PRAISES FOR GOVERNMENT

By Godwill Arthur-Mensah

Dr. Eric Osei Assibey, an Adjunct Fellow of the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) has said the Government had laid a solid foundation that would propel it to achieve its electoral promises.

He noted that when the manifesto of the New Patriotic Party was juxtaposed over what it had achieved within the 100 days in office, it deserved some commendations because it had laid the policy framework for smooth take-off.

‘‘We hope the government would continue to take prudent policy decisions that would inure to the benefit of the ordinary Ghanaian and avoid spending outside the budget for the sake of fulfilling election promises,’’ he stressed.

Dr Assibey, who is also a Senior Lecturer at the Economics Department of the University of Ghana, made the remarks in an interview with the Ghana News Agency, in reaction to the government’s 100 days in office, which Dr Mahamudu Bawumia, the Vice President, presented to the public at a Town Hall Meeting.

He said in spite of the good policy decisions the government had taken so far, it must ensure prudent financial management to consolidate fiscal gains and stabilise the macro-economic environment.

Commenting on the public bond issued by the government which fetched the nation $2.25billion dollars, Dr Assibey said it was an innovative and strategic way of re-structuring the country’s debts since it did not add-up to the existing debt stock. He said it would relief government of any pressure of having to service another debt and thus, create fiscal space to secure funding for other relevant programmes.

‘‘The good news about the 15-year public bond is that, it was issued in Cedis, which would be paid in dollars and this would increase the country’s foreign exchange reserves and ensure macro-economic stability,’’ he explained.

Touching on the cancellation of some Power Purchasing Agreements, he said it was a wise decision because the existing installed power capacity of the country was sufficient and that there was no need to rush for any power agreements, adding that the thermal plants and other power producers must produce power to meet public demand.

‘‘I don’t think the government must rush into any Power Purchasing Agreements because the installed power capacity could serve both domestic and industrial needs, only that the VRA and GLICO must meet the current demand’’

With regard to government’s decision to ensure all public contracts signed to be given unique code for easy tracking, the Senior lecturer, said the bane of the previous administration was a situation, where contracts were signed at the blindside of the Central Government.

He, therefore, noted that the decision would enable the government to monitor and track all public contracts to avoid financial waste and control government expenditure.

Dr Assibey expressed the hope that various programmes such as the free senior high school, paying of allowances for teacher trainees and nurses among other promises, as well as tax exemptions in the 2017 budget would be fulfilled to give meaning to what the government had been touting as achievements chalked within the first 100 days in office.

Editorial

JEREMY CORBYN

The leader of the Labour Party in Britain, Jeremy Corbyn is most certainly a fresh breadth of air in these days of the Trumps.

He is a passionate advocate of the interest of the British working class and believes firmly that the underprivileged can be liberated from poverty and misery.

Jeremy is fully aware of the fact that war is a most destructive enterprise which diverts resources from development.

He promises to join the battle against Israeli apartheid in Palestine and to join the fight against international terrorism.

As Africans who have been victims of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, and classical colonialism and are today suffering the effects of neo-colonialism, we fully endorse the candidature of Jeremy Corbyn as Prime Minister.

He is a true ally of the international working class movement and stands with all those struggling against all forms of injustice.

Jeremy is clearly the man for Number 10 Downing Street and we wish him well.

Local News:

OTIKO WEEPS FOR CHILDERN

Hon. Otiko Djaba, Minister for Children and Social Protection

By Prosper K. Kuorsoh

Madam Otiko Afisa Djaba, the Minister for Gender, Children and Social Protection has stated that selling children out for pittance was the saddest and most dishonorable thing parents could do.

Madam Djaba said such pittance could only solve short term problems which could not be compared to the value of sacrificing to educate the child for a life time benefit.

The Gender Minister stated this while interacting with queen mothers in Wa as part of her two-day working visit to the Upper West Region.

She therefore urged the queen mothers to rise up against the child marriage menace and to champion girl child education in their respective communities and the region at large in order to create a better society.

She challenged the queen mothers to come up with proposals on how they could help end child marriage in the country, assuring that the Ministry was willing to support any brilliant strategy that would lead to the eradication of child marriage in the country.

