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By Jake Johnson

“The elite ranks of our billionaire class continue to pull apart from the rest of us,” a new Institute for Policy Studies analysis finds.

8 Nov 2017 – In the United States, the 400 richest individuals now own more wealth than the bottom 64 percent of the population and the three richest own more wealth than the bottom 50 percent, while pervasive poverty means one in five households have zero or negative net worth.

“All combined, households in the bottom one percent have a combined negative net worth of $196 billion.”
— Billionaire Bonanza

Those are just several of the striking findings of Billionaire Bonanza 2017, a new report (pdf) published Wednesday by the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) that explores in detail the speed with which the U.S. is becoming “a hereditary aristocracy of wealth and power.”

“Over recent decades, an incredibly disproportionate share of America’s income and wealth gains has flowed to the top of our economic spectrum. At the tip of that top sit the nation’s richest 400 individuals, a group that Forbes magazine has been tracking annually since 1982,” write IPS’s Chuck Collins and Josh Hoxie, the report’s authors. “Americans at the other end of our economic spectrum, meanwhile, watch their wages stagnate and savings dwindle.”

Collins and Hoxie are quick to note that the vast gulf that currently exists between the rich and everyone else is not the product of some inexplicable “natural phenomenon.” It is, rather, the result of “unfair economic policies that benefit those at the top at the expense of those at  the bottom.”

Based on data recently made public by the Forbes 400 list and the Federal Reserve’s annual “Survey of Consumer Finances,” Billionaire Bonanza examines in detail the principal beneficiaries of America’s “deeply unbalanced economy”: the mega-rich.

“The wealthiest 25 individuals in the United States today own $1 trillion in combined assets,” the report notes. “These 25, a group equivalent to the active roster of a major league baseball team, hold more wealth than the bottom 56 percent of the U.S. population combined, 178 million people.”

The top 25 list features billionaires who have attained their vast riches through a variety of means, from inheritance to investing to founding a corporate giant like Amazon or Google. What unites these enormously wealthy individuals—aside from the fact that they are all white—is that they just keep getting richer, decade after decade.

Average Americans, by contrast, have not fared nearly as well: a significant percentage of the U.S. households “have no savings at all or owe more than they own,” making them residents of what Collins and Hoxie term “Underwater Nation.”

“Excluding the value of the family car, 19 percent of U.S. households have zero or negative net worth,” the report notes. “Looking at this trend through the lens of race reveals that 30 percent of black households and 27 percent of Latino households have zero or negative wealth.”

In order to get a broader sense of the size of the chasm between rich and poor in the U.S., Collins and Hoxie place the net worth of the top one percent and the bottom one percent side by side.

“The wealthiest 25 individuals in the United States today hold more wealth than the bottom 56 percent of the U.S. population combined, 178 million people.”

“All combined, households in the bottom one percent have a combined negative net worth of $196 billion,” the report finds. “For comparison, the top one percent, a category holding the exact same number of people, have positive $33.4 trillion in combined net worth.”

Even mainstream institutions like the International Monetary Fund have acknowledged that such vast disparities of wealth and income are not sustainable, politically or economically. But as Billionaire Bonanza notes, the Trump administration—with the help of the GOP-controlled Congress—appears bent on making these disparities worse by slashing taxes for the wealthy while gutting programs that primarily benefit low-income and middle class Americans.

So the first priority, Collins and Hoxie note, is to “reject tax and other federal policies that will add oil to the inequality fire.”

In terms of going on the offensive once the “do no harm” principle is observed, the report makes several suggestions, including:

•  Enacting higher marginal tax rates on individuals earning above $250,000 and $1 million;

• “Addressing the problem of hidden wealth,” which often leads to an underestimation of the level of wealth inequality;

• Instituting a tax on Wall Street financial transactions, which could bring in an estimated $350 billion in federal revenue over a decade;

• Eliminate the carried interest loophole, which allows hedge fund managers to “reclassify wage income as capital income” and pay less in taxes as a result; and

• Bolstering, rather than eliminating, the estate tax, which only affects a tiny number families.

As “the elite ranks of our billionaire class continue to pull apart from the rest of us,” the report notes, many Americans—including students saddled with loan debt, workers suffering from stagnant wages, and families who have seen “their wealth and savings evaporate”—are revolting against the system that allowed the richest to accumulate such wealth at the expense of so many.

“A century ago, a similar anti-inequality upsurge took on America’s vastly unequal distribution of income and wealth and, over the course of little more than a generation, fashioned a much more equal America,” Collins and Hoxie conclude. “We can do the same.”

Source: https://www.transcend.org/tms/2017/11/three-richest-americans-now-own-more-wealth-than-bottom-half-of-us-combined-report/

By Robert Fisk

When Saad Hariri’s jet touched down at Riyadh on the evening of 3 November, the first thing he saw was a group of Saudi policemen surrounding the plane. When they came aboard, they confiscated his mobile phone and those of his bodyguards. Thus was Lebanon’s prime minister silenced.

It was a dramatic moment in tune with the soap-box drama played out across Saudi Arabia this past week: the house arrest of 11 princes – including the immensely wealthy Alwaleed bin Talal – and four ministers and scores of other former government lackeys, not to mention the freezing of up to 1,700 bank accounts. Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman’s “Night of the Long Knives” did indeed begin at night, only hours after Hariri’s arrival in Riyadh. So what on earth is the crown prince up to?

