بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم
Headline News 09/03/2019
Headlines
• Trump Wants Countries to Pay ‘Cost plus 50’ for the Privilege of American Imperialism
• As US Plans End of Syrian war, it has no further need for the ISIS ‘Islamic State’
• Massive Anti-Regime Demonstrations in Algeria Expose Reality of Democratic Rule
Details
Trump Wants Countries to Pay ‘Cost plus 50’ for the Privilege of American Imperialism
According to Bloomberg:
Under White House direction, the administration is drawing up demands that Germany, Japan and eventually any other country hosting U.S. troops pay the full price of American soldiers deployed on their soil -- plus 50 percent or more for the privilege of hosting them, according to a dozen administration officials and people briefed on the matter.
In some cases, nations hosting American forces could be asked to pay five to six times as much as they do now under the “Cost Plus 50” formula.
Trump has championed the idea for months. His insistence on it almost derailed recent talks with South Korea over the status of 28,000 U.S. troops in the country when he overruled his negotiators with a note to National Security Adviser John Bolton saying, “We want cost plus 50.”
America, the declining superpower, operates a vast network of military facilities worldwide, reported to number close to a thousand, while it continues to struggle with financing vast government expenditure at home. Capitalism economic solutions are no more helpful than the failed Communist economic solutions that led to the collapse of the Soviet Union; the West’s only advantage until now has been their pragmatism, deviating from dogmatic Capitalist thought wherever necessary. But pragmatic patchwork solutions are a problem in themselves, especially as they are mostly copied from socialist thinking thus bestowing the West with the worst elements of both Capitalist and Communist economic thinking.
In following Jacksonian populist ‘America first’ thinking, US President Donald Trump imagines America’s military to be providing a noble service to the world:
“Wealthy, wealthy countries that we’re protecting are all under notice,” Trump said in a speech at the Pentagon on Jan. 17. “We cannot be the fools for others.”
The actual reality is the opposite; like its Imperial European predecessors, America has dominated and plundered the world for the benefit of its own entrenched elite, simply spray painting its murky colonial control in the shiny colours of ‘voluntary’ treaties and agreements. As the above article goes on to note:
Critics argue that the demand also misreads the benefits that overseas troop deployments bring to the U.S. “Even raising this question feeds a misinformed narrative that these facilities are there for the benefits of those countries,” said Douglas Lute, a former U.S. ambassador to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. “The truth is they’re there and we maintain them because they’re in our interest."
As US Plans End of Syrian War, it has no further need for the ISIS ‘Islamic State’
According to Reuters:
U.S-backed fighters will resume their assault on Islamic State’s last, small patch of ground in eastern Syria if no more civilians come out by Saturday afternoon, one of their spokesmen said on Friday.
The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) have slowed their offensive on the jihadist enclave at Baghouz near the Iraqi border to allow many thousands of people to pour out in an exodus that has lasted weeks.
A month ago the SDF launched what it called a “final battle” to take the cluster of houses and farmland, and people leaving the enclave have described harrowing conditions of peril and hardship.
For those who have been sincerely working for decades for the re-establishment of the Islamic Khilafah (Caliphate) State on the method of the Prophet (saw), it was quite evident from the very first day of Baghdadi’s declaration that his was essentially an American-controlled militia masquerading as the Islamic State.
It was after the Syrian people’s full rejection of the openly Western-aligned ‘Free Syrian Army’ that America realised it needed to find more discreet proxies for its involvement in Syria. Accordingly, the US began manoeuvring its regional clients towards backing local forces not in order to overthrown the regime but to divide and destroy the noble uprising against the regime. Thus was borne ISIS, whose actual mission was to fight revolutionary groups in both Iraq and Syria, and to attempt to confuse sincere Muslims with its talk of Islam. A further advantage was its portrayal in the West to justify continued American involvement in Syria and Iraq.
America could have disposed of ISIS long ago if it wished but it is only doing so now as it no longer needs an excuse for continued military engagement as it thinks the Syrian revolution has been successfully quashed. But America is mistaken and, with Allah’s permission, the revolution shall rise again, this time through loyal, sincere, politically aware leadership.
Massive Anti-Regime Demonstrations in Algeria Expose Reality of Democratic Rule
According to the CNBC:
Cities across Africa’s largest country have been flooded for the past two weeks with protesters opposing their ageing President Abdelaziz Bouteflika’s fifth re-election bid after 20 years in power. The demonstrations, which on March 1 by some estimates numbered more than a million, have sent shockwaves through the oil and gas-rich country — OPEC’s ninth largest crude producer...
The 82-year-old Bouteflika, who took power in 1999 and ended Algeria’s bloody decade-long civil war, has rarely been seen in public since suffering a stroke in 2013. He is currently in a hospital in Switzerland undergoing medical treatment. He was not physically present to submit his own candidacy or address protesters.
Earlier this week, through a representative, the president offered to hold new elections after a year and a referendum on the constitution if re-elected during the country’s next contest on April 18. But that failed to satisfy activists, who have called for new and bigger protests on Friday. They say they hope to bring 20 million people out to the streets — half of Algeria’s population.
The so-called democratic system implemented in Muslim countries is in reality a façade for continued colonial control. Algeria, a former French colony, is in fact still ruled by France, through the Algerian political and military elite. Bouteflika is not only the tired face of this entrenched elite but of continued French colonial control.
Democracy is an illusion not only in Muslim countries but in the West itself where it entered general political discourse only in the last century or so. Western governmental systems are in reality still based on the idea of ‘mixed government’ whose actual purpose was to serve Western elite interests. The democratic fantasy of millions of citizens participating in their own rule is an illusion not only in countries like Algeria but in the West also. Democracy is only able to mask tyranny; the only way to fully eliminate it is to adopt a system emanating from a transcendent spiritual basis, one that can be truly independent of human manipulation. With Allah’s permission, the Muslims of Algeria and of other Muslim lands shall yet overthrow the legacy structures of colonial rule and re-establish their Islamic Khilafah (Caliphate) State on the method of the Prophet (saw) implementing the truth and carrying its light to the entire world.