The economic, political and social outlook for 2012 is profoundly negative. The almost universal consensus, even among mainstream orthodox economists is pessimistic regarding the world economy. Though even here their predictions understate the scope and depth of the crises.

There are powerful reasons to believe that beginning in 2012, we are heading toward a steeper decline than what was experienced during the Great Recession of 2008 – 2009. With fewer resources, greater debt and increasing popular resistance to shouldering the burden of saving the capitalist system, the governments cannot bail out the system.

Many of the major institutions and economic relations which were cause and consequence of world and regional capitalist expansion over the past three decades are in the process of disintegration and disarray. The previous economic engines of global expansion, the US and the European Union, have exhausted their potentialities and are in open decline. The new centers of growth, China, India, Brazil, Russia, which for a 'short decade' provided a new impetus for world growth have run their course and are de-accelerating rapidly and will continue to do so throughout the new year.

The Collapse of the European Union

Specifically, the crises wracked European Union will break up and the de facto multi-tiered structure will turn into a series of bilateral/multi-lateral trade and investment agreements. Germany,France , the Low and Nordic countries will attempt to weather the downturn. England, namely the City of London, in splendid isolation, will sink into negative growth, its financiers scrambling to find new speculative opportunities among the Gulf petrol-states and other 'niches'. Eastern and Central Europe, particularly Poland and the Czech Republic, will deepen their ties to Germany but will suffer the consequences of the general decline of world markets. Southern Europe (Greece, Spain, Portugal and Italy) will enter into a deep depression as the massive debt payments fueled by savage assaults on wages and social benefits will severely reduce consumer demand.

Depression level unemployment and under-employment running to one-third of the labor force will detonate year-long social conflicts, intensifying into popular uprisings. Eventually a break-up of the European Union is almost inevitable. The euro as a currency of choice will be replaced by or return to national issues accompanied by devaluations and protectionism. Nationalism will be the order of the day. Banks in Germany, France and Switzerland will suffer huge losses on their loans to the South. Major bailouts will become necessary, polarizing German and French societies,between taxpaying majorities and the bankers. Trade union militancy and rightwing pseudo 'populism' (neo-fascism) will intensify the class and national struggles

A depressed, fragmented and polarized Europe will be less likely to join in any Zionist inspired US-Israeli military adventure against Iran (or even Syria). Crises ridden Europe will oppose Washington's confrontationalist approach to Russia and China.

The US: The Recession Returns with a Vengeance

The US economy will suffer the consequences of its ballooning fiscal deficit and will not be able to spend its way out of the world recession of 2012. Nor can it count on 'exporting' its way out of negative growth by turning to previously dynamic Asia, as China, India and the rest of Asia are losing economic steam. China will grow far below its 9% moving average. India will decline from 8% to 5% or lower. Moreover, the Obama regime's military policy of 'encirclement', its economic policy of exclusion and protectionism will preclude any new stimulus from China.

Militarism Exacerbates the Economic Downturn

The US and England will be the biggest losers from the Iraqi post war economic reconstruction. Of $186 billion dollars in infrastructure projects, US and UK corporations will gain less than 5% (Financial Times, 12/16/11, p 1 and 3). A similar outcome is likely in Libya and elsewhere. US imperial militarism destroys an adversary, plunging into debt to do so, and non-belligerents reap the lucrative post-war economic reconstruction contracts.

The US economy will fall into recession in 2012 and the "jobless recovery of 2011" will be replaced by a steep increase of unemployment in 2012. In fact, the entire labor force will shrink as people losing their unemployment benefits will fail to register.

Labor exploitation ("productivity") will intensify as capitalists force workers to produce more, for less pay, thus widening the income gap between wages and profits.

The economic downturn and growth of unemployment will be accompanied by savage cuts in social programs to subsidize financially troubled banks and industries. The debates among the parties will be over how large the cuts to workers and retirees will be to secure the 'confidence' of the bondholders. Faced with equally limited political choices, the electorate will react by voting out incumbents, abstaining and via spontaneous and organized mass movements, such as the "occupy Wall Street" protest. Disatisfaction, hostility and frustration will pervade the culture. Democratic demagogues will scapegoat China ,the Republican demagogues will blame the immigrants.Both will fulminate against "the islamo-fascists" and especially Iran..

New Wars in the Midst of Crises: Zionists Pull the Trigger

The 52 Presidents of the Major American Jewish Organizations and their "Israel First" followers in Congress, State, Treasury and the Pentagon will push for war with Iran. If they are successful it will result in a regional conflagration and world depression. Given the extremist Israeli regimes' success in securing blind obedience to its war policies from the US Congress and White House, any doubts about the real possibility of a major catastrophic outcome can be excluded.

China: Compensatory Mechanisms in 2012

China will face the global recession of 2012 with several possibilities of ameliorating its impact. Beijing can shift toward producing goods and services for the 700 million domestic consumers currently out of the economic loop. By increasing wages, social services and environmental safety, China can compensate for the loss of overseas markets. China's economic growth which is largely dependent on real estate speculation will be adversely affected when the bubble is burst .A sharp downturn will result.. This will lead to job losses, municipal bankruptcies and increased social and class conflicts. This can result in either greater repression or gradual democratization. The outcome will profoundly affect China's market - state relations. The economic crises will likely strengthen state control over the market.

Russia Faces the Crises

Russia's election of President Putin will lead to less collaboration in backing US promoted uprisings and sanctions against Russian allies and trading partners. Putin will turn toward greater ties with China and will benefit from the break-up of the EU and the weakening of NATO.

The western media backed opposition will use its financial clout to erode Putin's image and encourage investment boycotts though they will lose the Presidential elections by a big margin. The world recession will weaken the Russian economy and will force it to choose between greater public ownership or greater dependency on state funds to bail out prominent oligarchs.

The Transition 2011 – 2012: From Regional Stagnation and Recession to World Crises

The year 2011 laid the groundwork for the breakdown of the European Union. The crises began with the demise of the euro, stagnation in the US and the outbreak of mass protests against the obscene inequalities on a world scale. The events of 2011 were a dress rehearsal for a new year of full scale trade wars between major powers, sharpening inter-imperialist struggles and the likelihood of popular rebellions turning into revolutions. Moreover, the escalation of Zionist orchestrated war fever against Iran in 2011 promises the biggest regional war since the US-Indo-Chinese conflict. The electoral campaigns and outcomes of Presidential elections in the US, Russia and France will deepen the global conflicts and economic crises.

During 2011 the Obama regime announced a policy of military confrontation with Russia and China and policies designed to undermine and degrade China's rise as a world economic power. In the face of a deepening economic recession and with the decline of overseas markets, especially in Europe, a major trade war will unfold. Washington will aggressively pursue policies limiting Chinese exports and investments. The White House will escalate its efforts to disrupt China's trade and investments in Asia, Africa and elsewhere. We can expect greater US efforts to exploit China's internal ethnic and popular conflicts and to increase its military presence off China's coastline. A major provocation or fabricated incident in this context is not to be excluded. The result in 2012 could lead to rabid chauvinist calls for a new costly 'Cold War'. Obama has provided the framework and justification for a large scale long-term confrontation with China. This will be seen as a desperate effort to prop up US influence and strategic positions in Asia. The US military "quadrangle of power" – US-Japan-Australia-South Korea – with satellite support from the Philippines, will pit China's market ties against Washington's military build-up.

Europe: Deeper Austerity and Intensified Class Struggle

The austerity programs imposed in Europe, from England to Latvia to southern Europe will really take hold in 2012. Massive public sector firings and reduced private sector salaries and hiring's will lead to a year of permanent class warfare and regime challenges. The 'austerity policies' in the South, will be accompanied by debt defaults which will result in bank failures in France and Germany.. England's financial ruling class, isolated in Europe but dominant in England, will insist that the Conservatives 'repress' labor and popular unrest. A new tough neo-Thatcherite style of autocratic rule will emerge ; the Labor-trade union opposition will issue empty protests and tighten the leash on the rebellious populace. In a word, the regressive socio-economic policies put in place in 2011 set the stage for new police-state regimes and more acute and possibly bloody confrontations with workers and unemployed youth with no future.

The Coming Wars that Ends America "As We Know It"

Within the US, Obama has laid the groundwork for a new and bigger war in the Middle East by relocating troops from Iraq and Afghanistan and concentrating them facing Iran. To undermine Iran, Washington is expanding clandestine military and civilian operations against Iranian allies in Syria, Pakistan, Venezuela and China. The key to the US and Israeli bellicose strategy toward Iran is a series of wars in neighboring states, world- wide economic sanctions , cyber-attacks aimed at disabling vital industries and clandestine terrorist assassinations of scientists and military officials.

The entire push, planning and execution of the US policies leading up to war with Iran can be empirically attributed to the Zionist power configuration occupying strategic positions in government, mass media and 'civil society'. A systematic analysis of policymakers designing and implementing economic sanctions policy in Congress finds prominent roles for mega-Zionists like Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Howard Berman; in the White House, Dennis Ross and Jeffrey Feltman in State; Stuart Levy and his replacement David Cohen in Treasury. The White House is totally beholden to Zionist fund raisers and takes its cue from the '52' Presidents of the Major American Jewish Organizations. The Israeli-Zionist strategy is to encircle Iran, weaken it economically and attack its military.

The Iraq invasion was the US's first war for Israel; the Libyan war the second; the current proxy war against Syria is the third. These wars have destroyed Israel's adversaries or are in the process of doing so. During 2011, economic sanctions, which were designed to create domestic discontent in Iran were the principle weapon of choice. The global sanctions campaign engaged the entire energies of the major Jewish-Zionist lobbies. They also faced no opposition in the mass media, Congress or the White Office. The Zionist power configuration (ZPC) faced virtually no criticism from any of the progressive, leftist and socialist journals, movements or grouplets – with a few notable exceptions.

The past year's relocation of troops from Iraq to the borders of Iran, the sanctions and the rising Big Push from Israel's fifth column in the US means War in the Middle East. This likely means a "surprise" aerial and maritime missile attack by US forces. This will be based on a concocted pretext of an "imminent nuclear attack" cooked up by Mossad and transmitted by the ZPC to the Congress and White House for consumption and transmission to the world. It will be a destructive, bloody, prolonged war for Israel. The US will bear the direct military cost by itself but the rest of the world will pay a dear economic price. The Zionist promoted US war will convert the recession of early 2012 into a major depression by the end of the year and probably provoke mass upheavals.

Conclusion

All indications point to 2012 being a turning point year of unrelenting economic crises spreading outward from Europe and the US to Asia and its dependencies in Africa and Latin America. The crises will be truly global. Inter-imperial confrontations and colonial wars will undermine any efforts to ameliorate this crisis. In response mass movements will emerge which will move over time from protests and rebellions , hopefully to social revolutions and political power.

* James Petras is the author of more than 62 books published in 29 languages, and over 600 articles in professional journals. Petras' latest books, Global Depression and Regional Wars (Atlanta, Clarity Press, 2009) is the third in a series, including Zionism, Militarism and the Decline of US Power (Atlanta, Clarity Press 2008) and The Power of Israel in the United States (Atlanta, Clarity Press 2006), analyzing the influence of militarism and Zionism in American foreign policy.

Introduction

After suffering major military and political defeats in bloody ground wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, failing to buttress long-standing clients in Yemen, Egypt and Tunisia and witnessing the disintegration of puppet regimes in Somalia and South Sudan, the Obama regime has learned nothing: Instead he has turned toward greater military confrontation with global powers, namely Russia and China. Obama has adopted a provocative offensive military strategy right on the frontiers of both China and Russia.

After going from defeat to defeat on the periphery of world power and not satisfied with running treasury-busting deficits in pursuit of empire building against economically weak countries, Obama has embraced a policy of encirclement and provocations against China, the world's second largest economy and the US's most important creditor, and Russia, the European Union's principle oil and gas provider and the world's second most powerful nuclear weapons power.

This paper addresses the Obama regime's highly irrational and world-threatening escalation of imperial militarism. We examine the global military, economic and domestic political context that gives rise to these policies. We then examine the multiple points of conflict and intervention in which Washington is engaged, from Pakistan, Iran, Libya, Venezuela, Cuba and beyond. We will then analyze the rationale for military escalation against Russia and China as part of a new offensive moving beyond the Arab world (Syria, Libya) and in the face of the declining economic position of the EU and the US in the global economy. We will then outline the strategies of a declining empire, nurtured on perpetual wars, facing global economic decline, domestic discredit and a working population reeling from the long-term, large-scale dismantling of its basic social programs.

The Turn from Militarism in the Periphery to Global Military Confrontation

November 2011 is a moment of great historical import: Obama declared two major policy positions, both having tremendous strategic consequences affecting competing world powers.

Obama pronounced a policy of military encirclement of China based on stationing a maritime and aerial armada facing the Chinese coast – an overt policy designed to weaken and disrupt China's access to raw materials and commercial and financial ties in Asia. Obama's declaration that Asia is the priority region for US military expansion, base-building and economic alliances was directed against China, challenging Beijing in its own backyard. Obama's iron fist policy statement, addressed to the Australian Parliament, was crystal clear in defining US imperial goals.

"Our enduring interests in the region [Asia Pacific] demands our enduring presence in this region ... The United States is a Pacific power and we are here to stay ... As we end today's wars [i.e. the defeats and retreats from Iraq and Afghanistan]... I have directed my national security team to make our presence and missions in the Asia Pacific a top priority ... As a result, reduction in US defense spending will not ... come at the expense of the Asia Pacific" (CNN.com, Nov. 16, 2011).

The precise nature of what Obama called our "presence and mission" was underlined by the new military agreement with Australia to dispatch warships, warplanes and 2500 marines to the northern most city of Australia (Darwin) directed at China. Secretary of State Clinton has spent the better part of 2011 making highly provocative overtures to Asian countries that have maritime border conflicts with China. Clinton has forcibly injected the US into these disputes, encouraging and exacerbating the demands of Vietnam, Philippines, and Brunei in the South China Sea. Even more seriously, Washington is bolstering its military ties and sales with Japan, Taiwan, Singapore and South Korea, as well as increasing the presence of battleships, nuclear submarines and over flights of war planes along China's coastal waters. In line with the policy of military encirclement and provocation, the Obama-Clinton regime is promoting Asian multi-lateral trade agreements that exclude China and privilege US multi-national corporations, bankers and exporters, dubbed the "Trans-Pacific Partnership". It currently includes mostly smaller countries, but Obama has hopes of enticing Japan and Canada to join ...

Obama's presence at the APEC meeting of East Asian leader and his visit to Indonesia in November 2011 all revolve around efforts to secure US hegemony. Obama-Clinton hope to counter the relative decline of US economic links in the face of the geometrical growth of trade and investment ties between East Asia and China.

A most recent example of Obama-Clinton's delusional, but destructive, efforts to deliberately disrupt China's economic ties in Asia, is taking place in Myanmar (Burma). Clinton's December 2011 visit to Myanmar was preceded by a decision by the Thein Sein regime to suspend a China Power Investment-funded dam project in the north of the country. According to official confidential documents released by WikiLeaks the "Burmese NGO's, which organized and led the campaign against the dam, were heavily funded by the US government"(Financial Times, Dec. 2, 2011, p. 2). This and other provocative activity and Clinton's speeches condemning Chinese "tied aid" pale in comparison with the long-term, large-scale interests which link Myanmar with China. China is Myanmar's biggest trading partner and investor, including six other dam projects. Chinese companies are building new highways and rail lines across the country, opening southwestern China up for Burmese products and China is constructing oil pipelines and ports. There is a powerful dynamic of mutual economic interests that will not be disturbed by one dispute (FT, December 2, 2011, p.2). Clinton's critique of China's billion-dollar investments in Myanmar's infrastructure is one of the most bizarre in world history, coming in the aftermath of Washington's brutal eight-year military presence in Iraq which destroyed $500 billion dollars of Iraqi infrastructure, according to Baghdad official estimates. Only a delusional administration could imagine that rhetorical flourishes, a three day visit and the bankrolling of an NGO is an adequate counter-weight to deep economic ties linking Myanmar to China. The same delusional posture underlies the entire repertoire of policies informing the Obama regime's efforts to displace China's predominant role in Asia.