Put bluntly, he is clawing down all his rivals and – so the Lebanese fear – trying to destroy the government in Beirut, force the Shia Hezbollah out of the cabinet and restart a civil war in Lebanon. It won’t work, for the Lebanese – while not as rich – are a lot smarter than the Saudis. Every political group in the country, including Hezbollah, are demanding one thing only: Hariri must come back. As for Saudi Arabia, those who said that the Arab revolution will one day reach Riyadh – not with a minority Shia rising, but with a war inside the Sunni Wahhabi royal family – are watching the events of the past week with both shock and awe.

But back to Hariri. On Friday 3 November, he was in a cabinet meeting in Beirut. Then he received a call, asking him to see King Salman of Saudi Arabia. Hariri, who like his assassinated father Rafiq, holds Saudi as well as Lebanese citizenship, set off at once. You do not turn down a king, even if you saw him a few days’ earlier, as Hariri had. And especially when the kingdom owes Hariri’s “Oger” company as much as $9bn, for such is the commonly rumoured state of affairs in what we now call “cash-strapped Saudi Arabia”.

But more extraordinary matters were to come. Out of the blue and to the total shock of Lebanese ministers, Hariri, reading from a written text, announced on Saturday on the Arabia television channel – readers can guess which Gulf kingdom owns it – that he was resigning as prime minister of Lebanon. There were threats against his life, he said – though this was news to the security services in Beirut – and Hezbollah should be disarmed and wherever Iran interfered in the Middle East, there was chaos. Quite apart from the fact that Hezbollah cannot be disarmed without another civil war – is the Lebanese army supposed to attack them when Shia are the largest minority in the country (many of them in the army)? These were not words that Hariri had ever used before. They were not, in other words, written by him. As one who knows him well said this week, “this was not him speaking”. In other words, the Saudis had ordered the prime minister of Lebanon to resign and to read his own departure out loud from Riyadh.

I should add, of course, that Hariri’s wife and family are in Riyadh, so even if he did return to Beirut, there would be hostages left behind. Thus after a week of this outrageous political farce, there is even talk in Beirut of asking Saad Hariri’s elder brother Bahaa to take his seat in the cabinet. But what of Saad himself? Callers have reached him at his Riyadh home, but he speaks only a few words. “He says ‘I will come back’ or ‘I’m fine’, that’s all, only those words, which is very unlike him,” says one who must know. And what if Hariri did come back? Would he claim that his resignation had been forced upon him? Dare the Saudis risk this?

He certainly did not anticipate what happened to him. Indeed, Hariri had scheduled meetings in Beirut on the following Monday – with the IMF, the World Bank and a series of discussions on water quality improvement; not exactly the action of a man who planned to resign his premiership. However, the words he read out – scripted for him – are entirely in line with the speeches of Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman and with the insane President of the United States who speaks of Iran with the same anger, as does the American Defence Secretary.

Of course, the real story is just what is going on in Saudi Arabia itself, for the crown prince has broken forever the great compromise that exists in the kingdom: between the royal family and the clergy, and between the tribes. This was always the bedrock upon which the country stood or fell. And Mohamed bin Salman has now broken this apart. He is liquidating his enemies – the arrests, needless to say, are supposedly part of an “anti-corruption drive”, a device which Arab dictators have always used when destroying their political opponents.

There will be no complaints from Washington or London, whose desire to share in the divvying up of Saudi Aramco (another of the crown prince’s projects) will smother any thoughts of protest or warning. And given the smarmy reporting of the Crown Prince’s recent speeches in the New York Times, I have my suspicions that even this elderly journalistic organ will be comparatively unworried by the Saudi coup d’etat. For that is what it is. He unseated the interior minister earlier this year and now Mohamed bin Salman is getting rid of his opponents’ financial power.

But ruthless men can also be humble. Hariri was allowed to see the King – the original reason for which he believed he was travelling to Riyadh – and even paid a visit to the crown prince of the United Arab Emirates this week, an ally-nation of the Saudis who would prevent him jumping on a flight to Beirut. But why on earth would Hariri want to go to the Emirates? To prove that he was still free to travel when he cannot even return to the country which he is supposed to be ruling?

Lebanon is always going through the greatest crisis since its last greatest crisis. But this time, it’s for real.

Source: http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/lebanon-prime-minister-saad-hariri-resignation-not-all-seems-quits-resigns-surprise-saudi-arabia-a8045636.html

SAJFP MEDIA STATEMENT

We as Jewish South Africans reject the ANC’s International Relations Sub Committee meeting with Israeli politician Tzachi Hanegbi.

Hanegbi has a history of violence. As president of his student union in 1980, he received a six-month suspended sentence for leading an attack on Palestinian students, he has also served in the Israeli Defense Force (that we need not remind you is guilty of human rights abuses and crimes against the Palestinians). In addition, in July this year, through a despicable Facebook post, Hanegbi threatened Palestinians with a further round of ethnic cleansing.

Furthermore, Hanegbi was part of a group of Israeli politicians who in January this year backed a racist anti-African law. Hanegbi voted in favor of the “Prevention of Infiltration Law and Ensuring the Exit of Infiltrators from Israel (Legislative Amendments and Temporary Provisions) (Amendment), 5767 – 2016” which proposed the seizing of wages from non-Jewish African refugees to coerce them to self-deport. Israeli racism against Africans is shared and even encouraged by leading Israeli politicians including the likes of Hanegbi as well as Israeli Prime Minster, Benjamin Netanyahu, who has said that Africans in Israel “threaten the social fabric of society.” Israel’s Minister of Interior, Eli Yishai, has said that African immigrants “think the country doesn’t belong to us, the white man.” And the Israeli Minister of Culture and Sport, Miri Regev, has publicly compared Africans to “a cancer”. It was also revealed in 2013 that Israel was forcing African women to take birth control injections without their consent.

