“Psychopath Capitalism”: US Economic Terrorism and Genocide Against the People of Venezuela

“It is agonizing to witness the mass murder of a heroic and progressive Venezuelan people, by a psychopathic capitalism which has not one iota of human decency, and wallowing in its cannibalistic behavior, desecrates the very concept of human rights.  But that is the essence of monopoly capitalism, whose “highest” stage is fascism.”

Source

April 25: Foreign Minister Arreaza Describes Excruciating Suffering of the Venezuelan People Resulting From US Sanctions; 

April 26: US Violates its Obligation as  UN Host Country and Sanctions the Foreign Minister for Speaking Truth to Power

“We are not only on the wrong side, we are the wrong side.”   Pentagon Papers Expert Daniel Elllsberg

“American sanctions are deliberately aiming to wreck Venezuela’s economy and thereby lead to regime change.  It’s a fruitless, heartless, illegal, and failed policy, causing grave harm to the Venezuelan people.”  Professor Jeffrey Sachs

US Maneuvers at the United Nations

The entire official schedule of meetings of the United Nations Commission on Disarmament – April 8 through April 29 – was forced to cancel because the United States, in violation of its obligations as host country, refused a visa to important Russian delegates.

On April 25, Venezuela’s brilliant, charismatic Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza (left) detailed, in a United Nations press briefing, the horrific suffering the Venezuelan people are enduring as a result of the dictatorship of US sanctions against his country, and US terrorization of each and every global institution and nation which the US is demanding sever all economic and diplomatic ties with Venezuela.

In a stealthy, deadly march to global dictatorship, and consistent with its attempt to subjugate the United Nations to the interests of US oligarchic power, the United States is abusing its membership in the United Nations, attempting to force regime change on Venezuela, using criminal methods in violation of the Hague Convention, the Geneva Convention, the United Nations Charter, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Charter of the Organization of American States, the Venezuelan Constitution, and in violation of U.S. law itself.

The U.S. maneuvers to destroy the Maduro government’s UN accreditation, and replace it with their puppet Guaido are horrifying and Machiavellian, and, quite realistically, since the US has absolutely no scruples, nor any respect for international law, there is an ominous possibility that they may succeed.  Numerous diplomats of many countries, with whom I have spoken, are terrified by the sanctions the US just placed on the Venezuelan Foreign Minister, recognizing the threat to their own sovereignty, and sophisticated Iranian specialists delineated the dangerous possibilities the US has to use this method to force out the Venezuelan delegation to the UN, and de facto denude the Maduro government’s access to the UN.  If the US succeeds in this criminal scheme, the credibility of the UN will be entirely and irreparably destroyed, as the many diplomats with whom I have spoken have confirmed.  Many delegates are now saying that the UN would be better based in another more reliable and respectful country.  Venezuela is Chairman of the Non-Aligned Movement, an organization of 120 member states. For the US to sanction her Foreign Minister is an unconscionable and intolerable abuse of the host country status.

The US Is Orchestrating a Coup in Venezuela

The US has, furthermore, forged another mafia-style organization of flunkey Latin American “governments” which give every indication of becoming  a new Operation Condor, that systematically organized engine of murder arranged by Augusto Pinochet and Henry Kissinger, (image left) an international organized criminal plan to exterminate all progressive and humanitarian efforts throughout Latin America and beyond.

Operation Condor orchestrated the slaughter of Chilean former Foreign Minister Orlando Letelier in Sheridan Circle, Washington, DC in 1976. Letelier bled to death after a car bomb arranged by Anti-Castro Cuban terrorists tore off his legs. An American girl working for the Institute of Policy Studies, Ronni Moffett was also killed in that terrorist action.  In Argentina, Chilean General Carlos Prats was murdered when his Buenos Aires home was bombed;  in Rome, ChileanSenator Bernardo Leighton’s wife was crippled by an assassin’s bullet intended for him;  Operation Condor arranged the murder of former progressive Bolivian President Torres in Argentina.

