China’s Defense Ministry Wednesday firmly opposed an “extremely erroneous” report by the U.S. Defense Department on China’s military, saying it is fraught with a zero-sum game mindset and Cold-war mentality.
The Defense Ministry’s Information Office came in response to the U.S. report that hyped up the so-called “Chinese military threat” and misinterpreted China’s national defense policy and military strategies.
The office noted that the U.S. report had slandered China’s military modernization, defense expenditure and nuclear policy, aggravated tensions across the Taiwan Strait and instigated cross-Strait confrontations.
“China has always pursued a defensive national defence policy and everyone knows that China is a builder of world peace,” Foreign Affairs Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said on Wednesday, as reported by the Economic Times.
On Tuesday, the Pentagon published its annual study on the evolution of Chinese military power. In this document, the U.S. authorities hold that the Asian country has equaled or exceeded U.S. military capabilities in several areas of defense.
Besides believing that China seeks to double the number of nuclear warheads in its arsenal over the next decade, Washington suggests that Beijing has made significant advances in its technical capabilities to build ships, cruise missiles, and integrated air defense systems.
The Pentagon report was released amid tensions that President Donald Trump has been generating through military exercises in the South Sea and bans to WeChat and TikTok, which the Republican politician considers a threat to his country’s national security.
In recent years, the United States has increasingly more often impinged on sovereignty of other nations, thus flagrantly flaunting just how uncivilized its policies are. Such behavior is exemplified in various ways: diplomatic pressure exerted on policies of other nations; involvement in color revolutions; imposition of unlawful sanctions, and bans on trading with clear rivals to the US (an act that does not comply with existing international laws and the principle of free trade).
All of this is particularly noticeable when it comes to the ever increasing attempts by Washington to stop other nations from purchasing Russian weaponry. The United States must be aware of the fact that Russia’s high quality and fairly inexpensive military equipment is deservedly popular throughout the world. In addition, its export generates considerable revenues for the Russian Federation, and serves as an effective foreign policy tool for the nation, which helps Moscow build and adjust relations with other countries.
It is therefore not surprising that once tensions between Russia and the US arose, Washington began imposing anti-Moscow sanctions, focusing on the Russian Federation’s weapons trade in particular. In fact, a key aim of the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA), which was signed into law in August 2017, was to counter “Russian influence in Europe and Eurasia”. In September 2018, the “US government imposed secondary sanctions under CAATSA” for the first time by punishing Russia’s partners for “engaging in significant transactions with” individuals on the List of Specified Persons. According to a note issued by the US Department of State that month, the aforementioned actions were “not intended to undermine the military capabilities or combat readiness of any country”. Overall, the wording of the Act gives Washington a lot of room for maneuver.
There have been several widely publicized stories in connection with the CAATSA and the sale of Russia’s S-400 air defense systems, which are viewed as some of the more sought after items produced by the Russian Federation’s military industrial complex.
The S-400 Triumf is designed to destroy aircraft (including stealth targets), cruise and ballistic missiles (travelling at a speed of 4.8 km/s). The system’s radars can detect dozens of aerial targets at the same time and subsequently intercept them in various weather conditions. S-400 missile systems have been in service with the Russian Armed Forces since 2007. In fact, they are an essential part of the Russian Federation’s integrated air defense system.
China became the first nation to express interest in purchasing S-400 systems. Russian President Vladimir Putin approved the sale of S-400 Triumf to China in 2014, i.e. long before the CAATSA was passed.
But once the Act was signed into law, the threat of US sanctions against China for its purchase of the missile systems loomed large. In September 2018, despite the fact that the S-400 agreement between the Russian Federation and the PRC had been reached before-hand, the US decided to impose sanctions against China’s Equipment Development Department of the Central Military Commission and its director, Li Shangfu. In spite of these troubles, “the first regimental set of S-400” had reached China in the spring of 2018. Apart from launchers, the delivery included command and control systems, radiolocation stations and other parts essential for such pieces of equipment. At the end of 2018, the People’s Liberation Army Rocket Force tested the S-400 Triumf air defense system by “successfully shooting down a simulated ballistic target almost 250 km away and moving at the supersonic speed of 3 km/s”. Such news was quite impressive and helped promote Russia’s missile system to the world. In January 2020, the Russian Federation “concluded delivery of a second S-400 Triumf missile system regimental set to China”. China also received “more than 120 advanced anti-aircraft guided missiles” at the time.
The next country that decided to purchase the S-400 system was Turkey. After Turkey signed the relevant agreement with Russia in September 2017, Washington and other NATO members began criticizing Ankara’s decision. Since that time, the United States has been trying to convince and force Turkey to drop the deal.
In July 2019, the United States removed Turkey from the F-35 joint strike fighter program, which meant that Ankara would “lose its production work on the jet by March 2020”. In addition, six F-35s meant for Turkey were never delivered by the United States.
After Ankara received the air defense systems from Russia, Turkey conducted its first test at the end of November 2019. Various aircraft, including US-made F-16 fighter jets, were scrambled near Ankara to test the ability of the Russian-made air-defense system to track and intercept such fighters. USA’s F-16s are quite popular in the Middle East and Europe. In fact, the air forces of Israel and Greece (Turkey’s potential enemies) are equipped with such fighter aircraft.
