The Black Alliance for Peace

 

“… Somebody must say to America, America if you have contempt for life if you exploit human beings by seeing them as less than human, if you will treat human beings as a means to an end, you thingafy those human beings. And if you will thingafy persons, you will exploit them economically. And if you will exploit persons economically, you will abuse your military power to protect your economic investments and your economic exploitations.” —Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., “Where Do We Go From Here?” (1967) In the United States, a liberal or a self-identified radical can rationalize supporting a candidate who throws Palestinians under the bus in order to get elected to the U.S. Senate. These same people can remain silent on murderous U.S. economic sanctions. They also can avoid any comment on U.S. imperialist aggression. They can do all of these things and their “progressive” or “radical” credentials would not be questioned. That is why Joe Biden can 1) fill his cabinet with neoliberal war hawks, 2) signal obscene spending on the U.S. military will continue, and 3) tell the rulers they can rest assured knowing he is committed to the imperialist agenda of “Full Spectrum Dominance” that has been the U.S. state’s bipartisan-supported national security policy for the last two decades—and what amounts to “the left” shrugs its shoulders. But the Black Alliance for Peace (BAP) will not be silent and we will not collaborate. When Biden and the right-wing neoliberal Democrats say they will re-assert U.S. leadership of the white, Western imperialist alliance to wage the war against the global South in the name of protecting human rights, we say no to imperialist subterfuge. We will continue to expose both parties’ real agenda of advancing the interests of U.S. and European capital by slinging back into their collective faces the reality of their capitalist crimes and the systematic violations of the human rights of people in the United States. We will not let go unchallenged any U.S. official, including the newly appointed mouthpiece of U.S. anti-people policies (the “U.S. ambassador to the United Nations”), standing in any international forum to twist up their mouths to talk about human rights and democracy. The cruel joke of the United States is concerned for human rights is reflected in its policies on the African continent, which we will be exposing in webinars taking place over the next few days. Today, the International Committee of the National Lawyers Guild and the International Association of Democratic Lawyers have joined BAP’s work on AFRICOM by hosting a webinar on the subject. And on December 4, BAP is co-sponsoring an international webinar on AFRICOM with the Women’s International League on Peace and Freedom (WILPF). We hope you support both events and join and/or support BAP’s U.S. Out of Africa Network and our campaign to shut down AFRICOM.  Samora Machel (1933-1986), leader of the Mozambique Liberation Front (FRELIMO) and the first president of Mozambique, said, “International solidarity is not an act of charity: It is an act of unity between allies fighting on different terrains toward the same objective. The foremost of these objectives are to aid the development of humanity to the highest level possible.” That is the task BAP has taken on. We hope, in your own way, you assume this awesome historical obligation.

 

"A woman’s going to send the bombs”

by El Jones

 

A woman’s going to send the drones
So ready the covers of your Vogues
The food bank lines are now miles long
But a woman’s the one who sends the bombs
Liberal feminism can’t be wrong
When a woman’s the one who sends the bombs.
Can’t get workers PPE
But you go girl Nancy Pelosi
All hail the bipartisan war parties
Now Trump is gone we all agree
George W. Bush has been redeemed
The war criminals are on our team
And there’s a Black woman on my TV screen
And when she bombs I’ll yell yasss Queen
We’ll force your countries to be free
And little Black girls can finally see
Themselves in drones and F-16s
And this is MLK Jrs dream
Brought to you by Wall Street
Brought to you by the elites
We’ll never ever give you peace
Fund military and police
But a woman could be commander in chief
See what can happen when you believe?
This is gender equality
So everybody takes a knee
The resistance heroes hip hip hooray
The FBI and CIA
The generals and NSA
So please enjoy your new airbase
We’ve all forgotten Abu Ghraib
We all forgot Guantanamo Bay
And none of them will see the Hague
The Patriot Act’s so yesterday
Centrist neoliberal’s all the rage
Kids still living in a cage

