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Trump “the Fascist”

By James Petras | April 12, 2016

From left to right a raucous chorus has emerged to denounce Republican Presidential primary frontrunner Donald Trump as a ‘fascist’. They cite his campaign promises to build an Israeli-style wall along the US border; his threats to expel eleven million undocumented immigrants; and to restrict foreign Muslims from entering the US, as well as the way his pugnacious face and arm resemble those of Benito Mussolini (‘he juts out his chin, he raises his arm’). They decry his extreme nationalism as ‘resembling Hitler’s policy’, by which they mean his opposition to detrimental free trade agreements and his slogan to “Make America Great… Again.”

In this article I will critically address the current cartoonish image of fascism with fascism’s historical reality, and then proceed to analyze the so-called “lesser evil” politics behind the re-invention of an American fascist in the guise of billionaire Donald Trump.

Fascism: Fact and Fiction

Historically, fascist politics involved organized mass movements, armed militia and paramilitary groups who assaulted political opponents and violently censored critical speech and suppressed the right to assemble. Fascists scapegoated minorities, especially Roma and Jews, and burned trade unions and leftist headquarters, assassinating their leaders and beating their members. Programmatically, they attacked pacifists and defended overseas wars and empires in the name of ‘living space’. Evoking a past imperial glory, they were not ‘isolationists’.

Candidate Trump has not organized anything resembling a mass movement, let alone an armed militia. There are no ‘Trumpeting Brown Shirts’. At most, the police and a handful of his (often elderly) white supporters have punched a few KKK-dressed provocateurs who have physically disrupted and threatened Trump’s public meetings and his exercise of free speech. In fact, the ‘fascist’ disruption of democratic freedoms seems to be mostly organized and practiced by his political rivals.

Trump, far from scapegoating the powerful Jewish minority in this country, gave a shamelessly Israel-centric speech and received a standing ovation from nearly 18,000 mostly prominent Jews at the March 2016 meeting of the major pro-Israel lobby (AIPAC).

His rhetoric, concerning the expulsion of 11 million undocumented workers from Mexico and Central America and the building of a border wall, is a far cry from the practice of imprisoning and violently expelling over two million undocumented Latinos under the Clinton-Bush-Obama/Clinton regimes. At its worst, Trump promises to continue the existing federal policy on immigration and not create a ‘fascist’ rupture with past administrations. Is a ‘rhetorical cement wall’ worse than the real wall of armed border police, helicopters and armed carriers that have operated under the Presidencies of Clinton – Bush – Obama/Clinton with its hundreds of migrant deaths in the desert? Are declarations of a repressive immigration policy more ‘fascist’ coming from Trump’s loud mouth than the actual official practice of violently seizing undocumented workers from their homes and workplaces with long-term imprisonment and expulsion? Expelling youth, raised and educated in this country, or violently splitting up productive, well-integrated families and imprisoning their main breadwinners for lack of documents…that’s the official policy of the current and past three administrations.

There is far less of the truly fascist embrace of pre-emptive war and invasion in Trump’s speeches than in the actual policies pursued by the Clinton-Bush-Obama/Clinton regimes. In fact, among Trump’s numerous critics, especially his Republican rivals and the Hillary Clinton camp, we hear the loudest denunciations of his non-interventionist foreign policy (isolationism), which is “out of line” with the interventionist, overseas wars of current and past Republican and Democratic administrations. Trump’s critics and media pundits are ‘horror-struck’ at his apparent willingness to co-operate with Russian President Putin against common enemies, such as ISIS. Is his pragmatic regard of Russia more or less fascist than his rivals’ support for the Ukrainian putsch, orchestrated by the Obama regime in alliance with bona fide armed anti-Semitic Ukrainian fascists? His calls to dump NATO as an expensive drain on US treasure and manpower have the elite howling in outrage!

The propagandists, who paint Trump as a modern American fascist, cite his crude sexist remarks as ‘examples of a misogynist totalitarian’ while pointing favorably to Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton as potentially the ‘first feminist President’. In regard to his alleged misogyny, ‘the Donald’ pointed to Madame First Lady, Senator and Secretary Clinton’s promotion and critical role in US wars against Libya, Iraq and Syria where well over one million women have been rendered refugees, raped, injured or killed. Which is worse, one may ask: Crude locker room jokes or millions of orphaned boys and girls denied parents, homes, education and any future in the Middle East and North Africa? That is the world Midwife Hillary Clinton had helped to deliver.

Misogyny is the in the eye of the deceiver.

Are Trump’s verbal attacks on the practice of US multi-nationals relocating abroad to avoid US taxes and Wall Street financial houses hiding billions of the US elites’ obscene wealth in offshore tax shelters, more detrimental to ‘American values’ (as charged) than Hillary Clinton’s pandering to Wall Street while pocketing over $300,000 for each 45 minute sycophantic performance (marketed as her ‘policy lectures’), or her decades of actively promoting globalization – including the US job-destroying NAFTA?

Clearly Trump currently lacks program, organization and practice that define a fascist politician. At the very worst, he parrots the general line of attack against immigrants and Muslims. So far he would just bar them from the US but not bomb them ‘to the stone-age’. This should be contrasted with the actual policies carried out by the war-criminals Clinton/Bush/Obama-Clinton. It would be hard for Donald to ‘trump’ Hillary when she threatened to ‘obliterate Iran’ and its scores of millions of citizens because of Iran’s fictitious ‘nuclear program’.

On the other hand, Trump’s own meetings and rallies have been the victim of repeated disruption by organized groups acting like fascist thugs. Role reversal in real life: Trump, the target of rabid sustained mass media attacks, is pronounced the fascist …

Bashing Trump: Backdoor Backing of Hillary the Militarist Psychopath

If the objective case for labeling Trump ‘a fascist’ is weak or non-existent, why do so many prestigious academics and journalists play this stupid game of name-calling?

The commonsense explanation of their ruffled bluster is because they are setting up ‘Trump-the-Straw-Dragon’ in order to promote the poisonous Madame Secretary Hillary Clinton as the ‘lesser evil candidate’ for President of the United States.

