A Stock Market Primer, in Six Easy Steps

William Kaufman

What is the stock market?

1) It’s not real economic activity—it’s a form of mass hysteria or mass psychosis.

2) Stock prices reflect a mass-hysteria impression of the worth of a piece of paper you hold—a stock certificate. The worth of that piece of paper is sometimes tethered to some economic reality of some corporation—at least partially—but sometimes not. Often a stock price bears little relation to the economic health of a company, as illustrated in the wildly gyrating stock price-to-earnings ratios through the decades. Hence the stock price is often a matter of caprice, covert manipulation, and/or unfathomable crowd psychology, not necessarily real economic “health” or productivity.

If, say, you are fortunate enough to own a stock that has doubled or tripled in price, this does not mean that you have accrued new wealth—that stock valuation is meaningless as long as you still own the piece of paper (the stock certificate); you realize that wealth only by selling the stock. And if you do cash out—sell the piece of paper—to someone else, you are transferring to another person the hazard of seeing that valuation drop or evaporate—an opportune fobbing off of risk to someone else, a transfer of cash to you, but no real creation of wealth—just the passing on of a piece of paper in exchange for currency. Eventually, down the road, your gain will be someone else’s loss when the music stops playing and the last holder of the piece of paper finds there is no chair for him to land on—the stock market as Ponzi scheme.

If everyone or most people decide to sell their pieces of paper—to take their profits—all at once, then the stock prices tumble, so the idea that everyone can cash out and realize this imaginary wealth equally and universally is a mirage: if everyone tried to access it at once, it would evaporate. Hence the common notion that rising stock prices indicate a general increase in wealth or national prosperity is delusional. A stock crash does not erase billions or trillions in “wealth” overnight, as we are commonly told. There was never any “wealth” there to begin with, in the sense that a stock price rationally or measurably reflects the worth of tangible goods or services; that price is just a mass fever dream, a collective, chaotic, bidding war about the worth of pieces of paper.

3) The stock market is a swindle.

Much of the movement of these equities markets originates in the decisions of large funds or high-speed traders who have access to esoteric information, advanced algorithms, or trading networks from which Joe Trader, playing the market at home on his laptop, is excluded. Hence Joe Trader inevitably gets screwed. The author Michael Lewis draws the veil from this complicated high-tech rigging in a 2014 interview with CBS’s 60 Minutes:

Steve Kroft: What’s the headline here?

Michael Lewis: Stock market’s rigged. The United States stock market, the most iconic market in global capitalism is rigged.

Steve Kroft: By whom?

Michael Lewis: By a combination of these stock exchanges, the big Wall Street banks and high-frequency traders.

Steve Kroft: Who are the victims?

Michael Lewis: Everybody who has an investment in the stock market. . . .

Steve Kroft: And this is all being done by computers?

Michael Lewis: All being done by computers. It’s too fast to be done by humans. Humans have been completely removed from the marketplace. “Fast” is the operative word. Machines with secret programs are now trading stocks in tiny fractions of a second, way too fast to be seen or recorded on a stock ticker or computer screen. Faster than the market itself. High-frequency traders, big Wall Street firms and stock exchanges have spent billions to gain an advantage of a millisecond for themselves and their customers, just to get a peek at stock market prices and orders a flash before everyone else, along with the opportunity to act on it. . . . The insiders are able to move faster than you. They’re able to see your order and play it against other orders in ways that you don’t understand. They’re able to front run your order.

Steve Kroft: What do you mean front run?

Michael Lewis: Means they’re able to identify your desire to, to buy shares in Microsoft and buy ‘em in front of you and sell ‘em back to you at a higher price. It all happens in infinitesimally small periods of time. There’s speed advantage that the faster traders have is milliseconds, some of it is fractions of milliseconds. But it’s enough for them to identify what you’re gonna do and do it before you do it at your expense.

5) The MSM commentators on the markets are all industry touts.

Their unvarying counsel, under all circumstances, is this: Get into the market. Get in if you’re not in already. Stay in if you’re already in. A plunge is a buying opportunity. A surge is a buying opportunity. A buying opportunity is that which puts a commission in their pockets. A mass exit from the stock market is the end of their livelihood. I don’t know the Latin term for the logical fallacy at work here, but I think the English translation is something like this: bullshit being slung by greedy con artists. These are people with no more conscience or expertise than the barking guy with the Australian accent on the three a.m. informercial raving about a miracle degreaser or stain remover.

6) This market, more than most, is a big fat bubble, ready to pop.

This bubble is a cloistered biosphere of Teslas and beach houses, of con artists, kleptocrats, and financial sorcerers. It is rigorously insulated from the dolorous real economy inhabited by the 99 percent: declining living standards; stagnant real hourly wages; lousy service-industry jobs; debilitating consumer and student debt peonage; soaring medical insurance premiums and deductibles that render many people’s swiss-cheese policies unusable; crumbling cities and infrastructure; climate disasters of biblical proportions; and toxic food, water, and air. This stock-market bubble has been artificially inflated by historically low interest rates (so the suckers have to go into the market to get a return on their money) and Fed “quantitative easing,” a technocratic euphemism for a novel form of welfare for the one percent that has left untold trillions of “liquidity” sloshing around among the financial elites with which to play Monopoly with one another and pad their net worth by buying back shares of their own companies to inflate stock prices. Moreover, this bubble is even more perilous and tenuous than previous ones because the “air” inside is being pumped by unprecedented levels of consumer and institutional debt that will cause a deafening “pop” when some of the key players start to lose their shirts, and suddenly all the Peters start calling in the debts of all the Pauls who can’t pay.

