Dear Friend,
Prime Minister Narendra Modi lied to the nation claiming that there never was a pan India National Register of Citizens (NRC). Launching BJP’s election campaign in Delhi he said, “Has anything happened with the NRC yet? Lies are being spread. After my government came to power, from 2014 to now, let me tell the 130 crore citizens of this country, nowhere has the NRC word been discussed, been talked about. Only when the Supreme Court said, then we had to do it for Assam. What are they talking about? Spreading lies.” This is a lie. Home Minister Amit Shah, who is also the president of the BJP, has spent the last year promising over and over that India will carry out an all India NRC, going so far as to make it one of the central promises of the electoral campaign ahead of Lok Sabha polls earlier this year.
Kindly support honest journalism to survive. https://countercurrents.org/subscription/
If you think the contents of this news letter are critical for the
dignified living and survival of humanity and other species on earth, please forward it to your friends and spread the word. It's time for humanity to come together as one family! You can subscribe to our news letter here http://www.countercurrents.org/news-letter/.
In Solidarity
Binu Mathew
Editor
Countercurrents.org
Modi Lies To The Nation On NRC
by Countercurrents Collective
Prime Minister Narendra Modi lied to the nation claiming that there never was a pan India National Register of Citizens (NRC). Launching BJP’s election campaign in Delhi he said, “Has anything happened with the NRC yet? Lies are being spread. After my government came to power, from 2014 to now, let me tell the 130 crore citizens of this country, nowhere has the NRC word been discussed, been talked about. Only when the Supreme Court said, then we had to do it for Assam. What are they talking about? Spreading lies.” This is a lie.
Home Minister Amit Shah, who is also the president of the BJP, has spent the last year promising over and over that India will carry out an all India NRC, going so far as to make it one of the central promises of the electoral campaign ahead of Lok Sabha polls earlier this year.
The Bravehearts Protesting in India
by Pieter Friedrich
Ask me what democracy looks like, and I will point to the brave-hearts protesting on the streets of India. But like any bonafide totalitarian, Modi has banned protests. He has shut down the internet. He has sent in the stormtroopers to bust heads. He is jailing anyone who dissents. He is killing anyone who protests. His regime even ordered Indian TV channels to stop broadcasting footage of the protests.
Need police reforms to professionalise it in the greater interest of democracy
by Vidya Bhushan Rawat
The death toll in the anti CAA protests through out the country has crossed 20. Situation in many parts of the country is tense and government has imposed section 144 in most of it. Many State governments have imposed section 144 for many days. State like Uttar Pradesh have it till January end but still protests have rocked the state.
Let’s talk NPR !!!
by Nisha Biswas
The NPR is a register of usual residents of the country with the objective is to create a comprehensive identity database of every usual resident in the country. It is being prepared at the local(village/sub-town), sub-district, district, state and national level under provisions of the Citizenship Act 1955 and the Citizenship (Registration of Citizens and issue of National Identity Cards) Rules, 2003. It is mandatory for every usual resident of
India to register in the NPR.The database would contain demographic as well as biometric particulars.
Admit That the Waters Around You Have Grown
by Coco Das
The waters of fascism have risen in the country where I was born and the country where I have citizenship. Both countries need sustained, non-violent, mass protest to demand the removal of fascist regimes.
The waters of fascism have risen in the country where I was born and the country where I have citizenship. Both countries need sustained, non-violent, mass protest to demand the removal of fascist regimes.
As morose as it sounds, I sometimes think about where I would be sent if I were deported. I’m a naturalized U.S. citizen, with no guarantee of a permanent home as the Trump Pence regime tests out ways to de-naturalize citizens.
I left India when I was two years old, and have not been a citizen of that country since I was sixteen. Once, someone who meant well told me that if things got bad for me here, I could go back to India and still have a home. At one time, I probably would have accepted that, but now I feel that for people who care deeply about humanity, there are no homes and no safe spaces.
