Category: Europe


  • This content originally appeared on Human Rights Watch and was authored by Human Rights Watch.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Keir Starmer says he wants to learn from Italy’s ‘dramatic’ statistics. But a Guardian investigation reveals that EU money goes to officers who are involved in shocking abuse, leaving people to die in the desert and colluding with smugglers

    When she saw them, lined up at the road checkpoint, Marie sensed the situation might turn ugly. Four officers, each wearing the combat green of Tunisia’s national guard. They asked to look inside her bag.

    “There was nothing, just some clothes.” For weeks Marie had traversed the Sahara, travelling 3,000 miles from home. Now, minutes from her destination – the north coast of Africa – she feared she might not make it.

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • The international climate group Greenpeace on Friday called on European leaders to “reciprocate” the courage shown by first responders in several countries over the weekend by forcing fossil fuel giants to pay for climate damages. Calling out leaders including Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala, and Romania Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Document detailing ‘deterioration’ under Kais Saied will fuel concerns about bloc’s migration deal with his country

    The EU fears its credibility is at stake as it seeks to weigh growing concerns about the crushing of dissent in Tunisia while preserving a controversial migration deal with the north African country, according to a leaked document.

    An internal report drafted by the EU’s diplomatic service (EEAS), seen by the Guardian, details “a clear deterioration of the political climate and a shrinking civic space” under the Tunisian president, Kais Saied, who has suspended parliament and concentrated power in his hands since starting his term of office in 2019.

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • Organisers of international summit hope to create pressure to reverse laws including a ban on women speaking in public

    More than 130 Afghan women have gathered in Albania at an All Afghan Women summit, in an attempt to develop a united voice representing the women and girls of Afghanistan in the fight against the ongoing assault on human rights by the Taliban.

    Some women who attempted to reach the summit from inside Afghanistan were prevented from travelling, pulled off flights in Pakistan or stopped at borders. Other women have travelled from countries including Iran, Canada, the UK and the US where they are living as refugees.

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • Julio Pacheco says he will appeal against the ‘devastating’ decision to abandon the first such investigation in Spain

    Hopes of securing justice for people tortured under the four-decade Franco dictatorship in Spain have suffered a major setback after a judge in Madrid shelved a landmark investigation into a teenager tortured by police three months before the dictator’s death.

    Julio Pacheco was a 19-year-old student and anti-Franco activist when he was arrested in August 1975 on suspicion of involvement in the murder of a police officer. He was taken to the infamous headquarters of the Directorate-General for Security in Madrid’s Puerta del Sol, where secret police officers tortured him for seven days before he was imprisoned for “terrorism”.

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.


  • This content originally appeared on Human Rights Watch and was authored by Human Rights Watch.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Mendis, who stayed in Manchester church for two years in 1980s to fight deportation, has died aged 68 in Germany

    Refugees and human rights activists are making their way to Bremen in north-west Germany for the funeral of a man who fought for freedom and safety for asylum seekers.

    Viraj Mendis came to prominence after seeking sanctuary in a Manchester church where he spent two years in the 1980s. He died aged 68 on 16 August in Bremen, which offered him sanctuary after he was deported from the UK.

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • The trenchant critic of Putin was released this month, but says he saw captivity as an integral part of his campaign

    For many people, if they had recently turned 70 and were faced with the prospect of a long stint in a Russian prison, their first instinct would be to dash to the airport and escape the country as quickly as possible. Oleg Orlov, one of Russia’s most experienced and respected human rights advocates, had that opportunity but never considered it an option.

    Orlov, whose organisation, Memorial, won the Nobel peace prize in 2022, remained in the country after being accused of “discrediting the Russian army” for his commentary on the war in Ukraine. In February this year, he was convicted and sentenced to two and a half years in prison.

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • The 2024 Olympic Games have provided the perfect excuse for French authorities to turn Paris into a hyper-securitized police state. Recently, two journalists on a critical tour of the Olympics hosted by the anti-Olympics activist group Saccage 2024 (“Destruction 2024”) were arrested and interrogated by police—despite not engaging in any form of disruptive or illegal activity. Reporting from the streets of Paris, TRNN’s Dave Zirin speaks with Noah Farjon of Saccage 2024 about his arrest and what it says about the state of democracy in France under the spotlight of the Olympics.

    Studio Production: Jules Boykoff
    Post-Production: David Hebden, Adam Coley


    Transcript

    The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. An updated version will be made available as soon as possible.

    Dave Zirin:

    Hey, this is Dave Zirin here from Edge of Sports TV, only on The Real News Network. I’m here with Noah from Saccage 2024. Saccage 2024 is a counter-Olympic organizing collective, here in Paris. Noah, thank you so much for joining us.

    Noah Farjon:

    Thank you for inviting me here.

    Dave Zirin:

    You were in a very difficult situation involving the police in an arrest the other day. Can you tell our audience what happens?

    Noah Farjon:

    Yeah. Me and two journalists got arrested yesterday when we were trying to do what we call a Saccage Toxic Tour, which is just a little tour of the Olympic area around the Stade de France, just to show some of the buildings that got destroyed or impacted by this Olympics. It was a very calm event that was supposed to involve 10 journalists and a few of our members, just to show those-

    Dave Zirin:

    The effects?

    Noah Farjon:

    Yes, the effect of the Olympics on the city of Saint-Denis. But I found two other journalists, [inaudible 00:01:35] Toxic Tour and was trying to guide them to the beginning of the Toxic Tour. When we arrived, when we were just out of the metro, there was a lot of plainclothes police that was just watching us and pointing. It was clear that we were watched. Which is something that happen in all of our Toxic Tours, there is always some police following us to see what we’re doing.

    But what was [inaudible 00:02:01] is that as soon as we started moving, four police car arrived immediately to block the way and 30 cops got out to do an identity check. And when they found leaflets and some stickers… Some leaflets were for a past protest that was accepted by the police, that happened without an issue, but they still took two hour, were doing a lot of phone call, taking picture of us, and trying to put pressure on us, being very rude.

    And eventually say, “You are now under arrest for trying to gather and do degradation.” Which was entirely false, because once again, it was just a journalistic event, just to show the city. They took us to the police station and we stayed there for 10 hour.

    Dave Zirin:

    Wow. Before you go on, I just want to make this really clear for the audience. You were attempting just show journalists the effects of the Olympics on Saint-Denis, and because of that you were arrested and held for 10 hours?

    Noah Farjon:

    Yeah. Yeah, both me and the journalists were very surprised because… The journalists clearly were… They had what is called [French 00:03:19].

    Dave Zirin:

    [French 00:03:19], yes.

    Noah Farjon:

    Which is an official document saying, “We are from the press and we are going to go there.” One even had an Olympic accreditation. But the police told them, “Yeah, but we can’t know if it’s not a fake one, so you are still going to be taken with us.” This person had specifically a press pass from the Olympic, which should give her access to a lot of backstage area. She shouldn’t at all have been arrested. Everybody was very surprised by that arrest.

    They took us to the police station. We stayed for a long time. It took me six hour before I got interrogated. During the interrogation, the question was very surprising because it was not… They could only [inaudible 00:04:12] about what we’re doing here. It was mostly about, “Are you on the left? Are you against [inaudible 00:04:20]? Are you part of Saccage 2024? Are you against the Olympic?”

    It was a lot of political question about my political view and my political view about the Olympics.

    Dave Zirin:

    Wow. They asked if you were on the left?

    Noah Farjon:

    Yeah.

    Dave Zirin:

    Wow. We hear much about France being one of the great old democracies. What does this tell us about democracy in France?

    Noah Farjon:

    Democracy in France is having huge issue right now. What Macron is doing by refusing to name a prime minister from the majority that got chosen, and he’s using the Olympic to make that last longer. He said, “I am doing an Olympic ceasefire on politics and therefore will not nominate a prime minister until at least the Olympics are over, but perhaps before the Paralympics.” He’s using the current events to block everything.

    This Toxic Tour or events that we did a lot of time before the Olympics and never had issue with that. Because these are always short events. The biggest we did was 35 people on bikes.

    Dave Zirin:

    Wow. I want to lay this out for the audience. The left coalition received the most votes in the last election. They are waiting to have one of their members named as a prime minister, by all rights, but President Macron is saying, “We’re going to wait off on that because we’re having an Olympic ceasefire on politics.” Basically, that’s what’s happening?

    Noah Farjon:

    Yeah. It’s what’s happening.

    Dave Zirin:

    Wow. That doesn’t sound very democratic.

    Noah Farjon:

    Oh, it is not. It is not. Macron, this is the first mandate, but especially his second term, he has less and less of a majority, and used all of the political and legal way he has to ignore the fact that he is extremely unpopular and have less and less elected official. What he did, for example, also for these elections that happened just before the Olympics, was that he said that all the people that are still minister were going to vote to choose the leader of the Assembly.

    Which is highly illegal, because for the separation of power, if you’re in the cabinet of Macron, you are not supposed to vote on that and to vote in general as a deputy. So, he tell them to vote, and gave them [inaudible 00:06:54] vote to have the leader of the Assembly being someone of Macron, despite him being the only second-biggest.

    Dave Zirin:

    Wow. You’re talking about what Macron has meant to democracy in Paris and in France. What have the Olympics meant to democracy in Paris?

