Storm Daniel was recorded as one of the most lethal Mediterranean cyclones in the history of the world. It initially formed as a low-pressure event in early September 2023, significantly flooding Greece, Bulgaria and Turkey. The pressure system then developed into a tropical storm and moved toward Libya’s coast where it caused disastrous flooding. Daniel’s severe rainfall led to flooding that…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
The India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC) is a massive public diplomacy op launched at the recent G20 summit in New Delhi, complete with a memorandum of understanding signed on 9 September.
Players include the US, India, UAE, Saudi Arabia, and the EU, with a special role for the latter’s top three powers Germany, France, and Italy. It’s a multimodal railway project, coupled with trans-shipments and with ancillary digital and electricity roads extending to Jordan and Israel.
If this walks and talks like the collective west’s very late response to China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), launched 10 years ago and celebrating a Belt and Road Forum in Beijing next month, that’s because it is. And yes, it is, above all, yet another American project to bypass China, to be claimed for crude electoral purposes as a meager foreign policy “success.”
No one among the Global Majority remembers that the Americans came up with their own Silk Road plan way back in 2010. The concept came from the State Department’s Kurt Campbell and was sold by then-Secretary Hillary Clinton as her idea. History is implacable, it came down to nought.
And no one among the Global Majority remembers the New Silk Road plan peddled by Poland, Ukraine, Azerbaijan, and Georgia in the early 2010s, complete with four troublesome trans-shipments in the Black Sea and the Caspian. History is implacable, this too came down to nought.
In fact, very few among the Global Majority remember the $40 trillion US-sponsored Build Back Better World (BBBW, or B3W) global plan rolled out with great fanfare just two summers ago, focusing on “climate, health and health security, digital technology, and gender equity and equality.”
A year later, at a G7 meeting, B3W had already shrunk to a $600 billion infrastructure-and-investment project. Of course, nothing was built. History really is implacable, it came down to nought.
The same fate awaits IMEC, for a number of very specific reasons.
Pivoting to a black void
The whole IMEC rationale rests on what writer and former Ambassador M.K. Bhadrakumar deliciously described as “conjuring up the Abraham Accords by the incantation of a Saudi-Israeli tango.”
This tango is Dead On Arrival; even the ghost of Piazzolla can’t revive it. For starters, one of the principals – Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman – has made it clear that Riyadh’s priorities are a new, energized Chinese-brokered relationship with Iran, with Turkiye, and with Syria after its return to the Arab League.
Moreover, both Riyadh and its Emirati IMEC partner share immense trade, commerce, and energy interests with China, so they’re not going to do anything to upset Beijing.
At face value, IMEC proposes a joint drive by G7 and BRICS 11 nations. That’s the western method of seducing eternally-hedging India under Modi and US-allied Saudi Arabia and the UAE to its agenda.
Its real intention, however, is not only to undermine BRI, but also the International North-South Transportation Corridor (INTSC), in which India is a major player alongside Russia and Iran.
The game is quite crude and really quite obvious: a transportation corridor conceived to bypass the top three vectors of real Eurasia integration – and BRICS members China, Russia, and Iran – by dangling an enticing Divide and Rule carrot that promises Things That Cannot Be Delivered.
The American neoliberal obsession at this stage of the New Great Game is, as always, all about Israel. Their goal is to make Haifa port viable and turn it into a key transportation hub between West Asia and Europe. Everything else is subordinated to this Israeli imperative.
IMEC, in principle, will transit across West Asia to link India to Eastern and Western Europe – selling the fiction that India is a Global Pivot state and a Convergence of Civilizations.
Nonsense. While India’s great dream is to become a pivot state, its best shot would be via the already up-and-running INTSC, which could open markets to New Delhi from Central Asia to the Caucasus. Otherwise, as a Global Pivot state, Russia is way ahead of India diplomatically, and China is way ahead in trade and connectivity.
Comparisons between IMEC and the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) are futile. IMEC is a joke compared to this BRI flagship project: the $57.7 billion plan to build a railway over 3,000 km long linking Kashgar in Xinjiang to Gwadar in the Arabian Sea, which will connect to other overland BRI corridors heading toward Iran and Turkiye.
This is a matter of national security for China. So bets can be made that the leadership in Beijing will have some discreet and serious conversations with the current fifth-columnists in power in Islamabad, before or during the Belt and Road Forum, to remind them of the relevant geostrategic, geoeconomic, and investment Facts.
So, what’s left for Indian trade in all of this? Not much. They already use the Suez Canal, a direct, tested route. There’s no incentive to even start contemplating being stuck in black voids across the vast desert expanses surrounding the Persian Gulf.
One glaring problem, for example, is that almost 1,100 km of tracks are “missing” from the railway from Fujairah in the UAE to Haifa, 745 km “missing” from Jebel Ali in Dubai to Haifa, and 630 km “missing” from the railway from Abu Dhabi to Haifa.
When all the missing links are added up, there’s over 3,000 km of railway still to be built. The Chinese, of course, can do this for breakfast and on a dime, but they are not part of this game. And there’s no evidence the IMEC gang plans to invite them.
All eyes on Syunik
In the War of Transportation Corridors charted in detail for The Cradle in June 2022, it becomes clear that intentions rarely meet reality. These grand projects are all about logistics, logistics, logistics – of course, intertwined with the three other key pillars: energy and energy resources, labor and manufacturing, and market/trade rules.
Let’s examine a Central Asian example. Russia and three Central Asian “stans” – Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan – are launching a multimodal Southern Transportation Corridor which will bypass Kazakhstan.
Why? After all, Kazakhstan, alongside Russia, is a key member of both the Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU) and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO).
The reason is because this new corridor solves two key problems for Russia that arose with the west’s sanctions hysteria. It bypasses the Kazakh border, where everything going to Russia is scrutinized in excruciating detail. And a significant part of the cargo may now be transferred to the Russian port of Astrakhan in the Caspian.
So Astana, which under western pressure has played a risky hedging game on Russia, may end up losing the status of a full-fledged transport hub in Central Asia and the Caspian Sea region. Kazakhstan is also part of BRI; the Chinese are already very much interested in the potential of this new corridor.
In the Caucasus, the story is even more complex, and once again, it’s all about Divide and Rule.
Two months ago, Russia, Iran, and Azerbaijan committed to building a single railway from Iran and its ports in the Persian Gulf through Azerbaijan, to be linked to the Russian-Eastern Europe railway system.
This is a railway project on the scale of the Trans-Siberian – to connect Eastern Europe with Eastern Africa and South Asia, bypassing the Suez Canal and European ports. The INSTC on steroids, in fact.
Guess what happened next? A provocation in Nagorno-Karabakh, with the deadly potential of involving not only Armenia and Azerbaijan but also Iran and Turkiye.
Tehran has been crystal clear on its red lines: it will never allow a defeat of Armenia, with direct participation from Turkiye, which fully supports Azerbaijan.
Add to the incendiary mix are joint military exercises with the US in Armenia – which happens to be a member of the Russian-led CSTO – cast, for public consumption, as one of those seemingly innocent “partnership” NATO programs.
This all spells out an IMEC subplot bound to undermine INTSC. Both Russia and Iran are fully aware of the former’s endemic weaknesses: political trouble between several participants, those “missing links” of track, and all important infrastructure still to be built.
