Tuesday, February 4, 2020

Sanders Campaign's Internal Caucus Numbers Show Them Leading Iowa, With Biden a Distant Fourth

04 February 20

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04 February 20

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Sanders Campaign's Internal Caucus Numbers Show Them Leading Iowa, With Biden a Distant Fourth

Democratic U.S. presidential candidate Senator Bernie Sanders speaks to supporters and volunteers at a campaign field office in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, February 2, 2020. (photo: Mike Segar/Reuters)

Ryan Grim, Aída Chávez, Lee Fang and Akela Lacy, The Intercept
Excerpt: "The Sanders campaign reports it received 29.7 percent of the vote, closely followed by former South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg at 24.6 percent."
READ MORE

Iowa voters listen as Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders speaks at the Ames City Auditorium on January 25, 2020, in Ames, Iowa. Iowa holds the state's caucuses on February 3. (photo: Win McNamee/Getty Images)

Sanders Reportedly Finished 1st, Biden 4th in Unreleased Iowa Poll
Tim O'Donnell, The Week
O'Donnell writes: "Remember that final poll of Iowa Democrats from CNN and The Des Moines Register that wasn't released because of an interviewing error? Well, FiveThirtyEight reportedly confirmed the final results."

It was a particularly rough poll for former Vice President Joe Biden, who fell all the way to fourth, despite hovering near the top of the leaderboard for months. Former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg came in third.

Michael Bloomberg. (photo: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg)

DNC Debate Rules Forced Diversity Out of the Democratic Presidential Race - and Then They Changed the Rules for a Really Rich White Man
Stephen A. Crockett Jr., The Root
Crockett Jr. writes: "By the end of January, damn near every candidate of color had withdrawn from the race. And all of them could cite one culprit as the reason for their withdrawal: the stringent and unwavering debate rules of the Democratic National Committee."
READ MORE

A student at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, visits a makeshift memorial set up in front of the school on Feb 18, 2018. (photo: AFP)

I Was a Parkland Teacher. Listen to Our Stories and Keep the Promise of Never Again.
Ivy Schamis, The Washington Post
Schamis writes: "'Are we going to die today?' That was the last question a student ever asked me in my classroom at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla."
READ MORE

Hatice Cengiz said if anything now happened to her, the world would be responsible. (photo: Taylor Jewell/Invision/AP)

Khashoggi Fiancee: 'Saudi Arabia Can Get Away With Whatever It Wants'
Stephanie Kirchgaessner, Guardian UK
Excerpt: "'Because these people were not punished for what they have done, and because the world has chosen to just move on, they can still do what they want,' Hatice Cengiz said."
READ MORE

Qandeel Baloch. (photo: Nation)

New Book Looks at Murder of Pakistani Social Media Star at the Hands of Her Brother
Renee Montagne, NPR
Montagne writes: "Baloch's fame could not protect her from a tragic end: One of her brothers murdered her in what's known as an honor killing. She was just 26."

Journalist Sanam Maher, who has written a book about Baloch (whose real name was Fauzia Azeem) called A Woman Like Her, spoke with NPR about the star and the aftermath of her death.

A beluga whale swims under an iceberg in Alaska. (photo: Design Pics Inc/First Light/Getty Images Plus)

Belugas Are Dying Off in Alaska and Oil and Gas Operations Are to Blame, Says Lawsuit
Jordan Davidson, EcoWatch
Davidson writes: "Two environmental groups made a formal announcement that they will file a lawsuit to protect endangered beluga whales whose numbers have plummeted recently."

The suit aims to void permits allowed by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) that opened up oil and gas exploration in Cook Inlet in southern Alaska. The suit alleges that NOAA violated the Endangered Species Act by issuing the permits without protecting Cook Island belugas. The law requires the formal 60-day notice before the agency can be sued, according to The Associated Press.

The Center for Biological Diversity and Cook Inletkeeper teamed up to send notice that they will sue NOAA.

NOAA's National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) released a disturbing new population estimate last week that showed whale numbers are far lower than previous estimates and their numbers are dropping rapidly, as Reuters reported.

The NMFS report estimated that only 279 beluga whales remain in Cook Inlet, a steep decline from the nearly 1,300 that lived there in 1979. The population decline has accelerated to an annual rate of 2.3 percent over the last decade, which is four times faster than previous estimates, according to NMFS, as Reuters reported.

Cook Inlet runs almost 200 miles from Anchorage to the Gulf of Alaska. It supplies energy for the south-central part of the state. The industrial activities there threaten beluga whales, which swim there and feast on salmon and other fish, according to The Independent.

The Center for Biological Diversity said these "daunting" numbers mean exploration planned by Hillcorp Alaska needs to stop immediately, as The Independent reported.

The plaintiffs are demanding a new assessment of oil and gas exploration since the Trump administration used higher, inaccurate beluga whale numbers when it gave a permit to Hillcorp Alaska. The permit allows the petroleum company to "take" beluga whales as part of its operations. "Take" is a nebulous term that allows the company to harass and harm whales. The environmental groups want a guarantee that Cook Inlet belugas can recover from any of Hillcorp Alaska's operations, according to The Associated Press.

"Since we pressed for listing the Cook Inlet Beluga whale as endangered in 2008, the drive for corporate profits and complacent government bureaucrats have conspired to stifle progress for this dwindling stock," said Bob Shavelson, advocacy director for Cook Inletkeeper, in a statement. "Hilcorp should do the right thing and abandon its plans for new drilling in Cook Inlet."

Last summer, the Trump administration loosened environmental regulations that allowed for new mining, oil and gas drilling where protected species live, according to The Independent.

"The tragic decline of these lovely little whales spotlights the risk of allowing oil exploration in their habitat," said Julie Teel Simmonds, an attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity, in a statement. "If we're going to save these belugas, the Trump administration must cancel permission for the oil industry to use seismic blasting and pile driving in Cook Inlet. These animals are hanging on by a thread, and we can't let them be hurt even more."

The groups said that seismic blasting used in exploration and deep-sea mining causes blasts heard miles away. The blasts can register up to 250 decibels. For reference, standing next to a jackhammer is 100 decibels. Those underwater blasts can cause hearing loss in marine mammals, severely disrupt communication between pods, disturb feeding and breeding grounds, and reduce their ability to catch fish, according to the environmental groups, as The Associated Press reported.

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CC News Letter 04 Feb- Seattle City Council Passes Resolution Against CAA, NRC

Dear Friend,

The Seattle City Council, one of the most powerful city councils in the U.S., on Monday unanimously passed a resolution condemning India’s recently-enacted Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and the National Register of Citizens (NRC). Reaffirming Seattle as a welcoming city and expressing solidarity with the city’s South Asian community regardless of religion and caste, the resolution “resolves that the Seattle City Council opposes the National Register of Citizens and the Citizenship Amendment Act in India, and finds these policies to be discriminatory to Muslims, oppressed castes, women, indigenous, and LGBT people“.

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subscribe to our news letter here http://www.countercurrents.org/news-letter/.

In Solidarity

Binu Mathew

Editor

Countercurrents.org

Seattle City Council Passes Resolution Against CAA, NRC

by Countercurrents Collective

https://countercurrents.org/2020/02/seattle-city-council-passes-resolution-against-caa-nrc

Seattle City Council Passes Resolution Against CAA, NRC

in World — by Countercurrents Collective — February 4, 2020

Reaffirming Seattle as a welcoming city and expressing solidarity with the city’s South Asian community regardless of religion and caste, the resolution “resolves that the Seattle City Council opposes the National Register of Citizens and the Citizenship Amendment Act in India, and finds these policies to be discriminatory to Muslims, oppressed castes, women, indigenous, and LGBT people“.

Introduced by Indian American City Council member Kshama Sawant, the resolution urges the Parliament of India to uphold the Indian Constitution by repealing the CAA, and to stop the National Register of Citizens, and take steps towards helping refugees by ratifying various UN treaties on refugees.

“Seattle City’s decision to condemn CAA should be a message to all who wish to undermine pluralism and religious freedom. They cannot peddle in hate and bigotry, and expect to have international acceptability at the same time,” said Ahsan Khan, president of Indian American Muslim Council.

Thenmozhi Soundararajan of Equality Labs, which organized the community in support of resolution, welcomed its passage. “We are proud of the Seattle City Council for standing on the right side of history today. Seattle is leading the moral consensus in the global outcry against the CAA, she said.

Soundararajan said that thousands of organizers across the country have called, e-mailed, and visited Seattle City Council members to amplify this resolution, and it sets an example to cities across the United States.

“At a time when members of the Indian ruling party sided Trump, the Muslim ban, and his war on immigrants as justification for targeting hundreds of millions of Indian minorities, Americans have a unique responsibility to stand up and speak about this human rights crisis. We are glad that Seattle is leading the way on this,” she said.

Seattle City Council became the first legislative body in the United States to take a stance on India’s CAA and NRC, which have created turmoil in India since the CAA passed in December 2019. The CAA imposes a religious criterion to fast-track Indian citizenship for Hindu, Sikh, Jain, Parsi, and Christian immigrants, notably leaving out Muslims. When paired with the NRC, the CAA could lead to hundreds of millions of people in India being stripped of their citizenship and rights. The NRC requires extensive documentation to prove an individual’s citizenship and has already left out millions of residents when applied in the state of Assam.

In Seattle, hundreds from the South Asian community and allied organisations have spoken out against the CAA and NRC, including over 400 people who rallied in Bellevue on 26 January. Local organisations API Chaya, Tasveer, IAMC Seattle, Council of American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) Washington, Seattle South Asians Building Accountability and Healing (SABAH), Khalsa Gurmat Center Federal Way, Gurudwara of Renton, Gurudwara of Auburn, Gurudwara of Kent, Gurudwara of Bothell, and the Seattle LGBTQ Commission joined national organisations Equality Labs, Amnesty International USA, and the Ambedkar King Study Circle in calling for the passage of the resolution. Seattle-area residents recognise that international condemnation will apply pressure on the Indian government to account for the discrimination and violence perpetuated by the CAA and NRC.