While any one policy adopted by the Obama regime does not, in itself, present an immediate threat to peace, the cumulative impact of all these policy pronouncements and the projections of military power add up to an all out comprehensive effort to isolate, intimidate and degrade China's rise as a regional and global power. Military encirclement and alliances, exclusion of China in proposed regional economic associations, partisan intervention in regional maritime disputes and positioning technologically advanced warplanes, are all aimed to undermine China's competitiveness and to compensate for US economic inferiority via closed political and economic networks.

Clearly White House military and economic moves and US Congressional anti-China demagogy are aimed at weakening China's trading position and forcing its business-minded leaders into privileging US banking and business interests over and above their own enterprises. Pushed to its limits, Obama's prioritizing a big military push could lead to a catastrophic rupture in US-Chinese economic relations. This would result in dire consequences, especially but not exclusively, on the US economy and particularly its financial system. China holds over $1.5 trillion dollars in US debt, mainly Treasury Notes, and each year purchases from $200 to $300 billion in new issues, a vital source in financing the US deficit. If Obama provokes a serious threat to China's security interests and Beijing is forced to respond, it will not be military but economic retaliation: the sell-off of a few hundred billion dollars in T-notes and the curtailment of new purchases of US debt. The US deficit will skyrocket, its credit ratings will descend to 'junk', and the financial system will 'tremble onto collapse'. Interest rates to attract new buyers of US debt will approach double digits. Chinese exports to the US will suffer and losses will incur due to the devaluation of the T-notes in Chinese hands. China has been diversifying its markets around the world and its huge domestic market could probably absorb most of what China loses abroad in the course of a pull-back from the US market.

While Obama strays across the Pacific to announce his military threats to China and strives to economically isolate China from the rest of Asia, the US economic presence is fast fading in what used to be its "backyard": Quoting one Financial Times journalist, "China is the only show [in town] for Latin America" (Financial Times, Nov. 23, 2011, p.6). China has displaced the US and the EU as Latin America's principle trading partner; Beijing has poured billions in new investments and provides low interest loans.

China's trade with India, Indonesia, Japan, Pakistan and Vietnam is increasing at a far faster rate than that of the US. The US effort to build an imperial-centered security alliance in Asia is based on fragile economic foundations. Even Australia, the anchor and linchpin of the US military thrust in Asia, is heavily dependent on mineral exports to China. Any military interruption would send the Australian economy into a tailspin.

The US economy is in no condition to replace China as a market for Asian or Australian commodity and manufacturing exports. The Asian countries must be acutely aware that there is no future advantage in tying themselves to a declining, highly militarized, empire. Obama and Clinton deceive themselves if they think they can entice Asia into a long-term alliance. The Asian's are simply using the Obama regime's friendly overtures as a 'tactical device', a negotiating ploy, to leverage better terms in securing maritime and territorial boundaries with China.

Washington is delusional if it believes that it can convince Asia to break long-term large-scale lucrative economic ties to China in order to join an exclusive economic association with such dubious prospects. Any 'reorientation' of Asia, from China to the US, would require more than the presence of an American naval and airborne armada pointed at China. It would require the total restructuring of the Asian countries' economies, class structure and political and military elite. The most powerful economic entrepreneurial groups in Asia have deep and growing ties with China/Hong Kong, especially among the dynamic transnational Chinese business elites in the region. A turn toward Washington entails a massive counter-revolution, which substitutes colonial 'traders' (compradors) for established entrepreneurs. A turn to the US would require a dictatorial elite willing to cut strategic trading and investment linkages, displacing millions of workers and professionals. As much as some US-trained Asian military officers, economists and former Wall Street financiers and billionaires might seek to 'balance' a US military presence with Chinese economic power, they must realize that ultimately advantage resides in working out an Asian solution.

The age of Asian "comprador capitalists", willing to sell out national industry and sovereignty in exchange for privileged access to US markets, is ancient history. Whatever the boundless enthusiasm for conspicuous consumerism and Western lifestyles, which Asia and China's new rich mindlessly celebrate, whatever the embrace of inequalities and savage capitalist exploitation of labor, there is recognition that the past history of US and European dominance precluded the growth and enrichment of an indigenous bourgeoisie and middle class. The speeches and pronouncements of Obama and Clinton reek of nostalgia for a past of neo-colonial overseers and comprador collaborators – a mindless delusion. Their attempts at political realism, in finally recognizing Asia as the economic pivot of the present world order, takes a bizarre turn in imagining that military posturing and projections of armed force will reduce China to a marginal player in the region.

Obama's Escalation of Confrontation with Russia

The Obama regime has launched a major frontal military thrust on Russia's borders. The US has moved forward missile sites and Air Force bases in Poland, Rumania, Turkey, Spain, Czech Republic and Bulgaria: Patriot PAC-3 anti-aircraft missile complexes in Poland; advanced radar AN/TPY-2 in Turkey; and several missile (SM-3 IA) loaded warships in Spain are among the prominent weapons encircling Russia, most only minutes away from it strategic heartland. Secondly, the Obama regime has mounted an all-out effort to secure and expand US military bases in Central Asia among former Soviet republics. Thirdly, Washington, via NATO, has launched major economic and military operations against Russia's major trading partners in North Africa and the Middle East. The NATO war against Libya, which ousted the Gadhafi regime, has paralyzed or nullified multi-billion dollar Russian oil and gas investments, arms sales and substituted a NATO puppet for the former Russia-friendly regime.

The UN-NATO economic sanctions and US-Israeli clandestine terrorist activity aimed at Iran has undermined Russia's lucrative billion-dollar nuclear trade and joint oil ventures. NATO, including Turkey, backed by the Gulf monarchical dictatorships, has implemented harsh sanctions and funded terrorist assaults on Syria, Russia's last remaining ally in the region and where it has a sole naval facility (Tartus) on the Mediterranean Sea. Russia's previous collaboration with NATO in weakening its own economic and security position is a product of the monumental misreading of NATO and especially Obama's imperial policies. Russian President Medvedev and his Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov mistakenly assumed (like Gorbachev and Yeltsin before them) that backing US-NATO policies against Russia's trading partners would result in some sort of "reciprocity": US dismantling its offensive "missile shield" on its frontiers and support for Russia's admission into the World Trade Organization. Medvedev, following his liberal pro-western illusions, fell into line and backed US-Israeli sanctions against Iran, believing the tales of a "nuclear weapons programs". Then Lavrov fell for the NATO line of "no fly zones to protect Libyan civilian lives" and voted in favor, only to feebly "protest", much too late, that NATO was "exceeding its mandate" by bombing Libya into the Middle Ages and installing a pro-NATO puppet regime of rogues and fundamentalists. Finally when the US aimed a cleaver at Russia's heartland by pushing ahead with an all-out effort to install missile launch sites 5 minutes by air from Moscow while organizing mass and armed assaults on Syria, did the Medvedev-Lavrov duet awake from its stupor and oppose UN sanctions. Medvedev threatened to abandon the nuclear missile reduction treaty (START) and to place medium-range missiles with 5 minute launch-time from Berlin, Paris and London.

Medvedev-Lavrov's policy of consolidation and co-operation based on Obama's rhetoric of "resetting relations" invited aggressive empire building: Each capitulation led to a further aggression. As a result, Russia is surrounded by missiles on its western frontier; it has suffered losses among its major trading partners in the Middle East and faces US bases in southwest and Central Asia.

Belatedly Russian officials have moved to replace the delusional Medvedev for the realist Putin, as next President. This shift to a political realist has predictably evoked a wave of hostility toward Putin in all the Western media. Obama's aggressive policy to isolate Russia by undermining independent regimes has, however, not affected Russia's status as a nuclear weapons power. It has only heightened tensions in Europe and perhaps ended any future chance of peaceful nuclear weapons reduction or efforts to secure a UN Security Council consensus on issues of peaceful conflict resolution. Washington, under Obama-Clinton, has turned Russia from a pliant client to a major adversary.

Putin looks to deepening and expanding ties with the East, namely China, in the face of threats from the West. The combination of Russian advanced weapons technology and energy resources and Chinese dynamic manufacturing and industrial growth are more than a match for crisis-ridden EU-USA economies wallowing in stagnation.

Obama's military confrontation toward Russia will greatly prejudice access to Russian raw materials and definitively foreclose any long-term strategic security agreement, which would be useful in lowering the deficit and reviving the US economy.

Between Realism and Delusion: Obama's Strategic Realignment

Obama's recognition that the present and future center of political and economic power is moving inexorably to Asia, was a flash of political realism. After a lost decade of pouring hundreds of billions of dollars in military adventures on the margins and periphery of world politics, Washington has finally discovered that is not where the fate of nations, especially Great Powers, will be decided, except in a negative sense – of bleeding resources over lost causes. Obama's new realism and priorities apparently are now focused on Southeast and Northeast Asia, where dynamic economies flourish, markets are growing at a double digit rate, investors are ploughing tens of billions in productive activity and trade is expanding at three times the rate of the US and the EU.

But Obama's 'New Realism' is blighted by entirely delusional assumptions, which undermine any serious effort to realign US policy.

In the first place Obama's effort to 'enter' into Asia is via a military build-up and not through a sharpening and upgrading of US economic competitiveness. What does the US produce for the Asian countries that will enhance its market share? Apart from arms, airplanes and agriculture, the US has few competitive industries. The US would have to comprehensively re-orient its economy, upgrade skilled labor, and transfer billions from "security" and militarism to applied innovations. But Obama works within the current military-Zionist-financial complex: He knows no other and is incapable of breaking with it.

Secondly, Obama-Clinton operate under the delusion that the US can exclude China or minimize its role in Asia, a policy that is undercut by the huge and growing investment and presence of all the major US multi-national corporations in China, who use it as an export platform to Asia and the rest of the world.

The US military build-up and policy of intimidation will only force China to downgrade its role as creditor financing the US debt, a policy China can pursue because the US market, while still important, is declining, as China expands its presence in its domestic, Asian, Latin American and European markets.

What once appeared to be New Realism is now revealed to be the recycling of Old Delusions: The notion that the US can return to being the supreme Pacific Power it was after World War Two. The US attempts to return to Pacific dominance under Obama-Clinton with a crippled economy, with the overhang of an over-militarized economy, and with major strategic handicaps: Over the past decade the United States foreign policy has been at the beck and call of Israel's fifth column (the Israel "lobby"). The entire US political class is devoid of common, practical sense and national purpose. They are immersed in troglodyte debates over "indefinite detentions" and "mass immigrant expulsions". Worse, all are on the payrolls of private corporations who sell in the US and invest in China.

Why would Obama abjure costly wars in the unprofitable periphery and then promote the same military metaphysics at the dynamic center of the world economic universe? Does Barack Obama and his advisers believe he is the Second Coming of Admiral Commodore Perry, whose 19^th century warships and blockades forced Asia open to Western trade? Does he believe that military alliances will be the first stage to a subsequent period of privileged economic entry?

Does Obama believe that his regime can blockade China, as Washington did to Japan in the lead up to World War Two? It's too late. China is much more central to the world economy, too vital even to the financing of the US debt, too bonded up with the Forbes Five Hundred multi-national corporations. To provoke China, to even fantasize about economic "exclusion" to bring down China, is to pursue policies that will totally disrupt the world economy, first and foremost the US economy!

Conclusion

Obama's 'crackpot realism', his shift from wars in the Muslim world to military confrontation in Asia, has no intrinsic worth and poses extraordinary extrinsic costs. The military methods and economic goals are totally incompatible and beyond the capacity of the US, as it is currently constituted. Washington's policies will not 'weaken' Russia or China, even less intimidate them. Instead it will encourage both to adopt more adversarial positions, making it less likely that they lend a hand to Obama's sequential wars on behalf of Israel. Already Russia has sent warships to its Syrian port, refused to support an arms embargo against Syria and Iran and (in retrospect) criticized the NATO war against Libya. China and Russia have far too many strategic ties with the world economy to suffer any great losses from a series of US military outposts and "exclusive" alliances. Russia can aim just as many deadly nuclear missiles at the West as the US can mount from its bases in Eastern Europe.

In other words, Obama's military escalation will not change the nuclear balance of power, but will bring Russia and China into a closer and deeper alliance. Gone are the days of Kissinger-Nixon's "divide and conquer" strategy pitting US-Chinese trade agreements against Russian arms. Washington has a totally exaggerated significance of the current maritime spats between China and its neighbors. What unites them in economic terms is far more important in the medium and long-run. China's Asian economic ties will erode any tenuous military links to the US.

Obama's "crackpot realism", views the world market through military lenses. Military arrogance toward Asia has led to a rupture with Pakistan, its most compliant client regime in South Asia. NATO deliberately slaughtered 24 Pakistani soldiers and thumbed their nose at the Pakistani generals, while China and Russia condemned the attack and gained influence.

In the end, the military and exclusionary posture to China will fail. Washington will overplay its hand and frighten its business-oriented erstwhile Asian partners, who only want to play-off a US military presence to gain tactical economic advantage. They certainly do not want a new US instigated 'Cold War' dividing and weakening the dynamic intra-Asian trade and investment. Obama and his minions will quickly learn that Asia's current leaders do not have permanent allies - only permanent interests. In the final analysis, China figures prominently in configuring a new Asia-centric world economy. Washington may claim to have a 'permanent Pacific presence' but until it demonstrates it can take care of its "basic business at home", like arranging its own finances and balancing its current account deficits, the US Naval command may end up renting its naval facilities to Asian exporters and shippers, transporting goods for them, and protecting them by pursuing pirates, contrabandists and narco-traffickers. Come to think about it, Obama might reduce the US trade deficit with Asia by renting out the Seventh Fleet to patrol the Straits, instead of wasting US taxpayer money bullying successful Asian economic powers.

* James Petras is the author of more than 62 books published in 29 languages, and over 600 articles in professional journals. Petras' latest books, Global Depression and Regional Wars (Atlanta, Clarity Press, 2009) is the third in a series, including Zionism, Militarism and the Decline of US Power (Atlanta, Clarity Press 2008) and The Power of Israel in the United States (Atlanta, Clarity Press 2006), analyzing the influence of militarism and Zionism in American foreign policy.

WASHINGTON, Dec 13, 2011 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- Following a three year Freedom of Information Act battle, US Trade Ambassador Ron Kirk has been forced to publicly release a secret report about America's first bilateral trade agreement. The 1984 report predicted which US industries would be most harmed by massive trade preferences for Israel.

In 2009 the Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy (IRmep), a Washington nonprofit that works to improve policy formulation, sought public release of the report. The USTR refused. IRmep appealed to an outside review panel arguing that declassified FBI files revealed both the Israeli government and American Israel Public Affairs Committee unlawfully obtained the report in 1984. A declassified FBI investigation uncovered AIPAC's receipt of the report from Israel's Economics Minister, who refused to divulge how he obtained it. IRmep successfully argued that Americans most harmed by the data theft should also have access to the report.

The International Trade Commission compiled "Probable Economic Effect of Providing Duty-Free Treatment for Imports from Israel" by soliciting confidential business information from all concerned industries. US tomato growers and canners wanted to protect domestic production and jobs while discounting Israel as a significant market for US products. Arkansas bromine producers were concerned that Israel's state-owned producer would displace private sector US jobs in an economically challenged region.

According to the secret trade report,

"Opposition to the duty-free tariff treatment for jewelry was voiced by the largest national jewelry trade association and several domestic producers...Support for the elimination of jewelry tariffs came from an importer and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee....The implementation of this proposal would eliminate uncertainty about the future of the GSP program, a program which is the key to Israel's competitiveness in the US market."

