Monday, August 06, 2018

Korean Concern for Washington Peace Laggards

On 65th Anniversary of Korean Truce, Activists Criticize US for Delaying Real Peace 

by Kevin Zeese - CounterPunch


August 6, 2018

South Korean peace and justice activists have been writing to us at Popular Resistance complaining that the United States is not responding to the positive steps being taken by North Korea before and after the meeting between President Trump and Chairman Kim.

They have sent us information about protests they are organizing in South Korea against the United States as well as in Washington, DC.

Their views show a great divide between the United States and the calls for a permanent peace which includes removal of US troops as just last week the Congress passed a National Defense Authorization Act which forbids removal of US troops from Korea. The John S. McCain Act states the “significant removal” of US troops is “a non-negotiable item as it relates to the complete, verifiable, and irreversible denuclearization” of North Korea..

The activists argue that the temporary halt in war games which practice nuclear and other military attacks on North Korea are insufficient. They want to see movement toward a real peace treaty and removal of economic sanctions, especially allowing South Korea and North Korea to normalize relations.

And, they want US military forces out of Korea, permanently.

On July 27, in a protest in front of the White House, South Korean activists claimed the June 12 agreement between North Korea and the United States called for normalizing relations between North Korea and the US and establishing a permanent and solid peace regime in Korea. They believe that to conclude North Korea-US peace treaty includes withdrawal of the US military from Korea as the core. They call on the Trump administration to fully implement the June 12 declaration and immediately withdraw US troops from South Korea. They pledge all-out national resistance against the United States, to advance the realization of the world where US troops are withdrawn, the Korean people are masters of their country, and the nation is reunified.

They report on a protest held at the US embassy in South Korea on July 29th. Two members of Youth Resistance, “a democratic peace group of patriotic youths formed in October last year for anti-war, peace and national independence,” strongly condemned the United States for its continued military presence in South Korea. This was the ninth protest they have held at the US Embassy in Gwanghwamun next to the Seoul Museum of History.

In the protest, Seo Hyeong-hoon and Min Ji-won rushed toward the US embassy shouting slogans demanding the United States to get out of South Korea. They unfurled a banner that said “Permanently Withdraw United States Forces in Korea” and threw leaflets into the air. Police violently responded, Seo Hyung-hoon head was pushed onto the ground, his arm held backward, and his face slammed to the ground by the police. Allies at the protest witnessed the violence and took photos and video. Theey report that these events were witnessed by many foreign tourists in the area.

The two peace advocates were taken into custody and brought to the Jongno Police Station. They and their allies are protesting against violent suppression of legitimate demonstrations. The two protesters condemned the US for failing to fulfill the June 12th Singapore Declaration signed by President Trump and Chairman Kim. Protests were held throughout the night to get them released from custody.

Seo Hyung-hoon wrote,

“North Korea has not carried out nuclear tests and missile launches in the past nine months. They have abandoned thePunggye-rie nuclear test center and released three American criminals. In contrast, the US has done very little beyond the temporary and conditional interruption of war exercises. No action has taken place on the threat of US nuclear missile attacks.
The US is preventing progress on substantive dialogue with their excuse that a denuclearization timetable is needed. Trump’s actions show he did not genuinely engage in this dialogue, as the sanctions for North Korea have been extended for another year.

“The United States has made a military colony in South Korea and established a puppet regime. We seek peace for our nation and the people of Korea. We want a peace treaty that will last and defeat US imperialism. We understand these high-level talks will not develop on their own and the people must take action. We seek peace because we will be the first to be hit by a US military attack.
Our destiny should not be controlled by the presidents of the other countries. We are our own masters and must struggle with our voices and actions to achieve a lasting peace. There is no peace without a peace agreement that includes US military forces leaving the country!”

They argue that the US must convert the unstable armistice agreement to a stable peace treaty. Under Clause 60 of Article 4 of the Armistice Agreement that was signed on July 27th, 1953, it says that within three months a conference of both sides will “settle through negotiation the questions of the withdrawal of all foreign forces from Korea, the peaceful settlement” of issues between the countries. Instead, on October 1st, the US signed a mutual defense treaty with the South Korean government which neutralized the armistice agreement and institutionalized the long-term presence of the US military.

After the embassy protest, Youth Resistance member of the Min Ji-won said,

“It has been a month since the meeting between President Trump and Chairman Kim in Sentosa Island, Singapore, but there is still tension with the United States. We strive for the promise of a new relationship, a permanent and solid peace regime. North Korea has canceled the Punggye-rie nuclear test site and returned US military soldiers remains. What is the US doing in return?

“In 1945, when the Korean people enjoyed the joy of liberation from Japan, the United States entered our land as an occupying military force. Since then, their unilateral occupation has continued. The United States joined the armistice agreement, which was signed on July 27, 65 years ago. As long as US forces remain on this land, the pain of the war will not disappear and our people cannot achieve justice. The Koreans are no longer deceived by the United States, which is pouring cold water into the atmosphere of peace and unity.
“It is US soldiers who undermine our independence and democracy which are the long-time desires of the Korean people. US military abuses are not being overlooked by Koreans, no matter how much they try to hide their aggression and violations of human rights.
Our people are no longer deceived by the United States. Now that the people’s aspirations for unification are swelling up, US forces must leave the country. It is time to write a new history that will mark the end of the 73-year-long history of the United States trampling on Korea. Youth Resistance is on the path of glorious struggle to demolish US forces and open the horizons of self-reliance, democracy, and unification. Youth activism reveals the light of the nation and our passion shows the pulse of the nation to rise against US militarism.”

On July 27, at dawn, Lee-Jeok who is the permanent representative of Peace Treaty Movement Headquarters and others held a candlelight ceremony of the General MacArthur statue. The Korean people rage against MacArthur as he came to South Korea as the occupier in 1945, divided Korea, and threatened a nuclear attack in the Korean War. Following the ceremony, a coalition of groups held a rally in front of the US Embassy to demand the immediate signing of a Peace Treaty and permanent withdrawal of US military forces.

At protests are occurring in South Korea, the Democratic People’s Party (Welfare Party for Democracy) has been conducting demonstrations for 122 days in front of the White House and at the US Embassy. The Democratic Party’s chairman Lee Sang-hoon said, “The Max Thunder war games must permanently be suspended. The peace agreement with the United States must be concluded!. The US Army must leave Korea”
 
Kevin Zeese is an organizer at Popular Resistance.
More articles by:Kevin Zeese

Watching a Population Die: Capitalism and Tourism Combine to Starve the Orca

Starving Orcas, Grieving Mother Draw Global Attention to Trudeau’s Pipeline Buyout

by Coast Protectors


August 5, 2018

The image of a grieving mother orca cradling her dead calf off Canada’s west coast is hitting media around the world, drawing critical attention to the Trudeau government’s decision to buy a pipeline that will drive up tanker traffic through the region. 


Coast Protectors is urging supporters to tweet Trudeau immediately, after his own government acknowledged the risks the orcas face due to the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion.

“The Canadian government has admitted the Southern Resident Killer Whales face extirpation (local extinction) due to the increase of oil tankers through the Salish Sea,” the organization states.

Photo: Centre for Whale Research/Facebook
 
“In 2016, Canada’s National Energy Board stated in a report that Trans Mountain ‘is likely to result in significant adverse effects to the southern resident killer whale.’”

And now, “off the coast of British Columbia Canada, 75 Southern Resident Whales are slowly dying from a lack of Chinook salmon, their main food source since time immemorial,” Coast Protectors adds. “Salmon dams, shipping noise, and pollution are killing the whales—and the Trans Mountain pipeline and tanker project will be the final nail in their coffin.”

CBC reports that “the story of the southern resident J-pod orcas, and the mother mourning her dead calf, has drawn attention from around the world,” prompting the Twitter campaign focused on Trudeau. “Let’s jam their social media like tankers jam whale sonar,” Coast Protectors urges in its call to action.

“Since J35/Tahlequah’s baby calf died, there has been an outpouring of grief around the world. Please help turn that grief into action.”

Twitter is the chosen tool, the organization adds, because “social media is where Trudeau’s Liberals like to brag about being ‘world class’ environmental leaders. The world needs to know that they are letting the 75 Southern Resident Killer Whales beloved to the West Coast go extinct.”

In the U.S., Greenpeace is out with a similar appeal, calling on Gov. Jay Inslee to enact a moratorium on tanker traffic through Washington State waters. “If it goes ahead, the Trans Mountain Pipeline expansion could send 400 new tar sands oil tankers through these orcas’ habitat every year,” Greenpeace notes.

“A moratorium on new fossil fuel traffic in Washington state waters would stop shipments from the new pipeline through the orcas’ habitat, and force the builders to back away from the project. But only a national call for bold, courageous action will make it happen.”

While Tahlequah grieves her calf’s death, CBC notes that another calf, four-year-old J50, is starving, showing signs of malnourishment and lethargy. University of Washington conservation biologist Deborah Giles said J50 has only grown to the size of a one-year-old, and its condition has deteriorated through the summer.


“I’ve personally never seen a whale that thin and still swimming around,” Giles told The Star Vancouver.
“If she continues on this trajectory, we will lose her.”

In response, Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) and the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) “are considering a plan that would involve feeding the underweight killer whale chinook salmon with medication in it—a strategy the U.S. department believes hasn’t been used before,” CBC reports.

“We have no idea at this point if an attempt to provide food, or medication in the form of food, would be successful,” said NOAA public affairs officer Michael Milstein.

“We want to go into this with our eyes open, in a situation where we could create a whale that’s dependent on us for food, that’s not going to do anyone any good.”

Milstein also stressed that “a lack of food is only one of the reasons southern resident whales are struggling,” CBC states.

“We really need to think about those other factors,” he said. “For instance, even if there is food, if there’s too much noise and they can’t use their echolocation to find that food, it doesn’t make a whole lot of difference.”

“It’s insane to be building this pipeline,” added Living Ocean Society Executive Director Karen Wristen, in an interview with Yale Environment 360. “There’s too much noise already in critical habitat, and adding 800 tanker trips a year (400 into port and 400 out) to existing levels of noise is not going to be possible” without further endangering the Southern Resident pod.

“Heartbreak for Tahlequah is an appropriate starting point,” notes oceans specialist Susan Casey, in a New York Times opinion piece that points to scarce, contaminated food as the most immediate threat the orcas face.

“In a way, it’s the easy part. What’s harder is turning our shared sense of grief for this mother into an impetus to solve the problems plaguing the dwindling southern resident orca population.
If we aren’t willing to turn our empathy into action, then one day in the near future we will explain to our children and grandchildren how incredible the orcas were, and how bad we felt about their fate.
How their pain resonated with us and caught our attention. How deeply we felt their loss. Just not enough to do what was required to save them.”

Sunday, August 05, 2018

Legacy of the Infinite War: Next Gens Take the Field of America's Great Game

The Legacy of Infinite War: Special Ops, Generational Struggle, and the Cooperstown of Commandos

by Nick Turse - TomDispatch


August 5, 2018

Raids by U.S. commandos in Afghanistan. (I could be talking about 2001 or 2018.) A U.S. drone strike in Yemen. (I could be talking about 2002 or 2018.) Missions by Green Berets in Iraq. (I could be talking about 2003 or 2018.)

While so much about the War on Terror turned Global War on Terrorism turned World War IV turned the Long War turned “generational struggle” turned “infinite war” seems repetitious, the troops most associated with this conflict -- the U.S. Special Operations forces -- have seen changes galore. 

As Representative Jim Saxton (R-NJ), chairman of the Terrorism, Unconventional Threats and Capabilities Subcommittee, pointed out in 2006, referring to Special Operations Command by its acronym:

“For almost five years now, SOCOM has been leading the way in the war on terrorism: defeating the Taliban and eliminating a terrorist safe haven in Afghanistan, removing a truly vicious Iraqi dictator, and combating the terrorists who seek to destabilize the new, democratic Iraq.”

Tomgram: Nick Turse, A Grim Inheritance

[Note for TomDispatch Readers: With today’s post, TomDispatch goes on vacation for a week. The next post will be on August 14th. In the meantime, let me thank all of you for your beyond-generous response to my summer appeal for funds. I can’t tell you how deeply appreciated it was. Anyone who meant to contribute but didn’t and still wants my new book, A Nation Unmade by War, signed and personalized, can always go to our donation page and for $100 ($125 if you live outside the U.S.) get a copy with my gratitude -- or choose among any number of other striking books.

One other thing: I want to urge all of you again to think about picking up -- thanks to publisher Haymarket Books -- a half-priced copy of Beverly Gologorsky’s new Dispatch Books novel, Every Body Has a Story, by clicking here. She’s a writer I’ve admired for years. (I’ve read all her books.) And this one, a genuine working-class novel about how the foreclosure crisis of 2007-2009 hit ordinary Americans is simply wonderful. If you don’t believe me, check out Ron Jacobs’s splendid review at Counterpunch (“an emotionally taut tale that is also a specific, personal, and unbending critique of the system of neoliberal capitalism”). See you in a week! Tom]

It looks like TomDispatch may have a few less readers from now on. Perhaps it will surprise you, but judging by the mail I get, some members of the U.S. military do read TomDispatch -- partially to check out the range of military and ex-military critics of America’s wars that this site publishes. Or rather they did read TomDispatch. No longer, it seems, if their computers are operating via Department of Defense (DoD) networks. The DoD, I’ve heard, has blocked the site. You now get this message, I’m told, when you try to go to it: “You have attempted to access a blocked website. Access to this website has been blocked for operational reasons by the DOD Enterprise-Level Protection System.” Oh, and the category that accounts for it being blocked? “Hate and racism.” Mind you, you can evidently still read both Breitbart and Infowars in a beautifully unblocked state via the same networks.

On consideration, however, I’ve concluded that the Department of Defense might have a point. Since this site was launched as a no-name listserv in October 2001 soon after the Afghan War started -- you know, the war that the DoD is still pursuing so successfully almost 17 years later with its 17th commander now in the field, 15,000 American troops still fighting and advising there (and still dying there as well), and the enemy, the Taliban in particular, in control of yet more territory in that country -- TomDispatch has always hated America’s never-ending, ever-spreading, refugee- and terror-producing wars that now extend from South Asia across the Middle East and deep into Africa. So perhaps this site is, after all, a must-block “hate” site.

And among the authors who have spread TomDispatch’s antiwar gospel of hatred -- now so judiciously cut off by the Pentagon -- Nick Turse, in particular, has long grimly tracked the growth and spread of Washington’s forever wars and of the Special Operations forces, the semi-secret military that has become, in these years, their heart and soul. He returns to this sorry tale again today, this time in a unique fashion -- by tracing the careers of those in the military, commanders and commanded, dead and alive, who returned to America’s official and unofficial war zones again and again and yet again. Maybe someone should suggest to the Pentagon that there’s something else out there to block, so that another website, 17 years from now, won’t be writing about Washington’s 34th commander in the field in Afghanistan. Maybe it’s time to block those wars. Tom

The Legacy of Infinite War: Special Ops, Generational Struggle, and the Cooperstown of Commandos

by Nick Turse

Much has changed since Saxton looked back on SOCOM’s role in the early years of the war on terror. For starters, Saxton retired almost a decade ago, but the Taliban, despite being “defeated” way back when, didn’t do the same. Today, they contest for or control about 44% of Afghanistan. That country also hosts many more terror groups -- 20 in all -- than it did 12 years ago. “Vicious Iraqi dictator” Saddam Hussein is, of course, still dead and gone, but in 2014, about a third of “the new, democratic Iraq” was overrun by Islamic State militants. The country was only re-liberated in late 2017 and the Islamic State is already making a comeback there this year. Meanwhile, Iraq is beset by anti-government protests and totters along as one of the most fragile states on the planet, while the Iraqi and Afghan war zones bled together -- with U.S. special operators now fighting an Islamic State terrorist franchise in Afghanistan, too.

In spite, or perhaps because, of these circumstances, SOCOM continues to thrive. Its budget, its personnel numbers, and just about any other measure you might choose (from missions to global reach) continue to rise. In 2006, for instance, 85% of Special Operations forces (SOF) deployed overseas -- Army Green Berets and Rangers, Navy SEALs, and others -- were concentrated in the Greater Middle East, with far smaller numbers spread thinly across the Pacific (7%), Europe (3%), and Latin America (3%). Only 1% of them were then conducting missions in Africa.

Today, the lion’s share -- 56% -- of those commandos still operate in the Greater Middle East, according to figures provided to TomDispatch by SOCOM, but all other foreign deployments have grown at that region’s expense. Africa Command has leapt from last to second place and now hosts 16.5% of America’s overseas commandos, European Command 13.9% of them, the newly renamed Indo-Pacific Command 8.6%, and Southern Command 4.5%.

In the Zone


As deployments have shifted geographically, the number of special operators overseas has risen dramatically. In any given week in 2001, an average of 2,900 commandos were deployed abroad. By 2014, that number had hit 7,200. Today, according to SOCOM spokesman Ken McGraw, it’s 8,300.

A generation of commandos have spent their careers fighting on the proliferating fronts of Washington’s forever wars, hopping from one conflict zone to another or sometimes returning to the same campaign again and again. Some have spent much of their adult lives at war and a number have lost their lives after multiple warzone tours, still without a victory in sight. “At this stage in the ongoing counter-violent extremist type of fight, it is not a rare exception for airmen to be on their 12th, 13th, or 14th deployment,” Lieutenant General Marshall Webb, the chief of Air Force Special Operations Command, told the Senate Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities earlier this year. And when it comes to serial deployments, special ops airmen are hardly unique.

Consider, for example, Green Beret Colonel Owen Ray who recently took command of the 1st Special Forces Group (1st SFG). His path to that post might be thought of as the military equivalent of working one’s way up from the mailroom. He has, in fact, held a command at every level of the 1st SFG. In 2003, he served as a detachment commander in Afghanistan. By 2011, he was back there as a company commander. In 2013, he returned as the chief of the 1st Special Forces Group’s 4th Battalion. Now, he heads a unit whose members have spent the last years deploying to hotspots across the planet.

“I stand in absolute awe at the service rendered and the impact this unit had on multiple theaters,” said outgoing commander Colonel Guillaume Beaurpere at a July change of command ceremony in which he handed over the reins to Ray.

Beaurpere himself is a model of the long-war SOF experience in multi-theater warfighting. A French immigrant commissioned as an officer in 1994, he served in South Korea, Kosovo, and sub-Saharan Africa. In 2007, he commanded a Special Forces company in Iraq. In 2008, he was back in Iraq as the executive officer for a special operations task force in Baghdad.

In 2010, he served as the deputy chief of staff of a SOCOM joint task force and the task force deputy operations officer during the lead-up to NATO’s war in Libya. In 2011, he took command of a special forces battalion and supervised its operations in West Africa. He also played a role in establishing a special ops presence in Central Africa to aid local proxies fighting Joseph Kony’s Lord's Resistance Army. In 2012, he served as the chief of a special operations command and control element in the Horn of Africa. Beaurpere is now assigned to Special Operations Command in Tampa, Florida, where he serves as executive officer to the commander.

This spring, President Trump tapped Lieutenant General Scott Howell to be the first Air Force officer to head Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), SOCOM’s secretive “hunter-killers,” which include the Army’s Delta Force and the Navy’s SEAL Team Six.

A longtime special operator, Howell has hopped back and forth between combat zones and stateside posts while steadily climbing the special ops ladder.

His assignments have included a 2005-2006 stint, when he was still a lieutenant colonel, as commander of the Joint Special Operations Aviation Detachment Arabian Peninsula at Joint Base Balad, Iraq; a 2008-2010 assignment, when he was a colonel, as commander of the Joint Special Operations Aviation Component, Special Operations Task Force, at Balad Air Base, Iraq, and Bagram Airbase, Afghanistan; a 2012-2013 stint, when he was a brigadier general, as deputy commanding general of Special Operations Joint Task Force-Afghanistan and NATO Special Operations Component Command-Afghanistan; and then, a 2016-2017 position, when he was a major general, as the head of NATO Special Operations Component Command-Afghanistan and Special Operations Joint Task Force-Afghanistan.

Or, for a grimmer look at the special ops experience in these years, consider the biographies of some of the commandos recently killed overseas. They offer a unique window on the operations tempo, scale, and scope of America’s never-ending wars. Take Chief Special Warfare Operator William "Ryan" Owens. He completed his Navy SEAL training in December 2002 and then deployed 12 times, carrying out perhaps 1,000 missions or more, including assignments in Afghanistan and Somalia, before he was killed in Yemen last January. Similarly, Senior Chief Special Warfare Operator Kyle Milliken, who enlisted in the Navy in 2002 and joined the SEALs a short time later, survived tours in Iraq -- in 2007 alone, he took part in 48 combat missions there -- and Afghanistan only to be killed in Somalia last May.

Staff Sergeant Logan Melgar, a Green Beret who was reportedly strangled to death by two fellow special operators in Mali last June, was a veteran of two tours in Afghanistan. Staff Sergeant Dustin Wright, one of two Green Berets killed in an Islamic State ambush in Niger in October 2017, was reportedly on his second deployment to that West African nation. Army Sergeant 1st Class Mihail Golin -- the victim of a New Year’s Day attack in Afghanistan -- enlisted in the Army in 2005, a year after emigrating to the United States from Latvia, serving in Iraq in 2006-2007 and Afghanistan in 2009-2010, 2011-2012, and again in 2017. Staff Sergeant Alexander Conrad, a 26-year-old assigned to the Special Forces, served two tours in Afghanistan -- in 2012-2013 and again in 2014 -- before losing his life in a June 2018 attack in Jubaland, Somalia.

Hallowed Halls


Today, who remembers Dan Brouthers or the Troy Trojans and Buffalo Bisons, the professional baseball teams he played for? The same could be said of William “Judy” Johnson of the Hilldale Daisies, Mike “King” Kelly of the Boston Beaneaters, and Charlie “Old Hoss” Radbourn of the Providence Grays who, in 1884, pitched 73 complete games and won 59 of them. (Yes, you read that right!). Those men are nonetheless immortalized in bronze forever -- or at least as long as the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum stands in Cooperstown, New York.

Philip Cochran, Leroy Manor, and Aaron Bank might be even less well known to the rest of us, although they’re enshrined in the equivalent institution for their line of work. They are among the 69 members of the Commando Hall of Honor at SOCOM headquarters, MacDill Air Force Base, Florida. Cochran is best known for his service as the chief of the 1st Air Commando Group in the China-India-Burma Theater during World War II. Manor commanded the Air Force Special Operations Forces and headed the Joint Task Force responsible for the unsuccessful 1970 Son Tay prison compound raid to rescue American prisoners of war in North Vietnam. And Colonel Aaron Bank, known as ''the father of Special Forces'' for his role in creating the Army units that became known as the Green Berets, conducted small-unit operations with resistance fighters in Nazi-occupied Europe during World War II.

This year saw six new inductees to that Hall of Honor, including Major General James Rudder, who led three companies of Rangers during the 1944 D-Day landings in Normandy, France, and Air Force Colonel William Kornitzer, who took part in both the Son Tay prison raid and the even-more-disastrous Operation Eagle Claw, the failed special ops mission to rescue U.S. hostages in Iran that cost eight military personnel their lives in 1980. But not all of 2018’s honorees harkened back to the hazy past. The war on terror has been going on for so long that two of this year’s inductees played roles in it, one of them perhaps the most famous commando of his generation.

General Stanley McChrystal, reads an Army news release about his induction ceremony, “served more than 34 years where he commanded both Joint Special Operations Command and... is credited with changing the way special operations forces are employed and how the nation views those forces in a positive way.” The article, however, says nothing about how the “runaway general” lost his job as commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan in 2010 after the publication of a Rolling Stone exposé in which his staff criticized Obama administration officials in his presence. Nor does it mention that, despite the widespread credit he’s received for defeating al-Qaeda in Iraq through relentless “man-hunting” missions back in the 2000s, that group nonetheless evolved into the Islamic State. It then swept across that same country in 2014, seizing town after town that JSOC and other U.S. troops had spent years clearing.

Similarly, the article fails to note that the war in Afghanistan that McChrystal was sent to win has ground on for the better part of a decade since his departure. Instead, it says that he is “recognized” for having “directly contributed to the nation's success in the Global War on Terrorism.” His inclusion offers a clue about where SOCOM’s Hall of Honor sets the bar for success in this century and suggests that many veterans of the forever war, perhaps for generations to come, could join McChrystal in the Cooperstown of commandos.

Generation War


At a recent Pentagon press briefing, Task & Purpose’s Jeff Schogol asked General Joseph Votel, former SOCOM commander and the current chief of U.S. forces in the Greater Middle East, if “a new generation of children will grow up to have to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan.” Votel largely punted on the issue of how generational the war on terror might prove to be, but his answer was still a telling one. “I do recognize we’ve certainly been in Afghanistan for a long time -- and of course, we’re back in Iraq for a second/third time addressing some of these problems,” he replied.

“I think this is a reminder that these things often take time.”

Time indeed.

The idea of Washington being engaged in a “generational war” was front and center earlier this year when Army General Austin “Scott” Miller, a career special operations soldier, testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee. As a young infantry officer, he had led elite Army Delta Force soldiers during the infamous “Black Hawk Down” Battle of Mogadishu in Somalia in 1993 and has since charged up through the ranks. He first deployed to Afghanistan as a lieutenant colonel in the wake of the 9/11 terror attacks. Then came a combat tour in Iraq and a return to Afghanistan as a brigadier general in 2010 to command the Combined Forces Special Operations Component Command-Afghanistan. In 2013-2014, he was back in Afghanistan again, this time as a major general in charge of NATO Special Operations Component Command-Afghanistan/Special Operations Joint Task Force-Afghanistan. Today, he has a brand new fourth star and commands all U.S. forces in that country, the 17th U.S. commander there since 2001.

At Miller’s confirmation hearing in June, Arkansas Republican Senator Tom Cotton raised an uncomfortable question that even a cursory examination of the general’s biography should provoke.

“Did you imagine in 2001 that you would be deploying... to Afghanistan in 2018?” he asked. 

Miller replied that he had not, adding, “Senator, I actually recall conversations of people who were out over Christmas in 2001 talking about they were doing this so their kids did not have to.” That response led Cotton to call attention to a soldier seated just behind Miller: a young Army 2nd Lieutenant with the 82nd Airborne Division who just happened to be the general’s son, Austin Miller.

“If Lieutenant Miller does his job well and stays as a platoon leader at the 82nd Airborne into next year, 2019, he is going to have a private report to his platoon in all likelihood who was born after the 9/11 attacks. That is a pretty shocking fact. Is it not?”

“Yes, Senator,” Miller agreed.

It’s likely as well that the members of the 82nd Airborne, perhaps even Lieutenant Miller and one or more post-9/11 privates, will deploy again to Afghanistan in the coming years. As the core of the military’s Global Response Force, the 82nd Airborne Division is on-call to react anywhere in the world within 18 hours. It is a globe-trotting, rapid-response light infantry force that has seen recent service in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and the Horn of Africa and shares its home, Fort Bragg, with U.S. Army Special Operations Command.

It’s also likely that an increasing number of Special Operations forces from Fort Bragg and elsewhere will be spread ever more equally across the planet, while deployments to perpetual hot-spots like Afghanistan and Iraq continue. A generation of special operators has already deployed repeatedly to South Asia, the Middle East, and increasingly Africa. Some of them are now entering the special ops hall of fame despite the fact that not one post-9/11 war has been definitively won, the number of terror groups aligned against the United States has markedly increased, and the number of special ops battle fronts -- from Afghanistan to Cameroon, Iraq to Tunisia, Yemen to Somalia, the Philippines to Niger, Libya to Syria -- in this country’s forever wars has only grown.

Tactical successes have been many -- battles won, territory taken, foes killed, enemy leaders eliminated. But failures have been far greater, including ill-conceived deployment policies that neglect to link SOF missions to strategic outcomes, man-hunting being substituted for strategy, and commanders leaning on Green Berets and Navy SEALs to solve national security problems -- issues that ought to be addressed by policymakers, not commandos.

In his confirmation hearing, General Miller put a spotlight on one of the most critical shortcomings of Washington’s “infinite war,” one that has afflicted every level of the U.S. establishment from the White House and the Pentagon to the special ops community: a failure of imagination.

After acknowledging that the war in Afghanistan -- the one he has been fighting on and off for almost two decades -- was “generational,” the four-star general admitted what he had failed to consider 17 years before as a lieutenant colonel.

“This young guy sitting behind me,” he said, referring to his uniformed son, “I never anticipated that his cohort would be in a position to deploy as I sat there in 2001.”

Nick Turse is the managing editor of TomDispatch, a fellow at the Nation Institute, and a contributing writer for the Intercept. He recently covered an ethnic cleansing campaign in the Democratic Republic of Congo for Vice News. His latest book is Next Time They’ll Come to Count the Dead: War and Survival in South Sudan. His website is NickTurse.com.

Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on Facebook. Check out the newest Dispatch Books, Beverly Gologorsky's novel Every Body Has a Story and Tom Engelhardt's A Nation Unmade by War, as well as Alfred McCoy's In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of U.S. Global Power, John Dower's The Violent American Century: War and Terror Since World War II, and John Feffer's dystopian novel Splinterlands.

Copyright 2018 Nick Turse

It Was Always a War of Ideology

The West has Performed ‘Philosophical Coup’ Against the Left 

by Andre Vltchek - NEO


August 2, 2018

It has been happening for quite some time, but no one has been paying much attention: Western academia, mainstream media, and the most visible propagandists, were trying to convince the world that 1) ideology has died, or at least became irrelevant 2) in case it did not die, the Left is actually… hold your breath… right-wing!

Especially the Left that is holding power, particularly in Asia and in Latin America, is being ‘re-defined’ in London, Paris and Washington.

The Western propaganda gurus are apparently rejuvenated, lately, as there are great budgets available to them, in the United States, United Kingdom, and elsewhere. They are openly told to go after certain countries, particularly Russia, China and Iran.

This is an extremely complex but important development.

You see, the West has been losing, and so has capitalism and especially imperialism, which is synonymous with neo-colonialism.

People all over the world had enough. Even certain groups inside the imperialist countries, have had enough.

The main problem is that after decades, during which philosophy has been locked up, imprisoned, inside the decaying aulas of the toothless universities, most people have lost any idea what really disgusts them; what they are against, and what they desire.

Philosophy and such deep and essential topics like ‘in what direction the world should be evolving’, are not discussed at UNESCO meetings, anymore, as they are not debated by talk show hosts and ‘public intellectuals’, at least not in open.

Light pop music, horror movies, the promotion of selfish, often infantile values and desires, never really deeply satisfied the masses, but they damaged them, reducing people’s ability to think freely, to analyze and to make sober and well-informed conclusions.

‘-isms’ have been spat at, particularly the left-wing ‘-isms’. Increasingly, the left was smeared and then compared to the extreme right, even with fascism. In fact, pronouncing Communism and fascism in one breath, became tremendously well rewarded. In the West, thousands of ‘thinkers’ and ideologues made a great living doing nothing else than that.

*


This essay has been inspired by an exchange with an Irish academic, who called, in his email to me, this publication (NEO – New Eastern Outlook), an ‘extreme right-wing Russian nationalist publication’.

I exploded, wrote back, clarifying that NEO is a left-wing, internationalist magazine, and that the people who are running it have nothing to do with anything right-wing, whatsoever. But I soon realized that this was not about the evidence, but about something very different.

Similar, confusing messages are coming from everywhere, whenever I go to Europe or North America, or whenever I tune in to their television or radio channels. Something twisted is being broadcast, day and night. Political reality gets extremely fuzzy. Great left-wing political leaders are called names: demagogues, populists, even worse. And those constant, insane Cold War propagandist comparisons of Stalin and Hitler (any logical comparisons never appear, like Hitler = Churchill, German Nazism = European colonialism, etc.).

The biggest problem is that a great majority of Western citizens have succumbed to this propaganda. They are not capable of questioning anything related to these issues, anymore, and were they to want to question, they don’t even know where to search for the sources that could effectively challenge the official dogma.

They are indoctrinated, but they think that they are free. Not only that, they don’t realize that they are deeply conditioned and brainwashed: they actually think that they are in a position to preach, obliged to enlighten others, instructing the world with what they have been taught. And so, they speak and write, get paid for it. They join the U.N., ‘international cultural institutions’ and the NGOs, universities, and they continue spreading all those dogmas developed by the Western ideologues for one and the only purpose: to exploit and to control the world. They do not present these fabrications as theses, but as facts. Of course, there are no facts behind what they are preaching, as there is no hard evidence, but who would search for the evidence, and how? Even the internet is not so easy to navigate, anymore, and Western bookstores are nowhere as diverse as those in China or Russia.

*


Back to the main issue: it is essential for the West to discredit socialism, Communism, and also all anti-imperialist movements that are now getting stronger all over the world.

In fact, many propagandists in London, Paris and Washington, are clearly realizing that the West and its control over the world, is almost finished. The more they are aware of this fact, the more aggressively they go after their adversaries (their jobs often depend on that control, and the privileges of their nation, of course, too).

Attacking socialists or Communists who are holding power in Asia or Latin America, is not enough, anymore.

Now the Empire is spreading pessimism, defeatism and dark nihilism, both at home and abroad (please read my latest book: “Revolutionary Optimism, Western Nihilism”). “All people are the same”, it says. Sounds nice, but what it means is actually extremely sinister: “All people are maniacal egotists like us, mass murderers like us, and of course, thieves!”

Terms and definitions get all mixed up, confused. Nothing is defined precisely.

For instance, when the left-wing governor of Jakarta, ‘Ahok’, began cleaning the most polluted city on Earth, building public transportation, providing the poor with social housing, several Indonesian NGOs paid by the West, as well as countless individuals, began calling ‘Ahok” a ‘right-winger’, because he was evicting petite capitalist street vendors and thugs who were shamelessly blocking the few sidewalks that the turbo-capitalist Jakarta has in its possession. Thugs and street vendors, who flourished during the fascist, anti-Communist dictatorship, have been terrorizing the city and its mainly poor dwellers for decades. But the argument went: “The Governor is against the little people”.

There was actually a ‘great danger’ that this deeply popular governor could make it to a much higher post, even the highest one in the country. That would be unacceptable, and the servile ‘city planners’, academics and ‘civil society’ groups shamelessly teamed up against him. First, he was discredited (being called right-wing), then accused of insulting religion (Islam) and finally, thrown into prison. He is rotting there until now, for being a true socialist (a word that is even still illegal to pronounce in Indonesia, as it is being connected with Communism).

The Jakarta scenario is of course no exception. The same is happening in the Philippines. The West and its local lackeys are attacking, with the same twisted ‘logic’ and zeal, countries such as Venezuela, Brazil, but especially China, Iran and Russia.

To call China by what it really is: ‘Communist (with the Chinese characteristics) and presently the most successful country on Earth”, would be totally unacceptable, anywhere in the West or its ‘client’ states. That would greatly boost China’s popularity. Why? Because even deep in the dark belly of the capitalist and imperialist beast – Europe and North America – the common people actually want something ‘left-wing’, something socialist, even Communist. They were told to hate it, to trash it publicly, and they do. But deep inside, many are still longing for it.

The Empire knows psychological warfare extremely well: to discredit China, it really has to be called capitalist. Or call it imperialist. Say it is ‘like us’. (“Like us” is definitely not good. The people on all continents hate ‘us’). Say that China is not helping African people by building infrastructure, hospitals and schools (although that is precisely what China is doing, if you ask Africans – something that no Western journo is bothering to do). Say that China is ‘following its own interests’, and that it is doing business (again, these days, a dirty word, except in a few Southeast Asian helplessly corrupt and servile ‘client’ states).

The same is true when it comes to Russia. The foreign policy of Russia is clearly anti-imperialist. In many ways, it is still that good old Soviet foreign policy – internationalist, egalitarian, based on humanism. Present-day Russian diplomats are brilliant, soft-spoken philosophers. The West can never match them. Therefore, it smears them, their country and everything that it stands for. President Putin is portrayed as some right-wing strongman and lunatic, and Russia as a capitalist state. It is thorough nonsense, as Russia is in many ways, increasingly, similar to its close ally – China. Russia counts on a mixed economy with a great accent on social welfare, and it is a country that is ready to defend and protect those who are brutalized by Western neo-colonialism. It occupies nobody, overthrows no governments. It is increasingly a good, solid and compassionate country, but the more it is, the more demonized it gets. The better it behaves, the more it gets smeared, mostly by being called ‘capitalist’, ‘right-wing’, an ‘oligarchy’. Well, great propaganda barks for sure; the Western demagogues and intelligence officers certainly know their trade.

Syria, oh how is it being defined by the Western demagogues? How it is being defamed! It is never called by what it really has been for decades – a Pan-Arab socialist state! It’s ‘regime’ (a favorite British derogatory term, which I actually love to use against their own, British fascist, stale, passive-aggressive monarchy) is constantly branded as ‘dictatorial’. You will never hear expressions like ‘socialist’ or ‘internationalist’. You know why? Because, let me repeat it again, these terms, deep inside, evoke sympathy in the ears of people worldwide, even in the hearts of some Westerners, subconsciously.

‘Socialist’, ‘serving the people’ – you may smear it, but that is what people really want, and wanted for decades and centuries. That is what they have fought for, were dying for; on the barricades. Some instincts are still there, in people’s hearts, or do you think that they were sacrificing their lives in order to be governed by individuals like Macron or May?

Therefore, the socialists, not some European pseudo-traitors-socialists, but true socialists and Communists, are constantly branded by the West as ‘populists’, demagogues and often, even as right-wingers.

This negative, nihilist, depressing propaganda blurs and confuses the people everywhere. It calls white, black, and black, white. It labels Communists as fascists, and then declares that both fascists and Communists are the same.

Now the people, at least those who are the most exposed to the Western mass media, are ‘unable to commit themselves’ to anything, from political labels, to revolutionary ideals, and even to each other. They go ‘by issues’, arrogantly selfish (hundreds of millions of atomized centers of the universe) in both personal lives and in politics. In London or Paris, not to speak of New York City, those who are believed to be the ‘most educated’, are sadly the most conditioned, indoctrinated and feeble.

It is quite remarkable that in some parts of the world like Southeast Asia, the West has managed to create an absolutely bizarre West-lookalike-but-not-really-alike ‘upper class’, by injecting an idiotic type of education and cheap ‘cultural values’ (I will address this issue soon, in my upcoming essay). The result is – obedient and soulless countries unable to create anything new and substantial.

*


All of this, just in order to prevent the world from following its instincts – from choosing socialism and Communism.

You see, the task of the Western regime is tremendous: to break, to pervert, the natural reflexes of human beings. Whenever people anywhere in the world have been given a true opportunity, they voted, or fought for, some type of socialism, or Communism.

Basically, all the countries of Latin America selected, democratically, left-wing governments. And they were overthrown by the West and by their lackeys. It is happening to this day. Millions have been dying in the process.

In Africa – precisely the same. It began with Patrice Lumumba and his murder, and it never stopped. Fascist monsters and mentally sick individuals were injected from abroad, and paid to govern.

Asia? Absolute horror: from the socialist Iran in 1950’s to internationalist, Communist Indonesia before 1965, people wanted Communism and got murdered, raped and in the end, robbed of everything. By whom: by the West and its apparatchiks and local spooks from the colonial era. Countries that resisted and won, like China, and Vietnam, are now much better off than others.

They all wanted socialism, all over the world: The Middle East, too, and yes, Europe as well! It truly takes great discipline and continuous brainwashing, to forget that the US and UK intelligence services prevented Europeans in France, Italy and even West Germany, from voting in Communists after WWII. Nazis were employed to intimidate and to murder left-wing candidates. Then they were shipped to South America, where they either ‘retired’, or began collaborating with the fascist pro-Western regimes. I know it: I spoke, couple of decades ago, to those old beasts who were allowed to escape with their loot of gold teeth from the concentration camps – to Paraguay, Argentina, Chile.

Destroying the natural human longing for socialism is the main task of the Western regimes, be they ‘constitutional monarchies’ or ‘guided multi-party hoaxes’.

The result is total global schizophrenia. Intuitively, people desire something, but they are told that it is wrong, and then they are ordered what to desire (unless they want to become unemployable).

It is the same with love and sex. We, men, are told that our bodies should be longing for certain types of women. Women are instructed what type of man to desire.

It is the same with jobs, or how people pass their free time: banging into mobile phones, playing degenerate video games, and studying some nonsense at university, just to get a diploma that certifies them as some good future servants of the regime.

What did they do to people, really? Adults, fathers and mothers, ‘respected’ individuals are moving their fingers all over the phone monitors, playing infantile games and making babyish faces, while taking their own photographs at every corner. European intellectual cinema has collapsed, as well as literature. And everyone is grinning like idiots. And almost everyone is suicidal.

It is clearly a post-coup situation. It is abnormal.

Pathological. Almost nobody is happy. Everyone pretends to be happy.

You see, deep inside, people like to dream about a better world, they like to commit, even sacrifice themselves for another being, or for an ideal, or revolution.

This insanity which the West has spread, just so its dear capitalism and neo-colonialism stays in control of the planet, will not last much longer.

Soon, people will realize that there is nothing more glorious than to build his or her country, to improve conditions all over the world, to clean up our environment, to love and to fully commit to that love.

Before that, however, the lies have to be exposed. White is white and black is black. War is war, peace is peace. Aggressors are aggressors and victims are victims.

The West has immobilized people all over the world with its filthy, depressing lies. It stares at humans, like a cobra stares at a tiny, poor mouse.

Soon, I am sure the world will rise and demand the truth! With the truth, the psychological balance will return. People will learn how to dream again. With dreams, the insanity that the West has been spreading, will be confronted. Imperialism will shout, howl; it will try to bite everything that moves, but relatively quickly, it will lose all its power and, hopefully, kick the bucket. I believe in it. Millions are now, again, ready to fight for it.

Andre Vltchek is philosopher, novelist, filmmaker and investigative journalist. He’s a creator of Vltchek’s World in Word and Images, and a writer that penned a number of books, including The Great October Socialist Revolution. He writes especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook.”

What Colour is Your Hat? Beneath the White Helmets

White Helmets Exclusive – Humanitarian Heroes or Terrorists

by Going Underground - RT


August 4, 2018

In this episode, we speak to the boss of the White Helmets Raed Al Saleh about allegations of links to ISIS and Al Qaeda in a Going Underground Exclusive. Plus, we speak to Vanessa Beeley, a journalist who has been on the ground in Syria during the war, about her accounts, which have differed widely from those of the White Helmets.



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When 6 is 9: Zionists Calling Human Rights Supporters Racist

Bizarro Zionism: Zionists Call Human Rights Supporters Racist

by Yves Engler - Dissident Voice


August 3rd, 2018

What to call someone who claims to oppose racism, except for that directed against Palestinians?

Judge someone by what they have done and continue to do. Consider the source.

These thoughts ran through my mind as I struggled to write about Bernie Farber’s standing among some Left/liberals.

After Israel recently solidified its apartheid regime, a Facebook friend posted an opinion by illustrious pianist and conductor Daniel Barenboim titled “Today, I Am Ashamed to Be an Israeli.”

Bernie Farber - CEO of the Mosaic Institute

While expressing opposition to its recent entrenchment of Jewish supremacism, the story effectively denied the ethnic cleansing of Palestine by claiming,

“the founding fathers of the State of Israel who signed the Declaration [of independence] considered the principle of equality as the bedrock of the society they were building.”

More than this sop to colonial history, my leftist Facebook friend’s post piqued my ire because it highlighted that the article came from Farber, who worked at the now defunct Canadian Jewish Congress (CJC) between 1984 and 2011. In response to my complaint about citing the former CJC CEO approvingly, Farber wrote,

“I will continue to work for mutual understanding and do my best to see all sides. You will of course see what you wish from your one-sided pedestal and be critical of anyone who remains a progressive Zionist which I am.”

From the “pedestal” on which I observe Farber, I see an individual who has repeatedly labelled supporters of Palestinian rights as racist. After the Canadian Union of Public Employees (Ontario) passed a 2009 motion in support of the Palestinian led Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement Farber claimed, “anti-semitism is once again amongst us.” For Farber the resolution was “bigoted and discriminatory and anti-Jewish” because only one country was targeted. “The sole target is Jews, is Israel,” he said.

In a 2010 letter to the Toronto Star denouncing Israeli Apartheid Week CJC’s CEO wrote,

“Anything that promotes the destruction, demonization and delegitimization of Israel, the world’s only Jewish state, is inherently anti-Semitic.
To falsely accuse Israel, and by extension the vast majority of the world’s Jews who support the Jewish state, of ‘apartheid,’ is a form of anti-Semitic bullying.”

When the Israeli military killed 1,400 Palestinians (including 345 children) over 22 days in 2008-09 Farber denounced those protesting the slaughter across the country for their purported “vile, disgusting, hateful rhetoric of the kind that should be absolutely frightening to Canadians.” Further stoking anti-Arab/Muslim sentiment, he labeled the protests “uncivil, un-Canadian, that demonize Jews and Israelis.” Farber called on the police to investigate the burning of an Israeli flag and a small number of individuals with signs deemed “pro-Hamas” or comparing Israel’s actions to the Nazis.

In 2003 Farber lobbied for noted Islamophobe and anti-Palestinian activist Daniel Pipes to speak at York University. “It would have set a very, very unacceptable precedent to cancel it because of students who didn’t like or what he had to say,” said the then executive director of CJC Ontario.

In 1996 Pipes asserted that Islam “would seem to have nothing functional to offer” and six years earlier said:

Western European societies are unprepared for the massive immigration of brown-skinned peoples cooking strange foods and maintaining different standards of hygiene…
All immigrants bring exotic customs and attitudes, but Muslim customs are more troublesome than most.”

The year before speaking at York University Pipes launched Campus Watch, which created “dossiers” on professors and academic institutions viewed as critical of Israel and more recently, wrote a piece titled “How 99 Percent of ‘Palestine Refugees’ Are Fake.”

Farber certainly didn’t support Pipes as a principled defender of free speech. In fact, Farber repeatedly promoted hate speech restrictions and a few years later the CJC pressured the York administration against holding an academic conference entitled Israel/Palestine: Mapping Models of Statehood and Paths to Peace. Farber also applauded the Stephen Harper government’s 2009 move to block former British MP George Galloway from speaking in Canada, writing: “George Galloway enables terrorism.”

After Adbusters juxtaposed photos of the World War II Warsaw Ghetto with images of Gaza, Farber penned a National Post op-ed titled “Selling anti-Semitism in the book stores”. It urged people to complain to stores selling the Vancouver-based magazine and a week later Shoppers Drug Mart told Adbusters it would no longer sell its magazine.

Aligning himself with Doug and Rob Ford, in 2010 Farber called on Toronto Pride to ban Queers Against Israeli Apartheid from its parade. In an over-the-top Toronto Star opinion piece he (co)wrote,

you’ve got to hand it to the organizers of Toronto’s annual gay pride parade. With their cowardly volte face in allowing Queers Against Israeli Apartheid (QuAIA) to march, organizers have pulled off the PR nightmare hat-trick: bowing to the bullying of political correctness; violating their own core philosophy by readmitting a group rooted in hate and demonization; and shifting media focus off their main objective.”

As executive director of CJC Ontario Farber joined US Jewish groups’ campaign to suppress the 1998 publication of A Nation on Trial: The Goldhagen Thesis and Historical Truth, which was a rebuttal of Daniel Jonah Goldhagen’s widely distributed Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust.

The Norman Finkelstein-led project included an expanded version of an article by Ruth Bettina Birn, chief historian for Canada’s Nazi war crimes unit. Farber claimed that Birn was lending her name to Finkelstein’s “anti-Israel outbursts“, which were “an insult” to Jews. The CJC tried to intimidate the longstanding Nazi hunter through her government employer.

In another attempt to punish those in any way associated with Finkelstein, Farber threatened to take the York Region education board to the human-rights commission if it did not dismiss a Palestinian-Canadian from its race relations committee.

Farber was angry that Bader Abu Zahra distributed a review of Finkelstein’s The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering at a teachers’ conference to discuss including “Holocaust and Anti-racist education in History, English and Social Science courses.”

When former Assembly of First Nations (AFN) head David Ahenakew made anti-Semitic comments in 2002 Farber (correctly) criticized them. But he also used Ahenakew’s abhorrent comments to smear Palestine solidarity activists.

Alluding to the September 2002 protest against Benjamin Netanyahu at Concordia University and support for the second Palestinian intifada, Farber claimed Ahenakew “felt comfortable at the time to say what he’s been thinking for a long time.” Farber then used Ahenakew’s anti-Semitic comments to push AFN leaders to support a state stealing indigenous Palestinians’ land. As part of AFN/CJC rapprochement Grand Chief Phil Fontaine participated in a CJC organize tour to Israel.

Farber attacked the United Church of Canada for supporting Palestinian rights and Independent Jewish Voices (IJV).

It almost sends shivers down our spine that the United Church of Canada won’t speak out against documents which on their face are anti-Semitic,” said Farber, regarding a number of Palestine solidarity resolutions submitted to its 2009 national meeting. 

Amidst an aggressive campaign targeting the United Church, the CJC head opined, “that a mainstream Christian faith group would provide funding to create an anti-Zionist, and anti-Jewish group is absolutely astounding.”

Farber has repeatedly denigrated IJV, which supports the Palestinian civil society’s call to put economic and diplomatic pressure on Israel. He called IJV a “small, radical rump group”, “a rump on the edge of Jewish society”, a “fringe group” that spews “vile, anti-Zionist” rhetoric, “a minuscule, fringe group” that backs the “anti-Semitic” claim that Israel practices apartheid, etc.

At the same time that he disparaged IJV, Farber gave political cover to the Jewish Defence League (JDL), which recruited in Jewish high schools and participated in Toronto’s Annual Israel Walk. According to Andy Lehrer, JDL head Meir Weinstein spoke glowingly of Farber. After being asked to do so for years, Farber finally distanced himself and the CJC from the JDL in 2011. Highlighting the tension between those who back its anti-Palestinian posture, but oppose the JDL’s alliances with fascist/white supremacist organizations, Farber denounced the group after it rallied in support of Britain’s extremist English Defence League.

In response to my posting some of the above information on Facebook Farber complained that,

“I haven’t worked at the CJC for over 7 years. And you have no idea of my work since then.” 

While Farber is no longer a leading proponent of the idea that expressing support for Palestinians is “anti-Semitism”, now challenges some of the Islamophobia he previously stoked and is offside with the JDL, it would be a stretch to say he’s broken from his CJC past. In 2015 Farber’s Mosaic Institute co-hosted an event with the Consulate of Israel in Toronto and last year he supported the exclusion of IJV and the United Jewish People’s Order from an Ontario anti-Semitism committee he co-led. In February Farber was a spokesperson for a JSpace Canada press release calling on the NDP convention to oppose a resolution that called for boycotting products from illegal Israeli settlements.

Despite this anti-Palestinian activity, many left/liberals partner with him. Alt weekly Toronto Now regularly publishes Farber’s articles; anti-racist journalist/activist Desmond Cole spoke with him at a recent forum put on by Farber’s Mosaic Institute; Judy Rebick, Sandy Hudson, Jerry Dias and others co-authored an op-ed with Farber calling on “Progressive Voters To Rally Around Andrea Horwath”; A slew of individuals have supported the new Farber-chaired Canadian Anti-Hate Network; the Treyf podcast interviewed him twice last year; the Torontoist quoted him in an article titled “Toronto’s Jewish Left is Alive and Well and Resisting Extremism.”

Of course, one could argue there is nothing wrong with interviewing someone you disagree with, partnering on an issue even if you differ on other subjects or citing a former pro-Israel activist to highlight that country’s eroding support.

But, ask yourself this: Would a pro-union publication give voice to a prominent union-basher? And if that union-basher claimed to have changed, wouldn’t the pro-union publication question him/her about the reasons for the change and their current opinion regarding unions?

It seems to me that supporters of Palestinian rights must, at a minimum, ask Farber similar questions before giving him voice as a “progressive” and “anti-racist”.

Yves Engler is the author of A Propaganda System: How Canada’s Government, Corporations, Media and Academia Sell War and Canada in Africa: 300 Years of Aid and Exploitation . To help organize an event as part of the fall tour for my forthcoming book Left, Right: Marching to the Beat of Imperial Canada please get in touch at yvesengler [at] hotmail.com
Read other articles by Yves.

The Artifice of the Trump Iran "Deal"

Trump’s Art of the Deal and Iran sanctions

by M K Bhadrakumar - Indian Punchline


August 4, 2018

An amicable formula seems to be emerging between the Trump administration on the one hand and China and India on the other hand as regards the impending US sanctions on Iran’s oil exports. Below-the-radar consultations are going on between Washington and Beijing and New Delhi.

The Trump administration initially threatened collateral damage to countries such as China and India unless they fell in line with the US diktat to stop all oil imports from Iran to zero by November 4.

Oil is at the core of Trump’s containment strategy against Iran, since oil exports are a major source for income for Tehran and the American game plan is all about hurting Iranian economy until its leadership capitulates and begs him for a meeting.

It’s a hackneyed notion to bully Tehran to make it bend. It never worked in these 40 years – not even under Barack Obama who enjoyed vast political capital in the international community. But the good thing about Trump is that behind the fire and fury, he’s a realist. (By the way, Iranians know it, too, as this utterly fascinating tongue-in-cheek commentary yesterday implies.)

So, after some rounds of diplomacy in world capitals (to test the waters, basically) – Beijing, New Delhi, Ankara, in particular, which are big-time buyers of Iranian oil – Washington began signaling that sanctions can also provide for ‘waivers’ – that is, Trump administration will selectively exercise the great privilege of deciding not to punish countries that may still want to buy Iranian oil after the November 4 cutoff date.
Quite obviously, from the feedback received from American diplomats, Washington senses great reluctance to pay heed to the US demarche.

In particular, China and India (which account for over half of Iranian oil exports) are heavily dependent on Iranian oil – and, for good reason too. At least in the case of India, Iran offers oil at discounted price on deferred payment basis with substantial reduction in freight and insurance costs.

Now, the US cannot possibly sanction the oil industry in China or India because Big Oil is also hoping to do business with them. (For shale oil, Asian market is the preferred destination.) Some analysts predict that Russia, which like America is also an energy superpower, will be a net gainer. Russia can cash in on the needs of China and India for oil; Russia can buy Iranian oil and sell it through swap deals and so on (and make some money in the bargain); or, Russia may even move into the Iranian oil industry in a big way and make investments there. At any rate, it is foolhardy for the US to imagine that it can control the world energy market in terms of price elasticity of supply.

In view of above factors, the Trump administration is finessing an understanding with China and India whereby the US sanctions policy against Iran does not become an acrimonious issue. The interests to be reconciled are: a) China and India have legitimate interests in sourcing Iranian oil and it is unrealistic and counterproductive to coerce them; and, b) US too has an abiding interest not to sanction the oil companies of China and India, which are prospective buyers of US oil.

The Bloomberg report, here, says that China has point blank refused to cut Iranian oil imports but may agree to keep imports at the existing level as of November 4. Interestingly, the report cites US officials heaving a sigh of relief:

“That would ease concerns that China would work to undermine U.S. efforts to isolate the Islamic Republic by purchasing excess oil.” 

Plainly put, Washington is relieved that Beijing will not take advantage of the US sanctions against Iran.

On the other hand, the Reuters report on India, here, assesses that Indian imports of Iranian crude oil are dramatically increasing in recent months. A 30% increase is reported in July with crude imports from Iran touching record level of 768000 barrels per day. (This is a whopping 85% jump over the corresponding period in July 2017, which was 415000 bpd)!

Of course, if the US can allow China to keep its import of Iranian oil at existing level as of November 4, it cannot deny a similar formula to India. And, therefore, doesn’t it make eminent sense that India keeps ramping up its oil imports from Iran to the maximum level possible by November 4?

Evidently, this is Trump’s Art of the Deal at work. By the way, for Iran too, this would provide some ‘sanctions relief’. Which in turn may even ‘incentivize’ Tehran to talk to Trump. If there is anything like a workable “win-win” in politics, this is it, this is it.