Sweden’s ruling party dropped the country’s historic military nonalignment on Sunday and agreed to join NATO, shortly after Finland’s leaders officially announced they would do the same.
Media reports from Europe and other places said:
The moves were major steps in ending decades of military neutrality for the two Nordic nations, as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine continued to dramatically shift security considerations in Europe.
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said their accession would be a “turning point for security” in Europe. “Their membership in NATO would increase our shared security, demonstrate that NATO’s door is open, and that aggression does not pay.”
“We arre now facing a fundamentally changed security environment in Europe,” Swedish Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson said.
Swedish Foreign Minister Ann Linde said: While the country’s “200-year-long standing policy of military nonalignment has served Sweden well,” the nation now faced a “fundamental change,” she said. “As a member of NATO, Sweden not only achieves more security, but also contributes to more security.”
Speaking at a news conference earlier in Helsinki alongside Prime Minister Sanna Marin, Finnish President Sauli Niinisto described Sunday as a “historic day.”
Sweden had been closely coordinating with Helsinki on its decision to join the military alliance.
Once formal requests are submitted, each of NATO’s 30 member nations must approve, a process that could take months or longer.
At the heart of NATO is Article 5, which says that “an armed attack against one or more” members “shall be considered an attack against them all.”
Among Russia’s preinvasion demands was a rollback of NATO’s “open door” policy, under which countries once part of the Soviet Union have joined the alliance. Instead of a rollback, the Russian invasion appears to be producing further expansion, right on Russia’s roughly 800-mile border with Finland.
Both decisions represent a seminal shift in military thinking on the continent.
Finland’s leaders said Thursday that the countries should join NATO without delay, but the formal decision came Sunday after the president and a committee on foreign and security policy finalized a report on Finland’s accession to the alliance. The report will be submitted to Parliament on Monday.
Sweden’s course was also advanced last week, when the ruling party leadership presented a paper exploring the pros and cons of NATO membership. “Finland will maximize its security,” Niinisto said.
“In Finland, we still have the parliamentary process ahead of us,” Marin said, “but I trust the Parliament will debate this historic decision with determination and responsibility.”
The announcements came as NATO foreign ministers and those of Finland, Sweden and Ukraine met in Berlin to discuss the Nordic countries’ path to membership and military assistance to Kyiv.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken said he was “very confident” that NATO would reach consensus on admitting Sweden and Finland to the military alliance. “I heard almost across the board very strong support” for adding the Nordic countries, he said.
Blinken did not offer a timeline for their accession, noting that the organization has a “process.”
When NATO was formed with the intention of balancing the security threats from the Soviet Union and its allies, Finland and Sweden chose instead to adopt a position of neutrality and nonalignment.
NATO requires unanimity on the approval of new members, and Turkey has expressed skepticism over admitting Finland and Sweden to the alliance. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has criticized the countries as “home to many terrorist organizations.”
The comments — referring mainly to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, a militant organization known as the PKK — were seen as a threat by Turkey to veto any NATO expansion.
U.S. officials are hoping to smooth out differences within the alliance, and Blinken spoke to Turkey’s foreign minister on Sunday but said he did not want to “characterize” those discussions.
In response to questions about whether Turkey will block or significantly delay membership for the Nordic countries, Stoltenberg expressed confidence that NATO would move swiftly.
“Turkey has made it clear: Their intention is not to block membership. Therefore, I am confident we’ll be able to address the concerns that Turkey has expressed in a way that doesn’t delay the accession process,” he said, without offering a specific timeline.
Baerbock also said the two countries could join “very quickly” if they made that decision.
“Our doors are more than open, and if their parliaments and their societies are going to decide to join NATO, this will make us even stronger,” she said. Germany is prepared to do everything it can for a “quick ratification process,” she added.
During the Berlin meeting, Blinken also met with Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba to discuss military aid for Ukraine and the continuation of food exports to the developing world.
“More weapons and other aid is on the way to Ukraine,” Kuleba tweeted after the meeting. “We agreed to work closely together to ensure that Ukrainian food exports reach consumers in Africa and Asia.”
The State Department said Blinken discussed “details regarding the latest tranche of U.S. security assistance to bolster Ukraine’s defenses” and potential solutions to exporting Ukraine’s grain to international markets. The ongoing fighting in Ukraine, a major food exporter, has been linked to rising food prices and inflation in the developing world.
Putin-Niinisto Talk
Niinisto told Russian President Vladimir Putin by phone about Helsinki’s plans to join NATO, Interfax news agency cited Bloomberg as saying on Saturday.
According to TASS, Putin and Niinisto had a “sincere exchange of views over the announced decision by Finland’s leadership to apply for NATO membership,” the press service of the Kremlin said.
“Putin stressed that rejecting the traditional policy of military neutrality would be wrong since there are no threats to Finland’s security. Such a change in the country’s foreign policy course could have a negative effect on Russia-Finland relations, which have been built over the course of many years in the spirit of neighborliness and partnership cooperation and have a mutually beneficial nature,” the Kremlin noted.
Uncertainty Added To Europe, Say Chinese Analysts
Chinese analysts said that this could add new uncertainty to the security of Europe, but it does not mean there will be new military conflicts in the continent as they believe Russia can solve its concerns with these two countries in political ways, otherwise they will fall into a U.S. trap to further worsen the security situation of Europe.
The U.S. can deploy missile defense systems and other military equipment in the territories of NATO members, to weaken the nuclear deterrence of Russia and maximize the military advantage against Russia, said analysts, noting that this is the fundamental reason why the tensions between Russia and some other European countries cannot be effectively resolved, and also a reason that causes the ongoing conflict in Ukraine.
No Stationing Of Nuclear Weapons, NATO Bases On Sweden’s Territory, Says Ruling Party
The ruling Social Democratic Workers’ Party of Sweden supported the country’s entry into NATO with one reservation: the alliance must not station nuclear weapons and permanent bases on the territory of the kingdom. The relevant statement has been posted on the website of this political force.
“The party board has at its meeting on May 15, 2022 decided that the party will work toward Sweden applying for membership in NATO,” the Social Democrats said in a statement.
At the same time Sweden expressed “unilateral reservations against the deployment of nuclear weapons and permanent bases on Swedish territory.”
On May 13, a cross-party parliamentary report was released in the country, which concluded that NATO membership would increase the security level of the kingdom. The debate on this document will be held in Parliament on May 16, on the same day the Swedish government will hold an additional meeting to make a formal decision on the application to join the alliance. According to the Svenska Dagbladet newspaper, the kingdom can send documents to Brussels on May 17.
U.S. Ready To Provide Military Support To New NATO Hopefuls
The U.S. is prepared, if needed, to provide Sweden and Finland with military support as these countries await NATO’s response to their membership applications, Pentagon spokesman John Kirby has said.
In a BBC interview which was recorded on Friday and broadcast on Sunday, Kirby said that Russia’s warnings are “clearly concerning.”
“But it is not up to Russia to determine whether Finland and Sweden become NATO allies, it’s up to the people of Finland and the people of Sweden,” the US military spokesman said.
When asked if the U.S. would send troops to defend Finland and Sweden if they were attacked, Kirby first said that he would not want to speculate on a hypothetical scenario but nevertheless gave a detailed response.
“If in the period of their application to NATO and their accession to NATO they would need some additional capabilities or support … we will be able to provide some additional support if needed,” he said.
NATO Confident Of Overcoming Turkey’s Objections
NATO Deputy Secretary General Mircea Geoana has said he is sure the organisation will be able to overcome Turkey’s objections to Finland and Sweden becoming new members.
