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By Aaron Maté

Pretending to oppose a Rafah assault, the White House facilitates a new Israeli massacre at a Gaza tent camp.

27 May 2024 – After months of unrelenting Israeli slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza, President Biden and his top aides insisted that they had had enough.

When it comes to an Israeli assault on Rafah, where more than one million displaced people had fled, that would be a “red line,” Biden said in March. “I’m not supplying the weapons … to deal with that problem,” he promised earlier this month. The White House, Secretary of State Antony Blinken declared in April, “cannot support a major military operation in Rafah.” For the US, “it’s imperative that people are able to get out of the way of any conflict,” and “we have yet to see a plan.”

Israel’s latest massacre in a Rafah tent camp for displaced civilians, in which dozens of people including children were burned and maimed while sheltering near United Nations warehouses, shows that the White House’s “red line” in Rafah was in fact a green light for continued Israeli atrocities. According to the Palestinian Red Crescent, the attack occurred in the Tal as Sultan area of Rafah, where the Israeli military had declared a so-called “safe zone” and encouraged Palestinians to flee to for protection.

Asked two weeks ago “what exactly is [Biden’s] red line,” and whether that would entail “withholding weapons”, Blinken answered tersely: “Look, we don’t talk about red lines when it comes to Israel.” In other words, when Blinken’s boss, Biden, did talk about a “red line” in March, he was simply lying – just as when he falsely and repeatedly claimed to have seen photos of Israeli Oct. 7^th victims that do not in fact exist.

After laying down an invisible “red line,” the White House also ensured that its one concrete use of US leverage was a meaningless gesture. When Biden paused a weapons shipment to Israel for the first time earlier this month, the administration claimed it was a “shot across the bow” intended to underscore US opposition to a Rafah assault. Yet one US official acknowledged that the move would have no impact. “Despite the pause,” the official explained, according to the Washington Post, “the Israeli military has enough weapons supplied by the U.S. and other partners to conduct the Rafah operation if it chooses to cast aside U.S. objections.” To underscore that its objections were meaningless, the White House quickly followed the token pause with a new authorization of $1 billion in arms sales to Israel, primarily in tank ammunition.

To ensure that US weapons shipments could continue uninterrupted, Blinken’s State Department then released a Congressionally mandated report that adopted the same double game. The report found that it was “reasonable to assess” that US weapons “have been used by Israeli security forces since October 7 in instances inconsistent” with international law in Gaza, yet nonetheless concluded that there was insufficient information to do anything about it.

The report also found that Israeli “action or inaction … contributed significantly” to “insufficient” levels of food and aid inside Gaza, yet ultimately concluded that the US does not “currently assess that the Israeli government is prohibiting or otherwise restricting the transport or delivery of U.S. humanitarian assistance.” The report’s conclusions contradict virtually every aid organization operating in Gaza, as well as the US government’s own experts. Rather than demand that Israel end its aid blockade of Gaza, the US has spent over $320 million building a “humanitarian pier” that has only managed to supply a trickle of supplies.

In defending the State Department report’s incoherence, Blinken cited what he called “an incredibly complex military environment.” When it comes to Hamas, he added: “You have an enemy that intentionally embeds itself with civilians. It’s very, very difficult in the heat of war to make a definitive assessment about any individual incident.” By definition, Hamas is “embedded” throughout Gaza because its 2 million inhabitants are trapped inside the same strip of land under a US-backed Israeli siege. The Gaza military environment is therefore the opposite of “complex”: it is a defenseless, occupied territory where, according to Israel and the White House, every civilian is fair game.

National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan made this explicit just days ago. When it comes to judging Israel’s operations in Rafah, Sullivan told reporters, “there’s no mathematical formula.” Instead, he explained, “what we’re going to be looking at is whether there is a lot of death and destruction from this operation or if it is more precise and proportional.”

In other words, rather than unequivocally oppose more Israeli “death and destruction” in Rafah and vowing consequences, the US would only acknowledge new atrocities after facilitating them.

In an additional endorsement of Israel’s Rafah assault, Sullivan claimed that he had been briefed “on refinements that Israel has made to its plans to achieve its military objectives while taking account of civilian harm.” The day prior, an unnamed senior administration official had claimed that: “It’s fair to say that the Israelis have updated their plans. They’ve incorporated many of the concerns that we have expressed.” No detail was provided on what these “updated” “refinements” entailed.

A few days before the Rafah tent camp massacre, the State Department also claimed that Blinken, in a call with Israeli Minister Benny Gantz, “reiterated the President’s position on a major Rafah operation.” Notably, the statement did not bother to specify what “the President’s position” was. By that point, the White House had made perfectly clear that it would claim to oppose a “major Rafah operation,” all while allowing massacres that it would pretend are not “major.”

Blinken’s statement came as the International Court of Justice ordered Israel to comply with the Genocide Convention and “immediately halt its offensive” in Rafah. It also demanded that Israel immediately allow the “unhindered provision … of urgently needed basic services and humanitarian assistance.”

Yet the White House “was conspicuously silent” on the ICJ ruling, the Washington Post noted, “a stark contrast to an almost identical ruling by the ICJ in March 2022,” which ordered Russia to “immediately suspend” military operations in Ukraine. Back then, the State Department lauded the court’s “vital role in the peaceful settlement of disputes under the U.N. Charter.”

Rather than comment on the ICJ decision, the Post added, the National Security Council directed spokespeople to respond to questions with a single sentence: “We’ve been clear and consistent on our position on Rafah.”

Yet with its invisible “red line” and procession of mealy mouthed, incoherent statements, the White House has been the opposite of clear. When it comes to Israel’s mass murder campaign in Gaza, Biden and his aides have only been consistent in deceptively fueling death and destruction.

Aaron Maté is a journalist with The Grayzone, where he hosts “Pushback.” He is also a contributor to Real Clear Investigations and the temporary co-host of “Useful Idiots.” In 2019, Maté won the Izzy Award for outstanding achievement in independent media for Russiagate coverage in The Nation.

3 June 2024

Source: transcend.org

By Caitlin Johnstone

It clears up a lot of confusion when you understand that the US empire is not a national government which happens to run nonstop military operations, it’s a nonstop military operation that happens to run a national government.

1 Jun 2024 – It clears up a lot of confusion when you understand that the US empire is not a national government which happens to run nonstop military operations, it’s a nonstop military operation that happens to run a national government.

The wars are not designed to serve the interests of the United States, the United States is designed to serve the interests of the wars. The US as a country is just a source of funding, personnel, resources and diplomatic cover for a nonstop campaign to dominate the planet with mass military violence and the threat thereof.

This campaign is not waged to benefit the American people or their security, but to benefit the loose international alliance of plutocrats and unelected empire managers whose wealth and power are premised on the world order of continuous violence, exploitation and extraction which the campaign of global domination upholds. This campaign of global domination and its manifestations as a whole may be referred to as the US empire, which has very little in common with the US as an individual nation.

Until you understand this, nothing the US government or the US war machine does will make sense. You won’t understand why military operations are being waged which don’t seem to benefit the American people in any way, and which if anything actually harm the national security interests of the United States. You won’t understand why US foreign policy remains the same no matter who’s in office, regardless of party or platform. You won’t understand why the US and its allies do crazy things that otherwise make no sense for governments to do, like backing an increasingly unpopular genocide in Gaza, starting a cold war with China, or tempting nuclear armageddon with Russia.

And the answer is that these aggressions are not happening because they benefit the US as a nation, or even because they serve the political agendas of any elected officials. The nonstop violence is a means to a completely different end, and is almost an end in and of itself — benefiting war profiteers, shoring up geostrategic control, and expanding the sphere of the US empire’s particular brand of global capitalism.

There’s the nonstop worldwide military operation, and then there’s the theatrical set pieces of an official government slapped together in the foreground which we’re all meant to pretend has something to do with all the wars and militarism we are seeing. In reality the war machine just does what it’s going to do while the official elected suits in Washington put on these performances where they argue about abortion and Donald Trump to make it look like the US has a real government that’s making real decisions.

It was decided long ago that war is too important to be left to the will of the electorate, so now there’s this fake dummy political system that the American people are given to play with so they won’t meddle with the gears of the imperial machine. The local inhabitants of the hub of the globe-spanning empire are kept too propagandized, entertained, distracted, busy, poor, and sick to have a truth-based relationship with what’s being done in their name around the world, and if they do make some space in their life to become politically engaged they are herded into a kayfabe two-party system where both factions support war, militarism, imperialism, plutocracy and ecocidal capitalism but put immense amounts of energy into empty culture warring over issues that nobody with any real power cares about.

