Dear Friend,
India is on fast track to release a COVID vaccine latest by August 15. The canvassing for volunteers needed for the first two phases of the trial has started; about 1100 are needed in all. If the Government of India indeed feels that the vaccine is safe and efficacious for human trials to be started then why can’t it enlist all members of the present Lok Sabha & Rajya Sabha; Judges of the Supreme Court; Secretaries, Union Ministries & Chief Secretaries, States/Union Territories; Scientists at ICMR, AIIMS, NIV and Chair Persons, National Commissions who could voluntarily consent in writing to become subjects of the trials
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ICMR Exhumes, Revives Nazi Era Template For Vaccine Trials
by Press Release
The canvassing for volunteers needed for the first two phases of the trial has started; about 1100 are needed in all. If the Government of India indeed feels that the vaccine is safe and efficacious for human trials to be started then why can’t it enlist all members of the present Lok Sabha & Rajya Sabha; Judges of the Supreme Court; Secretaries, Union Ministries & Chief Secretaries, States/Union Territories; Scientists at ICMR, AIIMS, NIV and Chair Persons, National Commissions who could voluntarily consent in writing to become subjects of the trials
The Coronavirus Republic: Three Million Infections and Rising
by Dr Binoy Kampmark
The United States is famed for doing things, not to scale, but off it. Size is the be-all and end-all, and the coronavirus is now doing its bit to assure that the country remains unrivalled in the charts of infection. In time, other unfortunates may well catch up. Brazil, with a president freshly diagnosed as having COVID-19, is currently on the silver podium. India has the bronze, though it is hard to see it being in that position for long.
The United States is famed for doing things, not to scale, but off it. Size is the be-all and end-all, and the coronavirus is now doing its bit to assure that the country remains unrivalled in the charts of infection. In time, other unfortunates may well catch up. Brazil, with a president freshly diagnosed as having COVID-19, is currently on the silver podium. India has the bronze, though it is hard to see it being in that position for long.
As the virus tears through, the announcement that COVID-19 infections in the US had passed three million suggested that President Donald Trump had, in fact, been assisting in his Make America Great Again program, if only for the wrong reasons. With the death toll now over 130,000, this has been an internal epidemiological war that shows no signs of abating. Coronavirus has been found thriving in Florida, Texas, Arizona and California. Some states are returning to stricter lockdown regimes.
The spread of infection and the grim-reaper gallop of the virus has seen a proliferation of analyses, much of it of little comfort to current or future victims. Did the trajectory in the US suggest the makings of a second wave, or merely the progress of the first? Mike Tildesley of the University of Warwick explained to the BBC that the exercise was “not particularly scientific: how you define a wave is arbitrary.” Hardly reassuring, though members of the Trump administration, including White House trade advisor Peter Navarro, is under the impression that the first has run its course, and preparations are being made for a second round. As he told CNN’s Jake Tapper last month, “We are filling the stockpile in anticipation of a possible problem in the fall. We are doing everything we can beneath the surface, working as hard as we possibly can.”
Melissa Hawkins, a public health academic from American University, is under no such illusions. She makes the fiercely logical point that to have a second wave, the first needs to conclude. “The US as a whole is not in the second wave because the first wave never really stopped. The virus is simply spreading into new populations or resurging in places that let down their guard too soon.”
This a view shared by the public health heavyweights, such as Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious diseases. “We are still knee-deep in the first wave of this. And I would say, this would not be considered a wave. It was a surge, or a resurgence of infections superimposed upon a baseline.” The hasty re-opening of cities and states had “led to a situation where we now have record-breaking cases.”
Letting down the guard is the sort of thing US Vice-President Mike Pence, who leads the White House Coronavirus Taskforce, is not averse to. His point of reassurance lies in falling rates of fatality even as the infection rate is rising. “This reflects,” observes Geoffrey Joyce, director of health policy at University of Southern California, “a shift in infection rates toward younger populations, as well as improved treatment as providers learn more about the virus.”
Before reporters at the US Department of Education, Pence made the following assessment: “While we mourn with those who mourn, because of what the American people have done, because of the extraordinary work of our healthcare workers around the country, we are encouraged that the average fatality rate continues to be low and steady.”
Such workmanlike, cold language lacks the schmaltz that has typified other administrations during times of crisis. Trump eschews the unifying gesture, solemn expressions of sympathy, tearful calls to the family of the dead, or any commemorative displays of feeling or bereavement. Strong men and women do not cry and nor should you.