4) The end game is near. We can console ourselves that these latest innovations in financial prestidigitation and fraud are stretched about as far as they can go. The financial elites are out of three-card monte scams to suck the wealth out of the economy. The heroic productivist heyday of capitalism, celebrated by Marx himself, is over in this country—no more driven visionary builders of railroads, factories, skyscrapers, and highways to a better tomorrow: just endless financial skullduggery and hoarding at the top, and for the rest of us the cold comforts of cell phones, smart televisions, and the endless streams of plastic consumer junk circulating through Amazon and Walmart. What Baudrillard called “the mirror of production” is a prison for the planet earth and every species on it. All that is left for the bipartisan predator class of the United States is scavenging: massive tax breaks for the rich today and tomorrow, perhaps, no more Medicare, no more Social Security, no more public schools—if they have their way, and they probably will. Pop goes the stock market, the illusion of prosperity, the whole unsustainable carbon-poison “economy,” and pop goes the planet and the human race. But look at it this way: it’s a buying opportunity.

The Fires in Myanmar

STEPHEN WALLACE

Her scarred face was dimly lit in the small hut that was provided by the United Nations.   She was anxious to tell her story.  It came out of her in an impassioned torrent that could not be slowed.   I just sat there, stunned, wishing I could tell her something to ease her anguish; something to make her forget.

I was in a Rohingya refugee camp near Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh.    The woman with the scarred face was Rohingya. The Rohingya is an ethnic group in Myanmar that has been the subject of many recent worldwide reports.  Both the New York Times and the BBC had been writing extensively about the Rohingya fleeing for their lives into Bangladesh as the Myanmar Army burned down their villages in southwest Myanmar.

Doctors without Borders estimated 6,700 had been killed since last August.  Horror stories were being recounted daily, straight out of the mouths of the Rohingya as they flowed into Bangladesh, by the hundreds of thousands.

The scarred woman’s name is Momatz.  She lived in Myanmar until the Myanmar military started to burn the homes in other nearby Rohingya villages.   She and her husband had heard the military was heading toward her village.   They were packing to flee when a Buddhist government official arrived in her village to reassure her and her neighbors they had nothing to worry about.  The official said he would protect their village.   The official told them to stay.  He told them they would be safe.   She believed him.  She stayed.

The next day the Myanmar military arrived at her village.  The Buddhist government official was gone.  Momatz and her family had been tricked.

Rohingya Refugee Camp, Bangladesh.

I heard this story while I was working in Bangladesh as a photographer.  I hired an English speaking guide with extensive knowledge of the Rohingya refugee camps.    After a day and a half of taking pictures I told my guide I wanted to hear their stories.    I wanted to know if the newspaper reports were true.

Before visiting Momatz I was invited into the hut of a different family from a different Rohingya village in Myanmar.   I took off my shoes and entered the small shelter.   A 15 year old girl limped in and with difficulty lowered her body to sit on the floor with me.  Her mother and father sat on each side of her.   The teenager’s name was Umme.

Umme.

Umme and her father told me their family was running from their village that the Myanmar military was in the process of setting on fire.   The family was attempting to exit by the main egress from their village, a dirt road surrounded by dense vegetation.   Once they were outside the village the soldiers suddenly appeared from behind trees and bushes and started firing rifles.  The family was caught in an ambush, an ambush to kill unarmed men, women, and children.

The family kept running.  Umme was hit in the leg.  She went down.  Her father and an uncle carried her into the jungle and hid her.  Umme’s mother was hit in both legs. Umme and her mother didn’t receive medical care for days.

Umme sat emotionless as she told her story.  The father wiped tears from his eyes and struggled to maintain his composure.

I am a physician.  I had not told the family of that fact.  As I listened to the story, I kept wondering how extensive Umme’s injury was.  To my surprise the father reached around a corner and pulled out an x-ray of Umme’s leg and handed it to me.

I took the x-ray to the doorway and held it to the light.  I was surprised by what I saw.  The femur, the thighbone, the largest strongest bone in the body, had been shattered, blown to pieces.  A large fragment of the bullet was easily visible and still embedded in her leg.   How incredibly painful the injury must have been and she had no pain medication for days while the leg was jostled as she was carried for miles.  I could feel my throat tighten and I blinked to fight away tears.  I stood silently, holding the X-ray to the light, trying to absorb the inhumanity that produced this injury.

I moved away from the door and sat back down.  The father handed me a few pages of medical records.  I studied them.  The medical records verified the family’s story.  Fortunately, the mother’s two leg wounds were superficial.

They also told me the uncle that helped carry Umme to safety was later shot and killed.  The father asked me to tell their story in the United States.

My guide and I left Umme’s hut.  I was shaken.  He was not.  He had been hearing these stories for months.   He took me to another tent.    It was the tent of Momatz, the woman at the beginning of the story who had facial burns.

She, as Umme, had escaped Myanmar in August 2017.

We sat.  I requested my guide ask her simply, “What happened?”

Tears and nearly uncontrolled passion immediately appeared.   She talked rapidly.  My guide attempted to slow her down in order to translate her story into English.   She spoke with urgency.

Momatz.

Momatz told me the Myanmar Army rapidly entered her village.  All the Rohingya males were rounded up and taken to the center of the village.  While their families watched the men, including Momatz’s husband, were shot in the chest.

Before her husband died, he looked at Momatz who was standing just a few yards away, and asked her for water.  A soldier heard his request, returned to him, and slit his throat.    Momatz attempted to come to the aid of her husband while holding her baby.  She was stopped by another soldier who then grabbed her baby from her arms and threw the baby in an inferno of burning debris.  Momatz heard the cries of her infant.    Then, she and the other woman of the village were forced into the only house that was not on fire at the time.  She and the other women were repeatedly raped, and then locked in the house as it was set on fire.   Momatz was able to escape the fire, but 30 to 40 per cent of her body bears the scars of the fire.

While Momatz told her story an eight-year-old girl sat in the corner crying.   It was her the only surviving child. The girl had somehow escaped, but she had scars on top of her head from machete blows administered by the soldiers.

Momatz’s Daughter.

I felt as if a huge ocean wave had hit me and put me on my back and I could not get up.   I was stunned.  I could think of nothing to say.  I did not cry.  My mind did not want to process what I had just heard.   It was later that night, back at the hotel, I broke down.

