My talk at a webinar on Rohingya history

Oppression, marginalization, violence, propaganda – none of it is new. What is new, however, is the mere scale, frequency and omnipresence of disinformation, especially when it is propagated by a powerful group that runs at the state level with the goal to eliminate a small minority that is different than the dominant group’s identity by race, ethnicity, language, religion, customs and culture. Nowhere in our time is this issue perhaps more acute than in Myanmar where the Rohingyas are victims of a carefully crafted genocidal program that has become a national project there, enjoying full support from top to bottom of every rung and corner of the Buddhist society – from a military man in uniform to a monk in a saffron robe, from a peasant in the paddy field to a politician wearing a longyi. The decades of disinformation campaigns against the Rohingya people have robbed the persecutor of its moral teachings about what defines our humanity, and the values of compassion and empathy for a fellow human being. Even the R-word is a forbidden word in Myanmar. Suu Kyi won’t utter the word, nor would her now-ousted government officials. To them, Rohingya is an “invention” that is concocted by “Chittagonian Bengalis (Bangladeshis)” to grab Buddhist land. roh001_400_01In so doing these chauvinists forget that the history of the geographical region commonly known as the South Asia and South-east Asia has no one beginning, no one chronology, no single plot or narrative. This gargantuan fact is recognized by all great historians of the past and the present (e.g., Professors David Ludden, Abdul Karim, Richard Eaton, Romila Thapar, R.S. Sharma, Juan Cole, Michael Charney and many others) who spent their lifetimes to study the region. To these unbiased and genuine historians of the ancient world, the region did not have a singular history, but many histories, with indefinite, contested origins and with countless separate trajectories that multiply the more we learn about the region. Myanmar, bordering south Asian countries like Bangladesh and India in the west, is no exception to that general rule. Today’s Buddhist-majority Myanmar (formerly Burma) is surely different than it was a decade ago, let alone a century or a millennium ago. Today, the country is estimated to have a population of 57 million (the 2014 government national census estimates 51.5m) of which the vast majority is Burman (Bamar), comprising roughly 68% of the population. They are considered the “first class” citizens in this country of more than 135 indigenous ethnic groups. The minority Muslims belonging to the Rohingya ethnic group, who live mostly in the north-western Rakhine state (formerly Arakan), bordering Muslim-majority Bangladesh, is not recognized as part of this Myanmarese apartheid state. Denied citizenship (since 1982), they are depicted as aliens, outsiders, illegal immigrants, and even “influx viruses” by the Buddhist population. Their presence in the Buddhist-majority country is seen with much suspicion and hatred. Let’s look at some examples: - South China Morning Post reported in 2009 that the Burmese Consulate-General Ye Myint Aung wrote to foreign missions in Hong Kong insisting that the “Rohingya” should not be described as being from Burma. "In reality, Rohingya are neither Burmese people nor a Burmese ethnic group," he said, contrasting their "dark brown" complexion with the "fair and soft" skin of people from Burma. "It is quite different from what you have seen and read in the papers. (They are as ugly as ogres)," he was said to have written (The Sydney Morning Herald, 14 Feb. 2009). The remark did not hurt his career; the military government later appointed him ambassador to Switzerland. 1 - Referring to Rohingya as “Bengalis,” General U Min Aung Hlaing, who has been serving as Chairman of the State Administration Council of Myanmar since 2 February 2021, a position which makes him the country's de facto leader, said in 2018 that they “do not have the characteristics or culture in common with the ethnicities of Myanmar.” [Speaking at a military gathering in northern Kachin State in March 2018] - To hatemongering monks like Wirathu (spiritual leader of the 969 movement and head of Ma Ba Tha), Rohingyas are “Kalars” (a derogatory term for Muslims), 2 who simply “don’t exist”. 3 On the allegations that Rohingya women have been abused and raped by the military, Wirathu laughed: “Impossible. Their bodies are too disgusting.” 4 (The mind of a racist and bigot is written all over his statements.) Wirathu, by the way, is not alone in entertaining a racist mindset. When a Rakhine state lawmaker Aung Win, MP, was asked by a BBC journalist about soldiers sexually assaulting Rohingya women, he giggled. Local Buddhist men and soldiers could not have committed mass rapes, he explained, because Rohingya women were “very dirty”. - To many Buddhists, the Rohingyas are “Bengali Terrorists” or “extremists.” - The Rakhine extremist academic Dr. Aye Chan depicts Rohingya as “Influx Virus” – illegal Muslims of Arakan [Influx Viruses: The Illegal Muslims in Arakan By U Shw zan and Dr. Aye Chan]. - Another Buddhist extremist Khin Maung Saw depicts Rohingyas as the “camel” in a Burmese fable that dislodged its owner from his tent, warning fellow Arakanese Buddhists against the Rohingyas whom he calls as “Chittagonian Bengalis” (“the guest who want to kick out the Host from his own house”). - Myanmar’s army commander Senior General Min Aung Hlaing made it clear when, on September 16, 2017, he posted to Facebook a statement saying that the current military action against the Rohingya is “unfinished business” stemming back to the Second World War. He also stated, “They have demanded recognition as Rohingya, which has never been an ethnic group in Myanmar. [The] Bengali issue is a national cause and we need to be united in establishing the truth.” 5 Some 16 years ago, when Dr. Shwe Lu Maung, a Burmese dissident, wrote his book, “The Price of Silence: Muslim-Buddhist War of Bangladesh and Myanmar”, there were at least two million Rohingyas living inside the Rakhine state. Thanks to Myanmar’s genocidal campaigns, part of a national project to de-populate the Rohingya, today, there are only about 600,000 Rohingyas, living inside the country, mostly in government-controlled camps and enclaves, with no rights of their own. More than a million of them were forced to flee the Apartheid Myanmar in 2017 for Bangladesh where they live inside refugee camps in Cox’s Bazar and Bhashan Char Island. (Another two million Rohingyas had fled Myanmar before the pogroms of 2012.) Denied each and every one of the 30 rights enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Rohingyas are described, and rightly so, the most persecuted people in our time in our planet. They are the victims of genocide, perpetrated by a regime with wide support enjoyed inside the country. Since Aug. 25, 2017, according to a report by the Ontario International Development Agency, nearly 24,000 Rohingyas have been killed by Myanmar’s state forces while more than 34,000 thrown into fires, over 114,000 others beaten, as many as 18,000 women and girls raped and at least 115,000 homes burned down. 6 And all these latest crimes against humanity happened under the watchful eyes of Suu Kyi, once touted as the democracy icon in the West! What a travesty of the Noble Peace prize! As can be noticed, at the center of the Rohingya Crisis is a question about the group’s origin. It is in this identity and the contrasting histories and narratives, as duly recognized by the Tanenbaum organization (combating religious prejudice and violence), where religion and politics collide. The Narrative of the Rohingya: The Rohingya version of their historical narrative in the region reflects 5 main points: 1. The forefathers of today’s ethnic Rohingyas have lived in Arakan (today’s Rakhine state) since time immemorial. 7 They are the descendants of the first settlers of the territory, even before Islam arrived in the region at the end of the 8th Century (during the reign of Mahatong Tsandaya (788-810 CE)). Mixed with later migrants of seafarers, sailors, preachers, traders, soldiers (esp. since 1430) and kidnapped/enslaved Bengalis (brought to Arakan by the Magh pirates), and Shah Shuja’s entourage (1660) they formed the nucleus of what would later be self-identified as the Rohingya. Genealogically, Rohingyas are Indo-Aryan descendants. Genetically, they are an ethnic mix of Bengalis, Indians, Moghuls, Pathans, Arabs, Persians, Turks, Moors and central Asians. They are South Asian in appearance, in contrast to Southeast Asian, and have developed a separate culture and a mixed language, which is absolutely unique to the region, reflecting this geographic reality and trueness of Arakan. 8 2. The Rohingya language and culture was dominant in Rakhine during its rule by Mrauk U Dynasty from the 15th to the 18th centuries before the territory was annexed by the Burman king Bodawpaya in 1784 whose rule epitomized bigotry and intolerance. The Burmese invasion killed tens of thousands of Arakanese Muslims and Buddhists, and led to the imprisonment of 20,000 Arakanese Muslims and Buddhists, and the forced exodus of some 200,000 of the inhabitants (Rohingya Muslims and Rakhine Buddhists) of Arakan to flee to Bengal (in British India). 3. Nearly a third (30%) of the population of Arakan was Muslim when the East India Company captured the territory in 1826 when the Rohingyas became British subjects. 9 4. During WWII, the Buddhist majority in Arakan and Burma collaborated with fascist Japanese forces, which led to Japanese occupation of Burma and ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya people inside Arakan (1942-45). Two hundred ninety-four Muslim villages were destroyed by Buddhist fascists, Muslims were pushed out of southern Arakan, more than a hundred thousand Rohingya Muslims were massacred during the pogroms of 1942, another 80,000 Rohingyas fled to Bengal in British India. Rohingyas, on the other hand, joined the British Army and fought against fascism and the Japanese invaders in a guerrilla war. The Rohingya contend that the British promised them an independent state in the northern part of Arakan (Mayu Frontier Region) after the war, but that promise was broken and the Muslim-majority parts of the northern Arakan was made part of the new state of Burma. 10 5. Rohingyas have every right to self-identity themselves. The Narrative of the Rakhine and Bamar Peoples: The Bamar and the Rakhine Buddhists contend the following: 1. Islam had only a small presence in Arakan during the Mrauk U Dynasty’s rule (1430-1784 C.E.), which was Buddhist, not Muslim. 2. The Rohingya are not native to Arakan. Rather, they are Bengali migrants, or “Chittagonians,” who arrived in 1826 after the British conquest of the territory. 3. The small number of Muslims who lived in Arakan before British colonialization are not the ancestors of the modern Rohingya. 4. The Rohingya benefited from British colonialization and used the World War II to consolidate their strength in Myanmar. What Do the Scholars Say? Here below I provide a brief summary: 1. Similar to the origin of the Bengali speaking Muslims of Bangladesh, the Rohingya are an amalgamation of peoples, from native Muslim Arakanese who lived in Arakan for many centuries, to Indian/Bengali Muslims who settled after putting exiled Arakanese king Min-Saw-Mun to the throne in 1430 CE to the Bengalis enslaved in the 16th-17th centuries by the Rakhine Maghs and Portuguese pirates, to a very small group of workers who arrived in Arakan in the 19th century. 11 2. Islam had a strong influence in Arakan before its colonialization by both Burma (1784) and Britain (1826). The Mrauk U Dynasty in particular sought and held Islamic titles. 12 3. Regardless, there is further evidence that the Rohingya community existed in Myanmar before British colonialization. In 1799, 25 years before the British invaded Myanmar, Francis Buchanan, a surgeon employed by the British East India Company, traveled throughout Burma and documented the existence of a Muslim ethnic group “who have long settled in Arakan, and who call themselves ‘Rooinga’, or natives of Arakan.” 13 Bengali poets of the 17th century also mention of the existence of the Roshang (or Rohang in local dialect) in their poems. 14 A British writer, Major R.E. Roberts of the East India Company also noted in his “Account of Arakan” in 1777 that: “Almost three fourths of the inhabitants of Rekheng [Arakan] are said to be natives of Bengal, or descendants of such, who constantly pray that the English may send a force to deliver them from their slavery, and restore them to their country; in that case they have agreed amongst themselves to assist their deliverers to the utmost of their power.” 15 [Emphasis this author’s] 4. Even after the Burmese annexation of Arakan, there was a sizable amount of Arakanese Muslims who had survived. In the nineteenth century, after the British annexation of the territory in 1826, Sub-Commissioner Charles Paton published a “Historical and Statistical Sketch of Aracan” in 1828 – the main part of a Secret Report dated 1826 in which he estimated (the same sentence in both reports) the population of Arakan thus: “The population of Aracan and its dependencies, Ramree, Cheduba and Sandoway, does not, at present, exceed a hundred thousand souls, and may be classed as follows: Mugs [Rakhine], six-tenths, Musselmans [Muslims], three-tenths, Burmese, one-tenth: Total 100,000 souls.” 16 [Emphasis this author’s] 5. According to Rangoon University Professor Bertie Pearn, who in 1949 joined the UK Foreign Office as Head of South East Asia Research: “By the year 1798, two-thirds of the inhabitants of Arakan were said to have deserted their native land. In one year, 1798, a body of no less than ten thousand entered Chittagong, followed soon after by many more; and while their compatriots who had been longer settled there endeavoured to assist them, they were nevertheless reduced to a condition of the direct poverty, many having nothing to eat but reptiles and leaves.” 17 [Emphasis this author’s] It is undeniable that some descendants of Arakanese refugees who had taken shelter in Bengal since 1784 later chose to return from Bengal to Arakan during the British occupation of Myanmar from 1826 to 1948. The British labeled these immigrants either “Mahomedan” or “Chittagonian,” and they became an important part of the colonial workforce and bureaucracy. 6. World War II enflamed tensions between the two communities as both the Japanese and the British took advantage of underlining sectarianism to win the war. The Japanese recruited Buddhist Rakhine into the “Patriot Arakan Force,” while the British recruited the Rohingya into “Force V.” Violence occurred between these two communities even after the World War II ended. Initial attempts by the Muslims in Rakhine to carve their own state, and later to join East Pakistan (now Bangladesh), failed. All of Arakan became part of an independent Burma in 1948. 7. According to Dr. Shwe Lu Maung, “The Burmese, especially the Rakhines, due to lack of knowledge of historical materialism, view that the Muslim elite invented 'Rohingya'. Nothing can be more wrong than this view. No, it was not an invention but it strongly signifies the Rohingya's coming to the age from their abyssal existence, an event of the emergence of a Fourth World. 18 The Rohingyas were simple commoners who never minded who the king, the ruler, or the lord was. They just cared their farm and fishing gears and kept moving for the better land and fishing water, just like in the good old days of the 'out-of-Africa' migration!” What did other leaders of Burma say about the Rohingya? * In 1946 General Aung San, father of Suu Kyi, assured full rights and privileges to Muslim Rohingya Arakanese as an indigenous people saying: “I give (offer) you a blank cheque. We will live together and die together. Demand what you want. I will do my best to fulfill them. If native people are divided, it will be difficult to achieve independence for Burma. * “I understand that during the time of the Constituent Assembly in 1947 after the signing of the Panglong Agreement that February & before the Union of Burma came into being in January 1948 - my father Sao Shwe Thaike was asked if the Rohingyas of Arakan are indigenous Peoples? My father, who is a Shan as am I, replied - "if the Rohingyas are not indigenous, nor am I".” – wrote Han Yawnghew (son of Sao Shwe Thaike who was appointed Counsellor to the Governor, later he was elected the first President of independent Burma in 1948–52). (http://dbyouths.blogspot.com/2007_07_01_archive.html ) The above brief review shows that what is promoted by ultra-racist and bigot monks like Wirathu of Myanmar, and ultra-nationalist and chauvinist revisionist politicians and their fanatical followers, and pseudo-historians as the single tree of their culture, rooted in their racial and religious myths, is actually more like a vast forest of many cultures filled with countless trees of various sizes, shades, ages, colors and types, constantly cross-breeding to fertilize one another. The profusion of cultures blurs the boundaries of the forest. According to Professor Ludden, “the so-called cultural boundaries of our time are more like an artifact of modern national cultures than an accurate reflection of pre-modern conditions.” 19 I would like to conclude my talk with a statement from Dr. Shwe Lu Maung, “Therefore, the Myanmar government assertion that the Rohingyas are the British era settlers is nothing but a cover up of Burmese atrocities and colonialism over Arakan from 1784 to 1826. Myanmar government has given citizenship to the Pakistani and Bangladeshi Rakhines of Arakan who returned to Myanmar after 1948 but denies citizenship to the Rohingyas on the ground of race and religion. 20 This double standard is against the philosophy and ideology of we-the-people.” 21 ************************** (This essay is based on the author’s speech in a webinar on The Rohingya of Burma: Narrating our History (4 June 2021 03:00PM London Time) 1 https://www.latimes.com/world/asia/la-fg-myanmar-rohingya-hate-20171225-story.html 2 https://www.vice.com/en/article/3kegwv/myanmars-extremist-monk-doesnt-regret-calling-un-envoy-a-whore 3 https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2017/may/12/only-takes-one-terrorist-buddhist-monk-reviles-myanmar-muslims-rohingya-refugees-ashin-wirathu 4 https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2017/may/12/only-takes-one-terrorist-buddhist-monk-reviles-myanmar-muslims-rohingya-refugees-ashin-wirathu 5 Human Rights Watch, “Crimes Against Humanity by Burmese Security Forces Against the Rohingya Population,” September 26, 2017. https://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/supporting_resources/burma_crimes_against_humanity_memo.pdf. 6 https://www.dhakatribune.com/world/south-asia/2018/08/17/study-claims-an-estimated-24-000-rohingya-murdered-in-myanmar; https://www.researchgate.net/publication/326912213_Forced_Migration_of_Rohingya_The_Untold_Experience. 7 https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2018/4/18/who-are-the-rohingya 8 https://www.rohingya.org/rebuttal-to-u-khin-maung-saws-misinformation-on-rohingya/ 9 http://www.netipr.org/policy/downloads/20111029_analysis-of-demography-in-arakan-by-habib-siddiqui.pdf 10 Nemoto, Kei. "The Rohingya Issue: A Thorny Obstacle between Burma (Myanmar) and Bangladesh." (1991). http://www.burmalibrary.org/docs14/Kei_Nemoto-Rohingya.pdf. 11 Abdul Karim, The Rohingyas: A short account of their history and culture. Arakan Historical Society, Chittagong (2000) 12 Nemoto, op. cit.. 13 Gregory B. Poling, “Separating Fact from Fiction about Myanmar’s Rohingya,” Center for Strategic & International Studies, February 13, 2014. https://www.csis.org/analysis/separating-fact-fiction-about-myanmar%E2%80%99s-rohingya. 14 A. Karim, op. cit. 15 Roberts, R. E. "An Account of Arakan." Asiatick Miscellany 1 (1785): 316-326. https://www.burmalibrary.org/docs/primarysources-mc.2002-07-25.pdf 16 Paton, Charles. "Historical and Statistical Sketch of Arakan." Asiatic Researches 16 (1828): 353-381. https://www.burmalibrary.org/docs/primarysources-mc.2002-07-25.pdf 17 B.R. Pearn, “King-Bering”, in Journal of the Burma Research Society, 1933, vol. 23, no. 2. 18 Shwe Lu Maung, Burma Nationalism and Ideology, University Press Ltd., Dhaka, 1989, Chapter 9, pp. 103-111. 19 As cited in Habib Siddiqui, Muslim Identity and Demography in the Arakan State of Burma (Myanmar); https://www.amazon.com/Muslim-Identity-Demography-Arakan-Myanmar/dp/1791784798 20 Dr. Aye Maung, a Member of Parliament (Upper House or Amyotha Hluttaw) and the Chairperson of Rakhine Nationalities Development Party, may not be a Myanmar citizen in light of the Burma Citizenship Act 1982. 21 Shwe Lu Maung, The Rakhine State Violence Vol. 2. https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-rakhine-state-violence-vol-2-dr-shwe-lu-maung/1121079303

