“We live in an area where there is no water,” says Ibrahim al-Majaida, a resident of al-Mawasi, an agricultural area near Khan Younis in the southern Israeli-occupied Gaza Strip.
The disrupted operation of treatment facilities has led to sewage spills in various areas of Gaza, such as al-Mawasi.
“Even plants and vegetables don’t survive in it because of the contamination,” says Rasha al-Majaida, another resident of al-Mawasi. “Not even birds drink from it.”
Justice collapsed, evil triumphed and UN lost its soul in its infancy
Seventy years ago on November 29 1947, Western imperialist powers led by US President Truman, blackmailed United Nations and passed a resolution, in complete violation of the very UN charter, to partition Palestine to offer part of it to migrant Jews to set up a Jewish state.
It was one of the darkest days in human history when international justice, moral principles and all cherished human values collapsed. As a result of this resolution Palestinians, the owners of the land, were forced into refugee camps where they still languish in appalling condition.
From the very inception, the big powers manipulated UN Security Council. For example US blackmailed member countries such as Philippines, Haiti, Liberia, China, Ethiopia and Greece who opposed the resolution to support.
In the closing days of the Second World War, five nations –United
States, Soviet Union, France, United Kingdom and China – met in Washington between August and October 1944, to work out proposals for a charter to establish the United Nations (UN) in place of the League of Nations.
In the following year, representatives of fifty governments met in San Francisco from 25 April to 26 June 1945 for formulating the United Nations Charter based on the proposals worked by the five big powers. The Charter was finally adopted and signed on 26 June 1945 by the participants.
In drafting the Charter and establishing the UN, the big powers structured the organisation to ensure they retain their power to continue to shape the destiny of the world to suit their political and economic agendas.
Although membership had been open to all, new members were admitted to the UN General Assembly on the recommendation of the Security Council only on condition if they accept, and were willing to carry out the decisions of the Security Council.
Seven decades later today, the UN, which has 191 members, has failed the world.
After the collapse of the former Soviet Union, the UN has become a mere tool under the sole super power the United States, which exploits the UN to implement its evil designs on the helpless, especially Muslim countries.
Highlighting the current plight of the UN, former Malaysian Prime Minister, Dr. Mahathir Mohamed in his final address to the General Assembly said in 2004, that the “United Nations, in which we had pinned so much hope, is collapsing on its clay feet, helpless to protect the weak and the poor”.
The UN’s credibility crisis continues to date. Hundreds of resolutions have been passed on many international issues. Those directed especially at Muslim countries were strictly implemented as divine laws while others were ignored.
For example in June 1967 Israel invaded neighbouring countries, with the backing of the west, and captured West Bank, Gaza, Sinai and Golan Heights. The United Nations resolutions 242 and 338 demanded Israeli withdrawal from captured territories. Instead Israel continue to build Jewish settlements and annex Palestinian lands including East Jerusalem.
In the 1960s and 70s, with more and more newly independent countries joining the UN, the General Assembly became the most important forum for the newly emerging countries to highlight their cause and seek means to redress them. In the 1980s, angered by the Third World domination of the General Assembly, the US ignored the UN, delayed her annual financial contributions and even withdrew from UNESCO.
In 1990 came the collapse of the former Soviet Union changing overnight the entire international political scene throwing Third World countries aligned with Soviet Union into disarray.
It was in this critical environment for the developing countries Iraq, encouraged by United States, invaded Kuwait in August 1990, and triggered the Gulf crisis. Between the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait on 2 August 1990 and the beginning of the US attack on Iraq on January 17 1991, the UN Security Council passed twelve resolutions in quick succession. Thus it was UN sanctioned war, destruction and the genocide of its people.
Sanctions
United Nations sanctions on countries like Iraq, Libya, Iran and North Korea, to cite few, turned out to be genocide of people for the follies of their regimes, often supported by US. The UN sanctions on Iraq in 1991 killed more than 500,000 children while hundreds of thousands remain deformed and crippled.
UN and the Massacre of Bosnian Muslims
The UN resolutions were responsible for the massacre of more than 200,000 Muslims in Bosnia. It was under the watchful eyes of UN and the champions of human rights in Europe and United States that Bosnian Serbs slaughtered more than 300,000 Muslim men, women, and children and displaced at least two million more that were driven out from their homes to take refuge in the nearby jungle.
The UN gave a free hand to the well-armed Serbian thugs to commit mass murder, torture, rape, destruction and eviction from their homes under what was described as “ethnic cleansing”. The UN lost its credibility when it imposed an arms embargo and deprived the Bosnian Muslims to defend themselves.
