(note that this post is a short updated summary of the issues previously outlined in other posts on this site)
Many articles in mainstream media regarding the current violence in Gaza portray the conflict as a Hamas terrorist vendetta against Israel and Jews.
The reality is somewhat different.
Al jazeera notes as of 17th July, that “of the 214 Palestinians killed so far in Operation Protective Edge, at least 67 were women and children and 11 were elderly, according to Ashraf al-Qedra, spokesman for the Gaza Health Ministry. Over 1,500 have been injured, and Gaza hospitals have reported severe medical-supply shortages. (In contrast)the first Israeli death was reported Tuesday, after shrapnel from a rocket hit a civilian handing out food to soldiers near the Gaza border. The disproportionate death and casualty rate between the two sides in this conflict clearly illustrates the overwhelming destructive power of the Israeli military machine against this tiny isolated ghettoised non-state. Israel, as the occupying force, has a UN mandated obligated to protect those people’s whose lands it has occupied.
As the history books show, Israel has pursued a violent and illegal process of the elimination of the ‘Palestinian problem’ since its brutal occupation of Palestinian lands in 1948, when hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were driven from their houses and lands by the Israeli Army, in what Palestinians call the ‘Nakba’ -the Catastrophe. That process of occupation and removal of people who have lived in the area for thousands of years, is ongoing. Operation ‘Protective Edge” is just one more step along the way to finally eliminating those troublesome Arabs who persist in trying to subsist in the homeland of their forefathers.
Along with that occupation goes an ongoing military ever-tightening noose around Gaza and the West Bank, which has seen Gaza literally strangled by Israeli occupation forces into a primitive society where sewage, water and health systems are largely nonexistent. Palestinian children continue on a daily basis to be arrested, tortured and thrown in Israeli jails for crimes such as stone throwing or protesting the occupation. Since the beginning of 2000, 1407 Palestinian children alone have been killed by Israeli forces.
And this ignores the many thousands of adults tortured jailed and murdered in Israeli prisons for daring to resist the occupation. And let us not forget all the Palestinian homes and orchards bulldozed by armoured bulldozers to make way for Israeli “settlers”, on a daily basis.
Israel is one of the largest and most well resourced militaries in the world (fourth largest); courtesy of the United States, who since 1948 has blindly promoted and applauded each atrocity committed by the Israelis in the face of overwhelming international condemnation.
Certainly no violence can be supported from either party in this horrendous and savage conflict, but readers of this post should not need to wonder why Hamas is angry and violent in response to this brutal and seemingly never-ending tragedy.
The only way forward is a one-state solution, where fair compensation for lives and lands lost is given to those hundreds of thousands of Palestinians forcibly expelled from their homeland; and all the resident populations-whether Jew, Christian or Muslim, learn to create a peaceful and sustainable future in a new and just Palestine.
And lastly, lets look at who supports this ongoing terror by the Israeli war machine ( note an abstention means tacit support for the status quo of more war).
Postscript:
Note the chilling banner at the end of Craig Murray’s blog here on the Gaza genocide
The banner reads: “There are no innocents in Gaza“
The video (below) of “Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi” (another one of the fictional “nom-de-guerre” names so beloved of Islamic jihad fighters), shows a hesitant youngish man delivering in Koranic verse style the announcement that he (in all modesty appropriate to a disciple of Mohammed) is the new caliph of Iraq, Syria and Levant that all must bow down to.
As the Angry Arab says; When you bill yourself as a caliph you inevitably raise expectations. And as the Arabic saying goes: ‘the mountain went into labor and gave birth to a mouse’. What a lousy performance.
While these young psychopaths have a certain predilection for violent murder and ignorance, they are definitely not idolised by the vast majority of Sunni Muslems around the world. The sectarian violence, mysoginism and vengeance they espouse, fomented largely through Wahhabi funds from Saudi Arabia and Qatar and with “special assistance” from U.K. and U.S. “intelligence” over the years, fools few on the Arab street. These young violent men are simply tools of those who wish for nothing better than all-out mayhem, death and environmental destruction in middle eastern states that do not sufficiently support a Western view of who should control the world’s resources.
