their Egyptian and Syrian customers. That was what Kennedy really meant when he told Golda of the dangers he saw of the U.S becoming involved in a major crisis “not of our own making.”

President Kennedy was so concerned by the possibility of a superpower confrontation being provoked by Israel’s arrogance of power that he saw merit in the idea of the Jewish state being “neutral”, meaning non-aligned. We know that from an off-the-record interview he gave to Amos Elon, Washington correspondent of Ha’aretz, Israel’s daily newspaper for seriously thoughtful people. The interview took place in August 1961 (when Zionist lobby pressure on Kennedy was intense), but it was not published until two days after Kennedy’s assassination. According to Elon, the President said he would be pleased to see a neutral Israel if that would lead to improved relations between the United States and the Soviet Union and, as a consequence, to improved relations between Israel and the Arab world.

That was explosive political stuff. In my analysis there is no better or more dramatic illustration of the great gulf that existed between President Kennedy and the vested military-industrial interests named by President Eisenhower. The MIC would have regarded Kennedy’s concept of a neutral Israel as heresy. How so? The MIC in America had wanted the Soviet Union to be drawn into the Middle East, in order to have a much bigger board on which to play the Cold War Game. (Could that have been one of the reasons why Dulles refused to provide Nasser with arms for defense?)

Though there were moments of great tension and extreme crisis – the Cuban missile crisis, for example – when one of the two superpowers did not play by the rules, the Cold War really was more of a game than not, played for the purpose of creating jobs and generating wealth by the production and selling of weapons. What Kennedy really wanted (and what Gorbachev would come to want for the Soviet Union before it fell apart) was an end to that nonsense, and for the vast resources of all kinds that went in waging the Cold War to be diverted to the long twilight struggle of his inaugural speech – the struggle “against the common enemies of man” including “poverty and disease and war itself.”

Golda left her meeting with President Kennedy believing that if Ben-Gurion continued to defy him on Dimona, Israel would be on a confrontation course with him for the remainder of his first term and all of his second; and that, she knew, would be disastrous for the Jewish state and no doubt Jews everywhere. If Ben-Gurion could not be persuaded to change his mind and agree to IAEA inspection of Dimona, he would have to go.

That was the message Kennedy wanted Mother Israel to get. She got it

END OF QUOTE FROM MY BOOK

In the context above what I am suggesting is that if and when he is free to put real pressure on Israel to be serious about peace with the Palestinians, Obama should make best use of the Kennedy quote – “What we want from Israel arises because our relationship is a two-way street”. And he could and should put flesh on that bone by saying, among other things, that it is not in America’s own best interests to allow Israel to go on denying the Palestinians an acceptable measure of justice. But his crunch point could and should be something like this. “What America wants and needs, in order to best protect its own interests in the Arab and wider Muslim world, is an end to Israel’s denial of an acceptable amount of justice for the Palestinians. Unless we get that, I as president will have no choice but to use the leverage at my disposal to press you.” Israelis would know, even if Obama didn’t spell it out, that the pressure would include an end to American vetoes of Security Council resolutions condemning Israel and sanctions.

If Obama was to go public with such a position in the wake of defeat for the Zionist lobby over the Iran nuclear issue, I think it’s reasonable to assume that a big majority of Jewish Americans would signal, if only by their silence and/or refusal to condemn Obama, that their first loyalty was to America not Israel.

There is no certainty about how the Jews of Israel would respond, but there’s a good case for believing that because what most of them care most about is the relationship with America, a significant majority of them would say to Netanyahu and his coalition government something like: “Enough is enough. We insist that you make peace with the Palestinians on terms they can accept, even if that means a short, sharp civil war with those settlers who refuse to withdraw from the West Bank and be relocated and compensated.”

For those who might believe there is little or no prospect of a Jewish civil war in the event of President Obama insisting with leverage as necessary on Israel making peace with the Palestinians on terms they could accept, I recommend Chapter 12 of Volume Three of the American edition of my book. This chapter is titled The Blood Oath. It reveals that Sharon convened a secret meeting of many senior military officers to sign a blood oath committing them to make common cause with those settlers who would resist “to the death” the implementation of any government decision to withdraw from the West Bank. My named and quoted source for that dramatic story was none other than Ezer Weizman, Israel’s defense minister of the time.

When Ezer told me of the secret meeting minutes after he learned about it, he asked me a question. Did I think Sharon would act in accordance with the blood oath he and others had signed? I said: “What I think is of no consequence. I’m a visiting goy. You’re Israel’s defense minister, what do you think?” He replied: “Of course, he would. He’s mad enough to nuke the entire fucking Arab world!“

The coming months will tell us how mad Netanyahu is.

And also whether or not the optimism expressed in this post was justified.

Alan Hart is a former ITN and BBC Panorama foreign correspondent. He is author of Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews. He blogs at http://www.alanhart.net and tweets via http://twitter.com/alanauthor

By Robert J. Burrowes

04 December, 2013

@ Countercurrents.org

As we evaluate the outcomes of the recent UN climate negotiations in Warsaw, one lesson that we are invited to learn, again, relates to our strategy for getting effective action taken on the ongoing climate catastrophe and other critical environmental problems. Is lobbying elites to change their behaviour an effective strategy for change?

My experience, reinforced by decades of casual observation, is that lobbying elites is a complete waste of time and that a strategy that focuses on inviting ordinary individuals and groups to take action in the desired direction is far more effective. Why do I say this?

Mainstream political processes are usually described as ‘democratic’ which means that they are supposed to be responsive to and representative of the popular will. When they were originally created, this was usually the explicitly stated or implicitly presumed aim. However, with the passage of time and the steady rise of corporate power, professional lobbyists and corporate money have corrupted the ‘democratic ideal’ so that the ‘people’s representatives’ are no longer responsive to the people. Corporations and their industry organisations, front groups and lobbyists have seized control of governments and key international organisations. And other powerful non-state actors, including particular religious elites (including Zionism, the Vatican and Wahhabi Islam) exercise disproportionate power in particular contexts too.

In essence, this means that elites will continue to encourage us to ‘exercise your democratic right’ to vote and to lobby because once our political effort has been so channelled, our dissent is easily dissipated and thus ignored.

Conservative political ‘action’ groups of various kinds often play a part in drawing us into using ineffective strategies and we need to be aware of the part they are playing on behalf of elite interests even if this is simply the result of an inadequate political analysis rather than something more sinister.

Any organisation committed to genuine grassroots empowerment and mobilisation would not waste its time lobbying delegates at a UN conference given that the UN was captured by elite interests a long time ago: A casual perusal of UN decisions will reveal that its orientation is to serve elite interests, whatever flowery rhetoric fills the pages of various UN documents, and when the UN Security Council sometimes makes a move in the direction of justice (for example, on Palestine), the US government will usually exercise its veto.

So what can we do instead? Well there are plenty of genuine grassroots initiatives out there which are worthy of being considered for your support. And given that the phenomenal paramilitary response coordinated by national elites to thwart the Occupy movement illustrates how much they fear genuine grassroots mobilisation, we can draw some useful lessons on how to improve our strategy in future. For example, good nonviolent strategists have long been aware that tactics involving concentration (where many activists are gathered in the same place, perhaps attending a large rally) are more vulnerable to military/police repression than are tactics utilising dispersion (where activists participate without gathering in large numbers). This is because it is much easier to direct repressive violence at a crowd than it is by going door-to-door.