No serious observer minimally aware of Clinton’s carnal embrace of multiple simultaneous disastrous and destructive wars in Ukraine, Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Syria and Libya, could possibly support her – unless if they are convinced that a greater danger looms on the horizon and “we have to defeat fascist Trump at all cost”? No serious democrat or wage and salaried employee can ignore Madame Clinton’s role as Wall Street’s most shameless pimp unless they ‘believe’ that a loud-mouth New York ‘fascist is worse than Wall Street’.

The phony scaremongering about Trump’s “fascism” just serves to cover up Clinton’s most servile promotion of traitorous wars for the benefit of Israel. One should envision the thousands of desperate Syrian refugees clinging to decrepit boats in the Mediterranean when reading excerpts of Clinton’s private e-mails: According to WikiLeaks, Hillary declared that “the best way to help Israel deal with Iran’s growing nuclear capability (sic) is to help (sic) the people of Syria overthrow the regime of Bashar Assad. … The fall of the House of Assad could well ignite a sectarian war between the Shiites and the majority Sunnis of the region drawing in Iran, which, in the view of Israeli commanders would not be a bad thing for Israel and its Western allies”. Not a bad thing for Israel – but a cruel and criminal policy against a sovereign nation and multi-ethnic society. Madame Clinton followed through with these demented pronouncements, which can only be viewed as genocidal! Clinton promoted the most violent proxy war, uprooting over half of the civilian population of Syria and killing hundreds of thousands, while shredding a sovereign nation. She thus pandered to her Israeli mentors and Pluto-Zionist funders.

To justify backing a serial war monger, a US Secretary of State who has served Israel’s interests, and a politician who has carnalized her ‘feminist principles’ with Wall Street billionaires, Hillary Clinton’s smarmy supporters have had to invent an opponent who is even worse: Creating and then denouncing “Trump the Fascist” serves as a backdoor justification for supporting a proven political psychopath!

April 13, 2016 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes, Wars for Israel | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Yaalon: Egypt-Saudi Bridge Obtained Israel’s Prior Approval

Al-Manar | April 12, 2016

The Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon said that the Zionist entity does not oppose erecting a bridge that links Egypt to Saudi, noting that the project obtained Israel’s prior approval.

Yaalon added that Saudi sent the Zionist entity a document that conveys the former’s commitment to Camp David pact which was concluded between Israel and Egypt in 1979, considering Tiran strait and Aqaba Gulf as international waterways that will keep open to maritime and aerial navigation.

The Israeli official pointed out that an agreement was concluded between KSA, Egypt, US, and Israel to transfer the power on the islands to Saudi as long as it will be included in the military appendix military appendix of Israel-Egypt Camp David Treaty.

Tzachi Hanegbi who heads the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee also signaled on Tuesday the Zionist entity did not oppose Egypt’s return of two Red Sea islands to Saudi Arabia, viewing it as a chance to draw closer to Riyadh against the axis of resistance in the region.

April 13, 2016 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular | , , , | Leave a comment

European parliamentarians urge release, EU action on case of Khalida Jarrar

Khalida-Jarrar

samidoun – Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network | April 12, 2016

23 Members of European Parliament directed a letter today, 12 April, to Federica Mogherini, High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs, expressing their “great concern with the arrest, detention and sentencing of the Palestinian Legislative Council member Khalida Jarrar.” Jarrar, a prominent Palestinian leftist, feminist and advocate for political prisoners, is serving a 15-month term in Israeli prison; she was arrested on 2 April 2015.

The MEPs called on Mogherini to raise Jarrar’s case with the Israeli government and demand her immediate release, that the issue of Palestinian political prisoners is raised and investigated, and that the EU mission in Israel and future EU delegations visit Jarrar and fellow Palestinian prisoners.

Further, they raised the overall situation of Israeli military courts, which convict Palestinians at a rate of over 99%, the transfer of Palestinian prisoners inside Israel, and new legislation threatening heavy sentences for children and stone-throwers, as well as the legislation allowing force-feeding of hunger strikers.

The letter, signed by members of the Socialists & Democrats (S&D), European United Left/Nordic Green Left (GUE/NGL), Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE), Greens/European Free Alliance (Greens/EFA), and Europe for Freedom and Direct Democracy (EFDD) groups in the Parliament, highlighted the injustice of Israeli military courts and the nature of “prohibited organization” charges which deny Palestinian freedom of association and criminalize Palestinian politics. The letter discussed the nature of the charges against Jarrar, which focused on public political activity and speeches, and the use of alleged secret evidence to jail Jarrar and deny her bail.

Download letter here: Letter on Khalida Jarrar’s situation

April 12, 2016 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Israel On a Rampage of Destruction In the West Bank

By Barbara Erickson | TimesWarp | April 12, 2016

Israeli bulldozers are tearing up Palestinian structures at a rapid pace this year, destroying more than 500 houses and other buildings and displacing more than 650 men, women and children in three short months. The demolition spree is outpacing last year’s rate by more than three to one, and monitoring groups are raising the alarm.

Representatives of the European Parliament have spoken out against the destruction, saying Israel is violating international law. The United Nations and the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem have issued several reports and called for a halt to the demolitions; even the U.S. state department has expressed “concern” over the campaign.

The New York Times, however, has given short shrift to this story, relegating it to wire service reports, which appear neither in print nor in the featured headlines of Middle East news on the website. Only readers who search the site for specific news about demolitions can read about the recent rampage of destruction taking place in the West Bank.

No Times reporter has found it worthwhile to visit Khirbet Tana, for instance, a herding community near Nablus. The Israeli army has carried out demolitions there four times since February of this year, most recently just this past week, when they destroyed tents, houses and animal shelters and confiscated a car, a tractor and a water tank.

Earlier, on March 2 the authorities demolished a two-room schoolhouse with its playground equipment and toilets (as well as nine homes, two tents, 16 animal shelters and one solar panel).

