“Revolution, revolution, Syria is revolution!”

By David

It’s not everyday you hear protesters on Auckland’s Queen Street chanting the words “revolution”. It’s even less likely that the whole crowd will be chanting with the passion and determination that says the revolution is real and right now, not a slogan for the distant future.

But today in Syria, and across the Arab world, revolutions are under way. And on Sunday 100 people, mostly from Auckland’s Syrian community, turned out to show their solidarity with Syria’s democracy movement.

Syria has existed under a “state of emergency” since 1963, when the Baath Party took power. Repression was increased from 1970 when general Hafiz Assad took took power in an internal coup. His son Bashar is now president. This means no free speech, no protests no complaints.

Revolts against the current regime in the late ’70s and early ’80s were brutally crushed. In Hama, tens of thousands were killed by government forces in 1982.

Such massive repression had an impact on many people’s lives. One Auckland protester, Ali said his grandfather had narrowly escape execution in Hama, while his uncle was later “disappeared” by the regime. Although the family learned he had died in prison there were no official records.

In such cases the grief of families is compounded by the fact that wives cannon remarry and property cannon be inherited, because the disappeared are not officially dead. “It is a small problem [compared with the death of that person] but it is also big problem”, Ali said.

News of the what happened in Hama was kept secret from the world. Syrians themselves learned of the massacre, but dared not speak openly about it. For 30 years the memory of the revolt and its repression meant most Syrians were too afraid to raise their voices in protest.

Now, in the wake of the revolutions in Tunisia and Egyp, things have changed. Even so, the first response to these revolutions was not mass protests. That came only after a group of 10 to 15 year old school children (who were, perhaps too young to be afraid of what had happened 30 years ago,) wrote protest graffiti on the walls of the small city of Daraa. They were arrested and tortured by police. Outraged, their parents protested and others joined in. Even security forces shooting and killing people did not stop the protests, which spread through the country.

At first the protests were simply calling for reform and the protection of civil liberties, such as the right to free speech, not the overthrow of the government. But as this has only been met with the murder of protesters, the fateful slogan of the new Arab revolt is being heard, “The people want the regime to fall!”

Amongst the oppression there are positive signs. For repression the government relies mostly on the special forces. Described as “little gods”, because they exploit their position to get anything they want, these men have a stake in defending the regime.

The regular army is made up largely of conscripts, the sons, brothers and cousins of those who are protesting. Soldiers have had their cellphones confiscated, to try and cut them off from the people. But in at least one case, regular soldiers moved to protect protesters from the special forces, and were shot at for their trouble.

Even in Aotearoa protesters fear that by coming out on the streets they could endanger their families in Syria, but with people back home facing up to the guns of the regime, they feel they must do what they can to let the world know what is happening in Syria.

Now example of Hama inspires not just fear, but determination. People know if they do not succeed, the government remains in power, then the lives of everyone who has protested, their friends and their family will be in danger.

“There is no way back, we have to go forward to freedom.”

For more on the Syrian revolt and solidarity events in Auckland, check out Syria Solidarity on Facebook.

Attack on Libya aims to reassert Western dominance

By David

The Western powers now bombing Libyan are protecting their easy access to Libyan, Saudi and Gulf oil and their overall control of the Arab World, which they have dominated since Britain and France carved up the Turkish-dominated Ottoman Empire after World War One (1914-18).

The rise of Arab Nationalism after World War Two threatened Western control, but with the help of Israel (formed by Jewish settlers in what had been Palestine in 1948), the US was able to reassert Western control.

Now the structure of imperial domination has taken a huge hit from the uprisings, particularly the fall of Mubarak in Egypt. The US and its allies know they must do something to ensure that whatever new order emerges it will still be under their control.

That easy bit, for them, is backing the Saudi / Kuwaiti / UAE invasion of Bahrain, to ensure the revolution is crushed there and does not spread. The kings of Saudi Arabia and of the smaller Gulf states have been important US allies for decades, providing cheap oil, military bases and political support within the Arab world. For any of these regimens to fall to democracy would be a huge set back for the US.

The hard decision was deciding what to do in Libya. When he first came to power 1969 Gaddafi was inspired by the Arab nationalism and Chinese Maoism. But the nationalists had already been defeated by Israel in the Six Day War of 1967, after which it occupied Gaza and the West Bank, as well as large parts of Syria and Egypt.

Like Syria, Libya remained independent from the US, but anti-imperialist and socialist rhetoric masked brutal dictatorships. Over the last ten years Gaddafi has made his peace with the West, but he is not dependent on them, and therefore not a reliable ally.

Waging war, nominally in support of, and at the request of, the rebels is a golden opportunity for the West to relegitimise military attacks in the Middle East after the disasters of Afghanistan and Iraq. It also offers the possibility of a new government dependant on Western support controlling either part or all of Libya and its oil. Most importantly, it allows the West to assert some control in this vital part of the world.

Revolutionary Hope and Change Across the 'Arab World'

By Gilbert Achcar

and Ali Mustafa
Source: New Socialist

Gilbert Achcar is a Lebanese writer, socialist, and antiwar activist. He is also a professor of Development Studies and International Relations at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London, and author most recently of The Arabs and the Holocaust: the Arab-Israeli War of Narratives. In this interview, he discusses the significance of the ongoing revolutionary wave of mass protests occurring across the Middle East with one of the New Socialist webzine editors Ali Mustafa.

This Is An Arab 1848. But US Hegemony Is Only Dented

With western-backed despots being turfed out politics has changed for ever. So just how far can the revolution spread?

By Tariq Ali

Source: The Gaurdian

Friday, February 25, 2011

Revolutionary murals on the walls of newly established toilet facilities for protesters in Cairo's Tahrir Square. Photograph: Ben Curtis/AP

Auckland: Solidarity with Bahrain’s revolution -- Saudi Troops Out!

The peaceful protestors at the Pearl Roundabout in Bahrain have again been slaughtered. A month ago, it was by their own Government. Now, it is with the support of foreign Saudi troops.

On Saturday 19th at 2pm, we will gather in Aotea Square, to listen to members of the Bahraini Community and their supporters, before we march to the Saudi Consulate.