Earlier, Madam Djaba paid separate courtesy calls on the Upper West Regional Minister, Mr Sulemana Alhassan and the Overlord of the Wala Traditional Area, Naa Fuseini Seidu Pelpuo IV.

At the Wa Naa’s Palace, the Gender Minister touted the key role of traditional authorities in development and reiterated government’s commitment to work with them to bring development to the people.

She pleaded with all to put aside their political colours and partner government in the fight against hunger and poverty which had left many people in the area traumatised.

Wa Naa Pelpuo IV congratulated the Minister on her appointment and said her working experience in the region put her in a better position to understand their challenges and to proffer solutions to address them.

He pledged their commitment to support the Minister and the government to work to reverse the poverty situation in the region.

NAGRAT DEFENDS TEACHERS

Christian Addae Opoku

By Jonas Nyabor

The National Association of Graduate Teachers (NAGRAT), has jumped to the defense of the about eight hundred teachers who want to change their dates of birth, which would either get them to work longer with the Ghana Education Service (GES) or retire earlier.

This follows a statement from the Ghana Education Service (GES) over the weekend, that placed an indefinite embargo on the process.

But according to the teacher association, the decision by the GES is a wrong move.

The President of NAGRAT, Christian Addae-Poku, told Citi News the wrong dates of birth were caused by the GES, and therefore they must give teachers the opportunity to rectify them.

“For the change of date of birth, the solution is not for the GES to place an embargo on it. It is for the GES to investigate and approve whether the person really deserves it or not. When someone is employed at the GES, the person sends his documents to the Ghana Education Service. They do the data entry and we have had many cases where in the process of entering the data, they have made mistakes.”

While urging the Ghana Education Service to accept requests for change of dates of birth, Mr. Addae Poku intimated that, most teachers were unaware GES had captured the wrong dates of birth until the GES began the process to migrate unto a biometric system.

“The most important thing is for the GES to investigate to ascertain the truth or otherwise of it because there are many ways to check this. They should not generalize it and make it appear as if anybody who is applying for a change in date of birth is wrong. It is not right for them to do that, they should investigate and the right thing must be done.”

Meanwhile, the Ghana Education Service (GES) has said that its decision to halt the process is because it was a strain on its administrative resources considering the time involved.

He told Citi News that, “there is much waste of quality time of management duty. It also involves so much that, a batch can spend more than two days or three on the change or scrutiny of those documents…. So there is the need for us to lay an embargo on this thing so that other duties can also be carried out by management.”

Source: Citifmonline

Private schools want GES to train teachers

Matthew Opoku Prempeh, Minister of Education

An educationist has appealed to the Ghana Education Service (GES), to help organise periodic in-service training for teachers in private learning institutions.

Mr Emmanuel Ofosu, Secretary of the Private Schools Association in the Atiwa District of the Eastern Region, made the appeal through the Ghana News Agency shortly after a management and staff meeting of the school at Anyinam.

Mr Ofosu, a retired Headmaster and Proprietor of the Promising Hope Preparatory School at Anyinam, said most private learning institutions have lost focus, because some of their fresh tutors employed, have no teaching technics, to guide them to discharge their tutorial work diligently.

He said many prospective entrepreneurs did not know how to start, where to go for assistance and how to manage their enterprises effectively and efficiently.

Mr Ofosu expressed optimism that the GES would assist the private schools in their field of operations, to enable their schools keep abreast of the latest interventions in education.      

GNA

Africa

Remembering South African struggle hero Chris Hani: Lessons for today

Chris Hani

By Arianna Lissoni

South African communist leader Chris Hani was assassinated by white racists 27 years ago, removing him from the scene during the nation’s transition to Black rule. Hani fought careerism and corruption in the revolutionary movement. Today, the tradition of internal debate that Hani promoted has become eroded, and criticism keeps being silenced as sowing disunity.

The “what if” game is popular with the media and the commentariat in South Africa. A popular example is “what if …” South African Communist Party (SACP) leader Chris Hani were still alive.

What, for example, would he say about the SACP’s tripartate alliance partner, the African National Congress? What would he say about the state of the alliance after recent calls by both partners, the SACP and union federation Cosatu for President Jacob Zuma to step down?