In November, I went back to India for the first time in fifteen years to attend two weddings. I dreaded going, especially the prospect of finding out how much of my family has aligned with Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the political wing of the Hindu fascist movement that has risen to the highest levels of power in India. After Modi’s re-election in early 2019, the BJP has accelerated the process of fascist consolidation in horrifying ways. Just as the Trump Pence regime’s assault on immigrants has been the linchpin and battering ram of a whole fascist program of white supremacy, misogyny, and xenophobia, Modi and the BJP’s war on Muslims has escalated to a genocidal ethnic cleansing and the re-making of India as a “Hindu Rashtra,” a theocratic state for the protection and benefit of Hindus. When Modi revoked Kashmir’s special status and put the region under military lockdown, a beloved cousin was happy that Kashmir would finally be “integrated” into the rest of India. A cousin I used to be close to is married to a BJP politician. These are conversations I didn’t want to have in person, especially during a family celebration.
But visiting India, especially the relatively progressive city of Kolkata, perhaps feels akin to walking around Berlin in 1935. On the surface, things can look normal, even pleasant. The Hindu wedding season had just begun, and I saw on the streets of Kolkata a lot of joy, diversity, and vitality. Yet you read the paper, or get into an even shallow discussion on politics, and you can begin to understand how far into fascism India has fallen. Some greet it with a mixture of fear, despair, and grief for the lost dream of a secular India. Some think they can support the BJP for cleaning up the streets of Benares (where some of my family lives) and reject the lynching of Muslims. In a country of over a billion people, with a history of protest and civil disobedience, any organized opposition in the streets to the BJP’s Hindu fascist vision of India has paled in comparison to what is needed and what is possible.
The latest terror the BJP is spreading across India, the Citizenship Amendment Bill (now called Citizenship Amendment Act) in combination with the National Register of Citizens, has finally sparked mass determined protests across the country, particularly on campuses after the Delhi police stormed Jamia Millia Islamia University and brutalized students. The NRC was the mechanism by which, virtually overnight, almost two million people, many of them refugees from the 1971 Bangladesh liberation war who fled to the northeastern state of Assam, lost their citizenship. Because some of these people who were left off the registry of citizens were Hindus, the Citizenship Amendment Bill of 2019 was introduced to separate those seeking citizenship or residency to non-Muslim refugees and Muslim “infiltrators.” The Citizenship Amendment Bill just passed in the Lok Sabha, which means this terror has become the law of the land, and could be the precursor that threatens the citizenship and residency rights of 20 million Indian Muslims. At the same time, the government is ominously building massive concentration camps, testing and fortifying a more brutal surveillance and repression apparatus, and unleashing a rabidly violent Hindu fascist base. In the last decade, 90% of religious violence, overwhelmingly against Muslims, has occurred since Modi and the BJP took over in 2014.
Modi’s regime is committing greater crimes against humanity each passing day and must be removed from power through non-violent mass protest. The student protests against CAB have spread, and some opposition party leaders have called people into the streets, but it won’t be enough to stop the Hindu fascists from cementing their vision of India as long as Modi and the BJP remain in power. All these fascist regimes, the Trumps and the Modis, must go now, and only millions in the streets can create the kind of political crisis to drive them out.
It was surreal to experience the fascist collapse of the country where I live and the country of my birth from two different vantage points. In the U.S., the white supremacy of the Trump regime puts me constantly on edge, while in India, my family of upper caste Hindus, even if they don’t like Modi, are not in the crosshairs and can pretend it isn’t happening. Then there are loved ones who have jumped into the Hindu fascist tide, lining up behind monsters on a march to genocide.
On the plane coming home, I happened upon a playlist of Bob Dylan songs. In the current climate, the lyrics of “The Times They Are A-Changin’” sounded bitterly ironic.
Come gather ’round people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown
And accept it that soon
You’ll be drenched to the bone
If your time to you is worth savin’
Then you better start swimmin’ or you’ll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin’
The rising waters of justice and revolution that Dylan was writing about have receded and given way to the rising waters of fascism. Today, it’s the people on the side of humanity who need to start swimming, and it’s humanity itself that will sink like a stone if we don’t awaken the millions who can be the only force to stop this global catastrophe. Fascism is seductive to some, overwhelming to others. It isn’t understood deeply enough, or hated with enough passion, or resisted with enough determination.
The people of India, and the world, deserve better — lives free of oppression and the temptation to oppress. From here, I will continue to kick at the dam until people flood the streets in non-violent resistance to force back the fascist tide, and the waters that can cleanse the world of fascism can rush and rise again. We must do this, because in the fight against fascism, it can become too late at a moment when the fate of humanity and the planet hangs in the balance. The times have changed, but the future is still unwritten.