While Bosnian Serbs were busy with their killing spree for three long years UN did nothing to stop the genocide and protect the Muslims.
Almost a week long Srebrenica massacre of approximately 10,000 Muslim men and boys and the torture, rape, and killing of many women and children, from July 12 through July 18, in and near the UN declared “safe area” remains one of the most horrifying events in recent European history.
Later admitting UN complicity UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan reiterated that Srebrenica massacre would haunt the world body forever. The 400 Dutch troops who were guarding Srebrenica’s Muslim victims looked the other way, while the UN rejected appeals for air strikes by NATO to halt their advance.
“The victims had put their trust in international protection. But we, the international community, let them down”, said a message from former European Union foreign policy Chief Javier Solana. “This was a colossal, collective and shameful failure”.
Matt Frei-30 NOV 2017Europe Editor and Presenter Joining us now to debate the issue is Nicola Byrne, President of the Irish Exporters Association, Editor of Brexit Central, Jonathan Isaby, Senator Neale Richmond, Brexit spokesperson for Fine Gael – Ireland’s ruling party, Jennifer Kavanagh is a law lecturer at the Waterford Institute of Technology, Deputy Editor of Belfast based, News Letter, Ben Lowry and Ray Bassett is the former Irish Ambassador to Canada.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Horst Seehofer, the head of the Bavarian Christian Social Union (CSU) arrive for talks hosted by German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier (R) with the leader of the Social Democrats (SPD) Martin Schulz, in Schloss Bellevue in Berlin, Germany, November 30, 2017. REUTERS/Guido Bergmann/BPA/Handout via REUTERS
BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany’s Social Democrat (SPD) Foreign Minister said on Thursday that his party would not be quick to agree to another grand coalition with Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives, as party leaders met with the president in a bid to end political deadlock.
Merkel is casting around for a coalition partner after her centre-right bloc shed support to the far right in a Sept. 24 election. Her attempts to form a three-way tie-up with the pro-business Free Democrats (FDP) and the Greens failed.
The SPD, which saw its participation in a Merkel-led coalition government from 2013-17 rewarded with its worst election result in German post-war history, had been strongly opposed to another “grand coalition”.
But under pressure from Germany’s President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, SPD leader Martin Schulz has signalled willingness to discuss a way out of the political impasse.
SPD Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel told broadcaster ZDF no one should expect his party - still ruling with the conservatives in a caretaker government - to immediately agree to join another grand coalition now that talks to form a three-way ‘Jamaica’ alliance have failed.
“We’re now in a process orchestrated by the president, in which we first need to look at what the possibilities are but no one can expect it to go quickly,” he said, adding that it was up to the conservatives to show what they wanted.
“The conservatives, Greens and FDP took months to get nothing off ground so I’d ask people not to put pressure on us,” Gabriel said, adding that the conservatives needed to make clear what they wanted.
Senior conservative and chancellery chief Peter Altmaier told ZDF the conservatives and SPD had presided over four years of economic prosperity and the SPD needed to decide if it would give that up or reconsider its decision to go into opposition.
”We’re making the case for that because we think one of our trademarks, alongside ‘Made in Germany’, is ‘Stability Made in Germany’, Altmaier said.
The leader of the Social Democrats (SPD) Martin Schulz (R) arrives for talks hosted by German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier (L) with Chancellor Angela Merkel and Horst Seehofer, the head of the Bavarian Christian Social Union (CSU) in Schloss Bellevue in Berlin, Germany, November 30, 2017. REUTERS/Guido Bergmann/BPA/Handout via REUTERS
He added that many people expected Germany to manage to form a government, adding: “Everyone has to live up to that.”
Steinmeier, a former SPD lawmaker and foreign minister, hosted a meeting on Thursday that lasted just over two hours between Merkel, her Bavarian conservative ally Horst Seehofer and Schulz, as part of his efforts to facilitate the formation of a stable government.
The parties are all due to hold high-level meetings on Friday to discuss how to proceed. Sources in the SPD said all options would be discussed - ranging from a re-run of the grand coalition with the conservatives to new elections.
Merkel is set to hold a telephone conference with senior party members on Friday to discuss the meeting with Steinmeier but the conservatives do not expect the SPD to agree to official coalition talks until after its party congress next week.
Almost two-thirds of Germans, surveyed between Nov.22 and Nov.27, want the SPD to start talks with the conservatives on forming another coalition of the centre-right and centre-left, an Allensbach poll showed.
MINORITY GOVERNMENT?