We appreciate that the Hanegbi/ANC meeting was not an official government to government meeting, however, Israel has already issued a statement misconstruing the facts – suggesting that this was an inter-ministerial meeting. Hanegbi himself has tweeted that he was “in the first ministerial meetings between @Israel and @GovernmentZA in 5 years”. The ANC has not rejected this Israeli PR strongly or forcefully enough. And, the larger question remains, why would the ANC have held such a meeting in the first place?  How would the ANC view a meeting during the 1970s of, for example, an ally, Julius Nyerere’s Tanzania African National Union (TANU), meeting with a Minister from Apartheid South Africa? The ANC and the larger liberation movement would rightfully have condemned such moves and likewise Palestinians – as well as human rights supporting Jewish South Africans and our progressive Jewish Israelis allies also condemn this.

SAJFP reaffirms our support for the ANC National Policy Conference’s recommendation to downgrade the South African Embassy in Tel Aviv. We hope that the ANC’s International Relations Sub-Committee is not attempting to derail this recommendation from its branches. The downgrade is a concrete step beyond rhetoric. Israel must be held accountable for its crimes against the Palestinian people and a clear message must be sent that there are no normal relations with an abnormal regime.

We would like to again draw attention to the letter that a group of progressive Jewish Israelis sent to the ANC also supporting the call for a downgrade of relations and support of the BDS boycott of Israel. In their letter to the ANC, our Israeli friends explained that:

“After many years of trying to change our society from within, we have come to the conclusion that an international campaign, such as the boycott against apartheid South Africa, is necessary to change the situation here. We believe that the time has come for further measures. Governments including the South African government should be downgrading diplomatic relations and their embassies in Israel, to send a clear message to Israel that its violations of international law are unacceptable. Ultimately we call on the ANC to strengthen its support for the BDS movement and Palestinian struggle.”

We humbly submit that the ANC should be taking its direction from the oppressed, from the Palestinians, who have called for the downgrade, as well as progressive Israelis who are working towards a just peace in Israel-Palestine and who have also called for the downgrade of the Embassy. The ANC should not be taking its direction from the oppressor – from the Israeli government!

For more information please contact:
Allan Horwitz:  0825128188

*South African Jews for a Free Palestine (SAJFP) is an organisation of South African Jews wishing to see a just resolution to the conflict in Historic Palestine. We strongly believe in the Jewish concept of Tikkun Olam, “Repairing the World” which embodies social action and the pursuit of social justice. Historically Jews have been involved struggles to achieve social justice and we are proud to continue this tradition. Furthermore, as Jews, we feel obliged to speak out against injustice purportedly carried out in our name.

08 November 2017

By Jordan Shilton

Hot on the heels of purging his main rivals for the Saudi throne, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has dramatically ratcheted up tensions in the Middle East, accusing Iran of an “act of war.” This makes clear that the consolidation of power in the hands of the most hardline, anti-Iranian faction of the Saudi royal family threatens to trigger a catastrophic regional conflict across the war-ravaged Middle East.

Bin Salman’s allegation was made in the wake of the firing of a missile from Yemen into Saudi Arabia, which was intercepted and destroyed by the Saudi Air Force. Riyadh has been waging a bloody war since 2015 against the Houthi rebels in Yemen.

Bin Salman seized on the incident to provocatively threaten a military conflict with Tehran. “The involvement of Iran in supplying missiles to the Houthis is a direct military aggression by the Iranian regime,” he said Tuesday, “and may be considered an act of war against the Kingdom.”

Fanning the flames of conflict between the two regional competitors and strengthening bin Salman’s hand in his anti-Iran policy, US President Donald Trump denounced Iran Monday, blaming it, without any evidence, for being behind the missile launch. The head of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards responded to Trump’s incendiary allegation by denying Iranian responsibility.

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif responded angrily via Twitter, criticising Riyadh for carrying out “wars of aggression, regional bullying, destabilising behaviour and risky provocations.” Yet, he added, Saudi Arabia “blames Iran for the consequences.”

Bin Salman’s war threats followed the dramatic arrest of 11 princes and 38 government ministers and former ministers last weekend. The crackdown, carried out by bin Salman in conjunction with his father, the aging and ailing King Salman, exposed the deepening crisis confronting the regime in Riyadh and the extremely unstable situation throughout the Middle East.

The 32-year-old bin Salman was named as crown prince in June by his father after the arrest of former Crown Prince Mohammed bin Naif. Bin Salman was appointed Saturday by King Salman to head up an anti-corruption body, and a few hours later he launched the latest wave of detentions under the self-serving pretext of clamping down on corruption.

The transparent aim was to strengthen Salman’s branch of the royal family and ensure a smooth succession to bin Salman when the 81-year-old king abdicates or dies. Among the most high profile figures arrested were Prince Miteb bin Abdullah, the son of the former King Abdullah and head of the National Guard, and Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, a billionaire with substantial investments in numerous European and US companies.

The crown prince’s declared determination to confront growing Iranian influence throughout the region is exacerbating the already tense conflicts that have been enflamed over the course of more than a quarter century of uninterrupted wars waged by US imperialism. The first Gulf War of 1991, the invasion of Iraq in 2003, the bombardment of Libya in 2011 and the ongoing war in Syria and Iraq have claimed the lives of millions, forced millions more from their homes and upended the regional balance of forces.

