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  • Open letter to the EU Leadership Demanding an Immediate Ceasefire in Gaza

    15th March 2024.

    Dear President von der Leyen,
    Dear President Michel,
    Dear High Representative Borrell,

    The Geneva International Peace Research Institute respectfully comes back to you on this question of a ceasefire in Gaza, on which we have yet to receive a satisfactory response.

    Since our previous email of 23rd February, GIPRI has launched an academic and media campaign of awareness-raising and public debate.  Our director Dr. Gabriel Galice and the board are appalled at the inaction by European leaders in the face of the on-going genocide and the multiple violations of international humanitarian law and human rights law by the government of Israel.  It is most urgent to enforce a permanent ceasefire in Gaza, followed by a lifting of the illegal blockade against the hapless population of Gaza, the full implementation of the order of the International Court of Justice of 26 January 2024, and the prompt and effective delivery of humanitarian assistance to the starving population.

    You received the proposal from Dr. Galice on the 27th of February last, calling for a multi-national force to break the illegal Israeli blockade on Gaza. We attach the document here again for your reference.

    The document was shared in good faith, as a rallying call to the international community to support the besieged population of Gaza, through the formation of unilateral state partnerships with international humanitarian organizations to break the illegal blockade. What it was not meant for was to be co-opted by the EU and the US government.

    The GIPRI proposal was published in the Belgian paper Le Soir on 29th February, and we have it on good authority that the next morning it was sitting on the desks of prime ministers in certain European capitals.

    It was also published in the Tribune de Geneve on 5th March.

    By some marvelous set of coincidences, the US government announced a week after the Le Soir article, after five months of relentless Israeli bombing, that it would build a pier in Gaza and send aid to Gaza via a maritime corridor out of Cyprus. It would do all of this while at the same time maintaining its provision of weapons and political cover for Israel to continue its murderous campaign against the civilians of Gaza unabated. The cognitive dissonance of such a situation is monstrous, as we see pictures of a tugboat pulling a barge with a couple of hundred tons of aid on it, bound for Gaza, while the images of the bloody aftermath of Israeli air strikes continue to be livestreamed. It is unethical and cynical to be complicit in a genocide and then to pretend to be a Good Samaritan with all the media hype associated with it.  Last weekend, the EU announced that it would be implementing a similar initiative, although the European governments continue giving aid and comfort to the government of Israel in the midst of its ethnic cleansing campaign, engaging in apology of genocide and crimes against humanity.

    There appears to be such an enormous moral vacuum and absence of ideas at the levels of Brussels and Washington, not to mention shocking apathy, that it is quite clear that the GIPRI proposal has been co-opted by bureaucrats in both locations to make it seem as though they are doing something to help the people of Gaza, when in reality they do not care.

    Not only is the mechanism that the EU has adopted useless, in the absence of a port in Gaza or any means of inland delivery of aid planned for in advance, but the EU is also continuing to provide its tacit support for the Israeli blockade, the bombing and starvation of the population, as well as the continuation of the slow and torturous Israeli aid inspection process.

    By opening a maritime corridor via Cyprus, the EU is effectively surrendering any remaining moral authority it may have had to the Israelis, by presenting the scenario as though no other possible alternative exists, when in fact many alternatives do exist.

    Through adopting this approach, the EU continues to support the Israeli blockade by steadfastly refusing to call for a ceasefire, and by not calling for Israel to open the land borders to allow the hundreds of aid trucks already positioned to enter Gaza. This is the only effective means through which aid can be distributed to the population by the United Nations agencies, the International Committee of the Red Cross, and other international partners and organizations. These agencies have been calling for months for rapid and unhindered access to deliver aid, calls that continue to fall on deaf ears.

    This assault on Gaza was never about 7th October, or about Hamas, or about Israel’s notional right to defend itself. It is clear now that it is nothing less than a pre-planned genocide, a land-grab for the creation of a greater Israel, a more secure Apartheid ethno-state. The EU has supported it and you are all guilty of enabling this genocide to take place in plain sight. Words have lost their meaning at this point to express the horror of what we have witnessed for the past five months. Again, just last night, we witnessed another ‘Flour Massacre’, with over 60 people murdered by Israeli tanks and machine guns while waiting for food aid.

    This is a shocking disgrace and once again there has been no condemnation from the EU of these cold-blooded massacres we have witnessed in the past two weeks.