Desperately seeking fame on Youtube, as they behead another infidel of whatever religious persuasion, they are like little children given dangerous toys to play with by the grownups.
Their “secret” cavalcade of many miles of brand new Toyota’s through the deserts of Iraq from Syria to capture key Iraqi northern towns, was somehow never spotted by Western spy satellites. Make no mistake, these are the “moderates” that Western governments have been funding to overthrow Assad’s Syria , and now Maliki’s Iraq, for the past five years. This is a deliberate plan by Western governments to de-stabilise and overthrow any middle eastern government that 1) doesn’t support the ongoing Israeli destruction of Palestine and Palestinians, and 2) doesn’t support the right of the U.S. to basically do anything it wishes to.
It would be amusing if it were not so sad that these nasty little psychopaths in offices in London, Paris and Washington who get others to do their killing and torture for them, believe that this is the way to a brave new future; a “New American Century“. Take the former British Chief of Defence Lord Richards’ brilliant proposal to train and equip 100,000 jihadists to take Damascus from Syrian Government forces, with substantial Western air support- (read collateral air damage) on the pretext that this would reduce civilian casualties in in Syria! . Fittingly, the great Lord Richards was also once Nato commander in the brutal fiasco that is the fourth Anglo Afghan War and is now a senior advisor to the right wing British International Institute of Strategic Studies, and which strangely enough, supported the US invasion of Iraq and is now very anti the current Shi-ite based Maliki government in Iraq.
And of course let’s not forget the $500 million dollars worth of armaments and training from President Obama and Congress that will go only to the ‘moderate’ extremists in Syria fighting the Syrian government forces.
Or perhaps note the leaked ( unverified but eminently plausible ) Rand Corporation document advising the Western Ukrainians how to destroy Eastern Ukraine- these guys in their cosy little offices in the city are oh-so-ruthless in getting others to murder and torture and destroy on their behalf ( but only of course where it benefits their bank accounts).
The People’s Republic of Donestk was formed in 7th April 2014; breaking away from the state of Ukraine after a very informal referendum of its local population. The referendum was largely caused by the decisions of the Kiev interim Government, after it deposed the former elected ( but like almost every other President of Ukraine since independence from the Soviet Union in 1991 – extremely corrupt) president of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych. Yanukovych fled from power as a result of the Maidan protests and threats to his life, led by right wing extremists.
The interim Ukrainian government’s decision to effectively marginalise Russian speaking Ukrainians through banning the Russian language and subsequently calling anti-Maidan groups in the East, “terrorists”, led to the formation of pro-Russian paramilitary groups in the East, in the oblasts of Donestk and Luhansk. Their stated aim was to preserve their Ukrainian/Russian identity against the threats by neo-nazi extremists to “purify” Ukraine, in the new interim Kiev government; largely from within the Slovoda Party and Right Sektor paramilitary groups based in the West of Ukraine.
It is currently unclear what level of support the “self-proclaimed” (are not all state entities initially “self-proclaimed”?) Donestk People’s Republic has with the local population, with some very problematic opinion polls run out of Kiev and funded from the U.S. which state pro-Russian support at less than 40%. Facts on the ground would seem to suggest otherwise, especially since the killing of 39 people in the Trades Hall centre in Odessa on May 2 2014, apparently by right wing football hooligans from the West.
It is also problematic whether those currently running the administration of the Donestk PR have the best of the local population at heart, or are simply opportunists , ex-soldiers and thugs. In addition there is always the tendency with any revolution, especially when under pressure from the outside, to respond in more and more draconian and violent ways towards its own population. Are the Donetsk PR officials any less rascist, anti-Jew and voracious than those in Kiev?-time will tell.
Notwithstanding those concerns, the creation of this ‘people’s republic’ does present a unique opportunity for a better state not seen for perhaps almost a hundred years on this planet. The opportunity to begin afresh, untainted by cronyism, the powers of the corporates, the drive for “progress” at the expense of the planet. An opportunity for a state entity driven by altrusim, responsibility for the vulnerable and a respect for the environment. Impossible you say?- certainly improbable when we look at our current rapacious “growth” (read; money-for-the-rich and baubles for the poor) driven state entities.
