Archives: Articles

By David Hearst

Several detainees taken to hospital with torture injuries, while sources tell MEE scale of crackdown is bigger than authorities have revealed

Some senior figures detained in last Saturday’s purge in Saudi Arabia were beaten and tortured so badly during their arrest or subsequent interrogations that they required hospital treatment, Middle East Eye can reveal.

People inside the royal court also told MEE that the scale of the crackdown, which has brought new arrests each day, is much bigger than Saudi authorities have admitted, with more than 500 people detained and double that number questioned.

Members of the royal family, government ministers and business tycoons were caught up in the sudden wave of arrests orchestrated by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, known as MBS, under the banner of an anti-corruption drive.

Some, but not all, of the top figures arrested were singled out for the most brutal treatment, suffering wounds to the body sustained by classic torture methods. There are no wounds to their faces, so they will show no physical signs of their ordeal when they next appear in public.

Some detainees were tortured to reveal details of their bank accounts. MEE is unable to report specific details about the abuse they suffered in order to protect the anonymity of its sources.

The purge, which follows an earlier roundup of Muslim clerics, writers, economists and public figures, is creating panic in Riyadh, the Saudi capital, particularly among those associated with the old regime of King Abdullah, who died in 2015, with power then passing to his half-brother, King Salman.

Many fear the primary purpose of the crackdown is a move by MBS to knock out all rivals both inside and outside the House of Saud before he replaces his 81-year-old father.

On Wednesday night, seven princes were released from the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Riyadh, where they had been held since Saturday. The top royals have been moved to the king’s palace, sources told MEE.

The crown prince’s cousin, Mohammed bin Nayef, who continues be under house arrest, has had his assets frozen, the Reuters news agency reported. Sons of Sultan bin Abdulaziz have also been arrested and had their assets frozen.

One of the most famous is Prince Bandar bin Sultan, a former Saudi ambassador to Washington and confidant of former US president George W Bush.

Saudi authorities said that one of the corruption cases they are looking at is the al-Yamamah arms deal, in which Bandar was involved. But Bandar himself is not under arrest and living in Jeddah, a source told MEE.

Bandar bought a hamlet in Oxfordshire, in a picturesque area of central England, and a 2,000-acre sporting estate with part of the proceeds from kickbacks he received in the al-Yamamah arms deal, which netted British manufacturer BAE £43bn ($56.5bn) in contracts for fighter aircraft.

As much as $30m (£15m) is alleged to have been paid into Bandar’s dollar account at Riggs Bank in Washington and the affair led to corruption probes in the US and UK, although the case was dropped in the UK in 2006 after an intervention by then-prime minister Tony Blair.

Also among those arrested is Reem, the daughter of Al-Waleed bin Talal, the only woman to be targeted in the latest roundup.
Bank accounts frozen

To prevent others from fleeing, MBS has ordered a freeze on private bank accounts. The number of account closures and those banned from travel is many times the number of people who have been arrested, sources in Riyadh told MEE.

No one expected a crackdown of this scale and against princes of such seniority in the House of Saud, which is why so many of those detained were caught red-handed and had no time to flee.

The purge against other members of the royal family is unprecedented in the kingdom’s modern history. Family unity, which guaranteed the stability of the state since its foundation, has been shattered.

The last event of this magnitude was the overthrow of King Saud by his brother Prince Faisal in 1964. At one point in that saga, Prince Faisal ordered the National Guard to surround the king’s palace, but the king himself was never vilified.

His exit was dignified and all the senior figures, including Faisal himself, waved him goodbye at the airport.

Mohammed bin Salman vowed before becoming crown prince: “I confirm to you, no one will survive in a corruption case – whoever he is, even if he’s a prince or a minister.”

Today, however, the sons of all four key men in the House of Saud who comprised the core of the family through the last four decades have been targeted. They are the sons of King Fahd bin Abdulaziz, King Abdullah, Prince Sultan and Prince Nayef.

This represents an unprecedented attack on the position and wealth of the pillars of al-Saud, including the three most prominent figures of the ruling Sudairi clan.

King Salman is one of seven Sudairi brothers, the clan that has dominated the kingdom for the last 40 years. The other surviving Sudairi is Ahmed bin Abdulaziz, who has been sidelined.

Salman only gained the throne because two of his four full brothers, Sultan and Nayef, died as crown princes.

Even then his accession was a close-run thing, as MEE has previously reported. King Abdullah died before a decree writing Salman out of the line of succession could be signed and published.
Public humiliation

In Bedouin culture, the attack on his cousins will not be forgotten or forgiven. Their public humiliation, as well as the freezing of their assets, is seen as a blow to their honour, which surviving members of their family are duty bound to avenge.

The crown prince’s attack on leading business figures is equally risky.

One of those rounded up on Saturday was Bakr bin Laden, the head of Saudi Arabia’s biggest construction company. He had managed the biggest construction programmes for decades through a series of sub-contractors he paid directly.

Bin Laden was rich enough to absorb the costs, before he in turn had to “bribe” officials in the government to get paid for the original work and the contract they had agreed.

Once you remove the man or the company at the top of the sub-contractor pyramid, no one beneath him gets paid, thus risking throwing the entire construction industry into disarray. The same happened to Saudi Oger, the company owned by Saad Hariri, the former prime minister of Lebanon, which was declared bankrupt on 31 July.

Some of the ministers MBS promoted have also been caught by the purge.

Adel Fakeih, a former minister of planning and the economy, spearheaded the rollout of bin Salman’s ambitious privatisation drive called Vision 2030.

He was also key in the announcement of Neom, a proposed mega-city backed by $500bn in government money to be built on the shores of the Red Sea.

Fakeih, a former mayor of Jeddah, was arrested on 4 November. The same fate was suffered by Adel al-Torifi, the crown prince’s information minister.

Symbolically, the announcement of Neom was made at the Ritz Carlton hotel, where the princes have been detained since Saturday.

Many of Mohammed bin Salman’s colleagues must now be asking themselves how long they have before the ambitious prince turns on them.

By hitting the foundations of the unity of the family, as well as the oligarchs, and targeting independent Islamic scholars and public figures, MBS is turning his guns on the traditional pillars of the Saudi state, one analyst said.

“So far, the Saudi kingdom has used chaos as a policy in its near abroad, either in Iraq, Syria or in Yemen. However, it is now implementing the chaos theory at home too, and no one, least of all the prince himself, can be sure of what will now happen,” an informed person in Riyadh said last night.

“The stability of the kingdom was built on three pillars: the unity of the al-Saud family, the Islamic character of the state and the flourishing loyal domestic business community. By hitting all three simultaneously, the risk of the kingdom sinking into the sand is very high,” he said.

12 November 2017

Source: http://www.middleeasteye.net/news/exclusive-senior-figures-tortured-and-beaten-saudi-purge-1489501498

By Dr Robin Andersen

A few days before the Halloween hearings held by the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Terrorism, where powerful tech companies would provide testimony about their roles disseminating “fake news” during the 2016 election, Twitter announced it would no longer accept advertising from the Russian government-sponsored broadcast channel Russia Today (RT), or the state-owned Sputnik.

In a Twitter PublicPolicy blog post (10/26/17), the company said it would “off-board advertising from all accounts” owned by RT and Sputnik. The decision was based on its own assessment of the 2016 US election “and the US intelligence community’s conclusion that both RT and Sputnik attempted to interfere with the election on behalf of the Russian government.” As substantiation, Twitter merely provided a link to the January 6, 2017, intelligence report (ODNI).

BuzzFeed (11/1/17) reported that Twitter based its decision on the intelligence report that called RT “the Kremlin’s principal international propaganda outlet,” also providing a link to the report without a word about its documentation or quality. Most reporting did the same, including the New York Times (10/26/17), which said Twitter’s decision “was informed by specific findings of the United States intelligence community, made public in January.”

A lonely voice critical of the Twitter ban was the Electronic Frontier Foundation (10/27/17), which warned the action was a threat to free expression, both in the US and globally.

At the time the report was published, Vox (1/6/17) repeated many of the “intelligence” assertions, including the Kremlin propaganda charge. Vox told readers that “RTis way more important than we think,” saying the report contained “striking observations” about RT’s reach, message and proximity to the Russian government. For example, staff at RT’s bureaus are not just close, but “very, very close to the Kremlin.” One network head was from Russia’s “diplomatic service,” and “London’s RTbureau is managed by the daughter” of a former Mikhail Gorbachev speechwriter.

It appeared that neither Vox nor those who penned the “intelligence report” remembered that under Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev, glasnost (meaning openness) and a liberal press flourished in the Soviet Union. Gorbachev’s face appeared on the cover of Timemagazine (1/1/90) when it declared him the Man of the Decade, and later that year (6/4/90) the magazine quoted him as saying, “I detest lies.”

Taking a closer look at the seven pages of claims against RT (a full one-third of the total intelligence report on Russian interference) that led to Twitter’s decision, some journalists might have concluded that RT provided substantive news to the American public in 2012, and later during the election. They might also have noticed that the report makes shoddy, misleading arguments, embarrassing mistakes (such as confusing European and US date notations), unsubstantiated claims, and lacked any grounding in the foundations of journalism in a democracy. As Robert Parry (Truthdig, 7/31/17) pointed out, US government accusations against RT

have related more to it covering topics that may make the establishment look bad—such as the Occupy Wall Street protests, fracking for natural gas, and the opinions of third-party presidential candidates—than publishing false stories.

