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Showing posts with label US Foreign Policy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label US Foreign Policy. Show all posts
Jan Guillon ✒ with a piece that featured in two Swedish newspapers. Recommended by Eva Sennesvik.

Sweden signed a defence deal. It looks like Sweden has been at war with the US and lost, writes Jan Guillon in this note that was printed in Aftonbladet 25th of February -23 and printed in Norwegian translation in Klassekampen 9th of March - 23.

It looks like Sweden has been at war with the US and lost. At least when you read the latest defence deal between our (Swedish) government and the US government. It introduces American sovereignty in Sweden.

This is of course not the image conveyed in media. From Rapports (Swedish news) coverage I only remember images of a tiny, happy Swedish defence minister and a huge, grumpy American defence minister signing the secret deal, as if it was an ordinary routine deal. It is not. It is unique in our history and has unfathomable consequences. It’s about complete submission.

Right at the beginning of the deal it states that the US shall have “unlimited access to and use of predetermined bases and areas”.

Exactly. What are these predetermined bases and areas? They are listed on page 37. It involves All Swedish air-bases, and all military installations, 17 in total. In practice this means that the US will have unlimited control of all of the Swedish defence system, unhindered, power.

On undefined defence installations certain areas will be closed off as “only US military access”, where US jurisdiction will apply. But not only that. “On request” the US will have rights to use private lands, property, roads, ports and airports.

The States are also at liberty to “develop areas and facilities” for storage and defence equipment. There are no limitations for weaponry, not even nuclear arms (article 14), The parties “may consult on the aforementioned to the extent it is deemed necessary.”

Over a great number of pages the rights and benefits American soldiers based in Sweden shall have. American personnel, their families and civilian employees will be exempt from normal passport and visa demands. American military ID will be used in their place. Swedish Security police shall not control or put surveillance on American personnel. All cars owned by American personnel will have untraceable Swedish numberplates. All American personnel is exempt from paying tax, including taxation on purchases, even through customs bringing purchases in or out of Sweden, including unlimited sums of currency. American airplanes shall have unlimited access to Swedish airspace, just like all American ships will have unlimited access to Swedish territorial waters.

American airplanes nor ships can be inspected by Swedish authorities and so on in a very long list of decisions.

Sweden will forgo all criminal jurisdiction (article 12) when it comes to American personnel, their families and civilian employees. But in a slight contradiction it says: "if a member of the American forces or a family member is prosecuted by Swedish police, the jurisdiction is in the hands of Swedish courts.”

It sounds reasonable. But; “cannot be prosecuted in absentia” (12:4) , and if the trial lasts longer than a year it is void. As Swedish police cannot enter American suspects on their base, the American soldiers can in effect, together with the Swedish head of State, enjoy full immunity against prosecutions.

Civil law claims can not be directed at American personnel (article 15), and the list goes on to tiny issues like exemptions from paying TV- licence, but having to pay for bridge/ferry fees. And finally the not so surprising decision that Swedish trade union rules/rights are deemed null and void on American bases. (page 36)

The American contract makers – there are no traces of Swedish ones – seem to have thought about everything. But they do have experience from all the countries they have occupied earlier. Maybe they just took the capitulation agreement from, for example, Iraq down from a shelf and adjusted it a little.

Even the right to have their own tax-free zones for recreation, shopping, entertainment, hamburger bars and tax free alcohol has been examined.

The Swedish government may have put Swedish defence systems in the hands of Trump.

This Swedish submission to a superpower isn’t completely unique. But one has to go back to the second have of the 1700’s to find anything similar. Back then it was Russia who controlled Swedish foreign policies for a while.

This new submission is however voluntary and has nothing to do with NATO. The contract is strictly between Sweden and the US. Come Autumn we might see that the Kristofferson (Swedish PM) - government may have put Sweden’s defence in president Donald Trump's hands, even if he pulls the US out of NATO.

This is a scandal like no other. It is absolutely mind boggling how this could happen in secret, without it being discussed by the political opposition in the Foreign affairs Committee. Because that’s the way it must have happened. The other parties can’t have agreed with this and kept their mouths shut? And what were the government thinking? Are the “nationalists” in Swedish Democrats also prepared to sell Sweden’s sovereignty and shut up about it too? Who really wants to make Sweden Russia’s prime target in Europe in case of war? There are about 126 questions to ask in this the greatest political scandal in my lifetime. I generously leave that job to my younger journalist colleagues. Go!

A Note On American Military Bases In Sweden

Alon Mizrahi ⬟ Some radical, fundamental things need to be said immediately about the mass murderer Joe Biden's idea of air-dropping aid into Gaza First.

It needs to be said that the genocide of Gaza is an American operation, funded and equipped by America and protected diplomatically by an automatic and unconditional veto in the UNSC.

Israel is but the edge of a razor, or an axe, wielded by the US and slashing Palestinians. So why is the US wanting to aid while mass-murdering Palestinians? Here are some reasons. 

1. Management of image. The US wants to appear moral and merciful, or at least capable of deviating from the AIPAC line. So it does so mechanically, with stress on display and symbolism, as is usually the case with fake identities such as the white colonizer. It doesn't know that to normal people this only accentuates the monstrosity, and by no means the humanity of the US. 

2. Management of consciousness. As part of an ongoing psychological warfare to weaken and confuse people, Western powers always talk from two opposing perspectives. Killing while providing aid to them is a prime example of that. You can not effectively fight what you cannot grasp. 

3. Helping Israel (to complete its genocide). By providing aid the US is mitigating mounting pressures to stop the Gaza holocaust. 

4. Sadism. The US wants Gazans to not know what to make of food air-dropped followed by bombers, or maybe even delivered at the exact same moment, by the exact same hand. This excruciating and debilitating confusion brings sadistic joy to the US, and it is also used to prime Gazans for annihilation.