Despite all of its threats, the US is in no hurry to impose more painful sanctions against Turkey in addition to removing it from the F-35 program because the United States does not wish to spoil its relationship with an important partner, such as Ankara. After all, Turkey is an influential nation among the Muslim-majority countries as well as a NATO member. In fact, the nation has allowed the US military to conduct operations in the Middle East from its territories. In turn, Ankara, with its ambitions to become a leader in the region, is trying to show, in every possible way, its independence from Washington. It is worth reminding our readers that, in recent years, Turkey–United States relations have soured because of the ongoing conflict in Syria. For instance, Washington supports Syrian Kurds fighting for their independence, while Ankara views them as its enemies.
At the beginning of July 2020, Turkey conducted more tests of its S-400 Triumf systems despite the possibility of the US imposing additional sanctions against Ankara. Yet again, Turkey used the good-old F-16 as training target.
Yet, it was reported that during the exercise, as reported by the local media, S-400 managed to track F-35 Stealth that were flying over the Black Sea at a distance of some 200 kilometers from the radar station. These were the very fighters that Turkey wasn’t able to purchase because of the S-400. As mentioned above, these aircraft are made with the use of advanced stealth technology, which makes its stealthy capabilities the main selling point. Thus, in addition to the reputational blow that Turkey’s purchase of Triumphs inflicted on America, the S-400 damaged the reputation of American military technology.
In July 2020, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was urged by US Senators to impose sanctions on Turkey over its actions in the Eastern Mediterranean region.
It would seem that Turkey has no intention of ridding itself of the Russian missile systems for now. And hopefully, the S-400 Triumf will continue to reach new markets.
After Turkey, India (USA’s strategic partner in South Asia) decided to purchase Russia’s air defense systems. Since the alliance with New Delhi is extremely important for Washington, the latter expressed its opposition to the aforementioned deal but did not take any measures to punish India.
There have been reports that Iran is interested in buying S-400 Triumf from Russia too. The country has managed to survive sanctions imposed against it by the US and other nations over its nuclear program for quite some time. In fact, Iran is a key rival of the United States, which is why Washington would not be happy if Iran were to purchase such effective air defense systems.
In fact, there is more bad news for the United States with regards to S-400 systems in other parts of the world. The fact that F-35 fighters were detected by Turkey’s Triumf missile defense systems during recent tests could be viewed as a blow to the US designers of these aircraft. In addition, the US may face more serious troubles in the future. Some believe that Turkish servicemen were, in fact, able to obtain important information about the US fighter jets and their movements during the tests.
China’s purchase of S-400 Triumf could have especially negative consequences for the United States. In fact, China’s air defense capabilities have improved on account of the new system. Its range now covers the Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea (claimed by both China and Japan) and parts of Taiwan, viewed as either a separate country or a part of China. Hence, Russia’s missile systems could strengthen Beijing’s positions in the region, as a whole, as well as in its territorial disputes.
The author could, therefore, conclude that USA’s concerns about Russian-made Triumf systems are indeed justified. As S-400s gradually become common place throughout Asia, they not only help strengthen air defenses of certain nations and generate earning for the Russian government, but they could also facilitate global political changes.
The owners of four cargoes carrying Iranian fuel that was looted in high seas by the United States last month have mounted a legal challenge to reclaim them, a report says.
The US government has said it seized 1.116 million barrels of fuel because it was bound for Venezuela which is under American sanctions as part of Washington’s bid to topple President Nicolas Maduro, but the owners have disputed it.
According to a filing with the US District Court for the District of Columbia Tuesday, “at the time they were seized, the Defendant Properties were destined for Trinidad for sale to customers in Peru and Colombia.”
When the news of the loot was first broken last month, Iran put down its foot to assert that neither the ships were Iranian nor their owners or their cargo had any connection to the Islamic Republic.
US reports had also claimed that the ships were owned by Greece, but the court filing on Tuesday showed otherwise.
United Arab Emirates-based Mobin International Limited said it was the owner of the cargo aboard the Bella and Bering tankers, UK-registered Oman Fuel said it owned the cargo aboard the Pandi and Luna tankers, and Oman-registered Sohar Fuel said it part-owned the cargo aboard the Luna.
The companies said they had sold the cargoes onwards to UAE-based Citi Energy FZC, but payment was due upon delivery, which was disrupted by the seizure, Reuters reported.
“Therefore, Claimants Mobin, Oman Fuel, and Sohar Fuel retain a financial stake in those agreements and have immediate right to title, possession, and control of the Defendant Properties,” they wrote in the filing.
US claim of victory dealt a blow
The legal challenge puts yet another damper on the US government’s victory lap which came with the much-hyped claim that Washington had finally found a way to block Iran and Venezuela from evading American economic sanctions.
Over the past two years, the Trump administration has repeatedly placed sanctions on Iran’s oil and other lucrative industries with the express aim of shutting Tehran out of global markets and causing an economic collapse.
But far from collapsing as American leaders had predicted, Iran’s economy keeps humming and is getting back on its feet.
Meanwhile, Iran sent five oil tankers 1.5 million barrels of gasoline and diesel fuel to Venezuela in May and June despite American threats to stop them.
“We showcased our might, and our biggest display of power was the imposition of our will and the sailing through high seas from the Persian Gulf to Venezuela,” Major General Hussein Salami said last month.
An Iranian news agency said Iran’s naval forces were preparing to target US commercial vessels in the Persian Gulf in case US forces interfered with Venezuela-bound Iranian oil tankers.
When the New York Times first reported the seizure of the four cargoes last month, the newspaper headlined it as a “diplomatic doubleheader” which blocked Iran and Venezuela from evading American economic sanctions.
Iranian officials brushed aside the claim, with Iran’s Ambassador to Venezuela Hojjat Soltani saying the report was an “act of psychological warfare perpetrated by the US propaganda machine” trying to compensate for the Trump administration’s “humiliation and defeat by Iran using false propaganda.”