    As a group of European and American citizens, we have had enough, and we are holding you accountable for your actions in supporting Israel’s destruction of Gaza and its murder of the population. We are appalled that the EU has acted in this undemocratic way for the past five months, throwing its support behind Israel, while the citizens of the EU have been overwhelmingly demanding, for months now, an end to the senseless slaughter and destruction.

    We demand that the EU calls for an immediate and unconditional end to the Israeli bombing of Gaza right now, and we demand that the EU also calls for an opening of the borders, allowing rapid and unhindered delivery of food, shelter and medical supplies to the population.

    Anything less than this is unacceptable and in breach of international law, which you all claim to uphold, but which it is evident that you are in breach of.

    Short of this, we will be amplifying calls at the public level for your immediate resignations, as you no longer represent the population of the EU, with your continued support for a racist, murderous, apartheid regime.

    Professor Alfred de Zayas, former senior lawyer with OHCHR, former UN Independent Expert on International Order, and member of the GIPRI board is prepared to substantiate the violations by Israel of the Hague Convention of 1907, the Geneva Conventions of 1949 and the 1977 Additional Protocols, of the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, and of articles 6, 7, and 8 of the Statute of Rome.

    If there ever was a case for the application of the Responsibility to Protect doctrine (GA Resolution 60/1 paras 138-39), this is it.

     

    The post Open letter to the EU Leadership Demanding an Immediate Ceasefire in Gaza appeared first on CounterPunch.org.


    This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Geneva International Peace Research Institute.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Cop Cities, Borders, and Bombs

    Image by Ray Acheson.

    Last month, organizers and activists from around the United States gathered in Tucson, Arizona for a nationwide summit to Stop Cop City—or, more accurately, Cop Cities. As new research has revealed, there are at least 69 militarized police training facilities in the works across the country. Each was put in motion in or after 2020, clearly a direct response to the Black Lives Matter uprisings that dominated city streets for months to condemn racialised police violence and demand the defunding of police.

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  • Why Should We Give All Our Money to Landlords?

    Image by Jon Tyson.

    Who decided we should give all our money to landlords? Did you vote for that? I didn’t. You didn’t, either. And if you have thoughts of leaving renting behind to buy, the costs of mortgages are, not surprisingly, rising dramatically as well.

    As far as I know, no landlord has been recorded as holding a literal gun to the head of tenants to sign a lease. But then there is no need for them to do so, as “market forces” do the work for them. At bottom, the problem is that housing is a capitalist market commodity. As long as housing remains a commodity, housing costs will continue to become ever more unaffordable. To put this in other words: As long as housing is not a human right, but instead something that has to be competed for and owned by a small number of people, the holders of the good (housing) will take advantage and jack up prices as high as possible.

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  • It Can Happen to You

    The greatest tribute the Academy Awards made to Zone of Interest was to reenact its basic premise for nearly four hours, wrapping itself in a cocoon of distraction and self-infatuation, amid the horrors taking place outside, a swirl of superficiality only briefly interrupted by the unsettling sound of Jonathan Glazer’s trembling voice bringing an urgent message from the dead and dying to those who have retreated into a simulation of innocence.
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  • Inside the UAW’s Southern Strategy

    Persuading Southern autoworkers to join a union remains one of the U.S. labor movement’s most enduring challenges, despite persistent efforts by the United Auto Workers union to organize this workforce.

    To be sure, the UAW does have members employed by Ford and General Motors at facilities in Kentucky, Texas, Missouri and Mississippi.

    However, the UAW has tried and largely failed to organize workers at foreign-owned companies, including Volkswagen and Nissan in Southern states, where about 30% of all U.S. automotive jobs are located.

    But after the UAW pulled off its most successful strike in a generation against Detroit’s Big Three automakers, through which it won higher pay and better benefits for its members in 2023, the union is trying again to win over Southern autoworkers.

    The UAW has pledged to spend US$40 million through 2026 to expand its ranks to include more auto and electric battery workers, including many employed in the South, where the industry is quickly gaining ground.

    Based on my five decades of experience as a union organizer and labor historian, I anticipate that, recent momentum aside, the UAW will face stiff resistance from Toyota, Volkswagen, Mercedes-Benz and the other big foreign automakers that operate in the South. The pushback is also coming from Southern politicians, many of whom have expressed concern that UAW success would undermine the region’s carefully crafted approach to economic development.

