Freeing Julian Assange: the last chapter

John Pilger describes a landmark judgement in the Julian Assange case that may see the WikiLeaks founder walk free after five years.

Listen Up, Socialist! An Open Letter to the Bernie Sanders Generation

WITNESSES TO HISTORY
CALEB MAUPIN

“The US government is not working to protect you and your family. It is bought and sold, working for a cartel of international bankers who have no loyalties of any kind…”

It used to be off-limits to talk the way we do. We can all remember when “capitalism” was synonymous with “good” in standard American English. In the mainstream mind, the word “socialism” only conjured up images of dictators and prison camps.

But then in 2008, the economy crashed. People like you and me starting waking up, asking questions, and looking for answers.

What woke you up? Was it seeing your neighborhood suddenly dotted with foreclosed homes? Was it having a relative lose their good-paying industrial job after their plant closed down? Was it those student loan bills that just kept coming? Was it leaving college and discovering you’ll never get a chance to have the kind of decent-paying job and living standard that once defined the American dream? Was it applying for food stamps, after being told your whole life that there was prosperity in America for all who worked hard?

It certainly helped that the Republicans called Obama a “socialist” constantly. If daring to show even the slightest concern about the decaying of the industrial Midwest and the crisis of low wages makes you a “socialist,” many people should be interested in becoming one.

Back in 2008 calling Obama a “socialist” was a way to slur him. Now Bernie Sanders, the Democratic Party front-runner, is calling himself a “socialist” as a way to attract supporters. Many of the most dedicated anti-Wall Street activists who occupied Zuccotti Park back in 2011 are now “feeling the Bern.” Sanders talks vaguely about “democratic socialism” on national television between rants against the wealthy financial oligarchy, and people love him for it.

Hating Wall Street and their system of global monopoly capitalism might be a new thing for you and me, but it’s not new for most of the world. The message of my letter is this: If you really want to fight Wall Street, you have to join up with the unfolding global revolution. Fighting the billionaire one percent means fighting racism and imperialism.

Wall Street and the Black Nation

If you’ve seen Michael Moore’s new movie Where to Invade Next, you’ve got to be perplexed. Why do working people in Europe have guaranteed healthcare, free education, and a much more humane society? Moore barely hints at the reasons. He shows workers’ rallies and demonstrations. He points out that people in Europe protest more and tend to be more involved in the political process.

Lack of political involvement is certainly part of our problem. We all know that too many people in the USA are tuned out of politics and tuned in to Kim Kardashian and the Real Housewives of New Jersey. But the problem is deeper than that.

What image immediately comes into your mind when you hear the phrase “welfare mother?” Despite the fact that the majority of women with children who receive government assistance are white, the image that has been burned into our minds and associated with the phrase “welfare mother” is that of an African-American woman. The manufactured perception that government programs only help “the others” has been key in duping people and destroying the US economy.

“Hating Wall Street and their system of global monopoly capitalism might be a new thing for you and me, but it’s not new for most of the world…”

For the last four decades, while the incomes and living standards of all the working families in the United States have been dropping, the US media have convinced white people to direct their anger at African-Americans. They have convinced many to support cuts in social programs and the firing of government workers, believing that these things would only hurt African-Americans and Latinos.

Meanwhile, a huge police state is emerging. Our civil liberties are disappearing. Cops are killing people everywhere, and millions of people are locked in prison. The federal government is watching our every move, listening to our phone calls, and reading our e-mails. Yet many of us have been duped into going along with it by politicians who play up fear and racism and talk about “getting tough on crime.”

Racism has been the biggest barrier to social justice in the United States. The United States, unlike France or Germany, is not a nation. The United States is a country, and within it are both oppressed and oppressor nations. The primary way the ruling global elite has kept back the working families of all nations within the United States is by mobilizing the whites to oppress, despise, and beat down African-Americans.

The ruling financial elite has prevented struggles and rebellions from breaking out by utilizing white workers. Wall Street is very good at redirecting our rage and transforming us into foot soldiers they can use to beat down the Black and Chicano nations.

As the economy is crumbling, the middle class is destroyed, and youth are stuck in low-wage service sector jobs, we see this racism racket once again. Protesters are marching through the streets saying “Black Lives Matter” because the courts and society at large have given the police an unofficial license to kill Black youth. Armed rebellions are breaking out in places like Ferguson and Baltimore.