Saudi Troops Out.
Down with the Bahraini Junta.
Power to the People
Victory to the Bahraini Revolution.

more info at- http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=188981107789270

Public letter from Bahraini protesters to Barack Obama

From  jadaliyya.com

[This is a public letter addressed to US President Barack Obama from by protesters in Bahrain under the name “Movement of 14 February.” The letter was circulated on March 15, 2011]

Mr President,

You certainly know about the Saudi and other gulf troops arriving to Bahrain to aid the government in clamping down the peaceful protesters. If you can find any legal, logical or ethical justification for this intervention, can you find any justification as well to them forming thugs attacking peaceful Bahrainis in their own homes and villages, killing them with live rounds, intimidating women and children in these areas, and boasting themselves with a "claimed" American green light!!

Mr President, having listened to your addresses in many occasions, we find it difficult to believe that you and the United States could stand by in such an inhumane and resentful situation that Bahrainis are witnessing today, for the simple sin of peacefully claiming civic, political and human rights. We urge you Mr. President to take a position that will be remembered by your own people as well as the Bahraini people and all peoples in this miserable region of the world.

We ask for a clear and firm stance from the US administration towards the ill-intentioned, arrogant and murderous actions of the Bahraini regime with the help of neighboring Gulf regimes.

This is the outcry of peaceful Bahraini protesters, and we heartily hope that it will meet your wise and just support.


Movement of 14 February

History-making aid convoy about to bust Gaza siege

Viva Palestina founder George Galloway announces the Gaza convoy is sailing to Egypt on 18 October despite Cairo blacklisting himself and 16 other volunteers. He is speaking to a crush of international media and 400 convoyers in Latakia, the main port of Syria.

Kia Ora Gaza media release
18 October 2010

Today the international aid convoy to Gaza, whose three columns have driven from England, North Africa and the Arab East to link up in Syria, leaves land and takes to the waters of the Mediterranean.

These are the same waters where, four months ago, Israeli commandos stormed the Gaza aid vessel Mavi Marmara, leaving nine civilian aid workers shot to death and dozens more wounded.

The convoy’s destination is the Egyptian port of Al-Arish, just a 19 kilometre drive to Rafah Gate, the only land entrance to Gaza not under the control of Israel.

“It took a tense ten-day battle of wills to get Cairo to grant safe passage across Egypt and into Gaza, but the convoy finally got the green light,” said Grant Morgan, co-organiser of Kia Ora Gaza, which has a six-person Kiwi Team among the 400 convoyers driving 150 aid-packed vehicles.

“This is a history-making convoy because Egypt’s back door to Gaza has been well and truly pushed open by the convoy’s huge size, sheer determination and international support,” Mr Morgan continued.

“It’s a fantastic victory, and all Kiwis who care about a fair go for all will be proud that our own Kia Ora Gaza team is part of this humanitarian breakthrough.”

At the last minute, Cairo blacklisted 17 convoyers from entering Egypt, including George Galloway, the founder of Viva Palestina which organised the month-long epic journey across three continents.

“Not even Cairo’s blacklisting of 17 aid volunteers can take the shine off the convoy’s huge triumph,” said Mr Morgan. “The guts and grit of the convoyers, together with growing global support, has broken Israel’s inhuman siege of Gaza. It’s a big step forward for humanity.”

The convoy could be entering Gaza by Wednesday 20th October.

“Convoyers are sure to be greeted by cheering throngs of Gazans. They badly need the convoy’s chemotherapy drugs, X-ray machines and other life-saving supplies. Even more, these suffering but resilient people appreciate the international solidarity which is helping them to bust the brutal blockade,” said Mr Morgan.


Keep up to date with the Viva Palestina convoy at http://kiaoragaza.net/

Gaza aid convoy permitted to enter Egypt

Aid volunteers in Latakia are glued to Aljazeera as the television network announces that Cairo has granted immediate permission for the international convoy to enter Egypt and proceed safely to Gaza

By Julie Webb-Pullman
Member of the Kiwi Team to Gaza
From Kia Ora Gaza
14 October 2010

A few hours ago the Egyptian Government gave permission for the international aid convoy to enter Egypt, and deliver its humanitarian aid to Gaza, although Viva Palestina founder George Galloway has been told to keep out.

The convoy is comprised of over 400 people from 30 countries, and is carrying more than US$5 million of medical and educational supplies in some 150 vehicles, mainly ambulances. The supplies include desperately-needed chemotherapy drugs for children with cancer.

Convoy leaders say they expect to leave the Syrian port of Latakia in the next 24 to 36 hours, sailing for the Egyptian port of Al-Arish.

The mood is upbeat in Latakia’s former refugee camp which has been home to convoyers for the past 12 days while awaiting Egyptian approval. Groups are gathering to discuss developments, watch the news, celebrate with a game of football, and text their organisations back home.

The convoy will pass through the waters in which Israel’s military attacked the Gaza aid ship Mavi Marmara on 31 May, killing nine Turkish citizens and wounding many more humanitarian volunteers. As we reach this site, convoyers will throw flowers into the sea, before continuing on our way.

Although there is concern about how the Israeli government might respond, especially among the 30 people who were also on the Mavi Marmara, most convoyers are confident their passage will be peaceful. 

“I expect that the Israelis will shadow us in a boat to intimidate us, but the military option is off the table, in my opinion,” said Kia Ora Gaza convoyer Pat O’Dea.

Organisers are hopeful there will be no last minute problems, and that the aid will reach Gaza by next week.

New aid convoy sets off for Gaza

Here’s some international media coverage of the Viva Palestina convoy to Gaza, which of course includes Kia Ora Gaza. Daily updates from the Kiwi Team are now appearing on their website. They’re currently in Paris.


From Al Jazeera

Last Modified: 19 Sep 2010 01:29 GMT

Organisers say the Viva Palestina 5 is the biggest aid convoy ever bound for the Gaza Strip [File: GALLO/GETTY]

A new convoy of vehicles has set off from the UK carrying humanitarian aid for the people of Gaza, more than three months after nine people were killed in another attempt to break an Israeli blockade on the Strip.

The Viva Palestina 5 convoy, which departed from London on Saturday, will be joined by participants from a number of countries before it eventually attempts to cross the Rafah border from Egypt into the besieged Palestinian territory.

Al Jazeera’s Tania Page, reporting from London, said organisers of the trip say the attempt is the biggest and most international aid convoy ever bound for Gaza.