The US intelligence officials apparently do not like RT reporting about the abuses of the American Security apparatus. They complain that RT‘s reports often characterize the United States as a “surveillance state” and allege widespread infringements of civil liberties, police brutality and drone use (RT, 10/24/12, 10/28/12, 11/1–10/12).

RT is also condemned for reporting on Occupy Wall Street: It “created a Facebook app to connect Occupy Wall Street protesters via social media. In addition, RT featured its own hosts in Occupy rallies.” Airing material far outside acceptable discourse in mainstream commercial media, RT also “focused on criticism of the US economic system, US currency policy, alleged Wall Street greed and the US national debt.”

Repeated are familiar charges that Russians bolstered Donald Trump’s campaign and diminished Hillary Clinton’s. Claims that RT harmed Clinton point to broadcasts that include debates with third-party candidates like Jill Stein. Indeed, Ed Herman (7/8/17/)argued that no case was made by the ODNI report and that RT’s content was rather the “ongoing expression of opinion and news judgments.”

This intelligence report may go down as one of the shoddiest pieces of media criticism ever penned, and also the least scrutinized. (FAIR’s Adam Johnson was one of the few to take a close look at it—1/10/17.)

Ironically, RT’s own own reporting of the “intelligence” marshaled against it is a masterful illustration of decoding skills no longer very evident in the US commercial media. RT’sJanuary 7 broadcast with Kevin Owen spent almost 15 minutes on the US report, concluding that the “final assessment neither implies that there’s any evidence,” nor proves that there are any facts.

RT’s Fracking Programming

Screengrab from RT featured in the ODNI report.

Complaints about RT’s coverage of fracking were given a prominent position in the ODNI report: “RT runs anti-fracking programming, highlighting environmental issues and the impacts on public health,” it stated. It went on to claim:

This is likely reflective of the Russian government’s concern about the impact of fracking and US natural gas production on the global energy market and the potential challenges to Gazprom’s profitability.

Vox repeated intelligence claims about the alleged motivations for RT’s fracking coverage, but failed to say that stories contained health and environmental impacts of fracking.

Those in Congress representing the interest of the extractive industries have seized on this charge, equating anti-fracking coverage with “divisive messages” such as hate speech. The Washington Times (9/26/17) reported on a congressional probe into Russian “fracking-related social media ads.” The committee rallied against

divisive social and political messages conveyed through social media [that] have negatively affected certain energy sectors, which can depress research and development in the fossil-fuel sector and the expanding potential for natural gas.

Under pressure to block “fake news,” Twitter banned RT ads, and Google announced that it would “de-rank” stories from RT (and Sputnik as well), placing them lower in search results. But while RT is sponsored by the Russian government, it is still a legitimate international news agency, as are the UK’s BBC News at Ten, Qatar-owned Al Jazeera, and 20 Heures, produced by France 2’s broadcasting service. It offers critical, alternative perspectives unavailable on other channels. It is also clearly labeled, not hidden like a bot or a fabricated Facebook page, allowing the public knowledge of its origination and perspective.

RT’s reporting bears striking similarities to alternative and independent media content, and that is why letting the charges against RT stand unexamined is so dangerous. The actions being taken by tech giants to battle fake news are currently having devastating effects on alternative media and freedom of speech, while leaving the worst hate speech and junk news spinning across the internet by right-wing trolls.

‘Professional’ vs ‘Junk’ News

The way fake news is being defined in this battle is an attack on alternative journalism itself. CNN reported (10/26/17) on a study by Oxford University’s Internet Institute on “‘Junk News’ and 2016 Election,” finding that only 20 percent of sampled tweets contained links to “professional” news. (Together with “professional political news,” they comprise 30 percent of tweets.)  The anchor says, “You mean real news, like CNN,” to a nod of approval. Much of the rest of  Twitter content is lumped together as ill-defined “junk,” shown on a graph as “polarizing or conspiratorial: Inclu. Wikileaks and Russia”; no mention is made of the racist, hateful or misogynist content of white supremacist trolls.

Such classifications emerge from naïve technology researchers seemingly unaware that junk news and propaganda are deeply embedded within professional news brands: Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, global warming is not anthropogenic and tax cuts for the rich will benefit the middle class. (Media critic Edward Herman penned a long history of the New York Times‘ fake news about Russia, and before that the Soviet Union, that dates back as  as the 1917 revolution itself—Dissident Voice,7/8/17.)

Yet in the battle against fake news, much of the best, most accurate independent reporting is disappearing from Google searches. The World Socialist Web Site (8/2/17) reported that Google’s new search protocol is restricting access to leading independent, left-wing, progressive, anti-war and democratic rights websites. The estimated declines in traffic generated by Google searches for news sites are striking:

• WSWS.org fell by 67 percent.
•  AlterNet.org fell by 63 percent.
• ConsortiumNews.com fell by 47 percent.
• SocialistWorker.org fell by 47 percent.
• MediaMatters.org fell by 42 percent.
• CommonDreams.org fell by 37 percent.
• DemocracyNow.org fell by 36 percent.
• Truth-out.org fell by 25 percent.
• CounterPunch.org fell by 21 percent.
• TheIntercept.com fell by 19 percent.

Truthdig noted back on July 31 that

Google’s strategy is to downgrade search results for targeted websites based on a supposed desire to limit reader access to “low-quality” information, but the targets reportedly include some of the highest-quality alternative news sites on the internet.

As we enter a brave new world where artificial intelligence is deployed in calculations and algorithms purportedly targeting fake news, the winners are establishment and commercial media. This may be the reason for so little discussion, other than a few laudatory features praising the new technology. The New York Times (5/1/17) gushed about researchers harnessing digital technology to fact-checking programs in a hunt for fake news as  “a positive way of moving artificial intelligence forward while improving the political debate.” Tech giants, we are told, are partnering with computer scientists and start-ups to develop sophisticated algorithms computing “reams of online data to quickly — and automatically — spot fake news faster than traditional fact-checking groups can.”

The lack of transparency about the design of algorithms now extends to other players with open censorship in mind. A group of anonymous “researchers” on the website PropOrNot have created what Robert Parry of Consortium News (11/27/16) refers to as a blacklist. Consortium News was included among some 200 Internet sites spreading what PropOrNot deems “Russian propaganda.” Parry noted that the Washington Post (11/24/17) validated the authors of PropOrNot as sophisticated experts who “tracked” the Russian propaganda operation. The Post’s Craig Timberg  described the nameless players of PropOrNot simply as “a nonpartisan collection of researchers with foreign policy, military and technology backgrounds.”

FAIR (11/24/16) shows that despite respected media critics taking the report to task, thePost’s spurious claims were cemented as conventional wisdom across much of the media. Jeffrey St. Clair, a co-founder and editor of CounterPunch.org, another independent news site that made the list, told FAIR (12/8/16), “The morning after the Post published its article, I found 1,000 emails in my inbox, mostly hate mail and death threats.”

By contrast, commercial digital technologies continue to augment the reach of alt-right views. Recently ProPublica (8/19/17) surveyed the most visited websites of extremist groups identified by either the SPLC or the Anti-Defamation League. Researchers found that

more than half of them—39 out of 69—made money from ads, donations or other revenue streams facilitated by technology companies. At least 10 tech companies played a role directly or indirectly in supporting these sites.

The Islamaphobic Jihad Watch is an example of one the numerous sites that “monetize their extremist views through relationships with technology companies.”

And AlterNet (11/8/17) reported that “Google is continuing to allow the monetization of fake news via its advertising network AdSense,” and boosted numerous fake news stories after the Sutherland Springs, Texas, church massacre.

Twitter still has a white supremacy problem. The Root (11/9/17) reported that Twittergave its coveted “verified” status, denoted by a blue checkmark, to Jason Kessler, the organizer of the white supremacist Charlottesville rally that resulted in the murder of Heather Heyer and the brutal beating of DeAndre Harris at the hand of white supremacists. A blue checkmark from Twitter verifies the users’ tweets and profiles, and they are more likely to appear in searches, allowing messages to be spread faster and reach more people. By verifying Kessler’s account, Twitter is directly enabling white supremacy.

The Fundamental Problem

The expanding universe of lies, propaganda and fake news proliferating across the internet is a consequence of the monetized technologies that drive profits for the powerful tech industry. Facebook, Twitter and YouTube are not neutral platforms. They are deliberately designed to actively harvest human attention and sell it to advertisers, an immensely profitable enterprise. As a consequence, digital technologies blur the lines between paid ads, boosted posts and organic content on platforms such as Facebook, where ads and newsfeeds alike go viral. This is a design choice that came about because in-feed placement increased the engagement on the ads, and thus Facebook’s revenue. The business model is built into the technology. Writing in Politico (11/1/17), Renee Diresta and Tristan Harris note:

The self-serve ease and affordability of Facebook’s ads tool, and the fact that the platform can turn content viral quickly, is why advertisers and manipulators alike love it.

Twitter is a high-speed tool for breaking news, and for citizen journalists who need to reach the public and share information. On the other hand, refusing to alter its commercial design, the platform has failed to acknowledge and police the anonymous, automated army of bots. This leads to hashtags spreading vile anti-immigrant content, racism and misogyny as quickly as news and information.

Disentangling the hot-button, attention-grabbing stories that go viral from the advertising that supports that content would lower profit margins. Instead, companies are devising artificial intelligence and algorithms that purportedly detect fake news. In doing so, they are leading the charge to eliminate independent and alternative views under the guise of Kremlin propaganda, which started last January with charges against RT in the ODNI report.