    Noah Farjon:

    For me, a lot of things, because many laws that were passed for the Olympics or laws that will be kept after. In France have been huge protests that we fight hardly, against drones and against algorithmic camera. But there was an Olympic law to test this technology, so right now there are drones and cameras that use AI all around Paris for the Olympics, because those laws were passed, thanks to the Olympics. And there was no protest this time, because the Olympics make everything more okay, basically. People will not protest as much if it’s something that’s done for the Olympics.

    But to me, one of the worst things that happened is, Paris is under basically occupation. It’s the biggest police and army presence in the city since the occupation during the Second World War. We’re not even free to circulate anymore because we need what’s called a QR code, which is a flash code to say, okay, I have the right to take my car in all of this area of Paris. The lockdown around the Seine, just here, for the opening ceremony was so big that there was less people there during the week of lockdown before the ceremony, that there was less people there than during the COVID lockdown.

    Dave Zirin:

    Wow.

    Noah Farjon:

    Because nobody had access to the Seine for a week.

    Dave Zirin:

    Wow. And-

    Noah Farjon:

    And a lot of people-

    Dave Zirin:

    Please continue, sorry.

    Noah Farjon:

    And also, a lot of people got what’s called in France, [foreign language 00:08:56], which is like house arrest, not just in Paris, but in many other cities. Which basically said, you have not the right to leave your home during Olympic event or not to go in Paris because we think you are an issue for security. There was people that were on the left. A lot of leftists got arrested.

    Basically, anybody that was a bit under surveillance of the police and had any kind of legal issue before, got arrested. A lot of people that had no legal issue but were having mental issue also were forbidden to go out on their own. And mental hospital, that were supposed to be some hospital where they could leave and go back in, said, “Okay, you cannot let your patient leave for those days.”

    It’s a huge threat on our freedom to move. It’s not becoming a freedom, but a right that we have to ask and that has to be given by the prefecture of police.

    Dave Zirin:

    The left came together to beat back the National Rally and the fascists in the last election. But, there’s a socialist mayor of Paris, Hidalgo.

    Noah Farjon:

    Yeah.

    Dave Zirin:

    Are there now splits on the left in terms of how to deal with the Olympics and the policing and Macron’s attacks on democracy between those who are cheerleading the Olympics and those who are protesting?

    Noah Farjon:

    Yeah. Sadly, at least the more mainstream [inaudible 00:10:34] left. I’ve never been too much against the Olympic. We can see the way it is talked about, the opening ceremony. Most of elected official are talking about this ceremony as a big success for the left. Because they said, “Oh, look, there was some marginalized communities that were represented.”

    But in fact, it was still a very elitist event because there was still the army everywhere, there was still police everywhere. Yes, there was Aya Nakamura singing, but she was singing with the [French 00:11:04], which is the army. So, it was just the elites saying, “Look how cool we are and how much we like France.” But for the media and Parisian, they still couldn’t go there. Only the spots that were on big incline could see what was happening in the Seine. Many people that took ticket and that got there were like, “Oh, I just cannot see.”

    All they were talking about was like, “Oh. Look, how cool we are.” An example I have is Gojira, which is a metal band that work with Sea Shepherd at some point, got a castle to do a war song about Ah! Ca Ira, which is a French revolutionary song. But they were protected by the police for more than a week with the castle being closed off. Meanwhile, Watson is getting arrested by the police in Greenland. It’s completely disconnected from what’s happening.

    Dave Zirin:

    I think we call that irony.

    Noah Farjon:

    Yes.

    Dave Zirin:

    Which the French are very good at.

    Noah Farjon:

    Oh, yeah.

    Dave Zirin:

    The Olympics are coming to Los Angeles in the United States in 2028. Do you have any advice or words for the people of Los Angeles about what it means to have the Olympics come to your town, and how the left in Los Angeles should be responding?

    Noah Farjon:

    Yeah. For Los Angeles, there is many things to say, but what’s important for you is to organize and try to show that whatever they promise to you for this Olympics, it’s not worth the humane cost. It’s not worth any of the costs that they will try to impose on you. For sports and for entertainment, you cannot justify to evict people. You cannot justify to just clean up the city and make it a tourist attraction.

    You need to protest and you need to do everything you can to make it as hard for this Olympics to happen, not just for those ’28 Olympics, but also for the next ones they will try to put on you. I know Salt Lake City got a bid-

    Dave Zirin:

    Yes.

    Noah Farjon:

    … that is recurring very often. For example, Salt Lake City, all of the cities should keep fighting against this Olympic, just to show that it is an event that shouldn’t happen anymore-

    Dave Zirin:

    Wow.

    Noah Farjon:

    … because the cost is too great.

    Dave Zirin:

    The cost is just too great.

    This is Noah from Saccage 2024. Noah, thank you so much for joining us here on The Real News Network.

    Noah Farjon:

    Thank you for [inaudible 00:13:42].

    Dave Zirin:

    Of course. Absolutely. We’ll be back with more news from The Real News Network from Olympic Paris before you know it.

    Maximillian Alvarez:

    Thank you so much for watching The Real News Network, where we lift up the voices, stories and struggles that you care about most. And we need your help to keep doing this work, so please, tap your screen now, subscribe and donate to The Real News Network. Solidarity Forever.

    This post was originally published on The Real News Network.

  • Fundamental rights body warns of flawed approach to credible accounts of ill-treatment and loss of life

    Authorities in EU member states are not doing enough to investigate credible reports of violations of human rights, including deaths, on their borders, an EU human rights body has said.

    The EU Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA) said human rights agencies and NGOs were reporting “serious, recurrent and widespread rights violations against migrants and refugees during border management” but despite “credible” reports many were not investigated.

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • With music now a crime in Afghanistan, Braga has become one of the few places where the practice is being preserved

    A stone’s throw from Portugal’s oldest cathedral and buzzing bakeries serving up pastéis de nata, the complex notes of a sitar fill the ground floor of an unassuming building in the northern city of Braga.

    The soft strumming belies the radical nature of the mission that has taken root here: to preserve Afghan music and use it as a tool to counter those who want to eradicate it.

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • Union for civil servants claimed Home Office staff could be open to prosecution if Strasbourg rulings on Rwanda ignored

    General election 2024: live news

    Guidance drawn up by Conservative ministers which told civil servants to ignore Strasbourg rulings and remove asylum seekers to Rwanda is lawful, the high court has ruled.

    The FDA trade union, which represents senior civil servants, brought legal action claiming senior Home Office staff could be in breach of international law if they implement the government’s Rwanda deportation bill.

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • French voters went to the polls on Sunday for the first round of snap legislative elections. For the first time, a victory for the far right is looking like a credible prospect — an extraordinary turnaround for a party that until 2022 held only a handful of seats in parliament. The far-right National Rally has topped the polls with a score of more than 33% of the first-round vote (compared with 18.

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Erik Bulatov (USSR), People in the Landscape, 1976.

    There was a time when calls for a nuclear-free Europe rang across the continent. It began with the Stockholm Appeal (1950), which opened with the powerful words ‘We demand the outlawing of atomic weapons as instruments of intimidation and mass murder of peoples’ and then deepened with the Appeal for European Nuclear Disarmament (1980), which issued the chilling warning ‘We are entering the most dangerous decade in human history’. Roughly 274 million people signed the Stockholm Appeal, including – as is often reported – the entire adult population of the Soviet Union. Yet, since the European appeal of 1980, it feels as if each decade has been more and more dangerous than the previous one. ‘It is still 90 seconds to midnight’, the editors at the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (the keepers of the Doomsday Clock) wrote in January. Midnight is Armageddon. In 1949, the clock sat at three minutes to midnight, and in 1980 it had retreated slightly from the precipice, back to seven minutes to midnight. By 2023, however, the clock’s hand had moved all the way up to ninety seconds to midnight, where it remains, the closest we have ever been to full-scale annihilation.

    This precarious situation is threatening to reach a tipping point in Europe today. To understand the dangerous possibilities that could be unleashed by the intensified provocations around Ukraine, we collaborated with No Cold War to produce briefing no. 14, NATO’s Actions in Ukraine Are More Dangerous than the Cuban Missile Crisis. Please read this text carefully and circulate it as widely as possible.

    For the past two years, Europe’s largest war since 1945 has been raging in Ukraine. The root cause of this war is the US-driven attempt to expand the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) into Ukraine. This violates the promises the West made to the Soviet Union during the end of the Cold War, such as that NATO would move ‘not one inch eastward’, as US Secretary of State James Baker assured Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev in 1990. Over the past decade, the Global North has repeatedly snubbed Russian requests for security guarantees. It was this disregard for Russian concerns that led to the outbreak of the conflict in 2014 and the war in 2022.

    Today, a nuclear-armed NATO and a nuclear-armed Russia are in direct conflict in Ukraine. Instead of taking steps to bring this war to an end, NATO has made several new announcements in recent months that threaten to escalate the situation into a still more serious conflict with the potential to spill beyond Ukraine’s borders. It is no exaggeration to say that this conflict has created the greatest threat to world peace since the Cuban Missile Crisis (1962).

    This extremely dangerous escalation confirms the correctness of the majority of US experts on Russia and Eastern Europe, who have long warned against the expansion of NATO into Eastern Europe. In 1997, George Kennan, the principal architect of US policy in the Cold War, said that this strategy is ‘the most fateful error of American policy in the entire post-Cold War era’. The Ukraine war and the dangers of further escalation fully affirm the seriousness of his warning.

    Elif Uras (Turkey), Kapital, 2009.

    How Is NATO Escalating the Conflict in Ukraine?

