1918

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On Memorial Day 2018, in the year marking the 100^thanniversary of the end of World War I, Michael Parenti contemplates the trenches and the oligarchs who caused so much unnecessary misery.

German soldiers wearing 4 different types of gas masks, WW1.

By Michael Parenti Special to Consortium News

Looking back at the years of fury and carnage, Colonel Angelo Gatti, staff officer of the Italian Army (Austrian front), wrote in his diary: “This whole war has been a pile of lies. We came into war because a few men in authority, the dreamers, flung us into it.”

No, Gatti, caro mio, those few men are not dreamers; they are schemers. They perch above us. See how their armament contracts are turned into private fortunes—while the young men are turned into dust: more blood, more money; good for business this war.

It is the rich old men, i pauci, “the few,” as Cicero called the Senate oligarchs whom he faithfully served in ancient Rome. It is the few, who together constitute a bloc of industrialists and landlords, who think war will bring bigger markets abroad and civic discipline at home. One of i pauci in 1914 saw war as a way of promoting compliance and obedience on the labor front and—as he himself said—war, “would permit the hierarchal reorganization of class relations.”

Just awhile before the heresies of Karl Marx were spreading among Europe’s lower ranks. The proletariats of each country, growing in numbers and strength, were made to wage war against each other. What better way to confine and misdirect them than with the swirl of mutual destruction.

Then there were the generals and other militarists who started plotting this war as early as 1906, eight years before the first shots were fired. War for them means glory, medals, promotions, financial rewards, inside favors, and dining with ministers, bankers, and diplomats: the whole prosperity of death. When the war finally comes, it is greeted with quiet satisfaction by the generals.

Moguls and Monarchs Prevail

[dropcap]B[/dropcap]ut the young men are ripped by waves of machine-gun fire or blown apart by exploding shells. War comes with gas attacks and sniper shots: grenades, mortars, and artillery barrages; the roar of a great inferno and the sickening smell of rotting corpses. Torn bodies hang sadly on the barbed wire, and trench rats try to eat away at us, even while we are still alive.

Farewell, my loving hearts at home, those who send us their precious tears wrapped in crumpled letters. And farewell my comrades. When the people’s wisdom fails, moguls and monarchs prevail and there seems to be no way out.

Fools dance and the pit sinks deeper as if bottomless. No one can see the sky, or hear the music, or deflect the swarms of lies that cloud our minds like the countless lice that torture our flesh. Crusted with blood and filth, regiments of lost souls drag themselves to the devil’s pit. “Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch’entrate.” (“Abandon all hope, ye who enter” as our Dante delivered his painful message).

Meanwhile from above the Vatican wall, the pope himself begs the world leaders to put an end to hostilities, “lest there be no young men left alive in Europe.” But the war industry pays him no heed.

Finally the casualties are more than we can bear. There are mutinies in the French trenches! Agitators in the Czar’s army cry out for “Peace, Land, and Bread!” At home, our families grow bitter. There comes a breaking point as the oligarchs seem to be losing their grip.

At last the guns are mute in the morning air. A strange almost pious silence takes over. The fog and rain seem to wash our wounds and cool our fever. “Still alive,” the sergeant grins, “still alive.” He cups a cigarette in his hand. “Stack those rifles, you lazy bastards.” He grins again, two teeth missing. Never did his ugly face look so good as on this day in November 1918. Armistice embraces us like a quiet rapture.

Not really a quiet rapture with smiling sergeants. Many troops on both sides continued killing to the bitter end, with a fury that had no mercy. In one day, November 11, the last day of war, some 10,900 men were wounded or killed from both sides, a furious rage in the face of peace, years of slaughter; now moments of vengeance.

The Fall of Eagles

[dropcap]A[/dropcap] big piece of the encrusted aristocratic world breaks off. The Romanovs, Czar and family, are all executed in 1918 in Revolutionary Russia. That same year, the House of Hohenzollern collapses as Kaiser Wilhelm II flees Germany. Also in 1918, the Ottoman empire is shattered. And on Armistice Day, November 11th, 1918, at 11:00 a.m.—the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month—we mark the end of the war and with it the dissolution of the Habsburg dynasty.

The House of Romanovs—complete collapse

Four indestructible monarchies: Russian, German, Turkish, and Austro-Hungarian, four great empires, each with millions of bayonets and cannon at the ready, now twisting in the dim shadows of history.