Even in the face of Google’s testimony at the Halloween Hearings that the company’s own internal review found that RT broke none of Google’s rules or protocols, the Guardian (11/21/17) reported that Google searches would employ algorithms to de-rank the “state-run Russian news agencies, including Russia Today and Sputnik, which are accused of spreading propaganda by US intelligence agencies.” The Guardian went on to confuse RTwith twitter trolls:

At least 80 times, news sites, including the Telegraph, Metro and BuzzFeed,embedded or quoted tweets known to have been written by a notorious state-backed “troll army” based in St Petersburg.

Mainstream media continually equate RT with such troll armies, while downplaying the role of alt-right hate groups in the promulgation of fake news. Also outside of the Russiagate purview is the degree to which fake news content was amplified on the Internet by the Trump campaign and his supporters. The Nation (11/16/17) pointed out that as Russiagate reaches panic levels, freedom of speech is under fire:

Congress, led by Democrats, is also eyeing [RT], along with any other information source that could be deemed “Russian-linked.” At recent congressional hearings on how Russia allegedly used its platforms to influence the 2016 campaign, lawmakers denounced Facebook, Twitter and Google for failing to thwart…“a deliberate and multifaceted manipulation of the American people by agents of a hostile foreign power.”

In response, Twitter has

informed lawmakers that its new criteria for identifying a Russian-linked account now includes merely having a user name with Cyrillic characters or tweeting frequently in the Russian language.

The latest escalation of Russiagate is an open attack on whistleblowers and independent media. On November 27, the House Intelligence Committee issued a subpoena demanding that satirist and journalist Randy Credico provide testimony to the committee. In an earlier letter, Adam Schiff, the ranking Democrat on the Committee, demanded Credico’s “voluntary” cooperation with the panel’s “bipartisan investigation into Russian active measures directed at the 2016 US election.” Credico declined Schiff’s invitation and the sweeping demand for

the preservation and production of all documents, records, electronically-stored information, recordings, data and tangible things, including but not limited to graphs, charts, photographs, images and other documents, regardless of form other than those widely available (e.g. newspaper articles) related to the committee’s investigation, your interview and any ancillary matters.

Credico, who compared the action to the witchhunts of the McCarthy era, told Consortium News (11/28/17) that the committee probably wants access to the Pacifica Radio program, “my 14-part series on Assange, ‘Julian Assange: Countdown to Freedom,’ which includes WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, his mom, and some of the most significant US government intelligence agency whistle blowers in modern history.”

With the spotlight on a “hostile foreign power,” tech companies are allowed to leave intact the commercial digital technologies that spin the weaponized hate of white supremacistsand misinformation across the internet.

On November 13, RT was forced to register as a “foreign agent,” under a 1938 law enacted to counter Nazi propaganda. As The Nation (11/16/17) points out, the Justice Department demand was unusual:

Although hundreds of foreign entities are registered under FARA, international media outlets are almost entirely exempt, and none have registered in over a decade.

The Washington director for PEN America, Gabe Rottman, expressed concern that the DoJ action could lead to “retaliation against US-supported outlets such as Voice of America or public broadcasters like the BBC.”

Time magazine cover (7/15/96) celebrating US intervention in the Russian presidential election

As predicted, by November 19, the Russian Justice Ministry put nine US government-funded news agencies on noticethat they would probably be designated “foreign agents.” The Voice of America (VOA), Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and seven separate regional outlets active in Russia could be affected under the new legislation designed specifically as retaliation for US actions against RT. (VOAreported its Russian counterpart’s blacklisting as a matter of fact—“Russia’s RT Registers as Foreign Agent in US,”  11/13/17—though when the tables were turned, the term was suddenly discovered to require scare quotes: “9 US-Funded News Outlets Could Be Forced to Register as ‘Foreign Agents,’” 11/19/17.)

In a prophetic and equally ironic comparison, media critic Edward Herman (7/8/17) noted back in July, “All the logic and proofs of a Russian ‘influence campaign’ could be applied with at least equal force to US media and Radio Free Europe’s treatment of any Russian election.” And, he added, “Of course the US intervention in the 1996 Russian election was overt, direct and went far beyond any ‘influence campaign.’”

The consequences of allowing unsubstantiated accusations against RT to stand unchallenged are helping distort the debate about fake news. In doing so, they allow open calls for censorship and algorithms that close down critical and independent views. This, together with the many other serious and numerous challenges to freedom of expression at the moment, should worry those who value life in an open society, and freedom of speech across the globe.

Dr Robin Andersen is Professor of Communication and Media Studies at Fordham University. In addition, she directs Fordham’s M.A. Program in Public Communication and the Peace and Justice Studies Program. Contact her by email: andersen [at] fordham.edu

30 November 2017

Source: http://www.countercurrents.org/2017/11/30/backlash-against-russian-fake-news-is-shutting-down-debate-for-real/

By Fred Mazelis

US President Donald Trump retweeted three videos Wednesday morning that were posted by Jayda Fransen, the deputy leader of Britain First, a fascist outfit that has specialized in such activities as “mosque invasions” and “Christian patrols” in urban areas with large Muslim populations.

Trump’s latest tweeting is an escalation of a political strategy aimed at inciting and encouraging far-right forces. At the time of the fascist rampage in Charlottesville, Virginia in August that left one anti-fascist protester dead, Trump claimed that there were “good people” among the white supremacist demonstrators. Now he has openly associated himself with a fascist group.

The videos, entitled “Islamist mob pushes teenage boy off roof,” “Muslim Destroys a Statue of Virgin Mary,” and “Muslim migrant beats up Dutch boy on crutches,” are crude attempts to whip up hatred of Muslims. The Dutch video, from earlier this year, shows a fight in which no Muslims were involved, and the other two are four-year-old depictions of violence in Egypt and Syria, respectively—no more representative of all Muslims than the murderous rampages in California and Texas exemplified all Americans.

Trump had said nothing further about the tweets, but White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders defended them without reservation. “Whether it’s a real video, the threat is real,” she told reporters. “The threat is real, the threat needs to be addressed and the threat has to be talked about and that’s what the president is doing in bringing that up.”

Britain First was founded in 2011 by former members of the fascist British National Party. One of its founders was known for anti-abortion fanaticism, and the group has also been linked to extreme-right British Loyalists in Northern Ireland.

Jayda Fransen, now 31 years old, was found guilty in 2016 of religiously aggravated harassment for abusing a Muslim mother in front of her four young children in the city of Luton, about 30 miles northwest of London. Franzen screamed at the woman, who was wearing a hijab, that Muslim men force women to cover up to avoid being raped “because they cannot control their sexual urges,” and added, “that’s why they are coming into my country raping women across the continent.”

Thomas Mair, the fascist who killed British Labour MP Jo Cox during the Brexit campaign last year, shouted “Britain First!” as he shot and stabbed the MP, from the Batley and Spen constituency, near Leeds. Britain First, which parades in paramilitary uniforms, has no more than 1,000 supporters, according to the Guardian, but about 500,000 Facebook “likes.” Fransen received 56 votes when stood for parliament in 2014.

Trump’s open endorsement of the fascists was greeted with enthusiasm by Fransen herself, who tweeted her thanks to the White House in capital letters on Wednesday:

“THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES, DONALD TRUMP, HAS RETWEETED THREE OF DEPUTY LEADER JAYDA FRANSEN’S TWITTER VIDEOS! DONALD TRUMP HIMSELF HAS RETWEETED THESE VIDEOS AND HAS AROUND 44 MILLION FOLLOWERS! GOD BLESS YOU TRUMP! GOD BLESS AMERICA!”

Within the US, fascist elements were similarly pleased. David Duke, former leader of the Ku Klux Klan, wrote on Twitter, “Thank God for Trump! That’s why we love him!”

Trump’s solidarization with fascists in Britain, like his praise for the Nazi demonstrators in Virginia, is not an aberration. That the president is openly solidarizing with such forces is an expression of the putrefaction of American democracy, under the impact of unprecedented social inequality and the drive to world war.

The current tweeting controversy comes only one day after the North Korean regime’s latest test of a long-range missile, amid worries over Trump’s continuous sabre-rattling that could lead to war, with massive casualties on the Korean peninsula and beyond.

Trump, undoubtedly working in concert or general agreement with his former chief adviser Stephen Bannon of Breitbart News, continues to lay the groundwork for a fascist movement in the US. The scapegoating of immigrants and Muslims is being stepped up, blaming ethnic or religious minorities for poverty and unemployment, and whipping up fear in the name of the “war on terror.”

Trump’s critics within the Democratic and Republican parties—who are themselves engaged in a ferocious neo-McCarthyite campaign alleging that Russia is “sowing divisions” within the US—are motivated primarily by concerns about the consequences for US imperialist interests abroad and domestic stability at home.

Senator Jeff Flake, Republican of Arizona, whom the mainstream press was calling a profile in courage recently in connection with his book critical of Trump and his decision not to run for reelection, could not seem to summon up much anger in this case. The Senator called Mr. Trump’s retweets “highly inappropriate,” adding, “I hope he takes them down and doesn’t do it again.”

The British political establishment felt obliged to issue its own disclaimers. A few Labour parliamentarians struck an angry pose. Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said Trump’s actions were “abhorrent, dangerous and a threat to our country.” Prime Minister Theresa May’s reaction was notably bland, with May declaring, “It is wrong for the president to have done this.” Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury, added his meek plea for Trump to make a statement “to make clear his opposition to racism and hatred in all forms.”

Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper spoke more directly to the interests of American imperialism, summing up the reaction in these circles as he has in the past. Clapper, who served under both Bush and Obama, said he worried that Trump’s actions could encourage anti-Muslim violence, “and it causes our friends and allies around the world to wonder about the judgment of the president of the United States.”

30 November 2017

Source: http://www.countercurrents.org/2017/11/30/trump-retweets-fascist-anti-muslim-videos-from-britain/

By Ramzy Baroud

On 18 November, just days before the fiftiest anniversary of United Nations Resolution 242, the US State Department took its first step towards severing its ties with the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO).

The timing of this decision could not be any more profound.

The first formal contact between the US and the PLO occurred in mid-December, 1988, when US Ambassador to Tunisia, Robert H. Pelletreau Jr., picked up the phone to call the PLO headquarters in Tunis to schedule formal talks.

Palestinian PLO officials were ‘elated’ by the fact that the US made the first move, as reported by the New York Times.

This assertion, however, is quite misleading. For over a decade prior to that ‘first move’, PLO’s chairman, Yasser Arafat, had to satisfy many US demands in exchange for this low-level political engagement.

The ‘talks’ in Tunisia were prolonged, before the PLO was ready to make its final concession in secret meetings in Oslo, Norway in 1993.

Eventually, a PLO office was opened in Washington DC. It served little purpose, aside from being an intermittent platform to arrange Washington-sponsored talks between Israeli and PLO officials. For Palestinians living in the US, it was almost invisible until the US announced its decision to possibly shut it down.

The American threat followed a United Nations speech last September by Mahmoud Abbas, the leader of the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Chairman of the PLO. From an Israeli-US perspective, Abbas committed a mortal sin for seeking the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court (ICC) to take Israel to task regarding its human rights violations in Occupied Palestine.

By doing so, Abbas, not only violated a peculiar US law that forbids the PLO from seeking ICC help, but also an unspoken rule that allowed the US to engage the PLO in 1988, where the US served the rule of the political and legal frame of reference for the so-called ‘peace process.’ The UN took a backseat.

But even that unequal relationship proved too much for the US government, which is moving fully and unconditionally into the Israeli camp. The Trump Administration is now working to rewrite the nature of US involvement in the Middle East, and, especially, in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Unfortunately, Trump’s team has no concrete strategy and no frame of reference, aiming to change 50-years of US foreign policy – unfair to Palestinians and Arabs – but has no alternative plan of its own.

30 November 2017

Almost a year ago, Trump made a promise to Israel to be a more trustworthy ally than President Barack Obama, who gave Israel more money than any other US president in history. Obama, however, had violated a golden rule in the US-Israeli relationship: he did not veto a UN resolution that condemned the illegal settlements in the Occupied Palestinian territories.

Israel panicked at that unprecedented event, not because it feared that the UN Security Council would enforce its purportedly binding resolution, but because the US had, for once, refused to shield Israel from international censure.

Even before officially taking over the White House, the Trump team attempted to prevent UNSC Resolution 2334 from passing. It failed but, come January, it took over the Israeli-Palestinian file with a vengeance, threatening to cut off funds to Palestinians, blocking their efforts from expanding their international reach, and declaring its full and unconditional support for the rightwing government of Benjamin Netanyahu.

But there was more to Israeli alarm at Resolution 2334 than mere US betrayal. This Resolution – which asserted that Israeli settlements have no legal validity and constitute a flagrant violation of human rights – was partly predicated on, and clarified and added to, previous UNSC Resolution 242.

This means that 50 years of incessant Israeli attempts to absolve itself from any commitment to international law have failed miserably.

For Palestinians, and the larger Arab context, Resolution 242 marked their defeat in the war of 1967. Unsurprisingly, this Resolution has been cited in various agreements between Israel and the PLO, but only to give these agreements a veneer of international legitimacy.

However, the Oslo Accords of 1993 gave Israel the opportunity to use its leverage to bypass international law altogether: signing a peace agreement without ending its military occupation became the goal.

Against this backdrop, it is no wonder that Netanyahu was quite shocked to witness that a recommitment to Resolution 242 last year at the UNSC did not garner US opposition. Actually, the longstanding Resolution gained more substance and vigor.

The June 1967 war was Israel’s greatest military victory, and Resolution 242 enshrined a whole new world order in the Middle East, in which the US and Israel reigned supreme. Although it called for withdrawal of Israeli military from Occupied Palestinian and Arab lands, it also paved the way for normalization between Israel and the Arabs. The Camp David Agreement between Egypt and Israel was a direct outcome of that Resolution.

This is why Resolution 2334 has alarmed Israel, for it invalidated all the physical changes that Israel has made in 50 years of illegal occupation of Palestinian lands.

The Resolution called for “two democratic States, Israel and Palestine, liv(ing) side by side in peace within secure and recognized borders”.

Unlike Resolution 242, Resolution 2334 has left no room for clever misinterpretation: it references the pre-June 1967 lines in its annulment of the Israeli occupation and all the illegal settlements Israel has constructed since then.

The Resolution even cites the Fourth Geneva Convention, the UN Charter and the International Court of Justice’s advisory opinion of July 2004, which stated that Israel’s barrier in the West Bank was illegal and should be dismantled.

With international law, once more, taking center stage in a conflict which the US has long designated as if its personal business, Abbas was empowered enough to reach out to the ICC, thus raising the ire of Israel and its allies in the White House.

Even if the PLO’s office is permanently shut down, the decision should not just be seen as punishing Palestinians for seeking ICC support but, ultimately, as the culmination of disastrous US diplomacy, for which the Trump Administration has no clear alternative.

30 November 2017

Source: http://www.amec.org.za/palestine-israel/item/1551-decades-of-us-diplomacy-has-failed-why-the-us-wants-to-shut-down-plo-office.html

By Gabriel Wildau in Shanghai and Tom Mitchell in Beijing

Poorest quarter of households own just 1 per cent of country’s total wealth

Communist China has one of the world’s highest levels of income inequality, with the richest 1 per cent of households owning a third of the country’s wealth, a report from Peking University has found. The poorest 25 per cent of Chinese households own just 1 per cent of the country’s total wealth, the study found.

China’s Gini coefficient for income, a widely used measure of inequality, was 0.49 in 2012, according to the report. The World Bank considers a coefficient above 0.40 to represent severe income inequality. Among the world’s 25 largest countries by population for which the World Bank tracks Gini data, only South Africa and Brazil are higher at 0.63 and 0.53, respectively. The figure for the US is 0.41, while Germany is 0.3.

The study from the university’s Institute of Social Science Survey is likely to bolster calls for more progressive taxation and increased social welfare spending in the nominally communist country. The Gini coefficient has risen from roughly 0.3 in the 1980s.

There’s no doubt that the income gap is getting larger and larger,” said Zhou Xiaozheng, a sociology professor at Renmin University in Beijing. “To put it simply, the poor are getting poorer and the rich are getting richer.” “You don’t need a report to know that,” added Prof Zhou, who was not involved in the research.

While China’s income inequality is more severe than other large countries, wealth inequality is worse in the US. The wealthiest 1 per cent of US households owned 42 per cent of all US wealth in 2012, according to research led by Emmanuel Saez, economist at University of California Berkeley. Rampant corruption and unreported income presents challenges for estimating income and wealth levels in China.

The figures are notably higher than official estimates. China’s statistics bureau said last year that the country’s Gini coefficient had fallen slightly to 0.469 in 2014 from 0.477 in 2011. An other estimate by widely respected economists at the Southwest University of Finance and Economics in Chengdu put the Gini coefficient at 0.61 in 2010. The latest report is based on a survey of nearly 15,000 households in 25 different provinces.

Separately, the Hurun Report said on Thursday that the number of dollar millionaires in China had risen 8 per cent over the past year to 3.14m. According to Hurun’s 2015 China Rich List, the country is home to 596 dollar billionaires, more than the US. China’s leadership has pledged to address inequality. “We want to continuously enlarge the pie, while also making sure we divide the pie correctly. Chinese society has long held the value of ‘Don’t worry about the amount, worry that all have the same amount’,” Xi Jinping wrote in People’s Daily, a government mouthpiece, in 2014.

Additional reporting by Ma Nan and Wan Li

Twitter: @gabewildau

24 January 2016

Source: https://www.ft.com/search?q=China+income+inequality+among+world%E2%80%99s+worst

By Dr Ludwig Watzal

Israel, the USA, and Saudi Arabia are doing everything to lay the foundations for war against Iran. That is why Iran and its people must be demonized and dehumanized. The Israeli governments have been doing this since the Shah of Iran was overthrown by the Iranian people. In general, all Sunni Muslim countries get along very well with Iran, except the regime of Saudi Arabia and those Arab regimes that succumb to their financial pressure, which doesn’t surprise anybody because they collaborate closely with the Zionist regime such as Egypt.

In a flattering interview with the New York Times, the Saudi crown prince and future king, Mohammed bin Salman, called the Supreme Leader of Iran, Ali Khamenei, the “new Hitler of the Middle East.”[1] And he continued with a skewed comparison, saying: “But we learned from Europe that appeasement doesn’t work. We don’t want the new Hitler in Iran to repeat what happened in Europe in the Middle East.” The same rhetoric used Netanyahu when he agitated against the nuclear deal with Iran.