Coco Das is on the editorial board of Refuse Fascism
Resisting the footfalls of a Genocide
by Swapna Gopinath
As the country offers stiff resistance to the government’s agenda of polarizing the society, the factors at play are not confined to persecution of religious minorities alone. It is a multipronged attack aimed at dividing the country and its people at several levels, each one more destructive than the other.
As the country offers stiff resistance to the government’s agenda of polarizing the society, the factors at play are not confined to persecution of religious minorities alone. It is a multipronged attack aimed at dividing the country and its people at several levels, each one more destructive than the other. With more than ten protesters dead in the process, the resistance is turning out to be a bloody one, with the government unleashing its police force on its own citizens, with the leaders issuing statements where ‘revenge’ is a word used with absolute callousness, and citizens are targeted and surveyed for acts of ‘sedition’.
Today we see youngsters, people from every corner of the country playing active roles in fighting off the toxic powers that have the potency to destroy the land, the fragile webs of power balanced delicately over the decades since independence. While the government tested the waters, the latest being the abrogation of Article 370, a large majority of the population remained silent. NRC in Assam too did not see any resistance, pictures of detention camps were widely shared on social media, yet the responses were either lukewarm or tacit compliance.
Things changed overnight with the introduction of the bill, which has the potential to create schisms within the society. As one reads the Citizen Amendment Act along with National Registry of Citizens, one sees the toxicity of thoughts and the agenda of splitting up the nation into not only Muslim and non-Muslim, but also into various categories and classes, stripping several of them of their identities and rights and thereby decimating them as social beings extremely vulnerable to violence and annihilation. Home Minister’s words, in several interviews only confirms this, as he repeatedly mentions with the arrogance of power, that religious identity will be a deciding factor in NRC and similar activities. Moreover, no one can be an Indian citizen until and unless one provides the required documents that prove one’s citizenship by birth in this land. This becomes a huge responsibility when you are a Muslim, especially when the environment has been rendered extremely hostile for them through the implementation of CAA.
This act is the first tentative step taken by the government towards establishing a nonsensical dream of the ruling party, the Hindu Rashtra. The myth of the Hindu nation is not merely one of religious nature, it is also one of class hierarchy. The creation of this land for the Hindus is rooted in segregation of the religious and economic kind. Once the process of creating a national registry is set in motion, the consequences will be disastrous. The upper-class Hindu and the Muslim will have the means and the power to forge documents and establish their identity and citizenship easily in this nation where nepotism and corruption rules supreme. The people left out in this conundrum will be the poorest of the poor, with no means to establish their identity as citizens. Hindus will not be spared in this, as is already visible in the case of Assam. The poorest among the Hindus living on the streets, in the metropolitan cities, or in the remotest villages of the country will find it difficult to trace their roots and convince the authorities, since they are illiterate and has little awareness about this extremely complicated process. Aadhar and other documents will not help them in this crisis.
Then, what is the agenda? Is it merely to divide the country and strive towards the dream of the Hindu nation? Or is it to annihilate the poor, who are neither consumers of the corporates who fund the government nor tax-payers for the government? The age of the Anthropocene is also the age when man decides the future of the human population, designs it in such a way that it serves to satisfy the greed of the neoliberal capitalist structures that shape the governments across the world.
The protest, therefore, is not just to uphold the values that are enshrined in the constitution, it is also an act of resistance against the devious schemes of the government that has been stoking hatred against the Other. Identifying the Other, isolating them, stripping them of citizenship and then destroying them – all these are acts of crime, yet are presented before the public for validation in the name of the Promised Land of Hindus.
The protest is thus also a necessity, a demand that the moment claims from its citizens. No doubt, it will be a prolonged one, since power is arrogant and brutal, especially when the government has time and again refused to respect the Constitution or uphold the values that has held this country as a single entity through the past decades.
Swapna Gopinath, currently a Fulbright fellow at the University of Rochester, NY.
