Ten-Day Dawn Enters 42nd Year

By: Kayhan Int’l

 

Yesterday on the 12th of the Iranian month of Bahman (February 1), the nation marked the start of the Ten-Day-Dawn in remembrance of the memorable return home of their beloved leader, Imam Khomeini (RA), in 1979 from 15 years of exile and the resounding triumph ten days later of the Islamic Revolution that threw into the dustbin of history the British-installed and the U.S.-backed Pahlavi Shah, and along with him over a quarter century of American hegemony over Iran.

Today, as Islamic Iran is all prepared to mark the 41st anniversary of the victory of the grassroots movement and enter into its 42nd year, proud of its astounding achievements in almost all fields ranging from stem cell technology to the nuclear fuel cycle and aerospace to the ballistic defence system in the face of four decades of illegal sanctions and economic terrorism, the U.S. continues to wring its hands in frustration at the impending end of its undue influence in the whole region.

We all remember how millions of Iranians had converged on the streets of Tehran leading to Mehrabad Airport in 1979 to catch a glimpse of the Father of the Islamic Revolution, spreading roses in the path of his motorcade as it moved slowly towards the Behesht-e Cemetery, from where he preferred to address the nation.

The words of the Sage of the Age from the abode of the seemingly dead to the ears of the apparently alive continue to reverberate till this day, transcending the time zone and inspiring the second and third generations of Iranians, whose devotion, coupled with their millions-strong presence whenever circumstances require, are firm proofs of the durability and universality of his thoughts.

He spoke with conviction and succeeded in establishing the uniquely popular religious system of government in Iran which is now a role model for most of the people of the region, as is evident by his portraits the public displays from Africa to Central Asia and throughout the Subcontinent, as well as in the West, to the chagrin of the Great Satan whose forty years of intricate plots have all come to a naught, including the 8-year war imposed through Saddam and the terrorist bid to seize Iraq and Syria.

Even the recent cowardly killing of General Qassem Soleimani by the terrorist Donald Trump has badly boomeranged on the U.S., shattering its myth of military invincibility as the devastated Ain al-Assad base holds testimony, and endearing the martyred commander to all freedom-loving people who gathered in millions not just in the cities of Iran to pay him tribute, but also turned out in hundreds of thousands in neighbouring Iraq, as well as in Pakistan, Yemen, Syria, Lebanon and other countries.

The fact that the Islamic Republic of Iran is the mainstay in the region and beyond, and has exposed hypocrites and terrorists, including the U.S. president, as Godless cowards, is due to the foresight of Imam Khomeini who lived and breathed Islam and left no stone unturned in fostering Shi’ite-Sunni solidarity through the Islamic Unity Week on the Prophet’s birthday and mobilizing the Ummah for the cherished goal of liberating Palestine and Islam’s first Qibla, Bayt al-Moqaddas, from the yoke of the despicable Zionists.

He predicted the end of communism, and it is no more. He foretold the eventual collapse of capitalism, and it is on its last legs. He prophesied the weeding out of the cancerous tumour called the Zionist entity, and its death throes are evident for all despite the vain bid by Trump and his criminal clique to save tottering Israel through the self-defeatist ‘conspiracy of the century’.

Washington is indeed at the end of its wit. It is bewildered. Its threats, theatrics, and tweets to the few traitors to indulge in violence and vandalism, have miserably failed. Even the rubbish films produced by pro-Zionist Hollywood as part of the US-Israeli policy of Iranophobia and Islamophobia, have met with failure.

According to the Leader of the Islamic Revolution, Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei, the multiplicity of U.S. threats show the power of the Islamic system, for; if the Islamic Republic did not enjoy high power and influence, the ill-wishers of the Iranian nation would not embark on futile efforts.

It is the grassroots support of the people that makes the Islamic Revolution indomitable, because a light which has a Divine Source, in accordance with the holy Qur’an and the teachings of Prophet Muhammad (SAWA) and his Infallible Ahl al-Bayt, cannot be extinguished

No wonder, Imam Khomeini had remarked: "Our Revolution was explosion of light.”

The ‘hijacking’ of the swearing in of the first female Muslim State Representative in Pennsylvania

 Noshin Bokth

Here in the United States, the Muslim community lives in an atmosphere that pulsates with disquietude and uncertainty. Here in the land of the free, our president is a man that possesses not a vestige of skill or compassion. He is a leader only by title. He conveys xenophobic and Islamaphobic rhetoric without any regard. President Donald J. Trump continues to demonize and antagonize Islam and Muslims with explicit malice. It is disconcerting, to say the least. Despite this, the American political climate, which has been arid with enmity, found a portion of its thirst quenched, even if only for a moment.

Last year, the first Muslim women were elected into congress, Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar. They are the first drops in the fiercely anticipated, luscious rain that comes after a drought. But there is a long path to tread before America experiences the glorious monsoon it so desperately yearns for.

On March 25th, 2019, Movita Johnson- Harrell was the first Muslim woman to be sworn into the Pennsylvania Statehouse. Yet another drop to cultivate promise. However, this historic day, meant to be imbued with hope for all, was eclipsed by Pennsylvania State Rep, Stephanie Borowicz. Before Harrell’s swearing-in, she took it upon herself to offer a prayer, mentioning Jesus 13 times. A few excerpts from her prayer as follows,

“God forgive us. Jesus. We’ve lost sight of you.”
“President Trump, Lord we thank you that he stands beside Israel unequivocally.”

To call this a prayer, given the context, is unsuitable. It is an emphatic political statement and assertion masked as an invocation. Borowicz announced to Harrell and the Muslim community, “You are not accepted here. We do not stand with you. We stand against you.” This rhetoric is incredibly disparaging to, not only the Muslim community but to all people of faith. Prayer should offer inspiration and evoke sentiments of solidarity. It exemplifies strength, and to use it as a divisive tool that intimidates is precarious coming from a professional who alleges to be a leader.

The swearing in of any politician is a solemn occasion. It is a moment of reverence and celebration. The event is meant to embody so-called American values of equality and inclusion, of community and people, regardless of idiosyncrasies. To transfigure it and distort it into a setting to assert political ideologies is unseemly. One could argue, but she simply recited an innocent prayer. Her declaration was subtle, nonetheless, it was there. By thanking her lord that President Trump “stands beside Israel unequivocally,” she was blatantly saying, “Officially, you might have a place in this government. Unofficially, your voice will be repressed.” This point in her prayer is particularly pertinent. Borowicz astutely unveiled her keen and cognizant tactics.

The conflict surrounding Israel and Palestine is not a point of political and financial discourse for Muslims, including Harrell. It is a question of reviving a pilfered community, of reclaiming humanity. It penetrates and paralyzes the depths of our hearts. The illegal state of Israel, along with it’s most fervent ally, The United States of America, is liable for the pogrom of illimitable Palestinians. Its nation is cemented with the bones of those it oppressed. Israel unflinchingly discharges bullets at medics and aid workers fortified with nothing but stethoscopes and bandages. Israel interminably silences the people of Palestine with missiles and bullets. Her gratitude for the president’s support of Israel was her avowal to endorse the suppression of Harrell’s voice and all those like her.

The most primaeval and prevailing form of oppression is silencing. To be perpetually muted is pillaging people’s humanity and dignity. Without our voices, our stories are remnants of fading dreams, lost in the cosmos. Without amiable conversation, peace and justice, and all that comprises our humanness will dissipate with the dust of war. In an era of emotional political strife and tumult, we can not afford to turn profound, visceral experiences of supplication into clandestine weapons. Movita Johnson-Harrell responded eloquently to this incident,

“I do not have a problem with religion. I do not have a problem with choice. I do not have a problem with Jesus. I have a problem with using religion as a weapon,”

The world is already asphyxiating from the carnage of war, we do not need any more ammunition designed. We require empathic dialogue. We need to listen. We demand a cessation of language that perpetuates the othering of an already marginalized community. By definition, a democracy is a system of government by the people. The officials in place are meant to represent the people.

Both Harrell and Borowicz were elected, making manifest a disequilibrium in the system. Borowicz’s arbitrary and partisan supplication will be denounced, it is an exhortation from the divine to raise our voices. Juxtaposed next to Borowicz and all that her prayer embodies, white supremacy, is Harrell and Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, and a myriad of other entities whose mere presence is more resounding than any discriminatory prayer. For they themselves are prayers, as interpreted by any standard dictionary, an earnest hope.

The Satanic Nature of the Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki

“Ahab is forever Ahab, man.  This whole act’s immutably decreed.  ‘Twas rehearsed by thee and me billion years before this ocean rolled.  Fool!  I am the Fates’ lieutenant; I act under orders.”

– Herman Melville, Moby Dick

“The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid ‘dens of crime’ that Dickens loved to paint…But it is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried, and minuted) in clean, carpeted, warmed, and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voice.”

– C. S. Lewis, author’s preface, 1962, The Screwtape Letters

American history can only accurately be described as the story of demonic possession, however you choose to understand that phrase.  Maybe radical “evil” will suffice.  But right from the start the American colonizers were involved in massive killing because they considered themselves divinely blessed and guided, a chosen people whose mission would come to be called “manifest destiny.”  Nothing stood in the way of this divine calling, which involved the need to enslave and kill millions and millions of innocent people that continues down to today.  “Others” have always been expendable since they have stood in the way of the imperial march ordained by the American god. This includes all the wars waged based on lies and false flag operations. It is not a secret, although most Americans, if they are aware of it, prefer to see it as a series of aberrations carried out by “bad apples.”  Or something from the past.

Our best writers and prophets have told us the truth: Thoreau, Twain, William James, MLK, Fr. Daniel Berrigan, et al.: we are a nation of killers of the innocent.  We are conscienceless.  We are brutal.  We are in the grip of evil forces.

The English writer D. H. Lawrence said it perfectly in 1923, “The American soul is hard, isolate, stoic and a killer.  It has never yet melted.”  It still hasn’t.

When on August 6 and 9, 1945 the United States killed 200-300 thousand innocent Japanese civilians with atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, they did so intentionally.  It was an act of sinister state terrorism, unprecedented by the nature of the weapons but not by the slaughter. The American terror bombings of Japanese cities that preceded the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki – led by the infamous Major General Curtis LeMay – were also intentionally aimed at Japanese civilians and killed hundreds of thousands of them.

Is there an American artist’s painting of Tokyo destroyed by the firebombing to go next to Picasso’s Guernica, where estimates of the dead range between 800 and 1,600?  In Tokyo alone more than 100, 000 Japanese civilians were burnt to death by cluster bombs of napalm.  All this killing was intentional. I repeat: Intentional.  Is that not radical evil?  Demonic?  Only five Japanese cities were spared such bombing.

The atomic bombings were an intentional holocaust, not to end the war, as the historical record amply demonstrates, but to send a message to the Soviet Union that we could do to them what we did to the residents of Japan.  President Truman made certain that the Japanese willingness to surrender in May 1945 was made unacceptable because he and his Secretary-of-State James Byrnes  wanted to use the atomic bombs – “as quickly as possible to ‘show results’” in Byrnes’ words – to send a message to the Soviet Union.  So “the Good War” was ended in the Pacific with the “good guys” killing hundreds of thousand Japanese civilians to make a point to the “bad guys,” who have been demonized ever since.   Russia phobia is nothing new.

Satan always wears the other’s face.

Many Baby Boomers like to say they grew up with the bomb.  They are lucky. They grew up.  They got be scared.  They got to hide under their desks and wax nostalgic about it.  Do you remember dog tags?  Those 1950s and 1960s?  The scary movies?

The children of Hiroshima and Nagasaki who died under our bombs on August 6 and 9, 1945 didn’t get to grow up.  They couldn’t hide.  They just went under. To be accurate: we put them under. Or they were left to smolder for decades in pain and then die.  But that it was necessary to save American lives is the lie. It’s always about American lives, as if the owners of the country actually cared about them.  But to tender hearts and innocent minds, it’s a magic incantation.  Poor us!

Fat Man, Little Boy – how the words echo down the years to the now fat Americans who grew up in the 1950s and who think like little boys and girls about their country’s demonic nature.  Innocence – it is wonderful!  We are different now. “We are great because we are good,” that’s what Hillary Clinton told us.  The Libyans can attest to that.  We are exceptional, special.  The next election will prove we can defeat Mr. Pumpkin Head and restore America to its “core values.”

Perhaps you think I am cynical.  But understanding true evil is not child’s play.  It seems beyond the grasp of most Americans who need their illusions.  Evil is real.  There is simply no way to understand the savage nature of American history without seeing its demonic nature.  How else can we redeem ourselves at this late date, possessed as we are by delusions of our own God-blessed goodness?

But average Americans play at innocence.  They excite themselves at the thought that with the next election the nation will be “restored” to the right course.  Of course there never was a right course, unless might makes right, which has always been the way of America’s rulers.  Today Trump is viewed by so many as an aberration.  He is far from it.  He’s straight out of a Twain short story.  He’s Vaudeville. He’s Melville’s confidence man.  He’s us. Did it ever occur to those who are fixated on him that if those who own and run the country wanted him gone, he’d be gone in an instant?  He can tweet and tweet idiotically, endlessly send out messages that he will contradict the next day, but as long as he protects the super-rich, accepts Israel’s control of him, and allows the CIA-military-industrial complex to do its world-wide killing and looting of the treasury, he will be allowed to entertain and excite the public – to get them worked up in a lather in pseudo-debates.  And to make this more entertaining, he will be opposed by the “sane” Democratic opposition, whose intentions are as benign as an assassin’s smile.

Look back as far as you can to past U.S. presidents, the figureheads who “act under orders” (whose orders?), as did Ahab in his lust to kill the “evil” great white whale, and what do you see?  You see servile killers in the grip of a sinister power.  You see hyenas with polished faces. You see pasteboard masks.  On the one occasion when one of these presidents dared to follow his conscience and rejected the devil’s pact that is the presidency’s killer-in-chief role, he – JFK – had his brains blown out in public view.  An evil empire thrives on shedding blood, and it enforces its will through demonic messages.  Resist and there will be blood on the streets, blood on the tracks, blood in your face.

Despite this, President Kennedy’s witness, his turn from cold warrior to an apostle of peace, remains to inspire a ray of hope in these dark days. As recounted by James Douglass in his masterful JFK and the Unspeakable, Kennedy agreed to a meeting in May 1962 with a group of Quakers who had been demonstrating outside the While House for total disarmament.  They urged him to move in that direction.  Kennedy was sympathetic to their position.  He said he wished it were easy to do so from the top down, but that he was being pressured by the Pentagon and others to never do that, although he had given a speech urging “a peace race” together with the Soviet Union. He told the Quakers it would have to come from below.  According to the Quakers, JFK listened intently to their points, and before they left said with a smile, “You believe in redemption don’t you?”  Soon Kennedy was shaken to his core by the Cuban missile crisis when the world teetered on the brink of extinction and his insane military and “intelligence” advisers urged him to wage a nuclear war.  Not long after, he took a sharp top-down turn toward peace despite their fierce opposition, a turn so dramatic over the next year that it led to his martyrdom.  And he knew it would.  He knew it would.

So hope is not all lost.  There are great souls like JFK to inspire us. Their examples flash here and there. But to even begin to hope to change the future, a confrontation with our demonic past (and present) is first necessary, a descent into the dark truth that is terrifying in its implications.  False innocence must be abandoned.  Carl Jung, in “On the Psychology of the Unconscious,” addressed this with the words:

It is a frightening thought that man also has a shadow side to him, consisting not just of little weaknesses – and foibles, but of a positively demonic dynamism. The individual seldom knows anything of this; to him, as an individual, it is incredible that he should ever in any circumstances go beyond himself. But let these harmless creatures form a mass, and there emerges a raging monster; and each individual is only one tiny cell in the monster’s body, so that for better or worse he must accompany it on its bloody rampages and even assist it to the utmost. Having a dark suspicion of these grim possibilities, man turns a blind eye to the shadow-side of human nature. Blindly he strives against the salutary dogma of original sin, which is yet so prodigiously true. Yes, he even hesitates to admit the conflict of which he is so painfully aware.

How can one describe men who would intentionally slaughter so many innocent people?  American history is rife with such examples up to the present day.  Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, etc. – the list is very long.  Savage wars carried out by men and women who own and run the country, and who try to buy the souls of regular people to join them in their pact with the devil, to acquiesce to their ongoing wicked deeds.  Such monstrous evil was never more evident than on August 6 and 9, 1945.

Unless we enter into deep contemplation of the evil that was released into the world with those bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, we are lost in a living hell without escape.  And we will pay.  Nemesis always demands retribution.  We have gradually been accepting rule by those for whom the killing of innocents is child’s play, and we have been masquerading as innocent and good children for whom the truth is too much to bear.  “Indeed, the safest road to Hell is the gradual one,” Screwtape, the devil, tells his nephew, Wormwood, a devil in training, “the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.”  That’s the road we’ve been traveling.

The projection of evil onto others works only so long.  We must reclaim our shadows and withdraw our projections.  Only the fate of the world depends on it.

Best trained terrorists in the world

International Hypocrisy

by Dr Elias Akleh

By now all international media resources; newspapers, magazines, TV channels, and internet social media, are busy reporting the gruesome murder of Jamal Khashoggi; a Saudi reporter, who was loyal to the regime until he turned against Muhamad bin Salman (MBS) and his suppressive policies.

Once MBS was announced crowned prince in 2015 and started his war against Yemen, critic Khashoggi found it safer for himself to leave Saudi Arabia. He moved first to UK and later to USA. In his writings Khashoggi harshly criticized the policies of the young prince. Eventually he was lured to the Saudi consulate in Turkey, where he was reported murdered and butchered into small pieces that were buried in different parts of Turkey’s wilderness.

Understanding Saudi culture and the practices of the Saudi royal family, one will come to the logical conclusion, supported by the events and evidences, that MBS has ordered the murder of Khashoggi. The Saudi royal family is notorious in assassination and sentencing to death all alleged criminals and political activists, who dare to criticize their policies. The streets of capital Riyadh have been the witness of so many public gruesome beheadings; 158 in 2015, 154 in 2016, 146 in 2017 and 73 in 2018 as of July 17.

Although the royal family denied any involvement or knowledge of Khashoggi’s murder and had promised to conduct an investigation in the murder, in investigation led by the prime suspect; MBS himself, the Saudi Kingdom was met with harsh condemnations and calls for punishment. Saudi Arabia started to feel the repercussions of such calls when international banks, corporations, investors, major media outlets and world leaders started to pull out of the Saudi Future Investment Initiative (FII); a massive economic conference colloquially known as “Davos in the Desert”, hosted by MBS himself on October 23-25. The initiative is part of MBS’ ambitious “2030 Programme” to make the Saudi kingdom less reliant on oil.

Jim Yong-kim of World Bank, Christine Lagarde of International Monetary fund, Stacey Cunningham president of New York Stock Exchange, John Flint CEO of HSBC, as well as Credit Suisse, and Standard Chartered decided not to attend at Davos. Investment companies such as Uber, Mastercard, Virgin Group, JPMorgan Chase, Ford Motor Comp., Viacom Inc, and private equity firms such as Blackstone, BlackRock and Bain Capital are pulling out of Davos. Media outlets such as Bloomberg, CNN, New York Times, CNBC, The Economist, Financial Times and Los Angeles Times among others decided not to attend. Antonio Guterres; Secretary General of the UN, and Audrey Azoulay of UNESCO expressed their deep concern about the murder and called for investigation and punishment of the perpetrators. Many world leaders condemned Khashoggi’s murder and called for reprimanding the kingdom. Many European politicians and American senators called for halting the sale of weapons to the kingdom.

A lot of “hooplas” for the murder of one person, yet dead silence for the murder of millions others, including women and children, in the seventy years old Zionist occupied Palestine, in the eight years old American/Israeli/Gulf states war against Syria and in three years old Saudi/Emirati war against Yemen.

Zionist Jewish terrorist groups and militias, similar to al-Qaeda and ISIS, had occupied Palestine in 1948, perpetrated numerous massacres against civilian Palestinians, razed to the grounds hundreds of Palestinian towns, ethnically cleansed almost 800 thousand Palestinians, and established a colonial state of Israel. In 1967 those Zionist Israeli Jews again perpetrated more war crimes and occupied the rest of Palestine, destroyed more towns, massacred more Palestinians and built more illegal colonies. Although these Israelis entered into peace treaty with the Palestinians they are still ethnically cleansing and murdering in cold blood Palestinians, usurping their land, and expanding and building more colonies in violation of all peace treaties and in violation of UNSC resolutions. Israeli crimes against Palestinians, as well as other Arab states such as Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria, have never stopped, but rather are increasing in number, in intensity and in ferocity.

Due to their narcissist elitist racist religious belief that they, alone and no other nation, are god’s chosen people, Israeli Jews act as if they enjoy a divine impunity that allows them to perpetrate genocidal crimes against Palestinians and against other nations in violation of all human norms and beyond all international laws and conventions. Nurturing this Jewish narcissistic belief are the encouragement, unconditional support, and the immunity and protection Israel enjoys from some western states, specifically the USA and UK, who brag about being champions of human rights, beacon of freedom and democracy, and holding the torch of justice for all.

The US had used its Veto power to protect Israel from at least 44 UNSC resolutions. On top of those Israel has violated 300 other resolutions regarding its occupation of Palestine. To make matters worse the US leads other western countries in describing the Israeli genocidal crimes against Palestinians as “self-defense” and every Palestinian defensive and peaceful reaction as terrorist attacks.

Israel is encouraged to continue its ethnic cleansing and massacre of Palestinians. The latest Israeli erasure of Palestinian villages is going on now in Khan El-Ahmar village. The villagers are the Bedouin Jahalin tribe, who became homeless refugees after being forcefully expelled from their original village in the Negev in 1952 by the Israeli army. They rebuilt new homes and a local children school in Khan El-Ahmar under the Jordanian rule. At the present, Israel is in the process of demolishing the whole village in order to gain more land to expand its illegal Maale Adumim colony a short distance away. Palestinians are conducting daily sit-ins to prevent the demolition of the village and to prevent a second Nakba to its inhabitants.

Israeli genocidal crime of Palestinian civilians is still an ongoing process. Israeli Jews consider Palestinians as the descendants of Amalekites; the worst enemy of ancient Israel. Jewish god ordered the Jews to wipe off Amalekites off the earth. This order is still ingrained in the Jewish psyche, who keep reminding their off springs of this order. On the walls of the holocaust memorial in the Hague hangs a plaque with a text in Dutch and Hebrew from Deuteronomy 25: 17-19 stating“Remember what Amalek has done to you … blot out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven. You shall not forget.”

Present Israeli Jews are still in the process of “plotting out the remembrance of Amalek(Palestinians) from under heaven” as can bee seen recently in the Gaza Strip. Israel has turned Gaza Strip into the largest ever concentrated prison camp (worst than Nazi concentration camps) for its two million inhabitants; mostly refugees who were ethnically cleansed from Palestine during the 1948 Nakba. For the last twelve years these Palestinians have been starved into sickness, their water been poisoned, their electricity was cut, their fishing marine space has been extremely limited, their towns, their homes and their fields were severely bombed with the devastating bombs including the illegal white phosphorous bombs in Israel’s wars of aggression in 2008-2009 and again in 2014,  and their women and children are being shot dead daily.

After seventy years passage of UNSC resolution 194 stating that these Palestinian refugees have the legitimate right to return to their towns and homes they were kicked out of, but none of the international legal organization nor any other country helped them implement this resolution, these Palestinian refugees decided to peacefully march back to their towns in what was dubbed “The Great Return March”. This march started on Friday 30th of last March and has been going on every Friday since then; so far, a total of 30 march attempts. Unfortunately, Israeli army snipers stood in their way, and have murdered in cold blood 212 Palestinians including teen agers, women, paramedics and reporters, and had injured a total of 22,000 others causing a lot of limb amputations due to their use of the explosive hollow pointed bullets, poisonous gas and stun grenades. Yet, despite the obvious fact that Israel is the number one rogue state in the world, Nikki (Nimrata) Haley; the American ambassador to the UN, had the audacity to describe this Israeli army killing fields against civilians in Gaza as the most restrained army in the whole world.  “No country in this chamber would act with more restraint than Israel has.” She stated.

Yet, none of the self-proclaimed peace-loving justice-calling world leaders, media outlets, banking systems, investors and corporations, who boycotted Saudi Davos in the Desert initiative as a reprimand to Saudi murder of one person; Jamal Khashoggi, have lifted a finger, uttered a word or boycotted Israel for the latest murder of hundred Palestinians nor for the razing of any Palestinian village. Are the lives of these hundreds of Palestinians, and the lives of hundreds of thousands who were murdered since 1948, not worth one life of a Saudi reporter?

There is no puzzle in this picture. International humanity is dead while hypocrisy is thriving and the ultimate goal and justification is money. The Saudi royal family is a filthy rich oppressive theocratic dictatorship, who had been protected in the past by the British and in the present by the American administration. For such protection the Saudi family has to pay and they pay dearly in different forms as in military weapons deals and economic privileges to foreign investing corporations. Trump expressed this situation openly and eloquently when he described Saudi Arabia as “a milk cow which would be slaughtered when its milk runs out.”

All these political and economic pressure exerted by world leaders, bankers, investors and media outlets are merely more attempts to milk Saudi Arabia as much as possible in more weapons deals and more economic privileges. Saudi Arabia has a lot of milk; money, unlike the Israeli case where the USA is Israel’s milking cow.

What goes for the case of Palestinian victims goes also for the Syrian and Yemeni victims. The world leaders and corporations who are milking Saudi Arabia are the same perpetrators committing, though covertly, war crimes against Syria and Yemen.

When comparing the international reactions to the murder of one person; Khashoggi in this case, with the reactions to the heinous war crimes against millions of innocent people in Palestine, Syria, Yemen or in any other place around the globe for that matter, one cannot help but question the validity of the famous proverb that “justice will always prevail”. Are we cheating ourselves and our children when we assert the fallacy that evil will be defeated and justice will always prevail at the end? Studying the history of Mankind, one discovers that those, who had the military power to assert their rights and their own form of justice even if they contradict the rights and justice of others had always prevailed, and those, who lacked military power had no chance to assert their own rights and had always perished. This proves that the rule of law, even the laws approved on internationally, is irrelevant, and that might is right still prevails in this world.

Dr. Elias Akleh is an Arab American from a Palestinian descent. His family was evicted from Haifa, Palestine, after the 1948 Nakba when the Zionists stole his family’s property. Then the family was evicted again from the West Bank during the 1967 Naksah, after the Zionist, again, occupied the rest of Palestine.

The American scream

Just like when the medieval executioners tortured their prisoners to scream out for "mercy", so today two former aides of US President Donald Trump are put being on the rack to extract a begging response. If they finger the president, then maybe mercy will be shown to the prisoners.

Trump's former lawyer and his campaign manager are facing lengthy prison sentences for financial fraud and political campaign irregularities. Michael Cohen could get five years in jail, while Paul Manafort faces a soul-crushing 80 years behind bars. A de facto death sentence, given his age.

The set-up here is so obvious and pathetic. Both men are being dangled by the feet ahead of their sentencing, with the blatant purpose of forcing them to incriminate Trump, and in that way, Trump's political enemies finally get their long-held objective of impeaching the president.

This is how the "American Dream" really operates. Forget the emblems of supposed American civility, the white-picket fences, apple pie in bourgeois comfort, old glory fluttering down at the courthouse, and all those other imaginary democratic virtues. American politics has more in common with Francis Ford Coppola's classic movie, The Godfather, illustrating how organized crime is intertwined with politicians and lawmakers. Mob practices are more the currency of American politics than dainty civic duties. In reality, it's not the American Dream, it's the American Scream.

The impossibly perfect American Dream is nevertheless so powerfully ingrained and inculcated in the popular psyche by Hollywood and national myth-making propaganda, it is hard to see the brutal reality.

When the American military obliterated Japanese civilians with atomic weapons, or incinerated children in Southeast Asia with napalm, or when it organized death squads to mutilate peasants in Central America, such practices can be easily obscured because of the opium that is the American Dream and its seductive, illusory vanity.

Even when an American president is hideously assassinated in broad daylight by his own security services, the people are not awakened from the impossible "dream". American politics is as dirty and as criminal as it gets. Assassinating foreign leaders, overthrowing governments, subverting and rigging elections, brainwashing the public with lying news media and think tanks, militarizing "allied" societies in the name of "protection". These are some of the realities that define the US capitalist power system, at home and abroad.

One of America's most celebrated presidents John F Kennedy began his term in the White House under sordid conditions. Talk about interference? It is well-documented Kennedy's election was secured by the Chicago-based Mafia, under crime boss Sam Giancana, rigging the ballots in key states to give Kennedy the decisive vote over rival Richard Nixon in 1960.