Will our children ever forgive us for our dismal confusion? Will they ever understand what we went through? Will we? By 1918, four aristocratic autocracies fade away, leaving so many victims mangled in their wake, and so many bereaved crying through the night.

Back in the trenches, the agitators among us prove right. The mutinous Reds standing before the firing squad last year were right. Their truths must not be buried with them. Why are impoverished workers and peasants killing other impoverished workers and peasants? Now we know that our real foe is not in the weave of trenches; not at Ypres, nor at the Somme, or Verdun or Caporetto. Closer to home, closer to the deceptive peace that follows a deceptive war.

Now comes a different conflict. We have enemies at home: the schemers who trade our blood for sacks of gold, who make the world safe for hypocrisy, safe for themselves, readying themselves for the next “humanitarian war.” See how sleek and self-satisfied they look, riding our backs, distracting our minds, filling us with fright about wicked foes. Important things keep happening, but not enough to finish them off. Not yet enough.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Inventing Reality, The Politics of News Media; Make-Believe Media: The Politics of Entertainment; Democracy for the Few; Land of Idols: Political Mythology in America; History as Mystery; The Assassination of Julius Caesar , A People’s History of Ancient Rome and the first part of his memoir, Waiting for Yesterday: Pages from a Street Kid’s Life.

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The Best Definition of Donald Trump We Have Found

In his zeal to prove to his antagonists in the War Party that he is as bloodthirsty as their champion, Hillary Clinton, and more manly than Barack Obama, Trump seems to have gone “play-crazy” — acting like an unpredictable maniac in order to terrorize the Russians into forcing some kind of dramatic concessions from their Syrian allies, or risk Armageddon.However, the “play-crazy” gambit can only work when the leader is, in real life, a disciplined and intelligent actor, who knows precisely what actual boundaries must not be crossed. That ain’t Donald Trump — a pitifully shallow and ill-disciplined man, emotionally handicapped by obscene privilege and cognitively crippled by white American chauvinism. By pushing Trump into a corner and demanding that he display his most bellicose self, or be ceaselessly mocked as a “puppet” and minion of Russia, a lesser power, the War Party and its media and clandestine services have created a perfect storm of mayhem that may consume us all.— Glen Ford, Editor in Chief, Black Agenda Report

The cancellation of Roseanne Barr’s television series

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By David Walsh, wsws.org

On Tuesday, ABC television abruptly cancelled the revived Roseannetelevision series after its star Roseanne Barr posted a racist tweet.

Barr’s offending tweet made reference to Valerie Jarrett, an African American woman who was one of Barack Obama’s advisers: “Muslim brotherhood & planet of the apes had a baby=vj.” Barr deleted the tweet and later apologized to Jarrett and “all Americans. I am truly sorry for making a bad joke about her politics and her looks. I should have known better. Forgive me—my joke was in bad taste.” Barr said she was not a racist, “just an idiot.”

Barr with John Goodman

Announcing the cancellation of Roseanne, ABC Entertainment president Channing Dungey piously commented in a statement, “Roseanne's Twitter statement is abhorrent, repugnant and inconsistent with our values, and we have decided to cancel her show.” Robert Iger, Chairman and CEO of the Walt Disney Company, which owns ABC, asserted, “There was only one thing to do here, and that was the right thing.”

Roseanne

The posturing of Iger—one of the best-paid executives in the US—and the rest of the ABC hierarchy as high-minded opponents of intolerance and advocates of universal brotherhood is absurd and monstrously hypocritical. A billion-dollar corporation, the television network, along with the rest of the American media, has the blood of masses of people in the Middle East and Central Asia on its hands. Warmongers like ABC News Chief Global Affairs Correspondent Martha Raddatz regularly pass on Pentagon misinformation and anti-Muslim propaganda as “news.”

In any event, a controversy surrounding Barr comes as no great surprise. An opponent of the Iraq War, an outspoken supporter of Occupy Wall Street and a candidate for president for the pseudo-left Peace and Freedom Party in 2012, the comedian-actress has descended in the more recent period into the universe of far-right conspiracy theories. She has promoted the claim, for example, that high-ranking Democratic Party figures are involved in child sex-trafficking rings and that Donald Trump is breaking them up.