    The most dangerous recent developments in this conflict are the decisions by the US and Britain in May to authorise Ukraine to use weapons supplied by the two countries to conduct military attacks inside Russia. Ukraine’s government immediately used this in the most provocative way by attacking Russia’s ballistic missile early warning system. This warning system plays no role in the Ukraine war but is a central part of Russia’s defence system against strategic nuclear attack. In addition, the British government supplied Ukraine with Storm Shadow missiles that have a range of over 250 km (155 miles) and can hit targets not only on the battleground but far inside Russia. The use of NATO weapons to attack Russia risks an equivalent Russian counter-response, threatening to spread the war beyond Ukraine.

    This was followed by NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg’s June announcement that a NATO headquarter for operations in the Ukraine war had been created at the US military base in Wiesbaden, Germany, with 700 initial staff. On 7 June, French President Emmanuel Macron said that his government was working to ‘finalise a coalition’ of NATO countries willing to send troops to Ukraine to ‘train’ Ukrainian forces. This would place NATO forces directly in the war. As the Vietnam War and other conflicts have shown, such ‘trainers’ organise and direct fighting, thus becoming targets for attacks.

    Nadia Abu-Aitah (Switzerland), Breaking Free, 2021.

    Why Is Escalation in Ukraine More Dangerous than the Cuban Missile Crisis?

    The Cuban Missile Crisis was the product of an adventurist miscalculation by Soviet leadership that the US would tolerate the presence of Soviet nuclear missiles only 144 km from the nearest US shore and roughly 1,800 km from Washington. Such a deployment would have made it impossible for the US to defend against a nuclear strike and would have ‘levelled the playing field’, since the US already had such capabilities vis-à-vis the Soviet Union. The US, predictably, made it clear that this would not be tolerated and that it would prevent it by any means necessary, including nuclear war. With the Doomsday Clock at 12 minutes to midnight, the Soviet leadership realised its miscalculation and, after a few days of intense crisis, withdrew the missiles. This was followed by a relaxation of US-Soviet tensions, leading to the first Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (1963).

    No bullets flew between the US and the USSR in 1962. The Cuban Missile Crisis was an extremely dangerous short-term incident that could have ignited large-scale – including nuclear – war. However, unlike the Ukraine war, it did not flow from an already existing and intensifying dynamic of war by either the US or the USSR. Thus, while extremely dangerous, the situation could also be, and was, rapidly resolved.

    The situation in Ukraine, as well as the growing conflict around China, are more structurally dangerous. Direct confrontation is taking place between NATO and Russia, where the US just authorised direct military strikes (imagine if, during the 1962 crisis, Cuban forces armed and trained by the Soviet Union had carried out major military strikes in Florida). Meanwhile, the US is directly raising military tensions with China around Taiwan and the South China Sea, as well as in the Korean Peninsula. The US government understands that it cannot withstand erosion to its position of global primacy and rightly believes that it may lose its economic dominance to China. That is why it increasingly moves issues onto the military terrain, where it still maintains an advantage. The US position on Gaza is significantly determined by its understanding that it cannot afford a blow to its military supremacy, embodied in the regime that it controls in Israel.

    The US and its NATO partners are responsible for 74.3% of global military spending. Within the context of the US’s increasing drive for war and use of military means, the situation in Ukraine, and potentially around China, are, in reality, as dangerous, and potentially more dangerous, than the Cuban Missile Crisis.

    Tatiana Grinevich (Belarus), The River of Wishes, 2012.

    How Are the Warring Parties to Negotiate?

    Hours after Russian troops entered Ukraine, both sides began to talk about a drawdown of tensions. These negotiations developed in Belarus and Turkey before they were scuttled by NATO’s assurances to Ukraine of endless and bottomless support to ‘weaken’ Russia. If those early negotiations had developed, thousands of lives would have been spared. All such wars end in negotiations, which is why the sooner they could have happened, the better. This is a view that is now openly acknowledged by Ukrainians. Vadym Skibitsky, deputy head of Ukraine’s military intelligence, told The Economist that negotiations are on the horizon.

    For a long time now, the Russia-Ukraine frontline has not moved dramatically. In February 2024, the Chinese government released a twelve-point set of principles to guide a peace process. These points – including ‘abandoning the Cold War mentality’ – should have been seriously considered by the belligerent sides. But the NATO states simply ignored them. Several months later, a Ukraine-driven conference was held in Switzerland from 15–16 June, to which Russia was not invited and which ended with a communiqué that borrowed many of the Chinese proposals about nuclear safety, food security, and prisoner exchanges.

    Velislava Gecheva (Bulgaria), Homo photographicus, 2014.

    While a number of states – from Albania to Uruguay – signed the document, other countries that attended the meeting refused to sign on for a range of reasons, including their sense that the text did not take Russia’s security concerns seriously. Among the countries that did not sign are Armenia, Bahrain, Brazil, India, Indonesia, Jordan, Libya, Mauritius, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Thailand, and the United Arab Emirates. A few days before the Switzerland conference, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin stated his conditions for peace, which include a guarantee that Ukraine will not join NATO. This view is shared by those countries of the Global South that did not join the Switzerland statement.

    Both Russia and Ukraine are willing to negotiate. Why should the NATO states be allowed to prolong a war that threatens world peace? The upcoming NATO summit in Washington from 9–11 July must hear, loudly and clearly, that the world does not want its dangerous war or decadent militarism. The world’s peoples want to build bridges, not blow them up.

    Maxim Kantor (Russia), Two Versions of History, 1993.

    Briefing no. 14, a clear assessment of current dangers around the escalation in and around Ukraine, underscores the need, as Abdullah El Harif of the Workers’ Democratic Way party in Morocco and I wrote in the Bouficha Appeal Against the Preparations for War in 2020, for the peoples of the world to:

    • Stand against the warmongering of US imperialism, which seeks to impose dangerous wars on an already fragile planet.
    • Stand against the saturation of the world with weapons of all kinds, which inflame conflicts and often drive political processes toward endless wars.
    • Stand against the use of military power to prevent the social development of the peoples of the world.
    • Defend the right of countries to build their sovereignty and their dignity.

    Sensitive people around the world must make their voices heard on the streets and in the corridors of power to end this dangerous war, and indeed to set us on a path beyond capitalism’s world of unending wars.

    The post There Is No Such Thing as a Small Nuclear War first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Erik Bulatov (USSR), People in the Landscape, 1976.

    There was a time when calls for a nuclear-free Europe rang across the continent. It began with the Stockholm Appeal (1950), which opened with the powerful words ‘We demand the outlawing of atomic weapons as instruments of intimidation and mass murder of peoples’ and then deepened with the Appeal for European Nuclear Disarmament (1980), which issued the chilling warning ‘We are entering the most dangerous decade in human history’. Roughly 274 million people signed the Stockholm Appeal, including – as is often reported – the entire adult population of the Soviet Union. Yet, since the European appeal of 1980, it feels as if each decade has been more and more dangerous than the previous one. ‘It is still 90 seconds to midnight’, the editors at the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (the keepers of the Doomsday Clock) wrote in January. Midnight is Armageddon. In 1949, the clock sat at three minutes to midnight, and in 1980 it had retreated slightly from the precipice, back to seven minutes to midnight. By 2023, however, the clock’s hand had moved all the way up to ninety seconds to midnight, where it remains, the closest we have ever been to full-scale annihilation.

    This precarious situation is threatening to reach a tipping point in Europe today. To understand the dangerous possibilities that could be unleashed by the intensified provocations around Ukraine, we collaborated with No Cold War to produce briefing no. 14, NATO’s Actions in Ukraine Are More Dangerous than the Cuban Missile Crisis. Please read this text carefully and circulate it as widely as possible.

    For the past two years, Europe’s largest war since 1945 has been raging in Ukraine. The root cause of this war is the US-driven attempt to expand the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) into Ukraine. This violates the promises the West made to the Soviet Union during the end of the Cold War, such as that NATO would move ‘not one inch eastward’, as US Secretary of State James Baker assured Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev in 1990. Over the past decade, the Global North has repeatedly snubbed Russian requests for security guarantees. It was this disregard for Russian concerns that led to the outbreak of the conflict in 2014 and the war in 2022.

    Today, a nuclear-armed NATO and a nuclear-armed Russia are in direct conflict in Ukraine. Instead of taking steps to bring this war to an end, NATO has made several new announcements in recent months that threaten to escalate the situation into a still more serious conflict with the potential to spill beyond Ukraine’s borders. It is no exaggeration to say that this conflict has created the greatest threat to world peace since the Cuban Missile Crisis (1962).

    This extremely dangerous escalation confirms the correctness of the majority of US experts on Russia and Eastern Europe, who have long warned against the expansion of NATO into Eastern Europe. In 1997, George Kennan, the principal architect of US policy in the Cold War, said that this strategy is ‘the most fateful error of American policy in the entire post-Cold War era’. The Ukraine war and the dangers of further escalation fully affirm the seriousness of his warning.

    Elif Uras (Turkey), Kapital, 2009.

    How Is NATO Escalating the Conflict in Ukraine?

    The most dangerous recent developments in this conflict are the decisions by the US and Britain in May to authorise Ukraine to use weapons supplied by the two countries to conduct military attacks inside Russia. Ukraine’s government immediately used this in the most provocative way by attacking Russia’s ballistic missile early warning system. This warning system plays no role in the Ukraine war but is a central part of Russia’s defence system against strategic nuclear attack. In addition, the British government supplied Ukraine with Storm Shadow missiles that have a range of over 250 km (155 miles) and can hit targets not only on the battleground but far inside Russia. The use of NATO weapons to attack Russia risks an equivalent Russian counter-response, threatening to spread the war beyond Ukraine.