“By the time the convoy reaches the Strip it will have grown from 15 vehicles to 150 - picking up support across Europe and the Arab world,” she said.

“Most of the journey will be over land, but the aid will be transferred to ships for transportation between Syria and Egypt.

“The aid workers hope to deliver their supplies through the Rafah crossing between Egypt and Gaza early next month.”


Deadly raid remembered

Members of the convoy have planned to hold a remembrance ceremony as they pass the spot where Israeli troops conducted a deadly raid on another aid flotilla destined for Gaza on May 31.

Nine pro-Palestinian activists - eight Turks and a dual US-Turkish citizen - were killed when Israeli troops boarded the Mavi Marmara ship.

Israel has insisted its commandos resorted to force after they were attacked on the deck of the boat, but activists on board say the soldiers opened fire as soon as they landed.

Organisers of the Viva Palestina convoy said the actions of the Israeli army against the flotilla brought a change in international opinion against the seige on Gaza.

“Far from deterring people from seeking to bring that siege to an end, the Israeli assault on the Freedom Flotilla is spurring on even more people to bring humanitarian aid to the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip and to end the blockade,” the group said in a statement on its website.

“As a result Viva Palestina is launching ‘Viva Palestina 5 - a global lifeline to Gaza’ … in conjunction with convoys leaving from Casablanca and Doha and timed to coordinate with a larger and even more international flotilla aiming to reach Gaza by sea at the same time as the land convoys reach by land.”


Gaza closed off

Israel imposed a blockade on the Gaza Strip in June 2007 after the Palestinian group Hamas movement took control of the territory.

Gaza has been closed to virtually all supplies, and Palestinians inside the territory have had to deal with food shortages, lengthy power cuts and no cooking gas.

Israel has since eased its land border restrictions with the territory to allow through more civilian goods.

But construction materials remain heavily restricted, Gazans have very limited freedom of movement, and Israel still enforces a naval blockade on the territory.

The postwar war in Iraq

Eric Ruder explains what we should – and shouldn’t – expect from the “end of combat operations” in Iraq proclaimed by the Obama administration.

from Socialist Worker US

“WE WON. It’s over, America. We brought democracy to Iraq.” Those were the words of a soldier from the 4th Stryker Brigade, supposedly among the last U.S. combat troops to leave Iraq, two weeks ahead of President Barack Obama's August 31 deadline for withdrawal.

This is a watershed moment for Iraq. But not because the U.S. occupation is over or any of the other reasons put forward by the mainstream media.

Taking action outside Fort Hood

Cindy Beringer reports from Texas on an antiwar action outside Fort Hood.
from Socialist Worker US

Protesters organized by Iraq Veterans Against War march outside Fort Hood in July 

(photo Madeleine Dubus)

 
WHEN THE buses carrying the first group of soldiers of the 3rd Armored Calvary Regiment (ACR) stealthily approached the gates of Fort Hood in Texas, the protesters waiting outside had already won a victory.

Members of the regiment have seen some of the worst fighting of the war in Iraq over the course of multiple deployments. At least 50 soldiers have physical and mental diagnoses that should prohibit their return to military duty, and many others probably have not sought treatment. And yet, the buses were there in order to deploy these soldiers again.

A protest campaign against the 3rd ACR's redeployment had already brought unwelcome attention to the military's lack of concern for its soldiers.

On August 22, activists and supporters were at it again. They gathered at Fort Hood in Killeen to be a part of a direct action against the redeployment of the first group of soldiers.

The best way you can counter Israel’s propaganda machine

[Last Sunday] TVOne’s “Sunday” programme broadcast the BBC Panorama story “Death in the Med”.

As “Sunday” presenter Cameron Bennet made clear in his intro, this BBC Panorama story gives the Israeli version of the storming of the Gaza Freedom Flotilla on 31 May which left nine civilian aid workers dead and dozens injured.

It’s the old, old story of an aggressor selling the propaganda line that really the victim was to blame for being attacked.

Cameron Bennet asked the question: Will this Israeli version of history sway people? My answer: probably not many.

The Israeli military attack on a humanitarian aid ship on the open sea in the dead of night was so indecent that the world’s majority are lining up against the illegal and immoral siege of Gaza’s 1.5 million people.

If you do come across someone who is swayed by this Israeli propaganda, simply point them to Kia Ora Gaza’s website.

Today [Monday] on kiaoragaza.net we have posted seven articles which, in different ways, expose the Israeli propaganda attack. These articles are:

UN official criticises Israel over flotilla probe

‘Death in the Med’ for BBC journalism?

Mairead Maguire, Nobel Peace Laureate, writes to BBC Panorama

A beautiful gift from the BBC

IHH 40 page report on Israeli attack on the Mavi Marmara

Israeli propaganda attack on Gaza Freedom Flotilla

Amnesty International Report 2010 – Israel & the Occupied Palestinian Territories

Just click on any headline above to take you to the article on our website.

Kia Ora Gaza is fund-raising to send a six-person Kiwi Team to Gaza in three vehicles packed with humanitarian aid, such as medical equipment, educational supplies and building equipment. 

Our brave Kiwi Team is joining the biggest aid convoy since the Second World War. 500 vehicles full of aid and staffed by over 1,000 volunteers from scores of different countries  will converge on Gaza in October.

This historic convoy, led by UK-based charity Viva Palestina, will deliver humanitarian aid that is still banned by the state of Israel. And the convoy has a real chance of ending the Israeli siege of Gaza, or at least fatally weakening the blockade.

Here’s my message to you:  If you really want to bring both aid and justice to the people of Gaza, then donate generously to Kia Ora Gaza's humanitarian mission. Go to kiaoragaza.net to see how to donate.

And if you have already made a donation, then how about making another? Your financial support for Kia Ora Gaza is the best way you can counter Israel’s propaganda machine.