“The United States is seeking to contrive a victory for itself. Neither did the ships nor the cargo belong to Iran,” Minister of Petroleum Bijan Zangeneh told reporters in Tehran.
Aiming to cut Iran’s sales to zero, Washington in May 2019 ended sanctions waivers for importers of Iranian oil. Tehran reacted with typical defiance, saying it would find ways to sell its oil.
Last month, NBC News cited data from online service TankerTrackers.com showing that Iran was exporting a lot more crude oil than US figures suggest.
According to the data, Iran is exporting as much as 600,000 barrels per day (bpd) of crude oil – thrice more than an estimate of 227,000 bpd made in a US congressional report.
Iran, NBC News said, is coming up with more innovative techniques in wiggling its way around the draconian American sanctions.
Iranian officials have said the country is in an economic war with the United States which has forced international payment networks to cut off the Islamic Republic, making trade all but impossible.
$10 billion of oil, petrochemical investment in 5 months
On Tuesday, Iran’s Ministry of Petroleum said oil and petrochemical investment in the country has reached $10 billion since the beginning of the Iranian calendar year in March.
The government plans to officially launch 17 petrochemical projects, which are expected to produce 100 million tonnes annually and generate $25 billion per year in revenues by the end of the year, it said.
Iran also plans to launch by the end of its current calendar year in March 2021 an oil terminal designed to bypass the Strait of Hormuz for Iranian oil exports.
The country has already started building an onshore oil pipeline worth $1.8 billion to Jask which sits just east of the Strait of Hormuz. As much as $700 million of the investment will go to develop the port terminal.
The 1,100-kilometer pipeline will be capable of carrying 1 million bpd of crude oil from the Goureh oil terminal in the northwest to Jask on the Sea of Oman, without the need to have tankers travel through the Strait of Hormuz.
Last month, Iran said it had signed a total of 13 oil contracts with 14 domestic firms, which will raise the Islamic Republic’s oil production capacity by 185,000 barrels per day.
On Monday, July 27, a group of physicians called The Frontline Doctors met on the steps of the Supreme Court of the United States in Washington DC for a press conference, discussing their experience in treating patients with hydroxychloroquine (HCQ).
Shortly thereafter – but not before the video has received more than 70 million views on Brietbart livestream and 17 million viral shares – the hammer of Big Tech went to work, attempting to crush all evidence of the doctors’ compelling plea to make HCQ, an inexpensive and extremely effective medication, available to all. Big Tech – including Google, Apple, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, Vimeo and even the website host Squarespace – didn’t stop with only scraping the physicians’ press conference off the internet. No, they punished others for even TALKING about the press conference. Breitbart was censored for days and even Donald Trump, Jr. was put into Twitter jail for mentioning HCQ.
And then, a mere 48 hours after the press conference and censorship storm, (on Wednesday evening July 29), the State of Ohio Board of Pharmacy’s ruling (Rule 4729:5-5-21) that was written and approved on July 20, was published with a plan to go into effect following morning. This arbitrary rule prohibited doctors from prescribing and pharmacies from dispensing chloroquine or hydroxychloroquine “for the treatment or prevention of COVID-19” – unless the patient was enrolled in an institutional review board (IRB) qualified clinical trial.
The rule went further: All previous approvals for the use of these two medications were to be voided. Did that mean the thousands, if not tens of thousands, of patients across Ohio whose rheumatoid arthritis and other autoimmune conditions had been successfully treated for years with Plaquenil, the trade name for hydroxychloroquine, were going to be denied medication too?
While many doctors I know were scrambling to find a way to fight this rule, the next morning Ohio Governor Mike DeWine issued a written statement:
“The Board of Pharmacy and the State Medical Board of Ohio should revisit the [restrictive rule] issue, listen to the best medical science, and open the process up for comment and testimony from experts. I agree with the FDA commissioner, Stephan Hahn, who said the decision whether a person should take hydroxychloroquine should be made between a doctor and a patient.”
I personally thought DeWine was simply issuing a political statement to make him look more open-minded and perhaps more Republican and right-leaning. But low and behold, within a few hours, the Ohio Pharmacy board issued the following statement:
“As a result of feedback received by the medical and patient community and at the request of Governor DeWine, prohibitions on prescribing chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine in Ohio for the treatment of COVID-19 will not take effect at this time. Licensees should be aware that emergency rule 4729-5-30-2 is no longer effective and the requirements of that rule, including the inclusion of a diagnosis code on any prescription for chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine are no longer applicable.”
“The physician’s ability to exercise their professional, clinical judgment (including consideration of potential risks on a case-by-case basis) in the assessment and management of the medical needs of their patients.”
So is it about drug safety or is it about politics?
If a state pharmacy board, a governor and a state medical association can do a complete 180-degree turn-around, from banning a drug to freely using it, in less than 24 hours, I hope that anyone who is paying attention can FINALLY see that these rules and mandates have nothing to do with drug or patient safety, nothing to do with scientific evidence and nothing to do with effectiveness.
It is all purely about power and control.
Why are they fighting against HCQ so vehemently? If an inexpensive drug with a long history of safe use can treat and prevent the syndrome called COVID-19 caused by a virus called SARS-CoV2, it would completely upend the necessity of a coronavirus vaccine. All that money, all those plans and all that power-grabbing effort on the part of the globalists would be wasted. The Plandemic would be over and humanity would be free.