The war party is here to stay
And let’s lock Julian Assange away.
We can’t let him expose the truth
We’re never bringing home the troops
Obama’s so cool shooting hoops
You’ll all be crushed under the boot
We’re plotting out another coup
Billionaires, we won’t prosecute
We save that for moms of truant youth
Those Timberlands were looking cute
So let the oil companies pollute
Hell put them in the cabinet
Add bankers to make up the set
We’ll regulate the internet
Corporate news is all you’ll get
But a woman’s going to send the jets
Are Yemeni women happy yet?
This moment gives me all the feels
A woman’s making weapons deals
A woman’s making refugees
A woman’s going to rob and steal
Last week we were environmentalists
But now wars for oil are feminist
And history will reminisce
How all the donors benefit
Orange man is out the door
Things can go back to how they were before
Biden voted for the Iraq War
How dare you ask for any more
Your kids still super-predators
And his kid’s on strike number four
But the prison’s just for you and yours
And really the crime bill’s all your fault
This is the time for unity
Bow down to oil and energy
And let’s be friends with GOP
And white suburban families
There’s no more white supremacy

Black woman deliver us the vote
We’ll still be kneeling on your throat
But a woman’s going to send the drones
So volunteer to work those phones
So we can bomb some woman’s home
And probably waterboard her son
They’re back in fashion neo-cons
So four more years of settlements
War parties are in agreement
And let’s hashtag Black excellence
Kamala is Vice President
The ladies join the gentlemen
In sword, famine, wild beast, pestilence
The four-horse persons of the apocalypse
These days we call that feminist
Is this the dream of suffragists?
And I heard her bombs never miss
And don’t forget to call her Ms.
Madame, her honor, she or ma’am
Get ready for those detainment camps
Muster the troops line up the ranks
A woman’s going to send the tanks
And all of us will give her thanks
Especially weapons manufacturers, banks
And thanks to those suburban moms
A woman’s going to send the bombs
I’m glad a woman is so strong
To send our countries all those bombs.

 

New Strategies for the Left on a Global Scale

BY GIORGIO CAFIERO

NOVEMBER 27, 2020

https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/11/27/new-strategies-for-the-left-on-a-global-scale/

 Authored by Andy Heintz, Dissidents of the International Left is an extraordinarily inspirational and illuminating book. The work constitutes a valuable contribution to discourse about the concept of international solidarity at a time when it’s needed more than ever. Based on interviews with dozens of academics, liberation theologians, NGO leaders, feminists, philosophers, and human rights activists from southern Mexico’s mountainous highlands to Syria’s Jazira Region to America’s rural heartland, Dissidents of the International Left offers new ways of thinking about the Left’s strategies for effecting positive change on a global scale.

Although divided into six regions—North America, Latin America, South, and East Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and Northern Africa, and Europe—Dissidents of the International, Left drives home the point that, for example, the “Islamic world” and the “West” are not two distinct worlds. In truth, the Left needs to act on the understanding that there is one global system. “Leftism is primarily a domestic politics,” said Michael Walzer, a prominent American intellectual whom Heintz interviewed. “I wanted an international Left that is alert to the realities of the world and honest in confronting them.”

As humanity copes with the rise of authoritarian leaders, endless wars, systemic racism, environmental degradation, misogyny, religious extremism, and many other challenges, Dissidents of the International Left will continue opening-up critical discussions. Such conversations will ideally lead to leftist movements and individuals across international boundaries finding more humane, inclusive, and realistic solutions to dangerous crises that, if left unaddressed, will only worsen over time.

Heintz’s book offers valuable reminders about the importance of maintaining humility and respect for local perspectives on complicated problems. Too often the Western left is guilty of patronizing people in the Global South by depicting non-westerners in Orientalist and reductionist ways. Doing so only amplifies stereotypes about people in the Middle East, Asia, Africa, and Latin America, which undermines the potential for greater solidarity across the globe.

For example, the Algerian academic Anissa Helie warns against the dangers of NGOs failing to appreciate the importance of deferring to people who

have spent years, if not decades, on the frontlines of their local struggles as opposed to moral crusaders who parachute into a conflict-ridden area of the world to conduct field research before flying home to New York or London two weeks later. All too often, as Helie explains, there are “seemingly ‘well-intentioned’ outside groups” in the human rights space that embrace “strategies that are ultimately detrimental to progressive groups—feminist and otherwise—working locally in other contexts.”

