US authorizes intensified air strikes against civilians in Iraq and Syria

Thomas Gaist

Since last fall, without any public acknowledgment by the US government and military, US warplanes have been bombing civilian areas in Iraq and Syria under loosened rules of engagement, the US Defense Department announced Wednesday.

Under the new rules, US forces may attack any area considered to have a “non-combatant value” of 10, that is, a likely fallout of fewer than 10 civilian deaths.

Given the current volume of airstrikes, the expanded rules of engagement imply that the Pentagon may murder thousands of civilians every month.

This March alone, US warplanes dropped nearly 2,000 bombs on Iraq and Syria, an increase over the 1,700 bombs dropped by US forces during the previous March. Last November, the US-led coalition set a new record for a single month, dropping nearly 3,300 bombs.

Since the beginning of “Operation Inherent Resolve” in August 2014, Iraq and Syria have been pummeled by a combined total of more than 40,000 bombs, the vast majority of them made by American companies and delivered by American planes.

“The gradualistic, painfully slow, incremental efforts of the current administration undercut the principals of modern warfare, and harken back to the approach followed by the Johnson administration,” retired US Air Force general David Deptula, now with the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies, said Tuesday, defending the expanded air strikes in comments to USA Today.

The revelation comes amid numerous signs that Washington is preparing even greater military violence against the Middle Eastern working class and oppressed masses, as part of a general expansion of military operations throughout the region, coordinated with the Saudi monarchy and Gulf sheikdoms.

During a visit to Abu Dhabi Wednesday, US defense secretary Ashton Carter demanded increased involvement by the Gulf Cooperation Council governments of Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar and UAE in the US war against Iraq and Syria.

The US defense chief called for the Arab monarchies to adopt new measures to counter Iranian power, including joint US-GCC patrols along Yemen’s coastlines in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden, and adoption of US-sponsored plans to develop the cyberwarfare, special operations, naval and missile defense capabilities of the Arab states.

“The U.S. military remains committed and capable of responding to Iranian malign and destabilizing activities and deterring aggression against our regional friends and allies,” Carter said.

In the coming months, the American military will continuously “accelerate” its Iraq-Syria war, Carter said Monday. In remarks from Baghdad, Carter unveiled plans to deploy more than 200 additional US troops to Iraq, along with Apache helicopter gunships and High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS).

The reinforcements will be deployed in support of large-scale assaults aimed at recapturing Mosul and other Iraqi cities currently held by Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), Carter said.

The flurry of announcements of new US military projects has underscored the fact that, notwithstanding the Obama administration’s diplomatic overtures to Tehran, Washington remains committed to armed aggression throughout the region and to countering Iranian influence by military means.

“Despite all the differences, Saudi Arabia and America are not getting divorced. We need each other,” former Central Intelligence Agency official and Brookings Institution intelligence analyst Bruce Riedel told CNN.

Despite the emergence of real divisions within the US-Saudi camp, the Kingdom remains the central pillar of US domination over the region.

In a Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) report Wednesday, titled “The Saudi and Gulf Perspective on President Obama’s Visit,” leading US ruling class strategist Anthony Cordesman explains the indispensable role of the US-Saudi alliance within the US-dominated world order established at the end of the Second World War.

“America’s strategic ties to Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf states—which in practice include Bahrain, Jordan, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, and the UAE—have been critical to U.S. strategic interests ever since Britain withdrew from the Gulf,” Cordesman notes. “The strategic partnership between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia has been progressively more important ever since President Roosevelt met with King Ibn Saud on the deck of the USS Quincy in the Suez Canal on February 14, 1945.”

US political and military domination over the Arabian Peninsula and Persian Gulf remains necessary to what Cordesman identifies as the central priority of American policy in the region, namely: “Ensuring the stable flow of some 17 to 18 million barrels of petroleum exports per day out of the Gulf, and steadily increasing the flow of oil, gas and product exports to meet the demands of the global economy.”

US control over these resources requires continued funding to the Gulf States in support of “weapons systems tailored to supporting joint action against Iran.” The US must work closely with its regional partners to “deal with the full range of complex threats posed by Iran” and counter “the steady expansion of Iranian influence and arming of non-state actors and proxy forces in areas ranging from Lebanon and Gaza, to Syria and Iraq, which threatens states like Kuwait, Bahrain, and Yemen,” Cordesman warns.

Waged under the banner of “the war against ISIS,” the US wars in Iraq and Syria, are driven in large measure by Washington’s determination to thwart the emergence of Iran as a regional hegemon, the threat of which has become more acute as Iranian influence in both Iraq and Syria has grown amid the wreckage produced by US-led wars against both countries.

US imperialism is desperately seeking to defend its position through further support for and massive arms sales to the Saudi and Gulf militaries, which are stoking sectarian conflicts throughout the region, moving toward ever greater confrontation with Iran and pushing the entire region toward an all-out conflagration.

Life expectancy declines for white Americans

Patrick Martin

It seems that each week brings new information documenting the precipitous decline in the conditions of life for a large majority of the American people. Yet in all of the media commentary on the mood of anger expressed in the convulsive 2016 election campaign, little is said about the profound and worsening social crisis that is fueling it.

On Wednesday came a report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) analyzing data on deaths recorded in the United Sates in 2014. The CDC found that life expectancy for whites has begun to drop, with a more pronounced decline for women than for men.

The actual year-on-year change from 2013 to 2014 may seem small, with life expectancy at birth for whites falling from 78.9 years to 78.8 years, but the direction of the change is in and of itself shocking. As Dr. Elizabeth Arias, author of the report, notes, “The trend in life expectancy at birth has been one of improvement since national estimates were first published with 1900 data.”

After more than a century of rising life expectancy, interrupted only briefly by World War II and the worst year of the AIDS epidemic, life expectancy for whites remained constant in 2012 and 2013, and then declined in 2014. Life expectancy for the entire US population remained unchanged because there was a slight improvement for African-Americans, Hispanics and other minorities.

Dr. Arias told the New York Times that the decline in life expectancy was largely the result of increased death rates for white men and women from their mid-20s to their mid-50s, the prime years of adulthood, when death rates are typically quite low. “The increase in death in this segment of the population was great enough to affect life expectancy at birth for the whole group,” she said. “That is very unusual.”

While categorized in racial terms by the study, what is expressed in such figures is the consequences of class warfare. Other studies have shown a shocking divergence in life expectancy between poorer and wealthier Americans. The impact of decades of deindustrialization, and the social ills produced by it, is reflected in one of the most basic indicators of social well-being.