What we need then, is the development of state structures that foster:
Community initiative and responsiveness- local town “councils” where every citizen has a voice and a right to be heard and responded to.
Central and local policies that recognise that “growth for growth’s sake’ is nonsensical and destroys both our own living environment and the other living things around us- ‘growth’ is the short term path to death
Central and local initiatives that encourage inter-connectivity between people- eg local community places within walking distance for food and product distribution, green spaces,
Town planning which “forces” people to mingle together to get their work done: eg small interconnected urban areas, green spaces and gardens
Local and central state welfare systems that all citizens buy into according to their capacity to pay through taxes, and all are recompensed equitably in times of trouble
Principles and policies that create respect for the other living beings interacting with the human population.
Training for all age groups in the art of mindfulness
An understanding that violence to others destroys oneself
an inalienable obstruction to business interests influencing state and local political decisions (i.e absolutely no capacity for corporates to finance politicians)
It can (and must) be done. For the sake of all of us on this little blue ball.
The current unstable and dangerous situation in the Ukraine where large elements of the Russian speaking part of the Ukrainian population in in Eastern and Southern Ukraine are apparently pushing for Russian annexation can be largely attributed to Ukraine’s turbulent and violent history.
Kiev, the capital city of Ukraine is considered by many Russians to be the birthplace of Russia, or “Kievan Rus” in the thirteenth century. While no longer a predominantly Russian speaking country, its principal connection has been with its more powerful northern neighbour over the last 800 years.
Ukraine ,or “the Ukraine” as it is often known, literally means “borderlands”, an indication of its status as a standalone state entity over the last 1000 years.
After the Partitions of Poland (1772–1795) (around the time of the US War of Independence), Ukraine was divided between Russia and Austria, with the largest part of Ukraine being integrated into the Russian Empire, and the rest under Austrian (known as the Austro-Hungarian Empire since 1849) control.
Gaining its independence briefly from the Russian Empire in the chaos following the Russian Bolsehvik Revolution of 1917 , Ukraine was forcibly incorporated under Soviet control in 1921 and remained a semi-autonomous republic of the Soviet Union until the collapse of the USSR in 1991, when it once again became independent.
During the rule of Stalin in the USSR in the 1930s, agrarian collectivisation policies were brutally enforced across the entire Soviet Union, but particularly in what has been referred to as the bread-basket of Russia; the Ukraine. Known as Holodomor, the communist collectivist policies resulted in at least 7.5 million deaths with mass starvation occurring amongst the peasantry of western Ukraine particularly. Ukraine has defined the process as genocide, and the brutal process of starvation and loss of lands was instrumental in the rise of right-wing groups in Western Ukraine, (whose populations tend to be more Eurocentred than the South-East), who supported the principles of both Mussolini’s fascist party in Italy and Nazi policies in Germany. The views were largely centred by 1943 in the actions of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army led by Stepan Bandera, in ethnic cleansing of Poles and Jews as well fighting with the Nazis against the Russians . Bandera’s Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN-B) was strongly supported by Western intelligence agencies and particularly the CIA after the second world war .
In addition to those horrors, in 1944 approximately 200,000 Crimean Tatars were forcibly deported to other parts of the USSR because of their presumed alliance with the Nazis, where a large percentage subsequently died of starvation. Those Tatars who have since returned to the Crimea remain fiercely hostile to the Russians and some have been implicated in anti-Russian warfare in other countries and also within Crimea and wider Ukraine.
Jews and Russians were seen to be the cause of the death, destruction and dispossession which occurred in the Holodomor. In retaliation, Ukrainian fascist and Nazi groups were formed which both fought alongside the Nazis against the Russians and also aided in the Nazi’s Jewish progroms in Western Ukraine. The Svoboda party and its activist group, the Pravyi Sekor (Right Sector), are the current manifestations of those nationalist movements. Members of these two groups have also fought alongside Chechnyan separatists and jihadists in Russia in the past few years. In addition the right -wing Ukrainian nationalist private army and political party, the Ukrainian National Assembly – Ukrainian National Self Defence (UNA-UNSO) , a violent and extreme right-wing and anti-Russian organisation, has been implicated in the sniper shootings of both police and demonstrators in Maidan Square in Kiev.
