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By K P Fabian

Confounding his critics and an army of pundits who were confidently predicting an unsuccessful summit, President Trump has demonstrated that his deal-making approach can deliver results in an area where patient, plodding, conventional, hesitant diplomacy has signally failed.

Trump deserves all credit for the historic success of his summit with DPRK’s Chairman Kim Jung Un. Equally, Kim also deserves full credit. The Western media that had for long demonized him had wrongly speculated that the young Kim, 34, would not be able to hold his own while meeting Trump who can be intimidating.  Kim held his head high and Trump was at his charming best. It looked as though Trump had left his bad temper in Canada and he was so relieved to apply his mind to resolving the Korean conundrum which successive US presidents have signally failed to address or even understand holistically.

We shall first try to figure out, cutting through  the diplomatic jargon, what was agreed upon in Singapore, based on the signed joint statement and Trump’s subsequent press conference.

First, Washington and Pyongyang have agreed to put an end to the long chapter of hostility going back to the Korean War of 1950-53. That war marked the beginning of the Cold War. Though the Cold War collapsed definitively by demise of the USSR in 1990-91, the 76 million Koreans in the divided Korea have not stopped suffering from that war. The Trump-Kim decision is to embark on a path of normalization of their relations.

Second, the two sides will jointly work to build a ‘lasting and stable peace’ in the Korean peninsula. In short, there will be a peace treaty formally ending the Korean War replacing the armistice of 1953.

Third, Pyongyang reiterated its commitment contained in the April 27 Panmunjom declaration with Seoul to “work towards complete denuclearization” of the Korean peninsula.

Fourth, Pyongyang agreed to permit Washington to recover and take to US the mortal remains of US soldiers who died in the Korean War. About 6,000 families in US have been wanting to see the mortal remains of their loved ones.

Fifth, Pyongyang will destroy an important missile testing centre as a gesture of good will though this is not mentioned in the joint statement.

Sixth, US will stop military exercises that have in the past raised the level of tension.

Last but not the least is that both sides will start implementing what was agreed upon with a sense of dispatch and the two leaders will meet again.

Trump has been unfairly criticized by some media pundits who were looking for the words “complete, verifiable, and irreversible disarmament “a formula used by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo before the summit as one of the key demands of Washington. Any one conversant with the ground realities of international diplomacy would have known that any such demand put upfront would have been a non-starter. There is a fundamental misunderstanding that need to be cleared up here. The Western pundits who believe that Kim sought the summit mainly because he wanted to get rid of the asphyxiating sanctions have got it wrong. Of course, the sanctions do hurt in a big way. But, the primary reason for Kim’s move is that having concluded the missile and nuclear tests he has demonstrated his nuclear-weapon capability and he does not need to conduct more tests. Senator Diane Feinstein , a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, has said that Pyongyang probably has 50 to 60 nuclear weapons and the missile capability to deliver a  war head in the US, perhaps not with much accuracy.

President Trump who tweeted for months abusing Kim by calling him ‘the little rocket man” did consider for a while military action against DPRK. Eventually, Defence Secretary Mattis and others convinced him of the danger of initiating hostilities risking the lives of 29,000 of US military personnel and of hundreds of thousands of the South Koreans living in Seoul so close to the DMZ (Demilitarized Zone) within the range of DPRK’s artillery shells. Trump also has his eyes on a Nobel Peace Prize.

Trump’s critics who hark back to the 1994 agreement with DPRK that was aborted and argue on that basis that Kim cannot be trusted are woefully imprisoned in the past and are  unable to appreciate the realities of 2018.   The 1994 agreement was to stop DPRK’s use of reactors capable of producing plutonium and in exchange US was to supply fuel oil and to lift long standing sanctions though this was not specifically spelt out.  After the agreement was signed, President Clinton’s Democratic party lost control of the Senate and the Republicans stood in the way of Washington’s fulfilling its obligations.

There is another deplorable confusion of thought among some Western commentators. They always go into the past behavior of DPRK and try to extrapolate into its future behavior forgetting two crucial factors: DPRK is now a nuclear weapon state and Kim really wants to develop his country economically for which he badly needs good relations with US.

The behavior of Moscow and Beijing calls for a comment. For months, they obliged Trump   by agreeing to impose tighter and tighter sanctions. It was only when Kim smartly turned the tables on them by sending out a signal to Trump through President Moon of South Korea and Trump responded to that signal though with some delay that China and Russia realized that they had to get into the game. Kim responded cleverly by going to China twice to meet with President Xi Jinping  and accepting an invitation to go to Moscow from Foreign Minister Lavrov who came to Pyongyang. There is no doubt at all that Kim has played his hand skillfully.

Let us try to find out how South Korea, China, Russia, and Japan might look at the summit.   Obviously, President Moon of South Korea will be overjoyed as he, above all others, has worked the hardest to make the summit happen. His ‘sun-shine policy’ of seeking peace and cooperation with DPRK has  marked a milestone. At one time, Moon was supposed to be present in Singapore to have a meeting with Trump and Kim after they had met first. Secretary Pompeo is on his way to Seoul to brief President Moon.

China has an ambivalent approach to the whole problem. It does not want a crisis in DPRK that might cause a huge exodus of refugees to China. China is not too comfortable with a nuclear armed DPRK, but it also realizes that once the issue is resolved, US will cease to need China’s help in tackling DPRK. China, of course, does not want a unified Korea, but can be sure that Korean unification is far away. But, reinforced cooperation between Seoul and Pyongyang will reduce China’s hold on DPRK. If DPRK has normal trade with South Korea, obviously it will be less dependent on China economically. All told, China would like to see the issue remain unresolved provided it does not lead to a war between US and DPRK.

Russia shares some of China’s concerns, but on balance it would like to see peace and stability in the Korean peninsula.

Japan might be unhappy. Prime Minister Abe has till recently taken a hard line against DPRK, He has derived considerable political advantage by taking such a hard line that also in a way was used to justify his plan for amending the Constitution to permit Japan to have a normal military. But, as the momentum developed towards a Kim-Trump summit, Abe through Moon asked for a meeting with Kim before the Singapore summit, but for understandable reasons Kim did not oblige. Abe has highlighted the issue of 17 Japanese abducted, five of whom have been returned. Trump has declared that US would work with Japan.

Let us try to figure out what is in store. Of course, there is a non-zero probability that this Singapore agreement also can come a cropper. But, there is a higher probability that the Singapore summit will deliver as both sides want it to succeed. Trump does lack certain presidential qualities, but he is a successful chief executive officer who can apply his mind to problem with singular determination. He is no Hamlet like Obama to be paralyzed between ‘to be or not to be’.

The Nobel Committee should not rush to award any prize to Trump. It should watch the implementation for at least a year and then award the prize to Trump, Kim, and Moon.

Ambassador K. P. Fabian is an Indian Diplomat who served in the Indian Foreign Service between 1964 and 2000, during which time he was posted to Madagascar, Austria, Iran, Sri Lanka, Canada, Finland, Qatar and Italy.

13 June 2018

Source: https://countercurrents.org/2018/06/13/the-singapore-summit-a-good-beginning/

By Fadi Quran

Instead of bringing an end to the occupation, the current Palestinian leadership and its institutions have become a key component of it. Yet a new generation of leaders is slowly emerging. Their goal is to build a new framework for the Palestinian struggle that avoids the mistakes of the past and ensures that freedom is achieved in their lifetime. Their successful entrance into leadership will require both a reckoning with and breaking of a cycle that blocks change.