The Khirbet Tana school had been built in 2011 with funds donated by an Italian aid organization. According to the United Nations Office of Humanitarian Affairs, it was one of more than 100 structures “provided as humanitarian assistance to families in need,” which have been destroyed so far this year.

This has become a heated issue with many donor groups, including members of the European Parliament. After a recent EP delegation to Palestine, Irish parliamentarian Martina Anderson stated, “We are incensed by Israel’s increasing number of demolitions of humanitarian structures funded by EU taxpayers. People are losing their homes in the cold and the rain. Israeli policies violate international law and show disrespect for the EU, Israel’s biggest trade partner.”

Her words had no effect on Israeli authorities, who went on to bulldoze the school at Khirbet Tana two weeks later and then spent the next two days destroying structures in eight other communities.

Writer Amira Hass described this follow-up operation in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz: “The Israelis destroyed tents people were living in, huts, pens, herd enclosures, an access road (which makes it very hard to deliver humanitarian aid to the families), a two-kilometer pipe meant to provide water to 50 families in the area, storage facilities and a dairy. Some of the tents and the pipe were donated by international organizations. Fifty-nine people, including 28 minors, were left without a roof over their heads.”

As of April 4, according to the UN, Israel had destroyed 500 Palestinian structures and displaced 657 individuals this year, compared with 521 structures and 663 persons in all of 2015. As B’Tselem has noted, this is “an unusually massive demolition campaign.”

All this is disturbing enough, but the news that Israeli politicians are shamelessly pushing for continued destruction of the vulnerable herding communities is even more appalling. As Hass reports in Haaretz, Knesset members “have openly pressured Civil Administration officials to step up the demolitions and evict Palestinian communities from Area C.” They have also “demanded that the authorities destroy buildings that international organizations, particularly European ones, have donated.”

The Times, however, has little interest in exposing the illegal and inhumane actions of Israeli officials and the consequent suffering (and stubborn resilience) of vulnerable Palestinian families clinging to their land and livelihoods. To do so would expose the lie at the heart of the Israeli narrative—the claim that Israelis are the innocent victims of Palestinian terrorism.

The demolition campaign, however, reveals the helplessness of Palestinian communities, the cruelty of the occupation forces and the criminal actions of government officials. From the Times’ point of view it is all best left unsaid.

April 12, 2016 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , , | Leave a comment

Door Bang

Defence for Children Palestine – January 28, 2016

Meet five Palestinian children who go to school in the Old City of Jerusalem, in close proximity to Israeli settlers and armed forces. Each child describes their daily experience of unease and even bodily danger, as they travel to and attend school.

Hadeel, a tender-hearted young girl, walks her younger sister to kindergarten every morning before heading to her own school. She shares her fear that settlers will enter the building and kidnap her, as her school’s front door faces the entrance to an Israeli settler compound.

“The settlers could easily open the door and walk into our school. I’m afraid,” Hadeel states.

Hamza shows the camera a scar on his chest, the result of an Israeli soldier shooting him with a rubber-coated metal bullet. Israeli forces passing in a jeep likewise shot Ahmad’s father with a rubber-coated metal bullet as he was walking his son to school.

Rashad, a student at Riad Al-‘Aqsa school, explains the he dropped out for a while because of recent political unrest. Now that he has returned, Rashad faces regular harassment from Israeli settlers while walking or riding the bus. Sawsan Safadi, international and public relations director for the Palestinian Ministry of Education, affirms that absences like Rashad’s are quite common and hamper Palestinian children’s education.

Despite these hardships, Mohammad continues to pursue his love of theater, setting up street performances for his friends. “[W]hen I’m acting, nothing can bring me down. I act freely.”

This short film by Mouv Media, L.L.C. was produced by Defense for Children International – Palestine and War Child Holland.

Join a growing global movement fighting for accountability, increased protections, and justice for Palestinian children. You can make a difference. Join us: http://www.dci-palestine.org/donate.

April 12, 2016 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular, Video | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Boycott campaign launched against Dutch delivery service TNT

Ma’an – April 12, 2016

HEBRON – Activists called for a boycott campaign against Dutch international courier company TNT Express after its staff reportedly refused to deliver parcels to Palestinian recipients, allegations the company denied.

Boycott campaign co-organizer Suhaib Zahdah told Ma’an on Monday that “the issue surfaced after TNT employees refused to deliver mail parcels to their Palestinian recipients.”

The recipients contacted the company, which reportedly said company policy doesn’t allow work with the Palestinians, and suggested the recipients “use addresses in Jerusalem or Nazareth [in Israel] instead,” Zahdah said, referring to the reply of TNT’s headquarters in the Netherlands as “negative.”

“This is a violation of international law as the company discriminates by employing people refusing to work with Palestinians while they work with the illegal Israeli settlements,” he said.

The boycott campaign was launched under the slogan “TNT, the people discrimination,” a play on the company’s slogan “the people network.”

In response to the allegations, the company told Ma’an that TNT makes regular deliveries to Palestine, “including Ramallah, Gaza, East Jerusalem, Hebron, and the West Bank.”

While the company said TNT’s Israel branch “delivers shipments to Israeli towns, including those in the West Bank,” referring to Israeli settlements, shipments to Palestinians in the occupied Palestinian territory are handled through TNT’s Jordan branch, and delivered by a subcontractor once “for the final delivery.”

TNT in response to the case brought up by the campaign said: “We’ve had email exchanges with a customer who was disappointed because TNT Israel wasn’t able to make a delivery at the address he specified.”

“Security restrictions may at times limit our ability to serve certain destinations or addresses. This is what we explained to one of our customers today,” TNT said, emphasizing the company did not have a political agenda.

The boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel has gained momentum over the past year, with activists increasingly targeting companies that act in compliance with Israel’s illegal occupation of East Jerusalem and the West Bank.

Israeli settlements in East Jerusalem and the West Bank are considered illegal by the majority of the international community, and companies who either operate out of settlements or in cooperation with settlement-based companies are seen by the BDS movement as supporting illegal Israeli policies.