Turkish Sultan Recep Tayyip Erdogan, for his part, will never give up the Zangezur corridor across Syunik, the south Armenian province, which was envisaged by the 2020 armistice, linking Azerbaijan to Turkiye via the Azeri enclave of Nakhitchevan – that will run through Armenian territory.
Baku did threaten to attack southern Armenia if the Zangezur corridor was not facilitated by Yerevan. So Syunik is the next big unresolved deal in this riddle. Tehran, it must be noted, will go no holds barred to prevent a Turkish-Israeli-NATO corridor cutting Iran off from Armenia, Georgia, the Black Sea, and Russia. That would be the reality if this NATO-tinted coalition grabs Syunik.
Today, Erdogan and Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev meet in the Nakhchivan enclave between Turkiye, Armenia, and Iran to start a gas pipeline and open a military production complex.
The Sultan knows that Zangezur may finally allow Turkiye to be linked to China via a corridor that will transit the Turkic world, in Azerbaijan and the Caspian. This would also allow the collective west to go even bolder on Divide and Rule against Russia and Iran.
Is the IMEC another far-fetched western fantasy? The place to watch is Syunik.
This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
New York: Mournful processions and Majalis of Muharram-ul-Haram are being held across the world including the United States,with Muslim devotees paying homage to Imam Hussain (AS) and his loyal companions who rendered their lives in the soil of Karbala for the noble cause of humanity, justice and restoration of the glory of Islam.
The Muharram-ul-Haram gatherings and mourning processions are also being held with devotion and respect in Africa, Middle East, Iran, South Asia including Pakistan and India.
The main Muharram procession in Dallas and Houston will be held downtown on the 10th of Muharram, July 28, while the series of congregations will continue in various imambargahs and private residences.
A large number of Muslim devotees of Imam Hussain (AS), the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad PBUH, (the last messenger of Allah Almighty) participated in the Muharram gatherings at Houston’s Al-Ghadeer Imambargah, Dalles’ Imambargah Momin Center and Dar-e-Hussain.
While series of Majalis also being organized wherein Zakirs and religious scholars are describing the incident of Karbala.
Azadar echoed like Labbaik Ya Hussain everywhere, participating in these gatherings organized in memory of the great sacrifice of the grandson of Prophet Muhammad.
Mourning events are ongoing in many other cities of Texas, the largest state of America, including Houston and Dallas.
Men, women and children are actively participating in these meetings.
The post Muharram processions, Majlis being held across the world including the US with religious reverence first appeared on VOSA.
This post was originally published on VOSA.
This story originally appeared in Jacobin on July 26, 2023. It is shared here with permission.
One bright sunny March morning in 1980, Archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero was saying mass at a church hospital in San Salvador when a bullet from a sniper rifle ripped through his heart.
Romero started life and ministry as a conservative. But after his friend Father Rutilio Grande was assassinated to discourage other faith leaders from supporting Salvadoran peasants, Romero underwent a political and theological conversion. Picking up where Grande left off, Romero embraced a “theology of liberation,” a perspective that espouses God’s preference for the poor and oppressed. His visibility as archbishop elevated his voice and the credibility of his critique of the conditions faced by peasants in El Salvador.
A month before his assassination, Archbishop Romero wrote President Jimmy Carter requesting a halt to US military assistance to the right-wing Salvadoran government and its allied paramilitary death squads. Over 250,000 people attended Romero’s funeral, echoing his demands for justice. Tragically, they were swimming against the historical current. A campaign of terror and murder, often orchestrated or at the very least condoned by the United States, continued across the country.
In the wake of Romero’s murder, Elliott Abrams, the newly appointed assistant secretary of state for human rights and humanitarian affairs, said, “Anybody who thinks you’re going to find a cable that says that Roberto D’Aubuisson murdered the archbishop is a fool.” In fact, two US embassy cables said precisely that, naming D’Aubuisson as the one who ordered his personal bodyguard to carry out Romero’s assassination. In denying the evidence, Abrams helped him get away with murder. With Abrams’s support, US military assistance to the Salvadoran government was dramatically increased that year.
This month, President Biden nominated Elliott Abrams to join the State Department Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy. Abrams’s history is not secret: in 2019, Representative Ilhan Omar grilled him before Congress. Abrams served for twelve years as part of the Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush administrations. During that time, seventy-five thousand Salvadorians were killed. Abrams called US policy in El Salvador a “fabulous achievement.” Recounting the 1981 massacre at El Mozote, Omar asked, ‘“Do you think that massacre was a ‘fabulous achievement’ that happened under our watch?”
In the village of El Mozote, the army’s Atlácatl Battalion herded women and children into a church convent and opened fire with US-supplied M16 automatic rifles before burning the building down. They committed other atrocities as well, and by the end over nine hundred people were murdered. Of them, 140 were children, their average age six. One survivor recalled seeing a dead mother and her dead baby lying in bed. On the walls, scrawled in blood, were the words: “Un nino muerto, un guerrillero menos”: “One dead child is one less guerrilla.”
The harm Abrams inflicted during his tenure isn’t restricted to El Salvador. In Haiti, he helped prop up dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier, who is estimated to have killed as many as sixty thousand of his political opponents while in power. Abrams also defended the Guatemalan Montt regime, which oversaw the mass murder, rape, and torture of scores of indigenous Ixil Mayan people in the 1980s. General Efraín Ríos Montt was tried and convicted in 2013 for genocide.
In the Middle East, Abrams has proved a staunch supporter of Israel. Throughout his career, Abrams has used his platform to portray illegal Israeli settlements as natural and innocuous, to smear criticism of Israel by human rights groups as antisemitism, and to welcome Evangelist Zionist support for the state of Israel, despite that movement’s belief in a biblical injunction to bring about Armageddon. Abrams has long denied the oppression of Palestinians, and mocked the use of the term “apartheid.” Following Israel’s election in 2022 of a far-right extremist government, Abrams dismissed the concerns of American Jewish leaders as “hysterics” of a “privileged” group.
Far from a peace-oriented diplomat, Abrams did everything he could to torpedo the Iran nuclear deal, including encouraging Israel to bomb Iranian nuclear sites. Abrams was a major cheerleader of the disastrous US invasion of Iraq, including having written a letter in 1998 to President Clinton, encouraging him to depose Saddam Hussein.
Abrams also championed the US overthrow of Libyan president Muammar Gaddafi in 2011. As in Iraq, the US intervention encouraged by Abrams has not resulted in better conditions for the country. Instead, divisions have increased, and fighting has resulted in tens of thousands of deaths. As Libyan Government of National Accord (GNA) interior minister Fathi Bashagha said, “Every day we are burying young people who should be helping us build Libya.”
From his 1991 conviction for lying to Congress during the Iran-Contra affair to his 2019 support for a Venezuelan coup, the list of Abrams’s global crimes and misdeeds is too long to enumerate.
Steps have been taken over the past couple of decades to repair some of the damage done by Abrams and company in Latin America. In December 2011, the El Salvadoran government apologized for the El Mozote massacre. In 2018, Oscar Romero was elevated to the status of saint. Romero “left the security of the world, even his own safety, in order to give his life according to the gospel,” said Pope Francis.
