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  • The Nakba of Sheikh Jarrah: How Israel Uses ‘the Law’ to Ethnically Cleanse East Jerusalem

    A Palestinian man, Atef Yousef Hanaysha, was killed by Israeli occupation forces on March 19 during a weekly protest against illegal Israeli settlement expansion in Beit Dajan, near Nablus, in the northern West Bank.

    Although tragic, the above news reads like a routine item from occupied Palestine, where shooting and killing unarmed protesters is part of the daily reality. However, this is not true. Since right-wing Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, announced, in September 2019, his intentions to formally and illegally annex nearly a third of the occupied Palestinian West Bank, tensions have remained high.

    The killing of Hanaysha is only the tip of the iceberg. In occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank, a massive battle is already underway. On one side, Israeli soldiers, army bulldozers and illegal armed Jewish settlers are carrying out daily missions of evicting Palestinian families, displacing farmers, burning orchards, demolishing homes and confiscating land. On the other side, Palestinian civilians, often disorganized, unprotected and leaderless, are fighting back.

    The territorial boundaries of this battle are largely located in occupied East Jerusalem and in the so-called ‘Area C’ of the West Bank – nearly 60% of the total size of the occupied West Bank – which is under complete and direct Israeli military control. No other place represents the perfect microcosm of this uneven war like that of the neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah in occupied East Jerusalem.

    On March 10, fourteen Palestinian and Arab organizations issued a ‘joint urgent appeal to the United Nations Special Procedures on forced evictions in East Jerusalem’ to stop the Israeli evictions in the area. Successive decisions by Israeli courts have paved the way for the Israeli army and police to evict 15 Palestinian families – 37 households of around 195 people – in the Karm Al-Ja’ouni area in Sheikh Jarrah and Batn Al-Hawa neighborhood in the town of Silwan.

    These imminent evictions are not the first, nor will they be the last. Israel occupied Palestinian East Jerusalem in June 1967 and formally, though illegally, annexed it in 1980. Since then, the Israeli government has vehemently rejected international criticism of the Israeli occupation, dubbing, instead, Jerusalem as the “eternal and undivided capital of Israel”.

    To ensure its annexation of the city is irreversible, the Israeli government approved the Master Plan 2000, a massive scheme that was undertaken by Israel to rearrange the boundaries of the city in such a way that it would ensure permanent demographic majority for Israeli Jews at the expense of the city’s native inhabitants. The Master Plan was no more than a blueprint for a state-sponsored ethnic cleansing campaign, which saw the destruction of thousands of Palestinian homes and the subsequent eviction of numerous families.

    While news headlines occasionally present the habitual evictions of Palestinian families in Sheikh Jarrah, Silwan and other parts of East Jerusalem as if a matter that involves counterclaims by Palestinian residents and Jewish settlers, the story is, in fact, a wider representation of Palestine’s modern history.

    Indeed, the innocent families which are now facing “the imminent risk of forced eviction” are re-living their ancestral nightmare of the Nakba – the ethnic cleansing of historic Palestine in 1948.

    Two years after the native inhabitants of historic Palestine were dispossessed of their homes and lands and ethnically cleansed altogether, Israel enacted the so-called Absentees’ Property Law of 1950.

    The law, which, of course, has no legal or moral validity, simply granted the properties of Palestinians who were evicted or fled the war to the State, to do with it as it pleases. Since those ‘absentee’ Palestinians were not allowed to exercise their right of return, as stipulated by international law, the Israeli law was a state-sanctioned wholesale theft. It ultimately aimed at achieving two objectives: one, to ensure Palestinian refugees do not return or attempt to claim their stolen properties in Palestine and, two, to give Israel a legal cover for permanently confiscating Palestinian lands and homes.

    The Israeli military occupation of the remainder of historic Palestine in 1967 necessitated, from an Israeli colonial perspective, the creation of fresh laws that would allow the State and the illegal settlement enterprise to claim yet more Palestinian properties. This took place in 1970 in the form of the Legal and Administrative Matters Law. According to the new legal framework, only Israeli Jews were allowed to claim lost land and property in Palestinian areas.

    Much of the evictions in East Jerusalem take place within the context of these three interconnected and strange legal arguments: the Absentees’ Law, the Legal and Administrative Matters Law and the Master Plan 2000. Understood together, one is easily able to decipher the nature of the Israeli colonial scheme in East Jerusalem, where Israeli individuals, in coordination with settler organizations, work together to fulfill the vision of the State.

    In their joint appeal, Palestinian human rights organizations describe the flow of how eviction orders, issued by Israeli courts, culminate into the construction of illegal Jewish settlements. Confiscated Palestinian properties are usually transferred to a branch within the Israeli Ministry of Justice called the Israeli Custodian General. The latter holds on to these properties until they are claimed by Israeli Jews, in accordance with the 1970 Law. Once Israeli courts honor Israeli Jewish individuals’ legal claims to the confiscated Palestinian lands, these individuals often transfer their ownership rights or management to settler organizations. In no time, the latter organizations utilize the newly-acquired property to expand existing settlements or to start new ones.

    While the Israeli State claims to play an impartial role in this scheme, it is actually the facilitator of the entire process. The final outcome manifests in the ever-predictable scene, where an Israeli flag is triumphantly hoisted over a Palestinian home and a Palestinian family is assigned an UN-supplied tent and a few blankets.

    While the above picture can be dismissed by some as another routine, common occurrence, the situation in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem has become extremely volatile. Palestinians feel that they have nothing more to lose and Netanyahu’s government is more emboldened than ever. The killing of Atef Hanaysha, and others like him, is only the beginning of that imminent, widespread confrontation.