5. Strengthening the place charity has in the colonialist capitalist order. By portraying the murderer, enslaver, and exploiter as a savior through charity, capitalist colonialism, the basis for American political culture, can continue applying systemic injustice while reaping both unimaginable financial rewards and reputational benefits. Charity is a pillar of capitalist greed, corruption, and enslavement. - Two facts to keep in mind: 

A. Throughout its millennia of existence, Gaza never needed aid before Zionism (read: white capitalist colonialism). 

B. About half of Gazans originate from families and communities ethnically cleansed from 1948 Israel in the Nakba.

Another aspect of just how ridiculous and divorced from reality this airdropping is: Gaza is a coastal city with direct access to the Mediterranean since ancient history. It is an hour's drive from Tel Aviv, and less than that from Ben Gurion airport. It is 20 kilometers away from Ashdod sea port, Israel's largest. 

Gaza can be accessed by land and sea easily. It has dozens of entry points. It is inseparable from the history and geography of the Mediterranean region, with Alexandria, Malta, and Crete just a few hours away by ship (maybe a day). But airdropping aid into Gaza makes it look like an isolated, exotic, far-off island. Somewhere between the Easter Island and Antarctica, and undergoing an alien invasion, and not an insane, delirious, hazy slaughter at the hands of America's closest bestest ally in the world, smack at the heart of civilization. This is also how you estrange a people and a struggle. 

Colonialist cinema, that's what this is.

Alon Mizrahi is an Arab Jew, author, blogger, public speaker
and anti-Zionist.

Genocide Of Gaza Is An American Operation

Tommy McKearney ☭ Mythology refers to Helen’s “beautiful face that launched a thousand ships”. 


This, according to legend, was the cause of the Trojan war. Whether true or not, what we can say in the modern era is that the face of major war is now the ugly face of capitalism at its highest stage: imperialism. There is a massive media industry employed by the controllers of capital, working day and night, to define the narrative differently. Nevertheless, it still remains as the German military theorist Carl von Clausewitz wrote in the 19th century that, “War is regarded as nothing but the continuation of state policy with other means.”


In the case of the Western powers led by the US, state policy remains as Lenin noted in his seminal work: the creation and maintenance of a world order that facilitates the export of finance capital in order to exploit labour and natural resources across the rest of the globe. To do so entails ensuring compliance with this system by all those countries not part of the privileged sphere. Being forced to accept this situation, the people of less well-off countries suffer serious social and economic disadvantage. Failure to comply with the diktats of imperialism, however, results in heavy-handed economic and/or military sanction.

At this point it is worthwhile reflecting on James Connolly’s assessment that governments in capitalist society are but committees of the rich to manage the affairs of the capitalist class. Capitalist governments led by the USA, therefore, see as a major priority the need to enforce the West’s global military domination as a necessary step towards preventing or challenging their ability to exploit what they like to call the Third World.

With this insight in mind, the rationale underpinning the current campaign by the US and EU to curtail the ever increasing economic and thence political influence of China becomes clearer. A campaign that is now being augmented by a brazen military threat as the US surrounds the PCR with a ring of military bases. Not that the imperialists confine their “projection of power” to the East. A NATO proxy war in Ukraine and now backing a genocidal campaign against Palestinians are but the latest conflict zones in an ongoing series of hostilities across every continent.

It hardly needs saying that Washington and its allies do not state publicly the underlying rationale behind their foreign policy and most certainly never explain the real reason for their never-ending series of wars. Were they to do so, it would most surely lead to problems with their own electorates. Evidence of this fact can be seen in the huge demonstrations in the US and UK demanding a ceasefire in Gaza, in spite of unqualified support by Biden and Sunak for the murderous Israeli assault.

The role of the West’s mainstream media in promoting acceptance and tolerance for their government’s military operations is of such significance that these agencies have to be seen as an integral part of the imperialist war machine. Media coverage is at best tendentious when not downright partisan.

Nor is the Irish state broadcasting company, RTÉ, free from being complicit in this strategy. The station rarely fails to refer to the “’Hamas-run’ health agency in Gaza” or neglects to mention the 7th October casualties when reporting the infinitely greater number of Palestinian dead. How monotonous too have become the repeated phrases, “Iranian-supported Hezbollah”, “Iranian-backed Houthi”… Yet when did we last hear of the US-supported, -equipped, -financed and -protected state of Israel?

The danger inherent in such slanted reporting is obvious. In the absence of a rounded and complete picture being provided to the public, warmongering governments are subject to few if any restraints. On one hand it misleads many in the West to accept their states’ spurious narrative “justifying” the aggression. Perhaps still more dangerous is that this misinformation leads to a sense of semi-complacency in that all too many underestimate the real risk of a global conflagration placing the very existence of the human species in doubt.

In this context it is useful to consider what is referred to as the Thucydides Trap. Based on observations made by an ancient Greek historian, the theory indicates that when a superpower’s position of supremacy is threatened by an emerging power, there is a significant likelihood of war between the two. The theory has received renewed interest in academic and military circles over the past decade in light of the above-mentioned growth of China’s influence on the world stage.

And while the concept has its critics and sceptics, it does nevertheless merit a serious hearing within wider society. After all, what is the purpose behind the US military encirclement of China and in time, will this situation become ever more fragile and fractious? Not only is it increasingly likely that the Chinese economy will outperform all others but there is also a definitive shift in global relations and alliances.

Exemplifying this transfer of allegiance is the growing influence of the BRICS group of countries, a fact reinforced recently by the South African government lodging a case with the International Court of Justice against US protectorate, Israel. Taken together, these two events alone can pose a challenge for contemporary capitalism with its dependency on financialisation, as G7 countries have shifted away from industrial capitalism.

Against this rather depressing backdrop it is important to review the prospect for peace. There is, after all, significant and energetic peace movements in many countries constantly making solid and unanswerable arguments against the horrors of war. Moreover, hundreds of thousands have taken to the streets across the imperialist West demanding a ceasefire in Gaza.

The question is, though, whether such expressions of moral outrage will be sufficient to prevent an all-consuming conflict? Historical precedent offers little comfort. Most likely it will require direct involvement by the working class through grassroots organisations such as trade unions taking industrial action to prevent the movement of troops and munitions.