Indeed, Barr made new headlines in 2016 when she revealed her support for Trump, later insisting that she was still “a radical” and had voted for Trump to “shake up the status quo & the staid establishment.”

Barr’s outburst May 29 came as one of a series of disoriented tweets she posted that inveighed against various figures in the Democratic Party and its orbit. She first claimed that Chelsea Clinton, daughter of the former president, was married to a nephew of Hungarian-American billionaire George Soros, a prominent Democratic donor (and one of the bête noires of the anti-Semitic ultra-right), which is not true. When Chelsea Clinton pointed out the error, Barr, who is Jewish, replied in a tweet, “Please forgive me! By the way, George Soros is a nazi who turned in his fellow Jews 2 be murdered in German concentration camps & stole their wealth—were you aware of that?”

Barr went on to suggest that Soros intended to “overthrow [the] us constitutional republic by buying/backing candidates 4 local district attorney races who will ignore US law & favor ‘feelings’ instead—and call everyone who is alarmed by that ‘racist.’” When a correspondent made a reference to Valerie Jarrett helping to “hide a lot” during the Obama administration, Barr chimed in with her fateful comment, which she subsequently blamed on the sleeping drug Ambien.

Sara Gilbert, who played Barr’s daughter on Roseanne and was one of the chief instigators of the program’s revival, told the media that Barr’s views “do not reflect the beliefs of our cast and crew or anyone associated with our show. I am disappointed in her actions to say the least. This is incredibly sad and difficult for all of us, as we've created a show that we believe in, are proud of, and that audiences love—one that is separate and apart from the opinions and words of one cast member.” Another performer, Michael Fishman, as well as showrunner Bruce Helford, offered similar remarks.

Trump inserted himself into the controversy Wednesday afternoon, when he offered his own bizarre and egomaniacal tweet: “Bob Iger of ABC called Valerie Jarrett to let her know that ‘ABC does not tolerate comments like those’ made by Roseanne Barr. Gee, he never called President Donald J. Trump to apologize for the HORRIBLE statements made and said about me on ABC. Maybe I just didn't get the call?”

[dropcap]B[/dropcap]arr’s views and her connections to the extreme right are reprehensible, but, as noted above, there is nothing admirable or remotely progressive about Disney’s actions, which will only make her a martyr in the eyes of the paranoid ultra-right. Disney’s decision reaffirms the ability of giant corporations to terminate television programs and other forms of entertainment or news when the CEO and other executives disapprove of an individual’s political views. This may be used against right-wing opinions in this case, but the far greater likelihood is that the precedent will be turned against opponents of big business and war.

Aside from the wholesale McCarthyite purging of left-wing actors, writers and directors in the 1940s and 1950s, we have the more recent example, in 1982, of CBS’s closing down of the Lou Grant show. The popular drama series about a big city newspaper was taken off the air under pressure from corporate sponsors and the Reagan administration due to the left-wing views and activities of its star, Ed Asner. Asner had played a leading role in the Screen Actors Guild strike in 1980, and became president of the union in 1981. He was vocal in support for the PATCO strike that same year and spoke out strongly against the policies of the Reagan White House, including its involvement in supporting vicious dictatorships throughout Latin America.

Asner’s participation in a fundraiser for El Salvadoran rebels was apparently the final straw. The media and prominent Republicans such as Charlton Heston launched a smear campaign against the veteran actor. As one observer noted, “I’ve never seen anybody transformed so quickly from being everyone's favorite uncle to a communist swine.” Lou Grant was taken off the air within weeks. Moreover, the star of WKRP in Cincinnati, Howard Hesseman, was also involved in the El Salvadoran event. WKRP in Cincinnati was canceled the same day as Asner’s program.

Disney's CEO Bob Iger—Appalling hypocrisy doesn't come much more revolting than this, but this is the default mode, for the entire corporate class.

The abrupt rise and fall of the revived Roseanne involves a great deal that is sordid, and not simply the comedian’s crazed tweeting.

ABC executives no doubt thought they were being terribly clever, making use (in their own minds) of the “Trump phenomenon” and “white working class anger” when they put Barr’s show back on the air. In their stupidity and social obliviousness, they thought they could successfully navigate fraught, complex political waters through the medium of a situation comedy, that they’d have a profitable hit on their hands to boot and that, in any case, they had Barr under control.

