domingo, 24 de setembro de 2017

Reality check : Israeli lobbying on the United Nations

Boycott Israel is a Human Right 

The Israeli government and its accomplicies are mobilising to try and thwart a United Nations list of companies complicit in illegal settlements in the occupied Palestinian territory (oPt).
These efforts are taking place in parallel to significant initiatives by figures within and outside of the Israeli government to normalise the presence of the settlements, moves which could contribute towards a future, formal annexation of sections of the West Bank.
On 24 March 2016 the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) adopted a resolution by 32 votes to 0 (with 15 abstentions) that called for the establishment of “a database of all business enterprises involved” in settlement activities in the occupied Palestinian territory (oPt), to be updated annually.
While some saw the vote as “a symbolic victory for the Palestinians,” others went further, hailing it a “landmark decision” after “years of toothless UN condemnations of settlements”. The Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) Movement praised the resolution for affirming that “companies must be held to account for their participation in Israeli violations”.
In the past 18 months, preparatory work has moved ahead, albeit with delays. According to Fox News, in December 2016, the UN allocated $138,700 for the work required to establish the list. While the original publication date in February 2017 was put back, it now appears that UN human rights chief Zeid Ra’ad Al-Hussein intends to publish the list by the end of the year.
The database was fiercely opposed from the very beginning by the Israeli and US governments. In the weeks before the March 2016 vote, both made “intense diplomatic efforts” to block the resolution, with Israeli ambassadors “instructed to convey to the highest echelons” of their respective capitals that Israel wanted Council members “to oppose the resolution”.
But what explained Israel’s unusually intense level of mobilisation – or its depth of anger at the resolution’s adoption (government spokesperson Emmanuel Nahshon said the UNHRC was “in need of urgent mental treatment”)? As the Financial Times explained, Israel and the US “fought against the database provision for fear it would lead to pressure to boycott the companies in question”.
An op-ed in Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth was clearer about the threat. In contrast to “the hundreds of other anti-Israeli resolutions” the UNHRC has passed “which didn’t change a thing,” the piece argued, the database would be “likely to cause serious trouble”. Why? The “list of Israeli companies working in the settlements is long and includes most of the business sector”.
Israel and the US have been trying to stymy the creation of the database ever since, with the two states unsuccessfully opposing the release of UN funding for the work. In June, US ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, blasted the database as the latest in a “long line of shameful actions” by the UNHRC, and suggested the Trump administration may even withdraw from the Council altogether.
pales
On 21 August The Washington Post reported on US lobbying efforts to thwart the publication of the database, with unnamed diplomats painting a picture of “behind-the-scenes jockeying over the issue”. A senior US official quoted by the paper explained that the Trump administration is seeking to look for the list of companies to be implemented “in the most narrow way possible” – if at all.
Aater that same month the Israeli media reported that Benjamin Netanyahu’s government and the US were ramping up the pressure to try and block the UN list of companies. From the Israeli government side, the panic and lobbying efforts stem from a perception of the publication of the list as a significant win for the BDS movement.
The Israeli authorities have been aided in their offensive against the database by NGO Monitor, an outfit that has been described as a “government surrogate group”. In June, the organisation launched a document which, it claims, “reveals that business activity in occupied territories [around the world] is ubiquitous,” citing the likes of Northern Cyprus, Crimea, and Western Sahara.
The report, authored by Northwestern University professor Eugene Kontorovich, claims both that international law does not prohibit businesses from operating in occupied territories, and, that the UNHRC is singling out Israel for opprobrium. That is to say, NGO Monitor seeks consistency of impunity, not consistency of accountability.
The purpose of the report, according to Kontorovich, is “to name and shame… the Council for engaging in this effort, the countries that supported this effort, and any countries that might think of continuing to fund it or I would even say continuing to sit in the Council as they go down this one-sided path”. In other words, a glossy, 44-page-long trolling exercise.
Kontorovich, for his part, is as enthusiastic a supporter of Israel’s settlements in the oPt as he is an opponent of efforts to seek accountability for violations of international law. In recent weeks he has defended a marathon which winds through the West Bank, and, as an expert at “conservative think tank” Kohelet Policy Forum, attacked a Human Rights Watch report on settlements and Israeli banks.
Indeed, the Ukrainian-born, US-raised academic has himself lived in at least two West Bank settlements since emigrating (Alon Shvut and Neve Daniel). Earlier this year, Kontorovich gave a guest talk (video) at Netiv Ha’avot, a settlement outpost facing the prospect of house demolitions. A few years ago, he similarly addressed radical settlers at a site in the southern West Bank.
As Israel has sought to shield itself – and complicit parties – from accountability abroad for systematic violations of international law, at home influential political forces within and outside of government are looking to normalise the presence of settlements in the oPt, a possible precursor to formal annexation.
Responding to a petition against the recent bill retroactively authorising settler homes built on privately-owned Palestinian land, the Israeli government has submitted to the Supreme Court what has been called “one of its more forceful documents to date,” a legal brief “pushing to change the legal interpretation underpinning 50 years of its judicial treatment of Area C of the West Bank”.
If, as The Jerusalem Post reported, the court accepts the argument laid out in the brief, “it will have taken a significant step in the normalisation of Israeli life for the 400,000 citizens who live in Area C, which is outside the country’s sovereign borders, instead of viewing it as belligerent occupation”.
Interestingly, the government’s brief was authored by a private attorney, Harel Arnon, after the Attorney General refused to argue the state’s position. Arnon is listed as a ‘Legal Advisor’ to ‘We Have Legal Grounds!’ (along, incidentally, with Kontorovich), a lobby group seeking the Israeli government’s adoption of the 2012, pro-settlement Levy Report.
Recently, Israel’s Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked – a firm opponent of Palestinian statehood – praised the Settlements Regulations Law as part of a wider sea change. “We want to revolutionise our [legal] perception,” he said. “Foremost is that it is possible for [the Knesset] to legislate [for the West Bank] and in addition that we don’t solve one injustice with another.”
Interestingly, these initiatives are occurring at the same time as anti-BDS legislation is being vigorously promoted in the United States, an opportunity some are seizing to erase any distinction between Israel and settlements in the oPt (see a number of state-level anti-BDS laws, for example).
In a recent op-ed in The Washington Post, meanwhile, Jonathan Greenblatt, head of Anti-Defamation League, defended the Anti-Israel Boycott Act currently being debated on Capitol Hill by explicitly referring to – and tellingly misrepresenting – the UNHRC database. Indeed, one pro-Israel publication claimed that the very “impetus” for the legislation was the UNHRC resolution.
It is instructive to note how these developments – Israel’s international offensive against the UN database and domestic efforts to normalise, legally and discursively, settlements in the oPt – are happening in parallel. Remember, it is only because of a lack of accountability that Israel’s de-facto annexation of the oPt has been able to proceed over the last half century.
It is because of this ongoing impunity that influential political currents within and outside the Israeli government see an opportunity, as they see it, to normalise the presence of illegal settlements, unilaterally carve out the contours of Palestinian reservations, and annex ‘Area C’ of the West Bank.
To understand the kind of end goal these people have in mind, we can go back to Kontorovich, and specifically, to an interview he gave in 2013. Asked what the solution is to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Kontorovich didn’t hesitate: “The status quo”.
In this context it is vital the UN database comes to fruition. By itself, it is a drop in the ocean. But if such a modest gesture towards accountability was undermined by Israeli and US pressure this would serve as yet further encouragement for those Israelis – some of whom are in government – who believe that the status quo, namely a de facto, apartheid one state, is all too sustainable.