In 1954, Nikita Khrushchev, the Soviet President of the day, transferred the Crimea , to the Southeast of Ukraine and previously part of Russia itself , to the Ukraine republic .
The Wolfsangel, Svoboda’s first party logo (1991–2003) and now widely used as a uniform emblem by the Right Sector, is both a truncated swastika and the acronym “HH”- for “Heil Hitler”
The most defining reason for the recent demonstrations in Maidan Square in Kiev, against the corrupt but democratically elected president Viktor Yanukovych, was Yanukovych’s decision to switch from supporting alignment and eventual Ukrainian integration with the European Union (after IMF “re-alignment” of the economy), to alignment with Russia and its $15 billion no-strings loan. It is likely that many of those early demonstrators in Maidan Square saw their chance to escape a Ukraine of poverty, for the wealth and opportunity of Europe, slipping away. However the muscle on the ground at Maidan Square and even since the new government in Kiev was installed, has been the Svoboda Party (whose insignia up until 2003 was the Wolfsangel, both a symbol for the swastika and the acronym for “Heil Hitler”) and its hand-maiden, the ‘Right Sector’.
Alexander Muzychko (Sasha Biliy of the “Right Sector” ) “speaking” to a state prosecutor 27th Feb
While Svoboda has partially dissociated itself from its neo-Nazi past; its offspring, the Rights Sector or “Pravyi Sektor” regards “de-Russification” of Ukraine as its core ideology, along with ensuring the ethnic purity of the Ukrainian population including the exodus of Jewish populations, and good moral values.
Global Research notes that ” Canvas, formerly Otpor, received significant money from the US State Department in 2000 to stage the first successful Color Revolution against Slobodan Milosovic in then-Yugoslavia. Since then they have been transformed into a full-time “revolution consultancy” for the US, posing as a Serbian grass-root group backing “democracy.” While Poland under President Tusk, and Sweden have been pushing for Ukraine’s integration into the EU since the initial “colour revolution”, with the strong backing of the US State Department and CIA, they have perhaps inadvertently been also supporting and subsidizing the far right Ukrainian agenda, who have no interest in EU integration. Ostensibly EU/US support has been for the “technocrats” (ie those who support IMF financial “reforms” ) like ex-boxer Klitschko and the newly appointed acting president Oleksander Turchinov. (of Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland’s “fuck EU” fame”)
However one of the first steps of the new government was to rescind the previous government’s recent legislation to legitimize Russian as an official language of the Ukraine. It is likely that that rescindment, more than any other factor, was the key reason for South-Eastern Ukrainians of Russian descent, many of whom solely speak Russian, to fear for their future in a ‘Ukraine for Ukrainians’.
The other major factor is undoubtedly the fear by Russia that the new Ukrainian government will also rescind the lease recently extended out to 2042 for Russia’s only warm water naval base. As the US is well aware, the Sevastopol base allows the Russians to re-supply its ally President Bashad in Syria against US, Turkish and Saudi funded extremists in the Syrian civil war. Loss of the warm water naval base in in the Crimea would have significant negative strategic impacts for the Russians, as the British and French are also only too aware of, after their battles, in alliance with the Turks to re-capture the Crimea and Sevastopol from the Russians in the Crimean War in 1853.
It should be noted also that the industrial base of Ukraine is predominantly in the South-Eastern parts of the country, where there are significant populations of Ukrainian ethnic Russians, and where it’s heavy industry was a key part of the Soviet economy. As with many ex-Soviet states, the factories are by Western standards, unproductive and out of date, and hence would require massive injections of IMF capital and machinery, along with massive layoffs of superfluous workers; a prospect for which Western industrialists have been rubbing their hands in glee since the Ukrainian Orange Revolution in 2004. (Post-script-see the great analysis of the neo-con plan for acquisition of Ukrainian/Russian assets by Michael Hudson here )
The complex interactions of internal Ukrainian and international players, create the opportunity for war. The Russian decision to send in more troops into the Crimea certainly escalates the situation. Additionally, other South-Eastern Ukrainian cities with varying proportions of Russian speaking populations, are now also rising up against the new Kiev anti-Russian government and establishing self-protection militias against the Right Sector and other far-right Ukrainian groups. How much support those Russophiles will get in the cities of Donetsk, Kharkov, Simferapol, Odessa Lugansk and Kerch, is currently unknown. Russia currently insists that its forces have not left their Crimean bases (25,000 Russian troops are permitted in the Crimea as part of the Ukraine /Russia lease agreement) and that all pro-Russian forces on the ground in Ukraine are pro-Russian Ukrainians – a statement disputed by the EU and the U.S.
