Wednesday, October 3, 2018

Global Research, October 02, 2018

Association of Arab-American University Graduates, Inc. 3 March 2013

Introduction

The following document pertaining to the formation of “Greater Israel” constitutes the cornerstone of powerful Zionist factions within the current Netanyahu government, the Likud party, as well as within the Israeli military and intelligence establishment. (article first published by Global Research on April 29, 2013).

President Donald Trump has confirmed in no uncertain terms, his support of Israel’s illegal settlements (including his opposition to UN Security Council Resolution 2334, pertaining to the illegality of the Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank).
Moreover, by moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem and allowing for the expansion of Israeli settlements in the occupied territories and beyond, the US president has provided a de facto endorsement of the “Greater Israel” project as formulated under the Yinon Plan.
Bear in mind: this design is not strictly a Zionist Project for the Middle East, it is an integral part of US foreign policy, namely Washington’s intent to fracture and balkanize the Middle East. Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital is intended to trigger political instability throughout the region.
According to the founding father of Zionism Theodore Herzl, “the area of the Jewish State stretches: “From the Brook of Egypt to the Euphrates.” According to Rabbi Fischmann, “The Promised Land extends from the River of Egypt up to the Euphrates, it includes parts of Syria and Lebanon.”
When viewed in the current context, including the siege on Gaza, the Zionist Plan for the Middle East bears an intimate relationship to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the 2006 war on Lebanon, the 2011 war on Libya, the ongoing wars on Syria, Iraq and Yemen, not to mention the political crisis in Saudi Arabia.
The “Greater Israel” project consists in weakening and eventually fracturing neighboring Arab states as part of a US-Israeli expansionist project, with the support of NATO and Saudi Arabia. In this regard, the Saudi-Israeli rapprochement is from Netanyahu’s viewpoint a means to expanding Israel’s spheres of influence in the Middle East as well as confronting Iran. Needless to day, the “Greater Israel” project is consistent with America’s imperial design.
“Greater Israel” consists in an area extending from the Nile Valley to the Euphrates. According to Stephen Lendman, “A near-century ago, the World Zionist Organization’s plan for a Jewish state included:

• historic Palestine;

• South Lebanon up to Sidon and the Litani River;

• Syria’s Golan Heights, Hauran Plain and Deraa; and

• control of the Hijaz Railway from Deraa to Amman, Jordan as well as the Gulf of Aqaba.

Some Zionists wanted more – land from the Nile in the West to the Euphrates in the East, comprising Palestine, Lebanon, Western Syria and Southern Turkey.”

The Zionist project supports the Jewish settlement movement. More broadly it involves a policy of excluding Palestinians from Palestine leading to the eventual annexation of both the West Bank and Gaza to the State of Israel.
Greater Israel would create a number of proxy States. It would include parts of Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, the Sinai, as well as parts of Iraq and Saudi Arabia. (See map).

According to Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya in a 2011 Global Research article, The Yinon Plan was a continuation of Britain’s colonial design in the Middle East:

“[The Yinon plan] is an Israeli strategic plan to ensure Israeli regional superiority. It insists and stipulates that Israel must reconfigure its geo-political environment through the balkanization of the surrounding Arab states into smaller and weaker states.

Israeli strategists viewed Iraq as their biggest strategic challenge from an Arab state. This is why Iraq was outlined as the centerpiece to the balkanization of the Middle East and the Arab World. In Iraq, on the basis of the concepts of the Yinon Plan, Israeli strategists have called for the division of Iraq into a Kurdish state and two Arab states, one for Shiite Muslims and the other for Sunni Muslims. The first step towards establishing this was a war between Iraq and Iran, which the Yinon Plan discusses.

The Atlantic, in 2008, and the U.S. military’s Armed Forces Journal, in 2006, both published widely circulated maps that closely followed the outline of the Yinon Plan. Aside from a divided Iraq, which the Biden Plan also calls for, the Yinon Plan calls for a divided Lebanon, Egypt, and Syria. The partitioning of Iran, Turkey, Somalia, and Pakistan also all fall into line with these views. The Yinon Plan also calls for dissolution in North Africa and forecasts it as starting from Egypt and then spilling over into Sudan, Libya, and the rest of the region.

Greater Israel” requires the breaking up of the existing Arab states into small states.

“The plan operates on two essential premises. To survive, Israel must 1) become an imperial regional power, and 2) must effect the division of the whole area into small states by the dissolution of all existing Arab states. Small here will depend on the ethnic or sectarian composition of each state. Consequently, the Zionist hope is that sectarian-based states become Israel’s satellites and, ironically, its source of moral legitimation… This is not a new idea, nor does it surface for the first time in Zionist strategic thinking. Indeed, fragmenting all Arab states into smaller units has been a recurrent theme.” (Yinon Plan, see below)

Viewed in this context, the war on Syria and Iraq is part of the process of Israeli territorial expansion.
In this regard, the defeat of US sponsored terrorists (ISIS, Al Nusra) by Syrian Forces with the support of Russia, Iran and Hizbollah constitute a significant setback for Israel.
Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, September 06, 2015, updated September 18, 2018

The Zionist Plan for the Middle East

Translated and edited by

Israel Shahak

The Israel of Theodore Herzl (1904) and of Rabbi Fischmann (1947)

In his Complete Diaries, Vol. II. p. 711, Theodore Herzl, the founder of Zionism, says that the area of the Jewish State stretches: “From the Brook of Egypt to the Euphrates.”
Rabbi Fischmann, member of the Jewish Agency for Palestine, declared in his testimony to the U.N. Special Committee of Enquiry on 9 July 1947: “The Promised Land extends from the River of Egypt up to the Euphrates, it includes parts of Syria and Lebanon.”

from

Oded Yinon’s

“A Strategy for Israel in the Nineteen Eighties”

Published by the

Association of Arab-American University Graduates, Inc.

Belmont, Massachusetts, 1982

Special Document No. 1 (ISBN 0-937694-56-8)

Table of Contents

Publisher’s Note1

The Association of Arab-American University Graduates finds it compelling to inaugurate its new publication series, Special Documents, with Oded Yinon’s article which appeared in Kivunim (Directions), the journal of the Department of Information of the World Zionist Organization. Oded Yinon is an Israeli journalist and was formerly attached to the Foreign Ministry of Israel. To our knowledge, this document is the most explicit, detailed and unambiguous statement to date of the Zionist strategy in the Middle East. Furthermore, it stands as an accurate representation of the “vision” for the entire Middle East of the presently ruling Zionist regime of Begin, Sharon and Eitan. Its importance, hence, lies not in its historical value but in the nightmare which it presents.

The plan operates on two essential premises. To survive, Israel must 1) become an imperial regional power, and 2) must effect the division of the whole area into small states by the dissolution of all existing Arab states. Small here will depend on the ethnic or sectarian composition of each state. Consequently, the Zionist hope is that sectarian-based states become Israel’s satellites and, ironically, its source of moral legitimation.

This is not a new idea, nor does it surface for the first time in Zionist strategic thinking. Indeed, fragmenting all Arab states into smaller units has been a recurrent theme. This theme has been documented on a very modest scale in the AAUG publication, Israel’s Sacred Terrorism (1980), by Livia Rokach. Based on the memoirs of Moshe Sharett, former Prime Minister of Israel, Rokach’s study documents, in convincing detail, the Zionist plan as it applies to Lebanon and as it was prepared in the mid-fifties.

The first massive Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1978 bore this plan out to the minutest detail. The second and more barbaric and encompassing Israeli invasion of Lebanon on June 6, 1982, aims to effect certain parts of this plan which hopes to see not only Lebanon, but Syria and Jordan as well, in fragments. This ought to make mockery of Israeli public claims regarding their desire for a strong and independent Lebanese central government. More accurately, they want a Lebanese central government that sanctions their regional imperialist designs by signing a peace treaty with them. They also seek acquiescence in their designs by the Syrian, Iraqi, Jordanian and other Arab governments as well as by the Palestinian people. What they want and what they are planning for is not an Arab world, but a world of Arab fragments that is ready to succumb to Israeli hegemony. Hence, Oded Yinon in his essay, “A Strategy for Israel in the 1980’s,” talks about “far-reaching opportunities for the first time since 1967” that are created by the “very stormy situation [that] surrounds Israel.”

The Zionist policy of displacing the Palestinians from Palestine is very much an active policy, but is pursued more forcefully in times of conflict, such as in the 1947-1948 war and in the 1967 war. An appendix entitled “Israel Talks of a New Exodus” is included in this publication to demonstrate past Zionist dispersals of Palestinians from their homeland and to show, besides the main Zionist document we present, other Zionist planning for the de-Palestinization of Palestine.

It is clear from the Kivunim document, published in February, 1982, that the “far-reaching opportunities” of which Zionist strategists have been thinking are the same “opportunities” of which they are trying to convince the world and which they claim were generated by their June, 1982 invasion. It is also clear that the Palestinians were never the sole target of Zionist plans, but the priority target since their viable and independent presence as a people negates the essence of the Zionist state. Every Arab state, however, especially those with cohesive and clear nationalist directions, is a real target sooner or later.

Contrasted with the detailed and unambiguous Zionist strategy elucidated in this document, Arab and Palestinian strategy, unfortunately, suffers from ambiguity and incoherence. There is no indication that Arab strategists have internalized the Zionist plan in its full ramifications. Instead, they react with incredulity and shock whenever a new stage of it unfolds. This is apparent in Arab reaction, albeit muted, to the Israeli siege of Beirut. The sad fact is that as long as the Zionist strategy for the Middle East is not taken seriously Arab reaction to any future siege of other Arab capitals will be the same.
Khalil Nakhleh

July 23, 1982

Foreward

by Israel Shahak

The following essay represents, in my opinion, the accurate and detailed plan of the present Zionist regime (of Sharon and Eitan) for the Middle East which is based on the division of the whole area into small states, and the dissolution of all the existing Arab states. I will comment on the military aspect of this plan in a concluding note. Here I want to draw the attention of the readers to several important points:

1. The idea that all the Arab states should be broken down, by Israel, into small units, occurs again and again in Israeli strategic thinking. For example, Ze’ev Schiff, the military correspondent of Ha’aretz (and probably the most knowledgeable in Israel, on this topic) writes about the “best” that can happen for Israeli interests in Iraq: “The dissolution of Iraq into a Shi’ite state, a Sunni state and the separation of the Kurdish part” (Ha’aretz 6/2/1982). Actually, this aspect of the plan is very old.

2. The strong connection with Neo-Conservative thought in the USA is very prominent, especially in the author’s notes. But, while lip service is paid to the idea of the “defense of the West” from Soviet power, the real aim of the author, and of the present Israeli establishment is clear: To make an Imperial Israel into a world power. In other words, the aim of Sharon is to deceive the Americans after he has deceived all the rest.

3. It is obvious that much of the relevant data, both in the notes and in the text, is garbled or omitted, such as the financial help of the U.S. to Israel. Much of it is pure fantasy. But, the plan is not to be regarded as not influential, or as not capable of realization for a short time. The plan follows faithfully the geopolitical ideas current in Germany of 1890-1933, which were swallowed whole by Hitler and the Nazi movement, and determined their aims for East Europe. Those aims, especially the division of the existing states, were carried out in 1939-1941, and only an alliance on the global scale prevented their consolidation for a period of time.

The notes by the author follow the text. To avoid confusion, I did not add any notes of my own, but have put the substance of them into this foreward and the conclusion at the end. I have, however, emphasized some portions of the text.
Israel Shahak
June 13, 1982

A Strategy for Israel in the Nineteen Eighties

by Oded Yinon

This essay originally appeared in Hebrew in KIVUNIM (Directions), A Journal for Judaism and Zionism; Issue No, 14–Winter, 5742, February 1982, Editor: Yoram Beck. Editorial Committee: Eli Eyal, Yoram Beck, Amnon Hadari, Yohanan Manor, Elieser Schweid. Published by the Department of Publicity/The World Zionist Organization, Jerusalem.

At the outset of the nineteen eighties the State of Israel is in need of a new perspective as to its place, its aims and national targets, at home and abroad. This need has become even more vital due to a number of central processes which the country, the region and the world are undergoing. We are living today in the early stages of a new epoch in human history which is not at all similar to its predecessor, and its characteristics are totally different from what we have hitherto known. That is why we need an understanding of the central processes which typify this historical epoch on the one hand, and on the other hand we need a world outlook and an operational strategy in accordance with the new conditions. The existence, prosperity and steadfastness of the Jewish state will depend upon its ability to adopt a new framework for its domestic and foreign affairs.

This epoch is characterized by several traits which we can already diagnose, and which symbolize a genuine revolution in our present lifestyle. The dominant process is the breakdown of the rationalist, humanist outlook as the major cornerstone supporting the life and achievements of Western civilization since the Renaissance. The political, social and economic views which have emanated from this foundation have been based on several “truths” which are presently disappearing–for example, the view that man as an individual is the center of the universe and everything exists in order to fulfill his basic material needs. This position is being invalidated in the present when it has become clear that the amount of resources in the cosmos does not meet Man’s requirements, his economic needs or his demographic constraints. In a world in which there are four billion human beings and economic and energy resources which do not grow proportionally to meet the needs of mankind, it is unrealistic to expect to fulfill the main requirement of Western Society, ¹ i.e., the wish and aspiration for boundless consumption. The view that ethics plays no part in determining the direction Man takes, but rather his material needs do–that view is becoming prevalent today as we see a world in which nearly all values are disappearing. We are losing the ability to assess the simplest things, especially when they concern the simple question of what is Good and what is Evil.