“Turkey is an important ally and expressed concerns that are addressed between friends and allies,” Geoana told reporters during an informal NATO foreign ministers’ meeting in Berlin on Sunday.
“I am confident if these countries [Finland and Sweden] decide to seek membership in NATO we will be able to welcome them, to find all conditions for consensus to be met,” he added.
Finland and Sweden stayed out of NATO during the Cold War.
German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock told reporters at the meeting that Berlin “has prepared everything to do a quick ratification process” of the Finnish and Swedish bids, adding that NATO ministers agreed that the process, which usually takes a year, should be accelerated.
However, those plans could be derailed by Turkey’s opposition to Finland and Sweden’s membership.
On Friday, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan slammed the two Nordic nations as “guesthouses for terrorist organizations,” referring the separatist Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and the Revolutionary People’s Liberation Front (DHKP/C), which have been outlawed in Turkey. “At this point, it is not possible for us to have a positive approach” to their bids, he said.
Erdogan’s top adviser Ibrahim Kalin clarified to Reuters on Saturday that Ankara was “not closing the door” for Helsinki and Stockholm, but was “basically raising this issue as a matter of national security for Turkey.”
Ukraine Can Defeat Russia, Says NATO Sec. Gen.
Ukraine can score a victory in its fight against Russian forces, as the situation on the battleground is not developing according to Moscow’s plans, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg claimed on Sunday.
Speaking to the reporters after informal meetings of the military bloc’s foreign ministers, Stoltenberg revealed that the main topics of the discussions were “strong support for Ukraine, the further strengthening of NATO’s deterrence and defense, and the longer-term implications of the war,” including the alliance’s future stance towards Russia.
“Russia’s war in Ukraine is not going as Moscow had planned. They failed to take Kiev. They are pulling back from around Kharkiv, their major offensive in the Donbass has stalled. Russia is not achieving its strategic objectives,” Stoltenberg said.
He added that, contrary to the alleged wishes of the Russian President Vladimir Putin, Ukraine continues its fight, “NATO is stronger than ever” and the US and Europe are “solidly united.”
“Ukraine can win this war. Ukrainians are bravely defending their homeland,” the NATO SG said, adding that weapons supplies and other support from its backers are “making a real difference on the battlefield.”
Therefore, Stoltenberg argued, the bloc should continue supporting Ukraine.
The SG revealed that the June NATO summit in Madrid will see members making “important decisions,” including measures aimed at reinforcing the bloc’s deterrence posture.
No Capitulation
Russia insists that it is fulfilling all its objectives in Ukraine and will not turn off its intended path. During a TV broadcast on Saturday, the Russian Ambassador in the U.S. said there would be no “capitulation.”
“We will never give up, we will not step back,” he claimed.
Earlier this month, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that the Russian “military operation” in Ukraine was going “according to plan.”
Moscow has consistently warned the West against “pumping up” Ukraine with weapons, claiming that it would only lead to prolongation of the conflict and create long-term problems. It has also stressed that any foreign weapons on Ukrainian territory would be considered as legitimate targets.
EU Candidate Serbia Accuses West Of Hypocrisy
Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic has said his “guts turn” when he hears Western countries talk about their respect for the territorial integrity of Ukraine, while simultaneously insisting on the independence of the Serbian breakaway region of Kosovo.
During a Sunday broadcast on Prva TV, Vucic claimed there were no principles in modern international politics and accused the West of double standards and hypocrisy when it comes to the Ukraine and Kosovo conflicts. Serbia is a candidate for EU membership.
Belgrade does not recognize Kosovo’s 2008 self-declaration of independence and considers the territory to be a Serbian province. Nearly 100 countries, including the U.S. – but not Russia – have recognized the independence of the region.
“My guts turn when I hear about the principles and respect for territorial integrity. They (the Western countries) ask us to respect someone’s integrity, and what about ours?” said Vucic.
As the G7 pledged that it would never accept the violation of Ukraine’s territorial integrity, the Serbian government will continue to insist on the same principle for its own country, Vucic argued.
“For Serbia to give up its integrity, it can only happen with a gun to the forehead, and not to us but to our children,” he stressed.
The Serbian leader also questioned why, if Russia is really committing terrible crimes in Ukraine, NATO is not bombing it as it did in former Yugoslavia in 1999.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said last month that Moscow’s move to recognize the breakaway republics of Donetsk and Lugansk was based on the Kosovo precedent.
Belgrade has taken a neutral stance in relation to the conflict, with Vucic vowing to punish Serbs if they attempt to fight on either side.
Serbia Will Fight Sanctions Pressure
Despite suffering “enormous damage,” Serbia will fight to maintain its policy of not joining the Western sanctions introduced against Moscow over the conflict in Ukraine, its president has insisted.
“We have lasted eighty days” without restricting Russia and “the price we pay is huge,” Alexander Vucic told local broadcaster Prva on Sunday. Serbia lacks access to the capital market and can’t service its foreign loans, which affects the well-being of the population, he complained.
“They say: ‘Vucic is announcing the introduction of Russian sanctions.’ No, we will fight as long as we can. We suffered enormous damage, but we aren’t looking for ‘a thank you’,” the president insisted.
Serbia is acting this way because it is “a sovereign and independent country” that is well aware of “how unfair and unnecessary” the sanctions are, he said.
The issue of restrictions against Moscow is also closely linked to the supply of Russian gas and oil, on which Serbia is entirely dependent, Vucic said, expressing hope that Belgrade will be able to agree a “good price” on energy at the upcoming talks between the sides.
Last month, the Serbian president claimed that he was blackmailed into placing restrictions on his country’s ally Russia, with Belgrade being threatened with energy sanctions of its own if it refused.
Zelensky Bans Ukrainian Opposition Parties
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Saturday signed into law a bill establishing a mechanism to outlaw political parties, who oppose his policies on western integration. The legislation is aimed at political parties deemed to be engaging into “anti-Ukrainian” activities.
The list of wrongdoings which can be used as a pretext to ban a faction suggests that challenging the official position of the Ukrainian authorities on the ongoing conflict with Moscow can lead to a ban.
Specifically, it outlaws denial of the “aggression against Ukraine,” calling it an internal conflict, a civil war and so on. Any positive remarks about those deemed to be perpetrating “aggression” are prohibited as well, including referring to the forces of the breakaway Donetsk as Lugansk republics as “insurgents.”
The new legislation also outlines a simplified procedure to ban a political party. It now requires a court ruling, with all related cases – including pending ones – transferred to a court in the western Ukrainian city of Lviv for as long as the country is under martial law. A ruling on such cases is final and cannot be appealed.
In March, Ukraine’s national Security Council suspended multiple political parties it deemed to be “pro-Russian.” The list included assorted minor, primarily left-wing parties, as well as Ukraine’s second-largest group ‘Opposition Platform – For Life’, led by Viktor Medvedchuk, a businessman with alleged ties to Russia. Having previously been placed under house arrest, in April of last year the politician ended up in custody of the country’s security services.
His initial incarceration came after his faction passed out Zelensky’s Servant of the People in terms of popularity, according to polling.
Pentagon Chief And Ukraine’s counterpart Talk About Phone Call With Russian Defense Minister
Pentagon Chief Lloyd Austin told Ukrainian Defense Minister Alexei Reznikov in a phone conversation on Sunday about his conversation with Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu on May 13, US Defense Department spokesman John Kirby said in a written statement following the talks.
According to him, Austin and Reznikov discussed the situation in Ukraine and the needs of Kiev in armaments.