Looking at former and current Palestinian leadership, one can observe a cyclical trajectory in which members of the elite first acquire the legitimacy to lead through a combination of traditional structures and foreign support. The legitimacy of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem Amin Al-Husseini, for example, was grounded in religious and familial authority and enhanced and institutionalised by the Ottoman Empire and then the British Mandate. Ahmed Shuqeiri’s legitimacy derived from the Arab League as well as his educational status and familial ties, while President Mahmoud Abbas’s legitimacy was founded on factional loyalties within Fatah and then significantly consolidated by the US and Israel.

These leaders and the institutions they administer fail to deliver on popular aspirations, leading to stagnation and public dissent. This precipitates an inter-Palestinian power struggle that is often intergenerational and highly destructive. The struggle ends when a national tragedy occurs that either destroys or unites the competing factions. During these historical moments of national chaos, a new generation of leaders rises, mesmerising the public and accruing revolutionary legitimacy that propels them to the top.

In each turn of this cycle, sitting leaders either adopt the new discourse and co-opt members of the new generation or maintain status via intervention by foreign sponsors who kill or arrest insurgents. An example of this dynamic is the death of Izz Al-Din Al-Qassam, and later the leaders of the 1936 Revolt, who were crushed with great brutality by the British. Yasser Arafat’s conquest of the PLO from Shuqeiri in the 1960s, in which Arafat incorporated members of the new generation, is another. Such transitions also occurred on the local level during the First Intifada, and with Hamas’s gradual takeover in Gaza during and after the Second Intifada.

The third phase of this cycle sees the rise of a technocratic class, a generation of leaders that attempts to rebuild or replace the institutions that were destroyed in the internal conflict. These leaders are or perceive themselves to be institution builders, and although they rarely reach the pinnacles of power, they are able to acquire significant authority. These builders can take many forms in their approach to reinvigorate society, from the revolutionary to the neoliberal. Examples include Khalil Al-Wazir, a key founder of Fatah who was pivotal in slowly rebuilding the national movement in Palestine after the PLO’s failures in Lebanon. He was assassinated by Israel in Tunisia for his role in laying the groundwork that launched the First Intifada. Another example is Salam Fayyad, who pursued a Western-backed neoliberal institution-building process in Palestine after the Second Intifada. Regardless of the political leanings of these builders, their efforts are often short-lived as they tend to clash with more deeply-rooted power structures. This phase of the cycle often closes with a return to the first phase, wherein a small set of elites, supported by outside forces, hold control.

Today, this cycle seems blocked. An ossified Palestinian leadership has managed to cling to power for more than two decades. The institutional framework established by the Oslo Accords – a Palestinian Authority (PA) without authority providing inadequate administrative services, low-level employment, and security for Israel – still governs a subset of Palestinians in the Occupied Palestinian Territory. The PA has become a buffer zone between the Palestinians and the Israeli occupation, one that largely favours the occupation. Meanwhile, through heavy foreign assistance, the PA has transformed the socioeconomic landscape of Palestinian society by increasing inequality, widening political divisions, and even attempting to alter the media and educational landscape to weaken all forms of effective struggle against the occupation.

The results of these developments, combined with the deteriorating regional politics of the Middle East, has led the most astute observers of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to conclude that the Palestinian struggle for freedom is comatose.

But one need only look a bit deeper to see that something is stirring. A new generation of Palestinians is organising and growing in strength. They are waiting for the right moment to transform the status quo and create the momentum that will end the occupation. The Israeli security establishment, although it may not fully understand these dynamics, sees this coming. Why else would defence minister Avigdor Lieberman ban the Palestinian “Youth Movement” and put it on the terrorist list? In fact, there is no organisation or organised body called the “Youth Movement” on the ground in Palestine. Rather, the term Al-Hirak Al-Shababi is most commonly used to refer to any social or political action led by youth. What scares Lieberman so? Why does the Palestinian General Intelligence maintain a file on “youth-led activities?”

Over the past five years I have met and spoken with thousands of young Palestinians across the West Bank and Gaza Strip and in the diaspora. In every town, city, and refugee camp, youth groups are blossoming. Most focus on very local needs and lead volunteer work. They appear non-political and are not affiliated with any faction. These groups often fail, fall apart, and use what they have learned to try something new. Their growth is anything but linear, but their learning is exponential.

These groups’ driving questions are: What do we need to do to have a better life? What is our purpose? How do we achieve it? Having asked these questions, it is not long before they discover that the occupation and the PA as its governing body are obstacles in their path. This generation’s focus on grassroots action and its ability to conceptualise the PA as an impediment to a genuine liberation movement are fundamental to its potential to transform the stagnant Palestinian leadership model.

Further, many young people in Palestine are despondent about the status quo. This is clearest in Palestinian universities, which have been transformed from beacons of liberation to factories of disenchantment. Once hotbeds of Palestinian political struggle, the universities today produce young men and women focused on two things: a paying job or an opportunity to emigrate. One university dean I spoke with defined his job as simply training a workforce for the PA economy. Although youth groups are active on campuses, offering glimpses of hope, the Palestinian security forces in the West Bank and Hamas’s forces in Gaza have turned student politics and electioneering into a shadow of what they once were, ensuring that superficial slogans and fear override genuine student organising and hope.

However, despite these repressive policies, the new generation has not given up on its Palestinian identity or its dreams of freedom. Many are preparing to enter the struggle for freedom under the right leadership: one they can be part of and trust. This new generation of leaders, learning from the experiences of the past, have wisely chosen to work quietly, away from the spotlight, and patiently prepare for when the moment is ripe.

Identifying that moment, however, will be difficult because three stars need to align: a) Reigniting hope: The Palestinian street needs to go from being risk averse to being hopeful that a better future is possible; b) Overcoming the power threshold: The youth must feel they have the human resources and endurance to slog through the obstacles the PA and Israel can put in their way; c) Consolidating to confront the occupation: Given that the PA and its security apparatus are pivotal in maintaining the status quo, and that any more internal Palestinian strife is to be avoided, the youth will have to find a moment when the occupation has committed an act so severe that they can mobilise many of the ranks of the apparatus into the struggle against the occupation and away from internal repression. Of course, Israel and its backers will do their best to make sure these stars do not align, from killing hope to arresting dozens of youth activists. The only way for this moment to arise is for Palestinian civil society and youth activists to build their strength and expand societal self-awareness.

How will these young people avoid the mistakes of the past and break the cycle outlined above? For a new Palestinian leadership to be successful, a culture of transparency, accountability, and feedback must first be created at the local level. No matter how powerful, resilient, and disciplined a leader is, and no matter how much they love their country and people, they are human. It is only through developing a culture of accountability that a community can produce leaders that can move the struggle forward. While Palestine has had many leaders, none have maintained a culture around them that helped birth new leaders and ensured that they remain accountable. Creating this culture is not something done through legislation or rules alone, but is a daily practice.

Although there is not enough space here to flesh out the necessary practices in detail, some are fairly straightforward. For example, leaders at all levels of society, from volunteer groups to ministries, can work with their teams to put forward a clear vision for what they want to achieve, define each person’s responsibilities and specific outcomes, and ensure that leaders take ownership of their and their teams’ results. They should allow team members to provide feedback on the process in an open setting, such as in a weekly meeting when tasks are tallied and learning is discussed in a convivial manner.

In such a process, the group’s leader helps ensure that the team achieves its vision in a united, collaborative spirit. Eventually, this ensures that everyone in the group is a leader because leadership is not couched as a zero-sum process.

The process may not always work perfectly, but the lessons learned are valuable, including lessons about how one’s ego can get in the way of achieving team goals. Most importantly, the youth participants become aware of a method of teamwork and leadership that transcends what they see in local politics. Though it may sound cliché, it is nonetheless true that nothing is more impactful than leading by example and learning through experimentation.