Passage of Israel trade preferences into law in 1985 created a chronic US deficit averaging $10 billion per year. In May of 2011, IRmep's Center for Policy and Law Enforcement filed a petition with the USTR Section 301 Committee demanding $6.64 billion in compensation for exporters that suffered confidential business information loss to AIPAC and Israel. Although USTR refused to pursue the petition, the report's public release now provides crucial evidence for civil damage claims to be filed in court against AIPAC. Stakeholders may now download released sections of the report and links to FBI files at: http://www.irmep.org/ILA/ustr/

SOURCE: Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy (IRmep)

When new recruits join British Petroleum (BP) they are fed romantic tales about how the company came into being.

William Knox D'Arcy, a Devon man, studied law and, after emigrating to Australia, made a fortune from the Mount Morgan gold-mining operations in the 1880s. Returning to England he agreed to fund a search for oil and minerals in Persia and negotiations with the Mozaffar al-Din Shah Qajar began in 1901. A sixty-year concession to explore for oil gave D'Arcy the oil rights to the entire country except for five provinces in northern Iran. The Iranian government would receive 16 percent of the oil company's annual profits.

Mozzafar ad-Din, seldom consulted on matters of state by his father, was naive in business matters and unprepared for kingship when the time came. He borrowed heavily from the Russians in order to finance his extravagant personal lifestyle and the costs of the state, and in order to pay off the debt, he signed away control of many Iranian industries and markets to foreigners. The deal D'Arcy cut was too sharp by far and would eventually lead to trouble.

He sent an exploration team headed by geologist George B Reynolds. In 1903 a company was formed and D'Arcy had to spend much of his fortune to cover the costs. Further financial support came from Glasgow-based Burmah Oil in return for a large share of the stock.

Drilling in southern Persia at Shardin continued until 1907 when the search was switched to Masjid-i-Souleiman. By 1908 D'Arcy was almost bankrupt. Reynolds received a last-chance instruction: "Drill to 1,600 feet and give up." On 26 May, at 1,180 feet, he struck oil.

It was indeed a triumph of guts and determination. The Anglo-Persian Oil Company was soon up and running and in 1911 completed a pipeline from the oilfield to its new refinery at Abadan. But the company was in trouble again by 1914. The golden age of motoring had not yet arrived and the industrial oil markets were sewn up by American and European interests. The sulphurous stench of the Persian oil, even after refining, ruled it out for domestic use, so D'Arcy had a marketing problem.

Luckily, Winston Churchill, then First Lord of the Admiralty, was an enthusiast for oil and wanted to convert the British fleet from coal, especially now that a reliable oil source was secured. He famously told Parliament: "Look out upon the wide expanse of the oil regions of the world!" Only the British-owned Anglo-Persian Oil Company, he said, could protect British interests. His resolution passed and the British Government took a major shareholding in the company. Just in time too, for World War I started a few weeks later.

During the war the government seized the assets of a German company calling itself British Petroleum in order to market its products in Britain. Anglo-Persian acquired the assets from the Public Trustee complete with a ready-made distribution network with hundreds of depots, railway tank wagons, road vehicles, barges and so forth. This enabled Anglo-Persian to rapidly expand sales in petroleum-hungry Britain and Europe after the war.

In the inter-war years Anglo-Persian profited handsomely from paying the Iranians a measly 16 per cent , and an increasingly angry Iran tried to renegotiate the terms. Getting nowhere, the Iranians cancelled the D'Arcy agreement and the matter ended up at the Permanent Court of International Justice at The Hague. A new agreement in 1933 provided Anglo-Persian with a fresh 60-year concession but on a smaller area. The terms were an improvement for the Iranians but still didn't amount to a square deal.

Iranian President Mohammad Mosaddeq, Time Magazine’s Man of the Year cover for 1951.

Iran's small share of the profits became a big issue and so did the treatment of its oil workers. 6,000 withdrew their labour in 1946 and the strike was violently put down with 200 dead or injured. In 1951 Anglo-Iranian declared £40 million profit after tax but gave Iran only £7 million. Meanwhile Arabian American Oil was sharing profits with the Saudis on a 50/50 basis. Calls for nationalisation were intensifying.

Iran nationalised its oil to achieve economic and political independence and combat poverty

In March 1951 the Iranian Majlis and Senate voted to nationalise Anglo-Iranian, which had controlled Iran's oil industry since 1913 under terms disadvantageous to Iran. Respected social reformer Dr Mohammad Mossadeq was named prime minister the following month by a 79 to 12 majority. On 1 May Mossadeq carried out his government's wishes, cancelling Anglo-Iranian's oil concession due to expire in 1993 and expropriating its assets.

His explanation, given in a speech in June 1951 (M. Fateh, Panjah Sal-e Naft-e Iran, p. 525), ran as follows...

Our long years of negotiations with foreign countries... have yielded no results this far. With the oil revenues we could meet our entire budget and combat poverty, disease, and backwardness among our people. Another important consideration is that by the elimination of the power of the British company, we would also eliminate corruption and intrigue, by means of which the internal affairs of our country have been influenced. Once this tutelage has ceased, Iran will have achieved its economic and political independence.

The Iranian state prefers to take over the production of petroleum itself. The company should do nothing else but return its property to the rightful owners. The nationalization law provides that 25 per cent of the net profits on oil be set aside to meet all the legitimate claims of the company for compensation...
It has been asserted abroad that Iran intends to expel the foreign oil experts from the country and then shut down oil installations. Not only is this allegation absurd; it is utter invention...

For this he was eventually removed in a coup by MI5 and the CIA, imprisoned for 3 years then put under house arrest until his death.

In the meantime Britain orchestrated a world-wide boycott of Iranian oil, froze Iran's stirling assets and threatened legal action against anyone purchasing oil produced in the formerly British-controlled refineries. It even considered invading. The Iranian economy was soon in ruins. Attempts by the Shah to replace Mossadeq failed and he returned with more power, but his coalition was slowly crumbling under the hardships imposed by the British blockade.

At first America was reluctant to join Britain's destructive game but Churchill let it be known that Mossadeq was turning communist and pushing Iran into Russia's arms at a time when Cold War jumpiness was high. It was enough to get America's new president, Eisenhower, on board and plotting with Britain to bring Mossadeq down

Mohammad Rezā Shāh Pahlavi, Shah of Iran.

The Shah fled to Rome. When it was judged safe to do so he returned on 22 August 1953. Mossadeq was arrested, tried, convicted of treason by the Shah's military court and sentenced to death.

Mossadeq remarked ...

My greatest sin is that I nationalised Iran's oil industry and discarded the system of political and economic exploitation by the world's greatest empire... With God's blessing and the will of the people, I fought this savage and dreadful system of international espionage and colonialism.

I am well aware that my fate must serve as an example in the future throughout the Middle East in breaking the chains of slavery and servitude to colonial interests.

The sentence was later commuted to three years' solitary in a military prison, followed by house arrest until he died on 5 March 1967. Mossadeq's supporters were rounded up, imprisoned, tortured or executed.

Zahedi's new government soon reached an agreement with foreign oil companies to form a consortium to restore the flow of Iranian oil, awarding the US and Great Britain the lion's share - 40 per cent going to Anglo-Iranian. The consortium agreed to share profits on a 50-50 basis with Iran but, tricky as ever, refused to open its books for inspection or verification by Iranian auditors or allow Iranians to sit on the board.

Anglo-Iranian changed its name to British Petroleum in 1954.

A grateful US massively funded the Shah's government, including his army and secret police force, SAVAK.

The West's fun came to an abrupt halt with the Islamic Revolution of 1979 and the book closed on a chapter in British enterprise that started heroically, turned nasty and ended in tears.

The US is still hated today for reinstating the Shah and his vicious SAVAK, and for demolishing the Iranians' democratic system of government, which the Revolution unfortunately didn't restore. Britain, as the instigator and junior partner in the sordid affair, is similarly despised.

On top of that, Iran harbours great resentment at the way the West, especially the US, helped Iraq develop its chemical weapons arsenal and armed forces, and how the international community failed to punish Iraq for its use of chemical weapons against Iran in the Iran-Iraq war. The US, and eventually Britain, tilted strongly towards Saddam in that conflict and the alliance enabled Saddam to more easily acquire or develop forbidden chemical and biological weapons. At least 100,000 Iranians fell victim to them.

This is how John King, writing in 2003 , summed it up...

The United States used methods both legal and illegal to help build Saddam's army into the most powerful army in the Mideast outside of Israel. The US supplied chemical and biological agents and technology to Iraq when it knew Iraq was using chemical weapons against the Iranians. The US supplied the materials and technology for these weapons of mass destruction to Iraq at a time when it was know that Saddam was using this technology to kill his Kurdish citizens. The United States supplied intelligence and battle planning information to Iraq when those battle plans included the use of cyanide, mustard gas and nerve agents. The United States blocked UN censure of Iraq's use of chemical weapons. The United States did not act alone in this effort. The Soviet Union was the largest weapons supplier, but England, France and Germany were also involved in the shipment of arms and technology.

Which brings us to today... Why are we hearing non-stop, loud-mouthed sabre-rattling against Iran when we should be extending the hand of friendship and reconciliation?

David Cameron (b. 1966) wasn't even a twinkle in his father's eye when Britain crushed Iran's democracy, and was probably carousing with his Bullingdon Club pals at Oxford while Iranians were dying in their thousands from Saddam's poison gases. What does he know?

William Hague (b. 1961) seems similarly oblivious to the dirty tricks previous British foreign secretaries pulled on Iran.

Obama (b. 1961)? He was a community organiser in Chicago while the Iranians were being mustard-gassed by chemicals his country supplied to Saddam. What does he know?

As for Mrs Clinton (b. 1947), she's old enough to know better.

So why are they demonising Iran instead of righting the wrongs? Why not live and let live?

Because the political establishment is still smarting.

They are the new-generation imperialists, the political spawn of those Dr Mossadeq and many others struggled against.

They haven't learned from the past, and they won't lift their eyes to a better future. It's so depressing.

* Stuart Littlewood is author of the book Radio Free Palestine, which tells the plight of the Palestinians under occupation. Read other articles by Stuart.

The West's lofty expectations for Salam Fayyad went far beyond what he was ever able to deliver.

By Nathan J. Brown* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

Salam Fayyad, Palestinian Prime Minister. STAN HONDA/AFP/Getty Images

The prime minister's departure from the Palestinian political scene appears likely but not inevitable. With Fatah and Hamas striving to form a unity government, Fayyad may very well be sacrificed on the altar of Palestinian unity.

Neither the sunny nor the cynical view of Fayyad is fair. His optimistic smile obscured an impossible situation: Fayyad's main achievement has not been to build the structures of a Palestinian state, but to stave off the collapse of those structures that did exist. An equally important achievement was his ability to persuade Western observers that he was doing much more. In the process, however, he raised expectations far beyond his ability to deliver.

What Fayyad Did Not Do: In enumerating Fayyad's accomplishments, it is necessary -- if churlish -- to begin by explaining what Fayyad did not accomplish.

First, he did not build any institutions. The state-like political structures now in the West Bank and Gaza were either built during the heyday of the Oslo Process in the 1990s or in the more distant days of Jordanian and British rule.

Second, he did not bring Palestinians to the brink of statehood. The Palestinian Authority, for all its problems, was actually far more ready for statehood on the eve of the Second Intifada in 1999 than it is on the possible eve of the third in 2011. A dozen years ago, Palestine had full security control of its cities, a set of institutions that united the West Bank and Gaza, a flourishing civil society, and a set of legitimate structures for writing authoritative laws and implementing them. Those accomplishments were in retreat long before Fayyad took office, and he was hardly able to restore them.

Third, Fayyad did not strengthen the rule of law. He could not have done so, since the only legitimate law-making body the Palestinians have, the Legislative Council, has not met since he came to power.

Fourth, Fayyad did not prove to Palestinians that they should rely on themselves. Just the opposite. He showed Palestinians that if they relied on him, foreigners would show them the money. At the heady days at the beginning of Oslo, the United States pledged half a billion dollars for the entire five-year process during which the parties were supposed to negotiate a permanent agreement. They have given Fayyad more than that almost every year that he has been in office. The Europeans have opened the purse strings for him too. It is utterly baffling that a figure so completely dependent on Western diplomatic and financial support would be seen by outsiders as an icon of Palestinian self-help.

Finally, he did not bring economic development to the West Bank. What he made possible was a real but unsustainable recovery based on aid and relaxation of travel restrictions. Year-to-year economic indicators in both the West Bank and Gaza are dependent on foreign assistance, and even more on the political and security situation. Fayyad can thus take some credit for the upturn, but Hamas can make a similar claim for the mild improvements in Gaza since Israel relaxed some of the closure last year. Neither has laid the groundwork for real development or attraction of foreign investment. Nor could they in the stultifying and uncertain political environment.

None of these failings was personal. Fayyad could not have accomplished any of these goals even had he wanted to. He led half of a dysfunctional Palestinian Authority, governed scattered bits of territory in the West Bank, and was forced to rattle the cup constantly in order to pay the bills.

What Fayyad Did Do: However, if Fayyad could not walk on water, he did an almost miraculous job of not drowning. This is not to damn Fayyad with faint praise; the prime minister assumed control of a Palestinian Authority that was unable to pay all of its salaries, deeply mistrusted by Israel, and treated as irrelevant by many Palestinians.

His first and most impressive accomplishment was to gain the trust of Western governments. The unrealistic hopes placed in his premiership were partly a testimony to the esteem in which he was held in some international circles. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has spoken of her pride in his efforts and informed Palestinian youth that Fayyad has given them hope. No diplomatic statement from Western governments is complete without a kind word for his accomplishments. Fayyad was even able to earn a grudging Israeli trust through renewed security cooperation and efforts to rebuild the Palestinian security services. These accomplishments allowed him to pay government salaries, redeploy police, and attract enormous amounts of aid.

And Fayyad was able to win some modest victories in Palestinian governance. The security services became less partisan, public finances became more transparent (even without any domestic oversight), corruption likely decreased, pockets of the civil service were rebuilt on a more professional basis, and basic order in Palestinian cities was improved. When it comes to progress in these areas -- sharply limited but still significant -- Fayyad can even claim to have gone beyond maintenance to improving the Palestinian situation beyond where it stood in 1999.

The Poverty of Politics: All along, however, this was a difficult juggling act. Enthusiastic international support would continue only so long as it was possible to pretend that Fayyad was making dramatic gains; domestic acceptance of Fayyad was dependent on his continuing to pay salaries and provide for basic order. Pulling aside the curtain and revealing that Palestinians were not building a state thus risked undermining Western support for him, which would in turn remove the raison d'être of his premiership in Palestinian eyes.

Thus Fayyadism was a political house of cards. There was no domestic foundation for Fayyad's efforts; for Palestinians, he was simply an unsolicited gift from the United States and Europe -- a welcome one for some, but not for others. And to his international backers, Fayyad was completely frank about his limitations: His efforts, he said, would only pay off in the context of a meaningful diplomatic process that reinforced the drive toward statehood. This was an ingredient that has been missing for many years, and Fayyad was powerless to procure it.

Earlier this year, there were signs that Fayyad himself had begun to look for ways to escape Fayyadism. It was Fayyad, rather than Fatah and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who reached out to Hamas in February. The reconciliation file was quickly snatched out of his hands, however, and his hold on the premiership is now on the bargaining table.

What is remarkable, however, is how Fayyadism soldiered on in some Western eyes even after Fayyad himself had begun to distance himself from it. American pundits continued to trumpet his successes without missing a beat right up until the April reconciliation agreement. In March, Thomas Friedman was still writing about Fayyad's gaining momentum and even upped the ante by claiming that his program posed the "biggest threat to Iran's strategy." Meanwhile top policymakers continued to be mesmerized by Fayyad's poll numbers, which were less bad than those of most other leaders, and simply ignored the hollowness at the core of their own policies. Nor did the polls translate into any kind of political party or movement that could have run in, much less won, an election -- if one were ever held.