Trying to talk about this to people who are still plugged into the mainstream imperial worldview is like if Amazon had a children’s cartoon show called Andy Amazon & Friends, and the public believed the cartoon show was Amazon — they didn’t know anything about the sprawling trillionaire megacorporation that’s devouring the global economy. You’d try to talk about the gargantuan e-commerce company and they’d think you were talking about the cartoon, and object that what you’re saying doesn’t line up with what they know about the show and its characters.

Once you see the corporation behind the cartoon, once you see the empire behind the performative puppet show of official politics, you see it everywhere. You see it in the movements of the imperial war machine. You see it in the news headlines. You see it in the phony justifications and narratives that are being spouted by the western political-media class. You see it in our education system. You see it throughout our vapid mainstream western culture of interminable diversion and capitalist indoctrination.

And you stop caring about the puppet show. You stop caring about presidential elections, about Stormy Daniels and Donald Trump, about the culture war wedge issue of the day and the latest hot topic that everyone’s saying you need to take a position on. It becomes as interesting to you as some Youtube video your kid has on in the background when you’re busy dealing with a home emergency.

And the behavior of the empire absolutely is an emergency. The escalations against Russia and China that these freaks are pushing have the world on a trajectory that’s going to get us all killed, and the horrors they are inflicting in Gaza and elsewhere are creating a nightmare on earth right here and now. The empire is only getting crazier and more violent as its planetary domination becomes more challenged, and until people can see it for what it really is, it’s going to be very hard to build up the necessary public opposition against it to use the power of our numbers to force them to stop.

Caitlin Johnstone is a rogue journalist, poet, and utopia prepper. Contact: admin@caitlinjohnstone.com

3 June 2024

Source: transcend.org

By Amy Goodman and Denis Moynihan

30 May 2024 – Israel’s ongoing bombardment and ground invasion of Gaza, now nearing its ninth month, has provoked unprecedented global outcry. On May 24th, the International Court of Justice, after an emergency hearing in South Africa’s genocide case against Israel, ordered Israel to halt its attack on Rafah. In a statement published with the order, one of the court’s presiding jurists, Judge Dire Tladi of South Africa, wrote,

“There are no more words to describe the horrors in Gaza. The words ‘apocalyptic,’ ‘exceptionally grave,’ ‘disastrous’ and ‘catastrophic’ have all been used to describe the current situation, and all seem to pale in comparison to what is unfolding before our very eyes. Almost daily we are confronted with gut-wrenching accounts of victims and survivors and images of unimaginable suffering.”

Rather than heeding the court’s order, Israel bombed a refugee tent city outside Rafah, in what was designated as a “safe zone.” Independent journalist Shrouq Aila spoke to the Democracy Now! news hour from Gaza, two days later, saying,

“They launched at least two rockets on a displacement camp that is quite close to the UNRWA logistic base…people gathered around this space, considering it a safe area. After the bombing, the area is basically full of tents for displaced people, and the fire [spread] because the tents are basically made of nylon fabrics and wood…the death toll was 45, and almost 200 injured.”

A man who survived was recorded holding the charred, decapitated body of a child. CNN is reporting the munitions used were made in the United States by Boeing.

Meanwhile, not far from the ICJ in The Hague, at the International Criminal Court, ICC Prosecutor Karim Khan petitioned for arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, as well as for three senior Hamas leaders, for war crimes and crimes against humanity. Khan wrote, “Notwithstanding any military goals they may have,” “the means Israel chose to achieve them in Gaza – namely, intentionally causing death, starvation, great suffering, and serious injury to body or health of the civilian population – are criminal.”

In a further challenge to Israel, three European nations formally recognized Palestine as a state. Ireland, Norway and Spain join over 140 other United Nations member states (as well as two UN-recognized non-states, Vatican City and the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic) in recognizing Palestinian statehood.

In announcing the decision, Ireland’s Taoiseach, or Prime Minister, Simon Harris said,

“On the 21st of January 1919 Ireland asked the world to recognise our right to be an independent State…a plea for international recognition of our independence, emphasizing our distinct national identity, our historical struggle, and our right to self-determination and justice. Today we use the same language to support the recognition of Palestine as a State.”

Harris added, “I have spoken to a number of other Leaders, and I am confident that further countries will join us in taking this important step in coming weeks.” Iceland and Sweden recognized Palestine years ago; Slovenia has indicated it will do so by mid-June.

On May 10th, the United Nations General Assembly voted on Palestinian membership; 143 countries voted in favor, 25 abstained, and nine voted against, led by the United States. Membership requires approval by the Security Council, where the US holds veto power. In April, in advance of the General Assembly vote, the Security Council considered a resolution to recommend Palestine receive full UN membership. The US, as it almost always does on matters critical of Israel, vetoed it.

President Joe Biden has publicly called for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, but his actions speak far louder, and far more lethally, than his words. It seems the Biden administration has no “red line” that would force him to halt arms shipments to Israel, nor take any other significant punitive action to align the US government with almost every other nation on earth.

At a White House press briefing on May 28th, CBS News’ Ed O’Keefe asked National Security Communications Advisor John Kirby about the deadly strikes on the tent camp near Rafah:

“O’Keefe: How does this not violate the red line the president laid out?

“Kirby: We don’t want to see a major operation, we haven’t seen one.

“O’Keefe: How many more charred corpses does he have to see before he considers a change in policy?

“Kirby: We don’t want to see a single more innocent life taken, and I kind of take a little offense at the question.

ICC Prosecutor Karim Khan included in his Gaza war crimes petition that he “will not hesitate to submit further applications for warrants of arrest.” President Biden and his enablers have the power to end Israel’s war on Gaza and the slaughter of civilians there. Their decision not to is criminal.

Amy Goodman is the host of “Democracy Now!” a daily international TV/radio news hour airing on more than 900 stations in North America.

Denis Moynihan is the co-founder of Democracy Now! Since 2002, he has participated in the organization’s worldwide distribution, infrastructure development, and the coordination of complex live broadcasts from many continents.

3 June 2024

Source: transcend.org

By Vijay Prashad

16 May 2024 – The subtitle, My Heart Makes My Head Swim, comes from Frantz Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks (1952). In a chapter called ‘The Fact of Blackness’, Fanon writes about the despair that racism produces, the immense anxiety about living in a world that has decided that certain people are simply not human or not sufficiently human. The lives of these people, children of a lesser god, are assigned less worth than the lives of the powerful and the propertied. An international division of humanity tears the world into pieces, throwing masses of people into the fires of anguish and oblivion.

What is happening in Rafah, Gaza’s southernmost city, is ghastly. Since October 2023, Israel has ordered 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza to move southwards as the Israeli armed forces have steadily moved their gunsights across the Wadi Gaza wetlands down to the edge of Rafah. Kilometre by kilometre, as the Israeli military advances, the so-called safe zone moves further and further south. In December, the Israeli government claimed, with great cruelty, that the tent city of al-Mawasi (west of Rafah, along the Mediterranean Sea) was the new designated safe area. A mere 6.5 square kilometres (half the size of London’s Heathrow airport), the supposed safe zone within al-Mawasi is nowhere near large enough to house the more than one million Palestinians who are in Rafah. Not only was it absurd for Israel to say that al-Mawasi would be a refuge, but – according to the laws of war – a safe zone must be agreed upon by all parties.

‘How can a zone be safe in a war zone if it is only unilaterally decided by one part of the conflict?’, asked Philippe Lazzarini, the commissioner-general of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA); ‘It can only promote the false feeling that it will be safe’. Furthermore, on several occasions, Israel has bombed al-Mawasi, the area it says is safe. On 20 February, Israel attacked a shelter operated by Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières, killing two family members of the organisation’s staff. This week, on 13 May, an international UN staff member was killed after the Israeli army opened fire on a UN vehicle, one of the nearly 200 UN workers killed in Gaza in addition to the targeted assassination of aid workers.

Not only has Israel begun to bomb Rafah, but it hastily sent in tanks to seize the only border crossing through which aid dribbled in on the few trucks a day that were allowed to enter. After Israel seized the Rafah border, it prevented the entry of aid into Gaza altogether. Starving Palestinians has long been Israeli policy, which is of course a war crime. Preventing aid from entering Gaza is part of the international division of humanity that has defined not only this genocide, but the occupation of Palestinian land in East Jerusalem, Gaza, and the West Bank since 1967 and the system of apartheid within the borders defined by Israel following the 1948 Nakba (‘Catastrophe’).