“Secretary Austin provided an update on his May 13th phone call with Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu in which he urged an immediate end to the conflict in Ukraine and emphasized the importance of maintaining lines of communication. Secretary Austin reiterated the unwavering U.S. support for Ukraine’s sovereignty and security assistance efforts to bolster Ukraine’s capacity to counter Russian aggression. The leaders pledged to remain in close contact,” Kirby said.
Oil Prices Drop On Profit-Taking, Supply Fears Linger
A Reuters report from Tokyo said:
Oil prices slipped on Monday, giving up earlier gains as investors took profits after a surge in the previous session, but global supply fears loomed with the European Union preparing to phase in a ban on imports from Russia.
Brent crude futures were down 64 cents, or 0.6%, at $110.91 a barrel at 0137 GMT, while U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures dropped 60 cents, or 0.5%, to $109.89 a barrel.
Both benchmarks, which jumped about 4% last Friday, earlier increased by more than $1 a barrel, with WTI reaching its highest since March 28 of $111.71.
“Oil markets are expected to gain this week as a pending ban by the European Union on Russian oil will further tighten global supplies of crude and fuels,” said Kazuhiko Saito, chief analyst at Fujitomi Securities Co Ltd.
The EU still aims to agree a phased embargo on Russia oil this month despite concerns about supply in eastern Europe, four diplomats and officials said on Friday, rejecting suggestions of a delay or watering down proposals.
Last week, Moscow slapped sanctions on several European energy companies, causing worries about supplies.
U.S. Gasoline Futures Set A Fresh All-Time High The Reuters report added:
Meanwhile, U.S. gasoline futures set a fresh all-time high again on Monday as falling stockpiles fuelled supply concerns.
“Oil prices remained bullish, especially WTI’s near-term contract, as U.S. gasoline prices continued to rise amid weaker imports of petroleum products from Europe,” Fujitomi Securities’ Saito said.
On the supply side, U.S. energy firms in the week to May 13 added oil and natural gas rigs for an eighth week in a row as high prices and prodding by the federal government prompted drillers to return to the wellpad.
Elsewhere OPEC+ – the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and allies including Russia – has been undershooting previously agreed plans for output increases due to under-investment in oilfields in some OPEC members and, more recently, losses in Russian output.
The latest monthly report from OPEC showed its output in April rose by 153,000 barrels per day (bpd) to 28.65 million bpd, lagging the 254,000 bpd rise that OPEC is allowed under the OPEC+ deal.
Saudi Aramco Net Profit Soars 82% In Q1 On High Oil Prices
Another Reuters report from Dubai said:
State-owned oil producer Saudi Aramco on Sunday reported an almost 82% rise in first-quarter net profit, broadly in line with analyst forecasts, helped by strong oil prices.
Aramco, which is at par with Apple Inc as the world’s most valuable company, reported a net income of $39.5 billion for the quarter to March 31 from $21.7 billion a year earlier.
The world’s top oil exporter was forecast to post a net income of $38.5 billion, according to a median estimate from 12 analysts provided by the company.
Aramco, which listed in 2019 with the sale of a 1.7% stake mainly to the Saudi public and regional institutions, said its earnings were the highest in any quarter since it went public, boosted by crude prices, volumes sold and improved downstream margins.
The Reuters report said:
Earnings by global energy companies such as BP and Shell have risen to their highest in at least a decade on the back of rising commodities prices, even as many of them incur mostly write-downs from exiting Russia.
Brent crude prices ended the first quarter up almost 70% to $107.91 a barrel from end of March 2021.
OPEC+ agreed this month to another modest increase in its monthly oil output target, arguing it could not be blamed for disruptions to Russian supply that have driven up prices. It also said China’s coronavirus lockdowns was threatening the outlook for demand.
“Our view is Brent will end up lower in the second half of the year and so we are expecting (Aramco) earnings to pull back and for the second quarter to be a peak,” said Yousef Husseini, associate director for equity research at EFG Hermes.
The company declared a dividend of $18.8 billion to be paid in the second quarter, in line with market expectations, and approved the distribution of one bonus share for every 10 shares held in the company.
Aramco said it saw improved downstream margins in the first quarter and is looking to develop opportunities in the downstream sector.
“During the first quarter, our strategic downstream expansion progressed further in both Asia and Europe, and we continue to develop opportunities that complement our growth objectives,” Aramco CEO Amin Nasser said in a statement.
Shares of the company have risen 37% since the start of the year, outperforming the Saudi index which is up nearly 14%.
German Industry Issues Warning Over Impact Of Cutting Russian Gas Deliveries
Media reports from Germany said:
The cessation of Russian gas deliveries would have a catastrophic effect on the German economy, according to Siegfried Russwurm, president of the country’s biggest industry association BDI.
“The consequences of cutting off Russian gas supplies would be catastrophic,” he told tabloid Bild am Sonntag in an interview published on Saturday evening.
Russwurm added that such a step would deprive the country’s businesses of the fuel, forcing them to shut down production lines.
“A host of companies in this case would be completely cut off from gas supplies,” he said. “In many cases, the affected firms will be forced to stop production, some enterprises may never be able to start it again.”
Berlin believes Russia may stop gas supplies over sanctions imposed on Moscow and the supply of weapons by Germany to Ukraine. Earlier this week, German vice-chancellor and economy minister, Robert Habeck, said the country was not yet ready for a total embargo on Russian gas.
On Wednesday, Russia imposed sanctions on Gazprom’s European subsidiaries including Gazprom Germania, an energy trading, storage and transmission business that Germany placed under trusteeship last month to secure supplies. The sanctions list also includes Gazprom Schweiz AG, Gazprom Marketing & Trading USA, Vemex, Wingas, and EuRoPol GAZ.
Earlier, Ukraine suspended the flow of Russian natural gas to Europe, while blaming Moscow for the disruption. Russian gas had previously been flowing uninterrupted through pipelines across Ukraine despite tensions between the two countries.
Egypt Assesses Impact Of Ukraine-Related Crisis
Egypt’s economy has sustained losses of up to 130 billion Egyptian pounds ($7 billion) amid the Ukrainian crisis, according to the country’s Prime Minister Moustafa Madbouly.
“The aftermath of the war has placed a huge financial burden on us and we have invested 130 billion pounds to cover rising prices for strategic goods,” Madbouly said on Sunday, pointing out that the indirect consequences of the events in Ukraine are estimated at another over $18 billion.
According to the PM, the current conflict between Russia and Ukraine has sent prices for vital produce soaring, having posed enormous challenges to the Egyptian economy.
“In May 2021, the price of a barrel of oil was $67, now it has reached $112, while a ton of wheat cost $270 a year ago, now we pay for the same volumes based on a price of $435 per ton,” Madbouly explained.
“Previously, we had imported 42% of grain, while 31% of tourists were from Russia and Ukraine, and now we have to look for alternative markets.”
The PM also said that Egypt had managed to restore tourism after the Covid-19 pandemic and “achieve budget profitability of $5.8 billion ahead of the Russian-Ukrainian crisis.”
He added that despite Covid-related crisis and turmoil in the movement of world trade, the nation saw an unprecedented increase in income from the Suez Canal.
Egypt’s unemployment rate dropped to 7.2% in January-March, down from 7.4% in the previous quarter, the state statistics agency CAPMAS said on Sunday.
The agency also reported that Egypt’s annual inflation rate surged to 14.9% in April, significantly higher than the previous month’s 12.1%.
In March, Egypt’s Central Bank raised its key interest rate for the first time since 2017, citing inflationary pressures triggered by the coronavirus pandemic and the Russia-Ukraine conflict, which hiked oil prices to record highs.
