Tehran Times – The inimitable Chris Hedges, who for years was the New York Times bureau chief covering the Middle East, and who lost his job at the newspaper 20 years ago because he opposed the U.S. invasion of Iraq, has lately written another masterful piece covering all the bases with regard to Apartheid Israel.
One need not re-describe what Hedges has on Palestine, but the only conclusion one can come to is that the current Israeli government intends to annex eventually all of the West Bank, give no relief to the two million plus Palestinians in Gaza, and eventually drive out the remaining Palestinians in the West Bank, some three million, one way or another. For anyone who has been involved with trying to understand the Palestinian plight in recent decades, what Hedges relates is one of the saddest stories among many unfolding now. Iranians know this, too.
The other hugely horrific story is in Ukraine, and a potential new story now involves Niger which in a coup installed new leaders fed up with French colonialism there and in West Africa. Note that some 70 percent or more Nigeriens don’t even have electricity for light bulbs, but France depends to a significant degree for its own power needs on uranium extracted on the cheap by and from Niger’s poor. Also, of late, we have the imprisonment of Pakistan’s popular Imran Khan, this is largely a result of U.S. demands to effectively bury the popular Khan from leading Pakistan.
And this is because he objected to the U.S. proxy war on Russia in Ukraine. One also witnesses efforts by the U.S. to corral China both economically and politically with the focal point on Taiwan to ensure that it remains a U.S. vassal and does not re-join China even while the U.S. allegedly recognizes that Taiwan is in fact “Chinese”.
The U.S. is even sending “cookie monster” Undersecretary of State Victoria Nuland to Vietnam soon to try to convince the Communist government in Vietnam to support the Biden Administration. Nuland failed in her recent mission to Niger in her opposition to that country’s new government. She is likely to fail in Vietnam, too, whatever her precise demands may be.
And there are other so-called diplomatic efforts in other countries to try to keep the U.S. “empire” intact, where compromise is not in the U.S. cards but simply arm twisting, threats, bribes and demands. It’s obvious that ANY important country that does not obey the U.S. is a potential target for political and military turmoil. But the big enchilada nowadays remains Ukraine, with China, in the growing recognition of U.S. failure in Ukraine, the next target.
There is no question, regarding Ukraine, that the Zelensky regime has all but lost the much heralded “offensive” against the Russian forces in Ukraine this summer. This suggests the war in Ukraine could end by late autumn in some fashion but on Russia’s terms. Even a few U.S. mainstream media outlets such as CNN have admitted to the U.S.-NATO proxy war’s military failures.
No one can kill an obvious truth forever, not even CNN or other parts of the U.S. mainstream media, so the question is, what does a country do with truths that are staring it in the face? In the case of people like Nuland and Antony Blinken, Nuland’s boss, and Jake Sullivan, a “national security” advisor to senile Joe Biden, they don’t modify policies at all and carry on as if truths don’t matter. They simply cannot conceive of supporting a geopolitical strategy where cooperation might prevail even now when it becomes a necessity because tensions could explode in a nuclear way.
Biden just this month authorized or suggested another $40 billion to push the bloody war further, according to James Rickards, an American lawyer, financial expert and author. The U.S. may already have committed some $200 billion into the overall effort to castrate Putin’s Russia, Rickards says, and will brook no competition economic or military to U.S. dominance. And this is a financial environment where the U.S. is $33 trillion in debt and the annual interest on the debt is well over $730 billion. This expense will surpass a trillion dollars in another year, more than the entire U.S. “defense” budget which itself is insane. It’s totally unsustainable but there you have it, another failure to recognize a truth.
Even Muammar Ghaddafi, who was sodomized with a bayonet and murdered in Libya, the most prosperous African country in his day, said this way back in 2005: “NATO is expanding towards Russia to reach and capture the gas, oil, coal and iron owned by Russia.” Ghaddaffi went on in his long-ago speech vaguely foreshadowing his demise and the NATO/U.S. destruction of prosperous Libya, adding that the U.S. is in effect killing itself, claiming that the hour will come when the U.S. will collapse like the Soviet Union did just over three decades ago.
But none should make the mistake of failing to recognize that the U.S. has not seriously been about promoting “freedom and democracy” and especially goodwill, but about resource theft, dominance, control and rapine, all at bottom to try to make sure that the “empire” survives and thrives with little regard even for the longer term well-being its NATO allies in a de-industrializing Europe that has lost its independence and become dependent on the U.S. for table scraps of economic support.
by Martin Love
