Mexican president: Mexico has more democracy than US

Mexico's president says his country is more democratic than the United States

Via AP news wire

Mexico President
(Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved)

Mexico’s president said Tuesday his country is more democratic than the United States.

President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s testy comments came after U.S. officials took note of heated public debate in Mexico over López Obrador’s recently approved electoral reforms, which critics allege could weaken Mexico's democracy. The reforms would cut spending for the country’s electoral authorities.

López Obrador angrily rejected any U.S. comment, even though U.S. State Department spokesman Ned Price was careful to say in a statement Monday that “We respect Mexico’s sovereignty.”

The Mexican president responded “there is more democracy in Mexico than could exist in the United States.”

“If they want to have a debate on this issue, let's do it," López Obrador said pugnaciously. "I have evidence to prove there is more liberty and democracy in our country.”

The Mexican president is notoriously touchy about criticism, whether it comes from human rights groups, non-governmental organizations, the press, or Mexican regulatory or oversight agencies.

Price said in a statement that “Today, in Mexico, we see a great debate on electoral reforms on the independence of electoral and judicial institutions that illustrates Mexico’s vibrant democracy."

"We respect Mexico’s sovereignty. We believe that a well-resourced, independent electoral system and respect for judicial independence support healthy democracy.”

At the root of the conflict are plans by López Obrador, which were approved last week by Mexico’s Senate, to cut salaries and funding for local election offices, and scale back training for citizens who operate and oversee polling stations. The changes would also reduce sanctions for candidates who fail to report campaign spending.

López Obrador denies the reforms are a threat to democracy and says criticism is elitist. He argues that the funds would be better spent on the poor.

Tens of thousands of people demonstrated over the weekend in Mexico City’s main plaza, calling the cuts a threat to democracy.

Xi Jinping bans ‘Western’ concepts from schools

Constitutional government, separation of powers and independence of the judiciary are now out. Previously, a directive had been issued encouraging students to report on teachers who deviate from the Communist Party line. Chinese liberals are a persecuted minority. Xi wants to promote China's ideological model in the world.


Beijing (AsiaNews) – Chinese President Xi Jinping has launched a campaign to ban Western democratic ideas from the country’s education system.

To this end, schools have been ordered to “oppose and resist Western erroneous views” such as constitutional government, separation of powers, and judicial independence.

On Sunday, the General Office of the Communist Party of China (CPC) issued new directives, ordering teachers and students to follow the legal principles laid down by the Party and its General Secretary, Xi.

The order comes a week before the National People's Congress, China’s parliament, holds its annual meeting, which also marks the start of Xi’s third term in office.

This is not the first time that the CPC has issued directives of this kind. Communist authorities already encourage students to report on teachers who praise Western forms of governance.

Now the regime wants the CPC’s education policy to be fully implemented in schools. People should be educated "for the Party and the country” and observe a “socialist rule of law”.

In China, most people have accepted total control of the state by the Party in exchange for improved economic conditions. Liberals are a clear minority, persecuted by the government.

Reformist academics like He Weifang, Xu Zhiyong, and Xu Zhangrun have ended up in prison or lost their jobs because they called for the implementation of the rule of law in China (in its true, liberal democratic version), with freedom of the press, an independent judiciary, and the protection of human and workers’ rights .

China’s constitution mentions respect for individual freedoms, including freedom of religion, but everything is subordinated to the supreme interests of the CPC.

It now seems that Xi, who is both CPC general secretary and the country’s president, also wants to promote China's ideological model to developing nations.

In a recent speech at the Party school, he said that China offers a new path for human progress and that "modernisation" is not synonymous with “Westernisation”.

Aleppo Marist: earthquake 'tragedy for all', Syrians 'discriminated' in aid

Nabil Antaki, a doctor in Aleppo, slams Western sanctions that have led to a different emergency response in Syria and Turkey. People "are desperate"; the displaced need of a roof. In the early stages, machinery and rescue teams that did not come could have saved lives. For Europe and the United States, this is a disgrace.

Aleppo (AsiaNews) – Nabil Antaki is a Christian doctor specialised in gastroenterology. For years, he has been directly involved in relief work for the victims of Syria’s brutal civil war. Three years ago, he turned his attention to helping people when the COVID-19 pandemic broke out; now he is grappling with the impact of the 6 February earthquake. He spoke to AsiaNews about the latter.

“After the first, devastating shock,” he said, “hundreds of thousands of people took refuge in churches, mosques, schools, and public gardens because their homes had collapsed or had been seriously damaged, or just out of fear. Today, three weeks later, most shelters have closed.”

A lay member of the order of Marist friars, he is one of the few doctors to remain in Aleppo after the start of the civil war.

At present, “The people of Aleppo are desperate,” he said. “In the last 12 years they have experienced non-stop tragedies, one after the other: the war, the economic crisis, COVID-19, a cholera epidemic, and now the earthquake.”

In the first two weeks, it was a rush to find food, blankets, mattresses amid “absolute emergency.” Now, “the primary work is fixing damaged buildings, rebuilding those razed to the ground; and, above all, guaranteeing a roof to the thousands of families who lost their homes.”

This is a huge task, given that in Turkey alone the earthquake caused US$ 34 billion in damages, this according to the World Bank.

Meanwhile, the combined death toll for the two countries has reached 51,000. in Syria though, estimating the real toll of the quake is difficult because the country is controlled by different groups.

Reconstruction depends on what will happen wilt international sanctions against Syria.

"Even before the earthquake, poverty and economic crisis were the consequence of sanctions, which blocked investment,” Dr Antaki explained.

“The UN estimates that about 82 per cent of the population lives below the poverty line. At present, we don't have digging machinery or rescue teams equipped to search under the rubble and many died because we could not look for them, and help."