The vision of man’s limitless aspirations and abilities shrinks in the face of the sad facts of life, when we witness the break-up of world order around us. The view which promises liberty and freedom to mankind seems absurd in light of the sad fact that three fourths of the human race lives under totalitarian regimes. The views concerning equality and social justice have been transformed by socialism and especially by Communism into a laughing stock. There is no argument as to the truth of these two ideas, but it is clear that they have not been put into practice properly and the majority of mankind has lost the liberty, the freedom and the opportunity for equality and justice. In this nuclear world in which we are (still) living in relative peace for thirty years, the concept of peace and coexistence among nations has no meaning when a superpower like the USSR holds a military and political doctrine of the sort it has: that not only is a nuclear war possible and necessary in order to achieve the ends of Marxism, but that it is possible to survive after it, not to speak of the fact that one can be victorious in it.²

The essential concepts of human society, especially those of the West, are undergoing a change due to political, military and economic transformations. Thus, the nuclear and conventional might of the USSR has transformed the epoch that has just ended into the last respite before the great saga that will demolish a large part of our world in a multi-dimensional global war, in comparison with which the past world wars will have been mere child’s play. The power of nuclear as well as of conventional weapons, their quantity, their precision and quality will turn most of our world upside down within a few years, and we must align ourselves so as to face that in Israel. That is, then, the main threat to our existence and that of the Western world. ³ The war over resources in the world, the Arab monopoly on oil, and the need of the West to import most of its raw materials from the Third World, are transforming the world we know, given that one of the major aims of the USSR is to defeat the West by gaining control over the gigantic resources in the Persian Gulf and in the southern part of Africa, in which the majority of world minerals are located. We can imagine the dimensions of the global confrontation which will face us in the future.

The Gorshkov doctrine calls for Soviet control of the oceans and mineral rich areas of the Third World. That together with the present Soviet nuclear doctrine which holds that it is possible to manage, win and survive a nuclear war, in the course of which the West’s military might well be destroyed and its inhabitants made slaves in the service of Marxism-Leninism, is the main danger to world peace and to our own existence. Since 1967, the Soviets have transformed Clausewitz’ dictum into “War is the continuation of policy in nuclear means,” and made it the motto which guides all their policies. Already today they are busy carrying out their aims in our region and throughout the world, and the need to face them becomes the major element in our country’s security policy and of course that of the rest of the Free World. That is our major foreign challenge.⁴

The Arab Moslem world, therefore, is not the major strategic problem which we shall face in the Eighties, despite the fact that it carries the main threat against Israel, due to its growing military might. This world, with its ethnic minorities, its factions and internal crises, which is astonishingly self-destructive, as we can see in Lebanon, in non-Arab Iran and now also in Syria, is unable to deal successfully with its fundamental problems and does not therefore constitute a real threat against the State of Israel in the long run, but only in the short run where its immediate military power has great import. In the long run, this world will be unable to exist within its present framework in the areas around us without having to go through genuine revolutionary changes. The Moslem Arab World is built like a temporary house of cards put together by foreigners (France and Britain in the Nineteen Twenties), without the wishes and desires of the inhabitants having been taken into account. It was arbitrarily divided into 19 states, all made of combinations of minorites and ethnic groups which are hostile to one another, so that every Arab Moslem state nowadays faces ethnic social destruction from within, and in some a civil war is already raging. ⁵ Most of the Arabs, 118 million out of 170 million, live in Africa, mostly in Egypt (45 million today).

Apart from Egypt, all the Maghreb states are made up of a mixture of Arabs and non-Arab Berbers. In Algeria there is already a civil war raging in the Kabile mountains between the two nations in the country. Morocco and Algeria are at war with each other over Spanish Sahara, in addition to the internal struggle in each of them. Militant Islam endangers the integrity of Tunisia and Qaddafi organizes wars which are destructive from the Arab point of view, from a country which is sparsely populated and which cannot become a powerful nation. That is why he has been attempting unifications in the past with states that are more genuine, like Egypt and Syria. Sudan, the most torn apart state in the Arab Moslem world today is built upon four groups hostile to each other, an Arab Moslem Sunni minority which rules over a majority of non-Arab Africans, Pagans, and Christians. In Egypt there is a Sunni Moslem majority facing a large minority of Christians which is dominant in upper Egypt: some 7 million of them, so that even Sadat, in his speech on May 8, expressed the fear that they will want a state of their own, something like a “second” Christian Lebanon in Egypt.

All the Arab States east of Israel are torn apart, broken up and riddled with inner conflict even more than those of the Maghreb. Syria is fundamentally no different from Lebanon except in the strong military regime which rules it. But the real civil war taking place nowadays between the Sunni majority and the Shi’ite Alawi ruling minority (a mere 12% of the population) testifies to the severity of the domestic trouble.

Iraq is, once again, no different in essence from its neighbors, although its majority is Shi’ite and the ruling minority Sunni. Sixty-five percent of the population has no say in politics, in which an elite of 20 percent holds the power. In addition there is a large Kurdish minority in the north, and if it weren’t for the strength of the ruling regime, the army and the oil revenues, Iraq’s future state would be no different than that of Lebanon in the past or of Syria today. The seeds of inner conflict and civil war are apparent today already, especially after the rise of Khomeini to power in Iran, a leader whom the Shi’ites in Iraq view as their natural leader.

All the Gulf principalities and Saudi Arabia are built upon a delicate house of sand in which there is only oil. In Kuwait, the Kuwaitis constitute only a quarter of the population. In Bahrain, the Shi’ites are the majority but are deprived of power. In the UAE, Shi’ites are once again the majority but the Sunnis are in power. The same is true of Oman and North Yemen. Even in the Marxist South Yemen there is a sizable Shi’ite minority. In Saudi Arabia half the population is foreign, Egyptian and Yemenite, but a Saudi minority holds power.

Jordan is in reality Palestinian, ruled by a Trans-Jordanian Bedouin minority, but most of the army and certainly the bureaucracy is now Palestinian. As a matter of fact Amman is as Palestinian as Nablus. All of these countries have powerful armies, relatively speaking. But there is a problem there too. The Syrian army today is mostly Sunni with an Alawi officer corps, the Iraqi army Shi’ite with Sunni commanders. This has great significance in the long run, and that is why it will not be possible to retain the loyalty of the army for a long time except where it comes to the only common denominator: The hostility towards Israel, and today even that is insufficient.

Alongside the Arabs, split as they are, the other Moslem states share a similar predicament. Half of Iran’s population is comprised of a Persian speaking group and the other half of an ethnically Turkish group. Turkey’s population comprises a Turkish Sunni Moslem majority, some 50%, and two large minorities, 12 million Shi’ite Alawis and 6 million Sunni Kurds. In Afghanistan there are 5 million

Shi’ites who constitute one third of the population. In Sunni Pakistan there are 15 million Shi’ites who endanger the existence of that state.

This national ethnic minority picture extending from Morocco to India and from Somalia to Turkey points to the absence of stability and a rapid degeneration in the entire region. When this picture is added to the economic one, we see how the entire region is built like a house of cards, unable to withstand its severe problems.

In this giant and fractured world there are a few wealthy groups and a huge mass of poor people. Most of the Arabs have an average yearly income of 300 dollars. That is the situation in Egypt, in most of the Maghreb countries except for Libya, and in Iraq. Lebanon is torn apart and its economy is falling to pieces. It is a state in which there is no centralized power, but only 5 de facto sovereign authorities (Christian in the north, supported by the Syrians and under the rule of the Franjieh clan, in the East an area of direct Syrian conquest, in the center a Phalangist controlled Christian enclave, in the south and up to the Litani river a mostly Palestinian region controlled by the PLO and Major Haddad’s state of Christians and half a million Shi’ites). Syria is in an even graver situation and even the assistance she will obtain in the future after the unification with Libya will not be sufficient for dealing with the basic problems of existence and the maintenance of a large army. Egypt is in the worst situation: Millions are on the verge of hunger, half the labor force is unemployed, and housing is scarce in this most densely populated area of the world. Except for the army, there is not a single department operating efficiently and the state is in a permanent state of bankruptcy and depends entirely on American foreign assistance granted since the peace.⁶

In the Gulf states, Saudi Arabia, Libya and Egypt there is the largest accumulation of money and oil in the world, but those enjoying it are tiny elites who lack a wide base of support and self-confidence, something that no army can guarantee. ⁷ The Saudi army with all its equipment cannot defend the regime from real dangers at home or abroad, and what took place in Mecca in 1980 is only an example. A sad and very stormy situation surrounds Israel and creates challenges for it, problems, risks but also far-reaching opportunities for the first time since 1967. Chances are that opportunities missed at that time will become achievable in the Eighties to an extent and along dimensions which we cannot even imagine today.

The “peace” policy and the return of territories, through a dependence upon the US, precludes the realization of the new option created for us. Since 1967, all the governments of Israel have tied our national aims down to narrow political needs, on the one hand, and on the other to destructive opinions at home which neutralized our capacities both at home and abroad. Failing to take steps towards the Arab population in the new territories, acquired in the course of a war forced upon us, is the major strategic error committed by Israel on the morning after the Six Day War. We could have saved ourselves all the bitter and dangerous conflict since then if we had given Jordan to the Palestinians who live west of the Jordan river. By doing that we would have neutralized the Palestinian problem which we nowadays face, and to which we have found solutions that are really no solutions at all, such as territorial compromise or autonomy which amount, in fact, to the same thing. ⁸ Today, we suddenly face immense opportunities for transforming the situation thoroughly and this we must do in the coming decade, otherwise we shall not survive as a state.

In the course of the Nineteen Eighties, the State of Israel will have to go through far-reaching changes in its political and economic regime domestically, along with radical changes in its foreign policy, in order to stand up to the global and regional challenges of this new epoch. The loss of the Suez Canal oil fields, of the immense potential of the oil, gas and other natural resources in the Sinai peninsula which is geomorphologically identical to the rich oil-producing countries in the region, will result in an energy drain in the near future and will destroy our domestic economy: one quarter of our present GNP as well as one third of the budget is used for the purchase of oil. ⁹ The search for raw materials in the Negev and on the coast will not, in the near future, serve to alter that state of affairs.

(Regaining) the Sinai peninsula with its present and potential resources is therefore a political priority which is obstructed by the Camp David and the peace agreements. The fault for that lies of course with the present Israeli government and the governments which paved the road to the policy of territorial compromise, the Alignment governments since 1967. The Egyptians will not need to keep the peace treaty after the return of the Sinai, and they will do all they can to return to the fold of the Arab world and to the USSR in order to gain support and military assistance. American aid is guaranteed only for a short while, for the terms of the peace and the weakening of the U.S. both at home and abroad will bring about a reduction in aid. Without oil and the income from it, with the present enormous expenditure, we will not be able to get through 1982 under the present conditions and we will have to act in order to return the situation to the status quo which existed in Sinai prior to Sadat’s visit and the mistaken peace agreement signed with him in March 1979. ¹⁰

Israel has two major routes through which to realize this purpose, one direct and the other indirect. The direct option is the less realistic one because of the nature of the regime and government in Israel as well as the wisdom of Sadat who obtained our withdrawal from Sinai, which was, next to the war of 1973, his major achievement since he took power. Israel will not unilaterally break the treaty, neither today, nor in 1982, unless it is very hard pressed economically and politically and Egypt provides Israel with the excuse to take the Sinai back into our hands for the fourth time in our short history. What is left therefore, is the indirect option. The economic situation in Egypt, the nature of the regime and its pan-

Arab policy, will bring about a situation after April 1982 in which Israel will be forced to act directly or indirectly in order to regain control over Sinai as a strategic, economic and energy reserve for the long run. Egypt does not constitute a military strategic problem due to its internal conflicts and it could be driven back to the post 1967 war situation in no more than one day. ¹¹

The myth of Egypt as the strong leader of the Arab World was demolished back in 1956 and definitely did not survive 1967, but our policy, as in the return of the Sinai, served to turn the myth into “fact.” In reality, however, Egypt’s power in proportion both to Israel alone and to the rest of the Arab World has gone down about 50 percent since 1967. Egypt is no longer the leading political power in the Arab World and is economically on the verge of a crisis. Without foreign assistance the crisis will come tomorrow. ¹² In the short run, due to the return of the Sinai, Egypt will gain several advantages at our expense, but only in the short run until 1982, and that will not change the balance of power to its benefit, and will possibly bring about its downfall. Egypt, in its present domestic political picture, is already a corpse, all the more so if we take into account the growing Moslem-Christian rift. Breaking Egypt down territorially into distinct geographical regions is the political aim of Israel in the Nineteen Eighties on its Western front.

Egypt is divided and torn apart into many foci of authority. If Egypt falls apart, countries like Libya, Sudan or even the more distant states will not continue to exist in their present form and will join the downfall and dissolution of Egypt. The vision of a Christian Coptic State in Upper Egypt alongside a number of weak states with very localized power and without a centralized government as to date, is the key to a historical development which was only set back by the peace agreement but which seems inevitable in the long run. ¹³

The Western front, which on the surface appears more problematic, is in fact less complicated than the Eastern front, in which most of the events that make the headlines have been taking place recently. Lebanon’s total dissolution into five provinces serves as a precendent for the entire Arab world including Egypt, Syria, Iraq and the Arabian peninsula and is already following that track. The dissolution of Syria and Iraq later on into ethnically or religiously unqiue areas such as in Lebanon, is Israel’s primary target on the Eastern front in the long run, while the dissolution of the military power of those states serves as the primary short term target. Syria will fall apart, in accordance with its ethnic and religious structure, into several states such as in present day Lebanon, so that there will be a Shi’ite Alawi state along its coast, a Sunni state in the Aleppo area, another Sunni state in Damascus hostile to its northern neighbor, and the Druzes who will set up a state, maybe even in our Golan, and certainly in the Hauran and in northern Jordan. This state of affairs will be the guarantee for peace and security in the area in the long run, and that aim is already within our reach today. ¹⁴

Iraq, rich in oil on the one hand and internally torn on the other, is guaranteed as a candidate for Israel’s targets. Its dissolution is even more important for us than that of Syria. Iraq is stronger than Syria. In the short run it is Iraqi power which constitutes the greatest threat to Israel. An Iraqi-Iranian war will tear Iraq apart and cause its downfall at home even before it is able to organize a struggle on a wide front against us. Every kind of inter-Arab confrontation will assist us in the short run and will shorten the way to the more important aim of breaking up Iraq into denominations as in Syria and in Lebanon. In Iraq, a division into provinces along ethnic/religious lines as in Syria during Ottoman times is possible. So, three (or more) states will exist around the three major cities: Basra, Baghdad and Mosul, and Shi’ite areas in the south will separate from the Sunni and Kurdish north. It is possible that the present Iranian-Iraqi confrontation will deepen this polarization. ¹⁵

The entire Arabian peninsula is a natural candidate for dissolution due to internal and external pressures, and the matter is inevitable especially in Saudi Arabia. Regardless of whether its economic might based on oil remains intact or whether it is diminished in the long run, the internal rifts and breakdowns are a clear and natural development in light of the present political structure. ¹⁶

Jordan constitutes an immediate strategic target in the short run but not in the long run, for it does not constitute a real threat in the long run after its dissolution, the termination of the lengthy rule of King Hussein and the transfer of power to the Palestinians in the short run.