Germany Warns Of Brutal Global Hunger
Skyrocketing food prices worldwide are the result of Russia pursuing a hybrid war strategy, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock claimed on Saturday following a G7 meeting.
However, Moscow immediately hit back by blaming Western sanctions for the spike.
“Russia made a conscious decision to turn the war against Ukraine into a ‘grain war,’” the German minister insisted. This, she alleged, is now affecting a wide range of states, especially those in Africa.
”There is a threat of brutal hunger,” she said.
“We must not be naive about this,” Baerbock warned. “It’s not collateral damage, it’s a perfectly deliberate instrument in a hybrid war that is currently being waged.”
She said the countries of the G7 wanted to look for alternative ways of delivering grain from Ukraine to the world.
Earlier in the week, the US State Department tweeted: “While Ukraine used to export up to five million tons of grain per month, shipments have all but stopped due to the Kremlin’s blockade of Ukrainian ports.” Washington claimed that such actions put “millions at risk of famine.”
Ukraine is currently unable to export about 90 million tons of agricultural products, as Russia has blocked Ukrainian ports, its Prime Minister Denys Shmygal told local media. The country produces a significant share of world food – about 27% of its sunflower seeds, 5% of its barley, 3% of its wheat and rapeseed, and 2% of its corn.
Russia is the largest exporter of wheat in the world. Although it has the ability to export grain, it also faces problems due to sanctions and its own requirements.
Russia’s Response To German Accusation
Responding to the German foreign minister’s comments, Moscow accused the West of causing the spike in food prices.
“Prices are rising due to sanctions imposed by the collective West under pressure from the United States. This is if we talk about the direct reason. Failure to understand this is a sign of either stupidity or deliberate misleading of the public,” Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova wrote in her Telegram channel.
According to the diplomat, the threat to Ukraine’s statehood is also the work of the West. “Ms. Baerbock’s predecessors are also involved in it, who not only interfered in the situation in this country, but modeled Ukraine’s domestic and foreign policy in manual mode,” she wrote.
The Empire is currently fighting a war – a partly-proxy and partly direct war – in Ukraine. The war between capitalist interests whether identified as ‘bipartisan unity’ in a country or ‘oligarchs’, is basically with the same bourgeois interests.
Ukraine, once a part of the Soviet Union, is now controlled by the US and Western European interests. While the hopes and dreams of the Soviet Union apparently waned away, capitalist, and neo-Nazi, ideologies and politics usurped political power of Ukraine. The Empire, with an apparent anti-fascist, anti-Nazi face, had been supporting, supplying, and training the far-rightist and neo-Nazi elements of Ukraine to wage its war against Russia.
Despite concerns at home, the Empire continued collaborating with and supporting Nazi ideology in Ukraine. ‘In 2015, the CIA, according to five former intelligence and national security officials, set up “a secret intensive training program in the US for elite Ukrainian special operations forces and other intelligence personnel.” The same year, the US Congress passed a spending bill that featured “hundreds of millions of dollars worth of economic and military support for Ukraine, one that was expressly modified to allow that support to flow to the country’s resident neo-Nazi militia, the Azov Regiment”.’ (Gabriel Rockhill, “Nazis in Ukraine: seeing through the fog of the information war”, Liberation News, cited in MR Online, March 30 2022)
The US has already put in much effort and money in countering the Russian advance in Ukraine. As The New York Times reports, “The House…passed a $40 billion military and humanitarian aid package for Ukraine in an overwhelming 368 to 57 vote, weeks after lawmakers overwhelmingly approved $13.6 billion in emergency aid for the war effort. That total — roughly $53 billion over two months — goes beyond what President Biden requested and is poised to amount to the largest foreign aid package to move through Congress in at least two decades.” (“House Passes $40 Billion More in Ukraine Aid, With Few Questions Asked”, The New York Times, May 10 2022)
The aid for the Ukraine War package disbursed by the Empire since the war began is roughly close to Russia’s annual defense spending of $65.9 billion in 2021, and more than four times higher than the total defense spending of Ukraine in 2021. With the Empire’s war package Ukraine became 14th in the world in terms of annual military spending, surpassing nations such as Israel ($24.3 billion) and Iran ($24.6 billion).(“Fact Check: Joe Biden $33bn Ukraine Plan Worth Half Russia Military Budget”, Newsweek, April 29 2022; “How Joe Biden’s $33bn Ukraine War Plan Compares to NATO Defense Budgets”, Newsweek, April 29, 2022)
The plethora of military spending by the Empire for the Ukraine War brings to fore the Empire’s desperate need to win the war. It also puts into perspective the information perpetrated by contemporary media on the war; a war that turns into an ‘unfair’ one when considered the Empire’s military spending with respect to Russian forces.
However, the question remains, why would the Empire ‘give away’ such a large number of ‘bucks’ to Ukraine, and even provide exclusive armaments support along with military trainings while it has a huge debt burden, gigantic failure in handling the pandemic, huge student loan burden, deficiency in health care system, galloping social problems including racial problem, violence/gun violence that creates a march of murders in different places on almost every other day, and even the present soaring gas price?
With Russia controlling the largest natural gas reserves (about 48,938 billion cubic meters) followed by Iran (34,077 bcm), and Qatar (23,831 bcm) (“Infographic: How much of your country’s gas comes from Russia?”, Aljazeera, March 17 2022), the western, eastern European and broken-away-from-Soviet Union-countries face a dilemma – whether to support the US agenda in Ukraine or be silent observers of the war. Germany, the current economic leader in Europe, “has been the biggest single-country buyer of Russian energy in the first two months since the war in Ukraine began. The study published by the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA) calculates that Russia has earned €63 billion ($66.5 billion) from fossil fuel exports since February 24. The researchers [figures compiled by an independent research group] worked out that Germany alone paid Russia about €9.1 billion ($9.65 billion) for fossil fuel deliveries in the two months’ since the Ukraine war began” (“Germany top buyer of Russian energy since Ukraine invasion began: report”, Deutsche Welle, 2022).
With its European axis in a disheveled state over energy crises (including Macron barely winning the election in France), with the European gas sources controlled by Russia, the US is suddenly at a fix, whether to expand eastward or to extort by showmanship of power. The US has always exerted its control over Europe after the 90’s, with cajoling and coaxing, and sometimes with ‘sweet’ threats. And now it faces a long-forgotten ‘enemy’, the Russian bloc, almost forsaken remnants of the Bolsheviks haunting its dreams. In its desperate throes of throwing away ‘communist advances’, the said Empire is supporting neo-Nazi forces in Ukraine, its last foothold of geo-strategic control in Eastern Europe.
While this is itself an irony considering the US being a part of the Allied Forces in WWII, yet it is not surprising, given the fact that the US imperialist advances had always tried to undermine pro-people struggles across continents, with its bloody ‘legacy’ of supporting fascist regimes in many Asian countries including Indonesia and in Latin America.
There are other facts that demand close look:
- “Some of Europe’s largest energy companies are preparing to use a new payment system for Russian gas demanded by the Kremlin, which critics say will undercut EU sanctions, threaten the bloc’s unity and deliver billions in cash to Russia’s economy.” (“EU energy groups prepare to meet Vladimir Putin’s terms for Russian gas”, Financial Times, 2022)
- “Gas distributors in Germany, Austria, Hungary and Slovakia are planning to open rouble accounts at Gazprombank in Switzerland in order to satisfy a Russian requirement for payments in its own currency, according to people with knowledge of the preparations.” (ibid.)
- “The groups include two of the single largest importers of Russian gas: Düsseldorf-based Uniper and Vienna-based OMV.” (ibid.)
The US imperialist agenda finally reduce to these facts about energy resources. While energy sources along with fossil fuels deplete, the Empire turns its malevolent eyes to countries where such resources yet remain.
And the Empire wants it for taking, all of it!
Hence wars rage across continents, the Empire ensuring its control over Middle Eastern energy sources is now trying to control gas, oil, and rare metal sources in Russia. Ukraine remains a pawn in the Empire’s geostrategic advances, a potential gateway to resources controlled by the Russian interests.
So, the Empire covets control in Russia, the country with vast oil, gas, and other resources. Weakening of Russia will enable its competitor to have control over Russia’s resources. Now, through this Ukraine war, the Empire is trying to bleed and weaken Russia. This drives the Empire’s Ukraine war – a full-fledged intervention, mostly indirect, and partly direct.
However, yet the question remains, when do the wars end? When does the bloodletting end?
The prevalent system, spearheaded by the US and European economic systems, is going through a crisis of energy and planetary resources, one of many crises the system has created itself by plundering, expropriation, and over-accumulation. ‘[R]eports by national security analysts on strategic energy policy …followed in May 2001 by the White House release of its National Energy Policy, issued under the direction of Vice President Dick Cheney…emphasized the need for U.S. petroleum security, noting that total US oil production had fallen 39 percent below its 1970 peak and that US reliance on foreign oil imports could increase to almost two-thirds of its total gasoline and heating oil consumption by 2020. President Bush warned in May 2001 that dependence on foreign crude oil put US “national energy security” in the hands of ‘foreign nations, some of whom do not share our interests’.” (John Bellamy Foster, “Peak Oil and Energy Imperialism”, Monthly Review, July 1, 2008)
The evident looming energy crisis had been one of the major factors in imperialist advances to search for and plunder more resources across continents. Direct and proxy wars, imperialist advances and attempts at creating puppet governments and controlling sovereign countries, onslaughts against pro-people movements, organizations and powers therefore ensued. However, while the more the Empire became ‘adventurist’ and desperate for accumulation and expropriation, the more it turned rife with stagnation, inflation, and financial meltdowns.
‘The answer was for the Western powers led by the United States to play a more direct role in the development of world oil resources. This would be coupled with replacement of the current political economy of oil dominated by national oil companies, which had arisen with the growth of “resource nationalism” in the third world, with one in which the multinational oil corporations centered in the advanced capitalist economies once again took charge of reserves and investments.’(ibid.)
With the military-industrial complex-driven war for oil and resources in the Middle East straining the Empire’s economy to a point where it can no longer sustain a ‘boots-on-ground’ battle, the US needed a geo-tactically safe waypoint to resources in its largest, resource-rich and staunchest enemy front – to the plains of the former Soviet Union, the Russian Federation.
Ukraine had always been a part of long-standing US and Western imperialist expansion strategies. Economic and military control over Ukraine was pivotal to gaining a 1,200-mile border with Russia, essentially a tactical insertion point of nuclear arms, that in turn ensures the Empire’s final foothold of tactical control over vast amount of resources including oil and gas in the ‘Eastern front’.
‘Zbigniew Brzezinski, … Jimmy Carter’s national security advisor said in his 1997 Grand Chessboard that Ukraine was the “geopolitical pivot,” particularly in the West, which if it were brought into NATO and under Western control, would weaken Russia so much that it could be tethered, if not dismembered. This has been the goal all along and U.S. strategic planners and Washington officials, along with the NATO allies, have stated over and over that they wanted to bring the Ukraine into NATO. NATO made this goal official in 2008. Only a few months ago, in November 2021 in the new strategic charter between the Biden administration in Washington and Zelensky government in Kyiv, it was agreed that the immediate aim was bring Ukraine into NATO. But this has also been NATO’s policy for a long time now. The United States in the final months of 2021 and at the beginning of 2022 was moving very fast to militarize the Ukraine and accomplish that as a fait accompli.’ (John Bellamy Foster, “The U.S. proxy war in Ukraine”, Monthly Review, April 9 2022)
To drive this imperialist agenda, the Empire had been supporting Nazi/fascist/far-rightist elements in Ukraine to destabilize pro-people, and pro-Soviet ideologies and movements. The US had not flinched in supporting fascist, far-right, white supremacist groups like the Azov Brigade in perpetrating its war for said ‘democracy’, even though ‘in 2019, U.S. lawmakers wrote a letter to the State Department in which they stated that “the link between Azov and acts of terror in America is clear.” A 2018 FBI affidavit stated that Azov ‘is believed to have participated in training and radicalizing United States-based white supremacy organizations.’ This included members of the white-supremacist Rise Above Movement, which were indicted for having ‘violently attacked and assaulted counter-protestors’ at several white nationalist and white supremacist events throughout the U.S., including the violent ‘Unite the Right’ rally in Charlottesville.” (Gabriel Rockhill, “Nazis in Ukraine: seeing through the fog of the information war”, Liberation News, cited in MR Online, March 30 2022)
The Empire has already been conducting a ‘secret war’ in Ukraine since late February with the presence of elite special forces, according to a report in Le Figaro’s senior international correspondent Georges Malbrunot citing a French Intelligence community source. “SAS units ‘have been present in Ukraine since the beginning of the war, as did the American Deltas,’ Malbrunot tweeted citing a French intelligence source”. Western pro-war intentions had already been apparently confirmed by EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell saying, “war will be won on the battlefield” during a visit in Kiev in April 2022. (Countercurents Collective, “Ukraine Update: Sweden And Finland Set To Join NATO”, countercurrents.org, April 12 2022)
These are essentially strategic maneuvers of the Empire for expansion and control of resources, resources that it is in dire need of. The Empire’s ideology, basically anti-people and anti-civilization has always been one that helps drive its imperialist interests. The Empire can carry out the most nefarious of acts that may even undermine its own citizens’ interests, let alone interests of masses around the world for this ideology. The crisis of energy and resources, however, ironically is of the Empire’s own making, a ramification of its continuous expansion, pilfering and expropriation of resources. While the Empire’s war for more resources, rages on, the world suffers.
The Empire’s war in Ukraine is now leading to a global economic crisis, a result of unilateral anti-Russian sanctions. Russia’s permanent representative to the UN Vassily Nebenzia said, “The actual causes threatening the global food market with serious turbulence are not in Russia’s actions but rather is the unrestrained sanction hysteria the West has unleashed against Russia giving no thought either to the population of the countries of the so-called global south or to their own citizens. The attempt to isolate Russia economically, financially and logistically from the years-long cooperation channels is already entailing an economic crisis of the historic scale.” (Countercurrents Collective, “Ukraine Update: Possibility Of Putin-Zelensky And Putin-Biden Meeting”, countercurrents.org, March 20 2022)
The war is threatening to devastate the World Food Program’s efforts to feed about 125 million people globally, warned the UN food chief. WFP Executive Director David Beasley told the UN Security Council, with 50% of the grain bought by the WFP coming from Ukraine, the crisis has compounded by a lack of fertilizer products coming from Belarus and Russia. (ibid.)
While the US pours billions in its Ukraine War, billions paid by US taxpayers, its media hails the essentially armaments support as ‘humanitarian aid’, even gloating over the number of armaments as ‘aids’ in the war. Though the Empire apparently vocally advocates ‘peace’, its acts are not only far from it, but can be deemed as instigations and indirect (sometimes even direct) participation in the Ukraine War.
The Empire’s Ukraine war, however, is not necessarily a show of its strength and superiority. Rather the war is the Empire’s one of desperate efforts to control a rapidly deteriorating energy crisis the brunt of which has already left the Empire scathed and scarred, reeling from wounds that run deep within its very societal and economic structure. While lives, homes and hearths are lost, yet the Empire, a self-appointed ‘harbinger of peace’, continues its war based on lies, hypocrisy and disinformation, such is the irony.
[Omar Rashid Chowdhury is a civil engineer and writes from Bangladesh]
Israeli police attack mourners at funeral for slain journalist Shireen Abu Akleh. Image is a capture from a video clip circulating on social media (https://fb.watch/c_28BmgFX9/).
Of the hundreds of thousands of images flowing in quick succession on social media in the aftermath of Shireen Abu Akleh’s extrajudicial execution undertaken by a State actor, namely Israel, three in particular will never leave me.
I’ll start with the most surrealist of the three, the one that made me want to poke someone in the ribs and shout, “Wait, go back; did you see that?” It comes from the tail end of a video clip on Facebook showing the attack of Israeli police on Palestinian pallbearers/mourners carrying her coffin draped in the Palestinian flag. The incident took place during the last leg of a devastatingly emotional funeral procession that had begun in Jenin the day before and ended in Jerusalem/Al-Quds. For coverage of this yet another nationally cataclysmic event in the history of Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, go to Al Jazeera.
Following is a video clip of the attack circulating on social media (“The World must see…” – The Palestinian Information Center):
At the end of the clip, you will see a Palestinian mourner holding up a funeral wreath and walking between the line of Israeli police and the staggering pall-bearers. To me, the action brought to mind images from sci-fi movies of someone warding off a blood-sucking vampire by holding up a crucifix in the vampire’s face. But to other people, this shocking incident took on religious undertones. It is being dubbed Via Dolorosa in reference to the processional route in the Old City of Jerusalem/Al-Quds, where Jesus is said to have walked on his way to crucifixion as he was being flogged by Roman soldiers.
The images are already seared into our collective memories in the same way that the video clips and still images of JFK’s assassination and funeral procession are seared into the collective memory of Americans. The religious references that Palestinians have reached for in this instance are apt, not only because of the location where the sorry spectacle took place, but also because of the ongoing violent judaization of Jerusalem/Al-Quds (and, indeed, the rest of the West Bank) that continues to outrage both Muslim and Christian Palestinians alike. This brings me to the second image I would like to discuss, the one of the Patriarch and Mufti of Al-Quds, mourning side-by-side:
The Patriarch and the Mufti at Shireen Abu Akleh’s funeral in Jerusalem/AlQuds (image circulating on social media with no attribution)
When I posted the above image on Facebook, I headlined it (as I am titling this piece) “Where is the rabbi?” It’s a logical question to ask in a city that is of such significance to all three interrelated monotheistic religions in the Middle East. In pre-Zionist times, the very small number of religious Jews in Palestine, all of them Sephardic and Arabic speakers, lived peacefully alongside native Palestinians, and it is easy to imagine a rabbi then mourning alongside the Patriarch and the Mufti. But such people no longer exist today in this Jewish state.
As owned by Zionism, “Jewishness” manifested itself at the funeral of Shireen Abu Akleh in the form of fascist soldiers operating within a brutal Jewish supremacist apartheid state founded on Palestinian dispossession and ethnic cleansing. A few days before the commemoration of the 74th anniversary of the Palestinian Nakba, the barbaric savagery of the Zionist regime is on show for all the world to see. As Steve Salaita succinctly put it: Why attack mourners? “Because they weren’t also in the casket.” Such bloody-mindedness applies to the Chief Rabbis of Israel as well as to conscripted soldiers.
A rabbi mourning alongside the priest and the sheikh would have elicited the same reaction as that expressed on Twitter by Mohamad Bazzi in reaction to the Saudi Foreign Ministry extending condolences to the family of Jamal Khashoggi: “There’s a fitting Arabic proverb [to apply here]: He kills the victim, and walks in his funeral.”
The third image that will never leave me is, unfortunately, a very familiar trope for Palestinians. By that I mean the image of a woman, usually a mother, distraught with grief, prostrate over the body of a martyred son.
A tender embrace of Shireen Abu Akleh’s casket by a mourner (circulating on social media with no attribution)
Shireen’s parents are both deceased. She was deeply mourned by her brother and an entire nation, because, like Princess Diana, whom everyone felt they knew, Shireen had entered our living rooms and our hearts and we felt connected to her. “It has to be said that Shireen has broken the Internet today and broken hearts around the world,” said Lyse Doucet, Canadian BBC Presenter and Chief International Correspondent.
She was our voice in a medium that largely mutes it, that even when exposing Israel’s crimes, as Orly Halpern does for Time Magazine from Jerusalem, journalists unquestioningly accept the assumption that Palestinian armed resistance is terrorism, whereas Israel’s state terror is simply “a mistake;” something that should be condemned, true, but is fixable, because Israel can be “Jewish and democratic;” it just has to try harder. So, Halpern writes without any qualification or pause (italics mine): “In Jenin, where Israeli forces were carrying out anti-terrorism operations after a spate of fatal attacks on Israeli Jews…” In this one sentence, she legitimizes Israel’s brutality, Israel’s existence as a Jewish state, and the misnomer of Israel’s so-called “Defense Forces.”
There is nothing, no context in Halpern’s glib statement, nothing, even, like what Richard Silverstein wrote in ‘Mandela and Lessons for Israel-Palestine: from Armed Struggle to Political Transformation’: “I am convinced that within a decade or so of an agreement ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Israelis themselves will understand that Palestinian militants were little different from leaders of the Israeli Jewish resistance, who themselves took up arms and were labelled terrorists by the British Mandate. Some of these figures themselves became prime ministers and generals after the founding of the State. In the same way, Palestinian resistance leaders have and will take their place leading a Palestinian state once it comes into existence.”
Commenting on Silverstein’s quotation above, Sivan Tal rightfully objected to the latter’s use of language equating Palestinian militants with “leaders of the Israeli Jewish resistance,” writing:
“Those Zionists were real terrorists and not ‘resistance fighters.’ They were more of invaders than occupied. The British Mandate was intended to facilitate establishing the ‘Jewish national home’ in Palestine, the fact that those extremist (Begin et. al.) didn’t like them doesn’t make them resistance fighters or liberation fighters. You can’t compare the British Mandate which favored the Zionists over the Palestinians to the Israeli occupation and say ‘Israeli occupation to the Palestinians is like the British Mandate was to the Zionist pioneers. It’s a distortion of reality and history.”
The last image above is tender. The viewer does not see Shireen’s stony, dead face or the anguished face of the young mourner, only a gentle, protective embrace and the crisp flag. It is being said that “Israel wants to send yet another message to the Palestinians and their supporters across the globe that no one is safe,” and that is why Israeli snipers killed prominent Aljazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh. If there is a message being sent by anyone, it is a message sent by Palestinians collectively to Israel, and that message is basically, “fuck you and your snipers; the resistance continues.”
The Palestinian BDS National Committee (BNC) issued a statement, escalating the boycott:
We join our voice with that of the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate demanding respect for standards against media normalization in order to honor the blood of Sherine Abu Aqle, and we call on all Arab personalities, and Palestinians in particular, to reject normalization and refrain from interacting in any way (through publishing or conducting interviews) with any of the Israeli media…. As we extend our deepest condolences to the Al-Jazeera TV family in the Palestine office and to the Palestinian and Arab press in general, we address the management of Al-Jazeera TV channel in Qatar to respond to the Palestinian Journalists’ Syndicate’s demand to stop providing the platform for the trumpets of the Israeli occupation under the name of “other opinion.”
On May 15, the 74th commemoration of the Nakba, we heard a message from the Palestinian people that goes far beyond the numb language of reports and UN resolutions. Palestinian resistance continues with or without the rabbi.
Note: The above was first published on Medium.
_________________________
Rima Najjar is a Palestinian whose father’s side of the family comes from the forcibly depopulated village of Lifta on the western outskirts of Jerusalem and whose mother’s side of the family is from Ijzim, south of Haifa. She is an activist, researcher and retired professor of English literature, Al-Quds University, occupied West Bank.
WASHINGTON (05-15) – It has been 74 years since 750,000 Palestinians were forced from their homes and land by Zionist forces on May 15, 1948, during the creation of the state of Israel. The global commemoration of the “Day of Palestinian Struggle” acknowledged each year is always mired in conflict. As such the scheduled Nakba (catastrophe) events in Berlin this year have been cancelled by police and anyone attempting to participate in any demonstration or commemoration has been advised that they will be “arrested and prosecuted.” This, according to the Palestinian prisoner network, Samidoun Network. The group also reported that the organizers received documents from police claiming the reason for the ban is that participants are too “emotional.” Evidently, outrage and emotion are now a threat to public safety. Berlin, with one of the largest Palestinian communities in Europe, is at present the only city to outlaw this year’s commemoration while elsewhere in Germany and across the world events were held.
Samidoun also reported that the Berlin Senate had appropriated public funds for Zionist groups activities for May 15. The groups that were funded are credited with labeling both BDS and Amnesty International as “anti-Semitic.” This blatantly discriminatory action of funding them is both racist in nature and outrageous in its preferential treatment of some citizens under the law and will be no doubt be challenged in court.
The backdrop of all this has occurred in a week that the world witnessed the targeted killing of Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh. She and her crew were accused of being “armed with cameras” by Israeli military spokesman Ran Kochav in a feeble attempt to blame her for her own death while reporting the news. This outrageous charge of weaponizing cameras and shifting responsibility away from themselves was followed later by an attack on her funeral procession when Israeli police beat mourners and pallbearers after accusing them of throwing rocks and for chanting “nationalist slogans.” Later police continued their unrelentless indignation for her and for a free press when a policemen tore Palestinian flags from the hearse as it was transporting her body through a crowd on its way to the cemetery. This unwarranted and excessive use of force by police needs to be thoroughly investigated. Her crime even in death is that of being a Palestinian journalist with a camera. Her targeted killing is an affront to all journalists as much as it is to the free collection and dissemination of the news. A democracy cannot function in a vacuum when its citizenry is deprived of information and analyses needed to make informed decisions and when journalists are intimated and afraid to practice their vital profession.
The unprovoked attack at her funeral is only one in a series of events that Palestinians are all too familiar with living under the occupation forces that suppress every aspect of their lives daily. And funerals enrage the Israeli military even more so as they enforce controls on how Palestinian families are allowed to mourn their dead. Even in death, Palestinians are not free as Israel maintains control over their mourning with an iron fist.
In response to the targeted killing of Shireen Abu Akleh, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is calling for a “transparent international probe” that the Israeli military responded to in writing by presenting two scenarios for how Shireen was shot and killed. In one they blamed Palestinian terrorists who they claimed had fired 500 rounds at Israeli forces and were responsible for her death. In a second scenario, they conceded that it was possible that an Israeli soldier firing his weapon while observing the terrorists through a periscope from inside an armored vehicle could have inadvertently hit the journalist. Thus, presenting the kill shot as a mere “accident.”
The call for an independent international and transparent investigation is key as an Israeli investigation will predictably whitewash the killing and, as other such investigations have shown, will place the onus on the victim while clearing themselves of any wrongdoing.
In Washington today several hundred Palestinian Americans, along with supporters for a Free Palestine and calling for an end to the Israeli occupation, gathered at the Lincoln Memorial this afternoon to mark the 74th anniversary of the Nakba. Prominent among the usual signs calling for changes and a Palestinian state was a memorial to Shireen Abu Akleh that included a casket noting she was a journalist along with banners calling for justice and holding Israel accountable for her death.
Many attendees placed flowers and personal notes to Shireen on the casket as the memorial continued throughout the afternoon. One person placed a lit candle as an eternal flame honoring the well known and loved journalist.
In reporting many stories over the years, it was especially touching as to how many people approached this reporter to express their gratefulness for the work all journalists do and how appreciative they are for all we do in keeping them informed of what is going on. In particular, one small handwritten sign placed on the black casket had written on it, “Stop silencing truth.”
(This article has previously appeared in the Nuze.ink.)
Phil Pasquini is a freelance journalist and photographer. His reports and photographs appear in the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, Pakistan Link and Nuze.ink. He is the author of Domes, Arches and Minarets: A History of Islamic-Inspired Buildings in America.
At that time, most of my dreams at night were constant nightmares, something I didn’t know before.
Perhaps this is a natural matter because dreams reflect the reality that a person lives in. Our conversations are about tragedies, daily anxiety, and an uncertain future.
We were wondering if the occupation would be permanent as in Palestine or if it was temporary. No one was able, of course, to answer this question.
In ordinary life, a person is busy with his daily life. As for us, we were busy with the existential question. Because it was easy to be shot or arrested at any time. And without any reason, investigation, or even an echo in the media.
We were waiting hope, resembling perhaps the characters of Samuel Beckett in the play waiting for Godot. In this play, there are two people, Vladimir and Estragon, waiting for Godot, who may symbolize hope or salvation. The difference is that the two men were not in a state of anxiety for fear of being killed or arrested at any moment as we were.
We heard all the time frightening stories, such as the Israeli backed Lebanese agents arrested a Palestinian and then told him that they had released him, and when he came out, they shot him claiming he had escaped from prison.
A friend told me that the Israeli Lebanese agents groups arrested him and his father. When they asked them to get out of prison, he told his father to sprint in one direction and him in another, fearing that they would kill both. But they were lucky and left safe
There was a big dog in the neighborhood, and it howled a lot at night. I didn’t know if its
Howling was usual or only when there was movement outside.
Once I wanted to make sure if its howling was a routine thing or if it howled when there was movement. When I heard the sound of howling, I went out quietly from the house and stood in the corner of the place where I could see, and no one would see me, and it was dark.
I didn’t see anything at first, but I saw lights used by Zionist soldiers as they crossed the road after a short time.
We used to hear news about people from the camp who disappeared and did not return every time.
This is the hardest thing, especially for parents.
Because it is somehow easier to deal with when there is a grave, but disappearance and the absence of a tomb are complicated things for the family.
And I know several cases whose traces of their sons disappeared and never returned. One of them told me that he knew that his son had been killed, but he wanted a grave for him.
I thought of how abusive a situation we reached when the dream of a mother or father to have a grave for their son!!
Israel is the only state in the world that holds the dead bodies of Palestinian fighters. And there are hundreds of corpses of those in a cemetery inside occupied Palestine called the (Cemetery of Numbers). This is how the Palestinians became a figure for Zionists!
One day a German television came and interviewed the people in the destroyed camp. A friend said that one should be careful of the television team because they might be Zionists working under the cover of the media.
And the reason for the suspicion is that the same TV team filmed in the camp a few months before the Zionist invasion, and rumors were spread that they photographed the shelters which were bombed by Israeli planes.
I do not know how true this is, but I have heard many stories that Israel sends spies in the form of journalists or doctors. I listened to a tale spread after the invasion about a beggar in Beirut who turned into an Israeli officer.