Drug overdoses, liver disease (much of it a byproduct of alcoholism and drug abuse) and suicide are the main causes of these premature deaths. Addiction to prescription opioids like OxyContin is a major factor: Americans comprise 5 percent of the world’s population but consume 80 percent of prescription opioids.

According to an analysis of health data by the Washington Post published April 10, the death rate for rural white women in their 40s has risen by 30 percent since 2000, and by nearly 50 percent since 1990. In 30 counties in the rural South, middle-aged white women now have a higher mortality rate than black women of the same age.

Summing up the overall dimensions of the crisis in life expectancy, the Post wrote: “Compared with a scenario in which mortality rates for whites continued to fall steadily after 1998, roughly 650,000 people have died prematurely since 1999—around 450,000 men and nearly 200,000 women. That number nearly equals the death toll of the American Civil War.”

The contradictions of American capitalism find expression not solely in the dismal indices of declining social well-being, but also in an increasingly militant, angry and politically radical mood in the working class. Vulnerable individuals may fall victim to social evils like drug abuse and suicide, but the class as a whole will seek to find a way out of the crisis on the road of struggle.

Those struggles that have broken out over the past year have immediately come into conflict with the trade unions, which function as part of the police apparatus of corporate America for suppressing the working class. From the oil workers’ strike of early 2015 to the rank-and-file rejection by autoworkers of sellout contracts accepted by the UAW to the current protests and strikes by teachers and the Verizon walkout, workers are confronting the necessity of breaking through the straitjacket of the unions and their alliance with the Democratic Party, and adopting a new political perspective.

In the 2016 presidential campaign, the social anger has been reflected in support for nominally anti-establishment candidates in both big business parties—the real estate mogul Donald Trump on the right and, more broadly, the self-described “democratic socialist” Bernie Sanders on the left.

Sanders presents himself as an opponent of Wall Street greed and the “billionaire class,” but his main purpose is to divert the growth of anti-capitalist sentiment in the working class and among young people back into the suffocating confines of the Democratic Party. He has pledged to back Hillary Clinton if and when she wins the nomination.

While the outcome of the primary campaign is not settled, the New York primaries have increased the chances that Trump will secure the Republican nomination and Clinton will win the Democratic race. This “choice” is itself a demonstration of the complete dead end of the capitalist two-party system.

Clinton—the former first lady, senator from New York and secretary of state—is the personification of the corrupt status quo. Together with her husband, she has raked in $140 million since leaving the White House in 2001.

Clinton’s likely opponent is a billionaire demagogue who became a celebrity through real estate manipulations, casinos and a reality TV show, and now engages in fascistic rants against immigrants, Muslims and women, while encouraging violence against those who protest against his racist rhetoric. Trump’s main contender, Texas Senator Ted Cruz, meanwhile, is a favorite of the Tea Party and the Christian right, who advocates the privatization of Social Security and the carpet bombing of Iraq and Syria.

None of these candidates can offer any policies to address the catastrophic conditions affecting ever broader sections of the American people. These conditions are rooted in the insoluble crisis of American and world capitalism, which both parties defend. Regardless of who wins the election in November, the ensuing months will see an intensification of austerity and attacks on democratic rights at home and militarism and war abroad.

The initial growth of social opposition and working class consciousness reflected in the elections underscores the urgent need for a genuine socialist and internationalist perspective to guide the coming struggles of the working class.

New Zealand government plans major increase in military spending

Tom Peters

New Zealand’s National Party government is finalising its 2016 Defence White Paper, which will outline spending and strategic priorities for the country’s military. The document was initially planned for release at the end of last year but has been delayed for months.

Australia’s Defence White Paper, released in February, announced a massive $A195 billion in spending over the next decade on military acquisitions alone—new submarines, warships, jet fighters and an array of other military hardware. The purpose is to further integrate Australia into the US “pivot to Asia”—the military encirclement and preparations for war against China, which the White Paper identified as a threat to Australian interests.

New Zealand Defence Minister Gerry Brownlee told the New Zealand Heraldhis government’s White Paper was being prepared in close consultation with Australia and “will similarly reflect those shared values and security perspectives, including the importance of interoperability between our defence forces.”

Like Australia, New Zealand’s political establishment supports the anti-China “pivot” and views its alliance with Washington as crucial to defending its own neo-colonial interests in the South Pacific. The Obama administration is demanding military “interoperability” with Australia and New Zealand, along with other US allies throughout the region, in order to build a fully-integrated force to confront China.

While seeking to preserve cordial relations with China, New Zealand’s second largest trading partner, Prime Minister John Key’s government has committed to the US war drive. New Zealand’s air force is part of the Bersama Shield exercise currently underway in the South China Sea involving Australia, Malaysia, Singapore and Britain. In March, New Zealand joined exercises with the US and South Korea.

Over the past year, the US has greatly heightened tensions in the South China Sea, condemning China’s land reclamation and “militarisation” of reefs and atolls under its administration. The US navy has already mounted two “freedom of navigation” operations, directly challenging China’s territorial claims by sending warships within the 12-nautical-mile limit around Chinese administered islets. Washington is pressing its allies to follow suit.

To strengthen “interoperability” with the US and Australia, New Zealand has already increased military spending and will undoubtedly outline more funding in the White Paper. Earlier this year, the Defence Ministry announced plans for an extra $11 billion worth of acquisitions over the next decade, including new air transport, surveillance aircraft and navy frigates. In February, the government announced a $440 million upgrade of weapons systems for two frigates. Eight new helicopters also have been purchased for the navy.

Last month the Defence Force reportedly requested multi-million dollar submarine-spotting equipment for its Orion aircraft. Robert Ayson, head of the Centre for Strategic Studies in Wellington, told Radio NZ, “the South Pacific is not a heavy submarine area but New Zealand also operates further afield.” China and other Southeast Asian nations were increasing their underwater capabilities, he said. In other words, the upgrade is not for defensive purposes but to assist the aggressive operations by the US near Chinese territory.

The Pentagon is placing a premium on naval forces as its plans for war with China—AirSea Battle—envisage massive air and missile attacks on the Chinese mainland from ships and submarines in nearby waters, as well as US military bases in Asia. American and allied forces would also be used to impose a naval blockade aimed at crippling the Chinese economy by cutting off vital imports of energy and raw materials.

A new $46 million Battle Training Facility for the elite Special Air Service (SAS) forces will play a key role in training New Zealand troops to fight in US and Australian-led operations. Key and Brownlee attended the official opening of the facility on April 8. According to Fairfax Media, “special forces representatives from the USA and Australia, as well as other international military dignitaries” were also present.