April 12, 2016 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, Solidarity and Activism | , , , | Leave a comment

Two Smooth Faces of Evil

smooth faces of evil

By Craig Murray | April 12, 2016

Many of you will recognise one of the faces in this photograph, Mark Regev. He is Israel’s new Ambassador to London and of course was the Israeli government spokesman who justified the massacre of more than 600 women and children in Gaza, and the murder of peace activists aboard the Mavi Marmara.

The other face of evil is Simon McDonald, head of the UK Diplomatic Service. You probably now think I am indulging in hyperbole. But no, I am not.

Simon McDonald was the Foreign Secretary Jack Straw’s Private Secretary at the time of the implementation of the British government’s extraordinary rendition and intelligence from torture programmes. When I became the only member of the UK’s senior civil service to make formal objection to these programmes, it was Simon McDonald who managed Jack Straw’s response in continuing to use torture.

I have indisputable documentary evidence of this, plain despite redactions by the British government censors (redactions which primarily remove all references to the CIA).

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It is put to me frequently that people like McDonald, who were merely implementing a policy of torture, are not evil. That of course is the age old “only doing my job” defence. As somebody who was sacked for refusing to go along with torture, I think I have walked the walk and can describe him as evil. It is also worth noting that, while McDonald meets all new Ambassadors to London, he went far further with Regev than with anybody else. He tweeted out their photo with the message “Happy to see Mark Regev newly arrived Israeli Ambassador, an old friend from Tel Aviv ten years ago.”

Ten years ago, when they were friends in Tel Aviv, was of course the year in which Israel invaded Lebanon and Mark Regev was the chief Israeli spokesman justifying that attack, with its mass civilian casualties. Regev also defended the bombing by Israel of a United Nations observation post.

It is hardly surprising McDonald and Regev became friends at this time, as Gordon Brown’s government were doing everything possible behind the scenes to assist the Israeli invasion. As I wrote at that time

I have just watched on television sixty bodies being buried in a mass grave in Tyre, victims of Israeli bombing. At the same time I saw the odious Kim Howells, Foreign Office minister, arguing that a ceasefire would not solve the problem.

British diplomats at the UK Mission to the United Nations in New York – people I know personally – are putting massive effort into working against a ceasefire. They have the ultimate weapon that they and the US can veto any resolution at the Security Council, but are bending their backs into heading the subject off the agenda.

I hope they are proud of their succesful efforts. For every hour they prevent a ceasefire, on average two more Lebanese children are dying. Israel claims now to have killed 100 Hizbollah fighters. Even if true, that means they are killing two children to every fighter.

McDonald and Regev. Torture meets child-killing. Don’t they make a lovely couple?

April 12, 2016 Posted by | Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Zionism: Imperialism in the Age of Counter-revolution

Coercive Engineered Migration: Zionism’s War on Europe (Part 11 of an 11 Part Series)

By Gearóid Ó Colmáin | Dissident Voice | April 11, 2016

During the 1920s General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union Josef Stalin formulated what he considered to be the essential contribution of Lenin to Marxist political economy. Leninism, he wrote, is Marxism in the era of proletarian revolution. Since 1989 proletarian and national liberation revolutions throughout the world have been overturned by a general, global counter-revolutionary upsurge. It is a a political phenomenon that has seen the onslaught of US colour revolutions, which seek to do away with the bourgeois nation-state itself, the last barrier to the total exploitation of the world by the global corporate and financial elite.

In this essay I have argued that the contemporary form of this counter-revolutionary ideology, of this imperial drive for global domination, is Zionism. One could therefore, echoing Stalin’s definition of Leninism, assert that Zionism is imperialism in the age of capitalist counter-revolution. In other words, Zionism is the very form of contemporary Western imperialism. However, unlike Russian and Chinese imperialism, Western imperialism or Zionism has both a religious and ethnic dimension. Zionism is a Messianic and racist ideology which is not based simply on secular, Jewish nationalism but has its roots in Talmudism.

Zionism, through its control of Western finance capitalism, is striving for global governance. Lenin, writing in 1915, described as ‘indisputable’ the fact that ‘development is proceeding towards monopolies, hence, towards a single world monopoly, towards a single world trust’. But Lenin also pointed out that this drive towards unipolar global power would also intensify the contradictions in the global economy. A cogent example of this today is the low-intensity covert war currently being waged by the United States/Israel against Germany: The Western imperial alliance is turning on itself.

However, no people’s resistance to Zionism can be mounted if the empire continues to outsmart its opponents. The aforementioned General Barnett understands his enemies well. He used to teach Marxism in Harvard university and has written a book comparing the African policies of the German Democratic Republic and the Socialist Republic of Romania. In his book Blueprint For Action, he points out that the father of Fourth Generation Warfare is Mao Zedong.  Imperial grand strategy is now waging war using techniques developed during the Chinese revolution, one of the greatest anti-colonial struggles in history. The key for anti-imperialist resistance today, therefore, has to be to understand how to turn the tools of imperialism against imperialism.

Marxism is an indispensable tool for understanding capitalism, but is insufficient for a full comprehension of the complexities of imperial strategy and tactics in the information age. Barnett and many other US and Israeli military strategists are keen students of social psychology, and in particular General Boyd’s OODA Loop Theory. The OODA stands for observation, orientation, decision, action. According to Boyd, decision-making occurs in a recurring cycle of observe-orient-decide-act. An entity (whether an individual or an organization) that can process this cycle quickly, observing and reacting to unfolding events more rapidly than an opponent, can thereby “get inside” the opponent’s decision cycle and gain the advantage.

One could see this psychology at work during the Arab Spring. The rigid ideological orientation of the average ‘leftist’ saw the uprisings in Tunisia as proof that people were rebelling against a US-backed dictator and his ‘neo-liberal’ regime. This interpretation was reinforced by strategically placed ‘critics’ of US-foreign policy in the news station of Zionism’s ancillary regime, Qatar, while the initial indifference of the Western press confirmed the interpretation of the Tunisian revolt as a genuine, grass roots uprising against US imperialism.