Similarly, another interviewee, Sarah Eltantawi, who is a renowned historian of contemporary Islam, Sharia law, and political Islam, discusses racism shaping conversations within many western left-wing circles about the Egyptian coup of 2013. Recalling the perceived “necessity of consulting ‘non-Egyptian sources’ to attain an objective understanding of why Egyptians opposed the Muslim Brotherhood,” Eltantawi found it “preposterous [how there was a] refusal to understand Egyptians on their own terms at the time… as if Egyptians had a duty to conform to stereotypes about Muslim-majority societies finding Islamism to be the most liberating ideology.”

Ultimately, Heintz has produced an essential book for those of us who believe that the Left needs to find new ways to incorporate experiences from across the globe to deal with modern-day challenges that are transregional in nature. By conducting these 77 interviews, Heintz seeks to help bring us closer to a future with a new international system shaped by greater social justice, equality, and respect for fundamental and universal rights. For those who share Heintz’s desire to help create this future, Dissidents of the International Left is mandatory reading.

 

 

Saudi crown prince was reluctant to back US attack on Iran

Israel's Netanyahu called for strikes on uranium facilities during Neom meeting with 'very nervous' Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi sources say

By 

David Hearst

Published date: 27 November 2020

https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/saudi-arabia-israel-iran-mbs-us-attack-reluctant

 

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman was reluctant to accede to demands from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to agree to an attack on Iran when they met last Sunday in Neom, Saudi sources with knowledge of the meeting told Middle East Eye.

Bin Salman's reluctance was said to be for two reasons. Firstly, he read two recent attacks on Saudi oil targets as warning messages from Iran delivered by proxies.

Secondly, he doubts the US response under President-elect Joe Biden's incoming administration, in the event of a prolonged series of strikes and counter strikes, believing Biden’s the first response to a Gulf crisis would be to deescalate before negotiating a nuclear deal with Tehran.

In last Sunday's tripartite meeting, the outgoing US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo did not commit to an attack on Iran’s uranium processing installations, a Saudi source with knowledge of the meeting told MEE.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, the source said: “In the meeting, Netanyahu was advocating hitting Iran. Pompeo did not commit either way.”

In Riyadh, the threat of a US attack on Iranian uranium enrichment facilities is still very much alive, despite signs that outgoing US President Donald Trump, at last, appears willing to concede that he lost the election.

In recent weeks, two B52 bombers practiced a sortie from a base in North Dakota over the Gulf, involving other US combat and refueling aircraft.

Acting Secretary of Defence Christopher Miller is currently on another trip to the Gulf, visiting US airbases in Bahrain and Qatar, ostensibly to wish US servicemen well over Thanksgiving.

The Saudi source said the latest attacks on sites in the kingdom were clearly proxy messages from Iran.

The two most recent attacks on Saudi oil installations are a strike by a Quds 2 missile launched by Iran-backed Houthis on an oil tank at Aramco’s plant in north Jeddah, and a limpet mine attack on a Greek-owned tanker in the Red Sea port of Shuqaiq.

The missile strike in north Jeddah was the largest scale assault on an Aramco installation since drone strikes hit Abqaiq and Khurais, halving the kingdom’s oil production for a few months in 2019.

Riyadh officially denied that last Sunday's meeting took place after details were first reported by Israel's Haaretz newspaper.

"No such meeting occurred," Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud tweeted.

A US State Department statement about Pompeo's meeting with the crown prince in Neom did not mention Netanyahu.

“They discussed the need for Gulf unity to counter Iran’s aggressive behavior in the region and the need to achieve a political solution to the conflict in Yemen,” it said.

Netanyahu's office has not commented on the meeting but Israeli Minister of Defence Benny Gantz said: “The leaking of the secret flight of the prime minister to Saudi Arabia is an irresponsible step.”

Netanyahu's visit, on which he was accompanied by Mossad chief Yossi Cohen, marked the first known high-level meeting between an Israeli and a Saudi leader, though the two are reported to have met privately in the past.

Messages from Tehran

The Iranian “messages” to Riyadh conveyed by the attacks on oil facilities are part and parcel of a broader communications offensive by Iran.

Last week, MEE reported that Iran had dispatched one of its top generals to Baghdad to order allied Iraqi factions to cease all attacks until Biden is in the White House.

Brigadier-General Esmail Qaani was explicit in his instructions to paramilitary leaders on Wednesday.

“Qaani made it clear that Trump wants to drag the region into an open war before leaving, to take revenge on his opponents over losing the election, and it is not in our interest to give him any justification to start such a war,” a senior commander of a Shia armed faction, who was among those briefed about what was said at the meeting, told MEE.