Given the tragic history outlined above, it would appear the only rational solution to the problems exacerbated by foreign state actors, is negotiation. In the 1990s the 55-state member Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (the OSCE) was created to deal with détente in Europe and emerging post-cold war problems . The OSCE offers a unique and relatively non-partisan pathway to a negotiated settlement of the complex issues facing Ukraine. The alternative, despite the huff and puff from NATO and the US, may well be the secession of some part of what is now Ukraine to form a Russian speaking autonomous or semi-autonomous state, unless the power and hostility of the far right groups opposed to ethnic Russians in Ukraine can be controlled.
Through its abrogation of key elements of the Geneva Convention by using torture, genocide and illegal incarceration of people it thinks could do things to US interests that the state might not like, the US has progressively negated key aspects of the constitutional protections for its own citizens. In addition, professional bodies such as the American Pyschological Association and the American Medical Association, in tacitly legitimizing torture and murder ( drones or otherwise) and random indefinite imprisonment of people the state thinks might be a risk to the US, have destroyed their legal and moral authority .
The Orwellian legal and state double-speak ( what is evil is good, what is war is peace) by US political and legal figures, is now accepted as truth by the vast majority of US citizens and many in the Western world. Many US citizens are consequently no longer able to differentiate between right and wrong/truth and lies.
The US has been fighting wars to protect its “interests” (read companies) for most of its existence, beginning with the genocide of the North American Indians who populated much of North America at the time of European settlement and leading to the wars with Spain in the Carribbean and the Philippines in order to develop an empire to exploit , as with other Western powers of the time.
But it is really only in the years after the end of Second World War in 1945, that the power of the corporations in the US has finally overturned all semblance of human rights, decency and fairness in the US . These wars, and particularly the genocides committed in North Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia and Iraq, have lead to no negative national consequences for the US , and have thus resulted in those in power in the US believing that they are immune to the impact of the death and destruction they inflict on others.
Moreover, over those intervening 65 years of constant war, the US has steadily become a “war machine”- its raison d’etre being to fight and kill others for what they have. Each marine that returns home brutalised and scarred by the reality of war; each soldier who returns to his home town finally knowing the truth of what “the greatest nation in the world ” really stands for, is a time bomb of death and destruction to that community. A culture of violence as the solution to anything has now totally permeated every aspect of American society. To quote another of those biblical aphorisms -“what ye sow, so shall ye reap”
And with each war, the targets of American state violence become ever more aware of the complete and viciously laughable hypocrisy of the United States; it’s Presidents mouthing ghastly platitudes of the US being the ” shining city on the hill” , the exemplar to the world of peace and democracy, while raining terror and death on the helpless. For the families and communities of the millions killed by the US military since the second world war, there remains no justice – no resting place.
What is now desperately needed is an international legal body that is truly impartial-no longer controlled by those rich and powerful states who commit the the vast majority of the terror and death they so loudly condemn in others. An international body that seeks justice, not vengeance, that ascribes appropriate compensation to those whom the powerful have done injustice to.
When every war-mongering state, not just as is currently , its head of state, knows that, regardless of the colour of the skin of those in power, the warring state will be punished with heavy financial reparations for the evil it has done- only then will the incentive for war rapidly recede and justice prevail.
The Guardian, in an article of 22nd January, notes that the The American Psychological Association (APA) has declined to rebuke one of its members, Dr John Leso for his known complicity in the torture of the US kidnapped suspect Mohammed al-Qahtani, who was ” charged” by the Pentagon in 2008 for his suspected involvement in 9/11.
The Guardian notes that “the APA did not deny Leso took part in the brutal interrogation of the suspected 20th 9/11 hijacker, Mohammed al-Qahtani, whose treatment the Pentagon official overseeing his military commission ultimately called “torture”.