Justice is long overdue for Romero, the other Salvadorian faith leaders who were murdered in the 1980s, the children murdered in El Mazote, the Ixil Mayan women raped by death squads in Guatemala, and the people of Haiti, Iraq, Palestine, and elsewhere. Making sure that Abrams does not receive another appointment to another administration is the absolute least the United States government could do.
This post was originally published on The Real News Network.
Jeremy Corbyn’s ascendance to the leadership of the UK Labour Party in 2015 offered hope for a revival of the British left. With decades of experience and principled opposition to war and privatization under his belt, Corbyn was uniquely positioned to bring the Labour Party back from its neoliberal turn. But this was not to be—just five years later, Corbyn was ousted from the Labour Party and his supporters were purged. The political opposition to Corbyn was accompanied by a media villification campaign that conflated support for Palestinian rights with anti-Semitism. Ultimately, the question of Labour’s support for Israeli Apartheid was successfully wielded to isolate and expel Corbyn and his supporters. Asa Winstanley joins The Chris Hedges Report for an autopsy of Corbyn’s leadership.
Asa Winstanley is an investigative journalist living in London who writes about Palestine and the Middle East. He has been visiting Palestine since 2004 and is originally from south Wales. He writes for the award-winning Palestinian news site The Electronic Intifada where he is an associate editor and also a weekly column for the Middle East Monitor. He is the author of Weaponising Anti-Semitism: How the Israel Lobby Brought Down Jeremy Corbyn
Studio: David Hebden, Adam Coley, Cameron Granadino
Post-Production: Adam Coley
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.
Chris Hedges:
When the socialist Jeremy Corbyn became the leader of the Labour Party in Britain in 2015 and mounted a grassroots campaign in 2017 to become the British Prime Minister, the ruling corporate elites along with the war industry panicked. They conspired with the Israel lobby to mount a vicious campaign of character assassination against Corbyn and his supporters accusing them even if they were Jewish of antisemitism. Corbyn has long been a champion of Palestinian rights.
The media did its part to crucify Corbyn as a bigot while Labour Party officials ruthlessly purged the party of Corbyn’s supporters. Corbyn was eventually driven out of the party in 2020 after the snap election loss against Boris Johnson. The neutralization of Corbyn is an ominous precedent. The purging of Corbyn and his supporters effectively emasculated the left within the Labour Party. This was its goal. The unholy alliance between Israel, the war industry, and the Corporatist raised the question of whether it is possible in Britain or the United States to reform the system from within.
Joining me to discuss these issues is Asa Winstanley, an associate editor and reporter with a website, Electronic Intifada and the author of Weaponizing Antisemitism, how the Israel Lobby brought down Jeremy Corbyn. Let’s begin with who Corbyn was and how he gained such support within the Labour Party. Because there’s a democratic process within the Labour Party whereby the members actually have the capacity to have their voices heard in a way that is not true in either the Democratic Party or the Republican Party in the United States.
Asa Winstanley:
Yeah, great to be with you, Chris. Yes, that’s right, there were changes to the Labour Party’s rules in 2015. The Labour Party was previously quite undemocratic, but the rule changes made it more democratic. It made it easier for anyone really to vote in parties internal elections. Wasn’t quite as open as the Democratic and Republican primaries in the US where anyone can essentially register to vote as a Democrat or a Republican and then vote in the primaries.
But it made it easier. It meant that not only were there Labour Party members could vote in the elections, but also anyone who was, you just had to pay three pounds basically to become a registered supporter of the Labour Party. It just made it a lot easier and it gave the members a lot more say. The percentage of the electoral college as it were within the Labour Party that went towards members and supporters as opposed to the MPs who would choose the leader, was increased. It meant that the left wing candidate won, which had never happened before.
Chris Hedges:
We should be clear that the Labour Party under Tony Blair transformed itself into a neoliberal version. Much like Clinton did to the Democratic Party. Labour, which traditionally had been a political bulwark for the working class, no longer was. It was a very different party from what it was at its inception.
Asa Winstanley:
Yeah, it was ostensibly still a socialist party on paper. But in reality it was the party of Tony Blair, which meant it was the party of privatization. It was the party of war. I first got my political education during the early ’90s after the 911 attacks and the invasion of Afghanistan being involved in the anti-war movement. To me at that time and to so many other people, the Labour Party was the war party. It was the party that was helping George W. Bush to invade Afghanistan and Iraq.
Jeremy Corbyn becoming the leader of the Labour Party, was the last possible thing you could imagine. Because he was in the Labour Party, he was a Labour MP at that time. But he was on the back benches. He was basically rebelling against his party leader. He was voting against the Iraq war. He was voting against privatization. He was voting against dismantling of the welfare state and things like that. He would be on our demonstrations, he’d be leading our demonstrations. He’d be doing the speeches against the Iraq war and crucially, he was part of the Palestine solidarity movement as well.
Chris Hedges:
The attacks against him began almost immediately. You write that Corbyn had barely arrived as Labour leader in September 2015 before a senior serving general in the British Armed Forces warned The Sunday Times that there would be a mutiny of Corbyn were elected Prime Minister. I’m quoting. “There would be mass resignations at all levels and you would face the very real prospect of an event which would effectively be a mutiny, the general said. Feelings are running very high within the armed forces.” You would see a major break in convention with some generals directly and publicly challenging Corbyn. He said the army just wouldn’t stand for it. I think people would use whatever means possible, fair or foul to prevent that. That’s just unbelievable. Was that the first real savo against Corbyn?
Asa Winstanley:
It was one of the early ones, absolutely. I think that took place before even he became… Wait, I could see the footnote now in my book. It was just after he became leader. It was one of the very early mutiny’s. What makes Corbyn different from even someone like Bernie Sanders, who he has a lot in common with, is that he was, and he is very much an anti-imperialist in a lot of ways. He’s very strong on foreign policy. He was sometimes known and described as the foreign minister of the left.
He voted against every war including the war in Libya. He was somebody who was very critical even of the British security services. He was involved in trying to campaign against apartheid South Africa at a time when the British government was supporting apartheid South Africa. He was involved in trying to overturn miscarriages of justice in campaigns like the Birmingham six, and which involved the collusion of security services. He was somebody who was in the North Ireland. He was campaigning for the end of the British occupation of the North of Ireland and he brought Jerry Adams to parliament at a time when-
Chris Hedges:
We should just for our American viewers, this is the political wing of the IRA.
Asa Winstanley:
Right. At a time when the IRA was involved in a armed struggle against British Armed Forces. Jeremy Corbyn was trying to negotiate an end to that armed conflict by bringing the political wing of the IRA into parliament. I suppose what you could call the British deep State had a long account against Jeremy Corbyn. There’s a long record of British Intelligence Services trying to spy on and infiltrate, not only left wing groups, but even left wing MPs including Jeremy Corbyn and his allies.
This was quite a very early and very open signal by a serving British senior, serving British general. He wasn’t named by The Sunday Times, but there’s no doubt about the credibility of the source because that’s exactly the sort of source that The Sunday Times has in military intelligence sources like this and that they base most of their reporting on. It was a very clear signal that if he became Prime Minister, there’d be steps taken against him.
