Archives: Articles

By Dr Ramzy Baroud

It is feasible for China to continue playing an important role in mediating Middle East conflicts. In fact, it already has. In the case of the Israeli occupation of Palestine, however, mediation is hardly the issue.

Even before Beijing successfully managed to achieve reconciliation between Saudi Arabia and Iran last April, Chinese diplomacy has shown exceptional maturity.

For many years, China has been perceived to be an outsider to global affairs, supposedly contending itself to economic expansion or to regional economic integration.

Former US President Donald Trump forced, or rather, accelerated China’s global outreach when, in 2018, he launched an unprecedented trade war on the powerful Asian country.

Trump’s plan backfired. Not only did Washington fail to dissuade Beijing from bowing to American diktats, it also inspired what became known as China’s wolf diplomacy – a self-assertive Chinese approach to foreign policy.

From an American – or Western – viewpoint, the new tactic was perceived to be hostile and aggressive.

But from a Chinese perspective, the new policy was necessitated by the relentless war launched against China by successive US administrations, along with their Western allies.

The Russia-Ukraine war, however, accentuated China’s role in international conflicts and diplomacy. Though Beijing’s ‘12-point peace proposal’ last March failed to impress the West and was superficially welcomed by Moscow, the proposal highlighted an important shift.

The fact that China found it necessary to develop an elaborate political position as a potential mediator conveyed that China is no longer content with playing the role of the supporting actor in international forums.

China’s diplomacy was dismissed by many, especially in Western media and politics, as a non-starter, if at all serious or even well-intentioned.

Merely three weeks later, the Chinese-brokered Iran-Saudi agreement took place.

Major political actors in the region, including Washington, appeared to be taken by surprise. The Chinese success story was juxtaposed by many journalists in the Global South, to Washington’s conflict-prone, dead-end diplomacy in the Middle East.

Buoyed by its success, China ventured further into new diplomatic territories, offering to mediate between Israel and Palestine. The Palestinians welcomed a Chinese role; the Israelis were disinterested.

The Chinese government is aware of the near impossibility of engaging both Palestinians and Israelis in genuine peace talks. Though Palestinians are desperate to escape or, at least, balance out Washington’s hegemony, it is not in Israel’s interest to abandon its greatest political benefactor, financier and military backer – the United States.

Though China and Israel have developed relatively strong economic and, for China, strategic ties, in recent years, Beijing’s geopolitical worth for Tel Aviv is simply incomparable to that of Washington.

It would also make little sense for Tel Aviv to grant Beijing any political leverage at a time of geopolitical transitions, especially because China has historically supported the Palestinian people’s struggle for freedom.

Indeed, for decades, China served as a vanguard for the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and, later, the State of Palestine at the United Nations, insisting on the respect and implementation of international laws relevant to ending the Israeli occupation of Palestine.

Unsurprisingly, China recognized the PLO’s political status in 1965 and the State of Palestine in 1988. Now, China is pushing for full Palestinian membership in the international body.

The Chinese position was fundamental to Beijing’s strategic alliances in the Global South in previous decades.

The economic growth of China and its integration into a Western-centric economic system, starting in 1978, progressively weakened China’s trade and political relevance in the Global South.

This process, however, is being reversed, not only because of Washington’s trade war, and the hesitance of Western countries to join Beijing’s Belt and Road initiative, but because of the US-led Western sanctions on Moscow. The Western economic war on Russia is an urgent reminder to China that it cannot fully rely on Western markets and financial systems.

China’s slow drift from a Western-centric economic system is being coupled with a whole new approach to foreign policy – ‘wolf diplomacy’ in the West, and a gentler, kinder approach in the Global South.

Even before former Foreign Minister of China, Qin Gang phoned his Palestinian and Israeli counterparts, offering mediation, China had already introduced a peace initiative known as the four-point proposal.

The proposal highlighted China’s readiness to move past its role as a trade partner into that of a political actor on the global stage.

For China, this was not only a matter of prestige, as various Muslim and Arab countries, along with Israel, are critical parties in the ambitious BRI project.

In recent months, however, China’s interest in being a peace mediator increased exponentially, especially amid the near total absence of Washington, the self-proclaimed ‘honest peace broker.’

China has also shown a willingness to mediate between rival Palestinian groups. That, too, ushers in an evolution in China’s approach to Palestinian politics. However, it will not be easy.

The Palestinian Authority’s (PA) financial well-being – and political future – is largely linked to Washington and other Western capitals. Though Palestinian officials, the like of Foreign Minister Riyad al-Maliki, are threatening to “turn to China” due to the PA’s “disappointment” in Washington, such a shift will not be permitted, if not by Washington, then by Tel Aviv itself.

The visit in June by PA President Mahmoud Abbas to Beijing, although touted by the PA-run media as an earth-shattering event, will not be a game changer. True, it highlights China’s growing interests in Palestine, but it is unlikely to be followed by substantive action on the part of the Palestinian leadership.

Palestinians need China, as they need other powerful players in the Global South, but it is not mediation that they desperately require. Mediations do not end military occupations or dismantle apartheid regimes. Instead, Palestinians need solidarity.

The major changes underway in the world’s geopolitical map, and the rising importance of the Global South present Palestinians with unique opportunities to break away from US-Western hegemony and to reconnect with Palestine’s true strategic depth in Asia, Africa, South America, and the rest of the world.

For this to occur, Palestinians must present their cause as one united front, not as political fragments and factions. Only then, emerging powers can view Palestine as a serious geopolitical asset in a vastly changing world.

Dr. Ramzy Baroud is a journalist, author and the Editor of The Palestine Chronicle.

16 August 2023

Source: countercurrents.org

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky

Author’s note

“The term “environmental modification techniques” refers to any technique for changing – through the deliberate manipulation of natural processes – the dynamics, composition or structure of the Earth, including its biota, lithosphere, hydrosphere and atmosphere, or of outer space. (Convention on the Prohibition of Military or Any Other Hostile Use of Environmental Modification Techniques, United Nations, Geneva: 18 May 1977)

“US military scientists … are working on weather systems as a potential weapon. The methods include the enhancing of storms and the diverting of vapor rivers in the Earth’s atmosphere to produce targeted droughts or floods.” (The late Rosalie Bertell)

***

I  initiated my research on Environmental Modification Techniques (ENMOD) in 2001 focussing on the HAARP System of Antennas, in Gokona, Alaska.

The HAARP facility was fully operational starting in the mid-1990s with advanced capabilities.

While HAARP was closed down in 2014, ENMOD techniques have in the course of the last ten years become increasingly sophisticated as well as precise. Much of the documentation has become classified.

In the United States, Directed Energy Weapons (DEW) are the object of research by several agencies linked to the Pentagon, including DARPA, the Air Force Research Laboratory, the Office of Naval Research among others.

Of relevance to the debate on climate, geo-engineering and ENMOD, this article first published by The Ecologist, (December 7, 2007) provides an overview as well as a history. It also confirms the role of private military contractors in the development of HAARP including BAE Systems Inc and Raytheon.

Michel Chossudovsky, August 17, 2023

***

Rarely acknowledged in the debate on global climate change, the world’s weather can now be modified as part of a new generation of sophisticated electromagnetic weapons. Both the US and Russia have developed capabilities to manipulate the climate for military use.

Environmental modification techniques have been applied by the US military for more than half a century. US mathematician John von Neumann, in liaison with the US Department of Defense, started his research on weather modification in the late 1940s at the height of the Cold War and foresaw ‘forms of climatic warfare as yet unimagined’. During the Vietnam war, cloud-seeding techniques were used, starting in 1967 under Project Popeye, the objective of which was to prolong the monsoon season and block enemy supply routes along the Ho Chi Minh Trail.

The US military has developed advanced capabilities that enable it selectively to alter weather patterns. The technology, which is being perfected under the High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP), is an appendage of the Strategic Defense Initiative – ‘Star Wars’. [HAARP facility was closed down in 2014. Since then more advanced facilities have been developed]. From a military standpoint, HAARP is a weapon of mass destruction, operating from the outer atmosphere and capable of destabilising agricultural and ecological systems around the world.

Weather-modification, according to the US Air Force document AF 2025 Final Report ‘offers the war fighter a wide range of possible options to defeat or coerce an adversary’, capabilities, it says, extend to the triggering of floods, hurricanes, droughts and earthquakes:

‘Weather modification will become a part of domestic and international security and could be done unilaterally… It could have offensive and defensive applications and even be used for deterrence purposes. The ability to generate precipitation, fog and storms on earth or to modify space weather… and the production of artificial weather all are a part of an integrated set of [military] technologies.’ *(Weather as a Force Multiplier: Owning the Weather in 2025)

In 1977, an international Convention was ratified by the UN General Assembly which banned ‘military or other hostile use of environmental modification techniques having widespread, long-lasting or severe effects.’ It defined ‘environmental modification techniques’ as ‘any technique for changing –through the deliberate manipulation of natural processes – the dynamics, composition or structure of the earth, including its biota, lithosphere, hydrosphere and atmosphere, or of outer space.’

While the substance of the 1977 Convention was reasserted in the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) signed at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio, debate on weather modification for military use has become a scientific taboo.

Military analysts are mute on the subject. Meteorologists are not investigating the matter and environmentalists are focused on greenhouse gas emissions under the Kyoto Protocol. Neither is the possibility of climatic or environmental manipulations as part of a military and intelligence agenda, while tacitly acknowledged, part of the broader debate on climate change under UN auspices.

