Delegates from around the world are gathered in Dubai preparing for the opening of the 28th annual Conference Of the Parties (COP28), to be held from Nov. 30 to Dec. 12. The leadership is in the hands of Sultan Ahmed Al-Jaber, the head of United Arab Emirates’ state-owned oil company, Adnoc. 

Al-Jaber’s rise to leadership is a handover of power to the fossil fuel industry in the global effort to fight climate change. Now, leaked documents reveal that Al-Jaber’s team planned to use COP28 to obtain oil and gas deals in meetings with at least 27 countries.

Al-Jaber’s reputation had to be transformed in order to gain support to take over the presidency. The process was carried out by the largest public relations firms in the world – all of them PR mercenaries with a boatload of resources at their disposal. And they are all U.S. corporations. 

According to a June 2023 article in Politico, “During the past decade, the UAE has spent more than $1 million on direct climate-focused advocacy and paid millions more to advisory firms and think tanks helping to polish its green credentials…”

Activists called Al-Jaber’s presidency of COP28 “asking arms dealers to lead peace talks.” However, initially, the White House seemed okay with the choice. 

Last January, John Kerry, Biden’s Presidential Envoy for Climate, signaled that the U.S. was comfortable with an oil company executive being pushed for the job when he said, “I think that Dr. Sultan Al-Jaber is a terrific choice because he is the head of the company.” That is not likely the level of comfort now, but it isn’t just this new scandal that may cause the U.S. to sour on Al-Jaber. 

A careful look at the agenda that Al-Jaber will push reveals intentions for a crafty strategic shift in favor of energy profits. Until now, the push at the series of international conferences has been to “phase out” fossil fuels. Part of his plan is to shift that language to “limit emissions from the production of fossil fuels” during the transition to renewables. This doesn’t include emissions from the use of fossil fuels – only the production at refineries. 

Limiting emissions means using carbon capture technology. Energy companies favor carbon capture not only because it will be profitable but also because they can make the claim that fossil fuels can be exploited with lower emissions during the transition to other forms of energy. Scientists and engineers know that to scale it up enough to be effective is impossible.

Fossil fuel subsidies

Al-Jaber’s role is full of contradictions. He plays up the idea that he and his team (he has appointed dozens of staff from the oil company to positions in the leadership of COP28) are in the vanguard of clean energy. He pledges to raise $20 billion for renewable energy for the Global South. But the UAE also plans to spend $100 billion to boost its oil production from 4 billion to 7.5 billion barrels per year.

There is also no intention to enter any opposition to fossil fuel subsidies as there has been in all previous COP gatherings. The U.S. hands over up to $50 billion per year to oil companies. Globally, energy giants raked in $4 trillion in 2022.

Presumably, all of this would be okay with the energy companies and the banks that finance fossil fuel extraction, as well as with the White House. But another part of Al-Jaber’s agenda is more likely to run afoul of powerful U.S. interests.

U.S. delegates have fought against proposals to fund the Global South to help with adapting to the extreme weather. Those countries that have been robbed of their resources during the colonial era and during the stage of imperialism are underdeveloped industrially. As a consequence, they’ve added little to global CO2 emissions. It was the U.S. and Britain that emitted the lion’s share of carbon in the atmosphere today. 

The idea of a fund to help the Global South adapt to and recover from extreme weather disasters has gained ground throughout the history of these international conferences. In previous COP conferences, an agreement was struck that the U.S. and Europe would pay $100 billion per year into a fund for adaptation. The payments never happened. 

At COP27 in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt, the anger of Global South delegates finally forced a formal agreement to set up the Loss and Damage Fund. But the U.S. is reportedly refusing to concede on how the fund will be structured. They want it to be run through the World Bank, and that would give the donors the opportunity to claim that aid packages that were already pledged could be considered part of the Loss and Damage Fund.

On Al-Jaber’s agenda is a way to exploit this divide between the interests of the rich capitalist countries and those of the Global South. Many countries don’t have enough fuel of any kind to heat homes adequately or can barely run factories. In other words, in order to develop, they need energy of some kind, and transitioning to renewables is out of reach for them. While the U.S. is throwing up obstacles to the Loss and Damage Fund, Al-Jaber is talking up paying for fuel to aid in their development and, in some cases offering to aid their transition to a renewables-based power grid. This is a way for him to try to get past opposition to the fossil fuel industry’s power grab.

Delegates have to approve the new president of the conference each year at its opening. Until now, it’s been a formality. That could change. So much is uncertain as this conference is set to begin. It’s entirely possible that Al-Jaber won’t survive the leaked documents scandal. The only certainty is that the climate change movement has to stay in the streets.

Talk by Mahtowin Munro, co-leader of United American Indians of New England (UAINE), at the National Day of Mourning in Plymouth, Massachusetts, on Nov. 21.

In addition to warm greetings to our Indigenous relatives from North and South America, we welcome Black and Palestinian people to the National Day of Mourning, as well as members of the 2SLGBTQ community. We welcome all people here from the Four Directions who want to be in solidarity with Indigenous struggles. 

As an organization long dedicated to opposing colonialism, we at UAINE understand fully that our liberation is intertwined with that of other colonized and oppressed peoples. We want to express our solidarity with refugees and migrants, many of them Indigenous, who continue to be forced out of their home countries due to U.S. policies, and we continue to insist that the deadly U.S.-Mexican border, with its walls and concertina wire, is not our border.

Looking out over Plymouth Harbor, it is so beautiful. It’s hard though not to think about the environmental destruction the Pilgrims and subsequent waves of settlers brought with them. 

For example, just down the road from here, there is a now-decommissioned nuclear power plant called Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station. 

Holtec — the company that owns the power plant — has been planning for a long time to dump more than a million gallons of radioactive wastewater into Cape Cod Bay, and there has been widespread opposition to that. Meanwhile, Holtec has been releasing some of that radioactive water into the air in the form of gas and they clearly plan to release more in that manner. Yet they are not stopped. 

Down the road a little further you’ll find the Massachusetts Coastal Pine Barrens — one of only three Pine Barrens left in the world. This incredibly rare and important ecosystem — which formed over thousands of years and which houses hundreds of species of animals and birds — is under threat from sand and gravel mining. Water is life, and we humans are part of that web of life, but settlers have largely forgotten this.

Climate justice?

We say today that the way to address climate change is to center Indigenous knowledge of our own territories, not the “green new deal” or the fake carbon proposals made by nations at places like the big climate conferences. 

“Sustainable” energy sources are rarely sustainable, as Indigenous people — who protect 80% of the world’s biodiversity — often bear the consequences. Throughout Indigenous territories, land and water are constantly being exploited without the consent of the traditional owners. My mind is drawn to the wind turbines off Martha’s Vineyard that were installed without the consent of the Aquinnah Wampanoag Tribe.

The slogan landback is on everyone’s lips now, but that feeling has been there for centuries, hasn’t it? It’s time to dismantle the colonial structures that have stolen our lands and keep us in poverty. Tribes in Massachusetts — the Mashpee and Aquinnah Wampanoag, Nipmuc and other tribes — need landback to be able to bring their people back to their homelands.

There is no climate justice on stolen land! 

