This will be the first official visit to any part of Israel by a member of the British Royal family since the Jewish state’s establishment in 1948 and which is due to take place next week. It is, of course, a distinctly odd choice of timing considering the current attitude of non-cooperation by the Netanyahu government towards any peace settlement that allows the return of stolen land to Palestinian refugees.

Perversely, the Conservative government of Theresa May seems determined to continue to increase Britain’s military reliance on the state of Israel despite the obvious danger to the NATO alliance by compromising UK national security with military equipment from a non-member state.

Israel currently has a massive trade surplus of $3.33bn with Britain by its exports to the UK that include military drones and guided missiles, which trade poses a direct threat to British national security by an undeclared nuclear state that is neither a party to the Non Proliferation Treaty (NPT) nor subject to inspection by the IAEA.

One solution would appear to be a European-wide boycott of the importation of Israeli military equipment and services together with an urgent review by the May government on the issue of British export licences of military parts and equipment to the IDF.

If this royal visit to the Occupied Territories is to be of any value, it must draw global attention to the continued blockade of essential goods and services for the 1.8 million civilian population of Gaza by the Israeli Right-wing, extremist Likud regime of Binyamin Netanyahu that has caused so much loss of life and hardship for the indigenous Muslim Arab population.

The British royal family is held in high esteem in most parts of the world and its public condemnation of human rights abuse by the Israeli government could only be of benefit to those millions still persecuted by this neo-colonialist, Right-wing administration.

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Hans Stehling (pen name) is an analyst based in the UK. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

The Palestinian Health Ministry reported on June 1st that a beautiful young woman medic, Razan Ashraf Najjar, 21, was the second medic to be killed by Israeli army fire since March 30th. To date, Israel has killed 130 and injured more than 13,400 non-violent people in Gaza for protesting the siege. Among the injured are 238 medics, 29 shot with live fire after being directly targeted with high-velocity gas bombs.

Still, Israel is accorded impunity. Even when crimes are acknowledged, they “may” constitute a war crime or a crime against peace (Nuremberg), Israel’s destruction of Gaza’s entire infrastructure “may” render Gaza unliveable by 2017, 2018, 2019 or 2020, Gaza “may” be a humanitarian disaster, or Israel’s use of unconventional weapons in 2006, 2009, 2014 and 2018 should be investigated. And always underreported is the participation of nations and institutions in Israel’s “military-securitization-pacification” complex. Israel has long violated arms embargoes imposed on some of the most murderous regimes, and has produced and used prohibited weapons with impunity. Germany recently donated to Israel a submarine capable of carrying 144 nuclear warheads (as part of its Holocaust reparations!).

The Israeli historian Ilan Pappe has substantiated through archival records Israel’s ethnic cleansing of 1948 in the formation of the Israeli state, methodically researched and planned since before the Holocaust. Pappe now defines Israel’s modus operandi as an “incremental genocide.” At the 2014 Russell Tribunal, former UN Special Rapporteurs on the Occupied Territories John Dugard and Richard Falk also found evidence of “incitement to genocide.” More recently, Haaretz writer Gideon Levy wrote that Israel’s real purpose in its Gaza operations is “to kill Arabs” and that the Israel Defence Forces has a “map of pain.”

Israel’s lies have been closely interrogated by Noam Chomsky and former National Director of the American Jewish Congress Henry Siegman, among many others. They write that Israel surreptitiously instigates and pre-plans innumerable provocations until Palestinians eventually retaliate, allowing Israel to justify massively disproportionate reprisals in the name of “self-defense.” They document Hamas’ consistent compliance with truce agreements (unlike Israel’s systemic violations). The world should be forewarned that Israel has long used this same strategy against Iran, secretly “provoking Iran into responding with war or measures just stopping short of war” while manipulating public opinion with “semi-official horror scenarios” about Iran.1

Israel and the Children of Palestine

Poetry often captures best what seems unimaginable. Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish’s eulogy to Edward Said identifies Israel’s “maximum proficiency” in killing and Palestinian hunger to live:

…Adept snipers, hitting their target
With maximum proficiency
Blood
And blood
And blood.
…And scream that you may hear yourself,
and scream that you may know you’re still alive,
and alive,
and that life on this earth is possible.

Aharon Shabtai’s poem “J’Accuse” is a requiem for Muhammad al-Durrah, a child killed with “maximum proficiency.”

The sniper who shot at Muhammad the child
Beneath his father’s arm
Wasn’t acting alone –
…The tree doesn’t go green
When a single leaf unfurls,
many wrinkled brows
leaned over the plans.
History has known
foreheads like these-
technicians of slaughter,
bastards in whose eyes
morality is a pain in the ass…..
Each one of these authorities
sees to his part in the plan:
one’s in charge of liquidation,
another of the daily harassment;
this one’s field is public relations,
that one’s collaboration;
this one deals with expulsion and fencing,
that one with the destruction of homes.
Because, when it comes down to it, we’re only speaking
of a population of a certain size,
which needs to be pounded and ground
then shipped off as human powder.
… For the sniper who fired at the child
is only a single stinking instrument
within an enormous orchestra…

Killing and tormenting children and parents are found in many other “civilized” nations: the U.S. policy toward Black and refugee children; the half million dead Iraqi children over the course of the American war and occupation; and Canada’s “scooping” tens of thousands of Indigenous children into residential schools. Britain’s maltreatment of whole classes of children is captured in Jonathan Swift’s Modest Proposal to eat Irish children to solve the demographic threat and food shortages.

In Israel’s disproportionate attacks on Gaza, one-third to one-quarter of the fatalities are children. In Operation Protective Edge, Israel killed 551 Gazan children while one Israeli child was killed. As a result of the Gaza siege imposed in 2007, 70 per cent of babies at nine months suffered from anemia, and about 15 per cent of Gaza’s children are reported as stunted in growth due to malnutrition. Closures prevent infants from leaving Gaza for life-saving cardiovascular surgery. As of January 2008, there were no first line paediatric antibiotics available in the Ministry of Health. Physicians for Human Right-Israel (PHR-I) filed a petition and a request to the Israeli Supreme Court for a temporary injunction to stop the nightly sonic booms, deeming it a collective punishment of the civilian population that particularly traumatized children, causing hearing loss, night terrors, and bedwetting, but the petition was rejected. Barring goods like potato chips and toys has to do with absolute power, not security.

Israelis shamelessly desecrate dead Palestinian children and their families. Former Prime Minister Golda Meir:

“We can forgive the Arabs for killing our children. We cannot forgive them for forcing us to kill their children. We will only have peace with the Arabs when they love their children more than they hate us.”

Golda Meir, the guilt-inducing Jewish mother in extremis, is utterly devoid of feeling the “majesty and burning” of a child’s death (Dylan Thomas). Minister of Justice Ayelet Shaked has called for the slaughter of Palestinian mothers as they give birth to “little snakes” and Netanyahu accuses Palestinians of selecting photogenic pictures of child victims for propaganda. Israeli soldiers scrawled on a mourning notice for 16-year-old Musab Tamimi, killed by a sniper’s shot to the throat:

“‘Son of a bitch, slut, dead.’ For good measure, they drew a Star of David… Neatly folded, the notice is now in the possession of the bereaved father.”

Israel tried to blame the father and cameraman of faking the killing of Muhammad al-Durrah, the child in Shabtai’s poem “J’Accuse”. Thousands of Palestinian children have been kidnapped, incarcerated, and tortured in an apartheid juvenile justice system.2

There appears to be no self-awareness. In the article “Tell the Truth, Shimon” [Peres], Gideon Levy admonishes the spineless prime minister to “go to the village of Yamoun and meet Heira Abu Hassan and Amiya Zakin, who lost their babies three weeks ago when IDF soldiers wouldn’t let their cars through the checkpoint, while they were in labor and bleeding. Listen to their terrible stories.” Yigal Shochat evokes the gas chamber “selections,” writing that checkpoint officials “make a selection” as to who will be allowed to proceed to a hospital or to a maternity ward.3

Sakharov Peace Prize recipient Nurit Peled-Elhanan lost her own daughter to a suicide bombing. She speaks of “the megalomania of the insolent and corrupt leaders of the state of Israel … [who] have succeeded in converting this whole country into an altar on which they sacrifice other people’s children to the god of death….”

The late Dr. Eyad al-Sarraj, former director of the Gaza Community Mental Health Program, wrote that

“children experienced beating, bone-breaking, injury, tear gas and acts of killing, and that the most excruciating psychological experience was to see their fathers beaten helpless by Israeli soldiers without resistance.”

Avi Mograbi’s documentary Avenge But One of My Two Eyes provides insights into the education of Israel’s Jewish youth. From earliest childhood through young adulthood they are repeatedly told by adults in positions of authority about the heroic and exciting suicide terrorism myths of Masada and Samson Under conditions of siege or of insults to male narcissism, they learn that male leaders are entitled to ask hundreds of women and children to commit suicide or to kill thousands of people. These seductive myths conflate the experiences of victimhood and heroic aggression, leading to guiltless entitlement to kill. According to Netanyahu,

“We don’t educate our people, our children in suicide kindergarten camps, as happens in the Palestinian side, and you should see what Hamas is educating them to do …. And the worst thing that I see, the worst thing, is that they use their children, … they don’t give any thought about them.”

Gideon Levy writes of Israel whitewashing “kill-and-destroy’ operations, with cruelly ironic names like “Locked Kindergarten.”4 For a brief time the 2006 operation was named “Samson’s Pillars” before it was changed to “Summer Rains.”

Israel and Legalized Illegality

The carnage of the Great March of Return has its precedents: the newly described butterfly bullet belongs to a line of non-conventional and illegal weapons tested in the “lab” of Gaza, including, Dense Inert Metallic Explosives (DIME), flechette shells, white phosphorus, and cube-shaped cluster bombs. Israel cleverly twists the law, claiming that Gaza is a “parastatal entity” to evade the legal obligations of the occupier. It claims that its aggression prevents a greater aggression and is in compliance with the principle of lesser evil.5

The late Israeli linguist and author, Tanya Reinhart, documents in detail the “scale and horror” of Israel’s planned killing and maiming in response to Palestinian protest. Since 2000 Israel has targeted the head, legs, knees, or eyes “by carefully aimed shots” that will cripple and maim people for life. By December 2001 there were 25,000 injured Palestinians. Reinhart quotes Ehud Barak:

“that with a stable average of five casualties a day, Israel could continue ‘undamaged’ in the media for many more months.”

She adds that there are no hospitals to care for them, that many are “near starvation amidst the infrastructure destruction that is inflicted on their communities.”6 Israel’s doctors have put Gazans on a “diet” by calculating the minimum caloric intake for each age group.

Israel, with its educated population, has squandered the post WWII possibility of “never again” for all people. Hannah Arendt and Albert Einstein opposed Israeli statehood, and warned of fascism, racism, and militarism. In 2004 about 200 Israelis, including founder of Physicians for Human Rights-Israel Dr. Ruchama Marton and Jerusalem Assistant Mayor Meron Benvenisti, signed the Olga Document:

“The State of Israel was supposed to tear down the walls of the ghetto; it is now constructing the biggest ghetto in the entire history of the Jews; …[ if Israelis] muster within ourselves the appropriate honesty and requisite courage, we will be able to take the first step in the long journey that can extricate us from the tangle of denial, repression, distortion of reality, loss of direction and forsaking of conscience, in which the people of Israel have been trapped for generations.”

Instead, Israel (and its allies) have justified and facilitated the imprisonment, maiming and massacre of civilian populations with appalling regularity. Here are the final words of “J’Accuse”:

when “that man smiles, …. when hoarsely, he pronounces the word ‘Peace’ – mothers wake up trembling;… and now, at long last, he’ll roll up his sleeves and get down to the work at which he excels, and bring about a blood bath.”

The 1955 exhibit The Family of Man included the photo of Jewish people herded out of the burning Warsaw ghetto, with the caption –

“Humanity is outraged in me and with me. We must not dissimulate nor try to forget this indignation which is one of the most passionate forms of love” (George Sand).

Israel has reversed its position from victim to perpetrator and, as such, has become an instrumental part of the deadly global political economy of arms and incarceration. The Palestinian struggle is of global significance, a fight for life in the face of legalized illegality, the Orwellian “peace” institutions that do not protect (as with the U.S. again just vetoing a UN resolution to protect Palestinians), proliferating nuclear and new weaponry, closed borders, and the scientifically calculated disposability of a people.

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Judith Deutsch is a member of Independent Jewish Voices, and former president of Science for Peace. She is a psychoanalyst in Toronto. She can be reached at [email protected].

Notes

  1. Israel Shahak, Open Secrets: Israeli Nuclear and Foreign Policies, London: Pluto Press, 1997, pp. 53-55.
  2. Catherine Cook, Adam Hanieh, Adah Kay, Stolen Youth: The Politics of Israel’s detention of Palestinian children, London: Pluto Press, 2004 and Defense for Children Itl. Palestine Section, 2004.
  3. Yigal Shochat, “Red line, green line, black flag,” p. 129, and Gideon Levy, “Tell the truth, Shimon,” p. 81, in Roane Carey and Jonathan Shainin, The Other Israel, New York: The New Press, 2002.
  4. Gideon Levy, The Punishment of Gaza, London: Verso, 2010, p. 24.
  5. Jeff Halper, War Against the People, Pluto Press, 2015 and Eyal Weizman, The Least of all Possible Evils, Verso: 2011.
  6. Tanya Reinhart, Israel/Palestine: How to end the war of 1948, New York: Seven Stories, 2002, pp. 112-16.

All images in this article are from the author.

The creation of a business association of Chinese mining companies in the Congo should be interpreted as Beijing centralizing its levers of control over the country through the establishment of a powerful lobbying group that will undoubtedly advance the strategic interests of the People’s Republic while the Central African state undergoes an unprecedented political transition fraught with developing Hybrid War tumult.

Bloomberg reported at the beginning of this week that 35 Chinese mining companies came together to form the “Union of Mining Companies with Chinese Capital” (also known as USMCC per its French acronym) in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC or simply Congo) “at the initiative of China’s embassy and on the advice of Congo’s mines minister”. This represents nothing less than the establishment of a powerful lobbying group that centralizes China’s enormous economic influence over the Congo and provides Beijing with the possibility of exerting its political will, interestingly at what was supposedly the suggestion of Kinshasa itself. On the surface, it might seem peculiar that a mineral-rich country would ask its top trading partner to do such a thing given the predisposition of any state to worry about losing its sovereignty through such means, but the situation in the Congo is unusual by any standard and deserves some further elaboration in order to understand the current context.

The Slow-Motion Collapse

The Western European-sized state and former battleground of the so-called “African World War” that killed an estimated 5 million people is once again on the edge of chaos as an incipient Hybrid War rages along parts of its periphery, allegedly driven by incumbent President Kabila’s postponement of the planned December 2016 elections for logistical reasons that would have deprived some of the electorate of their democratic rights. The real reason, however, is that the West is very uncomfortable with the Congo’s fast-moving and full-spectrum strategic partnership with China that has allowed the People’s Republic to gain control over the majority of the world’s cobalt production and possibly pioneer a trans-African connectivity corridor between the continent’s two coasts. This was explained in detail in the author’s June 2016 analysis titled “China vs. the US: The Struggle for Central Africa and the Congo”, which also accurately predicted the contours of the country’s developing conflict.

Since then, Kabila finally committed to holding elections this December, but the electronic voting mechanisms that his country plans to use were hypocritically criticized by the US for self-serving reasons intended to delegitimize the vote ahead of time in case his forthcoming designated successor wins at the polls, which remains a theoretical possibility. The author also elaborated on this in a March 2018 article about how “US Criticism Of Congo Highlights E-Voting Hypocrisy And Hybrid War Threats”, which followed an earlier analysis just two weeks prior titled “Congo Mining Code: Kabila vs. Cobalt Companies” that focused on how this new piece of legislation levelled the lopsided playing field between the state and international mining companies by giving Kinshasa a much greater share of royalties on “strategic minerals” such as cobalt. The recently promulgated mining code was seen as a serious threat to Western mining interests and reason enough to continue with the Hybrid War on the Congo.

Balancing The Blowback

As it turns out, however, the bulk of China’s investment in the country is concentrated in the mining sector, with even the largest non-mining joint project of the $13 billion Inga 3 dam indirectly connected to it given the potential that it has to take the Congo’s power-hungry mining operations to the next level upon expected completion in the next seven years. Therefore, China’s interests were also affected by this mining law, but the Congo evidently wanted to remain on the country’s good side by signaling that this legislation wasn’t aimed against it, hence the friendly suggestion that Beijing centralize its economic operations into a powerful lobbying group that will inevitably strengthen its political position. This is useful for Kinshasa because it creates a constructive counterforce for opposing Western influence, but it also carries with it certain strategic risks if the situation spirals out of control.

Katangese Considerations

China’s motivation for transforming its economic levers of influence into ones of political control is self-explanatory because it seeks to secure its presence in the strategic region of Katanga where most of its mineral investments are concentrated, as well as where it has the greatest potential of combining the recently refurbished Benguela Railway in Angola with its TAZARA counterpart in Tanzania and Zambia for streamlining a cross-continental bicoastal connectivity corridor. Given the developing Hybrid War on the Congo, however, China has no direct means of protecting this priceless piece of Central African real estate and isn’t (yet) ready to commit private military forces (“mercenaries”) there for that purpose. Furthermore, doing so might be interpreted as exceptionally hostile because of the history that Katanga has in being exploited by mercenaries who attempted to sever this mineral-rich region from the state at the behest of their Western masters.

The recent revival of the dormant 1999 Congo-Russian military agreement for Moscow to provide Kinshasa with arms and advisors is a step in the direction of this Great Power fulfilling its grand strategic ambitions to “balance” Afro-Eurasian affairs and provide “outsourced security solutions” for the New Silk Road, but it can’t be assumed that Russia will succeed with these objectives at the pace and scope that China needs in order to secure its Katangese mineral and connectivity investments. Therefore, Beijing understands the utility of leveraging its enormous economic influence for political means in encouraging Kinshasa to commit its forces to safeguarding these sites in the Katanga region, otherwise China might take the lead in a forthcoming UN stabilization mission there or perhaps even a unilateral one to do so instead if the Hybrid War escalates to such a level that its interests are credibly endangered.

That’s not what China wants, however, as it would rather “Lead From Behind” through a combination of its offshore aircraft carrier-based forces and indirect military supportto its in-country counterparts & their (Russian?) “mercenary”/”advisor” allies than to get directly involved in any African conflict, which is why it’s so important for the People’s Republic to first centralize its economic influence in the country through the recently created USMCC political lobbying organization in order to coordinate such an operation under those circumstances. In the worst-case scenario, the dominant Chinese economic and political presence in the southeastern part of the country could be relied upon to turn a “decentralized” Katanga into a de-facto “protectorate” until its reincorporation into the Congo, or even into an outright Chinese ally if ever becomes independent through the course of any forthcoming conflict.

Concluding Thoughts

It should be reminded that China officially supports all countries’ territorial integrity, but that it – like all states – would act to preserve and expand its interests “if push came to shove”, meaning that Beijing could show “pragmatic flexibility” in adapting to changing conditions in the Congo by “unofficially engaging” with local authorities in the Katanga region so as to safeguard its strategically precious mineral and connectivity investments there. The creation of the 35-company USMCC lobbying group could facilitate such measures under those complex circumstances, while in comparatively better ones it’ll work to expand China’s political influence throughout the entirety of the Congo, meaning that it’s a win-win for China regardless of whether the country descends further into Hybrid War or its first-ever democratic transition of power is a success. Therefore, no matter what happens, China isn’t going to cede its ultra-strategic position in the Congo but will do everything in its power to strengthen it.

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This article was originally published on Eurasia Future.

Andrew Korybko is an American Moscow-based political analyst specializing in the relationship between the US strategy in Afro-Eurasia, China’s One Belt One Road global vision of New Silk Road connectivity, and Hybrid Warfare. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Chairman Kim Jong un of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) and his wife Ri Sol Ju paid yet another visit to the People’s Republic of China President Xi Jinping on June 19. 

This is the third time in as many months that the head of the Worker’s Party of Korea (WPK) has held face-to-face talks with his counterpart Xi Jinping and his wife Peng Liyuan of the Communist Party of China (CPC) in Beijing. 

The two Asian heads-of-state held discussions on the recent developments involving the ongoing dialogue between the Republic of Korea (south) and the DPRK over issues of normalizing relations and potential unification.  These important questions along with the summit meeting held with United States President Donald Trump on June 12 in Singapore have created tremendous interests throughout the international community. 

Just in a matter of months there have been momentous events which are reshaping the character of inter-Asian relations as well as exposing the fallacy of Washington’s decades-long foreign policy towards both the DPRK and the PRC. Trump’s statement in the aftermath of the Singapore Summit that the Pentagon would suspend the annual war games in South Korea during August, sent shock waves throughout the military-industrial-complex in the U.S.

In a statement issued by Noh Kyu-duk of the South Korean Foreign Ministry, the official said:

“The governments of South Korea and China share the same strategic goal of completely denuclearizing the Korean peninsula. Also, our government hopes China will play a constructive role in resolving this problem. We hope Chairman Kim Jong Un’s visit will contribute to that.” (Global China Television Network, June 19, article by Jessica Stone)

Whether or not the dominant imperialist state extends this suspension beyond 2018, it illustrates the futility of Washington’s posture toward the Korean Peninsula. Both China and the DPRK have been the principal focus of successive U.S. administrations as it relates to their attempts to maintain imperialist interests in the Asia-Pacific region.

A united approach from Beijing and Pyongyang will signal to Washington that their maneuvers in the region will not divide the major players as far as regional security and anti-imperialism is concerned. Nevertheless, the overall objectives of the U.S. and its allies remain the same: to further contain China and marginalize those interests which are steadfast in maintaining the national and regional independence of the various states.

DPRK leader and Chinese counterpart with their wives in Beijing on June 19, 2018

Both leaders pledged in the June 19 meeting to strengthen and deepen relations in the coming period to ensure the continuing forward progress towards peace and development in the region. Beijing has been acting as a mediator between Pyongyang and Washington after the escalation of tensions during 2017 brought the two states to the brink of a full-blown military conflict.

There has never been a comprehensive peace agreement since the armistice of June 1953 after three years of war which resulted in the deaths of millions of Korean and tens of thousands of imperialist troops led by the U.S. and Britain under the banner of the United Nations. Annual military exercises held jointly by Seoul and Washington in April and August involve 17,000 ROK troops along with over 50,000 Pentagon soldiers.   

In exchange the DPRK has agreed to suspend testing and upgrades in its nuclear weapons program. The socialist state has developed long-range Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBM) weaponized with nuclear technology. 

These military options created by the DPRK are for exclusively defensive purposes in light of the persistent decades-long threats from Washington and Tokyo. Japan had occupied the Korean Peninsula after a 1905 treaty which led to an occupation extending from 1910-1945. 

After the defeat of Japan in World War II, an alliance of patriotic forces led by the communist party founded the DPRK in 1948. The three year war and ongoing occupation of the south has hampered the unification of the Peninsula.

Significance of the Singapore Summit

The June 12 meeting which brought together Trump and Kim came on the heels of a contentious Group of 7 (G7) meeting in Quebec. Relations among the imperialist states have been strained due to the trade war initiated by the Trump administration which has imposed tariffs on Canada along with European Union (EU) nations.

These events have prompted a high degree of volatility in the U.S. and world financial markets where a precipitous decline occurred on June 19. Most economic analysts attribute the drop in values to the trade policies of Washington. 

China is also a major target of Trump’s efforts to mislead the public in the U.S. suggesting that the imposition of tariffs will result in job creation and salary increases for working families who are still suffering from the fallout of the Great Recession of 2007-2011. A large portion of employment growth in the U.S. is through low-wage labor in the service sectors. Income has remained stagnate while real wages have been on the decline for several decades.

There were four points of agreement which emerged from the Singapore Summit. A joint statement issued by the two leaders said:

1) The United States and the DPRK commit to establish new U.S.-DPRK relations in accordance with the desire of the peoples of the two countries for peace and prosperity;

2) The United States and the DPRK will join their efforts to build a lasting and stable peace regime on the Korean Peninsula;

3) Reaffirming the April 27, 2018 Panmunjom Declaration, the DPRK commits to work toward complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula; and 

4) The United States and the DPRK commit to recovering POW/MIA remains, including the immediate repatriation of those already identified.“

The suspension of war games and nuclear testing was not written down as a point of agreement although Trump’s post-summit press conference affirmed these decisions. Trump asserted that the joint Pentagon-ROK exercises are far too expensive and should be curtailed.

Underlying Crises in Beijing-Washington Relations

Nonetheless, these discussions cannot conceal the continuing provocations by Washington against the PRC. In addition to the trade war which is destabilizing markets around the world, the Pentagon is still seeking to militarily intimidate Beijing in the Asia-Pacific region.

China has responded to repeated military incursions by the Pentagon surrounding the South Seas which Washington contends are not the sovereign territory of Beijing. The U.S. is accusing China of militarizing the South China Sea which has prompted the Defense Department to withdraw an invitation for China to join an international naval exercise the U.S. is sponsoring over the next few weeks. 

The Pentagon claims that China has deployed anti-ship missiles, surface-to-air missile systems and electronic jammers to areas in the Spratly Islands. Washington has demanded that China withdraw these defense systems. 

An article published during late May by the India Times emphasized that:

“China says it dispatched warships to identify and warn off a pair of U.S. Navy vessels sailing near one of its island claims in the South China Sea. A statement on the Chinese Defense Ministry’s website said the Arleigh Burke class guided-missile destroyer USS Higgins and Ticonderoga class guided-missile cruiser USS Antietam entered waters China claims in the Paracel island group ‘without the permission of the Chinese government.’ It said the Chinese military ‘immediately dispatched warships to identify and inspect the American ships according to law, and warned them to depart.’”

These military efforts by the U.S. have continued through successive administrations. China’s growing economy and military capability are viewed as a major threat to the imperialist hegemony of Washington and Wall Street. 

Tensions could rise to the level of a direct military conflict whose outcome would be long term in its political and economic impact. The burgeoning trade war and military posturing will undoubtedly result in global uncertainty and instability throughout various continents.   

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Abayomi Azikiwe is the editor of Pan-African News Wire. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

All images in this article are from the author. 

Gina Haspel’s New Vision for the CIA?

June 21st, 2018 by Philip Giraldi

After a bruising confirmation fight, one wonders if newly approved Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Director Gina Haspel will have the political support to put her own stamp on how the agency is structured and operates. Insiders note that, though she was acting director for only two months, she did little more than continue the changes made by her predecessor Mike Pompeo, who had been in charge of the agency for 15 months.

The past 17 years have seen a major change in how the CIA is organized. The Cold War agency was basically divided into two major intelligence components and included an administrative structure as well as a scientific and technical division that had their own independent functions but also worked to support intelligence operations and analysis. To put it simply, the agency consisted of one half that collected information and another half that analyzed the information collected. The operations component, itself divided into geographical regions, was a producer of intelligence, which was then processed by the analysts before going on to the consumers, which consisted of the White House, Congress, and other agencies within the government with a “need to know” that gave them access to the finished intelligence reports. The principal consumer of intelligence and the CIA’s “boss” was and is the president of the United States.

Within the system of producer-consumer there were a number of staffs and centers that dealt with issues like terrorism, drug trafficking, and nuclear proliferation that were regarded as global threats that defied neat compartmentation into geographic areas. The Counter Terrorism Center (CTC), which included representatives from the Secret Service, FBI, DIA, NSA, and Pentagon, also incorporated analysts into the process, which was a major break from the principle that analysts and case officers should never mix lest the final product be contaminated by operational or political considerations.

Post 9/11, the allegations that clues to the hijackers had been missed due to excessive compartmentation within the various intelligence and law enforcement agencies meant that the idea of fusion centers like CTC became more popular. It also meant that there was a great demand for officers with paramilitary training to send to places like Afghanistan and eventually Iraq. Spies who had been trained to slowly and carefully develop Russian diplomats for recruitment became less relevant.

Operations in places like Pakistan became brutal, with low-level agents working for money treated like disposable garbage. When CIA contract officer Raymond Davis was arrested by Pakistani police in 2011 after he shot dead two motorcyclists, who may or may not have been Pakistani intelligence officers, it emerged that he was part of an armed team providing security for meetings with Pakistani agents. Agents would be picked up off the street, stuffed behind the car seat with a blindfold on so they would not know where they were going, taken to a second car where they would be interrogated before they would be paid and again stuffed behind the seat blindfolded to be taken to a spot where they could be dropped off. As a model of CIA agent handling it was not exactly old school.

Inevitably the methodology of CIA operations involving the recruitment and debriefing of agents, referred to as tradecraft, began to be forgotten as older officers retired and the training of new officers emphasized new skills. The agency pretty much began to forget how to spy and how to deal with an untested agent, leading to catastrophes like the 2009 suicide bombing deaths of seven CIA officers at Camp Chapman near Khost in Afghanistan, where an agency base was run by an officer who lacked the relevant experience and made a major security mistake.

And meanwhile more and more of the annual budget was going to the paramilitaries, who provided the physical protection of the burgeoning number of CIA sites and also protection for meetings. The transition to a different agency structure accelerated under President Barack Obama and his director, John Brennan. Brennan favored replacing the former geographic structure with more fusion teams that would include analysts and representatives from other government agencies. Many at CIA believed that Brennan had a particular animus against agency operations, as he had entered CIA hoping to become a case officer but had washed out of the training course. Brennan pushed ahead with his fusion program and also promoted Greg Vogel to be head of Clandestine Services, once described as operations. Vogel was a paramilitary, not a case officer, and inside the CIA it was widely regarded as the final insult to the agency’s spies.

Haspel, who briefly held the position of acting director of the clandestine service, was an integral part of the Brennan regime and generally went along with his preferences, though a source reports that she did dig in her heels at one point when there was a proposal to greatly expand the assassination by drone program. If she did that, it is to her credit and perhaps an indication that she does have limits in terms of what she would do in support of the White House.

As a result of the 2016 election, there was inevitably a change at the top of the agency. Coming into a CIA that no longer knew how to spy, President Donald Trump’s new director, Mike Pompeo, moved quickly to reverse many of the decisions made by Brennan, but he also brought his own set of likes and dislikes. Officers who worked directly with Pompeo reported that he was controlling, insisting on support among senior officers for whatever policies the White House was promoting. This did not go down well at CIA, where officers prided themselves on being politically neutral with their only guideline being to report developments honestly and analyze objectively. Pompeo also institutionalized greater emphasis on Iran as a prime enemy, creating a task force to address it.

And now there is Ms. Haspel. Insiders believe she will move slowly and cautiously but will continue in the direction set by Pompeo. That means somewhat of a reversion to the traditional agency model, which prevailed when she was being trained and during her first assignments. And given her grilling by the Senate, she will be presumably very cautious about engaging in questionable activities. As a former case officer, I would have to think that is a good thing—traditional spying hopefully without the renditions, the black sites, and the torture.

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This article was originally published on American Free Press.

Philip Giraldi is a former CIA counter-terrorism specialist and military intelligence officer and a columnist and television commentator. He is also the executive director of the Council for the National Interest. Other articles by Giraldi can be found on the website of the Unz Review. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from the author.

On June 19, units of government forces attacked positions of militant groups near the village of Buser al-Harir northeast of the southern Syrian city of Daraa. Sporadic clashes in the area continued on June 20 but no major advance was carried out by the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) and its allies.

Pro-government sources described this development as a trial balloon ahead of possible advance in the area.

If the SAA establishes control of Duweiri al-Harran and Melihit al-Atash, it will encircle a number of militant held villages south of these two points creating a “cauldron”, which would be cut off from the rest of the militant-held area.

Meanwhile, military equipment, including artillery and battle tanks, of the Syrian military continued to enter the province of Daraa.

An Israeli reconnaissance unmanned aerial vehicle, Skylark, crashed in the province of Quneitra, east of the occupied Golan Heights, on June 19. The  Israeli military has likely expanded its reconnaissance operations in the area ahead of the SAA’s expected advance in southern Syria.

On the same day, Russian Presidential Envoy for Syria Alexander Lavrentyev said that there are still notable number of ISIS and Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (Jabhat al-Nusra) militants in southern Syria. The announcement, which came following a meeting among representatives of Turkey, Iran and Russia on the de-escalation zones agreement, is another indication that the Russian-Iranian-Syrian block is not going to tolerate the presence of these groups in the war-torn country.

Units of the SAA and other pro-government factions have cleared the areas of Tayyara, al-Bawdah, Wadi al-Luwayziyah and nearby points at the border with Iraq from ISIS cells. This advance was a part of the wider effort to combat the terrorist group’s presence in the area.

The SAA also met with the Iraqi Popular Mobilization Units (PMU) at the Syrian-Iraqi border, southeast of the village of Humaimah.

Following the June 18 strike by the US-Israeli-led bloc on pro-Damascus forces southeast of al-Bukamal, the PMU announced that it is set to secure the border area despite the opposition from any side. So, the PMU’s presence on the border will only grow.

In eastern al-Suwayda, the SAA liberated Khirbat Al-Umbashi and advanced on the settlement of Al-Qara where clashes between government troops and ISIS members are now ongoing.

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The politico-media projectors, focussed as they are on the migratory flow from South to North across the Mediterranean, are leaving other Mediterranean flows in the dark – those moving from North to South, comprised of military forces and weapons. Perhaps we should say the “Enlarged Mediterranean”, an area which, in the framework of USA / NATO strategy, stretches from the Atlantic to the Black Sea, and to the South, from the Persian Gulf as far as the Indian Ocean.

During his meeting with NATO Secretary Jens Stoltenberg, in Rome, Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte pointed out the “centrality of the Enlarged Mediterranean for European security”, now threatened by the “arc of instability stretching from the Mediterranean to the Middle East”. Which is why it is important for NATO, an alliance under US command, which Conte describes as the “pillar of interior and international security”. This is a complete inversion of reality.

It is the foundation of USA / NATO strategy which in fact provoked the “arc of instability” with its two wars against Iraq, the two other wars which demolished the states of Yugoslavia and Libya, and the war aimed at demolishing the state of Syria. According to Conte, Italy, which participated in all these wars, plays “a key role for the security and the stability of the Southern flank of the Alliance”.

In what way? We can discover the truth by what the medias are hiding. The US navy ship Trenton, which welcomed aboard 42 refugees (authorised to land in Sicily, unlike those of the Aquarius), is not based in Sicily in order to carry out humanitarian actions in the Mediterranean – it is in fact a rapid force unit (up to 80 km/h), capable of landing on the coasts of North Africa, within a few hours, an expeditionary force comprising 400 soldiers and their vehicles.

US Special Forces are operating in Libya to train and lead allied army formations, while US armed drones, taking off from Sigonella (Sicily), hit their targets in Libya. In a short time, announced Stoltenberg, NATO drones will also be operating from Sigonella.

They will integrate the “Hub” or “NATO Strategic Direction South” (NSDS), the intelligence centre for military operations in the Middle East, North Africa, the Sahel and Sub-Saharan Africa.

The Hub, which will become operational in July, has its headquarters in Lago Patria, alongside the Joint Force Command of NATO (JFC Naples), under the orders of a US admiral – presently James Foggo – who will also command US naval forces in Europe (with their headquarters at Naples-Capodichino, and the Sixth Fleet based in Gaeta) and also the US naval forces for Africa. These forces have been integrated by the aircraft-carrier Harry Truman, which entered the Mediterranean two months ago with its attack group.

On 10 June, while media attention was focussed on the Aquarius, the US fleet, carrying 8,000 soldiers, and armed with 90 fighters and more than 1,000 missiles, was deployed in the Eastern Mediterranean, ready to strike in Syria and Iraq.

At the same time, on 12-13 June, the Liberty Pride docked at Livorno – it is a militarised US ship, and carried on its 12 bridges further cargos of weapons which, from the US base of Camp Darby (Pisa), are sent every month to Jordan and Saudi Arabia to cultivate the wars in Syria and Yemen.

This is how we feed these wars, which, together with neo-colonial methods of exploitation, provoke the pauperisation and uprooting of populations. Consequently, the migratory flow continues to increase dramatically, creating victims and new forms of slavery.

“It seems that being tough on immigration now pays”, commented President Trump, referring to the measures decided not only by Matteo Salvini, but by the totality of the Italian government, whose Prime Minister is qualified as “fantastic”.

This is fair recognition on the part of the United States, which, in the government’s programme, is defined as a “privileged ally” of Italy.

Source: PandoraTV

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This article was originally published on Il Manifesto.

Manlio Dinucci is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.

Release All Detained Immigrant Children Now!

June 21st, 2018 by Massoud Nayeri

Selected Articles: The Decline of the US Empire

June 20th, 2018 by Global Research News

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More than ever, Global Research needs your support. Our task as an independent media is to “Battle the Lie”.

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Lies, distortions and omissions are part of a multibillion dollar propaganda operation which sustains the “war narrative”.

While “Truth” is a powerful instrument, “the Lie” is generously funded by the lobby groups and corporate charities. And that is why we need the support of our readers.

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Kim’s Resolve to “Put The Past Behind Us”, Trump’s Commitment to Stop the War Games? What Next?

By Carla Stea, June 20, 2018

Though it is much too early to predict the course or outcome of the Singapore summit, in a  powerful gesture of reconciliation, following his supremely diplomatic meeting with DPRK Chairman Kim Jong-un, (diplomacy during which Trump respectfully saluted a North Korean general, who had already saluted him,) President Trump unexpectedly announced his decision to halt the war games routinely held between the US and the ROK, which President Trump described as tremendously costly and “provocative.” 

 

Children’s Images: 1943 and 2018

By Roy Morrison, June 20, 2018

The children are criminal aliens, deserving of what the Nazis called “special treatment” or Sonderbehandlung which often meant execution. Donald Trumpand Stephen Miller, Jeff Sessions, John Kelly call it “zero tolerance” to repel the “infestation” of brown skinned immigrants.

Leaving the UN Human Rights Council: Crimes against Humanity. Washington Endorses The State of Israel

By Dr. Binoy Kampmark, June 20, 2018

Accordingly, Haley announced that the United States would be withdrawing from “an organisation that is not worthy of its name”, peopled, as it were, by representatives from such states as China, Cuba, Venezuela and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The Rallying Cry of a Nationwide Movement: “Chinga la Migra” (F*ck Border Patrol)

By Michelle Chen, June 20, 2018

The parents of migrant children are set to endure a separate nightmare in the coming months, fanned out across the country to detention centers where they will await legal judgement. Far from the border, the crisis bled into the Pacific Northwest in early June as scores of new detainees were funneled into the federal immigrant detention center at SeaTac, a city on the outskirts of Seattle.

From Nazi Germany to Japanese Internment Camps: Here’s the Disgusting History Behind Trump’s ‘Infest’

By Elizabeth Preza, June 20, 2018

Critics were quick to jump on Trump’s use of the word “infest,” which typically refers to insects or animals and immediately conjures images of disease and death. And with good reason; using such dehumanizing language to describe living, actual human beings has precursors in Nazi Germany and World War II Japanese Internment Camps, among other instances of human rights abuses.

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Immigration Divides Europe and the German Left

June 20th, 2018 by Diana Johnstone

Freedom of movement is the founding value of the European Union. The “four freedoms” are inscribed in the binding EU treaties and directives: free movement of goods, services, capital and persons (labor) among the Member States.

Of course, the key freedom here is that of capital, the indispensable condition of neoliberal globalization. It enables international finance to go and do whatever promises to be profitable, regardless of national boundaries. The European Union is the kernel of the worldwide “Open Society”, as promoted by financier George Soros.

However, extended to the phenomenon of mass immigration, the doctrine of “free movement” is disuniting the Union.

A German Crisis

Starting in 2011, millions of Syrian refugees fled to neighboring Turkey as a result of the Western-sponsored war to overthrow the Assad regime. By 2015, Turkish president Erdogan was insisting that Europe must share the burden, and soon was threatening the European Union with opening the floodgates of refugees if his conditions were not met.

In August 2015, German Chancellor Angela Merkel announced that Germany would accept all genuine refugees. Germany had already taken in over 400,000 refugees, and another 400,000 were assumed to be on the way – if not more. Although addressed to Syrians, Merkel’s invitation was widely interpreted as an unlimited invitation to anyone who wanted to come Germany for whatever reason. In addition to a smaller number of refugee families, long lines of young men from all points east streamed through the Balkans, heading for Germany or Sweden.

The criminal destruction of the government of Libya in 2011 opened the floodgates to immigrants from Africa and beyond. The distinction between refugees and economic migrants was lost in the crowd.

Germans themselves were sharply polarized between those who welcomed the commitment to Christian charity and those who dreaded the probable effects. The differences were too highly charged emotionally, too subjective to be easily discussed in a rational way. Finally, it depends on whether you think of immigrants as individuals or as a mass. Concerning individuals, compassion reigns. You want to get to know that person, make a friend, help a fellow human being.

As a mass, it is different because you have to think also of social results and you do not know whom you are getting. On the one hand, there are the negative effects: labor market competition which lowers wages, the cost of caring for people with no income, the potential for antisocial behavior on the part of alienated individuals, rivalry for housing space, cultural conflicts, additional linguistic and educational problems. But for those whose ideal is a world without borders, the destruction of the oppressive nation state and endless diversity, unlimited immigration is a welcome step in the direction of their utopia.

These conflicting attitudes rule out any consensus.

As other EU countries were called upon to welcome a proportionate share of the refugee influx, resentment grew that a German chancellor could unilaterally make such a dramatic decision affecting them all. The subsequent effort to impose quotas of immigrants on member states has run up against stubborn refusal on the part of Eastern European countries whose populations, unlike Germany, or Western countries with an imperialist past, are untouched by a national sense of guilt or responsibilities toward inhabitants of former colonies.

After causing a growing split between EU countries, the immigrant crisis is now threatening to bring down Merkel’s own Christian Democratic (CDU) government. Her own interior minister, Horst Seehofer, from the conservative Bavarian Christian Social Union, has declared that he “can’t work with this woman” (Merkel) on immigration policy and favors joining together with Austria and Italy in a tough policy to stop migration.

The conflict over immigration affects even the relatively new leftist party, Die Linke (The Left).

A good part of the European left, whatever its dissatisfaction with EU performance, is impregnated with its free movement ideology, and has interiorized “open borders” as a European “value” that must be defended at all costs. It is forgotten that EU “freedom of movement” was not intended to apply to migrants from outside the Union. It meant freedom to move from one EU state to another. As an internationally recognized human right, freedom of movement refers solely to the right of a citizen to leave and return to her own country.

In an attempt to avoid ideological polarization and define a clear policy at the Left party’s congress early this month, a working group presented a long paper setting out ideas for a “humane and social regulated leftist immigration policy”. The object was to escape from the aggressive insistence on the dichotomy: either you are for immigration or you are against it, and if you are against it, you must be racist.

The group paper observed that there are not two but three approaches to immigration: for it, against it, and regulation. Regulation is the humane and socially beneficial way.

While reiterating total support for the right of asylum including financial and social aid for all persons fleeing life-threatening situations, the paper insisted on the need to make the distinction between asylum seekers and economic migrants. The latter should be welcomed within the capacity of communities to provide them with a decent life: possibilities of work, affordable housing and social integration. They noted that letting in all those who hope to improve their economic standing might favor a few individual winners but would not favor the long-term interests either of the economic losers or of the country of origin, increasing its dependence and even provoking a brain drain as educated professionals seek advancement in a richer country.