    Lauding the ‘perfect three-legged stool’

    After the region’s formerly robust textile industry imploded in the 1980s and 1990s because of an influx of cheap imports, Southern business and political leaders revived the region’s manufacturing base by successfully recruiting foreign automakers.

    The strategy of those leaders reflects what the Business Council of Alabama has described as the “perfect three-legged stool for economic development.” It consists of “an eager and trainable workforce with a work ethic unparalleled anywhere in the nation,” accompanied by a “low-cost and business-friendly economic climate, and the lack of labor union activity and participation.”

    The prospect of a low-wage and reliable workforce has lured the likes of Nissan, BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Kia, Honda, Volkswagen and Hyundai to the South in recent decades.

    Although many of those companies negotiate constructively with unions on their home turf, the lack of union membership and the protections that go with it have proved a draw for them in the United States.

    As journalist Harold Meyerson has noted, these foreign automakers embraced the opportunity to “slum” in America and “do things they would never think of doing at home.”

    The absence of union representation is a major reason why.

    Less than 5% of workers in six Southern states are union members, and only Alabama and Mississippi approach union membership levels above 7%, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

    That’s below the national average, which slid to 10% in 2023.

    Blaming unions for bad job prospects

    One way automotive employers in the South have blocked unions is by portraying them as outdated institutions whose bloated contracts and rigid work rules destroy jobs by making domestic auto companies uncompetitive.

    Automotive leaders in the South argue the region has developed an alternative labor relations model that provides management with flexibility, offers wages and benefits superior to what local workers have earned previously and frees employees from any subordination to union directives.

    Southern automakers also draw on another powerful resource in resisting the UAW: public intervention by top elected officials.

    In 2014, when the UAW attempted to organize a Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga. Bob Corker, Tennessee’s junior U.S. senator and a former mayor of Chattanooga, weighed in as voting commenced.

    Corker claimed he had received a pledge from Volkswagen’s management to expand production in Chattanooga if workers voted against the union.

    Three years later, Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant similarly urged Nissan workers to reject the UAW.

    “If you want to take away your job, if you want to end manufacturing as we know it in Mississippi, just start expanding unions,” Bryant said in 2017.

    A majority of the autoworkers heeded their conservative leaders’ advice in both cases and voted against joining the UAW.

    Making dire warnings

    With the UAW ramping up its organizing efforts again, Southern governors are sounding alarms once more.

    “The Alabama model for economic success is under attack,” warned Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey.

    She then asked workers: “Do you want continued opportunity and success the Alabama way? Or do you want out-of-state special interests telling Alabama how to do business?”

    Unions “have crippled and distorted the progress and prosperity of industries and cities in other states,” South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster declared in his Jan. 24, 2024, State of the State address. He then issued an ominous call: “We will fight” the UAW’s labor organizers “all the way to the gates of hell. And we will win.”

    The UAW counters that union membership means workers will get predictable raises, better benefits and improved workplace policies.

    Changing context

    Although these arguments from anti-union politicians haven’t changed much over the years, the context certainly has.

    The UAW’s big wins on pay and benefits resulting from its 2023 strike against General Motors, Ford and Stellantis have increased its clout and credibility.

    Many automakers with a U.S. workforce not covered by the UAW – including Volkswagen, Honda, Hyundai and other foreign transplants – responded by raising pay at their Southern plants. The union justifiably describes those raises as a “UAW bump.”

    The UAW will presumably cite these pay hikes in its outreach to workers at Tesla and other nonunion companies involved in electric vehicle and battery production in which the industry is investing heavily.

    “Nonunion autoworkers are being left behind,” the UAW’s recruiting website warns. “Are you ready to stand up and win your fair share?”

    The pitch continues: “It’s time for nonunion autoworkers to join the UAW and win economic justice at Toyota, Honda, Hyundai, Tesla, Nissan, BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Subaru, Volkswagen, Mazda, Rivian, Lucid, Volvo and beyond.”

    Some Southern autoworkers, meanwhile, have been expressing concerns over scheduling, safety, two-tier wage systems and workloads that they believe a union could help resolve.

    It’s also clear they’ve been emboldened by the gains they have seen UAW members make.

    Southern autoworkers applaud the union-organizing drive underway at a VW factory in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

    Revving up

    The UAW’s campaign is just starting to rev up.