In Ireland, a good start would be firstly to fight to retain the Triple Lock on neutrality and second, to ensure the closure of the NATO military bases in Shannon and Aldergrove.

Tommy McKearney is a left wing and trade union activist. 
Follow on Twitter @Tommymckearney

The Imperialist March To War

Anthony McIntyre ☠ With Israel's genocidal onslaught on the civilian population of Gaza having resumed for more than a week now, its chief sponsor, the United States, in the UN chose splendid isolation over international solidarity with those on the receiving end of Judeo-Nazi butchery.

US expressions of solidarity with beleaguered Ukraine now sound like nothing other than pious moralising, the criticism of Putin, self-serving bombast. Countless more children have been murdered in the two months of Gazacide than Russia has managed in its entire war of aggression. 

In the UN the US alone stood with the Kapos, using its power of veto to prevent a ceasefire, which had it come into being, would have called time on the Israeli genocide. The gratitude expressed by Israel's corrupt leader, Baby Killer Netanyahu was effusive. Baby Killer knows the value of US support and military hardware. It is what makes the genocide possible. Without it, the Judeo-Nazis would be compelled to halt.

If we express surprise at the US action we would be fooling no one other than ourselves.  Only last week it lauded one of the world's most notorious war criminals who died having reached the age of one hundred. Literally thousands of those Kissinger murdered never saw their first birthday. Antony Blinken, after Genocide Joe the leading cheerleader for the Israeli war on children, eulogised the mass murderer:

It was Henry’s enduring capacity to bring his strategic acumen and intellect to bear on the emerging challenges of each passing decade that led presidents, secretaries of state, national security advisers, and other leaders from both parties to seek his counsel, including me.

Not a word about Henry's enduring capacity to massacre millions, his enduring passion for murder. The fawning over Kissinger at least demonstrates the type of counsel Blinken is still eager to take in. Henry would not have batted an eyelid at genocide. If Blinken is blinking it is not in disbelief at what has been unfolding in front of his eyes. 

Many apologists and genocide deniers pretend that the real abomination is to accuse Israel of genocide rather than the genocide that Israel is committing. Take this cringeworthy evasion by Howard Jacobson: Charging Jews with genocide is to declare them guilty of precisely what was done to them. And your point is Mr Jacobson? That being a victim of some heinous barbarism arms you with immunity from becoming barbaric? That has all the persuasiveness of a belief that some magic potion can make a warrior invisible in battle. 

The Jewish musician and outspoken critic of Israeli policy in the occupied territories, Jonathan Ofir, did not hold back: 'it is clear that we are really in Nazi times, and it really does bring associations of the Holocaust.'

Many years ago I read a striking book - Germany's Willing Executioners by Daniel Goldhagen. Its central point was that the Nazis alone did not bear responsibility for the Holocaust - the entire German people did.

Soldiers of the Infant Destruction Force currently exterminating their way through Gaza proclaimed in song for the camera their genocidal intent:

Everyone knows our slogan
There are no uninvolved

Echoing Goldhagen, Ofir opined: 

These are not just the chants of some kids on the hills. They are soldiers in Gaza — the same soldiers perpetrating this horrific genocide right in front of our eyes. Those cheerleading them in explicitly genocidal terms are not just far-right fanatics either; this spirit is everywhere.

Thursday's vote in the UN is ample proof that in the Whitehouse Biden & Blinken are rendering the chorus.

⏩Follow on Twitter @AnthonyMcIntyre.

Themselves Alone

Fra Hughes ðŸ’£writing in Jude Collins on 3 November lashes US foreign policy.

Western media is full of stories of Biden and Blinken calling for a pause in the ongoing Israeli one sided war on Gaza.

Gazans have no standing army, no tanks,no warships, no f35 stealth bombers.

Palestinian resistance have not dropped over 24,000 tons of bombs on the civilian population and infrastructure of Israel similar to the war crimes perpetrated against Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Palestinians have not murdered an Israeli child every 15 minutes.

It has not deprived Israelis of water, food, medicine, fuel - the basic necessities for life, nor have they targeted hospitals, ambulance drivers, medics, doctors and recue workers.

Nor have they deprived Israeli hospitals of fuel resulting in ventilated patients and babies in incubators being left to die.

The Crimes against Jabalyia refugee camp that murdered over 400 noncombatants was struck a second time as rescuers tried to recover the bodies of up to another 600 souls buried under the rubble.

Over 9000 are dead and 25,000 injured with the real figure probably much higher.

Gaza City is totally surrounded by Zionist tanks as the apartheid regime tries to divide the strip in two, while it continues to eviscerate entire families all over Gaza to include a Palestine TV journalist and ten of his family in a precision assassination.

The proposed hospital ships being touted as a possible aid to help the Palestinian wounded is a distraction.

The change of tone from the American administration is a distraction.

The call by blinkered Biden and unblinkered Blinken is designed to change the narrative in the West from the Zionist genocide in Gaza to one of having a pause in the war on Palestinians and to limit civilian casualties, is simply a pause in the international narrative, not a pause in the violence. Its strategic aim is to prevent calls for a ceasefire and allow the apartheid regime time and room to manoeuvre to achieve its military short term objectives.

The Israeli current onslaught on Gaza is unprecedented in recent times.

They are being encouraged armed and militarily supported by France, Britain and America.

While Israel destroys life as we know it in Gaza, Macron is trying to cobble together a coalition of the willing to enter the war.

He wants an international, not peace keeping force, but a militia to attack Hamas, an organisation he claims is a terrorist group.

Hamas, like the Irish Republican Movement, like the African National Congress, like the Sandinista are a national liberation organisation fighting an anti colonial war against an illegal foreign alien usurpation of their land and homes.

I support national liberation movements which are in line with international law. Is there any other position people of conscience can take?

Madelaine Albright said the death of 600,000 Iraqi children before the invasion of Iraq was a price worth paying.

Perhaps she has met Thatcher and Sharon in the afterlife?

So many dead, so many injured already and a ground attack utilising tanks, artillery, aircraft and drones to level the landscape in front of advancing troops, will see thousands more dead injured and buried under the rubble.

