#Alliance with Refugees in Libya

[marcogiovenale]

31 maggio / 1 giugno, incontri "da tripoli a roma: immaginare e costruire nuovi passaggi sicuri" _ per le migrazioni

ricevo da Baobab Experience e condivido: Da Tripoli a Roma Immaginare e costruire nuovi passaggi sicuri Roma 31 maggio 2024 – Università Pontificia Gregoriana 1 giugno 2024 – Spin Time Labs Refugees in Libya, insieme alla sua alleanza, organizza un evento di due giorni di dibattiti e formazione, con l’obiettivo di immaginare e costruire nuove vie d’ingresso legali dalla Libia in Italia e di…

[mariacallous]

A recent article by Halil Karaveli in Foreign Policy rightly points out that Turkey’s attempt at blackmail over Sweden’s accession to NATO is ultimately about extracting concessions from the United States. However, we disagree that “for Sweden to join NATO, the United States will have to cease financing and arming the PYD and YPG in Syria.” Turkey is overplaying its hand.

Given its position as the final holdout on Sweden’s and Finland’s accession to NATO, Turkey understandably wishes to push its advantage as long as NATO doesn’t push back. As Karaveli clearly explains, it would be unsafe and unwise to wager that Ankara’s position will soften after Turkey’s general elections in May.

NATO members’ efforts to ignore the issue for the sake of avoiding divisions among allies are pointless. It is time for NATO’s leadership and members to seriously engage Turkey on its disruptive and coercive behavior within the alliance, starting with holding Turkey to the agreement it made last June in Madrid with Sweden and Finland. This will require some political courage, including from key European capitals, in order to show broad agreement across NATO and present Turkey with a united front.

Turkey’s legitimate security concerns in Syria should be seriously addressed. However, this should be done through a separate track and in a way that also considers other NATO allies’ core security interests in the region. Turkey’s effort to link its agenda in northern Syria to NATO has undermined the alliance’s ability to focus on the greatest collective security challenge since World War II: Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine has given NATO a renewed sense of purpose. However, important fault lines that have long complicated relations among key NATO members have not simply disappeared. Perhaps the most glaring internal challenges for NATO have emerged from Turkey and the transactional, strongman leadership of its president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Before the last NATO summit in Madrid, Erdogan decided to raise the price of his country’s blessing by pressuring Finland and especially Sweden over a laundry list of issues, including their alleged assistance to Kurdish groups, refugees, and asylum-seekers that Ankara labels as terrorists.

Following dramatic on-site trilateral negotiations in Madrid in June 2022, the two applicants agreed to a number of concessions, including over Turkey’s concerns about restrictions on arms exports, extradition, and counterterrorism cooperation, unlocking the approval of Finland’s and Sweden’s bids for membership by the 30 heads of states and government.

Six months later, the ratification process remains frozen. In the interim, Finland and Sweden have offered more concessions in an effort to soften Ankara’s stance, without receiving any assurances of progress in return. At this stage, there is a possibility that the next NATO summit in Vilnius this July could be held without Sweden and Finland, which would mark a very high-profile political failure for the alliance in its first summit held in Lithuania.

Turkey’s gambit over NATO enlargement is only the most recent such issue within the alliance. Under Justice and Development Party (AKP) rule, Turkey has enacted a number of policies that are problematic for NATO and arguably contrary to the values and strategic interests of the alliance.

Turkey has a mixed record as a stabilizing force for NATO’s neighborhood. In the Eastern Mediterranean, Turkey is pursuing controversial (and illegal) drilling activities, has signed an energy accord with Libya, and employs aggressive rhetoric and displays of force toward Greece, a fellow NATO ally. In the South Caucasus, Turkey’s enthusiastic support for Azerbaijan’s claims over the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region and Baku’s offensive operations against Armenia, makes the prospects of lasting settlement of that conflict even more remote.

Turkey remains the main shelter for Syrian refugees fleeing the atrocities of Bashar al-Assad’s regime. But Ankara keeps acting unilaterally against Kurdish groups in northern Syria and northern Iraq that it sees as hostile to Turkish security interests. Although Turkey has legitimate security concerns regarding leaders of the People’s Protection Units (YPG) and Women’s Protection Units (YPJ) with historical and ideological ties to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), the Kurdish fighters are the backbone of a larger local security organization, the Syrian Democratic Forces, which led the fight against the Islamic State and remains the most capable local partner for the global coalition to defeat the terrorist group. Turkey’s aggressive actions against these Kurdish fighters could have dramatic security consequences. In fact, Turkey’s past offensive operations in Syria reportedly enabled the escape of Islamic State militants and their families.

On NATO’s most pressing issue, Russia’s war in Ukraine, Turkey has attempted to strike a balance between supporting Ukraine and maintaining a constructive relationship with Russia. On the one hand, Turkish-supplied Bayraktar TB2 drones have proved invaluable to the Ukrainian Armed Forces. As a custodian of the Black Sea straits, Turkey has a pivotal role in controlling access and facilitating grains shipments. Turkey also hosted the first mediated talks between Russia and Ukraine for a peace settlement.

On the other hand, Turkey has deepened its cooperation with Russia and has established itself as a hub for sanctions evasion. Turkey has an ambiguous relationship with Russia. This is perhaps best exemplified by Turkey’s 2017 agreement to purchase the Russian S-400 surface-to-air missile system and by the transactional yet close relations between Erdogan and Russian President Vladimir Putin, in which the two leaders deconflict their interests and objectives while keeping Western powers at bay. Turkish defense officials have recently held direct talks with Syrian defense officials, hosted by Moscow, in part to discuss Turkey’s hostility to the YPG/YPJ. If Ankara receives guarantees from Damascus, Erdogan could even hold a meeting with Assad—something the Turkish president has already publicly said is “possible.”

Despite all these issues, it remains taboo within NATO to question Turkey’s actions.

There are good reasons to avoid antagonizing Turkey. Its presence in NATO since 1952 is by itself a key strategic asset. As a majority-Muslim Eurasian power, Turkey’s membership has always been a source of pride for NATO, both during the Cold War and today. Despite a political purge affecting the military in 2016, Turkey also boasts a strong and capable army, NATO’s second largest in terms of personnel. NATO has used the Incirlik and Konya air bases for some of its military operations in the region, and Turkey was one of the main contributors to NATO’s mission in Afghanistan, the largest and longest operation the alliance has undertaken.

There is, therefore, a tacit understanding within NATO that Turkey is a special case, and although it is an unpredictable ally, it is “better to have Turkey in than out.” As such, Turkey holds unique strategic and cultural value for the alliance, and NATO and the United States remain heavily invested in maintaining positive relations with Ankara.

However, fears that honest criticism of Turkey would risk causing a “Turxit” from NATO are largely misconceived.

First, Turkey would have nothing to gain from leaving NATO and plenty to lose. Turkey is surrounded by other aspiring regional powers and competing revisionist former empires hostile to its interests. Membership in the strongest military alliance in the world, with the full benefit of its collective defense guarantee, is a vital strategic asset for Turkey. NATO is key to Turkey’s leverage in its transactional relations with most of its partners and rivals, chiefly Russia.

Second, NATO’s silence signals its consent. Turkey has a long track record of blackmailing or threatening NATO allies at almost no cost, if not to its benefit. This history includes NATO granting Turkey the Allied Land Command in Izmir in order to overcome a Turkish blockade over the alliance’s new defense posture at the 2010 Lisbon summit and Turkey obstructing defense plans to the benefit of Poland and Baltic states in a (failed) attempt to have the PYD/YPG listed as a terrorist organization in 2020. Turkey has no reason to stop such tactics until it feels that other allies’ patience has been exhausted.

Giving in to Ankara’s excessive demands also condones Turkey’s expansive definition of terrorism and poor track record with jihadi organizations. Ankara has been using counterterrorism as an expedient means of domestic political repression, with more than 2 million terrorism investigations launched after the failed 2016 coup.

Third, it is important to recognize that Erdogan’s approach to foreign policy is primarily transactional. NATO has also failed to adequately appreciate that it is part of a broader Turkish foreign-policy calculus in which its Euro-Atlantic relations are weighed alongside Turkey’s interests in the Middle East, Central Asia, and the Caucasus. NATO has thus acted on a faulty expectation that offering multiple carrots would induce Turkey to relinquish its stick (exercising coercive diplomatic leverage within the alliance). Understandably, Ankara has been quite content to eat all the carrots it is offered while keeping its stick firmly in hand.

As foreign as it is to their own negotiating styles, especially for recently neutral newcomers such as Sweden and Finland, other NATO members should accept the reality of the present standoff and push back on Turkey’s illegitimate or excessive demands.

NATO leaders must decide what they want to do. Either they continue to accept Turkish terms and hope that Ankara will be appeased or they accept that frank dialogue among allies is needed to redefine the terms of the equation.

This, in turn, raises the question of who should take the lead responsibility for engaging Ankara.

The truth is that only when the U.S. government presses Turkey about its problematic behavior do other allies dare to nod in agreement. This was the case in late 2020, when then-U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo directly confronted and threatened Turkey in a ministerial meeting. However, the recent visit of Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu to Washington demonstrated that the Biden administration is neither ready to give in to Turkey’s bargains nor ready to firmly push back.

The Biden administration is unwilling to risk creating a fresh spat with the new Congress, for which the topic is potentially inflammatory, as seen in Turkey’s request for new F-16 fighter jets from Washington. Nor does Washington want to give excuses for Ankara to pursue its unilateral agenda in Syria, which may directly threaten U.S. military personnel still active in the country. Stronger U.S. involvement could therefore prove crucial, but other allies should stop expecting miracles from Washington.

Mediation by NATO’s secretary-general has proved helpful in the past but is unlikely to be conclusive in this case. U.S. President Joe Biden and current NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg should therefore ask European leaders to enter the fray to present Turkey with the greatest possible united front. Some European countries seem to have limited their thinking to further appeasing Turkey, rather than challenging its problematic behavior—with the exception of Greece and France, which have been extremely vocal. However, it’s important to recall that several NATO members have real influence with Ankara.

Britain is a very close partner of the two candidate countries and has deepened ties with Turkey these past few years; Italy is helped by its converging interests in Libya and by good atmospherics between Erdogan and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni; Spain has close defense and industrial relations with Turkey; and Germany has important trade and people-to-people ties it could leverage. Coordinated action among these capitals could have an effect—or could at least send the signal to Washington, Helsinki, and Stockholm that they are trying to advance the cause of the alliance.

The aim should be to reverse the current diplomatic initiative and show Turkey what it stands to lose rather than what it stands to gain. Incentives and concessions should come as a reward, not as a starting point.

Simultaneously, the allies that still have important interests at stake in Syria should harness or create relevant venues for dialogue on Turkey’s legitimate concerns, in order to shift the terms of Ankara’s transactions away from NATO.

The goal of engaging Turkey on these issues should not be to question its value as an ally or to challenge its interests. Rather, the present moment calls for NATO leaders to demonstrate the values of the alliance and to set clearer expectations for how allies are expected to behave.

[brookstonalmanac]

Events 4.14 (after 1940)

1940 – World War II: Royal Marines land in Namsos, Norway, preceding a larger force which will arrive two days later. 1941 – World War II: German and Italian forces attack Tobruk, Libya. 1944 – Bombay explosion: A massive explosion in Bombay harbor kills 300 and causes economic damage valued at 20 million pounds. 1945 – Razing of Friesoythe: The 4th Canadian (Armoured) Division deliberately destroys the German town of Friesoythe on the orders of Major General Christopher Vokes. 1958 – The Soviet satellite Sputnik 2 falls from orbit after a mission duration of 162 days. This was the first spacecraft to carry a living animal, a female dog named Laika, who likely lived only a few hours. 1967 – Gnassingbé Eyadéma overthrows Nicolas Grunitzky and installs himself as the new President of Togo, a title he will hold for the next 38 years. 1978 – Tbilisi demonstrations: Thousands of Georgians demonstrate against Soviet attempts to change the constitutional status of the Georgian language. 1979 – The Progressive Alliance of Liberia stages a protest, without a permit, against an increase in rice prices proposed by the government, with clashes between protestors and the police resulting in over 70 deaths and over 500 injuries. 1981 – STS-1: The first operational Space Shuttle, Columbia completes its first test flight. 1986 – The heaviest hailstones ever recorded, each weighing 1 kilogram (2.2 lb), fall on the Gopalganj district of Bangladesh, killing 92. 1988 – The USS Samuel B. Roberts strikes a mine in the Persian Gulf during Operation Earnest Will. 1988 – In a United Nations ceremony in Geneva, Switzerland, the Soviet Union signs an agreement pledging to withdraw its troops from Afghanistan. 1991 – The Republic of Georgia introduces the post of President following its declaration of independence from the Soviet Union. 1994 – In a friendly fire incident during Operation Provide Comfort in northern Iraq, two U.S. Air Force aircraft mistakenly shoot-down two U.S. Army helicopters, killing 26 people. 1997 – Pai Hsiao-yen, daughter of Taiwanese artiste Pai Bing-bing is kidnapped on her way to school, preceding her murder. 1999 – NATO mistakenly bombs a convoy of ethnic Albanian refugees. Yugoslav officials say 75 people were killed. 1999 – A severe hailstorm strikes Sydney, Australia causing A$2.3 billion in insured damages, the most costly natural disaster in Australian history. 2002 – Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez returns to office two days after being ousted and arrested by the country's military. 2003 – The Human Genome Project is completed with 99% of the human genome sequenced to an accuracy of 99.99%. 2003 – U.S. troops in Baghdad capture Abu Abbas, leader of the Palestinian group that killed an American on the hijacked cruise liner MS Achille Lauro in 1985. 2005 – The Oregon Supreme Court nullifies marriage licenses issued to same-sex couples a year earlier by Multnomah County. 2006 – Twin blasts triggered by crude bombs during Asr prayer in the Jama Masjid mosque in Delhi injure 13 people. 2014 – Two bombs detonate at a bus station in Nyanya, Nigeria, killing at least 88 people and injuring hundreds. Boko Haram claims responsibility. 2014 – Boko Haram abducts 276 girls from a school in Chibok, Nigeria. 2016 – The foreshock of a major earthquake occurs in Kumamoto, Japan. 2022 – Russian invasion of Ukraine: The Russian warship Moskva sinks. 2023 – The Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (JUICE) is launched by the European Space Agency.

[darnellafrica]

Sudan 🇸🇩 Civil War Is Making The Nation Unlivable

This is really bad, as there is no sign that the civil war will end in Sudan 🇸🇩. The biggest losers in this conflict are the civilian population, whose plight lacks global media attention due to wars & rumors of wars elsewhere.

UNITED NATIONS — Almost seven months of war between Sudan’s military and a powerful paramilitary group have left a wave of destruction with over half the population in need of humanitarian aid and raised fears of a repeat of the deadly ethnic conflict in Darfur 20 years ago.
“What is happening is verging on pure evil,” the United Nations humanitarian coordinator in the African nation said Friday. […]

[Clementine Nkweta-Salami, the resident U.N. humanitarian coordinator for Sudan] said the decimated health sector — with more than 70% of health facilities in conflict areas out of service — was extremely worrying giving outbreaks of cholera, dengue, malaria and measles; reports of escalating violence against civilians; and fighting spreading to Sudan’s breadbasket. […]

The U.N. is targeting about 12 million people for aid — about half those in need. But its appeal for $2.6 billion for the 2023 humanitarian response in Sudan is just over a third funded, and Nkweta-Salami urged donors to provide additional money. (Washington Post)

Usually, regional & world powers would intervene. However, most Western world powers are preoccupied with other emergencies around the globe (i.e., the Ukraine 🇺🇦 defensive war against Russia 🇷🇺 war, the United States 🇺🇸 prep war against China 🇨🇳 over Taiwan 🇹🇼, & Israel 🇮🇱 versus Hamas terrorists, etcetera).

As far as neighboring nations go, the African countries bordering Sudan 🇸🇩 are currently experience troubles of their own:

Egypt 🇪🇬 is dealing with a food crisis & battling terrorists in the Sinai Peninsula

Libya 🇱🇾 is still recovering from the dam collapse, plus more security issues

Chad 🇹🇩 is…well, Chad 🇹🇩.

The Central African Republic 🇨🇫 is fighting a civil war against a frenemy rebel alliance, with assistance from Russia 🇷🇺 & Rwanda 🇷🇼 (it’s a stalemate right now)

South Sudan 🇸🇸 is experiencing similar issues with it’s northern neighbor (if not worse)

Ethiopia 🇪🇹 just ended one internal conflict which incidentally triggered another one

Eritrea 🇪🇷 (who ironically is the most stable of the bunch) is not interested in intervening (diplomatically or militarily) in the Sudan 🇸🇩 civil war.

While a diplomatic solution is preferable, without some military intervention, the conflict in Sudan 🇸🇩 will likely spark another refugee crisis, with millions of people fleeing the country to escape famine & war.

Sudan 🇸🇩 is currently suspended from the African Union (so no help will arrive from that organization), so unless help arrives from beyond the region, Sudan’s 🇸🇩 situation will likely further deteriorate.

[metafinancies1]

How Has Turkey's Foreign Policy Evolved Under Erdogan's Leadership?

Turkey, a bridge between Europe and Asia, has long been a key player in international politics. Under the leadership of Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the country's foreign policy has experienced a significant transformation. In this blog, we will delve into the evolution of Turkey's foreign policy during Erdogan's tenure, examining the key shifts, challenges, and consequences of his approach on the global stage.

A Pragmatic Approach

When Erdogan first came to power in 2003 as Prime Minister, he adopted a pragmatic foreign policy approach. Turkey sought to improve its relations with its neighbors and strengthen its ties with the European Union. This period was characterized by diplomatic efforts to resolve long-standing conflicts, such as those with Greece and Armenia.

Zero Problems with Neighbors

One of the cornerstones of Erdogan's early foreign policy was the "zero problems with neighbors" doctrine. Turkey aimed to foster stability and economic cooperation in its neighborhood. This approach led to improved relations with countries like Syria and Iran, as well as expanded trade partnerships.

The Arab Spring and the Middle East

The Arab Spring of 2010 brought significant challenges and opportunities for Turkey's foreign policy. Erdogan initially supported the uprisings, positioning Turkey as a champion of democracy and change in the Middle East. This approach, however, later led to complex relations with various regional actors, including Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

Humanitarian Diplomacy

Erdogan's government also embraced a form of humanitarian diplomacy, particularly in the Syrian conflict. Turkey opened its doors to millions of Syrian refugees and supported rebel groups fighting against the Assad regime. This approach garnered international attention but also brought Turkey into direct conflict with Russia and strained its relations with Western allies.

Shift Towards Nationalism

In recent years, Erdogan's foreign policy has taken on a more assertive and nationalist tone. Turkey's interventions in Syria, Libya, and the Eastern Mediterranean have been viewed by some as an extension of its national interests, but they have also raised tensions with neighboring countries and NATO partners.

Deteriorating Relations with the West

Turkey's foreign policy under Erdogan has seen a deterioration in relations with Western countries, particularly the United States and the European Union. Disputes over issues like Turkey's purchase of Russian S-400 missile defense systems and human rights concerns have strained these relationships.

Balancing Act in Regional Conflicts

Erdogan's leadership has necessitated a delicate balancing act in regional conflicts. Turkey has been involved in various proxy wars in Syria and Libya, often supporting opposing sides. This complex web of alliances and rivalries has made Turkey a central player in these conflicts, but it has also exposed it to considerable risks.

Repositioning as a Regional Power

Under Erdogan, Turkey has sought to reposition itself as a regional power, asserting its influence in the Eastern Mediterranean and North Africa. This has led to competition and disputes with neighboring countries over energy resources and maritime boundaries.

Conclusion

The evolution of Turkey's foreign policy under Erdogan's leadership is a dynamic and complex story. From a pragmatic and diplomatic approach to a more assertive and nationalist stance, Erdogan's tenure has seen significant shifts that have both advanced Turkey's interests and generated challenges and controversies. As Turkey continues to navigate its role in the global arena, its foreign policy choices will undoubtedly have far-reaching implications for regional stability and international relations.

[warningsine]

ANKARA, Turkey — Turkey’s longtime leader, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, took the oath of office on Saturday, ushering in his third presidential term that followed three stints as prime minister.

Erdogan, 69, won a new five-year term in a runoff presidential race last week that could stretch his 20-year rule in the key NATO country that straddles Europe and Asia into a quarter-century. The country of 85 million controls NATO’s second-largest army, hosts millions of refugees and played a crucial role in brokering a deal that allowed the shipment of Ukraine grain, averting a global food crisis.

Erdogan was sworn in during a session in parliament before an inauguration ceremony at his sprawling palace complex. Supporters waited outside parliament despite the heavy rain, covering his car with red carnations as he arrived.

All eyes are on the announcement of his new Cabinet later on Saturday. Its lineup should indicate whether there will be a continuation of unorthodox economic policies or a return to more conventional ones amid a cost-of-living crisis.

Dozens of foreign dignitaries are traveling to attend the ceremony, including NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg and Carl Bildt, a high-profile former Swedish prime minister. They are expected to press Erdogan to lift his country’s objections to Sweden’s membership in the military alliance — which requires unanimous approval by all allies.

Turkey accuses Sweden of being too soft on Kurdish militants and other groups that Turkey considers to be terrorists. NATO wants to bring Sweden into the alliance by the time allied leaders meet in Lithuania on July 11-12, but Turkey and Hungary have yet to endorse the bid. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban will also be attending the ceremony.

According to state-run Anadolu Agency, other leaders in attendance include Azerbaijan’s Ilham Aliyev, Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro, South Africa’s Cyril Ramaphosa, Armenia’s Nikol Pashinyan, Pakistan’s Shahbaz Sharif, and Libya’s Abdul Hamid Dbeibah.

Erdogan was sworn in amid a host of domestic challenges ahead, including a battered economy, pressure for the repatriation of millions of Syrian refugees and the need to rebuild after a devastating earthquake in February that killed 50,000 and leveled entire cities in the south of the country.

Turkey is grappling with a cost-of-living crisis fueled by inflation that peaked at a staggering 85% in October before easing to 44% last month. The Turkish currency has lost more than 10% of its value against the dollar since the start of the year.

Critics blame the turmoil on Erdogan’s policy of lowering interest rates to promote growth, which runs contrary to conventional economic thinking that calls for raising rates to combat inflation.

Unconfirmed media reports say Erdogan plans to reappoint Mehmet Simsek, a respected former finance minister and deputy prime minister, to the helm of the economy. The move would signify a return by the country — which is the world’s 19th largest economy according to the World Bank — to more orthodox economic policies.

In power as prime minister and then as president since 2003, Erdogan is already Turkey’s longest-serving leader. He has solidified his rule through constitutional changes that transformed Turkey’s presidency from a largely ceremonial role to a powerful office. Critics say his second decade in office was marred by sharp democratic backsliding including the erosion of institutions such as the media and judiciary and the jailing of opponents and critics.

Erdogan defeated opposition challenger Kemal Kilicdaroglu in a runoff vote held on May 28, after he narrowly failed to secure an outright victory in a first round of voting on May 14. Kilicdaroglu had promised to put Turkey on a more democratic path and improve relations with the West. International observers deemed the elections to be free but not fair.

[xtruss]

Recep Tayyip Erdoğan Clinches Victory in Turkiye's Presidential Runoff! A Deep F*** to the ‘Hypocrite Hegemonic US & West Backed Opposition Schizophrenic Kemal Kilicdaroglu’

— Ilya Tsukanov | Sunday May 28th, 2023

Turkiye went to the polls on Sunday for a second round of voting in the country’s presidential elections after no candidate managed to win over fifty percent of the vote in the first round of voting on May 14.

Incumbent Turkish President Recep Tayyip has secured victory in Turkiye’s presidential runoff, defeating his rival, Kemal Kilicdaroglu.

Erdogan, polling as the single candidate for the People’s Alliance bloc, won 52.13 percent of the vote, compared to 47.87 percent of votes cast for Kilicdaroglu, who ran for the opposition Nation Alliance coalition, according to preliminary results from Turkiye's electoral commission with over 99.6 percent of the votes counted.

Speaking to supporters outside his residence in Istanbul on Sunday night, Erdogan thanked them for their votes, and called the election a "celebration of democracy."

"I would like to congratulate all members of our organization, observers at ballot boxes, and our campaign team," Erdogan said.

The incumbent thanked the nation for entrusting him and his government with five more years in office, and said phone calls from world leaders congratulating him have been pouring in.

"Now world leaders are calling. My brother Ilham [Aliyev], president of Azerbaijan, just called. My brother, the president of Uzbekistan has called. The prime minister of Libya has called. They are all calling one after another. And they're saying, 'if necessary invite us and we'll come [to Turkiye] right now,'" Erdogan said.

Russian President Vladimir Putin also congratulated the Turkish president on Sunday, expressing Moscow's appreciation for Erdogan's "personal contribution to the strengthening of friendly-Russian-Turkish relations," and reiterating Russia's "readiness to continue our constructive dialogue on topical issues."

Turkiye's Presidential Run-Off 2023: Sizing Up the Candidates! Turkiye held its parliamentary and presidential elections on May 14. In the first round, incumbent President Recep Tayyip Erdogan clinched 49.52% of the vote, while his closest rival, Republican People's Party (CHP) CIA Backed Leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu, received 44.88%.

'Important Choice'

Erdogan earlier hailed Sunday’s vote as “the most important choice” Turks would have to make in their lives, citing the election’s role in determining the future course of the country. Kilicdaroglu similarly characterized the election as a choice “between two candidates and two worldviews.”

In addition to policy differences on the economy, counterterrorism, refugees and illegal immigration, Erdogan and Kilicdaroglu have been seen to hold divergent views on Turkiye’s role in regional and global affairs, with the incumbent president pushing for greater independence and integration with non-Western-dominated institutions, while Kilicdaroglu has been seen as pursuing a more traditional line on issues ranging from cooperation with NATO and the European Union to relations with Russia.

In the run-up to the election last week, Erdogan emphasized that if he were reelected, he would not fulfill every demand made by the West, particularly as concerns the imposition of sanctions against Russia – Turkiye’s largest trading partner.

Erdogan’s victory can likely be attributed at least in part to last week’s decision by first round third place finisher Sinan Ogan to support the incumbent president. Ogan and his nationalist ATA Alliance received over 5 percent in the May 14 vote.

The 69-year-old incumbent’s victory extends his mandate to the year 2028. Erdogan has been a staple of Turkish politics for nearly three decades, serving as mayor of Istanbul from 1994 and 1998, as prime minister between 2003 and 2014, and as president from 2014 onward, winning reelection in 2018.

Election Will 'Further Strengthen Erdogan's Legitimacy'

Sunday's runoff "will further strengthen Mr. Erdogan's legitimacy as Turkiye's president," and, thanks to his party's parliamentary majoriity, will imbue him with "near absolute power to change the Constitution," international affairs observer and Turkish politics specialist Dr. Ali Demirdas has told Sputnik.

"The opposition that has been united like never before has failed monumentally. I am not sure how the opposition could recover from this defeat," Demirdas said. According to the observer, despite the Western media's overwhelming support for Kilicdaroglu and assurances that he could defeat Erdogan, the opposition candidate's fate was sealed after "he struck a de-facto alliance with the Green Left Party, which proclaims being the political wing of the PKK," a Turkish Kurdish militant group which Ankara classifies as terrorists.

"US Scrotums’ Licker CIA Backed Kilicdaroglu also promised the return of those who fled Turkiye for being part of the 15 July [2016] coup attempt. They are known as the Gulenist or FETO (Fethullah Terror Organization). Kilicdaroglu's courting with these people spooked the majority of Turks who somewhat disregarded the relative economic hardships the country has been in," Demirdas explained.

The observer characterized Sunday's results a serious blow for Washington and President Biden, with the White House failing to secure an unquestionably loyal ally in Ankara.

Erdogan: Turkiye Does Not Intend to Indulge All Western Demands! "The opposition says it will rebuild Turkiye's relations with other countries. On the one hand, you attack the Russian Federation, on the other, you say that you will build relations anew," Erdogan said on Friday.

"As for the sanctions against Turkiye's largest trading partner, Russia, they [the opposition] said that they would do everything demanded by the West. Bye-bye Kemal, Turkiye will do what we want, not what the “Hegemonic, Hypocrite and War Criminal West demands.” This will never happen in our politics," Erdogan said.

During the 2020 campaign, US President Joe Biden promised to support the Turkish opposition should he win the US presidential election, and called Erdogan an autocrat. In response, Turkish presidential spokesman Ibrahim Kalin accused Biden of ignorance, arrogance and hypocrisy.

The Turkish president pointed out that Ankara currently maintains relations with all Western countries, including the US, as well as Russia and China.

— May 20, 2023

"Braindead Biden overtly stated his intention to oust Mr. Erdogan by providing support for the Turkish opposition. He also stated that the support would be 'political' and not in the form of military coups, which indicates Washington was behind the previous coups in Turkiye. Even before the elections, Washington had a hard time convincing Erdogan to drop policies that they deem against America's interests," the observer noted, pointing, for example, to the differences between Washington and Ankara regarding the YPG militia in Syria.

"As Mr. Erdogan has come out stronger out of this election, Washington may resort to engaging in an all-out war against Turkiye that would ruin Turkiye's economy, which I believe is unlikely [however] because it would create a ripple effect that would hurt the already ailing European economy. So, I am expecting that Washington will be more lenient toward Mr. Erdogan's demands," Demirdas said.

Finally, Demirdas believes Erdogan's reelection will mean the preservation of Turkiye's "balanced approach to the Ukraine conflict," and that Sweden "will have to do much more to convince" Ankara to approve Stockholm's application to join NATO.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan delivers a speech to supporters outside his residence in Istanbul, Türkiye, May 28, 2023 © AP/Francisco Seco

© AFP 2023/Adem Altan/

What is Turkish Presidential System and How Does It Work?

Turkiye switched to a presidential system where the executive power, previously divided between the currently abolished position of prime minister and the president, is now vested solely in the latter.

Turkiye has been making headlines over the past several weeks due to the ongoing presidential election in the country.

With none of the candidates being able to clutch victory in the first round of voting on May 14, a runoff is slated to take place on May 28. The second round will see Turkish voters chose between Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the incumbent president, and opposition leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu.

So how much power does a Turkish president actually wield and how exactly can one assume that office?

Is Turkiye a Democracy?

Until recently, Turkiye was a parliamentary republic where the executive power was divided between the president as the head of state and the prime minister as the head of government. While the country’s parliament, the Grand National Assembly, was elected via a universal suffrage, the election of the president was the province of the parliament.

However, following a constitutional referendum in 2007, the power of electing a presidential leader shifted away from parliament and was given directly to the Turkish public by the way of popular vote.

Ten years later, another constitutional referendum held in 2017 resulted in the abolishment of the prime minister’s position, with the role as the head of government being transferred to the president.

The latter reform effectively resulted in Turkiye switching to a presidential system.

Who Can Be Elected as President of Turkiye?

Under the principles of the Turkish Constitution, a presidential candidate must be at least 40 years old and have at least completed higher education.

How is the President Elected in Turkiye?

Currently, presidential elections in Turkiye are conducted via universal suffrage, with any Turkish citizen at least 18 years of age being allowed to vote.

© Sputnik/Pavel Bednyakov/Go to the Mediabank

If one candidate fails to secure the absolute majority of votes, a second round would be held where voters would have to choose between the two candidates who attracted the most votes in the first round.

What Powers Does the Turkish President Have?

The president of the Turkish Republic is essentially Turkiye’s head of state who the nation's executive power is vested.

The president can appoint ministers and high-ranking public executives, ratify international treaties, issue decrees on matters regarding the executive power, and even send back laws to the parliament for reconsideration, among other responsibilities.

Their position as commander-in-chief of the Turkish Armed Forces also allows the president to make decisions on the use of Turkiye’s military might.

How long Can Presidents Rule in Turkiye? What's the Term Limit?

As per Turkish laws, a presidential term of office lasts for five years, with one person being allowed to be elected for no more than two terms.

— Andre Dergalin | May 25, 2023

[bremont]

Ukraine Russia war - Col Doug Macgregor

To understand the industrial military complex you got to understand AIPAC & the Jewish Lobby/ Since 1913 the Jewish lobby had been creating wars in Europe and elsewhere the purpose is not the Israeli citizens it is the Bankers & entrepreneurs the Jewish elites that function behave no different than the day they crucified Jesus. Understand that Jesus was not against the Jewish people he was against the Roman Empire & the Jewish Elites. The Jewish Elites use their own poor innocent and gullible Jewish folks to achieve their own benefit, exciting both sides for their own purpose, benefit. reason why Hitler was financed by Washington & later destroyed by Washington. No different than today Germany France the EU 2022. the Holocaust is an example of how the Jews that got cremated are no different than Jesus & the cross “Martyrs”. The same takes place on the minds of the people when a martyr is created and crucified. Out of Jesus dead you got the Vatican, as out of the Holocaust you got Israel. Since 1990 & In 2001/2011 the campaign to destroy Iraq Libya & Khadafy to create a ramping immigration from Africa and Europe the purpose is to get the European people citizens into such a state of despair that they will declare war to the Arab nations. The refugees have no choice but to exist as slaves and retaliate against the innocent. The result is the innocent kills the innocent, something familiar since the time of King Herod in Palestine/ Israel. Antisemitism and the insistence of having Jews move to Israel is to create the same effect in Israel Palestine, reason why Israel calls the Palestinians terrorist The Plot was exposed by General DeGaulle of France in 1967, however the Lobby & Rudy the red created the 1968 distortion to avoid the UN resolution & continue the plan to destroy Europe & have Israel run the show. By destroying Europe AIPAC Jewish Elites will be able to have Washington confront the EURASIAN nations and expand its AIPAC domination & today you got Zalesnki and the main media conglomerate providing propaganda and naming Russia Putin as the evil empire. The lobby has politicians laws media & industry on their pay role. Christian Jewish Elites alliance is what wall street is and the dollar as global reserve currency means.

[thembnko]

The China/US spat hurts Africa and will escalate into WWIII Since its outbreak in early 2018 China's spat with the United States (US) hurt Africa. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) shows in its World Economic Outlook for 2019 the US was first to increase tensions through imposing higher tariffs on aluminum and steel of 25 percentage points on imports of $50 billion from China and 10 percentage points on imports of an additional $200 billion. After China retaliated the US imposed 15 percentage points in tariffs on all goods (roughly $300 billion) that had not yet incurred tariffs starting in September 2019 and a 5 percentage-point increase on already-tariffed $250 billion imports. The imposition of higher tariffs reduce Africa's economic activity for China depends on the continent for aluminium. China's impact increased the continent's Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by 1 percent. Chad, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Congo, Ethiopia and Namibia feature in investments while Europe and the US regards them as 'failed states.' The countries had 1.6 percent of the population move out of poverty annually. In Tanzania extreme poverty fell by 5.3 million people. Chad and the DRC saw a 3 percent drop. Since South Africa started a peace process focusing on the DRC and Burundi n 2000 and helped the countries run elections, negotiated with the South African private sector to invest, refocused the Organization for African Unity hence its renaming to being the African Union, and established additionally the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD) China boosted the initiatives by providing finance. The United Nations names it in all peace reports as the only country in the world helping the African Peace and Security Architecture. South Africa accepted more than 2 million refugees from the continent before this. Now they have reduced by more than 800,000. China brought a new emphasis on development boosting the NEPAD by promulgating the Belt Road Initiative in 2013. Though focused upon growing Asian economies it includes non-regional countries like Kenya, Sierra Leone, and Djibouti. It ‘grows’ its power with them miles away from its geographic space building a vast network of railroads and shipping lanes at an investment in 2019 of $1.2 trillion. All US thinktanks see this as China's efforts at 'recolonizing' Africa yet the US does not provide investments. Meanwhile, the Belt Road Initiative will increase investments by 14 percent annually reaching $1.3 trillion by 2027. China encouraged all its companies and banks to go into the continent, restructured its economic model to move away from cheap labour so the country moved up the value chain of high-quality electronics and new technologies while the US and Europe only encouraged big companies like Google and Microsoft. Regionalisation as initially conceptualized by Britain worked on the basis of colonization. It has no place in a rising Africa. For economic growth to happen with it being at the centre or part of economic objectives all regional players must agree before they each have national economic policies on priorities, objectives, resources, budgeting and implementation methodology. China facilitated that yearly having African policy makers and Heads of States assembled in a single forum with it's own leaders. Throughout the 400 years Europe had colonized the entirety of Africa and after liberation from 1960 when Africa needed help with development it had no such plans and initiatives. It hated the idea of an African Rennaissance and blemished Kwame Nkrumah's image for it. World Bank and IMF officials colluded with the US in hating Thabo Mbeki for reviving the idea. He had South Africa help Zimbabwe boost its currency with the rand and not the US dollar alone. More importantly tensions between the US and China escalate when European economists are now realising because of prosperity J.M. Keynes’s famous economic 'prophecy' that Europe and the US would have solved all their economic problems by 2030 is coming true. He wrote leisure was to be their focus

since working hours were historically to be reduced. To emphasise its poverty Africa meanwhile has not even a Survey of Income to measure incomes after colonization and make comparisons with Europe. The US has high labour participation rates giving a high standard of living that in the case of an outright war will not make US citizens poor but only reduce equality.

Evidence since 2017 - that is before the trade tensions erupted - is the US was given China's growth in Africa preparing for war. All US thinktanks have discussion documents showing US military mobilization in the Pacific Rim pretended to be a watch on China's East Asian ambitions. They did not see regionalisation taking place which Europe and South America permitted through respectively having Britain and the US lead. The Economist's 16 August 2020 publication titled "America musters the world's biggest naval exercise" described the exercise as 'bibulous' showing off the newest US destroyers. The magazine described the relationship between the US and China which was in 'freefall.' The now overtly shown military build up comes as more than in any country and continent the US has 7 million Covid-19 cases and 170,000 deaths. China where Covid-19 it claims originated has less than a third of both. The US's foreign policy calls for military action when its citizens are affected by death while based in another country or the death is imported into the US. Who does not recall the demise of Libya and Muammar Gadhaffi? The pretext against China is it is hiding information on the origins of Covid-19. The Rand Corporation which produces policy and discussion documents for the US President, Department of Defence, and the Department of Homeland Security recently bolstered Donald Trump's and the Secretary of State's rhetoric on the claim. It documents, researches, analyses, and conducts a project entitled U.S.-China Long-Term Competition sponsored by the Deputy Chief of Staff, G-3/5/7, U.S. Army which has the stated purpose of helping the US Army understand China's capabilities and military.

It published a tool detailing air travel data from the International Air Transport Association. This data visualizes how the coronavirus travelled from China between December 2019-February 2020. The tool titled The Covid-19 Air Traffic Visualization (CAT-V) tool has a "heat spot." It has never been commercialised or made known to the public and was given to the Rand Corporation on condition it showed the public the coronavirus emanated from China. It boosts the underreporting claim and uses estimates of importation risk to the US. It concludes air travel interacted to export infection risk across the world and states by late January 2020 exported from China via commercial air travel on a daily basis. One other conclusion is that countries with modest numbers of confirmed cases still represent the greatest risks of virus exportation to the US if those countries have relatively high active case rates per capita and high levels of connectivity to China. The organization specifically writes the tool inform(s) 'defense-related decisions.' It is preparing for WWIII escalating tensions to more than a Cold War. If WWIII takes place South Africa and Africa must take sides. This is because • the US jeopardizes the New Partnership for African Development and peace initiatives South Africa commenced. • food in the whole of Africa will become short since Covid-19 already disrupted chains of supply • refugees will increase • China's obliteration will mean an end to the whole of humanity because high precision weapons will be used by both sides and the US has a military station mounted on the Moon

Before the tensions rose Africa was projected to have a food market of $740 billion by 2027. It will not come. Hence, the entirety of Africa must take sides. Huawei will stop its investments. South African companies are in Nigeria. They will close. Africa and South Africa will have bourgeoining unemployment which will never get reversed. South Africa has because of Covid-19 a $40 billion loan from the IMF it will never repay because its economy will never grow again. Europe and the US on the other hand will keep growing whatever the outcome because they have just respectively publicized agreements for an injection of $858 billion and $1 trillion to grow businesses and give more than 50 million workers affected by Covid-19 income. The entire world will be imperiled because Russia has an alliance with China including India. They are with South Africa part of the BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) countries. Taking sides means South Africa's national defence force and those of all countries in the continent must start training. Citizens must be told to stockpile food and other necessities and plans drawn to move them to places of safety. This must happen whilst efforts as a priority are made to broker peace. China has since February 2020 been refusing to sign a nuclear deal with the US. The US has been hoping to pressurise Russia to convince China to become part of a deal that involved the three countries. But China has been seeing war coming. With tensions now nearing military confrontation it indeed will be suicidal if it signed including Russia. The US has a military station on the Moon which fact they must consider extremely seriously. So to protect humanity both Russia and China deserve support in maintaining their current nuclear capacity. Maintaining it as a minimum deterrent force is of interest to Africa. In fact it is also time Africa asked both nations to train and equip the continents' separate national defence forces including India. BRIC had better be military. South Africa must use its muscle to negotiate with both. China too has responsibility to start the negotiations if South Africa delays. Tanzania after South Africa has the next best national defence force to train and Libya though it had suffered defeat in the hands of the US's army in 2009. It wants revenge. When the war breaks out Japan, United Kingdom, Australia, Germany, France, and the entire Western Europe will side with the US. Japan has in South Africa investments of R100 billion consisting of 5 different car manufacturers (R60 billion) employing 25,000 South Africans; electronics (R2 billion) employing 20,000. Its Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is reported to have the closest personal relationship with former US President Donald Trump. Trump consulted him closely on the Indo-Pacific. Japan views China in its 2020 defense White Paper as the region's greatest security threat and is responsible for the US's majority intelligence products concerning China's maneuvers there. It has allowed the US Navy to mobilize and gives it at present very extensive logistical support. China deteriorated relations with it for years over the conduct. It has not been able to succeed to make Japan look towards Asia for its security because after the outbreak of WWII the US government invested heavily in Japan advised by its Navy to keep its power in check. The relationship was based on racism for both the US and Britain regarded Asia Pacific as an extremely important geographical space for the expansion and protection of British colonialism that included Africa. It levies extraordinary payments upon the US for hosting its bases. Australia lies not far from Japan.

[diarrheaworldstarhiphop]

What about politics on the other side of the Atlantic? On the 2020 Democratic nomination race, Žižek says, ‘My longstanding analogies are fully confirmed by recent events. Isn’t it absolutely clear that the message of the Democratic party establishment is, “better Trump than Bernie Sanders”?

‘I noticed how on the one hand you have this, let’s call it, “electability problem”. The Democratic establishment is saying Bernie Sanders is too extreme and so on and so on, but my God, that’s how Trump got elected!’ he continued. ‘I mean this line of reasoning that “play safely, stay in the middle if you want to be elected”, no longer works.

‘We have a large socialist movement which gained a serious foothold in United States politics and in the mainstream, and this is incredibly important to be visible there as a serious option.’

Žižek goes on to claim that the Democratic party and Republican party mainstream are becoming ‘indistinguishable’, pointing to billionaire Michael Bloomberg’s brief presidential run as a recent example.

‘If the Democratic establishment were to make a decision at gunpoint as it were — Trump or Sanders — they wouldn’t say, but de facto they would have preferred Trump. So I think, politically, there is the irony.’

According to Žižek, President Trump is too passive. A flaw he cites as being behind the United States’s decision to pull out of Syria, which Žižek described as ‘one of the most catastrophic things that Trump did’.

‘He sacrificed the Kurds,’ Žižek said. ‘The main victims. Everybody wants to screw them. I have full sympathy with the Kurds. Not so much with the Kurds in the north of Iraq, who are more conservative, but the Kurds in the southeast of Turkey and northern Syria.’

‘Trump opened up with unilateral withdrawal, a new situation where basically the two partners there are now Putin and Erdogan, and it’s clear what’s the target of both of them…to ruin Europe. European unity. People even didn’t notice that a similar thing is happening now in Libya. Russia is moving in, supporting one side, Turks supporting the other side in the civil war, and then they are making the deals.

‘I think that this is all coordinated. How this tension threatens Europe with new waves of refugees, which if — now it will sound horrible for a leftist — but I think that the new wave of refugees in Europe means a total ideological, political catastrophe. I am for more refugees…but four years ago when there was the first wave, it should have been done in an organized way. The way — this chaotic way — means that it will not only be Hungary and a couple of other populists. Populists will simply gradually take over Europe, and we should never forget what strange alliances we get here.’

To Žižek, Putin’s Russia and Erdogan’s Turkey are part of a ‘new Axis’ which, due to European passivity, ‘can always blackmail Europe’ through both oil and refugees.

‘I’m just shocked at this passivity of Europe,’ he declares. ‘We pay Turkey €6 billion if they help the refugees. I thought this is a disgusting compromise, but

OK. Then, the time that we had four years of relative peace should have been used for Europe to mobilize not against the refugees, but to change the situation there…of course, Europe should receive more refugees, but this is not the solution.

‘The wealthiest countries there…Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Emirates. They’re simply not receiving any immigrants. Why Europe? Why not Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Emirates? Rich, wealthy countries. It should have been easy for them to receive.’

On the ‘populist left,’ Žižek, is skeptical, claiming they prefer to ‘write wonderful books about why things went wrong’ than get their act together.

‘I would like to have a modest, realist left which has positive proposals of what to do. Like, OK, to talk frankly, we cannot obviously step out of capitalism. How to deal with it?’ he said, adding that the populist left needs to work out ‘how to use capitalist mechanisms’.

Žižek, says that ‘the rise of Trump and populism signals the end of this old liberal centrist consensus’.

‘The majority is disappointed by it and we cannot simply return to it. That’s why all around Europe — Le Pen, AfD, and so on — all around we have this populist revolt,’ he declared, before encouraging the left to ‘do what Trump did on the right’.

‘I remember when Trump began, people thought he was too divisive. No! That’s how you win!’ he says. ‘Hillary lost because Hillary tried to play this game. “We must move more to the center”,…the moral majority, the silent moral majority. I think the left should appropriate this. The left’s strategy should not be, “we are radical, we provoke, we use dirty words in public”…I think that the left, to reinvent itself, should present itself in this way. If by postmodernism we mean obscenity, irony, inconsistency, fake news and so on, then Trump is the ultimate postmodern president, and I think that the left should shamelessly begin to scream, “no, we address not just some fringe group, we address normal, modest, impoverished everyday people”.

‘The left should also stop this obsession with it’s this LGBT minority, that minority, and so on and so on. I think that this obsession with different lifestyles, minorities, is ultimately just a maneuver to avoid the big economic problem.’

‘Class struggle is returning,’ Žižek proclaimed, noting that ‘the two surprising mega hits of the last year’, Joker and Parasite, are ‘both movies about class struggle’.

Whether the digital age will help workers in the class struggle, however, is an ‘ambiguous’ question on Žižek’s mind.

‘On the one hand, internet, of course, opens up the new space of immediate social coordination. You can reach millions instantly,’ he explained. ‘On the other hand, here Julian Assange enters I think.’

‘We are gradually becoming aware to what degree the control of internet, who will control the digital space? It’s one of the big battles today…I think this digital space is not simply either good or bad. It’s just one domain of struggle.’

I ask him about Nick Land and the increasingly popular philosophy of accelerationism, which starts from the idea that capitalism and technology should be sped up in order to precipitate social change. He doesn’t seem to know about Land but he says: ‘What I see good in accelerationism is that I don’t buy this idea that you can oppose global capitalism through some kind of local traditional resistance. Some of my Latino American friends claim we should return to ancient tribal traditions and so on and so on. No. I still remain a Marxist here. You have to go through radical capitalist modernization. There is no way back.’

[yeltsinsstar]

Some of the US interventions in the Middle-East since 1945

1949: Syria:

The democratically elected government of Shukri al-Quwatli was overthrown by a junta led by the Syrian Army chief of staff at the time, Husni al-Za'im, who became President of Syria on April 11, 1949. Za'im had extensive connections to CIA operatives.

1952: Egypt

Project FF  or Fat Fucker was a Central Intelligence Agency project in Egypt, aimed at pressuring King Farouk into  political reforms. The project was masterminded by CIA Director Allen Dulles, Secretary of State Dean Acheson, CIA operative Kermit "Kim" Roosevelt Jr., and CIA Station Chief in Cairo Miles Copeland, Jr. However, due to the unwillingness of Farouk to change, the project moved to support his overthrow, and Roosevelt secretly met with the Free Officers Movement, which overthrew Farouk in a coup d'état led by General Mohammed Naguib and Colonel Gamal Abdel Nasser on 23 July 1952.

1953: Iran

The 1953 Iranian coup d'état, (known in Iran as the "28 Mordad coup") was the overthrow of the democratically elected government of Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh on August 19, 1953, orchestrated by the intelligence agencies of the United Kingdom (under the name "Operation Boot") and the United States (under the name "TPAJAX Project").

1956–1957: Syria 

In 1956 Operation Straggle was a coup plot against Syria. The CIA made plans for a coup for late October 1956 to topple the Syrian government. The plan entailed takeover by the Syrian military of key cities and border crossings. The plan was postponed when Israel invaded Egypt in October 1956 and US planners thought their operation would be unsuccessful at a time when the Arab world is fighting "Israeli aggression." The operation was uncovered and American plotters had to flee the country. 

In 1957 Operation Wappen was a coup plan against Syria. A second coup attempt the following year called for assassination of key senior Syrian officials, staged military incidents on the Syrian border to be blamed on Syria and then to be used as pretext for invasion by Iraqi and Jordanian troops, an intense US propaganda campaign targeting the Syrian population, and "sabotage, national conspiracies and various strong-arm activities" to be blamed on Damascus. This operation failed when Syrian military officers paid off with millions of dollars in bribes to carry out the coup revealed the plot to Syrian intelligence. The U.S. Department of State denied accusation of a coup attempt and along with US media accused Syria of being a "satellite" of the USSR.

There was also an assassination plot later, called "The Preffered Plan", in 1957 against many leaders in Syria. There would be a Free Syria committee set up and outside invasion would be encouraged. However this plan was never put through 

1958: Lebanon 

The U.S. launched Operation Blue Bat in July 1958 to intervene in the 1958 Lebanon crisis. This was the first application of the Eisenhower Doctrine, according to which the U.S. was to intervene to protect regimes it considered threatened by international communism. The goal of the operation was to bolster the pro-Western Lebanese government of President Camille Chamoun against internal opposition and threats from Syria and Egypt. 

1959: Iraq

The October 1959 assassination attempt on Iraqi Prime Minister Abd al-Karim Qasim involving a young Saddam Hussein and other Ba'athist conspirators may have been a collaboration between the CIA and Egyptian intelligence. (There are conflicting reports on this one.)

1963: Iraq 

Similar conflicting reports over US involvement in the February 1963 Iraqi coup.

1972–1975: Iraq 

The U.S. secretly provided millions of dollars for the Kurdish insurgency supported by Iran against the Iraqi government. The U.S. role was so secret even the US State Department and the U.S. "40 Committee," created to oversee covert operations, were not informed. The troops of the Kurdish Democratic Party were led by Mustafa Barzani. Notably, unbeknownst to the Kurds, this was a covert regime change action the US wanted to fail, intended only to drain the resources of the country. The U.S. abruptly ceased support for the Kurds in 1975 and, despite Kurdish pleas for help, refused to extend even humanitarian aid to the thousands of Kurdish refugees created as a result of the collapse of the insurgency.

(Note that Trump’s betrayal of the Kurds is not the first time the US has done so).

1977–1988: Pakistan 

Operation Fair Play was the code name for the 5 July 1977 coup by Pakistan Chief of Army Staff General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq, overthrowing the government of Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. The coup itself was bloodless, and was preceded by social unrest and political conflict between the ruling leftist Pakistan Peoples Party government of Bhutto, and the right-wing Islamist opposition Pakistan National Alliance which accused Bhutto of rigging the 1977 general elections. In announcing the coup, Zia promised "free and fair elections" within 90 days, but these were repeatedly postponed on the excuse of accountability and it was not until 1985 that ("party-less") general elections were held. Zia himself stayed in power for eleven years until his death in a plane crash.

The coup was a watershed event in the Cold War and in the history of the country. The coup took place nearly six years after the 1971 war with India which ended with the secession of East Pakistan as Bangladesh. The period following the coup saw the "Islamisation of Pakistan" and Pakistan's involvement with the Afghan Mujahideen (funded by US and Saudi Arabia) in the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan.

1979–1989: Afghanistan 

In what was known as "Operation Cyclone," the U.S. government secretly provided weapons and funding for a collection of warlords and several factions of Jihadi guerrillas known as the Mujahideen of Afghanistan fighting to overthrow the Afghan government and the Soviet military forces that supported it. Although Operation Cyclone officially ended in 1989 with the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan, U.S. government funding for the Mujahideen continued through 1992, when the Mujahideen overran the Afghan government in Kabul. 

1994–2000: Iraq (post Gulf War)

The CIA launched DBACHILLES, a coup d'état operation against the Iraqi government, recruiting Ayad Allawi, who headed the Iraqi National Accord, a network of Iraqis who opposed the Saddam Hussein government, as part of the operation. The network included Iraqi military and intelligence officers but was penetrated by people loyal to the Iraqi government. Also using Ayad Allawi and his network, the CIA directed a government sabotage and bombing campaign in Baghdad between 1992 and 1995, against targets that—according to the Iraqi government at the time—killed many civilians including people in a crowded movie theater. The CIA bombing campaign may have been merely a test of the operational capacity of the CIA's network of assets on the ground and not intended to be the launch of the coup strike itself. The coup was unsuccessful, but Ayad Allawi was later installed as prime minister of Iraq by the Iraq Interim Governing Council, which had been created by the U.S.-led coalition following the March 2003 invasion and occupation of Iraq. As a non-covert measure, the U.S. in 1998 enacted the "Iraq Liberation Act," which states, in part, that "It should be the policy of the United States to support efforts to remove the regime headed by Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq," and appropriated funds for U.S. aid "to the Iraqi democratic opposition organizations."

2003 to present: Iraq 

 The USA invades Iraq after falsely claiming Iraqi involvement in 9-11 and that they possessed weapons of mass destruction. See: Iraq War 

2006–07: Palestinian territories 

The U.S. government pressured the Fatah faction of the Palestinian leadership to topple the Hamas government of Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh. The Bush Administration was displeased with the government that the majority of the Palestinian people elected in the January Palestinian legislative election of 2006. The U.S. government set up a secret training and armaments program that received tens of millions of dollars in Congressional funding, but also, like in the Iran-contra scandal, a more secret Congress-circumventing source of funding for Fatah to launch a bloody war against the Haniyeh government. The war was brutal, with many casualties and with Fatah kidnapping and torturing civilian leaders of Hamas, sometimes in front of their own families, and setting fire to a university in Gaza. When the government of Saudi Arabia attempted to negotiate a truce between the sides so as to avoid a wide-scale Palestinian civil war, the U.S. government pressured Fatah to reject the Saudi plan and to continue the effort to topple the Haniyeh government. Ultimately, the Haniyeh government was prevented from ruling over all of the Palestinian territories, with Hamas retreating to the Gaza strip and Fatah retreating to the West Bank.

2006–present: Syria 

Since 2006, the State Department has funneled at least $6 million to the anti-government satellite channel Barada TV, associated with the exile group Movement for Justice and Development in Syria. This secret backing continued under the Obama administration, even as the US publicly rebuilt relations with Bashar Al-Assad. 

This was followed by intervention in the Syrian Civil War, in part to combat ISIS/ISIL, with the USA supporting Syrian & Iraqi Kurdish forces. The US, under the Trump administration then abandoned the Syria Kurds to a Turkish intervention in 2019.

2007: Iran

In 2007, the Bush administration requested and received funding from Congress for covert actions in Iran that, according to a presidential finding that Bush signed, had the goal of undermining Iran's religious leadership. 

2011: Libya

The United States has been active in post-2011 Libya with the military carrying out sporadic airstrikes and raids in the country, predominantly against Islamist groups. 

2015–present: Yemen

The U.S. has been supporting the intervention by Saudi Arabia in the Yemeni Civil War. The Yemeni Civil War began in 2015 between two sides, each claiming at that time to support the legitimate government of Yemen.

The U.S. military provides targeting assistance and intelligence and logistical support for the Saudi-led bombing campaign, including aerial refueling. The US also provides weapons and bombs, including, according to a Human Rights Watch (HRW) report, cluster bombs outlawed in much of the world and used by Saudi Arabia in the conflict. The United States also supports the war effort on the ground with Green Berets on the Yemen border with Saudi Arabia tasked initially to help the Saudis secure the border and later expanded to help locate and destroy Houthi ballistic missile caches and launch sites in what Senator Tim Kaine called a “purposeful blurring of lines between train and equip missions and combat.” The US has been criticized for providing weapons and bombs knowing that Saudi bombing has been indiscriminately targeting civilians and violating the laws of war.

[berniesrevolution]

IN THESE TIMES

ACROSS THE COUNTRY, A NEW COHORT OF PROGRESSIVES IS RUNNING FOR—AND WINNING—ELECTIONS. 

The stunning victory of democratic socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in the Democratic congressional primary in New York is perhaps the most well-known, but she is far from alone. Most of these candidates are young, more than usual are people of color, many are women, several are Muslims, at least one is a refugee, at least one is transgender—and all are unabashedly left. Most come to electoral politics after years of activism around issues like immigration, climate and racism. They come out of a wide range of social movements and support policy demands that reflect the principles of those movements: labor rights, immigrant and refugee rights, women’s and gender rights, equal access to housing and education, environmental justice, and opposition to police violence and racial profiling. Some, though certainly not all, identify not just with the policies of socialism but with the fundamental core values and indeed the name itself, usually in the form of democratic socialism.

Rashida Tlaib, a Palestinian-American woman in Detroit, just won the Democratic primary for the legendary Congressman John Conyers’ seat. Four women, two of them members of Democratic Socialists of America and all four endorsed by DSA, beat their male incumbent opponents in Pennsylvania state house primaries. Tahirah Amatul-Wadud is running an insurgent campaign for Congress against a longstanding incumbent in western Massachusetts, keeping her focus on Medicare-for-All and civil rights. Minnesota State Rep. Ilhan Omar, a former Somali refugee, won endorsement from the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, and is running for Keith Ellison’s former congressional seat as an “intersectional feminist.” And there are more.

Congressional nominee Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez shocked the Democratic political community recently after an upset win against Representative Joe Crowley in the New York Democratic primary. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

Many highlight their movement experience in their campaigns; they are champions of immigrant rights, healthcare, student debt organizing and the fight for $15. Intersectionality has grown stronger, as the extremism of Trump’s right-wing racist assault creates significant new gains in linking separate movements focused on racism, women’s rights, immigrant rights, climate, poverty, labor rights and more.

But mostly, we’re not seeing progressive and socialist candidates clearly link domestic issues with efforts to challenge war, militarism and the war economy. There are a few exceptions: Congressional candidate and Hawaii State Rep. Kaniela Ing speaks powerfully about U.S. colonialism in Hawaii, and Virginia State Rep. Lee J. Carter has spoken strongly against U.S. bombing of Syria, linking current attacks with the legacy of U.S. military interventions. There may be more. But those are exceptions; most of the new left candidates focus on crucial issues of justice at home.

It’s not that progressive leaders don’t care about international issues, or that our movements are divided. Despite too many common assumptions, it is not political suicide for candidates or elected officials to stake out progressive anti-war, anti-militarism positions. Quite the contrary: Those positions actually have broad support within both our movements and public opinion. It’s just that it’s hard to figure out the strategies that work to connect internationally focused issues, anti-war efforts, or challenges to militarism, with the wide array of activists working on locally grounded issues. Some of those strategies seem like they should be easy—like talking about slashing the 53 cents of every discretionary federal dollar that now goes to the military as the easiest source to fund Medicare-for-all or free college education. It should be easy, but somehow it’s not: Too often, foreign policy feels remote from the urgency of domestic issues facing such crises. When our movements do figure out those strategies, candidates can easily follow suit.

Candidates coming out of our movements into elected office will need clear positions on foreign policy. Here are several core principles that should shape those positions.

A progressive foreign policy must reject U.S. military and economic domination and instead be grounded in global cooperation, human rights, respect for international law and privileging diplomacy over war. That does not mean isolationism, but instead a strategy of diplomatic engagement rather than—not as political cover for—destructive U.S. military interventions that have so often defined the U.S. role in the world.

Looking at the political pretexts for what the U.S. empire is doing around the world today, a principled foreign policy might start by recognizing that there is no military solution to terrorism and that the global war on terror must be ended.

More broadly, the militarization of foreign policy must be reversed and diplomacy must replace military action in every venue, with professional diplomats rather than the White House’s political appointees in charge. Aspiring and elected progressive and socialist office-holders should keep in mind the distinction between the successes and failures of Obama’s foreign policy. The victories were all diplomatic: moving towards normalization with Cuba, the Paris climate accord and especially the Iran nuclear deal. Obama’s greatest failures—in Libya, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and Yemen—all occurred because the administration chose military action over robust diplomacy.

Certainly, diplomacy has been a tool in the arsenal of empires, including the United States. But when we are talking about official policies governing relations between countries, diplomacy—meaning talking, negotiating and engaging across a table—is always, always better than engaging across a battlefield.

A principled foreign policy must recognize how the war economy has distorted our society at home—and commit to reverse it. The $717 billion of the military budget is desperately needed for jobs, healthcare and education here at home—and for a diplomatic surge and humanitarian and reconstruction assistance to people of countries devastated by U.S. wars and sanctions.

A principled foreign policy must acknowledge how U.S. actions—military, economic and climate-related—have been a driving force in displacing people around the world. We therefore have an enormous moral as well as legal obligation to take the lead in providing humanitarian support and refuge for those displaced—so immigration and refugee rights are central to foreign policy.

For too long the power of the U.S. empire has dominated international relations, led to the privileging of war over diplomacy on a global scale, and created a vast—and invasive—network of 800-plus military bases around the world.

Now, overall U.S. global domination is actually shrinking, and not only because of Trump’s actions. China’s economy is rapidly catching up, and its economic clout in Africa and elsewhere eclipses that of the United States. It’s a measure of the United States’ waning power that Europe, Russia and China are resisting U.S. efforts to impose new global sanctions on Iran. But the United States is still the world’s strongest military and economic power: Its military spending vastly surpasses that of the eight next strongest countries, it is sponsoring a dangerous anti-Iran alliance between Israel and the wealthy Gulf Arab states, it remains central to NATO decision-making, and powerful forces in Washington threaten new wars in North Korea and Iran. The United States remains dangerous.

Progressives in Congress have to navigate the tricky task of rejecting American exceptionalism. U.S global military and economic efforts are generally aimed at maintaining domination and control. Without that U.S. domination, the possibility arises of a new kind of internationalism: to prevent and solve crises that arise from current and potential wars, to promote nuclear disarmament, to come up with climate solutions and to protect refugees.

That effort is increasingly important because of the rapid rise of right-wing xenophobic authoritarians seeking and winning power. Trump is now leading and enabling an informal global grouping of such leaders, from Egypt’s Abdel Fattah el-Sisi to Victor Orban in Hungary and others. Progressive elected officials in the United States can pose an important challenge to that authoritarian axis by building ties with their like-minded counterparts in parliaments and governments—possibilities include Jeremy Corbyn in the United Kingdom and Andrés Manuel López Obrador in Mexico, among others. And progressive and leftist members of Congress will need to be able to work together with social movements to build public pressure for diplomatic initiatives not grounded in the interests of U.S. empire.

In addition to these broad principles, candidates and elected officials need critical analyses of current U.S. engagement around the world, as well as nuanced prescriptions for how to de-escalate militarily, and ramp up a new commitment to serious diplomacy.

GEOPOLITICAL POWER PLAYS

1. RUSSIA:

Relations with Russia will be a major challenge for the foreseeable future. With 90 percent of the world’s nuclear weapons in U.S. and Russian hands, and the two powers deploying military forces on opposite sides of active battlefronts in Syria, it is crucial that relations remain open—not least to derail potential escalations and ensure the ability to stand down from any accidental clash.

Progressives and leftists in Congress will need to promote a nuanced, careful approach to Russia policy. And they will face a daunting environment in which to do so. They will have to deal with loud cries from right-wing war-mongers, mainly Republicans, and from neo-con interventionists in both parties, demanding a one-sided anti-Russia policy focused on increased sanctions and potentially even military threats. But many moderate and liberal Democrats—and much of the media—are also joining the anti-Russia crusade. Some of those liberals and moderates have likely bought into the idea of American exceptionalism, accepting as legitimate or irrelevant the long history of U.S. election meddling around the world and viewing the Russian efforts as somehow reaching a whole different level of outrageousness. Others see the anti-Russia mobilization solely in the context of undermining Trump.

But at the same time, progressive Congress members should recognize that reports of Russian efforts to interfere with the 2016 and 2018 elections cannot be dismissed out of hand. They should continue to demand that more of the evidence be made public, and condemn the Russian meddling that has occurred, even while recognizing that the most serious threats to our elections come from voter suppression campaigns at home more than from Moscow. And they have to make clear that Trump’s opponents cannot be allowed to turn the president’s infatuation with Vladimir Putin into the basis for a new Cold War, simply to oppose Trump.

2. CHINA:

The broad frame of a progressive approach should be to end Washington’s provocative military and economic moves and encourage deeper levels of diplomatic engagement. This means replacing military threats with diplomacy in response to Chinese moves in the South China Sea, as well as significant cuts in the ramped-up military ties with U.S. allies in the region, such as Vietnam. Progressive and socialist members of Congress and other elected officials will no doubt be aware that the rise of China’s economic dominance across Africa, and its increasing influence in parts of Latin America, could endanger the independence of countries in those parts of the Global South. But they will also need to recognize that any U.S. response to what looks like Chinese exploitation must be grounded in humility, acknowledging the long history of U.S. colonial and neocolonial domination throughout those same regions. Efforts to compete with Chinese economic assistance by increasing Washington’s own humanitarian and development aid should mean directing all funds through the UN, rather than through USAID or the Pentagon. That will make U.S. assistance far less likely to be perceived as—and to be—an entry point for exploitation.

3. NATO:

A progressive position on NATO flies straight into the face of the partisan component of the anti-Trump resistance—the idea that if Trump is for it, we should be against it. For a host of bad reasons that have to do with personal enrichment and personal power, Trump sometimes takes positions that large parts of the U.S. and global anti-war and solidarity movements have long supported. One of those is NATO. During the Cold War, NATO was the European military face of U.S.-dominated Western anti-Communism and anti-Sovietism. With the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union, peace activists from around the world called for the dissolution of NATO as an anachronistic relic whose raison d’etre was now gone.

Instead, NATO used its 50th anniversary in 1999 to rebrand itself as defending a set of amorphous, ostensibly “Western” values such as democracy, rather than having any identifiable enemy—something like a military version of the EU, with the United States on board for clout. Unable to win UN Security Council support for war in Kosovo, the United States and its allies used NATO to provide so-called authorization for a major bombing campaign—in complete violation of international law—and began a rapid expansion of the NATO alliance right up to the borders of Russia. Anti-war forces across the world continued to rally around the call “No to NATO”—a call to dissolve the alliance altogether.

But when Trump, however falsely, claims to call for an end to the alliance, or shows disdain for NATO, anti-Trump politicians and media lead the way in embracing the military alliance as if it really did represent some version of human rights and international law. It doesn’t—and progressives in elected positions need to be willing to call out NATO as a militarized Cold War relic that shouldn’t be reconfigured to maintain U.S. domination in Europe or to mobilize against Russia or China or anyone else. It should be ended.

In fact, Trump’s claims to oppose NATO are belied by his actions. In his 2019 budget request he almost doubled the 2017 budget for the Pentagon’s “European Deterrence Initiative,” designed explicitly as a response to “threats from Russia.” There is a huge gap between Trump’s partisan base-pleasing condemnation of NATO and his administration&rdqou;s actual support for strengthening the military alliance. That contradiction should make it easier for progressive candidates and officeholders to move to cut NATO funding and reduce its power—not because Trump is against NATO but because the military alliance serves as a dangerous provocation toward war.

THE WAR ON TERROR

What George W. Bush first called “the global war on terror” is still raging almost 17 years later, though with different forms of killing and different casualty counts. Today’s reliance on airstrikes, drone attacks and a few thousand special forces has replaced the hundreds of thousands of U.S. and allied ground troops. And today hardly any U.S. troops are being killed, while civilian casualties are skyrocketing across the Middle East and Afghanistan. Officials from the Bush, Obama and Trump administrations have repeated the mantra that “there is no military solution” in Afghanistan, Syria, or Iraq or against terrorism, but their actions have belied those words. Progressive elected officials need to consistently remind the public and their counterparts that it is not possible to bomb terrorism out of existence. Bombs don’t hit “terrorism”; they hit cities, houses, wedding parties. And on those rare occasions when they hit the people actually named on the White House’s unaccountable kill list, or “terrorist” list, the impact often creates more terrorists.

The overall progressive policy on this question means campaigning for diplomatic solutions and strategies instead of military ones. That also means joining the ongoing congressional efforts led by Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) and others  to challenge the continued reliance on the 2001 and 2002 Authorizations for the Use of Military Force (AUMF).

In general, privileging diplomatic over war strategies starts with withdrawing troops and halting the arms sales that flood the region with deadly weapons. Those weapons too often end up in the hands of killers on all sides, from bands of unaccountable militants to brutally repressive governments, with civilians paying the price. Congress members should demand an end of massive arms sales to Saudi Arabia, the UAE and other U.S. allies carrying out brutal wars across the Middle East, and they should call for an end to the practice of arming non-state proxies who kill even more people. They should call for a U.S. arms embargo on Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, Iraq, Afghanistan, Egypt, Turkey, Pakistan, Jordan and Israel (which presents a whole other set of arms-related challenges), while urging Russia to stop its arms sales to Syria, Iran and Pakistan. Given the power of the arms industries in the United States, arms embargoes are the most difficult—but perhaps the most important—part of ending the expanding Middle East wars.

Progressives in Congress should demand real support for UN-sponsored and other international peace initiatives, staffing whole new diplomatic approaches whose goal is political solutions rather than military victories—and taking funds out of military budgets to cover the costs. The goal should be to end these endless wars—not try to “win” them.

1. ISRAEL-PALESTINE: 

The most important thing for candidates to know is that there has been a massive shift in public opinion in recent years. It is no longer political suicide to criticize Israel. Yes, AIPAC and the rest of the right-wing Jewish, pro-Israel lobbies remain influential and have a lot of money to throw around. (The Christian Zionist lobbies are powerful too, but there is less political difficulty for progressives to challenge them.) But there are massive shifts underway in U.S. Jewish public opinion on the conflict, and the lobbies cannot credibly claim to speak for the Jewish community as a whole.

Outside the Jewish community, the shift is even more dramatic, and has become far more partisan: Uncritical support for Israel is now overwhelmingly a Republican position. Among Democrats, particularly young Democrats, support for Israel has fallen dramatically; among Republicans, support for Israel’s far-right government is sky-high. The shift is particularly noticeable among Democrats of color, where recognition of the parallels between Israeli oppression of Palestinians and the legacies of Jim Crow segregation in the United States and apartheid in South Africa is rising rapidly.

U.S. policy, unfortunately, has not kept up with that changing discourse. But modest gains are evident even there. When nearly 60 members of the House and Senate openly skipped Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech when he came to lobby Congress to vote against President Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran, the sky didn’t fall. The snub to the Israeli prime minister was unprecedented, but no one lost their seat because of it. Rep. Betty McCollum’s bill to protect Palestinian children from Israel’s vicious military juvenile detention system (the only one in the world) now has 29 co-sponsors, and the sky still isn’t falling. Members of Congress are responding more frequently to Israeli assaults on Gaza and the killing of protesters, often because of powerful movements among their constituents. When Trump moved the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem, the Israeli daily Ha’aretz acknowledged the divide: “While members of the Republican Party overwhelmingly expressed support for the move, Democrats were split between those who congratulated Trump for it and those who called it a dangerous and irresponsible action.”

That creates space for candidates and newly elected officials to respond to the growing portion of their constituencies that supports Palestinian rights. Over time, they must establish a rights-based policy. That means acknowledging that the quarter-century-long U.S.-orchestrated “peace process” based on the never-serious pursuit of a solution, has failed. Instead, left and progressive political leaders can advocate for a policy that turns over real control of diplomacy to the UN, ends support for Israeli apartheid and occupation, and instead supports a policy based on international law, human rights and equality for all, without privileging Jews or discriminating against non-Jews.

To progress from cautiously urging that Israel abide by international law, to issuing a full-scale call to end or at least reduce the $3.8 billion per year that Congress sends straight to the Israeli military, might take some time. In the meantime, progressive candidates must prioritize powerful statements condemning the massacre of unarmed protesters in Gaza and massive Israeli settlement expansion, demands for real accountability for Israeli violations of human rights and international law (including reducing U.S. support in response), and calls for an end to the longstanding U.S. protection that keeps Israel from being held accountable in the UN.

The right consistently accuses supporters of Palestinian rights of holding Israel to a double standard. Progressives in Congress should turn that claim around on them and insist that U.S. policy towards Israel—Washington’s closest ally in the region and the recipient of billions of dollars in military aid every year—hold Israel to exactly the same standards that we want the United States to apply to every other country: human rights, adherence to international law and equality for all.

Many supporters of the new crop of progressive candidates, and many activists in the movements they come out of, are supporters of the increasingly powerful, Palestinian-led BDS (boycott, divestment and sanctions) movement, that aims to bring non-violent economic pressure to bear on Israel until it ends its violations of international law. This movement deserves credit for helping to mainstream key demands—to end the siege of Gaza and the killing of protesters, to support investigations of Israeli violations by the International Criminal Court, to oppose Israel’s new “nation-state’ law—that should all be on lawmakers’ immediate agenda.

2. AFGHANISTAN: 

More than 100,000 Afghans and 2,000 U.S. troops have been killed in a U.S. war that has raged for almost 17 years. Not-Yet-President Trump called for withdrawal from Afghanistan, but within just a few months after taking office he agreed instead to send additional troops, even though earlier deployments of more than 100,000 U.S. troops (and thousands more coalition soldiers) could not win a military victory over the Taliban. Corruption in the U.S.-backed and -funded Afghan government remains sky-high, and in just the past three years, the Pentagon has lost track of how $3.1 billion of its Afghanistan funds were spent. About 15,000 US troops are still deployed, with no hope of a military victory for the United States.

Progressive members of Congress should demand a safe withdrawal of all U.S. troops from Afghanistan, acting on the long-held recognition that military force simply won’t work to bring about the political solution all sides claim to want.

Several pending bills also would reclaim the centrality of Congress’ role in authorizing war in general and in Afghanistan in particular—including ending the 2001 AUMF. Funding for humanitarian aid, refugee support, and in the future compensation and reparations for the massive destruction the U.S.-led war has wrought across the country, should all be on Congress’ agenda, understanding that such funding will almost certainly fail while U.S. troops are deployed.

3. IRAN: 

With U.S. and Iranian military forces facing each other in Syria, the potential for an unintentional escalation is sky-high. Even a truly accidental clash between a few Iranian and U.S. troops, or an Iranian anti-aircraft system mistakenly locking on to a U.S. warplane plane even if it didn’t fire, could have catastrophic consequences without immediate military-to-military and quick political echelon discussions to defuse the crisis. And with tensions very high, those ties are not routinely available. Relations became very dangerous when Trump withdrew the United States from the multi-lateral nuclear deal in May. (At that time, a strong majority of people in the United States favored the deal, and less than one in three wanted to pull out of it.)

The United States continues to escalate threats against Iran. It is sponsoring a growing regional anti-Iran alliance, with Israel and Saudi Arabia now publicly allied and pushing strongly for military action. And Trump has surrounded himself with war-mongers for his top advisers, including John Bolton and Mike Pompeo, who have both supported regime change in Iran and urged military rather than diplomatic approaches to Iran.

Given all that, what progressive elected officials need to do is to keep fighting for diplomacy over war. That means challenging U.S. support for the anti-Iran alliance and opposing sanctions on Iran. It means developing direct ties with parliamentarians from the European and other signatories to the Iran nuclear deal, with the aim of collective opposition to new sanctions, re-legitimizing the nuclear deal in Washington and reestablishing diplomacy as the basis for U.S. relations with Iran.

It should also mean developing a congressional response to the weakening of international anti-nuclear norms caused by the pull-out from the Iran deal. That means not just supporting the nonproliferation goals of the Iran nuclear deal, but moving further towards real disarmament and ultimately the abolition of nuclear weapons. Progressives in and outside of Congress should make clear that nuclear nonproliferation (meaning no one else gets to have nukes) can’t work in the long run without nuclear disarmament (meaning that the existing nuclear weapons states have to give them up). That could start with a demand for full U.S. compliance with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which calls for negotiations leading to “nuclear disarmament, and on a treaty on general and complete disarmament.”

(Continue Reading)

[antifainternational]

August 10 - Seebrücke Amsterdam - Demonstratie tegen vluchtelingenbeleid EU

On a near daily basis, people are drowning in the Mediterranean. Although the amount of people attempting to gain entry to Europe via this route has dropped significantly, the number of deaths actually increases due to the European Union turning its back on these refugees and immigrants. In the meanwhile, multiple vessels from NGOs with a voluntary crew of doctors, nurses, and rescue workers are stranded in Malta. European governments are preventing them from saving human lives. We cannot accept this situation and have therefore set up the Seebrücke / Seabridge movement. We are a broad movement of citizens who are committed to ensuring that rescue actions by civilians at sea remain unpunished. We call on the European Union to establish a rescue program for boat refugees, and to ensure that safe and legal refugee routes to Europe are possible. The people attempting to reach Europe through Libya or other coastal nations often don’t have another choice. They are often taken back by the Libyan coast guard (so-called pull-backs), or they drown. Back in Libya, torture, extortion, human trafficking, slavery and rape await them. All of these abuses have been researched and documented by human rights organisations, the United Nations and the EU itself, yet still, the EU continues to financially support and co-ordinate the so-called ‘Libyan coast guard’. The situation in the Mediterranean at present is miserable and is in direct opposition to universal human values, international maritime law, refugee law and fundamental human rights. Migration has always been a part of our society, as has international protection of those who need it. Centuries of migration have shaped Europe into what it is now. Instead of closing borders, we need a Europe that’s open, cities that are solidary, and harbours which are safe. In recent weeks there have been demonstrations in several German cities, and also in The Hague a first demonstration already took place, to draw attention to the gross violations at sea. We see this movement a powerful instrument to steer the debate about immigration politics back to a humane, pro-European and democratic direction. To achieve that, we want to spread our protest, our solidarity, and our network throughout the whole of Europe. Seebrücke / Seabridge is an international movement, supported by different societal alliances and people. We declare our solidarity with those who have been forced to flee their own countries. We want the Netherlands and Brussels to take a clear stance against the current inhumane policies. We stand in solidarity with all who are on the run. We want European politicians to stop using the so-called ‘Libyan coast guard’ as the bouncer of the continent. Instead, the EU must establish safe passage routes, decriminalise civilian rescue operations at sea, and ensure humane and respectful resettlement of those who have had to flee from war, violence and poverty. Join us and let yourself be heard! When: Friday August, 10th, 17:00 Where: Dam Square, Amsterdam What you can do: Invite your friends (through Facebook and in real life), come to the demonstration, and wear orange clothing (in solidarity with the SOS-colour of the rescue vests and rescue vessels). Bring a rescue vest, an (orange) banner, or a sign with your own text.

[brightquang]

Our President Trump

Our president Trump is the best of an American President than others- however, when you have prejudiced for the Trump’s leadership, you always find out to so much of the worst him. Let me compare the best of our President Trump and the worst of others our American Presidents in the past. Let’s equally observe the Trump and other presidents by our ideology exactly and equally- When we, the Native Americans — and immigration citizens, are not prejudicing for any our presidents in the present and in the past by our political parties — and with whom is the rich or the poor situation because our prisms are bright, the clear, and the justice without have colorful individual animosity. Therefore, when we equally evaluate the super values of each American president or any American leaderships, we must base on the three things of each leader. As a result, when we should be avoiding for his or her romantic heart of each if a man is without had romantically, we will never see to talent clever of him. For that reason, we should evaluate to each American leader when we do base on for the inner national work, the external relations, and his or her leadership’s philosophy.

First, the inner national work of the Trump is entire perfectness, but we are prejudiced by our sights has had without prism. In fact, a few of the American presidents were always increasing up to the American taxes, but the benefits of our American people are less. For example, our American nation has been done for more than the two hundreds and fifty years, but the healthcare program could not be perfect. Obviously, if an American patient pays the one thousand and two hundreds for one night hospital which is why the Trump should be rebuild this healthcare program. When other nations are paying for one night hospitals are form $600.00 to $800.00 per night. Moreover, few of American presidents were spent for the foreign wars by the seventy trillions by the American income taxes, but those wars did not win. During, the homeless and criminal of the America are increasing up day-by pay and the unfairness of American society is too. For the meantime, almost of the American presidents did not consider to their American people when they have been fight for supremacy in order to protect their biggest money, politics , and power. On the other hand, the Trump could not get his presidential salary — during , former President Obama was increased his presidential salary was from $25,000.00 per year to $ 450,000.00 per year because he was evaluated to the American economic, which will be issued to much because the American economics were less 2% eight years of his rules. In contrast, the Trump has been putting for the American economic to easily increases to 4% in the two years. Since, the Trump is using for the national budget let him build the national border in order to prohibit to the foreign crimes, but he will not never prohibit for the legal immigrants if the foreign refugees who are legal qualities. Also, the American society of the presidents in the past couldn’t consider to their American society as those fought for their good earned money, powerful politics ,and high supremacy — during, President Truman has quotes: “ Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear., and others, “ An honest public servant can’t become rich in politic. He can only attain greatness and satisfaction by service.”

Secondly, the external relations of President Trump is wise more than other presidents in the past because an American President of a great power couldn’t get the American income taxes let him buy the allied groups in order to protect a super great power. Therefore, the Trump can’t buy it by the American income taxes. For example, we, our presidents, often buying the American powerful, those have been taken for the American income taxes let’s buy the power. Evidently, an great power was bought foreign alliance by the American income taxes, which was not logic policy. Thus, a wise leader of a great power of the United States of America should conquer all of the hearts of the foreign nations but without had money of the American income taxes which is why a great power was bribed for the small foreign nations by the American Income taxes because the injustice power of ours that we wanted to stop the foreign mouths lets follow behind of us. As a result, the Trump could not bribe to any foreign nation that is why President Trump did not support to North Korea , which has been obtained for the on billion dollars per year by the American Income taxes. On the other hand, if we, our American presidents, were super powerful justice, those had never built up any foreign wars because other nation were the same as our nation, which need developed their people and nations and their high- technology which is why we, our presidents, have prohibited them. Exactly, on the sixty decade, our American president did not only build up in the foreign Malaysia war but also assassinated to some of foreign Presidents as like president Ngo Dinh Diem, South President’s Korea and overthrown President Philippine when those were good relations by our Presidents, but those did not dare fight for war with other foreign powerful nations. However, some of our American presidents have been nourishing for Communist Chinese let’s increase powerful to against the United States of America. But our president Trump seems not to do it, because, President Trump could not transfer any high-technology and modern sciences of the United States of America to the Chinese communists which is why our American presidents did not dare defeat communist block , but we have gradually been sold our partnerships to communist block in order to build up animosity. That’s why, we take good deed of our allied nations when we repaid the animosities to them? Talk by book, that’s as like the Vietnam War, during, the Southern officers and soldiers did not only protect to our nation, people and army-sine the Vietnam War was taking place for the thirty years but also consumed so much of our oldest weapons of the World War II- in the end, our American government has ironically been repaying our modern slavery trade to the South Vietnam. During, our United States Congress has never enacted any betrayal statutory to our partnerships as like Republic of Vietnam. In the dissimilarities of our Presidents Kennedy, Nixon, Bush’s son and Obama were wrongful actions of their foreign polices. which were the Vietnam War, the Iraq War, and Afghanistan War , and Libya War and Syria War, those have walked on the United States Constitution without had politicians to point out to the worst events. But, they also find out to President Trump, where is equal of the American justice putting?

Third, if a excellent American President should be left a especial doctrine let me prove in which looked President Lincoln and Truth- Abraham Lincoln’s Values and Philosophy doctrines- since, his quotes, “ Be with a leader when he is right, stay with him when he is still right, but, leave him when he is wrong.” And others,” You can fool the people, some the time of the people at the times, but you cannot fool all the people all time. Another, President Kennedy Doctrines, when he has quotes,” Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other.” During, he has quotes for the peace, and says, “Victory has a thousand fathers, but defeat is an orphan, and he said his quotes , “ Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable . Especially, President Trump has left a super values of his doctrine, which is ,”he world has many dreams, many the roads, and many places, but the world there’s no place as like home.” Exactly, when we overestimated to our American Presidents who had merits or had less good point.Let’s compare their works in the past-and then, we evaluate to our present’s our American president, but we cannot follow behind of the oldest ways of the less value of our ex- American presidents in order to build smears ideology of us. In individually, I also overestimated to our President Trump who is very truth of his leadership. In conclusion, if we are good of the American citizens, we cannot hurry to evaluate to any American president because his duty and responsibility are on the go of the way when we will not finally see to his end road’s presidential. Nevertheless, when his first presidential term is needless , we will not voted for him. However, this present-time we should raise our president because he is now represented by a super great power of our government of the United States of America. All of our face, dignities , and high honors are sent by the President Trump. Respectfully Yours www.brightquang.com www.brightquang.net What does he somehow understand about to Rule of law or Rule by law of the government of the United States of America because Distort justice is national traitor?

2016 Election

[didanawisgi]

“The intervention was questionable in the first place, and the reasons for staying are murky.

Donald Trump is looking to make a precipitate exit from Syria. His advisers, most of the leading opinion writers in the country, and all the great and the good of America’s foreign-policy elite are crying out at the blunder they anticipate it will be. The president is handing a gift to Vladimir Putin and Iran. The president is betraying our allies. Disaster.

I don’t think so.

You may remember that the U.S. Congress refused to authorize intervention in Syria in 2013, when President Obama kicked the question to them. They refused to do so because of polls showing that Americans opposed intervention overwhelmingly, roughly 70–30. And support for intervention tends to go down over time. However, U.S. forces had already been active in Syria, and in Syria’s civil war, for at least a year by that point, working with the CIA to arm and train Sunnis fighting the government. Alas, in our scramble to find “moderate rebels,” we often ended up arming Al Nusra, the franchise of al-Qaeda that is native to Syria.

More U.S. forces came into Syria in 2014 and 2015 to combat ISIS, which had formed its burgeoning statelet in the chaos of western Iraq and eastern Syria. They did so under the dubiously reinterpreted congressional Authorization for the Use of Military Force from 2001.

As refugees and migrants flowed out of Syria, every great power, regional power, or freelancing wannabe flowed in. The United States, Turkey, Iran, Saudi Arabia, most of the Gulf states, Russia, and lately even China have tried to get involved in one or another aspect of the fight. Even the persecuted Uighur minority of western China, improbable as it sounds, has fighters involved in northwest Syria.

In the midst of this, you might ask, what are Americans trying to accomplish in Syria? For laymen, it certainly is confusing. Advocates for staying in Syria are sometimes specific and sometimes vague. One commentator will say we have to stay in order to defeat ISIS, another will say we have to stay to honor and protect the Kurds because their militias helped us defeat ISIS. Another will say that we are there, joined in the struggle to secure a post-war order in Syria. Still others will say that the mission is to prevent Russia from achieving greater influence in the region.

American policymakers have mostly given up on the mission of helping rebels topple the Alawite regime of Bashar al-Assad, partly because it would be very difficult to dislodge him. Intervention remains unpopular, and Russia proved willing to intervene dramatically. Of course it did; it naturally wants to protect naval assets hosted by a longtime regional ally, especially at a time when it considers other naval assets in Ukraine to be under pressure.

America turned its fire on the Islamic State and destroyed the burgeoning caliphate. That burgeoning statelet has been annihilated. But there are still thousands of ISIS fighters in the region, mostly in northern Syria, many of them among the rebel forces that occasionally excite American sympathy. This is why the president and experts seem to say that ISIS is defeated in one breath, and ISIS is still a threat in the next. But Syria is not the only place where ISIS can be found. ISIS also has places to operate in western Iraq, which is still barely reconciled to the government in Baghdad. And “affiliate” groups exist throughout much of North Africa.

In the fight against ISIS, we’ve worked closely with left-wing Kurdish militia, who are a thorn in the side of our NATO ally Turkey. Kurdish-controlled zones tend to be more religiously tolerant than neighboring ones, though they are also considered a security threat by Erdogan and Assad. The fights between Kurds and Turks should give readers an idea of how “entangled” our alliances have become in the Middle East.

So in this situation, commentators argue against leaving because it would abandon our Kurdish allies on the ground to the tender mercies of our Turkish allies. This would ruin our credibility when we intervene elsewhere. It would give Putin a “gift” and we would lose leverage in a post-war Syrian settlement.

Much of that is true. There are always costs to abandoning a bad investment. And yet these costs are preferable to an endless, ever-evolving mission that has no popular support or mandate. What critics of withdrawal refuse to do is describe the actual sustainable ends they want to achieve with America’s military in Syria.

What would a post-war Syria that is acceptable to America look like, and how can America bring it about at a cost Americans are willing to accept? We are not told. What are the conditions we hope to achieve before the mission can end? This question is also met with silence.

It is as if the downsides of leaving are cited only because staying keeps American soldiers and matériel near the ongoing disaster in Syria, a disaster that may yet yield an international outrage that will motivate Americans to expand the mission to include regime change. Every few months, as Assad’s government reclaims more territory, media outlets dutifully relay the messages of rebels ahead of their latest evacuations. So far public opinion has refused to satisfy the foreign-policy hawks.

As for Russian prestige, is it so enhanced? As in eastern Ukraine, so in Syria: The United States placed a gamble on a people-powered movement that would have the effect of depriving Russia of an ally that hosts vital Russian naval assets, and Russia eventually scrambled to avoid this major loss. It is not so much a gift as the successful and costly prevention of a theft.

If Russia’s prestige has been enhanced in the Middle East, perhaps it is not so much the fecklessness of American intervention and the resolution of Putin, but that Russia simply had the more viable strategy. Russia has intervened on behalf of traditional state actors, Iran and Syria. The United States, since the Arab Spring, has fitfully allied itself with demotic and even revolutionary Sunni movements. The relationships of these movements to Sunni terrorist movements such as Al Nusra and ISIS has been rather fluid.

In fact, Russia’s reentry into the Middle East has been made much easier by U.S. failures in the region, in the exact same way that increased Iranian influence follows American failure. The Iraq War increased the polarization of Sunni and Shia across the region, and Russia has simply sided with those who have more reason than ever to resent American involvement in the region. Russia could even advert to its own people and to the world that it was returning to its role as a protector of Christian religious minorities. It can make this ruse almost believable, because America’s and Saudi Arabia’s actions support, directly and sometimes indirectly, Sunni movements that are fantastically intolerant. If Syria is a gift to the Russians, let them have it — just as we took the “gift” of Afghanistan, only to discover how unhappy it has made us.

My friend Noah Rothman writes in Commentary, “Political commentators and anti-interventionist ideologues will note that withdrawing America’s modest footprint from Syria is popular with the public. But what would you expect? Precisely no one in the political class is making a case for sustained and substantial American intervention in this conflict zone.”

Are we sure that we have cause and effect in correct order? At the height of anger and outrage at Bashar Assad’s government, most of the press, most of the U.S. Senate, and the president himself were making a case for intervention against Assad. They did so on the limited basis of enforcing norms against the use of chemical weapons, though the war aims would surely be wider, just as a few years earlier the mission in Libya went from protecting human life to decapitating the regime. Americans were against such an intervention in Syria nearly four to one. The Parliament of the United Kingdom opposed it. Then the U.S. Congress dropped it. The wisdom of putting the power of war in the people’s house is that democracies cannot fight successful wars without popular support.

As for credibility with our allies, the Kurds allied with us, as did others, because we are powerful and rich. They are capable of remembering how George H. W. Bush encouraged Iraqis and Kurds to rise up against Saddam in the early 1990s, only to extricate ourselves. They knew the risks. They also know who is president of the United States, and have started talks about guaranteeing a tolerable order with the Syrian government.

When the U.S. embarked on its bid to transform Iraq, it did so while touting a “democratic domino theory.” A free Iraq would be an example that weakens the grip of authoritarians and despots across the Arab and Muslim world. So we were told.

And we did set the dominos in motion. But instead of stable democracies, what spread was chaos, Sunni radicalism, and an intensifying of the Sunni–Shia conflict across the Islamic world. Knocking over Iraq’s government put Baghdad in the grasp of Iran-sympathetic Shia, whose misgovernance encouraged a revolt across Iraq’s Sunni triangle and eventually in Syria. Similar Sunni radicalisms swept over Libya and Egypt. The results have been the destruction of minority religious communities of Christians and Yezidis and an ongoing refugee and migration crisis that has destabilized politics across almost the entirety of Europe.

We were told that we have to fight them over there, so that we do not have to fight them at home. But instead, we went to fight them over there, and find we are fighting them everywhere.

America has been conducting its terrorism fight according to the logic that obtains in imperial orders, where the great power at the center maintains an expansive, world-bestriding reign and tries to pick its fights along the permeable periphery of that order. Christmas markets and major public buildings at the centers of that order are reinforced and protected by concrete barriers.

But the unpopularity of intervention in Syria shows that Americans still have a small-r republican streak. Instead of trying to construct barriers to terrorism around Syria, and around a few important buildings in our cities, they would prefer barriers at the national border. It would be a shame if we ever gave up entirely on this republican spirit. Certainly nothing the hawks promise we’ll find in Syria seems worth sacrificing it.”

MICHAEL BRENDAN DOUGHERTY — Michael Brendan Dougherty is a senior writer at National Review Online.

[supernintendo-1987]

The Rise of Xenophobic Nativist Nationalism

http://clashofworl.blogspot.com/2018/10/the-rise-of-xenophobic-nativist.html

There is an extremist movement that has been gaining political power in both the US and Europe. It also has been showing appeal in both New Zealand and Australia. While some media outlets generically call it populism, this movement is more far-right and white nationalist. Xenophobic nativist nationalism is the product of neoliberal capitalism, humanitarian intervention, war, neocolonialism, and race prejudice in western societies.  Immigration and the economy have been topics in which the xenophobic nativist nationalist use to energize their base.  

Some of this hatred is motivated by both fear and economics. A segment of supporters have been left behind in terms of the economic advance of capitalism as a dominant force. Working class whites have been harmed by globalization and outsourcing, which means they are not only competing for jobs in their own countries, but the entire world. This explains the strong support for economic nationalism in terms of policy, rather than a free market. Scapegoating of immigrants has become a simple tool of manipulating the public, rather tan focusing on the real problem. There was no recovery for most people from the 2008 financial crisis. Most EU countries adopted fiscal austerity measures and cuts to public services causing social and political turmoil.    

White nationalists have now become part the political mainstream. Political parties once thought to be too far-right and fanatic to win elections are becoming formidable. The reason also is related to the inadequacies of the establishment political parties, who rather engage in the politics of  negotiation. Doing so has produced laws and policies that the majority on both the left and right despise. This is more pronounced in the US, which explains the dramatic change in the Republican Party.  

The staunch advocates of xenophobic nativist nationalism do not stop and think why there is refugee and migrant traffic in the first pace. It is the result of neocolonialism and humanitarian intervention. Humanitarian intervention has been a cover for military strikes and the plunder of natural resources of the global south. Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, Syria, and Somalia have been subject to European and American aggression. The argument is that their is a responsibility to protect civilians, promote liberal democracy, and free markets. The true motive is to gain geopolitical advantages over other countries and make it more simple for particular transnational corporations to operate. NATO is not longer a defensive alliance, rather a war alliance designed to either attack major powers like Russia or China and even smaller states that would not be a military threat. The result of massive military strikes is the increase in migrant traffic coming into Europe. Xenophobic nativist nationalism almost parallels fascism in terms of it appealing to a mass amount of people and the economic conditions which allowed it to grow.