Diabolic Methods Used by the US to Wreck Venezuela

In a colossal report entitled:  “Economic Sanctions as Collective Punishment:  The Case of Venezuela,” and corroborating everything stated by Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza, economist Jeffrey Sachs and Mark Weisbrot describe the diabolic methods used by the United States to wreck Venezuela and discredit socialism, resulting in the deliberate murder of at least 40,000 Venezuelan people, including children, the elderly, the infirm and other of the most vulnerable civilians. This is a systematic and deliberate policy of the US government, a heinous plan to exterminate socialism and massacre the Venezuelan people in order to steal their oil, a spectacular act of piracy brazenly conducted with the collusion of obedient puppets in Western Europe and Canada, and craven, obsequious Latin American states whose shameful obedience to Washington is breathtaking.

Complete Blockade

Washington is now threatening to completely blockade and sanction Cuba to force that country to sever relations with Venezuela. Nicaragua is, of course, also in the crosshairs.

Yesterday there was a failed coup, provoked by the Quisling Juan Guaido, (image right with Lopez) who incited a military revolt to violently overthrow the democratically elected government of Nicholas Maduro.  If Joseph Biden or Bernie Sanders, or any American citizen advocated the violent overthrow of the US government, they would be imprisoned and/or executed.  It is astounding that the Manchurian candidate Juan Guaido, advocating the violent overthrow of the Venezuelan government, is allowed to roam free, throughout Venezuela.  This is incontestable proof of the impeccably democratic character of the Maduro government. And perhaps it is proof of Maduro’s strength and trust in the Venezuelan people.  But Maduro’s life is at risk for his country. During yesterday’s emergency, Venezuelan Ambassador Samuel Moncada convened a UN press conference, and skillfully replied to often slanted and biased questions  for which Moncada was well prepared, and had no doubt anticipated.

The US government is disintegrating, and has been for many years, with the current administration rife with internecine warfare.  The French government is confronting an incipient popular revolution of the Yellow Jackets, the British government stymied by Brexit and separatist movements threatening the survival of the “United Kingdom.”  It is only with the most flagrant arrogance that they criticize Venezuela.

It is agonizing to witness the mass murder of a heroic and progressive Venezuelan people, by a psychopathic capitalism which has not one iota of human decency, and wallowing in its cannibalistic behavior, desecrates the very concept of human rights.  But that is the essence of monopoly capitalism, whose “highest” stage is fascism. One can only hope that Russia and China will recognize the future menace to their own survival, and will not indulge in the wishful thinking of a “win-win” arrangement with Washington. One can only hope that the crucible of Venezuela will prove to be the Stalingrad of this de facto World War III, and it will be on the battlefield of Venezuela, with its transgenerational legacy of Simon Bolivar, that fascism is defeated, and the future progressive destiny of humanity will be forged.

*

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Carla Stea is Global Research’s correspondent at United Nations Headquarters, New York, N.Y.

The original source of this article is Global Research

Copyright © Carla Stea, Global Research, 2019

Unilateral US sanctions violate human rights: UN expert

A UN rights expert expresses concerns about the negative impacts of unilateral US sanctions against people in Iran, Cuba and Venezuela.

Source: PressTV-Unilateral US sanctions violate human rights: UN expert

http://www.presstv.com

May 7, 2019

Idriss Jazairy, UN special rapporteur on the negative impact of the unilateral coercive measures

A UN rights expert has slammed unilateral US sanctions against Iran, Cuba and Venezuela, saying the use of economic measures for political purposes violates human rights and international law.

In a statement released on Monday, Idriss Jazairy, UN special rapporteur on the negative impact of the unilateral coercive measures, warned that the US bans against the trio might precipitate man-made humanitarian catastrophes.

“Regime change through economic measures likely to lead to the denial of basic human rights and indeed possibly to starvation has never been an accepted practice of international relations,” he said.

“Real concerns and serious political differences between governments must never be resolved by precipitating economic and humanitarian disasters, making ordinary people pawns and hostages thereof,” he added.

Jazairy also voiced worries about Washington’s termination of sanctions waivers for major Iranian crude buyers, saying the move harms not only the Iranian nation, but also their trade partners.

“The extraterritorial application of unilateral sanctions is clearly contrary to international law,” he said. 

“I am deeply concerned that one State can use its dominant position in international finance to harm not only the Iranian people, who have followed their obligations under the UN-approved nuclear deal to this day, but also everyone in the world who trades with them,” he noted, referring to the landmark 2015 agreement — officially called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

Recently, the US ended six months of waivers which allowed Tehran’s eight largest customers to continue importing limited volumes. It also threatened the buyers of Iranian oil with sanctions if they fail to stop their purchases.