According to MEE's sources, Iran believes an attack order by Trump is still an imminent threat.

“They are telling Saudi that you will pay the price for anything that happens to us. MBS knows that if Trump attacks the Iranians, Saudi will not get US protection from Biden,” a source said.

“He is now reluctant for such a thing to happen under Trump. That was clear in the meeting.”

The sources, who have direct knowledge of the events in the Saudi royal court, described the crown prince as “anxious and very nervous”.

“MBS is living his worst days since he became crown prince. His main concern is Biden. He feels this administration will be hostile to him and with the world not forgetting all that he has done, the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, the imprisonment and mistreatment of women activists, he really does not know what to do,” a second source said.

MBS’s reluctance to normalize

Trump, his son-in-law Jared Kushner, and Pompeo have each pressurized the crown prince, the kingdom's de facto ruler, to normalize relations with Israel and this effort have apparently continued since the US election.

At first, Pompeo tried to strong-arm bin Salman into a public meeting with Netanyahu. In the end, a compromise was reached. The meeting in Neom would be secret but it would be agreed beforehand that Netanyahu could leak it.

The Neom meeting was duly leaked to the Israeli media and the Israeli censor, the official body which forbids the publication of reports of contacts with countries with whom Israel has no diplomatic relations remained silent.

The crown prince’s reluctance to normalize relations with Israel does not stem from a sympathy with the Palestinian cause.

“He does not care about the Palestinians. He loathes them. Not one single cell in his body has any concern for their cause,” the source said.

Bin Salman knows, though, that if he pushes for normalization now, this would have to happen under the name of his father King Salman.

“Such a step has to have the stamp of approval of his father. And in whatever stage of consciousness and mental alertness, the king is, he is implacably opposed to this,” the source said, referring to the king’s reported dementia.

“In these circumstances, normalization will not be easily sold to the Saudi people.”

‘Please Trump'

Pompeo was blunt with bin Salman. The outgoing secretary of state told the Saudi prince that under a hostile Biden administration, he had only two protectors left in the US.

The first was the pro-Israel lobby and the second was the Republican caucus in the Senate.

Pompeo told the crown prince he has to please Trump if he wants to continue benefiting from protection from the new administration.

Bin Salman was described as anxious and concerned about Biden.

Biden has repeatedly promised to hold Saudi Arabia accountable for human rights violations and has pledged to limit weapons sales and treat the kingdom as a “pariah”. He has said he believes bin Salman ordered Khashoggi's murder in 2018.

He has also promised what would amount to a 180-degree turn of policy on Iran, spurning the policy of maximum pressure through sanctions and turning once more to the negotiating table.

A lot of the enemies the crown prince has created on his rise to power will see the Biden administration as their ally.

This will include some of the top prince's bin Salman has had arrested and detained - his elder cousin, the former crown prince Mohammed bin Nayef, and his uncle Prince Ahmed bin Abdulaziz, who has publicly opposed MBS.

Son who needs his father

The crown prince’s awareness of his own vulnerability has led him to depend on his father as a figurehead even more than in the past.

During the virtual G20 meeting in Riyadh, King Salman was pushed to the front, with MBS absent from the official photograph, unlike at previous meetings of the G20 where he represented the kingdom.

King Salman has also been used to renew strained ties with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. He did this is in a telephone call to Erdogan, suggesting that the foreign ministers of both countries should meet to resolve the issue of the kingdom's unofficial boycotting of Turkish goods.

Saudi relations with Turkey have been under intense strain for two years since Erdogan refused to stop calling for an international inquiry into the murder of Khashoggi inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.

The olive branch being offered now by Riyadh is chiefly down to the fact that when Biden opens up to Iran, both Saudi Arabia, and Turkey will need each other. 

The war in Yemen is another of the crown prince’s major concerns.

“The economy is hemorrhaging on a much bigger scale than officially announced to pay for the cost of the Saudi military operation in Yemen. His main ally MBZ [Mohammed bin Zayed, crown prince of Abu Dhabi] has got what he wanted [control of the south] and MBS is left with the real war with the Houthis,” a source said.

Bin Salman, who also occupies the role of defense minister, is short of troops on the ground and has turned to Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. But Sisi is unwilling to oblige.