    In accordance with its “30-50-70” strategy, the union is announcing the share of workers who have signed union cards in stages. Once it hits 30% at a factory, the UAW will announce publicly that an organizing campaign is underway. At the 50% mark, it will hold a public rally for workers that includes their neighbors and families, as well as UAW President Shawn Fain.

    Once it gains support from 70% of a plant’s workers, the UAW says it will seek voluntary recognition by management.

    A recent National Labor Relations Board ruling provides unions with additional leverage in this process. If management refuses to recognize the union’s request, the employer would then be required to seek an NLRB representation election.

    To win, unions need a majority of those voting. Under the new rule, if management is found to have interfered with workers’ rights during the election process, it could then be required to bargain with the union.

    So far, the UAW has announced that it has obtained the support of more than half the workers at factories belonging to two of the 13 nonunion automakers it’s targeting: a Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and a
    Mercedes-Benz factory near Tuscaloosa, Alabama. It has also obtained 30% support at a Hyundai plant in Alabama and a Toyota engine factory in Missouri.

    I believe that the stakes are high for all workers, not just those in the auto industry.

    As D. Taylor, the president of Unite Here, a union that represents workers in a wide range of occupations, recently observed: “If you change the South, you change America.”The Conversation

    This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

    The post Inside the UAW’s Southern Strategy appeared first on CounterPunch.org.


    This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Bob Bussel.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • The New York Times’ Bret Stephens, Hasbarist

    Bret Stephens speaking at the 92nd Street Y, Youtube screenshot.

    On October 15, 2023, a week after Hamas’s attack on Israel and in the early days of an indiscriminate Israeli response, New York Times editorialist Bret Stephens wrote a column titled “Hamas Bears the Blame for Every Death in This War.”

    After allowing that “[r]easonable people can criticize Israel for not allowing enough time for civilians to get out of harm’s way,” Stephens, having rhetorically covered himself, endorses the impending ground invasion and arrives at the conclusion inscribed in the column’s title. “The central cause of Gaza’s misery is Hamas,” he writes. “It alone bears the blame for the suffering it has inflicted on Israel and knowingly invited against Palestinians.”

    After five months of war, at least 30,000 Palestinians dead (12,000 children, certainly an undercount), innumerable documented atrocities, a partial indictment for genocide, and the prospect of a spiraling Middle East conflagration, you might think his tune would have shifted, even a little. After all, even Tom Friedman has managed to squeeze out some criticism of Israel.

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  • What Biden and the Democrats Can Appear to Do About Gaza

    When it comes to the genocide that the United States is helping Israel inflict on Gaza, Joe Biden is never more repugnant than when he pretends to care. I actually prefer his one-sided regional empathy: tedious reminiscences of chats with Golda Meir and odious references to Israel’s psychopathic Prime Minister as “Bibi”. { A  term […]
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  • Starvation Games

    With more than a half-million Gazans already facing starvation and more and more children dying of hunger, Biden’s solution, a floating port, will take 30-60 days to build and even then Israeli forces will still be in charge of inspecting the trucks of supplies, the main reason trucks are backed up for miles at the entry points into Gaza. Even the trickle of humanitarian supplies and food Biden has pledged to provide to Palestinians in Gaza won’t do much, if any, good, if there’s no one there to distribute it and Israel just moved to deny visas to the aid workers who have the experience and means to get the aid where it needs to go, a clear strategy to double down on its warfare by starvation.
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  • Homo What?

    As some members of our species are at it, hell for leather, killing other members of it wholesale and openly, aided and abetted by “democratic” national and international institutions in the “crime of all crimes”—genocide—humanity’s current situation is one in which the end of our species, and all the rest, is looming in the even […]
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  • Fani Willis’ Other Scandal

    Four days before the January 6 insurrection, then-president Donald Trump infamously told a state official to “find” the votes needed to overturn his 2020 loss to Joe Biden in the key state of Georgia. News of Trump’s put-me-in-jail-please phone call broke just as Fani Willis took the reins as the newly elected district attorney for […]
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    This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Pete Tucker.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Burning All Illusions

    The desperate attempts to smear Aaron Bushnell as “insane” are absurd. They are the kind of absurdity that Camus dissects in The Myth of Sisyphus, which begins by saying “There is only one really serious philosophical question, and that is suicide.”  If Camus ultimately comes down on the side of living, it’s a close call that takes many pages to reason out in a world where one civilized culture gave us Auschwitz and another Hiroshima. Our own cultural guardians want us to believe Bushnell was mad and not the war that drove him to take his own life.
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  • Assange’s High Court Appeal