US and Israeli strategists were capable of doing this through their deep understanding of ‘leftist’ discourse. They also understood that the ‘anti-globalisation’ form of the protest movement would fool genuine critics of US imperialism, thereby impeding their ability to react to the US-orchestrated revolutions in a rational manner.

In the Arab Spring, inverted Marxian dialectics, Systems Theory, Psychology, Military Science and Utility Theory were waged against a feckless and discombobulated anti-war movement who would repeat the sound bites of ‘popular uprising’ and the ‘defeat of US imperialism in the Middle East’ implanted in their minds by one of the most impressive and successful US/Israeli geostrategic operations in modern history.

On the eve of NATO’s bombing of Libya, the BBC predictably called upon an old reliable ‘critic of US foreign-policy’ Noam Chomsky. The veteran American philosopher agreed that the West had a “duty” to “stop the massacres” in Libya thus ensuring there would be no moral outrage among the so-called “anti-war movement” to a NATO military intervention. The invitation of Noam Chomsky by the Zionist-controlled BBC illustrates the importance for British intelligence of ideologically disarming potential ‘leftist’ opponents in the run-up to meticulously planned wars of aggression, disguised as ‘humanitarian interventions’.

Chomsky stated that ‘there may come a time when it would make sense for the West to become involved… but the question is has that time come.’ No anti-imperialist would ever suggest that it could make sense for the West to intervene militarily in another country, under any circumstances.

Given Chomsky’s anarchist ideology — the very ideology instrumentalised by the CIA in colour revolutions — the BBC knew he would go along with their fake ‘popular uprising’ in Benghazi; thus providing justification to wage ‘humanitarian’ warfare in support of the ‘revolution’.

In 2013, a massive military destablisation of Brazil was undertaken by US NGOs, operating under the guidance of the CIA, in order to weaken the popularity of a government moving far too close to Russia and China in the eyes of Washington. Again, the CIA’s ‘Vinegar Revolution‘ received full support from most ‘leftist’ quarters. Once again, military geostrategy had triumphed over anti-imperialist analysis.

The current refugee crisis proves that US/Israeli military geostrategy is running circles around its opponents who, instead of identifying the culprits who are using human beings as weapons, are unwittingly collaborating with Zionism’s plan to inundate Europe with migrants for the purposes of fomenting civil war in the European peninsula.  It is a desperate effort to prevent Eurasian integration, a prospect inimical to what the Pentagon refers to as ‘full spectrum dominance’.

Those who have joined in the chorus of welcoming the refugees/migrants are unwitting participants in an extension of Zionism’s neo-colonial wars in Africa and the Middle East. They are also complicit in the endorsement and cover-up of a modern slave trade. Opposing imperialism requires study of the logic of its geostrategic operations. Imperialism’s deliberate flooding of Europe with a Wahhabised lumpen-proletariat from a war-torn Southern Hemisphere will not help the cause of labour, the cause of human freedom. Rather, it will contribute to preventing the unification of the European-peninsula with the Eurasian Heartland. It will also contribute towards the further colonisation and destruction of independent African and Middle Eastern nations such as Eritrea and Syria.

An example of Marxist Leninist parties’ inability to deal with imperialism’s weaponization of migrants comes from the Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist Leninist). Their argument in favour of immigration is sound under normal circumstances but they fail to address the problem of when immigration becomes a tool of imperialism, a specific geopolitical strategy aimed at destabilizing both the country of origin and the destination of the migrant.

The recent resolution of the CPGBML is worth reproducing here in full:

This party firmly believes that immigration is not the cause of the ills of the working class in Britain, which are solely the result of the failings of the capitalist system.

Immigration and asylum legislation and controls under capitalism have only one real goal: the division of the working class along racial lines, thus fatally weakening that class’s ability to organise itself and to wage a revolutionary struggle for the overthrow of imperialism.

These controls have the further effect of creating an army of ‘illegal’ immigrant workers, prey to super exploitation and living in dire conditions as an underclass, outside the system, afraid to organise and exercising a downward pull on the wages and conditions of all workers.

The scourge of racism, along with all other ills of capitalism, will only be finally abolished after the successful overthrow of imperialism. But since immigration can no more be abolished under capitalism than can wage slavery, our call should not be for the further control and scapegoating of immigrants, but the abolition of all border controls, as part of the wider fight to uproot racism from the working-class movement and build unity among workers in Britain, so strengthening the fight for communism.

The problem here is that no distinction is made between immigration into imperialist countries and immigration into semi-colonial type countries. For example, Syria has been forced to close its borders due to the passage of terrorists in the service of imperialism. In such circumstances, it would be ludicrous to condemn the Syrian government for erecting fences to protect its borders. Similarly, Hungary, a small country which has just taken modest steps towards escaping from the clutches of US imperialism under the control of the IMF, has decided to erect fences to protect its borders from what it perceives as an attempt by US imperialism to destabilize the country. Under these conditions, such a decision is entirely justified. The CPGBML argues correctly that “the scourge of racism, along with all other ills of capitalism, will only be finally abolished after the successful overthrow of imperialism.” The erection of fences in Hungary is part of that fight against imperialism, when migrants are clearly being used as weapons of imperialist strategy against recalcitrant nation-states.

The fact that Zionism is using the refugee crisis to further its imperialist agenda does not mean, however, that all refugees in the world are being used for this purpose. Rather, just as in the Arab Spring where the social inequalities of capitalism were used by imperialism to further the cause of capitalism, many refugees coming from the Middle East and Africa are being used for the same purpose.

Throughout the world Homo sapiens is being supplanted by Homo economicus: a vacuous, brain-washed, rootless cosmopolitan, a deterritorialised and acculturated nomad, hopelessly blown hither and thither by the exigencies of capital. Meanwhile, Zionism continues to stoke up the incessant and utterly fraudulent War on Terror, with omnipresent mass surveillance of the “nations” (goyim) while at the same time Jews are being encouraged by the Israeli regime to leave Europe for settlement on Arab lands, ruined and depopulated by Zionism’s wars.