Muslim groups urge Biden to intervene against Egypt executions

A coalition of Muslim American groups has called on the administration of President Joe Biden to intervene to halt a mass execution of political dissidents in Egypt set to take place in the coming days, joining a growing number of rights groups urging increased US pressure on Cairo. The US Council of Muslim Organizations (USCMO), which includes some of the largest Muslim American groups, sent a letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Monday stressing that Washington should pressure Cairo "publicly and privately" to stop the executions. The groups called on Biden to suspend US military aid to Egypt until Cairo improved its human rights record. "As Americans, we know that Egypt's military dictatorship benefits greatly from our taxpayer dollars," the coalition wrote. "Because of this support, our nation has both the opportunity and the obligation to stop its planned mass execution of political prisoners." The USCMO includes prominent Muslim groups, such as American Muslims for Palestine (AMP), the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA) and the Muslim American Society (MAS). Earlier this month, Egypt upheld the death sentence against 12 Muslim Brotherhood leaders arrested in the wake of a coup that brought current Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi to power in 2013. Rights groups speak out Supporters of then-President Mohamed Morsi, Egypt's first democratically elected leader, had staged a sit-in at Rabaa al-Adawiya Square against the coup. The protest was violently dispersed in a massacre that Amnesty International has called a "horrific turning point for human rights in Egypt". Egyptian security forces killed hundreds of protesters at Rabaa, and many more were prosecuted in relation to the sit-in, including the 12 Muslim Brotherhood leaders facing imminent execution. Osama Yassin, who served as minister of youth under Morsi, and Mohamed el-Beltagy, a former lawmaker, are among the prisoners. They were convicted of "arming criminal gangs", "possessing firearms", "killing policemen" and "resisting authorities". But rights groups have described the legal proceedings against the 12 Brotherhood leaders as well as against other Rabaa suspects as "sham" trials. Egypt: The Muslim Brotherhood execution frenzy needs to stop Read More » On Monday, the USCMO said Egypt was "ruled by a brutal military dictatorship with no regard for human rights", stressing that Washington, which provides $1.3bn in annual aid to Cairo, must act against the Egyptian government. "We cannot condemn the imprisonment of people like Alexei Navalny in Russia and Aung San Suu Kyi in Burma while ignoring the murder of political prisoners in Egypt," the groups said. "Detaining and murdering political opponents is wrong, regardless of whether an American ally or an American adversary does it." Also on Monday, 29 rights groups released a joint statement calling on the international community to "urgently and publicly condemn the escalating use of the death penalty in Egypt". The groups, which include Freedom Initiative, Democracy in the Arab World Now (DAWN), Reprieve and Human Rights Watch, also launched a Twitter campaign under the hashtag #StopEgyExecutions. The groups urged the international community to "call on the Egyptian president to immediately institute a moratorium on all executions in Egypt, and commute the death sentences of the 12 men sentenced in relation to the Rabaa dispersal case". According to a recent report by Amnesty International, Egypt was the third most prolific executioner in the world in 2020 with 107 executions. Since coming to power after the 2013 coup, Sisi outlawed the Muslim Brotherhood and moved to ban virtually all forms of political opposition, jailing thousands of dissidents. In its letter to Blinken, the USCMO cited Biden's own verbal commitment to human rights to urge him to help stop the executions. "If the Biden administration truly believes that human rights must guide American foreign policy, it should withhold all financial and political support from Egypt's military regime until it cancels these death sentences, releases all political prisoners, and guarantees human rights to the people of Egypt," the groups said. Campaign pledges Biden had vowed to pursue a human rights-focused foreign policy, and as a candidate he specifically rebuked Donald Trump's chummy relationship with Sisi. "No more blank checks for Trump’s 'favourite dictator'," Biden wrote in a tweet last year, referring to the Egyptian president. Biden's campaign also vowed to protect human rights around the world when addressing Arab and Muslim American voters. How Israel's latest offensive on Gaza shifted Biden's tone on Egypt Read More » "Human rights are at the core of the very idea of America, and the United States is safer when fundamental rights are protected worldwide," Biden's platform for Muslim American communities read. "In too many countries, we are seeing governments led by brutal regimes that fail to protect the civil and political rights and the dignity of their citizens." In a virtual meeting with Arab-American activists in July 2020, Blinken, then serving as a campaign adviser to Biden, also vowed to uphold "human rights and democratic principles" when dealing with the Middle East. "It does a lot to undermine our moral standing globally and our ability to lead when Donald Trump calls Egyptian President el-Sisi, as he put it, 'my favourite dictator'," Blinken said at the time. Despite these pledges, the Biden administration is seeking to continue US aid to Egypt without any conditions or restrictions, and US officials have been lauding the Egyptian government for its role in securing a ceasefire between Israel and Palestinian groups in Gaza last month.

