US crimes

ANDRE VLTCHEK—hat is the ‘Monroe Doctrine’? In brief, it is a document which defines the entire Western Hemisphere as a ‘backyard’ of the United States. It ‘philosophically’ justifies Washington’s neo-colonialism, and the most barbaric coups it has been triggering, as well as covered and open interventions in the Caribbean, and in Central and South America.And now, National Security Advisor John Bolton, is using this term in connection with Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua, outraging those who are opposing the US foreign policy in the region. What he means is clear, although it is never pronounced as bluntly as that: Countries in the Western Hemisphere should never be allowed to go socialist, and they should be prevented from disobeying Western dictates.

ADAM SCHATZ—I used to call myself a non-Zionist, rather than an anti-Zionist: the latter term seemed to traduce the origins of Zionism, which arose as a response to the existential threat to Jewish life in Europe. ‘Anti-Zionism’ overlooked the richness of the debates within early Zionism. The ‘cultural Zionist’ Ahad Ha’am, for example, supported the creation of a Jewish homeland in Palestine, but not a Jewish state, and castigated ‘territorial’ Zionists for imagining that ‘Palestine is a land almost entirely deserted, an uncultivated desert,’ and that ‘the Arabs are desert savages, a people like donkeys, incapable of seeing and understanding what is happening around them. This is a great mistake.’ One of the founders of bi-nationalism – what’s now envisaged as a single state, accommodating both people’s national aspirations – Ha’am considered himself a Zionist. So did the journalist and activist Uri Avnery, one of the fiercest critics of Israel’s wars and occupation, who died last year, aged 94. But these ‘Zionists’ do not represent actually existing Zionism.

CAITLIN JOHNSTONE—Not even the US government alleges that WikiLeaks knowingly coordinated with the Kremlin in the 2016 publication of Democratic Party emails; the Robert Mueller Special Counsel alleged only that Guccifer 2.0 was the source of those emails and that Guccifer 2.0 was a persona covertly operated by Russian conspirators. The narrative that Assange worked for or knowingly conspired with the Russian government is a hallucination of the demented Russia hysteria which has infected all corners of mainstream political discourse. There is no evidence for it whatsoever, and anyone making this claim should be corrected and dismissed.

ALEXANDER RUBINSTEIN—Bernie Sanders (I-VT) is now leading the pack of Democratic contenders for the 2020 presidential nomination. In the previous election cycle, Sanders served as an anti-establishment underdog, bucking Democratic orthodoxy with a strong progressive economic message. But this time the field is more crowded with like-minded candidates –“progressives” like Elizabeth Warren, Cory Booker, and Kamala Harris. It follows then that in order to distinguish himself, Sanders needs visionary solutions to problems outside of the economic realm. In the foreign policy arena, however, he is looking for inspiration on Israel-Palestine from tried-and-failed Democratic presidents of the past — namely, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton — all while echoing Trump and Bush Jr. administration talking points.

ED CURTIN—Assange has suffered mightily for American sins. The Anglo-American torturers know how to squeeze their victims to make old men out of the young. Abu Ghraib was no aberration. The overt is often covert; just a thin skin separates the sadists’ varied methods, but their message is obvious. No one who saw Assange dragged to prison could fail to see what the war-mongers, who hate freedom of the press when it exposes their criminal activities, can do to a man. Nor, however, could one fail to see the spirit of defiance that animates Assange, a man of courageous conscience cowards can’t begin to comprehend.