كنعان النشرة الإلكترونية
Volume XX – Issue 6394
9 October 2022
In this issue:
- CCSIS Report
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Was the world ever without war?
Dr. Adel Samara
Occupied Palestine
It seems of the political, academic, cultural, media, and even philosophical discourse, this world need to change. The world is occupied by the West, with the West’s discourse describing a period of war and a period of peace according to the situation in the West itself and its internal developments. It is the claim of the capitalist regimes that their countries were sometimes without war, and these are the same regimes that, in spite of this claim, where carrying out a class war within their countries and colonial aggression against the world.
Because of the occupation of the capitalist West all of the discourse, the term, and even the entirety of the language, produced in the West forces the rest of the world to imagine itself and its situation as is the case in Europe, but rather the global capitalist center.
That is why we witness in the writings of many intellectuals from many countries who write in his country, but not about his country itself, because he thinks as the Western master designed him to think and write, so he became dependent on the way of thinking and internalized the mental defeat, so he produces an intellectual and cultural defeat that is a defeated discourse and began to promote and market this defeated culture in his society to create in the final analysis a follower generation with open eyes and an open mouth and thus distorted consciousness.
The record of history, which rests on its logic, says that the world or world history is the history of class struggle. That is, since the entry or transition of human societies from a primitive communal to a class society based on private property, these societies have lived in relations whose essence is war, while peace was only an exception here or there, only moments of relative peace in terms of time and place, and we do not know if it really happened. Of course, certain societies did not move from communal to other modes of production in parallel and simultaneous transition, but the important thing is that the transition took place and as a result of that transition, the wars did not stop until today.
The slave mode of production whose name speaks for its essence, was a continuous war, whether within a class-based society or between a society or a state and another, or between one state and another. Empires did not fight one country, or country after another, but fought a series of wars against a series of countries, peoples, and nations that did not yet become states. The Greek invasion reached the Arab homeland and Persia, and later the Roman Empire, which expanded to be then divided into Western and Eastern.
Moreover, the slave society is a class war between the masters and the slaves, with no difference between the “democracy of Athens” and Rome after that. The empires practice two forms of wars internal and against other peoples.
The situation is not different in the stage of feudalism between the feudal/noble and the serf, or in the stage of the tribute mode of production (Amen and Turner), nor in the Asian mode of production, perhaps imagined by Marx, where class struggle as well as wars between nations. Rather, the national conflict between one country and another, even if it takes the form or declaration of national war, is mainly in parallel with the internal class struggle by a ruling class that owns a country against the entire other social classes of the same country.
Although the societies in which the capitalist mode of production dominates, whether the advanced monopoly capitalism in the center or the peripheral/dependent capitalist mode of production, is also class societies in which class struggles have not stopped on the one hand, and wars between states have definitely not stopped either.
The world of capitalist social formations may differ from previous social formations in portraying this stage in a false way. This falsehood is the establishment or discourse of the Western capitalist regimes of the West and Japan.
What we mean is that when the Western media and discourse describe a period as a period of peace, it means that there is peace in Europe or in the center, ignoring all parts of the world against which the West wages many types of wars.
Even within the West itself, the class struggle is taking or is characterized by slow and weak paces within the society itself.
When it is an unheated rate, because all society in western countries, including the popular classes, is sprinkled with what was done and looted from the countries of the periphery, i.e. the Third World, where it is used to cool the intensity of the class struggle by taking some of what was looted in a form or another.
With regard to the West, if the West is not at war with one another or the West is not exposed to war from outside its geography, that means for it that the world is at peace! As for any Western country setting up war and annihilating any country in the world, it is not considered war, but rather a peace, even peace in the whole world!
In the age of capital, there is no cold war, but hot wars of varying intensity.
When the United States attacked Iraq in 1991, we wrote that, after the dissolution of the Eastern Bloc, the world moved from the Cold War to the Hot War. But the truth of the matter is that the world of capital is a state of permanent war because war is one of the most important conditions for the survival of the dominance of the capitalist mode of production, i.e., private property and the engine of all this is the access to unlimited accumulation. During the Cold War, class struggles within human societies did not stop, as did the war between states. Of course, the Soviet Union curbed or restrained the brutality of the relatively aggressive West. Therefore, the hot war exists and the cold heat has heated up.