There was hope that this would settle the issue. This did not happen. Instead, the party’s most popular leader found herself the target of angry emotional protests due to her defense of this sensible approach.

Sahra and Oskar

As elsewhere in Europe, the traditional left has drastically declined in recent years. The long-powerful German Social Democratic Party (SPD) has lost its working-class base as a result of its acceptance, or rather, promotion of neoliberal socioeconomic policies. The SPD has been absorbed by the Authoritarian Center, reduced to junior partner in Angela Merkel’s conservative government.

Die Linke, formed in 2007 by the merger of leftist groups in both East and West Germany, describes itself as socialist but largely defends the social democratic policies abandoned by the SPD. It is the obvious candidate to fill the gap. In elections last September, while the SPD declined to 20%, Die Linke slightly improved its electoral score to almost 10%. But its electorate is largely based in the middle class intelligentsia. The party that captured the most working-class votes was the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), considered far right populist – largely because its growing success at the polls is due to popular rejection of mass immigration.

There are two way of looking at this.

One way, the Clintonite way, is to dismiss the working class as a bunch of deplorables who do not deserve to have their interests defended. If they oppose immigration, it can only be because they have impure souls, besmirched by racism and “hate”.

Another way is to consider that the grievances of ordinary people need to be listened to, and that they need to be presented with clear, well-defined, humane political choices, instead of being dismissed and insulted.

Image below: Sahra Wagenknecht (sitting) with Angela Merkel (standing) (Source: n-tv)

Image result for Wagenknecht + merkel

This is the viewpoint of Sahra Wagenknecht, currently co-leader of Die Linke in the Bundestag.

Wagenknecht was born in East Germany 48 years ago to an Iranian father and German mother. She is highly educated, with a Ph.D. in economics and is author of books on the young Marx’s interpretation of Hegel, on “The Limits of Choice: Saving Decisions and Basic Needs in Developed Countries” and “Prosperity Without Greed”. The charismatic Sahra has become one of the most popular politicians in Germany. Polls indicate that a quarter of German voters would vote for her as Chancellor.

But there is a catch: her party, Die Linke. Many who would vote for her would not vote for her party, and many in her own party would be reluctant to support her. Why? Immigration.

Sahra’s strongest supporter is Oskar Lafontaine, 74, her partner and now her husband. A scientist by training with years of political experience in the leadership of the SPD, Lafontaine was a strong figure in the 1980s protest movement against nuclear missiles stationed in Germany and remains an outspoken critic of U.S. and NATO militarism – a difficult position in Germany. In 1999 he resigned as finance minister because of his disagreement with the neoliberal policy turn of SPD Chancellor Gerhard Schoeder. He is a consistent critic of financial capitalism and the euro, calling for a change of European monetary policy that would permit selective devaluation and thus relieve the economically weaker member states of their crushing debt burden.

After leaving the SPD in 2005, Lafontaine went on to co-found Die Linke, which absorbed the post-East German Party of Democratic Socialism led by lawyer Gregor Gysi. A few years later he withdrew into the political background, encouraging the rising career of his much younger partner Sahra Wagenknecht.

Lafontaine can be likened to Jeremy Corbyn in Britain and Jean-Luc Mélenchon as a left leader who has retained basic social and antiwar principles from the past and aspires to carry them into the future, against the rising right-wing tide in Europe.

The Wagenknecht-Lafontaine couple advocate social policies favorable to the working class, demilitarization, peaceful relations with Russia and the rest of a multipolar world. Both are critical of the euro and its devastating effects on Member State economies. They favor regulated immigration. Critical of the European Union, they belong to what can be called the national left, which believes that progressive policies can still be carried out on the national level.

The Globalizing Left

Die Linke is split between the national left, whose purpose is to promote social policies within the framework of the nation-state, and the globalization left, which considers that important policy decisions must be made at a higher level than the nation.

As co-leader of the Linke fraction in the Bundestag, Wagenknecht champions the national left, while another woman, the party co-chair Katja Kipping, also an academic of East German origin, speaks for the globalization left.

In a July 2016 article criticizing Brexit, Kipping made it clear that for her the nation is an anachronism unsuitable for policy making. Like others of her persuasion, she equates the nation with “nationalism”. She also immediately identifies any criticism of mass immigration with scapegoating: “Nationalism doesn’t improve our lives, it makes the poor only poorer, it takes nothing from the rich, but instead blames refugees and migrants for all present misery.”

The idea that social reform must henceforth take place only on the European level has paralyzed left parties for decades. The most extreme of the globalizing left shove their expectations even beyond the European Union in hopes of eventual revolution at the global level, as preached by Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt in their joint books Empire and Multitude

According to Negri, an alarmingly influential Italian theorist who has been dead wrong ever since the 1970s, the final great global revolution will result from the spontaneous self-liberation of the “multitude”. This is a sort of pie in the sky, projecting hopes beyond the here and now to some desirable future made inevitable by the new immaterial means of production (Negri’s boneless imitation of Marxism). Whether or not they have read him, many anarchist anti-globalist notions of The End Times are in harmony with Negri’s optimistically prophetic view of globalization: it may be bad now, but if it goes far enough, it will be perfect.

Since the globalization left considers the nation state inapt to make the revolution, its abolition is seen as a step in the right direction – which happens to coincide with the worldwide takeover of international financial capital. Its core issue, and the one it uses to condemn its adversaries in the national left, is immigration. Katya Kipping advocates “open borders” as a moral obligation. When critics point out that this is not a practical suggestion, the globalization left replies that it doesn’t matter, it is a principle that must be upheld for the future.

To make her policy line even more unrealistic, Kipping calls for both “open borders” and a guaranteed minimum income for everyone.

It is easy to imagine both the enthusiastic response to such a proposal in every poor country in the world and its horrified rejection by German voters.

What can motivate leaders of a political party to make such flagrantly unpopular and unrealizable proposals, guaranteed to alienate the vast majority of the electorate?

One apparent source of such fantasy can be attributed to a certain post-Christian, post-Auschwitz bad conscience prevalent in sectors of the intelligentsia, to whom politics is more like a visit to the confession booth than an effort to win popular support. Light a candle and your sins will be forgiven! Many local charitable organizations actually put their beliefs in practice by providing material aid to migrants. But the task is too great for volunteers; at present proportions it requires governmental organization.

Another, more virulent strain of the open border advocates is found among certain anarchists, conscious or unconscious disciples of Hardt and Negri, who see open borders as a step toward destroying the hated nation state, drowning despised national identities in a sea of “minorities”, thereby hastening the advent of worldwide revolution.

The decisive point is that both these tendencies advocate policies which are perfectly compatible with the needs of international financial capital. Large scale immigration by diverse ethnic communities unwilling or unable to adapt the customs of the host country (which is often the case in Europe today, where the host country may be despised for past sins), weakens the ability of society to organize and resist the dictates of financial capital. The newcomers may not only destabilize the situation of already accepted immigrant populations, they can introduce unexpected antagonisms and conflicts. In both France and Germany, groups of Eritrean migrants have come to blows with Afghan migrants, and other prejudices and vendettas lurk, not to mention dangerous elements of religious fanaticism.

In foreign policy, the globalization left tends to accept the political and media mainstream criticism of Wagenknecht as a Putin apologist for her position regarding Syria and Russia. The globalist left sometimes seems to be more intent on arranging the rest of the world to suit their standards than finding practical solutions to problems at home. Avoiding war is also a serious problem to be dealt with at the national level.

Despite the acrimonious debates at the June 8 to 10 party congress, Die Linke did not split. But faced with the deadlock on important questions, Wagenknecht and her supporters are planning to launch a new trans-party movement in September, intended to attract disenchanted fugitives from the SPD among others in order to debate and promote specific issues rather than to hurl labels at each other. For the left, the question today is not merely the historic, “What is to be done?” but rather a desperate, Can anything be done?

And if they don’t do it, somebody else will.

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This article was also published on Consortiumnews.

Diana Johnstone is the author of Fools’ Crusade: Yugoslavia, NATO, and Western Delusions. Her new book is Queen of Chaos: the Misadventures of Hillary Clinton. The memoirs of Diana Johnstone’s father Paul H. Johnstone, From MAD to Madness, was published by Clarity Press, with her commentary. She is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG). She can be reached at [email protected].

First published in June 2017

From the outset, Israel’s project was to enclose Gaza.

1..85 million Palestinians imprisoned in the Gaza Strip “Prison enclosure”. An act of genocide and the “international community” remains silent.

In the wake of the April-May 2018 Gaza massacre, the unfolding consensus among Western leaders is that “Israel has the Right to defend Itself”.

IDF snipers will shoot anybody who approaches the Surveillance Wall.

“Once the entire wall has been completed, it will seal off the Gaza Strip’s land border with Israel ‒ leaving only its Mediterranean maritime border as a possible route into Israel,” according to the Jerusalem Post’s Yossi Melman.

Michel Chossudovsky, May 20, 2018

Israeli 2017 media reports confirm the construction of a new high tech 65 km security and surveillance wall equipped with cameras and sensors “to separate Gaza from Israel” thereby reinforcing the enclosure of Gaza as a de facto “prison territory” with a population of more than 1.85 million. 

This initiative constitutes the latest stage of a process started in 1994 with the establishment of the so-called Israel Gaza security barrier. As we recall the barrier was in part torn down during the Second Intifada in 2000 and was then rebuilt.

There has been virtually no coverage or analysis of this latest project. The ambitious project, budgeted to cost 3 billion shekhels ($850 million), will see an integrated wire fence, 6 to eight metres high, equipped with  sensors and cameras built above the ground, over the 65-kilometre Gazan border, while heavy concrete slabs strengthened with iron rods will be built dozens of metres underground.”

The existing Gaza-Israel Wall

Screenshot Rafah Wall 

The Jerusalem Post (June 23, 2017) heralds the newly proposed 65 km Gaza Fence and underground wall as “the biggest and most complex engineering projects Israel has undertaken and is unique even on a global scale”:

This underground wall will be equipped with sensors produced by the Israeli defense manufacturer Elbit Systems …

Above ground, a six to eight meter integrated wire fence armed with sensors and cameras will be erected. Observation, control and command centers will be built along its length and the entire barrier, above and below ground, will be linked online to a command center located in a rear military base in the vicinity.

observation towers, control and command centers will be built along the length of the wall, above and below ground, linked to a command center situated in a nearby military base.

Israeli construction and engineering firms will spearhead the project, with support from similar Chinese, Australian, French and South Korean firms. More than 1,000 engineers, construction workers and project management personnel from Israel and abroad, but excluding Palestinians, have been engaged for the work.

Tenders for the project, called for by the Israel Defense Ministry in collaboration with the Israel Defense Forces were awarded last month.

The social and economic impacts of this newly designed wall are devastating.

1..85 million Palestinians imprisoned in the Gaza Strip “Prison enclosure”. An act of genocide and the “international community” remains silent:

“Once the entire wall has been completed, it will seal off the Gaza Strip’s land border with Israel ‒ leaving only its Mediterranean maritime border as a possible route into Israel,” according to the Jerusalem Post’s Yossi Melman.

Remember the Warsaw Ghetto? Is it comparable?

400,000 Jews imprisoned in the Warsaw Ghetto, the largest Nazi ghetto in Poland.

 

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United States’ envoy to the UN, Nikki Haley, makes a mockery of human rights as she follows Trump’s instructions to cease recognition of the UNHRC and its vital work in protecting the rights of communities worldwide.

In an overt recognition of his own family’s heavy involvement in Netanyahu’s policy of settlement-building and ethnic cleansing, Donald Trump finally shows where his real commitment lies – in the furtherance of the Likud Party agenda for the establishment of a Greater Israel and the forced ‘transfer’ of millions of indigenous Arabs to adjacent states.

This is a move that increases American global isolation and threatens not only a US-backed Israeli war with Iran but sets the trajectory for nuclear war in the Middle East, as well as a trade war with the EU, China and Japan. This, of course, in addition to America’s disengagement from the Paris Agreement on Climate Change.

There is now little doubt that the pro-Zionist dominated White House is determined to bring about global realignment by the force of economic and military policies that will destabilise international trade and bring about armed conflict.

As old alliances are swept aside by this US-Israeli agenda, the United Nations itself as the international body of final recourse and authority becomes an anachronistic irrelevance as American military and economic aggression changes the face of global politics to conform to the new agenda of a world dominated by dangerous, nuclear-armed United States of America & Israel.

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Hans Stehling (pen name) is an analyst based in the UK. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Israel’s IDF Snipers: Choosing Who to Shoot

June 20th, 2018 by Stephen Shenfield

Snipers (sharpshooters) constitute about a quarter of all soldiers in the IDF’s combat units. The standard course for the training of snipers lasts five weeks. The best snipers, however, are Russian immigrants who fought in Chechnya.

Snipers are organized in teams that form part of infantry battalions. Snipers are equipped with special rifles of various makes. Since 2010 the best rifle at their disposal has been the HTR 2000, which has a range of over 1,000 meters. Older makes have somewhat shorter ranges — several hundred meters.

The locator

Each team of snipers contains a specialist called the locator, who plays a key role in choosing targets. On April 10 a former locator by the name of Nadav Weiman talked on Israeli television to Channel 10 about his experience in a sniper team of the Nahal Reconnaissance Platoon on the Gaza border. (He now works for the organization Breaking the Silence as head of its education department.)

Here is how Weiman describes his work as a locator:

“I would sit with binoculars and an electro-optic lens during the day and a thermal lens at night. I would identify a figure, see if he was armed, then I would measure the distance with a laser meter and check the wind with an electronic weather vane. Then I would give the snipers correction data and count down 3, 2, 1, fire!”

It is of interest to compare this account of the pre-firing procedure with that given on April 1 by Major General Haim Cohen, commander of the Shaked Battalion near the southern end of the Gaza Strip, on the Galatz military radio station. Cohen omits the technical detail provided by Weiman but emphasizes two steps that Weiman fails to mention: (1) obtaining authorization to fire from a commander; and (2) warning the targeted individual by means of a PA system. According to Cohen, there was a commander next to each sniper team and it was he who gave the order to fire. But Weiman says that when he was in the army it was he, the locator of the team, who gave the order.

The open fire regulations

Both Weiman and Cohen say that the choice of targets is in principle guided by the open fire regulations. These are the regulations that Israeli human rights NGOs tried but failed to challenge before the Supreme Court on April 30. The precise regulations are classified, yet the Israeli network i24 reports they are “widely known in a country where most Israelis perform compulsory military service.”

The open fire regulations, especially in their current form, mandate the shooting not only of armed but also of unarmed individuals who have been assigned to certain categories. One such category is the “main inciter” who “inflames” those around him.

How do you identify a “main inciter”? That, says Weiman, is “the million dollar question.” It is left to the judgment of the locator or commander on the spot. It cannot be based on what the suspect is saying because the decision maker cannot hear him (and is also unlikely to understand Arabic). He can only observe him visually. In practice an “inciter” is probably just someone who stands out in some way.

Another category mentioned by Weiman — albeit in a different context, namely, that of Operation Protective Edge in the Gaza Strip in 2014 — is the “scout”. Weiman and his fellow soldiers were ordered to shoot any Palestinian, even if unarmed, carrying an object — it could be a cell phone or binoculars — that he might be using to direct or assist combatants.

The radio interviewer asks Cohen about the relationship between permission to shoot and distance from the fence. Is there a forbidden zone and how far does it extend? Cohen’s answer is not very clear but he does refer to a 100-meter-wide “perimeter zone”. However, many demonstrators in his sector were at distances of 70–80 meters, i.e., well within the perimeter zone, and were not shot solely for that reason — unlike those who approached very close.

Weiman concludes that the open fire regulations impose no effective constraints. Category definitions are so vague that they can be used to justify practically any target. This makes it very difficult to prove that a specific shooting violated the regulations. At the same time, IDF spokesmen constantly cite the existence of the regulations — their content, as you will recall, is a military secret — as a reliable safeguard against abuses. Catch 22.

Gaza — a free fire zone 

However, perhaps Weiman exaggerates a little. Permissive as the regulations may be, it is doubtful whether, for instance, they allow the shooting of medical personnel wearing distinctive uniforms and holding their hands up like the nurse Razan al-Najjar. Another factor must be at work.

That factor is the perception of the Gaza Strip as a free fire zone where anyone can be shot and killed with impunity. This perception has developed within the IDF over the years in the course of successive punitive operations. At an earlier stage in the process some kinds of target were still off limits, such as women and people holding a white flag. But in recent years the situation has reached a point where soldiers are permitted to shoot at anyone they see.

As a result, many killings lack even the most tenuous security rationale. In Operation Protective Edge, for example, one tank gunner was told by his commander to fire a tank shell at any target as commemoration for a fellow soldier who was killed. As a sort of game, he and his buddies tried to hit cars moving along one of the Gaza Strip’s main north-south roads. It may therefore be presumed that many of the Gaza demonstrators who have been maimed or killed were shot just for fun, to alleviate boredom, or to express hatred of the “enemy population”.

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Stephen Shenfield is a British-born writer. After several years as a government statistician, he entered the field of Soviet Studies. He was active in the nuclear disarmament movement. Later he came to the U.S. and taught International Relations at Brown University. He is the author of Russian Fascism: Traditions, Tendencies, Movements (M.E. Sharpe, 2001).

Featured image is from the author.

Operation Barbarossa II: The Wurlitzer of War Plays On

June 20th, 2018 by Christopher Black

While the excitement of the World Cup in Russia keeps many of us fixed on the merits of the contending teams and the drama of the games, the news out of Brussels is disturbing. They’re preparing for war. With Russia. There is no other way to read what Jans Stoltenberg announced at a press conference in Washington on June 6, the anniversary of the D-Day landings in northern France by British, Canadian, Free French and US forces, to attempt to stop the Red Army from the complete capture of Germany in 1945. Just as those allies had to clear the German Army from their path then in order to face off with the Red Army, today they are intent on clearing the path for the rapid movement of men and material across the Atlantic from the USA to Europe and rapid and easy movement of those forces across Europe to the east, to not just face the Russians but to attack them.

Operation Barbarossa II, the name I use for this operation, though I am sure they have their own, the set-up for which has been proceeding for several years, is building momentum with the announcement by the NATO defence ministers of the establishment of two new NATO joint force commands; one in Norfolk, Virginia, a US naval base, and one in Ulm, Germany. The Norfolk joint command will manage the logistics for movement of troops and materiel from the USA to Europe as rapidly and smoothly as possible while the Ulm command will ensure the movement of those troops and materiel continues without obstacles across Europe to the Russian border.

They also announced that by 2020 they will have a special rapid deployment force of 30 mechanised battalions, 30 air squadrons and 30 combat ships that can mobilise in 30 days. They are, Stoltenberg said, “boosting readiness” and, regarding military mobility across Europe stated,

“we are working together to eliminate obstacles-whether legal, customs or infrastructure-to ensure our forces can move across Europe when necessary.”

The establishment of these new commands is not defensive, which is their claim. They are offensive and are part of the larger conspiracy among the NATO governments to commit the crime of aggression against Russia.

On June 18th the western media, acting as the chorus for the NATO military machine, raised synchronous and dramatic alarms of the presence of Russian nuclear weapons at a base in Kaliningrad, the Russian territory and important military base on the Baltic Sea. Just imagine, Russia dares to have nuclear weapons based on its own territory, and is treated once again as a pariah. Then try to imagine the western press being exercised in the same way about the US storing nuclear weapons in many bases on its territory as well as other countries around the world and you can begin to wonder what all the fuss is about; especially when North Korea just won from the United States the concession of the discontinuance of the constant threat of joint US-South Korean military exercises for agreeing to talk about disarming its nuclear defence system in the hope of guarantees against American aggression and a peace treaty. We have gone down this road before and we hope for the best, but US treachery is notorious, as we have seen before regarding promises made to North Korea and recently to Iran.

So as the USA signals some relief of pressure on the North Korean front, it elevates the pressure elsewhere like a player on the Wurlitzer organ of war, pulling out the stops on the organ pipes there, and pushing them in there as they try to direct the world into its traps.

Even its “allies” are being given the rough treatment with Canada being picked on, as an example to the rest, that any opposition to American wishes will not be tolerated. All that the Canadian prime minister did, at the end of the G7 meeting in Quebec, was to reject the American President’s claims about free trade and tariffs and to state that Canada would not be pushed around. Shocked that anyone could dare say such a thing to him the American president stated, in effect, that no one can talk back to him, that he is emperor and must be obeyed and if you try disobey you will be crushed. ‘It’s gonna cost yuh.” The world history is littered with such tyrants and such tyrannies and in the end they all lose their heads in revolution or war, but in the meantime they oppress us with impunity.

The American economy is in a bad state, with national debt that renders it in fact bankrupt, an economy that is stagnant, with 45% of the population living in poverty and millions more on the edge, a real rate of unemployment of at least 21%, its primary industry declining, its ability to sell its goods in competition with the rest of the world weakening while its military spending wastes most of the national budget on long, unwinnable wars. So, to try to make the country, “great again” the Americans have decided to beggar there neighbours, their allies and everyone else, by forcing them to buy more American products and sell less of theirs, using tariffs as the gun to the head.

The entire G6, yes they are now referring to the G6 not the G7, and China, which faces further US trade attacks, have drawn their lines in the sand and retaliated in kind, something unthinkable a decade ago. But though the anger is evident so are the worries, as in Germany where Chancellor Merkel has openly talked about taking Germany in a new direction, away from the USA and the Atlantic, towards new allies outside of the direct US orbit, but German auto manufacturers are worried about losing car sales in the US and so want to placate the Americans in their tantrum as much as possible. This tension on views about the German role vis vis the US, as well as tensions over the immigrant crisis due to the western wars in the Middle East and Africa is creating tensions within the Merkel coalition government and threatens its collapse. President Macron of France went so far as to state that the American trade war is not only criminal, but a mistake,” adding, “Economic nationalism leads to war.” He also hinted that the remaining countries of the G7 combined are a bigger market than the US and we don’t mind being six, if needs be.”

But though there are increasing tensions between the members of the NATO cabal as they fall out over who is going to make the most money among them and even talking about war, they are united in their continuing hostility towards Russia.

This writer has expected the hue and cry regarding Kaliningrad for some time, because on Friday, February 26, 2016 the Atlantic Council, the preeminent NATO think tank, issued a report on the state of readiness of the NATO alliance to fight and win a war with Russia. The focus of the report is on the Baltic states. The report is called Alliance at Risk”.

It has the sub-heading “Strengthening European Defence in an Age of Turbulence and Competition.” Layer upon layer of distortion, half-truths, lies and fantasies obscure the fact that it is the NATO countries that have caused the turbulence from the Middle East to Ukraine. NATO is responsible for nothing according to this report, except “protecting the peace.” Russia is the supreme aggressor state, intent on undermining the security of Europe, even intent on attacking Europe, an “existential threat” that NATO must prepare to repel.

It states at page 6 that,

The Russian invasion of Crimea, its support for separatists, and its invasion of eastern Ukraine have effectively ripped up the post-Cold War settlement of Europe. President Vladimir Putin has shattered any thoughts of a strategic partnership with NATO; instead, Russia is now a de facto strategic adversary. Even more dangerously, the threat is potentially existential, because Putin has constructed an international dynamic that could put Russia on a collision course with NATO. At the center of this collision would be the significant Russian-speaking populations in the Baltic states, whose interests are used by the Kremlin to justify Russia’s aggressive actions in the region. Under Article 5 of NATO’s Washington Treaty, any military move by Putin on the Baltic states would trigger war, potentially on a nuclear scale, because the Russians integrate nuclear weapons into every aspect of their military thinking.”

This supports warnings made the past two years of a move by NATO in the Baltic states which will be justified by false flag hybrid war operations conducted by NATO, as I have stated several times in other essays. This is emphasized by the recommendation in the report that “to deter any Russian encroachment into the Baltic states, NATO should establish a permanent presence in the region… to prevent a Russian coup de main operation …”

The document also uses language that indicates that the NATO powers do not recognize Russian sovereignty over Kaliningrad that was established at the end of the second world war, claiming that Russia “has ripped up” the post-Cold War settlement of Europe, whatever that means to them, because as far as we know the Cold War was supposed to end with the withdrawal of the Red Army from Eastern Europe in exchange for a commitment by USA that NATO would not move east. Instead the NATO powers, with the treachery that is their custom, moved quickly into those territories and began conducting regular and expanding military exercises threatening Russia directly.

Once again, the NATO powers are preparing the ground for an incident involving Kaliningrad, home base of their Baltic Fleet and guardian of the approaches to St. Petersburg and what the Guardian stated is emerging as a critical square on the east European chessboard in Vladimir Putin’s efforts to push back assertively against NATO expansion.”

The false concern about the type of arms that Russia may or may not have at their base in Kaliningrad is designed to raise the issue in the public mind and to manipulate people into calling for action to be taken to remove this “threat” to NATO before it is too late. It’s the old “weapons of mass destruction” rational all over again, we’ve got them, and that’s just fine, but they’ve got them and that we can’t allow. But the real reason is that they want to start something. They have tried in Britain with the Skripal affair but the credibility of the British claims has been questioned even by its allies, in particular Germany, which stated that apart from British claims, it has seen no evidence at all that Russia was involved. They have tried it in Syria with staged chemical weapons attacks, supported by NATO propaganda units masquerading as non-governmental organisations. Now we can expect a build up of propaganda around the Russian base at Kaliningrad, and a false flag operation by NATO against their forces in the area in Poland or the Baltic nations or the peoples there to be blamed on Russia resulting in calls for Russia to surrender their position there or to justify an attack on it.

In the western media stories about Kaliningrad, they made sure to state,

NATO has increased its own presence in the area. A multinational battle group, led by soldiers from the U.S. Army’s 2nd Cavalry Regiment, is stationed in Poland, not far from the country’s border with Kaliningrad. The unit is part of NATO’s Enhanced Forward Presence, which is intended to deter potential Russian aggression.”

And,

Last week, the U.S. Senate approved a measure to require the Pentagon to assess the need for permanently stationing U.S. forces in Poland to counter Russia’s more assertive military posture. That move came several weeks after Warsaw said it was seeking such a permanent presence.”

This of course is exactly in line with the demands of the Alliance At Risk Report that called for a NATO force to be placed in Poland and this staged alarm concerning the possible nuclear weapons at Kaliningrad, will serve as an added justification for placing NATO forces in Poland directly on the Russian border and will increase the existential threat against Russia.

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Christopher Black is an international criminal lawyer based in Toronto. He is known for a number of high-profile war crimes cases and recently published his novel “Beneath the Clouds. He writes essays on international law, politics and world events, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook.” He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from the author.

Donald Trump on Tuesday elected—nay, made the political calculus—to use the word “infest” while describing real, human beings (“illegal immigrants”) who allegedly “pour” into our country and presumably must be stopped.

“Democrats are the problem,” the president wrote in Twitter. “They don’t care about crime and want illegal immigrants, no matter how bad they may be, to pour into and infest our Country, like MS-13.”

“They can’t win on their terrible policies, so they view them as potential voters!” he exclaimed.

Critics were quick to jump on Trump’s use of the word “infest,” which typically refers to insects or animals and immediately conjures images of disease and death. And with good reason; using such dehumanizing language to describe living, actual human beings has precursors in Nazi Germany and World War II Japanese Internment Camps, among other instances of human rights abuses.

Writing for Forward, columnist Aviya Kushner notes of the 1940 German Nazi propaganda Film “Der Ewige Jude” (“The Eternal Jew”), “one of the film’s most notorious sequences compares Jews to rats that carry contagion, flood the continent, and devour precious resources.”

Kushner adds:

What is happening now is “defining the enemy. Substitute “continent” for “Country,” capitalized, and you get the picture. The roots of the particular word “infest” are also telling. The English word comes from the French infester or Latin infestare ‘assail’, from infestus ‘hostile’. So yes, it’s a word rooted in hostility.

David Livingstone Smith, the director of the Institute for Cognitive Science and Evolutionary Psychology at the University of New England and author of the 2011 book “Less Than Human,” told NPR the Nazis explicitly referred to their victims as Untermenschen (“subhumans”) to make it easier to carry out atrocities against them.

“It’s wrong to kill a person, but permissible to exterminate a rat,” Smith explained. “To the Nazis, all the Jews, Gypsies and others were rats: dangerous, disease-carrying rats.”

In a 2008 article on the dehumanization of Muslims following the 9-11 terror attacks, professors Erin Steuter and Deborah Wills explained the role of language in presenting the enemy as “less than human” and thus making it “psychologically acceptable to engage in genocide or other atrocities.”

“Historical precedents include Nazi propaganda films that interspersed scenes of Jewish immigration with shots of teeming rats,” Steuter and Willis write. “Jews were also compared to cross-bred mongrel dogs, insects and parasites requiring elimination; Nazi propaganda insisted that “in the case of Jews and lice, only a radical cure help.”

According to Steuter and Willis, the human-beings-as-pests metaphors “have antecedents in Western media treatment of the Japanese in WWII, who were also systematically presented as vermin, especially rats, bats and mosquitoes – representations that were expanded from Japanese soldiers to include Japanese citizens.”

“Perhaps inevitably, the rhetoric of pest and infestation slipped into the rhetoric of extermination and eradication, as in the popular poster found in U.S. West Coast restaurants during World War II that proclaimed, ‘This restaurant poisons rats and Japs,’” they note.

Remarkably, the comparisons aren’t just metaphorical; as Steuter and Willis explain, the creators of chemical insecticides used against infestations “also created poison gas” and led “to the use of chemical defoliants as weapons”—the literal extermination of humans.

The process of dehumanization is essential to “to overcome the very deep and natural inhibitions they have against treating other people like game animals or vermin or dangerous predators,” Smith explained to NPR.

“We all know, despite what we see in the movies that it’s very difficult, psychologically, to kill another human being up close and in cold blood, or to inflict atrocities on them,” Smith said.

Which brings us back to Trump’s use of the word “infest,” a calculated attempt to mitigate reasonable concerns over his administration’s barbaric “zero tolerance policy” by lumping in the innocent children of undocumented asylum seekers with the “vermin” Americans so desperately want to keep out.

Defenders of the president will say it’s just a word; they’ll say he meant only to dehumanize the real, living people who rape and murder and steal as opposed to the real, living people fleeing poverty and violence and death. They’ll feign outrage over comparisons to Nazi Germany or Japanese Internment camps like they feigned outrage over the accurate description of children in “cages.”

But words have meaning and historical context and historical significance. One can only hope that when Trump takes his rightful place in the history books, we’ll be reminded of who the real vermin are.

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Elizabeth Preza is the Managing Editor of AlterNet. Follow her on Twitter @lizacisms.

America is being systematically thirdworldized – notably since the neoliberal 90s, escalated under Bush/Cheney, social justice further assaulted under Obama.

The Trump regime and GOP-controlled Congress want New Deal/Great Society programs eliminated altogether – by defunding or privatization, giving Wall Street and other corporate predators new profit centers, at the expense of grievously harmed ordinary people, especially the nation’s most vulnerable.

The state of America today is deplorable. Reported 3.8% unemployment is baloney, real unemployment at 21.4% with longterm discouraged and displaced workers included, according to Shadowstats economist John Williams.

Most US workers are underemployed in rotten part-time or temp jobs because millions of full-time ones no longer exist – lost by offshoring to low-wage countries.

Poverty in America is a growth industry, tens of millions of US workers a missed paycheck or two away from possible homelessness, hunger and despair.

The Trump regime and GOP-controlled Congress are waging class war on ordinary Americans, escalating what began earlier, wanting America returned to 19th century harshness, eroding or eliminating one social program after another, wanting maximum resources for warmaking and corporate profit-making.

On Tuesday, Republican House members introduced a FY 2019 budget proposal, calling for $5.4 trillion in mandatory spending cuts over the next decade – for defense spending increases and to help pay for the great GOP tax cut heist enacted last year.

Major cuts in Medicare and Medicaid are prioritized over the next decade – $537 billion and $1.5 trillion respectively, another $5 billion from Social Security, additional cuts from other social programs.

According to Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget president Maya MacGuineas, the House budget proposal

“calls for $8.1 trillion of deficit reduction relative to CBO’s baseline, most of these savings com(ing) from rosy economic assumptions or unreconciled and often unrealistic spending cuts.”

The proposal calls for fast-tracking at least $302 billion in spending cuts over the next decade, a process requiring a simple majority to pass, avoiding an undemocratic Dem filibuster.

Republicans will again try to kill Obamacare. The Orwellian-named “A Brighter American Future” budget “assumes Congress repeals Obamacare and replaces it with a patient-centered, free-market health care system,” its summary states, failing to explain what Republicans have in mind is egregiously unfair.

The proposal also includes an option for eligible government-run Medicare recipients to enroll in privatized plans, a scheme to let corporate predators charge more and deliver less.

With midterm elections in November, budget legislation isn’t likely to be enacted before the lame duck session ahead of when a new January 2019 Congress is sworn in.

Undemocratic Dems will surely use the draconian House GOP proposal as a campaign issue to boost their electoral chances in November.

According to top Dem House Budget Committee member Rep. John Yarmuth, his party members

“will make sure everyone knows that after providing millionaires and corporations with massive tax breaks, House Republicans decided to pay for it by once again calling for a repeal of the Affordable Care Act, ending Medicare as we know it, and offering deep cuts to investments in economic growth.”

Center on Budget and Policy Priorities president Robert Greenstein issued a statement in response to the GOP House scheme, saying:

“It’s easy to become numb to the harshness of these budgets and to brush aside their policy implications based on the assumption (likely correct) that few, if any, of these policies will be enacted this year,” adding:

“But this budget reflects where many congressional leaders – and the president – would like to take the country if they get the opportunity to enact these measures in the years ahead.”

“Rather than help more families have a shot at the American dream, it asks the most from those who have the least, and it would leave our nation less prepared for the economic and other challenges that lie ahead.”

A Final Comment

The nation I grew up in long ago no longer exists. Endless wars rage against invented enemies. Monied interests are more omnipotent than ever.

Social justice is on the chopping block for elimination. Harsh legislation transformed the country into a police state.

Undemocratic Dems are as deplorable as Republicans, each right wing of US duopoly government as bad as the other – privileged interests alone served, ordinary people increasingly harmed.

The deplorable state of the nation should terrify and enrage everyone. The only solution is nonviolent grassroots revolution. Nothing else can work.

Elections change nothing. Dirty business as usual always wins at the federal, state and local levels.

America’s ruling class may doom us all if not challenged. Ordinary people have disruptive power when they use it.

It takes more than marches, rallies, slogans, grumbling or petitions. It requires taking activism to a far higher level and sustaining it whatever the challenges – by withholding cooperation with government responsible for inflicting enormous harm on countless millions at home and abroad.

When government serves privileged interests at the expense of most others, sustained resistance is the only possible way for positive change.

Regime change begins at home. It’s an idea whose time has come.

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Stephen Lendman is a Research Associate of the CRG, Correspondent of Global Research based in Chicago.

VISIT MY NEW WEB SITE: stephenlendman.org (Home – Stephen Lendman). Contact at [email protected].

My newest book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: How the US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

Featured image: Activists rally in Henderson County, North Carolina against police collaboration with ICE. (Mijente/Facebook)

The stories emerging from the southwestern border of families torn apart by immigration authorities have sent shockwaves through the national media. But the bleak images of locked-up children don’t capture the full landscape of anguish facing immigrant communities nationwide. 

The parents of migrant children are set to endure a separate nightmare in the coming months, fanned out across the country to detention centers where they will await legal judgement. Far from the border, the crisis bled into the Pacific Northwest in early June as scores of new detainees were funneled into the federal immigrant detention center at SeaTac, a city on the outskirts of Seattle. The transfer was part of a massive effort by the Trump administration to warehouse as many newly arrived migrants as possible, pending prosecutions for allegedly illegal border crossings under its “zero-tolerance” agenda.

The policy is triggering an explosion of migrant incarceration, even though many of the apprehended are refugees fleeing mass violence, rape, conflict and persecution in Central America and other parts of the Global South.

As ICE rolled into the SeaTac with its human cargo, protesters from Northwest Detention Center (NWDC) Resistance arrived to greet them. The rally drew community members from diverse backgrounds, some of them spurred by the headlines to protest, others long-time activists who had campaigned for years against the region’s other immigrant prison, the Northwest Detention Center, which has become notorious for inhumane, abusive conditions and riotous protests by detainees. The action kicked off a national tour of resistance, Chinga la Migra (Fuck Border Patrol), spearheaded by national advocacy network Miijente, to promote solidarity across grassroots migrant resistance movements nationwide that are defending their communities from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

Image result for Maru Mora Villalpando

Maru Mora Villalpando (image on the right) helped organize the rally with the Chinga la Migra tour, not just to show solidarity with the newly arrived detainees, but to affirm her own presence on U.S. soil. An undocumented mother of a US citizen daughter, Mora is fighting for others while facing possible deportation herself.

Following the rally, Villalpando told In These Times,

“This is just another signal of how the Department of Justice has taken advantage of their powers [to carry out] this war against immigrants. … They have all these tools and they’re using them against us. And they’re deciding that now everybody should go to federal prison.”

Under the administration’s new zero-tolerance policy, focused on prosecuting virtually every arrested border crosser, the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security are systematically splitting up parents and children, allegedly to streamline removal proceedings. Children are housed in separate federal shelters while parents are processed, with industrial efficiency, through group hearings in heavily backlogged immigration courts.

Although the Obama administration also arrested and detained immigrants on a massive scale, general asylum cases were processed through civil court procedures, rather than the punishment-focused criminal prosecution. Many families were detained under Obama, but at least they were kept intact. And while the previous administration did enact some modest reforms to detention policy under public pressure, Trump has sharply reversed course as both detention and enforcement efforts surge.

Now, Villalpando says, Sessions has obliterated previous hard-fought reforms enacted under the last administration.

“He is the jury, the prosecutor, he’s the jury and he’s the judge,” she says, adding: “That’s why we were calling on Obama to dismantle the machine before these white supremacists were taking over.”

As of early June, more than 1,600 ICE detainees have been shunted into federal prisons, where their stay will supposedly be temporary, according to ICE. Separated children have been warehoused in federal facilities, including a surreal makeshift “childcare” home in a cheerily repainted converted Texas Walmart store.

Parents are offered more austere conditions, meanwhile, at the federal SeaTac facility, which has opened just over 200 beds to house migrants freshly transferred from the border. Washington congressional representative Pramila Jayapal arragned a rare brief visit to the facility last week, and encountered about 170 women, mostly asylum seekers, who had been torn from their families, isolated and traumatized while they churned through the chaotic court process.

“Thirty to 40 percent of these women came with children who had been forcibly taken away from them,” Jayapal told The Nation. “None got a chance to say goodbye to their children. … This separation of children from their parents is really a form of torture.”

Many communities—including King County, which houses part of SeaTac—brand themselves as “sanctuary” jurisdictions, which seek to shield immigrants from ICE investigation. But the County also partners with ICE to host detention centers, which form the core infrastructure of the deportation regime.

When it comes to enforcement actions, even jurisdictions claiming to not cooperate with ICE agents are still subject to federal intervention. At another stop planned on the tour, Chicago, protesters will condemn city authorities for partnering with ICE on police anti-gang operations, despite liberal politicians’ claims of opposing Trump’s crackdowns while clandestinely exposing immigrants to futher risk.

Today, immigrant communities have found their most reliable allies are not reformist politicians, but the grassroots mutual aid networks they have built up over the years through community coalitions linking clergy, schools, labor and other groups to oppose police collaboration with immigration enforcement, stage direct actions, and provide social support for threatened families. These bottom-up networks form the solidarity movement that the Chinga la Migra tour seeks to champion.

For NWDC Resistance, grassroots struggle has always been both necessary and strategic.

“We have no money, we have no resources,” Villalpando said. “We only have whatever we have, which is our bodies.”

And their movement is inclusive, promising to support all migrants whether they go public to protest ICE or decide to stay underground to keep their families safe.

“What we want to tell people is not to be afraid,” said Villalpando, adding that for the authorities: “That’s how they have won for such a long time, to keep us afraid, and to hide their practices.”

The intensification of detentions—with some 50,000 border apprehensions and nearly 2000 kids separated from April 19 to May 31—is making it even harder to organize immigrant communities, which are stratified geographically and separated. Courts are granting reprieve haphazardly and arbitrarily, many lack access to legal counsel, and posting bail is often prohibitively expensive. Villalpando noted that all her legal appeals and demands for reprieve have been denied.

“And this is me, with all the support and public pressure and a legal team,” she said, adding: “Now think about all those people that are crossing the border, and are here right now. They have no legal representation, they don’t know the system, so this is like a big hammer coming down on us.”

But the hammer is also galvanizing a national movement, and the Chinga la Migra tour seeks to highlight those common struggles as it runs through Chicago and rural south. In North Carolina, activists in Alamance County joined with Mijente activists on June 13 to rally against the federal 287g program, which facilitates joint operations between local police and ICE agents.

In front of the local courthouse, a mariachi band blasted a celebratory tune as Kischa Loreé Peña, an organizer with the grassroots group Down Home NC, spoke before a banner emblazoned with, “We Will Not Go Back.” She talked about what her own family had in common with her migrant neighbors:

 “We know we’re fighting white supremacy, [against] the Confederate flags up the street … As a mother I understand what it’s like to fear police and racism with my son walking the streets, and I think that no one should live like that…we believe that an attack on one of us is an attack on all of us.”

While the Trump administration’s border war threatens to break apart the country, in many communities, the struggle has instead tied together neighbors who their ground in the place they call home.

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Michelle Chen is a contributing writer at In These Times and The Nation, a contributing editor at Dissent and a co-producer of the “Belabored” podcast. She studies history at the CUNY Graduate Center. She tweets at @meeshellchen.

Washington’s ‘Pivot to Asia’: A Debacle Unfolding

June 20th, 2018 by Prof. James Petras

Relevant article first published by Global Research in October 2016.

In 2012 President Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Defense Secretary Ashton Carter launched a new chapter in their quest for global dominance:  a realignment of policies designed to shift priorities from the Middle East to Asia.  Dubbed the ‘Pivot to Asia’, it suggested that the US would concentrate its economic, military and diplomatic resources toward strengthening its dominant position and undercutting China’s rising influence in the region.

The ‘pivot to Asia’ did not shift existing resources from the Middle East, it added military commitments to the region, while provoking more conflicts with Russia and China.

The “pivot to Asia” meant that the US was extending and deepening its regional military alliances in order to confront and encircle Russia and China.  The goal would be to cripple their economies and foster social unrest leading to political instability and regime change.

The US onslaught for greater empire depended on the cooperation of proxies and allies to accomplish its strategic goals.

The so-called ‘pivot to Asia’ had a two-pronged approach, based on an economic trading pact and various military treaty agreements.  The entire US strategy of retaining global supremacy depended on securing and enhancing its control over its regional allies and proxies.  Failure of the Obama regime to retain Washington’s vassal states would accelerate its decline and encourage more desperate political maneuvers.

Strategic Military Posturing

Without a doubt, every military decision and action made by the Obama Administration with regard to the Asia-Pacific Region has had only one purpose – to weaken China’s defense capabilities, undermine its economy and force Beijing to submit to Washington’s domination.

In pursuit of military supremacy, Washington has installed an advanced missile system in South Korea, increased its air and maritime armada and expanded its provocative activities along China’s coastline and its vital maritime trade routes.  Washington has embarked on a military base expansion campaign in Australia, Japan and the Philippines.