This is reminiscent of the attack on Beirut in 1982 and the massacres in the Shabra and Chatilla refugee camps.

The offensive on Fuluja. The shock and awe carpet bombing of Baghdad. The murderous attacks on Gaddafi and Assad.

America cares nothing for the lives of non-white non Europeans as it continues the Anglo Saxon 17 century colonial mindset of destroying the barbarians while claiming to civilise them - while simultaneously exploiting their natural resources.

Do not listen to America, Britain, France or the European Union. They care nothing for the lives of noncombatants, of innocent children.
 
The ongoing settler violence in the Westbank and Israeli incursion raids unopposed by the pathetic Palestinian Authority is killing, maiming, arresting and imprisoning unarmed civilians at will.
Hundreds are dead in the occupied territories.

Many more are imprisoned - nearly 2000 alone since October 7 - many of those detained under internment without trial have and are being tortured.

Sadly the tactics used by the American regime to distract, their citizens from the truth of their actions is mirrored in Ireland.

What politicians say in public and practice in private are at times diametrically opposed

Like the American administration with its hypocritical calls for a pause on the war on Gaza - a hollow call if ever there was one - we have politicians in Ireland doing exactly the same.

Using public platforms for votes they decry the ethnic cleansing of Gaza, the Zionist war crimes against the indigenous Palestinian population and call for an end to the bombing of UN schools, hospitals, refugee camps, community centres and other places of refuge housing over 1.5 million displaced souls, but that is all they are doing.

The simplest method for politicians in Ireland to show they really condemn the Zionist supremacist murderous campaign on Palestine is to refuse its representative the political cover of staying in the country.

If you oppose the apartheid regime, then refuse to legitimise it and expel its ambassador.

I won’t be attending any rallies that are simply platforms for political parties to gain votes, who by their actions prove they are more concerned with votes, than the death of innocent civilians.

Is power in the Dail more important than your common humanity?

Is American validation more important than your conscience?

Where exactly did you go so badly wrong?

I haven’t voted in recent elections as there is no one who represents my views, from the pseudo left to the new constitutional republicans but I might vote in the forthcoming elections.

I might in fact vote for the DUP .

Know the real enemy who stands before you.

As Israel now arrests Gazan residents in hospitals in the Westbank, ready to deport them to Gaza - including residents who have found work in the occupied territories - Egypt is sending 3000 Gazans back into the death camp. America has gotten many of the dual nationality passport holders out of Gaza in order to minimise Western casualties. Egypt stopped the ambulance allowed to leave Gaza at the same time demanding passports from the injured. Many of those had been rushed to hospital initially as emergencies. Who brings a passport to a hospital emergency room, if you are unconscious, lost a limb or horrifically maimed?

Many of those 88 patients in those emergency ambulances died because of the Egyptian delays.

Europeans walk out of Gaza. Gazans are allowed to die while awaiting life saving surgery at the border.

Maybe we should expel the Egyptian Ambassador or at a minimum protest at their embassy? No politicians please - many of us have had enough of the deceitful duplicity.

Palestinian speakers only.

On that point why hasn’t the Palestinian representative to Ireland been invited to address these rallies?

Is it really about Palestine, really?

Nasrallah is speaking at 1pm today. Will there be a wider conflict.

At least Nasrallah is an honest politician. I look forward to hearing him speak.

I know the truth when I hear it and I know duplicity when I see it.

Fra Hughes is a Belfast based writer and activist.

American Duplicity Mirrored In Ireland

Stanley Cohen ✊ How long ago was it that Colin Powell sat before the United Nations Security Council with his twisted trove of compelling evidence that Iraq was host to a veritable mountain of weapons of mass destruction just awaiting the right moment to unleash its Shia ravage upon the stainless West?


Of course, it was a lie, a conscious pretext to justify what was to follow where tens of millions throughout the Middle East paid for this US “hard intelligence” with their liberty, their lives, and their yearning for little more than the universal right for them and their families to pursue the freedom of life. Some twenty years later the weapons of mass lie continue to propagate daily with an unbroken fabricated flood of deadly Western puffery about an innocent pastoral Israel under siege not at all by virtue of its own long and well-established regional hands of occupation filth, but of course by the voracious anti-Semitic appetite of Iran, Palestine, and Hamas. It’s a lie.

Gaza City under Israeli airstrikes, screengrab
from Al Jazeera’s live feed.

When expedient, for years we have been apprenticed by largely Western Christian and Jewish tutors along with purchased “Islamic scholars” about the branded unresolvable divide between Sunni and Shia denominations which, they preach, all but guarantees periodic eruptions within the Islamic world. After all, was it not this internecine scriptural split that explains away the horrors inflicted in Yemen upon the impoverished Iranian-supported Shias by the Sunni states of Saudi Arabia and UAE largely with weapons that were made in the USA?

Although the Saudi/UAE inflicted casualties continue, when the world last cared reliable sources report that over 150,000 people were killed in Yemen, as well as more than 227,000 dead as a result of an ongoing famine and lack of healthcare facilities due to the war.

Not packaged, let alone understood, for the internal civil war it was, how much easier and politically convenient to simply blame Iranian support and “control” over Houthi Shias against a Sunni government as the trigger for what was clearly an Indigenous political rebellion. How often were we told that Houthis were fighting as Iranian proxies rather than as combatants in a native uprising largely directed at the lingering legacy of European colonialism? Sound familiar?

So, tell me, if the marriage of an uprising in the Middle East is ultimately fueled not by aboriginal aspiration but strict theological obedience, how is it that the Shias of Iran are dictating to the Sunnis of Hamas what to do and when? They ain’t.

There is nothing I can say at this point in history that will move the lockstep sentiments of personally invested or reality-disconnected Israeli cheerleaders to understand, let alone accept, that Hamas is an Indigenous national liberation movement, born not from abstract thought, religious fueled hate or the chase of personal fortune, but rather from the hardscrabble roads of Gaza itself. So, I will not try.