These questions are being asked again on the anniversary of Hani’s assassination by two rightwing extremists on April 10, 1992.

But such use, often by the liberal media, of Hani’s name (and those of other fallen cadres of the liberation movement) is problematic. It seeks to isolate Hani from the movement that produced him, presenting him as an exception it can then appropriate.

Hani’s name is also regularly invoked by the SACP and the ANC come election time. Many campaign posters call on supporters to “Do it for Chris Hani”. Here, the summoning of Hani’s memory has become little more than empty rhetoric.

A more useful exercise may be to reflect on Hani’s life, actions and beliefs, and their significance for today.

A popular hero

In his book “A Jacana Pocket Biography: Chris Hani” historian Hugh Macmillan argues it was Hani’s physical and moral bravery, his compassion and humanity that made him a “popular hero” -- the words used by French philosopher Jacques Derrida to describe Hani in his Spectres of Marx lecture.

Hani helped build a culture of internal criticism in the ANC. In 1969 he and six other commissars and commanders of Umkhonto we Sizwe, the ANC’s military wing, signed what became known as the “Hani memorandum”. The memorandum outlined the “frightening depth of the rot in the ANC”, accusing its leadership of careerism, corruption and persecution by the party’s security.

Hani’s memorandum was the catalyst for one of the most significant events in the history of the ANC in exile, a conference in Morogoro, Tanzania. But it was viewed as treacherous by some within the leadership, particularly those it had criticised. Hani and his comrades were expelled from the ANC and only reinstated after the Morogoro conference.

Russian scholar Vladimir Shubin has argued that it was largely thanks to the memorandum that the delegates to the conference included rank and file MK members and not just the leadership.

The Morogoro conference opened ANC membership to non-Africans. It also adopted the important “Strategy and Tactics” document. This provided -- for the first time since the ANC’s banning in 1960 -- a systematic assessment of the conditions of struggle and an overall vision for defeating apartheid in a time of deep political demoralisation.

The conference was a moment of self-reflection. It helped the ANC to overcome the state of crisis and demoralization that had set in.

The ability of the leadership of both the ANC and its closest ally, the SACP, to reassess circumstances, interrogate these and themselves, and learn from past mistakes to overcome difficult moments is one of the most important lessons from their history. This tradition of internal debate has become eroded, and criticism keeps being silenced as sowing disunity.

Disrupting notions of masculinity

A famous quote by Che Guevara states that “the true revolutionary is guided by great feelings of love.” Leaders like Hani were moved to act by their hearts as well as by reason. The decision to join the liberation struggle was one of reason -- a conscious rejection of apartheid oppression and inequality. But it was also a choice informed by “revolutionary love” or a “love for the people” -- shaped by a sense of justice and by compassion, as well as by a vision, the ability to imagine a different future.

As struggle veteran and public intellectual Raymond Suttner points out in Recovering Democracy in South Africa, what is new and alarming about many of the ANC’s current leaders is their callousness. The plight of the poor no longer evokes compassion or empathy from a government that is supposed to represent them.

Both Suttner and Macmillan also highlight Hani’s commitment to disrupting notions of heroic masculinity. In his book Macmillan tells the story of one of Hani’s comrades, Thenjiwe Mtintso, who credited him with introducing her to the gender content of the liberation struggle when she arrived in exile.

Hani’s concern with gender issues can also be seen in his reaction to the abuse of women in MK camps. He introduced a rule that prevented officers from forming relationships with new women recruits.

By looking at the life of people like Hani South Africans can recover the possibility of alternative and gentler types of masculinity to the prevailing models of patriarchal, machoist, militaristic and violent manhood.

Communist for life

At the time of South Africa’s transition to democracy Hani decided to resign from ANC structures and concentrate his efforts on building the SACP. He understood that there would be a need to build the party for it to be a truly democratic and democratizing force in a post-apartheid South Africa intent on taking the struggle of the working class and the poor forward.

While the SACP would have to redefine itself in the new South Africa, Hani believed that it should be the main agent of change. That’s where his loyalty to the party was rooted.

Hani was not a communist in passing. He immersed himself completely into the liberation struggle. And it was “a communist as communist,” to quote Derrida again, that his assassins were out to get.