    This article was posted on Wednesday, March 24th, 2021 at 8:23pm and is filed under Annexation, Apartheid, Benjamin Netanyahu, Evictions, Human Rights, Hypocrisy, Israel/Palestine, Israeli Defence Force (IDF), Justice, Land Theft, Murder, Occupation, Property Rights, United Nations, Violence, Zionism.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Elections under Fire: Palestine’s Impossible Democracy Dilemma  

    Many Palestinian intellectuals and political analysts find themselves in the unenviable position of having to declare a stance on whether they support or reject upcoming Palestinian elections which are scheduled for May 22 and July 30. But there are no easy answers.

    The long-awaited decree by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas last January to hold legislative and presidential elections in the coming months was widely welcomed,  not as a triumph for democracy but as the first tangible positive outcome of dialogue between rival Palestinian factions, mainly Abbas’ Fatah party and Hamas.

    As far as inner Palestinian dialogue is concerned, the elections, if held unobstructed, could present a ray of hope that, finally, Palestinians in the Occupied Territories will enjoy a degree of democratic representation, a first step towards a more comprehensive representation that could include millions of Palestinians outside the Occupied Territories.

    But even such humble expectations are conditioned on many “ifs”: only if Palestinian factions honor their commitments to the Istanbul Agreement of September 24; only if Israel allows Palestinians, including Jerusalemites, to vote unhindered and refrains from arresting Palestinian candidates; only if the US-led international community accepts the outcome of the democratic elections without punishing victorious parties and candidates; only if the legislative and presidential elections are followed by the more consequential and substantive elections in the Palestinian National Council (PNC) – the Palestinian Parliament in exile – and so on.

    If any of these conditions is unsatisfactory, the May elections are likely to serve no practical purpose, aside from giving Abbas and his rivals the veneer of legitimacy, thus allowing them to buy yet more time and acquire yet more funds from their financial benefactors.

    All of this compels us to consider the following question: is democracy possible under military occupation?

    Almost immediately following the last democratic Palestinian legislative elections in 2006, the outcome of which displeased Israel, 62 Palestinian ministers and members of the new parliament were thrown into prison, with many still imprisoned.

    History is repeating itself as Israel has already begun its arrest campaigns of Hamas leaders and members in the West Bank. On February 22, over 20 Palestinian activists, including Hamas officials, were detained as a clear message from the Israeli occupation to Palestinians that Israel does not recognize their dialogue, their unity agreements or their democracy.

    Two days later, 67-year-old Hamas leader, Omar Barghouti, was summoned by the Israeli military intelligence in the occupied West Bank and warned against running in the upcoming May elections. “The Israeli officer warned me not to run in the upcoming elections and threatened me with imprisonment if I did,” Barghouti was quoted by Al-Monitor.

    The Palestinian Basic Law allows prisoners to run for elections, whether legislative or presidential, simply because the most popular among Palestinian leaders are often behind bars. Marwan Barghouti is one.

    Imprisoned since 2002, Barghouti remains Fatah’s most popular leader, though appreciated more by the movement’s young cadre, as opposed to Abbas’ old guard. The latter group has immensely benefited from the corrupt system of political patronage upon which the 85-year-old president has constructed his Authority.

    To sustain this corrupt system, Abbas and his clique labored to marginalize Barghouti, leading to the suggestion that Israel’s imprisonment of Fatah’s vibrant leader serves the interests of the current Palestinian President.

    This claim has much substance, not only because Abbas has done little to pressure Israel to release Barghouti but also because all credible public opinion polls suggest that Barghouti is far more popular among Fatah’s supporters – in fact all Palestinians – than Abbas.

    On February 11, Abbas dispatched Hussein al-Sheikh, the Minister of Civilian Affairs and a member of Fatah’s Central Committee, to dissuade Barghouti from running in the upcoming presidential elections. An ideal scenario for the Palestinian President would be to take advantage of Barghouti’s popularity by having him lead the Fatah list in the contest for the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC). Hence, Abbas could ensure a strong turnout by Fatah supporters, while securing the chair of presidency for himself.

    Barghouti vehemently rejected Abbas’ request, thus raising an unexpected challenge to Abbas, who now risks dividing the Fatah vote, losing the PLC elections, again, to Hamas and losing the presidential elections to Barghouti.

    Between the nightly raids and crackdowns by the Israeli military and the political intrigues within the divided Fatah movement, one wonders if the elections, if they take place, will finally allow Palestinians to mount a united front in the struggle against Israeli occupation and for Palestinian freedom.

    Then, there is the issue of the possible position of the ‘international community’ regarding the outcome of the elections. News reports speak of efforts made by Hamas to seek guarantees from Qatar and Egypt “to ensure Israel will not pursue its representatives and candidates in the upcoming elections,” Al-Monitor also reported.

    But what kind of guarantees can Arab countries obtain from Tel Aviv, and what kind of leverage can Doha and Cairo have when Israel continues to disregard the United Nations, international law, the International Criminal Court, and so on?

    Nevertheless, can Palestinian democracy afford to subsist in its state of inertia? Abbas’ mandate as president expired in 2009, the PLC’s mandate expired in 2010 and, in fact, the Palestinian Authority was set up as an interim political body, whose function should have ceased in 1999. Since then, the ‘Palestinian leadership’ has not enjoyed legitimacy among Palestinians, deriving its relevance, instead, from the support of its benefactors, who are rarely interested in supporting democracy in Palestine.

    The only silver lining in the story is that Fatah and Hamas have also agreed on the restructuring of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), which is now largely monopolized by Abbas’ Fatah movement. Whether the democratic revamping of the PLO takes place or not, largely depends on the outcome of the May and July elections.

    Palestine, like other Middle Eastern countries, including Israel, does have a crisis of political legitimacy. Since Palestine is an occupied land with little or no freedom, one is justified to argue that true democracy under these horrific conditions cannot possibly be achieved.