Three words in this sentence are fundamentally contested by Israel: apartheid, occupation, and genocide. Israel and its Global North allies want to claim that the use of these words to describe Israeli policies, Zionism, or the oppression of Palestinians is tantamount to anti-Semitism. But, as the United Nations and numerous respected human rights groups note, these are legal descriptions of the reality on the ground and not moral judgments that are made either in haste or out of anti-Semitism. A short primer on the accuracy of these three concepts is necessary to counter this denial.

Apartheid. The Israeli government treats the Palestinian minority population within the borders defined in 1948 (21%) as second-class citizens. There are at least sixty-five Israeli laws that discriminate against Palestinian citizens of Israel. One of them, passed in 2018, declares the country a ‘nation state of the Jewish people’. As the Israeli philosopher Omri Boehm wrote, through this new law, the Israeli government ‘formally endorses’ the use of ‘apartheid methods within Israel’s recognised borders’. The United Nations and Human Rights Watch have both said that Israel’s treatment of Palestinians falls under the definition of apartheid. The use of this term is entirely factual.

Occupation. In 1967, Israel occupied the three Palestinian territories of East Jerusalem, Gaza, and the West Bank. From 1967 to 1999, these three areas were referred to as part of the Occupied Arab Territories (which at different times also included Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, Syria’s Golan region, and southern Lebanon). Since 1999, they have been termed the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT). In UN documents and at the International Court of Justice, Israel is referred to as the ‘occupying power’, which is a term of art that requires certain obligations from Israel toward those whom it occupies. Although the 1993 Oslo Accords set up the Palestinian Authority, Israel remains the occupying power of the OPT, a designation that has not been revised. An occupation is identical to colonial rule: it is when a foreign power dominates a people in their homeland and denies them sovereignty and rights. Despite Israel’s military withdrawal from Gaza in 2005 (which included the dismantling of twenty-one illegal settlements), Israel continues to occupy Gaza by building a perimeter fence around the Gaza Strip and by policing the Mediterranean waters of Gaza. Annexation of parts of East Jerusalem and the West Bank as well as the punctual bombing of Gaza are violations of Israel’s obligation as the occupying power.

An occupation imposes a structural condition of violence upon the occupied. That is why international law recognises that those who are occupied have the right to resist. In 1965, in the midst of Guinea Bissau’s struggle against Portuguese colonialism, the United Nations General Assembly passed Resolution 2105 (‘Implementation of the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples’). Paragraph 10 of this resolution is worth reading carefully: ‘The General Assembly… [r]ecognises the legitimacy of the struggle by the peoples under colonial rule to exercise their right to self-determination and independence and invites all States to provide material and moral assistance to the national liberation movements in colonial Territories’. There is no ambiguity here. Those who are occupied have the right to resist, and, in fact, all member states of the United Nations are bound by this treaty to assist them. Rather than sell arms to the occupying power, who is the aggressor in the ongoing genocide, the members states of the United Nations – particularly from the Global North – should aid the Palestinians.

Genocide. In its order published on 26 January, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) found that there was ‘plausible’ evidence of Israel committing genocide against Palestinians. In March, the UN special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, Francesca Albanese, published a monumental report called Anatomy of a Genocide. In this report, Albanese wrote that ‘there are reasonable grounds to believe that the threshold indicating Israel’s commission of genocide is met’. ‘More broadly’, she wrote, ‘they also indicate that Israel’s actions have been driven by a genocidal logic integral to its settler-colonial project in Palestine, signalling a tragedy foretold’.

Intent to commit genocide is easily proved in the context of Israel’s bombardment. In October 2023, Israel’s President Isaac Herzog said that ‘an entire nation out there is responsible’ for the attacks on 7 October, and it was not true that ‘civilians [were] not… aware, not involved’. The ICJ pointed to this statement, among others, since it expresses Israel’s intent and use of ‘collective punishment’, a genocidal war crime. The following month, Israel’s Jerusalem Affairs and Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu said that dropping a nuclear bomb on Gaza was ‘an option’ since ‘there are no non-combatants in Gaza’. Before the ICJ ruling was published, Moshe Saada, a member of the Israeli parliament from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party, said that ‘all Gazans must be destroyed’. These sentiments, by any international standard, demonstrate an intent to commit genocide. As with ‘apartheid’ and ‘occupation’, the use of the term ‘genocide’ is entirely accurate.

Earlier this year, Inkani Books, a Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research project based in South Africa, published the isiZulu translation of Fanon’s Wretched of the Earth, Izimpabanga Zomhlaba, translated by Makhosazana Xaba. We are so proud of this accomplishment, bringing the work of Fanon into another African language (it has already been translated into Arabic and Swahili).

When I was last in Palestine, I spoke with young children about their aspirations. What they told me reminded me of a section from The Wretched of the Earth: ‘At twelve or thirteen years of age the village children know the names of the old men who were in the last rising, and the dreams they dream in the douars [camps] or in the villages are not those of money or of getting through their exams like the children of the towns, but dreams of identification with some rebel or another, the story of whose heroic death still today moves them to tears’.

Children in Gaza will remember this genocide with at least the same intensity as their ancestors remembered 1948 and as their parents remembered the occupation that has loomed over this narrow piece of land since their own childhood. Children in South Africa will read these lines from Fanon in isiZulu and remember those who fell to inaugurate a new South Africa thirty years ago.

Vijay Prashad is an Indian historian, editor and journalist. He is a writing fellow and chief correspondent at Globetrotter.

3 June 2024

Source: transcend.org

By CONTRIBUTING AUTHORS

Guest contributor

Maung Zarni

With spiralling violence throughout the country and the alarming resurgence of the genocidal destruction of the Rohingya in Rakhine, Myanmar is ripe for external political intervention by its neighbours.

Since the 2021 military coup that ousted Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD), the ensuing violent conflict between the State Administrative Council (the coup regime, SAC) and a myriad of anti-coup resistance movements, has triggered the dismemberment process of Myanmar along ethnic lines.

A clear and comprehensive understanding of Myanmar’s crisis is in order. Armed and political conflicts have been taking place over the last 70 years.

I did a research interview with the late Colonel Chit Myaing, who, in 1947, was the deputy-commander of the 5th Burma Rifles stationed in Rakhine State. “I was still fighting Rakhine separatists in Western Burma the day the Union Jack came down and the new Burma flag went up with fanfare in the capital,” he told me.

In those early years, Rohingya Muslims from northern Rakhine adjacent to what was then called East Pakistan (Bangladesh came into being after its 1971 war of independence) were also fighting the Burma Army.

At times the Rohingya made a common cause against the political centre with their co-habitant Rakhine Buddhists. Then the Karen and the various factions of the Burmese Communist Party launched their respective bids to take over the central state.

Fast-forward to present-day Myanmar.

In a nutshell, the emerging on-the-ground situation is a hybrid between a deeply fractured Syria of today and the early days of Yugloslavia’s break-up in the 1990s, which involved multiple genocidal acts and shifting alliances along ethnic lines.

In Syria, the Russian-backed Assad regime remains unscathed in Damascus while the country’s territories have fallen into the hands of a half-dozen anti-Assad resistance groups, with ties to various external powers.

Unlike the break-up of Yugoslavia – referred to as “Balkanization” – in the 1990s, Myanmar’s national boundaries with its immediate neighbours such as China, India, Thailand, Bangladesh and Laos have not changed.

For no neighbouring country, particularly China and India – with their own respective issues of the “break-away province” of Taiwan and restive anti-Delhi northeast region – would stomach the birth of new mono-ethnocratic statelets on its borders with Myanmar, where inter-ethnic and communal tensions are brewing.

Because of the loss of what legalists call “effective control” of territories, international supporters of Myanmar’s anti-coup armed resistance organisations have begun, rather prematurely, to project the collapse of the deeply unpopular SAC.

They mistake the military’s troop withdrawal and battlefield losses in ethnic peripheries of the country as imminent SAC collapse.

To belabour the obvious, while better-armed and backed by China and Russia – with complete air dominance – the SAC has been forced to adopt tactical withdrawal from the regions which it considers peripheral to the its survival.

But, it is empirically false to argue that its territorial losses to resistance forces are “irreversible”.

A case in point is Myawaddy. The SAC successfully retook one of the most important border trading towns on Thai-Myanmar border, after weeks of its initial retreat.

As a matter of fact, the resistance forces are susceptible to the whims and pressures of India, China, Bangladesh and Thailand.