The story of his life –- and that of many others –- is exemplary of this total commitment and willingness to sacrifice one’s life for an ideal. It was ideas, a political project and the movement that counted –- not individuals, because no one would have made it on their own.

This may be difficult to imagine in today’s society where individualism and self-interest reign supreme and personalized politics has become the norm. But it was by doing things with, and for others, as part of a collective movement that people like Hani found their self-realization.

* Arianna Lissoni is a researcher at History Workshop, University of the Witwatersrand. This article previously appeared in The Conversation.

Source: Pambazuka

Britain

Rally Round Corbyn – Vote Labour and Smash the Tories on 8 June!

Jeremy Corbyn

In an almost unprecedented turn of events, Tory Prime Minister May called a snap general election for Thursday 8 June, breaking her previous promise of not holding one until the end of the full parliamentary term in 2020.

Speculation is rife around the reasoning behind this, but it seems that the ongoing investigations into Tory election fraud from overspending in the 2015 General Election and the strong possibility of losing their wafer-thin majority of 11 MPs in parliament was the trigger. By calling the general election, they hope to effectively smother any attempts by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) to take any action against the Conservative Party and their MPs.

The Tories are in trouble and many are now jumping ship, including former chancellor George Osbourne. It seems that the divisions between the ‘liberal’ pro-EU wing and the jingoist little-Englander wing are coming to the surface after the brief Brexit honeymoon of Theresa May.

Another aspect is that the election presents the Tories (and the right-wing of the Labour Party, i.e. the main representatives of the ruling class) an opportunity to force Corbyn to resign should Labour do badly. Given that the right-wing of Labour have tried (and failed) on multiple occasions to oust Corbyn, perhaps the ruling class have gone for a change of tack. They are hoping that the polls putting the Tories in the lead with 17 points are accurate. But the polls have been proved wrong in recent times on several occasions. This is because they are based on outdated statistical models that weight the electorate’s propensity to vote on the basis of a number of assumptions made by the modelers. Those assumptions might have held true in the past, but as the political aftershock from the 2008 capitalist crisis has been felt in recent years, those assumptions no longer hold. Although working class people and those on low incomes are statistically less likely to vote than the wealthy, Corbyn has drawn support from precisely this demographic, in the same way that Brexit motivated the dispossessed to vote against the establishment.

Can Corbyn do it?

Following Brexit, UKIP are in meltdown as many voters see the job done of holding the referendum and leaving the EU. Many UKIP voters will ‘return’ to voting either Labour or Tory. The Lib Dems are posing as the anti-Brexit party, which will likely do more damage to the Tories than to Labour. They will draw support from those sections of the middle class who were happy with the Tory status quo but who have been paralysed in a collective breakdown since the EU referendum in June 2016.

But we all know the Lib Dems offer no progressive alternative. They have gone into coalition with the Tories before and they’ll do it again. Back in December 2016, even after the EU referendum, Tim Farron refused to rule out going into coalition with the Tories and described Corbyn as ‘toxic’, claiming that ‘any serious politician who rules out going into power isn’t a serious politician’. In another radio interview only yesterday, he repeated the same platitudes. Thus there can be no question on tactical voting – a vote for the Lib Dems is a vote for the Tories. The only principled class vote can be for Labour.

Corbyn faces an uphill struggle, against his own Party MPs who are sabotaging him at every step, the capitalist establishment and the billionaire-owned media. It also has to be said that the Left have failed to collectively organise coherently to push for real structural change within Labour which would shift power towards the membership. The compromising ‘softly softly’ approach of the Corbyn/McDonnell leadership towards the Blairite traitors has backfired and has only strengthened the right-wing. The only organised faction of the Left that could have vigorously pushed for grassroots reform, such as mandatory reselection, within Labour is Momentum, but since Jon Lansman’s coup they have uncritically towed the Corbyn/McDonnell party line of compromise.

But despite all this, Corbyn has at his disposal an important weapon that no other party in the whole of Europe has: over half a million members. Labour gained 2,500 members only yesterday! It’s also clear that the hundreds of thousands who have joined Labour over the last two years have done so purely to support Corbyn. And whilst those members may not have been entirely motivated to come to branch meetings or even canvass in the local elections, they will surely come out in droves to support their man.

