G77 + China: The largest intergovernmental coalition within the United Nations meets at turning point

G77 + China: The largest intergovernmental coalition within the United Nations meets at turning point

    Sunday, January 21, 2024   No comments

 

The intergovernmental organization known as the G77 + China holds its summit this month in Africa. The summit is held during challenging time. UN secretary general was present to highlight some of these challenges including the war in Gaza and threat of spillover effect that could widen the conflict or increase its intensity.

The opening of the summit called the “South Summit” in Kampala, Uganda, was overshadowed by what Liu Kuo-chung called the continued influence of “the old international economic and political system, in undermining international peace and development,” amid a consensus among the participants on the importance of changing the global financial and economic system that emerged after World War II.

The summit is being held in Africa, which is witnessing increasing competition between the major powers to enter it, each according to its priorities. For China, the continent constitutes a cornerstone of its “Belt and Road” initiative, and the summit aims to enhance cooperation in the fields of economics and development among member states, develop and transfer technology, and bridge the gap. Science between North and South countries.

The Group of 77 (G77) is an international governmental alliance, the largest of its kind within the United Nations system. It was established in 1964 with the aim of defending the interests of developing countries, promoting the economy, and coordinating common issues affecting the countries of the South.

The group was established on June 15, 1964, at the end of the first session of the United Nations Trade and Development Program (UNCTAD) in Geneva, where the joint statement was announced and signed by 77 developing countries from around the world.

Between 10 and 25 October 1967, the group's first ministerial meeting was held in Algiers, during which the "Algiers Charter" was approved, which included the founding structure of the group.

Although the group has expanded and its members have increased to 134 countries, it still maintains its name due to the significance and symbolism of the event, and the strength and diversity of attendance it expresses at the founding conference.

The group includes two-thirds of the member states of the United Nations, representing 80% of the planet's population, and approximately 43% of the world's economy.

The group includes 134 countries from various developing countries, and the member countries are divided by continents; she:

Asia:

Afghanistan, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, South Korea, India, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Laos, Lebanon, Malaysia, Maldives, Mongolia, Myanmar, Nepal, Oman, Pakistan, Philippines, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Somalia, Sri Lanka, Palestine, Syria, Tajikistan, Thailand, East Timor, Turkmenistan, UAE, Vietnam, Yemen and Azerbaijan.

Africa:

Algeria, Angola, Benin, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cape Verde Islands, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Comoros, Congo, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ivory Coast, Djibouti, Egypt, Eritrea, Eswatini, Ethiopia, Gabon, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea Bissau, Kenya, Lesotho, Liberia, Libya, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Mauritania, Mauritius, Morocco, Mozambique, Namibia, Niger, Nigeria, etc. Kenya and Equatorial Guinea Rwanda, Sao Tome, Senegal, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Sudan, South Sudan, Togo, Tunisia, Uganda, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

North America:

Bahamas, Barbados, Antigua and Barbuda, Belize, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominica, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Grenada, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Jamaica, Nicaragua, Panama, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Lucia, St. Vincent, and Trinidad and Tobago.

South America:

Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Paraguay, Peru, Suriname, Uruguay and Venezuela.

Continent of Oceania:

Fiji, Kiribati, Tonga and Vanuatu.

Media Review: Underscoring the risks associated with attacking Yemen, European countries, including France, refused to support it

Media Review: Underscoring the risks associated with attacking Yemen, European countries, including France, refused to support it

    Friday, January 12, 2024   No comments

 Attack on Yemen might be the riskiest action taken by the US administration, and that risk is obvious. France and some other European powers refused to take part in it or even sign on the statement issued after the strike on Yemen that were carried out by the US and UK, and supported by a handful of other nation-states like Bahrain. In Yemen, on the other hand, Houthis government may have gained more support not only from the people living in the territories under its control, but even from territories still under the control of Saudi-backed government.

Some background for this emerging military confrontation between the US and the Sanaa government in Yemen: Houthis-run goverment in Yemen imposed a blockade on commercial ships that either belong to Israel or trading with Israel until the blockade imposed by Israel on Gaza and its war in Gaza are stopped. Although Houthis stated that no other ships will be denied transit, the US insisted that the actions taken by Yemen are threat to global commerce. It acted on this jsutification. After the strike, the Government of Sanaa said that it will retaliate and that it will continue to enforce the blockade until Gazans are allowed food and safety.