    This article was posted on Thursday, March 11th, 2021 at 8:36pm and is filed under Elections, Fatah, Hamas, Incarceration, International Criminal Court, Israel/Palestine, Israeli Defence Force (IDF), Mahmoud Abbas, Occupation, Palestine, Palestinian Authority, Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), Political Prisoners, Politics, United Nations, West Bank, Zionism.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Coup Leaders, Aung San Suu Kyi Betrayed Democracy in Burma

    What is taking place in Burma right now is a military coup. There can be no other description for such an unwarranted action as the dismissal of the government by military decree and the imposition of Min Aung Hlaing, the Commander-in-Chief of the Army, as an unelected ruler.

    However, despite the endless talk about democratization, Burma was, in the years leading up to the coup, far from being a true democracy.

    Aung San Suu Kyi, leader of the country’s erstwhile ruling party, the National League for Democracy (NLD), has done very little to bring about meaningful change since she was designated State Counselor.

    Since her return to Rangoon in 1989 and placement under house arrest for many years, Suu Kyi was transformed from an activist making the case for democracy in her country, into a ‘democracy icon’ and, eventually, into an untouchable cult personality. The title, ‘State Counselor’, invented by NDL following the 2016 elections, was meant to place her authority above all others in government.

    The justification for this special status is that the military, which continued to have substantial sway over the government, would not allow Suu Kyi to serve as the Prime Minister, because her husband and children are British. But there is more to the story. On her relationship with her party, Richard C. Paddock recently wrote in the New York Times that Suu Kyi has controlled her party in a style that is similar to the previous military control of the country.

    “Critics began calling the party a cult of personality,” Paddock wrote, adding, “Often criticized for her stubbornness and imperious style, she has kept the party firmly under her command and is known to demand loyalty and obedience from her followers.”

    Those who have celebrated the ‘Lady’s’ legacy of yesteryear, were disappointed when the supposed human rights champion agreed to participate in the 2016 elections, despite the fact that millions of Burmese who belong to marginalized ethnic groups – like the country’s persecuted Rohingya – were excluded from the ballot box.

    Faint and bashful criticism was overpowered by the global celebration of Burma’s fledgling democracy. No sooner had Suu Kyi been made the de facto leader, although with direct alliance with the country’s former junta, than international conglomerates – mostly Western – rushed to Rangoon to capitalize on Burma’s largesse of natural resources, left unexploited because of economic sanctions imposed on the country.

    Many legitimate questions were brushed aside, so as not to blemish what was dubbed as a victory for democracy in Burma, miraculously won from a cruel military by a single woman who symbolized the determination and the decades-long struggle of her people. However, behind this carefully choreographed and romanticized veneer was a genocidal reality.

    The genocide of the Rohingya, a pogrom of murder, rape and ethnic cleansing, goes back many decades in Burma. When the Burmese junta carried out their ‘cleansing’ operations of Rohingya Muslims in the past, their violent campaigns were either entirely overlooked or conveniently classified under the encompassing discourse of human rights violations in that country.

    When the genocide intensified in 2016-17, and continued unabated, many legitimate questions arose about the culpability of Burma’s ruling NLD party and of Suu Kyi, personally.

    In the early months of the most recent episodes of the Rohingya genocide at the hands of government forces and local militias, Suu Kyi and her party behaved as if the country was gripped by mere communal violence and that, ultimately, blame was to be shared by all of those involved. That discourse proved unsustainable.

    Internationally, the Rohingya became a recurring theme in the media as hundreds of thousands of refugees were forced to flee, mostly into Bangladesh. The magnitude of their misery became daily and horrific headlines. Stories of rape and murder were documented by the United Nations and other international rights groups. As a result, thanks to efforts championed by a group of 57 Muslim countries, a landmark lawsuit, accusing Burma of genocide, was filed at the UN International Court of Justice in the Hague in 2019.

    For Suu Kyi and her party, ethnic allegiances and realpolitik superseded any platitudes about democracy and human rights, as she defiantly objected to international criticism and openly defended her government and military. In her testimony at the UN Court in December, Suu Kyi described the genocidal violence of the Rohingya as “cycles of inter-communal violence going back to the 1940s”.  Moreover, she harangued the ‘impatience’ of international investigators and human rights groups, blaming them for rushing to judgment.

    By dismissing what “many human rights experts have called some of the worst pogroms of this century,” Suu Kyi turned from “champion of human rights and democracy to apparent apologist for brutality,” NYT reported.

    Though we must insist that the return to rule by the military in Burma is unacceptable, we must equally demand that Burma embraces true democracy for all of its citizens, regardless of race, ethnicity or religion. A good start would be to disassociate Aung San Suu Kyi from any inclusive democratic movement in this country. The Lady of Burma had her opportunity but, sadly, failed.

    This article was posted on Sunday, February 28th, 2021 at 6:27pm and is filed under Aung San Suu Kyi, Authoritarianism, Burma, Coup, Crimes against Humanity, Democracy, Disinformation, Elections, Genocide, Human Rights, Hypocrisy, International Court of Justice, Militarism, Propaganda, Rohingya, Totalitarianism, Transparency/Secrecy, United Nations.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Over 800 Organizations and Individuals in the United States Demand the Biden Administration End Its Support for the Brutal Moïse Regime in Haiti

    Above photo: By Professor Danny Shaw who is currently in Haiti

    United States – Today, February 24, 72 organizations and 700 individuals published an open letter calling for the Biden administration to end its illegal and destructive intervention in Haiti. While Joe Biden and the Democrats condemned the Trump forces for not respecting the results of the U.S. election, they are supporting Jovenel Moïse’s refusal to leave office after his term as president ended on February 7, 2021. Moïse has unleashed violent gangs, the police and the military against protesters who are demanding that he respect the Constitution and step down.

    “President Biden claims to care about racial equity but his actions in Haiti show the emptiness of that rhetoric,” said Ajamu Baraka of the Black Alliance for Peace. “For centuries now, the United States has employed force to dominate Haiti, the first Black Republic that was established in 1804 after the defeat of French and Spanish colonizers. President Biden has an opportunity to demonstrate his commitment to democracy and Black self-determination by ending support for the Moïse regime and denouncing the current violence.”