Egypt feels it is paying the price for the Emiratis’ breakthrough diplomatic recognition of Israel. According to Cairo, recognition has established a pattern of trade deals in which Israel has become the Mediterranean gateway to the Gulf, bypassing Egypt and making the Suez Canal redundant.

These deals include an oil pipeline, a high-speed railway, and now plans by Google to lay a fiber optic cable linking Saudi Arabia and Israel, which will connect Europe to India.

“The Egyptians are starting to feel the heat about it,” said a source.

“He is very concerned about the future," the source said of the Saudi crown prince. "The meeting happened because he is willing to pay the price, to please Israel and keep Trump and the Republicans onside.

“Although he hoped by now to be king, he now realizes he needs his father more than ever before.”

 

RCEP, CPTPP and the Asian Century

By Jorge Heine Source: Global Times Published: 2020/11/26 

It is often said that politics these days is all about giving signals. If that is the case, China has recently given two potent signals that bear on the future of world trade and globalization. 

On November 15, it signed the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) with 14 countries after eight years of talks. Encompassing the population of 2.2 billion people and a GDP of 29 percent of the world economy, RCEP can well be considered the largest such trade deal that has ever been signed. Also, at the virtual APEC summit in Kuala Lumpur, President Xi Jinping announced China's interest in joining the Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), often referred to as the TPP11, which includes six members of the RCEP, plus a number of countries in the Americas. 

President Trump, of course, famously ditched the TPP in January of 2017, in one of the first acts of his administration. More recently, he also snubbed both the virtual ASEAN meetings (whose 10 members are part of the RCEP) and East Asia Summits to which he had been invited. The signals could not be clearer: While China presses ahead with Asia's regional integration, the US is otherwise engaged. 

The very fact that the three economic heavyweights of East Asia (China, Japan, and South Korea) have joined such an economic group despite their ongoing differences is historical. The same goes for having Australia (and New Zealand) within the RCEP. Asia and Australasia are moving ahead with regional economic integration, while the North Atlantic countries continue to wallow in protectionism and arcane disputes about how to finalize Brexit. The latter has consumed by now four years of the European Union and the United Kingdom's attention, and shows no sign of coming to an end soon.

From a broader perspective, the fact that India at the last moment decided to drop out of the RCEP is also revealing. For the past three years, we have been peddled the story that the very notion of the Asia-Pacific (on which entities like APEC were founded, as the Cold War ended) was obsolete, and should be replaced by that of the Indo-Pacific. The latter was in many ways the maritime response to China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). All sorts of figures in terms of cargo crossing the Indian Ocean and reaching the Pacific was bandied about as part of this sales job. The jewel in the crown of all this was the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (QSD, also known as the QUAD), which includes the US, Japan, India, and Australia, whose foreign ministers met on October 6 in Tokyo with much fanfare. Hailed by some as the equivalent of an "Asian NATO" in the making, the QUAD has been built up as a major shift in the region's architecture. By definition, India is at the very center of this construct and must play a key role in it. There were high expectations that India would take up this role with great brio and impetus.

Yet, you can't really have at the center of any such construct a country that marginalizes itself from the broader Asian regional integration project. This confirms, de facto, the continuing validity of the notion of the Asia-Pacific as the region where the action is, and the reality that South Asia is not yet ready to join it ( much as India refused to join APEC in 1990, when invited to do so; neither is India part of the CPTPP). Yes, there is something to the idea of the Indo-Pacific, but it will be a long time before it comes into being as a geopolitical and geoeconomic entity. Right now, it is merely wishful thinking.

We are thus witnessing the return, in full regalia, of the Asia Pacific to the center of world affairs. If China were to join the TPP11, and we could look at the possibility of a merger between the RCEP and the TPP11, that would be a real game-changer. It would certainly move us further along to what Kishore Mahbubani has referred to as the Asian Century.

As President-elect Joe Biden assembles his foreign policy and national security team, there is much talk of reviving alliances and multilateralism. There is little doubt that the single most important step he could take in that regard after taking office would be to join the CPTPP, whose earlier version as TPP the US spent close to a decade negotiating and promoting. Yet, it tells you much about the climate in today's Washington, that most observers consider that only a far-fetched possibility. 

The action in today's world is in the Asia-Pacific, but on the shores of the Potomac the eyes are firmly fixated on things such as the spat between France and Germany on the meaning of European "strategic autonomy." Good luck with that!

The author is a professor at the Pardee School of Global Studies, Boston University, a Wilson Center global fellow and a non-resident senior research fellow at the Center for China and Globalization (CCG) in Beijing. opinion@globaltimes.com.cn

 

Migración: la visión punitiva de AMLO frente a Biden

Salvador Camarena

 25/11/2020

https://www.elfinanciero.com.mx/opinion/salvador-camarena/migracion-la-vision-punitiva-de-amlo-frente-a-biden

La derrota de Trump abre el escenario para que López Obrador redefina su política migratoria. La cuestión es que ya vimos que lo que esta administración decía hace un par de años que quería, no lo supo defender; y que lo que decía que no quería, lo abrazó de tal forma que ahora hace dudar sobre cuál es el verdadero talante de este gobierno con respecto al trato a los migrantes que cruzan México.

Para entender mejor el dilema que enfrentará el presidente de la República con el cambio de gobierno allende el Bravo, cae como anillo al dedo, ja, la publicación de 'Un paso adelante, tres atrás. La política migratoria en tiempo de AMLO y Trump'. Se trata de un ensayo de Tonatiuh Guillén López, efímero comisionado nacional de migración del actual gobierno, y que forma parte del oportuno Balance temprano, coordinado por Ricardo Becerra y José Woldenberg (editorial Grano de Sal, 2020).

En su participación en ese libro, Guillén hace en efecto un balance de los factores que “provocaron la radical regresión de la política migratoria de un gobierno que nominalmente la conduciría hacia una etapa superior y civilizada, guiada por principios éticos y por el respeto a los derechos fundamentales de las personas. Lejos estamos hoy de esa expectativa, lamentablemente”.

AMLO propuso como candidato y presidente electo, nos recuerda Guillén, un enfoque de derechos humanos y de inversión en las zonas deprimidas de México y Centroamérica para que la migración fuera optativa, no forzada por la pobreza.

Pero, recuerda Guillén, “lo que nació como iniciativa de reforma vanguardista rápidamente se debilitó y el gobierno retornó al modelo duramente criticado del pasado, no solamente para repetirlo, sino para impulsar su versión más radical, agresiva y distante del sentido humanitario nominalmente defendido”. El diagnóstico del experto en migración no deja lugar a dudas sobre el resultado: “No hay peor periodo de exclusión e intolerancia que el actual”.

Hace precisamente dos años estaba por iniciar esa regresión cuando, luego de negociaciones durante la transición a cargo de Marcelo Ebrard, México cedió ante Washington y aceptó los Protocolos de Protección de Migrantes (PPM): una simulación de medidas 'unilaterales' anunciadas por el gobierno de Trump que la administración AMLO pactó en privado para en público decir que se aprestaban a ofrecer ayuda 'humanitaria' para los migrantes expulsados por EU, que, según cálculos de Guillén, ascendían hasta julio de este año a 70 mil personas.

La aceptación de México de convertirse en patio trasero de Trump para que en nuestro territorio los expulsados de Estados Unidos esperaran su trámite migratorio no fue lo único preocupante que pactaron Ebrard-AMLO.

Para Guillén resulta igualmente grave que en los hechos el Inami cedió sus funciones a la Guardia Nacional, que no es otra cosa que cederlos al Ejército, “que por primera vez fue insertado de manera masiva y directa en el control de los flujos migratorios que transitan por México”.

El autor se llega incluso a preguntar si se investiga o se tolera a las mafias de tráfico de personas: “no hubo aparato de seguridad federal o estatal que dedicara su labor a la desintegración de las organizaciones de traficantes. Posiblemente lo que sucedía era exactamente lo contrario”.

En concreto, Ebrard y López Obrador aceptaron que México y su Guardia Nacional fueran el muro de Trump en las fronteras sur y norte: “la política exterior (nada mejor) se convirtió en política interior (tampoco mejor)”.

Con la llegada de Biden habrá espacio para negociar; lo que no hay es claridad de qué política migratoria quiere AMLO.

 

 

Joe Biden’s Interventionist Secretary of State Pick

Anthony Blinken pushed for intervention in Iraq, Syria, Libya, and YemenDave DeCamp Posted on November 23, 2020

https://news.antiwar.com/2020/11/23/joe-bidens-interventionist-secretary-of-state-pick/

On Monday, Joe Biden announced he will nominate his long-time advisor Anthony Blinken to be the secretary of state for the incoming administration. Blinken has a long history of advocating for intervention in places like Iraq, Syria, Libya, and Yemen.

Blinken was Biden’s top aide in 2002 when Biden was leading the charge in the Senate to give George W. Bush his invasion of Iraq. In 2006, Biden penned an Op-ed for The New York Times that called for dividing Iraq into three separate autonomous zones with a central government in Baghdad later referred to as a “soft partition.” According to the Times, Blinken helped craft Biden’s proposal.

Blinken served various posts in the Obama administration. First, as then-Vice President Joe Biden’s national security advisor from 2009 to 2013, as the deputy national security advisor from 2013 to 2015, and as the deputy secretary of state from 2015 to 2017.

Seen as a loyal Biden aide, Blinken surprised some in the White House when he broke with Biden and supported military intervention in Libya in 2011, according to The Washington Post. Blinken also called for US action in Syria after Barack Obama was reelected in 2012. Sources told the Post in 2013 that Blinken “was less enthusiastic than Biden” about Obama seeking Congressional approval for a military strike on Syria.

In 2019, Blinken co-authored an Op-ed in Washington Post with neoconservative Robert Kagan. The piece argued against President Trump’s “America First” foreign policy and said the US did “too little” in Syria. “Without bringing appropriate power to bear [in Syria], no peace could be negotiated, much less imposed,” the article reads.

In 2015, Blinken facilitated an increase in weapons sales and intelligence sharing for the Saudi-led coalition after it intervened in Yemen to fight the Houthis. “We have expedited weapons deliveries, we have increased our intelligence sharing, and we have established a joint coordination planning cell in the Saudi operation center,” Blinken said in April 2015.

In 2018, Blinken joined over two dozen former Obama administration officials and signed a letter calling for an end to US support for the war in Yemen. But in 2019, Blinken’s name was noticeably absent from a similar letter that included Obama-era officials like Susan Rice, Samantha Power, and Ben Rhodes.

One area where a Biden administration could be less hawkish than a Trump administration is Iran. Blinken has been critical of President Trump’s decision to withdraw from the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). Speaking at an event earlier this year, Blinken said Biden would return to the JCPOA. “[Biden] would seek to build on the nuclear deal to make it longer and stronger if Iran returns to strict compliance,” he said.

While Blinken is a proponent of the JCPOA, it’s worth noting that Iran hawks seem happy with Biden’s choice. Mark Dubowitz, the head of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a think tank that regularly calls for regime change in Tehran, celebrated Blinken’s nomination. Dubowitz wrote on Twitter that Blinken and Michele Flournoy, a front runner to be Biden’s secretary of defense, would make “a superb national security team. The country will be very fortunate to have them in public service.”

Another force that will clash with Biden and Blinken’s stated goal to return back to the JCPOA is Israel, a country Blinken is a staunch supporter of. The Obama administration signed a deal in 2016 that gives Israel $38 billion in military aid over the course of a decade, until 2027.

Shortly after Biden was announced the winner of the presidential election, Israeli sources said they were already planning to reach out to Biden about a new long-term military aid package. With some progressives in Congress calling for the US to leverage military aid to Israel over its abuses of Palestinians, Blinken made it clear that a Biden administration’s support for Israel would be unconditional.

“He [Biden] would not tie military assistance to Israel to any political decisions that it makes. Period. Full stop. He said it; he’s committed to it. And that would be the policy of the Biden administration,” Blinken said in May.

 

Iran’s allies on high alert in Trump’s final weeks in office

By QASSIM ABDUL-ZAHRA and SAMYA KULLAB

November 20, 2020

https://apnews.com/article/joe-biden-donald-trump-iran-middle-east-baghdad-7532d20c40b9d1240c77f26f621d2902

BAGHDAD (AP) — Iran has instructed allies across the Middle East to be on high alert and avoid provoking tensions with the U.S. that could give an outgoing Trump administration cause to launch attacks in the U.S. president’s final weeks in office, Iraqi officials have said.