During my travels I have heard some terrible things.  Once I spent a daylong car ride with a member of the Cambodian Khmer Rouge army who admitted at the end of the day that he had killed innocent people during the 1970’s.  I have talked with the survivors of the My Lai Massacre where the United States military, during the Vietnam War, went on a rampage killing unarmed women, children, and old men.   Yet nothing has caused me more sadness than seeing and talking with the Rohingya.  The grief of these people is overwhelming.  Bangladesh wants to send them all back to Myanmar.  The Rohingya have no hope.  I believe, as the U.N. said, that what is going on in southwest Myanmar is textbook “ethnic cleansing.”

The UK’s Hidden Hand in Julian Assange’s Detention

Jonathan Cook

It now emerges that the last four years of Julian Assange’s effective imprisonment in the Ecuadorean embassy in London have been entirely unnecessary. In fact, they depended on a legal charade.

Behind the scenes, Sweden wanted to drop the extradition case against Assange back in 2013. Why was this not made public? Because Britain persuaded Sweden to pretend that they still wished to pursue the case.

In other words, for more than four years Assange has been holed up in a tiny room, policed at great cost to British taxpayers, not because of any allegations in Sweden but because the British authorities wanted him to remain there. On what possible grounds could that be, one has to wonder? Might it have something to do with his work as the head of Wikileaks, publishing information from whistleblowers that has severely embarrassed the United States and the UK.

In fact, Assange should have walked free years ago if this was really about an investigation – a sham one at that – into an alleged sexual assault in Sweden. Instead, as Assange has long warned, there is a very different agenda at work: efforts to extradite him onwards to the US, where he could be locked away for good. That was why UN experts argued two years ago that he was being “arbitrarily detained” – for political crimes – not unlike the situation of dissidents in other parts of the world that win the support of western liberals and leftists.

According to a new, limited release of emails between officials, the Swedish director of public prosecutions, Marianne Ny, wrote to Britain’s Crown Prosecution Service on 18 October 2013, warning that Swedish law would not allow the case for extradition to be continued. This was, remember, after Sweden had repeatedly failed to take up an offer from Assange to interview him in London, as had happened in 44 other extradition cases between Sweden and Britain.

Ny wrote to the CPS: “We have found us to be obliged to lift the detention order … and to withdraw the European arrest warrant. If so this should be done in a couple of weeks. This would affect not only us but you too in a significant way.”

Three days later, suggesting that legal concerns were far from anyone’s mind, she emailed the CPS again: “I am sorry this came as a [bad] surprise… I hope I didn’t ruin your weekend.”

In a similar vein, proving that this was about politics, not the law, the chief CPS lawyer handling the case in the UK, had earlier written to the Swedish prosecutors: “Don’t you dare get cold feet!!!”

In December 2013, the unnamed CPS lawyer wrote again to Ny: “I do not consider costs are a relevant factor in this matter.” This was at a time when it had been revealed that the policing of Assange’s detention in the embassy had at that point cost Britain £3.8 million. In another email from the CPS, it was noted: “Please do not think this case is being dealt with as just another extradition.”

These are only fragments of the email correspondence, after most of it was destroyed by the CPS against its own protocols. The deletions appear to have been carried out to avoid releasing the electronic files to a tribunal that has been considering a freedom of information request.

Other surviving emails, according to a Guardian report last year, have shown that the CPS “advised the Swedes in 2010 or 2011 not to visit London to interview Assange. An interview at that time could have prevented the long-running embassy standoff.”

Assange is still holed up in the embassy, at great risk to his physical and mental health, even though last year Sweden formally dropped an investigation that in reality it had not actually been pursuing for more than four years.

Now the UK (read US) authorities have a new, even less credible pretext for continuing to hold Assange: because he “skipped bail”. Apparently the price he should pay for this relatively minor infraction is more than five years of confinement.

London magistrates are due to consider on Tuesday the arguments of Assange’s lawyers that he should be freed and that after so many years the continuing enforcement of the arrest warrant is disproportionate. Given the blurring of legal and political considerations in this case, don’t hold your breath that Assange will finally get a fair hearing.

Remember too that, according to the UK Foreign Office, Ecuador recently notified it that Assange had received diplomatic status following his successful application for Ecuadorean citizenship.

As former British ambassador Craig Murray has explained, the UK has no choice but to accept Assange’s diplomatic immunity. The most it can do is insist that he leave the country – something that Assange and Ecuador presumably each desire. And yet the UK continues to ignore its obligation to allow Assange his freedom to leave. So far there has been zero debate in the British corporate media about this fundamental violation of his rights.

One has to wonder at what point will most people realise that this is – and always was – political persecution masquerading as law enforcement.

Separation Of Religion From State Still A Necessity

Protik Bardhan

The role of religion in politics is as contentious today as it was about hundreds of years ago. The question still haunts the civilization today as it used to once upon a time. The west, for its part, has been successful in separating religion from politics or the church from politics, to which they still adhere amid the wave of rightist politics. In line with the west, especially Europe, many countries from the other parts of the world opted for it but hardly achieved any success.

The first paragraph of the piece may smack of some despair, but in the wake of the rise of extremist Islami, Hindutva and Buddhist politics in the South Asia and bullying of far rights in the west, it may not sound illogical to readers. The fact remains that west, even on the back of strong universal education, has been struggling to keep religion at bay having undergone the historical experience of renaissance, enlightenment and all the struggles for democracy.

Indeed, human beings do always have a penchant for spirituality; we are not merely a bunch of solid matters. Since antiquity, religion played the central role in meeting that need of people. With the advent of modern science and technology, the great advancement of humanities, human beings started coming out of the influence of religion, however, it cannot be said that they were totally dispelled of religion. It cannot happen. But at least, the role of religion was limited to the private sphere of human beings, which can be cited as development. Modernism gave people the scope to think freely without the influence of religion. Reason, not faith, became the driving force of human thinking, which led to epoch-making discoveries, inventions and a whole host of achievements in humanitarian studies. In a nutshell, the world, at least, to a certain extent, became anthropocentric from a faith-based and fatalist one. But it was never fully a secular world as the role of religion was always there, at least in the personal sphere.

