Global South

Who Really Targeted US Troops in Syria? | Syriana Analysis

Netanyahu’s idea is “Make the Midde-East in Israel’s image.”  Opening speech on the video, by Jeffrey Sachs.

We’ve been talking about an attempt at Pax Judaica that is operating in the region now.  What seems to be happening in Australia is that the country is being punished for standing for a Palestinian State some months ago.  The investigation itself is a zionist affair and the Australian law enforcement is being pushed out.  This is in order to own the narrative.  When Syria fell, it was unbelievable how the narrative was created and I watched with dismay.  This narrative is now on steroids.  Israeli intelligence now claims far and wide that Iran is the prime suspect in the Bondi Beach attack. At least the Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese rejected ICC‑wanted Benjamin Netanyahu’s claim that Australia’s recognition of Palestinian statehood was behind the shooting.  Asked by the ABC if he saw a link between the decision and the Bondi Beach shooting, Albanese replied: “No, I don’t.”

The brave man who attacked the one shooter at Bondi Beach and took his gun away, is being lauded, but nobody says his name.  His name is Ahmed al Ahmed.  With the vile narrative building from the zionist entity, we of course can’t say that Ahmed did something very brave and was shot twice himself.  Then the narrative falls apart.

For Hannukkah, I’ve never seen so many giant Hannukkah candles in the open.  I’ve seen these candle holders in Russia, in Ukraine, in the US and in many locations.  Here Israeli soldiers capture the moment they light the first Hannukah candles in Mount Hermon, Syria, area that does not belong to them.

The narrative continues in the US and in Britian.

This story, from Syria, to now, is one story.  It is one initiative and one set of hasbara to attempt to adjust the worldview toward zionist-israel.  They want all of us to forget the consequences of their genocide and as such, they want to walk free.

 

We of course also do not see anything about children shot and fishermen shot and bombed and any other horror in Gaza.  That is suddenly verboten to talk about, while the narrative is being constructed in order to resucitate the ‘poor jew under assault’ story.  Last night’s bombing, shooting, more tanks in Gaza and more children and Gazan’s killed is not in the headlines.  The attacks on Lebanon is ongoing.

But the 10 year old child (rip) killed at Bondi Beach, have huge photos in all media.

NETANYAHU:

“We have never killed children in Gaza.

This is antisemitic propaganda.” pic.twitter.com/AvRopbWZjA

— Sulaiman Ahmed (@ShaykhSulaiman) December 10, 2025

To tie this to Syria, looks like two stories, but it is one, and is an intellectual and social assault on all of us.  IOF soldiers celebrated the Hanukkah holiday by lighting torches atop the ruins of Gaza’s Indonesian Hospital, the main medical facility in northern Gaza that once served thousands of Palestinian civilians, and now lies in ruins.

Here is an update.  It is a speech by Netanyahu (apologies).

Australia “caused” antisemitism by recognizing a Palestinian state.
Albanese “let the disease spread” by not following Israel’s preferred policy.
The Bondi attack happened because Australia showed “weakness.”
Western governments must act according to what Israel expects, or terrorism will “consume you as well.”

There were no condolences, no expressions of solidarity, only political coercion using a domestic Australian tragedy as leverage.  I believe this attack is not innocent but was created to confirm that everyone must obey the dictates of the zionist entity.    Netanyahu’s message to the West is “Follow our political line or your citizens will die, and it will be your fault.” That crosses every line of respect between sovereign states and sounds like a direct threat.

—-

Syriana Analysis:  In tonight’s live stream, I break down the mysterious incident involving US forces in Syria in which three American service members lost their lives – and why the official version of events does not add up.

While US officials publicly point to the so-called “Islamic State” as the culprit, multiple indications suggest something very different: that the individual who opened fire in the ambush was actually a member of the Syrian security apparatus operating under the Jolani-led authorities. In other words, part of the same structure that has been indirectly empowered and protected by Washington in post-Assad Syria.

We will look at: • The timeline of the incident and how the story changed • Why blaming “IS” so quickly helps maintain a convenient narrative • How local security forces linked to Jolani interact with US troops on the ground • The broader relationship between the Jolani system and US policy in northern Syria • What this reveals about the real nature of American presence in Syria after the fall of Assad

This episode is not about sensationalism. It is about connecting open-source information, leaks and local testimonies to understand how a supposed partner structure can become a direct threat – and why this is almost impossible to admit in official statements.

Global South

Russian envoy to US: Until Washington shifts policy, strategic dialogue can’t restart Ambassador Alexander Darchiev discusses prospects for relations with the United States

Russian envoy to US: Until Washington shifts policy, strategic dialogue can’t restart

Ambassador Alexander Darchiev discusses prospects for relations with the United States

Global South

Richard D. Wolff & Michael Hudson: China Just REJECTED Trump’s ‘Surrender Plan’

Modest concessions from China that were not a sacrifice. Xi enabled Trump to get what he really wants, a public relations orchestration.

Global South

Disproving the claims that the Zionist entity created, funded, or supported Hamas

A HISTORIOGRAPHIC ANALYSIS

Mujamma Haraket

Featured Image: Archival photo of old Gaza market and the historic Omari Mosque, ca. 1960

INTRODUCTION

In this article, I set out to dispel the narrative(s)—initially proffered by Yasser Arafat in the late 1980s and early 1990s but then popularized beyond intra-Palestine politics by liberal zionist journalists before being instrumentalized by the zionist entity’s intelligence apparatus—that the zionist entity “created”, “helped create”, or “funded” Hamas.[1] This set of claims enjoys deep popularity amongst would-be supporters of the Palestinian liberation struggle who, unwittingly, are repeating the choice framework of the zionist intelligence services and the Palestinian Authority’s Abu Mazen (viz., Mahmoud Abbas) who has pragmatically instrumentalized this claim to delegitimize the Hamas movement’s indigenous, local, and grassroots. Insofar as political science scholarship is concerned, this narrative also sports proponents like Beverly Milton-Edwards, who first proffers this thesis in her 1996 book, Islamic Politics in Palestine (London: Tauris Academic studies) and repeats it in her co-authored 2010 text with Stephen Farrell, Hamas: The Islamic Resistance Movement (Cambridge: Polity Press) and the two’s more recent, revised book, Hamas: The Quest for Power (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2024).

That this narrative has become broadly accepted and is now repeated by respected academics including Rashid Khalidi[2]—to then be circulated by an array of independent journalists like Dina Sayedahmed[3] and repeated by Borrell Fontelles, EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy (from 2019 until 2024)[4]—is unwarranted given the academic reception history of this narrative, which was thoroughly debated, challenged, and deflated at the time of Milton-Edwards’ initial publication. Indeed, in Khaled Hroub’s 2000 review of the book for the Journal of Palestine Studies,[5] Hroub—one of the most erudite and informed political scientists researching and publishing on the Hamas movement—adeptly and methodically dispels Milton-Edwards’ claim; in his subsequent book, Hamas: Political Thought and Practice, which contains the locus classicus contravening this claim, Hroub expounds on this issue, further invalidating its premises.[6] Nevertheless, decades later, the narrative persists, bolstered by zionist publications like Ha’aretz, The Times of Israel, and Yedioth Ahronoth; and piecemeal remarks from Shabak (viz., Shin Bet) intelligence operators like Yuval Diskin or ministers like Avigdor Liberman who, in the latter instance, strategically propounds Netanyahu’s supposedly propitiative instructions to Mossad chief, Yossi Cohen, characterizing his and Herzi Halevi’s allegedly placatory rationale vis-a-vis a similarly utterly weak-willed Prime Minister, remarking that “the Qataris” “[…] ‘begged’ […] to continue supporting” Hamas, with Netanyahu reputedly obliging in turn.[7] Even Amnesty International lends credibility to this claim in their 2022 report, adverting to Benjamin Netanyahu’s March 2019 remark concerning the zionist entity’s maintenance of “a separation policy between the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza” in order to “[help] prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state” before inferring that this bolsters the broader, unsubstantiated narrative of the entity’s lending direct assistance for Hamas.[8]

The supposed evidence for the claim that the zionist entity “funded”, “created”, or “helped create” Hamas draws from two historical instances, both of which the proponents of this narrative mischaracterize. The first (i) predates the establishment of Hamas on 8 December 1987[9] and concerns the licenses/permits that institutions related to the Palestinian branch of the Ikhwan (viz., Muslim Brotherhood) received. The latter concerns the 2018-2019 negotiations concerning the Great March of Return, where, following a lengthy and arduous negotiation process, the zionist entity conceded that the Hamas movement would be permitted to secure and transfer its Zakat funding through Qatar. This latter claim, though comparatively neoteric, not only consists in a misrepresentation of the historical record of the Great March of Return 2018-19 negotiations but has been purposed by political entrepreneurs/opposition candidates positioning themselves in contraposition to the Netanyahu government, utilizing this narrative to telegraph that, should they have led the government—or, alternatively, should they so elected to take up this role following the forthcoming elections—they would not participate in such reputed “mismanagement” of the Occupied Territories. The “Qatari cash payments” narrative has, in short, been opportunistically mobilized by a host of opposition candidates and representatives, proving as a wellspring with which to challenge the Netanyahu government’s administration of Gaza in particular.

In order to properly analyze the initial claim (i), we must adopt a historical understanding of the Palestinian Ikhwan/Muslim Brotherhood and how it garnered popularity from the Palestinian masses. It should be underscored at this preliminary point that the Palestinian Ikhwan/Muslim Brotherhood has, historically, been an organization with a distinct history, the proper understanding of which requires disambiguating it from other branches—particularly those that depart from the so-called “traditional Ikhwan” ideology inaugurated by Hasan al-Banna and subsequently promulgated by Sayyid Qutb. Even Palestinian political figures that, today, one conceives of as markedly distinct from the Hamas movement, including Yasser Arafat (viz., Abu Ammar) and Khalil al-Wazir (viz., Abu Jihad), were close affiliates or members of the Palestinian Ikhwan during the late 1950s.[10]

In the following section, I will adumbrate the history of the Palestinian Ikhwan and its development of social institutions. In the subsequent two sections, I will analyze the history of the claim, spurred by Arafat and Fatah, concerning the permits granted by the zionist occupation to al-Jam’iyah al-Islamiyah (the Islamic Society) and al-Mujamma’ al-Islami (the Islamic Center). In the final section, I will consider the more recent, though narratively continuous, issue of Qatar-issued cash payments that the entity, as a consequence of the Great March of Return negotiations, conceded to. Although there have been previous commentaries that aimed to dispel the narratives at hand,[11] this systematic review aims to both be more comprehensive in its political-historical exegesis and in its overview of the genealogy of this claim.

SECTION 1.

The Grassroots History of the Palestinian Ikhwan and its Social Institutions

In 1928, Hasan al-Banna formed the Ikhwan (Muslim Brotherhood) with the twin goals of Islamizing Egyptian society and liberating Egypt (and the Muslim world more broadly) from colonial rule. The 1930s saw the spread of the Hasan al-Banna School and its thinkers throughout the world. Abdel Rahman al-Sa’ati, the brother of al-Banna, and Muhammad As’ad al-Hakim toured Palestine, Lebanon, Syria in August 1935 to spread Ikhwan’s message. The two envoys, accompanied by Tunisian leader ‘Abdel ‘Aziz al-Tha’alibi met with Hajj Amin al-Husayni. For several years thereafter, the relations between Palestinians and the Ikhwan remained limited to an exchange of letters, mainly between al-Banna and Hajj Amin al-Husayni, expressing solidarity.

In March 1936, following the Great Palestine Revolt of 1936, the interest of the Ikhwan/Muslim Brotherhood in Palestine increased. The Ikhwan convened a special conference in March 1936 to support the rebellion. The General Central Committee in Aid of Palestine formed as an offshoot of the conference. From 1936-1939, the Ikhwan actively supplied moral and material aid to the Palestinian cause through the “Palestine Piaster” contribution campaign, which issues declarations and pamphlets attacking the British for their policies in Palestine. The Ikhwan also called for a boycott of Jewish zionist magazines in Egypt, which were being circulated by the Jewish Agency with the goal of inculcating Arab support for the Yishuv settler movement. It distributed, against the wishes of the British authorities during the time, the eighty-page booklet, Fire and Destruction in Palestine,[12] which was issued by the Palestine Higher Arab Committee. This resulted in the arrest of Hassan al-Banna, the founder of the Ikhwan/Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. Subsequently, the Ikhwan in Egypt sent letters of protest to the British authorities of British Mandatory Palestine.

In 1943, a genuine Palestinian Muslim Brotherhood organization was formed: the Makarem Society of Jerusalem. During the subsequent year, 1944, Palestinian delegates were sent to the Fifth Convention of the Brotherhood, held in Aleppo. According to veterans of the movement, however, it was 1945 that the first official branch of the Ikhwan/Muslim Brotherhood Palestine was established in Gaza after the end of the Second World War. It was headed by-Hajj Zafer-al-Shawwa. Subsequently, the Ikhwan’s branches in Gaza grew to four: one belonging to the administrative office, another in al-Rimal, a third in Harat al-Zaitunah, and a fourth in al-Daraj. There were other branches in the Gaza Strip, in Khan Yunis, Rafah, and Buraij and Nusairat camps. Delegates from these branches became members of the Ikhwan’s administrative office in the Gaza region. Indeed, it took until 1945 for the Ikhwan to establish its Palestinian affiliate, the Palestinian Ikhwan/Muslim Brotherhood. By 1947, there were 25 branches throughout Palestine with a combined membership of between 12,000 and 20,000. The Palestinian Muslim Brotherhood’s popularity stemmed not only from the Palestinian resistance to British occupation but also the equally pressing issue of increased Jewish immigration of the Yishuv movement.

From 29 until 30 March 1946, the General conference of the Muslim Brotherhood branches in Palestine convened in Jerusalem. The conference was attended by delegates of the Ikhwan’s Palestinian branches; the conference was called by members of the Jerusalem branch to debate how to best unify the efforts of the Ikhwan’s members and establish a central office in Palestine. By 1947, there were thirty-eight branches and over 10,000 registered members, drawn from both the ruling elite and lower classes, of the Palestinian Ikhwan/Muslim Brotherhood. In October 1946, the Ikhwan held a convention in Haifa in which delegates from Trans-Jordan and Lebanon took part. This was the first convention to be devoted to topics of general national concern, including the issue of the British Mandate government of Palestine and its responsibility for the ongoing political instability, as well as placing the Palestine problem before the UN Security Council.

In October 1947, anticipating the Nakba, the Palestinian Ikhwan/Muslim Brotherhood called a convention in the wake of increased onslaught of Zionist immigration and emerging peril in Palestine. At the convention, the Muslim Brotherhood declared “its determination to defend the country by all means and its willingness to cooperate with all nationalistic bodies to that end,” adding that “[t]he Muslim Brotherhood will bear its full share of the cost of resistance.” The Brotherhood played an important role in uniting the two largest paramilitary organizations in Palestine: the Futuwwah and Najjadah, which had been in competition with one another. The military units belonging to these organizations united under the name of the Arab Youth Organization. Mahmoud Labib, the authorized representative of the Egyptian Ikhwan/Muslim Brotherhood for military affairs was put in charge of training. Soon, however, the British authorities expelled him from Palestine.

During the fighting of 1948, the Jaffa branch of the Palestinian Brotherhood was most active in terms of fighting. Within the branch, there existed a secret military organization that enlisted a limited number of men with proper qualifications. The Ikhwan in the region assumed responsibility for defense of the Bassa, Tal al-Rish, ‘Ajami, and Nuzha areas in Jaffa and for maintaining law and order within the city. They obtained some of their arms by way of Fawzi al-Qawuqji, head of the Kata’ib al-Jihad al-Muqaddas (Sacred Jihad Battalions). The Ikhwan joined the Jihad al-Muqaddas in fighting in and around Jerusalem. In the villages of Ramallah and Silwan, the Brethren not only joined local formations in combat, but they also formed their own rescue squadron, which was active in the area. The Brethren also fought alongside ‘Abdel Qader al-Husayni in the famous al-Qastal battle. The leader of the Brotherhood’s rescue squad, ‘Abdel Razzaq ‘Abdel Jalil, was wounded in the engagement. After the 1948 defeat and the loss of most of Palestine, the Brotherhood in the West Bank was incorporated into the Brotherhood of Jordan under a single organization. The Brethren in the Gaza Strip, due to their proximity to Egypt and total Egyptian control of the Gaza Strip, formed a separate organization that was in close contact with the Brotherhood’s center in Cairo. Due to this, the once fortified linkage between the Brotherhood in Gaza and the West bank was, to a significant degree, severed; the Brotherhood in the Gaza Strip took on revolutionary and military traits but the Brotherhood in the West Bank adopted a political and educational approach.

The Palestinian Ikhwan/Muslim Brotherhood branches became severed by the creation of the zionist entity in 1948. Following the Nakba, as is well known, Jordan annexed the West Bank and the Gaza Strip came under Egyptian control. Refugees became an important part of the Ikhwan’s constituency as, unlike the traditional elite, it succeeded in establishing a presence in all major refugee camps; this presaged the broadly grassroots working class support that its Islamic and social services and charity institutions would garner. The Muslim Brotherhood movement united with the movement in Jordan and those in Gaza Strip formed its own administrative office, led by Sheikh Umar Sawwan until 1954.

Following annexation of West Bank to Jordan in 1950, Palestinians became Jordanian citizens. The Ikhwan organizations in the West Bank and former Trans-Jordan united under the name of the Muslim Brotherhood in Jordan. It became focused on da’wa and educational activities rather than military activities. This served as the driving force behind the convening of the General Islamic Conference in Jerusalem, in April 1953. The conference met several times in Jerusalem and Damascus for two consecutive years, attracting Islamic delegates from China, Indonesia, Iran, Malaysia, Pakistan and Arab countries. The Jordanian government prevented the conference from meeting in 1955 and closed down its permanent office in Jerusalem in July 1955. however the Jordanian government did allow the conference to resume its meetings in June 1956.

Between 1950 and 1955, some Ikhwan groups in the Gaza Strip formed military cells (again prefiguring the military wing of Hamas that would transpire decades later). Two secret militant organizations were formed to engage in armed struggle: Youth for vengeance [Shabab al-Tha’r] and the Battalion of Justice [Katibat al-Haq]. Prominent leaders in Youth for Vengeance included: Salah Khalaf, As’ad al-Saftawi, A’id al-Muzaiyin, Omar Abu al-Khair, Isma’il Suwairjo, and Muhammad Isma’il al-Nuni. The membership of the Battalion of Justice included Khalil al-Wazir (Abu Jihad), Hassan Abdel Hamid, ‘Abd Abu Marahil, and Hamad al-‘Aidi. These organizations would provide inspiration for the formation of Fatah, the Palestine National Liberation Movement, in 1957. Notably, all of the members of the Battalion later joined Fatah, as did most members of the Youth for Vengeance.[13]

In 1954, the Ikhwan grew increasingly vocal in its criticisms of Jordan and King Hussein’s strong ties to the West. It staged demonstrations in 1954 to protest the presence of the Jordanian army (i.e., the Arab Legion). It opposed the Baghdad Pact (a position that forced Muhammad ‘Abdel Rahman Khalifah, the Brotherhood’s ombudsman, to seek refuge in Damascus in 1955). It also took issue with the Eisenhower Doctrine, which the Jordanian regime supported. Parliamentarians representing the Brotherhood voted against granting confidence to some cabinet appointments by the King of Jordan, notably that of Wasfi al-Tal in 1963. Still, during this period, mutual interests between Jordan and the Ikhwan tended to triumph over suspicions and the turbulent relationship. This allowed it to maintain its existence.

In 1954, Gamal Abdel Nasser outlawed the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. The Palestinian branch experienced a devastating blow and almost disappeared. It was reduced to a small number of students, teachers, and workers, functioning almost entirely underground. Zafer al-Shawwa was the first to withdraw from the Ikhwan following the decree to dissolve the group. He had headed the Brotherhood’s administrative office in Gaza and was also the appointed mayor of the city. He issued a statement declaring his support of the revolutionary government in Cairo and of all its measures against the Brotherhood. This period is significant as it saw the contraction of the Ikhwan and its reorientation towards institution-building.

From 1954 onwards, the Gazan Brotherhood/Ikhwan became caught in the power struggle between Egypt’s Gamal ‘Abd al-Nasser and the Egyptian Ikhwan, in an Nasser’s clampdown on autonomous Palestinian resistance groups. Within this hostile climate, the Gazan Ikhwan decided to at least temporarily turn its back on resistance, but to little avail. By the late 1950s, most of its members were in prison or exile, leaving only a handful of supporters at large, while Arab Nationalism became the dominant ideology. The decision to renounce resistance led activists like Khalid al-Wazir (Abu Jihad) to leave the Ikhwan and set up their own movement, Fatah, in the late 1950s. The West Bank Ikhwan had some 700-1,000 members but were overshadowed by the 2,300 members of the Palestinian Communist Party and the larger Jordanian Ikhwan, which they integrated. The Ikhwan, although they organized some weapons training programming, focused on welfare and local politics, winning parliamentary seats in Hebron and Nablus; following the Jordanian Ikhwan’s decision to be a “loyal opposition” to the King, they subjugated calls for the liberation of Palestine to the King’s agenda, focusing more on anti-imperialist and moralist themes, although they did champion Palestinian issues like the right of return for refugees. In West Bank, the Ikhwan’s subjugation was prompted by the traditional elite in the organization who, unlike the predominantly lower class Gazan leadership, had a greater stake in preserving the status quo. After 1954, the Palestinian Ikhwan in Gaza had continued working in secret, as the Nasser’s regime exacted crackdowns and persecutions of its members.

In 1955, the Ikhwan emerged as foremost political movement in Gaza Strip. When Nasser banned the Ikhwan in Gaza, which was then under Egyptian rule, it became a clandestine organization pursued by the police, as was also the case with the Communists and the Ba’thists. Enrollment in the Brotherhood dropped and the principal cadres fled the Gaza Strip in order to avoid repression and search for a source of income. Among the leaders who emigrated were Fathi al-Bal’awi, Salah Khalaf, Salim al-Za’nun, ‘Awni al-Qishawi, Zudhi Saqallah, Sulaiman Abu Karsh, and Kamal al-Wahidi. Nevertheless, the group remained politically active at a grassroots level. The Ikhwan in the Gaza Strip helped abort a 1955 proposal to resettle some Palestinian refugees in Egypt’s Sinai peninsula. Furthermore, the Ikhwan organized popular demonstrations jointly with the Communists and Ba’thists, demonstrating its openness to coalition-building.

From 1955-1956, the Ikhwan again hewed to its militant past, demonstrating the cyclic-processual nature of armed resistance and social services-based activism that the Palestinian Ikhwan (and, later, Hamas) would adopt. The Ikhwan in the West Bank had begun to train with weapons smuggled across the Sinai. The head of the Hebron Branch of the Ikhwan had struck an agreement with the commander of Jordanian forces in the region for members of his branch to receive training from army instructions. During the zionist occupation in 1956-1957, which lasted 6 months, the Ikhwan formed a National Resistance Front with the Ba’thists, adopting a strategy of engagement in armed struggle against the Israelis.

July 1957 saw a memorandum from Khalil al-Wazir (Abu Jihad) to the leadership of the Ikhwan in the Gaza Strip recommending that the Palestinian Muslim Brotherhood take up the responsibility of preparing for armed struggle. The Palestinian Muslim Brotherhood did not take Khalil al-Qazir’s memorandum seriously, however, fearing that it was ill prepared and this might attract attention from Nasser’s police; the leadership thus wished to remain secretive and circumscribe the ranks of the organization. Nevertheless, in 1958-1959, members from the Palestinian Ikhwan who believed in the need for a mass mobilized movement undertook a project of actively recruiting individuals behind the backs of the leadership. Thus came to fruition the establishment of the Palestine National Liberation Movement-Fatah, which attracted some prominent Brethren who had initially remained loyal to the Brotherhood. These included Salim al-Za’nun, Salah Khalaf, As’ad al-Saftawi, Kamal ‘Udwan, Abu Yusuf al-Najjar, Sa’id al-Nuzayin, Ghaleb al-Wazir, and others who did not become as well known.[14]

Rather than adopt the Fatah option for the liberation of Palestine, which depended on securing support from Arab countries in the struggle with Israel, the mainstream Ikhwan in Palestine chose the alternative of consolidating the power of its existing organization with the expectation that, when it succeeded in its mission, it could and would liberate Palestine with the support of the entire Islamic world. The Ikhwan felt that it could appeal to the fact that Muslims everywhere had a sacred duty to save al-Quds, which was the first qibla in Islam, and to liberate the land of al-isra’ wal mi‘raj. With this being its focus, during the late 1950s and throughout the 1960s, the Palestinian Ikhwan pursued a policy of not engaging in resistance. Both the Gazan and West Bank branches, for different reasons, had decided to focus on social and political activities.

During this period, of the 1950s-60s, the Ikhwan in the West Bank capitalized on the relative tolerance of the Jordanian government (particularly in comparison to that of Nasser’s Egypt). The Brotherhood won seats in the Jordanian parliament, representing such Palestinian cities as Hebron and Nablus in the 1954, 1956, and 1962 elections. It should also be said that, in 1960, the Ikhwan—motivated by its belief that the Palestinian liberation movement should prioritize social institution-building and Islamic cohesion—adopted an official decision against the formation of Fatah. While the Ikhwan preserved a non-hostile attitude towards Fatah, it argued that Fatah’s militant project was doomed to failure. This marked a historical turn whereby for the first time since the 1930s, the Palestinian armed resistance movement and the Palestinian Islamists saw a clear split in strategy. The Palestinian Ikhwan focused on elections and social programming. For example, in 1962: Muslim Brotherhood in West Bank’s candidate, Sheikh Mashhour al-Damen won highest number of votes in Nablus in 1962. The Ikhwan also regrouped, believing that its program would benefit from a unified stance. It formed the Palestinian Organization, which the Palestinian Ikhwan in the Arab Gulf countries was affiliated with, electing Hani Bdisonas their Comptroller General in the summer of 1962.

Having outlined the precise nature of the Palestinian Ikhwan and how it became a force focused on social programming and elections, we can now turn to the issue of its gaining permits/licenses during the period of zionist occupation.

SECTION 2.

Permits/Licenses allotted to al-Jam’iyah al-Islamiyah (the Islamic Society) and al-Mujamma’ al-Islami (the Islamic Center): Contesting Narrative (i) that the Zionist Entity helped “create” Hamas

This section focuses on the claim that Hamas was “created” by the zionist entity—a claim which is decades old, oft repeated and relies on the Palestinian Ikhwan institutions receiving permits for operation during the period in which the zionist entity occupied and managed all institutions operating in Gaza and the West bank. Because, compared to the more recent “Qatari cash payments” claim (viz., narrative (ii)), this claim concerning the Palestinian Ikhwan institutions’ receiving licenses is the most entrenched claim, I will spend the most time with it.

After the disastrous war/Naksa of June 1967 and Israeli capture of Golan Heights, Sinai, and the rest if Palestine, the Islamic movement began to regain its vitality amongst Palestinians; however, its institutions—like all Palestinian institutions—had to operate under zionist institution’s surveillance, with Gaza and the West Bank held under zionist occupation.

As Azzam Tamimi recounts, it was in 1966 or 1976 when Sheikh Yassin formally joined the Ikhwan.[15] This also coincided with what is called the Ikhwan’s “mosque building phase” where, between 1967 to 1975, it campaigned to build mosques and Islamic institutions that would “mobilize, unite, and consolidate the faith of a new generation so as to prepare it for the confrontation with Zionism”.[16] One of the most important such Islamic institutions was al-Jam’iyah al-Islamiyah (the Islamic Society). As Tamimi recounts:

In 1967, after working for nearly a decade from their own homes and in the mosques, the Ikhwan deemed the situation appropriate for the launch of their first public platform. This was al-Jam’iyah al-Islamiyah (the Islamic Society), whose objective was to conduct educational, recreational, and sporting programs for the youth. The Israelis did not see this association as any kind of threat, and granted the Ikhwan a license for its establishment. Run from a room in al-Shati’ (beach) Mosque, the society’s activities included sports, recreational trips, scouting activities, and public lectures on religious and social issues. Meanwhile, from his base at al-Abbas Mosque, Sheikh Yassin succeeded in collecting enough money from donors to reprint the last volume of Sayed Qutb’s Qur’anic exegesis, entitled Fi dhilal al-Qur’an (In the shade of the Qur’an). To ensure that it gained the widest possible circulation, and especially to encourage students to read it, he divided it into five separate sections, printing 2,000 copies of each. This project helped change the way the Ikhwan was perceived in Gaza. Qutb […] was introduced to the readers both as a revolutionary fighting for justice and as a scholar of the highest standing.[17]

That, in 1967, al-Jam’iyah al-Islamiyah (the Islamic Society) received permits for the educational activities run in al-Shati (beach) Mosque would later serve as one of the sources of the claim initiated by Arafat and then repeated by the earliest zionist journalist popularizer of this narrative, Michal Sela, who proffered it in a 1999 Jerusalem Post article.[18] However, the permit was granted under the auspices that al-Jam’iyah al-Islamiyah was part of exclusively Islamic erudition, with the zionist occupation presuming that the Palestinian Ikhwan in Gaza had—as was their publicly stated platform—abdicated armed resistance.

It should also be highlighted that this publicly projected stance was not the thorough-going position of the Palestinian Ikhwan but that of the Gaza branch, which is why al-Jam’iyah al-Islamiyah (the Islamic Society) was permitted a license (with then-Prime Minister’s Levi Eshkol’s occupational government allotting such licenses for what they regarded as purely social organizations). Such was not the case in the West Bank, which saw the participation of the Palestinian Ikhwan in the 1968-70 resistance campaign known as the “Sheikhs’ Camps” in Jordan in collaboration with Fatah; around 300 men were trained and posted to seven commando bases. This activity was circumscribed to the Palestinian Ikhwan outside of the Gaza Strip, which launched a campaign of guerrilla raids across the Jordan border with the zionist entity. It set up four bases under the banner of Fatah in the northern Jordan Valley near the border. Apart from lending its name, Fatah had nothing to do with those bases. The decision to set up the bases had been taken by the overall leadership of the Ikhwan/Muslim Brotherhood in the Arab world, not by the Gaza Strip Ikhwan. The Jordanian (including West Bank) Ikhwan were the most enthusiastic, as were the ones in the Sudan; however, the Gaza branch opposed the idea as they thought the endeavor would prove futile.[19] From 1968-70, the Ikhwan in the Jordan Valley engaged in some significant military operations across the border with the zionist entity; again, this effort was at the instigation of the general headquarters of the Ikhwan in the Arab world and was, according to Abu ‘Azza, not an initiative of the Palestinian Ikhwan itself.[20]

While Fatah sought to liberate Palestine via military initiatives that they believed would bring regular Arab armies into Battle, the Ikhwan in Gaza continued proselytizing activities, seeking to win adherents and create a generation of Palestinians that could carry out the task of liberation and rally the Islamic umma behind the effort. The Gaza Ikhwan in particular focused on creating mosques, charities, kindergartens, Qur’anic schools, and, occasionally, medical clinics equipped with mobile units that granted free of charge medical service to the general population, including those outside of urban centers; these mobile clinics, which employed Ikhwan medical specialists, would travel to the rural areas to treat farmers. Ikhwan pharmacists would also help in dispensing medicine at low prices. The Ikhwan would also pay for customary Islamic celebrations. They maintained these, and al-Jam’iyah al-Islamiyah (the Islamic Society), via zakat communities—not funding from the zionist entity.