Are there Palestinians who disagree, even at times despair, of Hamas… of course. But after 75 plus years of ethnic cleansing, you will not find any wanting for wholehearted support for the resistance–be it from millions still occupied by a deadly colonial project, or those long ago exiled at gun-point from their age-old homeland by Europeans who tore across it with unrestrained bombast and endless thirst for blood. For without defiance, whether from movements or “lone wolf” … be it by armed struggle or passive resistance … one comprised of Muslims, Christians and non-believers alike–of women and men, students and scholars, only fools or desperate wizards believe that if left to its own unchecked device, a kinder gentler Israel would emerge to ensure justice and human rights for those whose dwindling land they thirst and liberty they detest.

Has Iran provided financial aid to Hamas, some of which was used for the purchase or production of weapons? Of course. Why not. It is not the only country that has chosen sides in this struggle against ethnic cleansing and for righteous justice. After all, the United States has funded Israel to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars these many years which has financed the use of phosphorous and cluster bombs against civilians in Gaza in violation of Protocol III to The Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons of 1983 and The Convention on Cluster Munitions of 2008. It has also armed snipers who have shot tens of thousands of peaceful protestors on the Gaza border in violation of The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. Not one to limit its backing of Israeli butchery to but the air and land of Palestine, the US has long subsidized an Israeli navy whose prime function is to attack and destroy Palestinian fishing and humanitarian aid vessels be they in the Port of Gaza or afloat in the Mediterranean Sea.

Never one to suppress its own geo-political thirst or economic appetite, The Convention on Cluster Munitions was ignored earlier this year when the US elected to arm Ukraine with thousands of cluster bombs. So too, it disregarded the transfer of American-made weapons it provided to Saudi Arabia and its coalition partners in Yemen later transferred to al Qaeda-linked fighters, and other so-called radical Salafi militias. Nothing new about this. Independent of its invasions and occupations of Kuwait, Iraq, and Afghanistan, in the last thirty-five years alone the United States has intervened or proxied up in numerous international hot spots through money or weapons including Syria, Somalia, Haiti, Yugoslavia, Bosnia, Ethiopia, Kenya, Liberia, Mauritius, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda. With an unbroken sordid record of meddling, there is abundant evidence that the US has engaged in nearly 400 military interventions of one sort or another between 1776 and 2023. But Iran is the problem.

Over the years, billions in humanitarian aid have come to Gaza from Qatar, Kuwait, Turkey and Algeria to name but a few of the supportive sister states. Donated largely for reconstruction of essential infrastructure, schools and hospitals targeted and laid to waste by Israeli bombs, ribbon cutting in Gaza one of the world’s most densely populated and impoverished territories has proven time and time again to be but a momentary tease–with each restoration quickly lost to the next Israeli onslaught and the next and the next.

Once upon a time, before the lure of US dollars and Israeli shekels purchased a new generation in the Gulf, Saudi Arabia armed Hamas with rockets and other weapons for the defense of Gaza. However, that solidarity was to change with the arrival of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman who the very year he had Jamal Khashoggi murdered, told Jewish leaders in New York City that Palestinians should “start accepting peace proposals or shut up.” Five years later at the urging of Biden and with the blessing of his personal hedge fund banker, Jared Kushner, in the run-up to the Hamas strike, bin Salman was expected to sign the Abraham Accords. With that signature, he would have joined UAE, Bahrain and Morocco in a treacherous pact with Israel which places their own economic and geo-political interests ahead of not just palpable Israeli violations of international law, but all standards of decency and humanity. Trading in his bisht and red & white keffiyeh for Armani pinstripes, how can anyone avoid the overpowering stench of a regional double standard?

And what of the “proof” that Iran provided the skill set and dictated the nature and timing of the most recent Hamas strikes against the occupation? Now streaming in from predictable Zionist echo chambers at AIPAC and ADL to the halls of a cheap ill-informed Congress to the amplified one-sided MSM breaking news cycle… there is none. To be sure, like it or not, as a seasoned national liberation movement with an armed wing that has successfully battled to a stand-still Israeli jets, tanks, and battleships for decades, Hamas needs not, nor does it accept direction from non-Palestinian actors on how or when to proceed in its struggle against the occupation. Any such claim oozes with pejorative ignorance and racist superiority. Bearing the reek of classic hasbara, these shouts are but another in a long line of played deceits that Israel is an enlightened democracy under perpetual siege in the midst of doctrinal fired anti-Semitism.

Of course, Israelis tutor the West that they and they alone love and care for their families and young while the dominant regional Arab and Palestinian populations are more than willing to sacrifice their sons and daughters to a nihilist agenda in the name of Islam. Very much a living lie, for decades this marketing lure has enticed the neo-colonial West to ignore Israel’s marriage of hate and violence providing the money, weapons and Security Council vetoes it needs to keep it just beyond the reach of universal law and international accountability. Zionists would have us believe that Palestinians, per capita among the most highly educated people and culture in the world, know not what they want and or how to get there, but rather are mere dutiful vassals of Iran as it seeks to impose its brand of Shia fundamentalism upon the rest of the region. Nonsense.

Hamas is a national liberation movement dating back some 40 years to a time and place where an earlier generation of explosive, deadly Kahanists sought to corrupt if not rid Palestine of any collective aspiration of self-determination, independence and justice. The notion that all these years later the movement, now among the most sophisticated and successful in the region, if not the world, needs guidance, training and edict from any other state or people to fight on is but seductive sophistry in search of a vulnerable and ill-informed audience to bite the poison political pill. At its core, the tired screed that the Islamic Resistance Movement’s self-determination is determined by others not born of Palestinian families and heritage is but a shoddy deflection from the horrors unleashed by Zionists these past 75 years upon an Indigenous community dating back not decades or centuries but millennium.