Now the aftermath of the attacks and the reaction of worl to it.

The British newspaper "The Telegraph" indicates that Paris refused to work jointly with its Western allies, and did not support the American and British air strikes against Yemen.

An unidentified French official told the British newspaper The Telegraph that Paris “fears that, by joining the US-led strikes, it will lose any influence it has in the talks to defuse tensions between Hezbollah and Israel.” France has focused much of its diplomacy in recent weeks on avoiding escalation in Lebanon.

According to The Telegraph newspaper, France did not sign a statement of support for the US and British air strikes against Yemen, after saying that it “will not participate in air strikes to protect maritime navigation in the Red Sea.”

 

On the other hand, Germany, Denmark, the Netherlands, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, South Korea and Bahrain signed a joint statement supporting the US-British strikes and warning against taking further measures.

 

The Dutch also provided logistical assistance during the strikes, but other major European powers, including France, Spain and Italy, did not provide military or political support.

 

On the other hand, France, along with Italy and Spain, refused to participate in the strikes, and avoided signing a statement supporting them.

 

According to The Telegraph newspaper, Emmanuel Macron's government refrained from joint action with its Western allies against Yemen, in contrast to what happened with it in recent years, in Libya and Syria, when its army participated in repelling ISIS attacks, according to its claim.

 

In turn, the joint commander of the French forces in the Red Sea region, Admiral Emmanuel Sallars, said yesterday, Thursday, that “Paris’ current mandate does not include striking Ansar Allah directly.”

 

The American "Bloomberg" agency reported, in a report, that US President Joe Biden is facing "his biggest test yet regarding his ability to avoid a broader war in the Middle East," in the wake of the American-British aggression against Yemen.

The British Sky News network reported on Friday that the American and British strikes are pushing more Yemenis to support Ansar Allah in Yemen.

According to the British Sky News correspondent, who spoke to people inside Yemen, and they told her how terrified they felt when the British and American missiles fell yesterday, the Yemenis view the United Kingdom and the United States as “igniting the war by supporting the Saudi-led coalition.” .

She pointed out that, after the recent British and American strikes, the Yemenis are increasing their support for Ansar Allah, and “Washington and London do not favor this matter at all.”

Egypt denies Israel's allegations of preventing aid from entering Gaza

Egypt denies Israel's allegations of preventing aid from entering Gaza

    Friday, January 12, 2024   No comments

As reported in international media outlets, Dia Rashwan, head of the Egyptian Information Service, categorically denied the allegations and lies of the Israeli defense team before the International Court of Justice, that Egypt is responsible for preventing the entry of humanitarian and relief aid into the Gaza Strip from the Egyptian side of the Rafah crossing.

Rashwan explained in a statement today, Friday, that the inconsistency and lies of the Israeli allegations are evident in the following points:

All Israeli officials, especially the Prime Minister, the Minister of Defense, and the Minister of Energy, have confirmed dozens of times in public statements since the start of the aggression on Gaza that they will not allow aid to enter the Gaza Strip, especially fuel, because this is part of the war that their state is waging against the Strip.

  After all these statements, which did not consider this prevention and siege to be war crimes and genocide under international law, and when the occupying state found itself before the International Court of Justice accused with documented evidence of these crimes, it resorted to throwing accusations against Egypt in an attempt to escape its likely condemnation by the court. .

He said that it is known that Egypt's sovereignty extends only to the Egyptian side of the Rafah crossing, while the other side of it in Gaza is subject to the actual occupation authority, which was actually demonstrated in the mechanism for the entry of aid from the Egyptian side to the Kerem Shalom crossing, which connects the Gaza Strip to Israeli territory, where She is inspected by the Israeli army, before being allowed to enter the Gaza Strip.

He said that Egypt has announced dozens of times in official statements, starting with the President of the Republic, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and all concerned parties, that the Rafah crossing from the Egyptian side is open without interruption, calling on the Israeli side not to prevent the flow of humanitarian aid to the Strip and to stop deliberately obstructing or delaying the entry of aid under the pretext of inspecting it.

He said that many of the world's senior officials, led by the Secretary-General of the United Nations, had visited the Rafah crossing from the Egyptian side, and none of them were able to cross it into the Gaza Strip, due to the Israeli army preventing them from doing so, or fearing for their lives due to the ongoing Israeli bombing of the Strip.