Precipitated by the September 1970 “Black September”,[21] which found the Palestine Liberation Organization relocating to Lebanon, the Palestinian Ikhwan, reacting to the large scale of Palestinians massacred in Jordan, adopted a uniform position in both the West Bank and Gaza Strip; it now sought to exclusively pursue an educational mission.

Encouraged by the successes of the al-Jam’iyah al-Islamiyah (the Islamic Society), in 1973, a new successor-institution, al-Mujamma’ al-Islami (the Islamic Center) was founded in Gaza by Sheikh Ahmad Yassin and a number of adherents, whose prominent figures would later win international notoriety as the leaders of Hamas. These included Dr. Mahmour Zahar, Dr. Abdel Aziz Rantissi, Ibrahim Yazouri, Abd al-Fattah Dukhan, Issa al-Najjar, and Salah Shehadeh. These founders were recently graduated students from the lower middle classes. Al-Mujamma’ al-Islami was created to render further social, medical, and educational services to, in particular, the community of Jawrat al-Shams, south of Gaza City. Again, the funding was, contra claims that would later be made, entirely endogenous. As Tamimi summarizes, the:

[…] building was funded by donations collected from the wealthier Palestinians of the West Bank, and once construction was complete, an application for a license to operate was lodged with the Israeli occupation authorities. The Israelis issued the necessary license, which, however, a few days later, they revoked. It later emerged that a prominent Palestinian figure in Gaza had advised the Israeli authorities to withdraw the license because of a personal dispute with the project committee over his own role in it. This prominent Palestinian […] [was] believed to have links to the Israelis [….] After repeated appeals, and through the good offices of another prominent Palestinian figure […] the Israeli authorities re-issued the license and the Center was opened. Al-Mujamma’ (the Center) had a much wider scope than al-Jam’iyah (the Society) and its objectives included the provision of a variety of social services and the establishment of mosques, kindergartens, schools, and clinics across the Gaza Strip. The services and facilities provided by the Center proved so popular that a branch was soon opened in Khan Yunis.[22]

That the licenses were readily revoked upon complaint should clarify that this institution was not “created” by the zionist entity but merely tolerated, insofar as it appeared to be at odds with any resistance-related activity.

Al-Mujamma‘ al-Islami (the Islamic Center) functioned as the nexus of the Palestinian Ikhwan’s charitable activity and helped the group garner a significant popularity amongst lower and lower-middle socioeconomic classes—the very groups that would serve as Hamas’s base in future decades. Al-Mujamma‘ al-Islami (the Islamic Center) was followed by a number of related institutions, including, 1976, al-Jam‘iyyah al-Islam‘iyyah (the Islamic Association), “which focused on educational, social welfare activities in areas neglected by others: refugee camps and poor urban quarters”[23]. Al-Jam’iyya al-Islāmiyya (the Islamic Association) was not founded by Ahmad Yassin but by Isna’il Abu Shanab and Ahmad Badar, though it was effectively an instrument for Al-Mujamma‘ al-Islami (the Islamic Center). Primarily, Al-Jam’iyya al-Islāmiyya (the Islamic Association) established kindergartens, health clinics, summer camps, and various religious and social activities.

In 1978, the year that Al-Mujamma‘ al-Islami (the Islamic Center) was legalized in Gaza, the Palestinian Ikhwan merged with the Ikhwan in Jordan in one organization called the “Bilad al-Sham” organization. This was also the year that the Islamic University of Gaza was founded, Gaza’s first university, whose “founding board members were mainly members of the Ikhwan who were also involved with the al-Mujamma’ al-Islami (the Islamic Center), at the time presided over by Sheikh Yassin.”[24] Notably, in 1981, Al-Mujamma‘ al-Islami (the Islamic Center) helped with the creation of a sister organization, “al-Jam‘iyyah al-Jam‘iyyat al-Shabbat al-Muslimat (Young Women’s Islamic Association), laying the foundations for the popularity Hamas was later to enjoy among women”[25]

These organizations funding was entirely through the Islamic pillar of zakat, or alms-giving. This would prove prudent during the First Intifada, when the zionist entity would claim that the Palestinian Ikhwan’s charities funded violent acts; as Tamimi writes,

[…] no evidence to prove such allegations has ever been provided” and “in order to avert any legal sanction, it was ensured that zakat committees and the institutions that supported them abroad were properly licensed. Meticulous care was taken to ensure their activities were absolutely legal and transparent; and not a single penny of the money received by these charities were allowed to slip into other projects, especially not to the military effort [that transpired during the First Intifada], which had its own discrete sources of funding.[26]

These organizations collectively “succeeded in more than doubling the number of mosques under their authority”.[27] The proliferation of mosques, which accompanied coeval social services, burgeoned with celerity, rising from 200 in 1967 to 600 in 1987. As Leila Seurat correctly summarizes “[i]nvolvement in proselytizing activities was meant to prepare the next generations to liberate Palestine […] These initiatives were at the time tolerated by Israel”.[28] Toleration is quite distinct from creation or instigation, however; yet the toleration—which, as aforementioned, was not always sustained, with these institutions subject to permit-rescindment by the occupying zionist entity depending on its whims. Yet some commentators, particularly those liberal Zionists like Michal Sela and Charles Enderlin, have argued, making unsubstantiated claims, that this toleration was due to the zionist entity’s hoping that Al-Jam’iyya al-Islāmiyya (the Islamic Association) and its related organizations would serve as an effective counterweight to the PLO, which pursued military activities.[29] There is no evidence that this was the case, however, and the Ikhwan in Palestine was, indeed, soon to pursue resistance activities such that, were this to have been the zionist occupation’s motivating thinking, it too would have been mistaken. However, this did not prevent early zionist commentators—particularly liberal zionist journalists who used this narrative as a cudgel to critique their more right-wing government—from arguing, as Sela did in May 1989 article arguing that:

Until a few years ago, the organizations in Gaza and the Islamic University received much encouragement from the military government. The various organizations were registered by law as charities. The military government accepted them, knowing that they were being used, inter alia, for political activity, bringing in money from abroad for their activities. They were allowed to build mosques, whose number increased from 70 in 1967 to 180 today. The military government believed that their activity would undermine the power of the PLO and of leftist organizations in Gaza. They even supplied some of their activists with weapons, for their protection.[30]

Sela’s claim that nascent military arm of the Palestinian Ikhwan’s Islamic Resistance Movement (IRM), formed in 1980, was supplied weapons by the zionist entity is a sheer fabrication. As Rub‘i al-Madhun recounts, during the early 1980s, Sheikh Yassin established the military wing of the Ikhwan in the Gaza Strip, which was led in the beginning by Abdul-Rahman Tamraz and then Salah Shehadeh.[31] This was not only an entirely endogenous creation but the issue of arms was a highly surreptitious affair that, when exposed, resulted in severe punishment from the occupying entity. Relatedly:

The first precursors of the establishment of the military wing [of Hamas] appeared in 1980 when the leadership sent some of its cadres abroad for military training. Sheikh Ahmad Yasin established the military wing [viz., the IRM] in GS [viz., Gaza Strip], led in the beginning by ‘Abdul-Rahman Tamraz and then Salah Shehadeh. However, the military wing was exposed by a suspicious arms dealer, leading to a crackdown against it […] [between 25 February – 1 July 1984] […] The Israeli authorities arrested Sheikh Ahmad Yasin for belonging to 13 years in prison. Yasin was released in a prisoner swap between Palestinian resistance forces and Israel on 20/5/1985.[32]

Indeed, the arms that the IRM obtained were either purchased from Fatah or through the black market, using funds that were provided from within the Ikhwan by its own networks.[33] Tamimi provides what is the most detailed English-language account, adumbrating a committee that transpired inside of the Palestinian Ikhwan that planned for the group to take up arms—a program it clandestinely maintained despite widespread critique from the PLO that it remained separate from the ongoing resistance activities; this committee began as a relatively modest group of operatives who were attached to the department of the Secretariat of the Palestinian Ikhwan’s Executive Office. It would eventually burgeon into a massive network of organizations that collectively became known as Hamas. It is worth quoting Tamimi’s historical outline of the formation of this committee in full:

[…] the Palestine Committee, at times referred to as the “Inside Committee,” headed by the Amman-based Secretary of the Tanzim Bilad al-Sham Executive Office, received a sum of $70,000, raised by the Kuwaiti branch [of the Ikhwan]. This was to be delivered to the Ikhwan in Gaza to fund their first jihad project, to which the committee had, in confidence, given its backing. The money was to be used for the purchase of weapons and ammunition and to send a number of individuals to Amman to receive military training.

Only Sheikh Ahmad Yassin and a very close circle of his associates were aware of this project, plans for which were finalized in 1982. Other members of the Gaza Executive Committee of the Ikhwan were not informed. Outside Palestine, no one knew about the plan apart from those directly involved in the Palestine Committee, whose role was to provide the funds and the facilities to train the Gazans in Jordan. A group of Ikhwan members from Gaza came to Jordan, received the necessary training, and returned to Gaza to form the first cell in the Ikhwan’s military apparatus. Sheikh Yassin set up two separate systems for the purchase of arms, which were readily available for sale in Israel and usually originated with the Israeli army. Israeli officers and soldiers would steal weapons and sell them on the black market. Those who did this were generally doing it to support their drug addictions. However, the Ikhwan members who were assigned the task of procuring the weapons by way of one of these two routes lacked experience and took insufficient precautions. Consequently, they fell into a trap set up for them by collaborators, and were tricked into buying weapons from Israeli agents. The plan was uncovered, and those who were interrogated by the Israelis, under severe torture, divulged the names of their superiors. Initially Sheikh Yassin believed the arrests were the result of some accident, but he soon saw that those targeted were progressively higher in the ladder of responsibility. If the process was allowed to continue, he concluded, the Israelis would eventually reach him. Only two people knew of his involvement: those who headed the two weapons-purchasing networks. He immediately ordered these two men to leave the country. One of them, Dr. Ahmad al-Milh, fled successfully to Yemen, where he has since remained. The other, Dr. Ibrahim al-Maqadmah, could not find a way to leave. He was arrested and confessed under torture that Sheikh Yassin was the ringleader. Sheikh Yassin was immediately arrested.

At the time, rumors were circulating in Gaza to the effect that the Ikhwan had been buying weapons in order to use them against their opponents in the other Palestinian factions. The Ikhwan had already made powerful enemies in the ranks of Fatah and the left wing of the Palestinian nationalist movement. These rumors found ready credence, owing to the tension that gripped Gaza at the time [….] However, on 15 April 1984, an Israeli military court found Sheikh Yassin guilty of plotting to destroy the State of Israel and sentenced him to thirteen years imprisonment. Ibrahim al-Maqadmah was sentenced to, and served, eight years. A key figure in the plot was Salah Shihadah, whom the court was unable to convict because he would not confess. Nevertheless, the Israelis continued to suspect his involvement and he spent two years in administrative detention. The Israeli authorities were able to seize half the weapons the Ikhwan had bought and stored. However, the other half, purchased through the second network, which had not been broken, remained hidden. These arms were used in part some two years later when military actions were taken against Israel’s collaborators ahead of the eruption of the intifada in 1987.[34]

This passage reveals that contra Sela’s assertions, the zionist entity persecuted the Ikhwan due to its weapons cache, rather than supported it. The funding, too, as the passage reveals, was entirely endogenous, untethered to the zionist entity. Furthermore, so were the ideological tenets bolstering the Palestinian Ikhwan and Inside Committee’s thinking. The organizers, who emphasized attention to ideology and theorizing, were guided by the writings and guidance of Munir Shafiq, who was then a newcomer to the arena of Islamic struggle. Shafiq had a notable influence on the formulation of resistance strategy for those organizations. Likewise, a booklet by Khaled Salah al-Din, “Al-Halaqa al- mafqooda bain al-thawra al-filastiniyya wal itijah al-Islami” [The missing link between the Palestinian revolution and the Islamic trend], which appeared shortly before the First Intifada, had a great influence. These were the indigenous intellectual and theoretical building blocks of the Islamic struggle for the liberation of Palestine, which developed quite independently of the zionist entity’s supervision.

SECTION 3

Abu Ammar and Fatah’s Popularization of the Narrative that Hamas was “created” by the Zionist Entity—an Account Later Popularized by Beverly Milton Edwards

Apart from zionist commentators, however, there is a second and perhaps more significant reason that this narrative that the zionist entity “created” Hamas by helping found these institutions proliferated. Unfortunately, Arafat himself contributed to the popularization of this account, charging “that Hamas was established with the direct or indirect support of Israel”, reiterating “this accusation since the formation of Hamas,” despite, as Khaled Hroub states “the occurrence of such accusations seems to correlate with the amount of tension between Hamas and the PLO at any given time”.[35] Arafat made such statements in the 24 September 1992 issue of “Al-Quds al-Arabi” and the 28 February 1993 issue of “Al-Sharq al-Awsat”. However, these fallacious statements were motivated by an enmity that grew out of bitterness to Hamas’ opposition to the so-called Madrid-Oslo “peace process”. Let us now turn to this to better understand why this narrative first transpired.

As Hamas established itself during the First Intifada—with its first communique issued on 14 December 1987—and was organically part and parcel of this uprising, it was politically necessary for it to form alliances with other Palestinian resistance organizations, which were also involved in the Intifada. Notably, these relationships were contextualized by the then accelerating pace of the so-called “peace process”, which picked up in parallel with the Intifada as a Palestinian state was declared at the Algiers 1988 Palestinian National Council (PNC) session. With the subsequent 1991 Madrid Conference and the 1993 Oslo Agreement, those Palestinian political factions opposed to normalization recognized the need for coordination with one another.

In a letter from prison at the end of 1993, Sheikh Yassin suggested that Hamas should be pragmatic and utility-maximizing in coordination with other resistance groups.[36] George Habash, secretary general of the PFLP, spoke with notable enthusiasm about Hamas in the publication “Filastin al-Muslima”, remarking that:

From the ideological position of total confrontation, I welcome Hamas joining the swell of total resistance to the Zionist enemy. Whoever is familiar with that (Islamic) movement—its slogans, its priorities, and the ambiguities that beset the occupied territories because of the positions it has adopted—and compares that with its position today, after the intifada, cannot but notice a huge difference and has to welcome warmly its joining the nationalist movement. There can be no doubt but that the participation of Hamas and [Palestinian] Islamic Jihad in the battle is a victory for the nationalist struggle and a boost to the popular uprising.[37]

The secretary general of the DFLP, Nayef Hawatmeh was more reserved at first, remarking that Hamas’s conduct in its early years was at odds with the Unified National Leadership of the Intifada. This was because Hawatmeh believed Hamas should have joined the Unified National Leadership. As is well known, Arafat and the PLO’s leadership had taken over the Unified National Leadership of the Uprising (also known as UNLU), which they announced on 8 January 1988. UNLU had, under Arafat, thus sought to assert Fatah and the PLO as the leading faction in the Intifada, poised contra Hamas. When the Intifada broke out on 9 December 1987, Hamas initially began to organize its activities and public demonstrations independently.[38] The PFLP and DFLP, on the other hand, joined Fatah in the formation of the UNLU. When the 19th Palestinian National Council held its session in November 1988, the leftist factions, along with Fatah, collectively agreed on the decision to declare Palestinian independence, which Hamas regarded as an implicit recognition of the Partition Plan for Palestine, United Nations General Assembly Resolution 181 of 29 November 1947.

However, the PFLP refused to approve UN Security Council Resolution 242, which deals with the Palestinian people as refugees. Although these leftist factions followed the peace process that Fatah’s leadership spearheaded in Madrid in 1991, they eventually took a clear oppositional stance to the signing of the Oslo Accords on 13 September 1993. Most of the Palestinian leftist groups banded together in the “Alliance of Ten Factions”, which also included Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. This provided the basis for a joint action alliance that included protests during the Intifada and a wide political opposition to the Oslo Accords. Hamas, PIJ and the leftist groups’ alliance had its origins in a meeting held on the sidelines of the Conference in Support of the Intifada in Tehran in October 1991, shortly before the Madrid Peace Conference. Then the alliance was formalized on 1 January 1994, when it announced itself a part of the “Alliance of Ten Factions”. Fatah, sidelined from and disgruntled by this alliance between the leftist factions, Hamas, and PIJ, regarding Hamas as the driving force, treated Hamas with chronic reluctance at first and enmity later; throughout the Intifada of Stones, it began accusing Hamas of being an inorganic agent, created by the zionist entity or a cut-out of Iran that was seeking to render an alternative to the PLO.

Arafat was not alone in making these claims. While acknowledging a certain amount of inevitable coordination with Hamas, Salah Khalaf (Abu Iyad), the third most important PLO leader during the intifada, argued Hamas was attempting to carve itself out as an alternative to the Unified National Leadership (UNLU). Hoping to delegitimize Hamas, Abu Iyad fallaciously averred that the zionist entity was placing its hopes on this alternative to UNLU, therein invigorating what would become a regular Fatah trope, repeated frequently. Fatah’s position became ossified, with leaders repeating that Hamas had received support in its founding from the entity. In his attempts to delegitimize Hamas and the leftist-political Islam alliance it had effectively rendered, Abu Iyad furthered the fallacious narrative popularized by other Fatah members, including Arafat, “that Israel tried to use Hamas to undermine the Palestinian national movement”; it should be highlighted that these statements were produced as early as March 1990 and only multiplied in the following months.[39]

That Hamas proved principled in its refusal to bow to the so-called “peace process” only furthered the obdurate Fatah line. In April 1990, the PLO had invited Hamas to participate in the concurrent meetings of the preparatory committee working on reconstituting the Palestinian National Council (PNC). This invitation was envisaged as a preliminary step to Hamas’s admission to the PNC and constituted the first official recognition by the PLO of Hamas as a nationalist Palestinian group that was due respect and had to be dealt with in that capacity. Hamas, however, declined this invitation. Three months Later, the PLO, in its weekly publication, “Filastin al-Thawra” (the PLO’s official organ) accused Hamas of deserting the unity of nationalist ranks and of trying to deviate from “the commandments, the organic structure and the laws of the Palestinian family”.[40]

This editorial expressed the official PLO position in its mainstay publication. In July 1990, the PLO released a statement that Hamas had “been established to satisfy an Israeli aim, or at least that it had been established with the consent of Israel in order to weaken the PLO”, a charge that “would evolve as Hamas’s relations with Islamic parties—notably Iran—developed”.[41] This development demonstrates that it was less the substance of the charge that mattered for those proposing it than the broader penumbra of doubt. As is well known, the Madrid Conference of October 1991 marked the beginning of Iranian support for Hamas. With Arafat’s backing of Saddam Hussein, Ayatollah Khomeini’s preferential relations with the PLO had rapidly deteriorated, with now Iran hewing closer to Hamas. On October 18, 1991, the second International Conference in Support of the Islamic Revolution of the People of Palestine (ICSIRPP) convened in Tehran; here, 400 delegates from 45 countries participated. Sheikh Khalil Qawqa, Al-Alami, and Musa Abu Marzouk represented Hamas.

According to Jeroen Gunning, “[w]hile Fatah lost the financial support of its Gulf state sponsors, Hamas’ financial support increased”.[42]

Where Arafat once accused Hamas of being a project directly or indirectly fostered by the zionist occupation, he now claimed foreign governments had inserted itself in Palestinian national politics by using Hamas as a conduit.[43] Curiously enough, in doing so, Arafat anticipated the alliance that Fatah and sectarian Salafi-Jihadi groups would form in the 2010s, when they would accuse Hamas of being an Iranian proxy. But these claims, like those that Hamas was an offspring of the zionist entity, were entirely fabricated.

The real reasoning that Fatah spun this narrative was due to Hamas’ robust and increasingly welcome opposition to the Madrid-Oslo “peace process”. From 22-24 October 1991, Hamas coordinated with leftist and nationalist organizations by declaring the formation of the Ten Resistance Organizations (TRO), just prior to the 30 October 1991 convening of the Madrid Conference. The birth of the TRO was announced by leaders of eleven organizations and the coalition included Hamas, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command (PFLP-GC), the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP), Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), the Movement for Palestinian National Liberation—Fatah/Al-Intifada, the Movement for Palestinian National Liberation—Fateh/Revolutionary Council, Vanguards of the War of Popular Liberation, Al-Sa’iqa, the Popular Struggle Front, and the Revolutionary Palestinian Communist Party. The first joint communique, issued on 24 October 1991, called for a general strike on the day that the Madrid Conference was to convene.[44] Opposition to the Madrid Conference was the common denominator among these organizations and this was the subject of the first joint communique released via the TRO. The TRO did not form a joint organizational or command structure until the Alliance of Palestinian Forces met in January 1994. The involvement of Hamas and PIJ was evident in the emphasis, in some of the communiques, placed on the borders of historic Palestine (i.e., from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River), the rejection of any peace settlement, and references to the Islamic dimension of the problem. These hardline terms, championed by Hamas, remained deeply objectionable to Fatah, as it was seeking to pursue a peace process with the zionist entity. Another worry was that Hamas would inaugurate a successor- or competitor-organization to the PLO. Granted, the TRO’s loose structure allowed for only minimal coordination among the fasa’il, which often made it difficult for the TRO to respond to the momentum of regional and international support for the peace talks. However, this prompted the organizations, chief among them Hamas, to propose different proposals for creating a unified front or alliance, which only heightened Fatah’s anxieties. The narrative that Hamas was a zionist creation, hence proved fruitful for Fatah.

Fatah’s worries were not entirely unfounded. The first idea for the TRO was a Hamas proposal for a Higher Palestinian Coordination Committee, submitted in April 1992 (i.e., 6 months after the convening of the Madrid Conference and the first meeting of the TRO). The text’s introduction stated that the proposal was to establish a TRO coordination committee that would formulate a united political position in Palestine directed against the proposals for a peaceful settlement. Furthermore, after the Oslo Agreement, Hamas proposed the creation of an Alliance of Palestinian Forces as a new formula for organizing the TRO; the other organizations also submitted similar proposals. What distinguished Hamas’s proposal from the others was its unique perspective on the PLO as an institution. Hamas proposed “rebuilding the institutions of the Palestinian people, first and foremost the PLO, on a fair and democratic basis”.[45] In turn, Hamas quelled some other members’ fears that it wanted to create an alternative, proper, to the PLO, envisaging instead of taking over the PLO and reforming it from within. After initially proposing a quota system—wherein Hamas would be have percent of the delegates, while the other organizations would combined be represented by 40 percent and the independents would have the remaining 20 percent—the proposal was rejected by the leftist and nationalist fasa’il for organizational reasons; they feared this organizational structure would repeat their experience with Fatah, which used to dominate Palestinian organizations by using a quota system allocating a quota to each organization that was proportional to its membership. Hamas, responding to this fair critique, thus withdrew the proposal. It then proffered an amended proposal that abandoned the proportional quota system; in the new formula, each organization would have two delegates. This proposal was presented in 1993 and it was accepted. It became the basis for the Alliance of Palestinian Forces.

This only exacerbated the Fatah-Hamas enmity. Proposals for the political positions that the alliance should adopt in the post-Oslo period included the following: rejecting the agreement; boycotting the elections for the PA council (or participation in the council by appointment); boycotting all organizations that had been derived from the Oslo Agreement or were understood to be implementing the Oslo program; affirming the inalienable, historic rights of the Palestinian people to liberate its land, return to its homeland, and practice full national self-determination; and adhering to armed struggle as the principal means of liberation. The fasa’il approved the general text of the proposal unanimously and approved the final amendments. Thus, as of the founding session in Damascus on 5 January 1994, the Alliance of Palestinian Forces replaced the TRO. In its first declaration, on 6 June 1994, the Alliance of Palestinian Forces condemned the Oslo Agreement and the letter Arafat had sent to Rabin recognizing Israel; for the Alliance, this was an act of “national treason” to be abrogated. The Alliance declared it non-binding to all Palestinian people. The Alliance condemned the leadership of the PLO (though not the PLO itself), writing that “The current leadership of the PLO does not represent the Palestinian people, nor does it express its views or aspirations”.[46]

The victory of the joint electoral list supporting the rejectionist fasa’il in the Bir Zeit University elections was a success for the group. This victory, at a traditional PLO stronghold, was considered an important referendum on the peace process, demonstrating what the fasa’il could achieve by coordinating its activities. On 23 October 1991, Hamas published leaflets on the eve of the Madrid Conference entitled “A Historic Release: No to the Conference; No to Selling out Palestine and the Holy City of Jerusalem,” 23 October 1991. The release condemned the Madrid Conference. The focus point was on the PLO, which it denounced explicitly. Throughout this entire period, Fatah’s adherents continued spreading versions of the claim that Hamas enjoyed ties, financial or otherwise, to the zionist entity. Yet, the sole evidence that Fatah could advert to were the aforementioned permits issued to al-Jam’iyah al-Islamiyah (the Islamic Society) and al-Mujamma’ al-Islami (the Islamic Center). Ironically, Fatah itself had received such licenses from the zionist entity in 1981, when Fatah established its Shabiba clubs, gaming, athletics, and social mixing venues designed for young people throughout the West Bank and Gaza. Nevertheless, Fatah loyalists continue to appeal to this argument, reinvigorating it every few years.[47] This was also postulated by Jean-François Legrain, which hypothesized that the Israelis precipitated Hamas’ military victory against Fatah in order to weaken Mahmoud Abbas.[48]

At one point, Fatah’s narrative concerning Hamas became inculcated as the “received view” amongst scholars. As aforementioned, the anchor was Milton-Edwards’ scholarship. In Hroub’s exacting review, he brilliantly disabuses readers from adopting this line, writing that:

My major disagreement with Milton-Edwards’s account concerns her thesis of how and why the Palestinian Islamists evolved from the first half of the 1970s. She largely attributes their emergence to Israeli sanction and patronage, arguing that “There is no question as to the existence of Israeli-Mujama [Muslim Brothers] collusion. From the late 1970s onwards the real issue was its extent” (p. 129). Dealing with such a sensitive issue, Milton-Edwards adopts a nonscrutinizing methodology, relying almost entirely on sources hostile to the Islamists. Not one single view, quotation, or piece of information is drawn from Islamist sources, and readers thus are kept in the dark about the opinion of the Islamists concerning the most serious accusation leveled against them.

The main “areas” of the alleged Israeli-Islamists “collusion” were granting legal licensing for Islamist organizations and holding “top-level” meetings with them, orchestrated to harm the nationalist camp. The author refers to licenses for “Islamic institutions” such as the Mujama (1978) and the Islamic University of Gaza (1980) as clear proof of “collusion.” Yet, when she draws our attention to the “founding of a large number of ‘national institutions’ throughout the 1970s and 1980s including universities, hospitals, research centers, newspapers and magazines” (p. 131), she fails to tell us about the similar Israeli “legal licensing” under which those institutions functioned. Using the author’s argument, can one conclude that Israel had sanctioned the nationalist institutions such as the Red Cross Society in Gaza (1972) or al- Najah and Birzeit Universities in the West Bank by “legalizing” them as it did the Islamists’ institutions?

On the second area of “collusion,” Milton-Edwards contends that the “leaders of Hamas were regularly filmed at meetings with top-level Israeli officials … [and] Dr Mahmoud Zahar [Hamas’s spokesman in Gaza] was a tending meetings with Israel’s Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin” (p. 151). In reality, there was neither “regularity” nor “meetings” in the “conspiring” sense that the author presents. According to Zahar himself, the frequently mentioned meeting of 16 May 1989, held at the Israeli Defense Ministry, was between Rabin and fifteen leading leftist and nationalist figures from the Gaza Strip, including As’ad Saftawi, Rabah Mhana, Ytnis al-Jarou, Zakariyya al-Agha, and others and was not an exclusive meeting with Zahar. Other well-known meetings, one with Rabin in April 1989 and one with Shimon Peres in March 1988, were closer to interrogation sessions; the Israelis conducted meetings with leading Palestinians of all political affiliations to explore their views on main developments. If a “collusion” between Israel and the main force of political Islam in Palestine was so clear, publicly well-known, and strongly condemned, how does the author conclude that “The force of political Islam has sunk its roots deep into the fabric of Palestinian society” (p. 212)?[49]

In his subsequent book, Hroub, without mentioning Milton-Edwards outright, further decries this narrative. He introduces the issue by writing that:

Two basic issues need to be considered in analyzing the mutual perceptions of Hamas and Israel and the attendant political practice that has been pursued since the creation of Hamas. The first issue concerns the accepted ‘wisdom’ in the media, political circles, and even in academic circles about Israel’s stance toward the Islamist phenomenon—the Muslim Brotherhood before the intifada and later Hamas. There is a common belief that Israel encouraged the Islamists, its goal being to weaken the position and diminish the influence of its main enemy, the PLO.[50]

As Hroub notes, the interpretations that have “attributed the emergence and growth of the Palestinian Islamic tide to an Israel ‘plot’”, with the goal of this policy being to undermine the leadership of the PLO, are meted by other, more moderate positions that “Israeli policy merely ignored the phenomenon.”[51] As we have already seen, it was, in fact, Fatah’s information apparatus that adopted and propagated the former interpretation, purposing Arafat’s strident declarations, which proclaimed Hamas “to be merely a creation of Israel to weaken the PLO”.[52]

However, Hroub proffers a different interpretation, which I submit is, given the political historical record, far more convincing. As Hroub notes,

Israel’s policy toward the growing strength of Islamic movements throughout the 1970s and 1980s up to the first year of the intifada was characterized by confusion, bewilderment, and an inability to take decisive action. Consequently, Israel confined itself to reaction to and monitoring of developments.[53]

Hroub’s assessment derives from the five factors that are discussed below.

1) Israel’s position toward Islamic institutions or toward the social and educational aspects of the Islamic awakening was no different from its established position toward other nonmilitary phenomena that accompanied the Palestinian national movement and factions of the PLO. Hence, the level of tolerance for or suppression of the work of those institutions was the same regardless of their ideological or political bent. Scores of nationalist institutions, such as academic associations, clubs, daily newspapers, weekly magazines, schools, universities, and other organizations, demonstrate this policy.

As Hroub writes,

All these institutions operated by virtue of permits issued by the Israeli occupying authority; some of the institutions belonged directly or indirectly to the PLO or other Palestinian political factions. It is not fair, therefore, to mention only the permits granted to Islamic institutions in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. The chief concern of the occupation authorities during the 1970s and 1980s was military activity. Thus, they concentrated their efforts on the pursuit of such activity and were relatively tolerant toward informational and propagandistic activities, whether carried out by nationalist or Islamist forces.[54]

This belies the argument proffered by (often liberal zionist) academics and commentators like Amos Yadlin, Yuval Diskin, Avner Cohen who point to how, in 1967, the al-Jam’iyah al-Islamiyah (the Islamic Society) received permits for the educational activities run in al-Shati (beach) Mosque and in 1976, Al-Jam`iyyah al-Islam’iyyah (Islamic Association) received (however temporarily) permits from the occupying zionist government to operate social, medical, and educational programming.