The HAARP Programme

Established in 1992, HAARP, based in Gokona, Alaska, is an array of high-powered antennas that transmit, through high-frequency radio waves, massive amounts of energy into the ionosphere (the upper layer of the atmosphere). Their construction was funded by the US Air Force, the US Navy and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Operated jointly by the Air Force Research Laboratory and the Office of Naval Research, HAARP constitutes a system of powerful antennas capable of creating ‘controlled local modifications of the ionosphere’. According to its official website, www.haarp.alaska.edu , HAARP will be used ‘to induce a small, localized change in ionospheric temperature so physical reactions can be studied by other instruments located either at or close to the HAARP site’.

HAARP array of antennas

But Rosalie Bertell, president of the International Institute of Concern for Public Health, says HAARP operates as:

“a gigantic heater that can cause major disruptions in the ionosphere, creating not just holes, but long incisions in the protective layer that keeps deadly radiation from bombarding the planet”.

Physicist Dr Bernard Eastlund called it ‘the largest ionospheric heater ever built’.

HAARP is presented by the US Air Force as a research programme, but military documents confirm its main objective is to ‘induce ionospheric modifications’ with a view to altering weather patterns and disrupting communications and radar.

According to a report by the Russian State Duma:

‘The US plans to carry out large-scale experiments under the HAARP programme [and] create weapons capable of breaking radio communication lines and equipment installed on spaceships and rockets, provoke serious accidents in electricity networks and in oil and gas pipelines, and have a negative impact on the mental health of entire regions.’*

An analysis of statements emanating from the US Air Force points to the unthinkable:

The covert manipulation of weather patterns, communications and electric power systems as a weapon of global warfare, enabling the US to disrupt and dominate entire regions.

Weather manipulation is the pre-emptive weapon par excellence. It can be directed against enemy countries or ‘friendly nations’ without their knowledge, used to destabilise economies, ecosystems and agriculture. It can also trigger havoc in financial and commodity markets. The disruption in agriculture creates a greater dependency on food aid and imported grain staples from the US and other Western countries.

HAARP was developed as part of an Anglo-American partnership between Raytheon Corporation, which owns the HAARP patents, the US Air Force and British Aerospace Systems (BAES).

The HAARP project is one among several collaborative ventures in advanced weapons systems between the two defence giants. The HAARP project was initiated in 1992 by Advanced Power Technologies, Inc. (APTI), a subsidiary of Atlantic Richfield Corporation (ARCO). APTI (including the HAARP patents) was sold by ARCO to E-Systems Inc, in 1994. E-Systems, on contract to the CIA and US Department of Defense, outfitted the ‘Doomsday Plan’, which ‘allows the President to manage a nuclear war’. Subsequently acquired by Raytheon Corporation, it is among the largest intelligence contractors in the World. BAES was involved in the development of the advanced stage of the HAARP antenna array under a 2004 contract with the Office of Naval Research.

The installation of 132 high frequency transmitters was entrusted by BAES to its US subsidiary, BAE Systems Inc. The project, according to a July report in Defense News, was undertaken by BAES’s Electronic Warfare division. In September it received DARPA’s top award for technical achievement for the design, construction and activation of the HAARP array of antennas.

The HAARP system is fully operational and in many regards dwarfs existing conventional and strategic weapons systems. While there is no firm evidence of its use for military purposes, Air Force documents suggest HAARP is an integral part of the militarisation of space. One would expect the antennas already to have been subjected to routine testing.

Under the UNFCCC, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has a mandate ‘to assess scientific, technical and socioeconomic information relevant for the understanding of climate change’. This mandate includes environmental warfare. ‘Geo-engineering’ is acknowledged, but the underlying military applications are neither the object of policy analysis or scientific research in the thousands of pages of IPCC reports and supporting documents, based on the expertise and input of some 2,500 scientists, policymakers and environmentalists. ‘Climatic warfare’ potentially threatens the future of humanity, but has casually been excluded from the reports for which the IPCC received the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize.

17 August 2023

Source: globalresearch.ca

The New World Mathaba was born out of the original World Mathaba founded by the revolutionary leader and martyred Pan Africanist, Muammar Qaddafi. We are committed to the original mission of the World Mathaba as stated by Qaddafi: “to organize and coordinate resistance to imperialism and neo-colonialism, and to fight all forms of imperial economic, political, cultural and military domination, including the presence of imperial military bases in Africa”. In his name we extend our solidarity and support to the revolutionary and progressive forces in Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger.

We unequivocally and vehemently condemn the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) for threatening the new leader of Niger, General Abdourahamane Tiani and the people of Niger with military intervention unless they reinstate former President Mohamed Bazoum. Bazoum is a Western stooge who ensured the imperialist’s continued plunder of Niger’s abundant natural resources and the exploitation and suffering of his people.

We salute the coup leaders and the people of Niger for their courage and determination to rid their country of Mohamed Bazoum and the neo-colonial and imperialist forces he represents. It is clear that the African so-called Heads of State threatening Niger are unashamedly running dogs of French and US imperialism. Where were the voices of these neo-colonial minions of ECOWAS when the Libyan Jamahiriya was being bombed by the US-led NATO (North Atlantic Terrorist Organization) forces?

The Libyan people and the revolutionary forces stood defiantly and courageously against an onslaught that lasted for nine months, while many cowardly African misleaders remained silent or openly betrayed the Brother-Leader Qaddafi, the Libyan people and the loyalist forces.

Revolutionary Pan Africanists must never forget the role played by the neo-colonial regime of Nigeria, now leading the charge against Niger, in supporting the forces of White supremacy and the Islamic heretics, parading as jihadists, funded and trained by the imperialists and their allies, that killed Qaddafi and destroyed the Libyan Jamahiriya.

Today, these same pseudo-Jihadists have infiltrated the Sahel-Sahara region, facilitated by French and US imperialism, to cause mayhem and instability so as to create a pretext for the US and French military presence in Africa, which presides over the continued plunder of the continent and exploitation of its people.  Niger, despite its tremendous wealth in natural resources, including uranium, remains one of the world’s poorest countries. This neo-colonial debacle, called “democracy” by the imperialists, and its devastating impact on Niger and its people has finally been brought to an end by the revolutionary armed forces of Niger, with the support of the Nigerien people.

The New World Mathaba commends the revolutionary leadership in Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger in their just and honourable quest to complete the national liberation struggle for true independence and economic justice. They are continuing the revolutionary tradition of Kwame Nkrumah, Modibo Keita, Thomas Sankara, Muammar Qaddafi and countless others.

The global balance of power is finally shifting. In the multipolar world that is emerging, the old Hegemon can no longer have its way. BRICS is expanding to incorporate many more members from the Global South. As the US and Western Europe become increasingly isolated and powerless, revolutions including those in Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua, as well as the new revolutions in Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger will have a breathing space to exercise their God-given right to self-determination without fear of persecution, and threats of regime change and destruction. Other nations will soon join them, as the entire world finally rejects neo-colonialism and Western domination. As Qaddafi prophesied in The Green Book: “the era of the masses is rapidly advancing towards us…it excites the emotions and dazzles the eyes”.

Al Fateh (the Victory) is certain!

Gerald A. Perreira
On behalf of the International Coordinating Committee
New World Mathaba
Email: worldmathaba2022@gmail.com

August 7, 2023

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Democratic precandidate for President of the United States made the following remarks before the start of the Humanity for Peace Rally: [video: https://humanityforpeace.net/ from 2:11 to 11:01]

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.: Hi everybody, it’s Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. here, and I want to thank all of the organizers at Humanity for Peace for putting this event together, and for giving me the opportunity to address you.

My uncle, John F. Kennedy, once told one of his two closest friends, Ben Bradlee, who was the editor of the Washington Post, when Bradlee asked him, what do you want on your gravestone, what’s your epitaph? My uncle told him, “He kept the peace.” And when Bradlee questioned him on that further and pressed him, my uncle Jack said that the primary job of the President of the United States is to keep the country out of war. And he succeeded in doing that during his three years in office. He never sent a combat soldier abroad, who died. He kept the country out of Laos, he kept us out of Cuba on two occasions; he kept us out of Berlin in 1961.

And he kept us out of Vietnam. He sent only 16,000 military advisors there, mainly Green Berets, and on Oct. 22nd, they didn’t have permission to fight, although some of them did. And in October 1962, he learned that one of his Green Berets had died, and he asked his aide to give him a combat casualty list, and the aide came back and said 75 had died so far; he said, that’s too many. And he signed National Security Order 263, ordering all 16,000 troops home, and the first 1,000 coming home beginning at the end of November. And of course, a month after that, right at the end of November, he was killed. And a week later, President Johnson remanded that order. Within a year Johnson had sent the 250,000 troops that the military wanted from the beginning.

My uncle understood one thing about war, and it’s something we need to understand today: Because today we’re closer to a nuclear exchange than at any time since the Cuban Missile Crisis in October of 1962. My uncle understood that, if you want to keep the country out of war, you have to be able to put yourself into the shoes of your adversary. When he came into office, the intelligence agencies and people around him, knew almost nothing about Nikita Khrushchev. President Eisenhower had said that it wouldn’t be a soldier, a President who had started out as a soldier, who would put Americans into World War III, because soldiers knew about war. He was a soldier himself. My uncle had been a soldier, was the only President to win the Purple Heart. And Khrushchev, of course, was a soldier, and had been in the most brutal battle of World War II in Stalingrad.

But the CIA knew almost nothing about him, because there was a mole in Langley and all of the Kremlin officials who had defected to the United States, or who had tried to work as spies for the United States, were immediately detected. So the CIA knew almost nothing about Khrushchev and they assumed that everybody in the Kremlin was a monolith.