    Assange’s attorneys had informed the court that he simply could not attend in person, though it would hardly have mattered.  His absence from the courtroom was decorous in its own way; he could avoid being displayed like a caged specimen reviled for his publishing feats.  The proceedings would be conducted in the manner of appropriate panto, with dress and procedure to boot.
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  • The Storm in Gaza, Ericka Huggins, and the Right to Remain Ridiculous

    I don’t know about you, but my heart is broken. And I am nothing special – I’m guessing there are at least two to twenty million people in this country – a whole other mainstream – who feel something similar. But I am profoundly privileged, demographically secure with the genome of a Mary Poppins – what right have I to mention my self-indulgent feelings? Because I wasn’t aware I had a heart condition until I talked about Gaza to Ericka Huggins. “Your heart is broken,” she told me.
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  • Everybody Knows

    Where we stand after 140 days of war:  At least 29,514 Palestinians have been killed and 69,616 wounded since the war began. Another 7,000 are presumed dead, buried under the rubble. More than 500,000 Palestinians in Gaza are suffering from severe hunger, another 350,000 suffer from chronic hunger conditions, while 60,000 pregnant women and more than 700,000 children suffer from malnutrition and dehydration.
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  • Does Clean Energy Mean Indian Relocation From the Colorado Plateau? 

    Energy Fuels, Inc. opened a uranium mine called Pinyon Plain Mine, 7 miles from the rim of the Grand Canyon on December 21, 2023, according to the company’s press release. They plan to mill the ore into high assay low energy-enriched uranium (HALEU) suitable for power-plant use at their uranium mill in White Mesa, Utah. […]
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  • Israel Counting All Men Killed in Gaza as Militants

    Last month, The Wall Street Journal published an article on the disparities between estimates by the Israeli military of the number of Palestinian militants killed in Gaza and estimates by US intelligence agencies of the same. Although the article focuses on the Israeli military’s over-estimations, it also shares two revealing figures: 1. According to the Health Ministry of Gaza, which does not distinguish between civilians and militants, at least 8,000 Palestinian men were killed by the Israeli military in Gaza; 2. According to the Israeli military, its forces killed 9,000 militants in Gaza. The only possible way to square those two numbers is for the Israeli military to count every single Palestinian man it has killed in Gaza as a militant, and then add some. As absurd as that sounds, that appears to be precisely what the Israeli military has been doing for months — and the United States and United Kingdom have done the same in their wars in the Middle East too.
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  • Shooting the Messengers

    “America accepts a ceasefire whereby Hamas ceases and Israel fires.” – Marwan Bishara + Israel is committing war crimes in Gaza that are so brazen and outrageous that no one even considered legislating against them…until now. + Consider this: On Tuesday afternoon, the IDF sent a handcuffed Palestinian man named Jamal Abu Al-Ola into Nasser […]
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  • Putin’s 15 Major Points in Tucker Carlson Interview

    The following are my ‘takeaways’ from listening closely to the Tucker Carlson-Putin Interview of this past week. A number of revelations came out of the interview (e.g. repeated role of France, Germany, UK and CIA scuttling a resolution to the conflict) as well as Putin’s deep commitment to continue until Ukraine is no longer a threat to Russia. One comes away from listening to the interview that Putin feels he has been ‘had’ by the US/EU so often he no longer trusts its politicians and doesn’t believe US presidents have the power to decide; he, and Russians in general, have a deep belief that Russia and Ukraine (and Belarus) are ‘one people’ who have been divided by invaders in the past but always re-united again; and that he’s ready to negotiate but Zelensky and US/NATO have ruled it out and would have to initiate it. Finally, US sanctions have failed, the world is changing fast, and many countries have developed to the point they no longer do whatever the US wants and are demanding more independence.

    1) Putin says he’s ready to negotiate but Zelensky has outlawed discussions and US/NATO doesn’t want to. Zelensky is “head of Ukraine state. He could cancel his decree” and negotiate. Russia’s ready but will not ask for negotiations. Russia’s minimal demands: No NATO. Neutral Ukraine. Nazis out of Ukraine government & military

    2) Russia & Ukraine had a signed deal in Istanbul in April ’22 to end war. As part of the deal, Donbass remained in Ukraine but with some autonomy. Russia asked to withdraw troops from Kiev as a sign of good faith during negotiations in Istanbul and did. Zelensky reneged on the deal after Boris Johnson flew in and told him to, promising him all the money and weapons he needed.