    This was followed by NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg’s June announcement that a NATO headquarter for operations in the Ukraine war had been created at the US military base in Wiesbaden, Germany, with 700 initial staff. On 7 June, French President Emmanuel Macron said that his government was working to ‘finalise a coalition’ of NATO countries willing to send troops to Ukraine to ‘train’ Ukrainian forces. This would place NATO forces directly in the war. As the Vietnam War and other conflicts have shown, such ‘trainers’ organise and direct fighting, thus becoming targets for attacks.

    Nadia Abu-Aitah (Switzerland), Breaking Free, 2021.

    Why Is Escalation in Ukraine More Dangerous than the Cuban Missile Crisis?

    The Cuban Missile Crisis was the product of an adventurist miscalculation by Soviet leadership that the US would tolerate the presence of Soviet nuclear missiles only 144 km from the nearest US shore and roughly 1,800 km from Washington. Such a deployment would have made it impossible for the US to defend against a nuclear strike and would have ‘levelled the playing field’, since the US already had such capabilities vis-à-vis the Soviet Union. The US, predictably, made it clear that this would not be tolerated and that it would prevent it by any means necessary, including nuclear war. With the Doomsday Clock at 12 minutes to midnight, the Soviet leadership realised its miscalculation and, after a few days of intense crisis, withdrew the missiles. This was followed by a relaxation of US-Soviet tensions, leading to the first Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (1963).

    No bullets flew between the US and the USSR in 1962. The Cuban Missile Crisis was an extremely dangerous short-term incident that could have ignited large-scale – including nuclear – war. However, unlike the Ukraine war, it did not flow from an already existing and intensifying dynamic of war by either the US or the USSR. Thus, while extremely dangerous, the situation could also be, and was, rapidly resolved.

    The situation in Ukraine, as well as the growing conflict around China, are more structurally dangerous. Direct confrontation is taking place between NATO and Russia, where the US just authorised direct military strikes (imagine if, during the 1962 crisis, Cuban forces armed and trained by the Soviet Union had carried out major military strikes in Florida). Meanwhile, the US is directly raising military tensions with China around Taiwan and the South China Sea, as well as in the Korean Peninsula. The US government understands that it cannot withstand erosion to its position of global primacy and rightly believes that it may lose its economic dominance to China. That is why it increasingly moves issues onto the military terrain, where it still maintains an advantage. The US position on Gaza is significantly determined by its understanding that it cannot afford a blow to its military supremacy, embodied in the regime that it controls in Israel.

    The US and its NATO partners are responsible for 74.3% of global military spending. Within the context of the US’s increasing drive for war and use of military means, the situation in Ukraine, and potentially around China, are, in reality, as dangerous, and potentially more dangerous, than the Cuban Missile Crisis.

    Tatiana Grinevich (Belarus), The River of Wishes, 2012.

    How Are the Warring Parties to Negotiate?

    Hours after Russian troops entered Ukraine, both sides began to talk about a drawdown of tensions. These negotiations developed in Belarus and Turkey before they were scuttled by NATO’s assurances to Ukraine of endless and bottomless support to ‘weaken’ Russia. If those early negotiations had developed, thousands of lives would have been spared. All such wars end in negotiations, which is why the sooner they could have happened, the better. This is a view that is now openly acknowledged by Ukrainians. Vadym Skibitsky, deputy head of Ukraine’s military intelligence, told The Economist that negotiations are on the horizon.

    For a long time now, the Russia-Ukraine frontline has not moved dramatically. In February 2024, the Chinese government released a twelve-point set of principles to guide a peace process. These points – including ‘abandoning the Cold War mentality’ – should have been seriously considered by the belligerent sides. But the NATO states simply ignored them. Several months later, a Ukraine-driven conference was held in Switzerland from 15–16 June, to which Russia was not invited and which ended with a communiqué that borrowed many of the Chinese proposals about nuclear safety, food security, and prisoner exchanges.

    Velislava Gecheva (Bulgaria), Homo photographicus, 2014.

    While a number of states – from Albania to Uruguay – signed the document, other countries that attended the meeting refused to sign on for a range of reasons, including their sense that the text did not take Russia’s security concerns seriously. Among the countries that did not sign are Armenia, Bahrain, Brazil, India, Indonesia, Jordan, Libya, Mauritius, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Thailand, and the United Arab Emirates. A few days before the Switzerland conference, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin stated his conditions for peace, which include a guarantee that Ukraine will not join NATO. This view is shared by those countries of the Global South that did not join the Switzerland statement.

    Both Russia and Ukraine are willing to negotiate. Why should the NATO states be allowed to prolong a war that threatens world peace? The upcoming NATO summit in Washington from 9–11 July must hear, loudly and clearly, that the world does not want its dangerous war or decadent militarism. The world’s peoples want to build bridges, not blow them up.

    Maxim Kantor (Russia), Two Versions of History, 1993.

    Briefing no. 14, a clear assessment of current dangers around the escalation in and around Ukraine, underscores the need, as Abdullah El Harif of the Workers’ Democratic Way party in Morocco and I wrote in the Bouficha Appeal Against the Preparations for War in 2020, for the peoples of the world to:

    • Stand against the warmongering of US imperialism, which seeks to impose dangerous wars on an already fragile planet.
    • Stand against the saturation of the world with weapons of all kinds, which inflame conflicts and often drive political processes toward endless wars.
    • Stand against the use of military power to prevent the social development of the peoples of the world.
    • Defend the right of countries to build their sovereignty and their dignity.

    Sensitive people around the world must make their voices heard on the streets and in the corridors of power to end this dangerous war, and indeed to set us on a path beyond capitalism’s world of unending wars.

    The post There Is No Such Thing as a Small Nuclear War first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Berlin, June 26, 2024 – The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) strongly condemns the Russian foreign ministry’s Tuesday decision to block access to 81 European media outlets in Russia in response to the EU’s recent ban on four pro-Kremlin media outlets. 

    “Russian authorities’ blocking of 81 European media outlets betrays their deep-seated fear of truthful reporting,” said Gulnoza Said, CPJ’s Europe and Central Asia program coordinator, in New York. “Moscow must immediately stop restricting Russians’ access to information and cease its attempts to stifle the flow of news that deviates from the official line.”

    The Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ statement included 81 media outlets from 25 of the 27 EU member countries, excluding Croatia and Luxembourg,U.S. Congress-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) reported. Among those listed were television and radio companies, newspapers, magazines, and online media including Germany’s Der Spiegel and Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, France’s Le Monde and Libération, Spain’s El País, Italy’s La Stampa and La Repubblica, the Agence France-Presse news agency, Politico and several other media outlets.

    “The Russian Federation has repeatedly warned at various levels that politically motivated harassment of domestic journalists and unjustified bans on Russian media in the EU will not go unanswered,” the foreign ministry’s June 25 statement said, adding that the targeted media were spreading “false information” about Russia’s war in Ukraine.

    On May 17, the European Union announced it would suspend the “broadcasting activities” of the state-run RIA Novosti news agency, the pro-government newspapers Izvestia and Rossiyskaya Gazeta, and the Prague-based news website Voice of Europe, saying that those outlets were “under the permanent direct or indirect control of the leadership of the Russian Federation, and have been essential and instrumental in bringing forward and supporting Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine.” The decision went into effect on June 25.

    After Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the EU banned Russian state-controlled media outlets Russia Today (RT) and Sputnik on similar grounds and Russian authorities have forced a number of foreign journalists to leave the country either by revoking their accreditation or refusing to renew their visas.

    On June 26, Russia’s foreign ministry responded to Austria’s recent decision to revoke the accreditation of Arina Davidyan, the Vienna-based head of the Russian state news agency TASS, by ordering Carola Schneider, head of the Moscow bureau of Austrian public broadcaster ORF, to “hand over her accreditation” and leave Russia “in the near future.”

    CPJ emailed the Russian Foreign Ministry for comment on the media bans, but did not receive any response. 


    This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • The recent European Parliament elections shocked the mainstream European parties and their international friends and allies.

    The 720-member European legislature has largely been the handmaiden for the technocrats in Brussels, who craft the economic and social direction of the European Union. Since its inception, the EU has presented a stable, reliable face of capitalist rule organized around market fundamentalism, minimizing market intervention, and slowing, even reversing, the growth of the public sector. The broad right-center and left-center — traditional pro-business, liberal, and social democratic parties — have united in ensuring that agenda.

    With the demoralization or decline of the anti-capitalist left, there has been little resistance mounted to the forward march of the EU program.

    Into the breach left by a marginal or now timid anti-capitalist left, stepped a new wave of right-wing populists preparing to exploit the growing mass dissatisfaction with twenty-first-century capitalism and its political custodians. The economic setbacks, stagnant or declining standards of living, inadequate social and employment security, inequality, social strife, and displacement incurred by European workers cried out for political expression. Right opportunists gladly answered these calls with hollow nationalism, ill-aimed blaming and shaming, and cultural anti-elitism.

    Throughout Europe, new and refashioned parties like Austria’s Freedom Party, France’s National Rally, Alternative for Germany, Hungary’s Fidesz Party, Italy’s Lega and Brothers for Italy, Netherland’s Party for Freedom, Spain’s Vox, and many others, vie to fill the radical oppositional space evacuated or neglected by the anti-capitalist left.

