Bulletin N° 801
Subject : Palestinian Freedom Fighters against Imperialist Hand Puppets.
19 May 2018
Grenoble, France
Dear Colleagues and Friends of CEIMSA,
On the same literary and political level as Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley's
famous insightful fiction, Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818, revised 1831) - the morbid story of unrequited love - we find Etienne de La Boétie's essay, The Discourse of Voluntary Servitude (1552-53) which also exposes the causes of violence
in a new and decisive manner. Both of these works expose the dilemma of
uninhibited violence and reintroduce it into the realm of social relationships,
where the stunning complexity of cause and effect begins to surface and the
mystery of overachievement and hubris
starts to unravel.
[I]t has always happened that tyrants, in order to
strengthen their power, have made every effort to train their people not only
in obedience and servility toward themselves, but also in adoration. Therefore
all that I have said up to the present concerning the means by which a more
willing submission has been obtained applies to dictators in their relationship
with the inferior and common classes.
I come
now to a point which is, in my opinion, the mainspring and the secret of
domination, the support and foundation of tyranny. Whoever thinks that
halberds, sentries, the placing of the watch, serve to protect and shield
tyrants is, in my judgment, completely mistaken. These are used,
it seems to me, more for ceremony and show of force than for any reliance
placed in them. The archers forbid the entrance to the palace to the poorly
dressed who have no weapons, not to the well armed who
carry out some plot. Certainly it is easy to say of the Roman emperors that
fewer escaped from danger by aid of their guards than were killed by their own
archers. [Almost a third of the Roman Emperors were killed by their own
soldiers.] It is not the troops on horseback, it is not the companies afoot, it is not arms that defend the tyrant. This does not seem
credible on first thought, but it is nevertheless true that there are only four
or five who maintain the dictator, four or five who keep the country in bondage
to him. Five or six have always had access to his ear, and have either gone to
him of their own accord, or else have been summoned by him, to be accomplices
in his cruelties, companions in his pleasures, panders to his lusts, and
sharers in his plunders. These six manage their chief so successfully that he
comes to be held accountable not only for his own misdeeds but even for theirs.
The six have six hundred who profit under them, and with the six hundred they
do what they have accomplished with their tyrant. The six hundred maintain
under them six thousand, whom they promote in rank, upon whom they confer the
government of provinces or the direction of finances, in order that they may
serve as instruments of avarice and cruelty, executing orders at the proper
time and working much havoc all around that they could not last except under
the shadow of the six hundred, nor be exempt from law and punishment except
through their influence.
The
consequence of all this is fatal indeed. And whoever is pleased to unwind the
skein will observe that not the six thousand but a hundred thousand, and even
millions, cling to the tyrant by this cord to which they are tied. According to
Homer, Jupiter boasts of being able to draw to himself all the gods when he
pulls a chain. Such a scheme caused the increase in the senate under Julius,
the formation of new ranks, the creation of offices; not really, if properly
considered, to reform justice, but to provide new supporters of despotism. In
short, when the point is reached, through big favors or little ones, that large profits or small are obtained under a tyrant,
there are found almost as many people to whom tyranny seems advantageous as
those to whom liberty would seem desirable. Doctors declare that if, when some
part of the body has gangrene a disturbance arises in another spot, it
immediately flows to the troubled part. Even so, whenever a ruler makes himself
a dictator, all the wicked dregs of the nation – I do not mean the pack of
petty thieves and earless ruffians who in a republic,
are unimportant in evil or good [Cutting off of ears as a punishment for
thievery is very ancient. In the middle ages it was still practiced under ST.
Louis. Men so mutilated were dishonored and could not enter the clergy or the
magistracy.] – but all those who are corrupted by burning ambition or
extraordinary avarice, these gather around him and support him in order to have
a share in the booty and to constitute themselves petty chiefs under the big
tyrant. This the practice among notorious robbers and famous pirates: some
scour the country, others pursue voyagers; some lie in ambush, others keep a
lookout; some commit murder, others robbery; and although there are among them
differences in rank, some being only underlings while others are chieftains of
gangs, yet is there not a single one
among them who does not feel himself to be a sharer, if not of the main booty,
at least in the pursuit of it. It is dependably related that Sicilian pirates
gathered in such great numbers that it became necessary to send against them
Pompey the Great, and that they drew into their alliance fine towns and great
cities in whose harbors they took refuge on returning from their expeditions,
paying handsomely for the haven given their stolen goods.
Thus the
despot subdues his subjects, some of them by means of others, and thus is he
protected by those from whom, if they were decent men, he would have to guard
himself; jus as, in order to split wood, one has to use a wedge of the wood
itself; Such are the archers, his guards, his halberdiers; not that they
themselves do not suffer occasionally at
his hands, but this riff-raff, abandoned alike by God and man, can be led to
endure evil if permitted to commit it, not against him who exploits them; but
against those who like themselves submit, but are helpless. Nevertheless,
observing those men who painfully serve the tyrant in order to win some profit
from his tyranny and from the subjection of the populace, I am often overcome
with amazement at their wickedness and sometimes by pity for their folly. For,
in all honesty, can it be in any way except in folly that you approach a
tyrant, withdrawing further from your liberty and, so to speak, embracing with
both hand your servitude? Let such men lay aside
briefly their ambition, or let them forget for a moment their avarice, and look
at themselves as they really are. Then they will realize clearly that the
townspeople, the peasants whom they trample under foot and treat worse than
convicts or slaves, they will realize, I say, that these people; mistreated as
they may be, are nevertheless, in comparison with themselves, better off and
fairly free. The tiller of the soil and the artisan, no matter how enslaved,
discharge their obligation when they do what they are told to do; but the
dictator sees men about him wooing and begging his favor, and doing much more
than he tells them to do. Such men must not only obey orders; they must
anticipate his wishes; to satisfy him they must foresee his desires; they must
wear themselves out, torment themselves, kill themselves with work in his
interest, and accept his pleasure as their own, neglecting their preference for
his, distorting their character and corrupting their nature; they must pay heed
to his words, to his intonation, to his gestures, and to his glance. Let them
have no eye, nor foot, nor hand that is not alert to respond to his wishes or
to seek out his thoughts.
Can that
be called a happy life? Can that be called living? Is there anything more
intolerable than that situation, I won’t say for a man of mettle nor even for a
man of high birth, but simply for a man of common sense or, to go even further,
for anyone having a face of a man? What condition is more wretched than to live
thus, with nothing to call one’s own, receiving from someone else one’s sustenance,
one’s power to act, one’s body, one’s very life?