My uncle felt disabled by that lack of knowledge. And in 1961, he started out his relationship with Khrushchev on a rocky road. They met in Vienna, and he found Khrushchev was pugnacious and bombastic, and had practically dared my uncle to go to war with him. My uncle quickly understood that he, himself, was surrounded by military warhawks in the intelligence apparatus, in the military brass and the Pentagon, who saw nuclear exchange with Russia as not only unavoidable, but also desirable. When my uncle maintained a proposition to go to war on several occasions, they said that we were going to win that war, because we had more missiles than the Russians, which we do not have today; they have 1,000 more than us. But, his brass told him that there would be only 30 million American casualties and 130 million Russians and that would be victory. And my uncle left that meeting, saying, “and we call ourselves the human race.”

He knew that he had to, in 1961, in August, there was a confrontation at the Berlin Wall, where U.S. tanks were facing down Russian tanks at Checkpoint Charley, and the world was this close to nuclear war at that point. And my uncle made a back-channel cable to Khrushchev, asking him to pull out his tanks. Khrushchev sent a note back to my uncle’s cable, saying “my back is to the wall, I have no place to retreat,” and my uncle realized at that point that Khrushchev was in the same position that he was in: He was also surrounded by military warhawks who were egging for a fight with the United States. And they realized that only the two of them were going to prevent that full-on nuclear exchange. My uncle made a proposition, a promise to him, that if Khrushchev withdrew his tanks, my uncle would follow within a few hours, and they did that. And afterwards they trusted each other, and they realized that they had to communicate directly with each other.

They began a series of 26 letters that they exchanged with each other, highly personal letters that were smuggled by a Soviet GRU spy named Georgi Bolshakov, that end-run their own State Department, their diplomatic corps, the military and intelligence apparatus. So they were talking directly to each other.

They also installed hotlines in Cape Cod, where I live, and those wires are still protruding at the home, the summer lighthouse that my brother owns, and another hotline at the White House, where they could pick up the phone and talk directly to each other.

And that’s more important today than it ever was. They were in a very analogous situation, where we are putting Vladimir Putin in a place where his back is against the wall: And it’s a time more than ever that we need to be talking to each other. We have made no effort to talk to the Soviet—to the Russian leadership, for many, many months, almost a year. And there have been many efforts by the Russian leadership to engage us, and engage Ukraine in peace negotiations, and we have rebuffed those.

In April of 2022, the Russians and—we now know—the Russians and the Ukrainians initialed a peace agreement, that was based on the Minsk Accords, and the Russians were already beginning to withdraw their troops. And yet, we sent, the U.S. White House sent [then-British Prime Minister] Boris Johnson over there to torpedo that deal.

We need to be doing the opposite of that: We need to be talking directly with Vladimir Putin, and all sides and we need to settle this insanity, before we initiate another nuclear exchange that will destroy all of humanity.

I want to thank you for all the work that you’re doing, and I want to congratulate you and send you all my gratitude for making this a priority for all of humanity. Thank you very much.

Mike Billington
EIR
16839 Hill Haven Lane
Hamilton, VA 20158

Worldwide ‘Humanity for Peace’ Rallies Launch Movement To Stop the Danger of Nuclear War and Build a Durable Peace

Aug. 6, 2023 (EIRNS)—A stunning chorus of voices from around the world sang out on Sunday Aug. 6, the 78th anniversary of the barbaric bombing of Hiroshima, from dozens of parallel “Humanity for Peace” rallies across Europe, Ibero-America and the United States, led by a flagship rally in Dag Hammarskjold Plaza in front of the United Nations in New York City, demanding peace and a new international security architecture that protects the interests of all nations, large and small.

At the UN rally, a solid crowd of about 250 at any one time—with an additional equal number passing through over the course of the two-and-half-hour event—heard from some 20 speakers from numerous countries and of varied political affiliations, all committed to the common cause of the one Humanity, of stopping the imminent danger of thermonuclear and building a growing movement to forge a durable and just peace. The rally was co-moderated by Anastasia Battle of the Schiller Institute, and Irene Mavrakakis of Liberty Speaks.

Reflecting the political diversity of the coalition, the Humanity for Peace rally heard messages of support from three Presidential candidates—Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. (Democrat), Aaron Day (Republican), and Mike ter Maat (Libertarian)—as well as from LaRouche independent candidate for U.S. Senate from New York, Diane Sare; the former President of Guyana, Donald Ramotar; Haitian presidential candidate Jude Elie; and a number of prominent anti-war activists including Scott Ritter and the LaRouche movement’s Jose Vega. All of the speakers, each in their own way, conveyed the spirit that “peace is more powerful than war,” as Rev. Dr. Terri Strong stated in her remarks. Vega closed out the rally by announcing upcoming further Humanity for Peace events in September and beyond, stating: “This does not end here!”

The central message to the event came from Schiller Institute founder Helga Zepp-LaRouche, whom various speakers thanked as the initiator and driving force of the Humanity for Peace process. Zepp-LaRouche’s message to the rally was as follows:

“To all the courageous people demonstrating today for peace!

“We have to wake people up all over the world. Never before was mankind in a bigger danger of annihilating itself in a global nuclear war. Of the more than 12,000 existing nuclear weapons today, each of which are up to a thousand times more destructive than the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, 3,800 are immediately deployable and nearly 2,000 are on ‘launch on warning’ status.

“If it comes to nuclear war, as there are politicians today who are recklessly considering the use of these weapons, not even a historian will be left to investigate how it could have come to this incomprehensible catastrophe. If it happens, the people who die in the first minutes will be the comparably lucky ones, for in the following days, month and years, all life on this planet will become extinct, both through total radiation and a nuclear winter of many years. Everything for which thousands of generations have struggled, all sorrows and joy, all poems and songs, will vanish forever.

“We demand the immediate controlled destruction of all nuclear weapons. But even more profoundly, we demand the realization of a new global security and development architecture, which takes into account the security interests of all nations of the world, big ones and small ones. This architecture must overcome the formation of geopolitical blocs once and for all, and put the interest of the one humanity first. The precondition for this is a new just world economic order, which allows every nation and every human being to fully develop all of their innate potentials.

“Let us unite the peace movements all over the world with the nations of the Global South, for the realization of a new paradigm in the history of the human species!

“The new name for peace is development!”

Mike Billington
EIR
16839 Hill Haven Lane
Hamilton, VA 20158

By Mike Whitney

The Biden Administration is implementing a plan to draw Taiwan into a direct military confrontation with the People’s Republic of China. The plan bears many similarities to the strategy that was used in Ukraine where Russia was goaded into invading the country in response to emerging threats to its national security. In this case, Beijing is expected to react to mounting challenges to its territorial integrity by US proxies and their political allies operating in Taiwan. These incitements will inevitably lead to greater material support from the United States which has stealthily worked behind the scenes (and in the media) to create a crisis. The ultimate objective of these machinations, is to arm, train and provide logistical support for Taiwanese separatists who will spearhead Washington’s proxy war on China. According to a number of independent reports, there is already growing operational collaboration between the Taiwanese Army and US Armed Forces. That collaboration will undoubtedly deepen after hostilities break out and the island is plunged into war.

The plan to confront China militarily was outlined in the 2022 National Security Strategy in which the PRC was identified as “America’s most consequential geopolitical challenge” who expressed its “intent to reshape the international order.” This NSS analysis was followed by an explicit commitment to prevail in the struggle to control the “Indo-Pacific” region which “fuels much of the world’s economic growth and will be the epicenter of 21st century geopolitics.”...(“No region will be of more significance to …everyday Americans than the Indo-Pacific.”) Biden’s NSS emphasizes the critical role the military will play in the impending confrontation with China: “We will…modernize and strengthen our military so it is equipped for the era of strategic competition with major powers”… “America will not hesitate to use force to defend our national interests”.

Drawing China into a Taiwan quagmire is the first phase of a broader containment strategy aimed at preserving America’s top spot in the global order while preventing China from becoming the region’s dominant economy. The plan also includes economic, cyber and informational elements that are designed to work in concert with the military component. In its entirety, the strategy represents Washington’s best effort to roll-back the clock to the heyday of the unipolar world order when America set the global agenda and the United States had no rival.

Trouble in Taiwan

Taiwan is not a country. Taiwan is an island off the coast of China much like Santa Catalina is an island off the coast of California. No one disputes that Santa Catalina is part of the United States, just as no one disputes that Taiwan is a part of China. The issue was settled long ago, and the US agrees with the results of that settlement. For all practical purposes, the issue has been resolved.

The United Nations does not recognize Taiwan’s independence nor do the 181 countries that have established diplomatic relations with China. In fact, the UN adopted a General Assembly Resolution back in 1971 acknowledging the “People’s Republic of China as the sole legal government representing the whole of China.”

The One-China policy explicitly relates to the status of Taiwan. Taiwan is part of China, that’s what the One-China policy means. Nations that want to have relations with China must agree on the status of Taiwan; it is the foundational principle upon which all relations with China are based. The issue is not debatable. One can either accept that ‘Taiwan is an inalienable part of China’s territory’ or take their business elsewhere. There is no third option.

The United States claims that it is committed to the One-China policy. In their recent visits to Beijing, all three senior-level officials from the Biden Administration (Anthony Blinken, Janet Yellen and John Kerry) publicly stated their unwavering support for the One-China policy. This is an excerpt from an article at Forbes:

Secretary of State Antony Blinken reiterated the U.S.’ position on its One China policy as he met with China’s leader Xi Jinping Monday, saying it does not support Taiwanese independence and that containing China’s economy was not an American goal….

Blinken said the U.S. held a “One China” policy and does not support Taiwanese independence, but is concerned about China’s “provocative actions” along the Taiwan Strait. Blinken Tells Xi Jinping U.S. Does Not Support Taiwanese Independence, After Meeting To Quell Tensions, Forbes

President Joe Biden has also stated his support for the One-China principle on many, many occasions, which is what you would expect since it is the official position of the United States government. Here’s a short recap on the issue from China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs:

The US made the following commitments to China regarding the one-China principle in the three China-US joint communiqués.

