- nterview with the Palestinian Economist Adel Samara about the Gaza Strip and Egypt
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Is there any One-Man War
Adel Samara
Occupied Palestine
Comrade Sukant Chandan forwarded to me his article on the Russian /NATO war in Ukraine:
Why those supporting Putin’s war in Ukraine can’t comment on anything & have sold out on everything
– Migration / white supremacy racism / Racism in Russia and its periphery / China / Middle East / Nazism & the far-right / Africa)
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The article was full of points that lured me to deal with even in detail, but I will make my article as short as possible.
Sukant reminds me of the long old imperialist propaganda against Arab leaders who were against imperialism and Zionism like Nasser, Sadam, al-Assad, and Qaddafi, propaganda which pretend that the problem with all those leaders’ countries is only because and with one man, the leader not the people even not the Arab Homeland which is still targeted by the colonial capitalist-imperialist west for three hundred years. The imperialists kill or assassinate those leaders, occupy directly or indirectly their countries, kill millions, and push their countries into the Stone Age.
This is not the only big mistake by Sukant. It is strange that he did not refer to many other issues:
· The most criminal goal of the west who maintains the aggressive bloody NATO after the collapse of the USSR.
· He did not mention the Russian mistake when applying to participate in NATO, and the NATO rejection of the Russian demand.
· Moreover, Sukant neglects the NATO expansion to the borders of Russia despite the fact that the NATO “promised” not to expand after the unification of Germany, a single inch in Eastern Europe, including the former USSR itself!
Sukant wrote: “NATO countries have successfully entrapped Putin and his state into a war to bleed Russia to death in a context of fast-growing western colonial-capitalist crises that necessitates sharply rising attacks on competitive states (Russia and China or eg) and against the global black working classes and environment”.
But, suppose that Russia did not launch that war, will NATO stop its expansion? I don’t know the logic of Sukant’s blaming Putin is! Is there any regime or leader who will wait for the enemy until its’ troops enter his own country?
Sukant’s argument blames Putin as if he calls the western colonial imperialists to attack Russia and China!
He also blames Putin for encouraging the western colonial imperialists to sharply attack “the global black working class”! I don’t think that there are black working classes totally separated from all working classes in the world or even in one country. Exploitation is exploitation anywhere even in countries where you have racism there is a joint class interest for all workers for all popular classes. The mechanism of ending racism is the joint struggle of people of all colors even if it will take a long march of re-education. Human beings are not slaves of color but of capital.
Sukant added:
“And, on the other hand, it is a war reflecting the Putin state’s own political and economic crisis whereby his oligarchs need to attain more ‘lebensraum’ in
Ukraine “.
There might be a hard economic crisis in Russia, but the same in the United States on the one hand, and the same United States put Europe in an economic/social crisis, but Sukant did not refer to that. And again, suppose that Russia is in an economic crisis, does that means that Russia shouldn’t protect its own country? I agree that the Russian oligarchs will benefit from the results of rescuing and restoring the four areas, but the main point is that the four areas are Russian on the one hand, and the challenge to the Russian oligarchs is the duty of the Russian working class to continue the class struggle towards socialism, not the “capitalist/imperialist Putin” as Sukant calls him. In fact, according to the news from Russia, especially the speeches of the Russian analyst Vatislav Motosov that the oligarchs, especially, their Russian Jews, did leave Russia directly after the beginning of the war.
Sukant believes that Putin: “… and his own growing fascist oppression necessitates he sharply increases his attacks on the oppressed peoples of the Russian empire / CIS and its oppressed periphery, especially in Central Asia but also in Africa as well”.
But even the western media did not accuse Putin of fascism, they accuse him as a dictator, non-democratic, but not fascist! The Russians “in the Russian empire CIS” according to Sukant writing never occupied central Asia and Africa or any other country.
The Russian forces are there according to agreements with the regimes of those countries. The last example is Mali which the Russians were invited to replace the French imperialist forces.
After the wave of formal independence for many African countries, between 1960 and 1962, France continued to dominate political, economic, military, and cultural life in at least 19 countries of its former African colonies, which shifted from direct military colonialism to indirect colonialism, and French companies worked, with the support of the state, to plunder natural resources, draining qualified people from Africa and selling manufactured products with high added value. France has carried out more than seventy military operations in Africa, during five decades, overthrowing at least 22 presidents, assassinating many of them, and imposing military and economic agreements. and unequal trade and hegemony continued on all sectors and levels until indications of a decline in French influence in its former colonies appeared a few years ago, when many African countries began to diversify their relations and welcome Chinese investments, consolidating the Chinese influence that began growing about two decades ago.