Altogether, in addition to the damages caused by the quake and by the war, sanctions against the Syrian regime will weigh heavily in the future.

Necessities like bread, gas, fuel, electricity are in short supply; motorists, for example, can have 25 litres of petrol every 20 days, electricity is available for two hours a day.

"People are desperate, so much so that today we often hear that 'we lived better during the worst years of the war, under bombs and sniper fire,’ and 'we regret not having emigrated' in the two-year period, 2015-2016, when it was easier to leave.”

Today hope is also in short supply. “There is no light at the end of the tunnel and the only consolation comes from the huge generosity and solidarity of Syrians in the diaspora, whose help and support is unique.”

Christian NGOs are among the groups bringing help and support, providing housing, shelter in churches, food, clothing, electricity, starting with the Blue Marists of Aleppo who "took care of hundreds of Christian and Muslim families" in the first phase of the emergency.

"Now we are renting apartments for those who cannot return to their homes,” Dr Antaki noted. “Neither in the past nor in the present is there any confessional discrimination in providing aid; everyone is going through this tragedy, like the previous ones, in a spirit of total solidarity.”

For the doctor, whether in government-controlled Aleppo, or in Idlib, the only province still held by rebel and jihadi groups, or among Syrian refugees in Turkey (at least 1.7 million in the 11 provinces most affected by the earthquake), the “tragedy is the same for everyone.”.

What makes the difference are "the hundreds of planes that arrived in Turkey with aid, while none were sent to Syria for political reasons in the first hours after the quake. This is a source of shame for Europe and the United States. The response to people's suffering should have been separated from political and military issues.”

PAKISTAN

Supreme Court to hear case of Christian jailed for 21 years for blasphemy

by Shafique Khokhar

Anwar Kenneth was sentenced to death in Lahore in 2002 for defending Christianity against Islam in the weeks following the 9/11 attacks. After five court-appointed lawyers refused to defend him, one agreed to take up his case at the next hearing. For human rights advocates, defending one’s faith cannot be considered blasphemy.



AsiaNews (Lahore) – Anwar Kenneth, a Christian man from Lahore, has been on death row for 21 years following his conviction of blasphemy for defending Christianity in an exchange with a local Islamic leader in the aftermath of the attacks on 11 September 2001.

Anwar Kenneth’s odyssey is now before the Pakistani Supreme Court, which is expected to start deliberations on the matter tomorrow.

His legal troubles began when a complaint was filed against him on 25 September 2001 under the infamous Article 295c of the Pakistan Penal Code, the so-called blasphemy law.

The charge is based on a letter, the Christian man, a former Ministry of Fisheries employee, sent to Haji Mehmood Zafar, secretary of a Lahore mosque, who had written to him that, while Jesus is a prophet according to Islamic tradition, he neither died on a cross nor was resurrected.

In his reply, Anwar Kenneth argued that Muhammad was not the prophet and that the Qur'an was not the word of God. And, provocatively, he challenged his interlocutor to file a complaint for blasphemy, claiming that God would protect him.

Eventually, Anwar Kenneth went on trial on 18 July 2002, ending with a conviction, a fine of five million rupees, a death sentence, and immediate imprisonment. On 30 June 2014, the Lahore High Court upheld the court's verdict.

Anwar Kenneth has always refused to appoint his own lawyer claiming that God is his defence. Moreover, in 21 years, five court-appointed lawyers have refused to represent him in court.

On 24 January 2023, the Supreme Court asked the Bar Council to provide counsel to represent the defendant in the interests of criminal justice. A lawyer agreed, so the hearing is set for 1 March.

Joseph Jansen, president of Voice for Justice, spoke to AsiaNews about the case. “Religious freedom is a fundamental human right protected by national and international laws.”

Anwar Kenneth “is firm in his faith in Christianity, and his arguments and opinions should not be interpreted as an act of blasphemy.”

For Lawyer Abdul Hameed Rana, Anwar Kenneth is a devout believer and an innocent person. Like him, “There are billions of people in the world, who have their own religion and do not believe in Islam”.

None of them “are not liable to be prosecuted in any court of law for their beliefs.” Hence, “he must be acquitted as he has already spent 21 years of his life behind the bar for the offence he has never committed.”

For his part, activist Aneel Edger notes that the Supreme Court itself ruled in 2022 that depriving minorities of their religious beliefs and preventing them from professing and practising their religion is contrary to the Constitution of Pakistan.

Furthermore, written communication between two religious leaders who practise their respective faiths, Christian and Islamic, should not be interpreted as an act of blasphemy.

Tyre, policemen storm bank for non-payment of salaries

A group of policemen, like private citizens in the past, broke into an institution demanding the payment of their salaries. Behind the assaults was the freezing of current accounts, the economic crisis and the collapse of the local currency, which hit a new low yesterday. It has lost almost 90 per cent of its value since 2019.

Beirut (AsiaNews) - The economic crisis, the freezing of bank accounts and the gradual depreciation of the local currency, which yesterday recorded a new negative record, are pushing a growing number of Lebanese to the threshold of poverty, and of desperation.

Hence the decision to attack credit institutions in an attempt to recover part of their assets. Cases similar to this have become more and more frequent in recent times, with yesterday's assault by police officers in Tyre, in the south of the country, on a local branch of the General Corporation of the Bank of Lebanon, claiming payment of their salaries.

Protests continued throughout the country, with the lira hitting a new low, fuelling further discontent among the population. According to the National News Agency, this time ordinary citizens were also joined by a group of police officers - also frustrated at the non-payment of their monthly salary - who stormed the bank counters in an attempt to recover the money.