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, as it has been throughout the crisis, has received various whippings from the administration. Its latest set of guidelines covering the reopening of schools were, according to Trump, “very tough and expensive”. The scolding given to the CDC had sent its officials scurrying off in search of a new regulatory set to placate the petulant ogre in the White House. In Pence’s words, the “CDC is going to be issuing a new set of tools, five different documents that will be giving even more clarity on the guidance going forward.”
This pattern of obfuscation, redirection and revision has been repeated in parts of the country. Rosy manipulation is preferable to gruesome reality. The economy shall be unfettered; illusions shall be cultivated. Data and evidence are enemies of the business civilisation, as are those distracting epidemiological models. Rebekah Jones, formerly of the Florida Department of Health, found this to her own cost when she lost her job over concerns about the way she was presenting infection data. Tasked with creating a platform that would show when parts of the state might ease coronavirus restrictions, she was told to “delete the report card because it showed that no counties, pretty much, were ready for reopening.” Best not to do such jobs too well.
Florida’s Governor Ron DeSantis dismissed the issue, while his communications director, Helen Aguirre Ferré, resorted to the traditional formula of belittling Jones’s behaviour. The naughty data scientist had misbehaved and been a cheeky unilateralist. “Rebekah Jones exhibited a repeated course of insubordination during her time with the department, including her unilateral decisions to modify the department’s COVID-19 dashboard without input or approval from the epidemiological team or her supervisors.”
At times, the criticism of public health initiatives, such as wearing a facemask, have had less to do with the rigours of raw science than the pull of a dotty mysticism. Ohio representative Nino Vitale captured that point. “We’re created in the image and likeness of God. When we think of image, do we think of a chest or our legs or our arms? We think of their faces. I don’t want to cover people’s faces … That’s the image of God right there and I want to see it in my brothers and sisters.” The terrible Sky God must have been amused by such earthly musings.
The death toll, and the rate of infection, suggest that public health considerations repeatedly face the social Darwinian considerations that underlie Trump’s administration. The protests against stay-home orders and COVID-19 restrictions betrays a certain fatalism: rights before health; trade before survival; guns before respirators. What will happen, will happen, and stop being such a killjoy. Trump’s messages of encouragement to such protestors keep the theme alive. With these attitudes, three million infections do not merely become a matter of resignation, but deluded celebration in the ill Republic.
Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. Email: bkampmark@gmail.com
COVID-19: Infection Rate Per Million Population In Select Countries, Provinces And Countries – 4 July 2020
by VT Padmanabhan
VT Padmanabhan has calculated the rate of Covid-19 infection per one million population of the country or the region. Covid-19 has shown its presence 215 countries/regions in
the UN system. The rate for China is 58 per Million and her position is 189th in the world. India has 506 per Million and her position is 114th.
We have been seeing and hearing a lot of visual and print media news and statistics of the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic. This will continue for some time to come. Almost all reports give the absolute number of cases and deaths. As on 7 Jul 20, with nearly 3.1 million cases and 134,000 deaths the USA is on top, Brazil with 1.67 million cases is No 2 and India with 760,000 cases is No 3.
This is not the way we have been seeing other health or socio-economic data of different countries or region. The health data are normally presented as rates of birth, infant mortality, cancer death etc per thousand people. I could not figure out as to why international agencies like the WHO has departed from this historical practices. During the early days of the pandemic, WHO used to give the number of cases, deaths and recoveries and the total population of 31 provinces in Mainland China. Even this practice has been discontinued since.
A map published by the WHO, showing three countries – US, Brazil and India with the highest number of cases, is reproduced below: Even though this is factually correct, it may have negative feelings among some viewers.
In this note I have calculated the rate of Covid-19 infection per one million population of the country or the region. Covid-19 has shown its presence 215 countries/regions in the UN system. The rate for China is 58 per Million and her position is 189th in the world. India has 506 per Million and her position is 114th.
Graph 1: Covid-19 Cases in select countries as on 04 Jul 20 – Rate per million
Graph 1 shows the infection rate for 38 countries, which together have 65% of the world’s population and 88% of the Covid-19 infections. The rate given in per million population. Acutally, the US is not the No1 country as far infection rate is concerned. The US is the 6th country. The top slot is occupied by Qatar with a population of 2.8 million, 80% of whom guest workers, most of them living in crowded hostels. Qatar’s infection rate is 35,324 persons per million. The rates for other top countries are Bahrain – 16933, Chile – 15,266, Kuwait 11,544 and Peru 9070.