The question of separation of religion from politics is important in the sense that it is quintessential to democracy, that is, a polity of the people, by the people and for the people. Religious politics always lays stress on the supremacy of one religion over others, and thus, adherents of other religions are marginalized, which is the polar opposite to the norms of democracy. In such a state of human civilization, this is not acceptable at all.

It is this same sense of religious supremacy that drives the adherents of the Islamic state to annihilate all others who don’t conform to their faith, even the Shias, the other sect of Islam. And with the rise of nationalism in the 19th century, religion and nationalism got mixed with each other in a much more complicated way; Indian nationalism under the spiritual leadership of Gandhi is a prime example of that. Hence, people tended to get into a box of identity, which erects a wall of separation among them, in terms of religion, nationality and so on.

The fact remains that lack of democratic and religious reforms and proper education resulted in people’s renewed interest in religion coupled with rising inequality. If state carries out its duties, people are less likely to feel helpless; which can result in fatalism and religiosity. In case people more are equipped with proper education, they wouldn’t feel like resorting to religion for their spiritual (mental) need. The remark of noted Bengali essayist Motaher Hossain Chowdhury is worth quoting in this regard: “To an educated person, culture constitutes the religion, and to an uneducated person, religion is tantamount to culture. Proper education can fill in the gap of spirituality. Once, the uneducated and semi-educated people used to practice religion. The students of madrassas manned the extremist organizations. But now, even people with the highest education and decent family background are joining these organizations. Again, this is lack of proper education. For sure, a new wave of religion-based politics stretched to different parts of the world. It will go on this way for some time. But we should keep focused on our struggle for a just and free world.

Perhaps, what religious fanaticism can do is amply demonstrated by the partition of India, the legacy of which is still felt. Till date, the Indian subcontinent is the least connected region of the world. Even after partition, we could not bridge the gap. Lack of communication is still thwarting us to know each other closely. A very small number of people from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh travel each other’s country; however, personal tourism between India and Bangladesh recently increased. It is a matter of great regrets that, even after more than 700 of coexistence, the two major communities of the subcontinent, the Hindus, and the Muslims, still feel separated. On the other hand, the plight of the displaced Rohyngas can be attributed to the rampant anti-Muslim sentiment of the ethnic Burmese, at least in part.  The place of Buddhism in the polity and politics in Myanmar is a strongly debated issue in the country.

In countries like Myanmar, India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, politicians should address the underlying grievances that lead people to support exclusionary nationalist narratives, which are partly economic. A much more visible focus on the economy would give people confidence that the government is prioritising better opportunities and jobs and a more prosperous future for ordinary people. The west did fulfill many of these, and that is the reason why, they can still maintain the basic democratic balance. If we follow their footstep, religious leaders like notorious Baba Ram Rahim Singh may not become the last resort for the commoners in our part.

Philosophically, humankind should be freed from the clutch of religion to augment the cause of universal brotherhood and solidarity, And Politically; we have to be able to separate religion from politics.

Erasing Arab Identity: Iran Demolishes More Historical Sites In Ahwaz

Rahim Hamid

In January 2018, the Iranian regime ordered the demolition of another cherished artefact of Ahwazi heritage in the occupied Arab region of Ahwaz.

Ahwazi activists reported that regime authorities ignored petitions submitted by local residents pleading with them not to destroy the 98-year-old cinema in Dar Khwain city to the west of the regional capital, with regime security forces, assisted by municipality officials, using bulldozers to raze the historic building.

The cinema was established for the area’s people in 1920 on the orders of Sheikh Khazal Al-Kaabi, the last Arab ruler of Ahwaz who was deposed in Iran’s 1925 annexation of the then-autonomous Arab emirate, with even the Iranian regime’s own heritage agency listing it as a historic site to be protected.

Unfortunately,  as has been the case since the 1925 annexation and occupation, which was supported by the then-British empire, successive Iranian regimes have worked tirelessly to erase the Arab cultural heritage and landmarks of the Ahwazi people; this is part of a larger effort to eradicate their Arab identity, history and heritage. The destruction of the beloved cinema was simply another expression of this attempt by Iran to forcibly assimilate the Ahwazi people, even whilst treating them as fifth-class citizens and denying them the most basic rights on the basis of their Arab ethnicity.

This official sabotage has also seen the vandalism or wholesale destruction of many other sites of historic interest in the region, with others deliberately allowed to fall into such disrepair that they collapse. These sites including the palaces of Prince Khazal’s palaces in the cities of Muhammarah, Hamidiyeh and the regional capital Ahwaz.

In November 2010, the regime’s infamous Islamic Revolutionary GuardsCorps demolished theFilya[Feiliyeh] palace overlooking the Shat al-Arab waterwaynear Muhammarah, which dated back to 1917.

Filya[Feiliyeh] palace

Two years later in 2012, another palace established by prince Khazal in Hamidieh city was bulldozed, then in July 2013, the regime ordered the demolition of the Saray Ajam palace, located in the capital city of Ahwaz.  This building had been registered as a site of special historicinterest by the regime’s heritage agency, with Ahwazi activists calling onthe concerned international bodies such as UNESCO to take firm action to prevent the regime from further destroying irreplaceable antiquities in its drive to obliterate the Arab identity of the once-autonomous region, effectively attempting to erase Ahwazi history.

Image of the demolition of the Arabic historical monument known by the name of “Saray Ajam”

Many Ahwazis believe that an unofficial battle has been going on in their region since the late 19thcentury to reinstate the Persian Empire there before expanding across the region.

For Ahwazi people,  this is an existential fight for their culture, heritage and identity against an encroaching and accelerating ethnocide; as with other totalitarian regimes, Iran’s leadership relies on Orwellian revisionism and falsification of historical records, attempting to deny not only the distinctive ethnically Arab character of Ahwaz, but even to deny every aspect of its history; to admit the truth of its former autonomous status, after all, would force the regime to admit their own  position as colonialist occupiers, whose annexation of Arabs’ lands was enabled and assisted by the then-British empire  – not a good look for a regime which depicts itself as being an icon of anti-imperialist resistance.