In the past year, the Land of Cedars has seen an escalation of armed robberies and assaults on banks, with citizens now exasperated by the economic collapse and restricted access to accounts. Widespread corruption, capital controls, the devaluation of the local currency, and the non-payment of the dollar portion of civil servants' salaries have fuelled the crisis.

Moreover, since the beginning of the crisis in 2019, the Lebanese lira has lost almost 90% of its value, prompting exasperated citizens to storm and burn banks and, the latter, to call a lockout at the beginning of the month that was only interrupted last week. In the crosshairs is the head of the Central Bank, Riad Salameh, himself accused of corruption and of embezzling millions in capital, so much so that he has ended up under investigation in France and Switzerland.

A judicial source, relayed by L'Orient Today, reports an 'investigation' against him to be opened shortly. An attempt to preserve the 'rights' of the Lebanese State to the assets that were allegedly - at least this is the accusation - misappropriated by the high official, although no further details are known at the moment and the investigators oppose secrecy.

In recent days, the Swiss daily SonntagsZeitung accused Salameh of having pocketed over 500 million dollars, deposited in at least 12 banks in Switzerland. He had been accused of undue gain last year, but the investigation never resulted in an interrogation and the suspect has always rejected the accusations.

 

Go to the Banks. Take What Is Rightfully Yours.’ Meet the Bank Robbers of Beirut | NYT Opinion

 Feb 28, 2023

A wave of armed bank robberies has been sweeping Lebanon amid its economic meltdown. But the heists have followed a highly unusual pattern: The robbers are the banks’ clients, and the money they have been demanding is the contents of their own accounts.

These thieves have been driven to such extraordinary lengths to get their savings because banks have imposed strict withdrawal limits to avoid collapse.

In the Opinion video above, Sali Hafiz, a Lebanese interior designer, describes how a health crisis in her family drove her to take up arms — actually, a toy pistol — and withdraw her money by force. But the film also argues that the true thieves are not citizens like Ms. Hafiz who are trying to get their hard-earned savings but, rather, corrupt financial and political leaders who have helped to run the economy into the ground.

Prosecutors from five European countries have been investigating Riad Salameh, the governor of Lebanon’s central bank, who has been accused of laundering public money in Europe. And last Thursday, The Associated Press reported, Lebanese prosecutors charged Mr. Salameh, his brother and an associate with embezzlement, forgery, money laundering, illicit enrichment and tax law violations.

texts

Expropriation

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Pëtr Kropotkin

Turkey expelled over 68,000 Afghan migrants in 2022

The recent shipwreck off Crotone put the spotlight on the eastern route into the European Union. Last year, Turkey expelled 120,000 people, including 12,000 Pakistanis. In Afghanistan, the situation has worsened since the Taliban came back in August 2021. Despite ongoing funding from the European Union, Turkey has failed to process asylum applications by Afghan refugees who arrive via Iran.

Milan (AsiaNews) – Last year, Turkey expelled some 120,000 asylum seekers, including 68,290 Afghans and 12,5001 Pakistanis, plus migrants from other countries deemed illegal, this according to its General Directorate of Migration Management.

As more tragedies strike the Mediterranean, public interest is rekindled in the eastern route that branches off on land (via Turkey, the Balkans, and Eastern Europe) and sea.

The latest episode took place a few days ago off the coast of Crotone, southern Italy, where a boat carrying migrants sank in rough seas; so far, the bodies of 60 people have been recovered, including some 20 Pakistani nationals.

Reacting to the incident, the Pakistani government ordered an official investigation into the smuggling networks operating in the country.

“A crackdown on the criminal network of human trafficking worldwide is the need of the hour,” said Minister for Overseas Pakistanis Sajid Hussain Turi.

“Since April 2022, over 600,000 people have been sent abroad for jobs,” he explained, urging his fellow citizens to be careful and “not to fall prey to human trafficking.”

Currently, Turkey hosts more than four million refugees, the highest number in the world, mostly Syrians (3.7 million) who fled the war that began in 2011, but also 322,000 registered asylum seekers from Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran and Somalia.

Under a 2016 agreement with the European Union, Turkey has pledged to take charge of refugees in the country with EU funds.

Between 2016 and 2019, the EU allocated more than € 8 billion (US$ 8.5 billion) in humanitarian aid through two different mechanisms to ensure that Turkey stopped migrants from entering its territory. Between 2020 and 2023, it paid out more than € 960 million (US$ 1 billion).

Yet, after all these years, the fate of refugees in Turkey continues to be heartbreaking. In early January, the Directorate General for Migration Management announced plans to expel another 5,000 Afghan migrants, like in 2022.

According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, more than 98 per cent of refugees in Turkey live outside refugee camps in difficult and often precarious circumstances.

Many refugee families have exhausted their financial resources, and believe that they have no choice but to resort to survival mechanisms such as child labour, street begging, or marrying off underage daughters.

Afghans are also abducted for ransom. As an AsiaNews source noted, “many people” die along the Afghan-Iranian and the Iranian-Turkish borders in a "desperate attempt" to start a new life away from the Taliban.

Several humanitarian groups have spoken out on the fate of Afghan refugees in Turkey. According to a Human Rights Watch report last year, Turkish authorities systematically expel or turn away Afghan refugees without processing their applications for international protection.

The situation is worse since the Taliban seized power in August 2021. Not only did they impose bans and restrictions on women, but they are hard-pressed to cope with a catastrophic humanitarian situation with more than 90 per cent of the population living below the poverty line.

In Afghanistan, attacks by the local branch of the Islamic State group,[*] abductions of former government officials, and revenge killings by the Taliban have also increased.

In October last year, the General Directorate of Migration Management said it had prevented 238,448 "irregular migrants" from entering the country in 2022.

