THE RUSSIAN ALTERNATIVE: HOW MOSCOW IS CAPITALISING ON US RETREAT IN PALESTINE, ISRAEL

12 February 2021
The Russian Alternative: How Moscow is Capitalizing on US Retreat in Palestine, Israel
by Ramzy Baroud
Photograph Source: Mahmoud Abbas and Vladimir Putin. April 18, 2016 in Kremlin – CC BY 4.0

Israeli anxiety was palpable when it was reported that Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, was not contacted by the new American President, Joe Biden, for days after the latter’s inauguration. While much is being read into Biden’s decision, including Washington’s lack of enthusiasm to return to the ‘peace process’, Moscow is generating much attention as a possible alternative to the United States by hosting inner Palestinian dialogue and conversing with leaders of Palestinian political groups.

Indeed, a political shift is taking place on both fronts: the US away from the region and Russia back to it. If this trend continues, it could only be a matter of time before a major paradigm shift occurs.

The Israelis are rightly worried at the potential loss of the unconditional support of their American benefactors. “There are 195 countries in the world, and … Biden has not contacted 188 of them,” Herb Keinon wrote in The Jerusalem Post on February 2, adding, “but only in Israel, people are concerned about the significance of this delay”.

The concern is justified as Israel has been designated as Washington’s most prominent ally for many years, both in the Middle East and globally.

It is unclear whether the relegation of Netanyahu during Biden’s early days in office is an indicator that Israel — in fact, the entire region – is no longer an American priority or a warning message to Netanyahu who has rallied for years in support of the Republican Administration of Donald Trump.

Thanks to Netanyahu’s foreign policy miscalculation, support for Israel has, in recent years, become an unprecedented partisan issue in US politics. While the overwhelming majority of Republicans support Israel, only a minority of Democrats sympathize with Israel, as recent public opinion polls revealed.

While it is true that Netanyahu’s behavior in recent years earned him special status within Republican ranks thus making him persona non grata among Democrats, it is equally true that the US seems to be divesting from the Middle East altogether.

According to Politico, reporting on the Biden Administration’s initial days in office, a major restructuring has already taken place among the staff of the US National Security Council, flipping the previous structure “where the Middle East directorate was much bigger than it is now and the Asia portfolio was managed by a handful of more junior staffers.”

However, it is not only Washington that is shifting its geostrategic center of gravity. Russia, too, is undergoing a major restructuring in its foreign policy priorities. While Washington is retreating from the Middle East, Moscow is cementing its presence in the region, which began gradually in its calculated involvement in the Syrian conflict in 2015. Moscow is now offering itself as a political partner and a more balanced mediator between Israel and the Palestinians.

Like the US, Russia might not necessarily see its political involvement as a precursor to actually ending the so-called Israeli-Palestinian conflict, though Moscow insists, unlike Washington, on the centrality of international law and United Nations Resolutions in the quest for a just peace. Writing in the Polish Institute of International Affairs, Michał Wojnarowicz argues that Russia’s involvement in Palestine and Israel is consistent with its overall strategy in the Middle East, aimed at building “a network of influence among regional actors and boost its image as an attractive political partner.”

A variation of this view was offered in the New York Times in 2016, when Moscow began working to translate its strategic gains in Syria to political capital throughout the region. It was during this time that the American-sponsored peace process had reached a dead end, giving Russia the opportunity to float the idea of a Moscow-sponsored talk between Israel and Palestine.

“Russia’s new-found Middle East peace push, part of President Vladimir V. Putin’s reinsertion of Moscow into the region in a profound way after years of retreat, seems to be about everything but finding peace in the Middle East,” a NYT op-ed argued. “Instead, it is about Moscow’s ambitions and competition with Washington.”

At the time, Netanyahu rejected the Russian overture, in the hope that a Republican Administration would grant Israel all of its demands without making any concessions. The Palestinians, including relatively isolated movements like Hamas and the Islamic Jihad, found in Moscow a welcoming environment and a crucial international power that is able to balance out Washington’s blind support for Israel.

Despite Israel’s refusal to engage with the Palestinians under Russian auspices, many Palestinian delegations visited Moscow, culminating, in January 2017, in a political breakthrough when rival Palestinian factions, Fatah, Hamas and others, held serious talks in the hope of bridging their differences. Although the round of talks did not bring about Palestinian unity, it served as Russia’s political debut in a conflict that has fallen squarely within the American geopolitical space.

Since then, Russia has remained very involved through well-structured efforts championed by Putin’s Special Envoy, Mikhail Bogdanov. These efforts are channeled through three different areas: inner Palestinian dialogue, Palestinian-Israeli dialogue and, of late, dialogue within the Fatah movement itself. The latter, especially, is indicative of the nature of Moscow’s involvement in the multi-layered conflicts at work in the region.

Even when Palestinian groups are finalizing their previous agreements in Cairo, top Palestinian officials continue to coordinate their actions with Moscow and with Bogdanov, personally.

Russia’s credibility among Palestinian groups is boosted by similar credibility among ordinary Palestinians as well, especially as it emerged in January that they will be receiving the Russian Sputnik V COVID-19 vaccine, scheduled to be available in the Occupied Territories in the near future.

Moreover, while Washington publicly declared that it will not roll back any of Trump’s actions in favor of Israel, Russian Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov, is pushing for an international peace conference on Palestine, to be held in the coming months.

The US now has no other option but to slowly retreat from its previous commitments to the peace process: in fact, the region as a whole. As is often the case, any American retreat means a potential opening for Russia, which is now laying claim to the role of peace broker, a seismic change that many Palestinians are already welcoming.

Ramzy Baroud is a journalist and the Editor of The Palestine Chronicle. He is the author of five books. His latest is “These Chains Will Be Broken: Palestinian Stories of Struggle and Defiance in Israeli Prisons” (Clarity Press, Atlanta). Dr. Baroud is a Non-resident Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Islam and Global Affairs (CIGA), Istanbul Zaim University (IZU). His website is www.ramzybaroud.net

THE SOUTH AFRICAN ORGANISATION SASOL - OIL FROM COAL GERMAN TECHNOLOGY - SHOULD BE SOCIALISED!