 Israel's occupation of the American mind, could be also said for Western mind in general


PALESTINA

If you are in London this Fall, go to the Young Vic Theater to see:

DAILY LIFE UNDER OCCUPATION

In the Gaza Strip, health officials say they're witnessing a sharp rise in suicide attempts, as the ongoing Israeli blockade has made the Palestinian territory "unlivable", according to the United Nations. Among those who have taken their own lives is 22-year-ol talented short story writer Mohammed Younis, who committed suicide two three weeks ago. This summer, Israeli imposed electricity cuts left Gaza résidents with power for only four hours a day. 
Red Cross president Peter Maurer: "Let's just for a minute imagine how life is with four hours of electriciy with wastewater pump not cuntioning, with running water not functionning. And I this is the reality at the present moment."

Israeli banks claim that Israel’s laws require them to be involved in the colonization of occupied Palestinian – and Syrian – land in violation of international law.
But Human Rights Watch has concluded in a new report that there is nothing in Israeli law that forces the banks to provide many financial services that aid the theft of Palestinian land for Jewish settlements.
While welcoming the report, human rights defenders are criticizing its recommendation that international investors “engage” with Israeli banks, rather than simply divesting.
For once, we can praise the Human Rights Watch analysis as remarkable, but its recommendation is at least really problematic.
All five big Israeli banks – Bank Hapoalim, Bank Leumi, Mizrahi Tefahot Bank, First International Bank of Israel and Israel Discount Bank – are heavily involved in settlements.
By providing services to settlements, Israeli banks “violate their international law responsibilities to avoid contributing to human rights and other abuses, including unlawful land seizures, discrimination against Palestinians and de facto annexation of the West Bank by Israel,” Human Rights Watch said in a statement. “Without these banking activities, settlement maintenance and expansion would be more difficult.”
So, why "engage" and not "divest"?
Tthe recommendation to engage gives the patently false and misleading impression that investors can verify that their funding is not contributing to or assisting settlement activity while Israeli banks continue to do business in and with settlements.
Given the fungibility of financial investments – which means that money invested in one place will free up money to be used somewhere else – there are only two ways investors can really verify that their investments are truly “settlement-free”: either the investors withdraw all their investments from the complicit banks, or the banks cease their complicity by completely ending their operations and business in and with the settlements regime.
Actually, Israeli banks’ involvement in serious violations of human rights are moreover not limited to their role in the settlements. For example, Israeli banks provide services to and promotemanufacturers of weapons used against Palestinians and Lebanese.
Yet by focusing solely on the settlements, the report gives another false impression that Israeli banks may meet their obligations under international law if they end all their business in and with settlements. This is obviously not true.
Bottomline, at least institutional investors have the responsibility, under the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, to divest from Israeli banks. As Human Rights Watch report provides an irrefutable argument that Israeli banks are voluntarily, not legally obligated to be, involved in grave violations of international law.
This should convince more institutional investors in Israeli banks to follow the principled and courageous example of the United Methodist Church and the massive Dutch pension fund PGGM by ending all investment in Israeli banks. They are a pillar of Israel’s regime of occupation, settler-colonialism and apartheid.


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RUSSIA

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domingo, 17 de setembro de 2017

Israel vs Palestine: Rape as a weapon of War Crime?

Prefácio: Roger Waters talks to Michael Moore about his recent article in the New York Times

Peter Paul RUBENS - 1635/40
Violências sexuais são usadas há séculos como arma de guerra e por isso foram proibidas na Convenção de Genebra.
O horror que o estupro causa e semeia "inspirou" grandes pintores da Renascença ao século XX, cujas obras escolhi para ilustrar esta crônica a fim de descrever esse drama da maneira menos desagradável possível, no prisma de pinceladas que despertam o melhor do ser humano em vez dos horrores que abriga. As obras retratam o mesmo evento, o rapto e estupro das Sabinas, um episódio lendário das história da fundação de Roma narrado por Lívio e Plutarco - os primeiros romanos, sob o comando de Rômulo e Remo, teriam assegurado sua descendência raptando e estuprando as esposas, irmãs e filhas, Sabinas, do povoado vizinho.
O estupro era usado na antiguidade não como arma, e sim para "saciar as necessidades" físicas dos soldados que passavam meses, às vezes anos, longe de suas cônjuges. Os generais, naquela época, respeitavam seus adversários e havia uma honra nas batalhas, na conquista, e no que seguia.
Com o passar dos séculos e das mudanças de mentalidade, a percepção do inimigo conjuntural virou pessoal, estrutural, e com isso, mudou o comportamento dos generais e as ordens, oficiais ou oficiosas, dadas a seus soldados na periferia das batalhas.
Aí o estupro virou crime de guerra indiscutível e inegável;
Crime de guerra usado hoje como arma horrenda silenciosa que emudece suas vítimas invisíveis, humilhadas e conspurcadas para a vida inteira em uma morte-vida, da vergonha passada de geração a geração marcada de sentimentos conflituosos de ódio e amor pelo alvo e o fruto indesejado da agressão.
Normalmente agrupada em uma apelação genérica de "estupro de guerra", a violência sexual em conflitos é uma estratégia militar ou/e política completa. Não é o soldado raso que se bestializa em combate e agride uma mulher ou uma menina que poderia ser sur mãe, irmã, esposa, filha.
Não.
A estratégia do estupro é definida e decidida no alto da hierarquia militar ou/e política. Do mesmo jeito que os chefes dos poderes executivos e militares decidem o bombardeio de um bairro ou um vilarejo, o extermínio de um povo, o gaseamento de uma comunidade, enfim, coisas que Israel faz intermitente e repetidamente na Faixa de Gaza.
O estupro sempre existiu durante guerras.
Porém, só virou instrumento endêmico nos conflitos contemporâneos.
A partir da Segunda Guerra Mundial, quando os soldados da Wehrmacht invadiram a União Soviética estuprando as mulheres que encontravam e os russos revidaram ao tomarem a Alemanha, é muito raro que um conflito escape a essa regra masculina de punirem as mulheres para atingirem os homens no que eles mais amam.
É uma das piores manifestações da bestialidade des/humana.
A violência sexual em conflitos é uma arma covarde, integral. Uma arma que cumpre um objetivo preciso, calculado, planejado em detalhes, como toda investida militar.
Os danos são múltiplos e perniciosos.
O estupro atinge primeiro a vítima, em sua carne, em seu moral, em sua alma, e ricocheteia em seus próximos, em sua família, em sua comunidade, em toda a sociedade.
Famílias inteiras são destruídas, o equilíbrio de uma sociedade é rompido, e nesse processo, exclui e rejeita a vítima, a pauperiza, estigmatiza a criança nascida do crime, e concomitantemente, a humilhação e a vergonha levam à escalada da violência, à fragilização da economia da coletividade, do país atingido, em uma bola de neve que prejudica todo mundo.
É raro que as vítimas sejam ouvidas, cuidadas, moralmente compensadas obtendo justiça.
Pois é raríssimo que os autores dos crimes sejam julgados, apesar de existir um quadro jurídico internacional neste sentido.
Só no terceiro milênio que a ONU reagiu como devia, pelo menos no papel, com as resoluções 1325 e 1820 do Conselho de segurança das Nações Unidas. Elas estabelecem que o uso do estupro e outros tipos de violência sexual em tempos de conflito pode constituir crime de guerra, crime contra a humanidade ou ser elemento constituinte de crime de genocídio.
O primeiro caso julgado foi o de Jean-Paul Akayesu, quando o tribunal penal internacional para Ruanda reconheceu pela primeira vez o estupro de guerra como elemento constitutivo de genocídio. Em seguida, mais de um terço das pessoas condenadas pelo tribunal penal internacional para a antiga Iugoslávia foram condenados por crimes que envolvem violência sexual.
Mas infelizmente, como sempre acontece com julgamentos de crimes de guerra, só africanos e iugoslavos são punidos. As demais denúncias, que envolvem Israel e as potências ocidentais nem são registrados, pois, se fossem, haveria registro, e mesmo sendo engavetados posteriormente, um ou outro órgão de imprensa independente divulgaria.
Portanto, o estupro como arma de guerra continua, atingindo majoritariamente as mulheres, mas em alguns casos, meninos; pré-adolescentes palestinos denunciaram abusos sexuais durante sua detenção em masmorras israelenses pelo crime de jogar pedras em tanques do exército ocupante; mas ficou por isso.
Insidioso, barato, com visíveis repercussões a curto, médio e longo prazo, e protegido pela impunidade que predomina nesta área... a violência sexual em conflito continua sendo o crime perfeito.
E há isralenses influentes que preconizam esta punição contra os palestinos... e não recebem nem tapas na mão. É o que trato abaixo, em inglês, para que haja mais repercussão.