The anti-Iran American sanctions had been lifted under the JCPOA, but they returned in place last year when the US abandoned the multilateral accord.

Elsewhere in his statement, the UN rights expert denounced the economic hardship caused by the US sanctions in Cuba and questioned Washington’s claim that its sanctions against Venezuela were aimed at “helping” its people.

US unveils new sanctions on Cuba, Venezuela

US National Security Adviser John Bolton announced a series of new sanctions against Cuba and Venezuela on Wednesday.

He further called on the international community to “challenge” Washington’s restrictive measures against sovereign countries which amount to “a threat to world peace and security.”

“I call on the international community to engage in constructive dialogue with Venezuela, Cuba, Iran and the United States to find a peaceful resolution in compliance with the spirit and letter of the Charter of the United Nations before the arbitrary use of economic starvation becomes the new ‘normal’,” Jazairy said.

One Million Species Poised to Go Extinct Soon Because of Humans: UN

Humans have pushed a million plant and animal species to the brink of extinction—with potentially devastating implications for the future of civilization.

Source: One Million Species Poised to Go Extinct Soon Because of Humans: UN

Common Dreams

By Jake Johnson

May 6, 2019

A United Nations report described as the most authoritative and comprehensive assessment of global biodiversity ever published found that human exploitation of the natural world has pushed a million plant and animal species to the brink of extinction—with potentially devastating implications for the future of civilization.

Conducted by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) and released Monday, the report warned that species extinction rates are “accelerating” at an “unprecedented” rate due to the human-caused climate crisis and economic activity.

“The overwhelming evidence of the IPBES Global Assessment, from a wide range of different fields of knowledge, presents an ominous picture,” Sir Robert Watson, chair of the IPBES, said in a statement. “The health of ecosystems on which we and all other species depend is deteriorating more rapidly than ever. We are eroding the very foundations of our economies, livelihoods, food security, health, and quality of life worldwide.”

While the report’s findings—compiled by a team of hundreds of experts from 50 nations—are dire and cause for serious alarm, Watson said, there is still a window for action.

“It is not too late to make a difference, but only if we start now at every level from local to global,” said Watson. “Through ‘transformative change,’ nature can still be conserved, restored, and used sustainably—this is also key to meeting most other global goals. By transformative change, we mean a fundamental, system-wide reorganization across technological, economic, and social factors, including paradigms, goals, and values.”

Eduardo Brondizio, co-chair of the IPBES, echoed Watson, saying “business as usual has to end.”

The IPBES report comes as youth-led movements across the globe are organizing and taking to the streets en masse to pressure political leaders to take climate action in line with the urgency demanded by the scientific evidence.

Andrew Wetzler, managing director of the nature program for the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), told the Washington Post that the IPBES assessment shows “that nature is collapsing around us and it’s a real wake-up call to humanity.”

According to the report:

• The average abundance of native species in most major land-based habitats has fallen by at least 20 percent, mostly since 1900;
• More than 40 percent of amphibian species, almost 33 percent of reef forming corals, and more than a third of all marine mammals are threatened;
• The picture is less clear for insect species, but available evidence supports a tentative estimate of 10 percent being threatened;
• At least 680 vertebrate species had been driven to extinction since the 16th century and more than 9 percent of all domesticated breeds of mammals used for food and agriculture had become extinct by 2016, with at least 1,000 more breeds still threatened.

Andy Purvis, professor at the Natural History Museum in London and one of the report’s main authors, said the findings show that the “society we would like our children and grandchildren to live in is in real jeopardy.”

“This is the most thorough, the most detailed and most extensive planetary health check. The take home message is that we should have gone to the doctor sooner. We are in a bad way,” Purvis said. “I cannot overstate it. If we leave it to later generations to clear up the mess, I don’t think they will forgive us.”

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70 years of NATO charts 70 years of brute force and hard power

“The hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist – McDonald’s cannot flourish without McDonnell Douglas, the builder of the F-15. And the hidden fist that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley’s technologies is called the United States Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps.”

Thomas Friedman

Source link

http://www.rt.com

John Wight

April 4, 2019

John Wight has written for a variety of newspapers and websites, including the Independent, Morning Star, Huffington Post, Counterpunch, London Progressive Journal, and Foreign Policy Journal.