2) Second, it was not ideal “for Israel, especially after the late 1970s, to resort to a harsh repressive policy toward the manifestations of Islamic awakening in the Occupied Territories.”[55] Hroub points to many reasons for this, noting that the most important was “the fear that such a policy might render an indirect service to the Islamic current by giving credence to its claim that the Jews and Israel are fighting Islam.”[56] If this assertion acquired credibility, the national struggle would be recast as an ideological one—a war between religions. This in turn might lead to the incitement of religious feelings abroad and thus to the strengthening of the Islamic current. Furthermore, the zionist leadership feared that

the adoption of an obviously repressive policy toward nonmilitary religious institutions in a region where the Islamic tide was rising would intensify the feeling of enmity for Israel in the region. Internationally, such a policy, interpreted as an abridgment of religious freedom, would harm the reputation of Israel.[57]

Such considerations apparently continued to influence the formulation of Israeli policy through the first two years of the First Intifada. Resistance activities during that time, whether directed by Hamas or by the UNLU, were confined to mass demonstrations and the use of firearms was avoided. The situation only changed during 1994-96, when regional circumstances favored the adoption of the repressive policy dubbed “fighting Islamic terrorism.”

3) Third, the zionist entity’s intelligence apparatus was—and, it should be noted, to this day continues to be—enormously welcoming of the narrative that it is responsible for “indirectly helping Hamas.”[58] The reasoning is that, by taking responsibility for indirectly helping Hamas,

by looking the other way when it came into being”, the zionist political structure is able to boast superior control and strength, part and parcel of the “Israeli political mind-set, which is characterized by a ‘superiority complex.’ This mind-set invented the myth of the ‘invincible Israeli army,’ wove legends around the ‘supernatural’ capabilities of its security services (including Mossad and Shin Bet), and painted a fabulous picture of its ability to influence events both regionally and on the Palestinian plane. In effect, it perceived Israeli control of most (if not all) strings as virtually absolute.[59]

Were Shabak to acknowledge that a Palestinian nationalist-Islamic movement like Hamas could form indigenously burgeon in the Occupied Territories outside of its control, this would be a significant blow to its pride. This is also, incidentally, related to why the zionist entity has been welcoming of narratives that Tufan al-Aqsa did not consist in an intelligence failure but was an operation that the entity was well aware of beforehand and permitted, so as to enjoy a justification to annex the Gaza Strip.

Indeed,

It was more consistent with this mind-set to concede that Israeli policy in one form or another was behind the emergence of Hamas. This claim would serve— even as it admits an error in tactics—Israel’s strategy of firmly establishing that its Arab and Palestinian foes are not capable of carrying out any undertaking that may influence events outside Israel’s masterful control. In brief, the optimum position for the Israeli mind-set is to admit an error and to feign regret over a policy that led to a present situation wherein Hamas has become immune to a complete and final liquidation.[60]

During the late 1980s and early 1990s, many allusions were made by zionist officials to this point. There were several academic publications containing this narrative that had a lasting effect as, by repeating the same line, they rendered Milton-Edwards’ framework to be the “received view” in academic circles.[61]

4) Fourth, the Islamic-nationalist liberation phenomenon that burgeoned within the Occupied territories did not grow in isolation but within a broader context of historical social change sweeping the Arab and Islamic region. This period, extending between the second half of the 1970s and mid-1990s, witnessed dramatic growth of an Islamic awakening and several currents of Political Islam. The Islamic current in the Occupied Territories was influenced and nurtured by the growth of an Islamic movement in Jordan to the east, Hizbu’llah in Lebanon to the north, the advancement of the Islamic movement in Egypt, “where moderate groups exerted influence through democratic processes in parliament and the unions while armed groups engaged in a bloody confrontation with the security forces.”[62]

In turn,

the victory of the Islamic revolution in Iran, the evolution of the Islamic movement in Sudan, and the increasing growth of political Islam in Algeria all had important influences on Palestinian Islam in the Occupied Territories. Thus, Palestinian Islam was part of a broader phenomenon, not an isolated occurrence. The fact that it existed under military occupation worked only to deepen and broaden its appeal and to clarify its goals.[63]

It is unfortunate that those analysts who argue that Hamas was an outgrowth of or indirectly supported by the zionist entity ignore this broader historical-social current.

5) Fifth, the zionist entity, at most, can said to have tried to manipulate narratives concerning competition between political forces in the Occupied Territories, whether they be Hamas or the PLO; as Hroub writes, “[t]here is nothing creative or unique in this practice of trying to benefit from the internal contradictions of an opponent. Indeed, this is a conventional practice used by one party of a struggle against its various opponents.”[64]

One must also consider the arguments produced bolstering the fallacious narrative of zionist-Hamas collaboration, insofar as they concern the supposed openness towards dialogue between the zionist entity and Hamas representatives. Recall that this was what Milton-Edwards herself appealed to. After the end of 1990, Hamas leaders began to appear on the political stage outside the Occupied Territories (unlike the previous three years, when Hamas had no declared political leadership abroad). Previously, Hamas leaders, without being identified as such, had been summoned to meet zionist entity officials—not as representative of Hamas but in their capacity as influential public Islamic figures. During this initial period of zionist “reconnaissance” and attempts at “political softening” (or what some, retrofitting Tareq Baconi’s appellation, might call “political containment”), a number of Hamas leaders, including Sheikh Yassin, Abdel al-Rantisi, and Mahmoud al-Zahhar, were summoned and engaged in discussions. For example,

[the head of the] Israeli civil administration in Gaza summoned al-Zahar and discussed with him the feasibility of forming a Palestinian delegation to negotiate with Israel (before the Madrid Conference), suggesting that Hamas be represented in the delegation provided that it recognizes the right of Israel to exist. When al-Zahhar refused, the Israeli threatened him with arrest.[65]

The zionist entity changed its position as the First Intifada progressed and the use of fire arms and Molotov cocktails was integrated to the mass demonstrations, prohibiting summoning any Islamic personalities from Hamas or close to it for the purpose of discussions or establishing liaison.[66] After Hamas declared the presence of political leadership abroad, Hamas’ position was to reject meeting any official “Israeli parties”, corresponding to PLO policy in this regard.[67] Hamas’ position was that of “categorical rejection of conducting any dialogue with the Zionist entity.[68]

After Hamas’ military operations in 1993 and 1994, the zionist entity’s political leadership attempted, especially following the Oslo Agreement, to try to convince Hamas to renounce violence “in exchange for a guaranteed political role in the peace settlement”, with “[s]everal Israeli officials, including then Prime Minister Rabin,” declaring “Israel’s readiness for dialogue and negotiations with Hamas to achieve this objective.[69]

Prior to the Oslo process, Shimon Peres, then foreign minister, even declared that his government was “ready to negotiate with extremists from Hamas if they were freely elected in the Occupied Territories”[70]. As Muhammad Nazzal, Hamas representative in Jordan, reported to Al-Hayat, on 22 December 1993, the zionist government offered early release to many jailed Hamas leaders in order for them to travel abroad and discuss the zionist demands for halting military operations. Some military commanders within the zionist entity discussed this issue with numerous Hamas supporters within the Gaza Strip.

Among these discussions is one conducted in April 1994 by General Doron Almough, commander of Israeli troops in Gaza, with Sheikh Ahmad Bahar, the head of the Islamic Association in al-Shati refugee camp. Sheikh Bahar relates that he was summoned to the office of the Military Governor as would any citizen under occupation. Among the topics was a longish and theoretical dissection of the nature of Islamic government. With respect to the proposal for self-government, Bahar expressed his opposition because it consolidates the occupation and does not fulfill people’s demands.[71]

In the first few months following 1994, attempts by the zionist entity to engage Hamas intensified. Hamas official Muhammad Nazzal, in an interview with Khaled Hroub from 23 April 1995, remarked that:

The most important of these attempts included a meeting between the deputy chief of staff of the enemy army, Amnon Shahak, with the brother, ‘Imad al-Faluji, who was detained in Gaza’s central prison in February 1994; a discussion between two members of the occupation central command and the brother, Dr. Mahmoud al-Rumhi, who was held in Hebron’s central prison to await trial for being the political director of Hamas in the Ramallah area; a contact made by an Israeli living in Europe with Dr. Mahmoud al-Zahhar; and a further communication by the same Israeli with a person close to Hamas in one of the European countries whereby Israel offered to negotiate with Hamas through a third party (an Arab country) in such a way that this country would communicate the demands of the movement to the Zionist entity and vice versa. Rabin’s declaration in February 1994 represented a readiness for dialogue as a culmination to this series of attempts. [The zionist entity espouses four goals;] The first is to exert pressure on Arafat by putting him on notice that there is a strong competitor with whom Israel can negotiate. The aim would be to push him into making more concessions. The second is to probe Hamas’ position on participation in the self-government authority and on stopping the armed struggle. The third goal is to soften the [Hamas] movement’s political and military line. The fourth is to ensure the success of self-government by giving Hamas an effective role in its leadership.[72]

However, Hamas continued to rebuff the zionist entity’s attempts to facilitate open communication channels. Hamas undertook this venture by publicly announcing the zionist entity’s attempts to render lines of communication as they transpired, effectively undercutting their would-be clandestine status; in addition, Hamas firmly rejected Rabin’s offers to negotiate. According to Hamas, “the language between us and the occupying enemy forever shall remain a language of resistance and struggle and not one of negotiations, concessions, or capitulations”.[73]

The only exception to Hamas’ basic position against negotiation was concerning humanitarian cases and the exposure of civilians to military operations. On several occasions Hamas announced its “readiness to negotiate in humanitarian matters through a third party such as the Red Cross as happened in November 1994 in the case of the captured Zionist soldier, Waxman, who was exchanged for Palestinian detainees”.[74] This Hamas leaflet from 7 Nov. 1994 included the following:

[…] an initiative in April 1994 to remove civilians from the arena of struggle between Palestinian mujahideen and Zionist occupation forces and to spare them the brunt of military operations. This may be done by having [Prime Minister] Rabin issue clear instructions to the occupation army, [Israeli] settlers, and Arab collaborators to stop attacking or targeting Palestinian civilians for killing, arrest, and house demolition. In exchange, Hamas’s Qassam Brigades will confine their activities only to military targets and to armed Zionist elements.[75]

At a later stage, specifically after the series of Hamas operations in February and March 1996 and the subsequent violent campaign against it through arrests, the destruction of homes, and the closure of institutions, the zionist government tried once again to open communication channels with Hamas, using contacts close to both sides in Europe. At that time, Hamas tried to mitigate the reactions against it. This included the Sharm al-Sheikh, Egypt Conference “against terrorism”, titled “Summit of the Peacemakers” that convened on 13 March 1996.[76]

The Hamas movement asserted its “readiness to deal with any positive (efforts) that aim to discuss the political dimension of the problem and its ramifications on the interest and future of all sides, with a view to achieving peace, security, freedom, independence, and sovereignty for our people”.[77] Following Tufan al-Aqsa, it would appear that, in retrospect, these efforts could very well, as Hroub conveys, could have been attempts at reassuring “Hamas merely to gain more time to uproot its infrastructure” while, in response, Hamas’ signaling readiness to negotiate an armistice was motivated by its intention “to mute the attack against it and to neutralize as many of its foes as possible”, with the Hamas movement signaling its readiness to deal with any effort, regional or international, aimed at reaching “a ceasefire in accordance with just conditions”.[78]

Having now concluded my analysis of the more entrenched version of this narrative concerning putative zionist-Hamas collaboration, we can, in the final section, turn to the more recent claim about “Qatari cash payments”.

SECTION 4

The Great March of Return 2018-2019 Negotiations and “Qatari Cash Payments”

Over the last year, it has speculatively argued Hamas’ subsistence, particularly in the years preceding Tufan al-Aqsa, have either lacked autonomy and been paternalistically supervised by Israel’s security state at best, or been goaded/motivated by the Israeli security state’s instrumentalism at worst. The crudest rendering of this narrative proffers that Hamas has, in fact, been a “controlled opposition” invention of the Israeli state. In light of operation Al-Aqsa Flood, ongoing at the time of this paper’s writing, this narrative has proliferated. This narrative galvanized by Mark Mazzetti and Ronen Bergman of The New York times in their 10 December, 2023 article “‘Buying Quiet’: Inside the Israeli Plan That Propped Up Hamas”[79], which tendentiously expounds a piecemeal rendering of the November 2018 agreement, during which Egyptian mediation, bolstered by the United Nations and Qatar, produced a series of agreements between Israel and Hamas aimed at defusing the tension that transpired with the Gazan Great March of Return. Although one of the agreements was that Hamas politicians like Ahmad Bahar, Mouchir al-Masri, and Mahmoud al-Zahar would be permitted to travel with suitcases containing large amounts of money across the Kerem Shalom border crossing with him to Gaza, this agreement was not easily reached nor was the zionist entity a witting partner. Yet, even venerable historians like Rashed Khalidi[80] have repeated Mazzetti and Bergman’s tendentious retelling of the “Qatari suitcases of cash” issue, fomenting the manufacturing of a “controlled opposition” narrative where Hamas and Israel are clandestine bedfellows.

This narrative eschews the adversarial political context of the Great March of Return negotiations, spearheaded by Yahya al-Sinwar, which began in the summer of 2018 and continued until 1 April 2019, when a new deal was reached under the aegis of Egypt, which restated the principles of the previous one. Each of these concessions, which permitted the issuance of funds from Qatar banks for governmental-institutional purposes within Gaza involved arduous negotiations.

It should first be clarified that Hamas political bureau members transporting suitcases of cash was by no means a novel practice. It was out of necessity, due to the proscribed nature intra- and inter-bank wire transfers for Hamas. In the Fall of 2006, Hamas ministers transported suitcases full of zakat-issued cash from Egypt to Gaza, openly noting to the European Union Border Assistance Mission that was then located at the Rafah crossing that these funds would be used for governmental purposes. These often included millions of dollars to pay civil/public servants including police officers, physicians, and teachers who would not receive their salary for extended periods, ranging from weeks to months.

In the wake of Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, however, the “controlled-opposition-cum-collaboration” narrative began homing in on the more recent transport of cash. This was coupled with Yair Lapid’s recent inflammatory interview with the Times of Israel, lambasting Netanyahu for “permitting” such practices; it was is here that the Yesh Atid politician—that is, the opposition politician to Netanyahu, attempting to paint the latter as politically tolerant of Hamas and thus incompetent—vaguely gestured at Netanyahu’s supposedly having wittingly sidelined intelligence foreknowledge, with Lapid commenting:

I’m telling you, it was out there — all the signs, all the red flags, all the warnings — and he [Netanyahu] ignored them all. This is why it wouldn’t have happened on our shift — and this is why he shouldn’t have been prime minister since October 8.[81]

The verbiage should clarify that this narrative was inflected by inter-zionist party political claims that overshadowed how the permission of cash transport was won through a years-long negotiation process that accompanied the Great March of Return. Related to Lapid’s interview, earlier and subsequent reports in the Western media concluded that the Netanyahu government willfully ignored results of the Israeli state’s own intelligence gathering efforts, which, prior to 7 October 2023, they argued, had espied the preemptive organization of Al-Aqsa Flood.[82] Perhaps most widely read was Ronen Bergman and Adam Goldman’s 2 December 2023 New York Times article, “Israel Knew Hamas’s Attack Plan More Than a Year Ago”, where the journalists argued that “Israeli officials obtained Hamas’s battle plan for the Oct. 7 terrorist attack more than a year before it happened,” adverting to encrypted “documents, emails and interviews” and the so-called “Jericho Wall” 40-page document that apparently included intelligence-gathering efforts concerning the Al-Qassam Brigades’ battlefield training regimen.[83] Although the two journalists do not argue that the Netanyahu government’s overlooking these intelligence-gathering efforts amounted to collaboration, it bolstered the aforementioned narrative, which cumulatively state that the permission of the Qatari cash deliveries to Gaza amounted to the Netanyahu government’s, and, by extension, the zionist entity’s, intentionally dividing the Palestinian fronts. Of course, this presumes that the West Bank Palestinian Authority, were it to govern the Gaza Strip, would further empower the Palestinian people by means of unity, at odds with the West Bank PA’s history of ignoring the settler movement in Area C; squelching of resistance factions in Jenin, Tulkarem, Nablus, and elsewhere; imprisoning political opponents and even murdering outspoken critics like Nizar Banar; and its collaboration with the entity.

The narrative also simply ignores the record of the Great March of Return negotiations. The Qatari cash deliveries were hard won agreements where the Hamas movement agreed, in negotiations with the Netanyahu government, that it would not further escalate the Great March protests that it had ardently supported. Indeed,

The triggering of the March of Return in March 2018 heralded new terms in the provision of Qatari aid to Hamas. This aid was now indexed to war and peace dynamics: the nuisance capacity of rockets and incendiary balloons allowed Hamas to ensure that Israel would authorize, in return for calm, the monthly sending of tens of millions of dollars to Gaza.[84]

As Seurat helpfully recounts, providing the backdrop for these negotiations,

The level of confrontation at the [zionist entity and Gaza] border has greatly diminished since the summer of 2018 and negotiations continue between Israel and Hamas: since November, the two parties have made an agreement projecting the delivery by Qatar of petrol and cash, the setting up of an electrical plant, Gaza’s reconstruction and a decision to launch talks to find an agreement in the long run.”[85]

These November 2018 agreements were significant wins for Hamas that echoed an original set of concessions that the Netanyahu government had only partially made good on during a set of negotiations concurrent to earlier stages of the Great March of Return. The earlier concessions, which the Netanyahu government backtracked on, had been produced in the Spring-Summer of 2018. This is why, in the subsequent concessions,

The principles of the November 2018 agreement were reiterated: opening of the Kerem Shalom crossing, closed since 25 March; delivery by Qatar of $40 million to officially finance the health sector and mitigate unemployment by putting in place a programme of cash payments for work in UN organizations; supplying of the Gaza electric plant; the creation of two industrial zones in the enclave’s east and north; the lifting of the restrictions affecting fishermen. In exchange for all of this, Palestinians consented to forbid the launching of incendiary balloons and creating a 300-metres-wide buffer zone in front of the security fence separating Israel from the Gaza Strip.[86]

It should be noted that, when the Netanyahu government backtracked, al-Qassam began using deploying rockets to Mishmeret in order to persuade the zionist entity to make good on its previously agreed upon terms. Tareq Baconi adumbrated the November 2018 agreement and the context framing it in an International Crisis Group article, writing that

Hamas and Israel have been engaged in indirect ceasefire negotiations under Egyptian and UN mediation since July of last year [viz., 2018]. The talks produced a November [2018] ceasefire agreement: Hamas committed to end rocket fire into Israel and promised to restrain the intensity of the Great March of Return, the protests in the Gaza-Israel fence area that began on 30 March 2018. Israel in turn said it would extend the nautical limit for Gaza fishermen and agree to allow Qatar to pay Gaza government salaries and supply fuel to Gaza’s power plant. The parties agreed that after the immediate risk of escalation was averted, they would take measures toward a sustainable resolution of Gaza’s economic challenges. Yet while Hamas has demonstrated its capacity to restrain the protests, Israel has shown little willingness to advance the ceasefire beyond the initial agreement to allow Qatari assistance. Since November [2018], the talks have stalled without progress toward fulfilling Hamas’s central demand – that Israel loosen the economic stranglehold on the strip. There is a widespread belief that a military assault on the strip is inevitable after the Israeli elections.

Hamas has long used rocket fire as a means of pressuring the Israeli government to return to negotiations and to grant concessions in Gaza. After the two rockets were fired at Tel Aviv ten days ago, the ceasefire discussions resumed. But, if rocket fire has been somewhat effective in bringing Israel to the table, it has largely failed to alleviate the blockade. From 14 March [2019], the Great March of Return Higher Committee, which includes Hamas, expanded its “night disturbances” – whereby demonstrators blast loud noises and explode devices close to Gaza’s periphery in order to disturb Israeli civilians and generate pressure on the Israeli authorities. The latest rocket was likely an attempt by Hamas to force Netanyahu to choose between fulfilling Israel’s ceasefire obligations or suffering greater embarrassment among his political rivals and constituents. Hamas believes its hand is strong at present because the Israeli government wants to avoid an escalation ahead of the elections. In this sensitive period, Hamas assumes it has the best chance of pushing Israel to compromise without getting dragged into a full-scale war.

[….]

[Following] the implementation of the November [2018] ceasefire arrangement […] [,] [b]oth sides recommitted to that agreement after the two rockets landed in Tel Aviv on 14 March [2019]. This agreement had initiated six months of Qatari funding and fuel transfer into the Gaza Strip as urgent relief. The six-month period was originally planned to end in April [2019] and was to be followed by secondary and tertiary phases once the risk of war had passed. The latter phases were to include measures to restore Gaza’s electricity, increase the number of Palestinians allowed in and out of the strip, expand the entry of merchandise, extend the range off the coast in which Gazans can fish, and generally ease the blockade.[87]

Hamas had not won either of these concessions easily and its use of rockets should signify that the Netanyahu government by no means “gave” or “supplied” or “funded” Hamas. These were hard won compromises; just as no rationally minded commentator would deem the freeing of Palestinian prisoners and hostages during the initial stages of the Tufan al-Aqsa negotiations as the zionist entity “freely granting” Hamas’ terms, so too should they recognize the proper context of the Great March of Return negotiations. It is also important to underscore that the Netanyahu government backtracked after the November 2018 agreements, which saw the Great March of Return protests continue; this again demonstrates that the negotiation outcomes were not freely allotted. The tenuous nature of the negotiations resulted in the April 2019 concessions. Indeed, it was, as Seurat outlines

Egyptian mediation, backed by the United Nations and Qatar, that allowed, in November 2018, the conclusion of a first agreement between Israel and Hamas aimed at defusing tension; the Palestinian movement committed to stop the launching of incendiary balloons, obtaining in exchange a loosening of the blockade, permitting the delivery of oil and money by Qatar. Once more on 1 April 2019, a new deal was reached under the aegis of Egypt, which restated the principles of the previous one: in exchange for no more incendiary balloons, Hamas, in theory, got the reopening of the Kerem Shalom border crossing; the delivery by Qatar of $40 million to finance the health sector and fight unemployment; the supplying of fuel for Gaza’s electric plant; the lifting of restrictions on fishermen and also, at a later stage conditioned by a truce of longer duration, the possibility of creating two industrial areas to the east and north of the enclave.[88]

It should be noted that none of these funds were allocated to Hamas or any of the other resistance factions’ military operations. As was the case in the days of the Palestinian Ikhwan’s institutions and the clandestine 1980 resistance faction, all funding was intentionally kept disparate. Al-Qassam’s funds remained entirely independent, such that the claim that Netanyahu licensed the Tufan al-Aqsa operation by allowing for “Qatari cash payments” remains unsubstantiated. Indeed, the $40 million that Qatar transferred was used to set “up a program of payments in cash by Qatar, via work done by the poorest Palestinians hired by UN bodies.”[89] Again, Seurat’s research provides for the most exacting and detailed overview of how the Great March of Return negotiations transpired; consequently, I reproduce the most important sections from her book in full:

Although the March of Return was part of the dynamics of popular protest organized via the mediation of various political factions, it very quickly became an instrument of pressure used by Hamas to oblige Israel to negotiate. Considered as tools complementary to rockets, incendiary kites and balloons were now associated with a global strategy of armed struggle, mobilized as a function of the progress in negotiations held simultaneously in Cairo: when the talks were going smoothly, Hamas would keep the peace, but when they stalled, it would use these tools to force Israel to return to the negotiating table. Launched in July 2018, these talks led to a first agreement reached in November under the aegis of the United Nations, Egypt and Qatar. Since then, the goal of Hamas has been to force Israel to implement the terms of this deal. Hamas has various instruments to coerce Israel into implementing the agreement. It can, for instance, refuse to accept Qatari payments when Israel tries to impose new conditions on the movement: this is what happened when, following the reception of the first two payments of $15 million in November and December[.] [Over the $15 million granted to Hamas, $10 million were used to pay the salaries of public servants, and $5 million were meant for humanitarian aid.] Hamas rejected the third one, accusing Israel of demanding new restrictions, which included the transiting of Qatari money through the Palestinian Authority’s official banks, and even the halting of the March of Return.[90]

Seurat also details the nature of the “Qatari cash payments”, which were by no means free-flowing but part of agreed upon and negotiated standards:

On 30 March 2019, during the first anniversary of the March of Return, Hamas, in the midst of negotiations in Cairo, deployed its men in orange suits to secure the security fence separating Gaza from Israel and prevent Gazan youth from walking into a confrontation. It thus obtained an increase in Qatari aid, which rose from US$15 to US$40 million, without interrupting the March: the mobilization could remain in the form of a march per week, which would never go beyond the security perimeter extending 300 metres from the security barrier. It was the same logic of appeasement that prevailed during the violent clashes opposing Israel to Islamic Jihad in November 2019: staying away from confrontation, Hamas obtained the opening of the Kerem Shalom crossing, the supply of fuel by trucks and an extension of the maritime territory granted to fishermen.

Consequently, the provision of various compensations to Hamas, all of which were won through Hamas’ firm negotiations, included: Qatar-issued aid intended for public servants and Gaza’s impoverished population, with this being an attempt to combat the high unemployment rate in Gaza; a gas-pipeline construction project to provide Gaza with electricity; and a water-treatment plant. These were, again, the byproduct of Hamas’ negotiations to reach solutions that would make the Gaza Strip viable for its then approximately 2.1 million denizens. Hamas, as the sole guarantor of stability in the territory, had, via negotiations under the aegis of Egypt, Qatar, and the United Nations, thus acquired the status of an unavoidable interlocutor.[91]

With this, I conclude this study. I hope it will serve as an effective educational/teaching aid for those who wish to gain more context into the history of an array of oft-deployed claims that collectively aver that the zionist created, supported, or armed Hamas. I hope that the readers of this article will now be intellectually equipped to aptly contest such claims.

[1] Although it might strike readers as inappropriate for an academic or academia-oriented text, departing as it does from the latter’s norms, I use appellation the “zionist entity” for political purposes, galvanized by the belief that this stripe of exegetical history inherently has a political orientation. (The liberty of a non-academic platform like substack is that it permits such an instrumentalization of writing that balances academic objectivity with a recognizable political orientation). Nevertheless, this ought not to suggest that I approach the issue that this article is concerned with from a partisan orientation; I have reached this conclusion after years of objective analysis, following the reception history of the claim. Furthermore, this stylistic choice is informed by the belief that, indeed, there is no neutral appellation, and were one to use the appellation “Israel”, it would amount to a similarly political act, no different in kind than using “zionist entity”. The distinction is that the former appellation is marked by recognition of this entity as a legitimate nation-state. Deploying the “zionist entity” abrogates any such legitimacy (and is in keeping with an antecedent political-historical precedent that enjoys revolutionary Iran, pre-“peace process” Fatah, Hamas, Ansar Allah, and myriad other nation-state and non-state political actors in its midst). Furthermore, in place of the uppercase “Zionist”, I, throughout, use the lowercase “z” to indicate that this is a descriptive ideology, akin to “colonialism”, “irredentism”; to use the uppercase “Z” betrays the belief that this is a proper noun with a territory-claim anchored in “Zion” and, like the appellation “Israel”, grants legitimacy.

The question of why the zionist entity does not enjoy a legitimacy claim to property is beyond the scope of this article and shall be treated in a later article. Suffice to say, however, that my argument draws on those produced by Christopher Wellman in Christopher Wellman and Phillip Cole, Debating the Ethics of Immigration (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011) and is motivated by a broadly Hegelian orientation. That is, following Wellman, property rights claims are not static and do not morally arrive by way of sheer indigeneity-genealogy appeals but, rather, are historically open by dint of the processual-dialectical and -historical nature of a bounded population’s relationship with its geography, neighbors, culture, and customs. Intuition pumps like the following ought to illustrate the weakness of sheer indigeneity-genealogy appeal; take person A, who lives in Italy but whose grandparents come from a village in Greece; the grandparents had been subject to a human travesty that resulted in their being illegally uprooted (e.g., looting by a distinct bounded populace, say Caucasians) and, due to poor socio-economic conditions, made the decision to emigrate; person A, upon returning to his grandparents’ village would not, it strikes us, have an inherent moral legitimacy claim to require the expulsion of the current homeowner in all cases. Although the agents/party that initially expelled person A’s grandparents, vis-à-vis illegal means deserving of moral disapprobation, did not obtain a legitimate moral/political claim to the property at that moment, it can be argued that the subsequent generation(s) could come to legitimately enjoy such claims by integrating with the local culture and being accepted by the historically-cum-contemporaneously dominant bounded populace (which included neighboring populations). To appeal to mere indigeneity-genealogy claims would be to reduce property rights to a question of DNA testing, eliding the role that geography, culture, and local populations play. But rendering integration key illuminates why the zionist settler project is an anathema.

The most critical marker of the legitimacy claim is whether integration is exacted by way of not only an initial act of violence/ethnic cleansing/genocide but whether it requires the continuation of these processes. In the case of the zionist entity, the illegitimacy of the ancestors of the Yishuv movement who now occupy historic Palestine exacted and continue to exact routine violence. The Yishuv-zionist tradition has neither ceded nor assimilated with the dominant-processual culture, thereby instancing its putative claim to property-claims via usurpation.

Wellman’s (2011, ch. 1) grants high value to freedom of association, which, he admits, contains a tension: if we insist on cashing this out via a strong collective right then this will inevitably conflict with the associative rights of individuals to do things like marry outsiders or hire them for work. He resolves this tension in favor of the collective by asserting that the group has the right to protection from individuals who would unilaterally impose a change in their membership by their private action. Such is also the case in the Palestinian example. Vide Wellman, a right to association “trumps” exogenous indigeneity-genealogy claims (which, in any case, there is good evidence for believing do not apply to the case of Ashkenazi Jewish settlers). This also helps explain why Arabic Mizrahi Jewish settlers have, by being complicit in and directing violence against the Palestinian population—exacerbated by the Mizrahi plurality’s Likud-turn during the “ballot box” revolution that saw Begin’s Prime Minister election in 1977—abrogated any possible claims to free association with the Palestinian geography.

[2] See Rashid Khalid in his interview with Robinson Erhardt, “Rashid Khalidi: October 7th Revisited | Israel, Palestine, Gaza, Hamas, & The Nakba”,

. Accessed online 1 September, 2025.

[3] Dina Sayedahmed, “Blowback: How Israel Went From Helping Create Hamas to Bombing It”, The Intercept, 19 February 2018. https://theintercept.com/2018/02/19/hamas-israel-palestine-conflict/ ; accessed online 1 September 2025

[4] “EU’s top diplomat accuses Israel of funding Hamas”, Politico, 1 May 2024. https://www.politico.eu/article/israel-funded-hamas-claims-eu-top-diplomat-josep-borrell/ . Accessed online 30 April 2024.

[5] See Khaled Hroub, “Muslim Revivalism”, Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. 29, No. 4, Autumn 2000, pp. 106-108, esp. 107.

[6] See Khaled Hroub, “”Hamas and Israel: Perception and Language of Interaction”, Hamas: Political Thought and Practice (Beirut: Institute of Palestine Studies, 2000), pp. 200-203.

[7] See Times of Israel Staff, “Liberman: Netanyahu sent Mossad head, general to Qatar, ‘begged’ it to pay Hamas”, The Times of Israel, 22 February 2020. https://www.timesofisrael.com/mossad-chief-top-general-visited-qatar-begged-it-to-pay-hamas-liberman-says/ .(Accessed online: 1 September, 2025), where Liberman is quoted as saying that “[o]n Wednesday two weeks ago the head of Mossad… and the head of [IDF] Southern Command visit Qatar on an errand from Netanyahu, and they simply beg the Qataris to keep sending money to Hamas after March 30. The Qataris have said they will stop sending money on March 30”; also see Tal Schneider, “For years, Netanyahu propped up Hamas. Now it’s blown up in our faces”, Times of Israel, 8 October 2023. https://www.timesofisrael.com/for-years-netanyahu-propped-up-hamas-now-its-blown-up-in-our-faces/ ; accessed online 1 September 2025. Also see The Nation “Why Netanyahu Bolstered Hamas”, 11 December 2023. https://www.thenation.com/article/world/why-netanyahu-bolstered-hamas/ ; accessed online 1 September 2025.