[*] Islamic State-Khorasan Province, IS-KP.

Iraqi Kurdistan’s KDP and PUK reach deal on election related issues

Published: February 28, 2023

AuthorEditorial Staff

HEWLÊR-Erbil, Iraqi Kurdistan region,— Zana Khalid, the head of the Kurdistan Democratic Party’s (KDP) bloc in Iraqi Kurdistan region parliament, and Luqman Wardi, the deputy head of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan’s (PUK) bloc, announced that they have resolved most of their disagreements over election issues.

The two rival parties during a meeting, which was described as positive and productive, held in Erbil on Tuesday have agreed to activate the Electoral Commission and divide the Kurdistan region into four voting zones and rely on a biometric voter registration system for the upcoming parliamentary elections.

Following hours of discussion, both parties plan to meet again on Saturday and engage with representatives of other parties to discuss the upcoming elections.

The elections were originally scheduled for October 2022, but due to disagreements over the election law, the Kurdistan parliament extended its term by year. The extension came after political parties failed to hold the sixth parliamentary elections scheduled for Oct. 1, 2022, as specified by Kurdistan region president Nechirvan Barzani in February 2022.

Iraqi Kurdistan remains politically and geographically divided between the KDP, led by Massoud Barzani, and the PUK party, headed by the Talabani family. As a result, the region lacks a cohesive and unified governance structure, with the Barzanis in control of Erbil and Duhok governorates, while the Talabanis hold sway over Sulaimani.

Copyright © 2023 Ekurd.net. All rights reserved

UK

Labour: Starmer is paving the way for the triumph of dark politics

By waging an all-out war on the left and its ideas, the Labour leader is strangling hope of change in a time of crisis and risks driving voters towards right-wing authoritarians

Britain's main opposition Labour Party leader Keir Starmer waits to address delegates during the London Labour Regional Conference in central London on 28 January 2023 (AFP)

There is a reason - and not the one given - why Labour Party leader Keir Starmer has announced that he is banning his predecessor, Jeremy Corbyn, from standing as a candidate for the party at the next general election.

Corbyn has been sitting as an independent since Starmer exiled him from the Labour benches in late 2020 - after Corbyn observed that it was for “political reasons” he faced years of evidence-free accusations the Labour Party was beset by antisemitism on his watch. He called the accusation “dramatically overstated”.

The official grounds for Corbyn being permanently barred from returning to the parliamentary party are that he has refused to apologise for his comment.

No other political leader, not even Tony Blair, has haunted the thoughts of his successor in quite the way Corbyn continues to do so

Announcing Corbyn’s exclusion as a candidate, Starmer said Labour would "never again be brought to its knees by racism or bigotry. If you don't like that, if you don't like the changes we have made, I say the door is open and you can leave".

The establishment media - from right to supposed left - are trying to bolster Starmer’s claims about Corbyn and his supporters by continuing to weave a web of misrepresentations about the former leader being depraved and unhinged.

Antisemitism in Labour is apparently being kept at bay only because of Starmer’s vigilance, in contrast to Corbyn’s supposed indulgence. And, were Corbyn to be serving as prime minister today, we are warned, he would be taking “cranky” foreign policy decisions, like encouraging a diplomatic process to end the bloodshed in Ukraine.

No other political leader, not even Tony Blair, has haunted the thoughts of his successor - or the airwaves and pages of the billionaire-owned media - in quite the way Corbyn continues to do so.

Even a disastrous, if brief, prime minister like Liz Truss quickly faded from memory. Boris Johnson stays in the British public’s imagination only because the scandals and dramas he presided over are still playing out, and because in the crisis-plagued Conservative Party, he might yet manage to claw his way back into Downing Street.

So why the perennial concern about Corbyn, even as he languishes on the backbenches, outside the two-party chokehold on British politics, with no evident path back to power? Why does his shadow loom so large?

All-out war

The reason has nothing to do with antisemitism or Corbyn’s criticisms of the West’s response to the Ukraine war - or rather, not in the sense Starmer and commentators would have you believe.

Like the media, Starmer wants not just the solitary figure of Corbyn gone from British politics. He wants to eradicate something far more dangerous to the establishment: Corbynism, the ideas of a fairer, more equal society the former Labour leader gave life to, as well as the potential grassroots movement he represents.

Labour's Forde report is devastating on factional war against Corbyn

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In his light-on-detail speech last week, Starmer set out his top “five missions”, in which he chiefly sought to present himself as a better steward of neoliberalism than the ruling Tory party.

But even in purdah, Corbyn continues to serve as a symbol.

Starmer’s efforts to disappear his predecessor from the Labour Party - and from British political life - has operated in tandem with his all-out war on a large section of the party’s members, who have been gradually driven from the ranks.

That has very much included Jewish Labour members standing in solidarity with Corbyn. Under Starmer, they have been ousted from the party in disproportionately large numbers.

Notably, that is a fact barely reported by the media because it flies in the face of their phoney narrative: both that antisemitism thrived under Corbyn and only under Corbyn; and that it is Starmer who is eradicating racism from the party.

Even YouGov polling found that already low levels of antisemitism in Labour actually reduced during Corbyn’s tenure as the party drew in huge numbers of new left-wing supporters, attracted by his anti-imperialist, anti-racist, more egalitarian agenda.

A paradox, also unremarked by the establishment media, is that Starmer waited to make his move against Corbyn until immediately after the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) announced it was ending its monitoring of Labour for antisemitism.

It was the EHRC’s 2020 report that paved the way to Corbyn’s removal from the Labour benches, after its conclusions were heavily misrepresented by the media.