Despite the regime’s  tireless efforts to stuff Ahwazi history down the memory hole, so to speak, the history is well-documented by the Ahwazi people and can be seen in all parts of the region from Elam and  Muhammarah to the Bab al-Salam and Hormuz Straits.

The regime uses every trick in the book in its efforts to claim ownership of the region and to deny the Ahwazi people their land and heritage, not only razing historic sites, but seizing homes, farms and massive tracts of land, which are ‘gifted’ to ethnically Persian settlers to the area; as in Israel these settlers are provided with  well-appointed homes, generous subsidies, good jobs and other inducements to move to the region in an effort to change the demographic balance.

Iran’s efforts to erase Ahwazi culture even extend to language and clothing, with Ahwazis forbidden from receiving or providing education in their native Arabic language and prohibited from wearing their traditional Arab garb.

The Iranian regime even attempts to deny the Ahwazi people’s right to their own land, claiming that Ahwazis are not indigenous to the area but settled there during the Islamic conquest in the seventh century.  Amongst many other examples of this effort to rewrite history, the regime deliberately misattributes construction of historical Ahwazi landmarks to Iran’s Akhmini dynasty rather than to the Arab rulers of the time. The aim of this wholly false manufactured narrative is to suggest that Arab Ahwazis are essentially foreign interlopers in Persians’ nation, despite the fact that this is very easily disproven by archaeological and historic records, with Ahwazis’ presence in their land dating back millennia.

The regime’s destruction of Dar Khiwan’s cinema is, therefore, simply another part of Iran’s constant efforts to erase Ahwazis’ heritage and history ancient and modern.

With more than half of Iran’s population made up of ethnic minorities, predominantly Ahwazis, Kurds, Baluchisand Turkish Azeris, the regime subjects these citizens to horrendous injustice and constant pressure in an effort to force them to renounce or simply forget their ethnic, cultural and linguistic heritage and accept Persian homogeneity; as one activist said, “The regime seizes lands, changes education curricula, and redraws borders to assert its dominance in the region.”

Ironically, the regime’s efforts to enforce the acceptance of homogenous Persian culture and identity are also fruitless because of the regime’s overt and brutal racism towards the same minorities.

Despite all of the regime’s efforts, however, Ahwazis and other minorities will continue to fight for their heritage, their rights, their culture, their history and their freedom.

An Exodus of Jews From Palestine Is Inevitable

Rima Najjar

Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) has come a long way in advocating for Palestinian rights. They now fully embrace the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) Movement, seeing it as the most effective method to effect change. JVP is on Israel’s BDS Ban List and is described by another Jewish group in the US (the Anti-Defamation League — ADL) as “the largest and most influential Jewish anti-Zionist group in the United States.”

In recent years, JVP has significantly expanded and now has many chapters across the US. Its concerns go to the heart of Jewish identity, Zionism, and Jewish institutional culture, topics Israel has long hijacked. Their boldest campaign to date has been the campaign to convince young US Jews not to participate in the Birthright trips Israel sponsors for Jews around the world.

This JVP campaign is very significant because it delegitimizes Israel as a Jewish state, as a birthright of Jews worldwide. It is also directed at a Jewish demographic that, by all accounts, is moving away from Israel’s hasbara and is likely open to transformative change.

Israel cannot survive as a Jewish state without a constant influx of Jews as immigrants to keep the Jewish majority it created by denying Palestinian right of return and blocking Palestinian aspirations to self-determination in their own homeland.

Today, thanks to BDS, we are no longer trapped in the language of “disputed territory” or dual “narratives”. It’s finally clear that the demise of the Jewish state is inevitable, leading to an exodus of Jews from Palestine. Israel’s end will come, as Henry Siegman, President of the U.S./Middle East Project, writes in The National Interest, from one of two scenarios, both of which will be fueled by the nature or character of the Jewish state itself.

First scenario:

“If after what undoubtedly would be a long and bitter anti-apartheid struggle Palestinians prevail, they will be in the clear majority. Having established the principle that the majority can impose on the minority the religious and cultural identity of the State, Israel will not be in a strong position to deny Palestinians that same right. That will lead in time to a significant exodus of Israel’s Jews.”

Second scenario:

“If Palestinians do not prevail, then the undeniable apartheid character of the state and the cost of the ongoing struggle will lead to the same result — an exodus of Israel’s Jews over time, creating an even greater demographic imbalance between the country’s Jewish and Arab populations. Palestinians will not leave because they will have nowhere to go.”

JVP’s campaign to convince college-age American Jews not to participate in Israel’s Birthright trips amounts to telling them that Israel’s national identity and territorial claims in Palestine cannot be defined by their own American national identity disguised as corrupted Judaism.

This is a message worth conveying to Jews worldwide. Any Jew feeling the need or desire to emigrate from his or her country could do Palestinians a favor and boycott immigrating to Israel. To religious Jews, the message is, as Siegman says: “Most Jews did not make their lives in Jerusalem in the past two millenniums, even in times when they were able to do so. Instead they ascribed the yearned-for return to Jerusalem to eschatological time.”

The time has finally come for Zionist chains to be broken and for self-determination, dignity, and transformative justice for Palestinians to spring forth across synagogues, churches and mosques worldwide.

As Dr Gideon Polya eloquently put it in Palestinian Me Too: 140 Alphabetically-listed Zionist Crimes Expose Appalling Western Complicity & Hypocrisy :

“A peaceful , humane solution that would be of enormous benefit to all the world, to all the Jewish Israelis and to all the Indigenous Palestinians, would be a unitary state in Palestine with return of all refugees, zero tolerance for racism, equal rights for all, all human rights for all, one-person-one-vote, justice, goodwill, reconciliation, airport-level security, nuclear weapons removal, internationally-guaranteed national security initially based on the present armed forces, and untrammeled access for all citizens to all of the Holy Land. It can and should happen tomorrow.”