These self-aware leaders and their culture of transformative leadership will clash with the socioeconomic environment and political elite established and strengthened by international players and Israel. Such a people’s-based leadership, whether directly or indirectly, will be the target of massive co-optation and, if that fails, assassination. One can argue that Israel’s “mowing the grass” in Gaza and the PA’s assault on student and youth politics are pre-emptively attempting to destroy rising leaders.

While some argue that a top-down approach to reform will fix the leadership problems – by restructuring the PLO, gaining representation, and holding elections, among other strategies – the current socioeconomic dynamics, reality of occupation, and international intervention in Palestinian politics make these efforts at internal reform easy targets for political manipulation. It is authentic change at the local level that can fix the problem from its roots and bring about a lasting leadership transformation for Palestinian society. If this generation succeeds, it will not only liberate the nation, but will ensure that the future beyond liberation is more beautiful than many of us today can imagine.

* Fadi Quran is a Senior Campaigner at Avaaz and a Popular Struggle community organiser.

8 June 2018

Source: http://www.amec.org.za/palestine/item/1565-upending-the-palestinian-leadership-the-role-of-youth.html

By Eric Zuesse

Now that the United States (with the cooperation of its NATO partners) has turned the former Soviet Union’s states other than Russia into NATO allies, and has likewise turned the Soviet Union’s Warsaw Pact allies into America’s own military allies in NATO, the United States is finally turning the screws directly against Russia itself, by, in effect, challenging Russia to defend its ally Syria. The U.S. is warning Syria’s Government that Syrian land, which is occupied by the U.S. and by the anti-Government forces that the U.S. protects in Syria, is no longer really Syria’s land. The U.S. is saying that there will be direct war between Syria’s armed forces and America’s armed forces if Syria tries to restore its control over that land. Tacitly, America’s message in this to Moscow is: now is the time for you to quit defending Syria’s Government, because, if you don’t — if you come to Syria’s defense as Syria tries to kill those occupying forces (including the U.S. troops and advisors who are occupying Syria) — then you (Russia) will be at war against the United States, even though the U.S. is clearly the invader, and Russia (as Syria’s ally) is clearly the defender.

Peter Korzun, my colleague at the Strategic Culture Foundation, headlined on May 29th, “US State Department Tells Syria What It Can and Can’t Do on Its Own Soil” and he opened:

“The US State Department has warned Syria against launching an offensive against terrorist positions in southern Syria. The statement claims that the American military will respond if Syrian forces launch an operation aimed at restoring the legitimate government’s control over the rebel-held areas, including the territory in southwestern Syria between Daraa and the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. Washington is issuing orders to a nation whose leadership never invited America in in the first place! The very idea that another country would tell the internationally recognized Syrian government that it cannot take steps to establish control over parts of its own national territory is odd and preposterous by any measure.”

The pro-Government side calls those “terrorist positions,” but the U.S.-and-allied side, the invaders, call them “freedom fighters” (even though the U.S. side has long been led by Al Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate and has increasingly been relying upon anti-Arabic Kurds). But whatever they are, the United States has no legal authority to tell Syria’s Government what to do or not do on Syrian land.

Russia’s basic position, at least ever since Vladimir Putin came into power in 2000, is that every nation’s sovereignty over its own land is the essential foundation-stone upon which democracy has even a possibility to exist — without that, a land cannot even possibly be a democracy. The U.S. Government is now directly challenging that basic principle, and moreover is doing so over parts of the sovereign territory of Syria, an ally of Russia, which largely depends upon Russia to help it defeat the tens of thousands of invading and occupying forces.

If Russia allows the U.S. to take over — either directly or via the U.S. Government’s Al Qaeda-linked or its anti-Arab Kurdish proxy forces — portions of Syrian territory, then Russia’s leader, Vladimir Putin, will be seen as being today’s version of Britain’s leader Neville Chamberlain, famous, as Wikipedia puts it, for “his signing of the Munich Agreement in 1938, conceding the German-speaking Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia to Germany.”

So: Putin will now be faced with either knuckling under now, or else standing on basic international democratic principles, especially the principle that each nation’s sovereignty is sacrosanct and is the sole foundation upon which democracy is even possible to exist or to evolve into being.

However, this matter is far from being the only way in which the U.S. Government now is challenging Russia to World War III. On May 30th, the Turkish newspaper Yeni Safak bannered “US trains armed groups at Tanf base for new terror corridor” and reported that:

New terror organizations are being established by the U.S. at the Tanf military base in southern Syria that is run by Washington, where a number of armed groups are being trained in order to be used as a pretext to justify U.S. presence in the war-torn country. …

Military training is being conducted for “moderate” opposition groups in al-Tanf, where both the U.S. and UK have bases.

These groups are made up of structures that have been established through U.S. financing and have not been accepted under the umbrella of opposition groups approved by Turkey and the FSA.

From Deir Ezzor to Haifa

Claiming to be “training the opposition” in Tanf, the U.S. is training operation militants under perception of being “at an equal distance to all groups.”

Apart from the so-called opposition that is linked to al-Qaeda, Daesh [ISIS] terrorists brought from Raqqa, western Deir Ezzor and the Golan Heights are being trained in the Tanf camp. …

The plan is to transport Iraqi oil to the Haifa [Israel] Port on the Mediterranean through Deir Ezzor and Tanf.

Actually, Deir Ezzor is also the capital of Syria’s own oil-producing region, and so this action by the United States is more than about merely a transit-route for Iraq’s oil to reach Israel; it is also (and very much) about America attempting theft of oil from Syrian land.

Furthermore, on May 23rd, Joe Gould at Defense News headlined “House rejects limit on new nuclear warhead” and he reported that the U.S. House, in fulfillment of the Trump Administration’s Nuclear Posture Review, which seeks to lower the threshold for nuclear war so as to expand the types of circumstances in which the U.S. will “go nuclear,” rejected, by a vote of 226 to 188, a Democratic Party supported measure opposing lowering of the nuclear threshold. President Trump wants to be allowed to lower the threshold for using nuclear weapons in a conflict. The new, smaller, nuclear warheads, a “W76-2 variant,” have 43% the yield of the bomb that the U.S. dropped on Hiroshima, but it’s called a ‘tactical nuclear weapon’ meaning that it is supposedly intended for use in ‘conventional’ wars, so that it is actually designed to eliminate altogether the previous meta-strategic principle, of “Mutually Assured Destruction” pertaining to nuclear war (that nuclear weapons are justifiable only in order to prevent another World War, never in order to win such a war) that successfully prevented nuclear war till now — that once a side has introduced nuclear weapons into a military conflict, it has started a nuclear war and is challenging any opponent to either go nuclear itself or else surrender — America’s new meta-strategic doctrine (since 2006) is “Nuclear Primacy”: winning a nuclear war. (See this and this.)

U.S. President Trump is now pushing to the limit, presumably in the confident expectation that as the U.S. President, he can safely grab any territory he wishes, and steal any oil or other natural resource that he wishes, anywhere he wants — regardless of what the Russian Government, or anyone else, thinks or wants.

Though his words often contradict that, this is now clearly what he is, in fact, doing (or trying to do), and the current U.S. House of Representatives, at least, is saying yes to this, as constituting American values and policies, now.

Trump — not in words but in facts — is “betting the house” on this.

Moreover, as I headlined on May 26th at Strategic Culture, “Credible Report Alleges US Relocates ISIS from Syria and Iraq into Russia via Afghanistan.” Trump is apparently  trying to use these terrorists as — again like the U.S. used them in Afghanistan in order to weaken the Soviet Union — so as to weaken Russia, but this time is even trying to infiltrate them into Russia itself.

Even Adolf Hitler, prior to WW II, didn’t lunge for Britain’s jugular. It’s difficult to think of a nation’s leader who has been this bold. I confess that I can’t.