Vilifying Corbyn

Corbyn was judged to have interfered in antisemitism cases, with the implication that his office tried to stop antisemites from being expelled. The truth was the opposite, as the EHRC quietly conceded. His team “interfered” only in the sense that they tried to speed up the handling of disciplinary cases his right-wing opponents in the party bureaucracy stalled in a bid to fuel the antisemitism smears.

Starmer is interfering in disciplinary cases too - and doing so openly and proudly, including overturning a decision in late 2020 by his National Executive Committee to reinstate Corbyn as an MP. But this time the EHRC seems unconcerned.

The EHRC has given Starmer its official stamp of anti-racism approval even as his officials drive out Jewish members in unprecedented numbers. These are Jews whose mistreatment no one in public life seemingly cares about - because they back Corbyn.

Last week, hot on the heels of that stamp of approval, and mocking the idea that Starmer’s party is interested in tackling racism, Labour barred its local constituency parties from affiliating with a range of progressive groups.

Those included Jewish Voice for Labour, which represents Jews highly critical of Israel’s oppression of Palestinians, and the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, the main UK organisation representing Palestinian interests, as well as Somalis for Labour, Sikhs for Labour and the All African Women’s Group.

The Equalities watchdog’s “special measures” on Labour are also apparently not needed even though prominent Black party members, such as former shadow home secretary Diane Abbott, also a Corbyn ally, complain that Starmer’s Labour has done nothing to address anti-Black racism exposed in the recent Forde Report.

The truth is that Starmer and the establishment media will not be satisfied until they have driven a stake through the heart of Corbynism, and its genuine commitment to anti-racism and a more egalitarian approach to the economy. That is why they have never sounded more desperate to vilify him and his supporters.

An outburst on BBC TV last week by Guardian columnist Rafael Behr skated exceptionally close to libelling not only Corbyn but the entire British left as frothing-at-the-mouth Jew haters.

Sinking ship

As the saying goes, you can’t kill an idea. And the ideas Corbyn gave life to are even harder to kill when the country’s current leaders look not just inept but concerned only to asset-strip the ship before it goes down - while the best promised by Starmer, the opposition leader, is to slow down the looting.

Even to many of its admirers, capitalism, especially of today’s turbo-charged variety, increasingly looks mired in crisis. Bereft of solutions, its architects have to constantly peddle distractions and exploit emergencies, from the Ukraine war and growing tensions with China to the cost-of-living crisis and the pandemic.

The country's leaders look not just inept but concerned only to asset-strip the ship before it goes down - while the best promised by Starmer is to slow down the looting

In an age of climate breakdown, resulting from an over-consumption model impossible for our profit-driven corporations to wean themselves off, socialism’s appeal may quickly resurface - or, at least, that appears to be the establishment’s concern.

Karl Marx, the now unfashionable 19th-century political economist, observed that capitalism “sowed the seeds of its own destruction”. And sure enough, capitalism looks like it is being strangled by its own internal contradictions, forcing a stark choice between continuing wealth accumulation and our species’ survival on a finite planet.

The job of Britain’s politicians is not, of course, to air these contradictions or highlight their parties’ lack of solutions. It is to keep the ship on course, heading towards the iceberg. It is to keep underscoring threats from overseas “madmen”. It is to be in lockstep with Nato and its expansion through resource wars that further enrich the wealthy while justifying austerity for everyone else. And most fundamentally of all, it is to remain piously in thrall to the City and the euphemism of “economic growth”.

Any leader who refuses to abide by these stipulations faces a campaign of demonisation, as Corbyn found to his cost.

Gaslighting members

Over the past three years, Starmer has been busy setting out his conditions for remaining in the Labour Party tent - parameters that just so happen to mirror precisely the British establishment’s requirements for legitimacy in public life.

Starmer demands simple-minded patriotism and an unwavering commitment to the West’s Nato military alliance and its aggressive posturing and expansion. He ostentatiously prioritises the needs of big business and demurs about the right of those abused by neoliberalism to strike. He describes himself as a proud Zionist and decries any but the softest criticism of Israel as proof of antisemitism.

Alongside the anti-racist groups, Starmer has banned local constituency parties from affiliating with the Stop the War Coalition, which campaigns against the West’s endless military "interventions", the Labour Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, Corbyn's Peace & Justice Project, and the Campaign Against Climate Change Trades Union Group.

Kim Johnson row: Starmer is ignoring Israel's slide into fascism

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In other words, in a system rigged to allow only two parties to contend for power, those who want Labour to serve as a vehicle for meaningful change are not welcome. Labour will not tolerate the struggle against imperialism, or efforts to stop endless resource wars, or trenchant opposition to Israel’s subjugation of the Palestinian people, or Britain’s further militarisation, or anything more than tinkering with gross wealth disparities.

And it is not even ideological differences being cited as the grounds for expelling members from the country’s only major “socialist” party. It is based on smears: that they are racists, antisemites, and stooges of Vladimir Putin.

Even as he denied Corbyn the right to stand as a Labour candidate, Starmer gaslit members, telling them Labour “will never again be a party captured by narrow interests. It will never again lose sight of its purpose or its morals”.

But Corbyn’s effective expulsion bluntly sends exactly the opposite message: that Labour has been fully captured by the boss class and will not permit any dissent.

Coup de grace

One might have expected a little pushback, if only from Britain’s self-declared liberal-left daily newspaper, the Guardian. But its columnists have been largely revelling in Starmer delivering the coup de grace against Corbyn.

Sonia Sodha called the decision "morally correct" and "to Starmer’s credit", while Polly Toynbee averred that excluding Corbyn was "inevitable" because the Labour Party could not afford to be even "a little bit racist".