Nicolas POUSSIN - 1636/37
In 2008, the Security Council of the United Nations voted unanimously for a resolution describing rape as a tactic of war and a threat to international security. But perhaps the more important question is: Will the resolution give teeth to efforts to stem sexual violence against women in conflict situations?
In the resolution 1820, the Security Council noted that “women and girls are particularly targeted by the use of sexual violence, including as a tactic of war to humiliate, dominate, instil fear in, disperse and/or forcibly relocate civilian members of a community or ethnic group.” The resolution demanded the “immediate and complete cessation by all parties to armed conflict of all acts of sexual violence against civilians.”
It was expected that by noting that “rape and other forms of sexual violence can constitute war crimes, crimes against humanity or a constitutive act with respect to genocide,” the resolution would strike a blow at the culture of impunity that surrounds sexual violence in conflict zones and allows rapists to walk without fear of punishment.
Indeed, the resolution stresses the need for “the exclusion of sexual violence crimes from amnesty provisions in the context of conflict resolution processes,” calls upon member states to comply with their obligations to prosecute those responsible for such crimes, and emphasizes “the importance of ending impunity for such acts.”
Ultimately, however, the effectiveness of UN Resolution 1820 in reducing sexual violence and bringing its perpetrators to book are restricted to places such as the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC)—arguably the epicentre of sexual violence against women today, although not exclusively—as well as Liberia and the Darfur region of Sudan.
Warring groups use rape as a weapon because it destroys communities totally. The perpetrators destroys communities. Punish the men, and  punish the women, doing it in front of the men. It has become more dangerous to be a woman than a soldier in an armed conflict.
Rape has been a dishonourable camp follower of war for as long as armies have marched into battle. In the 20th century, perceptions of rape in war have moved from something that is inevitable when men are deprived of female companionship for prolonged periods to an actual tactic in conflict. The lasting psychological harm that rape inflicts on its victims has also been recognized: Rape is always torture, says Manfred Nowak, Special Rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.
That is exactly why some influential Israelis preconize the use of this savage weapon against the Palestinians.
What does the UN have to say about it?
No comment, so far.


Edgar DEGAS - 1861/62
Meanwhile, in Israel a prominent rabbi known to have advocated genocide in Gaza also advised that IDF soldiers may rape during wartime, it has emerged.
Rape : Weapon of war in the IDF? Some Israelis may want so.
Shmuel Eliyahu, chief rabbi of Safad in present-day Israel - and a son of the late Mordechai Eliyahu, who served as Israel’s chief rabbi from 1983 to 1993 - approved rape by the military in a 2002 article that has gone largely unnoticed outside Israel because it was written on Kipa.co.il, a popular Hebrew-language website catering for religious Jews, Eliyahu contended that Israeli soldiers would lose their motivation to wage war if they are not allowed to rape non-Jewish women.
The comments were made five years before Eliyahu recommended that Israel should use massive force in Gaza.
In 2007, he said that Israel “must kill 100,000, even a million” people in Gaza if that was necessary to stop Palestinian resistance fighters from firing rockets.
Eliyahu’s 2002 comments on rape were highlighted in a recent Facebook post by Ruhama Weiss, a Jerusalem-based academic.
In a column called “Ask the Rabbi,” Eliyahu suggested that a Talmud law authorized sexual violence under certain circumstances. He was responding to a question – apparently by one of the website’s readers – about whether women could be viewed as “war booty.”
According to Eliyahu, an Israeli soldier should be subject to few, if any, constraints when fighting a war. He wrote to parents, "[When your son goes to war] you shouldn’t be preaching morality to him... Don’t weaken his spirit. If you forbid him from a beautiful woman and he’s enraptured by her outer charms, then he’ll think about her and is likely to get to the point where the Jewish people will be defeated. What will you gain from that?”
Eliyahu interpreted a Talmud scripture as meaning “if it burns in you, take a beautiful woman,” thereby excusing rape during war.
That view is at odds with international law. The International Criminal Court has confirmed that the use of rape in armed conflict is a war crime.
Nevertheless, after justifying the woman’s rape, Eliyahu goes on to blame the victim, wondering if she “may have specially made herself up, in order to take [the soldier] down and incriminate him.” Eliyahu even implied that these rape victims ought to be thankful for not subsequently being killed, or kept in sexual slavery for the rest of their lives.
“Notice her life was spared during wartime,” he wrote. “She isn’t even held captive by sword. He cannot live with her, as one lives with women and then sell her as a slave. He frees her!! Free as a bird!!”
Eliyahu’s advice resembles that which Eyal Krim, now the chief rabbi in the Israeli military, has previously given. Iin 2003, Krim also sanctioned rape during military operations in an “Ask the Rabbi” column for Kipa.co.il.
Last year, his appointment as the army’s chief rabbi was delayed for a week. Angered by his remarks on rape, some left-leaning politicians appealed against his appointment to the Israeli high court; their appeal was rejected.
During that brief delay, Krim received the full-throated support of over 150 army rabbis, as well as government ministers from the Jewish Home party.
In recent years, numerous Jewish Home lawmakers have themselves been accused of sex crimes. Allegations against one such lawmaker have been examined by a forum of rabbis, affiliated with the party. The rabbis decided against calling the lawmaker for questioning.
The head of that rabbinical forum was Shmuel Eliyahu.