© Global Look Press / Martin Poole

The existence of NATO 70 years on from its creation is an insult to the millions who died so that the UN Charter could be born.

The most significant and enduring testament to those who perished in the struggle to defeat fascism in WWII remains the UN Charter, the foundational document of the United Nations upon its birth in October 1945. The Charter arose from the ashes of that epic struggle as a tangible symbol of hope. Enshrined within its articles was a solemn promise that henceforth justice, international law and tolerance would reign in place of brute power, force and intolerance.

Consider for a moment the first section of the Charter’s preamble:

WE THE PEOPLES OF THE UNITED NATIONS DETERMINED

• to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind, and
• to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small, and
• to establish conditions under which justice and respect for the obligations arising from treaties and other sources of international law can be maintained, and
• to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom

It is impossible to read those words and not lament the gaping disjuncture between the noble ideals they embrace and the grim reality that arrived in their wake. For rather than mankind being saved from the scourge of war, the scourge of war and conflict has grown to become a near-everyday reality across the globe.

Read more

US lecturing Russia to ‘keep out of Western Hemisphere’ is hubris & hypocrisy on steroids

The pressing question we are required to grapple with today is: Why? What lies at the root and what is the common denominator responsible for mankind’s abject failure to achieve the vision set out in the UN Charter?

Upon due consideration, we are left in no doubt that, fundamentally, the series of conflicts that have come to define our existence are a consequence of the drive by one ideological bloc to dominate and impose a particular political, economic and value system onto a world defined by its diversity of languages, cultures, histories and traditions.

The result is the normalization of war and the apotheosis of hard power, rather than war and hard power being regarded as grotesque perversions in a world cured of the moral sickness of might is right.

Seventy years ago, NATO, a military alliance whose entire existence and ethos is predicated on might is right, emerged from the womb of the Cold War objectives devised by a Truman administration of fanatical hawks, consumed with the goal of full-spectrum dominance at the close of WWII.

In his 1997 essay, ‘The Last Empire,’ Gore Vidal savages the official history proffered by Western ideologues when it comes to the sudden shift that took place from Moscow being viewed as an indispensable ally in the war against Nazi Germany in the eyes of the Roosevelt administration, to implacable foe when Truman entered the White House upon Roosevelt’s death in April 1945.

Gore Vidal: “The National Security State, the NATO alliance, the forty-year Cold War were all created without the consent, much less advice, of the American people… The impetus behind NATO was the United States… We were now hell bent on the permanent division of Germany between our western zone (plus the British and French zones) and the Soviet zone to the east. Serenely, we broke every agreement that we had made with our former ally, now horrendous Communist enemy.”

ALSO ON RT.COMIf Trump wants to disarm Russia, he should un-recognize Kosovo

Moving things forward, it is by now no secret that US Secretary of State James Baker assured Soviet premier Mikhail Gorbachev in a meeting on February 9, 1990, that NATO would not expand “one inch eastward” upon the reunification of Germany. According to declassified documents, Baker’s pledge was made as part of a “cascade of assurances” over Soviet security given by Western leaders at that time and on into 1991, when the Soviet Union came to an end. It is the breaking of those assurances that lies at the heart of the deterioration in relations between East and West that has taken place from then to now.

Flush with triumphalism over the demise of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, NATO was loosed upon the world not in name of democracy but in the cause of imperialism. Neocon scribe Thomas Friedman, more than any of his ilk, has written openly of the driving ethos of Western foreign policy after the Soviet Union’s demise: “The hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist – McDonald’s cannot flourish without McDonnell Douglas, the builder of the F-15. And the hidden fist that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley’s technologies is called the United States Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps.”

Friedman’s gleeful celebration of the economic opportunities lying open to the US in the post-Soviet world was shared by powerbrokers in Washington on both sides of the aisle. Intoxicated with a misplaced sense of exceptionalism and virtue, the world now lay before them like a vast banquet upon which they were invited to feast. And the first course in this feast was the former Yugoslavia with its abundant human and natural resources, not to mention strategic location in the Balkans, ripe for the taking.

Read more

In 1999, it was Yugoslavia in the crosshairs of the imperialists, now it’s Venezuela

Michael Parenti, in his definitive work on the destruction of Yugoslavia, ‘To Kill A Nation,’ reminds us that after the fall of communism in eastern Europe, “the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY) remained the only nation in that region that would not voluntarily discard what remained of its socialism and install an unalloyed free market system. It also proudly had no interest in joining NATO.” Later, Parenti also reveals: “The ultimate goal has been the complete privatization and Third Worldization of Yugoslavia, Eastern Europe… It is to replace the social wage with a neoliberal global free market, a process that would deliver still greater wealth and power into the hands of those at the top.”

The role of NATO in achieving the West’s objectives in Yugoslavia need not detain us; they have been set out in powerfully in a series of articles commemorating the 20th anniversary of the start of the Western military alliance’s 78-day air war against FRY with them in mind. Here, specifically, I refer you to the work of RT columnist Neil Clark.

The point is that today – bearing in mind NATO’s role in destroying Yugoslavia, helping to turn Afghanistan into a failed state rather than democratic state, destroying Libya, and in threatening Russia – it is no longer feasible or possible to harbor any lingering belief that NATO is anything other than a snarling beast of US hard power, deployed not to protect and defend, but destroy and dominate.

The 70th anniversary of the birth of NATO is a cause for lamentation, not celebration. The only fitting way to mark it is with a minute’s silence in solemn remembrance of its countless victims.

 

The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.

‘Why not give Israel North and South Carolina?’ Syrian envoy asks US at UN

Better yet: Why not relocate Israel to Florida?

RT.com

28 Mar, 2019

FILE PHOTO: An aerial view on a housing complex in North Carolina, U.S. © REUTERS/Charles Mostoller

Syria’s UN ambassador has suggested the US hand “a couple” of its own states over to Israel instead of flouting international law and selling others’ land for favors with the Israeli lobby, like it did with the Golan Heights.

Syria’s UN Ambassador Bashar Jaafari offered a stark rebuke to the US-backed Israeli claim to the occupied Golan Heights at the UN Security Council meeting on Wednesday. Jaafari said the Trump administration does the bidding of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the UN to curry favor with the powerful Israeli lobby in the US.

In a remark that elicited a chuckle and a head-shake from his Israeli counterpart, Jaafari suggested that Washington bargain away land that is actually its to give.

You can give them North and South Carolina, for example, why not? South Carolina is a great piece of land… So, give Israel a couple of states if this administration really wants to have Israeli support

Trump’s decision to back the Israeli claim to the Golan Heights comes just ahead of the Israeli general elections on April 6 and has been widely considered as an electoral boost for Netanyahu, who is facing charges of fraud, bribery and breach of trust at home.

“Don’t be misguided by thinking that one day this land will be yours due to hypocrisy or due to being a pawn in the electoral game where you bring each other support, so the Israelis can succeed in their elections and the Americans can also get support from Israeli lobbying groups in the US,” Jaafari said. The Golan Heights, seized by Israel during the 1967 Six-Day war and formally annexed in 1981, will ultimately “come back” to Syria, the diplomat said.

The Security Council meeting was called at Syria’s request. Damascus insists that the recognition of the Golan Heights belonging to Israel runs counter to UN resolutions that expressly declare the annexation “null and void.”

ALSO ON RT.COM‘US decision on Golan Heights is highway to war’: Russian Duma speaker

Washington’s adversaries and allies alike have lined up to condemn the breach of international law. The Arab League, Turkey, Iran and Russia spoke up against the recognition. Russia’s Duma speaker Vyacheslav Volodin said it was a “highway to war.” At a UNSC meeting on Wednesday, Russian Deputy Envoy to the UN Vladimir Safronkov said that by siding with Israel, Washington hampers the efforts to improve the security situation in the Golan Heights and ease tensions between the Arab world and the Jewish State itself.

“This not only exacerbates the situation in Syria and complicates the establishment of political process but it also creates serious obstacles to normalizing the relations between Israel and the Arab States,” he said, adding that the US followed through with its decision while turning a blind eye to “the opinion and warnings at both international and regional levels.”

Trump Gives Away What Is Not His or Israel’s

Source: Trump Gives Away What Is Not His or Israel’s – American Herald Tribune

ahtribune.com

BY Jeremy Salt

March 22 ,2019

Trumpery: dictionary definition, ‘articles of little or

no value.’ As applied to cheap jewelry, vulgar, garish

and tasteless. As applied to paintings, trompe l’oeil, ‘to deceive the eye,’ from the French verb tromper, to deceive.

 

Hubris grips Israel. Absolute power has had its usual effect of absolute corruption, of morality, legality, and justice as well as the money deals that have enriched corrupt Israeli politicians.

No one dares stop Israel.  Not the UN and not western governments. They can but they don’t or they won’t.  Israel can kill Palestinians on the West Bank, in Jerusalem, in Gaza, without any meaningful intervention by the ‘international community.’  

On the West Bank, a corrupt Palestinian Authority has done much of its dirty work, administering the occupied territory on behalf of the occupier, not the occupied.  In East Jerusalem, it has acted as the conduit for the sale of Jerusalem properties to Zionist settlers, with straw men, Palestinians, and bogus companies set up to transfer properties without owners knowing that the real purchasers are Zionist settlers.

Most of the money for these purchases comes from the US, where Donald Trump has now followed up his “recognition” of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital with his “recognition” of the occupied Golan Heights as sovereign Israeli territory.

He did this in a tweet, without telling the relevant arms of his own administration beforehand. The State Department was taken by surprise and so was everyone else, except the Israeli government. It knew because Trump had passed on the word. Behind the scenes, John Bolton and the US ambassador to Israel, David Freedman, effectively Israel’s American ambassador to Israel, worked to set this up.

The parallel to Trump’s unilateral White House action is US recognition of Israel in 1948.   Because of the probability of extreme bloodshed, early in 1948 the US had backed away from the 1947 partition plan and was seeking a UN trusteeship over Palestine.   That was the policy followed until Truman upended it on May 14 by recognizing Israel de facto, without informing the State Department or the US delegation at the UN.

The UN Secretary-General had been informed, and it was in the wastepaper basket in his office that the screwed-up ticker tape message sent to him was found.  The US delegation ’s head, Warren Austin, was so disgusted he walked out of the UN building and left it to his deputy to make the formal announcement of recognition.  The enraged Cuban delegation threatened to pull Cuba out of the UN.  

The US has never been an honest broker but at least in the 1940s and 1950s, there were sensible people who recognized the great dangers for the US in supporting Zionism and the state of Israel.  

Loy Henderson, a senior State Department official, responsible for Middle Eastern policy, wrote that support for a Jewish state would violate US policy of allowing a majority vote by the population of any territory to determine its form of government.

He warned that support for Israel would involve the US “in international difficulties of so grave a character that the reaction throughout the world as well as in this country will be very strong.”

Secretary of State George Marshall opposed partition and wrote that if Truman recognized Israel, he would vote against him in the next elections.  

Truman’s double-dealing was to repeated by Lyndon Johnson in the 1960s when he told the Israeli ambassador, Yitzhak Rabin, that he need not worry about being forced into signing the nuclear-non proliferation treaty in return for the supply of US planes and tanks.   

Johnson would make sure they would be provided without any conditions, blindsiding his own officials, who thought they were going into negotiations with a strong hand, only to be treated with discourtesy by Rabin.  

Israel got the lot then, the tanks and the planes and the freedom to develop nuclear weapons without having to sign the NPT, and it has got the lot ever since.  Military and economic grants have now reached unprecedented levels.  On top of the $3.8 billion aid, Israel will receive for 2019 it is now the beneficiary of a ten-year $38 billion ‘defense’ package, signed into law in August 2018.  

These sums of money, enabling the occupation of Palestine and the killing of Palestinians, are augmented by smaller grants, $50 million here or $50 million there, the icing on an enormous and very tasty cake. Israel still has the freedom to develop nuclear weapons without US interference.

In December 2017, Donald Trump “recognized” Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, on the same day that Zionist snipers were killing unarmed Palestinians along the Gaza fence line.  He has now followed this by “recognizing” the Golan Heights as sovereign Israeli territory.

The banality of the man is summed up in the means of communication, not a White House press conference, not a State Department communique, but a tweet, the same conduit he uses for talking about his children or abusing his political opponents or telling the world how great the Mexican wall will be. 

Of course, there can be no “recognition” because both East Jerusalem (‘at least’ as there is no good reason to separate the occupation of the east in 1967 from the occupation of the west in 1948) and the Golan Heights are occupied territories in fact and under international law.   