This explains why Washington pressured its client regime in Manila under the former President ‘Nonoy’ Aquino, Jr., to bring its territorial dispute with China over the Spratly Islands before a relatively obscure tribunal in Holland.  The European ruling, unsurprisingly in favor of Manila, would provide the US with a ‘legal’ cover for its planned aggression against China in the South China Sea.  The Spratly and Paracel Islands are mostly barren coral islands and shoals located within the world’s busiest shipping trade routes, explaining China’s (both Beijing and Taipei) refusal to recognize the ‘Court of Special Arbitration’.

Strategic Economic Intervention: The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP)

The US authored and promoted Trans-Pacific Partnership (TTP) is a trade and investment agreement covering 12 Pacific countries designed to ensure US regional dominance while deliberately cutting out China.  The TPP was to be the linchpin of US efforts to promote profits for overseas US multi-nationals by undercutting the rules for domestic producers, labor laws for workers and environmental regulations for consumers.  As a result of its unpopular domestic provisions, which had alienated US workers and consumers, the electorate forced both Presidential candidates to withdraw their support for the TPP – what one scribbler for the Financial Times denounced as “the dangers of popular democracy”.  The Washington empire builders envisioned the TPP as a tool for dictating and enforcing their ‘rules’ on a captive Asia-Pacific trading system.  From the perspective of US big business, the TPP was the instrument of choice for retaining supremacy in Asia by excluding China.

The Eclipse of Washington’s “Asian Century”

For over seventy years the US has dominated Asia, ravaging the continent with two major wars  in Korea and Indo-China with millions of casualties, and multiple counter-insurgency interventions in Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, the Philippines, Timor, Myanmar, Pakistan and Afghanistan.  The strategic goal has been to expand its military and political power, exploit the economies and resources and encircle China and North Korea.

Under the Obama-Clinton-Kerry Regime, the imperial structures in Asia are coming apart.

Washington’s anti-China TPP is collapsing and has been replaced by the Chinese sponsored Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) with over fifty member countries worldwide, including the ten nations of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASAEN), plus Australia, India, South Korea and New Zealand.  Of course, China is funding most of the partnership and, to no one’s surprise, Washington has not been invited to join…

As a result of the highly favorable terms in the RCEP, each and every current and former US ally and colony has been signing on, shifting trade allegiances to China, and effectively changing the configuration of power.

Already Cambodia, Laos, Thailand and Indonesia have formalized growing economic ties with China.  The debacle of the TPP has just accelerated the shift toward China’s new trade pact (RCEP).  The US is left to rely on its ‘loyalist four’, a stagnant Japan, Australia, South Korea and its impoverished former colony, Philippines, to bolster its quest to militarily encircle China.

The Dangers of ‘Popular Democracy’: President Duterte’s Pivot to China and the End of US Supremacy in SE Asia?

For over a century (since the invasion of the Philippines in 1896), especially since the end of WWII, when the US asserted its primacy in Asia, Washington has used the strategic Philippine Archipelago as a trampoline for controlling Southeast Asia.  Control of the Philippines is fundamental to US Imperialism: Washington’s strategic superiority depends on its access to sea, air, communications and ground bases and operations located in the Philippines and a compliant Philippine ruling class..

The centerpiece of US strategy to encircle and tighten control over China’s maritime routes to and from the world-economy is the massive build-up of US military installations in the Philippines.

The US self-styled “pivot to Asia” involves locating five military bases directed at dominating the South China Sea.  The Pentagon expanded its access to four strategic air and one military base through the ‘Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement’ signed by the Philippine President Aquino in 2014 but held up by the Philippine Courts until April 2016.  These include:

(1) Antonio Bautista Airbase on the island of Palawan, located near the contested Spratly Islands in the South China Sea.

(2) Basa Airbase 40 miles northwest of the Philippines capital of Manila, overlooking the South China Sea.

(3) Lumbia Airbase located in the port of Cagayan de Oro, Mindanao, a huge US facility under construction.

(4) Mactan – Benito Ebuen airbase located on Mactan Island off the coast of Cebu in the central Philippines.

(5) Fort Magsaysay located in Nueva Ecija, on Luzon, the Philippine Army’s Central Training and command center, its largest military installation which will serve the US as the training and indoctrination base for the Philippine army.

Pentagon planners had envisioned targeting Chinese shipping and air bases in the South China Sea from its new bases on western shores of the Philippines.  This essentially threatens the stability of the entire region, especially the vital Chinese trade routes to the global economy.

Washington has been intensifying its intervention in the South China Sea relying on decrees issued by its previous proxy President Benigno (Noynoy) Aquino, III (2010-2016).  These, however, were not ratified by the Congress and had been challenged by the Philippine Supreme Court.

Washington’s entire “pivot to Asia” has centered its vast military build-up on its access to the Philippines.  This access is now at risk.  Newly elected President Rodrigo Duterte, who succeeded Aquino in June 2016, is pursuing an independent foreign policy, with the aim of transforming the impoverished Philippines from a subservient US military colony to opening large-scale, long-term economic trade and development ties with China and other regional economic powers.  Duterte has openly challenged the US policy of using the Philippines to encircle and provoke China.

The Philippine “pivot to China” quickly advanced from colorful rhetoric to a major trade and investment meeting of President Duterte and a huge delegation of Philippine business leaders with his Chinese counterparts in Beijing in late October 2016.  During his first 3 months in office Duterte blasted Washington for meddling in his ongoing campaign against drug lords and dealers.  Obama’s so-called ‘concerns for human rights’ in the anti-drug campaign were answered with counter-charges that the US had accommodated notorious narco-politician-oligarchs to further its military base expansion program.  President Duterte’s war on drugs expanded well beyond the alleged US narco-elite alliance when he proposed two strategic changes: (1) he promised to end the US-Philippine sea patrols of disputed waters designed to provoke Beijing in the South China Sea; and (2) President Duterte announced he would end military exercises with Washington, especially in Mindanao, because they threatened China and undermined Philippine sovereignty.

President Duterte, in pursuit of his independent nationalist-agenda, has moved rapidly and decisively to strengthen the Philippines ‘pivot’ toward China, which in the context of Southeast Asia is really ‘normalizing’ trade and investment relations with his giant neighbor.  During the third week of October (2016) President Duterte, his political team and 250 business leaders met with China’s leaders to discuss multi-billion-dollar investment projects and trade agreements, as well as closer diplomatic relations.  The initial results, which promise to expand even more, are over $13 billion dollars in trade and critical infrastructure projects.  As the Philippine’s pivot to China advances, the quid pro quo will lead to a profound change in the politics and militarization of Southeast Asian.  Without total US control over the Philippines, Washington’s strategic arc of encirclement against China is broken.

According to a recent ruling by the Philippine Supreme Court, the controversial US military base agreement (Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement) imposed by the former President Aquino by fiat without congressional ratification can be terminated by the new President by executive order.  This ruling punches some major holes in what the Pentagon had considered its ‘ironclad’ stranglehold on the strategic Philippine bases.

The Duterte government has repeatedly announced its administration’s commitment to a program of economic modernization and social reconstruction for Philippine society.  That agenda can only be advanced through changes that include multi-billion dollar infrastructure investments, loans and technical cooperation from China, whereas remaining a backward US military colony will not only threaten their Asian economic partners, but will condemn the Philippines to yet another generation of stagnation and corruption.  Unique in Southeast Asia, the Philippines has long been mired in underdevelopment, forcing half of its qualified workforce to seek contract servitude abroad, while at home the society has become victims of drug and human trafficking gangs linked to the oligarchs.

Conclusion

Washington’s ‘pivot to Asia’, enshrined in its effort to corral the Asian countries into its anti-China crusade is not going as the Obama-Clinton-Kerry team had envisioned.  It is proving to be a major foreign policy debacle for the outgoing and (presumably) incoming US presidential administrations.  Democratic Party candidate Hillary Clinton has been forced to denounce the Transpacific Trade Partnership (TPP), one of her own pet projects when she was Secretary of State.  The Pentagon’s military base strategy stuck in a 1980’s time-warped vision of Southeast Asia is on the verge of imploding.    The Philippines, its former colony and vassal state, is finally turning away from its total subservience to US military dictates and toward greater independence and stronger regional ties to China and the rest of Asia.  Southeast Asia and the South China Sea are no longer part of a grand chessboard subject to Pentagon moves for domination.

In desperation, Washington may decide to resort to a military power grab– a coup in the Philippines, backed by a coalition of Manila-based oligarchs, narco-bosses and generals.  The problem with a precipitate move to ‘regime change’ is that Rodrigo Duterte is immensely popular with the Philippine electorate – precisely for the reasons that the Washington elite and Manila oligarchs despise him.  The mayor of Manila, Joseph Estrada, himself a former victim of a Washington-instigated regime change, has stated that any US backed coup will face a million-member mass opposition and the bulk of the nationalist middle and powerful Chinese-oriented business class.  A failed coup, like the disastrous coup in Venezuela in 2002 against Hugo Chavez could radicalize Duterte’s policy well beyond his staunchly nationalist agenda and further isolate the US.

See James Petras latest book from Clarity Press: ISBN: 978-0-9972870-5-9, $24.95 / 252 pp. / 2016 http://www.claritypress.com/PetrasVIII.html

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Donald Trump And The Power Of Money

June 20th, 2018 by Peter Koenig

This article by Peter Koenig was first published in October 2016 before the US Presidential Elections. This analysis centers on the platform of then-presidential candidate Donald Trump.

***

Imagine, Donald Trump would accede to the US Presidency, an unlikely event with the presstitute media relentlessly slamming, slashing and demonizing him, not unlike they do with President Putin – while cheering no-end for the warmonger Killary, no matter what atrocities she has on her hands and body, no matter that blood is dripping out of her mouth every time she opens it – like Iraq, Libya, Syria, Palestine, Afghanistan, Sudan – and more, much more.

They, the elite, the military-security complex, Wall Street want War. War is good for business – so said the Washington Post. The warmongering MSM (mainstream media) also propagates for more weapons to enrich the military-security complex that pays them. But just for a moment, let’s assume, Trump would get elected with such a large margin that voter fraud would be difficult to manage.

Trump is sending a different narrative from that of eternal war. Trump seems to be looking into a different direction. He essentially says – stop the conflict with Russia, make Russia a partner, stop outsourcing jobs, bring them back, give labor back to Americans, slash the unemployment rate – which is, of course, everybody knows, way above the silly fabricated 5%. The reality is that unreported but real unemployment in the US is hovering between 22% and 25%, a real hammer for the economy, increasing anger and unhappiness and crime. Trump also says in the same vein as bringing back jobs – STOP globalization, restrain NATO, rein in the banks – yes, Wall Street, the Goldman Sachs-es and Co. of this world of fake pyramid money, dominated by the Rothschild-Rockefeller-Morgan clan. Trump says, let’s have a financial system that works for the people.

Does he mean it? – I don’t know. Could be true.

Most of what he says makes sense for America, for Americans – and by extension for much of the rest of the world, especially Europe, the genuine Europe, not the puppet-commandeered Europe. He also says a lot of outright discriminatory and xenophobic rubbish – like building a wall separating Mexico from the US of A, emulating Israel; and propagates a crackdown on Moslems. Does he mean it? Or does he want to please potential voters? – Such statements are indeed dangerous rubbish, but they are secondary to all the other things that are PRIORITARY, as they would help restore American society, workforce, dignity – most important: DIGNITY. Dignity is important for Americans to wake up to realize that they are living in a country that wastes their money, the peoples’ resources – on countless criminal wars around the world, feverishly racing towards Full Spectrum Dominance to benefit a few. The secondary stuff is important too, but can be dealt with in parallel by Americans that have come to senses.

Trump is in many ways like France’s Marine LePen, representing the extreme right, and therefore, no matter what sensible things she says and has on her agenda to do – and I don’t doubt one minute that she means what she says – like EUREXIT and send NATO to hell – she is still framed by the ‘left intellectuals’ – if such a thing still exists in our neoliberal universe – as a discriminatory xenophobe who would expel all ‘colored’ and ‘veiled’ foreigners. Of course, that’s bad. But let her first initiating France exiting from the EU, the Euro and NATO – the likely salvation of Europe, then tackle the other issues. First comes first. A true intellectual left would have to understand that – and not bend to the presstitute promoted clichés.

Trump has enough money power. He doesn’t have to bend to the military security complex, to the banks, to the Obamacare pharma-fiefdom. He doesn’t really have to bend to anybody. That worries the elite. He is independent. Let’s give him the benefit of the doubt. In no case could he be worse than Hillary – the killer – so much can be read from every word she says. Her pattern of pathology – “We came, we saw, he died”, when she saw the bloodstained image of the NATO-slaughtered Ghaddafi – indicates that she would not stop from pressing this infamous Red Button of Death and total world annihilation – perhaps even repeating that same smirk,  “We came, we saw, the world exploded”.

Now let’s go to the next hypothesis, assuming Trump would be elected and ‘they’ – the elusive high-powered small elite that pulls the strings on Washington and the White House’s overseas puppets, and let’s assume ‘they’ would let him live, at least for a while, Trump might be doing ‘irrational’ things in the eye of the Beltway slaves. Recognizing the perils for his own country and those for his neighbor, Canada, Mr. Trump might call on the western stooges, in Europe particularly, who for the sake of brown-nosing the naked king in Washington, are prepared to sell-out 500-plus million European and their future generations to the most nefarious trade deals the world has ever known – CETA, TTIP and TiSA (let alone the TPP, where 12 Pacific countries are about accept Washington) – telling them to come to senses, think democracy and stop the deals that 80% or more of Europeans despise and reject.

As a parenthesis and philosophically speaking, one could say that given the hundreds of years of colonization around the globe, of shameless exploitation, of raping and killing millions of people throughout Africa, Asia, and Latin America – and mind you, an exploitation that continues to this day under the guise of trade and international banking – that these nefarious trade ‘deals’, TTIP, CETA, TiSA, are Europe’s historically deserved heritage, perpetrated by her own kind. The United States is Europe on steroids. The chickens are coming home to roost, so to speak.

The Saker wrote a great essay on the aberration of this upcoming US election and what might follow after the election, “The US Is About To Face The Worst Crisis in Their History” –

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article45729.htm .

One of the article’s commenters pinned it down to the point: “If Trump does become Commander in Chief, his first job will be securing his life. Those who really run the show in the US will stop at nothing to safeguard their empire. Truly the US is at a cross roads and by extension the world. Times are really scary.”

What Trump says he would do during his first 100 days in office, he presented in a groundbreaking speech at Gettysburg, Pa. this past weekend, is for the most part truly astounding

http://www.veteransnewsnow.com/2016/10/24/donald-trump-delivers-a-powerful-policy-speech-on-his-first-100-days-in-office/.

It is not less than revolutionary, because no US politician, let alone a Presidential candidate or President has said something for the most part so sensible as did Presidential candidate Trump. Summarizing, he promises bringing back overseas jobs, would prevent the continued outsourcing of the American production processes, bring order to the crime-ridden communities, he would seek friendly partnership with Russia, defusing the WWIII threat – and he would tackle, restrain and control the corrupt banking system, including the endless money-making machine, the privately owned, Rothschild dominated FED. – That is a challenge other Presidents have failed to master, including Lincoln and JFK. We know how they ended.

Trump has already hinted that to revive the American economy the zero-interest policy may have to be changed, so that banks become more responsible. The owners of the system would hardly allow Trump’s interference in their obscene profit-making scheme. They’d rather at their calling let the bomb explode. A sudden change of this policy would hit many over-stretched banks like a bombshell – reminiscent of 2008 Lehman Brothers, just magnified by a factor of 10. There are currently at least three, possibly five Wall Street giants that are on the edge. They get by, because of the FED’s zero interest policy- and they make sure that this doesn’t change, as several if not all of them are part of the private FED system. Would Trump dare touching this highly protected scheme? – It’s a deadly challenge. He knows it.

This time there may be more at stake than just another banking collapse, a planned emulation of the 2007 / 2008 crisis, where Wall Street was copiously rewarded for its excesses by tax-money bail-outs. Be aware, this time it would not be tax-payer’s money that would rescue the Too-Big-To Fail (TBTF) banks, but it would be YOUR money, your deposits, your savings, your pension funds, 401(k)’s, possibly even your shares if you have any in the bank being ‘collapsed’ – and the process would be called ‘bail-ins’.

The (western) world is under the hegemon of a privately-owned money system, the US-dollar – and most people don’t even know it. The accent is on the western world, because the east, comprising Russia, China, the SCO countries (Shanghai Cooperation Organization – consisting of China and Russia and most of the Central Asian former Soviet Republics, plus Iran and Pakistan – and others are waiting in the wings), the EEU (Eurasian Economic Union), as well as most of the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa), are forming their own eastern economic and monetary block. – I have said this before, but will repeat it for readers to realize – this ‘economic block’ – is largely, if not entirely, delinked from the dollar scheme. It consists of about half the world’s population and one third of the world’s GDP, a solid GDP that is. In contrast to the western, especially the US GDP; in the eastern block much of the GDP is based on real labor output and manufacturing.

In reality, this eastern economic power block which is also displaying the world’s largest economic development potential, since history remembers, the New Silk Road – or the One Belt, One Road (OBOR) economic development scheme, stretching from Vladivostok to Lisbon (if Europe chooses to participate), does not need the west anymore. The OBOR project has already begun. It represents a view into the future, with job opportunities and the outlook for a truly better life for hundreds of millions, possibly billions of people during coming generations – a dynamic vision for the future. The east is where the future lays.

Donald Trump as President notwithstanding, a new western well-planned banking collapse may start in the US, the ramifications and impact would be felt around the globe – sinking millions, hundreds of millions of people into poverty, misery, the like we haven’t seen in recent history. The banks ‘depositors’ money might not be enough. The reptiles are hungry. They might privatize public properties, infrastructures, roads, ports railways, health care, education, pensions, natural resources – anything that is still in the hands of the people. If Greece is a reminder, then think of Greece blown up by a factor of 1000 – all around the globe, touching in extremis the vulnerable people of the vulnerable countries – billions of people. While the money flows again from the poor to the rich, to an ever-shrinking pool of super-rich; widening the rich-poor gap to a disgusting yawn. Leaving the 99.99 % – by now the 99.99999% – ever more powerless, having to fend for sheer survival – seeking refuge in ‘better lands’. It’s a war by money. Canons, bombs and guns could rest – for a while.

For years, I have felt the Empire will have to be brought down from inside – from the people who can’t take it anymore, from an internal revolt that eventually would break the worldwide extended monster’s back. Rome and most subsequent empires have fallen this way. It may still happen. But now I side more with The Saker’s theory, namely that the defeat may come from a combination of inside revolt and outside forces, not so much military forces, but economic forces. In theory, it could happen tomorrow. Just imagine, the one third of world-GDP-countries would drop all their dollar reserves, all the dollar denominated international contracts, all dollar issued trade agreements – and in particular, abandon at once the unwritten rule of hydrocarbons to be traded only in US-dollars. It would most likely wipe out the western economy.

This will not happen, of course. Simply, because the One Third GDP holders do not want to destroy the economy of the rest of the world, especially the so-called developing and emerging countries, many – or most of them – eventually to become allies of this eastern block that promises peaceful co-existence rather than the current western pattern of ever multiplying wars and conflicts – a sheer dollar-fed killing spree, with destruction and weapons manufacturing no end.

The Power of Money. Would Donald Trump, as President, himself a moneyed powerhouse, survive such a calamity? In fact, would he be able and strong enough to veer the ship around, guiding the world away from such destructive scenarios and towards peace and cooperation between East and West? – Or is the train already too far out of the station? – No telling at this time. The signals are certainly not good. But, let’s put in a grain of optimism and ‘bank’ on a positive strand of dynamics fueled by an increasing human consciousness – one that would not allow Hillary to push the Death Button.

Peter Koenig is an economist and geopolitical analyst. He is also a former World Bank staff and worked extensively around the world in the fields of environment and water resources. He writes regularly for Global Research, ICH, RT, Sputnik, PressTV, The 4th Media, TeleSUR, TruePublica, The Vineyard of The Saker Blog, and other internet sites. He is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed – fiction based on facts and on 30 years of World Bank experience around the globe. He is also a co-author of The World Order and Revolution! – Essays from the Resistance.

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In reply to allegations that “Vladimir Putin is a killer,” Trump stated: “There are a lot of killers. You think our country is so innocent?”

In reply to Fox news host Bret Baier’s allegation that Kim Jong-un has “done some really bad things,” Trump replied: 

“Yeah, but so have a lot of other people done some really bad things. I could go through a lot of nations where a lot of bad things were done.”

Though it is much too early to predict the course or outcome of the Singapore summit, in a  powerful gesture of reconciliation, following his supremely diplomatic meeting with DPRK Chairman Kim Jong-un, (diplomacy during which Trump respectfully saluted a North Korean general, who had already saluted him,) President Trump unexpectedly announced his decision to halt the war games routinely held between the US and the ROK, which President Trump described as tremendously costly and “provocative.” 

Although the U.S. military attempted to characterize the war games as routine and defensive, their intolerable threat to the DPRK is exposed in the naming of recent war games, explicitly titled:  “Decapitation of the Leadership of North Korea.” 

Trump’s decision to halt the war games indicated his respect for the most urgent concerns of the DPRK, and for their point of view in general.   Trump specifically mentioned B-52s and B-1s that regularly fly near the Korean peninsula:

“We fly in bombers from Guam.  That’s six and a half hours away.  That’s a long time for these big massive planes to be flying to South Korea to practice and then drop bombs all over the place and then go back to Guam.  I know a lot about airplanes.  It’s very expensive.  I don’t like it.  What I did say is I think it’s very provocative.”

These war games, including “Ulchi Freedom Guardian” are one of the largest military exercises in the world.  They include almost 18,000 American forces and 50,000 South Korean troops.  The most recent “Max Thunder” war games includes the largest-ever drill involving B-52 strategic nuclear bombers, F-11 Raptor stealth fighters and other nuclear strategic assets.

It is unfortunate that former Vice President Joe Biden asserts that the Trump administration has given the DPRK many sought after wins up front without getting anything in return. 

“So far this is not a deal that advantages the USA or makes us safer.” 

Would Biden prefer nuclear winter, which we risked prior to the deal?

History

Critics of the deal are evidently historically ignorant.  In declaring, as Kim Jong un did, that “we agree to leave the past behind,” he made an enormous concession and sacrifice.  The history of the Korean war, 1950-1953, is a history of US command of UN forces that attempted to perpetrate a genocide of the North Korean people, and massacred 2-3 million North Koreans in barbaric fashion, while destroying the entire country – bombing and totally demolishing the complete infrastructure necessary to support human life in North Korea, reducing to rubble every building in Pyongyang, destroying farmland, killing livestock, and when every visible structure had been smashed, US pilots were ordered to fly low, and bomb everything still living.  As most of the younger men were still away in the army, only women and children and the most elderly were visible, and the US-UN pilots murdered everyone above ground they saw.

 

Pyongyang, 1953, totally destroyed as a result of US bombings

 Pyongyang Today. Compare to the Trump Tower in Manhattan

one of many Pyongyang theatres copy

one of many Pyongyang theatres

Crimes against Humanity

The hideous massacres at Sinchon county (massacres repeated in every other county) included atrocities committed against the more than 1,000 women and children who had sought protection in an underground air-raid shelter, into which the US-UN soldiers then poured gasoline which they ignited into a raging fire, roasting to death the women  and children within. 

Almost 40,000 inhabitants of Sinchon County alone were massacred. These atrocities were repeated in 30 other counties, including Anak, Unryul, Haeju, Pyoksong, Songhwa, Onchon, Thaethan, Phyongchon, Yonan, Jaeryong, Jangyon, Ragyon, Phyongsan, Thosan, Pongsan, Songrim, Sariwon, Anju, Kangso, Nampho, Kaechon, Sunchon, Pakchon, Shosan, Huichon, Yangyang, Cholwon, Wonsan, Hamju, Tanchon. 

The heinous actions committed by the US-UN forces constitute war crimes and crimes against humanity, a holocaust for which the DPRK is legally entitled to claim war reparations, which, if destruction of human lives,  property, and infrastructure are calculated, should amount to at least one trillion dollars.

Kim Jong un’s agreement to “put the past behind” saved Donald Trump and the US taxpayers (whose salaries funded that atrocious war), approximately one trillion dollars in war reparations.  In agreeing to “forget the past” in the interest of peace, the DPRK Chairman Kim made an enormous concession up front, agreeing to forego legitimate claims for reparations.

The major question now is how serious and reliable is Trump’s agreement to stop war games, which could be resumed at any moment, and how serious and reliable are pledges to lift the criminal and abhorrent UN sanctions which are causing the spread of disease and malnutrition among the people of the DPRK, and are currently rotting the very infrastructure necessary to sustain human life in North Korea.  According to the Wall Street Journal of June 15, Mr. Pompeo told a joint press conference in Beijing that

“China, Japan and South Korea had agreed that the UN sanctions should ‘remain in place until such time as that denuclearization is in fact complete.’” 

This is  violation of the spirit of the Singapore agreement, and a criminal violation of the human rights of the people of the DPRK.  On May 19, 2018, The New York Times published the report of Professsor Siegfried S. Heckar, the most experienced US federal government adviser, former director of Los Alamos weapons laboratory in New Mexico and currently at Stanford University.  Professor Heckar stated unequivocally that denuclearization of the DPRK would probably take up to 15 years. 

“Dr. Hecker’s time frame stands in stark contrast with what the US initially demanded, which could be a key sticking point in any summit meeting between President Trump and Chairman Kim Jong un.”

The UN sanctions are genocidal, and all UN member states supporting the sanctions are complicit in crimes against humanity.  According to the Wall Street Journal,

“Ensuring Continued Chinese pressure on Pyongyang is one of the top priorities for Washington following the summit.” 

By contrast, according to the Wall Street Journal,

“immediately after the summit, Beijing called for a UN Security Council review of the sanctions…Chinese officials had been expected to press Mr. Pompeo to ease economic pressure on Pyongyang.”

It is egregious obfuscation and bad faith for the UN to claim that its sanctions are “targeted,” and not “blunt.”  This is the equivalent of saying that Sharia dictated amputation of limbs, as punishment, is done in hospitals to prevent infection, and female genital mutilation is performed by licensed doctors under sanitary conditions.  However this butchery is performed, the result is the irreparable mutilation of a human being.  “Targeted sanctions” are a notorious failure, and a rampant destruction of human lives in the DPRK. 

UN Special Rapporteur for the DPRK, Tomas Quintana expresses ”alarm” that the sanctions are preventing chemotherapy from reaching cancer patients, condemning DPRK citizens to excruciating deaths from malignant illness;  Quintana is appalled that wheelchairs are de facto blocked by the sanctions, and indispensable equipment is denied to disabled persons by the sanctions.  This is not targeted, and it is not accidental.  It is deliberate.  Thousands of boxes of “humanitarian” food aid are left to rot because sanctions technicalities block transport of food to the people of the DPRK.

Knowingly overlooked by most media, other than Bloomberg, on April 11: 

“In February, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, the biggest financial contributor to TB control in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea since 2010, announced that it will close its programs there in June, citing “challenges working in the country.” 

The closure of programs is likely to lead to ‘’massive stock outs of quality-assured TB drugs nationwide,’’ wrote Harvard Medical School doctors in an open letter to the Global Fund, published on March 14 in the British medical journal the Lancet.  Such privations in the past has ‘’led to the rapid creation of drug-resistant TB strains, as doctors ration pills and patients take incomplete regimens,’’ they wrote.

“Treatment regimens that are too short or rely on inferior or inappropriate medicines are the fastest route to drug resistance,” says Jennifer Furin, a Harvard trained doctor and researcher, who’s cared for TB patients for 23 years. 

Cutting funding to programs in North Korea, she says, will undermine disease-control efforts beyond North Korea. 

“This will be a disaster that the global health community will pay for later,” Furin says.  ‘’This is a politically created problem that will turn into a health catastrophe, not just for the people living in the DPRK, but for everybody in the region.”  

In an open letter to the Geneva-based organization published on March 13, Dr. Kim Hyong Hun, the DPRK’s vice minister of public health, accused the Global Fund of “bowing to the pressure of some hostile forces” in the campaign of sanctions. 

Dr. Kwonjune Seung, who was among the authors of the open letter to the Global Fund published in the Lancet, visits a dozen TB centers in North Korea twice a year as medical director of the Eugene Bell Foundation.  Dr. Seung and his colleagues wrote in the Lancet: 

“The decision to suspend the Global Fund projects in North Korea, with almost no transparency or publicity, runs counter to the ethical aspiration of the global health community, which is to prevent death and suffering due to disease, irrespective of the government under which people live.” 

Dr. Jennifer Furin states: 

“This is a way to punish the DPRK.  But this is a weapon of destruction in and of itself.  TB is an airborne disease.  It doesn’t stay within borders.”

Deliberately preventing treatment of diseases which, if left untreated morph into deadly variants, (in this case untreated TB leads to fatal drug-resistant strains of TB) is nothing less than a covert form of biological warfare that is in complete violation of international laws prohibiting biological warfare.  This is a modern day version of the earlier British and American practise of sending smallpox infested blankets to the Mapuche Indians, and other indigenous people in territories invaded and stolen from them by the British and American conquistadors.

But as Dr. Jennifer Furin states: 

”This is a weapon of destruction in and of itself.  TB is an airborne disease.  It doesn’t stay within borders.”

Perhaps, one day the same people who support the UN sanctions on the DPRK, and refuse to take responsibility for the agony they are inflicting on the people of the DPRK, perhaps these very same people will one day see their own loved ones die agonizing deaths of drug-resistant TB, ironically, and ultimately resulting from the very same UN sanctions now devastating the DPRK.  Perhaps that would be a tragic form of retributive justice.

The sanctimonious and hypocritical criticism of the DPRK for human rights issues, is even more unacceptable and ludicrous, coming from a nation built upon the slaughter of native Americans, and the slavery of kidnapped Africans.  On June 3, The New York Times’  ”Arts and Leisure” section published:  “Remembering Lynching’s Toll”:  a memorial recording  the lynching of slaves in America.  ”The act of lynching was, by calculation, intensely visual.  Its central, recurring image of controlling white bodies surrounding a tortured black one projected a message meant to grind a black population down with fear.  As with all terrorism, unpredictability and arbitrariness were tactical tools.  Lynching was intended to demonstrate that any black person, male or female, adult or child could be accused of any offense and be ritually slaughtered.  The law was no protection, and guilt was presumed, because being black was the real crime.  The Memorial for Peace and Justice is dedicated to more than 4,000 African-Americans…placing lynching within a broader context of white-on-black terrorism that goes back to the trans-Atlantic slave trade, in which Montgomery played a role, and forward to the warehousing of black men in prisons today.

Lynching in the USA persisted, obscenely, throughout the Twentieth Century and still occurs. Currently, prisons are America’s gulags, in which mostly African-American men, and poor white men, are forced to perform slave labor.  It is merely a disguised and updated form of slavery. 

Donald Trump cannot possibly lecture the DPRK on human rights.  He recognizes that “we are not innocent,” and he is one of the few presidents in office willing to admit this.  There is no legitimate evidence of human rights abuses in the DPRK.  The UN  “Commission of Inquiry” was exposed as a fabrication and a tissue of lies, a propaganda device which even the UN Assistant-Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs, Ivan Simonovic, acknowledged “does not meet the standard of proof required to be admitted as evidence in a court of law.”  Perhaps even Donald Trump cannot stomach this disgraceful hypocrisy.

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Carla Stea is Global Research’s correspondent at United Nations Headquarters, New York, N.Y.

On June 18, the US-led carried out airstrikes on a position of government forces at the village of of al-Hiri, located southeast of the border town of al-Bukamal, the Syrian state media said describing the attack as an attempt to raise morale of terrorist groups that are losing the war to the Syrian Arab Army (SAA).

The SANA also accused the US of providing ISIS with various support in order to allow terrorists to remain in Syria thus justifying own illegal presence in the war-torn country.

The US-led coalition denied these reports saying that it did not conduct strikes near al-Bukamal.

However, the Syrian side was able to release footage from the ground confirming damage and showing impact sites of the strikes. According to different sources, from 30 to 90 pro-government fighters were killed and injured in the attack. This numbers includes members of Iraqi militias participating in the conflict on the side of the Damascus government.

Some sources say that the strike was carried out by Israel.

On the same day, Turkish and US-led coalition forces started carrying out a joint patrols near the town of Manbij, controlled by the Kurdish-dominated Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). Photos and video of a large number of Turkish vehicles appeared from the area of the Sajur river.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu even said that

“[Turkish forces] have also started entering Manbij.”

But this claim is not confirmed by any evidence right now.

The SDF released a statement claiming that no Turkish troops will enter Manbij. However, the group has little influence on the situation. So, all will depend on terms and conditions of the US-Turkish agreement.

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Children’s Images: 1943 and 2018

June 20th, 2018 by Roy Morrison

We’ve seen this before. Men with guns separating terrified children from their families to be taken away subjected to the tender mercies of the empire. It’s all legal. The men with guns and the bureaucrats commanding them are just following orders.

The children are criminal aliens, deserving of what the Nazis called “special treatment” or Sonderbehandlung which often meant execution. Donald Trump and Stephen Miller, Jeff Sessions, John Kelly call it “zero tolerance” to repel the “infestation” of brown skinned immigrants.

Today they are the poor mostly brown skinned others. Criminal children of criminal aliens threatening our jobs, safety and security in the land of the free and the home of the brave.

Yes these kids are being separated from deported parents both to face uncertain fates. That is not our problem. Granting refuge and asylum and immigration apparently is.

We are not sending these kids to a Treblinka death camp. Yet. The intention is clear at this white Nationalist moment: To torture children and to build our great wall to prevent the poor, the Muslim, the black and the brown from entering the new white nation.

Immigrants are the enemy. Internment camps and separating children from parents for now the means. The instruments of the U.S government are being used to serve sustained abuse of migrants and immigrants in the name of democracy.

Image on the left: The Warsaw Ghetto, 1943

A couple of historical references are appropriate. SS General Stroop who published the photos of his liquidation of the Warsaw ghetto and its children was tried by the Americans and the Poles after the war and hanged.

We are at one of those moments that Albert Camus described at the end of his novel The Plague.

“And, as he listened to the cries of joy rising from the town, Rieux remembered that such joy is always imperiled. He knew what those jubilant crowds did not know but could have learned from books: that the plague bacillus never dies or disappears for good; that it can lie dormant for years and years in furniture and linen-chests; that it bides its time in bedrooms, cellars, trunks, and bookshelves; and that perps the day would come when, for the bane and the enlightening of men, it would rouse its rats again and send them forth to die in a happy city.”

When Governments Take Children Hostage

June 20th, 2018 by J. B. Gerald

The U.N. High Commissioner of Human Rights, Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein, has called for the Trump administration to immediately stop separating children from their parents and families on entering the U.S. when the legality of their entry is questioned.

“The thought that any state would seek to deter parents by inflicting such abuse on children is unconscionable. I call on the United States to immediately end the practice of forcible separation of these children.”

He references the American Academy of Pediatrics which believes the practice causes “irreparable harm”.

This new Trump policy of separating children from their parents is a policy familiar to North American Indigenous peoples, as well as the indentured servants and African and Indian slaves of America’s history. It is legal only because the government says it is. If found illegal as a crime against U.S. domestic laws or human rights under international laws, cooperating with it could eventually result in charges against those who effect these actions which are to common sense, indecent. There are a number of international laws rising from signed treaties which help reveal how humanity traditionally feels about the Trump administration’s lack of understanding and concern for children.

The U.S. remains the only country in the world which has not ratified the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child. However the U.S. at least has signed it and Article 9, 1of the Convention begins:

“States Parties shall ensure that a child shall not be separated from his or her parents against their will,” with the exception applying to the best interests of the child.

Article 11, 1 specifies

“States Parties shall take measures to combat the illicit transfer and non-return of children abroad,” which might empower any of the world states to bring legal action against the Trump administration at International Criminal Court.

While the U.S. does not subscribe to the International Criminal Court, that doesn’t necessarily limit the Court’s jurisdiction.

The 1967 Protocol relating to the Status of Refugees was signed by the United States. Under the Protocol the U.S. is required to cooperate with the UN High Commissioner for Refugees and affirm and continue the articles of the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees. Among these are:

Article 16. Access to courts
1. A refugee shall have free access to the courts of law on the territory of all Contracting States.Article 31. Refugees unlawfully in the country of refuge
1. The Contracting States shall not impose penalties, on account of their illegal entry or presence, on refugees who, coming directly from a territory where their life or freedom was threatened in the sense of article 1, enter or are present in their territory without authorization, provided they present themselves without delay to the authorities and show good cause for their illegal entry or presence.
2. The Contracting States shall not apply to the movements of such refugees restrictions other than those which are necessary and such restrictions shall only be applied until their status in the country is regularized or they obtain admission into another country. The Contracting States shall allow such refugees a reasonable period and all the necessary facilities to obtain admission into another country.

Article 33. Prohibition of expulsion or return (“refoulement”)
1. No Contracting State shall expel or return (“refouler”) a refugee in any manner whatsoever to the frontiers of territories where his life or freedom would be threatened on account of his race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion.

In particular the taking away of children from their parents, placing them at the disposal of the State, may be a violation of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide which the U.S. is a party to:

Article II In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious groups, as such: ….. e. Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.Article III The following acts shall be punishable:
a. Genocide;
b. Conspiracy to commit genocide;
c. Direct and public incitement to commit genocide;
d. Attempt to commit genocide;
e. Complicity in genocide.

The principles set forth in these treaties which are usually substantiated by laws in the legal systems of their signing countries, grew out of the horrors of Twentieth Century wars and history’s fears for humanity’s future. The treaties rise from intercultural consensus. These are principles and laws which can’t be set aside without triggering the kinds of resistance which lead to retaliation, violence and war. They aren’t laws to be broken by the poor, or even by the powerful, arrogant and rich.

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This article was originally published on Night’s Lantern.

Sources

“U.N. rights chief: Migrant family separations “unconscionable”, AP, June 18, 2018, CBS;

“Hundreds of children wait in large metal cages with foil blankets at Texas Border Patrol facility,” Norman Merchant, AP, June 18, 2018, The Toronto Star;

“What’s Really Happening When Asylum-Seeking Families Are Separated?” Katy Vine, June 15, 2018, Texas Monthly;

“Mexico’s Gov’t, Catholic Church Reject US Immigration Policies,” June 14, 2018, TeleSur;

“Defense Contractors Cashing In On Immigrant Kids’ Detention,” Betsy Woodruff, Spencer Ackerman, June 14,2018, The Daily Beast.

Featured image is from Julie Maas from Early Lessons, Moody Maine, Editions Gerald and Maas, 1992.

The margin between what is a human right as an inalienable possession, and how it is seen in political terms is razor fine. In some cases, the distinctions are near impossible to make.  To understand the crime of genocide is to also understand the political machinations that limited its purview.  No political or cultural groups, for instance, were permitted coverage by the defintion in the UN Convention responsible for criminalising it.

The same goes for the policing bodies who might use human rights in calculating fashion, less to advance an agenda of the human kind than that of the political. This can take the form of scolding, and the United States, by way of illustration, has received beratings over the years in various fields.  (Think an onerous, vicious prison system, the stubborn continuation of the death penalty, and levels of striking impoverishment for an advanced industrial society.)

The other tactic common in the human rights game is gaining membership to organisations vested with the task of overseeing the protection of such rights.  Membership can effectively defang and in some cases denude criticism of certain states.  Allies club together to keep a united front.  It was precisely this point that beset the UN Commission on Human Rights, long accused of being compromised for perceived politicisation.

The successor to the UN Commission on Human Rights, the UN Human Rights Council, has come in for a similar pasting.  The righteous Nikki Haley, the US ambassador to the United Nations, had made it something of a personal project to reform the body. It was a body that had been opposed by the United States.  But reform and tinkering are oft confused, suggesting a neutralisation of various political platforms deemed against Washington’s interests.  Is it the issue of rights at stake, or simple pride and backing allies?

For one, the barb in Haley’s protestation was the HRC’s “chronic bias against Israel”, and concerns on the part of Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein, a UN human rights chief unimpressed by the Trump administration’s policy of separating migrant children from their parents.

Accordingly, Haley announced that the United States would be withdrawing from “an organisation that is not worthy of its name”, peopled, as it were, by representatives from such states as China, Cuba, Venezuela and the Democratic Republic of Congo. 

“We take this step,” explained Haley, “because our commitment does not allow us to remain a part of a hypocritical and self-serving organisation that makes a mockery of human rights.”

The Congolese component deserved special mention, the state having become a member of the HRC even as mass graves were being uncovered at the behest of that very body.  Government security forces, according to Human Rights Watch, were said to be behind abuses in the southern Kasai region since August 2016 that had left some 5,000 people dead, including 90 mass graves.  A campaign against the DRC’s election to the Council, waged within various political corridors by Congolese activists, failed to inspire UN members to sufficiently change their mind in the vote. A sufficient majority was attained.

The move to withdraw the US received purring praise from Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, still glowing with satisfaction at Washington’s decision to relocate the US embassy to Jerusalem.  For the Israeli leader, the Council had been nothing but “a biased, hostile, anti-Israel organisation that has betrayed its mission of protecting human rights.”  It had avoided dealing with the big violators and abusers-in-chief, those responsible for systematically violating human rights, and had developed, according to Netanyahu, an Israel fixation, ignoring its fine pedigree as being “the one genuine democracy in the Middle East”.  The slant here is clear enough: democracies so deemed do not violate human rights, and, when picked up for doing so, can ignore the overly zealous critics compromised by supposed hypocrisy.

Israel’s ambassador to the UN, Danny Danon, did not restrain himself in praise

The United States had “proven, yet again, its commitment to truth and justice and its unwillingness to allow the blind hatred of Israel in international institutions to stand unchallenged.”

The common mistake made by such states is that hypocrisy necessarily invalidates criticism of human rights abuses. To have representatives from a country purportedly shoddy on the human rights front need not negate the reasoning in assessing abuses and infractions against human rights.  It certainly makes that body’s credibility much harder to float, the perpetrator being within the gates, but human rights remains the hostage of political circumstance and, worst of all, opportunistic forays.  The US withdrawal from the Council does little to suggest credible reform, though it does much to advance a program of spite typical from an administration never keen on the idea of human rights to begin with.  The Trump policy of detachment, extraction and unilateralism continues.

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Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge.  He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research and Asia-Pacific Research. Email: [email protected]

Featured image is from The Unz Review.

Germany Intervening Again in Greek Affairs!

June 20th, 2018 by Dimitris Konstantakopoulos

The German Government has called upon the political parties of Greece and of FYROM to support the Agreement for the resolution of the dispute on the name of FYROM which was recently signed by Greek FM Kotzias and FYROM’s FM Dimitrov.

This is the latest of numerous German interventions in the Balkans since 1990 and in Greece since 2010, all of them, with no exception, have had absolutely catastrophic consequences for the whole peninsula, but also for Europe as a whole, as well as for the prospects of peace between East and West.

This was not the only outside intervention. The Socialist International, in a rather rare move, also strongly supported the Agreement, in spite of the objections of its Greek section and of the fact that this Agreement is officially not supported by a majority of Greek Deputies! Tsipras and Kotzias did not have any legitimacy to sign it.