Everything suggests that Saudi Arabia and its US backer are taking coordinated steps to challenge Iran more forcefully. The entire US ruling elite is deeply troubled by Iran’s growing influence in the Middle East and the fact that, notwithstanding the expenditure of vast amounts of blood and treasure, Washington has proven incapable of bringing the world’s most important oil-exporting region under its control. Instead, the US is losing ground to Russia and increasingly China, which is emerging as an economic player.

The same day as bin Salman ordered the arrest of his rivals, Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri announced his surprise resignation while in the Saudi capital. Hariri, a Sunni leader who ruled in cooperation with the Shiite and Iranian-aligned Hezbollah, appears to have been forced out by Riyadh to create the conditions for a more direct confrontation with Hezbollah. In neighbouring Israel, which is preparing for war with Hezbollah, the government of Binyamin Netanyahu has encouraged the Saudis in their hardline approach to Iran. Tel Aviv has also stepped up its air strikes in the Syrian conflict, aiming to contain Iranian influence and stop weapons shipments to Hezbollah.

Prince Salman’s purge was explicitly endorsed by Trump, who stated during his ongoing Asia trip that it was a good thing for the crown prince to take action against corruption and that he has “great confidence” in him.

Trump laid the groundwork for the development of an anti-Iranian Sunni alliance in the Middle East during a trip to Riyadh in May. In the course of a provocative speech, he lambasted Tehran as the region’s main sponsor of terrorism. Last month, Trump refused to certify Iran’s compliance with the 2015 nuclear accord negotiated under the Obama administration, setting the stage for a further ratcheting up of tensions with Tehran and a direct military conflict involving the United States.

Predictably, the US media has generally responded positively to bin Salman’s crackdown on his domestic opponents. The only expressions of concern came from those worried that bin Salman’s aggressive clampdown could discredit and weaken the Saudi monarchy. Bruce Riedel, a 30-year CIA veteran and director of the Brookings Intelligence Project, told al-Jazeera, “There will be much discontent behind the scenes in the family, and the Kingdom is headed for instability.”

Riyadh, which has served as a key prop of Washington in the Middle East since 1945, is growing increasingly concerned about the undermining of its geopolitical position. Washington’s failure to launch a direct intervention to topple the Assad regime, its decision to conclude the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran and its refusal to grant its unreserved support to Riyadh’s economic and diplomatic blockade of Qatar earlier this year have intensified the Saudi ruling establishment’s crisis.

The Saudi ruling elite is responding to the thwarting of its ambitions to become the regional hegemon by lashing out ever more recklessly and aggressively. The bloody war in Yemen conducted by Riyadh since 2015 against the Houthi rebels, has killed tens of thousands of civilians and produced a devastating humanitarian disaster. The Saudis have failed to achieve their strategic ambitions and have instead been increasingly isolated, with only limited support coming from the Gulf states for the conflict.

The blockade against Qatar, which was motivated by the Saudis’ frustration at Doha’s burgeoning ties with Tehran, especially in the energy sector, has also failed to produce the desired outcome, with only the UAE, Bahrain and Egypt joining the Saudi offensive. Kuwait and Oman have remained neutral, effectively crippling the Saudi-led Gulf Cooperation Council.

The strengthening of Assad in Damascus, with the aid of Russia and Iran, has enabled Tehran to plan the establishment of a land corridor running through Syria to Lebanon and the Mediterranean coast, which would substantially enhance Iranian influence across the entire region at the expense of Riyadh, Tel Aviv and Washington.

Saudi Arabia’s domestic economic and social crisis is yet another factor contributing to the explosive situation. The royal family sits atop a social powder keg, with its vast wealth and that of the business elite offering a glaring contrast to the poverty experienced by wide sections of the kingdom’s population. These social tensions have worsened due to the sharp decline in oil prices since 2014, which has roiled the Saudi economy, compelled the adoption of austerity measures and increased dissatisfaction with the fabulous levels of wealth enjoyed by the country’s rulers. Added to this is Saudi Arabia’s overwhelmingly young population, two-thirds of which is under the age of 30.

It is clear to see why the House of Saud is deeply concerned about maintaining its brutal dictatorial rule. Ever since the Egyptian and Tunisian revolutions of 2011, the greatest fear in Saudi ruling circles has been the emergence of a popular movement in opposition to the existing set-up, something which it has sought to prevent by means of ruthless repression.

The rampant levels of social inequality and increased discrediting of the ruling elite will only encourage the Saudi rulers to act with even greater aggression throughout the region. Riyadh’s twin aims are to divert social tensions outwards against external enemies, and to strengthen the unstable monarchical regime.

Originally published in WSWS.org

Source: http://www.countercurrents.org/2017/11/08/saudi-crown-prince-charges-iran-with-act-of-war/

By teleSUR

1 Nov 2017 – The U.N. General Assembly has voted 191 to 2 for the lifting of the U.S. blockade on Cuba as the United States and Israel were the only countries to vote against the resolution.

Delegate after delegate called for the end of the blockade, highlighting the progressive and positive role Cuba plays in the international community.

Speaking at the General Assembly, titled, “Necessity of ending the economic, commercial and financial embargo imposed by the United States of America against Cuba,” the representative of African states called the hardline stance taken by the current U.S. administration against Cuba as being “a step backward” that hampers Cuba’s sustainable development.

He recalled Cuba’s proud history on the African continent, actively participating in liberation struggles and its ongoing contribution to improving healthcare.

“The people of Africa will continue to remember this contribution,” he said, adding that Cuba has long been a responsible member of the international community.

