In my last post but one, Donald Trump is the empire unmasked, I quoted Caitlin Johnstone as per the above image caption. In the post which followed it, What is to be done?, I offered Chris Hedges’ slightly more detailed elaboration – culminating in the truth that “it is impossible to vote against Goldman Sachs, the fossil fuel industry or Raytheon, whichever party is in office”  ¹ – of the same point. In that second post I also repeated Rosa Luxemburg’s formulation, a little over a century ago, that humanity faced a binary choice of socialism or barbarism. ²

Both themes are echoed in this response, by Palestinian academic and activist Mazin Qumsiyeh, to the reinauguration of America’s 45th president as its 47th. It’s short enough to quote in full before I turn to a second aspect of the empire of chaos, its scarcely believable – were it not so brazenly self-documented – cynicism over the Ukraine. But first, over to Professor Qumsiyeh, ³
the title for his stirring words a variant on Rosa’s framing of humanity’s dilemma.

The choice is ours

We in the global South were never in doubt that imperialism is deep state and the only difference between Genocide Joe and lunatic Trump is style. 

Both Netanyahu and Trump have visions of building empires and discarding the remnants of international law and the UN. Will they succeed to lead us to a World War or will we have peace?

Trump immediately acted with executive orders to dismantle the US’s connection to the world with a triumphalist inaugural speech full of classic colonialist language of manifest destiny, frontiers, pioneers and so on. But this is only more open empire building that was happening under his predecessors. His fascist billionnaire supporters are pardoned or even give Nazi Salute (like Elon Musk) while common people (including Jews) who speak for Palestinian human rights are dubbed “anti-semitic” by Zionist groups like the ADL.

The US is completing its second largest so-called “embassy” (in Beirut, the first in Baghdad). Each accommodates tens of thousands of personnel and the world is bullied to submission. The neoconservative Zionist plan of toppling seven countries in the Arab world ⁴ has materialized ⁵ albeit was delayed a bit because of the resistance. Trump is only verbally more crude as than other “presidents” so he insulted people around the world from Alaskan natives to the Dutch (over Greenland) to Panamanians (wants to take Panama Canal) etc. Even his nearest neighbors (Canada and Mexico) and closest allies in Europe all are in his crosshairs.

The world all looks at this stronger push to expand the big genocidal empire (USA) and the small genocidal empire (Israel) with trepidations. But the reaction has been an expansion of the BRICS group of nations and the line up for a global war is becoming clearer. We in the global South were never in doubt that imperialism is deep state and that the only difference between Genocide Joe and lunatic Trump is style of bluster of character. But since the 1962 assassination ⁶ of John Kennedy, the transfer power in the USA was from one Zionist puppet to another Zionist puppet. ⁷ The US system of federal elections has slowly and methodically been consumed by moneyed interests of the billionaires. The democrats and republicans become two sides of the same coin which is a Public Relations campaign to give the illusion of democracy while dragging the world to the abyss in service of moneys interests.

Different faces but the essence is the same: making the rich richer and the poor poorer and pardoning criminals wearing different masks. Money flows whether from Edelson and Musk to republicans or Saban, Soros and Streyer to democrats. In all cases indigenous people and people of color are sacrificed on the altar the new Golden calves (and the chief being the Zionist sacred cow).

Here in the occupied Palestinian territories, pogroms by Jewish colonial settlers and soldiers accelerated after the “ceasefire” agreements in Lebanon and the Gaza Strip.  The apartheid regime only intensified: lockdown of the cantons/bantustans that we are restricted in. Home demolitions and confiscation of more Palestinian lands, and increase in Jewish colonial settler buildings (squatters on our land).

Torching vehicles and homes is now almost a daily occurrence supported by the fascist Netanyahu government (a government of settlers). Without going into a detailed analysis, the trends are clear and could lead to catastrophic outcomes (global war combined with climate change). To reverse this direction requires a global uprising, a global unity of all affected people. What the global imperialist elites want us to think is that our interests and causes are separate or even contradictory. But the struggles of immigrants in the US, of Alaskans, of Californians, of Panamanians, of Syrians, of Palestinians of hundreds of other people are all one struggle against those elites profiting from their hegemony whether they are called Biden, Trump, Modi, or Neneyahu.

By realizing the unity of our struggle can we defeat the greed that causes millions misery and that leads us to mass extinction. For all with eyes to see and brains to examine, the data is now available and the choice is clear. We either allow them to destroy humanity and the environment or we reclaim our humanity and our earth. The choice is ours.

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Did I mention the Ukraine? And Washington’s “scarcely believable” cynicism? As I and others say over and over, by its own admission the US deep state alluded to by Professor Qumsiyeh never believed Ukraine could defeat Russia. That was not the point. As noted in my already cited last post but one …

Weakening Russia by provoking then exhausting her in the Ukraine – the needless suffering of either country of zero concern to the hegemon other than as spin for a credulous West – was a goal set out with unabashed candour in 2019, when the Pentagon commissioned the Rand Corp. (one of the many private think-tanks to which ostensibly public policy is outsourced) to explore options for Extending Russia.  See my post, six weeks prior to the Russian SMO of February 24, 2022, Kazakhstan: why is the Steppe on fire? 

Then there’s Leon Panetta, Obama’s Secretary of Defense and former CIA director, who told Bloomberg TV the US was in a proxy war with Russia in Ukraine, “whether we say so or not” – before adding that, “the way you get leverage is by, frankly, going in and killing Russians” …

… and Senator Lindsey Graham. Having already blasted Congress parsimony by assuring it that every dollar spent on that proxy war was excellent value since Russia was – he said – bleeding out while not a single US soldier had died, he more recently let another cat out of the bag:

This war is about money … the richest country in all of Europe for rare earth minerals is Ukraine. Two to seven trillion dollars’ worth of  rare earth minerals, very relevant to the 21st century. Ukraine’s ready to do a deal with us, not the Russians. So it’s in our interest to make sure Russia doesn’t take over the place …

Donald Trump is going to do a deal to get our money back, to enrich ourselves with rare earth minerals. A good deal for Ukraine and us. And he’s going to bring peace.