Pablo PICASSO - 1962/63
Then there is this Israeli who said in 2014, during Israeli Operation Protective Edge in Gaza, that the best way to fight wars is to rape women.  Unfortunately for women and academics everywhere, this remark was made by professor Mordechai Kedar of Bar-Ilan University. He said and I quote, " The only thing that will deter is if they kow [the resistents] that either their sister or mother will be raped if they are caught." And aslso went on to justify that this is just how “Middle Eastern culture” is.
I must admit that it was hard not toake that personally, as a woman and as a human being.
Kedar has been a member of the military intelligence and is now a researcher at the Began-Sadat Centre for Strategic Studies.
Comforting to know, isn’t it? Not to mention awfully smart.
Completely ignore Geneva Conventions, they’re just hurdles. So are the bodies of the innocents. They’re just roadblocks on the way to a bigger, better Israel. And while you’re at it, take a culture’s sensitivities and use it against them. End the pretence of ‘defending your border’ and come up with a clear cut slogan: we are out to destroy everything about the Palestinians; their lives, their futures, their culture, their existence period.
Clearly, there is no concept of cultural evolution and human rights’ violations involved in this argument.
At the time, the university responded by saying that, “Dr Kedar did not call and does not call to fight terror with anything but legal and moral means.”
The reaction to this statement met with expected and justified outrage from feminist groups from within Israel and beyond – but this is hardly an exclusive feminist issue. This is a humanity issue – a country that is already creating enough pools of blood and incarcerated bodies must show some remorse, if it has any left, at this ridiculous and sickening thought.
Is it not enough that Israel has already indiscriminately bombed innocent women and children and is basically forcing the Palestinians into extinction and, total and complete annihilation that, they now want to use women as a tool for revenge and extend their violent ambitions?
To add to these atrocious crimes against humanities, here is an educational personality, no less, who came up with advice on how to deter resistence against occupiers. Not dialogue, not compassion, not potential ways to bring peace but more violence, and let’s make it gender-based because that will really hurt them.
Are they completely and wholly blind to what rape means and what a violent, unforgivable crime it is? Who is teaching them the rules of war? Whatever happened to sparing women and children? Whatever happened to fair play and justice, even in times of hate and disillusion?
The problem is that the "war" that Israel has been staging in Palestine since 1948 is a war where rules of fair play and human collateral damage hardly matter. So at this point, I do not even have logical comparisons that I can bring the reader’s attention to. At this point, my sensibilities sputter and the only theory that comes to my mind is that maybe Israel has lost all possible sense of ethical treatment of human beings and the principles of what is right and wrong.
The fact is that Israeli administration has already lost its moral compass: so a statement like this coming from a rabbi or a scholar hardly ruffles any feathers of any human rights groups that are already tired of counting the bodies that pile inside Gaza and the lives shattered in the West Bank. Perhaps Israel’s complete and total lack of moral conscience when it comes to abundantly handicapping and Killing Palestinians has wiped all sense of what is humane and appropriate in a state of ‘war’, as they call it. In their blind hatred and racism, they have forgotten that what they are doing is paving way for another Holocaust – and this time they will join the ranks of those who have cost humanity rather than defended it.

PALESTINA

 If you are in London this Fall, go to the Young Vic Theater to see:

DAILY LIFE UNDER OCCUPATION
16 year old Ahed Tamimi reveals life Under occupation in the village of Nabi Saleh in occupied Palestine, West Bank. 
Janna Jihad

Israeli Occupation forces use severe violence against Zieikhah al-Muhtaseb, 55 years old, who tried to prevent the welding of her house by Israeli soldiers.

. After years denigrating boycotts, the Guardian columnist Jonathan Freedland asserts: The talking is over, the occupation goes on.  


. Letter from Gaza: 'Alive due to lack of death' 

. On the 35th Anniversary of Sabra and Shatila massacres: The forgotten refugees.


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BRASIL - DIRETAS, JÁ!

 Porta dos Fundos
Conversa Afiada


Roger Waters in concert, USA, september 2017
Another Brik on the Wall

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domingo, 10 de setembro de 2017

USA vs North Corea: Explosive game of meddling with a dangerous man


As Americans and the World come to grips with Trump’s confrontational policies with North Korea, it’s easy to forget that U.S. relations with this country reached a nadir of nonsense under Barack Obama.
Rand Corporation, a military-intelligence think tank founded during the Cold War, relentlessly promoted the views of Bruce W. Bennet, a defense researcher who wrote a lot on Kim Jong-un, the 33-year-old who rules, from its capital Pyongyang, the Democractic Peoples' Republic of Korea (DPRK), the formal and preferred name of the country known world-wide as North Korea.
Here’s how Obama originated the current troubles for which Trump alone is being blamed.
Bennett’s regime change proposals were, and are, the culmination of policies hatched by Obama’s administration to weaken Kim’s hold on power and hasten what they considered DPRK's inevitable collapse. Obviously they failed, yet elements of the plan still abound.
Let’s start with some basic background. The hostile U.S. relationship with the DPRK dates back to the Korean War, when U.S. bombers turned the country into cinders in a destructive campaign of carpet-bombing that killed millions of people. In 1953, an armistice ended the fighting, leaving the country divided and in a perpetual state of war. A peace treaty was never signed. Sometime in the late 1980s, with the border still tense and the U.S. showing no signs of withdrawing its military forces from the South, the DPRK decided to embark on a nuclear program to defend itself from wars of regime change and guarantee its sovereignty.
To head off that development, in 1994 President Bill Clinton negotiated an agreement with DPRK's founding leader, Kim Il-sung, that sought to allay his government’s fears by ending U.S.’s hostile policies. Under the “Agreed Framework,” the DPRK shut down its one test reactor—its only source for plutonium—in return for U.S. shipments of oil for its power grid and two new light-water reactors to be built by an international consortium. Most importantly, both sides agreed to end mutual hostility by fully normalizing their economic and political relations.
The agreement, which froze DPRK's nuclear program for 12 years, held for several years. But in 2002, the Bush administration falsely accused the DPRK of building a secret uranium program as a second route to a bomb and tore up the framework.
In response, DPRK, which was by now led by Kim Jong-il, Kim Jong-un’s father, restarted its nuclear program, and by 2006 had exploded its first nuclear device.
Surprisingly, Bush reopened negotiations only three weeks later, and by 2007, under the rubric of the Six Party Talks, the DPRK agreed again to freeze its program. That accord was still pending when Obama was elected in 2009. He had run for president pledging to talk to Iran and DPRK, but quickly changed course on the latter.
According to Leon Sigal, a former State Department official, Obama and his top adviser on Asia, Jeff Bader, decided in 2009 to side with the new conservative president of South Korea, Lee Myung Bak, who had campaigned against engagement and demanded stronger pressure tactics against the DPRK. Soon, the idea of direct talks and regular was abandoned. Officially, the doctrine for replacing direct engagement with pressure tactics was known as “strategic patience.” Behind it was a mistaken assumption—the same one made by Bennett today—that DPRK was headed for collapse, making even the chance of an agreement a futile exercise.
It’s difficult to overstate how reactionary Obama’s policies became. In contrast to Bush, and even Trump, Obama flatly rejected the idea of negotiating with Pyongyang without a prior commitment to denuclearization. He also expressed no interest in the Pyongyang’s offer to sign a peace agreement. More disturbingly, he was the first president in history to refer to the Korean War, which has been universally recognized as a bloody stalemate, as a “victory.” In doing so, Obama revived a right-wing trope that was first used in the 1950s and resurrected during the Bush years by David Frum and other neocons.
So from the onset, Obama caused U.S.’s policy toward Pyongyang's government to take a sharp right turn.
The tensions were exacerbated by the covert cyber war Obama launched against DPRK to damage and slow its missile program. During the Obama years, the DPRK tested three more nuclear bombs, and despite the cyber war, rapidly expanded its missile abilities.
As the situation deteriorated, Obama embarked on a series of military exercises with South Korea that increased in size and tempo over the course of his administration. They included unprecedented overflights by B-52 and stealth B1-B bombers as well as training in “decapitation strikes” designed to take out Kim and his leadership. All of this led straight to the crisis Trump inherited and has only made worse.
But while Trump critics rightly chafe over his reckless allusions to a nuclear attack on Pyongyang, it’s often forgotten that Obama himself made similar statements towards DPRK' capital, couched in his trademark cool. “We could, obviously, destroy North Korea with our arsenals,” Obama told CBS News in April 2016. A few months later, Daniel Russel, the president’s senior diplomat on Asia who had earlier viewed The Interview at Sony’s request, actually threatened DPRK's destruction. If Kim gets “an enhanced capacity to conduct a nuclear attack,” Russel told defense reporters, he would “immediately die.”
At the time, these threats hardly caused a ripple in the media, and sparked few complaints from the liberals who now criticize Trump for pushing the U.S. to war or the progressive reporters who criticized Bush for his invasion of Iraq.