The Muslim World Towards Unthinkable Clash of Reason

Mahboob A. Khawaja

“Muslims are numerous but powerless. Divisions among Muslims, especially between Sunni and Shiites, have consigned the Muslim Middle East to almost a century of Western control….Muslim disunity has made it possible for Israel to dispossess the Palestinians, for the U.S. to invade Iraq, and for the U.S. to rule much of the region…”(Paul Craig Roberts, “Muslims are their own Worst Enemy”: Global Research)

Looking Beyond the Obvious Horizon –  The Besieged Arab-Muslim World

Logic fails to combat the incensed Arab authoritarianism to reason against the Western-led wars of catastrophic ends. The whole of the Arab Middle East is under destruction by design and strategic plans chalked out ages ago. The 21st century Muslim world embodies ignorance, inept leadership and mismanagement of public governance leading to continuous despotism and degeneration where unthinkable future is a thinkable entity of the present. Nations and societies enriched with live conscience and thinking hubs enjoin consciousness to make navigational change when faced with problematic situations of political and strategic importance. Not so, most Muslim elite act like dummies as men of the king and “the king has no clothes.”

Global politics is not fixed but a constantly changing phenomenon of life. The Arab -Muslim leaders do not comprehend the imperatives of political change. But reality will not diminish because nobody is conscious of its place. After more than sixty years of freedom from the European imperialism, societal development remained a primitive mode of tribal folklore and storytelling. The Arab Middle East faces many critical crises and no one thinks about peacemaking, humane security and conflict management.The masses are the net victims of the bogus “war on terror” generated by the US and its European allies. Millions have been victims of cold blood massacres and forcibly displaced to European lands as unwanted refugees. There are no independent public institutionsaimed at workable solution and no proactive thinking in any Arab-Muslim quarter to strive for political unity and to have coherent leadership. Leaders who cannot think intelligently or understand the nature of the current political crises, how could they lead the masses to any strategic direction?  Authoritarian Arab-Muslim leaders will sabotage the peaceful endeavors for crisis management just to escape the challenges of reality. It serves the strategic interest of the US-led war in Iraq, Syria, Yemen and Libya and soon to Saudi Arabia, dismantling of the Arab heartland by their own hands using weapons of mass destruction. There are Arab-Muslim leaders to console the masses and to provide sense of moral and intellectual security in crises.

Coalition of the Unthinkable Warmongers

America and some of the oil producing Arab rulers are collaborating in warmongering. They are unaware of the short-long terms consequences of warmongering to societal thinking, behaviors and future-making.Viewing the prevalent destruction of the environment, killings and displacement of the innocent civilians from Syria to Iraq, one is reminded constantly of the barbarity of the 2nd World War that Europeans imposed on one another. Now under the Trump presidency, pros and cons are shifted daily to the extremes and facts and fictions take trivial twist in foreign policy. The recent American posture to enforce its dictum on the status of Jerusalem clearly sets the alarming prospects of a disdained future for its role in peacemaking and relationships to the larger Muslim world. America is in a grip of crises, one after another as legal and political repercussions of the continued wars against Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Yemen and Syria. The war mentality has not changed from Obama onward to President Trump. America moral and intellectual capital signals complete bankruptcy – development contrasting its modern history of moral and political values. Over the centuries what was evolved and built by its historical thinkers, philosophers and political leaders, has been undermined and destroyed by George Bush, Barrack Obama and now Trump just in two decades. Paul Craig Roberts (“Truth is Offensive”), provides a unique insight to American political psyche, not previously explained by other contemporary intellectuals:

“Most Americans go along with unaccountable murder, torture, and detention without evidence, which proclaims their gullibility to the entire world. There has never in history been a population as unaware as Americans. The world is amazed that an insouciant people became, if only for a short time, a superpower. The world needs intelligence and leadership in order to avoid catastrophe, but America can provide neither intelligence nor leadership. America is a lost land where nuclear weapons are in the hands of those who are concerned only with their own power. Washington is the enemy of the entire world and encompasses the largest concentration of evil on the planet.  Where is the good to rise up against the evil?”

Recall History to Change Violence by Reason and Manage Problem-Solving

Do the Arab leaders live for today and deny the implications of a sustainable future?  Morally and intellectually disdained Arab-Muslim leaders are preoccupied with futile issues of the narcissism – egoistic gimmick of power. They have allowed the foreigners to wage wars and destroy the societal homogeneity and intellectual fabric. They are all part of the problem, how could they be part of the solution.

The UNO had the mandate to safeguard the humanity from the scourge of war. Yet, its role and importance has diminished to become an observer servicing the aggressors and the victims alike. The UN Security Council is tainted with inaction and failures in situations of critical crises as Syria, Iraqand Yemen – humanity crying for ‘Save our Soul.’ Are we seeing the repetition of failure of the League of Nations to embrace another dreadful war of the century?   Issuing concerns and statistical reportsin situations on bloodbath warranting prompt action is not a call to reason and responsibility. Mankind needs security from sadistic bombers and killers, not opinionated condemnation statements.

The continuous sectarian barbarism of the few dictators have destroyed much of Syria, Iraq, Libya, Yemen  and could well destabilize Egypt and Saudi Arabia as appears to be emerging insolvent phantom of the near future. The mental microscope of the leaders is overburdened with a sense of unreality.  The unthinkable despotic traitors are within, not elsewhere. The narcissist leaders could well undermine the larger societal interest but would not go away voluntarily. The Arab rulers and the masses live and breathe in conflicting time zones being unable to see the rationality of people-oriented governance – the essence of Islamic system of governance.  The worst is yet to come as the wars continue, surrender to foreign forces as there are no leaders to think of the future, no Arab armies to defend the people and no sustainable socio-economic infrastructures intact to support the masses.America and European claim friendship but their actions are tainted with continuous conflicts and destruction of the Arab masses. If one looks for workable change, it is imperative to have the revival of Islamic thinking-based system of governance and moral character of leadership for accountability and to defuse violence and sectarian warmongering and replace it with reason and honest accountability to the masses.