    3) Putin gave a long historical introduction on history of Russia & Ukraine since 862. He explained attempts (in 1200s, 1650s, 1918-21, 1941-44) by invaders to split Ukraine from Russia that all eventually failed. (Suggesting current NATO effort would too). A major repeated Putin theme as Ukraine & Russia have always been one people

    4) Western Ukraine (Lvov region) before WW2 was Poland-Hungarian-Romanian, but given to Ukraine by Stalin after WW2 after Poland was given eastern Germany.  Putin implied the West could have western Ukraine back (as Putin suggested in prior speeches). West Ukraine is not part of historic Russian homeland which is Russia-Ukraine-Belarus.

    5) Russia wanted to join Europe after 1991 but was repeatedly rejected by West. Putin described face-to-face meetings with Clinton & Bush Jr. where they agreed re. Russia joining NATO (Clinton) and stopping US intervention in Chechnya (Bush) but both Clinton and Bush then reversed after conferring with advisors. Putin’s impression US presidents can’t make a deal and are often overturned by other powers in Washington. China’s Xi has the same impression, per Putin.

    6) After meeting with Bush, Putin gave him proof CIA was involved in Chechnya war. Bush replied “Well, I’m going to kick their ass”. Bush never got back to Putin after. In 2008 US/NATO in Bucharest NATO meeting declared Ukraine & Georgia would soon join NATO. Russia’s 2008 War with Georgia followed

    7) Re. 2014 coup, Putin said “CIA did its job” but it was unnecessary. It “could have been done all legally”. Ukraine president at the time (Yanukovich) was warned by US/EU at the time of the coup not to use police or army against demonstrators in Maidan. He didn’t. Yanukovich agreed to a 3rdre-election not provided by Ukraine’s constitution but they went ahead with coup anyway. US representatives bragged they spent $5B on the coup. Putin would not mention names (Victoria Nuland).  Regarding 2015 Minsk agreement: Putin said Ukraine refused to implement it. EU leaders (Germany’s Merkel & France’s Holland) admitted in 2022 Minsk agreement in 2015 was ‘just to buy time’ to rearm Ukraine. In Putin’s words: “They simply led us by the nose”

    8) When asked by Carlson if current talk in the West that if Russia wins in Ukraine it means it will invade Europe, Putin replied ‘only if they attack Russia first’. US mercenaries are already fighting in Ukraine. And when Carlson mentioned US Sen. Schumer’s statement that the US might have to fight in Ukraine, Putin sarcastically said: “Does the US have nothing better to do than fight in Ukraine”. If US did commit troops to Ukraine, it would push world to “brink of humanity”.

    9) When asked by Carlson who blew up the Nordstream pipeline, Putin: “CIA has no alibi” and “look at those interested and have capability of doing it” and “beneficiaries are American institutions”. When Carlson asked for more evidence US did it, Putin replied Russia has the evidence but no purpose to reveal it now. Germany has shut down 2 other pipelines that can still be opened & Russia will gladly resume sending gas(naming names might obviously jeopardize what he implied).  Germany goes along with US because “German leaders are driven by interests of collaborative west rather than German interests”.

    10) Putin: Biden’s Russian sanctions are “a grave mistake”. By weaponizing the US $, the US is undermining its global economic influence. Putin: The dollar is the cornerstone of US power. “Do you even realize what’s going on or not? You are cutting yourself off”. He added, before  2022, “80% Russia’s trade was in $ and only 3% in Yuan. Now 30% is in Yuan, 30% in Rubles and only 13% in $US.

    11) Sanctions failed. Russia is now 5th largest economy in ‘purchasing power parity’ measure. China 1st. Russia-China trade now >$240B. BRICS economies are now as large in GDP as US/G7. Sanction “tools US uses don’t work”

    12) World is changing very fast. US can’t stop it but is reacting aggressively & militarily to the change. Threats from genetics, AI technologies, ‘brain chip’, etc. Much like gunpowder in the prior era. There’s “no stopping Elon Musk” (i.e. technological change)

    13) Carlson asked if Russia would negotiate. Putin: “They’re options if there’s a will”. Those in power must realize Russia can’t be defeated. West “stopped negotiations”.. “Let them correct their mistake”..”I know they want it; let them think how to do it.”Ukraine is now a satellite of the USA, which spends $72B a year on it