    Where the European Communist Parties could always count on a far more robust protest vote beyond their core membership, the protest vote now goes to the populist right by default.

    To stem the right-populist tide, various strategists devised new alliances, power-sharing agreements, even technocratic governments. New “left” populist parties — Syriza, PODEMOS, France Insoumise — sprung up to draw support from the same mass anger and frustration exploited by the populist right.

    But none of these supposed answers to right-wing populism have succeeded in containing or reversing its advance. The mid-June European parliamentary elections have, in many ways, marked a new high water for right-populism. In both France and Germany — the two anchors for the Eurozone project — the right has made spectacular gains.

    Most dramatically, the French National Rally (RN) — the historic party of the Le Pen family — won more than double the vote (31+%) of Macron’s ruling party. In an act of frustration and, perhaps, desperation, Macron called for early national elections at the end of June. He, no doubt, expects to cry for a “united front” against the threat of right-wing governance, as he has successfully done in the past. He assumes that his party and RN will win in the first round and the left will have no choice but to support him in the second-round run-off.

    Meanwhile, Macron’s approval rate in France has reached an all-time low of 5.5%. And he has begun his campaign by attacking both the left and right (“the fever of extremes”) — hardly a formula for drawing the left in a presumed second round of voting.

    But the soft leftist parties– France Insoumise, the Communist Party, the Socialist, and the Greens– have cobbled together their own shaky “united front” to make an impact in the first round. The interesting question would be whether Macron’s party would return the favor and support this effort in a second round against RN. I doubt they would. Bourgeois “solidarity” only goes so far.

    In Germany, the hard right, semi-populist Alternative for Germany (AfD) party became the second largest party behind the Christian Democrats, garnering more votes than any of the individual parties in the governing coalition. The war-crazed Green Party took an especially hard hit in this election, losing nine seats.

    While AfD has done less than RN to attempt to clean its ownership of fascistic detritus, it nonetheless draws a great deal of support from working-class protest voters. Germany’s ARD polling found that “a full 44% voted for the AfD out of disappointment at other parties.”

    And that is how much of the electoral support for the populist right should be understood. The traditional right has long drawn its support from the bourgeoisie, small businesses, the professional strata: those protecting their status in a capitalist society. The populist right, taking that approach a step further — through nostalgia, misplaced blame, false anti-elitism, and the bogus promise of life-altering change — appeals to the masses: those alienated from a capitalist society. Unless one wants to cynically dismiss the people for their bad choices or pompously scold them for their bad judgment, you must conclude that the existing left parties have failed the masses, lost their credibility, and surrendered leadership on the popular issues, allowing right-populism to fill the breach.

    Can one imagine Le Pen or even Macron winning the votes of France’s workers from the post-war Communist Party of Thorez, Duclos, and Rochet, the party esteemed for its role against fascism, and the party promising socialism?

    Can one imagine Berlusconi, Lega, the Five Star Movement, Brothers of Italy drawing the Italian working class away from the Communist Party of Togliatti, the party that led the anti-fascist struggle, the party that offered Italian workers a dignified struggle against capital?

    Can one imagine the AfD flourishing in the GDR, that part of Germany that today supplies the greatest number of votes to the AfD?

    They do so today because the French Communist Party has abandoned its historic role as the champion of the working class and neither listens to workers nor puts their interests at the top of its agenda.

    The Italian party dissolved itself thirty-five years ago and paved the way for decades of political farce and faux populism in Italian politics.

    And the capitalist pillage of the former socialist German Democratic Republic planted the seeds of despair that grew into the AfD.

    But it doesn’t have to be this way. The untold story of the European parliamentary election reveals a world of possibility.

    Purposely overlooked by the media were the impressive left gains in Greece and Germany. In both cases, working-class partisanship, principled socialism, and militant anti-imperialism and the promise of peace attracted voters. Where the weak-tea, decaffeinated left campaigned on fear of the right and defense of the European Union’s foreign policy, the Greek Communist Party and a new, radical German party surprised observers with significant gains.

    The Greek Communist Party (KKE) nearly doubled its percentage of the vote over the previous European parliamentary election held in 2019. The results substantially exceeded last year’s parliamentary percentages as well. Its strength was shown especially in Attika and urban and working-class areas. These gains were made because of the principled stance of KKE and in spite of swimming against the EU tide of capitalism and war shared by all the other parties. KKE shows that defeating right-wing populism is possible by giving real, bold, and radical answers to the despair of working people.

    In Germany, the left wing of the Die Linke Party — the working class-oriented, anti-imperialist wing — finally broke away and established a new party openly opposed to the European Union agenda, its institutionalized capitalism, and its war policies. Led by the independent-minded Sara Wagenknecht, the new party was quickly organized five months ago, yet drew 6.2% of the vote in the European parliamentary elections. The persistently compromising, centrist-orienting Die Linke was trounced, reduced to 2.7% of the vote. ARD polls show that the new party drew 400,000 votes from Die Linke, 500,000 votes from the Social Democrats, and 140,000 votes from the AfD. In some parts of Eastern Germany, the new party — yet to create a sustainable name — drew as much as 15% of the vote.

    Perhaps better than any result, the new party delivered a shocking blow to the idea that one must stop the populist right by rallying to the center in defense of a moribund capitalism. As Lenin reminds us: “Two questions now take precedence over all other political questions — the question of bread and the question of peace.” Wagenknecht’s new party gave the questions precedence, attacking Germany’s economic malaise and inflation, as well as the deadly war in Ukraine. We should follow the development of the new party closely.

    By attending to working-class interests, the Austrian Communist Party and the Workers’ Party of Belgium also made gains against the right-populist wave.

    It should be clear that the hollow tactic of opposing right-populism by circling the wagons around mainstream centrist parties is proving to be bankrupt. The notion that voters can be shepherded away from populist poseurs with a “united front against the bad guys” approach has failed to win people from a desperate need for bread and peace.

    These examples show a principled, proven approach to the problem of the populist-right, an approach that neither resorts to a retreat to the center or a bogus, unsustainable, ineffective “united front.” The thirst for change is there.

    The post Lessons of the European Elections first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Agnieszkaholland greenborder

    The new film Green Border, from acclaimed Polish director Agnieszka Holland, dramatizes the humanitarian crisis facing millions of migrants seeking refuge in Europe. It tells the true story of how refugees from the Middle East and Africa became trapped in 2021 at the so-called green border between Poland and Belarus, through the perspectives of refugees, border guards and refugee rights activists. “Fear and the hate are so easy to be spread when our borders or our comfort is attacked by the challenge of newcomers,” warns Holland, who connects the crisis depicted in the film to Europe’s growing anti-migration political atmosphere. “Frankly, it is an incredible mess right now. And it’s going in a very dangerous direction,” she says. Green Border opens today in New York and nationwide next Friday.


    This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Iranian-Swedish citizen Saeed Azizi also exchanged for Hamid Noury, who was serving life in Sweden for role in death of political prisoners

    Johan Floderus, the Swedish EU diplomat held in captivity for two years in Iran, has been freed and has arrived home, the Swedish prime minister has announcedgreeted by the prime minister and his delighted and relieved family and friends.

    Ulf Kristersson said on Saturday that the Iranian lifer Hamid Noury was being exchanged for Johan Floderus and the Iranian-Swedish citizen Saeed Azizi. He arrived back in Sweden later that evening.

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • Eighty years after countless people gave their lives liberating Europe, fascism makes a comeback in the recent European elections. 

    In this week’s Gaslit Nation, Terrell Starr of the essential Black Diplomats Podcast and Substack joins Andrea to discuss the recent European elections and what they mean for the global democratic alliance, including our own elections in the U.S. Reporting from L’viv, Terrell shares what life is like in Ukraine after MAGA Mike Johnson deliberately delayed Ukraine aid for six critical months. Andrea updates Terrell on the latest in the Trump trial, and they discuss what it means for Ukrainians watching a reality TV horror show of an election in the U.S. that their very democracy depends on. 

    This week’s bonus show out Saturday morning, exclusive to subscribers at the Truth-teller ($5/month) and higher on Patreon, is a discussion of why the Democrats don’t have their own Project 2025. So Gaslit Nation makes one, with a little help from Elizabeth Warren’s plans! We also discuss the toxic industrial complex of far-right funded fake progressives who are paid trolls of foreign enemies/dictatorships like Russia and Iran and anti-democracy American oligarchs like Peter Thiel, bought off to divide and conquer the Left. 

    Subscribe at Patreon.com/Gaslit to hear all bonus shows, get all episodes ad free, invites to exclusive events, and more! Thank you to everyone who supports the show – we could not make Gaslit Nation without you! Here are some of the exciting events we have coming up for our Patreon community: 

    Investigative Journalist Craig Unger Live-Taping – June 25th 12pm ET: 

    • June 25th is George Orwell’s birthday! Come celebrate with us at a live taping of Gaslit Nation, featuring another fearless journalist, Craig Unger, the author of several bestselling books: House of Trump, House of Putin; House of Bush, House of Saud; and American Kompromat: How the KGB Cultivated Donald Trump, and Related Tales of Sex, Greed, Power, and Treachery (which features his reporting on Jeffrey Epstein’s pedophile global crime syndicate). Joining the live-taping will be Russian mafia expert Olga Lautman and European analyst Monique Camarra of Kremlin File. Drop your questions in the chat! Be sure to subscribe at the Truth-teller tier ($5/month) or higher to get your ticket on Patreon.com/Gaslit. A zoom link will be sent out the morning of the event. Thank you to everyone who supports the show! 