Ethnic Resistance Organisations (EROs) such as the Kachin Independence Organization (KIO), the Karen National Union (KNU), the Karenni National Progressive Party (KNPP), the Chin National Front (CNF), and the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA) have to rely on the neighbouring states’ tacit approval for their economic survival.

To its detriment, the SAC is fighting a multi-front civil war against a myriad of ethnic and pro-democratic resistance groups. It has resorted to scorched earth operations, including with hundreds of airstrikes and the destruction of key infrastructure such as bridges, wherever its troops have been defeated or forced to withdraw.

My resistance colleagues on-the-ground told me that the areas, euphemistically termed as “liberated”, are in effect littered with rubble and ruins, devoid of human inhabitants.

Barely able to feed their own internal war refugees, the resistance organisations are in no position to put the reconstruction of their communities on their agendas.

The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi told the Security Council that Myanmar’s civil war has resulted in over three million Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) since the 2021 coup.

The country’s informal economy is being ruined as the fighting has spread nationwide.

Internally, other EROs such as the Ta’ang National Liberation Army (TNLA) and the Arakan Army (AA) are grabbing towns and military outposts for the purposes of revenue collections, natural resource and trade route control, enraging local ethnic communities.

This inevitably sets the stage for future inter-ethnic communal violence, even without the military’s ethnic divide-and-rule involvement in these horizontal conflicts.

Don’t forget, there are also almost one million Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh, whose wholesale repatriation – and future reconstruction – to Rakhine has to remain on any international agenda.

Alarmingly, the increased territorial control of their homeland in northern Rakhine by the AA, with its well-documented anti-Rohingya genocidal racism, has already resulted in a new round of death, arson and destruction. Against this backdrop, Bangladesh’s policy objective of Rohingya repatriation will remain unrealizable.

Post-genocide Cambodia offers relevant lessons to Myanmar watchers and resisters, as well as the embattled SAC leadership.

A week ago at the Future of Cambodia without Genocide Conference in Phnom Penh, I heard former Prime Minister Hun Sen offer his first-hand analysis of how the Western “champions of democracy and human rights” kept alive Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge regime for 12 years after it was militarily defeated.

Currently there is a complete absence of any effective measures or viable approaches to the humanitarian crisis in Myanmar. Neither the Security Council, with its paralysis, nor the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) – with its futile Five Point Consensus – has been able to stop the violence.

It is time for Myanmar’s neighbours to put their heads together to break this vicious cycle, and put an end to war in Myanmar.

There is absolutely no denying that both the Bamar political and military elite, and the non-Bamar ethnic leaderships, have failed the 55 million diverse peoples living in Myanmar.

The initially unifying rhetoric of “federal democracy” which emerged in the early months of the nationwide armed resistance, during which established EROs served as incubators of new revolutionaries for the thousands of young men and women from across Myanmar, has for all intents and purposes, faded away.

Ominously, the garden variety ethnic-nationalisms informed by the “blood-and-soil” racist ideologies are taking root. To be specific, the AA have reportedly inflicted ethnically-motivated violence and arson targeting Rohingya genocide survivors.

This ominous development is what prompted former U.S. Ambassador to Myanmar Scot Marciel – one of the most vocal supporters of the armed resistance in Myanmar – to express his alarm to Reuters on 27 May.

“The situation [in Rakhine] is incredibly fraught and dangerous…In some ways, this is an early test of whether a post-military-ruled Rakhine State with significant autonomy can work,” said Marciel.

Internationally, the once rosy view of the Western actors – who are most vocal in their support for resistance forces, as peacebuilders and promoters of democracy, human rights, and rule of law – has faded away.

These same actors are collectively complicit in Israel’s ongoing genocidal destruction of Gaza and pouring more fuel in the Ukraine-Russia war in Eastern Europe.

Against this backdrop, it is imperative that Myanmar people build our political courage to say that we need help from our neighbours. We are geographically, economically, culturally and historically wedded to them, for good or ill.

Let our capable neighbours take the lead in restoring order and stability in our country. Let them kick start something like a Neighbours’ Peace Initiative. The leaderships of Cambodia and Thailand are reportedly keen to assist Myanmar to sue for peace.

It is not the West but our old neighbours who effectively helped Hun Sen and his Vietnam-backed government to bring Cambodia’s post-genocide civil war to a close. Even with the devastating loss of a third of its population in the genocide and the war, Cambodia has bounced back.

Advocating for peace and negotiations as the only way forward in Myanmar’s situation wherein every party in conflict has convinced themselves of eventual military victory invites wrath at best and all kinds of personal attacks at worst.

I know this risk very well. Twenty years ago when no one in their right mind would touch Myanmar and when Aung San Suu Kyi could do no wrong, I urged the world principled engagement with the military generals – no less violent and murderous then.

I am now urging Myanmar’s neighbours to adopt inclusive engagement with all parties – not just Aung San Suu Kyi and Min Aung Hlaing – in its domestic conflicts. For there is no other way forward as the zero sum victory is not conceivable.

Myanmar is haemorrhaging in all aspects. It is not just the SAC that has suffered troop depletion and low morale. The society at large is undergoing rapid depletion of its human resources and suffering from pervasive hopelessness. We cannot stop this on our own. We need to wage peace now and we need help.

Maung Zarni is a UK-exiled scholar and revolutionary from Burma with 35 years of direct political involvement in Burmese affairs.

DVB publishes a diversity of opinions that does not reflect DVB editorial policy.

3 June 2024

Source: english.dvb.no

By Paul Craig Roberts

The War Is Widening Into Armageddon

Every provocation action the West said it would not do it has done.

The false denials have kept alive Putin’s hope that the conflict can be restricted to Donbas.

But the attack on Russia’s warning system has brought Putin closer to reality.

The situation is dire and all the Idiot West does is to provoke it further. It is of the greatest urgency that the Biden Regime stand down and immediately sit down with Putin and resolve the conflict.

Kennedy and Khrushchev resolved the Cuban Missile Crisis. Putin has made it clear that he wants to resolve the Ukraine matter that the West has pushed into crisis. Why doesn’t Washington want to resolve a dangerous crisis?

Why is no-one but me asking this question?

The West Summons a Propaganda “Peace Conference”

Ukrainian attacks on Russian nuclear radars unnerving US
The Washington Post pretends the US is not behind the attacks.

German leader U-turns on allowing Kiev strike inside Russia

Russia Has Moved Eleven Nuclear Submarines Into the Atlantic Ocean
The Idiot Western World Is Bringing Armageddon to Humanity

The Ever Widening War

Hiding Behind Puppet Kiev, NATO Trying to Inflict Strategic Defeat on Russia

*

Armageddon Is Closing In on Us

Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s remarks at the 32nd Assembly of the Council for Foreign and Defence Policy, Moscow, May 18, 2024

Lavrov’s speech indicates that after 20 years of rebuffs the Russian government is gradually realizing that their “Western partners” are in fact determined enemies. Sooner or later Lavrov and Putin will comprehend that arrayed against Russia is Satanic Evil that cannot be negotiated with.

Putin and Lavrov have tried to deal with evil diplomatically. Even after the entire West cold-shouldered the Russian government’s efforts during December 2021 and January 2022 to arrive at a mutual defense treaty, the Russian government still misunderstood its adversary and with the slow paced limited intervention in Ukraine carelessly conveyed to Washington the means to widen the conflict.

By all indications, the conflict is now wide open. If Putin fails to decisively win the war before Western Ukraine fills with NATO soldiers, Putin’s options will be surrender or nuclear war.

*

The West Has Placed the Survival of the World in the Hands of Three Artificial States

All of the trouble in the world revolves around three artificial states: Ukraine, Taiwan, and Israel.

Ukraine was part of Russia for longer than the United States has existed. It was first created as an independent country in the early 1990s by Washington following the Soviet government’s collapse and replacement of the Communist Party rule’s with Yeltsin’s, a puppet of Washington.

Ukraine is thus an artificial country merely 30 years old, having never previously existed as an independent country.

Taiwan is a small island off the China coast, a part of China inhabited by Chinese people. Washington tried to pretend that a small island was China and had Taiwan setting on the UN Security Council.

But President Nixon knew better. He supported the removal of Taiwan and its replacement with the Chinese mainland. Nixon originated the one-China policy that was US policy until the Biden Regime.

Israel was a creation of the stupid and corrupt British government, or perhaps more correctly of the fanatic Zionists who drove countless undefended Palestinians from their towns and villages. Generations of Palestinians have been born in refugee camps located in Jordan and Lebanon.