We only have to look across the channel to France, where the left-reformist Mélenchon has gone from relative obscurity to rivalling Le Pen in the polls for the Presidential Elections. He was given a big boost following a successful televised debate. Contrast this with Theresa May who is refusing to participate in any television debates – clearly she did not call the snap election from a position of strength!

Mélenchon’s popular left policies include a four day week, raising the minimum wage, increasing taxes on the rich, leaving NATO and floating the possibility of leaving the EU. The first round of the presidential election is set to be held on 23 April. Should no candidate win a majority, a run-off election between the top two candidates will be held on 7 May. A victory for Mélenchon would give an indirect boost to Corbyn’s campaign because it would show that class-based reforms are popular and electable.

Yesterday, a record 150,000 people registered to vote. Every person and their dog knows this is crunch time for Corbyn. If Corbyn goes, the whole project is over, and likely so is Labour as any kind of vehicle for working class interests. What would come after this we can only speculate, but let’s be clear – a defeat for Corbyn’s Labour on 8 June would be a defeat for the whole working class and a huge setback for the revolutionary Left.

No time for sectarianism
Organisations like the Revolutionary Communist Group, a third period Stalinist sect, who declare they will ‘fight…  the Labour Party and its apologists’ with catchy slogans like ‘DON’T VOTE, ORGANISE!’ show their utter bankruptcy and failure to engage in Marxist praxis. If they believe the masses will flock to the banner of the RCG and communist revolution following the defeat of Corbyn, they are sadly mistaken. They should perhaps heed Marx’s advice:

The Communists fight for the attainment of the immediate aims, for the enforcement of the momentary interests of the working class; but in the movement of the present, they also represent and take care of the future of that movement (Marx 1848).

Other groups like the Socialist Party claim to support Corbyn and yet continue to stand candidates against Labour. They have made no effort amongst its members to join Labour, other than a token petition to save face. If the Socialist Party claim to support Corbyn, will they go out and canvass for a Labour vote for 8 June? That is the concrete question staring in the face of all sectarians of various shades.

Of course, if there were a mass or semi-mass centrist or revolutionary Marxist organisation, the context and the question posed would be completely different. It is due to the failure of the Marxist Left over the past two decades, when conditions were not favourable for work in the Labour Party, that no attempt was made to build a united revolutionary Marxist organisation. Instead, the various far-left groups either retreated into sectarian isolation or took part in various reformist projects such as the Socialist Labour Party, Socialist Alliance, Respect and of course TUSC.

Had the far-left united to build such a party during the New Labour era of ‘capitalism with a human face’ on the basis of a clear revolutionary programme with genuine roots in the working class, there would have been a legitimate case for backing it during an election, despite knowing that its votes would be squeezed by a Corbyn-led Labour Party.

Instead, all that exists to the left of Labour is TUSC, which is now in terminal decline following poor electoral results and, more recently, the SWP’s departure. The RMT (Rail, Maritime and Transport workers union) are also edging away from TUSC, with many branches voting to abandon the project in the wake of Corbyn. In effect, TUSC is now just a front for the Socialist Party, who in turn refuse to call for a Corbyn Labour vote. Why support a tiny reformist project when there is a mass reformist project to support in the form of Corbyn’s Labour Party? Only the existence of a credible revolutionary party with social weight would offer a qualitatively different alternative.

Vote Labour without illusions in England and Wales
Marxist World calls for an unconditional vote for Labour in England and Wales, without illusions. Unconditional means a vote for the Labour candidate regardless of whether they are Blairite, Corbynista or the devil himself – a vote for Labour is a vote for a Corbyn reformist government. At the same time, we do not promote illusions that a Corbyn government will be able to achieve all of its modest aims.

We do, however, appreciate the situation in Scotland is different to that of England and Wales. Unfortunately, Labour does not support the right of Scotland to independence, which led the Scottish National Party to wipe them out at the last election. Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland’s First Minister, has said that she would not support a Tory coalition government, implying a potential alliance of sorts with Labour in the event of a Labour minority government after 8 June.