Not The India that Modi Sees
by Supratim Barman
What the majority of those outside the Republic (and perhaps even Modi himself) will not appreciate is the vast diversity of the Republic and, (on that note), I would like to take you through a small tour of my part of the world, on the Eastern Seaboard, specifically within the vast city of Kolkata and show you a few things that Modi himself may be unaware of.
Burning Continents, Secret Travels and Scott Morrison
by Dr Binoy Kampmark
The bush fire situation in Australia is now deemed catastrophic. And it started early, with a relentless ferocity that has seen thousands of volunteers stretched across the states and a slow but assured rise in the number of deaths.
The Right to Healthy Food: Poisoned with Pesticides
by Colin Todhunter
Environmentalist Dr Rosemary Mason has just written an open letter addressed to three senior officials in Britain: John Gardiner, Under Secretary of State for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs in the British government; Chris Whitty, the Chief Medical Officer for England; and Chris Wormald, Permanent Secretary at the Department of Health and Social Security. Her letter focuses on the issue of food and the herbicide glyphosate. But the issues she discusses should not be regarded as being specific to the situation in Britain: they apply equally to countries across the world which are facilitating the interests of global agrochemicals conglomerates.
Environmentalist Dr Rosemary Mason has just written an open letter addressed to three senior officials in Britain: John Gardiner, Under Secretary of State for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs in the British government; Chris Whitty, the Chief Medical Officer for England; and Chris Wormald, Permanent Secretary at the Department of Health and Social Security.
Her letter focuses on the issue of food and the herbicide glyphosate. But the issues she discusses should not be regarded as being specific to the situation in Britain: they apply equally to countries across the world which are facilitating the interests of global agrochemicals conglomerates.
For instance, according to a September 2019 report in the New York Times, ‘A Shadowy Industry Group Shapes Food Policy Around the World’, the International Life Sciences Institute (ILSI) has been quietly infiltrating government health and nutrition bodies. The article lays bare ILSI’s influence on the shaping of high-level food policy globally, not least in India and China.
Accused of being little more than a front group for its 400 corporate members that provide its $17 million budget, ILSI’s members include Coca-Cola, DuPont, PepsiCo, General Mills and Danone. The report says ILSI has received more than $2 million from chemical companies, among them Monsanto. In 2016, a UN committee issued a ruling that glyphosate, the key ingredient in Monsanto’s weed killer Roundup, was “probably not carcinogenic,” contradicting an earlier report by the WHO’s cancer agency. The committee, it turned out, was led by two ILSI officials.
And this brings us to Rosemary Mason’s letter.
In it, she describes how she established a very successful nature reserve in South Wales, which attracted huge numbers of insects, two bat species and many swallows, house martins and swifts. She says that it was miraculous. But disaster soon followed.
In 2011, the local council was asked to attempt to destroy Japanese Knotweed using the glyphosate-based herbicide Roundup. Japanese Knotweed had become resistant to Roundup in the 1980s. That meant that however much of the chemical was sprayed, it was impossible to kill it; the plant just grew bigger and stronger. Between 2012 and 2017, Mason notes that the number of insects on her reserve began to decline. It ultimately became a wildlife desert.
Mason asks:
“Monsanto, the British government and the UK and EU regulators say that glyphosate is safer than table salt. But would table salt kill all these insects that we recorded in our photo-journals or cause apocalyptic declines globally?”
She adds that the invertebrates in her nature reserve were poisoned. But that was only the half of it:
“My neurologist concluded that I had developed a toxic neurodegenerative disorder secondary to long-term exposure to glyphosate-based herbicides.”
Mason proceeds to outline the cosy relationship between the agrochemicals sector, Cancer Research UK and the British government, the result of which is to promote a disease narrative that diverts attention from the effects of toxic agrochemicals and place the blame on individual lifestyle behaviour, choice of diet and alcohol consumption. She asks:
“Where is the scientific evidence for this?”
Aside from the government’s collusion with pesticides manufacturers, Mason says the corporate media, most notably in Britain, are silent about pesticides that are poisoning the public:
“They haven’t informed the British people about the trials involving Roundup in the US. Bayer estimates that there are currently more than 42,000 plaintiffs alleging that exposure to Monsanto’s Roundup and other glyphosate-based herbicides made by Monsanto caused them or their loved ones to develop non-Hodgkin lymphoma. In the UK, there were 13,605 new cases of Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma in 2015 (and 4,920 deaths in 2016).”