Without the Plandemic, the coordinated tracking databases being built to accommodate initiatives such as COVIPASS and Time Stamp would fade away. Time Stamp, first launched in 2018, is a total identity platform integrated into the GAVI-Mastercard “Wellness Pass.” It will house your digital vaccination records and also be linked to Mastercard’s click-to-play system. The system is powered by an AI (artificial intelligence) and machine learning technology called NuData. Trust Stamp intends to be the primary technology used by governments for contact tracing and used by law enforcement for surveillance and futuristic “predictive policing” – the implementation of the Thought Police.
For those who don’t know, or don’t remember, the concept of the Thought Police comes from the 1949 George Orwell novel, “1984.” The Thought Police, called the Thinkpol, were the secret police who were instructed to discover, apprehend and punish any person whose thoughts were unapproved by the government.
Thinkpol is eerily similar to present tense surveillance systems that use criminal psychology, informers [contact tracers], and cameras with microphones [ie. your iPhone]. Citizens are being monitored and those who challenge the status quo and the authority of Big Brother are starting to be arrested…. is Room 101 next?
How did we get here?
It is remarkable that in a mere 100 days, a series of planned events and unified messages about hydroxychloroquine appeared across the US, Canada, Australia, NZ and most of western Europe. The message? A long-used generic and inexpensive drug called hydroxychloroquine is dangerous and should not be used to treat a potentially fatal disease, COVID-19, for which there are no reliable or otherwise “approved” treatments.
Even though hydroxychloroquine has been prescribed safely for 65 years and used successfully by many millions of patients, the message was hammered home that the drug is safe for its other uses, but dangerous when used for Covid-19. This doesn’t make sense, but it seems to have worked as doctors stopped using their critical-thinking skills and fell into lock-step compliance.
In the US, the “Never Trump” message morphed into “Never Hydroxychloroquine,” meaning, the pandemic will be “Never Over” unless, of course, you are vaccinated.
Outrageous statements such as this are gifts that keeps on giving.
Let’s check the facts:
1) wildfires less than 20% of earlier 20th century in acreage burned.
2) Hurricane ace index/storm near record lows this year, Globally no increase. EPAC/WPAC well below average So is total Global production this season.
3) Much worse storms than what we see now have always run rampant. The list is legion and too numerous to name.
4) Heatwaves are nothing compared to the 1930s , and if you didn’t have rolling blackouts due to energy policy, there would be less problems, Why the rest of the nation would want to adopt the example of California is beyond any rational person. Besides cold kills more than warm, another fact ignored.
Obviously the person making this statement either does not know these facts, or does and simply seeks to hide them to push a false missive. There can be no other conclusion.
Apparently Kamala Harris does not understand that previous times as warm as today were known as climate optimums, not climate emergencies. We can go on and on, but in this case brevity makes the point.
The Philippines says it will not comply with the United States’ sanctions against China over regional disputes in the South China Sea, even though Manila itself is involved in one such dispute with Beijing.
Philippine presidential spokesman Harry Roque announced during a Tuesday press briefing that President Rodrigo Duterte would not comply with unilateral US sanctions against Chinese firms involved in constructing artificial islands in the South China Sea.
Roque said Manila would make its own decisions and would not follow those of a foreign country.
“We are not a vassal state of any foreign power and we will pursue our national interest,” the Philippine presidential spokesman said. “Our national interest is to ensure flagship projects are completed.”
He said the Chinese firms would continue working on infrastructure projects in the Philippines. The Philippine government is trying to make progress in a 180-billion-dollar overhaul of the country’s infrastructure.
The remarks came despite statements made last week by the Filipino foreign minister that he would recommend that the government abandon the deals with the Chinese companies.
The US — a defense treaty ally of the Philippines — last Wednesday announced sanctions against 24 Chinese companies and individuals over what Washington alleged to be involvement in constructing military facilities on submerged reefs in disputed waters of the South China Sea.
China claims sovereignty over much of the South China Sea. Vietnam, Taiwan, Malaysia, and Brunei, besides the Philippines, have overlapping claims with China to parts of the sea. The United States, an extra-territorial force, has been stirring regional tensions by provoking China’s rival claimants and conducting routine sails or fly-overs in the sea.
Relations between Washington and Beijing have dropped to the lowest level in decades since US President Donald Trump came to power. The two countries are currently at loggerheads over numerous issues, including trade, technology, Hong Kong, Taiwan, the East and South China Seas, and most recently, the coronavirus pandemic.
The US has been significantly ratcheting up the tensions with China in all of those areas recently.
The US Energy Department said on Monday it has reached a settlement with South Carolina on removing weapons-grade plutonium by 2037 from a Cold War-era site and shipping most of it to a disposal facility in New Mexico.
South Carolina, which had sued the energy department, will receive an upfront payment of $600 million. The state will waive its right to bring any more lawsuits over the plutonium until 2037.
“Today’s announcement is a guarantee to the people of South Carolina that plutonium will be removed safely from this state,” said US Energy Secretary Dan Brouillette.
The US government had planned to build a mixed oxide (MOX) plant to convert the material into fuel for nuclear power. But a MOX plant had never been built in the United States, and the Trump administration axed the program in 2018 saying it would cost about $48 billion more than $7.6 billion already spent on it.
That decision was a blow to South Carolina politicians, including Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, who had touted the jobs it would provide.
The department said 9.5 metric tons of plutonium will be removed from the Savannah River site. Much of the material will be sent to New Mexico, where it will be diluted and disposed of in a nuclear waste site near Carlsbad.
A notice in the Federal Register on Friday indicated that the department and its arm the National Nuclear Security Administration will dispose 7.1 metric tons at New Mexico’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant.
The energy department was required by law to either build the MOX plant or remove the plutonium but it had done neither.