The Perils of Positive Thinking: For years, Fayyad's soft talk and cheery dedication enabled policymakers throughout the world to ignore the brewing crisis. And this may be where Fayyad, despite his impressive management skills, did Palestinians a disservice.

In 2009, the incoming Obama administration was quickly lured into a set of approaches (many inherited from the Bush years) that proved their complete bankruptcy this year -- ignoring Gaza and allowing its population to be squeezed hard, pretending that there was a meaningful Israeli-Palestinian negotiation process at hand, assuming that Hamas could be dealt with after the peace process and Fayyad had worked their magic, and making the paradoxical and erroneous assumption that the best way to build Palestinian institutions was to rely on a specific, virtuous individual.

Fayyad cannot be held primarily responsible for this collective self-delusion; at most, he facilitated it. And in the process he provided all actors with a breathing space that is now disappearing. Ultimately, the ones who convinced themselves he was capable of completely transforming Palestine are most responsible for squandering the brief respite his premiership offered.

* Nathan J. Brown is a professor of political science and international affairs at George Washington University and nonresident senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Source: Foreign Policy

The power of lies, deception and self-delusion

By Christopher King* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

My family has an investment in Libya. It is a small plot of land in the Knightsbridge War Cemetery at Acroma, eastern Libya, where my uncle, my father's brother, is buried. He died fighting Rommel's forces in World War II and left a young wife. My grandmother mourned him, her youngest son, for the rest of her life. You might say that my father was more fortunate. Although he was captured by the Japanese when Singapore fell due to British military incompetence, he survived his period as a prisoner of war.

You might think that my parents were able to take up their lives where they left off. That was not the case. Warfare, it seems, changes people. Suffice to say that the war destroyed our family.

That is why I despise the warmongers Barack Obama, George Bush, Anthony Blair, Gordon Brown and David Cameron along with the Gaddafis and Saddams - men who enrich themselves and advance their interests in others' blood and suffering. Nor do I exclude the British Chiefs of Defence Staff who wring their hands in mock sorrow at the deaths of their men. If they had a scrap of courage themselves they would cite the Nuremberg Principles and bring their men home. These people are all the same. Every country has them - failures as moral humans. Why do we tolerate them?

It is a mystery to me why anyone voted a second term for Anthony Blair after he had hawked the Americans' Iraq invasion around Europe. Our public next voted him in for a third term! David Cameron, Gordon Brown and Nick Clegg all stood on a pro-war platform. Everyone voted for them as if it were the most natural thing in the world for these men to conspire to invade other countries, bomb and shoot their inhabitants and assassinate them with drones. It can be no surprise that our politicians are engaged in yet another American war in Libya.

The British public accepts being led by men who prefer war to peace, to being robbed by their paymasters, the bankers, American and British, rather than controlling our own money and to being parasitized by America rather than ruling ourselves. There can be only one explanation: our public is afraid of the truth which is in plain sight. We are witnessing the triumph of illusion over reality; of lies over truth; of hope over the death of our economy. Yes, of evil over good. When tens, even hundreds of thousands of men, women and children have been killed in ten years of warfare, something is very wrong. Someone is doing something very bad. The simple, even trivial explanation: our public does not want to hear the bad news.

The bad news is that the consumer dream of infinite growth and never-ending plenty is at an end. The country's economic trend is now downward. Our political and business leaders are engaged in a desperate conspiracy to conceal this trend to general poverty while ensuring that they and their families live in luxury. Anthony Blair, the bought-and-paid-for multi-millionaire is the model. He and his family live well at the cost of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives and Afghan lives.

The good news? I shall have to think about it.

Our public clearly believes that our leaders and bankers are capable, responsible men. They know more than us, they must know what they are doing! And it is true.

They are indeed responsible men: our politicians are responsible to their banker and industrialist paymasters, our bankers to their co-conspirators. They do know more than we do - and ensure that we do not find our what they know by using the Official Secrets Act, invoking commercial confidence and a hundred tricks and evasions in and out of the courts and Parliament. And they know what they are doing very well - robbing us as ruthlessly as any Mubarak or Gaddafi.

One day soon, perhaps seven or 10 years time, the British public will awaken cold, hungry, with children badly clothed, food and energy in short supply, bank accounts empty, debts unpaid, jobs impossible to find, social security non-existent. "How has this happened?" will be the cry. "Where is the economic recovery?" My friends, the economic recovery will exist only in politicians' mouths, in the pages of the Murdoch press and, of course, in banking inventions.

One of the best of men, Brian Haw, has lived in a tent in Parliament Square, protesting our wars for the last 10 years. It is no coincidence that those who have the fewest possessions see reality most clearly. That is why Jesus said (Mark 10:25) that a rich man will never enter the Kingdom of Heaven. It is always a matter of money. Wars are for money and those who kill foreigners to steal their resources will hardly shrink from killing their own countrymen to add to and preserve their wealth.

Why should anyone imagine that our prime minister and his deputy are any more virtuous than Saddam, Mubarak or Gaddafi when all the evidence is against it? Public illusion is possible because we are still able to live on the capital that past generations built up in this country. It will not last long in competition with over two and a half billion persons in China and India alone, whose ambition is to achieve our living standards and whose current income averages about GBP 50 to 60 per month. Note: averages. Hundreds of millions have no measurable income. These are not merely statistics. They are part of the dynamics of global production and markets.

It is not our corrupt politicians who act in the best interests of our people and our country. It is the Julian Assanges and Brian Haws. They are the prophets of our time and the rich Great and Good hate them. We should be flocking to support our prophets in our own best interests and it is precisely because they speak for our best interests that they are hated.

We have several generations who think that war is a sort of movie or computer game. Soldiers' families are shocked and surprised when their sons and husbands are killed. It's not supposed to happen. They seek explanations. The explanation is that their loved ones have died to ensure that America's rich get richer and to allow our bankers and big businessmen to pick over their garbage. That is what our country has come to.

My friends, you have not yet recognized that we are at war within our country. We are living on capital, on the fat accumulated by past generations of inventors, builders and social reformers. It will soon be gone and our war will become exactly like those of Tunisia, Egypt or Syria. Perhaps like Afghanistan. You don't believe it? Just look at the speed of collapse in Greece.

The first steps in commencing rebuilding our country and re-establishing an independent, self-reliant Britain are:

• Abandon the American wars that we are engaged in
• Get rid of all American bases in this country
• Leave NATO, abandon US military purchases, join a European defence force.

The first steps in commencing an economic recovery are:

• Stop the sale of publicly owned banking assets.
• Mutualize all publicly owned banking assets
• Cease government guarantees of deposits with the private sector banks
• Give government guarantees only to deposits with cooperative or mutual banks
• Cease giving private banks access to Bank of England funds
• Channel Bank of England funds exclusively through mutualized banks
• Investigate the HSBC takeover of the Midland bank in relation to an alleged one million pounds donation to the Conservative Party from the Chinese government representative on the board and if corruption is confirmed, to nationalize equivalent HSBC assets.

The chancellor of the exchequer, George Osborne, has announced that he will "ring fence" the banks' domestic banking sections and guarantee their deposits. This minimal, token gesture, originating from the Vickers-chaired Treasury Select Committee, is hailed as protecting the economy by our chancellor. The chancellor and this committee are not concerned with the national economy. They are concerned about preserving the wealth and privilege of their banker friends and themselves.

The threats to individual and national wealth posed by the greedy banks are undiminished. The media are already predicting that the banks will recover their profits from increased banking charges. It is not a matter of painting the banks a different colour. They crashed the economy and have been robbing us ever since.

The present banking system gives private sector bankers access to government Bank of England funds, government guarantees of their deposits and government bailouts of their losses. This system is an outrage. It needs complete replacement.

My father kept himself alive in a Japanese prison camp and his brother died in fighting wars that they believed were for their families, their countries and for a good cause. It was not for these despicable, disgusting liars who are robbing their own people and murdering foreigners by the hundreds of thousands for obscene wealth and insane American world-dominance fantasies backed by threats of nuclear holocaust. This is what truth looks like. I suspect that the British public will have to experience some "Third World" poverty in order to see it clearly.

* Christopher King is a retired consultant and lecturer in management and marketing. He lives in London, UK.

By Prof. James Petras* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

Introduction

On May 29, 2011, President Obama visited Joplin, Missouri , the site of a devastating tornado that killed 140 and pronounced it a terrible "tragedy". But were the deaths the inevitable result of 'natural events' beyond the human intervention?

Coincidentally the same week Afghan President Karzai condemned the killing of a family of 14 by a NATO fighter bomber, running the total to several hundred civilians killed so far this year and thousands over the decade.

The relation between the civilian deaths in Joplin and Afghanistan raises fundamental questions about the priorities, character and direction of the US Empire and the future of the American republic.

Geography of Tornados

Every year at least 20 major violent tornadoes – with winds exceeding 200 mph – hit "tornado alley" and beyond, including central Texas, northern Iowa, central Kansas, Nebraska, western Ohio, Missouri, Indiana, Mississippi, Louisiana and Alabama. Each and every year at least sixty are killed and several hundred are maimed and injured. This year, through May 2011, over 519 have been killed, 25% of whom were in mobile homes, almost three times as many as those in standard houses.

In other words, these tornado-related deaths are predictable, annual, and region-specific and have a higher incidence among low income households. Government agencies and academics have compiled data banks and time series information mapping the route, frequency and impact of tornadoes.

Information about the nature of killer tornadoes is plentiful. Nevertheless deaths mount from year to year. Fear and insecurity stalks the region's most susceptible to the violent whirlwinds, even as the Congress and White House have increased personnel and funding for 'Homeland Security' twenty fold over the decade .The current budget is over $180 billion. If we add the deaths caused by other 'natural' disasters like the flooding of New Orleans , the numbers of deaths are staggering. What explains this perverse relation between huge public funding for 'homeland security' and the increased insecurity of vulnerable Americans in clearly identified danger zones?

The reason is clear: 'Homeland Security' (HS) is an Orwellian misnomer. The agency is not concerned with domestic, civilian, American security. HS is part of a military-police response to imagined overseas threats, which have not materialized or at least have not produced deaths comparable to tornadoes and floods in the last 11 years.

HS spends billions and employs thousands to investigate, spy and harass citizens engaged in legal-constitutional activities. HS and the Pentagon spend tens of billions on overseas infrastructures – buildings, bases, camps -and over 900 billion in arms. HS and the Defense Department forcefully intervene militarily throughout the world via overt and clandestine operations.

To be precise HS intervenes offensively overseas, attacking civilian targets, while it fails to engage domestically to protect American civilians who are left defenseless in the face of predictable natural disasters.

HS and the Pentagon's sustained violent overseas operations are rejected and regarded as a hostile imperial intervention by the civilians in those countries adversely affected. In contrast, defenseless citizens in the US would welcome large-scale intervention in the form of community shelters, which would provide survival, security, life-saving protection and financial aid for rebuilding their lives. Moreover, Pentagon and HS spending on overseas infrastructure, bases and bombs results in deficits, whereas investments in tornado and flood shelters would stimulate jobs, growth and investment in the US .

The current activity of HS destroys lives abroad and neglects survival at home: It has nothing to do with our "homeland" and even less with our "security". Five percent of HS budget would have prevented many of Joplin 's 'tragedy' (and saved us from Obama's gaseous oratory!) and the other 400 deaths from this year's crop of tornadoes.

Systemic Bases of Perpetual Domestic Neglect

Death from 'natural' events raises a fundamental POLITICAL question: Why is the budget of Homeland Security and the Pentagon directed overseas, toward destructive, offensive, military activity rather than to domestic, constructive, defensive activity to protect American lives and productive economic activity?

The problem is systemic not due to some personal flaw or political idiosyncrasy of the moment. The structures of the US economy and military institutions are oriented 'outwardly' to conquering foreign financial markets and building a military empire. The ideology which informs strategic policymakers is imperial-centered not republican: They do not speak of developing and deepening the economy and security of ' middle America '. Every member of the political and corporate elite talks of 'world' or 'global' leadership – a thinly veiled euphemism for the drive to sustain world dominance. Within the imperial framework the entire 'security' budget is directed toward maintaining offensive military supremacy. No wonder there is a steep decline in all spheres of domestic security – natural, social, personal, health and employment –a phenomenon that proceeds with little public debate. The only exception is when threats to security impinge most directly and forcefully on a significant sector of the population. For example, witness the storm of protest from those directly affected when the politicians moved to privatize social security and Medicare.

Nevertheless, the entire political spectrum, the two parties, the Congress and the White House over the past 30 years, have created an artificial consensus in which overseas wars, foreign aid to patrons (Israel) and clients (Pakistan and Egypt) absorbs the greatest percentage of budgetary spending. No political or economic leadership has stepped forward to articulate the obvious connection between global expansion and domestic decay; to forcefully state that the deterioration of the republic is a direct product of the vast resources channeled into military and economic empire building. Who on New York City 's Wall Street or Washington 's Pentagon is going to even look at or consider a 'security plan' with regard to the geography of catastrophes – tornado alley covering a dozen states and the floods and deaths that overwhelm the lowlands from Montana to Louisiana ?

Listen America

Their message is loud and clear:

Small towns and trailer parks do not count! You have your 2nd amendment (the 'right to bear arms'), you have your 'small government', and you have your flags: 'Wav 'em and weep' as tornadoes blow down your houses and your sons and daughters return wrapped in flags to the Battle Hymn of the Empire!

Conclusion

One might argue that community storm shelters won't break the Treasury or reverse the empire. More to the point, their absence, from the federal, state and local political agenda, is emblematic of the total subordination of domestic America to imperial Washington . The 'cost' of building community shelters at the strip malls and trailer parks in Joplin , Missouri is less than a regional training outpost in Kandahar , Afghanistan . It is not a question of money.

Conquering Afghanistan villages enhances the prestige of the Generals, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and NATO officials. Can saving 145 lives in Joplin , Missouri match that in terms of world politics or the politics of imperial leadership? For Afghanistan , Washington builds a thousand military shelters and bomb proof bunkers .For the Americans living in tornado alley and the flood plains of the Mississippi people must make do.

When you hear the tornado warning, it's up to you. As a proud, free American you can find a rock to crawl under and say your prayer: the Federal government and Homeland Security have the Endless, World-wide War against Terror to fight and cannot be bothered by a Joplin , Missouri nursing home in the path of a tornado.

We exaggerate: Obama will jet in and speak before the cameras in solemn terms of the 'tragedy' and 'courage' of the people of Joplin ... But will any local politician stand up and speak truth to power? Most of these deaths and (many more to come) are avoidable; under a democratic American republic, the government 'intervenes' to provide protection, health and employment for its people.

In the meantime, as the empire continues to grow it destroys its own people, just like the sow that devours its offspring.

* James Petras' latest books, Global Depression and Regional Wars (Atlanta, Clarity Press, 2009) is the third in a series, including Zionism, Militarism and the Decline of US Power (Atlanta, Clarity Press 2008) and The Power of Israel in the United States (Atlanta, Clarity Press 2006), analyzing the influence of militarism and Zionism in American foreign policy.

By James Petras* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

Introduction

Most accounts of the Arab revolts from Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, Morocco, Yemen, Jordan, Bahrain, Iraq and elsewhere have focused on the most immediate causes: political dictatorships, unemployment, repression and the wounding and killing of protestors. They have given most attention to the "middle class", young, educated activists, their communication via the internet, (Los Angeles Times, Feb. 16, 2011) and, in the case of Israel and its Zionists conspiracy theorists, "the hidden hand" of Islamic extremists (Daily Alert Feb. 25, 2011).