Of course, Barr doesn’t represent working class anger, but a kind of diseased, wealthy-lumpen Hollywood element and she is definitely not under control. She remains a loose cannon even as she sinks into the right-wing swamp. Her comments and the explosion were entirely predictable.

It remains unclear what people like Gilbert, Laurie Metcalfe, John Goodman and some of the others (liberals and even identity politics types) were thinking. Perhaps it was economic opportunism, perhaps there was a fantasy of an alliance with “white populist anger.” But the entire unprincipled affair has now blown up in their faces, costing hundreds of people their jobs. In any event, ABC’s actions were cynical and reactionary from beginning to end, both in putting the show on, and taking it off.

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The Best Definition of Donald Trump We Have Found

Five thousand deaths in Puerto Rico from Hurricane Maria

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Genevieve Leigh, wsws.org

A social crime and cover-up exposed

On Tuesday, a Harvard University study was published in the New England Journal of Medicine revealing that the true death toll from Hurricane María in Puerto Rico may be as high as 5,000 people, an estimate 70 times the absurdly low official government figure that to this day remains at 64.

The study found that thousands of deaths were caused by lack of access to basic medical care. The report explained: “[T]he most frequently reported problems were an inability to access medications (14.4 percent of households) and the need for respiratory equipment requiring electricity (9.5 percent), but many households also reported problems with closed medical facilities (8.6 percent) or absent doctors (6.1 percent). In the most remote category, 8.8 percent of households reported that they had been unable to reach 911 services by telephone.”

The study also documents some of the daily struggles of life for the working class in the aftermath of the storm. The report shows that, on average, households went 84 days without electricity, 68 days without running water and 41 days without cellular telephone coverage in the period evaluated by the study (September 20 to December 31, 2017).

The results of the study are a damning exposure of one of the most monstrous cover-ups in US history. Eight months after the storm, the independent study by Harvard researchers provides the only comprehensive scientific assessment of the death toll from the hurricane and the massively under-funded and incompetent recovery effort.

The Harvard study notes that the territorial administration of Governor Ricardo Rosselló stopped providing official mortality figures to the public in December, after estimates by media outlets showed vastly higher death rates than the official numbers given out by both the Trump administration and the local government.

This campaign of lies to conceal the scale of the disaster has been led by the Trump administration. During his October 2017 visit, while more than 80 percent of the island was struggling to survive without electricity, running water or access to medical care, the president declared that the destruction from Hurricane María did not constitute “a real catastrophe like Katrina” because the Rosselló government at that point had certified only 16 deaths. It has now been established that the death toll in Puerto Rico towers above that of every other US natural disaster in recent history, including Hurricane Katrina, which is reported to have killed 1,833 people.

The US corporate media are callously indifferent to the suffering of the people of Puerto Rico and determined to continue the cover-up. The Harvard study is being treated as a non-issue. The report was featured on the front pages of the websites of the New York Times and Washington Post for no more than a few hours on Tuesday and was completely gone from the front pages by Wednesday.

The criminally negligent government response to the hurricane was not a mere oversight, but rather a deliberate policy pursued with the support of both political parties. The financial oligarchy that rules the United States did not want to spend the money needed to save lives, make the storm victims whole and rebuild the island’s infrastructure. On the contrary, as far as it was concerned, the social and economic devastation of Puerto Rico was an opportunity to further the corporate plunder of the island’s assets and wealth.

In the months preceding the hurricane, as Puerto Rico hovered on the edge of bankruptcy, Wall Street hedge funds and banks sought to exploit the crisis to extract ever greater tribute in return for credit. As a result, the island’s infrastructure was on the verge of collapse and social inequality was skyrocketing before the hurricane struck.

In the weeks following the hurricane, the ruling elite was centrally preoccupied with passing a multi-trillion-dollar tax cut for corporations and the wealthy, which was signed into law by Trump in December, at the same time people in Puerto Rico were dying from lack of electricity, clean water and medical services.

The Democratic Party offered no resistance to the policy of the Trump administration. When Democratic Senator Bernie Sanders visited the island, he proclaimed he had come to “to listen, and to hear from the people of Puerto Rico about how we address the immediate set of crises that the island faces short-term.” Following his publicity stunt, no action was taken.