The facility will be used for joint exercises involving US and other foreign troops, as well as by other branches of the NZ Defence Force and the police. The New Zealand Herald reported that it would train soldiers for environments such as Iraq and Afghanistan and “urban battlefields,” including “Auckland high rise buildings, a ship captured by pirates, hotels and shopping malls.”

Defence Force Chief Lieutenant General Tim Keating said the SAS would be trained to respond to threats that “can be from someone on your side, or some unsuspecting place.”

During their rotations in Afghanistan, as part of the US-led occupation, the NZ SAS were implicated in war crimes against prisoners and Afghan civilians. Using the threat of terrorism as a pretext, these elite troops are to be prepared for operations within New Zealand—potentially to suppress protests against the government’s deepening austerity measures and the march toward war.

The military’s spending spree comes amid ongoing attacks on working people’s living standards. In response to the economic crisis, the government has cut funding to healthcare and welfare, and is destroying thousands of jobs, including at the Inland Revenue Department, New Zealand Post and state-owned mining company Solid Energy.

Far from criticising the military spend-up, the opposition Labour Party and its ally, the right-wing populist New Zealand First Party, have attacked the government from the right, calling for even more spending and military recruitment. The last Labour government fully restored New Zealand’s alliance with the US by sending troops to Afghanistan and Iraq. The opposition parties have embraced New Zealand’s alignment with the US against China and have sought to whip up anti-Chinese xenophobia by scapegoating Chinese immigrants over the housing crisis and unemployment.

On April 14, NZ First defence spokesman Ron Mark released figures showing that the navy patrol vessels Pukaki and Taupo had not spent any time out of port since 2012 and 2013 respectively. He declared: “Our Navy is frankly way too small and our seas are mostly unguarded.” Mark said the navy should be equipped to patrol beyond New Zealand’s exclusive economic zone to cover “a vast slice of the globe that extends from Antarctica to north of the equator and mid-Tasman to east of the Cook Islands.”

Labour’s defence spokesman Phil Goff said the navy was “crippled by staff shortages” following a 23 percent reduction in staff in 2012. He denounced Defence Minister Brownlee for lacking “commitment to our armed forces being able to carry out the roles the country needs it to.”

NZ First spokesman Mark also lashed out at the National Party for reportedly preparing to close army training areas at Waiouru and Tekapo. He described the move as a “betrayal” and accused the government of being “short-sighted with respect to what it takes to train and prepare for war,” adding that “internationally, we live in a time of unprecedented instability.” To help “prepare for war,” NZ First recently proposed a scheme for unemployed youth as young as 15 to receive army training. The entire political establishment is committed to the militarisation of society and the integration of New Zealand into Washington’s reckless drive toward war with China.

Steel producers summit threatens stepped-up trade war against China

Robert Stevens

Representatives of the world’s leading steel producing nations have failed to agree on any measures to tackle the crisis in the industry.

A meeting Monday in Brussels was billed as a “High-Level Symposium on Excess Capacity and Structural Adjustment in the Steel Sector,” organised by the Belgian government and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Instead of resolving tensions, it marked a further stepping up of an ongoing trade war.

Ministers and other high-level government officials in charge of steel-related industrial and trade policies from 34 countries attended, including the United States, China and India, which collectively produce 93 percent of global steel output. Alongside these were representatives from the European Union (EU), World Trade Organisation, the World Steel Association, and delegates from various private sector steel corporations.

The meeting was called in response to the massive global overcapacity in steel production. The OECD noted that global steelmaking capacity was 2.37 billion tonnes in 2015, but declining production meant only 67.5 percent of that was being used—down from 70.9 percent in 2014. New plants were set to add another 47 million metric tonnes by 2018.

China, which has gone from producing a few percent of the world’s steel a few decades ago, produced half of all steel worldwide in 2015. It now has an overcapacity of 350 million tons, according to EU estimates. This is double the amount produced in one year in the entire EU. China’s attempt to export some of its surplus has led to a collapse in steel prices of up to 40 percent. In March, China announced that 500,000 jobs would go in its steel industry, with capacity to be drastically reduced.

According to World Steel Association chairman Wolfgang Eder, “The problem in Europe is that there is too much capacity” and the industry would probably have to be reduced by half in the next 15 years to survive. Given that 330,000 workers are employed at more than 500 sites throughout Europe, the scale of job losses entailed would be staggering.

The “overarching focus” of the Brussels meeting was “on promoting structural adjustment in the steel industry and reducing excess capacity by removing distortionary government policies and through industry restructuring.” It aimed to “agree on steps to reduce competition-distorting policies.”

Behind such phrases, the real agenda of the meeting was for the major imperialist powers to confront China, not an OECD member, with threats of escalating sanctions.

Belgian Deputy Prime Minister Kris Peeter, who chaired the meeting, acknowledged that “very frank” discussions took place. EU Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmstrom said, “It’s now life or death for many companies” as “the massive surge in steel imports from China is hitting Europe very hard and the price of steel in Europe has dropped by 40 percent in the last years.” Singling out China again, she said a “crucial problem here is of course the involvement of states and support, and not market needs, and this has created incentives to overproduce.”

Malmstrom warned that the EU has begun to impose a series of tariffs against China and was now “examining a few other Chinese issues as well and we might bring them further later this year.”

Following the meeting, US Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker and Trade Representative Michael Froman released a belligerent statement, warning: “Unless China starts to take timely and concrete actions to reduce its excess production and capacity in industries including steel ... the fundamental structural problems in the industry will remain and affected governments—including the United States—will have no alternatives other than trade action to avoid harm to their domestic industries and workers.”

Li Xinchuang, the vice secretary general of the China Iron and Steel Association, was belligerent in his response, stating, “It is a totally pointless complaint from the US and it’s biased against China.”

Speaking to Reuters, Li said, “China’s steel industry is market-based and Chinese steel products have good quality, low price and good service. The complaint on government subsidies is also crap.”

Xinhua, China’s official state news agency, declared that assigning blame to the Chinese steel industry was “a lame and lazy excuse for protectionism. … Blaming other countries is always an easy, sure-fire way for politicians to whip up a storm over domestic economic woes, but finger-pointing and protectionism are counterproductive.”

China's assistant commerce minister, Zhang Ji, told reporters that China had cut 90 million tonnes of capacity and would reduce it by a further 100-150 million tonnes. Asked what steps the government would take following the unsuccessful talks, Commerce Ministry spokesman Shen Danyang told reporters Tuesday, “China has already done more than enough. What more do you want us to do?”