There is no chance that Jordan will continue to exist in its present structure for a long time, and Israel’s policy, both in war and in peace, ought to be directed at the liquidation of Jordan under the present regime and the transfer of power to the Palestinian majority. Changing the regime east of the river will also cause the termination of the problem of the territories densely populated with Arabs west of the Jordan. Whether in war or under conditions of peace, emigration from the territories and economic demographic freeze in them, are the guarantees for the coming change on both banks of the river, and we ought to be active in order to accelerate this process in the nearest future. The autonomy plan ought also to be rejected, as well as any compromise or division of the territories for, given the plans of the PLO and those of the Israeli Arabs themselves, the Shefa’amr plan of September 1980, it is not possible to go on living in this country in the present situation without separating the two nations, the Arabs to Jordan and the Jews to the areas west of the river. Genuine coexistence and peace will reign over the land only when the Arabs understand that without Jewish rule between the Jordan and the sea they will have neither existence nor security. A nation of their own and security will be theirs only in Jordan. ¹⁷

Within Israel the distinction between the areas of ’67 and the territories beyond them, those of ’48, has always been meaningless for Arabs and nowadays no longer has any significance for us. The problem should be seen in its entirety without any divisions as of ’67. It should be clear, under any future political situation or military constellation, that the solution of the problem of the indigenous Arabs will come only when they recognize the existence of Israel in secure borders up to the Jordan river and beyond it, as our existential need in this difficult epoch, the nuclear epoch which we shall soon enter. It is no longer possible to live with three fourths of the Jewish population on the dense shoreline which is so dangerous in a nuclear epoch.

Dispersal of the population is therefore a domestic strategic aim of the highest order; otherwise, we shall cease to exist within any borders. Judea, Samaria and the Galilee are our sole guarantee for national existence, and if we do not become the majority in the mountain areas, we shall not rule in the country and we shall be like the Crusaders, who lost this country which was not theirs anyhow, and in which they were foreigners to begin with. Rebalancing the country demographically, strategically and economically is the highest and most central aim today. Taking hold of the mountain watershed from Beersheba to the Upper Galilee is the national aim generated by the major strategic consideration which is settling the mountainous part of the country that is empty of Jews today. ^l⁸

Realizing our aims on the Eastern front depends first on the realization of this internal strategic objective. The transformation of the political and economic structure, so as to enable the realization of these strategic aims, is the key to achieving the entire change. We need to change from a centralized economy in which the government is extensively involved, to an open and free market as well as to switch from depending upon the U.S. taxpayer to developing, with our own hands, of a genuine productive economic infrastructure. If we are not able to make this change freely and voluntarily, we shall be forced into it by world developments, especially in the areas of economics, energy, and politics, and by our own growing isolation. ^l⁹

From a military and strategic point of view, the West led by the U.S. is unable to withstand the global pressures of the USSR throughout the world, and Israel must therefore stand alone in the Eighties, without any foreign assistance, military or economic, and this is within our capacities today, with no compromises. ²⁰ Rapid changes in the world will also bring about a change in the condition of world Jewry to which Israel will become not only a last resort but the only existential option. We cannot assume that U.S. Jews, and the communities of Europe and Latin America will continue to exist in the present form in the future. ²¹

Our existence in this country itself is certain, and there is no force that could remove us from here either forcefully or by treachery (Sadat’s method). Despite the difficulties of the mistaken “peace” policy and the problem of the Israeli Arabs and those of the territories, we can effectively deal with these problems in the foreseeable future.

Conclusion

Three important points have to be clarified in order to be able to understand the significant possibilities of realization of this Zionist plan for the Middle East, and also why it had to be published.

The Military Background of The Plan

The military conditions of this plan have not been mentioned above, but on the many occasions where something very like it is being “explained” in closed meetings to members of the Israeli Establishment, this point is clarified. It is assumed that the Israeli military forces, in all their branches, are insufficient for the actual work of occupation of such wide territories as discussed above. In fact, even in times of intense Palestinian “unrest” on the West Bank, the forces of the Israeli Army are stretched out too much. The answer to that is the method of ruling by means of “Haddad forces” or of “Village Associations” (also known as “Village Leagues”): local forces under “leaders” completely dissociated from the population, not having even any feudal or party structure (such as the Phalangists have, for example). The “states” proposed by Yinon are “Haddadland” and “Village Associations,” and their armed forces will be, no doubt, quite similar. In addition, Israeli military superiority in such a situation will be much greater than it is even now, so that any movement of revolt will be “punished” either by mass humiliation as in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, or by bombardment and obliteration of cities, as in Lebanon now (June 1982), or by both. In order to ensure this, the plan, as explained orally, calls for the establishment of Israeli garrisons in focal places between the mini states, equipped with the necessary mobile destructive forces. In fact, we have seen something like this in Haddadland and we will almost certainly soon see the first example of this system functioning either in South Lebanon or in all Lebanon.

It is obvious that the above military assumptions, and the whole plan too, depend also on the Arabs continuing to be even more divided than they are now, and on the lack of any truly progressive mass movement among them. It may be that those two conditions will be removed only when the plan will be well advanced, with consequences which can not be foreseen.

Why it is necessary to publish this in Israel?

The reason for publication is the dual nature of the Israeli-Jewish society: A very great measure of freedom and democracy, specially for Jews, combined with expansionism and racist discrimination. In such a situation the Israeli-Jewish elite (for the masses follow the TV and Begin’s speeches) has to be persuaded. The first steps in the process of persuasion are oral, as indicated above, but a time comes in which it becomes inconvenient. Written material must be produced for the benefit of the more stupid “persuaders” and “explainers” (for example medium-rank officers, who are, usually, remarkably stupid). They then “learn it,” more or less, and preach to others. It should be remarked that Israel, and even the Yishuv from the Twenties, has always functioned in this way. I myself well remember how (before I was “in opposition”) the necessity of war with was explained to me and others a year before the 1956 war, and the necessity of conquering “the rest of Western Palestine when we will have the opportunity” was explained in the years 1965-67.

Why is it assumed that there is no special risk from the outside in the publication of such plans?

Such risks can come from two sources, so long as the principled opposition inside Israel is very weak (a situation which may change as a consequence of the war on Lebanon) : The Arab World, including the Palestinians, and the United States. The Arab World has shown itself so far quite incapable of a detailed and rational analysis of Israeli-Jewish society, and the Palestinians have been, on the average, no better than the rest. In such a situation, even those who are shouting about the dangers of Israeli expansionism (which are real enough) are doing this not because of factual and detailed knowledge, but because of belief in myth. A good example is the very persistent belief in the non-existent writing on the wall of the Knesset of the Biblical verse about the Nile and the Euphrates. Another example is the persistent, and completely false declarations, which were made by some of the most important Arab leaders, that the two blue stripes of the Israeli flag symbolize the Nile and the Euphrates, while in fact they are taken from the stripes of the Jewish praying shawl (Talit). The Israeli specialists assume that, on the whole, the Arabs will pay no attention to their serious discussions of the future, and the Lebanon war has proved them right. So why should they not continue with their old methods of persuading other Israelis?

In the United States a very similar situation exists, at least until now. The more or less serious commentators take their information about Israel, and much of their opinions about it, from two sources. The first is from articles in the “liberal” American press, written almost totally by Jewish admirers of Israel who, even if they are critical of some aspects of the Israeli state, practice loyally what Stalin used to call “the constructive criticism.” (In fact those among them who claim also to be “Anti-Stalinist” are in reality more Stalinist than Stalin, with Israel being their god which has not yet failed). In the framework of such critical worship it must be assumed that Israel has always “good intentions” and only “makes mistakes,” and therefore such a plan would not be a matter for discussion–exactly as the Biblical genocides committed by Jews are not mentioned. The other source of information, The Jerusalem Post, has similar policies. So long, therefore, as the situation exists in which Israel is really a “closed society” to the rest of the world, because the world wants to close its eyes, the publication and even the beginning of the realization of such a plan is realistic and feasible.

Israel Shahak
June 17, 1982 Jerusalem
About the Translator
Israel Shahak is a professor of organic chemistly at Hebrew University in Jerusalem and the chairman of the Israeli League for Human and Civil Rights. He published The Shahak Papers, collections of key articles from the Hebrew press, and is the author of numerous articles and books, among them Non-Jew in the Jewish State. His latest book is Israel’s Global Role: Weapons for Repression, published by the AAUG in 1982. Israel Shahak: (1933-2001)
Notes
1. American Universities Field Staff. Report No.33, 1979. According to this research, the population of the world will be 6 billion in the year 2000. Today’s world population can be broken down as follows: China, 958 million; India, 635 million; USSR, 261 million; U.S., 218 million Indonesia, 140 million; Brazil and Japan, 110 million each. According to the figures of the U.N. Population Fund for 1980, there will be, in 2000, 50 cities with a population of over 5 million each. The population ofthp;Third World will then be 80% of the world population. According to Justin Blackwelder, U.S. Census Office chief, the world population will not reach 6 billion because of hunger.
2. Soviet nuclear policy has been well summarized by two American Sovietologists: Joseph D. Douglas and Amoretta M. Hoeber, Soviet Strategy for Nuclear War, (Stanford, Ca., Hoover Inst. Press, 1979). In the Soviet Union tens and hundreds of articles and books are published each year which detail the Soviet doctrine for nuclear war and there is a great deal of documentation translated into English and published by the U.S. Air Force,including USAF: Marxism-Leninism on War and the Army: The Soviet View, Moscow, 1972; USAF: The Armed Forces of the Soviet State. Moscow, 1975, by Marshal A. Grechko. The basic Soviet approach to the matter is presented in the book by Marshal Sokolovski published in 1962 in Moscow: Marshal V. D. Sokolovski, Military Strategy, Soviet Doctrine and Concepts(New York, Praeger, 1963).
3. A picture of Soviet intentions in various areas of the world can be drawn from the book by Douglas and Hoeber, ibid. For additional material see: Michael Morgan, “USSR’s Minerals as Strategic Weapon in the Future,” Defense and Foreign Affairs, Washington, D.C., Dec. 1979.
4. Admiral of the Fleet Sergei Gorshkov, Sea Power and the State, London, 1979. Morgan, loc. cit. General George S. Brown (USAF) C-JCS, Statement to the Congress on the Defense Posture of the United States For Fiscal Year 1979, p. 103; National Security Council, Review of Non-Fuel Mineral Policy, (Washington, D.C. 1979,); Drew Middleton, The New York Times, (9/15/79); Time, 9/21/80.

5. Elie Kedourie, “The End of the Ottoman Empire,” Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 3, No.4, 1968.
6. Al-Thawra, Syria 12/20/79, Al-Ahram,12/30/79, Al Ba’ath, Syria, 5/6/79. 55% of the Arabs are 20 years old and younger, 70% of the Arabs live in Africa, 55% of the Arabs under 15 are unemployed, 33% live in urban areas, Oded Yinon, “Egypt’s Population Problem,” The Jerusalem Quarterly, No. 15, Spring 1980.
7. E. Kanovsky, “Arab Haves and Have Nots,” The Jerusalem Quarterly, No.1, Fall 1976, Al Ba’ath, Syria, 5/6/79.
8. In his book, former Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin said that the Israeli government is in fact responsible for the design of American policy in the Middle East, after June ’67, because of its own indecisiveness as to the future of the territories and the inconsistency in its positions since it established the background for Resolution 242 and certainly twelve years later for the Camp David agreements and the peace treaty with Egypt. According to Rabin, on June 19, 1967, President Johnson sent a letter to Prime Minister Eshkol in which he did not mention anything about withdrawal from the new territories but exactly on the same day the government resolved to return territories in exchange for peace. After the Arab resolutions in Khartoum (9/1/67) the government altered its position but contrary to its decision of June 19, did not notify the U.S. of the alteration and the U.S. continued to support 242 in the Security Council on the basis of its earlier understanding that Israel is prepared to return territories. At that point it was already too late to change the U.S. position and Israel’s policy. From here the way was opened to peace agreements on the basis of 242 as was later agreed upon in Camp David. See Yitzhak Rabin. Pinkas Sherut, (Ma’ariv 1979) pp. 226-227.
9. Foreign and Defense Committee Chairman Prof. Moshe Arens argued in an interview (Ma ‘ariv,10/3/80) that the Israeli government failed to prepare an economic plan before the Camp David agreements and was itself surprised by the cost of the agreements, although already during the negotiations it was possible to calculate the heavy price and the serious error involved in not having prepared the economic grounds for peace.
The former Minister of Treasury, Mr. Yigal Holwitz, stated that if it were not for the withdrawal from the oil fields, Israel would have a positive balance of payments (9/17/80). That same person said two years earlier that the government of Israel (from which he withdrew) had placed a noose around his neck. He was referring to the Camp David agreements (Ha’aretz, 11/3/78). In the course of the whole peace negotiations neither an expert nor an economics advisor was consulted, and the Prime Minister himself, who lacks knowledge and expertise in economics, in a mistaken initiative, asked the U.S. to give us a loan rather than a grant, due to his wish to maintain our respect and the respect of the U.S. towards us. See Ha’aretz1/5/79. Jerusalem Post, 9/7/79. Prof Asaf Razin, formerly a senior consultant in the Treasury, strongly criticized the conduct of the negotiations; Ha’aretz, 5/5/79. Ma’ariv, 9/7/79. As to matters concerning the oil fields and Israel’s energy crisis, see the interview with Mr. Eitan Eisenberg, a government advisor on these matters, Ma’arive Weekly, 12/12/78. The Energy Minister, who personally signed the Camp David agreements and the evacuation of Sdeh Alma, has since emphasized the seriousness of our condition from the point of view of oil supplies more than once…see Yediot Ahronot, 7/20/79. Energy Minister Modai even admitted that the government did not consult him at all on the subject of oil during the Camp David and Blair House negotiations. Ha’aretz, 8/22/79.
10. Many sources report on the growth of the armaments budget in Egypt and on intentions to give the army preference in a peace epoch budget over domestic needs for which a peace was allegedly obtained. See former Prime Minister Mamduh Salam in an interview 12/18/77, Treasury Minister Abd El Sayeh in an interview 7/25/78, and the paper Al Akhbar, 12/2/78 which clearly stressed that the military budget will receive first priority, despite the peace. This is what former Prime Minister Mustafa Khalil has stated in his cabinet’s programmatic document which was presented to Parliament, 11/25/78. See English translation, ICA, FBIS, Nov. 27. 1978, pp. D 1-10.