The request — delivered by a senior Iranian general to allies in Baghdad this week — reflects the growing regional anxiety over President Donald Trump’s unpredictable behavior and the uncertainty in the chaotic transition period until President-elect Joe Biden takes over in two months.

Iran’s allies have collectively welcomed Trump’s election defeat. Under his presidency, tensions with Iran escalated, reaching fever pitch at the beginning of the year with the U.S. airstrike that killed Iran’s top general, Qassim Soleimani, at the Baghdad airport. Iran launched a ballistic missile attack in response to the fatal drone strike, targeting U.S. soldiers in Iraq and wounding dozens.

Trump also unilaterally withdrew America in 2018 from Iran’s nuclear deal with world powers, meant to prevent it from developing nuclear weapons, and re-imposed punishing sanctions on Iran, crippling its economy.

Iran has since abandoned all limits on its uranium enrichment program, even as the deal’s other international partners have tried unsuccessfully to salvage it. The incoming Biden administration has stated plans to rejoin or renegotiate the 2015 nuclear accord.

But there is growing concern over what Trump, who is refusing to concede the election, might do in the last days of his presidency — including a potential strike on America’s enemies abroad. On Thursday, an adviser to Iran’s supreme leader warned in an interview with The Associated Press that any American attack on Iran could set off a “full-fledged war” in the region.

“We don’t welcome war. We are not after starting a war,” said Hossein Dehghan, who served in Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard before becoming a defense minister under President Hassan Rouhani.

The concern does not appear to be rooted in anything concrete — Trump has, in fact, ordered a drawdown in U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan to be completed by mid-January — but rather in general nervousness about the unpredictability of Trump’s actions. His firing of Defense Secretary Mark Esper two days after the election triggered a flurry of speculation about whether it was related to a broader plan to strike abroad.

Iraq, where the U.S.-Iran rivalry has chiefly played out, is seen as a potential arena. Frequent attacks against the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad in recent months led a frustrated Trump administration to threaten to close the mission, a move that sparked a diplomatic crisis and diplomatic back-channel messaging that led to an informal truce a few weeks ahead of the U.S. election.

With two months to go until a Biden administration takes over, Iranian Gen. Esmail Ghaani, head of the Guard’s expeditionary Quds Force, delivered Tehran’s request during a meeting with Iranian-backed Iraqi militia factions and Shiite politicians in Baghdad this week, according to two senior Iraqi Shiite politicians who attended the meetings in Baghdad.

The message: Stand down to avoid giving Trump the opportunity to initiate a fresh tit-for-tat round of violence.

And to the Iraqi Shiite paramilitaries: Be calm and cease attacks for now against the American presence in Iraq.

However, if there was a U.S. aggression by the Trump administration, Iran’s response would “be in line with the type of strike,” one of the Iraqi politicians cited Ghaani as saying.

An Iraqi government official also confirmed Ghaani’s meetings with Iranian-backed factions in Iraq this week. All Iraqi officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the private meetings.

Meanwhile, in Lebanon, the leader of the Iran-backed militant Hezbollah group, Hasan Nasrallah, warned followers and allies to be vigilant during Trump’s remaining weeks in office.

“All of us ... should be on high alert in these next two months so that it passes peacefully,” Nasrallah said in televised remarks earlier this month even as he urged followers to “be prepared to face any danger, aggression or harm” and to respond in kind “if the US or Israel’s follies go that far.”

But only hours after Ghaani delivered Iran’s message in Baghdad — and while he was still in Iraq — a barrage of Katyusha rockets were fired at the Iraqi capital’s heavily fortified Green Zone, landing a few hundred meters (yards) from the U.S. Embassy. A few of the rockets that landed just outside the Green Zone killed a child and wounded five civilians.

The attack — contrary to instructions to avoid escalation — could indicate potential disagreement within militia ranks or a deliberate plan by the factions to offer mixed messages and keep their intentions ambiguous.

A little-known militia group, Ashab al-Kahf, believed to have links with the powerful Kataib Hezbollah, claimed responsibility for the rocket attack. For its part, Kataib Hezbollah denied it had carried out the barrage, and claimed the truce initiated in October was still in place.

That claim was countered by Qais al-Khazali, the head of the powerful Iran-aligned Asaib Ahl al-Haq militia group, who said in a televised interview on Thursday that the truce had ended.