[8] “Israel’s apartheid against Palestinians: Cruel system of domination and crime against humanity”, Amnesty International, 1 February 2022; Index Number: MDE 15/5141/2022, pp. 1- 280, p. 80; on p. 80 n.268, Amnesty International cites 268 The Jerusalem Post, “Netanyahu: Money to Hamas part of strategy to keep Palestinians divided”, 12 March 2019, jpost.com/Arab-IsraeliConflict/Netanyahu-Money-to-Hamas-part-of-strategy-to-keep-Palestinians-divided-583082 ; accessed online 1 September 2025.

[9] The formation of Hamas can be adumbrated as follows. In October 1997, the administrative bureau of the Ikhwan (Muslim Brotherhood) movement in the West Bank and Gaza Strip had resolved to launch its role in fighting the occupation, in parallel with the launch of the Islamic Resistance Movement—Hamas. On 23 October, 1987, a meeting was held in the home of the late Hasan al-Qiq in Dora in the Hebron district. The meeting was attended, in addition to al-Qiq, by Abdul Fattah Dukhan, Hammad al-Hasanat, Ibrahim al-Yazouri, Adjan Maswady, M.M., and F.S. Absent from the meeting was the late Sa’id Bilal. The attendees decided to give each city the choice to take action in the manner it deemed appropriate. On 6 December 1987, a member of Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) stabbed a settler from the zionist entity in the Gaza town square, resulting in the settler’s death . This created furor amongst those living in the zionist entity. On 8 December, 1987, four Palestinian workers were crushed to death by a truck from the zionist entity. This provoked, on the same day, massive demonstrations in Jabaliyya camp, where the three victims of the zionist entity’s attack had hailed from. Hamas officially formed as a resistance group within the context of the First Intifada. The foundational meeting gathered Sheikh Yassin, Abd al-Aziz al-Rantisi, Salah Shehadeh, Abd al-Fattah Dukhan, Ibrahim al-Yazouri, Mohammed Sham’a, and Issa al-Nashar. Although prefigured by the 23 October 1987 meeting at Hasan al-Qiq’s home in Dora, 8 December 1987 thus is Hamas’ official date of emergence (although its first communique was released several days after). See Mohsen Mohammad Saleh, “Chapter One: The Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas): An Overview of Its Experience & History 1987–2005”, Mohsen Mohammad Saleh (Ed.), The Islamic resistance Movement (Hamas): Studies of thought and Experience (Beirut: Al-Zaytouna Centre, 2017), pp. 25-61, esp. pp. 34-35.

[10] As Mohsen Mohammad Saleh, “Chapter One: The Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas)”, op. cit., pp. 29-30 writes:

After the disastrous war of 1948, the MB [viz., Muslim Brotherhood] movement became one of the most popular groups among the Palestinians, between 1949 and 1954, both in the West Bank (WB) and Gaza Strip (GS), thanks to their acclaimed role in the war of 1948, and their Islamic-national programs. The Brothers enjoyed relative freedom in Egypt until 1954, and favorable conditions in Jordan. Other movements were not able to rival the Islamists, until Gamal ‘Abdul Nasser dealt a harsh blow to the MB movement, and began a crackdown on them, utilizing his powerful media apparatus to distort their image.

As a result, the MB and the Islamists in general were now on the defensive, biding their time until better circumstances emerged. One of the models of the power of the Islamists was the Palestinian Students League in Egypt, the elections to which Islamists or the candidates they backed won every year until 1957. This included Yasir ‘Arafat, who was close to the MB movement.

[….]

In that period, restrictions on, and persecution of, the Islamic movement, especially in Egypt and GS, raised questions among the enthusiastic young members of the Palestinian MB movement, about the possible modes of action for the liberation of Palestine. The general trend in their ranks was to seek to be prudent, and focus on educational and faith-related aspects, but another trend was to seek organized militant action, which does not take open Islamic forms, but adopts national frameworks that can appeal to a wider range of young people, protecting it from hostility and crackdowns on the part of the regimes. The experience of the Algerian revolution in that period was one of the important motivations for this mode of action. These were the first seeds of the Fatah movement (the Liberation of Palestine Movement, and later the Palestinian National Liberation movement) in 1957 in Kuwait, led by Yasir ‘Arafat, which originated from the MB movement and, more specifically, the inhabitants of the GS.

Khalil al-Wazir (aka Abu Jihad), who was a member of the MB, and who became the number two man in Fatah for 30 years, had suggested the move to the MB leadership in GS, but to no avail. However, this did not stop a considerable number of prominent and respected members of the MB from joining Fatah upon its foundation, such as Sa‘id al-Muzayyan, Ghalib al-Wazir, Salim al-Za‘nun, Salah Khalaf, As‘ad al-Saftawi, Muhammad Yusuf al-Najjar, Kamal ‘Adwan, Rafiq al-Natshah, ‘Abdul Fatah Hammoud, and Yusuf ‘Umairah. They all assumed senior leadership positions in the movement. In addition, Yasir ‘Arafat himself was close to the MB movement. However, Fatah, which focused its recruitment efforts on MB members until 1962, opened up to various movements and segments of the population, especially after the leadership of the MB in GS compelled members to choose between membership of Fatah or the MB movement.

[11] See for example, Mohammad Makram Balawi “Did Israel create Hamas?”, Middle East Monitor, 15 November 2023; accessed online (3 September 2025): https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20231115-did-israel-create-hamas/

[12] As Noha Mellor recounts in “Islamizing the Palestinian–Israeli conflict: the case of the Muslim Brotherhood”, British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, Vol. 44, Is. 4, pp. 513–528, p. 523, the booklet contained:

50 gruesome images of people being tortured, and depicting British soldiers allegedly tearing up copies of the Qur’an. The booklets had been sent to the Brotherhood for distribution across Egypt, and the MB [Muslim Brotherhood] had managed to circulate thousands of copies across the country, leaving only a few hundred copies in their headquarters. Al-Banna proudly admitted to the possession of the booklets, and even gave himself up to the police […] The Ikhwan went many times before the prosecution and offered themselves for interrogation and even imprisonment.

One can find a copy of the booklet online at: https://eltaher.org/docs_photos/documents/palestine/1938%20-%20Fire%20and%20Destruction%20in%20Palestine.pdf ; accessed online 1 September 2025.

[13] Abu ‘Azza headed the Brotherhood’s organization in Gaza during the Israeli occupation from November 1956 to February 1957, when he was arrested by the occupation authorities. He says that he opposed the idea of creating Fatah and was instrumental in formulating the Brotherhood’s position opposing it. He resigned from the Brotherhood in 1972 and later was appointed a member of the Palestine National Council, continuing to serve until the late 1980s, when he resigned to protest the resolution declaring a Palestinian state and recognizing Israel.

[14] In his book Filastini bila hawiyya [A Palestinian without identity] (Kuwait: Dar Kadhima, 1981), Salah Khalaf [Abu Iyad], the third-ranking man in the PLO during the 1970s and 1980s, denies that he had any prior relationship with the Muslim Brotherhood. However, Abu ‘Azza confirms a clear relationship, as does Abu ‘Amr, who verifies the existence of an organizational relationship through Salah Khalaf’s friends in the group.

[15] Azzam Tamimi, Hamas: Unwritten Chapters (London: C Hurst & Co Publishers Ltd, 2009), p. 88.

[16] Khalil al-Qawga, an early leader of Hamas who was expelled by the zionist entity’s authorities in the initial months of the intifada, interview in Al-Anba’ (Kuwait), 8 October 1988.

[17] Tamimi, op. cit., pp. 88-89.

[18] See Michal Sela, “Resistance is a Moslem Duty”, Jerusalem Post, 27 May 1989.

[19] Ahmed Nawfal, a member of the Palestinian Ikhwan/Muslim Brotherhood in Jordan, had a central role in the Ikhwan’s bases.

[20] 31 August 1969 saw the Green Belt Operation; and on 14 September 1969, the Deir Yassij operation. Although these were resistance efforts led by the.

[21] On 17 September 1970, King Hussein replaced his civilian cabinet with a twelve-man military government and undertook the so-called “Black September” operation on PLO camps and bases in Amman, Jordan. Hundreds of Palestinian civilians were either killed or wounded. The PLO’s numbers were 3,500 civilians and 900 guerrillas killed. There were also reports that the Jordanian Legionnaires raped and looted the Palestinian population. On 22 September 1970, several Syrian military columns advanced towards Amman with the mission of supporting the PLO but Jordanian jets hounded them. By 23 September 1970, much of Amman’s urban center was in possession by the Legionnaires. See Ziv Rubinovitz, “Blue and White ‘Black September’: Israel’s Role in the Jordan Crisis of 1970”, The International History Review, December 2010, Vol. 32, No. 4 (December 2010), pp. 687-706. Hamas characterized this massacre, and those of Tal al-Za‘tar (1976) and the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps (1982) as demonstrative of prosecution of Palestinians in the 20th century; see Hamas, Periodic statement no. 27 of 3 August 1988 and Periodic statement no. 115 of 3 September 1994.

[22] Tamimi, op. cit., pp. 89-90.

[23] Jeroen Gunning, Hamas in Politics: Democracy, Religion, Violence (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008), p. 30.

[24] Tamimi, op. cit. 95.

[25] Gunning, op. cit., p. 30.

[26] Tamimi, ibid., p. 87, n5f.

[27] Tamimi, ibid., p. 92.

[28] Leila Seurat, “The Foreign Policy of Hamas”, London, I.B. Tauris, 2022, p.6.

[29] See Sela, “Resistance is a Moslem Duty”, op. cit.; Charles Enderlin, “Le grand aveuglement, Israel et l’irresistible ascension de l’Islam radical”, Paris, Albin Michel, 2009.

[30] Sela, “Resistance is a Moslem Duty”, op. cit.

[31] See Rub‘i al-Madhun, “The Islamic Movement in Palestine 1928–1987,” Shu’un Filastiniyyah, Markaz al-Abhath, Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), issue 187, October 1988, p. 27.

[32] Saleh, “The Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas): An Overview of Its Experience & History 1987–2005”, op. cit., p. 33:

[33] Abdullah Abu ‘Izzah, Ma‘ al-Harakah al-Islamiyyah fi al-Duwal al-‘Arabiyyah (With the Islamic Movement in Arab Countries) (Kuwait: Dar al-Qalam, 1986), pp. 71–96.

[34] Tamimi, op. cit., p. 110.

[35] Khaled Hroub, “Hamas: Political Thought and Practice”, Beirut: Institute of Palestine Studies, 2000, p. 92.

[36] See Sheikh Yassin, Letters from Kfar Yona prison to the leaders and members of the Hamas movement, 3 October 1993; published in Al-Wasat, 11 November 1993

[37] Habash in “Filastin al-Muslima” (March 1990), p. 12).

[38] See Ahmad Sa‘id Nofal and Mohsen Mohammad Saleh, “Hamas’ Position Vis-à-Vis the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and Its Factions“, Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas): Studies of Thought and Experience, op. cit., p. 170.

[39] Khaled Hroub, “Hamas: Political Thought and Practice”, Beirut, Institute of Palestine studies, p. 112; also see “Filastin al-Muslima”, March 1990, p. 13

[40] PLO quoted from the extended lead editorial in Filastin al- Thawra, “Likai la tadhi al-haqiqa: radduna ‘ala hamas” [That the truth not be lost: Our reply to Hamas], 8 July 1990.

[41] Hroub, Hamas: Political Thought and Practice, op. cit., p. 93

[42] Gunning, Hamas, op. cit., p.41.

[43] See Al-Hayat, 5 March 1996.

[44] However, the formal announcement on the formation of the TRO did not come until nearly one year later, on 29 September 1992. By that date, the Palestinian Revolutionary Front had replaced the Movement for Palestinian National Liberation—Fatah/Revolutionary Council. The leaders who announced the birth of the TRO concurrently met with the World Conference in Support of the Iranian Revolution in Palestine, which convened in Tehran, Iran, on 22-24 October 1991.

[45] Reproduced in Khaled Hroub, Hamas: Al-Fikr wa al-Mumarasah al-Siyasiyyah, Beirut: Institute for Palestine Studies, 1996, pp.328-330

[46] “Declaration of the Alliance of Palestinian Forces” [in Arabic], Damascus, 6 January 1994.

[47] For instance, Naim al-Achab reintroduced this narrative after the failed 2007 attempt by the Palestinian Authority to to usurp the Hamas government. The PA received military assistance and training by General Keith Dayton in undertaking this effort, which was coordinated with the zionist entity. Al-Achab, however, fallaciously framed Hamas’ seizure of the government three months after the Mecca Agreement of 2007 as in keeping with the zionist entity’s interests. See: Maariv, 1 October 2007, quoted in Naim al-Achab, Imârat-Hamâs (The Hamas Emirate), Dâr al-tanwîr li-l-nashr wa-l-targama wa-l-tawzîʿ (Ramallah, 2007); also see: Bakr Abou Bakr, Hamâs, suyûf wa manâbir, Dâr al-Shurûq li-l-nashr wa-l-tawzî‘ (Ramallah, 2008); Ahmad Abd al-Rahman, ‘Hamâs khârij al-sirb: wusûlan ilâ-l-hudna l-majjâniyya’, Seyasat (Summer 2008): 65–70. For Keith Dayton’s coordination with the zionist entity, see: Clayton Swisher, The Palestine Papers (London: Hesperus Press, 2011), p. 18 – 51; Keith Dayton, “Keynote address to the Soref Symposium on US Middle East Policy,” Washington Institute for Near East Policy, 7 May 2009; Daud Abdullah, Engaging the World: The Making of Hamas’s Foreign Policy (Johannesburg: Afro-Middle East Centre, 2020), 96-99.

[48] Jean-François Legrain, ‘Pour une autre lecture de la guerre de Gaza’, EchoGéo (Sur le Vif, 2009).

[49] Hroub, “Muslim Revivalism”, op. cit., p. 107.

[50] Hroub, Hamas: Political Thought and Practice, p. 200.

[51] Ibid., 201.

[52] Ibid.

[53] Ibid.

[54] Ibid., 202.

[55] Ibid.

[56] Ibid.

[57] Ibid.

[58] Ibid.

[59] Ibid.

[60] Ibid., 203.

[61] See for example: Ze’ev Schiff and Ehud Ya’ari, “Intifada: The Palestinian Uprising—Israel’s Third Front” (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1989), pp. 223-25.

[62] Hroub, Hamas: Political Thought and Practice., p. 203.

[63] Ibid.

[64] Ibid.

[65] Hroub, Hamas: Political Thought and Practice, op. cit., pp. 204-5n142); see further Al-Nahar, 16 December 1989.

[66] For example, Ha’aretz reported on 15 January 1990 that “the Ministry of Defense ordered the heads of the civil administration in the Occupied Territories not to make contacts with elements of Hamas and to sever immediately all lines of communication with persons who support the movement”; reported initially by Al-Nahar (Jerusalem), 16 January 1990.

[67] Hroub, Hamas: Political Thought and Practice, op. cit., p. 205.

[68] Hamas leaflet, “Resistance and Struggle will be the Sole Language of Dialogue with the Occupying Enemy,” 20 February 1994.

[69] Hroub, Hamas: Political Thought and Practice, op. cit., p. 205. Also see: “Al-Ahram” (Cairo), 19 April 1994; see also a statement by the zionist entity’s minister of police, Moshe Shahal, published in “Al-Quds Al-Arabi” (2 November 1994): “Israel makes a mistake by not being ready to talk to people. There are many currents [of thought] inside Hamas. The majority denies any possibility of negotiation or recognition of the Jewish state. But there are some whom I would not say are more moderate … but are more realistic.” Yossi Beilin made a statement along the same lines in November 1994.)

[70] Quoted in “Al-Hayat”, 1 January 1992.

[71] See Bahar’s interview with Hroub, “Harakat Hamas bain al-sulta al-filastiniyya wa-Isra’il: Min muthallath al-quwa ila al-mitraqa wal-sindan”, [Hamas Between the PA and Israel: From the triangle of power to the anvil and hammer], Majallat al-dirasat al-filastiniyya, no. 18 (Spring 1994): 24-37.

[72] Muhammad Nazzal, interview with Hroub, 23 April 1995, reproduced in Hroub, Hamas: Political Thought and Practice, op. cit., p. 206.

[73] Hamas leaflet, “Resistance and Struggle will be the Sole Language of Dialogue,” 20 February 1994.

[74] Hamas leaflet, “Clarification from Hamas spokesman, Ibrahim Ghosheh,” 7 November 1994.

[75] Ibid.

[76] During this period, the United States position on Hamas became more uncompromising when the United States pushed for the convening of an anti-terrorism summit at Sharm al-Sheikh, Egypt, in the wake of the February and March 1996 martyrdom operations by al-Qassam in Jerusalem, ‘Asqalan, and Tel Aviv. In March 1996, Hamas sent lengthy memoranda and letters to the United Nations and to the contracting parties of the Fourth Geneva Convention in the wake of the convening of the Sharm al-Sheikh Conference, which targeted Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad in particular. The international summit was held in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, on 13 March 1996. It was chaired by US President Bill Clinton and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak

[77] See Hamas, “Memorandum issued by Hamas’s political office about the latest developments,” 12 March 1996.

[78] Hroub, Hamas: Political Thought and Practice, op. cit., p. 207; Hamas, “An Important Memorandum from Hamas to the Kings, Presidents, and Ministers Meeting at Sharm al-Sheikh,” 13 March 1996; full text in Hroub, 2000, Appendix, document no. 5); also see Leila Seurat, “The New Hamas Insurgency”, Foreign affairs, 26 August 2025; retrieved online (3 September 2025) https://www.foreignaffairs.com/israel/new-hamas-insurgency for a comparable analysis of Hamas’ actions prior to Tufan al-Aqsa.

[79] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/10/world/middleeast/israel-qatar-money-prop-up-hamas.html (Accessed 14 Nov. 2024); Also see: Sami Peretz, “How Netanyahu Enabled October 7 With Suitcases of Cash”, 20 December, 2024, https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/2023-12-20/ty-article-opinion/.premium/how-netanyahu-enabled-october-7-with-suitcases-of-cash/0000018c-8397-d219-a5bf-b7ff40660000 (Accessed 14 Nov. 2024).

[80] “Rashid Khalidi: October 7th Revisited | Israel, Palestine, Gaza, Hamas, & The Nakba”,

(Accessed 14 Nov., 2024)

[81] https://www.timesofisrael.com/he-lost-his-soul-lapid-sees-sacred-cause-in-toppling-netanyahus-government/

[82] Dr. Mohamed Abdou has already clarified the shortcomings of this claim in his adroitly written “Communiqué #3: ‘and he (Allah) sent against them swarms of birds”, 20 May 2025; retrieved online (3 September 2025):
https://drmohamedabdou.substack.com/p/communique-3-and-he-allah-sent-against?utm_source=substack&utm_campaign=post_embed&utm_medium=web

[83] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/30/world/middleeast/israel-hamas-attack-intelligence.html

[84] Seurat, op. cit., p. 116

[85] Ibid. p. 64.

[86] Ibid., pp. 64-65.

[87] Tareq Baconi, “Stopping an Unwanted war in Gaza”, International Crisis Group; retrieved online (3 September 2025): https://www.crisisgroup.org/middle-east-north-africa/eastern-mediterranean/israelpalestine/stopping-unwanted-war-gaza

[88] Ibid., pp. 110-111.

[89] Ibid., p.111n30. Also see Al-Monitor, 20 March 2019.

[90] Seurat, op. cit., pp. 134-135.

[91] Ibid., p. 135.

Global South

Vladimir Putin addressed the plenary session of the 11th St Petersburg International United Cultures Forum

Vladimir Putin addressed the plenary session of the 11th St Petersburg International United Cultures Forum.

The event took place in the Grand Catherine Palace located in the Tsarskoye Selo State Museum and Reserve. This year’s theme is Return to Culture – New Opportunities.

* * *

President of Russia Vladimir Putin: Forum participants, ladies and gentlemen, friends,

Welcome to the International United Cultures Forum. It is truly a pleasure to once again host people of art and education from different countries in Russia.

I am confident that your professional dialogue that is free from stereotypes and biased approaches will help expand cooperation and interaction between states and peoples, and embody the motto of this year’s forum, Return to Culture – New Opportunities, into vibrant and highly relevant modern-day projects.

It is deeply symbolic that one of the main venues of the forum this year is here, in Tsarskoye Selo. I hope you will enjoy these marvellous masterpieces and outstanding interior decorations. The magnificence of the Catherine Palace and its park ensembles is born of the harmony of different cultural traditions and embodies the nations’ ability to have the ideas unite them, and to join efforts in order to create beautiful works of art going from one generation to the next.

All this serves as a remarkable evidence of the unifying and creative power of culture.

These approaches are the essence and meaning of our forum. They reflect the significance of languages, customs, and artistic heritage of each nation for the whole world, and the supreme value of their diversity, which creates harmony and forms our civilisation.

All our forums – this is the 11th forum – asserted the core, key principle which says that the more vibrant, the more fulfilling, and the more distinctive this diversity is, the richer our common cultural heritage is and the more stable and successful the future of our planet will be.

We, in Russia, know well that national culture can thrive and get richer only in interaction with other cultures. Our country was originally formed as a multiethnic nation, and this priceless gift determined its unique cultural palette and the status of a truly great power with great art, science, and literature. By the way, creative writing is in itself an excellent environment for communication, and we are in favour of strengthening the interaction between writers from different countries.

History proves that the brightest pages of cultural explosion occur in times when cultures actively interact with the outside world. And conversely, when society shuts off itself from the world, putting blind, dogmatic trust in its exceptionalism and superiority over others, a period of spiritual and intellectual crisis comes, followed by cultural decline and stagnation across all spheres of life.

We must strive for balance between preserving national values and being open to the influence that fosters development and progress. Mixing traditions and techniques often creates world-class masterpieces, while personal contacts help artists, writers, and musicians find unusual forms to realise their talent potential, stimulating creative thinking and the emergence of new movements.

Culture dialogue takes on particular significance today, in the era of rapid development of technology, including artificial intelligence. These technologies make our world increasingly interconnected, opening up tremendous opportunities for creation, ambitious experiments, and daring innovation, including in culture.

Yet our shared task is to avoid risks and negative social consequences, particularly the dilution and devaluation of the values of freedom and human rights, ethical and moral standards, as well as the loss of national distinctiveness and cultural diversity, without which there would be no global harmony.

It is obvious that technology encourages faster spread of ideas. Artificial intelligence, for instance, analyses large data sets and forecasts trends. However, I believe that only human inspiration and genius – that of true masters and creators – can produce original solutions that would lead to discoveries and breakthroughs in science, art, and social spheres. And certainly, the interaction and mutual trust among representatives of different cultures.

Humanity is yet to embrace the new reality while preserving the origins that serve as our foundation. We believe that the world of the future is neither for egoists totally immersed in cyberspace, nor for loners who live following the principle of “every man for himself,” but for people who still appreciate love and friendship, cherish their loved ones, and understand their inseparable connection to, and responsibility toward, society.

It is no coincidence that in Russia, many cultural sector development programmes are included in the Family national project. We see this as a guarantee of resolving demographic problems, creating conditions for self-realisation of young people and for their successful future, raising good citizens on a solid basis of Russian culture and the best pieces of world culture.

For Russia, supporting families with children, enhancing the influence and authority of the institution of the family and its values is top priority. After all, our identity and national character are deeply rooted in the family. Family teaches, educates, passes on traditions and acts as the main keeper of our culture.

Of course, many in this audience, almost all of you, know a classic definition of culture: culture is information that is passed on from generation to generation. The spiritual and moral values ​​are the result of tireless work and quest by scores of generations, and each one added a new perception to the existing world outlook.

Everything that we refer to as heritage today was, at the time of its creation, acutely contemporary art, be it the Tale of Bygone Years, probably known to every Russian citizen, or the avant-garde art of the early 20th century. Great Russian classics, such as Pushkin, Lermontov, Gogol, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, and Chekhov, to name a few, authored books that were ahead of their time and caused heated debates back in the day.

This kind of innovation created a tradition – a living tradition open to change and capable of catering to the needs of society. In order for it to carry on, it must be enriched by new generations of masters.

It is gratifying that a noticeable renewal is taking place in various spheres of Russia’s cultural sector. Creative associations and unions are gaining ground. That includes the Union of Writers of Russia, which consolidates in its ranks outstanding representatives of the literary community. Young creative talents are heading leading theatres, and musical and artistic performance groups. This is a positive development that reflects healthy continuity processes.

The emergence of new names in literature, cinema, and fine arts is also facilitated by the state policy. In Russia, comprehensive support for young people, assistance in exercising the rights to freedom for all types of creativity, in discovering new talents and helping them grow professionally are enshrined in law.

Accessible quality teaching for gifted children is being ensured in Russia by its unrivalled system of continuous creative education that includes specialty schools, colleges, and higher education institutions.

We hold numerous festivals and competitions each year for young actors, artists, musicians, and dancers. Aspiring young professionals, who are just starting out, also receive support through prizes, grants, and scholarships.

We pay significant attention to developing cultural centres in the regions. This enables us to discover and nurture talent even in small towns and settlements, ensuring equal opportunities for gifted young people and all residents of our country.

Naturally, much remains to be done, particularly in smaller towns and residential communities. We will definitely continue to promote this trend which is gaining momentum.

We are opening new theatres, concert halls, cultural centres, galleries, and traditional arts and crafts centres in the regions, restoring and renovating cultural and historical heritage sites and creating conditions for our people, civil society organisations, philanthropists, and business representatives to participate in such projects. By the way, I would like to thank business leaders for their involvement.

We expect that our successful cultural initiatives may be of interest to our friends abroad, and we are certainly ready to share this experience with all partners, jointly enriching the global cultural landscape with vibrant events. Today, I would like to highlight one such initiative.

Friends, we are grateful to our like-minded partners who supported Russia’s proposal to revive the Intervision international song contest – a remarkable platform where songs capture the distinctive character of peoples and the diversity of cultures and traditions. I firmly believe that the modern Intervision contest will fully preserve this atmosphere of creativity and friendship, serving as yet another proof that true art knows no borders and its unifying power is immeasurable. I wish all contestants success. There is no doubt that they will make their own meaningful contribution to strengthening dialogue between cultures and peoples.

[Note: Intervision is in direct opposition to Eurovision.]

I would like to stress once again: cultural and humanitarian area is one of the priorities for us in terms of international cooperation. This topic was also addressed during the recent meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation leaders, particularly within the context of countering extremist ideology.

We are aware of the threats it poses and the horrific tragedies it precipitates. We consider the preservation of shared historical memory – which truly unites our peoples and strengthens their spiritual bonds through mutual understanding and trust – to be one of culture’s most vital tasks.

This year marks the 80th anniversary of the end of the Second World War, the Great Patriotic War. Undying gratitude to frontline soldiers and homefront workers, the memory of millions of fallen civilians – victims of Nazism, and pride in the generation of the victors have become an inseparable, essential part of our culture, being embodied in artworks, paintings, books, films, and memorials, instilling in youth a sense of responsibility for their country and for the security of the entire global community.

I am convinced that the role of culture in international cooperation, in countering neo-Nazism, Russophobia, antisemitism, and all forms of racism, ethnic or religious intolerance, should grow stronger. Here, first and foremost, we count on your support, on the engagement and contribution of cultural figures, and on concrete initiatives that can enrich our common cultural space.

I know that the forum’s agenda includes numerous professional discussions and creative exchanges. We will make every effort to incorporate your ideas and proposals when working with partners across all international organisations where Russia maintains an active presence – including the SCO, as I mentioned, BRICS, and other multilateral associations.

Let me stress once again: our task in the modern world is to combine efforts in safeguarding cultural identity and diversity, traditions, and worldviews whilst moving forward, fostering innovation, and jointly creating genuine art – uplifting creativity that elevates humanity’s finest qualities. We must counter threats to minority cultures’ survival, advance principles of justice and equality in interethnic relations, and free the world from prejudice, double standards, and attempts to cancel this or that culture.

We must strive for openness and mutual respect, be willing to learn, and contribute to strengthening and expanding the global cultural space thereby ensuring a decent, peaceful, and prosperous future for our peoples.

I wish you every success and fruitful discussions. Thank you for your attention. Thank you for joining us today.

Thank you. All the best.

Global South

Last Chinese warning

… the Tianjin SCO summit is a collective demarche by Eurasia, which has united against the United States, the European Union, and their regional allies…

By Rostislav Ishchenko at Ukraine.ru.

(machine translation)

The meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization states that opened in Tianjin today is undoubtedly a diplomatic triumph for China. This was clearly intended by the main participants, including Russia and India.

And the West is to blame for this.

Let’s start with a formal note: all the participating countries are represented by their heads of state or government. The President of Russia has arrived for a four-day visit, combining his participation in the SCO summit with a state visit to China. The events related to the latter will take place in Beijing. By the way, Putin’s schedule is extremely busy, with numerous meetings with the leaders of the participating countries, which indirectly confirms the importance and significance of the summit.

In general, it should be noted that although the SCO summits are held in member countries on a rotational basis, all the turning points in the organization’s life have occurred in China. The founding meeting of the then-called “Shanghai Five” (Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan) was held in Shanghai. The 2001 meeting, which led to the establishment of the SCO after the admission of Uzbekistan, also took place in China (also in Shanghai).

In addition to SCO members, observers and dialogue partners, representatives of five other Southeast Asian states (Indonesia, Malaysia, Maldives, Laos and Vietnam) have arrived at the current summit in Tianjin (also China). I do not presume to say that they will gain any status in the SCO as a result of the meeting, although this is not excluded. For example, why don’t they become observers or dialogue partners? But the very fact of the arrival of representatives of these countries is very important.

The fact is that China’s relations with Southeast Asian countries are extremely complex. They have traditionally been wary of China’s ambitions and Beijing’s claims to dominance in the region. Vietnam and Malaysia have territorial disputes with China that are just as complex and long-lasting as the Chinese-Philippine dispute, which the United States is currently using to escalate military tensions in the region in order to increase pressure on China.

Washington has recently (as recently as August of this year) made attempts to draw Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam, Laos, and India into the anti-Chinese alliances being formed by the United States in the Indo-Pacific region. The presence of the leaders of these countries in Tianjin indicates that the choice has not been made in favor of the United States. This is due to the fact that the agenda of the meeting focuses on discussing security issues, both military and economic. The main threat to the countries in the region comes from the military activities and economic policies of the United States.

It is no coincidence that I wrote that the West, primarily the United States, is to blame for China’s diplomatic triumph, which was achieved through joint efforts with India and Russia. The Russia-India-China triangle, which forms the basis of the SCO, had its own challenges. In fact, it still does. However, these challenges are being actively addressed, and the countries are actively seeking and finding mutually acceptable compromises, as they recognize the aggressive policies of the United States and the West as the primary threat to their interests.

The very beginning of the SCO – the creation of the “Shanghai Five” – was the first global format to bring Russia and China closer together strategically. The “Shanghai Five” helped to resolve relations between Moscow and Beijing in Central Asia (primarily with the buffer countries bordering both powers), as well as with the Central Asian states themselves. At the time, both Russia and the Central Asian states had serious concerns about China’s plans for military, political, and financial-economic expansion in the region.