Besides the silliness of such comparisons, it’s an incredible insult to the highest Shiite authority by a Sunni Muslim, who is going to be the next “King of Saudi Arabia.” The Iranian clerical elite will never forgive and forget. They rebuked this insult elegantly saying: “No one in the world and the international arena gives credit to him because of his immature and weak-minded behavior and remarks.” As an old deep-rooted people, the Iranians gave bin Salman a good advice: “Now that he has decided to follow the path of famous regional dictators … he should think about their fate as well.”

This provocation by a regime that can only survive by the US American and Zionist sword and their financial tribute in the form of large weapon purchases and mercenary pay for terrorist fighters should have not future. But there is a sneaky plan behind bin Salman’s slander. It started with Donald Trump’s silly speech he delivered during his visit to Saudi Arabia in which he called Iran “the top state sponsor of terrorism.” And Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu called Iran “the world’s leading sponsor of terrorism.” Both leaders cooperate very closely in deranging the nuclear deal signed under the Obama administration. Now, Mohammed bin Salman has thrown himself into the fray.

At least for the time being, President Trump is not jet willing, despite his anti-Iranian bias and rhetoric, to go to war with Iran for Israel’s and Saudi Arabia’s sake. To sacrifice American lives for two rogue regimes would be politically very unwise. That is why an image cultivation of the Saudi regime has already started in the United Kingdom and the US. In the case of Israel, the reporting in the US and the UK are one-sided and incredibly biased. Hence, the Saudis have to catch up.

The British Guardian and the leading newspaper of the US Empire, the New York Times,  have started to paint the new Saudi strongman, Mohammed bin Salman, as a kind of visionary reformer, although he has been spreading terror and blood since he took office. That Saudi Arabia has been fighting a brutal war against the people of Yemen, supports the different terror groups in Syria and stirs up tensions against Iran is silently skipped by Thomas L. Friedman from the NYT. Even bin Salman’s crackdown on large parts of the political and economic elite and his bloody purge against political opponents celebrate the NYT as a fight against “corruption.” Nobody should be surprised that the US and its major media outlets are embracing this brutal strongman because he serves US interests. Saddam Hussein was the best case in the point until he fell from US grace.

While the Guardian was full of praise of bin Salman during the year, the NYT reported more cautiously until Thomas L. Friedman took over. In a kind of press release, the Guardian was full of praise for the future Saudi King.  He did arrest not only 11 peopled but also sidelined 20 billionaires. That several people died in an organized helicopter crash was not worth reporting to the Guardian.

Friedman didn’t want to be in no way inferior to the Guardian’s uncritical reporting. He even topped it writing: “The most significant reform process underway anywhere in the Middle East today is in Saudi Arabia.”  All the other Arab Spring movements failed miserably happening from bottom up; the Saudi one is led from the top down by bin Salman. That the Crown Prince wants to reform a degenerated Saudi version of Islam seems worth reporting. Time will tell. Reading all these articles, one can ask who paid for these base flatteries.

Why didn’t Friedman ask bin Salman about his 500 million US-Dollars worth yacht? Or the cost of the last vacation in Morocco, where he and his father’s royal household spent 950 million US-Dollars. So much to combat corruption, Mr. Friedman.

Bin Salman also maintains an unconventional and rough diplomatic contact with other heads of states when they are on a Saudi drip-feed. When Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri visited Saudi Arabia, he was forced to announce his resignation via Saudi TV. Apparently he feared for his life. For a few days, he stood under house arrest. Due to the speech of Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, the whole Lebanese leadership rallied behind Nasrallah and called for Hariri’s return to announce either his resignation or to stay in office. The President of France, Manuel Macron, also intervened on behalf of Hariri. Finally, Hariri could leave Saudi Arabia via France from where he returned to Lebanon to celebrate the country’s independence day. Bin Salman’s farce failed miserably. Almost the same happened to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. The Saudis ordered him to Riyadh and presented him an outline of the American Israeli “peace plan.” After returning to Ramallah, Abbas rejected the US Zionist document of surrender.

It’s an open secret that the Saudi and the Zionist regime are cultivating intensive diplomatic contacts not only on security issues. A rare interview by the head of Israel’s armed forces to a Saudi owned news outlet fueling talks of close links. Despite the denial of the Saudi foreign minister Adel el-Jubeir, these rumors won’t disappear. “There are no relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel,” Jubeir said. Formally, he seems correct, but what about the informal contacts. Hasn’t Mohammed bin Salman visited Israel in camera?

According to Danny Danon, Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, Israel enjoys “warm relations” with many Arab countries despite the fact that these nations officially refuse to recognize Israel diplomatically. Prime Minister Netanyahu has been boosting for quite some time about the close contact with several Arab countries.

The Israeli Saudi US American alliance aims at Iran. They want to push back Iran’s influence in Iraq and Syria. For the time being, bin Salman’s plan to sell Israel to war against Lebanon to crush Hezbollah has failed. Hariri was not the Saudi stooge bin Salman thought. What these three rogue states have in common is the destruction of Iran like they did with Iraq, Syria or Libya. Netanyahu has warned President Bashar al-Assad not to allow Iran to build military bases in Syria. Israel will never accept it as they will never tolerate a nuclear Iran, so Netanyahu.

It remains to be seen whether the new “Axis of Evil” or the Russian Iranian Turkish alliance will prevail in the Middle East. So far, the Zionist US American and Saudi cooperation have brought devastation to the region; it’s time Russia and the other rational actors bring stability back to the area.

Dr. Ludwig Watzal works as a journalist and editor in Bonn , Germany . He runs the bilingual blog between the lines. http://between-the-lines-ludwig-watzal.blogspot.de/

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/23/opinion/saudi-prince-mbs-arab-spring.html

29 November 2017

Source: http://www.countercurrents.org/2017/11/29/does-the-israeli-saudi-alliance-plans-a-war-against-iran/

By George Capaccio

”I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London, that a young healthy child well nursed is at a year old a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled …”

—Jonathan Swift, 1729 (from “A Modest Proposal”)

I am writing this on Thanksgiving eve. Tomorrow, like so many other fellow Americans, I will be passing the mashed potatoes and gravy, calling for more cranberry sauce, and once again feeling pangs of conscience as the turkey platter comes my way and I imagine industrial-scale factories where millions of farm-raised turkeys are slaughtered and otherwise prepared for consumption.In Plymouth, hundreds will gather for a Day of Mourning in recognition of the suffering Native Americans have endured since Europeans first began their conquest of indigenous lands over 500 years ago.

It will be a day of mourning for me as well. For that matter, every day lately has become a day of mourning as I reflect upon my country’s role in the starvation and slaughter of the people of Yemen. Through its open-ended support of Saudi Arabia’s illegal war against Yemen’s Houthi rebels, the U.S. is complicit in what has become the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. The statistics are appalling: At least 10,000 Yemenis have been killed, the majority of whom are innocent civilians; millions have been displaced; and, according to UN reports, “some 7 million people in Yemen are now on the verge of starvation. Yemen is also in the throes of a cholera epidemic that has infected more than 900,000 people.”

Cholera is an infectious disease that occurs when a person ingests food or water contaminated with a particular type of bacterium. Typically, feces from an infected person are the source of contamination. In Yemen, Saudi planes have deliberately targeted the country’s water- and sewage-treatment plants, and its electrical infrastructure. Result: People are consuming untreated food and water and becoming ill. Cholera causes severe diarrhea, which in turn can lead to dehydration. If not remedied in time, dehydration will lead to shock and death in just a few hours.

The International Committee of the Red Cross predicts that a million people will become victims of the cholera epidemic by the end of this year. Disease and starvation are weapons of choice Saudi Arabia and its partners in crime are deploying against their enemies in Yemen, whom they regard as proxies of their major regional foe—Iran. To prevent the spread of Shia Islam in its own backyard, the Sunni regime of Saudi Arabia  is waging total war on the people of Yemen, now suffering from severe, life-threatening shortages of food and medicine.

These shortages are not the results of an earthquake or other natural disaster. They are the intended consequences of the bombing and shelling of Yemen’s civilian infrastructure by Saudi Arabia, and its imposition of a nearly total air, sea, and land blockade that has made an estimated 70% of Yemen’s population dependent on imported food and other forms of humanitarian aid, which the blockade has severely restricted—with the consent and active participation of the most indispensable nation on the face of the planet—the United States. We can thank Saint Obama for getting the ball rolling when his Administration authorized the shipment of more than $100 billion worth of weapons to the Saudi military, a largess that Trump has continued in the form of an additional $110 billion in weapons sales to the most despotic regime in the Middle East and the heart and soul of Wahhabism, a perversion of Islam that has brought nothing but suffering to the people of the region.

Our role in the crisis is not limited to the provision of high-tech weapons and munitions; the military has been waist-deep in the Big Muddy of turning Yemen, the poorest country in the Arab world, into a nation of widows and orphans. As former Green Party vice presidential candidate Ajamu Baraka rightly points out:

This is a war that could not then or today have been launched and executed without direct support from the U.S. military. The United States provided critical support in the form of intelligence sharing and targeting, air-to-air refueling, logistics support, participation in the naval blockade, and billions of dollars in weapons sales.

So let us bow our heads and give thanks for America’s continuation of the war of conquest that began five centuries ago and has evolved into the imperium’s onslaught against the poor and defenseless elsewhere in the world and its ruthless drive for hegemony, even when this means supporting the likes of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman and other heartless rulers as long as our interests and theirs are closely aligned.