Still
men accept servility in order to acquire wealth; as if they could acquire
anything of their own when they cannot even assert that they belong to
themselves, or as if anyone could possess under a tyrant a single thing in his
own name. Yet they act as if their wealth really belonged to them, and forget
that it is they themselves who give the ruler that power to deprive everybody
of everything, leaving nothing that anyone can identify as belonging to
somebody. They notice that nothing makes men so subservient to a tyrant’s
cruelty as property; that to possession of wealth is the world of crimes
against him, punishable even by death; that he loves nothing quite so much as
money and ruins only the rich, who come before him as before a butcher,
offering themselves so stuffed and budging that they make his mouth
water.(pp.70-75)
The lesson here is that the key to servitude is
collaboration, that we have more power than we think, and we misuse it to our
own detriment because of a trap that has been carefully laid for us in advance,
preparing us to serve our masters as no more than useful idiots.
The 28 items below reflect the deep crisis
capitalism has entered and the cusp of general catastrophe upon which we are
now balanced. As the ruling class has earned the much deserved reputation of
being cynically criminal and irresponsibly homicidal, the rest of us are
approaching a free fall into chaos and worse. For those of us who seek no
comfort in the dogma of life-after-death this is of much
concern.
Francis Feeley
Professor emeritus of American Studies
University Grenoble-Alpes
Director of Research
University of Paris-Nanterre
Center for the Advanced Study of American Institutions and Social
Movements
The University of California-San Diego
a.
Iranian Media
Speculates About Possible
Death of Saudi
Crown Prince
https://sputniknews.com/world/201805171064543844-saudi-prince-health-concerns/
The apparent disappearance of Saudi Crown Prince
Mohammed bin Salman from the public eye has led
several Iranian media outlets to wonder if one of the most powerful men in the
kingdom might’ve been killed during an attempted coup last month.
Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman
was allegedly hit by two bullets during the April 21 attack
on the royal palace in Riyadh and may actually be dead as he has
not appeared in public since the incident, Kayhan
newspaper reports citing "a secret
service report sent to the senior officials of an unnamed Arab
state."
+
https://blackagendareport.com/
===========
b.
How long after this week's Gaza massacre are we going to continue
pretending that the Palestinians are non-people?
Remember
how they were to blame for their own exodus seven decades ago, because they
followed the instructions of radio stations to leave their homes until the Jews
of Israel were ‘driven into the sea’. Only, of course, the radio broadcasts
never existed
Monstrous. Frightful. Wicked. It’s strange how the words just run out in the
Middle East today. Sixty Palestinians
dead. In one day. Two-thousand-four-hundred wounded, more
than half by live fire. In one day. The figures are an outrage, a turning away
from morality, a disgrace for any army to create.
And we are supposed to believe that the Israeli
army is one of “purity of arms”? And we have to ask another question. If it’s
60 Palestinians dead in a day this week, what if it’s 600 next week? Or 6,000 next month? Israel’s bleak excuses – and America’s
crude response – raise this very question. If we can now accept a massacre
on this scale, how far can our immune system go in the days and weeks and
months to come?
+
US Embassy Baptized
With Blood
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/49446.htm
by Finian
Cunningham
On the very hour of
the US opening its embassy in Jerusalem, hundreds of unarmed Palestinian
civilians, including children, were being slaughtered by Israeli snipers.
Nearly 60 people, including eight children,
were brutally murdered in cold blood by Israeli sharpshooters. At least a
thousand others were injured from bullet wounds, many of whom will be maimed
for life. More bloodshed is expected in coming days.
What kind of criminal world are we living in? When news
channels can report this carnage as if it's somehow normal. Where is the
outrage of Western pundits who foam at the mouth over alleged atrocities
elsewhere?
While
American and Israeli dignitaries were regaling themselves with hosannas
about their "shared values" of "democracy" and
"peace", only a few miles away thousands of Palestinians
in Gaza were being shot at for daring to demand respect
for their human rights.
===========
c.
Julian Assange is in
immense danger
Ecuador Hints it May Hand Over
Julian Assange to Britain and the US
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/49401.htm
by James Cogan
Julian
Assange is in immense danger. Remarks made this week
by Ecuador’s foreign minister suggest that her government may be preparing to
renege on the political asylum it granted to the WikiLeaks
editor in 2012 and hand him over to British and then American authorities. On March 28, under immense pressure from the governments in the US,
Britain and other powers, Ecuador imposed a complete ban on Assange
having any Internet or phone contact with the outside world, and blocked his
friends and supporters from physically visiting him. For 45 days, he has not
been heard from. Ecuadorian Foreign Minister Maria Fernanda
Espinosa stated in a Spanish-language interview on Wednesday that her
government and Britain “have the intention and the interest that this be
resolved.” Moves were underway, she said, to reach a “definite agreement” on Assange.
+
Ecuador’s Ex-President Rafael Correa
Denounces Treatment of Julian Assange as “Torture”
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/49445.htm
===========
d.
Ecuador's Talks With UK Over Assange
'Defame Country's Good Name'
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/49440.htm
Journalist John Pilger
Interviewed By Sputnik News
Sputnik: Julian Assange has been cut off from communications
for a month and a half now. What is known about his physical
condition?
John Pilger: His physical condition is not good at all. He
hasn't had natural light for almost six years. He has a persistent cough.
He is suffering physically [much the same as] anyone who is imprisoned,
effectively, [and] without even the opportunity to go outside and
exercise.
He's been denied even the right
of passage to hospital. They say 'yes you can go, but we're not
going to allow you back.' So the examinations that he needs he hasn't been
able to get.
Sputnik: Ecuador's foreign
minister has said that the country is in talks with Britain
about Assange's fate. What can you tell us
about this?
John Pilger: I can say that the new government in Ecuador
led by Lenin Moreno is a disgrace. They have defamed the good name
of Ecuador which under the previous president, [Rafael] Correa, had
elevated itself to an extraordinarily moral position in granting
Julian Assange political refuge.
Politically refuge is something that is
internationally recognized. It's not something you can then water down. Well
that's what Moreno's government has done. He's negotiated with the British
government over the head of Julian, at times not even involving
him and his lawyers.
===========
e.
US
Ambassador to Israel Gave Money to Jewish Terror Group: Reports
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/49407.htm
David Friedman was president of American Friends of Beit
El Yeshiva Center when a donation was made to Qomemiyut
Movement, reports say
by MEE staff
The US ambassador to Israel was president of an
American charity that donated money to a Jewish group designated a
"terrorist organisation" by the United
States, Israeli media has reported just days before he was due to open a new
embassy in Jerusalem.
David Friedman was the president of American
Friends of Beit El Yeshiva Center between 2011 and
2017, which raises about $2m a year for
settler-linked programmes, particularly in Beit El and its Beit El
Yeshiva religious school Friedman attended as a young man.
+
IDF Prepares to Kill More
Peaceful Protesters in Gaza on Friday
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kKX91jvnVIA
===========
f.