It is unknown whether Russia and China’s relations would have reached the level of strategic cooperation (especially so quickly) if it weren’t for the West’s openly aggressive policies, which left the countries of Eurasia with no choice. The alternative to uniting the countries of the region through compromise to fight for their interests against the West was to capitulate to it and become dependent states subjected to neo-colonial exploitation. The further rapid growth of the SCO, which included even countries that had been at odds with each other for many years, was also predetermined by Western policies, which caused greater concern and rejection among the countries of the region than any old local conflicts. The region was fighting “for its borders,” while the West was fighting “for its life.”

The current meeting is taking place against the backdrop of the Trump administration’s announced shift in U.S. foreign policy towards China. Instead of presenting mutually beneficial proposals, the U.S. has come to Beijing with an arrogant demand to abandon its own interests in order to support an ineffective U.S. economic and military policy aimed solely at restoring the irrevocably lost American global hegemony, which allowed for a neo-colonial plunder of the planet.

The Americans needed the support of countries in the region, as well as global players such as Russia and India, to succeed in their anti-Chinese policy. Instead of looking for ways to bring their positions closer to Moscow and New Delhi, Washington has found nothing better than to try to put pressure on them. Russia is being persuaded to accept unfavorable peace conditions in Ukraine, although the United States needs a temporary (until victory over China and switching to Russia) stabilization in the European direction.

Economic sanctions are being imposed against India in the form of increased tariffs, trying to force it to accept US demands that are unfavorable for its economy. Moreover, the requirements not to buy Russian energy carriers (which the United States itself buys and resells to its allies at a surcharge) are secondary. Major increased tariffs on Indian exports to the United States were introduced earlier, in an attempt to force New Delhi to accept artificial restrictions on the profitability of its trade with the United States.

The United States has lost its ability to compete effectively with foreign producers. They no longer need (because it is not profitable) freedom of trade. They want to open up other countries’ markets for themselves and close their own markets to others. They are willing to achieve this goal not only through economic means, but also through military force where they cannot be defeated.

This is why the topic of military, political, and economic security in the region will be the main focus of both the summit and bilateral negotiations. This is also why Russia, India, Indonesia, and other Eurasian countries have not only agreed to the summit format as a Chinese diplomatic triumph, but have also helped to organize it.

In form, this is China’s response to the United States, its final warning in response to attempts at aggressive pressure. In fact, the Tianjin SCO summit is a collective demarche by Eurasia, which has united against the United States, the European Union, and their regional allies, to postpone or even successfully resolve existing problems and conflicts in the face of a global threat from the West.

The success of the summit in Tianjin, which means the further expansion and internal strengthening of the SCO, is guaranteed by the very fact of a united (even though this unity is beginning to crack under the weight of unsolvable problems) and extremely aggressive West.

Global South

Slices of Life, #6

Cambodian dictator Hun Sen’s level of corruption and depravity is also instructive, since it’s mirrored by other leaders, including the world’s most visible. 

with gratitude to Linh Dinh at Postcards from the End.

Thy Sovantha — Aug 24, 2025.

Though Hun Sen’s official title is President of the Senate, every Cambodian knows he’s still their dictator, as he’s been for 38 years. On 8/3/25, Hun Sen announced 30-year-old Thy Sovantha had been kicked out of the Cambodian People’s Party and fired from her job as vice mayor of Arey Ksat, a city of just 76,000 people.

His explanation, “We don’t have time to educate undisciplined cadres when national matters demand attention. Time and again, Thy Sovantha has posted inappropriate messages on FaceBook. I’ve personally called her to request she delete two recent posts. Today, she again posted a message that’s harmful to our military even as our soldiers are defending our nation.”

A day or two later, Hun Sen also stripped Thy Sovantha of her citizenship, and booted her entire family out of the country. She’s lucky to not be murdered. What has this minor Cambodian politician done to incur such wrath, and why should you care?

Off the coast of Sihanoukville is Koh Tang, a paradisal island that houses thousands of forced laborers and sex slaves of many nationalities, according to Thy Sovantha. She has even compiled names of victims. Those no longer useful are killed for their organs. Since a heart is worth one million bucks and a liver $560,000, nobody should be wasted. Vietnamese already know Koh Tang as where 513 of their compatriots perished, after being kidnapped by the Khmer Rouge in 1975 from Thổ Chu, an island 65 miles away. After being worked to death, their corpses were used to fertilize jackfruit, coconut and mango trees. So quaint, such a primitive solution.

With the Kingdom of Cambodia technically a democracy with the king just a figurehead, such horrors are supposed to be passé, but slaves are still trapped across Cambodia. Mostly controlled by Chinese, they enrich the Hun Sen clan.

Before this episode, Thy Sovantha was already famous for her stunning looks. At age 18, she emerged as a supporter of Sam Rainsy, a flamboyant politician now living in exile. When Thy Sovantha switched her allegiance to Hun Sen, it’s assumed she had been bought off. No one really cared, since she was so soothing to stare at. Unlike Kristi Noem, she hasn’t been cut up every which way, then nervously reassembled like some thrift store jigsaw puzzle.

Hun Sen’s level of corruption and depravity is also instructive, since it’s mirrored by other leaders, including the world’s most visible. To these monsters, young women and girls are only useful for sex, young men are to be worked to death or sent to battles, with the rest just useless eaters to be murdered, with their organs harvested. Jewjab was a particularly cute solution, since people were charged to be injured or even killed. Those with “long Covid” can be fleeced for years until death.

With Thy Sovantha so visible, Hun Sen couldn’t just zap her. This decision may prove fatal. Humiliated by Thailand and abandoned by China, he’s already in deep shit. From overseas, Sovantha will speak out even more. Perhaps the old creep is also smitten by this beauty.

Whenever in Saigon, Hun Sen stays, for some reason, at the middle-brow Tân Lộc Hotel by Bến Thành Market. Frequenting nearby eateries, he’s well known for squeezing waitresses’ shoulders. Near corpses can’t help but grab.

In Jordan last month, I thought often about Ghassan Kanafani. Married to a Dane, this Palestinian could have fled to safety. Instead, he stayed most outspoken in the Middle East, so was murdered by Jews, along with his 17-year-old niece, in Beirut. Challenging Cambodia’s most powerful man, Thy Sovantha also flirted with death. There’s also the example of Albania’s Musine Kokalari. Educated in Italy, she could have just stayed there. Instead, Kokalari came home to write in her native language and become politically involved. Though this wrecked her life, her courage and integrity still inspire.

Nations that lack Kanafanis, Sovanthas, Kokalaries or Nam Caos don’t survive. A life’s worth shouldn’t be measured in years, but in meaningful, decisive acts, whether honorable, cowardly or merely misguided. These considerations are moot, however, if men are on auto pilot. With ChatGPT, Chatsonic and whatever else, half dead brains can just drift. In self driving cars, they can just text or ogle at porn.

For a week, I had this stubborn cough, runny nose and slight headache. Only yesterday did I get some pills from Pharmacity. Done with this article by 7:33AM, I will trek a few miles, just to wade into tactile life again. Unmediated experience is never a waste of time. I’m lucky to be in a society with streets still alive.

Couch or cubicle bound serfs can keep mooning at Thy Sovantha, but remember, she’s not just a pretty face!

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Ah, Life! — Aug 25, 2025.

Doing nothing, 29-year-old Vinh gets 200K [$7.60] a day from his parents. After high school, he did enter college to study tourism management. He lasted just one year. Like millions of similar youths across this globe, Vinh’s defeated lifestyle is enabled by the internet. Its free music, porn, video games and TikTok skits give his life meaning. He’s entertained.

Walking to Coffee Seven this pre dawn, I paused to chat with BlueTooth. As always, he was listening to Eminem. That sonic monotony defines and anchors him.

“I don’t know any Vietnamese who can rap that rapidly,” I said. “Do you?”

“I met this kid who claimed his crew could do it.”

“Could he?”

“I didn’t see it.”

“What does it mean, to rap so rapidly?”

“It means you can sing without thinking!” He sounded awed. “We can’t do it yet.”

When BlueTooth said that rap must be authentic, I pointed out the obvious. Most rappers are broke assed pussies who pose as loaded gangstas. Like Trump or Uncle Sam, they’re fakes. Since I must think before singing, I couldn’t be so elaborate or exact. Still, I got my point across.

Arriving at Coffee Seven, I noticed a Chevrolet Orlando parked outside. Though an American brand, it’s made in South Korea and never sold in the USA, so a fake, basically. It belongs to Mrs. Seven’s niece. As the Assistant Post Master General of Ho Chi Minh City, she can afford these nice wheels. Nearing 50, she’s never married. Her two sisters are also unmarried career women. This global progression towards isolation is accelerating, and mostly welcomed.

Tribes in the Vietnamese Highlands used to live in multi-family long houses. The Hakka of southern China dwelled in enormous circular fortresses, so a vast home, basically, for each clan. Now, there are charmingly named cage apartments and coffin homes in Hong Kong. Five years ago in Seoul, I stayed for nearly a week in a tiny room that cost just $24 a night. It was fun as a novelty. Many South Koreans, though, must live that way. Four decades ago, I had friends who rented NYC closets they converted into bedrooms. Any space wide enough for a single mattress can be leased, obviously, with a first month, last month and security deposit, plus a background check. Your live in landlord wouldn’t want you to slide open that closet door at 3AM, so you can, you know, snuggle a bit. Tennessee Williams has fond memories of such encounters in New Orleans rooming houses. His best account of aroused strangers clawing for love is “Night of the Iguana,” of course.

Despite herself and almost unconsciously, a spinster manages to seduce a queer, but not to consummation. Just before coitus, she flees back to her room, so is, again, alone. Still, she has glimpsed a novel universe.

Consider this masterful passage, “Now she was sleepy. But just before falling asleep she remembered and felt again the spot of dampness, now turning cool but still adhering to the flesh of her belly as a light but persistent kiss. Her fingers approached it timidly. They expected to draw back with revulsion but were not so affected. They touched it curiously and even pityingly and did not draw back for a while. Ah, Life, she thought to herself and was about to smile at the originality of this thought when darkness lapped over the outward gaze of her mind.”

There’s nothing original about seeing semen as life, but it certainly feels that way to each virgin. There’s no mockery in Williams’ acknowledgement, only tremendous empathy. By adding pity to her wonderment, he’s also showing pity for all lonely bodies, including his, of course, for how many times did Tennessee touch that damp spot on his own belly?

Two weeks ago, Gina Schrank commented, “I loved hearing about your coffee lady caring for someone or other constantly.” After her mother’s stroke, Mrs. Seven had to wipe and wash her daily for 12 years. For a much shorter time, she had to do the same for her dad. “He used to clutch at his pants like this!” she told me. “But I had to do it. I couldn’t let him be so dirty.”

This morning, I found out Mrs. Seven also took care of her mother-in-law whenever she popped in for coffee, which was often. After escaping Vietnam by boat, this lady settled in California, but came home after two decades without her husband.

“She lived with her son, you know, so she wasn’t properly washed. A woman had to do it. I took her to the back. Her pussy was all slimy,” she chuckled at this memory. “I washed it.”

Her term for pussy is chim, by the way. It literally means “bird.” Makes no sense. Vietnamese also call cows “crawling animal,” con bò. They’re beyond goofy, man.

Though subjected to each deranged trend emanating from that Flaming Babylon on that distant, unreachable hill, almost no Vietnamese is tatted up, pierced and strutting down the street, acting tough. Even those in “cool looking” hoodies flaunt cutesy slogans and cartoon characters in pastel colors. The most clueless wear pyjamas all day long. The more image conscious, the more narcissistic thus insane you are.

Once upon a time Gore Vidal, Truman Capote or Tennessee Williams could be spotted on American television. That civilization is hardly remembered, much less missed. Now, there are only waves of cool zombies brushing against confused troops, freshly deployed. Their endless war has come home.

China’s Tang ping, South Korea’s N-po generation, UK’s NEET and Japan’s freeters are all descendants of Herman Meville’s Bartleby, that pathetic yet sublime Wall Street quitter. Steered towards a soulless, machinelike existence, they’ve all decided to mumble, “I’d prefer not to.” It would only be a passive suicide, though, if you’re not saying yes to anything.

For several years, I’ve photographed people staring at phones. Uploading my latest, I was struck by how insane they’ve become. It’s useless to say this can’t go on.

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Stragglers in the Night — Aug 27, 2025.

Passing BlueTooth in the dark, I said, “We’re like ghosts. While other people sleep, we just…” I checked myself from saying “function.” Half an hour later, I still don’t know what verb would have been better, but perhaps “straggle”? You, me, him, we barely straggle, for we’re the luckiest.

Hearing me sneeze, Mrs. Seven’s bitch barked from behind her rusting steel door. Only today did I learn she’s called Nọng, a hideous name, and unique, too. Nasty Flannery O’Connor has a character named Hulga Hopewell. Mrs. Seven’s other dog, a male, is called Milk Cow, Bò Sữa. She also refers to him as “missus,” as in, “Missus always hides when it’s time to take a bath.” With our quirks, secrets, shameful solutions or perversions we get by, hopefully without being humiliated or jailed.

Before leaving my high ceilinged, French built room, I listened to a monologue by The Functional Melancholic. Witty, thought provoking, well read and with a good delivery, he’d have drawn live audiences 30 years ago, like Spalding Gray, but today, he must earn his keeps on YouTube. “Civilization’s Inevitable Collapse” has provoked 1,500 comments after just a week, so he’s raising urgent yet all-too-familiar issues. From Thoreau to John Zerzan, many have articulated the despair and horrors of being trapped in conformist America.

The Functional Melancholic, “While most of us are staggering under debt and spiritual emptiness that’s become so routine and ubiquitous, it might as well be direct deposited with our paychecks at this point. The question, ‘Do you like civilization?’ is about as absurd as asking, ‘Do you like your nervous system?’”

A typical response, “I was sitting in my cube today, trying to be grateful for still having a decent job, when a realization hit me. The world just feels.. wrong. Everything about it is wrong. Nothing is the way it should be. It’s all backwards and upside down. It’s like Morpheus said: it’s like a splinter in the mind. It’s suffocating.”

I heard Spalding Gray around 1985. Going to the Painted Bride, I passed through Washington Square. Thousands of Revolutionary War soldiers, plus a few Brits, are buried there in unmarked graves. Seeing me with a white girl, some dude, perhaps homeless, started chasing us with a fallen tree branch. I’m betting he’s a Vietnam Vet who suddenly spotted a Viet Cong. Brushing off this goofy episode, we enjoyed Gray’s performance. In 2004, this Manhattanite jumped off the Staten Island Ferry into the East River, so that’s that.

During my 35 years in the USA, I never got a credit card, so never spent cash I didn’t have. I bought two used cars, which I drove for less than two years altogether. I never got a mortgage. There were times I counted pennies at checkout counters. With such a minimal lifestyle, of course I was a loser to most eyes, but so what. Once I was paid to talk to a class at the Philadelphia Community College. The very next day, I was washing windows at Rittenhouse Square. The term gig economy hadn’t been invented. With buckets of hot water, squeegees and scrunched up newspapers, I roamed through Center City with Lee Goldston. Despite his name, Lee was just this black dude from North Carolina. Lee’s business card said, “Associated Philadelphia International Company,” but my own father, with a single restaurant in Santa Clara, CA, called his backwoods operation “Kobe International.”

“How is it international?” I asked him.

“That’s for the future. Kobe will be international!”

That’s Trumpian or Muskian logics. Since you can’t absolutely rule out any possibility, you can just say anything, but only to morons, of course.

With Klarma, afterpay and affirm, Americans are postponing paying in full even their fastfood burger, burrito or reconstituted chicken. They’re also skipping payments on their houses and cars. Even if your blood pressure is spiking and your nuts are freezing, everything is cool, sort of, as long as there are deep fried calories in your belly.

By early 2018, Tony and his sister no longer had electricity or heat, but they were still eating and, most importantly, drinking. With Latinos taking over his kitchen, Tony became just a parking lot attendant, but his furtive stealing finally got Tony fired. His aging sister was only given the worst tables at her waitressing job. All Friendly Lounge’s regulars gave Tony money so he wouldn’t starve. His last words to us before disappearing for good, “This is your last chance to lend me money!” That wouldn’t be a bad line in any monologue.

Since it’s 6AM, I will wrap up today’s monologue. Straggling home, I will cook up some spaghetti, to eat with a beef burger patty. A recent indulgence are cubes of sugar free dark chocolate, bought at Lotte Supermarket.

One last detail before I forget or get struck by lightning. During the Vietnam War, Mrs. Seven’s dad made good money selling pot to American soldiers. Getting to know them, he even converted this very house into a mini bar. That’s why there’s a Minnie Mouse, playing the harp, on Mrs. Seven’s bedroom wall. When she was distracted chatting to a neighbor yesterday, I sneaked into her room to photograph it.

To survive, you must be resourceful, sneaky or freakish, whatever it takes, man, as long as you’re not hurting nobody.

With her tail chopped off, Nọng only has a comic stub to wiggle, but she’s never felt one second of self-pity, I don’t think. As she came by to check on me just seconds ago, I felt so much admiration, from me to her, of course. You’re a pitiful shit, she’s probably thinking.

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About Linh Dinh (@linhdinh):

‘Before being canceled, I was an anthologized poet and fairly prolific author, with my last book Postcards from the End of America. Now, I write about our increasingly sick world for a tiny audience on SubStack. Drifting overly much, I’m in Cambodia.

Born in Saigon, Vietnam in 1963, I lived mostly in the US from 1975 until 2018, but have returned to Vietnam. I’ve also lived in Italy, England and Germany. I’m the author of a non-fiction book, Postcards from the End of America (2017), a novel, Love Like Hate (2010), two books of stories, Fake House (2000) and Blood and Soap (2004), and six collections of poems, with a Collected Poems cancelled by Chax Press from external pressure. I’ve been anthologized in Best American Poetry 2000, 2004, 2007, Great American Prose Poems from Poe to the Present, Postmodern American Poetry: a Norton Anthology (vol. 2) and Flash Fiction International: Very Short Stories From Around the World, etc. I’m also editor of Night, Again: Contemporary Fiction from Vietnam (1996) and The Deluge: New Vietnamese Poetry (2013). My writing has been translated into Japanese, Italian, Spanish, French, Dutch, German, Portuguese, Korean, Arabic, Icelandic, Serbian and Finnish, and I’ve been invited to read in Tokyo, London, Cambridge, Brighton, Paris, Berlin, Leipzig, Halle, Reykjavik, Toronto, Singapore and all over the US. I’ve also published widely in Vietnamese.’

AHH: Please support this wonderful writer on his Substack! Thanks

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Global South

Slices of Life, #5

What crime did I commit in a past life to end up like this? To feel anything, numb sacks of meat must go online to cultivate their sadism.

with gratitude to Linh Dinh at Postcards from the End.

Bird Wings Under Sunshine — Aug 19, 2025.

Noticing her frog so immobile, Mrs. Seven thought maybe it was pregnant. Now, she thinks it’s just starving. “Look at its flanks,” she frets as I peer at the darkened lump, parked in a puddle, with its rump against the splotchy wall. What crime did I commit in a past life to end up like this? it must be thinking.

Give this animal a sprig or two of raw watercress, I suggest. With all that’s wrong with the world, why am I concerning you with this inconsequential being? I’m not, really. Like y’all, I don’t care about anyone, ultimately, but as a SubStack hack, I must come up with amusing tales, and pretend I give a shit about anything. It’s grueling and dangerous work. Why didn’t I choose a much softer career in some coalmine or sewer, or on a tsunami battered offshore rig?

Mrs. Seven’s husband’s death anniversary is coming up. Her two daughters and two grandchildren will be here. Her two pregnancies were separated by 15 years. In between, she had three abortions, of the kind performed very early. She explained it as having a blood clot conveniently sucked out, more or less. As a dancer, she couldn’t prance around on stage with a bulging belly.

By the late 80’s, Mrs. Seven was performing at the Palace Hotel. It’s only half a mile from Cóc Cóc, where I’m sitting. On 4/30/75, Palace was the site of the very last Vietnam War battle in Vung Tau. Surrounded and vastly outnumbered, more than 400 ARVN soldiers had to surrender after several hours.

Mrs. Seven’s recollection of Palace is mostly pleasant. When food was still scarce, her troupe could occasionally enjoy all-you-can-eat buffets, with even leftovers to take home. Twelve members were northerners, with several from Nghệ An, Ho Chi Minh’s home province. It’s long famous for its poverty.

“They wouldn’t just take food home, but steal plates and glasses,” she remembers. “When I visited their homes, I’d see all these Palace Hotel plates.” She laughs. Their homecooked meals were pitiful, but that’s just Nghệ An. “They don’t eat like us.”

Foreign companies would have catered parties at the Palace. Not until these Westerners or Taiwanese finished feasting could her troupe begin its dubious folkloric performance. Mrs. Seven’s star turn was impressively labeled “Bird Wings Under Sunshine.” As her agent, I’m ready to book this slightly stooped and creaking old broad for Trump’s new ballroom at the Whitey House.

Most annoying were the French, for they sure took their time eating. They’d leisurely suck every sliver of meat from the thinnest crab leg and lick the last drop of whatever soup from a spoon. When they’re done, there wasn’t a speck of gravy left for a baby gnat. Forget frogs.

For a single performance on a cruise ship on Phú Quốc Island, Mrs. Seven made enough for a used washing machine. “The toilets on that ship were better than what we had on land!” A booking for three months in Japan fell through, however. This was when Vietnamese needed exit visas. With that secured, Mrs. Seven already bought, in her mind, a sound system for her husband’s band. He’s an organist.

My Scranton buddy, Chuck Orloski, won a Fulbright Fellowship to Bulgaria in the mid 80’s. Before Chuck could board a plane for Sofia, the US imposed sanctions on that nation, so that’s that. He’ll also die without ever seeing his ancestral Poland.

Sơn the security guard reflects often on his brushes with death in Pol Pot’s Cambodia. In her dim café, Mrs. Seven remembers arching her back and holding her pretty hands, just so, under stage lighting.

Walking home decades ago, she was hit by some asshole who didn’t turn his light on. Was he saving some gasoline, he thought, or extending the lifespan of his headlight? For over a month, she couldn’t even kneel properly, much less dance. In hellish pain, she had to force her buttocks to touch her heels. “It hurt so bad! I was sweating!” Alone in her room, she had no choice but to keep trying.

When Sơn showed up late, again, this pre dawn, we asked why his wife didn’t wake him up on time? They don’t even sleep in the same room, he explained. She was still sleeping.

Again, I quote Stanley Kunnitz, “Those who were strange born, those who’ll die tomorrow, dance here today,” and alone, too, of course.

With this piece at only 725 words, I must scrape harder for very last bit of coal, crabmeat or soup. Looking up, I see yet another itinerant seller of lottery tickets. She’s short with sticklike legs. Also more numerous are old women from the provinces. Selling not much, they must wander around stoically all day long.

At Cóc Cóc, there’s a taped flyer telling thieves to stop stealing its plastic plant pot. Even brand new, it’s worth less than $3. Closing up each evening, Mrs. Seven must remove a junk electric fan from an outside wall.

We’re old enough to remember necklace snatchers swooping by on motorbikes. Those too clumsy or inexperienced risk smashing their victim’s face or skull on asphalt. Such two wheeled muggers have shown up in the West.

Listen, I’m not here to persuade anyone of anything. If you’re convinced you and yours are cruising through a Golden Age, then happy sailing! You deserve it.

No less deserving are MAGA farmers losing workers, markets and, now, even farms and family homes passed down through generations. American democracy can’t be more perfectly illustrated.

With my back against a wall, I sit in the shade of a midget palm. On the underside of one leaf is a dozen black and orange insects. Just born apparently, they’re clustered around their now empty eggs. Eight yards away, a red bus has just stopped to dislodge aging white tourists. One woman wore a skirt of a dozen colors. Her giddiness at being repackaged is fetching. In her youth, she may have danced nearly as well as Mrs. Seven.

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Intertwining Satanists — Aug 20, 2025.

Clarity in thinking or writing is extremely rare. Nearly always, we get ducking, dodging or just plain lying, with the entire US political establishment especially adroit and shameless at these practices. American writers, even dissident ones, are also expert at dancing around obvious truths.

How bracing, then, to wake up this morning to these statements from Kevin Barrett, “Everyone agrees that God hates the wanton mass murder of tens or hundreds of thousands of innocent women and children. Those who stand with God, with their faith, with the values of the New Testament (or the Qur’an or Mahabharata or Analects or Lotus Sutra or Tao Te Ching for that matter) are bound to oppose genocide. Acquiescing in genocide, or even supporting it, amounts to opposing God.

“[…] Jews, by definition, are the people who rejected Christ. That means the self-proclaimed Jewish state is the ‘anti-Christ state’—the State of Antichrist. And the Jewish state of Israel is committing a genocide against the descendants of the family of Jesus, namely the Palestinians. The satanic Zionists, who spit on Christians and burn and bomb their holy places, are crucifying Gaza out of hatred for Jesus and his followers (Muslim as well as Christian).”

Bravo, my man!

As Satanists, these Jews don’t just lapse often into violence, but sexual violence, for the worst violation on any human, and by extension, God, is to inflict sadistic pain on his naked person. You enjoy reducing him or her to a screaming, sobbing animal. As Satanic Americans look the other way, Jews commit thousands of Satanic sexual crimes against Arabs. They’re doing it right now.

With their Satanic sadism so insatiable, powerful Jews also prey on Jews. Just two months ago, some Jewish victims were finally able to make public their unspeakable suffering.

Yael Ariel, “I experienced ritual abuse over many years until my late teens and was forced to harm other children. I chose to speak out and make my voice heard. I received threats after revealing my story. From age five to age 20, I was harmed in these ceremonies. I filed a complaint with the police that was closed after a few months, and I know of other cases that were closed.”

Yael Shitrit, “You have no idea what ritual abuse is. The human brain cannot comprehend it. You can’t imagine what it means to program a three-year-old girl through rape and sadism so they can do whatever they want without anyone knowing. Their trafficking of me happened all over the country. They moved me from ceremony to ceremony. Naked men stood in a circle. My therapist, her husband, and her son harmed me, and there were dozens of other girls and boys who harmed me.”

Unnamed victim, “At 14, he took me to sadistic clubs. I endured torture and starvation at the hands of well-known and prominent individuals. I suffered harm in endless ways. There were public events, and there were internal ceremonies where I was tied to a tall post with handcuffs. Around me, there were other handcuffed victims with rituals of drinking menstrual blood and the slaughter of cats and other animals. They told me no one would believe me if I spoke out.”

My ex-publisher, Dan Simon, just released a French book on sexual crime, “Sad Tiger is built on the facts of a series of devastating events. Neige Sinno was 7 years old when her stepfather started sexually abusing her and at 14 or 15 the abuse stopped. At 19, she decided to break the silence that is so common in all cultures around sexual violence.” I should propose to Dan an encyclopedia of Jewish sexual violence. Just sitting here in Vung Tau, I can already name Jack the Ripper, Louis B. Mayer, Dan Schneider, Harvey Weinstein, Clive Davis and Jeffrey Epstein.

One recent entry is Tom Alexandrovich. A division head at the Israel National Cyber Directorate, Alexandrovich was in Las Vegas to meet NSA officials. Since spooks spy on each other, good old Tom should have known better than to use his cellphone to hook up with a 15-year-old. Armed with condoms, Tom headed to this date via Uber, which left another trail. Caught in a sting operation, he’s safely back in Israel. You think this 38-year-old will show up for his court date on 8/27/25?

In 2008, a principal at Adass Israel School in Elsternwick, Australia was investigated for sexual abuse against three girls. After fleeing to Israel, Malka Leifer was only returned 12 years later to face trial. It only took a decade for Gershon Kranczer to be extradited. Though sexual crimes are common to all nations, only one openly harbors such criminals. Times of Israel on 3/12/21, “Israel has become a haven for dozens of Jewish sexual abusers fleeing charges in recent years, particularly those in the ultra-Orthodox community who are aided by Israeli friends or relatives.”

What do you expect, though, from those whose God advises, “Now therefore kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him. But all the women children, that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves.” It’s OK to commit genocide, but spare enemy virgins, so you can rape them. Though this is also the Christian God, I can’t imagine Jesus talking like that.

The Jewish state is intertwined with the leading white nation, so both are sinking into hell. It’s sickeningly poetic.

Trump the supposed savior of downtrodden whites spent years raping white children, along with other white leaders. Bill Clinton on their leading pimp, “Jeffrey is both a highly successful financier and a committed philanthropist with a keen sense of global markets and an in-depth knowledge of 21st-century science.”

Of course, you should trust the science. Supplying rape victims to top whites, Epstein also joined in the fun. Finally caught with so much dirt on everyone, Jeff had to be killed, or maybe he’s just lying low in Israel. In the Anti-Christ State, those with the sickest appetites are hardly rare. Just for laughs, they shoot teen boys in the testicles.

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Walking Corpse Running Meat! — Aug 21, 2025.

There’s a useful and amusing Chinese phrase, 行尸走肉. Pronounced as shing shi zoo roo, it means, literally, walking corpse running meat. This can also be applied to nations. Rotting, it still struts.

With my flesh only slightly putrefied, I tickle my maggot burrowed and fly specked brain this morning since it’s the death anniversary of Mrs. Seven’s husband. Later, his musician friends will gather to sing and play his favorite songs. Saigon Beer will flow. Her younger daughter, Mi Mi, arrived last night from Bình Dương, 80 miles away, where she’s working at a beauty salon.

Just now, a neighborhood loser, Vinh, dropped by. A staggering corpse, he still thinks he has a chance with Mi Mi. Unemployed and untraveled, the 29-year-old still suckles his dying mama’s dry titties, so to speak. Mi Mi has worked all over Vietnam, as far north as Pleiku. She has had a steady boyfriend for seven years. Repeatedly, she has turned down his marriage proposal. Still pretty, she doesn’t lack suitors, and she’s making her own cash. She’s seen friends burdened with kids in marriages already sour.

“This boyfriend has relatives in Australia. They want to bring him over there.”

“So your daughter can go with him if they get married?”

“She says, ‘Why would I want to go to Australia when I can go to the USA?!’” Mi Mi has an aunt in Texas who can hook her up. This lady hasn’t been back in eight years, however.

Near death, each trip across the globe becomes more untenable. Strapped to a narrow seat between rotting strangers, you’re hurled through cold space in an aluminum tube that may, and perhaps should, break up any second, to put all those over the hill stewardesses out of their earthly misery. No more squeezing those widest hips through the thinnest aisles to serve crappy food to sullen passengers who don’t even speak English. “I said chicken or pasta, you fuckin’ moron!”

Only the most attentive foreigners notice the proliferation of incense sticks all over Vietnam. They jut from bases of trees and fronts of buses. Spirits everywhere must be honored and appeased. Since the dead aren’t quite dead here, every Vietnamese living room is a shrine to the dead. Dead grandparents, parents, aunts, uncles and siblings often eat and watch television with their living relatives until they, too, drop dead.

Born in 952, Dương Vân Nga died in 1000. She’s the only queen in Vietnamese history to be married to kings from two dynasties. Soon after Đinh Tiên Hoàng was assassinated, she wedded Lê Đại Hành. Many people suspect she may have colluded with the second to kill the first. They were likely lovers.