It’s an old story. Not that long ago, the U.S. and Iraq were bedfellows until Saddam Hussein broke the rules and had to be “taken out.” I wager the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia is well-acquainted with the story of Saddam’s rise and fall, and the means by which the U.S. brought Iraq to its knees. In the first Persian Gulf War (1991), the U.S. military targeted Iraq’s civilian infrastructure, including water- and sewage-treatment plants, and the electrical system. And for over a decade, successive U.S. Administrations maintained a comprehensive embargo, allowing in only a trickle of humanitarian supplies. What we’re seeing in Yemen in year three of the war with Saudi Arabia is not that far a cry from what the Iraqi people endured under sanctions, imposed by the UN but enforced by the U.S. and UK. Severe malnutrition, the rise of communicable, water-borne diseases, and high rates of infant and maternal mortality were all directly related to the near-total destruction of Iraq’s civilians infrastructure and the continuation of a sanctions regime which prevented Iraq from importing necessary spare parts, restoring its electrical system to full capacity, and keeping the water-treatment plants running. Thanks largely to the role of the U.S. in making the Iraqi people pay for their leader’s intransigence, hundreds of thousands of innocent human beings, mostly the old, the young, and the poor, died.

According to Save the Children, disease and starvation—the poison fruits of the war between Yemen and Saudi Arabia—could very well claim the lives of more than 50,000 Yemini children by the end of the year. Right now, the Saudi-imposed and U.S.-condoned blockadeis killingan estimated 130 Yemeni children each and every day. One thing you can say for sure about the U.S. is that no matter which party is in power, geopolitical interests and objectives will almost always trump the need for compassion and humanity. I am thankful that Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy had the courage to stand up on the floor of the Senate on Tuesday, November 14 to denounce U.S. support for the war in Yemen and to hold up photos of starving Yemeni children as graphic evidence of the suffering our support has enabled. And I am also thankful that the day before Senator Murphy’s address, “the House of Representatives voted 366-30 in favor of a non-binding resolution that said the U.S. role in the war had not been authorized by Congress.”

It will take much more than a non-binding resolution and a Senator’s act of conscience to stop the bloodshed in Yemen and bring an end to the war. I mourn for the victims of this war and when I sit down with friends on Thanksgiving day, I will think of the children in Yemen and in other parts of the world where there is not enough food or no food at all not because of drought or other natural causes, but because of the inhumanity that passes for leadership and the policies that come from men and women whose own hearts must have broken long ago, and who cannot feel the pain of their brothers and sisters, and take no responsibility for putting an end, once and for all, to this suffering.

I will be thankful that my wife and I have created a lasting marriage in which we honor and support each other’s choices, and I will be thankful for the friends with whom I will share the Thanksgiving meal, and for the many fine and courageous individuals in every part of the world who are doing everything in their power to build a truly revolutionary new world order founded upon the principles of justice and equality; men and women struggling to preserve and enhance the beauty of our all-too fragile planet and safeguard its riches for generations to come, and to oppose all those who would trample this beauty to death in the name of maximizing profits and controlling the lion’s share of Earth’s natural resources.

If Jonathan Swift were alive today, I can well imagine him considering the tragedy that is unfolding in Yemen. I don’t doubt for a moment that he would mourn the dying of so many innocents. Perhaps his satirical gifts would inspire him to pen another “modest proposal,” this time in response to the sight of so many starving, emaciated children. He would understand that their suffering and the suffering of their families are not accidental but rather the consequences of political stratagems in which the safety, health, and well-being of ordinary people have little or no value. He might also determine that the root cause of the conflict is Saudi Arabia’s fear and hatred of Shia Islam and its most powerful advocate—Iran. The solution to this conflict, therefore, would be to completely block the transmission of this religious doctrine and practice to the Kingdom and its neighboring countries, or so Swift might conclude.

To that end, I can well imagine him proposing the creation of the world’s largest mosque—a structure that would encompass the entire Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Construction would begin with the building of a wall around the country. While the wall is being built, a selection of the finest artists in the Arab world would design the qubba, or dome, large enough to sit comfortably on top of all sides of the wall. Skylights cut into the dome would allow ample sunlight into the Kingdom, and a massive air conditioning system would keep Saudi Arabia’s temperature at a moderate 75° Fahrenheit, or 24° Celsius.

Using its vast wealth, the Royal Family could afford to provide each of its citizens with a lifetime of financial support under one condition—that they would never question the authority of their rulers or conspire to foment revolution. With the Saudi version of Sunni Islam under lock and key, so to speak, the Kingdom would have no reason for waging war against its neighbors. The very idea would eventually be seen as ludicrous, irrational, unnecessary. To control the population of Shia Muslims and other minority groups living within the Kingdom, the offspring of these groups could be easily converted into kebab for the Royal Family, and its vast network of sycophants and tribal members.

Best of all, to keep the people happy and carefree, in addition to providing an indestructible, lifelong safety net, the Kingdom could install the latest laser technology to turn the country’s vast deserts into an awe-inspiring mirage of ocean vistas. The oceans, of course, would be hologram projections, as true to life as possible, complete with frolicking dolphins, breaching whales, boats under sail, and so forth.

With the entire country transformed into one vast prayer hall, all of human life, from its most humdrum tasks to its highest pursuits, would be an exercise in devotion. If they were so inclined, the Royal Family might also purchase naming rights from the Disney corporation and call their land the Magic Kingdom by the Sea (the Red Sea, actually). Tourists from all over the globe would flock to Saudi Arabia, thus generating an income stream equal to what it derives from its oil wealth. It’s quite likely that the country would be designated as one of the new Wonders of the World.

Granted, what Jonathan Swift might propose, were he alive today, does sound “over the top.” Personally, I would propose at the very least a moratorium on all weapons sales to Saudi Arabia and its allies, an unconditional end to the blockade, a major relief effort bringing in tons of life-saving supplies, and an independent investigation into war crimes committed by the Saudi-led coalition, its supporters—the U.S. and UK—and Houthi forces. And I would ask my fellow Americans to consider the plight of the people of Yemen, particularly the children, and do whatever is in their power to bring this tragedy to an end, starting perhaps with the use of social media or direct conversations with friends, co-workers, family members—informing them about the nature of this war and reminding them (gently, of course) that, as citizens of Saudi Arabia’s most powerful enabler, we have a responsibility to speak out against the violence, stand in solidarity with the victims of this violence, and advocate for Congressional action on behalf of the Yemeni people.

George Capaccio is a writer and activist living in Arlington, MA. During the years of U.S.- and UK-enforced sanctions against Iraq, he traveled there numerous times, bringing in banned items, befriending families in Baghdad, and deepening his understanding of how the sanctions were impacting civilians. His email is Capaccio.G@gmail.comHe welcomes comments and invites readers to visit his website: www.georgecapaccio.com

24 November 2017

Source: http://www.countercurrents.org/2017/11/24/a-less-than-modest-proposal-to-end-the-war-in-yemen/

By Abdus Sattar Ghazali

Russian President Vladimir Putin has said his Iranian and Turkish counterparts have supported a proposal to hold a “Syrian people’s congress” that will bring together government and opposition figures.

The Russian President on Wednesday (Nov 22) hosted Hassan Rouhani and Recep Tayyip Erdogan, just as some Syrian opposition groups met in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia’s capital, before United Nations-sponsored talks in Geneva.

“The congress will look at the key questions on Syria’s national agenda,” Putin told reporters at the summit in the Black Sea resort of Sochi, sitting alongside Rouhani and Erdogan.

“First of all, that is the drawing-up of a framework for the future structure of the state, the adoption of a new constitution, and, on the basis of that, the holding of elections under United Nations supervision.”

The congress is expected to also take place in Sochi before the next round of Geneva talks on November 28. However, no details about the exact date or who will be invited to attend were released.

In a joint statement, the three leaders underlined the need for all warring sides to release all prisoners and hostages, hand over bodies and create the conditions for a lasting truce.

They also urged the international community to provide humanitarian aid, clear Syrian territory of mines and restore infrastructure wrecked by the long-running conflict.

Now in its seventh year, the war in Syria has killed hundreds of thousands of people and displaced more than 12 million.

Syrian opposition in Riyadh says Assad has to go

Syrian opposition groups meeting in Saudi Arabia have renewed their demand for the removal of President Bashar al-Assad in a draft resolution obtained by Al Jazeera.

The groups said that a solution to the war in Syria can only be achieved with the departure of Assad at the start of the transitional period – a position held by the Syrian opposition since the start of the war, now in its seventh year.

“The participants agreed that the goal of the political settlement is to establish a state based on the principle of citizenship, which enables the Syrians to draft their constitution without interference and to choose their leaders through free, fair and transparent elections in which the Syrians participate inside and outside Syria under the supervision of the United Nations,” the draft resolution reads.

The communique stipulates that a transitional governing body “could include members of the present government and the opposition and other groups and shall be formed on the basis of mutual consent”, but does not make any specific mention as to who exactly from the current government should stay on.

The ‘slow-motion slaughter’ of Syrian civilians

As the Syrian conflict entered its seventh year, about one million children have been orphaned by the war in Syria which is in its sixth year, according to an Aljazeera report.

More than 465,000 Syrians have been killed in the fighting, more than a million injured and over 12 million Syrians – half the country’s prewar population – have been displaced from their homes.