For instance, in Nevada, there is a sacred area called Thacker Pass, where a settler massacre of dozens of Paiute people took place in 1865. The pass is also the site of the largest known lithium deposit in the U.S. and one of the largest in the world. A massive mining project on the site by Lithium Americas was approved by both the Trump and Biden administrations and started construction earlier this year. 

For its proponents, the mine is an essential component for a U.S. shift to a greener future. But they ignore that the mine threatens irrevocable environmental and historical destruction to the area. 

We think today also of Kanaka Maoli people in Hawai’i, who continue to suffer from the hazards of colonialism. Often displaced on their own islands, the land is heavily militarized in many areas, the water in the Pearl Harbor area is polluted by the U.S. Navy, and the impacts of colonization led to the horrible fire on Maui a few months ago.

In so-called Canada, from coast to coast to coast, First Nations, Metis and Inuit communities are fighting against the effects of colonization — Mi’kmaq people are fighting for their fishing rights once again. Everywhere, First Nations are trying to stop destructive development. Drug deaths are hitting hard in all of our Indigenous communities.

In Guatemala, Peru, Mexico, Chile and elsewhere, Indigenous people are in resistance.

Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women (MMIW) continues to be a crisis throughout Indian Country. I think especially today of the situation in Winnipeg where a serial killer was known to have dumped bodies of murdered Indigenous women in a landfill, and people continue to demand that the landfill be searched for their bodies. The government has refused to do this. So we join them in calling for the landfill to be searched and say that Indigenous women are not trash!

Here in the so-called U.S., Native nations achieved a major victory when the Indian Child Welfare Act was upheld earlier this year. But ICWA needs to be strengthened! Our children are still being snatched and put into foster care, separating thousands of our youth from their land and culture. 

The theft of children has often been a core tenet of settler colonialism. I even see settlers online now talking about wanting to adopt Palestinian orphans. They should instead be demanding that the children of Palestine can grow up with their own families, free in their own homelands.

Supporters of Palestinian resistance

I want to turn to speaking about Palestine for a bit. Our organization has supported Palestinian resistance for decades and we pledge to never let our relatives down.

When you see a genocide happening — whether in Congo or Sudan or Armenia or Palestine — you need to try to do something about it. If you are silent, that is in effect supporting the genocide as well. That is a basic principle that many of us have taught to our children, yet too many people are still standing, afraid to speak up because of the repression right now.

We are honored to have a Palestinian speaker on our program today and I will explain why. From our perspective, Palestinian people are Indigenous. What has been happening to Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank since October is an increase in what has been an ongoing genocide directed against them by the settler colonial state of Israel. But the violence against Palestinians has never stopped in more than 75 years. 

For instance, 60% of the children of Gaza were malnourished before October because of the conditions of the occupation, and Israel controls not only Gaza’s water but also 80% of the water in the West Bank. What we are witnessing is a resurgence of the ongoing barbaric violence of settler colonialism there. 

Palestinians have been subject to being killed, imprisoned, assaulted and tortured, starved and denied access to water for years. Right now, a second Nakba or Catastrophe has been happening.

If you believe that landback is necessary here, then you need to understand that landback is also necessary for other colonized people of the land.

As Indigenous people, we understand firsthand that to be a colonized person is to exist under constant violence — physical, cultural and psychological. We call what is happening in Palestine genocide because that is what it is. You can’t take a pause in genocide, nor is this a war, nor are there two armies. 

We see the same features of manifest destiny and white supremacy that we have experienced weaponized against Palestinians. We speak plainly and say that this is also apartheid. Our organization opposed apartheid in South Africa decades ago and we oppose it in Palestine now.

Puritans and Zionists

The Pilgrims in Plymouth and the Puritans in Boston were obsessed with the idea that they were in a wilderness provided for them by their god, as though the land was empty and waiting for them. This idea is so embedded that even today, I hear from school children and adults alike that the Europeans brought civilization here, that Indigenous peoples were not actually doing anything with the land. The invaders rename the streets and villages and rivers. They actively erase the existence of people who live here and continue to live here.

This certainly sounds familiar to Palestinians. Zionists still speak about Palestine as a land without people for a people without a land — and even if the land was not empty, it was supposedly full of people who had no real connection to the place, didn’t know how to develop and exploit the land the way Europeans did, didn’t know how to make the desert bloom, and so they lack legitimacy. The propaganda insists that Indigenous people lose legitimacy because they are somehow not sufficiently there, or they are somehow insufficiently civilized.

When I look at Gaza, I see reflections of all of the Indigenous people killed in the waves of massacres here in North America, in Guatemala, in Congo, Haiti, Australia and Ireland, Puerto Rico, the Philippines, Algeria — people around the world whose only crime has been to exist and resist settler colonialism.

And of course the United States, the unapologetic killer of millions of Indigenous, Black and other oppressed peoples, supports this.

If we the colonized suffer in silence, we are sometimes considered to be suitable objects of settler pity and charity. But we don’t want pity. We want freedom and the restoration of our homelands. We fight back because we must. We fight back by living, having children, loving each other, remembering our true history of who we were and still are. 

We fight back for our land because that is part of our bodies too. We fight back in any way we can because the alternative is to become extinct on our own homelands, which is the ultimate goal of settler colonialism. We know what it’s like to be considered animals and savages and to endure generations of ongoing genocide.

They try to dehumanize us, but we never lose our humanity. I think of the settlers who have often had no trouble killing even our children because they don’t see any of us as fully human, and they continue to tear our families apart so that our children will be separated from the land and the culture. 

Colonel Chivington from Colorado, who led the Sand Creek Massacre, said to “Kill em all, women and children, because nits make lice.” That is exactly the sentiment that we are hearing now from Netanyahu and many others in Israel as they justify the massacre of thousands of children and their families, as they now openly support the spread of infectious diseases to kill off even more Palestinians.

Resist dehumanization

As Indigenous peoples, we resist the violence and erasure of settler colonialism and the attempts to dehumanize until we can fully become ourselves through liberation. Like Indigenous people here, Palestinians themselves must decide what they want for their future and how they will resist. It is absolutely not for outsiders to decide that for them.

We also know there is greed underlying what is happening. Greed for the land, greed to control the water, greed for gas and oil and other resources.

We call out Genocide Joe Biden and nearly all politicians in the U.S., in Canada, in Britain and elsewhere who have been supporting genocide and providing billions of dollars in funding and weapons, filling their own pockets and the pockets of the manufacturers. We cannot appeal to the morality of our colonial oppressor. They have none.

But we are in relationship with each other and we are in relationship with the land. As Indigenous people, the land is part of our bodies, our stories, everything we are. The land, the rivers and seas and lakes of Palestine await the return of the Palestinian people.  

So today on U.S. Thanksgiving day, we say that we will not be thankful for these crimes against humanity laid bare for the whole world to see. We will not be thankful for the billions of dollars stolen from us, money that could be going to housing and education and food on tables that instead is flowing out in aid to the war criminal state of Israel. We will not be thankful for the ongoing destruction of our beautiful planet.

We feel the struggle of Palestinian people and of all Indigenous peoples in struggle in our hearts and bones.

Today, we are asking you to mourn and to listen. Tomorrow, we ask you to use your heartbreak and rage to fuel your action to make this end. 