The US government had secretly shipped plutonium from South Carolina to Nevada sometime before November 2018, the Trump administration revealed last year. Democratic officials in Nevada were angered when they learned the news.
South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson said the deal was the largest single settlement ever in the state’s history. The deal will prevent the state from becoming a dumping ground for nuclear waste and the money will help its economy recover from the coronavirus pandemic, he said.
“The very basis of property in the U.S. is derived through whiteness and through Black oppression, through the history of slavery and settler domination of the country. Looting strikes at the heart of property, of whiteness and of the police. It gets to the very root of the way those three things are interconnected. And also it provides people with an imaginative sense of freedom and pleasure and helps them imagine a world that could be. And I think that’s a part of it that doesn’t really get talked about—that riots and looting are experienced as sort of joyous and liberatory.” – https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2020/08/27/906642178/one-authors-argument-in-defense-of-looting
Israel’s defenders both in the political realm and in the media have long used every weapon available to stifle any criticism of Israeli racism and its oppression of the Palestinians. In particular, the use of “anti-Semitism” as something like a tactical discussion stopper in deliberations about the Middle East has long been a staple of both American and European politics. It is freely employed to end all dispute while also condemning those accused of the crime to being somehow outside the pale, monsters who are consigned forever to derision and obscurity. But the Israelis and, to be sure, many diaspora Jews know exactly how the expression has been weaponized. Former Israeli Minister Shulamit Aloni explained how it is done “Anti-Semitic”…”its a trick, we always use it.”
If one were to read the U.S. mainstream media, reflective as it nearly always is of a certain institutional Jewish viewpoint, one would think that there has been a dramatic increase in anti-Semitism worldwide, but that claim is incorrect. What has been taking place is not hatred of Jews but rather a confluence of two factors. First is the undeniable fact that Israel has been behaving particularly badly, even by its admittedly low standards. Its slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza has been unusually observable in spite of media attempts to avoid mentioning it, plus its support of terrorists in Syria and attacks on that country have also raised questions about the intentions of the kleptocratic regime in Tel Aviv, which is currently pushing hard for an attack on Iran and appears to have the Trump administration fully on board. That all means that the perception of Israel as an exclusively Jewish state, inevitably raises questions about the behavior of the international Jewish community that has done so much to shape the favorable narrative, but it does not necessarily imply hatred of the Jewish ethnicity or religion.
Second, the alleged increase in anti-Semitic incidents is also largely fueled by how those incidents are defined. Israel and its friends have worked hard to broaden the parameters of the discussion, making any criticism of Israel or its activities either a hate crime or ipso facto an anti-Semitic incident. The U.S. State Department’s working definition of anti-Semitism now includes “… the targeting of the state of Israel” and it warns that anti-Semitism is a criminal offense. Recent legislation in Washington and also in Europe has criminalized hitherto legal and non-violent efforts to pressure Israel regarding its inhumanity vis-à-vis the Palestinians. Legitimate criticism of Israel thereby becomes both anti-Semitism and criminal, increasing the count of so-called anti-Semitic incidents. That means that the numbers inevitably go up, providing fodder to validate a repressive response.
One might add that Hollywood, the mainstream media and academia have contributed to the allegations regarding surging anti-Semitism, relentlessly unleashing a torrent of material rooting out alleged anti-Semites and so-called holocaust deniers, while simultaneously heaping praise on Israel and its achievements. All of the media exposure of so-called anti-Semitism has a political objective, whether intended or not, which is to insulate Israel itself from any criticism and to create for all Jews the status of perpetual victimhood which permits many in the diaspora to unflinchingly support a foreign country against the interests of the nations where they were born, raised and made their fortunes.
Two Muslim congresswomen, Rashida Tlaib of Michigan and Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, have dared to overtly challenge the reality that Jewish power is greatly disproportionate in Washington. Tlaib said that the sponsors of legislation intended to benefit Israel by limiting free speech “… forgot what country they represent. This is the U.S. where boycotting is a right and part of our historical fight for freedom and equality. Maybe a refresher on our U.S. Constitution is in order, then get back to opening up our government instead of taking our rights away.”
Indeed, Congressional Israel boosters have long since forgotten that they are supposed to uphold the Constitution of the United States while also promoting the interests of their constituents, not those of a country seven thousand miles away. Glenn Greenwald of the Intercept responded to the Tlaib comment with a tweet “It’s stunning how much time US political leaders spend defending a foreign nation even if it means attacking free speech rights of Americans.” Ilhan Omar then tweeted her own pithy rejoinder to Greenwald: “It’s all about the Benjamins, baby!” which was in reference to the Founder Benjamin Franklin’s portrait on hundred-dollar bills. Her comment was almost immediately interpreted as meaning that she was accusing leading politicians of being bought by the Israel Lobby, which is at least in some cases basically true.
There followed a manufactured outrage, with political leaders from both parties latching on to a media frenzy to score points against each other. Even though it is perfectly legitimate for a Congresswoman on the Foreign Affairs Committee to challenge what the Israel Lobby does and where its money comes from, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi complained that Omar’s “use of anti-Semitic tropes and prejudicial accusations about Israel’s supporters” was “deeply offensive.” President Donald Trump, who has admitted that his Mideast policy is intended to serve Israeli rather than U.S. interests, also jumped in, saying “I think she should either resign from congress or she should certainly resign from the House Foreign Affairs Committee.”
