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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

By Vanessa Beeley

My Two Sections from 2 Aug 2023

In section one I cover the recent military coup in Niger and the emergence of a new Pan-Africanist movement led by the Sahel nations of Burkina Faso, Niger and Mali with a combined population of 60 million. It is the 7th military coup to overthrow governments in thrall to French neocolonialism since 2020. The developing partnerships with Russia and China are strengthening African resolve to throw off the chains of colonialism. With Ibrhaim Traore we see a similar ideology to the assassinated Thomas Sankara, one of the most inspirational leaders of all time.

Watch: Niger, Burkina Faso leading the Sahel region war against Imperialism

Then in section two, I cover the recent events in Syria – the U.S. military build-up and the recent spate of ISIS attacks triggered by the U.S-led axis of terror occupying one third of Syrian territory.

Watch: Syria heads for military escalation as US increases pressure

Vanessa Beeley is a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace Development Environment.

7 August 2023

Source: transcend.org

By Manlio Dinucci

Headline: “Russia starves the world, Italy’s Meloni confirms it.”The accusation that Russia is starving Africa by blocking Ukrainian grain shipments, falls in the face that all of the grain from Ukraine went to EU countries, not to poorer nations, to which only 2 ships out of 87 were sent.  

31 Jul 2023 – At the United Nations Food Systems Summit, Italy’s President Meloni confirmed the West’s accusation against Russia: 

“Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine has exacerbated food insecurity in many African nations, had a major impact on the distribution of grains around the world exacerbating the global food security crisis. This would be the cause of the fact that 30 percent of humanity, 2.4 billion people, do not have access to adequate food, that more than 700 million people (according to official default estimates) are chronically undernourished, i.e., condemned to premature death from starvation.

What the real causes are is indicated by the World Bank’s own data: while wholesale prices of agricultural products and cereals have fallen by 4 percent and 12 percent respectively in one year, food prices have risen worldwide, often by 10 percent or more, affecting low-income countries the most. What the real causes of hunger are is shown by the growing phenomenon of “land grabbing”: the grabbing of arable land in Africa and other regions by large speculative groups. The same ones that speculate on all commodities, including grains: more than 6 million commodity buying and selling contracts are entered into daily at the Chicago Commodity Exchange for speculative purposes. 

The accusation that Russia is starving Africa because it is blocking Ukrainian grain shipments falls in the face of the fact that almost all of the grain sent by Ukraine went to European Union countries, not to poorer nations, to which only two ships out of 87 were sent.  

At the Second Russia-Africa Summit it was announced that Russia exported more than 11 million tons of grain to Africa last year and nearly 10 million tons in the first six months of 2023. All this took place despite illegal sanctions imposed on Russian exports.  In the coming months Russia will supply 50,000 tons of wheat each to Burkina Faso, Zimbabwe, Mali, Somalia, Central African Republic, and Eritrea, delivered at no cost.

Manlio Dinucci is a research associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization, a geographer, and geopolitical scientist.

7 August 2023

Source: transcend.org

By Gurpreet Singh

Let’s make the world’s so-called largest democracy accountable for incarcerating a disabled scholar. A wheelchair-bound former Delhi University Professor, who is struggling with multiple ailments, is serving a life sentence under trumped up charges, for merely questioning the power and standing up for the poor and marginalized, as well as for the religious minorities who are being persecuted in India. GN Saibaba was convicted on March 7, 2017,after being branded as a sympathizer of Maoist insurgents.

The United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention has asked for his release on humanitarian grounds due to his deteriorating health and brutal jail conditions. Thousands of people across the world have signed petitions asking for his liberation. But the right wing Hindu nationalist government in New Delhi refuses to let him go. On the contrary, attacks on political dissidents and minorities have increased ever since Narendra Modi became the Prime Minister in 2014.

It is pertinent to mention that when Mahatma Gandhi, the father of the Indian nation and a towering leader of the passive resistance movement against British rule, was sentenced on March 18, 1922 his followers decided to observe the 18th of every month as “Gandhi Day” until he was released.