With these two announcements, the US has finally ruled itself out as any kind of honest broker between Israel and the Palestinians.  It never has been, of course.  Some presidents tried hard to bring balance into the relationship – Jimmy Carter for example – but all eventually caved in.

The Golan Heights is part of Syria.  In 1967 it was seized by Israel during its war against Egypt and Syria.  This was no “pre-emptive” attack as the Zionists have claimed ever since but a blitzkrieg aimed at destroying Arab military capacity, destroying Egypt’s leader, Gamal Abd al Nasser and seizing the rest of Palestine. 

The seizure of the Golan involved the expulsion of 90,000-130,000 Syrians and Palestinians. Some fled, others were driven out but, just like 1948, no one was allowed back.  About 100 villages were destroyed and ploughed over.

In 1974, after a war which Egypt and Syria would have won on the battlefield had not Anwar al Sadat betrayed the Syrian president, Hafez al Assad, new lines of demarcation were drawn up on the Golan, leaving about 70 percent in the hands of the Zionists. 

Before withdrawing from some of the territories they had occupied, Zionist units deliberately destroyed the city of Quneitra. It was never rebuilt, the ruins standing as testimony to the complete bastardry of the army which had occupied it.

Since that time Israel has filled the occupied Golan with about 30 settlements and 25,000 settlers. Archaeological relics are plundered, the Golan’s vital water resources are drained off and Israeli and foreign tourists contribute to the economy of occupation.   In recent years the occupied Syrian communities, mainly Druze, have had to put up with wounded terrorists being transported across their land from Syria to receive treatment in Israeli hospitals.  On occasion, they have attacked these convoys.  Most Druze remain committed to their Syrian identity.

In his tweet, Trump wrote that the “recognition” of the occupied Golan as Israeli is important to “regional stability.” The opposite is true, of course. ‘Regional stability’ is even more seriously threatened. With these announcements, Trump has put his administration entirely in Israel’s pocket. 

Trump may well give Netanyahu’s election prospects a boost by turning his tweeted intention into a formal policy statement before the Israeli elections in early April.  Both the Jerusalem and the Golan declarations, however, are a sign that Israel and its lobbyists in the US have seriously overplayed their hand and that in buckling to their pressure, Trump has worsened Israel’s standing in the US.    

The US groveling to Israel over many decades would now seem to have reached its apogee. All that remains is the plan being cooked up by Trump, John Bolton, Jared Kushner, and David Freedman, in continuous consultation with the Israeli government, to bury the Palestinian question forever.

Americans are aware more than ever of how Israel dictates US foreign policy.  Jewish Americans know it in increasing numbers, especially on university campuses. They have the same moral consciousness as anyone else and are appalled by Israel’s atrocious record over many decades. They are distancing themselves both from Israel and Zionism and of course, they completely abhor the Netanyahu government and Israel’s even more openly racist and fascist parties.

Two Muslim members of Congress have recently sharpened the debate with exposure of the lobby’s vote-buying political influence.  Senior Democrats, including Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, have declared they will not be attending the annual AIPAC conference in Washington on March 24-26.  In years gone by, such defiance by a US politician would be regarded as suicidal but not now. This is partly the measure of how the wind is blowing in the US.

Trump’s two declarations end all illusions.  Even in the minds and the hearts of those who desperately cling to the hope of a genuine peace process, there can surely be no hope left.   One would have to be completely deluded to see something in nothing.  What is left is surrender or resistance. Either you or us.  Not a peace of the brave as pronounced on the White House lawns in 1993 but a peace of the grave.

Many Palestinians never thought peace with Israel was possible. They have been proven right. Those who continued to place their trust in the “international community” or in the application of international law or the bona fides of the Israeli government have been proven wrong. George Habash read the situation correctly back in the 1950s and 1960s. Hasan Nasrallah reads it correctly now. 

The abandonment by the US of the remnants of a peace process that was never a peace process in the first place creates grave dangers, not regional stability, especially when taken in the context of a possible Israeli war with Hizbullah or Iran or on both of them.

The US has left the supporters of a genuine peace process with nothing in their hands.  There is no two-state solution in sight, only a bogus one-state ‘solution’ which turns all of Palestine into Netanyahu’s apartheid Jewish state.  