The ‘refugee crisis’ is indubitably one more step towards the creation of a Greater Israel. Benjamin Netanyahu recently told the Israeli National News that Israel must become a “world power”.

To politically correct pundits, Victor Orban’s fence might appear inhumane and xenophobic, but at this moment in history the concrete choice presented to us is between temporary fences designed to protect nations from imperialism or Zionist walls built to imprison humanity.

• Read Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four, Part Five, Part Six, Part Seven, Part Eight, Part Nine, Part Ten

Gearóid Ó Colmáin is a journalist and political analyst based in Paris. His work focuses on globalization, geopolitics and class struggle.

April 12, 2016 Posted by | Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance, Timeless or most popular | , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Last day of demolition order leaves Palestinian family in fear of losing their home

International Solidarity Movement | April 10, 2016

Jerusalem, Occupied Palestine – The 10th of April is the last day of the demolition order on the home of the Totanji family. The family lives in the Sawaneh district in Wadi al-Joz, a village in East Jerusalem near the Old City, which Israel has declared as a ‘National Park’ area. This despite it having always been a residential area. The family received the demolition order over a year and a half years ago, but lost the appeal against the order last month. Today is the last day of the demolition order, which leaves the family fearing that their house maybe demolished tonight.

The house is single-story with 4 bedrooms. However, it is currently the home of 16 people including a 7 month old baby, the granddaughter of the owner of the house. As is the case with other Palestinian families in fear of house demolition, the family does not have any where else to go, and will leave their whole life behind if their house is demolished. Just seven months ago, one of Totanji sons had his house demolished in the same area. This fear of losing one’s home does not just apply to the Totanjis, but also to the rest of the residents in Palestine, due to the huge number of demolitions and demolition orders. In just the last week (31st March-6th April) 14 houses have been demolished in East Jerusalem and the West Bank by Israeli Forces.

Wadi al-Joz is located directly outside the Old City of Jerusalem in a vulnerable area. It is a neighbourhood that suffers from many demolition orders and subsequent demolitions. This is due to Israel declaring parts of the area around the Old City in Jerusalem as a ‘National Park’, to “protect the historical land.” The area covers a huge residential areas containing villages which are already overcrowded including Wadi al-Joz. In addition to the Totanjis, 13 other families in the Sawaneh district in Wadi al-Joz are also in danger of demolition. The information regarding the so called ‘National Park’ was only relayed to these families in the past two years. And whilst Israeli authorities claim that it was declared a park more than 4 decades ago, regardless, this declaration concerning annexed territory is in direct violation of international law.

The family is seeking an international presence to defer the demolition and deter the Israeli authorities. Internationals will be in the house from this evening and for the foreseeable future to prevent the demolition. There is a press conference planned tomorrow morning, 11am on the 11th of April 2016, to announce the opening of a protest tent outside the Totanji family house. The families and the community of Wadi al-Joz invites everyone to attend the protest and to lend coverage to this important event.

Address:

Wadi Al-Joz, neighbourhood of East Jerusalem

Across the Fire Station, behind the Central Market or “Hisbi”

Directions:

From Damascus Gate, follow the Old City Wall towards the Mount of Olives and continue down into Wadi Al-Joz. The home is on a dirt road on the right before you begin to go up the hill to the Mount of Olives. It is about 10-15 minute walk from Damascus Gate. Alternatively, you can drive down from the Mount of Olives past the Ibrahimiya School. The dirt road is on the left at the bottom of the hill just opposite the paved road that goes right into Wadi al-Joz.

Contacts:

Totanji family contact

Aref Tatanji: +972-(0)-508-133-590 (Arabic)

Press conference contact

Nureddin Amro: +972-(0)-525-271-587 (Arabic and English)

ISM media contact

Josephine: +972-(0)-59-740-6401(English)

Further reading:

http://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israel-destroying-palestinian-homes-path-bible-trail-encircling-jerusalem-1585955449

Background about home demolitions:

House demolitions in International Humanitarian Law (Diakonia)

East Jerusalem: Key Humanitarian Concerns (UN OCHA, August 2014)

The Absentee Property Law in East Jerusalem and Its Implementation: A Legal Guide and Analysis (Norwegian Refugee Council, 2013)

April 11, 2016 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Solidarity and Activism | , , , , | Leave a comment

International Day of Solidarity for Palestinian Prisoners – Paris, London, NYC, Toulouse

BDS France Toulouse, Coup Pour Coup 31, NPA31, Collectif Palestine Libre

As of March 2016, there are over 7,000 Palestinians, including more than 100 children, in Israeli prisons, in violation of international law which prohibits an occupying power to imprison in its territory the people of occupied territories.

Since 1967, over 750,000 Palestinians (20% of the total population and 40% of the male population) have been imprisoned by the occupation army. There is no Palestinian family that has been untouched by imprisonment.

toulouse-14avril201699.74% of Palestinians are convicted by Israeli military courts, the majority of these resulting from forced “plea bargains” (the accused must plead guilty or face a much higher sentence, in a context that they will certainly be found guilty)

Nearly 700 Palestinian prisoners are held under administrative detention, an arbitrary and illegal procedure that allows the Israeli army to detain Palestinians for a period of six months, indefinitely renewable, without charge or trial.

Among the detainees are Palestinian parliamentarians, including Ahmad Sa’adat, General Secretary of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine; Marwan Barghouti, Fateh leader; and several Hamas lawmakers. In April 2015, Khalida Jarrar, member of the Palestinian Legislative Council and advocate for prisoners’ rights, was arrested and sentenced to 15 months in prison. Lawyer and activist Shireen Issawi was convicted along with her brother Medhat Issawi, and sentenced to 4 and 8 years in prison respectively. Medhat Issawi was previosly imprisoned for 20 years!