The atmosphere has been soured by the decision of the conservative agriculture minister to back a European Union proposal to extend the use of a weedkiller for another five years - a measure opposed by the SPD. In reaction, SPD members have called for compensation and set various policy conditions.
German Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere, a conservative, told reporters a stable government was urgently needed to move ahead on security priorities such as hiring more police.
He told the Frankfurter Allgemeine newspaper that the conservatives were trying to form a stable government with the SPD, if the SPD would agree. He added: “Only if this attempt fails do we need to think about other steps - not now.”
FDP leader Christian Lindner, who walked out of attempts to form the ‘Jamaica’ alliance, told newspaper Rheinische Post a grand coalition would be “more stable and more advantageous” than a Jamaica tie-up.The business wing of Merkel’s Christian Democrats called on Merkel to “seriously consider” a minority government, warning that another grand coalition would only be possible for the price of “even more unaffordable promises” in social policy.\
Additional reporting by Andrea Shalal, Andreas Rinke, Michael Nienaber and Holger Hansen; Writing by Michelle Martin; editing by Matthew Mpoke Bigg and Rosalba O'Brien
Prosecutors say Chinese hackers from a mysterious cybersecurity firm stole corporate secrets from three big firms.
A U.S. flag is adjusted ahead of a news conference between U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Beijing on Jan. 27, 2016. (Jacquelyn Martin/AFP/Getty Images)
Prosecutors in the United States this week quietly outed what appears to be a Chinese state-linked hacking ring, an escalation in Washington’s campaign to pressure China over its trade practices and efforts to steal intellectual property from U.S. firms.
In an indictment unsealed on Monday, federal prosecutors in Pittsburgh allege that a trio of Chinese nationals and their cybersecurity firm Boyusec hacked three companies — industrial giant Siemens, the economic analysis firm Moody’s, and the GPS navigation company Trimble — and made off with sensitive company documents.
The indictment names Wu Yingzhuo, Dong Hao, and Xia Lei. The first two are co-founders of Boyusec, while Xia was an employee. With prosecutors scrutinizing the firm, the Wall Street Journalreported Wednesday that Boyusec disbanded earlier this month.
Prosecutors made no mention in court documents of any links between Boyusec and the Chinese state, a departure from a high-profile case in 2014 from the same office that publicly linked alleged hackers to Chinese government ministries. Then, the local FBI office drew up wanted posters of the Chinese army hackers and published photographs of the accused in their army uniforms.
But a trove of public evidence and research by private security firms strongly suggests that Boyusec is an affiliate of China’s powerful Ministry of State Security and appears to operate as a cover for cyber-espionage.
“There has been a lot of accumulated evidence that these guys are tied to the state,” said John Hultquist, the director of analysis for the computer security firm FireEye.
Despite the seemingly clear links between Boyusec and the Ministry of State Security, American officials have described the case as a routine criminal prosecution rather than one that implicates a Chinese intelligence agency.
“The indictment makes no allegations regarding state sponsorship,” said Justice Department spokesman Wyn Hornbuckle, who added that prosecutors only “included the allegations that we are prepared to prove in court with admissible evidence.”
There could be several reasons for a cautious approach from the department. The evidence linking Boyusec to the Chinese government could be weak, or too sensitive, to reveal in open court. At the same time, Washington and Beijing are trying to work together to rein in North Korea’s increasingly brazen weapons program, which could counsel a more cautious approach to naming and shaming. (U.S. and Chinese defense officials met Wednesday.)
Though fairly obscure, Boyusec was known to U.S. officials. In November 2016, a Defense Department intelligence assessment reportedly concluded that Boyusec was close to the Ministry of State Security and that it was working with the tech giant Huawei to “produce security products that will be loaded into Chinese-manufactured computer and telephone equipment,” according to the Washington Free Beacon.
“The doctored products will allow Chinese intelligence to capture data and control computer and telecommunications equipment,” the paper reported, citing anonymous officials. Pentagon officials did not respond to questions this week about the report.
In May, an anonymous blogger under the moniker “intrusiontruth” publicly named Wu and Dong and described Boyusec as a contractor for Chinese intelligence. In a series of blog posts, the anonymous author used a series of domain name registrations to identify Boyusec’s founders and to tie them to a hacking outfit known as APT3.
The security firm Recorded Future quickly chimed in with research of its own and backed the anonymous blogger’s conclusions. The firm concluded that Boyusec is a part of APT3 (for “advanced persistent threat”) and has worked as a contractor for China’s Ministry of State Security.
Security researchers use the term “APT3” as a moniker for a set of techniques, computer code, and hacking activity tied to a Chinese actor. It remains unclear whether Boyusec and its founders make up the entirety of the hacking operation known as APT3 or whether the firm is merely one component of APT3.