According to these sources, Egypt’s military budget increased by 10% between fiscal 1977 and 1978, and the process still goes on. A Saudi source divulged that the Egyptians plan to increase their militmy budget by 100% in the next two years; Ha’aretz, 2/12/79 and Jerusalem Post, 1/14/79.
11. Most of the economic estimates threw doubt on Egypt’s ability to reconstruct its economy by 1982. See Economic Intelligence Unit, 1978 Supplement, “The Arab Republic of Egypt”; E. Kanovsky, “Recent Economic Developments in the Middle East,” Occasional Papers, The Shiloah Institution, June 1977; Kanovsky, “The Egyptian Economy Since the Mid-Sixties, The Micro Sectors,” Occasional Papers, June 1978; Robert McNamara, President of World Bank, as reported in Times, London, 1/24/78.
12. See the comparison made by the researeh of the Institute for Strategic Studies in London, and research camed out in the Center for Strategic Studies of Tel Aviv University, as well as the research by the British scientist, Denis Champlin, Military Review, Nov. 1979, ISS: The Military Balance 1979-1980, CSS; Security Arrangements in Sinai…by Brig. Gen. (Res.) A Shalev, No. 3.0 CSS; The Military Balance and the Military Options after the Peace Treaty with Egypt, by Brig. Gen. (Res.) Y. Raviv, No.4, Dec. 1978, as well as many press reports including El Hawadeth, London, 3/7/80; El Watan El Arabi, Paris, 12/14/79.
13. As for religious ferment in Egypt and the relations between Copts and Moslems see the series of articles published in the Kuwaiti paper, El Qabas, 9/15/80. The English author Irene Beeson reports on the rift between Moslems and Copts, see: Irene Beeson, Guardian, London, 6/24/80, and Desmond Stewart, Middle East Internmational, London 6/6/80. For other reports see Pamela Ann Smith, Guardian, London, 12/24/79; The Christian Science Monitor 12/27/79 as well as Al Dustour, London, 10/15/79; El Kefah El Arabi, 10/15/79.
14. Arab Press Service, Beirut, 8/6-13/80. The New Republic, 8/16/80, Der Spiegel as cited by Ha’aretz, 3/21/80, and 4/30-5/5/80; The Economist, 3/22/80; Robert Fisk, Times, London, 3/26/80; Ellsworth Jones, Sunday Times, 3/30/80.
15. J.P. Peroncell Hugoz, Le Monde, Paris 4/28/80; Dr. Abbas Kelidar, Middle East Review, Summer 1979;
Conflict Studies, ISS, July 1975; Andreas Kolschitter, Der Zeit, (Ha’aretz, 9/21/79) Economist Foreign Report, 10/10/79, Afro-Asian Affairs, London, July 1979.
16. Arnold Hottinger, “The Rich Arab States in Trouble,” The New York Review of Books, 5/15/80; Arab Press Service, Beirut, 6/25-7/2/80; U.S. News and World Report, 11/5/79 as well as El Ahram, 11/9/79; El Nahar El Arabi Wal Duwali, Paris 9/7/79; El Hawadeth, 11/9/79; David Hakham, Monthly Review, IDF, Jan.-Feb. 79.
17. As for Jordan’s policies and problems see El Nahar El Arabi Wal Duwali, 4/30/79, 7/2/79; Prof. Elie Kedouri, Ma’ariv 6/8/79; Prof. Tanter, Davar 7/12/79; A. Safdi, Jerusalem Post, 5/31/79; El Watan El Arabi 11/28/79; El Qabas, 11/19/79. As for PLO positions see: The resolutions of the Fatah Fourth Congress, Damascus, August 1980. The Shefa’amr program of the Israeli Arabs was published in Ha’aretz, 9/24/80, and by Arab Press Report 6/18/80. For facts and figures on immigration of Arabs to Jordan, see Amos Ben Vered, Ha’aretz, 2/16/77; Yossef Zuriel, Ma’ariv 1/12/80. As to the PLO’s position towards Israel see Shlomo Gazit, Monthly Review; July 1980; Hani El Hasan in an interview, Al Rai Al’Am, Kuwait 4/15/80; Avi Plaskov, “The Palestinian Problem,” Survival, ISS, London Jan. Feb. 78; David Gutrnann, “The Palestinian Myth,” Commentary, Oct. 75; Bernard Lewis, “The Palestinians and the PLO,” Commentary Jan. 75; Monday Morning, Beirut, 8/18-21/80; Journal of Palestine Studies, Winter 1980.

18. Prof. Yuval Neeman, “Samaria–The Basis for Israel’s Security,” Ma’arakhot 272-273, May/June 1980; Ya’akov Hasdai, “Peace, the Way and the Right to Know,” Dvar Hashavua, 2/23/80. Aharon Yariv, “Strategic Depth–An Israeli Perspective,” Ma’arakhot 270-271, October 1979; Yitzhak Rabin, “Israel’s Defense Problems in the Eighties,” Ma’arakhot October 1979.
19. Ezra Zohar, In the Regime’s Pliers (Shikmona, 1974); Motti Heinrich, Do We have a Chance Israel, Truth Versus Legend (Reshafim, 1981).
20. Henry Kissinger, “The Lessons of the Past,” The Washington Review Vol 1, Jan. 1978; Arthur Ross, “OPEC’s Challenge to the West,” The Washington Quarterly, Winter, 1980; Walter Levy, “Oil and the Decline of the West,” Foreign Affairs, Summer 1980; Special Report–“Our Armed Forees-Ready or Not?” U.S. News and World Report 10/10/77; Stanley Hoffman, “Reflections on the Present Danger,” The New York Review of Books 3/6/80; Time 4/3/80; Leopold Lavedez “The illusions of SALT” Commentary Sept. 79; Norman Podhoretz, “The Present Danger,” Commentary March 1980; Robert Tucker, “Oil and American Power Six Years Later,” Commentary Sept. 1979; Norman Podhoretz, “The Abandonment of Israel,” Commentary July 1976; Elie Kedourie, “Misreading the Middle East,” Commentary July 1979.
21. According to figures published by Ya’akov Karoz, Yediot Ahronot, 10/17/80, the sum total of anti-Semitic incidents recorded in the world in 1979 was double the amount recorded in 1978. In Germany, France, and Britain the number of anti-Semitic incidents was many times greater in that year. In the U.S. as well there has been a sharp increase in anti-Semitic incidents which were reported in that article. For the new anti-Semitism, see L. Talmon, “The New Anti-Semitism,” The New Republic, 9/18/1976; Barbara Tuchman, “They poisoned the Wells,” Newsweek 2/3/75.

The original source of this article is Association of Arab-American University Graduates, Inc.

Monday, October 1, 2018

Brave New World Revisited

Great article that shows us now what a genius Huxley was. People underestimated his prescience in the shape of things to come. He was definitely " in the know " about where the Elites want to take this Project. And don't forget H.G. Wells and 'The Sleeper Awakes', written in 1910. It's a future where lives are dominated by 'Babble Machines', known today as the MSM.

The biggest drug today is not one of the legal or illegal drugs but the discharge of dopamine one receives by "being accepted and liked" by some of those other slaves in those social networks. Facebook is the worse drug in the planet right and is destroying our world.

Brave New World Revisited Again
Dan Glazebrook
RT : 28 Sep, 2018

60 years ago this year, Aldous Huxley published Brave New World Revisited, which concluded that the real world was moving towards the future predicted in his classic dystopian novel much more quickly than he had first imagined.

Brave New World, published almost three decades earlier, foresaw a future in which social control had been perfected through a mixture of cultural dumbing down, genetic engineering and the prodigious use of recreational drugs and no-strings sex. Unlike that other classic of dystopian fiction (George Orwell’s 1984), Brave New World proved prophetic in its description of a world in which acquiescence to authority would be purchased through mindless consumerism, rather than imposed with bludgeon and baton. As he wrote in Revisited: “It has become clear that control through the punishment of undesirable behaviour is less effective, in the long run, that control through the reinforcement of desirable behaviour by rewards, and that government through terror works on the whole less well than government through the nonviolent manipulation of the environment and of the thoughts and feelings of the individual men, women and children.” In the world of his fable, he noted, “punishment is infrequent and generally mild,” adding that “It now looks like the odds are more in favour of something like Brave New World than of something like 1984” emerging.

The first element of control in Brave New World was prenatal manipulation; that is to say, the “systematic practice of eugenics and dysgenics.” All babies were test tube babies, with “biologically superior” sperm and ova fused together to produce Betas, Alphas and Alpha Pluses. These would become the adults destined to inherit political and economic control: the future brains and leaders of the Brave New World. At one point, the Resident World Controller of Western Europe is asked the obvious question of why everyone is not made Alpha Plus. “Because we don’t wish to have our throats slit,” comes the reply. To this end, “biologically inferior” sperm and ova were treated to the Bokanovsky Process, where they would be deliberately treated with alcohol and other protein poisons to retard their development. These would grow into the “epsilon” workers used for menial and monotonous labour.

Huxley said, “The creatures finally decanted were almost subhuman; but they were capable of performing unskilled work and, when properly conditioned, detensioned by free and frequent access to the opposite sex, constantly distracted by gratuitous entertainment and reinforced in their good behaviour patterns by daily doses of soma, could be counted on to give no trouble to their superiors.” After all, the Controller adds, Alpha Pluses would go mad with epsilon work.

In his 1958 study, Huxley seemed to go back on his forecast of such genetic manipulation, writing that “Babies in bottles and the centralised control of reproduction are not perhaps impossible; but it is quite clear that for a long time to come we shall remain a viviparous species breeding at random. For practical purposes genetic standardisation may be ruled out.”

Just 20 years later, Louise Joy Brown, the world’s first ‘test tube baby’, was born. Of course, this was still a long way from the complete abolition of wombs and state-controlled selective breeding of his fable; but the steady increase in prenatal screenings underway today – pushing towards the potential elimination of conditions like Down Syndrome – are leading to a level of genetic selection which even Huxley had perhaps been too quick to rule out.

A second method of social control was through the ubiquitous use of drugs; namely Soma, a cure-all providing bliss, visions, or sleep depending on dosage; and all at “no physiological or mental cost.”

“The Brave New Worlders,” Huxley tells us, “could take holidays from their black moods, or from the familiar annoyances of everyday life, without sacrificing their health or permanently reducing their efficiency.” Furthermore, the use of Soma was “not a private vice, it was the very essence of the Life, Liberty and Pursuit of Happiness guaranteed by the Bill of Rights.”

Updating Marx, Huxley noted that in the Brave New World, Opium – or at least Soma – was the religion of the people; for “like religion, the drug had power to console and compensate, it called up visions of another, better world, it offered hope, strengthened faith and promoted charity.”

Soma was an essential weapon in the armoury of the World Controllers, pacifying and distracting the citizenry from the meaninglessness inanity of their emotionally numbed existence. “Chemically induced euphoria,” Huxley wrote, functioned as “a substitute for the satisfaction of feeling oneself free and creative.”

Which brings us to sex. The Brave New World is one in which thought and reading are frowned upon, the quest for meaning replaced by a never-ending parade of no-strings sex. Monogamy is seen as the “enemy of civilisation” whilst “promiscuity is the rule,” its citizens remind each other, and “romance is degenerate.” Emotion, intelligence, family – all are viewed as afflictions, brakes on individuality; even the very word ‘mother’ is considered obscene. ‘Own-time’, as it’s called, is frowned upon; the most damning indictment of the leading protagonist Bernard – the clearest evidence of his weirdness – is that he “actually chooses to spend time on his own.” Sex is completely detached from emotion, and instead functions as both pleasurable distraction and indicator of status and success.

Ultimately it is this – not a beating from the police – that leads to Bernard’s co-option. Bernard is an Alpha Plus civil servant who finds fame and fortune following his discovery of ‘John the Savage’, a rugged and unconditioned literate who personifies the old world of Christian morality and knowledge-seeking, and gets promptly paraded around like a circus animal. Bernard’s newfound adulation following this ‘discovery’ provides him with a pass to ‘sessions’ with high-status women. In contrast to 1984’s lead character Winston – who is ultimately co-opted through fear and torture – Bernard’s co-option thus takes place as the growing wealth, recognition and sex he receives following his ‘discovery’ naturally tend to blunt his critical outlook on society – raising the question of whether his initial rebelliousness was anything more than jealousy in the first place. In sum, control in the Brave New World is achieved almost entirely by consent; its citizens cowed by what Huxley calls “the infliction of pleasure.”