Umsebenzi Online, Volume 19, Number 7, 23 March 2020

Voice of the South African Working Class

In this Issue:

Sasol should be socialised!

Introduction

The Government Employees Pension Fund (GEPF) and Industrial Development Corporation (IDC) lost in total more than R200 billion in this month’s crash of Sasol, reported the Business Report on 15 March 2020. The GEPF is managed, as an investment fund, by the Public Investment Corporation (PIC), while the IDC is a state development finance institution (DFI). The combined loss of workers and public funds occurred through 13.5% and 8.5% stakes held in Sasol by the GEPF and the IDC respectively. The landslide loss did not occur at Eskom or any SOE – it occurred, on the contrary, in a privatised company.

The silence of the private profit sector, its business associations and political and ideological agents, such as the DA, “expert” or “analyst” “notice me” and hangers-on, is deafening. The sycophantic supporters of privatisation are instead calling for more privatisation, divestment of the state in SOEs, and other neoliberal measures. The working class has to unite in defence of public property rights and for the SOEs to be turned around to thrive. Below the excerpt of the editorial from the forthcoming African Communist (Issue 202, 1^st & 2^nd Quarter 2020) deals with the failure of the privatised company, the crash of Sasol, and the way forward, socialisation! 

• Umsebenzi Online

Sasol should be socialised!   

African Communist editorial | Red Alert |

In just one single day in mid-March this year, Sasol lost 45,6% of its share price, with R76-billion of shareholder equity being wiped out in one week. In an attempt to reassure its shareholders, creditors and the markets more generally, Sasol put out a statement valuing its underly­ing assets at R23,3-billion. That’s no small sum, but it represents a huge collapse in value for this synthetic fuel company that was worth more than R400-billion just six years ago.

The immediate cause of the mid-March collapse was the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on global oil demand and the stand-off between two of the world’s major oil producers, Saudi Arabia and Russia. The oil price dropped to around $US35 a barrel. This is close to what the SACP (and others) have long assumed to be the cost to Sasol of producing oil from coal – a cost which, until now, Sasol has kept a closely guarded secret for reasons we will elaborate below.

But behind Sasol’s March 2020 troubles lies another story, and be­hind that story lies yet another. Before the advent of Covid-19 and the oil price collapse, Sasol was already in major trouble.

But let’s first travel back 14 years.

In February 2006 the SACP Central Committee put out a statement welcoming then Minister of Finance Trevor Manuel’s announcement that he was setting up a task team to investigate the possibility of im­posing a windfall tax on Sasol. The announcement was, in principle, an important step forward in the campaign that the SACP had been leading for some years for the socialisation of Sasol and its huge accu­mulation of profits.

Sasol was established in 1950 as a public entity. It was subsidised from the fiscus for many years to cover the difference between the glo­bal price of oil which hovered around $25 a barrel and Sasol’s cost to produce oil from coal (which we long assumed to be around $35). This arrangement was a key part of the strategic intervention of the apart­heid regime to ensure that South Africa’s industrial development was not entirely at the mercy of external oil producers (and later, of course, oil sanctions). This strategic intervention was successful. Today Sasol still supplies around 35% of South Africa’s petrol needs.

Following the global oil price shock of 1973, in which OPEC coun­tries collectively combined to limit production and drive up the global price, oil prices soared. Sasol became immensely profitable as it sold (as it still does) its oil on the South African market at the same price as imported oil. In 1979 Sasol was privatised and sold at a discount to established South African monopoly capital.

But through the 1980s and 1990s and 2000s the global price of oil, sometimes moving above $100 a barrel, was way above Sasol’s produc­tion cost. Over many decades, the South African economy and general public, not just car owners, but taxi and bus commuters, farmers us­ing tractors and food transporters have been subsiding mega-profits for Sasol’s private share-holders – paying at the pump for Sasol petrol as if it were imported all the way from the Middle East.

It is in this context that the SACP has called for the return of Sasol to public ownership and, as a first step, for a variable “windfall tax” to be imposed on Sasol for any time the global oil price tracks significantly above the $35 a barrel – the amount that we believed was the cost to Sasol for producing oil from coal. We also argued that this windfall tax could be the basis of a South African sovereign wealth fund.

So, in 2006 as the oil price hovered around $60, the central com­mittee welcomed Trevor Manuel’s announcement that he was finally establishing a task team to look at the windfall tax proposal. Sasol’s executives went ballistic. “The company is concerned that its ability to reinvest profits into its operations will be compromised if a windfall tax is imposed,” it proclaimed. Sasol CEO at the time, Pat Davies, made veiled threats about “re-thinking” its local investment plans.

To its credit, in 2007 Manuel’s task team, after detailed considera­tion, brushed aside this howling and strongly recommended a windfall tax on Sasol.

Instead, however, and inexplicably Treasury reached a “gentleman’s” agreement with Sasol – in exchange for not imposing the windfall tax, the company committed to investing some of its mega-profits in a new coal-to-oil plant in Limpopo (the so-called Mafutha project).

In 2012, with the global oil price around $120 a barrel, Sasol’s net profit for the year was R24-billion, but there was still no Mafutha! Then in 2013, Sasol announced a R200-billion investment in a gas to liquid plant, not in Limpopo, but in faraway Louisiana, USA.

Even the conservative Business Day journalist David Gleason was outraged: “Born courtesy of taxpayers…South Africa’s biggest compa­ny and world leader in various critical energy technologies is investing ever more deeply in the US than it is here. This may be the right thing for the company, but is it right for the country?”