The high point of this scheming is the fiscal plan developed by the unelected and dictatorial Financial Oversight Management Board, put in place by the Obama administration. The proposed plan will eliminate thousands of jobs, privatize both the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority (PREPA) and the water utility, consolidate dozens of state agencies, cut pensions by 10 to 25 percent for retired public employees, drastically reduce government subsidies to all of Puerto Rico’s 78 municipalities, cut funding to the island’s only public university, slash sick leave and vacation pay for public-sector workers by half, and eliminate mandatory Christmas bonuses, among other cost-cutting measures.

The crisis in Puerto Rico is a graphic expression of crisis and historical bankruptcy of American and world capitalism. All the processes that have coalesced to produce the disastrous state of affairs in Puerto Rico—the financialization of economic life, privatization of social services, attacks on living standards—are global processes that define life for workers all over the world.

The crimes committed against workers in Puerto Rico parallel every other social crime committed against the working class throughout the world: Hurricane Katrina in Louisiana, the Grenfell fire in London, the poisoning of the water supply in Flint, Michigan.

The lie told in every case that there is “no money” to repair the damage, make whole the residents or prepare for a future natural disaster is refuted by record corporate profits and CEO pay and billions spent on war. Just one day after the Harvard report was released, it was revealed that Trump’s corporate tax cuts, signed into law a few months after Hurricane María, resulted in $30 billion in additional profits for America’s largest companies in the first quarter. This is the exact cost estimated by Governor Rosselló to repair critical infrastructure on the island.

In early February of this year the Trump administration, with the full support of the Democrats, passed a military budget of $700 billion which will be used to escalate US military violence in the Middle East and prepare for war against Iran and nuclear-armed Russia and China. This military budget would cover the cost of rebuilding damaged and destroyed homes from the storm 15 times over.

The only way to secure the rights of the working class in Puerto Rico and around the world is by expropriating these resources from the giant corporations and the billionaires who control the world's wealth and putting them under the democratic control of the working class. The ally of the Puerto Rican working class in achieving this is not this or that local bourgeois politician who claims to oppose Trump, but the working class on the mainland and around the world who suffer at the hands of the same ruling class policies.

—Genevieve Leigh

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Genevieve Leigh writes for wsws.org, a Marxian publication.

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The Best Definition of Donald Trump We Have Found

ARCHIVES: In honorable remembrance of Patrice Lumumba

The Last Letter of Patrice Lumumba
FIRST PUBLISHED ON 28 APR 2011 • REPUBLISHED 27 MAY 2018

Congo Crisis.^[1] He was subsequently imprisoned and murdered in circumstances suggesting the support and complicity of the governments of Belgium and the United States. Lumumba was barely 35 years old. ^[2]^[3]Source: WIKIFILE

Congo’s martyred patriot, Patrice Lumumba

Western allies, who found direct and indirect support, both deliberate and unintentional, amongst certain high officials of the United Nations, that organization in which we placed all our trust when we called on its assistance.

They have corrupted some of our compatriots and bribed others. They have helped to distort the truth and bring our independence into dishonour. How could I speak otherwise?

Dead or alive, free or in prison by order of the imperialists, it is not myself who counts. It is the Congo, it is our poor people for whom independence has been transformed into a cage from whose confines the outside world looks on us, sometimes with kindly sympathy, but at other times with joy and pleasure. But my faith will remain unshakeable. I know and I feel in my heart that sooner or later my people will rid themselves of all their enemies, both internal and external, and that they will rise as one man to say No to the degradation and shame of colonialism, and regain their dignity in the clear light of the sun.

We are not alone. Africa, Asia and the free liberated people from all corners of the world will always be found at the side of the millions of Congolese who will not abandon the struggle until the day when there are no longer any colonialists and their mercenaries in our country. As to my children whom I leave and whom I may never see again, I should like them to be told that it is for them, as it is for every Congolese, to accomplish the sacred task of reconstructing our independence and our sovereignty: for without dignity there is no liberty, without justice there is no dignity, and without independence there are no free men.

Neither brutality, nor cruelty nor torture will ever bring me to ask for mercy, for I prefer to die with my head unbowed, my faith unshakable and with profound trust in the destiny of my country, rather than live under subjection and disregarding sacred principles. History will one day have its say, but it will not be the history that is taught in Brussels, Paris, Washington or in the United Nations, but the history which will be taught in the countries freed from imperialism and its puppets. Africa will write its own history, and to the north and south of the Sahara, it will be a glorious and dignified history.