The only statue of Dương Vân Nga is in a temple dedicated to her second husband. Each year, this effigy is taken to a temple honoring her first, on his death anniversary. Before being transferred, she’s whipped ten times. This corporeal punishment of a wooden statue is deadly serious. Even after a thousand years, the people of Hoa Lư cannot forgive at least her unfaithfulness.

To remember is to imagine that something of you, too, will linger. Of course, it’s nonsense. Alive, you’re already ignored and forgotten.

Sharper than me, Google AI Overview defines 行尸走肉 as a man living without a soul, goal, determination or creativity. That’s a bit harsh, wouldn’t you say? Defines just about everybody, especially today. Now at Cóc Cóc, I’m surrounded by zombies staring at phones. It wasn’t like this just three years ago.

To feel anything, numb sacks of meat must go online to cultivate their sadism. A 46-year-old French live streamer has just died after months of “physical and moral humiliation.” With half a million followers, Raphaël Graven had up to 15,000 dorks watch his degradation, as executed by two “friends,” at any moment. For a fee, anyone could suggest a specific torture. With no talents or looks, Graven couldn’t have asked for a better gig. With death, he’s achieved immortality.

After British Lily Phillips slept with 100 men in one day, she was topped by Australian Annie Knight, who bedded 583 within 24 hours. These blushing maidens were put to shame by another Brit, Bonnie Blue, who scored 1,057 retching blokes in 12 hours. Only a nuclear bomb can fumigate that bedroom. Rule, rule, Britannia! Britons never shall be slaves! All these lovelies rake in big bucks as stars at OnlyFans, a platform owned by American Leonid Radvinsky. Unlike Pornhub’s Solomon Friedman, Radvinsky is no rabbi, however, so don’t give me any of that anti-Semitic shit!

Man can’t live by porn alone, unfortunately. After the last paragraph, I walked home for lunch. Afterwards, I listened to A Homestead Journey video. Only through citizen journalists like this “Barbara” can you get a true picture of what’s happening. Black or white, Americans are incredulous at their jacked up bills. Just to eat, many have stopped paying their mortgage, utility, student loan or credit card debts. For at least a decade before I left the US for good in 2018, this reality was already too common. Just to drag their corpses through another day, all my stressed and exhausted friends relied on drugs and/or alcohol. Only Felix Giordano had it easy. He got a check each month for being mentally ill. Working for years in an insane asylum where patients smeared shit on walls or jerked off nonstop, Felix himself went mad. Most of us aren’t so lucky.

With the vaguest, dimmest and sketchiest approximations of a soul, goal, determination or creativity, they stagger from one porn site to another, for that’s the one resource this world has in luxurious abundance. Humanity has never been so blessed.

At age 26, Mi Mi still has a few years before realizing that she, too, is just another shing shi zoo roo. Suck it up, bitch! There’s no shame in belonging.

---

About Linh Dinh (@linhdinh):

‘Before being canceled, I was an anthologized poet and fairly prolific author, with my last book Postcards from the End of America. Now, I write about our increasingly sick world for a tiny audience on SubStack. Drifting overly much, I’m in Cambodia.

Born in Saigon, Vietnam in 1963, I lived mostly in the US from 1975 until 2018, but have returned to Vietnam. I’ve also lived in Italy, England and Germany. I’m the author of a non-fiction book, Postcards from the End of America (2017), a novel, Love Like Hate (2010), two books of stories, Fake House (2000) and Blood and Soap (2004), and six collections of poems, with a Collected Poems cancelled by Chax Press from external pressure. I’ve been anthologized in Best American Poetry 2000, 2004, 2007, Great American Prose Poems from Poe to the Present, Postmodern American Poetry: a Norton Anthology (vol. 2) and Flash Fiction International: Very Short Stories From Around the World, etc. I’m also editor of Night, Again: Contemporary Fiction from Vietnam (1996) and The Deluge: New Vietnamese Poetry (2013). My writing has been translated into Japanese, Italian, Spanish, French, Dutch, German, Portuguese, Korean, Arabic, Icelandic, Serbian and Finnish, and I’ve been invited to read in Tokyo, London, Cambridge, Brighton, Paris, Berlin, Leipzig, Halle, Reykjavik, Toronto, Singapore and all over the US. I’ve also published widely in Vietnamese.’

AHH: Please support this wonderful writer on his Substack! Thanks

Global South

Slices of Life 4

Like the US itself, Trump is nothing but his image, so when he looks weak, confused, ridiculous or petty, the world can see exactly how his eviscerated nation is doing

with gratitude to Linh Dinh at Postcards from the End.

Image War — Aug 16, 2025.

Since American presidents are now at risk of stumbling headfirst going up or down Air Force One, it’s only logical for them to use stairlifts and evacuation slides. Why chance having the Defender of the Free World crack his denture and skull, just heading to another golfing vacation, or some global summit where he will be mostly ignored, if not mocked? Sliding down, each POTUS should be without pants or Depend. With a splash, he’ll plunge into a kiddie pool as journalists cheer. After being washed, perfumed and sedated by two illegal immigrant nurses of color, he’s ready to hit the red carpet to shake hands with foreign dignitaries.

For transparency’s sake, this entire process will be broadcast live on CNN, Fox News and the BBC, with appropriate color commentaries. “For some reasons, that brown bitch is taking too long to soap the president’s balls. Soon as we find out why, we’ll give you an update. Meanwhile, President Putin of Russia patiently waits, his only sign of exasperation a barely perceptible sigh.”

These patriotic and constructive reflections were triggered by the alarming yet endearing spectacle of Trump zigzagging in Alaska. Was he trying to find Cook Inlet? Since Putin took his time descending, Trump had to wait. When the better man finally appeared, Trump erupted with three bursts of applause. Receiving no equivalent affection, Trump looked positively forlorn when they finally shook hands. With his palm up, Trump was a beggar, and for seconds, his left hand even joined their manual coupling in an unmanly, needy threesome. In our image obsessed world, these spectacles aren’t just significant but emblematic. Like the US itself, Trump is nothing but his image, so when he looks weak, confused, ridiculous or petty, the world can see exactly how his eviscerated nation is doing.

This stinking and stumbling psycho is strapped to thousands of nuclear warheads, however. Without them, the US would just be one vast Skid Row, begging to be divided up by Mexico, Canada, Russia, China and Greenland. Here and there in the Heartland, there may still be MAGA republics, though impoverished, irrelevant and worse off than today’s Lesotho, Eswatini, Tristan da Cunha or Bir Tawil.

Rwanda and Gabon have joined Israel, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Pakistan and Cambodia in nominating Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize. No major European, Oriental or South American countries have done so. Even the most servile US vassals can’t risk embracing a genocidal child rapist.

Demanding peace between Thailand and Cambodia, 2,500 monks marched through Phnom Penh on 8/10/25. Over a dozen hoisted large photos of Trump, with “Thank You! Mr. President.” Though the US likely had a hand in starting that war, these cloistered doofuses credited the Donald with stopping bloodshed.

Right in downtown Tirana is George W. Bush Street. Though short, it passes Mosque of Namazgah, Albania’s largest. Maybe Trump will have at least an alley named after him in Phnom Penh? He’s winning the image war in Cambodia!

In 2020, I was astounded to discover Trump Kids Kindergarten in Lào Cai, a Vietnamese city of 130,000 right on the Chinese border. In an obscure spot high up in the mountains, Trump was idolized by ignorant Communists. This state run school is still there.

The US as a brand is most seductive to those with no chance of experiencing the Tenderloin, Skid Row, Philadelphia’s Kensington, Camden, Gary, South Bend, Youngstown, Scranton, St Louis, Oakland or all of New Orleans outside the French Quarters. They’re like those middle-aged guys in Amman, Jordan who are mesmerized by one Hollywood movie after another at cozy yet grimy Pop Café, a place no tourist but one has ever entered. They don’t know what it’s like to endure social distancing nearly every waking hour for decades. I’ve never experienced a population more atomized.

Let’s examine one photo of Zelensky’s visit to the White House on 2/28/25. With his arms folded, the Jewish clown is being scolded by two suited idiots, with Trump flaunting his trademark pucker. Like his boss, lapdog Vance is waving his hands in disapproval. Basic manners dictate you don’t bully a guest, even in private, but this was a staged spectacle, performed for Trump’s Budweiser and Miller High Life swilling base. The setting itself is laughable. Behind Trump on the mantel are the tackiest golden urns and figurines, and “TRUMP” is on some booksized block on the coffee table. Trump must always push his brand. Of course, there are no real books within sight. Flags of the US Army and US Marines flank this draft dodger. If only Liberace had become president!

If only we were just talking about taste. Just now, photos of Epstein’s Manhattan mansion have emerged. Though we see the same level of pricey tackiness so beloved by Trump, there are much darker notes. Vigilant Citizen describes a work of art, “Everything about this sculpture is creepy and unsettling, especially considering that young girls were being raped and abused in this very mansion. White gowns worn by brides are meant to represent their purity and virginity. This particular bride is seemingly attempting to escape something awful… like maybe an old pedo trying to abuse her. They like to mock their victims.” Inside this pedo rape paradise are sweet photos of Epstein with Bill Clinton, Trump, Melania, Bill Gates, Mick Jagger and Elon Musk, among others. A long letter from Woody Allen includes this poetic line, “Add to this that Jeffrey lives in a vast house alone, one can picture him sleeping in damp earth.”

There’s a lovely painting of a saucy Bill Clinton in a blue dress and red heels. Draped across a French Empire chair, he’s showing off his cleavage and flashing a pink thigh.

Long before death, they’re hell dwellers, and proud of it. Why not? Indulging in the worst acts imaginable has reaped them the greatest benefits. Most of their victims even consider them gods.

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So Far Gone! — Aug 17, 2025.

The mysterious animal living in Mrs. Seven’s house turned out to be a large green frog. Dwelling behind her coolers, it had standing water on the concrete floor to drink, plus mosquitoes and gnats, one must assume, to feast on. Worrying about this beast’s poor diet, she left a hunk of bread by its side. Since it remained untouched days later, she removed it. Content, this solitary exile will stay right where he is, a silent, brooding presence, unmolested by men, dogs or God. That’s a better fate than most men’s. His options beyond this house aren’t great. Escaping, he’d likely be squashed or gently lowered into a boiling pot of rice gruel with mung beans.

At Vietnamese wet markets, you’ll see skinned frogs still alive. I’ve also written a poem about a turban wearing and gum chewing “sadistic climbing perch monger.”

Here’s the killer part, “Keeping these fish in a tin basin, she takes out each one and snips, with a scissors, its tail, anal fin, dorsal fin, pelvic fin, ventral fin, pectoral fin, then, finally, head. If only she would reverse this order, the climbing perch would not thrash about during the entire process.”

All travelers know no two nations do anything the same. Of course, if you only hop from one global enclave to another, you’ll miss most of these stark or subtle differences, but that’s not traveling. Landing in Timbuktu, Nakhchivan or Qaanaaq, they look immediately for a McDonald’s and a Starbucks.

Recently, Trump cited Oakland and Baltimore as examples of cities “so far gone,” they need federal intervention, as just happened in DC. Since Trump doesn’t drive, much less walk, anywhere dicey, he has no direct experience of Anacostia or Deanwood in DC, much less Baltimore, but that’s true of his critics also. Whether conservative or liberal, most Americans know better than to stray into black ghettos. Here are the five deadliest American cities, Memphis, Oakland, St. Louis, Baltimore and Detroit. Four are majority black, with St. Louis nearly so.

Just pointing out these facts will get me charged as a “racist” by many upstanding Americans, but consider this hateful passage, “In the city of Philadelphia the increasing number of bold and daring crimes committed by Negroes in the last ten years has focused the attention of the city on this subject. There is a widespread feeling that something is wrong with a race that is responsible for so much crime, and that strong remedies are called for.” It was written in 1899 by that famous Nazi, W.E.B. DuBois, when he was best buddies with Adolf Hitler. Growing up in adjacent rowhouses, they’d split even a pretzel. So poor, they had to pool money over months to buy one Tastykake.

When Trump talked about solving urban crimes, his MAGA base plus many others immediately understood it as a resolve, finally, to tackle black crime, so they cheered, though not at work or in polite company. With Trump, though, it’s just another con and misdirection. He’s using black crime to normalize the presence of soldiers on American streets. Having engineered the worst economic collapse, he’s preparing for its attendant chaos and violence.

As a high school kid in Northern Virginia, I’d drive my Mustang II to Baltimore to catch my Mariners play the Orioles at Memorial Stadium. I’d head straight there from my McDonald’s job on Little River Turnpike. In my M’s jersey and waving a pennant, I once screamed so loud while sitting alone in the outfield, a player turned around to stare at the freak. I’d like to say it was Ruppert Jones, but he must have been retired by then.

As an adult in Philly, I’d take a Greyhound to Baltimore to spend another relaxing, near suicidal day. Away from its Inner Harbor, the city looked bombed. Wandering around Charm City, I started to understand why John Water’s Divine thought eating dogshit was so wonderful. With so many murals honoring murder victims, you also feel close to God, as in, “I’ll be there in a second, Jesus.” It’s a spiritual city.

You, too, should drop everything to visit Baltimore at the first opportunity. Its tourism slogan, “You won’t get it till you get here.” A preview, “A 13-year-old boy with 18 prior felony arrests has been apprehended again, this time for a series of armed carjackings and robberies that took place across Baltimore from July 26 to 27, according to the Baltimore Police.” Similar youths are liberally sprinkled across America.

Under Biden, there was a noticeable uptick in anti social behavior, including street takeovers, flash robberies, smash and grabs, dine and dashes, porch piracy and nuisance streaming. Far from going away, these have only increased under Trump, since their root causes, alienation, pathological self absorption, community breakdown, unaffordability of basics and meaningless existence, have only been exacerbated. Plus, Trump is himself a worldclass felon. Crime exudes from all his pores and orifices effortlessly. Trump emanates crime.

In 1992, Camden Yards opened in Baltimore. Now, there are retro ballparks all over. Inside these exclusive environments, the USA is still safe and wholesome. The cheapest seat for a game five days from now goes for $23, with the most expensive at $153. With the added cost of hot dogs, soft drinks, beer and parking, a typical family of four can’t come here. Triple locked inside some ghetto rowhouse or a suburban duplex, they can still enjoy this American mirage, on their bought-on-credit flatscreen. That’s how it will be, then, as their world cracks, crumbles and burns.

---

John Rocker, Prophet — Aug 18, 2025.

Twenty five years ago, an Atlanta Braves pitcher, John Rocker, said, “I’m not a very big fan of foreigners. How the hell did they get in this country?” With his team in NYC to play the Mets, Rocker observed, “Imagine having to take the 7 train to the ballpark, looking like you’re riding through Beirut next to some kid with purple hair next to some queer with AIDS right next to some dude who just got out of jail for the fourth time right next to some 20-year-old mom with four kids. It’s depressing.”

It’s clear this 26-year-old had never been to Beirut or anywhere in the Middle East. Even today, you almost never see in Muslim nations purple haired kids, queers with AIDS, obvious felons or 20-year-old moms with four kids. Unlike in the USA, their criminals, degenerates and misfits don’t advertise themselves. Even American nerds pose as gangstas, for their culture glamorizes all crimes, including genocides.

When Rocker was born in Statesboro, GA in 1974, it had roughly 17,000 people. In high school, he lived in Macon (pop. 130,000). Though a city, it’s still in the same state, then he was drafted by the Braves. Nearly his entire minor league career was spent in the South.

There were plenty of Latino players in his organization, however, and the big club’s roster for 2020 included players from Venezuela, Curacao, the Dominican Republic, Panama, Canada and Cuba. Even with so many foreign teammates, Rocker had plenty of white ones to socialize with, however. The appearance of everyone working together towards a common goal disguises the fact that, after the game, most players stick with their own race or at least those who speak their language comfortably. Even on the airplane home, they self-segregate.

Rocker’s disgust, fear and hatred of NYC is all too common. It’s not just the natural reaction of any bumpkin towards the city, but of every child when forced to enter school, or of any man on his first trip abroad, even if he’s going voluntarily, for pleasure. To be uprooted is always violent, but without this, almost no goals are achievable, especially today. Very few are allowed to be housewives or simply shopkeepers in their hometowns. Thrust into alien, bewildering environments, nearly everyone seeks to reclaim his hickishness by frequenting the same bar, café, cheesesteak joint or Chinese takeout, or he can watch the Braves or Phillies for 200 times a year, including the playoffs and Spring Training. Compulsive, addictive behavior is nearly an inevitable reaction to the terrors of displacement.

Retired, Rocker must be living in some Southern town, so he’s no longer displaced. Most people don’t have that option.

Trump’s decision to send National Guardsmen from Ohio, West Virginia and South Carolina to Washington DC made me think of John Rocker. Unlike the pitcher, they won’t be armed with fastballs and sliders, but M4 carbines and M9 pistols. Nothing will go wrong, I’m sure.

Deployed around Union Station, Georgetown, Chinatown and 14th Street, they’ll make a show of arresting sandwich throwing drunks and public urinators, but their real tasks, make no mistake, is to sow fear and disorder. When American cities go up in flames, American hicks will cheer.

Though the worst kind of New Yorker, Trump, with his red cap, is posing as a John Deere tractor driving peasant. You’d never find him plopped next to a John Rocker, though, at any good ol’ boys tavern. Served a pickled trotter, the Donald would retch.

Before college, I had been to NYC just once. At 15-years-old, I went there with my mother, stepfather and half brother on a day trip, a very long drive from Northern Virginia. That day’s highlight was a visit to the top of the World Trade Center. Applying for college, I was accepted at Pratt and Parson, but visited neither. Wanting to become an oil painter, I knew I’d have to confront NYC at some point.

From Philly, I’d take two local trains to NYC. At first, it was only to visit its museums. Eventually, I’d get to know many neighborhoods, including those across the Hudson in New Jersey. I gave poetry readings at St. Mark’s Place, the Nuyorican Café and a few other venues I can’t quite remember. I was paid to talk to a class at Yeshiva University, I’m not kidding. I was on a panel at NYU with Susan Sontag and Carolyn Forché, among others. I was a critic-in-residence at Art in General. Many of my college friends moved to NYC. My main publisher was there. On my last visit, I was interviewed by Chris Hedges for Russia Today. I wrote a long poem about Yankee Stadium. Despite all this exposure, I never warmed up to Manhattan. It’s too much about image, with every transplant remaking himself to be more worldly, even freakish. Even their speech changes.

At Philly’s Friendly Lounge, there was a regular, Johnny AC, who made it a point to never visit NYC, and he had been to Japan.

For thousands of years, we lived in villages. Now, 55% of the world’s population dwell in cities, with millions packed into cubicles suspended in smog. Last week, some tattooed asshole in Hanoi was caught on camera beating up a female neighbor by the elevators. He clearly didn’t care who she was, or even where he was. His soulless, arrogant face exudes alienation.

When I was born in November of 1963, Saigon had a population of 1.6 million. Now, it has 14. That’s why I’m living in a drowsy city by the ocean. At 4:06AM, I’m again sitting at a sweetly shabby café in a quiet alley. Mrs. Seven is still living in her childhood home. Through the open door of her bedroom, I can see an elegant pastel portrait of her late father. On her wall is a peeling mural of the Vietnamese countryside. Her two dogs’ one big trip was to the wet market, a quarter mile away. Behind her red cooler, a large green frog contently squats. Like everyone, he has had enough harrowing life experiences to brood over.

Clearly, our species’ existence is unsustainable. Though we know and sense this, there’s nothing we can do. Our elites, though, have firm, definite plans they’re already executing. Meanwhile, there are still baseball games to be stared at on our droning televisions.

---

About Linh Dinh (@linhdinh):

‘Before being canceled, I was an anthologized poet and fairly prolific author, with my last book Postcards from the End of America. Now, I write about our increasingly sick world for a tiny audience on SubStack. Drifting overly much, I’m in Cambodia.

Born in Saigon, Vietnam in 1963, I lived mostly in the US from 1975 until 2018, but have returned to Vietnam. I’ve also lived in Italy, England and Germany. I’m the author of a non-fiction book, Postcards from the End of America (2017), a novel, Love Like Hate (2010), two books of stories, Fake House (2000) and Blood and Soap (2004), and six collections of poems, with a Collected Poems cancelled by Chax Press from external pressure. I’ve been anthologized in Best American Poetry 2000, 2004, 2007, Great American Prose Poems from Poe to the Present, Postmodern American Poetry: a Norton Anthology (vol. 2) and Flash Fiction International: Very Short Stories From Around the World, etc. I’m also editor of Night, Again: Contemporary Fiction from Vietnam (1996) and The Deluge: New Vietnamese Poetry (2013). My writing has been translated into Japanese, Italian, Spanish, French, Dutch, German, Portuguese, Korean, Arabic, Icelandic, Serbian and Finnish, and I’ve been invited to read in Tokyo, London, Cambridge, Brighton, Paris, Berlin, Leipzig, Halle, Reykjavik, Toronto, Singapore and all over the US. I’ve also published widely in Vietnamese.’

AHH: Please support this wonderful writer on his Substack! Thanks

Global South

The Delicate Exit

“Now let them seek a delicate exit from the mess they’ve gotten themselves into — but we will achieve our objectives.” — VVP

By William Schryver at imetatronink.

My coalescing sense of the underwhelming Alaska Chats is that Russia has not materially varied from its longstanding terms.

Trump rolled into town with his “stealth” flyover, imagining he was the one giving an audience to Putin.

From start to finish it was perfectly evident to any discerning observer that it was just the opposite, and that Putin was there to repeat and to emphasize Russia’s apparently inviolable terms.

As I understand it, the Russians have said they will implement a conditional temporary ceasefire in the south while NATO/AFU forces withdraw from Donetsk.

No one has said anything about ending the Special Military Operation, nor of the disposition of territories.

In essence, the Russians are saying:

“We’ll temporarily stop destroying you on the southern part of the line of contact while you retreat from the northern part, and then we’ll demand you also withdraw from the southern part, and lay down your arms.”

I cannot understand how so many people seem to doubt the resolve of the Russians to continue fighting western forces for years to come pursuant to their clearly enunciated objectives.

In each successive year of this war, Russian strength has augmented across the spectrum. Russia is not only outproducing the combined west by several multiples, but their military hardware is now indisputably superior in most key categories.

The only exit route for the US/NATO is capitulation, which in this instance entails withdrawing NATO military presence to the 1997 borders, as stipulated in the NATO-Russia Founding Act of 1997.

How they opt to frame that capitulation is up to them.

As I noted in my February 2024 analysis of the Tucker Carlson interview of Vladimir Putin:

Tucker Carlson: “Do you think it is too humiliating at this point for NATO to accept Russian control of what was two years ago Ukrainian territory?

Vladimir Putin: I said let them think how to do it with dignity. There are options if there is a will.

Up until now there has been the uproar and screaming about inflicting a strategic defeat on Russia on the battlefield. Now they are apparently coming to realize that it is difficult to achieve, if possible at all. In my opinion, it is impossible by definition. It is never going to happen.

It seems to me that now those who are in power in the West have come to realize this as well. If so, if the realization has set in, they have to think what to do next. We are ready for this dialogue.”

That both Tucker Carlson and others have failed to correctly interpret Putin’s words is incomprehensible to me. So permit me to paraphrase them in language that is perhaps more understandable to the dimwitted and disingenuous people in the West who continue to misrepresent them:

“We offered them an early out, and they rejected it in favor of an appeal to arms in order to inflict what they imagined would be a severe strategic defeat against Russia on the field of battle. But their reach greatly exceeded their grasp. They cannot defeat us. Now let them seek a delicate exit from the mess they’ve gotten themselves into — but we will achieve our objectives.”

No matter how the would-be masters of empire try to spin defeat into victory, most everyone around the world will still know the score. And it is this disabused illusion of imperial military supremacy that will rapidly accelerate its inexorable decline.

Global South

Trump received the War’s Victor

Michael von der Schulenburg: Alaska Meeting Was a “Game Changer”

Excellent discussion and correct preliminary conclusion. “Trust-building” was leitmotif, to halt the runaway train to nuclear war. Reality between the two who count are now materially different. Europeans stand alone, and will cast off by Empire. “The Peace” is gonna be imposed on the crazed Europeans, and others fueling Forever Wars. Russia is recognized as peer power that must be negotiated with, sans diktat or derision, as they hold the cards.

Global South

Bear, Dragon, Elephant, Toucan, Nightingale stare down Goldfinger

Of course it’s all about Alaska. Here’s what’s in play. But it’s the shadowplay that’s even more exciting.

By Pepe Escobar at Strategic Culture Foundation.

Of course it’s all about Alaska. Here’s what’s in play. But it’s the shadowplay that’s even more exciting.

Across the world, for those who grew up in the Cold War Swingin’ Sixties, the temptation is irresistible to cast Donald Trump as Goldfinger  (but who would play Oddjob? Hegseth?)

Goldfinger, after all, is a powerful, ruthless gambler. His 21^st century motto would be “Obliterate & Plunder”. In fact, sequentially, an orgy of obliteratin’ and plunderin’ if the occasions present themselves. Everything subjected to the search for the Golden Deal. My way. The only way.

Yet now it’s possible that Goldfinger may have met its appropriate – collective – match.

This is what happened the last time a summit took place in Alaska, in this particular case US-China in a shabby hotel in Anchorage. That shook the geopolitical chessboard to the core. Trump-Putin might – but only under quite specific conditions.

There’s only one realistic, optimal endgame for Alaska: a joint declaration of intent, pointing to a follow-up, as in the next meeting to be held in Russian territory. A sort of starter for the long and winding road towards a real reset of US-Russia relations, including a possible settlement in the proxy war in Ukraine.

Essentially, they may agree to keep talking. Yet what really matters is what may be implied by the promise: Goldfinger refrains from imposing secondary sanctions on Russia’s partners.

That will constitute a tremendous BRICS victory (Iran excluded. Actually, two strategic allies of Russia would be excluded: Iran and the DPRK).

BRICS are actively building a coalition to stare down Goldfinger. The key players are Bear, Dragon, Toucan and Elephant – all four original founders of BRIC. Nightingale should be added later, as it is linked via geopolitical/geoeconomic strategic partnerships with Bear, Dragon and Elephant.

When it comes to the Alaska nitty gritty, the top Bear needs to consider all the ramifications of what is an imperative for the Russian General Staff and the vast intel apparatus in Moscow: unless Goldfinger minions stop weaponizing and providing precious intel to Ukraine is all its forms, the mythic “ceasefire” that Goldfinger and the pack of toothless chihuahuas in Europe desperately want will be just an intermission to allow Ukraine to rearm to the hilt.

That’s a tough call for the top Bear: he has to placate his domestic, radical critics who blast him for sitting down with the enemy, and at the same time he must deliver the goods to his under-siege BRICS allies.

BRICS counteract Goldfinger’s Plunder tactics

Bear, Dragon, Toucan and Elephant are involved in breathless telephone diplomacy to articulate their collective response to Goldfinger’s Tariff/Plunder drive.

Examples. Modi on Brazil: “A strong, people-centric partnership between Global South nations benefits everyone.”

Lula on India: “Brazil and India are, so far, the two most affected countries. We reaffirmed the importance of defending multilateralism and the need to address the challenges of the current situation.”

Xi to Lula: China backs Brazil to defend its national sovereignty; BRICS is “a key platform for building consensus in the Global South.”

Goldfinger’s Tariff Plunder works in several ways.

On India: because New Delhi refuses to open its vast agricultural market to tariff-free Made in USA imports (45% of India’s population directly depends on agriculture); and because India buys Russian oil at much-needed discount prices.

On Brazil: because the ultimate target is regime change and free reign to plunder Brazil’s natural wealth.

So far, Goldfinger’s Plunder antics have been stellar when it comes to engineering their own blowback: from allienating even allies – see abject European submission – to de facto burying multilateral trade, not to mention international law.

Example: just a few hours before the tariff “pause” on Made in China products was about to expire, Goldfinger signed an executive order extending the deadline for another 90 days. Translation: TACO, all over again. If the tariff “pause” went through, the economy of the $37 trillion-indebted “indispensable nation” would be in even more dire straits.

Then there’s Goldfinger’s possible Arctic gameplay, already examined here. There’s virtually no evidence Russia would allow the US to participate in the development of the Arctic-wide Northern Sea Route (NSR), or Arctic Silk Road in Chinese terminology.

The role of Russia’s Atomflot – 11 nuclear icebreakers, 9 of them in action, 2 being built, including Project 10510 Rossiya, a behemoth capable of navigating anywhere in the Arctic anytime – in parallel with Russia’s astonishing arsenal of new weapons systems, these are absolutely key variables on any serious discussion on any possible US-Russia partnership post-Alaska.

Goldfinger’s obsession to cage Nightingale

Now let’s look at Nightingale – an immensely complex case. Goldfinger has totally embarked on a multi-track maximum pressure/tension remix against Iran: forcing Hezbollah to disarm; forcing the collapse of Lebanon into factional war; legitimizing the “al-Qaeda R Us” dismemberment of Syria; forcing snapback UN-backed sanctions on Tehran.

Then came the Goldfinger-hailed “historic peace summit” with Azerbaijan’s Aliyev and Armenia’s Pashinyan.

Well, what Baku and Yerevan really signed under Goldfinger’s watchful eye is not a peace deal: it’s a mere memorandum of understanding (MOU).

Their Joint Declaration is extremely vague – and non-binding. What is promised is a “let’s keep talking” set up: “We acknowledged the need to continue further actions to achieve the signing and ultimate ratification of the [Peace] Agreement.”

It remains to be seen what happens with the much-ballyhooed 99-year American grip on the Zangezur corridor – trimphally named Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity (TRIPP) – complete with grabbing 40% of its revenues (Armenia would get only 30%) and placing 1,000 American mercenaries to patrol Armenian territory, right south of Nightingale’s borders.

The big story is of course Goldfinger eager to snatch at least one connectivity corridor in southern Eurasia – in the strategic south Caucasus, using a gangster-minded MI6 asset (Aliyev) and a national traitor (meek Pashinyan), which will be discarded and/or sweetened in due time. Crucially, NATO membership was offered to both Armenia and Azerbaijan.

The Deep State’s game plan is total control: what really matters is the opening to establish a NATO corridor all the way to the Caspian.

There’s no way Nightingale will let that happen, not to mention Bear and Dragon: it would mean a direct NATO threat not only to the International North South Transportation Corridor (INSTC), which unites three BRICS (Russia, Iran, India) and crosses the Caspian, but also the Chinese Silk Roads, whose corridors traverse Iran with possible branch outs to the Caucasus.

Nightingale has already made it quite clear it will not allow any kind of change of status for the Zangezur corridor. And it has the necessary missile arsenal to back it up. IRGC Deputy Commander Yadollah Javani: Iran “will not allow an American corridor on its border.”

Wherever it comes from, Goldinger or the Deep State, the pressure by the Empire of Chaos is relentless. There will be no respite in the Hybrid – and otherwise – Wars on BRICS, especially on the new Primakov triangle (“RIC” as in Russia, Iran, China).

Alaska in principle should be about a reset of all US-Russia security matters – geopolitical, commercial, military, with Ukraine being just a subset. That will be a major stretch. It’s hard to imagine Putin being able to impress on Trump, on the same table, the finer points of NATO/US ceaseless plots to undermine, harass and destabilize Russia.

The most probable outcome is that the proxy war – and the SMO – will keep rollin’ on, but with the Deep State making extra bundles of euros by selling tons of weapons for NATO to dispatch to Kiev. But even without the promise of a new, serious, US-Russia security architecture, BRICS may still stand a chance to snatch a victory out of Goldfinger’s latest photo op.

