Saddam's Death, 198 [may-june 2023]
attempt to destroy political holism in the middle east

See also: Page 197: april-may 2023 and Page 199: july 2023


Israel & The Temple Revolution & Unesco & the Temple
Regime Change in Iraq - Overview 2002/2003 - Trump & the Pisces Messiah - Kennedy Speech 1961 - Eisenhower's Social Gospel - "I Have, I Rule and I will Destroy" - Iran & the dialogue of civilizations - Netanyahu & Infantilization of Israel - Jesus & Pophet Muhammed: "Be a stranger in the world" - Ideological Warfare Center - Jewish fundamentalism in the State of Palestine - Palestinian Martyrs and Jewish Heroes - The Balfour Declaration - Trump's move on Jerusalem (2017) - Abbas & Trump's "slap of the century" - John Bolton, prominent war hawk, National Security Adviser to President Trump - Lies & Provocations: France, UK and USA show their dark face - Trump, the 'deal-breaker' - Explaining America’s economic might - Netanyahu & The Survival of the Fittest - Bush’s ‘Axis of Evil’ Is Now Pence’s ‘Wolf Pack of Rogue States’ - Mike Pence & antisemitism - Amnesia of the US Foreign Policy Establishment - Israeli Elections 2019 - Was Jesus a Palestinian? - Labor disappears from Knesset - Settlers from the White House - NO to International Law - Israel & The Three Central Dilemmas - Netanyahu & Neo-Zionism - Secularism & 'Jewish' identity - Pompeo & Christian leadership - Jeremy Corbyn & Jewish Witch Hunt - Trump's Deal of the Century - Netanyahu & the Moongod Abraham - Gantz' betrayal - Trump's sanctions against ICC officials - The Ceasar Act - The Turkey-Armenia conflict - Joe Biden's Running Mate - The UAE-Israel-deal - The Sudan-US-Israel-deal - Robert Fisk Articles" - Joe Biden elected president - The return of Victoria Nuland - Putin 2014: New Rules or a Game without Rules - Alexander Dugin & The Great Awakening - Bennett is an 'evil' and 'wicked' Reform Jew, say haredi MKs - The Taliban enter Kabul - UAE leaders receive Syrian President Assad - Lapid & the Palestinian state - Yusuf al-Qaradawi died in Qatar - Israel heading toward a fascist theocracy - Ukraine is now a failed state: - The Global Civilization Initiative - Assad joins Arab leaders in Jeddah


Index Page - Start

Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was born April 28, 1937 and died December 30, 2006. He was the fifth President of Iraq, holding that position from July 16, 1979 until 9 April 2003. He was one of the leading members of the revolutionary Arab Socialist Ba’ath Party, and afterward, the Baghdad-based Ba’ath Party and its regional organization Ba’ath Party, Iraq Region, which advocated ba’athism, an ideological marriage of Arab nationalism with Arab socialism. (Patricia Ramos, july 2013)


How the National Security State Manipulates the News Media
Ted Galen Carpenter, antiwar.com, March 09, 2021

An especially dangerous threat to liberty occurs when members of the press collude with government agencies instead of monitoring and exposing the abuses of those agencies. Unfortunately, collusion is an all-too-common pattern in press coverage of the national security state’s activities. The American people then receive official propaganda disguised as honest reporting and analysis.


"The national security of America and the security of the world could be attained if the American leaders [..] become rational, if America disengages itself from its evil alliance with Zionism, which has been scheming to exploit the world and plunge it in blood and darkness, by using America and some Western countries.
What the American peoples need mostly is someone who tells them the truth, courageously and honestly as it is.
They don’t need fanfares and cheerleaders, if they want to take a lesson from the (sept. 11) event so as to reach a real awakening, in spite of the enormity of the event that hit America.
But the world, including the rulers of America, should say all this to the American peoples, so as to have the courage to tell the truth and act according to what is right and not what to is wrong and unjust, to undertake their responsibilities in fairness and justice, and by recourse to reason..."

Saddam Hussein, INA 15-9-2002


Joe Biden & Truth - 2009

US Vice President Joe Biden said that the new administration would seek the unvarnished truth from its spies, whether or not their information supported the goals of the government.
The Vice President's address was greeted with loud cheers by the several hundred CIA employees who gathered for the swearing in ceremony in the foyer of the Agency's headquarters in Langley, Virginia.
Standing before the wall of 89 stars representing the CIA staff who have died in the line of duty, Mr Biden said:
"We expect you to provide independent analysis, not to engage in group think. We expect you to tell us the facts as you know them wherever they may lead, not what you think we want to hear." (Tim Shipman. 20-2-2009)

"We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people …
The wave of the future is not the conquest of the world by a single dogmatic creed but the liberation of the diverse energies of free nations and free men. …
Mankind must put an end to war or war will put an end to mankind." John F.Kennedy


“Human beings are members of a whole,
In creation of one essence and soul.
If one member is afflicted with pain,
Other members uneasy will remain.
If you have no sympathy for human pain,
The name of human you can not retain.”

Saadi Shirazi
(Persian poet & humanist, born in Shiraz, Iran, c. 1210)


Flashback- Hanan Ashrawi 2002:
The New Age of Ideology

"The post-September 11 era in the US has heralded in a new age of ideology whose discourse and world views have served not only to accommodate such extremist views as those held by Sharon, but also to provide him with a platform and an influence that were unthinkable only a year ago.
Thus while the American President is busy devising a new Manichean universe of absolute good and absolute evil, pronouncing policy on the basis of a simplistic polarization of the world, and unilaterally defining the terms while categorizing state and non-state actors accordingly, Sharon’s Israel has maneuvered itself into a position of even greater power on the world stage provided explicitly by the US."

Index Page


"Holism is the most fundamental discovery of 20th century science. It is a discovery of every science from astrophysics to quantum physics to environmental science to psychology to anthropology.
It is the discovery that the entire universe is an integral whole, and that the basic organizational principle of the universe is the field principle: the universe consists of fields within fields, levels of wholeness and integration that mirror in fundamental ways, and integrate with, the ultimate, cosmic whole...."
"For many thinkers and religious teachers throughout this history, holism was the dominant thought, and the harmony that it implies has most often been understood to encompass cosmic, civilizational, and personal dimensions. Jesus, Mohammed, Buddha, Lord Krishna, Lao Tzu, and Confucius all give us visions of transformative harmony, a transformative harmony that derives from a deep relation to the holism of the cosmos."

About political holism

Political holism is based on the recognition that "we" are all members of a single whole. There's no "they," even though "we" are not all alike. Because "we" are all part of the whole, and therefore interdependent, we benefit from cooperating with each other. Political holism is a way of thinking about human cultures and nations as interdependent.
Political holists search for solutions other than war to settle international disagreements. Their model of the world is one in which cooperation and negotiation, even with the enemy, even with the weak, promotes political stability more than warfare.
In an overpopulated world with planet-wide environmental problems, the development of weapons of mass destruction has rendered war obsolete as an effective means to resolve disputes.

Political dualists consider political holists unpatriotic for questioning the necessity to defeat "them." In times of impending war, political dualists tend to measure patriotism by the intensity of one's hostility to the country's immediate enemy.
Naturally, they would view as disloyalty any suggestion that the enemy is not evil, any call for cooperation with the enemy, any criticism of one's own country.
To political dualists, cooperation with the enemy means capitulation, relinquishment of the nation's position of dominance.
At its extreme, political dualism is essentially tribalism. (Betty Craige, 16-8-1997)


Desmond Tutu & Ubuntu

"A person with Ubuntu is open and available to others, affirming of others, does not feel threatened that others are able and good, based from a proper self-assurance that comes from knowing that he or she belongs in a greater whole and is diminished when others are humiliated or diminished, when others are tortured or oppressed."
"We think of ourselves far too frequently as just individuals, separated from one another, whereas you are connected and what you do affects the whole World.
When you do well, it spreads out; it is for the whole of humanity." (Ubuntu info)

Saudi Crown Prince: We will assist in helping
the Palestinians establish a state
Elad Benari, Arutz Sheva, May 19, 2023

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman on Friday once again stressed the importance the kingdom places on a Palestinian state.
Speaking at the Arab League summit taking place in the country, bin Salman said, according to Channel 12 News, "The Palestinian issue was and still is the main issue of the Arab countries and is at the top of the kingdom's priorities. We will not delay in providing assistance to the Palestinian people in recovering their lands, restoring their legitimate rights and establishing an independent state within the borders of 1967 with East Jerusalem as its capital.">BR> Palestinian Authority (PA) chairman Mahmoud Abbas, who attended the summit, said that "commemorating the Nakba at the UN refutes the Zionist narrative."
In addition, he called on the Arab countries to turn to the International Criminal Court over the “Israeli occupation” and charged, "Israel violates the signed agreements and UN resolutions and adheres to the colonial Zionist project which is based on the continuation of the occupation, ethnic cleansing and apartheid."
Haaretz noted that, in a statement summarizing the summit published after its conclusion, the members of the Arab League reaffirmed their support for the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative, which stipulates that 22 Arab countries will normalize ties with Israel in return for an Israeli withdrawal from Judea and Samaria.
Israel to date has rejected the 2002 Saudi proposal...

Flashback: The Arab Peace Initiative 2002

"Abdallah bin Abdul Aziz is offering Israel full peace, including political, economic and cultural normalization, in return for a full withdrawal from the territories. This is more than a mere license to exist in peace in the region and recognition of the existence of Israel.
This is the political horizon Saudi Arabia, in consultation with Egypt, Jordan and some of the Gulf countries, is willing to give Israel: Complete integration in the region; realization of the vision of the New Middle East; economic and cultural cooperation; falafel in Damascus and stalls in the international market of Dubai; an Israeli flag in Riyadh; programming engineers in Bahrain and gas from Qatar to Israel. This initiative offers Israel the fulfillment of supremely important interests, which are supposed to ease the pain of the concessions.
The importance of the initiative lies in the fact that it is Saudi Arabia that is putting it forward. It comes from the deepest heart of the Arab, and even more importantly, the Islamic world. Saudi Arabia did so, despite the fact that it has no war or border conflicts with Israel, and despite its increasingly growing ties with Iran. A Saudi seal of approval is an Islamic seal of approval, even if it does include Iran, and it is an Arab seal of approval." (Zvi Bar'el - Ha'aretz, 1-3-2002)

Israel News: Smotrich Plans to Send Israeli Squatters in
to Steal More Palestinian Land in West Bank
Juan Cole 05/20/2023

Yaniv Kubovich and Ben Samuels at Haaretz report that far-right extremist Bezalel Smotrich is preparing to send in another half-million Israeli squatters to steal Palestinian land in the West Bank.
Smotrich is the leader of the Religious Zionism bloc in parliament and the finance minister in the Netanyahu cabinet, who also was given responsibility for the Palestinian West Bank.
The Palestinian West Bank and Gaza Strip do not belong to Israel, which seized them for the purposes of military occupation during the 1967 Six Days War. It is illegal for a UN member to usurp neighbors’ land, and it is illegal for an occupying power to settle its own citizens in militarily occupied territory...

Israel has already illegally annexed part of the Palestinian West Bank, adding Palestinian East Jerusalem and surrounding areas to the Israeli District [makhoz] of Jerusalem. These annexed regions, with nearly 400,000 Palestinian residents, have been strategically settled by 200,000 Israeli squatters.
In the remaining areas of the Palestinian West Bank, there are an additional 450,000 squatters, so if we took into account all Israelis living on land usurped in 1967 it would likely come to 650,000.
Smotrich is proposing nearly doubling that number, as a “core mission” of the Israeli government.


smotrich & ben-gvir

The plan was floated in the wake of Thursday’s aggressive “Flag Day” march of Israeli squatters through the Palestinian neighborhoods of East Jerusalem, taunting them that their homes actually belong to Israeli Jews and implicitly threatening to ethnically cleanse them.
Indeed, the squatters shouted “Death to Arabs,” lest anyone doubt their genocidal intentions.
Smotrich was one of the leaders of the march, along with Jewish Power extremist Itamar Ben-Gvir, who has been known to pull a gun on Palestinians who dare protest their ritual humiliation.
Ben-Gvir was caught on camera dancing and shouting. He was made minister of national security by Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu despite having been convicted of racist hate speech and “incitement” to racism...
Even the rabidly anti-Palestinian US State Department condemned the Israeli extremists’ call for “Death to Arabs.”

After Itamar Ben-Gvir visited the Temple Mount,
the government gathered for a meeting in the Western Wall tunnels.
YNet News [Israel], 21-5-2023

Just hours after National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir visited the Temple Mount , the government on Sunday held its weekly in the tunnels of the Western Wall in Jerusalem in honor of Jerusalem Day.

The spokesman for the Fatah movement Munther al-Haik criticized the government for holding its meeting in the heart of the Jerusalem. "The meeting of the occupation government will not change the historical and religious reality of Jerusalem, the eternal capital of the State of Palestine," he said.
Al-Haik also referred to Ben-Gvir's visit to the Temple Mount. "The terrorist's attack on the Al Aqsa Mosque, alongside a handful of settlers and under heavy security, is a provocation and a blatant violation of the status quo on the Temple Mount..."
Hamas spokesman Hazem Qasem also commented on the holding of the government meeting in the tunnels of the Western Wall, saying: "These Judaizing measures, which the Zionist government intends to approve at the meeting today, are an attempt to falsify the identity of the city of Jerusalem, which is blatant aggression against our people."

With the knowledge of Netanyahu, who was informed about the move on Thursday, Ben-Gvir went up to the Temple Mount – after he had avoided doing so on Jerusalem Day itself, as he had done in previous years.
"I am happy to go up to the Temple Mount, the most important place for the people of Israel. We are the owners of the house here," he said during the visit.

Jordan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs condemned the move: "It is a provocative step that must be condemned. It is a dangerous escalation that is a blatant violation of international law and the status quo in Jerusalem and the holy places."
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Egypt also condemned Ben-Gvir's visit to the Temple Mount: "These provocative actions are contrary to the responsibility and understanding expected of senior officials in the Israeli government. Egypt calls on Israel to stop acting in ways of escalation that add to the existing tensions in the city."


The temple: A center of power?



The Antonia-citadel, a Roman armycamp
declared as Israel's most holy place...

Antonia-Citadel: Named after Marcus Antonius (14 January 83 BC – 1 August 30 BC), commonly known in English as Mark Antony, was a Roman politician and general who played a critical role in the transformation of the Roman Republic from a constitutional republic into the autocratic Roman Empire.
The Antonia-citadel was build by Herod the Great after the siege of Jerusalem. Aided by Roman forces provided by Marcus Antonius (Mark Antony), Herod was able to capture the city and depose Antigonus II Mattathias, ending Hasmonean rule.
The historian Josephus described the Antonia fortress as a small city with a palace and military barracks. It was filled with apartments, cloisters, baths, large courtyards and a deep underground passageway.


Saudi Arabia & BRICS Membership:
A Game-Changer for Saudi Arabia’s Economy?
By Hussain Shahid, Modern Diplomacy, May 21, 2023

As Saudi Arabia prepares to potentially join the BRICS, there is much to consider in terms of the impact on the country’s economy. While some may view this as a simple geopolitical move, it could have significant economic implications for the region and the world as a whole.
First and foremost, it is important to understand the economic power of the BRICS nations.
Together, Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa represent 40% of the world population and 25% of global GDP.

One potential benefit of Saudi Arabia joining BRICS is increased trade opportunities. With its strong oil and natural gas resources, Saudi Arabia could become a key player in the energy trade within the bloc, which already dominates global oil and gas consumption with a 30% and 22% of the world share respectively.
Additionally, as a member of BRICS, Saudi Arabia would have the opportunity to diversify its trade relationships beyond its traditional partners in the West, potentially leading to new markets and increased economic stability.
As the world’s largest exporter of oil, Saudi Arabia’s alignment with the BRICS nations would reshape the geopolitics of energy and potentially challenge the dominance of Western oil markets.
With the BRICS countries collectively representing a substantial share of global oil consumption, the addition of Saudi Arabia would consolidate the bloc’s position as a major player in the energy market. This strategic partnership could lead to enhanced energy cooperation, joint ventures in oil exploration and production, and the establishment of alternative energy trading mechanisms, ultimately fostering greater energy security and resilience for all member states.

Another economic benefit of joining BRICS is increased investment opportunities. The bloc has already established the “New Development Bank” with a capital of $100 billion to rival the International Monetary Fund, and Saudi Arabia’s inclusion would add significant resources to this effort...
Saudi Arabia’s access to China and India, two of the world’s largest markets, would facilitate increased exports and economic partnerships.
Leveraging the technological innovation and manufacturing capabilities of BRICS members, particularly China, would accelerate Saudi Arabia’s growth in these sectors...

Overall, Saudi Arabia’s potential inclusion in BRICS presents a win-win opportunity for Saudi Arabia as it will accelerate the economic diversification and development of the nation and reduce its dependence on Western blocs.
Saudi Arabia’s recent decision to strengthen the relationship with Iran, brokered by China is the sign of tectonic shifts in the middle east...


America’s Wars and the US Debt Crisis
By Jeffrey D. Sachs, Information Clearing House, 23-5-2023

In the year 2000, the U.S. government debt was $3.5 trillion, equal to 35% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). By 2022, the debt was $24 trillion, equal to 95% of GDP. The U.S. debt is soaring, hence America’s current debt crisis. Yet both Republicans and Democrats are missing the solution: stopping America’s wars of choice and slashing military outlays.
According to the Watson Institute at Brown University, the cost of U.S. wars from fiscal year 2001 to fiscal year 2022 amounted to a whopping $8 trillion, more than half of the extra $15 trillion in debt. The other $7 trillion arose roughly equally from budget deficits caused by the 2008 financial crisis and the Covid-19 pandemic.

To surmount the debt crisis, America needs to stop feeding the Military-Industrial Complex (MIC), the most powerful lobby in Washington.
As President Dwight D. Eisenhower famously warned on January 17, 1961, “In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.”
Since 2000, the MIC led the U.S. into disastrous wars of choice in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, and now Ukraine.

America’s annual military spending is now around $900 billion, roughly 40% of the world's total, and greater than the next 10 countries combined. U.S. military spending in 2022 was triple that of China.
According to Congressional Budget Office, the military outlays for 2024-2033 will be a staggering $10.3 trillion on current baseline. A quarter or more of that could be avoided by ending America’s wars of choice, closing down many of America’s 800 or so military bases around the world, and negotiating new arms control agreements with China and Russia.
Yet instead of peace through diplomacy, and fiscal responsibility, the MIC regularly scares the American people with a comic-book style depictions of villains whom the U.S. must stop at all costs.
The post-2000 list has included Afghanistan’s Taliban, Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, Syria’s Bashar al-Assad, Libya’s Moammar Qaddafi, Russia’s Vladimir Putin, and recently, China’s Xi Jinping.
War, we are repeatedly told, is necessary for America’s survival.

A peace-oriented foreign policy would be opposed strenuously by the military-industrial lobby but not by the public. Significant public pluralities already want less, not more, U.S. involvement in other countries’ affairs, and less, not more, US troop deployments overseas.
Regarding Ukraine, Americans overwhelmingly want a “minor role” (52%) rather than a “major role” (26%) in the conflict between Russia and Ukraine. This is why neither Biden nor any recent president has dared to ask Congress for any tax increase to pay for America’s wars. The public’s response would be a resounding “No!”

Flashback - Realism & Restraint
Ike’s Military-Industrial Complex, Six Decades Later
James Pinkerton, American Conservative, 15-1-2020

January 17 marks the 59th anniversary of President Dwight Eisenhower’s farewell speech to the nation.

After eight years in the White House, just three days before John F. Kennedy would be sworn in as his successor, Ike went on national television and touched on many topics, from promoting the economy to working with Congress.
Yet the heart of his speech was a finely chiseled critique of what he dubbed the “military-industrial complex.”
This criticism was all the more remarkable, of course, because Eisenhower had been a career military man. Having graduated from West Point in 1915, he had served in the U.S. Army for more than three decades, through two world wars, ultimately rising to the rank of five-star general.
Yet on January 17, 1961, Ike said: “Our military organization today bears little relation to that known by any of my predecessors in peacetime, or indeed by the fighting men of World War II or Korea.”
He continued: “This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence—economic, political, even spiritual—is felt in every city, every statehouse, every office of the federal government.”

By then 70 years old, Ike was no born-again pacifist. He quickly added of the military’s enlarging, “We recognize the imperative need for this development.”
That imperative, of course, was the Cold War, the seemingly permanent eyeball-to-eyeball confrontation of two countries, the U.S. and the U.S.S.R., each glaring at the other with ideological hostility tipped with nuclear technology.
In response to the Soviet threat, Ike had maintained the Cold War structures he had inherited from his predecessor in the Oval Office, Harry Truman...

In his speech, Eisenhower made no apology for his role in the further freezing of the Cold War. Yet he still urged caution as to the potential ill effects of cold warring on the home front: “We must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources, and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.”
Then came the money sentences: “In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.”

Those three key words, “military-industrial complex,” rocketed through the national consciousness.
With those three words, Eisenhower gained the proverbial “strange new respect” among intellectuals, who mostly leaned left.
Indeed, the phrase “military-industrial complex” has become a favored catchphrase for leftists, anti-militarists, and anyone else looking for evocative shorthand....
So yes, Eisenhower was a vigorous leader in the Cold War competition, yet at the same time he was a citizen before he was a soldier, rightfully concerned with protecting our institutions from “unwarranted influence.”


A Dangerous Proposal
The love affair with Zelensky knows no bounds.
Ted Galen Carpenter, The American Conservative, May 24, 2023

Just when one is tempted to conclude that Ukraine’s sycophantic backers in the West can’t embrace policies that are more detached from reality, leading figures in that faction manage to plumb new depths of absurdity.
The latest example is a May 22 Wall Street Journal op-ed by Bernard-Henri Lévy. He fumes that one of Vladimir Putin’s chief weapons in his war against Ukraine “is Russia’s status as a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, which entails the power to block any resolution. It’s a legacy of World War II and the decision to reserve this status to the five victors, including the Soviet Union.”
But “the Soviet Union no longer exists,” Lévy emphasizes. Consequently “Russia’s permanent membership and the veto power it confers have no legal basis.”
After delineating Russia’s “war crimes” since 1991 (real or exaggerated) Lévy finally comes to the meat of his proposal. “Ukraine can and should inherit the rights of a fallen Russia. Remove the Russian Federation from its seat as a permanent member and transfer it to Ukraine.”

Expelling a permanent member of the Security Council from its seat is dubious from a legal standpoint and recklessly provocative from a geopolitical one. The closest legal analogy for removing Russia was the U.N.’s decision in 1971 to transfer China’s Security Council seat from the exiled Kuomintang government of Taiwan to the communist government in Beijing.
However, that situation was vastly different from what Lévy and Ukraine’s other advocates are proposing. Beijing effectively ruled all of mainland China, but Ukraine inherited only a small portion of the defunct Soviet Union. Most of the USSR’s territory, the majority of its population, as well as the bulk of its military and economic infrastructure, went to Russia...
The most preposterous aspect of Lévy’s scheme, though, is his proposal to transfer Russia’s seat to Ukraine.
If he had suggested Germany, Japan, India, or Bazil, the idea would at least be relevant to the real world and great power relations. But Ukraine?




B.H. Levy 2011 - supporting islamists in Libya and Syria


China-Russia cooperation is broader
than what US-led West can envision:
Global Times editorial, May 24, 2023

On the afternoon of May 24, Chinese President Xi Jinping met with Prime Minister of the Russian Federation Mikhail Mishustin, who was on an official visit to China, at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing.
Mishustin also held talks with Chinese Premier Li Qiang on the same day. China and Russia signed a series of bilateral agreements on service trade cooperation, sports, patents, and Russian millet exports to China, which shows significant results of Mishustin's first visit to China since taking office as Russian Prime Minister. The increase in quality of China-Russia economic and trade cooperation, coupled with a full tank of oil, will drive them toward a farther and broader future...
As a result, China-Russia economic revitalization will receive a continuous and strong impetus, and more people from both countries will feel and enjoy the tangible benefits brought by mutually beneficial cooperation.

The rich practice of the comprehensive strategic partnership of coordination between China and Russia in the new era tells us that when the political mutual trust between countries reaches a certain level, the world suddenly becomes more open, presenting opportunities and potential for mutually beneficial cooperation...
This is the essence of the new type of major-country relationship, and we strongly suggest that Washington take it seriously...
Western media, whose minds are filled with confrontation, become nervous at the sight of normal cooperation between China and Russia. They either advocate for China and Russia to "join forces to resist the West" or stir up the old tune of "Russia is dependent on China" to provoke China-Russia relations. Is it possible for the US to contain and suppress China, isolate Russia in all respects, and try to isolate China and Russia from each other as well?

The root of this divided attitude in the US lies in its uncontrollable hegemonic impulses and the fear of the so-called "China-Russia alliance," which is considered the US' greatest geopolitical nightmare.
These two factors create an internal conflict and psychological strain that the US cannot resolve. The tense atmosphere over the Asia-Pacific region is essentially an external manifestation of Washington's geopolitical anxieties...
We often emphasize that the cooperation between China and Russia is neither directed against third parties nor subject to third-party interference or coercion.
This principle guides China's interactions not only with Russia but also with all countries, including those from Europe, the Middle East, and neighboring regions.
It stands in stark contrast to the practices of hegemonism: one emphasizes "non-targeting" and "non-interference and non-coercion," while the other is precisely engaged in "targeting," "interference," and "coercion" worldwide. The former has created astonishing miracles of peace and development, while the latter has left countless scars and conflicts...
The resilience of China-Russia cooperation against interference has significantly strengthened, and the noise generated by the US and Western countries serves as a reverse motivation for us to continue moving forward....

Wikipedia info: The Global Times is a daily tabloid newspaper under the auspices of the Chinese Communist Party's flagship newspaper, the People's Daily, commenting on international issues from a Chinese nationalistic perspective.
Sources both in mainland China and abroad have said that the Global Times is not generally representative of the Chinese government's political positions, while the People's Daily is considered more representative.

Mikhail Vladimirovich Mishustin
(born 3 March 1966, Sun in Pisces, Moon in Cancer)
is a Russian politician and economist serving as the prime minister of Russia since 16 January 2020. He previously served as the director of the Federal Taxation Service from 2010 to 2020.
President Vladimir Putin nominated Mishustin to become prime minister on 15 January 2020, following the resignation of Dmitry Medvedev and the rest of the government
Mikhail Mishustin was born in Lobnya, a town very close to Moscow. His mother was born in the city of Kotlas in the Arkhangelsk region while Mishustin's father, a Jew from Belarus, was born in Polotsk.
On 15 January 2020, Putin nominated Mishustin for the post of Prime Minister.
According to many political analysts, Mishustin is the only one of Putin's Prime Ministers who truly formed his "own" cabinet. He gathered a team of his own people and associates. Before that, in the 21st century, only Putin was able to do this.

Pisces Sun Cancer Moon:
A Disciplined Personality
The Horoscope Website

Those born with their Sun in Pisces and their Moon in Cancer are difficult to understand because their feelings are always deep. They pay attention to those around them and are very empathetic.
Many would say they have a sixth sense and can grant other people’s wishes even before these know what they want. It doesn’t matter what people with the Pisces Sun Cancer Moon combination decide to do, they will always be intense and serious.

In business or at their job, these natives will be disciplined, determined and very energetic. Confident, they usually have control over any situation.
Pisces Sun Cancer Moon people are very aware of their feelings but can be insecure. Their self-protecting abilities are incredible. It doesn’t matter if they are women or men, they are soft and would never express their feelings until they are sure they can trust a person completely.

What these guys are fighting for is their family and a comfortable home. They need to be accepted and have a sense that what they are doing is important. It’s important their loved ones understand them for who they really are....


Syria's Assad accuses France of 'hysteria'
for calling to put him on trial
Rina Bassist, Al-Monitor, May 25, 2023

France reiterated on Thursday its stance against rehabilitating ties with Syria after Damascus qualified a call by Paris to try President Bashar al-Assad for his role in the civil war as ‘’hysteria.’’
Interviewed on Tuesday on French television channel France 2, French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna answered "yes" when asked if Assad should be put on trial, adding that "the battle against crime, against impunity is part of French diplomacy."
The affirmation by Colonna sparked Damascus' irk. A statement issued by the Syrian Foreign Ministry on Wednesday said, "We have recently followed the hysteria and isolated and detached positions of French diplomacy, which has lost its senses after the historic decisions of the Arab summit in the kingdom of Saudi Arabia when it comes to Syria. The backward French diplomacy must review its positions." The statement then accused France of seeking to "restore the legacy of the colonial era."
The Paris-Damascus exchange continued on Thursday. Asked whether Paris might change its position on rehabilitating ties with Damascus following the re-acceptance of Syria into the fold of the Arab League, spokesperson of the French Foreign Ministry Anne-Claire Legendre said that "nothing justifies normalization." "Assad remains the enemy of his own people," added Legendre.

France severed all diplomatic ties with Syria in 2011.
The French Foreign Ministry made it clear on multiple occasions that it has no intention of changing its stance vis-a-vis the Assad regime. Similarly, EU foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell said in early May, after the publication of the decision on Assad and the Arab League, that nothing has changed about the European Union’s position toward Syria.
The current sanctions are still in effect, and the basic condition for normalizing relations with the Syrian regime is a political change in the country,” stated Borrell.


FLASHBACK: Interview given by M. Laurent Fabius,
Minister of Foreign Affairs
Consulate General of France in New York, 2012

"Bashar al-Assad is the murderer of his people. He must leave power – the sooner the better. Until now, the actions taken to that end have come up against two obstacles.
The first derives from the lack of consensus at the UN Security Council, because of the Russians and Chinese. The second is military: the Syrian army is powerful. No state is ready today to contemplate a ground operation. The risks of regional contagion would be dreadful, particularly in Lebanon.
In this context, France is adopting a three-pronged approach. Firstly, toughening sanctions, if possible at Security Council level. Secondly, we must work with Russia, who plays a decisive role. .. Finally, we must encourage the Syrian opposition to come together..."

Griffin Tarpley: Press TV, 17-8-2012

Assad was supposed to be brought down in July, I think July 18th, terror attacks to decapitate the Syrian armed forces, the shipping in of thousands and thousands of new death squad members from many other countries, etc...
That has now failed. As far as we can see from the outside, the death squads have been driven out of many parts of Aleppo. So the death squads once again are losing and the Syrian government is still there...
The US, the British, the French and indeed the Israelis are now apoplectic. That’s what you see with [French Foreign Minister Laurent] Fabius. I would call attention to the language he decided when he says ‘the Syrian regime should be smashed fast and that Assad doesn’t deserve to be on this earth’.
This is a language we haven’t heard in Europe since the fascist era. This is the language of a fascist dictatorship and, well, Fabius is not quite that yet but you get the idea. It’s going in that direction.


aleppo, 'freedom-fighters' 2012, 2013, 2014

"The plan is to destroy the modern Arab state of Syria"
Dr Makram Khoury-Machool, Palestinian scholar, based in Cambridge, UK

The plan is to destroy the modern Arab state of Syria that emerged after WWI and in the 1940s, and, where possible, to establish new religious states (similar to the Jewish state of Israel).
In this way, Arab power and along with it, the Pan-Arab ideology of Michel Aflaq and Antun Sa’ade (both Arab Christians) and Nasser of Egypt, would disappear.
This process began when, in 1978-9 under Sadat, Egypt signed its peace treaty with Israel, and was followed by the destruction of Lebanon in 1982, the second Intifada in 1987, and the economic takeover of Iraq in 2003. It was then followed in Libya with the seizing of oil and gas in 2011.
Therefore, in order to keep the US-Israel hegemony, the West needs to align states along sectarian lines (Sunni-Shiite) rather than on Pan-Arabism.
Indeed, this process was boosted after the occupation of Iraq and the toppling of the Ba’ath party...

Syria returns Légion d'honneur award to France
BBC News, 20-4-2018

Syria has returned to France the prestigious Légion d'honneur presented to President Bashar al-Assad, saying he would not wear the award of a country that was a "slave" to America. The award was returned to France via the Romanian embassy in Damascus.
The move comes days after France said a "disciplinary procedure" for withdrawing the award was under way.
President Assad was decorated with the highest class of the award, the grand-croix, in 2001 after he took power following the death of his father.

"The ministry of foreign affairs... has returned to the French republic... the decoration of the grand-croix of the Légion d'honneur awarded to President Assad," the Syrian foreign ministry said in a statement.
"It is no honour for President Assad to wear a decoration attributed by a slave country and follower of the United States that supports terrorists," it added.

"Any community with only one dominant power is always a dangerous one."
"That's why I favor a multipolar world, in which Europe obviously has its place."
Jacques Chirac 2003

"Go back to the principles of the French Revolution"
President Bashar al-Assad gave an interview to the French daily Le Figaro
Syrian Arab News Agency, 3-9-2013

-- Malbrunot: How can we stop the war, the crisis in Syria has been on going for more than two-and-half years? You have suggested a National Unity government, the international community has suggested Geneva II, how can we stop the blood bath in Syria?
-- President al-Assad: Discussing a solution at the beginning of the crisis is very different to discussing it today. From the beginning I have emphasised that a resolution can only be achieved through dialogue, which would lead to solutions that can be implemented through political measures.
The situation today is different; today we are fighting terrorists, 80-90% of them affiliated to Al-Qaeda. These terrorists are not interested in reform, or politics, or legislations. The only way to deal with the terrorists is to strike them; only then can we talk about political steps. So in response to your question, the solution today lies in stopping the influx of terrorists into Syria and stopping the financial, military or any other support they receive. ...

-- Malbrunot: French Parliamentarians will meet on Wednesday. There is a big debate in France now, with some believing that Hollande has gone too far on this issue. What is your message to the French Parliamentarians before they convene and vote on the strike?
-- President al-Assad: How can the parliamentarians convince the French public that their country is secular, yet at the same time it supports extremism and sectarianism in other parts of the world?
My message to the French Parliamentarians is: go back to the principles of the French Revolution that the whole world is proud of: Liberty, Justice, Equality. ...

The Middle East Stabilises,
"a new mood has arisen"
Alastair Crooke, Al Mayadeen, 28 May 2023

A new mood has arisen: Anger is building across the world. To those that have been vilified, sanctioned and attacked in the name of the ‘Rules-based Order’ the message is clear: You are not alone; many peoples are voicing their anger and discontent.
The divisive ‘with us’, or be treated as extremist threat if ‘against us’ dogma is being overthrown. US foreign policy is crumbling across the Middle East, and in Asia, Africa and South America.

In his speech, Bashar Al-Assad spoke of the opportunity this wave of discontent and anger has provided to the Region to revise its dispositions – away from Western dominance and intervention:
Today we are facing an opportunity to change the international situation that appears in the form of a unipolar world, a result of the dominance of the West, who lacks all ethics and principles …
This historic opportunity requires the Arab World to reposition itself and invest in the positive atmosphere of reconciliation that preceded today’s summit”, Al-Assad added, referring to recent diplomatic initiatives which resulted in Saudi Arabia’s resumption of diplomatic ties with Tehran and Damascus.

President Al-Assad also stressed the need to consolidate Arab culture in the face of “modern liberalism, which targets the innate affiliations of man and strips him of his morals and identity”.
This latter point by Al-Assad -- ‘the cultural danger’ associated with contemporary woke liberalism -- is noticeably becoming a global theme, as states emphasise the wish to manage lives in their own way of being.
Of course, Syria is not yet sovereign. US and Turkish forces, together with foreign-backed militia, occupy significant portions of Syrian land. Nonetheless, the Arab League's position on rejecting foreign intervention and their de-facto legitimisation of the Syrian government will assist Damascus in finding a negotiated outcome.


Libyan Government Forms New “Islamic Monitoring” Body
By ,Mohamed Emad, Libya Review, May 26, 2023

Social media users criticized the decision made by the General Authority for Libyan Endowments and Islamic Affairs, based in Tripoli, regarding the establishment of the ‘Hurras Al-Fadhilah – Virtue Guards’ program.
The Authority said that the program “aims to promote virtue and prevent vice in society,” but critics argue that it may lead to the imposition of conservative Islamic values on citizens.
The Authority announced the launch of the program, stating that it will join a group of programs aimed at developing advocacy, promoting values, enhancing good morals, and immunizing society from all forms of moral and doctrinal deviation.
The Authority explained that through the program, “everyone will seek to play a role in saving humanity from the clutches of deviation, atheism, proselytism, and intellectual and doctrinal terrorism.”

Awqaf Authority launches program
to spread religious teachings in schools
Libya Update News, Friday, January 27, 2023

The General Awqaf Authority in Tripoli, which is controlled by the former Grand Mufti of Libya, al-Sadiq al-Ghariani, seeks to spread extremist ideology in Libya through religious schools in Tripoli and its environs, in addition to a religious program that targets primary and preparatory public schools.
The Awqaf Authority in the government of Abdul Hamid Dbeibeh, announced the launch of a program in public schools, which it said, “aims to spread religious awareness in schools, and to combat intellectual and cultural invasion,” during a meeting of the authority with Education Minister Musa al-Maqryef on Thursday.
In April 2022, Abdul Hamid Dbeibeh granted Sadiq al-Ghariani, permission, by official decree No. 709, to establish religious schools for the stages of preparatory and secondary education.
Al-Ghariani issued a decree to put Dbeibeh’s decision into action and established several religious schools in various municipalities, especially in Tripoli and the cities around it.

Flashback: Libya's grand mufti thanks Qatar, Turkey
Middle East Monitor, May 23, 2020

Libya's Grand Mufti Sadiq Al-Ghariani thanked Qatar and Turkey for their support of the Libyan people's stability.
In contrast, he attacked the United Arab Emirates (UAE), accusing it of killing Libyans with its drones in support of the militias of the coupist Major General Khalifa Haftar.
"I salute the prince, government, and people of the brotherly country Qatar, as it has been supporting the Libyan people all this time, and ever since the outbreak of the blessed revolution (in 2011)..."
He continued: "May Allah reward Qatar with good, as it has made its best... I also salute and thank the president, government, and people of the brotherly country Turkey, especially after signing the joint security cooperation agreement with the legitimate Libyan Government of National Accord (GNA)."
He further indicated: "May Allah reward the Turkish president with good. He has implemented this agreement's requirements at the best, bearing the suffering, hostility, and an internal and external confrontation from the opposition that has attacked him."
He noted: "The Turkish president, may Allah reward him well... He supported the Libyan issue with all that he could, and he moved between capitals in support of the Libyan issue."
"Turkey should have a priority in our economic relations, security cooperation, and oil and gas exploration, as it has priority before any other country."

The War in Ukraine Was Provoked
and Why That Matters to Achieve Peace
Jeffrey D. Sachs, Common Dreams, May 23, 2023

Regarding the Ukraine War, the Biden administration has repeatedly and falsely claimed that the Ukraine War started with an unprovoked attack by Russia on Ukraine on February 24, 2022.
In fact, the war was provoked by the U.S. in ways that leading U.S. diplomats anticipated for decades in the lead-up to the war, meaning that the war could have been avoided and should now be stopped through negotiations.
Recognizing that the war was provoked helps us to understand how to stop it.
It doesn’t justify Russia’s invasion. A far better approach for Russia might have been to step up diplomacy with Europe and with the non-Western world to explain and oppose U.S. militarism and unilateralism. In fact, the relentless U.S. push to expand NATO is widely opposed throughout the world, so Russian diplomacy rather than war would likely have been effective.

The Biden team uses the word “unprovoked” incessantly, most recently in Biden’s major speech on the first-year anniversary of the war, in a recent NATO statement, and in the most recent G7 statement.
Mainstream media friendly to Biden simply parrot the White House. The New York Times is the lead culprit, describing the invasion as “unprovoked” no fewer than 26 times, in five editorials, 14 opinion columns by NYT writers, and seven guest op-eds!
There were in fact two main U.S. provocations. The first was the U.S. intention to expand NATO to Ukraine and Georgia in order to surround Russia in the Black Sea region by NATO countries (Ukraine, Romania, Bulgaria, Turkey, and Georgia, in counterclockwise order).
The second was the U.S. role in installing a Russophobic regime in Ukraine by the violent overthrow of Ukraine’s pro-Russian President, Viktor Yanukovych, in February 2014.
The shooting war in Ukraine began with Yanukovych’s overthrow nine years ago, not in February 2022 as the U.S. government, NATO, and the G7 leaders would have us believe.

Biden and his foreign policy team refuse to discuss these roots of the war.
To recognize them would undermine the administration in three ways. First, it would expose the fact that the war could have been avoided, or stopped early, sparing Ukraine its current devastation and the U.S. more than $100 billion in outlays to date.
Second, it would expose President Biden’s personal role in the war as a participant in the overthrow of Yanukovych, and before that as a staunch backer of the military-industrial complex and very early advocate of NATO enlargement.
Third, it would push Biden to the negotiating table, undermining the administration’s continued push for NATO expansion.

Sergei Glazyev, an adviser to Putin, accused Washington on February 6 of a "clear breach" of a 1994 treaty giving the United States and Russia roles as co-guarantors of security in Ukraine.
"The stunts the Americans are pulling today by crudely interfering in Ukraine's domestic affairs in a unilateral manner are an obvious violation" of the agreement, he said. radio free europe, 7-2-2014
U.S. planning for NATO expansion began early in the 1990s, well before Vladimir Putin was Russia’s president. In 1997, national security expert Zbigniew Brzezinski spelled out the NATO expansion timeline with remarkable precision...
Ukraine’s leaders knew clearly that pressing for NATO enlargement to Ukraine would mean war. Former Zelensky advisor Oleksiy Arestovych declared in a 2019 interview “that our price for joining NATO is a big war with Russia.”

During 2010-2013, Viktor Yanukovych pushed neutrality, in line with Ukrainian public opinion.
The U.S. worked covertly to overthrow Yanukovych, as captured vividly in the tape of then U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and U.S. Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt planning the post-Yanukovych government weeks before the violent overthrow of Yanukovych.
Nuland makes clear on the call that she was coordinating closely with then Vice President Biden and his national security advisor Jake Sullivan, the same Biden-Nuland-Sullivan team now at the center of U.S. policy vis-à-vis Ukraine.
After Yanukovych’s overthrow, the war broke out in the Donbas, while Russia claimed Crimea.
The new Ukrainian government appealed for NATO membership, and the U.S. armed and helped restructure the Ukrainian army to make it interoperable with NATO...

The Biden administration’s insistence on NATO enlargement to Ukraine has made Ukraine a victim of misconceived and unachievable U.S. military aspirations. It’s time for the provocations to stop, and for negotiations to restore peace to Ukraine.

Failure to back Ukraine would send signal to China
about taking Taiwan, Sen. Graham says
By Sergiy Voloshin, Reuters, May 27, 2023

If the United States fails to back Ukraine enough in the war against Russia, that would send a signal to China that it could take Taiwan, a senior Senator said on a visit to Kyiv on Friday.
Lindsey Graham, a Republican, said after meeting President Volodymyr Zelenskiy that U.S. President Joe Biden should send more weapons to Ukraine in addition to the more than $35 billion of weaponry and military hardware already provided ("the best money we've ever spent...").
A hard line toward China is one of the few policies with bipartisan support in the deeply divided U.S. Congress.
Beijing considers Taiwan part of its territory. Chinese armed forces conducted exercises, fired missiles over Taiwan and cut military contacts with Washington after former House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited the self-governed island in August 2022.
"There can be no backing off of helping Ukraine because if we fail here, there goes Taiwan," Graham told reporters.
"If you're running for President, as a Republican or Democrat, I don't know how you can make the argument that we're stronger against China if we pull the plug on Ukraine - that makes zero sense. What I want the Chinese to see is that invading a neighbor is not as easy as it looks."
He continued: "The best way to protect Taiwan and world order is for (Russian President Vladimir) Putin to lose."

Flashback - Libya 2011
Graham-McCain: It would have been 'fine'
if NATO bombing killed Gadhafi

U.S. Republican Senator John McCain said it would be "fine" if NATO air strikes killed Libyan leader Muammar Gadhafi while targeting his command centers. "We should be taking out his command and control, and if he is killed or injured because of that, that's fine," McCain said on CBS' "Face the Nation." "But we ought to have a strategy to help the rebels succeed and overthrow Gadhafi and everybody associated with him."
Republican Senator Lindsey Graham said Gadhafi was a "legitimate military target" because he was acting outside of international law and attacking civilians. "He's the command and control source. He's not the legitimate leader of Libya. And the way to get this to end is to go after the people around him and his support network," Graham said on "Fox News Sunday."
"He's the source of the problem. He is not the legitimate leader of Libya. He should be brought to justice or killed," Graham said. (Haaretz-Reuters, 2-5-2011)

US media in praise of lynching
Russia Today, October 26, 2011

The mainstream US media has reacted to Muammar Gaddafi's brutal lynching with a tidal wave of cheers and approval, trumpeting the Colonel’s death as the start of a new era for Libya.
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton led the triumphant celebrations of Gaddafi’s death with her immortal line, “We came, we saw, he died!” - words which are sure to be remembered far beyond America’s shores...
It cost us a trillion dollars to get Saddam and a billion dollars to get Gaddafi,” remarked television host Bill Maher. “And Libya says they’re going to pay back the billion that we spent, too. So it’s going to end up being sort of free for nothing,” cheered the host of MSNBC’s The Rachel Maddow Show.
Senator Lindsey Graham gave it to us straight: “Let’s get in on the ground, there is a lot of money to be made in the future in Libya, there is a lot of oil to be produced,” he said.
“Boy, I tell you, these Arab dictators – they’re not very original. Just like Saddam Hussein, caught him in a hole,” sneered Bill Maher.

Graham and McCain on End of Qadaffi Regime in Libya
US-Senator-Graham-Website, Aug 22 2011

Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senators John McCain (R-AZ) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) today released the following statement regarding the end of the Qadaffi regime in Libya is in Libya:
“The end of the Qadaffi regime in Libya is a victory for the Libyan people and for the broader cause of freedom in the Middle East and throughout the world..."
“The uprising in Libya was inspired by the peaceful protest movements that succeeded in toppling long-ruling autocratic regimes in Tunisia and Egypt earlier this year. But while Presidents Mubarak and Ben Ali left office quickly, Qaddafi adopted a radically different approach – attempting to preserve his regime by unleashing the most brutal possible violence.

Qaddafi's fall should now send a clear message to dictators throughout the region and beyond that this strategy will fail. In particular, that is a lesson for Bashar al Assad, and we are confident that his regime will soon join Qaddafi's on the ash heap of history.


Iran, Saudi Arabia, UAE attend BRICS meeting
in South Africa, as bloc mulls expansion
Al-Monitor News, June 2, 2023

Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates foreign ministers attended the BRICS meeting in South Africa this week, as the bloc seeks to expand its membership to counterbalance Western powers.
Iran's Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud and UAE Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan attended the ministerial meeting of the BRICS nations on Thursday and held bilateral meetings on Friday.
Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Iran are not members of the bloc, which is currently comprised of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.
Iran submitted an application last year to join as an observer state. Saudi Arabia is in discussions to join BRICS' lender bank, the New Development Bank, the Financial Times reported this week. Created in 2014, the bank is seen as a counterweight to the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.

Upon his departure from Tehran, Amir-Abdollahian hailed BRICS as a body that represents half of the global population and called his visit an example of Iran's "active presence at international bodies" and a step in Iran's "balanced" foreign policy.
In a pre-recorded interview broadcast on state TV after his departure, Amir-Abdollahian said that a key topic on his agenda in Cape Town would be "de-dollarization" in trade with BRICS member states.
Iranian officials have been persistently pursuing that goal in their recent meetings with friendly states. The country's Deputy Foreign Minister for Economic Affairs Mehdi Safari announced last month that the Islamic Republic has already proposed to member states of both BRICS and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization to designate a non-dollar currency for their trade ties "to neutralize the impacts of unilateral sanctions."


Controversy ensues as Jordan
grants license to Ba'ath party
Shafaq News [Iraq] 1-6-2023

A heated debate has been unfolding in Iraq for several days after the Election Commission in Jordan announced that it had granted the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party a license to legally engage in political activities within the kingdom.
While Amman asserts that the party is an indigenous Jordanian political organization operating solely within the borders of the kingdom, Iraqi political factions express their strong opposition to granting a license to the party, particularly following the chants by its supporters calling for its return to Iraq and a change in the current political system.
These factions caution that despite the party being banned in Iraq, their concerns stem from the fact that the Ba'ath Party advocates for Arab nationalism, a call that transcends the borders of Jordan and extends to other nations.

Scores of individuals took to the streets of the Iraqi capital yesterday morning in angry protests against the Jordanian authorities allowing the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party to engage in political activities on its soil. They demanded that the Iraqi government take necessary measures against Amman.
The Islamic Dawa Party, led by former Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, strongly protested against granting the Ba'ath Party permission to operate in Jordan, considering it a "provocative act."
In contrast, Saleh al-Mutlaq, former Deputy Prime Minister, pointed out that "the Ba'ath Party exists in Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, and Sudan, and it competes in elections.
Al-Mutlaq, who spoke to Shafaq News agency, clarified that "the Ba'ath Party in Iraq is currently banned. However, the political system that has been in place for 20 years and still fears a party that has been eradicated is an insecure system that does not deserve to lead Iraq."
He called on the current political system to "change its approach" and allow anyone who desires to run for elections.


Aflaq: An essential aspect of Arab nationalism is its humanism."

For nearly four decades, the Ba'ath Party ruled Iraq, with former President Saddam Hussein at the helm of power before being toppled by the United States and its allies in the Third Gulf War in 2003.


The Biden Administration’s Latest
Tone-Deaf Foreign Policy Positions
Ted Galen Carpenter, Monday June 5, 2023

There has been obvious movement in recent months on the part of leading Arab powers to temper their feud with Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad.
Only a few years ago, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and other countries were in a partnership with Turkey and the United States to unseat Assad – largely because of his close alliance with Iran. Now, those same powers have changed course dramatically, seeking a rapprochement with both Damascus and Tehran. Important signals of the new political environment were Saudi Arabia’s restoration of diplomatic relations with Iran and Syria’s re-entry to the Arab League.
Instead of going along with the new diplomatic and geopolitical realities in the region, the Biden administration chose this moment to escalate its attempts to isolate Assad.
On May 30, Washington imposed new economic sanctions on Syria.
As Dave DeCamp noted, the businesses were targeted using the Caesar Act, a law the US has used to impose sanctions on Syria that are specifically designed to prevent the country’s reconstruction."

The worst case of a tone-deaf policy is the administration’s petulant response to countries that decline to go along with Washington’s efforts to isolate Russia.
In the past few weeks, US policymakers even have hinted about imposing economic penalties on South Africa for continuing to trade with Moscow. In mid-May, the US ambassador to South Africa specifically accused that country of covertly providing arms to Russia. His accusation drew an immediate, angry rebuke from Pretoria.
Such behavior reflects Washington’s broader frustration with the faltering of its anti-Russia campaign. Early on, Biden and his aides fostered the myth that the world was united in its desire to punish Russia for the Kremlin’s aggression against Ukraine.
The reality is that the vast majority of countries, including such major players as China, India, Brazil, and South Africa, have refused to impose sanctions on Russia...


How JFK would pursue peace in Ukraine
Jeffrey Sachs, Jordan Times, June 04, 2023

President John F. Kennedy (JFK) was one of the world’s great peacemakers.
In his dazzling and unsurpassed Peace Speech, delivered exactly sixty years ago on June 10, 1963, Kennedy laid out his formula for peace with the Soviet Union.
Kennedy’s Peace Speech highlights how Joe Biden’s approach to Russia and the Ukraine War needs a dramatic reorientation. Until now, Biden has not followed the precepts that Kennedy recommended to find peace.
A mathematician would call JFK’s speech a “constructive proof” of how to make peace, since the speech itself contributed directly to the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty signed by the US and Soviet Union in July 1963.
Upon receipt of the speech, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev told Kennedy’s envoy to Russia, Averell Harriman, that the speech was the greatest by an American president since Franklin D. Roosevelt, and that he wanted to pursue peace with Kennedy.

In the speech, Kennedy describes peace “as the necessary rational end [goal] of rational men”.
Yet he acknowledges that peacemaking is not easy: “I realise that the pursuit of peace is not as dramatic as the pursuit of war, and frequently the words of the pursuer fall on deaf ears. But we have no more urgent task.”
The deepest key to peace, in Kennedy’s view, is the fact that both sides want peace. It is easy to fall into the trap, warns Kennedy, of blaming a conflict only on the other side. It is easy to fall into the trap of insisting that only the adversary should change their attitudes and behavior. Kennedy is very clear: “We must reexamine our own attitude, as individuals and as a Nation, or our attitude is as essential as theirs.”
Crucially, said Kennedy, we must not “see only a distorted and desperate view of the other side”. We must not “see conflict as inevitable, accommodation as impossible, and communication as nothing more than an exchange of threats”.
Kennedy emphasised the importance of direct communications between the two adversaries. Peace, he said, “will require increased understanding between the Soviets and ourselves. And increased understanding will require increased contact and communication. One step in this direction is the proposed arrangement for a direct line between Moscow and Washington, to avoid on each side the dangerous delays, misunderstandings, and mis-readings of the other’s actions which might occur at a time of crisis”.

In the context of the Ukraine War, Joe Biden has behaved almost the opposite of JFK.
He has personally and repeatedly denigrated Russian President Vladimir Putin. His administration has defined the US war aim as the weakening of Russia. Biden has avoided all communications with Putin. They have apparently not spoken once since February 2022, and Biden rebuffed a bilateral meeting with Putin at last year’s G-20 Summit in Bali, Indonesia. Biden has refused to even acknowledge, much less to address, Russia’s deep security concerns....


"There is no Department of Peace"
by Ralph Nader, CounterPunch, June 5, 2023

The Military Budget, which devours over half of the entire federal government’s operational expenditures, has been exempted by Joe Biden and the Congressional Republicans from any reductions in the debt limit deal just reached.
Also exempted are hundreds of billions of dollars in yearly diverse corporate subsidies to big business freeloaders.
Most of the cuts will slash the domestic programs that protect the health, safety and economic well-being of the American people. Cuts will also be made to the starved I.R.S. budget, further weakening its capacity to pursue super-rich tax cheats and giant corporate tax escapees.
The GOP insisted on continuing its aiding and abetting of grand-scale tax evasion that fuels bigger deficits.
Biden also agreed not to restore any of Trump’s tax cuts on these same plutocrats and corporatists who refuse to pay for the undeclared wars of Empire from which they massively profit....

But hey, our war machine can remotely vaporize a cluster of young men idly standing on a dusty road in Yemen with a drone operator pushing buttons in Virginia and Nevada. Over a trillion and a half dollars will be spent on upgrading our nuclear bombs with the same amount being wasted on strategically useless F-35 fighter planes.
And remember citizens, when the government talks war, organizes for war, has military bases in a hundred countries and provokes belligerence, wars are likely to happen.
Not even the money spent on one F-35 is being devoted to waging peace, initiating ceasefire negotiations and launching efforts for international arms control treaties...
There is no Department of Peace, and the State Department is more bellicose than the Pentagon in its war of words...

Venezuela's Maduro visit to Saudi Arabia
Salim A. Essaid, Al-Monitor News, June 6, 2023

High-level meetings between Saudi Arabia and Venezuela that began in Jeddah on Monday including with the country's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, demonstrate the kingdom’s next diplomatic wave seeking to balance between the traditional East versus West political blocs and gain greater freedom of movement on the global stage.


maduro - blinken - mbs - 2023

The visit coming hours before US Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s arrival in Jeddah on Tuesday, is a signal to Washington that has imposed sanctions on the struggling Latin American country for more than 15 years.
The Biden administration, however, has relaxed some of these sanctions and has a direct negotiating channel with the government of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.
Maduro arrived in Jeddah early Monday, after visiting Turkey, along with a delegation that included First Lady Cilia Flores, Foreign Affairs Minister Yvan Eduardo, Minister of Oil Pedro Rafael along with other key ministers, according to official statements. They met with the Saudi Crown Prince along with a number of ministerial counterparts.
Monday’s visit was the first for Maduro to the kingdom since 2015.

To strengthen its security globally, Saudi Arabia has taken major steps to improve its global partnerships in a series of normalization agreements with countries including Iran, Syria, and Canada — all this year.
The kingdom also approved a decision to join the geopolitical body, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, in March. Along with Venezuela, it is currently seeking to join the emerging national economy group BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) to expand its economic and geopolitical bridges with the Global South...


The World Economy Is Changing
by Richard D. Wolff, CounterPunch, 7-6-2023

The year 2020 marked parity between the total GDP of the G7 (the U.S. plus allies) and the total GDP of the BRICS group (China plus allies).
Since then, the BRICS economies grew faster than the G7 economies. Now a third of total world output comes from the BRICS countries while the G7 accounts for below 30 percent.

The evident failure of the economic sanctions war against Russia offers yet more evidence of the relative strength of the BRICS alliance.
That alliance now can and does offer nations alternatives to accommodating the demands and pressures of the once-hegemonic G7.
The latter’s efforts to isolate Russia seem to have boomeranged and exposed instead the relative isolation of the G7. Even France’s Macron wondered out loud whether France might be betting on the wrong horse in that G7 vs. BRICS economic race just under the surface of the Ukraine war. Perhaps earlier, less-developed precursors of that race influenced failed U.S. land wars in Asia from Korea through Vietnam to Afghanistan and Iraq.

China increasingly competes openly with the United States and its international lending allies (the IMF and the World Bank) in development loans to the Global South....
De-dollarization represents yet another dimension of the now rapid realignments in the world economy.
Since 2000, the proportion of central banks’ currency reserves held in U.S. dollars has fallen by half. That decline continues. Every week brings news of countries cutting trade and investment payments in U.S. dollars in favor of payments in their own currencies or other currencies than the U.S. dollar.
Saudi Arabia is closing down the petrodollar system that crucially supported the U.S. dollar as the pre-eminent global currency...

Neoliberal globalization benefited China disproportionally. So China and BRICS countries have replaced the United States as the champion of continuing a broadly defined global free trade and capital movements regime.
Defusing conflicts, especially in the contentious Middle East, enables China to promote the peaceful world economy in which it prospered. In contrast, the economic nationalism (trade wars, tariff policies, targeted sanctions, etc.) pursued by Trump and Biden has struck China as a threat and a danger. In reaction, China has been able to mobilize many other nations to resist and oppose United States and G7 policies in various global forums.

The source of China’s remarkable economic growth—and the key to BRICS countries’ now successful challenge to the G7’s global economic dominance—has been its hybrid economic model.
China broke from the Soviet model by not organizing industry as primarily state-owned-and-operated enterprises. It broke from the U.S. model by not organizing industries as privately owned and operated enterprises. Instead, it organized a hybrid combining both state and private enterprises under the political supervision and ultimate control of the Chinese Communist Party.
This hybrid macroeconomic structure enabled China’s economic growth to outperform both the USSR and the United States...

Richard Wolff is the author of Capitalism Hits the Fan and Capitalism’s Crisis Deepens. He is founder of Democracy at Work.


Iran Reopens Embassy in Saudi Arabia After Seven Years
FARS News Agency [Iran], 7-6-2023

Tehran officially reopened its embassy in Saudi capital Riyadh on Tuesday, seven years after it was closed due to a diplomatic rift between the two regional powers.
The development came months after the two regional powers agreed to end a diplomatic rift under a China-brokered deal.
A ceremony was held inside the embassy's compound with dozens of diplomats and officials attending the reopening of the diplomatic mission for the first time in seven years.
"We consider today an important day in the relations of the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia," Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Alireza Bigdeli told a flag-raising ceremony. "The cooperation between the countries is entering a new era," he added.
There is still no official confirmation on when the Saudi embassy in Tehran or the kingdom’s consulate in Mashhad will officially reopen or who its ambassador will be.


China, Palestine upgrade ties to
‘milestone’ strategic partnership
By Global Times staff reporters: Jun 14, 2023

China and Palestine on Wednesday upgraded their bilateral relations to a strategic partnership under the witness of Chinese President Xi Jinping and visiting Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. Xi stressed that China and Palestine are good friends and good partners who trust and support each other.
China was one of the first countries to recognize the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and the State of Palestine, and has all along firmly supported the Palestinian people's just cause of restoring their legitimate national rights, Xi said.
Facing unprecedented changes in the world and the new developments in the Middle East, China stands ready to strengthen coordination and cooperation with Palestine, and work for a comprehensive, just and durable solution to the Palestinian question at an early date, Xi noted.
Since the establishment of bilateral diplomatic relations in 1988, China has always assisted within its capacity with Palestine's economic development and improving people's livelihoods.
China aided Palestine in the construction of more than 40 projects including schools and roads, sent expert teams, medical supplies and vaccines during the COVID-19 pandemic, and in June 2023, China pledged a further $1 million donation to the Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East.

In a joint statement on the upgrade of bilateral relations issued on Wednesday, the two sides reiterated mutual support on issues of core interests and key concerns.
Palestine upholds the one-China principle and supports all efforts made by the Chinese government to achieve national reunification… and condemns external interference in China's internal affairs including Hong Kong and Xinjiang-related affairs.
China supports Palestine to become a full member of the UN and to resume peace talks with Israel on the basis of the principle of "land for peace," relevant UN resolutions, and the "two-state solution" to achieve peaceful coexistence between Palestine and Israel.

Xi, during the Wednesday meeting with Abbas, put forward a three-point proposal for the settlement of the Palestinian question.
First, the fundamental solution lies in the establishment of an independent state of Palestine that enjoys full sovereignty on the basis of the 1967 borders and with east Jerusalem as its capital. Second, Palestine's economic and livelihood needs should be met. Third, it is important to keep to the right direction of peace talks.
A large-scale, more authoritative and more influential international peace conference should be convened to create conditions for the resumption of peace talks and contribute tangible efforts to help Palestine and Israel live in peace, Xi said.

China's role and efforts have been recognized, as a recent poll showed that 80 percent of Palestinians welcome Chinese offers to mediate in the Palestine-Israel conflict, while the US is seen as the least favorite option.


Israel National News
Supreme Planning Council approves:
4,500 housing units in Judea and Samaria
Arutz Sheva, 18-6-2023

The agenda for the Supreme Planning Council for Judea and Samaria [occupied West Bank-WD] was published today (Sunday). The agenda includes the approval of over 4,500 housing units in various communities in Judea and Samaria.
The published plans join the nearly ten thousand units published at the previous meeting of the Supreme Planning Council. With the new plans, more housing units have been approved in the first six months of 2023 than at any other six-month period of the last decade.
The plans include the construction of 326 units in Neve Tsuf, 228 units in Givat Zeev, 258 units in Beitar Ilit, 340 units in Ma'ale Adumim, 381 units in Revava, 343 units in Elkana, 287 units in Adora, and 196 units in Telem.
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said: "The construction boom in Judea and Samaria and in all parts of our country continues. As we promised, today we are advancing the construction of thousands more new units in Judea and Samaria.
Judea and Samaria residents are ceasing to be second-class citizens and the natural development in settlements is being reflected in construction and expansion."
"I thank Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for their cooperation. I would also like to thank the staff of the Settlement Administration at the Ministry of Defense and the Planning Office for their hard and determined work.


Smotrich 2019 - 2023

G-d willing, we will continue to develop the settlements and strengthen the Israeli hold on the territory," Smotrich said.


Vladimir Putin & the multipolar order
Sputnik Globe News, 17-6-2023

At the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum on Friday, Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke to the global dynamic of moving toward a multipolar order and away from one dominated by Europe and the United States.
The Russian leader noted that Western sanctions, intended to strangle Russia’s economy, have instead accelerated the process of decentering the West and spurred new relationships between Russia and partners in Africa and Asia.
He also pointed to increased trade in rubles and yuan, although he cautioned that Russia has never intended to “de-dollarize” its economy.

Professor Joe Siracusa, a political scientist and dean of Global Futures at Curtin University in Western Australia, told Sputnik on Friday that Putin was “simply registering what is already a reality.”
“The world has already broken up, with the BRICS and the Shanghai Cooperation Agreement, and we got the Western groups. The world is broken up into multi-polar agencies.
Multipolarity is the natural condition of the world,” said Paolo Raffone, a strategic analyst and director of the CIPI Foundation in Brussels, Belgium. “Unilaterality can be imposed by dominion and force but cannot be endured for a long time.”
“From 1945 to 1991, the world was locked in a bipolarity because of the post-WWII balance of power and the persistence of European colonial practices.
After the end of European colonial practices and the voluntary dissolution of the USSR, the world’s natural multipolar trend regained pace,” but that changed with US and UK “interference” with the process, he explained.
“Since 2001, the USA and UK have weaponized globalization, imposing the primacy of security interests on economic development.
After the financial crash of 2008, the Western powers entered a distress era while others, namely China, Russia, and some large southern countries, expanded their free actions and activities based on national interest and cooperation,” he said....

During his remarks in St. Petersburg, Putin also spoke of the special military operation in Ukraine, which is in its 16th month and where Ukraine has recently launched a new counteroffensive heavily based on Western-supplied weapons.
Putin noted that Ukraine is on the verge of running out of weapons while Russian military production is continuing to ramp up, leading him to predict that Kiev has no chance of winning.
Putin spoke of the neo-Nazi atrocities in Ukraine, noting that the goal of the special military operation is the de-Nazification of Ukraine.

“This idea of de-Nazification, which, of course, is one of the basis of the allied occupation of Germany and Austria after the second World War, has lost its significance in the West," professor Joe Siracusa told Sputnik.
"That is, Western audiences aren't familiar with what the president is talking about. I mean, the idea of de-Nazification is a project that goes on for a 100 years, you just don't knock the DNA out of these people overnight. I understand it in its long historical terms. I think it could have been explained a little better. And I think the Western press made no effort to explain it at all.”

Putin: "Zelensky is a disgrace to the Jewish people"
Kremlin website, 16-6-2023

Dimitri Simes: You know very well that perhaps no other statement of yours about Ukraine irritates the collective West more than the statement that Nazism plays a large role in Ukrainian politics and that denazification is required.
In response, you are told: “What are you talking about? [President of Ukraine Vladimir] Zelensky is Jewish. He is a legitimately elected president, and it is clear that he stands for everything good (Western) against everything bad (Russian). So it is not for you to say that he sides with the Nazis.” How do you respond to this?

Vladimir Putin: I have had many Jewish friends since childhood. They say: Zelensky is not a Jew but a disgrace to the Jewish people.
This is not a joke or irony. Do you understand? After all, neo-Nazis, followers of Hitler, have been raised on pedestals as today’s heroes in Ukraine.
The Holocaust means killing 6 million Jews, one and a half million of which were killed in Ukraine, and primarily at the hands of Bandera followers.

Wikipedia info: Stepan Andriyovych Bandera (1 January 1909 – 15 October 1959) was a Ukrainian far-right leader of the radical, militant wing of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, the OUN-B.
Bandera remains a highly controversial figure in Ukraine. Many Ukrainians hail him as a role model hero or as a martyred liberation fighter, while other Ukrainians, particularly in the south and east, condemn him as a fascist Nazi collaborator who was, together with his followers, responsible for massacres of Polish and Jewish civilians during World War II.

I had no doubt that you would ask such a question and last night, when I was going to bed, I called Moscow and asked them to compile some materials. I called them when I was here already.
Look, Yaroslav Stetsko, head of the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists, Bandera’s faction, 1939: “Moscow and Judaism are Ukraine’s greatest enemies. I insist on the extermination the Jews and the need to adapt German methods to dealing with Jewry in Ukraine.”
Another activist. July 10, 1941, the Lvov pogroms, when German units entered Lvov. A certain Stepan Lenkavsky writes, “Regarding the Jews, we accept all methods that will lead to their complete extermination.”
Bandera was an anti-Semite and a neo-Nazi. But no one appears to want to hear that because Zelensky has Jewish blood. ...
Look, in the Soviet Union in the last years of Stalin's life there were members of the Politburo, like Kaganovich, who were Jews. They had many relatives, wives in particular, who were Jewish. And there were Jews in the leadership of the Security Service, including generals. But no one is denying the fact that anti-Semitism existed under Stalin and that there were lawless actions based on it. So, the argument that if someone has Jewish roots, his regime objectively cannot pursue an anti-Semitic policy does not seem credible to me, to say the least...


Israel-Palestine News
Mounting violence in West Bank poses
different challenges to Palestinians and Israelis
The Arab Weekly, Friday 23/06/2023

With the Israeli-occupied West Bank once again in turmoil after the latest bloodshed this week, uncertainty has deepened over the position of 87-year-old Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas with a negotiated peace looking as remote as ever.
Developments have also accentuated the debate within Israel about the impact of its violent military reactions, on its backing by the US and on the normalisation with Arab neighbours.

Since the beginning of the year at least 130 Palestinians and 24 Israelis have been killed in acts of violence by both sides.
A gun battle on Monday in which seven Palestinians were killed and over 90 wounded, followed a day later by the killing of four Israelis and a deadly rampage by Israeli settlers through Palestinian towns, once more underscored the West Bank’s volatility.
It also laid bare the weakness of the Palestinian Authority (PA) in the face of the hundreds of Palestinian militants in flashpoint cities such as Jenin and Nablus, and the expansion of Israeli settlements that further dims Palestinian dreams of a state on land Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East war.

Set up 30 years ago as part of interim peace accords with Israel that Abbas helped craft, the PA has seen its popularity shrivel amid allegations of graft, incompetence and its widely-resented security cooperation arrangements with Israel.
The theme of PA incompetence was picked up on social media again this week as the PA, which exercises limited self-rule, stood by powerless while Jewish settlers attacked Palestinian towns.
The same theme has been picked up on Israeli media from another perspective. The Jerusalem Post said Palestinian militant groups are “exploiting the power vacuum caused by the authority’s lack of governance” as well as Palestinians’ frustration therewith” to entrench themselves in Jenin.

Almost 80% of Palestinians want him [Abbas] to resign, according to polling from the Palestinian Centre for Policy and Survey Research....
An array of senior Fatah leaders has been jostling for position for months, in behind-the-scenes manoeuvring made more complicated by the fact that no elections have been held since 2006 and there is no clear mechanism to decide the succession.
Potential successors include Hussein Al-Sheikh, one of Abbas’ closest allies, reformist figure Mahmoud Dahlan or Marwan Barghouti, a leader of the 2000-06 intifada (uprising) and hero to many Palestinians, who has been imprisoned in Israel for the past two decades.
Much will depend on what Israel is willing to accept but publicly at least, it has avoided taking sides.

“There are two bad alternatives, one is chaos and one is Hamas taking power in the West Bank and both must be prevented,” Israeli military spokesman Daniel Hagari said.
Many Israeli experts see limits to what Israel can achieve military. They see also the damage Jewish settlers do to Israel by running amok.
Former head of IDF military intelligence Amos Yadlin warned that “legitimacy disappears when Palestinian villages are burned and non-involved Palestinian residents are hurt. That is simply destroying Israeli legitimacy.” He said the ultra-religious bloc could derail Israel’s strategic objectives.

Israeli Minister Goldknopf in Evyatar:
There will be 1,000 residents here, I am one of you
Hezki Baruch, Arutz Sheva, 23-6-2023

United Torah Judaism chairman and Minister of Construction and Housing Yitzhak Goldknopf on Thursday visited the community of Evyatar in Samaria [West Bank] and sought to encourage the residents, who had arrived at the community in response to the shooting attack near Eli.
The Minister visited the Beit Midrash (Torah study hall), spoke to the yeshiva students and danced with students and local residents.
"With God's help there will be a community here," declared Goldknopf. "I am not your partner but rather one of you. There will be 10,000 residents here and there will not be one child who will not dance and be happy..."
To the students of the yeshiva, Goldknopf said, "I came here to tell you to continue to 'cultivate and guard' the Land of Israel, there will be no force that will drive us away from here.

Yossi Dagan, head of the Samaria Regional Council, said at the Beit Midrash: "We came here to strengthen you, the yeshiva students, you are our center, you are our future.
"The eyes of all the people of Israel are on the settlement enterprise..." "We are calling on the government to approve Evyatar as a permanent community in the State of Israel. The Minister of Housing is ready to bring planning proposals and build thousands of housing units here, with God's help," added Dagan.
Evyatar was built at the site of a former military outpost following the murder of Guetta in 2021. Residents later left willingly to preempt a conflict with the previous government...

Survey: 48% of Israelis support
military operation in Judea and Samaria
Arutz Sheva [Israel], Jun 23, 2023

Nearly half of Israelis support the launch of a large-scale military operation in Judea and Samaria [occupied West-Bank] following recent deadly terrorist attacks, according to a new poll conducted by Panels Politics Institute Director Dr. Menachem Lazar for Maariv.
In response to the question, whether following the recent terrorist attacks Israel should launch a large-scale military operation in Judea and Samaria, the answers were: 48% answered - "yes", 26% answered - "no", and 26% answered - "I don't know".
71% of respondents who voted for parties in the current coalition supported a military operation, while only 9% of coalition voters said no.
Among respondents who voted for opposition parties, support for a military operation drops to 29%, while 39% oppose such an operation and 32% responded that they do not know.

Iran's Khamenei Describes Siege of Israeli Military
by Palestinians in Jenin As Instance of New Era
FARS News Agency [Iran], 22-6-2013

Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei [spiritual leader] said that that recent developments in Jenin, where Palestinian youths surrounded the Israeli military, serve as clear examples of a new era and signal a bright future with complete victory, promising that the West Bank is where the Zionist regime will be brought to its knees.
Ayatollah Khamenei made the remarks in a meeting with head of the political bureau of the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran on Wednesday.
He emphasized the sense of responsibility of the young and faithful Palestinians and their individual and collective presence on the battlefield as a very important issue.
"What happened recently in Jenin and the siege of the Zionist military by the Palestinian youth are clear examples of this new scene and heralds a bright future a full victory for the Palestinians," he underlined.

On Monday, Israeli soldiers stormed Jenin and fired live ammunition, stun grenades and toxic gas. Combat helicopters were used for the first time in decades after the ensuing hours-long exchange of gunfire between Palestinian resistance fighters and Israeli troops. Israeli special forces killed at least seven Palestinians and wounded nearly 100 others during the heavy clashes.
On Tuesday, four Israeli settlers were killed and as many wounded in a retaliatory attack by Palestinians near the occupied West Bank city of Ramallah.

Khamenei underscored that the issue of Palestine is at the heart of the Islamic world and the Islamic nation’s issues, adding, "The amount of progress that is made on the Palestinian issue will influence the amount of progress that will be made regarding the issues of the Islamic nation."...
Ismael Haniyeh, for his part, expressed his gratitude toward Iran for its ongoing support of the Palestinian issue.
"Gaza is the heart of the resistance, but today the main and decisive battle is taking place in the West Bank. The Zionist enemy is making some dangerous decisions, but because of the upper hand that our young fighters have in the West Bank, the Zionist regime has no other choice but to choose between bad and worse options," he stated.

Jerusalem Post Middle East
West Bank risks 'spiralling out of control' - UN rights chief
By REUTERS, Published: 23-6-2023

The United Nations high commissioner for human rights said on Friday that the situation in the West Bank was deteriorating sharply, adding that Israeli forces had killed at least seven Palestinians including children in a refugee camp.
"This week's violence in the occupied West Bank risks spiraling out of control, fuelled by strident political rhetoric, and an escalation in the use of advanced military weaponry by Israel," Volker Turk said in a statement via a spokesperson at a UN press briefing, calling on Israel to bring its actions into line with international law.
The weaponry included helicopter gunships and drones, the spokesperson added.
The air strikes on the Jenin refugee camp represented a "major intensification of the use of weaponry more generally associated with the conduct of armed hostilities, rather than a law enforcement situation," he said.
"Israel must urgently reset its policies and actions in the West Bank in line with international human rights standards, including protecting and respecting the right to life," he said.


US to stop funding Israeli science and tech projects
in occupied West Bank
By Middle East Eye staff, 26 June 2023

The Biden administration informed Israel that Washington will no longer transfer funds to research, science or technology projects taking place in the occupied West Bank, reversing a US policy implented in the waning weeks of the Donald Trump presidency. According to Axios, the notice was delivered to Israel two weeks ago.
The move reverses a Trump-era policy decision in late 2020, which allowed US taxpayer funding to be used for science and technology projects in Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank for the first time since 1967.
The agreement to reverse the policy was signed in October 2020 at the illegal West Bank settlement of Ariel, which was built in 1978 on land stolen from the villages of Salfit, Iskaka, Marada, and Kifl Haris.
Under the Trump administration, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced the US no longer viewed Israel’s settlements on West Bank land it captured in the 1967 Middle East war as “inconsistent with international law”, essentially throwing out the 41-year-old legal opinion which had long been the basis of US policy towards Israeli settlements.


Pompeo says God may have sent Trump
to save Israel from Iran (22-3-2019)

Pompeo also was the first US secretary of state to visit an illegal Israeli settlement in the Palestinian West Bank and the Syrian Golan Heights, and also implemented a policy stating that all exports from the West Bank's Area C - whether made by Palestinians or Israelis - would be branded as "Made in Israel".
It remains to be seen whether Biden will overturn the rest of the Pompeo doctrine, which was formulated by the Kohelet Policy Forum, the right-wing Israeli think tank behind Israel's attempted judicial overhaul.

Kohelet Policy Forum
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Kohelet Policy Forum is an Israeli conservative-libertarian think tank. It was founded in January 2012 by the American-Israeli computer scientist, Talmud scholar and political activist Moshe Koppel (widely regarded as Israel’s most influential pro-Zionist), who now serves as the Forum's chairman.
The KPF describes its three main goals as "to secure Israel's future as the nation-state of the Jewish people, to strengthen representative democracy, and to broaden individual liberty and free-market principles in Israel."
The KPF founded the Shiloh Policy Forum, a settlement organisation, and pays the salaries of three of its staff.
KPF worked on policy papers which underpin the attempted 2023 judicial reform in Israel, which involves giving the government control over judicial appointments, limiting judicial review of laws and government decisions, an "override clause" which is intended to allow the Knesset to overrule supreme court decisions with a majority of 61 out of 120 votes, and limiting the authority of the government and ministerial legal advisors.
The judicial reform has sparked protests from various groups who oppose it, such as lawyers, judges, civil society organizations, opposition parties, and some economists. They argue that the reform would undermine the separation of powers, the independence of the judiciary, the rule of law, and the protection of human rights in Israel.

The Shiloh Policy Forum
Shuki Sadeh, Shomrim website, 23-1-2023

Benjamin Netanyahu speaks during the Kohelet Policy Forum Conference at the Begin Heritage Center, in Jerusalem, on Jan. 8, 2020. JNS info, 13-3-2023
According to the Shiloh Policy Forum website, the organization is a “research and policy institute, which aims to provide information regarding Jewish settlement in every part of the Land of Israel – as well as the related challenges, needs, importance and moral justification thereof.”
Its connection to the Kohelet Policy Forum, a well-funded research body considered to have had the most influence over the Israeli right in the past decade, is underplayed on its website but is mentioned in some of Shiloh’s publications and in other reports.
For example, in 2020, Kohelet paid the salary of Shiloh’s only salaried employee that year. In some of its publications, Shiloh refers to itself as having been “founded by the Kohelet Policy Forum” and mentions that it had common board members. In its report to the Registrar of Associations, Shiloh describes its connection to Kohelet as “common goals and common functionaries.”
The chairman of the Shiloh Policy Forum is Benzi Lieberman, a former head of the Yesha Council of Jewish Settlements in Judea, Samaria and the Gaza District and one-time chairman of Israel Lands Authority.

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