Gleason was right, but he was also wrong – the decision to disinvest massively into the US has now proven to be a disaster for Sasol and its shareholders. The Louisiana project has run years over schedule and billions over budget. Sasol’s debt has ballooned and creditors are nerv­ous. Before the Covid-19 outbreak, before the oil price collapse, Sasol was in trouble. It joins a list of former pillars of the apartheid economy that disinvested out of South Africa and that have now run into trou­ble. Old Mutual burnt its fingers in London, Anglo American is a pale shadow of its past, SA Breweries got eaten up, Woolworths is limping from its Australian ventures.

And now to add further insult to our injury, Sasol has put out a state­ment reassuring its creditors and investors that even at $28 a barrel, the company can cut it. The blighters! All these years they have kept their cost of producing oil from coal a deep secret, disguising from the South African public the actual amount we have been subsidising mega profits over decades.

The wealth and world-class technical capacities of Sasol need to be socialised and harnessed for the overall development of our country. A windfall tax in 2007 would have been an important step forward in that direction. The task of socialisation has become a whole lot more complex, but no less critical.

• This is an excerpt of the editorial from the forthcoming African Communist, Issue Number 202, 1^st & 2^nd Quarter 2020

Mar 23

April 5, 2019

The Anti-Semitic Con

by Paul Edwards

With the Putin/Russia Collusion Fairytale debunked, the undeniable cancer of real foreign interference in our government demands an honest airing.

Since American politics is mortally corrupt, one might wonder why bother to expose one prime cause of its ethical degeneracy.  If the beast is dead, what use is determining what killed it?  Well, it isn’t quite dead and we have to live with it.  If the public knew one country has done more to subvert our government than all others combined it might raise enough hell to stop it.

In terms of influence, there can be no serious denial that Israel exerts by far the most powerful suasion of any foreign power on America.  Influence exerted by a foreign power’s registered lobby is legitimate per our toothless  protocol.  Israel’s is not so registered, but… details, details.  So, when Republicans invite Bibi to smarmily insult a sitting President in a joint session of Congress, that’s influence, not interference.  When, besides financing most Senators and Representatives elections, Israel takes them on cushy, free PR junkets to Tel Aviv, that’s influence, not interference.

Conversely, when Clintonista subversion of the Sanders campaign appears on Wikileaks and is instantly imputed to Russia and Putin–without proof and against expert technical evidence–that’s not influence, it’s Russki interference.  More absurdly, when–again, without proof–the same Dem CFOs howl that Putin Trolls bought chump change worth of dingy ads on Facebook that swung the election to Trump that’s… but you get the picture.

What is obvious and has long been so–and has been emphasized by two years of fraud and insanity regarding imagined Russian collusion–is that influence is what your friends have; interference is what your enemies do.

Why, when it is so blatantly obvious as to be a source of outspoken pride for them, is the fact that Israel’s right-wing ruling clique brazenly and continually interferes in American government in the most aggressive and offensive way, universally denied?  You want flagrant foreign collusion with high officials in U.S. government?  Open your eyes.  And your mind…

The reason it’s officially denied is that Israel’s Congressional whores know that not to do so violates their deal.  Not to back Israel unquestioningly  terminates it, and the loss of that money means loss of office… to say nothing of the beating they’d take in the press and on their reputations.

The great mass of Americans won’t admit what many can’t help but know because they, too, fear being attacked for such bold honesty.  They are equally vulnerable to rough handling from the same source: the massively powerful Israel Lobby, a unified phalanx of militant American Zionists.
To be clear: Zionism has always insisted that Israel exists for Jews only.

The Israel Lobby–financed by vast American Zionist wealth–potent as it is, could not leverage our politics if its tactics were exposed, and it knows it.   History gives it the key that makes rational assessment of Israel’s policies impossible: the Holocaust and the true anti-Semitism that was its cause.

Evocation of that horror allows any critique of Israeli government to be sleazily labelled Anti-Semitism, and so to effectively nullify argument.  The dishonest and cynical Israel Lobby uses this tactic shamelessly to blunt and derail sound criticism or even plain examination of Israeli state behavior.

What then is Anti-Semitism?  By definition it is antipathy or hatred of the Jewish people as a whole.  An Anti-Semite espouses that categorical prejudice, and Anti-Semitism in word or deed pertains to Jews in toto.  In contrast, behavior that is ugly, hateful, or injurious but not directed at Jews as a whole, though execrable, is not Anti-Semitic, just as it’s possible to hate a Catholic or Muslim without hating their religion or their people.

It follows then, that criticism, even vicious, hateful criticism of the Israeli State, is not inherently Anti-Semitic, and the claim is false on its face.  To attack the Israeli State is not to attack Jews as a people since Israel is not home to most of Jewry and its polity by no means defines or represents Jews in all their broad, complex range of beliefs, practices, and principles.

To say that criticizing the brutal, repressive apartheid Israeli government’s actions is Anti-Semitic is no more legitimate than to say that condemnation of the American State’s vicious imperialist wars makes one anti-American.

This disingenuous con needs to named and refuted around the world.

Is there criticism of Israel that is clearly Anti-Semitic?  Of course, there is!  Plenty of it.  Anti-Semitism is no less real and evil because it does not apply to all critiques of Israel or all insults to Jews or Jewish entities.  Precisely because Anti-Semitism is so vile and toxic a disease, and because it will continue to live in its odious carriers, it is critically important not to vitiate the ubiquitous contempt it arouses by cynically muddling its meaning.

The dishonest and defensive crying of wolf that the government of Israel and the Israel Lobby deploy against any criticism of their history and policy is, in addition to being morally contemptible, deeply counterproductive in terms of Israel’s standing in world opinion.  Mounting a transparently false, blanket, all-purpose lament as a cover for their most obvious and glaring crimes and cruelties cannot prevent the world from seeing them for the corrupt and unjust power they are and fiercely, adamantly opposing them.

