‘Genocide Joe’ Suffers Another Mortifying Slap-Down at the United Nations

MAY 10, 2024

Source

Mike Whitney

In a clear rejection of US policies and leadership in the Middle East, the UN general assembly voted overwhelmingly to back the Palestinian bid for full UN membership. The western media have mostly ignored Friday’s balloting since the widely-anticipated results represent another black eye for Washington. But the outcome of the vote is a blow to the Biden administration’s failed Gaza policy as well as a clear indication that America’s blanket support for Israel’s genocide is increasing Washington’s isolation and irrelevance.

The assembly vote was 143 to 9, which means that US diplomatic influence has eroded to the point where the White House could barely coerce 9 of their most-loyal vassal states to reject the motion. It is imperative that people fully grasp the meaning of this vote, which suggests that the so-called “Rules-Based Order” is a withering fraud that grows more anemic by the day. Additionally, the vote provides compelling evidence that the American Century is officially over and that the vast majority of the world’s nations are no longer willing to comply with Washington’s self-serving edicts.

Naturally, Israel’s envoy to the UN, Gilad Erdan, used the opportunity—not to express his remorse at being a participant in his nation’s sadistic rampage in Gaza—but to scold the other members of the assembly for acting courageously on a matter of principle. Without a trace of irony, Erdan accused the other members of “shredding the UN charter with your own hands. Yes, yes, that’s what you’re doing. Shredding the UN charter.”

What Erdan failed to mention is that Israel holds the world’s record for breaking UN resolutions and has yet to encounter an international law that it won’t break with impunity. Israel decided long-ago that its future depended on its ability to use the world’s biggest bully as its personal bodyguard thus allowing it to ignore any legal or moral restraints on its behavior. This is an excerpt from an article at the UK Guardian:

Friday’s resolution …. does not make Palestine a full member, or give it voting rights in the assembly, or the right to stand for membership of the security council, but the vote was a resounding expression of world opinion in favour of Palestinian statehood, galvanized by the continuing bloodshed and famine caused by Israel’s war in Gaza.

Even before the vote in the assembly on Friday morning, Israel and a group of leading Republicans urged US funding be cut anyway because of the new privileges the resolution granted to the Palestinian mission.

The US mission to the UN, which voted against the resolution, warned that it would also use its veto again if the question of Palestinian membership returned to the security council for another vote.

“Efforts to advance this resolution do not change the reality that the Palestinian Authority does not currently meet the criteria for UN membership under the UN charter,” the mission’s spokesperson, Nathan Evans, said. “Additionally, the draft resolution does not alter the status of the Palestinians as a “non-member state observer mission”. UN general assembly votes to back Palestinian bid for membership, The Guardian

Try to appreciate how hypocritical and morally bankrupt the US position really is. For the last 57 years, Republicans and Democrats alike, have paid lip-service to a two-state solution based on UN Resolution 242 which requires Israel to remove its settlements from Palestinian land in occupied Gaza and the West Bank. “Get off Palestinian land and there will be peace.” That is US policy which is backed-up by international law. But, now, under Biden, the US not only opposes Palestinian statehood (which would improve their chances of getting a fair deal.) but is also providing the money, bombs and logistical support for blowing 2 million Palestinians to smithereens. This is the Biden policy in a nutshell, and—in case you hadn’t noticed—it is a clear departure from more than a half century of US foreign policy. The reason Biden is now commonly referred to as “Genocide Joe” is because he is unilaterally breaking international law by providing material support to Israeli barbarism which makes him—and the United States—equally culpable in the premeditated annihilation of the Palestinian people. Here’s more from the Guardian:

…the resolution also makes plain that “the state of Palestine, in its capacity as an observer state, does not have the right to vote in the general assembly or to put forward its candidature to United Nations organs.”

…. “In essence, it gives the Palestinians the airs and graces of a UN member, but without the fundamental attributes of a real member, which are voting power and the right to run for the security council.”….

Despite the wording in the resolution making clear Palestine would not have a vote, Israel called on the US to cut funding for the UN because of the resolution, and a group of Republican senators announced they were introducing legislation to do that.

…. Senator Mitt Romney said in a written statement. “Our legislation would cut off US taxpayer funding to the UN if it gives additional rights and privileges to the Palestinian Authority and the PLO.” The Guardian

Nice, eh? So, the vote didn’t turn out the way Uncle Sam wanted, so now he’s going to “take his ball and go home.” That’s called, ‘being a crybaby,’ and it helps to explain why more and more leaders are joining an alternate bloc of nations called the BRICS. There’s simply no reason to align oneself with a waning superpower that is so morally corrupted that it believes that mass murder is an acceptable foreign policy. (Note: The other countries that opposed Palestine’s bid for membership were Micronesia, Argentina, Hungary, Nauru, Palau, Papua New Guinea and Israel. The list helps to illustrate the ineffectiveness of US diplomacy which has virtually collapsed under Anthony Blinken.)

Not surprisingly, Russia’s Permanent Representative Vassily Nebenzia offered the most intelligent analysis. Here’s what he said just prior to the vote:

It is our common duty to correct the historical injustice regarding Palestinian aspirations for their own sovereign unified state, which should have been admitted to the United Nations as early as 1948. We are convinced that Palestine’s full UN membership would help to equalize the starting negotiating positions with Israel, which received is status as a UN member state more than 75 years ago.

Admission of the State of Palestine to the UN would be the first practical step towards a just solution of the Palestinian question on the UN-approved platform and within the universally recognized international legal framework. …..

This process should result in the implementation of the internationally recognized two-state solution providing for Israel coexisting in peace and security with Palestine in the 1967 borders and with the capital in East Jerusalem. For this dialogue to succeed, Israel and Palestine must be on an equal footing in accordance with the decisions of the UN Security Council….

….When this draft resolution is adopted, Palestine… will receive a number of additional opportunities for more effective work in the United Nations General Assembly and at the meetings held under UNGA’s auspices. We see this as an opportunity to at least partially correct the historical injustice against the long-suffering Palestinian people, who have lost an unprecedented number of peaceful lives over the past seven months…

… Palestine must become a full member of the UN…. We believe that the most important element of this draft is contained in its recommendation to the UN Security Council to reconsider Palestine’s application for UN membership. It is a moral obligation for all of us. Only full membership will allow Palestine to join the ranks of other members of the Organization and fully exercise the rights that this status implies. ….The Palestinian people have long deserved it. Statement
by Permanent Representative Vassily Nebenzia at the 10th Emergency Special Session of the General Assembly

Well said.

Bottom line: Biden and his handlers do not want the Palestinians to have their own state which is why he is assisting Israel in annihilating the native population and replacing them with Jewish settlers. Fortunately, under international law the Occupied Territories will be Palestinian land into perpetuity and there’s nothing the United States or Israel can do about it.

Will Zionism Self-Destruct?

 APRIL 22, 2024

ALASTAIR CROOKE

Israel’s strategy from past decades will continue with its hope of achieving some Chimeric transformative “de-radicalisation” of Palestinians that will make ‘Israel safe’.

(This paper is the basis of a talk to be given at the 25th Yasin (April) International Academic Event on Economic and Social Development, HSE University, Moscow, April 2024)

In the summer following Israel’s 2006 (unsuccessful) war on Hizbullah, Dick Cheney sat in his office loudly bemoaning Hizbullah’s continuing strength; and worse still, that it seemed to him that Iran had been the primary beneficiary from the U.S. 2003 Iraq war.

Cheney’s guest – the then Saudi Intelligence Chief, Prince Bandar – vigorously concurred (as chronicled by John Hannah, who participated in the meeting) and, to general surprise, Prince Bandar proclaimed that Iran yet could be cut to size: Syria was the ‘weak’ link between Iran and Hizbullah that could be collapsed via an Islamist insurgency, Bandar proposed. Cheney’s initial scepticism turned to elation as Bandar said that U.S. involvement would be unnecessary: He, Prince Bandar, would orchestrate and manage the project. ‘Leave it to me’, he said.

Bandar separately told John Hannah: “The King knows that other than the collapse of the Islamic Republic itself, nothing would weaken Iran more than losing Syria”.

Thus began a new phase of attrition on Iran. The regional balance of power was to be decisively shifted towards Sunni Islam – and the region’s monarchies.

That old balance from the Shah’s time in which Persia enjoyed regional primacy was to be ended: conclusively, the U.S., Israel and the Saudi King hoped.

Iran – already badly bruised by the ‘imposed’ Iran-Iraq war – resolved never again to be so vulnerable. Iran aimed to find a path to strategic deterrence in the context of a region dominated by the overwhelming air dominance enjoyed by its adversaries.

What occurred this Saturday 14 April – some 18 years later – therefore was of utmost importance.

Despite the bruhaha and distraction following Iran’s attack, Israel and the U.S. know the truth: Iran’s missiles were able to penetrate directly into Israel’s two most sensitive and highly defended air bases and sites. Behind the whooping western rhetoric lies Israeli shock and fear. Their bases are no longer ‘untouchable’.

Israel also knows – but cannot admit – that the so-called ‘assault’ was no assault but an Iranian message to assert the new strategic equation: That any Israeli attack on Iran or its personnel will result in retribution from Iran into Israel.

This act of setting the new ‘balance of power equation’ unites the diverse Fronts against the U.S.’ “connivance with Israeli actions in the Middle East, that are at the core of Washington’s policy – and in many ways the root-cause of new tragedies” – in the words of Russian Foreign Minister, Sergey Ryabkov.

The equation represents a key ‘Front’ – together with Russia’s war against NATO in Ukraine – for persuading the West that its exceptionalist and redemptive myth has proved to be a fatal conceit; that it must be discarded; and that deep cultural change in the West needs to happen.

The roots to this wider cultural conflict are deep – but finally have been made explicit.

Prince Bandar’s post-2006 playing of the Sunni ‘card’ was a flop (in no small part thanks to Russia’s intervention in Syria). And Iran, has come in from the cold and is firmly anchored as a primary regional power. It is the strategic partner to Russia and China. And Gulf States today have switched focus instead to money, ‘business’ and Tech, rather than Salafist jurisprudence.

Syria, then targeted by the West and ostracised, has not only survived all that the West could ‘throw at it’ but has been warmly embraced by the Arab League and rehabilitated. And Syria is now slowly finding its way to being itself again.

Yet even during the Syrian crisis, unforeseen dynamics to Prince Bandar’s playing of Islamist identity versus Arab socialist secular identity were playing out:

I wrote then in 2012:

“Over recent years we have heard the Israelis emphasise their demand for recognition of a specifically Jewish nation-state, rather than for an Israeli State, per se”;

– a state that would enshrine Jewish political, legal, and military exceptional rights.

“[At that time] … Muslim nations [were] seeking the ‘undoing’ of the last remnants of the colonial era. Will we see the struggle increasingly epitomised as a primordial struggle between Jewish and Islamic religious symbols – between al-Aqsa and the Temple Mount?”

To be plain, what was apparent even then – in 2012 – was “that both Israel and its surrounding terrain are marching in step toward language which takes them far away from the underlying, largely secular concepts by which this conflict traditionally has been conceptualised. What [would] be the consequence – as the conflict, by its own logic, becomes a clash of religious poles?”

If, twelve years ago, the protagonists were explicitly moving away from the underlying secular concepts by which the West conceptualised the conflict, we, by contrast, are still trying to understand the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through the lens of secular, rationalist concepts – even as Israel quite evidently is seized by an increasingly Apocalyptic frenzy.

And by extension, we are stuck in trying to address the conflict through our habitual utilitarian, rationalist policy tool-set. And we wonder why it is not working. It is not working because all parties have moved beyond mechanical rationalism to a different plane.

The Conflict Becomes Eschatalogical

Last year’s election in Israel saw a revolutionary change: The Mizrahim walked into the Prime Minister’s office. These Jews coming from the Arab and North African sphere – now possibly the majority – and, with their political allies on the right, embraced a radical agenda: To complete the founding of Israel on the Land of Israel (i.e. no Palestinian State); to build the Third Temple (in place of Al-Aqsa); and to institute Halachic Law (in place of secular law).

None of this is what might be termed ‘secular’ or liberal. It was intended as the revolutionary overthrow of the Ashkenazi élite. It was Begin who tied the Mizrahi firstly to the Irgun and then to Likud. The Mizrahim now in power have a vision of themselves as the true representatives of Judaism, with the Old Testament as their blueprint. And condescend to the European Ashkenazi liberals.

If we think we can put Biblical myths and injunctions behind us in our secular age – where much of contemporary western thinking makes a point of ignoring such dimensions, dismissing them as either confused, or irrelevant – we would be mistaken.

As one commentator writes:

“At every turn, political figures in Israel now soak their proclamations in Biblical reference and allegory. The foremost of which [is] Netanyahu … You must remember what Amalek has done to you, says our Holy Bible, and we do remember – and we are fighting…“Here [Netanyahu] not only invokes the prophecy of Isaiah, but frames the conflict as that of “light” versus “darkness” and good versus evil, painting the Palestinians as the Children of Darkness to be vanquished by the Chosen Ones: The Lord ordered King Saul to destroy the enemy and all his people: “Now go and defeat Amalek and destroy all that he has; and give him no mercy; but put to death both husband and wife; from youth to infant; from ox to sheep; from camel to donkey” (15:3)”.

We might term this ‘hot eschatology’ – a mode that is running wild amongst the young Israeli military cadres, to the point that the Israeli high command is losing control on the ground (lacking any mid-layer NCO (Non-Commissioned Officer) class).

On the other hand –

The uprising launched from Gaza is not called Al-Aqsa Flood for nothing. Al-Aqsa is both a symbol of a storied Islamic civlisation, and it is also the bulwark against the building of the Third Temple, for which preparations are underway. The point here is that Al-Aqsa represents Islam in aggregate — neither Shi’i, nor Sunni, nor ideological Islam.

Then, at another level, we have, as it were, ‘dispassionate eschatology’: When Yahyah Sinwar writes of ‘Victory or Martyrdom’ for his people in Gaza; when Hizbullah speaks of sacrifice; and when the Iranian Supreme Leader speaks of Hussain bin Ali (the grandson of the Prophet) and some 70 companions in 680 CE, standing before inexorable slaughter against an 1,000 strong army, in the name of Justice, these sentiments simply are beyond the reach of western Utilitarian comprehension.

We cannot easily rationalise the latter ‘way of being’ in western modes of thought. However, as Hubert Védrine, France’s former Foreign Minister, observes – though titularly secular – the West nonetheless is “consumed by the spirit of proselytism”. That Saint Paul’s “go and evangelize all nations” has become “go and spread human rights to all the world”… And that this proselytism is extremely deep in [western DNA]: “Even the very least religious, totally atheists, they still have this in mind, [even though] they don’t know where it comes from”.

We might term this secular eschatology, as it were. It is certainly consequential.

A Military Revolution: We’re Ready Now

Iran, through all the West’s attrition, has pursued its astute strategy of ‘strategic patience’ – keeping conflicts away from its borders. A strategy that focused heavily on diplomacy and trade; and soft power to engage positively with near and far neighbors alike.

Behind this quietist front of stage, however, lay the evolution to ‘active deterrence’ which required long military preparation and the nurturing of allies.

Our understanding of the world became antiquated

Just occasionally, very occasionally, a military revolution can upend the prevailing strategic paradigm. This was Qasem Suleimani’s key insight. This is what ‘active deterrence’ implies. The switch to a strategy that could upend prevailing paradigms.

Both Israel and the U.S. have armies that are conventionally far more powerful than their adversaries which are mostly composed of small non-state rebels or revolutionaries. The latter are treated more as mutineers within the traditionalist colonial framing, and for whom a whiff of firepower generally is considered sufficient.

The West, however, has not fully assimilated the military revolutions now underway. There has been a radical shift in the balance of power between low-tech improvisation and expensive complex (and less robust) weapons platforms.

The Additional Ingredients

What makes Iran’s new military approach truly transformative have been two additional factors: One was the appearance of an outstanding military strategist (now assassinated); and secondly, his ability to mix and apply these new tools in a wholly novel matrix. The fusion of these two factors – together with low-tech drones and cruise missiles – completed the revolution.

The philosophy driving this military strategy is clear: the West is over-invested in air dominance and in its carpet fire power. It prioritises ‘shock and awe’ thrusts, but quickly exhausts itself early in the encounter. This rarely can be sustained for long. The Resistance aim is to exhaust the enemy.

The second key principle driving this new military approach concerns the careful calibration of the intensity of conflict, upping and lowering the flames as appropriate; and, at the same time, keeping escalatory dominance within the Resistance’s control.

In Lebanon, in 2006, Hizbullah remained deep underground whilst the Israeli air assault swept across overhead. The physical surface damage was huge, yet their forces were unaffected and emerged from deep tunnels – only afterwards. Then came the 33 days of Hizbullah’s missile barrage – until Israel called it quits.

So, is there any strategic point to an Israeli military response to Iran?

Israelis widely believe that without deterrence – without the world fearing them – they cannot survive. October 7 set this existential fear burning through Israeli society. Hezbollah’s very presence only exacerbates it – and now Iran has rained missiles down into Israel directly.

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The opening of the Iranian front, in a certain way, initially may have benefited Netanyahu: the IDF defeat in the Gaza war; the hostage release impasse; the continuing displacement of Israelis from the north; and even the murder of the World Kitchen aid workers – all are temporarily forgotten. The West has grouped at Israel’s – and Netanyahu’s – side again. Arab states are again co-operating. And attention has moved from Gaza to Iran.

So far, so good (from Netanyahu’s perspective, no doubt). Netanyahu has been angling to draw the U.S. into war with Israel against Iran for two decades (albeit with successive U.S. Presidents declining the dangerous prospect).

But to cut Iran down to size would require U.S. military assistance.

Netanyahu senses Biden’s weakness and has the tools and knowhow by which he can manipulate U.S. politics: Indeed, worked in this way, Netanyahu might force Biden to continue to arm Israel, and even to embrace his widening of the war to Hizbullah in Lebanon.

Conclusion

Israel’s strategy from past decades will continue with its hope of achieving some Chimeric transformative “de-radicalisation” of Palestinians that will make ‘Israel safe’.

A former Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. argues that Israel can have no peace without such ‘transformative de-radicalisation’. “If we do it right”, Ron Dermer insists, “it will make Israel stronger – and the U.S. too”. It is in this context that the War Cabinet’s insistence on retaliation against Iran should be understood.

Rational argument advocating moderation is read as inviting defeat.

All of which is to say that Israelis are psychologically very far from being able to reconsider the content to the Zionist project of Jewish special rights. For now, they are on a completely different path, trusting to a Biblical reading that many Israelis have come to view as mandatory injunctions under Halachic Law.