Omar’s comments preceded the recent wave of pro-Israel censorship in news stories, on social media and also within information “search” services on the internet. If anything, the effort to broaden the censorship of language and expressions relating to Israel and the activities of the Israel Lobby both in the United States and worldwide has increased. News/information sites like Yahoo have stopped allowing comments on their articles in part because the comments often contradicted their reporting on the Middle East and also on other issues. Google searches are skewed to bury results that are particularly critical of the Jewish state.
As it is an election year and both parties are seeking tens of millions of dollars from Israel-tied Jewish donors like Sheldon Adelson and Haim Saban, the effort to make any criticism of Israel hate speech is intensifying. Two weeks ago “… more than 120 organizations sent a letter to the social media giant [Facebook], urging it to ‘fully adopt’ the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism as the ‘cornerstone of Facebook’s hate speech policy regarding antisemitism.’ This definition, which was adopted by the IHRA in 2016 and has been promoted to governments worldwide, includes several examples of what it describes as ‘contemporary’ antisemitism—including ‘denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor” and “applying double standards’ to Israel—that can be interpreted to define much criticism of Israel, Israeli policies, or Zionism as antisemitism.”
Facebook for its part has hired Emi Palmor, former director-general of Israel’s justice ministry, as a member of its new oversight board which will censor content on the site. The company’s chief operations officer Sheryl Sandberg has also declared that FB is using “… the IHRA definition ‘in informing [its] own approach and definitions,’ that its new policy ‘draws on the spirit—and the text—of the IHRA,’ and that under Facebook’s policy, ‘Jews and Israelis are treated as “protected characteristics.’”
Protected characteristics has meant in practice that criticism of the activities of either Israelis or Jewish groups will not be acceptable on the site. Anecdotal evidence suggests that Facebook is also now censoring any material that might lead to legitimate criticism of the Jewish state and its policies. On August 18th the site removed a picture and article showing a road filled with dead Palestinian-owned sheep that were reportedly killed by an Israeli settler driver. The Israeli deliberately ran over the animals with his car as part of a campaign to destroy the livelihoods of Palestinian farmers on the West Bank.
When the Israel Lobby complains that portraying Israel negatively is thinly veiled anti-Semitism, one might well respond that terrible things are being done in the Middle East in the name of Jews and of Israel. Silencing critics by accusing them of a hate crime is little more than a perversion of justice to serve the demands of a powerful and wealthy minority as well as a denial of constitutional rights for all Americans. When confronted by accusations of “anti-Semitism”, just recall what the Israeli minister admitted: “It’s a trick, we always use it.”
Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is https://councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org.
One reason for the extraordinary hostility of the foreign policy insiders’ brigade toward President Trump is that he has not wasted his time conjuring up new missions to justify NATO’s continued existence.
Instead, he has promised to withdraw 12,000 US troops from Germany and, to add insult to injury, he has demanded that NATO member states increase their financial contributions toward the upkeep of the military alliance ostensibly there to “protect” them.
This is sacrilege to a foreign policy elite that have spent the last 70 years worshipping at the altar of NATO.
“US troops aren’t stationed around the world as traffic cops or welfare caseworkers—they’re restraining the expansionary aims of the world’s worst regimes, chiefly China and Russia,” Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., fumed.
Former National Security Adviser Susan Rice expressed alarm about the “continued erosion of confidence in our leadership within NATO, and more efforts that call into question our commitment, and more signals to the authoritarians within NATO and Russia itself that this whole institution is vulnerable.”
Trump, according to Nicholas Burns, former US ambassador to NATO and current adviser to Joe Biden, has cast America’s military allies primarily as a drain on the US Treasury, and he has aggressively criticized Washington’s true friends in Europe—democratic leaders such as France’s President Emmanuel Macron and Germany’s Chancellor, Angela Merkel—even as he treats Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, Kim Jong Un, and other ‘authoritarians’ around the world with unusual tact.
Seventy former Republican national security officials recently issued a statement accusing Trump of having “disgraced America’s global reputation and undermined our nation’s moral and diplomatic influence.” And—horror of horrors!—Trump “has called NATO ‘obsolete.’ ”
Not only has Trump failed to spell out a new mission for NATO, the one mission of sorts he has come up with—extraction of more funds from NATO member-states—is calculated to cause mutual recriminations within the alliance. Trump regularly boasts that he has cajoled NATO to cough up an additional $130 billion a year “and it’s going to be $400 billion,” he recently warned.
To the denizens of Washington’s foreign policy think-tanks, pressuring NATO member states to come up with more money is a dangerous business. It could have the undesirable effect of forcing them to wonder whether devoting scarce resources to NATO—particularly now following the Covid economic downturn—is a sound investment.
NATO desperate to find reasons to justify its existence
It is no secret that ever since the fall of the Soviet Union and the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact, NATO has been desperately searching for a reason to justify its existence. The alliance has expanded its membership from 16 to 30 in 20 years, while failing to put forward a convincing reason, other than inertia, for staying in business.
To be sure, there were and are threats—cybersecurity, mass migration, human trafficking, narcotics, nuclear proliferation, international terrorism—but it was never clear how a narrowly-focused military alliance would be able to address them unilaterally. NATO has thus been forced to engage in some vigorous head-scratching.
During the 1990s, we had the “humanitarian intervention” craze. This led to the NATO bombing of Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1994 and 1995 and, more horrifically, to the bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999. Neither operation achieved anything that could not have been achieved years earlier—and without the use of force.
In 2001, NATO got in on the Global War on Terror. After 9/11 NATO, for the first time in its history, invoked Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty, declaring that the terrorist attack on the US was an attack against every NATO member.