    The past two presidents of Haiti, Michel Martelly and Jovenel Moïse, were hand-picked and forced into office by the United States during the Obama administration against the will of the Haitian people. Moïse is currently ruling by decree after dismissing most of the legislators and refusing to hold elections. With the backing of the Core Group, composed of the United States, Canada, Brazil, France, Germany, Spain, the European Union and the United Nations, Moïse is trying to push a new constitution through using a referendum in April. The new constitution being written by members of the Core Group and without any real participation of the Haitian people would grant greater power to the executive office.

    Since February 7, the rogue Moïse government has launched a brutal crackdown on all dissent resulting in home invasions, arrests, the firing of Supreme Court judges and a police inspector general, attacks on the media and the use of chemical agents and live ammunition to disperse protests, as documented by the U. S. Human Rights Clinics.

    “The current situation in Haiti is critical,” stated Marleine Bastien, the Executive Director of the FANM In Action and a leading voice in South Florida’s Haitian community. “The Superior Council of Haiti’s Judiciary, The Haitian Bar Federation, and credible civil society organizations inside Haiti and their diaspora allies agree that President Moise’s term has in fact ended.  It is time for President Biden to keep his promise and respect the democratic rights and  self-determination of the Haitian people.”

    Here is the open letter:

    On February 7, 2021, Jovenel Moïse’s term as president of Haiti ended – but with the support of the Biden administration he is refusing to leave office. This has created an urgent crisis in the country. A mass movement, reminiscent of the 1986 popular movement that overthrew the brutal U.S.-sponsored dictatorship of Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier, is demanding Moïse step down. We are alarmed by the abundance of evidence of severe human rights violations by the Moïse regime to quell the protests.

    One of the main calls from the mobilizations of hundreds of thousands in the streets of Port-au-Prince and across Haiti has been for the United States, United Nations and the Organization of American States to stop their interference. These bodies, as part of the “Core Group” of imperialist nations and institutions targeting Haiti, are currently pushing their rewrite of the Haitian Constitution through a referendum on April 25.

    These organizations have a long history of neocolonial intervention in Haiti and the region. Ever since the democratically elected president Jean Bertrand Aristide was overthrown for a second time by a U.S.-sponsored coup in 2004, Haiti has been occupied by a United Nations force that, at its height, deployed 14,000 troops and personnel. This occupation has changed form over the years (from MINUSTAH to BINUH), but it is ongoing.

    The U.S. government has consistently stood as a barrier to popular democracy in the Americas. The 2009 coup in Honduras; the 2019 coup in Bolivia; and the ongoing blockades of Nicaragua, Cuba and Venezuela are but several examples of the U.S.’s poor record on human rights and lack of respect for sovereignty in the region. By its own admission, the State Department “works closely with the OAS, UN, the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), and individual countries to advance its policy goals in Haiti.” Under the guise of fighting drug trafficking, the U.S. continues to train and fund the Haitian National Police.

    The U.S. establishment spin doctors seemingly live in an alternate universe, claiming, “The remarkable lack of popular response to calls for mass protests in recent weeks indicates that Haitian people are tired of endless lockdowns and squabbling over power.” The reality is quite the opposite: the Haitian people are united in their call for a peaceful transition to democracy.

    We express our solidarity with the Haitian people and our support for their rights to democracy and self-determination. We join our voices to the demands of the Haitian people who are calling for the following:

    We demand that Jovenel Moïse

    • Immediately step down.

    We demand that the Biden Administration:

    • Withdraw financial support for the illegal constitutional referendum and Moïse dictatorship;
    • Respect the will of the vast majority of the people demanding democracy and Haitian self-determination
    • Reaffirm support for the right to peaceful protest;
    • Immediately cease all U.S. financial and military support to Haiti’s security forces
    • Condemn the recent violence against protesters and journalists; and,
    • Demand the immediate dismantlement of all paramilitary forces in Haiti and the disarmament of gangs carrying out wanton violence against the popular movement.

    The whole world is watching!

    See here for signatories.

    *****

    Contacts:

    Ajamu Baraka – Black Alliance for Peace, 202-643-1136.

    Margaret Flowers – Popular Resistance, gro.ecnatsiseRralupoPnull@ofni, 410-591-0892.

    This article was posted on Thursday, February 25th, 2021 at 12:49am and is filed under Haiti, Joe Biden, Organization of American States (OAS), United Nations, United States, Violence.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Canada’s Alliances prove the Country is an Imperialist Power

    For thousands of years folk wisdom has insisted that ‘you shall be known by the company you keep’. This is also true of countries.

    A recent United Nations vote condemning the “glorification of Nazism, neo‑Nazism and other practices that contribute to fuelling contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance” generated significant commentary on social media. The US and Ukraine voted against the widely supported resolution while Canada, Australia, New Zealand and most European countries abstained. One commentator tweeted that the countries who failed to condemn Nazism were “more or less the same coalition of stooges that recognized Juan Guaido” as president of Venezuela while another pointed out that it was similar to the coalition of “countries condemning China’s policies in Hong Kong.” Another connected it to NATO.

    These commentators hit on something fundamentally important. It is instructive to consider Canada’s UN votes and position on international issues through the lens of its many alliances.

    Canada is a leading member of North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Canada participated with the US and Britain in the secret talks on creating a north Atlantic alliance and since NATO was established in 1949 has been one of its most active contributors.

    Canada is a member of the “Five Eyes” intelligence-sharing arrangement. A series of post-Second World War accords, beginning with the 1946 UKUSA intelligence agreement, created the “AUS/CAN/NZ/UK/US EYES ONLY” arrangement. The Five Eyes partnership oozes of white supremacy. Settler colonialism and empire unite an alliance that excludes wealthier non-white nations (Japan and South Korea) or those with more English speakers (India and Nigeria). It’s not a coincidence that the only four countries that originally voted against the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) in 2007 are part of the Five Eyes.