Hubert Védrine asks us the supplementary question: “Can we imagine a West that manages to preserve the societies it has birthed – and yet “is not proselytizing, not-interventionist? In other words, a West that can accept alterity, that can live with others – and accept them for who they are”.

Védrine says this “is not a problem of the diplomatic machines: it’s a question of profound soul-searching, a deep cultural change that needs to happen in western society”.

A ‘trial of strength’ between Israel and the Resistance Fronts ranged against it likely cannot be avoided.

The die has been deliberately cast this way.

Netanyahu is gambling big with Israel’s – and America’s – future. And he may lose.

If there is a regional war, and Israel suffers defeat, then what?

When exhaustion (and defeat) finally settles in, and the parties ‘scrabble in the drawer’ for new solutions to their strategic distress, the truly transformative solution would be for an Israeli leader to think the ‘unthinkable’ – to think of one state between the River and the Sea.

And, for Israel – tasting the bitter herbs of ‘things fallen apart’ – to talk directly with Iran.

(Republished from Strategic Culture Foundation by permission of author or representative)

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The Second Round of Retaliation Between Israel and Iran Has Just Begun

Joe Biden is caught in a trap caused by his own weakness

APRIL 19, 2024

PHILIP GIRALDI

Given the lying and fact twisting that have routinely been part and parcel of accounts of what is occurring in the Middle East, the past several weeks have nevertheless been shocking in terms of how an abysmally low standard of truth can be reduced even farther. Looking at developments objectively, one comes up with a series of facts. First of all, Israel was not at war with either Syria or Iran during the first weeks in April. Iran had never attacked Israel prior to that point and Syria last fought Israel in 1973, over fifty years ago. Israel, however, has regularly been assassinating Iranian officials and scientists and it has been frequently been bombing Syria since 2017, increasing the pace to weekly and sometimes even daily attacks over the past six months paralleling the Gaza fighting. A particularly devastating attack took place on March 29^th when the Israeli military launched massive strikes against a weapons storage depot in Syria’s northern province of Aleppo which killed at least 40 people, most of them Syrian soldiers. The air strikes produced a series of explosions that also killed six Lebanese Hezbollah fighters.

But three days later on April 1^st a very damaging and unprovoked attack was directed against the Iranian Embassy’s Consulate General, which was located in an upscale neighborhood in Damascus, Syria’s capital. The building was completely destroyed by missiles fired from F-35 fighter planes that had crossed over the Syrian border from Israel, killing Iranian diplomats as well as Brigadier General Mohammad Reza Zahedi and Zahedi’s deputy, General Haji Rahimi, and also Brigadier General Hossein Amirollah, the chief of general staff for the al-Quds force in Syria and Lebanon. Syria subsequently confirmed that a total of 13 people were killed in the attack, including six Syrians and a Lebanese Hezbollah militiaman. Both Iran and Hezbollah vowed revenge.

Attacking a diplomatic mission is considered a major war crime according to the Vienna Convention, but there was no condemnation of the incident coming from the US and the usual suspects in Western Europe. Instead of doing what was right by pressuring Israel to stop attacking its neighbors and thereby possibly preventing a major war in the Middle East, President Joe Biden repeated his pledge that the United States would regard as “ironclad” its commitment to guarantee Israel’s security if Iran were to strike back. This guaranteed to Israel that any action taken by it would be supported by Washington. The Biden Administration also predictably voted against a Russian and Chinese drafted UN Security Council resolution to condemn the Israeli attack on the Iranian Consulate, which was a clear violation of international law and an act of war committed by Israel. The US reportedly cast its veto vote “no” after “Diplomats said the US told council colleagues that many of the facts of what happened on Monday in Damascus remained unclear.” What was actually unclear was the fog that generally surrounds the Biden foreign policy and national security team since it was pretty transparent who was the aggressor in terms of means, motive and outcome.

When Iran did retaliate on April 13^th, it carried out a carefully calibrated moderate strike against military targets intended to do damage but not cause a large number of casualties. It reportedly hit several airbases from which the Israeli fighter bombers had begun their attack on Damascus as well as an Israeli Air Force intelligence center in the formerly Syrian Golan Heights. No one was killed in spite of the 300 estimated drones and missiles that were launched, most being intercepted by Israel and its allies. But the attack nevertheless sent a message from Tehran that next time it could be much worse, both immediate in timing and “considerably more severe” than its response on Saturday night had been. Iran also claims that it attempted to prevent an escalation by warning the US about their plans, which would be passed on to Israel, that a “controlled” retaliation was coming. The Pentagon denied that it had been told anything, which may mean that Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin was asleep at his desk once again.

Not content with the outcome, Israel inevitably struck back on Friday, hitting a major airbase near Isfahan, and, to make sure no one was missed, targets in both Iraq and Syria. Iranian military sources advise however that the loud explosions heard by local residents were Iranian air defenses shooting at some flying objects, presumably drones. Per the New York Times and other accommodating media, the strike was a warning that Israel could penetrate Iranian airspace and not intended to do serious damage. The Pentagon was apparently informed shortly before the Israeli action. Iran’s counter-counter retaliation is now pending, but it is clear that Netanyahu will not be deterred by electoral considerations in the United States to stay his hand in his own counter-counter response.

And how does the United States fit into the story? The White House response to the Iranian attack on Israeli territory was inevitably completely unlike the previous uncritical response to Israel’s Consulate General attack, namely condemnation of Iran and the repetition of the usual tripe about “Israel has a right to defend itself” and the sanctity of the “ironclad” defense arrangement. Biden also attempted to cover himself against political blowback due to his licking Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s shoes in the upcoming November election by making it known that he had spoken with and advised Netanyahu, recommending not carrying out a reprisal of the reprisal, which Washington would be unable to support as it could/would lead to major escalation. Netanyahu, not fearing Biden’s displeasure, blew the advice off and he and his war cabinet made clear that they were working on a response as well as setting a timetable for invading Rafah in south Gaza, which Biden had also recommended against.

The White House completed its groveling to Netanyahu by vetoing a UN Security Council resolution on April 18^th that would have advocated full UN membership status for the state of Palestine, demonstrating that kicking the Palestinians is always a good way to maintain Israeli favor! The vote was 12 (including France, Japan and South Korea) in favor, two abstentions (the shameless United Kingdom and, surprisingly, Switzerland) and an American veto. The US insisted that elevation of Palestine’s diplomatic status can only be obtained after negotiations between the Palestinian Authority and Israel. US Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield absurdly raised another objection: “Right now, the Palestinians don’t have control over a significant portion of what is supposed to be their state. It’s being controlled by a terrorist organization.” She was referring to Hamas but the comment actually more correctly is applicable to Israel. In any event, a leaked White House memo had previously revealed that Biden opposes full UN membership and statehood for the Palestinians without Israel’s approval, which, of course, will not be forthcoming.

So we have Israel as the aggressor against two countries that were not declared enemies and had not attacked the Jewish state in any way in many, many years. But when Israel attacked them, committing a major war crime Joe Biden and company preferred to sit on their hands and mumble, saving their vituperation for when Iran staged a deliberately mild counter-attack as a warning. That is called hypocrisy, to turn things on their head to provide the answer that one wants to see and it applies equally to Biden accusing the Russians of “illegal occupation” in Ukraine while Israel’s theft of Syria’s Golan Heights and ongoing seizure of the West Bank goes unchallenged by Washington. And the pushback against Iran is unlikely to diminish very soon as the Jewish controlled US Congress also has the bit between its teeth to demonstrate how much it loves Israel. Congressman Steve Scalise, GOP House Majority Leader, has announced that “In light of Iran’s unjustified attack on Israel, the House will move from its previously announced legislative schedule next week to instead consider legislation that supports our ally Israel and holds Iran and its terrorist proxies accountable. The House of Representatives stands strongly with Israel, and there must be consequences for this unprovoked attack.” Over at the Senate Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas is advocating punishing Iran by beating on its possible friends in the US, physically attacking folks who are demonstrating in support of the Palestinians. Cotton said that the “pro-Hamas criminals” should be confronted by angry citizens who “take matters into [their] own hands” and confront the offenders, endorsing the use of force against peaceful demonstrators.

But there is also the back story behind why Israel likely attacked the Iranians in Syria in the first place. I and a number of other observers immediately after the Israeli attack assumed that the Jewish state had staged a deliberate over-the-top provocation to draw Washington into its wars. Just as in the case of the October 7^th Gaza attack by Hamas, which Israel had full knowledge of and let happen, Netanyahu sought to create a situation in which it would goad Iran into being forced to retaliate to force an “ironclad” Biden to protect its “ally” by taking on Iran directly.

Why did Israel do it beyond the obvious desire to destroy Iran just like it is destroying the Palestinians? It was done because Israel has likely become aware that it is viewed as the world’s greatest pariah state due to its genocide in Gaza, to include the recent horrific killing of hundreds of Palestinians in the Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza as well as the targeted assassination of seven employees of a charity that was bringing in food to those starving due to Israel’s blocking the entry of relief supplies. And also because Israel is actually not winning its war against Hamas, it needed to shift the narrative to something different. That would be using its time-honored technique of making itself once again the “victim” in confronting a powerful new enemy, Iran, which would make the problem of bad public relations with the world over Gaza be in part mitigated.

A shift in the story would also presumably bring with it the expected help from the United States and its European allies to do the hard work in killing Iranians. And the trick seems to have worked, predictably. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak of Britain has been recently facing demands to cut off arms shipments to Israel because of the devastating death toll in Gaza, but on the following Monday, he was able to salute the British warplanes that had shot down some Iranian drones sent by Iran to attack Israel. It was a telling example of how Israel has been able to scramble the equation in the Middle East. Faced with a intensively publicized barrage of Iranian missiles, Britain, the United States, France and others rushed to help the Israelis who had in fact started the conflict. The United States is also currently planning on increasing the pressure on Iran through a series of tough new sanctions being prepared by Treasury Secretary Janice Yellen, saying “Treasury will not hesitate to work with our allies to use our sanctions authority to continue disrupting the Iranian regime’s malign and destabilizing activity.” Yellen notably did nothing when Israel committed a major war crime in its attack on the Iranian Consulate General in Damascus, nor has she supported sanctions over the Israeli Gaza genocide. She is, of course, Jewish. More aid for the Jewish state is also still waiting for a congressional vote to approve the $14 billion currently in the pipeline, with Washington Report claiming that this year’s total US aid to Netanyahu will likely exceed $25 billion “in direct costs related to its fervent support for Israel.”

Right now, the dilemma for the US government will be that it must pull out all the stops in supporting Israel or face inter alia retaliation by the Israel Lobby working through its donors and media resources to defeat Biden in November. And there hovers in the peripheries of one’s mind the worse grim possibility that Israel, if rebuffed by its “allies,” will use its secret nuclear arsenal to blow up the Middle East and presumably a large chunk of adjacent areas in Europe and Asia as well. There are stories already circulating suggesting that the Israeli nuclear reactor at Dimona might have been an Iranian target and that Israel is right now preparing to take out Iranian nuclear research sites. Netanyahu is calling the shots while a befuddled White House looks on. Israel has baited a trap and Joe Biden has stepped right into it.

Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org.

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Secretary Blinken Announces Warhawk Nuland’s Resignation

March 06, 2024

Global Research,

By Dr. Paul Craig Roberts

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In a surprise statement this morning Secretary of State Blinken announced the resignation of Under Secretary Victoria Nuland to take place “in the coming weeks.” 

Over the past three years, Toria has led this Department on everything from addressing complex crises in the Sahel, Haiti, and the Middle East, to broadening and strengthening America’s alliances and partnerships across Europe and the Indo-Pacific.

But it’s Toria’s leadership on Ukraine that diplomats and students of foreign policy will study for years to come. Her efforts have been indispensable to confronting Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, marshaling a global coalition to ensure his strategic failure, and helping Ukraine work toward the day when it will be able to stand strongly on its own feet – democratically, economically, and militarily.

—Secretary of State Antony Blinken, US Department of State, March 5, 2024

Read More: Leading Provider of Financial Research Says US Is Headed for Third World Status

Blinken’s Statement on the Retirement of Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland (Source: US Department of State)

The announcement is a surprise for many reasons. Nuland is the primary and best-placed operative of the neoconservatives’ control over US Foreign Policy. Moreover, things are going well for her war agenda. For a year of longer she has been advocating for supplying Ukraine with long range missiles, and now German generals are recorded talking about doing so. She has pushed for NATO troops for Ukraine, and Washington’s French puppet has called for this step to be taken. 

In the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Nuland has seen the opportunity to expand the conflict to an attack on Iran, long a neoconservative agenda. The war has already expanded into Yemen, and there are reports that Israel intends to expand the war into Lebanon against Hezbollah, an Iranian ally.  

Why would a neoconservative in an influential and powerful position on the verge of achieving neoconservative goals resign?

Another puzzle is Blinken’s resignation announcement. No reason is given. The announce is full of praise for Nuland, but there is no expression of regret of her leaving. Instead, there is only this: “We are so grateful for Toria’s service” (Toria is Victoria’s nickname).

My quarter century experience in Washington tells me that Blinken has just told Nuland that she is fired.  

I have seen no US news reports of Nuland’s resignation/firing. This is amazing. The principle architect of Washington’s aggressive foreign policy toward Russia and Iran is removing herself, or is being removed, from a powerful office without explanation, and the presstitutes are silent?

I think it is too much to hope that the Democrats, a collection of bird brains, realized that Nuland was the face of the war party and that the Democrats could not survive that face in the upcoming elections. After the many years of demonization of Putin, Russia, and Iran, how can the effects of such demonization suddenly be called off?

Another puzzle is the absence of reporting in the presstitute media of Blinken’s announcement of Nuland’s resignation. RT mentioned it and Gilbert Doctorow on his personal site. Apparently, the official narrative hasn’t yet been prepared and handed to the presstitutes. 

It will be interesting to see what the official narrative is.

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Paul Craig Roberts is a renowned author and academic, chairman of The Institute for Political Economy where this article was originally published. Dr. Roberts was previously associate editor and columnist for The Wall Street Journal. He was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy during the Reagan Administration. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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Biden’s America Surrenders to War Criminal Netanyahu

DECEMBER 28, 2023

Source

Vital US interests are sacrificed to avoid offending Israel and its Lobby

Philip Giraldi

I don’t have anyone whom I would consider a friend who supports the genocide being carried out by Israel in Gaza. But my occasional interaction with the psychopaths who infest the US government and media and who are intimately connected by virtue of their political instincts as well as their personal interests in campaign donations and/or elevated salaries derived from Israel and its powerful lobby have plenty of sound bites to throw out to demonstrate their love of the Jewish state in all its manifestations. They mouth the Pelosi-Schumer-Biden assertion that “Israel has a right to defend itself” and that Israel is “America’s closest ally” and “best friend,” all of which can readily be exposed as a series of self-serving lies and deliberate misinterpretations of international law. Beyond that, they inevitably cite their view that critics of Israel are fully responsible for what they choose to refer to as the ultimate evil of “surging anti-semitism.” In so doing they conveniently ignore the obvious fact that anger towards Jews collectively speaking is nearly always derived from the crimes against humanity committed by the Zionist political entity that now legally defines itself as Jewish.

I sometimes ask the friends of Israel what interest the United States has that would warrant our country becoming complicit in committing war crimes that, collectively speaking, amount to precursors for the complete expulsion or killing of millions of Palestinians from what remains of their homes. They try to weasel word their way avoiding the implications of that question by observing that the United States is not directly engaged in the conflict, an evasion that I belittle by pointing out that Washington is providing funding, arming and political cover for the more powerful and lethal party engaged in the conflict while also blocking attempts to bring about a ceasefire to comply with orders from that same party, which sure looks like direct involvement to me. I also point out that Israel is working hard to get the US military engaged against Hezbollah in Lebanon and also against Iran and is likely to be able to maneuver the stoneheads in and around the White House to do its bidding vis-à-vis both objectives.

So the big question has to be “Why does the United States engage in a conflict that inter alia has utterly ruined our country’s reputation worldwide and for which there is no real compelling national interest?” The answer is, of course unpalatable to many, but has to be that the US government is in many respects and vis-à-vis some of its designated national policies completely under the control of Israel and its powerful domestic as well as international lobby. This habitual bowing to force majeure has warped the thinking of the ambitious scallywags who seem to be present wherever one turns in places like Washington. How else does one explain the infamous and quite frankly ridiculous comment delivered at the 2018 Israeli American Council meeting by leading politician Nancy Pelosi, who said that “I have said to people when they ask me if this Capitol crumbled to the ground, the one thing that would remain is our commitment to our aid…and I don’t even call it aid…our cooperation with Israel. That’s fundamental to who we are.”

The delusional Pelosi, who appears to have no “fundamental” attachment to the interests of the American people whom she represents, is unfortunately not unique in the halls of Congress, even less so in the Joe Biden White House, which might be regarded as the illustration of what happens when you appoint Zionists to nearly all key positions running your foreign, economic and national security policies. The degree of direct Zionist/Israeli control over the hapless Biden can best be illustrated by reviewing the course of the recent redrafting of a UN Security Council resolution authored by the United Arab Emirates that sought to bring about a suspension of the fighting and the urgent resumption of humanitarian supplies for Gaza. The US forced the revisions after coordination with Israel to permit the Israelis to continue to attack civilian targets and avoid entering into anything like a ceasefire, changing the word “suspension” in the original draft to the less demanding creation of “conditions for a sustainable cessation of hostilities.” Language authorizing the lead UN role in monitoring and delivering the assistance to the Gazans was also expunged leaving to belligerent Israel the task of completely controlling the distribution of any supplies allowed entry into the areas inside Gaza, which it is also simultaneously continuing to bomb, thereby slowing the stream of urgently needed supplies to a trickle while also killing hundreds more civilians.

To be sure, it was the United States blindly supporting Israel that rendered what was a promising proposal to put an end to the multiplying civilian deaths toothless. Israel demonstrated just how high it regarded Joe Biden when it contradicted what the president said about the US being able to moderate some Israeli offensive action in Gaza. Netanyahu denied that, saying that he and his war cabinet were continuing to make all relevant decisions based on Israel’s own interests. Israel Defense Force (IDF) Chief of the General Staff General Herzi Halevi followed on with his own assessment that finishing the job in Gaza, i.e. totally destroying Hamas by whatever means it requires, will take “many more months.” The Israeli military has indeed visibly increased its efforts by opening up new “battle zones” inside Gaza, to include directly targeting the crowded and starving refugee camps outside the cities. The civilians are paying the price while a grinning Joe Biden is spending his New Year’s holiday in the American Virgin Islands.