Another thing that excited Kim's anger and mistrust, was a movie called "The Interview", which is a simple-minded propaganda against DPRK and Kim Jong-un, produced by Sony and condoned by Obama.
To tell this story, I need to talk about the Rand Corporation, which first became famous in 1971, when Daniel Ellsberg, a Rand analyst, leaked the Pentagon Papers that exposed the secret history of the Vietnam War.
The incredible tale of official lies that unfolded in pages of the New York Times and other papers helped end the war four years later and triggered the beginning of the end of Richard Nixon. After shaking off that incident, Rand emerged as one of the premiere research centers for the Pentagon and U.S. intelligence.
As a result of 9/11 and the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Rand returned full force to refining the practice of counterinsurgency, or COIN, the “soft power” side of empire-building that got its start in Vietnam and aims at winning “hearts and minds” of countries that the United States invades or subverts. Bennett’s policy proposals to divide members of the DPRK “elite” from their government with offers of political support and financial assistance come right out of the COIN playbook.
The link between Rand and Sony was made shortly after the first public viewing of the film "The Interview" by Rand CEO Michael Rich, a lifelong employee of the think tank. Under his leadership, Rand developed close ties with U.S. intelligence. In November 2014, for example, Rich presided over a “rare dialogue” with the National Security Agency that took place at Sony’s headquarters in Century City and included then NSA director Michael Rogers as well as Michael Leiter, the former director of the CIA’s National Counterterrorism Center.
In June 2014, after the first clips of the movie were shown, Rich emailed Bennett, informing him he had recommended that Rand “trustee Michael Lynton, CEO of Sony Entertainment, get in touch with you for some quick assistance.” Lynton, too, had high-level connections. As the hacked Sony emails collected by Wikileaks would later reveal, he had attended dinners at Martha’s Vineyard with President Obama, and as a Rand board member, had contacts throughout government. From June on, Bennett, through Lynton, became a critical adviser to the film and acted as a liaison between the studio and the Obama administration.
The makers of The Interview were especially interested in advice on crafting the ending of the film. The scene of Kim’s head exploding pleased Bennett, as he wrote in one of his emails. “I have been clear that the assassination of Kim Jong-Un is the most likely path to a collapse of the North Korean government,” he wrote.
Bennett continued: ‘Thus while toning down the ending may reduce the North Korean response, I believe that a story that talks about the removal of the Kim family regime and the creation of a new government by the North Korean people (well, at least the elites) will start some real thinking in South Korea and, I believe, in the North once the DVD leaks into the North (which it almost certainly will). So from a personal perspective, I would personally prefer to leave the ending alone.”
Bennett firmly believed the film could spark the U.S.-led coup he had dreamed about for so long. “There are many ways that United States and even Sony Pictures could affect North Korean internal politics,” he wrote on the Rand website. “Slipping DVDs of at least parts of The Interview into the North, including a narration describing what their ‘god’ Kim is really like is one way.” (In fact, a version of this stunt was attempted right after the film came out by two of the more fanatical regime-changers in Washington, the neocon writer Jamie Kirchik and right-wing human rights hustler Thor Halvorssen.)
To make sure the film was on the "right track", Sony arranged to show the ending to officials at the State Department. Lynton emailed Daniel Russel, who was the assistant Secretary of State for East Asia, that the studio was “concerned for the safety of Americans and American and North Korean relations.” He and other U.S. officials gave their blessing to the film’s violent ending. After word of Russel’s involvement leaked out, the State Department denied any role, only to be contradicted by Russel himself. In a 2016 speech in Los Angeles, he said, “I’m the U.S. government official who told Sony there was no problem ‘greenlighting’ the movie The Interview.”
Despite the official go-ahead, Sony agreed at first to only release The Interviewon DVD. Then, when Sony temporarily pulled the film in December 2014, Obama became its champion, declaring that “we cannot have a society in which some dictator someplace can start imposing censorship here in the United States.” That led to the remarkable sight of Hollywood actors and directors from the liberal left, led by the likes of George Clooney and Michael Moore, defending the film as an act of free speech and urging Americans to defy Kim’s “censorship” and go see it in a theater.
By this time, Sony had been hacked by a group that called itself the “Guardians of Peace.” The FBI later claimed this group was secretly working for North Korea. The Obama administration agreed, and said its top intelligence officials had concluded that North Korea was “centrally involved.” This finding was questioned by many cyber-security experts (especially Gregory Elich’s critique in Counterpunch and Kim Zetter’s analysis in Wired). They concluded that the FBI’s “evidence” found in servers in Thailand, Singapore and elsewhere was thin and speculative, and found signs that the real hackers (who had an uncanny insider knowledge of Hollywood) could still be at large and might have been former Sony employees.
But the U.S. government had no doubts at all. In January 2015, Obama called the DPRK’s alleged hack an “act of war” and used it as an excuse to launch one of the most aggressive American actions on behalf of a private corporation in U.S. history. His executive order imposed sanctions against three DPRK agencies and nearly a dozen “critical North Korean operatives” in retaliation for the hack. The Treasury Department said the sanctions were in direct response to Pyongyang’s “numerous provocations, particularly the recent cyber-attack targeting Sony Pictures Entertainment.” The action marked a major escalation, returning “the U.S. to a posture of open hostility with its oldest remaining Cold War adversary,” the Wall Street Journal noted.
Shortly after these actions were taken, the New York Times published a revelation that raised serious questions about the hack, reporting that the NSA had broken into the DPRK’s computer systems as early as 2010 and “penetrated directly into the North with the help of South Korea and other American allies.” If that was true, the NSA might have watched the alleged hackers and allowed them to do their work. Here’s what the Times concluded: “The extensive American penetration of the North Korean system… raises questions about why the United States was not able to alert Sony as the attacks took shape last fall, even though the North had warned, as early as June, that the release of the movie…would be ‘an act of war.’”
By this time, however, the film had done its damage by convincing Kim’s government that the Obama administration did indeed want its destruction. More missile and nuclear tests followed, and by the end of the Obama administration relations were far worse than they were when Bush left office in 2009. In other words, the film had the opposite of its intended effect, prompting a clampdown by Kim and suppressing whatever internal dissent existed.
Today, Kim Jong-un remains firmly in control of DPRK, and the Trump administration—despite Trump’s tweets on Sunday equating engagement with “appeasement"—appears to be slowly moving toward negotiations of some kind with his government. Bruce Bennett continues to fantasize about bringing the leader down. Kim, he argued in a recent post, craves his weapons not for self-defense but because “nukes are one way to show his subjects he's a god.” Kim is “a weak leader consumed by paranoia,” he wrote in a separate piece.