Those who suggest Starmer is the broom needed to clean out Labour’s stables will doubtless get the outcome they predict. Running against a ruling Conservative Party in disarray and led by stale, colourless leaders reeking of privilege in a party mired in cronyism, Starmer is almost certain to win the next election - if only by default.

In blocking the left from a visible political presence, in stifling its ideas in a time of crisis, Starmer is leaving the field open to the far right

And that is as far as most pundits wish to look. But politics has long-term trends too. Capitalism’s crises, just like climate breakdown, are not going away. They will intensify, as will popular alienation, frustration and anger.

That means those offering a programme of radical change are going to prosper, and those clinging to a discredited status quo will face steady decline and marginalisation. Voters will increasingly be drawn to figures promising decisive action over inaction.

In blocking the left from a visible political presence, in stifling its ideas and creativity in a time of crisis, Starmer is leaving the field open to the far right. They will be only too eager to highlight and exploit the deficiencies of a soulless Labour Party, one that pays no more than lip service to resolving Britain’s problems.

And they will doubtless also scapegoat the usual suspects - not the rich, not those in power, but immigrants, Jews and “communists” - who will be blamed for bringing the UK to its knees.

Ultimately, the smearing of Corbyn and the Labour left will bring about the very things the Labour right and the establishment media claim they seek to avert: Britain will become a darker, more racist, more authoritarian place.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.

Jonathan Cook is the author of three books on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and a winner of the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His website and blog can be found at www.jonathan-cook.net

American media love the arms trade, as long as the arms dealers are American

US media outlets have been apoplectic about Russia’s use of Iranian drones in Ukraine, but routinely praise US arms provisions

Ukrainian soldiers prepare a US-supplied M777 howitzer to fire at Russian positions in Kherson region, Ukraine, on 9 January 2023 (AP)

Gregory Shupak
24 February 2023 

US media outlets have been apoplectic about Russia’s use of Iranian drones in Ukraine but routinely portray US weapons exports as a benign, if not benevolent, force.

In Forbes, for example, Paul Iddon denounces Iran as "an accomplice and enabler of wanton Russian aggression". Ellie Geranmayeh and Cinzia Bianco write in Foreign Policy that that America and Europe should focus "on ways they can interdict and counter Iranian weapons used in Ukraine as well as increase the tangible costs for Iran with its own public".

There is a dearth of cases of US media using comparable language to describe the effects of American-made weapons

In the same publication, John Hardie and Behnam Ben Taleblu write that Iran’s Shahed-136 drone has helped Russia’s "campaign of terror" in Ukraine and that such arms exports are part of Iran’s "offensive against the West.”

Iranian drone shipments to Russia are among the reasons a Washington Post editorial gives for asserting that Iran is "foment[ing] . . . trouble" internationally and engaging in "aggressiveness abroad" by "helping Russia destroy Ukraine".'

Not only is there a dearth of cases of US media using comparable language to describe the effects of American-made weapons, but glance at coverage from the last week or so, and you’ll find outright praise for US arms provisions.
'Real leadership'

On CNN, Peter Bergen asserts that US President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Anthony Blinken have shown "real leadership" on the Ukraine war by taking actions such as authorising "military aid to Ukraine, including highly accurate HIMARS missiles and soon M1 Abrams tanks".

Yet as Jeffrey Sachs points out, the Biden administration "poured cold water on the negotiations in March, when Ukrainians were contemplating a negotiated end to the war but instead walked away from the negotiating table". For Bergen, it seems "real leadership" is when a head of state uses their leverage to keep a war going and then provides the means for the blood to keep flowing.

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In the same vein, Brett Stephens of The New York Times insists: "It's time to arm Ukraine with the arms it needs to win quickly - including F-16s - not just to survive indefinitely". The Bulletin of the Atomic Sciences, however, advocates the opposite. The group condemns the Russian aggression while suggesting that:

At a minimum, the United States must keep the door open to principled engagement with Moscow that reduces the dangerous increase in nuclear risk the war has fostered. One element of risk reduction could involve sustained, high-level US military-to-military contacts with Russia to reduce the likelihood of miscalculation. The US government, its Nato allies, and Ukraine have a multitude of channels for dialogue; they all should be explored. Finding a path to serious peace negotiations could go a long way toward reducing the risk of escalation.

Stephens is hardly the only one to flatter the US arms industry. A Wall Street Journal op-ed by Michael Makovsky and Blaise Misztal says that a "US arms depot in Israel has become a stockpile of democracy in recent months, as the Biden administration has transferred its artillery shells to Ukraine".

The depot in question, the War Reserve Stockpile Ammunition-Israel (WRSA-I), exists so that in case of war in the region, both Israel and the US will have easy access to weapons. Makovsky and Misztal repeat the same claptrap about democracy at the end of the piece, writing that: "The stockpile of US weapons in Israel should be used to give Ukraine any and everything it needs. But then America should quickly upgrade and refill it" for US-Israeli use in the Middle East "to make sure that the next time a conflict erupts, the WRSA-I can again serve as a much-needed stockpile of democracy".
'Stockpile of democracy'

Makovsky and Misztal's take on the Ukraine war is, at best, breathtakingly naïve. The conflict is a proxy war between Russia and Nato, chiefly the United States. America and its allies aren’t deluging Ukraine with weapons so that it can be a democracy but because Nato is in a geopolitical struggle with Russia, a war of position that gets in the way of Ukrainians governing their own affairs.

Saying that the US and Israel use weapons in the Middle East for "democracy" is absurd on its face. American weapons in the region prop up brutal pro-US tyrannies and are used for American invasions and occupations that kill and unleash death and destruction at scales that are hard to fathom, as what happened in Iraq. Israel, for its part, uses American armaments to attack the region’s peoples, often at a grave cost.