Since when, two days before the 45th Oval Office occupant became the 47th, there was that  Time Magazine article. When the devil shows you his face, the saying goes, believe him.

Over to Kit Klarenberg:

It’s Official: US Abandoning Ukraine

January 21st, 2025

On January 19th, TIME magazine published an astonishing article, amply confirming what dissident, anti-war academics, activists, journalists and researchers have argued for a decade. The US always intended to abandon Ukraine after setting up the country for proxy war with Russia, and never had any desire or intention to assist Kiev in defeating Moscow in the conflict, let alone achieving its maximalist aims of regaining Crimea and restoring the country’s 1991 borders. To have a major mainstream outlet finally corroborate this indubitable reality is a seismic development.

The TIME article’s brief first paragraph alone is rife with explosive revelations. It notes when the proxy war erupted in February 2022, then-President Joe Biden “set three objectives for the US response” – and “Ukraine’s victory was never among them.” Moreover, the phrase oft-repeated by White House apparatchiks, that Washington would support Kiev “for as long as it takes”, was never meant to be taken literally. Instead, it was just “intentionally vague” newspeak, with no implied timeframe or even desired outcome in mind.

Eric Green, a member of Biden’s National Security Council who oversaw Russia policy, states the US “deliberately…made no promise” to President Volodymyr Zelensky to “recover all of the land Russia had occupied” since the conflict’s inception, “and certainly not” Crimea or the breakaway Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics. He said the White House believed “doing so was beyond Ukraine’s ability, even with robust help from the West.” It was well-understood such efforts were “not going to be a success story ultimately” for Kiev, if tried.

In other words, hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians have been rubbed out – while as recently as last month Washington was urging Kiev to lower the conscription age and release another hundred thousand hopelessly inexperienced young men into the meatgrinders of the Russian front – in a proxy war the US deep state knew from the get-go could not be won.

Read Kit’s article in full …

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1. See, Let’s stop pretending America is a functioning democracy.
2. For those wanting to know more of the magnificent spirit that was Rosa Luxemburg, an aesthetically sparkling introduction is Kate Evans’ biography, in monochrome graphics, linked from my short post on Red Rosa.
3. Mazin Qumsiyeh’s home page offers this:

   Professor Mazin Qumsiyeh previously served on the faculties of the University of Tennessee, Duke, and Yale Universities. He and his wife returned to Palestine in 2008 starting a number of institutions and projects such as a clinical genetics laboratory that serves cancer and other patients. In 2014, they founded (initial personal donation of $250,000) and run (as full time volunteers) the Palestine Institute for Biodiversity and Sustainability (PIBS) at Bethlehem University. Qumsiyeh published over 160 scientific papers, over 30 book chapters, and several books on topics ranging from cultural heritage to human rights to biodiversity conservation to cancer. Currently leading the effort to produce the new National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan for Palestine. He serves on the board of a number of Palestinian youth and service organizations and oversees many projects related to sustainability of human and natural communities. His many published books include “Bats of Egypt”, “Mammals of the Holy Land”, “Sharing the Land of Canaan: Human rights and the Israeli/Palestinian Struggle” and “Popular Resistance in Palestine: A History of Hope and Empowerment”. He also published hundreds of articles and letters to the editor and has an activism book published electronically. He gave hundreds of talks in 45 countries around the world. He especially believes in youth empowerment towards social and environmental causes. The programs he & his wife created impacted thousands. He also serves on the board of a number of Palestinian youth and service organizations. PIBS-BU has become an oasis for visitors to Palestine from around the world. He was selected in March 2008 to be honored among “the writers who have enriched our pages with their creative writings and enlightened us with their progressive thinking” by Arab World Books For his service, community and non-violent resistance he received many awards including American Arab Anti-discrimination Committee (ADC) Alex Odeh award, the American Friends Service Committee AFSC Connecticut chapter 2004 award, the 2011 Social Courage Award from the Peace and Justice Studies Association at the Joint Conference of PJSA and the Gandhi King Conference in October, 2011 at the Christian Brothers University in Memphis, Tennessee and in 2021 the Paul K. Feyerabend Foundation and Takreem awards. For these same actions, Qumsiyeh was harassed and arrested. He and his wife and dozens of other volunteers and staff at PIBS continue to have “Joyful participation in the sorrows of this world” and make a real difference for sustainability of nature and human communities

4. Professor Qumsiyeh refers here to the bombshell revelation, by US Brigadier General (retired) Wesley Clark, that on the eve of the illegal invasion of Iraq, seven Middle East states were already earmarked for regime change
5. Professor Qumsiyeh loses me here. The most important of the seven targeted states, Iran, has been weakened by the fall of Syria but remains a formidable obstacle to the empire.
6. JFK’s deep state execution – a few weeks after my 11th birthday, so I’m one of the zillions to know exactly where I was and what I was doing when the news broke – was in 1963, not 1962, but what’s a year between friends?
7. While this paragraph as a whole is witheringly accurate, talk of US presidents as Zionist puppets could  be read as a belief that Israel rules the USA. Any ambiguity resides in the fact that while most Western leaders of the past century, including outright antisemites like Churchill, have been Zionist, the z-word is so widely misused as to make it hard to say whether the professor is of that view. If he is then I respectfully disagree for reasons set out in my posts on US neocons & Israel’s far Right – Part 3 in particular.