If Palestine, any part of it, is to be redeemed, only the option of force seems left for those who will not surrender. After more than seven decades of chicanery, lies, and brutality from Israeli governments, this conclusion would be self-evident.

It is not a question of wanting it or wishing for it.  Force is abhorrent but there has never been a time in history when an occupied people have not resisted the occupier to the utmost limits of their endurance.   

Both the Palestinians and the Zionists conform to the historical pattern, one as the occupied and the second as the occupier. Israel thinks it can break the Palestinians down by the application of brute force but after more than seven decades it has still not succeeded.  Instead, in the minds of many, it has only strengthened the lesson that what has been taken by force, ultimately can only be taken back by force.

When there is no peace, no remote possibility of peace, the pendulum must swing back to war.  When it comes, and sooner or later it will come, Israel is going to take such punishment that it might finally see reason, if by then it is not too late to see reason.  It would be better to see reason before the event but that is not going to happen.

Hizbullah has the capacity to inflict great damage on Israel.   The Iron Dome and the Arrow anti-missile ‘defense’ systems will stop only a fraction of the volume of missiles that will pour into Israel in the event of war with Hizbullah or the war with Iran which Netanyahu has wanted for years.  Even Hamas now says it has rockets that can reach any part of Israeli territory. Even if Israel ‘wins’, a nebulous concept in the context of such a destructive war, it will be seriously wounded. 

Israel’s greatest defense system would have been to reach a generous settlement with the Palestinians long ago but what it has actually settled for is ideology, the fulfillment of the Zionist dream that is a Palestinian nightmare, and the continued theft of Palestinian land over the security of its Jewish citizens. 

They are in the Middle East and want to stay there.  They want a future for their children, but what kind of future is on offer from Israel’s racist politicians, settlers and rabbis?  The answer?  The same kind of violent future that is on offer for the Palestinians.  Is this the choice any sane person would want to make?

WRITER

Jeremy Salt

Jeremy Salt has taught at the University of Melbourne, Bosporus University (Istanbul) and Bilkent University (Ankara), specialising in the modern history of the Middle East.  His most recent book is “The Unmaking of the Middle East. A History of Western Disorder in Arab Lands” (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008.)

War crime investigators will be barred from entering US

Source: War crime investigators will be barred from entering US – Middle East Monitor

http://www.middleeastmonitor.com

March 16, 2019

Restrictions may also be placed on investigators examining alleged war crimes involving Israel

Building of the International Criminal Court [File photo]

War crimes investigators working for the International Criminal Court (ICC) will be barred from entering America if they probe the actions of the country’s soldiers in Afghanistan and other locations, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has said.

The Trump administration also said restrictions may also be placed on investigators examining alleged war crimes involving Israel.

Suggesting they would not be granted visas, Pompeo said: “We are determined to protect the American and allied military and civilian personnel from living in fear of unjust prosecution for actions taken to defend our great nation.”

A spokesperson for the ICC said that it was an independent and impartial institution and would continue its work “undeterred” by Washington’s actions.

A prosecutor currently has a pending request to investigate actions of US troops in Afghanistan.

The visa restrictions will apply to any ICC employee who takes or has taken action “to request or further such an investigation” into allegations against US forces and their allies in Afghanistan that include forced disappearances and torture, Mr Pompeo said.

The new policy is designed to deter the investigators, he added.

“These visa restrictions may also be used to deter ICC efforts to pursue allied personnel, including Israelis, without allies’ consent,” he said.  “If you are responsible for the proposed ICC investigation of US personnel in connection with the situation in Afghanistan, you should not assume that you still have or will get a visa or will be permitted to enter the United States.”

“We are prepared to take additional steps, including economic sanctions, if the ICC does not change its course,” Mr Pompeo said, adding: “The first and highest obligation of our government is to protect its citizens and this administration will carry out that duty. The ICC, as a court of law, will continue to do its independent work, undeterred, in accordance with its mandate and the overarching principle of the rule of law.”

Mr Pompeo’s announcement was criticised by Human Rights Watch, which called it “a thuggish attempt to penalize investigators” at the ICC.

“The Trump administration is trying an end run around accountability,” the organisation said. “Taking action against those who work for the ICC sends a clear message to torturers and murderers alike: Their crimes may continue unchecked.”