A ceasefire is not enough. A ceasefire is the bare minimum. The Palestinian people need reparations to rebuild. Occupation and settlements must end. US aid to Israel must end. Palestine must be free!

Talk by Palestinian activist Salma Abu Ayyash at the National Day of Mourning in Plymouth, Massachusetts, on Nov. 21.

I call on my ancestors to envelope us here today with their protection and guidance. I call on my father, a Palestinian ancestor who fought for Palestine all his life, to bless my words as I take on this responsibility of speaking to you today, honoring this day of mourning.

I am grateful to be on native Wampanoag land. I am grateful to be on this stage speaking after these Indigenous women and elders.

When my sister Mahtowin asked me to speak to you, I felt my heart expand out of my ribcage. I literally stopped breathing for a few seconds. I want to start by saying that this has been one of the greatest honors given to me. I don’t take this responsibility lightly and I don’t take this honor for granted. 

This gathering continues to be a place where we not only mourn and remember past and current genocides, but also a place where we unite in power in our belief that a different world is possible.

We gather in our conviction that we, humans of all backgrounds, will not stand for supremacy, genocide, and the continued extractive, destructive processes that Mahtowin just talked to you about, and that colonialism, capitalism, imperialism, and greed continue to destroy our planet and humanity.

This is our struggle, our children’s struggle, and that of our ancestors before us, and it will be a long one, it will be a hard one, but we will never, never give up our fight for Indigenous rights for land, stewardship, and renewal.

We will never give up our right to fight for Black liberation and reparations. We will never give up fighting for all immigrants and oppressed people across the planet. And I hope you are all with me in our struggle to liberate Palestine.

We Palestinians yearn for a land where Palestinians have self-determination, liberty, sovereignty over our lands, freedom of movement, and to be free from the daily pogroms, killings and incarcerations that have been going on for 75 years and more. A land where anyone, whatever your relationship with the creator or lack thereof, is welcome to participate in building a nation with equal rights for everyone.

I say bring it on. We are a generous, loving people.

The power we need

Palestine was once such a place before the state of Israel was created on 78% of its land. One of its cities, Yafa, was called the mother of strangers because before 1948, it was a thriving Arab port on the sea that welcomed everyone; before European settler colonial invasion destroyed our societies, alienated neighbors, and turned Arab Jews and non-Jews against each other. 

Yes, we have a dream, and it will come true because anything short of this dream is accepting a system of genocide and oppression, continued aggression, and settler expansion.

We Palestinians have all the power we need because of you: Indigenous people everywhere, Black and Brown people, the wretched of the Earth, people of conscience. Jewish people who shed their fears and join this mass movement. Working-class people and all people who understand their privileges and the wrongs of all their ancestors. We have all the power because we choose life for all.

Palestinians, in our pain, our disbelief, our trauma: Let us remind ourselves that we have a Native American matriarch sitting in the front seat leading the Palestinian women chanting their hearts out for Palestine on top of an old truck, pulling us forward with her love and perseverance. Let us remember that Indigenous people in our communities made visible what settler colonialism is, why landback is important.

Let us thank the young Black women and men and their elders, writers, artists, educators, who taught us about anti-Blackness and structural racism, including exposing the U.S. carceral system. These same Black young and not-so-young people are marching with us day in and day out, just like Palestinians marched with them after Ferguson, and against the prison-industrial system and police brutality everywhere. Police in many U.S. states and towns, from Boston to Cambridge, you name it, trained by the Israeli army.

Black and Indigenous people’s movements made visible the frameworks that allow us now to speak with clarity and no uncertain terms about the systemic buildup of anti-Palestinian, anti-Arab and Islamophobic systems in the U.S. From think tanks and racist institutions and university programs that further imperialist goals of the U.S. and Europe in the Arab world that destroyed Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Libya, and Lebanon and that continue to destroy and exploit Africa, South America and build their empires on the blood of people of the global south.

I know there is no doubt in your mind. There is no dissonance. There is no paralysis. You know that our struggles are intertwined, sourced from the same well of revolutionary spirit and determination, from the same history of colonization, and from the determination to be free.

Palestinians will acknowledge you always and hold you in our hearts in gratitude, and join you in your struggles, even during this dark cloud of carnage, because it is one struggle. It is our collective liberation, and that is our power.

And now Gaza.

15,271 in 40 days

I wonder, do we really understand what it means when 15,271 children, women, and men are killed in 40 days? Can you imagine it? Or that 4,150 people are still caught under the rubble of buildings hit by Israeli air and artillery. 

Look around you. Think of these numbers. I won’t recite the staggering numbers of schools, places of worship, hospitals, and civilian buildings destroyed, or the number of journalists targeted and health care workers and teachers killed.

I don’t think our brains are capable of absorbing these numbers and this carnage anymore. Can you take watching another video of a child being pulled from under the rubble or a man being lynched by a mob of Israeli soldiers?

We are all watching what is happening in Gaza in horror – the world is watching – but maybe you don’t know what is happening in the West Bank right at this moment.

I am a Palestinian from the village of Betar, north of Al-Khalil-Hebron. When I speak with my aunt, she describes to me a scene of terror that has intensified since Oct. 7. Settlers roam with their machine guns day and night. According to the New York Times, there are over 200 killed by settler rampages and over 2,000 injured, including over a thousand who fled from their homes due to these recent armed pogroms.

Some 2,650 Palestinians have been detained by the army in the West Bank. At least 195 Palestinians have been killed and over 2,500 others injured, according to the last update from the Palestinian Health Ministry back on Nov. 15. 

There are 171 healthcare facilities destroyed.

My cousin, my aunt’s son, is detained. The last time she was able to speak to him was almost three weeks ago. He spoke of torture, of stripping prisoners of their clothes, of taking everything away from them. Not allowing enough food and no access to sun or sanitation. Indeed, this was corroborated by their vile leaders describing the scene with pride. 

What’s happening in Palestine today is a condensed, horrible version of what’s been happening to us on a daily basis for over 75 years.

Mainstream media coverup

I have yet to hear one mainstream media outlet report fully on what’s happening, let alone put this carnage in context. Did you hear anywhere that 22 hospitals were attacked, bombed, and rendered nonfunctional or that 66 mosques have been completely destroyed? 

Every report from the media should remind you that the Palestinians are a people that have been living under a brutal occupation and that our land has been and continues to be colonized for 75 years. They should also remind you that people under conditions of occupation, transfer, and continued colonization have the right to resist by any means possible and that an occupying power has no right to “defend itself” against the people it occupies. Certainly not with collective punishment of the whole Gaza population that has already been under siege for 16 years.

We reject a state that has no constitution or defined borders, and that has been deemed an apartheid state by two international organizations, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, and two Israeli human rights organizations. A state that has 65 racist laws discriminating against non-Jews, including a nation-state law that declares the right to exercise national self-determination to be unique only to the Jewish people. And that declares Jewish settlement as the national value and mandates that the state will labor to encourage and promote the establishment and development of Jewish settlement. We all know what that means.

We reject the notion that anti-zionists are antisemites because we oppose and resist a settler colonial state. Palestinians have lived with peaceful Arab Jewish people for centuries. Our fight is against the white European settler project, not against our Jewish brothers and sisters.