Beyond the damage Israel’s cowardly dishonesty does to itself, a more critical concern for Americans concerns what it has done and is doing to exacerbate the rolling debacle of our misruled and floundering country.  The Israel Lobby, Zionism’s American voice, wielding the bogus trope of  Anti-Semitism as a club, infects and pollutes through its agents and activists every niche of our government from the Presidency and Congress, to Federal Departments and Bureaus, to State and local offices.

Without Zionist acceptance Trump would not have been President, but neither would Obama.  Through the Lobby’s diligence we have made our country hated by carrying Israel’s dirty water in the Middle East, crippled and hamstrung enlightened policy at home, and been afflicted with such creatures of nightmare as the Harpy, Nikki Haley, bughouse pseudo-Christian loon, Mike Pompeo, and murderous psychopath, John Bolton.

Nothing suggests the death grip Israel and its Lobby have on our fate can be broken.  So long as the Anti-Semitic Con is viable, even our security is in jeopardy with its blind, sick, demented chosen monsters in charge.

The fable of the eagle and scorpion comes painfully to mind.  When the bird, stung and bearing them both down to death, asks how the scorpion could sting it after swearing not to do so, it replies, “You knew what I was when you let me ride.”  It was all too clear what Israel was in 1947.

More articles by:Paul Edwards

 

Paul Edwards is a writer and film-maker in Montana. He can be reached at: hgmnude@bresnan.net

HYPOCRISY, HYPOCRISY, HYPOCRISY

 Before I get started on the rest of this story of the hypocrisy of the politicians of much of the world, I think the most breathtaking one came today, 8 OCTOBER 2016, from John Kerry from the USA, holding forth on the war crimes being committed in Syria by the Russians and others on the bombings taking place on civilians in Aleppo and other areas of Syria.

This is the same John Kerry who didn't say or do anything when Israel bombed Gaza to smithereens, not once, not twice, but on an ongoing basis.

Then you have to read the three stories below and note the hypocrisies of all the governments concerned of the countries under the microscope.

I believe the episodes involved everywhere are nothing short of the most unbelievably hypocrisy that we have seen perpetrated anywhere in the world.

When you have finished reading the stories, discuss what you think of the unspeakable chutzpah, to use that wonderful Yiddish word, to describe our politicians "great and small" everywhere.

--------------------

Israeli sentenced to 5 years for joining Syrian Qaeda group

Amin Ahmad Saleh Snobar convicted of traveling to Syria, training with Nusra Front terror group

By Times of Israel staff April 21, 2016, 2:26 pm 1
 

An Israeli Arab man was sentenced on Thursday to five years in prison after being convicted of traveling to Syria to join the al-Nusra Front and fight against President Bashar Assad’s regime.
The Haifa District Court sentencing of Amin Snobar, 24, from Kafr Yasif in the northern Galilee, was the most severe so far given to Israeli citizens who have been involved in the Syrian civil war.
He was also ordered to pay a NIS 35,000 ($9,300) fine or serve an extra half a year in prison.
Court papers revealed that Snobar left Israel in mid-2014 and traveled to Turkey. From there he infiltrated into Syria.

Snobar then spent six months training with various jihadist groups including the al-Qaeda-linked al-Nusra Front. In December 2014 he returned to Israel, whereupon he wiped information from his computer, as well as instructing his family to do the same. He also destroyed his cellphone and the SIM card that he used during his time in Syria, actions the court said were intended to hinder a possible investigation, according to court documents.

Amin Snobar in Haifa District Court on April 21, 2016. (Screen capture: Ynet news)

He was arrested after his return to Israel in January 2015 and convicted a year later on several charges, including exiting the country in an illegal manner, membership in an illegal organization, illegal military training, providing services and assistance to an illegal organization, and obstruction of justice.

Snobar’s legal representative said the sentence was unprecedented and noted that another man convicted of joining the Islamic State was given only two years in prison, Channel 2 reported. The attorney also pointed out the Snobar cooperated with investigators by confessing to most of the charges against him and did not in any way harm state security.

“While it is true that [prosecutors] did not prove that the defendant had [specific] intentions to harm the State of Israel, that does not pardon his actions,” the court noted.

“He took part in extensive and diverse training during the half-year in which he was a member of various groups, including the al-Nusra Front, and in various locations.”

According to the ruling, Snobar trained in bomb-making, infantry combat and the use of various weapons, including assault rifles and RPGs.

<a href="http://us-ads.openx.net/w/1.0/rc?cs=fiInstance_99977_0_9088439_iframe&cb=cf8236b460&c.zoneid=fiInstance_99977_0_9088439&r0=http://cdn.firstimpression.io/delivery/ck.php?oaparams=2__bannerid=9242__zoneid=99977__cb=cf8236b460__oadest=" ><img src="http://us-ads.openx.net/w/1.0/ai?auid=538505052&cs=fiInstance_99977_0_9088439_iframe&cb=cf8236b460" border="0" alt=""></a>

The court concluded that Snobar “was not engaging in adventurous behavior, but in the behavior of one who wishes to be part of a terror organization, and even to die as a ‘martyr’ in a jihad in which he sought to participate.”

The al-Nusra Front, the ruling read, “constitutes an arm of al-Qaeda. It was not established just to battle against the Assad regime. It is a Salafist jihadist Islamic organization for which the toppling of the Assad regime is only part of a comprehensive regional plan that intends to establish an Islamic regime in the region, including by replacing the State of Israel, and through the use of violence to achieve its goals.”

Israel formally declared several Syrian jihadist groups, including Islamic State and the al-Nusra Front, illegal organizations in late 2014, after Snobar had already set off on his journey.

According to security services, more than 50 Israeli citizens have traveled to Syria and Iraq to join Islamic State.

In December 2015, in two separate incidents, an East Jerusalem man and five residents of Nazareth were arrested for planning terror attacks in support of IS.