It’s a shame that the country that once fought against foreign occupation and its draconian laws is now being ruled by its own people, who have brought in even more stringent laws to suppress the voices of freedom. Saibaba is just one example of the extreme barbarity, while many continue to suffer the state violence in an independent India. Let’s reclaim the country of Gandhi’s dreams, and make noise for the release of Saibaba and all other political prisoners being jailed unfairly. For now, we can follow in the footsteps of the freedom fighters, and start observing every 7th of the month as “GN Saibaba Day” until he comes back home with dignity and respect. Nothing will be more fitting than to launch this initiative in the month of August, when the double-faced Indian leadership celebrates independence from the British, while continuing to oppress its own citizens to retain power and control by taking the refuge of patriotism.

Gurpreet Singh is a journalist

6 August 2023

Source: countercurrents.org

By Norman Solomon

In 1980, when I asked the press office at the U.S. Department of Energy to send me a listing of nuclear bomb test explosions, the agency mailed me an official booklet with the title “Announced United States Nuclear Tests, July 1945 Through December 1979.” As you’d expect, the Trinity test in New Mexico was at the top of the list. Second on the list was Hiroshima. Third was Nagasaki.

So, 35 years after the atomic bombings of those Japanese cities in August 1945, the Energy Department—the agency in charge of nuclear weaponry—was categorizing them as “tests.”

Later on, the classification changed, apparently in an effort to avert a potential PR problem. By 1994, a new edition of the same document explained that the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki “were not ‘tests’ in the sense that they were conducted to prove that the weapon would work as designed… or to advance weapon design, to determine weapons effects, or to verify weapon safety.”

But the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki actually were tests, in more ways than one.

Take it from the Manhattan Project’s director, Gen. Leslie Groves, who recalled: “To enable us to assess accurately the effects of the bomb, the targets should not have been previously damaged by air raids. It was also desirable that the first target be of such size that the damage would be confined within it, so that we could more definitely determine the power of the bomb.”

A physicist with the Manhattan Project, David H. Frisch, remembered that U.S. military strategists were eager “to use the bomb first where its effects would not only be politically effective but also technically measurable.”

For good measure, after the Trinitybomb test in the New Mexico desert used plutonium as its fission source on July 16, 1945, in early August the military was able to test both a uranium-fueled bomb on Hiroshima and a second plutonium bomb on Nagasaki to gauge their effects on big cities.

Public discussion of the nuclear era began when President Harry Truman issued a statement that announced the atomic bombing of Hiroshima—which he described only as “an important Japanese Army base.” It was a flagrant lie. A leading researcher of the atomic bombings of Japan, journalist Greg Mitchell, has pointed out: “Hiroshima was not an ‘army base’ but a city of 350,000. It did contain one important military headquarters, but the bomb had been aimed at the very center of a city—and far from its industrial area.”

Mitchell added: “Perhaps 10,000 military personnel lost their lives in the bomb but the vast majority of the 125,000 dead in Hiroshima would be women and children.” Three days later, when an atomic bomb fell on Nagasaki, “it was officially described as a ‘naval base’ yet less than 200 of the 90,000 dead were military personnel.”

Since then, presidents have routinely offered rhetorical camouflage for reckless nuclear policies, rolling the dice for global catastrophe. In recent years, the most insidious lies from leaders in Washington have come with silence—refusing to acknowledge, let alone address with genuine diplomacy, the worsening dangers of nuclear war. Those dangers have pushed the hands of the Doomsday Clock from the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists to an unprecedented mere 90 seconds to cataclysmic Midnight.

By Arjun Banerjee

The news cycle this week has been taken up with the rapidly escalating violence in Haryana’s Gurugram, Mewat, and Nuh. This is occurring against the backdrop of months of violence in the state of Manipur, where the hill-dwelling Christian Kuki tribals are facing an onslaught by the dominant Hindu Meitei community of the plains. Ever since the BJP assumed power under the leadership of Modi in 2014, such instances of collective violence and terrorization of minorities (especially Muslims) has become commonplace in India. This comes as no surprise given the RSS-BJP’s ideology and the fact that it has been putting ‘fascism with Indian characteristics’ in practice for the past nine years that it has been in power at the Centre and various states.

Predictable reproduction of anti-Muslim violence

Haryana is hardly the first state to witness the mobilization of Hindus against Muslims. The saffron-clad mobs going about the streets in tandem with the online mobs have been a constant in public life on one pretext or the other. In context of Haryana, news has it that the violence was set off by a Hindu procession being pelted with stones, allegedly by Muslims. The animosity and violence were then aggravated by social media posts and talk of known lyncher, anti-Muslim bigot, and self-appointed cow vigilante Monu Manesar calling on his ‘followers’ to participate in further mobilizations that target Muslims.