We mourn the death of all innocent lives and stand with Jewish people fighting white supremacy and antisemitism in Europe, the U.S., and anywhere on the globe.

Let me remind you that there are 7,000 Palestinian hostages that are now being held in Israeli jails, including 172 children. We know this is not just about hostages. These human losses did not happen in a vacuum. Seventy-five years of dispossession, 56 years of continued murderous military occupation and settlement, and 16 years of siege of the population in Gaza is the root cause of this carnage. 

If the U.S. really cared about the Jewish people and their safety, it would have worked to resolve the root causes.

When Biden said, “If Israel didn’t exist, we would create it,” what do you think he meant by that? 

Without 34 United Nations Security Council vetoes that the U.S. threw in the face of peace since 1954, making a mockery of the global institution that was created to ensure we preserve our humanity, none of this would have happened. 

Without the military aid the U.S. lent this terror machine, including the recent $14.8 billion, none of this would have happened. Without the U.S. lobby AIPAC that funnels millions into the pockets of our representatives, none of this would have happened. Without U.S. institutions, businesses, and universities that silence Palestinian voices, none of this would have happened.

The true face of Zionism has been on display for decades, but it can’t get any clearer after the past 40 days. Just Google statements by Israeli leaders, starting with Netanyahu, likening us to animals and calling for ethnic cleansing.

The true antisemites

How could the same people whose parents and grandparents suffered so much in their own history turn around and use genocidal fascist tools on another population? How is this good for Jewish people on this planet? 

I would go as far as saying that the governments of Israel, Europe, and the U.S. are the antisemites themselves, not those of us who call for liberation and equality for all. 

Do not tell me about peace before you recognize that the system of apartheid and supremacy has to be dismantled, just like the South African settler apartheid state was dismantled. Once that happens, Palestinians and Jewish people can live in peace on the historic land of Palestine. 

Anything short of this is blind to the nature of this settler state and its racist laws against non-Jews that have been causing Palestinians great harm for 75 years. Not even a two-state solution is possible before the foundations of the state of Israel that are built on supremacy and colonization are challenged.

I have no faith in any of our senators in office who need to be told to stop this genocide, but we need to keep pressure on them, not let them off the hook. So tell them that you don’t support this racist settler colonial state, that a brief ceasefire, even if it gives a few days of respite to the terrorized population, is not going to protect Gazans after that period is over. 

Ask them why the sanctity of the lives of our children is any less important than white children. Tell them your tax money, your hard-earned pennies, should not go into war machines. Not in your name. That they should go first for reparations for Black and Indigenous people.

The United States spends more on national defense than China, Russia, India, Saudi Arabia, Britain, Germany, France, South and North Korea, Japan, and Ukraine combined. What kind of a country is this but a criminal imperial one – criminal outwards towards other nations and criminal inwards towards its citizens who desperately need care?

Shut it down!

Speak of Palestine everywhere because, believe me, our numbers matter. When you speak up, others will, too, and those in power will have to reckon with our voices. Exercise your right of boycott and divestment, even if 35 states have passed laws against this peaceful method of resistance that started with South Africa.

This violence is meant to break us all and make us accept it. How do you put an end to this energy of destruction and rescue what is left of our humanity?

I urge you to take power from this gathering and other gatherings of people of conscience. Our solidarity is everything.

To our oppressors, I say, you can build your dreams on our bones; you can imagine your safety guaranteed through the violence you inflict on us, but we will not stand by. We will resist you until our last word and our last breath.

And to my people in Palestine, I call out to you. I hold your hands firmly, and I kiss the Earth beneath your souls. And I say I am prepared to die for you.

Long live Palestine!

The United Auto Workers, one of the largest unions in North America, added its voice to the global call for a ceasefire in Gaza. The announcement was made hours after Israel resumed its attacks on the Gaza Strip following a seven-day pause.

On December 1, Brandon Mancilla, Director for United Auto Workers Region 9A, wrote on X that the UAW is calling for a ceasefire in Israel and Palestine and is creating “a Divestment and Just Transition working group to study the history of Israel and Palestine, our union’s economic ties to the conflict, and explore how we can have a just transition for US workers from war to peace.”

UAW President Shawn Fain stated shortly afterwards, “I am proud that the UAW International Union is calling for a ceasefire in Israel and Palestine. From opposing fascism in WWII to mobilizing against apartheid South Africa and the CONTRA war, the UAW has consistently stood for justice across the globe.”

The United Auto Workers has risen in prominence with a historic victory over the three largest automakers in the US in their recent “big three” contract campaign, which mobilized all rank and filers in the union in an unprecedented way. Members partook in “practice pickets” and fought for a series of demands far more radical than anything the UAW had demanded of corporations in decades. 145,000 auto workers won historic pay raises that lifted everyone up, especially those at the lowest rungs of the workforce, eliminated divisive tiers, tied wage increases to inflation, among other victories.

This massive win had a ripple effect across the industry. Non-union automakers Toyota, Honda and Hyundai announced that they would increase workers’ pay shortly after the victory.

Speaking outside of the White House gates at a press conference on the morning of December 1, where a group of activists have been in a hunger strike since November 27 for a permanent ceasefire, Brandon Mancilla said, “For so long we’ve been silent and we’ve been ignorant in the labor movement to this issue.”

“That time is over,” he said. “I wanna thank all the rank and file members who have made this happen.”

Nov. 30 — John Parker, a candidate for California’s 37th congressional district, is being detained by the Egyptian National Security Agency, along with other participants in the Global Conscience Convoy in Cairo, initiated by the Egyptian Syndicate of Journalists.  

He was taken into custody along with others when the group unfurled a banner that read “From the River to the Sea, Palestine Will be Free.” Parker and other detainees from Argentina, Australia, and France have yet to be released.  

John Parker stated: “The Palestinian people desperately need food, fuel, water, medicine and aid. The Rafah crossing must be opened so that people of the world can get needed supplies to the Palestinian people. Anything less contributes to Israel’s criminal genocide.”

Parker is a founding member of the Los Angeles-based Harriet Tubman Center for Social Justice and a reporter with Struggle-La Lucha.  He traveled to Cairo to be a part of the Global Conscience Convoy for Gaza. 

The Embassy of the United States is aware and informed of the detention. The Harriet Tubman Center for Social Justice, Struggle-La Lucha and the Peoples Power Assembly are demanding the U.S. embassy seek Parker’s release and that Egyptian authorities release all four detainees immediately.

Contact the U.S. Embassy in Egypt, the Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and Egyptian consulates in the U.S. to demand the release of all those detained.

Egyptian Consulate, Washington, DC, United States
3521 International Court, N.W., Washington, D.C., 20008

(202) 966-6342
(202) 244-4319

Email: embassy@egyptembdc.org
Website: www.egyptembassy.net

Cairo, Nov. 29 — On Monday, U.S. participants who are part of the Global Conscience Convoy went to a scheduled meeting with the U.S. Embassy in Cairo, Egypt, to encourage the embassy to do its part in allowing the convoy to help break the siege of Gaza, and to help stop the complicity and support of Israeli genocide that the entire U.S. government is guilty of and profits from.