“As South Asians in Seattle, SABAH confirms that the CAA is not an internal issue to India, and that Seattle must take a stand against it,” said Veena Roy of SABAH. “There are thousands here in Seattle who are intimately connected to the minority experience in India, some have needed to migrate here after similar violence in the past, and many who have family in India who directly experience the violence that the Indian government clamors to keep hidden. We know that Kshama Sawant’s resolution is much more than a symbolic gesture. It has created ripples in the Greater Seattle Area, even in India. As a community of Seattle, a sanctuary city that fights for equality and safety for the undocumented, we applaud the passing of this resolution,” she added.

Javed Sikander, Indian American Muslim Council (IAMC), Seattle welcomed the resolution. “These acts are unconstitutional and designed to disenfranchise several million Muslim, Dalits and other minorities in order to create a fascist state. The prime minister of India and his party BJP has to be stopped from further damaging India and its secularism,” he said.

Tyna Ek, of the Seattle Indivisible, said, “The NRC/CAA, in combination, threatens to make millions of Indian Muslims stateless. Seattle Indivisible stands against religious persecution here and abroad; and we are proud that our City Council does as well.”

Full text of the resolution:

Under CAA, India rejects its own to welcome

a few outsiders

by Vivek Sakpal

https://countercurrents.org/2020/02/under-caa-india-rejects-its-own-to-welcome-a-few-outsiders

A large number of Indians – most of them Dalits, Adivasis and the poor – will lose their citizenship under CAA only for a few thousand refugees from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan to be accommodated, writes Vivek Sakpal

CAA-NPR-NRC’s Impact on Urban Poor

Press Release

https://countercurrents.org/2020/02/caa-npr-nrcs-impact-on-urban-poor

Statement by National Coalition for Inclusive and Sustainable Urbanisation (NCU)

CAA-NPR-NRC’s Impact on Urban Poor

in India — by Press Release — February 4, 2020

Statement by National Coalition for Inclusive and Sustainable Urbanisation (NCU)

The National Coalition for Inclusive and Sustainable Urbanisation (NCU) unequivocally condemns the unconstitutional and anti-constitutional CAA-NPR-NRC being unilaterally imposed by the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government. The NCU is a network of activists, researchers, urban practitioners, lawyers, informal sector workers, collectives and individuals who, for the past two years have been involved with issues of urban class and caste inequalities and is continually monitoring this acutely dangerous social condition in our cities. Therefore, are working for an alternative paradigm of urbanization. These inequalities are brought to light when basic rights such as the right to housing, participation in governance mechanisms, right to livelihood and most importantly, equal right to the city, are denied to the urban poor.

India has been going through tumultuous times. The massive inequities in Indian cities are best highlighted by a recent Oxfam report. Shockingly, just 63 billionaires have more money than the entire budget of the government of India. This disparity is mirrored in asset holdings in cities. The difference between the top 10 per cent and the bottom ten per cent is 50,000 times in Indian cities! This is further accentuated by the huge informality that exists in urban India-93 per cent.This exposes the extreme vulnerabilities faced by urban population.

These inequities have become especially starker since 2014, because of the NDA government’s anti-people and anti-poor policies, which have imposed untold hardships on all marginalised sections of society, especially Dalits, Adivasis, Muslims,Women and Minorities. The constituent members of the NCU have been at the forefront in trying to combat the adverse consequences of these myopic policies across the length and breadth of the nation. Some of the more visible issues include inaccessible education, denial of housing and other essential public services, illegal evictions under the false pretence of constructing world class cities and through the government’s flagship programmes such as the Smart City Initiative,Swachh Bharat Mission, Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojna, Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation etc. All of these collectively target only certain classes, castes and minority communities. These issues are even more starkly felt in numerous cities in Jammu & Kashmir and the North-East, where the NDA’s unconstitutional mandates, norms and repressive practices have further accentuated these problems. These policies cumulatively impinge upon our right to the city, which a recent high court judgment held as a fundamental right.

The NDA’s brazen threat to impose the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, the National Register of Citizens and the National Population Register (CAA-NRC-NPR) despite widespread opposition, including from 11 state governments further exacerbates the problems faced by the urban poor.

We at the NCU are deeply concerned that the CAA-NRC-NPR will directly target unorganised sector workers, homeless people, migrant workers, basti dwellers, transgender persons. For example, the enumeration process of the proposed NRC-NPR will adversely impact the 1.77 million homeless people in India. Furthermore, our own surveys in just five states (Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand, Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu) reveal that on average, 99 per cent of all homeless people do not have their own birth certificates, which in the context of NRC-NPR-CAA becomes a dangerous proposition. Moreover, 30 percent of urban homeless population do not have any identity proof. Similarly, there are a number of Nomadic and De-Notified Tribes, as well as migrants driven by rural distress who do not possess and will not be able to furnish the requisite documentation that the NRC-NPR process will undoubtedly expect.

The NCU firmly believes that the burden of proof of citizenship should not fall on citizens but on the State. In other words, the government cannot begin with the assumption that “everyone living in India is an illegal immigrant until proven otherwise”. This is patently unconstitutional and violates the inalienable rights of millions of Indians.

In these perilous times, seeing the imminent danger to the urban poor, which includes more than 6.5 crore slum dwellers, 93 per cent of India’s labour force which is in the informal sector, and innumerable other vulnerable groups, it is vital to express solidarity with these groups, and stand steadfastly with them in this time of uncertainty. Therefore, we as urban practitioners and concerned citizens of India unequivocally reject the CAA-NRC-NPR and extend solidarity with millions of conscientious Indians who are courageously opposing it in various forms.
Signatories,

A G Krishna Menon Urban Planner
Aashima Sood Urban Scholar
Abdul Shakeel Housing Right Activist
Abhishek Pandey Urban Practitioner
Aditya Singh Architect and Development Professional
Adrian D Cruz Urban Researcher
Ajay Kumar Upadhyay Social Activist and Journalist
Akriti Bhatia Labour rights Activist and Urban Researcher
Amrita Sharma Urban Practicioner
Anand Lakhan Housing Right Activist
Anirudh Singh Rajput Urban Practitioner
Ankit Jha Urban Activist
Aravind Unni Urban Researcher and Activist
Aseem Mishra Urban Planner
Ashok Bhattacharya Mayor, Siliguri and Former Minister Urban Development
Bhargav Oza Urban Researcher
Bhashwati Sengupta, Urban Practitioner
Bhawna Jaimini Research Associate
Chandan Kumar Working People’s Charter
Chandana Das Urban Practitioner
Chirashree Ghosh Child Rights Activist
Darshini Mahadevia Urban Researcher
Devashish Devashish
Dinesh Abrol Chairman, Gurgaon Water Forum
Dinesh Mishra Child Rights Activist
Dipani Sutaria Ecologist
Divya Verma Urban Practicioner
Dunu Roy Social Activist
Evita Das Urban Researcher
Gaurav Mittal Urban Researcher
Gaurav Varshney Architect
Gautam Bhan Housing Rights Activist
Gayatri Singh Senior Advocate, Human Rights Activist
Gitanjali Prasad Social Worker
Harikrishnan S Urban Researcher
Harsh Mander Social Activist
Hemant Kumar Research Fellow
Ibtesam Arzoo Junior Research Fellow, JNU
Indivar Jonnalagadd Urban Researcher
Indu Prakash Singh Activist
Indupriya M Architect
Jammu Anand Municipal Corporation Employess Union
Kabir Ali Zia Choudhary Advocate and Housing Rights Activist
Kranti L C Human Rights Activist
Krishnkant Social Activist
Ksheeraja Padmanabhan, Architect
Madhuri Sharma Architect Student
Manish Lawyer and Researcher
Mathew Idiculla Urban Researcher
Mukta Naik Urban Researcher
Natasha Maru, PhD Researcher and Consultant
Nazifa Ahmed Nazifa Ahmed, Researcher, Assam
Nehal, Vaidhy Pediatrician
Nian Paul Urban researcher
Nipun Prabhakar Architect
Nishant Researcher
Ojas Shetty Urban Practitioner
Pradip Krishen Environmental Activist and Film-Maker
Puneet Bansal Architect
Rafi Malek Urban Researcher
Rahul N Urban Researcher
Rajendra Ravi Social Activist
Rajni Former Mayor, Dharamshala
RajpalSingh Rana Waster Pickers Union, Nashik
Rakshan Khan Architect
Renu Desai Urban Researchr
Romi Khosla Urban Planner
Ruchika Lall Urban Practitioner
Rutul Joshi Urban Planner and academician
S. Bharat Urban Researcher
Sachidanand Sinha Professor, JNU
Sahil Harjai Architect
Sameer Development Professional
Sanjay Chauhan Former Mayor, Shimla
Satwika Taduri Architect
Sayan Das Public Health Researcher
Shaktiman Ghosh National Hawkers Federation
Shalaka Researcher and Consultant
Shama Fathima Urban Researcher
Shruti Nikhar Architect
Shweta Damle Housing Rights Activist
Sindhu Nagaraj Architect
Sohail Hashmi Heritage Activist, Writer and Film-Maker
Sonakshi Aggarwal Labour Sector Practitioner
Sonu P Yadav Urban Practitioner
Sudeshna Sengupta Consultant and Researcher
Sudhir Kumar Katiyar Centre for Labour Research and Action
Sukrit Nagpal Urban Researcher
Tapas Upadhyay Architect
Tikender Singh Panwar Former Deputy Mayor, Shimla
Uma Dey Sarkar Urban Researcher
Vanshika Singh Urban Researcher
Varsha Vidhya Vilas Social Activist
Vibhawari Verma Researcher and Student

State assembly resolutions against Constitutional (Amendment) Act 2019: Debating legalities for or against?

by Dr Ahmed Raza

https://countercurrents.org/2020/02/state-assembly-resolutions-against-constitutional-amendment-act-2019-debating-legalities-for-or-against

The resolutions against CAA do not breach the constitutional obligations as putting dissent voices against any union law always remains a right enshrined in

the constitution as the resolution only points to the growing dissent in the state. In federal system of governance, every issue needs to be addressed in accordance with the constitutional values and ethos. The CAA 2019 raged a huge controversy and resentments among the citizens caused by a sense of insecurity and discriminations responsible for creating a rift among the people.

Pakistan and Somalia declare national emergency over locust as hordes near India border

by Countercurrents Collective

https://countercurrents.org/2020/02/pakistan-and-somalia-declare-national-emergency-over-locust-as-hordes-near-india-border

Following infestation of swarms of desert locusts in the eastern part of Pakistan the country’s Prime Minister Imran Khan declared national emergency on Saturday to protect crops and help farmers. The Pakistan government said it was the worst locust infestation in more than two decades.

Pakistan and Somalia declare national emergency over locust as hordes near India border

in World — by Countercurrents Collective — February 4, 2020

“We are facing the worst locust infestation in more than two decades and have decided to declare national emergency to deal with the threat,” Information Minister Firdous Ashiq Awan said on Saturday.

The desert locusts — large herbivores that resemble grasshoppers — arrived in Pakistan from Iran in June and have already ravaged cotton, wheat, maize and other crops.

Favorable weather conditions and a delayed government response have helped the locusts breed and attack crop areas.

Their potential for large-scale destruction is raising fears of food insecurity.

India-Pakistan border

Pakistani newspaper Dawn reported: Pakistan’s National Food Security Minister Makhdoom Khusro Bakhtiar said the locust swarms were currently on the Pakistan-India border around Cholistan and were previously in Sindh and Balochistan.

“The locust attack is unprecedented and alarming,” Bakhtiar told Pakistani lawmakers in a briefing on Friday.

“Action has been taken against the insect over 0.3 million acres (121,400 hectares) and aerial spray was done on 20,000 hectares,” he was quoted as saying by Pakistani newspaper The Express Tribune. “District administrations, voluntary organizations, aviation division and armed forces are put into operation to combat the attack and save the crops,” he added.

Dawn reported: Imran pledged to tackle the issue, adding that protection of agriculture and farmers was the government’s priority.

“The federal government will take all possible steps and provide required facilities to protect crops from any possible danger with special focus on the danger of locust,” Khan said.

The last time Pakistan saw a serious threat of locusts was in 1993.

Somalia declares emergency

Somalia has also declared a national emergency as large swarms of locusts spread across east Africa.

The country’s Ministry of Agriculture said the insects, which consume large amounts of vegetation, posed “a major threat to Somalia’s fragile food security situation”.

The UN says the swarms are the largest in Somalia and Ethiopia in 25 years.

However, Somalia is the first country in the region to declare an emergency over the infestation.

Somalia’s unstable security situation means that planes cannot be used to spray insecticide from the air.

In January, the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) called for international help in fighting the swarms in the Horn of Africa, warning that a larger swarm is expected in April across the region, which could grow up to 500 times in size by June.

The swarms spread into east Africa from Yemen across the Red Sea, after heavy rainfall in late 2019 created ideal conditions for the insects to flourish.

Locusts can travel up to 150km (93 miles) in a day. Each adult insect can eat its own weight in food daily.

In December, a locust swarm forced a passenger plane off course in Ethiopia. Insects smashed into the engines, windshield and nose, but the aircraft was able to land safely in the capital, Addis Ababa.

Skies over Saudi Arabia, Yemen

Residents in Saudi Arabia and Yemen have been faced with the bewildering sight of a gargantuan swarm of roughly 360 billion locusts, which can block out the sun at times.

Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Environment has warned residents not to eat any of the locusts as they are likely contaminated with toxic pesticides.

The FAO has warned that the insects could “reproduce rapidly and, if left unchecked, their current numbers could grow 500 times by June,” spreading to Uganda and South Uganda.

The massive locust swarm measures roughly the size of Manhattan and has caused tens of millions of dollars worth of damage, devastating East Africa in one of the worst outbreaks in decades.

FAO seeks fund to tackle the emergency

The FAO of has requested over $75 million to tackle the emerging crisis caused by the swarm. The insect outbreak was itself triggered by a series of recent cyclones, which produced ideal breeding conditions for the pests.

Desert locusts consume their own bodyweight in food each day, and can travel up to 150km in swarms large enough to block out the sun.

“A swarm the size of Rome can eat enough food in one day as everybody in Kenya,” said Keith Cressman, FAO’s senior agriculture officer.

Billions of locusts swarmed over East Africa

A locust invasion in Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia has left crops devastated. It is the biggest swarm in decades, with billions of the ravenous insects nibbling their way through the already climate-ravaged region.

Thick clouds of locusts are blackening the skies of East Africa from Ethiopia and Somalia into Kenya due to extreme weather changes.

Experts warned that the insect infestation could have disastrous effects on a region still recovering from recent drought and aggressive flooding.

The FAO estimated that one locust invasion in Kenya covered around 2,400 square kilometers (930 square miles) and contained up to 200 billion locusts which descend to feed off plants and vegetation.

People in Kenya were seen shooting in the air, waving sticks, banging cans and running around trying to chase the locusts away, according to the Associated Press news agency.

Biggest in decades

For Ethiopia and Somalia, the infestation is the biggest in 25 years, according to the FAO.

Farmers faced frustration as vegetation for their livestock is consumed by the ravenous locusts. Many were just slowly recovering from three years of drought, a process, which usually takes up to five years.

Climate crisis

In an already vulnerable region with high levels of poverty, the locusts can further devastate crops, resulting in “a major food security problem”, said Guleid Artan of the Climate Prediction and Applications Centre at a press conference in Nairobi.

The locusts, he warned, were the latest symptom of extreme weather conditions that also saw a 2019 drought end in one of the wettest rainy seasons in four decades in parts of East Africa, with mass floods killing hundreds. The year 2019 witnessed eight cyclones, the most in a single year since 1976.

From East Africa to Australia

Artan attributed the weather crisis in East Africa to a warmer western Indian Ocean — a climate condition referred to as the Indian Ocean Dipole, which has conversely led to extreme drought in Australia.

Miles away, Australia is also currently undergoing its own nature extremities: wildfires, dust storms, flooding and hail.

“We know East Africa is one of the most vulnerable to climate change. We know this region will see more extremes,” Artan said.

If the locusts are not controlled by the beginning of the next planting and rainy season around March, herders could see more crops devastated.

Kenyan farmers hit by worst locust swarms in 70 years

The current infestation of locusts in Kenya is the worst in Kenya for 70 years.

Desert locusts have ravaged at least 11 of Kenya’s 47 counties, leaving a trail of destruction on farmland. Experts say if the locust invasion is not checked, it could pose a serious threat to food security and livelihoods in the region.

FAO’s Locust Watch: Locusts will increase further as a new generation of breeding starts in the Horn of Africa

The current Desert Locust situation remains extremely alarming and represents an unprecedented threat to food security and livelihoods in the Horn of Africa. This will be further exacerbated by new breeding that has commenced, which will cause more locust infestations.

India/Pakistan: Control operations continue against residual summer-bred swarms along both sides of the border.

Kenya: Immature swarms continue to arrive in the northeast and move throughout northern and central areas, having invaded 13 counties to date. Some swarms have started to lay eggs that will hatch in early February and new swarms could start to form by early April in northern counties. Although a few swarms have reached the Rift Valley, they are likely to remain in northern areas. Aerial and ground control operations are in progress but need upscaling. Further movements are expected in Turkana and central counties.

Ethiopia: Swarms continue to be present throughout eastern areas, including the Ogaden, while some continue to move to the south and into the Rift Valley. Another generation of breeding will increase locust numbers further. Aerial and ground control operations are in progress but need upscaling.

Somalia: In the northeast, hopper bands are present and swarms are laying eggs where hatching and further hopper band formation are imminent. Other swarms have been reported in the south near the Kenya border.

South Sudan and Uganda: As the nearest swarms are about 200 km away in Kenya, a few of these could appear at any time in the coming days in the extreme southeast of South Sudan and, to a lesser extent, in northeast Uganda.

In addition to the Horn of Africa, there are several other hot spots where important Desert Locust infestations are developing.

Djibouti: A few swarms were reported near Ali Sabieh and the Ethiopian border. More details are awaited.

Eritrea: Ground control operations are underway against hopper groups that are fledging and forming adult groups on the northern and central coast. At least one swarm arrived on the southern coast near Assab on the 20th either from Yemen or Ethiopia.

Sudan: Locust infestations are increasing on the Red Sea coast where hopper bands have formed and mature swarms are laying eggs. Aerial and ground control operations are in progress.

Oman: Ground control operations continue against hopper bands and several swarms in the northeast. A few small swarms migrated southwards along the eastern coast, reaching Salalah.

Saudi Arabia and Yemen: Hopper bands have formed along Red Sea coastal plains from Jeddah to Hodeidah, many of which have fledged and formed immature groups of adults that are maturing. Immature swarms formed in Yemen on the coast and some moved into the highlands. Another generation of breeding will cause locust numbers to increase further. Aerial and ground control operations are in progress in Saudi Arabia while limited ground control has been carried out in Yemen.

Iran: Swarm breeding is thought to be underway along parts of the southern coast.

China plans to ban the trade in wild animals, believed to be behind the

coronavirus as racism spreads worldwide

by Countercurrents Collective

https://countercurrents.org/2020/02/china-plans-to-ban-the-trade-in-wild-animals-believed-to-be-behind-the-coronavirus-as-racism-spreads-worldwide

China said it would ban illegal wildlife markets and trade in light of the Wuhan coronavirus or 2019-nCoV, which has killed at least 426 people and infected more than 20,000. Beyond China, at least 169 cases have been confirmed in 25 countries

China plans to ban the trade in wild animals, believed to be behind the coronavirus as racism spreads worldwide

in World — by Countercurrents Collective — February 4, 2020

Countries with confirmed coronavirus cases. Photo: ABC News. The photo is used here in public interest.

It is widely believed that the Wuhan coronavirus likely started in a wet market, where live and dead animals are often sold in poorly regulated conditions.

The ban on wildlife markets is just one of a number of initiatives China is taking in response to the novel coronavirus.

China also swiftly built two hospitals to accommodate the growing number of patients, and put entire cities under unprecedented quarantine.

The Politburo Standing Committee, the most powerful body of the Chinese Communist Party issued a statement Monday recognizing its “shortcomings” in its response to the outbreak, adding that it will “severely crack down” on illegal wildlife markets and trade in light of the Wuhan coronavirus outbreak.

“It is necessary to strengthen market supervision, resolutely ban and severely crack down on illegal wildlife markets and trade, and control major public health risks from the source,” the committee said in the statement.

The Wuhan coronavirus is a zoonotic disease, meaning that it originated in animals. Experts believe the novel coronavirus spread from bats, to snakes, to people. China initially imposed a ban on live animal sales in the city of Wuhan in light of the outbreak.

While there is not yet a vaccine or specific cure for the virus, at least 500 patients have recovered after being treated with a “cocktail” of HIV and other antiviral medicines.

Fear and racism worldwide

Coronavirus has carried with it xenophobia – and Asian communities around the world are finding themselves subject to suspicion and fear.

When a patient on Australia’s Gold Coast refused to shake the hand of her surgeon Rhea Liang, citing the virus that has killed hundreds, the medic’s first response was shock.

But after tweeting about the incident and receiving a flood of responses, the respected doctor learned her experience was all too common.

There has been a spike in reports of anti-Chinese rhetoric directed at people of Asian origin, regardless of whether they have ever visited the centre of the epidemic or been in contact with the virus.

Chinese tourists have reportedly been spat at in the Italian city of Venice, a family in Turin was accused of carrying the disease, and mothers in Milan have used social media to call for children to be kept away from Chinese classmates.

In Canada, a white man was filmed telling a Chinese-Canadian woman “you dropped your coronavirus” in the parking lot of a local mall.

In Malaysia, a petition to “bar Chinese people from entering our beloved country” received almost 500,000 signatures in one week.

The incidents are part of what the Australasian College for Emergency Medicine has described as “misinformation” which it says is fuelling “racial profiling” where “deeply distressing assumptions are being made about ‘Chinese’ or ‘Asian-looking’ people.”

Disease has long been accompanied by suspicions of foreigners – from Irish immigrants being targeted in the Typhoid Mary panic of 1900s America to Nepali peacekeepers being accused of bringing cholera to earthquake-struck Haiti in the last decade.

“It’s a common phenomenon,” said Rob Grenfell, director of health and biosecurity for Australia’s science and research agency CSIRO.

“With outbreaks and epidemics along human history, we’ve always tried to vilify certain subsets of the population,” he said, comparing the behavior to 1300s plague-ridden medieval Europe, where foreigners and religious groups were often blamed.

“Sure it emerged in China,” he said of the coronavirus, “but that’s no reason to actually vilify Chinese people.”

In a commentary for the British Medical Journal, doctor Abraar Karan warned this behavior could discourage people with symptoms from coming forward.

Claire Hooker, a health lecturer at the University of Sydney, said the responses from governments may have compounded prejudice.

The World Health Organization has warned against “measures that unnecessarily interfere with international travel and trade”, but this has not stopped scores of countries from introducing travel bans.

The tiny Pacific nation of Micronesia has banned its citizens from visiting mainland China altogether.

“Travel bans respond largely to people’s fears,” said Hooker, and while sometimes warranted, they often “have the effect of cementing an association between Chinese people and scary viruses”.

Abbey Shi, a Shanghai-born student in Sydney, said the attitude shown by some of her peers has “become almost an attack on students who are Chinese”.

While Australia’s conservative government has banished its citizens returning from Wuhan – the central Chinese city at the epicenter of the virus – to a remote island for quarantine, thousands of students still stuck in China risk their studies being torpedoed.

“Right now it looks like they have to miss the semester’s start and potentially the whole year, because of the way the courses are set up,” Shi said.

According to Hooker, studies in Toronto on the impact of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, or SARS – another global coronavirus outbreak in 2002 – showed the impact of xenophobic sentiment often lasted much longer than the public health scare.

“While there may be a cessation of direct forms of racism as news about the disease dies down, it takes quite a bit of time for economic recovery and people continue to feel unsafe,” she said.

People may not rush back to Chinese businesses or restaurants, and may even heed some of the more outlandish viral social media disinformation — such as one popular post imploring people to avoid eating noodles for their own safety.

“In one sense you might think the effects lasted from the last coronavirus to this one, because the representation as China being a place where diseases come from has been persistent,” Hooker said.

Kerala declares “state calamity” over 3rd case of coronavirus

A regional health emergency has been declared in the Indian state of Kerala after a third case of a lethal virus gripping China was confirmed there, prompting officials to take harsher action against those evading screenings.

The “state calamity” was announced by Kerala’s health minister KK Shailaja, who noted the designation was not meant to “trigger panic”, but rather “to create more awareness” about the fast-moving contagion.

With three confirmed cases in the country, India has begun to take steps to contain the outbreak, but Shailaja said some returning from China continue to sidestep health checks and warned there would be legal consequences for anyone caught doing so.

“Despite our vigilance, it is sad some returnees dodge health officials. It is really dangerous,” the minister said. “If they continue to do this we will treat it as a crime. We need cooperation of all to tide over the crisis,” he added.

2,200 Indians under observation

Over 2,200 Indians remain under observation for signs of the illness with another 84 already admitted to hospitals.

A number of those under observation recently returned from China aboard two specially-equipped Air India flights sent to China to evacuate Indian citizens. Many of them are students studying in China. Another 3,000 students remain in China, Shailaja said.

New Delhi confirms 2nd coronavirus case

An Air India flight carrying 323 Indians and seven Maldivians from coronavirus-stricken Wuhan touched down in New Delhi on Sunday morning. It is the second time Indian citizens were airlifted from China since the outbreak.

It was the second time an Air India Boeing 747 has flown to the Chinese city at the epicenter of the deadly outbreak to rescue stranded Indians, many of whom are medical students at a local university.

On Saturday, the first such flight arrived in New Delhi with 324 people, bringing the total number of Indian evacuees to 657. This time, however, seven foreigners – citizens of the Republic of Maldives – were also transported.

The passengers will now be subject to monitoring in a special quarantine facility near the capital.

The news of the second flight safely returning to Indian soil came shortly after health officials confirmed the country’s second case of the novel coronavirus. Like the first one, it came out of the state of Kerala.

“The patient has tested positive for novel coronavirus and is in isolation in a hospital,” the Indian Health Ministry said on Sunday. The patient’s condition has been described as stable.

The first confirmed case was reported in the state of Kerala on Thursday. The individual was said to have contracted the disease while studying at Wuhan University.

It is unclear whether the patient in the second case was also a student, or whether the pair had been in close contact.

U.S. declares emergency and travel ban

The U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar has declared a public health emergency and a temporary travel ban.

Over the weekend, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security announced that flights entering the country from China would be rerouted – m at no additional cost to the passenger – to seven airports designated for screenings.

US plans more evacuation flights from Wuhan

The U.S. health officials are preparing for the possibility of a pandemic.

The U.S. is planning more flights to evacuate American citizens out of Wuhan, according to the U.S. embassy in Beijing.

Those flights will land at four U.S. military bases, and similar to the evacuation flight that landed in California last week, passengers will be quarantined upon arrival. The planes will be loaded with medical supplies and humanitarian goods, which the U.S. hopes to deliver to Wuhan on the first leg of the journey.

At Princeton University, more than 100 students self-quarantined because they had recently traveled to China, a university spokesperson confirmed. The school directed students, faculty and staff who traveled to mainland China to self-isolate for 14 days after their return.

In absence of a passport

In Wuhan, the epicenter of the outbreak, Justin Steece, a 26-year-old American, made a video diary documenting his experience. Steece, who works in Wuhan and whose wife is a Chinese national, said his family was denied an evacuation flight by the State Department because his infant son does not yet have a passport.

U.S. actions spread fear

Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying called the U.S. actions “excessive” and said that such measures “could only create and spread fear.”

U.S. patients’ illnesses range from mild to severe

The U.S. currently has 11 patients who have tested positive for the new coronavirus and 167 patients who have tested negative.

The U.S. coronavirus cases have been along a spectrum of severity. Some of the cases have been mild. Other patients have had moments when they were “extremely ill” and required oxygen to breathe.

Data out of China suggests that people who are older, or who have underlying health problems, are at higher risk for severe forms of coronavirus.

Hong Kong expands border closures

Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam on Monday announced additional border closures, severing all but three links between the semi-autonomous Chinese city and mainland China. The Hong Kong International Airport, the Shenzhen Bay border and the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau bridge remain open.

The move came as thousands of public hospital workers went on strike Monday morning, demanding the Hong Kong government shutter all borders with mainland China as the country struggles to contain the outbreak.

At least 15 people in the city have been infected with the novel coronavirus, according to the Hong Kong Department of Health.

Oil climbs back above $50

Oil traded back above $50 a barrel before OPEC and its allies gather Tuesday for an urgent meeting to assess the impact of the coronavirus on global demand.

While futures have slumped more than 20% since early January as the virus curtailed demand in a market awash with crude, commodities are stabilizing globally on Tuesday as traders assess China’s measures to support economic growth.

The virus has upended trade flows and probably led to a 20% cut to China’s oil demand as the crisis hits the world’s biggest commodities importer. Refineries are curbing operations and shutting plants, while China’s top processor is seeking to re-sell millions of barrels of West African crude it no longer needs because of the squeeze to consumption.

“The coronavirus is prompting growth downgrades around the world and oil demand is taking a big hit,” said Howie Lee, an economist at Oversea-Chinese Banking Corp. in Singapore.

West Texas Intermediate for March delivery added 44 cents to $50.55 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange as of 1:06 p.m. in Singapore after falling as much as 0.9% earlier. The contract slumped 2.8% to the lowest since January 2019 on Monday. Brent gained 0.6% after dropping 3.8% on Monday.

Metals and iron ore

Energy to metals have rallied globally, while iron ore and crude in China pared losses after plunging earlier. The firmer tone came even as steel mills and processing plants remain shut throughout China.

Russian President Vladimir Putin and Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz discussed the market by phone on Monday, the Kremlin said in a statement, adding that both leaders confirmed “readiness to continue cooperation.”

In China, officials are reviewing whether to soften the economic growth target for 2020 and authorities in Beijing are hoping the U.S. will agree to some flexibility on pledges in their phase-one trade deal due to the virus outbreak, according to people familiar with the situation.

Stocks in Asia bounce back

Asian equities rose with U.S. futures and China’s stocks stabilized after Monday’s slide as investors gauge efforts to contain the coronavirus and awaited potential responses from policy makers.

In a wild start to trading Tuesday, Chinese equities tumbled more than 2%, and then recouped all that loss within minutes.

South Korean shares outperformed in Asia, with Hong Kong, Japanese and Australian benchmarks seeing more modest gains.

U.S. Treasury yields also edged up, while the dollar was flat.

Analysts are anticipating a series of measures to support economic growth.

“We feel like the world is moving under our feet because the probability of containment, looking at statistics daily, is a little bit of a fool’s errand,” Richard Lacaille, chief investment officer at State Street Global Advisors.

China Stocks Steady After Monday’s Record $720 Billion Wipeout

Chinese stocks stabilized after the market’s biggest loss of value on record, with traders unconvinced that the recovery would last given the spreading virus outbreak.

The CSI 300 Index of equities rose 1% at 10:58 a.m. local time, led by large caps. The broader Shanghai Composite Index erased an earlier advance with more than two stocks dropping for each that advanced. The gains follow a $720 billion plunge in Chinese shares, the largest shareholders in China have ever seen on a net basis. A measure of 10-day swings jumped to the highest since October 2018.

Investors are bracing for wilder swings in stocks as they react to Beijing’s supportive measures and the worsening virus outbreak that is threatening China’s economy. While some came out Tuesday to buy stocks on the cheap, most stopped short of predicting that any rebound will be sustained. Some 135 stocks were still trading limit down on Tuesday.

“The worst is not over for China’s markets,” said Sean Lee, a fund manager at Shin Kong Investment Trust in Taipei. “We’re only seeing a rebound after yesterday’s sharp decline. It gives us time for a short breather. Funds will flock to stocks with good news in the short term.”

Two-thirds of the Chinese economy will remain closed this week as several provinces took the extraordinary step of extending the Lunar New Year holiday to help curb the spread of the disease.

Palestine – “Deal of the Century” – or Fraud of the Century?

by Peter Koenig

https://countercurrents.org/2020/02/palestine-deal-of-the-century-or-fraud-of-the-century

It is possible if the entire UN body or a vast majority, of it stands behind such a proposal. Equal rights and equal obligations, is the only way forward leading to a peaceful two-state solution, with two nations living side by side in harmony and peace. Let’s make this a worldwide objective, while burring deep and deeper the ridiculous and inhuman

Trump-Netanyahu-Kushner Plan.

Palestine – “Deal of the Century” – or Fraud of the Century?

in Palestine — by Peter Koenig — February 4, 2020

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas demolished President Trump’s “Peace Plan” or, as the Donald called it, “The Deal of the Century”, calling out “Jerusalem is not for sale”, warning that the “conspiracy deal will not pass. The Palestinian people will reject it.” He added, “[the Plan] belonged to the dust bin of history”. And he is absolutely right. That is an understatement. Indeed, the Palestinians were never even consulted. President Abbas denounced the Plan as a “new Balfour Declaration”. Turkish President Erdogan said, “This is the plan to ignore the Palestinians’ rights and legitimize Israel’s occupation,” as quoted by Anadolu Agency.

The proposed deal, a “two-state” solution, basically under Israeli jurisdiction and military and police security, would reflect the real situation on the ground, namely a Palestinian state dissected into several small enclaves connected by roads, and surrounded by Israeli territory and settlements. What’s left of the Palestinian West Bank would be connected to Gaza through a tunnel.

The big deal: Israel would stop expanding settlements for 4 years. However, the Plan is mute about what happens after the four years. Possibly an acceleration of new settlements that would quickly catch up with the missed 4-year construction. Everything is possible under this fraudster arrangement. Israel would also annex with immediate effect the fertile Jordan Valley, thus, cutting off Palestine from the Jordan River and its agricultural lands which is under the Oslo Agreement joint territory.

The “Plan” – Deal of the Century – or rather Fraud of the Century, was in the making for more than 2 years, since November 2017. It was concocted in Israel, by Netanyahu, his local Likud and Zionist allies, and by three US-American Orthodox Jews, who have no clue, let alone experience in diplomacy and international affairs – plus, they are totally devoid of any notion of ethics. They are Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and advisor, David Friedman, US Ambassador to Israel, and Jason Greenblatt, special Assistant to the President for “International Negotiations”. What a farce!

The proof for their utter ingenuousness – if that’s what you want to call it, rather than viciousness – is the “Peace Plan” itself, – or as Robert Fisk says, “the belief that the Palestinians would dream of accepting such a deranged, farcical set of political demands is without precedent in the western world.” This plan is rather an excuse for continuous Israeli-driven conflict and annexation of the last square meter of Palestinian Westbank territory.

The so-called “Vision of Peace” was presented at a White House Press Conference on Tuesday, 28 January. The two rogue characters, alleged criminals, Trump under impeachment, and Netanyahu charged with corruption, appeared smug, almost hand-in-hand, facing a crowd of MSM media and friends awaiting and applauding them. Palestinians were not invited to listen to their Peace Plan of the Century, that supposedly was drafted for their future well-being. They would have not come to the presentation anyway. I can just repeat – what a miserable farce, what sham, what denigrating action by what is called the President of the United States, towards another state and people. There re hardly any words to describe this atrocious exceptional nation and her President, who is a mere Zionist poodle.

The ‘miracle’ Plan has two parts, one with an economic and the other with a political focus. Palestinians knew about its substance, as Jared Kushner presented the economic plan, dubbed “Peace to Prosperity”, in Bahrain in June 2019. It talked about a US$ 50 billion investment budget over the next ten years, partly substituting USAID’s funding cuts from ongoing and future Gaza and Palestine development projects. So, hardly any new money.

Essentially, under the Plan, the Palestinians would recognize the Settlements, ant hope of rights to Jerusalem as a shared capital was killed. Trump referred to Jerusalem as “Israel’s undivided capital”. And, of course, the emperor decides, following the strong and unwavering guidance by his indicted Master, Israel’s PM, Netanyahu.

Also, in an act of utmost bigotry, Trump has already placed the US Embassy in Jerusalem, to make sure there is no misunderstanding. And similarly, on 25 March 2019, Trump declared unanimously, as if it was his role to do so, that the Golan Heights, were recognized to be part of Israel. To make it appear more valid, Trump signed a worthless piece of paper to this effect which he waved in front of the Washington Press corps. When in fact, the Golan Heights are an integral part of Syria, illegally occupied for the last 50-plus years by Israel.

Under the Deal, Moslems, wanting to visit their historic al-Aksa Mosque must get Israeli permission. UNWRA, The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, would disappear. Other UN agreements and arrangement specially concluded in support of the discriminated Palestinian people, would also be canceled. All under the pretext that Palestine is now an autonomous state. Again, what a farce! – And the west, while perhaps smiling at the Zionist-US atrocity put in a “Peace Agreement” – does nothing, zilch, zero – just looking on like spineless poodles.

On Thursday, 30 January 2020, Palestine canceled the 1992 – 1995 Oslo Accords (several of them were signed in that period). Although not much of this Oslo Peace Agreement was ever adhered to by Israel, it was a landmark signature event by both parties, Palestine and Israel, shaking hands.

Key points of the Oslo Accord included the goals of Palestinian interim Self-Government (not the Palestinian Authority, but the Palestinian Legislative Council) and a permanent settlement of unresolved issues within five years, based on Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338. Although the agreements recognize the Palestinian “legitimate and political rights,” they remain silent about their fate after the interim period. The Oslo Accords neither define the nature of the post-Oslo Palestinian self-government and its powers and responsibilities, nor do they define the borders of the territory it eventually would govern.

A core issue of the Oslo Accords was the withdrawal of the Israeli military from Palestinian territories. The plan was a withdrawal in phases and a simultaneous transfer of responsibilities to the Palestinian authorities for maintaining security. Oslo II, Article X.2 reads:

“Further redeployments of Israeli military forces to specified military locations will commence after the inauguration of the Council and will be gradually implemented commensurate with the assumption of responsibility for public order and internal security by the Palestinian Police …”

Here is what the UNSC Resolutions 242 and 338 specifically say, “United Nations Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338 were passed (respectively) in the aftermaths of the 1967 and 1973 Arab-Israeli wars.Resolution 242 (reaffirmed in 338) was designed to provide the framework for peace negotiations based on a “land-for-peace” formula and has become the foundation of all subsequent negotiations and peace treaties in the region.

The resolutions called for the withdrawal of Israeli forces “from territories of recent conflict,” an Arab “termination of all claims or states of belligerency,” and a recognition of the State of Israel and its “right to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force.” The resolution also called for “achieving a just settlement of the refugee problem.”

While Palestine recognized Israel’s right of existence, none of the actions by Israel of returning land, has, of course, happened. The Israeli – US pretext is this: Since the passage of the resolution, many have interpreted the text as mandating an Israeli withdrawal to the pre-1967 borders. However, the drafters of Resolution 242 have stated that they did not intend to call for a return to June 5, 1967 lines and purposefully used the words “withdrawal from territories” and not “withdrawal from the territories. Israel and the United States interpret the resolutions as calling for a withdrawal from areas of the West Bank and Gaza Strip consistent with its security needs and in the context of a peace agreement, but not from all the territories.”

Two other key points, maybe the most important ones, were left for “later”. Unresolved under “Oslo” were a mutually agreeable solution of Jerusalem and the partition of the Palestinian Westbank’s significant water resources. About 80 % of all the precipitation that falls on Israel and the so-called Westbank, fall on the Palestinian Westbank. However, Israel controls these resources, both surface, and groundwater and releases only minimal fractions of what would belong to Palestine. This leaves Palestine way short of the necessary water to irrigate her agriculture and to gradually become food autonomous. Of course, dependence is Israel’s purpose, plus Israel wants the water which legally would belongs to Palestine, for herself, in this arid area. It is water stolen from Palestine.

In hindsight one could say, the Oslo Accords did more harm than good, inasmuch asthey left many crucial issues unresolved and others up to dubious interpretations. It is high time that Palestine cancels them. By now, they were nothing else but an empty shell. And nothing of Oslo is renegotiable, as their meaning has long been overshadowed by Israel’s apartheid oppression. Israel will never let go, like their brother and mentor, whom strangely Zionist-Israel commands, the US of A. Once an objective is in their plan, they will pursue it against all odds with conflicts, wars and indiscriminate killing – exactly what the world is witnessing today and has been observing for the last at least 60 years.

At the request of Palestine, the Arab League will hold an extraordinary meeting at the ministerial level on February 1, 2020, to discuss the so-called peace plan, predictably rejecting it and instead looking at a way forward. To agree on a way forward is a real challenge with the (western) worldwide supported fake and lie-based pro-Israel propaganda.

Let Israel live – but request firmly and enforce by UN blue Helmets, if necessary, from Israel to let Palestinians also live; Israel to withdraw to the pre-67 borders and let Palestinian refugees return, as per the original agreement, and request firmly from Israel to respect Human Rights, and behave as Israel would want other people and nations to behave vis-à-vis Israel.

It is possible if the entire UN body or a vast majority, of it stands behind such a proposal. Equal rights and equal obligations, is the only way forward leading to a peaceful two-state solution, with two nations living side by side inharmony and peace. Let’s make this a worldwide objective, while burring deep and deeper the ridiculous and inhuman Trump-Netanyahu-Kushner Plan.

Peter Koenig is an economist and geopolitical analyst. He is also a water resources and environmental specialist. He worked for over 30 years with the World Bank and the World Health Organizationaround the world, including in Palestine, in the fields of environment and water. He lectures at universities in the US, Europe and South America. He writes regularly for Global Research; ICH; RT; Sputnik; PressTV; The 21st Century; Greanville Post; Defend Democracy Press, TeleSUR; The Saker Blog, the New Eastern Outlook (NEO); and other internet sites. He is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed – fiction based on facts and on 30 years of World Bank experience around the globe. He is also a co-author of The World Order and Revolution! – Essays from the Resistance.
Peter Koenig is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.

First published by the New Eastern Outlook – NEO

The Holocaust, the BBC and antisemitism smears

by Jonathan Cook

https://countercurrents.org/2020/02/the-holocaust-the-bbc-and-antisemitism-smears

Here is what Guerin said over footage of Yad Vashem: “In Yad Vashem’s Hall of Names, images of the dead. Young [Israeli] soldiers troop in to share in the binding tragedy of the Jewish people. The state of Israel is now a regional power. For decades, it has occupied Palestinian territories. But some here will always see their nation through the prism of persecution and survival.”

The Holocaust, the BBC and antisemitism smears

in World — by Jonathan Cook — February 4, 2020

Senior BBC news reporter Orla Guerin has found herself in hot water of an increasingly familiar kind. During a report on preparations for the commemoration of the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz concentration camp, she made a brief reference to Israel and an even briefer reference to the Palestinians. Her reporting coincided with Israel hosting world leaders last week at Yad Vashem, its Holocaust remembrance centre in Jerusalem.

Here is what Guerin said over footage of Yad Vashem:

“In Yad Vashem’s Hall of Names, images of the dead. Young [Israeli] soldiers troop in to share in the binding tragedy of the Jewish people. The state of Israel is now a regional power. For decades, it has occupied Palestinian territories. But some here will always see their nation through the prism of persecution and survival.”

British Jewish community leaders and former BBC executives leapt on her “offensive” remarks, even accusing her of antisemitism. Guerin had dared, unlike any of her colleagues in the western media, to allude to the terrible price inflicted on the Palestinian people by the west’s decision to help the Zionist movement create a Jewish state shortly after the Holocaust. The Palestinians were dispossessed of their homeland as apparent compensation – at least for those Jews who became citizens of Israel – for Europe’s genocidal crimes.

Guerin’s was a very meek – bland even – reference to the predicament of the Palestinians after Europe’s sponsorship, from the 1917 Balfour Declaration onwards, of a Jewish state on their homeland. There was no mention of the Palestinians’ undoubted suffering over many decades or of Israel’s documented war crimes against the Palestinians. All that Guerin referred to was an indisputable occupation that followed, and one could argue was a legacy of, Israel’s creation.

Holocaust weaponised

In fact, as we shall see in a moment, Israel’s establishment is today invariably and necessarily justified by antisemitism and its ultimate, horrifying expression in the Holocaust. The two are now inextricably intertwined. So Guerin’s linking of these two events is not only legitimate, it is required in any proper analysis of the consequences of the Holocaust and of European racism.

In fact, the furore among Jewish groups in Britain seems all the more perverse given that the Israeli media have extensively reported on Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s explicit efforts to weaponise the current Holocaust commemorations to harm the Palestinians.

He hopes to leverage sympathy over the Holocaust to win assistance from western capitals in bullying the International Criminal Court in the Hague into denying that it has any jurisdiction over the Palestinian territories Israel is occupying. That would prevent the court from enforcing international law by investigating war crimes perpetrated by Israel against the Palestinians. (In fact, aware of the diplomatic stakes, the ICC’s prosecutors have so far shown zero appetite for pursuing those investigations.)

This extract from a commentary by noted Israeli human rights activist Hagai El-Ad, published in the liberal Israeli newspaper Haaretz (Israel’s version of the New York Times), gives a proper sense of how inadequate was Guerin’s solitary reference to the Palestinians – and how her colleagues are actually complicit through their silence in allowing Israel to weaponise antisemitism and the Holocaust to oppress Palestinians:

“How dehumanizing [of Netanyahu and the Israeli government], to insist on denying a people’s last recourse to even an uncertain, belated, modicum of justice [at the ICC]. How degrading to do so while standing on the shoulders of Holocaust survivors, insisting that this is somehow being carried out in their name. …

“It remains in our hands to decide if the past’s painful lessons will be allowed to be turned on their head in order to further oppression – or remain loyal to a vision of freedom and dignity, justice and rights, for all.”

History in the shadows

By not echoing the rest of the western media in entirely airbrushing the Palestinians out of Europe’s post-Holocaust history, Guerin stood isolated and exposed. None of her colleagues – supposedly fearless, muckraking journalists – appear willing to come to her aid. She has been made a scapegoat, a sacrificial victim – one that will serve as a future reminder to her colleagues of what they are permitted to mention, which parts of Europe’s history they may examine and which parts must remain forever in the shadows.

Guerin’s comment was denounced as “offensive” by her former boss, Danny Cohen, who was previously the director of BBC television. No one, of course, cares that the Palestinians’ experience of being wiped out of recent European history and its legacy in the Middle East is deeply offensive. The Palestinians are what historian Mark Curtis refers to as “Unpeople”.

What he and others meant by “offensive” was made explicit by the Campaign Against Antisemitism (CAA), which argued that Guerin’s statement was antisemitic.

The CAA is one of the groups that, using similarly twisted logic, led the attacks on the British Labour party over claims of antisemitism in its ranks under leader Jeremy Corbyn. It helped to foist a highly problematic new definition of antisemitism on the party that downgrades concerns about racism directed at Jews to prioritise a supposedly bigger crime: criticism of Israel. The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition offers 11 examples of antisemitism, seven of which refer to Israel rather than Jews.

Preposterously, the CAA alleged that Guerin had violated one of these examples. It said her report had included “drawing comparisons between Israeli policy and the Nazis”. Very clearly, she had done no such thing.

Erasing the record

The most that could be inferred from Guerin’s extremely vague, overly cautious remark was two things. First, that Israel justifies the need for a Jewish state on the threat to Jews posed by antisemitism (as evidenced by the Holocaust). And second, that the resulting state of Israel has inflicted a very high price on the Palestinians, who had to be displaced from their homeland to make that state achievable. At no point did Guerin make a comparison between the suffering of Jews in the Holocaust and the suffering of Palestinians.

She simply, and rightly, hinted at a chain of related events: European racism towards Jews culminated in the Holocaust; the Holocaust was used by the Zionist movement to justify European sponsorship of a Jewish state on the ruins of Palestine; Palestinians and their supporters feel aggrieved that the Holocaust has become a pretext for ignoring their plight and suppressing criticism of Israel. Each of those links is irrefutably true. And unless the truth is now antisemitic – and there is mounting evidence that it is being made so by Israel, its lobbyists and western governments – what Guerin said was not conceivably antisemitic.

It may seem obvious why Israel and its lobbyists would want to silence criticism, or even a basic historical understanding, of the context and consequences of Israel’s founding. But why are western officials evidently so keen to aid Israel in this project of erasing the historical record?

Israel could never have been established without the expulsion of 750,000 Palestinians from their homeland and the destruction of hundreds of their villages to prevent any return. That is why a growing number of historians have risked the wrath of the Israel lobby to declare these events ethnic cleansing – in other words, war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Western hypocrisy

Let us note that the circumstances in which Israel was created were not exceptional – at least, from the point of view of recent western history. In fact, Israel is an example of a typical settler colonial state. In other words, its creation depended on the replacement of the native population by a group of settlers, just as occurred when Europeans founded colonies in the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and elsewhere.

The difficulty for Israel and its western allies has been that Israel’s crimes are being committed in the modern era, at a time when the west has claimed to have learnt the lessons both of its colonial past and of the Second World War. In the post-war period the west promised to change its ways, with a new commitment to international law and the recognition of human rights.

The shameful irony about the west’s complicity in Israel’s creation is that Israel could only have been established through the dispossession and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people. Those outrages occurred in the very same year that, via the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, western states pledged to create a different, better world.

In other words, Israel was launched as an old-style western colonial project at the very moment when the western powers promised to decolonise, giving their colonies independence. Israel was embarrassing proof of the west’s hypocrisy in promising to break with its colonial past. It was evidence of bad faith from the outset. The west used Israel to outsource its colonialism, to bypass the new limitations it claimed to have imposed on itself.

A colonial spin-off

So committed were the western powers to Israel’s success that France and Britain helped it from the late 1950s to build a nuclear arsenal – the only one in the Middle East – in violation of the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Predictably, that further destabilised an already highly volatile region as other states, especially Iraq and Iran, considered trying to level the playing field by developing their own nuclear weapons.

In another sign of the west’s commitment to this colonial spin-off was its determination to turn a blind eye in 1967 to Israel’s greedy expansion of its borders in conquering the rest of historic Palestine. For more than half a century Israel has been given free rein to entrench its occupation and to build settlements in violation of international law. All these decades later the International Criminal Court is still dragging its heels – indefinitely, it seems – rather than prosecute Israel for settlements that are irrefuably a war crime. And more than 50 years on, Europe continues to subsidise the settlements through trade agreements and a refusal even to label settlement products.

Rather than account for these outrageous violations of an international order the west founded, Israel’s allies have helped to obscure or pervert this real history. Israel has developed a whole industry, hasbara, to try to prevent outsiders from grasping what has happened since 1948.

It is therefore important for Israel and its western allies to promote justifications for Israel’s creation that appeal to emotion, not reason, as a way to dissuade observers from delving too seriously into the past. In fact, there are only three possible justifications / explanations for the transformation of what was once Palestine into Israel, a state created by and for European Jews on the ruins of Palestine. Two of these rationales play extremely poorly in the modern west.

That leaves only the third justification, as Guerin intimated in her report, and one that resonates well in an age saturated with identity politics.

A Biblical promise

The first justification says that the Zionist movement was entitled to rid Palestine of the overwhelming majority of its Palestinian natives because God promised Jews the land of Palestine thousands of years ago. This argument tells Palestinians: Your family may have lived for centuries or even millennia in Nazareth, Nablus, Bethlehem, Beersaba, Jerusalem, Jaffa, Hebron, Haifa but that counts for nought because God told Abraham the land belonged to the Jews.

Let us not discount the continuing power of this argument. It was what inspired the 19th century, apocalyptic movement of Christian Zionism – a longing for the “restoration” of Jews to the Promised Land to bring about an end-times in which only true Christians would be saved.

Later, Christian Zionism was repurposed and adopted by small numbers of influential Jews like Theodor Herzl who realised they needed the support of Christian Zionist elites if they were ever to build a Jewish state. They finally found a sponsor in colonial Britain. In part, it was an appetite for Biblical prophecy that guided the British cabinet in approving the Balfour Declaration.

Today, much teaching in Israel depends on unspoken, unexamined claims in the Bible that Jews have a superior right to the land than Palestinians. Nonetheless, Israeli officials know that nowadays Biblical arguments hold little sway in much of the west. Outside Israel such claims play well only with evangelicals, mostly in the US, and have therefore been deployed selectively, targeted chiefly at US President Donald Trump’s base. For the rest of us, the Biblical rationale is quietly set aside.

White man’s burden

The second justification, frequently resorted to in the early years of the Zionist project, was a fully fledged colonial one, and closely tied to ideas about a superior Judeo-Christian civilisation.

Colonialism assumed that white westerners were a biologically separate race that had to assume responsibility for taming and civilising the savage nature of inferior peoples around the planet. These inferior beings were treated like children – seen as impulsive, backward, even self-destructive. They needed a role model in the white man whose job was to discipline them, re-educate them and impose order. The white man was compensated for the heavy burden he had to shoulder by awarding himself the right to plunder the savage people’s resources. In any case, it was assumed, these barbarians were incapable of managing their affairs or putting their own resources to any good use.

If all this sounds improbably racist, remember that Trump right now is proposing a variation of the same idea: Mexicans must pay for the wall that keeps them out of a white America, even as US corporations continue to exploit cheap Mexican labour; and ungrateful Iraqis are threatened with being made to pay for the soldiers that invaded their country and the US military bases that oversee their occupation.

Liberals are no less averse to colonial ideas. The white man’s burden underpins the “humanitarian intervention” project and the related, endless “war on terror”. It has been easy to paint other states and their peoples negatively as they continue to reel from centuries of colonial interference – the theft of resources, the imposition of artificial borders that stoke internal, tribal conflict, and western support for local dictators and strongmen.

Developing states have also struggled to prosper in a world dominated by western colonial institutions, whether NATO, the World Bank, the IMF or the UN Security Council. Doomed to failure by the very rules rigged to ensure the western powers alone prosper, developing states find their dysfunctional or authoritarian politics turned against them, used to justify continuing invasion, plunder and control of their resources by the west.

‘Death to the Arabs’

Whatever Zionism claims, Israel was not an antidote to this “white man’s burden” ideology. It was an extension of it. Much of Europe may have been deeply racist towards Jews, but Europe’s Jews were usually viewed as higher in the racial hierarchy than black, brown or yellow people. Typically Jews were despised or feared by antisemites not because they were seen as backward or primitive but because they were presented as too clever, or as manipulative, secretive and untrustworthy.

The Zionist movement sought to exploit this racism. Its founders, white European Jews, impressed on potential sponsors their ability to help colonise the Middle East on behalf of the European powers. After the Balfour Declaration was issued, the British government put the Colonial Office in charge of shaping a Jewish “home” in Palestine.

An indication of the degree to which European ideas of racial categories polluted the thinking of the early Zionist movement can be gauged by the treatment of the Mizrahim – Jews from neighbouring Arab states who arrived in the wake of Israel’s creation.

The Ashkenazi (European) Jews who founded Israel had no interest in these Jews until the destruction of large parts of European Jewry in the Nazi death camps. Then the Mizrahim were needed to bolster Jewish demographic numbers against the Palestinians. Founding father David Ben Gurion was disparaging of the Mizrahim, terming them “human dust”. There were vigorous debates inside the Israeli army about whether the supposedly inferior, backward Arab Jews could ever have their savage natures tamed sufficiently to serve usefully as soldiers.

Israel launched an aggressive campaign to de-Arabise the children of these Jews – so successfully that today, even though Mizrahim constitute half of Israel’s Jewish population, less than 1% of Israeli Jews can read a book in Arabic. So complete has their re-education been that Mizrahi supporters of the Beitar Jerusalem football club lead chants of “Death to the Arabs” at the ground, apparently unaware that their grandparents were Arab in every sense of the word.

Virus of hatred?

Again, Israel and its western allies understand that few observers will accept overtly colonial-style justifications for Israel’s creation, except of the vague, war-on-terror kind. Such arguments run counter to the spirit of the times. Nowadays western elites prefer to pay lip service to identity politics, intersectionality, native rights – at least if they can be used to provide cover for white privilege and to disrupt class solidarity.

Israel has proven particularly adept at inverting and weaponising this form of identity politics. Now deprived of traditional Biblical and colonial rationales, Israel has been left with only one palatable argument to justify its crimes against Palestinians. A Jewish state is supposedly needed as inoculation against a global plague of antisemitism. Israel, it claims, is a vital sanctuary to protect Jews from inevitable future Holocausts.

Palestinians are not just collateral damage of the European project to create a Jewish “home”. They are also presented as a new breed of antisemite – their anger supposedly driven by irrational, inexplicable hatred – that Jews need protecting from. In Israel, roles of oppressor and victim have been reversed.

Israel is only too keen to extend the accusation of antisemitism to any western critic who champions the Palestinian cause. In fact, it has gone much further. It argues that, whether consciously or not, all non-Jews harbour the virus of antisemitism. Other Holocausts have been averted only because nuclear-armed Israel behaves like “a mad dog, too dangerous to bother”, as Israel’s most famous military chief of staff, Moshe Dayan, once declared. Israel is designed as a garrison state for its Jews, and an impregnable bolt-hole in time of trouble for any Jews who foolishly – Israeli leaders imply – have not understood that they face another Holocaust outside Israel.

White European racism

This is the self-rationalising appeal of antisemitism for Israel. But it has proved the perfect weapon too for western elites who wish to besmirch their opponents’ arguments, as Corbyn, Labour’s outgoing leader, found to his cost. Just as the Zionist movement and its Jewish state project were once the favoured vehicle for spreading British colonial influence in the Middle East, today Israel is the favoured vehicle for impugning the motives of those who criticise western imperialism or advocate for political alternatives to capitalism, such as socialism.

Few outside Israel understand the implications of the mischievous, self-serving antisemitism rationale crafted long ago by Israel and now embraced by western officials. It assumes that antisemitism is a virus present in all non-Jews, even if often lies dormant. Non-Jews must remain vigilant to prevent it reviving and infecting their thinking.

This was at the heart of the claims against the British Labour party. So-called “extreme leftists” like Corbyn and his supporters, so the argument goes, were so sure of their anti-racism credentials that they dropped their guard. Largely free of a fear of immigrants and non-white populations, they mixed with British Muslims and Arabs whose attitudes and ideas were easily passed on. Arab and Muslim resentment towards Israel – again, presented as inexplicable – supposedly provided fertile soil for the growth of antisemitism on the left and in Corbyn’s Labour party.

Guerin’s mistake was to hint, even if briefly and vaguely, in her report at a deeper, even more discomforting recent history of European white racism that not only fuelled the Holocaust but also sponsored the dispossession of the Palestinians of their homeland to make room for a Jewish state.

The connecting thread of that story is not antisemitism. It is white European racism. And the fact that Israel and its supporters have signed up as cheerleaders for that kind of racism makes it no less white and no less racist.

This essay first appeared on Jonathan Cook’s blog: https://www.jonathan-cook.net/blog/

Cook won the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His books include “Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East” (Pluto Press) and “Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair” (Zed Books). His website is www.jonathan-cook.net.

World Interfaith Harmony Week : Steps Toward A Harmony Renaissance

by Rene Wadlow

https://countercurrents.org/2020/02/world-interfaith-harmony-week-steps-toward-a-harmony-renaissance

The United Nations General Assembly on 20 October 2010, by resolution A/RES/65/PV.34 designated the first week of February of every year as the World Interfaith Harmony Week between all religions, faiths and beliefs.

World Interfaith Harmony Week : Steps Toward A Harmony Renaissance

in World — by Rene Wadlow — February 4, 2020

The General Assembly, building on its efforts for a culture of peace and non-violence, wished to highlight the importance that mutual understanding and inter-religious dialogue can play in developing a creative culture of peace and non-violence. The General Assembly Resolution recognized “the imperative need for dialogue among different faiths and religions in enhancing mutual understanding, harmony and cooperation among people.” The week has a potential to promote the healing of religion-based tensions in the world.

As the then Secretary General Ban Ki-moon wrote “At a time when the world is faced with many simultaneous problems — security, environmental, humanitarian, and economic — enhanced tolerance and understanding are fundamental for a resilient and vibrant international society. There is an imperative need, therefore, to further reaffirm and develop harmonious cooperation between the world’s different faiths and religions.”

Citizens of the World have called for a cultural renaissance based on the concept of harmony. Rather than concentrating primarily on conflicts, struggles and suffering which is certainly necessary if we are to help resolve the many armed conflicts, World Citizens have suggested that the focus should be on cooperation, coexistence and visions of a better future. Harmony includes tolerance, acceptance, equality and forgiveness of past pains and conflicts. Harmony leads to gentleness, patience, kindness and thus to inner peace and outward to relations based on respect.