Even though any decisions reached at the meeting were to be nonbinding, nothing whatsoever could be agreed other than a “follow-up high-level discussion in September 2016.”

For decades, the trade unions in every country have played a central role in dividing steel workers and sabotaging all struggles, as they facilitated the loss of hundreds of thousands of jobs and attacks on wages, terms and conditions, and pension rights. Today they openly act as the nationalist cheerleaders for corporations and are the staunchest advocates of protectionism and trade war measures.

On February 15, Brussels witnessed the repulsive spectacle of steel unions and employers associations from 17 European countries holding a joint demonstration at the EU Commission to demand further trade war measures against China. Given their record it was fitting that trade union representatives were invited to speak at Monday’s meeting. The union reps were asked to present reports in a session of the summit dealing with “structural adjustment challenges in the steel sector.” Their expertise was called on in a session aimed at “Drawing on the experiences that economies have had in restructuring their steel industries in the past … and how these lessons could be applied to develop effective strategies for addressing the current crisis in the steel industry.”

The official report of the meeting said the trade union speakers “noted the importance of ensuring that all countries play by the same trade and social rules.”

The pro-capitalist unions will stop at nothing in defending the corporations.

The same day as the Brussels summit, the United Steel Workers union (USW) filed a case with US regulators to demand “four years of increased tariffs” on “a flood of foreign [aluminium] imports.” The USW said, “The majority of the aluminium currently flooding into the US market comes from Canada, the Middle East, Russia and Venezuela.” USW International President Leo W. Gerard said, “Aluminium is vital to our national and economic security, and this case will help us retain and begin to rebuild domestic production of primary unwrought aluminium.”

Aluminium, he continued, “is a vital product for our aircraft and weapon systems. It’s used in construction, manufacturing and in electrical transmission.”

China had to be confronted, insisted the USW, as the “significant imbalance between supply and demand in primary unwrought aluminium” was “principally caused by massive capacity additions in China that exceed growth in demand.”

Lining up with the Obama administration’s war drive against China, the statement warned, “Aluminium, steel, paper and many other USW-represented sectors have been the targets of unfair trade. … This vital case draws a line in the sand. We will not cede primary unwrought aluminium production.”

Tensions rise between Italy and Egypt over Giulio Regeni murder

Marianne Arens

The brutal murder of Italian student Giulio Regeni in Cairo has resulted in an open diplomatic crisis between Egypt and Italy.

On April 8, the government in Rome recalled its ambassador to Egypt. Prime Minister Matteo Renzi said that Italy had a duty to Regeni’s family “but also to the dignity of us all” to bring the “genuine truth” to light.

Italian student and journalist Giulio Regeni was tortured to death in Egypt in January in a bestial manner. On January 25, the fifth anniversary of the Egyptian revolution, he disappeared without a trace close to Tahrir Square. Then on February 3, his horrifically disfigured body was found in a ditch by a highway.

To date, Egyptian Interior Minister Magdi Abdel Ghaffar has avoided acknowledging any government involvement in Regeni’s murder, but the regime is notorious for torture and murder. Last year, Human Rights Watch wrote of the disappearance of 41,000 people in Egypt. The Muslim Brotherhood alone stated that 29,000 of its members had been arrested.

President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, the gravedigger of the Egyptian revolution, came to power in 2013 after a coup against his predecessor Mohamed Mursi. Since then, police have murdered thousands of regime opponents, thrown tens of thousands in jail, and condemned over a thousand political opponents to death, including the former Islamist president, Mohamed Mursi.

After Regeni’s death, Egyptian authorities presented six different explanations. He allegedly died first in a car accident, then of a rape committed by homosexuals, and then in something to do with the drug trade.

Shortly before Easter, Egyptian police suddenly presented Giulio’s passport, student cards and bank cards, together with other objects, which could not however be matched to Regeni. The latest “explanation” states that Egyptian authorities shot four mafia members dressed as policemen who kidnap foreigners to rob them. The objects had been secured in an apartment belonging to the sister of one of the victims.

This “version” is not credible, as it does not explain why Regeni was tortured or why the criminals threw his body in a ditch while retaining his passport and other personal belongings.

These grotesque proceedings were finally exposed to Italian newspaper La Reppublica via email by an anonymous, well-connected source. The author of the email described himself as a member of the Egyptian secret police and apparently has detailed knowledge of the case.

From a Yahoo account, he described the events in a mixture of English, Arabic and Italian: “The order to arrest Regeni was given by General Khaled Shalabi, head of the criminal commissariat and the office of investigations in Cairo. He had been carrying out surveillance on Giulio’s apartment and ordered national security officers to search it. The General held Regeni for 24 hours after his arrest in the Gizeh barracks.”

There, Regeni was asked “about his network of contacts to Egyptian workers’ leaders,” but he refused to make any statements without the presence of a interpreter or representative from the Italian embassy. He was subsequently brutally beaten. During the night of January 26 to 27, he was transferred “at the orders of interior minister Magdi Abdel Ghaffar…to an office of the national security in Nasr City.” The chief of national security was ordered to “make him talk.”

In the following 48 hours, Giulio was tortured with increasing brutality. He was “hit in the face,” then “beaten on the soles of his feet with a stick” and “hung from a door,” he was “subjected to electric shocks on sensitive parts of the body,” and was given “no water, no food, no sleep.” They also “placed [him] naked in a room overflowing with water, which [was] subjected to electric shocks lasting several seconds every 30 minutes.”

The injuries resulting from such torture apparently match those found by the autopsy in Rome. This and several other details were known only to the torturers and Italian investigators, and had not been published anywhere. La Reppublica concluded that the author of the anonymous report was credible.

Further details confirm this credibility, such as when the author reports that the secret police in Nasr City subjected the victim to “cuts with a kind of bayonet,” which the autopsy also confirmed.

The transfer to the military intelligence service was decided upon jointly by the interior minister and presidential adviser Ahmad Jamal ad-Din. There, torturers “pressed cigarette butts on his throat and ears,” which would explain why the body was found with its earlobes cut off.

On the day when Italian minister Federica Guidi travelled to Cairo to investigate Regeni’s fate, consultations were held about what should be done with the body. The interior minister, along with Egyptian President Al-Sisi, was personally involved in these discussions. “In the meeting it was decided to portray the incident as a kidnapping with a homosexual background and therefore to throw the body naked in a roadside ditch,” according to the anonymous report.

On 11 April, La Reppublica wrote that Giulio’s death had to be finally “described for what it is: a state murder.”