The Global Conscience Convoy, launched by the Egyptian Journalists Syndicate – the union of Egyptian journalists – made it clear that the U.S. is one of those countries complicit in genocide:

“For too long, the Occupation has been emboldened by the unconditional support of major world powers, who disregard its atrocities and shield it from accountability. Their complicity in the face of injustice is a stain on the world’s conscience.” 

After getting through Egyptian security, then U.S. security, we began a conversation with two representatives of the embassy’s political office, who offered us nothing but manufactured empathy, giving the impression that their hands were tied in the “awful situation” after Oct 7. 

It was curious that the attack by Hamas on Oct. 7, which was preceded by 75 years of Israeli attacks and occupation, was characterized as “heinous,” with no mention of who was actually responsible for the “awful situation” in Gaza. 

When asked whether the massacres in Gaza could be considered heinous, given the over 14,000 Palestinians killed with nearly 50% being children, and hospitals and schools included in the civilian targets, the response from the embassy was “awful situation.”

We asked, if the transfer of humanitarian and medical attention to Gaza was only possible during the ceasefire, why wouldn’t the U.S. use its influence with Egypt’s government to get them to allow the convoy to bring aid?

The embassy representatives said they do not control what Egypt does and there are so many security hurdles to go through in making decisions.

A damning admission 

This writer mentioned the culpability of the U.S. in arming Israel with weapons of mass destruction against a civilian population, and how this aid gives the U.S. great influence in Israel’s government – and how that also applies to the Egyptian government’s foreign policy, since it too receives significant U.S. funding. 

One of the embassy representatives admitted that giving weapons to Egypt and Israel allows the U.S. to have leverage in their decisions. But they had previously said they had no influence with Egypt to allow the convoy through! Although they said they supported Israel in its war against the Palestinian people, they thought that Israel had gone too far, but they had no influence.

We asked them why they couldn’t just stop giving aid and stop arming Israel with weapons that are killing civilians and children? Admitting that weapons are key to leverage, the U.S. Embassy was admitting its culpability in genocide by refusing to use that leverage. 

When asked if the over $500 billion worth of natural gas and oil on the coast of Gaza and the West Bank could be a motive for U.S. complicity with Israel – there was not a peep from the representatives.

The fuel that is vital for electricity, food production and keeping babies alive in incubators could be produced off the shores of occupied Palestine – but the Israeli occupation will not allow it. The cost of occupation includes the lives of many, many children.

Bianca Estrada told the embassy staff that as a mother with two children she had to come to join the convoy. Her tears in explaining her empathy with Palestinian parents losing their children in such horror committed by Israel added to her genuine message of solidarity and frustration with Israel and the U.S. 

When the embassy used the excuse of supporting Israel’s right to “self defense,” one of our delegates, who was born in the West Bank, questioned how it could be called self-defense when the people of Palestine are living under an illegal occupation.

Struggle-La Lucha’s Lev Koufax mentioned that his Jewish history has taught him what a concentration camp looks like and that the genocide by Israel must be considered a holocaust.

Complicity in genocide

Much information was relayed about the genocidal nightmare that Israel unleashed after Oct. 7, killing hundreds every day until the temporary ceasefire. But the U.S. regime, now led by Biden and the Democratic Party and aided by the Republicans in Congress, refused to call for a ceasefire. They instead opted for a “pause.” 

Biden and the U.S. Embassy know very well that the aid they said is going through will stop after the ceasefire (set to end tomorrow), and another 14,000 Palestinians could be killed in the next few weeks. 

We knew, of course, that the embassy already had this information and more about the horror faced by Gaza. But this meeting was a record of their informed complicity in genocidal terrorism. 

When we left the meeting, we let them know that we knew their plans to support Israel and refuse to help the convoy were set. In their own words, “our priority is the American people” – meaning the U.S. capitalist rulers. 

We put on the record that we knew that they understood that their refusal to allow aid and continuing U.S. funding of Israel means the continuation of the slaughter of children after the pause ends. 

It might be taking a leap, but it does seem curious that CBS News reported the day after our visit to the U.S. Embassy in Cairo: “A U.S. military plane carrying 54,000 pounds of food and medical supplies bound for civilians in Gaza landed in Egypt on Tuesday, the first of three such flights aimed at easing the humanitarian crisis in the enclave during a lull in fighting between Israel and Hamas.”

Why was this the first flight to “ease the humanitarian crisis”? Why didn’t it begin when the ceasefire began – instead of only two days before the ceasefire extension is set to end? 

But as the article states, the aid will not make a dent in the need. Hoping a last-minute public relations stunt smooths the way for the continuation of genocide is nothing but evil.

“From the president on down, we understand that what is getting in is nowhere near enough for normal life in Gaza,” one official said on a call with reporters.

Todas y todos los integrantes del periódico La Lucha por el Socialismo-Struggle for Socialism basado en los Estados Unidos, nos unimos hoy al mundo que conmemora la vida de los mártires Farah Omar, Rabih Al-Maamari y Hussein Aquil. 

Gracias a su noble y sacrificado trabajo en los medios de Al Mayadeen pudimos abrir los ojos a la espantosa realidad de un genocidio perpetrado por no tan solo la entidad sionista, sino con la criminal autorización y estrecha colaboración del gobierno estadounidense y sus aliados europeos. Realidad que los medios comerciales en el occidente han tratado de ocultar de la forma más miserable que ser humano haya sido testigo.

Su trabajo informativo quedará como prueba testimonial para lo que más temprano que tarde, será un juicio a nivel planetario donde los pueblos, que se han identificado honrosamente con la causa Palestina, juzgaremos y condenaremos a los culpables en cada foro y en cada tribunal de conciencia.

Farah Omar, Rabih Al-Maamari y Hussein Aquil, ¡Presentes!

¡Viva Al Mayadeen! ¡Viva Palestina Libre!

COP28, the next annual international conference where countries plan and set goals to limit the emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs), will take place in Dubai from Nov. 30 through Dec. 12. Increasingly, the conferences have come under the control of major capitalist powers – particularly the U.S. 

Global South countries have barely contributed to the warming of the atmosphere, but are most vulnerable. COP27 in Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt, was something of a battleground between the representatives from Africa, Asia and Latin America, and the imperialist powers of Europe, Japan and especially the United States.

The details of what transpires in Dubai will be analyzed in the weeks that follow, but this is a great time for serious climate change activists to take a good look at the stellar performance of socialist Cuba in the struggle to save the planet. 

It is an absolute crime that the mainstream media has ignored what can be accomplished in the global effort to mitigate the crisis of global warming without the influence of giant energy corporations and banks.

Cuba’s planned economy has enabled the island – even as the U.S. blockade hinders its ability to trade – to keep sustainability as a major priority for years. This is based on Fidel Castro’s keen understanding of the harm of capitalist industry’s emissions and the vulnerability of the underdeveloped countries of the world – the Global South. But the revolutionary leader and thinker was aware of the conundrum facing the former colonies in dealing with the destruction of the environment.

In a speech at the 1992 Earth Summit, the Cuban president said: “They have poisoned the seas and rivers, polluted the air, weakened and punctured the ozone layer, saturated the atmosphere with gases which are changing weather conditions with a catastrophic effect we are already beginning to experience.