Thank you,

Grant Morgan

Co-organiser of Kia Ora Gaza

021 2544 515

grantmorgan@paradise.net.nz

kiaoragaza.net

Keep SAS out of Afghanistan

SAS combat troops “look set to return to Afghanistan” according to an NZPA article, that reports on Prime Minister John Key’s response to a request for more troops for the war from the US. The PM says he is “somewhat sympathetic” to the request.
 The mistaken belief that the people from Afghanistan had something to do with the September 11 attacks, or that the aim of the war was to capture Osama Bin Laden, has meant the war in Afghanistan has always had more support in this country, and more importantly in the US, than the war in Iraq. The previous Labour Government was able to exploit this, using troop commitments in Afghanistan to cosy up to the US. National will no doubt continue this policy. 
As the NZPA the article reminds us, there are already “About 140 army, navy and air force personnel are involved in New Zealand’s provincial reconstruction team (PRT) operating in Bamiyan province. The team has been there since 2003 and is committed until September 2010 so far.” And as Peace Movement Aotearoa (who forwarded the the NZPA report) points out:

SAS troops previously deployed to Afghanistan have been integrated with other Special Forces in the Combined Joint Special Operations Task Force under US military command. Along with US Special Forces, “six foreign nations including New Zealand and Australia, also assigned some of their best ‘hunters and killers’ to the group” which is headquartered near Bagram air base. Clearly not deployments that could be regarded as peacekeeping by any stretch of the imagination ...


It will be even easier for National to continue New Zealand’s involvement, now that Obama is working to promote Afghanistan as the “good war” in contrast to the mess in Iraq. But the truth is the occupation of Afghanistan has no more justification and is no more successful than the occupation of Iraq. In both cases the US and it’s allies, including NZ, are slaughtering tens of thousands of innocent people, while strengthening the “extremeists” they claim to be trying to stop. As Malalai Joya, a women’s rights actavist elected to the Afghan parliament in 2005, recently stated:

Almost eight years after the Taliban regime was toppled, our hopes for a truly democratic and independent Afghanistan have been betrayed by the continued domination of fundamentalists and by a brutal occupation that ultimately serves only American strategic interests in the region.

It is long past time for New Zealand to end it’s support for the war crime that is the occupation of Afghanistan by withdrawing all troops. As Joya argued in another recent interview, with Australia’s Green Left Weekly (GLW):

“But what’s going on today is like civil war. People are squashed today between two enemies: an internal and an external enemy ... “That’s why its better if the foreign troops leave as soon as possible. People are saying: we don’t expect anything good from you, just stop your wrongdoing. “Bombs falling from the sky are killing our people. On the ground, the Northern Alliance and Taliban are killing our people. From both sides our people are the victims — especially women and children.” She cited a May 4 US air-strike in her native Farah province. “The mainstream media wants to throw dust in the eyes of the world. Over 150 people were killed. I spoke to a young woman who lost 20 members of her own family. “This was a massacre. I was banned from giving a press conference. But the US government and media said only 20 were killed. “Our people hate warlords, don’t support Karzai and his puppet government of war criminals and drug lords who now want to negotiate with the Taliban. Our people hate the Taliban. “If the troops withdraw, then it is easier fight with one enemy. Now we are fighting with two enemies: occupation forces and these criminals.

A village elder from Granai, Afghanistan, points to the grave where his sister and her children are buried. Over 150 people were killed when the village was bombed by the US Air Force on May 4. Photo by Guy Smallman.

For more details about the massacre on the May 4 bombing of Granai village in Farah province, see the interview with Photojournalist Guy Smallman “the only Western reporter to visit the village” in Britain’s Socialist Worker newspaper. For an overview of what’s happening in Afghanistan today, take a look at ‘The Afghan war — unjust and unwinnable’ in the latest Green Left Weekly. Also of interest Reactions to US President Barak Obama’s recent speech “to the Muslim World”, from Noam Chomsky and Robert Fisk.

Can the US empire strike back?

by Alex Callinicos from British Socialist Worker 10 June 2008 Imagine, in a galaxy far, far away, an empire in decline. A disastrous military adventure and the rise of new powers have exposed its weakness. To cap it all, the emperor himself is generally despised as a provincial clod. But now his successor has to be chosen. What better way to rehabilitate the empire in the eyes of others than to select as emperor an eloquent, dynamic, relatively young man – a man who, while being utterly safe, not only belongs to the group of imperial subjects who are victims of its greatest historical injustice, but whose father comes from a foreign country and who himself spent some of his childhood in another?

Continue

The Coming War with Iran: It's the oil, stupid!

By Joe Lauria
14 April 2008
Huffington Post

World civilization is based on oil. The world is running out of oil. The oil companies and governments are not telling the truth about how close we are to the end.

Dick Cheney knew about peak oil back in 1999 when he spoke to the London Petroleum Institute as Halliburton CEO. He predicted it would come in 2010. After that it's just a matter of years before it runs out. Whoever controls the remaining oil determines who lives and who dies.

Sixty percent of this oil is under a triangular area of the Middle East the size of Kansas. In that speech Cheney said: "The Middle East with two-thirds of the world's oil and the lowest cost, is still where the prize ultimately lies."

This small Middle East triangle encompasses the northeast of Saudi Arabia, all of Iraq and the southwestern part of Iran, along with Kuwait, Qatar and the Emirates. The US controls Iraq. It has friendly governments in the other states.

Iran is the exception. The US now surrounds Iran.

Controlling an area the size of Kansas shouldn't be a problem for the U.S. military, except that it is heavily populated and many people in the triangle don't want the Americans there and are willing to fight.

It's been known for at least thirty years that America needs alternative energy sources. But instead of an alternative energy plan we got the invasion of Iraq by oilmen wedded to a dying business, willing to kill hundreds of thousands to cling to the last drop.

The US is never leaving the region or withdrawing from Iraq. McCain is right about staying, but 100 years is too long. The oil won't last that long.

Iran is next. Lieberman set up Petraeus to testify last week that Iranian-backed groups are murdering hundreds of American servicemen in Iraq. On Friday Gates called Iran's influence in Iraq "malign" and Bush said if Iran keeps meddling in Iraq "then we'll deal with them."

They are building their case for war with resolutions in the Senate and at the UN. It's only western Iran, from the Iraq border to 150 miles inside the country that the U.S. will have to occupy. That's where Iran's oil is.

But the U.S. will have a nasty battle on their hands in Iran even if they restore a Shah-like puppet in Tehran 30 years after the revolution.

The Saudis would not mind seeing the Iranian regime go. But the Saudis may also be on the list. The US may have to destabilize and control Saudi Arabia some day too.