Allowing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a known liar and habitual war criminal to tell the US government what to do is about as low as it gets, Mr. Biden! You should not only be ashamed, but more than that, humiliated, compelled to do ghastly things in support of your own fear of possible Jewish/Israeli reaction if you do not bow down before King Netanyahu. He and the band of inhuman monsters he has assembled in his cabinet have made no secret of their intention to remove the Palestinians from Palestine, either by forced emigration or by killing them if necessary. On Christmas Day, Prime Minister Netanyahu told a meeting of his Likud bloc “that he was still working on the ‘voluntary’ immigration of Gaza’s inhabitants to other countries.” His associates Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich have made it clear that the ethnic cleansing process will proceed even if it is not in any way voluntary. As Israel is the occupying power in the former Palestine, what is taking place is, as defined by the Geneva Conventions, the Genocide Convention and the UN Charter, a crime against humanity and the United States is completely complicit in it not to mention actually enabling the slaughter through its supplying of arms and money to the Israelis. It has recently been reported in the Israeli media that the United States has delivered an astonishing “10,000 tons of armaments and military equipment on 244 cargo planes and 20 ships” to sustain the Israeli homicidal assault against the people of Gaza. And to demonstrate its gratitude for the flood of weapons, America’s “best friend” and “closest ally” Israel has nevertheless complained “about a delay in the delivery of munitions.”

The total support of the Israeli genocide of the Palestinians by Washington and the media is not only shameful, it is lacking any context for a crime against humanity that has been going on with US connivance for the past 76 years. Under international law, an occupied people has a right to use force to resist occupation, but even given that, the majority of Israeli deaths on October 7^th should probably be attributed to so-called “friendly fire” from the Israeli army not from Hamas. The occupied and woefully abused Palestinians rising-up and seeking both freedom and sovereignty in the land that was once completely theirs is fully justified and should be respected. Israel’s killing women and children through deliberate starvation or even by execution style is indisputably a war crime. Bombing hospitals or leaving newborn incubator babies abandoned to die is a crime against humanity. Arresting innocent Palestinians before parading them naked and even desecrating their dead bodies by harvesting organs that you then sell is unspeakable and almost unimaginable evil as is deliberately targeting and bombing schools and churches where people are trying to find shelter.

The genocide and destruction in Gaza is the worst crime committed in modern history and the man who could have stopped it, Joe Biden, sits on his hands and grins. No one should remain silent when confronted by this horror but the silence and the deliberate distortion of what is taking place is a tribute to Jewish power in America and elsewhere. I am including some recent commentary from the illustrious Australian Journalist Caitlin Johnstone which demonstrates perfectly the hypocrisy and inhumanity of both Biden and the leaders of Britain, France, Canada, and Germany: “Sometimes Israel’s crimes are so horrific that at first you don’t even understand what you’re looking at. You just stare at it trying to make sense of what you’re seeing for a bit, like you would if you suddenly saw a space alien or a leprechaun or something… It’s so incredibly obvious what we’re looking at here. The only thing putting a wobble on people’s perception is the immense amount of propaganda distortion the media is churning out on this issue, plus the fact that the demographics look a bit different from what history has conditioned people to watch out for. If there were two million Jewish people trapped by Christians in a giant concentration camp and placed under total siege, being told that half of them had 24 hours to relocate into the other half or be killed, nobody would have any confusion about what they were witnessing.”

And a leading American journalist Daniel Larison must have the last word of advice from his site on Eunomia: “We are witnessing one of the gravest crimes of our time. Our government is aiding and abetting the perpetrators. It is up to people in this country to make our government cut off all support for this war and to press for an end to the war itself.” Amen, Daniel!

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PHILIP GIRALDI

US Foreign Policy Goes “Woke”?

Regime change in store for cultural conservatives?

MARCH 7, 2023

Source

By Philip Giraldi

It is generally observed that imperial powers like the United States frequently interfere in foreign governments in support of economic or hard political reasons. To be sure, Washington has refined the process so it can plausibly deny that it is interfering at all, that the change is spontaneous and comes from the people and institutions in the country that is being targeted for change. One recalls how handing out cookies in Maidan Square in Kiev served as an incentive wrapped around a publicity stunt to bring about regime change in Ukraine in 2014 when Senator John McCain and the State Department’s Victoria Nuland were featured performers in a $5 billion investment by the US government to topple the friendly-to-Russia regime of President Viktor Yanukovych. Of course, change for the sake of a short-term objective might not always be the best way to go and one might suggest that the success in bringing in a new government acceptable to Nuland has not really turned out that well for Ukraine and the Ukrainian people, nor for those Americans who understand that the Biden Administration’s pledge to arm Ukraine and stay in the fight against Russia “as long as it takes” just might not be very good for the United States either.

And the United States continues to be at it, meddling in what was once regarded as something like a war crime, though it now prefers to conceal what it is up to by preaching “democracy” and wrapping the message in “woke-ish progressivism” at every opportunity. An interesting recent trip by a senior government official that was not reported in the mainstream media suggests that the game is still afoot in Eastern Europe. The early February visitor was Samantha Power, currently head of USAID, and a familiar figure from the Barack Obama Administration, where she served as Ambassador to the United Nations and was a dedicated liberal interventionist involved in the Libya debacle as well as various other wars started by that estimable Nobel Peace Prize recipient after he had received his award. The Obama attack on Syria has been sustained until this day, with several American military bases continuing to function on Syrian territory, stealing the country’s oil and agricultural produce.

USAID was founded in 1961 and it was intended to serve as a vehicle for nurturing democratic government and associated civic institutions among nations that had little or no experience in popular government. That role has become less relevant as nation states have evolved and the organization itself has responded by becoming more assertive in its role, pushing policies that have coincided with US foreign policy objectives. This has led some host nations to close down USAID offices. Within the US government itself, participants in foreign policy formulation often observe that USAID and the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) now are largely in the business of doing what the CIA used to do, i.e. interfering in local politics by supporting opposition parties and other dissident or even terrorist groups. Both organizations were very active in Ukraine in 2014 and served as conduits for money transfers to the opposition parties and those who were hostile to Russia’s influence for “democracy building.”

Samantha Power, who is married to another Democratic Party affiliated power broker, lawyer Cass Sunstein, traveled to Hungary on her diplomatic passport but took pains to cover her travel as a routine bureaucratic visit to an overseas post. Hungary is undeniably a democracy, is a member of the European Union, and also of NATO, but Power reportedly did not clear the travel with the Hungarian government and apparently did not meet with any government officials, even as a courtesy. She tweeted that her visit was to reestablish USAID in the Hungarian capital, “Great to be here in Budapest with @USAmbHungary where @USAID just relaunched new, locally-driven initiatives to help independent media thrive and reach new audiences, take on corruption and increase civic engagement.”

By “independent media” Power clearly meant that the US will be directly supporting opposition press that is anti-government and which embraces the globalist-progressive view currently favored by the White House. A US Embassy press release on the visit revealed that Power was in town as part of a project to relaunch seven USAID programs throughout Eastern Europe. It did not elaborate on the “corruption” that Power intended to address, which, of course, would have been a direct insult to the local governments wherever she intended to visit, nor did the document reveal that many of the groups that will be supported are likely to be affiliated with “globalist” George Soros.

In Budapest, Samantha Power did indeed meet with opposition political figures and civil organizations and groups, with particular emphasis on the homosexual community including “Joined @divaDgiV, @andraslederer, and @viki radvanyi for lunch in Budapest where we spoke about their work to advocate for LGBTQI+ rights and dignity in Hungary and around the world @budapestpride” as described in one of her tweeted messages after arrival. Power was also accompanied throughout by the highly controversial US Ambassador David Pressman, who is openly homosexual, of course, married to a man, and who has been highly critical of the conservative Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s government, which was reelected in 2022 by a landslide margin in a vote that was considered free and fair. Orban is disliked by Joe Biden’s Washington because he is conservative and a nationalist, not because he is incompetent or dishonest while Pressman was and is a perfect example of the Biden State Department sending a terrible fit as ambassador to an extremely conservative country just to make points with the gay community in the US. Pressman has persisted in telling Hungarians how to behave not only on foreign policy but also on sexual diversity and cultural issues and, for his efforts, was finally told to “shut up” by Hungary’s Foreign Minister.

To be sure, Hungary’s undeniably democratic government, which is politically and economically tied to Washington, does not support the United States-led strategy to prolong and even escalate the Russia-Ukraine war and will not contribute to arming Ukraine. It does not accept “globalist” open immigration that seeks to challenge the established national culture, and also opposes same-sex marriage on religious grounds. It does not allow LGBTQ material to be presented to minors in state schools, which it considers to be morally correct anti-pedophilia legislation. For that reason, the time was clearly right, in the “woke” view of the Biden Administration, for Samantha Power to show up with a little dose of regime change in her portfolio. Hungarian officials had already expressed their concern over what they consider extreme pressure coming from the United States, largely because Hungary is a conservative country that values its culture and political independence. The visit by Power sent a signal to the Hungarian government and people that the pressure will likely increase and that Washington will not hesitate to use its embassies and overseas military bases to actively support groups that promote views that are not generally embraced by the local populations.

The Samantha Power story is of interest, to be sure, because it demonstrates that since the United States is the self-appointed enforcer of the “rules based international order” nothing in the world is off limits. Far too many US politicians and media pundits think that other states are not really sovereign and have to submit to US dictates in everything, and if they dare to step out of line they can be punished. If a conservative Christian country or leader – by which one might include Hungary, Russia or Brazil – believes that homosexuality or even abortion on demand are morally objectionable the US now believes that it has a mandate to use federal government resources to change that perception including by actively engaging with a foreign nation and its government on its own soil. To put it bluntly, the United States must certainly be considered the world leader in compelling all nations to conform to the political and moral values that it insists be adhered to.

So if one wants to learn why US Foreign Policy is so inept in terms of actually serving the interests of the American people, look no farther than was has happened and continues to roil in Ukraine as well as the implications of the Samantha Power visit to Hungary. For Foreign Service Posts, providing support for the agendas of the collection of freak shows that make up the Democratic Party has become manifestly as or even more important than promoting genuine national interests overseas or assisting American businesses and travelers.

What is perhaps most interesting is the way the “woke” foreign policy is being largely concealed from the American public and is being run as some kind of stealth operation. One initiative run by USAID in Macedonia in 2016 under President Obama included a $300,000 grant for “suitable” Macedonian applicants to “fund” a program entitled “LGBTI Inclusion” to counter how “Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) persons continue to suffer discrimination and homophobic media content, both online and offline… Considerable efforts are still needed to raise awareness of and respect for diversity within society and to counter intolerance.” How many American taxpayers would be happy to learn that their hard-earned money has been going to support programs run in nonconsenting foreign democracies to make them more “woke?” Of course, no one in the Biden Administration is telling the public about it, nor is the story likely to appear in the mainstream media, so presumably no one will know!

Greed, usury and the world

January 30, 2023

Source

by Naresh Jotwani

The Saker recently posted an article (here) on the important subject of the quality of leadership in the US. In a comment to that article, I asked him the following question:

From what you have accurately pointed out, is it possible also to draw the following inescapable conclusions?

1. Money which was poured into the think-tanks came not from the Neocon minions themselves but their paymasters, who are presumably very wealthy people.

2. Therefore “big money” of some variety wanted and presumably still want to “take over” US foreign policy. The money paid in is an investment seeking return.

3. Greed and arrogance drive big money.

So we are forced to conclude:

4. Unbridled greed and arrogance of certain people are creating difficulties for billions of people around the world.

Your opinion will be greatly appreciated!

Promptly, the Saker replied as follows:

1) yes
2) yes
3) yes
4) and yes again

I agree with every point you make.
Actually, the root of most evil on our planet is usury and its “byproducts”. I recommend Michael Hudson as THE authority on this topic 🙂

We see that the two words ‘greed’ and ‘usury’ are central to the two excerpts cited. We can hope therefore that an understanding of the meaning and background of these two words will add much to the background and significance and of Saker’s article.

Greed

Greed is a character trait, like a dark and bottomless hole, deep in the emotional make-up of a person. It distorts the affected person’s all-round outlook, and affects the entirety of his or her life and relationships. By its very definition, greed is insatiable. A need may one day be satisfied, but never greed. Unlike a need, greed has no connection with the essential material necessities of rational human life. It can therefore be dubbed an irrational trait, a character flaw. Since a greedy person is never contented, contentment as a goal of life is denied to him or her.

Does nature or nurture play the bigger role in the growth this trait in an individual?

While nature – genetics? – may indeed play a role, a far bigger role is probably that of nurture, as reflected in the person’s upbringing, education, social environment … et cetera. For example, severe deprivation may accentuate the expression of greed in an individual.

Usury

Usury is defined as ‘the lending or practice of lending money at an exorbitant interest’. ‘Exorbitant’ here implies that the rate of interest is designed with the specific aim of cruelly exploiting, impoverishing or even ruining the borrower.

The ideal of a healthy free-market economy is premised on both parties to a transaction benefitting from the transaction. Usury goes against that spirit in the sense that the borrower – the weaker party – is forced into a transaction which is not in his or her long term interest. A short term critical need knowingly or unknowingly pushes a person into a ‘debt trap’.

Usury is an expression of greed – but not the only possible expression of greed. Greed manifested in a schoolyard brawl, a family dispute or in bureaucratic corruption does not involve usury. Of course we must assume that usury does always involve greed as its core drive, since it is difficult to imagine an usurious practice not driven by greed.

Institutionalization of usury

While greed is a personal trait, the practice of usury can and very often is institutionalized. The institutionalization of usury requires immense cunning and cleverness. The stated mission of any such institution cannot say out loud the part about exploitation or impoverishment. If that part became known, the truth would chase away most borrowers; truth is bad for the business of usury. Therefore the underlying usurious nature of such institutions must be disguised by words such ‘helping the needy’, ‘free market’, ‘financial services, ‘modern lifestyle’ et cetera. Institutionalized usury can only prosper with the help of lies.

The stereotype of the usurious moneylender in an Indian village is based on the harsh reality of a not-too-distant past. An individual village moneylender may not formally ‘institutionalize’ the business, but a ‘caste network’ of such moneylenders across a few dozen villages behaves pretty much as an informal institutionalized structure.

In that sense, a moneylender family and caste – or, equivalently, tribe – must be understood as the earliest forms of institutionalized usury. In a traditional moneylender family, we assume that a child would learn about usury at the grandfather’s knee.

Far more imposing institutions of usury come with ‘progress’ and ‘development’ – institutions such as banks, regulators, central banks, innumerable laws, finance schools, hedge funds, law firms, lobbying firms … and so on. People soon learn that, since there is much easy money to be made through such rackets, there is no longer a need to bother with hard work.

Institutions provide nurture and selection

Once institutions of usury come into being – families, castes, tribes, banks, finance schools et cetera – nature is hugely supplemented by conscious nurture in enlarging and empowering the usurious class. The interplay of nature and nurture then becomes deep and thorough-going. Political power, which is usually spineless, yields readily to financial power, and the healthy economy of a society comes under the iron-grip of the non-productive usurious class.

Historically, between usury and greed, the latter certainly has to be older. Greed can exist even in the absence of money as medium of exchange and store of value; but usury depends explicitly on the use of money. Money in the form of clay tablets – or whatever – was invented about five thousand years ago, and therefore usury would have followed soon. Quite plausibly, greed might well have spurred the initial development of instruments of usury. Necessity is the mother of invention, after all.

Institutionalized usury is a powerful vehicle giving traction to unrestrained play of greed in society. This is because the disguising verbiage which serves as cover for usury displaces any other truly human values which the society might earlier have cherished. Older values and traditions are derided as not being ‘the best business practices’. In the absence of truly binding values – family, community, citizens’ duties to one another – the society crumbles.

In such a society, the most ruthless ‘players in the game of usury’ are shaped, toughened and honed by years of nature, nurture and relentless competition. Suborning the pliable political class from behind the curtains is second nature to them. While such ‘players’ may be admired or venerated by many, they shun any commitment or responsibility for the public good.

Tribal factors

A ‘caste’ or ‘tribe’ – or even ‘nation’, in the original sense of that word – is like a very large extended family, bringing people together who are of similar background and traditions. In a heterogeneous world, such groups provide secure identity for family and community life. As people migrate from place to place, and interact with alien groups, staying together in the form of a cohesive group becomes a central and essential mechanism of survival.

Inevitably however, that survival mechanism engenders a strong feeling of ‘us’ versus ‘the others’ or ‘the other groups’. The inevitable result of that strong feeling is the attitude that (a) helping one of your own is a virtue, (b) hurting one of your own is a vice, and (c) virtue and vice simply exchange places if an alien individual or group is involved. Thus one wins group acclaim – and brides? – by robbing others to the benefit of one’s own group.

Group acclaim plays a big role in nurturing and reinforcing characteristic trends within a tribe. If a tribal hero who robbed a neighbouring tribe of ten pieces of gold wins laurels – and brides? – then some young boys will surely dream of out-shining their hero by robbing twenty pieces of gold. Vice practiced against another tribe is seen as virtue. In this sense, around the world, tribal values often fall far short of any notion of universality.

Therefore if we think about greed in a tribal context, then we must admit that its aggressive expression towards ‘others’ is not only permitted but often held up as virtue or exemplar, whereas its intra-tribe expression is moderated by intra-tribe relationships.

Oh, the irony of it all … !

Bright, western-educated children of Indian village money lenders are today making their careers in western financial businesses. One can imagine such a bright young ‘finance expert’ visiting his ancestral village and donating some money to the local school. For his generosity, the villagers would fall over one another to garland, fete and all-but-worship the ‘village boy done good’. The proud father would puff at his beedi and look on. But the simple-minded villagers would not be at all aware that, back in the shining capital city, the very same village boy lobbies aggressively for laws which facilitate the financial exploitation of communities such as theirs. Insufficiently aggressive lobbying will cost the bright boy his lucrative job.

Present status and geo-economics

Today institutionalized usury operates relentlessly, at peak efficiency – aided by powerful technology and by thousands of years of practice and refinement of art. Its unforgiving iron clutches extend all around the world. The current conflict in Ukraine is the latest and the most prominent symptom of the tectonic geo-economic stresses it generates.

Behind geo-politics lies geo-economics, and unfortunately greed plays a huge part in today’s global economic systems. To be fair, greed has probably always played a huge part in global economic systems – but it is only the current system which we witness first hand.