He said that the negotiations that took place over the humanitarian truces, which lasted for a week in the Gaza Strip, in which Egypt, Qatar, and the United States were parties, witnessed extreme intransigence on the part of the Israeli side in determining the amount of aid that the occupation forces would allow to enter the Strip, given that they control it militarily, which resulted in The end of the entry of quantities announced at the time.

Rashwan said that in light of the continued Israeli intention to obstruct the entry of aid at the Kerem Shalom crossing, Egypt has resorted to assigning Egyptian trucks with Egyptian drivers to enter, after inspection, directly into the territory of the Gaza Strip to distribute aid to its residents, instead of transferring it to Palestinian trucks to do this.

He said that what confirms the Israeli occupation army’s control over the entry of aid into the Gaza Strip and its deliberate obstruction of it is what US President Joe Biden asked it to open the Kerem Shalom crossing to facilitate its entry, which was announced by his National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan on December 13, as good news.

Rashwan concluded his statement by saying: “If the Israeli authorities really want food, medical supplies, and fuel to enter the Gaza Strip, they have six (6) crossings from their lands with the Gaza Strip, and they must open them immediately for trade and not for the entry of aid, especially since this trade with the Gaza Strip has reached Gaza in 2022, more than $4.7 billion for the benefit of the Israeli commercial and industrial sector.”

The Washington Institute: Hezbollah's popularity and support for Hamas have risen in Lebanon

The Washington Institute: Hezbollah's popularity and support for Hamas have risen in Lebanon

    Wednesday, January 10, 2024   No comments

The American "Washington Institute" conducted an opinion poll in Lebanon, and found that there was an increase in Hezbollah's popularity compared to the last poll conducted in November 2020, and that support for Hamas was more widespread in Lebanese society.

The Institute conducted this survey in the aftermath of the “Al-Aqsa Flood” saga and the escalation between the Israeli forces and Hezbollah, during the period extending from November 14 to December 6.

The Washington Institute poll showed that 79% of the Lebanese express a positive opinion of Hamas, while perceptions of a military solution to the conflict with the occupation, rather than a “political solution,” are much more widespread in Lebanon than in other Arab countries.

As for the position on the United States of America, the poll found that most Lebanese, specifically 71%, do not agree with the idea that Washington “is still in the best position to help end the war in Gaza.”

The institute also noted that there is “a noticeable shift in Lebanese society, away from the United States and towards other powers,” as the percentage of those who agree that their country “cannot rely on the United States these days, and therefore must look more to Russia or China.” As partners, it rose by 17 points.

Media Review: How did major American newspapers cover the Gaza war?

Media Review: How did major American newspapers cover the Gaza war?

    Tuesday, January 09, 2024   No comments

 A quantitative analysis conducted by the American website "The Intercept" concluded that the coverage of major newspapers in America in the first six weeks of the attack on Gaza showed a strong bias in favor of Israel.

The website said that coverage of the Israeli war on Gaza by the New York Times, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times was consistently biased against the Palestinians.

The website explained in its report that the print media, which plays an influential role in shaping American public opinion on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, did not pay much attention to the unprecedented impact of the Israeli blockade and bombing campaign on both children and journalists in the Gaza Strip.

Disproportionate coverage

He said that major American newspapers disproportionately highlighted Israeli deaths in the conflict, used emotional language to describe the killing of Israelis, did not do so with Palestinian deaths, and provided unbalanced coverage of anti-Semitic actions in the United States, while largely ignoring anti-Muslim racism in the wake of the attack. October 7th in Israel.

Pro-Palestinian activists accused major newspapers of bias with Israel, with the New York Times witnessing protests in front of its Manhattan headquarters over its coverage of the Gaza war, an accusation supported by The Intercept's analysis.

The Intercept's open source analysis focuses on the first six weeks of the conflict, during which 14,800 Palestinians, including more than 6,000 children, were killed by Israel's bombing of Gaza.

The Intercept collected more than a thousand articles from the New York Times, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times about Israel's war on Gaza, and recorded the uses of some key terms and the context in which they were used.

Serious defect

She said that the statistics reveal a serious flaw in the way Israeli and pro-Israel figures are covered versus Palestinian and pro-Palestinian voices, with uses that favor Israeli narratives over Palestinian narratives.