Hence, while gathering people in large numbers can be exciting and empowering when it happens occasionally (and ways to minimise the risk of repression can be utilised in these contexts: see ‘Minimising the Risk of Police Violence’ http://dkeenan.com/NvT/40/9.txt) the strategic reality is that most of our struggle for peace, justice and environmental sustainability must take place ongoingly, at a mundane level, in our daily lives. Paradoxically, perhaps, virtually all of this struggle can be conducted without risk of any kind, especially if enough of us participate.

In short, the evidence teaches us that elites want us to lobby (or vote for) them so that they can ignore us, and that mobilizations that concentrate people in one place, while appropriate in some circumstances, provide easy targets for repression. So we need to develop strategies that primarily allow us to organise collectively in small local groups, to work with people whose values we share, which mobilize new participants in an empowering way, while minimizing the opportunities for military and police repression.

So if you are someone who is inclined to take action yourself, rather than to politely ask your oppressor to go easy on you for a change, then you are welcome to plan or be part of effective nonviolent strategies that will ultimately be decisive in shaping our future. If you don’t know one of these groups already, you might consider setting up a ‘Flame Tree’ group in your household, street or neighbourhood. See ‘The Flame Tree Project to Save Life on Earth’ http://tinyurl.com/flametree

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

By Antonio Tujan Jr.

04 December, 2013

@ Countercurrents.org

BALI, Indonesia (December 4) — Lines have been drawn as world leaders gather in Bali for the World Trade Organization’s ninth summit. On one side are the world’s wealthiest countries, including the United States, the European Union, Australia, and Canada, among others. On the other side, resistant to the proposals of this powerful bloc, stands the rest of the world: from the so-called “emerging” to developing to the least developed economies.

Since the 1999 Battle in Seattle, WTO conferences have been lightning rods for protest by developing countries and by progressive Northern groups as well. Across the global South — in Latin America, in Africa, in Asia — the trade-related debates during the WTO talks translate into harsh gut-level realities especially for the hundreds of millions of poor and marginalized. Rules that allow a wealthy country, the United States for example, to subsidize its corporate agriculture while barring a developing country’s state from giving support to its small-scale farmers, take on real life and devastating impact. The effects of the WTO’s trade policy are evinced by high rates of poverty and hunger, which has grown worse over the course of the institution’s 18-year existence.

Perhaps Indian commerce and industry minister Anand Sharma put it best when he told the Times of India, “We can no longer allow the interests of our farmers to be compromised at the altar of mercantilist ambitions of the rich. The Bali ministerial meeting is an opportunity for the developing countries to stay united.”

When the WTO was established in 1995, joining the cabal of other global institutions that have since framed international governance—the United Nations, the World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund—its domain was trade facilitation, defined by the WTO as the “simplification and harmonisation of international trade procedures.” In short, trade facilitation ensures easier movement of goods across national borders through “open,” “non-discriminating,” and “non-protectionist” mechanisms.

Given the devastating impact of WTO policies on the agriculture and industries of poor countries, it well deserves the distrust and even hostility with which it is viewed by many developing countries, civil society organizations (CSOs), and grassroots movements across the world. As the official talks begin in Bali, the call of thousands of protesters camped in a nearby sports arena remains “Junk the WTO!” underscoring just how problematic and unpopular the WTO’s mandate has become.

The Bali package

The centerpiece of the 9th WTO ministerial, popularly called the “Bali package,” is a bundle of proposals on three main issues: trade facilitation, agriculture, and the concerns of least developed countries (LDCs).

Essentially, the Bali package is a step backwards for the WTO. To explain that, we must look at the history of the institution — the WTO holds a ministerial conference every two years, and the time it takes to come to agreement on the items in its agenda is a round. The latest round began at Doha, Qatar in 2001 with the unveiling of the Doha Development Agenda (DDA).

The DDA—deceptively tagged as a “development round” since it was purportedly giving priority to developing country concerns—in fact pushed for agreements and rules on new issues that many developing countries were not ready or unwilling to tackle, such as investment, competition, government procurement, intellectual property and services. At the same time, it urged developing countries to further open up their markets through elimination of tariffs and subsidies.

Developing countries found themselves burdened with negotiations on new trade issues, even as wealthy states evaded discussion of the problems raised by poor countries arising from existing trade obligations. As a result, developing countries overwhelmingly rejected the new market-oriented proposals, while pushing for dialogue and more positive results on their issues with WTO rules.

Developed countries, on the other hand, refused to accept any deal that included “unfair protectionist measures” for poor countries. Now, more than a decade later, the Doha Round stalemate drags on.

The Bali Package is supposed to be the end of that stalemate. It claims to include not only the favored issues of wealthy countries (trade facilitation), but also the concerns of LDCs. In fact, the G33 coalition of developing countries successfully pushed for inclusion of some points in its own agenda — specifically, on agriculture and food security — in the Bali talks. The G33 proposals represent efforts to extract some positive gains for developing countries especially for their agricultural sector.

But there are two problems facing the G33. The first is that, meager as their proposals are, the bloc of developed countries still wants to reject them for being protectionist. The second is that, even if their proposals passed by sheer force of numbers on the floor and outside “Green Rooms”, their gains would remain disproportionately small compared to the immense obstacles still in front of them.

The hard truth is that, no matter what happens with the G33 proposal, the trade position of poor countries would hardly improve. This is because they would be expected to play the quid-pro-quo game by agreeing to the passage of the more comprehensive (and ultimately, damaging) proposals of wealthy countries. Indeed, such a supposed “success” in Bali would possibly be used to claim that the development-focused issues raised in the Doha round have finally been resolved. Indeed, the next step after passage of the Bali package would be the post-Bali Agenda, which promises to do even worse for developing countries by pushing for further expansion of trade rules in IT products, a wide range of services, and environmental goods and services.

Development justice

Pushing the interests of developing countries even further than what is possible within the WTO ministerial, a broad coalition of grassroots people’s organizations called the Indonesia People’s Alliance has organized a diverse five-day program of activities in Bali, called the People’s Global Camp (PGC). The PGC’s many major and side events have gathered thousands of anti-WTO and anti-imperialist participants from Indonesia and other countries. Workers, peasants, students, migrants, indigenous people, and other marginalized groups comprise the bulk of the PGC, having borne for decades the burden of the WTO’s skewed trade policies. They are challenging the questionable decisions being cooked by global powers in the current WTO summit.

For the G33 proposals and substantial talks on the Bali package to make sense, they must be framed within a much more innovative, even alternative, agenda that can rally the support of more developing countries and provide enough groundswell for member-states to rethink the premises that underlie the WTO. For instance, food sovereignty instead of merely food security as the framework for international trading policies. Development cooperation that truly empowers developing countries rather than promoting dependence that invariably leaves them worse off. A multilateral trading system premised on development justice instead of unregulated greed and exploitation.

Governments can only do so much across the negotiating table, especially with the world’s most powerful states pushing for the passage of the Bali package as it now stands. Grassroots movements and civil society, as they now gather outside the official venue, must continue to flex their muscles and call on developing countries to junk the WTO.

The People’s Global Camp holds the torch passed from Seattle to Hong Kong, from one ministerial conference to another. In this elaborate game of trade, politics, and power, the necessary role of mass movements is to expose and counter the WTO. We must challenge it to rise to the actual needs of the vast majority of the world’s population instead of perpetuating and even aggravating unequal trade relations that have, for decades, enriched so few at the expense of so many.

