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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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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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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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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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“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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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
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This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Jack Rasmus.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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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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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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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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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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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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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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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.
Image by mohammed al bardawil.
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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.”]
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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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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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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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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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The right-wing’s accusations attempt to distort the rationale of recent student protests through a loaded deflection: They demand suitable negative sanctions be applied against student advocates of “genocidal antisemitism.” Given the demonstrations and confrontations on this issue, the students who were punished at Columbia, the progressive anti-Zionist group Jewish Voice for Peace and Students for Justice in Palestine, were opposing the Israeli occupation of Palestine and advocating ceasefire not genocidal antisemitism.
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Image by Asim Z Kodappana.
What we feel defines who we are and what we believe. Such a statement seems obvious to the point of tautology. Yet we often don’t behave as if we genuinely credit it. Many of us are, despite increasingly savage attacks from neofascist champions of unreason, still children of the Enlightenment. And broadly, the Enlightenment dream was to strengthen people’s reasoning powers to the point where they would persuade one another through logical, rational argumentation and public debates conducted with impeccable calm. Feelings were irrelevant to this project, unnecessary, potential bearers of error. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, one of the fathers of calculus, expressed this rationalist attitude especially clearly in 1679 when he wrote about his pet project to create a universal language, declaring with poignant optimism, “The only way to rectify our reasonings is to make them as tangible as those of the Mathematicians, so that we can find our error at a glance, and when there are disputes among persons, we can simply say: Let us calculate, without further ado, to see who is right.”
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After decades of forced evictions, mass killings, warrantless arrests, restricted travel, stolen land, demolished houses, poisoned wells, razed orchards, embargoes and targeted killings, Israel has finally been placed in the dock to answer charges of genocide against the ghettoized and bombarded people of Gaza. And it took the South Africans to do it.
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“As I have walked among the desperate, rejected, and angry young men, I have told them that Molotov cocktails and rifles would not solve their problems. I have tried to offer them my deepest compassion while maintaining my conviction that social change comes most meaningfully through nonviolent action. But they ask — and rightly so […]
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Here’s what we know about the state of Gaza on day 91 of the war: 30,676 killed (including those 7,000 presumed dead under the rubble); 12,040 children killed; 6,103 women killed; 58,960 wounded; 105 journalists killed; 241 health care workers killed; 283 health care workers wounded; 1.93 million displaced; 67,941 homes completely destroyed; 179,750 homes damaged; 169 press offices damaged or destroyed; 318 damaged or destroyed schools; 1612 damaged or destroyed industrial facilities; 201 damaged or destroyed mosques; 3 damaged or destroyed churches; 169 damaged or destroyed health care facilities (23 hospitals, 57 clinics, 89 ambulances); 198 archeological and heritage sites damaged or destroyed; 41 civil defense workers killed; 127 civil defense workers injured.
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Salvador Allende.
Chilean writer Ariel Dorfman is probably best known to Americano audiences for his play Death and the Maiden, a parable about torture that Roman Polanski adapted for the big screen in 1994, starring Sigourney Weaver and Ben Kingsley (there were two other versions, a 2016 Iranian reboot plus 2020’s The Secrets We Keep, with Noomi Rapace and Chris Messina). From 1970-1973 the Buenos Aires-born Dorfman served as a cultural and press advisor to Salvador Allende, the democratically elected socialist president of Chile. In 1971 Dorfman co-authored How to Read Donald Duck, Imperialist Ideology in the Disney Comic, which has just been re-published by OR Books.
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The Genocide Convention, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, were adopted in 1948. What else happened in 1948? The establishment of the state of Israel and the Nakba, right? So how, from this beginning, could international law accommodate ongoing colonization — which requires human subjugation, a hierarchy of life? That’s the antithesis of a declaration that says everyone has inalienable rights. Even the best laws are not applied equally. The greatest violators of international law, including the United States, are never held accountable. They wrote the laws, so it makes sense that they’ve created this system.
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For the past year, I’ve been compiling a list of the best American films of the 2000s—any production released between January 1, 2000 and December 31, 2009 made with primarily American financing. I decided to watch every single movie that I missed in that decade when I went to the movies the most, two or […]
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In contrast to other historical atrocities, the crimes against the people of Gaza–mass murder, manufactured famine, dispossession, looting of property, demolition of cultural and religious heritage, and forced expulsion–have all been committed in the open–the genocidal plans have been written about in newspaper columns and freely expounded on talk shows. You won’t have to excavate through secret archives, the evidence of these grotesque crimes is there for all to see. What they’ve said and what they’ve done is on the record. There can be no hiding from it. And those who’ve armed, funded, abetted and justified these genocidal measures should be condemned for their complicity.
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Image by Li-An Lim.
It’s not true that humanity is committing suicide, as exemplified by the COP28 farce of a climate summit. The world’s industrialists and financiers are committing humanity to ecocide. More than ever, it’s easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.
Death by capitalism. That phrase has a certain catchy feeling to it. But it’s no joke, is it? No, no joke at all.
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Alex Saab was freed from US captivity in what Venezuelan Prof. Maria Victor Paez described as “a triumph of Venezuelan diplomacy.” The diplomat had been imprisoned for trying to bring humanitarian supplies to Venezuela in legal international trade but in circumvention of Washington’s illegal economic coercive measures, also known as sanctions. Negotiated prisoner exchange In […]
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So much of Gaza has been disfigured by Israeli/US bombs that it is now a different color from space. A New York Times determined that Israel routinely dropped 2,000 lbs. bombs in the area south of Wadi Gaza, the place the IDF had repeatedly ordered civilians in Gaza to move to for safety. The US-made MK-84 2,000-pound bomb can leave craters 60 feet deep and create blastwaves capable of killing and maiming people up to 3,000 feet away. The NYT report concluded that the IDF dropped at least 200 such bombs in southern Gaza, where “even for those who followed every evacuation order, there was still no safety to be found.”
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