At the same time, there is abundant evidence that the combination regime-change/cyber war project adopted by the Obama administration is still in force. A few weeks ago, CIA Director Mike Pompeo told a crowd at the Aspen Forum that he’s been ordered to find ways to “separate” Kim from his "missiles and nuclear weapons”—a “strong hint,” the New York Times reported, "that the United States was considering seeking a regime change in North Korea.” And on August 29, in a departing interview with Fox News, ousted White House adviser Sebastian Gorka let it slip that the cyber attacks on DPRK probably continue. “On the more covert side of things, you have seen a lot of missile tests fail,” he said. “Most tests actually fail. Sometimes there may be reasons beyond just incompetence by North Korea.“
The Democrats haven’t let up, either. Last month, Connecticut Senator Richard Blumenthal told NBC News that the Obama administration should have responded more aggressively to DPRK’s alleged hack of Sony in 2014. And there was an intriguing exchange recently between one of Obama’s top national security officials and South Korea’s new president, Moon Jae-in. On August 4, Moon spoke out against Korean right-wingers who send anti-DPRK propaganda over the border in large balloons—one of the tactics frequently suggested by Bennett and carried out by neocons Kirchick and Halvorssen. These actions, he warned, unnecessarily aggravate the North, and particularly during times of severe tension, “could prompt accidental clashes.”
That sparked an angry tweet from Samantha Power, the Obama administration’s former U.N. ambassador and perhaps the most famous proponent of “humanitarian intervention” against enemy states like DPRK. “So mistaken,” Power tweeted in response to Moon. “Information is what Kim Jong-un fears most.”
Like so many Americans who have served time as diplomats or generals in Korea since 1945, Power apparently believes that only the United States knows what’s best for Korea (as for everywhere else), both North and South. Her attitude appears to be the dominant one in Washington, where the latest crisis has only increased the fervor for a U.S.-led overthrow of DPRK among the national security elite. Last Friday, two days before Kim’s latest nuclear test, Jackson Diehl, the deputy editorial page editor of the Washington Post, took to his paper to argue that "regime change is the only way to definitively end the North Korean nuclear threat.” He added: "As former State Department human rights chief Tom Malinowski has argued, 'Political change in Pyongyang and the reunification of Korea, as hard as it may be to imagine, is actually much more likely than the denuclearization of the present regime.’"
In other words, the diplomacy that Vladimir Putin advises shouldn’t even be tried, only war.
The Malinowski reference is key: he is the former Washington director of Human Rights Watch, which despite  good work on a few issues has been at the forefront of the risky humanitarian intervention policies (such as a no-fly zone in Syria) so favored by Power and the liberal ignorant neocons of the Obama administration. As Malinowski concluded in the Politico article quoted by Diehl, "The central aim of our [regime change] strategy should be to foster conditions that enable this natural, internal process to move faster, while preparing ourselves, our allies and the North Korean people for the challenges we will face when change comes.” That’s exactly Bennett’s point.
But people like Bennett and Malinowski should "be careful what they wish for," two former high-ranking national security officials, Richard Sokolsky and Aaron David Miller, recently argued in 38North, a source of news and analysis on DPRK.
Most dangerous is the likelihood that a “decapitation” campaign as envisioned by Bennett and others would spark a wider war. Trying to topple Kim Jong-un might very probably precipitate a real crisis even worse than the current one, as we have seen in Irak, Lybia, and currently, in Syria and Venezuela.
Koreans can only hope that the very few voices of reason and diplomacy prevail and that a diplomatic solution can be found to the years of hostility between Washington and Pyongyang. That may be the only way the divided country can avoid the Lybia and Iraq-like calamity promoted by Bennett, Clinton and the "regime-changers" of Washington.
Vladimir Putin, who knows the world better than any other chief of state, rightly warned: "It is essential to resolve the region's problems through direct dialogue involving all sides without advancing any preconditions (for such talks). Provocations, pressure, and bellicose and offensive rhetoric is the road to nowhere".
Actually, it is the road to World War III.
Dialogue, not espionage or provocation, is the only way out of the mess Obama put the United States and all of us, in the event of a nuclear war.
By the way, don't get the title of this blog wrong. When I call Kim Jon-un mad, I don't mean dementia. I mean anger with the US. 
For Kim Jong-un is not mad. Quite the contrary. He is a rational man.
He has pulled off a wholly rational feat. By producing nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles capable of delivering them to U.S. territory, Pyongyang has obtained near-assurance that the U.S. will not attack it, in (yet another) attempt at regime change.
Wait, you’ll say. He already had that insurance. Every talking head on cable news says a U.S. strike would inevitably mean an attack on Seoul, which would kill tens of thousands immediately. South Koreans would blame the invasion on the U.S. So it’s just not tenable. Even if limited to conventional forces, the threat of invasion already constituted adequate deterrence. There’s no way the U.S. would trigger an attack on a city of 10 million people who are supposed to view the U.S. as their benevolent protector. So the North Koreans didn’t need to upset the world by acquiring nukes.
But think about it from Jong-un’s point of view.
Born in 1984, Jong-un was 7 when the U.S. first bombed Iraq, supposedly to force its troops out of Kuwait (although Saddam Hussein had already agreed to withdraw). Then the U.S. imposed sanctions on the country that killed half a million children.
He was 11 when the U.S. intervened in Yugoslavia, bombing Serbs to create the dysfunctional client state of Bosnia-Herzegovina.
He was 15 (probably in school in Switzerland) when the U.S. bombed Serbia and created the dysfunctional client state of Kosovo.
He was 17 when the U.S. bombed and brought regime change to Afghanistan. Seventeen years later, Afghanistan remains in a state of civil war, still hosting U.S. troops to quell opposition.
He was 19 when the U.S. brought down Saddam and destroyed Iraq, producing all the subsequent misery and chaos.
He was 27 when the U.S. brought down Gaddafi, destroyed Libya, forced the Yemeni president from power causing chaos, and began supporting armed opposition forces in Syria.
He was 30 when the U.S. State Department spent $5 billion to topple the Ukrainian government through a violent coup.
He knows his country’s history, and how the U.S. invasion from September 1950 leveled it and killed one-third of its people, while Douglas MacArthur considered using nuclear weapons on the peninsula.
He knows how U.S. puppet Synghman Rhee, president of the U.S.-proclaimed “Republic of Korea,” having repeatedly threatened to invade the North, executed 100,000 South Koreans after the outbreak of war on the grounds that they were communist sympathizers who would aid the enemy.
He loves Elizabeth Taylor movies but hates U.S. imperialism. There’s nothing crazy about that.
Kim Jong-un was 10 years old when the U.S. and DPRK signed the Agreed Framework, by which Pyongyang agreed to freeze its nuclear power plants, replacing them with (more nuclear proliferation resistant) light water reactors financed by the U.S. and South Korea, and the gradual normalization of U.S.-Pyongyang relations. He was 16 when U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright visited Pyongyang and met with his father Kim Jong Il. (In that same year, South Korean President Kim Dae-jung met with Kim Jong-il in Pyongyang during the period of “Sunshine Diplomacy” eventually sabotaged by the Bush/Cheney administration.) He was 20 when the agreement broke down (undermined by Dick Cheney and his neocons in 2004).
He was 17 when his older half-brother Jong-nam was busted at Narita Airport, for stupidly trying to enter Japan with his family on forged Dominican passports, to visit Tokyo’s Disneyland. That stunt ruled Jong-nam (murdered as you know in Malaysia in February 2017) out for the succession, whereas the next son, Jong-chul, was deemed “effeminate.” (At a Clapton concert in Singapore in 2006 he was seen with pierced ears.) Jong-un probably didn’t expect to be the next monarch until he was in his mid-20s.