The genocide of Palestine as a people and a country has been ongoing since 1947, and nothing has been done about it. Israel has gotten away with it by using the Holocaust card to gain sympathy for its victim status and by paying Western politicians with campaign contributions to support its agenda.

Now consider the fact that these three totally artificial countries totally lacking in any reality are each capable of unleashing nuclear Armageddon. Ukraine can do it by continuing to use Western-supplied long range missiles to attack Russia’s early warning system.

Taiwan can do it by accepting occupation by US soldiers and more shipments of US missiles.

Israel can do it by getting the bought-and-paid-for-Biden regime to OK Israel’s attack on Iran.

The question I now propose to you is: If in fact the US is a superpower, and if the West as a whole constitutes a mega-super power, how it is possible for three artificial states to have control of the West’s future?

Paul Craig Roberts is a renowned author and academic, chairman of The Institute for Political Economy where these articles were originally published. Dr. Roberts was previously associate editor and columnist for The Wall Street Journal.

30 May 2024

Source: globalresearch.ca

By Mike Whitney

China’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning has agreed to attend next month’s Ukrainian peace conference in Switzerland with one proviso, that Russia be invited. Mao said that Beijing supports the “timely convening of an international peace conference that is recognized by both the Russian and Ukrainian sides.”

That sounds reasonable, after all, one would expect that peace negotiations would include the representatives of the warring parties. But that is not the case here. And while more than 90 countries have confirmed that they will attend the upcoming meetings, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has excluded the one nation whose presence might make a difference — Russia.

Naturally, many analysts are puzzled by Zelensky’s omission which precludes any possible settlement or end to the hostilities. Simply put, the fighting will continue until Russia and Ukraine conduct bilateral negotiations and reach an agreement.

So, what is going on here?

What’s going on is that Zelensky is perpetrating a fraud. Clearly, there is no intention to strike a deal with Russia or to end the fighting. How could there be, after all, Russia wasn’t invited. So, we must assume that the peace conference will be used for some other purpose, like demonizing Putin or drumming up more support for the war.

What that tells us is that neither Zelensky nor his handlers in Washington have abandoned the idea of inflicting a strategic defeat on Russia. They’re not throwing in the towel and they’re certainly not looking for areas of mutual compromise. No. They’re merely exploring more creative ways of garnering support for their failed crusade. That’s what the so-called ‘peace conference’ is all about, luring more recruits to the Ukraine bandwagon.

We should mention, however, that Russia knows exactly what Zelensky is up-to and has no illusions about where all this is headed. Check out this short clip from an interview with Russian FM Sergey Lavrov:

The Swiss conference is being convened with the sole purpose of addressing Zelensky’s peace formula in the form of an ultimatum. It is not accidental that the Swiss themselves, including Swiss diplomats, are saying that the conference will focus not on “building bridges” for peace, but on supporting Ukraine.

Josep Borrel said the peace formula was the only initiative under discussion. (Note: Other peace initiatives by China, Brazil, and the Arab League are all being ignored.)

We have access to information that is not normally intended for public use. In late April, discussing the Swiss conference with foreign ambassadors in Kiev… Zelensky spent most of the time rambling almost hysterically and incoherently, and pleading for support for his peace formula as a means of forcing Russia on its knees. Whenever a person does not feel the need to control themselves, they tend to speak the truth. Those who are now being courted and pressed into coming to Switzerland, creating a crowd, and posing for a “family photo” in order to be able to then bloviate about broad-based support for Zelensky’s peace formula, should be aware of the place they are being lured into. They are expected to support an ultimatum that will then be presented to Russia. This is ridiculous.

President Vladimir Putin spoke about this quite recently. These games, just like other foreign policy moves by our Western partners who have lost their diplomatic skills, have nothing to do with diplomacy. Sergey Lavrov, Russian Foreign Minister Press Conference

So, the Russians aren’t taken in by this nonsense, they know it’s a scam. They also know that the whole thing was probably concocted by the Intel agencies in concert with their media consultants. Just like they know the meetings will probably be used to shore up Zelensky’s tattered image while, once again, dragging Russia through the mud. We’ve seen it all before. But the reality is that the more time that’s wasted on these public relations fiascos, the more the carnage piles up on battlefields in the East. And that’s the real tragedy, that Zelensky continues to play these stupid games while his countrymen are slaughtered in droves for no apparent reason. Maybe he should stop the performance art long enough to fix the problem? Maybe he should think seriously about peace?

Is that possible?

It is possible.

Imagine for a minute, if Zelensky was sincere in wanting to end the war. How much effort and sacrifice would it really take?

Not much. Yes, he would be opposed by Washington and by the far-right uber-nationalists in his government, but the actual price he would pay in terms of blood and treasure would be negligible. True, he’ll never recapture Crimea or the Donbas (roughly 20% of Ukraine’s former landmass) but that’s the price of waging a two year-long war with Russia. Putin can’t be blamed for that. (Remember, Zelensky was prepared to sign a peace agreement with Putin one month into the war, but Boris Johnson scotched the deal.) In any event, those territories are gone forever. The point is to salvage what is left of Ukraine before its borders shrink even more. This is what Zelensky should be focused on; preserving what’s left of his country while he still can. The longer the war drags on, the more likely Ukraine will either be partitioned or transformed into an uninhabitable wasteland. The time to act is now.

The good news is that Putin is ready to deal. Despite the misinformation in the West, he wants to put this mess behind him. He wants to end the war.

And Putin’s demands are not unreasonable. He just wants assurances about Russia’s security, which means he won’t allow NATO missile-sites on his western border. That is a demand that Zelensky can meet at no cost to himself.

What else does Putin want?

This may surprise you, but the deal Putin seeks with Zelensky can be reduced to just one word: Neutrality. Ukraine must be a neutral state which means that it must not become a member of a major military bloc like NATO, because NATO is a hostile, anti-Russian, military alliance that has prosecuted wars of aggression in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Libya. It is a menace that must be prevented from putting its bases, combat troops or weapons systems on Russia’s border. Period. Just as the United States would never allow China to place missile systems on Mexico’s northern border, NATO cannot be allowed to place Washington’s missiles on Russia’s border. It’s the same thing.

Zelensky believes that Ukraine ‘has the right’ to make whatever security arrangements it thinks best serve its national interests. That sounds like a reasonable proposition, but it’s not. Because in practical terms, Ukraine’s determination to join NATO has made Ukraine less safe, in fact, the probability of Ukraine’s membership in NATO has brought the country to the brink of annihilation. So, if Zelensky’s intention was to increase Ukraine’s national security, then he has compelling proof that he made the wrong decision.

Here’s a good rule of thumb for any smaller and less powerful nation that shares a border with a nuclear superpower: Don’t do things that scare your neighbor. Do not do things that make your neighbor feel threatened. And—most of all—do not threaten to join hostile anti-Russian alliances that regularly express their deeply-felt contempt and loathing for Russia. That is the fast-track to annihilation. If Zelensky did not know that before, he should certainly know it by now. Check out this excerpt from an article at Geopolitical Monitor:

Ukraine is not exactly a stranger when it comes to the notion of neutrality. In the aftermath of the fall of the Soviet Union, the country expressed an intention in its declaration of state sovereignty of 1 July 1990 to become a permanently neutral state that would shun participation in military blocs and show a commitment to denuclearization. This largely nonaligned status resulted in a vacillating foreign policy, which nonetheless appeared to be conducive to the pursuit of amicable relations with both the European Union (EU) and Russia, before being ultimately abandoned in December 2014 in the aftermath of Russia’s annexation of Crimea and the start of the Donbas war. In February 2019, with the overwhelming approval of the Verkhovna Rada (the Parliament of Ukraine), the Ukrainian constitution was amended, setting the country on a course toward full membership in the EU and NATO. Nonetheless, in late March 2022 Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy was still prepared to discuss the possibility of Ukraine taking a neutral position as part of a potential peace deal with Russia to halt the invasion. A Neutral Ukraine Is Not the Answer, Geopolitical Monitor

Let’s review: When Ukraine made its declaration of state sovereignty in July 1990, it pledged to be “a permanently neutral state.” And while it remained committed to that neutral status there was no hostility between Moscow and Kiev. But as soon as the United States toppled Ukraine’s government in the 2014 coup, Ukraine moved to renounce its neutrality, which is when all their problems began. What’s clear is that independent Ukrainian leaders did not choose to abandon neutrality. That decision was made in Washington by neocons who wanted to move their globalist army closer to Russia’s border. This isn’t speculation, this is what happened. NATO lied about ‘not moving one inch east” after the reunification of Germany and continued to push eastward until they were right on Russia ‘s doorstep. Finally—after being shoved into a corner—Russia pursued the only option available and pushed back. Russia launched its Special Military Operation (SMO) on February 24, 2022.