Marxist World cannot advocate a vote for the radical bourgeois SNP, yet nor can we deny the Scottish people’s right to independence which is supported by the majority of the Scottish working class at present. We would therefore encourage a vote for any party in Scotland that puts across an independent, socialist class position and simultaneously supports Scottish self-determination.

Economic and political crisis
The crisis of global capitalism and the falling rate of profit mean that implementing promised reforms such as a £10/hour minimum wage, free school meals for all primary school children and a fully funded and public NHS will face the wrath of the capitalist class, who would face the prospect of financing these reforms out of taxation. In such a situation, many businesses would threaten to leave the country and attempt to hold the working class to ransom through inflation and unemployment.

In the past, previous Labour governments were formally committed to making progressive reforms, with the majority of reformists, either of the left or right wing, in acceptance of them. When confronted with the limitations of the capitalist market, the difference between the two wings was that the right-reformists would give up without a fight and immediately capitulate to the capitalists’ demands, whilst the left-reformists were at least prepared to mobilise the working class in order to exert pressure on the ruling class which could allow them to squeeze a few more concessions, before ultimately giving up as well.

However, such is the political degeneration of the bulk of today’s Parliamentary Labour Party and their complete material and ideological commitment to neoliberal capitalism, many would simply point-blank refuse to support Corbyn’s modest reforms, either by voting with the Tories on all relevant policies or even going as far to formally break from the Labour Party and form their own “progressive” party, perhaps joining up with the Lib Dems in the process as Tony Blair has already hinted at. In fact it seems that ‘Labour’ Blair will actually campaign for the Lib Dems!

No amount of pressure will compel the bulk of the Parliamentary Labour Party to implement Corbyn’s programme as they have utterly broken from any pretence of supporting the workers’ movement. Instead, in the wake of a Labour victory, the focus of Marxists must be on mobilising the working class and the Labour grassroots membership for a socialist programme independently of parliamentary government. Therefore, our call to vote Labour is primarily about exposing them and the real class character of the Parliamentary Labour Party before the eyes of the working class.

Through our website and journals, supporters of Marxist World have put across a number of critiques highlighting the limits of reformism and ‘anti-austerity’ policies, along with other more modern trends such as ‘postcapitalism’. Our upcoming summer issue of the journal will develop these points, including a piece outlining how a democratically planned socialist economy could work, in opposition to the various shades of reformism offered by Corbyn and the bulk of the Labour Left.

What is clear for Marxists is that remaining within the structure and logic of the capitalist system, where profit is the sole motive for businesses to do anything, is a dead-end. The only way to break the rule of this minority exploiting class is to organise the majority, the working class, into a mass revolutionary organisation, armed with a programme to expropriate the property and wealth of the capitalists and establish workers’ control of the production and distribution of goods. Local councils and organising committees would be set up across the country to facilitate this and bring democracy to the grassroots level.

Such a revolutionary process will not happen in a straight line. But a Corbyn government would strengthen the movement in the sense that it would lead to generalised class struggle across the country, helping to prepare the workers’ movement with the necessary insight, tactics and strategies needed to fight for socialist revolution. Comrades, let us rally for a Corbyn victory on 8 June and prepare for major class struggle, whatever the result. We have a world to win!

Middle East:

Israel’s Illegal Occupation Most Malignant 

Israeli Soldier beat and drag Palestinian on street

By Middle East Monitor

The UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, Michael Lynk, has described the Israeli occupation as “the most malignant” in the world. The Canadian official added that perpetuating an alien rule over almost five million people, against their fervent wishes, inevitably requires the repression of rights, the erosion of the rule of law, the abrogation of international commitments and the imposition of deeply discriminatory practices.

Lynk accused Israel of humiliating the Palestinians and intensifying the crackdown on human rights activists. He presented his report to the UN Commission on Human Rights and Human Rights Council during its latest session on Israel. Israeli and US diplomats boycotted the session dedicated to several UN reports criticising Israeli settlements, the blockade of Gaza and the excessive use of force against Palestinians.

The report also criticised the Palestinian authorities for their violations, including unlawful killings and detentions. It comes after the resignation of the Executive Secretary of the UN Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia, Rima Khalaf, after her report accusing Israel of being an apartheid state was rejected by the international body under pressure from Israel and the US.