He was 24 when the New York Philharmonic Orchestra visited Pyongyang to a warm welcome. (Washington refused a DPRK offer for a reciprocal visit.) Selected as successor, he became the new absolute leader of DPRK at age 27, a young, vigorous, well-educated man (Physics degree from Kim Il-song University) groomed for the post and with a strong sense of dynastic responsibility. That means returning the DPRK to the relative economic prosperity of the 1970s and 80s, when average per capita energy consumption in the north exceeded that of the south.
Kim has make economic development primary, and the long-standing “military first” (Songun) policy is giving way to a policy more empowering civilian Korean Workers Party leaders.
The DPRK economy, according to The Economist, “is probably growing at between 1% and 5% a year.” A new class of traders and businessmen (donju) has emerged. The complex social status system (Songbun) that divides society into 51 sub-categories of “loyal,” “wavering,” and “hostile” (and distributing privileges accordingly) has been falling apart with the rise of market forces.
Fourteen months into his tenure, Kim Jong-un invited Dennis Rodman, a member of the U.S. Basketball Hall of Fame, to Pyongyang for the first of what have now been five visits. He is a huge basketball fan, an aficionado of U.S. popular culture, a child of rock ‘n roll. He is also rationally aware of the threat the U.S. poses to his country (among many countries). So his strategy has been to sprint towards nukes while he can. Perhaps he thought that since the Trump administration was (and is) in such disarray, no violent response (such as an attack on the Yongbyon nuclear complex) was likely. But it was risky; the U.S. president is, after all, unstable and ignorant. He has asked his advisors repeatedly, why can’t we use nukes since we have them?
The fact is, if Kim Jong-un plays his cards right, he will get international recognition for the DPRK as a nuclear power—the same degree of recognition afforded other non-NPT signatories like India, Pakistan and Israel. The U.S. will have to defer to Chinese and Russian sobriety and abandon hollow threatening rhetoric. It will have to back down, as it did in the Korean War, when it realized it could not conquer the North and reunify Korea on Washington’s terms and had to accept the continued existence of the DPRK.
In return for tension-reducing measures by the U.S. and the South, and the establishment of diplomatic and trade ties, Pyongyang will suspend its nuclear weapons program, content with and proud of what it has accomplished. It is the only way.
Just knowing that the enemy is capable of contemplating one’s people’s extinction surely motivates some leaders to seek the ultimate weapon. The dear young Marshall pulled it off. He replicated what Mao did in China between 1964 and 1967. He got the bomb, which had been introduced to the world over Hiroshima on August. 6, 1945, and used again three days later over Nagasaki. And never used anywhere since in the years since, in which the U.S. has been joined by the USSR, UK, France, China, Israel, India, and Pakistan as members of the nuclear club. He has no reason to use it, unless the U.S. gives him one.
Negotiations on the basis of mutual respect and historical consciousness are the only solution.
Meanwhile, the United Nations Security Council’s 15-0 vote to impose a new set of sanctions on North Korea somewhat disguises the critical role played by the Russia-China strategic partnership, the “RC” at the core of the BRICS group.
The new sanctions are pretty harsh. They include a 30% reduction on crude and refined oil exports to the DPRK; a ban on exports of natural gas; a ban on all North Korean textile exports (which have brought in US$760 million on average over the past three years); and a worldwide ban on new work permits for DPRK citizens (there are over 90,000 currently working abroad.)
But this is far from what US President Donald Trump’s administration was aiming at, according to the draft Security Council resolution leaked last week. That included an asset freeze and travel ban on Kim Jong-un and other designated DPRK officials, and covered additional “WMD-related items,” Iraqi sanctions-style. It also authorized UN member states to interdict and inspect North Korean vessels in international waters (which amounts to a declaration of war); and, last but not least, a total oil embargo.
“RC” made it clear it would veto the resolution under these terms. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told the US’ diminishing Secretary of State Rex Tillerson Moscow would only accept language related to “political and diplomatic tools to seek peaceful ways of resolution.” On the oil embargo, President Vladimir Putin said, “cutting off the oil supply to North Korea may harm people in hospitals or other ordinary citizens.”
“RC” priorities are clear: “stability” in Pyongyang; no regime change; no drastic alteration of the geopolitical chessboard; no massive refugee crisis.
That does not preclude Beijing from applying pressure on Pyongyang. Branch offices of the Bank of China, China Construction Bank and Agricultural Bank of China in the northeastern border city of Yanji have banned DPRK citizens from opening new accounts. Current accounts are not frozen yet, but deposits and remittances have been suspended.
To get to the heart of the matter, though, we need to examine what happened last week at the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok – which happens to be only a little over 300 km away from the DPRK’s Punggye-ri missile test site.
In sharp contrast to the Trump administration and the Beltway’s bellicose rhetoric, what “RC” proposes are essentially 5+1 talks (North Korea, China, Russia, Japan and South Korea, plus the US) on neutral territory, as confirmed by Russian diplomats. In Vladivostok, Putin went out of his way to defuse military hysteria and warn that stepping beyond sanctions would be an “invitation to the graveyard.” Instead, he proposed business deals.
Largely unreported by Western corporate media, what happened in Vladivostok is really ground-breaking. Moscow and Seoul agreed on a trilateral trade platform, crucially involving Pyongyang, to ultimately invest in connectivity between the whole Korean peninsula and the Russian Far East.
South Korean Prime Minister Moon Jae-in proposed to Moscow to build no less than “nine bridges” of cooperation: “Nine bridges mean the bridges of gas, railways, the Northern Sea Route, shipbuilding, the creation of working groups, agriculture and other types of cooperation.”
Seoul wants a rail network that will physically connect it with the vast Eurasian land bridge, which makes perfect business sense for the fifth largest export economy in the world. Handicapped by North Korea’s isolation, South Korea is in effect cut off from Eurasia by land. The answer is the Trans-Korean Railway.
Moscow is very much for it, with Putin noting how “we could deliver Russian pipeline gas to Korea and integrate the power lines and railway systems of Russia, the Republic of Korea and North Korea. The implementation of these initiatives will be not only economically beneficial, but will also help build up trust and stability on the Korean Peninsula.”
Moscow’s strategy, like Beijing’s, is connectivity: the only way to integrate Pyongyang is to keep it involved in economic cooperation via the Trans-Korean-Trans-Siberian connection, pipelines and the development of North Korean ports.
The DPRK’s delegation in Vladivostok seemed to agree. But not yet. According to North Korea’s Minister for External Economic Affairs, Kim Yong Jae: “We are not opposed to the trilateral cooperation [with Russia and South Korea], but this is not an appropriate situation for this to be implemented.” That implies that for the DPRK the priority is the 5+1 negotiation table.
Still, the crucial point is that both Seoul and Pyongyang went to Vladivostok, and talked to Moscow. Arguably the key question – the armistice that did not end the Korean War – has to be broached by Putin and the Koreans, without the Americans.
While the sanctions game ebb and flows, the larger strategyof "RC" is clear - a drive aimed at Eurasian connectivity. The question is now to convince Trump to leave them alone and Kim Jon un to play along despite the sanctions.