Graph 2; Rates per 1000 people in 51 US states are shown in Graph 2. Not all states in the US are equal. The rate for New York is 22,000 as against 2,000 per Million in Hawaii. 13 states with rates above 10/Million account for 41% and 18 States with rates between 5 -10 /per million have 51% of the total US Caseload.
Graph 3 and 4: Rates in Counties of New York. All 62 counties in New York has Covid-19 cases. With 42 per thousand persons, Rockland is on top. With 0.7 per 1000, Franklin holds the lowest position. Graph 3 has data for counties with infection rate of 5000 and above and graph 4 has counties with rates below 5000 per million peoples
INDIA
The infection rate in India is 506 per million population. This rate is about 10 times that of China, which means India did not learn any lesson from there. Globally, India’s position is 114th.
The rate in US is 8,900. The average for the world is 1500 per million. State-wise, the National Capital Region (NCR) of Delhi with a total population of 18.7 million has the highest infection rate of 2671 per million. The Union Territory of Ladakh with a population of 290,000 has an attack rate of 2377 per million. Delhi and Ladakh are not shown in the Graph
About 70% of the cases in Maharashtra are in Mumbai metropolitan region. The infection rate in Dharavi, the biggest slum in Asia with an area of 6 sq km and a population of 650,000 is 3,555 which is less than a tenth of the rate in Qatar. As of now, the Dharavi cluster is under control. According to The Hindu, the success can be attributed to effective containment strategy, conducting comprehensive testing and ensuring uninterrupted supply of goods and essential supplies to the community.
INDIA – RATES PER MILLION BY STATES AND UTs AS ON 18 JUN 20 AND 04 JULY 20
COVID -19 IN INDIA – INCREASE IN INFECTION RATE BETWEEN 18 June 04 JUL 2020
Graph 6 gives the trajectory of the pandemic in India during 18 June to 04 July 2020. The growth rate ranged from 3.8 in Telangana to 1.3 in Chandigarh.
The infection rate in counties like Richmond and Suffolk in New York State is above 40,000 per million. In comparison to that, rate in Dharavi in Mumbai, is less than a tenth. An expert had earlier theorized about some inherent stuff in India, which prevents the spread of the disease. We have to remember that there were only 1255 cases on 30 March 2020. After about 100 days we have now more than 700,000 people, an increase of more than 500 times.
The lower rates in most of India, other than big cities, means that we are in a relatively safer zone. The tragedy unfolding in high infection rate places like Chennai, Delhi and Mumbai should make us more vigilant.
The vaccine and drug industry is putting all their might to save the world from the pandemic. Of this vaccine group is the most active. For decades, they have not invent a vaccine, though there have been several viral epidemics. If the disease is contained at the earlier stage, as the Chinese did it, there is no scope for vaccine research and sales. China and India are also in the vaccine trail. If these two succeed, the chances of getting a vaccine which is affordable for majority of the people are brighter.
The USA is not seriously thinking about bringing the epidemic under control. The talk is generally centred around getting a vaccine by the year end. India and several other countries in the world do not have to wait for the magic bullet. Because it may not arrive as the scientist know very little about this virus. As the virus is going to be with us for a long time, we have to embrance the simplest preventive measures -the face mask, social distance and hand hygiene.
==============
VT Padmanabhan is a researcher in health effects of radiation. He has led epidemiological investigations among people exposed to high radiation in Kerala. He has also studied the occupational radiation hazards among workers of Indian Rare Earths, genetic effects of children exposed to MIC gases in Bhopal, health hazards to workers in a viscose rayon unit in Madhyapradesh and reduction of birth weight of babies near a beverage bottling plant in Kerala. He has visited several contaminated sites in Belarus and Japan and had extensive interactions with the survivors.His papers have been published in International Journal of Health Services, Journal of American Medical Association, International Perspectives in Public Health, the Lancet and Economic and Political Weekly. He is a member of the European Commission on Radiation Risk, an independent body of experts appointed by the Green MEPs in Europe.
China achieving its Military Objectives in Ladak de-escalates tension
by Syed Ali Mujtaba
As news reports are coming that China is disengaging its forces from the Line of Actual Control (LAC), the words of former National Security Advisor Shivsankar Menon comes as a handy quote. The former Ambassador to China says; China moves two steps forward and then takes one step backward, having a net gain of one step, each time it withdraws after an ingression on the LAC.