But, often forgotten in the popular memory of the book, the Brave New World does not span the globe. Parallel to the zone of consent, there is a zone of coercion. Outside the lands of relentlessly vacuous hedonism lie the deprived ‘reservations’ in which the poor and indigenous are hemmed in by electric fences. No serious conditioning takes place there, marriage and family occurs, “monstrous superstitions” such as Christianity and ancestor worship are practiced; it is a place, the tour guide explains, where “infectious diseases, priests and venomous lizards” are rampant. Yet the savages are perfectly tame, a result of their having been subjected to plenty of torture and starvation. And there is no escape from the reservations: those born there are condemned also to die there, adding, perhaps, to the piles of corpses at the boundary left by the desperate souls who have attempted to scale the fence.

Our hedonist wonderlands too are ringed by corpses: the corpses of those who would dare to flee the rampaging militias, broken societies and mass dispossession bequeathed the third world by NATO and the IMF. In the 10 years preceding the 2015 refugee crisis in Europe, 23,000 had already perished making the desperate crossing across the Mediterranean, whilst hundreds die each year on the US border with Mexico. And, as climate terror, economic crisis, and war make ever larger swathes of the world uninhabitable, these numbers are set to grow exponentially. Far-right parties across the Western world are already coming to power promising to make the fences impenetrable; to ensure, that is, that the pile of corpses continues to grow. Following suit this month was Jean-Claude Juncker, announcing a new army of 10,000 border guards to this end.

There was one major aspect of the modern world, however, that Huxley missed. In the neofeudal Brave New World, you are born into your allotted role, and conditioned to accept it. “The secret of happiness,” its proponents explain, “is liking what you have to do.” In our world, however, it is not the fatalistic comforts of feudalism that prevail, but the lies of neoliberalism. People, by and large, inherit their future position – class, status, income – from their parents. But everywhere – by the most well-meaning of teachers as much as by the most cynical of advertising executives – they are conditioned to believe that they are responsible for their own condition. The corollary of ‘you can be whatever you want’ is that ‘whatever you are is your own fault’. This basic myth of the modern world has succeeded, not in making everyone happy with their lot in life, but in ensuring they blame themselves for their predicament; if you find yourself in a dangerous, dead-end, or underpaid job, it must be because you are too stupid, lacking in talent or indolent to secure, or indeed deserve, anything else. This systemic production and reproduction of self-loathing – such an integral feature of contemporary life – was not a component of the Brave New World. And for this reason, the refugee plays a different role. In Huxley’s dystopia, the wretched inhabitants of the reservations – personified by ‘John the Savage’ – were objects of amusement, absurd relics of a long-supplanted life. For the overstimulated and under-fulfilled citizens of the West, however, the refugee is a canvas on which to project the unwanted and uncomfortable parts of our own psyche – a vessel to carry that part of ourselves we are taught to loathe, the part that seeks emotional security, decent housing, sustainable well-paid employment, but yet secretly believes we are really not entitled to it. Splitting off this conflicted craving from ourselves, we need to throw it at someone else, someone who can plausibly take on the role of the undeserving seeker of security. Enter the refugee.

Unlike 1984, Brave New World understood the splitting of the world into a zone of consent and a zone of coercion, in which consent could be obtained in the one precisely because coercion had been exported to the other. Yet the split in fact goes much deeper than this – into the very center of our souls.

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Dan Glazebrook is a freelance political writer who has written for RT, Counterpunch, Z magazine, the Morning Star, the Guardian, the New Statesman, the Independent and Middle East Eye, amongst others. His first book “Divide and Ruin: The West’s Imperial Strategy in an Age of Crisis” was published by Liberation Media in October 2013. It featured a collection of articles written from 2009 onwards examining the links between economic collapse, the rise of the BRICS, war on Libya and Syria and 'austerity'. He is currently researching a book on US-British use of sectarian death squads against independent states and movements from Northern Ireland and Central America in the 1970s and 80s to the Middle East and Africa today.

Thursday, August 30, 2018

John McInsane, the US neo-con warmonger, finally dead!

John McCain was a dirtbag. A war monger. A coward who only verbally scolded Trump while signing off on nearly all of his policies (cough, tax scam bill, cough) and appointees. He is the guy who started the whole "troll candidacy" business when he had that awful prick Sarah palin be his running mate. He has spend his entire life hurting people and helping get millions killed. To see him whitewashed like that and hailed a hero, even and especially by Liberals, is appalling but also disconcerting. It’s “nice” (on the surface that is) Republicans like McCain who provide cover for evil swine like Mitch McConnell, allowing them to gut the American security net and fuck over anyone who doesn’t live behind an iron gate. McCain’s illness and death shouldn'’t act as some magical shield that absolve him from abetting—no wait, LEADING—a GOP whose appetite for brazen monstrousness grows by the day. And yet, there were Senate Democrats giving our man a standing O right after he gleefully fucked their constituents, because Democrats would happily set aside differences with Godzilla for the sake of civility.

Hold the Plaudits, John McCain’s 2008 Campaign Paved the Way for Donald Trump
Mehdi Hasan
The Intercept, August 28 2018

What if John McCain hadn’t run for president in 2008?

Donald Trump might not be sitting in the White House today.

At first glance, that might sound odd. The six-term Republican senator, who passed away Saturday, has been hailed as an outspoken opponent of the president, while Trump himself despised McCain and famously claimed the former prisoner of the Vietcong was “not a war hero.”

McCain has also been held up, by both right and left alike, as an exemplar of political civility, integrity, and decency; a nonracist Republican; the anti-Trump. Bernie Sanders called him “a man of decency and honor;” Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez praised him as an “unparalleled example of human decency.”

Nothing could be further from the truth. Even if you discount the fact that McCain once publicly dismissed his wife as a “cunt.” Or that he referred to two of his fellow Republican senators as a “fucking jerk” and an “asshole.” Or that he mocked Chelsea Clinton, then a teenager, as “ugly.” Or that he refused to apologize for calling his Vietnamese captors “gooks.” Or that he slammed anti-war protesters as “low-life scum.”

Ignore all of that and you’re still left with his hate-mongering, race-baiting, Trump-precursing 2008 presidential campaign — against the first black Democratic nominee for the White House. How have the vitriol and smears of a decade ago been so easily forgotten by his eulogizers? So casually consigned to the media memory hole?

Remember: McCain introduced the loathsome Palin to the world in August 2008, when he plucked her from Alaskan obscurity and made her his running mate. In doing so, he granted prestige, influence, and credibility to a know-nothing demagogue and conspiracy theorist; a woman who thrived on racial and cultural resentment and would later become a leading figure in both the tea party and the “birther” movement. Sound familiar? Palin, as the Washington Post’s Dana Milbank wrote in 2016, was “politically, the Mother of Trump.”

As even Nicolle Wallace, MSNBC host and former adviser to McCain, conceded during the 2016 campaign: “Mr. Trump is riding the wave of anxiety that Ms. Palin first gave voice to as Senator John McCain’s running mate. Mr. Trump has now usurped and vastly expanded upon Ms. Palin’s constituency, but the connection between the two movements is undeniable.”

Is it any wonder then that the New York Times’s Jonathan Martin, in an otherwise fawning piece on the late Arizona senator in May, observed how “many in Mr. McCain’s own party believe that, by selecting Sarah Palin as his running mate in 2008, he bears at least a small measure of blame for unleashing the forces of grievance politics and nativism within the Republican Party”?

Remember also: McCain has never apologized for picking Palin. As Martin reported in his piece, McCain did express regret that he hadn’t selected his friend and fellow Sen. Joe Lieberman as his 2008 running mate, but “he continues to defend Ms. Palin’s performance.” Yes, her racist and conspiratorial performance. That performance.

It’s easy, though, to blame all of the Trumpish campaign of 2008 on the former governor of Alaska. It was McCain, however, who unleashed and empowered her — and failed to restrain or rebuke her as she incited angry crowds against Obama. “The growing furor in the Republican Party was something that we, as a campaign, failed to address,” admitted Wallace. And, while it was Palin who shamelessly accused Obama of “palling around with terrorists” and dog-whistled to rally-goers that the black Democrat wasn’t “a man who sees America the way you and I see America,” it was McCain who spent much of the days and weeks before the election trying to tie Obama to his former acquaintance, Bill Ayers, the co-founder of a Vietnam War-era militant group. It was McCain who authorized his campaign spokesperson to remind reporters of “Barack Obama’s long association with a domestic terrorist.” The spokesperson added, “The American people know radical when they hear it, and John McCain is not the candidate in this election they should be concerned about.”

You think shouting “lock her up” and “CNN sucks” at Trump rallies is bad? McCain-Palin rallies in 2008 featured Republican supporters in the audience shouting “Traitor!”, “Terrorist!”, “Off with his head!”, and “Kill him!” at the mere mention of Obama’s name. “Watch the tape of the guy screaming, ‘He’s a terrorist!’ McCain seems to shudder at that, he rolls his eyes … and I thought for a moment he’d admonish the man. But he didn’t,” wrote Joe Klein in Time magazine on October 9, 2008. “True enough: he no longer has his honor. But we are on the edge of some real serious craziness here and it would be nice if McCain did the right thing and told his more bloodthirsty supporters to go home and take a cold shower. But McCain hasn’t done the right thing all year.”

On October 11, 2008, Democratic congressman and civil rights icon John Lewis lambasted both McCain and Palin for “sowing the seeds of hatred and division” and even compared their dangerous campaign rhetoric to that of arch-segregationist George Wallace.

Some conservatives expressed outrage with McCain, too. David Frum accused him of “whipping Republicans and conservatives into a fury that is going to be very hard to calm after November.” Andrew Sullivan urged the Arizona senator to desist from dangerous and inflammatory attacks on a young, black Democrat: “For God’s sake, McCain, stop it. For once in this campaign, put your country first.” Republican activist and former McCain ally Frank Schaeffer denounced the GOP presidential candidate for “playing with fire,” unleashing a “monster of American hate and prejudice,” and holding rallies that “are beginning to look, sound, feel and smell like lynch mobs.”

Yet, astonishingly, all of this has been whitewashed from McCain’s political record. None of it makes an appearance in the raft of unctuous obituaries that have been published since Saturday. Instead, a single moment from that campaign — in which a woman at a town hall accused Obama of being “an Arab” and McCain replied by saying, “No ma’am, he’s a decent family man” — has become the only thing anyone seems to remember from it. Over the past couple of days, the clip of that exchange has gone viral on Twitter, with everyone from former Bush administration official Fran Townsend to liberal author Stephen King, citing it as proof of the late senator’s “character and integrity” and his “finest moment.”

Sorry, what? I have never understood how this was a badge of honor for McCain — nor do many Arab-Americans, for that matter. Actor Ben Affleck summed up the problem on “Real Time with Bill Maher” a few days after the incident. “What if someone said, ‘I heard he’s a Jew.’ ‘No, no, he’s not a Jew, he’s alright … he’s a decent guy’?” Affleck asked the audience. “‘Arab’ and ‘good person’ are not antithetical to one another. … We’ve allowed this idea where denying … that Obama is not an Arab, nor is he a Muslim, we’ve allowed that denial to turn into the acceptance of both of those things as a legitimate slur.”

In 2008, McCain could have pushed back against this idea, expressed by the increasingly Trumpish GOP rank and file, that there was something wrong with being Arab or Muslim; after all, his fellow Republican and Vietnam veteran Colin Powell did so rather eloquently on television around the same time. But, no, McCain, whether wittingly or unwittingly, allowed a distinction to be drawn between being an Arab and being a decent family man. Some suggest he should be given the benefit of the doubt on that remark because it was a spur-of-the-moment, off-the-cuff response to a rambling and racist questioner; his intent, they say, was noble.

Maybe. But context matters. How do you explain the rest of his shoddy election campaign? Shamefully, he ran for president while repeatedly claiming his black opponent was a friend of terrorists. Embarrassingly, he chose to give the nativist Palin a national platform she didn’t deserve. Disgracefully, he stayed silent as his own supporters called for the killing and beheading of Obama.

So the reality is this: if you were drawing up a list of Americans who share blame for the rise of Donald Trump, John McCain’s name would have to be somewhere near the top of it. With the noxious Palin at his side, the Arizona senator ran a nasty, bigoted, and desperate presidential campaign in 2008 that paved the way for Trump and Trumpism in 2016.

And you don’t have to take my word for it. It’s been reported that McCain requested for Obama to speak at his funeral. Perhaps the former president can start his eulogy by repeating aloud what he told New York magazine’s Jonathan Chait in October 2016: “I see a straight line from the announcement of Sarah Palin as the vice-presidential nominee to what we see today in Donald Trump … and the shift in the center of gravity for the Republican Party.”

Thanks, John McCain. Thanks a lot.

https://theintercept.com/2018/08/27/hold-the-plaudits-john-mccains-2008-campaign-paved-the-way-for-donald-trump/

Selected Comments:

McCain is celebrated in international media as "hero" "war hero" and "maverick", who was "anti-Trump. Many news outlets worldwide just copied the press release of international News agencies.

Whoever put it there - and I know, who it was - has a lot of power. Yes, it was the deep state. And they made a mistake here.

So if you are smart, you watch who prints the Propaganda for McCain. These are media outlets, who will print the next lies for the next US war. In Germany and France for example even little regional news papers will print the lies and not write, what a terrible monster he was. As I said, the deep state MIC has power over the media in many countries and languages.

Swiss outlets all chanted the song of the glorious war hero that wasn't respected by Trump - unisono! Disgraceful, when you remember that McCain advocated for half a dozen wars around the globe, wanted to bomb Iran, North Korea, etc.

2018 = 1968 all over again, a fascist raciest police state. Trump = Nixon. In November the choice will be yours again Freedom or Fascism!

Or more accurately, Trump or the forces that produced Trump. Hillary is why we have Trump.......Nothing more. The DNC rigging their primary gave us Trump, place the blame where it belongs.

McCain was pretty much the nastiest human being in any room at any given moment. Which means, of course, he was an American hero.

Like "paving the way for Donald Trump" was the worst thing about McCain. Give me a break, that is the least of many sins he could be accused of. That clown was a genuine bona fide evil-doer in his own right, a war criminal with blood of thousands on his hands.

They already know this and they know all about his insane blood lust. But the effusive eulogies came regardless, from every quarter, and they will keep on coming. That is the moral clarity of "the world's last best hope," c. 2018

Truths that can'’t be spoken in American corporate media:
    McCain never saw the prospect of a war anywhere in the world he did not instantly support - in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen and elsewhere. He advocated for prolonged wars. He died not seeing his wish to "bomb, bomb, bomb Iran" fulfilled. But his legacy is alive and well in Trump's military logic of US domination around the globe.
    McCain staunchly supported Israel, could not care less for the fate of Palestinians, and for a while even considered the arch-Zionist Joseph Lieberman as his running mate in 2008. But with his hardline support for sending arms to Syria, he played a key role in aggressively militarising the peaceful resistance to Assad regime.

John McCain’s domestic political rhetoric is not nearly as bad as his bloodthirsty war-crazed contribution to US foreign policy in the 21st century. He was a cheerleader for the Iraq War and wanted a permanent neocolonial occupation: Cutting off a questioner who talked about the Bush administration's willingness to keep troops in Iraq for 50 years, McCain said "Make it a hundred." He then mentioned that U.S. troops had been in Germany for 60 years and in Korea for 50 years, and added, "That's fine with me as long as Americans are not being injured or harmed or wounded or killed." http://voices.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2008/04/mccains_100year_war.html He amplified and supported all the lies about WMDs in Iraq that the war criminals GW Bush and Dick Cheney put out there (as did his pal, Hillary Clinton). This history has also been rewritten but here is McCain in 2003 spewing the same BS: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=OuAd0YjIfOY A decade later, he was pushing for the arming and financing of ISIS in Syria, again in partnership with Hillary Clinton and the Saudis and Lindsey Graham: https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/06/isis-saudi-arabia-iraq-syria-bandar/373181/
That’s just the short list of this bloodthirsty lunatic’s crimes - it’s ludicrous that he’s been portrayed as some kind of saintly patriotic American hero, when he has as much blood on his hands as Osama bin Laden does.

And if they were "injured, harmed, or killed" he sure wasn't gonna do a thing about it.
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/brandon-friedman/mccains-non-support-for-t_b_131046.html
I mean cannon fodder is cannon fodder, except when daddy's an admiral and pins medals all over it:

"McCain flew 23 bombing missions over North Vietnam, each averaging about half an hour, total time ten hours and thirty minutes. For these brief excursions the admiral’s son was awarded two Silver Stars, two Legions of Merit, two Distinguished Flying Crosses, three Bronze Stars, the Vietnamese Legion of Honor and three Purple Hearts. US Veteran Dispatch calculates our hero earned a medal an hour, which is pretty good going."
from: https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/08/27/the-horrors-of-john-mccain-war-hero-or-war-criminal-2/

John McCain didn't do for veterans, the ones that survived the wars he continuously sent them to fight and die in.
http://www.politicalaffairs.net/28-votes-mccain-s-record-against-veterans/
Turn off tv. Remember that politicians are scoundrels, and narcissists, all.
The lot of them certainly want us to speak kindly of their time in office. NONE deserve anything like the media parade that McCain is getting. These money whores need to take heed. American's can still get the truth, and it ain't pretty.

The people most responsible for Trump's election are the Clintons.
https://www.thenation.com/article/hillary-clinton-does-not-deserve-black-peoples-votes/
And Obama was, quite frankly, very much to blame for Hillary Clinton. The primary season in advance of the 2016 election should have been wide open on the Democratic side, not sewn up by the Clinton neoliberal machine.
I believe that Obama's tenure and his sitting by while income inequality went sky high during his presidency. The middle and lower classes got poorer while the elites got much richer. Hillary never addressed this, but Trump did. If Obama had kept even half of his campaign promises I'm thinking that Hillary would have had a better chance of being president. Add in the democrats letting republicans roll all over them when they were the minority party and should have been buried after Bush's presidency. The lost 900 seats at the federal and state levels during Obama's 8 years and they did nothing to stop it. Let's face it. Both parties are just as corrupt as the other. This goes for which party's candidate becomes president.

McCain "normalized" overt racism long before Palin. He was openly using racist slurs during interviews with reporters as early as 1999 and continued to do so throughout his presidential campaign and refused to apologize. Of course those slurs were against Asians so the liberals in the media don't care at all.

Ironic that mccain has been praised for being against torture but supports the wars that lead to it.

Ron Paul's take on McCain.    . . he epitomizes the neoconservative foreign policy, which we consider a total disaster.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EyR2ty8efDw

Palin was/is certainly a “know-nothing demagogue and conspiracy theorist,” but let’s remember how Reagan got his start. He was pimping the notion that Medicare was a secret communist plot, while arguing that anti-war protestors should be tried as traitors. This got him elected governor, and the rest is history.
The Republican Party has a long tradition of “sensible” types like McCain (or William Buckley) tolerating their party’s wingnut side if it meant furthering their goal of dismantling the New Deal. Which they have largely succeeded in doing. And by doing so, made lives worse for Americans, some of whom then in return embraced even further wingnuttery.
By all means criticize McCain for this, but do remember he was hardly the first.

He was a vicious, sociopathic, murderous criminal and war-monger, in no way deserving of respect, dead or alive.

John McCain was a war- and human rights criminal for what he did in Vietnam. And he not only never apologized for dropping bombs on people in another country that never attacked the U.S., but instead said that this evil war was right. End of story, nothing else needed here.

Voters became disillusioned with the political choices they were offered and began voting for the least qualified candidate on the ballot as a form of protest. Mr. McCain doesn't deserve particular blame (or credit depending on your point of view) for this development.

I think you're overstating the case, Mehdi. Sure, there were ugly aspects to John McCain's 2008 campaign, but the line from there to Trump is not so straightforward. I think you're using hindsight to try to find any and all the historical threads which may have lead to Trump's election in 2016, however thin they may be.

The most important factor in Trump's 2016 election the fact that the American people had become tired of the corrupt establishment of both parties.

In 2016, just like in 2008, Americans wanted a "change" candidate. They wanted an outsider. In 2008, the outsider was Obama. In 2016, the outsiders were Bernie Sanders and Trump.

Once the corrupt DNC killed Bernie Sanders' chances at the presidency by rigging their primary and crowning Hillary Clinton as their nominee (just like she paid them to do), Trump was the only outsider left.

Trump, the outsider, won an election against a corrupt insider in a year when outsiders had a natural advantage. It's quite simple, really. Everyone should have seen it coming a mile away. In fact, some people did:

    "And because of that, and the anger that so many have toward a broken political system, millions are going to vote for Trump not because they agree with him, not because they like his bigotry or ego, but just because they can. Just because it will upset the apple cart and make mommy and daddy mad.
    ...
    Remember back in the ‘90s when the people of Minnesota elected a professional wrestler as their governor? ... voting for Ventura was their version of a good practical joke on a sick political system. This is going to happen again with Trump."

    ---Michael Moore's prediction from August 3, 2016
    https://web.archive.org/web/20160803195706/https://michaelmoore.com/trumpwillwin/

Another example of the utter depravity of McCain is his performance at a hearing on the suit brought by Elouise Cobell for the recovery of the billions stolen by Energy and Mining corporations for over 100 years from Native lands. He interrupted Cobells' testimony by shouting, "That's a Lie" multiple times even though everyone knew her testimony was the truth. His florid face and bullying tone reflected his disdain for any woman of non-white color who had the audacity to confront the White Supremacist power of the United States government. Elouise sat and took it without a word as she had been confronting these White bullies her whole life. The event can be seen in the documentary of her fight: 100 years, One Woman's Fight for Justice. The final result of the suit was a pittance awarded to the thousands of Native families whose wealth had been stolen. All delayed and orchestrated by the Clinton administration mainly the Secretary of the Interior from Arizona who destroyed records and fought the suit in every way. Had the judge who ruled against them removed. Moved the suit to the Washington, D.C. appeals Court favorable to all Corporate Oligarchy occupants, and finally the Supreme Court where the traitorous Scalia Court finished wiping the slate clean of all of the felonious thievery of the Corporate Oligarchy. Cobell died before she even got 1 cent. Her bravery and death should have received the accolades for this traitor now pouring out of the mealy mouths of the current living politicians of both parties continuing the White Supremacy inherent to the United States every since its conquest and creation. TIME FOR A SECULAR REVOLUTION!

---
Why the US ruling class mourns John McCain
http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2018/08/27/pers-a27.html

The only reason why MSM is so pro -McCain is because he was anti-Trump.

When a leading arms manufacturer sends a heartbreaking eulogy on social media for McCain , you know what kind of hero he really was.

Not one word from the corporate media that I could see or hear said anything "negative'...or gave the whole true picture of what he was really about. We felt surrounded,outgunned, shocked and defeated by God, like the USA is painfully stupid...that his atrocities are completely acceptable. It is shameful.

Good one from Democracy Now:
Obit Omit: What the Media Leaves Out of John McCain’s Record of Militarism and Misogyny
https://www.democracynow.org/2018/8/27/obit_omit_what_the_media_leaves
- - -
must-read takedown of the fauxcialists Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez:

Ocasio-Cortez and Sanders praise McCain: An object lesson in the politics of the pseudo-left
http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2018/08/28/pers-a28.html

excerpt:

    "Amidst the outpouring of praise from all sections of the political establishment for Republican Senator John McCain, who died on Saturday, two statements stand out.

    The first was from Vermont senator and former presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, who tweeted: “John McCain was an American hero, a man of decency and honor and a friend of mine. He will be missed not just in the US Senate but by all Americans who respect integrity and independence.”

    The second was from Democratic Socialists of America member and New York congressional candidate Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who tweeted: “John McCain’s legacy represents an unparalleled example of human decency and American service. As an intern, I learned a lot about the power of humanity in government through his deep friendship with Sen. Kennedy. He meant so much, to so many. My prayers are with his family.”

    Ocasio-Cortez posted with her tweet the editorial from the Washington Post on McCain’s death, “John McCain, the irreplaceable American,” which praised McCain for his work on “national defense and deterrence of foreign aggression” and for “[rising] above party politics to pursue what he honestly saw as the national interest.”

    What, one is compelled to ask, are these two individuals, who present themselves as figures of the left and even socialists, talking about? What is McCain’s legacy of “human decency and American service?” What made him an “American hero?”"

If you'’re some Pollyanna offering your support to John McCain after he helped hollow out Medicaid, you’re a naïve dupe. The twin illusions of bipartisanship and decorum have always provided handy cover for anyone looking to willfully ignore the fiendish inequalities of the American political infrastructure and the GOP’s rapturous thirst for cruelty; a thirst that has only recently emerged in the foreground thanks to the existence of Trump for whom McCain paved the way.

McCain is no hero.

He died leaving behind a country HE helped turn into shambles; a fascist craphole. He wont have to live with what he did, we do. Him having died at the ripe old age of 82 doesnt change what he did or make him a hero or honorable man deserving of our praise and respect.

McCain and the Clintons were both responsible -- as was Obama for elevating Hillary after her unspeakably dirty campaign against him for the 2008 nomination. Besides, there is not much difference between McCain and the Clintons apart from party label.

Here is a 1999 piece about a psychiatric evaluation McCain underwent while a prisoner of war in North Vietnam. The psychological portrait drawn by Spanish psychiatrist Fernando Barral is that of a deeply narcissistic personality, cold, hardened and largely devoid of human empathy, a man who seemed to view the bombing of civilian populations as a kind of sport. https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/08/27/the-horrors-of-john-mccain-war-hero-or-war-criminal-2/

More on McCain:

A Little-Known Story About John McCain and His Fantasies of Benevolent U.S. Foreign Policy
https://theintercept.com/2018/08/27/a-little-known-story-about-john-mccain-and-his-fantasies-of-benevolent-u-s-foreign-policy/

Despite What the Press Says, “Maverick” McCain Has a Long and Distinguished Record of Horribleness
https://theintercept.com/2017/07/27/john-mccain-fake-maverick-horrible-record/

John McCain Claimed He Cares About “Honor” in the Senate. His Tax Vote Shows He Lied.
https://theintercept.com/2017/12/02/john-mccain-claimed-he-cares-about-honor-in-the-senate-his-tax-vote-shows-he-lied/

http://www.globalresearch.ca/us-has-killed-more-than-20-million-people-in-37-victim-nations-since-world-war-ii/5492051

Sunday, May 13, 2018

Douma witnesses speak at OPCW briefing at The Hague

Laid bare in front of the world. However, it sadly won't make a difference. If they were sure it happened the way they say, they would be eager for an investigation by anyone qualified. Alleging the attack and naming the culprits while refusing to conduct a proper investigation look worse either way.

No attack, no victims, no chem weapons: Douma witnesses speak at OPCW briefing at The Hague RT : 26 Apr, 2018

Witnesses of the alleged chemical attack in Douma, including 11-year-old Hassan Diab and hospital staff, told reporters at The Hague that the White Helmets video used as a pretext for a US-led strike on Syria was, in fact, staged.

“We were at the basement and we heard people shouting that we needed to go to a hospital. We went through a tunnel. At the hospital they started pouring cold water on me,” the boy told the press conference, gathered by Russia’s mission at the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) in The Hague.

Hassan was among the “victims” seen being washed by water hoses in a video released by the controversial White Helmets group on April 7. The boy and his family later spoke to the media and revealed that Hassan was hurried to the scene by men who claimed that a chemical attack had taken place. They started pouring cold water on the boy and others, filming the frightened children.