PALESTINA

The New York Times is letting a little light shine on the boycott Israel campaign with an op-ed it published by Roger Waters two days ago, titled, “Congress Shouldn’t Silence Human Rights Advocates,” just ahead of his concerts in Brooklyn.

The piece is an open endorsement of BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) aimed at Israel. Roger makes the argument we have frequently sought to make here, that progressives routinely use the boycott tool, including against North Carolina over the so-called bathroom bill.
Criminalizing boycotts is un-American and anti-democratic. Boycotts have always been accepted as a legitimate form of nonviolent protest in the United States. In 1955 and 1956, a bus boycott in Montgomery, Ala., incited by the protest of Rosa Parks and others, became one of the foremost civil rights struggles against segregation in the South.
More recently, the National Collegiate Athletic Association refused to hold championship events in North Carolina after state legislators there passed a law that curbed legal protections for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people and set discriminatory rules regarding transgender bathroom use in public buildings. Numerous artists, including Bruce Springsteen, refused to perform in the state; major corporations canceled investments in North Carolina. The voice of boycott in support of civil rights was heard and the bill was repealed, albeit as part of a problematic compromise. In these cases, progressives lauded these boycotters as champions of equality.
Roger says that the pro-Israel forces are mustering against his 64-city tour.
Audiences of tens of thousands are coming together at our “Us + Them” shows, which embrace love, compassion, cooperation and coexistence and encourage resistance to authoritarianism and proto-fascism. These appearances have been greeted by a few sporadic protests by right-wing supporters of Israel.
These protests would be of no consequence, if they did not occasionally have truly negative consequences. For instance, the city of Miami Beach prevented a group of school children from appearing onstage with me after pressure from the Greater Miami Jewish Federation. I understand that city officials have a democratic right to disagree with my opinions, but I was shocked that they were willing to take it out on kids.
Some local legislators are trying to shut down two shows Roger is having on Long Island later this week.
Officials in Nassau County in Long Island are threatening to take legal action to shut down two shows I have scheduled there next week, using a local anti-B.D.S. law passed in 2016. If the Nassau County attorney proceeds against the operators of the Nassau Coliseum, we will have our day in court and argue on behalf of all those who believe in universal human rights and the First Amendment.
Artist-led boycott, he reminds us, was crucial in the South Africa struggle. Those who are attempting to silence me understand the power of art and culture. They know the role artists played in the civil rights struggle in the United States and against apartheid in South Africa.
Here’s a report on Waters’s show in Newark last Thursday night, stressing how much of his show is aimed at Donald Trump. (“When they performed the Pink Floyd hit ‘Another Brick in the Wall’… Roger Waters and his band were joined by 10 children in prison jumpsuits. The children stood still at first, then sang and danced joyfully as the song’s message turned rebellious. At one point, they took off their jumpsuits to reveal T-shirts saying ‘Resist.’ That was just one of several swipes at the current U.S. president…”)
And by the way, his Times op-ed doesn’t even go into much detail about Palestinian conditions, though Roger has testified about the persecution at the Russell Tribunal. In the Times, he describes BDS as “nonviolent pressure to end [Israel’s] 50-year-old occupation of Palestinian territory and other abuses of Palestinian rights.”

Roger plays Brooklyn tomorrow night and Tuesday, then Nassau Coliseum on Friday and Saturday.
Roger Waters epic speech against Israeli occupation of Palestine


 If you are in London this Fall,
go to the Young Vic Theater to see:
My Name is Rachel Corrie


DAILY LIFE UNDER OCCUPATION
Israeli soldiers who claimed stones were thrown from the homes of the Da'na family in Hebron went into the are outside the homes and detained members of the family who had just driven up, compelled them to get out of the car, pointed a gun at a woman carrying a baby, and verbally abused a B'Tselem camera volunteer. Other résidents of the compound came out to see what was happening and the soldiers argued with theme.

An old Palestinian woman comes back home in the West Bank to find Israeli settlers throwing her belongings out to take her home from her.
Twenty Israeli settlers (with sleeping bags), accompanied by private armed security and backed by Israeli police forces, entered her house and started clearing it of the family belongings. one Palestinian resident, Khamis al-Gawi was arrested shortly after the Zionists invaders arrived and is still being held at a local police station for trying to stop them. Two internackional activists who were filming the settlers taking over the house were also arrested by the police and their video cameras confiscated.


OCHA  





BRASIL - DIRETAS, JÁ!
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