Dissident Voice
Thu, 25 Apr 2024 20:07:54 +0000
Muhammad Jaber, known as Abu Shujaa, the leader of the Tulkarem Brigade militia in Nur Shams refugee camp, emerges among mourners after rumors of his killing in the northern occupied West Bank during a two-day military operation, on 21 April. Mohammed Nasser APA images
The Israeli military carried out bloody carnage and destruction at the Nur Shams refugee camp and surrounding areas in Tulkarem in the northern occupied West Bank during a two-day raid this week.
During the 54-hour operation, at least 14 Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces, including three children. The Israeli military carried out the operation with domestic intelligence agency Shin Bet and Israel's Border Police. The invading forces damaged and destroyed homes, commercial stores, roads and other infrastructure, and left at least 25 Palestinians injured in the wake of the military raid.
"The Israeli military invasion into Nur Shams refugee camp marks the deadliest days in the occupied West Bank since the second intifada," said Ayed Abu Eqtaish, accountability program director at Defense for Children International-Palestine.
On 18 April, more than 120 military vehicles carrying dozens of soldiers, Tel Aviv newspaper Haaretz reported, invaded the Nur Shams refugee camp from multiple entrances and checkpoints, including through the Avnei Hefetz settlement, located on the western edge of the northern West Bank near Tulkarem.
Israeli troops besieged the camp, as well as several homes within it. Israeli troops occupied several homes, turning some of them into "military bases, barracks and observation points," according to DCIP.
Israeli military reinforcements, including three bulldozers, sealed the camp trapping residents inside, while others were unable to enter. Throughout the military raid, Israeli troops deliberately prevented ambulances from reaching wounded and killed Palestinians, DCIP reported.
The Israeli invasion resulted in widespread devastation.
"Bullets and grenades have left gaping holes in the walls of homes. Fragments of shells and LAU missiles are strewn across open spaces," Haaretz reported.
Israeli bulldozers demolished infrastructure in the camp. Israeli forces damaged electricity, water, sewage systems, and telecommunication networks, leading to power outages during the military raid.
Footage of ambulances arriving at the refugee camp after the withdrawal of Israeli forces shows them having to traverse the rubble of destroyed roads amidst damaged infrastructure and battered streets.
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Citizens descrbe the camp's condition as 'Little Gaza,' underscoring the extensive devastation caused by the occupation in just three days," an analyst wrote in the Lebanese paper Al-Akhbar.This is part of transferring "the model of extermination seen in the Gaza Strip, and preceding it, with the 'Dahiya Doctrine,' as a method of action for the enemy army when confronting resistance in the West Bank."
The "Dahiya Doctrine" is a strategy named after the southern suburb of Beirut that Israel deliberately flattened, where Israel indiscriminately targets civilian areas in order to turn civilians against armed resistance in the area and bring them to their knees.
In this strategy, the occupation forces "are not satisfied with confronting the resistance fighters, but rather seek to transform the camps into places unsuitable for life."
Armed resistance
Armed Palestinians in the camp confronted the Israeli invaders to protect their community, injuring several Israeli soldiers.
Despite initial reports indicating that he was killed, the leader of the Tulkarem Brigade, a group associated with Saraya al-Quds, the military wing of the Islamic Jihad resistance group, emerged among mourners in the camp following the Israeli withdrawal.
Pictures circulating on social media show an armed Muhammad Jaber, known among residents in the camp as Abu Shujaa, being borne on the shoulders of a crowd of Palestinians.
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Our message is that we challenged the occupation, and here we are still alive," Abu Shujaa told media following the military raid.
Children killed
Three children were among those slaughtered in the massacre.
Jihad Nyaz Naser Zandiq, a 15-year-old, was at home with his uncle when a group of armed Palestinians reportedly arrived on 19 April.
Israeli troops surrounded the house and ordered all its occupants to come out.
Despite Jihad and another Palestinian man exiting the house with their hands raised and declaring they were civilians, Israeli forces still opened fire, fatally shooting both of them.
Jihad's body remained on the ground for 17 hours before a neighbor moved him into his house until Israeli forces withdrew from the camp, DCIP reported.
A 17-year-old boy was hit by shrapnel from an Israeli-fired shell on the same day.
Ali Mohammad Ali Abdullah, who allegedly participated in confronting the invading Israeli troops, was attempting to leave a neighborhood of the camp with another young man when he was struck.
He sustained burns and shrapnel wounds on his face and body, and his corpse remained on the ground until Israeli forces withdrew from the area, DCIP's field investigation found.
An Israeli soldier, stationed in a heavily armored military vehicle, fatally shot a 14-year-old boy who was standing with a group of civilians at a roundabout in Tulkarem.
There were no confrontations between armed Palestinians and Israeli forces at the time, according to DCIP's field investigation.
The soldier fired a bullet at Qais Fathi Ibrahim Nasrullah from a distance of 300 meters, striking him in the chest, according to DCIP.
Although the boy was rushed to the hospital by a private vehicle, he was pronounced dead minutes after arrival, despite efforts to resuscitate him.
Genocide alert
"Israel has employed a lethal open-fire policy in the West Bank" since 7 October, Israeli human rights group B'Tselem said.
The Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention issued an "active genocide alert" over the situation for Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, declaring that "Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians across Palestine."
Earlier this month, violence against Palestinians in the West Bank accelerated as large groups of Israeli settler mobs launched attacks on more than a dozen Palestinian villages following the disappearance of an Israeli teenager.
Amnesty International highlighted an "alarming spike in violence" perpetrated by Jewish settlers against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank. The organization emphasized "the urgent need to dismantle illegal settlements, end Israel's occupation" and its system of apartheid.
The human rights organization implicitly rejected attempts to portray these attacks as isolated incidents caused by a few bad apples, as state sanctions against a handful of extremist settlers suggested.
"The appalling spike in settler violence against Palestinians in recent days is part of a decades-long state-backed campaign to dispossess, displace and oppress Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, under Israel's system of apartheid," said Heba Morayef, Regional Director for the Middle East and North Africa at Amnesty International.
"Violence is integral to the establishment and expansion of these settlements and to sustaining apartheid," she added.
"It's time for the world to recognize this and pressure Israeli authorities to abide by international law by immediately halting settlement expansion and removing all existing settlements."
• This article was first published in The Electronic Intifada
The post
"Deadliest days" in the West Bank first appeared on
Dissident Voice.
Dissident Voice
Thu, 25 Apr 2024 15:18:07 +0000
Rafah is already under attack; where will people go if Israel conducts a major offensive there? Abed Rahim Khatib DPA via ZUMA Press
It's almost 5 am in al-Mawasi Rafah. And we've been hearing the sounds of Israeli bombs since midday yesterday.
They're intermittent, maybe two or three every couple of hours.
There's a saying here that if you can hear them, then you're okay. For reasons I don't yet understand, people who are bombed don't hear the explosive metallic hatred that buries them alive, tears their limbs, burns their faces and steals life from them even if they survive.
People no longer pay attention to their booms, except to utter ya sater, a perfunctory prayer to protect whomever, wherever.
As the world has gotten smaller and dimmer here, conversations swirl around two topics – food and bombs – repeating with daily updates. What did one eat, what is there to eat, what will one eat, how long will one's stock last, how will they get the next meal, what aid has been allowed in, how high are the prices, how many have starved or are starving to death.
Apples were the talk of the town last week. They appeared in the market for the first time since Israel forbade, then restricted the entry of foods.
For the majority of Palestinians here, it was their first taste of fresh fruit in almost seven months. Those with mobile phones filmed their first bites.
Other fresh foods have not followed, but apples abound, even though most cannot afford them.
Talk surrounding bombs are more varied. Of course, it's not just bombs, but tanks and snipers, spy and killer drones and a host of other death technology.
Imminent assault
Most agree that an assault on Rafah – Gaza's southernmost city – is imminent. A video circulating social media shows an Israeli commander hyping up his unit by promising they will wipe Rafah away like they did Shujaiya, Beit Hanoun, Khan Younis.
The soldiers grunt and cheer, affirming the fervor of genocide.
"Have you seen the video?" some ask.
But most have not. They don't have internet.
"Where are we supposed to go now?" they ask.
The poet Mahmoud Darwish once asked, "Where do birds fly after the last sky?"
The meager tents of the displaced have already taken root. The precarious assemblage of string, cloth, wood and plastic have been filled with items slowly accumulated over half a year of a Zionist genocidal war.
Donated stove plates and propane tanks, plates and flatware, blankets, clothes, bedrolls, notebooks, food, toothbrushes and other things of living neatly arranged on makeshift shelves and hooks, cannot be easily moved.
"How can we carry it all?"
"How do we move again?"
People are tired.
"My heart can't take it. Just let them bomb us. Death is better than this life."
Where are we supposed to go now?
Where do birds fly after the last sky?
To Nuseirat in the Middle Area. That's the rumor.
Tanks just pulled out of there. But snipers are still positioned in some buildings, so we hear.
And Israel keeps bombing places they've evacuated. Like Khan Younis.
Burning our history
Majeda, my friend of over 20 years, takes me to Khan Younis to see the grim remains of her beloved city, her house and neighborhood. This once vibrant ancient town of multi-storied family homes, gardens, color, music, restaurants, souqs, shops and cafés has been transformed into a gray landscape of rubble, chewed up roads, crushed cars, decaying bodies, emaciated animals, dead animals and dust so thick it simply cannot settle.
You breathe it in as you walk through this architecture of colonial jealousy, hatred, supremacy and greed.
"This is where the family books were." Majeda points to an area of white ash.
"Strange how small the ash pile is for so many hundreds of books," she says.
I know she's not just talking about the number of those books, but the vast world they contained.
These weren't ordinary books. The novels and usual sort were in another room, in another ash pile.
These books were precious and irreplaceable handwritten texts.
Majeda comes from a prominent family that held positions of authority and kept social and legal records over centuries of contiguous life in that ancient city – land purchases, birth and death records, family disputes, marriages, crimes, money accounts, food stocks, wars and more. Leatherbound and stacked on the shelves of their family home, those books had been a family anchor to a fabled history that Zionists covet and claim as their own.
Only by burning our lived history can foreigners replace it with their biblical mythos and fantasy.
My friend points to a fallen tree trunk splayed across what used to be the entrance to her house, where most of the ancient tile is thankfully still intact and can be salvaged. "This was a Christmas tree my dad planted about 30 years ago," she says.
They're Muslim, but like most Palestinian Muslims, she loves and celebrates Christmas.
"How long do you think it would take to rebuild the city if we had all the money and materials we need?" my friend asks me. She poses the same question to everyone who has witnessed the unimaginable destruction I saw.
A year, I think.
"No, I think I can rebuild my house in six months," she insists.
I had given her the wrong answer. But she agrees it will take decades to restore their garden.
Lemon, olive, peach, clementine and orange trees take at least that long to mature.
"But look!"
She points to a green stem and leaf sprouting from the charred remnants of a bombed tree.
This ordinary manifestation of ordinary botanical cycles feels like a miracle. To her (and I admit to me, too), it is a promise that Gaza's native life will return.
It will sprout from death, because the colonizer's bombs cannot reach the depths of her people's roots, no matter how much of us they burn, kill or break.
• First published in The Electronic Intifada
The post
Sprouting from Death first appeared on
Dissident Voice.
Dissident Voice
Thu, 25 Apr 2024 14:31:00 +0000
In the American political tradition, doctrines (political, economic, military, etc.) have a distinct role to play. They prepare the ground for devising policies, making decisions, and enacting laws. Still, among all doctrines that have been shaping the identity of the United States, those related to foreign policy stand out. This is due to their (a) consequences aboard, (b) ideological capacity to keep reproducing, and (c) representative value as embodiment of power. Altogether, such doctrines tell other countries that the United States has a global agenda to pursue regardless of international objections.
Invariably since foundation, foreign policy doctrines were conceived as instruments of imperialist expansions and ideological sources pointing to the worldview and political direction of the United States. Not only did they become the official banners externalizing its aims, but also blueprints for establishing operational plans for territorial conquests, interventions, and wars. The threat of using military force (or other corecitive measures) to implement those plans has consistently been the chosen method. Did the U.S. achieve anything as consequence? Yes. Its colonialistic and imperialistic accomplishments during the past two centuries are vast and impressive.1
From measuring their collective place in the practice of imperialism, foreign policy doctrines can be described as the engine that moves the global objectives of the United States. Once an administration comes up with a specific policy course, the engine is revved up for action, guidelines drafted, and the course is announced. At the same point in time, an army of doctrinaires and agents of the state go into overdrive to procure all military, budgetary, and legislative means needed for the planned enterprise.
For instance, after the breakup of the USSR, the United States relentlessly reprised its previous attempts to be the sole decision maker of world affairs. Or, said differently, to exercise total control over the world system of nations using aggressive tactics—always backed by doctrines. On occasion, adages mix with doctrines. One such adage that U.S. ruling circles have been repeating ad nauseam is the "sole remaining superpower" (1, 2, 3, 4). Interpreted correctly, it means that the United States feels it has "earned the right" to rove around the world unopposed.
Nevertheless, with or without doctrines, the U.S. project to subjugate nations still out of its control has come to a full stop consequent to three convergent events. The first is the Russian intervention in Ukraine. The second is the unstoppable rising of China as a world power. The third is the overdue defiance that the South (formerly called developing countries) has launched against the pan-imperialist American-European order.2
Since their appearance on the scene in the early 19th century, foreign policy doctrines helped build the U.S. imperialist system. For the record, from the very beginning, this system was born neither pacifist nor peaceful or open to re-thinking. George Washington and the Continental Congress's policy ordering Original Peoples to choose either relocation or war is an irrefutable case in point.
Special Note
In 2012, Mitt Romney recycled Washington's concept of the U.S. power using a different figure of speech. "If you don't want America to be the strongest nation on earth, I am not your president". In 2024, Romney replayed his arrogant refrain. He stated, "What America is as a nation, what has allowed us to be the most powerful nation on Earth, and the leader of the Earth is the character of the people who have been our leaders". [Italics added].
Comment: Romney stated his vision for America in terms and images that leave no doubt on his hegemonic agenda. Is that surprising? No. he is a product of a system and ideology that sees the world as something to grab, own, manage, and even go to war to keep it. In other words, his vision is about imposing U.S. domination over all other nations. Pertinently though, with phrases such as "strongest nation on earth", "most powerful nation on Earth", and "leader of the Earth", Romney allow his militaristic hyperimperialism to float to the surface but disguised it under the "leadership" heading.
Question: how could Romney install America as a "leader of the earth" without first unleashing global violence to accomplish that installation? More importantly, has China, Russia, Hungary, Serbia, Algeria, Cuba, Brazil, Iran, Palestine, Sri Lanka, India, Colombia, Malaysia, or Turkey, for example, ever asked for such leadership in the first place?
General Discussion
As it developed into a military and economic superpower, the United States emerged first with distinct character: (a) colonialist, racist, and supremacist to the bone, (b) imperialist-focused conduct sold as a product of "democratic" statecraft, and (c) official culture primed for violence domestically and wired for war internationally.
To summarize, as conceived, adopted, and thereafter transformed into programs of the United States, foreign policy doctrines have been occupying a central place in the thinking, policymaking, and actions of presidents, their administrations, and orbiting institutions and think tanks. Remark: doctrines are not announced as such—a president does not go the podium and say: hey, here is my doctrine. Generally, doctrines start as specific acts to serve the system, to stress its assumed prowess and power, and to uphold its declared objectives.
This is how the process works. Initially, the habitual protocol leading to the informal promulgation of doctrines is scripted and introduced to make it sound as a "reasoned" conclusion to debated matters. But debates such as these and conclusions thereof are of no value whatsoever to those affected by their outcome. First, they are not rooted in the natural laws and needs of world societies. Second, they only reflect the hegemonic thus exploitive aims of U.S. ruling circles. For instance, aside from carpet-bombing, burning Viet Nam with Napalm bombs, poisoning it with Agent Orange, and killing three million of its people to prove Robert McNamara's Domino Theory was never a good reason for the Vietnamese people to accept the U.S. motive for destroying their country.
Successively, when an administration reaches a decision on an issue, makes an announcement against a specific country, and when that issue finds its way to the public, the system's "pundits" proceed to extract passages from presidents' speeches and writings, assign to them concept and purpose, and, before you know it, a doctrine is born. In the case of Ukraine, new doctrines are taking the center stage in the defense of U.S. post-USSR unipolarism and hegemonic agendas. One such ad hoc doctrine is that the United States is fighting Russian imperialism in Ukraine.
Doctrines, in the American practice of imperialism, offer a two-layer function. First, they intellectualize the bullying language of imperialism to solemnize the power of the ruling regime at enacting its "rules of engagement" with foreign nations. Second, they set the pattern, methodology, and ideological structure for the next enterprise. (Caveat: despite heavy setbacks in many parts of the world, the U.S. doctrine industry is highly adaptable, and it is not going to close its gates any time soon.)
Given that foreign policy doctrines have become a showcase for displaying the objectives of the ruling circles, as well as a repetitive ideological ritual confirming the unity and continuity of the imperialist state, is there a pattern to their mechanisms?
As it happens, when a president vacates the office for the next occupant, he leaves behind a trail of ideas and political positions highlighting the collective thinking of the system. Comparing the U.S. doctrines to those of religions may be of value. For instance, unlike the field of religions where doctrines are static and permanent (created to defend original, ancient, or old beliefs and dogmas), the U.S. doctrines are dynamic, always open to re-interpretations, and reflect three-stage process with a precise scope of work and finality—all situated in the future.
The first stage begins with deliberation on the objectives of the ruling circles in a given period. The second continues by enshrining them into a general declaration(s) of intent. The third, which is extremely important, turns that declaration into a three-tier sequential process. The first presents the system's rationales for the decisions taken. The second deals with their implementation. The third is more complex: it turns all interrelated processes and sustaining ideologies into a legacy of some sort. That is, what has been decided by a president (and his administration) at a specific period is going to be invoked, expanded on, and continued by his successors.
For example, with its post-WWII focus on hypothetical threats from international Communism to the Middle East, Eisenhower's doctrine is a replica of Truman's doctrine that declared the Soviet Union a universal threat. As for John Kennedy, his doctrine, often referred to as his foreign policy, is a mixture between those of Truman and Eisenhower. To see the U.S. doctrines in a broad perspective, I'm going to briefly discuss the Monroe Doctrine (corner stone of all successive doctrines), and three other doctrines relating to Theodore Roosevelt, Jimmy Carter, and Joe Biden.
The Monroe Doctrine (1823)
When the thirteen colonies became a political state in 1776, the objective was to claim neutrality to avoid further conflict with Britain or potential ones with France and Spain. But when the thirteen states increased to eighteen under the presidency of James Monroe (1817-25), that objective became two-pronged: (1) a call for increased expansion of colonies, and (2) a declaration that United States is the sole power in charge of the entire Western hemisphere. The U.S. Naval Institute describes the Monroe Doctrine as follows:
"As a principle in which the rights and interests of the United States are involved, that the American continents, by the free and independent condition which they have assumed and maintain, are henceforth not to be considered as subjects for future colonization by any European powers. . . We owe it, therefore, to candor and to the amicable relations existing between the United States and those powers to declare that we should consider any attempt on their part to extend their system to any portion of this hemisphere as dangerous to our peace and safety. [Italics added]
Comment
- Monroe was a skillful imperialist tactician. He presented his theory (attributed to his secretary of state and future president John Quincy Adams) of colonialism and domination in clear wording. First, he prohibits European powers from colonizing the rest of the Americas; yet, he allows the heir to colonialist Britain (the United States) the exclusive privilege of further colonization. With that, Monroe instituted the infamous American dual-standard paradigm in world relations.
- The inherent fascism of the new American state under Monroe is self-explanatory. He treated Turtle Island as lands without people and civilizations. The question is how could one colonize lands without removing or killing first their original inhabitants and destroying their stewarded environment?
- As I stated, Monroe is the prototype of typical U.S. hyper-imperialist. He arrogantly considers any challenge to the new system of things as "dangerous" to peace and prosperity of the United States.
- Two centuries later, anything happens in the world that U.S. fascist rulers do not like, they deem it a threat to U.S. national security, or, "dangerous" to peace and prosperity of the United States.
- The peremptory, imperialist injunction of Monroe reaches the apex when he declares that every portion of the hemisphere is, by exclusive U.S. unilateral decisions, under the U.S. indirect control thus jurisdiction. This declaration has led countless administrations not only to claim extraterritorial jurisdiction, but also to pretend that domestic affairs and development of a country could imperil U.S. national security. (Read: US to probe if Chinese cars pose national data security risks)
Doctrines: The Reincarnation of Monroe
- The case of Theodore Roosevelt: in 1904, the Monroe Doctrine gave birth to the Roosevelt Doctrine—then named the Roosevelt Corollary. I already stated that what has been decided by a president at a specific period is going to be invoked, expanded, and continued by his successors. Theodore Roosevelt corroborates my statement. A National Archives' article states the following:
"In his annual messages to Congress in 1904 and 1905, President Theodore Roosevelt expanded the Monroe Doctrine. The corollary stated that not only were the nations of the Western Hemisphere not open to colonization by European powers, but that the United States had the responsibility to preserve order and protect life and property in those countries." [Italics added]. The text in Italics proves my point.
- The case of Jimmy Carter: As Henry Kissinger had Richard Nixon in the palm of his hand; Zbigniew Brzezinski had Carter in his—coincidence or lack of intellectual security? Carter who, much later, had a rude awakening to the racist nature of Zionism (re: Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid), was another example representing the hyper-imperialist model. In his Union Address in 1980, Carter declared, among many other important things, the following:
"Let our position be absolutely clear: An attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America, and such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force. [Italics added]. Who was talking—Monroe or Carter?
It is beside the point to state that while the Soviet power or its main successor Russia never intervened in the Middle East during the past 107 years (exception in Syria to stop the U.S. and Israel from dismembering it. (Read, The Debate on the Imperialist Violence in Syria series by Kim Petersen and B.J. Sabri). At present, the American power is everywhere in the Middle East. It has full political and military control—direct and indirect—of Iraq, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Libya, Sudan, and Morocco. Conclusion: an attentive study of Carter's address will prove that the mind of Monroe has transmigrated to that of Carter.
- The case of Joe Biden: in 1986, Biden (then senator) stated, "If there were not an Israel, we'd have to invent one." The issue I am raising here is not about this Zionist wanting to create at any cost a state for Zionist settlers on Arab Palestinian soil. It is about Joe Biden repeating Monroe. That is, the United States consistently gives itself the unearned right to shape the world according to its convenient imperialist view.
- As for Biden's doctrine, The Hoover Institution (an imperialist academic think tank claiming liberalism) addresses the topic. One of its doctrinaires, Colin Dueck (a university professor and a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a known nest of American Zionists) thusly defines Biden's philosophy of imperialism, "If the Biden administration's grand strategy could be summed up in a single phrase, it would be – progressive transformation at home and abroad".
Could specialists in semantics and esoteric writings help us to decode what does "progressive transformation at home and abroad" mean? In the first place, what is progressive? Second, domestically, can Biden, as per Dueck, progressively transform the Zionist mobs inside his party, as well as those of Trump and his crowds? Internationally, could Sweden, Switzerland, Russia, Ukraine, Cameroon, Bolivia, Nepal, or Bolivia, etc. partake in or learn from Biden's "progressive" doctrine? Incidentally, how would Dueck qualify America before the advent of Biden: progressive, regressive, or what?)
To settle the issue on Dueck's bogus idea of "progressive transformation", we need to pose a few questions. Suppose an independent country X is touched by the American wand of "progressive transformation". Would that touch entail, among other things, invading it, installing military bases on its soil, dissolving its army, partitioning it in "federated" regions, abolishing its national currency, co-opting pro-American elements to lead it, writing constitutions for it, and building "without permit" the largest embassy in the world? It happened in Iraq.
Aside from this thematic mishap, Dueck redeemed himself by presenting articulate arguments—all anchored to the basic elements of U.S. hegemonic imperialism. Not to be overlooked, he permeated—perhaps without realizing it—his elaborations with undeclared references to the Monroe Doctrine and its successors. The following are selected passages:
- "Biden went further than either Obama or Trump in declaring that a global struggle against authoritarianism would be a strategic centerpiece of his new administration". Remark: "authoritarianism" is a catchword to say that this or that country is antithetical to U.S. objectives, thus it is, de facto, a hostile nation.
- Dueck declares that Jack Sullivan (current National Security Advisor) and other Democrats, "Developed the concept of a "foreign policy for the middle class". Remark: Dueck's statement begs the question: is there a foreign policy for the upper and lower classes. It is notable though that the United States never cast its foreign policy in terms of class or class conflict. For the record, who decides on this policy is the deep American State and its Zionist elites.
- Dueck then goes to the traditional themes of U.S. foreign policy: "China, Russia, and so on" are the real threat to the United States. He then adds, "Populism, nationalism, liberalism, and authoritarianism are each assumed by the Biden administration to be pressing threats." REMARK: This is overly trite. With regard to China, the United States has been inimical since the Long March of Mao Zedong.
- With typical American imperialist zeal, Dueck concludes, "We now face a kind of anti-American axis of hostile dictatorships, however loosely coordinated, covering most of the Eurasian continent. This is the most deadly threat in generations. By that standard, have we developed the policy tools, and specifically the military capabilities, to meet that challenge? The answer is obvious: not even close." REMARK: with these words, Dueck has effectively announced that all ante-Biden doctrines have come together in the person of Biden and his cohorts.
Propaganda and foreign policy
- The National Museum of American Diplomacy asks an "interesting" question, "What are the key pillars of American diplomacy?" The Museum answers with stock American slogan: "Security, Prosperity, Democracy, and Development". Then it goes on to give frivolous examples such as the one about "development in Cambodia"—the country that United States obliterated in order to fight the Vietcong and North Viet Nam. It is a fact that the United States never brought security, prosperity, democracy, and development to any country it attacked.
- The official voice of American diplomacy: the Zionist-ruled State Department is a pompous factory specialized in rhetorical garbage. It declares, "The State Department has four main foreign policy goals: Protect the United States and Americans; Advance democracy, human rights, and other global interests; Promote international understanding of American values and policies; and; Support U.S. diplomats, government officials, and all other personnel at home and abroad who make these goals a reality."
As I am forfeiting my right to comment, I am curious to know where Monroe is hiding in the statement. Look no farther than (a) "Protect the United States and Americans", and (b) "Other global interests".
Preliminary Conclusion
From the end of WWII forward, the phenomenon of U.S. doctrines is what it is—a bizarre menagerie of global power themes. Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush Sr., Clinton, Bush Jr., Obama, Trump, and Biden each have their own doctrine—or, to be exact, doctrines the system prepared for them. Conceptually, all such doctrines are declarations of allegiance to the continuity of imperialism and to the path that many generations of American colonialists, expansionists, supremacists, imperialists, and hegemonists set for the United States.
Observation: none among the above presidents had any doctrine with a specific formulation before taking seats in the halls of power. But once there, the seated presidents reprise the preceding doctrines and amplify content and reach. When you closely examine them, however, you will find out that they mimic each other in essence and means—and all have for a common goal the application of U.S. imperialist power abroad.
Evaluating how doctrines prepare the ground for the solidification of anti-Russian policies can be done by looking at how candidates conduct their campaigns for political positions. During such events, they speak of this and that idea so sketchily but only to sell their electability to a complacent and uninformed audience—normally, details of foreign policy and motivations never appear on the stage. Still, despite the paucity of substantive talk, their endeavor is mainly directed to the establishment, not to the public. Ultimately, this establishment has the overwhelming ability to promote or demote candidates with ease—kneeling to it, therefore, is an electoral necessity.
In the end, when it boils down to voting, the public will have only a Hobson's choice: candidates, with different names and faces, have identical views on the world—and a plan to rule it. They all have to sell the same merchandise: we control, we want, we oppose, we think, we decide, and so on.
Is selling the imperialist merchandise an important factor in U.S. foreign policy decision-making and actions?
In his book: A Nation of Salesmen, Earl Shorris, an attentive sociological researcher, touched on the crafty art of selling "things". He delves into the essence of controlled persuasion by taking on advertising as a tool that subverted the American culture. Shorris, of course, did not include foreign policy as "merchandise" that has been subverting the entire American polity for decades while inflicting incalculable heavy damages on all humanity. Briefly, selling its Foreign Policy Brand—by persuasion, coercion, or aggression—has been America's never-ending endeavor.
At this point, how is the United States merchandizing and selling its Brand and policy schemes on Ukraine and Russia?
ENDNOTES:
- To fight U.S. imperialism, we have to acknowledge its danger by looking at its accomplishment. In 1783, the newly established American Republic was 800,000 square miles. In 2024 factsheet, its area is 3,796,742 square miles. Currently and to varying degrees, the U.S. controls the entire European continent with the exception of Serbia. It controls Japan. It castrated the entire Arab states with the exception of Syria and Algeria. It controls most of South Asia. It controls many Latin American and African countries. It controls Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. And, it largely controls the UN and the UNSC—the UN's General Assembly is of no consequence. About the territorial colonialist expansions of the United States: the professional misinformants writing at Wikipedia calls the U.S. violent, bloody colonialist conquests as "territorial evolution" as if these were in line Darwin's theory of natural selection.
- The expression: American-European order is an umbrella term specifically denoting American, British, French, Italian, Spanish, and German imperialisms. By extension, it also includes the dangerous trio: Australia, Canada, and New Zealand. These three countries work under U.S. wings and take direct orders from Washington. Among all U.S. vassals, Japan is insidious. Although it does not appear often on the news, Japan is an advanced country, still very much militaristic, and acts according to U.S. rules and political views.
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Imperialism and Anti-imperialism Collide in Ukraine (Part 8) first appeared on
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Dissident Voice
Wed, 24 Apr 2024 04:53:49 +0000
Yesterday I attended mass. Instead of a priest, the mass was celebrated by Nicaraguan children – 10 fourth and fifth grade students. The kids led the congregation in prayers, passing of the peace, read the gospel and shared a homily. They invited congregants to share reflections on the reading – the Good Shepherd – and they blessed wine and soda crackers and served communion.
As I watched, I thought, "This is the way it should always be, we should be following the children, not the other way around." Why listen to old white men who stand behind so many pulpits the world over when the children can teach us so much more?
These kids have already learned all of life's important lessons. They already love each other, they already recognize the divine in each other, they already respect each other. These kids won't preach hate or war. In their homily, they tell us that their good shepherds are their parents and teachers; but I believe our good shepherds are these children.
I am struck by the hope that this model of the children leading the congregation is a reflection of a larger global shift. Worldwide, we have begun to see countries from the global south preaching from the pulpit, so to speak: South Africa taking Israel to the World Court for the genocide of the Palestinian people. Nicaragua taking Germany to the International Court of Justice for aiding and abetting Israel's genocide of the Palestinian people. Namibia arguing before the ICJ that because it has suffered occupation and colonialism Namibia "considers it a moral duty and sacred responsibility to appear before this court on the question of the indefensible occupation of Palestine by Israel."
Just as these children shepherded us in a mass that was every bit as dignified as any mass ever said by a priest, so is Nicaragua shepherding the world. Nicaragua is a small country from the global south that is modeling consistency and dignity – and choosing peace every step of the way. Just in recent days, Nicaragua has:
- Broken diplomatic ties with Ecuador following its flagrant violation of international law and diplomatic norms when police raided the Mexican Embassy in Quito and forcibly removed former Vice President Jorge Glas, who had been granted political asylum by Mexico. In its statement, Nicaragua expressed "forceful, emphatic and irrevocable repulsion, in light of which we take our Sovereign Decision to break all diplomatic relations with the Ecuadoran Government, at the same time we express, once again, our warm and consistent consideration to the beloved Ecuadoran people, who are living through times of inconceivable brutality, and we ratify, once again, our adherence to International Law and the Conventions that govern civilized relations between the States and Governments of the World."
- Reminded the UN that the U.S. still owes Nicaragua reparations and requested that these now be paid. In 1986, Nicaragua won a case against the United States wherein the International Court of Justice ruled that the U.S. repeatedly violated international law by training, arming, equipping, financing, and supplying the Contra paramilitaries in Nicaragua; attacking Nicaraguan infrastructure; putting mines in Nicaragua's ports; imposing an embargo on Nicaragua; and encouraging the Contras to commit atrocities that violate international humanitarian law. In 1988, the ICJ ordered the U.S. to pay $12 billion in reparations, which would be at least $31 billion
- Brought Germany to the ICJ for aiding and abetting Israel's genocide of the Palestinian people. Given its experience in the court successfully arguing the above case against the U.S. as well as many other cases in the intervening years, Nicaragua wanted to use its experience at the ICJ to benefit of the Palestinian people in an attempt to stop the genocide being perpetrated against them.
- Summed up its consistent and dignified approach in its message at the Economic and Social Council Forum on monitoring financing for development at the UN: "We reaffirm Nicaragua's commitment…to reducing poverty and inequality; to multilateralism, international law, and the assertion, exercise and defense of our sovereignty; and to the relationships of equality based on friendship, mutual respect, cooperation and solidarity."
With Nicaragua leading and the global south now lending its voice, it seems clear that the world will pivot on Palestine. While the U.S. and Europe continue to facilitate genocide by arming Israel; the global south calls for ceasefire and stands in solidarity with Palestine. As the children conclude mass with hugs and high fives all around, it seems especially fitting to me that the trajectory of the world be determined by our response to the genocide in Palestine. After all, Jesus was a Palestinian living under occupation, and he taught us that, "Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me."
2024-04-21 Mass CEB San Pablo Apostle Managua (Photo Credit: Becca Mohally Renk)
2024-04-21 Mass CEB San Pablo Apostle Managua 2 (Photo Credit: Becca Mohally Renk)
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Nicaragua: The Good Shepherd first appeared on
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Dissident Voice
Wed, 24 Apr 2024 02:52:40 +0000
On April 16, Australia's eSafety commissioner, Julie Inman Grant, issued with authoritarian glee legal notices to X Corp and Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, to remove material within 24 hours depicting what her office declared to be "gratuitous or offensive violence with a high degree of impact and detail". The relevant material featured a livestreamed video of a stabbing attack by a 16-year-old youth at Sydney's Assyrian Orthodox Christ the Good Shepherd Church the previous day. Two churchmen, Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel and Rev. Isaac Royel, were injured.
Those at X, and its executive, Elon Musk, begged to differ, choosing to restrict general access to the graphic details of the video in Australia alone. Those outside Australia, and those with a virtual private network (VPN), would be able to access the video unimpeded. Ruffled and irritated by this, Grant rushed to the Australian Federal Court to secure an interim injunction requiring X to hide the posts from global users with a hygiene notice of warning pending final determination of the issue. While his feet and mind are rarely grounded, Musk was far from insensible in calling Grant a "censorship commissar" in "demanding *global* content bans". In court, the company will argue that Grant's office has no authority to dictate what the online platform posts for global users.
This war of grinding, nannying censorship – which is what it is – was the prelude for other agents of information control and paranoia to join the fray. The Labour Albanese government, for instance, with support from the conservative opposition, have rounded on Musk, blurring issues of expression with matters of personality. "This is an egotist," fumed Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, "someone who's totally out of touch with the values that Australian families have, and this is causing great distress."
The values game, always suspicious and meretricious, is also being played by law enforcement authorities. It is precisely their newfound presence in this debate that should get members of the general public worried. You are to be lectured to, deemed immature and incapable of exercising your rights or abide by your obligations as citizens of Australian society.
We have the spluttering worries of Australian Police Commissioner Reece Kershaw in claiming that children (always handy to throw them in) and vulnerable groups (again, a convenient reference) are "being bewitched online by a cauldron of extremist poison on the open and dark web". These muddled words in his address to the National Press Club in Canberra are shots across the bow. "The very nature of social media allows that extremist poison to spray across the globe almost instantaneously."
Importantly, Kershaw's April 24 address has all the worrying signs of a heavy assault, not just on the content to be consumed on the internet, but on the way communications are shared. And what better way to do so by using children as a policy crutch? "We used to warn our children about stranger danger, but now we need to teach our kids about the digital-world deceivers." A matronly, slightly unhinged tone is unmistakable. "We need to constantly reinforce that people are not always who they claim to be online; and that also applies to images and information." True, but the same goes for government officials and front-line politicians who make mendacity their stock and trade.
Another sign of gathering storm clouds against the free sharing of information on technology platforms is the appearance of Australia's domestic espionage agency, ASIO. Alongside Kershaw at the National Press Club, the agency's chief, Mike Burgess, is also full of grave words about the dangerous imperium of encrypted chatter. There are a number of Australians, warns Burgess, who are using chat platforms "to communicate with offshore extremists, sharing vile propaganda, posting tips about homemade weapons and discussing how to provoke a race war".
The inevitable lament about obstacles and restrictions – the sorts of things to guard the general citizenry against encroachments of the police state – follows. "ASIO's ability to investigate is seriously compromised. Obviously, we and our partners will do everything we can to prevent terrorism and sabotage, so we are expending significant resources to monitor the Australians involved." You may count yourselves amongst them, dear reader.
Kershaw is likewise not a fan of the encrypted platform. In the timeless language of paternal policing, anything that enables messages to be communicated in a public sense must first receive the state's approval. "We recognise the role that technologies like end-to-end encryption play in protecting personal data, privacy and cyber-security, but there is no absolute right to privacy."
To make that very point, Burgess declares that "having lawful and targeted access to extremist communications" would make matters so much easier for the intelligence and security community. Naturally, it will be up to the government to designate what it deems to be extremist and appropriate, a task it is often ill-suited for. Once the encryption key is broken, all communications will be fair game.
When it comes to governments, authoritarian regimes do not have a monopoly on suspicion and the fixation on keeping populations in check. In an idyll of ignorance, peace can reign among the docile, the unquestioning, the cerebrally inactive. The Australian approach to censorship and control, stemming from its origins as a tortured penal outpost of the British Empire, is drearily lengthy. Its attitude to the Internet has been one of suspicion, concern, and complexes.
Government ministers in the antipodes see a world, not of mature participants searching for information, but inspired terrorists, active paedophiles and noisy extremists carousing in shadows and catching the unsuspecting. Such officialdom is represented by such figures as former Labor Communications Minister Stephen Conroy, who thankfully failed to introduce a mandatory internet filter when in office, or such nasty products of regulatory intrusion as the Commonwealth Online Safety Act of 2021, zealously overseen by Commissar Grant and the subject of Musk's ire.
The age of the internet and the world wide web is something to admire and loathe. Surveillance capitalism is very much of the loathsome, sinister variety. But ASIO, the Australian Federal Police, and the Australian government and other agencies do not give a fig about that. The tech giants have actually corroded privacy in commodifying data but many still retain stubborn residual reminders of liberty in the form of encrypted communications and platforms for discussion. To have access to these means of public endeavour remains the holy grail of law enforcement officers, government bureaucrats and fearful politicians the world over.
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Warring Against Encryption: Australia is Coming for Your Communications first appeared on
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Dissident Voice
Wed, 24 Apr 2024 02:35:12 +0000
"Nothing is real," observed John Lennon, and that's especially true of politics.
Much like the fabricated universe in Peter Weir's 1998 film The Truman Show, in which a man's life is the basis for an elaborately staged television show aimed at selling products and procuring ratings, the political scene in the United States has devolved over the years into a carefully calibrated exercise in how to manipulate, polarize, propagandize and control a population.
Take the media circus that is the Donald Trump hush money trial, which panders to the public's voracious appetite for titillating, soap opera drama, keeping the citizenry distracted, diverted and divided.
This is the magic of the reality TV programming that passes for politics today.
Everything becomes entertainment fodder.
As long as we are distracted, entertained, occasionally outraged, always polarized but largely uninvolved and content to remain in the viewer's seat, we'll never manage to present a unified front against tyranny (or government corruption and ineptitude) in any form.
Studies suggest that the more reality TV people watch—and I would posit that it's all reality TV, entertainment news included—the more difficult it becomes to distinguish between what is real and what is carefully crafted farce.
"We the people" are watching a lot of TV.
On average, Americans spend five hours a day watching television. By the time we reach age 65, we're watching more than 50 hours of television a week, and that number increases as we get older. And reality TV programming consistently captures the largest percentage of TV watchers every season by an almost 2-1 ratio.
This doesn't bode well for a citizenry able to sift through masterfully-produced propaganda in order to think critically about the issues of the day.
Yet look behind the spectacles, the reality TV theatrics, the sleight-of-hand distractions and diversions, and the stomach-churning, nail-biting drama that is politics today, and you will find there is a method to the madness.
We have become guinea pigs in a ruthlessly calculated, carefully orchestrated, chillingly cold-blooded experiment in how to control a population and advance a political agenda without much opposition from the citizenry.
This is how you persuade a populace to voluntarily march in lockstep with a police state and police themselves (and each other): by ratcheting up the fear-factor, meted out one carefully calibrated crisis at a time, and teaching them to distrust any who diverge from the norm through elaborate propaganda campaigns.
Unsurprisingly, one of the biggest propagandists today is the U.S. government.
Add the government's inclination to monitor online activity and police so-called "disinformation," and you have the makings of a restructuring of reality straight out of Orwell's 1984, where the Ministry of Truth polices speech and ensures that facts conform to whatever version of reality the government propagandists embrace.
This "policing of the mind" is exactly the danger author Jim Keith warned about when he predicted that "information and communication sources are gradually being linked together into a single computerized network, providing an opportunity for unheralded control of what will be broadcast, what will be said, and ultimately what will be thought."
You may not hear much about the government's role in producing, planting and peddling propaganda-driven fake news—often with the help of the corporate news media—because the powers-that-be don't want us skeptical of the government's message or its corporate accomplices in the mainstream media.
However, when you have social media giants colluding with the government in order to censor so-called disinformation, all the while the mainstream news media, which is supposed to act as a bulwark against government propaganda, has instead become the mouthpiece of the world's largest corporation (the U.S. government), the Deep State has grown dangerously out-of-control.
This has been in the works for a long time.
Veteran journalist Carl Bernstein, in his expansive 1977 Rolling Stone piece "The CIA and the Media," reported on Operation Mockingbird, a CIA campaign started in the 1950s to plant intelligence reports among reporters at more than 25 major newspapers and wire agencies, who would then regurgitate them for a public oblivious to the fact that they were being fed government propaganda.
In some instances, as Bernstein showed, members of the media also served as extensions of the surveillance state, with reporters actually carrying out assignments for the CIA. Executives with CBS, the New York Times and Time magazine also worked closely with the CIA to vet the news.
If it was happening then, you can bet it's still happening today, only this collusion has been reclassified, renamed and hidden behind layers of government secrecy, obfuscation and spin.
In its article, "How the American government is trying to control what you think," the Washington Post points out "Government agencies historically have made a habit of crossing the blurry line between informing the public and propagandizing."
This is mind-control in its most sinister form.
The end goal of these mind-control campaigns—packaged in the guise of the greater good—is to see how far the American people will allow the government to go in re-shaping the country in the image of a totalitarian police state.
The government's fear-mongering is a key element in its mind-control programming.
It's a simple enough formula. National crises, global pandemics, reported terrorist attacks, and sporadic shootings leave us in a constant state of fear. The emotional panic that accompanies fear actually shuts down the prefrontal cortex or the rational thinking part of our brains. In other words, when we are consumed by fear, we stop thinking.
A populace that stops thinking for themselves is a populace that is easily led, easily manipulated and easily controlled whether through propaganda, brainwashing, mind control, or just plain fear-mongering.
This unseen mechanism of society that manipulates us through fear into compliance is what American theorist Edward L. Bernays referred to as "an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country."
To this invisible government of rulers who operate behind the scenes—the architects of the Deep State—we are mere puppets on a string, to be brainwashed, manipulated and controlled.
Yet as I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, it's time to change the channel, tune out the reality TV show, and push back against the real menace of the police state.
If not, if we continue to sit back and lose ourselves in political programming, we will remain a captive audience to a farce that grows more absurd by the minute.
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Divide and Conquer: The Government's Propaganda of Fear and Fake News first appeared on
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