To an outsider, geo-economic issues seem to be THE central issues in the conflict. Nobody fights a war for democracy, or liberalism, or a third person’s well-being. Wars are always about riches, about ‘us versus them’. All other verbiage is at attempt to throw dust in other people’s eyes.

A major conflict on core issues has to be existential for both sides. Therefore talk of ‘the end of our civilization’ by a prominent financier does not come as a surprise. The civilization based on usury and fraud should feel threatened by the ongoing conflict. But then history has shown us again and again that – while civilisations come and go – life goes on.

Misfits of two types

Imagine that an individual who is not really greedy at heart finds himself or herself working with overtly greedy colleagues in a brazenly usurious institution. Clearly such an individual will be a misfit there. Over time, the individual must make a difficult choice: either become like everybody else around, or change jobs.

Conversely, an overly greedy individual may find himself or herself working with a group of contented and honest colleagues. This individual will also be a misfit. One imagines that such an individual will find it impossible to become contented and honest. Therefore the choices open to him or her are: try to corrupt everybody else around, or change jobs.

Other manifestations of greed

Like usury, price-gouging is also a form of economic violence. Like usury, price-gouging is also driven by greed, and often becomes institutionalized. The recent shameless hawking of certain types of vaccines is an example of price-gouging.

Different types of fraud – usury, price-gouging, corruption et cetera – are combined by clever people to multiply hugely their returns on investment. An example: Lend money at an exorbitant rates to country X so that she can ‘develop her economy ’; in simple language, force the country to mine A, B or C mineral and sell it to the lender at rock bottom prices. That would be usury, price-gouging, corruption and slave labour combined in highly synergistic manner, as taught by the best ‘business schools’ around the world.

But obviously price-gouging, usury, financial fraud, bonded labour et cetera are all siblings, all born out of limitless greed and sociopathic behaviour. While the present article discusses specifically only usury, clearly many of the observations made herein apply to all types of exploitation of the economically weak by the economically strong.

Saudi Crown Prince Defies the US Policy against Syria

JANUARY 21, 2023

Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° 

In November 2022, Saudi Arabia formally changed its stance on Syria. Saudi Arabia is the political powerhouse of the Middle East, and often shares positions on foreign policy and international issues with the UAE, which has previously re-opened their embassy in Damascus.

“The kingdom is keen to maintain Syria’s security and stability and supports all efforts aimed at finding a political solution to the Syrian crisis,” Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan told the November Arab League summit in Algeria.

Syria was suspended from the Arab League in 2011 following the outbreak of conflict instigated by the US, and portrayed in western media as a popular uprising of pro-democracy protesters.

Arab League Secretary-General Ahmed Aboul Gheit said, “The developments in Syria still require a pioneering Arab effort. It is necessary to show flexibility from all parties so that the economic collapse and political blockage can be dispelled. Syria must engage in its natural Arab environment.”

The next Arab League summit will be held in Saudi Arabia, and there is a possibility of Syria once again taking its seat at the round table.

On January 16, the Syrian Foreign Ministry agreed to resume imports from Saudi Arabia after over a decade of strained relations, and Syria planned to import 10,000 tons of white sugar. This development signals a new beginning between the two countries.

Saudi and the Syrian tribes

The Arab tribes in the north east of Syria have traditionally had strong ties with Saudi Arabia, and have received support from the kingdom. The tribes have opposed the ethnic cleansing and forced displacement of Arab villages which the US-led YPG militia has conducted for years. Even though Saudi Arabia has been viewed as a US ally in the past, this has changed since the US military has supported the Marxist YPG who have oppressed Syrians who are not Kurdish.

The US occupied oil wells in north east Syria may come under attack by Arab tribes who are demanding their homes, farms and businesses back from the US-supported YPG.  Some analysts foresee the US troops pulling out of Syria after the Kurds find a political solution with Damascus.

Turkey and Syria repair relationship

Turkey and Syria have begun steps to repair their relationship, which ended after Turkey supported the US-NATO attack on Syria for regime change, and hosted the CIA operations room funneling weapons and terrorists into Syria, under the Obama administration.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad demanded recently the withdrawal of Turkish troops from Syria to begin to repair the relationship.

Russia is brokering the reconciliation between Erdogan and Assad, which began with the Moscow hosted meeting of the three defense ministers, and a meeting between the three foreign ministers is upcoming.

The developments between Turkey and Syria are being watched by Iran. Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian said his country was “happy with the dialogue taking place between Syria and Turkey.” Amirabdollahian will travel to Damascus on Saturday for talks with Syrian Foreign Minister Mekdad.

Iran is looking to establish a new role in the recovery process in Syria. President Ebrahim Raisi will visit both Turkey and Syria soon, his first visit to Turkey since taking office two years ago.  While analysts see Saudi Arabia and Iran as antagonists, some feel the kingdom will ultimately realize they have to work with Iran in Syria and Lebanon.  Iran is part of the region and can’t be excluded from the geo-political sphere.

Saudi Arabian reforms 

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) said on April 27, 2021 that the country was undergoing a sweeping reform which would restructure the role of religion in Saudi politics and society.  The process began a few years before he became crown prince, but under his leadership it has accelerated. Islamic institutions in the Kingdom have seen changes in procedure, personnel, and jurisdiction.  All of these reforms are in line with the future vision of the country.

Some analysts feel the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood in the 1960s eventually gave rise to support for domestic religious institutions, and eventually led to funding of religious activities abroad, while religious leaders at home wielded power over public policy.

Vision 2030

Saudi King Salman, Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques, and his son, MBS have a plan for the country which is known as Vision 2030.  MBS is also Prime Minister and Chairman of the Council of Economic and Development Affairs.

The days of unlimited oil and markets are in the decline. Education, training, and employment opportunities are the stepping stones to building a thriving country and MBS is determined to plan for a long future of growth and innovation.

MBS

The Crown Prince is young and has new ideas.  He is instituting sweeping reforms to the society which have included more rights and freedoms for women. He has championed projects to place Saudi Arabia as a tourist destination, year round golf and soccer venue, and encouraged cultural arts such as musical productions. MBS is breaking the mold: no longer will Saudi Arabia be a breeding ground for Radical Islam.

Extremist preachers

Saudi Arabia had hosted many extremist preachers.  Some were featured on satellite TV channels located in Saudi Arabia, and others were local preachers, authors, or scholars.  Some had traveled abroad preaching in pulpits and exporting their hatred and sectarian bigotry.

One of the most famous preachers was Muhammed Al-Arifi, who has had an electronic surveillance device attached to him by Saudi intelligence agents, after they seized all of his social media accounts. His last tweet is said to be on May 6, 2019, when he had 20 million followers, and 24 million likes on Facebook, which ranked him as tenth in the Arab world and in the Middle East. The kingdom is shutting down clerics who are extreme.

In 2014, Great Britain banned Arifi from entering the UK following reports that was involved in radicalizing three young British citizens who went to Syria as terrorists.

A YouTube video in 2013 showed Arifi preaching in Egypt and prophesying the coming of the Islamic State.  Egyptian TV reported Arifi meeting with the former Muslim Brotherhood prime minister Hisham Qandil in his office.

Arifi is best remembered for his statement on the media Al Jazeera in which he called for jihad in Syria and supported Al Qaeda.

Adnan al-Arour is another extremist preacher who had appeared regularly on two Saudi-owned Salafist satellite channels. Arour was originally from Syria before settling in Saudi Arabia, and in the early days of the Syrian conflict he would stand up on camera, shake his finger, and called for his followers to ‘grind the flesh’ of an Islamic minority sect in Syria and ‘feed it to the dogs’.

These extremist preachers made it clear that the battles being waged in Syria had nothing to do with freedom or democracy, which the western media was pushing as the goal.  The truth was the conflict in Syria was a US-NATO attack for regime change and utilized terrorists following Radical Islam, who fought a sectarian war with the goal of establishing an Islamic State in Syria.

The previous Crown Prince

Muhammad bin Nayef Al Saud (MBN) served as the crown prince and first deputy prime minister of Saudi Arabia from 2015 to 2017.  On June 21, 2017 King Salman appointed his own son, MBS, as crown prince and relieved MBN of all positions.

MBN met with British Prime Minister David Cameron in January 2013. He then met with President Obama in Washington, on 14 January 2013. The discussion focused on the US-NATO attack on Syria and its support from Saudi Arabia.

In February 2014, MBN replaced Prince Bandar bin Sultan, then intelligence chief of Saudi Arabia, and was placed in charge of Saudi intelligence in Syria. Bandar had been in charge of supporting the US attack on Syria. Bandar had been trying to convince the US in 2012 that the Syrian government was using chemical weapons.  However, research has shown that the terrorists used chemical weapons to push Obama into a military invasion, based on his speech of ‘The Red Line’.

In March 2016, MBN was awarded Légion d’honneur by French President François Hollande, another partner in the US-NATO attack on Syria.

On February 10, 2017, the CIA granted its highest Medal to MBN and was handed to him by CIA director Mike Pompeo during a reception ceremony in Riyadh. MBN and Pompeo discussed Syria with Turkish officials, and said Saudi Arabia’s relationship with the US was “historic and strategic”.  Just months later in June MBS would depose MBN and strip him of powers, in a move considered to be “upending decades of royal custom and profoundly reordering the kingdom’s inner power structure”.

US diplomats argued that MBN was “the most pro-American minister in the Saudi Cabinet”. That is what brought MBN down. The days of blindly following the US directives are over in Saudi Arabia.  MBS has refused to bow down to Biden when he demanded an increase in oil production.  The Vision 2030 that MBS developed does not include financing failed wars in the Middle East for the benefit of the Oval Office. MBS has a strained relationship with Biden, and he wears it as a badge of honor.

Saudi role in the Syrian war

Saudi Arabia played a huge role in the large-scale supply of weapons and ammunition to various terrorist groups in Syria during the Syrian conflict.  Weapons purchased in Croatia were funneled through Jordan to the border town of Deraa, the epi-center of the Syrian conflict.

At the height of Saudi involvement in Syria, the kingdom had their own militia in Syria under the command of Zahran Alloush. The Jaysh al-Islam are remembered for parading women in cages through the Damascus countryside prior to massacring them.

In summer 2017, US President Donald Trump shut down the CIA operation ‘Timber Sycamore’ which had been arming the terrorists fighting in Syria. About the same time, Saudi Arabia cut off support to the Syrian opposition, which was the political arm of the terrorists.

Richard Dearlove, former head of MI6, expressed his view at the time that “Saudi Arabia is involved in the ISIS-led Sunni rebellion” in Syria.

Syria has been destroyed by the US and their allies who supported the attack beginning in 2011.  Now, Turkey and Saudi Arabia are looking to find a solution which will help the Syrian people to rebuild their lives.  Both Turkey and Saudi Arabia have turned away from past policies which found them supporting the conflict in Syria at the behest of the US.  There is a new Middle East emerging which makes its own policies and is not subservient US interests.

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Steven Sahiounie is a two-time award-winning journalist

US and Israel ‘biggest threats to security’ across Arab world: Arab Opinion Index

An overwhelming majority of Arab citizens say they oppose normalization with Israel, believing instead that the Palestinian cause concerns the entire region

January 20 2023

(Photo credit: AP)

ByNews Desk- 

The US and Israel have been named the “biggest threats” to the security of the Arab world by citizens from across West Asia and North Africa, according to the 2022 Arab Opinion Index released on 19 January by the Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies.

When presented with a list of countries and asked which poses the biggest threat to the Arab world, 84 percent of respondents said Israel, while 78 percent said the US.

Tied for third place are Iran and Russia, as 57 percent of respondents considered the two sanctioned nations the biggest threat to regional security. Meanwhile, 53 percent of citizens named France as a significant threat.

Turkiye and China were the only countries with positive results for their policies in the Arab world.

“There is a general sense of American hypocrisy on [West Asia] policy,” said Dana El Kurd, a professor at the University of Richmond, at a press briefing following the release of the findings.

Respondents, in particular, had a somber outlook on US policy on Palestine, as only 11 percent said they approved of Washington’s positions. On the other hand, 31 percent of respondents said they approved of Iran’s policies towards Palestine.

The poll also shows that 76 percent of respondents agreed that the Palestinian cause concerns all Arabs, not just Palestinians. An overwhelming majority (84 percent) said they would not support the normalization of ties with Israel.

This is true even in nations that have already normalized ties with Tel Aviv, like Jordan, Sudan, and Morocco, highlighting a clear divide between the interest of citizens and their leaders.

Even in Saudi Arabia, which Israel has considered the most crucial target for normalization, only five percent of respondents said they would favor such a deal.

When asked why they oppose normalization, respondents cited the over 70-year-long Israeli occupation of Palestine and the establishment of an apartheid state to persecute Palestinians as the main reason.

The Arab Opinion Index poll comprises in-person interviews with 33,000 respondents across 14 Arab countries. According to the Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies, interviews with Saudi citizens took place over the phone.

Countries polled included Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, Palestine, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, and Tunisia.

US to allies: No more ‘free’ military support; terms, conditions apply

January 19, 2023 

Source: The National Interest

By Al Mayadeen English 

The National Interest report says that the war in Ukraine has turned the tables on the US foreign policy approach to its allies.

Illustration of a US tank emerging from behind the American flag (Rob Dobi)

Washington has a new message to its allies: Relying on American military leadership will have to come with terms and conditions, no more “free rides”, a report by The National Interest revealed on Thursday.

The media outlet said that the earlier discussions have addressed the “free riding” problem in general, especially when it comes to US foreign policy.

In short, free riding refers to American allies earning US military protection and privileges acquired through Washington’s global influence and hegemony, without providing anything – or barely anything –  in return.

US international allies, during the cold war era and what came after, were at the center of criticism by Washington for “relying on the United States to spend its national treasure in terms of higher military expenditures to provide them with global security,” the report continued.

“If anything, the message coming from Washington these days is that if the allies want to be able to continue to rely on U.S. military leadership, they are the ones who would have to accept the economic conditions set by the Americans,” the report said.

The conditions, according to the media outlet, are “ending their energy deals with Russia, sanctioning it, and joining the United States in a long and costly economic-technological war with the Chinese.”

US “subsidies” to its allies’ defense budgets have enabled them [allies] to spend less on their military industry and focus more of their revenue on their social and economic needs, “while fiscal tightening forces Americans to cut expenditures on education and health,” according to the news sites.

According to the report, this begs the question:

“Why should America continue bankrolling the defense budgets of countries like Japan, surplus economies whose companies compete with American businesses in the global arena?”

The dominating position of the US in the Middle East, which has been sustained through large military and financial expenses, allowed Washington’s allies that are dependent on foreign energy imports to have freedom of access to the energy resources in the Gulf region, the report noted.

In addition to all the abovementioned points, there is also the current world reality where the US is committed to deploying its nuclear arsenal to defend its NATO and Asian allies in the case that they [allies] come under threats from adversaries with nuclear arms.

“Hence, the Americans are supposedly ready to see New York and San Francisco being nuked in order to save Berlin and Tokyo from annihilation,” said the outlet.

Thus, pressing NATO states to raise their defense budgets and their military and economic contributions to the coalition has become a bipartisan ritual of sorts in Washington “until President Donald Trump’s behavior made it look faux pas,” the report said.

 Anti-globalization sentiments in the United States

Americans are expressing unwillingness to “continue supporting the liberal economic order while the allies were breaking free-trade principles,” the media outlet stated.

“But then that was the way the industrial miracles of Germany and Japan had happened, very much at the expense of American economic interests,” it continued.

The cost implications on the United States from the wars it fought in the “Greater Middle East” started to challenge the de facto rhetoric in Washington regarding the US role on the global stage.

According to the report, the US is “supposedly ready” to help out its allies who resort to it and protect their access to energy resources in the Gulf region, “while the allies pay very little in exchange, and even try to force the United States into costlier military interventions in the Middle East, as France did in the case of Libya.”

War in Ukraine; turning point

After the start of Russia’s military operation in Ukraine and amid growing “Chinese threats to Taiwan,” the report said that – “according to the conventional wisdom” – US allies may have finally realized that “free riding” is not an option anymore when it comes to dealing with the United States.

“They need to start playing a more activist role in the protection of Western interests against the threat of powerful global disruptors” and now have to “contribute to the production of that international public good”.

Allies will have to step up their roles, “since alone the United States will not continue to provide it cost-free,” the report said.

‘American Hegemony Lite’

The media site pointed out Germany’s response to the Ukraine war and Japan’s reaction to growing tension with China as examples that allies are, indeed, making a shift in their role as US allies.

“These developments seemed to have changed the balance of power in Europe and Asia, where America can supposedly now count on its allies to play their roles as its deputies while the United States remains primus inter pares (first among equals), call it American Hegemony Lite,” the site said.

No more free pass for allies practicing protectionism

Toward the beginning of the Cold War, “liberalizing American trade policies while dealing with nations that practiced protectionism made some sense,” the report noted, arguing that some allied economies, such as Germany and Japan, were still in a state of recovery from the destructive outcomes of WWII, thus had to protect their local industries from outside competitors.

“But those who assumed that Trump’s economic nationalist policies would change under the more internationalist President Joe Biden are discovering now that that approach enjoys bipartisan support,” the report stressed.

The news site continued that the decision made by Biden not to join the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), which would have required the US to cut tariffs on some Asian imports, and his administration insisting on providing subsidies to electric-vehicle despite outrage from European allies in particular, who accused the US of practicing unfair protection to US-made products, are signs that Washington has turned upside-down the Cold-War-era deal with the allies.

In its concluding statement, the report said that despite the conventional discussion that it is in the US interests to stop allies from establishing independent military powers, which could make the world a “more dangerous place,” the United States was one of the countries that launched a “series of wars in recent decades that have made the world more dangerous.”

“It was based on the expectations that the United States needed to win the geostrategic commitment of its allies through concessions in the geo-economic area,” the report said.

US allies developing nuclear programs could not have been a bad idea

“In retrospect, if Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and Ukraine had nuclear weapons, the world would have probably been less dangerous today,” the news site claimed.

• Macron calls out US for double standards on gas prices to EU
• EU slams US over war-accumulated wealth: Politico
• Arabs realigning with China, Russia to affect US allies’ energy market
• War in Ukraine: A conflict that will decide the global system’s fate
• The West’s race for African energy is hypocritical and problematic
• Germany: No Leopard tanks to Kiev unless US agrees to send its Abrams

US intelligence UAE report: Activities go beyond ‘influence peddling’

15 Nov 2022

Source: The Washington Post

By Al Mayadeen English 

The Washington Post publishes an analysis telling how the United Arab Emirates meddled in the American political system.