The Wall Street Journal a few years ago revealed that in the 1970s under Nixon, Kissinger had plans drawn up for the US invasion and occupation of the Saudi oil fields. Those plans can be dusted off.

The American oil wars are being launched out of weakness, not strength. The American economy is teetering and without control of the remaining oil it will collapse. There will be massive chaos in any case, when only enough oil remains for the American elite and whomever they choose to share it with.

That will leave an oil-starved China and India, both with nuclear weapons, with no alternative but to bow to America or go to war.

It's not about greed any more. It's about survival. Because the leadership of America was initially too greedy to switch from oil to solar, wind, geothermal and other renewable alternatives, it may now be too late.

Had the hundreds of billions of dollars poured into the invasion and occupation of Iraq been put into alternative energy, the world might have had a fighting chance. Now that is far from certain.
What is certain is that these wars are not about democracy. They are not about WMD. The coming one will not even be about Iran's nuclear weapons project. It's about the oil, stupid.

Slaughter in Gaza- the Warsaw Ghetto of the 21st Century

Slaughter and starvation in Gaza-
six month old baby murdered
another 56 killed by Israeli attacks yesterday

ALL OUT-
GLOBAL DAY OF ACTION
AGAINST WAR AND OCCUPATION
12 noon MARCH 15th
AOTEA SQUARE, AUCKLAND

(a) End the occupation of Iraq
(b) Freedom for Palestine
(c) No NZ Troops in Afghanistan

Do your part, organise many more to come-
Join AntiWar Aotearoa and organise HERE

Warsaw Ghetto and Gaza: Disturbing Parallels Commentary: Steve Hutcheson, Arab News