PA Gives Biden Administration 30 Objectives for Negotiations with Israel

The Palestinian Authority (PA) has provided the United States with a number of objectives it seeks to work on in its negotiations with Israel while US President Joe Biden is in office. The PA has suggested approximately 30 items that relate to regaining its rights as a body, boosting the Palestinian economy and improving its people’s circumstances, Haaretz reported on Tuesday. An individual informed about the discussions told the Israeli daily that Washington, Tel Aviv and Ramallah all consider that such negotiations cannot currently be conducted in the open. However, the source argued that discreet work on some of the PA’s suggestions could occur. Among its suggestions, the PA has reportedly called for the number of work permits given to its citizens by the Jewish state to be raised. This would permit them to seek employment in illegal West Bank settlements as well as within Israel itself. The PA also suggested relatives from different areas of Palestine and Israel be allowed to reunite, and that building efforts be managed so that normal population increases can be accounted for in Palestinian areas. Other items concern the PA’s rights as an entity. It has asked for a return to the status quo in the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, though did not specify further. A halt to illegal settlement building and Tel Aviv’s administration of parts of the West Bank known as Area A, which the PA gained autonomy over in the Oslo Accords, are among other requests. News of the Palestinian Authority’s suggestions comes amid significant public outrage at PA President Mahmoud Abbas’ administration over the death of activist and PA opponent Nizar Banat. Protests have continued for days since news of his death in Palestinian custody broke, with protesters calling for Abbas’ resignation. (The New Arab, PC, Social Media)

‘Putting Lipstick on a Pig’: Why Washington Is Fawning Over Israel’s New Government

by Ramzy Baroud Posted onJune 25, 2021 When former US President Barack Obama used an old cliché to denigrate his political opponent, the late US Senator, John McCain, he triggered a political controversy lasting several days. "You can put lipstick on a pig, but it’s still a pig," Obama said at a campaign event in 2008. The maxim indicates that superficial changes have no bearings on outcomes and that modifying our facade does not alter who we really are. American politicians are an authority on the subject. They are experts on artificial, rhetorical and, ultimately, shallow change. Once again, Washington’s political make-up artists are busy at work. Since the dramatic ousting of his former mentor, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s new Prime Minister, Naftali Bennett, is now being presented as the alternative to Netanyahu’s right-wing, chauvinistic and rowdy political style. However, for this to happen, more makeup is required. Much can be said about Bennett and his party of ultra-nationalists and right-wing extremists, Yamina. Yamina is a decidedly racist political party. Their meager seven seats at the Israeli Knesset (parliament) were garnered through their constant appeal to the most violent and racist constituencies in Israel, whose oft-repeated chant "Death to the Arabs" is a daily reminder of their sinister political discourse. Bennett is often cited for this famous statement from 2013: "I’ve killed lots of Arabs in my life and there’s no problem with that." Yet, there is more to the man’s politics than such an abhorrent declaration. Since Israeli leaders do not perceive any form of Palestinian resistance to be legitimate and, in their eyes, Palestinians are either terrorists or potential terrorists, consider the following "solution" offered by Bennett to deal with the problem of "Palestinian terrorism." As Israel’s Minister of Education in 2015, Bennett proposed the building of a "deterrence" wall, one which "demands that incitement be ended and that terrorists are shot dead before they have a chance to hurt innocent people. It means that a terrorist who is shot will be dead and never walk again. It means that Israel remains in control of its homeland forever, unmoved by terrorism." So why does the Biden Administration want us to believe that Bennett is different? Immediately following his inauguration, President Joe Biden was the first world leader to call and congratulate Bennett on the new post. This act carries a deeper symbolic meaning when compared to the fact that it took Biden a whole three long weeks to phone Netanyahu, following the former’s own inauguration to the White House in January. A close aide to Israel’s new prime minister explained the nature of the amiable phone conversation between Biden and Bennett in an interview with the Axios website. "The White House wants to have close and regular consultation and engagement with Bennett and his team based on candid exchange of views, respect for differences, a desire to work toward stability and security," the Israeli source was quoted as saying. Aside from the emphasis on candor and "respect" with reference to the US-Israel future relationship, there has also been an equal and constant emphasis on the need for privacy in dealing with differences between the two countries. "Unlike its predecessor," the Times of Israel reported with reference to Netanyahu, the Bennett government "would voice its criticism (of Washington) in private." For months, the US had pleaded with Netanyahu to tone down his attacks on Washington, to no avail. Now that Bennett is in charge, he is clearly ready to play along. And why should he not? He is eager to present himself as the antithesis of Netanyahu. By making such a "concession," he would surely be expecting Washington to reciprocate. For Bennett, it is a win-win. Bennett understands that US politics towards Israel is not determined by the attitude of Israeli leaders. For example, in comments made last May, Biden laid to rest any suggestion that the US will hold Israel accountable during his term in power. There is "no shift in my commitment, commitment to the security of Israel. Period. No shift, not at all." If this solid pledge was made when boisterous Netanyahu was still in power, no change whatsoever should be expected, now that the supposedly agreeable Bennett is Israel’s new prime minister. American politicians are fawning over Bennett and his main coalition partner and future Prime Minister, Yair Lapid. They are eager to turn a new page, and move forward past Netanyahu’s tumultuous years. Bennett is expected to visit the US in July, while Lapid has already been invited to visit Washington by US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken. Meanwhile, a large Israeli military delegation headed by Israeli Army Chief of Staff, Aviv Kohavi, should already be in the US to discuss various subjects, including Iran, Hezbollah and to "negotiate" yet more US gifts to Israel in the form of military hardware. The US is keen on rebranding its relationship with Israel, not because Israel has changed, but because Washington has suffered repeated humiliation at the hands of ousted Netanyahu. Under Netanyahu, the US found itself often accused of not doing enough for Israel. Even Obama’s $3.8 billion annual military aid package did not spare him the repeated Israeli verbal assaults. Biden is willing to do whatever it takes to avoid that sordid scenario. Biden’s doctrine on Israel and Palestine is simple. He does not want to make an actual commitment to relaunching the peace process, for example, nor does he want to be placed in a position where he is forced to make demands from, let alone put "pressure" on Israel. Since Biden has little or no expectations from Israel, Bennett seems willing to play the role of the accommodating and sensible politician. He would be foolish not to do so, for, per his own political "vision," he merely wants to manage the conflict and prolong the occupation while, like his predecessor, continue to promote his own version of the deceptive notion of "economic peace." While the Americans and the Israelis are busy engaging in the ever-familiar ritual of "putting lipstick on a pig," the Palestinians remain irrelevant in all of this, as their political aspirations continue to be discounted, and their freedom delayed.

Israel: Knesset member calls for murder of people in mixed marriages

An Israeli Knesset member has called for the killing of couples involved in mixed marriages during a speech in parliament. Yitzhak Pindrus is a member of the United Torah Judaism, an ultra-Orthodox party that believes in a homogenous Jewish state and society. He called for the murder of "people who contribute to miscegenation", invoking a Biblical story about the murder of a Jewish man and non-Jewish woman while they were making love by lancing a spear through their engaged sexual organs. He made his comments on Monday while addressing - and looking at - Mansour Abbas, a Palestinian citizen of Israel who is a deputy minister in Prime Minister Naftali Bennett's coalition and the head of the Islamist Raam party. David Sheen, an Israeli journalist, who wrote about Pindrus's remarks on Twitter and shared his speech, said: "Like most eliminationist lawmakers, Yitzhak Pindrus doesn’t have a Twitter account, but apparently he has a private account, because he immediately noted that his incitement to genocide all Israelis 'who contribute to miscegenation' was reported on that." United Torah Judaism is part of the right-wing opposition camp headed by Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel's premier for the past 12 years, until his removal in June. These are not the first controversial comments Pindrus has made. In March, he said that women who convert to Judaism through Israel's army conversion programme are not Jewish and that their families should go into mourning. He used the Hebrew word "shiksas", a derogatory term, to refer to non-Jewish women.