US intelligence UAE report: Activities go beyond ‘influence peddling’

The US newspaper The Washington Post published an analysis on November 14 that says “US intelligence officials have concluded the United Arab Emirates meddled in the American political system, including by hacking into computers in the United States.”

This comes after Intelligence officials in Washington have put together a classified report showing efforts made by the United Arab Emirates to meddle in US politics despite Abu Dhabi being a close ally of Washington’s.

According to the same newspaper, the activities include legal and illegal bids to influence the US foreign policies in ways that would serve its interests throughout various administrations in the White House.

Meanwhile, only as per DoJ records, Abu Dhabi has spent over $154 million on lobbyists since 2016, the newspaper added.

“Three people who read a classified report and spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss classified information said the activities attributed to the UAE in the report go well beyond mere influence peddling,” writer John Hudson said.

“One of the more brazen exploits involved the hiring of three former U.S. intelligence and military officials to help the UAE surveil dissidents, politicians, journalists, and U.S. companies. In publlic legal filings, U.S. prosecutors said the men helped the UAE break into computers in the United States and other countries,” Hudson added.

“The report amounted to a ‘unique’ intelligence examination of a ‘friendly power,'” according to Bruce Riedel, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who once served on the National Intelligence Council, which compiled the report and typically writes such reports about adversaries.

However, as per Riedel, “it also serves as a reminder that the UAE has sought to become a force in cyberspace and has made questionable use of cyberweapons, including by siphoning ex-U.S. officials into surveillance work against the United States itself.”

For this purpose, the UAE has repeatedly been connected with the use of spyware known as Pegasus, a product of the NSO Group and Project Raven.

Last September, former US officials Mark Baer, ​​Ryan Adams, and Daniel Gerek admitted to providing advanced computer hacking technology to the UAE, and the UAE agreed with them to pay approximately $1.7 million to resolve criminal charges in a deferred prosecution agreement, which the Ministry of Justice described as the first of its kind.

“Under Project Raven, former U.S. government hackers aided foreign intelligence services in the surveillance of journalists, human rights activists, rival governments, and dissidents. That included the targeting of Americans,” the WP added.

“And the pipeline continues. Just last month, my colleagues Craig Whitlock and Nate Jones reported that over the past seven years, nearly 300 military retirees have sought federal authorization to work for the UAE,” the newspaper wrote, adding, “That includes cybersecurity advisers.”

In another investigation conducted by the Washington Post, more than 500 retired US military personnel, including top army officials, have taken high-paying jobs working for foreign governments since 2015, largely in countries infamous for human rights abuses and political repression.

Vladimir Putin Addresses Russian Security Council – October 26, 2022 – ENG Subtitles

October 26, 2022

American Diplomacy as a Tragic Drama

July 29, 2022

By Michael Hudson and posted with the author’s permission

As in a Greek tragedy whose protagonist brings about precisely the fate that he has sought to avoid, the US/NATO confrontation with Russia in Ukraine is achieving just the opposite of America’s aim of preventing China, Russia and their allies from acting independently of U.S. control over their trade and investment policy. Naming China as America’s main long-term adversary, the Biden Administration’s plan was to split Russia away from China and then cripple China’s own military and economic viability. But the effect of American diplomacy has been to drive Russia and China together, joining with Iran, India and other allies. For the first time since the Bandung Conference of Non-Aligned Nations in 1955, a critical mass is able to be mutually self-sufficient to start the process of achieving independence from Dollar Diplomacy.

Confronted with China’s industrial prosperity based on self-financed public investment in socialized markets, U.S. officials acknowledge that resolving this fight will take a number of decades to play out. Arming a proxy Ukrainian regime is merely an opening move in turning Cold War 2 (and potentially/or indeed World War III) into a fight to divide the world into allies and enemies with regard to whether governments or the financial sector will plan the world economy and society.

What is euphemized as U.S.-style democracy is a financial oligarchy privatizing basic infrastructure, health and education. The alternative is what President Biden calls autocracy, a hostile label for governments strong enough to block a global rent-seeking oligarchy from taking control. China is deemed autocratic for providing basic needs at subsidized prices instead of charging whatever the market can bear. Making its mixed economy lower-cost is called “market manipulation,” as if that is a bad thing that was not done by the United States, Germany and every other industrial nation during their economic takeoff in the 19^th and early 20^th century.

Clausewitz popularized the axiom that war is an extension of national interests – mainly economic. The United States views its economic interest to lie in seeking to spread its neoliberal ideology globally. The evangelistic aim is to financialize and privatize economies by shifting planning away from national governments to a cosmopolitan financial sector. There would be little need for politics in such a world. Economic planning would shift from political capitals to financial centers, from Washington to Wall Street, with satellites in the City of London, the Paris Bourse, Frankfurt and Tokyo. Board meetings for the new oligarchy would be held at Davos’s World Economic Forum. Hitherto public infrastructure services would be privatized and priced high enough to include profits (and indeed, monopoly rents), debt financing and management fees rather than being publicly subsidized. Debt service and rent would become the major overhead costs for families, industry and governments.

The U.S. drive to retain its unipolar power to impose “America First” financial, trade and military policies on the world involves an inherent hostility toward all countries seeking to follow their own national interests. Having less and less to offer in the form of mutual economic gains, U.S. policy makes threats of sanctions and covert meddling in foreign politics. The U.S. dream envisions a Chinese version of Boris Yeltsin replacing the nation’s Communist Party leadership and selling off its public domain to the highest bidder – presumably after a monetary crisis wipes out domestic purchasing power much as occurred in post-Soviet Russia, leaving the international financial community as buyers.

Russia and President Putin cannot be forgiven for having fought back against the Harvard Boys’ “reforms.” That is why U.S. officials planned how to create Russian economic disruption to (they hope) orchestrate a “color revolution” to recapture Russia for the world’s neoliberal camp. That is the character of the “democracy” and “free markets” being juxtaposed to the “autocracy” of state-subsidized growth. As Russian Foreign minister Sergey Lavrov explained in a press conference on July 20, 2022 regarding Ukraine’s violent coup in 2014, U.S. and other Western officials define military coups as democratic if they are sponsored by the United States in the hope of promoting neoliberal policies.

Do you remember how events developed after the coup? The putschists spat in the face of Germany, France and Poland that were the guarantors of the agreement with Viktor Yanukovych. It was trampled underfoot the next morning. These European countries didn’t make a peep – they reconciled themselves to this. A couple of years ago I asked the Germans and French what they thought about the coup. What was it all about if they didn’t demand that the putschists fulfil the agreements? They replied: “This is the cost of the democratic process.” I am not kidding. Amazing – these were adults holding the post of foreign ministers.^[1]

This Doublethink vocabulary reflects how far mainstream ideology has evolved from Rosa Luxemburg’s description a century ago of the civilizational choice being posed: barbarism or socialism.

The contradictory U.S. and European interests and burdens of the war in Ukraine

To return to Clausewitz’s view of war as an extension of national policy, U.S. national interests are diverging sharply from those of its NATO satellites. America’s military-industrial complex, oil and agriculture sectors are benefiting, while European industrial interests are suffering. That is especially the case in Germany and Italy as a result of their governments blocking North Stream 2 gas imports and other Russian raw materials.

The interruption of world energy, food and minerals supply chains and the resulting price inflation (providing an umbrella for monopoly rents by non-Russian suppliers) has imposed enormous economic strains on U.S. allies in Europe and the Global South. Yet the U.S. economy is benefiting from this, or at least specific sectors of the U.S. economy are benefiting. As Sergey Lavrov, pointed out in his above-cited press conference: “The European economy is impacted more than anything else. The stats show that 40 percent of the damage caused by sanctions is borne by the EU whereas the damage to the United States is less than 1 percent.” The dollar’s exchange rate has soared against the euro, which has plunged to parity with the dollar and looks set to fall further down toward the $0.80 that it was a generation ago. U.S. dominance over Europe is further strengthened by the trade sanctions against Russian oil and gas. The U.S. is an LNG exporter, U.S. companies control the world oil trade, and U.S. firms are the world’s major grain marketers and exporters now that Russia is excluded from many foreign markets.

A revival of European military spending – for offense, not defense

U.S. arms-makers are looking forward to making profits off arms sales to Western Europe, which has almost literally disarmed itself by sending its tanks and howitzers, ammunition and missiles to Ukraine. U.S. politicians support a bellicose foreign policy to promote arms factories that employ labor in their voting districts. And the neocons who dominate the State Department and CIA see the war as a means of asserting American dominance over the world economy, starting with its own NATO partners.

The problem with this view is that although America’s military-industrial, oil and agricultural monopolies are benefitting, the rest of the U.S. economy is being squeezed by the inflationary pressures resulting from boycotting Russian gas, grain and other raw-materials exports, and the enormous rise in the military budget will be used as an excuse to cut back social spending programs. That also is a problem for Eurozone members. They have promised NATO to raise their military spending to the stipulated 2 percent of their GDP, and the Americans are urging much higher levels to upgrade to the most recent array of weaponry. All but forgotten is the Peace Dividend that was promised in 1991 when the Soviet Union dissolved the Warsaw Pact alliance, expecting that NATO likewise would have little reason to exist.

Russia has no discernable economic interest in mounting a new occupation of Central Europe. That would offer no gain to Russia, as its leaders realized when they dissolved the old Soviet Union. In fact, no industrial country in today’s world can afford to field an infantry to occupy an enemy. All that NATO can do is bomb from a distance. It can destroy, but not occupy. The United States found that out in Serbia, Iraq, Libya, Syria and Afghanistan. And just as the assassination Archduke Ferdinand in Sarajevo (now Bosnia-Herzegovina) triggered World War I in 1914, NATO’s bombing of adjoining Serbia may be viewed as throwing down the gauntlet to turn Cold War 2 into a veritable World War III. That marked the point at which NATO became an offensive alliance, not a defensive one.

How does this reflect European interests? Why should Europe re-arm, if the only effect is to make it a target of retaliation in the event of further attacks on Russia? What does Europe have to gain in becoming a larger customer for America’s military-industrial complex? Diverting spending to rebuild an offensive army – that can never be used without triggering an atomic response that would wipe out Europe – will limit the social spending needed to cope with today’s Covid problems and economic recession.

The only lasting leverage a nation can offer in today’s world is trade and technology transfer. Europe has more of this to offer than the United States. Yet the only opposition to renewed military spending is coming from right-wing parties and the German Linke party. Europe’s Social Democratic, Socialist and Labour parties share American neoliberal ideology.

Sanctions against Russian gas makes coal “the fuel of the future”

The carbon footprint of bombing, arms manufacturing and military bases is strikingly absent from today’s discussion about global warming and the need to cut back on carbon emissions. The German party that calls itself Green is leading the campaign for sanctions against importing Russian oil and gas, which electric utilities are replacing with Polish coal and even German lignite. Coal is becoming the “fuel of the future.” Its price also is soaring in the United States, benefitting American coal companies.

In contrast to the Paris Club agreements to reduce carbon emissions, the United States has neither the political capability nor the intention to join the conservation effort. The Supreme Court recently ruled that the Executive Branch has no authority to issue nation-wide energy rules; only individual states can do that, unless Congress passes a national law to cut back on fossil fuels.

That seems unlikely in view of the fact that becoming head of a Democratic Senate and Congressional committee requires being a leader in raising campaign contributions for the party. Joe Manchin, a coal-company billionaire, leads all senators in campaign support from the oil and coal industries, enabling him to win his party’s auction for the Senate Energy and Natural Resources committee chairmanship and block any seriously restrictive environmental legislation.

Next to oil, agriculture is a major contributor to the U.S. balance of payments. Blocking Russian grain and fertilizer shipping threatens to create a Global South food crisis as well as a European crisis as gas is unavailable to make domestic fertilizer. Russia is the world’s largest exporter of grain and also of fertilizer, and its exports of these products have been exempted from NATO sanctions. But Russian shipping was blocked by Ukraine placing mines in the sea lanes through the Black Sea to close off access to Odessa’s harbor, hoping that the world would blame the world’s imminent grain and energy crisis on Russia instead of the US/NATO trade sanctions imposed on Russia.^[2] At his July 20, 2022 press conference Sergey Lavrov showed the hypocrisy of the public relations attempt to distort matters:

For many months, they told us that Russia was to blame for the food crisis because the sanctions don’t cover food and fertiliser. Therefore, Russia doesn’t need to find ways to avoid the sanctions and so it should trade because nobody stands in its way. It took us a lot of time to explain to them that, although food and fertiliser are not subject to sanctions, the first and second packages of Western restrictions affected freight costs, insurance premiums, permissions for Russian ships carrying these goods to dock at foreign ports and those for foreign ships taking on the same consignments at Russian harbours. They are openly lying to us that this is not true, and that it is up to Russia alone. This is foul play.

Black Sea grain transport has begun to resume, but NATO countries have blocked payments to Russia in dollars, euros or currencies of other countries in the U.S. orbit. Food-deficit countries that cannot afford to pay distress-level food prices face drastic shortages, which will be exacerbated when they are compelled to pay their foreign debts denominated in the appreciating U.S. dollar. The looming fuel and food crisis promises to drive a new wave of immigrants to Europe seeking survival. Europe already has been flooded with refugees from NATO’s bombing and backing of jihadist attacks on Libya and Near Eastern oil-producing countries. This year’s proxy war in Ukraine and imposition of anti-Russian sanctions is a perfect illustration of Henry Kissinger’s quip: “It may be dangerous to be America’s enemy, but to be America’s friend is fatal.”

Blowback from the US/NATO miscalculations

America’s international diplomacy aims to dictate financial, trade and military policies that will lock other countries into dollar debt and trade dependency by preventing them from developing alternatives. If this fails, America seeks to isolate the recalcitrants from the U.S.-centered Western sphere.

America’s foreign diplomacy no longer is based on offering mutual gain. Such could be claimed in the aftermath of World War II when the United States was in a position to offer loans, foreign-aid and military protection against occupation – as well as manufactures to rebuild war-torn economies – to governments in exchange for their accepting trade and monetary policies favorable to American exporters and investors. But today there is only the belligerent diplomacy of threatening to hurt nations whose socialist governments reject America’s neoliberal drive to privatize and sell off their natural resources and public infrastructure.

The first aim is to prevent Russia and China from helping each other. This is the old imperial divide-and-conquer strategy. Minimizing Russia’s ability to support China would pave the way for the United States and NATO Europe to impose new trade sanctions on China, and to send jihadists to its western Xinjiang Uighur region. The aim is to bleed Russia’s armaments inventory, kill enough of its soldiers, and create enough Russian shortages and suffering to not only weaken its ability to help China, but to spur its population to support a regime change, an American-sponsored “color revolution.” The dream is to promote a Yeltsin-like leader friendly to the neoliberal “therapy” that dismantled Russia’s economy in the 1990s.

Amazing as it may seem, U.S. strategists did not anticipate the obvious response by countries finding themselves together in the crosshairs of US/NATO military and economic threats. On July 19, 2022, the presidents of Russia and Iran met to announce their cooperation in the face of the sanctions war against them. That followed Russia’s earlier meeting with India’s Prime Minister Modi. In what has been characterized as “shooting itself in its own foot,” U.S. diplomacy is driving Russia, China, India and Iran together, and indeed to reach out to Argentina and other countries to join the BRICS-plus bank to protect themselves.

The U.S. itself is ending the Dollar Standard of international finance

The Trump Administration took a major step to drive countries out of the dollar orbit in November 2018, by confiscating nearly $2 billion of Venezuela’s official gold stock held in London. The Bank of England put these reserves at the disposal of Juan Guaidó, the marginal right-wing politician selected by the United States to replace Venezuela’s elected president as head of state. This was defined as being democratic, because the regime change promised to introduce the neoliberal “free market” that is deemed to be the essence of America’s definition of democracy for today’s world.

This gold theft actually was not the first such confiscation. On November 14, 1979, the Carter Administration paralyzed Iran’s bank deposits in New York after the Shah was overthrown. This act blocked Iran from paying its scheduled foreign debt service, forcing it into default. That was viewed as an exceptional one-time action as far as all other financial markets were concerned. But now that the United States is the self-proclaimed “exceptional nation,” such confiscations are becoming a new norm in U.S. diplomacy. Nobody yet knows what happened to Libya’s gold reserves that Muammar Gadafi had intended to be used to back an African alternative to the dollar. And Afghanistan’s gold and other reserves were simply taken by Washington as payment for the cost of “freeing” that country from Russian control by backing the Taliban. But when the Biden Administration and its NATO allies made a much larger asset grab of some $300 billion of Russia’s foreign bank reserves and currency holdings in March 2022, it made official a radical new epoch in Dollar Diplomacy. Any nation that follows policies not deemed to be in the interests of the U.S. Government runs the risk of U.S. authorities confiscating its holdings of foreign reserves in U.S. banks or securities.

This was a red flag leading countries to fear denominating their trade, savings and foreign debt in dollars, and to avoid using dollar or euro bank deposits and securities as a means of payment. By prompting other countries to think about how to free themselves from the U.S.-centered world trade and monetary system that was established in 1945 with the IMF, World Bank and subsequently the World Trade Organization, the U.S. confiscations have accelerated the end of the U.S. Treasury-bill standard that has governed world finance since the United States went off gold in 1971.^[3]

Since dollar convertibility into gold ended in August 1971, dollarization of the world’s trade and investment has created a need for other countries to hold most of their new international monetary reserves in U.S. Treasury securities and bank deposits. As already noted, that enables the United States to seize foreign bank deposits and bonds denominated in U.S. dollars.

Most important, the United States can create and spend dollar IOUs into the world economy at will, without limit. It doesn’t have to earn international spending power by running a trade surplus, as other countries have to do. The U.S. Treasury can simply print dollars electronically to finance its foreign military spending and purchases of foreign resources and companies. And being the “exceptional country,” it doesn’t have to pay these debts – which are recognized as being far too large to be paid. Foreign dollar holdings are free U.S. credit to the Unites States, not requiring repayment any more than the paper dollars in our wallets are expected to be paid off (by retiring them from circulation). What seems to be so self-destructive about America’s economic sanctions and confiscations of Russian and other foreign reserves is that they are accelerating the demise of this free ride.

Blowback resulting from US/NATO isolating their economic and monetary systems

It is hard to see how driving countries out of the U.S. economic orbit serves long-term U.S. national interests. Dividing the world into two monetary blocs will limit Dollar Diplomacy to its NATO allies and satellites.