Mason refers to Robert F Kennedy Jr, one of the US attorney’s fighting Bayer (which bought Monsanto). He says that Monsanto told Bayer that a $270-million set-aside would cover all its outstanding liabilities arising from Monsanto’s 5,000 Roundup cancer lawsuits. However, Bayer never saw certain internal Monsanto documents prior to the purchase.
Kennedy explains that for four decades Monsanto manoeuvred to conceal Roundup’s carcinogenicity by capturing regulatory agencies, corrupting public officials, bribing scientists and engaging in scientific fraud to delay its day of reckoning.
He adds that Monsanto also faces cascading scientific evidence linking glyphosate to a constellation of other injuries that have become prevalent since its introduction, including obesity, depression, Alzheimer’s, ADHD, autism, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s, kidney disease, inflammatory bowel disease, brain, breast and prostate cancer, miscarriage, birth defects and declining sperm counts.
Moreover, strong science suggests glyphosate is the culprit in the exploding epidemics of celiac disease, colitis, gluten sensitivities, diabetes and non-alcoholic liver cancer which, for the first time, is attacking children as young as 10.
Whether as a weed killer or as a desiccant to dry oats and wheat immediately before harvest, farmers have been spraying Roundup directly on food. Roundup sales rose dramatically to 300 million pounds annually in the US, with farmers spraying enough to cover every tillable acre in the country with a gallon of Roundup.
Glyphosate now accounts for about 50% of all herbicide use in the US. About 75% of use has occurred since 2006, with the global glyphosate market projected to reach $11.74 billion by 2023.
Kennedy asserts that never in history has a chemical been used so pervasively: glyphosate is in our air, water, plants, animals, grains, vegetables and meats. And it’s in beer and wine, children’s breakfast cereal and snack bars and mother’s breast milk. It’s even in our vaccines.
And yet, in the UK, as Mason explains, the Department of Health says pesticides are not its concern. None of the more than 400 pesticides that have been authorised in the UK have been tested for long-term actions on the brain; in the foetus, the child or the adult. But perhaps that’s to be expected: between May 2010 and the end of 2013, the Department of Health alone had 130 meetings with representatives of the agri-food industry.
Mason then says that the Department of Health’s School Fruit and Vegetable Scheme has residues of 123 different pesticides, some of which are linked to serious health problems such as cancer and disruption of the hormone system. Moreover, the scientific community has little understanding about the complex interaction of different chemicals in what is termed the ‘cocktail’ effect.
The effects of these toxins carry through to adulthood. Mason discusses the deleterious effects of glyphosate on the gut microbiome. Glyphosate disrupts the shikimate pathway within these gut bacteria and is a strong chelator of essential minerals, such as cobalt, zinc, manganese, calcium, molybdenum and sulphate. In addition, it kills off beneficial gut bacteria and allows toxic bacteria to flourish. She adds that we are facing a global metabolic health crisis provoked by an obesity epidemic linked to glyphosate.
Gut bacteria are vitally important to our well-being. Many key neurotransmitters are located in the gut. Aside from affecting the functioning of major organs, these transmitters affect our moods and thinking. Findings published in the journal Translational Psychiatry in 2014 provided strong evidence that gut bacteria can have a direct physical impact on the brain. Alterations in the composition of the gut microbiome have been implicated in a wide range of neurological and psychiatric conditions, including autism, chronic pain, depression and Parkinson’s Disease.
Mason then proceeds to provides evidence that shows that Britain (and the US) is in the midst of a barely reported public health crisis.
She refers to a letter written in 2013 by the late Marion Copley (US EPA toxicologist) to her colleague Jess Rowland. She accused Rowland of conniving with Monsanto to bury the agency’s own hard scientific evidence that it is “essentially certain” that glyphosate, the key ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup weed killer, causes cancer. The date of the letter comes after Copley left the EPA in 2012 and shortly before she died from breast cancer at the age of 66 in January 2014:
“Jess, Since I left the agency with cancer [breast] I have studied the tumor process extensively… based on my decades of pathology experience. Glyphosate was originally designed as a chelating agent and I strongly believe that is the identical process involved in tumor formation.”