The President of the “Movement for Change”, the Greek socialist party, Mrs. Fofi Gennimata, has asked the European Socialists to be very careful regarding issues affecting Greek national issues. Mrs. Gennimata supported the “European prospect” of FYROM, but she underlined that such a prospect requires the cancelling of all forms of irredentism. According to the leaders of the Greek Socialists, this Agreement is bad because it doesn’t solve but rather perpetuates and complicates the problems, without leading to a comprehensive and viable solution of the dispute. The Agreement, according to Mrs. Gennimata, is going to fuel nationalism in both countries and  will undermine the security and stability of the region. She concluded:

“We do understand the interest of European Socialists for an Agreement to be reached, but we don’t accept instructions and we don’t share their belief this Agreement will be effective”

A bad agreement

We will further explain in this article why we believe the Agreement signed, but not yet ratified,  is a bad one from the perspective of bringing peace and reconciliation between the Greeks (Macedonian or not) and Macedonian Slavs in the Balkans.

This Agreement will not end the dispute between the two neighboring nations, Greeks and Slavs of Macedonia. It is not the product of a genuine reconciliation between the two sides but rather of outside, backstage intervention by the US against the will of both.

By the way, the US Envoy in Athens is the same man who was serving, before being sent to Greece, in Kiev, Ukraine.

How many Ukrainian-type crises does Berlin need?

We know that most Western media are supporting this Agreement and hail it as a historic one. But most western media also favored destroying Yugoslavia and bombing the Serbs. Let us also not forget how they recently treated Greece, and what they wrote about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and how they contributed to the destruction of Libya etc.etc.

Western media have systematically distorted reality and they have contributed in policies which have led to nothing else than to the transformation of the Balkans and of a large part of Middle East and Africa into a land of ruins.

There was not a single western intervention, during the last decades, be it in the Balkans, the former USSR, the Middle East or Africa, which didn’t produce absolutely catastrophic results.

USA and European pressure on Greece and FYROM to sign a bad agreement which both societies do not like and reject will also have the same catastrophic consequences.

Primitive Nationalists?

Many people in Western and Central Europe, where nationalism was invented and where two catastrophic world wars begun, presume and dare give lessons to the smaller nations of the European periphery.

They have opinions on how to solve the problems of the Balkans, but we did not hear them making much noise when France, Britain and NATO, for instance, attacked and destroyed Libya. Now they’ve ended up supporting slave trade there in order to stop more refugees from coming to Europe!

They are treating Greeks and Macedonian Slavs who are protesting against the Agreement as “primitive nationalists”, instead of trying to understand their motivation and their reasons for protesting.

The main question in the Balkans is not the dispute between Greece and FYROM. Nobody cared about this dispute and this did not create any problem for the bilateral relations, until Washington decided that it needed FYROM in NATO and the EU and it needed it now.

By defending their national ideologies, myths, and identities, even if sometimes they do so in primitive terms, the Balkan nations try to defend themselves against the “bright future” they fear is in store for them in the context of the European Union, of NATO and of Globalization.

No Greek wants to invade FYROM and the same is true about Macedonian Slavs. They don’t invoke their nationalist sentiments -when they do so- in order to fight between themselves, but because they call upon them to defend themselves, defend whatever is left of their states and their nations, against Western, American and European Neo-Colonialism. One million people have been forced to emigrate from the tiny state of FYROM. Greece, one of the oldest members of the EU has been transformed, by the policies of Mrs. Merkel, Mr. Yuncker, Mrs. Lagarde, into a kind of slave economy and society.

Conditions for a viable solution of the dispute

For an agreement to be positive, it must satisfy two conditions:

First, it must be acceptable to both sides.

Second, in order to be viable, it has to be just and not be at odds with national and historical reality.

The agreement signed in Prespes by Greece and FYROM does not fulfill either of these two conditions. For example 73% of Greeks and the majority of Greek deputies (!!!) reject it and it is only through a political coup d’ etat that Tsipras and Kotzias, acting on behalf of the US and NATO, signed it.

Macedonia in modern times was a multinational region where different national and nationalistic projects have collided and have led to armed conflict twice in the beginning of the 20th century. Among them, the Greek national project, the “greater Bulgaria” project and the project of “one, independent and united Macedonia for Macedonians”, which is used as the ideological foundation of nowadays FYROM.

Underlying, there is the false claim that the “Macedonian” nationality is the legitimate people of Macedonia and the other nations inhabiting also in Macedonia are a sort of colonizers.

As a result of those wars, the region was divided between Greece, what is now FYROM, Bulgaria and a small part going to Albania.

Sometimes people ask me why are Greeks reacting to the name Macedonia. I answer to them they do it for the same reason that Portugal would not accept if Spain decided to be called the Kingdom of Spain and Portugal.

Macedonians Slavs have the right to self-determination and they are free to be called like they themselves want, up to the point they choose a name implying territorial claims to other parts of Macedonia.

Macedonia belongs not only to Macedonian Slavs, who are calling themselves Macedonians, but to all nationalities which live there and to the three or even four states exercising sovereignty in parts of the region.

But there is even a deeper reason for the Greek reaction. The Greeks have witnessed and cannot forget the dismemberment of Yugoslavia, a direct result of Germany, Austria and the Vatican supporting, in the name of the right of self-determination, revisionist pro-Western nationalisms against Serbian pro-Russian nationalism, a principle which these same countries deny for instance for Crimea and in many other cases. Greeks therefore had good reason to fear that their turn would come next.

They were right. Their turn came soon after Yugoslavia, but this happened through a debt and communication war which may not have taken the form of a military campaign but destroyed their country nevertheless.

Instead of solving these problems, the Agreement signed will certainly aggravate them and will create more confusion, thus laying the base for new disputes. It names FYROM as Northern Macedonia, but at the same time terms its citizens as “Macedonians” and their language as “Macedonian”. It thus lays the foundation for future conflict as the part implicitly lays claims for the whole. The problem surfaced even during the signature meeting, with PM Zaev calling his nation Macedonian and not Northern Macedonian in conformity with the wording of the Agreement.

The idea of reconciling Greeks and Macedonian Slavs is very good, but the Agreement is very bad and the idea of imposing a solution to the two countries from outside extremely dangerous. Maybe the German Government should concentrate on solving German problems instead of trying to tell to the Balkan nations what to do.

As for teaching how bad nationalism is to other Europeans, a Greek politician once told me that a German colleague and close -supposedly pacifist!- friend of his told him on the eve of the Kosovo campaign:

“I am very happy with this war!”

“Why?” the rather shocked Greek politician asked him.

“Because it will be the first war we Germans will win”, he continued, provoking a second shock to his interlocutor.

Coincidentally or not the first NATO plane which bombed the heroic city of Belgrade was German…

Greeks and Serbs mounted the strongest opposition to the Nazi occupation of Europe. Greeks resisted the Axis offensive for 242 days, followed by Norway and France, which resisted the Axis for 65 and 42 days respectively. The Greeks subsequently developed by far the largest resistance movement proportionally to the population of the country in all of Europe.

I think Germans should be grateful to the Greeks for their contribution to the victory over Nazism. Maybe they would be “victorious” if Hitler had won, but how would a normal person like to live in such a Europe?

I don’t know if German offensives against Yugoslavia and Greece are mere coincidence. What I do know is that it is shameful for Germans that they let their governments destroy twice in a century Greece and Serbia.

Germany, Balkans and Europe

Undoubtedly Berlin, which is now putting public pressure on political parties in Greece and FYROM to support this Agreement, knows very well that it reflects the will of only a minority of the Greek Parliament and is opposed by 73% of the Greek population. It also knows that it was signed for one and only one reason, namely tο satisfy US pressure and advance military planning against Russia. It also knows that it doesn’t forebode any genuine reconciliation between the two nations, quite the contrary.

What is the strategy of Berlin in the Balkans? Is it to help the United States promote their agenda? In any case this has been the final result of all German interventions up to now. In 1990, nobody needed the US in the Balkans. All nations of the region were looking to Europe at that time, while keeping strong energy and cultural ties with Russia. What is the situation today? The US is the dominant power in the Balkans, the region is transformed into a gigantic military base against Russia and Europeans are obeying Americans.

By the way, I wonder if Mrs. Merkel would accept for her country an agreement which is opposed by the majority of the population and of the Parliament.

Would Mrs. Merkel accept a foreign country dictating to Germans what to do, as she is now trying to do with Greeks and with Macedonian Slavs?

Did Mrs. Merkel ever read a book of History? Germany has the power to squeeze Greece and has already done so for eight years. It doesn’t have the power to avoid the consequences of its policies, the political and strategic fallout, as it didn’t  have the power to avoid the military fall out of a similar policy, albeit pursued with other means, which Berlin followed by launching the 2nd World War. Germans destroyed Greece and subjugated all of Europe then, only to be subsequently destroyed themselves and provide the Americans with the keys to dominate Europe ever since. This is exactly what they are repeating today.

Does an agreement which is rejected by both nations, Greeks and Macedonian Slavs, have any chance of contributing in the stabilization of the situation in the Balkans? Or will it provoke a new crisis which, in all likelihood, is already under way?

Germany maintains that it will resist the hostile US policy towards Europe by uniting the latter. How will it do that? By increasing US-NATO pressure on Greece and FYROM?  By allowing Washington to directly subjugate the Balkans? By destroying European periphery?

Thirty years ago the Balkans were not in such a bad state. Now they have lost everything. They are a chain of small, half of them Mafiosi, states, plundered and ruined economically. They have lost millions of their young and educated people, they have lost their industry, their social welfare state and they have known bloody military conflicts…

All that did happen as a result of German, US and NATO interventions. Is Mrs. Merkel so satisfied by all that and eager to continue in the same line? Does she not see any reason for a thorough review and correction of German policies?

How does Mrs. Merkel plan to face the pressure from Washington and the crisis in Europe itself? By helping aggravate relations between Europe and Russia? By incorporating the Western Balkans in the EU, without any preconditions for such an enlargement and against the will of the European peoples, possibly even the Germans themselves?

What united Europe? Greece, a member of the EU, is now in total ruins, after the implementation of a program supposed to help it! Mr. Regling says that it will have to apply Troika rules for 69 years. The “clean exit” of Greece from the program that Mr. Yuncker, Mr. Moscovici, the Commission and European governments are saying will happen is an enormous deception.

Does Mrs. Merkel think the other Europeans don’t see all that? Or that they don’t understand what is happening? The European Union has already lost Britain and Berlin’s policy towards Greece has greatly influenced British perceptions of the Union and has been an instrumental factor for Brexit. Germany’s European and international political capital is now at its lowest point since WWII.

Mrs. Merkel seems to be satisfied by Alexis Tsipras’s subservience. She is mistaken to confuse a dead body she contributed into transforming the Greek PM with the Greek people. She doesn’t seem to understand that even if she manages to completely destroy Greece, she won’t be able to destroy the memory and the consequences of such a Crime. People like Chancellor Helmut Schmitt or the writer Gunder Grass have warned their fellow compatriots about those dangers, but their warnings have fallen onto deaf ears.

It seems that European, in particular German, political elites are now more detached from reality as Marie Antoinette had ever been.

Or more controlled by Banks and Finance.

God help us all.

North Korea Agreed to Denuclearize, But When Will the US?

June 20th, 2018 by Prof. Marjorie Cohn

A powerful economic incentive continues to drive the nuclear arms race. After the Singapore Summit, the stock values of all major defense contractors — including Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Boeing and General Dynamics — declined.

Given his allegiance to boosting corporate profits, it’s no surprise that Donald Trump is counterbalancing the effects of the Singapore Summit’s steps toward denuclearization with a Nuclear Posture Review that steers the US toward developing leaner and meaner nukes and lowers the threshold for using them.

The United States has allocated $1.7 trillion to streamline our nuclear arsenal, despite having agreed in the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in 1968 to work toward nuclear disarmament.

Meanwhile, the US maintains a stockpile of 7,000 nuclear weapons, some 900 of them on “hair trigger alert,” according to the Union of Concerned Scientists.

“If weapons are used they need to be replaced,” Brand McMillan, chief investment officer for Commonwealth Financial Network has argued. “That makes war a growth story for these stocks, and one of the big potential growth stories recently has been North Korea. What the agreement does, at least for a while, is take military conflict off the table.”

Moreover, economic incentives surrounding conventional weapons also cut against the promise of peace on the Korean Peninsula. Eric Sirotkin, founder of Lawyers for Demilitarization and Peace in Korea, has pointed out that South Korea is one of the largest importers of conventional weapons from the United States. If North and South Korea achieve “a lasting and stable peace regime on the Korean Peninsula,” as envisioned by the agreement between Trump and Kim Jong Un, the market for US weapons could dry up, according to Sirotkin.

Even so, US defense spending will continue to increase, according to Bloomberg Intelligence aerospace expert George Ferguson.

“If North Korea turns from a pariah state to being welcomed in the world community, there are still enough trouble spots that require strong defense spending, supporting revenue and profit growth at prime defense contractors.”

The US Lags Behind on Denuclearization

Last year, more than 120 countries approved the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, which requires ratifying countries “never under any circumstances to develop, test, produce, manufacture, otherwise acquire, possess or stockpile nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices.” It also prohibits the transfer of, use of, or threat to use nuclear weapons or nuclear explosive devices.

Since the treaty opened for signature on September 20, 2017, 58 countries have signed and 10 have ratified it. Fifty countries must ratify the treaty for it to enter into force, hopefully in 2019.

The five original nuclear-armed nations — the United States, Britain, France, Russia and China — boycotted the treaty negotiations and the voting. North Korea, Israel, Pakistan and India, which also have nuclear weapons, refrained from participating in the final vote. During negotiations, in October 2016, North Korea had voted for the treaty.

In advance of the Singapore Summit, dozens of Korean American organizations and allies signed a statement of unity, which says:

Denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula means not only eliminating North Korea’s nuclear weapons but also denuclearizing the land, air, and seas of the entire peninsula. This is not North Korea’s obligation alone. South Korea and the United States, which has in the past introduced and deployed close to one thousand tactical nuclear weapons in the southern half of the peninsula, also need to take concrete steps to create a nuclear-free peninsula.

Prospects for Denuclearization on the Korean Peninsula

The jury is out on whether the statement signed by Trump and Kim after months of hurling incendiary nuclear threats at each other will prevent future nuclear threats and pave the way for global denuclearization.

On April 27, 2018, the Panmunjom Declaration, a momentous agreement between South Korea and North Korea, set the stage for the Singapore Summit. It reads,

“The two leaders [of North and South Korea] solemnly declared before the 80 million Korean people and the whole world that there will be no more war on the Korean Peninsula and thus a new era of peace has begun.”

The Trump-Kim statement explicitly reaffirmed the Panmunjom Declaration and said North Korea “commits to work towards complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.”

However, when the summit was in the planning stages and before Trump anointed John Bolton as National Security Adviser, Bolton skeptically predicted the summit would not deter North Korea from acquiring nuclear weapons.

Bolton wants regime change in North Korea. His invocation of the Libya model — in which Muammar Qaddafi relinquished his nuclear weapons and was then viciously murdered — nearly derailed the summit. Bolton cynically hoped the summit would provide “a way to foreshorten the amount of time that we’re going to waste in negotiations that will never produce the result we want.”

Sirotkin told Truthout,

“Sadly, [the summit] may be set up in this way to please the John Bolton neocon wing as this offers nothing but the peace we agreed to after World War II for all countries of the world in the UN Charter.”

Meanwhile, Trump claims he has achieved something his predecessors — particularly his nemesis Barack Obama — were unable to pull off.

“There is no longer a Nuclear Threat from North Korea,” Trump tweeted upon landing in the United States after the summit.

Five minutes later, he again took to Twitter, declaring,

“Before taking office people were assuming we were going to War with North Korea. President Obama said that North Korea was our biggest and most dangerous problem. No longer – sleep well tonight.”

In an analysis shared via Facebook, H. Bruce Franklin, professor emeritus at Rutgers University, pointed out that — in a sideways fashion — Trump was correct when he tweeted there is no longer a nuclear threat from North Korea:

[Trump] of course omitted the simple fact that there never was a realistic nuclear threat from North Korea, which has been frantically building a nuclear capability to act as a deterrent against U.S. aggression. If the U.S. stops threatening North Korea, North Korea will have no motive to threaten the U.S. with retaliation. The United States never faced any nuclear threat until we forced the Soviet Union to create one in 1949 to serve as a deterrent against our aggression.

The significance of the Singapore Summit should not be underestimated. Trump is the first US president to meet with the leader of North Korea. Trump showed Kim respect, and Kim responded in kind. Trump and Kim made a major commitment to peace. We should applaud and support it, and encourage Trump to sit down with Iran’s leaders as well.

The joint agreement signed by the two leaders in Singapore was admittedly sketchy, and denuclearization will not happen overnight. But the agreement was a critical first step in a process of rapprochement between two countries that have, in effect, been at war since 1950.

Indeed, the United States has continued to carry out military exercises with South Korea, which North Korea considers preparation for an invasion. In a critical move, Trump stated at the post-summit press conference that the United States would suspend its “very provocative” war games.

Trump also announced a freeze on any new US sanctions against North Korea and indicated that the United States could lift the current harsh sanctions even before accomplishing total denuclearization. Kim promised to halt nuclear testing and destroy a testing site for ballistic missile engines.

Ultimately, however, it is only global denuclearization that will eliminate the unimaginable threat of nuclear war.

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Copyright Truthout. Reprinted with permission.

Marjorie Cohn is professor emerita at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, former president of the National Lawyers Guild, deputy secretary general of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers and an advisory board member of Veterans for Peace. An updated edition of her book, Drones and Targeted Killing: Legal, Moral, and Geopolitical Issues, was recently published. Visit her website: http://marjoriecohn.com. She is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Vietnam Protests Against Special Economic Zones (SEZ)

June 20th, 2018 by Andrew Korybko

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The news that the EU is considering setting up so-called “disembarkation centers” in nearby non-member states is a distraction meant to appease an angry public, though no plan has been released thus far pertaining to the enforcement measures that would need to be implemented in order to make them more than a “band-aid solution” to the Migrant Crisis.

Sound Concept, Shallow Strategy

Politico reported that draft conclusions for next week’s European Council Summit have been circulating around and claim to announce the creation of so-called “disembarkation centers” in non-EU states for facilitating migrant processing. The concept is that individuals intercepted at sea would be sent to these facilities prior to determining whether they’re eligible for asylum or are just migrating for economic reasons, with the first-mentioned category being allowed entry into the EU while the second one could presumably be denied this privilege and possibly sent back home to their country of origin. The idea itself is sound enough, but it crucially lacks any enforcement mechanism for guaranteeing the removal of economic migrants from the “disembarkation centers’” host states, as well as a related one for getting their home countries to pay for their return.

Nefarious Neighbors

The article suggests that NATO-member Albania and Major Non-NATO Ally Tunisia are being considered as the locations for these prospective centers, but also notes that nothing has been decided yet and that “opening [these facilities in Tunisia] could risk destabilizing the region’s sole post-Arab Spring democracy”. Importantly, no such security risks are mentioned when it comes to Albania, which is already hosting MEK terrorists and plans to also do the same for returning Daesh ones too, indicating that the Balkan country’s role as the pro-Western factory exporting regional destabilization remains unchanged. It’s uncertain whether Tunisia’s authorities are independent enough to resist being turned into the “North African Albania”, but the example of neighboring Libya might make even the most diehard Atlanticists think twice about the wisdom of this possible decision.

If there were any serious plans for ensuring security at these sites, then Tunisia’s concerns would mostly be moot and pretty much pertinent only in terms of its international reputation becoming synonymous with refugee/migrant camps, which is why there are reasons to reconsider the wisdom of this entire plan to begin with. The originators of the “disembarkation center” idea aren’t giving due attention to the security dimension of this concept, which is its Achilles’ heel because someone – either the host country, the UN, a “coalition of the willing”, mercenaries, or some other force – must guarantee that the intercepted migrants housed in these host countries don’t escape from their facilities prior to the completion of what’s led to believe will be their expedited processing.

The thought of possible terrorists infiltrating local communities is apparently real enough of a risk that Politico felt obligated to warn its readers that Tunisia’s “post-Arab Spring democracy” might be endangered if it goes along with this plan. Again, this apparently isn’t a problem for Albania, which the West has an interest in perpetuating as a center of regional destabilization against Serbia, the Republic of Macedonia, and even Greece. Furthermore, even in the unlikely event that a solution is struck for securing the “disembarkation centers”, then other deals have to be agreed to in advance for working out who will be responsible for forcibly removing recalcitrant migrants from these facilities if their asylum appeals are rejected and they’re ordered to return back to their homeland.

Homeward Bound…And Back?

Accordingly, even if – which is another major uncertainty – these individuals are removed, someone needs to pay for their journey back home, which naturally raises the question of who that will be and what happens if their country of origin doesn’t want them back for whatever the reason may be. Financial incentives might compel impoverished states to go along with this final step of the process, but once more, someone will have to fund their trip, and there’s no way to prevent them from trying to re-infiltrate the EU once they land back home. After all, the Executive Director of the UN World Food Program warned in late April that the Second Migrant Crisis might come from Africa when considering that half a billion people might be pushed out of the Greater Sahel Region and into Europe in the coming years.

Therein lays the fundamental problem behind any so-called “catch and release” policy, where it doesn’t matter whether the migrants are released in the transit country hosting the “disembarkation centers” or sent back to their country of origin because they could theoretically continue coming back until the whole mass of them overwhelms the EU’s border defenses through swarming tactics and succeeds in breaking into the “socialist welfare utopia” that they all dream of living in. Correspondingly, the EU might be drawn deeper into “mission creep” through the establishment of more bases in the Greater Sahel Region designed to “preemptively” catch illegal migrants destined for Europe, however “unethical” this may be but operating per an agreement with cash-hungry quisling governments (“neo-protectorates”) like the ones in Mali and Niger.

Concluding Thoughts

Seeing as how the most effective solution to this problem necessitates a sustained multilateral military-developmental campaign that “strikes at the root” of illegal migration but may not be politically palpable for the European public given its incalculable long-term costs and indefinite timeframe, the “band-aid solution” that’s being bandied about for appeasing the rising EuroRealist populace is the distraction of so-called “disembarkation centers” that might actually cause more harm than good if they result in thousands of migrants and their terrorist infiltrators being sent to Albania prior to being let loose again all throughout the Balkans. The coastal state is already hosting MEK terrorists and very soon Daesh ones too, and the last thing that the region needs is hordes of destitute individuals willing to do these groups’ bidding in order to earn a few extra bucks for paying their way to nearby Italy or Germany.

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This article was originally published on Eurasia Future.

Andrew Korybko is an American Moscow-based political analyst specializing in the relationship between the US strategy in Afro-Eurasia, China’s One Belt One Road global vision of New Silk Road connectivity, and Hybrid Warfare. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from Eurasia Future.

On May 30th, Secretary of Defense James Mattis announced a momentous shift in American global strategic policy. From now on, he decreed, the U.S. Pacific Command (PACOM), which oversees all U.S. military forces in Asia, will be called the Indo-Pacific Command (INDOPACOM). The name change, Mattis explained, reflects “the increasing connectivity between the Indian and Pacific Oceans,” as well as Washington’s determination to remain the dominant power in both.   

What? You didn’t hear about this anywhere?  And even now, you’re not exactly blown away, right? Well, such a name change may not sound like much, but someday you may look back and realize that it couldn’t have been more consequential or ominous.  Think of it as a signal that the U.S. military is already setting the stage for an eventual confrontation with China.

If, until now, you hadn’t read about Mattis’s decision anywhere, I’m not surprised since the media gave it virtually no attention — less certainly than would have been accorded the least significant tweet Donald Trump ever dispatched.  What coverage it did receive treated the name change as no more than a passing “symbolic” gesture, a Pentagon ploy to encourage India to join Japan, Australia, and other U.S. allies in America’s Pacific alliance system. “In Symbolic Nod to India, U.S. Pacific Command Changes Name” was the headline of a Reuters story on the subject and, to the extent that any attention was paid, it was typical.

That the media’s military analysts failed to notice anything more than symbolism in the deep-sixing of PACOM shouldn’t be surprising, given all the attention being paid to other major international developments — the pyrotechnics of the Korean summit in Singapore, the insults traded at and after the G7 meeting in Canada, or the ominous gathering storm over Iran.  Add to this the poor grasp so many journalists have of the nature of the U.S. military’s strategic thinking.  Still, Mattis himself has not been shy about the geopolitical significance of linking the Indian and Pacific Oceans in such planning.  In fact, it represents a fundamental shift in U.S. military thinking with potentially far-reaching consequences.

Consider the backdrop to the name change: in recent months, the U.S. has stepped up its naval patrols in waters adjacent to Chinese-occupied islands in the South China Sea (as has China), raising the prospect of future clashes between the warships of the two countries. Such moves have been accompanied by ever more threatening language from the Department of Defense (DoD), indicating an intent to do nothing less than engage China militarily if that country’s build-up in the region continues.

“When it comes down to introducing what they have done in the South China Sea, there are consequences,” Mattis declared at the Shangri La Strategic Dialogue in Singapore on June 2nd.

As a preliminary indication of what he meant by this, Mattis promptly disinvited the Chinese from the world’s largest multinational naval exercise, the Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC), conducted annually under American auspices.

“But that’s a relatively small consequence,” he added ominously, “and I believe there are much larger consequences in the future.”

With that in mind, he soon announced that the Pentagon is planning to conduct “a steady drumbeat” of naval operations in waters abutting those Chinese-occupied islands, which should raise the heat between the two countries and could create the conditions for a miscalculation, a mistake, or even an accident at sea that might lead to far worse.

In addition to its plans to heighten naval tensions in seas adjacent to China, the Pentagon has been laboring to strengthen its military ties with U.S.-friendly states on China’s perimeter, all clearly part of a long-term drive to — in Cold War fashion — “contain” Chinese power in Asia.  On June 8th, for example, the DoD launched Malabar 2018, a joint Pacific Ocean naval exercise involving forces from India, Japan, and the United States.  Incorporating once neutral India into America’s anti-Chinese “Pacific” alliance system in this and other ways has, in fact, become a major twenty-first-century goal of the Pentagon, posing a significant new threat to China.

For decades, the principal objective of U.S. strategy in Asia had been to bolster key Pacific allies Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and the Philippines, while containing Chinese power in adjacent waters, including the East and South China Seas.  However, in recent times, China has sought to spread its influence into Southeast Asia and the Indian Ocean region, in part by extolling its staggeringly ambitious “One Belt, One Road” trade and infrastructure initiative for the Eurasian continent and Africa.  That vast project is clearly meant both as a unique vehicle for cooperation and a way to tie much of Eurasia into a future China-centered economic and energy system.  Threatened by visions of such a future, American strategists have moved ever more decisively to constrain Chinese outreach in those very areas.  That, then, is the context for the sudden concerted drive by U.S. military strategists to link the Indian and Pacific Oceans and so encircle China with pro-American, anti-Chinese alliance systems. The name change on May 30th is a formal acknowledgement of an encirclement strategy that couldn’t, in the long run, be more dangerous.

Girding for War with China

To grasp the ramifications of such moves, some background on the former PACOM might be useful.  Originally known as the Far East Command, PACOM was established in 1947 and has been headquartered at U.S. bases near Honolulu, Hawaii, ever since.  As now constituted, its “area of responsibility” encompasses a mind-boggling expanse: all of East, South, and Southeast Asia, as well as Australia, New Zealand, and the waters of the Indian and Pacific Oceans — in other words, an area covering about 50% of the Earth’s surface and incorporating more than half of the global population.  Though the Pentagon divides the whole planet like a giant pie into a set of “unified commands,” none of them is larger than the newly expansive, newly named Indo-Pacific Command, with its 375,000 military and civilian personnel.

Image result for PACOM

Before the Indian Ocean was explicitly incorporated into its fold, PACOM mainly focused on maintaining control of the western Pacific, especially in waters around a number of friendly island and peninsula states like Japan, South Korea, and the Philippines.  Its force structure has largely been composed of air and naval squadrons, along with a large Marine Corps presence on the Japanese island of Okinawa.  Its most powerful combat unit is the U.S. Pacific Fleet — like the area it now covers, the largest in the world.  It’s made up of the 3rd and 7th Fleets, which together have approximately 200 ships and submarines, nearly 1,200 aircraft, and more than 130,000 sailors, pilots, Marines, and civilians.

On a day-to-day basis, until recently, the biggest worry confronting the command was the possibility of a conflict with nuclear-armed North Korea.  During the late fall of 2017 and the winter of 2018, PACOM engaged in a continuing series of exercises designed to test its forces’ ability to overcome North Korean defenses and destroy its major military assets, including nuclear and missile facilities. These were undoubtedly intended, above all, as a warning to North Korean leader Kim Jong-un about what he could expect if he continued down the path of endless provocative missile and nuclear tests.  It seems that, at least for the time being, President Trump has suspended such drills as a result of his summit meeting with Kim.

Image below: Admiral Phil Davidson

Image result for Admiral Phil Davidson

North Korea aside, the principal preoccupation of PACOM commanders has long been the rising power of China and how to contain it.  This was evident at the May 30th ceremony in Hawaii at which Mattis announced that expansive name change and presided over a change-of-command ceremony, in which outgoing commander, Admiral Harry Harris Jr., was replaced by Admiral Phil Davidson.  (Given the naval-centric nature of its mission, the command is almost invariably headed by an admiral.)

While avoiding any direct mention of China in his opening remarks, Mattis left not a smidgeon of uncertainty that the command’s new name was a challenge and a call for the future mobilization of regional opposition across a vast stretch of the planet to China’s dreams and desires.  Other nations welcome U.S. support, he insisted, as they prefer an environment of “free, fair, and reciprocal trade not bound by any nation’s predatory economics or threat of coercion, for the Indo-Pacific has many belts and many roads.”  No one could mistake the meaning of that.

Departing Admiral Harris was blunter still.

Although “North Korea remains our most immediate threat,” he declared, “China remains our biggest long-term challenge.”

He then offered a warning: without the stepped-up efforts of the U.S. and its allies to constrain Beijing, “China will realize its dream of hegemony in Asia.”  Yes, he admitted, it was still possible to cooperate with the Chinese on limited issues, but we should “stand ready to confront them when we must.”  (On May 18th, Admiral Harris was nominated by President Trump as the future U.S. ambassador to South Korea, which will place a former military man at the U.S. Embassy in Seoul.)

Harris’s successor, Admiral Davidson, seems, if anything, even more determined to put confronting China atop the command’s agenda.  During his confirmation hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee on April 17th, he repeatedly highlighted the threat posed by Chinese military activities in the South China Sea and promised to resist them vigorously.

“Once [the South China Sea islands are] occupied, China will be able to extend its influence thousands of miles to the south and project power deep into Oceania,” he warned.  “The PLA [People’s Liberation Army] will be able to use these bases to challenge U.S. presence in the region, and any forces deployed to the islands would easily overwhelm the military forces of any other South China Sea claimants. In short, China is now capable of controlling the South China Sea in all scenarios short of war with the United States.”

Is that, then, what Admiral Davidson sees in our future?  War with China in those waters?  His testimony made it crystal clear that his primary objective as head of the Indo-Pacific Command will be nothing less than training and equipping the forces under him for just such a future war, while enlisting the militaries of as many allies as possible in the Pentagon’s campaign to encircle that country.

“To prevent a situation where China is more likely to win a conflict,” he affirmed in his version of Pentagonese, “we must resource high-end capabilities in a timely fashion, preserve our network of allies and partners, and continue to recruit and train the best soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines, and coastguardsmen in the world.”

Davidson’s first priority is to procure advanced weaponry and integrate it into the command’s force structure, ensuring that American combatants will always enjoy a technological advantage over their Chinese counterparts in any future confrontation.  Almost as important, he, like his predecessors, seeks to bolster America’s military ties with other members of the contain-China club.  This is where India comes in.  Like the United States, its leadership is deeply concerned with China’s expanding presence in the Indian Ocean region, including the opening of a future port/naval base in Gwadar, Pakistan, and another potential one on the island of Sri Lanka, both in the Indian Ocean.  Not surprisingly, given the periodic clashes between Chinese and Indian forces along their joint Himalayan borderlands and the permanent deployment of Chinese warships in the Indian Ocean, India’s prime minister Narendra Modi has shown himself to be increasingly disposed to join Washington in military arrangements aimed at limiting China’s geopolitical reach.

“An enduring strategic partnership with India comports with U.S. goals and objectives in the Indo-Pacific,” Admiral Davidson said in his recent congressional testimony.

Once installed as commander, he continued,

“I will maintain the positive momentum and trajectory of our burgeoning strategic partnership.”  His particular goal: to “increase maritime security cooperation.”

And so we arrive at the Indo-Pacific Command and a future shadowed by the potential for great power war.

The View from Beijing

The way the name change at PACOM was covered in the U.S., you would think it reflected, at most, a benign wish for greater economic connections between the Indian and Pacific Ocean regions, as well, perhaps, as a nod to America’s growing relationship with India.  Nowhere was there any hint that what might lie behind it was a hostile and potentially threatening new approach to China — or that it could conceivably be perceived that way in Beijing.  But there can be no doubt that the Chinese view such moves, including recent provocative naval operations in the disputed Paracel Islands of the South China Sea, as significant perils.

When, in late May, the Pentagon dispatched two warships — the USS Higgins, a destroyer, and the USS Antietam, a cruiser — into the waters near one of those newly fortified islands, the Chinese responded by sending in some of their own warships while issuing a statement condemning the provocative American naval patrols.  The U.S. action, said a Chinese military spokesperson,

“seriously violated China’s sovereignty [and] undermined strategic mutual trust.”

Described by the Pentagon as “freedom of navigation operations” (FRONOPs), such patrols are set to be increased at the behest of Mattis.

Of course, the Chinese are hardly blameless in the escalating tensions in the region. They have continued to militarize South China Sea islands whose ownership is in dispute, despite a promise that Chinese President Xi Jinping made to President Obama in 2015 not to do so.  Some of those islands in the Spratly and Paracel archipelagos are also claimed by Vietnam, the Philippines, and other countries in the area and have been the subject of intensifying, often bitter disagreements among them about where rightful ownership really lies.  Beijing has simply claimed sovereignty over all of them and refuses to compromise on the issue.  By fortifying them — which American military commanders see as a latent military threat to U.S. forces in the region — Beijing has provoked a particularly fierce U.S. reaction, though these are obviously waters relatively close to China, but many thousands of miles from the continental United States.

From Beijing, the strategic outlook articulated by Secretary Mattis, as well as Admirals Harris and Davidson, is clearly viewed — and not without reason — as threatening and as evidence of Washington’s master plan to surround China, confine it, and prevent it from ever achieving the regional dominance its leaders believe is its due as the rising great power on the planet.  To the Chinese leadership, changing PACOM’s name to the Indo-Pacific Command will just be another signal of Washington’s determination to extend its unprecedented military presence westward from the Pacific around Southeast Asia into the Indian Ocean and so further restrain the attainment of what it sees as China’s legitimate destiny.

However Chinese leaders end up responding to such strategic moves, one thing is certain: they will not view them with indifference.  On the contrary, as challenged great powers have always done, they will undoubtedly seek ways to counter America’s containment strategy by whatever means are at hand.  These may not initially be overtly military or even obvious, but in the long run they will certainly be vigorous and persistent.  They will include efforts to compete with Washington in pursuit of Asian allies — as seen in Beijing’s fervent courtship of President Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines — and to secure new basing arrangements abroad, possibly under the pretext, as in Pakistan and Sri Lanka, of establishing commercial shipping terminals.  All of this will only add new tensions to an already anxiety-inducing relationship with the United States.  As ever more warships from both countries patrol the region, the likelihood that accidents will occur, mistakes will be made, and future military clashes will result can only increase.

With the possibility of war with North Korea fading in the wake of the recent Singapore summit, one thing is guaranteed: the new U.S. Indo-Pacific Command will only devote itself ever more fervently to what is already its one overriding priority: preparing for a conflict with China.  Its commanders insist that they do not seek such a war, and believe that their preparations — by demonstrating America’s strength and resolve — will deter the Chinese from ever challenging American supremacy.  That, however, is a fantasy.  In reality, a strategy that calls for a “steady drumbeat” of naval operations aimed at intimidating China in waters near that country will create ever more possibilities, however unintended, of sparking the very conflagration that it is, at least theoretically, designed to prevent.

Right now, a Sino-American war sounds like the plotline of some half-baked dystopian novel.  Unfortunately, given the direction in which both countries (and their militaries) are heading, it could, in the relatively near future, become a grim reality.

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Michael T. Klare, a TomDispatch regular, is a professor of peace and world security studies at Hampshire College and the author, most recently, of The Race for What’s Left. A documentary movie version of his book Blood and Oil is available from the Media Education Foundation. Follow him on Twitter at @mklare1.

A large-scale Syrian Arab Army offensive to liberate southwest parts of the country bordering Israel and Jordan from US/Israeli supported terrorists appears imminent in the coming days.

Many thousands of Syrian forces mobilized for the upcoming campaign, including large numbers of elite Tiger troops deployed to Daara governorate – the area where US aggression on Syria began in March 2011, using terrorists as imperial proxies.

Together with Syria’s 4th Division and Republican Guard, Tiger force commander General Suheil al-Hassan will likely head the offensive to free the nation’s southwest from US/Israeli supported terrorists controlling the territory.

A major battle looms. In late May, State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert warned Syria against launching an offensive to regain control of its own territory bordering Israel and Jordan, threatening “firm and appropriate (US) measures.”

Pentagon and allied forces operate in the country illegally. Bashar al-Assad rightfully calls them “invaders.” In its 8th year, Obama’s war, now Trump’s, devastated the country – one of history’s great crimes.

Trump’s earlier promise to leave Syria was hollow, like virtually all positive pledges he makes. Washington didn’t wage war on the country to quit.

US troops occupy parts of its northeast and southwest. In early May, Fars News said

“the US military is dramatically expanding its operations in Syria, constructing new illegal bases in the war-torn country, and doing whatever it can to sell as many weapons as possible to vassals,” adding:

“The new mission creep base marks the latest example of America’s growing and controversial war for regime change in Damascus.”

“The new expansion is one part of what appears to be a massive US military infrastructure development project in other parts of the region as well, including Yemen, that will see new US outposts built this year on the pretext of fighting terror and protecting America’s illicit interests.”

US forces, along with UK and French ones, operate from numerous Pentagon bases in northern and southern parts of Syria.

Washington came to the country to stay, wanting puppet rule it controls replacing Assad, the nation made dystopian like post-war Libya and Iraq – partitioned, its resources looted, its people ruthlessly exploited, an Israeli rival eliminated, Iran isolated, ahead of a similar regime change scheme targeting the Islamic Republic.

Ahead of the Syrian Arab Army’s large-scale southwest offensive, its forces began striking US/Israeli supported terrorists’ “defenses inside the towns of Busra Al-Sham, Ghara Sharqiyah, and Ghara Gharbiyah,” according to AMN News.

What’s going on is a preliminary phase of what’s likely coming – a softening up of their positions ahead of attacking them and other southwestern areas full-force.

According to a Monday State Department press release, Lavrov and Pompeo “discussed issues and concerns related to Syria and the bilateral relationship.”

“Secretary Pompeo reemphasized the US commitment to the southwest ceasefire arrangement that was approved by President Trump and President Putin one year ago.”

Pompeo “noted that it was critical for Russia and (Syria) to adhere to these arrangements and ensure no unilateral activity in this area.”

On Monday, Lavrov and Pompeo discussed Syria by phone, focusing on observing Security Council Res. 2254 (December 2015).

It called for ceasefire and diplomatic conflict resolution – breached straightaway by Washington, NATO, Israel, their imperial allies, and terrorists they support.

Russia’s good faith efforts failed because Obama and now Trump want war and regime change, not peace and stability restored to Syria.

If Pentagon-led warplanes attack Syrian forces engaged in liberating southern parts of their own country from US/Israeli supported terrorists, war will escalate more than already, putting resolution more out of reach.

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Stephen Lendman is a Research Associate of the CRG, Correspondent of Global Research based in Chicago.

VISIT MY NEW WEB SITE: stephenlendman.org (Home – Stephen Lendman). Contact at [email protected].

My newest book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: How the US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

Featured image is from RT.


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Will the Real Donald Trump Please Stand Up?

June 19th, 2018 by Philip Giraldi

I had coffee with a foreign friend a week ago. The subject of Donald Trump inevitably came up and my friend said that he was torn between describing Trump as a genius or as an idiot, but was inclined to lean towards genius. He explained that Trump was willy-nilly establishing a new world order that will succeed the institutionally exhausted post-World War 2 financial and political arrangements that more-or-less established U.S. hegemony over the “free world.” The Bretton Woods agreement and the founding of the United Nations institutionalized the spread of liberal democracy and free trade, creating a new, post war international order under the firm control of the United States with the American dollar as the benchmark currency.

Trump is now rejecting what has become an increasingly dominant global world order in favor of returning to a nineteenth century style nationalism that has become popular as countries struggle to retain their cultural and political identifies. Trump’s vision would seem to include protection of core industries, existing demographics and cultural institutions combined with an end of “democratization,” which will result in an acceptance of foreign autocratic or non-conforming regimes as long as they do not pose military or economic threats.

Sounds good, I countered but there is a space between genius and idiocy and that would be called insanity, best illustrated by impulsive, irrational behavior coupled with acute hypersensitivity over perceived personal insults and a demonstrated inability to comprehend either generally accepted facts or basic norms of personal and group behavior.

Inevitably, I have other friends who follow foreign policy closely that have various interpretations of the Trump phenomenon. One sees the respectful meeting with Kim Jong-un of North Korea as a bit of brilliant statesmanship, potentially breaking a sixty-five year logjam and possibly opening the door to further discussions that might well avert a nuclear war. And the week also brought a Trump welcome suggestion that Russia should be asked to rejoin the G-7 group of major industrialized democracies, which also has to be seen as a positive step. There has also been talk of a Russia-U.S. summit similar to that with North Korea to iron out differences, an initiative that was first suggested by Trump and then agreed to by Russian President Vladimir Putin. There will inevitably be powerful resistance to such an arrangement coming primarily from the U.S. media and from Congress, but Donald Trump seems to fancy the prospect and it just might take place.

One good friend even puts a positive spin on Trump’s insulting behavior towards America’s traditional allies at the recent G-7 meeting in Canada. She observes that Trump’s basic objections were that Washington is subsidizing the defense of a wealthy Europe and thereby maintaining unnecessarily a relationship that perpetuates a state of no-war no-peace between Russia and the West. And the military costs exacerbate some genuine serious trade imbalances that damage the U.S. economy. If Trumpism prevails, G-7 will become a forum for discussions of trade and economic relations and will become less a club of nations aligned military against Russia and, eventually, China. As she put it, changing its constituency would be a triumph of “mercantilism” over “imperialism.” The now pointless NATO alliance might well find itself without much support if the members actually have to fully fund it proportionate to their GDPs and could easily fade away, which would be a blessing for everyone.

My objection to nearly all the arguments being made in favor or opposed to what occurred in Singapore last week is that the summit is being seen out of context, as is the outreach to Russia at G-7. Those who are in some cases violently opposed to the outcome of the talks with North Korea are, to be sure, sufferers from Trump Derangement Syndrome, where they hate anything he does and spin their responses to cast him in the most negative terms possible. Some others who choose to see daylight in spite of the essential emptiness of the “agreement” are perhaps being overly optimistic while likewise ignoring what else is going on.