Cuba’s Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez approached the podium to an abundance of applause. He responded to U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley’s comments by stating that the United States has no moral ground to stand on in its condemnation of the Caribbean island due to its “flagrant violation of human rights,” citing the arrest and deportation of minors and undocumented immigrants; the killing of African-Americans by U.S. police; the lack of guarantees for education and healthcare and restrictions on union organization; and the refusal of U.S. companies to sell life-saving medical supplies to Cuban healthcare services.

The Venezuelan representative speaking on behalf of the Non-Aligned Movement expressed full opposition to the promulgation of the economic, commercial and financial blockade against Cuba, which has lasted for over 55 years. He noted that the blockade is not only a contravention of international law, it is also a “criminal act” perpetrated by the most powerful government in the world to prevent a small Caribbean island from creating its own society.

The diplomat added that the blockade violates Cuba’s right to interact with the international community, due to its extra-territorial reach in the forms of fines and restrictions on people and businesses that travel to and engage with Cuba.

After criticizing member states and their representatives for condemning the U.S. economic blockade and calling the annual vote “political theater,” Haley directed her speech to the Cuban people. In doing so, she declared that her government, though standing alone in its promulgation of the 55-year-old blockade, will express solidarity with all Cubans by voting in favor of maintaining it.

The representative of the Plurinational State of Bolivia responded to Haley’s speech by reminding U.N. members of Cuba’s contribution to humanity. He quoted Nelson Mandela who stated that Cuba’s role in the Angolan liberation struggle, which included the “decisive defeat of the aggressive apartheid forces destroyed the myth of the invincibility of the white oppressor.” Hence, Cuba has been, and continues to be, at the “service of others,” he said.

Sacha Sergio Llorenty Soliz emphasized that while the United States wants to teach everybody lessons on democracy and human rights, it turns its back on international law, believing that multilateralism is a farse and continues to promote torture and turns Guantanamo base into an illegal prison.

“They want us to believe that they are exceptional” despite harboring governments that run counter to the aspiration of all peoples who want to see an end to the 55-year-old economic blockade against Cuba.

Rodriguez noted that every single Cuban family and social service has been adversely affected by the blockade.

“Haley speaks on behalf of an empire,” Rodriguez emphasized, one that promotes global insecurity, tramples upon international law and the U.N. Charter, “which she cynically invoked.”

He noted that Haley at least recognized “the total isolation of the United States” in its continued support of the economic blockade, disregarding the “weight of truth” expressed by the international community.

Rodriguez reminded U.N. member states and representatives that the current U.S. administration “lost the popular vote” and its attempt at undermining the Cuban Revolution “is doomed to failure.”

He quoted Cuban President Raul Castro when asserting that the U.S. and Cuba can coexist recognizing their difference, but it should not be expected that in order to do this, Cuba would yield to U.S. demands or accept any preconditions. He reiterated that the Cuban people will never “renounce its purpose” of building a socialist, sovereign, sustainable country.

In closing, Rodriguez thanked the majority of the people of the United States for supporting the lifting of the blockade.

The United States vote follows an Oct. 3 decision to expel 15 Cuban diplomats following allegations of “sonic attacks” on U.S. diplomatic staff stationed in the U.S. embassy in Havana, which the Cuban government has investigated and denied.

Since 1992, successive administrations have voted “no” on the annual resolution before the general assembly. Former U.S. President Barack Obama broke with this predictability by abstaining from the vote in 2016 as part of a new strategy of thawing relations with the socialist country.

Trump has rebuked his predecessor’s decision to open relations with Cuba. The administration has planned to re-impose strict travel restrictions for U.S. citizens to the island nation and close holes in the blockade that made it possible for investment in certain areas of the Cuban economy, including agriculture, technology, and tourism.

The annual resolution has been all but universally supported by the 193-member body of the general assembly. Only two countries have consistently voted against the resolution in recent years — the U.S. and Israel.

Go to Original – telesurtv.net

Source: https://www.transcend.org/tms/2017/11/world-votes-to-lift-blockade-on-cuba-as-us-israel-vote-no/

By Bill Van Auken

The resignation of Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri, announced Saturday in Riyadh over Saudi state media, marks a further escalation of the US, Saudi and Israeli preparations for military confrontation with Iran.

After becoming prime minister for a second time in 2016—he previously held the office from 2009 to 2011—Hariri, the leader of the Lebanese Sunni Future Movement party, headed a so-called national unity government in which the Iranian-backed and Shia-dominated Hezbollah movement played a prominent role.

In his resignation speech, which he read out over the Saudi Al-Arabiya television, Hariri issued a virulent denunciation of both Hezbollah and Iran, rhetoric that echoed that of the Saudi monarchy. “Wherever Iran is found, we find disputes and war,” he asserted, adding that “we will cut any hand that causes harm in our region.”

“I point very clearly to Iran which spreads destruction and strife wherever it is, and witness to that its interventions in the internal matters of the Arab countries, in Lebanon and Syria and Bahrain and Yemen,” Hariri said.

Hariri’s sudden and unexpected resignation came on the same day that Riyadh was rocked by the summary arrests of close to a dozen Saudi princes and dozens of current and former state ministers on charges of corruption. Among those arrested—and who are being detained in the Ritz-Carlton Hotel rather than any Saudi jail—is Prince Miteb bin Abdullah, the son of the late King Abdullah and head of the National Guard. Also detained was the billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, whose Kingdom Holding company has extensive interests in the US and Europe.

Corruption is endemic to the Saudi monarchical system, providing a convenient pretext for the arrests. Their real purpose is to consolidate the power of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who heads up the “anti-corruption” campaign, and ensure his succession to the throne.

The arrests may also, however, have a direct connection to Hariri’s resignation. The Saudi royal family has been roiled in recent months by divisions over the protracted and bloody US-backed war in Yemen, with which Bin Salman is most closely identified. The arrests may be aimed at quelling any dissent in relation to both the war and the continuing escalation of Riyadh’s anti-Iranian crusade, which is being carried out in alliance with both Washington and Tel Aviv.

There is every indication that Hariri’s resignation was staged at the behest of and in direct collaboration with the Saudi regime.

A key role in the affair has been played by the Saudi Minister of State for Persian Gulf Affairs Thamer al-Sabhan, who last Sunday had publicly taken Hariri’s government to task for its “silence” on Hezbollah’s “war” against the Persian Gulf monarchy. He demanded that Hezbollah be “confronted by force,” adding, “All of those who work and cooperate with it politically, economically and through the media should be punished,” a category that clearly would include Hariri.

Hezbollah has increasingly drawn the ire of the Saudi regime for the role it has played in helping the government of Bashar al-Assad defeat the collection of Al Qaeda-linked Islamist “rebels” who laid waste to Syria with the aid of billions of dollars in arms and money provided by Riyadh and the other Sunni Gulf oil sheikdoms in collaboration with the CIA.

The Shia-based movement, which emerged in response to the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon, succeeded in driving the US out of Lebanon in 1983 with the bombing of the US Marine barracks in Beirut, and forced Israel to end its occupation of southern Lebanon in 2000. Again in 2006, it fought the Israeli military to a standstill in a month-long war.

While Hezbollah is a bourgeois movement, which upholds the interests of Lebanese Shia capitalists and merchants, its resistance to Israel and its populist appeals to the “oppressed” have won it support beyond its Shia base.

Two days after Sabhan’s implicit denunciation of his collaboration with Hezbollah, Hariri flew to Saudi Arabia, where his family’s multi-billion-dollar construction firm is based. He holds dual Lebanese-Saudi citizenship. There, he met with both Crown Prince Bin Salman and Al-Sabhan.

Afterwards, he went on Twitter to report his “extended meeting with his dear friend Sabhan,” while Sabhan himself tweeted that they had discussed “many issues concerning the well-being of Lebanon” and that “God willing, what is coming is better.”

What was coming, of course, was Hariri’s resignation, throwing Lebanon’s fragile sectarian-based political system into crisis and raising the specter of the country plunging once again into civil war.

Hariri, in explaining his resignation and his presence in the Saudi capital, claimed that there were threats to his life and that he feared a return to the environment in which his father was killed in 2005. The Saudi media amplified on this theme, claiming that there had been a botched assassination attempt on the Lebanese prime minister. Lebanese security forces roundly denied the existence of any such attempt or existing plots. Lebanese President Michel Aoun said he would not accept Hariri’s resignation until he returned to Beirut.

Hariri, while having long bitterly opposed Hezbollah, blaming the movement for the assassination of his father, the former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in 2005, had backed the selection of Hezbollah’s ally Aoun for president, and accepted the nomination to form a government together with the powerful Shia-dominated movement in what was seen as a break in Lebanon’s protracted political impasse. He had also previously praised Hezbollah for its role in driving Al Qaeda-linked militias from the Syrian-Lebanese border.

What has changed is the ratcheting up of the campaign against Iran waged by Washington in alliance with both Saudi Arabia and Israel. The Trump administration has signaled its willingness to upend the Iranian nuclear agreement, which would place it on path to war with Tehran, while the US Congress last month enacted a new series of sanctions against Hezbollah, including the placing of multimillion-dollar bounties on the heads of two of its officials.

Lebanon, which suffered a civil war that bled the country from 1975 to 1989, is threatened with being turned into a field of battle in the drive by US imperialism to destroy Iran as an impediment to establishing hegemony over the oil-rich Middle East. To this end, the US administration has deliberately sought to fan the flames of sectarian tensions between Sunni and Shia Muslims, with potentially catastrophic implications for Lebanon.

The Israeli regime has made no attempt to conceal its glee over Hariri’s actions. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hailed the Lebanese prime minister’s resignation and statements in Riyadh as “a wake-up call for the international community to act against Iranian aggression.”

The country’s thuggish Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman went on Twitter to write: “Lebanon=Hezbollah. Hezbollah=Iran. Lebanon=Iran. Iran is dangerous to the world. Saad Hariri has proved that today. Period.”

The Jerusalem Post was even more explicit, stating, “Now, it seems that Hariri has given Israel more legitimacy for a full-scale and uncompromising campaign against Iran and Lebanon, not only Hezbollah, should a war in the north break out.”

It approvingly quoted Yoav Gallant, a member of the security cabinet and former Israeli general, who vowed that should war begin, “Israel will bring Lebanon back to the stone age.”

Source: http://www.countercurrents.org/2017/11/06/lebanese-crisis-bound-up-with-war-drive-against-iran/

By Nick Turse

25 Oct 2017 – U.S. troops are now conducting 3,500 exercises, programs, and engagements per year, an average of nearly 10 missions per day, on the African continent, according to the U.S. military’s top commander for Africa, General Thomas Waldhauser. The latest numbers, which the Pentagon confirmed to VICE News, represent a dramatic increase in U.S. military activity throughout Africa in the past decade, and the latest signal of America’s deepening and complicated ties on the continent.

With the White House and the Pentagon facing questions about an Oct. 4 ambush in Niger in which four U.S. Special Forces soldiers were killed, Secretary of Defense James Mattis reportedly indicated to two senior members of the Senate Armed Services Committee Friday that these numbers are only likely to increase as the U.S. military shifts even greater attention to counterterrorism in Africa.

“The huge increase in U.S. military missions in Africa over the past few years represents nothing less than a shadow war being waged on the continent.”

“You’re going to see more actions in Africa, not less,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham after the briefing. “You’re going to see more aggression by the United States toward our enemies, not less; you’re going to have decisions being made not in the White House but out in the field.”

But the U.S. military has already seen significant action in Africa, where its growth has been sudden and explosive. When U.S. Africa Command, the umbrella organization for U.S. military operations on the continent, first became operational in 2008, it inherited 172 missions, activities, programs, and exercises from other combatant commands. Five years in, that number shot up to 546.

Today’s figure of 3,500 marks an astounding 1,900 percent increase since the command was activated less than a decade ago, and suggests a major expansion of U.S. military activities on the African continent. (VICE News requested 2016 numbers, but AFRICOM failed to answer phone calls or respond to email requests.)

“The huge increase in U.S. military missions in Africa over the past few years represents nothing less than a shadow war being waged on the continent,” said William Hartung, the director of the Arms and Security Project at the Center for International Policy.

These developments stand in stark contrast to early assurances that AFRICOM’s efforts would be focused on diplomacy and aid. In the opening days of the command, the assistant secretary of defense for African affairs, Theresa Whelan, said it would not “reflect a U.S. intent to engage kinetically in Africa.” AFRICOM, she said, was not “about fighting wars.”

But an increasing number of AFRICOM’s missions have the appearance of just that. The command has launched 500 airstrikes in Libya in the last year alone, and U.S. forces have regularly carried out drone attacks and commando raids in Somalia.

“When push comes to shove training missions can easily cross the line into combat operations.”

“This military-heavy policy,” said Hartung, “risks drawing the United States more deeply into local and regional conflicts in Africa and generating a backlash that could actually aid terrorist organizations in their recruitment.”

Read more: The U.S. is waging a massive shadow war in Africa, exclusive documents reveal

Officially, the Pentagon says the 3,500 missions consist primarily of training and advisory efforts to build the “defense capabilities” of local partner forces, including the use of counterterrorism assistance efforts such as the Combating Terrorism Fellowship Program and Trans-Sahara Counterterrorism Partnership, according to spokesperson Maj. Audricia Harris. (Harris also confirmed that Waldhauser’s figures were accurate).

These programs are aimed at a plethora of terror groups that have sprung up across the continent since the 2000s, including 19 “active militant Islamist groups,”  — such as al Shabaab in Somalia, Boko Haram in the Lake Chad Basin region, and the Islamic State group in the Greater Sahara —  in AFRICOM’s area of operations, according to the Pentagon’s Africa Center for Strategic Studies. The ultimate aim, according to AFRICOM, is to defeat “transnational threats in order to advance U.S. national interests and promote regional security, stability, and prosperity.”

But AFRICOM uses extremely broad language to describe training missions, including those in which troops are killed in action. Missions carried out under the rubric of “security assistance,” “security cooperation,” “train-and-equip” or “building partner capacity” — can be indistinguishable from actual combat.

“We’ve seen a significant increase in U.S. military training to the African continent in recent years.”

“There is a notion,, in some circles at least, that training missions are ‘safe,’ and that U.S. troops are not exposed to the same level of risk as if they were engaged in direct combat,” said Hartung. “There may be an element of truth in this, but when push comes to shove, training missions can easily cross the line into combat operations.”

In May, for example, a Navy SEAL was killed by al Shabaab militants in Somalia while “assisting partner forces,” according to AFRICOM. Earlier this month, four Special Forces soldiers were killed in an ambush while providing “advice and assistance” to local forces in Niger.

U.S. troop deaths or scandals are frequently the only mechanism by which Americans come to know about military deployments to African nations like Niger, which according to Pentagon spokesperson Maj. Audricia Harris is home to more than 800 U.S. military personnel.

But Niger is hardly exceptional. Every day, 5,000 to 6,000 U.S. personnel are deployed across the African continent.

These near-constant training exercises, missions, and activities with troops from Benin and Burkina Faso, Cameroon and Chad, Gabon and Guinea Bissau, not to mention Mali, Nigeria, Senegal, the Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Togo and Uganda, among other nations, remain largely unknown to most Americans. So is the string of U.S. bases and outposts stretching from Djibouti to Tunisia, Cameroon to Kenya, Ghana to Niger.

“We’ve seen a significant increase in U.S. military training to the African continent in recent years,” Colby Goodman, the director of the Security Assistance Monitor, which tracks U.S. spending on foreign militaries, told VICE News. The number of African troops trained by U.S. military personnel jumped 89 percent, Goodman notes, from 22,825 trained in 2014 to at least 42,815 individuals a year later.

“I think we run the risk of working ourselves in more deeply — building dependence, rather than independence.”

Even before Mattis informed Sen. Graham and Sen. John McCain, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, there were indications that the counterterror missions would expand. This month, Donald Yamamoto, the acting assistant secretary of state for African Affairs, told the House Foreign Affairs Committee that the Trump administration’s proposed $5.2 billion African aid budget would address “key priorities” such as “assist[ing] partner nations to defeat ISIS branches and affiliates and other terrorist organization threats and networks in Mali and the Sahel, Nigeria and the Lake Chad Basin, Somalia and the Horn of Africa, and elsewhere.”

Recently, the acting U.S. Army Africa commander, Brig. Gen. Gene LeBoeuf, noted that so-called “theater security cooperation” activities — missions designed to “build relationships that promote specified U.S. interests” — are set to rise from 186 this year to 271 in 2018, with about 80 percent taking place in the Lake Chad Basin nations of Cameroon, Chad, Nigeria, and Niger. The recent attack on U.S. forces in Niger, believed to have been carried out by the Mali-based Islamic State in the Greater Sahara, suggest these missions pose increasing risks.

Experts warn this surge in U.S. military activities lacks strategic planning, and that providing training and equipment to such poor nations with fragile governments can result in greater instability.

“First, it’s very easy for our activities to overwhelm a country’s absorptive capacity for aid, which tends to result in elevated levels of corruption,” said Rebecca Zimmerman, a national security and foreign policy researcher at the RAND Corporation. “Next, by disproportionately funding the military and security apparatuses of these governments, we run the risk of militarizing or securitizing the country — elevating the militaries to a place of increased power relative to civilian government.”

Zimmerman warned this is particularly risky “in countries where there is inadequate civilian control of the military.” In 2012, for example, a U.S.-trained Army captain, Amadou Sanogo, overthrew Mali’s elected government. Two years later, Lt. Col. Isaac Zida, another U.S.-trained officer, seized power in Burkina Faso.

“With all of this,” Zimmerman said, “I think we run the risk of working ourselves in more deeply — building dependence rather than independence — which will make it hard for our forces to eventually conclude their mission.”

Spokespersons for Africa Command would not comment about the missions or such concerns, ignoring multiple emails from, and even hanging up on, this reporter.

“The U.S. government would do well to do serious risk assessments about its military activities in Africa,” Goodman warned. “These risk assessments must include the risks of U.S. military activities contributing to terrorist recruitment, especially in the Sahel, through increased U.S. military presence and by supporting corrupt military forces.”

Hartung shared similar concerns and said it was critical for the public to stay informed of the military’s often quiet expansion. “Congress and the public need to pay more attention to far-flung U.S. military train-and-equip missions, both in Africa and globally. They can too often sow the seeds of greater U.S. military involvement,” he said.

Nick Turse is an award-winning investigative journalist and a contributing writer for The Intercept, reporting on national security and foreign policy.

Source: https://www.transcend.org/tms/2017/10/the-us-military-is-conducting-secret-missions-all-over-africa/

By Dr Salim Nazzal

I believe that there is no political declaration throughout history that has had devastating effects such as the Balfour Declaration. The Balfour Declaration has ignited wars lasting 100 years in addition that it has posed a serious to the entire globe. The evidence is that during the 1973 Arab-Israeli war, The USA and the Soviet Union put their Nuclear weapons on alert. Also it   was recently revealed that Israel in the June war with Arabs in 1967   planned to blow up a nuclear bomb in the Sinai desert as a first warning, if the Egyptian forces were superior. Moreover, we have heard more than once that Israeli officials repeated words like that they are able to return the area to the Stone Age.

An important issue must be clarified in this regard

First, when Balfour gave his deadly promise, there was no persecution of the Jews in Europe because the promise came in 1917.

The second is that if there is persecution of an ethnic or religious group, it is natural to see refugee to escape from injustice. But the Zionist movement decided that the Jews should come to Palestine as invaders and not refugees. This is the main reason of the ongoing conflict with no prospects for its resolution so far.

The problem of Balfour’s promise is that he promised to give Palestine to the Jews of Europe, which means, despite the diplomatic attempts to bring envelope it in a moral form, it meant in reality the expulsion of the natives of Palestine. In this sense, it can be said that the Balfour Declaration was an order of expulsion.

If the Jewish example is to be followed internationally, this mean that each oppressed group or each group unhappy where they live has the right to expel others from their home!

Britain took over Palestine after the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in the First World War, and the League of Nations gave Britain the authority to mandate Palestine. The mandate juridical meant to take care of the people of the country so that they could administrate themselves. Balfour’s declaration was completely contrary to the resolutions of the League of Nations.

The promise of Balfour is no longer addressing refugees to flee to Palestine from injustice. The promise was granted to the Zionist movement that had the power, influence and ambition aimed at establishing a state that would be a bridge between the European and Berber civilization, as hers said. It was the first time in history that migrants brought by Britain from Europe succeeded not only in establishing a state, not only in expelling indigenous populations but also in acquiring nuclear weapons within 15 years of its establishment.

At the time of the promise, in 1917, US President Wilson issued what was known as the right to self-determination of peoples. This statement, however, had no value for Palestine. The United States was not very serious about this statement, which remained worthless. The United States supported the Balfour Declaration, contrary to Wilson’s declaration. Therefore, the promise came in the colonial climate. In this climate, there was no respect or value for the opinion of the indigenous population regarding their future. The first and last say was to the British authorities and their ally the Zionist movement.

The story that often said that Britain promised the Zionists to Palestine in return for the Jews persuading America to join Britain in the war may be the direct factor to produce the promise. But this was preceded by the Sykes-Picot secrete agreement 1n 1916 that divided the Arab region in the defeated Ottoman Empire between England and France

The Balfour State of Israel was achieved with iron and fire. The results were disastrous for the original inhabitants of Palestine who lost their homeland and were a disaster for the Arab region that had entered endless war since Israel was forcefully planted

The British Prime Minister’s decision to mark (with pride) the 100th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration is a decision lacking political wisdom, adding salt to the wound. It shows that after 100 years all the oppression which Palestinians are subjected to do not change Britain which continues to play the role of a cruel state that undoubtedly planted the culture of terror in the Middle East and beyond.

Dr. Salim Nazzal, a Palestinian-Norwegian historian on the Middle East, He has written extensively on social and political issues in the region.

Source: http://www.countercurrents.org/2017/10/28/the-balfour-declaration-planted-terror-in-the-middle-east/