US Foreign Policy

Are Demands On Qatar By US Arab Allies A Sign Of Coming Attack On Iran?

June 24, 2017 Staff, www.bbc.com Educate! Iran, Middle East, US Foreign Policy

By Staff of BBC News - The stakes have just been raised, dramatically. The sanctions imposed by Saudi Arabia, the UAE and others two weeks ago had failed to produce the result they wanted. Qatar has remained defiant, rejecting their accusations and pulling in help from Iran and Turkey. The list of demands now being made are humiliating for Qatar - closing its flagship TV channel Al Jazeera, for example, would spell an end to a 21-year drive to put Qatar firmly on the global media map. Some Gulf commentators believe these demands may be just a starting point for negotiations but the Saudi and UAE governments are in no mood for compromise. They don't trust Qatar's word. So if there really is no room for manoeuvre on the demands that would leave only two courses: total capitulation by Qatar and its return to the Gulf Arab fold, as a meek and much reduced national figure; or a defiant Qatar expelled from the GCC and quite possibly becoming a dependent ally of Iran's. Qatar's critics may yet regret what they have started.

Israel Makes Request To U.S. To Dismantle Life Support System For 5 Million Palestinians

June 21, 2017 Jonathan Cook, www.alternet.org Educate! Israel, Palestine, US Foreign Policy

By Jonathan Cook for AlterNet - Israeli and US officials are in the process of jointly pre-empting Donald Trump’s supposed “ultimate deal” to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. They hope to demote the Palestinian issue to a footnote in international diplomacy. The conspiracy – a real one – was much in evidence last week during a visit to the region by Nikki Haley, Washington’s envoy to the United Nations. Her escort was Danny Danon, her Israeli counterpart and a fervent opponent of Palestinian statehood. Danon makes Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu look moderate. He has backed Israel annexing the West Bank and ruling over Palestinians apatheid-style. Haley appears unperturbed. During a meeting with Netanyahu, she told him that the UN was “a bully to Israel”. She has warned the powerful Security Council to focus on Iran, Syria, Hamas and Hizbollah, instead of Israel. To protect its tiny ally, Washington is threatening to cut billions in US funding to the world body, plunging it into crisis and jeopardising peacekeeping and humanitarian operations.

Conference Signals Further US Militarization In Central America

June 20, 2017 Jake Johnston, www.cepr.net Educate! Central America, Latin America, Militarization, US Foreign Policy, US Imperialism

By Jake Johnston for CEPR - In a high-level meeting Friday, the presidents of Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador will discuss the region’s security with American and Mexican officials. Innocuous enough, you may think. But part of the meeting will be held on a US military base in Miami, Florida ― the headquarters of the US Southern Command, the Pentagon’s regional subsidiary that oversees American military operations throughout Central and South America as well as the Caribbean. Under President Donald Trump, the militarization of US foreign policy is about to stretch more deeply into Central America. Central America policymaking, hardly an open book to begin with, is set to become more secretive. With the Conference on Prosperity and Security in Central America just days away, there is no official agenda of speakers or publicly listed events and no involvement of civil society organizations, and even press access is extremely limited. What we do know is US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson will be there, as will Vice President Mike Pence, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and of course, General John F. Kelly, the director of Homeland Security and the previous head of SOUTHCOM.

Killer Drones And The Militarization Of U.S. Foreign Policy

June 19, 2017 Ann Wright, www.afsa.org Educate! Drones, Militarization, US Foreign Policy, US Imperialism

By Ann Wright for AFSA - The militarization of U.S. foreign policy certainly didn’t start with President Donald J. Trump; in fact, it goes back several decades. However, if Trump’s first 100 days in office are any indication, he has no intention of slowing down the trend. During a single week in April, the Trump administration fired 59 Tomahawk missiles into a Syrian airfield, and dropped the largest bomb in the U.S. arsenal on suspected ISIS tunnels in Afghanistan. This 21,600-pound incendiary percussion device that had never been used in combat—the Massive Ordinance Air Blast or MOAB, colloquially known as the “Mother of All Bombs”—was used in the Achin district of Afghanistan, where Special Forces Staff Sergeant Mark De Alencar had been killed a week earlier. (The bomb was tested only twice, at Elgin Air Base, Florida, in 2003.) To underscore the new administration’s preference for force over diplomacy, the decision to experiment with the explosive power of the mega-bomb was taken unilaterally by General John Nicholson, the commanding general of U.S. forces in Afghanistan. In praising that decision, Pres. Trump declared that he had given “total authorization” to the U.S. military to conduct whatever missions they wanted, anywhere in the world—which presumably means without consulting the interagency national security committee.