—————

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of  They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of  CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity.

9 June 2018

Source: https://countercurrents.org/2018/06/09/u-s-challenges-russia-to-nuclear-war/

By Whitney Webb

According to the UN, the number of Yemenis in danger of starving to death would rise from the current figure of 8.4 million to 18.4 million by this December. That’s three times the estimated death toll of Jews killed during the Holocaust.

29 May 2018 – During a briefing last Friday, the UN warned that millions more Yemeni civilians are expected to starve to death before year’s end as a result of a blockade imposed on the country by the Saudi Arabia-led coalition. The Saudis’ unsuccessful bid to quash the Houthi-led resistance movement against Western and Saudi imperialism in Yemen has already claimed the lives of thousands of civilians and transformed the country into the world’s worst humanitarian crisis since the war began in 2015.

Mark Lowcock, the UN’s emergency relief coordinator, expressed his concern regarding the “recent decline of commercial food imports through the Red Sea ports” — adding that, if conditions do not improve, the number of Yemenis at the brink of starvation would rise from the current figure of 8.4 million to 18.4 million by this December. Given that there are approximately 28 million people in Yemen, a continuation of the Saudi-led blockade would mean that nearly two-thirds of the entire country’s population will soon face starvation.

The U.N.’s warning of a growing famine in Yemen comes during the holy month of Ramadan, when the first revelation of the Quran is celebrated by Muslims through fasting. Given the number of Yemenis facing starvation, many Yemeni Muslims will be without food to break their fast.

While the coalition — composed of Saudi Arabia and the UAE, with support from other Gulf monarchies and Western governments — has publicly claimed that it has lifted the blockade after international pressure, the coalition’s “ship inspections” continue to prevent critical supplies – such as food, fuel and medicine – from entering the most populated portions of the country, which remain under Houthi control.

Lowcock stated that the “lifting” of the blockade has had little impact on the crisis, noting that imports are “well short of pre-blockade averages” and are insufficient to prevent the mass starvation of Yemeni civilians. In addition, the blockade has prevented sufficient medicine from entering the country — allowing the worst cholera epidemic in recent history to ravage Yemen, even though cholera is easily treated with inexpensive medication.

The UN’s dire warning regarding the situation in Yemen, undoubtedly the worst humanitarian crisis in the world, comes just as the Saudi-led coalition, with support from the United States and the United Kingdom, is preparing for an assault on the key Yemeni port of Hodeidah. On Monday, a coalition spokesman announced that its forces were within 20 km from the Houthi-held port, which has long been a key coalition target. The UN and other groups have long warned that any assault on Hodeidah would drastically worsen the crisis and greatly increase the number of Yemenis facing starvation.

According to Reuters, tens of thousands of Yemenis have been fleeing the port city in recent days, as fighting in the area intensifies. It remains unclear exactly when coalition forces will attempt to take the city and whether such an operation has been approved by its Western backers, such as the United States, which has continued to supply the coalition with arms and munitions despite its well-documented tendency to target civilian infrastructure.

Beyond the blockade: targeting food production and waging total war

While the blame for the brunt of the crisis has been placed on the coalition’s blockade on the imports of food, fuel and medicine, the coalition has also deliberately targeted the country’s food production and distribution infrastructure. In just the first year of the conflict, the coalition bombed over 350 farms, markets, and other agricultural infrastructure, which had a grave impact given that only 2.8 percent of Yemen’s land is arable. Fisherman have also been heavily targeted over the course of the conflict, with more than 250 fishing boats damaged or destroyed and 152 killed by coalition ships and helicopters as of last December.

The targeting of the country’s food production infrastructure by the coalition continues unabated. Just last Wednesday, coalition planes bombed a series of mango farms in the Hodeidah province, killing at least six and injuring three – all of whom were engaged in harvesting the fruit at the time, according to local reports.

The fact that the coalition continues to deliberately target civilian infrastructure, particularly its ability to produce food domestically amidst the blockade, suggests that the coalition is intentionally targeting Yemeni civilians in an attempt to gain an upper-hand against the Houthis.

Indeed, despite being significantly better equipped and enjoying the support of Western militaries, the Saudi-led coalition has been unable to make significant progress against the Houthi militia. For instance, recent military operations conducted by the Houthi and allied groups have resulted in Yemeni resistance groups taking control of over 100 miles of Saudi territory and successfully raiding the Saudi military for equipment and ammunition.

Thus, the coalition’s inability to win militarily against the Houthis over three years since the war began suggests that they are deliberately targeting civilians to offset their lack of military progress, adopting a “total war” strategy that is set to end in the genocide of a majority of the nation’s population.

Whitney Webb is a MintPress contributor who has written for several news organizations in both English and Spanish; her stories have been featured on ZeroHedge, the Anti-Media, 21st Century Wire, and True Activist among others – she currently resides in Southern Chile.

11 June 2018

Source: https://www.transcend.org/tms/2018/06/un-warns-10-million-more-yemenis-expected-to-starve-to-death-by-end-of-year/

By Jeremy Corbyn

5 Jun 2018 – I have asked for this statement to be read out at this evening’s Right of Return demonstration in London for justice for the Palestinian people:

In recent weeks, scores of unarmed Palestinian civilians have been killed in Gaza by Israeli forces. Hundreds have been wounded. Most are refugees or the families of refugees from what is now Israel, and they have been demonstrating for their right to return, week after week.

The killing of Razzan Najjar, the 22 year old medical volunteer shot by an Israeli sniper in Gaza on Friday, is the latest tragic reminder of the outrageous and indiscriminate brutality being meted out, under orders from the Netanyahu government.

The silence, or worse support, for this flagrant illegality, from many western governments, including our own, has been shameful.

Instead of standing by while these shocking killings and abuses take place, they should take a lead from Israeli peace and justice campaigners: to demand an end to the multiple abuses of human and political rights Palestinians face on a daily basis, the 11-year siege of Gaza, the continuing 50-year occupation of Palestinian territory and the ongoing expansion of illegal settlements.

President Trump’s decision to recognise Jerusalem as Israel’s capital city, and move the US embassy there, in violation of international agreements, has demonstrated that the US has no claim to be any kind of honest broker for a political settlement of the Israel-Palestine conflict.

A sustainable, just peace between Israelis and Palestinians, that recognises the rights and security of all, and puts an end to the continuing dispossession of the Palestinian people, is an interest we all share, in the Middle East and far beyond.

We cannot turn a blind eye to these repeated and dangerous breaches of international law. The security of one will never be achieved at the expense of the other. And that is why we are committed to reviewing UK arms sales to Israel while these violations continue.

The UK Government’s decision not to support either a UN Commission of Inquiry into the shocking scale of killings of civilian protesters in Gaza, or the more recent UN resolution condemning indiscriminate Israeli use of force – and calling for the protection of Palestinians – is morally indefensible.

Britain, which is a permanent UN security council member and has a particular responsibility for a peaceful and just resolution of the Israel-Palestine conflict, should ensure there is a credible independent investigation, genuine accountability and effective international action to halt the killings – and bring Gaza’s ever-deepening humanitarian crisis to an end.

Go to Original – Jeremy Corbyn Facebook

11 June 2018

Source: https://www.transcend.org/tms/2018/06/the-west-is-turning-a-blind-eye-to-the-gaza-massacre/

By Rima Najjar

Chris Hayes’ incredulous tweet on the killing of Palestinian paramedic Razan al-Najjar in Gaza is being echoed everywhere it seems on social media.Hayes hosts All In with Chris Hayes, a weekday news and opinion television show on MSNBC.