In the Shanghai Communiqué released in 1972, the US explicitly stated that “The United States acknowledges that all Chinese on either side of the Taiwan Strait maintain there is but one China and that Taiwan is a part of China. The United States Government does not challenge that position”.

In the Joint Communiqué on the Establishment of Diplomatic Relations released in 1978, the US clearly stated that, “The Government of the United States of America acknowledges the Chinese position that there is but one China and Taiwan is part of China”.

In the August 17 Communiqué released in 1982, the US unequivocally stated that “In the Joint Communiqué on the Establishment of Diplomatic Relations on January 1, 1979, issued by the Government of the People’s Republic of China and the Government of the United States of America, the United States of America recognized the Government of the People’s Republic of China as the sole legal Government of China, and it acknowledged the Chinese position that there is but one China and Taiwan is part of China”, and that “it has no intention of infringing on Chinese sovereignty and territorial integrity, or interfering in China’s internal affairs, or pursuing a policy of ‘two Chinas’ or ‘one China, one Taiwan’”. (China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs)

The western media would like their readers to think there is some “gray area” here and that the issue regarding China’s sovereign territory has not been settled. But—as we have shown—it has been settled. Taiwan is China. We must assume therefore that the media is being intentionally misleading in order to garner support for an “independence” movement that serves only one purpose; to legitimize the arming and training of US assets and insurgents that will be used in a bloody conflagration with China. In truth, the United States is laying the groundwork for a proxy-war on China, and Taiwan has been designated as the frontlines in that war. The independence movement is merely the cover Washington has chosen to conceal its real objectives.

This is why Taiwan has become a flashpoint in US-China relations. This is why numerous US-led delegations have visited Taiwan expressing their tacit support for Taiwan independence. This is why Congress has allocated millions of dollars to provide lethal weaponry for the Taiwanese military. This is why the US Navy has sent warships through the Taiwan Strait and conducted massive military drills on China’s perimeter. This is why Washington continues to provoke Beijing on the one issue that it is most sensitive. All of these incitements were conjured-up with one goal in mind: War with China. This is from Politico:

The Biden administration announced a $345 million weapons package for Taiwan on Friday, the first tranche in a total of $1 billion the U.S. has allotted to be transferred directly from Pentagon stockpiles to the island this year.

The move is sure to anger China as Washington has been trying to rebuild relations with Beijing. Senior administration officials, including Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, recently visited China, but the outreach has done little to quell tensions over a range of issues, from U.S. support to Taiwan to Beijing’s spy balloon program.

“We take our responsibilities to Taiwan and to improving their self-defense capabilities very, very seriously,” John Kirby, a spokesperson for the National Security Council, told reporters ahead of the announcement on Friday. “U.S. announces $345M weapons package for Taiwan, Politico

Repeat: “The move is sure to anger China.”

Indeed, the move was designed to anger China. That was clearly the point. But, why? Why is Washington challenging China on an issue on which there is virtually universal agreement?

Two reasons come to mind:

1. To goad China into overreacting and thus alienating itself from its allies and regional trading partners.
2. To turn public opinion against China by portraying the country as a violent aggressor that poses a clear threat to its neighbors.

Here’s more from the World Socialist Web Site:

The US announced last Friday that it will provide Taiwan with $345 million in weapons as the first tranche of an annual $1 billion in military equipment. The announcement marks another step to arm Taiwan to the teeth as Washington escalates its provocative confrontation with China….

the Biden administration has used the same provision to supply Ukraine with billions of dollars in US military equipment to intensify the war against Russia. Just as it goaded Russia into a conflict in Ukraine, the US is deliberately provoking a conflict with China over Taiwan.

… a Chinese embassy spokesman in Washington, Liu Pengyu, stated: “China is firmly opposed to US’s military ties with and arms sales to Taiwan.” He warned the US to “stop selling arms to Taiwan, stop creating new factors that could lead to tensions in the Taiwan Strait and stop posing risks to peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait.”

The US is intentionally undermining the One China policy, which de facto acknowledges Beijing as the legitimate government of all China, including Taiwan, and formed the basis of US-Chinese diplomatic relations established in 1979. Washington knows full well that China has long warned that it would respond with force to any declaration of independence by Taipei.
Preparing for war with China, US provides $345 million in arms to Taiwan, World Socialist Web Site

Imagine if China sent millions of dollars of lethal weapons to a budding secessionist movement in Texas. Imagine if they offered to arm and train Texan separatists in counterinsurgency warfare so they could kill as many American soldiers as possible. Imagine if China sent one political delegation after the other to Austin (Texas) to embolden the rebels and to offer them moral and material support. Imagine if China deployed part of their fleet and airforce to ports and bases near Texas so they could join in the fray when blows were exchanged and the fighting broke out.

How would Washington react to those developments? Would they be as restrained as the Chinese leadership has been in dealing with the relentless US meddling and provocations?

And, ask yourself this: Haven’t we seen this drill before? Didn’t this same scenario unfold in Ukraine following the CIA-backed coup in 2014 after which the US armed and trained Ukrainian forces to dig-in and provoke hostilities with Russia? Didn’t Washington deliberately choose an issue on which Russia was particularly sensitive in order to ‘get a rise’ out of Moscow?

Of course, they did. In his 22 years in office, President Putin has never started a war. In contrast, in America’s 247-year history, there have been only 16 years when the US was not at war. It is an astonishing record of violence that has no equal. As former President Jimmy Carter said, “The United States is the most warlike country on earth.”

People who have been following developments closely in US-China news, know that Team Biden has been playing a game of “good cop, bad cop” in which US diplomats have been making every effort to ingratiate themselves with the Chinese leadership (to assuage the allies) while—at the same time—pumping Taiwan full of weapons hoping to incite Beijing. The objective of this charade is to preserve so-called “strategic ambiguity” on the one hand while ratchetting up the savagery on the other. Regrettably, the tactic seems to be working. Chinese leaders are getting progressively more irritated which leads us to believe that, eventually, Uncle Sam will get the war he is looking for. At least, that is how things played-out in Ukraine. Here’s more from the WSWS:

Last week the Taiwanese military carried out its annual, multi-day war games known as the Han Kuang exercises, focused on repelling a Chinese invasion of the island. This year’s drills dealt more heavily than previously on threats to major infrastructure and transportation hubs, including the island’s main Taoyuan international airport….

Speaking to the media, Taiwan’s premier Chen Chien-jen justified the exercises, declaring: “Today’s drills in Tainan, include the simulation of wartime scenarios, is not only because of the increased international sensitivity triggered by Russia’s war in Ukraine. It’s even more a reflection of the constant threats and provocations from China directed at our country.”

The reality is that the US, not China, has upended the status quo in North East Asia, setting the stage for a conflict in the Indo-Pacific between nuclear-armed powers, even as it intensifies the war with Russia in Ukraine. Just as it has sacrificed countless Ukrainian soldiers and civilians, so it is prepared to do the same in Taiwan and is marshalling its regional allies including Japan, South Korea and Australia, for war. World Socialist Web Site

All of these developments suggest that US plans for a kinetic conflict with China are in a very advanced stage and that the Taiwan powder-keg could be ignited at any time.

A number of recent polls indicate that the American people—who remain completely ignorant of the events we have discussed here—have been conditioned to regard China as an unscrupulous competitor and a growing threat to national security. According to a recent survey from Gallup, US public opinion of China has fallen off a cliff. Here’s an excerpt from the report:

A record-low 15% of Americans view China favorably,…… More than eight in 10 U.S. adults have a negative opinion of China, including 45% who view it very unfavorably and 39% mostly unfavorably….

In addition to holding a largely unfavorable opinion of China, more Americans name China as the United States’ greatest enemy than any other nation by a wide margin. This view is closely linked to two other measures in the poll, which find that Americans broadly believe China’s military and economic powers represent a “critical threat” to the United States’ vital interests in the next decade. “Record-Low 15% of Americans View China Favorably, Gallup

Additionally, the PEW Research Center produced the same grim results:

Naturally, a great deal of the animus towards China is the result of the media’s relentless propaganda which is aimed at demonizing America’s most formidable economic rival. Consider, for example, how the American people were whipped into a frenzy over a Chinese balloon that drifted off-course and traversed parts of the US posing no threat to anyone. The media transformed this inconsequential incident into a lurid tale of international espionage as the errant civilian airship was dubbed the “Chinese spy balloon” whose nefarious purpose was to “gather intelligence from several sensitive American military sites”. Now we can see how trivial incidents like this are being used to smear Washington’s enemies and prepare the people for war.

Is War with China Inevitable?