“There were people unknown to us who were filming the emergency care, they were filming the chaos taking place inside, and were filming people being doused with water. The instruments they used to douse them with water were originally used to clean the floors actually,” Ahmad Kashoi, an administrator of the emergency ward, recalled. “That happened for about an hour, we provided help to them and sent them home. No one has died. No one suffered from chemical exposure.”

Hassan was among the “victims” seen being washed by water hoses in a video released by the controversial White Helmets group on April 7. The boy and his family later spoke to the media and revealed that Hassan was hurried to the scene by men who claimed that a chemical attack had taken place. They started pouring cold water on the boy and others, filming the frightened children.

“There were people unknown to us who were filming the emergency care, they were filming the chaos taking place inside, and were filming people being doused with water. The instruments they used to douse them with water were originally used to clean the floors actually,” Ahmad Kashoi, an administrator of the emergency ward, recalled. “That happened for about an hour, we provided help to them and sent them home. No one has died. No one suffered from chemical exposure.”

Halil al-Jaish, a resuscitator who tended to people at the Douma hospital that day, told the press conference that some of the patients had indeed experienced respiratory problems. The symptoms, however, were caused by heavy dust, which engulfed the area due to recent airstrikes, and no one showed any signs of chemical warfare poisoning, al-Jaish said.

The hospital received people who suffered from smoke and dust asphyxiation on the day of the alleged attack, Muwaffak Nasrim, a paramedic who was working in emergency care, said. The panic seen in footage provided by the White Helmets was caused mainly by people shouting about the alleged use of chemical weapons, Nasrim, who witnessed the chaotic scenes, added. No patients, however, displayed symptoms of chemical weapons exposure, he said.

Ahmad Saur, an emergency paramedic with the Syrian Red Crescent, said that the ward he was working at did not receive any patients exposed to chemical weapons on the day of the alleged incident or after it. All the patients needed either general medical care or help with injuries, he said. Saur told journalists he came to speak at The Hague independently of the Red Crescent, and that he was testifying freely and without any pressure.

One reporter asked what would happen to the eyewitnesses and whether they would “stay in Europe to testify.”

“We’re going back home, and see no problem with that. The situation is a lot better now. We’re Douma residents, like many others,” Hassan Ayoun, a doctor with the emergency department, said.

Six of the Douma witnesses brought to The Hague have already been interviewed by the OPCW technical experts, Russia’s permanent representative to the OPCW, Aleksandr Shulgin, said.

“The others were ready too, but the experts are sticking to their own guidelines. They’ve picked six people, talked to them, and said they were 'completely satisfied' with their account and did not have any further questions,” Shulgin revealed. He added that the allegations by “certain Western
countries” ahead of the briefing that Moscow and Damascus were seeking to “hide” the witnesses from the OPCW experts did not hold water.

The alleged chemical incident was only supported by the White Helmets’ video and social media reports from militant-linked groups, but the US, the UK and France judged they had enough evidence that it actually took place and launched a series of punitive strikes against Syria on April 14. The US and its allies accused Syrian President Bashar Assad of carrying out the “attack,” without providing any proof of their claim. Notably, the strike came hours before the OPCW fact-finding team was set to arrive in Douma to determine whether chemical weapons had been used there.

Selected Comments:

* The west try to ignore the truth now. The lies of Wall Street and white house propaganda machine, that we call main stream media.

* Just like a giant snow ball rolling down a mountain the evil of the democracies will eventually smother them.

* The West blocked an investigation into an alleged crime. Is this how the Western judicial system works? They prefer to shoot first and ask questions later.

* In order to establish who carried out an attack, it must first be established the attack occurred.

* Since US, UK and France have declared that they don’t need UN resolution to do whatever they want, they therefore declared themselves outlaws in the eyes of international legislation. Which means, any aquatic equipment of those so called nations is now treated as a pirate vessel and is a subject to destruction. World, that’s the best hunting season ever recorded in human history - seek the outlaws and destroy on sight. They can’t run to UN for protection - they just unilaterally exited that union. Shoot at will and good hunting.

* UN was created by Washington & London in order to easily spread their imperialistic goals. In other hands, USA and UK have the upper hand at UN. The same thing is with other "international" organizations such as WADA, WHO, WTO, World Bank, IMF and others.

* It Is Amazing how America and Great Britain are now using Chemical Weapons in every Way Possible To Create Another Global Incineration War where your Body Turns Charcoal as it Roast to Black Cinders in Madness of Political Global Lunacy.!!!

* No white helmets are ever poisoned but they are always around when poisoning is even mentioned. Are these guys carrying the stuff with them?

* The CIA Director Mike Pompeo has admitted that he fooled Trump into believing the chemical weapons attack in Syria (2017) was launched by the Syrian government. The U.S False flag attack, which actually originated from CIA rebel groups in the region, resulted in Trump launching Tomahawk missiles into Syria, killing 15 innocent civilians and 7 Syrian soldiers. So what Pompeo is admitting to is, at best, providing the President with faulty intelligence.

* Secretary Of Defence John Mattis admitted that there has been no evidence of any use of chemical weapons by Assad.......that was reported in Newsweek on the 8th of this month. Google it....it makes for stark reading but with propaganda being peddled as news, they get support and recognition in the
"court of public opinion" because their populations are predominately sheep.

Boxer Muhammad Ali & Vietnam War

Over 3 million Vietnamese killed in the Vietnam war by U.S. soldiers. The Vietnam U.S. vets who burned villages raped young woman after raping them they machine gun them and killed their children .

They carpeted bombed all Vietnam and used "Agent Orange" chemical millions got cancer ....crimes against humanity, done by the U.S. and two nuclear bombs in Japan .

April 28, 1967
"I ain't draft dodging. I ain't burning no flag. I ain't running to Canada. I'm staying right here. You want to send me to jail? Fine, you go right ahead . I've in jail for 400 years. I could be there for 4 or 5 more, but I ain't going no 10,000 miles to help murder and kill other poor people. If I want to die, I'll die right here, right now, fightin' you, if I want to die.

You 're my enemy , not no Chinese, ,,No Vietcong..... no Japanese. You my opposer when I want freedom.

You my opposer when I want justice.

You my opposer when I want equality. Want me to go somewhere and fight for you? You won't even stand up for me right here in America, for my rights and my religious beliefs. You won't even stand up for my rights here at home .

- Muhammad Ali.- April 28, 1967

On April 28, 1967, with the United States at war in Vietnam, Ali refused to be inducted into the armed forces, saying "I ain't got no quarrel with those Vietcong." On June 20, 1967, Ali was convicted of draft evasion, sentenced to five years in prison, fined $10,000 and banned from boxing for three years.

British 'war on terror' & strategic ties with radical Islam

British had been infamous since her colonial days of using "Dive & Rule" policy by even supporting Islamist militants to further her interest and inflict damage on the image of Islam.

Stench of hypocrisy: British 'war on terror' & strategic ties with radical Islam
John Wight
RT : 19 Apr, 2018

Britain's strategic relationship with radical Islam goes back decades and continues to this day.

There is no more foul a stench than the stench of hypocrisy, and there is no more foul a hypocrisy than the British government painting Bashar al-Assad as a monster when in truth he and the Syrian people have been grappling with a twin-headed monster in the shape of Salafi-jihadi terror and Western imperialism. Both are committed to destroying Syria as an independent, non-sectarian state, and both are inextricably linked.

Author and journalist Mark Curtis charts in detail the contours of this history in his book 'Secret Affairs: Britain's Collusion with Radical Islam':

"British governments, both Labour and Conservative, have, in pursuing the so-called 'national interest' abroad, colluded for decades with radical Islamic forces, including terrorist organizations. They have connived with them, worked alongside them and sometimes trained and financed them, in order to promote specific foreign policy objectives. Governments have done so in often desperate attempts to maintain Britain's global power in the face of increasing weakness in key regions of the world, being unable to unilaterally impose their will and lacking other local allies. Thus the story is
intimately related to that of Britain's imperial decline and the attempt to maintain influence in the world."

As far back as the First World War, when the Middle East began to assume strategic importance in the capitals of Western imperial and colonial powers, the British ruling class went out of its way to identify and recruit loyal local proxies in pursuit of its regional objectives. Britain's relationship with the Arab tribal chief, Ibn Saud, who would go on to establish Saudi Arabia in the early 1930s, began in 1915 with the Darin Pact, demarcating the territory then controlled by Saud as a British protectorate.

The following year, the Arab Revolt against the Ottomans erupted. Begun and inspired by Saud's fierce rival, Sharif Hussein, head of the Hashemite Arab tribe, the revolt was heavily bankrolled and supported by the British – a period immortalized in the exploits of British military agent T E Lawrence, known to the world as Lawrence of Arabia.

But whereas Sharif Hussein was a follower of orthodox Sunni Islam, Ibn Saud adhered to the radical doctrine of Wahhabism, which Winston Churchill was moved to describe as "bloodthirsty" and "intolerant." Regardless, when it came to its imperial interests there was no tiger upon whose back the British ruling class was not willing to ride during this period, and which, as events have proved, it has not been willing to ride since.

The most egregious example of this policy, one that continues to have ramifications today, was the support provided by the UK to the Afghan mujahideen in the late 1970s and 1980s. The insurgency's objective was the overthrow of Kabul's secular and left-leaning government, whose crime in the eyes of the Islamist insurgency's US and UK sponsors was that it had embraced the social and economic model of Moscow rather than Washington during the first Cold War.

British support for the mujahideen, married to the huge support provided by Washington, was indispensable in the eventual success of these self-styled 'holy warriors' in taking control of a country that had embraced modernity and turning it into a failed state mired in religious oppression, brutality, backwardness and poverty.

Mark Curtis again:

"Britain, along with the US, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, covertly supported the resistance to defeat the Soviet occupation of the country. Military, financial and diplomatic backing was given to Islamist forces which, while forcing a Soviet withdrawal, soon organized themselves into terrorist networks ready to strike Western targets."

While Washington's primary role in channeling military and financial support to the Afghan mujahideen, known as Operation Cyclone, may until have succeeded in overshadowing London's role in this dirty war, declassified British government cabinet papers which were made public in 2010 and reported in the UK media make grim reading.

They reveal that three weeks after Soviet forces arrived in Afghanistan at the request of the Afghan government in Kabul, struggling to deal with an insurgency that had broken out in the countryside, the Thatcher government was planning to supply military aid to the "Islamic resistance." A confidential government memo provides a chilling insight into the insanity that passed for official policy: "We trust the Western leaders are prepared for the enormous beneficial possibilities that could just possibly open up if the Afghan rebellion were to succeed."

It will be recalled that out of the ensuing collapse of Afghanistan emerged the Taliban, under whose rule the country was turned into a vast militant jihadist school and training camp. Many of the most notorious Islamist terrorists began their careers there, fighting the Soviets and then later broadening out their activities to other parts of the region and wider world. In this regard, Osama bin Laden and Al-Qaeda loom large.

Other notorious names from the world of Salafi-jihadism for whom Afghanistan proved indispensable include the Jordanian Abu al-Zarqawi, who founded Al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) during the US-UK occupation, an organization that would over time morph into ISIS.

Abdelhakim Belhaj and other Libyan Islamists cut their jihadist teeth in Afghanistan in the 1980s. Returning to Libya, they formed the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) in the eastern city of Benghazi. Though the group may have been disbanded in 2010, having failed to topple Gaddafi despite repeated attempts to assassinate the Libyan leader with, it's been claimed, the support of Britain's MI6, former members of the LIFG, including Belhaj, were important actors in the 2011 Libyan uprising.

By way of a reminder, the uprising in Libya started in Benghazi and would not have succeeded without the air support it received from NATO. Britain's then prime minister, David Cameron, was key in pushing for that air support and the sanction of the UN under the auspices of Security Council Resolution 1973. Though protecting civilians was central in wording of this UNSC resolution, it was shamefully distorted to justify regime change, culminating in Gaddafi's murder by the 'rebels.'

Staying with the LIFG, in the wake of the Manchester suicide-bomb attack in May 2017, which left 23 people dead and 500 injured, the fact that the bomber, a young Libyan by the name of Salman Abedi, was the son of a former member of the LIFG, did not receive anything like the media attention it should have at the time.

Manchester, England is home to the largest Libyan community in Britain, and there is strong evidence to suggest that when the Libyan uprising broke out MI6 facilitated the ability of Libyan Islamists in Britain to travel to Libya to participate in the fighting. Among them was Salman Abedi, who it is thought received military training in the country before being allowed to return to the UK thereafter.

This brings us on to Syria and, as with Libya, the question of how so many British Muslims have been able to travel from the UK to Syria via Turkey to take part in the anti-Assad insurgency since 2011? It also brings into sharp focus a policy that has veered between the ludicrous and the reckless.

Emblematic of the former was ex-prime minister David Cameron's claim, which he made during a 2015 Commons debate over whether the Royal Air Force should engage in air strikes against ISIS in Syria, that fighting as part of the Syrian were 70,000 moderates.

As for the recklessness of Britain's actions in Syria, look no further than the country's recent participation in the illegal missile strikes that were carried out in conjunction with the US and France, justified on the basis of as yet unproven allegations that Syrian government forces had carried out a
chemical weapons attack on Douma, just outside Damascus. The only beneficiaries of such actions by the Western powers are Salafi-jihadist groups such as ISIS (whom it was later reported took advantage of the missile strike to mount a short-lived offensive), Al-Nusra and Jaysh al-Islam.

The latter of those groups, Jaysh al-Islam, is a Saudi proxy. It was the dominant group in Douma and throughout Eastern Ghouta until the district's liberation by the Syrian Army and its allies with Russian support.

Given the deep and longstanding ties between London and Riyadh; given the fact, reported towards the end of 2017, that British military personnel were embedded in a training role with Saudi forces in Yemen; given the news that a British special forces sergeant was killed in northern Syria at the end of March this year while embedded with the Kurds, revealing for the first time that British troops were operating in the country on the ground – given all that, the question of who else British special forces and military personnel may be embedded with in Syria is legitimate.

In the context of the British state's long and sordid history when it comes to riding the back of radical Islam in pursuit of its strategic objectives, readers will doubtless draw their own conclusions.

Selected Comments:

* The UK and its agencies such as MI6 are deeply complicit in the wave of takfiri terrorrism that has covered much ofvthe globe and created an era of tension that the police state has exploited to further erode people's basic civil and human rights. The UK and especially the City of London are at the
nexus of organized global criminality.

* UK sponsoring of radical Islam goes back to the “great game” of the 19th century. Wahhabis, Salafis, taqfiris, Muslim Brotherhood are all British created and managed tools to suppress nationalism and democracy in Islamic countries. They never attack western client states.The UK government is a disgrace, complicit in the murder of countless Christians and Muslims.

* Since the west especially as represented by US , UK and France were practically denied the opportunity to steal from weak states from late 90s, they have resorted to disaster capitalism. The idea is to create perpetual war and conflict so that they can sell more arms to the warring factions and kill as many people as possible to justify huge military budgets. It has paid handsomely .They will continue an this route until new powers or coalitions are able to stop them, otherwise the world will never know peace.

The evolution of SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket

SpaceX has tinkered with its Falcon 9 rocket for a decade. Now, it says it's done with Block 5 (i.e. 9 Merlin engine boosters) which was used successfully on May 12, 2018 to launch a satellite for the Govt of Bangladesh.

Block 5 rocket launch marks the end of the beginning for SpaceX

Eric Berger - 5/3/2018

Less than eight years after its maiden launch, the Falcon 9 booster has become the most dominant rocket in the world. Modern and efficient, no rocket launched more than the 70m Falcon 9 booster launched last year. Barring catastrophe, no rocket seems likely to launch more this year.

In part, SpaceX has achieved this level of efficiency by bringing a Silicon Valley mindset to the aerospace industry. The company seeks to disrupt, take chances, and, like so many relentless start-up companies, drive employees to work long hours to meet demanding engineering goals.

While founder Elon Musk’s ambitions to settle Mars get most of the public’s attention, the company’s workhorse Falcon 9 rocket, which almost never leaves Earth orbit, is the reason SpaceX has soared to date. And on this vehicle, Musk’s company has imprinted its ethos of disruption and innovation by seeking every opportunity to improve the rocket.

Although this has caused headaches for customers like NASA and some suppliers, constant tinkering has allowed SpaceX to maximize performance of this rocket. By regularly upgrading the Merlin engines, shedding weight with lighter materials, and using super-chilled rocket fuel to maximize density, the Falcon 9 rocket now is about twice as powerful as it was during its initial flight. Rarely during its more than 50 launches since June 2010 has a Falcon 9 rocket not had a handful or more changes from the previous edition.

All the while, SpaceX has had a singular goal for the Falcon 9 rocket: to build the most perfect and efficient orbital rocket it could. Now, finally, the company seems close to taking a final step toward that goal by closing the loop on first-stage reusability. As soon as next Monday, but more likely a bit later this month, SpaceX intends to launch the “Block 5” variant of the Falcon 9 rocket for the first time. Musk has said this fifth revision of the Falcon 9 should mark the final major change for the booster.

The company has a lot riding on the revamped booster. SpaceX intends to fly each Block 5 first stage it builds a minimum of 10 times and—depending on your willingness to accept Musk’s enthusiastic outlook—perhaps many more. Ten flights would be hugely significant, as SpaceX has thus far only ever reused each of its Falcon 9 rockets a single time. Additionally, the company hopes to reduce the turnaround time between launches of a Falcon 9 booster, now several months, to a matter of weeks.

Achieving such a nirvana of low-cost, rapid access to space would represent a tremendous feat for SpaceX. For a company that aspires to one day land humans on Mars, this is the essential first step. Moreover, by freezing the design of the Falcon 9 rocket, SpaceX can free up its engineering talent to focus on the “Big Falcon Rocket” and its upper stage spaceship. And by flying each Block 5 booster multiple times, it can release its skilled workers to assemble that much, much larger booster.

The upcoming launch of the Block 5 rocket, therefore, marks the end of the beginning for SpaceX.

Close calls

To find a Falcon 9 launch of comparable magnitude to the forthcoming Block 5 launch, one probably has to go back to December 2015. The stakes were incredibly high then, too. Six months before, in June, SpaceX had suffered the first failure of the Falcon 9 booster, a catastrophic break-up of the second stage at about 150 seconds into the flight. The Dragon spacecraft ascending into space, laden with NASA cargo valued at more than $100 million, was lost.

SpaceX spent nearly half a year assessing and fixing the problem before returning to the launch pad. For that December flight, SpaceX doubled-down on its philosophy of taking risks. The Falcon 9 booster standing at the pad three days before Christmas was the first one using a much more powerful variant of the rocket, known as the Falcon 9 Full Thrust, or Block 3.

This ambitious booster had about 30 percent more capability than its predecessor, with more powerful engines and slightly larger tanks that accommodated super-cooled liquid oxygen and highly refined kerosene. Other modifications included upgraded grid fins to steer the rocket on its return through Earth’s atmosphere and landing legs.

But with this return to flight mission, it was not enough to debut an entirely revamped rocket. For the first time, SpaceX would also attempt to return a booster to Earth for a vertical landing along the Florida coast. Always be innovating, pushing.

Later that night, after the successful flight and landing, Musk held a teleconference with reporters. Ars asked Musk how confident he had been in success of the mission, both launching the new booster and sticking the landing.

"I wasn't at all confident that we would succeed, but I'm really glad of it," he replied. "It's been 13 years since SpaceX was started. We've had a lot of close calls. I think people here are overjoyed."

Musk has since told confidants that it was this Block 3 version of the Falcon 9 rocket that put SpaceX on top of the commercial satellite launch competition, elbowing out Russia, China, and Europe’s state-run rocket companies for a lot of this business. The more powerful Block 3 rocket also allowed SpaceX to begin launching heavier payloads for the US military. With Block 3, Musk felt as though he had the best rocket in the world.

And now, the Block 5

Musk wasn't wrong. It is true that SpaceX suffered another serious setback in September 2016 with the loss of a Falcon 9 during a launch pad test. Within the industry, there were murmurs that SpaceX was all hype, that it played too fast and loose to ever build a safe and reliable rocket. What good were low prices, competitors said, if the rocket had a non-trivial chance of blowing up, and customers had to wait years to get into space?

But then, the Block 3 rocket and its successor, the Block 4, began to shine. In 2017, SpaceX finally unleashed the “steamroller”—an industry buzzword for the company's ability to fly the low-cost Falcon 9 rocket more frequently. SpaceX flew 18 missions last year with the Block 3 and Block 4 versions of its rocket, and the company has completed seven flights of the Falcon 9 rocket through April of this year.

Now comes the Block 5. This new version includes myriad changes and upgrades that SpaceX anticipates will optimize the Falcon 9 for reusability. (Although the company has not released any official information, the reddit community has created a list based upon various statements made by Musk and the company’s president, Gwynne Shotwell).

The changes reflect what SpaceX has learned after that fateful December 2015 landing. The company has since recovered more than 20 rockets by land and sea, meticulously studying the wear and tear on the first stage booster structure, engines, and fuel tanks. The Block 5 version will therefore include modifications such as improved thermal shielding around the Merlin engines, unpainted components to save mass, and changes to the octaweb structure that holds the engines so they can be inspected, refurbished, and tested more quickly.

Shotwell and other company officials have said their initial goal with the Block 5 rocket is to fly each booster 10 times before significant refurbishment and to bring down the time between a rocket launch from months to weeks. In the aerospace industry, such rapid reusability of a rocket’s first stage is unheard of. But it is not a stretch to say that SpaceX may well pull this off.

“My experience with SpaceX has been that it has achieved its engineering goals,” said Carissa Christensen, an expert in commercial space analysis and founder and chief executive of Bryce Space and Technology. “They have set audacious, ambitious, and exciting goals before. And if SpaceX is saying that is the engineering goal, just based on past experience, it would be foolhardy to say they won’t get there.”

But given that SpaceX has already grabbed a significant chunk of the commercial launch industry with a booster that flies at most twice, what extra impact would an ultra-reusable rocket have?

How much it will cost

The answer depends on several questions. How much will SpaceX charge for launching on the Block 5 rocket over time? How much will it cost SpaceX to refurbish the Block 5 rocket? And if SpaceX reduces the price of launch, will demand over time increase?

In regard to price, SpaceX does not intend to discount the price of a Falcon 9 launch on the Block 5 rocket right away. “There’s no change,” company spokesman James Gleeson told Ars. There is speculation that eventually SpaceX may drop the price by 20 to 40 percent for Block 5 launches, from $62 million for a standard Falcon 9 launch down to around $40 million.

But for now, there is no immediate incentive for SpaceX to drop the price of a Falcon 9 launch. The company already has the lowest-cost orbital rocket in its class flying today. In dropping the price, Musk would be undercutting himself.

Down the line, one potential incentive for SpaceX to cut prices for the Falcon 9 rocket would be to increase the overall pool of customers. If it costs less to get into space, does that lower the barrier to more applications?

Dramatically cheaper launch costs may help close the business case for other ventures in space beyond traditional science, television, and observational satellites. Several companies, including SpaceX, are developing constellations of hundreds to thousands of satellites that could deliver Internet access from low-Earth orbit. Cheap launches might also help close the business case for space-based solar power, but that technology remains a ways off.

David Alexander, the director of the Rice Space Institute, noted that Japan has announced a nearly $1 billion space technology innovation fund and that countries such as China, the United Kingdom, and the rest of Europe are pushing for more data from remote sensing observations in low-Earth orbit.

“I think the biggest benefit is the broader access it would provide to a wide range of space entrepreneurs,” Alexander said of the potential for the Block 5 rocket to lower the cost of launch. “Cheaper access to space will only accelerate this.”

However, this seems unlikely to push demand for launches right away. Several experts Ars spoke to noted that the market for the launch of large satellites to low-Earth and geostationary orbit has remained fairly static. Because these satellites cost so much, saving $10 million or $20 million on launch costs probably won’t significantly increase the number of them being launched.

“I don’t think halving the launch cost makes a huge difference,” Christensen said. “Demand might be somewhat stimulated by lower prices, but space is expensive, and launch is a small part of it.”

Profit-taking, maybe

Several sources suggested SpaceX may reduce the price of the Falcon 9 rocket to further pressure its beleaguered competitors, including US-based United Launch Alliance as well as international providers in China, Russia, Europe, and elsewhere. However, none of these competitors is likely to go away, at least not soon. In the United States, United Launch Alliance remains a trusted partner of government agencies, and none of the other global space powers is likely to abandon its launch industries soon.

Despite these potential incentives, SpaceX will probably keep the Falcon 9 at more or less the same price point for a while and seek to profit from a decade of investing in innovations such as reusability. This makes sense, because it is not clear whether SpaceX is profitable at the current price point of a Falcon 9 rocket used once or twice.

The company now has in excess of 6,000 employees, and just meeting that payroll and keeping large facilities in California, Texas, Florida, and elsewhere operating probably costs on the order of $1 to $1.25 billion, experts told Ars. At a rate of $62 million per launch, it would take 20 launches a year just to cover these expenses. And this assumes that vehicle production costs are zero, which of course is not true.

This over-simplistic calculation suggests that the privately held SpaceX has been able to sustain its low launch prices to date thanks to development contracts from NASA for commercial cargo and crew services. It stands to reason therefore that, for a time at least, the company may just pocket any reuse “dividend.” Certainly, as SpaceX ramps up production of the Big Falcon Rocket—for which it has already acquired land for a manufacturing plant—it will need fistfuls of money.

Musk's madness

Every orbital rocket since the dawn of the Space Age, except for components of the space shuttle, has been thrown away after a single flight. The space shuttle mastered the art of re-flying a spacecraft, with Discovery launching and landing a record 39 times. However, NASA was never able to substantially cut the turnaround time between the landing and launch of an orbiter, a period that typically lasted six to 12 months. (The record is 54 days, between the first and second flight of Atlantis in 1985). More importantly, shuttle refurbishments were costly. Over the entire lifetime of the program, the incremental, per-flight cost of a space shuttle mission came to about $1 billion.

SpaceX has an opportunity to change this paradigm—to truly achieve rapid, reusable, low-cost spaceflight. And it has done so quickly. Should the Block 5 succeed in under a decade, SpaceX will have gone from a company that had never flown a rocket into space to having developed the most efficient orbital booster ever flown.

Because of this success, and its growing share of the commercial launch market, the Falcon 9 rocket has sent virtually all of SpaceX’s competitors scrambling to develop new boosters to try to compete. The Falcon 9 has pushed many of them to look into reusability, too.

For SpaceX, however, having caught and largely surpassed its orbital competitors, it is now time to move on. Sure, it will maintain a skeleton crew to continue fabricating a few Block 5 rockets. But if you really can fly a rocket like this 10 times, how many do you need to build a year?

So the company plans to turn its sights toward the larger Big Falcon Rocket that may one day enable human settlement elsewhere in the Solar System. In reporting this article, one source expressed amazement at this apparent madness. Why would SpaceX want to obsolete its own, dominant products?

A bit of history helps answer this. In the early 2000s, Musk was told he could never privately finance an orbital rocket. Then, he was told it was madness to try to land them on a boat. And then, he heard how foolhardy it was to try to strap three rockets together and light 27 engines at the same time. Elon Musk does not care all that much to hear about his madness.

Perhaps it is mad for SpaceX to work feverishly to obsolete its Falcon 9 rocket, which it has spent a decade perfecting. But this was not a company founded to appease shareholders, plural. It was founded to appease a single shareholder. And he wants to go to Mars, damn it.

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