Trump’s “Deal of the Century”

June 27, 2019  Posted by Lawrence Davidson 

Part I—The Deal of the Century

Trump’s “Deal of the Century”—An Analysis (26 June 2019) by Lawrence Davidson

President Trump’s peace plan for the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, or at least the economic side of it, was discussed at a meeting in Bahrain on June 25 and 26. The plan, euphemistically entitled “Peace to Prosperity” and the “Deal of the Century” is also, inaccurately, likened to a “Marshall Plan for Palestinians.” It is based on the assumption that money, ultimately the better part of $50 billion, can lure the Palestinian people into surrender—that is, the surrender of their right to a state of their own on their stolen ancestral land as well as the right of return for the 7.5 million Palestinians who have been forced into exile. Upon surrender, according to the plan, “an ambitious, achievable … framework for a prosperous future for the Palestinian people and the region” will be put into place. How this idealized future is to be integrated into the apartheid and Bantustan system of control that constitutes the Israeli government’s “facts on the ground” is left unexplained.

This bit of gilded bait was put together by “senior White House adviser” Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law; Jason Greenblatt, chief lawyer of the Trump Organization and now U.S. envoy for international negotiations; and David Friedman, the president’s bankruptcy lawyer who is now the U.S. ambassador to Israel. All of these men are at once unqualified for their present positions as well as Zionist supporters of Israeli expansionism. It is not surprising then that the Israeli government has welcomed this effort. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that he “would listen to the American plan and hear it fairly and with openness.” On the other hand, the Palestinian West Bank leader, Mahmoud Abbas, who is boycotting the Bahrain meeting, said, “As long as there is no political [solution], we do not deal with any economic [solution].”

There are no doubt some Palestinians who are upset at Abbas’s position: perhaps some business people, often-unpaid bureaucrats, and a portion of the frustrated middle-class, who will be dearly tempted by the promise of all that money. These are people who, given over a century of struggle, see no hope of a just political settlement. Nonetheless, those tempted might consider these facts:

(1) All those billions of dollars are, as yet, hypothetical. The money is not in the bank, so to speak. And, it is not a given that Trump can actually raise the funds. Thus, for all those ready to trade justice for dollars, it might be premature to actually make the leap.

(2) There is a prevailing belief among the Trump cabal putting this plan together that the Palestinians themselves are incapable of running the proposed development programs. They are assumed to be too corrupt or tainted with “terrorist” backgrounds to be trusted. Thus the question of who would run this effort (Israelis? American Zionists? anyone other than those dedicated to Palestinian interests?) is left unanswered. Relative to this question, it should be kept in mind that the Israelis have made something of a science of robbing the Palestinians of their resources. They are hardly likely to stop now.

(3) The raising of money for the Trump plan is in competition with a UN effort to raise $1.2 billion for UNRWA, the agency that supports programs for Palestinian refugees. This fund-raiser is literally running at the same time as the Bahrain meeting. If the Trump plan gains traction, there might well be pressure to shut down UNRWA altogether.

Is this really an honest proposal to provide the Palestinians with prosperity? The history of “third world” development efforts sponsored by and run under the guidance of “first world” powers, be they Western governments or institutions like the IMF, is largely one of failure.There is no reason to believe that the Trump plan will fare any better. While these problematic economic efforts may eventually fall short, the political conditions almost certain to be attached to the aid will probably require immediate cessation of all anti-Zionist activities, including the relatively successful ongoing boycott of Israel.

Part II—The Precedent

It might come as a surprise, but this is not the first time that financial bribery to procure Arab cooperation with Zionist ambitions has been tried.

There is a historical precedent for Donald Trump’s attempted “deal of the century” that is detailed my book, America’s Palestine (cheap used copies of which are available on line). Here is how that precedent went:

Back in 1942, the Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann told members of the U.S. State Department’s Division of Near Eastern Affairs (NEA) that Winston Churchill wished to make the Saudi king, Ibn Saud, “the boss of bosses in the Arab World.” The only condition to this offer was that Ibn Saud must “be willing to work out with Weizmann to achieve a sane solution to the Palestine problem.” Weizmann further claimed that the U.S. president Franklin Roosevelt was “in accord on this subject.”

The response of the head of the NEA, Wallace Murray, a man who knew the Middle East much better than did Chaim Weizmann, was one of skepticism. Murray noted that British influence over Ibn Saud was small and that he doubted the Saudi king wanted to be the Arab “boss of bosses.” Finally, he expressed doubt that anything the Zionists would consider a “solution” would be something Ibn Saud would consider to be “sane.”

Nonetheless, the Zionists persisted along these lines and soon came up with a plan where, in return for a Jewish Palestine, Ibn Saud would be made the “head of an Arab federation in control of a “development” budget of 20 million British pounds.”

At this point Murray became adamant that this would never work. He predicted that Ibn Saud would interpret the offer as a bribe—the offer of a throne in exchange for turning Palestine over to the Zionists. He would interpret the 20 million pounds as a “slush fund.” Consequently, there was every reason to believe that the Saudi ruler would see this whole plan as a personal insult. So Murray suggested that “the less we have to do with the … proposals of Dr. Weizmann the better.”

As it turned out Roosevelt disagreed with Murray and after a conversation with Weizmann in early June of 1943, authorized an approach to Ibn Saud along the lines of the Zionist plan. Why did he ignore Murray in favor of Weizmann? Because Murray’s accurate assessment of Ibn Saud conflicted with FDR’s stereotyped view of Arabs. This is revealed in the minutes of the June meeting with Weizmann wherein the president said that “he believes the Arabs are purchasable.” In other words, following a common Western view, the president saw the Arabs as a backward people who would do just about anything for the right amount of “bakshish.”

Subsequently, the entire scheme came to naught when, in the fall of 1943, Ibn Saud rejected it out of hand. He would subsequently tell FDR that the Jews should “be given the choicest lands and homes of the Germans who had oppressed them.” When the president replied that the Jews would not wish to stay in Germany after the war, Ibn Saud noted that the “allied camp” had “fifty countries” in it. Surely they could find enough open space (he even alluded to the underpopulated areas of the American West) to take in Europe’s Jewish refugees. Roosevelt came away from the exchange rather shaken. He finally understood from it that “the Arabs mean business” when it comes to Palestine.

Part III—Conclusion

The world has changed a lot since the 1940s. Ibn Saud has been replaced by the Saudi Crown Prince Muḥammad bin Salmān. This can be seen as real step down in terms of personal integrity and strategic judgment. Franklin Roosevelt has been replaced with Donald Trump. I will let readers make their own judgments on this change. Actually, the thing that has stayed constant, perhaps because it was always devoid of real empathy for the Palestinians, is the nature of Zionist leadership. Thus, Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, Danny Danon, has said that the only way the Palestinians can be economically liberated is through their political surrender. But as suggested above, Israel is now a confirmed apartheid state that feels its own “security” necessitates both military and economic control of the Palestinians. Given that reality, Danon’s notion of economic liberation means about as much as Weizmann’s promise of someone else’s (i.e., Britain’s) money. And then there is the replacement of Chaim Weizmann (the Zionist pre-state leader) with Benjamin Netanyahu. The former may have had more persuasive charm than the latter, but certainly their goals were, and continue to be, the same.

It is Zionism’s ambition to possess biblical Palestine that has reduced the Palestinians to destitution. Perfectly predictable and legal Palestinian resistance is the excuse the Israelis use to cover up the segregationist and impoverishing policies that are necessitated by their ideological worldview. And now Donald Trump and his Zionist son-in-law come forward with their plan, fully expecting the Palestinians to trust the Americans and their Israeli allies to make them “developed” and prosperous? I wonder what Ibn Saud would say to that?

About Lawrence Davidson
Lawrence Davidson is professor of history emeritus at West Chester University in Pennsylvania. He has been publishing his analyses of topics in U.S. domestic and foreign policy, international and humanitarian law and Israel/Zionist practices and policies since 2010.

Memo to Trump: Trade Bolton for Tulsi

 

PAT BUCHANAN • JUNE 28, 2019

“For too long our leaders have failed us, taking us into one regime change war after the next, leading us into a new Cold War and arms race, costing us trillions of our hard-earned tax payer dollars and countless lives. This insanity must end.”Donald Trump, circa 2016?Nope. That denunciation of John Bolton interventionism came from Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii during Wednesday night’s Democratic debate. At 38, she was the youngest candidate on stage.

Gabbard proceeded to rip both the “president and his chickenhawk cabinet (who) have led us to the brink of war with Iran.”In a fiery exchange, Congressman Tim Ryan of Ohio countered that America cannot disengage from Afghanistan: “When we weren’t in there they started flying planes into our buildings.”“The Taliban didn’t attack us on 9/11,” Gabbard replied, “Al-Qaida attacked us on 9/11. That’s why I and so many other people joined the military, to go after al-Qaida, not the Taliban.”When Ryan insisted we must stay engaged, Gabbard shot back:“Is that what you will tell the parents of those two soldiers who were just killed in Afghanistan? ‘Well, we just have to be engaged.’ As a solider, I will tell you, that answer is unacceptable. … We are no better off in Afghanistan that we were when this war began.”

By debate’s end, Gabbard was the runaway winner in both the Drudge Report and Washington Examiner polls and was far in front among all the Democratic candidates whose names were being searched on Google.Though given less than seven minutes of speaking time in a two-hour debate, she could not have used that time more effectively. And her performance may shake up the Democratic race.

If she can rise a few points above her 1-2% in the polls, she could be assured a spot in the second round of debates.If she is, moderators will now go to her with questions of foreign policy issues that would not have been raised without her presence, and these questions will expose the hidden divisions in the Democratic Party. Leading Democratic candidates could be asked to declare what U.S. policy should be — not only toward Afghanistan but Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Jared Kushner’s “Deal of the Century,” and Trump’s seeming rejection of the two-state solution.

If she makes it into the second round, Gabbard could become the catalyst for the kind of globalist vs. nationalist debate that broke out between Trump and Bush Republicans in 2016, a debate that contributed to Trump’s victory at the Cleveland convention and in November.The problem Gabbard presents for Democrats is that, as was shown in the joust with Ryan, she takes positions that split her party, while her rivals prefer to talk about what unites the party, like the terribleness of Trump, free college tuition and soaking the rich.Given more airtime, she will present problems for the GOP as well.

For the foreign policy Tulsi Gabbard is calling for is not far off from the foreign policy Donald Trump promised in 2016 but has since failed to deliver.

We still have 2,000 troops in Syria, 5,000 in Iraq, 14,000 in Afghanistan. We just moved an aircraft carrier task force, B-52s and 1,000 troops to the Persian Gulf to confront Iran. We are about to impose sanctions on the Iranian foreign minister with whom we would need to negotiate to avoid a war.Jared Kushner is talking up a U.S.-led consortium to raise $50 billion for the Palestinians in return for their forfeiture of sovereignty and an end to their dream of a nation-state on the West Bank and Gaza with Jerusalem as its capital.

John Bolton is talking of regime change in Caracas and confronting the “troika of tyranny” in Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela. Rather than engaging Russia as Trump promised, we have been sanctioning Russia, arming Ukraine, sending warships into the Black Sea, beefing up NATO in the Baltic and trashing arms control treaties Ronald Reagan and other presidents negotiated in the Cold War U.S. policy has managed to push our great adversaries, Russia and China, together as they have not been since the first Stalin-Mao decade of the Cold War.

This June, Vladimir Putin traveled to Beijing where he and Xi Jinping met in the Great Hall of the People to warn that in this time of “growing global instability and uncertainty,” Russia and China will “deepen their consultations on strategic stability issues.”Xi presented Putin with China’s new Friendship Medal. Putin responded: “Cooperation with China is one of Russia’s top priorities and it has reached an unprecedented level.”At the end of the Cold War, we were the lone superpower. Who forfeited our preeminence? Who bled us of 7,000 U.S. lives and $6 trillion in endless Middle East wars? Who got us into this Cold War II?Was all this the doing of those damnable isolationists again?Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of “Nixon’s White House Wars: The Battles That Made and Broke a President and Divided America Forever.”Copyright 2019 Creators.com.

روسيا والصين وإيران… وانتصار فيينا

يونيو 29, 2019

ناصر قنديل

– ما شهدته فيينا أمس، خلال الاجتماع الموعود للدول الموقعة على الاتفاق النووي بعد الانسحاب الأميركي منه، جاء على إيقاع تهديدين واحد أميركي لكل من يحاول المتاجرة مع إيران يختصره ما قاله المبعوث الأميركي الخاص حول إيران بريان هوك مخاطباً الأوروبيين، عليكم أن تختاروا بين واشنطن وطهران، وتهديد إيراني بخروج وشيك من موجبات الاتفاق النووي، يتم الاستعداد لتطبيق مفاعيله، عبر عنه الكلام الإيراني عن الصبر الذي نفد وعن رفض التطبيق الأحادي دون شركاء للاتفاق النووي لأكثر من سنة ونيّف كانت كافية لسائر الشركاء لإثبات شراكتهم، وجاءت النتيجة بالإعلان عن تفعيل فوري للآلية الأوروبية المالية البديلة للسويفت الذي تفادت عبره إيران العقوبات قبل الاتفاق النووي والذي سيطرت عليه أميركا مع انسحابها من الاتفاق.