Makovsky and Misztal deal with such bloodshed by invoking, you guessed it, Iran. Israel, the authors say, used the WRSA-I twice, "during its 2006 conflict with Lebanon, and again in 2014 during its war with Gaza. The US benefited from this, too, in helping a critical ally defend itself against Iran-backed terror organisations".

The UN Human Rights Council offers a rather different view on how Israel used its largely US-supplied arsenal in the 2006 assault on Lebanon, finding that Israel undertook "a widespread and systematic campaign of direct and other attacks throughout its territory against its civilian population and civilian objects, as well as massive destruction of its public infrastructure, utilities, and other economic assets".

Israeli air strikes pound the Gaza Strip, killing 10 members of a family and demolishing a key media building housing Al-Jazeera television and the Associated Press news agency, in Gaza City, on 15 May 2021 (AFP)

Israel killed over 1,100 Lebanese people, the vast majority of them civilians, with Lebanese children accounting for roughly one-third of the dead and injured - inconvenient facts for Makovsky and Misztal’s propaganda about "Iran-backed terror organisations".

And far from "defend[ing] itself" in the 2014 war, Israel was, as Amnesty International put it, employing American weapons "to violate human rights. The US government must accept that by repeatedly shipping and paying for such arms on this scale they are exacerbating and further enabling grave abuses to be committed against civilians during the conflict in Gaza".

Twenty-three days into the war, the "Iran-backed terror organisations" against which the Israeli military bravely struggled included "more than 1,400 Palestinians, mostly civilians", many of them children and humanitarian workers.
Massacring civilians

With rhetoric about American weapons exports being evidence of "real leadership", and how US arms function as a "stockpile of democracy", one could be forgiven for thinking that American weapons don’t kill and maim people at all.

Well, commentators of the Bergen-Makovsky-Misztal-Stephens school of thought might reply, what if these armaments are mainly being used against bad people and preventing worse harms than would occur had this weaponry not been used? Even just the last few years are rife with examples of American weapons massacring civilians.

With rhetoric about American weapons exports being evidence of 'real leadership' or supporting 'democracy', one might think that American weapons don’t kill and maim people at all

When Saudi Arabia and its allies bombed a funeral in Yemen in 2016, killing at least 100 people and wounding more than 500 - including hundreds of dead and injured civilians - the coalition did so with "a US-manufactured air-dropped GBU-12 Paveway II 500-pound laser-guided bomb". Scant corporate media coverage in the US characterised America as "an accomplice and enabler of wanton [Saudi] aggression" or as a participant in a "campaign of terror" in Yemen.

Likewise, in Israel’s May 2021 aggression against Gaza, the Israeli military killed 42 Palestinians, ten of them children, on the Strip’s al-Wehda Street. Human Rights Watch concluded that: "The al-Wahda Street strikes involved the use of 1,000-kilogram GBU-31 series air-dropped bombs mounted with a Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) guidance kit. This kit is produced by Boeing and exported by the United States to Israel".

There is a distinct shortage of US media accounts of the slaughter saying, for instance, that America is engaging in "aggressiveness abroad" by "helping [Israel] destroy [Palestine]" or that states should focus "on ways they can interdict and counter [American] weapons used in [Palestine] as well as increase the tangible costs for [the US] with its own public".

I’m not suggesting that Iran, or anyone else, should help Russia’s war effort. What I am saying is that when American media cover official enemies' weapons exports, these outlets act as if they find the arms trade morally abhorrent. But when they cover US weapons exports, American media sound like they're doing PR for Boeing or Raytheon.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.

Gregory Shupak teaches English and Media Studies at the University of Guelph-Humber in Toronto. He is the author of the book, The Wrong Story: Palestine, Israel, and the Media.

Opinion | Occupation

The Palestinian Authority's last gasp?

Renewed US confidence in the PA as the main force to subdue resisting Palestinians is not based on its substandard performance, but rather on the lack of available options

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken meets with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah on 27 March 2022 (Reuters)

Joseph Massad
23 February 2023

Much excitement surrounded a recent UN Security Council vote on a draft resolution introduced by the United Arab Emirates, with the cooperation of the Palestinian Authority (PA), against Israel’s ongoing settler-colonial plans in the occupied Palestinian territories.

On Monday, however, the UAE, the Arab League’s representative on the UN Security Council, and the PA withdrew the resolution under US orders issued by the Biden administration.

To avoid its demise, the PA pleaded with Netanyahu before he even assumed office to open a secret backchannel of talks and offered more services to the Israelis

The US had urged Security Council members not to bring the resolution to a vote, and proposed instead that they adopt a symbolic joint statement "which Washington could get behind".

The resolution would have condemned last week’s Israeli cabinet decision to legalise nine Jewish settlements in the West Bank and build 10,000 new Jewish settlement homes in East Jerusalem.

Two days before the expected vote, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken personally called Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and ordered him to withdraw the resolution.

The PA duly obeyed the orders. The UAE, with PA backing, substituted for the resolution a non-binding presidential statement, as per US orders.
A desperate attempt

This is the most recent PA manoeuvre to avoid its much-predicted demise by Israeli and Arab observers.

Indeed, all PA public relations protestations against the Netanyahu government notwithstanding, PA officials, following orders from their handlers in the White House, had pleaded with Netanyahu before he even assumed office, to open a secret backchannel of talks and offered more of their services to the Israelis, in the hope of ensuring PA survival.

Netanyahu, who spurned the PA for almost a decade, suspending the so-called "peace process", readily accepted the offer under US pressure.

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It was Palestinian Minister for Civilian Affairs Hussein al-Sheikh who passed the message to Netanyahu’s office through the Biden administration, a message which was sent a second time after Netanyahu’s government was sworn in.