Do not weep for me, my dear wife. I know that my country, which is suffering so much, will know how to defend its independence and its liberty.

Long live the Congo! Long live Africa!

Patrice Lumumba

_______________

MR Magazine, for making this material available.

La dernière lettre de Patrice Lumumba

Ma compagne chérie,

Je t’écris ces mots sans savoir s’ils te parviendront, quand ils te parviendront et si je serai en vie lorsque tu les liras. Tout au long de ma lutte pour l’indépendance de mon pays, je n’ai jamais douté un seul instant du triomphe final de la cause sacrée à laquelle mes compagnons et moi avons consacré toute notre vie. Mais ce que nous voulions pour notre pays, son droit à une vie honorable, à une dignité sans tache, à une indépendance sans restrictions, le colonialisme belge et ses alliés occidentaux — qui ont trouvé des soutiens directs et indirects, délibérés et non délibérés, parmi certains hauts fonctionnaires des Nations-unies, cet organisme en qui nous avons placé toute notre confiance lorsque nous avons fait appel à son assistance — ne l’ont jamais voulu.

Ils ont corrompu certains de nos compatriotes, ils ont contribué à déformer la vérité et à souiller notre indépendance. Que pourrai je dire d’autre ?

Que mort, vivant, libre ou en prison sur ordre des colonialistes, ce n’est pas ma personne qui compte. C’est le Congo, c’est notre pauvre peuple dont on a transformé l’indépendance en une cage d’où l’on nous regarde du dehors, tantôt avec cette compassion bénévole, tantôt avec joie et plaisir. Mais ma foi restera inébranlable. Je sais et je sens au fond de moi même que tôt ou tard mon peuple se débarrassera de tous ses ennemis intérieurs et extérieurs, qu’il se lèvera comme un seul homme pour dire non au capitalisme dégradant et honteux, et pour reprendre sa dignité sous un soleil pur.

Nous ne sommes pas seuls. L’Afrique, l’Asie et les peuples libres et libérés de tous les coins du monde se trouveront toujours aux côtés de millions de congolais qui n’abandonneront la lutte que le jour où il n’y aura plus de colonisateurs et leurs mercenaires dans notre pays. A mes enfants que je laisse, et que peut-être je ne reverrai plus, je veux qu’on dise que l’avenir du Congo est beau et qu’il attend d’eux, comme il attend de chaque Congolais, d’accomplir la tâche sacrée de la reconstruction de notre indépendance et de notre souveraineté, car sans dignité il n’y a pas de liberté, sans justice il n’y a pas de dignité, et sans indépendance il n’y a pas d’hommes libres.

Ni brutalités, ni sévices, ni tortures ne m’ont jamais amené à demander la grâce, car je préfère mourir la tête haute, la foi inébranlable et la confiance profonde dans la destinée de mon pays, plutôt que vivre dans la soumission et le mépris des principes sacrés. L’histoire dira un jour son mot, mais ce ne sera pas l’histoire qu’on enseignera à Bruxelles, Washington, Paris ou aux Nations Unies, mais celle qu’on enseignera dans les pays affranchis du colonialisme et de ses fantoches. L’Afrique écrira sa propre histoire et elle sera au nord et au sud du Sahara une histoire de gloire et de dignité.

Ne me pleure pas, ma compagne. Moi je sais que mon pays, qui souffre tant, saura défendre son indépendance et sa liberté.

Vive le Congo ! Vive l’Afrique !

Patrice Lumumba

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The U.S. and Israel: a Match Made in Hell

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by ROBERT FANTINA

When one is discussing a violent nation, one that disdains international law, hold human rights in contempt, and cares nothing for its reputation on the international stage, one is generally discussing either the United States or Israel. They are so often complicit in each other’s crimes, and that fact is becoming clearer as each nation is led by an unstable, corrupt and egotistical mad man.

We will not take the time herein to rehash the ugly history of this disgraceful duo; their current crimes are sufficient for a brief discussion.

U.S. violation of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.

This agreement, signed by President Barack Obama representing the United States, with Germany, France, Britain, Russia, China, the European Union and Iran, regulated Iran’s nuclear program, in exchange for the lifting of sanctions against that nation. One of the terms of the agreement was that international inspectors had to certify Iranian compliance, which it has done since its inception in 2015. The U.S. president had to certify, to Congress, compliance, based on the results of those international inspections.