Biden orders airstrikes on Iran-backed militants in Iraq and Syria. It's the wrong strategy

The Pentagon announced Sunday that U.S. forces had conducted strikes against Iranian-backed militia groups on the Iraqi-Syrian border in response to drone attacks targeting U.S. troops and facilities. America has tried this strategy before, and it has failed to stop such proxy attacks: Iranian rockets, and now unmanned aircraft, continue to rain intermittently on U.S. personnel with no signs of abating. Instead of allowing U.S. contractors, troops and property to face attack, the Pentagon would be better off withdrawing from Iraq altogether. The domestic threat to the U.S. of ISIS-inspired attacks isn’t diminished by stationing troops abroad because the threat stems from radicalization, not from ISIS’ material strength. The tit-for-tat process started under President Donald Trump and escalated following the January 2020 U.S. assassination of Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani, a senior figure involved in most of the Iranian attacks on U.S. troops. That flashpoint nearly started a war between Iran and the United States, and Iran’s missile strikes in the days following left 110 U.S. troops injured. Today, not much has changed. Attacks continued through the end of Trump’s presidency, and President Joe Biden began to encounter these proxy attacks from the outset of his administration. But the most recent reciprocal attacks prove that the strategy isn’t working. Deterrence is not shaky; it is nonexistent. Trump established an implicit but mutually understood red line that Biden seems to have adopted: The deaths of U.S. personnel will be met forcefully. Fortunately, no U.S. service members have been killed by these attacks. But if there’s no shift in U.S. strategy, regular rocket attacks will eventually result in the red line being crossed, inadvertently or purposely. OPINION The historic significance of Pope Francis' trip to Iraq — and its message to Iran There’s no reason to wait for that outcome. The United States conducts these strikes to protect American personnel, but the solution compounds the problem by incentivizing further attacks from Iran’s proxies. Instead, the U.S. can ensure its security by simply withdrawing all forces. Withdrawal isn’t defeat; it’s an acknowledgment that there’s no good reason to stay and a lot of good reasons to leave. And while Iran does want to see the U.S. exit Iraq, it diminishes its interest in targeting U.S. forces by decreasing Iran’s threat perception. What would be the consequences of this exit? First, it's helpful to understand the U.S. presence in Iraq and Syria is an advise-and-assist mission to help the Iraqi government counter the Islamic State militant group, with around 2,500 U.S. troops stationed throughout Iraq and 900 more in Syria. ISIS, however, has been forced to disperse to other parts of the world following its territorial and strategic losses in Iraq and Syria, and it doesn’t have the same conventional means of attack as when it conquered territory in 2014. Instead, it operates a disparate network of affiliated groups stretching from Nigeria to the Philippines. Despite ISIS’ aspirations for a global caliphate, these groups are largely offshoots of local jihadi groups fighting in local conflicts. Within Iraq itself, ISIS capitalized on the alienation of Sunni Muslims by a government that at the time blatantly favored Shi’ites. Preventing ISIS from returning to Iraq is no longer a military issue because of the blows the U.S. has already delivered to the terror organization; the effort now must focus on policing to locate remaining terror cells, on building confidence in the Iraqi government among alienated Sunnis and on addressing the population’s grievances. Ameliorating these issues denies ISIS the ability to entice new recruits. Recommended OPINION How Pelosi's partisan Jan. 6 committee can (maybe) turn the tables of the GOP OPINION South Dakota's national guard stunt is pure political theater — with a murky twist None of these goals can be achieved militarily, however, and none of that is even within the purview of the U.S. government. It’s an Iraqi matter for Iraqis to decide. The domestic threat to the U.S. of ISIS-inspired attacks isn’t diminished by stationing troops abroad because the threat stems from radicalization, not from ISIS’ material strength. Likewise, there is no “safe haven” in Iraq from which ISIS can organize attacks. Furthermore, if conditions aren’t ripe for withdrawal now, will they ever be? ISIS was denied the last patch of its territorial caliphate more than two years ago, so the upside for the U.S. staying is minimal. Likewise, the downside will only increase in the coming months. Iran’s incoming president, ultraconservative Ebrahim Raisi, is likely to be more bellicose and risk-tolerant than his predecessor. Raisi boasts strong connections within Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, the military component that equips and trains Tehran’s proxies. That means these proxies may act with less restraint, increasing the odds of American forces being endangered. Related OPINION We want to hear what you THINK. Please submit a letter to the editor. U.S. decisionmakers should consider Biden’s own words from April on the coming Afghanistan withdrawal when contemplating the fate of U.S. troops in Iraq: "We cannot continue the cycle of extending or expanding our military presence in Afghanistan — hoping to create ideal conditions for the withdrawal and expecting a different result." The U.S. should apply the lessons from Afghanistan rather than relearning them in Iraq. Getting entangled further without an exit strategy doesn’t bolster U.S. security, it undermines it. The phrase “forever wars” is plural. As the U.S. winds the Afghanistan conflict to a close, it needs to follow suit in Iraq.

Netanyahu Is Out But Nothing Has Changed for Palestinians by JAMES ZOGBY

One month after the end of the last hostilities between Israel and Hamas, events on the ground demonstrate that little has changed. And once again the US media is ignoring Israel's creeping annexation of Palestinian lands and their brutally aggressive behaviors toward the Palestinian people. There appeared to be an awakening of the press last month—especially the extensive coverage given to Israel's effort to evict Palestinians from their homes in Sheikh Jarrah and the Israeli military's brutal assault on Palestinians at al Aqsa—signaling greater sensitivity to the Palestinian plight. Although these Israeli actions and the mass uprisings of Palestinian youth they precipitated were drowned out by the more familiar storyline of Israeli bombardments of Gaza in response to Hamas rocket fire, after the ceasefire, positive coverage of Palestinian suffering continued, but only for a time. Shortly after being inaugurated, the new government issued a permit for flag-waving extremists to march through Arab neighborhoods chanting "Death to Arabs." Attention was soon diverted by the drama of Netanyahu's defeat and the formation of the new Israeli government. At this point, the Israeli hasbara industry kicked into full gear. Newly inaugurated Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, a notorious hardliner, we are told, has become a pragmatist who wants to restore frayed relations with Democrats. In an appeal to the Biden administration, a senior member of the Bennett-Lapid government said that their future "rests in Biden's hands...we hope that they will understand the constraints under which we are operating..." In other words, "Don't look at what we do or place demands on us; what should count is that we're not Netanyahu." But, as a leading Israeli peace activist noted, US attitudes toward Israel "ought to be framed by Israeli policies, not Israeli politicians, and as long as the policies continue, there is no reason to cut Israel slack for the simple fact that Israel's not being led by Netanyahu." As for the policies, nothing has changed. In the aftermath of the unrest that rocked Israeli cities last month, Israeli police arrested 2,100 citizens—91% of whom were Palestinian citizens of Israel. Shortly after being inaugurated, the new government issued a permit for flag-waving extremists to march through Arab neighborhoods chanting "Death to Arabs," "Your villages will burn," and other incendiary taunts. Once again, Israeli police arrested Arab counter-protesters. In an ominous development, Israeli police set up barricades around the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood and established a checkpoint for residents. They have also established guard posts near the Damascus Gate that the Israeli press notes are frequently being used to harass and beat young Palestinians who gather at the Gate's plaza. As I had feared, with each passing day, it appears that the Israelis are intent on repeating in Jerusalem what they did in Hebron. The Israeli press also reports that police have used brutal "crowd dispersal even when not necessary" and deployed skunk water hoses, spraying the plaza, the Old City walls, and homes in Silwan with a liquid that has a long-lasting "unbearable stench." Meanwhile, in the rest of the occupied lands, settlement expansion and creeping annexation continue. Just this week, the new government gave the green light to 31 new projects in settlements across the West Bank. And in Hebron, the Israelis have seized land adjacent to al Ibrahim Mosque to complete their takeover of this UNESCO-protected site. South of Hebron, the fertile lands of Khirbet al Aida, owned by Palestinians have been subjected to settler raids, demolition activity, and expropriation. The Israeli government's intent is to connect settlements around Hebron, cutting it off from the rest of the West Bank. Equally ominous are the activities of settlers, protected by the Israeli military, who have established an "outpost"—Evyatar—on a hilltop to the south of Nablus, Jabal Sabih. While the military has declared this outpost "flagrantly illegal," 60 homes have already been constructed, and soldiers have been seen assisting the settlers moving construction materials up the hill. The government has provided the outpost with water, electricity, and roads. Palestinians, on whose land this "outpost" is being erected, have been protesting this blatant land grab. In the last six weeks, Israelis have shot and killed five young Palestinian protesters. Like the development in Hebron, Palestinians understand that what is illegal today becomes legal tomorrow. Once completed, Evyatar will connect with other once-illegal outposts and will cut Nablus off from the rest of the West Bank. One month after the end of the last "Gaza war," Israeli settlers participated in 14 marches throughout the West Bank, protected by the Israeli military, demanding that the government expropriate Palestinian lands for settlement construction. Meanwhile in Gaza, despite Hamas' hollow boasts of victory, tens of thousands of Palestinians in that impoverished strip remain homeless, many more without water and electricity, and the entire population without hope for the future. In the Israeli Knesset, the new government is seeking renewal of a law to ban Palestinian "family unification" (forbidding Palestinian citizens of Israel and residents of Jerusalem from bringing spouses from the West Bank, Gaza, or outside to live with them) with Defense Minister Benny Gantz arguing that passage of this law "is necessary to maintain the security of the state and its Jewish democratic character." The bottom line: Netanyahu may be out, but creeping annexation and oppression continue. For Palestinians, nothing has changed.

An unrepentant mass murderer has died today

Donald Rumsfeld, The Controversial Architect Of The Iraq War, Has Died NPR Donald Rumsfeld, who served twice as U.S. secretary of defense and who was an architect of America's wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, has died. He was 88. "It is with deep sadness that we share the news of the passing of Donald Rumsfeld, an American statesman and devoted husband, father, grandfather and great grandfather," Rumsfeld's family said in a Twitter post. "History may remember him for his extraordinary accomplishments over six decades of public service, but for those who knew him best and whose lives were forever changed as a result, we will remember his unwavering love for his wife Joyce, his family and friends and the integrity he brought to a life dedicated to country." Rumsfeld holds the distinction of being both the youngest and the oldest person to serve at the helm of the Defense Department. Hawkish and a leader of the neoconservative movement that found considerable influence in the George W. Bush White House, Rumsfeld is perhaps best remembered as one of the key architects of the decades-long wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. His post-9/11 strategy has become one of the hallmarks of U.S. foreign policy, and the bloody trail left in the wake of the 2000s invasions has left some to remember him as a skilled statesman, while others have blamed these interventions as responsible for destabilizing the region and roping American soldiers into seemingly endless war. Then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld watches as then-President George W. Bush talks about the devastation at the Pentagon on Sept. 12, 2001. Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP As the Iraq War raged, U.S. troops became embroiled in a scandal involving the harsh treatment of Iraqi prisoners in the notorious Abu Ghraib prison. Rumsfeld subsequently said he offered to quit twice during that period, but that Bush "made that decision and said he did want me to stay on." "That was such a stain on our country," he told ABC News' Diane Sawyer in 2011. The prisoners, he said, were treated in a "disgusting and perverted and ghastly way." His position on the treatment of terrorism suspects at Guantanamo Bay also drew scrutiny — and criticism. A memo that detailed how interrogators at the prison camp forced prisoners to stand for four hours at a time bore this handwritten note from Rumsfeld: "I stand for 8–10 hours a day. Why is standing [by prisoners] limited to 4 hours? D.R." Bush, under whom Rumsfeld served as defense chief for the second time, eulogized his longtime ally on Wednesday. "On the morning of September 11, 2001, Donald Rumsfeld ran to the fire at the Pentagon to assist the wounded and ensure the safety of survivors. For the next five years, he was in steady service as a wartime secretary of defense — a duty he carried out with strength, skill, and honor," Bush said in a statement. "In a busy and purposeful life, Don Rumsfeld was a Naval officer, a member of Congress, a distinguished cabinet official in several administrations, a respected business leader — and, with his beloved wife, the co-founder of a charitable foundation. Later in life, he even became an app developer. All his life, he was good-humored and big-hearted, and he treasured his family above all else. Laura and I are very sorry to learn of Don's passing, and we send our deepest sympathy to Joyce and their children. We mourn an exemplary public servant and a very good man." Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld Tries His Hand At App Development THE TWO-WAY Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld Tries His Hand At App Development Rumsfeld resigned as defense secretary in 2006 as Americans expressed outrage over the Iraq War, which was fast becoming a foreign policy liability for the Bush administration. Rumsfeld largely stood by his actions, though, in his 2011 memoir and in his farewell remarks to the Pentagon in 2006. "A conclusion by our enemies that the United States lacks the will or the resolve to carry out our missions that demand sacrifice and demand patience is every bit as dangerous as an imbalance of conventional military power," he said. "It may well be comforting to some to consider graceful exits from the agonies and, indeed, the ugliness of combat. But the enemy thinks differently." Rumsfeld's early years in Washington Rumsfeld arrived in Washington, D.C., in the late 1950s as an accomplished Ivy League athlete and a veteran airman for the U.S. Navy. The Chicago-born Boy Scout quickly fell into the pace of government and would eventually be elected to serve four terms as a Republican representing Illinois' 13th Congressional District. Rumsfeld resigned from the Congress in 1969 to join the administration of then-President Richard Nixon. Years later, following Nixon's fall from grace and ultimate resignation, Rumsfeld returned to the White House to serve his first stint as defense secretary, under President Gerald Ford. It was there that Rumsfeld would solidify an alliance with Dick Cheney, who went on to serve as Bush's vice president, and alongside whom Rumsfeld would later make key foreign policy decisions. Following his time with President Ford, Rumsfeld left politics in search of success in the corporate world — which eventually saw him overseeing two Fortune 500 companies as chief executive. A generation later, Rumsfeld entered his second act in Washington, emerging as a surprise pick for Bush's defense secretary.