With much of Syria in ruins millions of Syrians have fled abroad. The Syrian refugee crisis remains one of the largest humanitarian crises since the end of World War II. The number of refugees who have fled the country now exceeds five million, including more than 2.4 million children, and millions more have been displaced internally, according to the United Nations.

The Syrian war is creating profound effects far beyond the country’s borders. Lebanon, Turkey, and Jordan are now housing large and growing numbers of Syrian refugees, many of whom have attempted to journey onwards to Europe in search of better conditions.

There are 5.3 million refugees in the Middle East which includes 2 million Syrians registered by UNHCR in Egypt, Iraq, Jordan and Lebanon, 3 million Syrians registered by the Government of Turkey, as well as more than 30,000 Syrian refugees registered in North Africa.
There are around one million Syrian refugees in 37 European countries.

24 November 2017

Abdus Sattar Ghazali is the Chief Editor of the journal of America (www.journalofamerica.net) email: asghazali2011 (@) gmail.com

Source: http://www.countercurrents.org/2017/11/24/iran-russia-and-turkey-agree-to-hold-syrian-peoples-congress-to-bring-together-all-warring-sides/

By Gerald A. Perreira

The world we find ourselves in is complex and full of contradictions. It is easy to fall for rudimentary textbook propaganda based on simplistic dichotomies, such as ‘the good guys versus the bad guys’. If we are not aware of the complexities and nuances facing us, we can fall for this type of propaganda, whose sole aim is to keep us apart and destroy any type of unity that could strengthen our ability to defeat the enemy.

When examining and assessing the latest information fed us by one of imperialism’s mouthpieces, CNN, there are important things for us, as revolutionary Pan-Africanists, to keep in mind. The first thing to note is the clear hypocrisy and insincerity which is nowhere more stark than CNN’s recent expose of “Libyan crimes against humanity” and French President, Emmanuel Macron’s  call for a special meeting of the UN Security Council to demand immediate action against this heinous “Libyan” crime.

I know this much for sure, as an African revolutionary I do not look to the devil for the truth. I know that the devil does not lie some of the time; he lies and deceives all of the time. In whatever form the devil manifests himself, I do not deal with him. He can come in the guise of the imperialists and White Supremacists themselves, or their mouthpieces such as CNN, BBC, Fox News or any of the mainstream corporate media outlets. We should never forget their role as cheerleaders and purveyors of the fake news that laid the groundwork for the invasion and destruction of the Libyan Jamahiriya. Therefore, let us ask ourselves the burning question, why are they providing us with this information, and why now? Why are the imperialists suddenly feigning concern for the plight of Africans?

In my first article on the invasion of Libya, published March 2nd, 2011, titled, Libya, Getting it Right: A Revolutionary Pan-African Perspective, I said that “the conflict in Libya is not a revolution, but a counter-revolution. The struggle is fundamentally a battle between Pan-African forces on the one hand, who are dedicated to the realization of Qaddafi’s vision of a united Africa, and reactionary, racist Libyan Arab forces who reject Qaddafi’s vision of Libya as part of a united Africa.”

Events have proved this analysis correct. Muammar Qaddafi and the Revolutionary Committees Movement of the Al Fateh Revolution had a monumental task on their hands: to conscientize and reposition the Libyan people for a significant role in the revolutionary Pan-African project for a United States of Africa. This is a battle for all African revolutionaries. In Sub-Saharan African countries, where almost the entire population comprises Black Africans, we face the same battle. Here in the Caribbean, it is no different. So, when Qaddafi urged his people to look towards a United States of Africa and a revolutionary Pan-African perspective, he had to face Libyans who rejected this program in favor of Libya and the entire North African region joining the Barcelona Project, a Mediterranean-European alliance, whose aim is to take North Africa out of Africa.

Prejudice against dark-skinned Africans exists all over planet earth. Even in countries where the population is almost 100% Black African, we have to contend with ‘shadism’, a hangover from colonialism and plantation culture, where Africans with lighter skin shades are held in higher esteem than Africans with darker skin shades. However, to say that “Arab Libyans” are selling “Africans” is overly simplistic and deliberately misleading. There is a hidden agenda here – beware. The objective is to ignite hostilities between so-called Arab-Africans and so-called Sub-Saharan-Africans.  There is a debate amongst Africans about who is an African. On the one hand, there are those who limit the definition of African to Black Africans in the Sub-Saharan region of the continent. On the other hand, there are those of us who believe that Africa is one, and we will resist any attempt by the imperialists to redefine and further balkanize Africa. Rather than becoming part of the European Community, North Africans promoting the Barcelona Project would be better off seeking out their African roots. This is what Muammar Qaddafi told all Libyans.

Those who today call themselves “Arabs” have a historical, ancestral and moral duty to recognize their Africanity. Those “Arabs” who live in countries on the African continent and those who live in the region outside of the continent, need to explore and reexamine their history.  The region they inhabit, erroneously named “Middle-East” and “Levant” by the European colonizers cannot be divorced from Africa. I agree with Islamic theologian and historian, Dr. Wesley Muhammad, that the area known as “Middle-East” or “Levant” is more aptly named ‘Afrabia’.

Anyone interested in more information on this and the Aryanization of Christianity and Islam, should refer to the brilliant works of Dr. Wesley Muhammad, especially his book ‘Black Arabia and the African Origins of Islam’.

The North Atlantic Tribes Organization (NATO) deeply fear this type of awakening and the unity of purpose and action it could lead to in this oil rich and wealthiest region of the world.
Minister Farrakhan said many years ago, reflecting on periods of unity in our history, “we did it before and we can do it again”. Muammar Qaddafi persistent struggle to forge a United States of Africa was starting to pay off. He was on the verge of creating an African currency that would have shifted the global economic imbalance, preparing the way for Africa to take its rightful place in the world. Laurent Gbagbo, former president of Ivory Coast, was openly supporting Qaddafi with this radical move. Gbagbo believed that those who were serious should declare a United States of Africa and the others could follow. Fear of this emerging African unity, especially between countries in the north and south of the continent, prompted France to orchestrate Gbagbo’s removal from power at the same time as the NATO led invasion of Libya. Genuine African unity, resulting in anything more than talk, will always be opposed, no matter what the cost, by the forces of White Supremacy.

As we now know, even those Libyans who opposed Qaddafi’s drive for a United States of Africa, did not support the overthrow of the Jamahiriya. It is a well-substantiated fact that the rag-tag and opportunistic conglomerate of reactionaries, including monarchists, Arab supremacists and al-Qaeda linked Islamists, such as those from the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, constituted an insignificant minority. The Libyan Revolutionary Armed Forces could have easily contained these retrograde forces, if NATO had not bombed them into power. Without the backing of France, the US, Britain, Italy, the Netherlands and their satellites, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the UAE, the so-called Libyan rebels amounted to nothing when confronted with the overwhelming support of the majority of Libyans for Muammar Qaddafi and the Al Fateh Revolution. This revolution brought dignity, stability, prosperity and liberation from foreign domination to all Libyans, from the fairest to the darkest in complexion. One thing you knew as soon as you stepped off the plane at Tripoli Airport was that the Libyans – all Libyans – were in control of their country! It was people power, seemingly chaotic and misunderstood by outsiders, but a truly participatory democracy to those who lived it and experienced it. The majority of Libyans were aware of this and supported Al Fateh.

Knowing who the so-called rebels truly are, it came as no surprise to me, that in addition to the long list of crimes against humanity attributed to these scoundrels, they would auction Black Africans as slave labor.

Following the heroic battle of Sirte, back in December 2011, in an article titled, “Demons Unleashed in Libya: NATO’s Islamists Continue Program of Ethnic and Ideological Cleansing”, I wrote about the horror that was taking place. A horror that was instigated by the Anglo-Franco-American Imperialists, under the watchful eye of the UN – all of whom are now shedding crocodile tears over the sale of African migrants in Libya. In that article, I wrote about the   “complete whiteout by the corporate media regarding all news from Libya”. I stated that, “Even the United Nations, an architect of the nation’s destruction, says 7,000 prisoners are held without trial or charge, most of them Black, many of them tortured. Any known Qaddafi loyalists who have not been able to get out of Libya have to stay underground. Death squads scour the land. Truckloads of bodies are being carted away, as the now feuding armed gangs, each with their own command structure, and none adhering to anything the Western installed NTC says, introduces the only policy they ever had – exterminate Qaddafi and all those loyal to him.”

These are NATO’s thugs.

I went on to note that, “In addition to loyalty to the Leader, and defense of their country against foreign invaders, having black skin and asserting one’s Africanity has become a crime in the new Libya. Ethnic cleansing is continuing unabated. Every day Black Africans from Libya and other parts of Africa are hunted down. Thousands have been brutally tortured and executed. Rape of Black women is a favored weapon of NATO’s Islamists. Many of the female bodies found show signs of rape, beatings and torture. Large numbers of Black Africans make up the ranks of the Green Resistance.”

I quoted one Tripoli resident as saying:

“Everyone is terrified of the NTC and their armed gangs. We have seen with our own eyes what they are capable of – they are animals. All around us people are being rounded up and imprisoned. We have no way of knowing how many have been murdered. Anyone who is associated with Qaddafi or suspected of loyalty to him is at risk. Even people who have worked for people who are known supporters of the leader have been rounded up and tortured. I personally know of many persons who were just working for people associated with the leader who have been taken away and never seen again. If you are black you are an immediate suspect – these rebels call black Libyans “abd” means slave and they are rounding them up just because they are black – it is making me sick and ashamed.”