When the United States retaliated by invading Afghanistan in October 2001, NATO was on hand to assist. In December, it established something called the International Security Assistance Force, the nebulous mission of which was to “assist the Afghan Government in exercising and extending its authority and influence across the country, paving the way for reconstruction and effective governance.”
Next came Iraq. Despite the vocal opposition of France and Germany to the 2003 invasion, NATO, in no time got involved. In 2004, it established NATO Training Mission-Iraq, the aim of which was supposedly to “assist in the development of Iraqi security forces training structures and institutions so that Iraq can build an effective and sustainable capability that addresses the needs of the nation.” One of its tasks was to train the Iraqi police. However, as WikiLeaks’ Iraq War Logs disclosure revealed, Iraq’s finely-trained police conducted horrific torture on detainees. Neither NATO’s Afghanistan nor its Iraqi mission covered itself in glory.
With the Democrats returning to power in Washington in 2009, NATO was back in the “humanitarian intervention” business. Its bombing of Libya in 2011 destroyed government, law and public order, institutions that before the intervention had ensured that the people of Libya were able to go about their daily lives free from the fear of death, not to mention the spectacle of slave markets.
The “humanitarian intervention” in Libya having ended in debacle and war crimes (including the execution of Muammar Gaddafi) in which NATO was clearly involved, it was back to the old Cold War mission of “containment.”
Following the February 21, 2014, coup in Kiev and the reincorporation of Crimea into Russia, NATO’s new mission was very much like its old. NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen promised that: “We will have more planes in the air, more ships on the water, and more readiness on the land. For example, air policing aircraft will fly more sorties over the Baltic region. Allied ships will deploy to the Baltic Sea, the Eastern Mediterranean and elsewhere.”
Six years on, it’s clear that there simply aren’t enough armed conflicts in the world to justify the continued existence, not to mention huge expense, of such a gargantuan military organization. NATO has therefore resorted to seizing on the latest fashionable social and cultural issues to prove how up-to-date it is.
More NATO as solution to Climate change?
For example, NATO has added “climate change” to its repertoire. NATO’s 2010 Strategic Concept declared that “Key environmental and resource constraints, including health risks, climate change, water scarcity and increasing energy needs will further shape the future security environment in areas of concern to NATO and have the potential to significantly affect NATO planning and operations.”
One would have thought that the most effective way NATO could contribute to minimizing global warming would be to cut back on armaments, military exercises and naval and air patrols. But no, apparently the solution to “climate change” is more NATO, not less.
Then came the issue gender equality. “Achieving gender equality is our collective task. And NATO is doing its part,” said Mari Skåre, the NATO Secretary General’s Special Representative for Women, Peace and Security, in 2013. In March 2016, on International Women’s Day, NATO held a so-called “Barbershop Conference” on gender equality. Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg took the opportunity to declare that gender equality was a frightfully important issue for the alliance because “NATO is a values-based organization and none of its fundamental values—individual liberties, democracy, human rights and the rule of law—work without equality….We learned in Afghanistan and in the Balkans that by integrating gender within our operations, we make a tangible difference to the lives of women and children”.
Definitely a “tangible difference to the lives of women and children”: As a result of NATO’s bombing campaigns in Yugoslavia and Libya, thousands of women and children lost their lives. In Libya, for example, NATO helped deliver perhaps thousands of women into the hands of ISIS.
This is how Human Rights Watch in 2017 described the record of ISIS rule in Libya:
“In the first half of 2016, fighters loyal to ISIS controlled the central coastal town of Sirte and subjected residents to a rigid interpretation of Sharia law that included public floggings, amputation of limbs, and public lynchings, often leaving the victims’ corpses on display.”
Trump’s failure to articulate a new mission for NATO, combined with his desire to extract more and more funds from the 29 member nations, puts the military alliance in a very vulnerable position. With no new mission and no obvious threats to Europe on the horizon—or at least none that NATO seems capable of addressing—its member states, sooner or later, are bound to question the value of belonging to an organization, with such high membership fees and so few benefits. No wonder the foreign-policy cognoscenti are fulminating and praying for a Biden presidency.
One of the reasons the foreign policy crowd detests Trump is that he hasn’t wasted his time trying to invent some “new mission” for NATO. Where Trump differs from his predecessors is that he hasn’t bothered trying to invent some new reason for NATO’s continued existence: Clinton had Yugoslavia, Bush Afghanistan & Iraq, Obama Libya. Trump hasn’t identified any “new mission” for NATO. Maybe because there isn’t one.
George Szamuely is a senior research fellow at Global Policy Institute (London) and author of Bombs for Peace: NATO’s Humanitarian War on Yugoslavia. Follow him on Twitter @GeorgeSzamuely
Given the U.S. government’s meddling in Chile’s 1964 presidential election, I can’t help but wonder whether that has contributed to the major obsession that U.S. officials have with supposed Russian meddling in U.S. presidential elections. When one does bad things to others, oftentimes this causes the malefactor to think that others are doing the same thing to him.
Americans didn’t learn about the full extent of the CIA’s meddling in the 1964 election until 2004, when U.S. officials decided to declassify records relating to what they had done.
Why that 40-year period of secrecy? Why, “national security” course. If the American people had found out what the CIA had done before that, the United States might have fallen into the ocean or maybe even been taken over by communists, Muslims, illegal immigrants, or drug dealers.
The purpose of the CIA’s intervention was to help presidential candidate Eduardo Frei defeat his opponent Salvador Allende, a Chilean physician.
Why the preoccupation with defeating Allende? Because Allende was more than just a doctor. He was also an avowed socialist. A democratically elected president with socialist proclivities was considered a grave threat to U.S. “national security.”