Statement Of Cuba In Reaction To Trump’s New Cuba Policy

June 19, 2017 Staff, www.minrex.gob.cu Resist! Cuba, Donald Trump, Trump Administration, US Foreign Policy

By Staff of Cuba Min Rex - On June 16, 2017, US President Donald Trump delivered a speech full of hostile anti-Cuban rhetoric reminiscent of the times of open confrontation with our country in a Miami theater. He announced his government’s Cuba policy, which rolls back the progress achieved over the last two years since December 17, 2014, when Presidents Raúl Castro and Barack Obama announced the decision to re-establish diplomatic relations and engage in a process towards the normalization of bilateral relations. In what constitutes a setback in the relations between both countries, President Trump, gave a speech and signed a policy directive titled “National Security Presidential Memorandum”, which provides the elimination of private educational “people-to-people” exchanges and greater control over all travelers to Cuba, as well as the prohibition of business, trade and financial transactions between US companies and certain Cuban companies linked to the Armed Revolutionary Forces and the intelligence and security services, under the alleged objective of depriving us from income.

U.N. Says 300 Civilians Killed In U.S.-Led Air Strikes In Raqqa Since March

June 15, 2017 Stephanie Nebehay, www.reuters.com Educate! Airstrikes, Syria, US Foreign Policy, US Imperialism

By Stephanie Nebehay for Reuters - Intensified coalition air strikes have killed at least 300 civilians in the Syrian northern city of Raqqa since March, as U.S.-backed forces close in on the stronghold of Islamic State forces, U.N. war crimes investigators said on Wednesday. The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a group of Kurdish and Arab militias supported by a U.S.-led coalition, began to attack Raqqa a week ago to take it from the jihadists. The SDF, supported by heavy coalition air strikes, have taken territory to the west, east and north of the city. "Coalition air strikes have intensified around the city," said Paulo Pinheiro, chairman of the U.N. Commission of Inquiry. "As the operation is gaining pace very rapidly, civilians are caught up in the city under the oppressive rule of ISIL, while facing extreme danger associated with movement due to excessive air strikes," he told reporters. Karen Abuzayd, an American commissioner on the independent panel, said: "We have documented the deaths caused by the coalition air strikes only and we have about 300 deaths, 200 in one place, in al-Mansoura, one village."

Trump’s Sword Dance Sets Off The War Of The Wahhabis

June 14, 2017 Pepe Escobar, www.transcend.org Educate! Donald Trump, US Foreign Policy

By Pepe Escobar for Sputnik News - The current Emir of Qatar, Tamim bin Hamad al Thani, now “guilty” for not blaming Iran as the root of all evils in the Arab peninsula, might even be following the steps of his own father, Hamad, who invented modern Qatar and deposed himself – under Saudi pressure – in favor of his son in 2013. We can’t forget that Bandar bin Sultan, a.k.a. Bandar Bush, notorious former top assembler/weaponizer of jihadis, and frustrated “liberator of Syria”, had famously described Qatar in the past as “300 people and a TV station”. So what is really going on in this noxious petrodollar swamp? The Israel-UAE connection. Let’s cut to the chase and establish that this nasty inter-GCC cannibalization has nothing to do with the Global War on Terror (GWOT). Among massive disinformation crossfire, a trail of evidence points to a concerted strategy elaborated by the Israeli lobby (via the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, founded, among others, by nefarious casino schemer Sheldon Adelson, and very close to Bibi Netanyahu); US neocon/Ziocon/neoliberalcon elements; and the UAE ambassador in Washington, Yousef al-Otaiba.