In November, six Arab Israelis from Jaljulia were arrested for preparing to join Islamic State after a seventh man successfully joined the organization by hang gliding into Syria from the Golan Heights.
And in October, in the first indictments for IS-affiliated activity on Israeli soil, seven men were indicted in Nazareth for attempting to carry out terror attacks in Israel under the Islamic State’s flag, having already acquired weapons and scoped out army bases and police stations.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Man found guilty of preparing to travel to Syria sentenced to five years’ jail.

By Emma Younger, ABC News 290916

A would-be-foreign fighter has been sentenced to five-and-a-half years in jail for attempting to join the conflict in Syria in one of the first cases of its kind in Australia.

Melbourne man Amin Mohamed, 26, was convicted of three counts of making preparations to travel to a foreign country to engage in hostile acts for attempting to fight on the frontline in Syria.

The Somalian-born New Zealand citizen was stopped from boarding a plane bound for Turkey at Brisbane airport in 2013.

He was later arrested and charged for applying for a passport, buying a plane ticket for Turkey and obtaining a contact for a fixer to help him travel from Turkey to Syria.

Mohamed made the arrangements with the help of Sydney jihadist recruited Hamdi Al-Qudsi who has since been jailed for helping young people travel to Syria.

In sentencing, Supreme Court Justice Lex Lasry said he did not think Mohamed would have “lasted long”.

“You do not seem to have any previous experience that would have equipped you for what you apparently wanted to do,” he said.

“That may be a clear indicator of how misguided your state of mind was at the time.”

Justice Lasry noted few people have been sentenced for the offence Mohamed was convicted of and none was similar.

Resolve to travel should not be downplayed.

Mohamed has since acknowledged he became “extreme” about religion and was motivated by hijrah – to travel to another country for the sake of God.

He told the court he now described himself as being naïve and foolish.

Justice Lasry told the court despite that self-reflection, Mohamed had failed to ever admit he was planning to join the conflict in Syria and his resolve to travel should not be downplayed.

“These arrangements were being carefully planned with a view to ensuring that your plans were not discovered,” he said.

“There was a time for reflection but you were not deterred and indeed your enthusiasm for your travel plans and the desire to engage in hostile activities seemed to escalate.”

After his arrest, Mohamed was held in immigration detention and he will now be transferred to prison to serve a minimum sentence of three-and-a-half years.

Taking into account the time he has already spent in detention, Mohamed will be eligible for release next year.

He is then likely to be deported, despite the fact his mother and siblings live in Melbourne.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

• September 27 2016 The Age
•  

Manny Waks sues brother for defamation over 'harbouring paedophile' claims

Yeshiva Centre child sexual abuse whistleblower Manny Waks is suing his brother for defamation, in a case likely to re-inflame tensions over abuse cover-ups in the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community.

Avi Yemini is the co-founder of IDF Training in Caulfield.  Photo: www.facebook.com/AviYeminiOfficial/

Mr Waks' brother Avrahem (Avi) Yemini​ has refused to remove from his public Facebook page explosive claims that Mr Waks and his parents hosted a known paedophile in their home for financial gain.

Mr Waks has acknowledged that the Waks family had a man convicted of a child sex offence - New York Rabbi Moshe Keller - staying at the family home over a period of days last year. (Rabbi Keller was convicted of endangering the welfare of a child after a court heard he had inappropriately touched a 15-year-old boy, The New York Times has reported.)

Manny Waks is suing his brother for defamation.  Photo: Penny Stephens
 

But Mr Waks says the family was initially unaware that Rabbi Keller would be staying at the home, and as soon as the Waks family was aware of the situation, they asked Rabbi Keller to leave.

Yeshiva wrote to parents in September last year to say it had been brought to their attention that "an individual ... who was previously charged with child related crimes, is visiting Melbourne and is staying in close proximity to the school campus.

"We have been in contact with Victoria Police and consulted with the relevant authorities and the individual is completely excluded from any access to the Yeshivah Centre in its entirety, at all times," the letter stated.

Mr Waks came to national prominence after he broke the silence about sexual abuse within Melbourne's Orthodox community, specifically at the St Kilda East Yeshiva College.

Mr Yemini is the co-founder of IDF Training, a pro-Israel gym in Caulfield that has come under attack for recruiting members to serve in the Israeli army, and has offered training in weaponry hosted by former Israeli Defence Force snipers.

The brothers' relationship has been strained for years, but the defamation suit represents a new low.
In documents lodged with the Supreme Court, Mr Waks says Mr Yemini's claims held him up to contempt and ridicule, and seriously injured his credit and reputation.

But Mr Yemini told Fairfax he would fight the defamation action.

Last year Mr Yemini posted on his public page a photograph of Manny and his parents, Zephaniah and Chaya Waks, beneath a headline reading "PLEASE SHARE: IMPORTANT CSA [child sexual abuse] OFFENDER COMMUNITY ALERT!"

Beneath, it read: "Moshe Keller, a notorious, convicted child sex offender is currently staying at the Waks' family home which is located literally metres from a school frequented by hundreds of children. Ironically, it is the very same school that Zephaniah (and Manny) Waks have been attacking relentlessly for years now in a so called bid to 'protect the children' who attend there."

Mr Yemini made further claims which Fairfax has chosen not to republish.

The post remains visible on the public page.

In 2013, the Waks family put their home on the market and moved to Israel, saying they had been bullied, harassed and ostracised from the Chabad community after Manny blew the lid on abuse at Yeshiva.

Two years later, Mr Waks said on his website, his parents had "finally" managed to sell their house, "unknowingly" selling it to Rabbi Keller's daughter and her large family.

"At the time of sale they were completely unaware of the link (the Keller daughter has adopted her husband's family name)," Mr Waks wrote in September last year.

"The contract has already been finalised and the settlement is due in December. As the family needed a place to stay for a few months, my parents generously offered them to move into the house this week free of charge (over Rosh Hashanah only Moshe Keller and his wife stayed over)."

He said once the link was known, the Kellers were asked to leave.