Indo-China Conflict And USA
by Akhilendra Pratap Singh
Actually, US is making a huge funding in the entire Himalayan region and knowledgeable sources claim that US influence is increasing in Nepalese
military. All these issues must be matter of concern for India and we must be vigilant about increasing US infiltration in Himalayan region
Hindustan wrote editorially on July 7 that there are indications of improvement in Indo-China tension. It further says that even if China has retreated from Galwan, we should not be in hurry to reciprocate. Its claim on Bhutanese territory is also in news. Many defence experts are also talking in the same vein. And many liberals go to the extent that we should never trust China, because China is the biggest danger for Indian security. For them, China is expansionist by its very nature and it is engaged in border conflict with all its neighbours. But, many people are of the opinion that barring India and Bhutan, China has resolved all border disputes with its neighbours. So far as Chinese engagement in South China sea, Hongkong and Taiwan is concerned, it is altogether different story, it does not fall in the category of ordinary border dispute.
Anyway, the killing of 20 Indian soldiers including the Commanding Officer of Bihar regiment on the night of 15-16 June is a matter of immense grief and condemnable, when it had already been decided in the meeting of senior military commanders on June 6 that there would be de-escalation on LAC and efforts would be made for stability, peace and tranquility. After more than 3 weeks of tension , the withdrawal by both the forces is a positive development despite the opinion of some experts and parties to the contrary. On July 5, talk between NSA Ajit Doval and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yee was necessary. In fact, such higher level political talk was needed even earlier. Now, it must continue. Basing on the essetial points of the agreements reached during talks in 1993, 1996, 2005, 2013,2015 on border dispute, efforts should be made to discuss and resolve the problems inherited from the colonial period as well as the current ones.
India is passing through a period of transition. In whatever state, parliamentary democracy is our political system and all parties are working under it. Emergency was certainly an exception. But, today the situation is changing qualitatively. RSS and BJP seem hell bent for imposing fascist polity and civilisation. Now, the future of parliamentary democracy and the orientation of Indian foreign policy will depend on the political balance of social forces. Whatever other weaknesses in the foreign policy, it was generally based on equality with other countries and a relative balance of super powers. This balance started weakening during UPA rule itself. Modi government took rapid strides to align with America’s Indo-Pacific military strategy. India is now a member of Quad. The status of this quadrilateral comprising US, Japan, India and Australia has been elevated and its meetings are now attended by minister level officials. Thus, India is gradually becoming US ally in containment of China. Even, during this Covid-19 pandemic, India too aligned with US to hold China responsible for it. Actually, becoming a party to the Indo-Pacific military strategy, India has unnecessarily entangled itself in US- China conflict which is, in no way, conducive to our national interest.
For containment of China, USA is busy engaging the countries of our Himalayan region in its Indo-Pacific strategy. Some examples may explain it. There is a new change in US attitude towards Tibet. Tibetan policy and support Bill has been passed in US House of Representatives in 2020. With other formalities, this will become an US Act for the defence of Tibetan culture and identity. This bill emphasises Tibetan autonomy, human rights, culture, environment and the protection of plateau region, while strengthening the central Tibetan administration. Now, everybody knows how much US is concerned about environment, human rights or respects the freedom of other nations. Capturing the technology and capital of the whole world, American rulers have become the emperors of finance capital and they are hell bent that the world remains unipolar so that all countries revolve around it. Its goal is to expand it’s influence in Himalayan region and it should be a matter of concern for India.
There is dispute over Kala Pani, Limpiyadhura and Lipulekh between Nepal and India but here too US wants to make Nepal part of Indo-US strategy. In the Standing Committee meeting of Communist Party of Nepal, this issue was raised that Nepal should not take funds from America’s Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) because it is part of US Indo-Pacific Strategy comprising military constituents aiming at containment of China. After Doklam, the current China-Bhutan dispute is about funds given to wild life sanctuary by an US agency. This district of Bhutan claimed by China as it’s territory borders Arunachal Pradesh of our country. There are no diplomatic relations between China and Bhutan and China blames India for it.
Actually, US is making a huge funding in the entire Himalayan region and knowledgeable sources claim that US influence is increasing in Nepalese military. All these issues must be matter of concern for India and we must be vigilant about increasing US infiltration in Himalayan region. Vigilance over China only won’t work. We should develop cordial relations with countries of Himalayan region and this relation should be on equal footing, not big brotherly. Explainations on Indo-China tension may differ, but, this time, there is broad consensus that there should be no war and the border dispute should be resolved through diplomatic and political level talks. Strong opinion is emerging that better friendly relations should be developed with neighbouring countries. In order to advance in this direction, we must pay attention to Kashmir issue also. Needless to say, Modi government’s Kashmir policy is coercive and adventurist in a way. Now, there should be a fresh thinking on the Kashmir problem and efforts must be enhanced to create public opinion against assaults by Modi government on the democratic rights of the Kashmiri people. This demand should be forcefully raised that, in order to win trust of the Kashmiri people, Modi government must rethink over it’s policy and resolve the Kashmir problem in a democratic manner.