APT3 has been active since at least 2010, using valuable hacking exploits known as “zero days” to penetrate corporate targets and even the computers of Chinese dissidents.
“Many targeted organizations in the commercial sector were consistent with the stated research and development goals of the Chinese state,” Hultquist said. The group’s targets include defense firms and companies with advanced commercial technologies that could serve Beijing’s economic and military modernization agendas.
Going after political dissidents offers additional indications of state involvement, Hultquist said. “When you target dissidents you get a good idea of who you’re dealing with,” he said.
Chinese officials denied this week that they knowingly allowed APT3 and Boyusec to operate from its shores. “China firmly opposes and cracks down hard on all forms of cyberattacks in accordance with the law,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang toldreporters.
Still, U.S. reticence to call out Chinese state responsibility for the hacks represents something of a departure from the approach begun in that 2014 case, which was seen as a shot across the bow of Chinese state-sponsored hackers and a watershed moment for U.S. law enforcement. In 2015, Presidents Barack Obama and Xi Jinping reached a landmark agreement in which they pledged not to carry out economic espionage for commercial gain, though Beijing seems not to be fully honoring the pact.
Hornbuckle, the Justice Department spokesman, said U.S. officials sought Beijing’s assistance but “received no meaningful response” and decided to go public with the indictment.
David Hickton, the former U.S. attorney in Pittsburgh who oversaw the 2014 investigation, said Monday’s indictment represents the “continuation of the campaign we started” to “apply law to the digital space.”
“In a global economy, we have to protect innovation and research and development,” said Hickton, who now directs the University of Pittsburgh’s Institute for Cyber Law, Policy, and Security. “We can’t let it be taken by cyber means.”
Former utilities executive Stacey Pomrenke enters the federal courthouse in Abingdon, Va., with her husband and then-Judge Kurt Pomrenke before her sentencing on corruption charges in August 2016. Kurt Pomrenke’s contacts with witnesses in the case resulted in his expulsion from the bench. His wife is now in prison. (Andre Teague/Bristol Herald Courier)
This post has been updated to reflect Pomrenke’s sentencing on Thursday. By Tom JackmanNovember 30 at 5:55 AM
A juvenile and domestic relations judge in southwest Virginia was removed from the bench Monday by the Virginia Supreme Court, effective immediately, after he admitted contacting two key witnesses in a pending federal corruption case against his wife.
Kurt J. Pomrenke, 64, was elected to the bench in 2013 to oversee juvenile and domestic court cases in Washington and Smyth counties and Bristol City along the Virginia-Tennessee border. He is only the second Virginia judge in the past 23 years to be removed by the state Supreme Court, court records show, with the other being a juvenile and domestic judge who resolved some visitation issues with a coin flip.
Pomrenke also has been found guilty of contempt of court by a federal judge in Bristol in connection with his wife’s case and on Thursday was sentenced to two months in prison and ordered to pay the maximum allowable fine of $1,000. His wife, Stacey Pomrenke, a former chief financial officer of Bristol Virginia Utilities, is serving a 34-month prison sentence on multiple charges of conspiracy, extortion and wire fraud, as well as contempt of court, in part for her husband’s contact with potential witnesses in the case.
Kurt Pomrenke, in a hearing before the state Judicial Inquiry and Review Commission, which handles complaints against judges, conceded that his actions were wrong and violated the state Canons of Judicial Conduct. The canons require judges to “uphold the integrity and independence of the judiciary” and to “avoid impropriety and the appearance of impropriety in all of the judge’s activities.” Pomrenke suggested that he only be censured, but the Supreme Court thought his actions were “particularly damaging to the integrity of the judicial process and the confidence of the citizens of the Commonwealth that a sitting judge in the Commonwealth would attempt to improperly influence two potential witnesses in his wife’s federal criminal trial.”
Pomrenke did not respond to a request for comment. His attorney, John E. Lichtenstein, said in a statement that Pomrenke was “disappointed but respects the action of the Supreme Court of Virginia.”
“He will assess his position, but his focus now is on the needs of his family,” Lichtenstein said in the statement. “He is, and will always be, deeply grateful for the opportunity to have served the Juvenile and Domestic Relations District Court in the 28th Judicial District.”
Pomrenke’s downfall began with the 2015 indictment of his wife on 15 corruption-related counts. She had been the chief financial officer of the city’s electric, water and sewer utility since 2003, and prosecutors alleged that she pressured BVU’s vendors for tickets to ballgames and auto races, money to pay for BVU employee parties, awarded bonuses to BVU employees without reporting them for tax purposes, and other executive chicanery. Her husband, a judge and former BVU board member, was granted access to pre-trial discovery in the case over the government’s objection.