Travel Bans, Restrictions And
Barbed Wire
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/49408.htm
Do You Want to Travel Around The Middle East? Think Twice!
by Andre Vltchek
Do you think it is that
simple to travel around the Middle East? Think twice!
Ask Palestinians, about
trying to get from a point A to a point B in their own nation.
Some time ago, sitting in
an old Ottoman hotel in Bethlehem, I asked a waiter what it takes to travel
from there to Gaza, where he said, several of his relatives were living. He
looked at me as if I had fallen from the Moon:
“There is no way I could travel there. If my
relatives get very sick or die, then, in theory, I could apply for an Israeli
travel permit to go there, but there is absolutely no guarantee that they would
approve, or that I could get to Gaza on time…”
I tried to appear naïve:
“And what if someone from an Arab country which does not recognize Israel,
wants to come here, to Bethlehem? Like, a Lebanese pilgrim or just a tourist?
Could he or she enter from Jordan?”
The waiter weighed for a
while whether to reply at all, but then had mercy on me:
“West Bank… You know, it only appears on the maps
as some sort of autonomous or independent territory. In reality, the borders
and movement of the people have been fully controlled by the Israelis.”
===========
g.
I Helped Start the Gaza
Protests. I Don’t Regret It.
by Ahmed Abu Ratima
(Mr. Abu Ratima helped
organize the Great Return March.)
May 14, 2018
Palestinian demonstrators
flee Israeli fire and tear gas during a protest on the Israel-Gaza border on Monday.CreditIbraheem Abu Mustafa/Reuters
by Ahmed Abu Ratima
RAFAH, Gaza — The seed
that grew into Gaza’s Great Return March was planted Dec. 9, just a few days
after President Trump announced he would
recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.
Palestinians long have held onto the dream of
Jerusalem as our own capital, or at least as a shared capital in a country that
offers equal rights to everyone. The feeling of betrayal and distress in Gaza
was palpable. To clear my head, my friend Hasan and I
took a walk along the border, which we do every now and again.
“There lies our land,” I
said to Hasan, as I looked at the trees on the other
side of the barbed-wire fence that confines us. “It’s just a few kilometers
away from here.” And yet, because of that fence and the soldiers who guard it,
it is so far away. Most people my age have never been permitted to leave Gaza,
since Egypt controls the southern land exit and Israel restricts access to the
north — as well as forbids use of our sea and airport (or at least what’s left
of it after three wars).
That thought led to a wish expressed on Facebook. And it struck such a chord with people in Gaza
that it set off a movement that culminated in the historic protests that have
taken place over the last month. Tragically, Israel reacted even more brutally
than I expected — and I’ve lived through three of its wars. The latest estimate
of the number of protesters killed is 104; more than 50 died just on Monday.
Thousands more have been injured. But our voices needed to be heard, and they
have been.
My hatred of borders is both universal — in the
sense that all Palestinians suffer from them — and very personal. My
grandparents and their grandparents were born and raised in the town of Ramla, in the center of what is now Israel. On my walks, I
imagined my family’s ancestral land.
But I also have experienced the destructive impact
of borders more personally. I was born in 1984, two
years after Israel withdrew from the Sinai Peninsula,
dividing my city, Rafah, between Gaza and Egypt. The
core of the city was razed by Israel and Egypt to create a buffer zone,
separating families, including mine, with barbed wire. My mother’s family lived
on the Egyptian side and Rafah’s division ended in
the separation of my parents. Although my mother lived a stone’s throw away, it
was 19 years before I saw her again.
On that day in December, as I watched the birds fly
over the border I could not cross, I found myself thinking how much smarter
birds and animals are than people; they harmonize with nature instead of
erecting walls. Later that day, I wondered on Facebook
what would happen if a man acted like a bird and crossed that fence. “Why would
Israeli soldiers shoot at him as if he is committing a crime?” I wrote. My only
thought was to reach the trees, sit there and then come back.
I couldn’t let go of that thought. A month later, I
wrote another post. “Thank you, Israel, for opening our eyes. If the occupation
opened the crossing points, and allowed people to live a normal life and
created jobs for young people, we could wait for a few generations,” I wrote.
“We are forced to choose between confrontations or between life.”
I ended the post with the hashtag GreatReturnMarch.
Young people in Gaza reacted to my post
immediately, sharing it and adding their own ideas. Just a week later, it
seemed as if hundreds of people were talking about it. We established a youth
committee and met with local agencies and institutions. We also met with the
national political parties: We wanted to offer all sectors of society in Gaza
the opportunity to be involved.
What has happened since we started the Great Return
March is both what I hoped and expected — and not. It was not a surprise that
Israel responded to our march with deadly violence. But I had not expected this
level of cruelty. On the other hand, I was heartened by the commitment to
nonviolence among most of my own people.
A couple of years ago, people here would have
dismissed the idea that peaceful demonstrations could achieve anything
significant. After all, every other form of resistance has produced nothing
concrete. What amazes me is the transformation we are seeing in the way we
resist. Our struggle previously was between armed Palestinian fighters and
Israeli snipers, tanks and F-16s. Now, it is a struggle between the occupation
and peaceful protesters — men and women, young and old.
The Great Return March reminds the world about the
origin of the conflict — our uprooting from our lands and our lives, beginning
in 1948 and sustained since then. We have chosen May 15 as the culmination of
our protests because that is the day that Palestinians mark the “nakba,” the Arabic word for catastrophe, which is what we
call the expulsions from our homes 70 years ago. Whatever solution we negotiate
in the future to allow our two peoples to live together peacefully and equally
must start with a recognition of this wrong.
Still, despite the response from Israeli snipers, I
continue to be committed to nonviolence, as are all of the other people
“coordinating” this march. I use quotation marks because when a movement
becomes this large — attracting what we estimate to be as many as 200,000
people on Fridays — it cannot be completely controlled. We discouraged the
burning of Israeli flags and the attachment of Molotov cocktails to kites. We
want peaceful, equal coexistence
to be our message.
We have also tried to discourage protesters from
attempting to cross into Israel. However, we can’t stop them. It is the action
of an imprisoned people yearning for freedom, one of the strongest motivations
in human nature. Likewise, the people won’t go away on May 15. We are intent on
continuing our struggle until Israel recognizes our right to return to our
homes and land from which we were expelled.
Desperation fuels this new generation. We are not
going back to our subhuman existence. We will keep knocking at the doors of
international organizations and our Israeli jailers until we see concrete steps
to end the blockade of Gaza.
+
Snipers Shooting
Unarmed People at 100 Meters Isn’t a ‘Clash’
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/49415.htm
===========
h.
Palestine
‘The Palestinians Have Not Forgotten, They
Have Not Gone Away’
Seventy
years after the Nakba, Israel has not succeeded in
erasing Palestine—or the Palestinians.