Of course, many people still think that Putin wants to rebuild the Soviet empire and that Ukraine is just the first step in a long march across Europe. Fortunately, NATO secretary general Jens Stoltenberg dispelled that fiction in a press conference in September, 2023. Here’s what he said:

“President Putin declared in the autumn of 2021, and actually sent a draft treaty that they wanted NATO to sign, to promise no more NATO enlargement. That was what he sent us. And was a pre-condition for not invade Ukraine. Of course we didn’t sign that.

“The opposite happened. He wanted us to sign that promise, never to enlarge NATO. He wanted us to remove our military infrastructure in all Allies that have joined NATO since 1997, meaning half of NATO, all the Central and Eastern Europe, we should remove NATO from that part of our Alliance, introducing some kind of B, or second class membership. We rejected that.

“So he went to war to prevent NATO, more NATO, close to his borders. He has got the exact opposite. He has got more NATO presence in eastern part of the Alliance and he has also seen that Finland has already joined the Alliance and Sweden will soon be a full member.

“This is this is good for the Nordic countries. It’s good for Finland and Sweden. And it’s also good for NATO. And it demonstrates that when President Putin invaded a European country to prevent more NATO, he’s getting the exact opposite.” Putin invaded Ukraine to stop NATO, says NATO chief, YouTube

Putin invaded Ukraine ‘to stop NATO’, alliance chief tells EU

So, Putin did not go to war to rebuild the Soviet empire. He went to war to prevent a hostile, anti-Russia, military coalition from plopping itself on his border where their missiles could strike Moscow in less than 7 minutes.

Was that unreasonable of him?

Of course, not. He was simply acting is his country’s best interests on a matter of critical (existential) importance. Check out this short 1-minute video of John Mearsheimer who makes the same point:

“… Let me put it differently, Ukraine—according to its Constitution and its Declaration of Sovereignty in 1990—was a neutral country. It abandoned neutrality in December 2014. Just think about that. So, if we had left it alone, Ukraine would be intact today including Crimea. (And) all these dead people would not be dead.” John Mearsheimer, Would Neutrality Have Prevented the War, You Tube

For Zelensky, the choice could not be clearer. Ukraine is either going to be neutral or it’s going to be obliterated. The choice is his to make. But one thing is certain, Russia is not going to live with a gun to its head. We know that now.

30 May 2024

Source: globalresearch.ca

By Uriel Araujo

On Tuesday, Paris lifted a state of emergency it had declared two weeks ago in its overseas territory of New Caledonia. France, however, is maintaining a night curfew and is also reportedly sending another 480 paramilitary gendarmes, in a development that is not getting that much press coverage internationally. Restrictions are being eased on the main pro-independence FLNKS party. This was a response to about two weeks of unrest and riots, with food shortages and millions of dollars’ worth of damage. Last week, French President Emmanuel Macron flew to the archipelago in an attempt to diminish the turmoil, much to no avail.

The Melanesia archipelago of Nouvelle-Calédonie or New Caledonia (native pro-independence groups prefer to call it Kanaky), located in the southwest Pacific Ocean, about 1,200 east of Australia, is part of the so-called Overseas France or France ultramarine (France d’outre-mer), which is a generic term for about 13 French territories outside of Metropolitan France (and outside of Europe). Those are basically the remains of the French colonial empire, which remained part of France after decolonization, in different ways and under various statuses.

New Caledonia is an interesting case of its own. It was annexed by Paris in 1853. Since the 1998 Nouméa Accord, it has been a “statut particulier” (or sui generis) collectivity. Although it is one of the EU’s Overseas Countries and Territories (OCTs), it is not part of the European Union itself. It has a population of about 270 thousand people. According to the 2019 census, about 40% of its population is part of the Kanak people, an indigenous Melanesian ethnic group. Only 24% report belonging to the French European community, while other (minority) groups, such as the Javanese, Algerian, and others, also make up the archipelago’s diverse population.

The political unrest was mostly triggered by a complicated and controversial voting reform which would grant voting rights to over 12,000 people belonging to the local population and more than 13,000 French citizens who have lived there for at least 10 years. Since the aforementioned 1998 Nouméa Accord, over 40,000 European French nationals have moved to New Caledonia. Even though the reform was supposedly intended to grant the Kanaks better political representation, with its intricacies, it could result in almost one in five voters becoming disenfranchised, some claim. With the new law, the total number of voters could increase by 14.5%, but such a scenario troubles many Kanak groups, most of which support independence. They worry about losing electoral weight with a reform they see as an ethnopolitical maneuver to further marginalize them.

Such reasoning makes sense, after all, there have been thus far three recent referendums on independence in the archipelago. At the first two, Paris loyalists won by a tiny margin, whereas the 2021 referendum was boycotted by the Kanaks due to pandemic restrictions. Politically speaking, the future of that territory remains debated, with a new referendum being discussed.

Macron has halted the reform which triggered what he described as an “insurrection”. Reportedly, over 2,700 gendarmerie and police authorities will be employed in the archipelago to maintain order, in any case.

Now, one can try to imagine for a moment how much different the Western press coverage and Western leaders’ reactions would be if a similar crisis were to unfold involving not Paris, but, say, Beijing or Moscow dealing with ethnopolitical unrest over voting rights in some “overseas territory” (if such analogous situation existed at all –  a few short-lived settlements aside, Russia for instance never had ultramarine colonies).

One does not need that much imagination: sure enough, already in 2022, the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, a US government agency, part of the part of the US Helsinki Commission, published a report called “Decolonizing Russia: a moral and strategic objective” – the title is quite self-explaining: it is about dismantling the Russian multinational federation (Article 3 of the Russian Constitution) for geopolitical purposes. That in itself was not new in fact:  the late Zbigniew Brzezinski, influential diplomat and national advisor, famously called for the further fragmentation of Russia (after the collapse of the Soviet Union). In his 1997 Foreign Affairs piece, he called for a “loosely confederated Russia – composed of a European Russia, a Siberian Republic and a Far Eastern Republic.” Brzezinski advocated all this while also speaking about “America’s global primacy”, of course.

Back to France, it currently faces its own geopolitical crisis in Africa today, as exemplified by the recent disasters in Niger, Mali and Chad. Five military agreements with France were revoked by the Nigerien military government in August last year, and the last contingent of the 1,500 troops Paris deployed in Niger left in December.

Military presence in Africa and voting rights of native ethnic groups in the Pacific are not the only political issues haunting Paris. Both the West African CFA franc, and the Central African CFA franc are colonial currencies issued by Paris to this day –  CFA standing for “Communauté Financière Africaine” (French for “African Financial Community”). Since 1945, the notes have been produced by the Bank of France at Chamalières.

As I wrote before, this monetary situation, with a fixed exchange rate, has affected Central African and West African economies, according to Landry Signé, a senior fellow in the Global Economy and Development Program and the Africa Growth Initiative at the Brookings Institution. And it has sparked demonstrations and anti-French sentiment in various African countries. In this context, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) is planning to introduce its own common currency for its members by 2027.

Today, discourses on “decoloniality” and “woke” agendas are increasingly part of the (US-led) Euro-Atlantic alliance’s soft power, which is quite ironic. It is hard to imagine a US Commission report calling for the “decolonizing” of France as a “moral objective”, for that matter. It would not be too far-fetched, however, to describe Paris today as an increasingly aggressive neocolonial power. The crisis in New Caledonia is a clear example of a French colonial Empire’s contested legacy that remains unresolved – and thousands of gendarmerie are not going to solve it.

Uriel Araujo is a researcher with a focus on international and ethnic conflicts. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

31 May 2024

Source: globalresearch.ca

By John Perry

When Nicaragua accused Germany of aiding and abetting Israel’s genocide in Gaza at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) last month, readers of corporate media might have seriously wondered whether Nicaragua’s case had any legitimacy. 

The case targeted Germany as the second biggest supplier of arms to Israel, because the US, Israel’s biggest supplier, does not accept the court’s jurisdiction on this issue. The object (as Nicaragua’s lawyer explained) was to create a precedent with wider application – that countries must take responsibility for the consequences of their arms sales to avoid them being used in breach of international law.