For days now deceitful politicians and traditional media across the globe have parroted the sculpted Zionist talisman that there is war between Hamas and Israel. Not true. It is a battle for survival between a “nation state” of occupiers and a people long beleaguered … but not defeated. To be sure, if Hamas were to disappear tomorrow, the global Palestinian struggle for self-determination, liberty and justice would and will continue till it be had. To hear the unbroken chant of “terrorists” by Israel and its funders beggars the undeniable history of nonstop Zionist terrorism beginning well before the Irgun, Haganah and Palmach hanged British soldiers, bombed the King David Hotel, sent mail bombs across Europe and assassinated Swedish Count Folke Bernadotte, the United Nations mediator for Palestine all in the name of a theft of a land they had not known, if at all, for thousands of years.

With its leadership prominently displayed and well deserved on “wanted” posters throughout Palestine and in Europe for heinous offenses against civilians and repeated violations of settled international law, these Europeans went on to inspire generations to come with a dark deadly vision of a homeland not theirs to reclaim or to reconstruct and where, to them, no crime was too disturbing … no rationale too obtuse.

No matter what the Zionists rewrite, Palestine is a land stolen from age-old Indigenous communities with hundreds of thousands driven at gunpoint from their homes, but not their history. For the fortunate, they were exiled to refugee camps in and out of their homeland; for the less so, mass assassination, rape and a final rest rotting in wells were left as a message for others across Palestine. In the years since, that nightmare has continued unabated with millions of Palestinians living under the often-deadly, always despotic yoke of Zionist expanse and excuse; with many more eking out existence as stateless refugees living long and far from their native land.

In the years since the onset of the unchanged Nakba, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians including children and the elderly have been shot, crippled and murdered always in the name of a perverse ideal built fundamentally upon the suffering of others. Even more have seen the damp dark cellblocks of political prisons, uncharged or tried, stripped of their families and lives for little more than a voice, a prayer, a hope. For years, Gaza has been the world’s largest open-air prison, one bounded on all sides by the hatred and terror of Israel and the complicity of its partner in cruelty–Egypt. But a short recast reminds us it is no stranger to Israeli war crimes.

With an opening salvo on December 27, 2008, Israel bombed the main police headquarters in Gaza City, killing 42 cadets standing in formation–none bearing weapons. Later it blew up 18 other police stations throughout the Gaza Strip. In total, 248 police officers were killed having not fired a single shot at Israeli forces. Over the twenty-one days that followed, Israel deliberately targeted civilians and civilian infrastructure and made widespread use of prohibited weapons, such as white phosphorous, in highly populated areas in clear violation of international law. During the onslaught, Israel targeted 23 U.N. buildings and/or compounds killing numerous civilians who had taken shelter there. In the deadliest case, 43 civilians were killed by an Israeli shelling of one such compound. Palestinian schools were also targeted. On January 5, an aerial strike killed three men who had sought shelter at the Asma Elementary Co-Ed A School. Twelve days later, a military ordinance struck the Beit Lahia Elementary School while it was being used as an emergency shelter… killing two young boys and injuring 13 others. Human Rights Watch documented at least seven instances where Israeli soldiers executed civilians… including five women and four children who were standing together waving white flags to convey they posed no threat. In another incident, Israeli soldiers shot and killed several members of the al-Najar family in Khuza’a village, east of Khan Yunis. Following orders from soldiers to leave their neighborhood, and while waving white flags, Rawiya al-Najjar and her family were gunned down. When the carnage ended, some 1440 Palestinians were killed and more than 5,000 injured… most of them civilians. According to the Israeli Human Rights group B’Tselem, 252 minors under the age of 16 (boys and girls) who did not take part in any fighting were killed along with 111 women and girls over 16.

Five years later, in the summer of 2014, the world was reminded of what it is to be a Palestinian in the crosshairs of a colonial fiend hell-bent on relegating them en masse to the ranks of the disappeared. During Israel’s unhinged six-week rampage it dropped 40,000 tons of explosives on more than 5200 “targets” throughout Gaza. At its end, some 2200 Palestinians were slaughtered, including 550 children, with some 10,000 others injured. Almost all the victims were civilians. More than 1900 children were orphaned, and hundreds of thousands were internally displaced with 20,000 homes, 26 NGO service providers, a half-dozen UNRWA facilities, 23 hospitals and health-care facilities, 133 schools, 360 factories, and 50,000 acres of croplands destroyed or damaged by Israel. Half of Gaza’s poultry stock was slaughtered along with thousands of family pets.

These are but a few of the more glaring examples of the recent yet unbroken mayhem long unleashed by Israel against a Palestinian community that never left its roots or lost the call of its collective claim. To keep track of this havoc is to bear witness to unspeakable crimes typically against the frail, the young, the passive who carry hope and horror-not weapons. According to Save the Children in the run-up to the most recent explosion, 2023 had already proved to be the deadliest year for Palestinian children since records began with at least 38 of them killed by Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank. That number has increased exponentially over the last several days with, it has been reported, some 500 additional children killed in Gaza. The Defense for Children International, a Palestinian human rights organization focused on child rights, reports that since 2005 major Israeli military offensives have killed more than 1,000 children in the 140 square mile prison of Gaza.

Meanwhile, there are some 5,200 Palestinians in Israeli prisons including 33 women and 170 children held largely on what are described as “security grounds.” Detained essentially indefinitely, they never see the inside of an Israeli civilian courtroom with the benefit of meaningful counsel, and the rights to due process and a trial. For them, it is very much a military star chamber–one overseen by a military judge and a military prosecutor with endless six-month detention extensions absent any cap, or established evidence of criminal wrongdoing.

In the most recent battle, the list of dead and injured civilians continues to grow on both sides and must stop. Yet the narrative of what has happened and why is no less destructive. No matter how many times politicians and theists of all callings seek to control and market the account by blaming Hamas and victimizing Israelis alone, even a cursory search establishes it is an obscene escape from reality. Long before Hamas arrived, Palestinians of all faiths, politics and aspirations fought against the expulsion, hatred and violence forced upon them by European terrorists in the name of a desperate historical rewrite. One which sought and continues to justify ongoing ethnic cleansing as so much an absolute historical rite of passage–a claim that defies the reality of time and long-settled decency and humanitarian law.