In Opening Its Embassy in Jerusalem, the US
Has Slammed the Door on the Peace Process
In its
place, it is time for a new paradigm based on full national and
civil equality for all.
To Be a Palestinian Journalist in Gaza Is to
Be Always Under Threat
“Everyone
is targeted. Even if you’re a journalist.… As long as
you are Palestinian and there, you are targeted.”
Hamza Saftawi and Miriam Berger
===========
i.
Meet Tarek Loubani, the Canadian
Doctor
Shot by Israeli
Forces Monday While
Treating Gaza’s
Wounded
https://www.democracynow.org/2018/5/17/meet_tarek_loubani_the_canadian_doctor
(@15 min. into this program)
===========
j.
The Dark Side of Israeli Independence
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/49404.htm
by Brett
Wilkins
On May 14, 1948, Israel declared its independence.
Each May 15, Palestinians solemnly commemorate Nakba
Day. Nakba means catastrophe, and that’s precisely
what Israel’s independence has been for the more than 700,000 Arabs and their
five million refugee descendants forced from their homes and into exile, often
by horrific violence, to make way for the Jewish state.
Land Without a People?
In the late 19th century, Zionism emerged as a
movement for the reestablishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine, then part
of the Ottoman Empire. Although Jews ruled over kingdoms there more than 2,000
years ago, they never numbered more than around 10 percent of the population
from antiquity through the early 1900s. A key premise of Zionism is what
literary theorist Edward Said called the “excluded
presence” of Palestine’s indigenous population; a central myth of
early Zionists was that Palestine was a “land without a people for a people
without a land.”
+
John Pilger:
Palestine Is Still the Issue
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/49443.htm
===========
k.
FROM THE NATION MAGAZINE
May 16, 2018
Palestinians Engaged in
Nonviolent Protest. Israel Responded With a Massacre.
The targeting of unarmed demonstrators
by snipers using high-velocity weapons was methodical, precise, and lethal.
by Sharif Abdel KouddousTwitter
(Ashraf
Amra / Sipa via AP Images)
Gaza City—The
sniper bullets don’t come in quick succession. It’s not a barrage of fire. It
is methodical, patient, precise. A single shot rings
out and someone falls. You wait a few minutes. The crosshairs settle on the
next target. Another shot, another body drops. Again and
again and again. It goes on for hours.
This is how
the Israeli military shot more than 1,350 Palestinians in Gaza on a single day,
on May 14. Slowly.
As at least
60 people were being killed and over 2,700 wounded, White House officials
clinked champagne glasses with their Israeli counterparts 50 miles away in
Jerusalem to celebrate the transfer of the US embassy from Tel Aviv. Most
people in Gaza have never been to Jerusalem. They can’t go. They can’t really
go anywhere. Many have spent their lives trapped inside the 25-mile-long
enclave, forbidden from crossing its borders. So they decided to march to the
borders, to protest the US decision on Jerusalem, to demand their right of
return, to push their bodies up against the limits of their confinement.
The
grassroots movement, dubbed the Great Return March, began on March 30, which
marks Land Day in Palestine (an annual commemoration for six Palestinians killed
by Israeli forces in demonstrations in 1976 over land confiscations). The plan
had been brewing for months. Activists, writers, and civil-society groups all
began to organize around the idea of a protest at Gaza’s borders. The tactic of
confronting the border is not a new one in Palestine; there have been numerous
actions in the past. But this was the first time that it would coalesce into a
broad-based, mass movement.
“The idea of
the return marches was to do something collectively—that everyone together
approaches the lands occupied in 1948,” said Mohamed Sherafi,
a member of the Progressive Student Work Front, known as Taqadomi.
“After a span of time, there was an agreement on the shape and form that we now
have.”
Fourteen
organizing committees were formed, comprising a broad swath of Palestinian
society, including youth groups, women’s groups, nongovernmental organizations,
legal-rights bodies, worker syndicates, and cultural associations. Their
groundwork led to the formation of a Higher National Committee for the Return
Marches, which included all the main political factions, with parties like
Hamas, Fatah, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Islamic Jihad,
and others joining forces.
While Hamas’s
participation was key in mobilization and funding
efforts, the concept for the marches originated outside the group and was
driven and led by all sectors of society.
In the
Western media, Gaza is usually equated with Hamas, relegating all of the
Strip’s diversity and political richness, all of its civil society and
grassroots agency, to the background. And so it was with the return marches:
The protests were widely characterized as being a Hamas operation. While Hamas
is the ruling power in Gaza, and its participation was key
in mobilization and funding efforts, the concept originated outside of the
group and was driven and led by all sectors of society.
“Hamas
unfortunately is viewed by a number of sides as a terrorist organization, so
Israel is trying to tie the marches to Hamas to demonize this movement because
it is peaceful and grassroots and popular,” said Hamas media spokesperson Hazem Kassem. “Everyone is taking
part. Hamas participates, supports, mobilizes.”
After much
debate, the organizers of the return marches settled on a number of key
guidelines regarding tactics: no arms, no military uniforms, no
party flags—just the Palestinian flag. People could try to cross the border
fence if they wished.
“We want to
break out of this prison. This is our right, this is our land.” —Salah Abdel Aaty, march organizer
“The goal of
this is not an invasion. We want to break out of this prison. This is our
right, this is our land,” said Salah Abdel Aaty, a
rights lawyer and member of the Higher National Committee.
For
the past 11 years—ever since Hamas took control of Gaza, after having won
democratic elections in 2006—Israel has imposed a harsh blockade on the Strip.
During Israel’s brutal assault on Gaza in 2014, the primary demand of Gazans
was the lifting of Israel’s blockade. Living conditions have steadily
deteriorated since then, and are now among the worst in the world. In 2012, the
United Nations forecast that Gaza would be “unlivable” by 2020. A new UN report last year found that conditions
are deteriorating even “further and faster” than they had predicted. A year
ago, in a bid to force Hamas to hand over power to the Palestinian Authority,
PA President Mahmoud Abbas imposed further sanctions on Gaza, making the
economic and humanitarian situation even more intolerable.
And yet,
while the demands of the return marches include the lifting of the siege, at
its heart is something higher: the right of return, the right of Palestinians
to reclaim the homes they were forcibly displaced from in 1948, the very
essence of the Palestinian liberation struggle.
“We had to
reclaim the Palestinian cause,” Abdel Aaty said. “As Palestinians, we now find
ourselves facing unprecedented threats to our national rights.”
President
Trump’s decision last December to formally recognize Jerusalem as the capital
of Israel and to transfer the US embassy there seemed like a first step in the
so-called “deal of the century” to resolve the Israel-Palestine conflict.