Dr Copley makes 14 observations about chelators and/or glyphosate, including that they are endocrine disruptors and suppress the immune system and damage the kidneys or pancreas, which can lead to clinical chemistry changes that favour tumour growth. She notes glyphosate kills bacteria in the gut: the gastrointestinal system is 80% of the immune system making the body susceptible to tumours.
Copley adds:
“It is essentially certain that glyphosate causes cancer.”
Mason concludes her letter by saying:
“The probability is that the population in Britain will increasingly suffer from the diseases associated with glyphosate-based herbicides and with the 400-odd pesticides that contaminate our food.
The deleterious effects of glyphosate on trees and crops will also continue because it is in the soil, water, air and rainfall.”
On the back of Brexit, the Conservative government in Britain is set to jump into bed with the US via a trade deal hammered out without public scrutiny or parliamentary oversight. That deal could see the gutting of food safety and environmental standards so that they are brought in line with those in the US. With its recent ‘landslide’ election victory (having gained just 29.5% of the electorate’s votes), it seems increasingly likely that, given his stated commitment to do so, Boris Johnson will usher in herbicide-tolerant GM crops.
US agrochemicals and GM seeds manufacturers must be salivating at the prospects of any such trade deal. With the privatisation of an increasingly burdened NHS likely to be part of a deal, private healthcare providers and insurers must be too.
You may read Rosemary Mason’s open letter in full (with all relevant citations) on the academia.edu website.
Colin Todhunter is an environmental journalist
Trump Impeached, Fascists React, People Rejoice—Take the Struggle Higher!
by Revolution Newspaper
This week the US
House of Representatives voted to impeach Donald Trump. This was a major event—and a very good thing! Even with the narrow terms on which the Democrats carried this out, people seized on this with enthusiasm. Thousands poured into the streets. They were both furious and exhilarated at the fact that Trump was finally beginning to be held accountable for some of his towering crimes.
This week the US House of Representatives voted to impeach Donald Trump. This was a major event—and a very good thing! Even with the narrow terms on which the Democrats carried this out, people seized on this with enthusiasm. Thousands poured into the streets. They were both furious and exhilarated at the fact that Trump was finally beginning to be held accountable for some of his towering crimes.
The next step in the process is for the Democrats to send the articles of impeachment to the Senate, and for the Senate to then hold a trial of Trump. The Senate is supposed to impartially evaluate the evidence and then vote on whether Trump should be removed from office.
The fascist Republican Party grouped around Trump reacted with fury and arrogance. The Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell openly stated that he would NOT be impartial. McConnell said that he would coordinate the trial with Trump himself—the accused—and that, anyway, since he, McConnell had already concluded that Trump should NOT be removed, there was no need for further witnesses or other evidence to be added. Whoever heard of such a thing!?! And yet this absurdity is on track to become the “new normal” under the Trump/Pence fascist regime.
Trump himself accused the Democrats of treason, and “making war on democracy.” In hosting a delegation from the Guatemalan government—a government infamous for repression and murder of opponents—Trump went so far as to say that “they knew how to take care of” the kind of opposition he was encountering from congressional Democrats.
A Criminal Is Indicted—And That’s A Good Thing!
It is true and important that the Democratic leadership focused on a crime pertaining in large part to “national security”—that is, the imperialist interests of the U.S. around the world. They explicitly did not take on the much more serious outrages perpetrated by this fascist regime against the masses of people and the planet itself. All this works against what is needed by humanity, here and around the world.
But the articles of impeachment do hit at the very important point that Trump had abused power and run roughshod over the rule of law. This includes the way he obstructed the impeachment process itself by refusing to turn over evidence and allow members of his administration to testify, in defiance of the law and the separation of powers. Had there been no impeachment whatsoever, or had the articles been voted down in the House, the fascists would have been further strengthened.
The fact that this criminal WAS impeached and now goes to trial is something to be welcomed and built on.
A New Situation, Full of Uncertainty
The furious reaction of the Republicans makes the situation extremely unpredictable. Shortly after McConnell brazenly said that he would not be impartial, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said that she would delay sending the impeachment articles over to the Senate until she could be sure that the proceeding would be a fair process.
Right now, nobody knows what comes next.