In a systematic collusion to erase Muslim identity and visibility, Hindutva groups in Gurugram have previously campaigned against Muslims offering prayers in public while the administration has capitulated.

The administration’s response and actions in the current violence are all too predictable. Anti-establishment voices online claim that the police are ignoring violence and its incitement. Late-night attacks and looting of homes is being reported, along with arrests of Muslim youth. As expected, “law and order” became the excuse to shut down the internet (but not the right-wing TV channels and their ceaseless anti-Muslim tirades), making you wonder whether social media platforms and not the governments at the city and state level are responsible for maintaining order. One may reasonably believe that the true intent of these internet shutdowns is to prevent any communication and documentation of events that may go against the grain of the official narrative and the political interests of the forces orchestrating the violence.

The Hindutva right-wing is always on the lookout for ways to present Muslims as a threat to the Hindus and the ‘nation’ as a whole, which by virtue of having a common enemy are assumed to be interchangeable in their imagination. The Allegations of attacks by Muslims on Hindu ‘processions’ has a history that goes all the way back to the pre-Independence era and is meant to underscore the fear of Muslims as a threat to Hindus. More recently, this tactic of mobilizing Hindu mobs with hostile intent and then painting them as a religious procession was deployed in 2021 when Muslims and their homes and properties were targeted in the wake of Ram Navami ‘celebrations’ in as many as six states, and the same pattern played out in the state of Tripura that year. What inevitably follows in the destruction of Muslim homes, shops, and mosques, either by Hindutva mobs or more blatantly with the State itself razing their houses with bulldozers.

Victimizers as victims

A cynical ploy by the Bajrang Dal, VHP, and their political protectors is to falsify and invert the historical reality of Brahmanical oppression of oppressed castes, religious minorities, and women and claim instead that it is they who are oppressed. At present, Twitter is awash with posts claiming that these militant groups are the ‘first line of defence’ and calls for unconditional and “unapologetic” support for them. This is very clearly a pushback against a growing rejection of their lawless actions and the illegitimate pressure that they are able to exert on public life thanks to the hands that hold their reins.

This language of ‘Hindus under attack’ being in need of protection and defence is meant to reflexively justify the aims and methods of such groups. The reality, however, is that these militant groups function as the muscle of the Hindutva agenda while its ideologues present their unprovoked aggression against Muslims and minorities as desperate self-defence on behalf of an entire ‘community’. While they may cynically allege that the violence in Nuh, Mewat, and Gurugram is being perpetrated with Hindus as the target, in actuality it is they who instigate and initiate the violence in order to make possible the very spectacles which they use as an example of Hindu victimization.

These appeals to a sense of being constantly under threat by undesirable minorities are calculated to cement their own legitimacy and to allow them to stake claim as the sole representatives of ‘Hindu interests’.

The false category of ‘Hindu’

It must be emphasized that the word ‘Hindu’ is an imaginary category and a rhetorical stand-in to express the political goals of Brahmanism in a religious idiom. The first census of 1831 made it clear that numerical strength would be of great significance the new politics of the subcontinent, prompting the savarna (upper-caste) overlords of this supposed religion to consolidate the greatest possible headcount under the umbrella term of ‘Hindu’. Any attempts to destabilize this consolidation and expose ‘Hinduism’ as an opportunistic unification is met with fierce resistance.

The Brahmanical Hindutva forces know that this concocted Hindu identity is a cornerstone of their ploy to project their interests as the desires of the ‘majority’ and ‘the nation’. This explains why there has not been a Census since 2011: the politically strong OBCs have raised a demand for the enumeration of caste groups that cannot be easily shunted aside. This anxiety to ride atop the poorly-put-together Frankenstein monster of Hinduism is what causes Brahmanism such consternation at the imagined menace of Muslims and Christians going around converting people from their ‘original’ religion into theirs.

Conclusion

In the end, popular resistance under a common banner of socialism, Ambedkarism, and women’s leadership is the only effective counter to the Hindutva onslaught that is backed by nearly unlimited financial resources and muscle. An electoral opposition such as the recently consolidated “INDIA” has no ideological alternative and has only a limited utility.

Arjun Banerjee is a writer and journalist.

5 August 2023

Source: countercurrents.org