Sheikh, who also serves as the secretary general of the PLO executive committee, is "the point person for Palestinian relations with the US and Israel".

Netanyahu appointed National Security Adviser Tzachi Hanegbi to conduct the secret talks.

It was during these talks, held in person and over the phone, that Hanegby and Sheikh reached the agreement that led to the PA and the UAE withdrawing the Security Council resolution.

The Israelis demanded that the PA stop legal procedures at the International Criminal Court and the International Court of Justice.

For their part, "the Palestinians asked Israel to stop unilateral steps like incursions into the Palestinian cities", Hangeby told the Conference of Presidents of the Jewish Organisations in North America.

He added that he told the Palestinians that Israel does not "want to send the Israeli military to the West Bank cities of Jenin and Nablus but does it because Palestinian Authority security forces ‘don’t do it themselves'".

Israel generously offered to provide "help" to PA forces to quash the resistance in West Bank cities.

The most recent Israeli massacre of 11 Palestinians in Nablus, which also injured at least 102 people, indicates that despite Israeli help, PA forces have proven incapable of repressing the rising tide of Palestinian resistance themselves.

Secretary Blinken, who visited Abbas a few weeks ago, ordered him to implement "a US security plan aimed at re establishing Palestinian Authority control over the cities of Jenin and Nablus, which have become centres of unrest".

The security plan was drafted by US Security Co ordinator Lt. Gen. Michael Fenzel.

The plan "includes the training of a special Palestinian force that would be deployed to this area to counter" Palestinian resistance. Fenzel has served as the US security coordinator of the Israel-Palestinian Authority since November 2021.

Fenzel is hardly a minor figure and is quite experienced in strategies to put down resistance by Arabs and Muslims to US military occupation.

He has previously served in the Gulf War of 1990-91, in the 2001 US invasion of Afghanistan, as well as the US invasion of Iraq in 2003.

He was brigadier general in the US Army and served as senior military fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and is the founder of the Council for Emerging National Security Affairs (CENSA).

Fenzel is a life member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a former director on the National Security Council staff in the White House.

He served as the senior military advisor to the Special Representative for Afghanistan Reconciliation in the United States Department of State and is the author of a book on Soviet military strategy in Afghanistan.

Before Blinken’s visit, and on US orders issued to them, the Egyptian and Jordanian chiefs of intelligence also visited Abbas to pressure the PA to increase its repression of Palestinian resistance.

According to recently reported leaks, the US is subcontracting the training of 12,000 PA security forces on how to better quash Palestinian resistance to its Egyptian and Jordanian allies.

This is not the first time the two countries have been subcontracted for the task.

They have been involved in training PA security officers for the past two decades.

Lack of options

During his visit, Blinken also ordered Abbas to resume security coordination with the Israelis.

Abbas, who claimed to have stopped PA security "coordination" with Israel last month, after the Israeli massacre of Palestinians in Jenin, has assured visiting CIA Director William Burns that "parts" of the coordination, including "intelligence sharing", continue unhampered by ongoing Israeli massacres.

In fact, Abbas assured Burns that: "PA security forces will continue arresting terror suspects and that the security coordination would be fully reinstated once calm is restored."

The PA’s concern continues to be motivated by the US and Israeli view that it is increasingly irrelevant, especially because of its inability to eliminate Palestinian resistance to Israel’s military occupation - the very raison d’être for which it was created - and it has not been as effective as the either state had hoped.

The rising tide of Palestinian resistance across the West Bank promises to disappoint US expectations and those of its Arab allies

A former Israeli general in military intelligence has recently warned of the impending collapse of the PA.

That most of the right-wing members of the Netanyahu coalition government have also repeatedly called for the dissolution of the PA has not been comforting news.

Interestingly, it seems that Netanyahu did not inform his coalition partners of the recent secret talks, lest they oppose them.

This renewed US confidence, and that of Israel’s Arab allies, in the PA’s role as the main force to be tasked with the repression of the Palestinians under Israeli occupation is not based on the PA’s substandard performance, but rather on the lack of available options for the US to maintain the status quo.

The US, like Israel and its Arab allies, has been invested with maintaining the status quo for at least the last decade and is concerned that the new Israeli government might effect change, which would constitute an uncalculated risk for the future survival of Israel and its military occupation.

As the PA was created in 1993 to ensure Israel’s continued survival as a Jewish settler colony and permanent occupier of the land of the Palestinians under different guises, the US and its allies are at a loss as to where to turn.

This dearth of options is what has revived interest in the role of the failing PA.

The renewed US trust in the PA’s abilities to subdue the resisting Palestinians, however, is arguably misplaced.

The rising tide of Palestinian resistance across the West Bank, and the steady readiness of the Gaza-based resistance, not to mention that of the Palestinian citizens of Israel, promise to disappoint US expectations and those of its Arab allies.

Despite their willingness to use the PA and negotiate with it, the Israelis seem to be the only party that appreciates the strength of the resistance and the danger it poses, and they continue to act and plan their military strategies accordingly.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.

Joseph Massad is professor of modern Arab politics and intellectual history at Columbia University, New York. He is the author of many books and academic and journalistic articles. His books include Colonial Effects: The Making of National Identity in Jordan; Desiring Arabs; The Persistence of the Palestinian Question: Essays on Zionism and the Palestinians, and most recently Islam in Liberalism. His books and articles have been translated into a dozen languages.

The Palestinian Authority's controversial role in West Bank security

Khaled Shalaby

27 February 2023

 

The Palestinian Authority was formed to protect Palestinian interests, but has come under increased scrutiny over the years. Critics argue that it has become a sub-contractor for Israel to protect its security from the Palestinians.

How does the PA coordinate security in the West Bank and what is its relationship with Israel’s government?