The blowback now unfolding in the wake of U.S. diplomacy begins with its anti-Russia policy. Imposing trade and monetary sanctions was expected to block Russian consumers and businesses from buying the US/NATO imports to which they had become accustomed. Confiscating Russia’s foreign currency reserves was supposed to crash the ruble, “turning it into rubble,” as President Biden promised. Imposing sanctions against importing Russian oil and gas to Europe was supposed to deprive Russia of export earnings, causing the ruble to collapse and raising import prices (and hence, living costs) for the Russian public. Instead, blocking Russian exports has created a worldwide price inflation for oil and gas, sharply increasing Russian export earnings. It exported less gas but earned more – and with dollars and euros blocked, Russia demanded payment for its exports in rubles. Its exchange rate soared instead of collapsing, enabling Russia to reduce its interest rates.

Goading Russia to send its soldiers to eastern Ukraine to defend Russian speakers under attack in Luhansk and Donetsk, along with the expected impact of the ensuing Western sanctions, was supposed to make Russian voters press for regime change. But as almost always happens when a country or ethnicity is attacked, Russians were appalled at the Ukrainian hatred of Russian-language speakers and Russian culture, and at the Russophobia of the West. The effect of Western countries banning music by Russian composers and Russian novels from libraries – capped by England banning Russian tennis players from the Wimbledon tournament – was to make Russians feel under attack simply for being Russian. They rallied around President Putin.

NATO’s trade sanctions have catalyzed helped Russian agriculture and industry to become more self-sufficient by obliging Russia to invest in import substitution. One well-publicized farming success was to develop its own cheese production to replace that of Lithuania and other European suppliers. Its automotive and other industrial production is being forced to shift away from German and other European brands to its own and Chinese producers. The result is a loss of markets for Western exporters.

In the field of financial services, NATO’s exclusion of Russia from the SWIFT bank-clearing system failed to create the anticipated payments chaos. The threat had been so loudly for so long that Russia and China had plenty of time to develop their own payments system. This provided them with one of the preconditions for their plans to split their economies away from those of the US/NATO West.

As matters have turned out, the trade and monetary sanctions against Russia are imposing the heaviest costs on Western Europe, and are likely to spread to the Global South, driving them to think about whether their economic interests lie in joining U.S. confrontational Dollar Diplomacy. The disruption is being felt most seriously in Germany, causing many companies to close down as a result of gas and other raw-materials shortages. Germany’s refusal to authorize the North Stream 2 pipeline has pushed its energy crisis to a head. This has raised the question of how long Germany’s political parties can remain subordinate to NATO’s Cold War policies at the cost of German industry and households facing sharp rises in heating and electricity costs.

The longer it takes to restore trade with Russia, the more European economies will suffer, along with the citizenry at large, and the further the euro’s exchange rate will fall, spurring inflation throughout its member countries. European NATO countries are losing not only their export markets but their investment opportunities to gain from the much more rapid growth of Eurasian countries whose government planning and resistance to financialization has proved much more productive than the US/NATO neoliberal model.

It is difficult to see how any diplomatic strategy can do more than play for time. That involves living in the short run, not the long run. Time seems to be on the side of Russia, China and the trade and investment alliances that they are negotiating to replace the neoliberal Western economic order.

America’s ultimate problem is its neoliberal post-industrial economy

The failure and blowbacks of U.S. diplomacy are the result of problems that go beyond diplomacy itself. The underlying problem is the West’s commitment to neoliberalism, financialization and privatization. Instead of government subsidy of basic living costs needed by labor, all social life is being made part of “the market” – a uniquely Thatcherite deregulated “Chicago Boys” market in which industry, agriculture, housing and financing are deregulated and increasingly predatory, while heavily subsidizing the valuation of financial and rent-seeking assets – mainly the wealth of the richest One Percent. Income is obtained increasingly by financial and monopoly rent-seeking, and fortunes are made by debt-leveraged “capital” gains for stocks, bonds and real estate.

U.S. industrial companies have aimed more at “creating wealth” by increasing the price of their stocks by using over 90 percent of their profits for stock buybacks and dividend payouts instead of investing in new production facilities and hiring more labor. The result of slower capital investment is to dismantle and financially cannibalize corporate industry in order to produce financial gains. And to the extent that companies do employ labor and set up new production, it is done abroad where labor is cheaper.

Most Asian labor can afford to work for lower wages because it has much lower housing costs and does not have to pay education debt. Health care is a public right, not a financialized market transaction, and pensions are not paid for in advance by wage-earners and employers but are public. The aim in China in particular is to prevent the rentier Finance, Insurance and Real Estate (FIRE) sector from becoming a burdensome overhead whose economic interests differ from those of a socialist government.

China treats money and banking as a public utility, to be created, spent and lent for purposes that help increase productivity and living standards (and increasingly to preserve the environment). It rejects the U.S.-sponsored neoliberal model imposed by the IMF, World Bank and World Trade Organization.

The global economic fracturing goes far beyond NATO’s conflict with Russia in Ukraine. By the time the Biden administration took office at the start of 2021, Russia and China already had been discussing the need to de-dollarize their foreign trade and investment, using their own currencies.^[4] That involves the quantum leap of organizing a new payments-clearing institution. Planning had not progressed beyond broad outlines of how such a system would work, but the U.S. confiscation of Russia’s foreign reserves made such planning urgent, starting with a BRICS-plus bank. A Eurasian alternative to the IMF will remove its ability to impose neoliberal austerity “conditionalities” to force countries to lower payments to labor and give priority to paying their foreign creditors above feeding themselves and developing their own economies. Instead of new international credit being extended mainly to pay dollar debts, it will be part of a process of new mutual investment in basic infrastructure designed to accelerate economic growth and living standards. Other institutions are being designed as China, Russia, Iran, India and their prospective allies represent a large enough critical mass to “go it alone,” based on their own mineral wealth and manufacturing power.

The basic U.S. policy has been to threaten to destabilize countries and perhaps bomb them until they agree to adopt neoliberal policies and privatize their public domain. But taking on Russia, China and Iran is a much higher order of magnitude. NATO has disarmed itself of the ability to wage conventional warfare by handing over its supply of weaponry – admittedly largely outdated – to be devoured in Ukraine. In any case, no democracy in today’s world can impose a military draft to wage a conventional land warfare against a significant/major adversary. The protests against the Vietnam War in the late 1960s ended the U.S. military draft, and the only way to really conquer a country is to occupy it in land warfare. This logic also implies that Russia is no more in a position to invade Western Europe than NATO countries are to send conscripts to fight Russia.

That leaves Western democracies with the ability to fight only one kind of war: atomic war – or at least, bombing at a distance, as was done in Afghanistan and the Near East, without requiring Western manpower. This is not diplomacy at all. It is merely acting the role of wrecker. But that is the only tactic that remains available to the United States and NATO Europe. It is strikingly like the dynamic of Greek tragedy, where power leads to hubris that is injurious to others and therefore ultimately anti-social – and self-destructive in the end.

How then can the United States maintain its world dominance? It has deindustrialized and run up foreign official debt far beyond any foreseeable way to be paid. Meanwhile, its banks and bondholders are demanding that the Global South and other countries pay foreign dollar bondholders in the face of their own trade crisis resulting from the soaring energy and food prices caused by America’s anti-Russian and anti-China belligerence. This double standard is a basic internal contradiction that goes to the core of today’s neoliberal Western worldview.

I have described the possible scenarios to resolve this conflict in my recent book The Destiny of Civilization: Finance Capitalism, Industrial Capitalism or Socialism. It has now also been issued in e-book form by Counterpunch Books.

1. “Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s interview with RT television, Sputnik agency and Rossiya Segodnya International Information Agency, Moscow, July 20, 2022,” Russian Foreign Affairs Ministry, July 20, 2022. https://mid.ru/en/foreign_policy/news/1822901/. From Johnson’s Russia List, July 21, 2022, #5. ↑
2. International Maritime Organization, “Maritime Security and Safety in the Black Sea and Sea of Azov,” https://www.imo.org/en/MediaCentre/HotTopics/Pages/MaritimeSecurityandSafetyintheBlackSeaandSeaofAzov.aspx. See Yves Smith, Some Implications of the UN’s Ukraine Grain and Russia Fertilizer/Food Agreements,” Naked Capitalism, July 25, 2022, and Lavrov’s July 24 speech to the Arab League. ↑
3. My Super Imperialism: The Economic Strategy of American Empire (3^rd ed., 2021) describes how the Treasury-bill standard has provided America with a free ride and enabled it to run balance-of-payments deficits without constraint, including the costs of its overseas military spending. ↑
4. Radhika Desai and Michael Hudson (2021), “Beyond Dollar Creditocracy: A Geopolitical Economy,” Valdai Club Paper No. 116. Moscow: Valdai Club, 7 July, reprinted in Real World Economic Review (97), https://rwer.wordpress.com/2021/09/23. ↑

WATCH: Full Palestine Chronicle Interview with Professor Noam Chomsky

June 17, 2022

Palestine Chronicle editors Ramzy Baroud and Romana Rubeo hosted IMT Professor and world-renowned intellectual Noam Chomsky. (Photo: Palestine Chronicle)

By Palestine Chronicle Staff

Palestine Chronicle editors Ramzy Baroud and Romana Rubeo hosted a special guest on Thursday, June 16, IMT Professor and world-renowned intellectual Noam Chomsky.

The wide-ranging interview examined numerous topics. Though the focus of the discussion was Palestine, the Palestinian struggle was discussed within a global geopolitical context, including the war in Ukraine and US foreign policy. 

Regarding Palestine, Chomsky answered questions pertaining to the one-state solution, the BDS movement, Israeli apartheid and Palestinian resistance. 

Below is the full interview with Professor Chomsky.

(The Palestine Chronicle)

Poland & Ukraine, Not Afghanistan, Were the First US Allies to be Abandoned by Biden

August 26, 2021

By Andrew Korybko
Source: OneWorld

The writing was on the wall this entire time that Biden was actually implementing a fair share of Trump’s foreign policy vision related to trading away his “allies” interests in pursuit of the “greater good” connected to more actively “containing” China in the Asia-Pacific.

The world is talking about the next US allies to be abandoned by President Biden after he shamefully hung his Afghan ones out to dry during America’s panicked retreat from the country. Some commentators believe that Ukraine might be next, but in reality, it and Poland were actually the first US allies whose interests were betrayed in pursuit of the so-called “greater good” despite Biden’s promises that he wouldn’t conduct his country’s foreign policy in the Machiavellian way that Trump did. I’ve been chronicling this for some time, but for those who haven’t closely followed my work over the past few months, here are my most relevant analyses accompanied by a concise summary of each:

* 8 April: “Why Does Ukraine Want War?”

Ukraine provoked hostilities in Donbass in a desperate attempt to remain relevant to the new US administration at the behest of some of the anti-Russian members of its permanent military, intelligence, and diplomatic bureaucracies (“deep state”) who wanted to sabotage Biden’s behind-the-scenes outreaches to Russia.

* 14 April: “Poland Must Wake Up To The Threat Of German Hybrid War”

Germany has been actively working as America’s “Lead From Behind” proxy for overthrowing the conservative-nationalist Polish government through Hybrid War means connected to Berlin’s backing of its neighbor’s Color Revolution movement.

* 24 April: “What Explains The Latest De-Escalation In Donbass?”

Russia didn’t fall for the trap laid out for it by hostile elements in the American “deep state”, though considerable credit for this somewhat surprising de-escalation also goes to Biden since he didn’t make matters worse like many predicted that he would at the time.

* 2 June: “Poland’s Counterproductive Foreign Policy Is Responsible For Its Present Predicament”

Poland was shocked by Biden’s decision to waive most of the US’ Nord Stream II sanctions, but it should have seen this coming since the moment he stepped into office and actively begun diversifying its foreign policy instead of remaining entirely dependent on America’s “good graces”.

* 11 June: “Towards Increasingly Complex Multipolarity: Scenarios For The Future”

I predicted that the US would “compromise” on the interests of some of its allies like Poland and Ukraine in pursuit of the “greater good” of pragmatically repairing relations with Russia so as to focus more of its efforts on actively “containing” China in the Asia-Pacific.

* 15 June: “How Serious Are Poland’s Grand Strategic Disagreements With The US?”

It then became increasingly obvious that Poland and the US have some irreconcilable grand strategic differences that far surpass their common military interests vis-a-vis Russia, but the aspiring Central European hegemon had yet to make any decisive moves to recalibrate its foreign policy in response.

* 24 June: “Polish-US Missile Defense Co-Op Is A Strategic Smokescreen”

To preemptively thwart Poland from doing anything dramatic that could bolster its strategic independence, the US went ahead with their prior “missile defense” plans, which served the purpose of keeping Poland in its clutches and also misleading that country’s leadership into thinking that the US was still their “trusted” ally.

* 12 July: “Former Polish PM Tusk Ridiculously Alleged A Kaczysnski-Putin Conspiracy”

Germany proxy Donald Tusk escalated the Hybrid War on Poland by claiming that the country’s viciously Russophobic grey cardinal was secretly Russian President Putin’s puppet, which preemptively thwarted his target’s plans to claim the same about him following his return to the country to lead the Color Revolution.

* 15 July: “It’s Time For A Polish-Russian ‘Non-Aggression’ Pact In Belarus & Ukraine”

In the face of such increased Hybrid War pressure against it, the most pragmatic thing that Poland could do is clinch a so-called “non-aggression” pact with Russia in their overlapping “spheres of influence” in order to focus more of its security services’ efforts on defending itself from the joint US-German regime change campaign.

* 19 July: “Poland Should Follow Ukraine’s Lead By Using China To Balance The US”

As unexpected as it was for most observers to acknowledge, Ukraine’s US-controlled puppet government actually began making serious moves to use China as a “balancing” force against America, which should have inspired Poland to follow suit as a means of showing the US how dissatisfied it is with the ongoing Hybrid War.

* 26 July: “The US-German Hybrid War Against Poland Is Intensifying”

Poland’s lack of resolve in defending itself from the joint US-German Hybrid War only served to embolden its nominal “allies” to intensify their regime change campaign, which threatened to make matters much worse for its beleaguered conservative-nationalist government.

* 29 July: “The West Is Pressuring Poland & Russia Due To Their Conservative-Nationalist Values”

Poland and Russia are interestingly in the same boat vis-a-vis the West since the latter is pressuring both of them due to their conservative-nationalist values, which Warsaw has yet to realize and thus explains why it’s still in a state of shock after its so-called “allies” so decisively turned against it.

* 13 August: “Ukrainian Ethno-Fascism vs. Russian Multiculturalism”

Ukraine’s response to America’s strategic betrayal of its interests hasn’t been to pragmatically explore a possible rapprochement with Russia like it should have done if its leadership had any wisdom but to counterproductively double down on its Russophobic policies.

* 12 August: “Unexpected Trouble In The Three Seas States Might Cause Them To Rethink Their Policies”

The combination of US-German Hybrid War pressure and the unexpected migrant crisis coming from Belarus might finally cause Poland to rethink its self-defeating regional policy of functioning as America’s anti-Russian puppet after receiving literally no rewards for this role nor relief from the regime change pressure upon it.

———-

Having indisputably established that Poland and Ukraine were the first US allies to be abandoned under Biden, it’s now time to talk a little bit more about the latter’s predicament. President Zelensky plans to finally meet his American counterpart at the end of the month, but many observers are wondering why it’s even taken so long. One possible reason other than the US leader’s deliberate mistreatment of his country’s ally is that he’s simply embarrassed because of the slew of scandals connecting him to that country such as the Burisma one with his son Hunter and Biden’s bargain with Poroshenko to fire former General Prosecutor Shokin who was investigating the first-mentioned scandal.

Biden also wanted Zelensky to bend over and accept that America was “compromising” on Ukraine’s interests as part of the “greater good” related to repairing relations with Russia in order to more actively refocus the US’ efforts on “containing” China. The Ukrainian leader understandably felt betrayed by Biden and began to lose faith in America’s reliability as an ally, which explains why his country started reaching out more to China lately. Even so, nothing that Kiev might do can fully protect its interests if Washington cuts a deal with Moscow over Eastern Ukraine like some commentators now speculate might be in the cards as part of their gradual rapprochement.

As for Poland, it too has been caught with its pants down by Biden’s pragmatic deal-making with Russia and also doesn’t have any realistic means to defend its interests in response to them being “traded away” by the American leader. Unlike Ukraine whose conservative-nationalist values are supported by the US because they take the extreme form of ethno-fascism that can be weaponized to keep Russian influence there at bay, the Polish government’s comparatively more mild values are seen as a threat to the entire Western project because of the possibility that they can influence other EU members and thus undermine the US’ plans to have Germany’s liberal-globalist ideology dominate the continent in order to control its countries by proxy.

Poland and Ukraine are therefore at America’s mercy. Their interests were betrayed by their “ally” even before Biden abandoned his country’s Afghan “allies”. Observers should become more aware of this fact since it shows that nobody should have been surprised by what just happened in that South Asian country. The writing was on the wall this entire time that Biden was actually implementing a fair share of Trump’s foreign policy vision related to trading away his “allies” interests in pursuit of the “greater good” connected to more actively “containing” China in the Asia-Pacific. It remains to be seen how much more “collateral damage” the US’ “allies” will suffer as a result of this policy, but there’s no longer any denying that such a Machiavellian policy exists.

American Howl !

August 20, 2021

By Larchmonter445 for The Saker Blog

Whether you supported the 20-year war in Afghanistan or not, if you are American, you paid for it. Two Trillion Dollars. Your personal tax tab is 7 thousand dollars.

If you sent a relative or friend into this horror in South Asia, you paid an emotional price also.

If your relative or friend lost his or her life, you paid again, most grievously.

If you are one who returned, PTSD is taking a toll on your life. You pay every night and day, psychologically.

If you came back with traumatic wounds, you pay each moment as you try to rehabilitate and recover.

And with all these payments and losses you sit in front of a TV or monitor and watch the most feckless, incompetent leadership on the face of the Earth. You see total disorder, amateur thinking, and disgraceful performance of State Dept. and US Military. The top command and elected officials, the top counselors and advisers, each and every one clueless, ignorant, flummoxed by reality. They know nothing and can do nothing. Yet, they lead the country.

If you are fond of NATO, the alliance just took a huge hit. So, the 75 years of unity and the 20 years of joint operations in Afghan are tossed away unilaterally. NATO is fracturing. They know Biden is a fraud and the US is aimless.

You finally hear from the President of the United States, the reasoning that was the policy and follow through. It makes no sense. The old man is irrational.

Day after day this continuing catastrophe you see the same imbeciles prove over and over that they don’t know how to think, organize, lead or inspire.