    Cult Expert Dr. Janja Lalich Live-Taping – July 15 8pm ET

    • July 15th kicks off the Republican National Convention/Hitler rally in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. To help us cope with the mainstream media, especially the New York Times, continuing to normalize Trump and his MAGA cult, we’re producing a live taping with cult expert Dr. Janja Lalich. Bring your questions about how to navitage this perilous time of rampant disinformation and manipulation, learn the signs of cult grooming, and how to help loved ones who have fallen victim. This will be Dr. Lalich’s second time on the show. You can listen to the interview with her from April 2022 here. Subscribe at the Truth-teller tier ($5/month) or higher to get your ticket on Patreon.com/Gaslit. A zoom link will be sent out the morning of the event. Thank you to everyone who supports the show! 

    In the Shadow of Stalin Book Launch – September 

    • Gaslit Nation will host a live taping at a book launch in New York City for In the Shadow of Stalin, the graphic novel adaptation of Mr. Jones. It includes scenes that didn’t make it into the final cut of the film, or it would have been three hours long! The evening will include a special meet-up just for Patreon supporters. We look forward to sharing more details as we get closer. If you want a book event/live taping of Gaslit Nation in your town or city, let us know! 

    Indivisible x Gaslit Nation Phonebank Party! – June 20th – NEW TIME 7pm ET

    • Open to all, Gaslit Nation and Indivisible are kicking things off early this year, really early! When there’s such a thing as Project 2025, there’s no time to waste. Come join us for our first phone bank party of the season, as we make calls to our fellow citizens in Republican hostage states, to refuse to abandon those on the frontlines of American authoritarianism, and to plant seeds of change. We’re going in! 

    RSVP here to join us! https://www.mobilize.us/indivisible/event/628701/

    Show Notes:

    Black Diplomats on Substack https://terrellstarr.substack.com/

    Opening Clip: Breaking down the far-right wins in European elections, Macron’s call for election https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=khC9zAyNdZI

    Closing Clip: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky shared an emotional moment with an American D-Day veteran during a ceremony in Normandy, France, commemorating the 80th anniversary of the historic landing. https://x.com/Newsweek/status/1798831270480552322

    Ivan Ilyin, Putin’s Philosopher of Russian Fascism https://www.nybooks.com/online/2018/03/16/ivan-ilyin-putins-philosopher-of-russian-fascism/

     


    This content originally appeared on Gaslit Nation and was authored by Andrea Chalupa.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.


  • This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Seg1 eu elections option 1

    Residents in all 27 countries of the European Union went to the polls this weekend to vote for the European Parliament, which resulted in a surge of support for far-right parties across much of the continent while many liberal and Green parties stumbled. Far-right parties did especially well in Italy, Germany and France, prompting French President Emmanuel Macron to dissolve the National Assembly and call snap elections. Lawmakers in the European Parliament can veto and shape laws, though they cannot introduce them. They also set the EU’s budget and approve the selection of the European Commission president — a powerful role currently held by Ursula von der Leyen of the center-right European People’s Party, which remains the strongest bloc. For more on European politics, we speak with Mehreen Khan, the economics editor at The Times of London and a former Brussels and EU correspondent for the Financial Times. Khan says that while some observers celebrated the relative strength of mainstream conservative parties, that is more a reflection of how successful racist, nationalist parties have been in reshaping the continent’s politics, particularly on immigration. “These formerly center-right parties are now definitely occupying territory that we used to call that of the far right,” she says.


    This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • MP Anthony Housefather speaks in a committee hearing in May 2024.

    Chinese (Simplified)EnglishFrenchGermanItalianPortugueseRussianSpanish

    Written by: Marthad Umucyaba

    Canadian parliament’s “Justice and Human Rights” committee hearings (1, 2, 3) in May exposed politicians’ desperation to crack down on the rebelling pro-Palestine student movement. Timing is key, because Canadian politicians are trying to do this before the rigged, NATO-controlled international legal system gets used against them. The main tools will be the forced invocation of the hate crimes provision of the Criminal Code, using the pro-Israeli IHRA definition of “anti-semitism”, and a push to force the universities to adopt the IHRA definition of “anti-semitism” to “encourage” expulsions.

    The leading cast of politicians trying to jail the students, before they get jailed by the international courts themselves, include infamous Zionist politicians Anthony Housefather, Melissa Lantsman, and Marco Mendicino. The most extreme ensemble of Zionist organisations were assembled to establish the pretext, including B’nai Brith, the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, and Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center. A noted feature of the “Justice and Human Rights” Committee hearings was the extreme push to make anti-Zionism and the refusal to acknowledge or recognise “Israel” into a “criminal offence” (May 23, 8:56:15-8:57:35).

    A noted demand by the extreme Zionists was for “no more Laith Marouf” (May 23, 8:40:06-8:40:16). The Canada Files has a regular series co-hosted by Aidan Jonah and Free Palestine TV’s Executive Director, Laith Marouf, titled “Canada and Palestine: The War on Zionism”.

    The “recommendations”

    The politicians at the centre of the “Justice and Human Rights” committee, namely MPs Anthony Housefather and Melissa Lantsman, were tailoring the committee witness invites to only include Zionists and their supporters. No pro-Palestinian guests were invited. There were “neutral” guests, such as the Presidents of the University of Toronto, McGill University (with such a “neutral” President who is begging the police to crack down on their encampment), University of British Columbia, and Concordia University, during the May 27 meeting, in order to make sure that the Presidents were still “filing injunctions” against the encampments, accusing pro-Palestinian protesters of “anti-semitism”, and suspending and expelling protesting students to the Zionist MPs’ satisfaction.

    Naturally, due to the clear bias of the “Justice and Human Rights” committee, all of the proposals were pro-colonial proposals for state repression. Some of the recommendations included withholding federal funds for any university that refuses to adopt the IHRA definition for anti-semitism, using the pro-Israel IHRA definition to define a hate crime, declaring opposition to the existence of Israel as “illegal hate speech”, and registering Samidoun – an organization that organizes in solidarity with Palestinian prisoners – as a terrorist organisation, along with the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps – a military division of the Iranian government – which would lead to the inevitable unfair persecution of Iranian immigrants. The University of Toronto, notably, declared (May 27, 12:47:38-12:48:00) they wouldn’t adopt the IHRA definition, knowing they’re the most endowed University in Canada, which means they couldn’t be blackmailed using federal funding.

    Anthony Housefather and Melissa Lantsman’s Zionism and racism

    In all three meetings, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion programs were mentioned. All of the Zionists interviewed about this aspect wanted their white supremacist project in the Middle East to be a “protected subject”. Melissa Lantsman, as well as the person she interviewed, Dr. Ted Rosenberg, the vocal Zionist ex-medical professor, also wanted the end of affirmative action programs, particularly in the medical field, under the false pretext that affirmative action programs in Canada were allowing visible minorities, such as Arab Muslims, Palestinians, Muslim Africans, and the indigenous to enter the Medical programs without meeting the regular requirements (May 23, 10:11:45-10:14:58). This is a racist dog whistle blown by the Conservative party when they declare their tacit intent to entrench racial caste in the job market.

    The truth is that before affirmative action, visible minorities and Indigenous medical student applicants were passed over on applications even when they met the requirements. Even currently, there is no indication that affirmative action has even been effective at diversifying the demographics of doctors in Canada, despite the incentives in federal funding granted to medical schools that accept minorities who meet the requirements. This “call” to end affirmative action is a clear demonstration of the racist nature of the Zionist camp.

    MP Marco Mendicino and MP Anthony Housefather were also shameless in their explicit racism towards the Palestinians. As examples of “anti-semitism”, Mendicino and Housefather repeatedly accused Hamas and the rest of the Palestinian resistance of raping prisoners and committing mass rape on the October 7th Al-Aqsa Flood – a narrative debunked by Electronic Intifada and the Grayzone – with no evidence presented. MPs Mendicino and Housefather then repeatedly condemned anyone who refused to accept the baseless accusation in every meeting, and Melissa Lantsman, showcasing her disdain for international law, repeatedly denied the Palestinians’ right to self-defence against Israeli aggression (May 27, 12:42:45-12:43:13).

    Moreover, MPs Mendicino, Housefather, and even Lantsman never once mentioned the documented sexual violence by IDF soldiers against Palestinians or even their sexual violence against fellow IDF soldiers, which has been reported regularly by the United Nations. According to them, the Arabs must get the lynch mob, regardless of whether there is evidence or not, while the White European Jews have the right to conquest of Palestinian women without reserve, as is believed by prominent Israeli Rabbi, Colonel Eyal Karim.

    Analysing the “rising anti-semitism”

    The two categories of events that are highlighted to mention a “rise in anti-semitism” are the alleged bigoted statements by protesters and the alleged increase in hate crimes. One of these recent ‘hate crimes’ was immediately blamed on Muslim immigrants with no evidence by Premier of Ontario Doug Ford. It should also be noted that the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) was infamous for initiating false flags during the war of aggression against Afghanistan in order to justify the continued occupation. Moreover, the alleged bigoted statements came from anecdotal testimonies of the witnesses without an alleged perpetrator being mentioned.

    The statistics from the three committee meetings, essentially suspect due to the known phenomenon of the RCMP manufacturing a narrative in Canada to suit geopolitical goals, belie the real persecution of the Muslim population in the country. Muslims in Canada catch unfair flack for their supposed consistent anti-semitism problem.

    The real consistent anti-semitism comes from elsewhere. Look towards Israel’s carpet-bombing campaigns, the illegal settlement activities, and the colonial imposed state on the Indigenous Semites in the region. Israel itself is above all anti-Semitic. That’s the irony of making “anti-Zionism” a criminal offence due to it being “anti-Semitic”. It’s an inherent contradiction.

    What’s next?

    “We, hopefully, together will find a way to wrest our displeasure with the ICC because if they’ll do this to Israel, we’re next. This group tried to come after our soldiers…yeah, you can clap all you want to! [addressing anti-Israel spectators] They tried to come after our soldiers in Afghanistan but reason prevailed. So, at the end of the day here, what I hope to happen is that we level sanctions against the ICC for this outrage to not only help our friends in Israel but protect ourselves over time.”

    A word of congratulations is in order to the reader, if they either think that Hamas was justified in launching Operation Al-Aqsa Flood on October 7, if they don’t recognise Israel, or even if the reader simply believes that Israel is committing war crimes in the Gaza strip. You, in Canada, have been made into an enemy of the state, because you oppose your colonial state’s support for the Israeli colonial state. You are now an enemy of NATO, the colonial state of Canada, and the war criminals at the helm of the Canadian state apparatus.

    The ultimate reason, and the most simple, is that there is now a battle to decide:

    • whether you will relent, stop protesting, and allow the state to consolidate itself as a defensive measure against any future international prosecutions,

    • whether you will get arrested as a political prisoner first, or;

    • whether the politicians will ultimately have to wear the cuffs in the face of public pressure they were unable to clamp down on.

    Israel’s genocide is a turning point in the illusion of western democracy and the ‘rules based’ international (white supremacist) order. The BRICS nations have skilfully used what was once a completely rigged international system against the NATO axis. And it will be a debilitating blow to the system whether the courts pass a fair judgement on Israel’s genocide or not. The insistence on NATO to continue its ethnic cleansing plan despite the clearly criminal implications, and the fact that the trap has been well prepared and set up by the regional enemies in the Axis of Resistance for a long time, means they are now caught in a situation where NATO states will have to drop the democratic pretence internally, in order to stand any chance of survival.

    Will you now, made to be an enemy of the state, understand the race against time and the historical significance of your struggle? Do you now understand that it’s either you going to jail or them? If so, then congratulations are in order once again. You are on the cusp of making history in a way that your enemies fear most:

    “We’re told…that students are just expressing their right to free speech, venting their moral outrage…I’d like to remind them that after World War One, German students were also outraged by injustice and poverty. Russian students were outraged by the exploitation of workers. Chinese students were outraged by authority during the cultural revolution, and the Graduates…the…Khmer Rouge, no less, were outraged by capitalism and Western colonialism. Where did this end? Now the students are outraged by Zionism.”

    • Dr. Ted Rosenberg, resigned Zionist professor, May 23 “Justice and Human Rights” Committee Meeting (9:39:36-9:40:10)


    Editor’s note: The Canada Files is the country’s only news outlet focused on Canadian foreign policy. We’ve provided critical investigations & hard-hitting analysis on Canadian foreign policy since 2019, and need your support.
     
    Please consider joining 83 consistent financial supporters, in setting up a monthly or annual donation through Donorbox.


    Marthad Shingiro Umucyaba (formerly referred to as Christian Shingiro) is a Rwandan-born naturalized Canadian expat. He is known for his participation in Communist/anti-imperialist national and international politics and is the radio show host of The Socially Radical Guitarist.

    He is also a freelance web developer in Hong Kong, China, striving to provide “Socially Radical Web Design at a socially reasonable price”.


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    This post was originally published on Articles – The Canada Files.

  • Logo of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Source: Creative Commons

    Chinese (Simplified)EnglishFrenchGermanItalianPortugueseRussianSpanish

    Written by: Marthad Umucyaba

    The Russian Embassy in Canada has disclosed new information to The Canada Files about policy meant to support Ukrainians who want to avoid fighting for the Nazi Ukrainian government. This comes as the prospect of Ukraine being fully annexed becomes more likely, since gains for the Russian Army increase by the day.

    The government of Ukraine has, in response, ordered all of their consulates to deny services to Ukrainian service age males as a coercion tactic to repatriate them back to the country for mobilisation to the front line. They have also requested and insisted on allied NATO nations to cooperate in aiding forced repatriation of Ukrainians to the front line to fight Russia. Some NATO nations have cooperated, including Poland.

    According to the Russian Embassy in Canada, Ukrainians wishing to avoid combat can head straight to Russia and apply for citizenship. There are also services available not just to Ukrainians, but to all foreign nationals in general to facilitate the move to Russia. A recent Human Rights report was also released by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation exposing the hypocrisy on “human rights” on the part of NATO states, including Canada in particular.

    Current Policy towards Ukrainian Refugees

    Via email, The Russian Embassy in Canada explained that since a July 2022 decree, #440, Ukrainians are eligible to apply for Russian citizenship in Russia proper. The process of applying for Russian citizenship for Ukrainians is not available at the consulates or the embassies. However, there are other services available that can be accessed by any foreign national, regardless of nationality, to help facilitate a move to Russia.

    Consular Services Available

    Consular services are available for verification of documents, regular visa services, and police checks. There are also specific services to help facilitate the move to Russia if due to the policy of the country the embassy is in, there is a genuine fear of forced repatriation to Ukraine. For example, Ukrainians who were born in the Donbass, Kherson, Crimea, or Zaporozhye, and reside abroad, can now verify their documents through the Russian embassy. They’ll be able to use those documents to apply for Russian citizenship when they make the move back to Russia.

    For Ukrainians seeking to avoid the conflict with Russia, and are concerned about being forcefully repatriated, the embassy’s recommendation is to contact the nearest Russian consulate or embassy to see what services are available, depending on that person’s particular situation.

    Russian citizenship in contrast to deteriorating “human rights” in the West

    Russia released a report on the human rights situation in “certain countries”, namely, the NATO states and their anti-Russian peripheries. Canada was of course included in the list, and just one example of the contrast between the Russian government and the Ukrainian government and its supporters was made clear with the human rights issues that the report emphasises. It also, in many ways, brings to light the root causes of the Russian Special Military Operation, NATO’s expansive nature, and NATO’s Nazi origins.

    Russia cited, among many past and present white supremacist and Nazi-esque abuses of the Canadian government, the failure on the part of Canada to respect Indigenous language rights. The report paid particular attention to the fact that in the Northwest Territories, in Nunavut, and in the Yukon, Inuktitut, the lingua franca of the indigenous nations there, is only taught up until grade five, despite a guarantee of the right to be educated through secondary and through post-secondary in that language.

    Russia describes itself as a multi-national nation. The regional languages of all of the nations that make up the federation are taught from primary school through post-secondary. In fact, one of the reasons that Russia decided to annex Crimea and recognise the Donetsk Peoples’ Republic and Luhansk Peoples’ Republic was legislation on the part of Ukraine that infringed on Russian language rights.

    The reader should compare and contrast that to a nation like Canada, that poisoned (and continues to poison) the water supply of Indigenous nations and brutally abused and killed children for speaking their native language in residential schools, and decide for themselves which country actually believes in the “human rights” concept.

    Make the Call

    This article assumes that for the Ukrainian reading it, they’re residing in a NATO country and not a die-hard Banderite supportive of the current Ukrainian government. It’s safe assumption that all of the die-hard Banderites are already in Ukraine, or have already died fighting for Bandera, and that any country outside of the NATO periphery will not forcefully repatriate Ukrainians on their own initiative.

    For those that came to the NATO states falling for the liberal democratic “Great Democracies” narrative, the “universal values” narrative, or even the “human rights record” narrative, and are now in a conundrum originating from that naivete, there is a way out. They can call the Russian embassy, or if the forced repatriation has already happened, to Volga at callsign 149.200.


    Editor’s note: The Canada Files is the country’s only news outlet focused on Canadian foreign policy. We’ve provided critical investigations & hard-hitting analysis on Canadian foreign policy since 2019, and need your support.
     
    Please consider joining 83 consistent financial supporters, in setting up a monthly or annual donation through Donorbox.


    Marthad Shingiro Umucyaba (formerly referred to as Christian Shingiro) is a Rwandan-born naturalized Canadian expat. He is known for his participation in Communist/anti-imperialist national and international politics and is the radio show host of The Socially Radical Guitarist.

    He is also a freelance web developer in Hong Kong, China, striving to provide “Socially Radical Web Design at a socially reasonable price”.


    More Articles

    This post was originally published on Articles – The Canada Files.

  • Group who crossed from Belarus included sister of one of the accused in case highlighting Latvia’s harsh migration laws

    Two Dutch people are facing prison sentences of up to eight years in Latvia over what they say was an act of compassion to help a group of refugees reach safety, including the sister of one of the pair.

    The case has put Latvia’s harsh laws on migration under the spotlight and comes as a local rights activist also faces jail time, for helping refugees who crossed into Latvia via the country’s border with neighbouring Belarus.

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • New York, May 30, 2024—The Committee to Protect Journalists is deeply troubled by a Thursday report by rights group Access Now and research organization Citizen Lab alleging that Pegasus spyware was used to surveil at least five journalists.