Palestinian prisoners are subject to torture, sleep deprivation, lack of hygiene and medical care, confinement in tiny cells and sordid, humiliating treatment. A growing number are held in prolonged solitary confinement. Threats, intimidation and denial of family visits are all means of the Israeli occupation to silence the legitimate struggle of the Palestinian people for land and freedom.

Many prisoners went on hunger strike, risking their lives to confront inhumane treatment; for example, Mohammed al-Qeeq ordered to administrative detention in November 2015 and after 94 days of hunger strike, securing his release in May 2016.

As part of the International Day of Solidarity for Palestinian Prisoners, we salute the thousands of Palestinians imprisoned for struggling against the apartheid and ethnic cleansing of their people. We also salute Georges Abdallah, communist activist for the Palestinian cause, imprisoned in France since 1984 for resisting the Israeli invasion of his country, Lebanon.

Let us unite for their release, to end the oldest military occupation in the world, to develop the movement for boycott, divestment and sanctions against the criminal regime of Israel, to demonstrate and popularize the struggle of the Palestinian people.

We demand:
The release of all Palestinian prisoners
The immediate end of the blockade and siege of Gaza
The end of occupation, colonization, and ethnic cleansing of Palestine
The Right of return of all Palestinian refugees
The immediate release of Georges Abdallah

Palestine lives, Palestine will be victorious!

Rassemblement jeudi 14 avril 2016 à 17h30 Square Charles De Gaulle (Métro Capitole).

16 April, Paris: Rally in support of Palestinian Prisoners

Saturday, 16 April
3:00 pm
Place du Chatelet
Paris, France
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/events/229128724111169/

March via the Boulevard Sebastopol to the Place de la Republique, where we will hold a mass rally to support the 7000 Palestinian political prisoners. We will not forget Georges Ibrahim Abdallah, the great defender of the Palestinian cause, held for 32 years in French prisons at the demand of Israel and the US!

Organizers: CAPJPO-EuroPalestine, Droits Devant, Children of Palestine, Palestine Nanterre, Saint-Ouen Palestine, Friends of Nablus, Collective for the Liberation of Georges Ibrahim Abdallah

16 April, London: Palestine Prisoners Parade

Saturday, 16 April
12:30 pm
Gower Street (Corner of Torrington Place)
London, UK
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/events/600881743402205/

On the occasion of Prisoners’ Day, we invite you to join us in solidarity with all Palestinians currently languishing in Israeli jails. We will march from Gower street to Trafalgar square along with another march that is being held that day (people against austerity). In keeping with the circus theme that has been used to raise awareness about Abu Sakha, a Palestinian clown currently held in administrative detention, we encourage people to come dressed as colourfully and clowny as you dare! We also encourage as many specific performers as possible (circus artists, musicians, dancers etc). If you have a specific tallent to perform, please get in touch at info@freeabusakha.com or private messaging to www.facebook.com/freeabusakha so we can coordinate the acts.

15 April, NYC: Celebrate resistance before Palestinian Prisoners’ Day

Friday, 15 April
4:00 pm
G4S Office – NYC (19 W 44th St)
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/events/1042793672451086/

On 17 April each year, Palestinian prisoners, the Palestinian people, and the world mark the International Day of Solidarity with Palestinian Prisoners.

Commemorated since 1974, when the first Palestinian prisoner, Mahmoud Hijazi, was freed in a prisoner exchange with the Palestinian Resistance, 17 April is a day of protests, rallies, marches, forums and more to commemorate the struggle of Palestinians imprisoned in Israeli occupation jails and demand their freedom.

We join with the Palestinian prisoners’ movement in calling on organizations and people of conscience around the world to take action to to express solidarity and call for freedom for Palestinian political prisoners.

Over 7,000 Palestinian prisoners are currently held in Israeli jails. More than 700 of them are held in administrative detention without charge or trial. The others face military courts which convict over 99% of the Palestinians that appear before them. Over 400 Palestinian children as young as 12 years old are held in Israeli prisons.

Every night, Israeli occupation forces conduct violent armed invasions of Palestinian villages, cities, refugee camps and homes, ransacking them and arresting dozens of Palestinians. This comes amid near-daily killings and extrajudicial execution of Palestinians by occupation forces, the demolition of the homes of the families of Palestinian prisoners, new racist laws targeting Palestinians who hold Israeli citizenship, and further escalating repression.

International action has seen some response: G4S, the British-Danish security corporation targeted for a global boycott because of its role in providing security systems, control rooms and equipment to Israeli prisons, has announced it is selling off its Israeli subsidiary and leaving the market entirely. However, it’s critical to keep the pressure on G4S until their equipment and security systems are no longer being used to imprison Palestinians, block their movement at checkpoints, or besiege Gaza.

G4S doesn’t only profit on the imprisonment of Palestinians, of course. Black student movements at Columbia University, the University of California and Cornell University have led in building campus boycotts and divestment against G4S because of its role in private imprisonment in the United States, especially of youth, and have won significant victories. Organizing with movements confronting imprisonment and racist oppression, including the Black movement and the prison divestment movement, is particularly crucial in confronting common oppressors.

Palestinian Prisoners’ Day this year also comes amid international repression of Palestinian organizing – for example, the attacks on BDS in France and the arrest and prosecution of BDS activists – and the imprisonment and persecution of Palestinians and fellow strugglers in international prisons, as in the cases of Georges Ibrahim Abdullah, the Holy Land Five, and Rasmea Odeh. Confronting racism and oppression of all forms comes hand in hand with confronting Zionist settler-colonial racism in Palestine.

After a regular, weekly protest of G4S on Friday, join Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network as we rally with CUNY Prison Divest and NYC Students for Justice in Palestine on Sunday, 17 April to demand freedom for Palestinian political prisoners and an end to private, for-profit incarceration in the United States:

https://www.facebook.com/events/1718091051808038

April 10, 2016 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Solidarity and Activism, Subjugation - Torture | , , , | Leave a comment

Israel connects BDS with terrorism while cracking down on German banks

RT | April 10, 2016

Israel’s Public Security Minister has linked the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement with terrorism and is threatening German banks using tactics previously employed against Al-Qaeda.

