بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم
Headline News 24/03/2018
Headlines:
Trump Toughens his team to Reassert American Global Dominance
British MEP Leading Secret Negotiations for Three Years with North Korea
America continues to Pressure Iran
Details:
Trump Toughens his team to Reassert American Global Dominance
Faced with new strategic threats and challenges, America is intent on continuing its role as world hegemon and US President Donald Trump is being given a free hand by the American establishment to choose a harder and more hawkish team. According to the New York Times:
“President Trump named John R. Bolton, a hard-line former American ambassador to the United Nations, as his third national security adviser on Thursday, continuing a shake-up that creates one of the most hawkish national security teams of any White House in recent history.
Mr. Bolton will replace Lt. Gen. H. R. McMaster, the battle-tested Army officer who was tapped last year to stabilize a turbulent foreign policy operation but who never developed a comfortable relationship with the president.
The move, which was sudden but not unexpected, signals a more confrontational approach in American foreign policy at a time when Mr. Trump faces mounting challenges, including from Iran and North Korea.
The president replaced Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson last week with the C.I.A. director, Mike Pompeo, a former Army officer and Tea Party congressman who has spoken about regime change in Pyongyang and about ripping up the Iran nuclear deal.
Mr. Bolton, an outspoken advocate of military action who served in the George W. Bush administration, has called for action against Iran and North Korea. In an interview on Thursday on Fox News, soon after his appointment was announced in a presidential tweet, he declined to say whether Mr. Trump should go through with a planned meeting with North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un.”
American world dominance is built on creating conflicts throughout the world, hence the need for hard-line individuals at this time, as Russia is rebuilding itself and China is increasing in strength.
In fact, it is the Westphalian system that is at fault, according to which states whose strength is in continuous fluctuation are restricted to borders that are permanently defined. Consequently, it becomes natural for strong states to interfere in the affairs of weaker states, instead of concentrating on their own governance, or extending their governance to new territories.
Previous to Western secular liberalism and its artificial construct of the ‘nation state’, the world allowed strong states to extend their territory, thus bringing the benefit of capable governance to greater populations, and at the same time pushing weaker states to reduce territory in line with their capability to govern. For global peace and stability, it is necessary that humanity abandons meaningless political fictions and returns to ideas that truly accord with the fundamental realities of politics and governance.
British MEP Leading Secret Negotiations for Three Years with North Korea
It is becoming increasingly clear that it is Britain that is frustrating American efforts to exacerbate the Korean issue. America has been trying for decades to intensify conflict in Korea, on China’s border, while it is emerging that Britain has been trying to reduce this conflict. According to the Telegraph:
A European Parliament delegation said Wednesday it has been conducting secret talks with North Korea over the last three years to try to persuade Pyongyang to negotiate an end to its nuclear programme.
The group led by British MEP Nirj Deva has met senior North Korean officials, including ministers, 14 times and plans another meeting in Brussels in the near future.
News of the below-the-radar diplomacy effort comes after the surprise announcement that US President Donald Trump plans a summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, part of fast-paced developments following an Olympic detente.
Mr Deva said he and his colleagues on the European Parliament Delegation for Relations with the Korean Peninsula had been "relentlessly advocating the case for dialogue without preconditions" to end the increasingly tense nuclear standoff with the North.
"I did much of the advocacy in secrecy with my colleagues. It is only now that I am revealing our efforts to a wider audience in the light of the proposed talks," Mr Deva said.
It should be clear, however, that Britain’s purpose in so doing is not because it desires less conflict in the world but because it wants direct conflict between America and China, whereas America wishes to have peaceful direct relations with China but instead use proxies to create conflict with China.
The world enjoyed a thousand years of general peace and justice at the time that the Islamic Khilafah (Caliphate) State was the world’s superpower. Islam’s championing of learning, open trade and general international security enabled Europe and China to concentrate on domestic socioeconomic development and the achievement of wholesome lifestyles and harmonious societies that valued the ethical, the humanitarian and the spiritual as well as the material aspects of life. Western secular liberal Capitalism has been a disaster for the world but with Allah’s permission the time is near for the return of Islam in the form of the re-established Islamic Khilafah (Caliphate) State on the method of the Prophet (saw) that will implement Islam, reunify Muslim lands, and carry the light of Islam to the entire world.
America continues to Pressure Iran
America has found yet another way to build political pressure on the Iranian regime. According to Reuters:
The United States on Friday charged and sanctioned nine Iranians and an Iranian company for attempting to hack into hundreds of universities worldwide, dozens of firms and parts of the U.S. government, including its main energy regulator, on behalf of Tehran’s government.
The cyber attacks, beginning in at least 2013, pilfered more than 31 terabytes of academic data and intellectual property from 144 U.S. universities and 176 universities in 21 other countries, the U.S. Department of Justice said, describing the campaign as one of the largest state-sponsored hacks ever prosecuted.
The U.S. Treasury Department said it was placing sanctions on the nine people and the Mabna Institute, a company U.S. prosecutors characterized as designed to help Iranian research organizations steal information.
U.S. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein said the nine Iranians were considered fugitives who may face extradition in more than 100 countries if they travel outside Iran.
Authorities “will aggressively investigate and prosecute hostile actors who attempt to profit from America’s ideas by infiltrating our computer systems and stealing intellectual property,” Rosenstein told a news conference.
The case “will disrupt the defendants’ hacking operations and deter similar crimes,” he added.
The hackers were not accused of being directly employed by Iran’s government. They were instead charged with criminal conduct waged primarily through the Mabna Institute on behalf of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the elite military force assigned to defend Iran’s Shi’ite theocracy from internal and external threats.
In Tehran, Iran’s foreign ministry spokesman Bahram Qasemi denounced the move as “provocative, illegitimate, and without any justifiable reason and another sign of the hostility of the (U.S.) ruling circles toward the Iranian nation”, state news agency IRNA said.
These cyber activities have become normal between different states with the increasing use of the internet and its associated vulnerabilities, just as other forms of espionage have been normal previously. However, America’s action at this time is intended to send yet another signal to the Iranian leadership to pressure them to reduce their involvement in Syria and Iraq. Indeed it was America that brought Iran to those countries to save critical American interests there. But now that the job is done, America wants Iran’s exit.
The present rulers of Muslim countries lack in sincerity to the Muslim people and their noble Deen, and it is this that reduces their strength and vision in combating Western aggression. The affairs of Muslims will not be set in order until Muslims give their loyalty to sincere, indigenous, ideological leadership that will re-establish Islam and carry its message to the entire world.