Tragically, after all the millennium we still live in times not unlike the dark march of history where struggles are judged not by the equal application of international law or the will and wail of justice but by the color of one’s skin, the echo of one’s words, the pose of one’s prayer. All too often, the scale of righteousness is weighted not by the credence of the cause but the partisan of one’s cheer. A double standard at best, it is a jury of institutional inequality–one that passes judgment not by the virtuous but the powerful; not by equal application of law but the coercive command of presence. It is specious posturing at its finest; an opportune script sculpted by occupiers across the globe, and not the occupied. It must stop.

Until the community of onlookers imposes the same standards upon colonizer as they do the colonized; upon Jews and Christians as they do Muslims; on skin tones of white as they do of color, the history of yesterday and that unfolding before us today remains locked in a dismissal falsified story-line. Ultimately, that description instills upon us all the bleak chronicle that the difference between “freedom fighter” and “terrorist” is not the justness of the cause … but who wins.

Stanley L. Cohen is lawyer and activist in New York City.

Weapons of Mass Lies

Stanley Cohen ✏ Once again, the mindless Zionist cheer was in full-on truth pogrom this week over the purchased news that citizens of Israel, one of the most despotic repressive and hate-driven states in the world, would no longer be subject to a vetting process designed, in theory, to safeguard the United States and its residents from visitors from other lands who pose a threat not just to “national security” but the safety of those who call the US home.


Let me be clear, I have long opposed the United States visa program as an entirely ambiguous and discretionary process fueled by enormous bureaucratic abuse which uses security as but a palpable cheap talisman when in reality its unrestricted ambiguity is intended to minimize the domestic impact of the international diversity of thought, politics, race, faith and identity. All too often Black, brown, indigenous and Muslim passport holders have been denied admission to the US long before arriving at its shores when their applications for visas have been denied by US consulates and embassies in their native lands following interrogations by junior State Department staff. This is particularly true for the stateless and other refugees fleeing oppression at the hands of their own governments (often US proxies) or, in the case of Palestinians, by an occupier which seeks to eradicate them in their entirety and which, once again, has been amply rewarded for it.

Photograph Source: ctj71081 – CC BY 2.0

Zionists galore preached falsely yesterday there is little difference between a rote minute-long passport visa waiver admission onto an airplane or upon arrival at a US port of entry and a visa application process that for many can and does run into numerous visits and months of delay – and for most ultimate denial — at a local US government building … an abusive process often driven by sexual harassment and rude pejorative lecture.

In short, the beneficiary of a US visa waiver program is assumed to be of good stock, safe politics and proper faith. Of course, for almost all such political payees they pass the skin tone test with fleeting glance alone. How much easier and honest it would be for Homeland Security officers at checkpoints to simply say welcome to you white, Christian, and now Jew.

Yes, waiver benefactors must, along with dozens of others so privileged, spend a few minutes in a line being asked the standard questions by security before boarding a flight such as… are you carrying explosives, or kilos of cocaine, or severed body parts? To be repeated upon arrival at a US port of entry along with the additional query of why have you come here and where will you be staying? Yes… that’s it. You know . . . 


Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!

Against this tiresome time-consuming painful process (ha-ha), stands the visa chase typically built of multiple visits to a secure US military-like compound where applicants are not just finger-printed, but often subject to hours of highly intrusive personal interrogations which include targeted questions about associations and family, political beliefs and activities, gender identity, and “criminal” history. Interviews, often canceled at the last minute, and not to be rescheduled for weeks or longer, before a visa is, if at all, granted there are security checks drawn typically not just from unreliable databases filled with baseless innuendo, rumors and uncorroborated allegations, but compelling dispositive Google searches. And why not?

After all, unlike the waiver recipients who– absent an INTERPOL Red Notice popping up on a passport—are admitted with no additional screening or questioning of consequence, visa applicants must successfully navigate an entirely arbitrary intel/security system that can deny admission to one simply seeking to visit family or to go on holiday for literally of dozens of specious and irrelevant reasons.

Of course, unlike waver beneficiaries, visa admissions are routinely denied even for minor, decades-old criminal convictions that say absolutely nothing about any current threat level of the traveler. To be sure, it is not all that unusual for those visa holders who have spent thousands of dollars and weeks of travel to arrive at a US port of entry to be greeted by excited family members only to be turned back. They can be refused entry without any stated reason as, unlike a waiver recipient, a visa does not guarantee entry into the United States. It simply allows a foreign citizen to travel to a port-of-entry which upon arrival can be denied by the Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Customs and Border Protection or a rookie immigration inspector, based on little more than a hunch … or is that a twitch.

Against that light, visas will not be issued by a US consulate or Embassy officer where any alien who, while serving as a foreign government official, was responsible for or directly carried out, at any time, particularly severe violations of religious freedom or …. to violate any law of the United States relating to espionage or to violate or evade any law prohibiting the export from the United States of goods, technology, or sensitive information… or who stands in opposition to the policies of the United States Government.

And then there is the bar to admission for anyone who has engaged in or incited “terrorist” activity or has, under circumstances indicating an intention to cause death or serious bodily harm, incited terrorist activity or who belongs to a ‘terrorist’ organization or a political, social, or other group that endorses or espouses terrorist activity.” In addition, “an alien whose entry or proposed activities in the United States the Secretary of State has reasonable grounds to believe would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States is inadmissible.”

So, too, those who have “ordered, incited, assisted, or otherwise participated in genocide … is inadmissible as are those who have committed, ordered, incited, assisted, or otherwise participated in the commission of any act of torture … or under color of law of any foreign nation, any extrajudicial killing. Likewise, any immigrant who is or has been a member of … any other totalitarian party (or subdivision or affiliate thereof), domestic or foreign, is inadmissible.”

Can anyone say Zionist “settler?”

How about Israeli soldier?

How about Shin Bet?

How about Mossad?

How about the Knesset?

Kahanist?

Welcome home to Brooklyn …Don’t forget to collect your El Al frequent flyer miles.