FOX news and Donald Trump are working hard to dupe us, like they have so many times before. They want to use the white working class as cannon fodder against the unfolding Black revolution. They want us burning mosques, cheering for George Zimmerman, hating immigrants, and waving American flags while they transform the entire country into a giant low-wage prison. Will we be suckers again? Or are we going to wake up and switch sides?

The Danger of Global War

Long before Bernie Sanders was calling himself a “democratic socialist,” Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was describing himself with such terms. Just before King was shot down, he started talking about poverty and the Vietnam War. He dared point out that US militarism around the world and the extreme poverty of people at home were absolutely linked.

King’s final speeches described how the forces that control the world, the big bankers, were oppressing and exploiting African-Americans at the same time they were slaughtering Vietnamese people. At the time of his death, King was daring to link the Ku Klux Klan and Pentagon as a singular apparatus of repression, and calling for an end to capitalism, the system based on profits.

In the days of MLK, the Black Panther Party, and Malcolm X, a lot of support for the Black freedom struggle came from outside of the country. The Soviet Union petitioned the UN to take action against Jim Crow segregation. Cuba broadcast “Radio Free Dixie,” urging African-Americans to rise up. Mao Zedong issued statements urging resistance to racism, and welcomed Black freedom fighters like Robert F. Williams and Huey Newton to China as heroes. The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea had a special relationship with the Black Panther Party. Many forces around the world understood that the fight against imperialism was linked to the Black freedom struggle in the United States.

The situation today isn’t much different. The Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran, a country the US media is constantly telling us to hate, has openly stated: “We are opposed to the crimes of ISIS and the crimes of the Federal Police of the United States. They are both the same.”

While FOX news and CNN portray protesters and activists as dangerous criminals, TV networks like Russia Today and PressTV invite those who are protesting to tell their side of the story, and expose the horrors of police brutality and political repression routinely covered up by the Wall Street-owned US media.

It should be no surprise that at the same time that they are filling neighborhoods across the United States up with police checkpoints, cameras, and surveillance drones, they are building military bases in the Pacific Ocean and surrounding the People’s Republic of China. At the same time that they are rehearsing for civil war and martial law in the hills of Idaho (remember “Operation Jade Helm”), they are setting the stage for a confrontation with Russia.

Russia isn’t part of the Soviet Union any longer. There are plenty of wealthy capitalists there now. The Cold War is over, but US leaders still want a confrontation. Why? Putin has brought stability after the chaos that ensued during the fall [overthrow, actually] of the USSR. The Russian economy is centered around exporting its publicly owned oil and natural gas resources. Russia is an emerging source of stability, competing with big bankers on the global markets.

That’s why in 2008, the US-aligned regime in Georgia attacked the territory of South Ossetia protected by Russian peacemakers, sparking a war. That’s why the democratically elected president of Ukraine was forcefully removed by a group of US-funded neo-Nazis and terrorists in 2014. That’s why US media is constantly telling us that Putin is a dictator, while at the same time the US is supporting and arming brutal regimes like the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

Libya is in ruins since the 2011 intervention. It once had the highest life expectancy on the African continent. Iraq is a mess. Saddam Hussein has been replaced by ISIS. Aside from the poppy fields and terrorist groups, Afghanistan is more impoverished and unstable than ever before. The “rescue missions” US leaders keep selling never seem to make anyone better off. The people in the Pentagon don’t care anything about human rights.

The dangerous war moves against Russia, like the racist repression of African-Americans and the rising police state at home, are about keeping the Wall Street criminals in control of the world. The fight against Wall Street is also a fight with the Pentagon, and it’s also a fight against police brutality and racism. The US government is not working to protect you and your family. It is bought and sold, working for a cartel of international bankers who have no loyalties of any kind. The World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, Wall Street, the London Stock Exchange; all the centers of economic power are under the control of a clique of Ayn Rand psychopaths. In the name of “neoliberalism” they have turned “might makes right” and “greed is good” into an ideology, and they want nothing to stand in the way of their profits. They glorify selfishness and individualism, and want to break down and destroy all communities, cultures, nations, and traditions. They want one global financial empire.

Venezuela, Iran, Russia, China, Cuba and Syria — all the countries the Pentagon is mobilizing to attack — have to one degree or another kicked these bankers out and taken control of their own economies. They have started developing independently, and the big bankers want to destroy them. In the US, Black nationalists like the New Black Panther Party, the Nation of Islam, the African People’s Socialist Party, and so many others want the same thing for African-Americans. They want self-determination and the right to build up and develop their own community. I say it’s time we embrace these forces. We have the same enemy. All those fighting for independence should be our friends.

What Kind of “Socialism” Do You Believe In?

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]here was a time when a lot of white people in the United States got something out of the empire. Older folks often talk about the booming economy of the 1950s, the “good old days” made possible by the rise of US power after WWII. It used to be that while US leaders bombed places like Vietnam and Korea, and we waved the flag and cheered, some of us got houses, cars, TV sets and a high standard of living.

But that’s history! The domestic capitalism of the United States has been defeated by international finance. The bankers that run the world are driving the entire human race down. With the computer revolution, technology is advancing to astounding heights. Their social scientists are talking about “overpopulation” because they don’t need us anymore. A crisis of global migration has erupted. People are fleeing their homes across the world because the global economy no longer has room for millions of workers.

Because Russia and China have dared to say “no” to international capitalism, and continue to build themselves up with somewhat state-controlled economies, the danger of war is intensifying. These large countries sit at the center of an entire bloc that has rejected the dictatorship of the dollar. Many countries, with many different ideologies, are refusing to be part of the international financial dictatorship.

I don’t blame you for supporting Bernie Sanders. I could never vote for him because of his support for Israel’s crimes against the Palestinians, and his justification of drone strikes. But he’s probably the best option among the “serious candidates” on the ballot. The fact that his campaign is moving closer to the “Black Lives Matter” uprising, and talking more about racism, is a good sign. When Sanders talks against the billionaire financial elite, he is saying what all of us know in our bones: a group of ultra-rich people run the USA, and they are taking the country and the entire world in a very dangerous direction. Global capitalism is driving us toward fascism, poverty, and war, so many Americans have started exploring different concepts of “socialism.”

What concerns me most, my socialist friend, is what you are going to do after the 2016 elections are over. Is your belief in “socialism” going to stop on Election Day? Are you going to return to your normal life, sitting back while Wall Street pushes the human race closer towards disaster? Or are you going to keep fighting back, not just at the ballot box, but in the street?

And what is “socialism” going to mean for you? Is it going to be a more liberal version of Donald Trump’s “Make America Great Again”? Is it about trying to bring back the good old days when white people got bigger crumbs while the bankers plundered the world? Or is it about building something entirely new?

The Soviet Union is gone. The kind of “really existing socialism” that defined the Cold War is not coming back. But in the Bolivarian movement of Venezuela, the People’s Republics of Donbass, the Hezbollah-controlled areas of Lebanon, and the streets of Baltimore and Ferguson, something new is emerging. It’s not the “communism” we learned about in school. It doesn’t fit into the 20th-century political categories of left or right. Sometimes it is very religious or nationalistic. Often it draws deeply from traditions and cultures of peoples who are under attack and refuse to surrender. Whatever you want to call the emerging forces of resistance, they are our only hope for the future. Wall Street and neoliberal capitalism have failed, and their only hope for keeping power is in war and repression.

If you really want to fight Wall Street, you need to pick sides now. You need to think in global terms. Time is running out and the stakes are getting higher. The world is waiting for us!

http://journal-neo.org/2016/01/13/listen-up-socialist-an-open-letter-to-the-bernie-sanders-generation/

Caleb Maupin is an American journalist and political analyst. Tasnim News Agency described him as “a native of Ohio who has campaigned against war and the U.S. financial system.” He was involved in the Occupy Wall Street movement from its planning stages. His political activism began while attending Baldwin-Wallace College in Ohio. In 2010, he video recorded a confrontation between Collinwood High School students who walked out to protest teacher layoffs and the police. His video footage resulted in one of the students being acquitted in juvenile court. He was a figure within the Occupy Wall Street protests in New York City. Maupin writes on American foreign policy and other social issues. Maupin is featured as a Distinguished Collaborator with The Greanville Post. READ MORE ABOUT CALEB MAUPIN HERE.

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Farcical Syrian Peace Talks Collapse

DISPATCHES FROM STEPHEN LENDMAN

Farcical Syrian Peace Talks Collapse

Pro-Western, pro-Saudi, anti-Syrian UN envoy/interlocutor Staffan de Mistura (see below, shaking Kerry’s hand) tried putting a brave face on collapse, saying talks going nowhere were suspended until February 25. They’re a meaningless exercise in deception, mostly opposition terrorist groups, wanting Syria raped and pillaged involved.

Mistura failed to reveal names of their delegates, groups and individuals as ruthless as ISIS, beholden to US-led Western and Saudi-led foreign powers – committed to war, instability and chaos, wanting Syrian sovereignty replace by caliphate tyranny.

Talks scheduled to begin on January 26 never began. US/Saudi-backed terrorist groups made unacceptable demands designed for rejection. They intended abandoning Geneva III and returning home Thursday. Mistura tried saving face for himself and foreign backers by announcing failed talks were suspended.

Both sides have intractable positions. Nothing ahead will change in a month, year or longer. Syria’s delegation wants peace, stability, a chance to begin rebuilding, its sovereignty protected, and the right of its people alone to decide who’ll govern them, free from outside interference – mandated under international law.

US-led Western nations, Saudi Arabia, other Gulf States and Israel want the Syrian Arab Republic destroyed, its resources plundered, its people exploited – a formula for endless conflict. At the same time, they want Iran isolated. Its turn awaits. Washington and rogue partners want the Islamic Republic returned to its bad old days, run by a tyrannical US-controlled puppet.

Syria’s UN envoy/chief negotiator Bashar al-Jaafari explained opposition terrorist groups intended subverting talks before they began, wanting them to fail, intending to walk out, then wrongfully blame Assad and Russia for their duplicity.

Syrian forces greatly aided by Russian air power have ISIS and other terrorist groups on the back foot – another reason why US-Saudi-backed opposition delegates withdrew. Negotiating from weakness defeats them.

“(W)e know that the (US/Saudi-backed) delegation had the intention to withdraw,” he explained. De Mistura gave them “diplomatic cover (on) orders from Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Qatar,” as well as Washington, mostly responsible for orchestrating failure.

Notably, after years of ISIS and other terrorist groups’ control of strategically important Nubl and Al-Zahra in northern Aleppo province, Syrian ground forces aided by Russian air power liberated them. At the same time, most terrorists in Ma’arasa, al-Khan, As Sin and al-Uweinat were eliminated. Most important, the strategic supply line from Turkey to Aleppo was severed.

Another tenuously operates from Turkey to Idlib (37 miles southwest of Aleppo) and Aleppo province. Expect Russian air power to let Syrian ground forces control the area in the days or weeks ahead.

According to Sergey Lavrov, conflict resolution depends heavily on “blocking illegal trafficking across the Turkish/Syrian border,” supplying terrorist groups with weapons, munitions and other supplies. Northern Syria near Turkey’s border is being incrementally liberated, a slow process, a key strategic aim vital to achieve overall victory.

ABOUT STEPHEN LENDMAN

STEPHEN LENDMAN lives in Chicago. He can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. His new book as editor and contributor is titled "Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III." ( http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html ) Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

Rockefellers Play With Fire: The Oil Scheme is Getting More Dangerous—

WITNESSES TO HISTORY
CALEB MAUPIN

John D Rockefeller (right) was the quintessential robber baron. His devious tactics still work in the 21st century. CC BY-NC-ND by Boston Public Library

Oil has fallen below $30 per barrel. The decline in oil prices that alarmed the world when it began in 2014 has lasted much longer than expected. Natural gas, steel, copper, and other commodities are also seeing their prices fall. Economists are becoming alarmed as all the signs indicating some kind of pending recession are appearing.

US media would have us believe that the “Chinese Slowdown” is solely responsible for this looming escalation of the economic crisis. However, it is widely acknowledged that the low oil prices are quite costly for the global economy and that this prolonged, artificial deflation is getting more and more dangerous. The price drop is intentionally planned and being carried out for specific purposes. For very selfish reasons, the House of Rockefeller is playing with fire, and threatening to burn the entire global economy to the ground.

Securing the Power of Exxon-Mobil

The Rockfellers are one of the most powerful families in the United States, and have been for a long time. Their history can be traced back to the 19th century and the rise of a corporation called Standard Oil. Today, their power can be found in the world’s largest oil corporation, Exxon-Mobil. Exxon-Mobil, a direct descendant of John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil, is the fifth-largest corporation in the entire world.

The Rockefellers and their friends at the Council on Foreign Relations have determined that keeping oil prices low serves long-term US foreign policy objectives — i.e., keeping Wall Street at the center of the global economy.

Long ago, when the Rockefellers were rising to power, their favorite tactic for beating out their competitors was price manipulation. In the 1800s, the Rockefellers would lower their prices and flood the markets with cheap oil. Once their opponents went under, they would raise their prices back up, and make bigger profits than ever. This method for centralizing economic power was developed almost into a science by John D. Rockefeller and his minions. Eventually, Standard Oil was targeted by Theodore Roosevelt with his famous “trust-busting” reforms.

In more recent decades, the Rockefellers have distinguished themselves among the US power elite by being visibly political. The Council on Foreign Relations, the highly secretive think tank in which US foreign policy is discussed and established, is almost completely funded by Rockefeller and Ford Foundation money. Rockefeller money is behind the Asia Society, the Open Society Foundations, and many other key voices in US political discourse.

While the Rockefellers are among the richest people on earth, their wealth does not translate to conservative politics as some might naively assume. Since the end of the Second World War, the Rockefellers have been liberals. Inscriptions honoring the Rockefellers can be found inside Riverside Church, a New York City religious institution associated with anti-war and civil rights activism.

MSNBC, the US television network that promotes the liberal politics of Rachel Maddow and Chris Hayes, as well as the pro-Democratic Party comedy sketches of Saturday Night Live, broadcasts from inside Manhattan’s Rockefeller Center. The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) media conglomerate was created by General Electric, one of the biggest military contractors. GE is also part of the Rockefeller empire.

The Rockefeller family is known for promoting reproductive choice, as well as LGBTQ rights. They are closely linked to the Democratic Party. The land on which the United Nations headquarters was constructed was once the property of the Rockefeller family, given as a personal donation.

The powerful family’s ownership of Exxon-Mobil cannot be separated from their strategic political alliances. Barack Obama’s administration and the Democratic Party have been faithful economic and political servants of the Rockefeller dynasty. The money behind the primary opponents of the Democrats on the political stage comes from Exxon-Mobil’s primary competitor. MSNBC’s obsession with demonizing the “Koch Brothers” as the incarnation of modern political evil isn’t simply about politics. Behind the politics is a classic market rivalry between Exxon-Mobil and Koch Industries.

The Rockefeller-CIA Oil Scheme

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]hree countries which are major opponents of the United States on the geopolitical stage — Russia, Venezuela, and Iran — are also oil exporters and major competitors with US oil corporations. All three of these countries have independent economies centered around government-owned natural resources. Each of these countries are also suffering serious consequences from the oil-price drop.

In Venezuela, the right-wing opposition — funded by Rockefeller- and Ford Foundation-linked NGOs — won control of the parliament in the 2015 December elections. The Bolivarian movement, led by the United Socialist Party and Nicolas Maduro, rose to power by utilizing the oil proceeds to fund housing, education, medical care, and community-controlled media. The oil price drop has caused these forces tremendous problems, and weakened the social programs.

The economic problems created by US sanctions against the Islamic Republic of Iran were intensified by the oil-price drop. Difficult economic circumstances swayed Iranian public opinion, strengthening President Hassan Rouhani and the forces calling themselves the “reformist movement.” The oil-price drop was a significant factor in bringing about the P5+1 nuclear conclusion, in which two-thirds of Iran’s peaceful nuclear energy program was dismantled.

Russia has been forced to cut its domestic budget. The spending of government money made Vladimir Putin very popular. Government-owned oil and natural gas allowed Russia to reboot its economy following the disastrous period of the 1990s.

“The talking heads on MSNBC are working very hard to push the millions of Americans who now identify themselves as “socialists” away from militant labor activism, and toward campaigning for the Democratic Party.”

So, how is the oil-price drop being carried out? What is causing the prices to go down? Innovations in technology, such as hydraulic fracking and new drilling methods, have certainly played a role. However, the primary reason for the extreme drop has been the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The repressive, human-rights-violating Saudi monarchy continues to pour tens of millions of barrels of oil onto the international market every day. Despite losing billions of dollars and experiencing an escalating internal crisis, the Saudi regime continues to expand its oil production apparatus. Saudi Arabia executed 47 people on January 1, indicating that its internal problems are getting larger.

The reason for Saudi Arabia’s indulgence in self-destructive economic policies is merely obedience. Saudi oil is the de facto property of Wall Street. Saudi Arabia has the fourth-largest military budget of any country in the world, purchasing weapons almost exclusively from the United States. The Kingdom serves as a Middle Eastern extension of major US oil and military corporations. The Saudi regime is flooding the market, losing money, and wrecking their country, because the bosses at Exxon-Mobil, i.e., the Rockefeller family, are ordering it.

Trump and the Koch Opposition

The oil-price drop does not only serve geopolitical ends. There is a domestic side to it as well. The invention of hydraulic fracking and the rise of domestic oil production in the United States have both brought all kinds of strength to Rockefeller’s competitors. The Koch Brothers emerged stronger than ever, along with a slew of smaller oil tycoons, who lack the kind of longstanding and entrenched influence wielded by the Rockefeller dynasty.

US Congress has lifted the 1973 oil export ban and these domestic competitors can now export on the international markets. It should be no surprise that the Keystone Pipeline, and “Drill, baby, drill!” have become rallying cries of Republican politics. “Drill, baby, drill!” means breaking the power of the Rockefellers and strengthening Koch Industries, along with a whole crew of nouveau riche grouped around them, wanting a bigger chunk of the oil profits.

The Rockefellers are hoping that the oil-price drop can not only defeat the emerging anti-capitalist bloc around the world, but also their domestic competitors. This strategy is working out as well. Houston, a political headquarters for the Koch insurgency, is having a housing crisis because of the oil-price drop. A recent article in the Wall Street Journal highlighted how a town in Montana called Williston, booming a few years ago with new oil, has also been devastated.

The Kochs are getting their filthy butt kicked (so far) by the Rockefeller strategy, which is also supported by the abominable Saudis. CC BY by DonkeyHotey

Now that the more ideologically right-wing Tea Party has run its course, the Koch Brothers have put up Donald Trump as their strongman against the Rockefeller establishment. As Trump preaches hate for immigrants and Muslims, beating his chest with a false “everyman” populism, he is attempting to build a political army. The hope is not so much to capture the presidency but to strong-arm the Ford Foundation and the Rockefeller think tanks away from their monopoly on setting policy. The reason Trump strays from the standard US foreign policy script, seeming friendlier to Russia and more critical of Saudi Arabia, is because he represents Wall Street opposition to Rockefeller dominance. Different strategies in relation to oil-exporting countries are not completely off-limits.

In addition to market rivalries, there has been a long history of tension between the CIA and the Pentagon. The CIA leadership is trained at places like Harvard and Yale, carefully studying the art of how to achieve long-term geopolitical goals. The military brass, on the other hand, is trained only in the hard science of blowing things up. Not surprisingly, the two groups frequently come into conflict with each other. The Rockefellers, with their Council on Foreign Relations and alliance with George Soros, have always been closer to the CIA and the Democrats. The military lines up consistently with the Republicans.

On the global stage, the Rockefellers hope to gradually cash-starve opponents of US power, while fomenting “color revolution”-style internal crises. On the other side of things, Donald Trump talks about “bombing the hell” out of Iraq, and his followers have much more enthusiasm for direct military attacks on defiant countries. The tense standoff surrounding the P5+1 nuclear deal was a manifestation of these strategic differences.

The Agony of Capitalist Crisis

[dropcap]A[/dropcap]s the Rockfellers and Obama Administration continue to wage economic war against Russia, Venezuela, and Iran — while at the same time trying to economically weaken Koch Industries and secure the power of the oil monopolies — the global economy is headed for catastrophe. The Saudis are obediently churning out oil, and prices in other sectors like natural gas are following close behind. Investor confidence is dropping and the expected panic is setting in.

As things spiral downward, Donald Trump and the Koch Brothers are attempting to utilize the ideological right wing. The obsessively pro-Israel, anti-Islamic and anti-immigrant sectors of the US working class, primarily found among the dispossessed whites of the south and rural areas, are seen as a potential political goon squad.

Meanwhile, the left is being politically re-shuffled as radical ideas reemerge in US discourse. Rockefeller money is deployed to control and direct the re-energized (but completely confused) US left. The Ford Foundation has staged entire conferences against police brutality, hoping to point “Black Lives Matter” away from a confrontation with the US political establishment. The talking heads on MSNBC are working very hard to push the millions of Americans who now identify themselves as “socialists” away from militant labor activism, and toward campaigning for the Democratic Party. The Rockefellers have given up on trying to suppress basic anti-capitalist sentiments, and instead are hoping to redefine socialism with classless phrases like “a government that works for everyone.”

The younger generation of Americans, who are statistically much more left-wing, are the target audience of the Rockefeller political machine. The goal is for the former chaos-loving residents of Zuccotti Park to become disciplined foot soldiers against the Kochs. The last thing that the owners of Exxon-Mobil want is an upsurge of militant street fighters. They don’t want the radicalism of the 1960s Revolutionary Youth Movement or the 1930s Young Communist League. They want obedient functionaries who study Saul Alinsky.

Behind all of this is an almost unresolvable economic problem. The computer revolution has made it cheaper and easier than ever to produce things, and now millions of people have no place in the world economy. The world market is full of commodities, cheaply produced by machines. These products cannot be purchased by the increasingly impoverished people of the world who no longer have a place at the assembly line.

In a crisis of mass migration, the people who the system no longer has a place for have fled from Africa, Latin America, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia. Within the United States and Western Europe, the standard of living is dropping and the next generation is adjusting to a low-wage economy.

With Russia and China as the linchpin, a new bloc of state-controlled, centrally planned economies has emerged, carving out an alternative in the world economy. Global events continue to reinforce the notion that western neoliberal capitalism is not the end of history.

The financial system, based on usury and exploitation, that has ruled the world for over 500 years, is in a long, deep crisis. Within the power structure, different factions are scrambling to save it, as alternatives to it are becoming more attractive to the dispossessed. Different strategies to defeat the rising global opposition are being utilized. Gradually, police state repression and militarism are beginning to replace the “democracy” and “human rights” western societies have often bragged about.

Everywhere the stakes are getting higher, and there is rising danger of greater catastrophe. The global stage of the 21st century is gearing up to unleash world-shaking surprises.

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The Logic of Hunger Striking Palestinians: When Starvation Is a Weapon

=By= Ramzy Baroud

Mohammed Allan: ‘It is a psychological warfare between the prison authorities, state and legal system apparatuses against a single individual,.’ (Via Maan)

[dropcap]B[/dropcap]y Friday, January 29, Palestinian journalist Mohammed al-Qeq had spent 66-days on hunger strike in Israeli jails. Just before he fell into his third coma, a day earlier, he sent a public message through his lawyers, the gist of which was: freedom or death.

Al-Qeq is 33-years of age, married and a father of two. Photos circulating of him online and on Palestinian streets show the face of a bespectacled, handsome man. The reality though is quite different. “He’s in a very bad situation. He fell into his third coma in recent days, and his weight has dropped to 30 kilograms (66 pounds),” Ashraf Abu Sneina, one of al-Qeq’s attorneys, told Al Jazeera. Al-Qeq was arrested under yet another notorious Israeli law called the ‘administrative detention’ law.

Ominous predictions of al-Qeq’s imminent death have been looming for days with no end in sight to his elongated ordeal. Unfortunately for a man who believes that the only tool of defense and protest he has against apartheid Israel is his body, the Red Cross and other international groups took many days to so much as acknowledge the case of this news reporter who had refused food and medical treatment since November 24, 2015.

Al-Qeq, works for Saudi Arabia’s Almajd TV network and was arrested at his home in Ramallah on November 21^st. In its statement, issued more than 60 days after he entered into his hunger strike, ICRC described the situation as ‘critical’, unequivocally stating the reality of Al-Qeq’s “life being at risk.” On January 27, the European Union also expressed its view of being “especially concerned” about al-Qeq’s deteriorating health.

Under the ‘administrative detention’ law, Israel has affectively held Palestinians and Arab prisoners without offering reasons for their arrests, practically since the state was founded in 1948. In fact, it is argued that this law which is principally founded on ‘secret evidence’ dates back to the British Mandate government’s Emergency Regulations.

After Israel occupied the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem in 1967, it clutched at straw in its desperate efforts to find whatever legal justifications it could for holding prisoners without trials. These efforts were eventually articulated in the Israeli Law on Authorities in State of Emergency in 1979.

This law was some sort of compromise between the internal intelligence (Shin Bet), the state and the court system, with the ultimate aim of providing the façade and apparent backing of a legal cover for what is considered in international law and most country laws as illegal. The Shin Bet was thus allowed to use whatever coercive measures – including physical and psychological torture – to exact ‘forced’ confessions from Palestinian prisoners over the course of six months, renewable by a court order without trial or charges.

Khader Adnan, 37, from Jenin, was held under administrative detention law for years. Israeli intelligence had no evidence to indict him of any particular charge, despite accusations that he was a valued member of the Islamic Jihad organization. He was set free on July 12, 2015.This occurred only after he too resorted to undergoing several hunger strikes, and two particularly long ones: early in 2012 a hunger strike lasted for 66 days, and another, in May 2015, lasted for 56 days.

Each time, Adnan reached the point where death, as is the case for al-Qeq, was also becoming a real possibility. When we asked him what compelled him to follow that dangerous path twice, his answer was immediate: “repeated arrests, the savagery of the way I was arrested, the brutality of the interrogation and finally the prolonged administrative detention”- without trial.

Administrative detentions are like legal black holes. They offer no escape routes and no rights for the prisoner whatsoever, but wins the interrogators time to break the spirit of the prisoner, forcing him or her to surrender or even admit, under torture, to things that he or she never committed in the first place. “It is our last and only choice,” says Mohammed Allan, 33, from Nablus, who underwent a hunger strike for so long that it resulted in brain damage, and nearly cost him his life.

“When you feel that all the doors are sealed, and you stand there humiliated and alone, knowing in advance that the court system is a charade, one is left with no other option but a hunger strike,” he says.

“First, I made my intentions clear by refusing three meals in a row, and by sending a written note through the Dover (Hebrew for a prisoner who serves as a spokesperson for a prison ward).” Then, the punishment commences. It is like a psychological warfare between the prison authorities, state and legal system apparatuses against a single individual,” which, according to Allan lasts for 50-60 days.

“Almost instantly, a hunger striker is thrown into solitary confinement, denied access to a mattress and blanket and other basic necessities. Only after six weeks or so, do Israeli prison authorities agree to talk to lawyers representing hunger strikers to discuss various proposals. But within that period of time, the prisoner is left entirely unaided, separated from the other prisoners and subjected to an uninterrupted campaign of intimidation and threats. Mental torture is far worse than hunger,” says Allan.

“You cannot even go to the bathroom anymore; you cannot stand on your own; you are even two weak to wipe the vomit that involuntarily gushes out of your mouth into your beard and chest.”

Allan almost died in prison, and despite a court order that permitted prison authorities to force-feed him (a practice seen internationally as a form of torture), doctors at Soroka hospital refused to act upon the instructions. In mid-August 2015, Allan was placed on life support when he lost consciousness. His severe malnutrition resulted in brain damage.

A third freed hunger striker, Ayman Sharawneh, originally from Dura, Hebron, but who has been deported to Gaza, describes hunger strikes as the “last bullet” in a fight for freedom that could possibly end in death. Sharawneh, like Adnan and others we talked to, was bitter about the lack of adequate support he received while dying in jail.

“All organizations, Palestinian or international, usually fall short,” he says. “They spring into action after the prisoner had gone through many days of torture.”

He says that 2 years and 8 months after he was deported to Gaza, he is experiencing severe pain throughout his body, particularly in his kidneys.

While undergoing the extended hunger strike “I started to lose my hair, suffered from constant nausea, sharp pain in my guts, threw up yellow liquid, then dark liquid, then I could hardly see anything. I had an excruciating headache and then I began to suffer from fissures all over my skin and body.”

He agrees with Adnan that ‘individual hunger strikes’ should not be understood as a self-centered act. “Mohammed Al-Qeq is not striking for himself,” says Adnan. “He is striking on behalf of all political prisoners,” whose number is estimated by prisoners’ rights group Addameer at nearly 7,000.

According to Adnan, the issue of hunger strikes should not be seen as a battle within Israeli jails, but as part and parcel of the Palestinian people’s fight against military occupation.

While the three prisoners affirmed their solidarity with Al-Qeq, they called for a much greater support for the hunger-striking journalist and thousands like him, many of whom are held indefinitely under administrative detentions.

The list of well-known Palestinian hunger strikers exceeds Al-Qeq, Adnan, Allan and Sharawneh and includes many others, not forgetting Samir Issawi, Hana Shalabi, Thaer Halahleh and Bilal Thiab. But what all of these former hunger strikers seem to have in common is their insistence that their battles were never concerned with the freedom of individuals only, but of an entire group of desperate, oppressed and outraged people.

Contributing Editor Dr. Ramzy Baroud has been writing about the Middle East for over 20 years. He is an internationally-syndicated columnist, a media consultant, an author of several books and the founder of PalestineChronicle.com. His books include ‘Searching Jenin’, ‘The Second Palestinian Intifada’ and his latest ‘My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza’s Untold Story’. His website is: www.ramzybaroud.net.

Source
Lead Graphic: Courtesy of the Photo Palestine Chronicle

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