Rights body accuses Myanmar junta of harassing Muslims, setting mosque on fire

A UK-based rights group accused the Myanmar military junta of harassing minority Muslims and setting a mosque on fire. “A fire in a mosque in Ahlone Township, Yangon, is the latest incident of violence against Muslims and other minorities in Burma by the illegitimate military regime,” the Burma Human Rights Network (BHRN) said in a statement on Thursday. It also blamed the junta for misinterpreting its oppressive acts. “While authorities blamed the fire on electrical issues, sources blamed the military and described it as an arson attack.” The mosque fire comes after months of attacks against Muslims and Christians throughout Burma, said the statement, adding that such attacks against the minorities are “intolerable” and the international community must realize the seriousness of these incidents and act immediately. According to the BHRN records and other available reports, more than 900 civilians, including 70 underaged children, have been killed by the Myanmar forces since the Feb. 1 military coup. Myanmar's military ousted President Win Myint, State Counselor Aung San Suu Kyi and other senior members of the pre-coup ruling National League for Democracy party, citing "election fraud" in the polls for the coup. “The world needs to immediately launch a global arms embargo and sanction all businesses connected to the Tatmadaw [Myanmar Army], including the oil and gas sector,” said Kyaw Win, BHRN executive director. Attacks on religious structures The statement also noted that Mohnhyin Mosque and Butaryone Street Mosque in Mohnhyin city were raided on June 3. “During the raid, a custodian of the mosque was arbitrarily detained.” “Similarly, a Catholic church in Kantharyar Loikaw City, Kayeh State, was shot at on May 24 as civilians sought refuge there. Three women and one man were killed in the incident,” said the statement. Referring to the destruction of an ethnic Karen Church on May 23 this year by the military and police in Insein Township, the statement claimed three people, including a pastor and a disabled person, were beaten and detained. “On April 12, a Muslim man living in a mosque in Tamwe, Yangon, was dressed up in woman’s clothing, tied up, hanged, and killed,” according to the statement. Calling the safety of religious minorities a matter of “great concern,” the statement warned that Burma can descend into a broader conflict between the military and the people. Call to recognize shadow government “BHRN calls on the international community to recognize the National Unity Government (NUG) as the legitimate representative of the Burmese people and to offer them full support as they endeavor to restore order to the country,” said the statement. The NUG is an anti-coup shadow government in Myanmar mostly formed by the ousted lawmakers. Anadolu Agency website contains only a portion of the news stories offered to subscribers in the AA News Broadcasting System (HAS), and in summarized form. Please contact us for subscription options.

Mosque Fire Latest in Tatmadaw’s Campaign Against Religious Minorities

24 June 2021 -- London/Yangon -- A fire in a mosque in Ahlone Township, Yangon is the latest incident of violence against Muslims and other minorities in Burma by the illegitimate military regime. While authorities blamed the fire on electrical issues, sources blame the military and describe it as an arson attack. The fire comes after months of attacks against Muslims and Christians throughout Burma. “These attacks against Muslims and Christians in Burma are intolerable and the international community must recognize the seriousness of these incidents immediately. The military has been able to increase its attacks on minorities in the country since the coup, believing they will face no further repercussions. This is just the latest reason the world needs to immediately launch a global arms embargo and sanction all businesses connected to the Tatmadaw, including the oil and gas sector,” Said BHRN’s Executive Director Kyaw Win. Previously, two raids occurred at Mohnhyin mosque and Butaryone Street Mosque in Mohnhyin city on June 3, 2021. During the raid, a custodian of the mosque was arbitrarily detained. Similarly, a Catholic church in Kantharyar Loikaw City, Kayeh State was shot at on 24 May as civilians sought refuge there. Three women and one man were killed in the incident. Before this, an ethnic Karen Church was destroyed on 23 May by the military and police in Insein Township. Three people, including a pastor and a disabled person, were beaten and detained. On 12 April a Muslim man living in a Mosque in Tamwe, Yangon was put in women’s clothing and makeup, bound, hanged, and killed. The safety of religious minorities is of great concern as Burma descends into a broader conflict between the Military and the people’s defense forces. BHRN calls on the international community to recognize the National Unity Government as the legitimate representative of the Burmese people and to offer them full support as they endeavor to restore order to the country. The international community must launch a global arms embargo and sanctions every last business and industry connected to the military to prevent them from prolonging the conflict against the civilian population. The NUG must also offer a clear plan and timeline for how they will prevent attacks against minorities once they are in power. Organisation’s Background BHRN is based in London and operates across Burma/Myanmar working for human rights, minority rights and religious freedom in the country. BHRN has played a crucial role in advocating for human rights and religious freedom with politicians and world leaders. Media Enquiries Please contact: Kyaw Win Executive Director Burma Human Rights Network (BHRN) E: kyawwin@bhrn.org.uk

ARNO: NUG Policy Position On Rohingya In Rakhine State – Statement

ARNO* June 21, 2021 Rohingya refugees. On 3 June 2021 the National Unity Government (NUG) of Myanmar issued its “Policy Position on the Rohingya in the Rakhine State.” In response, the Arakan Rohingya National Organisation (ARNO) with the Rohingya people cautiously welcomed this development. The announcement was a step in the right direction towards a credible solution for the Rohingya community of Myanmar. This process would need to be inclusive from the onset. In this regard, we encourage further direct engagement between the NUG and Rohingya representatives, and as such ARNO and our partners stand ready to play our part in what needs to be an inclusive process of engagement with Rohingya representatives. Against this background, we wished to emphasise the following in response to the policy position: 1. We welcome the NUG’s clear acknowledgment of the violence and gross human rights violations inflicted upon Rohingyas, including the massive displacement inflicted on our people, with hundreds of thousands fleeing their homes in Rakhine State in the last decade. The brutality and crimes of the Tatmadaw against all civilians now in Burma is a sad reality the Rohingya people have experienced for many years. The NUG’s expression of sorrow and sympathy to the plight of the Rohingya helps to bring about genuine reconciliation. 2. In parallel we welcome the NUG’s commitments to actively seek justice and accountability for all crimes committed by the military against the Rohingya and all other people of Myanmar. Such accountability process needs to be comprehensive and look beyond just the period of since 1 February. In this regard, we are encouraged by the NUG’s commitments towards reparation and justice in the future Federal Democratic Union Constitution. 3. The cornerstone of the legitimate rights and demands of the Rohingya centre on our recognition as citizens of Myanmar. The NUG’s position towards repealing the 1982 Citizenship Law is critical in this regard, including the abolishment of National Verification Cards, and replacing it with a just and inclusive legislative process that recognises the legitimate rights of the Rohingya as citizens of Myanmar. 4. Finally, we fully endorse the NUG’s position on the voluntary, safe, and dignified repatriation of Rohingya people who fled to neighbouring countries from Rakhine State due to the military’s brutality. It is critical for there to be a credible policy and plan in place by the NUG in addressing the refugee needs of the Rohingya and of all Burmese people who have been forced into refuge at the hands of the Tatmadaw. Underpinning the above is the need for genuine engagement and inclusion of Rohingya representatives. Such approach would ensure a just and durable solution for a future democratic Myanmar that we all seek. In particular we seek through this inclusion to urge the NUG to: (i) Intensify the focus and preparations for a comprehensive accountability process. This requires the NUG to initiate a process that grants the International Criminal Court jurisdiction over crimes committed within Myanmar against the Rohingyas and other communities. To support credible accountability efforts, it is important that NUG acknowledges all past crimes against Rohingyas to ensure victims see justice served and the cycle of violence is not repeated. (ii) Accept the findings and recommendations of the UN Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar (IIFFMM). This includes an unequivocal acknowledgment that genocide and crimes against humanity have been committed against the Rohingya, as stated by the UN Fact-Finding Mission. (iii) Commit to a comprehensive and durable solution to safeguarding the universal rights of the Rohingya as indigenous to Arakan/Rakhine State and therefore to Myanmar. Indeed, the Rohingya are entitled to rights and privileges on a par with other ethnicities of Myanmar. Our inherent rights and ethnic identity should be safeguarded in a future Myanmar, including through the Federal Charter, new constitutional process and vision set out by the NUG. We recognise addressing these issues are complex and securing the fair and just solution would not occur overnight. We stand ready to work with our NUG partners along this process, and remain committed to joining hands with NUG and others in the Spring Revolution against the military dictatorship in all possible ways, and bring about a free, fair and democratic future Myanmar. *Arakan Rohingya National Org

Albanian PM compares EU entry and 'Waiting for Godot'

SARAJEVO (Reuters) - Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama drew comparisons on Wednesday between attempts by his country and North Macedonia to join the European Union and the absurdist play "Waiting for Godot". Edi Rama looking at the camera: FILE PHOTO: Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama celebrates his party's election victory, in Tirana© Reuters/FLORION GOGA FILE PHOTO: Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama celebrates his party's election victory, in Tirana Bulgaria vetoed the start of talks with the two Balkan countries at an EU meeting on Tuesday. "This is a big disappointment and huge failure of the European Union, and a bad message to the whole region," North Macedonian Prime Minister Zoran Zaev told a news conference with Rama at an economic forum in North Macedonia's capital, Skopje. Rama likened himself and Zaev to readers of Irish writer Samuel Beckett's "Waiting for Godot", in which two characters wait for a third character who never arrives. "But contrary to Samuel Beckett's characters ... we are not really waiting, we are going forward, pushing and pushing ...to make the life of our people and the life of our countries better," he said. Bulgaria has blocked the official start of EU accession talks with North Macedonia because of disputes over history and language, and has also accused Skopje of hate speech and failing to implement a 2017 bilateral friendship treaty. "Our position is clear - European integration cannot be held hostage by bilateral relations," Zaev said, describing it as a dangerous precedent. Albania's attempts to start entry talks have also been held up because the European Commission, the EU executive, has said Albania and North Macedonia must move forward together. (Reporting by Daria Sito-Sucic; Editing by Timothy Heritage)