    Canada is a member of the Commonwealth. It was a member of the alliance when it only included Britain, Australia, New Zealand and apartheid South Africa.

    Canada is a member of the Group of Seven (G7) wealthy nations. It also has a permanent (constituency-based) seat on the International Monetary Fund’s executive board (Canada represents 10 Caribbean countries and Ireland on the IMF board).

    Canada is part of the Lima Group seeking to overthrow the Venezuelan government. Instigated by Canada and Peru in mid 2017, the Lima Group has successfully corralled regional support for the US-led campaign to oust President Nicolas Maduro.

    Canada is a member of the Core Group that heavily shapes Haitian affairs. Comprising the ambassadors of the US, France, Brazil and Spain, as well as representatives of the EU and OAS, Core Group representatives meet regularly among themselves and with Haitian officials and periodically release collective statements on Haitian affairs. While formally established two months after the 2004 US, France and Canada coup against President Jean–Bertrand Aristide, Radio Canada’s Enquête pointed out that the Core Group was actually spawned at the “Ottawa initiative on Haiti”. Held at the Meech Lake Government Resort on January 31 and February 1, 2003, no Haitian officials were invited to the private gathering where US, French, OAS and Canadian officials discussed overthrowing Haiti’s elected government, putting the country under UN trusteeship and recreating the Haitian military.

    Few countries are represented in as many powerful and openly interventionist coalitions. Canada’s different alliances suggests this country sits near the centre of global imperialism.

    This article was posted on Friday, January 1st, 2021 at 4:27am and is filed under G7 Summit, Haiti, Imperialism, NATO, Organization of American States (OAS), United Nations.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • The Future Will Only Contain What We Put into It Now

    Towards the end of November, United Nations Secretary General António Guterres addressed the German Bundestag to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the United Nations (UN). At the heart of the UN is its Charter, the treaty that binds nations together in a global project, which has now been ratified by all 193 member nations of the UN. It is well worth reiterating the four main goals of the UN Charter, since most of these have slipped from public consciousness:

    Guterres pointed out that the avenues to realise the aims of the Charter are being closed off not only by the neofascists, who he euphemistically calls ‘populist approaches’, but also by the worst kind of imperialism, as illustrated by the ‘vaccine nationalism’ driven by countries such as the United States of America. ‘It is clear’, Guterres said, ‘that the way to win the future is through an openness to the world’ and not by a ‘closing of minds’.

    CoronaShock: A Virus and the World. Cover image by Vikas Thakur (India).

    At Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research, we take the UN Charter as the foundation of our work. To advance its goals is an essential step for the construction of humanity, which is a concept of aspiration rather than a concept of fact; we are not yet human beings, but we strive to become human. Imagine if we lived in a world without war and with respect for international law, if we lived in a world that honoured fundamental human rights and tried to promote the widest social progress? This would a be a world where the productive resources would no longer be used for military hardware but would be used to end hunger, to end illiteracy, to end poverty, to end houselessness, to end – in other words – the structural features of indignity.

    In 2019, the world’s nations spent nearly $2 trillion on weaponry, while the world’s richest people hid $36 trillion in illicit tax havens. It would take a fraction of this money to eradicate hunger, with estimates ranging from $7 billion to $265 billion per year. Comparable amounts of money are needed to finance comprehensive public education and universal primary health care. Productive resources have been highjacked by the wealthy, who then use their money power to ensure that Central Banks keep inflation down rather than pursue policies towards full employment. It’s a racket, if you look at it closely.

    Two new World Bank studies show that, because of a lack of resources and imagination during this pandemic, an additional 72 million primary school aged children will slip into ‘learning poverty’, a term that refers to the inability to read and comprehend simple texts by the age of ten. A UNICEF study shows that in sub-Saharan Africa an additional 50 million people have moved into extreme poverty during the pandemic, most of whom are children; 280 million of sub-Saharan Africa’s 550 million children struggle with food insecurity, while learning has completely stopped for millions of children who are ‘unlikely to ever return to the classroom’.

    The gap between the plight of the billions who struggle to survive and the extravagances of the very few is stark. The UBS report on wealth bears an awkward title: Riding the storm. Market turbulence accelerates diverging fortunes. The world’s 2,189 billionaires seemed to have ridden the storm of the pandemic to their great advantage, with their wealth at a record high of $10.2 trillion as of July 2020 (up from $8.0 trillion in April). The most vulgar number was that their wealth increased by a quarter (27.5%) from April to July during the Great Lockdown. This came when billions of people in the capitalist world were newly unemployed, struggling to survive on very modest relief from governments, their lives turned upside down.

    CoronaShock and Patriarchy. Cover image by Daniela Ruggeri (Argentina)

    Our most recent study, CoronaShock and Patriarchy, should be compulsory reading; it provides a sharp assessment of the social – and gendered – impact of CoronaShock. Our team was motivated by the acute state of deprivation in which billions of people find themselves and how that deprivation morphs basic social bonds towards the hyper-exploitation and oppression of specific parts of the population. The report closes with an eighteen-point list of demands that are a guide for our struggles ahead. We make the case that the capitalist states are controlled by elites who are unable to solve the basic problems of our time such as unemployment, hunger, patriarchal violence, and the under-appreciation, precarity, and invisibility of social reproduction work.