Once in formative history, Muslim scholars and thinkers had life of wisdom and honor and Islam imbued the moral character of superiority in wars, but not anymore. When unusual and difficult problems erupt, intelligent and competent proactive leaders are always conscious and open to listening to voices of reason for change, reformation and societal stability. This helps all to manage a navigational change and to solve the problems. Borrowed weapons and corrupt and failed rulers do not have the capacity to extend moral and intellectual security to the besieged masses.

Implications of Downing the Israeli Fighter Plane

Elias Akleh

Israel had gained air space superiority in the Middle East after it destroyed the Egyptian air force during the 1967 6-days Israeli aggression war against it neighbors. Since then, the Arab weakness in the air force arena had emboldened Israel to use its air force power intensively and unhindered, up till now, to inflict damages to its Arab neighbors without endangering its troops in risky confrontation.

The free open-air space of the region allowed Israeli bombers to hit installations in the heart of some Arab countries, such as the 1981 bombing of Iraqi nuclear facility and the 2007 bombing of the alleged Syrian nuclear reactor. Violating international human rights, and without any international condemnation, Israel used its air force to destroy main civilian infrastructures, bomb civilian homes, hospitals, schools, mosques and churches, and many civilian institutions. This was apparent particularly in Israel’s invasions and wars against Lebanon and against Gaza Strip.

In fact, Israel was so emboldened that it had routinely violated Lebanese air space to attack Syria under bogus claims of self-defense, pre-emptive strikes against rocket convoys to Hezbollah, retaliations against claimed ISIS rocket launchers, and lately against alleged Iranian military facilities and rocket factories in Syria.

Within the last few years, arrogantly emboldened Israeli leaders had intensified their military aggression against Syria without paying any military or political price for it. This has just changed last Saturday February 10th when Syria finally considered that enough is enough and decided to defend its own air space.

Syrian government forces use drones to monitor ISIS’s military movements. Israel, as it had done in the past, decided to help its proxy army; ISIS, by bombing the Syrian drone air base. Two Israeli fighter planes were launched early Saturday morning, violated Lebanese air space, as usual, heading to Syria to do what they accustomed to believe a relatively easy mission.

Yet, the Israelis were surprised to discover that the mission was not business as usual. The Israeli fighter planes were confronted with heavy Syrian defenses and with ground to air missiles that downed their F-16 and damaged another F-15 fighter planes.

Panic and fear of further rocket attacks spread all over the northern Israeli colonies. Warning sirens wailed in many Israeli towns in the north, Israelis hurried into shelters and Ben Gurion international airport near Tel Aviv had temporarily halted air traffic. On Sunday Israel spread its iron dome rockets on its northern border, while sending more reinforcements south on the border with Gaza Strip. Israel does not have any territorial depth that could protect its citizens from any rockets launched from Syria.

Netanyahu, fearing further “Iranian” and/or “Russian” retaliations, or even worse, getting Israel alone involved in an unplanned and unprepared war against Syrian and Hezbollah forces, rushed to the phone calling on Trump and Putin claiming that Israel does not seek “escalation” and that the Israeli attack came as a limited retaliation for Iranian drone violation of Israeli air space. This is a claim that Netanyahu had always used to justify Israel’s continuous aggressions against Arabs accompanied with the bullying daring threat not to retaliate against these aggressions. “We seek peace, but are prepared for any scenario and I wouldn’t suggest to anyone that they test us” he arrogantly challenged in many of his speeches. Finally, Syria decided to test Israel’s resolve, and Netanyahu panicked.

Israeli officials were shocked by the unexpected result of what seemed to be an easy mission for the F-16 that is equipped with the latest American defensive Electronic Counter Measures (ECM) that is supposed to defend the plane from missile attacks. The shock did not hit only the Israelis but also hit the American military air force headquarters even harder especially when it was revealed that the very expensive ECM failed to defend the plane against the older 1960s technology of the Russian S-200 missile that hit the planes. This is so concerning to the Americans since the American air force fleet is comprised mainly of F-16 fighter planes using the same ECM defensive technology.

Israeli officials hastened to justify the attack as a retaliation for an Iranian drone that allegedly had violated the Israeli air space. It is worth mentioning, here, that Israel seems to be inflected with a dangerous pathological phobic obsession called Iran; Iranian nuclear bomb, Iranian rockets, and finally Iranian drones. All these have proven to be Netanyahu’s false manifestations of his over-imaginative sick mind, who wants to convince the world that Iran, not Israel, poses threat to the region and to the world. The alleged Iranian threat never escapes all of Netanyahu’s speeches.

History proves that Iran has not entered into any war of aggression for centuries and had never developed nuclear weapons, while Israel had been born out of a colonial war, lives into a state of perpetual aggressive wars against its neighbors, reported to have between 200 – 300 nuclear bombs, and had dropped nuclear tactical bombs on Yemen. Unlike ISIS creator America, Iran has no military presence in Syria, but few military advisers invited by the Syrian government.

This event of downing Israeli F-16 fighter plane is not a casual incident, but could be viewed as a crucial turning point in the on-going Arab/Israeli conflict. It could mean that Israel cannot any longer bomb its neighbors without any heavy price to pay. Israel needs to think deeply and to reconsider its policies before jumping into any military adventure. It is true that Lebanon, Iraq, and Syria have come wounded of devastating wars, yet they had come out experienced, determined, and better armed. The “Order out of Chaos”, the “New Middle East”, and the American Israeli ISIS terrorist wars, that meant to weaken and destroy the Arab Resistance Axis had failed and produced the opposite planned results. The Arab Resistance Axis, leadership and nations, is stronger instead.

Israeli leadership understands, now, that this event ushers a new strategic phase. The era of Israeli air force bullying its Arab neighbors is over. Any future Israeli air engagement could further demonstrate to other Arab leaders that Israel, with its air defense neutralized and without any territorial depth, is very vulnerable.  Israelis can only resort to their American protectors to deter any possible confrontation or rocket attacks that would herd Israeli citizens into shelters shuttering the myth of “Israel is the safest place for Jews”, and could initiate a reverse immigration.