Since February, protests against the cover-up of Regeni’s murder have grown. All of Italy watched as Regeni’s mother, Paola Regeni, reported in a March 29 press conference before the parliament building about the terrible state in which she found the body: “I could only recognise Giulio by the tip of his nose.” She demanded to know the truth and noted that Giulio was not an isolated case.

A petition demanding the uncovering of Giulio’s murder was signed by almost 5,000 academics internationally. Rallies are growing in Italy, blockades are being held in front of the Egyptian embassy, and the case is being discussed in detail online.

This has put the Italian authorities under pressure. In early April, the government felt compelled to demand rapid clarification from Egypt. Italian officials called for the publication of the mobile telephone records of the victim, surveillance video from metro stations and all forensic data and results. On 5 April, a delegation of high-ranking Egyptian jurists arrived in Rome, but without bringing the material which had been called for.

Three days later, Italian state prosecutor Giuseppe Pignatone stated that the talks with the Egyptians had collapsed without a result. On the same evening, foreign minister Paolo Gentiloni recalled ambassador Maurizio Massari from Cairo “for consultations in Rome,” as it was stated, to “discuss the next steps.”

Italy threatened to place Egypt on a list of dangerous countries for tourists, while the number of Italian tourists in Egypt has already dropped by one tenth. The British government has also demanded a full accounting from the Egyptian government, and the European Parliament discussed whether to halt weapons exports to Cairo.

Nonetheless, Italy does not want to risk its good relations with Egypt. It has steadily expanded economic and political cooperation with the al-Sisi regime. Italy is dependent on Egypt’s cooperation in particular in its preparations for a military intervention in Libya, and annual trade between Italy and Egypt amounts to €5 billion. On April 14, the Italian state prosecutor merely directed an official request for legal cooperation to Egypt.

In addition, Italian energy firm Eni discovered a huge gas field of over 100 square kilometres off the Egyptian coast. Renzi welcomed the find on Twitter with the hashtag, “goodnews.”

Obama flies to Saudi Arabia amid rising tensions

Bill Van Auken

US President Barack Obama arrives in Saudi Arabia today for meetings with Saudi King Salaman and the other crowned heads of the Sunni Arab oil monarchies that make up the Gulf Cooperation Council. The trip comes amid rising tensions both within the Middle East and between Washington and the Saudi royal family, over issues ranging from the nuclear deal with Iran to US legislation that would allow American citizens to sue Saudi Arabia over the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

These frictions notwithstanding, the House of Saud, with its medieval mass beheadings and extreme sectarian Wahhabi ideology, has remained a linchpin of US imperialist policy in the Middle East and a bulwark of reaction and repression in the Arab world for seven decades.

The most immediate source of conflict between Washington and Riyadh is the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act, a piece of legislation before the US Congress permitting lawsuits against foreign governments responsible for supporting terrorist attacks on American soil.

With bipartisan support, including from both Democratic presidential contenders, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, the legislation is clearly aimed at the Saudi regime. It has been triggered in large measure by renewed attention to the continued censorship of a 28-page chapter from the report of the joint congressional committee on 9/11 that details Saudi support and funding for the September 11 hijackers, 15 of whom were Saudi citizens.

In an interview broadcast by CBS on Tuesday, Obama made clear his intention to veto any such legislation, raising the danger that it could trigger actions against the US itself. “If we open up the possibility that individuals in the United States can routinely start suing other governments, then we are also opening up the United States to being continually sued by individuals in other countries.” This line of argumentation is unintentionally revealing, given US imperialism’s role as the world’s main state sponsor of terrorism.

The Saudi regime has threatened punishing retaliation if the legislation is enacted. The Saudi foreign affairs minister, Adel al-Jubeir, reportedly personally informed the White House that Riyadh would retaliate with the wholesale sell-off of $750 billion in US assets.

Such a “nuclear option” would not only deal a blow to the US economy, but would drastically reduce the value of Saudi assets themselves, exacerbating an already deepening crisis over the fall of oil prices. Whether the monarchy would really carry out such a reckless action or not, the fact that it threatens to do so is indicative of the tensions in the US-Saudi alliance.

At the heart of the controversy over the 9/11 report is the fact that this alliance has, since the CIA-orchestrated war for regime change in Afghanistan in the 1980s, involved the use of the Saudi regime and prominent Saudi citizens, such as Osama bin Laden, to mobilize Islamist fighters as US proxies. This has continued through the 2011 war in Libya and the ongoing conflict in Syria, which will no doubt be one of the main topics of discussion at the meeting in Riyadh.

US officials recently revealed that Washington is preparing to implement its “Plan B” in Syria should the cessation of hostilities negotiated at the end of February collapse and the talks between the Syrian government and Western-backed “rebels” in Geneva break down. It would involve the pouring of new and more deadly weapons into the conflict, in particular, anti-aircraft weapons that could be used to bring down both Syrian government and Russian jets.

The unraveling of both the cease-fire and the talks now appears to be taking place. The Syrian Al Qaeda affiliate and its CIA-vetted allies launched an offensive in Aleppo province earlier this month, prompting a government counteroffensive.

The Saudi- and US-backed “High Negotiations Committee” representing the Islamist militias fighting the Syrian government announced Monday that it was suspending its participation in the UN-brokered talks, while the “rebels’” chief negotiator, Mohammed Alloush, the leader of Jaysh al-Islam (Army of Islam), a rabidly sectarian militia fighting to impose an Islamic state in Syria, wrote on Twitter urging a new offensive. “Strike them at their necks. Strike them everywhere,” he said, quoting a passage from the Quran.

The Saudis have long urged the provision of more weaponry, including man pads, i.e., portable surface-to-air missiles capable of bringing down both military jets and passenger planes.

Other tensions have arisen in relation to an interview with Obama published in the April issue of the Atlantic magazine in which the US president described the Saudis as “free riders” who depended on the US for their defense while seeking to pull it into conflicts that did not serve Washington’s interests.

That the monarchy would take offense is entirely understandable. Far from riding “free,” Riyadh has paid some $95 billion in cash for US weapons systems under the Obama administration and negotiated deals worth over $100 billion more, making it by far the biggest customer of the US military-industrial complex.

A significant amount of new spending has gone into replacing bombs and missiles fired at civilian targets in Yemen, where over a year of a Saudi war has killed thousands and left half the population on the brink of starvation. The Pentagon has provided both intelligence and logistical support for this bloodbath.

Another not incidental consequence of the war has been the dramatic strengthening of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, which has established a mini-state around the southeastern port city of Mukalla and amassed unprecedented financial resources and arms stockpiles.