The thank-you note and business card sent by then-Judge Kurt Pomrenke to a potential witness in the case against his wife. (U.S. District Court)
Three weeks after his wife’s indictment, Pomrenke sent a handwritten note to her boss, the BVU chief executive Donald L. Bowman, with his business card included in a “thank you” envelope. “I just wanted to sincerely thank you for your kindness and understanding support for Stacey during these horrible times,” Kurt Pomrenke wrote. “It is horrible what our government is doing to her. She will be proven innocent.”
Bowman is a lawyer and had been cooperating with the widely publicized investigation of corruption at BVU, and had made his cooperation known in the news media, the Supreme Court noted. He was shocked to receive the note from Pomrenke, and drove directly to the U.S. attorney’s office in Abingdon, Va., to show it to them. This note, and an email that Stacey Pomrenke sent to five friends asking for their support, caused prosecutors to try to revoke her bond, which the judge denied. Instead, U.S. District Judge James P. Jones charged her with contempt of court for attempted witness tampering. He later found her guilty of this, and added two months to her 32-month corruption sentence in August 2016.
Next, on the eve of his wife’s trial in February 2016, then-Judge Pomrenke left a voicemail for a BVU employee expected to testify during the trial. “Hey, Connie, this is Kurt,” the judge said, according to the Supreme Court. “Um, when you’re testifying in that trial there might be a couple of things that you could do that would really help Stacey. If you could kinda slip in when you have a chance just little remarks like how Stacey did a great job, or Stacey was the one that took care of the employees … just something like that even though it’s not directly in response to the questions.”
That didn’t sit too well with Jones.
Bowman didn’t end up testifying in the trial but the employee, Connie Moffatt, did. The jury convicted Stacey Pomrenke on 14 of 15 charges, and three days later the judge directed the government to prosecute her for contempt of court, based on both email and her husband’s contacts with Bowman and Moffatt.
Meanwhile, a complaint was filed with the judicial review commission against Kurt Pomrenke. The judge responded with a three-page letter to the commission explaining his actions, claiming that he and his wife “had no idea of Bowman’s close continuing relationship with the prosecutors.” He then attached an email written by Bowman that he said was received in his wife’s pretrial discovery, even though he had been ordered not to disclose any of that material to anyone.
This caused federal prosecutors to file a motion in July asking for Pomrenke to be held in contempt of court for disclosing the discovery materials. Jones convicted him in September of willfully violating the order not to disclose. “As a lawyer and judge,” Jones said, according to Virginia Lawyer’s Weekly, “Judge Pomrenke had the maturity, knowledge and legal experience to understand the necessity to obey court orders.” He faces a maximum penalty of six months in jail and a fine of up to $1,000 at sentencing Thursday, though jail seems unlikely.
The state Supreme Court then took up a finding from the judicial review commission that Pomrenke had violated the judicial canons, and had admitted it. “We cannot escape the conclusion,” wrote Chief Justice Donald W. Lemons, “that having a sitting judge who apparently attempted to manipulate trial testimony would tend to impair public confidence in the integrity and impartiality of not only that judge, but also that of all the other members of the judiciary, and our entire system of justice. … We conclude that Judge Pomrenke’s actions are of sufficient gravity to warrant removal.”
L. Steven Emmert, an appellate lawyer who writes about Virginia’s appeals courts, said, “The word that comes to mind is unthinkable. It’s something that any judge with a good sense of propriety should know is wrong.” Emmert said that “if the only issue had been the note to the boss [Bowman], the Supreme Court might have let him off.” But the voicemail to the woman who actually did testify was too much, he said.
Pomrenke’s removal leaves only two judges to hear all of the juvenile and domestic cases in two counties and Bristol City, and cases he was currently hearing would be distributed to them. Emmert said the circuit court could appoint a temporary successor, who could either be replaced or elected by the General Assembly next year, or it could leave the spot open until the General Assembly elects a successor, who probably wouldn’t take the bench until spring, at the earliest.
The court’s opinion terminating Pomrenke’s judgeship is below:
Class struggle is back as the main determining factor of our political life – even if the stakes appear to be totally different, from humanitarian crises to ecological threats, class struggle lurks in the background and casts its ominous shadow
by Slavoj Zizek-
( November 28, 2017, London, Sri Lanka Guardian) Sometimes, the best way to appreciate a piece of news is to read it alongside another piece of news – only such a confrontation enables us to discern the true stakes of a debate.