Mr Waks is seeking damages and court costs against his brother, saying Mr Yemini failed to offer him a right to reply before putting his Facebook post online, and did not alter the post after Mr Waks had publicly responded.

SOUTH AFRICA AND RUSSIA SIGN SECRET NUKE 'STITCH-UP'

From the Mail and Guardian - South Africa

Jacob Zuma's secret nuke 'stitch-up'

26 SEP 2014 00:00QAANITAH HUNTER, LIONEL FAULL

·                             

·                             

·                             

As the government scrambles to limit fallout, we reveal how Jacob Zuma grabbed control of the R1tn deal and negotiated directly with Vladimir Putin.

President Jacob Zuma personally negotiated a nuclear deal with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, say highly placed government and ANC sources. This ensured that the intergovernmental agreement announced with fanfare this week took all but his most trusted and intimate inner circle by surprise.

A senior ANC leader, who Zuma entrusted with intimate details of the negotiation with Putin, said that Zuma had ironed out details directly with the Russian president on the sidelines of the Brics (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) summit in Brazil in July, and finalised details of the pact during his highly secretive visit to Moscow last month.

“It was simple. When Zuma came back from Brazil, it was done,” the senior ANC leader said.

The party leader and another well-placed ANC MP added that the details of the deal were finalised during Zuma’s trip to Russia in August.

The two sources said that Zuma subsequently instructed energy minister Tina Joemat-Pettersson to sign the deal with the Russians on the sidelines of the general conference of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna.

A joint statement issued by the Russian state-owned nuclear company Rosatom and the South African energy department on Monday said that the agreement “lays the foundation for the large-scale nuclear power plants procurement and development programme of South Africa based on the construction in South Africa of new nuclear power plants with Russian VVER reactors with total installed capacity of up to 9.6GW (up to eight [reactor] units)”.

Deputy energy minister Thembisile Majola told Parliament’s energy portfolio committee, which met on Tuesday, that she had no knowledge of the nuclear deal and had first learned of it through the media.

The chairperson of the committee, Fikile Majola, said that he would call Joemat-Pettersson to explain herself to the committee. “We want her to tell us the details surrounding the deal,” he said.

Shrouded in secrecy 
Sources also said that the minister and Zuma did not take the ANC’s national executive committee (NEC) into their confidence over the matter. Four NEC members independently said that there was no mention of an impending nuclear agreement with Russia at last weekend’s meeting. 

One added that some senior party figures were unimpressed that Zuma, instead of resting in Russia as initially planned, had negotiated deals that had not been agreed to by the leadership. He said Zuma only gave details of the deal to his most trusted Cabinet ministers and MPs.

This week’s announcement also startled politically connected nuclear lobbyists and industry insiders, some of whom frantically exchanged calls in a bid to understand its significance.

A respected nuclear industry leader said the statement looked “pretty definitive”, and news that Russia had clinched a deal to build nuclear reactors blazed unchecked across radio and television bulletins, as well as social media.

The announcement was followed by an apparent damage control exercise. A rival to Rosatom said that they had received written assurances on Tuesday morning from a leading member of the South African delegation to the IAEA conference in Vienna that “there will be other intergovernmental agreements signed with the other vendors before the procurement process will start”.

A new statement issued solely by the department of energy on Tuesday evening said that the agreement “initiates the preparatory phase for the procurement for the new nuclear build programme”.

“Similar agreements are foreseen with other vendor countries that have expressed an interest in supporting South Africa in this massive programme,” it said. “Joemat-Pettersson will lead a delegation to visit France, where bilateral discussions will culminate with the signing of a co-operation agreement between the two countries [and] the South African government is also in discussions towards concluding an intergovernmental agreement with the Chinese government.”

Russia leads the race 
But Zuma’s personal involvement with Putin means that even if similar agreements are concluded with other states, the Russians must be considered clear frontrunners.

Rosatom told the Mail & Guardian that Monday’s joint statement was “intended to solely serve as information on the agreement and not necessarily position Rosatom as a preferred bidder”.

“The agreement stipulates the overall development of various fields of nuclear power industry, and supplementary agreements will be signed in each field stipulating all details,” added a spokesperson.

Senior government and industry sources have been telling amaBhungane for the past 18 months that Zuma has taken a personal interest in the government’s planned procurement of 9?600 megawatts (an estimated R1-trillion’s worth) of nuclear power, regarding it as one of his “presidential legacy projects”.

A senior government official said that Zuma and Putin made initial strides towards a nuclear deal at the Brics summit in Durban in March 2013, but hammered out the details during Zuma’s working visit to the Russian Black Sea resort of Sochi in May last year.

The M&G reported that Zuma had slipped into the driver’s seat the following month, replacing his deputy at the time, Kgalema Motlanthe, as chair of the national nuclear energy executive co-ordinating committee.

A month later, Zuma replaced energy minister Dipuo Peters with Ben Martins, in a move widely seen as being intended to tighten control over the nuclear procurement process and tie up a deal with the Russians.

Joemat-Pettersson took over from Martins in May this year.

Draft agreement
According to the official, a draft nuclear co-operation agreement began to circulate between the Russians and the South Africans in July last year. Initiated by the Russians, this apparently sought a commitment from the South Africans to deal exclusively with them. It allegedly contained four clauses that particularly alarmed South African government officials. They included:

·                        Limiting South Africa to acquiring Russian reactor technology;  

·                        Giving Russia exclusive say over the auxiliary construction contracts; 

·                        Giving Russia a 20-year veto on South Africa doing business with any other nuclear vendor countries; and 

·                        Making South Africa exclusively liable for all nuclear equipment procured from Russia as soon as it left that country. 

“These clauses either flouted sections of our Constitution, which guarantees an open, competitive and transparent bidding processes, or they were not in our national interest,” said the source.