As for Russian influence, many African countries have signed defense agreements with Russia (or Turkey). But China concentrates on economic cooperation. It has invested more than four hundred billion dollars in Africa, and its investments amounted to 35 billion dollars, in 2018, and the volume of trade exchange between China and the continent of Africa, in 2021, amounted to about 254.3 billion dollars, while the share of France in the total volume of African trade decreased from 35% in 1962 to about 2.4% in 2018.
Here the conflict and competition are between western imperialism which occupy Africa and Russian/Chinese capitalism invited by African regimes. The space here did not allow me to explain if those African regimes are patriotic, nationalist, progressive, or clientele. I dealt with this issue in my last book, in Arabic, “Socialist China or Socialist Globe”.
Sukant did not mention the imperialist threats against China and the economic war against Russia, China, Syria, Iran, Cuba…etc under the name of punishment. Who appoints US imperialism to be a global judge other than its imperialist interests and fascist ideology?
The Biden administration just released its new National Security Strategy. It is designed to restore and enforce Washington’s domination over global capitalism and the international state system against pretenders to its throne as the imperial hegemony.
In the new National Security Strategy, Biden also lays out an ambitious plan to adapt the U.S. military to confront China in the Asia Pacific and Russia in Eastern Europe. These entail massive new investments in both conventional and nuclear weaponry. The president’s military budget for 2022 is already about $750 billion, with further increases expected in coming years.
Biden intends to maintain and expand the U.S.’s imperial reach through existing and new military alliances.
But this did not attract Sukant to deal with it properly despite the fact that it is too dangerous for humanity! Nearly a hundred percent of Sukant’s article against Putin shows Biden, but even US imperialism as a peace dove. If it is a matter of comparison, the US regime is a leading one in the level of fascism, imperialism, and war manufacturing on a global level.
Let me just mention one example, the US occupation of north Syria stealing Syrian wheat and oil fields, arming and protecting the Zio/Kurds against the Syrian Arab state, arming and training ISIS which occupies Idlib in the north of Syria, and supporting the Turkish old and neo-colonialism against Arab Homeland, especially Syria.
Again, on NATO’s aggression, most writers from liberals, like Joseph Stieglitz, Jeffry Sachs…etc, and many Marxists agree that the NATO expansion is the reason behind that war. In fact, it is itself a war.
This put Russia into two bitter choices:
Either to defend itself by launching a war of defense;
Or to wait until NATO enters its borders, occupies Russia, and fragments it to be like the Arab Homeland. In fact, the Zio/Nazi coup in Ukraine in 2014 was a war against Russia. I don’t know if Sukant criticizes this aggression either at that time or later.
Many of the points that are raised in Sukant’s article were right, i.e. Russia is a capitalist regime. “Each capitalist state builds military arsenals to enforce their corporations’ claims around the globe. Thus, economic competition between corporations produces imperial competition and in some cases wars for dominance over the world economy”.
But Russia is not an imperialist one as Trotskyites claim. It is possible that the capitalist regime might have the ambition to play an imperialist role, even the tiny Qatar is dreaming to be, but until today Russia did not practice that role.
Russia restores parts of its own country of a majority of the Russian population and made a free choice of their people to vote for a return to Russia, but the US never let the people of Haiti or Costa Rica decide their fate, not to mention that the NATO destroyed Libya, the US destroyed and occupied Iraq, and insists on destroying Syria.
The criminal terrorist alliance between Imperialism and the regimes and forces of politicized religion, i.e. ISIS which was devoted until this moment to destroying Arab republics did not deserve to be mentioned in the Sukants article.
Sukant is right in criticizing Russia’s relationship with the Zionist Ashkenazi Entity (ZAE) which occupies Palestine as a white settler colonial entity. Some people pretend that is because more than a million Russian Jews are there! Those Russians are settlers, and invaders, and their original country, Russia, must take them to court as aggressors against other people, the Palestinian people.
This, with other factors, i.e. is the inherent wrong position of the USSR towards ZAE’s occupation of Palestine, and is due to the strong role and influence of Jews in both the USSR and current Russia, a power which especially lately evoked Russian patriotism.
According to what I read from Russian and Arab analysts in Russia that the regime is too liberal towards the Jews in Russia and towards the Russian oligarch and even allowed them leave Russia when the war started.