Global South

A Bird’s Eye View of the Ukraine War

The whole world is watching these developments with great interest. 

By William Schryver at imetatronink.

They will endeavor to talk tough and “keep up appearances” for a while yet, but as a credible and capable military/political alliance, NATO is irreparably broken.

I’ve watched a LOT of drone footage from this war. I’ve seen, from a bird’s eye view, as it were, the design of the field fortifications Ukraine constructed, with NATO guidance, over the course of eight years.

The logic of these miles and miles of fortifications harkens back to the 1864-65 Battle of Petersburg (US Civil War), with a few World War I innovations thrown in for good measure.

It is a logic where victory largely depends on you not running out of men, heavy weaponry, and ammunition — and the enemy being comparatively stupid.

In many ways, the revealed logic of Ukraine’s long-prepared strategy for this war is a reflection of American military delusions and vanities, which multiplied and solidified over the course of the brief and fleeting “unipolar moment”.

Despite not having won a war since 1945, the US military is consumed with the vanity that it has always dominated opposing forces in every conflict.

There is a measure of truth in this perspective. But it is irrelevant. Because, since no later than the Korean War, the US has not faced a peer or near-peer adversary in a high-intensity conflict. The US military has not been, for almost three-quarters of a century, truly tested “under-fire”.

The US has measured its battlefield mettle, for decades, against brave sandal-shod men with AK-47s, RPGs, and a certain savoir faire for constructing IEDs.

But they have never faced anything like Russian artillery or missiles – not even in Hollywood movies or video games.

Consequently, the Pentagon’s self-perception of unquestioned supremacy has served to disinform and corrupt its doctrinal and procurement decisions for multiple generations of its officer corps. For most US generals and admirals, all putative opponents are underestimated.

That said, I believe a great many have now been awakened from their intellectual slumber by the manner in which the Russian armed forces quickly assessed the Ukrainian order of battle, and then professionally adapted their strengths and tactics to decisively defeat it.

The Battle of the Donbass

Here is a brief summation of the Russian tactical approach to the Battle of the Donbass:

Step #1: Advance reconnaissance units (often in force, with dozens or hundreds of drones overhead) to assess the situation; draw fire; relay to commanders raw video and geo-coordinates.

Step #2: With target-correcting drone swarms overhead, relaying real-time strike video, proceed to savage the fortifications with towed and mobile artillery, Multiple Launch Rocket Systems (in gradations of strength and precision), and even horrific thermobaric munitions for particularly suitable targets.

Let smoke clear.

Repeat Step #1.

Still something moving there?

Repeat Step #2.

Repeat Step #1.

Dead bodies everywhere?

Step #3: Send in tanks and infantry to mop up.

Move to next series of fortifications.

And so on and so forth …

This is why Ukraine now suffers hundreds of battle deaths every single day. And why, for months, the Russians have suffered very few casualties — likely as low as a 1:8 ratio, and quite possibly even lower.

Artillery, airstrikes, and precision guided munitions are doing almost all the fighting.

The Fatal Hubris of NATO War Strategy in Ukraine

But back to Ukraine’s apparent strategy for this war, and the apparent US influence on that strategy.

I will preface my commentary on this issue by stating that Ukraine’s fatal blunder was buying into NATO’s over-confident delusion that they (the Armed Forces of Ukraine) actually had a reasonable opportunity to defeat the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation in a high-intensity conflict.

I initially believed NATO military leaders must have had a sober view, far in advance, that their half-million-strong, well-armed, trained-to-NATO-standards Ukrainian proxy army had almost no chance of prevailing on the field of battle against Russia.

But watching drone video of Ukrainian fortifications has convinced me the US military brain trust, in the course of their eight-year-long preparation of the eastern Ukrainian battlefield, effectively disdained the Russian military and its commanders.

Their vanity persuaded them the Russians would mindlessly smash themselves to pieces against an entrenched well-armed force.

Indeed, they were so confident of the genius of their plan that they persuasively encouraged many hundreds of now-killed or captured NATO veterans to “share in the glory” of humiliating the Russians and bringing down the Putin regime once and for all.

They deluded themselves into believing the Russians lacked strategic and logistical acumen, a sufficiently well-trained force, and – arguably the biggest miscalculation of all – sufficient stockpiles of ammo to conduct a protracted high-intensity conflict.

In short, I have come to believe US/NATO commanders actually persuaded themselves that this “Mother of All Proxy Armies” had an excellent chance to soundly whip the Russians in a battle situated in their own back yard.

In other words, they disregarded centuries of European history that they somehow convinced themselves had no relevance to their 21st century aspirations to defeat Russia militarily and take a great spoil of its resources.

But, as is now readily apparent to all objective, knowledgeable military analysts around the globe, the Ukrainian proxy army has been pulverized by a patient, methodical, and significantly outnumbered Russian force, using long-established Russian doctrines and tactics.

Even more revealing is that once-vaunted and universally feared US/UK weaponry – almost all of it actually rather antiquated – has proven to be far less “game-changing” than the pea-brained strategists in Washington and Whitehall mistakenly believed.

Javelins, NLAWs, and Stingers have been exposed as mostly ineffective against their intended targets (tanks, helicopters, and low-flying jets). M-777 howitzers break down after just a few fires. GPS-guided “precision” munitions are routinely jammed by Russian electronic warfare counter-measures.

Worse yet, the inculcation of NATO field doctrines in the minds of the Ukrainian officer cadre has resulted in pervasively inflexible responses to battlefield events that develop contrary to expectations. Consequently, discipline has disintegrated, and improvisation has been paralyzed.

To be sure, if one were to go by the laughable assessments of western think-tank propagandists and their dutiful lackeys in the media, “Ukraine is winning” and “the inept Russian military has been humiliated”.

But more discerning observers around the world know better.

Sober military men in potential adversary countries across the globe see with clarity that Russia has, with one hand tied behind its back, eviscerated the massive, relatively well-armed and well-trained Ukrainian military. The US/NATO intimidation factor has been forever compromised.

More geopolitically significant, at least in the near future, is that European NATO members can also read the scorecard of this war: they now understand as they never could previously that standing on the NATO side of the field is hardly a guarantee of security.

I am convinced NATO will not survive the results of this war in Ukraine. Sure, they’ll “keep up appearances” for the time being, but there can be no doubt most now understand that siding with a rapidly declining empire is fraught with great risk and minimal gain.

More concerningly, the Chinese have been watching all of these developments with great interest. They are almost certain to be emboldened to act decisively to secure their sphere of influence in the emerging multipolar world.

Great dangers now await in east Asia …

Global South

Pakistan and China intervene in Western War on Iran

“… the night sky of the Persian Gulf is torn apart by the tail flames of the Thunderbolt-15 missiles ..

… why do the [Chinese] J-10Cs painted with the crescent moon military insignia dare to face the Israeli air force directly over the Strait of Hormuz? Is Islamabad’s decision makers risking a break with the U.S. to cross the border and show their swords to avenge the old grudge of Israel’s military aid to India or to build a last line of defense to stem the tide of millions of refugees?”

bravo! We can now say Pakistan has both turned and is fully committed to the new imposed world war. This is a disinfo channel, and stemming flood of refugees is Pakistan’s lesser consideration, but there are useful info, not widely spoken elsewhere.

Other nuggets now exist, such as Chinese-Pakistani military hardware crossing the Iranian border by land via Pakistan, and Chinese air cargo via central Asia into Iran. Help has arrived, if not yet commensurate with the unlimited support for the other side.

Russian expertise in ISR and EW and cyberware and other domains should be on offer as well, after they strenuously denounced this unprovoked illegal aggression (UNSC demarches accusing US, Germany, France, Britain of complicity; statements by Putin, Lavrov, Nebenzya and Ryabkov) and saw the same Anglo-Zio-Ukrainian team responsible for the dronification of Operation Spiderweb operating inside Iran..

It is basically about survival for Pakistan and China, who would both be next. The plot thickens as the conflagration spreads…

Global South

ISRAEL Attacks Against IRAN

What part will your country play in World War III?

By Larry Romanoff at Blue Moon of Shanghai.

The true origins of the two World Wars have been deleted from all our history books and replaced with mythology. Neither War was started (or desired) by Germany, but both at the instigation of a group of European Zionist Jews with the stated intent of the total destruction of Germany. The documentation is overwhelming and the evidence undeniable. (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8) (9) (10) (11)

That history is being repeated today in a mass grooming of the Western world’s people (especially Americans) in preparation for World War III – which I believe is now imminent. It is evident that War Clouds are gathering. The signs are everywhere, with media coverage and open talk of war in many countries. The RAND Corporation have for years been preparing military scenarios for World War III, and NATO is reported to be currently doing so. Vast movements of NATO troops and equipment are either in preparation or process to surround Russia. The US is surrounding China with military bases including the world’s largest in Guam. Both China and Russia are surrounded with nearly 400 US biological weapons labs. Iran is entirely vulnerable from the American military build-up in the Middle East.

Through their control of the mass media, the Jews’ Anger Campaign against China (12) (see note 13) is unrelenting, and successful, for at least the past two years filling the pages and airwaves with false atrocity tales against China, barrages of these lies occurring almost daily. These follow the same template used by the same people against Germany to stoke hatred and prepare the populations for World Wars I and II. It is the same – and based on the same kinds of lies – as those used to prepare for the invasions of Iraq, Libya and Syria. These people are utilising every manner of provocation against China, including increasingly outrageous and reckless military challenges in the South China Sea and near Taiwan. The entire world is being taught to hate China, Russia, and Iran. Attempts to convert India to China’s enemy are becoming increasingly desperate.

World War III will consist of the combined forces of the US, NATO and Israel (who considers itself a world military power) provoking a conflict aimed at the final destruction of China, Russia, and Iran, the three countries that must be destroyed to satisfy the dream of building Satan’s Third Temple in Jerusalem and initiating our New World Order. That is the plan. Your belief in it is not material to its execution.

We cannot count on anything from the Americans because they are too stupid; arrogantly and blindly willing to function as the Bankers’ Private Army one more time, having sworn fealty to the same persons who hold ultimate control of both the CIA and Mossad. England served that purpose for a century or more, but was readily sacrificed when the bankers transferred their flag to the US. A World War will leave the US physically and financially in ruins, much as the first two wars destroyed the British Empire and left England bankrupt. These people are ruthless beyond measure; to get what they want, they will fight to the last American. But as Benjamin Netanyahu famously said, “Once we squeeze everything we want from the US, it can dry up and blow away.” And it will. But no matter because the Bankers are already transferring their flag to NATO – a supra-national military that reports to no one and that will be our official oppressor in our Brave New World. And we cannot count on the masses of Western people because they are simply pawns in these geo-political contests, few understanding the tragic pit into which they so willingly leap.

The British Royal Family is 100% onside. If you doubt this, ask Queen Elizabeth for a public statement that England will refuse any part in another world war. She will ignore you, as would Boris Johnson and the UK’s parliamentary cabal, since they are in the forefront of the plans. Ask Canada’s cowardly Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to resolutely state that Canada will refuse to follow the Americans into another world war. He will refuse. We cannot count on Germany; that country today is an American/Jewish colony lacking a will of its own. Much of Eastern Europe, like Australia, has been twisted and turned, stupidly believing they will be held harmless by the power of NATO when in reality they will be among the first sacrificial lambs in this Third War. Italy, France, and Spain will almost certainly be bullied into participation; the remainder of Europe is largely irrelevant. Japan, also being an American/Jewish colony with no will of its own, plus being a major US military-operations base, will have no choice but to sacrifice itself.

There is no way to avoid the conclusion that history is indeed repeating itself, demonising yet another nation, deliberately engendering sufficient hatred and anger to justify another world war. Even confirmed Western ideologues will admit that what I have written here is true. What will be the position of your country’s government when the charge for the war cannon is finally ignited? Are you able to explain why you believe a Third World War is a good idea? If you are a European, haven’t you seen enough of war? If you are an American, hasn’t your government already killed enough innocent people? If you are a Jew, why don’t you speak out against this cabal of 300 or 400 before it’s too late?

Given the source of the push for a Third World War and the planned destruction of China, one is left to consider what, if anything, can be done to prevent a third worldwide holocaust. Even knowing the sources, it is hardly practical to declare war on at most a few thousand individuals scattered among perhaps ten nations.

I know of only one way to prevent the World War Three that is now imminent: make Israel pay for it. If in the final position of authority of one of the targeted nations, I would call in the Israeli ambassador and inform him that if my nation were forced into a war with the US, I would of course respond. However, my first retaliation would be not against the US but against Israel, that I would apply a necessary portion of my arsenal to ensure that Israel would remain uninhabitable for 500 years and that Satan’s Third Temple would never be built. It is my thesis that Israel is too important to these people to be sacrificed, and that faced with such a threat deemed credible, they would back off. With everything I know, I do not believe a third world war can be otherwise prevented.

I will of course be accused of anti-Semitism, but this is not about me; it is about a small handful of Jewish European bankers and industrialists who want a third world war to destroy the old order before the new can be installed. These people must be named and their objectives exposed. In any case, in a judicial debate of offending a few hundred people or starting a third world war, which is the greater crime?

---

Mr. Romanoff’s writing  has been translated into 34 languages and his articles posted on more than 150 foreign-language news and politics websites in more than 30 countries, as well as more than 100 English language platforms. Larry Romanoff is a retired management consultant and businessman. He has held senior executive positions in international consulting firms, and owned an international import-export business. He has been a visiting professor at Shanghai’s Fudan University, presenting case studies in international affairs to senior EMBA classes. Mr. Romanoff lives in Shanghai and is currently writing a series of ten books generally related to China and the West. He is one of the contributing authors to Cynthia McKinney’s new anthology ‘When China Sneezes’. (Chap. 2 — Dealing with Demons).

His full archive can be seen at https://www.bluemoonofshanghai.com/  + https://www.moonofshanghai.com/
He can be contacted at:  2186604556@qq.com

NOTES

(1) https://hofs.online/david-irving-churchills-war/
(2) https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2020/01/13/germanys-war-chapter-4-the-allied-conspiracy-to-instigate-prolong-wwii/
(3) https://thegreateststorynevertold.tv/the-war-criminal-churchill/
(4) https://research.calvin.edu/german-propaganda-archive/schul05.htm
(5) “Germany is getting too strong. We’ve got to smash her.” – Winston Churchill speaking during a private lunch in 1936. Reminiscenses in 1961 of General Robert E. Wood. World War II. By Carl J. Schneider, Dorothy Schneider. Page 15.
Free Downlod of this book: https://pt1lib.org/book/728795/c85219?id=728795&secret=c85219
(6) “We will force this war upon Hitler, if he wants it or not.” – Winston Churchill (1936 broadcast). “This war is an English war and its goal is the destruction of Germany.” – Winston Churchill (Autumn 1939 broadcast)
https://www.coursehero.com/file/p1da79e/Following-the-Treaty-of-Versailles-Germany-was-ordered-to-pay-the-war-costs-of/
(7) “You must understand that this war is not against Hitler or National Socialism, but against the strength of the German people, which is to be smashed once and for all, regardless of whether it is in the hands of Hitler of a Jesuit priest.” – Winston Churchill [1940]; Emrys Hughes, Winston Churchill, His Career in War and Peace p. 45); This book was published in Great Britain in 1950 under the title “Winston Churchill in war and peace.” The American version titled “Winston Churchill: British bulldog”  https://www.amazon.com/Winston-Churchill-British-bulldog-career/dp/B0006ATSO8
(8) https://www.moonofshanghai.com/2020/10/jewish-responsibility-for-both-world.html
(9) https://www.moonofshanghai.com/2020/10/zionism-hidden-tiranny-by-benjamin-h.html
(10) https://www.moonofshanghai.com/2020/10/the-jewish-declaration-of-war-on.html
(11) https://www.moonofshanghai.com/2020/10/the-jewish-betrayal-of-germany-and.html
(12) The Anger Campaign against China; https://www.moonofshanghai.com/2020/08/blog-post_49.html
(13) The International Jews have some reason to resent China, which was to be dismembered and turned into a perpetual cash cow, a plan frustrated by Mao and his revolution. It was not “the British” but the International Jewish banking families, the Rothschilds, Sassoons, Kadoories, Hardoons and others that were entirely responsible for China’s 150 years-long opium travesty. Immediately after World War Two, one of Mao’s first acts was to expel all the Jews from China and confiscate all their opium assets – including all of the city of Shanghai and the Mainland Branches of the HSBC. They haven’t forgotten, and they want their money back.

Global South

Intolerable Aggression

In the space of eleven days, the disintegrating USUK Empire nearly caused nuclear war in two separate regions of our world.

Their forces snuck drones into the Russian Federation and tried to attack all five strategic bomber bases of Russia. The START Treaty obligated Russians to leave one third of their nuclear triad vulnerable under the open sky, subject to remote satellite monitoring.

This was an unconscionable betrayal of several layers. They broke an oath, signed under this stringent bilateral treaty, which helps uphold the international peace.

They weaponized international commercial cargo, rendering all nations hostage to a new hybrid war tactic where cheap ubiquitous drones can degrade the most expensive pillars of national and international security; this will force gridlock as all countries scramble to protect themselves from every seemingly innocent cargo container crossing their border.

They forced Russia’s back against the wall – for Russia was obligated, per the new updated nuclear doctrine, to respond to even conventional attacks on their nuclear forces with a nuclear response – especially if proxies were used at behest of another nuclear power. Russia chose circumspection for now, and has not yet responded as of today, June 12, 2025, to this shocking development which one former Russian general admits brought the two nuclear super powers to the closest point of a nuclear exchange since the Cuban Crisis of 1962.

In the last day, the disintegrating USUK Empire nearly caused nuclear war in West Asia.

They ostentatiously “evacuated their nonessential and familial service forces” in the region. In addition to these diplomatic moves in most countries surrounding Iran, they raised their military readiness and breathed fire. The US War Minister Hegseth, and the US Senator Cotton in charge of their intelligence committee, both indicated Iran was nearing completion of “nuclear weapons” and that this was unacceptable, and by implication would be stopped. The President himself has kept alternating threats with offers of peace with Iran, as if haggling over an real estate block, and not the lives of billions.

The fragmenting West mobilized the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to urgently issue any statement indicating Iran was “in noncompliance” with her obligations under the defunct JCPOA nuclear deal torn up by Trump in his first term, and subsequently sidelined by the other European “E-3” of Germany, Britain and France. However, accordingly to terms within that same JCPOA, Iran WAS in compliance, and had remained so throughout, as a forced gradual walk-back, in response to western perfidy and noncompliance.

Implicit behind these criminal moves, as they lack the conventional wherewithal to meaningfully attack and degrade Iran, is the use of weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) chiefly aimed at the huge Iran civilian population – the main unhardened target. All the military and nuclear research centres are located at least a mile beneath their mountains, beyond reach of even nuclear weapons…

Mankind is forced to observe the spectacle of naked gangsterism taking hold in the imperial core – thrusting ever more wildly towards Armageddon in her agony. The Old Order, with the exorbitant privilege of free lunches via the usurious fiat petrodollar, is becoming ghost. It wanes by the day, as the sane flee to safer non-western havens, bilateral currency and barter exchanges, in the effort to escape “tariff” extortion, really a shameless highway heist dressed up as unjust taxation.

Those who perfected the Vampire Ball, in which all Others are the meal, including their own oppressed deplorable masses, in a screaming fit of silent rage threaten to bring down the very pillars of the sky rather than endure witnessing the birth of a new harmonious multi-nodal world system in which they do not keep their exceptionally unjust position at the top of the heap.

In the space of eleven days, the disintegrating USUK Empire nearly caused nuclear war in two separate regions of our world. The maddened careen from deepening conflagration to deepening conflagration, without sign of course correction. The unbridled escalation to totalen krieg rendering especially their own hemisphere a thermonuclear desert, indicate both a continuity of deep state governance since at least 1991, and the possession of madness at the elite level.

The civilizational-states are messaged by the neo-Carthage on the Thames that they remain between two choices: between dignity and humiliation. Dignity equals Armageddon, whereas humiliation is the return to bestial prehistoric slavery and annihilation that continues to be unrolled in Gaza.

Global South

Tainted Heros: a Documentary on The People’s War, South Africa

Tainted Heroes tells the story of how the African National Congress (ANC) – once a marginalised organisation within the South African political landscape – rose to power in the aftermath of the Soweto Uprisings in 1976.

The documentary deals with the organisation’s military training received in various African countries as well as the lesser known story of how the ANC underwent strategic training in Vietnam to implement a so-called people’s war strategy against its rival organisations.

This was especially implemented against the organisation’s former ally, Inkatha, led by Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi. The film explains how the ANC successfully implemented a predetermined programme of violence, fear and propaganda to eliminate political rivals and establish itself as the sole representative of black aspirations in South Africa.

It illuminates how the ANC’s armed struggle was more a struggle against black rival organisations than against the apartheid system.

Global South

European kakistocracy locked in a Forever War against Russia

Never interrupt your enemy when he is committing serial suicide.

By Pepe Escobar at the Strategic Culture Foundation.

Never interrupt your enemy when he is committing serial suicide (in reverse American gore-style, when the serial killer always resurrects). In the case of the EU kakistocracy, serial self-destruction is always a given, and always skyrocketing.

So the EUrocrats in Brussels have just adopted their 17^th round of sanctions against Russia – the sky is the limit – targeting nearly 200 tankers of the so-called Russian shadow fleet. The package, endorsed by EU member states, includes proverbial scores of asset freezes and visa bans.

The EU + UK combo is also scheming how to tighten the oil price cap on Russia to $50 a barrel, aiming to “hurt” Russia’s energy revenue.

Cue to a monster pipeline of laughter from the whole Global South, especially India and China. As if they would impeach any vessels of the shadow fleet, or if OPEC+ would care about a puny unilateral EUrocrat oil price cap.

To qualify EU actions as self-destructive anti-intellectualism is actually benign. The IQ of people at the top in Brussels is at dismembered worm level, exemplified by the Estonian batshit crazy chick in theory representing the foreign policy of 450 million EU citizens. Brussels has been reduced to a pathetic Estonian propaganda snake pit with a whiff of British accent.

The SVR has noted how there is a groundswell of despair in Brussels for the “mistake” of appointing the imbecile Estonian, universally known for “absolute incompetence” and a cringing “inability to build bridges” with EU leaders. She has already been removed from EU strategic defense policy planning.

Still, the sanctions package dementia will keep rollin’ on – redacted by careerists with fat salaries who only care about their own retirement gold package.

The next, the 18^th, is supposed to be the largest sanctions package in History, according to the Brussels rumor mill, not only accusing Russia of multiples stances of Hybrid War and alleged use of chemical weapons (when it’s actually the neo-nazis of country 404 who resort to it) but targeting several Russian defense sector companies plus companies and intermediaries from third countries supplying sanctioned products to Russia.

Add to it the German BlackRock chancellor actively lobbying for an EU ban on the Nord Stream pipeline – blocking any possibility of a U.S.-Russia business cooperation, already signaled by Trump. This ban will be part of the 18th package.

Cue to Grandmaster Sergey Lavrov, who recently felt the need to emphasize that political EUro-trash banning the return of NordStream are “either sick or suicidal.”

Stealing Russia blind: good luck with that

On the Baltic front, there’s more, of course – in a “Pirates of the Baltics” register: that’s the SIGINT-heavy Baltic Sentry mission, which aims to block Russian maritime activity. France is on it – which implies a non-regional NATO member directly involved, unlike, for instance, Norway.

The Russians are unfazed. A strong possibility is that they will escort Russian ships with multi-functional naval and aerial drones fully equipped with reconnaissance and combat gear.

Yet on the Orwellian front, nothing beats the anti-Russian “tribunal” announced on May 9 by EU foreign ministers in Lviv, together with Kiev, to “hold top representatives of the Russian leadership accountable.” That involves 30 partner countries, incuding UK and Australia. The U.S. is out.

The scam was minutely deconstructed by Thomas Roper, who is now viciously demonized and censored by the EU, even though he is a journalist and EU citizen of German nationality. Yes, Brussels now sanctions its own citizens capable of critical thinking, to the point of freezing their assets and forbidding them to visit their home country. And this is just the beginning.

The new EU kangaroo “court” will be set up by the Council of Europe – and will issue judgments even in absentia, via 15 judges elected for 9 years each, the whole thing costing the EUrocracy around 1 billion euros.

Needless to add that this kangaroo “court” has absolutely no basis in international law, as it’s not approved by the UN; instead, it’s a private club of the fragmented West. Follow the money to understand the rationale.

Few people today remember that last year the European Commission (EU) gave a $50 billion loan to Kiev; actually $35 billion by the EU and $15 billion by the G7. The problem is only Brussels is responsible for repaying this joint EU-G7 loan. And the loan is supposed to be paid from the annual revenues generated by Russian assets frozen – i.e. stolen – in the EU, which Brussels refuses to release before the next 45 years.

These are all official EU decisions, enshrined in Regulation 2024/277. Translation: no, I repeat, no European mainstream media has informed taxpaying citizens across the union that the EU has formally decided to be at war with Russia for at least the next 45 years.

Brussels has done everything trying to steal for good the “confiscated” Russian assets. The problem is the EC EUrocrats have not found a mechanism to bypass international law.

Enter the “court”. The EUrocracy will force the kangaroo “tribunal” to blame Russia for everything related to the war and the SMO; sentence Russian government members to long-term prison sentences – in absentia; and then decide that Russia has to pay reparations. Endgame: the kangaroo “court” decides to steal for good the frozen Russian assets.

Once again: under international law, this is a robbery. Key inevitable consequence: no one across the Global South will trust the euro and European financial centers anymore.

This Russian demonization EUro-dementia scenario is in play just as Trump 2.0 still bets on some sort of normalization with Russia via a solution for Ukraine. Yet the key factor here is the cowardly collective fear of the EU kakistocracy: if they don’t rob Russia blind, they have no means to repay that fateful $50 billion loan to the Kiev goons.

That should be the main factor explaining why this collection of political mutts needs, badly, to non-stop escalate what is a de facto Forever War against Russia.

So expect only dementia coming from Brussels in the foreseeable future. Like the brilliant idea of setting up a single military bank to alocate loans for weapons production, a replica of the World Bank with a HQ in London. Since they could not find 120 billion euros to come up with a single European military fund – the German economy, for instance, continues to collapse – their plan B is this bank.

For all that cornucopia of sound and fury, Russia remains, once again, unfazed. Putin top aide and former National Security Adviser Nikolai “Yoda” Patrushev has noted how NATO has been “conducting exercises at our borders at a scale unseen in decades. … They are training for conducting a broad offensive from Vilnius to Odessa, seizing Kaliningrad region, imposing a naval blockade in the Baltic and the Black Seas and executing preventive strikes on the staging locations of Russian nuclear deterrence forces.”

Good luck with that. Good luck with the military bank. And good luck with stealing Russia blind with no blowback.

Global South

The Istanbul Kabuki — decoded

The endgame is clear: the US losing the entire Eurasian land mass. Ukraine, under these immense geopolitical imperatives, is only a sovereign-deprived pawn in the (Great) Game.

By Pepe Escobar at the Strategic Culture Foundation.

Did President Putin really change the game by proposing the resumption of negotiations on the proxy war in Ukraine in Istanbul – over three years after the first ones were scotched by NATO?

It’s complicated. And depends on which “game” we’re talking about.

What the Russian move instantly accomplished was to throw into total disarray the European warmongering Three Stooges (Starmer, BlackRock chancellor, Le Petit Roi) Cocaine Express.

Irrelevant Europe was not even at the table in Istanbul – except via extensive previous briefing of the low-rent, shabby-dressed Ukrainian delegation. That was compounded by the noisy barking threat in the sidelines advocating “more sanctions” to “pressure Russia”.

In March 2022 in Istanbul, Kiev could have stopped the war. Every one of us who were in Istanbul at the time could foresee that Kiev would eventually have to be forced to the table all over again.

So in essence we are back to the same negotiation – with the same top Russian negotiator, competent historian Vladimir Medinsky, heading a delegation composed by pros, but with Ukraine now facing over a million dead; deprived of at least four regions – more on the way; what’s left of its mineral wealth de facto controlled by the US; and a horrendous black hole that passes for an “economy”. We are talking about country 404 territory.

During the negotiations on Friday, Medinsky went straight to the point:

“We don’t want war, but we are ready to fight for a year, two, three – as long as it takes. We fought with Sweden for 21 years [the Great Northern War, 1700-1721, as it is known in Russia]. How long are you ready to fight?”

That’s the geopolitical/military state of things for Kiev and their “to the last Ukrainian” warmongering backers: either you capitulate, or we’re going to hurt you even more.

What’s the point of these negotiations?

Turkiye under uber-opportunist Sultan Erdogan in fact hosted a P.R. meeting between Moscow, Kiev and itself – with the Ukrainians unleashing a blitzkrieg of infantile tantrums only designed to influence global public opinion. In sharp contrast, the head of the Russian Direct Investment Fund, Kirill Dmitriev, did his best to put a positive spin on the proceedings.

Istanbul 2.0, Dmitriev asserted, achieved a large exchange of prisoners (1,000 on each side); ceasefire options to be presented by both sides; and a continuation of dialogue.

That’s not much. Well, at least they discussed in the same language: Russian. Nothing was lost in translation.

A serious case can be made that to propose the resumption of these negotiations, under this format, was meaningless. There’s no evidence in the horizon both parties might touch the fundamental issue anytime soon: the whole geopolitical strategic equation in Eastern Europe, from the Barents Sea to the Black Sea and beyond – leading to an “indivisibility of security” new deal with global repercussions.

That implies that whatever track these negotiations may follow further on down the road, they are an objective impossibility. Meanwhile, the proxy war in Ukraine – and the SMO – will go on.

That would also suggest that the Moscow security establishment considers the neo-nazi instrumentalized goons in Kiev at best as a re-enactment of the 6^th Army of Paulus, with which you negotiate the end of a battle, but not the end of the war.

Even NATO semi-realists as retired Commodore Steven Jermy have been forced to admit that “Russia is in the driving seat” and clueless Europeans “appear to believe that the losers should dictate the terms of ceasefire or surrender.”

All the barking by the – European – chihuahuas of war cannot disguise the fundamental geopolitical/military fact: a massive NATO humiliation. Trump’s humongous problem is that he has to manage it – and sell it to domestic public opinion and the global public opinion as some sort of “deal” he struck with Putin.

It’s enlightening once again to go back to Grandmaster Lavrov, always the uber-realist, back in September 2024: “In April 2022, Russian and Ukrainian negotiators reached agreement in Istanbul. If that agreement had been observed, Ukraine would have preserved part of Donbass. But every time another agreement, always accepted by Russia, is broken, Ukraine shrinks in size.”

The (Great) Game, revisited

Now back to the (Great) Game. Kiev negotiators eventually admitting Ukrainian capitulation means a NATO capitulation and an Empire of Chaos capitulation. That’s the ultimate anathema for the US ruling classes. Even an ultra-negotiated, carefully managed Ukrainian surrender will be an impossible sell – not to mention Washington under Narcissus Drowned Trump acknowledging a strategic defeat.

Because that will mean the Empire of Chaos losing Eurasia for good: the ultimate Mackinder/Brzezinski nightmare. Coupled with the consequential solidification of the multi-nodal, multipolar world.

The Russia-China stategic partnership is very much aware of every nook and cranny in this larger-than-life process. Beyond the current Turkish kabuki, they clearly understand the Big Eurasia Equation.