Many in corporate media took a more jaundiced view. The Financial Times led by telling readers, “The authoritarian government of Nicaragua accused Germany of ‘facilitating genocide’ in Gaza at the opening of a politically charged case.” The second paragraph in a New York Times article cited “experts” who saw it “as a cynical move by a totalitarian government to bolster its profile and distract attention from its own worsening record of repression.” The Guardian qualified its comment piece by remarking that “Nicaragua is hardly a poster child when it comes to respect for human rights.”

Double standards are evident here. If the US government were to do what it has failed to do so far, and condemn Israel’s genocidal violence, Western corporate media would not remind readers of US crimes against humanity, such as the Abu Ghraib tortures, extraordinary renditions or the hundreds imprisoned without trial at Guantánamo. It’s hard to imagine Washington would be accused of “hypocrisy” (Guardian) for calling out Israel’s crimes. Any condemnation of Israel by the US or one of its Western allies would be taken at face value—in clear contrast to the media’s treatment of such action by an official enemy country like Nicaragua.

Of establishment media, Spain’s El Pais was perhaps the most vitriolic in its portrayal of Nicaragua. Its piece on the court case was headlined “The Worst Version of Nicaragua Against the Best Version of Germany.” “The third international court case on the Gaza war pits a regime accused of crimes against humanity against a strong and legitimate democracy,” the piece explained. “It may be a noble cause, but its champion couldn’t be worse.”

The paper commented rather oddly that Germany was “at its finest” arguing the case, and that its “defense against Nicaragua’s charges is solid and its legitimacy as a democratic state is unassailable”—a comment presumably intended to contrast its legitimacy with “the Nicaraguan dictatorship.”

In addition to its article cited above, the New York Times had a report more focused on the case itself. However, it was CNN and Al Jazeera that stood out as covering the case on its own merits rather than being distracted by animosity toward Nicaragua.

The negative presentation in much of the media was repeated when, later in April, they headlined that Nicaragua’s request had been “rejected” by the ICJ, with the New York Times again remembering to insert a derogatory comment about Nicaragua’s action being “hypocritical.” These followup reports largely overlooked the impact the case had on Germany’s ability to further arm Israel during its continued assault on Gaza.

Nicaraguan ‘Nazis’

Corporate media had been gifted their criticisms of Nicaragua by a report published at the end of February by the UN Human Rights Council. A “group of human rights experts on Nicaragua” (the “GHREN”) had produced its second report on the country. Its first, last year, had accused Nicaragua’s government of crimes against humanity, leading to this eyebrow-raising New York Times headline: “Nicaragua’s ‘Nazis’: Stunned Investigators Cite Hitler’s Germany.”

The GHREN’s leader, German lawyer Jan-Michael Simon, had indeed likened the current Sandinista government to the Nazis. Times reporter Frances Robles quoted Simon:

“The weaponizing of the justice system against political opponents in the way that is done in Nicaragua is exactly what the Nazi regime did,” Jan-Michael Simon, who led the team of U.N.-appointed criminal justice experts, said in an interview.

“People massively stripped of their nationality and being expelled out of the country: This is exactly what the Nazis did too,” he added.

It’s quite an accusation, given that the Nazis established over 44,000 incarceration camps of various types and killed some 17 million people. Robles gave few numbers regarding the crimes Nicaragua is accused of, but did mention 40 extrajudicial killings in 2018 attributed to state and allied actors and noted that the Ortega government had in 2023 “stripped the citizenship from 300 Nicaraguans who a judge called ‘traitors to the homeland.’”

Robles also quoted Juan Sebastián Chamorro, a member of the Nicaraguan oligarchic family who are among the Sandinista government’s fiercest opponents; Chamorro claimed there was evidence of “more than 350 people who were assassinated.” Even if true, this would seem to be a serious stretch from “exactly what the Nazis did.” 

Like most Western reporters, Robles—who also wrote the recent ICJ piece for the Times—gave no attention to the criticisms of the GHREN’s work by human rights specialists who argued that the GHREN did not examine all the evidence made available to it and interviewed only opposition sources. For example, former UN independent expert Alfred de Zayas castigated its first report in his book The Human Rights Industry, calling it a “political pamphlet” intended to destabilize Nicaragua’s government. 

Even if one takes the GHREN account at face value, the Gaza genocide is at least 100 times worse in terms of numbers of fatalities, quite apart from other horrendous elements, such as deliberate starvation, indiscriminate bombing, destruction of hospitals and much more. It’s unclear why the accusations against Nicaragua should delegitimize the case against Germany.

Hague History

Many media reports did mention Nicaragua’s long history of support for Palestine—which undermines the accusation of cynicism underlying the case—but few noted the Latin American country’s history of success at the Hague. As Carlos Argüello, the Nicaraguan ambassador to the Netherlands who took the lead at the ICJ, pointed out, Nicaragua has more experience at the Hague than most countries, including Germany. This began with its pioneer case against the US in 1984, when it won compensation of £17 billion (that was never paid) for the damage done to Nicaragua by the US-funded Contra war and the mining of its ports.

One notable exception to that historical erasure came from Robles at the Times, who did refer to the 1984 case. But the point was clearly not to remind readers of US crimes or to demonstrate that Nicaragua is an actor to be taken seriously in the realm of international law. The two academics she quoted both served to portray the current case as merely “cynical.”  

The first, Mateo Jarquín, Robles quoted as saying that the Sandinista government has “a long track record…of using global bodies like the ICJ to carve out space for itself internationally—to build legitimacy and resist diplomatic isolation.” Robles didn’t disclose Jarquín’s second surname, Chamorro. Like her source in the earlier article, he is a member of the family that includes several government opponents.

Robles also quoted Manuel Orozco, a former Nicaraguan working at the Washington-based Inter-American Dialogue, whose major funders include the US Agency for International Development and the International Republican Institute, notorious for their role in promoting regime change, including in Nicaragua. Orozco told Robles that “Nicaragua lacks the moral and political authority to speak or advocate for human rights, much less on matters of genocide.”

“Effectively Siding with Germany”

On April 30, the ICJ declined to grant Nicaragua its requested provisional measures against Germany, including requiring the cessation of arms deliveries to Israel. Headlining this outcome, the Associated Press said the court was “effectively siding with Germany.” The outlet did, however, continue by explaining that the court had “declined to throw out the case altogether, as Germany had requested” and will hear arguments from both sides, with a resolution not likely to come for years. 

That was better than NPR’s report, which only mentioned that the court was proceeding with the case in its final paragraph.  

But German lawyer and professor Stefan Talmon clarified that the court’s ruling “severely limits Germany’s ability to transfer arms to Israel.” 

“The court’s order was widely interpreted as a victory for Germany,” Talmon commented. “A closer examination of the order, however, points to the opposite.” He concluded that although the ICJ did not generally ban the provision of arms to Israel, it did impose significant restrictions on it by emphasizing Germany’s obligation to “avoid the risk that such arms might be used to violate the [Genocide and Geneva] Conventions.” 

And Talmon pointed out that the court appeared to make its decision that an order to halt war weapons shipments was unnecessary based on Germany’s claim that it had already stopped doing so. 

“By expressly emphasizing that, ‘at present’, circumstances did not require the indication of provisional measures, the Court made it clear that it could indicate such measures in the future,” Talmon wrote. 

Establishment media, seemingly distracted by the “hypocrisy” of Nicaragua challenging a country whose “legitimacy as a democratic state is unassailable,” mostly failed to notice that its legal efforts were therefore at least partially successful: It forced Germany to back down from its unstinting support for Israel’s genocide in Gaza, and alerted German politicians to the fact that they are at risk of being held accountable under international law if they transfer any further war weapons. 

John Perry is based in Masaya, Nicaragua and writes for the London Review of Books, Covert Action, Global Research, The Council on Hemispheric Affairs, Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting, Counterpunch, The Grayzone and other publications.

31 May 2024

Source: globalresearch.ca

By Philip Giraldi

The Jewish Virtual Library asserts that

“The US-Israel relationship is based on the twin pillars of shared values and shared interests. Given this commonality of interests and beliefs, it should not be surprising that support for Israel is one of the most pronounced and consistent foreign policy values of the American people.”

That is, of course, the big lie among the many that constitute the tie that binds the two countries together.

The back-up lies, regularly spouted in Congress, are that Israel is a democracy and an ally. It is, of course neither, as it is a Jews-only apartheid regime that has no fixed borders and no reciprocal security arrangements with the US. Israel and its promoters never tell the truth, particularly when they are conning the United States government into providing more money and more weapons, as has been occurring both openly and secretly over the past eight months during the horrific ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians.