Admiral John Kirby spokesman for the Defense Dept., Ned Price spokesman for State Dept., Jan Psaki spokeswoman for the WH, all of them know nothing, have no facts to report, seem bewildered by simple questions.

Listening to Jake Sullivan, NSC explains, is more naïveté and kindergarten-level thinking.

Mark Milley and Lloyd Austin are a quiniela of incompetence, both are lost in Critical Race Theory and too busy to win a war, command an evacuation, secure billions of dollars in lethal weaponry or answer a simple question with believable facts. Two Four-Star Dumb and Dumbers.

These dolts cut off the US government pipeline for the citizens caught inside Afghanistan, their lifeline to the State Dept. and consular staff has gone just when they need them.   These jackasses sent off all the resources their citizens needed for evacuation.

They inadvertently point blame to the Clown-in-Chief Biden, who reflexively blames Trump for the policy Biden created.

Then the inept US military took six days to bring in 7000 troops to work security at the airport. These troops, they told us, were pre-positioned and ready to go. Another massive failure of military logistical performance.

There are more days of this until the artificial deadline on the 31st. The odds are there will be 20-30,000 Americans and Afghanis who worked for and with our military left behind. This is totally unacceptable. They will become hostages to Taliban authorities.

The only good result of this debacle is it hurts Biden politically and makes a change in the Congress much more likely in 2022.

Biden’s Kabul is worse than Ford’s Saigon and Carter’s Tehran. And it is far from over.

As a citizen, you are embarrassed, ashamed, insulted, depressed, left helpless, enraged, and damn angry at the juvenile operational disaster in plain sight at Kabul airport.

Biden and Harris should be impeached. The entire NSC staff should be fired. The JCS chief and the JCS staff and the SOD should be fired. The State Dept. from top-down to consular staff should be fired.

It is their turn to pay for this national embarrassment, geopolitical disaster, and human tragedy.

‘Many US commentators have never BEEN to countries they comment on, see entire world from Washington perspective’ – Stephen Kinzer

June 27, 2021, RT.com

-by Eva K Bartlett

Much of Western media is a mixture of sensationalist accusations and fear mongering about ‘enemy’ states. It is difficult to find perspectives divorced from US foreign policy, American journalist Stephen Kinzer has told RT.

I asked the author and journalist Stephen Kinzer how the corporate media came to be so devoid of honest content and discussed the rise of censorship by Big Tech.

Kinzer is a Boston Globe columnist and formerly a correspondent for the New York Times. With over two decades of experience reporting from around the world, including areas being targeted by American imperialism, Kinzer can offer a much needed critique on the state of journalism today.

He started as an independent journalist in Central America in the mid-70s, when few journalists were going there, later reporting from Central Asia, Turkey, the Caucasus, and Europe.

“I’m sometimes asked why I developed a different perspective on the world than many other people who comment in the American press,” he told RT. “I always seem to be the skunk at the foreign policy garden party. Why is that?

“Upon reflection, I think it has to do with the way that I learned about the world. Many people who write about the world in the United States learned about the world the same way: they went to international relations schools, they went to work on congressional staffs, then they worked at think tanks. And they’re very steeped in this Washington-centric view of the world.”

Unlike such journalists and commentators, Kinzer learned journalism by going places and writing firsthand what he saw and heard.

“I learned about the world from the perspective of the people who were the victims of American foreign policy. I was in the places where people were getting bombed. I saw American foreign policy from the perspective of the rest of the world.”

Having myself learned journalism the same way, I appreciated his words. And I had a followup question about the concept of journalistic qualifications, something my detractors have claimed I lack.

According to Kinzer, there are many qualifications for being a journalist that are much more important than what school you went to or what you studied.

“The most important one is independent thinking. The great curse of our press in the West is willingness to accept the official narrative,” he said. 

In his view, many American journalists are merely stenographers. 

“They’re sitting down at a press conference, they write down what some government spokesman says, then they go and print that in a newspaper. You hardly even need to have a sentient human there, you can get an algorithm to probably put most of those stories together.

“And when you want to have a story that’s very well-sourced, they call the State Department, and the Defense Department, and several think tanks, and some congressmen. And they think, ‘Well I sure covered the landscape on this one!’”

But that, Kinzer argues, is not what covering the landscape is about. 

“The great qualification you need for a journalist is the confidence to go out and see for yourself, and believe that your eyes are actually telling you more than press releases from some other country.”

Indeed, much of the lies and war propaganda about Syria, for example, have come from journalists situated in Istanbul, Beirut, or North America, most who have never been to Syria, or if they have – not in the past decade.

“It’s amazing to see how many people have built reputations as commentators on foreign countries and world affairs who have never been there, have no idea, beyond vague tropes, of what those countries are,” Kinzer said. “It’s because they are seeing the entire world from Washington’s perspective, and don’t think there is any other perspective worth having,” he added.

“It’s truly amazing, I’ve seen the decline of this profession into such willing subservience. We don’t have any core of regular columnists or people trying to challenge established narratives. We do have voices that pop up periodically, but they’re so drowned out by the regular columnists who just voice the same tropes over and over again,” Kinzer said. 

“The intellectual laziness of the American press in covering the world has never been as extreme as it is now. It’s just as dangerous in most of what’s called NATO countries to be contradicting the narrative as it is in the United States.”

Tremendous desire of CIA to control news 

In 2014, German journalist and editor, Udo Ulfkotte, told RT he had been forced to publish works not written by him under his own name (or risk being fired), including things “written by agents of the CIA and other intelligence services, especially the German secret service.” 

According to Kinzer, the CIA “has had a massive, long-term effort to influence” the Western media dating back to the Cold War era. 

“The CIA has placed its own people, people who are on its payroll, in the offices of major news outlets over many decades. There was a large project the CIA called ‘Operation Mockingbird’ aimed specifically at trying to influence the US press, and particularly what the US press writes about the world,” he said. 

He recalled that in 1954, “when the CIA was planning to overthrow the government of Guatemala… because its president was ‘communist’, a New York Times reporter there started writing stories saying that actually the president is not communist and that land reform is only answering a desperate need of starving Guatemalans.” 

At CIA Director Allen Dulles’ request, the publisher agreed to keep the correspondent, Sydney Gruson, out of Guatemala. 

“Now that’s an extreme example. But, the motivation behind it is still there. There is a tremendous desire on the part of the CIA to control news.” 

While not surprised that the CIA would interfere in journalism, Kinzer was emphatic about his disgust that journalists toe the line.

“What I don’t like is that journalists go along with this! Power has so many levers, why should journalists become yet another one of them. We are the ones that are supposed to be questioning. It’s the job of reporters not to submit themselves to that.”

‘Press a button, and the narrative changes’

Kinzer also noted how media narratives can suddenly change, like a switch has been flipped. 

“It’s so interesting that when power decides to change the narrative, it happens right away.

“I can remember just six months ago turning on my PBS News Hour, in the US, and seeing a very longreport with General Dunford and Kelly Ayotte and a bunch of these right wingers who had come up with a big report about Afghanistan. And it was about why we can’t leave Afghanistan, we have to stay. It was a 10-minute report, and no other voices, nobody came on to say, ‘Wait a minute, that’s nonsense.’ Everybody was saying, ‘We have to stay in Afghanistan forever.’

“Suddenly, the president of the United States decides, OK, we’re gonna withdraw. And now, suddenly, it’s acceptable to say, ‘That whole Afghanistan thing was a disaster.’ Somebody just has to press a button, then the narrative changes, then everybody is allowed to say what the president said. But if you had said it one day before, you would have been in a lot of trouble.

“You have to wait for the general narrative to change, then you can change your narrative, but don’t do it until power tells you it is acceptable to change.”

Later in our conversation, he gave the example of writing about Israel, which he said was hard to do, until recently.

“Suddenly, in recent weeks even, it’s become a little more OK to be critical of Israeli policies, because some people in Washington are now a little more critical.”

Big Tech censorship on the rise

In the past several years, there has been an increase in social media giants deciding what content is acceptable and what “violates” so-called “community standards.” And as I wrote recently, it has gotten to the point where Twitter issues scary warnings about “unsafe” or “spammy” content from websites the social media platform deems dangerous, potentially scaring readers away. 

Commenting on the matter, Kinzer said that “the power of private companies to decide what people see and don’t see is greater now than ever.”

As for censorship by the outlets he has written for, Kinzer said he was lucky to be writing from places that editors really didn’t have the knowledge to tell him how to report. “Nobody called me and said ‘I know everything about Uzbekistan and this is wrong.’”

That said, he does maintain that in writing his columns, some subjects are either taboo or you would have to frame them in the usual anti-Russia manner common in Western media.

“It’s very hard to get a story in the American press about Russia that’s anything other than fitting into the cliches. I’ve had trouble writing about Russia, because the narrative that Putin is something other than a killer is not welcome in the United States. And I’ve had trouble writing about Syria. And of course, it’s very difficult to write about Israel.”

Lather, rinse, repeat

On the 10-year anniversary of the war on Syria, I wrote about how, mind-bogglingly, Western media and pundits continue to repeat the cliched and debunked rhetoric and lies that have been recycled year after year.

Kinzer addressed this technique, the repetition of narratives.

“I had an editor at the New York Times years ago who told me: A lot of journalism is about repetition. And boy does the American press do that. We have been told certain things about certain countries so many times over. And it just seems like the truth.

“‘The evils that have taken hold of Russia. The daily genocide that’s happening under the killers in Syria…’ You don’t need to go, you don’t need to check, it’s just like the air, it’s like an obvious fact.”

“I even see it in what’s happened to the Pulitzer Prize for International Journalism,” he said, adding that in 2020 it “predictably” went to a series of reports on “how evil Russia is” and this year – to a series of reports on “how evil China is.” 

The Pulitzer, he argued, is supposed to encourage original reporting, “not people that just scribble down what officials say, and then put it in nicer prose, and use phrases that are calculated to make people believe that government opinion is actual fact.”

“The job of journalists is to rebel against the narrative. We are out there as the eyes and ears of the world. If you don’t want to do it, fine, but don’t pretend that you’re doing it, and sit in your little cubicle and think of the stereotypes you’ve been fed and just regurgitate them. That is not journalism, it’s just public relations.”

In conclusion, Kinzer recalled a quote by Mark Twain: “The majority is always wrong. When you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to reform.”

Indeed, time and again when the majority has written about “weapons of mass destruction,” “chemical attacks,” Iraqi troops “killing babies in incubators,” and other Washington-contrived narratives, those courageous few who have stood up against those lies-based-narratives have proven to be honest journalists. 

If only more journalists would follow.  

Sitrep: Here Comes China: Space, Trade, Encirclement and Tibet

May 22, 2021

Selections from Godfree Roberts’ extensive weekly newsletter: Here Comes China. You can get it here: https://www.herecomeschina.com/#subscribe

Further selections and editorial commentary by Amarynth.

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Space News

The Zhurong rover touched down May 15 on Mars and signaled ground control 320 million kilometers away. After diagnostic tests, it will spend 90 days exploring and analyzing the area, climate, magnetic field and subsurface. The Tianwen-1 orbiter is changing its trajectory so Zhurong can transmit high-resolution photos.

 Read full article $→

“The mission is very ambitious. They plan to do, in one go, three steps NASA took several decades to achieve: getting into orbit, landing on the surface and then driving a rover around,” said Roberto Orosei, from the Institute for Radioastronomy in Bologna, Italy. Other space milestones this past year include the final BeiDou GPS satellite and the first of 11 launches to build a Space Station. Read full article →

Update from RT this morning:  “China’s Mars rover rolls off landing platform, joining US robots patrolling Red Planet”

https://www.rt.com/news/524522-chinese-rover-rolls-platform/

The Tianhe core module cabin of China’s space station project has completed in-orbit performance checks, including rendezvous and docking, life support systems for astronauts and robotic arms, as well as a series of space application equipment examinations. 

A Chinese teacher demonstrated rocket launch using drink bottles. Interesting and lively. China’s Mars rover Zhurong landed on the Red Planet on Saturday. pic.twitter.com/2sjHxL0t89

— Hu Xijin 胡锡进 (@HuXijin_GT) May 17, 2021

Read full article →

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At $23 billion, China is the world’s largest ice cream market. Competitors include Mengniu Dairy, Yili, Guanming, and Sanyuan, along with foreign giants like Nestlé and Unilever. US ice cream sales average $7 billion annually. Read full article →

A record 9.09 million university students will graduate this year and Vice Premier Sun Chunlan says,  “Go to central and western regions where the country needs you” (and where there are 1.4 available jobs per graduate). Read full article →

The EU’s goods trade surged in Q1 and China remained its top trade partner, with imports and exports both increasing 20% YoY. The US followed, with both imports and exports shrinking. Read full article $→

US importers paid 90% of tariff costs on Chinese goods, or 18.5% more for Chinese products subject to the 20% tariff. Chinese exporters receive 1.5% less for the same product. Read full article $→

US exports to China of wine, cotton, log timber and wood have increased over the past year after Beijing blocked those products from Australia. The US is prioritising its own economic interests over its ally’s, despite Antony Blinken’s promise that Washington would not leave Australia to face ‘economic coercion’ from Beijing. Read full article $→

Supplies of Russian agricultural products to China increased by 17.6% in Q1. Trade turnover reached $40.207 billion, 20% higher YoY. The two aim to double 2021 trade to $200 billion. Read full article $→

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Presidents Xi and Putin launched construction on four nuclear reactors made with Russian technology: two reactors each in Jiangsu and Liaoning Provinces, set to begin 2026 – 2028. They will be powered by Rosatom’s 3G pressurized water reactor technology at a  cost of $1.7 billion per site. Read full article $→

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US Encirclement of China: A Progress Report

We will post this long-read article by Brian Berletic in full as the New Eastern Outlook site has been down for a number of days.

Tensions between Washington and Beijing are not merely the recent results of former US President Donald Trump’s time in office – but rather just the latest chapter in US efforts to contain China that stretch back decades.

Indeed, US foreign policy has for decades admittedly aimed at encircling and containing China’s rise and maintaining primacy over the Indo-Pacific region.

The “Pentagon Papers” leaked in 1969 would admit in regards to the ongoing US war against Vietnam that:

…the February decision to bomb North Vietnam and the July approval of Phase I deployments make sense only if they are in support of a long-run United States policy to contain China.

The papers also admitted that China, “looms as a major power threatening to undercut [American] importance and effectiveness in the world and, more remotely but more menacingly, to organize all of Asia against [America].

The papers also made it clear that there were (and still are), “three fronts to a long-run effort to contain China: (a) the Japan-Korea front; (b) the India-Pakistan front; and (c) the Southeast Asia front.”

Since then, it is clear that from the continued US military presence in both Japan and South Korea, the now two decades-long US occupation of Afghanistan on both Pakistan’s and China’s borders, and the emergence of the so-called “Milk Tea Alliance” aimed at overthrowing Southeast Asian governments friendly with China and replacing them with US-backed client regimes – this policy to contain China endures up to today.

Assessing US activity along these three fronts reveals the progress and setbacks Washington faces – and various dangers to global peace and stability Washington’s continued belligerence pose.

The Japan-Korea Front 

Military.com in their article, “Here’s What It Costs to Keep US Troops in Japan and South Korea,” reports:

In all, more than 80,000 US troops are deployed to Japan and South Korea. In Japan alone, the US maintains more than 55,000 deployed troops — the largest forward-deployed US force anywhere in the world.

The article notes that according to the US Government Accountability Office (GAO), the US spent “$34 billion to maintain military presences in Japan and South Korea between 2016 and 2019.”

The article cites the GAO providing an explanation as to why this massive US military presence is maintained in East Asia:

“…US forces help strengthen alliances, promote a free and open Indo-Pacific region, provide quick response to emergencies and are essential for US national security.”

“Alliances” that are “strengthened” by the physical presence of what are essentially occupying US forces suggests the “alliance” is hardly voluntary and claims of promoting a “free and open Indo-Pacific region” is highly subjective – begging the question of to whom the Indo-Pacific is “free and open” to.

And as US power wanes both regionally in the Indo-Pacific as well as globally, Washington has placed increasing pressure on both Japan and South Korea to not only help shoulder this financial burden, but to also become more proactive within Washington’s containment strategy toward China.

Japan is one of three other nations (the US itself, Australia, and India) drafted into the US-led Quadrilateral Security Dialogue – also know as the “Quad.”

Rather than the US solely depending on its own military forces based within Japanese territory or supported by its Japan-based forces, Japan’s military along with India’s and Australia’s are also being recruited to take part in military exercises and operations in and around the South China Sea.

India’s inclusion in the Quad also fits well into the US 3-front strategy that made up Washington’s containment policy toward China as early as the 1960s.

The India-Pakistan Front 

In addition to recruiting India into the Quad alliance, the US helps encourage escalation through political support and media campaigning of India’s various territorial disputes with China.

The US also targets Pakistan’s close and ongoing relationship with China – including the support of armed insurgents in Pakistan’s Baluchistan province.

Recently, a bombing at a hotel in Quetta, Baluchistan appears to have targeted China’s ambassador to Pakistan, Ambassador Nong Rong.

The BBC in its article, “Pakistan hotel bomb: Deadly blast hits luxury venue in Quetta,” would claim:

Initial reports had suggested the target was China’s ambassador.

Ambassador Nong Rong is understood to be in Quetta but was not present at the hotel at the time of the attack on Wednesday.

The article also noted:

Balochistan province, near the Afghan border, is home to several armed groups, including separatists.

Separatists in the region want independence from the rest of Pakistan and accuse the government and China of exploiting Balochistan, one of Pakistan’s poorest provinces, for its gas and mineral wealth.

Absent from the BBC’s reporting is the extensive and open support the US government has provided these separatists over the years and how – clearly – this is more than just a local uprising against perceived injustice, but yet another example of armed conflict-by-proxy waged by Washington against China.

As far back as 2011 publications like The National Interest in articles like, “Free Baluchistan” would openly advocate expanding US support for separatism in Pakistan’s Baluchistan province.

The article was written by the late Selig  Harrison – who was a senior fellow at the US-based corporate-financier funded Center for International Policy – and would claim:

Pakistan has given China a base at Gwadar in the heart of Baluch territory. So an independent Baluchistan would serve US strategic interests in addition to the immediate goal of countering Islamist forces.

Of course, “Islamist forces” is a euphemism for US-Persian Gulf state sponsored militants used to both fight Western proxy wars as well as serve as a pretext for Western intervention. Citing “Islamist forces” in Baluchistan, Pakistan clearly serves as an example of the latter.