Let’s take reactions to one incisive text: in the summer of 2017, David Wallace-Wells published the essay titled “Uninhabitable Earth” which immediately became a legend. It clearly and systematically describes all the threats to our survival, from global warming to the prospect of a billion climate refugees, and wars and chaos all this will cause.
Rather than focusing on the predictable reactions to this text (accusations of scaremongering and so on), one should read it together with two facts linked to the situation it describes.
First, there is, of course, Trump’s outright denial of ecological threats; then, there is the obscene fact that billionaires (and millionaires) who otherwise support Trump are nonetheless getting ready for the apocalypse by investing into luxury underground shelters where they will be able to survive isolated for up to a year, provided with fresh vegetables, fitness centres, and everything else you could possibly imagine.
Another example is a text by Bernie Sanders and a piece of news about him which just hit the press. Recently, Sanders wrote an incisive comment on the Republican budget where the title tells it all: “The Republican budget is a gift to billionaires: it’s Robin Hood in reverse.” The text is clearly written, full of convincing facts and insights – so why didn’t it find more echo?
We should read it alongside the media report about the outrage which exploded when Sanders was announced as an opening night speaker at the upcoming Women’s Convention in Detroit. Critics claimed it was bad to let Sanders, a man, speak at a convention devoted to the political advancement of women’s rights. No matter that he was to be just one of the two men among 60 speakers, with no transgender speakers (a fact that was apparently accepted as unproblematic.)
Lurking beneath this outrage was, of course, the reaction of the Clinton wing of the Democratic Party to Sanders: its uneasiness with Sanders’s leftist critique of today’s global capitalism. When Sanders emphasises economic problems, he is accused of “vulgar” class reductionism.
So should we conclude from all this that our task is to depose Trump as soon as possible? When Dan Quayle, not exactly famous for his high IQ, was Vice President to Bush Senior, a joke was running around according to which the FBI had a secret order what to do if Bush dies: to kill Quayle immediately.
Let’s hope the FBI has the that same order for Mike Pence in the case of Trump’s death or impeachment – Pence is, if anything, much worse than Trump, a true Christian conservative.
What makes the Trump movement minimally interesting is its inconsistencies – recall that Steve Bannon not only opposes Trump’s tax plan but openly advocates raising taxes for the rich up to 40 per cent, plus argues saving banks with public money as “socialism for the rich” – surely not something Pence likes to hear.
Steve Bannon recently declared war, but against whom? Not against Democrats from Wall Street, not against liberal intellectuals or any other usual suspects but against the Republican Party establishment itself. After Trump fired him from the White House, he is fighting for Trump’s mission at its purest, even if it is sometimes against Trump himself – let’s not forget that Trump is basically destroying the Republican Party.
Bannon aims to lead a populist revolt of underprivileged people against the elites – he is taking Trump’s message of a government by and for the people more literally than Trump himself dares to do. That’s why Bannon is worth his weight in gold: he is a permanent reminder of the antagonism that cuts across the Republican Party.
The first conclusion we are compelled to draw from this strange predicament is that class struggle is back as the main determining factor of our political life – a determining factor in the good old Marxist sense of “determination in the last instance”: even if the stakes appear to be totally different, from humanitarian crises to ecological threats, class struggle lurks in the background and casts its ominous shadow.
The second conclusion is that class struggle is less and less directly transposed into the struggle between political parties, and more and more a struggle which takes place within each big political party.
In the US, class struggle cuts across the Republican Party (the Party establishment versus Bannon-like populists) and across the Democratic Party (the Clinton wing versus the Sanders movement).
We should, of course, never forget that Bannon is the beacon of the alt-right while Clinton supports many progressive causes like fights against racism and sexism. However, at the same time we should never forget that the LGBT+ struggle can also be coopted by the mainstream liberalism against “class essentialism” of the left.
The third conclusion thus concerns the left’s strategy in this complex situation. While any pact between Sanders and Bannon is excluded for obvious reasons, a key element of the left’s strategy should be to ruthlessly exploit division in the enemy camp and fight for Bannon followers.
To cut a long story short, there is no victory of the left without the broad alliance of all anti-establishment forces. One should never forget that our true enemy is the global capitalist establishment and not the new populist right which is merely a reaction to its impasses.
Last month, Saudi Arabia expanded its repertoire of ludicrous antics by bestowing citizenshipupon a robot named Sophia - a move presumably meant to augment the veneer of modernity and progress the tyrannical Saudi authorities strive to maintain.