As in its intervention in Syria, Saudi Arabia has waged the war in Yemen in the name of countering Iranian influence, though there is no evidence of major Iranian support for, much less control over, the Houthi rebels.

Among the statements made by Obama in the Atlantic interview that grated the most with the Saudi monarchy was his proposal that it “find an effective way to share the neighborhood and institute some sort of cold peace” with Iran. Riyadh bitterly opposed the nuclear deal with Tehran, fearing it could signal a rapprochement between Iran and the US that would diminish its own role as US imperialism’s principal regional ally.

Despite the nuclear accord, Washington remains determined, including by military means, to prevent Iran from challenging its hegemony in the Middle East.

Growing strains within Saudi society itself resulting from falling oil prices and consequent reductions in spending that threaten to provoke social discontent are the backdrop to these geopolitical tensions. The stability of US imperialism’s key Arab ally is being called increasingly into question.

Clinton, Trump post New York primary victories

Patrick Martin

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and billionaire Donald Trump won the Democratic and Republican primaries in New York State Tuesday, cementing their positions as the frontrunners for the presidential nominations of the two big business parties.

Clinton defeated Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders by a margin of 57 percent to 43 percent, rolling up a total of nearly 1.1 million votes compared to some 800,000 for her opponent. Democratic turnout was up about 10 percent compared to the last contested primary, in 2008, when Clinton defeated Barack Obama by nearly the same percentage margin.

In terms of delegates for the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, which were divided proportionally, Clinton won 135 and Sanders 104, increasing Clinton’s lead among elected delegates by 31. Media tabulations have Clinton with 1,424 elected delegates to 1,149 for Sanders, a margin of 275. When unelected superdelegates—party officials and officeholders, who overwhelmingly favor Clinton—are included, Clinton’s lead more than doubles to 713, with 1,893 for Clinton compared to 1,180 for Sanders. A total of 2,382 are required to win the Democratic nomination.

Clinton rolled up her majority in New York City and its suburbs, sweeping all five boroughs of the city and the five suburban counties, Nassau and Suffolk on Long Island and Westchester, Rockland and Orange north of the city. Upstate, Clinton won narrowly in Erie County (Buffalo), Monroe County (Rochester) and Onondaga County (Syracuse). Sanders actually won 49 of New York’s 62 counties, including the rural areas and the smaller manufacturing centers like Schenectady, Utica and Binghamton, as well as the state capital, Albany.

The Sanders campaign complained that Democratic Party rules making New York a closed primary—limited only to registered Democrats—excluded as many as 3 million voters registered as independents. Nearly all of the remaining primaries, with the exception of California, the most populous state, will be conducted under similar rules, increasing Clinton’s chances of winning most of those contests.

Sanders’s victories in 15 primaries and caucuses have been largely due to a big turnout among independent voters, particularly young people. Exit polls suggest that he has won a majority among registered Democrats in only one primary, in his home state of Vermont.

The Sanders campaign outspent Clinton by two-to-one and mobilized large numbers of young people, but Clinton had the unstinting support of Democratic Party officeholders and the bulk of the trade union apparatus in the state.

In the Republican primary, Trump won 60 percent of the vote, while his two remaining opponents, Ohio Governor John Kasich and Texas Senator Ted Cruz, divided up the remainder. Kasich won 25 percent of the vote and Cruz 15 percent. The total Republican vote was up more than 20 percent compared to 2008, but still far below the total in the Democratic contest. All three Republicans combined won fewer votes than Hillary Clinton in the heavily Democratic state.

Under Republican Party rules awarding delegates on a winner-take-all basis if a candidate wins 50 percent of the vote in a congressional district or statewide, Trump won at least 90 of the 95 delegates elected Tuesday, with Kasich taking the remainder. Cruz won zero delegates, finishing a poor third in all 27 congressional districts in the state.

Trump now leads the Republican contest with 849 delegates compared to 559 for Cruz, with 1,237 required for the nomination. The New York result does not clinch the nomination for Trump, but it makes it considerably more difficult to prevent him accumulating the needed delegates in the 15 states still to vote.

Kasich’s five or so delegates were the first he has won since the March 15 primary in Ohio, his home state. He has only 148 delegates, fewer even than Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, who suspended his campaign more than a month ago.

The result of the New York primary is that it appears more likely that the Democratic and Republican parties will nominate as their candidates the most widely despised figures in modern American political history. An opinion poll published last week found that Trump was viewed favorably by only 24 percent, compared to 65 percent disapproving, for a net negative standing of minus 41 percent, the worst figure ever recorded for a presidential frontrunner of a major capitalist party. Clinton’s numbers were the second worst ever recorded: 32 percent favorable compared to 56 percent unfavorable, for a net negative of minus 24 percent. Ted Cruz was little better, with a net negative rating of minus 23 percent.

These figures reveal not just the unpopularity of these individuals, but the widespread popular hostility to both political parties and the financial aristocracy they represent and serve.

In her victory speech in Manhattan Tuesday night, Clinton sought to identify herself with what she called “a progressive tradition from Franklin Roosevelt to Barack Obama,” espousing “bold progressive goals backed up with real plans.”

While listing a litany of unmet social needs, from “rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure” to education, health care, the environment, systemic racism and pay discrimination against women, she gave no hint as to why the Obama administration has so signally failed to improve conditions of life in any of these areas.

As has become the pattern throughout the campaign, Clinton made no reference to foreign policy or the looming threat of war, the day after the Obama administration approved the latest escalation of US military intervention in Iraq and Syria.

Proclaiming her own campaign to be “the only campaign, Democratic or Republican, to win more than 10 million votes,” counting all primaries and caucuses so far, she declared that “the race is in the home stretch and victory is in sight,” the first time she has made such a public claim.

Clinton appealed to Sanders and his supporters, saying that “much more unites us than divides us,” and made no explicit criticism of her Democratic rival, instead attacking Republicans Trump and Cruz.

Both Trump and Clinton are currently leading in the polls in all five of the states with primaries scheduled for next Tuesday, all on the East Coast: Maryland, Delaware, Pennsylvania, Connecticut and Rhode Island. Victory in all five would likely secure the Democratic nomination for Clinton, but would not foreclose the possibility of a contested Republican convention.

Sanders’s campaign manager, Jeff Weaver, appearing on MSNBC after the dimensions of Clinton’s victory in New York had become apparent, said that Sanders must win at least three of the five contests on April 26 to have a path to the nomination, indicating Pennsylvania, Connecticut and Rhode Island as the most likely.

