Breaking with Washington: Arabs and Muslims must take a stance for Palestine

By RAMZY BAROUD

(February 12) – A negotiated solution to the ‘Palestinian-Israeli conflict’, at least the way envisaged by successive US administrations, has failed. Now, Palestinians and their allies would have to explore a whole new path of liberation that does not go through Washington.

It is easy to place all the blame on the current US administration, setting apart dodgy characters such as the President’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, as the man who has single-handedly diminished any real chances for a just peace in Palestine and Israel.

Trump ‘solves’ the Arab-Israeli conflict

President Donald J. Trump listens as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivers remarks on Jan. 28, 2020, during the unveiling of the Trump administration’s Middle East Peace Plan | White House, Shealah Craighead

This plan goes beyond all previous U.S. commitments to Israel and of course it too will not work, writes As’ad AbuKhalil in Consortium News

Glory has long motivated U.S. presidents in their approach to the Arab-Israeli conflict. That has been clear since the administration of John F. Kennedy attempted to “solve” the intractable conflict.

They all know that by solving the conflict, once and for all, they would manage a secure place for their names in history. And for many of the biblically-minded presidents there are also religious motivations in associating their names with “peace plans” which aim to reward or elevate the status of biblical Israel. (Jimmy Carter in his book, “The Blood of Abraham,” could not distinguish between the modern occupation state of Israel, and Israel of the Bible.)

Saudi Arabia: The second Saud dynasty

During the evening of November 3, Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman (MBS) launched his “Night of the Long Knives” – a virtual coup d’état. It included the house arrest of 11 princes and four ministers and scores of other former government lackeys in political, security, and business spheres, not to overlook the freezing of up to 1,700 bank accounts worth $800 billion. This coup has serious regional and international implications.The next day, a missile headed toward Riyadh from Yemen, which the Saudis quickly called an act of war. The visiting prime minister of Lebanon, Saad Hariri, was placed under house arrest and forced to resign in a letter reportedly dictated by his hosts blaming Iran and the resistance organization Hezbollah for threatening the security of Lebanon; the Saudis called on expatriates to evacuate. In parallel, Israel launched new air strikes against Syria and the Trump regime escalated its offensive against Iran;  the US ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley later in the week called for sanctions against Tehran, citing Saudi “evidence”. Iran has dismissed the claims as baseless, pointing to the Saudi air, sea and land blockade on Yemen as preventing any such weapons supply.

Trump’s task is to reverse the ‘roll out’ of Iran by challenging the JCPOA

By MAHDI DARIUS NAZEMROAYA 

Washington’s plan for regime change in Damascus has failed. Albeit it has not gone the way that the US and Israel have desired, it can be said using the geopolitical language of Israeli and US planners and strategists that Syria has been “rolled back.” This does not mean Syria will stay in this “rolled-back” state statically.

In Iraq, the federal government has come out victorious and pushed back the so-called “Islamic State” and demands have started for a withdrawal of US forces. In the Levant, the Palestinians have managed to form a national unity government that will change the equation of talks between the Palestinians and Israel whereas Hezbollah and its political partners in Lebanon are stronger than ever. While in Yemen, the Houthis or Ansarallah have been able to repel the Saudis.

The US and its allies are the ones in the bigger geopolitical picture that are being “rolled back” steadily. In this context, Washington is now turning to the strategic depth of Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, the Houthi, and the Palestinians. That strategic depth is the Islamic Republic of Iran. 

CNN International, Gulf Co-operation Council and the business of war

For four years, the US, Canada and NATO together with the monopoly media such as CNN have portrayed the foreign intervention in the Syrian Arab Republic as a “civil war” and championed foreign terrorists as “moderate rebels” – proxy forces that are harboured, trained, armed, and extensively funded by a coalition of NATO and members of the Gulf Co-operation Council (GCC)  within the borders of Turkey (NATO territory) and Jordan.

The Saudi-Qatar row and NATO’s empire ambition

Like children fighting over toys, writes AYSEHA ALAM, the dictators of Saudi Arabia and Qatar are involved in infantile squabbles much to the annoyance of their US-NATO masters. Canada-GCC bilateral trade is increasing steadily, reaching a record high of $6.8 billion in 2012, up from $4.8 billion in 2010, much of it in armaments. In February, the Harper war government happily announced the $12 billion sale by General Dynamics, London, Ontario of armoured personnel vehicles to the feudal Saudia Arabia dictatorship, part of the Gulf Co-operation (sic) Council, which it considers a strategic partner. Since this article was written, the US indeed has started to supply heavy weapons to terrorist groups in Syria, a decision made following US President Barack Obama’s meeting with Saudi King Abdullah in Riyadh on March 28.

Crescent International – AS SYRIA continues to burn in its ghastly conflagration, emptying a country of half its population, the parlor spats of the Persian Gulf monarchies illustrate the tenuous nature of the confederates of civil war and destabilization in the Arab world. Old rivals Qatar and Saudi Arabia are once again butting heads, jeopardizing the US-Israeli project of fanning the black flames of war in Syria.

Harper government extends military deployment in Arabian Sea to 2015

Artemis’ “main vocation was to roam mountain forests and uncultivated land with her nymphs in attendance hunting for lions, panthers, hinds and stags.”

By TONY SEED

THE Harper government announced October 21 that it will extend its naval deployment in the Arabian Sea region until April 2015.  The unprecedented deployment is another act of a rogue state that under the pretext of defending “Canadian values” goes around the world attacking sovereign nations militarily, economically and politically, overtly and covertly, as part of a hooligan gang of allies led by the United States.

The Halifax-based patrol frigate HMCS Toronto and her crew of approximately 250 personnel are currently patrolling the Arabian Sea region. She departed her home port of Halifax, Nova Scotia on 14 January, 2013.

Syria: French colonizers have not accepted the loss of their colony

French General Georges Catroux is walking next to Nur-Eddin al-Khatib, the grandfather of Mouaz al-Khatib, the incumbent president of the foreign terrorist so-called National Coalition for Opposition Forces and the Syrian Revolution. Photo taken in 1941.

By ELENA GROMOVA (Photos, captions and sidebar by Tony Seed)

A PHOTOGRAPH taken in 1941, when Syria was still under the rule of French colonisers, has recently been circulating on social networking sites. In the worn black and white photograph, French General Georges Catroux is walking next to an elderly man with cunning eyes, Nur-Eddin al-Khatib.

More than 70 years has passed and the grandson of this Nur-Eddin – Mouaz al-Khatib, a former preacher at the Umayyad mosque in Damascus and now a deserter and traitor – has been elected head of the “Qatar Coalition” (the so-called “National Coalition of Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Groups” or Syran National Coalition, cobbled together by the United States – TS), which was created on 11 November 2012 at a meeting in Doha.

Middle East: Harper’s ‘anticipation of future missions’

By TONY SEED*

THE Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has been paralysed by its latest succession crisis, even as it has considerably stretched its own immediate military resources, urgently needed (especially right now) for repressing its own people, by sending a force under partly U.S. command to quell a year-long uprising in the Persian Gulf emirate of Bahrain. Meanwhile, a newly-released Congressional report advocates the United States boost the forces it already has encamped in Kuwait. Fifteen thousand U.S. troops are already stationed in the tiny Gulf kingdom.