T. Belman. I have know the author for at least 6 years during which time we have often communicated. He has a very unusual way of studying what is happening and relies on what leaders do, not what they say. His work is always worth reading. He focuses on Jews and Israel to a large extent.
By Francisco Gil-White, HIRHOME
Is US policy-making run by a bipartisan elite cartel? Perhaps the president is a figurehead; the media show changes, but the long-term goals—chosen by the CFR—are always the same. If so, Trump’s Middle East policies will feel different, but they will yield familiar fruits.
Will Trump be different? Israeli patriots expect him to be. After all, he postures as an enemy of Iran and ISIS. But, what evidence will be diagnostic that Trump really is delivering on his Mideast promises?
Can Trump (assuming he wants to) transform US foreign policy in the Middle East? To get a sense for how difficult this might be, we must appreciate how traditional the pro-jihadi policy has been. (It wasn’t just Obama.)
3. Trump & Netanyahu: How to interpret their summit?
According to many in the mainstream media, the Trump-Netanyahu summit evidenced a ‘pro-Israeli’ turn. That would be a direct challenge to the HIR model. But we don’t see it. The result of the summit, we claim, was ‘pro Iran.’ To say otherwise, as we show, requires important historical omissions.
Is US policy-making run by a bipartisan elite cartel? Perhaps the president is a figurehead; the media show changes, but the long-term goals—chosen by the CFR—are always the same. If so, Trump’s Middle East policies will feel different, but they will yield familiar fruits.
5. Who makes foreign policy for Trump?
When we examine the backgrounds of those chosen to make foreign policy for Trump, we find they are Establishment figures with a history of supporting pro-jihadi policies.
6. Why does he attack Mexico? Trump’s political grammar
The lords of the system are doing psychological warfare. There is method in what they do. We explain that here: the attacks on México are part of a sophisticated grammatical game.
7. Why the pro-jihadi tradition?
Even granting that the US is run by a power-elite cartel, it may not be obvious why that cartel would want to support jihadism. We attempt to explain that here.
@ Sebastien Zorn:
As for Stuyvesant…… Maybe they are on a different track and trying to eradicate cigarettes instead….. Or maybe they don’t know just what they’re doing and have a budget to get rid of, so as to have an excuse to ask for a bigger one next year.
@ Sebastien Zorn:
It’s not exactly true that Las Casas inaugurated the slave trade. It was already going by that time. But he strongly supported it at the beginning-but repudiated it later. He had no idea that it would grow into what it did. His motive was purely to help the dwindling Indian population which could not stand up to hard labour,. .
I think (not sure( this is in his Memoirs. Certainly anyway corroborated by other information. For a Verbrente Katolika he wasn’t such a bad old skin, because in those times, they were all like demons to everyone except themselves.
I don’t know if his compassion, which was much in evidence, extended as far as the Jews…….????
When I went to CCNY in the early 90s, the biggest Social Club was named after Assata Shakur aka Joanne Chesimard. It’s banners were everywhere. I believe it is no longer there, but it was for many years. And Leonard Jeffries thugs patrolled the halls when he gave a class.
After the Vietnam War, the radical Left decided to infiltrate the education system at all levels. And now that they’ve climbed the pinnacles of power to the very peak, they’ve invited in the radical Islamists to fill the vacuum they have created. Getting rid of statues isn’t about social justice. It’s about creating a vacuum.
Jewish liberals don’t get it. A Jewish legal outfit that sues anti-semites has chimed in and is trying to get rid of the statue of Peter Stuyvesant in New York, who nobody would even know was an anti-semite if they hadn’t brought it up. But, what will replace it?
Lenox Avenue has been Malcolm X Blvd for a while.
Bloomberg put in Arabic charter schools who principal was fired because the students wore tee-shirts that said, Intifada NY.
And Angela Merkel grew up in E. Germany.
And I didn’t personally encounter any open anti-Semitism until the Iraq War under GW Bush, except from one Italian Leftist room-mate in the 80s who said, “you are a Jew, aren’t you?” when I didn’t lower her rent during the brief period when somebody moved out because I had already lowered it and was basically subsidizing her and another guy to some extent, but she didn’t care.
When I was at CCNY, I spoke with a guy from E. Germany. We had basically the same curriculum in high school, it turned out.
@ Edgar G.:
Though, seriously, when I bought a used copy on Amazon last year, I think, it was just 4 or 5 dollars. Now, the paperback goes for about $36 and the hard cover is over $50. There was one listed for over $2,000. Seriously. Suddenly, it’s in demand.
Red Star Over China was my main high school text book in Modern China in 10th or 11th grade. We had Modern China, Modern Latin America, and US history.
No European history. Or literature, except for one maverick, kind of conservative teacher who gave us a little Shakespeare along with our Marshall Macluhan. Most of my literature courses had titles like, “Women’s literature,” “the short story,” all American, of course.
We learned that the Cultural Revolution was the greatest democratic experiment in history, Latin American importation of African slaves was inaugurated by the priest Bernardo de las Casas because he felt sorry for the Indians who were dying off, The American Revolution was a land grab — George Washington was the richest man in the country, and his land in the Ohio Valley was given to the French after the French and Indian Wars — a land grab plus slavery. The course didn’t go past the ante-bellum period. Glossy, official looking textbooks. In the 70s. Not really a mystery that I became a Leftist. There were street vendors selling Mao outfits and Che tee-shirts everywhere. All the rage, don’t you know. Also pink Mao buttons.
@ Edgar G.:
Take a look at the Wikipedia article link I enclosed. Days of Our Years is one of his autobiographies in which he encloses expanded news reports from the beginning and middle of his career, which went from the 20s to the 60s that he couldn’t publish earlier.
The Forgotten Ally is a unique treasure. I drew attention to it in a post last year and now, dated 2016, perhaps coincidentally, there is an inexpensive amazon kindle e-book, you can read it on your computer.
The Forgotten Ally he refers to is Israel, which is to say Jewish Palestine or the Yishuv, as it came out in 1942. He was there and he wrote from there in the 20s, 30s, and 40s.
Chapter 4 on is the inspiring story, stories really, of how Jewish Palestine turned the tide of battle in favor of the British, who were panicking and almost resigned to losing to Rommel. They did so, militarily and economically as the bread-basked and industrial foundation of the British Army in the Middle East.
Earlier, he writes in detail about the attempts of Jews to purchase land and settle it in the face of British intransigence, eventually prevailing.
It is an amazing book.
There is another one by that title, about China, which you were probably thinking of, I see, by somebody else.
Just google Amazon Kindle app for (whatever you have, PC, Mac, Chromebook, Android, Mac)
and then google Amazon Kindle the forgotten ally pierre van paassen
or click here. It’s expensive though. $2.99 USD.
You can also read it directly in the Kindle Cloud Reader for PC or Mac or Chromebook. Android or Mac needs the app.
You can also buy it used.
Hey, that’s 3,387.76 South Korean Won.
Cheaper in N. Korean Won 2,691 N. Korean Won.
I guess that’s because it’s the worker’s paradise.
https://www.amazon.com/Forgotten-Ally-Pierre-Van-Paassen-ebook/dp/B01CYO1IUK
@ Edgar G.
I just remembered now that I also have a “Left Book Club” issue called “Red Star Over China”, all about the Long March and Mao, Chiang Kai Shek etc. My late brother used to get them sent every month or whenever they issued a new book. I have over 7000, so can’t remember the names of them all.
@ Sebastien Zorn:
I think I have it, I it’s about China…not certain because it’s many years now since I saw my books. I know I have one called “Days Of Our Years”, I think that’s what it is, very much a biography.
@ Edgar G.:
Me, too. A great friend of Israel from the beginning. He cowrote a book with Jabotinsky and a couple of others. Do you have “The Forgotten Ally”?
@ Sebastien Zorn:
I have 2-3 of Van Passen’s books both large and thick with many pages. I always thought he was a super writer and did not seem to be overtly political at all, but interesting, so that I read them all at least 2-3 times each. He was remarkably focussed, especially in the field of social history. He was very pro-Jew.
Sorry, 2042.
Trotsky’s younger contemporary, Pierre Van Paassen, who made no claim to scientific method, was a lot better at predicting the future. He even predicted Obama, though he was 12 years off. He said the US would elect a Black Socialist President in 2020. He said this in 1942.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_van_Paassen
@ Felix Quigley:
By the way, I tried to comment on a reply you made to Yamit46 in another post in which you said that he had personally tried to hide what Trotsky had to say about the Jews and Israel.
I wondered what you could possibly mean by that. Also, when I googled it, I came up with this from the Trotsky archive:
Leon Trotsky: On the Jewish Problem
https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1940/xx/jewish.htm
He is wrong about nearly everything. He admits he has zero knowledge of the Jewish community anywhere, including Birobidjan and Palestine. He thinks Yiddish is the the national language of the Jewish people for the foreseeable future and says his knowledge is limited because he never learned it. He thinks Zionism will lead only to the murder of a few hundred thousand Jews in Palestine. He’s not sure about Birobidjan. He think the Jewish petty bourgeoisie should be absorbed into the working class and the Jewish bourgeoisie does nothing but take for themselves. He thinks Jews can only be freed when the proletariat is freed everywhere. Read for yourself. The only thing he has right is that he predicts the Shoah, though he blames it on “world reaction.” Not Germany and its allies. And he does admit that, contrary to earlier beliefs, assimilation is not likely in the immediate future.
Read it for yourself. This is from the official Leon Trotsky archive.
“Leon Trotsky on the Jewish Question.”
https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1940/xx/jewish.htm
@ Felix Quigley:
I wrote a paper about that debate in a political science class on Marxism I took with the late Professor Marshall Berman at City College of New York in the 90s. He said, people from as far away as China came up to him eagerly and said, “Are you the author of “All that is Solid, Melts into Air?”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Berman
@ Felix Quigley:
I used to feel as you do. In fact, there was a period where, as
Marxist, I didn’t take a position between Stalin and Trotsky, I regarded them both as good Marxists.
People have been making dire warnings like that for as far back as anybody remembers, but have you ever noticed that if you define a nation as an unbroken system of government, the United States is the oldest country in the world? So funny, how often, Europeans have talked down to us as though we were promising youngsters, especially considering how often we have had to bail them out over the last century. I have faith in the power and resilience of our Constitution. Isn’t it amazing how few countries have opted to copy our system of government and instead have chosen the parliamentary model that has collapsed so often?
Many people think the autocracy of the Soviet State was due to the historical habit of empire. I disagree. It came from a phrase of Lenin’s that reflected the Bolshevik outlook: “Good leaders are not born by the hundred.” That was from his debate with Rosa Luxembourg over “democratic centralism.”
Our founders view was: “yes, they are, given a system that takes account of human nature and lets many people take turns leading with checks and balances.”
@ Sebastien Zorn:
“fire everybody and start anew”
I think you are trivialising the nature of the struggle. What I think is involved here is a real struggle for power between those who are gearing towards Fascism and those like Trump who are trying to establish the reality of their nation state which is America.
I think this is the main division in America. All right is on the side of Trump in this. Those who are running down the American state are preparing the ground for chaos.
This is the mistake of the left from Marx onwards. Before you have internationalism you have to have nationalism. It is a contradictory situation. Remember that nationalism CAN lead to Fascism but does not have to do this.
Trump is not a business operative. He leads America. You trivialise Trump grievously when you talk like that.
But despite it all capitalism is a bankrupt system. It is amazing how people like you keep on defending the system.
Trump will fail but not for the reasons given but because capitalism is not reformable.
In the meantime there are key aspects of the Trump agenda that needs to be defended and Gil White is not defending those aspects. That is very serious.
In a period of deep crisis where the capitalist system becomes paralysed, as a whole world system but also as a nation state, it is UNDENIABLE that it takes one or two roads. It can take the road of Bolshevik Revolution as in Russia in October 1917, or it can take the Fascist Road as in Germany in 1933.
You must remember that Francisco is of the left but is an opponent of the above concept that I have just outlined and which cannot be denied because it is truth, and I would like to see someone invalidate what I said.
American capitalism is a reflection of world capitalism today and it is in dire straits.
The election of Trump was an effort to break out of this situation. Trump gathered behind him all of the best forces. To a large extent it was the poor of the south who supported him and against the Establishment in both parties, and in the Media and Churches. The trade unions became the great organizers of illegal immigration.
This is the point that Francisco Gil White is not addressing.
He is treating the whole of the election of Trump as a giant scam. But the hatred for Trump by the Establishment is very real. And the support of many people for Trump is also very real.
And the choice remaions…socialism or fascism.
Trump as a leader will not resolve that. So in essence he is a reformer in a situation where reforms are not really on. But Trump does not turn to Fascism, it is the opposition which does so. The Antifa are clearly fascist in every single way.
If Trump is overthrown what would be the consequences? Firstly at a stroke the disenfranchisement of those who voted for him. That also is a step towards fascism.
Those who voted for Trump are now, in every way they can, defending Trump. The deep state, or the state within the state, or the Establishment, are aiming to either neuter Trump or even kill him.
This is the weakness of this article by Francisco. He does not take sides in this most serious struggle.To take sides he does not have to endorse all about Trump. But he cannot sit on the sidelines and must defend Trump and the movement he gave rise to.
No difference in foreign policy? Seriously? I’m still liking a lot of what I’m seeing. In today’s news:
Israel and US Threaten to Cut UN Funding if Settlement ‘Blacklist’ Published
https://www.algemeiner.com/2017/08/31/israel-and-us-threaten-to-cut-un-funding-if-settlement-blacklist-published/
Doesn’t mention the wall or illegal immigration and revolving door crime. Does he think this is all made up? This was part of Trump’s platform from the beginning. He seems to suggest that it came later.
Interesting to see what a conspiracy theory from a Mexican perspective includes and leaves out but it still seems as shaky and assumption-ridden as all of the other conspiracy theories out there.
I don’t believe Trump is a con artist. I do believe that he is a pragmatist who prioritizes and is willing to make trade-offs and compromises if he thinks it will further his main goals but will easily try a new paradigm, fire everybody and start anew if he hits seemingly insuperable roadblocks. It’s part of how he got elected.
He is somebody who talks tough and uncompromising while looking for legal grey areas and loopholes to utilize, which is how he operated as a businessman, as well. I believe he is as unpredictable as he promised he would be, and that is why he has a chance of accomplishing something.
Good question,
Where are the answers?