The US boycotted the debate on Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories in Geneva on Monday, claiming that the UN Human Rights Council is biased against Israel. The move came after the US administration announced in March that it would review its relationship with the Geneva-based council, in light of its strong focus on Israel, Washington’s ally.

The HRC regularly addresses many areas of tension, including Syria and North Korea. However, Israel is the only state regularly placed on a separate agenda item with numerous human rights reports.

US State Department spokesman Mark Toner claimed in a statement from Washington that the discussion of the Monday session is an additional reminder of the long-standing bias of this body against Israel.

“The continued existence of this item on the agenda is among the greatest threats to the council’s credibility,” he added.

The original source of this article is Middle East Monitor

Destroying Palestinian Agriculture? Israeli Planes Spray Herbicides inside Gaza for the Fourth Time This Year 

By Natasha Roth

Israeli planes have been reported spraying herbicides over land inside the Gaza Strip on four occasions in 2017, including twice in the last two days.

Israeli planes sprayed herbicides inside the Gaza Strip for the second day running on Wednesday and the fourth time this year, according to local farmers and Israeli rights NGO Gisha. A video published on Wednesday, allegedly of the crop-dusting, shows a plane flying low and spraying over farmland.

Palestinians who reported the incident said that the planes had dusted near the Gaza border fence, and the Gaza Ministry of Agriculture is investigating the extent of the damage from the herbicides sprayed over the last two days. Around 840 acres of crops were damaged during the last round of spraying in January 2017, according to Gisha.

The dusting of Palestinian-owned farmland inside the Gaza Strip did not begin this year. As +972 reported at the time, Israeli planes sprayed herbicides over vegetation in Gaza for several consecutive days in December 2015, damaging over 400 acres of crops.

The IDF confirmed to +972 that it was responsible for spraying the farmland, but didn’t elaborate as to why, beyond the amorphous designation of “security operations.” A number of Palestinian farmers have since demanded compensation from the State of Israel.

Israeli planes have returned to spray herbicides numerous times since the end of 2015. The government, meanwhile, has contradicted itself over the area it claims to have targeted: despite the IDF’s confirmation to +972, and later to Gisha, that it had sprayed herbicides inside the Gaza Strip, the Israeli Ministry of Defense later claimed in a court hearing on the issue that the work had been carried out by private companies — and only on Israeli territory.

Since 2000, Israel has maintained a no-go area inside the Gaza border fence — formally referred to as the “Access-Restricted Area” (ARA) — which currently reaches 300 meters inside Gazan territory. The army enforces this buffer zone with everything from “less-lethal” weapons to live ammunition and tank fire, making it a particularly deadly stretch of land. Israeli bulldozers also reportedly enter the Gaza Strip on a regular basis to level land inside the ARA.

Farmers and scrap collectors who venture near the border are frequently targeted by Israeli sniper fire, including those who were apparently well outside the buffer zone. Most recently, a 15-year-old Palestinian, Yousef Shaaban Abu Athra, was killed when an IDF tank opened fire at him and two companions, who were wounded. The army claimed that the three had been acting suspiciously.

In addition to the land buffer zone, Israel restricts Palestinians to fishing within six nautical miles of the Gaza coast, and the navy regularly opens fire on fishermen who are deemed to have ventured further away from the shoreline.

This year marks a decade since the start of Israel’s siege on the Gaza Strip. Israel controls Gaza’s airspace and territorial waters, as well as all of its land crossings save for Rafah, which is controlled by Egypt and closed on all but the rarest of occasions. Gaza’s exports and imports are also controlled by Israel, as is the movement of people — residents and otherwise — in and out of the enclave.

At the time of writing, the IDF Spokesperson had yet to respond to a request for comment on the latest incident of crop-spraying.

US airstrikes on Syria: Hypocrisy and murder 

By Samuel Albert

Nothing could be more hypocritical than Trump's claim to have bombed Syria because of the suffering of Syrian children. Deployment of weapons of mass destruction against civilians is a hallmark of America’s wars. Moreover, how can a man who ordered that not a single refugee be accepted from Syria, even keeping out children scheduled to undergo life-saving medical procedures, claim to act in the name of Syrian children?