The Russians were said to have pushed “aggressively” for the signing of the agreement, first at the G20 summit in St Petersburg in September last year and again before the Atomex nuclear conference, hosted by Rosatom, in Johannesburg in November. But South African concerns about the proposed exclusivity and liability clauses are said to have stymied an agreement.

At the two-day G20 summit, South African and Russian officials were unable to agree on key clauses in the nuclear co-operation treaty, including those relating to its financing.

The M&G has learned reliably that Zuma summoned then finance minister Pravin Gordhan, who had accompanied him to the summit, to a meeting and appealed to him for the necessary financial commitments. Gordhan apparently declined and warned Zuma such a step would be unwise.

Gordhan could not be reached for confirmation on Thursday.

Initial agreement
In October last year, ANC secretary general Gwede Mantashe and treasurer general Zweli Mkhize accompanied a delegation of ANC-aligned businesspeople from the Progressive Business Forum on a four-day visit to Russia. The ANC signed a memorandum of understanding with Russia’s ruling United Russia party.

The M&G has previously reported that, before the Atomex conference, Russian state-owned media claimed a nuclear reactor deal was a fait accompli. News agency RIA Novosti reported as fact that Rosatom “are to build eight nuclear electricity units in South Africa. Formal agreements about this are to be signed … on the fringes of Atomex”.

But what was released at Atomex was a memorandum of understanding between Rosatom and the South African Nuclear Energy Corporation.

A protester in front of a Rosatom building in Russia. (Alexander Nemenov, AFP)

Martins promised at the time that a co-operation agreement would be signed early this year, pending the finalisation of “legal procedures”.

After Atomex, a source said energy department officials had stopped answering Rosatom’s calls, suggesting that the Russians had overstepped the mark or that major South African government decisions were then placed on hold until after this year’s elections.

After the May poll, Zuma removed Martins, who had held the position for less than a year, and replaced him with Joemat-Pettersson.

Presidential loyalty
Several M&G and amaBhungane sources said that she was seen as being more loyal to the president than her predecessors and more likely to deliver the outcome required on the nuclear deal.

It is not clear whether the agreement signed on Monday differs materially from the draft haggled over by the Russians and South Africans last year.

Xolile Mabhongo, a member of the South African government delegation to Vienna, told Business Day on Thursday that the veto clause had been removed from the signed agreement. He also said that the text of the new agreement would not be made public.

But the announcement reveals the Russians have finally managed to get South Africans to put pen to paper, stretching their lead in the race for the trillion-rand nuclear tender.

Presidential spokesperson Mac Maharaj did not respond to questions. – Additional reporting by Sarah Wild & Pauli van Wyk

Qaanitah Hunter is an M&G political reporter and Lionel Faull is an investigator with the M&G Centre for Investigative Journalism.

---

Long and winding road to a nuclear nation

Politically, South Africa and Russia seem determined to get a nuclear build deal done with unseemly haste. But there are many obstacles to it becoming a reality.

 Before South Africa can start building nuclear power plants, Parliament must ratify every step of the process, from the broad country-to-country agreement down to the allocation of money. 

Two regulators, those for electricity pricing and nuclear power respectively, must sign off on specific details, and they are bound by their own statutes and rules on fairness and justifiability. The flow of vast sums of money to foreign suppliers, and the accompanying currency hedges, are subject to financial regulations. 

There are stringent local requirements for environmental impact assessments and consultations with the communities involved (Bantamsklip and Duinefontein in the Western Cape and Thyspunt in the Eastern Cape are currently proposed sites for the nuclear stations). 

The fairness of tenders – to bidders, but also the citizens ultimately doing the buying – is a constitutional imperative, giving the courts broad powers to review processes if an interested party cries foul. 

Nuclear build and the manufacture and transport of nuclear fuel are subject to a tangle of international agreements on nonproliferation and safety. South Africa has agreed to adhere to the International Atomic Agency’s 19 milestones for a nuclear build, an anomaly for a country that has an existing nuclear programme. 

They include securing the money to deal with nuclear waste and the decommissioning of the power plants decades down the line, and having a human resources plan to make sure there are enough skilled people to run the proposed fleet.

 The guidelines also include a very practical (not to mention time-consuming and expensive) requirement about upgrading the electricity grid to deal with the start-up requirements and output of the new nuclear stations.   

Early this month, as the United States and the European Union moved to impose sanctions against Russia because of the conflict in the Ukraine, Russian nuclear company Rosatom argued that politics should play no part in decisions on nuclear energy. With safety and enormous sums of money involved, the company said “temporary disagreements” between countries should not be a factor. 

Between 1998, when South Africa started considering new nuclear build, and 2007, when Jacob Zuma ousted Thabo Mbeki as ANC leader, Russia was not considered a serious contender for any contracts. – Sarah Wild & Phillip de Wet

---

DA demands full disclosure

The Democratic Alliance said on Thursday that it has applied for full access to all the documents relating to the nuclear deal. 

It said that under the Promotion of Access to Information Act, it would demand sight of everything related to the decision to co-operate with Russia’s Rosatom State Atomic Energy Corporation on the new nuclear fleet, including the minutes of the interministerial committee on energy security chaired by President Jacob Zuma. 

The party has also written to the parliamentary oversight committee on energy, requesting that it subpoena Energy Minister Tina Joemat-Pettersson to appear before it and produce a copy of the full agreement with Rosatom, and to clarify Rosatom’s statements. 

DA leader Helen Zille said that the “extraordinary and unprecedented” situation where both Rosatom and the department of energy issued identical statements made it clear that there was a deal to develop nuclear programmes in “South Africa driven by Rosatom and the Russian government”. 

Despite the department trying to reinterpret the statement retrospectively, “one can hardly believe that they would have issued the first statement, which is the identical version of Rosatom statement, if there wasn’t some validity to it”. 

She said there had been speculation for many months about a secret deal being reached between Zuma and Russian President Vladimir Putin concerning the nuclear programme, which will cost an estimated R1-trillion and have to be paid for by generations to come. 