On June 7, 2018 he tweeted:

“The wording of that [Israel Defense Forces] IDF video is so bizarre. Hamas “incited” a woman to…provide medical care to the wounded? That’s incitement?”

I wish to God it were only the wording that is bizarre in this latest chapter of the Palestinians’ long-running tragedy since the ungodly arrival of the Zionist Jewish state of Israel among them.

To decry the killing of Razan al-Najjar on the basis that she was unarmed and did not pose a threat, as some are provoked to do by the IDF tripe at which Hayes marvels, plays right into Israel’s “narrative” of defense rather than the reality of the aggression it needs to continue to exist as the exclusionist colonial-apartheid polity it is.

It means you cannot state that an armed Palestinian resisting the IDF who is then killed by them is also an unjustified killing.

Apologists and propagandists who try to justifyRazan al-Najjar’s killing are the same as those who justify Israel’s violent existence as a Jewish state in Palestine against the will of its indigenous people.

Israel’s repression of Palestinians is never justified. To Israel, such repression is standard operating procedure — because we exist and because we are not Jews. The exact circumstances are irrelevant hogwash.

The fact is that the mere existence of Palestinians is a threat to Israel — a so-called demographic threat. By and large, Israel justifies any and all resistance to its settler-colonial presence in the Arab world by pointing to its security and the sanctity of its non-existent borders.

Our existential threat to them is their justification for killing us — i.e., we don’t need to be armed to be killed or shoved into prison or ethnically cleansed. All we have to do is exist and procreate in a spot needed to build housing for Israel’s Jewish population.

They can and have been justifying their unconscionable actions against us through denial and deflection, turning the tables on us and feigning empathy where necessary, as described in the Al-Jazeera video clip [2:33 minutes]:How Israeli Propaganda Works: The Luntz Document/ Al-Jazeera.

‘If you want to understand how the propaganda works you need to read the Luntz document — “The key, [Frank] Luntz says, is the claim that the fight is over ideology, not land. About terror [Islamist terror in the form of Hamas, Iran or Hezbollah], and not territory.”’

Israel never fails to crank up its PR Machine whenever it fails to work as it is meant to do:

Groping for a convenient solution to its public relations problems, the Israeli government has turned to hasbara. The literal meaning of this Hebrew word is “explanation,” but when put into practice, most informed observers recognize it as propaganda. The more the State of Israel relies on force to manage the occupation, the more it feels compelled to deploy hasbara. And the more Western media consumers encounter hasbara, the more likely they are to measure Israel’s grandiose talking points against the routine and petty violence, shocking acts of humiliation and repression that define its treatment of the Palestinians.

And it isn’t just the 1967 occupation that is the problem with Israel for Palestinians; it is the whole racist and cruel Zionist idea of a settler-colonial Jewish state in Palestine dominating the Arab world in general.

As Steven Salaita writes:

Many of the people who defend Israel are consciously racist (clearly), but others dehumanize Arabs and Muslims by reproducing unexamined assumptions about Israel’s moral or civilizational superiority.

Beyond racism (Arabophobia), lies and deflection, there is Israel’s classic justification for its very existence as a settler-colonial Zionist Jewish state in Palestine, namely the “liberation” of the Jewish people. This central Zionist fabrication has long gained Israel impunity on the Western international front:

Writing in The Electronic Intifada, Ilan Pappe says, in ‘Finding the truth amid Israel’s lies’:

… [Palestinian] children were considered as part of the enemy, who had to be cleansed for the sake of a Jewish state or as Carmel put it — a day after he finished his Galilee tour — for the sake of liberation.
[ Moshe Carmel is the author of Northern Campaigns — first published in 1949, in which he describes the events of the Nakba thus: “Great sadness and suffering flooded the roads — convoy upon convoy of refugees making their way [to the Lebanese border’]]
,… Revisiting them [such books as Carmel’s], 70 years on, reveals an elementary truth: it would have been possible to write the “new history” of 1948 [i.e., a history of ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, colonization and Jewish Zionist usurpation by European Jews] without a single new declassified document, but only if these open sources, as I call them, had been read with non-Zionist lenses.

The crimes perpetrated during the Nakba and Israel’s ongoing crimes today are callous and unconscionable and equally unbearable for us Palestinians. They are connected by a thread no hasbara in the world can break.

In the first instance (the Nakba), we have a violent ethnic cleansing perpetrated against a mostly agrarian population in Palestine, whose aftermath is still with us today in the shape of the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, six million Palestinian exiles and refugees and, of course an Apartheid, Zionist, Jewish state, armed to the teeth, including with nuclear weapons.

In the second instance (Israel’s ongoing crimes today), we have a beautiful young woman (21), a paramedic wearing a uniform that identified her as such, fatally shot while evacuating and tending to the wounded east of Khan Younes.

In describing her funeral, Haaretzrefers to Razan’s “hometown of Khuza’a” in the Gaza Strip, rather than her true hometown of Salama, five km east of Jaffa, now documented by Visualizing Palestine in their updated infographic “Short Walk Home, Long Walk to Freedom”.

If you deny Razan’s fundamental human right to return to her hometown and call her protest a “riot”, if you believe that the existence of a Jewish state in Palestine trumps all else, no matter the price Palestinians must pay in dispossession and exile, then, like US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman, you can justify all violence against Palestinians by pointing to Israel’s security and simply debating how much violence is “justified” when pushing protesting Palestinians back into their camps (over 70% of the Palestinian population in the Gaza Strip are refugees). If a little violence doesn’t work, then by all means, use deadly violence:

Friedman said experts had told him tear gas, water cannons and other nonlethal means of crowd dispersal would not have been effective during the weeks of riots… “If what happens isn’t right, what is right? What do you use instead of bullets?” he asked rhetorically.’

Standard practice is to lie glibly about the Great March of Return, as this Fox news outlet does:

The Gaza protests are being organized by the territory’s militant Hamas leadership and are aimed at drawing attention to the decade-long Israeli-Egyptian blockade on the territory. The protesters are also demanding the “right of return” for Palestinian refugees from the 1948 war and their descendants.

Note how the Palestinian inalienable and internationally recognized right of return is in quotation marks. Note that the blockade is mentioned with no reference to the horrible conditions it has engendered in the Gaza Strip. But most of all, note how “militant Hamas leadership” are said to have organized the protests, when it is, in fact,

a grassroots movement calling for the right of return of Palestinian refugees to their homes, as per UN Resolution 194, from which they were expelled in 1948 when the state of Israel was created.

As Toufic Haddad, activist, academic and author of Palestine Ltd: Neoliberalism and Nationalism in the Occupied Territory, says in an interview, Hamas’ decision to abstain from governance opened the path

for popular forces, and particularly a younger generation of activists, to take the initiative and see what could be done to change the situation.

The tragedy, as Shane Wesbrockcomments on a post by Steve Salaita on Facebook, is that subliminal hasbara “justification” of Razan’s and all IDF killing is pervasive even on entertainment media outlets in the U.S.:

I just finished reading about Razan al-Najjar last evening and decided to watch some Netflix to redirect. I open up the page and there is a big advertisement for a “Netflix Original” where the Israeli hero is hunting the evil Palestinian “terrorist.” Talk about superior narratives! Its bloody invasive, not to mention aptly timed.

Israel and its Western allies want the whole world to celebrate Israel’s achievements as they define them and to hide its devastating failures and its crimes against humanity [yes, Palestinians are human]. Their advocates get angry when they realize that Palestinians will not lie still under the Zionist yoke — not 70 years hence, not a million years hence.

Because the Zionist cause is unjust and racist, Israel and its spokespeople can “justify” only through lies and deflections.

Rima Najjar is a Palestinian whose father’s side of the family comes from the forcibly depopulated village of Lifta on the western outskirts of Jerusalem.