What is lacking is any attempt to provide a framework for the revolt which takes account of the large scale, long and medium term socio-economic structures as well as the immediate 'detonators' of political action. The scope and depth of the popular uprisings, as well as the diverse political and social forces which have entered into the conflicts, preclude any explanations which look at one dimension of the struggles.

The best approach involves a 'funnel framework' in which, at the wide end (the long-term, large-scale structures), stands the nature of the economic, class and political system; the middle-term is defined by the dynamic cumulative effects of these structures on changes in political, social and economic relations; the short-term causes, which precipitate the socio-political-psychological responses, or social consciousness leading to political action.

The Nature of the Arab Economies

With the exception of Jordan, most of the Arab economies where the revolts are taking place are based on 'rents' from oil, gas, minerals and tourism, which provide most of the export earnings and state revenues(Financial Times, Feb. 22, 2011, p. 14). These economic sectors are, in effect, export enclavesWorld Bank Annual Report 2009). These export sectors do not have links to a diversified productive domestic economy: oil is exported and finished manufactured goods as well as financial and high tech services are all imported and controlled by foreign multi-nationals and ex-pats linked to the ruling class (Economic and Political Weekly, Feb. 12, 2011, p. 11). Tourism reinforces 'rental' income, as the sector, which provides 'foreign exchange' and tax revenues to the class – clan state. The latter relies on state-subsidized foreign capital and local politically connected 'real estate' developers for investment and imported foreign construction laborers. employing a tiny fraction of the labor force and define a highly specialized economy (

Rent-based income may generate great wealth, especially as energy prices soar, but the funds accrue to a class of "rentiers" who have no vocation or inclination for deepening and extending the process of economic development and innovation. The rentiers "specialize" in financial speculation, overseas investments via private equity firms, extravagant consumption of high-end luxury goods and billion-dollar and billion-euro secret private accounts in overseas banks.

The rentier economy provides few jobs in modern productive activity; the high end is controlled by extended family-clan members and foreign financial corporations via ex-pat experts; technical and low-end employment is taken up by contract foreign labor, at income levels and working conditions below what the skilled local labor force is willing to accept.

The enclave rentier economy results in a clan-based ruling class which 'confounds' public and private ownership: what's 'state' is actually absolutist monarchs and their extended families at the top and their client tribal leader, political entourage and technocrats in the middle.

These are "closed ruling classes". Entry is confined to select members of the clan or family dynasties and a small number of "entrepreneurial" individuals who might accumulate wealth servicing the ruling clan-class. The 'inner circle' lives off of rental income, secures payoffs from partnerships in real estate where they provide no skills, but only official permits, land grants, import licenses and tax holidays.

Beyond pillaging the public treasury, the ruling clan-class promotes 'free trade', i.e. importing cheap finished products, thus undermining any indigenous domestic start-ups in the 'productive' manufacturing, agricultural or technical sector.

As a result there is no entrepreneurial national capitalist or 'middle class'. What passes for a middle class are largely public sector employees (teachers, health professionals, functionaries, firemen, police officials, military officers) who depend on their salaries, which, in turn, depend on their subservience to absolutist power. They have no chance of advancing to the higher echelons or of opening economic opportunities for their educated offspring.

The concentration of economic, social and political power in a closed clan-class controlled system leads to an enormous concentration of wealth. Given the social distance between rulers and ruled, the wealth generated by high commodity prices produces a highly distorted image of per-capital "wealth"; adding billionaires and millionaires on top of a mass of low-income and underemployed youth provides a deceptively high average income (Washington Blog, 2/24/11).

Rentier Rule: By Arms and Handouts

To compensate for these great disparities in society and to protect the position of the parasitical rentier ruling class, the latter pursues alliances with, multi-billion dollar arms corporations, and military protection from the dominant (USA) imperial power. The rulers engage in "neo-colonization by invitation", offering land for military bases and airfields, ports for naval operations, collusion in financing proxy mercenaries against anti-imperial adversaries and submission to Zionist hegemony in the region (despite occasional inconsequential criticisms).

In the middle term, rule by force is complemented by paternalistic handouts to the rural poor and tribal clans; food subsidies for the urban poor; and dead-end make-work employment for the educated unemployed (Financial Times, 2/25/11, p. 1). Both costly arms purchases and paternalistic subsidies reflect the lack of any capacity for productive investments. Billions are spent on arms rather than diversifying the economy. Hundreds of millions are spent on one-shot paternalistic handouts, rather than long-term investments generating productive employment.

The 'glue' holding this system together is the combination of modern pillage of public wealth and natural energy resources and the use of traditional clan and neo-colonial recruits and mercenary contractors to control and repress the population. US modern armaments are at the service of anachronistic absolutist monarchies and dictatorships, based on the principles of 18^th century dynastic rule.

The introduction and extension of the most up-to-date communication systems and ultra-modern architecture shopping centers cater to an elite strata of luxury consumers and provides a stark contrast to the vast majority of unemployed educated youth, excluded from the top and pressured from below by low-paid overseas contract workers.

Neo-Liberal Destabilization

The rentier class-clans are pressured by the international financial institutions and local bankers to 'reform' their economies: 'open' the domestic market and public enterprises to foreign investors and reduce deficits resulting from the global crises by introducing neo-liberal reforms (Economic and Political Weekly, 2/12/11, p. 11).

As a result of "economic reforms" food subsidies for the poor have been lowered or eliminated and state employment has been reduced, closing off one of the few opportunities for educated youth. Taxes on consumers and salaried/wage workers are increased while the real estate developers, financial speculators and importers receive tax exonerations. De-regulation has exacerbated massive corruption, not only among the rentier ruling class-clan, but also by their immediate business entourage.

The paternalistic 'bonds' tying the lower and middle class to the ruling class have been eroded by foreign-induced neo-liberal "reforms", which combine 'modern' foreign exploitation with the existing "traditional" forms of domestic private pillage. The class-clan regimes no longer can rely on the clan, tribal, clerical and clientelistic loyalties to isolate urban trade unions, student, small business and low paid public sector movements.

The Street against the Palace

The 'immediate causes' of the Arab revolts are centered in the huge demographic-class contradictions of the clan-class ruled rentier economy. The ruling oligarchy rules over a mass of unemployed and underemployed young workers; the latter involves between 50% to 65% of the population under 25 years of age (Washington Blog, 2/24/11). The dynamic "modern" rentier economy does not incorporatethe street as venders, transport and contract workers and in personal services. The ultra- modern oil, gas, real estate, tourism and shopping-mall sectors are dependent on the political the newly educated young into modern employment; it relegates them into the low-paid unprotected "informal economy" of and military support of backward traditional clerical, tribal and clan leaders, who are subsidized but never 'incorporated' into the sphere of modern production. The modern urban industrial working class with small, independent trade unions is banned. Middle class civic associations are either under state control or confined to petitioning the absolutist state.

The 'underdevelopment' of social organizations, linked to social classes engaged in modern productive activity, means that the pivot of social and political action is the street. Unemployed and underemployed part-time youth engaged in the informal sector are found in the plazas, at kiosks, cafes, street corner society, and markets, moving around and about and outside the centers of absolutist administrative power. The urban mass does not occupy strategic positions in the economic system; but it is available for mass mobilizations capable of paralyzing the streets and plazas through which goods and services are transported out and profits are realized. Equally important, mass movements launched by the unemployed youth provide an opportunity for oppressed professionals, public sector employees, small business people and the self-employed to engage in protests without being subject to reprisals at their place of employment – dispelling the "fear factor" of losing one's job.

The political and social confrontation revolves around the opposite poles: clientelistic oligarchies and de clasé masses (the Arab Street). The former depends directly on the state (military/police apparatus) and the latter on amorphous local, informal, face-to-face improvised organizations. The exception is the minority of university students who move via the internet. Organized industrial trade unions come into the struggle late and largely focus on sectoral economic demands, with some exceptions – especially in public enterprises, controlled by cronies of the oligarchs, where workers demand changes in management.

As a result of the social particularities of the rentier states, the uprisings do not take the form of class struggles between wage labor and industrial capitalists. They emerge as mass political revolts against the oligarchical state. Street-based social movements demonstrate their capacity to delegitimize state authority, paralyze the economy, and can lead up to the ousting of the ruling autocrats. But it is the nature of mass street movements to fill the squares with relative ease, but also to be dispersed when the symbols of oppression are ousted. Street-based movements lack the organization and leadership to project, let alone impose a new political or social order. Their power is found in their ability to pressureseize power and protect the entire rentier state and economic structure while sustaining their ties with their imperial mentors. existing elites and institutions, not to replace the state and economy.

Hence the surprising ease with which the US, Israeli and EU backed Egyptian military were able to seize power and protect the entire rentier state and economic structure while sustaining their ties with their imperial mentors.

Converging Conditions and the "Demonstration Effect"

The spread of the Arab revolts across North Africa, the Middle East and Gulf States is, in the first instance, a product of similar historical and social conditions: rentier states ruled by family-clan oligarchs dependent on "rents" from capital intensive oil and energy exports, which confine the vast majority of youth to marginal informal 'street-based' economic activities.

The "power of example" or the "demonstration effect" can only be understood by recognizing the same socio-political conditions in each country. Street power – mass urban movements – presumes the streetlocus of the principal actors and the takeover of the plazas as the place to exert political power and project social demands. No doubt the partial successes in Egypt and Tunisia did detonate the movements elsewhere. But they did so only in countries with the same historical legacy, the same social polarities between rentier – clan rulers and marginal street labor and especially where the rulers were deeply integrated and subordinated to imperial economic and military networks. as the economic

Conclusion

Rentier rulers govern via their ties to the US and EU military and financial institutions. They modernize their affluent enclaves and marginalize recently educated youth, who are confined to low paid jobs, especially in the insecure informal sector, centered in the streets of the capital cities. Neo-liberal privatizations, reductions in public subsidies (for food, unemployment subsidies, cooking oil, gas, transport, health, and education) shattered the paternalistic ties through which the rulers contained the discontent of the young and poor, as well as clerical elites and tribal chiefs. The confluence of classes and masses, modern and traditional, was a direct result of a process of neo-liberalization from above and exclusion from below. The neo-liberal "reformers" promise that the 'market' would substitute well-paying jobs for the loss of state paternalistic subsidies was false. The neo-liberal polices reinforced the concentration of wealth while weakening state controls over the masses.

The world capitalist economic crises led Europe and the US to tighten their immigration controls, eliminating one of the escape valves of the regimes – the massive flight of unemployed educated youth seeking jobs abroad. Out-migration was no longer an option; the choices narrowed to struggle or suffer. Studies show that those who emigrate tend to be the most ambitious, better educated (within their class) and greatest risk takers. Now, confined to their home country, with few illusions of overseas opportunities, they are forced to struggle for individual mobility at home through collective social and political action.

Equally important among the political youth, is the fact that the US, as guarantor of the rentier regimes, is seen as a declining imperial power: challenged economically in the world market by China; facing defeat as an occupying colonial ruler in Iraq and Afghanistan; and humiliated as a subservient and mendacious servant of an increasingly discredited Israel via its Zionist agents in the Obama regime and Congress. All of these elements of US imperial decay and discredit, encourage the pro-democracy movements to move forward against the US clients and lessen their fears that the US military would intervene and face a third military front. The mass movements view their oligarchies as "third tier" regimes: rentier states under US hegemony, which, in turn, is under Israeli – Zionist tutelage. With 130 countries in the UN General Assembly and the entire Security Council, minus the US, condemning Israeli colonial expansion; with Lebanon, Egypt, Tunisia and the forthcoming new regimes in Yemen and Bahrain promising democratic foreign policies, the mass movements realize that all of Israel's modern arms and 680,000 soldiers are of no avail in the face of its total diplomatic isolation, its loss of regional rentier clients, and the utter discredit of its bombastic militarist rulers and their Zionist agents in the US diplomatic corps (Financial Times 2/24/11, p. 7).

The very socio-economic structures and political conditions which detonated the pro-democracy mass movements, the unemployed and underemployed youth organized from "the street", now present the greatest challenge: can the amorphous and diverse mass becomes an organized social and political force which can take state power, democratize the regime and, at the same time, create a new productive economy to provide stable well- paying employment, so far lacking in the rentier economy? The political outcome to date is indeterminate: democrats and socialists compete with clerical, monarchist, and neoliberal forces bankrolled by the U.S.

It is premature to celebrate a popular democratic revolution....

* James Petras' latest books, Global Depression and Regional Wars (Atlanta, Clarity Press, 2009) is the third in a series, including Zionism, Militarism and the Decline of US Power (Atlanta, Clarity Press 2008) and The Power of Israel in the United States (Atlanta, Clarity Press 2006), analyzing the influence of militarism and Zionism in American foreign policy.

Cartoon by Sergei Elkin

Why Europe Fears the North African Uprisings

By Behzad Yahmaian * | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

While millions in the worl are celebrating the popular uprisings in North Africa, Europe is watching with skepticism and fear. The fall of the African dictators will deprive Europe of valuable allies in the fight against irregular migration. The political vacuum and the social and economic instability that follows will create a new wave of desperate migrants daring the high seas to reach the coats of Europe. This will deepen the immigration crisis Europe has been trying hard to manage in recent years. Europe is responding with an increased use of force. A new humanitarian crisis is looming.

Devastated by war and poverty, thousands of Sub-Saharan Africans have been leaving home on a torturous and long journey north every year. Arriving in Morocco, Tunisia, or Libya, they recuperate from the journey fatigue, pay human smugglers, and climb aboard flimsy boats heading to Italy or Spain. Many fall victim to high waves and deadly storms. The survivors join the army of asylum seekers, or undocumented workers in big cities across the continent.

Removing and returning the migrants to their places of origin or the last country they left before entering Europe has proven impractical. As a result, preventing the Africans from reaching Europe has become a policy priority in recent years. To block their arrival, European states have been signing bilateral agreements with North African dictators, recruiting them to guard the EU borders in return for financial assistance.

In a bilateral agreement with Zine Al-Abidine Ben Ali, Italy pledged financial support in exchange for help in preventing African transit immigrants and Tunisians from leaving for Europe. Zine Al-Abidine Ben Ali's fall ended the agreement. Border control collapsed in Tunisia and 5000 Tunisians arrived in the Italian port of Lampedusa. Although in much smaller numbers, Egyptians have been leaving their homes and heading to Italy. Egypt remains politically and economically unstable. The continuation of the situation will only increase the number of Egyptians opting for survival in Europe.

In a 2003 agreement between Spain and Morocco, Moroccan authorities pledged full cooperation in migration control in return for $390 million in aid. Two years later in September 2005, Moroccan soldiers and Spanish guards fired at hundreds of Africans trying to enter the enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla. Gun shots killed 11 migrants and injured many more. The North African protest movement has already reached the streets of Morocco. Here too, the future of the bilateral pact to stop African migration is at jeopardy.

The most notable of the bilateral agreements with North African dictators was the "Friendship Pact" signed between Italy and Libya on August 30th, 2008. The two countries pledged increase cooperation in "fighting terrorism, organized crime, drug trafficking, and illegal immigration." Muammar Gaddafi agreed to keep African migrants from leaving its frontiers for Italy, and readmit to Libya those intercepted in international waters. The price tag for this service was $5 billion Italian investment, and six patrol boats to police the waterways between Africa and Europe.

On May 6, 2009, the Italian coastguard and naval fleet interdicted a migrant boat in high seas and forcefully returned the passengers to Libya. Italy's interior minister Roberto Maroni hailed the act an "historic day" in the fight against illegal immigration. Among the passengers were vulnerable women and children, those in need of medical assistance, and those with legitimate cause for asylum and international protection. The Human Rights Watch has reported widespread abuse, physical violence, torture of returned migrants in Libya. In some cases, the Libyan authorities sold the Africans to human smugglers who kept them in private jails and released them after receiving money from their families.