“The forests are disappearing. The deserts are expanding. Every year billions of tons of fertile soil end up in the sea. Numerous species are becoming extinct.

“It is not possible to blame the Third World countries for this. Yesterday, they were colonies; today, they are nations exploited and pillaged by an unjust international economic order. The solution cannot be to prevent the development of those who need it most.” 

The Global South needs energy. Because of the poverty from imperialist plunder, much of the world relies on burning wood for heat and for cooking, and access to fossil fuel would be a step in the right direction for development. But even with very limited access to fossil fuel due to the blockade, Cuba has lowered its emissions and at the same time provided electricity to millions more Cubans.

Workers’ government

An Aug. 24 article in the pro-capitalist Forbes magazine confirms this: “Projects from the University of Leeds, the World Wildlife Fund, the Global Footprint Network, and the Sustainable Development Index show that Cuba is among the leaders in closing the gap between human development and sustainability.” 

Renewable forms of energy still only account for 4.5% of Cuba’s power generation. This amazing achievement happened because there aren’t giant energy corporations influencing the workers’ government of Cuba. 

In 2006 the Cuban government replaced every incandescent light bulb in the country with more efficient fluorescent bulbs. It subsidized modern, more efficient appliances, including 2 million refrigerators, more than 1 million fans, nearly 200,000 air conditioners and a quarter million water pumps. A campaign to replace old water heaters with new models that are run with solar energy is underway now.  

During this period, electricity use increased by 142%, but emissions dropped by 14%. The efficiency that accomplished this wouldn’t have been possible outside of a workers’ run government.

Cuba’s transition to urban farming, greatly reducing the need for transportation of food, is even successful in the capital city. The Forbes article quotes economist Sinan Koont, who said, “More than 35,000 hectares of land are being used in urban agriculture in Havana.” Cuba’s urban farming has become a model for small farmers throughout the Global South.

Cuba is also a world leader in reforestation. At the time of the revolution, only about 14% of the island was forested. That figure is now up to 30.6%.

Internationalism

Given that Global South countries contribute only a tiny fraction of the world’s GHG emissions, and their weakened ability to recover from climate catastrophes, the concern for countries saddled with the debt traps of imperialism has rightfully been adaptation – protecting their own populations and recovering from weather related catastrophes. 

Mitigation of the global crisis is the responsibility of the biggest polluters. Yet Cuba’s internationalist outlook has led this commendable effort to contribute to the effort to save the planet over and above what should be its responsibilities. 

Cuban socialism has guided the struggle to adapt to the island’s vulnerability to extreme weather and even to mitigate CO2 emissions. These earnest efforts and concern for all humanity puts the U.S. – the world’s per capita worst emitter of GHGs — to shame. 

Imagine what could be done if Cuba were free of the blockade. It is that example that the imperialist countries fear from Cuba.

Breaking the blockade won’t happen without the intervention of the people’s movement throughout the world. That is far from out of the question. At the United Nations General Assembly, 187 countries voted to end the blockade. Only two, the U.S. and its client apartheid state of Israel, voted to keep the Trump/Biden warfare against Cuba in place. 

More than 100 entities, including city councils in NYC, Chicago, Baltimore, Detroit and others, and scores of union locals and labor councils, have passed resolutions calling on Joe Biden to take Cuba off the list of State Sponsors of Terrorism and end the blockade. 

The United Nations has no power of enforcement. Only a powerful people’s movement can and will make it happen.

It’s fitting that Henry Kissinger finally croaked on Nov. 29, the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People. Every child murdered in Gaza by U.S.-made bombs dropped by U.S.-made planes was worth infinitely more than this bloody war criminal.

It’s obscene that Henry Kissinger could celebrate his 100th birthday on May 27. Patrice Lumumba, Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, Che Guevara, and Dr. King were all murdered before they reached 40.

Each of these heroes would be younger today than this war criminal if they had not been assassinated and were able to have long lives.

Kissinger deserves Nuremberg justice for mass murder on three continents. On his watch, millions of people were killed in Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Bangladesh, Chile, East Timor, Angola, South Africa, and Palestine.

Using his credentials as an “elder statesman,” Nixon’s former accomplice is a cheerleader for the proxy war against the Russian Federation in Ukraine. In a lengthy interview with “The Economist” ― a mouthpiece of the British and U.S. financial aristocracy ― Kissinger demanded that Ukraine be admitted to NATO.

That would turn the present conflict into a world war involving four nuclear powers: the United States, Britain, France, and Russia.

Kissinger also believes that Japan will develop nuclear weapons within five years. This is part of the war drive against the socialist People’s Republic of China.

It was by advocating so-called tactical nuclear weapons that Kissinger rose to prominence in the U.S. foreign policy establishment. His 1957 book, “Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy,” claimed that wars could still be fought with nukes yet prevented from turning into World War 3.

The key would be using “only ” nukes equivalent to 50 kilotons (50,000 tons) of TNT. The bomb that killed over 100,000 people in Nagasaki, Japan, was less than one-third that size.

Kissinger hit the big time as a protégé of New York Gov. Nelson Rockefeller, a member of the world’s first billionaire family that founded Big Oil. When Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru visited the United Nations in 1961, Rockefeller harangued him.

“He talked to me about nothing but bomb shelters,” said Nehru. “Why does he think I am interested in bomb shelters? He gave me a pamphlet on how to build my own shelter.”

Like Reagan’s “Star Wars” program, the campaign to build fallout shelters was an attempt to convince people they could survive a U.S. nuclear war on the socialist countries.

Kissinger’s nuclear bullying

For decades the U.S. State Department was a Rockefeller property. John Foster Dulles ― Eisenhower’s first Secretary of State ― was managing partner of Sullivan & Cromwell, the family’s law firm.

Dean Rusk ― Secretary of State under Kennedy and Johnson ― had been president of the Rockefeller Foundation. Even Trump’s first Secretary of State ― Rex Tillerson ― was former CEO of ExxonMobil, the descendant of Rockefeller’s crown jewel, Standard Oil of New Jersey.

Henry Kissinger was another Rockefeller employee. Upon becoming Nixon’s National Security Adviser, the New York governor thoughtfully gave Kissinger $50,000, worth $426,000 today. 

No one was prosecuted for this bribe. Kissinger illegally stored State Department papers in Nelson Rockefeller’s private vault at the family’s six-square-mile Kykuit estate in Westchester County, north of New York City. 

Less than two months after Nixon was inaugurated president in 1969, he and Kissinger launched Operation Menu, the massive bombing of Cambodia. The killing of thousands of people in a sovereign country was a war crime and a violation of international law.

So is Biden’s occupation and bombing of Syria.

Nixon and Kissinger could have made the same peace agreement in 1969 with Vietnam that they finally did in 1973. Millions of lives would have been saved in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos, as well as 20,000 fewer dead GIs.

Despite Kissinger’s barely disguised threats at the Paris peace talks to use nuclear weapons, Vietnam refused to surrender. At the Dec. 4, 1972 meeting, Vietnamese negotiator Lê Đức Thọ told Kissinger off:

“We … sometimes think that you would also use atomic weapons because, during the resistance against the French, Vice President Nixon proposed the use of atomic weapons. …

“If we do not achieve … [our] goal in our lifetime our children will continue the struggle … We have been subjected to tens of millions of bombs and shells. The equal of … 600 atomic bombs. …

“The simple truth is that we will not submit and reconcile ourselves to being slaves. So your threats and broken promises, we say, that is not a really serious way to carry on negotiations.” 