Many Russians push their critique of the Russian regime’s that is compromised by the Jewish role and especially their position towards the war in Ukraine to the open, especially after the obvious support of the ZAE to the Ukraine’s Zio-Nazi regime and its rude interference in internal Russian affairs by calling the Jews in the Russian army, around 400,000 troops, to leave Russia.
Yes, the world left is split to several attitudes towards this war, the main camps are:
· One camp equalizes Russia and the West imperial rivals where both are in a period of intense conflict, with oppressed nations caught between them.
· The other stand for Russian defense against NATO aggression.
· The third says that must not fall for the foolish politics of “my enemy’s enemy is my friend” and align themselves with Washington’s imperial and regional opponents, whose various track records of repression, imperialism, and counter-revolution are horrific in their own right. They offer no alternative to the workers and oppressed people, save for a new set of exploiters to replace the current ones.
Leftists and especially Marxists shouldn’t imprison themselves as workers only. Working classes are part of each society. Imperialism never limits its’ wars, exploitation, and fascism to the workers, but against most of the oppressed segments of the society. National liberation movements are not for workers only, and the same is social and class struggle against the bourgeois in the core capitalist countries even when the leadership of the class struggle is led by the working class and its pioneer revolutionary party.
We shouldn’t attach ourselves to the Russian regime, but we must be courageous enough to stand against western colonial capitalist monopoly imperialism when it launches a war against even a capitalist regime, at least because the victims of that war are the popular classes. When any country is at a war of defense, if the left does not participate in the defense of its own homeland, and waits to see the results, the masses of that nation will never gain confidence. As for the war in Ukraine, we must stand with the Russian people in their defense against NATO, and by doing that we stand for all humanity.
Hypocrisy aside, Biden’s plan, but the US plan, for great power competition faces several problems and contradictions. The U.S. and most of the world’s economies are deeply integrated with China. Europe is dependent on Russian energy and much of the Global South depends on food exports from Russia and Ukraine. These facts make it difficult for the U.S. to line up states against China and Russia. I think this is good enough for any Marxist to line up with Russia.
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Interview with the Palestinian Economist Adel Samara about the Gaza Strip and Egypt
” Egypt produces only 39% of its food needs and imports 85% of its wheat from Russia and Ukraine. Egypt enjoyed a lot of income from Russian and Ukrainian tourism and the Suez Canal, but both were hurt and hampered by Covid19 and NATO’s war against Russia. Unfortunately, the regime did not invest the loans in productive sectors (except gas where it is self-sufficient) but in restaurants, cafes, buildings… etc. This absorbs the loans and did not produce enough monetary liquidity to pay the loans and debt servicing ” ….more on Gaza STRIP in the link:
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Interview with the Palestinian Economist Adel Samara about the Gaza Strip and current Egypt
Q1: What do you think about president al Sissi policy? Is it true that they are collaborating with Zionist in the Rafah frontier?
Adel: Egyptian Regime absolutely collaborating with the Zionist Ashkenazi Entity – ZAE on every level especially in Rafah at the cost of the health of sick people, students travel to study, export-import …etc. The regime applies the recommendations/policies of US imperialism at all levels. But Hamas and all people in Gaza can’t protest openly because Egypt is the lung of Gaza especially because of the determination of geography.
Q2: Is it true that they want to destroy Gaza and forced the Palestinians to migrate to Egypt (Sinai)?
Adel: Here there are several scenarios.
1-The ZAE produced a plan by Israeli retired general Giora Eiland suggesting an expansion of the Gaza Strip to annex 1000 square km from Sinai to make it the Palestinian state as a final solution to the conflict.
2- Another by bin Salmans’ plan to transfer the Palestinians to his new city called Neom on the shore of the Red Sea.
3- An invasion of Gaza by armies of the Palestinian Authority (PA) , the Zionist Ashkenazy Entity (ZAE) , Egypt, and ZAE to uproot Hamas’ regime.
4- Qatar and Turkey planning to make Gaza an Islamic Emirate, financing it and minimizing the army struggle by bribing the society.
5- I don’t think Egypt needs more than two million people!
All those scenarios are inside the US policy for the region.
But for Hamas itself, is divided between the militants who insist on military struggle and the political leadership looking for compromise through negotiations. It is important to know that lately, Hamas realized that it is for its reputation to be closed to Syria and the resistance coalition.
Q3– What do you think about the military power in Egypt?