The political turmoil in North Africa is also threatening the future of the "Friendship Pact." Mummar Qaddafi has threatened his unilateral cancellation of the agreement if the European governments did not stop criticizing his violent suppression of the Libyan protesters. Qaddafi's armed forces killed hundreds of protesters in recent days. Meanwhile, the anti-government protests are raging in different parts of Libya. The future of the Libyan dictator remains unclear.

On February 15th, the Italian Ministry of Interior sent a formal request for help to Frontex, the European Union's border security agency. On February 20th, Frontex launched the Joint Operation Hermes 2011 with the deployment of additional aerial and maritime assets from Italy and Malta to combat the flow of illegal immigrants from North Africa.

Muammar Gaddafi may succeed in crushing the uprising by the use of extreme force. The dictator's fall will be, however, an irrevocable blow to Europe's current migration policy. The loss of Europe's hired gun in the fight against irregular migration will lead to a more open confrontation between the EU armed guards and the African migrants in high seas. How far will Europe go to stop the African from reaching its frontiers?

* Behzad Yaghmaian is a professor of political economy at Ramapo College of New Jersey, and the author of Embracing the Infidel: Stories of Muslim Migrants on the Journey West and the forthcoming The Greatest Migration: a People’s Story of China’s March to Power. He can be reached at behzad.yaghmaian@gmail.com .

Nima Shirazi * | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

"The gradual abolition of the slave trade: or leaving of sugar by degrees in 1792" by Isaac Cruikshank

Last week, Indypendent journalist and frequent Mondoweiss contributor Alex Kane noted:

"As the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement continues full-steam ahead in its efforts to force Israel to comply with international law, pro-Israel hawks are increasingly attempting to link the movement to anti-Semitism and Nazi Germany-era policies."

The latest example of this disingenuous and intellectually dishonest smear campaign comes (unsurprisingly) from Jeffrey Goldberg, the former IDF prison guard, unabashed warmonger, and Zionist apologist and propagandist, who recently cheered the New Israel Fund for, in his words, leaving the "BDS swamp."

Despite Goldberg's claim to be "running a campaign on this blog against the cheap deployment of Nazi imagery in argument-making," he does just that, stating that "it's a fair analogy" to liken the boycott of Israeli goods to the Nazi boycott of Jewish businesses in 1933, explaining that "the BDS movement, like no other anti-Israel propaganda campaign, has sent chills down the collective Jewish spine precisely because economic boycotts have been, throughout history, used to hurt Jews."

Kane, in his cogent response, accurately points out many of Goldberg's errors. For example, Kane notes that the BDS campaign is not a "European-centered campaign," as Goldberg writes, but rather is "a Palestinian-led civil society movement that has spread to the Western world." He also points out that Goldberg is "guilty of conflating Israel with Judaism, and Jews with Israelis," continuing:

"The BDS movement is not an economic boycott directed against Jews; it is a boycott movement directed against the State of Israel, which labels itself the Jewish State, because of its flagrant violations of international law and its continued occupation of Palestinian land."

As per the Nazi analogy, Kane writes that while "Nazi Germany instituted a blanket boycott...directed at a persecuted minority just because of their religious faith...[t]he BDS movement is targeting a state, asking Israel to comply with their obligations under international law, because of their unjust and oppressive policies towards the Palestinian people."

But this is not the limit of Goldberg's spurious claims and specious equivalency. What could - and should - also be addressed is Goldberg's blanket contention that "economic boycotts have been, throughout history, used to hurt Jews."

This statement follows Goldberg's pattern of labeling any and all human rights efforts as "anti-Semitic" whenever they happen to address war crimes, contempt for international law, rampant and aggressive discrimination, land and water theft, ethnic cleansing, and collective punishment routinely committed by the Israeli government and military and widely supported (or ignored, or justified) by the Israeli public.

Goldberg not only traffics in knee-jerk emotional blackmail, as usual - yelling "Nazi!" in a crowded blogosphere - but also relies on a very selective historical memory regarding the history of boycotts and campaigns to educate the public about ongoing injustice and mobilize it against such atrocities.

Even leaving the most obvious, and historically recent, connection of the boycott of Apartheid South Africa to the BDS call aside, Goldberg's contention still falls flat.

In what the BBC describes as "one of the earliest examples of consumers using their purchasing power to reject the trade in goods which have not been ethically produced," British civil society widely boycotted sugar produced by slaves in the Caribbean in 1791. Spurred by the distribution of thousands of pro-boycott pamphlets by the London Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade, eventually some 300,000 Britons boycotted sugar, resulting in sugar sales dropping by anywhere from a third to a half during that time. Many shops even advertised goods produced by 'freemen,' while sales of sugar from India, where slavery was not used, increased tenfold over two years.

BBC reports that "Hundreds of thousands of people also signed petitions calling for the abolition of the slave trade. Many supported the campaign against their own interests. For example, in Manchester (which sold some £200,000 worth of goods each year to slave ships) roughly 20% of the city's population signed petitions in support of abolition. The size and strength of feeling demonstrated by these popular protests made even pro-slavery politicians consider the consequences of ignoring public opinion. One pro-slavery lobbyist of the time noted that the 'Press teems with pamphlets upon the subject...The stream of popularity runs against us.'"

Also, during this time, even artists joined the fight to expose injustice. Poet Robert Southey spoke of tea as "the blood-sweetened beverage," and Sir William Fox urged the tea drinker "As he sweetens his tea, let him...say as he truly may, this lump cost the poor slave a groan, and this a bloody stroke with a cartwhip."

One wonders what could be written today about every dollop of Sabra hummus or each squirt of Ahava moisture-enhancing face "cleanser."

As Goldberg invokes the Nazi boycott of Jewish businesses to disingenuously link BDS to anti-Semitism, he doesn't address the fact that the boycott lasted (at most) three days, was widely ignored by the German public and abandoned due to its damaging effect on the economy. He then deliberately ignores the historical record, which shows that the ineffective (though unquestionably appalling and racist) Nazi boycott was actually preceded by an anti-Nazi boycott of German business, organized by the American Jewish community.

On March 23, 1933, less than two months after Hitler was sworn in as Chancellor, less than one month after the infamous Reichstag Fire of February 27 (the false-flag operation which paved the way for massive Nazi gains in the parliamentary elections six days later) and the exact same day that the parliament voted overwhelmingly to gave Hitler dictatorial powers, New York City's Jewish War Veterans, after considering the consequences for the already persecuted German Jewry, became the first American organization to announce a trade boycott of the Third Reich and organize a massive protest parade, in which over 4,000 veterans marched on City Hall and were welcomed by Mayor John P. O'Brien.

Soon thereafter, a coalition of the American Jewish Congress, the Non-Sectarian Anti-Nazi League, and the Jewish Labor Committee sponsored simultaneous protest rallies in New York, Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Cleveland and numerous other locations, encouraging the boycott of German goods. The New York rally, held at Madison Square Garden, was broadcast worldwide and featured speeches delivered by American Jewish, Christian, and labor leaders, along with Senator Robert F. Wagner and former New York governor Al Smith, calling "for an immediate cessation of the brutal treatment being inflicted on German Jewry." Four years later, another rally sponsored by the AJC and the Jewish Labor Committee was held at Madison Square Garden, at which union leader John L. Lewis, New York Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia, and Rabbi Stephen Wise all spoke in support of boycott.

Nevertheless, the boycott movement - both in the US and worldwide - was largely unsuccessful, in part due to governments' unwillingness to cut economic ties with the heavily industrialized Germany, but also because the Jewish community itself was divided on the issue. Historian Lenni Brenner writes that "there were those in the Jewish community in America and Britain who specifically opposed the very notion of a boycott. The American Jewish Committee, the B’nai B’rith (Sons of the Covenant) fraternal order and the Board of Deputies of British Jews refused to back the boycott. However, of all of the active Jewish opponents of the boycott idea, the most important was the World Zionist Organisation (WZO). It not only bought German wares; it sold them, and even sought out new customers for Hitler and his industrialist backers."

The WZO, intent on pursuing policies which would promote the establishment of a Zionist state in what was then Mandatory Palestine, "saw Hitler's victory in much the same way as its German affiliate, the ZVfD [Zionistische Vereinigung fuer Deutschland, or the Zionist Federation of Germany]: not primarily as a defeat for all Jewry, but as positive proof of the bankruptcy of assimilationism and liberalism," Brenner tells us. These sentiments were enthusiastically expressed by the renowned German biographer Emil Ludwig during a visit to the United States at the time. "Hitler will be forgotten in a few years, but he will have a beautiful monument in Palestine," he said. "Thousands who seemed to be completely lost to Judaism were brought back to the fold by Hitler, and for that I am personally very grateful to him.” (Meyer Steinglass, "Emil Ludwig before the Judge," American Jewish Times, April 1936)

Clearly, Zionist opposition to morally-justifiable boycott - in service of its ethnocentric ideology - is nothing new. But as history has shown, boycotts can succeed despite libelous opposition and propaganda - it just takes time.

*****

A portion of this article was previously published in my September 10, 2010 piece, "The Thin Green Line," here on Wide Asleep in America.

* Nima Shirazi is a writer and musician from New York City. His political commentary is published on his website, Wide Asleep in America.com. His analysis of United States policy and Middle East issues, particularly with reference to current events in Iran, Israel, and Palestine, can also be found in numerous other online and print publications.

By Jeff Gates * | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

For those who think the U.S. is broke, think again. It’s far more serious than that.

To renew Bush-era tax cuts for our most well-to-do 2% would reduce U.S. government revenues by $700 billion over the decade. That shortfall will need to be borrowed.

Or we could provide college scholarships to 14 million U.S. high school students. Or tuition, room and board for about half of today’s college students.

$700 billion is also the interest expense on the $3 trillion that the U.S. is projected to borrow to fund the long-term costs of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Of that interest paid to individuals, care to guess what portion finds its way to the topmost 2%?

$700 billion is also the amount authorized in October 2008 to stabilize the financial sector as part of the Troubled Assets Relief Program.

To boost liquidity, the Federal Reserve just announced $600 billion in “quantitative easing” over the next six months. That sum could be increased by another $300 billion.

A December 1^st report brought news that, from March 2008 to May 2009, the Fed extended nearly $9 trillion in short-term loans to 18 financial institutions.

That’s our full faith and credit at work making the world safe for financial markets. And for the elite of Wall Street. To show their gratitude to the American public, the financial sector just paid themselves $144 billion in year-end bonuses.

Meanwhile long-term unemployment is the worst since the Great Depression and fiscal disorder is now commonplace at the federal, state and local level.

States and municipalities have around $2.8 trillion of outstanding bonds. That debt is dwarfed by debts that are off the books, including as much as $3.5 trillion in pension shortfalls.  The situation resembles the run-up to the subprime mortgage meltdown

Meanwhile, the first of 78 million Baby Boomers born between 1946 and 1964 reach age 65 in 2011. This demographic bubble ensures fiscal strains unlike anything the U.S. has ever experienced.

Breaking the Habit

The topmost few have fared well over the past three decades. Then there’s everyone else.

In 1981, a $872 billion tax cut and investment stimulus helped expand national net worth by $5 trillion from 1983 to 1989. 54% was claimed by the half million families who make up the top one-half of one percent of the U.S. population.

That works out to an average $5.4 million gain per already-wealthy household. That’s a $65,000 increase in wealth per month or $90 per hour, 24 hours a day.

As with our wars, that surge in personal wealth was financed with debt. While the public got the debt, the well-to-do got ownership of the assets financed with that debt, along with the bulk of the interest.

That boost to personal wealth dates to when the stock market was a fraction of what it is today. Now the top 1% have a combined net worth greater than the bottom 90 percent.

The top 1% own 34% of all private net worth; the bottom 90% own 29%.

From 2002-2006, the topmost one percent received two-thirds of the gains in national income. That trend has remained steady over three decades.

During the 1977-1989 period, the top 1% claimed 70% of the increase in household income. The U.S. is now witnessing its widest ever disparities in wealth and income.

Reagan-era “supply-side” economics was marketed with campaign rhetoric remarkably similar to what we hear again today.

Reagan policies doubled the national debt in just one year.

Financial Reality

Over the past several decades, financial freedom has emerged as a proxy for personal freedom and the pursuit of financial returns as a proxy for the pursuit of happiness.

The economic environment changed such that those values not calculable in money are, by design, displaced. While that may not be what we want, that’s what we were schooled to do.

The trends confirm steadily increasing disparities in both wealth and income. Much as concentrated wealth undermines democracies, concentrated income undermines markets.

Americans do not yet grasp how this money-myopic mindset worked its way into education and imbedded itself in law. Yet our shared embrace of a “consensus” mindset induces us to freely embrace the very forces that now jeopardize our freedom.

There are no winners in this model, only creditors and debtors. The trends are not even good for the financially well-to-do. Lawmakers are right to worry that civil disorder is emerging as a possibility in reaction to growing social discontent.

Lacking the political will to address this steady dissolution of civil society, the U.S. faces increasing instability. How Americans respond will define what America becomes.

Should the union dissolve, the seeds of its destruction will be traceable to this shared mindset.

* Jeff Gates is a widely acclaimed author, attorney, investment banker, educator and consultant to government, corporate and union leaders worldwide, Jeff Gates' latest book is Guilt by Association -How Deception and Self-Deceit Took America to War (2008) his first release in the Criminal State series. His previous books include Democracy At Risk and The Ownership Solution. See his website Criminal State

By Dr. Elias Akleh * | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

The world has been lately busy with what could be considered major wars and other low level conflicts. The major wars can be seen in places such as Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, and Palestine, while low level conflicts can be seen in places like Haiti, Somalia, India, and Sudan. Potential future wars are planned to break out in places like Korea, Yemen, and the Persian Gulf region (Iran). Yet all these wars are just distracting symptoms of a hidden war that is still being waged since the beginning of humanity.

Since creation (possibly millions of years ago) Man has been engaged in conflict and battles killing his brother for land and for its natural resources. Although billions of people were killed, empires collapsed, cities burnt and destroyed, civilizations lost, and land torched and contaminated, the so-called civilized modern Man of today is still not convinced that wars do not solve conflicts but exacerbate them. Wars are still being waged, Cain keeps killing his brother Abel, despite the wide spread anti-war movements and the many peace activists, for they, like many modern physicians, are not aware of the real cause of conflict; the hidden war, and keep attempting to cure the symptoms rather than the cause.

But what is this hidden war that the majority of people are not aware of? This is the war of the powerful minority (wealthy power elites) against the weaker majority of the population of the whole world including one's own countrymen.

The symbol of the unfinished pyramid with its all-seeing eye on top on the American one Dollar bill represents the state of the world. This pyramid represents the power hierarchy and is divided into three major structures; the controlled at the bottom, the administrators and enforcer of power at the middle, and the controllers at the unfinished top with the all-seeing eye. The first two structures are also subdivided into lesser substructures.

One may notice that this pyramid's top is not complete yet. This top represents a completely controlled world order first mentioned publically by President George Bush, the father, as the New World Order. This world order is still not yet complete.

A correlative pyramid, though inverted, is implied by the first. This inverted pyramid represents the global wealth distribution and shows that the largest accumulation of wealth is at the top of the pyramid while the majority of the people barely have 2-5% of wealth.

The bottom totally controlled structure comprises the majority of world population that includes the lower and middle classes, ranging from the absolute helpless impoverished people to the well-off business middle class. The impoverished are the hardest laborers yet barely earn enough morsels to keep them alive. The middle class also work hard but enjoys better quality of life and exert a little power over the lives of the impoverished.

At the second structure we find the administrators and the enforcers of power. Here we have the governments of the world, the military industrial complexes, and the religious institutions. These have total control over the population of the lower structure. They also enter into dynamic inter-relationships, cooperating and fighting, among each other. The present day wars we are witnessing are the result of conflict between different governments and different religions, and the competition between opposing military industrial complexes.