Different versions of the plan have been leaked, but all indications point to
an abandonment of the right of return and the creation of a kind of
quasi-state, without sovereignty for the Palestinians and without Jerusalem as
their capital. “If you remove Jerusalem and the refugees, what do you have?
There’s nothing left. That’s it, the entire national project has ended,” said Monzer al-Hayak, the Fatah
information commissioner for western Gaza.
Similar
proposals have been floated in years past, but this time the domestic and
regional context has been in an unprecedented state of political decline. The
Palestinian leadership remains fiercely divided, with the latest reconciliation
efforts between Fatah and Hamas falling apart; and neighboring Arab countries
like Saudi Arabia and Egypt—once supporters of the Palestinian struggle—are now
more closely aligned with Israel than ever before.
The Great Return March:
·
With
the Great Return March, Palestinians Are Demanding a Life of Dignity
by
Ahmad Abu Rtemah
·
‘The
Palestinians Have Not Forgotten, They Have Not Gone Away’
by
Rashid Khalidi
·
In
Opening Its Embassy in Jerusalem, the US Has Slammed the Door on the Peace
Process
by
Mustafa Barghouti
·
To
Be a Palestinian Journalist in Gaza Is to Be Always Under Threat
by
Hamza Saftawi and Miriam Berger
·
These
Members of Congress Are Trying to Visit Gaza—Israel Should Let Them Do So
by John
Nichols
This
political convergence threatened the core of the Palestinian cause and gave
rise to the return march movement in Gaza. “Gaza has historically been
responsible for the national project,” said Akram Attalah, a columnist at the Ramallah-based newspaper Al-Ayam. “Gaza gave birth to Yasser Arafat; Gaza created
Fatah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and the first intifada. This is the role of Gaza.”
The first
return march took place on March 30, and the mass mobilizations continued on
each succeeding Friday, culminating after nearly seven weeks on May 14, to mark
the transfer of the US embassy to Jerusalem, and May 15, to mark the 70th
anniversary of the Nakba, or catastrophe, which is
how Palestinians refer to the forced expulsion from their homeland and the
founding of the state of Israel.
The turnout
on the first day was massive. “When we went down on March 30, we didn’t expect
those numbers,” said Iktimal Hamad,
the head of the women’s committee. “We didn’t expect it, then
we built on it.”
Tens of thousands descended on five
designated protest sites along the border, one in each of Gaza’s governorates,
spanning the length of the Strip, from north to south: Beit
Hanoun, Gaza City, al-Bureij,
Khan Younis, and Rafah.
Camps were set up with food carts, and held celebrations of Palestinian art,
music, and cultural heritage. There was a festive atmosphere.
For years, Israel has imposed a buffer
zone hundreds of yards wide along Gaza’s borders, regularly shooting at farmers
and residents in the area and eating into the Strip’s already cramped
territory. Thus the presence of the camps inside the buffer zone, in addition
to being a protest, was also a reclamation of land.
Closer to the front lines, men and
women approached the border fence, some armed with slingshots and rocks, some
with Molotov cocktails, some with nothing more than
displays of defiance. There were no guns, no grenades, no
rockets.
Holes were dug in the ground for
cover and to store caches of used tires. Young men and boys would set them
alight and sprint to the front dragging the burning rubber behind them; once in
place, the huge plumes of black smoke helped to block the snipers’ view. Paper
kites fashioned with burning rags and bottles filled with gasoline were
precariously flown over the border, occasionally setting Israeli crops on fire.
Protesters hooked bent rods of rebar onto the barbed wire laid
near the fence and hauled it away in repeated attempts to chip away at the
barriers that penned them in. They confronted different areas of the fence, to
divide Israeli troops. They planted the Palestinian flag on the mesh.
Some managed to cut through and
briefly walk on the other side, saying they were implementing the right of
return themselves before being forced back. Others did it out of sheer despair.
The majority of people just stood and faced the border; thousands gathered side
by side, all looking in the same direction.
The response was bullets. Slow and
steady, yet incessant.
Israeli
snipers positioned on sand dunes several yards away from the fence picked
people off at will. Dozens were shot, then hundreds, then thousands—nearly
6,500 since March 30.
People were shot everywhere. I saw a
woman hit as she walked up close to the barbed wire. I saw a teenager struck in
the knee as he whirred a rock-filled sling. I saw a
man shot in the foot while standing far back—some 200 yards—from the fence,
away from the smoke and the chaos. People who did cross the fence were often
shot at point-blank range. Methodical, patient, precise.
There was a constant stream of
bloodied bodies being carried on stretchers to ambulances parked farther back,
the wail of their sirens unending. On May 14, the Palestinian Red Crescent
deployed 58 ambulances in Gaza. It was not enough, so they began using their
administrative cars to ferry the wounded away.
Israeli soldiers used high-velocity weapons
designed to cause maximum harm. In addition, multiple doctors in Gaza said the
bullets were exploding upon impact. Amnesty International found that some
wounds “bear the hallmarks of US-manufactured M24 Remington sniper rifles
shooting 7.62mm hunting ammunition, which expand and mushroom inside the body.”
The vast majority of the gunshot
wounds were to the legs. In the orthopedic ward of Shifa
hospital, wails of anguish filled the hallway. Young men everywhere hobbled on
crutches, wincing in pain. Most lay on cots, their shattered legs held together
with rods and pins protruding at awkward angles. There have been nearly 30
amputations.
“The bullets leave fist-sized holes.
We are seeing exposed bones, lacerations of soft tissue, severe damage to
arteries, muscles, and tendons.” —Dr. Mohammed Abu Mughaiseeb,
Doctors Without Borders
“The bullets leave fist-sized holes.
We are seeing exposed bones, lacerations of soft tissue, severe damage to
arteries, muscles, and tendons. It is common to see pulverized bones,” Dr.
Mohammed Abu Mughaiseeb, the medical referent for
Doctors Without Borders in Gaza, said. “A significant
percentage of those wounded will suffer all their life from some form of
disability.”
In the first intifada, which lasted
from December 1987 to the early 1990s, soldiers broke the arms of stone-throwing
youth. Three decades later, they are taking out the legs of Palestinians
walking toward the border.
“You’re basically creating a new
generation of cripples,” said Dr. Ghassan Abu-Sitta, of the UK-based charity Medical Aid for
Palestinians.
People shot in the torso rarely
survived. The ones shot in the head were killed instantly.
In addition to the bullets there was
the tear gas. It came in three ways. The most frequent was multiple rounds of
five or six canisters at a time, fired from launchers mounted atop army jeeps
stationed near the snipers. Their range was short and the wind was mostly
blowing east, typically sending the waves of gas away from the protesters and
back across the border. The second was the more traditional hand-held rifle launcher,
which has a much longer range but shoots only one canister at a time. The third
method of delivery was new: a small drone that is able to fly over the crowds
and drop seven or eight canisters at once, directly on the people below. The
Israeli military had first experimented with the technology in Gaza in March,
two weeks before the return marches began. The occupied territories have long
been a laboratory for “live-testing” of Israeli weapons on the bodies of
Palestinians.