And the neoconservatives and globalists are striking back hard to make sure that détente stays in a bottle hidden somewhere on a shelf in the White House cloak room. Always adept at the creation of new front groups, the neocons have now launched something called the Renew Democracy Initiative (RDI), with the goal of “uni[ting] the center-left and the center-right.” Its founders include the redoubtable Max Boot, The Washington Post’s Anne Appelbaum, the inevitable Bill Kristol, and Richard Hurwitz of Council on Foreign Relations. RDI’s website predictably calls for “fresh thinking” and envisions “the best minds from different countries com[ing] together for both broad and discrete projects in the service of liberty and democracy in the West and beyond.” It argues that

“Liberal democracy is in crisis around the world, besieged by authoritarianism, nationalism, and other illiberal forces. Far-right parties are gaining traction in Europe, Vladimir Putin tightens his grip on Russia and undermines democracy abroad, and America struggles with poisonous threats from the right and left.”

There are also the internal contradictions in what Trump appears to be doing, suggesting that a brighter future might not be on the horizon even if giving the Europeans a possibly deserved bloody nose over their refusal to spend money defending themselves provides some satisfaction. In the last week alone in Syria the White House has quietly renewed funding for the so-called White Helmets, a terrorist front group. It has also warned that it will take action against the Syrian government for any violation of a “de-escalation zone” in the country’s southwest that has been under the control of Washington. That means that the U.S., which is in Syria illegally, is warning that country’s legitimate government that it should not attempt to re-establish control over a region that was until recently ruled by terrorists.

And then there is also Donald Trump’s recent renunciation of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), eliminating a successful program that was preventing nuclear proliferation on the part of Iran and replacing it with nothing whatsoever apart from war as a possible way of dealing with the potential problem. Indeed, Trump has been prepared to use military force on impulse, even when there is no clear casus belli. In Syria there have been two pointless cruise missile attacks and a trap set up to kill Russian mercenaries. Washington’s stated intention is to destabilize and replace President Bashar al-Assad while continuing the occupation of the Syrian oil fields. And in Afghanistan there are now more troops on the ground than there were on inauguration day together with no plan to bring them home. It is reported that the Pentagon has a twenty-year plan to finish the job but no one actually believes it will work.

The United States is constructing new drone bases in Africa and Asia. It also has a new military base in Israel which will serve as a tripwire for automatic American involvement if Israel goes to war and has given the green light to the Israeli slaughter of Palestinians. In Latin America, Washington has backed off from détente with Cuba and has been periodically threatening some kind of intervention in Venezuela. In Europe, it is engaged in aggressive war games on the Russian borders, most recently in Norway and Poland. The Administration has ordered increased involvement in Somalia and has special ops units operating – and dying – worldwide. Overall, it is hardly a return to the Garden of Eden.

And then there are the petty insults that do not behoove a great power. A friend recently attended the Russian National Day celebration at the embassy in Washington. He reported that the U.S. government completely boycotted the event, together with its allies in Western Europe and the anglosphere, resulting in sparse attendance. It is the kind of slight that causes attitudes to shift when the time comes for serious negotiating. It is unnecessary and it is precisely the sort of thing that Russian President Vladimir Putin is referring to when he asks that his country be treated with “respect.” The White House could have sent a delegation to attend the national day. Trump could have arranged it with a phone call, but he didn’t.

Winston Churchill once reportedly said that to

“Jaw, jaw, jaw is better than war, war, war.”

As one of the twentieth century’s leading warmongers, he may not have actually meant it, but in principle he was right. So let us hope for the best coming out of Singapore and also for the G-7 or what replaces it in the future. But don’t be confused or diverted by presidential grandstanding. Watch what else is going on outside the limelight and, at least for the present, it is not pretty.

*

This article was originally published on The Unz Review.

Philip M. Giraldi is a former CIA counter-terrorism specialist and military intelligence officer who served nineteen years overseas in Turkey, Italy, Germany, and Spain. He was the CIA Chief of Base for the Barcelona Olympics in 1992 and was one of the first Americans to enter Afghanistan in December 2001. Phil is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a Washington-based advocacy group that seeks to encourage and promote a U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East that is consistent with American values and interests. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Selected Articles: Big Oil, Brexit, North Korea, China

June 19th, 2018 by Global Research News

Global Research is a small team that believes in the power of information and analysis to bring about far-reaching societal change including a world without war.

Truth in media is a powerful instrument. As long as we keep probing, asking questions, challenging media disinformation to find real understanding, then we are in a better position to participate in creating a better world in which truth and accountability trump greed and corruption.

*     *     *

Ex-Mossad Chief: Best Part of My Job Was Having ‘a License to Crime’

By Richard Silverstein, June 19, 2018

When asked about what issue took the lion’s share of his attention as Mossad chief, he answers that Iran took up 80% of the agency’s operational agenda.  For those of us who’ve long criticized Israel’s obsession with Iran and suspected it was a pressure valve exploited by Israeli leaders who sought to avoid issues like Palestine, Pardo’s admission makes one realize how much time the Mossad wasted on chimeras like this.

The Problem with Lamenting “Acceptance” of Kim Jong-un

By Hugh Gusterson, June 19, 2018

As one might expect of any event starring Donald Trump, reaction to the Trump-Kim summit in Singapore has been polarized. Republicans—the same people who condemned Barack Obama for visiting Cuba and John Kerry for meeting with Iranian leaders—defended Trump’s meeting with Kim Jong-un.

Are the Hard Brexiteers – Jumping Ship?

By True Publica, June 19, 2018

A couple of months ago, the driving force behind Ukip Nigel Faragewas forced into confirming that two of his children possess British and German passports, meaning they will maintain their free movement rights in the European Union after Brexit. Before that, the Independent reported that last year, Mr Farage was forced to deny he was applying for German citizenship himself after he was spotted queueing at the German embassy.

North Korea: What Price Peace?

By Askiah Adam, June 19, 2018

Indeed the Singapore Declaration was much anticipated and is well received. But there is, too, much pessimism. The recent unilateral abandonment of the Iran nuclear agreement, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) by the United States is one. Iran, naturally, advised Kim to be wary.

Oil Giants Shell and Eni Face Trial in Milan Over Bribery Allegations in Biggest Corruption Case Facing Sector in Years

By Chloe Farand, June 19, 2018

They allege that Shell and Eni paid $1.1 billion into an account for the Nigeria government of which $800 million was later transferred to Malabu Oil and Gas, a company secretly owned by former Nigerian petroleum minister and convicted money launderer Dan Etete, to be distributed as payoffs.

China: The Largest Cheap Labor Factory in the World

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, June 19, 2018

The factory price of a commodity produced in China is of the order of 10% of the retail price in Western countries. Consequently, the largest share of the earnings of  China’s cheap labor economy accrue to distributors and retailers in Western countries.

In recent developments, Trump has duly instructed his administration to impose tariffs on about $50 billion worth of Chinese imports.

Marking yet another upsetting turn of events at the hands of the Trump administration, it was announced yesterday that the United States government canceled the proposed limits on the number of endangered whales, dolphins and sea turtles that can be injured or killed by gillnets on the West Coast.

The now defunct rule, which would have applied to less than 20 fishing vessels that use the monstrous fishing nets to catch swordfish in California and Oregon, would have halted gillnet fishing for up to two seasons if excess numbers of the nine groups of whales, sea turtles and or dolphins were trapped by the inconspicuous but dangerous net.

The measure which was originally introduced by the Pacific Fishery Management Council in 2015 would have applied to the endangered fin, humpback, and sperm whales, short-in pilot whales, and common bottlenose dolphins, as well as endangered leatherback turtles, loggerhead turtles, olive-ridley sea turtles and endangered green sea turtles.

Yet now, per Michael Milstein, a spokesperson for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the division has determined that the economic ramifications would have “a much more substantial impact on the fleet” than they had originally realized.

Further, he claimed, safety measures already enacted by the fishing industry, such as using pinging warning devices on the nets, have worked to “drastically” reduce the numbers of entangled whales and sea turtles.

“The Trump administration has declared war on whales, dolphins, and turtles off the coast of California,” noted Todd Steiner, director of the Turtle Island Restoration Network, which is based in Northern California.

Per the Los Angeles Times,

“This determination will only lead to more potential litigation and legislation involving this fishery. It’s not a good sign.”

Catherine Kilduff, an attorney with the Center for Biological Diversity, warned in an ABC news report that

“any accidental harm to endangered communities of humpback whales and leatherback turtles would be particularly dangerous given their low numbers; as low as 411 for one group of humpbacks.

While NOAA figures reportedly estimate that the number of vessels plunged from a high of 129 in 1994 to 20 in 2016, many disagree.

“The numbers caught per set have not gone down,” argued Steiner. “The California gill-net fishery kills more marine mammals than all other West Coast fisheries combined.”

Sadly, the devastating news comes not even a full week after WAN reported on the positive new alliance between the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation, the Government of Mexico, and the Carlos Slim Foundation, to support efforts to save the critically endangered vaquita porpoise.

*

Featured image is from takepart.com.

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The Saudi-led coalition and its proxies are developing their military operation to capture the western Yemeni port city of al-Hudaydah from the Houthis.

This very advance started on June 13 after a series of failed attempts of the coalition-led forces to reach the city along the western Yemeni coast. Over 25,000 of coalition-backed fighters and at least 1,500 UAE troops, backed by a large number of military equipment, including battle tanks, and the Saudi Air Force and Special Operations Forces are involved in the operation.

According to French daily Le Figaro, troops of the French Special Operations Forces are operating alongside UAE troops.

The goal of the first stage of the operation is to isolate the city from the rest of the Houthi-held area. The coalition has also established a naval blockade of the city. However, it failed to carry out a landing operation in the area on June 13 because the Houthis responded with anti-ship missile strikes.

On the ground, by June 18, the coalition-led forces had entered into the al-Hudaydah airport establishing control of a major part of it. However, some positions in the airport are still in the hands of the Houthis.

The coalition-led forces also captured the Al-Matahen roundabout east of al-Hudayadh attempting to outflank the city. The advance was made thanks to massive air and artillery strikes on positions of the Houthis in the areas. Another factor is that the city is surrounded by non-mountainous terrain.

The Houthis respond to the coalition’s advance carrying out flanking attacks on the logistic lines of their enemies’ striking force. On June 18, a Houthi official, Ali al-Emad, told the pro-Hezbollah channel al-Mayadeen that about 160 fighters of the coalition-led forces had been captured by the Houthis since June 13.

Videos and photos also show that the coalition has already suffered significant losses in military equipment.

Al-Hudaydah is the key logistical hub and the last major supply line linking the Houthi-held part of Yemen and the rest of the world. It’s vital for providing humanitarian aid to the local population. It also allows the Houthis to receive limited military supplies from Iran.

If the coalition is able to capture the city, this may and will likely become a turning point in the Yemeni war leading to the defeat of the Houthis in open warfare and turning the conflict into a partisan war.

We are appalled that the Board of Deputies (BoD) which claims to be “the voice of British Jews,” has once again attempted to justify the massacre of unarmed Palestinian people by the Israeli military. You issued a throw-away tweet on 31 March and a full statement on 15 May, followed by a comment opposing the World Health Organisation fact-finding mission into the health needs of the occupied territories on 24 May.

As you know, on 30 March, when Israel began its latest attack, Palestinians were commemorating Land Day. [1] It was the launch of their Great March of Return demanding the right to go back to their homeland and an end to the blockade of Gaza. The March continued until 15 May, the seventieth anniversary of the Nakba, when three-quarters of a million Palestinians were ethnically cleansed from their land: hundreds of towns and villages were depopulated and destroyed to make way for the state of Israel.

Since 30 March, 123 Palestinians have been killed, including children, women and medics, and journalists wearing vests marked PRESS, many shot in the back, and 13,600 have been maimed or injured by live ammunition, tear gas and firebombs. For six weeks the killings continued, day after day, and on 14 May, when the US moved its embassy to Jerusalem, despite “overwhelming global opposition”, another massacre: 60 people killed, and 2,771 maimed and wounded. The Israeli use of illegal “dumdum” bullets which expand after entering the body was clearly intended to cause not only greater pain but permanent disabilities.

Your statement justifying this massacre prompted over 500 Jewish Zionists to write to outgoing president Arkush and president-elect Marie van der Zyl [2] protesting that BoD had “deeply misrepresented” their views by relieving Israel of all responsibility for the deaths caused by their snipers.

BoD is doing its best to hide that Jews are divided over Israel’s ongoing repression and slaughter of the Palestinian people, which many of us, like most people everywhere in the world, including a number of Zionists, are outraged by. So much for BoD “speaking for all Jews”! You are so determined to defend Israel that you have even accused Jewish organisations and individuals of “antisemitism” because they support Palestinian rights, and campaigned for their expulsion from the Labour Party.

This is not the first time the BoD has condoned murder, claiming to speak on behalf of Jewish people in the UK. The BoD publicly supported pro-Israel rallies during the bombing of Gaza in 2008/9 and 2014 that killed thousands of Palestinian women, children and men. It has consistently supported a regime that is widely considered guilty of war crimes and the racist crime of apartheid. You are now saying that opposition to Israel’s actions is antisemitic, thus demanding that Israel should be the only government in the world exempt from criticism.

The BoD in recent years has been uncritical of Israel and pro-Tory, contrary to the great Jewish working-class tradition of struggling for social justice in every situation. Arkush declared his political allegiance when (on 9 June 2017) he mourned the Tory prime minister’s failure to win an outright majority at the general election as a “loss” for the Jewish community, and described the Tory alliance with the extreme right-wing, homophobic, anti-abortion Democratic Unionist Party in the North of Ireland as “positive news” and the DUP as “exceptionally warm and friendly”. The Tories that Arkush supports are aligned in Europe with right-wing political parties that honour Nazi collaborators and Islamophobes. Arkush also celebrated the election of Trump undeterred by his racist, Islamophobic, and antisemitic campaign.

Your identification with the Israeli government could prove even more frightening. Governments and people around the world fear that the wrecking of the agreement with Iran by Netanyahu and Trump (the heads of two nuclear powers) may start yet another war, repeating the horrors of Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria. You may find yourself not only supporting the destruction of Iran, but urging the risk of nuclear war.

As Jewish people we are distraught that the Nazi holocaust has been, and continues to be, used to justify the brutal occupation of another people who played no part in our historic persecution, and to indulge in warmongering.

We reclaim our tradition of struggling for social justice for all by echoing the call by Jamal Juma, coordinator of the Palestinian Grassroots Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign and the Land Defence Coalition:

“It is time for the world to stop standing in implicit or explicit complicity with Israeli apartheid and to join us in nonviolent action by taking up the Palestinian call for boycotts, divestment and sanctions until Israel respects international law and human rights.”

Notes

1. Land Day is the annual remembrance of the 1976 general strike protesting Israeli land theft from Palestinian citizens of Israel, when six unarmed Palestinians were killed, a hundred were wounded, and hundreds arrested.

2. We note that van der Zyl’s suitability to be president of BoD has been questioned by victims/survivors of child sexual abuse who accuse her of “abandoning” them in their efforts to eradicate this crime from Jewish institutions.

Signed by

Craig Berman
Sarah Glynn
Abe Hayeem
Rosamine Hayeem
Yael Kahn
Michael Kalmanovitz
Roisin Kalmanovitz
Agnes Kory
Selma James
Les Levidow
Moshe Machover
Helen Marks
Sam Weinstein
Karl Weiss

Trump Further Escalates Trade War with China

June 19th, 2018 by Stephen Lendman

Things are getting serious. Tit-for-tat tariff announcements assure losers, not winners, if implemented and stick.

In response to China matching US imposed $50 billion in tariffs on its goods, Trump issued the following statement:

“This latest action by China clearly indicates its determination to keep the United States at a permanent and unfair disadvantage. This is unacceptable.

“Therefore, today, I directed the United States Trade Representative to identify $200 billion worth of Chinese goods for additional tariffs at a rate of 10 percent.”

If Beijing retaliates in kind as before, he’ll impose another $200 billion in duties on its products, he said, adding:

US tariffs will become effective “if China refuses to change its practices, and also if it insists on going forward with the new tariffs that it has recently announced.”

“China apparently has no intention of changing its unfair practices related to the acquisition of American intellectual property and technology.”

“Rather than altering those practices, it is now threatening United States companies, workers, and farmers who have done nothing wrong.”

“This latest action by China clearly indicates its determination to keep the United States at a permanent and unfair disadvantage, which is reflected in our massive US$376 billion trade imbalance in goods.”

In April, the Trump regime announced $50 billion in tariffs on around 1,300 Chinese products – last Friday reduced to 1,102 of equal value, 818 worth $34 billion effective July 6.

The remainder will be reviewed on July 24 before a final determination on imposition is made.

On Saturday, China’s Commerce Ministry said it “doesn’t want a trade war,” but will “fight back strongly” in response to Trump regime actions on trade, adding:

“If the US side finally loses its mind and issues a new list, the Chinese side will be forced to take comprehensive quantitative and qualitative measures and provide a tough response.”

Three rounds of Sino/US trade talks failed to resolve differences. During talks in Beijing last week, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi remained far apart on trade and investment.

Separately, Pompeo accused Beijing of “unprecedented…larceny” on trade and through cyber activities, claiming:

“(T)hey’re not just taking (from the US) by forced technology transfer or stealing it by way of contract, but committing outright theft.”

A previous article explained that America’s trade deficit with China and other countries was made in the USA, not in Beijing or other foreign capitals.

Longstanding US policy encourages offshoring of jobs to low-wage countries – the problem exacerbated by last year’s great GOP tax cut heist, incentivizing corporate predators to shift operations abroad for tax advantages gained.

America blames other countries for its own wrongdoing and wrongheaded policies – sticks with other nations, not carrots, its favored tactic.

Dealings by China and Russia with other countries are polar opposite.

They seek cooperative relations abroad. Unlike Washington, they’re not waging political, economic, propaganda or hot war on any nations – a longterm winning strategy.

*

Stephen Lendman is a Research Associate of the CRG, Correspondent of Global Research based in Chicago.

VISIT MY NEW WEB SITE: stephenlendman.org (Home – Stephen Lendman). Contact at [email protected].

My newest book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: How the US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

Circuito da Morte no «Mediterrâneo Alargado»

June 19th, 2018 by Manlio Dinucci

Os holofotes político-mediáticos, concentrados nos fluxos migratórios Sul-Norte, através do Mediterrâneo, deixam outras deslocações na sombra: as movimentações do Norte para o Sul, das forças militares e das armas, através do Mediterrâneo. Com efeito, através do “Mediterrâneo alargado”, uma área que, no âmbito da estratégia USA/NATO, se estende do Atlântico ao Mar Negro e, para sul, em direcção ao Golfo Pérsico e ao Oceano Índico.

No encontro com o Secretário Geral da NATO, Stoltenberg, em Roma, o Primeiro Ministro Conte, salientou a “importância do Mediterrâneo alargado para a segurança europeia”, ameaçada pelo “arco de instabilidade do Mediterrâneo até ao Médio Oriente”. Daí a importância da NATO, a aliança sob comando USA que Conte define como “pilar da segurança interna e internacional”.

Distorção completa da realidade. Fundamentalmente, foi a estratégia USA/NATO que provocou “o arco de instabilidade” devido:

  • às duas guerras contra o Iraque,
  • às outras duas guerras que demoliram os Estados jugoslavo e líbio,
  • à guerra destinada a demolir o Estado sírio.

A Itália, que participou em todas estas guerras, segundo Conte, desempenha “um papel fundamental para a segurança e a estabilidade do flanco sul da Aliança”. De que maneira? Percebe-se pelo que  a comunicação mediática esconde.

O navio Trenton da Marinha dos EUA, que recolheu 42 refugiados (autorizados a desembarcar em Itália, ao contrário dos do Aquarius), não está estacionado na Sicília para realizar acções humanitárias no Mediterrâneo: é uma unidade rápida (até 80 km/h), capaz de desembarcar em poucas horas na costa norte-africana um corpo de 400 homens e veículos relacionados.

Forças especiais USA operam na Líbia para treinar e liderar formações armadas aliadas, enquanto os drones armados USA, decolando de Sigonella, atacam alvos na Líbia.

Em breve, anunciou Stoltenberg, também os drones da NATO começarão a funcionar a partir de Sigonella. Vão integrar-se no “Centro de Liderança Estratégica da NATO para o Sul”, um centro de serviços secretos para as operações militares no Médio Oriente, Norte da África, Sahel e África subsaariana. O Centro, que ficará operacional em Julho, está sediado em Lago Patria, no Comando Conjunto da Força da NATO (JFC Nápoles), sob o comando de um almirante americano – actualmente James Foggo – que também comanda as Forças Navais USA na Europa (com sede em Nápoles-Capodichino e a Sexta Frota estacionada em Gaeta) e as Forças Navais USA para a África.

Essas forças estão integradas pelo porta-aviões Harry S.Truman, que entrou no Mediterrâneo com o seu grupo de ataque há dois meses. No dia 10 de Junho, enquanto a atenção mediática estava concentrada no Aquarius, a frota USA  com mais de 8.000 homens, armados com 90 caças e mais de 1000 mísseis, foi posicionada Mediterrâneo Oriental, pronta para atacar a Síria e o Iraque.

Nesses mesmos dias, 12-13 de Junho, o Liberty Pride, um dos navios militares dos EUA, fazia escala em Livorno, embarcando nas suas 12 pontes outra carga de armas que, da base americana de Camp Darby, são enviadas mensalmente para a Jordânia e para a Arábia Saudita, destinadas às guerras na Síria e no Iémen. Assim, alimentam-se as guerras que, juntamente com os mecanismos de exploração neocolonial, provocam o empobrecimento e a erradicação das populações.

Consequentemente, os fluxos migratórios aumentam em condições dramáticas, que provocam vítimas e novas formas de escravidão. “Parece ser duro o que a imigração  agora paga”, comenta o Presidente Trump, referindo-se às medidas decididas não apenas por Salvini, mas por todo o Governo italiano, cujo Primeiro Ministro é designado como “fantástico”.

Reconhecimento legítimo da parte dos Estados Unidos, que no programa do actual Governo, os define como sendo o “aliado privilegiado” da Itália.

Manlio Dinucci

il manifesto, 19 de Junho de 2018

Artigo original em italiano :

Circuito di morte nel «Mediterraneo allargato»

ilmanifesto.it

 

Manlio Dinucci é geógrafoe jornalista

“Copyright Zambon Editore”

PORTUGUÊS

GUERRA NUCLEAR: O DIA ANTERIOR

De Hiroshima até hoje: Quem e como nos conduzem à catástrofe

ÍNDICE

 

Tradutora: Maria Luísa de Vasconcellos

 

 

 

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Em 12 de Junho de 1901, o físico francês, Henri Becquerel, identificou e quantificou pela primeira vez, a radiação proveniente de uma amostra de urânio. O fenómeno será classificado, sucessivamente, por outra cientista francesa, Marie Curie, como radioactividade.

Esta descoberta,no principio da década de 1900, abre a estrada para um futuro inimaginável, ao progresso nos campos médico e energético, a descobertas que anunciavam riqueza e felicidade para toda a Humanidade. Mas abria, também, o caminho para o desenvolvimento da radioactividade no campo militar e, em seguida, ao uso da ameaça nuclear como supremacia política. A um século de distância, a maravilha científica é substituída pelo temor difuso de um perigo furtivo e permanente.

A Associação dos Cientistas Atómicos Americanos, responsável pelo desenvolvimento extraordinário do nuclear e, consciente da sua responsabilidade, mudou o ponteiro do Relógio do Apocalipse, o assinalador do tempo simbólico do risco nuclear, de 3 minutos para a meia noite em 2015, para 2,5 minutos para a meia noite em 2017.

Manlio Dinucci, com o seu livro ‘Guerra Nuclear – O Dia Anterior’, explica com precisão documentada, a História dos últimos setenta anos de convivência com o nuclear e denuncia quem são os que, desde o fim da Segunda Guerra Mundial,  a usam sem receio no que  respeita à segurança dos seres vivos e como eles querem nos levar à catástrofe, ao deserto nuclear.

Tudo começou em Agosto de 1945. O Presidente dos Estados Unidos, Henry Truman, tomou uma decisão terrível: a de lançar uma bomba atómica sobre o Japão, para pôr um fim à guerra, já terminada na Europa. Ordenou ao Comandante da Força Aérea Americana no Pacífico, Carl Spaaz, de lançar um engenho sobre uma cidade de tamanho médio. Foram escolhidas quatro cidades mediante a importância e a localização. No fim o destino recai sobre duas delas, Hiroshima e Nagasaki, em parte, por razões metereológicas. Uma imensa bola de fogo envolveu a cidade, transformando-se numa enorme núvem de fumo em forma de cogumelo. Esta forma característica tornar-se-á a imagem clássica da catástrofe nuclear tão temida. O bombardeamento causará a morte imediata de, pelo menos, de cem mil pessoas no perímetro de 1,5 km do epicentro da explosão. As radiações atingiram dezenas de milhares de pessoas que continuaram a morrer ao longo dos anos. Tinha sido libertado um monstro que não se podia conter, invísivel e altamente mortal.

Será que o Presidente Truman tinha escolhido, realmente, lançar o engenho, unicamente, para pôr fim à guerra no Pacífico? Talvez as coisas não sejam assim. É sabido agora, que o Japão tinha oferecido, através de diversos canais diplomáticos, a sua rendição, mas impunha a condição não renunciável da intocabilidade da figura do Imperador. A minoria da esquerda nos USA, era contrária a exonerar o maior responsável pelo militarismo japonês da sua responsabilidade e Truman, de repente, sensível ao pedido da esquerda, fortaleceu-se com esta recusa para, deste modo, rejeitar as diligências da diplomacia japonesa. Será  possível que o Presidente americano, ao atingir o Japão, quisesse na realidade, ameaçar e redimensionar o papel dos Soviéticos, os verdadeiros vencedores do nazismo na Europa? (Gian Luigi Nespoli e Giuseppe Zambon, Hiroshima-Nagasaki, Zambon Editore, Verona 1997).

As primeiras reportagens da cidade bombardeada deixaram as pessoas petrificadas perante esta enorme força desconhecida. A monstruosa quantidade de mortos e feridos de patologias desconhecidas e não curáveis causadas pelas radiações, impressionou o mundo inteiro, entregando aos Estados Unidos  o troféu de nação invencível.

Em seguida, o Pentágono continuará a financiar os estudos sobre o nuclear e, no final da presidência de Eisenhower, o Complexo militar/industrial começará a influenciar a política americana, exarcebando o perigo do comunismo e de uma possível invasão soviética da Europa. Este estado de guerra não declarada encorajava uma corrida ao armamento que fazia andar a toda a velocidade as fábricas, enquanto os aliados europeus, a Grã-Bretanha e a França, por sua vez, se esforçavam  para dotar-se da bomba atómica e poder, assim, aceder à mesa dos poderosos. A URSS, obviamente tentou recuperar o tempo do atraso tecnológico que a afastava dos USA. Assim, o nuclear entrava na cena política internacional como dissuasão entre as forças em oposição durante a Guerra Fria.

Durante muitos anos, temeu-se que um erro furtuito na sala dos botões pudesse terminar a existência da Humanidade. Só depois da dissolução da União Soviética e com os diversos tratados para o controlo do rearmamento nuclear,  nos anos seguintes, é que se acreditou que não se devia temer o nuclear. Mas como demonstra o livro de Dinucci, tratava-se de um falso sentido de segurança, porque, em silêncio, continuou a pesquisa e a produção de novas armas muito sofisticadas.

Hoje estamos novamente perante os Estados Unidos que desafiam a Rússia, com um olhar para a China, uma situação semelhante à da Guerra Fria, mas muito mais temível, porque ao contrário da década de 1970, quando os antagonistas tinham concordado com um último telefonema através  do famoso telefone vermelho antes de qualquer acção definitiva, actualmente todos os adversários sabem que só obtém a vitória, quem lançar o primeiro míssil.

Revela o Washington Post que se autorizam ataques preventivos contra os Estados que estejam quase a comprar armas de destruição em massa.Em plena sintonia com a teoria do PNAC (Project for a new American Century, Projecto para um novo século americano)formulado pelos neo-conservadores e cada vez mais aplicada à política americana: A História do Sec. XX deveria ter ensinado que é importante plasmar as circunstâncias antes que as crises surjam e enfrentar a ameaça nuclear e enfrentar as ameaças antes que se tornem trágicas. A História deste século deveria ter ensinado a abraçar a causa de uma liderança americana… estabelecer uma presença estatégica militar em todo o mundo através de uma revolução tecnológica no contexto militar, desencorajar o aparecimento de qualquer super potência competitiva, lançar ataques preventivos contra quaisquer poderes que ameacem os interesses americanos.

Da narrativa do nascimento da bomba e da aniquilição das duas cidades japoneasas até há corrida renovada aos armamentos, com um percurso de nove capítulos densos de informação e pormenores documentados, Manlio Dinucci introduz o leitor no mundo do nuclear e da política que o acompanhou sobre o fundo de um cenário internacional em mudança. O autor revela acidentes nucleares desconhecidos, o risco das centrais atómicas obsoletas e os atentados às mesmas, o uso do urânio empobrecido nos bombeardeamentos na Jugoslávia e no Iraque, as guerras escondiddas, as guerras comissionadas, as guerras no Médio Oriente, o nascimento do ISIS, a inquietante cumplicidade americana no armamento dos terroristas islâmicos, a NATO e a CIA a trabalhar na Ucrânia, a perigosa expansão da NATO nos países de Leste em direcção à Rússia.

A política estrangeira americana parece dividir a Europa em duas entidades: de um lado a nova Europa, constituída pelos antigos países satélites da União Soviética – Repúblicas dos Balcãs, Polónia, República Checa, Eslováquia, Hungria, Bulgária, Roménia e, do outro lado, a parte fundadora da União Europeia. A primeira é considerada a aliada mais firme, onde fazer fluir financiamentos, armas, soldados e bases de mísseis para instalar contra a Rússia; a segunda é mantida sob controlo,para que não ouse conspirar economica e financeiramente com a Rússia ou outras nações inscritas no livro negro dos EUA, penalidades pesadas, ameaças de sanções e crises bancárias. Quase toda a Europa é membro da NATO e alberga grande número de bases militares que armazenam armas e bombas nucleares em Itália, Bélgica, Holanda e Alemanha. É evidente que a Europa está numa posição de sujeição aos Estados Unidos e é considerada a parte fraca das forças em campo.

Um capítulo do livro descreve as novas armas e abre uma antevisão da guerra estelar: a mudança das armas cinéticas em armas de energia dirigida.Não usam mais balas, mas impulsos electromagnéticos, ondas de calor, armas cibernéticas e outras diabruras de ficção científica que só tinhamos visto em filmes e como tal, pensávamos ser pura fantasia. Hoje são uma realidade terrível, como os drones miniaturizados com as mais diversas utilizações, como matar por comando remoto ou transportar mini-nukes, que espalham epidemias ou mais simplesmente, mosquitos espias. Igualmente incrível é o desenvolvimento dos sistemas espaciais e dos aviões robotizados para destruir os satélites das comunicações dos adversários e para enviar armas para o Espaço.

No final desta extraordinária cavalgada ao longo da história dos nossos anos mais recentes, o livro explica a posição actual do poder americano, reivindicando a defesa do amargo fim dos seus privilégios antes do aparecimento de outros poderes. Para este fim a pressão militar americana aumenta em todos os continentes. O Pentágono controla directamente, 4.800 bases e outras instalações militares. O mundo está dividido em seis áreas, cada uma das quais está submetida ao controlo de outros tantos Comandos Combatentes Unificados dos Estados Unidos. A estes Comandos juntam-se três operacionais à escala global que presidem as forças nucleares terrestres, navais e as operações no espaço e ciber espaço, a guerra electrónica e missilística; as operações especiais e as operações psicológicas; o transporte, a mobilidade e o abastecimento dos exércitos.

Dinucci conta com precisão as funções de cada uma e o panorama descrito é impressionante, porque se desenvolve paralelamente ao nosso quotidiano, na quase total ignorância do público, que é tido deliberadamente na ignorância do facto de que as bases constituem o primeiro objectivo destinado a receber o contra ataque.

Jean Toschi Marazzani Visconti

A seguir: Nota sobre o Autor

Tradutora: Maria Luísa de Vasconcellos

Livro por Manlio Dinucci :

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ÍNDICE

 

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Featured image: Hashd al-Shaabi logo

Iraq’s Hashd al-Shaabi military force said Monday that 22 of its members had been killed in airstrikes carried out by U.S.-led coalition warplanes near Iraq’s border with Syria.

Incorporated into the Iraqi Armed Forces in late 2016, the Hashd al-Shaabi, who are also known as Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) and as the People’s Mobilization Committee and the Popular Mobilization Units (PMU).

In a statement, the group said that U.S. warplanes had struck one of its encampments near the Syrian border, leaving 22 of its fighters dead.

“At 22:00 on Sunday 17th of June 2018, an US plane struck a permanent base belonging to the 45th and 46th brigades responsible for protecting the borders between Syria and Iraq with two missiles that led to the martyrdom of 22 PMU fighters and injuring 12 others,” said the statement.

The PMF have been present at the border since the start of liberation operations in the area, and with the knowledge of Iraqi Joint Operations.

The PMF explained the reason for their presence near the Syrian/Iraqi border:

“Due to the geographical and desert type nature of the area, while at the same time the necessity for military presence, the Iraqi forces had to establish their bases north of the Syrian town of Albu Kamal, which is only 700 meters away from the border and has an infrastructure that is close to the defence line, which is exploited by terrorists who continuously seek infiltration and attempt entry into Iraqi territory. This presence and base is with the knowledge of Syrian government and Iraqi joint operations.

“The terror groups present in these areas tried to infiltrate into Iraqi territories and the PMF foiled this on many occasions,”  and said that the US strikes “came to enable the enemy control over the borders after security forces, including army, border police and PMF sacrificed to liberate, clear and protect the border.”

The statement went on to demand a “formal explanation” from the U.S. regarding the deadly incident.

First established in 2014 with the express purpose of fighting the Daesh terrorist group, the Hashd al-Shaabi is believed to include more than 150,000 Shia, Sunni, Christian and Yazidi fighters.

The Liberal’s Lament Over Israel

June 19th, 2018 by James J. Zogby

I find it exceptionally irritating when I hear liberals worry about whether Israel will be able to remain a “Jewish and Democratic State” if it retains control of occupied Palestinian lands. It’s irritating because Israel is not now a democratic state nor has it ever tried to be one.

A state that prioritizes rights for one group of citizens (in this case Jews, who comprise 80% of the population) over the rights of another group (Arabs, who are 20% of Israel’s citizenry) cannot be democratic. Israel discriminates against its Arab citizens in law, social services, funding for education, and in everyday life. So although the concerns of liberals in the West are about the future of Israeli democracy, what they ignore is the reality of Israel, in practice. 

As I document in my book, Palestinians: the Invisible Victims, from its inception in 1948, Israel has guaranteed rights and opportunities for Jews at the expense of the indigenous Palestinians who remained after the Nakba. Instead of experiencing democracy, these Arabs were subjected to harsh military law, as a result of which they were denied fundamental human and civil rights. Their lands and businesses were confiscated. And they were even denied the opportunity to join the labor movement, or form independent political parties.

During the past 70 years, these Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel have made significant advances as they organized and fought to expand their rights. But as two stories that have appeared recently in the Israeli media make clear, the contradiction inherent in being a democracy and a Jewish state continues to plague Israel.

In the first story, the leadership of the Knesset disqualified a proposed piece of legislation offered by a group of Arab legislators. The bill “Basic Law: Israel, a State of All Its Citizens” sought to guarantee equal rights for all Israelis—Jews and Arabs alike.

Apparently the Knesset leaders were so threatened by this bill that they were unwilling to even allow it to be introduced and debated. At the same time, however, Jewish members of the body are advancing another piece of legislation that defines Israel as the “national state of the Jewish People,” making it clear that Arabs are at best, second-class citizens.

In another story, Jewish residents of Afula, a town in Northern Israel, demonstrated against the proposed sale of a home in their community to an Arab family. The flyer, mobilizing Afula residents to come to the demonstration, criticized “the sale of homes to those who are undesirable in the neighborhood.” The former mayor of the community is quoted in the story saying “the residents of Afula don’t want a mixed city, but rather a Jewish city, and it’s their right.”

This is the impact of the apartheid system that Israel established to govern the lives of its Arab citizens. Since 1948, Israel not only confiscated lands surrounding Arab towns and villages to make way for Jewish agriculture and development, it denied Arabs the right to purchase land and homes in Jewish communities. Reflecting how this history has led to the demonstration in Afula, the leader of the Arab bloc in the Knesset said,

“It is not a surprise that in a country that has founded 700 towns for Jews and not even one for Arabs, the idea that Arabs should be pushed aside does not shock citizens…our hope of living together is crumbling due to hatred and racism fueled by the government.”

Meanwhile, in the West Bank, Israel appears to be preparing a similar fate for the Palestinians living under occupation. Continuing the practice the Israelis instituted in the Galilee region, they have been slowly and steadily concentrating captive West Bank Palestinians into enclaves, denying them access to their land and in some cases, evicting them from their communities. One recent case reported in the Israeli press involves a Supreme Court decision allowing the state to demolish the West Bank community of Khan al Ahmar and to forcibly relocate “its citizens to a site near a dumpster in Abu Dis”—a Palestinian community near occupied East Jerusalem. At risk are Khan al Ahmar’s 173 residents and the community’s school that serves 150 youngsters from there, and neighboring villages. This is one of four recent forced evictions to clear areas of Palestinians in order to consolidate Israeli control.

These three stories combined have two things in common. On the one hand, they establish that it is a contradiction in terms to consider that Israel can be both Jewish and democratic at the same time. Liberals therefore can stop fretting about the danger facing Israeli democracy in the future. It already is, in practice, an apartheid state.

Next to consider is the fact that none of these stories made it into the U.S. press and so I suppose I can almost understand the Western liberal’s lament. Since they just don’t know how Israel behaves, they have no idea that the future they fear, is already here.

*

James J. Zogby is the president of the Arab American Institute.

Featured image: Former Mossad Director Tamir Pardo (Photo: Yair Sagi)

Former Israeli Mossad chief (2011-2015), Tamir Pardo, spoke to Israel’s foremost TV news magazine (the video is only accessible via Israeli IP addresses), Uvda about his thirty years’ working for Israel’s foreign spy service.  He was continuing a tradition begun by his predecessor, the late-Meir Dagan, who also did an interview with the TV program after he left his job.  In fact, they both did the interviews for the same reason: they were deeply disaffected from their former boss, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Since so much of Israeli intelligence work is done covertly and under the pall of military censorship, preventing the public from having any inkling of what is done in its name, such interviews draw back the curtain slightly on an otherwise taboo subject in the Israeli media.  As a result, the audience for such events is huge and the public hangs on every word.

Pardo didn’t disappoint.  He mixed a combination of striking candor with feigned humility to present a picture of an experienced Israeli spy who’s been humiliated by his former boss, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and driven into a sort of forced exile.

Mossad: “Great Fun” Because It Offered “License to Crime”

The Uvda interviewer, Ilana Dayan, too mixed a series of softball questions with striking candor and managed to elicit some startling admissions from her subject.  When she asked him to characterize his career as a spy, she thought he would offer a high-minded reply so she asked if he thought of it as service to “king and country.”  Pardo ignored her suggestion, and instead replied that it was the greatest fun one could have because it was “a license to crime.”

It’s one thing for long-time critical observers of the Israeli intelligence apparatus to express such views of the excesses of the Israeli national security state, which I’ve long done; but it’s quite another for someone at its highest levels confirm some of your worst fears.  Being a Mossad agent offers a license to criminality on behalf of the Israeli State.  In an Israeli context this appears perfectly acceptable.  But to the rest of us (or most of the rest of us), this is horrifying.  And only an Israeli Mossad chief (or perhaps an FSB chief) can laugh at that sort of statement as Pardo clearly does and see it as charming or endearing.

At another point in the interview, Dayan offers Pardo a list of covert operations against Iran which the Mossad is thought to have orchestrated.  In looking at the list, his first reaction is: “very nice.”  Coming from any other intelligence agency chief this would be considered a ghoulish reply.  But coming from an Israeli career-assassin, the response seems totally in character.

The TV segment also offers the pro forma protestations of conscience one is accustomed to seeing in these affairs.  Dayan earnestly asks Pardo how it feels to have the power of life and death over his victims.  The ex-spy replies with due gravity that it’s a heavy burden which he weighed carefully every time he had to make such a decision.

The Iran File

When asked about what issue took the lion’s share of his attention as Mossad chief, he answers that Iran took up 80% of the agency’s operational agenda.  For those of us who’ve long criticized Israel’s obsession with Iran and suspected it was a pressure valve exploited by Israeli leaders who sought to avoid issues like Palestine, Pardo’s admission makes one realize how much time the Mossad wasted on chimeras like this.

Pardo recounts a meeting he had with his then- boss, Meir Dagan, when he assumed the role as his deputy director. Dagan tasked him with devising a program to deal with Iran.  Months later, the deputy presented three options:

  1. “Conquering Iran”—this option was deemed “unrealistic”
  2. Regime change—he uses the analogy of a chisel and crystal, saying the Mossad would seek the precise point of weakness within the glass that would cause it to disintegrate with the correctly placed blow.

Though he doesn’t mention the third option, presumably it was the one the Mossad ultimately pursued of assassination, sabotage of military bases, and cyber-attacks on nuclear facilities.

Israeli Assassination Campaign Failed to Deter Scientists from Participating in Nuclear Program

Dayan questions the ex-Mossad chief extensively about Israel’s assassination campaign against Iranian scientists, which led to the murders of five senior figures in the nuclear program.  The interviewer reveals, for the first time, that there were fifteen names on the target list, indicating that the project could have killed many more such figures had it not been called off once nuclear negotiations commenced in earnest.

Many journalists and analysts sympathetic to the Israeli interests argue that the killings served an important purpose in crippling Iran’s capacity to recruit top talent to the nuclear program.  For the first time, Pardo acknowledges that such a goal was a failure, when he responds to her pointed question asking whether it did so.  He half-heartedly replies: “not very clearly.”

Pardo also confesses explicitly that the overall program designed to destroy Iran’s nuclear program and deny it the capacity to build a nuclear weapon failed.  At that point, Dayan interrupts and asks him: if your plan failed, why did you oppose the prime minister’s plan to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities?  Why not try something more aggressive once your more modest goal failed?

israeli war on iran

The Mossadnik replies that it is impossible to prevent a nation from achieving nuclearization where it has a will to do so.  Iran, he suggests, is a huge country with many different military and scientific installations scattered throughout.  You cannot destroy its nuclear program with a single blow, no matter how large.  What becomes clear is that Pardo is a realist, while those holding the reins of power are either fantasists or fanatics who believe they can achieve absolute victory against Israel’s adversaries.

Israel’s Brush with War Against Iran

Dayan asks Pardo what the consequences of an Israeli attack on Iran would have been.  Looking directly into her eyes, he tells her it would’ve meant going to war.  That’s why, when Netanyahu ordered Israeli military forces into war readiness employing a code-named “P + 15” (fifteen days to commencement of hostilities), Pardo approached the government’s chief legal advisor and asked whether the prime minister could declare war in such a fashion without a full cabinet debate.  Later, there was such an internal debate and the IDF chief of staff joined with Pardo and the Shin Bet chief to oppose the war option.  Their views carried the day and Israel didn’t attack.