So how does it happen, particularly as Israel is manifestly evil in terms of its treatment of the Palestinians as well reckless in its aggression directed against neighbors like Lebanon and Syria. That it is not also bombing Egypt and Jordan is largely attributable to the billions of dollars in aid that the US gives to those countries conditional on their maintaining a wobbly modus vivendi with the aggressive and nuclear armed Zionists.

Given the wonderful comfort zone that Israel has established largely due to US protection in international bodies like the United Nations and the UN Security Council as well as vis-à-vis the several international courts and humanitarian aid agencies, Israel has been regularly attacking and otherwise killing its neighbors without ever being held accountable for anything. It is a pattern that is particularly visible now as the slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza approaches the 50,000 mark, consisting mostly of women and children. The recent outrageous assault on the Tal al Sultan neighborhood refugee camp near Rafah, which killed at least 45 and included graphic photography of a burning child’s body without a head as well as other still flaming and smoking corpses, was directed against homeless Gazans living in tents who had previously been driven from their destroyed homes in the northern part of the country. And to the eternal shame of Biden and company, the slaughter used US-made and supplied weapons.

Add to the carnage the famine that is now threating to kill tens of thousands more Palestinians due to the Israeli government and its extremist settlers blocking the entry of food supplies and the scale of Israel’s chosen genocidal actions can be appreciated. Netanyahu’s claim that the army only used small munitions in Rafah and was targeting two Hamas officials hiding among the civilians was as usual a lie and the camp otherwise had no significance as a military target. Israel has followed up on the attack with another bombing run on nearby al-Mawasi the following night which killed more than twenty and the Jewish state’s tanks are now penetrating deep into the city no doubt preceding an infantry assault that could kill tens of thousands more. One senior Israeli government official is now predicting that the war will continue until the end of the year, another seven months, success apparently being measured by arriving at a point when Hamas and all other hostile Palestinians will be either killed or deported.

Following the Rafah slaughter, there no doubt occurred the mandatory phone call exchange between a sneering Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the grinning mental giant President Joe Biden, no doubt including Bibi’s expressing thanks for the American weaponry reportedly used in the killing. It’s really great when you don’t even have to pay for the weapons used to murder someone. To show his appreciation of the Israeli gratitude Biden no doubt muttered a phrase engraved on his prefrontal lobes, i.e. “Israel has a right to defend itself!” The transnational interaction presumably also produced the typical flatulence that emerges from the White House propaganda machine. Biden, in a bid to make it look like he was actually pressuring Israel to reduce civilian casualties, had previously warned that a full-scale invasion of Rafah would be hard to support and would be considered a “red line” issue, but it was a political stunt that he never intended to carry out apart from one delayed arrival of a shipment of the super heavy 2000 pound bombs. Many Americans, indeed a majority, are rightly deeply upset about the support of the US military and government for Israel’s latest war and an addled Biden is now counting votes while pretending to have humanitarian concerns.

Biden’s America Surrenders to War Criminal Netanyahu

Even so, the White House did not go so far as to blame the Israelis for their overreach. At a press conference, Biden’s National Security communications officer John Kirby, who reportedly was an Admiral once upon a time, possibly on the Good Ship Lollypop, articulated how

“You’ve all seen the images, they’re heartbreaking, they’re horrific. There should be no innocent life lost here as a result of this conflict. Israel, of course, has a right to go after Hamas… As a result of this strike on Sunday, I have no policy changes to speak to. It just happened. The Israelis are going to investigate it. We’re going to be taking great interest in what they find in that investigation.”

Image: Rachel Corrie was an American member of the International Solidarity Movement (ISM). She was crushed to death in the Gaza Strip by an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) bulldozer when she was kneeling in front of a local Palestinian’s home. Photograph by Denny Sternstein. (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

Sure you are John, and it will be a great and thorough investigation by Israel just like it was in the cases of the dead Americans on board the USS Liberty, peace activist Rachel Corrie, journalist Shireen Abu Akleh and, most recently, the 80 year old American citizen Omar Abdalmajeed As’ad who was beaten to death by elements in Israel’s “most moral army in the world” after being detained for the crime of having been walking in his West Bank village.

Why are Joe and company such dedicated dissimulators of the truth when it comes to Israel and all its malignant works? It is because of an entity known euphemistically as the Israel Lobby but which I much prefer to describe more accurately as the Jewish Money In Politics Entity (AIPAC, ADL and others) supported by the Scofield Bible Zio-Christian Crowd headed by clowns like House Speaker Mike Johnson. I know it’s a mouthful but that is what it is. Israel does not obtain US uncritical and overwhelming support because its behavior deserves it or because it serves American interests but rather because of all that money judiciously applied to corrupt the government at all levels and to buy and control the message of the media and entertainment industries. Professor John Mearsheimer, co-author of 2007’s The Israel Lobby, has long claimed that “Israel’s backers will go to silence anyone who challenges their narrative.” But according to Mearsheimer, something changed because of October 7^th:

“The big difference is that the lobby’s activities are completely out in the open today. I think few people knew much about the lobby back then. And very few people knew much about the lobby’s influence on American foreign policy, especially as it applies to the Middle East. And I think that we helped to expose that and now more people understand what’s going on. The lobby is now forced to operate much more out in the open.”

Pari passu, all that corruption judiciously applied is serving to strip Americans of their fundamental rights, particularly freedom of speech, as it will soon by illegal to criticize either Jews or Israel. And don’t expect any relief coming from the national election in November if there is a GOP victory in the form of Donald Trump and possibly Nikki Haley or some creature like that as a Ziocon replacement part. Trump sold out on every conceivable issue for Israel back in 2016-20 and would do it again. The Republicans have been striving to become the new party of “Israel First” as they want to steal away all that cash and media support from the Democrats. Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina has been calling for nuking Gaza while Nikki has been in Israel signing on bombs to be dropped on the Pals with a purple marker: “Finish Them! America [Loves] Israel.” Her urging of a foreign military funded and armed by the US government to kill refugees living in tents after the destruction of their homes might be considered the cruelest way to endorse mass murder, but hey, Israel always comes first in the thinking of most Congressmen and those who are unfortunately sitting in the White House.

There is also legislation in the pipeline being pushed by the Republicans opposing any attempts by the White House to try to condition behavior by suspending weapons shipments to good friend and ally Israel, not that Biden would really go that route. The Congress has also been putting intense pressure on universities to clamp down on Pro-Palestinian groups on campus by claiming they are antisemites while not doing the same vis-a-vis the sometimes violent supporters of Israel, and the universities are obliging, canceling the graduation of protesters or even expelling them.

Donald Trump has recently told a largely Jewish audience that he will deport any anti-Israel protesters if he becomes president, an interesting proposal as most of those demonstrating are native born American citizens and many of them are Jewish. He has also called on Israel to “finish” what it is doing to the Palestinians, clearly meaning that they should be exterminated or forced to emigrate, and has also told Jewish donors that today’s atmosphere in the US is very much like “before the holocaust.” No longer the loudmouth who called for an end to foolish wars, Trump has now in addition said that if he had been president when the Russian intervention into Ukraine had taken place, he would have bombed them. Likewise for China if it were to attack Taiwan. Either move would almost certainly start World War 3 even though neither Ukraine nor Taiwan is a vital security interest of the US but Trump is too stupid to know that. Secretary of State Antony Blinken is, for his part, urging that the US release for deployment in Ukraine advanced missile systems that would be able to strike deep into Russia. As dumb ideas go that it about as dumb as it gets, as the Russians have already indicated that they would respond with everything they have, meaning US military targets worldwide would be considered fair game for retaliation possibly using nuclear weapons.

We have truly been entering into something that might be entitled the Psycho Zone if it were to be made into a movie. War is being treated by the sociopaths in Washington, Israel and parts of Europe as if it something to be casually entered into in one’s spare time. There is even talk in both the US and UK as well as in some other European capitals about initiating active conscription at a close to war level so we freedom lovers can sock it to those Russkies and Chinks good and proper. And as for the Palestinian trash, the Biden pontoon bridge that cost $320 million appears to be broken but it can still be used to carry out Netanyahu’s plan to push a bunch of screaming Ay-rabs into the Mediterranean Sea to get rid of them for once and for all. Hopefully they can’t swim and the Chosen ones will again be able to take possession of what was given to them by Yahweh. Or something like that.

*

Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East.

30 May 2024

Source: globalresearch.ca