On May 14, the bloodiest day in Gaza
since the 2014 war, Shifa hospital was on the verge
of collapse, unable to cope with the influx of hundreds upon hundreds of
gunshot wounds. A janitor was kept busy mopping the blood off the floor. “I’ve
worked here for 17 years, and I have never seen a day like this,” said Dr. Ali Ouda, a surgeon.
The wounded were being discharged too
soon, in order to make room for those still awaiting treatment. There was a
list of up to 30 patients waiting for surgery. After 11 years of siege, the
hospital is woefully undersupplied, with shortages of antibiotics, IV fluids,
bandages, beds, and wheelchairs.
On May 15, the anniversary
of the Nakba, the gatherings at the border were
much smaller. Funerals were being held across Gaza and the wounded were being
tended to.
The youngest
victim was 8-month-old Laila al-Ghandour.
Her uncle was carrying her a hundred yards away from the fence when a drone
dropped tear gas all around them, according to two family members. Laila turned blue and died of suffocation shortly after
being rushed to the hospital. The next day screams of grief filled the family
home as her father carried her tiny body wrapped in a Palestinian flag. “Why is
the world silent? What are they waiting for?” her aunt, Wafaa
al-Ghandour, said through tears.
In a nearby
neighborhood, a few dozen gathered in a mourning tent on the street with the
family of Yazan al-Tobasi.
A 24-year-old father of one, Yazan had been going to
the protests every Friday. His family says he was standing back, away from the
fence, when a sniper shot him in the eye, killing him instantly. “He just went
to express himself. He wasn’t even throwing stones,” his father said. “He just
wanted to send a message to the world that we have rights.”
Overall, 112
Palestinians have been killed and more than 13,000 injured since the protests
began on March 30.
A New Embassy in Jerusalem, an Old Struggle in Gaza
Amy Wilentz on the American embassy in Israel,
Rachel Kushner on The Mars Room, and Patricia J. Williams on the legacy
of lynching.
By
Start Making Sense and Jon Wiener
A Palestinian
demonstrator shouts during a protest at the Israel-Gaza border on May 14, 2018.
(Reuters / Ibraheem Abu Mustafa)
Every day,
Trump makes the world less safe; Monday was a big one. Amy Wilentz
comments on Ivanka and Jared—and Sheldon Adelson—dedicating the new American embassy in Jerusalem
while the Israeli military killed 60 Palestinians during a mass nonviolent
protest at the Gaza border. Amy was Jerusalem correspondent for The New
Yorker and wrote the novel Martyrs’ Crossing about Palestinians
and Israelis.
Also: There
are 219,000 women in prison in the United States—Rachel Kushner’s new novel, The
Mars Room, is a story about one of them. She explains the mix of fact and
imagination that went into the book.
Plus: More
than 4,400 African Americans were murdered by white mobs between 1877 and
1950—that’s the conclusion of the Equal Justice Initiative, a nonprofit legal
center. The new National Memorial for Peace and Justice, in Montgomery,
Alabama, is dedicated to the victims; it opened last month. Patricia J.
Williams, a longtime columnist for The Nation, comments.
===========
Syria
Imposes New Rules of Engagement on Israel
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/49403.htm
by Sayed Hasan
On
Thursday 10th May 2018, an unprecedented exchange of strikes
happened between Israel and Syria. The mainstream
media, as well as some “alternative” media like Russia
Today, were quick to relay the Israeli army version, according to which
the Zionist entity “retaliated” to an “Iranian attack by Revolutionary Guards’
Al-Quds Force” consisting of “twenty rockets” fired at Israeli positions in the
occupied Golan, four of which were “intercepted by the Iron Dome” and the
others “crashed into Syrian territory”, no damage being recorded in Israel.
Israel has reportedly responded to this unprecedented “act of aggression” by a
“large-scale operation” that would have destroyed “the entire Iranian
infrastructure in Syria”, in order to deter the Islamic Republic from any stray
impulse of future strikes.
This
narrative takes for granted the postulates, data and myths of the Zionist
entity’s propaganda – which imposes permanent military censorship on the
Israeli media, exposing any offender to a prison sentence; and reading the
international media, one might get the idea that, like American economic
sanctions, this censorship is extraterritorial – but none of them can withstand
scrutiny.
===========
m.
An
apology to the people of Iran
https://www.codepink.org/an_apology_to_the_people_of_iran
Open
Letter to the People of Iran from the American People
These
are indeed terrifying times. Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Iran
nuclear agreement is reckless, baseless and dangerous. We cannot allow him to
take us down the path towards war with Iran.
Join
Jane Fonda, Oliver Stone, Danny Glover, Noam Chomsky, Vijay Prashad, Eve
Ensler, Mike Farrell, Frances Fisher, Shiva Rose, Matthew Modine, UPPJ, IPS,
World Beyond War, Voices for Non Violence and more in reaching out to the
Iranian people with an apology for our president’s unscrupulous behavior and a
pledge to try to reverse this decision. We will publicize this “Apology to the
Iranian People” via social media and publications inside Iran.
You
can sign anonymously or publicly.
===========
n.
Ray
McGovern: Haspel Hearing Is A Charade
(Watch)
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/49402.htm
79-year-old
CIA veteran Ray McGovern who was violently escorted out of a U.S. Senate
hearing and detained on Wednesday, has now been released and speaks with RT.
===========
o.
An
Empire of Nothing at All?
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/49429.htm
The U.S. Military Takes Us Through the Gates
of Hell
by Tom Engelhardt
[This essay is
the introduction to Tom Engelhardt’s new book, A
Nation Unmade by War, a Dispatch Book published by Haymarket Books.]
As I was putting the finishing touches on my new book, the
Costs of War Project at Brown University’s Watson
Institute published an estimate of the taxpayer dollars that will have gone
into America’s war on terror from September 12, 2001,
through fiscal year 2018. That figure: a cool $5.6
trillion (including the future costs of caring for our war vets). On
average, that’s at least $23,386 per taxpayer.
Keep
in mind that such figures, however eye-popping, are only the dollar costs of
our wars. They don’t, for instance, include the psychic
costs to the Americans mangled in one way or another in those never-ending
conflicts. They don’t include the costs to this country’s infrastructure, which has been crumbling
while taxpayer dollars flow copiously and in a remarkably -- in these years,
almost uniquely -- bipartisan fashion into what’s still
laughably called “national security.”