For the first time, Israel’s top spy tells Dayan that had he failed, rather than lead the Mossad into a war against Iran, he would have resigned.  Of course, it’s easy for such figures to assume a golden halo after the fact.  It’s harder to know what he would’ve done had the situation turned out for the worst.  But at least he asserts clearly that he would have refused his boss’ order to undertake what he perceived as an illegal war against Iran.

In looking back on that time, Israel’s top spy says that when he heard P+ invoked he understood there were two possible meanings: first, that Israel was truly on the path to war; and second, that declaring the intention of going to war was meant to signal Israel’s resolve to take the Iran issue to its ultimate bloody conclusion.  In other words, the exercise conveyed urgency to the Americans and forced them to consider Israel’s interests more fully while negotiating the nuclear deal.

It goes without saying that this is a highly dangerous enterprise.  Once one side in such a conflict adopts a military posture preparing for war, the other side is obligated to do the same.  At that point, the least spark can commence a conflict that neither side may actually want.  This is how World War I and a number of other bloody wars commenced.  But it does accord with Bibi Netanyahu’s reckless disregard for the conventional restraints most nation adopt to prevent such a catastrophe.  Luckily for Israel, there was no such spark and war was averted—that time.

However, given that the Israeli leader now has a like-minded reckless U.S president at the helm of U.S. foreign policy, all bets are off as to whether Israel may yet attack Iran either alone, or in tandem with the U.S. and its new Sunni allies, including Saudi Arabia.

The most important lesson to learn from the Pardo interview is that Israel’s strategy to deny Iran a nuclear weapon failed.  Despite the Mossad’s best efforts, its former director concedes publicly that its enemy’s capabilities were not significantly degraded.  That leaves only one other option, the one which has succeeded thus far (until Trump abandoned it), the JCPOA nuclear agreement.  The one which is currently most endangered by the reckless disregard of both Netanyahu and Trump.

NOTE: Iran has denied any intention to build nuclear weapons, is a signatory of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, and is in compliance with the JCPOA according to the IAEA.  The above article largely conveys the views of Tamir Pardo and the Israeli intelligence community, which are often at odds with the international consensus regarding the Iranian efforts.


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Circuito di morte nel «Mediterraneo allargato»

June 19th, 2018 by Manlio Dinucci

I riflettori politico-mediatici, focalizzati sui flussi migratori Sud-Nord attraverso il Mediterraneo, lasciano in ombra altri flussi: quelli Nord-Sud di forze militari e armi attraverso il Mediterraneo. Anzi attraverso il «Mediterraneo allargato», area che, nel quadro della strategia Usa/Nato, si estende dallAtlantico al Mar Nero e, a sud, fino al Golfo Persico e allOceano Indiano.

Nellincontro col segretario della Nato Stoltenberg a Roma,  il premier Conte ha sottolineato la «centralitàdel Mediterraneo allargato per la sicurezza europea», minacciata dall’«arco di instabilità dal Mediterraneo al Medio Oriente». Da qui limportanza della Nato, alleanza sotto comando Usa che Conte definisce «pilastro della sicurezza interna e internazionale». Completo stravolgimento della realtà.

È stata fondamentalmente la strategia Usa/Nato a provocare «larco di instabilità»con le due guerre contro lIraq, le altre due guerre che hanno demolito gli Stati jugoslavo e libico, e quella per demolire lo Stato siriano. LItalia, che ha partecipato a tutte queste guerre, secondo Conte svolge «un ruolo chiave per la sicurezza e stabilità del fianco sud della Alleanza».

In che modo, lo si capisce da ciò che i media nascondono. La nave Trenton della U.S. Navy, che ha raccolto 42 profughi (autorizzati a sbarcare in Italia a differenza di quelli dellAquarius), non è di stanza in Sicilia per svolgere azioni umanitarie nel Mediterraneo: è una unità veloce (fino a 80 km/h), capace di sbarcare in poche ore sulle coste nord-africane un corpo di spedizione di 400 uomini e relativi mezzi. Forze speciali Usa operano in Libia per addestrare e guidare formazioni armate alleate, mentre droni armati Usa,decollando da Sigonella, colpiscono obiettivi in Libia. Tra poco, ha annunciato Stoltenberg, opereranno da Sigonella anche droni Nato. Essi integreranno l’«Hub di direzione strategica Nato per il Sud», centro di intelligence per operazioni militari in Medioriente, Nordafrica, Sahel e Africa subsahariana.

LHub, che diverrà operativo in luglio, ha sede a Lago Patria, presso il Comando della forza congiunta Nato (Jfc Naples), agli ordini di un ammiraglio statunitense attualmente James Foggo –  che comanda anche le Forze navali Usa in Europa (con quartier generale a Napoli-Capodichino ela Sesta Flotta di stanza a Gaeta) e le Forze navali Usa per lAfrica. Tali forze sono state integrate dalla portaerei Harry S. Truman, entrata due mesi fa nel Mediterraneo con il suo gruppo dattacco.

Il 10 giugno, mentre lattenzione mediatica si concentrava sulla Aquarius, la flotta Usa con a bordo oltre 8000 uomini, armata di 90 caccia e oltre 1000 missili, veniva schierata nel Mediterraneo orientale, pronta a colpire in Siria e Iraq. Negli stessi giorni, il 12-13 giugno, faceva scalo a Livorno la Liberty Pride, una delle navi militarizzate Usa, imbarcando sui suoi 12 ponti un altro carico di armi che, dalla base Usa di Camp Darby, vengono inviate mensilmente in Giordania e Arabia Saudita per le guerre in Siria e nello Yemen.

Si alimentano così le guerre che, unite ai meccanismi neocoloniali di sfruttamento, provocano impoverimento e sradicamento di popolazioni. Aumentano di conseguenza i flussi migratori in condizioni drammatiche, che provocano vittime e nuove forme di schiavitù. «Sembra che essere duri sull’immigrazione ora paghi», commenta il presidente Trump riferendosi alle misure decise non solo da Salvini ma dallintero governo italiano, il cui premier viene definito «fantastico».

Giusto riconoscimento da parte degli Stati uniti, che nel programma di governo sono definiti «alleato privilegiato»dellItalia.

Manlio Dinucci

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Chaos in the Imperial Big House

June 19th, 2018 by Glen Ford

“The Trump experience has plunged corporate ideology and war rationales into disarray.”

Donald Trump, the arch racist usurper of the Republican Party, is tearing the ruling class consensus to shreds, inflicting bigger shocks to the imperial system by accident, impulse and ignorance than any conceivable “progressive” elected U.S. president could achieve on purpose. In the space of a few weeks, Trump has 1) threatened to disrupt corporate global supply chains through his in-out stance  on NAFTA; 2) forced Washington’s European junior imperial partners to reconsider their subservience to U.S. foreign policy and their vulnerability to U.S.-controlled financial institutions in the wake of Trump’s rejection of the Iran deal and his tirades at the G7 summit in Canada; and 3) discarded 70 years of Uncle Sam’s “Comply or Die” dictum towards North Korea, thus consigning the whole “axis of evil” designation to the dustbin.

Trump is not causing chaos in the imperial Big House because he wants to hasten the demise of U.S. imperialism. He is an intellectually and emotionally retarded spawn of super-privilege trying to stamp his orange imprint on history — “Trump did this, and it was the greatest thing ever!” — like the big “T” on the those buildings he doesn’t actually own. The man, literally, knows not what he does — and, therefore, cannot be counted on to repeat himself, or to follow through on any action with logic and consistency, for good or ill. However, the net effect of Trump’s crazed foreign policy has been to raise urgent questions, among foreign elites and general populations alike, of U.S. fitness for global hegemony. Trump’s behavior could deliver a coup de grace to an already severely frayed global capitalist consensus on U.S. world leadership, significantly weakening the potency of U.S. imperialism — even as Trump aligns more closely with the Israeli apartheid state and the Gulf monarchies and conspires to force regime change in Venezuela.

“The net effect of Trump’s crazed foreign policy has been to raise urgent questions of U.S. fitness for global hegemony.”

Domestically, the Trump experience has plunged corporate ideology and war rationales into disarrayeven as his administration (with Democratic help) has delivered the biggest corporate tax windfalls and military budgets ever.

Contradictions abound — but, of course, the accumulation of contradictions is what ultimately erodes the whole edifice. Donald Trump, incapable of perceiving beyond surface appearances, thinks a “strong” foreign policy means blood-curdling threats. So he threatens North Korea with “fire and fury.” When Kim Jong-un comes to the table with his South Korean partner, as they collaborated to do, Trump believes his threat has worked, and that the U.S. acted from strength. And then he agrees to “leave the past behind” and to enter what will become years-long negotiations on “denuclearization,” with “security guarantees” for the North, while immediately halting U.S.-South Korean military exercises that Trump called “provocative.” Trump looks forward to an eventual withdrawal of troops from the South. “At some point I hope it will be, but it’s not right now.”

If the leader of North Korea — the original “pariah” state demonized and placed beyond the pale of U.S.-decreed legitimacy — is now just another negotiating partner, and U.S. troop withdrawal from the South is a principled goal, then the “axis of evil” era is over and the rationale for U.S. troops and bases virtually everywhere in the world collapses — as is well understood by U.S. imperial strategists, who are in deep distress.

“Trump’s behavior could deliver a coup de grace to an already severely frayed global capitalist consensus on U.S. world leadership.”

So are the Democrats. Since Trump won the GOP nomination, they have become overt partisans of the War Party. House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi, a former co-chair of the Progressive Caucus, sounded like some cracker mistress in the Big House, carping  that Trump had “elevated North Korea to the level of the United States while preserving the regime’s status quo.” Pelosi showed her racist, imperialist inner core, recoiling at the very idea of equality among nations and peoples, and condemning Trump for appearing to abandon the goal of regime change in the North. (See Ajamu Baraka, “The Democrats Out-Right the Right on North Korean Summit.”)

Pelosi and her House minions have long voted to fund Republican and Democratic wars, while pretending to be peaceniks. Trump’s capture of the GOP presidential nomination drew them out of the closet, in full armored gear, screaming “Russia, Russia, Russia” like banshees — a clear indication of crisis among the Democrats’ ruling class masters.

If the leader of North Korea is now just another negotiating partner, and U.S. troop withdrawal from the South is a principled goal, then the ‘axis of evil’ era is over.”

Trump campaigned in 2016 for normal relations with Russia, an end to the U.S. regime change offensive, and opposition to so-called “free” trade, thus uniting most of the ruling class against him. It turned out that Trump’s wholly unexpected appeal for peaceful relations with Russia did not deter huge majorities of Republicans from voting for him in the primaries and the general election. The political conclusion was inescapable: If white Republicans were not wedded to the permanent war agenda — or cared more about maintaining white supremacy at home than funding endless hostilities abroad — then where was the mass constituency for the bipartisan War Party? If Trump’s “deplorables” weren’t wedded to the War Party, then who was?

Trump’s surprise election threw the bulk of the elite, the corporate media, the military-industrial complex, and the spooks of the intelligence agencies, into panic, as they confronted a crisis of legitimacy for the Warfare State. Now firmly aligned with Hillary Clinton and the Democrats, their response was to pre-empt Trump’s threatened rapprochement with Russia with a massive anti-Putin campaign. The elites realized they had to recreate — on the fly, with no factual basis — a war fervor that no longer existed among the masses of people, through Russiagate. In the chaotic process, they have further delegitimized virtually every U.S. institution, all the while putting the onus for the damage on the Vladimir Putin.

“If Trump’s “deplorables” weren’t wedded to the War Party, then who was?”

(They have even made the term “oligarchs” a household word — one that can just as easily be applied to the U.S. ruling class as to Putin’s rich friends in Russia. In the long term, this is not a good thing for rich capitalists, as a class.)

Trump has vacillated on “free trade,” speaking out of whichever side of his mouth works quicker. But his ambivalence and profound ignorance have put the NAFTA negotiations in total disarray. According the New York Times , Trump sent “a 24-year-old deputy to meet with a delegation that was expected to include representatives from more than 50 of the largest American companies and organizations, including Walmart, U.P.S., the Walt Disney Company, General Electric, General Motors, Caterpillar and Boeing” — the titans of industry to whom both corporate parties pay homage, but whom Trump is disrespecting, big time. Corporate supply chains affecting trillions of dollars and millions of (mostly Global South, super-exploitive) jobs hang in the balance. The National Association of Manufactures, whose pronouncements were gospel to Republicans and most Democrats in previous eras, can’t make a NAFTA wheel turn in Trump’s administration. Much more crucially, the advent of Trump has revealed the stark reality that there is no mass base for “free trade”— a euphemism for allowing the ruling class to do whatever they want with their money and everyone’s jobs. Support for “free trade” is an illusion conjured by the two corporate parties, who are writhing in a crisis of legitimacy.

“The National Association of Manufactures can’t make a NAFTA wheel turn in Trump’s administration.”

But such crises don’t bring down the system, on their own. Only a people’s movement can do that.

The real crisis for the War Party arrives when masses of people show up in the streets to demand an end to the Permanent Warfare State.

The real crisis for the Black Mass Incarceration State arrives when the targeted population no longer recognizes the legitimacy of the police, and moves to resist and replace the cops with their own security forces.

The real crisis for the Lords of Capital arrives when the people demand nationalization of the banks and the permanent dethroning of finance capital, the actual ruling class.

Trump, of course, wants none of that. But, under his presidency, the contradictions of late stage imperial capitalism are becoming both much more intense, and more obvious to folks on the ground. And that’s scaring the hell out of the ruling class — which will make them a lot meaner.

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Glen Ford is executive editor of BAR. He can be contacted at [email protected].

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One of the biggest corruption cases faced by the oil industry in recent years is due to resume in Milan on Wednesday as two of the world’s biggest oil companies Royal Dutch Shell and Italian firm Eni are facing trial.

Prosecutors are bringing criminal charges against Shell and Eni executives over allegations of corruption regarding a $1.3 billion oil deal in Nigeria.

This is the first time an oil company as large as Shell or senior executives of a major oil company have ever stood trial for bribery offences.

The case, which has been repeatedly delayed, involves the 2011 purchase by Shell and Eni of Nigeria’s OPL 245 offshore oilfield — one of Africa’s most valuable oil blocks.

Prosecutors in Milan have accused Shell and Eni of paying bribes to win the licence to explore the field which has never entered into production.

They allege that Shell and Eni paid $1.1 billion into an account for the Nigeria government of which $800 million was later transferred to Malabu Oil and Gas, a company secretly owned by former Nigerian petroleum minister and convicted money launderer Dan Etete, to be distributed as payoffs.

The $800 million payment was wired through London by bank JP Morgan Chase. A lawsuit accusing JP Morgan of negligence against the transfer has been filed against the bank in Nigeria.

According to court documents seen by Reuters, the bank admitted it knew Etete would benefit from the $800 million payment. It also argued the UK’s Serious Organised Crime Agency (now the National Crime Agency) approved the payment.

JP Morgan denied negligence and previously said it “considers the allegations made in the claim to be unsubstantiated and without merit”.

Prosecutors in Milan have also alleged that $520 million from the deal was converted into cash and intended to be paid to the then Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan, members of the government and other Nigerian government officials.

They claimed $50 million in cash was also delivered to the home of Eni executive Roberto Casula.

Charges have been brought against Eni’s chief executive Claudio Descalzi and former chief of exploration and production for Shell Malcolm Brinded. No current Shell officials are facing charges in the case.

Both Shell and Eni have repeatedly denied wrongdoing.

In a statement, Shell said:

“We believe the trial judges will conclude that there is no case against Shell or its former employees. There is no place for bribery or corruption in our company.”

On its website, Eni said:

“Eni’s Board of Directors has reaffirmed its confidence that the company was not involved in alleged corrupt activities in relation to the transaction.The board of directors also confirmed its full confidence that chief executive Claudio Descalzi was not involved in the alleged illegal conduct and, more broadly, in his role as head of the company.”

The case is likely to shed some light on the murky dealings of international oil companies to access resources, including paying governments large sums of money in exchange of securing licensing rights.

Barnaby Pace, from NGO Global Witness, said the trial could be “a turning point” for the oil industry.

He said:

“Some of the most senior executives of two of the biggest companies in the world could face prison sentences for a deal struck under their watch. Shell has recently accused one of these former executives of taking kickbacks in a separate Nigerian deal. How long before Shell cracks over this case too?”

The case also highlights the role played by London in facilitating the transfer of money from oil companies to government officials.

Earlier this year, a special investigation by DeSmog UK revealed how small oil and gas companies are using London’s junior stock market, the Alternative Investment Market (AIM), to finance sometimes unsavoury business activities in frontier markets across Africa.

DeSmog UK’s Empire Oil investigation used the example of Sirius Petroleum, a small oil investment company listed on AIM and operating in the Niger Delta to shed some light on the exchange’s regulatory flaws and the City’s enabling role.

Talking about the Shell and Eni trial, Chairman of Nigerian NGO Human and Environmental Development Agenda, Lanre Suraju, said:

“It is a clear signal that it is no longer business as usual for oil companies in Nigeria. It’s time justice was served.”

“This case heralds the dawning of the age of accountability, a world where even the most powerful corporations can no longer hide their wrongdoing and avoid justice,” said Antonio Tricarico, from Italian anti-corruption NGO Re:Common.

DeSmog UK previously revealed how UK ministers agreed to lobby the Nigerian Government to protect Shell’s oil interests in the Niger Delta despite the company’s poor human rights and environmental record in the region.

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Featured image is from Lommer/Wikimedia Commons/CC BY-SA 3.0.

As one might expect of any event starring Donald Trump, reaction to the Trump-Kim summit in Singapore has been polarized. Republicans—the same people who condemned Barack Obama for visiting Cuba and John Kerry for meeting with Iranian leaders—defended Trump’s meeting with Kim Jong-un.

“The way I look at it is when you’re talking, you’re not fighting,” said Sen. John Cornyn, a Republican of Texas. “And I think in the interest of everybody involved, that avoiding military conflict is really important if we can — because obviously a lot of innocent people would die in the process.”

Meanwhile many Democrats accused Trump of making the United States look weak.

These reversals in party rhetoric were not the most striking aspect of summit commentary, however. Post-meeting criticisms from pundits, politicians, and experts were of two kinds. The first was perfectly reasonable; the second should trouble anyone with a genuine interest in arms control.

The first kind of criticism was that, Trump’s inflated rhetoric notwithstanding, the summit was actually a great big nothing burger. As national security columnist Max Boot put it in the Washington Post,

“The Singapore summit was a mesmerizing spectacle utterly lacking in substance. In other words, it was a perfect microcosm of the Trump presidency…The meeting really should have been held in Oakland, not Singapore, because there is no there there.” (In case you missed the literary allusion, Gertrude Stein famously said of Oakland, California, that “there’s no there there.”)

Nicholas Kristof, writing in the New York Times, levelled a similar criticism in more measured prose:

“The most remarkable aspect of the joint statement was what it didn’t contain. There was nothing about North Korea freezing plutonium and uranium programs, nothing about destroying intercontinental ballistic missiles, nothing about allowing inspectors to return to nuclear sites, nothing about North Korea making a full declaration of its nuclear program, nothing about a timetable, nothing about verification, not even any clear pledge to permanently halt testing of nuclear weapons or long-range missiles.”

Fair enough. The summit was more showbiz than arms control. It was not preceded, as would usually be the case, by months of painstaking, lawyerly negotiations between deputies to hammer out areas of agreement and disagreement, the latter to be resolved (if possible) by the two national leaders. Instead, it was largely a good-natured get-acquainted chat between two heads of state, accompanied by displays of mutual respect and followed by extravagant statements about denuclearization that are largely aspirational. Still, given that the two leaders in question were, just a few months ago, threatening to attack each other with weapons of mass destruction, this is clearly progress, even if it falls far short of an actual arms control agreement.

But it is the second kind of criticism that should really worry us. Here are some examples:

Sen. Robert Menendez, a New Jersey Democrat, said as the summit was beginning that

“North Korea has already extracted concessions” in the form of Kim’s “long-sought legitimacy and acceptance on the global stage.”

Alison Evans, a North Korea expert and risk consultant, said the

final communique “implicitly recognizes North Korea as a de facto nuclear weapons state,” and “this lends North Korea, and specifically Kim, legitimacy at home and abroad.”

Boot, meanwhile, also wrote that

“Kim won an invaluable propaganda windfall: Ruling one of the poorest and most despotic countries in the world (North Korea’s gross domestic product is smaller than Vermont’s), he was recognized as an equal by the leader of the world’s sole superpower.”

Anne Applebaum, another Washington Post pundit, wrote that

“For Kim Jong Un, this moment is vindication. The wisdom of his nuclear policy has been confirmed: His tiny, poor, often hungry country, where hundreds of thousands have perished in concentration camps that differ little from those built by Stalin, has been treated as the equal of the United States of America.”

And the New York Times editorial board opined that

“Mr. Kim’s wins were obvious. He got what his father and grandfather never did—a meeting with an American president, the legitimacy of being treated as an equal as a nuclear power on the world stage, country flags standing side by side.”

Such comments are, for a start, myopic. They make it sound as if the summit was a zero-sum prestige contest in which North Korea walked off with all the prize money. But the footage of the two smiling leaders represents a liability as well as a win for Kim. It may show that he is a player on the world stage, but for a regime that has built its legitimacy over decades around the notion that Americans are evil devils who cannot be trusted, such images also pose a danger. If Americans can be partners after all, what gives legitimacy to the hermit state and the iron-fisted discipline with which the Kim family has ruled? Remember: the Soviet regime was undone by glasnost, not decades of nuclear saber-rattling.

More to the point, criticisms of Trump for legitimizing Kim sound more like the complaints of old-money WASPS upset that nouveau riche people of color want to join their golf club than the statements of people seriously trying to solve the problems of nuclear proliferation or imminent war on the Korean Peninsula. They bring to mind comments made by American officials in response to nuclear tests by India and Pakistan in 1998. At that time, Secretary of State Madeline Albright said,

“it was clear that what the Indians and Pakistanis did was unacceptable, and that they are not now members of the nuclear club.” (If the tests showed anything, it was that, like it or not, India and Pakistan were indeed “members of the nuclear club.”)

Meanwhile former national security advisor Robert McFarlane wrote,

“we must make clear to the Indian government that it is today what it was two weeks ago: an arrogant, overreaching cabal that, by its devotion to the caste system, the political and cultural disenfranchisement of its people and its religious intolerance, is unworthy of membership in any club.”

Underlying such comments is a snotty assumption that nations are hierarchically ranked, that the United States is at the top of this hierarchy, and that it is beneath the dignity of the American president to be seen talking to certain kinds of people. From this perspective, maintaining status differentials is more important than avoiding nuclear war. For once, Trump got it right when he responded to a Time reporter who gave him a hard time for “a video that showed you and Kim Jong Un on equal footing.” He said,

“If I have to say I’m sitting on a stage with Chairman Kim and that gets us to save 30 million lives—it could be more than that—I’m willing to sit on a stage, I’m willing to travel to Singapore, very proudly.”

To state the obvious: with 10 to 20 nuclear weapons, North Korea is, whether we like it or not, now a member of the nuclear club. Any diplomatic strategy that treats North Korea the way it was 20 years ago, the way the United States wishes it still were, is an exercise in futility—unless the whole point is to put North Korea in what is no longer its place. American national security experts like to talk about being “realists.” It is not realistic to treat North Korea as if its nuclear weapons make no difference to its status.

National Security Advisor John Bolton wanted to treat North Korea like an unruly child, and the story the US media underplayed this week is that the Trump-Kim summit represented a stunning defeat for Bolton, who had done everything in his power to sabotage the summit and enshrine either regime change or unilateral surrender of nuclear weapons as the principal US goal in North Korea. Maybe there will be another reversal of fortune in the epic struggle between Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Bolton to dominate US policy toward Pyongyang, but for now, US and North Korean officials are talking for the first time in two decades. As Winston Churchill famously said, “to jaw-jaw is always better than to war-war.”

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Hugh Gusterson is a professor of anthropology and international affairs at George Washington University. His expertise is in nuclear culture, international security, and the anthropology of science. He has written two books on the culture of nuclear weapons scientists and antinuclear activists: Nuclear Rites: A Weapons Laboratory at the End of the Cold War (University of California Press, 1996) and People of the Bomb: Portraits of America’s Nuclear Complex (University of Minnesota Press, 2004).

Featured image is from the author.

Are the Hard Brexiteers – Jumping Ship?

June 19th, 2018 by True Publica

Featured image: Jacob Rees Mogg

There is something not quite right about the biggest cheerleaders for Britain leaving the European Union when they don’t actually believe in it themselves. You would think these individuals would want to reinforce their evangelical preaching with actions that speak louder than words.

A couple of months ago, the driving force behind Ukip Nigel Farage was forced into confirming that two of his children possess British and German passports, meaning they will maintain their free movement rights in the European Union after Brexit. Before that, the Independent reported that last year, Mr Farage was forced to deny he was applying for German citizenship himself after he was spotted queueing at the German embassy.

And, as TruePublica reported three weeks ago, another long-term cheerleader and central figure to the ‘Leave’ campaign was Nigel Lawson. He was Chancellor of the Exchequer from 1983-89 who said in a speech that:

Most of the world is not in the EU and … most of these countries are doing better economically than most of the European Union’. The alternative to membership of the EU is simple – it is ‘not being in the European Union.”

Firm in the belief that he was right all along until recently that is – Lawson has now applied for residency in …. France. And whilst I’m sure no-one thinks he shouldn’t do so under normal circumstances, we also shouldn’t forget that he was a vociferous campaigner to stop everyone else from having free movement to their favourite holiday spots in Europe. There is only one word for that – hypocrisy.

Another Brexiter planning to jump ship is Andy Wigmore, who helped run Leave.EU alongside Nigel Farage and Arron Banks. He’ll be taking advantage of his Belize citizenship and leaving the UK for the small tropical nation this summer.

Now we come to another, very high profile Brexiteer. Jacob Rees Mogg is the quintessential, traditional British elitist who has all the hallmarks of the 1850s deeply embedded into his DNA.

Born in Hammersmith, Mogg was educated at the Dragon and Eton, and later Trinity College, Oxford, where he became president of the Oxford University Conservative Association.

Having worked for a number of years in finance, he co-founded investment company Somerset Capital Management (SCM), which currently manages an investment fund of around $7.6bn (£5.5bn).

He is married to Helena de Chair, daughter of the late author Somerset de Chair and Lady Juliet Tadgell, who is set to inherit an estimated £45m from her mother. Their combined fortunes would then total something to the order of £100m–£150m.

Mogg entered politics in 1997. While canvassing for the seat in Fife, was driven around in a Mercedes by his nanny.

I was going to take my Bentley, but she wisely said that this would be seen as ostentatious and I should take Mummy’s Mercedes instead.’

He was elected MP for North East Somerset in 2010.

You don’t get more (British) elitist (1850s) than that.

However, the Mail on Sunday reported that

Jacob Rees-Mogg’s investment firm has a stake in a string of Russian companies with links to the Kremlin and to some of Moscow’s wealthiest oligarchs. SCM has also bought shares in two Russian firms blacklisted by the US and others which are controlled by powerful oligarchs in President Vladimir Putin’s inner circle.

“These Russian investments are not what you would expect to find in a Rees-Mogg fund,” said Justin Urquhart Stewart, of Seven Investment Management. “As a politician, he has taken a hardline stance on Brexit and on Russia. So to have a fund investing millions in Russian companies goes totally against what he says he stands for. This is hardly a pro-UK fund, as it has no stake in the future prosperity of Britain.”

Ress-Mogg clearly stated in the line of criticism that his SCM fund really only invests in emerging economies, which makes higher risk funds produce higher rewards.

That excuse would be fine if it was true. Hot on the heels of that news comes a report from CityWire’s Wealth Manager where we learn that Moggs SCM investment company is opening up its flagship dividend growth fund to a new audience in, wait for it  …. Europe. This is a Dublin-domiciled feeder fund which has £1.4 billion (€1.6 billion) in assets under management.

Somerset Capital Management said the decision to launch the feeder was in direct response to increased offshore demand from investors. Yes, offshore demand no less. In other words, it’s a fund for British investors who want to invest long-term in Europe – not in Britain itself.

Despite the Tory MP’s avowed and unwavering belief that the British economy will more than just thrive after Brexit, the funds in SCM have nothing invested in the UK. And you could argue that Rees-Mogg is vindicated by the belief that Britain is not a good investmest because it’s too stable. But that would be a lie too – according to his own company.

Just a few days ago, SCM privately warned its clients about ‘considerable uncertainty’ during Brexit. In fact, what SCM is actually warning about is a hard Brexit – the one advocated by Rees-Mogg himself.

The Guardian reported that

The disclosure is embarrassing for Rees-Mogg. The parliamentarian has repeatedly dismissed the concerns of those worried about the financial risks of Brexit and has argued the UK needs to quit the single market and customs union so the country is not a “rule taker” from Brussels.”

In contrast, the SCM prospectus warns:

During, and possibly after, this period there is likely to be considerable uncertainty as to the position of the UK and the arrangements which will apply to its relationships with the EU.

Rees-Mogg tried to deflect criticism by saying “guidance to investors that was drafted by lawyers.”

Yet, Rees-Mogg, who earns £14,000 a month basic salary from SCM for a few hours a month, invests his time and fortunes outside of Britain. Lawson another high-priest of isolationism is investing his entire future in a political union he is supposed to despise along with Brexit Bishop Farage, who feels his own children should have the right to Europe’s freedoms, but no-one else’s should.

Then, we come to Liam Fox – a man who for decades has believed in America more than he does in Britain. Amongst many of his transgressions against the British people and state, Fox accepted a £50,000 donation from Jon Moulton, whose investment firm owns Gardner Aerospace, the largest aerospace supplier …. in Europe.

This old Tory “establishment” of hardened Brexiteers are the enemies within. They are little more than political anarchists. According to the government’s own figures, the type of Brexit these men advocate will see a recession of between 2 and 8 per cent. The former is representative of most post-war recessions, the latter would be catastrophic.

North Korea: What Price Peace?

June 19th, 2018 by Askiah Adam

First it was the Panmunjom Declaration and now, after some two months, on 12 June the Singapore Joint Declaration was signed, the former between the leaders of the two Koreas, Chairman Kim Jong-un of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) or North Korea and President Moon Jae-in of the Republic of Korea (ROK) or South Korea. The latter, meanwhile, was inked by Donald Trump, the President of the United States, and Kim. The central theme for both is peace for the Korean Peninsula premised on its denuclearization.

Item 3 of the Singapore Declaration was unequivocal:

“Reaffirming the April 27, 2018 Panmunjom Declaration, the DPRK commits towards complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.”

The continuity between the two declarations then is unmistakeable.

Unfortunately, reasons exist to cast a shadow over this ray of hope. Indeed the Singapore Declaration was much anticipated and is well received. But there is, too, much pessimism. The recent unilateral abandonment of the Iran nuclear agreement, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) by the United States is one. Iran, naturally, advised Kim to be wary. Simply put, Washington’s words are not worth the paper they’re printed on because there have been many previous instances where it reneged on its commitments. For example, one of Trump’s earliest moves was to withdraw from the Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA), a trade agreement signed and awaiting ratification by the 12 participating Pacific rim countries. NATO’s eastwards expansion towards the Russian border is another case of words betrayed. This was by the administration of Bush senior.

Not unnaturally, when the Singapore Declaration speaks of establishing US-DPRK friendly relations and for both parties to work at building peace for the Korean Peninsula hopes were kept realistic despite Trump’s announcement that US military exercises in South Korea will be suspended for the time being. This surprised even the ROK President. The US therefore, appeared to make good its intentions for peace. North Korea on its part had destroyed its missile test site even while the status of the summit was still uncertain.

However, the devil is in the details, which the Singapore Declaration left vague. Extensive negotiations then are inevitable. If the JCPOA took nine years to achieve could peace for Korea be arrived at faster? And, if the JCPOA is anything to go by could America’s cavalier attitude to peace be a a major spoiler?

The United States foreign policy is one of perpetual war. Where its soldiers are not on the ground, proxy armies are used to destabilise countries, as in Libya and Syria. To then be wholeheartedly optimistic about Korea is difficult, if not impossible especially when NATO military forces are building up along the Russia-Europe border, replete with military exercises which grow in intensity with every passing year.

America’s perpetual war policy is part of its imperial design to establish the so-called New World Order (NWO). Economic and military hostilities towards even superpowers Russia and China is indication of this malevolent inclination. And so, before a peace agreement can be signed and the Korean War well and truly ended the imperative is for a paradigm shift to occur in American foreign policy; one where there is acceptance that American hegemony is resented and a multipolar world is emerging. But no such thing is happening.

Does this mean that a Korean peace can be dismissed off hand as nothing but a pipe dream and the Singapore Declaration more an entrapment strategy than a liberating one? After all, Trump has said that sanctions on the DPRK stays.

But something odd occurred at the Summit. Trump played a 4-minute documentary on the options open to North Korea: a state of perpetual insecurity and war or prosperity through economic cooperation with America. Pyongyang is being placed squarely between a rock and a hard place.

Over the years North Korea has shown its resilience, circumventing American and international sanctions even as the noose tightens with every alleged breach. Rebuilding its cities from the ground up after having been razed to the ground by American bombing during the Korean War testifies to the people’s ingenuity. Reports of a backward, isolated country have proven false with recent visitors extolling its modern cityscapes. With the memories of a devastated country and a population decimated by at least 20 per cent still fresh in the Korean consciousness it is hard, therefore, to factor in an unforced capitulation by Pyongyang.

The Korean Peninsula is a flashpoint. For as long as tens of thousands of American soldiers are stationed in South Korea, North Korea cannot feel safe. But the Panmunjom Declaration demonstrated the two Koreas desire for peace. Yet Seoul does not decide its own security preferences. 

Furthermore, even if Trump had the will can he successfully undermine the deep state which has placed obstacles in his path throughout the 18 months he has been in office? Indeed, the dithering over the Summit could be an indication of him trying to override the neoconservatives in his administration, namely, John Bolton his National Security Advisor and Mike Pompeo, his Secretary of State. But this does not mean that neoconservatives want only war. 

North Korea is reputedly rich in untapped natural resources. Must Pyongyang then surrender its economic sovereignty to Washington before peace is possible for the peninsula? 

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Askiah Adam is Executive Director of International Movement for a JUST World (JUST).


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The West Really Hates China!

June 19th, 2018 by Andre Vltchek

It appears that the Western public, both relatively ‘educated’ and thoroughly ignorant, could, after some persuasion, agree on certain very basic facts – for instance that Russia has historically been a victim of countless European aggressions, or that countries like Venezuela, Cuba, Iran or North Korea (DPRK) have never in modern history crossed the borders of foreign nations in order to attack, plunder or to overthrow governments.

OK, certainly, it would take some ‘persuasion’, but at least in specific circles of the otherwise hopelessly indoctrinated Western society, certain limited dialogue is still occasionally possible.

China is different. There is no ‘mercy’ for China, in the West. By many standards, the greatest and one of the oldest cultures on Earth, has been systematically smeared, insulted, ridiculed and arrogantly judged by the opinion-makers, propagandists, ‘academia’ and mainstream press with seats in London, New York, Paris and many other places which the West itself calls the centers of ‘erudition’ and ‘freedom of information’.

Anti-Chinese messages are sometimes overt, but mostly thinly veiled. They are almost always racist and based on ignorance. And the horrifying reality is: they work!

They work for many reasons. One of them is that while the North Asians in general, and the Chinese people in particular, have been learning with zeal all about the rest of the world, the West is thoroughly ignorant about almost everything Asian and Chinese.

I personally conducted a series of simple but revealing ‘experiments’ in China, Korea and Japan, as well as in several countries of the West: while almost every North Asian child can easily identify at least a few basic ‘icons’ of Western culture, including Shakespeare and Mozart, most of the European university professors with PhDs could not name one single Korean film director, Chinese classical music composer, or a Japanese poet.

Westerners know nothing about Asia! Not 50% of them, now even 90%, but most likely somewhere in the area of 99.9%.

And it goes without saying, that Korea is producing some of the best art films in the world, while China and Japan are renowned for their exquisite classical art, as well as modern masterpieces.

In the West, the same ignorance extends to Chinese philosophy, its political system and history. In both Europe and North America, there is absolute darkness, withering ignorance, regarding the Chinese vision of the world. In Paris or Berlin, China is being judged exclusively by Western logic, by Western ‘analysts’, with unsurpassable arrogance.

Racism is the only fundamental explanation, although there are many other, secondary reasons for this state of affairs.

Western racism, which used to humiliate, attack and ruin China for centuries, has gradually changed its tactics and strategies. From the openly and colorfully insulting and vulgar, it has steadily evolved into something much more ‘refined’ but consistently manipulative.

The spiteful nature of the Western lexicon of superiority has not disappeared.

In the past, the West used to depict Chinese people as dirty animals. Gradually, it began depicting the Chinese Revolution as animalistic, as well as the entire Chinese system, throwing into the battle against the PRC and the Communist Party of China, such concepts and slogans as “human rights”. 

We are not talking about human rights that could and should be applicable and respected in all parts of the world (like the right to life) protection for all the people of the Planet. That’s because it is clear that the most blatant violators of such rights have been, for many centuries, the Western countries. 

If all humans were to be respected as equal beings, all countries of the West would have to be tried and indicted, then occupied and harshly punished for countless genocides and holocausts committed in the past and present. The charges would be clear: barbarity, theft, torture as well as the slaughter of hundreds of millions of people in Africa, the Middle East, what is now called Latin America, and of course almost everywhere in Asia. Some of the most heinous crimes of the West were committed against China and its people.

The ‘human rights’ concept, which the West is constantly using against China is ‘targeted’. Most of the accusations and ‘facts’ have been taken out of the context of what has been occurring on the global scale (now and in the history). Exclusively, Eurocentric views and ‘analyses’ have been applied. Chinese philosophy and logic have been fully ignored; never taken seriously. No one in the West asks the Chinese people what they really want (only the so-called ‘dissidents’ are allowed to speak through the mass media to the Western public). Such an approach is not supposed to defend or to help anybody; instead it is degrading, designed to cause maximum damage to the most populous country on Earth, to its unique system, and increasingly, to its important global standing.

It is obvious that the Western academia and mass media are funded by hundreds of millions and billions of dollars to censor the mainstream Chinese voices, and to promote dark anticommunist and anti-PRC nihilism.

I know one Irish academic based in North Asia, who used to teach in China. He told me, with pride, that he used to provoke Chinese students:

“Do you know that Mao was a pedophile?”

And he ridiculed those who challenged him and found his discourses distasteful.

But such an approach is quite acceptable for the Western academia based in Asia. Reverse the tables and imagine a Chinese academic who comes to London to teach Chinese language and culture, beginning his classes by asking the students whether they know that Churchill used to have sex with animals? What would happen? Would he get fired right away or at the end of the day?

*

The West has no shame, and it is time for the entire world to understand this simple fact.

In the past, I have often compared this situation to some medieval village, attacked and plundered by brigands (The West). Food stores were ransacked, houses burned, women raped and children forced into slavery, then subjected to thorough brainwashing.

Any resistance was crushed, brutally. People were told to spy on each other, to expose “terrorists” and “dangerous elements” in society, in order to protect the occupation regime.

Only two “economic systems” were allowed – feudalism and capitalism.

If the villagers elected a mayor who was ready to defend their interests, the brigands would murder him, unceremoniously. Murder or overthrow him, so there would always be a status quo.

But there had to be some notion of justice, right?

Once in a while, the council of the brigands would catch a thief who had stolen few cucumbers or tomatoes. And they would then brag that they protect the people and the village. While everything had already been burned to ashes by them

Given the history and present of China, given the horrid and genocidal nature of the Western past, ancient and modern, given the fact that China is by all definitions, the most peaceful large nation on Earth, how can anybody in the West even pronounce the words like ‘human rights’, let alone criticize China, Russia, Cuba or any other country that it put on its hit-list?

Of course, China, Russia or Cuba are not “perfect countries” (there are no perfect countries on Earth, and there never will be), but should a thief and mass murderer be allowed to judge anybody?

Obviously yes! It is happening, constantly. 

The West is unapologetic. It is because it is ignorant, thoroughly uninformed about its own past and present deeds, or conditioned to be uninformed. It is also because the West is truly a fundamentalist society, unable to analyze and to compare. It cannot see, anymore.

What is being offered by its politicians and replicated by the servile academia and mass media, is totally twisted.

Almost the entire world is in the same condition as the village that I just described.

But it is China (and also Russia, Cuba, Venezuela, Syria, Iran, and other nations) that is being portrayed as villains and tormentors of the people. Black becomes white. War is peace. Slavery is freedom. A mass rapist is a peacemaker and a cop.

*

Once again: The West hates China. Let us be totally honest.

China has to understand it, and act accordingly. Sooner rather than later.

As we have already determined, the hatred towards China is irrational, illogical, purely racist; mainly based to the superiority complex of Western “thinkers”. 

But also, it is based on the subconscious fear of the Westerners that Chinese culture and its socialist system (with all its ‘imperfections’) are greatly superior to the culture of terror and thuggery spread throughout our Planet by both Europeans and then North Americans.

Several years ago, I was interviewed by various Chinese media outlets, including the legendary People’s Daily, China Radio International and CCTV (now CGTN).

They all wanted to know why, despite all those great efforts of China to befriend the world, there is so much Sino phobia in Western countries. I had to face the same question, again and again:

“What else could we do? We tried everything… What else?”

Because of its tremendous hereditary optimism, the Chinese nation could not grasp one simple but essential fact: the more China does for the world, the less aggressively it behaves, the more it will be hated and demonized in the West. It is precisely because China is, unlike the West, trying to improve the lives of the entire planet Earth, that it will never be left in peace, it will never be prized, admired or learned from in such places like London, Paris or New York.

I replied to those who were interviewing me:

“They hate you, therefore you are doing something right!”

My answer, perhaps, sounded too cynical to the Chinese people. However, I wasn’t trying to be cynical. I was just trying to answer, honestly, a question about the psyche of Western culture, which has already murdered hundreds of millions of human beings, worldwide. It was, after all, the greatest European psychologist of all time, Carl Gustav Jung, who diagnosed Western culture as “pathology”.

But Who Really Hates China and How Much?

But let’s get numbers: who hates China and how much? Mainly, the Westerners – Europeans and North Americans. And Japan, which actually murdered tens of millions of Chinese people, plus China’s main regional rival, Vietnam.

Only 13% of the Japanese see China favorably, according to a Pew Research Center Poll conducted in 2017. 83% of the Japanese, a country which is the main ally of the West in Asia, see China “unfavorably”. In Italy which is hysterically anti-Chinese and scandalously racist at that, the ratio is 31% favorably, 59% unfavorably. Shocking? Of course, it is. But Germany does not fare much better, with 34% – 53%. The United States – 44% – 47%. France 44% – 52%. Entire half of Spanish nation sees China unfavorably – 43% – 43%.