Netanyahu-appointee Gilad Erdan has threatened to coerce German banks to prohibit BDS activists from fundraising through their accounts, not through Israeli legislation, but the laws of other countries where Erdan has “increased awareness among decision-makers in Europe and North America of the anti-Semitic, anti-democratic, and discriminatory nature of the BDS movement, which seeks Israel’s destruction and often has ties to terror-supporting organizations.”

To bring about this “increased awareness,” a taskforce headed by Erdan was launched last year at the cost of 100 million Israeli shekels ($25.5 million) that has been successful in impacting the laws, policies, and enthusiasm for enforcement in a number of countries, particularly the US and UK, where a number of anti-BDS restrictions have employed “anti-democratic” and “discriminatory” methods to clamp down on the movement.

Erdan’s Friday statement in the Jerusalem Post urged the banks to “carefully consider the potential legal, reputational, and ethical consequences of facilitating the activities of BDS groups.”

In response, the bank’s spokesman said “We expressly point out again that Commerzbank adheres to the applicable compliance guidelines and regulations regarding the conduct of an account.”

Ironically, while Erdan is threatening BDS activists with one set of laws, the global grassroots movement is actually trying to pressure Israel to “comply with international law” through the boycott of products and companies that profit from the violation of the rights of Palestinians, particularly violent land grabs.

Inspired by the BDS movement that helped end South African apartheid, supporters of this campaign, which includes Jewish activists contrary to the accusations of anti-semitism, believe it is the only way to push for a solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

Here are the countries Erdan is counting on to be Israel’s enforcers in its global crackdown on the “terrorist” boycotters.

US

Legislation has been introduced at local, state, and federal levels targeting BDS movements.

At least 16 anti-BDS initiatives were introduced in the US in 2015, including the Trade Promotion Authority legislation that discourages European governments from taking part in BDS activities by threatening to cut off their ability to engage in free trade with the US.

Illinois passed an anti-BDS state law that created a blacklist of foreign companies from which the state pension must divest its funds. South Carolina bans state business with companies engaged in boycotts.

Other anti-BDS bills have been introduced in Congress, New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. New York state currently has legislation on the table, just in time for the New York primary, that would ban state business with companies involved in boycotting Israel, including international banks.

Canada

Earlier this year, Canada passed a motion condemning “any and all attempts” to promote BDS. The country’s new leader Justin Trudeau said the movement had “no place on Canadian campuses” and fully supported Israel’s 2014 Operation Protective Edge against Gaza, despite his “liberal” outlook.

UK

The UK recently banned local authorities and public bodies from participating in BDS. This includes councils, universities, and student unions. The move was welcomed by Conservative MP Eric Pickles who said the BDS movement was an attempt “by the irresponsible left to demonize Israel.”

The UK has had its fair share of BDS victories in the past. Leicester City Council adopted the boycott policy in 2014 along with the National Union of Students the following year.

France

BDS is banned in France as part of a general law that classifies the boycott of a nation or its citizens as a hate crime. It is illegal for councils or legal bodies to boycott Israeli goods.

Last November, a small group of French activists were found guilty of provoking discrimination after holding a small rally calling for the boycott of Israeli goods. They were sentenced to pay €12,000 in damages to the plaintiffs, as well as legal fees.

Germany

While Germany doesn’t have a specific law banning the BDS movement, DAB Bank in Munich announced in February that it would cancel BDS-Kampagne’s account as of next week. DAB is owned by French BNP Paribas.

April 9, 2016 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, Solidarity and Activism | , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Palestinians mark 68th anniversary of Deir Yassin massacre

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Ma’an – April 9, 2016

Palestinians on Saturday marked the 68th anniversary of the massacre of more than 100 Palestinians civilians carried out by Zionist paramilitary groups in the village of Deir Yassin in 1948 prior to the establishment of Israel.

Deir Yassin has long been a symbol of Israeli violence for Palestinians because of the particularly gruesome nature of the slaughter, which targeted men, women, children, and the elderly in the small village west of Jerusalem.

The number of victims is generally believed to be around 107, though figures given at the time reached up to 254, out of a village that numbered around 600 at the time.

The Deir Yassin massacre was led by the Irgun group, whose head was future Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, with support from other paramilitary groups Haganah and Lehi whose primary aim was to push Palestinians out through force.

Records of the massacre describe Palestinian homes blown up with residents inside, and families shot down as they attempted to flee.

The massacre came in spite of Deir Yassin resident’s efforts to maintain positive relations with new Jewish neighbors, including the signing of pact that was approved by Haganah, a main Zionist paramilitary organization during the British Mandate of Palestine.

An Israeli psychiatric hospital now lies on the ruins of Deir Yassin, the remainder of which was reportedly bulldozed in the 1980s to make way for Jewish housing and incorporated as a neighborhood of Jerusalem. Streets of the neighborhood hold names of Irgun militiamen who carried out the massacre.

deiryassin2-pnn

The massacre was one of the first in what would become a long line of attacks on countless Palestinian villages, part of a broader strategy called Plan Dalet by Zionist groups to strike fear into local Palestinians in hopes that the ensuing terror would lead to an Arab exodus, to ensure only Jews were left in the “Jewish state.”

Thus the attack on Deir Yassin took place a month before the UN Partition Plan was expected to be carried out, and was part of reasons later given by neighboring Arab states for their intervention in Palestine.

The combination of forced expulsion and flight that the massacres — what would later become known among Palestinians as the Nakba, or catastrophe — precipitated left around 750,000 Palestinians as refugees abroad. Today their descendants number more than five million, and their right to return to Palestine is a central political demand.

The anniversary of the deadly razing of the village comes as modern day Palestinians in occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank continue to fight for their livelihood in the face of illegal Israeli settlement expansion, widespread detention campaigns, extrajudicial executions by Israeli forces, and a surge in housing demolitions — most recently leaving 124 Palestinians homeless in a single day.

April 9, 2016 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, Video, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment