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The announcement last week by the United States of the largest military aid package in its history – to Israel – was a win for both sides.

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu could boast that his lobbying had boosted aid from $3.1 billion a year to $3.8bn – a 22 per cent increase – for a decade starting in 2019.

Mr Netanyahu has presented this as a rebuff to those who accuse him of jeopardising Israeli security interests with his government’s repeated affronts to the White House.

In the past weeks alone, defence minister Avigdor Lieberman has compared last year’s nuclear deal between Washington and Iran with the 1938 Munich pact, which bolstered Hitler; and Mr Netanyahu has implied that US opposition to settlement expansion is the same as support for the “ethnic cleansing” of Jews.

American president Barack Obama, meanwhile, hopes to stifle his own critics who insinuate that he is anti-Israel. The deal should serve as a fillip too for Hillary Clinton, the Democratic party’s candidate to succeed Mr Obama in November’s election.

In reality, however, the Obama administration has quietly punished Mr Netanyahu for his misbehaviour. Israeli expectations of a $4.5bn-a-year deal were whittled down after Mr Netanyahu stalled negotiations last year as he sought to recruit Congress to his battle against the Iran deal.

In fact, Israel already receives roughly $3.8bn – if Congress’s assistance on developing missile defence programmes is factored in. Notably, Israel has been forced to promise not to approach Congress for extra funds.

The deal takes into account neither inflation nor the dollar’s depreciation against the shekel.

A bigger blow still is the White House’s demand to phase out a special exemption that allowed Israel to spend nearly 40 per cent of aid locally on weapon and fuel purchases. Israel will soon have to buy all its armaments from the US, ending what amounted to a subsidy to its own arms industry.

Nonetheless, Washington’s renewed military largesse – in the face of almost continual insults – inevitably fuels claims that the Israeli tail is wagging the US dog. Even The New York Times has described the aid package as “too big”.

Since the 1973 war, Israel has received at least $100bn in military aid, with more assistance hidden from view. Back in the 1970s, Washington paid half of Israel’s military budget. Today it still foots a fifth of the bill, despite Israel’s economic success.

But the US expects a return on its massive investment. As the late Israeli politician-general Ariel Sharon once observed, ­Israel has been a US “aircraft carrier” in the Middle East, acting as the regional bully and carrying out operations that benefit Washington.

Almost no one blames the US for Israeli attacks that wiped out Iraq’s and Syria’s nuclear programmes. A nuclear-armed Iraq or Syria would have deterred later US-backed moves at regime overthrow, as well as countering the strategic advantage Israel derives from its own nuclear arsenal.

In addition, Israel’s US-sponsored military prowess is a triple boon to the US weapons industry, the country’s most powerful lobby. Public funds are siphoned off to let Israel buy goodies from American arms makers. That, in turn, serves as a shop window for other customers and spurs an endless and lucrative game of catch-up in the rest of the Middle East.

The first F-35 fighter jets to arrive in Israel in December – their various components produced in 46 US states – will increase the clamour for the cutting-edge warplane.

Israel is also a “front-line laboratory”, as former Israeli army negotiator Eival Gilady admitted at the weekend, that develops and field-tests new technology Washington can later use itself.

The US is planning to buy back the missile interception system Iron Dome – which neutralises battlefield threats of retaliation – it largely paid for. Israel works closely too with the US in developing cyber­warfare, such as the Stuxnet worm that damaged Iran’s civilian nuclear programme.

But the clearest message from Israel’s new aid package is one delivered to the Palestinians: Washington sees no pressing strategic interest in ending the occupation. It stood up to Mr Netanyahu over the Iran deal but will not risk a damaging clash over Palestinian statehood.

Some believe that Mr Obama signed the aid package to win the credibility necessary to overcome his domestic Israel lobby and pull a rabbit from the hat: an initiative, unveiled shortly before he leaves office, that corners Mr Netanyahu into making peace.

Hopes have been raised by an expected meeting at the United Nations in New York on Wednesday. But their first talks in 10 months are planned only to demonstrate unity to confound critics of the aid deal.

If Mr Obama really wanted to pressure Mr Netanyahu, he would have used the aid agreement as leverage. Now Mr Netanyahu need not fear US financial retaliation, even as he intensifies effective annexation of the West Bank.

Mr Netanyahu has drawn the right lesson from the aid deal – he can act against the Palestinians with continuing US impunity.

- See more at: http://www.jonathan-cook.net/2016-09-19/palestinians-lose-in-us-military-aid-deal-with-israel/#sthash.fL4Eq28N.dpuf
Let’s Build Protective Walls Around All Non-Western Countries

By Andre Vltchek

November 22, 2016 "Information Clearing House" -  Only citizens can vote in the US Presidential elections, yet the impact is global.

The world is suddenly in disarray, in panic. A man notorious for his bigoted rhetoric, a man who believes in American exceptionalism, who wants to build the walls and to ‘restore order’, has been elected the 45th President of the mightiest nation on Earth. His country is doubtlessly in decline; it is indebted and some would even argue, hopelessly bankrupt, but it is still the Empire, the sole one to this day.

Below the surface, Mr. Trump may not be any viler than the Democratic candidate Mrs. Clinton and her clan has been for years. The establishment with which she has been inseparably intertwined for years and decades has been murdering millions all over the world, looting entire continents, and brutally guaranteeing that the Western world would always stay firmly in control of the entire Planet.

Throughout the years, Mrs. Clinton has been using ‘politically correct’ rhetoric, mainly (and often in a twisted way) in order to silence those who dared to criticize her deeds. Still, no matter what her words were stating, millions of people have been vanishing, worldwide, as a result of the policies introduced by her and by her former boss, President Barack Obama.

Donald Trump is brusque, aggressive, narcissistic and most likely, brutally honest. What he says is often pure trash, but whatever it is, he is not embarrassed to parade it in public. He has been giving many advanced warnings to both his supporters (including his voters) and to his adversaries. Objectively speaking, he is not any more or any less dangerous than Mrs. Clinton.

Both candidates come from the moneyed, pro-establishment milieu. Yet Mr. Trump evokes much greater fear all over the world than his rival, from Asia and Africa to Latin America.

It is at least partially because the mainstream Western propaganda rallied determinedly behind the well-tested and ‘reliable’ Mrs. Clinton (she has proven to be subservient to the Western imperialist regime and to market fundamentalist dogmas), and the Western mainstream media is exactly what is giving ‘marching orders’ to the local press, particularly in ‘client’ states in all parts of the world.

*

Nonetheless, Mr. Trump is definitely frightening on his own account, and just because he ran against (and defeated) the establishment candidate, does not make him less so.

Rowan Wolf, Managing Editor at The Greanville Post and publisher of Uncommon Thought, recently summarized what I felt about the recent elections, when she wrote to me (it was right after the results were announced):

“I am frightened over the election of Trump. Things were going to be bad here even without that because his position as the candidate for president legitimated the ugliest bigotry and violence. His election, legitimates and institutionalizes it at the highest levels possible. It is not as if this ugliness was not present in the US as it certainly was, but it was not celebrated. His racism extends outside the US and he has already stated numerous times that he would use nukes in the Middle East and just take the oil. He also hates the Earth. He plans to reverse or remove all environmental protections and regulations, and he doesn’t “believe” in global warming. His presidency could not happen at a worse time for our planet.”

*

I had the extremely bad fortune of spending ‘the day after’ in the den of the Western pro-establishment mainstream media based in Asia Pacific – the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Thailand (FCCT).

Or perhaps it was not only ‘bad fortune’ but also some type of perverse desire to witness the great and genuine desperation of those who have, for years and decades, been serving the Empire and its ‘liberal’ dogmas, twisting the truth and manufacturing hyper-reality.

Even before my arrival at the FCCT, the results of elections were finalized. I expected a great mess, and mess it was. I witnessed depressed glances, nervous laughter, small talk, and an excessive consumption of booze.

Speeches soon followed: made by the members of Western human rights organizations, of several NGO’s, and press corps.

Some Iranian exile began trashing Iran, somehow loosely connecting it to the US elections. Someone else had a go at the Philippine’s anti-imperialist President Duterte. And of course, China was hit on several occasions, and so was Russia, particularly that ‘evil’ Putin. One after another, speakers mimicked Ms. Clinton’s derogatory pronunciation of Russian President’s name.

No one mentioned Thailand or Indonesia even once.

It was all grotesque and endlessly sad.

Then the chest beating and insulting the voters slowly began… a slow masochistic public orgy.

In the end, several well-behaved members of the public began queuing in front of the microphone, asking polite questions. Not sending the panelists to hell, not insulting them directly to their faces… Nothing like that! People were just asking non-confrontational questions, and then, patiently and politely waiting for replies. The ‘client’ states of the West were still very far from the rebellion.

*

Then my phone became extremely active, as I began receiving messages from all corners of the globe.

From Sudan: “I never thought Donald would win! The Sudanese are making fun of Trump saying that he looks like our President Al-Basheer.”

From Italy: “Better than Killary, but still disgusting”.

From Uganda: “Our government is acting as if it didn’t back Hillary before the elections.”

From Argentina: “Now in the US they will have to eat their own crap… as they made others eat it for decades.”

From Indonesia: “Trump said that he would increase tariffs on imported products. In that case he’ll have to pay more for his suits, as he apparently wears some that are made in Indonesia”.

*

“Where were you on the 9-11?” Or now: “Where were you on 11-8?”

Some people compare these two events.

On both occasions (or before), no one bothered to listen, to face reality, and as a result, some terrible events took place.

On 11-8 I was in Bangkok.

On 9-11 in Hanoi, Vietnam, sipping coffee, and looking out of my window. The apartment was on a higher floor of the “Hanoi Tower”. The building was literally growing out from the old French prison, where Vietnamese patriots used to be tortured, raped and executed by the French colonialists. If I were to walk all the way towards the very glass panel, I would be able to see, far below, two shiny guillotines, preserved for people to remember the ‘great enlightened rule of the West over Asia’.

Suddenly on the horizon, the sky lit up in a tremendous explosion of colors. The villages surrounding Hanoi were shooting firecrackers and makeshift rockets up to the sky. It was a great fireworks display, something I had never seen before.

I turned my television set on. On the BBC coverage, two airplanes were flying, in slow motion, towards the towers of the World Trade Center.

A few minutes later I received a phone call from my best friend in Santiago de Chile.

“You would not believe what is happening here,” he reported to me, breathless. “People, total strangers, are stopping here, in the middle of the street. They are crying, falling into each other’s arms, and whispering: “Justice takes time, but it always comes!”

They were referring to 9-11-1973, when the United States overthrew one of the oldest and greatest democracies on Earth. Chile was raped, its people murdered, its form of government and its economic model were shattered.

A few hours after the “event”, both the Vietnamese and Chilean governments expressed their shock and support for the American people. In Vietnam, the celebrations were not reported. But they took place. Everyone knew it.

The great anger against the Empire could be felt, and is still felt, not only in those two great nations, but also all over the world.

People are outraged. Those in the United States are… and also those in the rest of the world are… although they are outraged for totally different reasons… but outraged they all are nevertheless!

“Democracy” is the rule of people. It does not mean the ‘Western multi-party system’. It only means the ‘rule of the people’, in Greek. It can be based on the ancient ‘heavenly mandate’ on which the Chinese system is based even now. It can be the modern Latin American form of participatory democracy… as long as people are ruling.

However, they are not ruling. Not in the West, nor in most of the countries of the rest of the world, where the governments are forced upon them by Western imperialism to defend their states and to often adopt very tough measures to do so.

People in the United States had spoken, expressing their frustration and anger.

People in the rest of the world were not asked who should be leading the world.

The next, the most logical step for the world should now be, immediately to reject the leadership of both the United States and Europe.

Brexit and 11-8 should be followed by the WORLD-EXIT. What does it mean? Simple: ‘Let the West eat its own shit, alone, finally’! And let the world be free from those governments and economic and colonialist concepts, which no one here (in Asia, Africa, Latin America or the Middle East) really elected and wants!

Once we are at exiting, rejecting and defending, let’s also build huge protective walls around all non-Western countries. To defend them from the Crusaders and hordes that have been looting and plundering the entire Planet for centuries.

The citizens of the United States have spoken. Oh yes! So let the rest of the world do the same!

Let them vote on WORLD EXIT! It is clear what the result will be!

Andre Vltchek is a philosopher, novelist, filmmaker and investigative journalist. He has covered wars and conflicts in dozens of countries. Three of his latest books are revolutionary novel “Aurora” and two bestselling works of political non-fiction: “Exposing Lies Of The Empire” and “Fighting Against Western Imperialism”. View his other books here. Andre is making films for teleSUR and Al-Mayadeen. After having lived in Latin America, Africa and Oceania, Vltchek presently resides in East Asia and the Middle East, and continues to work around the world. He can be reached through his website and his Twitter.

There is no such thing as western civilisation: The values of liberty, tolerance and rational inquiry are not the birthright of a single culture. In fact, the very notion of something called ‘western culture’ is a modern invention

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