During the hegemony of the capitalist mode of production, it becomes a falsification to claim that there is peace. This claim is completely contrary to the law of permanent contradiction in the society of private property and even contrary to the law of contradiction in its philosophical sense.
It is true that the Russian defense war is taking place today and it is said that it may lead to a world war. But, as we have said, when was no world war? Either severe or less frequent. Were the following not world wars?
· The Greeks extended invasion until Persia.
· Roman wars against Arab Homeland and most of the world
· Conquest of Hannibal to the borders of Rome
· The invasion of the Arabs from Andalusia to the borders of France
· The Feudal/Crusades against Arab Homeland
· The Ottomans’ conquest of parts of Europe
· The capitalist Western invasion against the rest of the world until today
· What about the massacres of Europeans against the indigenous peoples in North America, which are today the United States, Canada, Mexico, and Central and South America? Aren’t they wars?
· What about Western capitalism targeting the Arab Homeland for three hundred years ago?
· What about the uprooting war against the Palestinian people a century ago that did not stop?
These are just examples of big wars, and within the time of each example, there are many small wars between nations, and permanent class wars, whether intense or less intense, within every society.
Ironically, the phrase or term “global village” is in fact the exploitation and aggression of the part of the village called the center on the part called the periphery of this village, the war of the center against the periphery, the war of the north against the south. They are military, economic, cultural, psychological wars…etc… And when the crisis escalates, the center’s regimes launch a war against one another.
The claim that the world witnessed only two world wars is mere falsification. The so-called World War I took place between the countries of the capitalist center, and the so-called World War II of Nazism took place against the Soviet Union, secretly pushed by the rest of the western imperialist center, while the rest of the countries and people of the world were theaters of the West’s wars and a target for looting, exploitation, scraping and unequal exchange that was before the war remained after it, and even in the case of the Arab Homeland, most of the regimes are at class war against the people they rule, as they take turns exploiting them in a colonial and imperialist manner on behalf of imperialism itself. With regard to the periphery, the two so-called world wars were a war on the periphery and in the periphery in which it did not participate in his decision.
Within the womb of the capitalist mode of production, there are continuous developments driven by the law of the motion of capital, whose goal is the maximum accumulation, which breeds its superstructure as its servant in the form of ideologies Eurocentric, Francophonism, fascism, Nazism that are aggressive in nature.
These all “flourish” when this capitalist society begins to lose the welfare state when the global capitalist system, especially the center, enters into a crisis, the essence of which is the low rate of profit and low accumulation. Fascist forces jump to the leadership that the capitalist society because it is its reserve army, which the western capitalist society resorts to as is the time of the crisis.
The arrival of the neo-conservatives to power in the United States was not alone in revealing the fascism of this system. The neo-conservatives presented their fascism with pride and a comprehensive attack on the liberties of nations. Because capital is capital, the arrival of the American Democratic Party to power was an exchange of power between two allies, so Joe Biden continued aggression against various countries of the world, albeit at lighter rates and greater media propaganda, but with the start of the Russian defense war in Ukraine, he imposed on Russia all kinds of wars. Europe was forced to enter the war against Russia to be the scapegoat for the American regime. Nevertheless, Biden stands at the current session of the United Nations in September 2022 and insults all the attendees by saying, “I am against war and with the protection of small countries, while he is denying Syria medicine and food…”.
As for the developments of the world in the past two years, i.e. Covid 19 and the Russian war of defense against Ukraine and NATO they exposed the eloquence of lies and imperialist capitalist malice and prepared a climate that manifested and even the return of fascism in Europe.
The ongoing war in Ukraine, which is NATO’s war against the Russian Federation and with NATO, the various countries affiliated with the Western capitalist center, the various classes in the West that do not face this aggression with rejection, and the various intellectuals and media professionals who promote this war as a defense of democracy. The Western leaders are in a race to ask for oil and gas from the criminal Gulf regimes, wiping all their criticisms against Gulf rulers who never any respect for human rights.