11 June 2018

Source: https://countercurrents.org/2018/06/11/israel-and-its-spokespeople-can-justify-only-through-lies-and-deflections/

By Peter Koenig

Background

The war of words has intensified between the U-S and G-7 allies after President Donald Trump retracted his endorsement of the communiqué of the once-united group.

The German chancellor called Trump’s abrupt revocation of support for a joint communiqué sobering and depressing. Angela Merkel however said that’s not the end. France also accused Trump of destroying trust and acting inconsistently. Trump pulled the U-S out of the group’s summit statement after Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced the imposition of retaliatory tariffs on the U-S. The White House said Canada risked making the U-S president look weak ahead of his summit with the North Korean leader. But, Canada’s Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland later reiterated that her country will retaliate against U-S tariffs in a measured and reciprocal way.

PressTV:

What do you make of Mr. Trump’s decision to renege on the G7’s final statement?

PK:

Trump pulling out from the final G7 statement is just show; the usual Trump show. He signed it, then he pulled out. We have seen it with the Iran Nuclear Deal, with the North Korea meeting, on and off, with the tariffs – first – about two months ago – the tariffs were on for Europe, Mexico and Canada, as well as China – then they were off for all of them – and now they are on again…

How serious can that be? – Trump just wants to make sure that he calls the shots. And he does. As everybody gets nervous and talks about retaliation – instead of practicing the “politics of silence” strategy.

In the case of Europe, the tariffs, or the equivalent of sanctions, as Mr. Putin recently so aptly put it, may well serve as a means of blackmailing Europe, for example, to disregard as Trump did, the Iran Nuclear Deal, “step out of it – and we will relieve you from the tariffs.”

In the case of Canada and Mexico, it’s to make sure Americans realize that he, Mr. Trump, wants to make America Great again and provide jobs for Americans. – These tariffs alone will not create one single job. But they create an illusion and that – he thinks – will help Republicans in the up-coming Mid-term Elections.

In China – tariffs are perhaps thought as punishment for President Xi’s advising President Kim Jong-Un ahead of the June 12 summit – and probably and more likely to discredit the Yuan as a world reserve currency, since the Chinese currency is gradually replacing the dollar in the world’s reserve coffers. But Trump knows that these tariffs are meaningless for China, as China has a huge trade surplus with the US – and an easy replacement market – like – all of Asia.

PressTV:

How could the silence strategy by the 6 G7-partners have any impact on Trump’s decision on tariffs?

PK:

Well, the G6 – they are already now considered the G6+1, since Trump at the very onset of the summit announced that he was considering pulling out of the G7. – So, the remaining 6 partners could get together alone and decide quietly what counter measures they want to take, then announce it in a joint communiqué to the media.

It does not have to be retaliation with reciprocal tariffs, it could for example be – pulling out of NATO – would they dare? – That would get the world’s attention. That might be a much smarter chess move than copying the draw of one peon with the draw of another one. Because we are actually talking here about a mega-geopolitical chess game.

What we are actually witnessing is a slow but rapidly increasing disintegration of the West.

Let’s not forget, the G7 is a self-appointed Group of the “so-called” world’s greatest powers. – How can that be when the only “eastern power”, Russia, and for that – much more powerful than, for example, Canada or Italy, has been excluded in 2014 from the then G8?

And when the world’s largest economic power – measured by the real economic indicator, namely purchasing power parity – China – has never been considered being part of the G-Group of the greatest?

It is obvious that this Group is not sustainable.

We have to see whatever Trump does, as the result of some invisible forces behind the scene that direct him. Trump is a convenient patsy for them, and he plays his role quite well. He confuses, creates chaos – and on top of it, he, so far single handedly wants to re-integrate Russia in the G-7 – i.e. the remaking of the G-8.
So far the G6’s are all against it. Oddly, because it’s precisely the European Union that is now seeking closer ties with Russia. – Maybe because they want to have Russia all for themselves?

If that is Trump’s strategy to pull Europe and Russia together, and thereby creating a chasm between Russia and China – then he may succeed. Because the final prize of this Trump-directed mega political chess game – is China.

Trump, or his handlers, know very well that they cannot conquer China as a close ally of Russia. So, the separation is one of the chess moves towards check-mate. But probably both Presidents Putin and Xi are well aware of it.

In fact, the SCO just finished their summit in China’s Qingdao on 9 June, about at the same time as the G7 in Canada’s Charlevoix, Quebec Province, and it was once more very clear that this alliance of the 8 SCO members is getting stronger – and Iran is going to be part of it. Therefore, a separation of Russia from the Association is virtually impossible. We are talking about half the world’s population and an economic strength of about one third of the world’s GDP, way exceeding the one of the G7 in terms of purchasing power.

This, I think is the Big Picture we have to see in these glorious G7 summits.

Peter Koenig is an economist and geopolitical analyst.

11 June 2018

Source: https://countercurrents.org/2018/06/11/g7-vs-g61-the-war-of-words/

By Peter Koenig

Background
Brussels, June 6, 2018 (AFP)
The EU on Wednesday said a raft of retaliatory tariffs, including on whiskey and motorcycles, against painful metals duties imposed by the US would be ready as early as July.

The European Commission, which handles trade matters for the 28-country bloc, “expects to conclude the relevant procedure in coordination with member states before the end of June,” said European Commission Vice-President MarosSefcovic at a news briefing.

This would allow “that the new duties start applying in July,” he added.

“It is a measured and proportionate response to the unilateral and illegal decision taken by the US to impose tariffs on the European steel and aluminum exports which we regret,” said the former Slovak prime minister.

From blue jeans to motorbikes and whiskey, the EU’s hit-list of products targeted for tariffs with the US reads like a catalogue of emblematic American exports.

The European Union originally drew up the list in March but pledged not activate it unless US President Donald Trump followed through on his threat to impose 25 percent tariffs on steel imports and 10 percent on aluminum.

The Trump tariffs came into effect on June 1 and the EU now joins Mexico and Canada and other close allies that have announced their own wave of counter-duties against Washington.

The EU commission must now take their proposal to be signed off by the bloc’s member states amid divisions over what path to take against Trump’s unpredictable policies.

France and the Netherlands back a tough line against the US, while export powerhouse Germany has urged caution towards Trump’s “America First” policies.

PressTV
How do you think this will affect the US? Wouldn’t it create more unemployment in America?

Peter Koenig
First, I think we have to distinguish between the various trade blocks and trade wars, like China, Russia, the NAFTA partner countries, Mexico and Canada – and the European Union – the EU. They are all different in as much as they have different motives.

Second, there is much more behind the so-called trade wars than trade. Much of this trade war is propaganda, big style, for public consumption and public debate, where as in reality there are other negotiations going on behind closed doors.

And thirdly, there are mid-term elections coming up in the US this fall, and Trump must satisfy his home base, all the workers to whom he promised “Let’s Make America Great Again” – meaning bring back jobs, use US-made metals. So, Trump is also addressing those Americans who wait for jobs.As you know the unofficial but real figure of unemployment in the US is about 22% – and that does not even include the large segment of underemployed people, mostly youth.

I think we have to see the Big Picture here. And Trump, or rather those who give him orders, may not see all the risks that this complex multi-polar tariff war implies.

But for now, let’s stick to Europe.
It is very well possible that the EU will also impose import duties on US goods. But if it stays at that, it is very likely that this so-called trade war with the US is pushing Europe even faster than is already happening towards the East, the natural trading partners – Russia and China. As I said, its already happening.

But the Big Picture, in the case of Europe, I believe is IRAN. With tariffs on steel and aluminum – quite sizable tariffs, European producers of these metals, the second largest after China, would hurt. There may not be an immediate replacement market for America.

