ISIS and Al Qaeda are “Made in America”. Trump Tweets “We Have Defeated ISIS in Syria”

By Stephen Lendman

Global Research, August 10, 2019

In late 2018 and numerous other times, Trump falsely claimed ISIS was defeated.

Last December he tweeted: “We have defeated ISIS in Syria, my only reason for being there…”

In his January State of the Union address, he falsely said: “(T)he coalition to defeat ISIS has liberated very close to 100% of the territory…in Iraq and Syria.”

In July he said: “We (eliminated) 100% of the caliphate, and we’re rapidly pulling out of Syria. We’ll be out of there pretty soon” — not a message US hardliners want to hear.

He’s a geopolitical know-nothing, proved time and again, aware only of what his handlers want him to know, along with rubbish from Fox News, his favorite propaganda TV channel.

He may not know what followers of reliable independent sources, largely online, explained many times.

ISIS, al-Qaeda, its al-Nusra offshoot, and likeminded terrorist groups are US creations.

They’re recruited, armed, funded, trained, and directed by the Pentagon and CIA — using these jihadists as imperial foot soldiers in Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Libya, Afghanistan, and elsewhere, even the Philippines.

In a 2006 article and in his book on America’s “War on Terrorism,” Michel Chossudovsky explained the following:

“The US military-intelligence has created it own terrorist organizations. In turn, it has developed a cohesive multibillion dollar counterterrorism program (pretending) ‘to go after’ these terrorist organizations,” adding:

“To reach its foreign policy objectives, the images of terrorism in the Iraqi war theater (and later in Syria) must remain vivid in the minds of the citizens, who are constantly reminded of the terrorist threat” — unaware of its US creation.

In 2014, Chossudovsky discussed 26 things to know about the Islamic State (aka ISIS, ISIL, Daesh). Here’s some of what’s discussed:

“The US has been protecting both Al Qaeda and ISIS-ISIL-Daesh.”

“The US Airforce has consistently acted on behalf of the terrorists, bombing Syrian government forces.”

“The Islamic State (ISIS) was until 2014 called Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI).”

“Al Nusra is an al Qaeda affiliate which has committed countless atrocities in Syria. It is now considered by the US (to be) the ‘Moderate Opposition,’ fighting against Syrian government forces.”

“The terrorists are described as the victims of Syrian government aggression. From the very outset, the atrocities committed by the terrorists are casually blamed on Syrian government forces.”

“Those who recruited, trained and financed the terrorists are upheld by the ‘international community’ as the guardians of World Peace.”

“The latter include the heads of state and heads of government of the US, Britain, France and Turkey among others. It’s called ‘Responsibility to Protect’ (R2P).”

“The US led war against the Islamic State is a big lie.”

“Going after ‘Islamic terrorists,’ carrying out a worldwide pre-emptive war to ‘Protect the American Homeland’ are used to justify a military agenda.”

“The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) is a creation of US intelligence. Washington’s ‘Counter-terrorism Agenda’ in Iraq and Syria consists in Supporting the Terrorists.”

There’s more vital information in the article to know about ISIS, its origin, and why it was created. Along with likeminded jihadist groups, it’s used to further US imperial interests wherever these elements are deployed.

US aggression in Syria, Iraq, and elsewhere is unjustifiably justified as aiming to combat and eliminate the scourge US dark forces support — establishment media going along with the subterfuge.

State terrorism is official US/NATO/Israeli policy, waging war on nations threatening no one and defenseless Palestinians for not being Jewish.

Proxy fighters have been used by the US since the 1980s in Afghanistan and Central America.

Now they’re largely used in the Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia — but can show up wherever US ruling authorities, the Pentagon, and CIA want them deployed, aided by US terror-bombing of vital infrastructure and other targets.

On August 2, the US war department’s inspector general said the following:

During Q II 2019, ISIS became resurgent in Syria and Iraq, adding:

“According to the Combined Joint Task Force–OIR (CJTF-OIR), ISIS carried out assassinations, suicide attacks, abductions, and arson of crops in both Iraq and Syria.”

“In addition, ISIS established ‘resurgent cells’ in Syria and sought to expand its command and control nodes in Iraq.”

“CJTF-OIR reported that the Iraqi Security Forces (ISF) and US-backed (terrorists called) Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) were unable to sustain long-term operations against ISIS militants.”

The report claims ISIS has up to 18,000 fighters, new ones recruited to replenish its ranks, Pentagon officials opposed to a US drawdown in Syria and Iraq.

As long as the US and its imperial partners support the scourge of ISIS, the group remains active, not defeated as Trump falsely claimed.

The same goes for other terrorist groups in the region and elsewhere. They exist because of support from the US, NATO, Turkey, Israel, the Saudis, UAE, Jordan, and other US imperial partners.

Their heavy and other weapons don’t materialize out of thin air. They’re supplied cross-border from war theaters by Western and other countries.

Their fighters are trained by the Pentagon and CIA at US regional bases, including in northern and southern Syria.

Turkey bordering Iraq and Syria gives these jihadists safe haven in its territory, letting them move back and forth freely cross-border while pretending to combat this scourge.

The August 2 US war department report was a commercial for wanting a permanent Pentagon, NATO, CIA presence in Syria and Iraq — along with more funding for militarism and warmaking.

Wherever the US shows up militarily, mass slaughter, vast destruction, human misery, and permanent occupation follow.

It’s true in all US post-9/11 war theaters, as well as in the former Yugoslavia following the Clinton co-presidency’s rape of the country in the 1990s.

Instead of a hoped for peace dividend after Soviet Russia dissolved in December 1991, endless US-led wars continue to rage in multiple theaters with no prospect for peace and stability.

Countless millions of corpses, wrecked lives, and trillions of dollars spent for aggression attest to US barbarity.

Throughout the post-WW II period from 1950 to the present day, preemptive US wars of aggression raged and continue raging against nonbelligerent nations threatening no one.

That’s what the scourge of imperialism is all about.

VISIT MY NEW WEB SITE: stephenlendman.org (Home – Stephen Lendman). Contact at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

My newest book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: How the US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

Stephen Lendman is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization

The original source of this article is Global Research

Copyright © Stephen Lendman, Global Research, 2019

https://www.globalresearch.ca/isis-and-al-qaeda-are-made-in-america-trump-tweets-we-have-defeated-isis-in-syria/5686075

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Five Myths of American Exceptionalism Killing the Left

By Danny Haiphong
 

“The anti-Russian campaign has given the FBI and the CIA a public relations facelift.”

July 23, 2019 "Information Clearing House" - American exceptionalism is not merely an ideology that presumes the United States to be the beacon of (white) civilization, progress, and humanity. While this is the overarching definition, its function and form are not always visibly draped in the symbolism of American racist folklore so deeply embedded in the cultural life of the Empire. In my co-authored book American Exceptionalism and American Innocence: A People’s History of Fake News-From the Revolutionary War to the War on Terror, the myths of American exceptionalism are debunked, critiqued, and revised from an anti-imperialist perspective. However, a major focus of the critique is the devastating impact of innocence and exceptionalism on the left in the United States. Here are five myths of American exceptionalism subtly killing the left.
Myth One: Trump is the most dangerous force in American politics today
For many on the left, Trump is the anti-thesis of liberal enlightenment. Trump is a racist, a misogynist, and a corrupt billionaire. All of this is true, which is why many Black Americans, liberals, and progressives despise Donald Trump. That’s fair. Where the confusion lies is in the dangerous path that the response, or “resistance,” to Donald Trump has taken the left. The capitalist oligarchy has been successful in driving fear of Trump into a project of reforming and revitalizing the so-called “exceptional” values and institutions of the U.S. nation-state.
The “resistance” has mainly focused on the Russia-gate conspiracy to render the orange billionaire a dangerous foreign agent whose sponsor, Russia, must be disposed of with as much vigilance as Trump. This narrative ignores the very real continuity between Trump and U.S. imperialism through a psychopathic vilification of Russia. Neither Trump nor Russia created this system. Trump has merely benefitted from systemic stagnation and crisis, first by becoming rich from exploiting workers (as all capitalists do) and then by taking advantage of the political vacuum created by the bipartisan consensus of endless war and austerity—a consensus much of the population of the U.S. and the world at large no longer sees as legitimate. Without an alternative to the Democratic Party, the left was unable to muster any challenge to the political crisis engendered by the two-party duopoly. The danger then is not just Trump but rather the entire political establishment which enabled his rise. Viewing Trump as the singular danger of U.S. imperialism is more likely to take the world into nuclear war with Russia than neutralize the orange menace in the White House.

The U.S. corporate media is controlled by a handful of corporations with deep investments in the military industrial complex. Yet the corporate media continues to frame itself as the only source of legitimate “journalism.” Trump’s faux crusade against the corporate media has given the ruling class grounds to wage a war against independent media in the name of stomping out the real “fake news.” What is referred to as “fake news” is us, the left. The ruling class has labeled sources such as Black Agenda Reportdupes of Russia and has used Silicon Valley giants such as Facebook and Google to censor left-wing political media and organizations online. While polls continue to show that many Americans do indeed see the corporate media as “fake news,” the war on independent media, with Trump and Russia as the proxy, has reinvigorated the narrative that the U.S corporate media represents a “free press.” Such a narrative allows the corporate media continues to push for war and austerity while the left is drowned out by actually-existing censorship.Myth Two: The U.S. is a society where freedom of the press is sacred
Myth Three: Black America made progress under Obama
There has been much genuflecting about the condition of Black America and workers generally since Trump came into office. Trump has boasted that his administration deserves credit for reviving the capitalist economy while his opponents in the elite attribute the so-called gains to Obama’s administration. Neither is true. While stagnation has stabilized rather than worsened, the condition of Black America and workers in general cannot be viewed from the prism of progress if we consider the realities on the ground. Ninety percent of jobs created during the Obama period were low-wage or temporary . This has not changed under Trump. Black Americans came out of the Obama era with less wealth than prior to the 2007-08 economic crisis as a result of the bailout Obama facilitated to the banks. Black wealth will be zero by 2053 if current trends persist. This does not account for the fact that trends do not consider the periodic crashes of the capitalist system. Furthermore, low unemployment numbers can be attributed to the increase in discouraged workers, or workers no longer looking for jobs, who are not counted in federal unemployment statistics. In other words, progress is in the eye of the beholder, the ruling class, and we must move beyond narratives of progress to see the economic crisis in Black America and the working-class broadly for what it is: ongoing.
Myth Four: World War II
The myth that the U.S. “saved the world” in World War II continues to haunt the left in the U.S. Even Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the popular “democratic socialist” Congresswoman, has stated on several occasions that the U.S. must rise to the occasion of climate change like it did during World War II. What does this mean, really? The statement assumes that the U.S. defeated fascism in Europe and Asia and brought the world to a more democratic place and peaceful period in world history.
The myth of the “Good War” has made it difficult for even anti-war progressives to question the role of the U.S. in World War II. Forget that the U.S. used two nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki despite evidence from U.S. military officials at the time that their use was wholly unnecessary . Forget the U.S.-U.K. firebombing of Dresden in 1945 which killed 300,000 people; also seen as unnecessary by historians. And forget that the U.S. waited until 1941 to enter the war and saw Hitler as a major asset in weakening the Soviet Union up until that point. Surrounding World War II is a sacred creed of American exceptionalism. Many leftists believe that the “Golden Age” of capitalism which followed the war justifies, or at least makes excusable, the many crimes the U.S. committed in its participation in WWII. But the golden age of capitalism is gone, and we are in the system’s late stages. The military industrial complex created during World War II has a large part in leading us to this moment of U.S. imperial decline and we must get real about World War II if we are to develop a strong anti-imperialist movement in the belly of the beast.
Myth Five: Russia is the enemy of the U.S.
Since the 2016 election ended, the Democratic Party and its allies in the U.S. intelligence apparatus have been busy investigating the accusation that Donald Trump “colluded” with Russia to win the presidency. These claims have been debunked again and again by journalists and academics such as The Nation’s Aaron Mate and Stephen Cohen . Liberal darling and former FBI director Robert Mueller was appointed to investigate allegations of Russian collusion only to come up empty after over six hundred days of “investigation.” Still, the narrative that Trump is at least a dupe of Russia lives on and that’s because the whole saga was never about facts in the first place. Russiagate was always a poorly crafted mechanism on the part of the spook agencies in the U.S. to neutralize not only Donald Trump’s unpredictable political leanings but those of the left as well.
Russiagate has reinvigorated the anti-communist hysteria that was so deeply embedded in the racist and imperialist political architecture of the U.S. over the course of the 20thcentury. The anti-Russian campaign has given the FBI and the CIA a public relations facelift after years of struggle by the left, especially the Black left, in exposing the agencies to be facilitators of torture and war domestically and abroad. A record number of Democratic Party candidates in the 2018 mid-terms came directly from the military intelligence apparatus . Left political forces such as the Black Agenda Report have been lumped together with the likes of Alex Jones by neo-con think-tanks such as the Atlantic Council and censored in various forms online. All the while Russia has been blamed for deploying RT and Sputnik as agents of a foreign government whose coverage of issues such as Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter are purportedly to blame for the Trump presidency.
“The whole Russiagte saga was never about facts in the first place.”
Hatred toward Russia is dangerous for the left, not least because U.S. military hostilities with Russia have been intensifying for over a decade. Trump has gone along with the anti-Russian charade on the policy front. Making Russia the enemy of the U.S. is further stifling the ability of the left to spread its message online or on the ground in an already difficult political environment. It is not Russia that is sewing discord in the U.S. or anywhere else. Russia is not the enemy of the people. That job is reserved for the U.S. government. The very architects of the Russiagate saga are those forces that have historically murdered and imprisoned dozens of leaders of the Black liberation movement in an ongoing effort to neutralize the right to self-determination for oppressed nations such as Black America. Yet few speak out when the U.S. corporate state accuses Russia of sparking Black political unrest, as if Black Americans possess no grievances within an Empire that enslaved them and then kept them on the bottom of the economic, political, and social class ladder ever since.
Conclusion
Of course, there are many more myths of American exceptionalism that continue to disturb the sensibilities and political clarity of “the left” in the United States. American exceptionalism doesn’t merely presume the U.S. to be a force for good, domestically and abroad. It demands that even the most left-leaning political constituencies take up a struggle to redeem a social system built upon the billions of corpses and half-lives produced by the system itself. This ultimately leads us to the struggle between reform and revolution. While demands for reform that expose the U.S. oligarchy are necessary to any effective left movement, it is the process by which such a movement goes about realizing those demands that shapes its class character. Adherence to American exceptionalism kills the left and then takes it to the Democratic Party-run graveyard for burial. A left that can sustain itself beyond the allure of American exceptionalism must ultimately confront its most challenging manifestations, many of which are normalized in the political culture of this declining empire.

Danny Haiphong is an activist and journalist in the New York City area. He and Roberto Sirvent are co-authors of the book entitled American Exceptionalism and American Innocence: A People’s History of Fake News -- From the Revolutionary War to the War on Terror (Skyhorse Publishing). He can be reached at wakeupriseup1990@gmail.com, on Instagram at danny_haiphong, and on Twitter at @SpiritofHo.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/51973.htm

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British Arrogance on Hong Kong

By Finian Cunningham
July 07, 2019 "Information Clearing House" -  Britain’s Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt has warned China of “consequences” over its handling of violent protests in Hong Kong.

Hunt has not ruled out slapping sanctions on the Chinese government, according to BBC reporting.Other Conservative politicians like former Tory party chairman Chris Patten have also weighed in to rebuke China and to praise the protesters. While these politicians say they "condemn all violence" it is nevertheless clear that they are giving at least tacit encouragement to civil unrest in Hong Kong.
For its part, China angrily hit back this week with a warning to Britain to "stop interfering" in its internal affairs.

The latest spat between the United Kingdom and China flared up after protesters trashed the parliament building in Hong Kong in scenes of rampant anarchy. Windows were smashed and walls graffitied as protesters ran amok throughout the legislative council building last Monday. Colonial-era British flags were strewn over the chamber.

Hong Kong has been China’s sovereign territory for the past 22 years after Britain returned its former colony to Beijing’s control from a negotiated deal implemented in 1997. That was after nearly 150 years of British colonial rule over the tiny enclave on China’s southeast coast.
Why Britain should ever had possession of Chinese territory is of course a moot point. The omission of that topic in British political discourse illustrates the innate arrogance that lies behind the latest war of words with Bejing.
The fact is that Hong Kong is now under Beijing’s sovereign control, albeit with a degree of local autonomy as per the terms of the handover accord negotiated with London. The so-called “one country, two systems” arrangement expires in the coming years when Hong Kong will became fully integrated under Chinese laws with the rest of mainland China. Presently, however, it is still officially Chinese sovereign territory.

Therefore British officials like Jeremy Hunt and others have no business in lecturing China on how to manage a security problem caused by protesters smashing up government property.
Hong Kong has been in turmoil from weeks of massive public demonstrations against proposed laws that would allow crime suspects to be extradited to mainland China in order to face trial. Protesters in Hong Kong say that move would violate their local autonomy. The authorities have since shelved the proposed legislation, but the protests have continued, and took a dramatic twist with the violent occupation of the parliament building earlier this week.
The Beijing-backed administration in Hong Kong has the legal right and duty to bring those involved in criminal damage to justice. The morass was tantamount to violent sedition, which British politicians appear to be condoning.
China’s ambassador to the United Kingdom, Liu Xiaoming, put the British arrogance in perspective when he reminded that during 156 years of British colonial rule the people of Hong Kong had neither the right to protest nor an elected legislature, nor an independent judiciary. The territory was formerly under executive control from London with no local democratic rights whatsoever.
For British officials to now pontificate to Beijing about "democratic rights" in Hong Kong is just laughable. It illustrates the utter conceit and hypocrisy of Britain’s government on this matter.
For Hunt to warn China of "consequences" and "sanctions" also shows a delusional sense about British global power.
What is going on here no doubt partially stems from Hunt’s personal ambition to become the next British prime minister. Trying to sound "authoritative" and "tough" compared with rival leadership candidate Boris Johnson, Hunt is risking damaging bilateral relations with China with his poking into Hong Kong affairs.
In a post-Brexit world, Britain will need every trading partner it can muster when it leaves the European Union after more than four decades of EU membership. There are credible warnings that the British economy will suffer from a severe downturn once it quits the bloc unless it finds alternative global markets.
China’s economic colossus could thus be a vital lifeline for British international business in the future. The country is already a huge market for British exports even before Brexit has happened. The way that British politicians like Hunt and others have soured bilateral relations over their pesky comments concerning Hong Kong could come back to bite them. It is unlikely that China will forget about the British insults to its sovereign authority when the Brits come appealing for trade deals in the future.
British interference in China’s internal affairs over Hong Kong is not only supremely arrogant. It is downright stupid. But that’s the thing about arrogance; stupidity can’t be avoided, even when it is glaringly obvious.
Finian Cunningham has written extensively on international affairs, with articles published in several languages. He is a Master’s graduate in Agricultural Chemistry and worked as a scientific editor for the Royal Society of Chemistry, Cambridge, England, before pursuing a career in newspaper journalism. He is also a musician and songwriter. For nearly 20 years, he worked as an editor and writer in major news media organisations, including The Mirror, Irish Times and Independent.

This article was originally published by "Sputnik" -

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==See Also==

Jeremy Hunt on China/Hong Kong, why he should be PM and his record as Foreign Secretary

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/51882.htm

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The Neocolonial Arrogance of the Kushner Plan

By Rashid Khalidi
June 12, 2019 "Information Clearing House" -  “You cannot do without us,” Lord Curzon condescendingly told the Indians over whom he ruled as British imperial viceroy more than a century ago. As the Trump family rubbed shoulders with the Windsors during their recent visit to London, there was no mistaking the difference between the real aristocracy and the trumped-up one. However, Jared Kushner, presidential son-in-law and senior adviser responsible for crafting a Middle East peace plan, does have something in common with Lord Curzon and his colonial ilk.
In an interview with Axios shown on HBO on June 2, shortly before he arrived in the UK, Kushner cast doubt on the feasibility of independent Palestinian self-rule, declaring, “we’ll have to see,” adding, “the hope is that they over time can become capable of governing.” When asked if Palestinians should ever be able to enjoy freedom from “Israeli government or military interference,” he said only that this was “a high bar.” After suggesting that Kushner had consulted few if any Palestinians over the two years during which his peace plan was in the works, his interviewer asked if he understood why the Palestinians did not trust him. Kushner responded curtly, “I’m not here to be trusted.”
This was not the first time the Palestinians have been told they cannot govern themselves, that they are obliged to remain under foreign tutelage, and do not warrant being consulted about their national future. In 1919, another British imperialist, Lord Balfour, wrote—in a confidential memo to Curzon himself—“in Palestine we do not propose even to go through the form of consulting the wishes of the present inhabitants of the country… Zionism, be it right or wrong, good or bad, is rooted in age-long traditions, in present needs, in future hopes, of far profounder import than the desires and prejudices of the 700,000 Arabs who now inhabit that ancient land.”
The 1917 declaration associated with Balfour’s name, the basis of the British Mandate that led to the establishment of Israel, excluded the Palestinians—whom Balfour never mentioned by name—from the political and national rights it accorded to Jews. In the Axios interview, Kushner echoed Balfour’s words, repeatedly excluding Palestinians from political and national rights. Kushner and his colleagues, White House adviser Jason Greenblatt, and David Friedman, the US ambassador to Israel, have consistently stressed that theirs is essentially an economic development initiative for the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip, meant to operate under existing conditions of almost absolute Israeli control. So far, it has no disclosed political element, except the clear indication that Palestinian statehood and sovereignty are ruled out. All the Palestinians deserve, in Kushner’s view, is “the opportunity to live a better life… the opportunity to pay their mortgage,” under Israel rule. 

Astonishingly, for someone who is supposedly a successful businessperson, Kushner is apparently ignorant of the economic consensus that describes a Palestinian economy as strangled primarily by the systematic interference of the Israeli military occupation that he advocates maintaining. The Trump administration has added to this economic stranglehold with its decisions to cut both direct US aid to the West Bank and Gaza and its supportfor UNRWA. Meanwhile, the US continues to support the Israeli blockade of Gaza, aided by Egypt, with disastrous effects on its 1.8 million people, including chronic power and water shortages, minimal sewage treatment, more than 50 percent unemployment, and a complete lack of freedom of movement.Understandably, almost universally, Palestinians—along with many international commentators—see such an approach as simply paving the way to a normalization of never-ending occupation and creeping annexation under conditions of extreme legal discrimination between Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs: a situation resembling nothing so much as apartheid South Africa.
These are only some of the ways that the administration of which Kushner is part has made its contempt for the Palestinians apparent. In recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, it has unilaterally taken an issue Israel is treaty-bound to negotiate with the Palestinians off the table, and reversed seventy-plus years of US policy, while ignoring an international consensus that the city’s final status would be subject to a mutually acceptable peace agreement. The Trump administration has also explicitly avoided endorsing a two-state solution or any form of Palestinian sovereignty, positions Kushner reiterated in his interview. It closed the Palestinian mission in Washington, D.C., and cut off US aid to the Palestinian Authority. It claimed that, contrary to the status of all other refugees since World War II, the descendants of Palestinians, declared refugees in 1948, are not themselves refugees. Finally, in endorsing Israel’s annexation of the Golan Heights, the Trump administration has cleared the way for the annexation of whatever parts of the West Bank Israel should choose to swallow up.
Indeed, in a recent interview with The New York Times, Ambassador Friedman, who is reportedly a “driving force” in shaping the Trump Administration’s Middle East policy, stated that Israel has the “right” to annex “some, but unlikely all, of the West Bank.” Friedman then waxed philosophical: asked whether Kushner’s plan includes a Palestinian state, he mused, “What’s a state?” He concluded by ludicrously comparing the indefinite forcible Israeli occupation of Palestinian land to the treaty-based US military presence in Germany, Japan, and Korea. These declarations are the clearest possible indicator of which way the wind is blowing in Washington.
In exchange for these derogations of Palestinian rights, the Palestinians are to be offered money, collected from the Gulf monarchies, an offer that is presumably to be formalized at a conference in late June in Bahrain. Kushner’s proposal to buy off Palestinian opposition to a plan that obviates a negotiated political settlement is not just arrogant and crass—which is fully in keeping with the track record of his family and his in-laws. It is also no more than a reheated version of similar plans for “economic peace” in lieu of Palestinian rights peddled by Israeli leaders from Shimon Peres to Netanyahu. 
Since the time of the Oslo Accords in the mid-1990s, Peres, who was committed to the denial of Palestinian statehood and sovereignty, floated various ideas for “economic peace.” The same theme was sounded by Benjamin Netanyahu, starting with the 2009 election, and with growing emphasis ever since, as he has come out increasingly against Palestinian statehood. For Netanyahu and ultranationalist supporters of extremist settlers such as his recent cabinet colleague Naftali Bennett, an economic sweetener for the bitter pill the Palestinians are meant to swallow has become an essential plank in their explicitly annexationist approach. 
It is no secret that the Trump administration and the Netanyahu government are marching in lockstep, both regarding Palestine and a confrontation with Iran, but what is startling is how much of the White House’s Middle East policy, including the Kushner plan itself, has effectively been outsourced to Netanyahu and his allies in Israel and the US. The Trump administration’s Middle East “initiatives” so far have virtually all come pre-packaged from the Israeli extreme right’s storehouse of ideas, including moving the Jerusalem embassy, recognizing the annexation of the Golan, airily dispensing with the Palestinian refugee issue, trying to liquidate UNRWA, and withdrawing from the nuclear deal with Iran. There remain a few items on the Netanyahu wish list, including annexation of much of the West Bank, formal American rejection of Palestinian statehood, the creation of a completely tame Palestinian Quisling leadership, and other deplorable ways of coercing the Palestinians to accept that they are a defeated people. 
What Kushner and his colleagues are saying is that the Palestinians have no justified grievances, and no legitimate rights, except the right to whatever prosperity can be achieved with Gulf money under a permanent Israeli military occupation of their land. However, the Kushner plan’s notion of throwing other people’s money at the issue will not make it go away; not when it involves the national, political, civil, and human rights of an estimated 12 million people. As should be clear from political and civil society activism like the international BDS movement, and other forms of resistance in the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, among Palestinians inside Israel, and in the Palestinian diaspora, the Palestinian people are not about to be bought off.
The Trump administration has made it clear that while the Israelis are to have ample input into deciding what happens in Palestine, the Palestinians themselves do not deserve to be consulted on their future: in their arrogance, Kushner, Friedman, Greenblatt, and their right-wing Israeli mentors know better. The tired routine of depriving Palestinians of agency, as Kushner’s plan does in a pointed and disrespectful way, has been tried for over a century. It did not work under the British Mandate, it did not work between 1948 and the rise of the Palestine Liberation Organization in the 1960s as the Arab regimes tried to impose their tutelage on them, and it has not worked under Israel’s military rule. All that the Palestinians have been allowed by their Israeli overlords, from Menachem Begin in 1977 until Benjamin Netanyahu today, are severely constrained and largely cosmetic degrees of “self-rule” under the Israeli thumb. This is manifestly all Kushner is willing to offer.  
The status quo of military occupation and colonization that Kushner proposes to extend indefinitely is entirely at odds with decades of stated US policy, and with every principle of freedom, justice and equity the United States is supposed to stand for. It brings the United States into disrepute to allow its policy to be framed by such a trifling figure, acting under the influence of the retrograde ideas of the Israeli right. 
While Jared Kushner’s hobnobbing with royalty in London may have turned his head, whether he knows it or not, the days of Lord Curzon and Lord Balfour are long gone, the colonial era is over. With the neocolonial plans they have concocted for the Palestinians, he and his Israeli allies are swimming against the tide of history.
This article was originally published by "NYREV" -

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==See Also==

Australian film ‘Stone Cold Justice’ on Israel’s torture of Palestinian children

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/51751.htm


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The Pentagon’s “Pacific Bellicosity” Is Threatening Both Russia and China

By Andrew Korybko

Global Research, June 08, 2019

The Russian military claimed that the U.S.’ guided-missile cruiser Chancellorsville suddenly changed course early Friday morning while on a patrol in the East China Sea and almost collided with the Admiral Vinogradov destroyer that was passing through these waters at the same time.

The U.S. denied this accusation and instead said that it was the Russian vessel that was behaving unprofessionally and putting the lives of everyone involved at risk, though it should be noted that this certainly wasn’t the first time that American forces have been accused of such recklessness.

Actually, there have been several such incidents every year since the 2014 Ukrainian crisis and consequent territorial dispute of Crimea which led to a revival of Cold War tensions between the two great powers, with most of these near-misses occurring in the Baltic Sea, Black Sea, and Syria.

This is the first time that such an event happened in the East China Sea between the two rivals and proves that the Pentagon’s Pacific bellicosity of recent years is finally starting to endanger Russia just as much it’s been endangering China this entire time.

The U.S.’ so-called “freedom of navigation patrols” pass through the South China Sea and seem designed to provoke a military response from Beijing, one which Washington could then expectedly exploit to advance its demonization campaign against China.

 File photo of the Admiral Vinogradov destroyer and the Admiral Nevelsky warship (L-R) of the Russian Navy, serving in the Russian Pacific Fleet, in a naval parade celebrating the Navy Day of Russia. /VCG Photo

Given what’s known about previous near-misses between the Chinese and American navies, one can assume that the U.S. was the party at fault in the latest incident with Russia because of its established pattern of aggressive behavior. Furthermore, it can’t be ruled out that the recent event might have been timed to coincide with the ongoing St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF).

At SPIEF, China and Russia are discussing ways to intensify their cooperation on the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), which represents the most realistic opportunity to transform international relations away from the fading American-centric unipolarity and towards the more equitable emerging multipolar world order.

The U.S. is very upset that Russia and China moved much closer to one another after EuroMaidan, which interestingly also coincided with the Pentagon’s provocative activity in the South China Sea. The Russian-Chinese partnership isn’t aimed against any third party, but many in the American strategic, political, and media communities are convinced that it’s secretly intended to undermine the U.S., hence the hysterical reaction that they’re having to it.

That said, there’s no denying that Russia and China see eye-to-eye on practically every global issue of significance, and they’ve just found another commonality between them when it comes to the U.S.’ reckless military action in the Pacific.

 Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin hold talks in Moscow, Russia, June 5, 2019. /Xinhua Photo

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Russian forces are now endangered by this irresponsible activity just like their Chinese counterparts have been in recent years already, which could add a renewed impetus to these two great powers’ military cooperation with one another, especially in the naval sphere.

Not only that, but Russia is already paying more attention to the Pacific as part of the geopolitical re-balancing act that it’s been engaged in for half a decade already in reaction to the West’s sanctions against it, so it’s only natural for Moscow to take this latest incident very seriously and use it as the opportunity to cooperate even more closely with Beijing than ever before.

This conceivable outcome would add further credence to the theory that the U.S.’ aggression abroad is actually self-defeating and counterproductive because it ultimately lays the basis for equal and opposite reactions that eventually undermine its stated aims.

It’s enough to remember how the U.S.’ hybrid war aggression in Ukraine and conventional naval aggression in the South China Sea brought Russia and China closer together and fulfilled the nightmare scenario that the late former national security adviser and visionary geopolitical theorist Zbigniew Brzezinski warned about in his 1997 seminal work about “The Grand Chessboard.”

The solution as always would be for the U.S. to embrace win-win cooperation with all and reject the zero-sum schemes that got it to this point, but it doesn’t seem like it’s learned its lesson just yet, especially judging by the latest incident.

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This article was originally published on CGTN.

Andrew Korybko is an American Moscow-based political analyst specializing in the relationship between the US strategy in Afro-Eurasia, China’s One Belt One Road global vision of New Silk Road connectivity, and Hybrid Warfare. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from CGTN

The original source of this article is Global Research

Copyright © Andrew Korybko, Global Research, 2019

https://www.globalresearch.ca/pentagons-pacific-bellicosity-starting-endanger-russia/5679971

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