Admittedly, John F Kennedy seemed to undergo a genuinely personal and political evolution during his brief presidency, when he subsequently desired to normalize Cold War relations with the Soviet Union. His perceived betrayal of the Mafia and the US military-security apparatus probably cost him his life when he was assassinated in Dallas in November 1963, three years into his presidency. It is claimed that the CIA and Mafia worked together to organize the killing involving teams of snipers. The hapless Lee Harvey Oswald, the alleged shooter, was only a patsy, which the "great and good" American media have used as an odious cover-up ever since.

Anyway, let's get back to Trump. It seems obvious that the prosecution of his former aides is all about a vendetta against Trump, to get him out of the White House. The US political establishment, or deep state, has never accepted this "outsider" as the president. His stated preference to normalize relations with Russia is a particular red line. The whole "Russiagate" saga has been concocted in order to delegitimize Trump's election and to have him "taken out" as the figurehead for the deep state. It should not be surprising that Trump and his former friends are inculpated for bank and tax fraud and paying off hookers. That's how the system pretty much works, and those transgressions are only the surface.

Look at how Trump's rival Hillary Clinton was involved in political bribery and vote rigging, as well as soliciting foreign interference from trying to get "Russian dirt" on Trump. Not just Clinton, but the senior law enforcement and intelligence services under the Obama presidency were also involved in this massive subversion of the alleged American democracy. Trump's ex-lawyer Michael Cohen is reportedly "ready to cooperating" with the so-called Russia probe led by former FBI chief Robert Mueller. Mueller is a long-time operator for the deep state with his own baggage of criminal skeletons, such as lying over the Iraqi weapons of mass destruction ruse to wage a genocidal war on that country. His appointment as the chief inquisitor to entrap Trump is therefore apt.

Cohen is said to have "interesting things" to tell the Mueller inquisition concerning Trump and charges of collusion with Russia to get him elected. The only crimes uncovered so far are financial fraud, American-style.

But, we can be sure, that Cohen, a sniveling, greasy attorney, will deliver "information" to hang Trump in order to save his own skin from five years in the clingers. By the way, there are no good guys in this squalid drama of American politics. Trump and his gang are as rotten as the rest of the barrel.

US President Donald Trump's aides face deepening anxiety and uncertainty over ongoing federal investigations related to the 2016 US presidential election. White House staff members experienced a new level of turbulence this week after federal prosecutors secured the conviction of Trump’s former campaign manager and a plea agreement from the president’s longtime attorney.

In interviews with a half-dozen Trump aides and people close to the White House, many described rising concerns about federal inquiries underway, including US Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia probe into alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election. Trump has denied any collusion by his campaign and has long denounced the Mueller probe as a witch hunt.

Days ago, Trump’s former personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, pleaded guilty to campaign finance violations and other charges, saying he made payments to influence the 2016 election at the direction of Trump. Also, a jury in federal court in Alexandria, Virginia found former Trump election campaign chairman Paul Manafort, guilty on eight of 18 charges of filing false tax returns, failing to disclose his offshore bank accounts and bank fraud. Manafort still faces separate charges brought by Mueller in the Russia probe.

Trump has also lashed out at embattled US Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who recused himself from the Russian investigation, which paved the way for Mueller’s appointment. Separately, The Wall Street Journal and Vanity Fair reported that in the latest sign of the potential dangers for Trump and those close to him, David Pecker, CEO of American Media Inc, had been granted immunity by federal prosecutors in a deal in which he has been discussing Trump's role in hush agreements ahead of the 2016 election to women who said they had sexual encounters with the president.

In a tense press briefing with reporters, White House spokesperson Sarah Sanders declined to get into the “back and forth” on the Cohen and Manafort cases and repeatedly said Trump “did nothing wrong”. Another indirect credit to Trump is that the whole debacle he has provoked with the deep state goes to expose the profound decay and corruption in American politics. Just to show how Trump is no better than the rest. The American dream!? It's a nightmare that screams with crimes and corruption. When will the people awake?

What you read and heard was from an article by Finian Cunningham who has written extensively on international affairs for The Mirror, Irish Times and Independent and many other organizations.

https://thoothu2018.blogspot.com/2018/07/10.html?spref=fb&m=1