The war for dominance in the Middle East, following the crushing of ISIS, appears about to commence in Syria — with NATO allies America and Turkey on opposing sides.
Turkey is moving armor and troops south to Syria’s border enclave of Afrin, occupied by Kurds, to drive them out, and then drive the Syrian Kurds out of Manbij further south as well.
Says President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, “We will destroy all terror nests, one by one, in Syria, starting from Afrin and Manbij.”
For Erdogan, the Kurdish YPG, the major U.S. ally in Syria, is an arm of the Kurdish PKK in Turkey, which we and the Turks have designated as a terrorist organization.
While the Kurds were our most effective allies against ISIS in Syria, Turkey views them as a mortal peril and intends to deal with that threat.
If Erdogan is serious, a clash with the U.S. is coming, as our Kurdish allies occupy most of Syria’s border with Turkey.
Moreover, the U.S. has announced plans to create a 30,000-man Border Security Force of Kurds and Arabs to keep ISIS out of Syria.
Erdogan has branded this BSF a “terror army,” and President Bashar Assad of Syria has called BSF members “traitors.”
This U.S. plan to create a BSF inside Syria, Damascus declared, “represents a blatant attack on the sovereignty and territorial integrity and unity of Syria, and a flagrant violation of international law.”
Does not the Syrian government have a point?
Now that ISIS has been driven out of Raqqa and Syria, by what authority do U.S. forces remain to arm troops to keep the Damascus government from reimposing its authority on its own territory?
Secretary of State Tillerson gave Syria the news Wednesday.
The U.S. troop commitment to Syria, he said, is now open-ended.
Our goals: Guarantee al-Qaida and ISIS do not return and set up sanctuary; cope with rising Iranian influence in Damascus; and pursue the removal of Bashar Assad’s ruthless regime.
But who authorized this strategic commitment, of indefinite duration, in Syria, when near two decades in Afghanistan have failed to secure that nation against the return of al-Qaida and ISIS?
Again and again, the American people have said they do not want to be dragged into Syria’s civil war. Donald Trump won the presidency on a promise of no more unnecessary wars.
Have the American people been had again?
Will they support a clash with NATO ally Turkey, to keep armed Kurds on Turkey’s border, when the Turks regard them as terrorists?
Are we prepared for a shooting war with a Syrian army, backed by Russia, Iran, Hezbollah and Shiite militias from Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, to hold onto a fourth of Syria’s territory in alliance with Kurds?
The U.S. coalition in Syria said this week the BSF will be built up “over the next several years” and “be stationed along the borders … to include portions of the Euphrates river valley and international borders to the east and north.”
Remarkable: A U.S.-created border army is going to occupy and control long stretches of Syria’s borders with Turkey and Iraq, over Syria’s objections. And the U.S. military will stand behind the BSF.
Are the 2,000 U.S. troops in Syria really up to that task, should the Turks decide to cleanse the Syrian border of Kurds, or should the Syrian regime decide to take back territory occupied by the Kurds?
Who sanctioned this commitment to a new army, which, if Syria and its Russian and Iranian allies, and the Turks, do not all back down, risks a major U.S. war with no allies but the Kurds?
As for Syria’s Kurds casting their lot with the Americans, one wonders: Did they not observe what happened when their Iraqi cousins, after helping us drive ISIS out of Mosul, were themselves driven out of Kirkuk by the Iraqi army, as their U.S. allies watched?
In the six-year Syrian civil war, which may be about to enter a new phase, America faces a familiar situation.
While our “allies” and adversaries have vital interests there, we do not. The Assads have been in power for the lifetime of most Americans. And we Americans have never shown a desire to fight there.
Assad has a vital interest: preservation of his family regime and the reunification of his country. The Turks have a vital interest in keeping armed Kurds out of their border regions adjacent to their own Kurdish minority, which seeks greater independence.
The Israelis and Saudi royals want the U.S. to keep Iran from securing a land bridge from Tehran to Damascus to Lebanon.
The U.S. War Party wants us to smash Iran and remain in the Middle East forever to assure the hegemony of its favorites.
Have the generals taking us into Syria told the president how and when, if ever, they plan to get us out?
Copyright 2018 Creators.com.
January 19, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Illegal Occupation, Militarism, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | Israel, Middle East, NATO, Syria, Turkiye, United States, Zionism |
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When in 2016 Donald Trump mugged the bipartisan political establishment in the United States, there were three issues that put him beyond the pale:
- Restructuring America’s trade relations to favor American workers and producers, not international corporations keen to dump their costly domestic employees and relocate abroad, sending in their products tariff-free; and
- Stopping the migration invasion of the US, symbolized above all by building The Wall on the Mexican border – and making Mexico pay for it.
As Trump’s first year in office comes to a close, where do we stand?
War and Foreign Policy
The neoconservatives who have made a disaster of American policy for almost three decades are exultant that Trump is dancing to their tune. In the Middle East, “America First” has turned into “Israel and Saudi Arabia First” and a vendetta against Iran. While Trump has taken credit for the possible outbreak of peace between the two Koreas, that is a byproduct of the intransigence and bluster coming from Washington – which may resume as soon as the Olympics are over.
With respect to Russia, the picture is dreary and the trend worrisome. The absurdly named “Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act,” passed last year with a bipartisan, veto-proof supermajority, stripped Trump of his constitutional authority to make policy toward Russia. A new round of legislatively mandated sanctions designed to block any possible outreach to Moscow by criminalizing contact with any Russian within screaming distance of the Kremlin is imminent. Early hopes of US-Russia cooperation in Syria against jihad terrorist have given way to a continued (illegal) US military presence east of the Euphrates, talk of a “New Syrian Army” (recycled Daesh and al-Qaeda terrorists, with a push to turn the CIA aid spigot back on), plausible Russian suggestions of a US hand in a drone attack on Russian personnel, and back to square one with “Assad must go!” Providing lethal weapons to Ukraine – which could entail American advisers on the ground near the conflict line in the Donbas – moves us closer to military confrontation.
All that said, there is a school of thought that says Trump is in so precarious a position vis-à-vis a Deep State working overtime to remove him (and if pushed too hard, might just “JFK” him), that he has no choice but to adopt a “rope-a-dope” strategy. Patrick Armstrong thinks that Trump is purposely undermining the imperial order bit by bit by degrading the narcissistic notion of US global “leadership.” This means Trump’s seeming to go along with his ubiquitous adversaries’ bellicose agenda to the Nth degree but in the process making the US less and less relevant.
Korea may be an example: bluster and threaten, so the panicked South reached out to the North. Recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital: the US is no longer the mediator between Israel and the Palestinians, and we defund the Palestinian Authority and the UN to boot. Threaten to pull out of the Iran nuclear deal: nervous Europeans distance themselves from Washington and cozy up to Moscow, Beijing, and Tehran, which may in turn lead to a diminished US enthusiasm for defending “disloyal” NATO allies. Double down on the failed Afghanistan non-strategy: blame Pakistan and cut off their money. Impose economic and financial sanctions with reckless abandon: an alternative international finance system is in the works.
In any case, among Trump’s three populist heresies from the bipartisan Swamp’s agenda, this is the least well articulated and least important to his base in Flyover Country, many of whom reflexively if ignorantly respond positively to anything that sounds “tough” and militaristic (“Support our troops!” – so how about we stop getting them killed and crippled in unnecessary missions?). Whatever Trump thinks he’s doing, as long as he doesn’t stumble us into a war somewhere like Korea, Iran, Ukraine, or Syria, things are still better than if Hillary had won.
- Verdict after one year: Let’s call it a wash. But there’s still reason to worry.
Trade
Not much can be said about trade at this time. Maybe that’s good. There are solid America First people in the administration, such as U.S Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and Peter Navarro, who heads the White House Office of Trade and Manufacturing Policy, backed up by speechwriter Stephen Miller, the main nationalist-populist left in the Trump inner circle. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross is generally counted in this camp. Perhaps a low decibel level means quiet progress.
Or not. The trade nationalists are at daggers drawn with the globalists and generals: National Economic Council chief Gary Cohn, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, White House Chief of Staff John Kelly, and National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster. The former two are ideological free traders and advocates for global corporations and banks. The latter favor the tried-and-failed decades-long policy of buying geopolitical and strategic advantage by taking it out of the hide of American workers and producers: we give our satellites like Germany, Japan, South Korea, etc., etc., free, non-reciprocal access to our domestic market, they hand over their sovereignty. What a deal!
Who will come out on top is unclear. Pulling out of TPP was a positive sign. What Trump does about NAFTA will be a critical, which is why the usual suspects are in full-throated hysteria over his threat to insist Canada and Mexico renegotiate it or to pull the US out. With respect to the 800-pound gorilla of America’s trade woes, an America First pitch to China ought to be getting us out of Korea and the South China Sea while rebalancing our enormously one-sided trade relationship. Unfortunately, the globalists and generals would rather do the opposite: keep sacrificing Americans’ economic well-being in an effort to “contain” China strategically.
Trade won’t matter much in the November elections amid happy-news perceptions of improved job creation, stock market record highs (though how much of that represents real economic growth and how much a ballooning investment bubble is open to debate), and higher consumer confidence. But over the long term, if this opportunity is lost to put Americans’ interests ahead of those of transnational corporations it might not come again.
- Verdict after one year: It could go either way.
Immigration
Of the three Trumpish heresies from bipartisan orthodoxy, this is the most important. While for the establishment it ranks with foreign policy and is closely tied to it (“Invade the world, invite the world”), for Trump’s base it is head and shoulders above the other two. If not for his pledge to build The Wall and make Mexico pay for it, Trump never would have been the Republican nominee and won the presidency.
For the past week the American media and political class have been in a tizzy over precisely what scatological term Trump may have used in a closed-door White House meeting over DACA (“Deferred Action on Childhood Arrivals,” Obama’s so-called “Dreamers”) and immigration policy generally, including funds to build The Wall. (There evidently is some question of whether the second syllable was “hole” or “house.”) Is this the worst word ever uttered in a non-public meeting in the Oval Office? At least nobody claims Trump said whatever it was he said like Lyndon Johnson, perched on the presidential throne.