So, Trump may want to blackmail Europe into accepting his new sanctions on Iran. In other words, “either tariffs or you follow my dictate – abandon the Nuclear Deal and impose sanctions”.

Frankly, I doubt very much that this will work, since EU corporations have already signed billions worth of contracts with Iran. On the other hand, Germany in particular, is keen in renewing political as well as trade relations with Russia.

And the recent remark of the new US Ambassador to Germany, Richard Grenell, that he will support conservative right-wing movements in Germany and in Europe – did certainly not go down well in Germany, with already a Parliamentary movement to expulse him – which certainly doesn’t help US-German relations.

As we speak, most likely this type of “blackmail” negotiations, “either tariffs or you go with us against Iran”, are going on with the EU behind closed doors.

Of course, nobody knows the outcome.
Trump is like a straw in the wind, bending to whatever seems to suit him best at the moment.

Remember, a couple of months ago he already imposed tariffs on Europe, along with everybody else, on steel and aluminum, then he lifted them again – and now we are on again. It’s like with most everything he does. It’s probably his business negotiation strategy.

But, this would just confirm, that this trade war is much more than meets the eye, more than a trade war – it’s about geopolitics – like “show me your card – which camp are you in?”

Trump and those who manage him may still be under the illusion of the last 70 years, that the whole world, especially Europeans, have to bend over backwards to please the US of A, because they saved Europe – and the world – from the Nazi evil.

Not only is it time to stop the vassalage and become autonomous again, but also, many European start understanding that whom they really have to thank for liberating them from the Nazis – is Russia.

Peter Koenig is an economist and geopolitical analyst.

7 June 2018

Source: https://countercurrents.org/2018/06/07/us-trade-war-with-the-european-union/

By Farooque Chowdhury

Putin’s latest assertion signals that the world imperialism is going to face tough days in future.

Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, said: “Either Russia is a sovereign country, or there is no Russia.”

The world imperialism is not habituated to listen to such assertions. It’s also a tough message to hirelings of the world imperialism. The masters and their lackeys have to review self-positions, both strategic and tactical, in light of Putin’s latest assertion: Not at the cost of sovereignty.

Putin was speaking to Chinese TV prior to his China visit. His statements, observations and claims are worth-reading.

The Russian president said: “And, of course, the Russian people will always opt for [a sovereign Russia]. I think the Chinese people will too. We have no other option.”

The statement shows the compulsion the world imperialism has created for Russia, for China, and for countries facing imperialist “friendship” – “sermons”, demands, pressures, interferences, intervention, conspiracies. Thence, these countries “have no other option” other than asserting sovereignty.

This signifies intensified contradiction within countries, and between countries as the world imperialism will not accept assertion of sovereignty by countries, which will lead imperialism to organize/renew/intensify conspiracy, subversion, interference and intervention. The world imperialism is going to boost up its old hirelings, hire new lackeys, engage them, and create subversion, social disturbance, “civil” disobedience, political turmoil, internal strife.

Referring to sanctions, Putin said: However harsh they may be, will not force Russia to abandon its independent stance in the world, Russians will never accept trade-offs at the expense of sovereignty.

Putin specifically mentioned the world imperialism’s target: The Russian economy. He added an extra note: The sanctions will eventually backfire on those who followed the US’ lead in “punishing” Russia.

Now, it’s the countries following their masters’ lead to consider whether to take into account assurances from their masters or to heed to Putin. It’s not in terms of pronouncements, but in terms of economic measures – trade, etc., and tradeoff.

To countries in Europe that depend on Russia to many extents including gas from the rising power, the question of being a follower of the world imperialism or not bears one type of action and consequence. To peripheral countries facing imperialist mastery, the question bears another type of measures.

To the first group, there’s question of collaboration/amalgamation of capitals. There are collusion, cooption, or, competition. There is collusion in one area while competition in another. Now-a-days, it’s an intricate arithmetic, or an amalgamation of arithmetic, algebra and geometry.

To the peripheral group, the question is different. It’s different from two aspects: from the aspect of ruling elites, and from the aspect of people. And, the two bear different meanings. In this case, the mathematics turns more intricate as opposing interests – of the ruling elites’ and of the people – are to operate within a reality of competing capitals trying to strengthen/establish respective grip. At the same time, for both the opposing interests, there’s a common ground – a space to maneuver. Then, the question comes: Which capital is the biggest/direst threat? None will differ: It’s the dominating imperialist camp.

The US-led sanctions against Russia hurt a number of economies in Europe. A number of European state leaders including Austrian vice-chancellor Heinz-Christian Strache have expressed opinion not favoring the sanctions. The new government in Italy also bears similar position.

The EU is not happy with its US friends on the issue of US-introduced import tariffs on steel and aluminum – a gift from a friend. It’s the imperialist system’s one of the inherent problems – components’ interests very often move in incoherent way. It also creates scope for peripheral economies.

The Putin-assertion case turns difficult for the world imperialist order as the Russian leader is close to the Chinese leader Xi Jinping.

Putin has described Xi Jinping as a “reliable partner and good friend”.

Their friendship is so strong that once they celebrated Putin’s birthday together: “Chairman Xi Jinping is the only one among all the world leaders, to have celebrated my birthday with me,” Putin said, referring to his 61st birthday, which he marked at the 2013-Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting in Bali.

Putin termed Xi Jinping as “very accessible”, “very sincere”, “very reliable”, “good friend”, “good analyst”, “it is interesting to discuss outstanding international issues, economy problems with him”, “we always strive to fulfill our obligations”.

This expression of friendship carries strong signal for all: enemy and ally. China is to be counted. It’ll be foolish to ignore China. And, it’ll be foolish to ignore the Putin-Xi friendship.

Putin informed: China is and will continue to be Russia’s number one foreign trade partner.

China is Russia’s largest trading partner. Trade between the two countries grew last year, according to Putin, to $87 billion, and the first four months of 2018 its growth “equaled the figure for the whole of last year.” It’s already a 30 percent increase. In 2016, the trade turnover between the two countries was $69.52 billion. Putin expressed the desire to accelerate it further.

There is possibility of alliance between China-led One Belt, One Road and Russia-led the Eurasian Economic Union.

The two countries are bypassing dollar and other western currencies, and trying to make settlements in ruble and yuan. In 2017, nine percent of payments for supplies from Russia to China were made in rubles, and Russian companies paid 15 percent of Chinese imports in the renminbi.

The two close strategic partners are coordinating their moves on regional and global issues, helping safeguard each other’s national interests, and supporting each other in taking up larger roles on the world stage.

General Wei Fenghe, China’s defense minister, said at the recently concluded Moscow International Security Conference:

“I am visiting Russia […] to show the world a high level of development of our bilateral relations and firm determination of our Armed Forces to strengthen strategic cooperation.”

The Chinese military leader added: The visit is “to show Americans the close ties between the Armed Forces of China and Russia, especially in this situation. We’ve come to support you.

“The Chinese side is ready to express with the Russian side our common concerns and common position on important international problems at international venues as well.

Wei said: The strengthened military cooperation between the two is important for international peace and security.

Reciprocating similar attitude General Sergei Shoigu, Russian defense minister, said: “The efforts of the leadership of the both countries […] today has reached principally new unprecedented level, and have become a critical factor in keeping peace and international security.”

The message is explicit. And, the message is for all. It’s for those facing imperialist disturbance and threat, and for those searching for sources of benefit from their imperialist masters. The message is also for the greatest imperialist power: The days of unilateral dominance is going to be over.

Dmitri Trenin, director, Carnegie Moscow Center, writes in his Should Fear Russia We? (November 2016):

“[M]ore of Russia’s natural and military-technological resources would be made available to China. […I]n the larger scheme of things concerning the world order, Beijing and Moscow will be on the same side.”