The American Psychological Association describes itself as ” the largest scientific and professional organization representing psychology in the United States. APA is the world’s largest association of psychologists, with more than 134,000 researchers, educators, clinicians, consultants and students as its members.Our mission is to advance the creation, communication and application of psychological knowledge to benefit society and improve people’s lives.”
APA’s communications chief, Rhea Farberman has stated that a seven-year ethics investigation could not meet the burden of finding “direct unethical conduct” by Leso, and said it was “utterly unfounded” to fear the organization has condoned professional impunity.
The evidence of John Leso’s complicity in torture is incontrovertible in creating an inhumane environment for Mohammed al-Qahtani to be tortured by his “interrogators”. Dr John Leso therefore both unequivocally breached the APAs code of conduct and the universal medical ethic of “do no harm” .
No labyrinthine legal argument can allow the APA to escape its responsibilities to ensure its members behave in ethical and humane ways to their patients.
The APA has clearly now abrogated that responsibility and most certainly undermined the rights of human beings to the right to be treated humanely by state apparatus, and has consequently eliminated any professional credibility it may have had in the eyes of the global public and clinical professionals around the world.
It would therefore be expeditious for the APA to re-consider its astounding decision to condone torture by its members and to immediately and permanently dis-bar John Leso from its membership. However, this is unlikely to happen.
Since the beginning of the “War on Terror” in the United States, and the various Western countries who have been complicit in the fictional “war on terror”, we have seen increasing use by the state of statements by their “legal experts” to justify war crimes, torture and murder on an ever-expanding scale.
The APA’s excuse that the evidence about Dr Leso’s complicity in torture did not meet the burden of finding “direct unethical conduct” is clearly at odds with the facts. It does however reflect the fear by a supposedly ethical and professional body, of the power of the state to inflict harm on even such a prestigious professional body as the APA .
Weasel words and legal sleight of hand must instead be used by the APA’s legal advisors to justify this cowardice. However when such a professional body, which in their words, exists to “benefit society and improve people’s lives”, abrogates it’s right to instill justice, ethics and fair play out of fear of state retribution , there appears little hope for the foreseeable future of a fair and just society in the United States.
On November 26 2013, the UN General Assembly voted to proclaim 2014 the International Year of Solidarity with the Palestinian People. The UN Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People was requested to organize relevant activities in cooperation with governments, the UN system, intergovernmental organizations, and significantly, civil society. The seven countries who opposed the proclamation were Israel, United States, Canada, Australia,Micronesia, Palau, and the Marshall Islands. The vote was 110-7, with 56 abstentions.
I would ask that readers take some time to read the accounts of what has happened to Palestine and the Palestinian people since “ The Catastrophe”, the” Nakba, when in 1948 Israeli troops and gangs brutally forced out hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from the lands and houses they had lived in for centuries, killing many in the process .
This dispossession, 65 years later, is ongoing; each day more Palestinians are uprooted from their homes, their houses and orchards bulldozed and new “settlements for Israeli Jews only built over the rubble. The brutality, intensity and magnitude of the occupation is for some reason, a matter for silence by Western governments. Perhaps sharing in the guilt of the Nazis in the Jewish genocide in Europe, they turn a blind eye to the ghettoization of the Palestinian people. The victim of violence has indeed become the perpetrator. In the West Bank, the Israeli government have walled the population in , has carefully calculated the minimal calorific intake to keep each Palestinian alive, and has over many years reduced West Bank Palestinians lives to subsistence level, reliant on “illegal” tunnels supplying food from Egypt, while health , water and sewage systems crumble. This systematic policy is designed to force Palestinians to abandon their homeland to allow more Israeli settlement. What is urgently needed is for our New Zealand government to finally stand up to Israel and their US supporters and say “enough is enough” and permit international law to prevail. A separate Palestinian state is now no longer viable after 65 years. What is required therefore is, in the spirit of peace and reconciliation, a process of restoration of justice. Modelled on the Treaty of Waitangi process and the South African Peace and Reconciliation process, a unity government of all religions and politics across Israel and the rump of Palestine needs to be set up. This government would oversee the return of the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who have been dispossessed over the past 65 years , the release from jail of the many thousands of Palestinian political prisoners (men women and children) , and the full compensation or return of lands lost since the occcupation.