The controllers at the top are the wealthiest 3-5% of the families of the world population. The assets of some of these families are roughly estimated to be larger than the budgets of many countries combined. Their power over all the lower structures of the pyramid comes through their possession of and control over global money resources; i.e. central banks and financial institutions. Central banks such as the American Federal Reserve and the Bank of England print fiat paper money not backed by any real value such as precious metals. Through fractional-reserve banking system this money is loaned to governments and other governmental central banks in the form of bonds and charge interest for it. The government pays the interest from taxes collected from the people while other central banks charge higher interest to offset the interest they pay and to make some profit. The government and its central banks are, thus, in debt to the Federal Reserve. This debt is the bases for the country's national budget deficit.

Through their wealth this power elite had acquired the major industries of many countries especially the military and associated industries. They also control governments and dictate their policies through the buying of politicians with bribes, political rewards, and blackmail. They control political leaders, popes, and presidents by financing their ascendance to power position. Disloyal presidents, who attempt to promote self-interest or oppose the elite's plans, can easily lose their second term in office; e.g. George W. Bush and his unfinished war against Iraq, and Jimmy Carter and his solar energy plans. Others who directly opposed them or threatened their interests are assassinated e.g. failed assassination attempt on Andrew Jackson for destroying the privately owned Second Bank of US, Abraham Lincoln's assassination for his National Bank Act of 1863 and his Greenback money system, James Garfield's assassination for introducing silver into currency to refinance the federal debt, Warren Harding's suspicious death for reducing taxes and raising tariffs producing budget surplus, and failed assassination of Ronald Reagan for his appointment of the Gold Commission exposing the fact that US Treasury owns none of the gold at Fort Knox as believed by all Americans. Many other political leaders had been assassinated as documented in John Perkins' book "confessions of an Economic Hit Man". Even Popes were not spared assassination; suspicious death of Pope John Paul I in 28^th September 1978, only 33 days after his election as pope, for his decision to investigate the Vatican Bank (In God's Name: An investigation into the Murder of Pope John Paul I, by David Yallop".

Tracing back the history of these controllers one discovers that they were the money changers of the ancient times. They had accumulated wealth through usury; lending money for high interest. They used to lend money to kings to pay for their wars and conquests. Through their money they acquired the military industry; a very profitable business during wars. But this military industry needs wars to flourish. So the money changers hired mercenaries to commit what we now call false-flag terror attacks against one country and then accuse another country of the crime. The money changers then loan money to both countries to buy weapons they manufacture themselves. When the war ends the money changers again lend money to both countries to re-build their infrastructures and their economies. Usury has become the tool used by the money changers to gain power over governments and to dictate their demands over them.

War is the biggest debt generator. Governments borrow money for weapons procurement to assure victory. The power elite provide both money and weapons to both sides of conflict. The loser will be loaned more money and sold more weapons to regain victory thus perpetuating the conflict while the financing money changers reap big profit. The Iraq-Iran eight years war is just one example.

We should remember the warning words of President Woodraw Wilson:

"In the US today we have in effect two governments; we have the duly constituted government, then we have an independent, uncontrolled and uncoordinated government in the Federal Reserve System operating the money powers which are reserved to Congress by the constitution … we have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled governments in the civilized world; no longer a government of free opinion, no longer a government by a vote of the majority, but a government by the opinion and duress of a small group of dominant men"

According to President Wilson the richest and most powerful country of the world; the US, has been under the grip of few powerful men since 1913. Can we imagine how much control they have now 97 years later?

The power elite control money printing. They would create economic boom lending money to everyone, and then create a shortage of money causing depression. This money manipulation through inflation and deflation traps businesses into debt with high interest they could not pay leading foreclosures. This way the power elite would buy businesses and properties for pennies on the dollar. The late housing crisis in the US is just one example.

The power elite use their influence over governments to draw border lines to separate nations. They use ideologies and religions to create enmity and bet people against each other. They had created and financed Fascism, Nazism and Zionism. They had started and inflamed both World Wars. They created Communism to oppose Capitalism; dividing the world into two halves with aggressive arms race that benefited only the military industries. They had committed false-flag terror attacks against the US to drive the Americans into wars against many other countries.

After the collapse of Communism the power elite committed the 911 terror attack (gooogle 911 truth seekers) to incite Islamophopia and war against global terrorism mainly in the Islamic World. Islam is the last obstacle against the creation of the New World Order. Bankers and financiers could not penetrate the Islamic World because Islam prohibits usury and considers it a great sin. Islamophobia and terrorism were created to destroy Islam and to enforce western banking systems under the guise of spreading freedom and democracy, as has been done in Iraq.

The US and EU countries have been driven into the draining war against global terror that created huge budget deficits worth trillions of dollars. The power elite now is taking advantage of this debt to gain yet more power and to siphon more of people's hard earning money into their own pockets. This is seen in the recent global money crises with its so-called austerity plan; laying off workers, increasing retirement age, bailing out doomed banks and corporations, tax cut for the rich, budget cuts of the educational systems, attempt to control social security and retirement funds, and freezing the salaries of government employees among many other measures.

During the early 19^th century the money changers financed the conquest of Napoleon Bonaparte of Europe, the Middle East, and Russia. At the same time they also financed every country Napoleon had invaded. When Napoleon was defeated first time at Leipzig in 1813 and was exiled to the island of Elba, the money changers financed him again to return to power. At the same time they financed the British troops, who defeated Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo. During his last days Napoleon wrote:

"The hand that gives is above the hand that takes. Money has no motherland. Financiers are without patriotism and without decency. Their sole object is gain."

In his only act of violence that contradicted his peaceful teachings of love and turning the other cheek, Jesus Christ had whipped the money changers out of the temple accusing them of turning the house of prayer into "a den of thieves" (Mathew 21: 12 & 13).

Shouldn't we follow Jesus' example and kick those evil money changers out of our society?

* Dr. Elias Akleh is an Arab writer from a Palestinian descent born in the town of Beit Jala. His family was first evicted from Haifa after the "Nakba" of 1948, then from Beit Jala after the "Nakseh" of 1967. He lives now in the US, and publishes his articles on the web in both English and Arabic.

By Stephen Lendman * | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

Wall Street does it. Other Western banks do it. They all exploit markets, often ripping off customers illegally. Why not Israeli banks also in their own back yard, easily in expanding settlements.

The Coalition of Women for Peace (CWP) includes 10 feminist organizations and non-affiliated activist women in Israel. Founded in 2000, it advocates "radical social and political change," and is "a leading voice against the occupation, committed to feminist principles of organizing and Jewish-Palestinian partnership in a relentless struggle for a just peace."

In October, it released a report (PDF) titled, "Financing the Israeli Occupation, The Direct Involvement of Israeli Banks in Illegal Settlement Activity and Control over the Palestinian Banking Market."

Besides stealing Palestinian land, economic interests play a large role in Israel's occupation, including resource control, labor exploitation, and commercial enterprises of all kinds, operating freely and illegally in settlements, banks among them.

Israeli banks profiteer several ways discussed below, but make no mistake. Like in the West, they're predators, especially in Occupied Palestine, permitted to steal and exploit because what say have occupied people. As a result, banks (construction companies, and other commercial enterprises) breach international law as participants in illegal projects, a lucrative profit center they freely exploit.

To encourage migration, Israel offers generous benefits and incentives, most settlements given National Priority Area A status, entitling them to:

• quality, low-cost housing with subsidized mortgages;
• free education from age three and extended school days;
• free transportation to and from schools, and higher teacher salaries to attract qualified ones to move;
• for industry and agriculture, grants and subsidies, indemnification from EU produce tariffs, significantly lower taxes than inside the Green Line; and
• larger balancing grants to help settlements cover deficits.

In all aspects of finance, Israel banks are involved, profiteering from an expanding market six ways:

(1) Providing mortgages to homebuyers

Six large Israeli banks provide them - Bank Hapoalim, Leumi Mortgage Bank (of Bank Leumi), Mizrahi Tefahot Bank, Discount Mortgage Bank (of Israel Discount Bank), The First International Bank of Israel (FIBI), and Jerusalem Bank. All offer mortgages in the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Golan, seized from Syria in 1967. By so doing, they actively participate illegally in Israel's occupation.

Moreover, as lenders, they're also owners until mortgages loans are repaid, and if not, they seize properties in default, making banks sole owners of illegal ones on stolen land, becoming more than ever criminally complicit.

(2) Providing overall settlement financing

Israeli housing construction projects (in Israeli and the Territories) depend heavily on loans from inception through completion. They're provided under special terms known as "accompaniment agreements" (Heskem Livui). Moreover, they're regulated by the Sale of Apartments Law (Assurance of Investments for Apartment Buyers) and under Bank of Israel management regulations. They're also supervised by the Israeli Ministry of Construction and Housing.

These agreements are crucial. Without them, completion of many projects might be jeopardized. Under their provisions, the accompanying bank holds property as collateral until housing units find buyers. Construction companies, in turn, get a reliable source of financing, including credit and guarantees on projects undertaken.

Prior to an agreement, special bank officers evaluate a project's profitability. If approved, development is monitored from start to finish, and banks also are involved in determining prices for finished properties. In addition, home buyer payments are deposited in special accounts, exclusively for that purpose, controlled by accompanying banks to manage all related financial transactions.

In 2008, the Sale of Apartments Law was amended, tightening oversight of accompaniment agreements after fraud was exposed in a case called the Heftziba Affair. It involved one of Israel's largest construction companies - Heftziba.

Specializing in low-cost housing, it went bankrupt, after which its owner, Boaz Yona, was convicted of fraudulently stealing millions of dollars from unwary clients, without providing promised apartments. As a result, the amended Law requires an appointed Ministry of Construction and Housing commissioner, responsible for the registration and management of accompaniment agreements. The appointee must then submit an annual activity report to the Knesset Finance Committee.

In practice, however, agreements are privileged information between banks and construction companies, unavailable to the public. As a result, the 2009 report omitted privileged details, making it of little value. CWP appealed to the Ministry of Construction under Israel's Freedom of Information Act. Established by its Freedom of Information Law, it's, in fact, weak legislation, exempting many public agencies from complying, especially on security related issues. As a result, sanctions are seldom imposed, and appeals rarely upheld.

In response to CWP's effort, the Ministry declined, saying it lacked the requested information, whether or not true. As a result, CWP got what it could from banks and construction companies directly. They, of course, withhold vital details freely if they choose.

(3) Providing financial services to Settlement Authorities

Like settlements, local and regional councils and municipalities connected to them require financing for infrastructure, other projects, and essential services. Banks provide it for greater profits, including through loans, managing accounts, and other services.

Loans finance activities and establish enduring relationships, their provisions making banks investors in continued development and settlements growth, producing reliable income streams and greater profits. Overall, hundreds of millions of dollars are involved for projects ranging from a few to up to 99 years duration, supplement by new ones as settlements expand.

(4) Occupied Territory branch banking

Besides financing, all major commercial banks service private customers through West Bank, East Jerusalem and Golan branches - the more settlers, the more customers, and the more branch banks, the more strengthened Israel's settlement project becomes.

According to Bank of Israel data, 34 branches operate in settlements, providing the same services as throughout Israel, including personal and business accounts, mortgage and other lending, credit cards, and other financial services, all of it profiteering illegally.

(5) Business Lending

Occupation is profitable, including for many Israeli and international commercial enterprises. They also need financing to grow. Banks provide it. CWP learned that "all Israeli commercial banks provide business loans for companies that are directly and clearly involved in the occupation." In other words, they operate illegally in the settlements, and they know it.

(6) The relationship between Israeli banks and the Palestinian banking market

By agreement between Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA), only the shekel, dollar, euro and Jordanian dinar are used. The shekel, in fact, increases the Palestinian economy's subordination to Israel's much larger one.

The shekel's market share depends on several factors, including taxes, mainly from customs, and the VAT. In addition, most Palestinians with jobs work in settlements, and Israel has a thriving export and import market. The trade balance is illustrative. Of about 20 billion annual shekel transfers, 80% accrue to Israel.

Moreover, Palestinian banks have no direct access to the shekel clearing house, so must buy services from Israeli banks, mainly Bank Hapoalim and Discount Bank. However, arrangements impose "several limitations and have severe implications on the" cost burden Palestinian banks must bear.

Under established arrangements, Israeli banks demand collateral deposits of over one billion shekels (over 212 million euros), earning no interest. In addition, they charge high commissions, increasing costs and risks for their Palestinian counterparties. As a result, Palestinian banks incur deficits in the arrangement, impeding their development, and for some their viability.

Moreover, only some Palestinian banks may transfer shekels to Israeli banks. Newer ones are excluded to obstruct their ability to operate. In addition, the Bank of Israel controls monetary policy, including the amount issued, interest charged, inflation-targeting, foreign currency purchases, and export policies favoring Israel, not Palestine. Overall, Palestinian banks face enormous burdens, unfairly imposed to disadvantage them.

A Final Comment

Nearly all Israeli commercial banks exploit the Territories freely, effecting erasing the Green Line financially and commercially. Israeli and international enterprises are advantaged at the expense of Palestinian ones.

By profiteering from occupation, these banks bear direct responsibility and must "be held accountable for their role in the financing of economic activity which sustains continued Israeli control" illegally. They also perpetuate the Palestinians' enormous burden under "unjust conditions," ones demanding redress.

* Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon.

By Stephen Lendman* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

Throughout 43 years of occupation, Israel has waged war on Palestinians' human rights and civil liberties, a new UN report providing more evidence that keeps mounting exponentially, adding clarity about an out-of-control rogue state operating lawlessly.

On August 10, Haaretz writer Akiva Eldar cited it in an article headlined, "UN report: IDF barring Gazans' access to farms, fishing zones," saying:

"Over the last 10 years, the (IDF has) increasingly restricted Palestinian access to farmland on the Gazan side of the Israeli-Gaza border as well as (offshore waters) along the Gaza beach, a United Nations report (just) revealed."

Click to enlarge

Despite the Green Line, Oslo Accords, the so-called 2005 "disengagement," ongoing siege, the continued theft of West Bank and East Jerusalem land and more, Israel imposes punitive restrictions on Gazans, including under the 1994 Jericho Agreement. It established a 1,000 meter-wide "security perimeter" in the Territory, Palestinian police enforcing "special security measures" to prevent entry into Israel without permission.

A separate provision allowed a 20 nautical mile area off Gaza's coast for fishing, recreation, and other economic activities. Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA), in theory, share joint enforcement authority, but, in fact, Israel has sole control.

Since September 2000, the start of the second Intifada, Israel took over more repressively than ever. Palestinians have been denied all rights in their own territory under vague and restrictive rules, including use of their own land and waters. As a result, Gazans have been irreparably harmed.

Defining the Restricted Areas and Affected Populations

Israel's precise access parameters "are uncertain," including boundaries, conditions allowing or denying entry, and consequences if against Israeli restrictions. Morever, in the past decade, the IDF hardened measures in place.

Up to November 2008, a 300 meter prohibition was imposed. After Cast Lead, however, it expanded to a 1,000 - 1,500 meters, putting valuable farmland and residential areas off limits as follows:

• a "no-go zone" up to 500 meters inside the Green Line. Those entering may be shot on sight. Israeli incursions regularly occur, destroying property found, including crops; and
• a "high risk" zone up to 1,500 meters within the Line. "Opening fire at people accessing this area, as well as land leveling and property destruction, are common and widespread practices....carried out irregularly and unpredictably."

Affected Gazans reported even worse harshness, affecting areas up to 3,000 meters inside the Line. Omitting these from UN calculations, the combined "no go/high risk" prohibitions cover about 62.6 square km or about 17% of Gaza (95% of which is arable land), off limits to Palestinians who own it. In total, they're denied access to 35% of the Territory's cultivable farmland, a major blow to its agriculture.

