#140 – Commissioning Israel – The British Mandate

Zionism, from its beginning, included a battle plan to reconquer Biblical land given to the Israelis according to Genesis 15 and Exodus 23. Menachem Begin called it “the restoration of the whole Land of Israel to its God-covenanted owners.” Chaim Weizmann, the president of the WZO, testified it was the fulfillment of God’s “promise to his people,” and socialist leader Ben-Gurion affirmed that “the Bible is our Mandate.”

There was never any serious thought about what to do with the usurpers living on their land. They were obstacles that needed removal. A partnership between the Zionists and the indigenous Arabs was not possible nor ever considered. The Zionists were on a mission, an exclusive pursuit of a divine right to Palestine.

Politicide

The British Mandate mentions Palestine as a place but does not refer to Palestinians as a people. It describes the triad of players as His Majesty’s Government, the Jewish people, and the existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine.

Politicide is a term coined by Israeli sociologist Baruch Kimmerling, describing the process as using omission and commission to destroy a people. To politicide Palestinians was the first step toward their mission. 

The omission in the Balfour Declaration and the British Mandate for Palestine was structured. (1918-1948) Both documents never mention the people, the Palestinians, by name. Rashid Khalidi reflects on the symbolic absence of naming the Palestinians in the Mandate, writing, “As far as Great Britain and the League of Nations are concerned, they were not a people.” 

This blog explores the commissioning aspect of how the British fulfilled the Mandate directive to relegate the Palestinians as subservient to the Zionist reconquest project. (Israel) 

If You Build It, They Will Come

By the end of the 1920s, the Jewish Agency was established and authorized by the British ruling cabinet and had become the veritable government of the Yishuv. (Jewish population in Palestine) The evolution of the agency began in 1908 as the Palestine Office of the Zionist Organization, later the Zionist Commission, and then the Palestine Zionist Executive. It was always the operative branch of the World Zionist Organization. (WZO)

The Mandate encouraged cooperation between Zionist and British institutions in Palestine. The British allowed and promoted the Jewish Agency to deal with political affairs, economic affairs, immigration, settlement, and other matters. In return, the agency showed the British exactly how a Jewish state would work. They asserted their political rights over the indigenous, produced detailed maps and irrigation plans, debated the technicalities of government procedure, and exhibited a knowledge of how government functioned.

By contrast, the British denied the Palestinians political rights, making it increasingly difficult for Palestinian leaders to participate, thus negating their political existence. This structural exclusion of the Palestinians meant that the Mandate government and its subcontractor, the Zionist settler-colonial project, rolled on relentlessly without them.

Palestinians built their political structures without the support of the Mandate state. Many of those structures emerged from resistance to the British occupation of Palestine. The Peel Commission testimony would, years later, confirm a structural exclusion of the Palestinians from British decision-making was policy. No amount of paternalistic affection could counterbalance the day-to-day contact between Zionists and British colonial bureaucrats.

Wild In The Streets

Beginning in the 1920s, the Palestinian fellahin, the peasant farmers (over two-thirds of the indigenous Arab population) were being forced off the land in increasingly large numbers into urban environments of unemployment, poverty, and social marginalization. 

Fueled by a dispute between Muslims and Jews over access to the Western Wall, a series of demonstrations and riots in late August 1929 escalated into deadly violence. From August 23 to August 29, there were 133 Jews killed, 339 Jews were injured, 116 Arabs killed, and 232 were wounded. 

The British government commissioned an inquiry to investigate the 1929 rioting. The report, The Passfield White Paper, concluded that the cause of rioting was the result of Arab fears of the continual Jewish immigration and land purchases, particularly resonating from a growing Arab landless class. 

The report concluded that Zionist policy had severely damaged the economic development of the Arab population and also pointed out that the Jewish-only labor policy enhanced unemployment in the Arab sector. The Passfield White Paper proposed to limit Jewish immigration to Palestine and Jewish purchase of Arab land. 

The Paper proved to be feckless. With the World Zionist Organization headquartered in London, adroit lobbying in Parliament by Chaim Weizman, and the Histadrut, Hapoel Hatzair, Ahdut HaAvoda, Poale Zion, and the Jewish Agency firmly embedded in the British Mandate political sphere would only be a matter of time before the Paper was ignored or rescinded.  

That came with the issuing of a letter from British Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald to Chaim Weizmann (President – Zionist World Organization) reaffirmed British support for the continuation of Jewish immigration and land purchase in Palestine. This submission letter, prompted by claims of anti-Semitism by the Zionists, was dubbed the Black Letter by the Palestinians. It was an unofficial (official) withdrawal of the Passfield White Paper. 

The Revolution Will Not Be Televised

In the crowded shanty towns in Jaffa and Haifa, the young Palestinians found encouragement in the teachings of the charismatic preacher Izz ad-Din al-Qassam. His following came from the landless ex-tenant farmers drifting into Haifa from Upper Galilee. These areas were most affected by purchases of agricultural land by the Jewish National Fund and the Hebrew labor policy. These policies had dispossessed the Arabs of land and many of their traditional livelihoods. 

In April 1936, growing unrest among the Arab community of Palestine led to the outbreak of a revolt initially as an urban-led campaign of civil disobedience directed against the Zionist presence in Palestine. The British instituted financial penalties, curfews, and house demolitions upon the Palestinians. They soon followed up by militarization, as they turned schools into barracks and injected violence into everyday spaces. State violence as a retaliation tool and mass punishment ran rampant. 

To further the pain of the Palestinian quest to maintain their country, the British released The Peel Commission (1936–37) report. It was the first British commission of inquiry to recommend the partition of Palestine into two states. The division of British-occupied Palestine into physically segregated Arab and Jewish territories was a foreshadowing of the removal and relocation of Palestinians from their homes to designated Palestinian land.

This revelation thus began the second phase of the Arab rebellion. The rebellion proved more violent, and the peasant-led resistance movement increasingly targeted British forces. The colonial state responded with more interventions in Arab daily life. The Mandate security forces hoped that the increased force, the infliction of more economic losses, and the damage to Palestinian property would break the rebel movement. 

The British targeted the Palestinians, routines of work, school, worship, and travel. They intensified curfews, instituted mass incarceration and forced labor, and the revocation of free movement. The military took their campaign of collective punishments ever further, constricting and diminishing the life of the colonized and ruthlessly exploiting the damage they did to the substance and fabric of Palestinian lives. 

The retooled British counterinsurgency brought economic instability and physical insecurity. Socioeconomic foundations of society and cracking the institutional bases of the revolutionary movement. The onslaught of collective punishments destroyed the daily life of Arab Palestinians, forcing sacrifice and suffering onto households far and wide and making the quest for freedom and self-determination ever more costly and untenable. 

The Israelis learned well from their British mentors. It remains in Israel today, in the occupied Palestinian territories of Gaza and The West Bank. The Arab Revolt was a forecast for Palestinian viability to develop and maintain a resilient popular movement. Without any support, the Great Revolt was soon in tatters.

The Palestine Rebellion of 1936–39 was the most defiant of British imperial authority in the first half of the twentieth century. It had a price. The brutal crushing of the rebellion by the British army, the killing and hanging and collective punishment, the dismantling of Palestinian political organizations, the arrest and exile of Palestinian leaders, and the systematic disarmament of the Palestinian population shifted the balance of power in favor of the Zionists. 

The Palestinian national movement came to a tragic end. The brutal crushing of the rebellion by the British army, the killing, hanging, collective punishment, the dismantling of Palestinian political organizations, the arrest and exile of Palestinian leaders, and the systematic disarmament of the Palestinian population massively and irreversibly shifted the balance of power in favor of the Yishuv. 

Palestinians were demoralized and disorganized. “Palestinians began a disorienting period of transition during which they lost control over their fate.” An independent Palestinian government was not palatable to regional Arab nations and had strong opposition from those with power, including the British, Transjordan, and the Zionists.

Never Let A Crisis Go To Waste

As early as 1920, Ben-Gurion and his Labor colleagues had decided on the need for a secret underground army, the Haganah, on the realistic assumption that to convert a country whose vast majority was Arab into a Jewish national home required direct military force that the British government might not always be willing to provide. The word Haganah in Hebrew characteristically means self-defense.

At war’s end, Britain had created a Jewish auxiliary colonial army twenty thousand strong, which it armed, trained, and officered. This military force became the official Jewish army, the Jewish Settlement Police. (JSP) Once the Haganah army of thirty thousand men merged into the JSP, with a population of less than a half million, it became one of the most militarized communities in the world. 

With the United Nations Resolution 181 (Partitioning of Palestine) and the Israeli independence proclamation on the horizon, the challenges for the Zionists were twofold. 1) How to get rid of the British, now that they served their purpose, and 2) How to market “The Nakba”, the catastrophe. 

#139 – Balfour, The Camel, and Zionism

“There is a British proverb about the camel and the tent, At first the camel sticks one leg in the tent, and eventually it slips into it. This must be our policy.” Chaim Weizmann

The Tent

Sometime between the Old Testament and the latest ethnic cleansing campaign in Gaza, Israel came into existence. The 1947 United Nations Resolution 181, the Partition Plan of Palestine, was the culmination of an international Zionist political campaign officially launched after the publication of the Theodore Hurzl 1896 pamphlet Der Judenstaat (The Jewish State ). Herzl offered Zionism as the “final solution of the Jewish question.”

The First World Zionist Organization meeting held in Basel, Switzerland (August 1897) adopted the Basel Program. It was the implementation of Zionist goals for establishing a home for the Jewish people in Palestine. Included in the manifesto were two tenants that would have a lasting impact on Palestine, its people, and the Middle East.  

The first of those tenets was the promotion of Jewish settlements in Palestine, accomplished by purchasing land for “Jewish Only” settlers. Aided by the catastrophic Ottoman Land Code of 1858, creating an absentee landlord system of Palestinian peasant-farmer land, and the financial backing of agencies like the Jewish Colonization Association (1891) and the Jewish National Fund (1901) to acquire land in Palestine for “any Jews upon any term” forcibly dispossessed unsuspecting Palestinian peasant farmers of the land. 

The second part of the scheme was obtaining governmental approval to achieve the Zionist purpose. This legitimacy would come to fruition twenty years later when the British hegemonic empire issued the 1917 Balfour Declaration. The British Government announced its support for the establishment of “a National Home for the Jewish people” in Palestine.

Balfour – One Leg

It appears ironic that Prime Minister Arthur Balfour sponsored the anti-semitic Aliens Act of 1905 to prevent East European Jews fleeing pogroms from immigrating to England. Then, a dozen years later, as United Kingdom Foreign Secretary, issued the 1917 Balfour Declaration. Irony has been absorbed into many political decisions throughout history. 

Balfour wrote privately about his decision, ”Zionism, be it right or wrong, good or bad, is rooted in age-long traditions, in present needs, in future hopes, of far more profound import than the desires and prejudices of the 700,000 Arabs who now inhabit that ancient land.”

When exploring those profound age-long traditions, present needs, and future hopes, it becomes clear that the Balfour verbiage is “Political language designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind. ” (George Orwell)

The reality for the Balfour Declaration on Palestine: 

1. it was strategically important to keep Egypt and the Suez Canal in its sphere of influence (passage to India, British Navy access, transporting of merchant goods)
2. to rally support among Jews in the United States and Russia; 
3. to satisfy the British Zionist Lobbyist community;
4. sympathy towards Jews persecuted in Europe;
5. to keep the Allied governments in the World War.

Despite appearing as a bold declaration by Great Britain in favor of Zionism, it served as a strategic tool to support the Allied war effort. Married to a fear that Germany might preempt the Allies by issuing its own pro-Zionist statement, the Balfour Declaration stole any pro-Zionist move Germany could make.

No one doubted that the Allied Countries stood beside Britain when Balfour issued it. The Jewish Chronicle of London affirmed that the British government had acted “in accord—it is without doubt to be assumed—with the rest of the Allies.” At a Zionist conference in May 1917, Chaim Weizmann (1st President of Israel) announced, “The support of the British government, when given, will be in conjunction and agreement with the Allied powers.”

The French, the Americans, and the Italians were pliable passengers aboard the Zionist train conducted by a coalition of Nahum Sokolow, Chaim Weizmann, and Louis Brandeis. During the spring of 1917, Nahum Sokolow secured the support of France, (Cambon letter) Italy, and even the Catholic pope. Weizmann and Brandeis adroitly secured Great Britain’s and the United States’ support. A Jewish “national home” under British auspices had gained international credit.

A decree issued by the most powerful country of that age, an empire that at that moment was conquering Palestine. (World War l) To announce to the world that they supported the creation of a Jewish state was iconic. The British knew that Palestine was then an overwhelmingly Arab country, populated by 722,143 inhabitants with only 38,754 Jewish. ( 5.3 percent) It did not matter what the inhabitants wanted because the political expedience was of more benefit. Inevitably, the Balfour decision, until this day, has rendered a conflict-riven land.

Across the Pond – The Second Leg

The American mind romanticized the Bible stories and crusader adventure. For the majority of Western Christians and Jews, Zionists or anti-Zionists, newspaper reporters, missionaries, government officials, the United States president, and ordinary American citizens, the history and culture of the Arab Muslims of Palestine were irrelevant. Colonialist and religious ideology combined to triumph over history.

Zionism had also taken hold in the press. In December 1917, a pro-Jewish nation op-ed appeared in the New York Times. It encouraged the U.S. government “to recognize the Jewish nation as one of those oppressed smaller nationalities which must have an opportunity to assert themselves after the war.” Later in that month wrote, “thousands of New York Zionists packed Carnegie Hall” to celebrate ”the British promise to restore Jerusalem and the Holy Land to the Jewish people.”

President Woodrow Wilson had recently reached international stardom. In his January 8, 1918, address to Congress, President Woodrow Wilson proposed a 14-point program for world peace. It would later be a reference at the Paris Peace talks and a precursor to his Noble Peace Prize and the formation of the League of Nations. 

The Fifth point of the 14-Point Plan was “A free, open-minded, and absolutely impartial adjustment of all colonial claims, based upon a strict observance of the principle that in determining all such questions of sovereignty, the interests of the populations concerned must have equal weight with the equitable claims of the government whose title is to be determined.”

The Wilson administration, Secretary of State Robert Lansing, his staff, and Colonel House, his personal adviser, were better informed about the demographic realities of Palestine. Both men expressed misgivings about Zionism. By the time of the Paris Peace Conference, both argued against it because “a Jewish homeland implied the rejection of Wilsonian self-determination concerning Arabs.”

One would conclude that Wilson would oppose a colonial settler project in Palestine. However, Wilson was indebted to a cabal of Jewish Zionists that helped him get elected. The prestigious list included financier Jacob H. Schiff, philanthropist Nathan Straus, Bernard Baruch, Samuel Untermeyer, Rabbi Stephen Wise, and Ambassador Henry Morgenthau, a former U.S. ambassador to the Ottoman Empire. (1913-1916) 

Woodrow Wilson – It’s Slipping In

Wilson frequently consulted with attorney and U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis. In a letter to Wilson, Brandeis urged expanding boundaries for a new state of Israel. Brandeis persuaded, “Less than this would produce mutilation of the promised homeland. Neither in this country nor in Paris has there been any opposition to the Zionist program? The Balfour Declaration, which you made possible, was a public promise. I venture to suggest that it may be given to you, at this time, to move the statesman of Christian nations to keep this solemn promise to Israel. Your word to Millerand (France) and Lloyd George (Great Britain) at this hour may be decisive.”

Irony again confronts the reality of politics. Wilson bypassed Lansing and the State Department when it came to a decision on the Balfour Declaration, and the president ignored the cautionary advice of Colonel House. The contradiction between Zionist goals and the Wilson rule of self-determination was ignored. Wilson would turn to religious idealism to justify granting the Zionists an exemption from the rule. Wilson saw a European-born movement claiming validity from Old Testament history as a higher priority than twelve centuries of Arab culture and history.

Henry Morgenthau summed up the prevailing attitude in America, “Christians everywhere will rejoice that the Holy Land, so well-known to them through both the Old and New Testaments, has been restored to the civilized world.”

The Camel Is In The Tent

The seduction of Woodrow Wilson was the final conquest needed by the Zionists. Thus, the borders of Israel became a reality. The politicizing and empowering of a statement in an official British Government letter in support of “a National Home for the Jewish people” to the creation of the State of Israel was quite a jump. How the truth becomes mutated is essential to understanding the power that the Zionist Camel holds.

This Zionist Camel formula has proven successful over the years. It is a blend of half-truths mixed with claims of anti-semitism (actual or created) garnished of lobbying, bullying, and financial rewards. Then victimhood is sprinkled over this formula to enable the chosen State of Israel to be levitated to a height above the law. 

Balfour was a victim of the Zionist Camel, followed by Wilson and US citizens. At the 1919 Paris Peace talks, Zionism was a powerful force that established a stranglehold on world history. What followed was a series of tragic setbacks to Palestinian sovereignty. Including the formation of the League of Nations, the British Mandate of Palestine, the United Nations Resolution 181, the 1967 Six-Day War, the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, and the 2023 Genocide of Palestinians in Gaza. Will it end?

The Camel is well entrenched in the Washington big top. Are there any camel herders capable of removing it? I fear not!

#138 – The Birth Of Israel – Induced?

Colonial-Settlers

During the colonialism heyday, groups of immigrants could migrate to lands not internationally recognized as independent states, claim parcels of land, overpower the inhabitants, ethnically cleanse the indigenous people, and declare themselves an independent nation. The United States, Canada, and Australia followed this colonial-settler formula to become independent nations.

The Zionist project in Palestine was a colonial-settler quest for a Jewish homeland in Palestine. Besides using a successful formula, the Zionist project had an additional cache. They had international diplomatic decrees, land purchasing institutes, wealthy benefactors, and the British military might to guarantee a Jewish State in Palestine. 

The 1917 Balfour Declaration

British Foreign Secretary Sir Arthur James Balfour Declared: “His Majesty’s Government view with favor the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.” His declaration is the oxytocin that started it all. 

The British government, with no regard for the indigenous population, committed to establishing a “national home for the Jewish people” on land inhabited by Palestinians. For centuries before the Balfour Declaration, Christians, Muslims, Jews, and other religious and ethnic groups lived peacefully in Palestine. The Zionist ideology and settler-colonialism destabilized Palestinian life.

Pre-Balfour Declaration, Zionists were a minority of about 1% of the Jews of the world. The idea of setting up an exclusive theocratic Jewish society was a radical idea. The vast majority of Jews were non-Zionists who sought a different solution to the pogroms and antisemitism of 19th-century Russia and Europe. Their solution was assimilation, not self-segregation in Palestine. The Balfour Declaration set in motion Israel’s 75-year war against the Palestinians. 

1922 British Mandate of Palestine

This League of Nations issued a document provided for the administration of Palestine by the British to establish the Jewish national home. It acted as a guarantee for the implementation of the Balfour Declaration. The mandate made it clear that the only people in Palestine recognized with national rights were the Jewish people. In the 28 articles, there is no reference to the Palestinians as having national or political rights.

The 1937 Peel Commission

The 1937 Peel Commission was the first official British paper to propose dividing Palestine into Jewish and Arab states. With hints of ethnic cleansing, the Peel Commission concluded that the feasibility of partition required the transfer of Palestinian Arabs outside the Jewish state. 

The Zionist Congress accepted the plan as a first step to secure a base from where Jewish dominance could expand. Palestinian-Arab opposition was immediately expressed by the escalation of the Palestinian revolt launched in 1936. 

1938 British Woodhead Commission

In November of 1938, Britain formed the Woodhead Commission to study the feasibility of the Peel Plan. The Commission reported no plan for the partition of Palestine could successfully meet the terms of the Peel Commission. The Commission believed there was little hope of success in establishing self-supporting Arab and Jewish states. The Commission concluded that the partitioning plans were “impracticable”.

Britain continued to manage the Palestine situation politically and militarily. By 1947, after suffering several deadly terrorist attacks from the Zionist extremist, they realized their incapability of maintaining peace. In April 1947, the British referred the future of Palestine to the UN. 

The 1947 UN Partition Plan for Palestine, UN Resolution 181 

Ignoring the Woodhead Commission, the British leaving, increasing violence, and indicators of civil war did not deter the UN from issuing Resolution 181. The UN plan recommended the partition of Palestine into Jewish and Arab states. The partition plan proposed a Jewish state of more than half (56%) of Mandated Palestine territory. At that time, Jews comprised less than a third of the population and owned less than 7 percent of the land. 

The plan disregarded both the land and population injustice of the proposal. About one-half of the population in the UN-proposed Jewish state were Arabs: nine of the sixteen districts were part of the Jewish state, and only one of nine had a Jewish majority. The Zionists accepted the partition plan. The Arabs rejected it. 

Since 1947, Israel has propagandized this disagreement over UN Resolution 181. They convinced the West that since they had the backing of the UN, removing Palestinians from their land was justifiable, and the Palestinians were the trespassing outlaws who wanted to destroy Israel. The Zionists used this disguise as a reason for their conquest and cleansing of Palestinians. It fits nicely into a victimhood narrative. 

The 1948 Arab-Israeli War

The civil war between the Palestinian Arabs and Britain training Zionist armed groups was lopsided. The Palestinians, recovering from their 1936-39 Arab Uprising that annihilated their military capabilities, were no match. The Zionists proceeded on the belief that one-half of the population in the UN-proposed Jewish state had to be killed or relocated. 

Emboldened by the international imprimatur given by the UN decision, the Zionist military organizations attacked Arab villages and residential quarters before launching the highly organized Plan Dalet. Devised to control and conquer areas of the UN-partitioned Jewish state as well as areas of Jewish settlements outside its borders. 

Relying on the diplomatic and political assets provided by the UN Partition Resolution and U.S. support, the Zionists embarked on an offensive to conquer as much land as possible beyond the recommended boundaries defined in the partition, to destroy and empty whole Palestinian villages and towns.  

What proceeded (1947-49) was the expulsion of over seven hundred fifty thousand from a 1.9 million population, made refugees. Estimates indicate that 530 Palestinian villages and towns were destroyed and removed from the map, 5,000 Palestinians were killed in a series of atrocities, and more than 70 massacres. Palestinians refer to this period as Nakba – the catastrophe. 

On May 15, 1948, the last of the British military left Palestine. The same day, David Ben-Gurion, the Israeli first prime minister, declared independence for Israel. The Zionist movement had carefully prepared for independence and had created a network of institutions ready to begin the process of governing. The scheme to establish a national home for the Jewish people was almost complete. However, Israel had some unfinished business.

By early 1949, the proposed UN partition boundaries had become irrelevant. Israeli forces controlled 77 percent of pre-1948 Palestine, including large areas the UN planned to designate as part of the Arab state. Egyptian forces controlled Gaza while Jordanian and Iraqi troops held onto the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

The 1967 Six-Day War

In 1967, Israel launched a pre-empted attack against Egypt, unleashing the Six-Day War. The airstrike destroyed 90 percent of the Egyptian air force. Israel then followed suit against the Syrian Air Force. On that evening, Yigal Allon, an Israeli minister, wrote: “must not cease fighting until we achieve total victory, the territorial fulfillment of the Land of Israel”. 

All Egyptian, Iraqi, and Jordanian control ended in 1967 after the Israeli forces removed them during the Six-Day War. As a result, Israel was able to absorb the whole of the Palestinian territories of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza Strip. In addition, they conquered the Syrian Golan Heights and the Egyptian Sinai Peninsula. By the end of the war, Israel had expelled another 300,000 Palestinians from their homes, including 130,000 refugees displaced in 1948, and increased its territory by three and a half times. 

Moshe Dayan, an Israeli military leader, and politician, bragged, “We came to this country, which was already populated by Arabs, and we are establishing a Hebrew, that is a Jewish, state here… Jewish villages were built in the place of Arab villages. You do not even know the names of the Arab villages, and I do not blame you, because these geography books no longer exist; not only do the books not exist [but] the Arab villages are not there either.”

The 1967 war was the culmination of the Zionist colonial-settler project that began with Jewish journalist Theodor Herzl and his 1896 publication, Der Judenstaat. Herzl offered a solution to the antisemitism that plagued Europe. His work encouraged Jews to purchase land in Palestine to create an independent Jewish state. Anyway, after the 1967 war, the Israeli purchasing of Palestine was complete.

“The surest way to eradicate a people’s right to their land is to deny their historical connection to it.” Rashid Khalidi, Palestinian author

The Palestinians have never succumbed. Israel has used ethnic cleansing and racial separation of an apartheid society as strategic themes to eliminate Palestinian history. Settler colonial projects eventually reach a point when patience wanes. The final solution becomes slaughter and genocide to cleanse a native population that refuses to capitulate. Ask Native Americans, Armenians, Aborigines of Australia, Bengalis, Bosnians, Congolese, and Rwandans. Will Palestinians be added to that list?

#137 – al-Aqsa – The Furthest Mosque

Operation al-Aqsa Flood

The corporate-state media alliance provides an unfair and lazy assessment of news. They spin misinformation like the Russian invasion of Ukraine began the Uranian-Russian War, the 9/11 attack marked the beginning of the War on Terrorist (Islamic), the Gulf of Tonkin started the Vietnam War, Pearl Harbor began WW2, and Operation Al-Aqsa Flood started the most recent Israeli-Palistinian conflict. 

The truth is discovered by examining the antecedents leading up to events. Reporting events like the 2014 Maidan Coup, 1991 U.S. No-fly zones (NFZs) enforcement in Iraq, the 1956 cancellation of the Geneva Accords mandated Vietnam national elections, the 1941 U.S. freeze on Japanese assets and embargo on oil and gasoline, and events at al-Aqsa might be beneficial. Corporate-state media does a horrible job of reporting the historical background that would shed a different light on their historical spin. 

The corporate-state media consumer becomes entangled in a propaganda web void of pertinent historical facts, an entrapped passenger on a pop history train. Narratives like Israeli good, Palestinian bad, Russia, and China bad have been developed by cherry-picking history and omitting pertinent antecedents.

The Hamas October 7th operation will begin a new death count, with no analysis of the deaths leading up to this attack. Washington and the compliant media may condemn the Hamas retaliatory action as the beginning of the latest war in Israel, but it is not the beginning. Hamas spokesperson Khaled Qadomi lists a series of antecedents they considered before leveling the October 7th attack. 

Qadomi declares, “We want the international community to stop atrocities in Gaza against Palestinian people, our holy sites like al-Aqsa. All these things are the reason behind starting this battle.” Maybe someone should explain the al-Aqsa situation.

al-Aqsa

al-Aqsa is the silver-domed mosque inside a 35-acre al-Haram al-Sharif compound in Jerusalem. It is the third holiest site in Islam and the most important Muslim place in Palestine. Al-Aqsa, the Noble Sanctuary, is in the Quran. It is meaning is the furthest mosque. In early Islamic history, Muslims prayed towards this holy Jerusalem site as the qibla until Muhammad and the Muslims in Medina changed the qibla direction from Jerusalem to Mecca.

Al-Aqsa is an intricate setting for the holy day called Lailat al Miraj or Night Journey, a celebration of the Prophet’s nighttime journey from Mecca to Jerusalem. The day signifies a physical and spiritual journey. At al-Aqsa, He met with the previous prophets of Islam and His ascension into heaven and met God. God instructed Prophet Muhammad on the importance of reciting salat, or prayer, five times daily. 

The importance of the security to al-Aqsa, in Islam, is paramount. In 2017, a former legal adviser to the Palestinian minister of foreign affairs told Al Jazeera, “The issue of al-Haram al-Sharif (al-Aqsa) stands as a symbolic, but very strong catalyzer of the routine of injustice and oppression that Palestinians in Jerusalem are facing, and that causes a continuous eruption of popular anger and uprisings.” 

The Waqf – Administrative Control?

Since the Muslim reconquest of the Kingdom of Jerusalem in 1187, the al-Aqsa Mosque compound has been under the administration of a waqf, or Islamic trust, properties dedicated to the Muslim religion. The Waqf of Jerusalem is known as the Waqf.

Throughout history, entrance into al-Haram al-Sharif has changed. During the Ottoman rule of Palestine, the non-Muslims were denied entry to Haram al-Sharif. It changed in 1839. Non-Muslims were permitted to enter Temple Mount but had to obtain a special permit from the governor.

The 1948 war, after the Israeli conquest and occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, brought about another change. The Waqf would be under the control of the Kingdom of Jordan. In 1967, the protocol changed again. Jordan and Israel agreed that the Waqf would control matters inside the compound while Israel would control external security. 

Since 1967, non-Muslims would be allowed onto the site during visiting hours but would not be allowed to pray there. Praying at al-Aqsa was reserved for Muslims only. The status quo has eroded in recent years. Israeli forces have imposed severe restrictions on Muslim worshippers. 

Examples include: October 2009 – Entry restricted to Muslim men over 45 and Muslim women over 35; July 2011 – Entry restricted to Muslim men over 45; November 2014 – Entry restricted to Muslim men over 35; October 2015 – Entry restricted to Muslim men over 50 for two days; July 2017 – Entry restricted to Muslim men over 50.

The increased Israeli entrance restrictions are a change in the status quo of the Mount. The entry restrictions have been most severe on Gazans and residents of the West Bank. The Israeli government justifies these restrictions as measures taken for security reasons.

Al-Aqsa Under Attack?

Since 1920, when the father of religious Zionism, rabbi Avraham Yitzhak ha-Kohen Kook, stated that the Temple Mount would eventually be in Jewish control, many Muslims believe there is a political plot to wrestle control of the Haram itself.

Today, Israeli government-backed Temple movements, such as the Temple Mount Faithful and the Temple Institute, have challenged the Israeli ban on allowing Jews to enter the compound. Israeli forces routinely allow groups, some in the hundreds, of Jewish settlers who live in occupied Palestinian territories to descend on the al-Aqsa compound under police and army protection, stirring Palestinian fears of an Israeli takeover of al-Haram al-Sharif.

On October 2nd, nearly 1,500 Israeli fanatical settlers entered the al-Aqsa Mosque. Then, on Thursday, October 5th, more than 800 Israeli settlers stormed the al-Aqsa Mosque both times under the protection of Israeli forces. With harsher Israeli-imposed restrictions on Muslim worshippers entering al-Aqsa, Palestinians fear losing access to the compound. 

Bibi – The New-Old Sheriff Is Back In Town 

Many of the Israeli-Palestinian confrontations have coincided with the most recent prime ministership tenure of Benjamin Netanyahu. Raids against Palestinian worshippers at the mosque have increased significantly. The Israeli army and West Bank settlers inflict violence and oppression against Palestinians with no arrests. Deadly settler raids have become increasingly more regular. 

The first nine months of the Netanyahu regime have been a showcase of Israeli violence inflicted upon Palestinian civilians in Israeli-occupied lands. This year, Israeli forces have killed over 224 Palestinians (38 children), 187 in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem. The death count for 2023 has surpassed the record high of 178 killings in 2022. 

Currently, 1,264 Palestinians are in administrative detention without charge or trial, a two-decade high, and reports indicate 170 children incarcerated in Israeli prisons. Operation al-Aqsa Flood is a retaliatory strike. People pushed into a corner will fight back. 

Ofer Cassif of the Israeli Knesset said he warned the situation would erupt if the Israeli government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did not change its policies towards Palestinians. It erupted!

#136 – Next Stop, Beijing?

Americans are masters of amnesia, memory management, and historical ignorance. Amnesia, enabled by knowledge-free minds and a license for the highest officials to treat the truth as a potter would treat clay. Amnesia restricts the opportunity to learn from the lessons history offers.

In the wake of the Korean War (49,000 United States soldiers killed), Washington pledged no war on the mainland of Asia ever again. A decade later, we were knee-deep in Vietnam rice paddies. (59,000 American Soldiers killed)

Our country has forgotten how ugly the Vietnam War was. Textbooks in American history gave it little space; teachers downplayed it; television soon disregarded it as retro. Vietnam experience was the honing of methods to photoshop history. Vietnam was a warm-up for the post-9/11 era.

The post-9/11 memory management program has cleansed us of Presidential deceit, incompetence, systemic torture, censorship, the shredding of the Bill of Rights, and the perverting of national public discourse. The War on Terror is now an insignificant speck in our rearview mirror.

The fiasco in Iraq and the 20-year occupation of Afghanistan did not dissuade us from intervening in Syria. All three projects failed to turn an alien society into a Western democracy using the gun as a tool of choice.

In Syria, Washington partnered with the local al-Qaeda subsidiary, the same group responsible for the 9/11 attack. The Kabul evacuation showed that we learned nothing from the Saigon finale. A simple lesson, how not to evacuate, was erased from the Washington memory.

The next stop along the line was Ukraine. Washington’s ignorance of Russian security provoked its invasion of Ukraine. They mistook Putin’s anger for bluster and believed the Russian armed forces to be a paper lion. Both assumptions proved to be fatal miscalculations.

Washington’s latest failed endeavor will be ending soon. Washington eventually will stumble upon an acceptable Ukrainian off-ramp. But will they take any solace from a ruined Ukraine?

No, the foreign policy establishment will not allow remorse or thoughtful debriefing. Nobody of significance will denounce the next humanitarian or politically correct war. Eventually, the unhinged Washington cabal will propel us into an avoidable, catastrophic conflict.

Next stop, Beijing?

#135 – Liar, Liar, Ukraine Is On Fire

Liar, Liar
Blogger Caitlin Johnstone claims, “The single most egregious display of war propaganda in the 21st century occurred last year when the entire Western political/media class began uniformly bleating the word unprovoked in reference to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.”

We have heard that Putin was power-hungry and unwilling to tolerate an independent, pro-Western Ukraine on its border. Putin wants to conquer Ukraine, and NATO is needed to cover his colonial venture.

Brookings Institution Senior Fellow Steven Pifer says, “For the Kremlin, a democratic, Western-oriented, economically successful Ukraine poses a nightmare. Ukraine would cause Russians to question why they cannot have the same political voice and democratic rights that Ukrainians do.”

The Truth
Russian leaders regard Ukraine in Moscow’s sphere of influence and a vital Russian security buffer zone. George Kennan, the father of the American Cold War containment policy, warned about the 1998 US Senate ratification of NATO expansion. “Is the beginning of a new cold war,” Kennan stated. ”I think the Russians will gradually react quite adversely and it will affect their policies. I think it is a tragic mistake.”

After Russia annexed Crimea in 2014, extensive arms shipments began. Kyiv, the U.S., and NATO conducted joint military exercises, and the CIA initiated secret paramilitary training programs. In essence, the Obama, Trump, and Biden administrations began to treat Ukraine as a NATO member in all but name.

Catching the Liars
September 6, 2023, NATO Secretary General Stoltenberg inadvertently let the truth be known. “President Putin declared in the autumn of 2021 and sent a draft treaty that they wanted NATO to sign, to promise no more NATO enlargement. That was what he sent us. And as a pre-condition for not invading (sic) Ukraine. Of course, we didn’t sign that.” Consequently, “he went to war to prevent NATO, more NATO, close to his borders.”

In 1996, U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright when asked, “We have heard that half a million children have died [because of sanctions against Iraq]. I mean that’s more children than died in Hiroshima. And–you know, is the price worth it?” she replied, “I think this is a very hard choice, but the price–we think the price is worth it.”

Ukraine Is On Fire
President Joe Biden, is it worth it? 9,614 Ukrainian civilian deaths, 17,535 injured, 120,000 Ukrainian soldier deaths, 170,000 to 180,000 injured troops, 70,000 Russian soldiers killed, and 100,000 to 120,000 wounded.

#134 – Libya – 12 Years Too Late!

A person who is manipulative, dishonest, void of remorse, non-empathetic, and exploitative may be a psychopath. Does this definition fit those incapable of taking responsibility for the carnage they inflict? 

Are the humanitarians that clamor for more destruction and death to save the world exempt? These human rights advocates work to extend US power as a force for good. Are they just soldiers in the march to imperial dominance? 

President Obama, in a recent post, urged people to support aid agencies to alleviate the suffering of the people of Libya. I remember a cackling Hillary Clinton, Secretary of State in the Obama administration, boasting about the 2011 Muammar Gaddafi public execution. “We came, we saw, he died.” By the way, during his murder, he was sodomized with a bayonet. Yes, those humanitarians.

Before the Gaddafi government overthrow, Libya was the most prosperous and one of the most stable countries in Africa. It was a country with free healthcare and education, the right for all citizens to a home, and subsidized electricity, water, and gasoline. It had the lowest infant mortality rate and the highest life expectancy on the continent, with one of the highest literacy rates.

The 2005 United Nations World Summit unanimously adopted the Responsibility to Protect (R2P). It states that countries have a fundamental sovereign responsibility to protect their citizens. If they fail to do so, that responsibility falls to the United Nations system, which may take steps to protect those vulnerable people, violating the sovereignty of the relevant country if needed. So, under the UN auspices, other countries can use all means necessary, including military intervention, to prevent large-scale loss of life. 

The Humanitarians promoted R2P as a commitment to ensure that the international community never again fails to halt the mass atrocity crimes of genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and crimes against humanity. 

However, Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann, the former president of the UN General Assembly, warned in 2009 that R2P could be misused “to justify arbitrary and selective interventions against the weakest states.” 

Jean Bricmont, a Belgian theoretical physicist and philosopher of science, calls it Humanitarian Imperialism. In other words, it uses the concept of human rights to sell war. He concludes they justify the “ideology of intervention, discovering new ‘Hitlers’ as the need arose, and denouncing antiwar arguments as appeasement on the model of Munich in 1938.” 

Realistically, it’s compassion for the worthy victims as unworthy victims get ignored. Military intervention receives approval for Iraqis, Afghans, or Libyans. But Palestinian and Yeminis human rights are ignored. Human rights become relevant when discussing Cuba, Venezuela, and Iran. But irrelevant in Guantanamo, Saudi Arabia, Gaza (an open-air prison), or victims of drone attacks.

In 2011, the R2P doctrine failed miserably. The 2011 mission removed Gaddafi, but post-Gaddafi Libya has fallen into chaos. Migrants from Nigeria, Senegal, and Eritrea have been beaten and sold as slaves to work in fields or on construction sites. Libyan electrical grids, aquifers, oil fields, and dams fell into disrepair. Recently, torrential rains overwhelmed two decrepit dams. Walls of water 20 feet high raced down to flood the major cities, leaving up to 20,000 dead and 10,000 missing.

Journalist Chris Hedges recently wrote that the intervention sold as humanitarian may have been politically motivated. https://scheerpost.com/2023/09/17/humanitarian-imperialism-created-the-libyan-nightmare/

Hedges reports that Libya was a target of intervention because it had large oil reserves and was independent of Western control. They renegotiated more favorable contracts for their nations with Western oil producers and awarded oil contracts to China and Russia. Gaddafi also gave the Russian fleet access to the port of Benghazi.

Hedges also brings to lite that France also had a reason. Sidney Blumenthal, a longtime adviser to Clinton, reported that the French president sought “a greater share of Libyan oil” increased French influence in the region, an improvement in his domestic political standing, a reassertion of French military power, and an end to Gaddafi’s attempts to supplant French influence in “Francophone Africa.”

Utopian social engineering litters history. The murderous French Jacobins and the Soviet communists come to mind. Should the globalists, neoliberals, and imperialists be added to this infamous list? 

#133 – Putin’s Autocracy? Russian Don’t Mind – Why Should We?

The Dissolution of The Soviet Union
In late 1989, the communist regime in East Germany collapsed. Etched in my memory is the image of its citizens tearing down the Berlin Wall. In August 1991, a Soviet Coup failed to seize control of the country from the Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev. The coup was unsuccessful but became the catalyst for the collapse of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

In September 1991, the Soviet Government recognized the independence of the Baltic states. (Lithuania, Estonia, and Latvia) In early December, Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus withdrew from the Soviet Union. Kazakhstan would soon join the egress. The dissolution of the USSR followed. Boris Yeltsin became the head of a new Russian government.

US President at the time, President George H.W. Bush, lent his support to Gorbachev and pushed for the preservation of the Soviet Union. In January 1992, he delivered his “Chicken Kyiv” speech questioning the Ukrainian path to independence. Instead of supporting Ukrainian independence, he promoted staying in the Soviet Union under Gorbachev reforms. It was not popular and not well received. A US President endorsing Soviet rule in Ukraine? How things have changed.

New Russia
George H.W. Bush resisted the temptation to exert American influence. His approach helped carry the world safely through this tumultuous time. Bush then sought the support of opposition leader and Russian President Boris Yeltsin. Bush provided Yeltsin with intelligence and advice, enough for Yeltsin to emerge from the Soviet breakup as a hero.

Russia had an opportunity to build the foundation of a free enterprise system. During these years, the Bush presidency had treated Russia fairly and respectfully. There was no gloating or condescending attitude. Bush had successfully navigated the end of the Cold War and built a good relationship with Russia. However, the voting public believed his focus on Russia had distracted him from domestic responsibility.

Bush paid a high price for his attention to the Soviet/Russian transition. His political fortunes at home suffered. A US recession and a Republican Party primary challenge from Patrick Buchanan contributed to his 1992 reelection defeat. Bill Clinton, a governor from Arkansas with limited foreign affairs experience, defeated Bush in the November presidential election. Things were about to change!

Clinton and The Making of an Oligarchy
The Clinton administration squandered the idealism and goodwill of the Russian people. When President Clinton took office, 70% of Russians looked favorably at the United States. By 2000, only 37% held such a view.

The Russian people emerged from 70 years of Communist rule only to be robbed by the Russian oligarchs. The compliant Clinton Administration enabled a corrupt regime to nurture an Oligarchy. The Bill Clinton presidency presided over the greatest robbery of the 20th Century.

In December 1991, President Yeltsin lifted price controls. At the end of 1992, Yeltsin launched a three-month long, nationwide program to distribute investment vouchers to every Russia. (150 million people) They could sell the vouchers to speculators or use them to buy shares in the 5,000 state-owned industries. Most Russians, struggling with hyperinflation, were eager to sell them for below market value.

Come-up-from-nothing hustlers and former Soviet government insiders provided cash for vouchers. In turn, the speculator used them to buy shares in the state-owned industries. It was the world’s largest garage sale with the vouchers as the ticket.

By 1994, when the voucher program ended, 70 percent of the Russian infrastucture had been privatized in control of these savory characters. The economy had collapsed, and consumer prices increased almost 2000 times. The hyperinflation devastated the Russian people.

In 1995, the Yeltsin administration unleashed another scheme called Loans For Shares. The richest oligarchs loaned the government billions of dollars in exchange for massive shares in valuable Russian state enterprises. The plan was to allow the government to buy back the shares at market value. It did not happen. Instead, the oligarchs walked away with the most profitable Russian corporations for pennies on the dollar.

By December 1995, the last of the most profitable industrial enterprises went to auction. The list included a mining company, two steel companies, two shipping companies, and five oil companies. The Yeltsin regime predetermined the auction winners. The prices the oligarchs paid for these corporations were a steal.

By early 1996, Yeltsin was one of the most despised figures in Russia. The GDP had declined by 50 percent, hyperinflation, rampant corruption, skyrocketing violent crime, the collapse of medical services, food and fuel shortages, nonpayment of wages and pensions, and a plunge in life expectancy.

1996 Yeltsin Reelection
Polls showed Russians favoring Gennadi Zyuganov, a return to Communism candidate. Yeltsin held a single-digit approval rating but had the oligarchs and Bill Clinton as backers. The Russian oligarchs were flush with money from Yeltsin programs. Beholden to his administration, in the spirit of one hand washing the other, the oligarchs repaid their debt to Yeltsin by contributing enormous amounts of money and effort towards his election.

The US did its part to ensure Yeltsin won the first Russian “free and fair “ election. The Clinton administration would have been embarrassed to let Russia return the communists to power. Clinton deployed a team of American political consultants to Moscow to ensure a Yeltsin reelection.

The political consultants would often use Dick Morris, a Bill Clinton principal political aide, as a liaison to the President. In a 2016 interview, Morris described his role. “Clinton would meet with me every week. We would review the polling that was being done for Yeltsin by a colleague of mine, who was sending it to me every week. He, Clinton, and I would go through it and Bill would pick up the hotline and talk to Yeltsin and tell him what commercials to run, where to campaign, and what positions to take. He basically became Yeltsin’s political consultant.”

The Clinton Administration boosted the Russian economy by lobbying the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to infuse billions of dollars into Russia. They lobbied for Russian loans under false pretenses. According to political economist Nicholas Eberstadt, American Enterprise Institute, the marketing was “so implausible and absurd that only a Western government official, or an international civil servant, could possibly believe them.” The IMF money, not stolen or traded for favors, propped up the Russian bond market. This money leads to a profitable bubble for those in the Yeltsin circle.

Ex-Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbot recalled that the US actions enabled Russian corruption. He concludes that “the United States used its resources in a genuine belief that it was saving Russia from backsliding into Communism. What emerged was an oligarchy, a humiliating decrease in living standards for the vast majority of Russians, and a rapid decrease in Russian life-spans. Our interventions in 1996 made us a party to all of it.”

John Lloyd, former Moscow bureau chief for the Financial Times, explained that by allowing the oligarchs, in the name of the free market, to grab Russian resources and siphon anything of value into their own offshore bank accounts, the United States poisoned the Russian transition to a market economy. In the minds of ordinary Russians, Lloyd concludes, in Russia, capitalism became equated with theft.

Putin – A New Sheriff in Town
In August 1999, Boris Yeltsin appointed Vladimir Putin as prime minister. In 1991, Putin, an officer with the KGB, was so displeased with their role in the coup he resigned from his position. For the eight years between his resignation from the KGB and his appointment as Prime Minister, Putin watched his country destroyed by the corruption of the Yeltsin administration and the oligarchs he created.

By the time Putin took control in 1999, his mission was to destroy the Russian oligarchy and return political power back to the state. He accomplished his goal. Ordinary Russians applauded Putin’s pursuit of the oligarchs. After all, they believed the oligarchs were to blame for the nightmare of the Yeltsin years.

Russians regard Putin as the man who saved post-communist Russia. They admire his loyalty, have confidence in his leadership and support his more autocratic style.

Washington does not understand why Putin remains so popular – go figure! The Clintons blames Russian interference on her 2016 presidential election defeat – how ironic. History reveals a lot, it did not begin with the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine.

#132 – War’s “Why Can’t We Be Friends?”

The U.S. – USSR has never been at war with one another. They fought on the same side in WW1 and were allies during WW2. As a matter of fact, the Soviet Union defeated the Nazis in WW2 with help from the UK, US, and other Allied forces. Throughout history, the U.S. and the Russian relationship has ranged from good-willed cooperation to competitive rival.

Russia played a significant role in the American Revolutionary War. Catherine the Great decided to remain neutral in the conflict. Her sympathy and continued trade with the Colonists benefited both Russian commercial interests and the American rebels.

During the American Civil War, Tsar Alexander ll of Russia announced his support of the Union and urged reunification. The Tsar dispatched part of its fleet to New York, San Francisco, Boston, and Washington. These actions may have prevented Britain and France from intervening. Great Britain was sympathetic to the Confederacy and was dependent upon its exports.

In 1956, after Egypt’s leader Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal, the Suez Canal Crisis exploded. Israel, France, and the U.K. reacted by invading Egypt. The Soviet Union threatened to enter the fray. They demanded an immediate withdrawal of troops. The U.S., under the presidency of Eisenhower, supported the Nasser-Soviet position. Eisenhower then forced a ceasefire and withdrawal of all the invading forces. His support for the Egypt-Soviet side may have prevented a WW3 scenario.

Then, in 1962, Kennedy and Khrushchev, through back-door diplomacy, avoided direct confrontation over Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba. They worked together to solve a potential nuclear exchange between the two superpowers.

During the Reagan and Gorbachev years, the U.S. and USSR began a de-escalation of the Cold War. Gorbachev and Reagan signed the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty. The treaty required that their countries, by 1991, would eliminate arsenals of ground-launched, midrange nuclear missiles.

George H.W. Bush, Gorbachev, and Boris Yeltsin continued this working spirit, signing the START treaty, a pledge to reduce their arsenals significantly by 2009. Followed by the Open Skies Treaty, transferring the former Soviet nuclear arsenals to Russia with a $400 million United States commitment to help dismantle nuclear weapons.

The Cold War had ended, nuclear armaments were reduced, the U.S. and Russian relationship was amiable, and NATO was an organization that Russia was interested in joining. What? Putin believed NATO to be a non-threatening organization and a possible vehicle for Russia to join the European community.

In 2000, Putin had a very naive take on the hegemonic politics coming from the West. His attitude was on display during a Davis Frost interview. He told Frost that “Russia is part of the European culture. And I cannot imagine my own country in isolation from Europe and what we often call the civilized world.”

George Robertson, a former UK Labour defense secretary and Nato leader, recalled his conversation with Putin in 2000. “Putin said: ‘When are you going to invite us to join Nato?’ Robertson said: ‘Well, we don’t invite people to join Nato, they apply to join Nato.’ And he said: ‘Well, we’re not standing in line with a lot of countries that don’t matter.’” Russia is still standing in line as those other countries, that don’t matter, have become members of Nato.

What changed? NATO
In 1990, a reunified Germany joined NATO under the West German existing membership. Germany’s acceptance into NATO was accompanied by US Secretary of State James Baker promising the Soviets that NATO would not expand one inch.

Well, following the 1991 implosion of the Soviet Union, the Baker promise was broken. Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic became NATO members. Then Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania chose to join NATO in 2004.

Seven years after the Frost interview, a more veteran Putin let his frustration rip. At the 2007 Munich Conference on Security Policy, Putin said, “I think it is obvious that NATO expansion does not have any relation with the modernization of the Alliance itself or with ensuring security in Europe. On the contrary, it represents a serious provocation that reduces the level of mutual trust. And we have the right to ask: against whom is this expansion intended? And what happened to the assurances our Western partners made after the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact? Where are those declarations today? No one even remembers them. But I will allow myself to remind this audience what was said. I would like to quote the speech of NATO General Secretary Worner in Brussels on 17 May 1990. He said at the time that: “the fact that we are ready not to place a NATO army outside of German territory gives the Soviet Union a firm security guarantee”. Where are these guarantees?”

At the 2008 Bucharest Summit, NATO announced that Georgia and Ukraine, both ruled as part of the Soviet Union and both with borders to Russia, could join NATO. Putin called NATO’s promise of membership for Georgia and Ukraine “a direct threat” to Russian security. The Bucharest summit result heightened the Kremlin’s fears of encirclement. It also meant that Russia would lose the strategic buffer zone that enabled Russia to prevail over Western invaders twice in two centuries, Napoleon in 1812 and Hitler from 1941 to 1945.

Nato continued its creep toward Russian Borders. Two countries on the Adriatic Sea, Albania and Croatia, joined in April 2009, Montenegro in 2017, North Macedonia in 2020, and Finland in 2023.

The U.S. and NATO, intoxicated by its unipolar moment, continued ignoring the warnings from Russia and NATO member countries. Former French President Jacques Chirac said, “Russia should not be humiliated,” and German Ex-Chancellor Angela Merkel believed that Moscow had “legitimate security interests”. All concerns fell on deaf ears.

Washington and NATO systematically isolated Russia from Europe while claiming that Putin’s desire to restore the Soviet empire was the problem.

Why Can’t We Be Friends? NASA beamed this song to the linking of Soviet cosmonauts and U.S. astronauts for the 1975 Apollo–Soyuz Test Project.

#131 – “Praying In Vain For A Savior To Rise From These Streets” The Boss

Today’s working class feels the built-in pay cuts that inflation brings. Reality hits when they compare their wages to the increasing prices at the grocery store, the gas pump, and the monthly rent. Every Friday feels like a robbery has occurred. No, it is just the long arm of the Washington monster reaching into their pockets.

Engineered by the Federal Reserve Bank, it is a silent extraction. Officials tell them that inflation is coming down. They offer nothing to ease the pain inflicted by their eight percent pay cut last year. But they promise another three percent pay cut via inflation this year on top of the previous year’s pay cut. How sweet of our benevolent leaders as they approve billions of dollars for their neo-Nazi friends in Ukraine. 

The working class is not alone in their battle for equitable money. The upper-middle class faces the same dilemma. The only difference is that their cars are more expensive, homes bigger, and salaries higher than the working class. This demographic lives with the threat of unemployment and financial bankruptcy. With a recession looming, their jobless child living in their basement with a worthless degree, a $216,000 in college debt will be no help when the shit hits the fan. Yes, professional workers are living with the same anxiety.

These groups are bidding their time for a savior to rise. It will not come from the Republican or Democrat Party. Many thought it was Trump in 2016. Their support was a defiance of the Republican Party mixed with the leakage from the Democratic Party. He was not the answer. He only provided a big fat “fuck you” to the Washington vetted. What did that get him, jail time?

“Washington DC is a blood-swollen tick, sucking all the economic progress and freedom away from America’s working people and producing nothing of value in return. Wealth demographics of the Metro DC area prove that the parasite has clearly gotten bigger than the host. defunding the Deep State careerists in the federal executive branch.” https://libertarianinstitute.org/articles/were-primed-for-a-spark/

Washington workers are out of touch with America. They exist at the behest of the American working class. They wallow in an economic fascist revolving door. They provide the opportunity for the politically-favored corporations to get sweetheart federal contracts. They conceal their tactics behind propaganda, misinformation, and national security. It provides $100 billion in foreign aid to Ukraine to get hundreds of thousands of 19-year-old Russian and Ukrainian conscripts killed. 

Five of the Metro DC counties are among the ten wealthiest counties in America. Washington DC has no agricultural output, no manufacturing prowess, and no products that provide the comforts and necessities of Americans. The American working class watched Raytheon and Lockheed-Martin profits skyrocket as funds somehow mysteriously trickled into the accounts of the DC Metro elite as the Metro DC footprint expanded with million-dollar mansions. 

The FBI and Big Tech have become their hired hands to hide the profit of war and death. They are used to snuff out and remove any threat to this political and profitable relationship. The Covid lockdown, the Moderna jab, and the Amazon/NSA connection come to mind.

The backing for Trump was about a rebellion against the political establishment. The political results since 2016 have shown that American workers are unhappy. They are looking for a rebel capable of draining the swamp. The 2020 elections confirmed that no one in politics was on the side of the American working people.

Who, in 2024, can capture this crowd? Will their savior come democratically in the next presidential elections, or will it come by force? As we stray further from the government our founders designed, we open the door wider to change by force.