Engaging The ISIS Threat: Time For A Method Yet Untried

June 13, 2017 Marc Pilisuk, www.transcend.org Strategize! ISIS, US Foreign Policy

By Marc Pilisuk for TRANSCEND Media Service - Part of ISIS, (sometimes considered to be the whole thing), is an organization that has military power, controls vast territory in Syria and in Iraq and has information access throughout the Middle East and beyond. Its leaders express an ideology regarding the restoration of a caliphate or a religious state. This part of ISIS does command oil revenues and arms. It is an organized jihadist group that controls territory and seeks statehood. Acknowledging the overwhelming military superiority of the US and NATO, the leaders adopt a strategy geared to polarization of adversaries and the zeal of potential sympathizers. As reported in the Guardian, the tactics have been described: Hit soft targets: ‘Diversify and widen the vexation strikes against the “Crusader- Zionist” enemy in every place in the Islamic world, and even outside of it if possible, so as to disperse the efforts of the alliance of the enemy and thus drain it to the greatest extent possible. … Strike when potential victims have their guard down.

Students Urge End To US-Israel Police Exchanges

June 7, 2017 Nora Barrows-Friedman, www.electronicintifada.net Resist! Israel, Police, Students, US Foreign Policy

By Nora Barrows-Friedman for EI - The student government of California State University, Long Beach passed a resolution earlier this month calling on the administration to pull its investments in companies profiting from Israel’s violations of Palestinian rights. The vote comes in spite of strong pressure on student senators by the university’s president to reject the resolution. Meanwhile, students in Wisconsin also passed a resolution standing up to the US-based weapons and policing industries that profit from Israel’s human rights violations. In the weeks leading up to the successful vote at Cal State Long Beach, Jane Conoley, the university’s president, echoed Israel lobby claims that the Palestinian-led boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement is to blame for an increase in anti-Semitism. In a letter addressed to the student senators in late April, Conoley claimed that the passage of divestment resolutions “has often been accompanied by increases in anti-Jewish graffiti.” Her letter repeats a common false and anti-Semitic trope used by Israel lobby organizations to stifle debate: that Jews – conflated as a monolith with the state of Israel – are being singled out by Palestinian rights campaigners for special scrutiny.

Protests Followed Trump On His First Foreign Tour

June 1, 2017 Alexandra Rosenmann, www.alternet.org Resist! Donald Trump, Protests, US Foreign Policy

By Alexandra Rosenmann for AlterNet - The landmark investor vote defied Exxon’s management. It requires the oil giant to begin reporting climate-related risks to its business. Trump's first foreign trip, which began Saturday in Saudi Arabia, was also attended by Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, who shared a curious observation about their Saudi excursion upon his return to the U.S. Monday. "There was not a single hint of a protester anywhere there during the whole time we were there. Not one guy with a bad placard," he gushed in a CNBC interview. He's probably glad he returned when he did. From Tel Aviv to Taormina, protesters took to the streets as Trump stomped through their countries, shoving and name-calling in his own inimitable fashion.

US Has Budgeted $49M For Venezuelan Right-Wing Since 2009

May 22, 2017 Staff, www.telesurtv.net Educate! US Foreign Policy, US Imperialism, Venezuela

By Staff of Tele Sur - The funds have now become a mainstay of the U.S. State Department congressional budget for foreign operations. Since at least 2009 the U.S. Department of State has budgeted at least US$49 million in total to support right-wing opposition forces in Venezuela who are now in their seventh week of violent protests to oust democratically-elected President Nicolas Maduro. According to the 2010 budget justification, which designated US$6 million that year to Venezuela's “Economic Support Fund" the budget “will support efforts to preserve and expand democratic space through programs that strengthen and promote civil society, citizen participation, independent media, human rights organizations, and democratic political parties.” In a more detailed breakdown of the 2011 US$5 million budgeted for Venezuelan economic support, the budget indicates that US$1 million was designated specifically for the support of “political competition and consensus building.”

Extremist Saudi Arabia In Partnership With Donald Trump

May 20, 2017 Max Blumenthal, www.alternet.org Educate! Donald Trump, Saudi Arabia, US Foreign Policy

By Max Blumenthal for AlterNet - President Donald Trump’s nine-day-long “tolerance tour” will continue this Friday with a visit to Saudi Arabia. The junket offers Trump a brief respite from the suffocating atmosphere in Washington, where he faces a mounting campaign fueled by anonymous leaks from intelligence officials that is aimed at nothing less than his impeachment and replacement by a more supplicant Republican. Trump’s ties to Saudi Arabia run deep. During the campaign, even as Trump blamed the Saudi royal family for the 9/11 attacks, he registered eight companies connected to hotel interests in the kingdom. Once Trump was inaugurated, the Saudis returned the favor, paying for rooms at his Washington, D.C., hotel through Qorvis MSLGroup, a Beltway lobbying firm. The rooms were reserved for a group of veterans flown into town by Qorvis to lobby against the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act (JASTA) congressional legislation that would allow the bereaved family members of 9/11 victims to sue the Saudi government for its alleged role in the attacks. Many of the veterans had no idea they were acting on behalf of Saudi Arabia, and some, like Tim Cord, staged an open revolt when they realized they had been deceived.