Chris Hedges:
2008, a snap election is expected and two newspapers report that Corbyn has been quote, unquote “summoned” for a quote, unquote, “facts of life talk with the head of MI 15” and a quote, unquote, “acquaintance meeting with the head of MI-16.” These are domestic and foreign intelligence agencies. But that also was a fascinating moment when the deep state again sent signals that Corbyn was unacceptable. Can you talk about that?
Asa Winstanley:
Yeah. This was at a time when, as you said, it was a time of great political instability in the country and it was a period when there was a snap election expected at any time. Corbyn was the leader of the opposition. He was brought in for a meeting with MI-5 and MI-6 and it was supposed to be a secret meeting. It’s supposed to be a top secret meeting. Corbyn has talked about this. He later talked about it. He later talked about how it was very clear and it was made very clear to him and his staff that they were not to talk about the meeting at all.
That it was top secret, as you would expect with the heads of the intelligence services. Well then they proceeded to leak those meetings, They leaked them in the way that you described. That he was summoned for a quote, unquote “facts of life meeting.” That essentially they’re trying to put their foot down and trying to say, just in case you did become Prime Minister, you’re going to have to change all your anti-war ways and you’re going to have to go along with what we say.
Corbyn then later talked about that and about how it had been leaked deliberately by them as a way to undermine him. That they were putting out this idea that he was not fit for office. Not fit for high office. That he was some sort of danger to national security. The British press went along with this all along. Matt Kennard, a friend of mine, investigative journalist for Declassified UK. He put out a really good article studying this.
That he found 34 articles, I believe he put out his article in, I believe it was 2019, towards the end of 2019, and he looked at all of the reporting against Corbyn. He found 34 articles that had been openly sourced by MI-5 and MI-6. The domestic and international, effectively Britain’s FBI and CIA. That 34 of these articles had been sourced openly by MI-5, MI-6, and the military. In these articles, they’re openly stating according to military sources or according to intelligence sources, and these articles all portrayed Corbyn as a threat to quote, unquote, “national security.” That’s what they were doing openly. Very clearly within the national media, sending out these very clear signals against Corbyn. We can only imagine what they were doing secretly.
Chris Hedges:
I want to talk about the US because this is from a leaked audio recording obtained by the Washington Post. Then CIA director Mike Pompeo in a private meeting with the Israel lobby, said that the US government could stage its own intervention to stop Corbyn from becoming Prime Minister. This is the quote from Pompeo. “It could be that Mr. Corbyn manages to run the gauntlet and get elected.” Pompeo said, “It’s possible. You should know we won’t wait for him to do those things to begin to push back. We will do our level best. It’s too risky and too important and too hard once it’s already happened.” You even have the US government making in private, threats that they will prevent Corbyn from becoming Prime Minister.
Asa Winstanley:
Yeah. It’s pretty crazy. It’s so reminiscent of things like Operation Gladio and the CIA intervention in the Italian elections after the Second World War. It’s pretty crazy stuff. Again, this is what they were doing fairly openly. Yes, this meeting was in private, but it made its way into the Washington Post.
Chris Hedges:
Let’s talk about the weaponization of antisemitism. Which they used very effectively to destroy Corbyn and also to purge the party. What they went after were leftists within the party. The irony is that people they purged were in many cases or several cases, actually Jewish. 2018, three Pro-Israel, British Jewish newspapers publish identical front page editorials claiming that a Corbyn led government posed quote, “an existential threat to Jewish life in this country” due to the quote, “carbonite contempt for Jews and Israel.” You had clearly the forces, the intelligent forces, the military, the corporatist opposed to Corbyn. But the public truncheon that was used to bring him down was antisemitism. That’s what you do such a good job of chronicling in your book. Explain how the process worked.
Asa Winstanley:
It was really devastating. It was a really effective campaign. You have to hand it to the Israel lobby. They did it. They did it quite successfully. The main way they did it was to target Corby’s movement. His secret of his success was that he was an insurgent candidate for Prime Minister. That was his superpower, was that he had hundreds of thousands of people joining the Labour Party or rejoining the Labour Party. Probably many people had previously left during the Tony Blair years.
Who again, as you mentioned, was someone who was very much of the same sort of tendency as Bill Clinton. This so-called third way where we’re not conservatives, but we’re not socialists either. We’re a third way. A lot of these grassroots activists have left the party. In that period, because they were opposed to his policies of privatization, his policies of war, but also just because of the lack of democracy within the party, within the Labour Party. It was really hollowed out during the Tony Blair years.
It was really centralized in many ways. The Jeremy Corbyn era led to renewed hope that there could be democratization of the party. That there would be a new mass movement bringing hope really to the country. Bringing hope to working class. Bringing hope to these popular movements against racism, against war and so forth. The Labour Party membership had decreased so much over the years, and now it’s decreasing again. But in the Corbyn years, it went up to over half a million people.
It became the largest political party in Western Europe. It was absolutely huge. It was approaching 600,000 at one point. Then what happened was, this weapon of antisemitism became such a useful tool for the right. As you state, I think it’s important to note that it wasn’t only the Israel lobby, it was all these forces working together. The whole of the British establishment press, the whole of the corporate press and the British establishment in general was united against Corbyn.
But the unique weapon, the most powerful weapon against Corbyn was this weaponized antisemitism where essentially manufactured and fabricated forms of, or exaggerated forms of antisemitism were brought up and misportrayed in this way. Where first of all, they tried attacking Corbyn himself. That didn’t work so much at first because Corbyn has this long record of being an anti-racist. That record includes acting against antisemitism, against real antisemitism, which does exist from the right.
That wasn’t so effective at first. It later on became effective. But what then became really devastating was it was a really useful tool to divide the movement. These 200,000 people or more that joined the party just essentially to vote for Corbyn and to bring in something to change to the Labour Party, they were picked off one by one. His most prominent supporters within the party were attacked as anti-Semites falsely. Ken Livingston, for example, the former mayor of London, a Labour left-winger and rebel in his own right.
Who had ended up having to run against Labour. He did so successfully in the Tony Blair era because like Corbyn, he was very much a gad flight to Tony Blair. He achieved many things in power as mayor in London. He brought in all these left-wing policies. He was somebody who was in the ’80s, was involved in local government in London and supporting anti-racist causes and a supporter of the gay community at a time when it was quite unpopular in the country. When things that are now considered very mainstream.
Despite his long record, he was attacked as an antisemite because he was saying there was all these headlines about how Corbyn Corbyn’s movement was antisemitic. It was essentially all an attack on his record of solidarity with Palestinians, which was always misportrayed and smeared as antisemitism. Which is done all the time by Israel and it’s supporters. As we’re filming this, it’s going on against Roger Waters, the founder of Pink Floyd. They’re smearing his show as if it’s antisemitic. Corbyn’s supporters were essentially one by one picked off in this way, and eventually in the end they got him.
Chris Hedges:
Let’s talk about the role of Israel. Because as you point out in the book, you have these front groups in Britain purporting to represent British Jews with extremely close ties to the embassy. Some of those individuals actually came out of the embassy itself. Netanyahu, the prime minister of Israel, becomes involved also in the smears against Corbyn. Let’s talk about Israel’s role in this.