US lawmakers and rights groups call on Egypt to commute planned executions

US lawmakers and human rights groups are calling on Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi to commute the planned executions of a dozen members of the Muslim Brotherhood who were charged with hundreds of others in a "sham" mass trial. Representative André Carson called the death sentences that were upheld against the 12 last week "unjust" and an "egregious human rights violations", asking Sisi to intervene before the Monday deadline. "President al-Sisi should commute these death sentences, and he must hold accountable the members of the security forces responsible for the mass killings at Rab'a Square," Carson said in a tweet on Tuesday. An Egyptian court upheld the death sentences against the men, including two senior Muslim Brotherhood leaders, Mohamed el-Beltagy and Ahmed Aref, in a ruling on 14 June. Egypt's Criminal Procedure Code gives the president 14 days following the court ruling to pardon the defendants or commute the death sentences. Without intervention, the executions are set to take place on 28 June. 'Politically motivated death sentences' Calls for US pressure to be levied on Egypt have been building on Capitol Hill, particularly this week as Egypt's intelligence chief Abbas Kamel visits his counterparts in Washington. Several members of Congress in both the House and Senate have requested meetings with Kamel to address a range of human rights issues - from recent reports that Egyptian security forces were involved in the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi to accusations of politically motivated sham trials. On Tuesday, Representatives Don Beyer and Tom Malinowski, who are the co-chairs on the House's Egypt Human Rights Caucus, released a statement to the White House that stressed the importance of raising "persistent United States concerns about widespread human rights abuses in Egypt". "Arbitrary detentions, trumped-up prosecutions, torture, and digital snooping by Egyptian security services are consistent features of life for many Egyptians. These abuses also matter to the United States because of the generous military assistance that American taxpayers provide to Egypt," the congressmen said. The United States provides Egypt with around $1.8bn in military aid each year. While US President Joe Biden has so far failed to limit or further condition that aid, calls from congress to do so have been growing. "As such, we urge the administration to raise the Egyptian security services' continued abuses with Mr Kamel, including arbitrary detention rates that dwarf any regional counterpart, recent provocative and politically motivated death sentences and pending executions," the congressmen said in Tuesday's statement, also noting a range of other human rights abuses carried out by the Egyptian government. Sarah Leah Whitson, executive director of Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN), thanked Representatives Carson, Beyer and Malinowski in a series of tweets on the topic, saying "we must make clear to Sisi and Kamel that these sentences must be stayed and all the defendants in this sham trial pardoned". The US Council of Muslim Organizations, an umbrella group of the country's leading Muslim organisations, also called on the White House to condemn the court-ordered executions. 'A grossly unfair mass trial' All 12 men set to be executed were convicted by a terrorism court of "arming criminal gangs which attacked residents and resisted policemen as well as possessing firearms and ammunition… and bomb-making material" in September 2018, following a mass trial of 739 defendants that began in December 2015. The defendants were all arrested for their alleged involvement in a sit-in on 14 August 2013 at Rabaa al-Adawiya Square against the ousting of Egypt's first democratically elected president, Mohamed Morsi. 'President Sisi should seize this moment to void their execution and put an end to Egypt's profligate use of the death penalty' - Joe Stork, HRW During the largely peaceful protest, Egyptian security forces killed more than 800 people in what Human Rights Watch described as the "worst single-day killing of protesters in modern history". Meanwhile, rights groups have accused Egypt's courts of foul play, saying the government has targeted dissidents "in a grossly unfair mass trial" that seeks to shift guilt from Egyptian security forces' deadly crackdown. On Friday, HRW released a report, also calling for President el-Sisi to intervene in the planned executions and to release anyone prosecuted "solely for participating in largely peaceful protests". The group also called on Egypt to retry defendants charged with violent offences "before a court meeting international fair trial standards". "The Rabaa trial was a mockery of justice, so it is outrageous that the highest court has upheld these 12 death sentences," said Joe Stork, deputy Middle East and North Africa director at HRW. "President Sisi should seize this moment to void their execution and put an end to Egypt’s profligate use of the death penalty." At least 22 of those handed down prison terms during the mass trial were children at the time of arrest and were prosecuted alongside adults in violation of international law.

Israel Approves Plan To Expand Colonies In Occupied West Bank

The Israeli government has approved, Wednesday, plans for expanding illegal colonies on Palestinian lands in the occupied West Bank. Israeli Ynet News said Israel approved new construction in Jewish settlements, which also marks the first decision of its kind since the new Prime Minister Naftali Bennet took office. The plan was approved by the subcommittee in charge of colonialist activities, in the so-called “Civil Administration Office”, the administrative branch of Israel’s illegal occupation. Ynet stated that the subcommittee approved what it called a “limited construction plan” in the illegal colonies of Yitzhar, Elkana, and Mishor Adumim. In early May of this year, the Israeli government announced plans for the construction of at least 392 units in illegal Israeli colonies, on more than 432.1 Dunams of Palestinian lands. All of Israel’s colonies in the occupied West Bank, including those in and around occupied East Jerusalem, are illegal under International Law, the Fourth Geneva Convention in addition to various United Nations and Security Council resolutions. They also constitute war crimes under International Humanitarian Law.

Blinken lied through his teeth about Israeli and U.S. accountability to victims– that’s the real scandal BY DONALD JOHNSON

Daniel Larison made the central point about the Ilhan Omar controversy. People should be outraged about Antony Blinken’s comment and not hers. “The real outrage in this exchange was Blinken’s claim that victims of U.S. and Israeli war crimes can get justice from the governments responsible for those crimes, because all of us, Blinken included, know that this isn’t true.” Israel and the US are not accountable to their victims. This is a question of power. Proclamations about being democracies and having justice systems ignore the fact about their actual behavior. When Blinken said that Palestinians can get justice through Israeli structures he was lying through his teeth. I believe, whether it’s the United States or Israel, that we both have the mechanisms to make sure there is accountability in any situations where there are concerns about use of force, human rights, etc. I believe that both of our democracies have that capacity He simply wiped away all the facts gathered by all the human rights groups and this didn’t cause even a whiff of scandal. As the human rights group B’Tselem said of four Israeli attacks on Gaza over 12 years: Despite the horrifying, lethal consequences of intentionally bombing civilian objectives – which constitutes a war crime – Israel has never been held accountable, or forced to pay any price, for implementing this policy. Kamala Harris played a similar game in her response to a New York Times interview of the Democratic Presidential candidates in the summer of 2019. Asked about whether Israel lived up to her human rights standards, she acted like she had no idea what the question was about– “What specifically are your referring to?”– but then answered that Yes it does. No scandal. Subscribe to The Shift, a weekly newsletter from Michael Arria tracking the politics of Palestine in the U.S. Email * Instead, the entire uproar is about Ilhan Omar the troublemaker, the foreign antisemite who lacks patriotism because we can never discuss the obvious truth of her remarks but only what is supposedly wrong with what she said or how she said it. Now the rule is as it was for Jeremy Corbyn. You can have some discussion of Israeli apartheid in the press, but if it reaches the point where politicians start talking about it, they have to be Corbynized. We must speak of Israel and the US with reverence and just make passing hand-waving remarks about their imperfections. It never crossed the minds of most pundits or politicians or Democrats to be critical of Blinken’s pathologically dishonest response. His response was normal, entirely mainstream, precisely because Israel is an apartheid state and the US is a superpower and neither is accountable to their victims and we aren’t supposed to notice the lack of accountability. The idea that we have functioning justice systems is just part of the joke. We do have systems and they function as they are supposed to, which is to prevent accountability on these issues. And the entire mainstream reporting about Ilhan Omar’s heresy treats it solely as a political spat in which the Democratic Party establishment maintains discipline. The New York Times didn’t bother to ask Palestinians or victims of US bombs or sanctions or Steven Donziger (look him up) or human rights groups about US or Israeli or British or French accountability. The Germans only just got around to admitting their genocide in Namibia over 100 years ago. They were only accountable for the Holocaust because they picked a fight with most of the rest of the West and the USSR and lost. Were the Soviets accountable for their crimes or the West accountable for the crimes of centuries of imperialism? Of course not. Accountability is not something that comes naturally to powerful people, whether in democracies or not. A democratic society in theory allows for discussion and protest, but if the victims are not voters in that society or if they are an oppressed minority then those protests and discussions can go on for generations before any sort of change occurs. This is so obvious from history it shouldn’t need pointing out, yet somehow in these mind-numbingly stupid American discussions about “ our democracy” and how it functions, people mysteriously forget what should be clear to a well read ten year old child.

Barbara Lee Was Right About the War on Terror BY LUKE SAVAGE

Twenty years ago, Barbara Lee cast the lone vote against the Authorization for Use of Military Force — the blank check for endless war Congress gave George W. Bush after 9/11. She's been vindicated by history. Those who pushed the "War on Terror" have not. Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA) speaks with reporters in the Capitol in January 2020. (Tom Williams / CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images) Three days after the horrific September 11 attacks, America’s national atmosphere was a disorienting haze of fear, trauma, and jingoism. In the wake of what had just transpired, the bipartisan consensus could not have been more ironclad: the country would be entering into a vaguely defined war of unknown length whose parameters were essentially open-ended and could be determined at will by the president. That spirit was aptly captured in the language of a House resolution passed on September 14: The President is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons. Of the 421 lawmakers who voted on the resolution — which would pass in the Senate 98-0 shortly after — the lone voice of dissent was a single Democrat from California. Twenty years later, Barbara Lee’s intervention continues to count as one of the bravest individual votes in the history of the House of Representatives. Lee, moreover, refused to equivocate about the reasons for her opposition, explaining in an op-ed for the San Francisco Chronicle on September 23: Some believe this resolution was only symbolic, designed to show national resolve. But I could not ignore that it provided explicit authority, under the War Powers Resolution and the Constitution, to go to war. It was a blank check to the president to attack anyone involved in the Sept. 11 events — anywhere, in any country, without regard to our nation’s long-term foreign policy, economic and national security interests, and without time limit. In granting these overly broad powers, the Congress failed its responsibility to understand the dimensions of its declaration. I could not support such a grant of war-making authority to the president; I believe it would put more innocent lives at risk. . . . A rush to launch precipitous military counterattacks runs too great a risk that more innocent men, women, children will be killed. I could not vote for a resolution that I believe could lead to such an outcome. In the nearly two decades since, Lee’s assessment, deeply unpopular though it was at the time, has been vindicated again and again. The ensuing wars would have untold human consequences and wreak deadly havoc on the lives throughout the Middle East amid a rollback of civil liberties at home. Despite leaving office with record-low approval ratings, George W. Bush’s so-called War on Terror ultimately lingers as an ambient presence in American politics to this day. Bush, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump would all, at various times, cite the resolution passed on September 14, 2001, as justification for airstrikes and the deployment of ground troops in a host of countries that had absolutely nothing to do with 9/11. Some fifteen years after the attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center, the Obama administration was still invoking it to legitimize military operations in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, and beyond, including those against ISIS — a group which quite literally did not exist when the resolution was first drafted and passed. The Authorization for Use of Military Force of 2001, in fact, remains on the books today despite various efforts to repeal it. In this respect, this week’s House vote to repeal the 2002 Iraq War authorization (cited most recently by Donald Trump following the assassination of Iranian military leader Qasem Soleimani) — a move sponsored by none other than Lee herself — is a small but very real step toward reigning in the power of US presidents to wage open-ended warfare in perpetuity. With majority leader Chuck Schumer promising to put the repeal to a vote, there’s even some reason to believe it may succeed in the Senate, where previous efforts have failed. In the short term, the 268-161 passage of repeal legislation for the Iraq War is an occasion to recognize yet again the foresight of Barbara Lee, who twenty years ago had the courage to perceive the risk of giving any president a blank check to wage endless war at will. In the long-term, it represents only the first of many necessary victories in the wider campaign to restrain the imperial presidency and reassert basic democratic checks on its power to deploy America’s terrifying military arsenal without congressional oversight.

Bangladesh PM Hasina to global community: Ensure dignified repatriation of Rohingyas

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina on Wednesday renewed her call to the global community to ensure the dignified repatriation of Rohingyas as they are posing a big security threat to Bangladesh as well as the region. "We’ve sheltered them on humanitarian grounds but such a huge population can't be lodged for an indefinite period… I request the world community to assist us in dignified and peaceful repatriation of the Rohingyas," she said in her pre-recorded speech at the three-day “IX Moscow Conference on International Security.” She said Bangladesh has been hosting more than 1.1 million forcibly displaced Myanmar nationals for about four years. "They’re posing a huge security threat to Bangladesh as well as the region," she added. Hasina said it goes without saying that conflicts among states give rise to intrastate security problems. Besides, she mentioned, the concept of security now includes, in addition to military threats, the socio-economic and political needs of individuals, mass involuntary migration, environmental security and other non-traditional security threats. "Even, new challenges and issues of international security arise due to terrorism, extremism, separatism, weapons of mass destruction, cybercrimes, regional conflicts and ecological catastrophes," Hasina said. She also said Bangladesh maintains a zero-tolerance policy towards terrorism and extremism. The prime minister appreciated the recent ceasefire between Israel and Palestine saying that she hoped that peace and stability will prevail in the Middle East as well as other parts of the world. Regarding the Covid-19 pandemic, she said it is one of the most pressing global issues of the current time as it has not only taken its heavy toll on lives but also battered the economies and affected the livelihoods of millions of people across the world. She said the Bangladesh government has shown resilience in fighting the pandemic by ensuring available healthcare support for all and providing appropriate incentives to different sectors. She vowed to bring all citizens under the free Covid-19 vaccination program and the government is trying to get vaccines from all available sources to make that happen. "Our government is in touch with Russian for vaccines. I would like to mention that Bangladesh has the capacity to produce vaccines and even support the world community if we’re taken on board in the production chain," Hasina added. Terming climate change as a major issue, she said it needs proper attention from the global community. She mentioned that Bangladesh is one of the worst victims of climate change, although it does not have any contribution to the phenomenon. The prime minister hoped that the international community will play a proactive role in addressing adverse impacts of climate change through extending cooperation and exchanging knowledge and expertise. She said peace and security cannot be ensured unless all take appropriate measures to end human deprivation and ensure an environment that provides education and opportunities for all. Hasina urged the world community to ensure vaccination for all to fight off Covid-19, humanitarian assistance to the marginalised people, return of all the Rohingyas to Myanmar, stopping financing and arms supply to terrorists, and Increasing cooperation among military agencies to ensure global security.

Voting for Restoration of Democracy: Electoral Choices

Ram Puniyani One will be amazed to compare the India of today with the same a decade ago. BJP’s getting majority in the Lok Sabha (2014) has changed the political, social and economic scenario in adverse direction. The rising prices, the free fall of economy with GDP at all time low, with India falling down on hunger index and the massive rise in poverty-unemployment along with rise of corporate might reflects the economic plight of the citizens. The erosion of democratic ethos, parliamentary practices, decline in autonomy of democratic institutions like Election Commission, ED, CBI and role of section of judiciary in not preserving values of Indian Constitution are out in the open. The state of federalism is worrying again and many of the regional parties-states are feeling that Union Government is trampling over their rights. This has been most manifest in the Corona vaccination drive as one example. The social plight of dalits, adivasis and religious minorities and the ruling parties’ imposing CAA, has made it clear to most sections of society about the need to have a Union Government which adheres to the norms of Indian Constitution, pluralism and is inclusive. BJP is a party which has the solid multipronged backing of RSS, its lakhs of swayamsevaks and thousands of Pracharaks. They claim to be working for cultural organization but swing to electoral arena in elections. Media’s large section and IT cell has been built as a strong citadel for promoting BJP’s electoral prospects. The other powerful support comes from corporate sector, which has determined to see Narendra Modi as PM, from last couple of decades. On the top of it BJP has raised a strong electoral mechanism from booth level to the top which ensures exploiting all the possibilities of victory of BJP even in adverse situation. To add to its strength is its ways of making MLAs to walk over to BJP to form Governments even when it is in minority, as we saw in case of Goa, Karnataka and MP. Two examples of its winning elections are its alliances and overwhelming resources. As for alliances time and over again, the likes of Late Ram Vilas Paswan stands out. Winning over the ambitious leaders is best exemplified in case of Jyotiraditya Scindia. So despite large section of dissatisfied population BJP has been increasing its grip over the electoral power in Center and in many states. The amount of resources and efforts put in Bengal elections was phenomenal, still it showed that a determined citizenry can ensures that all these actions may not succeed. The opposition parties on one hand have not yet fully woken up to the fact that opposition unity based on the platform of plural, democratic agenda is the key to keep this party away from the seat of power. The results of Assam elections should be and eye opener, where despite a higher voting percentage Congress+ lost and a BJP+ polling less number of votes is occupying the seat of power. The main reason was inability to form a joint alliance despite having similar, though not exactly same, agenda. The party of Akhil Gogoi, which contested separately did affect the results adversely. There are many parties which make the show of coming for alliance, but put forward such hard bargaining conditions that alliance is not struck and the democratic vote is divided to the advantage of BJP. Case of AAP and Congress in the previous Punjab-Goa assembly elections is one such. So where does one go from here? In a recent article in TOI, MP Pavan Varma, who was earlier expelled from the JDU argues that regional parties do not add up to the pan India whole and for an effective opposition the role of Congress is central and crucial. He points out that “Congress is still the principal opposition party in states as far apart as Kerala and Assam. Even when reduced to just 52 seats in Lok Sabha in 2019 parliament elections, it garnered 12 crore votes (BJP got 22 crore votes) and 20 % of electoral vote share. The joint alliance of regional and national parties is being recognized as the need of the hour more than before. The mismanagement of Corona has dented the carefully crafted charisma of Modi and even those who used to parrot the formulation that “jitega to Modi hi’ (Modi alone will win) and that there is no alternative to Modi, realize that the dictatorial style and the highhanded pursuit of the sectarian nationalist politics of present regime are ruining the country all round. The problem is that the fragmentation of opposition forces and egos and political ambitions of many of the leaders handing the coalition are so rigid that the alliances do not happen and triangular fight ensues and BJP is by and large the beneficiary. The oldest party of India, which had a central role in getting the country independence, should be realizing that the individual ambitions of the leaders have to be accommodated partly in the larger framework of principles of Indian Constriction. The economic agenda has to be inclusive the way UPA I (Congress with support of left) was focusing on Rights based approach of vast sections of population. Interestingly if the opposition unity does not come through and BJP with twin support of RSS and Corporate succeeds in repeating its performance of last two general elections, the worsening of the plight of the country is writ on the face of country. Attempts should be intensified to build bridges between regional parties and the nationalist party. There is a need to evolve a minimum common program of saving the country from the agenda of sectarian nationalism, the marginalization’s of religious minorities: Muslims, Christians, dalits, Adivasis and women in general. In a true spirit of Indian nationalism all the activists of social movements also need to support such an initiative, as even the space for social movements needs to be reclaimed, while saluting the young student-youth leaders who are staking all their might to articulate the democratic rights and ambitions of the common man.

No Comparison: Thoughtcrime Reflections on the Latest Imperial Smackdown of the Nation’s Best Congressperson