    The texts that we published this year – from our red alerts on the coronavirus to the studies on CoronaShock – seek to orient us towards a rational assessment of these rapid developments, rooted in the world-view of our mass movements of workers, peasants, and the oppressed. We took seriously the view of the World Health Organisation to ground our studies in ‘solidarity, not stigma’. Based on the startlingly low numbers of infections and deaths in countries with a socialist government from Vietnam to Cuba, we studied why these governments were better able to handle the pandemic. We understood that this was because they took a scientific attitude towards the virus, they had a public sector to turn to for the production of necessary equipment and medicines, they were able to rely upon a practice of public action which brought organised groups of people together to provide relief to each other, and they took an internationalist – rather than a racist – approach to the virus which included sharing information, goods, and – in the case of China and Cuba – medical personnel. Because of this, we – alongside other organisations – have joined the campaign for the Nobel Prize for Peace to be given to the Cuban doctors.

    We have assembled a remarkable archive of material on CoronaShock and on the world that it has begun to produce. This includes a provisional ten-point agenda for a post-COVID world, a paper first delivered at a High-Level Conference on the Post-Pandemic Economy, organised by the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA). In the first few months of 2021, we will release a fuller document on the world after Corona.

    CoronaShock and Socialism. Cover image by Ingrid Neves (Brazil), adapted from People’s Medical Publishing House, China, 1977

    CoronaShock and Socialism. Cover image by Ingrid Neves (Brazil), adapted from People’s Medical Publishing House, China, 1977

    On a personal note, I would like to thank the entire team at Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research for their resilience during the pandemic, their ability to work at a pace much greater than before, and their good cheer towards each other during this period.

    We swim in the waters of our movements, whose fortitude against the opportunistic and cynical use of the crisis by capitalist governments lifts us up and gives us courage. Last week, the newsletter highlighted the patient and dedicated work done by the young comrades of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) in Kerala, who work to build a humane and just society. The same kind of work can be seen amidst the Landless Workers’ Movement in Brazil (MST), and it can be seen in the Copper Belt region of Zambia, where the members of the Socialist Party campaign for next year’s presidential election, and in South Africa, where the National Union of Metal Workers (NUMSA) fights to defend workers against retrenchment during the pandemic and where Abahlali baseMjondolo builds confidence and power amongst shack dwellers. We see this great endurance and commitment from our comrades of the Workers’ Party of Tunisia and the Democratic Way of Morocco, who are leading a revitalisation of the Left in the Arabic-speaking regions, and in the great application of the peoples of Bolivia, Cuba, and Venezuela, China, Laos, Nepal, and Vietnam, as they seek to build socialism in poor countries who face a sustained attack against the socialist path. We take strength from our comrades in Argentina, who struggle to consolidate the power of the excluded workers and to build a society beyond patriarchy. We are a movement-driven research institute; we rely upon our movements for everything that we do.

    This article was posted on Thursday, December 31st, 2020 at 7:49am and is filed under COVID-19, Housing/Homelessness, Human Rights, Poverty, Resistance, Socialism, Solidarity, United Nations.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Nuremberg Trial: 75 years Ago and What it Means Today

    On Saturday 21 November 2020 Russia celebrated the 75th Anniversary of the beginning of the Nuremberg Trials which started on 20 November 1945 and lasted almost a year, until 1 October 1946. The Tribunal was given the task of trying and judging 24 of the most atrocious political and military leaders of the Third Reich.

    For this unique celebration – so we shall never forget – Russian leaders and people of the Arts and History organized a Special Performance of Giuseppe Verdi’s “Requiem” at Moscow’s Helikon Opera Theatre. Daniel Hawkins, from RT, introduced this extraordinary event, as a journey through history, a journey through life and death, when some of – at that time – most genocidal people in history had to answer for their crimes.

    This opera event was prepared for more than a year and was first performed in January 2020 for the Holocaust victims and the victims of the Nazi concentration camps in Leningrad. The Nuremberg Trials were conducted by an International Military Tribunal. They resulted in 12 death sentences.

    The idea of the “Requiem” performance is “not just to appeal to emotions, but to reason. Because if we fail to learn from history, the tragedy could be repeated.”

    This is precisely what Sergei Novikov, head of the (Russian) presidential directorate for social projects, intimidated. He says, “Despite of what we have seen happening 75 years ago – we do not seem to have learned a lesson. Today we seem to go down the same road, which is frightening.”

    The musical performance interplays with theatrical realism – so memories are awake and moving – better than a museum. The educational impact of this celebration of remembrance is extremely important especially for the young people, who do not remember these events, but with this first-class performance, they may learn a crucial lesson,  a lesson hardly talked about in history books and even less so in the west.

    If we compare what has happened then – 75 years ago – actually the anti-Jewish demonstration in Berlin, known as Kristallnacht, on 9 and 10 November 1938, effectively the beginning of WWII, and look at today’s extremism in Europe, Germany, France, Austria, Belgium, we know that we are not far from a tyranny we knew as “Nationalsozialismus”, a political Nazi-concept of the late 1930s and up to mid-1940s, that today can best be compared with extreme neoliberalism and merciless oppression of peoples’ rights by police and military.

    In fact, we may be steps ahead of what Hitler and his crime and war cabinet had done, but again, today, like then, we are blind to it. There may be a time when we can no longer move, when we are in constant lockdown, masked with dismembered faces, so to speak, kept away from each other under the pretext of social distancing so that we cannot communicate with each other, all for reasons of public health, for the “good intentions” of our governments to protect us from an evil virus – the corona virus.

    Today, this oppression is the result of a long-term plan by a small elite to implement The Great Reset (Klaus Schwab, WEF, July 2020).

    *****

    There is, of course, a good reason, why Moscow wants the world to remember what WWII meant and how eventually Nazi-Germany was defeated – yes, largely if not solely by enormous sacrifices of the Soviet Union. Some 25 to 30 million USSR soldiers and Soviet citizens had left their lives for salvaging Europe – and possibly the world – from an all invading fascism.

    The United States, nominally an ally of the Soviet Union, had clandestinely funded the Third Reich’s war against the Soviet Union. One of the key purposes for the US getting “involved” in WWII, other than defeating the British Empire, was to defeat their arch-enemy, communist Soviet Union. The Rockefellers funded Hitler’s war machine by providing them with hydrocarbons, with petrol, the energy that drove the war.

    On the other hand, the Federal Reserve (FED), via the Bank for International Settlement (BIS) – the pyramid tower still omni-present in Basle, Switzerland, near the German border – transferred gigantic monetary resources to the Reichsbank (at that time Hitler’s equivalent of a German Central Bank)

    Verdi’s Requiem Performance in Moscow on 21 November is important to go back in history and open the “memory books” in front of our eyes. It is even more important, as we see the trend of fascism taking over the entire European continent and possibly also the United States.

    Europe basically ignores the importance of the 75th Anniversary of the Nuremberg Trials which still, as of this date, provides precedents for international war crimes – except, these precedents are miserably ignored.  If not, we would have multiple repeats of Nuremberg in our days and age with European and US leaders (sic) in “retirement’ but still with power. Our dystopian western world is beset by war criminals even to the point where they blackmail judges of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, not to touch their – the European and US – war crimes, or else…

    That’s where we have arrived.

    Since we are going back to the times when WWII and Nuremberg happened, we should take the opportunity to also look at the Big Picture, one that may be at the root of this new wave of fascism invading Europe. It is, in essence, a health dictatorship; it has become a Health Martial Law. Many countries have ratified, quietly, or rammed it through Parliament without the public at large noticing – a law allowing them switching from everyday life to an emergency situation; i.e., (health) Martial Law.

    The Big Picture, though, is a diabolical plan of eugenics. Yes, it’s a term nobody wants to use, but it must be said, because it’s one of the fundamental principles that lies in all that is planned, the 2010 Rockefeller Report and the extremely important WHO Report “A World at Risk” – Annual Report on Global Preparedness for Health Emergencies, by the Global Preparedness Monitoring Board – GPMB (September 2019).

    Key members of this Monitoring Board include the World Bank, IMF, CDC and many more influential players, who have been concocting the “Preparedness” for a new epidemic since at least 2016, when the World Bank set up a special “Health Emergency Fund” to face the “next pandemic”.

    Also, part of the SARS-Cov-2 preparedness and planned outbreak, was Event 201 (18 October 2019, NYC, sponsored by Gates, the WEF, and the Johns Hopkins School for Medicine (Rockefeller created and funded), which simulated the outbreak of a SARS-Cov-2 virus which curiously happened a few weeks later. The “outbreak” was actually officially announced on the dot of the beginning of the Decade 2020.

    The Big Picture scheme also includes as an aftermath to covid, The Great Reset by Klaus Schwab, WEF, July 2020), a plan to implement the 4th Industrial Revolution and the enslavement of the remaining population. The Rockefellers and Bill Gates, Kissinger and many more  have nurtured the idea of massively reducing the world population for at least the last 70 years.

    Ever since the Rockefellers espoused the concept of the “Bilderberger Society” (a parallel organization to the WEF (World Economic Forum), with overlapping and an ever-moving memberships) their one and only continuous “project” was a selective population reduction. And they actually never made it a secret. See Bill Gates TedTalk in February 2010 – just about the time when the infamous 2010 Rockefeller Report was issued, the one that has us now in “lockstep” following all the rules and regulations, issued by WHO and supported by the entire UN system .

    Why then was the eugenics agenda never seriously picked up by the mainstream, by the public at large? – Possibly, because nobody can even imagine people so evil – or allow me to call them non-humans – to actually want to make this reality. But these non-humanoids do exist. How they infiltrated themselves into human society is a mystery.

    By the way, have you ever seen Bill Gates – with his obnoxious grin – wearing a mask? Or the Rockefellers, Kissingers, et al?  How come they are always spared from this deadly virus, SARS-Cov-2?  How come they get very old, but appear to be always in good health? What kind of life elixir are they using?

    Back to the Eugenists. To implement such a massive plan on a worldwide scale, one needs a uniform approach to world health. In 1948, just a couple of years after the Nuremberg trials started, where war criminals like the Rockefellers should also have been indicted for supplying the enemy (German Nazis) with energy to drive their (anti-Soviet) war machine – back then, in 1948, Rockefeller created WHO, the World Health Organization.

    The philanthropic Rockefeller Foundation (RF) has marked the field of health like no other organization. The oil magnate, John D. Rockefeller “to promote the well-being of mankind throughout the world.” Hence, the RF created and provided the original funding to set up WHO in 1948. On 7 April 1948, WHO inherited the mandate and resources of its predecessor, the Health Organization, which had been an agency of the League of Nations. Twenty-six (out of then 58) UN members ratified WHO as a UN agency under the UN Constitution.

    Once you have “Global Health” under one roof, the WHO, funded primarily by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the pharmaceutical industries (predominantly GAVI – Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization – also created by Bill Gates in 2000) and you also have the predominant donor, Bill Gates, an obsessed vaxxer (and eugenist) without any medical training, choose WHO’s Director General – Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, a buddy of Gates and former Board Member of GAVI – it is relatively easy to make the foundation of WHO’s health policies based on vaccination.

    That’s what we see today. As we have heard from Gates’ TedTalk (2010 see above), vaccination seems to lend itself perfectly to reduce the world population. It has the further advantage, that if anything goes “wrong” – no vaccine company can be held responsible, let alone being sued. For example, if people get seriously ill or die from the vaccinations – which would not be a surprise, after the Covid-19 are planned to be administered in warp speed – the vaccine pharmaceuticals cannot be sued.

    In fact, vaccine companies do not bear any liability risk. The National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act (NCVIA) of 1986 (42 U.S.C. §§ 300aa-1 to 300aa-34), was signed into law by US President Ronald Reagan on November 14, 1986. NCVIA’s purpose was to eliminate the potential financial liability of vaccine manufacturers due to vaccine injury, since lawsuits led many manufacturers to stop producing the vaccines, a lame argument, but that shows once more the lobbying power the pharma industry commands.

    That’s where we stand today. Any sinister vaccination agenda, no matter how hurtful to the public, is home free. Today we are at this crucial point of massive forced vaccination. Many governments; i.e., UK’s Boris Johnson and Australia’s Scott Morrison, have already advanced the idea of a vaccination-pass. Without it you are banned from flying and from just about every public event. That’s promising.

    And one might ask what does that have to with public health?  What is the real agenda behind it?

    Again, returning to the Nuremberg Trials, aren’t we in the midst of a world tyranny to which all 193 UN member countries subscribed, or were coerced into – a tyranny that has already been genocidal, in as much as it destroyed the world economy, creating countless bankruptcies, unemployment – untold poverty and misery and death, and now a potentially genocidal massive vaccination campaign, the effects of it might be death in the medium to long term, but “untraceable”, or too late by the time the cause is discovered.

    A world tyranny inflicted by all 193 UN member countries – whatever their motivation – all these governments and the heads of WHO and the entire UN system belongs before a new Nuremburg-type Tribunal – where the same legal principal would be applied as 75 years ago in 1945.

    Who says this will not happen? We can make it happen. We, the People, are the 99.99%.  They are only 0.01 %. We have the power to resist – and we will prevail.

    Peter Koenig is an economist and geopolitical analyst. He is also a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization. Read other articles by Peter.

    This article was posted on Monday, November 30th, 2020 at 10:39pm and is filed under Bill Gates, COVID-19, Economy/Economics, Eugenics, Germany, Health/Medical, Lies, Lockdown, Media, Militarism, Nuremberg Trials, Opinion, The Soviet Union, United Kingdom, United Nations, United States, Vaccines, World Economic Forum (WEF), World Trade Organization, World War Two.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • The Emperor Has No Clothes

    I reviewed Sra. Michelle Bachelet’s Report on Venezuela, and was quite outraged at her lack of consideration and due diligence. I will, in a moment, tell everyone why this report needs to be trashed, but even before that, I think I should mention two systemic flaws about this type of reporting regardless of which country it is written for.

    First

    The Report treats Venezuela as an isolated entity, along with other entities, such as the United States, Colombia,… floating in separate air space, without impacting or being impacted by any other country, in any way, shape, or form.

    Everyone knows, however, that the truth is otherwise, that the funds the United States government has allocated to bring down the Maduro Bolivarian Government are probably more than some small countries’ annual budget, and that the United States’ sanctions to punish the Venezuelan people and deprive them of food, medicine, and fuel amount to no less than crimes against humanity. That clearly tells me that Venezuela is on earth and not in space, and both its government and its people are greatly impacted by the actions of other countries, and in particular the United States. It also, in my mind, invalidates the entire UN Report, but it takes spine, and we all know that Sra. Bachelet would not remain in office long if she attempted to produce one such report that takes into consideration all players influencing Venezuela and its people’s rights.

    In this report, there is no mention of international criminals, such as Elliot Abrams (what a shame), who have been convicted in his own country and is now running loose, being employed by the Trump Administration to bring death and horror upon the people of Venezuela, as they did in El Salvador, Nicaragua, Guatemala,… CAN A TRUE HUMAN RIGHTS OBSERVER REALLY REMAIN SILENT ON THESE ISSUES?

    Second

    The expression “Political Prisoner” is loosely defined and even more loosely utilized. A political prisoner is someone who has been imprisoned or subjected to other restrictions by the State, because of his beliefs, party affiliations, or peaceful protest. Such description is generally accepted by most, but loosely used to include violent opposition as well. As Fidel Castro would often ask: “Don’t we have the right to defend ourselves?” This issue is seldom addressed by ‘human rights’ organizations. Many people who are presented as political prisoners are often violent individuals of no independent character who are funded by the United States government or private individuals, somehow tied to the US government. Unless the HR report presents a list of the individuals, their alleged crimes against the State, and their investigated claims, one can never be certain if they can be categorized as political prisoners.

    In addition, repressive actions by ‘friendly governments’ are oftentimes ignored whereas ‘unfriendly governments’ are placed under constant scrutiny. As an example, how can we put Venezuela under a magnifying glass when daily crimes by the repressive State in Saudi Arabia are often ignored? In my opinion, those who place the Bolivarian State right next to the Saudi Arabian Dictatorship must be mentally deranged.

    The report is all unproven innuendos and play-with-words. It keeps referencing itself so many times that one starts wondering where the meat is. What is the real content? Where are the emperor’s clothes?

    And Now For the Meat

    The first paragraph  (graves vulneraciones)… que se han documentado en el pais. (POR FAVOR, QUE SON ESTAS?)

    Where are your research data?

    So where is the meat?

    The Seventh and Eighth Paragraphs

    Sra. Bachelet admits that the Bolivarian government announced its commitment to cooperate with her men to deal with the various themes. “The issue is complicated,” claims Sra. Bachelet. Why? The Venezuela government’s cooperation, which is pretty significant, is mentioned in a one-sentence blurb, perhaps intended to imply the Bolivarian government’s admission of its guilt which would be not true.

    The next paragraph (one of very few statistics) refers to 66 deaths, 52 of them allegedly inflicted by Security Forces. What about the other 14? Venezuelan opposition is notorious for miscategorizing pro-government deaths as its own, and many opposition members walk around armed. Is there any verification of such claims?

    Speaking of efficiency, there are, of course, many government functions that could be done better and much more efficiently if more funds were available, and the country’s wealth wasn’t robbed so much by the United States and the European Union countries, such as the case of the $2 billion British robbery of Venezuelan gold. Sra. Bachelet, how many more kids could receive milk and other alimentation if the stolen gold could be handed over to the constitutional government of Venezuela?

    Does honesty count any more in world politics?

    This article was posted on Friday, November 27th, 2020 at 5:12pm and is filed under Opinion, President Nicolas Maduro, United Nations, Venezuela.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.