Now something really shocking: the “rest of the world”. The numbers are totally the opposite! South Africa: 45% see China favorably, 32% unfavorably. Argentina 41% – 26%. Even the Philippines which is being pushed constantly by the West into confrontation with China: 55% favorably – 40% unfavorably. Indonesia that perpetrated several anti-Chinese pogroms and even banned the Chinese language after the US-sponsored coup in 1965: 55% favorably – 36% unfavorably. Mexico 43% – 23%. Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela: 52% – 29%. Chile 51% – 28%.

Then it gets even more interesting: Lebanon: 63% – 33%. Kenya: 54% – 21%. Brazil 52% – 25%. Tunisia 63% – 22%. Russia: 70% – 24%. Tanzania 63% – 15%. Senegal 64% – 10%. And the most populous country in Sub Saharan Africa, Nigeria – 72% – 13%.

The 2017 BBC World Service poll, Views of China’s influence by country, gives even more shocking results:

At the two extremes, in Spain, only 15% see China’s influence as positive, while 68% see it as negative. In Nigeria, 83% as positive and only 9% as negative.

Now, think for a while what these numbers really say.

Who is really benefiting from China’s growing importance on the world scene? Of course – the wretched of the Earth; the majority of our Planet! Who are those who are trying to stop China from helping the colonized and oppressed people? The old and new colonialist powers!

China is predominantly hated by Western imperialist countries (and by their client states, like Japan and South Korea), while it is loved by the Africans), most Asians and Latin Americans, as well as Russians.

Tell an African what is being said to the Europeans – about the negative or even “neo-imperialist”, influence of China on the African continent – and he or she will die laughing.

Just before submitting this essay, I received a comment from Kenya, from my comrade Booker Ngesa Omole, National Organizing Secretary, SDP-Kenya (Socialist):

“The relationship of China and Kenya particularly and Africa generally has not only led to tremendous development both in infrastructure but also a genuine cultural exchange among the Chinese and African people, it has also made African people understand the Chinese people firsthand, away from the daily half-truths and lies generated against China and the Chinese people and transmitted en masse globally through the lie factories like CNN. It’s has also shown that there is a different way to relate to the so called development partners and the international capital, the Chinese have developed a policy of non-interference in the internal affairs of a sovereign country as opposed to USA and Western Countries through IMF and World Bank who have imposed destructive policies on the continent that has led to the suffering and death of many African people, like that infamous Structural Adjustment Plan, that was a killer plan, after its implementation Kenyans unemployment skyrocketed, our country also became bankrupt. 

Another comparison is the speed at which the projects are done, in the past we had a gruesome bureaucratic expensive process, which could take several years before any work could start on the ground. This has changed with the coming in of Chinese capital, we see the projects are being effected just in time, we see very high quality work contrary to what the western media want to portray that everything from China and Russia are fake before arrival.”

*

The Chinese system (Communism or socialism with Chinese characteristics), is in its essence truly internationalist. 

Image result for Patriotism and Internationalism mao zedong

As Chairman Mao Tse Tung wrote in his “Patriotism and Internationalism”:

“Can a Communist, who is an internationalist, at the same time be a patriot? We hold that he not only can be but also must be… The victory of China and defeat of the invading imperialists will help the people of other countries…”

Chairman Mao wrote this during the China’s liberation struggle against Japanese invaders. However, not much has really changed since then.

China is definitely willing and capable of putting much of the world devastated by Western imperialism, back onto its feet. It is big enough to do it, it is strong enough, it is determined and full of optimism.

The West produces, directly manufactures, crises and confrontations, like the one that took place in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square in 1989, or the one that never really managed to ‘take off’ (mainly due to the disgust of the majority of the local people with the selfish and pro-Western protesters) in Hong Kong, in 2014.

However, those Western implants and proxies are all that most Europeans and North Americans know about China (PRC): ‘Human Rights’, Falun Gong, Tibet, Dalai Lama, ‘Northwest of the Country’ (here, they don’t remember, or cannot pronounce the names, but they were told in the mainstream Western media that China is doing ‘something sinister’ there, so that’s what they are repeating), Tiananmen Square, Ai Wei-Wei and few other disconnected barks, ‘events’, and names.

This is how this colossus with thousands of years of history, culture and philosophy, is perceived, judged, and how it is (mis-) understood.

The entire situation would be laughable, if it were not so tragic, so thoroughly appalling and dangerous.

It is becoming clear who really hates China: it is not the “world”, and it is not those countries on all the continents that have been brutalized and enslaved by the Western imperialists. There, China is loved. 

Those who hate China are the nations which are not ready to let go of their de facto colonies. The nations who are used to a good, too good and too easy life at the expense of others. To them, historically egalitarian and now for many decades socialist/Communist (with Chinese characteristics) China poses a truly great threat. Threat – not to their survival or peaceful existence, but threat to their looting and raping of the world.

China’s internationalist attitude towards the world, its egalitarianism and humanism, its emphasis on hard work and the tremendous optimism of its people, may soon, very soon, break the horrid inertia and the lethargy injected by Europe and the United States into the veins of all raped, plundered and humiliated nations. 

China Has Already Suffered Enough!

In his ground-breaking book “China Is Communist, Damn It!”, a prominent China expert, Jeff Brown (who is presently based in Shenzhen) writes about the dehumanizing treatment, which the Chinese people had been receiving from Westerners, for centuries:

“…untold numbers in the 19th century… were pressganged and kidnapped, to be sent to the New World to work as coolie slaves.

The racism conducted on these Chinese coolies was instructive. On the ocean voyage from China to Vancouver, Canada, they were tightly packed and kept in dark, poorly ventilated holds for the three-week trip, so they would not have any contact with the Whites traveling aboveboard. No sunlight, no fresh air. The crew on the ships routinely talked about these Chinese allies in terms of “livestock” and they were handled and treated as such. Actually, they were treated worse than cattle, pigs, sheep and horses, as there are laws that require animals get so much open air and exercise per day, while in transit…

This kind of inhumane treatment of Chinese citizens is dispassionately captured in the diaries of a British officer, charged with overseeing them,

‘As children, we were taught that Cain and Coolies were murderers from the beginning; no Coolie was to be trusted; he was a yellow dog… The task of stowing away Coolies is a tiresome one. In orders, it is alluded to as “embarkation”. By those experienced in the job, it is known more as “packing”. The Coolies are not passengers capable of finding each his cabin. The Coolies are so much cargo, livestock, which has to be packed away. While experiences are ceaselessly pressing upon him, his attitude towards existence is the attitude of a domesticated animal.’

British 2nd Lieutenant Daryl Klein, from his memoir, “With the Chinks”, spoken like a true Western imperial racist. Of course, chinks is the worst slur word to be used against the Chinese. It’s the equivalent of yellow nigger. The term Coolie is not any better. It’s like calling someone from Latin America a wetback. At least Lt. Klein was honest in his total dehumanization of the Dreaded Other.

There are countless examples of discrimination against, and humiliation of the Chinese people by the Western colonialists, on the territory of China. The Chinese were literally butchered and enslaved in their own territory, by the Westerners and the Japanese.

However, there were also despicable crimes committed against Chinese people on the territory of the United States, including lynching, and other types of killing.

Hard working, many Chinese men were brought as slave laborers to the United States and to Europe, where they were often treated worse than animals. For no other reason but for just being Chinese. No apologies or compensation were ever offered for such acts of barbarity; not even decades and centuries later. Until now, there is a silence surrounding the topic, although one has to wonder whether it is really simple ‘silence’ that grows from ignorance, or whether it is something much more sinister; perhaps defiance and conscious or subconscious refusal to condemn the fruits of Western culture, which are imperialism, racism and consequently – fascism. 

Gwen Sharp, PhD, wrote on June 20, 2014 for Sociological Images in his essay ‘Old “Yellow-Peril” Anti-Chinese Propaganda’:

“Chinese men were stereotyped as degenerate heroin addicts whose presence encouraged prostitution, gambling, and other immoral activities.  A number of cities on the West Coast experienced riots in which Whites attacked Asians and destroyed Chinese sections of town. Riots in Seattle in 1886 resulted in practically the entire Chinese population being rounded up and forcibly sent to San Francisco. Similar situations in other towns encouraged Chinese workers scattered throughout the West to relocate, leading to the growth of Chinatowns in a few larger cities on the West Coast.”

Throughout history, China and its people have suffered at the hands of Westerners, both Europeans and North Americans alike.

According to several academic and other sources, including a publication “History And Headlines” (History: October 9, 1740: Chinezenmoord, The Batavia Massacre):

“On October 9, 1740, Dutch colonial overlords on the Island of Java (now a main island in Indonesia) in the port city of Batavia (now Jakarta, capital of Indonesia) went on a mad killing spree of ethnic cleansing and murdered about 10,000 ethnic Chinese. The Dutch word, “Chinezenmoord,” literally means “Chinese Murder.”

Anti-Chinese massacres were also repeatedly committed by the Spanish occupiers of the Philippines, and there were countless other cases of anti-Chinese ethnic cleansing and massacres committed by the European colonialist administrations, in various parts of the world.

The ransacking of Beijing’s Summer Palace by French and British forces was one of the most atrocious crimes committed by Westerners on the territory of China. An outraged French novelist, Victor Hugo, then wrote:

“We call ourselves civilized and them barbarians. Here is what Civilization has done to Barbarity.”

*

The West cannot treat Chinese people this way, anymore, but if it could get away with it, it definitely still would.

The superiority complex in both Europe and North America is powerful and unapologetic. There is real great danger that if unchecked and unopposed, it may soon terminate all life on our Planet. The final holocaust would be accompanied by self-righteous speeches, unrestrained arrogance, gasping ignorance of the state of the world, and generally no regrets.

Chinese people cannot be beaten on the streets of Europe or North America, anymore; they cannot be, at least theoretically, insulted directly in the face just for being Chinese (although that is still happening).

But there are many different ways to hurt and deeply injure a human being or the country.

My close friend, a brilliant Chinese concert pianist, Yuan Sheng, once told me, right after he left a well-paid teaching position in New York, and moved permanently back to Beijing:

“In the United States, I used to cry late into the night, almost every night… I felt so helpless. Things they were saying about my country… And it was impossible to convince them that they were totally wrong!”

Several years later, at the “First World Cultural Forum” held in Beijing, an Egyptian-French fellow thinker Amin Said argued that we are all victims of capitalism. I strongly disagreed, and confronted him there, in Beijing, and later in Moscow where we spoke, again, side by side.

“Western bigotry, brutality and imperialism are much older than capitalism. I believe that the things are precisely the opposite: Western violent culture is the core of the savage capitalism.”

Recently, while addressing students and teachers at one of old alternative and officially progressive schools in Scandinavia, I finally understood the scope of the creeping anti-Chinese sentiments in Europe.

During my presentation about the global conflicts being fueled by the United States and Europe, the audience was silent and attentive. I spoke at a huge hall, addressing some 2 – 3 hundred people, most of them future educators.

There was some sort of standing ovation. Then questions. Then discussion over coffee. There, precisely then, things got very wrong.

A girl came and with an angelic smiled uttered:

“Sorry, I know nothing about China…. But what about the Northwest of the country?”

The northwest of China is a few times bigger than Scandinavia. Could she be more specific? No, she couldn’t:

“You know, the human rights… Minorities…”

An Italian girl approached me, saying she is studying philosophy. The same line of questions:

“I don’t know much about China, but…”

Then her questions got aggressive:

“What do you mean when you talk about ‘China’s humanism?’”

She was not asking, she was attacking. I snapped at her:

“You don’t want to listen, you simply want to hear yourself repeating what they brainwashed you with.”

One of the organizers of the conference hated my interaction with her spoiled, rude, self-centered and uneducated brats. I could not care less. I told her directly to her face.

“Then why did you accept the invitation to be a keynote speaker?” she asked.

I answered, honestly:

“To study the Europeans, anthropologically. To face your racism and ignorance.”

Next day, the same. I showed my shocking documentary film “Rwanda Gambit”, about how the West created the totally false Rwanda narrative, and how it triggered real genocide, that in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

But all that the audience wanted to discuss was China!

One said:

“I saw a Chinese government company building two sports stadiums in Zambia. Isn’t it strange?”

Really? Strange? The Chinese health system is mainly based on prevention and it is successful. Building stadiums is a crime?

Another one recalled that in West Africa,

“China was planting cashew nuts.”

That was supposed to match centuries of horrors of Western colonialism, the mass murder and slavery of hundreds of millions of Africans at the hands of the Brits, French, Germans, Belgians and others.

At the airport, leaving back for Asia, I wanted to throw up and simultaneously, to shout from joy. I was going home, leaving this brainwashed continent – this intellectual bordello behind.

The West was beyond salvation. It will not stop or repent. 

It can only be stopped, and it has to be stopped. 

*

Jeff Brown in his book “China Is Communist, Damn It!” pointed out one essential difference between the Chinese and Western mindset:

“China and the West could not be more different. Western civilization is founded on Greek philosophy, culture, politics and economy. Ancient Greece was composed of hundreds of relatively small, independent city-states, which on a daily basis, were comparatively isolated from each other. They were separated by water or mountain ranges, ensconced in bays and valleys. Each city-state’s population could usually be counted in the thousands, not millions. There were a number of different dialects, with varying degrees of mutual comprehension, from familiar to total misunderstanding. Contact with each other was based on commerce and trade, grounding Western economy in the precepts of capitalism. The notion of personal agency in the West is founded in this economic system, where farmers, landowners, merchants and craftsmen were able to work and make business decisions individually, between themselves. Each city-state had its own independent government and over the centuries, there were phases of monarchy, oligarchy, tyranny and democracy. Local wars were frequent, to settle disagreements. These battles happened steadily, as ancient Greece’s agricultural production was not abundant, due to poor soils and limited tillable land. When food became scarce with droughts, agricultural trade could be interrupted, due to shortages, thus stoking the need for war, to reclaim the lost purchases of food.

Ancient and modern China could not be more radically different. Life, the economy and development all revolved around a large central government, headed by the emperor. Instead of being based on trade and commerce, China’s economy has always been founded on agricultural production and the harvests were and still are largely sold to the state. Why? Because the government is expected to maintain the Heavenly Mandate, which means making sure that all of the citizens have enough to eat. Therefore, farmers always knew that the grain they grew could very easily end up in another part of China, because of distant droughts. This whole idea of central planning extended to flood control. Communities in one area of China would be tasked to build dams or canals, not to help reduce flood risk for themselves, but for other citizens far away, downstream, all for the collective good.

The idea of independent city-states is anathema in China, as it always signaled a breakdown in the central power’s cohesion and governance, from border to border, leading to warlordism, strife and hunger.” 

Chinese socialist (or call it Communist) system has clearly roots in China’s ancient history.

It is based on sharing and cooperation, on solidarity and harmony.

It is a much more suitable system for humanity, than what the West spread by force to all corners of the world.

When the West succeeds in something, it feels that it has “won”. It drives the banner pole into the earth, gets some fermented drink to celebrate, and feels superior, unique.

China thinks differently: “if our neighbors are doing well and are at peace, then China will prosper too, and will enjoy peace. We can trade, we can visit each other, exchange ideas.”

In the ancient days Chinese ships used to visit Africa, what is now Somalia and Kenya. The ships were huge. In those days, Europe had nothing so enormous at its disposal. Chinese ships were armed against the pirates, but they mainly travelled with scribes, scholars, doctors and researchers.

When they reached the African shore, they made contacts with the locals. They studied each other, exchanged gifts (some Chinese pottery and ceramics are still being found near the island of Lamu).

There was not much common ground between those two cultures, at that time. The Chinese scribes recorded: “This is not yet right time for permanent contact”. They left gifts on the shore, and sailed home. Nobody died. Nobody was “converted”. No one was raped. African land still belonged to Africans. African people were free to do what they chose.

A century or two later, the Westerners arrived…

*

I know China, but even better, I know the world in which China operates.

The more I see, the more I am impressed – I actually want China to be everywhere, and as soon as possible!

I have worked in all the tiny and large nations of Oceania (Polynesia, Melanesia and Micronesia), except in Niue and Nauru. There, the West divided this gorgeous and once proud part of the world, created bizarre borders, literally forced people to eat shit (dumping animal food in local stores), burdened them with foreign loans and introduced a culture of dependency and destruction (nuclear experiments, and military bases). Due to global warming, RMI, Kiribati and Tuwalu began “sinking” (in reality, the water is rising).

China came, with real internationalist determination. It began doing everything right – planting mangroves, building sport facilities for people in countries where over half of the population has to often live with diabetes. It constructed government buildings, hospitals, schools. The response of the West? They encouraged Taiwan to come, bribe the local governments and to make them recognize Taipei as the capital of an independent country, forcing China to break diplomatic relationships.

In Africa, I saw Chinese people building roads, railroads, even city trams, schools, hospitals, fighting malaria. This continent was only plundered by the West. Europeans and North Americans built nothing there. China did, and still does, miracles. Out of solidarity, out of internationalist principles so clearly defined decades ago by Chairman Mao.

And I don’t really care what the Western propagandists and ideologues think about the Chinese Communist Party, about Mao and about President Xi Jinping. I see results! I see China, huge, compassionate and confident, rising, and with its close allies like Russia, ready to defend the world.

China saved Cuba. The Western “left-wing” intellectuals said nothing about it. I did. I was attacked. Then, Fidel personally confirmed that I was correct.

China helped Venezuela and it helped Syria. Not for profit, but because it was its internationalist duty.

I saw China in action in East Timor, (Timor Leste), a tiny poor country that the West sacrificed, delivering it on a silver platter to the murderous Indonesian dictator Suharto and his military cronies. 30% of the people were brutally massacred. After independence, Australia began robbing the weak new government of the natural gas in a disputed area. China came in, built the energy sector and an excellent modern hospital (public), staffed with top Chinese surgeons (while Cuba sent field doctors).

Afghanistan? After 16 years of monstrous NATO occupation, this once proud and progressive (before the West manufactured terrorist movements there, to fight socialism) country is one of the poorest on Earth. The West built walls, barbed wire fences, military bases and total misery. China? China built a huge modern hospital wing, actually the only decent and functioning public medical facility in the country.

These are just some of many examples that I have been witnessing during my work, all over the world.

When I lived in Africa (I was based in Nairobi for several years), across the floor was a flat housing four Chinese engineers.

While the Westerners in Africa are almost always secretive, snobbish and arrogant, this group of Chinese builders was loud, enthusiastic and always in a great mood. They power-walked downstairs, in the garden, they ate, joked together. They looked like a good old “socialist realism” poster. They were clearly on a mission. They were building, trying to save the continent. And it was so clear how confident they were.

They were building, and I was making documentary films about what the West did to Africa, including my above-mentioned Rwanda Gambit.

It was clear where I stood. It was clear where the Chinese engineers stood. We stood with the people of Africa. Firmly. No matter what the Western propaganda, academia and mass media keep inventing, that is where we stood, and that is where we are standing right now, although geographically far apart. Once comrades, always comrades. And if we fall, that is how we fall – with no regrets, building a much better world.

And the people of Africa, of Oceania, Latin America and increasingly of Asia, are beginning to realize, to understand.

They are learning what The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is. They are learning about “Ecological Civilization”. They are slowly learning that not everyone is the same; that each country has a different culture and goals. They are learning that not everything in life is a lie or for profit. Yes of course, resources are not unlimited and expenses have to be sometimes covered, but there is much more to life than just cold calculations.

The West and its client states cannot understand this. Or they can, but do not want to. As a moral entity, they are finished. They can only fight for their own interests, as their workers in Paris are only fighting for their own benefits; definitely not for the world. 

The West tries to smear everything that is pure and it repeats that “everyone in this world is essentially the same” (a thief).

Their (mainly Western, but also South Korean, Taiwanese, Hong Kong and Japanese) academia is deeply involved. It has already infiltrated the entire world, particularly Asia, including China itself. It teaches young Chinese people that their country is actually not what they think it is! At some point, Chinese students were travelling to the West, in order to study… about China!

North American and European universities are spreading funding and trying to manipulate the best Chinese minds.

In other parts of Asia, again through funding and scholarships, the local academics “get matched” with the anti-Communist and pro-Western counterparts that operate at the universities inside the PRC.

This problem has been, fortunately, identified in the PRC, and the shameless attacks against the Chinese education system are being dealt with.

Mass media and bookstores are not far behind. Anti-Chinese propaganda is everywhere. Anti-Communist propaganda is everywhere.

*

Yet, China is rising. It is rising despite racism, the lies, and fake news.

Socialist, internationalist China is slowly but confidently marching forward, without confronting anyone, without making too much noise about the unfair, aggressive treatment it receives in the West and from countries like Japan.

It appears that its leadership has nerves of steel. Or perhaps those long thousands of years of great culture are simply allowed to speak for themselves.

When a great Dragon flies, you can bark, shout insults, even shoot at it. It is too big, too ancient, too wise and determined: it will not stop, turn back or fall from the sky. And when the people on Earth

 have enough time to observe it in its full glory and in full flight, they may, just finally may understand that the creature is not only mighty, but also tremendously beautiful and kind. 

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This article was originally published on New Eastern Outlook.

Andre Vltchek is a philosopher, novelist, filmmaker and investigative journalist. He has covered wars and conflicts in dozens of countries. Three of his latest books are his tribute to “The Great October Socialist Revolution” a revolutionary novel “Aurora” and a bestselling work of political non-fiction: “Exposing Lies Of The Empire”. View his other books here. Watch Rwanda Gambit, his groundbreaking documentary about Rwanda and DRCongo and his film/dialogue with Noam Chomsky “On Western Terrorism”. Vltchek presently resides in East Asia and the Middle East, and continues to work around the world. He can be reached through his website and his Twitter.

Rocking the G7: Trump Stomps His Allies

June 19th, 2018 by Dr. Binoy Kampmark

Disruption, disturbance, eruption, the words crowning the presidency of Donald J. Trump, who has effectively demonstrated an idea made famous by Nazi doodler of law and political theorist Carl Schmitt: politics is defined, not by identifying with friends in cosy harmony but with enemies in constant tension.

There are many ways that Trump might be seen as a creature of Schmittian reaction.  Alliances may well be lauded as good (the diplomat’s clichés of “eternal friendship”, “special bonds” and the treacly covering that comes with it), but then again, potential adversaries can also be considered in accommodating fashion.  In every enduring friendship between states is a potential enemy in wait, a dormant instinct that, given certain circumstances, might awake.  In every alliance, a potential shift might undermine, if not threaten the national interest.

In short, the current US president likes the bruising, the bullying and the cajoling in the abstract name of US self-interest. Forget the distinctions and the similarities.  There are no values in any shared sense.  There is only his road.

The press conference concluding the summit with Kim Jong-un on Sentosa Island provided the platform for Trump to round on his supposed allies even as he praised Little Rocket Man as his newly made friend, Chairman Kim, no less.  The spectacle was terrifying for groupies of the US empire, those who have praised the virtues of alliances and bonds with Washington as necessary for the Pax Americana.  Before them, the spectacle of US hegemony was being challenged with a brazen confidence. The Chairman seemed to be getting what he wanted, even if it all seemed a touch vague.

As the Kim-Trump show unfolded, the rubble at the G7 seemed to be growing, a sentiment captured by the satirical Borowitz Report in The New Yorker.  The meeting preceding the gathering in Singapore had put many a nose out of joint.  After leaving the Quebec summit, Trump got his fingers busy by tweeting that he had asked US representatives not to endorse the customary joint communiqué from the G7 leaders calling for “free, fair, and mutually beneficial trade” over the devil of protectionism.

The cooling towards Canada’s Justin Trudeau was a case in point, mixed with the usual air of berating condescension and sulkiness.  Much of it had arisen because of a disagreement on whether a sunset clause would find its way into any renegotiated trade agreement between Mexico, Canada and the United States.  Trump’s own version of reality was that negotiators were “pretty close on the sunset provision”.  Trudeau differed on such a reading, wanting nothing of the sort.  The bad blood was taking time to dry.

“Based on Justin’s false statements at his news conference, and the fact that Canada is charging massive Tariffs to our US farmers, workers and companies, I have instructed our US reps not to endorse the Communique as we look at tariffs on automobiles flooding the US market!”

In Singapore itself, Trump wished to add some flesh to the remarks, getting a few jocular asides in.

  “When I got onto the plane,” considered Trump, “I think that Justin probably didn’t know that Air Force One has about 20 televisions, and I see the television.  And he’s giving a news conference about how he will not be pushed around by the United States.  And I say, push him around?  We just shook hands.  It was very friendly.”

Then came that picture, poured over by aroused pundits and eager commentators, showing Trump sitting down like a bemused, bright coloured Buddha, seemingly defiant, with Germany’s Angela Merkel leaning across with grave school teacher disapproval.

“In fact,” he explained, “the picture with Angela Merkel, who I get along with very well, where I’m sitting there like this, that picture was we’re waiting for the document because I wanted to see the final document as changed by the changes that I requested.”

For Trump, the visuals are nigh everything, and this titillates the pundits he lures like starving waifs to a banquet.  Academics are also getting on board, being brought into Trumpland’s sordid undergrowth.

“Critics of President Trump say this is President Trump isolated,” suggested Dan Nexon of Georgetown University on the G7 snap, “so it feeds into the pre-existing narrative.”

But then came the other side, those supporters who considered the show “a sign of American strength, status and position in the dominance hierarchy.”

Others have also fallen for tissue-like substance and liberal readings, suggesting that Trump is seducing those who should know better.

“The symbolic meaning of a 13-second handshake in the visual form is the establishment of a physical and therefore a personal bond between the two leaders,” came the distinctly unscientific observation of political science professor Bruce Miroff.

The G7 meeting did the opposite of the Sentosa Island summit, suggesting a spectacle “of alienation, opposition and even international condemnation of Trump.”

Any amount of time might be spent on such performances, but Trump, for all the displays, remains heartily consistent in what superficially seems to be jolting anarchy.  On the issue of mistrusting, badgering, even punishing allies economically, he has remained true to his word, carrying through attitudes nursed since the 1980s.

“I’d throw a tax on every Mercedes-Benz rolling into this country,” he claimed in his 1990 Playboy interview should he ever become President, “and on all Japanese products, and we’d have wonderful allies again.”

And, prophetically, he promised a Schmitt-inspired attitude: don’t “trust our allies” and “perfect” that “huge military arsenal”.

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Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge.  He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne.  He is a frequent contributor to Global Research and Asia-Pacific Research. Email: [email protected]

The desperate sobbing of 10 Central American children, separated from their parents one day last week by immigration authorities at the border, makes for excruciating listening. Many of them sound like they’re crying so hard, they can barely breathe. They scream “Mami” and “Papá” over and over again, as if those are the only words they know.

The baritone voice of a Border Patrol agent booms above the crying.

“Well, we have an orchestra here,” he jokes. “What’s missing is a conductor.”

Then a distraught but determined 6-year-old Salvadoran girl pleads repeatedly for someone to call her aunt. Just one call, she begs anyone who will listen. She says she’s memorized the phone number, and at one point, rattles it off to a consular representative.

“My mommy says that I’ll go with my aunt,” she whimpers, “and that she’ll come to pick me up there as quickly as possible.”

An audio recording obtained by ProPublica adds real-life sounds of suffering to a contentious policy debate that has so far been short on input from those with the most at stake: immigrant children. More than 2,300 of them have been separated from their parents since April, when the Trump administration launched its “zero tolerance” immigration policy, which calls for prosecuting all people who attempt to illegally enter the country and taking away the children they brought with them. More than 100 of those children are under the age of 4. The children are initially held in warehouses, tents or big box stores that have been converted into Border Patrol detention facilities.

Condemnations of the policy have been swift and sharp, including from some of the administration’s most reliable supporters. It has united religious conservatives and immigrant rights activists, who have said that “zero tolerance” amounts to “zero humanity.” Democratic and Republican members of Congress spoke out against the administration’s enforcement efforts over the weekend. Former first lady Laura Bush called the administration’s practices “cruel” and “immoral,” and likened images of immigrant children being held in kennels to those that came out of Japanese internment camps during World War II. And the American Academy of Pediatrics has said the practice of separating children from their parents can cause the children “irreparable harm.”

Still, the administration had stood by it. President Donald Trump blames Democrats and says his administration is only enforcing laws already on the books, although that’s not true. There are no laws that require children to be separated from their parents, or that call for criminal prosecutions of all undocumented border crossers. Those practices were established by the Trump administration.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions has cited passages from the Bible in an attempt to establish religious justification. On Monday, he defended it again saying it was a matter of rule of law,

“We cannot and will not encourage people to bring children by giving them blanket immunity from our laws.”

A Border Patrol spokesman echoed that thought in a written statement.

In recent days, authorities on the border have begun allowing tightly controlled tours of the facilities that are meant to put a humane face on the policy. But cameras are heavily restricted. And the children being held are not allowed to speak to journalists.

The audio obtained by ProPublica breaks that silence. It was recorded last week inside a U.S. Customs and Border Protection detention facility. The person who made the recording asked not to be identified for fear of retaliation. That person gave the audio to Jennifer Harbury, a well-known civil rights attorney who has lived and worked for four decades in the Rio Grande Valley along the Texas border with Mexico. Harbury provided it to ProPublica. She said the person who recorded it was a client who “heard the children’s weeping and crying, and was devastated by it.”

The person estimated that the children on the recording are between 4 and 10 years old. It appeared that they had been at the detention center for less than 24 hours, so their distress at having been separated from their parents was still raw. Consulate officials tried to comfort them with snacks and toys. But the children were inconsolable.

The child who stood out the most was the 6-year-old Salvadoran girl with a phone number stuck in her head. At the end of the audio, a consular official offers to call the girl’s aunt. ProPublica dialed the number she recited in the audio, and spoke with the aunt about the call.

“It was the hardest moment in my life,” she said. “Imagine getting a call from your 6-year-old niece. She’s crying and begging me to go get her. She says, ‘I promise I’ll behave, but please get me out of here. I’m all alone.’”

The aunt said what made the call even more painful was that there was nothing she could do. She and her 9-year-old daughter are seeking asylum in the United States after immigrating here two years ago for the exact same reasons and on the exact same route as her sister and her niece. They are from a small town called Armenia, about an hour’s drive northwest of the Salvadoran capital, but well within reach of its crippling crime waves. She said gangs were everywhere in El Salvador:

“They’re on the buses. They’re in the banks. They’re in schools. They’re in the police. There’s nowhere for normal people to feel safe.”

She said her niece and sister set out for the United States over a month ago. They paid a smuggler $7,000 to guide them through Guatemala, and Mexico and across the border into the United States. Now, she said, all the risk and investment seem lost.

The aunt said she worried that any attempt to intervene in her niece’s situation would put hers and her daughter’s asylum case at risk, particularly since the Trump administration overturned asylum protections for victims of gang and domestic violence. She said she’s managed to speak to her sister, who has been moved to an immigration detention facility near Port Isabel, Texas. And she keeps in touch with her niece, Alison Jimena Valencia Madrid, by telephone. Mother and daughter, however, have not been able to speak to one another.

The aunt said that Alison has been moved out of the Border Patrol facility to a shelter where she has a real bed. But she said that authorities at the shelter have warned the girl that her mother, 29-year-old Cindy Madrid, might be deported without her.

“I know she’s not an American citizen,” the aunt said of her niece. “But she’s a human being. She’s a child. How can they treat her this way?”

Has your family been separated at the U.S.–Mexico border? Are you a worker at a detention center or do you aid families who have been affected? Tell us more at [email protected] or 347-244-2134.

Correction, June 18, 2018: This story previously referred to the American Association of Pediatricians. In fact, it’s the American Academy of Pediatrics.

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Ginger Thompson is a senior reporter at ProPublica who writes about the drug war.

I have been an activist on Long Island since I organized my 8th grade class to write articles in the Westbury Times calling for a new High School. I sang for the Sane Nuclear Policy group in 1960, I organized against the wars in Vietnam, Central America, Afghanistan, Iraq, Yugoslavia; Iraq again…Then there was quiet. Organizing for peace by the 1990s was stymied by the powerful Democratic Party support of Clinton’s wars against Somalia, Chad and Yugoslavia, as well as the Desert Storm/Desert Shield operations both the Bush (pere) and Clinton’s regimes perpetrated against Iraq. Liberals have clung to the Democratic Party and they don’t work for peace; they have long supported all US wars from at least World War I to the present conflicts in Syria, Yemen, and wherever US troops and materiel is deployed.

They promote the demonization of leaders and people, and accuse anyone with a different take on the world of being a conspiracy theorist, a term made up by the CIA, by the way. As former CIA official John Stockwell said:

__ “It is the function of the CIA to keep the world unstable, and to propagandize and teach the American people to hate, so we will let the Establishment spend any amount of money on arms.”

People didn’t want George Bush’s war on Iraq; millions here and around the world in 2003 said no, thronging the streets of New York and Washington opposed to war on Afghanistan and Iraq. Heedless, the Whitehouse and the Pentagon proceeded to murder over one million Iraqis, and to destroy the infrastructure of the most advanced country of the Middle East. For peace activists, things became even more difficult after 9/11. The bourgeois media went into overdrive with the ubiquitous War on Terror,” supporting the “Endless wars” and the coups the Bush, Obama, and Trump regimes perpetrated. The US government targeted Libya, Honduras, Ukraine; wherever they wished… Bombing, occupation and regime change campaigns promoted the geostrategic needs of the ruling class with US government leaders, Democrats and Republicans alike carrying out their instructions.

There were revelations: US General Wesley Clark said he had heard, in 2001, directly from someone in the “the Secretary of Defense’s office”[ detailing] “a memo that describes how we’re going to take out seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq, and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and, finishing off, Iran.”

The United States military then proceeded to invade or bomb every single one of those countries. Since 9/11 our tax dollars have paid for $5.6 trillion worth of munitions, bombs, guns, planes, ships, tanks, Humvees, missiles…to manufacturers of this deadly equipment, and the bankers who finance these wars. (Source)

It is all war, all the time. Both Democrats and Republicans have threatened wars on North Korea- DPRK: Democratic Republic of Korea, Iran, Russia and China. The Democrats oppose Trump’s peace [and hotel] overtures to the DPRK;last week, Wall Street stocks just sank with the threat of peace. The Apocalyptical Christian Fundamentalists look forward to World War III when they will all fly naked to heaven, leaving the rest of humankind to burn in a Hell on Earth.

For those of us who don’t find that prospect wonderful, there needs to be a reckoning, a reorganization, what Martin Luther King Jr. called, in a speech exactly one year before his death,

“A time comes when silence is betrayal.”

It is important to remember what Dr. King said as it is a perfect analysis and advice for us fifty years after his assassination.

Dr. King said people,

“do not easily assume the task of opposing their government’s policy, especially in time of war. Nor does the human spirit move without great difficulty against all the apathy of conformist thought.”

He spoke of the war in Vietnam and said, when

“came the buildup in Vietnam, and I watched [the War on Poverty] program broken and eviscerated, as if it were some idle political plaything of a society gone mad on war, and I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic destructive suction tube. So, I was increasingly compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor and to attack it as such.”

Dr. King said then,

“I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today — my own government.”

What did Martin Luther King Jr. say that was not true? And though we have been inundated with fear of terrorists in our country and around the world, in fact the United States is now even MORE the “greatest purveyor of violence in the world today.” The greatest terrorist.

Now, I am an historian. I have taught history of the US for 53 years. And one of the most important things I have tried to do is to expose the truth about the US history. Because children here are raised on that US “exceptionalism,” which makes Columbus a hero, though he killed most of the five million Taino/Arawak people of the Caribbean islands. US Social Studies texts and teachers revere the colonists who made war on the indigenous people, and the slaveholders who were our first presidents: The “Founding Fathers.” Teachers extoll Thomas Jefferson’s Louisiana Purchase as doubling the size of the US, though all that land was stolen from the Native People who Jefferson called “uncivilized.” Children learn to take pride in US aggressiveness and plunder. When indigenous nations fought the settlers and the army called them “savages,” – that pattern of demonization became the official template for any people who resisted US war or aggression.

So, revolts of enslaved people were brutally oppressed, and anyone fighting against slavery with guns was crazy, vicious, and wrong, be they Maroon colonies of Blacks and Seminoles, Creeks or Choctaws, or even the white man, John Brown, who said slavery would not end but with blood!

When the US created an incident to attack Mexico, in the interest of the slaveholders, all opposition was suppressed, as was all efforts to end slavery. The US ended up with 1/3 of Mexico by 1848.

They do not teach Native American history here, but the US from the 1858 to 1890 decimated and ethnically cleansed the indigenous people in a series of wars called, “The Indian Wars.” Then the Dawes-Severalty Act placed survivors of those wars on reservations , and took their children away to the “Indian Schools,” robbing them of their culture and killing them with abuse. This happened to every Indigenous tribe west of the Mississippi River. (Read Roxanne Dunbar Ortiz’s Indigenous History of the United States).

Adolph Hitler studied the 1887 Dawes Act and this is where he got the idea of Concentration Camps. He also was an avid supporter of the US ideology of Eugenics and Social Darwinism. These “philosophies” emerged in the age of the Robber Barons, the late 19th Century, when the ruling class of the US took over not only the economy, but education, manipulating peoples’ ideology through the media and the politicos who ran the country from municipalities to the federal government. Laws and misinformation officially designated as inferiors all people of color -Blacks, Mexicans, Chinese, but also poor whites, and immigrants from Eastern and Southern Europe.

My object here isn’t to bore you with old historical developments, but to put into perspective how the people of the United States have been socially engineered into abandoning natural compassion and concern for their fellow human beings. Because in fact, this has been the program of the United States since its founding. A settler regime requires support from those who would even marginally benefit from its aggressive policies. So, during the “Indian Wars,” when the US Army fought the Nez Perces, the Sioux, the Apaches, the Pomo, the Arapaho, the Cheyenne, and dozens more, they were acting in the interests of the mining moguls, the bonanza ranch companies, the sheep farmers, the railroad magnates. From Washington to Lincoln, and into the 1890s, the expansionism of the United States benefited white settlers. And when US Army killed Indigenous people, it made way for huge profits for the new Robber Barons.

Gradually, US family farmers, who benefited from the robbery of Indigenous land, succumbed one by one to the depressions of 1873, 1893, 1913, and finally the Great Depression. The big companies got all the farm land. That’s agribusiness. [In the 1980s Iowa Senator Tom Harkin said to me that there were more foreclosures in Iowa under Reagan than there had been in the Great Depression]. And the mining companies beat back every strike across the West with goon squads and National Guardsmen.

Everywhere, racism had taken root. In the South, Jim Crow laws and ideological manipulation gave poor whites the illusion of superiority to Black people. In the West, whites hated Native People and Mexicans: killed them, segregated them, and stole their land. Racism was taught in schools, it was legitimized in textbooks, it was preached from pulpits; it was in the media. Upper class white ideologues needed the poor people, 90% of the population, divided, especially after industrialization. It was an agenda: keep poor Black and white people apart, immigrants and native-born white workers apart, all to destroy class unity among workers in factories, mines, and to separate Black and white tenant farmers and sharecroppers…. vilify Mexicans and Chinese and Japanese…

A word about racism. Racism is a method of control. It is not a reaction to oppression, it is a tool of oppression, and therefore, it is reserved for the white people who are supposed to identify with the oppressor and to feel “superior” to the oppressed, people of color in the case of the US, or vilified and selected immigrants. Race is a construct; there is only one actual race; it is the human race, but the ideological leaders of the US have designated color or ethnicity as having to do with “race.” The better to divide us.

The US had, until the end of the 19th century, a frontier beyond which people down on their luck could go. By 1890, all the US land was Private Property, and there was no new land upon which people could settle. The rich mostly had it all. The economy was in shambles, and workers and farmers alike were rising up. The upper class feared revolution, there were resistance movements everywhere! Farmers! Workers! Strikes! Socialism! Even Blacks and whites were uniting in the South.

This threat of the poor uniting and rising up was the cause of US expansionism out-of-country. The Battleship Maine business was a sham, what we now call a “False Flag,” because with the Spanish-American War, the US embarked upon a path of imperialism, with governmental and economic leaders and the Yellow Journalist Press leading the attack. The bourgeoisie needed to expand. Capitalism must always expand! Raw materials stolen from Cuba, Puerto Rico, Hawai’i the Philippines, fruits of the Spanish American War, would lead to the US acquiring world’s riches! The US looked to China and also to Latin America. Their Patriarchal, racist, “Virile” aggressiveness was deified in a speech called “March of the Flag. Senator Albert Beveridge said:

“Fellow citizens, it is a noble land that God has given us; … a history of statesmen who flung the boundaries of the Republic out into unexplored lands and savage wildernesses …Shall the American people continue their resistless march toward the commercial supremacy of the world?… The Opposition tells us that we ought not to govern a people without their consent. I answer; the rule of liberty that all just government derives its authority from the consent of the governed, applies only to those who are capable of self-government. We govern the Indians without their consent, we govern our territories without their consent, we govern our children without their consent…

To-day, we are making more than we can use. To-day, our industrial society is congested; there are more workers than there is work! … As our commerce spreads, the flag of liberty will circle the globe, and the highways of the ocean carrying trade of all mankind, [will] be guarded by the guns of the republic. And, as their thunders salute the flag, benighted peoples will know that the voice of Liberty is speaking, at last, for them; that civilization is dawning, at last, for them!”

There it is: the prediction that the US would “continue a relentless march toward commercial supremacy of the world.” Justified by the glorious, “March of the Flag!” In the Spanish-American War, the US defeated the Spanish in Cuba in short order, but the US army was faced with the resistance of the people of the Philippines. After the defeat of the Spanish, the US killed over one million Filipinos. Since the ruling philosophy claimed that the Filipinos, like the Indigenous, were “savages;” the US perpetrated a genocide. US Generals directed soldiers to kill “everyone over ten” on those islands. In the Indian wars, the US Army said,

“The only good Indian was a dead Indian.”

The US military compared the Filipinos to “savage Indians.” There was opposition, and the US shifted into less obvious imperial practices, “Dollar Diplomacy” in Latin America and the Caribbean, “Moral Diplomacy- against Mexico, and all those natural resources: sugar, oil, timber, guano, lead, silver, other minerals – came home providing industrial jobs for the US working class.

So, the war on the indigenous, the continuation of racism after the end of slavery, and the first overseas imperial war the US fought were all predicated and justified upon racism and white supremacy. The cause of this all this expansionism was economic. Old Sir Walter Raleigh, an early imperialist pirate, said,

“Who controls the trade of the world controls the wealth of the world and consequently the World itself.”

That has been the path of the US ever since its founding.

World War one was done in company of the British Imperialists. It was a war for the bankers and industrialists: and resources. Nine million men died. Any opposition to the war was hushed by the Sedition and Espionage Acts. After WW I, the US laid claim to and laid waste to Central America and the Caribbean. United Fruit… “Gunboat Diplomacy” was imperialism and enforced by a bunch of Marines in China and the Western Hemisphere. March of the Flag.

The US came out on top and claimed victory in WW II, though they never mention that the Soviets won the war in Europe by the sacrifice of 27 million Soviet People. Post-War, the US wanted continued access to Asia, where most of US WW II military effort had gone.

But the Communists! The damned Communists wanted to get rid of imperial oppression and poverty and organize socialist economies – so people could live! So, US wars after WW II were against Communists in Asia; they armed and supported Chaing Kai-Chek against Mao and the Red Army. They used the UN to invade Korea against the Communist Revolution there. The US paid 80% of the French Indochina War, until they took over and began a mass murder and invasion of Vietnam against the protocols of the UN Geneva Accords. Fighting Communism meant ignoring international law, opposing peoples’ right to self-determination.