The only people Israel can now bully and terrorize are the Palestinians in the West Bank and in Gaza Strip, who are now going into their 11th “Week of Anger” demonstrating against the Israeli occupation, and engaging, with stones, the fully armed Israeli soldiers. The possibility of bombing Gaza to raise the reduced morale of the Israeli pilots, a common practice of Israeli leaders whenever they face a military failure, is very high now. The Hamas military wing; Izz ak-Din al-Qassam Brigades, announced that it had raised its readiness for any possible Israeli attack on the Gaza Strip.

Fearing Peace: Olympic Diplomacy In Action

Binoy Kampmark 

Mike Pence was a man with a mission.  At stages through the opening parts of the Winter Olympics in South Korea, he looked like a man on a mission.  With diplomatic gestures flowering all around with weedy vigour in Pyeonchang, he was intent on fighting them.  The gardener of empire had his implements at the ready.

The US Vice-President had a brief: ignore, stall, and frustrate.  Most of all, be wary of being wooed.  “We’ll continue,” he warned on Thursday, “to seize every opportunity to ensure that North Korea does not use the powerful imagery and backdrop of the Olympics to paper over an appalling record of human rights and a pattern of developing weapons and conducting the kind of missile launches that are threatening our nation and threatening neighbours across the region.”

He proceeded to meet four North Korean defectors.  He had been in Japan announcing “the toughest and most aggressive” sanctions against Pyongyang yet, exhorting troops at Yokota Air Base to guard against “the rogue regime in North Korea”.  At the opening ceremony, he refused to engage with his North Korean counterparts.  That ice, at least for the moment, would remain in place.

The fact that progress is being made by both Koreas in a multi-decade conflict goes against the grain of US foreign policy. (Admittedly, this grain varies depending on mood, timing and person.)  Rather than expressing sighs of relief that the two Koreas, who ultimately are the only ones who matter in any final accord, are speaking, larger powers are poking around the corner.  They are the potential spoilers.

President of the International Olympic Committee, Thomas Bach, could not resist noting the moment of symbolic unity.  The effect of both Koreas marching into the stadium under one flag hit the mark.  “All the athletes around me, all the spectators here in the stadium, and all Olympic fans watching around the world… we are all touched by this wonderful gesture.”

High jinks of sort would have been hard to avoid.  The North Korean cheer leaders, for instance, greeted athletes with a flag sporting the disputed islands of Dokdo.  (For Japan, these are known as Takeshima.)  This ribbing was cheekier given South Korea’s continued insistence on ownership. “This issue,” according to Dong-Joon Park and Danielle Chubb, “brings together all Koreans, no matter what their political inclination – a rare occurrence in a country that is itself deeply ideologically and politically divided.”

For all that, the most important niggler was that of division.  Soft power would be used to prize apart and isolate.  Would Seoul and Washington be separated, their warm, strategic relationship cooled by the seductive advances of Pyongyang?  And what of a persistently prickly Japan, locked, by virtue of security and circumstance, in an at times awkward alliance with South Korea and the United States?

Pyongyang has certainly been stocking up on its soft power inventories, disseminating them in short sharp bursts.  Kim Jong-un’s sister, Kim Yo-jong, supplied an ample “spear” in the “charm offensive” by attending the opening ceremony.

North Korean pop singer Hyon Song-wol of Excellent Horse-like Lady fame had also been doing the rounds in the South to inspect the venue where the DPRK Samjiyon Orchestra would perform, prompting concerns that she might be a good disguise as a Trojan Horse.

Rather than seeing this as opportunity, some of the paladins in Washington fear a near hypnotic control being exerted by Pyongyang.  The DPRK agenda here is to retain a nuclear capability while also seeking closer ties with South Korea, all the time attempting to isolate the US.  “North Korea,” suggested former South Korean vice foreign minister Kim Sung-han, “appears to be winning gold.”

In such an assessment, the DPRK “delegation and athletes are getting all the spotlight, and Kim Jong-un’s sister is showing elegant smiles before the South Korean public and the world.  Even for the moment, it appears to be a normal state.”

The Olympic moment was something of an intoxicated binge, a high point that could, in time, dissipate into depressed normality.  Former senior US diplomat Douglas Paal suggested how “tough” it was “not to get caught up in the emotions of an Olympics event”.

Another ally to be discomforted in this moment of diplomacy is Japan.  The fact that Japan’s prime minister, Shinzo Abe, decided to grace Friday’s opening ceremony with his troubling presence raised the spectre of North Korea’s abduction of Japanese nationals.  (Some 470 abductions are said to have taken place between the 1960s and 1980s.)  He also proceeded to irritate his South Korean hosts by insisting that joint military drills with the US would resume immediately after the Olympics.

South Korea has, in turn, been attacked by various Japanese figures for being soft and sympathetic to their North Korean brethren. “South Korean President Moon Jae-in,” stressed Kazuhiro Araki, head of the Unidentified Persons Investigation Committee at the National Association for the Rescue of Japanese Kidnapped by North Korea, “is pro-Pyongyang and he has used the Winter Olympics to protect North Korea from the pressure that was being applied by Japan and the US.”

The Korea Central News Agency was certainly attuned to the efforts of Japanese politicians to muddy waters.  “If Japan runs amok, defying our warnings,” went a release on January 26, “the Korean people will surely force Japan to pay a very high price for its crimes with their strong fists.”

As for Pence, North Korean soft power, at least behind the scenes, may have had its seductive effect.  From icy standoffishness at the ceremony, he would say aboard Air Force Two on Sunday that the United States would be open, despite the ongoing “maximum pressure” campaign, to talks without preconditions with Pyongyang.

There was the natural caveat, the now genetically programmed refrain.  “The point is, no pressure comes off until they are actually doing something that the alliance believes represents a meaningful step towards denuclearization.”  Conditions, without preconditions, a muddled state of affairs that will not necessarily trouble the negotiating wing of the DPRK.