Beijing is fully aware NATO’s real goal was always to confront it via Russia.  Ukraine was NATO’s pawn to take down Russia then get to China from the West. The goal of the US ruling elites as they configured their thalassocratic empire remains to blockade China from the West by land and sea, using Russia; then use Taiwan as a staging area to blockade China from the East by sea. No wonder control of Taiwan is a Chinese strategic imperative.

Enter Mackinder panic – all over again: the China-Russia strategic partnership can beat NATO hands down – and Russia, by itself, is already doing it. Xi and Putin once again discussed the chessboard in detail, in person, prior to the Victory Day parade last week in Moscow.

The endgame, once again, is clear: the US losing the entire Eurasian land mass. Ukraine, under these immense geopolitical imperatives, is only a sovereign-deprived pawn in the (Great) Game.

As for the tantrum-addicted clown in Kiev, he is merely an actor with no authority whatsoever, negotiations included. He is completely dominated by Ukrainian neo-Nazis who will kill him if and when the war is over. He merely fronts for them and gets paid off. And that’s why – enthusiastically supported by inconsequential London, Paris and Berlin – he’s obsessed to continue a Forever War destroying the very nation he claims to represent.

Global South

Moral Devastation of the Fragmented West

Judge Nap interviews roving nomad geopolitician Pepe Escobar on the amazing turn of fortune for the former combined West on every front and in every quadrant.

To the day of Victory over the nazi internationale!
#Victory80

Global South

Donald Trump is uniting the world against the US: Ben Norton

Donald Trump’s tariff threats, trade war, and other aggressive policies are uniting the world against the United States. Meanwhile, China is deepening its cooperation with Europe, Southeast Asia, Russia, and even South Korea and Japan. Ben Norton explains.

Global South

Michael Hudson: Trump’s Inverted View of America’s Tariff History

Michael Hudson

This article is based on America’s Protectionist Takeoff, 1815-1914: The Neglected American School of Political Economy (ISLET, 2010), my review of the political dynamics and economic theory that guided America’s rise to industrial power.

Donald Trump’s tariff policy has thrown markets into turmoil among his allies and enemies alike. This anarchy reflects the fact that his major aim was not really tariff policy, but simply to cut income taxes on the wealthy, by replacing them with tariffs as the main source of government revenue. Extracting economic concessions from other countries is part of his justification for this tax shift as offering a nationalistic benefit for the United States.

His cover story, and perhaps even his belief, is that tariffs by themselves can revive American industry. But he has no plans to deal with the problems that caused America’s deindustrialization in the first place. There is no recognition of what made the original U.S. industrial program and that of most other nations so successful. That program was based on public infrastructure, rising private industrial investment and wages protected by tariffs, and strong government regulation. Trump’s slash and burn policy is the reverse – to downsize government, weaken public regulation and sell off public infrastructure to help pay for his income tax cuts on his Donor Class.

This is just the neoliberal program under another guise. Trump misrepresents it as supportive of industry, not its antithesis. His move is not an industrial plan at all, but a power play to extract economic concessions from other countries while slashing income taxes on the wealthy. The immediate result will be widespread layoffs, business closures and consumer price inflation.

Introduction

America’s remarkable industrial takeoff from the end of the Civil War through the outbreak of World War I has always embarrassed free-market economists. The United States’ success followed precisely the opposite policies from those that today’s economic orthodoxy advocates. The contrast is not only that between protectionist tariffs and free trade. The United States created a mixed public/private economy in which public infrastructure investment was developed as a “fourth factor of production,” not to be run as a profit-making business but to provide basic services at minimal prices so as to subsidize the private sector’s cost of living and doing business.

The logic underlying these policies was formulated already in the 1820s in Henry Clay’s American System of protective tariffs, internal improvements (public investment in transportation and other basic infrastructure), and national banking aimed at financing industrial development. An American School of Political Economy emerged to guide the nation’s industrialization based on the Economy of High Wages doctrine to promote labor productivity by raising living standards and public subsidy and support programs.

These are not the policies that today’s Republicans and Democrats advise. If Reaganomics, Thatcherism and Chicago’s free-market boys had guided American economic policy in the late nineteenth century, the United States would not have achieved its industrial dominance. So it hardly is surprising that the protectionist and public investment logic that guided American industrialization has been airbrushed out of U.S. history. It plays no role in Donald Trump’s false narrative to promote his abolition of progressive income taxes, downsizing of government and privatization sell-off of its assets.

What Trump singles out to admire in America’s nineteenth-century industrial policy is the absence of a progressive income tax and the funding of government primarily by tariff revenue. This has given him the idea of replacing progressive income taxation falling on his own Donor Class – the One Percent that paid no income tax prior to its enactment in 1913 – with tariffs designed to fall only on consumers (that is, labor). A new Gilded Age indeed!

In admiring the absence of progressive income taxation in the era of his hero, William McKinley (elected president in 1896 and 1900), Trump is admiring the economic excess and inequality of the Gilded Age. That inequality was widely criticized as a distortion of economic efficiency and social progress. To counteract the corrosive and conspicuous wealth-seeking that caused the distortion, Congress passed the Sherman Anti-Trust Law in 1890, Teddy Roosevelt followed with his trust busting, and a remarkably progressive income tax was passed that fell almost entirely on rentier financial and real estate income and monopoly rents.

Trump thus is promoting a simplistic and outright false narrative of what made America’s nineteenth century policy of industrialization so successful.

For him, what is great is the “gilded” part of the Gilded Age, not its state-led industrial and social-democratic takeoff. His panacea is for tariffs to replace income taxes, along with privatizing what remains of the government’s functions. That would give a new set of robber barons free reign to further enrich themselves by shrinking the government’s taxation and regulation of them, while reducing the budget deficit by selling off the remaining public domain, from national park lands to the post office and research labs.

The key policies that led to America’s successful industrial takeoff

Tariffs by themselves were not enough to create America’s industrial takeoff, nor that of Germany and other nations seeking to replace and overtake Britain’s industrial and financial monopoly. The key was to use the tariff revenues to subsidize public investment, combined with regulatory power and above all tax policy, to restructure the economy on many fronts and shape the way in which labor and capital were organized.
The main aim was to raise labor productivity. That required an increasingly skilled labor force, which required rising living standards, education, healthy working conditions, consumer protection and safe food regulation. The Economy of High Wages doctrine recognized that well educated, healthy and well fed labor could undersell “pauper labor.”

The problem was that employers always have sought to increase their profits by fighting against labor’s demand for higher wages. America’s industrial takeoff solved this problem by recognizing that labor’s living standards are a result not only of wage levels but of the cost of living. To the extent that public investment financed by tariff revenues could pay the cost of supplying basic needs, living standards and labor productivity could rise without industrialists suffering a fall in profit.
The main basic needs were free education, public health support and kindred social services. Public infrastructure investment in transportation (canals and railroads), communications and other basic services that were natural monopolies was also undertaken to prevent them from being turned into private fiefdoms seeking monopoly rents at the expense of the economy at large. Simon Patten, America’s first professor of economics at its first business school (the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania), called public investment in infrastructure a “fourth factor of production.” 1 Unlike private-sector capital, its aim was not to make a profit, much less maximize its prices to what the market would bear. The aim was to provide public services either at cost or at a subsidized rate or even freely.

In contrast to European tradition, the United States left many basic utilities in private hands, but regulated them to prevent monopoly rents from being extracted. Business leaders supported this mixed public/private economy, seeing that it was subsidizing a low-cost economy and thus increasing its (and their) competitive advantage in the international economy.

The most important public utility, but also the most difficult to introduce, was the monetary and financial system needed to provide enough credit to finance the nation’s industrial growth. Creating private and/or public paper credit required replacing the narrow reliance on gold bullion for money. Bullion long remained the basis for paying customs duties to the Treasury, which drained it from the economy at large, limiting its availability for financing industry. Industrialists advocated moving away from over-reliance on bullion by the creation of a national banking system to provide a growing superstructure of paper credit to finance industrial growth.2 Classical political economy saw tax policy as the most important lever steering the allocation of resources and credit towards industry. Its main policy aim was to minimize economic rent (the excess of market prices over intrinsic cost value) by freeing markets from rentier income in the form of land rent, monopoly rent, and interest and financial fees. From Adam Smith through David Ricardo, John Stuart Mill, to Marx and other socialists, classical value theory defined such economic rent as unearned income, extracted without contributing to production and hence an unnecessary levy on the economy’s cost and price structure.

Taxes on industrial profits and labor’s wages added to the cost of production and thus were to be avoided, while land rent, monopoly rent and financial gains should be taxed away, or land, monopolies and credit could simply be nationalized into the public domain to lower access costs for real estate and monopoly services and reduce financial charges.

These policies based on the classical distinction between intrinsic cost-value and market price are what made industrial capitalism so revolutionary. Freeing economies from rentier income by the taxation of economic rent aimed at minimizing the cost of living and doing business, and also minimizing the political dominance of a financial and landlord power elite.

When the United States imposed its initial progressive income tax in 1913, only 2 percent of Americans had a high enough income to require them to file a tax return. The vast majority of the 1913 tax fell on the rentier income of financial and real estate interests, and on the monopoly rents extracted by the trusts that the banking system organized.

How America’s neoliberal policy reverses its former industrial dynamic

Since the takeoff of the neoliberal period in the 1980s, U.S. labor’s disposable income has been squeezed by high costs for basic needs at the same time as its cost of living has priced it out of world markets. This is not the same thing as a high-wage economy. It is a rakeoff of wages to pay the various forms of economic rent that have proliferated and destroyed America’s formerly competitive cost structure. Today’s $175,000 average income for a family of four is not being spent mainly on products or services that wage-earners produce. It is mostly siphoned off by the Finance, Insurance and Real Estate (FIRE) sector and monopolies at the top of the economic pyramid.

The private-sector’s debt overhead is largely responsible for today’s shift of wages away from rising living standards for labor, and of corporate profits away from new tangible capital investment, research and development for industrial companies. Employers have not paid their employees enough to both maintain their standard of living and carry this financial, insurance and real estate burden, leaving U.S. labor to fall further and further behind.

Inflated by bank credit and rising debt/income ratios, the U.S. guideline cost of housing for home buyers has risen to 43% of their income, far up from the formerly standard 25%. The Federal Housing Authority insures mortgages to guarantee that banks following this guideline will not lose money, even as arrears and defaults are hitting all-time highs. Home ownership rates fell from over 69% in 2005 to under 63% in the Obama eviction wave of foreclosures after the 2008 junk-mortgage crisis. Rents and house prices have soared steadily (especially during the period the Federal Reserve kept interest rates low deliberately to inflate asset prices to support the finance sector, and as private capital has bought up homes that wage earners cannot afford), making housing by far the largest charge on wage income.

Debt arrears also are exploding for student education debt taken on to qualify for a higher-paying job, and in many cases for the auto debt needed to be able to drive to the job. This is capped by credit-card debt accumulating just to make ends meet. The disaster of privatized medical insurance now absorbs 18 percent of U.S. GDP, yet medical debt has become a major cause of personal bankruptcy. All this is just the reverse of what was intended by the original Economy of High Wages policy for American industry.

This neoliberal financialization – the proliferation of rentier charges, inflation of housing and health-care costs, and the need to live on credit beyond solely one’s earnings – has two effects. The most obvious is that most American families have not been able to increase their savings since 2008, and are living from paycheck to paycheck. The second effect has been that, with employers obliged to pay their labor force enough to carry these rentier costs, the living wage for American labor has risen so far above that of every other national economy that there is no way that American industry can compete with that of foreign countries.

Privatization and deregulation of the U.S. economy has obliged employers and labor to bear the rentier costs, including higher housing prices and rising debt overhead, that are part and parcel of today’s neoliberal policies. The resulting loss of industrial competitiveness is the major block to its re-industrialization. After all, it was these rentier charges that deindustrialized the economy in the first place, making it less competitive in world markets and spurring the offshoring of industry by raising the cost of basic needs and doing business. Paying such charges also shrinks the domestic market, by reducing labor’s ability to buy what it produces. Trump’s tariff policy does nothing to address these problems, but will aggravate them by accelerating price inflation.

This situation is unlikely to change any time soon, because the beneficiaries of today’s neoliberal policies – the recipients of these rentier charges burdening the U.S. economy – have become the political Donor Class of billionaires. To increase their rentier income and capital gains and make them irreversible, this resurgent oligarchy is pressing to further privatize and sell off the public sector instead of providing subsidized services to meet the economy’s basic needs at minimum cost. The largest public utilities that have been privatized are natural monopolies – which is why they were kept in the public domain in the first place (i.e., to avoid monopoly rent extraction).

The pretense is that private ownership seeking profits will provide an incentive to increase efficiency. The reality is that prices for what formerly were public services are increased to what the market will bear for transportation, communications and other privatized sectors. One eagerly awaits the fate of the U.S. Post Office that Congress is trying to privatize.

Neither increasing production nor lowering its cost is the aim of today’s sell-off of government assets. The prospect of owning a privatized monopoly in a position to extract monopoly rent has led financial managers to borrow the money to buy up these businesses, adding debt payments to their cost structure. The managers then start selling off the businesses’ real estate for quick cash that they pay out as special dividends, leasing back the property that they need to operate. The result is a high-cost monopoly that is heavily indebted with plunging profits. That is the neoliberal model from England’s paradigmatic Thames Water privatization to private financialized former industrial companies such as General Electric and Boeing.

In contrast to the nineteenth century’s takeoff of industrial capitalism, the aim of privatizers in today’s post-industrial epoch of rentier finance capitalism is to make “capital” gains on the stocks of hitherto public enterprises that have been privatized, financialized and deregulated. A similar financial objective has been pursued in the private arena, where the financial sector’s business plan has been to replace the drive for corporate profits with making capital gains in stocks, bonds and real estate.
The great majority of stocks and bonds are owned by the wealthiest 10 percent, not by the bottom 90 percent. While their financial wealth has soared, the disposable personal income of the majority (after paying rentier charges) has shrunk. Under today’s rentier finance capitalism the economy is going in two directions at once – down for the industrial goods-producing sector, up for the financial and other rentier claims on this sector’s labor and capital.

The mixed public/private economy that formerly built up American industry by minimizing the cost of living and doing business has been reversed by what is Trump’s most influential constituency (and that of the Democrats as well, to be sure) – the wealthiest One Percent, which continues to march its troops under the libertarian flag of Thatcherism, Reaganomics and Chicago anti-government (meaning anti-labor) ideologues. They accuse the government’s progressive income and wealth taxes, investment in public infrastructure and role as regulator to prevent predatory economic behavior and polarization, of being intrusions into “free markets.”

The question, of course, is “free for whom”? What they mean is a market free for the wealthy to extract economic rent. They ignore both the need to tax or otherwise minimize economic rent to achieve industrial competitiveness, and the fact that slashing income taxes on the wealthy – and then insisting on balancing the government budget like that of a family household so as to avoid running yet deeper into debt – starves the economy of public injection of purchasing power. Without net public spending, the economy is obliged to turn for financing to the banks, whose interest-bearing loans grow exponentially and crowd out spending on goods and real services. This intensifies the wage squeeze described above and the dynamic of deindustrialization.

A fatal effect of all these changes has been that instead of capitalism industrializing the banking and financial system as was expected in the nineteenth century, industry has been financialized. The finance sector has not allocated its credit to finance new means of production, but to take over assets already in place – primarily real estate and existing companies. This loads the assets down with debt in the process of inflating capital gains as the finance sector lends money to bid up prices for them.

This process of increasing financialized wealth adds to economic overhead not only in the form of debt, but in the form of higher purchase prices (inflated by bank credit) for real estate and industrial and other companies. And consistently with its business plan of making capital gains, the finance sector has sought to untax such gains. It also has taken the lead in urging cuts in real estate taxes so as to leave more of the rising site value of housing and office buildings – their rent-of-location – to be pledged to the banks instead of serving as the major tax base for local and national fiscal systems as classical economists urged throughout the nineteenth century.

The result has been a shift from progressive taxation to regressive taxation. Rentier income and debt-financed capital gains have been untaxed, and the tax burden shifted onto labor and industry. It is this tax shift that has encouraged corporate financial managers to replace the drive for corporate profits with making capital gains as described above.

What promised to be a harmony of interests for all classes – to be achieved by increasing their wealth by running into debt and watching prices rise for homes and other real estate, stocks and bonds – has turned into a class war.

It is now much more than the class war of industrial capital against labor familiar in the nineteenth century. The postmodern form of class war is that of finance capital against both labor and industry. Employers still exploit labor by seeking profits by paying labor less than what they sell its products for. But labor has been increasingly exploited by debt – mortgage debt (with “easier” credit fueling the debt-driven inflation of housing costs), student debt, automobile debt and credit-card debt just to meet its break-even costs of living.

Having to pay these debt charges increases the cost of labor to industrial employers, constraining their ability to make profits. And (as indicated above) it is such exploitation of industry (and indeed of the whole economy) by finance capital and other rentiers that has spurred the offshoring of industry and deindustrialization of the United States and other Western economies that have followed the same policy path.3 In stark contrast to Western deindustrialization stands China’s successful industrial takeoff. Today, living standards in China are, for much of the population, broadly as high as those in the United States. That is a result of the Chinese government’s policy of providing public support for industrial employers by subsidizing basic needs (e.g., education and medical care) and public high-speed rail, local subway and other transportation, better high-technology communications and other consumer goods, along with their payments systems.

Most important, China has kept banking and credit creation in the public domain as a public utility. That is the key policy that has enabled it to avoid the financialization that has deindustrialized the U.S. and other Western economies.

The great irony is that China’s industrial policy is remarkably similar to that of America’s nineteenth-century industrial takeoff. China’s government, as just mentioned, has financed basic infrastructure and kept it in the public domain, providing its services at low prices to keep the economy’s cost structure as low as possible. And China’s rising wages and living standards have indeed found their counterpart in rising labor productivity.

There are billionaires in China, but they are not viewed as celebrity heroes and models for how the economy at large should seek to develop. The accumulation of conspicuous large fortunes such as those that have characterized the West and created its political Donor Class have been countered by political and moral sanctions against the use of personal wealth to gain control of public economic policy.

This government activism that U.S. rhetoric denounces as Chinese “autocracy” has managed to do what Western democracies have not done: prevent the emergence of a financialized rentier oligarchy that uses its wealth to buy control of government and takes over the economy by privatizing government functions and promoting its own gains by indebting the rest of the economy to itself while dismantling public regulatory policy.

What was the Gilded Age that Trump hopes to resurrect?

Trump and the Republicans have put one political aim above all others: cutting taxes, above all progressive taxation that falls mainly on the highest incomes and personal wealth. It seems that at some point Trump must have asked some economist whether there was any alternative way for governments to finance themselves. Someone must have informed him that from American independence through the eve of World War I, by far the dominant form of government revenue was customs revenue from tariffs.
It is easy to see the lightbulb that went off in Trump’s brain. Tariffs don’t fall on his rentier class of real estate, financial and monopoly billionaires, but primarily on labor (and on industry too, for imports of necessary raw materials and parts).

In introducing his enormous and unprecedented tariff rates on April 3, Trump promised that tariffs alone, by themselves, would re-industrialize America, by both creating a protective barrier and enabling Congress to slash taxes on the wealthiest Americans, whom he seems to believe will thereby be incentivized to “rebuild” American industry. It is as if giving more wealth to the financial managers who have deindustrialized America’s economy will somehow enable a repeat of the industrial takeoff that was peaking in the 1890s under William McKinley.

What Trump’s narrative leaves out of account is that tariffs were merely the precondition for the nurturing of industry by the government in a mixed public/private economy where the government shaped markets in ways designed to minimize the cost of living and doing business. That public nurturing is what gave nineteenth-century America its competitive international advantage. But given his guiding economic aim to untax himself and his most influential political constituency, what appeals to Trump is simply the fact that the government did not yet have an income tax.

What also appeals to Trump is the super-affluence of a robber-baron class, in whose ranks he can readily imagine himself as if in a historical novel. But that self-indulgent class consciousness has a blind spot regarding how its own drives for predatory income and wealth destroy the economy around it, while fantasizing that the robber barons made their fortunes by being the great organizers and drivers of industry. He is unaware that the Gilded Age did not emerge as part of America’s industrial strategy for success but because it did not yet regulate monopolies and tax rentier income. The great fortunes were made possible by the early failure to regulate monopolies and tax economic rent. Gustavus Myers’ History of the Great American Fortunes tells the story of how railroad and real estate monopolies were carved out at the expense of the economy at large.

America’s anti-trust legislation was enacted to deal with this problem, and the original 1913 income tax applied only to the wealthiest 2 percent of the population. It fell (as noted above) mainly on financial and real estate wealth and monopolies – financial interest, land rent and monopoly rent – not on labor or most businesses. By contrast, Trump’s plan is to replace taxation of the wealthiest rentier classes with tariffs paid mainly by American consumers. To share his belief that national prosperity can be achieved by tax favoritism for his Donor Class by untaxing their rentier income, it is necessary to block awareness that such a fiscal policy will prevent the re-industrialization of America that he claims to want.

The U.S. economy cannot be re-industrialized without freeing it from rentier income

The most immediate effects of Trump’s tariff policy will be unemployment as a result of the trade disruption (over and above the unemployment flowing from his DOGE cutbacks in government employment) and an increase in consumer prices for a labor force already squeezed by the financial, insurance and real estate charges that it has to bear as first claims on its wage income. Arrears on mortgage loans, auto loans and credit-card loans already are at historically high levels, and more than half of Americans have no net savings at all – and tell pollsters that they cannot cope with an emergency need to raise $400.

There is no way that disposable personal income will rise in these circumstances. And there is no way that American production can avoid being interrupted by the trade disruption and layoffs that will be caused by the enormous tariff barriers that Trump has threatened – at least until the conclusion of his country-by-country negotiation to extract economic concessions from other countries in exchange for restoring more normal access to the American market.

While Trump has announced a 90-day pause during which the tariffs will be reduced to 10% for countries that have indicated a willingness to so negotiate, he has raised tariffs on Chinese imports to 145%.4

China and other foreign countries and companies already have stopped exporting raw materials and parts needed by American industry. For many companies it will be too risky to resume trade until the uncertainty surrounding these political negotiations are settled. Some countries can be expected to use this interim to find alternatives to the U.S. market (including producing for their own populations).

As for Trump’s hope to persuade foreign companies to relocate their factories to the United States, such companies face the risk of him holding a Sword of Damocles over their heads as foreign investors. He may in due course simply insist that they sell out their American affiliate to domestic U.S. investors, as he has demanded that China do with TikTok.

And the most basic problem, of course, is that the American economy’s rising debt overhead, health insurance and housing costs already have priced U.S. labor, and the products it makes, out of world markets. Trump’s tariff policy will not solve this. Indeed, his tariffs by increasing consumer prices will exacerbate this problem by further increasing the cost of living and thus the price of American labor.

Instead of supporting a regrowth of U.S. industry, the effect of Trump’s tariffs and other fiscal policies will be to protect and subsidize obsolescence and financialized deindustrialization. Without restructuring the rentier financialized economy to move it back toward the original business plan of industrial capitalism with markets freed from rentier income, as advocated by the classical economists and their distinctions between value and price, and hence between rent and industrial profit, his program will fail to re-industrialize America. Indeed, it threatens to push the U.S. economy into depression – for 90 percent of the population, that is.

So we find ourselves dealing with two opposing economic philosophies. On the one hand is the original industrial program that the United States and most other successful nations followed. It is the classical program based on public infrastructure investment and strong government regulation, with rising wages protected by tariffs that provided the public revenue and profit opportunities to create factories and employ labor.

Trump has no plans to recreate such an economy. Instead, he advocates the opposing economic philosophy: downsizing government, weakening public regulation, privatizating public infrastructure, and abolishing progressive income taxes. This is the neoliberal program that has increased the cost structure for industry and polarized wealth and income between creditors and debtors. Donald Trump misrepresents this program as being supportive of industry, not its antithesis.

Imposing tariffs while continuing the neoliberal program will simply protect senility in the form of industrial production burdened by high costs for labor as a result of rising domestic housing prices, medical insurance, education, and services bought from privatized public utilities that used to provide basic needs for communications, transportation and other basic needs at subsidized prices instead of financialized monopoly rents. It will be a tarnished gilded age.

While Trump may be genuine in wanting to re-industrialize America, his more single-minded aim is to cut taxes on his Donor Class, imagining that tariff revenues can pay for this. But much trade already has stopped. By the time more normal trade resumes and tariff revenue is generated from it, widespread layoffs will have occurred, leading the affected labor to fall further into debt arrears, with the American economy in no better position to re-industrialize.

The geopolitical dimension

Trump’s country-by-country negotiations to extract economic concessions from other countries in exchange for restoring their access to the American market no doubt will lead some countries to succumb to this coercive tactic. Indeed, Trump has announced over 75 countries have contacted the U.S. government to negotiate. But some Asian and Latin American countries already are seeking an alternative to the U.S. weaponization of trade dependency to extort concessions. Countries are discussing options to join together to create a mutual trade market with less anarchic rules.
The result of them doing so would be that Trump’s policy will become yet another step in America’s Cold War march to isolate itself from trade and investment relations with the rest of the world, including potentially with some of its European satellites. The United States runs the risk of being thrown back onto what has long been supposed its strongest economic advantage: its ability to be self-sufficient in food, raw materials, and labor. But it already has deindustrialized itself, and has little to offer other countries except for the promise not to hurt them, disrupt their trade and impose sanctions on them if they agree to let the United States be the major beneficiary of their economic growth.

The hubris of national leaders trying to extend their empire is age-old – as is their nemesis, which usually turns out to be themselves. At his second inauguration, Trump promised a new Golden Age. Herodotus (History, Book 1.53) tells the story of Croesus, king of Lydia c. 585-546 BC in what is now Western Turkey and the Ionian shore of the Mediterranean. Croesus conquered Ephesus, Miletus and neighboring Greek-speaking realms, obtaining tribute and booty that made him one of the richest rulers of his time, famous for his gold coinage in particular. But these victories and wealth led to arrogance and hubris. Croesus turned his eyes eastward, ambitious to conquer Persia, ruled by Cyrus the Great.

Having endowed the region’s cosmopolitan Temple of Delphi with substantial gold and silver, Croesus asked its Oracle whether he would be successful in the conquest that he had planned. The Pythia priestess answered: “If you go to war against Persia, you will destroy a great empire.”

Croesus optimistically set out to attack Persia c. 547 BC. Marching eastward, he attacked Persia’s vassal-state Phrygia. Cyrus mounted a Special Military Operation to drive Croesus back, defeating Croesus’s army, capturing him and taking the opportunity to seize Lydia’s gold to introduce his own Persian gold coinage. So Croesus did indeed destroy a great empire – but it was his own.

Fast-forward to today. Like Croesus hoping to gain the riches of other countries for his gold coinage, Trump hoped that his global trade aggression would enable America to extort the wealth of other nations and strengthen the dollar’s role as a reserve currency against foreign defensive moves to de-dollarize and create alternative plans for conducting international trade and holding foreign reserves. But Trump’s aggressive stance has further undermined trust in the dollar abroad, and is causing serious interruptions in the supply chain of U.S. industry, halting production and causing layoffs at home.

Investors hoped for a return to normalcy as the Dow Jones Industrial Average soared upon Trump’s suspension of his tariffs, only to then fall back when it became clear that he was still taxing all countries 10 percent (and China a prohibitive 145 percent). It is now becoming apparent that his radical disruption of trade cannot be reversed.

The tariffs that Trump announced on April 3, followed by his statement that this was simply his maximum demand, to be negotiated on a bilateral country-by-country basis to extract economic and political concessions (subject to more changes at Trump’s discretion) have replaced the traditional idea of a set of rules consistent and binding for all countries. His demand that the United States must be “the winner” in any transaction has changed how the rest of the world views its economic relations with the United States. An entirely different geopolitical logic is now emerging to create a new international economic order.

China has responded with its own tariffs and export controls as its trade with the United States is frozen, potentially paralyzed. It seems unlikely that China will remove its export controls on many products essential for U.S. supply chains. Other countries are searching for alternatives to their trade dependency on the United States, and a reordering of the global economy is now under negotiation, including defensive de-dollarization policies. Trump has taken a giant step toward the destruction of what was a great empire.

Thanks to the Democracy Collaborative.

Footnotes

The three usual factors of production are labor, capital and land. But these factors are best thought of in terms of classes of income recipients. Capitalists and workers play a productive role, but landlords receive rent without producing a productive service, as their land rent is unearned income that they make “in their sleep.”
In contrast to the British system of short-term trade credit and a stock market aimed at making quick gains at the expense of the rest of the economy, Germany went further than the United States in creating a symbiosis of government, heavy industry and banking. Its economists called the logic on which this was based the State Theory of Money. I give the details in Killing the Host (2015, chapter 7).
America’s deindustrialization has also been facilitated by U.S. policy (starting under Jimmy Carter and accelerated under Bill Clinton) promoting the offshoring of industrial production to Mexico, China, Vietnam and other countries with lower wage levels. Trump’s anti-immigrant policies playing on native Americanism are a reflection of the success of this deliberate U.S policy in deindustrializing America. It is worth noting that his migration policies are the opposite of those of America’s industrial takeoff, which encouraged immigration as a source of labor – not only skilled labor fleeing Europe’s oppressive society, but also low-wage labor to work in the construction industry (for men) and the textile industry (for women). But today, by having moved directly to the countries from which immigrants performing U.S. industrial labor previously came, American industry has no need to bring them to the United States.
The White House has pointed out that Trump’s new 125% tariff on China is on top of the 20% IEEPA (International Emergency Economic Powers Act) tariffs already in place, making the tariff on Chinese imports an unpayably high 145%.

Global South

Sony Thang in his inimitable style

It’s always the same voice that calls others aggressive.   

Always the same hand that draws the knife, then accuses the wound of hostility.

So let’s speak with clarity.

It was the U.S. that imposed gunboat trade on China in the 19th century—demanding markets at cannonpoint while preaching the gospel of free enterprise.

The U.S. that armed Japan’s rise with steel, oil, and scrap—feeding the empire that would rape Nanjing, only to recoil when its creature turned back on its maker.

The U.S. that propped up the corrupt, crumbling Kuomintang—then tried to strangle the People’s Republic at birth. Because a sovereign, united China was never part of the imperial script.

The U.S. that refused to recognize Beijing for three decades, while calling a U.S.-backed military regime in Taiwan “Free China.”

The U.S. that firebombed Chinese volunteers and civilians in Korea, turned cities to ash with napalm—and threatened nuclear annihilation in 1950.

The U.S. that trained Tibetan separatists in secret CIA camps, armed them, sent them across frozen peaks to bleed China from within.

The U.S. that cheered as Britain clung to Hong Kong—then wept colonial tears when the city returned home, like a thief mourning lost loot.

The U.S. that flooded Xinjiang with propaganda, foreign funding, and proxy groups—planting the seeds of unrest to fracture Chinese sovereignty.

The U.S. that funneled millions into the Hong Kong riots—watched train stations burn, civilians beaten—and called it “democracy.”

The same U.S. that now rings China with military bases, floods Taiwan with weapons, bans Chinese tech, and incites war in the Pacific.

And still—without a flicker of shame—it dares to call China the aggressor?

A country that has spent over a century trying to divide, weaken, isolate, encircle, and provoke China… Now cries foul when China stands unbowed.

But history remembers.

And so does China.