But, again, the masses of people responded in a powerful, even if beginning, way to the impeachment. Thousands came into the streets on the night before the vote, furious about Trump and seizing a chance to act. Many responded to and took up the chant of OUT NOW! and the slogans being put forward by the #OUTNOW! contingents. This shows real potential that must be seized on and built further.
These sharpening conflicts at the top and the heightened uncertainty they bring make the activities called for by Refuse Fascism and #OUTNOW! for January even more important and make it possible to reach out much much wider.
In this situation, the following point stands out all the more sharply:
“The Democrats, along with the New York Times and the Washington Post, etc., are seeking to resolve the crisis with the Trump presidency on the terms of this system, and in the interests of the ruling class of this system, which they represent. We, the masses of people, must go all out, and mobilize ourselves in the millions, to resolve this in our interests, in the interests of humanity, which are fundamentally different from and opposed to those of the ruling class.
“This, of course, does not mean that the struggle among the powers that be is irrelevant or unimportant; rather, the way to understand and approach this (and this is a point that must also be repeatedly driven home to people, including through necessary struggle, waged well) is in terms of how it relates to, and what openings it can provide for, ‘the struggle from below’—for the mobilization of masses of people around the demand that the whole regime must go, because of its fascist nature and actions and what the stakes are for humanity.”
All this makes it more important than ever to put forward and struggle for the demand that the whole Trump/Pence regime must go NOW—and that the key to doing this is bringing forward more thousands today, working toward millions, in massive, sustained, nonviolent struggle.
Revolution newspaper/revcom.us, the voice of the Revolutionary Communist Party, provides the foundation, guideline, and organizational scaffolding for the whole process of carrying out our strategy for revolution. Through publishing works of Bob Avakian, and through many different articles, interviews, letters, graphics, and other features, Revolution enables people to really understand, and act to radically change, the world.
The World’s Top Ten Worst “Anti-Semites” in 2019!
by Dr Ludwig Watzal
Year after year, the right-wing Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles publishes its shitlist of the ten worst Anti-Semetic incidents around the world. To no one’s surprise, Jeremy Corbyn’s Labor Party came in first. On closer inspection, the list turns out to be an instrument of smear and Zionist propaganda against dissidents who don’t buy into the Zionist and the Israeli-Jewish narrative of Israeli government’s treatment of the
Palestinian people or Zionist pro-Israeli activities in other countries for the benefit of Israel.
Year after year, the right-wing Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles publishes its shitlist[1] of the ten worst Anti-Semetic incidents around the world. To no one’s surprise, Jeremy Corbyn’s Labor Party came in first. On closer inspection, the list turns out to be an instrument of smear and Zionist propaganda against dissidents who don’t buy into the Zionist and the Israeli-Jewish narrative of Israeli government’s treatment of the Palestinian people or Zionist pro-Israeli activities in other countries for the benefit of Israel.
For the last three years, Jeremy Corbyn was slandered by the British press and the Zionist Israel lobby in the UK. At the forefront of this smear campaign, Stephen Pollard, editor of the Jewish Chronicle and contributor for a bunch of other papers, Jonathan Freeland, a so-called liberal, writing for the supposedly liberal The Guardian, which lays a leading role in a whispering campaign against Corbyn and the Labor Party.[2] The Zionist lobby also organized an inner-Party smear campaign.
It should surprise no one that the Simon Wiesenthal Center joins the fray making Corbyn the frontrunner of its infamous shitlist. Worldwide, the Zionist lobby is very well interconnected. Even the highest Jewish authority, Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis, accused the Labor Party of “anti-Jewish racism.” Among other things, the anti-Corbyn campaign bore fruit. Under his leadership, his party suffered a crushing defeat in last week’s election.
Anti-Semitism is a form of racism against Jews. Corbyn has been fighting racism his entire political life. To accuse him of “Anti-Semitism” is utter nonsense. Political scientist Norman F. Finkelstein called the “Corbyn-Mania” rightly the “chimera of British Anti-Semitism.”[3] That the State of Israel is deeply involved in the smear campaign against recalcitrant politicians was demonstrated by the documentary of Al Jazeera.[4] In next to no time, the Zionist lobby accused Al Jazeera of “Anti-Semitism.” The Israel lobby uses “Anti-Semitism” like a “weapon of mass destruction” against any critic of Zionist or Jewish power in the U. K, the U. S., or elsewhere. Ofcom, the British Office of Communication, cleared Al Jazeera of this ridiculous accusation.[5]
To a lesser extent, the same holds for the two Freshmen Congresswomen Rashida Tlaib, the first one of Palestinian descent, and Ilhan Omar, born in Somalia and immigrated in 1995 to the U. S., who finished up in fifth place. Both Congresswomen uttered the only truism about the Zionist influence on the U. S. Congress and the American public in general. Tlaib criticized colleagues who voted for the anti-BDS resolution in Congress. Omar had to endure a shitstorm saying, “It’s all about the Benjamins baby,” hinting at “Jewish money.” Like Palestine, the U. S. Congress is “Israeli occupied territory.” (Pat Buchanan).
The German ambassador to the United Nations, Christoph Heusgen,[6] finished up seven places. The Simon Wiesenthal Center accuses Heusgen of casting 25 “anti-Israeli votes” in the UN. The German representative just voted according to international law, which the Israeli government violates regularly. His other “anti-Semitic” political sin was to compare Israeli bulldozers to Hamas rockets. “We believe that international law is the best way to protect civilians and allow them to live in peace and security and without fear of Israeli bulldozers or ‘Hamas rockets.’”
Israeli bulldozers is a deadlier weapon than the self-made rockets by Hamas. Why didn’t talk the Simon Wiesenthal Center about the killing of Rachel Corrie, who was twice overrun by the giant caterpillar bulldozers? Why didn’t they mention the murder of thousands of Palestinians through the Israeli war machine with U. S.-made weapons?
The German tabloid BILD accused Heusgen of “pure malice” against Israel, although Heusgen does only execute instructions of the German Foreign Ministry. In its smear article against Heusgen, BILD quoted Chancellor Merkel’s infamous speech in 2008 at the Israeli Knesset saying, “The security of Israel is never negotiable for me as German Chancellor.” It seems that Heusgen never got the memo, writes the tabloid.
BILD belongs to the Axel Springer group, which allows only pro-Israeli and pro-American coverage. Their so-called journalists have to agree to five “Essentials”: 1. We stand for freedom, the rule of law, democracy, and a United Europe. 2. We support the Jewish people and the right of Israel to exist. 3. We show our solidarity in the liberal community of values with the United States of America. 4. We are committed to a free and social market economy. 5. We reject political and religious extremism.
Looking at the remaining “anti-Semitic” incidents, all are out of proportion with reality. However harmful they may be, they are single cases and can’t be generalized. Well, next year, the public will be faced with another shitlist of so-called anti-Semites. To appeal to the reason of the functionaries of the Simon Wiesenthal Center seems futile.
[5] https://www.theguardian.com/media/2017/oct/09/ofcom-clears-al-jazeera-ntisemitism-expose- israeli-embassy-official
[6] http://der-semit.de/oeffentliche-hinrichtung-von-uno-botschafter-heusgen-durch-simon-wiesenthal-zentrum/
Dr. Ludwig Watzal works as a journalist and editor in Bonn , Germany . He runs the bilingual blog between the lines. http://between-the-lines-ludwig-watzal.blogspot.de/
The fact-check on RTE Implementation in Odisha
by Naba Kishor Pujari
The recent news of the primary school of Bhulia village under Bhawanipatna Block in Kalahandi District of Odisha has raised the concern of many as the children of this schools are being taught beneath a tree from the last three years. The classroom is one of the most important factors affecting student learning. Because a child spares most of his/her time in school as a student. Therefore, school infrastructure becomes an important factor behind how a child sees the world as he/she grows up.
Why Women Always Prefer To Take A Backseat?
by Dr Ishani Chakrabartty
It is a general observation that I am having over the past few days as an individual and as
a woman in general. Women, I had observed over the years (with my mother and aunts), never really wish or thrive to take the front seat for anything, how much educated they may be! Women tend to be satisfied with the success and achievements of their husband, brothers or any other male member. I am person who is in that stage of her life where she is trying very hard to build a career and make a place for herself in the society, coupled with the fact that she tries very hard to change people’s mindset about age-old tranditions and customs that degrade women and promote gender equality.
No comments:
Post a Comment