“We have been very badly burned as a society in the past and with all the secrecy that surrounds this particular deal, we are absolutely determined to get to the bottom of it,” Zille said. – Andisiwe Makinana

---

Lionel is a reporter at the Mail & Guardian Centre for Investigative Journalism, Amabhungane.

·                        Read more from Lionel Faull

WESTERN HYPOCRISY OVER RUSSIA

This article is from Antony Loewenstein's blog dated 21 March 2014 and should be read by all those shouting about Russia's involvement in Crimea.

Western hypocrisy over Russia

Bril­liantly strong Gideon Levy in the Is­raeli news­pa­per Haaretz:

Sad­dam Hus­sein has al­ready been ex­e­cuted, and so has Osama bin Laden. But all is not lost for the en­light­ened West. There is a new devil, and his name is Vladimir Putin. He hates gay peo­ple, so the lead­ers of the en­light­en­ment did not go to Sochi. Now he is oc­cu­py­ing land, so sanc­tions and boy­cotts will be im­posed upon him. The West is scream­ing bloody mur­der from wall to wall: How dare he annex ter­ri­tory in Crimea?

The United States is the su­per­power re­spon­si­ble for the great­est amount of blood­shed since World War II, and the blood of its vic­tims cries out from the soil of Korea and Viet­nam, Cam­bo­dia and Laos, Iraq, Pak­istan and Afghanistan. For years, Wash­ing­ton med­dled in Latin Amer­ica’s in­ter­nal af­fairs as though those af­fairs were its own, in­stalling and over­throw­ing regimes willy-nilly.

More­over, the num­ber of peo­ple in Amer­i­can pris­ons, and their pro­por­tion of the pop­u­la­tion, is the high­est in the world, and that in­cludes China and Rus­sia. Since 1977, 1,246 peo­ple, some of whom were in­no­cent of the charges against them, have been ex­e­cuted in the United States. Eight U.S. states limit speech against ho­mo­sex­u­al­ity in ways that are re­mark­ably sim­i­lar to the anti-gay law Putin en­acted. It is this su­per­power that, with its al­lies and vas­sal states, is rais­ing an out­cry against the new devil.

They cry out against the oc­cu­pa­tion of the Crimean penin­sula as if it were the most awful oc­cu­pa­tion on earth. They will pun­ish Rus­sia for it, per­haps even fight a world war for the lib­er­a­tion of Se­bastopol. Amer­ica can oc­cupy Iraq — the war on ter­ror and the weapons of mass de­struc­tion jus­tify that, as every­body knows — but Rus­sia may not in­vade Crimea. That is a vi­o­la­tion of in­ter­na­tional law. Even a ref­er­en­dum is a vi­o­la­tion of that law — which the West ob­serves so metic­u­lously, as every­body knows.

But of course, the truth is as far from the world of this sanc­ti­mo­nious dou­ble stan­dard as east is from west. The an­nex­a­tion of Crimea may be prob­lem­atic, but it is less prob­lem­atic than the oc­cu­pa­tion of the Pales­tin­ian ter­ri­to­ries by Is­rael. It is more de­mo­c­ra­tic than For­eign Min­is­ter Avig­dor Lieber­man’s land-swap pro­posal; at least Rus­sia asked the in­hab­i­tants under which sov­er­eign power they wished to live, some­thing it has never oc­curred to Lieber­man to do.

Rus­sia’s rea­sons for the an­nex­a­tion of Crimea are also more con­vinc­ing than the de facto an­nex­a­tion of the Is­raeli oc­cu­pied ter­ri­to­ries. The Rus­sians and the Is­raelis use the same ter­mi­nol­ogy of an­ces­tral rights and his­tor­i­cal con­nec­tion. The Is­raelis add rea­sons from the Bible, and mix in is­sues like sanc­tity and mes­sianic be­lief. “Crimea and Sev­astopol are re­turn­ing to … their home shores, to their home port, to Rus­sia!” said Putin; in Is­rael, Prime Min­is­ter Ben­jamin Ne­tanyahu talks about “the rock of our ex­is­tence.” But while most of the in­hab­i­tants of Crimea are Russ­ian, most in­hab­i­tants of the ter­ri­to­ries are Pales­tin­ian — such a minor, in­signif­i­cant dif­fer­ence.

Rus­sia is also more hon­est than Is­rael: It states its in­ten­tion of an­nex­ing the ter­ri­tory. Is­rael, which for all in­tents and pur­poses an­nexed its ter­ri­to­ries long ago, has never dared admit it.

The Is­raeli oc­cu­pa­tion does not cry out to the world — not for sanc­tions and cer­tainly not for threats of war — as the oc­cu­pa­tion of Crimea does. Ne­tanyahu is not the devil, ei­ther in the eyes of the Amer­i­cans or the Eu­ro­peans, and Is­rael’s vi­o­la­tions of in­ter­na­tional law are al­most never men­tioned. The Is­raeli oc­cu­pa­tion, which is more cruel than that of Crimea, is not rec­og­nized, and the West does not do a thing to truly bring it to a halt. The United States and Eu­rope even pro­vide it with fund­ing and arms.

This is not to say that Rus­sia does not de­serve to be crit­i­cized. The legacy of the So­viet Union is hor­rific, and democ­racy in Rus­sia is far from real, what with Putin de­clar­ing war on the media and on free ex­pres­sion and with the dis­grace­ful Pussy Riot af­fair; there is ris­ing cor­rup­tion and, with it, the rule of the oli­garchs. Putin does not speak as nobly as U.S. Pres­i­dent Barack Obama, but then Guan­tanamo is run by Amer­ica, not Rus­sia.

For all the pompous West­ern talk of jus­tice and in­ter­na­tional law, it’s ac­tu­ally the West­ern devil who wears Prada, all the while doing far more than Rus­sia to un­der­mine those vaunted val­ues.