If the WTO doesn’t rise to the challenge of development justice, then the world’s peoples are justified in their demand that it be dismantled.

Antonio Tujan Jr. is Director of IBON International and co-chair of the People’s Coalition on Food Sovereignty, both of which are involved in civil society initiatives at the 9th World Trade Organization ministerial conference currently being held in Bali, Indonesia. Tujan is also a noted writer and editor of books on development and social transformation. He can be reached at tony.tujan@iboninternational.org

You can also contact an IBON International media officer at:

Email: media@iboninternational.org

Landline: +63 02 9277062

Mobile: +63 0927 9058092

IBON International website: http://www.iboninternational.org

By Russia Today

4 December 2013

@ RT.com

Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger strongly defended his newspaper’s publication of the Snowden leaks in response to a hostile grilling by a UK parliamentary committee Tuesday, as MPs attempted to show that national security was breached.

Prior to the parliamentary hearing, former Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald, who first broke the story on Snowden’s revelations had tweeted that he thought the parliamentary hearing would be like an inquisition.

UK ‘s inquisition of the Guardian today RT @peterkofod @ggreenwald pretty sure it’ll be streamed here http://t.co/RaLQK9T3dK

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) December 3, 2013

Responding to MPs, The Guardian ‘s editor-in-chief insisted that national security was never breached and that what his newspaper had published was in the public interest. He said the UK government’s response to the Snowden revelations about NSA and GCHQ spying and its attitude to The Guardian had dismayed many people around the world who believe in a free press.

Asked whether he loves his country by committee chairman Keith Vaz, Rusbridger replied that he was proud to live in a country where there is free press – unlike other countries which “are not generally democracies, where the press are not free to write about these things.” He added, however, that in Britain privacy should be balanced against national security and assured MPs that the entire Guardian staff and their families who live in the UK “want to be secure,” too.

Rusbridger said the only way the UK ‘s and the US ‘s mass surveillance programs had become public knowledge was through the press, because politicians had failed in their job to properly scrutinize and regulate the secret services’ activities.

He said that in Britain many MPs were appalled to learn of the lack of parliamentary oversight over intelligence agencies, and that The Guardian had faced intimidation from the UK government and some politicians, including calls for Rusbridger to be prosecuted, while the US had begun to debate the issue properly in Congress.

One Tory MP, Michael Ellis, asked Rusbridger pointedly whether, if he had known about British intelligence agencies breaking the Nazis’ Enigma Code in World War II, he would have published it at the time. The question appeared to fall flat, however, as Rusbridger insisted that even trainee journalists very clearly knew the difference between revealing mass spying on the population today and endangering the lives of Allied troops during the war.

In his reply, Rusbridger retorted that bringing up the Enigma Code “was a well-worn red herring” and that he could “make that distinction.”

Ellis also accused The Guardian of publishing personal information, including the sexual orientation of GCHQ workers, saying that a Guardian story said there was a LGBT pride group at GCHQ.

But Rusbridger replied: “There are gay members of GCHQ, is that a surprise?”

“It’s not amusing,” Ellis said. “They shouldn’t be outed by you.”

Rusbridger refuted Ellis’s claim immediately, however: “The existence of a pride group at GCHQ was on the Stonewall website, and it does not out anyone.”

On the sensitive question of whether The Guardian had published the names of any UK intelligence officers, Rusbridger insisted that the paper has not revealed a single name: “We have published no names and we have lost control of no names,” he said.

On the issue of endangering national security and accusations by the chiefs of spy agencies GCHQ, MI5 and MI6 that The Guardian ‘s revelations were a “gift” to terrorist groups, Rusbridger replied that the problem with these accusations was that they were too vague.

He cited four officials closely connected with security in the UK and the US , whom The Guardian asked if what the newspaper was publishing was a genuine security risk.

Norman Baker, a Home Office minister, a member of the US Senate intelligence committee who asked not to be named, a senior Obama administration official and a UK Whitehall official all said the material published by The Guardian had caused no damage to national security, Rusbridger said.

With reference to the Tor website, Rusbridger defended The Guardian ‘s actions. Tor, software that hides the identity of the site’s users and owners, has been used by dissidents to communicate with each other, but also by pedophiles. Rusbridger said that the newspaper talked to the White House for three weeks about whether publishing would damage security, and that there was nothing that The Guardian published that wasn’t on Tor’s own website.

When asked if he was better placed to judge what should be public than the heads of the security services, Rusbridger replied he was not better placed, but in a democracy national security should not always be used as a trump card.

At the beginning of the hearing, Rusbridger said that only 1 percent of the information in the Snowden files had been made public so far.

British MP Jeremy Corbyn told RT that The Guardian ‘s actions have been responsible and that the grilling by British MPs appeared to be a witch-hunt.

“It seems to me it’s ‘Hunt the Guardian’ time and ‘Hunt Alan Rusbridger’ time – this is ridiculous. Alan Rusbridger’s Guardian is a very responsible paper with a great record of investigative journalism and liberal reporting,” he said.

Glyn Moody, a writer and journalist specializing in IT, said that Rusbridger’s inquisition amounted to little more than theater.

“I think what we are seeing is theater to a large extent, in that the UK government is trying to present things in a certain way for appearances,” he told RT .

Legendary Watergate journalist supports Rusbridger

Carl Bernstein, one of the two Washington Post investigative journalists who broke the Watergate scandal, has written an open letter of support to Alan Rusbridger before his interrogation by UK MPs. The letter was published on The Guardian website.

Bernstein said the press had been admirable and responsible in reporting the Snowden NSA and GCHQ spying revelations and that the articles published by The Guardian, The New York Times and The Washington Post had not helped terrorists or enemies of national security.

“You are being called to testify at a moment when governments in Washington and London seem intent on erecting the most serious (and self-serving) barriers against legitimate news reporting – especially of excessive government secrecy – we have seen in decades,” Bernstein wrote to Rusbridger.

“As we learned during our experience with the Pentagon Papers and Watergate, it is essential that no prior governmental restraints or intimidation be imposed on a truly free press,” he continued.

It was a dogged, years-long investigation by Bernstein and his Washington Post colleague Bob Woodward that eventually broke the scandal over the Watergate break-in, which led to US President Richard Nixon having to resign in 1974.

The scandal began when the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate office complex in Washington DC , were broken into by people connected to the official organization of Nixon’s reelection campaign. A number of tape recordings implicated the president himself, and proved that Nixon had attempted to cover up the illegal skullduggery that took place after the break-in.

By BGPMUS & BGPSSS

04 December, 2013

@ Countercurrents.org

BHOPAL GAS PEEDITH MAHILA UDYOG SANGHATHAN (BGPMUS)

51, Rajender Nagar, Bhopal 462010

&

BHOPAL GAS PEEDITH SANGHARSH SAHAYOG SAMITI (BGPSSS)

C/o Delhi Science Forum, D-158, Saket, New Delhi 110017

STATEMENT ON THE OCCASION OF THE 29 TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE BHOPAL GAS LEAK DISASTER

02 December 2013

The escape of about 40 tonnes of methyl isocyanate (MIC) – a highly toxic chemical – from a storage tank in a pesticide plant of Union Carbide India Limited (UCIL) in Bhopal on the night of 02/03 December 1984 resulted in a terrible disaster. Due to criminal negligence and utter callousness on the part of the plant management in taking adequate safety precautions, water and other impurities – that cause MIC to react violently – entered one of the MIC storage tanks resulting in exothermic reactions and forcing MIC and its reaction products to escape in the form of froth and lethal gases. The escaping poisonous gases, which were heavier than air, spread across 40 sq. kms of area of Bhopal, covering about 36 of the 56 municipal wards, leaving in its wake more than 20,000 dead (over several years) and inflicting injuries in varying degree on about 550,000 other human inhabitants. The pernicious impact on flora and fauna in the affected area was equally grave. UCIL was then under the control of Union Carbide Corporation (UCC) – a U.S. multi-national company, which is currently wholly owned by the Dow Chemical Company (DOW), USA.

As noted on previous occasions, even nearly three decades after the disaster, neither the State nor the Central Government has made any attempt to either undertake a comprehensive assessment of the ramifications of the Bhopal disaster or to take necessary remedial measures. As a result, the gas-victims have had to wage concerted struggles in their quest for medical relief, compensation and justice. During 2013, while achieving partial success on the litigation front, lack of progress on most other pressing issues concerning the Bhopal gas-victims continue to remain a source of major concern. The current status of issues such as health care, enhancement of compensation, prosecution of the accused, remediation of the environment, etc., may be briefly recounted as follows:

1. HEALTH : The gross indifference on the part of the State and Central Governments to the health needs of the gas-victims continues to be as grim as ever. Apart from the fact that a fairly large infrastructure has been built in terms of buildings and number of hospital beds because of pressure exerted over the years by organizations supporting the cause of the Bhopal gas victims, the quality of health care in terms of investigation, diagnosis and treatment continue to be abysmal. The persistent apathy on the part of the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) and the State of Madhya Pradesh in monitoring the health status of the Bhopal gas victims – through computerization and networking of hospital medical records and by ensuring the supply of health-booklet to each gas-victim with his/her complete medical record – is shocking to say the least. That a proper protocol for treatment of each gas-related ailment has not been evolved even 29 years after the disaster speaks volumes about the apathetic attitude of the concerned authorities in this regard.

It was because of this utter insensitivity on the part of the ICMR and the State Government that BGPMUS, the Bhopal Group for Information & Action (BGIA) and BGPSSS – as Petitioners Nos.1, 2 and 3 – filed a Writ Petition (No.50 of 1998) before the Supreme Court on 14.01.1998. The Petitioners pleaded for restarting of disaster-related medical research, monitoring and recording the health status of each gas-victim, improvement in health care facilities, appropriate protocol for treatment of each disaster-related ailment, etc. After 14 years of litigation, the Supreme Court acceded to the above prayers of the Petitioners and vide Order dated 09.08.2012 had issued necessary directions to the ICMR and the State Government in this regard. The Petitioners were further directed to pursue the matter before the High Court of Madhya Pradesh, a task that the Petitioners are actively engaged in at present. However, the fact remains that even 15 months after the Supreme Court passed the said Order dated 09.08.2012, neither the ICMR nor the State Government have taken the necessary steps to comply fully with all the directions of the Court.

At the behest of BGPMUS and BGPSSS, the Supreme Court vide Order dated 27.09.2013 has also directed the National Informatics Centre (NIC), which is under the Union Ministry of Communications and Information Technology and which has been entrusted with the task of computerization of the medical records of the gas-victims, to be impleaded as a Respondent in the case. Moreover, vide Order dated 19.11.2013, the MP High Court has directed the NIC to interact with the Monitoring Committee to evolve a proper format for computerization of medical records and issuance of health booklet to each gas-victim with his/her complete medical record. (The Monitoring Committee, which includes representatives of the Petitioners as well as of the State Government, was set up by the Supreme Court vide order dated 17.08.2004 to monitor the health status of the gas-victims.) The High Court will issue further directions in this matter on 11.12.2013.

The urgency of restarting medical research arising from and related to the Bhopal disaster, which the ICMR had abandoned in 1994, can in no way be underplayed especially in the light of numerous reports about the high morbidity rate in the gas-exposed areas of Bhopal. The four consolidated medical reports on the Bhopal disaster that the ICMR has published so far provide ample proof in this regard. Reports about genetic defects among the progenies of some of the gas-victims are also a major cause for concern.

2. COMPENSATION : Twenty-one years after the unjust Bhopal Settlement of 14/15 February 1989, the Union of India had decided to file a curative petition [Curative Petition (Civil) Nos.345-347 of 2010] before the Supreme Court on 03.12.2010 against the terms of the Settlement on the plea that the Settlement was based on underestimated figures of the dead and injured. The petition has been admitted but has not yet been taken up for hearing. BGPMUS and BGPSSS do support the UOI’s Curative Petition in principle regarding the total casualty figure (i.e., 5,73,000, including dead and injured) and regarding the modalities for enhancing compensation (i.e., that it should be based on the Dollar-Rupee exchange rate that prevailed at the time of the Settlement). However, BGPMUS and BGPSSS have serious differences with the UOI’s stand regarding the number of dead (just 5295) and the seriously injured (just 4944) and regarding the paltry claims for relief & rehabilitation and for environmental damage. The stand of BGPMUS & BGPSSS regarding the number of dead (20,000+) and seriously injured (150,000+) has already been explained in the Special Leave Petition (SLP) that is currently pending before the Supreme Court as SLP (C) No.12893 of 2010, which will be heard only after the disposal of UOI’s Curative Petition. On 24.10.2013, BGPMUS & BGPSSS have filed an Interlocutory Application in UOI’s Curative Petition (C) Nos.345-347 of 2010 to point out the inadequacies in the same and praying for granting appropriate relief. It is astonishing that the Union of India had made no attempt to place the relevant ICMR reports before the Claim Courts to enable the Claim Courts to assess fairly the types and gravity of injuries suffered by the Bhopal gas victims. In the absence of proper health booklets, which the ICMR and the State Government had failed to provide to each gas-victim, circumstantial evidence would have been very valuable in determining the likely degree of injury suffered by a gas-victim. BGPMUS & BGPSSS hope that the said Curative Petition, which has been pending before the Supreme Court for the last three years, would be disposed of without further delay.

3. CRIMINAL CASE : The criminal cases against the accused are supposedly proceeding at two levels: one against the three absconding accused and the other against the eight accused who appeared before the Chief Judicial Magistrate (CJM), Bhopal, to face trial. Through Judgment and Order dated 07.06.2010, the CJM has prosecuted the said eight accused persons under Section 304-A, 336, 337 and 338 of IPC. The CBI, the State of MP and BGPMUS & BGPSSS had filed Criminal Revision Petitions against the said Judgment before the Sessions Court, Bhopal. By completely overlooking the plea of the Prosecution and by upholding the contentions of the accused in toto, the Sessions Court, Bhopal, on 28.08.2012 dismissed the CBI’s Criminal Revision Petition No.632 of 2010 against the said Judgment because of it “being not maintainable and barred by limitation”. The CBI had sought enhancement of charges against Keshub Mahindra and 7 other accused from Section 304-A to Section 304 Part-II of IPC on the basis of evidence already before the Court of the CJM. Thus, the ray of hope that was visible in the Supreme Court’s Order dated 11.05.2011 in Curative Petition (Cr.) Nos.39-42 of 2010, which was that the misreading of its Order dated 13.09.1996 in Criminal Appeals Nos.1672-1675 of 1996 by the CJM “can certainly be corrected by the appellate/ revisional court”, has suffered a serious setback. Moreover, the fervent hope that similar Criminal Revision Petitions that the State of MP as well as BGPMUS & BGPSSS had filed, which were certainly not barred by limitation, would receive favourable consideration were also thwarted when the Sessions Court summarily dismissed the said Revision Petitions after keeping the same pending unduly for over three years. BGPMUS & BGPSSS have already expressed their utmost displeasure at the extremely slow pace at which the criminal case has been proceeding and their demand for setting up a special court to speed up the proceedings has not yet been acceded to by the State Government.

As of now, BGPMUS and BGPSSS, which were instrumental in reviving the criminal cases against the accused in 1991 by filing an appeal and a writ petition against the unjust settlement of 14/15.02.1989, have currently no locus in proceeding with the criminal cases against the Indian accused before the Sessions Court. Under the circumstances, accused Nos.2 to 9 can rest content that the likelihood of having to undergo punishment in their lifetime for the heinous crime they had committed is most improbable. Ten to fourteen days imprisonment at the time of arrest is the only privation that seven of the accused have suffered so far; accused No.4 has not faced even that inconvenience to date! Needless to say, the possibility of the survivors being rendered justice in their lifetime for the loss & suffering they have had to endure during the last 29 years remains as remote as ever.

The criminal case against the three absconding accused, namely accused Nos.1, 10 and 11, which has been pending before the Court of the CJM as Miscellaneous Judicial Case (MJC) No.91 of 1992 has also been proceeding at an equally tardy pace. After acceding to the plea of BGPSSS, BGIA and BGPMUS dated 07.09.2001, the CJM had issued notice to the Dow Chemical Company (DOW), USA, on 06.01.2005 to appear in the criminal case on behalf of the absconding accused No.10, Union Carbide Corporation (UCC), USA, which had become a wholly owned subsidiary of DOW in 2001. However, on 17.03.2005, the MP High Court at Jabalpur had stayed the said order of the CJM at the urging of a purportedly non-party in the matter. The stay was vacated only seven years later on 19.10.2012, when the High Court finally upheld the validity of the CJM’s Order dated 06.01.2005. After BGPSSS & BGPMUS brought the ruling of the High Court to the attention of the CJM, Bhopal, through an Application dated 30.11.2012, the case – MJC No.91/1992 – was posted for hearing on 07.01.2013. However, it is highly regretful that for no rhyme or reason the CJM has not re-issued the notice to DOW even nearly a year later. BGPSSS & BGPMUS had also brought to the attention of the CJM that proceeding against the absconding accused No.1, Warren Anderson, had not progressed even after the Chief Metropolitan Magistrate, Delhi, had issued a Letter Rogatory on 23.03.2011 at the urging of the CBI for the purpose. The fact is, the Union of India has made no attempt to expedite the proceedings although the matter is reportedly pending before the U.S. Administration since April 2011. The lackadaisical manner in which the trial against the accused in the Bhopal disaster criminal case has proceeded for the last twenty-nine years makes a mockery of the criminal justice system in the country. BGPMUS & BGPSSS are in the process of placing these facts before the higher courts for appropriate relief.

4. ENVIRONMENTAL REMEDIATION : Toxic waste that was generated during UCIL’s operation from 1969 to 1984 was dumped in and around the plant leading to severe soil and water contamination. A comprehensive study to estimate the extent and gravity of the damage has not been carried out by the Centre or the State Government to date. Instead, the magnitude of the problem has been grossly underestimated by making it appear that the total toxic waste that needs to be safely disposed of is only about 345 tonnes that is stored at the plant site. The matter is before the Supreme Court as SLP (C) No.9874 of 2012. However, the current proposal to incinerate/bury the toxic waste near Indore is wholly misconceived and it would only result in shifting the problem from Bhopal to Indore. On the contrary, in a preliminary study that was jointly carried out by the National Environmental Engineering Research Institute (NEERI), Nagpur, and the National Geophysical Research Institute (NGRI), Hyderabad, during 2009-2010, it was estimated that “the total quantum of contaminated soil requiring remediation amounts to 11,00,000 MT [metric tonnes] ” (p.68). Based on the “Polluter Pays Principle”, it is the duty and responsibility of the Dow Chemical Company, USA, which currently owns UCC, to meet the cost of remediating comprehensively the affected environment in and around the UCIL plant with the latest available remediation technology. Similarly, the cost of providing safe-drinking water to the affected population residing in and around the former UCIL plant too has to be borne by DOW. However, the responsibility for providing safe drinking water to the affected population is entirely that of the State Government.

At the initiative of the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), Delhi, a preliminary attempt was made in April 2013 to bring together on a common platform the various stakeholders and experts to prepare an Action Plan to remediate the degraded environment. While a draft Action Plan has been worked out, it requires further refinement as well as inputs from other experts and stakeholders, including the Government of Madhya Pradesh.

5. RELIEF & REHABILITATION : The State Government has failed to address adequately and with sensitivity a whole host of socio-economic problems that confronts the chronically sick, the elderly, the differently abled, the widowed, and other vulnerable sections among the gas-victims. The pittance, which was disbursed as compensation in most instances to these sections was never enough to take care of their daily needs. Finding gainful employment in accordance with the reduced capacity to work and to lead a dignified life has been a serious challenge. The State Government has to provide far more attention and support to this issue than in the past.

On the 29 th anniversary of this man-made-disaster, the Bhopal Gas Peedith Mahila Udyog Sanghathan (BGPMUS) and the Bhopal Gas Peedith Sangharsh Sahayog Samiti (BGPSSS) pay their homage to the deceased victims and reiterate their determination to continue to uphold the cause of the survivors and to seek justice for the hapless victims.

(Abdul Jabbar Khan)

Convener, BGPMUS,

Tel: 0755-2748688

Mobile: +91-9406511720

 

(N.D. Jayaprakash)

Co-Convener, BGPSSS

Tel: 011-27666980

Mobile: +91-9968014630

By David Smith,

05 December 13

@ Guardian UK

    “Death is something inevitable. When a man has done what he considers to be his duty to his people and his country, he can rest in peace” – Nelson Mandela

    Nelson Mandela led South Africa from apartheid to multi-racial democracy and will be mourned around the world.

Nelson Mandela, the towering figure of Africa’s struggle for freedom and a hero to millions around the world, has died at the age of 95.

South Africa’s first black president died after years of declining health that had caused him to withdraw from public life.

The death of Mandela will send South Africa deep into mourning and self-reflection 18 years after he led the country from racial apartheid to inclusive democracy.

But his passing will also be keenly felt by people around the world who revered Mandela as one of history’s last great statesmen, and a moral paragon comparable with Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King.

It was a transcendent act of forgiveness after spending 27 years in prison, 18 of them on Robben Island, that will assure his place in history. With South Africa facing possible civil war, Mandela sought reconciliation with the white minority to build a new democracy.

He led the African National Congress (ANC) to victory in the country’s first multiracial election in 1994. Unlike other African liberation leaders who cling to power, such as Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe, he then voluntarily stepped down after one term.

Mandela – often affectionately known by his clan name, Madiba – was awarded the Nobel peace prize in 1993.

At his inauguration a year later, the new president said: “Never, never, and never again shall it be that this beautiful land will again experience the oppression of one by another … the sun shall never set on so glorious a human achievement. Let freedom reign. God bless Africa!”

Born Rolihlahla Dalibhunga in a small village in the Eastern Cape on 18 July 1918, Mandela was given his English name, Nelson, by a teacher at his school.

Mandela joined the ANC in 1943 and became a co-founder of its youth league. In 1952, he started South Africa’s first black law firm with his partner, Oliver Tambo. Mandela was a charming, charismatic figure with a passion for boxing – and an eye for women. He once said: “I can’t help it if the ladies take note of me. I am not going to protest.”

He married his first wife, Evelyn Mase, in 1944. They were divorced in 1957 after having three children. In 1958, he married Winnie Madikizela, who later campaigned to free her husband from jail and became a key figure in the struggle.

When the ANC was banned in 1960, Mandela went underground. After the Sharpeville massacre, in which 69 black protesters were shot dead by police, he took the difficult decision to launch an armed struggle.

He was arrested and eventually charged with sabotage and attempting to violently overthrow the government.

Conducting his own defence in the Rivonia Trial in 1964, he said: “I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities.

“It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.”

He escaped the death penalty but was sentenced to life in prison, a huge blow to the ANC that had to regroup to continue the struggle. But unrest grew in townships and international pressure on the apartheid regime slowly tightened.

Finally, in 1990, then president FW de Klerk lifted the ban on the ANC and Mandela was released from prison amid scenes of jubilation witnessed around the world.

In 1992, Mandela divorced Winnie after she was convicted on charges of kidnapping and accessory to assault.

His presidency rode a wave of tremendous global goodwill but was not without its difficulties. After leaving frontline politics in 1999, he admitted he should have moved sooner against the spread of HIV/Aids.

His son died from an Aids-related illness. On his 80th birthday, Mandela married Graça Machel, the widow of the former president of Mozambique. It was his third marriage. In total, he had six children, of whom three daughters survive: Pumla Makaziwe (Maki), Zenani and Zindziswa (Zindzi). He has 17 grandchildren and 14 great-grandchildren.

Mandela was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2001 and retired from public life, aged 85, to be with his family and enjoy some “quiet reflection”. But he remained a beloved and venerated figure with countless buildings, streets and squares named after him. His every move was scrutinised and his health was a constant source of media speculation.

Mandela continued to make occasional appearances at ANC events and attended the inauguration of the current president, Jacob Zuma. His 91st birthday was marked by the first annual “Mandela Day” in his honour.

He was last seen in public at the final of the 2010 World Cup in Johannesburg, a tournament he had helped bring to South Africa for the first time. Early in 2011, he was taken to hospital in a health scare but he recovered and was visited by Michelle Obama and her daughters a few months later.

In January 2012, he was notably missing from the ANC’s centenary celebrations due to his frail condition. With other giants of the movement such as Tambo and Walter Sisulu having gone before Mandela, the defining chapter of Africa’s oldest liberation movement is now closed.

By Dr. Elias Akleh

02 December, 2013

@ Countercurrents.org

Last Friday, the 29 th of November, was the annual observance of the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People as dedicated by the UN General Assembly (resolution 32/40 B). On the same day Palestinians had called for “Day of Rage” demonstrations against Israeli theft of Palestinian land especially the on going theft of Naqab (Negev) area.

The generation old Palestinian/Israeli peace negotiations have been futile due to Israeli perpetual theft of Palestinian land and the building of more Jewish colonies (settlement). Under the American pressure the Palestinian Authority agreed to restart peace talks this summer after a three-year stalemate. Yet immediately after this the Israeli government had approved the building of thousands more housing units on usurped Palestinian land in the West Bank and East Al-Quds (Jerusalem). More Palestinian homes were also demolished by Israeli army in Al-Quds.

According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) the Israeli government has demolished over 500 Palestinian homes in East Al-Quds since the beginning of this year (2013). Israel has also displaced 862 Palestinians. Since occupying the West Bank in 1967 Israel has demolished at least 27,000 Palestinian homes and structures according to OCHA.

Israeli government is planning on demolishing homes of over 15,000 Palestinians in Al-Quds. The Israeli army had posted warrants on 200 residential blocks, each consisting of 40 -70 apartments. Among these buildings there is a mosque and a newly built school. The orders came very shortly after mayor Nir Barakat has been elected for a new term.

The UN Secretary Ban Ki-moon had issued a statement on the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People urging Israel to call off plans to expand building in illegal settlements. Human Rights Watch has blasted the Israeli government for its mandatory transfer of Palestinians from their Jordan Valley homes calling it a “prosecutable war crime.”

In its on-going implementation of the Zionist scheme of ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, the Israeli Knesset had approved, last June 2013, what is known as the Prawer-Begin Bill (known as Prawer Plan) calling for the mass expulsion of the Palestinian Bedouin communities in the Naqab (Negev) area south of occupied Palestine. When fully implemented the Prawer Plan will result in the destruction of 35 Palestinian Bedouin villages, the forced evacuation of up to 70,000 Palestinian Bedouins; citizens of Israel, and the confiscation of their land for the purpose of building 15 new Jewish only colonies.

In September 2011, the Israeli government approved the Prawer Plan, introduced by former Deputy Chair of the National Security Council, Ehud Prawer. The plan calls for the building of Jewish only settlements in the Naqab area to accommodate newly immigrant Jews. The problem facing this plan was the existence of 35 Palestinian Bedouin villages in the area. In May 2013 the Israeli Ministerial Committee on Legislation included the recommendations of Minister Benny Begin to the Plan and approved the proposed “Law for the Regulation of Bedouin Settlement in the Negev -2013” dubbed “The Prawer-Begin Bill”. The Bill was approved without any consultation with the local community leaders.

The Israeli government claimed that the Prawer plan aims to improve the Bedouins’ economic, social and living conditions, as well as resolving long-standing land issues. It further claimed that the Plan guarantees a better future for the Bedouin children providing them with civil services, schooling opportunities, easy access to health clinics, and employment opportunities for parents. If this is true, then why couldn’t the Israeli government provide all these services to these 35 villages rather than evicting their inhabitants without providing them any alternative housing? Instead the Israeli army started bulldozing some of these villages. More than 1,000 homes were demolished in 2011 alone, and close to another 1,000 were also demolished in 2012.

It is estimated that more than 70,000 Palestinian Bedouins are living in these 35 villages. Many of these villages predate the establishment of the Israeli state in 1948. Very few of them were created by the Israeli military order in the early 1950s to re-settle Palestinians, who were forcefully evicted from their towns due to Israeli occupation. They were told that their eviction was temporary and that they would go back to their towns after war is over. Yet these towns were occupied by Jewish immigrants instead. These villages were unrecognized by the Israeli government and did not receive any civil services; water, electricity, sewage, education, health care and transportation. The Palestinian Bedouins were declared “illegal occupiers of state property” by Israeli Minister Silvan Shalom.

Israel is a serial war criminal. Its crimes target Palestinians every day. Palestinian villages across the West Bank face unrelenting assaults by the Israeli military. Palestinian home demolitions and razing Palestinian agricultural land have become a daily routine for the Israeli military bulldozers. During last week of November the Israeli occupation authorities declared its intention to confiscate 1500 acres of Palestinian agricultural land in Aqraba village near Nablus and have sent its bulldozers to raze land in order to build a new Jewish only road connecting the illegal settlements of Itamar and Ginnot Shomeron ( palestine-info.co.uk )

In 29 th November four Israeli military vehicles raided the town of Barta’a southwest of Jenin and handed ten citizens notifications of the intended demolition of their 14 homes due to building without permits. Building permits are not granted to Palestinians while Israeli extremists are allowed to build illegal settlement without any permits. ( Palestine-info.co.uk )

In 28 th of November Israeli military bulldozers razed Palestinian lands in villages south of the West Bank city of Qalqilya. Witnesses told Ma’an News that several Israeli military vehicles escorted the bulldozers to the villages of Ras “Atiya, Ras Al-Tira, and Izbat Jalud, where they razed vast agricultural areas.

The inhabitants of the village of Deir Istiya have been the target of nearby extremist settlers’ terror attacks against their crops and water supply since 1990. This has culminated last week when the Israel military obtained a court ruling allowing them to uproot nearly 2500 olive trees in the Wadi Kana, a valley making up a large part of the village’s farmland. This uprooting will decimate the village’s agriculture and economy destroying the livelihoods of as much as 4000 inhabitants of Deir Istiya. ( Palsolidarity.org )

Besides these and many other disruptions and destructions of Palestinian property and lives the Israeli illegal colonies on stolen Palestinian land continues with abatement. The Times of Israel reported November 28 th that 7% of the new Israeli construction sites erected this year were located in the West Bank, and the number of building projects across the Green Line rose by nearly 130% compared to 2012. The Central Bureau of Statistics reported that since the beginning of 2013, 32,290 construction sites for housing units were erected across Israel, an increase of 5.5% compared to the corresponding time frame in 2012. There has also been an increase of 12.4% in the number of apartment buildings, whose construction was completed, with roughly 30,970 homes finalized since the beginning of 2013.

All these Israeli crimes of ethnic cleansing, land theft, illegal settlements buildings, extra-judicial assassinations are been perpetrated against the Palestinians under the eyes of the unwilling-to-move international legal bodies. Palestinians have given up on the futile peace negotiations. They lost confidence into the weak Palestinian Authority and its security apparatus, whose main job seems to protect Israeli interests rather than its own citizens. The elected Hamas government is besieged by Israel and Egypt in Gaza Strip and can barely manage survival for Gaza inhabitants. They have given up on the support of other Arab countries, which are struggling with their own internal conflicts. They got completely fed up. Enough is enough. They have decided to take matters into their own bare hands. They have called for a Day of Rage demonstrations against Israeli crimes and have gone out into the streets in mass.

It is only a matter of time before their rage develops into another, but more violent, Intifada.

Dr. Elias Akleh is an Arab writer from a Palestinian descent, born in the town of Beit-Jala. His family was first evicted from Haifa after the “Nakba” of 1948 war during the first Zionist occupation of part of Palestine, then from Beitj-Jala after the “Nakseh” of 1967 war when Zionist Israeli military expansion occupied the rest of all Palestine. He is living now in exile in the US and publish articles on the web.

By Russia Today

02 December 2013

@ RT.com

Britain systematically destroyed documents in colonies that were about to gain independence, declassified Foreign Office files reveal. ‘Operation Legacy’ saw sensitive documents secretly burnt or dumped to cover up traces of British activities.

The latest National Archives publication made from a collection of 8,800 colonial-era files held by the Foreign Office for decades revealed deliberate document elimination by British authorities in former colonies.

The secret program dubbed ‘Operation Legacy’ was in force throughout the 1950s and 1960s, in at least 23 countries and territories under British rule that eventually gained independence after WWII. Among others these countries included: Belize, British Guiana, Jamaica, Kenya, Malaysia and Singapore, Northern Rhodesia (today Zambia and Zimbabwe), Tanzania, and Uganda.

In a telegram from the UK Colonial Office dispatched to British embassies on May 3, 1961, colonial secretary Iain Macleod instructed diplomats to withhold official documents from newly elected independent governments in those countries, and presented general guidance on what to do.

British diplomats were briefed on how exactly they were supposed to get rid of documents that “might embarrass members of the police, military forces, public servants (such as police agents or informers)” or “might compromise sources of intelligence”, or could be put to ‘wrong’ use by incoming national authorities.

‘Operation Legacy’ also called for the destruction or removal of “all papers which are likely to be interpreted, either reasonably or by malice, as indicating racial prejudice or bias”.

The newly declassified files revealed that the Royal Navy base in Singapore was turned into the Asian region’s primary document destruction center. A special facility called a “splendid incinerator” was used to burn “lorry loads of files”, Agence France-Presse reported.

The “central incinerator” in Singapore was necessary to avoid a situation similar to that in India in 1947, when a “pall of smoke” from British officials burning their papers in Delhi, ahead of India proclaiming independence, filled the local press with critical reports. That diplomatic oversight was taken into account, as ‘Operation Legacy’ operatives were strictly instructed not to burn documents openly.

But not all the doomed archives could be shipped to Singapore. In some cases documents were eliminated on site, sometimes being dumped in the sea “at the maximum practicable distance from shore” and in deep, current-free areas, the National Archives publication claims.

The newly published collection of documents reveals that the British cleared out Kenyan intelligence files that contained information about abuse and torture of Kenyans during the Mau Mau uprising against British colonial rule in the 1950s. A special committee formed in 1961 coordinated document elimination in Kenya. Yet some files were spared simply when an estimated 307 boxes of documents were evacuated to Britain, just months ahead of the country gaining independence in December 1963.

The existence of some remaining Mau Mau legal case documents was revealed in January 2011.

Even after eliminating important evidence half a century ago, earlier in 2013 the British government was forced to pay 23 million dollars in compensation to over 5,200 elderly Kenyans, who had suffered from Britain’s punitive measures during the Mau Mau uprising.

In another documented occasion, in April 1957, five lorries delivered tons of documents from the British High Commission in Kuala Lumpur to the Royal Navy base in Singapore. Files were incinerated there; these contained details about British rule in Malaya, such as a massacre of 24 rubber plantation workers at the Malayan village of Batang Kali in 1948, who had allegedly been murdered by British soldiers.

Despite the mass document elimination, Britain’s Foreign Office still has some 1.2 million unpublished documents on British colonial policy, David Anderson, professor of African history at the University of Warwick, told AFP.

So Her Majesty’s government might still publish more valuable material that can shed more light on how one of the biggest empires in human history used to be governed. Overall, Britain had total control over 50 colonies including Canada, India, Australia, Nigeria, and Jamaica. Currently, there are 14 British Overseas Territories that remain under British rule, though most of them are self-governing and all have leaderships of their own.

By Dr. Ludwig Watzal

30 November, 2013

@ Countercurrents.org

This documentary on the role of the Academia concerning 9/11 by the producer and filmmaker Adnan Zuberi was bestowed with the “Documentary Achievement Award” at this year’s University of Toronto Film Festival . The documentary focuses on the surprising reluctance of the academic community to examine the events of September 11, 2001 . Virtually the entire academic community adopted immediately and uncritically the official narrative about these events. Academics did not ask some of the most elementary questions: What happened on that day? Who planned and executed this complex operation? And who benefited from it?

The flaws in the official narrative leap out at everybody who merely scratches the surface. What are intellectuals for, when they fail to deal critically with a watershed event that led to the transformation of the US into a police state, the erosion of civil rights, and which provided the US government with a rationale for two wars of aggression and for an indefinite global “war on terror”? The reluctant establishment of the 9/11 Commission, its composition and its modus operandi were designed to produce a whitewash final report. The Final Report of that Commission, indeed, is riddled with so many flaws that it is widely designated as an “omission report.” The issue of 9/11 has become the greatest taboo of the 21 st century in Western societies, a subject that may not be subject to scholarly inquiry.

It seems as if all governments, the media, and the academic community conspire against anybody who might dare to call the official narrative into question. 9/11 is surrounded by a cocoon and those who dare to penetrate risk to be socially ostracized or destroyed. Even academic experts that purport to espouse critical social views and left-wing journalists refuse to deal with this topic although there is no evidence that the alleged hijackers committed and could have committed this crime alone. One of the roles of intellectuals in society is to unveil what rulers attempt to conceal from the masses. In the case of 9/11, such an approach would mean to destroy the 9/11 myth and inquiry into the motives of the real perpetrators.

In the documentary, for example, the attitude of left-wing thinkers was quoted from Noam Chomsky’s book “9-11”. “…evidence about the perpetrators of 9/11 has been hard to find. And long after the source of the anthrax attack was localized to US government weapons laboratories, it has still not been identified. (…) Nevertheless, despite the thin evidence (…) the initial conclusion about 9/11 is presumably correct.” (pp 120-121) Besides the below quoted experts, Adnan Zuberi’s the documentary presents some more scientists.

Professor David McGregor from University of Western Ontario , Canada , pointed out that many academics are interested in how 9/11 affected society and politics but not in the incidents themselves. Even the writings of the renowned professor David Ray Griffin – who wrote more than 10 scholarly books on 9/11 – remain ignored by the academic community. Many academics are caught up in the spiral of silence, i.e. they prefer, for comfort, to defer to majority opinion. The fierce reactions against attempts to critically examine the official narrative of 9/11 suggest that such questioning touches a vulnerable nerve.

Zuberi documents statements by some experts who explain, inter alia, why the Twin Towers could not have been brought down by airplane crashes and the ensuing fires, not to speak of the 47-floor building WTC No 7, which collapsed mysteriously in free-fall speed in the late afternoon of 9/11 without being hit by an aircraft. Surprisingly, the “9/11 Commission Report” does not even mention this unprecedented event. The documentary presents, Inter alia, statements by professors of engineering and physics who show that the official narrative regarding the Twin Towers ‘ collapse is incompatible with physical law. Structural engineers have a special role to play in examining the Twin Towers ‘ collapse, because if the government’s narrative is true, building codes would have to be reviewed and many other tall buildings would appear to be at risk. Such review of building codes did not, however, take place.

According to Michael Truscello from Mount Royal University , Calgary , Canada , 25 per cent of the footnotes of this report were based on torture testimony. Basing a story of this kind of testimony under the rule of law criteria seems absurd. Most of the testimony deals with the alleged al-Qaeda plot, and some were made up, like Sheikh Mohammed admitted in letters to the International Committee of the Red Cross, said Truscello.

As stated by him, Philip Zelikow, executive director of the 9/11 Commission, framed the narrative of the investigation even before it began. He was a colleague of Condoleezza Rice and had co-authored a book together. According to him, Zelikow was a White-House insider. He kept close contact with Karl Rove, a senior adviser to George W. Bush and his master mind, when the commission was in progress.

According to Paul Zarembka, Professor at the University of New York at Buffalo , “there was probability around 99 per cent that there was insider trading on American and United Airlines” days before 9/11. In Zubeiri’s documentary some professors tell how they got bullied by colleagues and university administrators after they questioned the official version of 9/11. Professor John McMurtry from the University of Guelph, Ontario, Canada, for example, received hate mails, death threats, and some colleagues even demanded his expulsion from the university.

Since the Bush government has airbrushed all the evidence in the shortest possible time, how can scientists reconstruct it? Zuberi’s documentary shows that the investigations on 9/11 have to be reopened despite the huge opposition by government, corporate media and the academic community. This documentary calls for the widest possible distribution in order to raise the awareness that there are larger forces involved to commit such a crime than 19 young men allegedly guided from a cave in Afghanistan . Whether the present spiral of silence is stronger than the overwhelming evidence presented in this documentary remains to be seen.

Dr. Ludwig Watzal works as a journalist and editor in Bonn , Germany . He runs the bilingual blog between the lines. http://between-the-lines-ludwig-watzal.blogspot.de/

The documentary can be ordered here: http://911inacademia.com/

By Hussein Al-Alak

30 November, 2013

@ Countercurrents.org

It would be hilarious, if it wasn’t for the severity of the Syrian crisis, to read some of the allegations being directed against the Syrian based nun, Mother Agnes Mariam.

The Open Letter to Stop the War coalition, has been signed by over fifty alleged activists, who declare themselves to be “opponents of conflict”, and having been endorsed by the Independent’s journalist Owen Jones, has since seen Mother Agnes remove herself from Stop the War’s annual conference.

What has been omitted from the open letter though, which denounces Mother Agnes as being a “partisan” for Assad, has been some background details of those claiming that Mother Agnes, “has been consistent in assuming and spreading the lies of the regime”.

Looking over the list of 55 names, a substantial number of those who have signed, strike a chord with anyone familiar, with the marginal fringes of Britain’s left wing circuit. Included are members of Worker’s Power, the Socialist Worker’s Party, the International Socialist Network and former members of the now defunct Worker’s Revolutionary Party.

It strikes me as strange, that this motley crew of self-proclaimed British Trotskyists, view themselves as being the vanguard of Human Rights in Syria, especially with their warped views of the world, which includes the tiny London based Workers Power, declaring themselves to have established the Fifth Communist International.

Even on their website, there appears to be little on either the political or humanitarian crisis in Syria, nothing about Mother Agnes but allot about the Trotskyist interpretation on the Marxist Theory of Economics and adverts for pamphlets on the Russian Revolution, Leon Trotsky and a “reprinted edition of Degenerated Revolution”.

The same applies to the International Socialist Network, one of the many break away groups from the Socialist Worker’s Party, alongside Worker’s Power, but finding any information on Syria, Mother Agnes or even the Middle East, seems to be lost among the articles on the evils of Capitalism, the transitional phases to achieve real Communism and a Comradely letter sent to them, from non other, than Worker’s Power.

An interesting reference has come up though, according to Socialist Resistance, who over the past twenty years have been known as the International Marxist Group and Socialist Outlook, are seeking to merge with the International Socialist Network and have kindly informed the public, that should this go ahead, will gladly undergo, yet, another name change!

It is laughable, that Jeremy Scahill and The Independent’s Owen Jones, would also endorse the words of people who were in the Worker’s Revolutionary Party (WRP), and would themselves dare to put their names to a letter, which accuses Mother Agnes, of covering “up the brutality” of a foreign regime.

From 1979 on, the WRP provided Saddam’s Iraqi embassy with intelligence on dissident Iraqi’s living in Britain, which would have also included members of Britain’s Committee Against Repression and for Democratic Rights in Iraq.

An example of the party’s relationship to Baghdad, occurred in March 1979, when the central committee of the WRP in Britain, voted to approve the execution of more than twenty opponents of the Iraqi government, who in the run up to their murder’s in Iraq, had suffered from “pro-longed torture”.

One of the victims, Talib Suwailh, had only months earlier, unknowingly brought fraternal greetings to a conference of a WRP front organisation.

“War is terrible, terribly profitable” as V.I Lenin once stated, with capitalism clearly working and a clear lack of past interest in human rights concerns, from some now denouncing Mother Agnes. But only on the condition, that it does bring in amounts of £1,075,163 from foreign Governments, to British left wing groups, just like it did with the WRP.

Hussein Al-Alak is a UK based journalist and is chairman of the Iraq Solidarity Campaign UK. Hussein is also a member of the Royal British Legion and a mental health advocate for Combat Stress. You can follow him on Twitter @TotallyHussein. He blogs at http://totallyhussein.blogspot.co.uk