Asa Winstanley:
This is really important because there was actual involvement of the state of Israel itself. We saw, for example, when we talk about the Israel lobby, what do we mean? Well, it’s not one monolithic entity, as you know very well, Chris. It’s a a network, a diffused network of different organizations which work together. They work in coordination with each other for the most part. Occasionally they fall out with each other. You get 10 things like J Street, which it was supposed to be a more liberal Zionist organization, but is ultimately a Israel lobbying group.
Then you get APAC, which is nowadays very openly sort of Trumpist. Occasionally they will have falling out and they will be competing against each other. But by and large, these organizations work together and crucially most of them coordinate their activities with the state of Israel itself. With the Israeli embassy or with entities within the Israeli government itself, ministries within the Israeli government itself. There was one particular ministry which is now been folded.
Supposedly disbanded, but in reality folded into other Israeli ministries called the Minister of Strategic Affairs. Which was essentially another spy agency, really was what it was. It was a semi covert entity stacked with former military intelligence and other forms of Israeli spies. This was the entity which was really involved in attacking Corbyn. Several of these Israel lobby groups are in Britain, are Israel lobby groups that consider themselves to be liberal Zionist or even supposedly left-wing Zionists.
Several of them are actually within the Labour Party itself. Most notably, and obviously you’ve got Labour Friends. The way that Israel lobby works in the UK is a little bit different from the US. There’s no exact equivalent of APAC. There are some groups that want to be the equivalent of APAC, but they’re not as big. But the main way the lobbying is done is through groups within the two or three main political parties.
There’s a conservative friends of Israel, which obviously is the ruling party. There’s a Labour Friends, and there’s even liberal Democrat friends of Israel. Liberal Democrat being the third party, which is sometimes in coalition government. These groups are incredibly close to the Israeli embassy. The Al Jazeera, the Arab, the Qatari satellite channel did a really important, and I cover this in a chapter of the book, and I know you are very familiar with it as well in your reporting, Chris.
The Al Jazeera’s investigative unit did a really important undercover documentary series in 2017 about this. Their reporters infiltrated the British Israel lobby, especially Labour Friends. What they found was, in public Labour Friends says, “Oh, well, we’re just normal Labour members who we happen to support the state of Israel, the apartheid state of Israel.” Although obviously they deny it’s an apartheid state.
But in reality, what the undercover journalists found was that they actually work very, very closely with the Israeli embassy. The Labour Friends is essentially a front group. One of their staff members whose name is Michael Rubin, who’s now the director, who’s then a junior employee of Labour Friends of Israel, but is now the leader of Labour Friends. He was caught on camera in that investigation saying that they speak to the Israeli embassy quote, unquote “most days.” We like to have Labour Friends as a separate identity to the Israeli embassy. Because it helps us to get into places where we wouldn’t necessarily be able to do as Labour Friends of Israeli embassy was the way he put it.
Chris Hedges:
I only have four minutes left, and I want to talk about the role of the media. We should also be clear that Al Jazeera did a similar undercover operation in the United States on the power of the Israel lobby in the United States, which Israel managed to block broadcast. It never was broadcast on Al Jazeera. A pirated copy was up on Electronic Intifada. I hope it still is, because everyone should watch it. It’s quite disturbing. But let’s talk about the role of the media, because they amplified this smear of antisemitism. Every time they interviewed Corbyn, you have examples in the book, they just hammered him and hammered him and hammered him. Even times not even letting him answer. But they were a major part in this character assassination, or they played a major part.
Asa Winstanley:
That’s right. Yeah. I opened the book with a really quite good example, early example of that by Channel four News. Now, channel four news is well known in the UK as the Liberal TV channel, as the Liberal News program. It doesn’t have that much advertising on it. It’s subsidized by the state in a similar way to the BBC, although it doesn’t quite have the budget of the BBC. But it’s well known as a liberal news program. But they were really adamantly against Corbyn. They were really quite vociferous against him. The liberal media in general was really his worst enemy.
Chris Hedges:
The Guardian was awful.
Asa Winstanley:
It was. Even their news reporting was just very, very anti Corbyn. Nevermind the op-eds, the opinion pieces and so forth. The Guardian was really, really strongly opposed to him. It just showed that when it came down to it, they were really more about their advertisers.
Chris Hedges:
What happens? He’s essentially his own supporters are purged and right down to the lowest levels. Initially, you’re right, the senior leadership supported him is purged. But local groups are purged from Labour. Really ruthlessly down to the grassroots. He’s bereft of support within the party, in essence Labour, by the time he challenges Boris Johnson. By that time Labour has gutted or destroyed his own campaign on purpose.
Asa Winstanley:
Yeah. There was a really blatant form of internal sabotage to the point where there was Labour MPs who were really working against their own campaigns. Some of them did actually lose their seats. But it was so important to them that Corbyn not win, not become Prime Minister, that they’d rather lose their own seats. We saw that. There were several Labour MPs who actually left the party and tried to start a new party, which I forget the name of. It’s in the book. It was such a forgettable project that it was very clear that it was just a sabotage project to try and stop Corbyn winning. To the point where there was money set aside, leaked documents later showed there was money set aside. Labour Party money to work against the Corbyn’s Labour Party. It was an internal sabotage. It was very, very extreme.
Chris Hedges:
The same thing happened to George McGovern, the Democratic Party hierarchy. They again, had liberalized the rules by which candidates could get votes or support. The same thing. They joined forces with the Republican Party to destroy McGovern. Corbyn, of course, has now been pushed out of the Labour Party as an independent. When he stands for reelection, he’s still sitting in the House of Commons. When he stands for reelection, he actually will be challenged by a Labour Party candidate. I want to thank the Real News Network and its production team, Cameron Granadino, Adam Coley, David Hebden, and Kayla Rivara. You can find me@chrishedges.substack.com.
As fireworks boom and politicians solemnize Independence Day, the United States betrays the freedom of people around the world. The 4th of July is a strange spectacle: In Washington, D.C., patriots wave American flags at a parade even as the U.S. approves Morocco’s occupation of the Western Sahara, helping to crush the Sahrawi people’s hope for independence. Take your pick: Rwanda to Bahrain…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Saudi Arab: Delivering the wide-ranging sermon from Masjid-e-Nimra, Sheikh Dr. Yousaf bin Muhammad bin Saeed urged the Muslims to keep harmony and brotherhood among them.
All Muslims are like part of one body when any part of the body hurts, the pain is felt in the whole body, he added. The Muslims are urged to exhibit unity and behave politely and avoid conflicts, Sheikh Dr Yousaf said in his Hajj sermon.
“Muslims should exhibit best of manners as only those who will have good manners will be close to the Holy Prophet (peace be upon him) on the day of judgment,” ARY quoted him as saying.
“The combination of the testimony that only Allah is to be worshipped, along with the testimony that Muhammad (PBUH ) is Allah’s messenger.”
Sheikh Dr Yousaf in his Hajj Sermon further said that respecting and valuing humanity is compulsory for all Muslims. “Success lies in fear of Allah Almighty and following his orders”.
He said Allah has ordered Muslims to keep praying and paying zakat to the needy people.
Sheikh Yousaf urged the Muslims to worship in such a way that Almighty Allah is seeing them.