US President Donald Trump's cruise missile attack on a Syrian airbase can only ratchet up the horrors being inflicted on the Syrian people by multiple rival enemies. It is part of a stepped-up US-led intervention in Syria and Iraq that has already killed about 3,000 civilians, according to Airwars.org. Further, it threatens wider wars in the region and the whole world.

Although Trump claimed to be motivated by the sight of pictures of children choking and dying due to chemical weapons allegedly used by Syria's Bashar al-Assad regime, his attack came in the wake of US airstrikes that killed many hundreds of adults and children in Iraq and Syria, not with chemical weapons but high explosive Hellfire missiles and huge bombs.

In March the US-led coalition bombed a mosque, school and bakery in Syria and then leveled apartment buildings in western Mosul in Iraq, killing as many as 230 people in that attack alone. It is very clear that Washington wants to defeat Daesh (ISIS) not to do anything good for the people of Iraq and Syria, who have been Islamic fundamentalism's main victims, but to impose its own domination and beat back other rivals. The same applies to the US strike on Syria's Shayrat airbase. It had nothing to do with protecting people in Syria and everything to do with the US's strategic interests in the region and globally.

If you want to know what kind of regime the US would welcome in Syria, look at Egypt. Nothing better illustrates what US domination means in this region than Trump's meeting with Egyptian strongman Abdel Fattah el-Sisi a few days before this attack. Trump told Sisi he was doing a "fantastic job in a very difficult situation" and publicly declared, "You have a great friend and ally in the United States and me."

Sisi's rule began with a military coup in 2013. Its opening act was the massacre of more than 800 Islamic Brotherhood supporters demonstrating against the toppling of its elected government. After attacking a protest camp, troops moved through a hospital systematically exterminating patients and staff. Since then, Egypt's prisons have been engorged with as many as 60,000 political prisoners, including not only Islamists but members of the secular youth organizations that spearheaded the 2011 Tahir Square uprising and dissenters of all stripes. Sisi now presides over a country where young people are called "the jail generation". The main difference between Sisi and Assad is that Sisi is in the US's pocket and Assad is not.

It is hard to imagine anything more hypocritical than Trump's claim to have undergone a "change of heart" about the Assad regime because of the suffering of Syrian children. The “heart” of Trump and the imperialist power he heads beats with the blood of hundreds of millions of its victims. From the nuclear bombs that murdered hundreds of thousands of people in Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the close of World War 2 to the carpet bombing of Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, the extensive spraying of poisonous Agent Orange during the US war to dominate South-east Asia and the use of depleted uranium shells in the invasion and occupation of Iraq, the deployment of weapons of mass destruction against civilians has been a hallmark of American warfighting.

The US had no objection when the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq, back when it considered Saddam an ally, used poison gas to inflict some 100,000 casualties during the Iran-Iraq war. The US enabled both sides and, along with Germany, the UK and France, knowingly supplied the chemicals. The US even blocked UN action against Saddam after his forces gassed the Iraqi Kurdish town of Hallabja, killing 5-8,000 people, including a very high proportion of women, children and elderly.

Further, as many people have pointed out, a man and a regime that ordered that not a single refugee be accepted from the war the US has been fuelling in Syria, even keeping out children scheduled to undergo life-saving medical procedures, cannot claim to act in the name of Syrian children and other victims. The same can be said of UK Prime Minister Theresa May, who claimed to be "appalled" by the "barbarism of the Syrian regime"', when she herself has long been at the forefront of European Union policies that amount to deliberately letting Syrian and other refugees drown while fleeing crossing the Mediterranean. May shut down the British government programme to accept child refugees from the Mideast, which was originally slated to take in 3,500 children – itself a paltry number – after accepting only 350, on the grounds that there was “no more room”.

This demonstration of the US's murderous power was meant to signal that it does not intend to let Arabs, Iranians, Kurds or anyone else but the US run the region. It was also a threat to North Korea and elsewhere. Right now it is hard to predict Trump's next act, or how the consequences of this one will unfold, internationally and within the US. But some of those who are already sure that this will be a "one-off" US action were – until today – arguing that Trump is all bluster. He has repeatedly said about nuclear weapons, "I don't want to rule out anything." The gravity of this situation should not be underestimated.

* Samuel Albert writes for A World to Win News Service.

Source: Pambazuka