Trump’s real offense was less the word itself than its implication that certain Countries ABCD are horrible places to live, while other Countries WXYZ are quite the opposite. And since Countries ABCD are pretty much full of black and brown people, and Countries WXYZ are almost exclusively the abodes of white and yellow people, he’s a racist for noticing the difference. Hence, the media and Trump’s critics’ frenzied repetition of the R-word word, as though it were a sort of magical incantation that at some point will cause him to crumble into dust.
There are over seven and a half billion people inhabiting this orb of woe. Probably somewhere in the range of 90 percent of them would dramatically improve their lives if they left where they are and moved to the United States. Aside from the clear benefit to the Democratic Party in welcoming spanking new voters, how does it profit the American nation to import mobs of impoverished and uneducated people to drag down wages, especially in low-paying job categories, and to consume a disproportionate share of public benefits?
Keep in mind too that because a very high proportion of migrants in this category would be considered “minorities” under US law, they and their progeny would immediately qualify upon arrival for affirmative action status in hiring and education. What kind of idiot country imports foreigners and then discriminates in their favor against the natives? For what purpose – to offset historical wrongs to which the newcomers were never victim?
Conversely, the President’s defenders suggest that what’s really needed is to switch from a country-of-origin and family-reunification basis for our immigration system to a merit-based system. Let’s take only the best and the brightest, from whatever place they hail.
A supposed merit-based system is a bad idea too. First off – let’s show a little altruism here – it would make the plight of the horrible countries worse. I am not generally a fan of Pope Francis with respect to his views on migration, but he has a point when he says, like Pope John Paul II before him, that a “brain drain” from Third World countries robs them of much of their best talent and hope for improving their own homelands.
However, to note that is not to suggest that importing cherry-picked high-achievers into the US is such a blessing for us. Just as we don’t need a migrant underclass, neither do we need an imported overlord class taking the best jobs from American kids who have busted their hump getting through school and in many cases gone heavily into debt.
This is a particular problem in high-tech and IT, where massive companies with near-monopoly market control – and consequently almost total obsequy from the bipartisan political class – demand the importation of ever more foreign talent, particular in STEM fields. This is despite serious uncertainty as to whether there are enough jobs even for Americans trained in those disciplines.
A special area of concern is pushback against the Trump Administration’s modest effort to trim the much-abused H-1B program for supposedly “temporary” workers, a transgression against both the left’s multiculturalism and corporate plutocrats’ demand for cheap, docile indentured labor. There exists a kind of reverse-nativism, according to which America needs a vital “transfusion of fresh blood” from lots and lots of bright, energetic foreigners. You see, American-born people are just too lazy and stupid to succeed on their own and deserve to be replaced. If you or your offspring lose out to an “insourced” immigrant or H-1B via-holder, maybe one who can trump you on an affirmative action preference, too bad for you.
Here’s a suggestion. Let’s nix both imported underclass and overclass and have a long (if not permanent) immigration timeout like we had from the end of the first Great Wave of immigration in the mid-1920s until the current wave was set off by the 1965 immigration act. For almost half a century, those who entered in that previous wave (such as all four of this writer’s Spartan grandparents) and their progeny had time to assimilate and become Americans. Unless and until those who arrived in the past few decades have likewise Americanized (are we allowed to say that?) to the extent possible – and the millions now here illegally have been repatriated – entry should be cut down to the absolute minimum. That should be not much more than spousal visas, and those should be strictly scrutinized for fraud.
It remains to be seen whether Trump’s language, whatever it was, will translate into good policy. In the wake of “S-Gate,” he’s in a strong position. Republicans can move a clean federal government funding bill and dare the Democrats to block it and shut down the government of the whole country because it doesn’t save the “Dreamers.” But never underestimate the potential for panic among Congressional Republicans and their ability to throw away a winning hand.
That’s where the risk for Trump is. If he falls for a chump’s deal on immigration, where he yields on DACA in exchange for promises and gestures the way Ronald Reagan got suckered on the last big amnesty in 1986, his base – which indeed wouldn’t care if he gunned down someone in the middle of 5th Avenue – might not be so forgiving. They can overlook a lot, but not that. And if his base stays home this November, we’re looking at a Democratic Congress, impeachment, and President Mike Pence.
- Verdict after one year: Trump’s rough talk and the hateful reaction to it increase the chances he will stand his ground. But it still could go either way. This is the one to watch.
January 19, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Economics, Timeless or most popular | Middle East, NAFTA, NATO, United States |
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I have highlighted much of the mendacious nonsense coming out of the Lancet concerning climate change and pollution issues.
Now a hard hitting report by Mikko Paunio, a specialist in public health matters has destroyed both the credibility and integrity of two of the Lancet’s recent papers on pollution.
The GWPF, who commissioned the paper, report:
London, 18 January: A pair of influential reports published by the medical journal, The Lancet, are a “gross distortion” of public health science and threaten to devastate public health in the developing world. That is the warning by eminent epidemiologist Mikko Paunio.
The Lancet Commissions on Pollution and Health have claimed that the third world is suffering appalling health effects from industrial pollution. But as Professor Paunio explains, this is far from the truth:
“Most of the deaths that they say are caused by industrial air pollution are actually caused by domestic heating and cooking with renewable energy such as wood and dung, and most of the deaths from diarrhea that they say are caused by polluted water are actually caused by poor hygiene because the poor do not have enough water for washing.”
Professor Paunio also says that the Lancet Commissions’ proposal for a ban on new fossil-fueled power stations will be devastating for human health:
“To prevent most of the deaths from diarrhea, you need abundant water supplies, and that depends on having a reliable electricity grid, which can only come from fossil fuels. Clean air depends on centralised power generation in large power stations.”
Dr Paunio has set out his position in a hard-hitting report published by the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) this week, just ahead of an important meeting of the World Health Organization Executive, which is expected to consider the Lancet Commission’s proposals.
“Professor Paunio writes clinically and factually to demonstrate the errors, exaggerations, distortions, misquotations and suppressions of established evidence which pervade The Lancet reports. His facts and arguments are vitally important and should be widely read,” writes former Labour minister Lord Donoughue in his foreword.
Dr Paunio is a former government scientist at the European Commission and the World Bank. He works at the health ministry in Finland and is an adjunct professor at the University of Helsinki. He is best known as one of the first scientists to speak out against Andrew Wakefield’s claims, also published in The Lancet, about the MMR vaccine and autism.
Full paper (pdf)
Lord Donoghue has written the very pertinent foreword to the paper:
Professor Paunio has enjoyed a distinguished career in global public health, both in Europe and the USA. He has a proven record of countering medical falsehoods, based more on environmental propaganda than on scientific evidence. He certainly adds to that reputation in this hard-hitting and evidence-based paper. It focusses on two recent reports published (to its discredit) in the medical journal The Lancet. They have been widely quoted in the British Parliament and in the popular media. They were predictably trumpeted by climate alarmists at the 23rd UN Convention on Climate Change, clearly their target political audience.
The reports’ conclusions are supportive of the familiar climate-campaign claims that industrial development, and especially pollution derived from coal-fired power generation, are the main cause of much ill health and mortality in the world. Their political purpose is to convince global policy makers to take radical environmental action, for example by regulating and restructuring our energy economy, however inefficiently and expensively, in order to serve the noble cause of saving lives and improving health. There may be a case for that, if based on scientific facts, but Professor Paunio shows that The Lancet does not respectably advance that cause.
The Lancet’s political activism is apparently part of a wider political environmental campaign to blame almost any issue of current public and media concern on climate change (which is happening and always has): mass migration, floods, droughts, storms (now conveniently named to make a greater impact on public memory), and (allegedly) disappearing animal species such as Al Gore’s polar bears – now interestingly at a near peak of population. Professor Paunio writes clinically and factually to demonstrate the errors, exaggerations, distortions, misquotations and suppressions of established evidence which pervade The Lancet reports. Focussing on their misrepresentation of the latest factual evidence relating to the health factors involving air pollution and water supplies, he demonstrates how the main cause of global pollution deaths is from open-fire cooking and heating in the less-developed world, which causes ten times as much health damage in China and India than do their coal-fired power plants, which the climate alarmists so hate.
He also points out that global health has in fact dramatically improved during the past near two centuries of modest global warming. This is mainly due to economic development and especially because of improvements in institutional health provision in the developed world, something which the climate alarmists choose to ignore since it does not fit in with their ideological position.
Interestingly in this debate, it should be noted that modest global warming of the degree we have enjoyed is actually less health-threatening than global cooling. Warming does not significantly increase mortality; it does reduce temperature-related deaths. It is officially estimated that in the UK only 3 deaths per 100,000 of the population are heat related. However, 61 deaths per 100,000, twenty times as many, are cold related. So a cooling cycle, should it reappear, would be intrinsically more threatening to health than a warming one. This is not just in the UK. Stanford University research estimates that an increase of warming temperatures of 2.5◦C would reduce mortality in the USA by 40,000 deaths a year and so greatly reduce medical costs.
Most global ill health and mortality derives, not from industrial development and related climate matters, but from underdevelopment, especially domestic pollution and the malnutrition that can render it fatal. This does not mean that there are not serious concerns over climate change, where properly evidenced. But they should be address rationally, and not dogmatically.
Professor Paunio’s well researched paper shows that The Lancet’s concerns are not properly evidenced. His facts and arguments are vitally important and should be widely read, especially by policy makers and media commentators, not just for exposing the particular falsehoods in the reports, but also for demonstrating the dangers lying in the wider climate change debate of political groupthink.
Bernard Donoughue MA, D.Phil (Oxon)
Senior Policy Adviser to the Prime Minister 1974–79
Minister for Farming and Food 1997–99
January 18, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | The Lancet |
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Do you overeat? Did your boyfriend just break up with you? Does no one return your emails? Do you fall asleep at night and wake up in the morning? If so, you may be suffering from mental illness! Mental illness is a highly stigmatized, life-long condition, that millions do not even realize they have and only a pharmaceutical drug can fix says Pharma and its operatives.
Few marketing gambits have been as successful as Pharma’s elevation of everyday symptoms into “mental illness.” It has enabled it to aggregate “patient” groups to petition lawmakers, insurers and Medicaid and Medicare for payment of high-priced psychiatric drugs. It has allowed groups like the Pharma-funded Active Minds and NAMI to infiltrate college campuses and proclaim the ups and downs of growing up and college life “mental illness”––growing the market. And now it has allowed it to infiltrate Boston’s Museum of Science.
Last spring an exhibit called Many Faces of Our Mental Health debuted at the museum, taking Pharma’s everyone-is-mentally-ill message to museum goers and the general public. Visitors to the exhibit “might gain new insights and better understand the complex nature of mental health,” said the press release. They might “reflect on how mental health affects their own lives or the lives of friends and family.” Hey, they might have “mental illness” too!
Funders of the exhibit included the Pharma-backed NAMI and the Sidney R. Baer, Jr. and Sidney A. Swensrud foundations both of which stress screening and early intervention for childhood “mental illness.” Both mechanisms are widely seen as a way to grow the market for psychiatric drugs. In fact, the Baer Foundation funds the Pharma-funded Joan Luby who not only finds mental abnormalities in toddlers, she thinks they are present in “late preterm” babies!
There is no biological test for “mental illness”––whether depression, anxiety or bipolar disorder––and until recently, depression and anxiety were not even considered “mental illness.” Now, television drug ads, faux patient groups and faux public service announcements and online quizzes have produced a groundswell of self-diagnosed “mentally ill” people. Pharma funded patient groups like Active Minds and NAMI have even made the badge of mental illness “cool” on high school and college campuses.
“When insurers balk at reimbursing patients for new prescription medications,” says the Los Angeles Times, these groups “typically swing into action, rallying sufferers to appear before public and consumer panels [and] contact lawmakers.”
With an estimated one quarter of the population now taking expensive psychiatric drugs, Pharma’s everyone-is-mentally-ill ploy enriches Wall Street and raises our health care costs. Gone are the days when bad moods were attributed to problems with finance, romance, debt, jobs, housing, careers, family, marriages and health. Worse, Pharma’s everyone-is-mentally-ill ruse siphons off legitimate, activist anger at a government system that keeps people poor and powerless by suggesting they have a personal problem and the answer is a happy pill. Also known as––retreat into individualism.
“People living with mental illness can lead very productive lives and this exhibition highlights this important concept,” said Christine Reich, vice president of exhibit development and conservation, about the Museum of Science exhibit adding this commercial for expensive Pharma drugs: “Mental illness is greatly affect[ed] by the treatment options that are available.”
Martha Rosenberg is an investigative health reporter. She is the author of Born With A Junk Food Deficiency: How Flaks, Quacks and Hacks Pimp The Public Health (Prometheus).
January 17, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Corruption, Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | Boston Museum of Science, United States |
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Israel’s wall, on confiscated Palestinian land, has blocked travel to and from Palestinian cities, towns and villages in the West Bank for over 15 years.
Another barrier, similarly manned by Israeli soldiers, has blocked travel to and from Gaza for almost a quarter of a century.
The Israeli government recently publicly added 20 groups to those it bans from traveling to Israel. Following a previous Israeli ban in 2017, Alison Weir wrote the following:
Dear Israeli Government:
You’ve recently banned foreigners who support boycotts against Israel or Israeli settlements from being allowed to enter Israel – even Jewish foreigners, a first for the self-proclaimed Jewish state After all, your “Law of Return” has allowed (and encouraged) Jewish foreigners to freely immigrate to Israel, even as multitudes of Palestinians have been banned from returning to their homes.
People throughout the Western world have objected in outrage to your new law, particularly Jewish Westerners who have family and connections in Israel from whom they’ll be cut off in retaliation for their political positions.
Critics, even some who oppose boycotting Israel and who have had no problem with excluding Palestinians, have called out the law for diverse reasons: its quashing of free debate and political expression, its anti-democratic nature, how it will affect them and others personally.
I support these objections.
But I’m not trying to visit Israel.
I want to go to Bethlehem and Nablus, Ramallah and Hebron, Jenin and Tulkarem. I hope to return to Khan Yunis, Rafah, Gaza City, and numerous other towns and villages in the West Bank and Gaza.
In other words, I want to go to Palestine – a country recognized by 136 countries around the world. But your law, astoundingly, prevents me from visiting that country. You control entry and exit to the places I want to visit, even though they’re not part of your territory, or included in your exclusive democracy.
When I was born, Palestine referred to the whole of the land that your founders then ethnically cleansed and renamed. Now, it officially refers to a few segments of land, surrounded and trapped.
Unlike the residents of every other country on earth, Palestinians are not free to travel to and from their own country unless a foreign country gives them permission – a normally universal right that you routinely deny: to young and old, Muslims and Christians, professors and paupers, men and women.
Visitors are similarly obstructed. You decide whether they can get in, and whether they can get out.
When I try to visit Bethlehem, for example, I must face your armed soldiers manning the Kafkaesque, towering concrete wall you have erected on Palestinian land. These gun-toting youngsters will decree whether or not I and others – including Palestinian descendants of Bethlehem’s ancient shepherds – can pass through.
In other words, Israel is essentially imprisoning over 4 million men, women, and children (with some help from Egypt, its proxy to the south). Israeli jailers, euphemistically “border guards,” determine who may even visit this incarcerated population, and what supplies may reach them.
Over the years I’ve seen you prevent numerous individuals and groups, many bringing medicines and life-saving supplies, from visiting this captive population. You’ve blocked sons from visiting dying mothers, suffering children from receiving critical medical care, malnourished toddlers from receiving help.
It is a profound shame upon the world that this cruel and unconscionable condition has been permitted to persist year after year. There should have been massive and irresistible objections long before your recent legislation.
I remember when the United States opposed the Iron Curtain. Today, the U.S. gives the perpetrator of this current captivity $10 million per day.
Israel already denied me entry once 15 years ago, locking me up for 28 hours in a detention cell in Ben Gurion Airport before expelling me. I remember Israeli officials telling me I was not “allowed into Israel.” They didn’t even supply a reason.
Next time, they may say it’s because I endorse BDS, which I wholeheartedly do.
But I’m not trying to go to Israel. I want to go to Palestine.
– Alison Weir
January 17, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, Timeless or most popular | Human rights, Israel, Zionism |
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Face the truth: Israel won’t willingly return the lands and resources it has stolen unless slapped with tough, sustained sanctions. Civil society in the US and UK must end the conspiracy among their warped government ‘élites’ that makes a mockery of international law.
It goes something like this:
“Listen up, you wretched Palestinians. There’s no way you’re getting your lands back, or a state of your own, because that would make our Zionist buddies feel upset and insecure. And you know how their security matters above everyone else’s. Besides, God told them they could grab your land and kick you out even if they don’t really have any ancestral connection to it. So you rabble don’t belong here. And you might as well know that we support them 100 percent in their efforts to make life so f*cking unbearable that you all piss off somewhere else – and we don’t care where just as long as our beloved friends get their hands on your farms and homes and resources. Naturally we’ve suspended your human rights, and international law simply isn’t available to you.
“You don’t like being shafted? Tough. Learn to accept it. Bow down to those who are favoured by God, as we have done.”
signed: US and UK, adoring sponsors of God’s Rogue Regime
That, essentially, has been the West’s attitude for the last 50 years. And, if we don’t change it, that’s how it will for another 50, by which time Israel will rule the Middle East and possibly beyond.
Life for the Palestinians hasn’t improved. It has only got worse under the tyrrany of Israel’s military occupation. And throughout that time the performance of their representatives to the outside world, the PLO (Palestine Liberation Organisation), has been chronic verging on useless. Thanks in part to the Palestinian leadership’s diplomatic ineptitude and quisling tendencies Israel has been able to expand its frontiers and flourish far more than it had any right to.
By 2015, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu felt untouchable enough to say that if he was returned to power, a Palestinian state would not be established because handing back territory would threaten Israel’s security.
And in August 2017 he announced that Israel would keep the West Bank permanently and there would be no more uprooting of settlements: “We are here to stay forever…. This is the inheritance of our ancestors. This is our land.”
Netanyahu’s ancestors, by the way, are from… where? And the rest of the thugs in his administration… where do their roots lie? Few if any can show ancestral links to the Biblical lands they claim are theirs. The true inheritors, of course, are the Palestinian peoples who have been there since the days when Jerusalem was a Canaanite city.
Netanyahu’s position echoes his Likud Party’s stance back in 1999 and 2009, so western politicians should be well acquainted with it. To remind them, David Morrison has produced a neat analysis of Israel’s unchanging position:
- “The Government of Israel flatly rejects the establishment of a Palestinian Arab state west of the Jordan river.”
- “The Jordan Valley and the territories that dominate it shall be under Israeli sovereignty. The Jordan river will be the permanent eastern border of the State of Israel.”
- “Jerusalem is the eternal, united capital of the State of Israel and only of Israel. The government will flatly reject Palestinian proposals to divide Jerusalem”
- “The Jewish communities in Judea, Samaria and Gaza are the realization of Zionist values [written before Israel removed its troops]. Settlement of the land is a clear expression of the unassailable right of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel and constitutes an important asset in the defense of the vital interests of the State of Israel. The Likud will continue to strengthen and develop these communities and will prevent their uprooting.”
Likud’s message still stands. Tzipi Hotovely, Israel’s Deputy Foreign Minister and second only in ranking to Netanyahu, told Israeli diplomats in 2015 that “we need to return to the basic truth of our rights to this country…. This land is ours. All of it is ours. We did not come here to apologise for that.” She rattled on about God having promised the land of Israel to the Jews and how she was going to get the international community to “recognise Israel’s right to build homes for Jews in their homeland, everywhere”.
Zionist leaders before Netanyahu broadcast their fraudulent claims to the land and bragged about their plan to seize it. Their evil intent has been well advertised. Even if Netanyahu wanted a two-state solution he would be opposed by his own party and the five others making up his ruling coalition, virtually all of which stand against Palestinians having a state of their own.
Israel’s bad behaviour richly rewarded
As David Morrison and others have repeatedly pointed out, the UN Security Council has never applied sanctions against Israel to force a reversal of its illegal land grab. Instead of punishing the regime for its 50 years of terror, the US, UK and EU have showered it with privileges.
Since 1967, the US has handed Israel well over $100 billion in mostly military aid and provided political and diplomatic cover by vetoing resolutions critical of it in the UN Security Council. Obama before he left office guaranteed Israel a further $38 billion in military aid over the next ten years.
Hard-pressed American taxpayers still don’t seem to have grasped this misappropriation of their funds or they’d surely be angry enough to stop it.
The EU for its part allowed Israel to sign up to the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership in 1995 and gave it privileged access to EU markets under the EU-Israel Association Agreement of 2000, even though it breached the basic terms of membership from the start and continues to do so.So there are no painful consequences for Israel’s bad behaviour, just rich rewards.
Maintaining the illusion of a peace process
The peace process is, of course, a sham. Anyone who believes in it is hallucinating. But to perpetuate the cruel illusion Netanyahu offers an occasional glimmer of hope for a ‘negotiated’ settlement provided there are no awkward preconditions. In any event he will ensure the talks go nowhere, just as he has done many times before, aided and abetted by discredited ‘peace broker’ America and always blaming the Palestinians. It is patently obvious that Israel and the US (and indeed the UK) conspire to keep the idea of a peace process alive in order to provide a smoke-screen while Israel continues its expansionist policy and establishes more ‘facts on the ground’ designed to make its occupation irreversible.
Ban Ki-moon said two years ago: “The United Nations is committed to working to create the conditions for the parties to return to meaningful negotiations. That is the one and only path to a just and lasting solution — an end to the occupation that began in 1967…”
First, “meaningful negotiations” simply aren’t going to happen; and if they do they’ll lead nowhere as before. Besides, negotiations between a strong party backed by mighty powers and a weak demoralised party are unlikely to produce a “just” solution. Second, it is not “the only path”. There’s law and sanctions. And the law has already spoken. All that’s needed is the integrity and guts to enforce it. Nothing will change until the UN — or a significant section of the international community — rises to the moral challenge and enforces international law and the many resolutions relating to Israel’s crimes, and slaps Israel with severe sanctions until it complies. As long as it does nothing the UN is seen to be in on the conspiracy too.
The British government knows the facts. So what on earth was Ambassador Peter Wilson, UK Deputy Permanent Representative to the United Nations, thinking when he recently addressed the Security Council briefing on the Middle East Peace Process?
“Support for a two-state solution is the only way to ensure a just and lasting resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict…. The United Kingdom’s longstanding position on the Middle East Peace Process remains clear and unchanged: we support a negotiated settlement leading to a safe and secure Israel living alongside a viable and sovereign Palestinian state; based on 1967 borders with agreed land swaps, Jerusalem as the shared capital of both states, and a just, fair, agreed and realistic settlement for refugees.
Theresa May has all her ministers and MPs mouthing and writing the same tosh, as did her predecessors. It isn’t difficult given that 80 percent of them are reported to be signed-up Friends of Israel. We watched their grovelling worship of the rogue regime — and of the arch-criminal Netanyahu — at the Balfour centenary celebrations in London. Wilson added:
“The leadership and engagement that President Trump and his administration have demonstrated in reinvigorating the Middle East Peace Process must have our support. We call on the region, Israelis, and Palestinians to seize the opportunity that this presents and turn 2017 not just into another anniversary of occupation, but a new anniversary of peace.”
Well, we’ve seen Trump’s bull-in-a-china-shop leadership at work, gifting Jerusalem to Israel, and what that did for peace.
The Norwegian Refugee Council, an organisation not given to exaggeration, reacted by reminding everybody that acquiring or annexing territory is prohibited under international law, and the US is disregarding the international community’s long-standing position of not recognising Israel’s unlawful annexation of East Jerusalem. Recognising Jerusalem as the capital of Israel is tantamount to condoning annexation and the occupation. Furthermore Israel, as the occupying power, is prohibited from forcibly transferring Palestinians out of their homes in Jerusalem. Israel disregards this with its programme of evictions, home demolitions and residency revocations. “The US administration’s declaration risks condoning these practices and other violations of international law in the occupied Palestinian territory that NRC witnesses daily…. The international community should insist on respect for international law and the enforcement of existing UN resolutions, while governments should use their influence to hold those responsible for violations to account.”
Unfortunately respect for international law, enforcing UN resolutions and applying sanctions are not part of the US-UK tool kit unless directed against Iran and Israel’s other enemies.
So, as David Morrison warns, it looks as if “today’s Palestinian children will still be living under occupation when they are grandparents”.
And we as a nation will never be able to hold our heads up on account of the humiliation we heaped on them.
January 17, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular | European Union, Human rights, Palestine, UK, United States, Zionism |
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The audacious multiple-drone attack on Russia’s military bases in Syria is increasingly looking like a false flag carried out by the American Central Intelligence Agency. Sophisticated technology and a Ukrainian connection indicate that the swarm attack with 13 unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) was not the work solely of Syrian anti-government militants.
What’s more the Russian government appears to have the incriminating evidence on who sanctioned the drone attacks against the Russian air base at Hmeimim and its naval port at Tartus on January 6.
The weapons failed to execute their deadly mission. Of the 13 drones used, seven were shot down by Russian Pantsir S-1 air defenses and six were safely landed by Russian electronic jamming technology. Those captured intact UAVs will have provided forensic information about what agency authored the plot.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has said coyly, “We know who did it”, without as of yet specifying the culprit.
Images of the UAVs released by the Russian Ministry of Defense showed rudimentary construction from what appeared to be plywood.
However, the navigation technology and explosives onboard were sophisticated and professionally made. This was no amateurish mission, as might have been expected if militants alone had carried it out.
Furthermore, the drones were unlikely to have been made by Syrian militants. Russian analysis of the explosive PENT substance indicates that Ukraine was the source. That points to the Americans as the bridging agency between Ukraine and Syria.
Another key factor is that at the time of the attacks, Russian military detected a US Poseidon surveillance aircraft in proximity over the Syrian coastal area. The Poseidon would have the ability to guide the drones to the precise location of the Russian bases. Although the plane is commonly thought of as part of the US Navy fleet, that does not preclude the CIA having their own Poseidon aircraft.
It is also significant that Crimean lawmaker Ruslan Balbek has recently claimed that American Poseidon aircraft are being used to mount drone attacks by the US-backed Kiev regime. Balbek went further and said be believes the objective is to conduct a false flag attack on the minority Tatar community in Crimea. The “atrocity” would then be pinned on the Crimean authorities which the Western media would in turn amplify as condemnation of Russia.
On the Syrian attack, Russian President Vladimir Putin said last week at a meeting with senior Russian media executives that the culprit was not Turkey even though the drones were initiated from the northern Syrian province of Idlib where Turkish military forces are associated with militant groups.
“The attacks were provocations to destroy relations between Russia, Turkey and Iran. They were provocateurs, but they were not Turks,” said Putin.
Russia has yet to publicly attribute explicit blame for who was behind the drone operation. But the Kremlin appears to be confident in its incriminating information.
“Those aircraft were only camouflaged – I want to emphasize this – to look like handicraft production. In fact, it is quite obvious that there were elements of high-tech nature there,” Putin said.
The Russian president appeared to address the culprit with a cryptic remark: “You know that I know,” he said.
For its part, the Pentagon has categorically denied US involvement in the drone incidents. At a press conference in Washington DC last week, Marine Corps Lieutenant General Kenneth F McKenzie Jr said: “The United States was not involved in any way with the drone attack on Russian bases at any time.”
Another Pentagon spokesmen said accusations of American complicity were “ridiculous” and “reckless”.
The US military chiefs may be genuinely speaking honestly – as far as they know about the circumstances. In other words, it is plausible that the Pentagon was not involved in the drone attacks.
If so then that points to the other candidate being the CIA. After all, as US-based political analyst Randy Martin commented for this column, it is the CIA which has been the main driver behind the entire American drone weapon and surveillance program around the world, from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Yemen and Ukraine to a swathe of African countries.
Given the routine clandestine and autonomous nature of the CIA, it is conceivable that neither the Pentagon nor even the Trump White House would be aware of all the agency’s operations. The agency is apt to go rogue at any time, and the lack of knowledge among other branches of government in Washington affords the all-important foil of “plausible denial”.
Here is a speculative, but credible scenario: CIA operatives on the ground in Syria launch a swarm of armed drones on the Russian bases. The rickety design of the UAVs is aimed at giving the appearance of Turkish-backed militants in Idlib province. As Putin remarked, the objective was to scapegoat Turkey as complicit. If that worked, then relations between Moscow and Ankara, as well as Tehran, would become acutely strained. Washington is known to be unhappy with the rapprochement between Putin and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
The hi-tech navigation equipment and explosives onboard the drones, plus the telltale presence of an American Poseidon surveillance aircraft in the skies above suggest the involvement of a US state agency – the CIA.
Washington’s agenda in Syria has nothing to do with defeating terrorism. It is to propagate instability and chaos to undermine the Syrian government of President Assad and allied Russian achievement in overcoming the US regime-change plot. Nothing would please the American agenda more than for Russia, Turkey and Iran to bust up their detente in Syria.
The CIA has the expertise and technological capability to mount the sophisticated drone attack on the Russian bases. It also has the motivation to carry it out to further its regime-change intrigues. Who gains?
Still, there is another wild card in the pack, as analyst Randy Martin posits. He says: “The swarm drone attack was probably the first time that such a tactic was ever used in military records. It may have been carried out not only as a false flag to blame Turkey, but also as a way for the operatives to test Russian air defenses and signals intelligence.”
Martin added: “The danger is that we can expect more such attacks, perhaps with deadly consequences, against Russian forces in Syria as well as against Crimea and separatists in Eastern Ukraine.”
The implications are grave. If it is confirmed that the CIA were behind the drone attack on Russian bases in Syria, then that is tantamount to an act of war by the Americans – regardless of it being actioned by a rogue agency.
That might explain why the Kremlin is holding its cards very close to its chest on the matter. This is explosive.
January 17, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Deception, False Flag Terrorism, Timeless or most popular | CIA, Russia, Syria, United States |
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This week marks the 37th anniversary of a pledge made by the United States in 1981:
“The United States pledges that it is and from now on will be the policy of the United States not to intervene, directly or indirectly, politically or militarily, in Iran’s internal affairs.”
This week also marks 37 continuous years of the United States failing to uphold its pledge: the 1981 Algiers Accords.
Just how many people have heard of the 1981 Algiers Accords, a bilateral treaty signed on January 19, 1981 between the United States of America and the Islamic Republic of Iran? Chances are, not many. Just as chances are that not many are fully aware of what actually led to the signing of this treaty.
Following the success of the 1979 Iranian Revolution that overthrew the Shah, America’s strongman in Iran, plans were made to topple the new government in Tehran. In 1980, under the Carter administration, the United States began clandestine radio broadcasts into Iran from Egypt. The broadcasts called for Khomeini’s overthrow and urged support for Shahpur Bakhtiar [1] , the last prime minister under the Shah. Other plans included the failed Nojeh coup plot as well as plans for a possible American invasion of Iran using Turkish bases [2].
The new Revolutionary government in Iran, with a look to the past and the 1953 British-CIA coup d’état that overthrew the Mossadegh government and reinstalled the Shah, had good reason to believe that the United States was planning to abort the revolution in its nascent stages. Fearful, enthusiastic students took over the U.S. embassy in Tehran and took the diplomats as hostages in order to prevent such plans from fruition.
These events led to the negotiation and conclusion the Algiers Accords, point 1 of which was the pledge by the United States not to intervene in Iran’s internal affairs in anyway. The Algiers Accords brought about the release of the American hostages and established the Iran–U.S. Claims Tribunal (“Tribunal”) at The Hague, the Netherlands. The Tribunal ruled consistently “the Declarations were to be interpreted in accordance with the process of interpretation set out in the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties.” (*)
A pledge is only as valid and worthy as the person making it. From the onset, the United States failed to uphold its own pledge. For instance, starting in 1982, the CIA provided $100,000 a month to a group in Paris called the Front for the Liberation of Iran. The group headed by Ali Amini who had presided over the reversion of Iranian oil to foreign control after the CIA-backed coup in 1953 [4]. Additionally, America provided support to two Iranian paramilitary groups based in Turkey, one of them headed by General Bahram Aryana, the former Shah’s army chief with close ties to Bakhtiar [5].
In 1986, the CIA went so far as to pirate Iran’s national television network frequency to transmit an address by the Shah’s son, Reza Pahlavi, over Iranian TV in which he vowed: “I will return,” [6]. The support did not end there. Pahlavi had C.LA. funding for a number of years in the eighties which stopped with the Iran-Contra affair. He was successful at soliciting funds from the emir of Kuwait, the emir of Bahrain, the king of Morocco, and the royal family of Saudi Arabia, all staunch U.S. allies [7].
In late 2002, Michael Ledeen joined Morris Amitay, vice-president of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs; ex-CIA head James Woolsey; former Reagan administration official Frank Gaffney; former senator Paul Simon; and oil consultant Rob Sobhani to set up a group called the Coalition for Democracy in Iran (CDI) [8]. In spite of his lack of charisma as a leader, in May, 2003, Michael Ledeen wrote a policy brief for the American Enterprise Institute Web site arguing that Pahlavi would make a suitable leader for a transitional government, describing him as “widely admired inside Iran, despite his refreshing lack of avidity for power or wealth.” [9] In August 2003, the Pentagon issued new guidelines -All meetings with Iranian dissidents had to be cleared with Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith. Reza Pahlavis’ name was included in the list of contacts that had been meeting with Pentagon analysts [10].
Concurrent with this direct interference, and in the following decade, Washington concentrated its efforts into putting a chokehold on the Iranian economy. A provision of the Algiers Accords was that “the United States will revoke all trade sanctions which were directed against Iran in the period November 4, 1979, to date.” Embargoes and sanctions became the norm. Failing to interfere in Iran’s domestic affairs in order to topple the Islamic Republic through economic hardship, the United States once again turned up pressure through broadcasts and direct support for dissidents and terrorists – in conjunction with economic sanctions.
This stranglehold was taking place while concurrently, and in violation of the Algiers Accords, the CIA front National Endowment for Democracy was providing funds to various groups, namely “Iran Teachers Association” (1991, 1992, 1993, 1994,2001, 2002, 2003); The Foundation for Democracy in Iran (FDI founded in 1995 by Kenneth R. Timmerman, Peter Rodman, Joshua Muravchik, and American intelligence officials advocating regime change in Iran), National Iranian American Council (NIAC) 2002, 2005, 2006), and others [11].
Funds from NED to interfere in Iran continued after the signing of the JCPOA. The 2016 funding stood at well over $1m.
In September 2000, Senators openly voiced support for the MEK Terror group Mojaheddin-e-khalgh. Writing for The New Yorker, Connie Bruck revealed that: “Israel is said to have had a relationship with the M.E.K at least since the late nineties, and to have supplied a satellite signal for N.C.RI. broadcasts from Paris into Iran.” [12]. Perhaps their relationship with Israel and their usefulness explains why President Bush accorded the group ‘special persons status’ [13].
During the illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq, the terrorist group got protection from the U.S. troops in Iraq despite getting pressure from the Iraqi government to leave the country (CNN [14]). In 2005, “a Farsi-speaking former CIA officer says he was approached by neoconservatives in the Pentagon who asked him to go to Iran and oversee “MEK [Mujahedeen-e Khalq] cross-border operations” into Iran.”
Moreover, according to Pakistani Intelligence, the United States secretly used yet another terrorist group – the Jundallah, to stage a series of deadly attacks against Iran. The United States seems to have a soft spot for terrorists.
In addition to CIA funding and covert operations with help from terrorists, the United States actively used radio broadcasts into Iran to stir up unrest including Radio Farda and VOA Persian. It comes as no surprise then that the recipient of NED funds, NIAC, should encourage such broadcasts. Also, the BBC “received significant” sum of money from the US government to help combat the blocking of TV and internet services in countries including Iran and China.”
It is crucial to note that while the United States was conducting secret negotiations with Iran which led to the signing of the Joint Comprehensive Plan Of Action (JCPOA), the MEK were delisted as a foreign terror organization. This provides them with the legitimacy to write opinion pieces in leading American papers.
Also important to note that during the JCPOA negotiations in which the United States participated as a party to an agreement, it was busy flouting the Treaty with its broadcasts in to Iran – apparently, without objection. But the violation was not limited to broadcasts. Item B of the Treaty’s preamble states:
“Through the procedures provided in the declaration relating to the claims settlement agreement, the United States agrees to terminate all legal proceedings in United States courts involving claims of United States persons and institutions against Iran and its state enterprises, to nullify all attachments and judgments obtained therein, to prohibit all further litigation based on such claims, and to bring about the termination of such claims through binding arbitration.”
Unsurprisingly, the US again failed to keep its pledge and a partisan legislation allocated millions for the former hostages.
Clearly, the United States felt bound by the Treaty for it recognized Point 2. Of the Algiers Accords when in January 2016 Iran received its funds frozen by America in a settlement at the Hague. Perhaps for no other reason than to pacify Iran post JCPOA while finding the means to re-route Iran’s money back into American hands.
It would require a great deal of time and verse to cite every instance and detail of the United States of America’s violation of a Treaty, of its pledge, for the past 37 years. But never has its attitude been more brazen in refusing to uphold its pledge and its open violation of international law than when President Trump openly voiced his support for protests in Iran and called for regime change. The US then called an emergency UNSC meeting on January 5, 2018 to demand that the UN interfere in Iran’s internal affairs.
America’s history clearly demonstrates that it has no regard for international law and treaties. Its pledge is meaningless. International law is a tool for America that does not apply to itself. This is a well-documented fact – and perhaps none has realized this better than the North Korean leader – Kim Jong-un. But what is inexplicable is the failure of Iranians to address these violations.
Endnotes
[*] U.S. TREATIES AND AGREEMENTS
The Vienna Convention on theLaw of Treaties defines a treaty “as an international agreement concluded between States in written form and governed by international law, whether embodied in a single instrument or in two or more related instruments and whatever its particular designation.”
Under United States law, however, there is a distinction made between the terms treaty and executive agreement. ” Generally, a treaty is a binding international agreement and an executive agreement applies in domestic law only. Under international law, however, both types of agreements are considered binding. Regardless of whether an international agreement is called a convention, agreement, protocol, accord, etc. https://www.law.berkeley.edu/library/dynamic/guide.php?id=65)
[1] David Binder, “U.S. Concedes It Is Behind Anti-Khomeini Broadcasts,” New York Times, 29 June 1980,
[2] Mehmet Akif Okur, “The American Geopolitical Interests and Turkey on the Eve of the September 12, 1980 Coup”, CTAD, Vol.11, No.21, p. 210-211
[3] Malintoppi, Loretta. World Arbitration Reporter (WAR) – 2nd edition, December 2010
https://arbitrationlaw.com/library/algiers-accord-and-iran-united-states-claims-tribunal-1981-algiers-world-arbitration. Downloaded January 14, 2018
https://treaties.un.org/doc/publication/unts/volume%201155/volume-1155-i-18232-english.pdf
[4] Bob Woodward, “Veil: The Secret Wars of the CIA, 1981-1987”, New York: Simon & Schuster, 1987, p. 480. (Cited by Stephen R. Shalom, “The United States and the Gulf War”, Feb. 1990).
[5]Leslie H. Gelb, “U.S. Said to Aid Iranian Exiles in Combat and Political Units,” New York Times, 7 Mar. 1982, pp. A1, A12.
[6]Tower Commission, p. 398; Farhang, “Iran-Israel Connection,” p. 95. (Cited by Stephen R. Shalom, “The United States and the Gulf War”, Feb. 1990).
[7] Connie Bruck, ibid
[8] Andrew I Killgore. The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs. Washington:Dec 2003. Vol. 22, Iss. 10, p. 17
[9] Connie Bruck, ibid
[10] Eli Lake, New York Sun , Dec. 2, 2003
http://daily.nysun.com/Repository/getFiles.asp?Style=OliveXLib:ArticleToMail&Type=text/html&Path=NYS/2003/12/02&ID=Ar00100
[11] International Democracy Development, Google Books, p. 59 https://books.google.com/books?id=ReTtEj6_myAC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false
[12] Connie Bruck, “A reporter at large: Exiles; How Iran’s expatriates are gaming the nuclear threat”. The New Yorker, March 6, 2006
[13] US State Department Daily Briefing http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/dpb/2004/34680.htm
[14] Michael Ware, “U.S. protects Iranian Opposition Group in Iraq” 6, April 2007 http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/meast/04/05/protected.terrorists/index.html?eref=rss_topstories
January 17, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Timeless or most popular | Algiers Accords, CIA, Iran, JCPOA, Sanctions against Iran, United States |
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It’s a glaring contradiction that while US President Donald Trump has repeatedly voiced a desire for restoring friendly relations with Russia, the two countries stand even more frigidly apart than ever.
One year after Trump’s inauguration as the 45th US president, several metrics indicate bilateral ties have actually deteriorated, despite Trump’s oft-stated approval for better relations between Washington and Moscow.
Trump has said US cooperation with Russia should be seen as “an asset, not a liability.” Many people around the world, including within the US, would agree with Trump’s view. So, why the inertia in translating this into practical policy?
Not merely inertia, but in fact the opposite direction. The seizure of Russian diplomatic properties in the US, restrictions on Russian news organizations, and expanding sanctions on Russian business leaders are just some of the issues indicating growing hostility from Washington. Naturally, Russia has responded with its own countermeasures, which in turn exacerbates the antagonism.
The Trump administration’s green-lighting of lethal weapons supply to the Kiev regime in Ukraine regardless of Moscow’s appeals, and the emerging policy of Balkanizing Syria under a continuing American military presence in that country – again in contradiction to Moscow’s concerns – are more evidence of deteriorating relations.
While Trump was elected in November 2016 on a platform that included a reset from the antagonistic policy towards Russia under Democratic President Barack Obama – a policy Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton was also advocating – the upshot has been a continuation of hostility under Trump.
This raises troubling questions about the limits of presidential power to exert avowed policies.
One of the levers of control over the Trump White House has been the relentless “Russiagate scandal.” Trump’s domestic political enemies within the intelligence establishment, Democrat politicians and aligned news media outlets have drowned out public discourse with endless – and baseless – claims that Trump benefited from alleged Russian interference in the presidential election.
Trump has feistily brushed off these claims as “fake news.” Nevertheless, the saturated media insinuations of Trump as a “Kremlin stooge” have inevitably hampered his options for bilateral relations with Russia.
When Trump first met Vladimir Putin at the G20 summit in Hamburg last July, both leaders greeted each other cordially. That caused cynical comments in US media of Trump being “played by Putin.”
They agreed to bring the Syrian war to a rapid close and to work together to implement a negotiated resolution of the Ukraine conflict. But US policy has since become even more menacing in Syria, with the recent announcement that it is forming a 30,000-member Border Security Force (BSF). That development prompted Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov this week to say that he believes Washington is now intending to break up Syrian territorial integrity.
Then when Trump met Putin for a second time at the APEC summit hosted by the Philippines during November, the two presidents’ encounter was strangely crimped from a bilateral meeting to a glancing conversation on the sidelines of the event. News images showed Trump and Putin still enjoyed a cordial relationship. Trump also said then he accepted Putin’s assurances that Russia had not meddled in American domestic politics. Why the constraint then on having a bilateral meeting?
Moreover, a month later, Trump signed off on a new National Security Strategy document in December which explicitly accused Russia of using “subversive tactics” and “interfering in the domestic political affairs of countries around the world.”
The document, which Trump endorsed with his signature, went on to state: “The United States and Europe will work together to counter Russian subversion and aggression.”
Moscow has consistently responded with disdain to all such claims, pointing out the lack of evidence, and that the claims amount to a “frenzy of Russophobia.” Russia has admonished that this is damaging the prospect of restoring relations.
What is lamentable is that even though the Russophobia is at the level of baseless hysteria and wantonly irrational, it has had the palpable effect of negating any attempt to restore US-Russia relations to a more sane footing.
The “Russiagate scandal” can be ridiculed as a contrived drama that keeps running and running. It may be dismissed with contempt as a load of hogwash whipped by Trump’s political enemies within the US foreign policy establishment. But the disturbing thing is that the Russophobia has succeeded in controlling the White House.
Top Russian diplomat Lavrov this week reviewed priority foreign policy issues. They included establishing a peaceful end to the wars in Syria and Ukraine, as well as creating a peaceful settlement to the Korean nuclear crisis.
President Trump, from his brief personal meetings so far with Putin and Lavrov – the latter hosted in the White House – surely appears disposed to work with Moscow in addressing the foreign policy problems in a constructive bilateral manner. That is, in theory.
Regrettably, however, such cooperation between the American and Russian leaders will not be permitted to happen because of the Russiagate specter that has been conjured up over the Trump administration.
Hence, pressing global security concerns that would benefit from US-Russia cooperative dialogue are being jeopardized by the deepening, irrational chill in relations.
The baleful effect of this anti-Russian paranoia was illustrated in an article published last week by the Daily Beast. It was reported that a member of Trump’s National Security Council proposed early in the new presidency last year that the US should scale back its military forces in the Baltic countries.
Russia has long complained that the buildup of US-led NATO forces on its European borders is a provocative threat to its national security.
The idea of repositioning US troops from the Baltic was pitched as a “gesture to the Kremlin that would enable the nascent Trump administration to see its desire for friendly relations with Russia would be reciprocated.”
Apparently, the proposal was quickly rebuffed out of concern about how it would fuel US media claims of Trump being a Russian puppet.
Another idea that was similarly rejected was the lifting of US sanctions on Russia’s economy.
The Daily Beast goes on to make the pejorative editorial comment that the floated proposals “fit a pattern within the Trump administration… of sidling up to Russia. Taken in sum, the pattern raises questions about whether Trump and his team are willing to pay Russia back for the Kremlin’s role in the [presidential] election.”
Note how the article asserts as fact the dubious speculation about Russia interfering in US politics.
Reportedly the proposals for trying to restore relations with Russia have since dried up within Trump’s National Security Council.
Indeed, the NSC official named as the originator of the ideas – Kevin Harrington – is understood to have led the team that produced the hawkish National Security Strategy published at the end of last year.
Thus, from reasonable proposals to engage with Russia floated at the start of Trump’s first year in office, within 12 months the administration has absorbed and adopted the Russophobia narrative.
Anti-Russian group think espoused by US elites has become institutionalized, against the stated views of the president and the American electorate. Where’s the democracy in that?
READ MORE:
Senate probe expanded to anyone ‘of Russian descent or nationality’ – email
January 16, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Militarism, Russophobia, Timeless or most popular | Russia, United States |
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The 2018 Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) will be released soon. No significant changes should be expected, as there is little time left until it is officially made public. This is a document of great importance. It is coming out just as arms control is on the verge of disintegration. The draft review was published by HuffPost.
America is planning to upgrade its entire nuclear arsenal. It will replace warheads and modernize its command-and-control systems in order to stay at the “head of the pack.” The potential nuclear scenarios include responding to a “significant non-nuclear strategic attack” that would result in large-scale casualties or target key components of US infrastructure. For comparison, the 2010 review stated that nuclear weapons could be used in “extreme circumstances to defend the vital interests of the United States or its allies and partners.” No nuclear arms can be used against non-nuclear countries that comply with their non-proliferation obligations. And with only a little stretch of the imagination a “significant non-nuclear strategic attack” could mean anything. Many scenarios might fall into this category. As one can see, the first-use constraints are going to be relaxed. The 2010 review also opted not to develop new warheads. It did not anticipate any new missions or capabilities. In a major policy shift, the new draft document does away with these restrictions.
The 2018 draft review includes a low-yield warhead developed especially for sea-based strategic nuclear missiles. The warhead will include the trigger. The thermonuclear part of the two-stage warhead will be removed. The idea is that submarine-based weapons will serve as the means to “deter” Russia in Europe.
Actually, the plan has been under consideration for some time. Those who follow the latest developments on this topic remember the statement made by Air Force Gen. Paul Selva, the Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, last August. The official praised the idea of incorporating low-yield warheads into the designs of strategic missiles.
Does the United States really need new weapons to deter Russia, a program that will require a lot of money, time, and effort? What about the low-yield nuclear weapons already in its inventory, such as tactical bombs and air-launched cruise missiles? Are they not enough?
Actually, the only advantage of an SLBM-launched low-yield warhead is its ability to penetrate Russia’s S-400 and S-300V4 theater air-defense systems. They can intercept targets moving at 4,800 or 4,500 meters per second or intermediate-range missiles launched from a distance of about 2,500–3,500 kilometers. But the systems cannot hit a Trident SLBM until Russia’s S-500 air-defense system is operational.
Low-yield warheads will be seen as more usable, lowering the nuclear threshold. The idea of producing new Trident warheads has made headlines, but there is another element to the 2018 review that is even more detrimental for arms control and global stability.
Retired from service in 2013, the Tomahawk TLAM-N, intermediate-range, nuclear-tipped, sea-based cruise missile with variable yield warheads (5 to 150 kt), designed to strike ground targets from a distance of 2,500 km, is to be brought back. Its W80 nuclear warhead is to be upgraded and installed on new LRSO missiles that will be developed sometime after 2025.
The return of the TLAM-N is a highly provocative act. It requires little time to reinstall these weapons on ships and submarines. There is no way for Russia to know if a shipborne missile is nuclear-tipped or not. The possibility of a retaliatory nuclear strike will greatly increase. The return of the TLAM-N will mean the end of the Presidential Nuclear Initiatives (PNIs). Those executive orders made it possible to achieve a spectacular breakthrough without binding documents. In 1991, the leaders of the US and the Soviet Union made reciprocal unilateral pledges to significantly limit and reduce their tactical nuclear arms. All non-strategic nuclear weapons were removed from surface ships and multipurpose submarines and the sea has been free of them ever since. Now the US is going to make the PNIs a thing of the past and abruptly extend the arms race into this new domain.
A US ship launching a TLAM-N from the Baltic, Mediterranean, or Black Seas becomes a strategic weapon aimed at Russia. It makes no difference if a nuclear strike is delivered by an ICBM or a shipborne long-range cruise missile. Russia will respond, putting nuclear warheads on Kalibr sea-based cruise missiles and sending guided missile ships and submarines to patrol North American waters, ready for a retaliatory strike. The idea of resurrecting TLAM-N missiles undermines the entire arms-control regime. Sea-launched weapons cannot be regulated. There is no way to verify whether shipborne cruise missiles are nuclear or not. With the TLAM-N back in service, all the work to control nuclear arms will go down the drain. That’s where the real threat to global stability is coming from.
January 16, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Militarism, Timeless or most popular | Nuclear Posture Review, United States |
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Not a day passes without a prominent Israeli politician or intellectual making an outrageous statement against Palestinians. Many of these statements tend to garner little attention or evoke rightly deserved outrage.
Just recently, Israel’s Minister of Agriculture, Uri Ariel, called for more death and injuries on Palestinians in Gaza.
“What is this special weapon we have that we fire and see pillars of smoke and fire, but nobody gets hurt? It is time for there to be injuries and deaths as well,” he said.
Ariel’s calling for the killing of more Palestinians came on the heels of other repugnant statements concerning a 16-year-old teenager girl, Ahed Tamimi. Ahed was arrested in a violent Israeli army raid at her home in the West Bank village of Nabi Saleh.
A video recording showed her slapping an Israeli soldier a day after the Israeli army shot her cousin in the head, placing him in a coma.
Israeli Education Minister, Naftali Bennett, known for his extremist political views, demanded that Ahed and other Palestinian girls should “spend the rest of their days in prison”.
A prominent Israeli journalist, Ben Caspit, sought yet more punishment. He suggested that Ahed and girls like her should be raped in jail.
“In the case of the girls, we should exact a price at some other opportunity, in the dark, without witnesses and cameras”, he wrote in Hebrew.
This violent and revolting mindset, however, is not new. It is an extension of an old, entrenched belief system that is predicated on a long history of violence.
Undeniably, the views of Ariel, Bennett and Caspit are not angry statements uttered in a moment of rage. They are all reflections of real policies that have been carried out for over 70 years. Indeed, killing, raping and imprisoning for life are features that have accompanied the state of Israel since the very beginning.
This violent legacy continues to define Israel to this day, through the use of what Israeli historian Ilan Pappe describes as ‘incremental genocide.’
Throughout this long legacy, little has changed except for names and titles. The Zionist militias that orchestrated the genocide of the Palestinians prior to the establishment of Israel in 1948 merged together to form the Israeli army; and the leaders of these groups became Israel’s leaders.
Israel’s violent birth in 1947- 48 was the culmination of the violent discourse that preceded it for many years. It was the time when Zionist teachings of prior years were put into practice and the outcome was simply horrifying.
“The tactic of isolating and attacking a certain village or town and executing its population in a horrible, indiscriminate massacre was a strategy employed, time and again, by Zionist bands to compel the population of surrounding villages and towns to flee,” Ahmad Al-Haaj told me when I asked him to reflect on Israel’s past and present.
Al-Haaj is a Palestinian historian and an expert on the Nakba, the ‘Catastrophe’ that had befallen Palestinians in 1948.
The 85-year-old intellectual’s proficiency in the subject began 70 years ago, when, as a 15-year-old, he witnessed the massacre of Beit Daras at the hands of Jewish Haganah militia.
The destruction of the southern Palestinian village and the killing of dozens of its inhabitants resulted in the depopulation of many adjacent villages, including al-Sawafir, Al-Haaj’s home village.
“The notorious Deir Yasin massacre was the first example of such wanton killing, a model that was duplicated in other parts of Palestine,” Al-Haaj said.
The ethnic cleansing of Palestine at the time was orchestrated by several Zionist militias. The mainstream Jewish militia was the Haganah which belonged to the Jewish Agency.
The latter functioned as a semi-government, under the auspices of the British Mandate Government, while the Haganah served as its army.
However, other breakaway groups also operated according to their own agenda. Two leading bands amongst them were the Irgun (National Military Organization) and Lehi (also known as the Stern Gang). These groups carried out numerous terrorist attacks, including bus bombings and targeted assassinations.
Russian-born Menachem Begin was the leader of the Irgun which, along with the Stern Gang and other Jewish militants, massacred hundreds of civilians in Deir Yassin.
‘Tell the soldiers: you have made history in Israel with your attack and your conquest. Continue this until victory. As in Deir Yassin, so everywhere, we will attack and smite the enemy. God, God, Thou has chosen us for conquest,” Begin wrote at the time. He described the massacre as a “splendid act of conquest.”
The intrinsic link between words and actions remain unchanged.
Nearly 30 years later, a once wanted terrorist, Begin became Prime Minister of Israel. He accelerated land theft of the newly-occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, launched a war on Lebanon, annexed Occupied Jerusalem to Israel and carried out the massacre of Sabra and Shatilla in 1982.
Some of the other terrorists-turned-politicians and top army brass include Begin, Moshe Dayan, Yitzhak Rabin, Ariel Sharon, Rafael Eitan and Yitzhak Shamir. Each one of these leaders has a record dotted with violence.
Shamir served as the Prime Minister of Israel from 1986 – 1992. In 1941, Shamir was imprisoned by the British for his role in the Stern Gang. Later, as Prime Minister, he ordered a violent crackdown against a mostly non-violent Palestinian uprising in 1987, purposely breaking the limbs of kids accused of throwing rocks at Israeli soldiers.
So, when government ministers like Ariel and Bennett call for wanton violence against Palestinians, they are simply carrying on with a bloody legacy that has defined every single Israeli leader in the past. It is the violent mindset that continues to control the Israeli government and its relationship with Palestinians; in fact, with all of its neighbours.
January 16, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | Human rights, Israel, Palestine, Zionism |
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The second-highest decision-making body of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) decided Monday to call on the executive committee to suspend recognition of Israel until Israel recognizes the existence of Palestine, and annuls its annexation of Jerusalem, marking the latest fallout from Donald Trump’s December 6th claim of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.
The PLO will cease all security cooperation with Israel, and will cease the cooperation of the Paris Agreement, which had tied the Palestinian economy to the Israeli economy.
The statement from the Central Council said, in part, “Since Israel has voided all signed agreements through its constant violations of these agreements, the Central Council affirms that the direct goal is an independent Palestinian state, which involves moving from self-rule to having a state, by achieving sovereignty of the state of Palestine, with East Jerusalem as its capital.”
The Council called on the international community to work on ending the Israeli occupation, using all of the past UN Security Council and General Assembly resolutions, to achieve Palestinian sovereignty and an independent Palestinian state.
They called on countries to boycott Israeli settlement products, and to publish the database which includes the list of companies which bring products from the settlements.
The Council called for adopting the Boycott-Divestment-Sanctions (BDS) call, denouncing Israeli apartheid as a racist regime that is being imposed in place of a Palestinian state, rejecting any temporary solutions – especially regarding borders, rejecting any recognition of Israel as a Jewish state (which implies the denial of the existence and rights of the millions of non-Jews who live there), affirming the unity agreement signed in 2011 between the Palestinian factions, and affirmed again in 2017, and assuring a political partnership under the PLO as the only representative of the Palestinian people.
The Council affirmed the legitimate right of resistance to the occupation, as stated by international law, and called for support of the non-violent resistance movement in Palestine.
They also affirmed the urgent need to assist the Palestinians in Jerusalem, the eternal capital of Palestine, who are facing expulsion, home demolitions, and constant violations by Israel. They called on all Arab countries to follow through on their commitments of support to the Palestinian people.
The Council decided to take all needed measures to assist the Palestinians living in the besieged Gaza Strip.
They decided to continue the work on the international level to provide protection for the Palestinian people, as stated in Security Council Resolution 605 in 1987, 672 and 673 in 1990, Resolution 904 of 1998, and to ensure the implementation of the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949, which calls for protecting civilians living under foreign military occupation.
They decided to continue the international work to call for full membership at the United Nations for the state of Palestine.
The Council also decided to submit the cases of settlements, political prisoners, and the Israeli wars on Gaza to the International Criminal Court, and they also decided to continue filing more applications to international organizations and agencies.
Unofficial translation of the statement (by WAFA ):
Statement issued by the Central Council of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO)
January 14, 2018
Ramallah, Palestine
The Palestine Liberation Organization’s Central Council held its twenty-eighth ordinary session, under the name “Jerusalem the eternal capital of the State of Palestine”, between January 14 – 15 2018 in the city of Ramallah, in the presence of President Mahmoud Abbas.
A total of 87 members out of 109 members attended the session, while a number of members were unable to attend because they were arrested or prevented by Israel.
President of the Central council Salim Al-Za’noun began the session by saying that “The time has come for our Palestinian Central Council, that is representing the Palestinian National Council, which took the decision to establish the Palestinian National Authority to be the core of the state, to decide its future and function and to reconsider the recognition of the State of Israel until it recognizes the State of Palestine with Jerusalem as its capital and accept the refugees’ return based on resolution 194.”
Al-Za’noun stressed that the Central Council rejects any ideas that are being circulated as part of the so-called “deal of the century”, because they violate international law and resolutions of the international community and seek to impose a deficient solution that does not meet the minimum of Palestinians’ legitimate rights.
He called for finding other international pathways under the auspices of the United Nations to sponsor solving the Palestinian cause.
He said, “Our success in facing these risks and challenges requires accelerating the steps of implementing reconciliation and ending the division, and developing a plan to strengthen national partnership within the framework of the PLO, as the supreme national political and legal reference for our people.”
Al-Za’noun proposed to hold a session of the National Council, in which both Hamas and the Islamic Jihad will be invited with the task of reshaping, choosing or electing a new national council, as stipulated by the system of elections of the National Council.
“We respect and appreciate the position of Arabs and their support for the Palestinian cause. We demand the implementation of the decisions of the Arab summits on Jerusalem, especially the Amman summit of 1980, which called for severing all relations with any state that recognizes Jerusalem as the capital of Israel or transfers its embassy to it.”
He stressed that the sacrifices and struggles of prisoners in Israeli jails obligate Palestinians to provide all forms of support and that the dignity of Palestinians remains above any consideration.
Meanwhile, President Abbas reiterated commitment to a two-state solution based on international resolutions, the Arab peace initiative on the 1967 borders, the cessation of settlements’ expansion and unilateral actions. He affirmed that Palestinians will continue to seek the Security Council until full membership is achieved.
He stressed that Palestinians will not accept what the US attempts to impose, and that the PLO will reconsider its relations with Israel, yet engage in any serious peace negotiations under the auspices of the UN.
Following are the resolutions issued by the Central Council:
First: US recognition of Jerusalem
1. To condemn and reject the decision of US President Donald Trump, recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, and transferring his country’s embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, and work to reverse this decision.
2. The Council considered that the US administration, by announcing this decision, has lost its eligibility to function as a mediator and sponsor of the peace process and will not be a partner in this process unless the decision is reversed.
3. The Council stressed its rejection of President Trump’s policy that is aimed at presenting a project or ideas that contravene the resolutions of international community to resolve the conflict, which revealed its essence by declaring Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. The Council stressed the need to abolish the Congress’s decision to consider the PLO as a terrorist organization since 1987, and the State Department’s decision to close the Office of the PLO general delegation in Washington on November 17, 2017.
Second: The relationship with Israel (the occupation):
In light of the withdrawal of the occupying state from all agreements and revoking them by practice and imposing a fait accompli, and with the Central council stressing that the direct goal is the independence of the State of Palestine, which requires transition from self-governing to the stage of a state that is struggling for independence, with East Jerusalem as its capital and on the borders of 4 June 1967, in implementation of the resolutions of the National Council, including the Declaration of Independence in 1988, and relevant UN resolutions, including the General Assembly resolution 67/19 of 29/11/2012, as the political and legal basis for Palestinians reality, and the affirmation of adherence to the territorial unity of the State of Palestine, and the rejection of any divisions or facts imposed contrary to that;
The Central Council decided that the transitional period stipulated in the agreements signed in Oslo, Cairo and Washington, with its obligations no longer stand.
1.The Central Council calls upon the international community to assume its responsibilities on the basis of relevant UN resolutions to end the occupation and enable the State of Palestine to achieve its independence and to exercise its full sovereignty over its territory, including its capital, East Jerusalem, on the borders of 4 June 1967.
2.Assign the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization to suspend recognition of Israel until it recognizes the State of Palestine on the 1967 borders and revokes the decision to annex East Jerusalem and expand and build settlements.
3.The Central Council reaffirms its decision to stop security coordination in all its forms and to break away from the relationship of economic dependence established by the Paris Economic Agreement, to achieve the independence of the national economy. It requests the Executive Committee of the PLO and the institutions of the State of Palestine to start implementing this.
4.Continue to work with world countries to boycott Israeli colonial settlements in all fields, to work on publishing the database for companies operating in Israeli settlements by the United Nations and to emphasize the illegality of Israeli colonial settlements since 1967.
5.Adopt the BDS movement and call on world countries to impose sanctions on Israel to put an end to its flagrant violations of international law and to end its continued aggression against the Palestinian people and the apartheid regime imposed on them.
6.Reject and condemn the Israeli occupation and apartheid that Israel is trying to enshrine as an alternative to the establishment of an independent Palestinian state, and affirm the determination of the Palestinian people to resist by all means.
7.Reject any proposals or ideas for transitional solutions or interim stages, including the so-called state with temporary borders.
8.Refuse to recognize Israel as a Jewish state.
Third: The internal Palestinian situation:
1.Adhere to the reconciliation Agreement signed in 2017 and its execution mechanisms, the latest of which is the Cairo agreement in 2017 and the provision of means of support for its implementation, and enable the Government of National unity to assume its responsibilities fully in the Gaza Strip in accordance with the Amended Basic Law, and then conduct general elections and hold the Palestinian National Council session no later than the end of 2018 in order to achieve political partnership within the framework of the PLO, the legitimate and sole representative of the Palestinian people, and work to form a government of national unity in order to strengthen the political partnership and the unity of the Palestinian political system.
2.Affirm the right of our people to exercise all forms of resistance against the occupation in accordance with the provisions of international law and to continue to activate, support and strengthen the peaceful popular resistance.
3.Affirm the need to support Palestinians and their steadfastness in the eternal capital of the State of Palestine, Jerusalem and affirm the need to support their struggle against the Israeli measures aimed at Judaizing the Holy City.
4.Take all measures to support our people in the Gaza Strip, who faced the Israeli aggression and the Israeli siege and provide the support they need, including freedom of movement, access to health, the reconstruction and the mobilization of the international community to break the siege.
5.The Central Council condemns the leaking of the property by the Greek Orthodox church to Israeli institutions and companies and calls for accountability of those responsible. It supports the struggle of the Palestinian people from the Orthodox community in order to preserve their rights and their role in administering the affairs of the Orthodox Church and preserving its property.
Fourth: The Security Council, the General Assembly and the International Criminal Court:
1.Continue to work to provide international protection to the Palestinian people in the territory of the occupied State of Palestine (West Bank, including East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip) based on the Security Council resolution 605 for the year (1987), 672 (1967) and (1990), 904 of (1998), and the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949 (Protection of Civilians in Time of War).
2.Continue to work to strengthen the status of the State of Palestine in international forums and activate the request for full membership of the State of Palestine in the United Nations.
3.Provide referral on various issues (settlement, prisoners, aggression on the Gaza Strip) to the International Criminal Court.
4.Continue to join to international institutions and organizations, including the specialized agencies of the United Nations.
Fifth: The Arab and Islamic levels:
1.Call for activating the resolution of the 1980 Amman Summit, which obliges the Arab states to sever all ties with any state that recognizes Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and transfers its embassy to it, which has been reaffirmed in a number of other Arab summits with the request of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation member states to do the same.
2.Adhere to the Arab peace initiative and reject any attempts to change or alter it and maintain its priorities.
3.Work with the Arab countries (The Arab League), the Islamic countries (OIC) and the Non-Aligned Movement to hold an international conference with full powers to launch the peace process and in coordination with the EU countries, Russia, China, Japan and other international groups on the basis of relevant international resolutions and benefit from the outcomes of the 2017 Paris conference in a way as to ensure the end of the Israeli occupation and the empowerment of the State of Palestine with East Jerusalem as its capital on the 1967 borders and exercise its independence and sovereignty and to resolve the refugee issue on the basis of UN Resolution 194 and other final status issues in accordance with the resolutions of the international community within a specific time frame.
4.The League of Arab States, the OIC, the Non-Aligned Movement and the African Union must stand firm in front of world countries that violated the resolutions of these collective frameworks on voting against the United Nations General Assembly resolution on Jerusalem 21/12/2017.
5.The Central council condemned US threats to cut aid to UNRWA, which is seen as a way for the US to abandon its responsibility over a refugee crisis that it has aided in creating and calls on the international community to commit itself to securing the necessary funds for UNRWA, which would put an end to the continued decline in the Agency’s services and instead improve its role in providing basic services to the victims of the Nakbah and ensure a decent life for refugees as a responsibility that the international community should fulfill in accordance with resolution 194.
6.The Central Council rejects foreign intervention in Arab countries and calls for a political solution and dialogue in order to end the crises and wars experienced by some Arab countries. It calls for maintaining the unity of these countries and defying attempts to divide and alleviating the suffering of Arabs.
Sixth: Develop mechanisms to implement the decisions of the previous Central Council to represent women by at least 30% in all institutions in the State of Palestine and to harmonize the laws in accordance with the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW).
Seventh: The Central Council salutes the masses of Palestinians in refugee camps and exile camps in Syria, Lebanon and the Diaspora who affirm their adherence to the right of return every day. The Executive Committee is mandated to continue and intensify work with the Palestinian communities in the world and to communicate with international parties to mobilize support in facing decisions that aim to liquidate the Palestinian cause.
Eighth: The Central Council salutes the struggle and steadfastness of the prisoners in the Israeli jails and calls for their support in their daily confrontation and calls on national and international institutions to bring up their cases in all forums until their release. The Council condemns the arrest and intimidation of children, including Ahed Tamimi, which has become a symbol of Palestinian pride in the face of occupation as well as dozens of other children.
It condemns the deliberate killings and field executions committed by Israel, as well as the killing of Ibrahim Abu Thuraya, and condemns the continued detention of the bodies of Palestinians in the numbers graves, and calls for their unconditional release.
Ninth: The Central Council salutes Palestinians for their response to President Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and transfer the US Embassy to it. It salutes the souls of Palestinians who rose for Palestine and al-Aqsa.
January 16, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, Timeless or most popular | Israel, Jerusalem, Palestine, United States, Zionism |
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