– الآلية التقنية للسداد المسماة أينستيكس ، تقوم على صيغة تعامل مالي باليورو، تبيع بموجبها إيران نفطها لأوروبا، وتسدّد بموجبها اوروبا ثمن البضائع التي تشتريها إيران كحكومة وشركات للسوق الأوروبية، على أن تسدد ما يتبقى لإيران من مستحقات مالية في نهاية كل فترة تقاص بين ثلاثة شهور وستة شهور. ورغم أن الآلية تلحظ كبداية أن تبيع الشركات الأوروبية لإيران منتجات غذائية وطبية، فإن إيران وافقت شرط تفعيل الآلية لأنه ما لم يكن لدى إيران ما تشتريه مقابل كل نفطها المباع فإنها ستحصل على تدفقات نقدية باليورو، هي القضية المهمة في نهاية المطاف. وكان التفاوض الإيراني الأوروبي لا يدور حول الآلية، بل حول كمية النفط التي يمكن ان تستوعبها، فيما كانت إيران تصرّ على الكمية التي سبقت العقوبات والانسحاب الأميركي من الاتفاق النووي كان الأوربيون يعرضون تقريباً نصف الكمية فقط ويقولون إن ذلك مجرد بداية يمكن أن تتطوّر، وتوقفت المفاوضات هنا، بين نصف مليون برميل يومياً تطلب إيران ضمان شرائها وربع مليون برميل يومياً تعرضها اوروبا.

– ما دار في محادثات الرئيسين الفرنسي والإيراني عشية اجتماع فيينا أعاد تأكيد الخلاف على الكمية رغم الاتفاق على المبدأ، لكن المفاجأة كانت لأوروبا في فيينا بأن الصين أعلنت نيتها الانضمام إلى الآلية الأوروبية، بحيث تحتضن الآلية تمويل الكمية التي تشتريها الصين والتي أكدت عزمها على العودة لمواصلة شرائها بعد توقفها لشهرين عن الشراء والدفع واستبدالها بالمقايضة، وتشكل هذه الكمية النسبة الأهم من مبيعات إيران النفطية فهي تقريباً ثلث مبيعات إيران بقرابة ستمئة وخمسين ألف برميل يومياً، ومثلها قال الروس إنهم سيكونون شريكاً في الآلية، وقد سبق لروسيا أن أسست شركات أوف شور محمية بمرسوم رئاسي من العقوبات، مهمتها شراء وإعادة بيع النفط الإيراني كمساهمة في حماية الاتفاق النووي.

– ما جرى عملياً هو أن روسيا والصين وإيران، وقد خاضوا المواجهة على حافة الهاوية تحت عنوان إسقاط التزامات إيران بالاتفاق النووي، نجحوا بجلب أوروبا إلى نقطة أوروبية، تقول لسنا واشنطن ولسنا طهران، فمصلحة أوروبا بأن يبقى الاتفاق النووي لأن واشنطن لا تملك بديلاً له إذا سقط، ولا تملك خريطة طريق لمنع امتلاك إيران للسلاح النووي، وهو ما تقوله واشنطن عن هدفها من الانسحاب من الاتفاق، وسقوط الاتفاق يعني دفع إيران نحو امتلاك ما يكفي للجلوس على مقعد حاملي الأسلحة النووية ولو لم تقم بتصنيعه وبلغت الجهوزية اللازمة للتصنيع، كما يعني دفع السوق النفطية للاشتعال من دون امتلاك وصفة إطفاء، ومع تقديم أوروبا للمنصة المالية للتبادل مع إيران لم يعد مهماً حجم التعامل الأوروبي وفقاً لهذه الآلية بقدر ما يهمّ وجودها، وستجد الشركات الأوروبية أن كل ما تتردّد ببيعه لإيران ستقوم الصين ببيع ما يعادله من منتجاتها، مقابل شراء النفط الإيراني وتحويل المال بواسطة الآلية الأوروبية.

– انتصار روسي صيني إيراني ستتبلور ملامحه بصورة أوضح مع الأيام المقبلة عندما يجتمع وزراء الخارجية لتفاهمات فيينا، ويضعون النقاط على الحروف، وفقاً لما قاله معاون وزير الخارجية الروسية سيرغي ريابكوف، عن أن إنقاذ الاتفاق النووي قد تم فعلياً.

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America Tries to Solve Everything With Money! Will Fail at Bribing the Entire World!

The West’s Trumped-Up Hatred of Iran Serves The Zionist Dream of a Greater Israel Dominating the Middle East

By Stuart Littlewood
Source

There’s no doubt about it. We’re at the height of the Silly Season.

First we have Boris ‘I-am-a-passionate-Zionist’ Johnson, the hot favourite to become the UK’s prime minister. His biographer Sonia Purnell, who worked alongside  Johnson as a journalist, writes in the Sunday Times that he’s “temperamentally unsuitable to be trusted with any position of power, let alone the highest office of all, in charge of the UK and its nuclear codes”. She talks of his terrible mood swings “triggered by the slightest challenge to his entitlement or self-worth” and says he has “the fiercest and most uncontrollable anger” she has ever seen. This confirms what many of us feared. And we wonder how those who mix with him in the parliamentary party could possibly back him for top leadership.

Ian Birrell in the ‘i‘ discusses his lack of discipline – turning up to Cabinet dishevelled, unprepared and cluching the wrong papers, and his notoriously poor grasp of detail. “It is strange that anyone might see this bumbling and toxic buffoon as the person to lead a divided Britain amid delicate negotiations.”

Then we have the unhinged “cocked and loaded” Trump, bristling with aggression. Nobody is taken in by his claim that, having ordered military strikes against Iran’s radar and missile batteries in retaliation for their shootdown of a US spy drone, he changed his mind with only minutes to spare on account of a reminder that this lunacy might actually cost human lives.

It makes no difference if the US drone was 20 miles outside Iran or 4 miles inside. Iran presented GPS coordinates showing it was eight miles from the coast, which is inside the 12 nautical miles considered to be Iran’s territorial waters under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. The drone obviously represented a military threat and a provocation, and the US has no lawful claim of self-defense that would justify a military attack.  Iran has the right to ask identification from any aircraft flying this near its territory and Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations is reported to have written to the Security Council that the drone failed to respond to several radio warnings before it was downed.

Any US attack on Iran in these circumstances could be a violation of the United Nations Charter, which only allows the use of military force in self-defense after an armed attack or with Security Council approval.

Let’s remind ourselves of earlier US aggression and dishonesty during the Iran-Iraq war, as recorded in Wikipedia:

In the course of escorts by the US Navy, the cruiser USS Vincennes shot down Iran Air Flight 655 on 3 July 1988, killing all 290 passengers and crew on board. The American government claimed that Vincennes was in international waters at the time (which was later proven to be untrue), that the Airbus A300 had been mistaken for an Iranian F-14 Tomcat, and that Vincennes feared that she was under attack. The Iranians maintain that Vincennes was in their own waters, and that the passenger jet was turning away and increasing altitude after take-off. US Admiral William J. Crowe later admitted on Nightline that Vincennes was in Iranian territorial waters when it launched the missiles. At the time of the attack, Admiral Crowe claimed that the Iranian plane did not identify itself and sent no response to warning signals he had sent. In 1996, the United States expressed their regret for the event and the civilian deaths it caused.

Trump now wants to impose further crippling sanctions on Iran and her people while the UK’s Foreign Office minister Andrew Murrison has just been to Tehran calling for “urgent de-escalation” and cheekily criticising Iran’s “regional conduct” and its threat to stop complying with the nuclear deal, which the US recklessly abandoned but the UK remains committed to.

Good news about Murrison, though. A medical man, he voted against the Iraq war but as a Navy reservist was called up to do a 6 month tour of duty there. Perhaps Murrison should go see Trump and ask:

• Why is he not more concerned about Israel’s nuclear arsenal and the mental state of the Israeli regime, which are the real threat to the region and beyond?

• Why isn’t he slapping sanctions on Israel for its refusal to sign up to the NPT or engage constructively on the issue of its nuclear and other WMD programmes, not to mention its repeated defiance of international and humanitarian laws in the Holy Land?

Trump meanwhile has signed an executive order targeting Iran’s leadership with hard-hitting new sanctions supposedly needed to deny their development of nuclear weapons. “Never can Iran have a nuclear weapon,” Trump has decreed. He added: “We will continue to increase pressure on Tehran until the regime abandons its dangerous activities and its aspirations, including the pursuit of nuclear weapons, increased enrichment of uranium, development of ballistic missiles, engagement and support for terrorism, fuelling of foreign conflicts and belligerent acts….” Achingly funny. Who else could all that apply to, I wonder? Exactly. The Bully-Boy-in-chief himself and his best buddies in Tel Aviv.

Sowing the seeds of hatred

We have conveniently short memories when it comes to our abominable conduct towards the Iranians in 1951-53 when a previous Conservative government, in cahoots with the USA, snuffed out Iran’s fledgling democracy and reinstated a cruel dictator, the Shah. This eventually brought about the Islamic Revolution of 1979 and created the deep distrust between Iran and the West. Is it not shameful that the present Conservative government is spoiling for another fight? Shouldn’t the Foreign Office now focus on exerting influence through trade and co-operation?

The Iranian regime, like many others, may not be entirely to our liking but nor was Dr Mossadeq’s democracy 65 years ago. Besides, what threat is Iran to Britain? And why are we allowing ourselves to be driven by America’s mindless hatred?

When new recruits join British Petroleum (BP) they are fed romantic tales about how the company came into being. William Knox D’Arcy, a Devon man, studied law and made a fortune from the Mount Morgan gold-mining operations in 1880s Australia. Returning to England he agreed to fund a search for oil and minerals in Persia and began negotiations with the Mozaffar al-Din Shah Qajar in 1901. A sixty year concession gave D’Arcy the oil rights to the entire country except for five provinces in the north. The Persian government would receive 16% of the oil company’s annual profits.

Mozzafar ad-Din was naive in business matters and unprepared for kingship when the time came. He borrowed heavily from the Russians and in order to pay off the debt he signed away control of many Persian industries and markets to foreigners. The deal D’Arcy cut was too sharp by far and would eventually lead to trouble.

He sent an exploration team headed by geologist George B Reynolds. In 1903 a company was formed and D’Arcy had to spend much of his fortune to cover the costs. Further financial support came from Glasgow-based Burmah Oil in return for a large share of the stock.

Drilling in southern Persia at Shardin continued until 1907 when the search was switched to Masjid-i-Souleiman. By 1908 D’Arcy was almost bankrupt. Reynolds received a last-chance instruction: “Drill to 1,600 feet and give up”. On 26 May at 1,180 feet he struck oil.

It was indeed a triumph of guts and determination. The Anglo-Persian Oil Company was soon up and running and in 1911 completed a pipeline from the oilfield to its new refinery at Abadan. But the company was in trouble again by 1914.  The golden age of motoring hadn’t yet arrived and the industrial oil markets were sewn up by American and European interests. The sulphurous stench of the Persian oil, even after refining, ruled it out for domestic use, so D’Arcy had a marketing problem.

Luckily Winston Churchill, then First Lord of the Admiralty, was an enthusiast for oil and wanted to convert the British fleet from coal especially now that a reliable oil source was secured. He famously told Parliament: “Look out upon the wide expanse of the oil regions of the world!” Only the British-owned Anglo-Persian Oil Company, he said, could protect British interests. His resolution passed and the British Government took a major shareholding in the company just in time, for World War One began a few weeks later.

During the war the British government seized the assets of a German company calling itself British Petroleum for the purpose of marketing its products in Britain. Anglo-Persian acquired the assets from the Public Trustee complete with a ready-made distribution network and an abundance of depots, railway tank wagons, road vehicles, barges and so forth. This enabled Anglo-Persian to rapidly expand sales in petroleum-hungry Britain and Europe after the war.

In the inter-war years Anglo-Persian profited handsomely from paying the Iranians a miserly 16%, and an increasingly angry Persia tried to renegotiate terms. Getting nowhere, they cancelled the D’Arcy agreement and the matter ended up at the Court of International Justice at The Hague. A new agreement in 1933 provided Anglo-Persian with a fresh 60-year concession but on a smaller area. The terms were an improvement for the Persians but still didn’t amount to a square deal.

In 1935 Iran formally replaced Persia as the country’s official name internationally and Anglo-Persian changed to Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. By 1950 Abadan was the biggest oil refinery in the world and Britain, with its 51% holding, had affectively colonised part of southern Iran.

Iran’s small share of the profits became a big issue and so did the treatment of its oil workers. 6,000 withdrew their labour in 1946 and the strike was violently put down with 200 dead or injured. In 1951 Anglo-Iranian declared £40 million profit after tax but handed Iran only £7 million. Meanwhile Arabian American Oil was sharing profits with the Saudis on a 50/50 basis. Calls for nationalisation were mounting.

As a result of the Persian Constitutional Revolution the first Majlis (parliament) was established in 1906 and the country became a constitutional monarchy with high hopes. By mid-century Iran not unreasonably wanted economic and political independence and an end to poverty. In March 1951 its Majlis and Senate voted to nationalise Anglo-Iranian, which had controlled Iran’s oil industry since 1913 under terms disadvantageous to Iran. Respected social reformer Dr Mohammad Mossadeq was named prime minister the following month by a 79 to 12 majority. On 1 May Mossadeq carried out his government’s wishes, cancelling Anglo-Iranian’s oil concession due to expire in 1993 and expropriating its assets.

His explanation, given in a speech in June 1951 (M. Fateh, Panjah Sal-e Naft-e Iran, p. 525), ran as follows…

“Our long years of negotiations with foreign countries… have yielded no results this far. With the oil revenues we could meet our entire budget and combat poverty, disease, and backwardness among our people. Another important consideration is that by the elimination of the power of the British company, we would also eliminate corruption and intrigue, by means of which the internal affairs of our country have been influenced. Once this tutelage has ceased, Iran will have achieved its economic and political independence.

“The Iranian state prefers to take over the production of petroleum itself. The company should do nothing else but return its property to the rightful owners. The nationalization law provides that 25% of the net profits on oil be set aside to meet all the legitimate claims of the company for compensation…It has been asserted abroad that Iran intends to expel the foreign oil experts from the country and then shut down oil installations. Not only is this allegation absurd; it is utter invention…”

For this he would eventually be removed in a coup by MI5 and the CIA, imprisoned for 3 years then put under house arrest until his death.