The scholar adds:

“The Greater Eurasia that they are constructing will not be run from a single center, but their continental entente will essentially be aimed at limiting US dominance on the edges of the continent and in the world at large.”

Coming days will hear more tough words, which will signal more complicated moves on the world stage.

Farooque Chowdhury writes from Dhaka.

7 June 2018

Source: https://countercurrents.org/2018/06/07/putin-asserts-world-imperialism-faces-difficult-times/

By Seyed Hossein Mousavian

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo laid out a list of demands on Iran in a speech threatening to “crush” the country on Monday. His bellicose words come weeks after President Donald Trump pulled the United States out of the Iran nuclear deal and are nothing short of an ultimatum demanding Iran’s total surrender to U.S. wishes.

“Sanctions are going back in full effect, and new ones are coming,” Pompeo declared, “The Iranian regime should know this is just the beginning.”

Pompeo’s twelve demands reflect a misunderstanding of Iranian foreign policy, international law, and the realities of the region.

The 12 Demands—Rebutted

First, Pompeo contended that Iran must “declare to the IAEA a full account of the prior military dimensions of its nuclear program.” However, as part of the nuclear deal (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action or JCPOA), the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) resolved the issue of “possible military dimensions” to Iran’s nuclear program after years of investigation, including visits to military sites. In December 2015, the agency issued its “final assessment on past and present outstanding issues regarding Iran’s nuclear program.”

Second, Pompeo called on Iran to “stop uranium enrichment and never pursue plutonium reprocessing,” including “closing its heavy water reactor.” Such a demand is in direct contravention to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which allows signatories to develop the nuclear fuel cycle for civilian purposes, including enrichment.

As an NPT member, Iran has developed a uranium enrichment program, as have other states such as Brazil, Argentina, and Japan. Iran’s enrichment program was also recognized by UN resolution 2231, which endorsed the JCPOA.

Third, Pompeo stated that “Iran must also provide the IAEA with unqualified access to all sites throughout the country.” With the JCPOA, Iran has already accepted the highest standards on nuclear transparency in the history of nonproliferation. This includes accepting the safeguards agreement, additional protocol, and subsidiary arrangement 3.1.

Fourth, Pompeo said that Iran “must end its proliferation of ballistic missiles and halt further development of nuclear-capable missiles.” As arms control experts at organizations such as the International Institute for Strategic Studies have explained, none of Iran’s modern missiles is designed to be “nuclear capable.” Importantly, the context of Iran’s missile program is its falling victim to Iraqi missiles during the eight-year Iran-Iraq War, when Iran did not have the means to deter Iraq. Indeed, no nation in recent history has fallen victim to missile attacks as thoroughly as Iran has. Furthermore, ballistic missiles are a conventional armament that Iran has a strategic need to develop, especially to balance the threat posed by Israel’s nuclear-tipped missiles and Saudi Arabia’s long-range Dong Feng-3 missiles and, moreover, as a deterrence to possible U.S. attack.

Fifth, Pompeo called on Iran to “release all U.S. citizens … detained on spurious charges or missing in Iran.” In this regard, Pompeo should respect that Iran is a sovereign country, just like the United States. His demand is just as illegitimate as if Iran asked the United States to release all Iranian prisoners held in U.S. jails.

Sixth, Pompeo said that Iran “must end support to Middle East terrorist groups, including Lebanese Hizballah, Hamas, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad” even though these organizations represent major constituencies with legitimate grievances. In the case of Hamas and Hezbollah, they both have participated in and won in elections, with the later most recently making gains in Lebanon’s parliamentary elections.

Of course, Trump himself recently quipped that U.S. regional allies such as the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar fund terrorism, adding that “we’re stopping it.” In June 2017, former Qatari Prime Minister al-Thani also acknowledged that Qatar, along with the United States and other regional countries, made “mistakes” in “supporting the same groups” in Syria, among which were “extremists.”

Seventh, Pompeo stated that “Iran must respect the sovereignty of the Iraqi government and permit the disarming, demobilization, and reintegration of Shia militias.” This demand is ironic given that the United States currently has thousands of troops in Iraq, and a coalition headed by Hadi al-Ameri, a popular militia commander, came in secondplace in Iraq’s parliamentary elections. Senior Iraqi officials have recognized that without Iranian support, the Islamic State (ISIS or IS) “would be standing on the doorsteps of Baghdad.”

By positioning himself against the Popular Mobilization Units (PMUs), which are not monolithically Shia and were created after a fatwa by Iraq’s Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani after IS overran large parts of the country in 2014, Pompeo has aligned the United States against the Iraqi people, not Iran.

Eighth, Pompeo asserted that Iran must “end its military support for the Houthi militia and work towards a peaceful political settlement in Yemen.” From the beginning of the Saudi-led coalition assault on Yemen in 2015, which the United Nations says has createdthe “world’s worst humanitarian crisis,” Iran has called for a political solution to the conflict. In April 2015, Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif issued a four-point plan that outlined a negotiated settlement to the conflict.

Ninth, Pompeo stated that “Iran must withdraw all forces under Iranian command from Syria.” Iranian forces, just like Russian forces, are in Syria at the invitation of the legal Syrian government to combat armed rebel groups. Only the Syrian government can ask for their withdrawal. On the other hand, U.S. forces are in Syria illegally under international law, and Pompeo’s demand further infringes on Syria’s right to fight terrorist groups and to defend its sovereignty.

Tenth, Pompeo said that “Iran must end support for the Taliban and other terrorists in Afghanistan and the region, and cease harboring Al Qaeda.” To accuse Iran of supporting groups such as the Taliban and al-Qaeda is baseless, given that Iran has actively fought the ardently anti-Iranian groups, both of which were for years the main proxies for U.S. allies such as Saudi Arabia in Afghanistan. Both were also a direct outcrop of U.S.-backed forces in Afghanistan in the 1980s, which former Secretary of States Hillary Clinton recognized in 2011, stating: “The people we are fighting today we funded 20 years ago.”

Eleventh, Pompeo stated that Iran “must end the IRGC Quds Forces’ support for terrorists and militant partners.” The Quds Force’s mandate is the same as U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) in the region. The difference is that Iran is in the region and has core national security interests to protect its borders and territorial integrity, while CENTCOM is operating thousands of miles away from American borders.

Twelfth, Pompeo said that Iran must “cease its threatening behavior against its neighbors.” He left out more than a little bit of history, such as how Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, an Arab country, invaded Iran in 1980 and received full support from the United States and most Arab states, including Saudi Arabia. The conflict cost hundreds of thousands of Iranian deaths and injuries. The reality is that the United States attacked Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya—sowing widespread instability and turmoil in the region.

What Pompeo Really Wants

Pompeo’s list of demands simply recycles many of the same coercive policies and statements made by past U.S. administrations. This U.S. approach has already proved to be counterproductive and self-defeating for U.S. interests and regional stability.

Despite Pompeo’s faux call for diplomacy, his speech amounted to an official declaration of a regime-change policy against Iran. His untenable demands eliminate the prospects for U.S.-Iran diplomacy and set the two countries up for a dangerous escalation cycle that may lead to a catastrophic war.

What the world needs is genuine diplomacy. Since the Iranian nuclear crisis was the only regional crisis resolved through diplomacy, this model needs to be used to diplomatically resolve other regional crises.

Seyed Hossein Mousavian is a Middle East security and nuclear policy specialist at Princeton University, former spokesperson for Iran in its international nuclear negotiations, and author of “Iran and the United States: An Insider’s View on the Failed Past and the Road to Peace.” @HMousavian

22 May 2018