That’s not, of course, what would make most of us more
secure, but what would make them -- the denizens of the national security state
-- ever more secure in Washington and elsewhere. We’re
talking about the Pentagon, the Department of Homeland Security, the U.S.
nuclear complex, and the rest of that state-within-a-state, including its many
intelligence agencies and the warrior
corporations that have, by now, been fused into that vast and vastly
profitable interlocking structure.
In
reality, the costs of America’s wars, still spreading
in the Trump era, are incalculable. Just look at photos of the cities of Ramadi
or Mosul
in Iraq, Raqqa
or Aleppo
in Syria, Sirte
in Libya, or Marawi in the southern Philippines, all in ruins in the
wake of the conflicts Washington set off in the post–9/11
years, and try to put a price on them. Those views of mile upon mile of rubble,
often without a building still standing untouched, should take anyone’s breath away. Some of those cities may never be fully
rebuilt.
And
how could you even begin to put a dollars-and-cents value on the larger human
costs of those wars: the hundreds of thousands of dead?
The tens
of millions of people displaced in their own countries or sent as
refugees fleeing across any border in sight? How could you factor in the way
those masses of uprooted peoples of the Greater Middle East and Africa are
unsettling other parts of the planet? Their presence (or
more accurately a growing fear of it) has, for instance, helped fuel an expanding
set of right-wing “populist”
movements that threaten to tear Europe apart. And who could forget the role
that those refugees -- or at least fantasy
versions of them -- played in Donald Trump’s
full-throated, successful pitch for the presidency? What, in the end, might be
the cost of that?
Opening
the Gates of Hell
America’s never-ending twenty-first-century conflicts were triggered
by the decision of George W. Bush and his top officials to instantly define
their response to attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center by a tiny
group of jihadis as a “war”;
then to proclaim it nothing short of a “Global War on
Terror”; and finally to invade and occupy first
Afghanistan and then Iraq, with dreams of dominating the Greater Middle East --
and ultimately the planet -- as no other imperial power had ever done.
===========
p.
Reasons
Trump Breaks Nuclear-Sanction Agreement with Iran, Declares Trade War with
China
and
Meets with North Korea
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/49414.htm
by James Petras
For
some time, critics of President Trump’s policies have attributed them to a
mental disorder; uncontrolled manic-depression, narcissus bullying and other
pathologies.
The
question of Trump’s mental health raises a deeper question: why does his
pathologies take a specific political direction?
Moreover,
Trump’s decisions have a political history and background, and follow from a logic
and belief in the reason and logic of imperial power.
We
will examine the reason why Trump has embraced three strategic decisions which
have world-historic consequences, namely: Trump’s reneging the nuclear accord
with Iran; Trump’s declaration of a trade war with China; and Trump’s meeting
with North Korea.
In
brief we will explore the political reasons for his decisions; what he expects
to gain; and what is his game plan if he fails to secure his expected outcome
and his adversaries take reprisals.
===========
q.
Briefing
Note: Update on the Salisbury poisonings
http://syriapropagandamedia.org/working-papers/briefing-note-update-on-the-salisbury-poisonings
===========
r.
Trump’s
Withdrawal From Iran Nuclear Deal Gives Europe a Choice: Become Vassals or be
Independent
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/49411.htm
by
Finian Cunningham
Donald
Trump’s trashing of the Iran nuclear deal this week was not just an attack on
Iranian sovereign interests. The US president was also poking European allies
in the eye.
In
abruptly withdrawing the US from the international nuclear treaty, Trump warned
that his administration was preparing to re-impose harsh sanctions on Tehran,
and that those sanctions would also hit European commercial interests in Iran.
The
American president’s high-handed manner was to be expected towards Iran. He has
constantly denigrated the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), signed in
July 2015 by his predecessor Barack Obama, along with other members of the UN
Security Council, Britain, France, Russia, China plus Germany. Trump’s contempt
for Iran as an alleged state terrorism sponsor has also been relentless.
But
what stood out more in his dismissal of the nuclear deal this week was Trump’s
brazen disregard for European allies.
+
Playing
US sanctions: China walks a fine line in Iran
https://therealnews.com/playing-us-sanctions-china-walks-a-fine-line-in-iran
===========
s.
Trump
Basically Threatened Iran with Annihilation
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/49410.htm
The
Deep State First – Madness On Both Ends of the Acela Corridor
by David Stockman
At
his so-called Cabinet meeting this morning, the Donald basically threatened
Iran with annihilation if it does what 15 other signatories to the nuclear
non-proliferation treaty (NPT) do every day: Namely, increase production of industrial grade
nuclear fuel (3.5%-5.0% purity) at its enrichment plant at Natanz –
which, in any event, is crawling with IAEA inspectors.
Moreover,
it really doesn’t matter whether Trump was play-acting in the style of Art of
the Deal or that the JPAOC could be improved.
The
mere threat of a military attack from the White House is madness because it
arises from blatant lies that have absolutely nothing to do with US national
security. Nor, for that matter, the security of any other country in the
region, including Saudi Arabia and Israel.
The
real purpose of the Donald’s missile-rattling is nothing more than helping Bibi
Netanyahu keep his coalition of right wing religious and settler parties
(Likud, United Torah Judaism, Shas, Kulanu and the Jewish Home) together,
thereby maintaining his slim 61-vote majority in the 120-seat Kneset.
===========
t.
Is
Putin’s Strategy Finally Beginning To Work?
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/49422.htm
by Paul Craig Roberts
I
have explained Russian President Valdimir Putin’s Christian practice of turning
the other cheek to Western provocations as a strategy to convey to Europe that
Russia is reasonable but Washington is not and that Russia is not a threat to
European interests and sovereignty but Washington is. By accommodating Israel
and withdrawing from the multi-nation Iran nuclear-nonprolifertion agreement,
US President Donald Trump might have brought success to Putin’s strategy.
Washington’s
three main European vassal states, Britain, France, and Germany have objected
to Trump’s unilateral action. Trump is of the opinion that the multi-nation
agreement depends only on Washington. If Washington renounces the agreement,
that is the end of the agreement. It doesn’t matter what the other parties to
the agreement want. Consequently, Trump intends to reimpose the previous
sanctions against doing business with Iran and to impose additional new
sanctions. If Britain, France, and Germany continue with the business contracts
that have been made with Iran, Washington will sanction its vassal states as
well and prohibit activities of British, French, and German countries in the
US. Clearly, Washington thinks that Europe’s profits in the US exceed what can
be made in Iran and will fall in line with Washington’s decision, as the vassal
states have done in the past.