Britain, with regime change in mind, orchestrated a world-wide boycott of Iranian oil, froze Iran’s sterling assets and threatened legal action against anyone purchasing oil produced in the formerly British-controlled refineries. It even considered invading. The Iranian economy was soon in ruins…. sounds familiar, doesn’t it? Attempts by the Shah to replace Mossadeq failed and he returned with more power, but his coalition was slowly crumbling under the hardships imposed by the British blockade.

At first America was reluctant to join Britain’s destructive game but Churchill let it be known that Mossadeq was turning communist and pushing Iran into Russia’s arms at a time when Cold War anxiety was high. It was enough to bring America’s new president, Eisenhower, on board and plotting with Britain to bring Mossadeq down.

Chief of the CIA’s Near East and Africa division, Kermit Roosevelt Jr, arrived to play the leading role in an ugly game of provocation, mayhem and deception. An elaborate campaign of disinformation began, and the Shah signed two decrees, one dismissing Mossadeq and the other nominating the CIA’s choice, General Fazlollah Zahedi, as prime minister. These decrees were written as dictated by Donald Wilbur the CIA architect of the plan

The Shah fled to Rome. When it was judged safe to do so he returned on 22 August 1953. Mossadeq was arrested, tried, and convicted of treason by the Shah’s military court. He remarked…

“My greatest sin is that I nationalised Iran’s oil industry and discarded the system of political and economic exploitation by the world’s greatest empire… With God’s blessing and the will of the people, I fought this savage and dreadful system of international espionage and colonialism.

“I am well aware that my fate must serve as an example in the future throughout the Middle East in breaking the chains of slavery and servitude to colonial interests.”

His supporters were rounded up, imprisoned, tortured or executed. Zahedi’s new government soon reached an agreement with foreign oil companies to form a consortium to restore the flow of Iranian oil, awarding the US and Great Britain the lion’s share – 40% going to Anglo-Iranian. The consortium agreed to split profits on a 50-50 basis with Iran but, tricky as ever, refused to open its books to Iranian auditors or allow Iranians to sit on the board.

A grateful US massively funded the Shah’s government, including his army and secret police force, SAVAK. Anglo-Iranian changed its name to British Petroleum in 1954. Mossadeq died on 5 March 1967.

Apologise? Hell no… Let’s demonise Iran!

But the West’s fun came to an abrupt halt with the Islamic Revolution of 1979 and a great British enterprise that started heroically and turned nasty ended in tears.

The US is still hated today for reimposing the Shah and his thugs and demolishing the Iranians’ democratic system of government, which the Revolution unfortunately didn’t restore. The US is widely known by Iranians as Big Satan and its regional handmaiden Israel rejoices in the name Little Satan. Britain, as the instigator and junior partner in the sordid affair, is similarly despised.

Moreover, Iran harbours great resentment at the way the West, especially the US, helped Iraq develop its armed forces and chemical weapons arsenal, and how the international community failed to punish Iraq for its use of those weapons against Iran in the Iran-Iraq war. The US, and eventually Britain, leaned strongly towards Saddam in that conflict and the alliance enabled Saddam to more easily acquire or develop forbidden chemical and biological weapons. At least 100,000 Iranians fell victim to them.

This is how John King writing in 2003 summed it up…

“The United States used methods both legal and illegal to help build Saddam’s army into the most powerful army in the Mideast outside of Israel. The US supplied chemical and biological agents and technology to Iraq when it knew Iraq was using chemical weapons against the Iranians. The US supplied the materials and technology for these weapons of mass destruction to Iraq at a time when it was know that Saddam was using this technology to kill his Kurdish citizens. The United States supplied intelligence and battle planning information to Iraq when those battle plans included the use of cyanide, mustard gas and nerve agents. The United States blocked UN censure of Iraq’s use of chemical weapons. The United States did not act alone in this effort. The Soviet Union was the largest weapons supplier, but England, France and Germany were also involved in the shipment of arms and technology.”

While Iranian casualties were at their highest as a result of US chemical and biological war crimes Trump was busy acquiring the Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Trump Castle, his Taj-Mahal casino, the Plaza Hotel in Manhattan and was refitting his super-yacht Trump Princess. What does he know, understand or care about Iran?

On the British side Foreign Secretary Jaremy Hunt was messing about at Oxford University; and the front-runner to fill our Prime Minister vacancy, Boris Johnson, former Foreign Secretary, was similarly at Oxford carousing with fellow Old Etonians at the Bullingdon Club. What do they know or care?

Which brings us to today… Why are we hearing nonstop sabre-rattling against Iran when we should be extending the hand of reconciliation and friendship? And why are these clueless leaders demonising Iran instead of righting the wrongs? Because the political establishment is still smarting. And they are the new-generation imperialists, the political spawn of those Dr Mossadeq and many others struggled against. They haven’t learned from the past, and they won’t lift their eyes to a better future.

It’s so depressing.

Economic sanctions: are they moral, or even legal?

The US and UK have led the charge on oil sanctions and other measures to make life hell for Iranians. But are they on safe legal ground?

The International Association of Democratic Lawyers (IADL) in a statement on 26 November 2011, said they were deeply concerned about the threats against Iran by Israel, the United States, and the United Kingdom. Referring to a report by the International Atomic Energy Agency, IADL stated that those threats were unacceptable and dangerous not only for all the region but for the whole of humanity, and that Article 2.4 of the UN Charter forbids not only use of force but also the threat of force in international relations. The right of defence does not include pre-emptive strikes.

The IADL also pointed out that while Israel was quick to denounce the possible possession of nuclear weapons by others, it had illegally possessed nuclear weapons for many years. The danger to world peace was so great as to require the global eradication of all nuclear weapons, and to immediately declare the Middle East a nuclear free zone and a zone free of all weapons of mass destruction, as required by UN Security Council resolution 687.

Furthermore, Article 33 states that “the parties to any dispute, the continuance of which is likely to endanger the maintenance of international peace and security, shall, first of all, seek a solution by negotiation, enquiry, mediation, conciliation, arbitration, judicial settlement, resort to regional agencies or arrangements, or other peaceful means…” Economic ‘terror’ tactics such as the vicious sanctions deployed by the US, UK and their allies – and the similar measures used by Britain and America in the 1950s to bring down the government of Dr Mossadeq and reinstate the Shah – are simply not part of the approved toolkit.

Remember the context

UN Security Council resolution 487 of 1981 called on Israel “urgently to place its nuclear facilities under IAEA safeguards”. Israel has been allowed to ignore it for nearly 40 years. In 2009, the IAEA called on Israel to join the Non-Proliferation Treaty, open its nuclear facilities to inspection and place them under comprehensive IAEA safeguards. Israel still refuses to join or allow inspections.

The Zionist regime is reckoned by some to have up to 400 nuclear warheads at its disposal. It is the only state in the region that is not a party to the Non-Proliferation Treaty (Iran is). It has signed but not ratified the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty. As regards biological and chemical weapons, Israel has not signed the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention. It has signed but not ratified the Chemical Weapons Convention.

In early 2012 the US intelligence community was saying that Iran hadn’t got an active nuclear weapons programme, and Israeli intelligence agreed. The Director of the National Intelligence Agency, James Clapper, reported: “We assess Iran is keeping open the option to develop nuclear weapons… We do not know, however, if Iran will eventually decide to build nuclear weapons…”

So the continual focus on Iran has been a deliberate distraction. We repaid Iranian co-operation in D’Arcy’s oil venture with corporate greed and diplomatic double-cross. America and Britain are still smarting from the time when Iran democratically elected Dr. Mossadeq, who sensibly nationalized her vast oil resources. Up till then the grasping British were raking in far more profit from Iranian oil than the Iranians themselves.

Back in the 1920s the US State Department had described the oil deposits in the Middle East as “a stupendous source of strategic power, and one of the greatest material prizes in world history”. Ever since, its designs on Iraq and Iran have been plain to see and it is still ready to pounce on every opportunity.

When the CIA-engineered coup toppled Dr. Mossadeq, reinstated the Shah and his secret police, and let the American oil companies in, it was the final straw for the Iranians. The British-American conspiracy backfired spectacularly 25 years later with the Islamic Revolution of 1978-9, the humiliating 444-day hostage crisis in the American embassy and a tragically botched rescue mission. What should have been a sharp lesson for Western meddlers became a festering sore.

The quest for the energy prize is not over. But it is no longer just about oil. Zionist stooges in controlling positions in the West’s corridors of power are pledged to ensure Israel remains the only nuclear power in the Middle East and continues to dominate the region militarily. And they are willing to spill Christian blood and spend Christian treasure in that cause.

US National Security Adviser John Bolton, recipient of the Defender of Israel Award last year and the Guardian of Zion Award the year before, is one such super-stooge. His stupefying remark: “No-one has granted Iran a hunting licence in the Middle East” typifies the arrogance of his ilk.

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I Denounce the Holocaust Religion, but I am not Alone

Gilad Atzmon

فصل جديد من الابتزاز الأميركي: المُسيّرات اليمنية انطلقت من العراق!

كلام بومبيو كان في خلفية البيان الأخير الذي صدر عن عبد المهدي (أ ف ب )

• نور أيوب

   السبت 29 حزيران 2019

  تصعّد واشنطن ضغوطها على الحكومة العراقية، بهدف دفعها إلى تقييد فصائل المقاومة، بما يضمن تحييد الأخيرة عن أي مواجهة مستقبلية مع إيران. ضغوط ليست الادعاءات الأميركية في شأن انطلاق طائرات مسيّرة من العراق باتجاه السعودية خارجة من سياقها، وخصوصاً أنها تترافق مع حملات كلامية على الفصائل، بشكل يظهر معه كأن البعض يسعى إلى «إيجاد ذرائع لواشنطن لعمل ما في العراق».

  مساء الـ 17 من حزيران/ يونيو الجاري، انعقد في «قصر السلام» الرئاسي، وسط العاصمة العراقية بغداد، الاجتماع الدوري الثالث للقيادات السياسية، بحضور كل من رئيس الجمهورية برهم صالح، ورئيس الوزراء عادل عبد المهدي، ورئيس البرلمان محمد الحلبوسي. لم يغادر البيان الذي صدر عن الاجتماع حدود العموميات، التي يظلّ في إطارها أيضاً ردّ مصادر مقرّبة من رئيس الوزراء على سؤال «الأخبار» حول ما دار بين المجتمعين، إذ تقول إن الأخيرين شددوا على «مراعاة خصوصية الوضع الوطني، وتغليب مصلحة العراق والعراقيين»، وأكدوا دعمهم الحكومة في متابعة التقيّد بهذه السياسة، و«التصدّي لأي طرف يتعمّد الخروج على مبادئ العمل الوطني الموحّد».

  وحده النائب السابق عن محافظة صلاح الدين، مشعان الجبوري، أطلّ ليعقّب على بيان «اجتماع قصر السلام» بالقول إن الأميركيين قدّموا لعبد المهدي «أدلة من شأنها إدانة طرف عراقي» في عملية استهداف مضخّتي نفط تابعتين لشركة «أرامكو» السعودية (وسط المملكة) أواسط أيار/ مايو الماضي.

  لا تنفي ثلاثة مصادر، تواصلت معها «الأخبار»، أحدها من وزارة الخارجية وثانيها مقرّب من عبد المهدي وثالثها في قيادة «الحشد الشعبي»، حديث رئيس الوزراء خلال الاجتماع المذكور عن اتصال وزير الخارجية الأميركي، مايك بومبيو، به في 15 حزيران الجاري، ليبلغه بأن واشنطن «تمتلك أدلة تثبت تورّط جهات عراقية في قصف» مضخّتَي «أرامكو»، و«انطلاق الطائرات المسيّرة (التي استُخدمت في العملية) من منطقة جرف الصخر (60 كيلومتراً جنوبي غربي بغداد)». وبالنظر إلى تمركز «كتائب حزب الله» في تلك المنطقة، فإن واشنطن تحمّلها بالتالي المسؤولية (وفق قناة «سي أن أن» الأميركية، شنّ الجيش الأميركي هجوماً سايبرانياً على الكتائب في الأيام التي تبعت إسقاط الطائرة المسيّرة الأميركية من قِبَل الحرس الثوري الإيراني، بهدف شلّ شبكات الاتصالات الخاصّة بها). جواب عبد المهدي للوزير الأميركي كان مطابقاً لما قاله قبل يومين في مؤتمره الصحافي الأسبوعي، إذ أشار إلى أن «كل أجهزتنا الاستخبارية وكل قواتنا لم ترصد ولم يثبت لها هذا الشيء».

  مصادر الجيش اليمني: لسنا في حاجة إلى من يقصف بدلاً منّا

  لكن الحديث الرسمي عن الموضوع لم يقتصر على ما ورد في مؤتمر عبد المهدي، بل إن البيان الشهير الذي أصدره الأخير في 18 حزيران/ يونيو (راجع «الأخبار»، عدد 3786)، والذي شدد فيه على منع «عمل أي قوة مسلحة عراقية أو غير عراقية خارج إطار القوات المسلحة، ومنع أي قوة تعمل في إطار القوات المسلحة من أن تكون لها حركة أو عمليات أو مخازن أو صناعات خارج معرفة وإدارة وسيطرة القوات المسلحة»، لا يبدو خارجاً من هذا السياق. إذ توضح المصادر نفسها أن كلام بومبيو عن منطلق الطائرات المسيّرة هو الذي كان في خلفية بيان رئيس الوزراء، وليس الرميات الصاروخية الأخيرة التي استهدفت قواعد أميركية في العراق، وخصوصاً أن الأميركيين قدموا للجانب العراقي ما ادعوا أنها «أدلة دامغة» على انطلاق الطائرات المسيرة من أراضي الرافدين. وعلى رغم أن بغداد «لم تقتنع بتلك الأدلة، وخصوصاً أن المراصد لم تسجل مرور طائرة كهذه، إلا أن السفير الأميركي، ماثيو تولر، أصرّ صبيحة 18 حزيران/ يونيو على عرض ما زعم أنها أفلام وصور تدعّم حديث بومبيو»، الأمر الذي اضطر عبد المهدي، على ما يظهر، الى اتخاذ خطوة كلامية من شأنها امتصاص ضغوط الولايات المتحدة.

  في ردّها على تلك المزاعم، تنفي مصادر «الحشد» وفصائل المقاومة الاتهامات الأميركية، التي تورد على سبيل تفنيدها أن «المسافة المفترض أن تجتازها الطائرة هائلة (أكثر من 938 كيلومتراً)، ما يطرح سؤالاً حول هذه الطائرة الخارقة». كذلك، تنفي مصادر الجيش اليمني واللجان الشعبية حديث بومبيو جملة وتفصيلاً، مؤكدة أنه «غير صحيح»، متسائلةً: «كيف يمكن أن تنطلق المسيّرات من العراق؟!». تضع المصادر عينها ادعاءات واشنطن في سياق «استحقار العقل اليمني… فنحن لسنا في حاجة إلى مَن يقصف بدلاً منّا»، داعيةً الأميركيين إلى «الكشف عما يسمّونها أدلّتهم»، معتبرة أن الولايات المتحدة تسعى من خلال ذلك إلى «ابتزاز العراق، لتحييده عن المعركة… ولجم عمل فصائل المقاومة». وهو ما تذهب إليه أيضاً مصادر الفصائل، إذ لا تستبعد أن تكون «الدلائل مفبركة، حتى تأمن واشنطن جانب أي جهة عراقية قد تدخل في معركة» مستقبلية مع إيران، لافتة إلى أن بعض الجهات العراقية تحاول تحميل فصائل المقاومة المسؤولية، «وتنخرط في هجمات إعلامية علينا»، وكأنها تسعى إلى «إيجاد ذرائع لواشنطن لعمل ما في العراق».

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What’s Happening in the “Land of the Free” and the “Home of the Brave”?

By Edward Curtin

Global Research, June 29, 2019

There’s something happening here/What it is ain’t exactly clear.” – Buffalo Springfield

The Sunday newspaper had been left on the park bench.  Its book page had lists of best-sellers, as if numbers two through ten could be the “best” along with number one.  Absurdities were everywhere for the taking.  On the Non-Fiction Hardcover list, numbers 3, 5, and 10 each had the word fuck in the title.  The books were published by two old and respected publishing houses: Harper and Little Brown.  However, something was odd, for the word fuck was spelled f*ck.  These books were about hope, acceptance, and living the good life, cliché topics in a feel-good culture: The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck, Everything is F*cked, and Calm the F*ck Down.  It seemed you had to be f*cked first before you could accept the hope that the good life was coming your way. He wondered if these publishing houses thought that by eliminating the “u” they kept their hands clean and were not descending into the gutter with hoi polloi, while simultaneously titillating potential readers.  Did they think readers would be offended by the word fuck, but would not be by f*ck?  Then it occurred to him that he didn’t know what the fuck non-fiction books were anyway.  Maybe he had been wrong all his life and the opposite of up was non-up, not down.

*

On every table in the seaside resort’s breakfast room there was a brightly colored flower in a clear watered vase.  When he picked it up to smell the orange blossom, there was no smell and the water didn’t move.  He imagined an ersatz form of plastic happiness, a conjurer’s delight, where everything was a trick, nothing moved, not even water.

*

Leaving the Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton in southern California where white and black Marines were regularly fighting and there were even some killings never reported by the press, the two young Marines escaped the tense and claustrophobic atmosphere on a weekend pass.  It was early February 1967, and they took an overnight bus up the coast to San Francisco where they wandered around and found a breakfast restaurant near Union Square. There they read in the newspaper that for the week of January 12-19 the U.S. military had suffered its highest casualty count so far in Vietnam: 144 killed, 1, 044 wounded, and 6 missing-in-action.  It jolted them awake more than the coffee.  Later that afternoon, the two naifs wandered into the Haight-Ashbury district were they were startled by the first waves of acid-dazed hippies, who would soon arrive in hoards for the “summer of love.”  In the evening when they visited a bar for some beers, the waitress who delivered their drinks was topless.  While they regarded this slight anomaly with manly indifference, she must have noticed their military haircuts that stood out among the longhairs, and so she served them buttons with their beers.  The buttons read: Vietnam Love It Or Leave It. Heading back to the base, they knew where they didn’t want to go.

*

The young man was studying for a PhD.  He was intent on learning what made the world and people tick.  He was attending a small seminar at the home of his professor, a famous German emigre who had worked for the Rand Corporation and U.S.  Intelligence. Each of the five students was to give a short presentation on the subject of fake news and the issue of knowledge, since the course concerned the sociology of knowledge.  The student began his presentation by quoting a famous philosopher’s words: “In formulating any philosophy, the first consideration must always be: What can we know?  That is, what can we be sure we know, or sure that we know we knew it, if indeed it is all knowable.

Or have we simply forgotten it and are too embarrassed to say anything?  Descartes hinted at the problem when he wrote, ‘My mind can never know my body, although it has become quite friendly with my legs.’ By “knowable,” incidentally, I do not mean that which can be known by perception of the senses, or that which can be grasped by the mind, but more that which can be said to be Known or to possess a Knownness or Knowability, or at least something you can mention to a friend.”  The student paused and the eminent professor said, “So very interesting.  Who is that philosopher?”  The student replied, “Woody Allen.”  “He is very perceptive,” said the professor, “and yet I have never heard of him.  I will have to read his work.”  The student realized he was in good hands with such U.S. intelligence and Rand Corporation experts, so he asked the professor’s wife for another glass of the German wine she was serving and toasted his good fortune with a wry grin. None of the other students got the joke.

*

A young man was reading a book that he highly recommended to his uncle.  Leafing through it, the older man came upon this passage: “the free individual is just a fictional tale concocted by an assembly of biochemical algorithms.”  So what was the point of reading such a book, he wondered, since doing so was an exercise in pre-programmed absurdity since there was no freedom.

*

You have probably seen the bumper sticker that says: “Shit Happens.”  Some people are just lucky, I suppose, and odd coincidences mark their lives. When he was just out of Columbia College and working for Business International Corporation, a known CIA front company, Barack Obama had a chance encounter with a young woman, Genevieve Cook, with whom he had a 1-2 year relationship.

“How Dare you Say Peace is the Answer.” … Fear is a Much Better Alternative

Like Obama and at about the same time, Cook just happened to have lived in Indonesia with her father, Michael Cook, who just happened to become Australia’s top spook, the director-general of the Office of National Assessments, and also the Ambassador to Washington.

Of course, Obama’s mother, as is well-known, just happened to be living in Indonesia with Barack and Obama’s step-father, Lolo Soetoro, an Indonesian military officer under the command of General Suharto.

The CIA supported General Suharto’s coup against President Sukarno and the slaughter of over a million Indonesian Communists and Indonesian-Chinese.

Image: Indonesia massacre 1965

As is also well-known, it just so happened that Obama’s mother, Ann Dunham, trained in the Russian language, after teaching English in the US Embassy in Jakarta that housed one of the largest CIA stations in Asia, did her “anthropological” work in Indonesia and Southeast Asia financed by the well-known CIA conduits, USAID and the Ford Foundation. Then there is Cook’s stepfather, Philip C. Jessup, who just happened to be in Indonesia at the same time, doing nickel-mining deals with the genocidal Suharto government.  Anyway, “shit happens.”  You never know whom you might meet along the way of life.

*

The hostess at the seaside restaurant had an eastern European accent, so he asked her where she was from.  She said, “Belgrade, Serbia.”  He told her he was sorry for what the U.S. government led by Bill Clinton had done to her country and that he considered Clinton a war criminal. She said the bombing in 1999 was terrifying, and even though she was young at the time, she vividly remembered it. It traumatized her, her parents, and her family.  Then she smiled and said that in the month she had been in the U.S. for her summer job, all the Americans she had met had been so friendly.  He welcomed her to the U.S., and as he was walking away, he remembered that Clinton’s savage bombing of Serbia that had killed so many Serbian children and other innocents had been code-named “Operation Noble Anvil.”  He wondered what kind of “noble” people would think of innocent children as anvils: “heavy usually steel-faced iron blocks on which metal is shaped,” and did the friendly Americans accept Clinton’s sick lies when he ended his March 24, 1999 war address to the American people with these words: “Our thoughts and prayers tonight must be with the men and women of our armed forces, who are undertaking this mission for the sake of our values and our children’s future. May God bless them, and may God bless America.”

*

The banal, 1967 hit song, “San Francisco” (Be sure to wear flowers in your hair), which was influential in enticing young people to come to San Francisco for the Summer of Love, was written by “Papa” John Philips, who attended the US Naval Academy at Annapolis and whose father was a Marine Corps Captain.  “Papa” John’s wife had worked at the Pentagon and her father was involved in covert intelligence work in Vietnam.  His neighbor and Laurel Canyon (Los Angeles) buddy was Jim Morrison of Doors fame, whose father US Navy Admiral George Morrison commanded U.S. warships in Vietnam’s Tonkin Gulf during the “Tonkin Gulf Incident.” Frank Zappa, the father figure of Laurel Canyon’s many musicians who just happened to converge in one place at the same time where a covert military film studio operated, had a father who was a chemical warfare specialist at Edgewood Arsenal.  Stephen Stills, David Crosby and many other soon to be famous musicians all came from military and intelligence backgrounds and frolicked in Laurel Canyon.  Although they were draft age, none of them was drafted as they played music, dropped acid, and created the folk-rock movement whose music was catchy but innocuous and posed no threat to the establishment. But “shit happens.”  In his disturbing book, Weird Scenes Inside the Canyon, David McGowan raises the question: “what if the musicians themselves (and various other leaders and founders of the ‘movement’) were every bit as much a part of the intelligence community as the people who were supposedly harassing them?  What if, in other words, the entire youth culture of the 1960s was created not as a grass-roots challenge to the status quo, but as a cynical exercise in discrediting and marginalizing the budding anti-war movement and creating a fake opposition that could be easily controlled and led astray….What if, in reality, they were pretty much all playing on the same team?”

*

The reporter was interviewing four of the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi’s (image left) young “executive governors,” who were all dressed in three-piece business suits.  They were in the process of conducting Transcendental Meditation’s weeklong course leading to supernormal abilities, including, flying, levitating, disappearing, x-ray vision, and other siddhis, or supernormal powers.  Their recent press release had advertised the course as “a new breakthrough for human life on earth” for any person.  The reporter was a bit skeptical that people could be taught – for a large fee – to fly or disappear.

He asked one of the executive governors, “Can you literally rise into the air and move horizontally; can you see yourself and can others see you actually fly?” “Absolutely,” Larry Johnson replied without hesitation, “absolutely.  Once you eliminate all stress from your nervous system, you have unbounded, unlimited potential.  A human can achieve any desire he wants, flying is only one of them.”  “People will be skeptical,” the reporter continued, “How about a demonstration?”  “A public demonstration would cause too much of a ruckus,” said Johnson.  “And we couldn’t show you because we only do it for each other.  Actually, we do our techniques with our eyes closed, but we do peek out once in a while and see each other flying around the room.

You know, one of the siddhis is a technique for making yourself invisible, and the Mararishi has said, ‘Don’t peek out to see if you’ve disappeared.’” Johnson giggled and added, “We can also teach people to x-ray their own bodies and see through walls. Absolutely, absolutely.  It’s all about infinite correlation.  Absolutely.” As the battered reporter left the interview, he wondered if the Maharishi was a creation of the CIA.  He remembered John Lennon’s song lines about the Maharishi’s assistant:  “But he often spread rumors through his right hand man/Who used to be with the CIA”

*

What is “exactly clear” is that Buffalo Springfield (Stephen Stills, Neil Young et al.) toured with their Laurel Canyon buddies, the Beach Boys, in late 1967 (their other mutual bud, Charlie Manson, stayed out west presumably to work on his craft) and performed at a very odd venue for a “dissident” rock group, The U.S. Military Academy at West Point.  At that time nearly 500,000 American troops were waging war on the Vietnamese.  That concert was an odd happening, wouldn’t you say?

*

If  everyone actually looked, they’d see precisely what went down, “what’s going down,” and why we are going down.  If you think many of these things “just happen” for no reason, then I guess you are just “f*cked.”  Excuse me, but it’s true.  Does the asterisk help?

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

Distinguished author and sociologist Edward Curtin is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization. His website is http://edwardcurtin.com/.

The original source of this article is Global Research

Copyright © Edward Curtin, Global Research, 2019

I Denounce the Holocaust Religion, but I am not Alone

June 29, 2019  /  Gilad Atzmon

 

by Gilad Atzmon

‘Yeshayahu Leibowitz, the philosopher who was an observant Orthodox Jew, told me once: “The Jewish religion died 200 years ago. Now there is nothing that unifies the Jews around the world apart from the Holocaust.”’ Remember What? Remember How? – Uri Avnery

The Labour Party is now a comedy act. Even when it does the right thing, it is quick to admit it occurred by mistake. Three days ago the Party decided to let MP Chris Williamson back into its ranks, a decision that seemed to convince some that Corbyn finally grew a pair. Apparently, it didn’t take more than 72 hours for the party to humiliatingly reverse its decision and bow in to pressure mounted on its leadership by the Jewish Lobby, Labour Friends of Israel and, believe it or not, a bunch of party staffers who “demanded,” no more no less, an “immediate review” of the decision regarding Chris Williamson.