Nelson Mandelas’ vision of reconciliation and hope for the future can result in an Israel/Palestine state that brings a message of hope to the Middle East. The alternative is not worth imagining..
In the latest absurdity upon absurdity in this fictitious “war on terror”, the UK Police have defended their actions in holding and interrogating for 9 hours Glenn Greenwald’s partner, David Miranda on the grounds that Miranda was suspected of terrorism because he may have been relaying truthful information about a wide range of Western governments’ illegal spying on its citizens.
As the headline above notes; the UK Police’s rationale for the infringement of Miranda’s rights, was that they “had a duty to protect the public and our national security ” (from such unwarranted journalism). With both the UK and US police forces being increasingly accused of both corrupt and violent behaviour, it is little wonder the public in those countries feel a sense of betrayal by the state. Who are their police and armed forces in fact protecting?
Certainly the deliberately manufactured farce of muslim terrorism ( funded with enthusiasm by the CIA, and various other “intelligence” western agencies around the globe- not to mention our “allies”- the Saudis), is providing an ever more thinly stretched excuse for heavy handed enforcement behaviours, surveillance and the erosion of civil rights.
Who and what is it all for?
It would appear that much of this deterioration in rights and freedoms is simply to improve the profits of those international corporates , whether media, arms manufacturers , energy companies telecommunications or security companies that are able to buy the required influence in western “democracies”.
As it becomes increasingly clear that we are nearing the end of the free capitalistic lunch-with the remainder of the world’s natural resources being rapidly frittered away for a few quick bucks – the corporate billionaires are rushing for the exits, and trampling us “little people” in the stampede.
A recent Guardian article about the lives of migrant workers in Qatar highlights the issues of forced labour and slavery in middle eastern and some European countries.
As the Guardian article notes; Qatra has the highest ratio of migrant workers to the domestic population in the world; more than 90%. Aidan McQaude of Anti-Slavery International has no hesitation in calling many of these migrants not just forced labour, but true slaves; people who are treated as objects.
Craig Murray, ex British ambassador to Uzbekistan and long time campaigner against child labour/slavery in their cotton fields, notes that both the tolerance and the exploitation of slavery or cheap labour inevitably goes right to the top. In Uzbekistan’s case, to its torture loving President Karimov and his daughter (who are such good friends with Tony Blair!) . Anti Slavery International describes the working conditions for children in the cotton fields thus: Cotton production in Uzbekistan is a state orchestrated forced-labour system. The Government of Uzbekistan forces over a million children, teachers, public servants and private sector employees to pick cotton under appalling conditions each year. Those who refuse are expelled from school, fired from their jobs, and denied public benefits or worse. The Government harasses and detains citizens seeking to monitor the situation.
In Qatar’s case, the official responses to the accusations of slavery are so far at odds with the reality on the ground , that it would be very surprising that the government authorities and companies involved did not have full cognisance of the systemic exploitation occurring.
Asia News notes that the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) highlighted “contradictions with Qatari law” that fail “to give workers any real rights or protection from slavery conditions.”
ITUC General Secretary Sharan Burrow said the visa sponsorship system in Qatar allows the exaction of forced labour. “Under Qatari law, employers have near total control over workers. They alone choose if a worker can change jobs, leave the country or stay in Qatar,” she said.
In 2012, the Labour Relations Department in Qatar’s Labour Ministry received 6,000 worker complaints. The top concerns facing workers included exploitation, delays in paying wages, violence and work-related safety issues and fatalities.
In one of those most malignant of ironies, Qatar is one of the richest countries in the world for its Qatari citizenship population of 300,000 (total population of 1.9 million)
Similarly, across the border in Saudi Arabia, the Guardian in January 2013, noted that 45 foreign maids faced beheading by the State executioner . The International Labour Organisation’s (ILO) Committee of Experts on the Application of (Labour Rights) Conventions noted in 2012 that in Saudi Arabia the vulnerable situation of migrant workers, particularly domestic workers who are excluded from the provisions of the Labour Code, who are often confronted with employment policies such as the visa “sponsorship” system and subjected to abusive employer practices such as the retention of passports, non-payment of wages, deprivation of liberty and physical and sexual abuse which cause their employment to be transformed into situations that could amount to forced labour.
The Himalayan Times in July 2012 stated that up to 3,000 migrant workers from Nepal alone had died in Saudi Arabia since 2000.
However as Migrant Rights notes, the abuse of workers is not limited to Qatar or Saudi Arabia, abuse is epidemic and systemic in the middle east and beyond.
As I have noted in a previous blog , “We are all Immigrants”, none of us have any rights to this piece of land we currently plant our feet on. We are simply travelers, as were our ancestors before us. And to be fully human , we must welcome those new travelers amongst us too. And yet we continue to play this foolish and deadly game of “us’ and the “others”.
French attitudes towards the Roma are also indicative of the mindless attitude of those in power towards those who believe that simply because they and their ancestors happen to have lived in a geographically bounded state territory for some time, they are entitled to certain privileges, and those who are recent comers are not. The brutal and barbarous attitude by many in Australia towards the “boat people” from Asian countries, is a supreme example of this vicious mind-set.
The concept of “citizenship” is a useful mirage, a fiction created by states to marginalize some populations.
In reality any person who lives under the jurisdiction of a state geographic entity needs to be protected by its laws; whether they be occupiers of the lands for many generations, recent migrants, asylum seekers, or migrant workers.
As As’ad AbuKhalil, aka the Angry Arab states, it is the ignorance of racsim that drives these brutal policies and systems of exploitation and terror.
Now that Assad’s government in Syria has agreed to hand over supervision of its chemical weapons to the United Nations, some of the wind in the sails of the West’s determination to attack Syria has dissipated.
Yet France and its Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius are determined to ensure that a military strike remains likely, with France’s tabling of a UN resolution that would require “serious consequences” if the chemical weapons handover was not completed according to UN requirements or on time. Currently it is unclear what is motivating Fabius’ need to be the leader of the dogs of war against Syria. It is possibly some attempt by the Socialist government to regain some political support in France-although every French poll is indicating that French involvement in Syria would have the entirely opposite effect. Or is it an attempt to revive the glories of colonial France by re-bombing Damascus all over again , as it did in 1925-26 when those dark-skinned natives dared to fight for their own freedom from their French oppressors?
Or is it simply a matter of cash?, as Wayne Madsen reports for Iranian Press TV, where he states that the Saudi Arabian spy chief, Prince Bandar bin Sultan bin Abdulaziz Al Saud has been spending large amounts of Saudi oil money to “pay off” key members of the US Senate and House leadership as well as key ministers of the French government.
It may also be that Fabius’ war-mongering, like the UK foreign minister’s William Hague’s foreign policy decisions, appear wholly based on unconditional support for the Israeli state and its expansion. Hague the UK Foreign Minister , who , in an interview with the Israeli website YNetNews describes himself as “a natural friend of Israel”. Any actions that turn Shi-ite against Sunni in the countries surrounding Israel have to be, they reason, good for Israel.
Its my guess, that Al Qaeda think otherwise…
What is certain is that “Western” bombing of Syrian infrastructure will cause even greater suffering than Syrians from both sides are experiencing now. The experience of Libya in the last Western bombing campaign, is sadly illustrative. And what should by now be evident to anyone is that bombings or cruise missiles are not “precision targeted’ despite the hype . They frequently make errors both in their electronic targetting and, as is so often the case, the targeting coordinates are based on unreliable inadequate or false information.
Turkey, Saudi Arabia,Qatar, the UK, France and the US have been steadfast that there should be no negotiations while Assad is in power; in other words, that Assad’s forces will have to be defeated first before there are “negotiations”!-these are not the principles of those who espouse peace and reconciliation- what they appear to want is the destruction of the Syrian state, with their pundits arguing ( as they have done in Iraq) that Syria must be broken up into its constituent sectarian geographies. Such a breakup, (largely fomented by those outside powers themselves) will certainly not benefit the Syrian citizens of those enclaves, but will certainly benefit Israel (in the short term) and Saudi Arabia’s salafist mercenaries.
New Antarctica 