+
Merkel
heads to Sochi: Russia-Germany détente on the horizon?
https://www.rt.com/news/426959-merkel-putin-sochi-summit-iran/
Merkel
has been to Russia only once since 2014, which marked the rapid deterioration
of relations between Russia and Europe. The German chancellor visited Sochi in
early May 2017. Now, she is trekking out to Sochi once again – about a week
after the US President Donald Trump announced that he would be withdrawing his
country from the Iran nuclear deal, of which Russia and Germany are both
signatories. Washington’s
Iran sanctions bite: Germany trying to ‘minimize’ damage, France wants
exemptions The US leader’s decision has infuriated Europe, with Merkel
going so far as to suggest that Europe can no longer rely upon the US to ensure
its security and maintain international norms. With Merkel heading to Sochi, it
appears that Europe, increasingly disillusioned Washington, will seek closer
cooperation with Moscow in hopes of salvaging the Iran deal and making headway
on a number of other critical international issues.
===========
u.
Hypersonic glider: US intelligence in panic mode over Russia
https://www.rt.com/news/427014-russian-hypersonic-missile-intel/
Russia’s
state-of-the-art hypersonic glide vehicle, which analysts say is capable of
easily cutting through the existing US missile shield, will become operational
by 2020, reports citing US intelligence have warned.
Speaking to CNBC on the condition of anonymity, sources aware of US intelligence reports, said the Russian military successfully tested the weapon twice in 2016. The third known test of the weapon was allegedly carried out in October 2017, and allegedly failed when the device crashed seconds before hitting its target.
The
sources believe the device would be a significant breakthrough which could
enable Russian military to surpass US counterparts. The intelligence sources
claimed that the hypersonic gliders will get onboard countermeasures to enable
them to defeat even the most advanced missile-defense systems.
===========
v.
Russia’s
Presence in Syria is Far From Over
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/49405.htm
by
Robert Fisk
In the Middle
East right now, all sides in this complex battle are staring at each other with
increasing concern
An Israeli
statement that the Iranians had missiles in Syria was surely made in concert
with the Trump administration – it came within hours,
In the West, it’s easy to concentrate on each daily drama about the
Middle East and forget the world in which the real people of the region live.
The latest ravings of the American president on the Iran nuclear agreement –
mercifully, at last, firmly opposed by the EU – obscure the lands of mass
graves and tunnels in which the Muslim Middle East now exists. Even inside the
area, there has now arisen an almost macabre disinterest in the suffering that
has been inflicted here over the past six years. It’s Israel’s air strikes in
Syria that now takes away the attention span.
===========
w.
How
U.S. Taxpayers Fund The World's
Most
Profitable Corporations
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/49406.htm
by
David DeGraw
We
were trying to think of an issue that could possibly be more significant than
$21 Trillion in taxpayer money disappearing from the Pentagon. While it is very
hard to fathom something more significant than $21 Trillion, the only thing we
could come up with is the lack of Return
on Public Investment that American taxpayers get…
As
American taxpayers, did you know that we have been major investors in many of
the world’s most profitable corporations?
Yes,
significant Research & Development of technology, done by the Pentagon
through our public investment via taxpayer funding, has been handed over to
global private corporations and foreign countries, for their profit.
Global
weapons manufactures, foreign countries and most of Silicon Valley’s largest
companies have been gifted trillions of
dollars worth of technology, at our expense, for their profit.
Meanwhile,
instead of having state of the art infrastructure and paying significantly less
in taxes, our taxes increase, our infrastructure is collapsing and social services are getting cut, as our National Debt skyrockets to an all-time high.
===========
x
Gearing
Up for a Third Gulf War
by Michael T. Klare / TomDispatch
With Donald
Trump’s decision to shred the Iran nuclear agreement, announced last Tuesday,
it’s time for the rest of us to start thinking about what a Third Gulf War
would mean. The answer, based on the last 16 years of American experience in
the Greater Middle East, is that it won’t be pretty.
The New
York Times recently reported that
U.S. Army Special Forces were secretly aiding the Saudi Arabian military
against Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen. It was only the latest sign
preceding President Trump’s Iran announcement that Washington was gearing up
for the possibility of another interstate war in the Persian Gulf region. The
first two Gulf wars — Operation Desert Storm (the 1990 campaign to drive Iraqi
forces out of Kuwait) and the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq — ended in American
“victories” that unleashed
virulent strains of terrorism like ISIS, uprooted
millions, and unsettled the Greater Middle East in disastrous ways. The
Third Gulf War — not against Iraq but Iran and its allies — will undoubtedly
result in another American “victory” that could loose even more horrific forces
of chaos and bloodshed.
Like
the first two Gulf wars, the third could involve high-intensity clashes between
an array of American forces and those of Iran, another well-armed state. While
the United States has been fighting ISIS and other terrorist entities in the
Middle East and elsewhere in recent years, such warfare bears little relation
to engaging a modern state determined to defend its sovereign territory with
professional armed forces that have the will, if not necessarily the
wherewithal, to counter major U.S. weapons systems.
Bomb
Putin’s bridge, US commentator bizarrely
advises
Ukraine
https://www.rt.com/news/426936-ukraine-bomb-putin-bridge/
===========
z.
North Korea
Threatens To Call Off Pyongyang-Washington Summit, Slams U.S Approach
North Korea
would reconsider its participation in the historical Pyongyang-Washington
summit in Singapore planned for June 12, the country’s state-run news agency
KCNA reported on May 16.
According to
a press statement of North Korean First Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs Kim
Kye-gwan, North Korea’s Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un stated that its country
isn’t interested in any negotiations that envisage only unilateral
denuclearization without guarantees.
Kim Jong Un criticized the “so-called Libya mode of nuclear
abandonment” as this move hadn’t been an “expression of intention to address
the issue through dialogue.”
===========
zz.
It’s
the End of the World, and I Feel Terrible
https://therealnews.com/its-the-end-of-the-world-and-i-feel-terrible
by Norman Solomon | May 17, 2018
===========
zzz.
Switzerland -
A Once-in-a-Lifetime Chance
to Spreading Positive Banking News to the World
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/49419.htm
It’s called “Vollgeld Initiative” – in German, meaning more or less
“Referendum for Sovereign Money”. What is “Sovereign Money”? – Its money
produced only by the Central Bank, by the “Sovereign”, the government,
represented by its central bank. Money created in accordance with the needs of
the economy, as contrasted to the profit and greed motives of the banking
oligarchy – wat it is today; money creation at will,
by private banking.
The people of
Switzerland are called to vote on 10 June 2018 whether they want to stop the
unlimited, unrestrained money-making by the Swiss private banking system, and
to return to the “olden days”, when money was made and controlled only by the
Central Bank; and this not just in Switzerland, but in most countries around
the globe. Switzerland is one of the few sovereign countries within the OECD,
and possibly worldwide, that has the Right of Referendum written into her
Constitution. With 100,000 valid signatures anybody can raise a referendum to
amend or abolish a law, or to create a new one. – This is a huge privilege to
Right a Wrong.