The signatories, whom according to the Jewish News included the “vast majority of remaining Jewish party staff,” wished “to remain anonymous for fear of losing their employment.” Once again we are provided with an unprecedented glimpse into the unethical nature of the Zionist operation. Our ‘anonymous’ staffers  signed on a letter demanding that the party suspends an elected MP and let him practically lose his job, yet asked to remain anonymous so that they can keep their own.

On my part, I have been entertained in the last few days seeing some of the most horrendous Labour politicians lying about me in an attempt to smear MP Williamson. Two days ago I posted a video deconstructing unfounded nonsense that MP Margaret Hodge attributed to me and also challenged the ignoramus Lord Falconer’s drivel concerning my work. Yet, I was surprised to find out that the anonymous Labour staffers actually described me accurately. The staffers demanded MP Williamson to be ejected from the party, with one reason being that “he backed a petition in support of Gilad Atzmon, who has denounced the ‘holocaust religion’ and suggested that there is a Zionist plan for world domination.”

I am here to admit that only rarely do I see my detractors referring to my words and work genuinely. However, I would like to point out to the anonymous staffers that Zionist world domination is not ‘a plan’ anymore, it is the reality in which we live. With the Zionist LFI terrorising the Labour Leadership on a daily basis, with 80% of Tory MPs being members of the Zionist CFI, with AIPAC dominating American foreign policy, with the USA and Britain launching criminal wars following Zio-con immoral interventionist mantras, Zionism dominating world politics is not an abstract ‘plan.’ It is mainstream news!

But the staffers were also genuine describing me as a person who denounces the holocaust religion.

In my work I pay great respect to the Israeli philosopher Prof. Yeshayahu Leibowitz, who coined the notion “Holocaust religion” back in the 1970s. Leibowitz detected that Jews believe in many different things: Judaism, Bolshevism, Human Rights, Zionism, ‘anti-Zionism’ but all Jews believe in the Holocaust. Leibowitz, himself an orthodox Jew, opposed the Holocaust Religion. He stated occasionally that all historical events, no matter how catastrophic, are religiously insignificant. 

 In 1987 Adi Ophir, another prominent Israeli philosopher, offered his own criticism of the Holocaust religion. In his paper On Sanctifying the Holocaust: An Anti-Theological Treatise, Ophir admitted that “a religious consciousness built around the Holocaust may become the central aspect of a new religion.”

Ophir listed the four commandments of the new religion:

1. “Thou shalt have no other holocaust.”

2. “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image or likeness.” …

3. “Thou shalt not take the name in vain.”

4. “Remember the day of the Holocaust to keep it holy, in memory of the destruction of the Jews of Europe.”

Though Ophir’s formulations are understandably dated, my work on Holocaust Religion is consistent with the critical discourse offered by the two Israeli philosophers. In The Wandering Who I argue that the Holocaust discourse in its current form contains numerous essential religious elements. It has priests and prophets. It has commandments and dogmas (e.g. ‘Never Again’) and rituals (memorial days, pilgrimage to Auschwitz, etc.). It has an established, esoteric symbolic order (good, evil, death, liberation). It also has a temple, Yad Vashem, and shrines – Holocaust museums in capital cities worldwide. The Holocaust religion is also maintained by a massive global financial network, what Norman Finkelstein terms the ‘Holocaust industry’. This new religion is coherent enough to define its ‘antichrists’ (i.e. Holocaust deniers), and powerful enough to persecute them (through Holocaust-denial and hate-speech laws).

I also argue that the Holocaust religion is the conclusive and final stage in the Jewish dialectic; it is the end of Jewish history. The new religion allocates to Jews a central role within their own universe. In the new religion: the ‘sufferer’ and the ‘innocent’ march toward ‘redemption’ and ‘empowerment.’ God is out of the game and has been sacked, having failed in his historic mission. He wasn’t there to save the Jews, after all. In the new religion ‘the Jew’, as the new Jewish God, redeems himself or herself.

I indeed denounce the new religion and for the obvious ethical and humanist reasons. The holocaust religion adheres to the primacy of one people. It is an anti-universal precept that offers no hope, mercy or compassion. It instead produces a rationale for more oppression, global conflicts and havoc. It is hardly a surprise that the many people who adhere to the holocaust are engaged in the destruction of Palestine and its indigenous people. As far as I can say, the Holocaust religion is a blind, non-empathic precept. If the Holocaust is the new global religion all I ask is for the British Labour Party, its staffers and councilors to respect my right to be agnostic, a non-believer, an atheist.

And if MP Williamson is expelled from the Labour party for me upholding such views, maybe MP Williamson should consider giving me a call and thanking me for liberating him from his reactionary Zionised party.

---

More (A Must see Video) Here

Trade War Hangs Over the G20

June 29, 2019 © Photo: kremlin.ru

All the early statements and gossip in Osaka revolve around the year-long China-US dispute

Gordon WATTS

Two words were on the lips of world leaders as the curtain went up on the Group of 20 gathering in the Japanese city of Osaka. On Friday, all the early statements and gossip revolved around the “trade war.”

Xi Jinping set the tone. China’s president warned about the dangers of protectionism at a meeting between the BRICS bloc of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.

“This is destroying the global trade order … This also impacts the common interests of our countries, overshadows the peace and stability worldwide,” the Chinese president said.

While he did not directly refer to the United States, his message was clear and unequivocal.

In the past year, Washington and Beijing have been embroiled in a brutal trade conflict involving tit-for-tat tariffs on imports worth hundreds of billions of dollars. Along the way, Chinese companies, such as the telecoms giant Huawei, have been dragged into the dispute, suffering punitive sanctions imposed by Washington.

After trade talks broke down last month and the technology battle intensified between the world’s two largest economies, the shockwaves rippled across the globe.

Now, G20 leaders are praying that US President Donald Trump and Xi can ease tensions when they meet face-to-face on Saturday to discuss the situation.

Although there appears little chance of an immediate deal, they will be hoping a truce can be hammered out.

Trump at least made all the right noises about trade agreements. But they did not appear to include China.

‘Very big deal’

“I think we’re going to have some very big things to announce. Very big trade deal. We’re doing some very big things with India in terms of trade, in terms of manufacturing,” he said at the start of talks with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

The only real reference about the spat with Beijing came in a remark he also made to Modi.

“We actually sell Huawei many of its parts,” Trump said. “So we’re going to be discussing that and also how India fits in. And we’ll be discussing Huawei.”

Earlier this week, media reports suggested that Xi would not agree to a deal unless Washington lifted its ban on the company, which is recognized as a world leader in 5G technology and a key player in the smartphone sector.

During the opening session, Trump touched on the issue. “We must also ensure the resilience and security of our 5G networks,” he said.

Still, Sino-American trade fiction dominated the conversation after the World Bank released a report earlier this month entitled, Global Economic Prospects: Heightened Tensions, Subdued Investment.

“The trade relations between China and the United States are difficult, they are contributing to the slowdown of the global economy,” Jean-Claude Juncker, the outgoing European Commission president, told a media briefing.

French President Emmanuel Macron also called for a reset in relations between Washington and Beijing to get the “global economy” back on track.

“Today things are made neither in China nor in the United States. They are made globally,” he said.

In his opening address, Shinzo Abe, the Japanese prime minister, appealed for unity among bickering nations as well as later touching on the thorny problem of reforming the World Trade Organisation or WTO.

He urged G20 leaders to send a strong message in support of free and fair trade, warning that geopolitical tensions were rising and buffeting the “global economy.”

“With your help, I hope we will realize beautiful harmony in Osaka … rather than highlight our confrontations, let us seek out what unites us,” he said.

“Today, I want to discuss with leaders measures to further enhance momentum towards reform in WTO,” he added.

Eloquent sentiments amid the rhetoric of what is looking like a new economic Cold War between China and the US.

Indeed, the temperature plunged another few degrees before the opening address at the G20.

“Bullying practices are on the rise, posing severe threats to economic globalization and international order, and severe challenges to the external environment of developing countries,” Dai Bing, an official from China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said in a veiled attack on Washington’s stance.

Yet behind the scenes, Beijing’s top trade negotiator Vice-Premier Liu He and US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer met at the Imperial Hotel in Osaka, according to an official familiar with the matter who declined to be identified, Bloomberg news agency revealed.

They were trying to lay the groundwork for the Trump-Xi tete-a-tete.

Australia’s Prime Minister Scott Morrison, who dined with the US president on Thursday, illustrated the challenges ahead.

“I walked away with the view that this is going to be tough because there are some very serious issues that they’re trying to resolve,” he told Channel 7, the Australian television network.

But then, walking away has been a specialty in the year-long diplomatic confrontation.

asiatimes.com

The views of individual contributors do not necessarily represent those of the Strategic Culture Foundation.

Palestinian Town Changes Name of Street from “Bahrain” to Kuwait’s “Marzouq Al-Ghanim”

June 29, 2019

The mayor of Palestine’s Yatta in Al-Khalil (Hebron) in south of occupied West Bank changed one of his towns streets from “Bahrain” to “Marzouq Al-Ghanim”, the Speaker of Kuwait’s National Assembly, in recognition of Kuwait’s rejection of the Deal of the Century’.

A statement issued by Yatta’s municipality mentioned that upon a lot of appeals sent by the locals, the mayor Ibrahim Abu Zahra decided to change the name of the street, hailing the Kuwaiti support to the Palestinian cause.

Source: Al-Manar English Website

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Hezbollah: Lebanon Will Never Bow to Economic Scarecrow Used to Impose Resettlement of Palestinians

June 29, 2019

Hezbollah Deputy Secretary General Sheikh Naim Qassem stressed that the US-led conference in Bahrain has failed due to the absence of all the Palestinian forces, adding that it exposed the Gulf regimes who appeared clearly as being away from supporting the Palestinian cause.

Sheikh Qassem added that all the Palestinians have become more convinced that the military resistance is the only way to liberate Palestine, away from all the dishonest promises.

His eminence also stressed that Lebanon rejects the resettlement of the Palestinian refugees despite the use of the economic scarecrow, noting that the crisis in the country would be solved within the limits of the sovereignty.

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Monsters Walk the Earth. Why These Three Countries Are the Real Troika of Evil

By Philip Giraldi

June 28, 2019 “Information Clearing House” –  There are monsters among us. Every day I read about an American “plan” to either invade some place new or to otherwise inflict pain to convince a “non-compliant” foreign government how to behave. Last week it was Iran but next week it could just as easily again be Lebanon, Syria or Venezuela. Or even Russia or China, both of whom are seen as “threats” even though American soldiers, sailors and marines sit on their borders and not vice versa. The United States is perhaps unique in the history of the world in that it sees threats everywhere even though it is not, in fact, threatened by anyone.

Just as often, one learns about a new atrocity by Israelis inflicted on the defenseless Arabs just because they have the power to do so. Last Friday in Gaza the Israeli army shot and killed four unarmed demonstrators and injured 300 more while the Jewish state’s police invaded a Palestinian orphanage school in occupied Jerusalem and shut it down because the students were celebrating a “Yes to peace, no to war” poetry festival. Peace is not in the Israeli authorized curriculum.

And then there are the Saudis, publicly chopping the heads off of 37 “dissidents” in a mass display of barbarity, and also murdering and dismembering a hapless journalist. And let’s not forget the bombing and deliberate starving of hundreds of thousands innocent civilians in Yemen.

It is truly a troika of evil, an expression favored by US National Security Advisor John Bolton, though he was applying it to Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua, all “socialist” nations currently on Washington’s “hit list.” Americans, Saudis and Israelis have become monsters in the eyes of the rest of the world even if in their own minds they are endowed with special privilege due to their being “Exceptional,” “Chosen by God” or “Guardians of Mecca and Medina.” All three countries share a dishonest sense of entitlement that supports the fiction that their oppressive and often illegal behavior is somehow perfectly legitimate.

To be sure not all Americans, Saudis or Israelis are individually monsters. Many are decent people who are appalled by what their respective governments are doing. Saudi citizens live under a despotism and have little to say about their government, but there is a formidable though fragmented peace movement in slightly less totalitarian Israel and in the United States there is growing anti-war sentiment. The discomfort in America is driven by a sense that the post 9/11 conflicts have only embroiled the country more deeply in wars that have no exit and no end. Unfortunately, the peace movement in Israel will never have any real power while the anti-war activists in America are leaderless and disorganized, waiting for someone to step up and take charge.

The current foreign policy debate centers around what Washington’s next moves in the Middle East might be. The decision-making will inevitably involve the US and its “close allies” Israel and Saudi Arabia, which should not surprise anyone. While it is clear that President Donald Trump ordered an attack on Iran before canceling the action at the last minute, exactly how that played out continues to be unclear. One theory, promoted by the president himself, is that the attack would have been disproportionate, killing possibly hundreds of Iranian military personnel in exchange for one admittedly very expensive surveillance drone. Killing the Iranians would have guaranteed an immediate escalation by Iran, which has both the will and the capability to hit high value targets in and around the Persian Gulf region, a factor that may also have figured into the presidential calculus.

Trump’s cancelation of the attack immediately produced cries of rage from the usual neoconservative chickenhawk crowd in Washington as well as a more subdued reiteration of the Israeli and Saudi demands that Iran be punished, though both are also concerned that a massive Iranian retaliation would hit them hard. They are both hoping that Washington’s immensely powerful strategic armaments will succeed in knocking Iran out quickly and decisively, but they have also both learned not to completely trust the White House.

To assuage the beast, the president has initiated a package of “major” new sanctions on Iran which will no doubt hurt the Iranian people while not changing government decision making one iota. There has also been a leak of a story relating to US cyber-attacks on Iranian military and infrastructure targets, yet another attempt to act aggressive to mitigate the sounds being emitted by the neocon chorus.

To understand the stop-and-go behavior by Trump requires application of the Occam’s Razor principle, i.e. that the simplest explanation is most likely correct. For some odd reason, Donald Trump wants to be reelected president in 2020 in spite of the fact that he appears to be uncomfortable in office. A quick, successful war would enhance his chances for a second term, which is probably what Pompeo promised, but any military action that is not immediately decisive would hurt his prospects, quite possibly inflicting fatal damage. Trump apparently had an intercession by Fox news analyst Tucker Carlson, who may have explained that reality to him shortly before he decided to cancel the attack. Tucker is, for what it’s worth, a highly respected critic coming from the political right who is skeptical of wars of choice, democracy building and the global liberal order.

The truth is that all of American foreign policy during the upcoming year will be designed to pander to certain constituencies that will be crucial to the 2020 presidential election. One can bank on even more concessions being granted to Israel and its murderous thug prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu to bring in Jewish votes and, more importantly, money. John Bolton was already in Israel getting his marching orders from Netanyahu on the weekend and Pence was effusive in his praise of Israel when he spoke at the meeting in Orlando earlier in the week launching the Trump 2020 campaign, so the game is already afoot. It is an interesting process to observe how Jewish oligarchs like Sheldon Adelson contribute tens of millions of dollars to the politicians who then in turn give the Jewish state taxpayer generated tens of billions of dollars in return. Bribing corrupt politicians is one of the best investments that one can make in today’s America.

Trump will also go easy on Saudi Arabia because he wants to sell them billions of dollars’ worth of weapons which will make the key constituency of the Military Industrial Complex (MIC) happy. And he will continue to exert “maximum pressure” on Iran and Venezuela to show how tough he can be for his Make America Great audience, though avoiding war if he possibly can just in case any of the hapless victims tries to fight back and embarrass him.

So, there it is folks. War with Iran is for the moment on hold, but tune in again next week as the collective White House memory span runs to only three or four days. By next week we Americans might be at war with Mongolia.

Philip Giraldi is Ph.D., Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest. A former CIA Case Officer and Army Intelligence Officer who spent twenty years overseas in Europe and the Middle East working terrorism cases. He holds a BA with honors from the University of Chicago and an MA and PhD in Modern History from the University of London. 

مقاومة فلسطين ونعاج ترامب

يونيو 29, 2019

د. عدنان منصور

تصوّر الرئيس الأميركي ترامب، وهو رجل الأعمال والصفقات وصهره كوشنر سمسار بعض «العرب» أنه بهم يستطيع طيّ صفحة القضية الفلسطينية للأبد، وفتح صفحة جديدة من تاريخ قبيح تسطّره «إسرائيل اليهودية» على كامل التراب الفلسديني، بعد أن تزيح عن كاهلها قضية شعب مقاوم رافض للاحتلال بكلّ أشكاله. ظنّت الصهيونية الأميركية والصهيونية الإسرائيلية والصهيونية العربية المتمثلة ببعض المرتدّين العرب، أنّ حفنة من المال تستطيع أن تقضي على قضية شعب بتاريخه ووجوده وثقافته وتجذره بالأرض. بعض العرب الذين كانوا مثالاً حياً، ونموذجاً واضحاً للخنوع والرضوخ والذين ما تعوّدوا إلا أن يكونوا مطية لسياسات الولايات المتحدة، تأمرهم فيطيعون، تبتزهم ويدفعون، تحميهم وينوخون، يُصفَعون ويرضون، يُذلّون وهم فرحون. ظنّ الثعلب الأميركي أنه بهذه الزمرة من الأعراب يستطيع أن يروّض شعب فلسطين ويروّض شعوب الأمة كلها. لقد توهّم أنّ الشعب الفلسطيني هو على شاكلة من تعامل معهم على مدى عقود من الزمن، حيث رأى فيهم أنهم على استعداد للتنازل عن كلّ شيء، عن شرفهم، وأوطانهم وكراماتهم حفاظاً على المناصب والمكاسب والعروش والكروش. لم يعرف السيد الأميركي وسمساره وعبيده أنّ معدن فلسطين وشعب فلسطين يختلف بالشكل والأساس عن معدن المرتدّين والخونة في هذه الأمة. لم يعرف ترامب أنّ حبة من تراب فلسطين في غزة أغلى من كلّ مليارات مؤتمر «المحمية». وأنّ شجرة زيتون في أيّ بقعة من بقاع فلسطين تجري في وجدان الفلسطينيين مجرى الدم في العروق. يريد ترامب وزمرته شراء وطن، وتشريد شعب بأكمله والقضاء على وجوده ونزعه من تاريخه بحفنة من المال بذريعة إنماء المناطق الفلسطينية.

أين كان العربان عندما كان يجوع الشعب الفلسطيني ولا تُمدّ له اليد من هؤلاء إلا بالقليل القليل ليشعروه بالذلّ وبحاجته الدائمة إليهم؟! أين كان هؤلاء قبل المؤتمر الذي عُقد في المحمية، ليقدّموا الدعم المتواصل ويرفعوا الحصار عن الفلسطينيين، وهم يشاهدون العدو الصهيوني يحاصر غزة ويقتل شعبها ويتفرّجون، يمنع الكهرباء والمياه عنها وهم كدرون، يحاصرون شواطئها وهواءها وأرضها وهم محنّطون؟! ما الذي فعله أعراب الأمة في تطبيق العقوبات ومقاطعة «إسرائيل»؟! أين مبادراتهم؟ أين وعودهم؟ أين تشدّقهم وتصريحاتهم المملة الكاذبة بالعمل على قيام دولة فلسطين وعاصمتها القدس؟! لماذا تتدفق أموالهم اليوم على ترامب وكوشنر، وما الذي دفعهم إلى ذلك؟! وإذا كانوا هم على استعداد أن يبيعوا كراماتهم وأرضهم وثرواتهم، فشعب فلسطين المعذب الذي يئن ليلاً ونهاراً، لا يبيع شرفه ولا يبيع أرضه ووجوده. وأما ترامب فلا نعوّل عليه شيئاً، والولايات المتحدة و»إسرائيل» ما كانتا يوماً إلا وجهان لعملة واحدة.

إنّ الإيجابية الوحيدة في مؤتمر المحمية، هي أنها أسقطت النقاب عن الوجوه الغادرة بفلسطين وشعبها، والغادرة بأمتها وتاريخها. كنا في الماضي لا نصدّق ما كانوا يقولونه عن فلسطين وعن حرصهم على شعب فلسطين وعلى قضيته المركزية. كنا نشكّ بمواقفهم وسياساتهم وانتماءاتهم وتصريحاتهم، لكننا اليوم على يقين، أنّ هؤلاء كانوا يكذبون على شعب فلسطين وكانوا يتحيّنون الفرصة للانقضاض عليها واجتثاثها من جذورها. فكيف يحافظون عروشهم وكروشهم ومناصبهم إذا لم يطيعوا سيدهم في البيت الأبيض وهو القائل لهم بكلّ استعلاء وعنجهية وتكبّر: لا تستطيعون البقاء أسبوعين في حكمكم دون حمايتنا لكم؟ لذلك كان عليهم طاعة سيد البيت الأبيض ليدخلوا معه بالصفقة المذلة على حساب شعب فلسطين.

على الفلسطينيين اليوم قبل الغد أن يتخلّوا عن خلافاتهم، فلسطين تضيع أمام أعينهم، والقضية يبيعها بعض العرب. لا نريد أن نسمع غداً بأسماء تنظيمات فلسطينية، نريد أن نسمع بجبهة فلسطينية واحدة موحدة لها هدف واحد وصف واحد ضدّ كارثة صفقة القرن لإجهاضها في مهدها. كفى خلافات ونزاعات واجتهادات وسجالات واتهامات واشتباكات لا تؤدّي إلا لضياع القضية. آن للإخوة الفلسطينيين أن يأخذوا العبرة من الذي يحصل. ففلسطين فوق كلّ اعتبار، فوق الأحزاب والتنظيمات والعقائد والطروحات التي لا تفيد. فعندما تضيع فلسطين وتضيع القضية لن يبقى بعد ذلك تنظيم ولا حركة ولا منظمة ولا سلطة ولا زعيم. فهل يعي الأخوة الفلسطينيون والعرب الأحرار هذا الواقع قبل فوات الأوان؟ إنّ الفلسطينيين اليوم هم على المحك، وكلّ الأحرار في هذه الأمة تنتظر منهم قراراً شجاعاً يرتقي فعلاً لا قولاً إلى مستوى المسؤولية القومية. فهل يفعلها القادة الفلسطينيون؟!

عندما دعت الجامعة العربية إلى اجتماع استثنائي عاجل لوزراء الخارجية العرب يتعلق بفلسطين، والذي عقد يوم 17/11/2012 إثر العدوان الإسرائيلي على غزة، قلناها وبصدق «إنّ الشعب الفلسطيني ليس بحاجة منّا إلى التنديد والشجب والإدانة، ولا الشكاوى ولا التصريحات التي ملّ منها، وملّ معه العالم وشعوبنا العربية على مدى 64 عاماً… ما يريده شعب فلسطين وتريده شعوبنا العربية اليوم وقفة شجاعة مشرّفة تليق بمقاومته وتضحياته وكرامته وقيمه ووجوده وتاريخه، ترتقي إلى مستوى المسؤولية الوطنية والقومية، وتعبّر عن مكنونات وطاقات وإمكانات أمتنا العربية، ولا تعبّر عما يريد أن يمليه علينا الآخرون من قرارات مجحفة.. في الوقت الذي يكافئون فيه «إسرائيل» التي تأسّست على أشلاء الفلسطينيين ويغدقون عليها سلات لا حدود لها من الحوافز والمساعدات والدعم الاقتصادي والمالي والعسكري المتواصل.. متجاهلين ومستخفين بكرامة أمة تملك من وسائل القوة الكثير الكثير، لم تستطع وللأسف حتى الآن بسط إرادتها وقرارها المؤدّي إلى إخراج شعب فلسطين من نكبته والظلم اللاحق به منذ عام 1948… إنّ السلام لا يُستجدى، وإنّ الأرض لا تُستجدى، وإنّ الدولة الفلسطينية والحق الفلسطيني والعربي لا يُستجدى… تبقى فلسطين بوصلة العرب، بها يُقيّم العمل العربي المشترك ودونها يضمر هذا العمل ويضمحلّ، فلا تتركوا فلسطين بين أنياب الذئاب وهي التي تنتظر فكّ أسرها منذ 64 عاماً ولا تزال تنتظر…»

جاء الردّ سريعاً من حمد بن جاسم رئيس الوزراء القطري وزير الخارجية السابق قائلاً: هم ليسوا بذئاب فالبعض منا نعاج».

بعد سبع سنوات، يطلّ الأميركي وسمساره مع نعاجه يريدون أن يسطّروا تاريخاً جديداً لمنطقتنا، تزول فيه فلسطين ويذوب معها شعبها. لكن هيهات… فالنعاج معروف نهايتها والشعوب والأرض باقية وإنْ عاكسها لفترة طغاة العالم ونعاجهم.

وزير سابق

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Much safer to be a protester in Hong Kong/China than in France

June 28, 2019

by Ramin Mazaheri for The Saker Blog

The differences in handling the recent protests in Hong Kong and the weekly demonstrations in France illuminate an enormous democratic deficit between Western “liberal democratic” societies and non-Western “socialist democratic” ones.

It has been amazing to see how quickly the Hong Kong government – which under the “one country, two systems” system largely means the Chinese government (Hong Kong is officially a part of China) – acquiesced to public opinion after just two days of moderately-violent protests.

I am shocked. This is not because I falsely perceive Hong Kong or China as “anti-democratic”, but because every Saturday for months I have been dodging tear gas and rubber bullets in France. Hong Kong’s government backed down after barely more than a week of regular protests in the capital, whereas France has been unwilling to appease a protest movement which has lasted over seven months.

Almost immediately after protests turned violent, Hong Kong tabled the bill which proved so divisive, and their leader even apologised with the “utmost sincerity and humility”. What a contrast to French President Emmanuel Macron: Not only has Macron never apologised, but he did not even utter the words “Yellow Vests” in public until late April. His Interior Ministry can only be counted on to routinely remind Yellow Vests that they have “no regrets” about how the protests have been officially handled.

Hong Kong police reported that 150 tear gas canisters, several rounds of rubber bullets, and 20 beanbag shots were fired during the only day of serious violence. Conversely, a damning annual report this month from French police reported that 19,000 rubber bullets were fired in 2018 (up 200% from 2017), as were 5,400 shock grenades (up 300%).

Two things are appalling here: Firstly, the French government fired – at their own people, mostly for protesting neoliberal austerity – over 6,000 rubber bullets and 1,500 shock grenades in 2017. Shockingly violent protests were “normal” in France long before the Yellow Vests. Second: The Yellow Vests didn’t arrive until the final 6 weeks of 2018 – therefore, the increases and totals for 2019 will likely be 4-5 times than the already huge increases in 2018.

The latest tallies count 72 injuries and 30 arrests in Hong Kong – it was shock over this heavy-handed policing which led to the government’s intelligent move to restore order and democratic calm.

In France, the casualty figures are catastrophic: 850 serious injuries, 300 head injuries, 30 mutilations (loss of eye, hand or testicle). Someone passed out or vomiting is not counted as a “serious injury”, but if we included those hurt by tear gas, water cannons and police truncheons the number of injuries would undoubtedly approach six figures, as astronomical as that figure sounds. As far as arrests, France was at 9,000 on March 24, with nearly half receiving prison sentences. However, this count was announced before new, repressive orders were given to arrest democratic protesters even faster (more on this shortly). After interviewing for PressTV one of the rare lawyers courageous enough to openly criticise a French legal system which is obviously not “independent”, I estimate that over 2,000 Yellow Vests have already become political prisoners. More are obviously awaiting their trial, and more trials will obviously be convened.

Western mainstream media coverage of the two events is best described by a (modified) French saying: “one weight, two measures”. Hong Kongers are “freedom fighters” against a “tyrannical” and “totalitarian” Chinese system, whereas Yellow Vesters are routinely slurred in the West as thugs, anti-Semites and insensible anarchists.

Western media has no problem printing the turnout numbers of organisers… when it comes to Hong Kong. The Yellow Vests self-reported “Yellow Number”, and the turnout count of a courageous, openly anti-Macron police union were routinely ignored by the Mainstream Media until mid-April (here is Wikipedia’s tally of all three estimates, in French).

However, finally printing crowd counts from sources other than the (obviously self-interested) French Interior Ministry was clearly in keeping with the anti-Yellow Vest Mainstream Media: starting on March 23, France began deploying the military against French protesters, banning protests in urban centres nationwide (bans in rural areas began in early May), gave shocking orders for cops to “engage” (that is, “attack”) protesters, and also gave orders to make arrests more rapidly. Therefore, the outdated count of 9,000 could easily be vastly higher.

All the repression achieved what it was obviously intended to: scare French anti-government protesters away. Weekly protests averaged a quarter million people from January 1 until mid-March (cop union estimates), but after the harsh repression was announced until today protests averaged only 65,000 brave souls.

Western “independent” (and always-saintly) NGOs are no better than Western media: In a report released in late March, US-based Human Rights Watch had issued 131 articles, reports and statements on Venezuela – zero on France. The NGO is still totally silent on French repression.

Perhaps the most important question is: what are the protests about? On this issue there is also a huge difference: The protests in Hong Kong are over a law to extradite criminals, whereas in France the protests are over the criminal lack of public opinion in formulating public policy.

Those primarily threatened by Hong Kong’s law are financial criminals, as the island’s primary economic function is to serve as an England-dictated tax haven. This explains why “exposed” tycoons are now rushing their wealth out of Hong Kong. Perhaps the primary initial complaint was that the law would damage Hong Kong’s “business climate”, which is undoubtedly why Western media – so supportive of neo-imperialism and rapacious neoliberal business practices – was so very opposed to the bill and so very supportive of the protesters.

Those primarily targeted by the Yellow Vests are also financial criminals – the anti-patriotic French bankers, politicians and journalists who have colluded to create a “Lost Decade” of economic growth even worse than either of Japan’s two examples. This decade of near-recession is being dramatically compounded by Francois Hollande’s and Macron’s executive decrees and socioeconomic “deforms” which are gutting France’s social safety net, working conditions and France’s tradition of being the only Western neo-imperialist nation which pursued relatively egalitarian economic policies (only domestically, of course).

So what can we learn from this comparison? We can fairly say that the differences are “cultural”, which is to say that they are linked to and produced by their political values.

On one hand we have Hong Kong’s Beijing-tied government – China operates on a “socialist democratic” model. The structure of their government, one easily finds from reading their constitution, has been deeply influenced by the early 20th century ideals of anti-imperialism and class struggle.

China has emphatically rejected the Western “liberal democratic” model, incarnated by France, which remains rooted in aristocratic, 18th century ideals, and which necessarily lacks the modern ideals of economic equality, gender and minority equality, democratic equality and the ability to prevent an oligarchic rule of the “1%”.

When it comes to China, Hong Kong and France, the numbers and data are so overwhelmingly one-sided that not much ink needs to be spilled in this column to draw the obvious conclusion: China’s socialist democratic system is obviously far, far more democratic than France’s.

The Chinese and Hong Kong model of democracy is far more responsive to the will of public opinion, and to the fundamental needs of their public, than France’s outdated, aristocratic, and fundamentally anti-democratic political system.

Perhaps this was not the case 100 years ago, but it is clearly the case in 2019.

However, much, much ink from other pens should be spilled to broadcast this conclusion, especially in hypocritical and deluded Western newsrooms.

Ramin Mazaheri is the chief correspondent in Paris for Press TV and has lived in France since 2009. He has been a daily newspaper reporter in the US, and has reported from Iran, Cuba, Egypt, Tunisia, South Korea and elsewhere. He is the author of “I’ll Ruin Everything You Are: Ending Western Propaganda on Red China”.

هزيمة «السلطان» أردوغان الإنتخابية في اسطنبول ما دلالاتها وتداعياتها؟

يونيو 29, 2019

د. عصام نعمان

اسطنبول كانت عاصمة سلطنة بني عثمان لأكثر من 400 سنة. السلطان العثماني كان أيضاً خليفة المسلمين مع انّ ايّاً من سلاطين بني عثمان حجّ بيت الله الحرام.

أنهكت الحرب العالمية الأولى 1914 – 1918 السلطنة المترهلة، فكان أن أجهز عليها ضباط علمانيون بقيادة مصطفى كمال الذي أضحى، عقب إعلان الجمهورية العام 1923، رئيساً لها وأباً للأتراك أتاتورك .

بعد نحو قرن من الزمن تخللته حربٌ عالمية ثانية وحروب إقليمية متعددة، تربّع على قمة السلطة في الجمهورية العلمانية سلطان من طراز عثماني مغاير. إنه رجب طيب أردوغان، زعيم حزب العدالة والتنمية الإسلامي، وهو طراز حديث من الاخوان المسلمين. «الاخوان» الأتراك سيطروا على الدولة منذ العام 2003، وفازوا في جميع الانتخابات النيابية التي جرت منذ ذلك التاريخ.

في الانتخابات البلدية الأخيرة آذار/ مارس الماضي فَقَد «الاخوان» الأتراك العاصمة أنقرة والعاصمة الاقتصادية اسطنبول والعاصمة التجارية والسياحية أزمير. شقّ على «السلطان» أردوغان خسارة اسطنبول التي سيطر حزبه على بلديتها طوال 25 سنة، فكان ان نظّم حملة واسعة لإعادة إجراء الإنتخابات البلدية فيها بدعوى حصول تزوير ومخالفات متعددة في دورتها الاولى. حزب الشعب الجمهوري، الذي كان فاز مرشحه أكرم إمام أوغلو برئاسة البلدية، قَبِل التحدي وخاض المعركة متزعّماً جبهة عريضة تضمّ معظم الأحزاب المناوئة لأردوغان وحزبه.

لأسطنبول، البالغ عدد سكانها 15 مليوناً، أهمية سياسية وإقتصادية كبيرة. لم يكن «السلطان» مغالياً عندما أعلن في ذروة دورة الانتخابات البلدية الأخيرة انّ «من يفز في اسطنبول يفز بتركيا». لذلك بذل حزبه جهوداً مضنية لحشد الناخبين المحافظين الذين امتنع بعضهم، كما الناخبون الأكراد، عن التصويت في الدورة الأولى. اللافت والغريب قيام حزب العدالة والتنمية بتلطيف نبرته السياسية والإعلامية في شأن المسألة الكردية لدرجة انّ مرشحه لرئاسة بلدية اسطنبول بن علي يلدريم ذهب الى حدّ ذكر «كردستان»، وهي كلمة محظورة في أوساط معسكره. وكان أردوغان وكذلك وسائل إعلام رسمية أشارت الى رسالة وجهها الزعيم التاريخي لحزب العمال الكردستاني عبد الله أوجلان من سجنه داعياً فيها أنصار حزب الشعوب الديمقراطي الموالي للأكراد الى الحياد. لكن الحزب المذكور ندّد بمناورةٍ قال إنّ السلطات الحكومية تقوم بها وتهدف الى تقسيم الناخيين، داعياً الى التصويت لمرشح المعارضة أكرم إمام أوغلو.

ما دلالات سقوط مرشح السلطان «الاخواني» وتداعياته؟

أولى الدلالات دور الوضع الإقتصادي الصعب في هزيمة حزب العدالة والتنمية الحاكم. فقد بلغت نسبة التضخم 20 في المئة، بالإضافة الى انهيار الليرة التركية وارتفاع نسبة البطالة.

ثانية الدلالات نشوء جبهة معارضة واسعة لأردوغان، في مقدّمها حزب الشعوب الديمقراطي ومن ورائه المجتمع الكردي بملايينه الـ 18. ولا شك في انّ الاتساع المضطرد في شعبية أحزاب المعارضة سينعكس سلباً على حزب أردوغان في الإنتخابات النيابية المقبلة.

ثالثة الدلالات انّ فوز مرشح المعارضة في اسطنبول بتأييد ملحوظ من الناخبين الاكراد عزّز وضع الأكراد السوريين الذين يتعاون بعضهم مع أميركا، ولا سيما تنظيمهم العسكري المعروف باسم «قوات سورية الديمقراطية»، الأمر الذي يزيد من مخاوف الحكومة التركية الرافضة لأيّ شكل من أشكال الحكم الذاتي للأكراد عموماً سواء في تركيا او سورية أو العراق ويدفعها إلى التخفيف من مناوءتها للحكومة السورية وربما الى الحدّ من دعم أنقرة الوازن لبعض التنظيمات الإرهابية المعادية والناشطة في محافظة إدلب السورية.

رابعة الدلالات أنّ هزيمة أردوغان في انتخابات اسطنبول البلدية ربما تدفعه إلى التعاون بفعالية أقوى مع الحكومة الروسية في سياستها الرامية الى منع تقسيم سورية ولاستعادة سيادتها على كامل ترابها الوطني.

خامسة الدلالات انّ هزيمة حزب العدالة والتنمية الاخواني في انتخابات اسطنبول البلدية يعزز معنويات قوى المقاومة في لبنان وسورية وفلسطين المحتلة وربما يدفع أردوغان الى الإنفتاح على سورية بعد طول عداء من جهة، والتعامل مع حكومتها القائمة من جهة أخرى بما يعزز جهودها ضدّ المسلحين من شتى التنظيمات الإرهابية، لا سيما تلك التي تدعمها أميركا و»إسرائيل».

هل يتعقل «السلطان» المأزوم؟

وزير سابق

The Only ‘Deal’ On the Table Is For the Normalization of Ties between ‘Israel’ and Gulf Monarchies

By Darko Lazar

While lounging in the lobby of Manama’s Ritz Carlton Hotel, American rabbi Marc Schneier told The Times of ‘Israel’ this week that the normalization of diplomatic relations between Bahrain and Tel Aviv is “possible” by the end of the year.

The New York-based Schneier, who gained notoriety when he became ‘special adviser’ to the Bahraini monarch, Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa, made the comments as Manama played host to the unveiling of the Trump administration’s much-hyped proposal for ending the ‘Israeli’-Palestinian conflict.

According to Schneier, the Bahrain gathering generated “tremendous momentum” for the normalization of ties.

But he warned that rapprochement is impossible in the absence of “some kind of resolution between the ‘Israelis’ and the Palestinians.”

Enter Jared Kushner and one of the most comprehensive PowerPoint presentations anyone has ever seen.

‘The opportunity of the century’

The Trump administration’s new Palestine proposal, which claims to offer the region an economic pathway forward, while ignoring the ‘Israeli’ occupation of Palestinian territories, has not been enthusiastically received in the Middle East.

Reactions to the 140-page document – which refers to “Palestinian society” rather than a state and makes no reference to Palestinian refugees – range from skeptical to outrightly rejected.

The Palestinians have boycotted both the plan and the Manama meeting, accusing the White House of attempting to “liquidate the Palestinian cause”.

But despite the fact that one of the principal parties to the conflict is now completely excluded from the process, Trump administration officials appear determined to forge ahead with their plans.

At the glitzy two-day event in Manama, one of the plan’s architects and US President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, used his PowerPoint presentation to outline how USD 50 billion would be deployed to jumpstart the Palestinian economy by creating jobs, reducing poverty and doubling Palestine’s GDP.

It didn’t even matter that no one seems to know much about where all this money would come from.

For Kushner, this is intentional departure from “conventional wisdom”. It’s no laughing matter either. He dismissed the mocking description of Trump’s plan as the “deal of the century” and said it is “better referred to as the opportunity of the century”.

But for whom, exactly? It can’t be the Palestinians.

The idea that businessmen like Kushner and Trump, who have repeatedly taken an unapologetically pro-‘Israel’ line, should be trusted to deliver a just peace is a joke that needs no punch line.

For the current leadership in both Tel Aviv and Washington, even a Palestinian state comprising the territories occupied by ‘Israel’ in 1967 is more than they are willing to accept.

Instead, the Palestinians are being offered the mere promise of money in exchange for their nationhood, their religious sanctities, and acceptance of life under occupation.

So, no, this is not an “opportunity” for the Palestinians.

This is an “opportunity” to showcase the normalization of ties between Gulf monarchies and ‘Israel’, as well as create the right conditions to remove the only real obstacle to rapprochement among Washington’s main regional allies.

That said, the Trump White House isn’t actually hoping to clinch a ‘deal’ with the Palestinians in the true sense of the word. Rather, Gulf leaders still fear popular backlash aimed at their now publicly cozy relationship with ‘Israel’, and they have to be able to blame the Palestinians for rejecting “the opportunity of the century”.

This doesn’t mean that the Palestinian cause is going away. But Palestinians are likely to be subjected to further marginalization, pressure, economic strangulation, and the tightening of the ‘Israeli’ occupation in the West Bank.

Bahrain’s Foreign Minister, Khalid bin Ahmed Al Khalifa, hinted as much when he sat down for his first televised interview with an ‘Israeli’ network this Wednesday.

Al Khalifa told ‘Israel’s’ Channel 13 that Palestinians made “a mistake not showing up” to the Bahrain conference.

“It is always a mistake to miss an opportunity to achieve peace,” he added. “This was an opportunity that we wanted to see them here, but they chose not to come.”

And then he told the occupiers of Palestinian lands that they were the real peace doves.

“We know that [‘Israel’] is a ‘country’ that exists and its people do want peace,” Al Khalifa said. “We want the Arabs to feel that ‘Israel’ is a ‘country’ that belongs here… it is part of the heritage of this region.”

When asked if an ‘Israeli’ prime minister would be landing in Manama in the foreseeable future, the Bahraini diplomat said, “We do want to see normalization.”

If it weren’t for Iran, we would already be friends

The secret ties between Tel Aviv and the Gulf monarchies date back many decades. They are now being thrust into the public sphere for a number of reasons, including the Trump presidency and the growing need for more open military, technological and economic links.

But the main motivation is their shared hostility and hatred toward a more powerful Iran.

In his interview with ‘Israel’s’ Channel 13, the Bahraini foreign minister claims that, “If it was left to the Arabs and ‘Israelis’, we would have been much closer to peace than today.”

“But Iran is exacerbating the issue with money and weapons and with soldiers of militias,” Al Khalifa added.

In other words, if it weren’t for the Iran-led Resistance challenging the ‘Israeli’ occupation of countless Arab states, the Palestinians and others would have little choice but to accept the sort of ‘deal’ that’s on offer today.

In the eyes of the Gulf monarchs, as well as policy makers in the US and ‘Israel’, this is of course Iran’s true crime.

This is also the type of “behavior” that American officials want Tehran to work on.

This is the context in which the current normalization of ties between Tel Aviv and the Gulf states is unfolding.

As Washington presses ahead with its “pressure campaign” against Iran, there is an awareness that the US needs to consolidate its position in the only part of the region where it still exercises any real influence.

الأوضاع الكارثيّة لقوات حلف شمال الأطلسي المدرّعة!

يونيو 29, 2019

محمد صادق الحسيني

في إطار الحوارات والتحليلات، الدائرة حول احتمالات تصاعد التوتر، بما في ذلك على الصعيد العسكري، بين موسكو وواشنطن، وفي ظل تزايد عدد التدريبات والمناورات العسكرية، وعمليات التجسّس الجوي والبحري لحلف شمال الأطلسي ضدّ روسيا، خاصة من محيط البحر الأسود، أيّ المنطقة العسكرية الجنوبية الغربية لروسيا، بما في ذلك شبه جزيرة القرم، ومنطقة بحر البلطيق، التي تشكل المنطقة العسكرية الشمالية الغربية لروسيا، ومركزها مدينة لينينغراد، في ظلّ هذا النقاش الدائر، بين العسكريين والاستراتيجيين، فقد قامت مجموعة منهم بإجراء شبه مقارنة بين القوات المدرّعة لكلا الطرفين، الروسي والغربي الأطلسي، اعتمدت على دراسة تشكيلات مدرّعة روسية وأخرى المانية.

وقد خلص هؤلاء الباحثون العسكريون الأوروبيون الى النتيجة التالية:

1 – يتحمل الجيش الألماني العبء الأساسي، في مجال التدريبات والتحشيدات الأطلسية الموجهة ضدّ روسيا، بما في ذلك الجوانب اللوجستية من هذه النشاطات، التي تشمل كافة عمليات الإمداد والتزويد. وهو الأمر الذي يفرض على الجيش الألماني أن تكون وحداته المدرّعة في وضع مثالي، لأسباب عديدة، لا تتعلق بأعباء الإمداد فقط، والتزويد وانما بالاستعداد القتالي الفعلي في الميدان، وخاصة في مجال قتال المدرعات، التي سيكون عليها واجب:

ـ إما صدّ هجوم روسي مدرّع كاسح على خطوط دفاع حلف شمال الأطلسي استونيا ولاتفيا، في دول البلطيق وضدّ بولندا بشكل خاص.

ـ أو القيام بهجوم مدرّع لاختراق خطوط الدفاع الروسية، انطلاقاً من لاتفيا واستونيا باتجاه لينينغراد الروسية.

2 – وعلى الرغم من ضخامة المسؤولية الملقاة على سلاح المدرّعات الألماني إلا انّ هذا السلاح لا يمتلك أكثر من مئتين وأربع وأربعين دبابة قتال ثقيلة، من طراز ليوبارد 2 / Leopard 2 / والتي سيصل عددها الى ثلاثمئة وثماني وعشرين دبابة سنة 2023.

والأخطر من ذلك، حسب ما نشرته مجلة «شتيرن» Stern الألمانية، في وقت سابق، أنّ خمساً وتسعين دبابة فقط من المجموع العام صالحة للقتال، وذلك بسبب مشاكل تتعلق بقلة الصيانة وقلة قطع الغيار، التي ازدادت الحاجة إليها في السنوات الأخيرة بسبب زيادة عدد التمارين العسكرية لحلف شمال الأطلسي، التي تؤدّي الى استهلاك كبير لجنازير الدبابات وللتجهيزات الالكترونية الخاصة بإدارة تجهيزات الدبابة نفسها بالإضافة إلى أجهزة توجيه وتنسيق النيران… علماً انّ هذا النقص ناجم عن ضعف الإمكانيات المادية المرصودة لذلك لأعمال الصيانة .

3- التفوّق العملياتي الكبير، الذي تتمتع به الدبابات الروسية، من طراز T 80 وT 90، بالإضافة الى أحدث دبابة روسية في العالم، وهي دبابة أرماتا T 14، التي لا مثيل لها على الإطلاق والتي تعتبر سابقة لجميع الدبابات الغربية، بما لا يقل عن 15 عاماً. أيّ أنّ صانعي الدبابات الغربيين، بمن فيهم الأميركيون، بحاجة الى 15 عاماً من أبحاث التطوير كي يتمكنوا من صنع دبابة بمواصفات دبابة T 14 الروسية الحديثة.

4 – يسوق هؤلاء الخبراء العسكريون أدلة عدة، على صحة ما يقولون، أهمها ان الدبابات الغربية غير مجهزة بما يكفي من وسائل الدفاع الذاتي ضد الصواريخ والقذائف المضادة للدروع، سواء تلك التي تطلق من الكتف أو المدافع المباشرة او تلك التي تطلقها المقاتلات والمروحيات القتالية. وهم يستشهدون بقيام المقاتلين الأكراد بتدمير ثلاث دبابات تركية، من طراز Leopard 2 الألمانية الصنع، خلال المعارك التي خاضوها ضد الجيش التركي في سورية.

علماً أنّ الدبابات الأميركية، من طراز ابراهامز / ام 1 / والفرنسية من طراز لوكلير ليست أفضل من مثيلاتها الالمانية.

5 – وفي مقابل المشاكل، المالية والتكنولوجية والإدارية ونقص الإمكانيات القتالية، التي تعاني منها القوات المدرعة لحلف شمال الأطلسي، فإننا نرى تقدماً هائلاً في سلاح المدرعات الروسي، لا يقتصر على التفوّق لدبابة / تي 14 T 14 / الروسية وإنما يمتد ذلك الى القدرة الإنتاجية لصناعة الدبابات في روسيا، التي ستسلم 2300 دبابة، من طراز تي 14/ T14، حتى نهاية سنة 2020 الصناعات الألمانية ستزيد عدد دبابات ليوبارد في الجيش الألماني من 244 حالياً الى 328 سنة 2023…. كالفرق بين الثرى والثريا .

6- هذا كما تجب إضافة تطور هو غاية في الأهمية، يتعلق بالمنطقة العسكرية الروسية الغربية، التي تمتد من حدود موسكو حتى حدود دول البلطيق شمالاً، عبر الحدود مع روسيا البيضاء في الوسط، وصولاً الى الحدود مع أوكرانيا في الجنوب. هذا التطور الهام يتمثل في إعادة تشكيل جيش المدرعات الخاص، أو ما يمكن تسميته جيش مدرعات الحرس الخاص في إشارة لحرس الحدود أو ما يسمى بالانجليزية: 1st Guard Tank Army. هذا الجيش الذي تمّ تشكيله سنة 1942 وشارك في احتلال برلين وبقي معسكراً في ألمانيا الديموقراطية حتى زوال الاتحاد السوفياتي وتمّ حله سنة 1998، بينما بُدِئت إعادة تشكيله سنة 2016، حسب بيانات وزارة الدفاع الروسية، وأنجز ذلك في العام الماضي.

وهو يضم الآن أكثر من 800 دبابة من طراز / تي 80 T 80 / ودبابات تي 72 بي 3/ T – 72 B 3، وهي دبابات محدّثة بحيث أصبحت في مستوى أحدث الدبابات الغربية والروسية الحديثة. كما يضمّ هذا الجيش 800 مدرعة قتالية حديثة الى جانب 1400 مدفع ثقيل وراجمة صواريخ ويصل تعداد أفراده الى خمسين ألف جندي.

الأمر الذي تعتبره الولايات المتحدة وقيادة حلف الناتو إجراء يهدف الى زيادة قوة الردع الروسية في مواجهة قوات الناتو، في المنطقة العسكرية الغربية، والتي تتولى الدفاع عنها قوات جوية وبرية وبحرية روسية هائلة، إلى جانب هذا الجيش الجديد القديم، الذي يكتسب جزءاً من أهميته وقدرته على الردع من تاريخه العريق ومن الدور الخاص الذي قامت به وحداته القتالية خلال الحرب العالمية الثانية ومشاركته في احتلال برلين. وفِي ذلك إشارة الى المعنى الرمزي لدور هذا الجيش في احتلال برلين. وكأن الروس يخططون لإعادة احتلال برلين.

وبئس مثوى المتكبّرين.

بعدنا طيّبين قولوا الله.

The “Let Em Eat Cake” Deal of the Century: Trump’s “No Peace Deal Peace Plan” for Palestine and the Middle East

By Stephen Lendman

Global Research, June 28, 2019

A peace conference without participation of warring sides is an affront to what the process is supposed to be all about.

Trump’s no-peace/deal of the century peace plan was partly introduced at the so-called June 25-26 “Peace to Prosperity Workshop” in Bahrain.

A fascist dictatorship was appropriately chosen to host a scheme Palestinians, the Arab street, and activists for peace, equity, and justice categorically reject.

The common theme of participating nations was their abhorrence of rule of law principles and democratic values. Representatives from Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt, Jordan, Qatar, Oman and Morocco attended.

So did reinvented war criminal Tony Blair, along with US officials, others from the predatory World Bank and IMF, business interests as well showing up.

Palestinians boycotted the conference. Israel didn’t attend because of their absence. Nor Iraq and Lebanon.

Many participating representatives were mid-level officials, indicating lack of enthusiasm for the Trump regime’s dog and pony PR show — a scheme going nowhere.

Deceptively billed as “a vision to empower the Palestinian people to build a prosperous and vibrant Palestinian society,” the plan is all about serving privileged US/Israeli interests at their expense.

It has nothing to do with peace, equity and justice for long-suffering Palestinians, nothing to do with resolving irreconcilable Israeli/Palestinian differences, nothing to do with fundamental Palestinian rights affirmed under international law.

The economic portion of the plan discussed is all about serving US-led Western and Israeli monied interests, neoliberal harshness intended for Palestinians – how ordinary people are mistreated throughout the West and for the majority of Israeli Jews.

UK-based Palestinian academic Kamel Hawwash said holding the workshop without Palestinian participation showed its true goal — exploiting, not helping them, adding:

Trump Regime Demand for Palestinian Surrender. Washington’s “Peace Process” is a Colossal Hoax

Palestinian self-determination and other rights affirmed under international law are fundamental.

Without achieving them, the peace process is stillborn — the way it’s been for the past half-century, the greatest hoax in modern times, along with the US global war OF terror, not on it.

Trump’s no-peace/deal of the century ignores fundamental final status issues, including Palestinian self-determination, illegal Israeli occupation, settlements, borders, air and water rights, other resources, the right of diaspora Palestinians to return to their homeland, and East Jerusalem as exclusive Palestinian capital.

The plan ignores US/UK responsibility for over a century of harshness imposed on Palestinians, over 70 years of Israeli viciousness, and over half a century of militarized occupation — their land stolen, their fundamental rights denied.

Longstanding Israeli land theft is fundamental, what the Trump regime supports, including Jewish state annexation of West Bank settlements on stolen Palestinian land.

The plan treats Palestinians as “customers,” not afforded the right to be citizens of their own country, free from oppressive occupation.

The scheme involves securing a $50 billion investment fund for infrastructure and business projects. It’s unclear where most of the money is coming from and under what terms — whether it’s a gift, a loan, or combination of both, and what return on investment donors/lenders expect.

Without resolving key political issues, the economic proposal is meaningless. Who’ll invest billions of dollars for development in a de facto war zone?

Undeclared Israeli war on Palestinians remains ongoing throughout the Territories, no end of it in prospect.

The Trump regime showed contempt for their rights by illegally recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s exclusive capital, moving the US embassy there, and cutting off all funding for millions Palestinian refugees considered nonpeople.

Over $200 million in US aid for the West Bank and Gaza was “redirected” elsewhere “to ensure these funds are spent in accordance with US national interests (sic) and provide value to the US taxpayer (sic).”

The Trump regime’s vision of “a new reality in the Middle East” is old wine in new bottles — Palestinians still denied their right to live in peace on their own land in their own country, Israel’s repressive boot no longer stomping on them.

The bottom line of what went on in Bahrain and may follow is that Trump’s no-peace/deal of the century peace plan was dead before arrival — leaving oppressive Israeli apartheid rule in place.

 

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Award-winning author Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG)

His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

The original source of this article is Global Research

Copyright © Stephen Lendman, Global Research, 2019