Foreign policy mandarins on both sides of the aisle have repeatedly pushed for America’s deeper involvement in Central Asia. Grandmaster Zbigniew Brzezinski first made the case in his classic The Grand Chessboard where he said:

“..how America ‘manages’ Eurasia is critical. A power that dominates Eurasia would control two of the world’s three most advanced and economically productive regions. A mere glance at the map also suggests that control over Eurasia would almost automatically entail Africa’s subordination, rendering the Western Hemisphere and Oceania (Australia) geopolitically peripheral to the world’s central continent. About 75 per cent of the world’s people live in Eurasia, and most of the world’s physical wealth is there as well, both in its enterprises and underneath its soil. Eurasia accounts for about three-fourths of the world’s known energy resources.” Zbigniew Brzezinski, The Grand Chessboard,Wikiquote

His views have been universally supported among the Washington pundit class and their chief proponents like former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton who said:

“It is becoming increasingly clear that, in the 21st century, the world’s strategic and economic center of gravity will be the Asia-Pacific, from the Indian subcontinent to western shores of the Americas.”…

“Harnessing Asia’s growth and dynamism is central to American economic and strategic interests…. Open markets in Asia provide the United States with unprecedented opportunities for investment, trade, and access to cutting-edge technology…..American firms (need) to tap into the vast and growing consumer base of Asia.” “America’s Pacific Century”, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton”, Foreign Policy Magazine

And here’s one more from former Secretary of Defense Ash Carter’s speech at the McCain Institute at Arizona State University:

(The) ” Asia-Pacific…is the defining region for our nation’s future”… “Half of humanity will live there by 2050″ and that “more than half of the global middle class and its accompanying consumption will come from that region.”….”There are already more than 525 million middle class consumers in Asia, and we expect there to be 3.2 billion in the region by 2030…President Obama and I want to ensure that… businesses can successfully compete for all these potential customers. ….Over the next century, no region will matter more… for American prosperity.” Former Secretary of Defense Ash Carter, Department of Defense

The above quotes help to underscore the importance the US places on it’s strategy for the region. China is not only the gateway to Central Asia, it is also the main obstacle to the US plans to establish itself as the regional hegemon. That is why there must be a strategy for dealing with China, a strategy that isolates, sanctions, contains and eventually subjugates America’s biggest rival. Not surprisingly, Biden’s 2022 National Security Strategy articulates that plan in clear, unambiguous terms that leaves no doubt that the country is headed for war. Here are a few excerpts from the 48-page document:

The post-Cold War era is definitively over and a competition is underway between the major powers to shape what comes next… We will build the strongest and broadest possible coalition of nations that seek to cooperate with each other, while competing with those powers that offer a darker vision and thwarting their efforts to threaten our interests… We will…modernize and strengthen our military so it is equipped for the era of strategic competition with major powers,..

The Indo-Pacific fuels much of the world’s economic growth and will be the epicenter of 21st century geopolitics. ………..No region will be of more significance to the world and to everyday Americans than the Indo-Pacific… We reaffirm our iron-clad commitments to our Indo-Pacific treaty allies… America will not hesitate to use force when necessary to defend our national interests… The military will act urgently to sustain and strengthen deterrence, with the PRC as its pacing challenge….

The PRC is the only competitor with both the intent to reshape the international order and, increasingly, the economic, diplomatic, military, and technological power to do it…. The American military is the strongest fighting force the world has ever known……America will not hesitate to use force when necessary to defend our national interests….

Around the world, the need for American leadership is as great as it has ever been. … …. We will partner with any nation that shares our basic belief that the rules-based order must remain the foundation for global peace and prosperity.. There is nothing beyond our capacity. We can do this—for our future and for the world. National Security Strategy, White House

Let’s summarize:

1. The Indo-Pacific is now America’s top foreign policy priority because that is the area that will experience the most growth
2. The US will lead with its military and with the allies who share US interests
3. “We will…modernize and strengthen our military” to prevail in our “strategic competition with major powers.”
4. America’s Number 1 enemy is China; “the PRC presents America’s most consequential geopolitical challenge ….The PRC is the only competitor with both the intent to reshape the international order and, increasingly, the economic, diplomatic, military, and technological power to do it…”
5. “The post-Cold War era is over” but the United States is prepared to preserve the “rules-based order” whatever the cost in blood and treasure.

This is America’s foreign policy in a nutshell. US leaders and their globalist allies are fully committed to prevailing in today’s great power struggle with Russia and China. They have a clear grasp of the objectives they want to achieve and they are prepared to risk anything, including nuclear war, to achieve them. Any developments in Taiwan must be seen through the lens of Washington’s geopolitical ambitions which are clearly driving events.

*

Michael Whitney is a renowned geopolitical and social analyst based in Washington State.

4 August 2023

Source: globalresearch.ca

By Jan Oberg, Ph.D.

A major peace publishing event across cultures. The cover story of the influential China Investment Magazine’s July 2023 edition.

Can you imagine a leading economics, finance and investment magazine in the Western world publishing a 30 A4-page (10 000 words) article about the future peace and security world order – a think-piece consisting merely of concepts, theories, visions and philosophical aspects of the theme?

I can’t. They would not see it as meaningful to include perspectives on peace, nonviolence, security and related matters. But they’d probably gladly publish articles about military corporations, profits and the like.

But in China, they see the value of such holistic thinking between interrelated dimensions of society – and of the world – as it really is. Economics is not only about economic things; it takes place in a framework that influences it – past, present and future.

In contrast, the main problem in Western economic thinking is that it’s mostly about market aspects, corporate/private actors and maximizing utilities and profits as if economics could be isolated from society and culture. Furthermore, in the academic field called ‘national economics,’ Western economy students spend years learning about something that has not existed for decades in the real world.

I’m honored to have been asked by China Investment to write about the theme indicated in the headline. And I am grateful for the opportunity to express my thinking based on four decades of scholarly work, quite some thinking and on-the-ground experiences. See the original edition here.

Before you read my future-oriented analysis, let me quote this from its homepage so you get an impression of the status of this magazine:

“China Investment, founded in 1985, is a monthly under the supervision of the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), China’s macro-economic management agency, It’s jointly operated by Investment Research Institute under NDRC, China International Engineering Consulting Corporation. Enjoying an exclusive position under the central government, China Investment is the core journal which started the earliest among similar magazines to focus on the investment trend. Over the past 30-plus years, China Investment has been in line with the global market as its fundamental coordinate with a strategic focus on specific countries and regional markets and those major international propensities. China Investment is a key dialogue platform for officials from different countries, investment agencies, experts and scholars, business people and journalists.”

And now, my article below. It has been changed and re-edited in a few places and I have added some thoughts on non-military defense.

On August 1, 2023, the very important Global Times published my summary, requested by them, of the longer analysis below.

*********************

30 Jul 2023 – The world’s taxpayers give US$ 2,240 billion annually to their national military defenses. That is the highest ever, more than 600 times the regular budget of the United Nations, and three times the total trade between China and the US. Such are the perverse priorities of our governments; the five largest spenders are the US 39% of the total, China 13%, Russia 3,9%, India 3,6% and Saudi Arabia 3,1%.

Worldwide, governments maintain that they need that much to secure their people’s survival, national defense, security and stability – and that global peace will come.

With the exception of the elites of the Military-Industrial-Media-Academic Complexes (MIMAC), we all know this is a huge fallacy. Today’s world is at a higher risk of war–including nuclear–, more unstable and militaristic than at any time since 1945.

At the end of the West’s Cold War a good 30 years ago, peace became a manifest possibility, NATO could have been dismantled since its raison d’être, the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact, fell apart. A new transatlantic common security and peace system could have replaced NATO.

Tragically, ’defensive’ NATO did everything not only to cheat Russia with its promise to not expand ‘one inch,’ but also to expand up to the border of Russia, “not one inch off limit for the alliance,” to quote Marie Sarotte’s brilliant 550-page book, Not One Inch.

The NATO world now postulates that both Russia and China are threats to be met with even higher, de facto limitless, military expenditures.

But wait! How would you think and act if you witnessed a team of doctors do one surgery after the other on a patient who, for each, came closer to death?

You’d probably say that they are quack doctors. Their diagnosis and treatment lead to a devastating prognosis. Instead of health, they produce more of the problem they claim to solve!

Given that the highest investment on peace and security in history has caused the highest risk to humanity’s survival, why don’t we have a vibrant global debate? What is fundamentally wrong with the entire paradigm of security through arms? Where are the critical analyses of the world’s most enigmatic and dangerous logical short circuit?

The dominant security paradigm builds on factors like these:

• deterrence – we shall harm them if they do something we won’t accept or don’t do as we say;
• offensiveness – our defense is directed at them even thousands of kilometers away, not on our own territory;
• military means are all-dominant;
• civil means – like minimizing society’s vulnerability; civil defense, nonviolent people’s defense, cooperation refusal, boycott – are hardly discussed;
• our intentions are noble and peaceful, but theirs are not;
• our defense is not a threat to them, but they threaten us with theirs;
• ignoring the underlying conflicts that cause violence and war, the keys to conflict-resolution, and prepare instead for war to achieve peace.

This is, by and large, how everybody ’thinks’ and then they blame others for the fact that this type of thinking can not produce disarmament or peace.

Even worse, when that peace doesn’t come, everybody concludes that they need more and better weapons. In reality, this system is the perpetual mobile of the world’s tragic militarism and squandering of resources desperately needed to solve humanity’s problems.

There must be better ways to think. But there is far too little research and debate and the MIMAC elites thrive on war. Thus, decision-makers lack political will.

What would be the criteria for good peace and security?

Conflicts are to be addressed and solved intelligently by mediation, international law, and creative visions that address the parties’ fears and wishes. Violent means should be absolutely the last resort as is stated by the UN. Peace is about reducing all kinds of violence (there are many kinds) and creating security for all at the lowest military level, like the doctor who shall never incur more pain than necessary to heal a patient.

Here some alternative ideas and thinking to promote discussion:
instead of deterrence, seek cooperation and common security; the latter means that we feel secure when they do;

• go for being invincible in defense but unable to attack anybody else; have weapons with limited destruction capacity and range;
• make control/occupation impossible by our country’s non-cooperation with any occupier;
• balance defensive military and civilian means;
• prevent violence but not conflicts;
• never do tit-for-tat escalation; do something creative to de-escalate;
• show that your intentions are non-threatening and take small steps to invite Graduated Reduction in Tension (GRIT) without risking your own security;
• handle conflicts early; build peace first and then secure it;
• address underlying conflicts, traumas, fears and interests;
• educate and use professionals in civilian conflict-resolution and mediation, not only military expertise;
• develop and nurture a peace culture through education at all levels, ministries for peace, emphasis on conflict transformation instead of confrontation and rearmament;
• replace outdated neighborhood ethics with a global ethics of care.
  The possibilities are limitless. Conflict and peace illiteracy have brought us to where we are today. It is not whether human beings are evil, good, or both. It is a systemic paradigmatic malfunctioning that must change in name of civilization.