In addition to op-eds published by influential policy think tanks, US legislators like US Representative Dana Rohrabacher had proposed resolutions such as (emphasis added),

“US House of Representatives Concurrent Resolution 104 (112th): Expressing the sense of Congress that the people of Baluchistan, currently divided between Pakistan, Iran, and Afghanistan, have the right to self-determination and to their own sovereign country.”

There is also funding provided to adjacent, political groups supporting separatism in Baluchistan, Pakistan as listed by the US government’s own National Endowment for Democracy (NED) website under “Pakistan.” Organizations like the “Association for Integrated Development Balochistan” are funded by the US government and used to mobilize people politically, constituting clear interference by the US in Pakistan’s internal political affairs.

The Gwadar Port project is a key juncture within China’s growing global network of infrastructure projects as part of its One Belt, One Road initiative. The US clearly opposes China’s rise and has articulated robust strategies to counter it; everything up to and including open war as seen in the Pentagon Papers regarding the Vietnam War.

The recent bombing in Baluchistan, Pakistan demonstrates that this strategy continues in regards to utilizing local militants to target Chinese-Pakistani cooperation and is one part of the much wider, region-wide strategy of encircling and containing China.

The Southeast Asia Front

Of course the US war against Vietnam was part of a wider effort to reassert Western primacy over Southeast Asia and deny the region from fueling China’s inevitable rise.

The US having lost the war and almost completely retreating from the Southeast Asia region saw Southeast Asia itself repair relations amongst themselves and with China.

Today, the nations of Southeast Asia count China as their largest trade partner, investor, a key partner in infrastructure development, a key supplier for the region’s armed forces, as well as providing the majority of tourism arrivals throughout the region. For countries like Thailand, more tourists arrive from China than from all Western nations combined.

Because existing governments in Southeast Asia have nothing to benefit from by participating in American belligerence toward China, the US has found it necessary to cultivate and attempt to install into power various client regimes. This has been an ongoing process since the Vietnam War.

The US has targeted each nation individually for years. In 2009 and 2010, US-backed opposition leader-in-exile Thaksin Shinawatra deployed his “red shirt” protesters in back-to-back riots – the latter of which included some 300 armed militants and culminated in city-wide arson across Bangkok and the death of over 90 police, soldiers, protesters, and bystanders.

In 2018, US-backed opposition groups took power in Malaysia after the US poured millions of dollars for over a decade in building up the opposition.

Daniel Twining of the US National Endowment for Democracy subsidiary – the International Republican Institute – admitted during a talk (starting at 56 minutes) by the Center for Strategic and International Studies that same year that:

…for 15 years working with NED resources, we worked to strengthen Malaysian opposition parties and guess what happened two months ago after 61 years? They won.

He would elaborate on how the NED’s network played a direct role in placing US-backed opposition figures into power within the Malaysian government, stating:

I visited and I was sitting there with many of the leaders the new leaders of this government, many of whom were just our partners we had been working with for 15 years and one of the most senior of them who’s now one of the people running the government said to me, ‘gosh IRI you never gave up on us even when we were ready to give up on ourselves.’

Far from “promoting freedom” in Malaysia – Twining would make clear the ultimate objective of interfering in Malaysia’s internal political affairs was to serve US interests not only in regards to Malaysia, but in regards to the entire region and specifically toward encircling and containing China.

Twining would boast:

…guess what one of the first steps the new government took? It froze Chinese infrastructure investments.

And that:

[Malaysia] is not a hugely pro-American country. It’s probably never going to be an actual US ally, but this is going to redound to our benefit, and and that’s an example of the long game.

It is a pattern that has repeated itself in Myanmar over the decades with NED money building a parallel political system within the nation and eventually leading to Aung San Suu Kyi and her US-backed National League for Democracy (NLD) party taking power in 2016.

For Myanmar, so deep and extensive is US backing for opposition groups there that elections virtually guarantee US-backed candidates win every single time. The US National Endowment for Democracy’s own website alone lists over 80 programs and organizations receiving US government money for everything from election polling and building up political parties, to funding media networks and “environmental” groups used to block Chinese-initiated infrastructure projects.

The move by Myanmar’s military in February this year, ousting Aung Sang Suu Kyi and the NLD was meant to correct this.

However, in addition to backing political groups protesting in the streets, the US has – for many decades – backed and armed ethnic rebels across the country. These rebels have now linked up with the US-backed NLD and are repeating US-backed regime change tactics used against the Arab World in 2011 in nations like Libya, Yemen, and Syria – including explicit calls for “international intervention.”

A US-Engineered “Asia Spring”  

Just as the US did during the 2011 “Arab Spring” – the US State Department, in a bid to create synergies across various regime change campaigns in Asia, has introduced the “Milk Tea Alliance” to transform individual US-backed regime change efforts in Asia into a region-wide crisis.

The BBC itself admits in articles like, “Milk Tea Alliance: Twitter creates emoji for pro-democracy activists,” that:

The alliance has brought together anti-Beijing protesters in Hong Kong and Taiwan with pro-democracy campaigners in Thailand and Myanmar.

Omitted from the BBC’s coverage of the “Milk Tea Alliance” (intentionally) is the actual common denominators that unite it – US funding through fronts like the National Endowment for Democracy and a unifying hatred of China based exclusively on talking points pushed by the US State Department itself.

Circling back to the Pentagon Papers and recalling the coordinated, regional campaign the US sought to encircle China with – we can then look at more recent US government policy papers like the “Indo-Pacific Framework” published in the White House archives from the Trump administration.

The policy paper’s first bullet point asks:

How to maintain US strategic primacy in the Indo-Pacific region and promote a liberal economic order while preventing China from establishing new, illiberal spheres of influence, and cultivating areas of cooperation to promote regional peace and prosperity?

The paper also discusses information campaigns designed to “educate” the world about “China’s coercive behaviour and influence operations around the globe.” These campaigns have materialized in a propaganda war fabricating accusations of “Chinese genocide” in Xinjiang, China, claims that Chinese telecom company Huawei is a global security threat, and that China – not the US – is the single largest threat to global peace and stability today.

In reality US policy aimed at encircling China is predicated upon Washington’s desire to continue its own decades-long impunity upon the global stage and the continuation of all the wars, humanitarian crises, and abuses that have stemmed from it.

Understanding the full scope of Washington’s “competition” with China helps unlock the confusion surrounding unfolding individual crises like the trade war, the ongoing violence and turmoil in Myanmar, bombings in southwest Pakistan, students mobs in Thailand, riots in Hong Kong, and attempts by the US to transform the South China Sea into an international conflict.

Understanding that these events are all connected – then assessing the success or failure of US efforts gives us a clearer picture of the overall success Washington in encircling China.  It also gives governments and regional blocs a clearer picture of how to manage policy in protecting against US subversion that threatens national, regional, and global peace and stability.

Brian Berletic is a Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

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BEIJING, May 21 (Xinhua) — China’s State Council Information Office on Friday issued a white paper on the peaceful liberation of Tibet and its development over the past seven decades.

The white paper, titled “Tibet Since 1951: Liberation, Development and Prosperity,” reviewed Tibet’s history and achievements, and presented a true and panoramic picture of the new socialist Tibet.

You may Download the Full Text or read this very interesting document here: http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2021-05/21/c_139959978.htm

It consists of the following:

Foreword

I. Tibet Before the Peaceful Liberation

II. Peaceful Liberation

III. Historic Changes in Society

IV. Rapid Development of Various Undertakings

V. A Complete Victory over Poverty

VI. Protection and Development of Traditional Culture

VII. Remarkable Results in Ethnic and Religious Work

VIII. Solid Environmental Safety Barriers

IX. Resolutely Safeguarding National Unity and Social Stability

X. Embarking on a New Journey in the New Era

Conclusion

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This is but a fraction of what I gleaned from the Here Comes China newsletter.  If you want to learn about the Chinese world, get Godfree’s newsletter here: https://www.herecomeschina.com/#subscribe

Washington’s Obsession with China Expands

March 25, 2021 (Brian Berletic – NEO) – Mid-March saw a series of events helping to measure with exactitude US foreign policy regarding China – a commitment to and a doubling down on a decades-long encirclement and containment policy that has – so far – failed to return on Washington’s immense investments in it. 

The first indicator was the new US administration of President Joe Biden continuing without even the slightest deviation Trump-era policy regarding the targeting and banning of Chinese companies. 

German state media – Deutsche Welle – in an article titled, “US designates Huawei, four other Chinese tech firms national security threats,” would note: 

The US has labeled five Chinese tech companies, including Huawei, as national security risks. President Joe Biden may be continuing his predcessor’s hardline stance against China’s growing technological dominance.

Evidence justifying US claims of Chinese companies presenting a national security risk to the US has never been produced – and it is clear that these claims are meant to justify what is otherwise merely America’s inability to compete with rising Chinese companies. Because, in addition to banning Chinese companies from doing business in the US – the US has sought to pressure nations around the globe to similarly deny market access to China. 

This is an ongoing bid to secure US market shares through threats and intimation rather than through innovation and competitive business strategies.  

Why two apparently “opposite” political candidates like Trump and Biden have indistinguishable foreign policies is easy to explain when considering these policies are generated and promoted by unelected corporate interests who influence US foreign policy regardless of who sits in either the White House or Congress. These are the very interests who see their market shares and the associated power and influence that comes from them under threat by rising Chinese competitors. Another indicator was US Secretary of State Anthony Bliken and US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin’s “tour” of the Indo-Pacific, including stops in South Korea and Japan. 

Foreign Policy magazine in an article titled, “Blinken and Austin in Japan to Bolster Asian Allies,” would claim: 

The Biden administration wants to prod Japan more on defense and resolve tensions between Tokyo and Seoul.

The article would cite an op-ed by Blinken and Austin in the Washington Post claiming: 

“Our combined power makes us stronger when we must push back against China’s aggression and threats,” Blinken and Austin wrote in a joint Washington Post op-ed, citing human rights abuses in Xinjiang and Tibet, and China’s pushback on freedoms in Taiwan and Hong Kong. “If we don’t act decisively and lead, Beijing will.”

The deeply flawed notion that the US should “lead” in Asia rather than China – a nation actually residing in the region – is at the root of US-Chinese tensions – tensions driven entirely by Washington’s unreasonable pursuit of unwarranted influence in – even primacy over the Indo-Pacific Region. Foreign Policy would also note: 

…there is growing concern about how to nudge a politically wary Japan to boost its missile defenses, while hardening the U.S. presence that’s increasingly vulnerable to improving Chinese missiles.

And that: 

Japan already has Aegis-class destroyers equipped with SM-3 missiles offshore, which the United States helped develop, and is a co-producer in the F-35 program. But last June, Tokyo canceled delivery of the U.S. Aegis Ashore missile system, a shore-based missile-defense system, pushing instead to develop a domestically produced solution. That’s another area where the Pentagon may press the Japanese.

SM-3 missiles used on Aegis-class destroyers as well as with Aegis Ashore systems are manufactured by Raytheon – an arms manufacturer Lloyd Austin sat on the board of directors of until being brought in as Biden’s Secretary of Defense. 

In essence, a former Raytheon director will be selling missiles for Raytheon in his official capacity as Secretary of Defense – and based on the supposed threat of China – the largest economy and most populous nation in the region – “leading” rather than the US. 

To paper over the corruption at the very core of US foreign policy – the US pursues a propaganda war against China – citing manufactured and patently false claims of “repression” and “abuse” everywhere from Hong Kong and Taiwan to Xinjiang and Tibet. 

A 2019 US State Department strategy paper titles, “A Free and Open Indo-Pacific: Advancing a Shared Vision,” would repeat these false claims, stating: 

The People’s Republic of China (PRC) practices repression at home and abroad. Beijing is intolerant of dissent, aggressively controls media and civil society, and brutally suppresses ethnic and religious minorities. Such practices, which Beijing exports to other countries through its political and economic influence, undermine the conditions that have promoted stability and prosperity in the Indo-Pacific for decades.

It is difficult to understand what “stability” and “prosperity” the US is referring to. 

It is amid China’s rise that the region enjoys unprecedented levels of both as well as accelerated development through projects built in cooperation with China – and all in stark contrast to the decades of war triggered by US interventions on the Korean Peninsula and all across Southeast Asia as part of its Vietnam War and adjacent military operations. 

These were conflicts that have left the region permanently scarred and in several instances – such as the residual impact of chemical weapons used in Vietnam or unexploded ordnance dropped by the US over nations like Laos – are still disfiguring and killing people to this day. 

Underneath this thin and peeling layer of US propaganda lies the truth of waning American primacy around the globe and the fundamental lack of interest by Washington and Wall Street to adjust US foreign policy toward a cooperative and constructive role among the nations of the world rather than unobtainable aspirations to dominate over all other nations. 

Brian Berletic is a Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.  

From the Earth to the Moon: Biden’s China Policy Doomed from the Start

March 17, 2021

US President Biden and Vice President Harris Meet Virtually with their Counterparts in the ‘Quad’. (Photo: Video Grab)

By Ramzy Baroud

A much anticipated American foreign policy move under the Biden Administration on how to counter China’s unhindered economic growth and political ambitions came in the form of a virtual summit on March 12, linking, aside from the United States, India, Australia and Japan.

Although the so-called ‘Quad’ revealed nothing new in their joint statement, the leaders of these four countries spoke about the ‘historic’ meeting, described by ‘The Diplomat’ website as “a significant milestone in the evolution of the grouping”.

Actually, the joint statement has little substance and certainly nothing new by way of a blueprint on how to reverse – or even slow down – Beijing’s geopolitical successes, growing military confidence and increasing presence in or around strategic global waterways.

For years, the ‘Quad’ has been busy formulating a unified China strategy but it has failed to devise anything of practical significance. ‘Historic’ meetings aside, China is the world’s only major economy that is predicted to yield significant economic growth this year – and imminently. International Monetary Fund’s projections show that the Chinese economy is expected to expand by 8.1 percent in 2021 while, on the other hand, according to data from the US Bureau of Economic Analysis, the US’ GDP has declined by around 3.5 percent in 2020.

The ‘Quad’ – which stands for Quadrilateral Security Dialogue – began in 2007, and was revived in 2017, with the obvious aim of repulsing China’s advancement in all fields. Like most American alliances, the ‘Quad’ is the political manifestation of a military alliance, namely the Malabar Naval Exercises. The latter started in 1992 and soon expanded to include all four countries.

Since Washington’s ‘pivot to Asia’, i.e., the reversal of established US foreign policy that was predicated on placing greater focus on the Middle East, there is little evidence that Washington’s confrontational policies have weakened Beijing’s presence, trade or diplomacy throughout the continent. Aside from close encounters between the American and Chinese navies in the South China Sea, there is very little else to report.

While much media coverage has focused on the US’ pivot to Asia, little has been said about China’s pivot to the Middle East, which has been far more successful as an economic and political endeavor than the American geostrategic shift.

The US’ seismic change in its foreign policy priorities stemmed from its failure to translate the Iraq war and invasion of 2003 into a decipherable geo-economic success as a result of seizing control of Iraq’s oil largesse – the world’s second-largest proven oil reserves. The US strategy proved to be a complete blunder.

In an article published in the Financial Times in September 2020, Jamil Anderlini raises a fascinating point. “If oil and influence were the prizes, then it seems China, not America, has ultimately won the Iraq war and its aftermath – without ever firing a shot,” he wrote.

Not only is China now Iraq’s biggest trading partner, Beijing’s massive economic and political influence in the Middle East is a triumph. China is now, according to the Financial Times, the Middle East’s biggest foreign investor and a strategic partnership with all Gulf States – save Bahrain. Compare this with Washington’s confused foreign policy agenda in the region, its unprecedented indecisiveness, absence of a definable political doctrine and the systematic breakdown of its regional alliances.

This paradigm becomes clearer and more convincing when understood on a global scale. By the end of 2019, China became the world’s leader in terms of diplomacy, as it then boasted 276 diplomatic posts, many of which are consulates. Unlike embassies, consulates play a more significant role in terms of trade and economic exchanges. According to 2019 figures which were published in ‘Foreign Affairs’ magazine, China has 96 consulates compared with the US’ 88. Till 2012, Beijing lagged significantly behind Washington’s diplomatic representation, precisely by 23 posts.

Wherever China is diplomatically present, economic development follows. Unlike the US’ disjointed global strategy, China’s global ambitions are articulated through a massive network, known as the Belt and Road Initiative, estimated at trillions of dollars. When completed, BRI is set to unify more than sixty countries around Chinese-led economic strategies and trade routes. For this to materialize, China quickly moved to establish closer physical proximity to the world’s most strategic waterways, heavily investing in some and, as in the case of Bab al-Mandab Strait, establishing its first-ever overseas military base in Djibouti, located in the Horn of Africa.

At a time when the US economy is shrinking and its European allies are politically fractured, it is difficult to imagine that any American plan to counter China’s influence, whether in the Middle East, Asia or anywhere else, will have much success.

The biggest hindrance to Washington’s China strategy is that there can never be an outcome in which the US achieves a clear and precise victory. Economically, China is now driving global growth, thus balancing out the US-international crisis resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic. Hurting China economically would weaken the US as well as the global markets.

The same is true politically and strategically. In the case of the Middle East, the pivot to Asia has backfired on multiple fronts. On the one hand, it registered no palpable success in Asia while, on the other, it created a massive vacuum for China to refocus its own strategy in the Middle East.

Some wrongly argue that China’s entire political strategy is predicated on its desire to merely ‘do business’. While economic dominance is historically the main drive of all superpowers, Beijing’s quest for global supremacy is hardly confined to finance. On many fronts, China has either already taken the lead or is approaching there. For example, on March 9, China and Russia signed an agreement to construct the International Lunar Research Station (ILRS). Considering Russia’s long legacy in space exploration and China’s recent achievements in the field – including the first-ever spacecraft landing on the South Pole-Aitken Basin area of the moon – both countries are set to take the lead in the resurrected space race.

Certainly, the US-led ‘Quad’ meeting was neither historic nor a game-changer, as all indicators attest that China’s global leadership will continue unhindered, a consequential event that is already reordering the world’s geopolitical paradigms which have been in place for over a century.

– Ramzy Baroud is a journalist and the Editor of The Palestine Chronicle. He is the author of five books. His latest is “These Chains Will Be Broken: Palestinian Stories of Struggle and Defiance in Israeli Prisons” (Clarity Press). Dr. Baroud is a Non-resident Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Islam and Global Affairs (CIGA) and also at the Afro-Middle East Center (AMEC). His website is www.ramzybaroud.net