Israeli Prime Murderer Benjamin Netanyahu was more than a little miffed by this agreement; he addressed the U.S. Congress prior to the completion and signing of the agreement, attempting to get that body to vote it down. This put Congress members in a very uncomfortable position: they had to defy one of their two leaders. Either the Democratic president would have to be thwarted, or a main source of their campaign contributions would need to be disappointed.

In the end, they risked the campaign dollars, and approved the agreement.

During the remainder of Obama’s term, he certified compliance, as President Donald Trump did, most grudgingly, for the first year of his administration. Yet while Obama had a ‘troubled’ relationship with Netanyahu, the bromance between Trump and the Israeli leader rivals that of Romeo and Juliet; never have there been two such peas in any pod.

So, in order to please his Israeli paramour, and against the wishes and counsel of the entire international body except Saudi Arabia and Israel, against the advice of the U.S.’s military leaders, and in violation of international law, Trump withdrew the U.S. from the JCPOA.

This, of course, threw the other signatories into an understandable tizzy. Companies within their borders had begun doing very lucrative business with Iran, and they have now been told by the U.S. that they have between 60 and 120 days to cease and desist. Yet their own governments have said they will respect the JCPOA. This means that Trump could sanction some of the U.S.’s oldest and most trusted allies. This does not seem to trouble Trump, or his war-mongering cohorts. This includes the current National Security Advisor John Bolton, who disdains international law, and says it only exists to constrain U.S. power.

U.S. embassy move to Jerusalem.

This seems to be a case where Congressional lust to please Israel (keep in mind those campaign contributions), may have caused more problems than even Congress thinks it is worth. Congress decades ago passed a law mandating the move of the embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, to please its Israeli masters, but included a caveat that the U.S. president could delay the move due to ‘security considerations’. Every president since Bill Clinton has used that caveat. But security considerations be damned, said the illustrious Trump. So what if nearly the entire international community says that this must not be done, and that the final status of Jerusalem can only be determined through negotiations. So what if a resolution in the United Nations Security Council condemning the move was vetoed by the U.S., when every other nation represented on the Security Council voted in favor of the resolution. Who cares if the U.N. General Assembly voted overwhelmingly to make the decision to establish Jerusalem null and void. It is the fulfillment of a dream long held by Netanyahu, so that, it seems, is all that matters.

Israeli killing of Palestinian protestors.

For weeks, Palestinians in Gaza have been demonstrating, demanding the internationally-recognized right of return. Tens of thousands of Palestinians demonstrated, and they were met with live ammunition and tear gas by Israeli soldiers. Members of the press, clearly marked as such, were targeted, shot and killed. Medical personnel, also clearly marked and assisting injured Palestinians, had to fight Israeli soldiers who were attempting to prevent them from helping the wounded.

Around the world, such behaviors were condemned, yet no words of criticism emitted from the White House. Indeed, the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., the ignorant, racist Nikki Healy, praised Israeli ‘restraint’, and said any country would have defended its borders, apparently from unarmed demonstrators who were making no effort to breach those borders. She has long demonstrated that she lives in a fantasy land also inhabited by the president that she so ably serves.

So, where does this all leave us? We have two countries, each of which encourages and supports the other in its international crimes against humanity. Each is led by an internationally-recognized mad man. Each oppresses other nations, as it also selectively oppresses those within its own borders.

Have we, perhaps, reached a tipping point, that time when opinions shift dramatically? Several Democratic members of Congress have done the previously-unthinkable in criticizing Israeli actions. And not a single Democrat attended the grand, bloody opening of the embassy in Jerusalem.Until very recently, one of the very few areas on which the heavily-divided and extremely partisan Congress could agree was in their unwavering devotion to Israel.

Things are changing, but not for the people in Palestine. With the occupation in full force, the head of the government in the West Bank nothing more than a traitor, and Gaza strangled by the illegal blockade, the abject, unspeakable suffering continues. Perhaps, however, real change may be on the horizon. It will not come too soon for Palestine.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Robert Fantina’s latest book is Empire, Racism and Genocide: a History of US Foreign Policy (Red Pill Press).

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License

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