After Azaan-e-Maghrib, the pilgrims will leave for Muzdalifah where they will offer Maghrib and Isha prayers together and spend the night under open sky. From Muzdalifah, pilgrims will also collect pebbles to throw at Satin the next morning.
After offering Fajr Prayer at Muzdalifah, they will leave for Mina for remaining Hajj rituals.
“All praises are for Allah, the One and Only, who reformed humanity by sending the Prophet Muhammad to earth,” the speaker began, invoking the name of the Almighty.
“Praise be to Him, for there is no god but Him.”
Addressing the assembly, the sermon stressed the significance of adopting piety and fearing Allah.
It urged Muslims to strive for self-improvement. Sheikh Yusuf emphasized that exceeding the boundaries set by Allah is forbidden, and the measure of worship should remain within His guidance.
The sermon highlighted the fundamental beliefs of Islam, urging the congregation to affirm their faith in the oneness of Allah and the finality of the Prophethood of Muhammad. It emphasized that this testimony is the cornerstone of success for believers.
“The first part of the testimony is to believe that Allah is One, and Muhammad is Khatam al-Nabi (the last prophet),” the speaker said, adding that it will be the source of our success.
The five pillars of Islam were also expounded upon during the sermon.
Muslims were reminded of the importance of establishing regular prayer, fulfilling their obligations of zakat (charitable giving), observing fasting during Ramadan, and performing the Hajj pilgrimage for those who are physically and financially capable.
In order to foster unity, the sermon stressed the necessity of avoiding divisions and differences within the Muslim community.
Quoting the Qur’an, the speaker reminded the believers that Allah forbids division and that the hearts of the believers should remain united. The congregation was urged to put an end to divisive attitudes and work towards unity within society and families.
The sermon also cautioned against the influence of the devil, who seeks to sow discord and division among Muslims.
Pilgrims were reminded to remain vigilant, guarding themselves against divisive ideologies and promoting peace and harmony.
As the sermon concluded, the speaker called upon the assembly to be ambassadors of unity and righteousness, encouraging them to excel in good deeds and cooperate with one another in matters of faith and goodness. The implementation of Sharia law was highlighted as a means to preserve this unity.
The post Avoid divisions within the Muslim community: Sheikh Dr Yousaf addresses sermon from Masjid-e-Nimra first appeared on VOSA.
Ben Roberts-Smith was meant to be a poster boy of the regiment that served in Afghanistan. But the recent defamation case cracked the image of a plaster saint, writes Binoy Kampmark.
This post was originally published on Green Left.
This story originally appeared in Common Dreams on May 29, 2023. It is shared here under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0) license.
As supporters of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan at home and abroad celebrated his win of Sunday’s runoff election, human rights defenders and marginalized people including Kurds and LGBTQ+ activists voiced deep fears about how their lives will be adversely affected during the increasingly authoritarian leader’s third term.
Turkey’s Supreme Election Council confirmed Erdoğan’s victory over Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu on Sunday evening. Erdoğan, the 69-year-old leader of the right-wing Justice and Development Party who has ruled the nation of 85 million people since 2014 and dominated its politics for two decades, won 52.18% of the vote. Kılıçdaroğlu, a 74-year-old social democrat who leads the left-of-center Republican People’s Party, received 47.82%.
Erdoğan—who was seen handing out cash to supporters at a polling station in an apparent violation of Turkish election law—mocked his opponent’s loss outside the president’s home in Istanbul, saying, “Bye, bye, bye, Kemal” as the winner’s supporters booed, according to Al Jazeera.
“The only winner today is Turkey,” Erdoğan declared as he prepared for a third term in which his country faces severe economic woes—inflation has soared and the lira is at a record low against the U.S. dollar—and is struggling to recover from multiple devastating earthquakes earlier this year.
However, in Turkish Kurdistan—whose voters, along with a majority of people in most of Turkey’s largest cities favored Kılıçdaroğlu—people expressed fears that the government will intensify a crackdown it has been waging for several years.
Ardelan Mese, a 26-year-old cafe owner in Diyarbakir, the country’s largest Kurdish-majority city, called Sunday’s election “a matter of life and death now.”
“I can’t imagine what he will be capable of after declaring victory,” Mese said of Erdoğan in an interview with Reuters.
After initially courting the Kurds by expanding their political and cultural rights, Erdoğan returned to the repression that has long characterized Turkey’s treatment of a people who make up one-fifth of the nation’s population, while intensifying a war against the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), a far-left separatist group that Turkey, the United States, and other nations consider a terrorist organization.
“Erdogan’s victory will consolidate one-man rule and pave the way for horrible practices, bringing completely dark days for all parts of society,” Tayip Temel, the deputy co-chair of Turkey’s second-largest opposition party, the center-left and pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP)—which backed Kılıçdaroğlu—told Reuters.
Human rights defenders—many of whom have chosen or been forced into exile—also sounded the alarm over the prospect of a third Erdoğan term.
“If the opposition wins there will be space, even possibly limited, for discussions for a common future. With Erdoğan, there is no civic or political space for democracy and human rights,” Murat Çelikkan, a journalist who founded human rights groups including Amnesty International Turkey, said in an interview with Civil Rights Defenders just before Sunday’s runoff.
Çelikkan called Erdoğan a “very authoritarian, religious, pro-expansionist conservative.”
“Turkey, according to judicial statistics, has the largest number of terrorists in the world, because the prosecutors and judges have an inclination to use anti-terror laws arbitrarily and lavishly,” he continued. “There are tens of thousands of people who are being trialed or convicted by anti-terror laws. Thousands of people insulting the president.”
“Nowhere in Turkey you can make a peaceful demonstration and protest,” Çelikkan added. “The security forces directly attack and detain you. The minister of interior targets and criminalizes LGBTI+ people on a daily basis.”
LGBTQ+ Turks voiced fears for their future following a campaign in which Erdoğan centered homophobia in his appeals to an overwhelmingly Muslim electorate and repeatedly accused Kılıçdaroğlu and other opposition figures of being gay. During his victory speech Sunday evening, Erdoğan again lashed out at the LGBTQ+ community while excoriating Kılıçdaroğlu for his campaign pledge to “respect everyone’s beliefs, lifestyles, and identities.”
Erdoğan vowed in his speech that gays would not “infiltrate” Turkey and that “we will not let the LGBT forces win.” At one point during his address, an Al Jazeera interpreter stopped translating a 45-second portion when the president called members of the opposition gay.
Ilker Erdoğan, a 20-year-old university student and LGBTQ+ activist, told Agence France-Presse that “I feel deeply afraid.”
“Feeling so afraid is affecting my psychology terribly. I couldn’t breathe before, and now they will try to strangle my throat,” he added. “From the moment I was born, I felt that discrimination, homophobia, and hatred in my bones.”
Ameda Murat Karaguzu, a project assistant at an unnamed pro-LGBTQ+ group, told AFP that she has been “subjected to more hate speech and acts of hate than I have experienced in a long time.”
Karaguzu blamed Erdoğan’s government for the increasing hostility toward LGBTQ+ Turks, adding that bigots are keenly “aware that there will be no consequences for killing or harming us.”
Ilker Erdoğan struck a defiant tone, telling AFP that “I am also part of this nation, my identity card says Turkish citizen.”
“You cannot erase my existence,” he added, “no matter how hard you try.”
This post was originally published on The Real News Network.
Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s win in the May 28 second round of the Turkish presidential elections has sent a wave of concern and dread through democratic circles and the large Kurdish minority, reports Peter Boyle.
This post was originally published on Green Left.
Secret United States government documents leaked onto social media platform Discord reveal how the US and its military is striving to reestablish hegemony — targeting adversaries and pressuring allies, report Malik Miah and Barry Sheppard.
This post was originally published on Green Left.
COMMENTARY: By John Minto
The last fortnight has seen a series of brutal, deliberately provocative Israeli attacks on Palestinian worshippers at Al Aqsa Mosque in occupied East Jerusalem during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
Needless to say, Israel had no business interfering in Muslim worship at Al Aqsa, the third holiest shrine for Muslims after Mecca and Medina, and an area which is not under their authority or control.
Despite this, Israeli attacks on Al Aqsa have intensified in recent years as the apartheid state strives to undermine all aspects of Palestinian life in Jerusalem. It is applying ethnic cleansing in slow motion.
Inevitably missile attacks on Israel from Gaza and Southern Lebanon followed and Israel has reveled in once again trying to portray itself to the world as the victim.
There is an excellent 10-minute video in which former Palestinian spokesperson Hanan Ashrawi more than held her own against a hostile BBC interviewer here.
WATCH | A masterclass by @DrHananAshrawi illuminating the everyday violence & aggression Palestinians endure at the hands of Israel’s occupation, the inevitable local resistance to it & Israel’s ongoing impunity while also fending off @BBCWorld‘s spurious line of questioning. pic.twitter.com/eTpvXV7QbI
— Palestine Deep Dive (@PDeepdive) April 6, 2023
There is also an excellent podcast produced by Al Jazeera which backgrounds the increase in violence in the Middle East.
Inside Story: What triggered the spike in violence? Video: Al Jazeera
Nour Odeh – Political analyst and former spokeswoman for the Palestinian National Authority.
Uri Dromi – Founder and president of the Jerusalem Press Club and a former spokesman for the Israel government.
Francesca Albanese – United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
Further background on the politics around Al Aqsa is covered in this Al Jazeera podcast.
I strongly condemn Israel’s excessive use of force against Palestinian Muslims praying at #AlAqsaMosque during Ramadan, & its breaches of the #StatusQuo. This recklessness risks bringing further devastation to both sides of the Green Line.
Full statement: https://t.co/ys58j0bIzt https://t.co/mWfJiHSVaT— Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur oPt (@FranceskAlbs) April 6, 2023
Initially reporting here in New Zealand was reasonable and clearly identified Israel as the brutal racist aggressors attacking Palestinian civilians at worship. However, within a couple of days media reporting deteriorated dramatically with the “normal” appalling reporting taking over — painting Palestinians as terrorists and Israel as simply enforcing “law and order”.
At the heart of appalling reporting for a long time has been the BBC which slavishly and consistently screws the scrum in Israel’s favour. The BBC does not report on the Middle East – it propagandises for Israel.
Journalist Jonathan Cook describes how the BBC coverage is enabling Israeli violence and UN Special Rapporteur on the Palestinian Territories, Francesca Albanese, called out the BBC’s awful reporting in a tweet.
Renewed violence against Palestinian worshippers at #AlAqsaMosque on yet another Ramadan turned into suffering,must be condemned,investigated & accounted for.
Misleading media coverage
contributes to enabling Israel’s unchecked occupation & must also be condemned/accounted for https://t.co/JI6YzNgCju
— Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur oPt (@FranceskAlbs) April 5, 2023
It’s not just the BBC of course. For example The New York Times has been called out for deliberately distorting the news to blame Palestinians for Al Aqsa mosque crisis.
It’s not reporting — it’s propaganda!
Why is BBC important for Aotearoa New Zealand?
Unfortunately, here in Aotearoa New Zealand our media frequently and uncritically uses BBC reports to inform New Zealanders on the Middle East.
Radio New Zealand and Television New Zealand, our state broadcasters, are the worst offenders.
For example here are two BBC stories carried by RNZ this past week here and here. They cover the deaths of three Jewish women in a terrorist attack in the occupied West Bank.
The media should report such killings but there is no context given for the illegal Jewish-only settlements at the heart in the occupied West Bank, Israel’s military occupation across all Palestine, the daily ritual humiliation and debasement of Palestinians or its racist apartheid policies towards Palestinians — or as Israeli human rights groups B’Tselem describes it “A regime of Jewish supremacy from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea: This is apartheid”.
Neither are there Palestinian voices in the above reports — they are typically absent from most Middle East reporting, or at best muted, compared to extensive quoting from racist Israeli leaders.
The BBC is happy to report the “what?” but not the “why?”
Needless to say neither Radio New Zealand, nor TVNZ, has provided any such sympathetic coverage for the many dozens of Palestinians killed by Israel this year — including at least 16 Palestinian children. To the BBC, RNZ and TVNZ, murdered Palestinian children are simply statistics.
RNZ and TVNZ say they cannot ensure to cover all the complexities of the Middle East in every story and that people get a balanced view over time from their regular reporting.
This is not true. Their reliance on so much systematically-biased BBC reporting, and other sources which are often not much better, tells a different story.
For example, references to Israel as an apartheid state — something attested to by every credible human rights groups, such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch — are always absent from any RNZ or TVNZ reporting and yet this is critical to help people understand what is going on in Palestine.
Neither are there significant references to international law or United Nations resolutions — the tools which provide for a Middle East peace based on justice — the only peace possible.
Unlike their reporting on the Russian invasion of Ukraine, RNZ and TVNZ reporting on the Middle East leaves people confused and ready to blame both sides equally for the murder and mayhem unleashed by Israel on Palestinians and Palestinian resistance to the Israeli military occupation and all that entails.
John Minto is a political activist and commentator, and spokesperson for Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa. This article is republished from the PSNA newsletter with the author’s permission.
This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.
Israeli police invaded Al Aqsa Mosque for the second day in a row, shooting tear gas and stun grenades at Palestinian worshippers inside, reports Susan Price.
It is a mistake to ignore the connection between the attempted judicial coup in Israel and the occupation of the West Bank.
This post was originally published on Dissent MagazineDissent Magazine.
Decades into the illegal Israeli occupation of Palestine, massive crowds flooded Israel’s streets on Sunday, March 26 for another round of demonstrations against the far-right Benjamin Netanyahu government, reports Jessica Corbett.
March 19–20 marked 20 years since United States forces invaded Iraq. A new report documents the ongoing human, social, economic and environmental toll, reports Brett Wilkins.
This post was originally published on Green Left.
At around 5:30 a.m. local time in Baghdad on March 20, 2003, air raid sirens were heard in Baghdad as the U.S. invasion began. Within the hour, President George W. Bush gave a nationally televised speech from the Oval Office announcing the war had begun. The attack came on the false pretext that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was hiding weapons of mass destruction, and despite worldwide protest…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Twenty years after a United States-led coalition invaded and occupied Iraq, the country is facing cascading environmental crises and was recently declared the fifth-most vulnerable country to climate disruption. Plagued by instability and corruption fueled by religious divisions and various militias competing for influence and revenue, the Iraqi government is weak and unable to tackle these…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Turkey will go to election on May 14, after President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan called a snap poll, reports Susan Price, and the pro-Kurdish People’s Democratic Party (HDP) will likely be forced to participate in the election under a different party name, due to a politically-motivated trial against it.