Those who spoke to the German television were women or old men. Among them was our neighbor Umm Nabil, although she had little education, she was of a great deal of intelligence. She told them that they talk in the West about human rights. Do these rights not include Palestinians, or are Palestinians not human?
On Friday evening, I was sitting at a friend’s house, and his brother-in-law, Abu Saleh, was with us. It was early in the evening, and I usually stayed at a friend’s house if it was night until the next day.
The talk was about the same topics that we were discussing daily, and all of them were terrible news. After that, I went to overnight in the house of Abu Saleh, who died about 10 years ago. I was worried that evening, and I slept in a room opposite the room of Abu Saleh, and there was an open door between the two rooms so we could hear each other.
Abu Saleh’s house is located at the last point in the camp. Below the house lies a valley, which is lemon orchards and others.
Abu Saleh was a calm and religious man. He told me that he knows his fate is unknown. But he puts his future in the hands of God, and He is the one who decides.
I did not want to comment because I believe that the Zionist criminals are the ones who decide our fate now. But I think that faith helped him remain calm despite the worry that was evident on his face.
I was feeling very anxious that night. I was trying to sleep, but I woke up all the time. A little while after midnight, I heard the dogs howling. I called Abu Saleh and told him that I had listened to an intense howling, and he said that the howling was usual.
Some time passed, and I told him that the howling sounds were getting stronger and stronger, and I was sure that this meant that there was movement in the camp. Abu Saleh said we wait for the morning to see.
I was almost certain that something was going on. But I had no other option but to wait until morning because it is impossible to go out from home at this time, and even if I wanted to go out, where to go?
As soon as dawn approached, I began to hear the sound of a microphone calling from inside the camp. I called again Abu Saleh and told him about the call of the microphone. He said they were calling for the residents of the neighboring Lebanese village.
I told him that I heard that they were calling for the camp people saying that all ages from 16 to 60 to gather in the camp yard by orders of the IDF.
We were silent for a while, and Abu Saleh heard the call from the microphone that the target was the camp. We drank a quick cup of coffee, and I felt strongly that it was my turn to arrest.
In this case, the only thing I could do was to prepare my psychological arsenal to face the worst conditions.
We went to the assembly, and on the way, we saw the people walking toward the camp yard in a state of refraction. I will not forget the scene of the camp residents strolling as if they wished that the road extend longer to the camp yard.
When I remember this scene now, I feel angry despite the passage of all these years. I witnessed with my own eyes the people being humiliated and terrorized by professional Zionist criminals who had no conscience or morals who came to us from the ghettos of Eastern Europe, carrying with them a culture of hatred and death .
In the gathering, as it was in the first time, cars came behind them were masked men, and they told us to stand five by five each time. My father had preceded me to the gathering, looking at me with obvious concern.
As soon as my turn to stand up arrived, the mask man pointed at me and a soldier shouted, “You are a teacher.” They wrote on my back something in Hebrew.
Then I was placed with those who were arrested. After a time, the rest of the people left. As for us, they tied our hands and blindfolded us, then put us on the bus heading towards the city of Sidon. We did not know where they are taking us, but we knew that our fate became in the hands of the Zionist fascists.
Salim Nazzal is a Palestinian Norwegian researcher, lecturer playwright and poet, wrote more than 17 books such as Perspectives on thought, culture and political sociology, in thought, culture and ideology, the road to Baghdad. Palestine in heart.
It has dominated news cycles, debates and policies since 2020, but COVID-19 continues to exercise the interest of number crunchers and talliers. While the ghoulish daily press announcements about infections and deaths across many a country have diminished and, in some cases, disappeared altogether, publications abound about how many were taken in the pandemic.
The World Health Organization, ever that herald of dark news, has offered a revised assessment across of the SARS-CoV-2 death toll associated either directly or indirectly with the pandemic. Between January 1, 2020 and December 31, 2021, the global health body suggests that the mortality figure is closer to 14.9 million, with a range of 13.3 million to 16.6 million.
The number considers excess mortality, the figure reached after accounting for the difference between the number of deaths that have occurred, and the number expected in the absence of the pandemic. It also accounts for deaths occasioned directly by COVID-19, or indirectly (for instance, the pandemic’s disruption of society and health systems).
The impact, as expected, has been disproportionate in terms of which countries have suffered more. Of the excess deaths, 68% were concentrated in 10 countries – Brazil, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Peru, Russia, South Africa, Turkey, and the United States. Middle-income countries accounted for 81% of excess deaths; high-income countries, for 15%, and low-income countries, 4%.
The United States, if only for being ascendant in terms of power, wealth, and incompetence in dealing with the virus, finds itself in the undistinguished position of having lost a million people. “Today,” remarked President Joe Biden, “we mark a tragic milestone here in the United States, one million COVID deaths, one million empty chairs around the family dinner table, each irreplaceable, irreplaceable losses, each leaving behind a family, a community forever changed because of this pandemic.”
Chief Medical Adviser to the President, Anthony Fauci, rued the fact that “at least a quarter of those deaths, namely about 250,000” might have been saved by vaccinations. He also warned about the ugly prospect of a resurgence in numbers, and not bringing “down our guard”.
In light of such figures, WHO Director-General, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, reiterates the line he and his colleagues have done so for months. Pandemics demand more “resilient health systems that can sustain essential health services during crises, including stronger health information systems”. His organisation “was committed to working with all countries to strengthen their health information systems to generate better data for better decisions and better outcomes.” Much of this will be wishful thinking.
Figures, certainly when they concern matters of mortality, can become the subject of bitter dispute. COVID-19 has proved no exception. In Africa, 41 of 54 countries reported insufficient data. Some countries have released incomplete data sets; others, none to speak of. This meant, inevitably, that the WHO’s Technical Advisory Group for COVID-19 Mortality Assessment could only model the missing figures to fill gaps.
As a result scrapping and arguments over methodology duly emerged. India, for one, has very publicly objected to the way the WHO has approached the compilation, communicating its concerns in no less than six letters between November 2021 and March 2022 and in a number of virtual meetings. Concerns have also been registered by WHO Member States, including China, Iran, Bangladesh, Syria, Ethiopia and Egypt.
The case with India is particularly telling, given WHO modelling showing 4,740,894 excess deaths, almost triple that of New Delhi’s own figures. Such figures imply, as epidemiologist Prabhat Jha of the University of Toronto claimed back in January, that the authorities were “trying to suppress the numbers in the way that they coded the COVID deaths.”
In an indignant statement from the Union Health Ministry released early this month, much is made of “how the statistical model projects estimates for a country of geographical size & population of India and also fits in with other countries which have smaller population.” This constituted an unacceptable “one-size-fits-all approach and models which are true for smaller countries like Tunisia may not be applicable to India with a population of 1.3 billion.”
The WHO model also returned two highly varied sets of excess mortality estimates when using data from Tier 1 countries and when using data from 18 Indian states that had not been verified. “India has asserted that if the model [is] accurate and reliable, it should be authenticated by running it for all Tier 1 countries” and the “result of such exercise may be shared with all Member States.”
WHO assistant director general for emergency response, Ibrahima Soće Fall, concedes that any accurate picture is only as complete as the data provided. “We know where the data gaps are, and we must collectively intensify our support to countries, so that every country has the capability to track outbreaks in real time, ensure delivery of essential health services, and safeguard population health.”
The degree of fractiousness that persists in public health shows that sharp fault lines remain in each country’s approach to the pandemic problem. Disunity and factionalism, petty nationalism and self-interest, remain imperishable, even at the direst of times. And all governments, given the chance, will err on the side of inaccuracy rather than risk acute embarrassment.
Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He currently lectures at RMIT University. Email: bkampmark@gmail.com
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