Though there is no mechanical relation between domestic and foreign policies, yet the domestic policy does impact foreign policy. While Modi government’s domestic policy is based on coercion and oppression, all is not well in China, too. Chinese domestic policy, too, is growing coercive and its market economy with Chinese characteristics, too, is in crisis. Only time will tell how China deals with its economic crisis by increasing global trade through Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and other measures. One major reason why there is no war between India and China, today, is power balance also.
In order to avoid any confrontation in future, we should go back a bit in the past and try to understand Indo-China border dispute. Pt. Sundar Lal, who was a renowned Gandhian, has written well on this issue that Pt. Nehru, despite his willingness, could not resolve border dispute. The confrontation between two great nations and civilisations has adversely impacted our democracy and development, too. India, today, is in the grips of domestic as well as foreign corporate finance capital in the name of new economic policy and our agriculture, jobs and small-medium enterprises are being ruined. Pt. Nehru was certainly in favour of talks with China but he was not ready to negotiate and retreat an inch from the border line determined by Britishers in British India. He was under pressure from Jan Sangh and rightist forces, even the socialists were offensive against Nehru on border dispute. The anti-China diatribe of the socialists is worth noting and irony of history as the Congress Socialist Party was doing a novel experiment in Indian context different from Soviet-backed Communist Party, its official ideology was Marxism, but its successors did not want Nehru to talk to Communist China on border dispute! Everybody knew that the border demarcation between India and China was done forcibly by British India. Dr Lohia, too, regarded McMahon Line a gift of imperialism and it was a common knowledge that there was no Chinese representative in the McMahon line accord. In western sector, too, China had no role to play in determining border in Ladakh and Ladakh based Aksai chin. In fact, rulers of British India were then engaged with the Czarist Russia, because Russia was then eyeing at the entire region from Tibet to Sikyang (Xinjiang) province. It is the same Sikyang province where the demand for religious freedom is being raised.
Anyway, India must modify its foreign policy and dissociate itself from America’s Indo-Pacific military strategy. India is still in the process of Nation-state building. Taking democracy as key-link, it should inculcate a sense of citizenship among the people; developing border areas, it should work for thoroughgoing resolution of border disputes with China, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, Srilanka or Bhutan. But the present, establishment is not interested in it.
So, in order to create public opinion, communists, socialists, Gandhians, Ambedkarites as well as environmentalists, other social movements and political groupings should come on a common political platform and make collective efforts for dealing with pandemic as well as resolving economic crisis and border dispute and march together for the defence of democracy against fascist onslaught in the country.
Akhilendra Pratap Singh, Swaraj Abhiyan
A Look At The Past, Present And Future Of The China –Indian Border Dispute
by Arka Deep
After five decades of status quo in their unresolved border issue, India and China have locked horns again, this time at Galwan Valley. With the first casualties in nearly 53 years, this face off is essentially becoming a cause for concern among people.
Letter To Prime Minister On Coal Auction
by Press Release
As a part of the civil society and, in particular, as those concerned about the need to conserve the existing fresh water sources in the country and revive those on the decline, we feel that the proposed coal mining activity will adversely affect the
catchments of several important rivers in the northern and the eastern parts of the country. Therefore, the proposed coal auctions will not be prudent.
Elderly and the Culture of ‘Adda’
by Harasankar Adhikari
The elderly or senior citizen(particularly male) also create their own spaces for a daily ‘adda’ session at their post retirement life. It has a great impact in their daily life.
Neoliberal Psychological Romanticism: From The Primal Scream To The Collective Unconscious – Part II
by Bruce Lerro
In practice, neoliberalism strips the individual of his social, qualitative, historical and cross-cultural connections so that all social life can be reduced to a quantitative, measured and calculating cost-benefit analysis. Everything is saleable and reduced to a
price. At a micro level, neoliberal psychological realism results in what is called the “entrepreneur self”.
On Israel’s Bizarre Definitions: The West Bank is Already Annexed
by Dr Ramzy Baroud
https://countercurrents.org/2020/07/on-israels-bizarre-definitions-the-west-bank-is-already-annexed/
Wednesday, July 1, was meant to be the day on which the Israeli government officially annexed 30% of the occupied Palestinian West Bank and the Jordan Valley. This date, however, came and went and annexation was never actualized.