In addition, under the 2002 Bertini Commitment, Israel tightened coastal water restrictions from 20 nautical miles (NM) offshore to 12, but, in fact, even harsher limits were imposed. Some areas were entirely closed, others allowed open only part of the year. In mid-2006, restrictions applied beyond six NM, and after Cast Lead beyond three and in some areas only one. As a result, Gazans are gradually losing all rights to their coastal waters, those entering restricted areas risking life and loss of property.

"Overall, Palestinians are totally prevented from accessing 85 percent of the sea areas on which they are entitled to carry out maritime activities, including fishing, according to the 1994 Gaza-Jericho Agreement." About 113,000 people are affected (7.5% of Gaza's population), including those owning land and other property in restricted areas.

Many fisherman have also been harmed, Gaza's Ministry of Agriculture reporting at yearend 2009 that only 3,500 were registered, down from 10,000 in September 2000 when restrictions began. The number of people directly affected by land and fishing limits is about 178,000 or 12% of the population.

The Resulting Crisis

The UN report cites Israel's "systematic lack of respect for (Gazans') basic rights, as enshrined in international humanitarian and human rights law."

Worse still, are its enforcement methods, including:

• arbitrarily opening fire on anyone entering restricted areas, at times with warning shots, others with intent to kill, incidents happening daily. "The Fishermen's Syndicate reported that in (Q 1 2010)," 48 live firings on fishermen occurred, an average of four a week. A small percentage caused death or injury, but the risk is always present.

In the 19 month period from January 2009 through July 2010, 22 civilian deaths (including six children) and 146 injuries were reported (including 27 children).

Legal Implications

International law is clear and unequivocal, civilians at all times to be treated as protected persons during conflicts and occupation. The principle of distinction puts combatants and others in separate categories.

Targeting civilians is absolutely prohibited, regardless of circumstances, and when launching attacks, care must be taken to avoid harming them and their property. Yet Israel consistently and egregiously defiles the law, acting willfully in violation with impunity, besides its draconian military laws and medieval siege, not covered in the UN report.

Yet they're crucial to understand the severity of conditions, causing sustained, extreme, unrelenting humanitarian harm in a climate of uncertainty. Palestinians never know if they, their neighborhoods, or loved ones will be attacked. Fishermen are always endangered, and anyone collecting rubble or scrap metal in restricted areas may be shot, killed or injured, including women and children.

Worse still is the lack of clarity for demarcated areas, besides Israel changing them regularly without notice. In addition, at least once, misleading information was provided, the Israeli air force (in May 2009) dropping thousands of leaflets warning Gazans not to enter areas closer than 300 meters from the Green Line when, in fact, restrictions were up to 1,500 and in some areas 3,000.

"The lack of clarity, (arbitrary modifications), and unpredictability associated with this access regime makes it highly arbitrary, thus significantly increasing the level of risk to thousands of civilians who depend on access....for their livelihoods."

Destruction of Land and Property

Most occurred since September 2000, areas over 300 meters especially since 2006. As a result, "most (affected) agricultural land has been gradually abandoned and structures never reconstructed."

Since late 2008, regular land, crops and property destruction has been "carried out more less regularly" during weekly IDF incursions, typically by four to 10 tanks, bulldozers and jeeps, accompanied by helicopters, drones, and live fire. From January through May 2010, 72 recorded incidents occurred, averaging over three a week, Gazans never knowing where or when they'll strike, or who may be affected.

They're also targeted by remotely-controlled weapon stations, deployed in secured pillboxes every several hundred meters along the Green Line. Each contains machine guns able to hit targets up to 1.5 km away. According to Haaretz, "the procedure to authorize opening fire is complex, but takes less than two minutes" to complete. An assault is then initiated by pressing a button. Live fire guided by relayed field images and ground sensors follows, as well as more from aircraft and drones.

Attacks are also made by tanks and other weapons, in all cases against nonviolent civilians in violation of international law. After years of occupation and conflict, the toll is horrific, ordinary people up against the world's fourth most powerful military acting lawlessly against noncombatants.

In economic terms alone, the UN conservatively estimated a $308 million cost over the past five years (excluding Cast Lead) affecting:

• nearly 4,500 acres of land planted with fruit trees;
• another 1,500 acres of greenhouses;
• 1,000 residential structures;
• over 300 water wells;
• Gaza's water purification system and sole power plant;
• six factories; and
• the toll on fishermen, their boats and equipment.

Impact on Gazans' Livelihood

Affected Gazans have been impoverished and denied essentials under siege, besides living in fear and threatened almost daily with aggressive assaults. In economic terms, the loss of livelihoods and property alone has been devastating, affecting fruit trees, greenhouses, water wells, sheep and chicken farms, other farmland, fishing boats and equipment, factories, schools, hospitals, mosques, homes, and other structures.

An estimated 75,000 annual metric tons of produce alone has been lost, increasing as Israel destroys more land, farmers losing a third or more of their income. Fayyadh Al-Sumeiri's situation is typical. In 2003, the IDF leveled his small farm. Another plot with olive trees was destroyed in late 2008. He replaced it with wheat, rented some additional land, but both areas were again bulldozed during Cast Lead plus an irrigation network.

Lost income impoverished him and his family, plunging him into debt, Al-Sumeiri saying:

"Every day I pass by shops and see people that I owe money to, and I lower my head. I don't know what to do because I have no income. Everything we earned was from the land and every meter we planted was destroyed. Every day I pray that I will be able to return to my land and bring it back to the state it was in."

Thousands of other Gazan farmers tell similar stories, the siege, war, occupation, and regular incursions suffocating them slowly. It's slow-motion genocide ongoing for years, affecting the entire population, 1.5 million people trapped in the world's largest open-air prison.

Coping Under Siege

Under dire conditions, humanitarian aid has helped but not enough "to make a substantial difference in the lives of the affected population." As a result, strategies to generate alternate income have been used, farmers, for example, trying crop diversification or open-air planting after greenhouses were destroyed. Others sold assets or rely on the tunnel economy. Yet income generated is meager compared to earlier, including by fishermen, restricted on where they can go so their catch is smaller, less lucrative, and over-fished shallower waters are being depleted, compromising them further.

Other coping methods involve buying less, including essentials harming health and well-being, but with little income there's no choice. The quantity and quality of food consumed has dropped. As a result, health problems have increased, including higher incidences of anemia, diabetes, high blood pressure, and other illnesses. Overall, the quality of life in all respects has steadily eroded since fall 2000, especially under siege.

Impact on Education

Seven educational institutions were identified within 1,500 meters of the Green Line, affecting around 250 teachers, administrative and maintenance staff serving about 4,400 students from elementary school to vocational training. Cast Lead entirely destroyed another school in the restricted area plus others, including college facilities, throughout the Strip.

Overall, "The safety of students and staff attending these institutions, the quality of education provided and the level of educational achievement have been seriously undermined by their frequent exposure to Israeli fire...." As a result, schools have incurred significant damage, remain vulnerable, and have diverted scarce funds for recurrent repair needs.

Students and staff say classes are often interrupted by nearby assaults, yet believe children are safer in school than if evacuated elsewhere, exposing them to conflict in the open. In addition, a shortage of facilities forces most schools to run on double schedules - shifts reducing overall class time, restricting the number of new students, and providing less education on very restricted budgets because everything needed is in short supply, compounded by traumatized students, their concentration and performance affected.

"A consistent message to emerge was that frequent exposure to life threatening situations, along with the systematic destruction of livelihoods, severely eroded people's basic sense of physical and economic security. This erosion is perceived as a key cause behind the recurrence of an array of negative symptoms" observed in students, families and communities, including:

• increased adult depression;
• frequent childrens' bedwetting;
• lower school performance;
• higher dropout rates;
• changes in nutrition habits;
• greater domestic violence, symptomatic of adult men losing their role as breadwinners; and
• weakening social networks because dangerous conditions keep people close to home, fewer family visits resulting.

Impact on Utility Infrastructure

Israeli restrictions have significantly impeded maintenance, repair and upgrading of wastewater and electricity infrastructure, harming all Gazans under siege. Located east of Jabalia up to 200 meters from the Green Line, the North Gaza Emergency Sewage Treatment Plant is the Strip's largest facility, able to handle the sewage for more than 500,000 people. Currently, IDF restrictions impede staff access, allow only daylight operations, and inadequate fuel and electricity compromise operations further.

Only recently did Israel approve "in principle" the relocation of a Khan Yunis facility, reaching up to 400 meters from the Line. Negotiations continue to allow required material imports as well as worker access to the site, Israeli bureaucratic restrictions so far preventing them.

For the past three years, a new Gaza City wastewater treatment plant, to replace an existing lower capacity one, has been stalled because of Israeli bureaucratic delays. As a result, around 80 million liters of untreated and partially-treated sewage is dumped daily into the Mediterranean Sea, contaminating Gaza's coastal areas and most drinking water.

"The (serious) public health concerns of the inability to properly treat the current volume of sewage produced in the Gaza Strip are significant," affecting the entire population, a topic addressed in previous articles accessed through the following links:
http://sabbah.in/dkb2j3

http://sabbah.in/dpbYub

As a result, less than 10% of Gaza's aquifer drinking water is safe, the rest toxic, exposing those consuming it to serious health risks, including anemia, diarrhea, parasitic skin and other infections, and infant mortality.

In addition, an electricity crisis exists.

"Overall, access restrictions to infrastructure delivering electricity from Israel into (Gaza) have compounded an already precarious situation caused by the steady decline in electricity produced by" the Strip's only facility. It's severely impeded by Israel's materials and spare parts ban, preventing proper maintenance and rehabilitation unless lifted.

Final Comments

UN findings reveal the impact of Israeli restrictions, exacerbated by Gaza's siege. Israel's "lethal" enforcement has "resulted in a severe 'protection crisis,' characterized by a systematic lack of respect for the most basic rights afforded to civilian populations under international law."

The entire Strip is impacted, especially Gazans close to the Green Line, fishermen confined to shallow coastal waters, as well as women, children, the elderly and infirm. Everyone needs help more than ever, mostly by lifting the siege, increasing humanitarian aid, ending Israeli incursions, and giving the population a chance to rebuild and restore their lives, livelihoods, and dignity. It's what Israel won't allow and world leaders still tolerate, violating their obligation under international law and Security Council Resolution 1860.

It called for "an immediate and durable ceasefire (leading) to a full Israeli withdrawal, unimpeded provision through Gaza of food, fuel and medical treatment, and intensified" efforts for peace. Yet it's been unsuccessful because Israel ignores it and enforcement pressure's not applied.

As a result, Gazans suffer grievously, the entire population harmed by an out-of-control rogue state, bogusly claiming security concerns to commit slow-motion genocide, the world community complicit by indifference. Strong measures for change are needed, what only mass outrage and intensified BDS pressure can achieve.

* Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon.

Ocha Opt Special Focus 2010-08-19 English

And this video shows Israeli shooting Palestinian fishermen boats (Vittorio Arrigoni’s Account of the Israeli Shooting Date : 09-01-2008):

Video link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yTUYivihoTE

By Mohammed Omer* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

Zaki Al-Habeel (left) prepares his boat. Photo: Mohammed Omer

Fishing was a profession that used to keep thousands of fishermen and their families fed, but with Israel restricting the movements of fishermen, the catches are diminishing.

The same fate has overtaken the local flower farmers whose carnations were the delight of lovers and loved ones across Europe. Gaza used to export 75 million flowers to the EU duty free, before Israel embargoed all export.

There is little movement on the harbor during the day. Only a few fishing boats line the piers of the Gaza Strip.

"The fish are waiting, but the fishermen are being kept away," says Zaki al-Habeel, 33-year-old father of seven. But just before sunset, he is ready to go fishing.

Al-Habeel is not allowed to go as far out as he used to. The fishermen have been set a limit of three miles. "But it is not really three full miles," he says.

Often he is only a mile-and-a-half out before the Israeli navy fires at him. Al-Habeel and his brothers who are all fishermen risk injuries and damage to equipment every time they sail out.

Over the last decade, the Israeli navy has increasingly restricted Palestinian access to fishing zones along the Gaza beach, a UN report revealed last month.

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) compiled the report in cooperation with the World Food Program (WFP).

The report said Palestinian fishermen have been barred from 85 percent of the naval territory to which they are entitled under the Oslo Agreement of 1993 between Israel and the PLO.

The report also focused on the buffer zone between Israel and Gaza where farmers are shot at for tilling their own lands. The report mentions 22 Palestinians killed and 146 wounded in such incidents since January 2009.

Yet the farmers and fishermen continue to access these prohibited areas, risking their life and limb.

As Al-Habeel says, he and his brothers "have to feed our families." The last time, the Israeli navy shot out the fuel lines that are connected to his boat. Al-Habeel was just relieved they did not hit the small fuel tank, which is expensive and hard to find.

Last month, a 22-year-old fisherman was hospitalized with gunshot injuries, when he was perhaps a little more than two miles from the shore, other fishermen said.

The plight of the flower growers is just as wretched. Gaza-grown carnations, marketed under the brand name Coral, were popular all over Europe. But the situation has been going downhill for a while. In 2008, IPS had interviewed the carnation farmer Majed Hadaeid when his situation was quite desperate.

He had owned a 130-dunam (32-acre) farm yielding 16-17 million carnations a year in 30 different varieties and colors This year he has lost his entire four-million-dollar business, and is burdened with debts amounting to 1.5 million dollars.

There is a faint hope though. The European Campaign to Break the Siege on Gaza announced in July that more than 9,000 delegates have applied to take a ‘freedom flotilla’ to Gaza. They are raising 100,000 euros to send an Irish ship this autumn.

Hadaeid hopes these aid boats from Europe will help the other farmers to survive. "We need the flotillas to keep up continuous pressure on Israel," he said.

The fishermen nostalgically remember that day in August 2008 when the first flotilla arrived and members of the Free Gaza Movement joined them on their boats.

Al-Habeel says, "We were then able to get as far as six miles to fish."

Everyone cheers the news of another flotilla. Fatima Subhi, a 49-year-old, schoolteacher said, "I welcome such delegations."

The news has not all been positive though. In May this year, Israelis attacked the Turkish aid boat Mavi Marmara killing many people on board, including a Turkish-American passenger.

Turkish flags are seen at almost every street corner. A dish-seller is wearing a Turkish flag as a T-shirt. "They shed their blood for us, so we wear their flag over our hearts," he says.

This summer, quite a few Turkish names have appeared on shop fronts. There is the Marmara Restaurant, the Istanbul Café and a ladies cosmetics shop simply called Istanbul.

Samir Al-Ejjel, who owns a shop selling carnations, has designed a bouquet he calls Erdogan in honor of the Turkish Prime Minister and has a Turkish flag flying outside his shop.

There was a report in the Israeli daily Maariv last week that thousands of activists from Western nations, as well as from Arab countries and even Israeli citizens, were preparing to send a flotilla of 30 ships.

Al-Habeel likes to think that the many different people who came by land or sea were just like the wide varieties of fish he used to catch.

As he waits hopefully for the flotillas to return, a younger fisherman talks about the "beautiful ladies" who were on board. "The Israelis do not dare to shoot at (European) women," he says with a smile.

"Those flotillas gave us hope that rights can be protected — even under gunfire," he added.

In the past, the fishermen and flower farmers have appealed to the EU for support. But with governments turning a deaf ear, they call on humanitarian activists from around the world. They hold on to the hope that by Christmas there will be more varieties of fish on the table here, and colorful Gaza carnations in the markets of Europe.

* Mohammed Omer is a Palestinian journalist. He has reported for numerous media outlets, including the Washington report on Middle East Affairs, Pacifica Radio, Electronic Intifada and Inter Press Service. In 2008, Omer was awarded the 2007 Martha Gelhorn prize for Journalism. In the award citation, Omer was honoured as "the voice of the voiceless" and his reports were described as a "humane record of the injustice imposed on a community forgotten by much of the world."

(Inter Press Service)