Stanley L. Cohen is lawyer and activist in New York City.
You can no longer follow Stanley Cohen on Twitter @StanleyCohenLaw

Welcome To The US, Land of Unvetted Occupiers

Mick Hall ☭ The club of BRICS emerging economies formed in 2009 is home to more than 40% of the global population and accounts for nearly a quarter of the world’s gross domestic product.

President Xi of China will chair the virtual BRICS summit later this week, three of its most influential members - China, India and South Africa abstained from voting on a UN resolution condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

In response to this the US government put out a statement warning China and other BRICS nations not to be on the wrong side of history over the Ukraine-Russia war.

The United States of America has been on the wrong side of history almost every year since it's foundation in 1776. There is hardly a conflict in the world in which the US have become embroiled, which hasn't made a bad situation worse. In truth the US political, military, and industrial complex have so much blood on their hands it should be renamed Murder Incorporated.

Since WW2 when they did play a positive role they have intervened in Cuba, Vietnam, Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Libya, Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Haiti, Iran, Indonesia, Philippines, Lebanon, Palestine, Ukraine and more; they truly are a gang of piratical gangsters.

By the way given the above mentioned history it's not whataboutery to question the motives of the US government in the Ukraine, it's due diligence and common sense.

⏩ Mick Hall is a veteran Left Wing activist and trade unionist.

Murder Incorporated

Mick Hall ☭ Albert Einstein once said the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.

After the disastrous 2003 Iraq war and occupation which eventually had British troops scurrying out the back door in Basra in the middle of the night. The recent chaotic scenes when the British military retreated from Afghanistan leaving much of the country decimated and many Afghans without food or work, and ten years after NATO intervened in Libya. it's gone from a cohesive country, all be it with major flaws, to a failed state.

Now, you would have thought lessons would have been learnt from these failures but, no. The British prime minister is now poking the Kremlin with a long stick and has not dismissed putting British troops on the ground in the Ukraine. This beggars belief, when a casual glance at history would see the outcome would be disastrous for the Ukrainian people not least because NATO intervention would antagonize the bear.

Nevertheless the British MSM have been daily stoking up a war with Russia. Night after night, BBC TV news has been showing the same clip of Russian troops with a narrative - Putin is warmongering.

What is indicative of this shoddy reporting is the almost total failure of MSM outlets to report from the ethnic Russian speaking part of the Ukraine which makes up a third of the country's population.

What the Russian government wants was summed up succinctly by Alex McCrory:

If you found your home being surrounded by hostile forces, what would you do? This is precisely the position Russia finds itself in today. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the West, in the shape of NATO, has fashioned a noose for the Bear's neck. Most of the former Russian satellite states have been wooed by the West via the European Union and NATO at the behest of America. Nuclear missiles are capable of striking Russian cities in minutes from a number of NATO bases located along its border. What Russia demands is a Pan-European security agreement that removes the current existential threat. A reasonable request in the circumstances.

China is already surrounded by US bases and the hawks in the Pentagon are doing the same with Russia, you don't have to be a groupie of President Putin or President Xi Jinping to understand how dangerous this is for world peace.

It's worth reminding ourselves who is the serial aggressor here. Since 1945, the US has tried to overthrow more than 50 governments, many of them democratically elected; grossly interfered in elections in 30 countries; bombed the civilian populations of 30 countries; used chemical and biological weapons; and attempted to assassinate foreign leaders.*

* Taken from the American historian William Blum who until his death in 2018 yearly updated a summary of the record of US foreign policy.

⏩ Mick Hall is a veteran Left Wing activist and trade unionist.

US ✑ A Serial Aggressor

Information Clearing House ✒ Neuberger will make our cyber secure?
  
Philip Giraldi
11-February-2021

It does not require any particularly perspicacity to realize that the President Joe Biden Administration has been loaded with Zionists who not only believe in their own vision for Greater Israel but also in some cases have strong and enduring ties to the Israeli government itself. 

The new Secretary of State Tony Blinken comes from an American Jewish family that has well established ties to Israel. Blinken’s paternal grandfather was one of the founders of an organization that eventually evolved into the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). Blinken said at his Senate confirmation hearing that the new administration would “consult with Israel” before any possible return to the 2015 nuclear deal and he also made clear that there will be “additional conditions for Iran,” an odd position to take since it was the U.S. that withdrew from the agreement and introduced a harsh sanctions regime even though Iran was in compliance ...

Joe Biden himself proclaims proudly that he is a Zionist and Vice President Kamala Harris has spoken at AIPAC gatherings, pledging her unconditional support for the Jewish state.

Continue reading @ Information Clearing House. 

Another Zionist Joins The Biden Team

Via Information Clearing House ➤ The presence of two US aircraft carrier strike groups in the South China Sea conducting “high end” war games starting Saturday, involving round-the-clock aircraft launches, is just the most graphic demonstration to date of the Trump administration’s accelerating preparations for war against China. 

By Peter Symonds
The fact that the two-carrier operations were timed to coincide with Chinese naval exercises in the same strategic waters makes them all the more provocative and dangerous.

The global COVID-19 pandemic has dramatically exacerbated the crisis of global capitalism, centered in the United States, and all of its fundamental contradictions, leading to a further rapid rise of geopolitical tensions. Confronting a deep social and economic crisis at home, with growing opposition in the working class to the reckless back-to-work drive, the Trump administration is seeking to divert social tensions outward at an external enemy.

Trump, backed by the Democrats and the media establishment, is seeking to whip up a climate of war fever through a relentless campaign of anti-China propaganda based on lies and disinformation. Without a shred of evidence, top officials routinely blame China for the coronavirus pandemic and the huge American death toll, for which the White House is directly responsible through its criminal negligence and indifference.

Continue reading @ Information Clearing House.

US War Drive Against China Accelerates

Eva Sennesvik thinks the government of Norway can and should be impeached for its readiness to cede much sovereignty to US militarism.

Government Can Be Impeached

Eva Sennesvik returns again to No Bones About It to speak about the strong rising presence of the US army in the her native Norway. She writes in a personal capacity.

Norway, The New Pawn In US War Games

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