Harmony is a universal common value. In harmony we can find true belief that transcends all cultures and religions. The meaning of life is to seek harmony within our inner self. Humans are born with a spiritual soul that develops to seek self-fulfilment. Our soul has a conscience that elevates us. As our soul grows to maturity, we achieve our own harmony.

However, harmony is not only a personal goal of inner peace but a guideline for political, social and world affairs. At this moment in history, our action should enhance peace, reduce conflict and activate a harmony culture. The 21^st century is the beginning of a Harmony Renaissance. Our world mission is to be ready for humanity’s next creative wave to lead us to a higher level of common accomplishment. The World Harmony Renaissance should bring the whole world into action for this new millennium of peace and prosperity with unfettered collective energy.

Chinese culture can play an important role in the creation of this harmonious culture. In an earlier period in Chinese thought there was an important conscious effort to create a Harmony Renaissance. This was during the Sung dynasty (960-1279) which reunited China after a period of division and confusion. This was a period of interest in science — “the extension of knowledge through the investigation of things”. It was a period when there was a conscious effort to bring together into a harmonious framework currents of thought that existed in China but often as separate and sometimes hostile schools of thought: Confucianism, Buddhism, philosophical Taoism and religious Taoism. These efforts were called Tao hsuch — the Study of the Tao — an effort later called by Western scholars as “Neo-Confucianism”.

Chou Tun-yi (1017-1073), often better known as the Master of Lien-his, was a leading figure in this effort. He developed a philosophy based on the alternation of the Yin and Yang, each becoming the source of the other.

Thus today, after decades of conflict when the emphasis of the countries of the world both in policy and practice was upon competition, conflict and individual enrichment, there is a need for an emphasis on harmony, cooperation, mutual respect, and working for the welfare of the community with a respect for Nature. When one aspect, either Yin or Yang, becomes too dominant, then there needs to be a re-equilibrium.

Obviously, it takes time for a harmonious society at home and a harmonious world abroad to be put into place. The re-equilibrium of the energies of Yin and Yang do not take place overnight. Nor is this re-equilibrium only the task of the Chinese. The cultivation of harmony must become the operational goal for many. As Mencius (372-289 BCE) a follower of Confucius said “A trail through the mountains, if used, becomes a path in a short time, but, if unused, becomes blocked by grass in an equally short time.”

The World Interfaith Harmony Week is an opportunity to open new paths. As world citizens we must find a new guiding image for our culture, one that unifies the aspirations of humanity with the needs of the planet and the individual. We hold that peace can be achieved through opening our hearts and minds to a broader perspective. We are one human race, and we inhabit one world. Therefore we must see the world with global eyes, understand the world with a global mind and love the world with a global heart.

Rene Wadlow, President, Association of World Citizens

Teflon Lies

and Mowing Lawns: The Afghanistan Papers

by Dr Binoy Kampmark

https://countercurrents.org/2020/02/teflon-lies-and-mowing-lawns-the-afghanistan-papers

Since US forces were deployed after September 11, 2001 ostensibly to defeat the Taliban and al-Qaeda, the US has lost 2,400 personnel, seen the deaths of over a hundred thousand Afghans and expended, through Congress, $137 billion in reconstruction funds. Some $1 trillion has been spent in the military effort. A note from the Congressional Research Service from January 31 this year, despite toeing the line, had to concede that, while “most measures of human development have improved […] future prospects of those measures remain mixed in light of a robust Taliban insurgency and continued terrorist activity.”

Teflon Lies and Mowing Lawns: The Afghanistan Papers

in Imperialism — by Dr Binoy Kampmark — February 4, 2020

Afghanistan is a famous desert for empires, a burial ground which has consumed those in power who thought that extra fortification and trading most might benefit them. It remains a great, and somewhat savage reminder about those who suffer hubris, overconfidence and eagerness in pursuing their agendas. But the country has also served another purpose: a repository for the untruths of those who invaded it.

That said, the normative sense does not always keep pace with the actual; people might well insist that they loathe being lied to but that is no guarantee for altering conduct or votes. The US citizen has been the recipient of mendacity on the republic’s foreign engagements since President Thomas Jefferson decided to expand its operations against the Barbary pirates in Europe. There have been deceptions, concoctions and fabrications to either justify an intervention or justify the continuation of US garrisons in foreign theatres. Cometh the empire, cometh the military presence.

The Afghanistan Papers, as they have now come to be known, should have stimulated something more than it did. Run as a set of interviews in the Washington Post in December from the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), they are filled vignettes of confusion, incompetence and indifference. The interviews feature an imperium in a mess, dithering, muddled, and in need of a purpose. At times, there is an astonishing freshness that only comes with being frank.

SIGAR, the main oversight body responsible for examining the US operation in Afghanistan, has released nine reports in its “Lessons Learned” series. The seventh report, for instance, notes “the difficulty of reintegrating ex-combatants during an active insurgency in a fragile state.” The words of the executive summary are almost brutal in their common sense. “In Afghanistan, we found that the absence of a comprehensive political settlement or peace agreement was a key factor in the failure of prior reintegration programs targeting Taliban fighters.”

From September 2016 comes another report detailing “Corruption in Conflict”. Ambassador Ryan Crocker’s words feature prominently. “The ultimate point of failure of our efforts… wasn’t an insurgency. It was the weight of endemic corruption.” The report identified five pertinent grounds that affected the entire effort: the presence of corruption that “undermined the US mission in Afghanistan by fuelling grievances and channelling support to the insurgency”; the direct contribution by the US to corruption; a slowness to recognise the scale of the problem; the trumping of “strong anticorruption actions” in favour of security and political goals and the conspicuous lack of “sustained political commitment” in anticorruption efforts.

The picture sketched by the Post is one of dysfunction and even deceit in the planning process. As with any policy that demands many hands and many tiers, the grunts and diggers are bound to have a different view to those seated behind desks either in Kabul or Washington. The SIGAR project also saw criticism from over 400 insiders on the deepening nature of US involvement in a project without success or end. “With a bluntness rarely expressed in public,” notes the paper, “the interviews lay bare pent-up complaints, frustrations and confessions, along with second-guessing and backbiting.”

Distant wars fall victim to attention deficit syndrome. Geography dispels interest. The enemy is there, away from any reckoning. Whether a Taliban fighter is killed, or a school girl in Kabul educated, is irrelevant to the purchase of groceries of a shopper in Wisconsin. Few American voters have a concept of where the country is, seeing any deployment of forces in the most abstract of terms. The idea that US forces are there is only as relevant as the idea that they might serve some purpose to repel evil and shore up the interests of the country. Other factors rarely count.

The budgeting feature behind the war is also a matter that confines it to the periphery. Being part of “emergency supplementary spending”, the issue rarely finds scope for debate and discussion in the broader issues of Congressional spending. The US political establishment, in other words, shows little interest in this bit of nastiness in the Middle East. As an editorial in the Christian Century put it, “The war, in short, has little effect on most Americans’ lives.”

Not even President Donald Trump has been able to arrest this tendency, despite being very much of the view that US forces should be reined back from various theatres of operation. The objectives of his administration in Afghanistan entail “achieving a peace agreement that ensures Afghan soil is never used again by terrorists against the United States, its allies, or any country that allows American troops to return home.” Politics is often not only the art of the possible but the vague.

Besides, he has had impeachment proceedings to battle, a process which has served to draw attention away from the less appealing, let alone competent nature, of US foreign policy when it comes to overthrowing governments and finding suitable substitutes. On the issue of Afghanistan, Republicans and Democrats are to blame, both united by the strand of shoddiness that characterises imperial engagements that look increasingly doddering in their nature. Nation building is a near impossible exercise, and remains the exception that proves the rule.

The default position of US foreign and military policy in its Trump phase, then, is “mowing the lawn”, an expression bequeathed to us by Secretary of Defense Mark Esper. This entails measures of brutal violence to keep the enemy in check as “every now and then, you have to do these things to stay on top of it so that the threat doesn’t grow, doesn’t resurge.” A solid retreat, then, from the bricks and mortar of state-building.

Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. Email: bkampmark@gmail.com

Death Penalty or Victim Centric Justice System?

by Adv Dr Shalu Nigam

https://countercurrents.org/2020/02/death-penalty-or-victim-centric-justice-system

For past few days, since the Supreme Court has awarded death

penalty to four convicts, the media headlines are screaming for the blood of rapists who brutally gang-raped Nirbhaya or Jyoti Singh on 16th December 2012. Heated discussions are going on regarding the execution of convicts where several experts and activists argue against death penalty, while there are those who are in favour of it. However, what is ignored in this intensive debate is the fact that it is essential to ensure the certainty of punishment rather than stressing on the severity of punishment.

Political Narrative by the Ford Foundation progeny

by Dr Prem Singh

https://countercurrents.org/2020/02/political-narrative-by-the-ford-foundation-progeny

The children of Ford Foundation can make any claim, because it is their own system. Now they also practice politics by using India as its gateway. Like free economy, their politics too is ‘free’ even from the Constitution. There is a declared prohibition for any ideology, present or possible, other than neo-liberal

ideology in their politics and political narrative. The number of the children of Ford Foundation is steadily increasing in India. Those who undertook election campaigns of political parties with a promise to ensure them victory have also started venturing into active politics.

The Script is Being Written

by K P Sasi

https://countercurrents.org/2020/02/the-script-is-being-written

The script is being written

For those belonging to the `other’ faith

For women, Dalits, and the margins and

For the under-nourished colours

Trying to cover their bodies and minds

From the gazes of penetrating shame

The script is being written

In bolder and bolder letters.

It’s Time

by Kabir Deb

https://countercurrents.org/2020/02/its-time

Our silence is over

now we’ll scream like hell,

your walls would shake and fall

down like it is made of cards, you’re no one

to be vowed before, you can’t dictate on us anymore!

Middleboro Review 2

Tuesday, February 4, 2020

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World Interfaith Harmony Week : Steps Toward A Harmony Renaissance

Teflon Lies and Mowing Lawns: The Afghanistan Papers

BREAKING: Elon Musk’s gamble BLOWS UP in his face PAY ATTENTION! ELECT CLOWNS EXPECT A CIRCUS!

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