In a recent interview with the Khaleej Times, an Emirati newspaper, Sophia speculated that "it might be possible to make [robots] more ethical than humans" and that there are only two options for the future: "Either creativity will rain on us, inventing machines spiralling into transcendental super intelligence[,] or civilisation collapses."
Granted, many members of the global human population are presently grappling with far more mundane issues - such as how to survive under Saudi-led bombardment and blockade, as happens to be the case in neighbouring Yemen. There, residents might be forgiven for assuming civilisation had already collapsed.
Forget rains of creativity: the Saudis and their partners in crime have instead rained destruction on Yemen, in addition to presiding over an impending famine. Instrumental to the war effort is the United Arab Emirates, a territory that similarly seeks to conceal its brutal essence behind a facade of modern development, flashy buildings and malls with ski slopes.
Other bellicose contributions have come from further afield. The New Yorker magazine notesthat "Saudi armed forces, backed by more than $40 billion in American arms shipments authorised by the Trump and Obama administrations, have killed thousands of civilians in air strikes" in Yemen.
But back to the famine - since, after all, nothing says modernity and progress like inflicting mass starvation.
Consider, for example, the words of fourth-century Roman military expert Vegetius, who was clearly very cutting-edge 17 or so centuries ago: "It is preferable to subdue an enemy by famine, raids and terror, than in battle where fortune tends to have more influence than bravery."
The increase of the infectious disease is slowing, but still infecting around 5,000 people a day (AFP)
Nazis' 'hunger plan'
More recent wartimes have also seen hunger wielded as a weapon. In a June 2017 essay for the London Review of Books titled "The Nazis Used It, We Use It," Alex de Waal catalogues the reliance on starvation as an "effective instrument of mass murder" in World War II. While "forced starvation" was, of course, "one of the instruments of the Holocaust," the Nazis had also devised a "hunger plan" for swathes of the Soviet Union in accordance with German agri-territorial designs.
(Interestingly, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman also likes to talk about Nazis on occasion - as when he told New York Times foreign affairs columnist-cum-one-man-Saudi-PR-firm Thomas Friedman that Iran's supreme leader Ali Khamenei is "the new Hitler of the Middle East", and that "we don't want the new Hitler in Iran to repeat what happened in Europe in the Middle East.")
The Nazis, meanwhile, were hardly the only 20th-century profiteers from famine. De Waal writes that "about 750,000 German civilians died of hunger" courtesy of Britain's blockade of Germany during World War I, and that "the name chosen for the aerial mining of Japanese harbours in 1945 by the US Air Force was Operation Starvation."
For Saudi & Co, US complicity in criminal endeavours is pretty much assured so long as Saudi oil revenues continue to translate into big bucks for the US arms industry
As for more contemporary instances of depriving civilian populations of necessary survival materials, the UN sanctions against Iraq of the early 1990s come to mind - as does the 1996 response by then-US ambassador to the UN Madeleine Albright to estimates that half a million Iraqi children had died because of them: "We think the price is worth it."
Not everyone agreed - as was clear in a December 1995 New York Times article about a report compiled by two US-based scientists for the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation. The report dealt with the impact of sanctions, such as a drastic increase in Iraqi children "affected by 'wasting', or emaciation requiring urgent attention."
The Times article quotes the report's authors: "The United Nations humanitarian arm offers palliatives for the alleviation of suffering while the UN Security Council is intent on continuing the sanctions."
Weaponised journalism
Flash forward to 2017 and the UN's urgent warnings regarding the imminence of catastrophic famine affecting millions in Yemen, and one can't help but suspect that Sophia is probably right about the superior ethics of robots.
And just when it seemed the panorama couldn't get any bleaker, the Saudi-led Islamic Military Counter Terrorism Coalition - an alliance of 40 countries - has apparently detected a golden opportunity in Friday’s deadly attack on an Egyptian mosque.
Reuters reports that, at a Sunday meeting in Riyadh of coalition defence officials to “galvanise” the “counterterror” entity, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman announced that the attack in Egypt was "a very painful occurrence" and that "[t]he biggest threat from terrorism and extremism is not only killing innocent people and spreading hate, but tarnishing the reputation of our religion and distorting our belief."
Fair enough points - but perhaps they'd be more effectively made by someone not currently terrorising Yemen.
Luckily for Saudi & Co, US complicity in criminal endeavours is pretty much assured so long as Saudi oil revenues - not to mention contributions to regional chaos - continue to translate into big bucks for the US arms industry.
Assisting the US political establishment, meanwhile, is an obsequious media that enjoys portraying the Saudi royals as innovative and reform-minded pioneers.