History and the reality of the world today confirm that the absent peace cannot be restored to humanity without humanity transcending the capitalist mode of production and of course, its relations towards another mode of production and completely different production and distribution relations. It may be called socialism, post-capitalist, communism…etc. There is no problem because what is important is the essence, i.e., ending private property.
And when the fall of capitalism happens, the fall of its discourse will follow.
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Surrenders Before the GCC Sheikhs
CCSIS Report
While the West has traditionally been vocal about concerns over workers’ rights abuses in the GCC countries, it is a widely known principle in international relations that self-interest trumps everything else. Ever since Qatar beat the USA, Australia, Japan and South Korea to win hosting rights to the 2022 FIFA World Cup in 2010, despite never having qualified to play in the World Cup itself, it has been suffering snide comments about its eligibility to host the event, ranging from bribery accusations to poor treatment of expatriate labor and, more recently, anti-LGBT laws. However, as the geopolitical sands have shifted during the past decade, the same countries are taking a visibly different position.
Berlin’s scramble for alternative gas supplies
Foreseeing a gas crisis in the coming winter months, Europe is quickly searching for alternative supplies to Russian gas. Azerbaijan is being wooed by the EU officials for the very reason, but strong Russian influence in the South Caucuses and a fragile ceasefire between Armenia and Azerbaijan make this an unviable option. The other, relatively safe, option is the GCC. With this in mind, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz is currently on a whirlwind tour of the biggest gas exporters in the region—Saudi Arabia, UAE, and Qatar, eager to sign gas deals that can ensure a stable gas supply for German residents during the harsh winter months.
Chancellor Scholz’s 2-Day Trip
Chancellor Scholz’s first stopover was Jeddah, on 24 September 2022, where he met the Saudi Crown Prince and de facto ruler Mohammed bin Salman (MBS). For the German economy, Saudi Arabia is an attractive source of hydrogen, which it wants to use for energy instead of natural gas. Ironically, just 4 years ago, Germany was among a handful of European countries that had imposed a ban on 18 Saudi nationals who were believed to be involved in the MBS–sponsored assassination of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
The next day, Chancellor Scholz flew to Abu Dhabi where a formal agreement was signed for the supply of LNG to Germany starting from December 2022. Germany has been rapidly developing its LNG terminal infrastructure under the realization that it has to reduce reliance on Russian gas and explore other sources. The initial shipment from UAE will be for 137,000 cu m, which is not a lot, but it is a first step at building deeper relations within the region. The same day, the Chancellor landed in Doha, where he met the ruler Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani, and even committed to send an official representative to the FIFA event, which is scheduled to kick off on 20 November 2022.
Despite pressure from home-grown as well as international groups to take a firm stand on the human rights situation in the Gulf countries, including not only poor workers’ conditions, but arbitrary political arrests and restrictions on gender minorities, the Chancellor did not raise these issues. He even praised the Qatari government for making progress on workers’ conditions, indicating that Berlin has more important things to worry about.
The FIFA World Cup—Berlin Sings a Different Tune
Since winning the FIFA World Cup hosting bid in 2010, Qatar has been developing its infrastructure rapidly, mainly through foreign labour from the Indian subcontinent. New roads, hotels and stadiums have been constructed. At the same time, thousands of workers have lost their lives due to dangerously high temperatures, absence of adequate breaks and drinking water, and squalid living conditions.
German football officials have repeatedly alleged corruption on the part of Qatar in being awarded the bid, while also calling for the decision to be reversed by FIFA. In one of the qualifying rounds last year, German players wearing black shirts, lined up to spell “HUMAN RIGHTS” to embarrass the Qatari government.
The GCC nations have always been willing to trade with the West as the autocratic regimes need western support to ensure their continued rule. Moreover, as the move is intended to weaken Russia on the international stage, the GCC sheikhdoms will be happy to comply, owing to strong Russian relations with Iran and Syria. Chancellor Scholz will return to Berlin a happy man after a successful tour, and official government representation to the World Cup in November will ultimately silence all voices from Europe supporting political, civic and economic rights in the GCC.
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Exclusive Report of The Caucasus Center – Any form of its republishing need credit of The Caucasus Center for Strategic and Int’l Studies (CCSIS).
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