I saw a photo last week of a father holding his 6-month-old baby son. The father’s face was devoid of expression; the child in his arms was dead. The boy’s name was Mohammed Al-Borai; he along with several others had been killed in a blast fired indiscriminately by an Israeli cannon into the densely populated areas of Gaza. There were more photos, one of a group of young boys holding flowers standing around the battered and bloodstained body of the baby boy. That struck me as the most poignant. I had been having a discussion about the cause of suicide bombers among Palestinians and it will be this image more than any other that will concern me more than most. In their minds the young dead boy will have more impact on their future than anything any one might tell them. It was then that I started to contemplate perhaps more fully the plight of the Palestinians today and the parallels in the history of the Jews that led to their mass exodus from their own countries to immigrate to the land that was at the time known as Palestine. The Warsaw Ghetto during the Jewish Holocaust holds special significance to the European Jews. It was a place of oppression and the pathway to the ultimate death of thousands of their population that has become symbolic with their struggle for recognition. Yet what they are failing to acknowledge as their descendants press forward with their own brand of Jewish and Zionist idealism is the parallel set of conditions that they are now imposing on the Arab people of Palestine. The Nazis rounded up the Jews of Poland and quartered them in a small area of Warsaw, building a barricade around the perimeter to prevent them leaving. So too have the Israelis through conflict and force pushed many of the Arab inhabitants out of Israel into an enclave that now has a population density of 4,200 people per sq. km which is 14 times that of the surrounding area of Israel which has 360 people per sq. km. The Nazis deprived the ghetto inhabitants of food and essential supplies. So too has the Israeli government stopped the flow of goods to the 1.4 million inhabitants of Gaza by limiting the convoys of supplies to a mere trickle. The Nazis reduced the average calorie intake of the Jewish inhabitants of the ghetto to 241 calories per day. So too have the Israelis reduced the calorie intake of the Palestinians in Gaza. According to a UN report, it is presently at 61 percent of the average daily requirements. The Nazis restricted public utilities such as water and electricity. So too has the Israeli government. The Nazis restricted the inhabitants from adequate health care. Israelis restrict the health care in Gaza by limiting the medical supplies in or the treatment of cases that need to be done outside. The Jewish inhabitants through the ZZB and the ZOB resisted the oppression by the Nazis albeit too late and their rebellion was brutally crushed without concern for who was in the way. So too have the Palestinians of Gaza through their own resistance organizations, in particular Hamas, rebelled against their oppressors and so too do the Israelis use all means available to crush the rebellion without concern for who is in the way or who they maim or kill in doing so. The Nazis destroyed the structure of the ghetto leveling it to the ground in a broad quest to rout the resistance to their oppression. Israelis indiscriminately level buildings and the infrastructure in Gaza in a quest to rout out the resistance to their oppression. The Nazis assigned the Jewish people to a lesser status of all their inhabitants depriving them of their rights as citizens and even as humans. Israel assigns the refugees held in Gaza less status than is given to the Jews worldwide and deprives the Palestinians of their rights to return to their former lands. The Nazis applied whatever was at their means to break the will of the Jewish inhabitants of the ghetto. Israelis do the same thing; they use whatever is at their means to break the will of the Palestinians. The Nazis killed the Jewish inhabitants of the ghetto indiscriminately. Don’t the Israelis kill indiscriminately the inhabitants in forcing their control over Gaza? The Jews of Israel and elsewhere are quite right to protest at the inhumanity of the Nazis in their treatment of them and oblige the world not to allow the same situation to happen again. The Palestinians protest at the inhumanity of the Israeli treatment, yet in a bizarre twist of events, the world still allows the oppression to happen and continue. It was after the Jews in the ghetto had been largely killed or transported that the world stood up and felt guilty in not acting sooner. With the picture of Mohammed Al-Borai in my mind I question when the world will stand up and say: Enough is enough, there is not going to be a repeat of the Warsaw Ghetto and particularly when its perpetrators are those who suffered the most by its conduct. There is a basic conflict of inhumanity occurring to the Palestinian people of Gaza that the world is deliberately ignoring. An inhumanity that was inflicted by the Nazis on the Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto is now more than ever closely paralleling that which they are inflicting on the people of Gaza. They learned a hard lesson but it was not a lesson learned well. They have been given the power to practice humanity but have decided instead that they will treat the concerns of the Palestinians in the same inhumane way the Nazis treated them. A future monument will no doubt contain photos of Mohammed Al-Borai in the arms of his father and the world will decry the injustice. Steve Hutcheson has worked in crisis recovery in Kosovo, Afghanistan and Indonesia for the past several years and is now based in Thailand. He can be contacted at: steve50@mail.com Israeli minister threatens "holocaust" as public demand ceasefire talks Ali Abunimah, The Electronic Intifada, 29 February 2008 Israeli officials began damage limitation efforts after the country's deputy defense minister Matan Vilnai threatened Palestinians in the occupied Gaza Strip with a "holocaust." The comments came a day after Israeli occupation forces killed 31 Palestinians, nine of them children, one a six-month-old baby, in a series of air raids across the Gaza Strip. Israel claimed that the attacks were in retaliation for a barrage of rockets fired by resistance fighters in the Gaza Strip which killed one Israeli in the town of Sderot on Wednesday, 27 February. Palestinian resistance groups, including Hamas, said the rockets were in retaliation for the extrajudicial execution of five Hamas members carried out by Israel on Wednesday morning. Israeli occupation forces have killed more than 200 Palestinians since the US-sponsored Annapolis peace summit last November. In the same period, five Israelis have been killed by Palestinians. Speaking to Israeli army radio today, Vilnai said, "the more Qassam [rocket] fire intensifies and the rockets reach a longer range, [the Palestinians] will bring upon themselves a bigger shoah because we will use all our might to defend ourselves." A report on the BBC News website headlined "Israel warns of Gaza 'holocaust'" noted that the word "holocaust" -- shoah in Hebrew -- is "a term rarely used in Israel outside discussions of the Nazi genocide during World War II." The BBC later reported that "many of Mr. Vilnai's colleagues have quickly distanced themselves from his comments and also tried to downplay them saying he did not mean genocide." An Israeli foreign ministry spokesman, Arye Mekel, claimed that Vilnai used the word "in the sense of a disaster or a catastrophe, and not in the sense of a holocaust." The attempt to limit the damage of Vilnai's comments is not surprising. It was recently revealed how another Israeli official, Major-General Doron Almog, narrowly escaped arrest at London's Heathrow airport in September 2005, in connection with allegations of war crimes committed against Palestinians in the occupied territories. British police feared a gunfight if they attempted to board the El Al civilian aircraft on which Almog had arrived and on which he hid until he fled the United Kingdom back to Israel as a fugitive from justice. Incitement to genocide is a punishable crime under the international Genocide Convention, adopted in 1948 after the Nazi holocaust. "The 8 Stages of Genocide," written by Greg Stanton, President of Genocide Watch, sets out a number of warning signs of an impending genocide, which include "dehumanization" of potential victim groups and preparation, whereby potential victims "are often segregated into ghettoes, deported into concentration camps, or confined to a famine-struck region and starved." [1] Vilnai's holocaust threat, however much Israeli officials attempt to qualify it, fits into a consistent pattern of belligerent statements and actions by Israeli officials. Israel has attempted to isolate the population of Gaza, deliberately restricting essential supplies, such as food, medicines and energy, a policy endorsed by the Israeli high court but condemned by international officials as illegal collective punishment. As The Electronic Intifada has previously reported, dehumanizing statements by Israeli political and religious leaders directed at Palestinians are common (see "Top Israeli rabbis advocate genocide," The Electronic Intifada, 31 May 2007 and "Dehumanizing the Palestinians," Ali Abunimah, The Electronic Intifada, 21 September 2007) On 28 February, Vilnai's colleagues added their own inflammatory statements. Cabinet minister Meir Sheetrit stated that Israel should "hit everything that moves" in Gaza "with weapons and ammunition," adding, "I don't think we have to show pity for anyone who wants to kill us." And today, Tzachi Hanegbi, a senior member of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's Kadima party said that Israel should invade Gaza to "topple the Hamas terror regime" and that Israeli forces, which now enforce the occupation of Gaza from the periphery and air, should prepare to remain in the interior of the territory "for years." While Israeli leaders escalate the violence and threats, some other top officials and a vast majority of the Israeli public support direct talks with Hamas to achieve a mutual ceasefire, something Hamas has repeatedly offered for months. "Sixty-four percent of Israelis say the government must hold direct talks with the Hamas government in Gaza toward a cease-fire and the release of captive soldier Gilad Shalit," the Israeli daily Haaretz reported on 27 February citing a Tel Aviv University poll. The report noted that half of Likud supporters and large majorities of Kadima and Labor party voters support such talks and only 28 percent of Israelis still oppose them. Knesset Member Yossi Beilin, leader of the left-Zionist Meretz-Yahad party, called for an agreed ceasefire with Hamas, noting that "there have been at least two requests from Hamas, via a third party, to accept a cease-fire," Haaretz reported on 29 February. Israel's public security minister, Avi Dichter, visiting Sderot the previous day, criticized Israel's military escalation, saying, "Whoever talks about entering and occupying the Gaza Strip, these are populist ideas which I don't connect to, and in my opinion, no intelligent person does either." And, in an interview with the American magazine Mother Jones, published on 19 February, the former head of Israel's Mossad intelligence agency, Efraim Halevy, repeated calls for Israel and the US to negotiate a ceasefire with Hamas. Dismissing lurid rhetoric about the group, Halevy stated that "Hamas is not al-Qaida," and "is not subservient to Tehran." The question remains as to why when the vast majority of Israelis and Palestinians, some senior Israeli officials, and Hamas leaders are all talking about a ceasefire, the Israeli government refuses to accept one and the US refuses to call for one. US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has blamed the escalating bloodshed entirely on Hamas, and has failed to call for a ceasefire. This echoes her support for Israel's merciless 2006 bombardment of Lebanon which she notoriously celebrated as being "the birth pangs of a new Middle East." The Palestinian and Israeli populations are exhausted by the relentless bloodshed, however unequal its toll. They are paying the price of a failed policy, pushed by Washington and its local clients, which attempts to demonize, isolate and destroy any movement that resists the order that the United States seeks to impose on the region. Co-founder of The Electronic Intifada, Ali Abunimah is author of One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse (Metropolitan Books, 2006).

End the siege of Gaza!

Gaza siege is a war crime: End all support for Israel! Tony Iltis 1 February 2008 On January 23, a series of explosions ripped open the concrete and steel barrier that had sealed off the Gaza Strip from the outside world. The breach in the barrier allowed hundreds of thousands of desperate Palestinians, perhaps a third of Gaza’s 1.5 million residents, to surge into the Egyptian cross-border town of Rafah to buy some of life’s basic necessities — denied them by Israel’s siege of the 10 kilometre wide, 40-kilometre long Palestinian enclave. The explosion also blew holes in the inversion of reality anti-Palestinian propaganda in the Western media. For the past few months, mainstream media coverage of events in Palestine has been focussed on the US-orchestrated ’’Peace talks” between Israeli PM Ehud Olmert and Palestinian National Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas. The impression given by this coverage is that the US and its European Union allies are “honest brokers”, pushing for a settlement to the 60-year Arab-Israeli conflict based on Arab acceptance of Israel’s ’right” to exist with “secure borders” and Israel’s acceptance of an independent Palestinian state ruling over the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. The Abbas-led PA has been presented as the legitimate representative of the Palestinian people and a “partner for peace”. The impression has been given that the main obstacle to a “peace” settlement is the alleged refusal of Hamas — portrayed as terrorists and agents of “rogue states” Iran and Syria — to “renounce violence” against Israel and recognise the Israeli state’s “right to exist”. Hamas is presented as having ’’seized” control over Gaza to use it as a staging ground for attacking Israel. Ignored is the fact that the Hamas-led administration in Gaza is all that remains of the PA government elected by Palestinian voters in early 2006, following the US- and Israeli-backed, unconstitutional takeover of the PA administration in West Bank by Abbas and his Fatah party in June 2007. War crimes Ignored is the fact that ever since September 2000, about 1800 Palestinian civilians in Gaza have been killed by Israeli military attacks, while over the same period only a dozen Israeli citizens have been killed by cross-border Palestinian rocket attacks from Gaza. In the first two weeks of January, the Israeli military has killed 50 Palestinian civilians in Gaza, while Palestinian rocket attacks into Israel have slightly injured three Israelis. Yet, Israel and its Western backers, portray Israel, with the Middle East’s most powerful military machine, as the innocent victim of Palestinian aggression. Also ignored is the fact that Israel’s siege of Gaza — closing every access into the enclave, including for the delivery of fuel and food supplies, and the bombing of Gaza’s main power station — is a war crime. The 1949 Geneva Conventions state, in article 54 of their additional protocol, that, “Starvation of civilians as a method of warfare is prohibited”. It is also “prohibited to attack, destroy, remove or render useless objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population”. The dramatic events since January 23 have made two realities clear. Firstly, that the policies of Israel and its Western backers have turned Palestinians in Gaza into paupers and, secondly, that the Palestinian people retain a willingness to engage in mass defiance of their Israeli overlords. These events have also shown that far from being terrorist agents of outside powers, Hamas enjoys the support of the mass of Gazans because of its role in enabling this mass defiance. Occupied territories The 365km² Gaza Strip has been described as the world’s largest open-air prison. It is also the most densely populated place on Earth. When the Israeli state was created in 1947-49 through the violent seizure and ethnic cleansing of 78% of Palestine by Jewish colonists from Europe, some 800,000 Palestinian refugees fled to the West Bank and Gaza — the only parts of Palestine that remained outside of the new Jewish state. But in 1967, Israel invaded and occupied both of these territories. The bringing of all of the Palestinian nation’s homeland under Israeli rule did not mean that Palestinian refugees in Gaza and the West Bank could return to their pre-1948 home towns and villages. The UN-designated Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) remained administratively separated from pre-1967 Israel. This division did not stop Israel, in blatant violation of the 1949 Geneva Conventions, from planting settlements of its citizens in the OPT. From the outset Israeli control of the movement of people and goods, through military checkpoints and repeated border closures, was used to repress resistance to Israeli’s illegal occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. When the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) under the late Yasser Arafat signed the Oslo Accords with Israel in 1993, accepting a “two-state solution”, the assumption was that an independent Palestinian state would comprise the 22% of Palestine that remained outside of Israeli rule between 1948 and June 1967 — the West Bank and Gaza — with unimpeded access between Gaza and the West Bank. However, while the PLO was allowed by Israel to set up the PA — with the formal trappings of a government — the creation of such an independent Palestinian state was never the intention of Israel or its Western backers. Israeli settlements, with a population of just under half a million, along with by-pass roads and the “separation barrier” — an 8-metre high fortified concrete and steel barrier that encircles and divides the West Bank — have effectively annexed to Israel half of the West Bank. While Israeli settlements were withdrawn from the Gaza Strip in 2005, it was surrounded by a wall and its residents were denied access to Gaza’s own airspace and coastal waters, destroying the livelihoods of Gazan fishers. As if to underline the impossibility of these isolated and walled-off Palestinian ghettos somehow forming an independent state, Israel subjects the OPT to regular air strikes and periodic ground invasions. While Israel’s rulers publicly say they support a “two-state solution”, their actions show that what they really want is an “independent” Palestinian state consisting of a series of isolated apartheid-style ’’bantustans”. This is what the Israeli rulers want Palestinians to accept as a “two-state solution”. Hoever, Israel needs to maintain the illusion that a “two-state solution” is a viable possibility. Last November, Olmert made this clear when he told the Tel Aviv Haaretz daily: “If the day comes when the two-state solution collapses, and we face a South African-style struggle for equal voting rights (also for the Palestinians in the territories), then, as soon as that happens, the State of Israel is finished.” Olmert had expressed the same fear in a 2003 interview with Haaretz, saying: “More and more Palestinians are uninterested in a negotiated, two-state solution, because they want to change the essence of the conflict from an Algerian paradigm to a South African one. From a struggle against ‘occupation’, in their parlance, to a struggle for one-man [sic], one-vote. “That is, of course, a much cleaner struggle, a much more popular struggle — and ultimately a much more powerful one. For us, it would mean the end of the Jewish state.” The other part of Israel’s strategy is its attempt to turn the PA into a compliant collaborator in its apartheid-style “two-state solution”. While Arafat was never entirely willing to play this role, since Arafat’s death in a Ramallah compound besieged by Israeli tanks, Abbas has proved to be a much more willing Israeli “partner”. Western complicity It was in this context that the Hamas-led Change and Reform coalition, opposed to the widespread corruption in the Abbas-led PA, won the January 2006 Palestinian Legislative Council elections. Immediately after this, the US, the EU and other Western countries, including Australia, showed their real attitude to democracy in the Middle East by imposing an economic blockade on the OPT as collective punishment for not having voted for Abbas-aligned candidates. The only Western aid that continued to be given to the PA was military assistance to the Abbas-controlled security police. In June 2006, the US-financed and Israeli-armed Abbas-aligned PA secret police chief Mohamed Dahlan attempted to oust PA forces loyal to the Hamas-led coalition from Gaza. He failed, with pro-Hamas forces driving out Dahlan and his uniformed thugs. Israel, with support and encouragement from its Western allies, has since placed Gaza under a medieval-style siege. Food, medicine and fuel have become increasingly scarce, with electricity supplies from Israel being drastically cut. By mid-January, Gaza’s hospitals were on the verge of running out of fuel for electricity generators. While medical services in Gaza are barely functioning, Israel has even stopped ambulances from leaving, resulting in 85 preventable deaths since June. At least 95% of Gaza’s businesses have closed and 85% of Gazans are now dependent on foreign food aid which, the UN Relief and Works Agency reports, is rapidly running out. Caught between a US patron demanding that the Gaza prison-break be ended and a population disgusted by his complicity with Israel’s Gaza siege, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak has restricted goods getting to Rafah and the nearby town of El Arish so as to discourage Gazans from crossing the border. On February 1, Egyptian soldiers tried to lay down metal barriers across several Hamas-made breaches in the Rafah border crossing, but Hamas militants, supported by hundreds of demonstrating Gazans, used bulldozers to tear down the barriers. The Gaza siege is a crime against humanity. It could not occur without the backing of Western governments. All support for the Apartheid state of Israel, and its war crimes, must be ended From: International News, Green Left Weekly issue #738 6 February 2008.

Can the US empire strike back?

by Alex Callinicos from British Socialist Worker 10 June 2008 Imagine, in a galaxy far, far away, an empire in decline. A disastrous military adventure and the rise of new powers have exposed its weakness. To cap it all, the emperor himself is generally despised as a provincial clod. But now his successor has to be chosen. What better way to rehabilitate the empire in the eyes of others than to select as emperor an eloquent, dynamic, relatively young man – a man who, while being utterly safe, not only belongs to the group of imperial subjects who are victims of its greatest historical injustice, but whose father comes from a foreign country and who himself spent some of his childhood in another? Maybe this seems too cynical a view of Barack Obama’s bid for the US presidency. The success of his campaign for the Democratic nomination has been driven by a huge popular revulsion against George Bush’s discredited administration and by the desire finally to heal the wound in US society caused by slavery and racism. But the real power of the US president lies abroad. President John F Kennedy asked Richard Nixon in 1961, “It really is true that foreign affairs is the only important issue for a president to handle, isn’t it? I mean, who gives a shit if the minimum wage is $1.15 or $1.25 in comparison to something like the confrontation between the US and Cuba.” And, on foreign policy, there seems to be a big divide between the two presidential candidates. John McCain, the Republican nominee, is in favour of keeping US troops in Iraq for “maybe one hundred years”. Obama, by contrast, gained his edge on Hillary Clinton in large part thanks to his opposition to the invasion of Iraq in 2003. He is officially committed to withdrawing all US combat brigades from Iraq within 16 months of becoming president. But, in judging what Obama would actually do in the White House, it’s essential to remember what presidential elections are really about. Dominated by money – Obama’s victory over Clinton was clinched by his superior fund-raising – they are about choosing the leader who can best look after the global interests of US capitalism for the next four years. Long before President Jimmy Carter officially proclaimed it in January 1980, a key objective of US foreign policy has been militarily and politically to dominate the Middle East. The current surge in the oil price has made securing this objective even more important. So it’s striking, as the Washington Post has pointed out, that “when Mr Obama opened his general election campaign this week with a major speech on Middle East policy, the substantive strategy he outlined was, in many respects, not very much different from that of the Bush administration – or that of John McCain”. Obama made the speech to the American Israel Political Affairs Committee (AIPAC), one of the key pro-Israel lobbying organisations. He seems to have had two aims. The first was to ­reassure a suspicious audience that his opposition to the Iraq war did not in any way weaken his support for Israel. “Let me be clear,” Obama said. “Israel’s security is sacrosanct. It is non-negotiable, Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided.” He said he had been opposed even to letting Hamas contest the Palestinian elections in 2006 and promised Israel $30 billion US aid over the next ten years. Secondly, Obama sought to toughen his line on Iran. He has been attacked by Bush and McCain for “appeasement” for promising to negotiate with the Islamic Republican regime in Tehran. Not radical Obama’s position isn’t exactly radical. The December 2006 report of the Iraq Study Group, headed by Jim Baker, pillar of the administrations of Ronald Reagan and George Bush Senior, recommended negotiating with Iran as a way of getting out of the Iraq morass. But Obama was determined not to allow McCain to outflank him. “I will do everything in my power to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon,” he told AIPAC. This would include “aggressive, principled diplomacy” backed up by tougher sanctions and the ultimate sanction of force: “I will always keep the threat of military action on the table to defend our security and our ally Israel.” This change in tone isn’t just about defeating McCain in the general election. The military surge hasn’t brought peace or stability to Iraq, but it has bought the US time to pursue its long term plans for the country. The secret draft agreement for a “strategic alliance” between the US and Iraq revealed last week in Socialist Worker and the Independent indicate what these plans are – permanent US military bases in Iraq and the right for the Pentagon to pursue its operations without the say-so of its client regime. Democratic senators have denounced the proposal. Nevertheless, it is absolutely certain that Obama will fill what the Washington Post calls “the gap in his Middle East policy” by watering down his proposal to withdraw all US troops in Iraq. But if president Obama would probably offer only more of the same in the Middle East, what difference would he make overall to the US empire? After the Cold War, commentators talked about “the unipolar moment” – about overwhelming US global power. The Iraq debacle has reminded the world instead of US relative decline – a perception reinforced by the economic rise of China and the credit squeeze engineered by Anglo-American financial speculation. Instead of the swaggering arrogance of power symbolised by Bush, Obama would offer the world’s ruling classes a different face of the US – one ready to negotiate and to cooperate, and in particular to address the issue of climate change rather than pretend it doesn’t exist. But this more open stance would still rest on US military power – Obama wants to increase the size of the armed forces. He would make an attractive black emperor but he would still have his legions massed behind him.