In his way-too-long write-up of his exclusive interview with Mohammed bin Salman, the aforementioned Friedman manages a single mention of Yemen, which he reduces to "a humanitarian nightmare" rather than the direct work of human beings whom Friedman is whitewashing.
This is the same Friedman, of course, who once determined that "the problem with Saudi Arabia is not that it has too little democracy. It's that it has too much".
His other dubious feats include prescribing a "new rule of thumb" after chewing qat in the Yemeni capital in 2010: "For every Predator missile we fire at an Al-Qaeda target here, we should help Yemen build 50 new modern schools."
Unfortunately, weaponised journalism doesn't appear to be going out of style. And as Yemen now prepares for 21st-century starvation, ethical famine, too, is raging.
- Belen Fernandez is the author of The Imperial Messenger: Thomas Friedman at Work, published by Verso. She is a contributing editor at Jacobin magazine.
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.
Photo: Saida Ahmad Baghili, an 18-year-old Yemeni woman pictured in October, is a victim of malnutrition (AFP)
Pope's Myanmar speech avoids reference to Rohingya - BBC News
Before his speech Pope Francis met Myanmar's leader Aung San Suu Kyi
28 November 2017
Pope Francis has delivered a keynote speech in Myanmar, demanding "respect for each ethnic group" but without referring specifically to its Muslim Rohingya community.
Rights groups had urged the Pope to use the term to back the community.
However, the Catholic Church in the country had told him the term could cause difficulties for Catholics.
Myanmar has been accused of ethnic cleansing, with 620,000 Rohingya fleeing to Bangladesh since August.
Myanmar's government rejects the term Rohingya, labelling the community "Bengalis". It says they migrated illegally from Bangladesh so should not be listed as one of the country's ethnic groups.
Although he made no direct reference to the Rohingya, the Pope's speech was a strong defence of ethnic rights.
He said: "The future of Myanmar must be peace, a peace based on respect for the dignity and rights of each member of society, respect for each ethnic group and its identity, respect for the rule of law, and respect for a democratic order that enables each individual and every group - none excluded - to offer its legitimate contribution to the common good."
Media captionPope Francis is welcomed on his arrival in Myanmar
Francis said Myanmar's greatest treasure was its people and that they had "suffered greatly, and continue to suffer, from civil conflict and hostilities that have lasted all too long and created deep divisions".
"As the nation now works to restore peace, the healing of those wounds must be a paramount political and spiritual priority."
He added: "Religious differences need not be a source of division and distrust, but rather a force for unity, forgiveness, tolerance and wise nation-building."
Francis has used the term Rohingya in the past, in support of what he has termed his Rohingya "brothers and sisters".
Some were upset at his refusal to do so again.
"We are very much disappointed that he did not mention the Rohingya crisis," activist Mohammad Zubair told the AFP news agency from Kutupalong refugee camp in Bangladesh.
Amnesty International also said it was "disappointing"- though it did applaud his calls for respect toward all ethnic groups.
"Pope Francis' visit has also helped focus international attention on Myanmar and the horrific crimes being carried out against the Rohingya people on a daily basis by Myanmar authorities," its deputy campaign director for the region, Ming Yu Hah, said.
The BBC's Jonathan Head, in Yangon, says the Pope has also met a senior ultra-nationalist Buddhist monk and the armed forces commander, and his comments there may have been more forthright.
After meeting the pope on Monday, military chief Gen Min Aung Hlaing claimed "there is no discrimination between ethnic groups in Myanmar". Amnesty called his comments "the real scandal of the visit".
Before his speech, Pope Francis held talks with Myanmar's de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi.
In her speech, Ms Suu Kyi also made no direct reference to the Rohingya Muslims.
However, she accepted the situation in Rakhine state had "most strongly captured the attention of the world".
Media captionRohingya girls say they were forced into sex work in Bangladesh
She said that "social, economic and political" issues had "eroded trust and understanding, harmony and co-operation between different communities in Rakhine".
Ms Suu Kyi has been criticised for her lack of action over the issue. On Monday, the Nobel Peace Prize winner was stripped of the Freedom of the English city of Oxford, with local councillors saying they no longer wished to honour those who turned a blind eye to violence.
The 80-year-old Pope is on the second day of a four-day visit to the country.
In an earlier 40-minute meeting in Yangon with leaders of the Buddhist, Islamic, Hindu, Jewish and Christian faiths, the Pope also made no direct reference to the Rohingya, according to Vatican officials who gave a briefing on the meeting.
29 November 2017
The increase of the infectious disease is slowing, but still infecting around 5,000 people a day (AFP)