And then the Civil Rights Movement emerged out of the Black Churches in the US. J. Edgar Hoover was freaked out; the FBI went on full alert. People were on the move again in the US.

In the midst of all this the Cuban Revolution succeeded, and people here who were not anti-communists saw this as a victory for workers and peasants. The the peace movement bloomed: with the anti-Nuclear Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy and then the movement against the war in Vietnam.

As our anti-war movements developed, our plan was “teach” the truth, and unteach the support that would make people want to kill other people who wanted communism. Crushing communism and killing communists was the central important message of the Cold War at home, so even unions were called communist. In the popular media and the schools, Communists were demonized; communists were bad and should be killed along with anyone who followed them.

Korean War in the 1950s

You have to demonize the people of another country to make people believe in killing them. Communist Koreans deserved to die; the US killed four million Koreans of them, leveled every city. Then the US killed 3 million Vietnamese.

Until 1975.

But the media showed the truth. And at home, the martyrs and the multitudes in the Civil Rights and Black Panther movements, Muhammad Ali, Malcolm X, the Black Power Movement, the American Indian Movement, the Young Lords and then the students against the war…. Our humanity reasserted itself.

You see where this is going and where it comes from. In the 1980s, when communists were involved in revolutionary movements in Latin America, a movement sprang up uniting with people from Latin America and people from the US supporting Salvadorans, Nicaraguans, Guatemalans, and opposing US arming of Contras and fascist governments.

After the USSR died in 1991, the US had access to the resources of the former socialist republics. Expansion of capitalism followed: neoliberalism, privatizing publicly owned resources or closing them down.

Then: new enemies: Saddam Hussein: so, bomb Iraq; was there was a small anti-Iraq war movement but liberals were saying, “Let sanctions work.” The Iraqi people were then murdered in their millions by those sanctions, about which Madelaine Albright said -the death of 500,000 children was “worth it.” Then there was the Depleted Uranium and the devastation of cultural Iraq.

For over 30 years, the US government and media have been supporting the murder of millions of people. It is not about freedom; it is about oil, resources, trade routes, and capitalism. The March of the Flag.

There was a big anti-war movement before the second Iraq war but the government bombed anyhow and devised a way of having reporters there ‘EMBEDDED WITH US TROUPS!” Could there ever be a more honest way our government could have told us that the only information we would ever get would be from the military?

Then the US proceeded with devastating wars on Libya, Syria, with their Saudi buddies bombing the beautiful country of Yemen, deliberately starving millions. US troops are there now. Syria was a different story: she fought back, brought in the Russians, the Lebanese Hezbollah, the Iranians. The US vilifies all those resisters too. Of course, the justification for bombing was Bashar al Assad, the so-called dictator [beloved of his people]. When it was discovered that the terrorists in ISIS -Al Nusra and Al Qaeda were armed and trained and funded by the US, the US mainstream press covered it up.

This war on Syria has killed half a million Syrians, decimated ancient cities, and the US is illegally occupying the norther quadrant of the country along with the their terrorists, the French, and the British. War is still raging, and there is talk of NATO war on Russia and China too.

22 years ago yesterday, my husband Sean Gervasi died in Yugoslavia trying to tell the truth about the menace of NATO expansion and the US/NATO lies that eventually tore that sovereign country to pieces. He wrote the Prague Declaration for the Conference on the Enlargement of NATO in Eastern Europe and the Mediterranean” in 1996, concluding,

“The Western system is experiencing a profound economic, social and political crisis. And Western leaders apparently see the exploitation of the East as the only large-scale project available which might stimulate growth, especially in Western Europe.

They are therefore prepared to risk a great deal for it. The question is: will the world accept the risks of East-West conflict and nuclear war in order to lock into one region economic arrangements which are already collapsing elsewhere?”

Are we? Because that is on the table. I am not for the wars OR those iniquitous economic arrangements. And that’s why I am here today.

With the Women’s March on the Pentagon, we have the beginnings of a National Peace Movement again. And I am here asking you to join it. Cindy Sheehan, whose son was killed in Iraq in 2004, did not take the loss of her son Casey Sheehan in Iraq as some great victory for America. She was and is angry. Her son, who never wanted to kill anyone, was killed for a ruthless imperialist system. She wrote 3 years ago,

[I] “ wonder if there is any hope to end the evil of US empire, or are we doomed to “wash, rinse, and repeat” these stories of infamy and tragedy over and over again until the USA collapses from the weight of all the carnage?”

Well, with the heart of a phoenix, and all her anger intact, Cindy launched the Women’s March on the Pentagon this year, and hundreds of women and not a few men, joined her- because the anti-war movement can’t collapse under the weight of carnage. We need to rise again from our ashes. We are.

I hope you will want to join us on our buses or invite the Long island Women involved in this into your living rooms or libraries to discuss this and create a powerful opposition to these bi-partisan wars. We really need you. Not on line or in Facebook, but in person to spread the word: US wars must end! We need our tax money for schools, housing, health care, childcare, the infrastructure, to save the environment, to stop non-renewable energy expansion, stop the pipelines! End the school-to-prison pipeline! Treat immigrants with compassion! Most people want this, but we feel immobilized. We need to mobilize. Only a viable peace and justice movement can accomplish this. Please join us!

The history behind Palestine and Israel is a history of Jewish European settler-colonialism — i.e., Zionism. And since racism is a symptom and a tool of settler-colonialism, Zionism is also viewed as anti-Semitism, and as ethno-supremacy or Jewish supremacy, Arabophobia and Islamophobia.

The triangulation of anti-Semitism, Islamophobia and Arabophobia in the history of Palestine and Israel is part of the settler-colonial movement of Zionism and is not a “new history” in the sense of the term as introduced by Israeli historian Benny Morris in 1980 to humanize, in Israeli academic discourse, the victims of Zionism. It simply reflects modern terminology and encompasses historic events to which the Zionist mind is still largely closed.

These historic events are simple in their broad outline. Zionist Jews (self-proclaimed atheists) decided to build a Jewish state in Palestine and ended up taking much of the land by force and expelling most of the Palestinian non-Jewish Arab population, preventing them from returning.

Now Israel is occupying the rest of the territory the World Zionist Organization didn’t manage to take and continues to “settle” it.

In The Ends of Zionism: Racism and the Palestinian Struggle, Joseph Massad writes:

Zionism as a colonial movement is constituted in ideology and practice by a religio-racial epistemology through which it apprehends itself and the world around it… It is no longer contested, even among many Israelis, that the impact of Zionism on the Palestinian people in the last one hundred years includes: the expulsion of a majority of Palestinians from their lands and homes, the prevention of their return, and the subsequent confiscation of their property for the exclusive use of Jews; imposing a military apartheid system on those Palestinians who remained in Israel from 1948 until 1966, which since then has been relaxed to a civilian Jewish supremacist system of discrimination; and the military occupation and apartheid system imposed on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip and their population for the last thirty-five [now fifty-one] years as well as continued colonization of these occupied territories.

In that sense, the history of Jewish European settler-colonialism — i.e., Zionism — behind Palestine and Israel (as opposed to history as Zionist “narrative” or myth) has the voice of reason behind it, because it reveals an atrocity that must be redressed.

Acknowledging and taking accountability for Israel’s historic and ongoing crimes against Palestinian Arabs is the first step in resolving the Nakba. The historic details regarding why and how these tragic events happened have filled many books, but they are beside the point.

The broad outline by itself has the voice of reason if you also consider justice as reasonable and injustice as unreasonable.

What is reasonable or plausible, for example, about Ivanka Kushner now being able to buy a house in Jerusalem and “return” to Israel by dint of her conversion to Judaism and her American husband’s Jewishness, but Ghada Karmi, a Muslim Palestinian Arab being denied return to her homeland and not even allowed to buy back her own father’s stolen house?

In Humanizing the Text: Israeli “New History” and the Trajectory of the 1948 Historiography, Ilan Pappe, who is famously known for his The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, writes:

One thing is clear when analyzing the fortunes of Israeli new history from the time of its inception in the late 1980s until its brief/temporary disappearance in 2000: historical reconstruction is closely linked to general political developments and upheavals. In societies torn by internal and external rifts and conflicts, the work of historians is constantly pervaded by the political drama around them. In such geopolitical locations the pretense of objectivity is particularly misplaced, if not totally unfounded.

Radical Jewish dissident historians like Ilan Pappe in Israel are vital to a history that has the voice of reason on its side. They are a bridge to a wider public in Israel.

Palestinians often wonder what it takes to break through to the consciousness of Western publics with regard to the 70-year-long tragic history of Palestine.

I believe that the best way of shifting Western publics’ opinion from supporting Israel to supporting the Palestinian cause is to continue emphasizing what has already taken place through the demise of the so-called “peace process” and “two-state solution” — the realization, so long obscured, that the problem of Israel lies in its nature as a Zionist settler-colonial project in Palestine, rather than as a military “occupier”.

In Why the term ‘Israeli occupation’ must be rejected, Ramzy Baroud writes,

…It is often argued that Israel is an occupier that has violated the rules of occupation as stated in international law. This would have been the case a year, two years or five years after the original occupation had taken place, but not 51 years later. Since then, the occupation has turned into long-term colonization.

Many people believe that the Great March of Return has had so much positive journalistic reactions in Western media because the protest is essentially non-violent — i.e., it cannot be said to threaten Israel’s security and so the deadly force Israel uses is “disproportionate” and criminal.

That’s as far as Palestinian non-violent action goes. It doesn’t do anything to change Western publics’ perceptions of Israel as a legitimate Western-like state protecting its “borders” (albeit with disproportionate force) against a sea of Arabs or their perceptions of Palestinians as “rioters” and “barbarians” whose sole evil wish is to kill Jews.

Non-violent resistance has its uses, certainly, but it must never be pushed on an oppressed and brutalized people, in my view, as a higher moral ground of resistance.

Additionally, the emphasis on the tactic of non-violent resistance implicitly delegitimizes other forms of resistance, making saints out of some Palestinian martyrs and hunger-striking prisoners held under administrative detention (i.e., those imprisoned without charge) and accepting Israel’s justification for the execution and imprisonment of thousands of other Palestinians.

What’s different about the Great March of Return is that its demand of return connects the “occupation” and siege with the Nakba, dramatizing for a Western audience, through protest and resistance, the colonization of all of Palestine.

That demand, heard for the first time in the recent history of Palestinian resistance, is shifting the perceptions of Western publics.

Activists for justice in Palestine on social media have long used different tactics (primarily documenting and publicizing Israel’s violations of international law and human decency) to reach Western publics (to break through mainstream media in the West). The most effective are The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS – PACBI) campaigns that persuade academic big names and cultural and sports celebrities to take up the Palestinian cause.

Western publics are also becoming more aware of the Zionist backlash against BDS campaigns, especially as they impinge on freedom of speech.

Generally, addressing Western audiences, especially those on the Left, works by reference to progressive values applicable to injustices against all marginalized groups in Western society, as it brings home the incongruity of singling the Palestinian cause as an exception.

Western audiences are assumed to be part of the Judeo-Christian tradition, a term coined by George Orwell in the late 1930s in order to fight anti-Semitism. Unfortunately, this humanist tradition is tainted, because anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism are now linked inexorably within it, and so combating one means combating the other.

Western civilization has long been defined by colonial conquest (with Islamophobia and Arabophobia in the Middle East) and imperial power; it is what gave birth to Zionism. Furthermore,

… once established in its position of military superiority, the colonial culture produces, through a whole range of media, an unending ‘series of propositions that slowly and subtly — with the help of books, newspapers, schools and their texts, advertisements, films, radio — work their way into one’s mind and shape one’s view of the world of the group to which one belongs’… Successful colonisation leads the oppressed to identify with the world view of the oppressor.

The Palestinian Authority now identifies with its oppressor so thoroughly that it did not shy away, as dictated by Israel, from cracking down viciously on Palestinians in the West Bank rallying against Mahmoud Abbas’s punitive economic measures in Gaza.

What will ultimately change Western Public’s perceptions are Palestinians themselves, however they choose to resist. They must insist on liberation — on decolonization and not simply on “ending the occupation”.

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Rima Najjar is a Palestinian whose father’s side of the family comes from the forcibly depopulated village of Lifta on the western outskirts of Jerusalem. She is an activist, researcher and retired professor of English literature, Al-Quds University, occupied West Bank. She is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

On June 17, Syrian government forces have cleared Kabt Mount, Shadid Hill and the areas of Abar Warak and Bir Atshan, near the T2 pumping station, from ISIS cells.

According to the pro-opposition Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, 18 ISIS members and 8 government fighters were killed in the clashes. Pro-government sources added that a few vehicles of ISIS were also destroyed.

According to the ISIS-linked news agency Amaq, ISIS fighters ambushed a convoy of the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) destroying a battle tank and a vehicle.

This advance was a part of the wider effort of the SAA and its allies to clear the Homs-Deir Ezzor desert and eastern Syria in general from ISIS cells.

The SAA also re-launched its operation to clear eastern al-Suwayda from ISIS after deploying additional reinforcements in the area. Aur, Hibbariyah and nearby settlements remain the main targets of the operation. On June 16, ISIS destroyed an SAA vehicle near al-Haramiyah.

Additional units of the Tiger Forces, led by General Suheil al-Hassan, arrived in the province of Daraa in order to participate in the upcoming military developments there. Pro-militant sources say that the sides involved in the conflict were not able to reach a deal to de-escalate the situation and to implement a reconciliation agreement there.

On June 17, the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) captured the village of Dashisha from ISIS. Additionally, the SDF established control of al-Nasirah and Tell al-Jabir. A major part of ISIS members had withdrawn from these villages towards the remaining positions of the terrorist group along the border with Iraq.

According to pro-Kurdish sources, the SDF is set to clear the entire border from ISIS elements. However, it is not clear when the US-backed force is going to pay attention to a notable ISIS enclave in the Euphrates Valley.

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Ten Reasons Canada Should Get Out of NAFTA

June 19th, 2018 by David Orchard

For months Canadians have been inundated with claims from the government, various and sundry industries, and the national punditry, that NAFTA is good for our country, even necessary, and that “renegotiated” it will be even better. In the aftermath of US president Trump’s recent visit to Canada, virtually the entire Canadian political class has completely abandoned the vision of an independent, sovereign Canada. From the prime minister on down they rush to Brian Mulroney, the architect of the integration of Canada into the US, for direction and advice on how to “save NAFTA.” The door is now wide open for our country to take a different route, to reject NAFTA and build a nation which controls its own economy and destiny. Here are ten reasons why Canada should free itself from NAFTA, not enter more deeply into it.

One: Under NAFTA US corporations have the right to sue Canada for any law or regulation which they do not like and which they feel contravenes the spirit of NAFTA. US corporations have sued Canada 42 times under NAFTA, overturned Canadian laws and received over $200 million in NAFTA fines, plus approx. $100 million in legal fees, from Canada — and have filed claims for some five billion more. Why would any nation give foreign corporations the right to sue it and dictate its laws? (Canadian corporations can also sue the US. They have tried several times and failed each time.)

Two: Under the FTA, which is part of NAFTA, Canada agreed to never charge the Americans more for any good that we export to them than it charges Canadians. Why would Canada ever agree to such a provision and what in the world does it have to do with free trade?

Three: Canada agreed that it would never cut back on the amount of any good, including all forms of energy, that it sells to the US unless it cut back on Canadians proportionally at the same time. Why would Canada agree to deny its own citizens preferential access to their own resources?

Four: Except for a few exceptions, Canada agreed to allow US citizens and corporations to buy up Canadian companies and industries without restriction. They have taken over thousands of Canadian companies, from both our national railways to our retail industry to our grain companies. In 1867 the US purchased Alaska for $7 million. It is now purchasing Canada just as surely.

Five: Under NAFTA Canada’s standard of living has not risen, it has fallen. The real wages of Canadians are dropping steadily, and the divide between haves and have nots has soared.

Six: NAFTA is not free trade. It is the integration of North America into a continental economy. Integration means assimilation and that for Canada means the end of our country.

Seven: Locked into NAFTA Canada loses its ability to be an independent country. We see our country following the US on the world stage, even attacking and bombing small nations that have done no harm to Canada because, some of our leaders suggest, we must follow the US because our economies are so intertwined. (Then we watch some of the same leaders wringing their hands over the agony of the fleeing refugees our bombs have helped to create!)

Eight: Farsighted Canadian leaders have repeatedly warned their fellow citizens against free trade with the United States. John A. Macdonald called the very idea “veiled treason” because it meant giving control of our nation to a foreign power. George-Etienne Cartier said the end result would be union with United States, “that is to say, our annihilation as a country.” Robert Borden called free trade “the most momentous question” ever submitted to Canadians “not a mere question of markets but the future destiny of Canada.” John Diefenbaker called on Canadians “to take a clear stand in opposition to economic continentalism” and the “baneful effects of foreign ownership.” Pierre Elliott Trudeau called the FTA “a monstrous swindle, under which the Canadian government has ceded to the United States of America a large slice of the country’s sovereignty over its economy and natural resources.” John Turner called it “the Sale of Canada Act.”

Nine: In its early days Canada had no income tax. It used the revenue from tariffs on imported goods to finance the operation of the country and it had little or no debt throughout much of its history. Today after three decades of “free trade” with the US, Canada is carrying a record $1.2 trillion in federal and provincial debt and the tax burden on ordinary Canadians increases year after year. The rate of homelessness and use of food banks has escalated, public institutions and programmes on which citizens rely have been cut, while record amounts of raw resources are being poured across the border at fire sale prices.

Ten: Canada’s economy is roughly one tenth the size of that of the US. If we do not protect our industries, our sovereignty, and our economy, our country will be absorbed into the United States. This means the end of the dream of an independent Canada standing among the world’s nations with pride and dignity. It not be so. Both the FTA and NAFTA have cancellation clauses. With a simple 6 month’s notice Canada can withdraw without penalty. All three NAFTA countries are members of the World Trade Organization and our trade with them would simply revert back to WTO rules, under which we did much better than we have under NAFTA, and without any US corporate right to sue us or buy up our country.

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David Orchard was twice a contender for the leadership of the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada. He is the author of The Fight For Canada: Four Centuries of Resistance to American Expansionism. He can be reached at [email protected]

Violence in Nicaragua: US-Orchestrated Coup Attempt?

June 18th, 2018 by Stephen Lendman

The pattern is familiar. Ongoing violence in Nicaragua has the earmarks of another US-staged color revolution attempt.

Dirty US imperial hands operate everywhere, sovereign independent states their prime targets, wanting governments not subservient to US interests forcefully toppled, pro-Western puppet regimes replacing them.

What’s happening in Nicaragua is similar to the earlier US-sponsored Contra war.

This time it’s in new form, a so-called student-led anti-government movement, its rank-and-file elements unwittingly serving US imperial interests, led by likely CIA-recruited and manipulated hardliners.

Washington wants fascist tyranny replacing all sovereign independent governments. US dirty hands installed new millennium hemispheric pro-Western puppet rule in Haiti, Honduras, Paraguay, and Brazil.

Ongoing regime change efforts in Venezuela so far failed. Nicaragua is now targeted. Are Bolivia and Cuba next?

Ecuador’s Lenin Moreno appears amenable to transforming his nation into a US client state, purging former President Rafael Correa loyalists from his government, heading toward letting Pentagon forces back in country after Correa ordered them out.

Since mid-April, internal dark forces in Nicaragua were responsible for scores of deaths – at least 179, according to the Nicaraguan Center for Human Rights.

A Saturday agreement calling for an end to violence and establishment of an international truth and security commission collapsed straightaway.

Hours after President Daniel Ortega and civic leaders agreed to attempt to restore calm, remove roadblocks, and establish the above cited commission, violence resumed, truce shattered, at least eight people reported dead.

National police blamed anti-government protesters for the killings. Talks nonetheless continue. Ortega expressed willingness to “listen to all proposals and initiatives within the constitutional framework.”

On Saturday, a building in Managua set ablaze killed eight people, including two children, according to police.

Firefighters blamed the fire on masked opposition elements. Ortega accused anti-government instigators of trying to undermine democracy in the country.

What’s going on is similar to the Obama regime’s late 2013/early 2014 Maidan coup in Ukraine, replacing democratic governance with Nazi-infested putschists.

Writing about what went on, I called events at the time an Orange Revolution 2.0, the first US-staged one occurring from November 2004 – January 2005.

Each time US color revolutions succeed, tyranny subservient to Washington replaces legitimate governance. Ordinary people lose out. Promises made are broken. Exploitation and repression follow.

Once deceived in Ukraine should have been enough. Memories of most people are short-lived. Awakenings when come are too late to matter.

US-staged Contra war in Nicaragua followed the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) overthrow of the US-supported tyrannical Anastasio Somoza fascist regime – a despot Franklin Roosevelt once called “a son-of-a bitch, but he’s our son-of-a-bitch.”

During the 1980s, Ortega led the FSLN campaign against the Somoza dictatorship – first as a freedom fighter, then as Nicaraguan president from 1985 – 1990.

In 2007, he was reelected president, currently Nicaragua’s leader. Washington wants him replaced with hard-right governance under leadership it controls – the same scheme it pursues against all sovereign independent states.

Orchestrated mid-April violent protests were staged against social security changes, increasing worker and employer payments, cutting future pensions – later rescinded by Ortega to restore order.

Violence continues anyway. Numbers killed and injured keep rising. Ortega’s governance is threatened – targeted by US imperial viciousness for regime change.

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Stephen Lendman is a Research Associate of the CRG, Correspondent of Global Research based in Chicago.

VISIT MY NEW WEB SITE: stephenlendman.org (Home – Stephen Lendman). Contact at [email protected].

My newest book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: How the US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html


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Featured image: Mustafa Kemal Atatürk

It’s absurd to consider the founding father of the modern-day Turkish state as anything other than a Turk, but if the Greek Parliament passes the recently concluded “name deal” with Macedonia, then Athens will legally be obliged to regard everything in Greek Macedonia – including Atatürk, who was born in the regional capital of Thessaloniki – as having the “attribute” of being part of “Hellenic civilization, history, culture and heritage…from antiquity to the present day”.

Historical revisionism is back in season in the Balkans following the signing of the so-called “name deal” between the Republic of Macedonia and Greece, which the author extensively analyzed in his recent piece about how “Macedonia’s About To Become The World’s First ‘Politically Correct’ Police State”. The details of this topic as they relate to those two countries are contained within the text, but upon further contemplation of one of the many controversial clauses contained within the document, it became obvious that there’s also a Turkish tangent to all of this as well that deserves to be highlighted and discussed. Article 7 (2) of the agreement provocatively states the following:

When reference is made to the First Party, these terms (author’s note: ‘Macedonia’ and ‘Macedonian’ as per Article 7 (1)) denote not only the area and people of the northern region of the First Party, but also their attributes, as well as the Hellenic civilization, history, culture, and heritage of that region from antiquity to present day.” (emphases are the author’s own)

Basically, Greece is making maximalist identity claims to the entirety of Greek Macedonia, which it asserts is characterized by the attribute of representing “Hellenic civilization, history, culture, and heritage…from antiquity to the present day”, or in other words, refusing to acknowledge the existence of any non-Hellenic people on this territory during any time in the past several thousand years. This is blatant revisionism of the most arrogant kind that insults the intelligence of any person with even a passing knowledge of history who is aware of the wars and migrations that have marked the human story since its very beginning, to say nothing of relatively recent events over the past century.

The founding father of the modern-day Turkish state, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, was born in Thessaloniki, the main city of Greek Macedonia and current capital of the Greek administrative region of Central Macedonia, in 1881, thereby placing him within the purview of Greece’s maximalist claims that everything that it refers to by the word “Macedonia” (the region in which Atatürk was born) is characterized by the “attribute” of being part of “Hellenic civilization, history, culture, and heritage…from antiquity to the present day”. For as ridiculous of a claim as this is, it would be seemingly innocuous if it wasn’t about to become the official law of the state and its officials obligated to promote this on the world stage.

The so-called “name deal” that Greece just reached with the Republic of Macedonia will became the law of the land if it passes parliament, thus obligating the state’s representatives to implement all of its clauses, one of which is the revisionist assertion that everything within the borders of what is regarded as Greek Macedonia (including Thessaloniki, Atatürk’s birthplace) has been part of “Hellenic civilization, history, culture, and heritage…from antiquity to the present day”. That’s factually incorrect for many reasons, the most obvious and universally recognized objective one being the very existence of Atatürk – the founder of the modern-day Turkish state – himself, who was born there.

Should the agreement be approved by parliament, then Greece will have to claim Atatürk as their own per their newly promulgated national legislation, which will undoubtedly be seen as an unprecedented provocation by Turkey. It should be noted that the former mastermind of EuroMaidan and present US Ambassador to Greece Geoffrey Pyatt ominously predicted (or one could cynically say, planned in advance) that Turkey’s relations with his and his host country would go through “turbulence” ahead of its coming general election, which most certainly happened after Athens granted “political asylum” to two Turkish coup participants and the US threatened to sanction its nominal NATO “ally” if it purchases Russia’s S-400 anti-air missile system.

Now, however, Greece is about to take everything much further by passing the Macedonian “name deal” and entering its maximalist identity claims to everything and everyone who ever lived in the region of Greek Macedonia into law, thus making this absurd claim one of the pillars of its national-historic policy and compelling its state representatives to advance this narrative at all international fora. Failure to do so would literally be in contravention of the prospective legislation that’s about to be passed, thereby putting offenders on the wrong side of the law and opening them up to prosecution, or at the very least accusations of dereliction of their state duty. It sounds surreal, but these are the real-life implications if this “name deal” passes.

All of this is terribly ironic because the Greeks accuse the Macedonians of engaging in historical revisionism and appropriating a legacy that isn’t theirs, though with the stroke of a pen and pending passage in parliament, it’ll be Greece itself that will undoubtedly be guilty of this through the promulgation into law of its maximalist identity claims to Greek Macedonia that would inextricably involve laying legal claim to Atatürk’s legacy on the  basis that he and his family members were part of “Hellenic civilization, history, culture, and heritage…from antiquity to the present day.” This “politically correct” revisionism will lead to more pronounced interstate tensions if the Greek state gives itself the “right” to officially regard Atatürk as one of its “fellow Hellenes” because there’s no way that President Erdogan would ever remain silent in the face of such a provocation.

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This article was originally published on Eurasia Future.

Andrew Korybko is an American Moscow-based political analyst specializing in the relationship between the US strategy in Afro-Eurasia, China’s One Belt One Road global vision of New Silk Road connectivity, and Hybrid Warfare. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Real and Fake Threats to U.S. Vital Interests

June 18th, 2018 by Philip Giraldi

There has been considerable chatter inside the Washington Beltway about the meaning of President Donald Trump’s recent forays into international trade at the G-7 meeting in Canada and his nuclear disarmament tete-a-tete with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in Singapore. Depending on where one sits on the ideological spectrum G-7 is being viewed either as a calculated and largely ignorant insult to America’s closest allies or as a long overdue accounting for trade and defense imbalances that have severely damaged the U.S. economy. The most vitriolic analysis came from Republicans like Senator John McCain who accused Trump of betraying America’s allies while also aiding its enemies. McCain was referring in part to the president’s eminently reasonable suggestions that Moscow be allowed to rejoin the G-7 and that it would be beneficial to get together personally with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The meeting with Jong-un likewise is being described as a giveaway to North Korea with nothing in exchange but White House spin or as a brilliant maneuver to break a diplomatic logjam that has prevailed for more than twenty years. Those who are particularly concerned over the issue of a possible nuclear exchange taking place are pleased that the two sides are talking, even if, as The Hill observes, it will now be up to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to “put meat on the bones” by initiating a series of confidence building steps that will lead to a program for finally ending the Korean War and denuclearizing the region.

In his analysis of what to expect from Singapore, former Foreign Service Officer Peter Van Buren quotes another FSO Asia hand William Johnson, who describes how diplomacy is a process which

“…is often a series of failures, and in the best case, the failures become incrementally less bad, until the least spectacular failure is declared to be success. Diplomacy is a game where the goalposts are supposed to move, and often, to move erratically. Trump needs a plan, with specific goals, each laid out neatly in a set of talking points, not because he will attain those goals, but because he needs to figure out how short of them he can afford to fall or how far beyond them he can push his interlocutor.”

One would hope that in both the case of G-7 and Singapore wiser heads in the Administration will prevail and convince the White House to remain on target about protecting genuine American interests using diplomacy and whatever other tools are at hand.

Above all, a careful assessment of what the actual threats against the United States might be ten or twenty years down the road should be considered to frame appropriate responses. Was the presidential onslaught at G-7 justified in terms of protecting the national interest relating to unfair trade practices? Is a transnational defense strategy beneficial to the United States if it is required to bear most of the burden financially? And finally, what are the real military and political threats that confront the Washington?

The trade issue is perhaps the most complicated to deal with as most countries run surpluses with some trading partners and deficits with others, something called competitive advantage. The Donald Trump claim that that Canada runs a $100 billion surplus with the U.S. is incorrect. In reality, the U.S. has a small surplus in trading with Canada, last year amounting to $2.8 billion. So, is Canada a major source of trade imbalance? The answer would have to be “no,” even though it is demonstrably protectionist regarding food products. But there are other regions that have a large trade advantage vis-à-vis the U.S. The European Union runs a $100 billion surplus and China $375.

Europe aside, does China’s trade advantage have security implications? Yes, it does as China is the world’s most populous nation with the world’s largest economy. Economic power eventually translates into military power and if Beijing is closing its market to American products arbitrarily while selling its own goods in a relative open U.S. marketplace it becomes a vital national interest to correct that. And there are clear indications that Beijing deliberately distorts the marketplace by maintaining an undervalued Yuan and creating hurdles that foreign companies must negotiate to do business in China. China also owns 19% of Washington’s Treasury note issued debt, totaling $1.18 trillion, which it could unload at any time causing an economic crash in the U.S. The Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats has described the U.S. national debt as the most-grave long-term security challenge facing the country.

Defense policy and military threats from competitors constitute together a single issue as one drives the other. It is ironic that the United States, which is relatively unthreatened by enemies, continues to believe that it must intervene overseas to be safe. The current conflicts with Iran as well as in Syria and in Afghanistan are not vital interests for the United States, instead being driven largely by feckless allies, defense contractors and a sensationalist media. Even North Korea, which is a serious issue, is hardly a major threat to Americans.

The alleged threat from Russia, demonized by both the political left and right, is largely a fiction created to sell newspapers and give aspiring politicians something to talk about. Even if Russia wanted to re-occupy Eastern Europe it does not have the resources to do so. Its army is relatively small and designed for defense, its economy is the same size as Spain’s. It is nuclear armed to be sure, but, unless one is suicidal, nuclear weapons are ultimately defensive rather than offensive, to serve as a deterrent guaranteeing national survival when attacked but hardly usable otherwise.

So realistically Trump should be looking at the over the horizon economic and political problems deriving from Chinese power if he wants to address a real vital national interest. And he should do what he can to keep talking to G-7 about trade imbalances while also doing whatever is possible to hasten the demise of NATO, which has outlived its usefulness both from a fiscal and security point of view. And by all means, he should keep talking to Kim Jong-un and arrange sooner rather than later to meet with Vladimir Putin.

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This article was originally published on American Herald Tribune.

Philip M. Giraldi is a former CIA counter-terrorism specialist and military intelligence officer who served nineteen years overseas in Turkey, Italy, Germany, and Spain. He was the CIA Chief of Base for the Barcelona Olympics in 1992 and was one of the first Americans to enter Afghanistan in December 2001. Phil is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a Washington-based advocacy group that seeks to encourage and promote a U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East that is consistent with American values and interests. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from  #G7Charlevoix/ flickr.

On Father’s Day: Poor Alphonse

June 18th, 2018 by Philip A Farruggio

He was my dad, and he most likely never had a chance for a better life. He was born in 1915 to a Sicilian father and Neapolitan mother, both immigrants. When Alphonse was ten, he lost all his teeth from gum disease. Then, at seventeen, at the onset of the Great Depression, he was able to get into Brooklyn College, a school that required top grades for enrollment. A year into his college career, the torment of the depression forced his parents to close their candy store. In order to make ends meet, Mom and Dad, and yes Alphonse, had to go out and find jobs. He dropped out of college and found a menial job, much to the chagrin of the dean, who saw a great future for young Alphonse. A shitty job, but that extra money coming in would mean lunch for the family would not just be banana or Broccoli Rabe sandwiches.

His dad Peter, a proud and highly intelligent man, who actually graduated college in Tunisia, found work as a machinist, and Alphonse’s mom found work in a factory. Peter got involved with the union, and by the late 1930s was going out on strike. The times were becoming rougher and the NYC cops were always there to protect the owners, not the workers. Violence was in the air. One day Alphonse got a phone call that his dad was in jail, arrested during a labor scuffle. The bail was too high for them to get Peter out. So, Alphonse and his mother went around to everyone and anyone they knew, literally begging for help. Finally, they had enough and got Peter out. The caveat to all this was that Peter was told he would never get a job in that trade again.. ever! Alphonse and his mom kept working, and Peter kept looking for work… any kind of work. He tried to get on Relief, the precursor to today’s welfare, but the waiting list was too long. It seemed that things were not working well for the family. One day, December 1st 1940, Alphonse’s mom came home from her factory job to find the ‘love of her life’ lying in their bathtub… dead from a gunshot to his head. He was thoughtful even in suicide to make sure that he did it in the tub, not wishing to bloody up the floor.

Alphonse got drafted a year and a half later, and was sent to the Tank Corps in Texas. Before he was to be shipped out the Army released him as the ‘Sole supporting son’ . He returned home and found a job at the Brooklyn Navy Yard for the remainder of the war. He made friends with a fellow named Amos, and after the war they decided to go into the used car business. Alphonse was good at choosing cars, and Amos was a natural as the fast talking salesman. Things were good. Alphonse had married his childhood sweetheart by then, and had two sons… this writer being the newest arrival. The ‘wheel of fate’ rotated once again in the early 1950s when Amos took out a bank loan and forged Alphonse’s name as  cosigner. When he could not repay the loan, they came after Alphonse… and before long he had to declare personal bankruptcy. He lost the car lot and wound up getting a job on the docks as a longshoreman.

Yes, other men had it much worse. But other men were not my father. He never once stopped loving me his entire life. He was always there for myself and my older brother… always! May his spirit enjoy the joy and happiness on the other side of this dream called life… the joy and happiness that only came in spurts for dear Alphonse.

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Philip A Farruggio is a son and grandson of Brooklyn, NYC longshoremen. He has been a freelance columnist since 2001, with over 300 of his work posted on sites like Consortium News, Information Clearing House, Global Research, Nation of Change, World News Trust, Op Ed News, Dissident Voice, Counterpunch, Activist Post, Sleuth Journal, Truthout and many others. His blog can be read in full on World News Trust, whereupon he writes a great deal on the need to cut military spending drastically and send the savings back to save our cities. Philip has a internet interview show, ‘It’s the Empire… Stupid’ with producer Chuck Gregory, and can be reached at [email protected]

Eurasian integration and developing relations with Asian countries are important items on Russia’s present-day political agenda.  One of the platforms for moving forward on these issues is the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU or EEU), which includes Russia, Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. With the aid of this organization, the Russian Federation is improving its cooperation with numerous Asian countries, which could become Russia’s invaluable economic partners in the future.

The EEU (and therefore Russia) has successfully collaborated with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). The creation of a free trade zone (FTZ) between the EEU and the most influential and successful ASEAN member, Vietnam, is one of the most impressive achievements stemming from this cooperation, with the relevant agreement in effect since 2016

Thailand as well as Indonesia have also expressed their interest in creating a FTZ with the EEU.  However, negotiations with these countries will take time, while in the near future the EEU could sign an agreement of this nature with the renowned Asian Tiger, the Republic of Singapore.

The discussion to this effect has spanned a number of years. In May 2016, the Singapore Government and the Eurasian Economic Commission (EEC, the EEU’s regulatory body) signed a Memorandum of Understanding which sets forth the partners’ intention to collaborate on the issues of economic integration and elimination of trade barriers. In October 2016, the EEU and Singapore signed a declaration on creating a work group, whose aim is to research the feasibility of the FTZ agreement. Official  negotiations on establishing the free trade zone began in summer 2017. By the end of May 2018, three rounds of negotiations have already taken place but many issues are yet to be discussed, and it is senseless to rush such work. Both the EEU and Singapore expect to conclude the agreement on mutually advantageous terms. It is estimated that the outcome of these negotiations will become known closer to autumn 2018.

Still, the mere existence of these negotiations and the research group has already aided the development of the economic relations between the EEU and Singapore.  Hence, in 2017 the trade turnover between Singapore and the EEU countries exceeded $4.6 million, which is almost 90% higher than that in 2016.

The joint work group’s second session, dedicated to cooperation between the EEU and the Singapore Government, was held in May 2018. The main topics for discussion were trade development, economic cooperation, the digital economy and the possibility of creating the FTZ. The EEU representatives asserted their wish to achieve greater cooperation with Singapore as well as the other members of ASEAN.  In turn, Singapore signaled their readiness to aid the dialogue between the EEU and ASEAN.

At the end of May 2018, Sergey Lavrov, the Foreign Minister of Russia, shared his views on the possibility of creating an EEU-Singapore FTZ with the media. In his opinion, this FTZ could become an important stimulus for mutual trade, reciprocal capital investment and a technology exchange between the participating member states, which would, in turn, lead to a creation of a brand new environment conducive to investment and trade.

According to the EEC representatives, the next round of negotiations on establishing the FTZ between the EEU and Singapore will take place in June 2018.

Aside from the ASEAN block, the EEU is actively collaborating with other Asian countries. In May 2018, the EEU member states signed an interim agreement on establishing a FTZ with the Islamic Republic of Iran in Astana, the capital of Kazakhstan.  The parties eliminated or lowered various custom duties on a range of goods, agreed on a dispute resolution process, and decided to establish a joint committee comprised of high-ranking representatives from participating countries.  The duration of this agreement is 3 years,  and it has been reported that it is the first step in creating a permanent FTZ. Nevertheless, a permanent arrangement requires long-term and rigorous negotiations, which will take place while the interim FZT is in place.

Iran’s decision to sign this interim agreement could have been a direct consequence of the predicament it has found itself in because of the US intention to withdraw from the Iran nuclear agreement and impose new sanctions. A speedy creation of the FTZ with the EEU, even if temporary in nature, could substantially aid Iran’s economy threatened by US actions. At this time the trade turnover between Iran and the EEU countries is already approximately $2.7 billion, and this figure is bound to increase substantially in the next few months as a result of the interim FTZ.

China is yet another important EEU partner in Asia.  PRC also has serious intentions as far as the Eurasian economic integration is concerned. 2018 marked a 5-year anniversary of the Chinese Silk Road Economic Belt (the Belt) initiative, intended to unite key Eurasian transport routes and establish a common economic zone. The Chinese initiative nicely complements the EEU projects.  In May 2015, the Chinese President Xi Jinping and the Russian President Vladimir Putin signed an association agreement involving the Belt with the EEU.

In the summer of 2016, long-term negotiations on trade and economic cooperation began between China and the EEU. In October 2017, PRC’s Commerce Minister Zhong Shan and Veronika Nikishina, the EEC Minister in charge of trade, signed a bilateral agreement on concluding these negotiations. It has been reported that the agreement in question is of paramount importance both for China and the EEU member countries, and it will aid in eliminating trade barriers, increasing state support for trade initiatives and creating favorable conditions for industrial growth.

At the moment, the EEU leaders are preparing for the negotiations on creating a FTZ with a number of countries, including important players on the global market such as Israel and India. It is worth noting that EEU’s achievements over its 3-year life span are significant. All the aforementioned events may substantially strengthen trade and economic development on the entire Eurasian continent and lead to the creation of a firm foundation for Eurasian economic integration. The stabilizing role of all these processes is certainly noteworthy. For instance, the inclusion of long-term rivals such as China and India in the common economic zone could have a positive effect on the calm in the entire Asia-Pacific region.

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Dmitry Bokarev is a political observer, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook.

Civilians are fleeing Hodeidah after hundreds were killed in the Saudi-led coalition’s bomb campaign to take the strategic Yemeni port from Houthi rebels. The death toll and the disruption of vital supply lines has alarmed the UN.

Over 4,000 families have fled the city since June 1, according to the latest report by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs  that describes people losing their entire livelihood after airstrikes destroyed their farms.

“The air attacks were extremely heavy and violent back there, hitting humans, trees and houses – everything,” one of the displaced Yemenis told RT’s Ruptly video agency.

“A lot of people died – children and seniors” in the shelling of Hodeidah by the Saudi-led forces, another civilian added.

 

On Friday, AP reported that the number of casualties from the first three days of the operation stood at more than 280 people. But the death toll is feared to have grown as the coalition, which is seeking to reinstall the ousted government, continued to bomb Hodeidah on Saturday and Sunday, despite initial pledges to limit their bombing to the airport area, in what they call a “military and humanitarian operation” to “liberate the port of Hodeidah in western Yemen”.

On Saturday, the coalition announced that its backing has allowed the forces loyal to ousted Yemeni President Mansour Hadi to gain control of the airport outside Hodeidah.

“The military operations to liberate the city of Hodeida will not be stopped until we secure the city and its strategic port and that won’t last too long,” Sadek Dawad, the spokesman for the Republic Guards, told AP.

The Houthi rebels have denied the claims of the Saudi-led coalition, with Ahmed Taresh, who is in charge of Hodeida airport, telling SABA news agency that the facility has been completely destroyed by the airstrikes, but has not been surrendered to the enemy.

Ruptly footage from the outskirts of Hodeidah had shown plumes of black smoke coming from the airport, with sounds of explosion and intense fighting in the background.

The attempt by Sweden to pass a motion at the UN Security Council calling to end the fighting at Hodeidah was rejected on Friday, the US and UK blocking it. Both countries support the Saudi-led coalition and have faced harsh criticism for selling the weapons that are used against Yemeni civilians.

The Red Sea port of Hodeidah is of vital importance; it’s the main distribution point for humanitarian and commercial supplies arriving in Yemen, which is going through a massive humanitarian crisis. Riyadh and its allies have repeatedly tried to blockade the docks, saying that it was being used by Iran to smuggle arms to the Houthis.

Prior to the start of the coalition’s siege on Wednesday, the UN said that an attack on the densely populated port city may cost up to 250,000 civilian lives. It also warned that the operation could leave millions of Yemenis without the “food and basic supplies needed to prevent famine and a recurrence of a cholera epidemic.”

On Sunday, UN special envoy Martin Griffiths arrived in the Yemeni capital, Sanaa, in an attempt to broker a diplomatic solution to the crisis. The talks have been at “an advanced stage” for the United Nations to take over the administration of the port of Hodeidah, Lise Grande, UN humanitarian coordinator, said. Griffiths is expected to report to the UN Security Council on the results of the negotiations on Monday.

The Arab coalition has been waging a brutal military campaign in Yemen since March 2015, in an attempt to restore president Hadi to power. Three years of Saudi-led bombardment and a blockade of Yemen has led to a catastrophic situation in the country, with 22 million people, or 80 percent of the population, in need of humanitarian aid, while more than half of the country is left without basic medical services.

More than 5,500 people have been killed and over 9,000 injured as of the end of 2017, according to the UN, with Riyadh and its allies accused of indiscriminate bombings of civilian infrastructure in the country.