Wednesday, July 1, was meant to be the day on which the Israeli government officially annexed 30% of the occupied Palestinian West Bank and the Jordan Valley. This date, however, came and went and annexation was never actualized.
“I don’t know if there will be a declaration of sovereignty today,” said Israeli Foreign Minister, Gabi Ashkenazi, with reference to the self-imposed deadline declared earlier by Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. An alternative date was not immediately announced.
But does it really matter?
Whether Israel’s illegal appropriation of Palestinian land takes place with massive media fanfare and a declaration of sovereignty, or whether it happens incrementally over the course of the coming days, weeks, and months, Israel has, in reality, already annexed the West Bank – not just 30% of it but, in fact, the whole area.
It is critical that we understand such terms as ‘annexation’, ‘illegal’, ‘military occupation’, and so on, in their proper contexts.
For example, international law deems that all of Israel’s Jewish settlements, constructed anywhere on Palestinian land occupied during the 1967 war, are illegal.
Interestingly, Israel, too, uses the term ‘illegal’ with reference to settlements, but only to ‘outposts’ that have been erected in the occupied territories without the permission of the Israeli government.
In other words, while in the Israeli lexicon the vast majority of all settlement activities in occupied Palestine are ‘legal’, the rest can only be legalized through official channels. Indeed, many of today’s ‘legal’ 132 settlements in the West Bank and Jerusalem, housing over half a million Israeli Jewish settlers, began as ‘illegal outposts’.
Though this logic may satisfy the need of the Israeli government to ensure its relentless colonial project in Palestine follows a centralized blueprint, none of this matters in international law.
Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Conventions states that “Individual or mass forcible transfers, as well as deportations of protected persons from occupied territory to the territory of the Occupying Power or to that of any other country, occupied or not, are prohibited, regardless of their motive”, adding that “The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.”
Israel has violated its commitment to international law as an ‘Occupying Power’ on numerous occasions, rendering its very ‘occupation’ of Palestine, itself, a violation of how military occupations are conducted – which are meant to be temporary, anyway.
Military occupation is different from annexation. The former is a temporary transition, at the end of which the ‘Occupying Power’ is expected, in fact, demanded, to relinquish its military hold on the occupied territory after a fixed length of time. Annexation, on the other hand, is a stark violation of the Geneva Conventions and the Hague Regulations. It is tantamount to a war crime, for the occupier is strictly prohibited from proclaiming unilateral sovereignty over occupied land.
The international uproar generated by Netanyahu’s plan to annex a third of the West Bank is fully understandable. But the bigger issue at stake is that, in practice, Israel’s violations of the terms of occupation have granted it a de facto annexation of the whole of the West Bank.
So when the European Union, for example, demands that Israel abandons its annexation plans, it is merely asking Israel to re-embrace the status quo ante, that of de facto annexation. Both abhorring scenarios should be rejected.
Israel began utilizing the occupied territories as if they are contiguous and permanent parts of so-called Israel proper, immediately following the June 1967 war. Within a few years, it erected illegal settlements, now thriving cities, eventually moving hundreds of thousands of its own citizens to populate the newly acquired areas.
This exploitation became more sophisticated with time, as Palestinians were subjected to slow, but irreversible, ethnic cleansing. As Palestinian homes were destroyed, farms confiscated, and entire regions depopulated, Jewish settlers moved in to take their place. The post-1967 scenario was a repeat of the post-1948 history, which led to the establishment of the State of Israel on the ruins of historic Palestine.
Moshe Dayan, who served as Israel’s Defense Minister during the 1967 war, explained the Israeli logic best in a historical address at Israel’s Technion University in March 1969. “We came to this country which was already populated by Arabs, and we are establishing a Hebrew, that is a Jewish state here,” he said.
“Jewish villages were built in the place of Arab villages. You do not even know the names of these Arab villages, and I do not blame you, because these geography books no longer exist; not only do the books not exist, the Arab villages are not there, either … There is no one place built in this country that did not have a former Arab population,” he added.
The same colonial approach was applied to East Jerusalem and the West Bank after the war. While East Jerusalem was formally annexed in 1980, the West Bank was annexed in practice, but not through a clear legal Israeli proclamation. Why? In one word: demographics.
When Israel first occupied East Jerusalem, it went on a population transfer frenzy: moving its own population to the Palestinian city, strategically expanding the municipal boundaries of Jerusalem to include as many Jews and as few Palestinians as possible, slowly reducing the Palestinian population of Al Quds through numerous tactics, including the revocation of residency and outright ethnic cleansing.