It was because of these nuclear threats and the U.S. killing of millions that Lê Đức Thọ refused the Nobel Peace Prize that was awarded to himself and Kissinger.

All the power of the Pentagon couldn’t prevent a Vietnamese tank from smashing through the gate of the former U.S. embassy in what became Hồ Chí Minh City on April 30, 1975. Vietnam’s victory continues to inspire oppressed people from Palestine to the Philippines.

Chile’s 9-11 and Operation Condor

Vietnam wasn’t the only place where Kissinger’s bloody imprint was felt. U.S. copper companies and the ITT conglomerate couldn’t tolerate the election of the socialist Salvador Allende as Chile’s president in 1970.

Even before Allende was elected, Kissinger was plotting to overthrow him. “I don’t see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist because of the irresponsibility of its own people,” said Kissinger. So much for democracy and self-determination.

More people were killed when General Pinochet and the CIA overthrew Chile’s government on 9-11-73 than were killed on 9-11-01 in Manhattan. President Allende was among the victims. Santiago’s football stadium was filled with prisoners awaiting execution, including the folk singer Victor Jara who was tortured to death.

Secretary of State Kissinger approved of these atrocities. “We are sympathetic with what you are trying to do here,” Kissinger told Pinochet when they met in Chile on June 8, 1976. “You did a great service to the West in overthrowing Allende.”

Three months later, former Chilean foreign minister Orlando Letelier and an aide, Ronni Moffitt, were murdered in a Washington, D.C., car bombing on Sept. 21, 1976. Their assassination by Pinochet’s secret police agents was part of Operation Condor, a joint effort by six South American dictatorships to exterminate leftists.

Operation Condor’s lynchpin was Argentina dictator Jorge Videla. Kissinger told Videla’s foreign minister, César Guzzetti, on June 10, 1976, that he “hoped the Argentine government could get the terrorist problem under control as quickly as possible.” 

By “terrorists,” Kissinger meant any opponents of the bloody military regime that murdered as many as 30,000 political prisoners. Hundreds were thrown out of helicopters into the Atlantic Ocean.

Kissinger vs. African liberation

Kissinger’s Eurocentric arrogance and contempt toward all oppressed countries was evident in his exchange with Chilean Foreign Minister Gabriel Valdés in June 1969. (Valdés was a member of the Christian Democratic government that preceded Allende’s.)

Kissinger told Valdés, “You come here speaking of Latin America, but this is not important. Nothing important can come from the South. History has never been produced in the South.”

In 1972, Kissinger described Bangladesh as a “basket case,” a terrible, bigoted term for a country looted by British colonialism for 190 years. The year before, the U.S. aircraft carrier Enterprise was sent to the Bay of Bengal to try to intimidate India, which was supporting the independence struggle in Bangladesh.

Pakistan’s military, using the codename “Operation Searchlight,” carried out massacres against Bengali people with Nixon’s and Kissinger’s consent.

When Nixon and Kissinger arrived in Washington in 1969, Nelson Mandela had been in jail for over six years. U.S. imperialism was determined to keep him there. The CIA helped the apartheid secret police arrest the African National Congress leader in 1962.

The fascist government in Portugal ― a founding member of NATO ― was dropping U.S.-supplied napalm bombs on African liberation fighters in Angola, Guinea-Bissau, and Mozambique.

Ian Smith declared “Rhodesia” (occupied Zimbabwe) independent and said that he didn’t “believe in Black majority rule ever in Rhodesia — not in a thousand years.”

White settlers occupied Namibia, a former German colony, where they celebrated Hitler’s birthday.

Change was coming, however. The armed struggle of Africans led to the overthrow of the fascist regime in Lisbon on April 25, 1974.

Fighting for their liberation, Africans also brought some freedom to Portuguese working people. The Portuguese Communist Party played a key role in the Portuguese Revolution while extending aid to their comrades in Africa.

Africa called, Cuba answered, Kissinger threatened

After tremendous sacrifice, all of Portugal’s African colonies won their freedom. The People’s Republic of Angola was born on Nov. 11, 1975.

Vice President Nelson Rockefeller, along with his employees, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and White House occupant Gerald Ford, sought to kill it. They had the Nazi armies of then-apartheid South Africa invade the African country.

Africa needed help. Over 2,000 Cuban soldiers died fighting alongside their African comrades in defeating the apartheid forces.

As Elombe Brath ― the late Pan-African educator and organizer who was a founder of the December 12th Movement ― declared, “When Africa called, Cuba answered!”

The White House and the entire U.S. ruling class were furious. Kissinger wanted to invade Cuba.

“I think we are going to have to smash Castro,” Kissinger told President Ford on March 24, 1976. Ford said, “I agree.”

Kissinger told a meeting that included Gen. George Brown of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, “If we decide to use military power, it must succeed. There should be no halfway measures.”

A Black shield stopped Kissinger. Because of the “economic draft,” poor people are driven to enlist in the military. At the time, one out-of-four GIs were Black.

Even the generals had to take this into account. For the same reason, Trump was stopped from declaring martial law on June 1, 2020, against the Black Lives Matter movement.

It was the courage of the Cuban people led by Comrade Fidel Castro, the Black community in the United States, and the existence of the Soviet Union that prevented an attack on Cuba.

The dramatic throwing back of the apartheid forces at the gates of Luanda, Angola’s capital, sent shock waves through Africa. Less than a year later, Black youth in Soweto rebelled on June 16, 1976.

At least 700 Africans were murdered by apartheid forces, often armed with Israeli-made weapons. The Israeli newspaper Haaretz acknowledges that “South Africa under apartheid was the Israeli defense industry’s biggest customer.”

David Rockefeller ― the real “Dr. Evil” who was Nelson’s brother ― came to apartheid’s rescue. As CEO of the Chase Manhattan bank, now JPMorgan Chase, with $3.7 trillion in assets, David loaned hundreds of millions to the apartheid regime.

David Rockefeller repeated the extension of hundreds of millions in loans after the March 21, 1960, Sharpeville massacre in which 69 Africans were murdered.

Despite these banksters propping up apartheid, the “Soweto generation” of African youth led the way to overthrow it.

Petrodollars and splitting the socialist countries

The Portuguese colony of East Timor in Southeast Asia also declared its freedom in 1975. However, Indonesian dictator Suharto ― who rose to power a decade before by killing a million communists, workers, and peasants ― couldn’t tolerate a neighboring free state.

President Gerald Ford and Kissinger gave the green light to Suharto to crush East Timor when they visited him in early December 1975. Suharto respectfully delayed his invasion of East Timor until Dec. 7, 1975, one day after Ford and Kissinger had departed.

At least 200,000 people in East Timor, one-third of its population, were slaughtered.

Key to Wall Street’s wealth and power is plundering the oil-producing countries in Western Asia. The Pentagon’s biggest weapon in making this happen is the Israeli apartheid regime that occupies Palestine.