Sanders addressed a rally at State College, Pennsylvania before the polls closed in New York, and then flew home to Vermont without making any public statement other than a congratulatory phone call to Hillary Clinton.

Other results from exit polls of Democratic primary voters showed results quite similar to those in previous primary states, with Sanders winning by large margins among younger voters and running even with Clinton among minority voters under 45, while Clinton won by huge margins among African-American and Hispanic voters, including 77 percent of minority voters aged 45 and over.

On the Republican side, exit polls suggested a deepening split over the candidacy of Trump. A majority of those who voted for either Kasich or Cruz, some 55 percent, said they would not vote for Trump in November if he is the Republican nominee.

Kashmir: Killings, Curfew And The Myth Of Normalcy

Aadil Farooq

As the authorities lifted curfew in Kupwara and Handwara towns after days of demonstrations and subsequent killings, it seems that normalcy has returned to valley. But such arguments whose premises are laid on an ultra-myopic sense are themselves subjected to debate. What we mean by normalcy when the context is Kashmir specific.

Have Kashmir faced Handwara like situation for the first time. Have killing been done in Kashmir for the first time. It is not like that Kashmir saw it in zainakote it saw it in pulwaom, in Palhalan, in Sopore, in Veijbour, in Shopain in Chouhdhur, in Varmul, in Islambad, Bandpore, Kulgoam, Badgoam in every part of it and every bit of it, in the interiors and exteriors…everywhere. One can hardly find an area in Kashmir where blood is not spilled. The same spree was followed by the same myths of normalcy and everything was presumed to be normal devoid of identifying the brunt it was building.

The word normalcy and its obnoxious, abhorrent, disgust and continuous mortification in Kashmir is quite visible. Can things be normal when the barrel of gun is always pointing at you? Can things be normal when every Kashmiri is gazed as a suspect? Can things be normal when every phone call is tracked and traced? Can things be normal when even social media is subjected to scrutiny?

After the days of killings and curfew – and the subsequent restrictions laid by the occupational institutions – people seem to have finally moved on with their daily works and thus depicting normalcy. The mayhem of death was not an audient drama, but a reality of Kashmir which we have been facing since 90s or even before that.

Over the past three decades, especially during the 90s, Kashmir has been a witness to so many massacres. Then came 2008. There was a massive civilian uprising against the Indian occupation. Initially the authorities fired upon the peaceful demonstrations to silence the protesters. More than 60 civilians were killed. When India state saw things running out of their control, they imposed strict curfew. Things repeated in 2009 and 2010 (in 2010, 126 civilians were killed by Indian army and paramilitary forces).

So, such a situation of killings and curfew only reveal a persistent cycle of miseries that Kashmir seems to have got used to. The incidents of this kind are always followed by curfews and detention or house arrest of the resistance leaders. So in nutshell nothing – literally nothing; neither the attitude of the Indian state nor the counter strategies of the Kashmir’s resistance leadership – has really changed. Indian forces keep on killing our youth; the shameless Indian mainstream media keeps of defending their rapist and murderer forces. And on the other hand Kashmir’s pro-freedom leadership keep on issuing the statement of condemnation to further nurture their victimhood.

Iranian Teacher Racially Abuses Ahwazi Children For Speaking Arabic

Rahim Hamid

A Persian Iranian teacher reportedly punished two Ahwazi Arab primary school pupils for speaking with each other in their Arabic mother tongue last week by forcing them to wash out their mouths with soap and water, warning other pupils that they would face the same punishment if he heard them speaking Arabic or if they were reported to have done so in his absence.

The latest incident of overt anti-Arab prejudice from a regime official, which took place at a school in the Amaniyeh neighbourhood of the regional capital, Ahwaz, has sparked outrage among Ahwazi people, who already face extensive apartheid-style laws outlawing their Arab language, dress, and culture.

Speaking to ‘Arabi 21,’ prominent human rights activist Abdul Karim Dahimi condemned the teacher’s “heinous act,” adding that such overt and shameful racism towards young children exceeds even the customary brutal anti-Arab prejudice from the regime.

Dahimi explained that Ahwazi Arabs are forbidden from speaking their native language, despite the fact that it is “the language of the Quran and the mother tongue of the Arab people of Ahwaz,” adding that this “despicably ugly incident shows the extent of Iranian teachers’ hatred towards Arab language and culture since they consider all things related to Arabs to be filth.”

Other activists pointed out that although the Iranian regime’s constitution, specifically Articles 15 and 19, explicitly allow Ahwazi Arabs to be educated in their own Arabic language, in practice those articles of the constitution which pertain to non-Persian Iranians are disregarded by the regime, with the Persian language being forcibly imposed on the Ahwazis for decades as the sole language permitted.

Dahimi, a former teacher, told Arabi 21, “In recent years, anti-Arab hatred and Iranian supremacism have trickled down from the Iranian elite to the mainstream among the Persian community, and today we see these acts and this sort of racist behaviour recurring extensively against Ahwazi people, going unchecked even in a nation which calls itself Islamic.”

Talking about the latest incident involving the teacher’s abuse of the two children, the activist said, “The parents of these children raised complaints about the Iranian teacher’s racist crime, but they haven’t seen any serious legal action by the Department of Education officials against this racist teacher. We demand that [the education department] take legal action against this teacher and bring him to trial so that Arab students can’t be insulted, with legislation outlawing such abuse included in all international laws regarding crimes against children.”

Ahwazi activists point out that offensive racist depictions of Arabs are common in Iranian media which show a deep contempt for Arab culture and identity and use derogatory terms throughout even supposedly serious programs. Whilst Iranian regime officials claim that their abusive anti-Arab rhetoric and media coverage is directed solely against the regime’s Saudi opponents, this excuse is extremely unconvincing to Ahwazis, who have been subjected to such abuse for decades.

Empire Files Exposes What Hillary Clinton Really Represents

Robert Barsocchini

The above is devastating for Clinton and will further diminish her wavering support among non-oligarch US citizens, relegating her to being elected by the anti-democratic means on which she relies, from kick-backs and slush-funds to hundreds of billions of dollars in arms sales to foreign dictators. (Using and dealing in high-explosive devices is among Hillary’s most prominent trademarks.)

One of the key points in the investigation is that in what we are told is the US ‘democratic system’, a set of oligarchs with corrupt financial ties to the elite-catering candidates, like Hillary, literally get to have their individual votes count as thousands upon thousands of votes.