And, thus, Jerusalem’s Palestinian population, which once constituted the absolute majority, has now been reduced to a dwindling minority.
The same process was initiated in parts of the West Bank, but due to the relatively large size of the area and population, it was not possible to follow a similar annexation stratagem without jeopardizing Israel’s drive to maintain Jewish majority.
Dividing the West Bank into Areas A, B, and C as a result of the disastrous Oslo accords, has given Israel a lifeline, for this allowed it to increase settlement activities in Area C – nearly 60% of the West Bank – without stressing too much about demographic imbalances. Area C, where the current annexation plan is set to take place, is ideal for Israeli colonialism, for it includes Palestine’s most arable, resource-rich, and sparsely populated lands.
It matters little whether the annexation will have a set date or will take place progressively through Israel’s declarations of sovereignty over smaller chunks of the West Bank in the future. The fact is, annexation is not a new Israeli political agenda dictated by political circumstances in Tel Aviv and Washington. Rather, annexation has been the ultimate Israeli colonial objective from the very onset.
Let us not get entangled in Israel’s bizarre definitions. The truth is that Israel rarely behaves as an ‘Occupying Power’, but as a sovereign in a country where racial discrimination and apartheid are not only tolerated or acceptable but are, in fact, ‘legal’ as well.
Ramzy Baroud is a journalist and the Editor of The Palestine Chronicle. He is the author of five books. His latest is “These Chains Will Be Broken: Palestinian Stories of Struggle and Defiance in Israeli Prisons” (Clarity Press, Atlanta). Dr. Baroud is a Non-resident Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Islam and Global Affairs (CIGA), Istanbul Zaim University (IZU). His website is www.ramzybaroud.net
The ‘Invaluable’ Bud
by Sheshu Babu
Little did he know
That somewhere some other
Would recognize
And some other bud would rise
To preach flowers to blossom
Donald Trump
by David Anderson
Trump’s dystopian vision of America is not new. It is the ultimate flowering of anti-democratic thinking. It has in recent years metastasized in the
form of what we call today the Far Right Republican Party.
His niece Mary L. Trump has written in
“His egregious and arguably intentional mishandling of the current catastrophe has led to a level of pushback and scrutiny that he’s never experienced before, increasing his belligerence and need for petty revenge as he withholds vital funding, personal protective equipment, and ventilators that your tax dollars have paid for from states whose governors don’t kiss his ass sufficiently.”
(Mary L. Trump holds a PhD from the Derner Institute of Advanced Psychological Studies and has taught graduate courses in trauma and psychopathology)
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The Publisher Simon & Schuster writes on its website that the book portrays the president as a “damaged man” with “lethal flaws” who “threatens the world’s health, economic security, and social fabric.”
The publisher is correct. Donald Trump’s mind is a reflection of everything that is wrong with America. It is obsessed by hunger for power. It is driven by mendacious narcissism, derision of others, a sense of privilege, gleeful ignorance. As this has become more a certainty, many Americans find themselves asking: How did we get to this place? How can we get ourselves out of it?
Donald Trump’s niece paints a very grim picture. My purpose here is to agree with her and yet give Americans hope. How can I say this? I spent most of my life career traveling throughout the world assessing foreign risk. It has given me insight. Allow me to begin with my biography. In some ways it was not unlike that of Donald Trump.
My parents and grandparents were the product and success of the great American dream.
My father was a Swedish sailor immigrant’s son born in Ridgefield Park, New Jersey. He started in his youth as a Wall Street runner. He became the most powerful American banker for all of the Middle East at the House of Morgan. My mother was the daughter of a Swedish Lutheran Minister who left Sweden for America at the age of 14. He led a very beautiful Missouri Synod Lutheran church in Arlington, New Jersey.
As it was with Donald (and so many young boys) my father had a great influence on me. I can now vividly recall one incident; when a princely man from Saudi Arabia visited us at our home in Alpine, New Jersey to drink coffee and eat my mother’s pastries. As I stood in the driveway of our house this soon to be Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia—Faisal bin Abdelaziz Al Saud who later became King and then in 1975 was murdered by his nephew—stepped out of a black Lincoln limousine, surrounded by body guards. So many years later I can still feel the awe of his presence.
Was that the moment I made my decision? It may have been.
So, later I set out to follow my own international dream. It became my banking career. Beginning in New York with the Chase Manhattan Bank and then to their branch in Johannesburg, South Africa, it took me to every corner of the world; to the Soviet Union during the Henry Kissinger “detent” period, to all of Europe and Latin America and Asia. My job was assessing foreign risk and building foreign relationships. Over that period I became increasingly aware of the world around me and the underlying causes of past and present civilizational function and dysfunction.