We can learn to peace.

Masters of war are hated worldwide. Countries that take concrete leadership in developing new principles and policies for true global peace and human security will save humanity and will be loved forever.

Let a thousand peace ideas bloom!

Prof. Jan Oberg, Ph.D. is director of the independent Transnational Foundation for Peace & Future Research-TFF in Sweden and a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace Development Environment.

7 August 2023

Source: transcend.org

By Scott Ritter

28 Jul 2023 – Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky emerges as a tragic figure in the unfolding drama that is the Russian-Ukrainian conflict.

He was asked to sacrifice the lives of his countrymen in order to be seen by the U.S. and NATO as worthy of joining their club. But when the sacrifice did not produce the desired result (i.e., the strategic defeat of Russia), the door to NATO, which had been left open a crack to tease Ukraine into performing its suicidal task, was slammed shut.

Despite NATO’s disingenuous machinations to maintain the optics of potential Ukrainian membership (the Ukraine-NATO Council, created during the Vilnius Summit earlier this month, stands as a prime example), everyone knows that Ukrainian membership in the trans-Atlantic alliance is a fantasy.

Ukraine is now left to pick a poison of its own choosing — accept a peace which makes permanent Russian territorial claims while forever foregoing the possibility, however distant, of NATO membership; or to continue to fight, with the likely outcome of the additional loss of territory and destruction of the Ukrainian nation and people.

Robert Graves’ autobiography, Goodbye to All That, does double duty by providing a template for Ukraine as it charts the passing of Europe’s old order — the U.S.-dominated NATO alliance, the European Union, the rules-based international order and all the post-World War II structures, which held the Western world together for nearly eight decades. They are all now crumbling around us.

Graves’ struggle to adapt to post-war England in the aftermath of the horrors of the First World War, and his observations of a nation collectively struggling to define itself, is a cautionary tale for what is in store for Ukraine.

As Ukraine bids farewell to its former self, it must also part with its dreams of becoming one with a European community whose own longevity is very much in doubt. That is largely because of its disastrous involvement in the Russian-Ukrainian conflict.

Ukraine will never be the same after this war ends. Neither will the NATO alliance. Having defined the proxy war it is waging in Ukraine against Russia in existential terms, NATO will struggle to find both relevance and purpose in a post-conflict world.

The Vilnius summit on July 11-12 in many ways represented the high-water mark of Europe’s old order. The summit was the requiem for a nightmare of Europe’s own creation — the death of a nation, the nullification of a continent and the end of an order which had long ago lost its legitimacy.

Strange Isolation

Watching the reporting from the Vilnius summit, I was struck by the strange isolation of Zelensky as he sought to mingle with the leaders of NATO nations that called him friend and ally but treated him and the nation he leads as anything but.  Zelensky had pulled out all the stops to jockey Ukraine into position for NATO membership, only to be scratched at the gate.

Briefed in advance of a proposed NATO communique declaring that Ukraine would be invited to join the alliance “when allies agree and conditions are met,” the Ukrainian president was left to vent his frustration to an accommodating press only too willing to jump on the chance to flame the fires of scandal. “It’s unprecedented and absurd,” Zelensky bemoaned, “when time frame is not set neither for the invitation nor for Ukraine’s membership. While at the same time vague wording about ‘conditions’ is added even for inviting Ukraine.”

Mollified after being chastised by his NATO masters, Zelensky later changed his tune, speaking of his desire to join NATO, but in a new, non-confrontational manner. “The results of the summit have been good,” Zelensky told NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg during a joint press conference, “but if we had got an invitation [to NATO], they’d have been perfect.”

Later, during a press conference with U.S. President Joe Biden, Zelensky stood mute while Biden continued to pour cold water on the prospects for Ukrainian NATO membership. “We’ve just concluded the first meeting of the NATO-Ukraine Council and — where all our allies agreed Ukraine’s future lies with NATO,” Biden said. “Allies all agreed to lift the requirements for the Membership Action Plan for Ukraine and to create a path to NATO membership while Ukraine continues to make progress on necessary reforms.”

One could sense the anger and frustration in Zelensky’s eyes as he listened to Biden add insult to injury by calling him “Vladimir.”

The NATO dysfunction over Ukrainian membership, however, was but the most public manifestation of the debacle that was the Vilnius Summit.

The Fantasy of Unity

While Zelensky was playing the role of someone desperately looking for a date to the prom — on prom night — Turkish President Recep Erdogan was playing hard to get. After agreeing to allow Finland and Sweden to join NATO during last year’s Madrid summit, Erdogan laid down stringent conditions which kept Finland from being ratified as NATO’s newest member until April 2023. He left Sweden in the lurch on the eve of the Vilnius summit.

Just before departing for Vilnius, Erdogan surprised many by linking Turkish ratification of Sweden’s bid to join the trans-Atlantic alliance with Turkey’s desire to join the EU. “First, come and open the way for Turkey at the European Union and then we will open the way for Sweden, just as we did for Finland,” Erdogan declared. Shortly after arriving in Lithuania, Erdogan met with NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg and Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson, after which Erdogan reversed course, saying Turkey supported Sweden’s accession to NATO.

While Erdogan did not get his invitation to join the EU, Sweden promised to actively support the modernization of the EU-Turkey Customs Union and visa liberalization regarding applications by Turkish citizens for visa-free travel to Europe.

But the Stoltenberg-Erdogan-Kristersson meeting was merely window dressing for more substantive behind-the-scenes horse trading between Erdogan and Biden, which saw Turkey green-lighted to buy new F-16 fighters and have its existing fleet of F-16 fighters modernized.

Getting F-16 fighters had been a major goal of Turkey’s ever since the U.S., in 2019, removed Turkey from a U.S.-led international program to develop and produce the F-35 fighter following Turkey’s purchase of the S-400 air defense system from Russia. The F-16 sale, however, had been stalled following the imposition of sanctions on Turkey in December 2020 as part of the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA) — the first time such sanctions targeted a NATO member.

The U.S.  desire to see Sweden enter NATO as soon as possible appeared to be sufficient justification for the Biden administration to waive the CAATSA sanctions and send the F-16 deal to the U.S. Congress with its blessing. But Sweden’s accession is not guaranteed.

While the U.S. and NATO are pushing for Erdogan to call a special session of Parliament to ratify Swedish membership, Erdogan is holding off until October, when the Turkish Parliament convenes. Erdogan is looking for assurances that the F-16 deal will be approved by U.S. Congress. This is not sure thing, however, given concerns among lawmakers over Turkey’s strained relationship with NATO ally Greece, and the view that deconfliction there is as important as Sweden’s NATO membership.

To sum up: Biden and Stoltenberg highlighted the decision by Erdogan to move the application for Swedish membership to NATO onto the Turkish Parliament for ratification as a symbol of NATO’s “rock solid” unity.

Left unsaid is that Erdogan had to threaten NATO to get the U.S. to articulate a bribe that had the U.S. waiving its prior sanctioning of a NATO ally while at the same time compelling the U.S. to consider the security implications of the deal, given the open hostility that exists between Turkey and fellow NATO member Greece.

Webster’s defines “unity” as “a condition of harmony” and “the quality or state of being made one.” When it comes to the proper usage of that term, I don’t think the contentious relationship between Turkey and NATO qualifies.

Add to this France’s rejection of a proposal to open a NATO liaison office in Japan, and Hungary’s ongoing open disagreement with NATO and the EU over how to respond to Russia’s conflict with Ukraine, and one finds the NATO edifice riddled with fissures of discontent and disagreement which can only deepen as NATO stares the growing probability of a Russian military victory in the face.

Goodbye to All That

If the weeks leading up to the Vilnius summit were defined by the desire on the part of NATO to see the long-awaited and much-touted Ukrainian counteroffensive reach its maximum potential, the days which preceded the NATO gathering have confronted both Ukraine and its Western allies with the reality that the war is not going well for either.

The Ukrainian counteroffensive was formed around a core force of some 60,000 Ukrainian soldiers who received special training by NATO and European militaries on weapons and tactics designed to defeat Russian defenses. Since the counteroffensive began on June 8, Ukraine has lost nearly half of these troops, and a third of the equipment provided — including scores of the Leopard main battle tanks and Bradly infantry fighting vehicles that had been viewed by many as game-changing technology.

Back in 1993, George Soros postulated an architecture for a new world order premised on the United States as the sole remaining superpower overseeing a network of alliances, the most important being NATO, which would gird the northern hemisphere against a Russian threat.

“The United States,” Soros wrote, “would not be called upon to act as the policeman of the world. When it acts, it would act in conjunction with others. Incidentally, the combination of manpower from Eastern Europe with the technical capabilities of NATO would greatly enhance the military potential” of any U.S.-led alliance structure “because it would reduce the risk of body bags for NATO countries, which is the main constraint on their willingness to act.”

Forty years later, this very scenario is playing out on the bloody battlefields of Russia and Ukraine. The billions of dollars of military assistance provided by the U.S., NATO and other European nations is the living manifestation of the “technical capabilities” Soros spoke about, which are being married to “manpower from Eastern Europe” (i.e., Ukraine) to enhance the military potential of NATO in a way that reduces “the risk of body bags for NATO countries.”

Left unspoken are the hundreds of thousands of body bags that have already been lowered into the dark soil of Ukraine, highlighting the callous disregard for that human tragedy by the Vilnius attendees.

Scott Ritter was a US Marine Corps intelligence officer for 12 years.

7 August 2023

Source: transcend.org

By Black Alliance for Peace

3 Aug 2023 – The Black Alliance for Peace (BAP) condemns in the strongest possible terms Kenya’s proposal to lead what amounts to a foreign armed intervention in Haiti.

Kenya has offered to deploy a contingent of 1,000 police officers to help train and assist Haitian police, ostensibly to “restore order” in the Caribbean republic. Yet, their proposal is nothing more than military occupation by another name; an occupation of Haiti by an African country is not Pan-Africanism, but Western imperialism in Black face. By agreeing to send troops into Haiti, the Kenyan government is assisting in undermining the sovereignty and self-determination of Haitian people, while serving the neocolonial interests of the United States, the Core Group, and the United Nations.

There is an urgent need for clarity on the issue of occupation in Haiti. As described in a recent statement on Haiti and Colonialism, Haiti is under ongoing occupation. No call for foreign intervention into Haiti from the administration of appointed Prime Minister Ariel Henry can be considered legitimate, because the Henry administration itself is illegitimate. BAP has repeatedly pointed out that Haiti’s crisis is a crisis of imperialism. Haiti’s current unpopular and unelected government is propped up only by Haiti’s de facto imperial rulers: the unseemly confederacy of the Core Group countries and organizations, as well as BINUH (the United Nations Integrated Office in Haiti), and a loose alliance of foreign corporations and local elites.

Henry and the UN have made a mockery of sovereignty by mouthing the slogan “Haitian solutions to Haitian problems,” yet finding the only solution in violence through foreign military intervention. After repeated failed attempts to organize an occupying force to protect their interests and impose their will on the Haitian people (including appeals to the multinational organization, the Caribbean Community [CARICOM] for troops), they have now found a willing accomplice in Kenya, an east African country with its own set of internal problems.

As Austin Cole, co-coordinator of the BAP Haiti/Americas Team, argues: “At best, Kenya is allowing itself to be used in a violent line of neocolonial puppetry that will inevitably result in more death and imperial plunder for the masses of Haitians. At worst, Kenya sees this as an easy opportunity to serve the colonial ‘masters’ and win favor for political and financial needs.”

Indeed, what’s in it for Kenya? An opportunity to both train and enhance the salaries of local police forces and garner a patina of prestige, or at least bootlicking approval, from the West. And for Haiti? White blows from a Black hand and a further erosion of their sovereignty.

BAP demands that Kenya rescind their proposal to send 1,000 police to Haiti, while calling on the Kenyan people to join the Haitian masses and radical voices worldwide in condemning the continued occupation and governance of Haiti by the Core Group and the UN.

No to occupation. No to foreign intervention. No to Black face imperialism.

Yes to sovereignty. Yes to a true Pan-African alliance between the people of Haiti and Kenya.

7 August 2023

Source: transcend.org

By Dan Lieberman

28 Jul 2023 – Unimpeded Jewish settler violence has left the Palestinian people in desperation. “Between 2010 and 2019, nearly 3,000 Israeli settler attacks killed at least 22 Palestinians and injured 1,258 others across the occupied West Bank.” “Data collected by the UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reveals that there have been at least 570 attacks against Palestinians in the West Bank in the first six months of 2023 – an average of three attacks a day.” With the settler attacks intensifying, the plight of the Palestinians grows more menacing.

Israeli Human Rights organization, B’Tselem,  describes how the Israeli government encourages the settlements:

“Most of the settlements in the West Bank are defined as national priority areas. Accordingly, the settlers and other Israeli citizens working or investing in the settlements are entitled to significant financial benefits. These benefits are provided by six government ministries: the Ministry of Construction and Housing (generous loans for the purchase of apartments, part of which is converted to a grant); the Israel Lands Administration (significant price reductions in leasing land); the Ministry of Education (incentives for teachers, exemption from tuition fees in kindergartens, and free transportation to school); the Ministry of Industry and Trade (grants for investors, infrastructure for industrial zones, etc.); the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs (incentives for social workers); and the Ministry of Finance (reductions in income tax for individuals and companies).

Benefits are an inducement and not an excuse to acquire stolen property and are no reason to harass neighbors in an extreme and violent manner. Criminally attacking innocent Palestinians in adjacent villages gives the settlers a feeling of being all-powerful, all-commanding, all-authoritative, and having the right to murder, rob, and torch anyone they want.

The world treats the settlers as ultra-nationalists, as people with overzealous prophecies who are eager to fulfill a commitment to their God. They run amok because their beliefs are amok. Their violence must be stopped and, hopefully, legal and moral forces will subdue them. The word, as usual, is naive.

These hilltop villains arrive with a twisted mission — to bring their select group back to a land they fanatically believe God has given to them. People are entitled to their myths and ahistorical stories as a central focus to hold their ethnicity together; they are not entitled to take fantasy, pose it as a reality, and use the subverted reality for diabolical purposes. The settlers’ existence depends upon denying existence to others. The settlers’ principal purpose in life is to disturb the lives of others. They have often operated as a murderous contingent, completely unattached to reality, and finding pleasure in dominating their victims.

Not wanting the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), a euphemism for the Israel Offensive Forces (IOF), to be identified with the intended genocide of the Palestinian people, the Israeli government has purposely selected and conveniently installed the Orthodox Jews to play the role of shock troops for the government, commit the mayhem and carry out the vicious deeds. The ever-alert and just-around-the-corner police and military forces always arrive too late to halt the crimes committed against Palestinian villagers. No matter how severe the crime, the criminals are rarely apprehended, and if apprehended, never severely punished.

After decades of suffering under extreme oppression, with no end in sight, with oppressors who could live as well in other places, the destruction of the Palestinian people has unique qualities that defy rational thought. Particularly unique is the Western world’s assistance to the destruction, where, for the first time in history, external forces support and encourage mass violence against an established community, done in solicitation from Israel and in cooperation with foreign groups.

Examine the attacks from the promotions by the underwriters to the actions of the perpetrators and we learn that the attacks are a conspiracy of the unsettled and the deadly strikes on the Palestinians reverberate throughout the world; we are all menacingly affected and do not realize it.

Religious Right evangelists, multitudes of Jewish organizations, compromised political hacks, and the easily deluded, without compunction and without care of the damage they do to others, actively assist Israel in its deliberate repression of the Palestinians. The calamities that these partners in crime inflict upon the Palestinians are identifiable; their effect upon much of the rest of the world’s population is not understood. Political and policy subversion, financial corruption, moral degradation, harmful machinations against individuals that feature false charges of anti-Semitism, indoctrination, and unnecessary military actions are some of the calamities perpetrated against American citizens.

Military Action

In the invasion of Iraq, the U.S. government fooled its population and Americans suffered casualties from the treachery. The “intelligence assessment” that Sadaam Hussein was prepared to finalize the development of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and attack the United States proved false and the reasons for the invasion became a hoax. Not revealed was that the hoax was a hoax. The George W. Bush administration’s reason for the invasion was not due to its fear of Hussein acquiring advanced weapons of mass destruction, it was due to the Israel-friendly neoconservatives — Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, John Bolton, Douglas Feith, and Elliot Abrams — convincing the administration that a strong Iraq could become the central military power of the Middle East, be able to confront Israel, and should be defeated. How do we know this

It is ridiculous to assume that a government and its intelligence agencies could believe that Sadaam Hussein was “secretly creating biological agents using mobile laboratories in “road-trailer units and rail cars.” Laboratories for biological agents are fixed in tightly controlled and specifically designed buildings to maintain clean air and prevent escape of the deadly agents. How was this “secret operation” discovered? It wasn’t; it came from a supposed interview by German intelligence with one person, an Iraqi dissident, Rafid Alwan, known as Curveball. CNN investigated Curveball.

“Subsequent U.S. investigations into the intelligence failure around the claims found that German intelligence considered the defector “crazy” and “out of control,” while friends said he was a “liar.” Just days after Powell’s presentation, U.N. weapons inspectors presented evidence they said disproved those claims. But six weeks later, on March 20, 2003, the United States launched its invasion, toppling Hussein’s government in three weeks but locking itself in a war against an insurgency that has cost more than 4,000 American lives. No biological weapons, no germ labs, no weapons of mass destruction of any kind were found in Iraq after the invasion.

Did Saddam Hussein try to acquire uranium yellowcake or aluminum tubes for developing nuclear weapons? He did not, but even if he did, the Iraqi leader did not have the equipment for enriching the uranium. What did he need and how long would it take to enrich the yellowcake? Iran claimed to have converted a few tons of yellowcake in 2004 and they still do not have sufficient uranium for a nuclear weapon.

Why did the U.S. government and its expert intelligence agencies believe Hussein was manufacturing biological weapons and seeking material for making a nuclear weapon? They could not and they did not believe the ridiculous propositions; it was just a way to trick the populace into thinking evidence was available that proved Hussein sought weapons of mass destruction and to justify the invasion without disclosing the real reason.

The neocons were intimately involved with Israel and promoted Israel’s interests. They had already produced a 1996 policy paper titled “A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm” for Israeli PM, Benjamin Netanyahu, and the document recommended the removal of Saddam Hussein. Couple the fact that the United States had no reason to attack Iraq with the constant urgings by the influential neocons in the Bush administration to topple Hussein and we have the reason for the unreasonable invasion of Iraq.

International Terrorism

International terrorism has caused havoc to Americans. This violent phenomenon would exist apart from Israel, but Israel’s oppression of the Palestinians has strengthened the terrorist ranks. How has Israel contributed to international terrorism? Osama bin Laden clarified that conjecture

Osama Bin Laden Warns America, CBS News by Joel Arak, October 30, 2004:

He (bin-Laden) said he was first inspired to attack the United States by the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon in which towers and buildings in Beirut were destroyed in the siege of the capital.