That’s why the U.S. has given more than $158 billion to the Zionist regime.

General Alexander the Haig ― as Gil Scott-Heron called him ― described Israel as “America’s largest aircraft carrier which never could be sunk.” Haig had been an aide to Kissinger before becoming National Security Adviser and later Reagan’s first Secretary of State.

The billions of dollars of weapons shipped by the Pentagon to Israel during the Ramadan war (also called the Yom Kippur war) in October 1973 enraged Arab people. An oil embargo began.

As a result of this strike, Big Oil had to, at least temporarily, jack up what it was paying for petroleum. Kissinger’s “shuttle diplomacy” aimed to claw this money back in this period.

The petrodollar was born. The oil-producing countries had to put their reserves in U.S. banks.

It was Nixon going off the gold standard in 1971 and the petrodollar that allowed the United States to roll up huge foreign trade deficits. The U.S. dollar has become world money, a mighty weapon for Wall Street to use against its European and Japanese imperialist rivals.

Even after Kissinger left office, he was a power player for Big Oil. It was David Rockefeller and Henry Kissinger that demanded the bloody Shah be admitted to the U.S. after the Iranian people overthrew him.

Just as poisonous as his other crimes were Kissinger’s efforts to further the split in the socialist camp between the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China. All of Kissinger’s trips to Beijing and Moscow were for this purpose.

When Kissinger croaks, he will be remembered as a nightmare.

The United States, Japan, and South Korea will fully operationalize a missile warning system “by the end of December.” While justified as a means to counter North Korea’s missile launches, more worrisome, it escalates tensions in the region with China through the “NATOification” of all three countries, agreed upon in the “Spirit of Camp David” agreement.

The agreement was hailed as a “new era of trilateral partnership” during the August 18 press conference following a meeting between the heads of state of all three countries. Western media echoed the sentiment, calling it “historic” and “unprecedented.” China, listed in the agreement as a regional concern, accused the United States of creating a “mini NATO in Asia.” In response, United States National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan emphatically stated that the trilateral alliance is “nothing new” and certainly “not a new NATO for the Pacific.” Yet despite such dismissals, this meeting between the U.S. and its strongest allies in the region lays the foundations for NATO-level military cooperation—a common threat, interoperability, and security coordination—that threatens China and escalates tensions in the region.

‘Collective interests and security’

While the United States has had bilateral agreements under the San Francisco System with South Korea and Japan for decades, the August 18 Camp David meeting institutionalized trilateral cooperation among the three nations, changing the scope and nature of their relations from the hub-and-spoke bilateral alliances to trilateral annual summits (covering finance, commerce, industry, foreign policy, and defense) and joint military exercises. As Victor Cha of the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) states: “This [unprecedented] institutionalization of the trilateral relationship… transforms these alliances into something quite new.” This was a historical breakthrough for the United States, which first pursued a NATO-level alliance built around Japan in the 1950s. Yet, unresolved grievances around Japan’s colonialism (enabled by the U.S. decision to prioritize its security interests over rectifying Japan’s war crimes and colonialism), and the different security interests between South Korea and Japan forced it to settle for bilateral agreements with governments it installed and propped up. Nonetheless, as noted in Foreign Policy magazine, this U.S. “military preeminence in the Pacific gave Washington the luxury of not needing a collective security agreement.” Today, as the U.S. “has lost its preponderance of military power in the maritime domain… [the U.S. and its allies face a] threat comparable to what NATO confronted in Europe during the Cold War.”

The conservative, pro-U.S. Yoon Suk Yeol administration’s 2023 decision to normalize relations with Japan (casting aside a South Korean Supreme Court ruling against Japanese companies for the wartime conscription of Koreans) paved the way towards establishing the trilateral alliance that the U.S. had sought for the past 70 years. While the Spirit of Camp David Agreement is not yet a full-fledged mini Asian-NATO, combining two of the United States’ closest allies in the region into military cooperation with each other is a step towards it. The agreement contains the seeds of a NATO-level trilateral alliance based on mutual self-defense. More specifically, it calls for consultation and coordinated responses “to regional challenges, provocations, and threats that affect our collective interests and security.” As Kurt M. Campbell, Biden’s Asia strategy architect, has stated: a “fundamental, foundational understanding” of the Spirit of Camp David statement is that “a challenge to the security of any one of the countries affects the security of all of them.”

‘Integrated deterrence’

One of NATO’s strengths, which enhances and expands U.S. power projection in the region, is the synergy achieved by greater interoperability (i.e., the ability to effectively “achieve tactical, operational and strategic objectives”) between member countries. All of these are being built up and pursued through the trilateral security cooperation agreement.

This agreement lays the groundwork for trilateral interoperability to achieve “integrated deterrence” against China. This integrated deterrence is key in the U.S. containment of China. It allows the United States to carry out provocations (e.g., former U.S. House Speaker’s Nancy Pelosi August 2022 visit with Taiwan’s president) while limiting China’s response options.

A key component of integrated deterrence is joint military cooperation and coordination through a common operational picture. In other words, all parties need to be looking at the same operational picture, informing their operational decisions. The recent normalization of the General Security of Military Information Agreement (GSOMIA) by the Yoon Administration lays the foundation for this. Previously, under the 2014 trilateral information sharing agreement, South Korean and Japanese intelligence would be shared between each other through the United States and would be limited to threats from North Korea. GSOMIA, first signed in 2016 and reinstated by Yoon (after former President Moon allowed it to expire in 2019), allows comprehensive intelligence sharing between South Korea and Japan directly, including “threats from China and Russia.” On August 29, the United States, South Korea, and Japan held joint ballistic missile defense drills to “detect and track a computer-simulated ballistic missile target, and share related information.” The system is expected to be fully operationalized by the end of December 2023. While ostensibly against North Korean intercontinental ballistic missiles, given the scope of GSOMIA, this missile defense system can just as well be applied to China.

At a time when regional power is maintained through an “extended deterrence” to determine the outcome without a bullet even fired against an adversary, the United States’ missile defense system allows it to project its power in the region by neutralizing China’s anti-access and area-denial capabilities. Furthermore, it threatens to neutralize China’s ability to respond to a first strike by the United States. The United States’ “extended deterrence” containing China and China’s “extended deterrence” safeguarding its economic rise leaves both jostling for military advantage. In effect, U.S. actions are triggering a set of actions and counteractions that are escalating tensions in the region.

Members of the Biden Administration extol the Camp David Agreement as historic and unprecedented and as a qualitative leap forward in the United States, Japan, and South Korea military cooperation and coordination. At the same time, they oppose its characterization as a mini-Asian NATO. And while the agreement has not yet reached NATO status, it is clearly laying the groundwork toward that objective. It has also driven China, North Korea, and Russia to strengthen their own coordination, effectively consolidating an opposing bloc. Ultimately, the fight to establish competing “extended deterrence” is the beginning of war. To stop war, we must shift from military posturing and escalation to diplomatic solutions and respect for the security concerns of all countries.

This article was produced by Globetrotter.

Jeffrey Wagner is an educator in South Korea and a member of the International Strategy Center.

Dae-Han Song is in charge of the networking team at the International Strategy Center and is a part of the No Cold War collective.