This post was originally published on Green Left.
After a highly acclaimed run in North America, Roger Waters will take his “This Is Not a Drill” tour across Europe. The final concert in Gemrany, originally planned to take place in Frankfurt on May 28, has now been cancelled, reports Vijay Prashad and Katie Halper.
This post was originally published on Green Left.
While advocates of peace and a multipolar world order welcomed Friday’s China-brokered agreement reestablishing diplomatic relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia, U.S. press, pundits, and politicians expressed what one observer called “imperial anxieties” over the deal and growing Chinese influence in a region dominated by the United States for decades. The deal struck between the two countries…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
We have seen much recently about the Ukraine war anniversary. But this is also the anniversary of other wars: March marks the 8th anniversary of the war on Yemen and the 20th on Iraq. Members of Congress, including Senator Bernie Sanders, should introduce a Yemen War Powers Resolution before this war enters a 9th year.
On March 1st activists in 10 cities across the United States protested at congressional offices and beyond, calling on their lawmakers to bring the harmful U.S. role in the Yemen war to a rapid and final end. Over 70 organizations called for and supported the protests.
During Wednesday’s protests, activists called on Sanders and other federal lawmakers to introduce a new Yemen War Powers Resolution this month. If brought to the floor for a vote, Congress could order the president to end U.S. participation in the catastrophic conflict, which the U.S. has enabled for eight years. Sanders sponsored last year’s bill, but when he moved to bring the resolution to a floor vote in December, he was shut down by the Biden administration.
In December, Sanders pledged to return to the Senate floor with a new Yemen War Powers Resolution if he and the administration were unable to agree to “strong and effective” action that would achieve his goals.
Without meaningful public action from Biden at this point, the time is now for Sen. Sanders to make good on his pledge. For over 10 months, Saudi Arabia has not dropped any bombs on Yemen. However, this could change anytime. If the United States continues to support the war, it will be implicated in Saudi aggression if, and likely when, the conflict escalates.
Without meaningful public action from Biden at this point, the time is now for Sen. Sanders to make good on his pledge.
Approximately two–thirds of the Royal Saudi Air Force receive direct support from U.S. military contracts in the form of spare parts and maintenance. TheSaudi-led coalition has relied on this support to carry out these offensive strikes in Yemen. The United States has no sufficient compelling interest in Yemen that justifies implication in one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises.
Since March 2015, the Saudi Arabia and /UAE)-led bombing and blockade of Yemen have killed hundreds of thousands of people and wreaked havoc on the country, creating one of the largest humanitarian crises in the world. 17 million people in Yemen are food insecure and 500,000 children are experiencing severe wasting, also known as severe acute malnutrition.
For years virtually no containerized goods have been allowed to enter Hodeida, Yemen’s principal Red Sea port Hodeida. Containerized goods include essentially everything other than food and fuel. This has helped cripple the economy and prevented critical life-saving medicine and medical equipment from reaching people in need.
This humanitarian crisis has worsened since President Biden took office. Admittedly this is not entirely his fault. The Biden administration took some initial good steps forward, including reversing the Trump administration’s policy to designate the Houthis as a Foreign Terrorist Organization, and reversing an arms transfer in the works when Biden took office. The war in Ukraine and global wheat shortage have hit Yemen hard; the country relies heavily on imports. Climate disasters have also exacerbated the effects of the conflict in Yemen. But the Biden administration does bear partial responsibility for the continued suffering in Yemen.
Despite President Biden’s February 2021 commitment to end participation in Saudi offensive operations in Yemen, the U.S. has continued support for the war. The U.S. has continued to provide spare parts and maintenance for the Saudi air force, which increased the frequency of airstrikes on Yemen in 2021 and early 2022 – after Biden took office.
Without a negotiated settlement, nothing prevents Saudi Arabia from restarting airstrikes in Yemen. With apparent never-ending and unconditional U.S. military support, Saudi Arabia lacks an incentive to once and for all completely lift its blockade of Yemen and withdraw from Yemen.
In 2018 Saudi dictator Mohammed Bin Salman ordered the murder of a U.S. journalist and then lied about it. Just last year Saudi Arabia manipulated global energy markets to raise fuel prices and empower Russia in its immoral and illegal invasion of Ukraine. These are just a couple recent demonstrations of a history of destructive activity by Saudi Arabia that is harmful to the United States and its allies. The Biden administration was correct in October when it called for a re-evaluation of the US-Saudi relationship, urging Congress to propose measures to hold Saudi Arabia accountable. Passing the Yemen War Powers Resolution is a chance to do exactly that.
Organizations that signed the call to protest the war March 1st included the Yemen Relief and Reconstruction Foundation, the Yemeni Alliance Committee, About Face: Veterans Against War, Veterans for Peace, Progressive Democrats of America, the Libertarian Institute, Avaaz, CODEPINK, Peace Action, United for Peace and Justice, Democratic Socialists of America International Committee, Women’s League for International Peace and Freedom – US Section, among over 70 organizations. Over 100 national organizations – humanitarian, veterans’, libertarian, and others – wrote to Congress as recently as December urging their passage of the Yemen War Powers Resolution. Bernie Sanders should re-introduce his resolution.
Under Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution, the power to raise and support armies is reserved for Congress. No Congressional authorization for the use of military force (AUMF) has been issued for Yemen. The War Powers Resolution empowers Congress to invoke its constitutional war powers authority to end unconstitutional U.S. participation in wars like the war in Yemen.
The bill prevents a resumption of offensive Saudi airstrikes in Yemen by prohibiting U.S. involvement in them. This legislation can promote a negotiated settlement and long-term, lasting peace between the warring parties.
Saturday, March 25 will mark the eighth anniversary of the beginning of the Saudi-led coalition’s bombing of Yemen. To mark the occasion, US and international groups will hold an online rally to inspire and enhance education and activism to end the war in Yemen. Join grassroots organizers on March 25th at 12pm Eastern. Register now.
This post was originally published on Common Dreams.
Benjamin Netanyahu, the Prime Minister of Israel, will be remembered as the reckless politician who gave Itamar Ben-Gvir the green light to set a fire that will consume Palestine and cause death and destruction, the scale of which has never been seen before, writes Miko Peled.
This post was originally published on Green Left.
Green Left journalists Ben Radford and Isaac Nellist round up the latest news from Australia and around the world in this new podcast.
This post was originally published on The Asian Age | Home.
Chanting “Free, free Palestine” and “From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free”, 70 protesters gathered in the Murray St Mall to protest the January 26 slaughter of Palestinian refugees by the Israeli state.
Speakers pointed out that US and Australian politicians were quick to condemn the killing of seven Jewish civilians in Jerusalem on January 28 but were silent about the killing of Palestinians by Israeli forces two days earlier.
This post was originally published on Green Left.
While Israeli soldiers stormed Jenin and killed 10 Palestinians, members of Israeli registered professional cycling teams were training on roads in and around Geelong, writes Lisa Gleeson.
This post was originally published on Green Left.
This post was originally published on The Asian Age | Home.