    14) Putin: what’s happening “to an extent is a civil war”. Ukraine and Russia will be reunited again. “No one can separate the Russian soul” (once again returning to the theme at the start of the interview that historically) Russia, Ukraine, Belarus are one people

    15) Among the various reporting ‘bombshells’ revealed by Carlson’s interview was Putin’s clarification it wasn’t Ukraine negotiators at Istanbul that requested Russia pull back from Kiev in ’22 as a show of good faith..it was Macron (France) and Sholtz (Germany) request. And so much for the Western media myth of Ukraine’s great military ‘victory’ driving the Russians out of Kiev in April ’22

    The post Putin’s 15 Major Points in Tucker Carlson Interview appeared first on CounterPunch.org.


    This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Jack Rasmus.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Israelism Bucks Blind Faith in Israeli Occupation, Apartheid and “the Jewish Disneyland”

    Still from Israelism.

    Without presenting a single shred of evidence, Rep. Nancy Pelosi recently contended on CNN that protesters challenging U.S. and Israeli policies in Gaza are doing the Kremlin’s bidding. “For them to call for a cease-fire is Mr. Putin’s message. Make no mistake, this is directly connected to what he would like to see… I think some of these protesters are spontaneous and organic and sincere. Some, I think, are connected to Russia. And I say that having looked at this for a long time now… I think some financing should be investigated. And I want to ask the FBI to investigate that,” Pelosi squealed.(Paging Joe McCarthy!)

    Nevertheless, undaunted, two thirty-something American Jewish filmmakers have made Israelism, a documentary that is the worst ideological nightmare for the mindless pro-Israel camp. Erin Axelrod and Sam Eilertsen expertly give the lie to the one-sided propaganda about Palestinians that American Jews and others have been indoctrinated with regarding the Israeli occupation, apartheid and other dehumanizing policies, in a skillfully rendered, award-winning 80-minute nonfiction film. Challenging the dominant pro-Israel mythos, American Jewish and Palestinian activists, along with independent presidential candidate/academic Cornel West and intellectual Noam Chomsky, expose the lies that have been perpetrated and perpetuated by the ultra-Zionist militaristic regime and its supporters, threatening their stranglehold over the hearts and minds of Jewish and other Americans.

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    This post was originally published on CounterPunch.org.

  • Investigating the New York Times “Investigation” of Hamas Mass Rape 

    Almost three months after the Hamas attacks of October 7, and well into the international condemnation of the Israeli genocide in Gaza, on December 29, 2023, the New York Times revisited the topic of Hamas sexual violence. Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jeffrey Gettleman joined two other writers, Anat Schwartz and Adam Sella, in a piece billed […]
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  • Over the Top

    For every Israeli killed on October 7 (some of them, perhaps many) by the IDF, at least 10 Palestinian children in Gaza have been killed in revenge…with no sign the killing is slowing down never mind stopping.
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  • Abstractions and Mass Murder

    Israeli ground operations in Gaza, November 1, 2023. Photo: IDF. CC BY-SA 3.0

    There is nothing new under the sun in terms of incitement to war methods or the dehumanization techniques necessary to create compliant and bloodthirsty populations. The only thing that is new are the shifting and doomed populations who find themselves in the way of empire. Students of history, generally without a shred of self-examination, congratulate themselves for being born to a more enlightened time knowing that even if they were transported to those historical events, they would never have participated. They would have been the principled objector. It’s a comforting thought with absolutely no skin in the game. But when given present-day examples of such horror, and an opportunity to, if nothing else, be on the right side of history, they fall prey to the techniques that always worked in the past. They believe the current troubles are simply too complicated to unravel; that it’s all completely different from historical precedents. Unless a chink in the armor of this thinking takes place, we are doomed to move from genocide to genocide, whenever a population or group is deemed unfavorable or simply in the way. The words may not be exactly the same, but they always bear a striking similarity. That is, they dehumanize the other and make any and all attempts to rid themselves of the so-called savages part of a greater good. You still have to behave in a certain non-murderous ways within your in-group, but all bets are off when combating “the other”. It’s like quantum mechanics don’t seem to apply to everyday macro interactions. You get to murder and annihilate others, but still tuck your kids in at night like you aren’t a monster.

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    This post was originally published on CounterPunch.org.

  • Are Palestinians the New Jews?