Adel- It is a very complex issue. What we hear is that it is a strong army with good jet fighters a lot of tanks…etc. But, it is controlled by leaders/generals who are Americanized like Sisi. I mean that they depart the main doctrine of the Egyptian army during Nasser’ era.
INFORMA SOBRE ESTE ANUNCIO
What is more dangerous is that the army became a company; a huge one controls/owns most of the economic sectors not only military industries. It is bribed by the regime. Accordingly, this army never has the will of fighting. This might be clear since nothing is done against Ethiopia’s control of Nile waters. The same is for the army’s acceptance of the recognition of the ZAE and normalization with that Entity.
It is to enjoy the privileges of a bribe to protect the regime.
Q4- Do you see them as collaborators of NATO imperialism? Or a barrier to FMI/Corporations because of the economical power they have in Egypt- they have around 50% of the GDP?
Adel: It must be both. There is no conflict of interest between the two parts. The generals are fighting for their privileges. In the last month, a lot of news was noting that Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia United Arab Emirates are building Arab NATO including the ZAE. Despite formal deny from the rulers, I think they did really. For sure the ZAE will or really part of it.
Q5- Do you think that president Al Sissi’s policy is more progressive for the workers and sovereign than the muslim Brothers?
Adel: It is a tragedy to compare badly with the worst. In a dependent economy occupied by the army, there are no rights for the workers because the surplus produced by the workers is confiscated. The problem is that the workers still did not fight. Thirty percent of the people live on $3 a day. Sure those are workers and poor peasants. This is nearly the poverty line estimated by the World Bank.
The muslim brothers whom I call Forces of Politicized Religion FPR did not stay long to judge their position towards workers. Both Brothers and Sisi are representing the comprador class of its two parts, the one whose wealth was gained from Saudi Arabia when they escaped from Nasser’s regime and returned when Sadat became ruler, and the one that gains wealth from the Open Door policy since the beginning of Sadat era until today. Both branches of the capitalist comprador class are in the end exploiting the workers and all of the people.
Al Sissi policies are better than brothers for women, but for sure he did not mean that it is by chance. If the brothers continue, all Egyptian women will dress black and stay at home for male enjoyment and child breeding.
But, to understand better what I wrote above, it is important to see the economic situation of Egypt.
By May 30th this year Egypt devalues the exchange rate of its currency by 16% and rose interest rates by 1% aiming to attract US dollars from the investors who left Egypt, but for sure devaluation will never encourage imports from a country that did not produce commodities that needed for the world market.
NFORMA SOBRE ESTE ANUNCIO
Inflation rose to 10% after it was in 2021 only 5%. Prices, in general, rise especially during Covid19 time and later the Russian war of defence against NATO.
Egypt produces 39% only of its food needs and imports 85% of its wheat from Russia and Ukraine. Egypt enjoyed a lot of rent from Russian and Ukraine tourism and from the Suez Canal, but both were harmed and hindered by Covid19 and the Russian war. Unfortunately, the regime did not invest the loans in productive sectors but in restaurants, Coffees, buildings…etc. This absorbs the loans and did not produce enough money liquidity to repay the loans and debt services.
As long as state revenue from the canal and tourism decreased, the regime went again to IMF for more loans which did not spend on productive investments.
Egypt again asks IMF for loans in 2016. The loan for this year is $20 billion; in addition to a Saudi deposit of $3 billion, 2.8 billion from Germany, $ 600 million from African Development Bank, and $600 million from the World Bank. Egypt increases the interest rate so as to attract investors, but did not invest in the productive sector.
The exchange rate of its currency was reduced to 15 and finally 18 for one dollar, and roses the bills of electricity, water …etc, stopped subsidy for the poor that is why poverty rose from 28 to33% of the society.
The irony is that spending on luxury goods increased. The state built a large fishing lake which costs a lot despite the fact that there are a lot of small ones. The informal sector represents 40%of of the GDP according to TWT, a World Auditory company. Eighty percent of small and medium companies are working illegally. 36% of the state spending is for public debt service and the state still looking for more loans.
The regime collects taxes without providing services. And mainly collects from the poor and lower middle classes.
Foreign debt until 2012 is $137 billion and $26 billion of it for non-Egyptians. The total debt of foreign and local currency is $370 billion.
Abu Dabi paid Egypt $1, 3 billion and paid $2 billion to buy part of Egyptian government shares, and the Saudi sovereign fund deposit $2 billion to Egypt’s government.
Thanks to Dr Adel Samara responses
Bureau D’information Alba Granada North Africa, September 2022.
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