She commented that this anti-Palestinian bias in the print media combined with a similar survey of US television news conducted by the analysis writers last month, found a wider disparity.

The risks of this routine devaluation of Palestinian lives cannot be small. With the death toll rising in Gaza, entire cities flattened and uninhabitable for years, and entire families wiped out, the US government wields enormous influence as Israel's main sponsor and arms supplier. The media's exposure to the conflict means that there are fewer political downsides to American support for Israel.

A bleak picture for the Palestinian side

Coverage from the first six weeks of the war paints a bleak picture of the Palestinian side, according to the analysis, one that makes humanizing the Palestinians, and thus eliciting US sympathy for the Palestinians, more difficult.

The site explained that it searched for all articles containing related words (such as “Palestinian,” “Gaza,” “Israeli,” etc.) in the three aforementioned newspapers. He analyzed every sentence in every article and counted the number of specific terms.

He said that the coverage survey he conducted contained 4 main results:

Disproportionate coverage of deaths

In all three newspapers, the phrase “Israeli” or “Israel” appears more often than “Palestinian” or variations thereof, even as Palestinian deaths exceed those of Israelis. For all deaths, Palestinians are mentioned once, and for every Israeli death, Israelis are mentioned 8 times, or an average of 16 times more for each Palestinian death.

"Slaughter" the Israelis, not the Palestinians

The Intercept reported that highly emotional terms for killing civilians such as “massacre,” “massacre,” and “horrific” were almost exclusively reserved for Israelis killed by Palestinians, and not the other way around.

He added that editors and reporters used the term "massacre" to describe the killing of Israelis versus Palestinians 60 to 1, and used the word "massacre" to describe the killing of Israelis versus Palestinians 125 to 2. The word "horrific" was used to describe the killing of Israelis versus Palestinians 36 to 4.

The Washington Post used the word “massacres” several times in its reporting to describe what happened in the October 7 attack. “President Biden faces mounting pressure from lawmakers in both parties to punish Iran after the Hamas massacre.”

In a Washington Post story published on November 13 about how the Israeli siege and bombing had claimed the lives of 1 in 200 Palestinians, the word “massacre” or “massacre” was not used once. Palestinians were simply “killed” or “died,” often in the passive voice.

For children and journalists

The website also noted that only two headlines out of more than 1,100 news articles in the study mentioned the word “children” related to the children of Gaza. In a notable exception, The New York Times ran front-page stories in late November about the historic pace of killing of Palestinian women and children, even though the headline did not mention children or women.

He added that although Israel's war on Gaza is perhaps the bloodiest for children, most of whom are Palestinian, in modern history, there is no mention of the word "children" and related terms in the titles of the articles included in the study.

Gaza and Ukraine

While the war on Gaza was one of the bloodiest wars in modern history for journalists, most of them Palestinian, the word “journalists” and its repetitions such as “reporters” and “photographers” appear in only 9 headlines out of more than 1,100 articles studied. Approximately 48 Palestinian journalists were killed due to Israeli bombing at the time of the truce, and today, the death toll of Palestinian journalists has exceeded 100. However, only 4 of 9 articles containing the words journalist and correspondent were about Arab correspondents.

The Intercept commented that the lack of coverage of the unprecedented killings of children and journalists, groups that usually elicit sympathy from Western media, is conspicuous. By comparison, more Palestinian children died in the first week of the Gaza bombing than in the entire first year of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, yet the New York Times, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times all published sympathetic stories highlighting the Ukraine war.

The website commented that the asymmetry in how children are covered is both qualitative and quantitative. On October 13, the Los Angeles Times published an Associated Press report saying: “The Gaza Ministry of Health said on Friday that 1,799 people had been killed in the territory, including more than 580 under the age of 18 and 351 women. Last Saturday's Hamas attack led to the deaths of more than 1,300 people in Israel, including women, children, and young music festival-goers. Note that Israeli youth are referred to as children while Palestinian youth are described as under 18 years of age.

During discussions about prisoner exchanges, this repeated refusal to refer to Palestinians as children was most evident, with the New York Times in one instance referring to “Israeli women and children” being exchanged for “Palestinian women and minors.”

A Washington Post report published on November 21 announcing the truce agreement removed the phrase “Palestinian women and children” entirely: “President Joe Biden said in a statement Tuesday night that the deal to release 50 women and children held hostage by Hamas in Gaza, in exchange for 150 A Palestinian prisoner held by Israel. The brief did not mention Palestinian women and children at all.

Coverage of hate in the United States

Likewise, when it comes to how the conflict in Gaza contributes to hatred in the United States, major newspapers pay more attention to anti-Semitic attacks than to those directed against Muslims, The Intercept continued. Overall, there has been a disproportionate focus on racism toward Jewish people, versus racism targeting Muslims, Arabs, or those perceived as such.

During the period of the Intercept study, the three newspapers studied mentioned anti-Semitism more than Islamophobia (549 vs. 79), and this was before the “campus anti-Semitism” debate created by Republicans in Congress.

Despite many high-profile instances of both anti-Semitism and anti-Muslim racism during the survey period, 87% mentioned discrimination around anti-Semitism, compared to 13% mentioned Islamophobia, including related terms.

When major newspapers fail

In general, the killings of Palestinians in Gaza do not receive as much coverage in terms of scope or emotional weight as the killings of Israelis on October 7. These killings are often presented as arbitrarily high. Hamas' killings of Israeli civilians are consistently portrayed as part of the group's strategy, while killings of Palestinian civilians are covered almost as if they were a series of one-time mistakes committed thousands of times, despite many operations indicating Israel's intent to harm civilians and infrastructure. Civilian. The result is that the three major newspapers rarely gave the Palestinians humanitarian coverage.

Despite the biased coverage of Israel

Despite this disparity, opinion polls show a shift in sympathy toward the Palestinians and away from Israel among Democrats, with huge generational divisions driven in part by stark differences in news sources. In general, we find that young people get their information from TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, and Twitter, while older Americans get their information from print media and news.

The Intercept said biased coverage in major newspapers and mainstream television news affects public perceptions of the war and directs viewers toward a distorted view of the conflict, and this has led pro-Israel critics to blame pro-Palestinian views on social media “misinformation.”

He concluded by saying that, however, an analysis of both print media and television news shows that if any group of media consumers gets a biased image it is because of the news broadcast by the established media outlets in the United States.

Sheikh Hasina wins elections boycotted by the opposition in Bangladesh

Sheikh Hasina wins elections boycotted by the opposition in Bangladesh

    Sunday, January 07, 2024   No comments

Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina (76 years old) won a fifth term in power, after legislative elections that were boycotted by the main opposition party and described as “sham elections.”

A spokesman for the National Election Commission said on Sunday that the ruling Awami League party led by Sheikh Hasina “won more than 50% of the seats,” while the counting process is still ongoing.

Bangladesh, which occupies eighth place on the list of the world's most populous countries (about 170 million people), has witnessed strong economic growth under the leadership of the Awami League party led by Hasina, according to Agence France-Presse, which adds that the government has faced accusations of violating human rights several times and suppressing the opposition with violent methods. .

The Awami League party faces almost no opponents in the electoral districts in which it competes, but it has refrained from nominating candidates in a number of them, in an attempt to avoid parliament becoming a tool controlled by one party.

The Bangladesh Nationalist Party, whose ranks witnessed a widespread wave of arrests, called for a general strike at the end of the week, and urged residents not to participate in what it described as “sham” elections.

Sam Altman of OpenAI: “I am Jewish… I see a lot of people in our industry sticking up for me... while that support for Muslims is comparatively lower"

Sam Altman of OpenAI: “I am Jewish… I see a lot of people in our industry sticking up for me... while that support for Muslims is comparatively lower"

    Saturday, January 06, 2024   No comments

 OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said Thursday that he felt members of the Muslim and Arab communities in the technology industry were uncomfortable talking about their recent experiences, in an apparent reference to the impact of the ongoing war in Gaza, according to a Reuters report.

“Muslim and Arab colleagues (particularly Palestinians) in the tech community I spoke with feel uneasy about their recent experiences, and often do not speak out out of fear of retaliation and harming their career prospects,” Altman wrote on the social media network X.

The prominent president of the company that developed ChatGPT, which is supported by Microsoft, urged: Urge technology makers to treat members of those communities with empathy.

One X user asked Altman how he felt about the experiences of the Jewish community and he responded: “I'm Jewish, and I think anti-Semitism is a big and growing problem in the world, and I see a lot of people in our industry supporting me, which I greatly appreciate, and I see much less of that for Muslims.”

Contrary to Ankara’s political rhetoric in support of Palestinians, Turkish exports to Israel increased

Contrary to Ankara’s political rhetoric in support of Palestinians, Turkish exports to Israel increased

    Saturday, January 06, 2024   No comments

Economics is the overriding engine in global relations

Contrary to Ankara’s political rhetoric on the war in the Palestinian enclave of Gaza, Turkish exports to Israel rose by 34.8 percent last month, according to official figures, as the country’s trade relations with Tel Aviv come under scrutiny.

Israel began pounding Gaza after Hamas militants carried out an unprecedented attack in the country on October 7, killing 1,200 people and taking more than 200 hostage. Israeli airstrikes and ground attacks on Gaza have so far claimed the lives of more than 22,000 people, according to the local authorities, in addition to leading to vast destruction in the enclave.

British documents: Britain conducted a secret dialogue with Hezbollah and then sought to exploit Hariri to dismantle his military capabilities

British documents: Britain conducted a secret dialogue with Hezbollah and then sought to exploit Hariri to dismantle his military capabilities

    Wednesday, January 03, 2024   No comments

British documents reveal that British Prime Minister Tony Blair's government sought twenty years ago to use Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri to dissolve the military wing of Hezbollah, which was a pressing American-British goal.

According to the documents, which were recently declassified, Britain conducted a “useful” secret dialogue with Hezbollah, and insisted on continuing this dialogue despite its failure to convince the party to limit itself to political work.

In early July 2003, Blair invited Hariri to visit London after a month of talks between the British Prime Minister and French President Jacques Chirac.

Chirac described Hariri as "a visionary" and "an intelligent commentator on the peace process, especially with regard to the thinking of (Palestinian leader Yasser) Arafat," advising Blair to listen to him, as British Prime Minister's documents indicate.

Despite Hariri's invitation to visit 10 Downing Street (the seat of the British government), the British Foreign Office's assessment concluded that "there is no doubt that Hariri has any special insight into Arafat's motives."

However, the State Department's view was that Hariri "is worth listening to because he is deeply involved in regional politics. At the same time, because of his enormous wealth, he is a semi-independent observer of them." She added, "It is worth exploring what he has, especially with regard to Syrian intentions and (Syrian President) Bashar."

The Foreign Ministry also agreed with Blair's advisors on the need to benefit from Hariri "to determine what the United Kingdom wants from Lebanon." The offices of Blair and Foreign Secretary Jack Straw focused on the issue of ways to deal with Hezbollah... 

Source: BBC

Media Review: The National Interest calls on Biden to return soldiers from Syria and Iraq: stop making them targets

Media Review: The National Interest calls on Biden to return soldiers from Syria and Iraq: stop making them targets

    Wednesday, January 03, 2024   No comments

The American magazine "National Interest" criticized the foreign policy of US President Joe Biden, and his involvement of the United States in endless conflicts at the expense of the interests of the nation and the well-being of the army.

In an article entitled “Joe Biden Should Stop Treating American Soldiers as Targets” published, Tuesday, the magazine stated that attacks on American bases in Iraq and Syria with mortar shells, drones, and missiles have become routine (more than 100 since October 17). It caused dozens of injuries.

The magazine considered that the claim of National Security Council spokeswoman Adrian Watson that “the president does not place a higher priority than protecting American soldiers” is clear nonsense, because they are still being injured in Iraq and Syria without clear strategic goals, and that 2,500 Americans are stationed in Iraq, And 900 others are in Syria, with no clear purpose other than to be targets for enemies.

The magazine feared a larger strike that might hit a crowded building, with many American deaths expected, forcing the United States to fight another war in the Middle East, questioning the legal justification for occupying Syrian territory, mocking the slogan of “self-defense” on this front.

It considered that Washington's policy, supported by successive administrations and Congress, aimed at starving the Syrian people in a futile attempt to pressure Damascus, is morally abhorrent and practically foolish.

The magazine concluded by emphasizing the need for American military personnel in Iraq to also return to their homeland, instead of remaining a suitable target, considering that “the security of the United States is not served by illegal intervention and endless war, and that America is best served by avoiding involvement in conflicts that are of little importance to us.” "For the United States."