“While I was looking at these destroyed towers in Lebanon, it sparked in my mind that the tyrant should be punished with the same and that we should destroy towers in America, so that it tastes what we taste and would be deterred from killing our children and women,” he said.

From Lawfare

Recently declassified information from the first-ever interrogation of someone presumed to be a senior al-Qaeda operative captured after 9/11 provides dramatic new insights into Osama bin Laden’s plans for a follow-up attack to Sept. 11. Specifically, bin Laden was plotting a major attack in Israel, a move consistent with his obsession with the Arab-Israeli conflict and U.S. support for Israel. The attack was thwarted at the last minute.

The Middle East Institute connects Israel to the rise of Jihadists.

A number of jihadist groups have made Palestine a central tenet of their political goals. Over the years, Al Qaeda, one of the most powerful global jihadist outfits, has often mentioned Palestine in its various communications.

Consequently, the [ISIS} narratives target the United States, as a key ally of Israel and a direct contributor to the plight of the Ummah. Several European nations, along with Australia and Canada are also criticized for their recent calls to boycott the United Nations conference on racism — aimed at demonstrating Israel’s apartheid on Palestinians.

Financial

The American public rebels at swollen government budgets, huge government deficit spending, and punishing government debt, all intended to help the American nation, and refrains from voicing anger at the unnecessary government contributions to the foreign nation of Israel and its people.

As part of an agreement, signed by former president Barack Obama in 2016, the U.S. taxpayers pledged to give the Israel war machine $3.8 billion annually until 2029. The agreement releases Israel from budgeting funds for its military and diverts those funds to build settlements. In effect, Obama told Netanyahu, “You build the settlements and we’ll supply the weapons for militarizing them.”

As of March 1, 2023, the Congressional Research Service documents that the “United States has provided Israel $158 billion in bilateral assistance and missile defense funding.” The Jewish Virtual Library has a similar figure of $152 billion until the year 2022.

Unknown to most of the American public is how it subsidizes the settlements. The Washington Post had  a revealing opinion story on the subject

From 2009 to 2013, more than $220 million was sent across the ocean and into schools, synagogues and playgrounds dotting the hills of Judea and Samaria. Millions of tax-subsidized dollars have gone to Jewish settlements in Hebron, helping to sustain a grim reality in the segregated part of the city, where Palestinian movement is sharply restricted and their economic life has been suffocated.

Political System

In 2020, 28% of voters referred to themselves as white evangelicals. Overwhelmingly, they cast their votes for Republican candidates. The two most important issues for these churchgoers are Right to Life and support for Israel. The former is more talk than walk; candidates who run on a platform that includes women’s rights to abortion have done well. The latter issue, which is losing adherents in a younger bloc of the “saved,” serves Israel; many politicos have lost the evangelical vote and elections because they lacked unwavering support for Israel. Trump would be in Nowheresville if he defied the evangelicals and criticized Israel.

Led by Pastor John Hagee, founder and chairperson of Christians United for Israel (CUFI), dozens of spokespersons for the evangelical community spend prime time praising Israel to the faithful. In 2013, a Pew poll showed that 82 percent of white evangelicals agreed with the statement, “Israel was given by God to the Jews.”

Former Israel Prime Minister, Menachem Begin, courted the American evangelicals and Benjamin Netanyahu solidified the courtship after meetings with the most popular evangelical personalities, Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson. Each July, thousands of conservative evangelicals gather in Washington, DC for an annual summit of CUFI. Besides voting massively for candidates who support Israel, estimates have the conservative evangelical community contributing between $175 and $200 million annually to the apartheid state.

The evangelist community votes are insufficient to assure Israel gets its chosen candidates into office. Individual Political Action Committees (PAC) operating under the umbrella of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), pro-Israel groups, such as United Democracy Project (UDP), Democratic Majority for Israel, Republican Jewish Coalition, and Pro-Israel America, and wealthy Jewish individuals supply campaign contributions in big numbers. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, gambling casino operator, “Sheldon Adelson, and his wife, Miriam, spent $123 million on the 2018 midterm elections, all of it benefiting Republicans.”

PACs allied with AIPAC “poured more than $24m into defeating Democratic primary candidates critical of Israel. …it celebrated defeating former congresswoman Donna Edwards, who was the favorite to win a Maryland seat until the UDP spent $7m to unleash an advertising blitz against her.” In the 2022 Democratic primary for a congressional seat in northwestern Detroit, the UDP spent more than $4m to defeat Andy Levin, an Israel supporter who “dissented from AIPAC’s support for hardline Israeli policies.”

No argument with individuals and PACs legally contributing to the campaigns of candidates they favor and feel will propose policies benefiting the American people. AIPAC and its allied Jewish organizations and individuals contribute to the campaigns of candidates that favor the policies that benefit a foreign government, Israel, and, often, purposely steer elections for one narrow reason — to defeat candidates who may be rewarding to the American electorate but criticize Israel.

Reshaping U.S. policies

In 2010, the FBI uncovered 10 unregistered Russian agents living in the U.S. as ordinary citizens, engaged in harmless activities, such as meeting people in high places in order to influence their attitudes and reporting American views on foreign and domestic affairs to Moscow. Multiply the number of discovered Russian agents by thousands and you will have the number of Israeli expatriates in the U.S. who do the same for Israel and more; by becoming U.S. citizens they vote for Israel-friendly candidates.

In 2014, the Israeli government ministries and the Los Angeles-based Israeli American Council, which represents Israelis across the United States and promotes their interests, estimated between 500,000 and 800,000 Israelis lived in the U.S., about 150,000 living in the New York area, 120,000 in Los Angeles, and 80,000 in Miami. What are the more important voting areas in the United States? New York, California, and Florida are significant. Enough dual-citizen American-Israelis can shape the ballot in those regions and may have done that in Florida during the disputed 2000 presidential election.

Has Israel purposely selected citizens to emigrate to the United States and influence voters? I have known Israelis living and working in the United States who have invited people into their homes and propagandized for Israel, persuaded synagogues to display the Israeli flag, and collected statistical information for Israel. Others went to Israel, became allied with a known Israeli institute, returned with a grant from a Jewish institution, and, due to previous ties with a recognized Israeli institute, became scholars at recognized think tanks.

In addition to its allied PACS’ efforts to steer American elections, AIPAC functions as a Congressional lobby. Funding annual trips to Israel for senators and representatives is an essential part of the “wooing” of Congress. According to Legistorm, “AIPAC’s charity arm has spent $15.7 million on congressional visits to Israel since 2000. On gift travel disclosures, AIPAC says the purpose of these trips is ‘educating policymakers about the U.S.-Israel relationship.’”

Important congressional leaders attend its annual convention in Washington, where AIPAC displays its influence in shaping the federal government and its policies. During the Covid epidemic in 2020, AIPAC convention speakers included Vice President Mike Pence, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, former Democratic presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Democratic Sens. Chuck Schumer and Cory Booker, Democratic Rep. Nita Lowey, and New York Governor Andrew Cuomo. These influential political figures must have a reason (getting elected?) for paying homage to the Lobby for Israel group.

Harmful machinations against individuals

Unable to respond to the obvious reality of an Israel built upon the theft of Palestinian lands and oppression of the Palestinian people, Israel’s supporters resort to slander and vicious attacks on Americans to deter the population from understanding the Middle East crisis.

Canary Mission, AMCHA Initiative, anti-Defamation League, and other Jewish organizations ferret out groups and persons that support the Palestinians and harass and defame them with the usual charge of anti-Semitism. The attacks lead to the proposition that Anti-Zionism equals Anti-Semitism, an identity that has become the final resting place of the word “anti-Semitism.”

Stealing another community’s lands, ethnically cleansing a population, and instituting a severe repression that terrorizes the community — controls their daily life, purposely denies agriculture, water rights, and fishing rights, willfully ruins cherished olive and orange groves, interferes in acquiring livelihood and employment, and reduces their ontological security — describes the Zionist intrusion into the land of Palestine and is a Goddamn awful way to behave. Being against Zionism is a positive and meritorious action. No sound person can argue with that recommendation.

If anti-Zionism is a positive and meritorious action, then the equation anti-Zionism = anti-Semitism indicates that anti-Semitism is a positive and meritorious action. Can that be? No, it cannot be, and Israel’s supporters are guilty of defaming Jews and should be reproached for their insistence that anti-Zionism = anti-Semitism. Or, maybe this shows the unworthiness of the word anti-Semitism, that it is not a word to describe hate; it is a hateful word used to prevent debate and harm people.

Conclusion

Pro-Israel organizations have used nefarious methods to skew voting patterns, manipulate the American mindset, and prevent legitimate debate. They have made a mockery of American democracy and allied Americans as partners in an intended destruction of the Palestinian people.

The manner in which the Israeli settlers have inflicted their deadly operations on the Palestinians characterizes the happenings in an insane world. Imagine someone running through the streets, injuring innocent pedestrians and onlookers saying, “That’s not nice, you shouldn’t be doing that and others saying, “How can I help? And, when you’re finished, come over for a cup of coffee.”

Everything should be done to stop this madness; too little has been done and that little has been ineffective. The reason for this deficiency is obvious, a thought exists that bringing Israel to the Court of Justice harms the Jewish people. Just as anti-Zionism equates to anti-Semitism is an oxymoron, “bringing Israel to the Court of Justice harms the Jewish people” is also a contradiction. The Jewish people have already harmed themselves. Helping other people is a high priority in a moral world. Helping the Palestinians to escape destruction is one of the high priorities. Accomplishing that task will not harm the Jewish people; it will prevent an eventual moral and physical destruction of the people of the book, a win-win proposition for all participants in the crisis.

Dan Lieberman publishes commentaries on foreign policy, economics and politics at https://dlieb10gmailcom.substack.com/.

7 August 2023

Source: transcend.org