Leaked Draft Shows U.S. Weakened Climate Change Wording In Arctic Declaration

May 20, 2017 Sabrina Shankman, www.insideclimatenews.org Resist! Arctic, Climate Change, US Foreign Policy

By Sabrina Shankman for Inside Climate News - The day before the Arctic Council met for its biannual ministerial last week, the United States requested six changes to the intergovernmental declaration that was to be issued—each of which weakened the language on climate change. The Arctic Council, an intergovernmental body representing all eight Arctic states, does not make policy, but the diplomatic work accomplished there is intended to trickle back to the countries and result in changes. An important part of that is the declaration issued at the end of each two-year chairmanship, which is signed by top officials from each country, to acknowledge the scientific and diplomatic work that was accomplished and to state the council's goals going forward. The last-minute move by the United States to weaken the document can be seen as a test case for what we can expect at larger, more consequential meetings of international organizations dealing with global warming issues and policy as President Donald Trump rolls back U.S. climate policies and backslides on international commitments.

10 Reasons Trump Should Not Strengthen U.S.-Saudi Ties

May 18, 2017 Medea Benjamin, www.informationclearinghouse.info Resist! Saudi Arabia, Trump Administration, US Foreign Policy

By Medea Benjamin for "Information Clearing House" - Donald Trump has selected Saudi Arabia as the destination for his first trip abroad, strengthening U.S. ties to a regime that is fueling the very extremism, intolerance and violence that the US government purports to eradicate. Here’s 10 reasons why the United States should not be closely allied with the Saudi kingdom. The Saudis export an extremist interpretation of Islam, Wahhabism, around the globe. Over the past three decades, Saudi Arabia has spent about $4 billion per year on mosques, madrassas, preachers, students, and textbooks to spread Wahhabism and anti-Western sentiment. Let's not forget that 15 of the 19 fanatical hijackers who carried out the 9/11 attacks were Saudis, as was Osama bin Laden himself. The Saudis fund terrorism worldwide. A Wikileaks-revealed 2009 cable quotes then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton saying, "Donors in Saudi Arabia constitute the most significant source of funding to Sunni terrorist groups worldwide … More needs to be done since Saudi Arabia remains a critical financial support base for al-Qaeda, the Taliban, Lashkar e-Tayyiba and other terrorist groups." In Syria the Saudis are supporting the most extreme sectarian forces. And while the Saudi government condemns ISIS, many experts, including 9/11 Commission Report lead author Senator Bob Graham, believe that ISIS is a product of Saudi ideals, Saudi money and Saudi organizational support.

Gorbachev Warns Of Growing Danger

May 17, 2017 Rick Sterling, www.consortiumnews.com Educate! Imperialism, Russia, US Foreign Policy

By Rick Sterling for Consurtium News - A group of Americans visiting Russia heard dire warnings from ex-Soviet President Gorbachev that the tensions between the U.S. and Russia are creating a dangerous situation for the world, reports Rick Sterling, who is on the trip. The former President of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, is 87 years old but still sharp. He told a delegation of 30 Americans in a two-week visit to Russia organized by the Center for Citizen Initiatives, “This is a time to be concerned. We should worry about relations between our two countries. … Things cannot continue as they are.” President Gorbachev recalled his initial meetings with President Reagan, which came after six years of poor relations and hostility. In the first summit meeting, Reagan issued a long list of accusations against the Soviet Union; Gorbachev responded with his own accusations against the U.S. After that meeting Gorbachev said “He’s not a hawk; he’s a dinosaur” while Reagan said about Gorbachev “He’s a die-hard communist.” At the next summit meeting, Reagan continued lecturing Gorbachev. After listening for 15 minutes. Gorbachev stopped Reagan saying, “That’s enough. If you want to talk as equals we can go very far. Differences can be bridged. Problems can be resolved. But as equals.”

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