BY PAUL STREET United States political culture is an Orwellian nightmare. Two plus two equals five in the propaganda spectacle that passes for “democratic” news and debate here. Take the latest bipartisan establishment disciplining of Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), the U.S. House’s most courageous and eloquent member, for saying this: “We must have the same level of accountability and justice for all victims of crimes against humanity. We have seen unthinkable atrocities committed by the U.S., Hamas, Israel, Afghanistan, and the Taliban.” Omar dared, in the words of The New York Times, “to compare Israel and the United States to Hamas and the Taliban.” But did she? Look at these two sentences: “There’s nothing quite as exciting for baseball fans as a no-hitter. We have this season seen no-hitters thrown by pitchers with the Chicago White Sox, the San Diego Padres, the Detroit Tigers, the New York Yankees, the Baltimore Orioles, and the Cincinnati Reds.” Does this statement compare the White Sox with the Red Sox, the Padres, the Tigers, the Yankees, the Orioles, and the Reds? No, it makes an assertion about baseball no-hitters and then includes six teams in a list of Major League Baseball franchises with a pitcher who threw a no-hitter this year. For all anyone knows from these 41 words, each one of these teams is wildly different from the others. Thoughtcrime 1: Serious Comparison But, okay, let’s compare. Since Omar’s critics charge comparison, let’s take comparison seriously. One reason not to make “false equivalencies” between the Taliban (or Hamas) and the United States is that the former has never been remotely in the latter’s ballpark when it comes to committing crimes against humanity. Between direct U.S. slaughter and the U.S. sponsorship, funding, and equipping of mass slaughter by its client regimes, prominently including the racist apartheid state of Israel (recipient of $146 billion in U.S. military and economic funding in FY 2020, helping make Israel what the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace calls “the largest cumulative recipient of U.S. assistance since World War II”), Washington has murdered tens of millions of world citizens since August of 1945, when it criminally and unnecessarily atom-bombed two major Japanese cities. For an introduction to this criminal record, which is hiding in plain sight for those willing to look, Google up the following: “No Gun Ri,” “My Lai,” “many My Lais,” “Operation Tiger Force,” “Abu Ghraib,” “Nissour Square,” “Fallujah,” “Guantanamo,” “extraordinary rendition,” the “Highway of Death,” and “Bola Boluk.” Better yet, read my February 2018 Truthdig essay “The World Will Not Mourn the Decline of U.S. Hegemony” for a soul-numbing account of this unmatched record of mass-murderous terror inflicted both directly (as in Korea during the early 1950s, in Southeast Asia between 1962 and 1975, in Iraq in 1991 and 2003-2011/2017) and indirectly (as in Indonesia, Latin America, Palestine, Yemen and in countless nations and regions around the world). Here are some selections from that essay… It is difficult, sometimes, to wrap one’s mind around the extent of the savagery Uncle Sam has unleashed on the world during the last and the present century. In the early 1950s, for example, the Harry Truman administration responded to an early challenge to U.S. power in Northern Korea with a practically genocidal three-year bombing campaign that was described in soul-numbing terms by the Washington Post years ago: “The bombing was long, leisurely and merciless, even by the assessment of America’s own leaders. ‘Over a period of three years or so, we killed off—what—20 percent of the population,’ Air Force Gen. Curtis LeMay, head of the Strategic Air Command during the Korean War, told the Office of Air Force History in 1984. Dean Rusk, a supporter of the war and later Secretary of State, said the United States bombed ‘everything that moved in North Korea, every brick standing on top of another.’ After running low on urban targets, U.S. bombers destroyed hydroelectric and irrigation dams in the later stages of the war, flooding farmland and destroying crops … The U.S. dropped 635,000 tons of explosives on North Korea, including 32,557 tons of napalm, an incendiary liquid that can clear forested areas and cause devastating burns to human skin.” This ferocious bombardment, which killed 2 million or more civilians, began five years after Truman arch-criminally and unnecessarily ordered the atom-bombing of hundreds of thousands of civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki to warn the Soviet Union to stay out of Japan and Western Europe. The savagery of U.S. foreign policy in the post-WWII era did not always require direct U.S. military intervention. Take Indonesia and Chile, for two examples from the “Golden Age” height of the “American Century.” In Indonesia, the U.S.-backed dictator Suharto killed millions of his subjects, targeting communist sympathizers, ethnic Chinese, and alleged leftists. A senior CIA operations officer in the 1960s later described Suharto’s 1965-66 U.S.-assisted coup as “the model operation” for the U.S.-backed coup that eliminated the democratically elected president of Chile, Salvador Allende, seven years later. “The CIA forged a document purporting to reveal a leftist plot to murder Chilean military leaders,” the officer wrote, “[just like] what happened in Indonesia in 1965.” As John Pilger noted 13 years ago, “the U.S. embassy in Jakarta supplied Suharto with a ‘zap list’ of Indonesian Communist party members and crossed off the names when they were killed or captured. … The deal was that Indonesia under Suharto would offer up what Richard Nixon had called ‘the richest hoard of natural resources, the greatest prize in south-east Asia.’” According to the prolific and brilliant New Left historian Gabriel Kolko, “No single American action in the period after 1945,” wrote the historian Gabriel Kolko, “was as bloodthirsty as its role in Indonesia.” Two years and three months after the U.S-sponsored 1973 Chilean coup, Suharto received a green light from the Henry Kissinger and Gerald Ford White House to invade the small island nation of East Timor. With Washington’s approval and backing, Indonesia carried out genocidal massacres and mass rapes and killed at least 100,000 of the island’s residents. “To Henry Kissinger,” the human rights attorney Stanley L. Cohen noted five years ago, “the world, particularly Indochina, was very much a small chess game. Civilians were mere pawns ripe for sacrifice through hi-tech weaponry, including biological and chemical warfare, to enforce his worldview at any cost. Millions lost their lives to his cerebral game board” (emphasis added). Among the countless episodes of mass-murderous U.S. savagery in the oil-rich Middle East over the last generation, few can match the barbarous and sadistic cruelty of the “Highway of Death,” where the “global policeman’s” forces massacred tens of thousands of surrendered Iraqi troops retreating from Kuwait on Feb. 26 and 27, 1991. Journalist Joyce Chediac testified that: “U.S. planes trapped the long convoys by disabling vehicles in the front, and at the rear, and then pounded the resulting traffic jams for hours. ‘It was like shooting fish in a barrel,’ said one U.S. pilot. On the sixty miles of coastal highway, Iraqi military units sit in gruesome repose, scorched skeletons of vehicles and men alike, black and awful under the sun … for 60 miles every vehicle was strafed or bombed, every windshield is shattered, every tank is burned, every truck is riddled with shell fragments. No survivors are known or likely. … ‘Even in Vietnam I didn’t see anything like this. It’s pathetic,’ said Major Bob Nugent, an Army intelligence officer. … U.S. pilots took whatever bombs happened to be close to the flight deck, from cluster bombs to 500-pound bombs. … U.S. forces continued to drop bombs on the convoys until all humans were killed. So many jets swarmed over the inland road that it created an aerial traffic jam, and combat air controllers feared midair collisions. … The victims were not offering resistance. … [I]t was simply a one-sided massacre of tens of thousands of people who had no ability to fight back or defend.” The victims’ crime was having been conscripted into an army controlled by a formerly U.S.-backed dictator perceived as a threat to U.S. control of Middle Eastern oil. President George H.W. Bush welcomed the so-called Persian Gulf War as an opportunity to demonstrate America’s unrivaled power and new freedom of action in the post-Cold War world, where the Soviet Union could no longer deter Washington. Bush heralded the “war” (really a one-sided imperial assault) as marking the end of the “Vietnam Syndrome,” the reigning political culture’s curious term for U.S. citizens’ reluctance to commit U.S. troops to murderous imperial mayhem. As Noam Chomsky observed in 1992, reflecting on U.S. efforts to maximize suffering in Vietnam by blocking economic and humanitarian assistance to the nation it had devastated: “No degree of cruelty is too great for Washington sadists.” I could go on and on and on some more with terrible tales of unimaginable horror and mass death inflicted abroad by the U.S.-American war machine during my lifetime in Southeast Asia (the U.S. killed 3 to 5 million in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos between 1962 and 1975), Iraq (the “world’s leading democracy” killed at least 1 million Iraqis in the last eight years of this century’s opening decade) and elsewhere. Since Afghanistan’s Taliban is part of the Omar drama, it seems germane to mention a forgotten 2009 crime against Afghan humanity that then U.S. president Barack Obama tried to blame on the Taliban. Within less than half a year of his inauguration, Obama’s depressingly long list of atrocities in the Muslim world would include the bombing of the Afghan village of Bola Boluk. Ninety-three of the dead villagers torn apart by U.S. explosives in Bola Boluk were children. “In a phone call played on a loudspeaker on Wednesday to outraged members of the Afghan Parliament,” the New York Times reported, “the governor of Farah Province … said that as many as 130 civilians had been killed.” According to one Afghan legislator and eyewitness, “the villagers bought two tractor-trailers full of pieces of human bodies to his office to prove the casualties that had occurred. Everyone at the governor’s cried, watching that shocking scene.” The Obama administration refused to issue an apology or to acknowledge the “global policeman’s” responsibility. It initially blamed the carnage on – get this – “Taliban grenades.” (See Carlotta Gall and Taimoor Shah, “Civilian Deaths Imperil Support for Afghan War,” New York Times, May 6, 2009.) (By telling and sickening contrast, Obama had just offered a full apology and fired a White House official because that official had scared New Yorkers with an ill-advised Air Force One photo-shoot flyover of Manhattan that reminded people of 9/11. The disparity was extraordinary: Frightening New Yorkers led to a full presidential apology and the discharge of a White House staffer. Killing more than 100 Afghan civilians did not require any apology but was falsely blamed on the Taliban.) Reflecting on such atrocities the following December, an Afghan villager was moved to comment as follows: “Peace prize? He’s a killer. … Obama has only brought war to our country.” The man spoke from the village of Armal, where a crowd of 100 gathered around the bodies of 12 people, one family from a single home. The 12 were killed, witnesses reported, by U.S. Special Forces during a late-night raid. (Obama was only warming up his “killer” powers. He would join with France and other NATO powers in the imperial decimation of Libya, helping kill more than 25,000 civilians and unleashing mass carnage in North Africa. The U.S.-led assault on Libya was a disaster for black Africans and sparked the biggest refugee crisis since World War II.) The Taliban, which owes much of its origin to U.S. Cold War sponsorship of Islamo-terrorist forces on the former Soviet Union’s southern border, is a despicable terrorist outfit, God knows. There have long been fully credible reports of its vicious atrocities, including mass murder, torture, rape, and assassination. Still, it can’t hold a candle to Superpower (or even to Uncle Sam’s leading client state Israel[1]) when it comes to crippling and killing human beings. Seat of world history’s most extensive empire, the U.S. has at least 800 military bases spread across more than 80 foreign countries and “troops or other military personnel in about 160 foreign countries and territories.” The U.S. accounts for more than 40 percent of the planet’s military spending and has more than 5,500 strategic nuclear weapons, enough to blow the world up 5 to 50 times over. Last year it increased its “defense” (military empire) spending, which was already three times higher than China’s, and nine times higher than Russia’s. Comparing the Taliban and Hamas to such a massive military Empire is indeed truly absurd. Their crimes pale before those of world history’s most lethal Superpower. There’s no comparison. Thoughtcrime 2: The U.S. is Not a Democracy Now for a second U.S.-American thoughtcrime. As I suspect Rep. Omar knows very well (her political survival requires pretending not to), the United States is not a “democratic country.” It’s a capitalist plutocracy, a de facto bourgeois class dictatorship wherein majority progressive public policy opinion is close to irrelevant in comparison (there’s that word again) to the vastly superior power of concentrated wealth. If you are interested in how and why this is so, order and read my 2014 book They Rule: The 1% v. Democracy – a detailed analysis of how the U.S. ruling class rules (I argue that the commonly cited problem of plutocratic campaign finance is just one tip of a giant, democracy-freezing capitalist-imperialist iceberg) and why it matters. In the meantime, stop and think about all the programs and measures most U.S.-Americans support – Single Payer national health coverage as a human right, serious voter rights protections, serious progressive taxation, the restoration of union organizing rights, real gun control, a serious response to the climate catastrophe (which is merely the biggest issue of our or any time), and more (the list goes on) – that have zero chance of being implemented because of the corporate, financial, and imperial/military-industrial kill switch that is firmly attached to the U.S. system of supposedly democratic governance and mass consent-manufacture. U.S.-Americans don’t even directly elect the nation’s powerful chief executive (try explaining the preposterous undemocratic Electoral College system to someone from another country). The extremely powerful upper chamber of the U.S. Congress (the Senate) so vastly and absurdly overrepresents the nation’s most rural, white, and reactionary regions that it is now mathematically possible to put together a Trump-Republifascist Senate majority on the basis of states representing 17.6% of the nation’s population. (If liberal and diverse California had the same population-to-U.S. Senator ratio as super-white and right-wing Wyoming, it would have 136 U.S. Senators.) The Senate joins with the indirectly elected president to appoint absurdly powerful Supreme Court justices for life and now regularly cancels popular bills that manage to get past the badly gerrymandered lower chamber. With all due respect, it is transparently false and even absurd to call the U.S. a “democratic country.” It would take an actual American revolution for it to become any such thing. Note 1. “Beginning with its mass expulsion, rape and murder [of Arabs] at the onset of the [1948] Nakba (the Catastrophe),” Stanley L. Cohen wrote five years ago, “Israel has devoted itself to 68 [now 73] years of non-stop genocide coming up for air only periodically to retool or to change the nature of its weaponry of choice. What started out with the expulsion, at gunpoint, of more than 700,000 Palestinians from their ancestral homeland set in motion a refugee stampede that has grown to more than seven million displaced and stateless people, providing the world more than a disturbing glimpse of what was to come decades later in Syria.” The weapons are largely provided and paid for by the United States. The is the nuclear-armed judeo-fascist settler and apartheid state opposed by Hamas, whose crimes pale before those of its enemy and that enemy’s sponsor, the United States. Paul Street’s new book is The Hollow Resistance: Obama, Trump, and Politics of Appeasement.