“…What these rebels have done to their own people is disgusting – some of the acts of torture I can’t even speak about. There has been a lot of rape. I wept when I learned of what these animals did to the leader’s female bodyguards – they are not human and that is why there is so much fear. Any known Qaddafi loyalists who have not been able to get out of Libya have to stay underground. Libyans are afraid to talk to other Libyans – anyone could be an informer. It feels like the last days are upon us – Libya has been turned into a living hell.”

The imperialist media, including CNN was completely silent regarding all of these crimes against humanity, despite the fact that genocide in the form of an ethnic and ideological cleansing pogrom was unfolding right before our eyes. There was no outcry from the UN or the North Atlantic Tribes. No time or motive for outcry – having shared the spoils, these callous warlords had already moved on to their next victim – Syria.

So why now?

Could it be that the Green Resistance is gaining ground? Could it be that although they killed Qaddafi and buried him in an unmarked grave (they know why), his dangerous (for them) ideas are better known now than before?  Could it be that Muammar Qaddafi’s vision for a United States of Africa could once again re-surface?

Prior to the overthrow of the Jamahiriya, thousands of Africans travelled to Libya to work, and they prospered. Employment opportunities existed across a range of occupations, including teachers, librarians, nurses, hotel workers, chefs, mechanics, electricians, construction workers and unskilled laborers. They were able to send money home to their families. African businesses and companies also traded extensively in Libya. There was zero tolerance in the Jamahiriya for the mistreatment of Libyan or migrant workers or anyone for that matter. I know of many foreigners who received favorable judgements in employment disputes.

The destruction of this most prosperous and  just African country was led by France, who now dares to call for a special meeting of the UN Security Council to discuss the crimes committed against African migrants “by Libyans”. This is devil-speak. The same devil who, in the words of the Honorable Minister Farrakhan, “unleashed the demons” that are now committing these and other heinous crimes, is trying to sow more discord by talking about “Libyan crimes”. Where was CNN and the French government when these same gangs of demons were committing the atrocities described above?

We have known since the first day of NATO’s invasion that this was perhaps one of the most racist and atrocious crimes of the 21st century. The question that we must ask ourselves is why CNN, the French government and others who led the charge in 2011, are all of a sudden concerned about the plight of Africans in Libya. Minister Farrakhan calls it “deceptive intelligence”, and warns us that, “every time the serpent raises its head it should be de-capitated”.

Let us resist this crude attempt to divide and ruin us yet again. Let us not be distracted and misled by imperialist propaganda. Let us make sure that our enemies do not set our agenda, causing us to react to their devious attempts to pit us against each other. Let us set our own agenda for our second liberation. Crimes against Black Africans and Qaddafi loyalists, of every complexion, began in Libya in 2011, and continue to this day, unabated.  Thousands languish in detention centers, Libyans of every complexion and migrants from all over Africa. Those carrying out these crimes on the ground are the foot soldiers and thugs of the criminal masterminds of the hell that is now Libya. Arrest warrants should be issued immediately for Nicolas Sarkozy, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, David Cameron, King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud and Emir Tamin bin Hamad Al Thani to name but a few.

I end with a message to “All our Brothers and Sisters in Africa and the Diaspora” from long time Revolutionary Committee Movement member, Dr. Salem Zubeidy:

“This letter is addressed to our brothers, officials, and residents of the sub-Saharan African countries, who are characterized by dark features….

There have been many reactions and statements by African leaders, politicians, organizations and institutions following an investigation published by CNN that there are markets for the selling of Africans of dark skin in Libya …

No one stopped to question the validity of this report, and where is the market? When did this happen? Where do the (alleged) slaves go?

Then, no one asked how the channel got to the supposed market, and how was it able to video the “auction”? What is the purpose of the American channel to broadcast such a program that distorts an entire people, and accuses them of committing a heinous crime that is not accepted by a reasonable mind and not approved by any logic?

We can find explanations and justifications for a US channel harboring suspicious purposes in fueling separation and instigating seditions.

As an answer to the voices and forces that see in this an opportunity to falsify the facts, and play down the Libyan people’s accomplishments, side by side with their African brothers and sisters in the golden times of the al-Fateh Revolution, it behooves us to clarify some points:

1. Libya, which you know has been hijacked since the Fall of 2011, and its capabilities are being controlled by criminal gangs that had been enabled by means of the Western war machine of NATO, after destroying the foundations of the state.

2. Libya was the Bureau of the liberation movements, which trained, armed and equipped thousands of young people in the southern regions of Africa, Rhodesia, South Africa, Namibia, Mozambique, Zambia and Angola, and enabled them to return with their full military gear, with Libyan advisers, to fight the battles of liberation.

3. Libya offered total support to the struggle of Cabral in Guinea Bissau and Cape Verde and dispatched Libyan officers as volunteers to fight alongside him, some of whom are still living witnesses amongst us.

4. Libya presented absolute support for revolutionary and progressive regimes in African countries seeking liberation from imperialism and neo-colonialism in the Congo, Ghana, Burkina Faso, Chad, and others.

5. Libya alone has resisted the Barcelona process, which had as an objective the separation of the light-skinned in the north of the continent linking them with the Mediterranean in the so-called “Mediterranean Organization” and established the CEN-SAD in response to the Barcelona process, to prove the unity of the continent.

6. Libya fought the battle for the unification of the continent and the affirmation of its freedom, identity, and dignity through pressing for the establishment of the African Union.

7. Libya embraced African political opposition movements, supporting their programs and bringing many of their leaders to power.

8. Libya represented the ongoing battle for peace, development, and construction. It convened dozens of meetings, organized dozens of mediation affairs and reconciliations. It also invested huge sums in important projects in most countries of the continent …

We can go on in more detail, but we just want to tell you and the world that your Libyan brothers and sisters cannot accept to disassociate themselves from their continent, no matter how the enemies of Africa try.”

A full statement from Libyan People’s National Movement (LPNM) can be found at:

Libyan People’s National Movement Statement About Media Coverage of the Slave Trade in Libya

25 November 2017

Gerald A. Perreira is chairperson of the Guyanese organizations Black Consciousness Movement Guyana (BCMG) and Organization for the Victory of the People (OVP), International Secretary for ARM (African Revolutionary Movement) and executive member of the Caribbean Chapter of the Network for Defense of Humanity. He lived in Libya for many years, served in the Green March, an international battalion for the defense of the Al Fatah Revolution, and was an executive member of the World Mathaba based in Libya. He can be reached at mojadi94@gmail.com.

By rt.com
Washington is militarizing the Asia-Pacific, “pumping” weapons and kit into Japan and South Korea in an “absolutely disproportionate” response to the North Korean threat, the Russian Foreign Minister said. Tokyo won’t be calling the shots, he warned.

Sergey Lavrov, Russia’s Foreign Minister, was speaking to reporters after hosting his Japanese counterpart, Taro Kono, on Friday in Moscow. The top diplomat said Moscow deems unacceptable “attempts to pump armaments and military equipment into the [Asian] region, and to militarize it citing the North Korean nuclear threat.”

“We believe measures taken by the US and its allies in the region are absolutely disproportionate to what is required,” Lavrov added. Russia has voiced deep concern over the fact that “either Japan or South Korea is becoming a territory hosting the US global missile defense system being deployed in the region under the guise of [responding to] North Korean threat.”

He said that a similar American ballistic missile shield is being deployed in Europe, with Washington claiming it is to protect the continent from Iran’s missiles. “If you look at the map,” Lavrov stated, “you will see this US missile defense system is miraculously surrounding Russia and China.”

Disagreeing with a remark by Foreign Minister Kono, who said the US-built missile defense shield will not damage Russia-Japan ties, Lavrov said: “As we know the Americans, we quite seriously doubt they would agree to hand control over some element of this global missile defense system to someone else.”

He reiterated that Aegis Ashore system – parts of which recently went online in Romania, with more under construction in Poland – can also be equipped with Tomahawk cruise missiles – the kind of weapon whose land-based variants are prohibited under the 1987 US-Russia Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty.

Moscow does not welcome Pyongyang’s “missile and nuclear ventures that blatantly violate a UN Security Council resolution”, Lavrov told his Japanese counterpart. In the meantime, Russia as well as China “insist that other parts of the resolution, particularly the ones that call for revival of talks [with North Korea], should also be implemented.”

READ MORE: US Navy aircraft with 11 on board crashes into ocean southeast of Okinawa

The meeting comes at a time of heightened tensions in the Korean peninsula. Over the past months, Washington has been signaling that it was considering military actions against North Korea, but stopped short of delivering verbal threats. However, the US and its regional allies Japan and South Korea stepped up military exercises involving long-range bombers, carrier strike groups and amphibious forces.

In November, three US carrier strike groups held tri-carrier, multinational drills off the Korean coast in the latest show of force in the region. The USS ‘Ronald Reagan’, USS ‘Nimitz’ and USS ‘Theodore Roosevelt’ were joined by Japan’s ‘Ise’, ‘Inazuma’ and ‘Makinami’ warships, as well as close to a dozen South Korean ships. North Korea furiously condemned the maneuvers, which also involved US B-1 strategic bombers.

Next month, the US and South Korea’s militaries will be carrying out Vigilant Ace wargames, featuring six F-22 Raptor and four F-35A Lightning American stealth jets, as well as thousands of troops.

24 November 2017

Source: https://www.rt.com/news/410874-us-japan-militarization-asia/