Was this the reason that on Nov. 8, 2016 I found myself so dismayed by the news Americans had elected Donald Trump to the nation’s highest office — a man clearly unfit to lead America. My answer: Yes it was.
Then a year later a breakthrough idea began to form in my mind. I concluded that he may be exactly what America at this stage in its history needs. Like a horrible reflection in a mirror, the personification of all that is wrong now and has been wrong for over 400 years, a warning to our citizens of how dysfunctional we have become.
Bringing together all of my years of international risk assessment experience I have concluded that he could be a catalyst for change.
The need for change in America has been evident from the country’s founding. In the current era since the Reagan years it has become the more evident. With Reagan there was a movement towards crassness in our politics, toward the inequality of wealth distribution, toward cruelty in our social system.
So my conclusion is that we Americans are now faced with a stark reality; in the form of the shock that we needed. To use a timely metaphor, Donald Trump is like a virus forcing us to pay attention to the harm we are doing to ourselves, demanding that we find an antibody.
We are now seeing signs of this in the streets of our country.
I was told as a youngster in school that America in its beginning was created by and for the people and that it was a nation where people could reach their potential. My own family experience I had thought confirmed this. But now with Donald Trump and his sycophants I can see that it was for many Americans just a myth. My family and I were the lucky ones. Yes, some like my father and grandfathers had opportunity, but there remained many for whom opportunity was very limited; the poor white working-class and then the slaves at the very bottom — those from Africa treated not as people but as chattel property. The historical American reality from the foundation of our country to the present is that there was and continues to be an aristocracy of the rich. Massive wealth accumulation has always been with us. And it has always been able to purchase enormous political power. We do not have a democracy. We never did. We have been living in an autocracy. And with Donald Trump that failure is all the more apparent.
In recent years this has become the soul of the Republican Party. Beginning with Newt Gingrich in 1994, Republicans stopped trying to govern and instead began accumulating electoral power. It is said that few figures in modern history have done more than Gingrich to lay the groundwork for Trump’s rise.
A straight line can be drawn from Gingrich’s “Contract with America” to the Tea Party in 2009, an outsider movement characterized by distrust of government expertise and experience. The Tea Party helped elect a rogues’ gallery of loathsome lawmakers; Rand Paul (Ky.) and Ted Cruz (Texas) just to name two of them.
So Trump’s dystopian vision of America is not new. It is the ultimate flowering of anti-democratic thinking. It has in recent years metastasized in the form of what we call today the Far Right Republican Party.
And yet as I write here it all goes back long before Gingrich. FDR made some changes. But then after FDR, American conservatives piece by piece systematically dismantled his meager social safety net. This included reduced access to food aid, job training and unemployment insurance. Regulatory guardrails were rolled back. America allowed executive compensation packages to emphasize reward for short-term financial gain and place little value on the broader social/economic worker landscape. Conservatives put in place an income and inheritance tax system benefiting the very wealthy and pushing the even limited welfare burden onto the shrinking middle class. They privatized the most expensive and least socially productive medical system in the advanced world. They allowed education debt to suffocate the middle and lower classes. They allowed the nation’s infrastructure to deteriorate. And the list goes on.
Now for the good news:
Everything wrong with America is now centered on the incompetence of Donald Trump and his sycophant followers. There is a buildup of American revulsion. (most notably among the millennials) It is causing many Americans to demand change.
What is happening in our streets now is just the beginning. This is how progressive democratic societies improve; at first fitfully, imperfectly, frustratingly, sometimes painfully. But they do improve. So, I say: Thank you, President Trump. Thank you for showing us what we have become; how low we have become. Thank you for helping us find the courage to confront what we have become.
It will take time and hard work from every corner of American society – from people of all social racial profiles and creeds and levels of wealth. But the process has started. We are getting closer to a metaphorical Covid-19 Trump-ian socio-political cure.
Yet we are left with the nagging question. Will enough of us have the energy and patience to see it through?
It only took about 35% of the German people to put Hitler into Power. And many of the ultra-rich German industrialists stayed silent. This is where we now find ourselves. As it was then with Nazi Germany, what happens in November of this year will determine the future of our country.
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David Anderson brings together a wide range of interests in his writings, namely; theology, history, evolutionary anthropology, philosophy, geopolitics, and economics. He has written four books. The fourth is about a necessary geo political, social, religious, economic paradigm shift for human survival. http://inquiryabraham.com/
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