Keep in mind, after all, that this was 1964, during the period when the U.S. national-security establishment was convinced that the communists were coming to get us. The idea was that ever since the end of World War II, there supposedly existed a vast, worldwide communist conspiracy to take over the world that was supposedly based in Moscow, Russia. (Yes, that Russia!) If Allende were to be democratically elected president, that could accelerate, the notion went, the communist conquest of the United States, especially given the continued existence of the communist regime in Cuba.
In the process of helping Frei win the election, the CIA became a major factor in the election, albeit secretly and surreptitiously. According to an article on the meddling on the website of the National Security Archive,
[C]overt support for Frei’s Christian Democrats began in April 1962, at the suggestion of Kennedy aide Richard Goodwin and the U.S. Ambassador to Chile, with a series of secret payments on “a non-attributable basis”–meaning that the source of the funds was kept a secret from Frei and his party officials. In preparation for the 1964 campaign, in December 1963 the CIA’s Western Hemisphere Division proposed a concrete “political action program in Chile” to bolster the Christian Democrats chances of winning. The CIA’s Chief of Western Hemisphere Division, J.C. King, recommended that funds for the campaign “be provided in a fashion causing Frei to infer United States origin of funds and yet permitting plausible denial,” so that the CIA could “achieve a measure of influence over [the] Christian Democratic Party.”
The documents record that on March 26, 1964, Frei’s campaign managers met with U.S. embassy officials to go over their campaign budget of $1.5 million for which the party only had $500,000. A memorandum recording the meeting noted that “The Chileans suggested that the U.S. government make up this difference which amounts to one million dollars for the period from now to election time.” The “Special Group” which approved covert actions met on April 2 in the White House situation room and authorized CIA financing of the campaign and a compromise with the CIA in which the U.S. source of the secret funding “would be inferred” but with “no evidence of proof.”
On May 14, the Special Group approved an increase in covert spending to $1.25 million to allow the Christian Democrats to “campaign at its full potential.” On July 23, the Johnson administration approved another $500,000 for Frei to “maintain the pace and rhythm of his campaign effort.”
The CIA ended up spending $2.6 million to underwrite Frei’s campaign. Another $3 million was spent on an anti-Allende propaganda campaign.
Frei wonthe election. It was also a grand victory for the CIA.
Six years later, however, the U.S. government’s meddling in the 1970 Chilean presidential election ended up in failure. This time, Allende ended up winning the election. That then motivated the CIA to engage in such sordid, dark-side practices as bribery, kidnapping, assassination, transportation strikes, and, finally, a military coup that succeeded in ousting Allende from office. Let’s just hope that Russia doesn’t go that far.
Jacob G. Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation. He was born and raised in Laredo, Texas, and received his B.A. in economics from Virginia Military Institute and his law degree from the University of Texas. He was a trial attorney for twelve years in Texas. He also was an adjunct professor at the University of Dallas, where he taught law and economics. In 1987, Mr. Hornberger left the practice of law to become director of programs at the Foundation for Economic Education.
China has significantly reduced its imports of crude oil from Saudi Arabia in recent months, shows a report, adding that the Saudis are no longer among the top suppliers of crude to China.
The analytic report published by Oilprice shows that Chinese buyers of oil, including state-oil companies and independent refiners, imported a total 1.26 million barrels per day (bpd) of oil from Saudi Arabia in July, a record low that have come mainly as a result of high benchmark prices set by Persian Gulf Arab producers for orders placed in April.
For two years, Saudi Arabia has been either the number-one or number-two oil supplier to China, the world’s top oil importer.
However, a slump in global oil prices that began in March and continued into April, mainly a result of a price war between Saudi Arabia and Russia and the subsequent decline in demand for oil because of the coronavirus pandemic, pushed many Chinese buyers to look for ultra-cheap oil.
That caused imports into China from America to surge at the expense of Saudi Arabia. In fact, imports from the United States and Brazil increased in July, showing that Chinese preferred supplies that took almost 45 days to reach the country from America over the cargoes on the shorter route between the Middle East and China.
The report predicted that Saudis would have to wait for months to be able to capture their previous share of the Chinese market. It cited economic data as showing that supply of crude from the US and Brazil into China would continue to be strong in August and even in September as the Chinese buyers have continued to be price-conscious earlier this month when they chartered tankers for future deliveries.
1. “There is a huge gap between us (Jews) and our enemies, not just in ability but in morality, culture, sanctity of life, and conscience. They are our neighbors here, but it seems as if at a distance of a few hundred meters away, there are people who do not belong to our continent, to our world, but actually belong to a different galaxy.” Israeli president Moshe Katsav. The Jerusalem Post, May 10, 2001
2. “The Palestinians are like crocodiles, the more you give them meat, they want more”…. Ehud Barak, Prime Minister of Israel at the time – August 28, 2000. Reported in the Jerusalem Post, August 30, 2000
3. ” [The Palestinians are] beasts walking on two legs.” Menahim Begin, speech to the Knesset, quoted in Amnon Kapeliouk, “Begin and the Beasts”. New Statesman, 25 June 1982.
4. “The Palestinians” would be crushed like grasshoppers … heads smashed against the boulders and walls.” Isreali Prime Minister (at the time) in a speech to Jewish settlers New York Times April 1, 1988
5. “When we have settled the land, all the Arabs will be able to do about it will be to scurry around like drugged cockroaches in a bottle.” Raphael Eitan, Chief of Staff of the Israeli Defence Forces, New York Times, 14 April 1983.
6. “How can we return the occupied territories? There is nobody to return them to.” Golda Maier, March 8, 1969.
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