These oligarchs, dubbed ‘super-delegates’, bribe and support the candidate that works to make them (and in turn the politician in question) even richer and more powerful, and who is fine with, or in Hillary’s case gleeful about, mass-killing any ‘unpeople’ (1984) who stand in the way.

Another point raised is that Hillary’s first political work was “campaigning for the Donald Trump of the ’60s, far right Republican” and corporate oligarch Barry Goldwater. Goldwater was a white supremacist reacting against the burgeoning Civil Rights movement, and Hillary was inspired. (She regularly uses white-supremacist imagery in her own political campaigns.) She later became president of the Young Republicans Club, and to many independent analysts and neo-cons today, it is obvious that Hillary is herself an ideological member of the neo-con terrorist organization.

Again in the eighties and since, Hillary strongly supported policies that top government staffers have said were designed to, and have succeeded terrifically at, imprisoning and killing vast numbers of African Americans and other impoverished or dissident groups.

Indeed, expert Roger Morris finds in his extensive interviews with Hillary/Bill staffers (Partners in Power: The Clintons and Their America) that Hillary, as one might expect from her record, harbors utter personal disdain and disgust for honest, non-oligarch US citizens, whom she is known to call ‘red-necks’ and the like.

Morris further discusses the Clintons’ involvement in shipping money and weapons to the ‘secret’ US terrorist army known as The Contras. For attacking Nicaragua with this and other forces, the US was found guilty in the world’s highest court and the UNSC and GN of international terrorism and aggression. Due to the court’s inability to enforce judgments against history’s biggest empire, the US simply increased its terror against the poor nation that had been, according to international agencies, making great strides in improving the lives of Nicaragua’s population, which consisted predominantly of, as Hillary knew, poor people.

Since entering politics, the Clintons have increased their net worth hundreds of times over, and today have a net worth approaching two-hundred-million dollars, mainly derived from corporate bribery or, to use the touted phrase, ‘speaking fees’. You know all those guys at Goldman Sachs just think Hillary is a genius and they need to pay her five thousand dollars a minute for financial advice. But in reality, they really are interested in what she has to say, albeit for a reason that actually makes sense: they want to make sure they will get a return on their investment, hinting at why Hillary refuses to release transcripts of her ‘speeches’, and why the most intensive, comprehensive academic studies find that the US government responds only to oligarchs and swindlers, and never the actual population of the country.

While it is a widely held international and academic opinion that the US has the world’s most corrupt government because it is based on bribery and maintaining tight oligarchic control, professor David Graeber notes (Debt – The First 5,000 Years) that biased Western-run ‘watch-dog’ agencies are able to lower the US’s corruption ranking on the lists they create because in countries like Russia and China, bribing politicians is illegal, and thus considered corruption, whereas in the US it is rampant to the extent that the offending politicians and oligarchs simply declared bribery to be ‘legal’, and thus not counted as a form of corruption.

But not to worry: Hillary doesn’t just take millions from US oligarchs. She is also flush with millions from foreign oligarchs and dictatorships, and responds to their ‘generosity’ by supporting them privately and publicly, such as backing their efforts to overthrow democracies, or when she recently propagandized for apartheid Israel, just after it was declared the world’s top human rights violator by the United Nations.

Martin ends the investigation by saying US citizens can and should fight both the Republicans and the Democrats, and that she “completely rejects Hillary’s brand of bourgeois ‘feminism’ because it leaves out millions of immigrant women, poor women, and the women [and girls] under her bombs” – all ‘unpeople’ who have stood, or accidentally been, in the way of expanding the corporate empire.

Alcoholism, Game Theory and Peace in the Middle East

Andrew McLean

The world continues to watch with dismay as killing continues in the Middle East. I might say senseless killing but to those who instigate the acts it makes all the sense in their world.

How can this issue even remotely relate to alcoholism?

Gregory Bateson was a social scientist and anthropologist with an interest in systems and relationships. In 1971 he published a seminal work, “The Cybernetics of Self: A Theory of Alcoholism.” Bateson determined that alcoholic struggle for sobriety was part of an errant “Occidental stance.” He believed the success of the mutual aid group Alcoholics Anonymous was due to a change in epistemology, the alcoholic’s way of knowing and being in the world. For Bateson, an examination of the type of relationship within the system was paramount in effecting change. Bateson identified two primary relationship types: “symmetrical” and “complementary.”

Symmetrical relationships are competitive: Like-Like (think nuclear proliferation). They are part of a zero-sum game. In addiction, sobriety competes with non-sobriety. As action “A” (sobriety) occurs, so does the counter action of “B” (non-sobriety). Not only does Other compete with Other, other competes with anti-Other.

Bateson reminds us that in a system, parts operate from within and cannot have unilateral control over the whole. His view was that the alcoholic doesn’t overtly will drunkenness- he commands sobriety and then is disobeyed…

In the same global sense, as long as one is in a “black and white” relationship, war might not necessarily be planned, but easily becomes the correction of non-war. Pride (whether alcoholic, tribal, sectarian or national) narrows the concept of self and assumes a naïve sense of control while placing events/blame outside its scope. If countries in conflict believe they hold separate, indisputable self-evident truths and can only continue in symmetrical relationships, there can be no resolution.

Complementary relationships foster differences (Unlike-unlike) yet allow for “goodness of fit.” In alcoholic recovery, conversion is a shift from a symmetrical relationship to a complementary view.   The alcoholic “gives it up” to a higher power.

(In light of this treatise, ‘higher power’ in the addiction world was never intended to be an exclusionary entity).   His fight for sobriety, which he cannot win, is relinquished.

Paradoxically in doing so he bridges the self/other gap, expanding his world by becoming part of something “bigger than himself.” It can be, in the burying of pride, celebratory o differences and at the same time expansive of one’s scope.

Politically, there are many opportunities in the Middle East for potential complementary shifts. One example could be Israel transferring control of occupied territory. An example of overcoming “pride” to expand one’s own scope could be Palestine’s acknowledgement of Israel’s “right to be.” (Whether “other” would be less likely envisaged in a one-state vs. two-state environment remains to be seen.)

But how to sit at the table and change the relationship? Part of the inherent difficulty in peace talks is the mistrust not only of “other,” but the inclusion of a mediating 3^rd party into that system.

Another shift could be for the dialectic to occur via a truly neutral party, rather than standard political entities. A number of years ago in Madison, Wisconsin, USA, theNobel Peace Prize-nominated Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh led a retreat. He joined together the unlikely couple of “law enforcement” and the concept of “compassion.”

The results were surprisingly positive and powerful.

A mindful apolitical Zen master leading a Middle Eastern peace talk process?

We could do worse.