    The Israeli leadership is currently engaged in an undoubted genocide against the Palestinian population of Gaza. A complementary mopping-up operation continues (if in slow motion) in the West Bank. During World War II, a certain genocide took place. More than one if one counts the attempted genocide by the Nazis, consciously on racist grounds, of […]
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    This post was originally published on CounterPunch.org.

  • Gaza Delenda Est

    The Biden Administration’s decision to cut off critical funding to UNRWA is the default form of collective punishment for Clintonian liberals, where the denial of humanitarian aid is used as a weapon to punish (ie., starve) people who have no responsibility for the alleged transgression.
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  • ICJ’s Order to Prevent Genocide Applies to the Governments Arming Israel, Too

    Image by mohammed al bardawil.

    War profiteers are on notice. On 26 January, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) found that South Africa’s case against Israel for its genocide of Palestinians has merit. While the Court has not yet ruled on whether Israel’s mass slaughter of Palestinians since 7 October 2023 is genocide—a ruling at which it may take years to arrive—it did order Israel to prevent and not commit genocidal acts against Palestinians, prevent and punish public incitement to commit genocide, ensure the provision of humanitarian aid, preserve evidence related to allegations of genocide, and submit a compliance report within one month. These orders have a significant impact on the provision of weapons to Israel: governments arming genocide can be held accountable for genocide themselves.
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  • Decolonize This

    The theory of settler colonialism has – no surprise – never been popular among Western higher-ups. But since October 7, 2023, with chants of “From the River to the Sea / Palestine Will Be Free” ringing out on streets around the world, mainstream pundits and academics have taken aim at the theory, calling it dangerous, simplistic, morally deranged, antisemitic. Considering the sources – The New York Times; The Wall Street Journal; The Atlantic; CNN, etc. – it makes sense that they would want to curate the story of just how Western civilization became “civilized.”]

    caption id=”attachment_311847″ align=”alignnone” width=”680″]

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  • Genocide When You See It

    Just because the ICH ruling was obvious, doesn’t mean it wasn’t exceptional, since proving the obvious has been almost impossible for the last 75 years when it comes to Israel. This is the first fissure in Israel’s impunity, a crack that will widen with each new massacre, swallowing its funders and arms suppliers along with it.
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    This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Jeffrey St. Clair.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Los Alamos, Mon Amour: Gone with the Downwind

    A newspaper clipping glimpsed in a new documentary is headlined “New Mexico’s Infant Mortality Highest in U.S., Report Says.” Lois Lipman’s film explains why that rate is so high for babies, as well as for others, especially Indigenous and Hispanic inhabitants, in her gripping First We Bombed in New Mexico. Onscreen Tina Cordova, born and raised at Tularosa, only 30 miles from the Trinity Site, declares: “We are the first victims of the atomic bomb.” While the title of Lipman’s gripping 95-minute chronicle may be derived from Joseph Heller’s 1967 satirical antiwar play We Bombed in New Haven, this new production, which won jury and audience awards at the Santa Fe International Film Festival, is in the tradition of anti-nuclear bomb nonfiction classics such as 1982’s The Atomic Café, Judy Irving/Chris Beaver’s 1982 Dark Circle, Jim Heddle’s 1984 Strategic Trust: The Making of Nuclear Free Palau, Dennis O’Rourke’s 1986 Half Life, and Robert Stone’s 1988 Oscar-nominated Radio Bikini.

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    This post was originally published on CounterPunch.org.

  • The British Post Office Scandal and the Future of Democracy

    The Post Office’s top management operated a startling double standard in mapping blame. While it maintained a tough-as-nails approach in the case of small branches, it adopted an entirely lenient approach in the case of so-called Crown Post Offices.
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    This post was originally published on CounterPunch.org.

  • A War With No Future

    What Bidenian Deescalation looks like in the Middle East: In the past week, Israel attacked Gaza and the West Bank. Lebanon attacked Israel. Israel attacked Lebanon. The US attacked targets in Syria and Iraq. Iraq attacked US bases in Iraq and Syria and moved to kick the US out of Iraq. Turkey and Iran attacked Syria and Iraq. Iran also attacked Pakistan and Pakistan attacked Iran. Jordan attacked Syria. Yemen attacked ships in the Red Sea and the US/UK launched airstrikes on Yemen, prompting Yemen to attack US Navy ships. Two Navy SEALs drowned in an operation off the coast of Somalia.
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