    The report, “Exiled, then spied on: Civil society in Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland targeted with Pegasus spyware,” identified at least seven people whose devices were targeted between 2020 and 2023 by Pegasus, a form of zero-click spyware produced by the Israeli company NSO Group.

    “Today’s report raises major concerns about the use of spyware against journalists and shows once again that the press is among the main targets of Pegasus spyware,” said Gulnoza Said, CPJ’s Europe and Central Asia program coordinator. “Journalists should not be spied on, and these new attacks mean that governments urgently need to implement an immediate moratorium on the development, sale, and use of spyware technologies.”

    The targets included four named journalists and one Lithuania-based exiled Russian journalist whose device was targeted in June 2023 around an event in Riga, Latvia, and who requested to remain anonymous. The report describes the following attacks on the four named journalists:

    • Latvia-based exiled Russian journalist Maria Epifanova’s device was infected in August 2020, “the earliest known use of Pegasus to target Russian civil society,” the report said. Epifanova is the CEO of independent news outlet Novaya Gazeta Europe, which Russian authorities outlawed as “undesirable” in June 2023. The report said the infection occurred when Epifanova was chief editor of Novaya Gazeta Baltija — which covers Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia — and “shortly after she received accreditation to attend exiled Belarusian democratic opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya’s first press conference in Vilnius,” the capital of Lithuania.  

    “Regardless of who is behind this attack, invasion in private life is unacceptable. I am now working with a lawyer to decide on the next steps and will do my best to bring more light onto my own case and cases of my colleagues,” Epifanova told CPJ.

    • Latvia-based exiled Israeli-Russian journalist Evgeniy Erlich’s device was infected in late November 2022 while on vacation in Austria, the report said. Erlich, an independent producer, has worked with various media outlets, including broadcaster Current Time TV and Votvot, an on-demand Russian-language streaming platform. Both outlets are affiliated with the U.S. Congress-funded broadcaster Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL).

    Erlich told CPJ that “we will most likely never know” who ordered the attacks.

    • Latvian journalist Evgeniy Pavlov’s device was targeted in November 2022 and April 2023. Pavlov, a former correspondent with Novaya Gazeta Baltija and a freelance journalist for Current Time TV’s “Baltija” program, told CPJ that he was in Latvia at both times. Access Now was unable to confirm if the attempts were successful.

    “If the intelligence services of any country can interfere with the activities of journalists in this way, it poses a very great threat to free and safe journalism. And to free speech in general,” Pavlov told CPJ.

    “My phone was illegally tapped in Belarus, where I was persecuted for political reasons, prosecuted, and imprisoned by the KGB [Belarusian national security service],” Radina told CPJ. “I know that…my absolutely legal journalistic activity can be of interest only to Belarusian and Russian special services, and I am only afraid of the possible cooperation in this matter of the present operators, whoever they are, with the KGB or the FSB [Russian Federal Security Service].”

    In an email response to CPJ, the vice president of global communications for NSO group, Gil Lainer, maintained that the organization complies with all laws and regulations, emphasizing that it only sells to vetted intelligence and law enforcement agencies, and to allies of Israel and the United States. Lainer added that NSO group investigates all credible claims of misuse, adding that a number of investigations resulted in the suspension or termination of accounts.

    A 2022 CPJ special report noted that the development of high-tech “zero-click” spyware like Pegasus — the kind that takes over a phone without a user’s knowledge or interaction — poses an existential crisis for journalism and the future of press freedom around the world. The report included CPJ’s recommendations to protect journalists and their sources from the abuse of the technology and called for an immediate moratorium on exporting this technology to countries with poor human rights records.

    CPJ has also joined other rights groups in calling for immediate action to stop spyware threatening press freedom.

    In September 2023, an investigation released by Access Now and Citizen Lab revealed that the phone of Galina Timchenko, the head of independent Russian-language news website Meduza, who has lived in Latvia since 2014, was infected by Pegasus while she was in Germany in February 2023.

    The next day, Epifanova, Pavlov, and Erlich said Apple had notified them that their phone could have been targeted by hacker attacks.


    This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Arlene Getz/CPJ Editorial Director.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Three top officers close to Bashar al-Assad are on trial in absentia over the deaths of a student and his father

    Witnesses have told a Paris court how children and elderly people considered enemies of the ruling Syrian regime were tortured in a notorious military prison, at the trial of three high-ranking officers close to the country’s leader, Bashar al-Assad.

    The three are being tried in absentia for crimes against humanity and war crimes in connection with the deaths of two French-Syrian dual nationals, Patrick Dabbagh, a 20-year-old student, and his father, 48.

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • The application for arrest warrants by the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Karim A.A. Khan in the Israel-Hamas War gives us a chance to revisit a recurring theme in the commission of crimes in international humanitarian law.  Certain states, so this logic goes, either commit no crimes, or, if they do, have good reasons for doing so, be they self-defence against a monstrous enemy, or as part of a broader civilisational mission.

    In this context, the application for warrants regarding Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his Defence Minister, Yoav Gallant, merits particular interest.  Those regarding the Hamas trio of its leader Yahya Sinwar, Mohammed Al-Masri, the commander-in-chief of Al-Qassam Brigades, and the organisation’s political bureau head Ismail Haniyeh, would have left most Western governments untroubled.

    From Khan’s perspective, the warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant will focus on policies of starvation, the intentional causing of “great suffering, or serious injury to body or health”, including cruel treatment, wilful killing or murder, intentional attacks on the Palestinian population, including extermination, persecution and other inhumane acts falling within the Rome Statute “as crimes against humanity”.

    The ICC prosecutor’s assessment follows the now increasingly common claim that Israel’s military effort, prosecuted in the cause of self-defence in the aftermath of the October 7 attacks by Hamas, is not what it claims to be.  Far from being paragons of proportionate warfare and humanitarian grace in war, Israel’s army and security forces are part of a program that has seen needless killing and suffering.  The crimes against humanity alleged “were committed as part of a widespread and systematic attack against the Palestinian civilian population pursuant to State policy.”

    The reaction from the Israeli side was always expected.  Netanyahu accused the prosecutor of “creating a false symmetry between the democratically elected leaders of Israel and the terrorist chieftains”.  He rejected “with disgust the comparison of the prosecutor in The Hague between democratic Israel and the mass murderers of Hamas”.

    Israeli President Isaac Herzog also found “any attempt to draw parallels between these atrocious terrorists and a democratically elected government of Israel – working to fulfil its duty to defend and protect its citizens in adherence to the principles of international law […] outrageous and cannot be accepted by anyone.”

    Israel’s staunchest ally, sponsor and likewise self-declared democracy (it is, in fact, a republic created by those suspicious of that system of government), was also there to hold the fort against such legal efforts.  US President Joe Biden’s statement on the matter was short and brusque: “The ICC prosecutor’s application for arrest warrants against Israeli leaders is outrageous.  And let me be clear: whatever this prosecutor might imply, there is no equivalence – none – between Israel and Hamas.”

    The democracy-as-purity theme, one used as a seeming exculpation of all conduct in war, surfaced in the May 21 exchange between Senator James Risch, the top Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken.  Was the secretary, inquired Risch, amenable to supporting legislation to combat the ICC “sticking its nose in the business of countries that have an independent, legitimate, democratic judicial system”?  (No consideration was given to the sustained efforts by the Netanyahu government to erode judicial independence in passing legislation to curb the discretion of courts to strike down government decisions.)

    The response from Blinken was agreeable to such an aim.  There was “no question we have to look at the appropriate steps to take to deal with, again, what is a profoundly wrong-headed decision.”  As things stand, a bill is already warming the lawmaking benches with a clear target.  Sponsored by Arkansas Republican Senator Tom Cotton, the Illegitimate Court Counteraction Act would obligate the President to block the entry of ICC officials to the US, revoke any current US visas such officials hold, and prohibit any property transactions taking place in the US.  To avoid such measures, the court must cease all cases against “protected persons of the United States and its allies”.

    The Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer similarly saw the prosecutor’s efforts as a pairing of incongruous parties. “The fact however that the leader of the terrorist organisation Hamas whose declared goal is the extinction of the State of Israel is being mentioned at the same time as the democratically elected representatives of that very State is non-comprehensible.”

    From the outset, such statements do two things.  The first is to conjure up a false distinction – that of equivalence – something absent in the prosecutor’s application.  The acts alleged are relevant to each specified party and are specific to them.  The second is a corollary: that democracies do not break international law and certainly not when it comes to war crimes and crimes against humanity, most notably when committed against a certain type of foe.  The more savage the enemy, the greater the latitude in excusing vengeful violence.  That remains, essentially, the cornerstone of Israel’s defence argument at the International Court of Justice.

    Such arguments echo an old trope.  The two administrations of George W. Bush spilled much ink in justifying the torture, enforced disappearance and renditions of terror suspects to third countries during its declared Global War on Terror.  Lawyers in both the White House and Justice Department gave their professional blessing, adopting an expansive definition of executive power in defiance of international laws and protections.  Such sacred documents as the Geneva Conventions could be defied when facing Islamist terrorism.

    Lurking beneath such justifications is the snobbery of exceptionalism, the conceit of power.  Civilised liberal democracies, when battling the forces of a named barbarism, are to be treated as special cases in the world of international humanitarian law.  The ICC prosecutor begs to differ.

    The post A Misplaced Purity: Democracies and Crimes Against International Law first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Prosecution of three high-ranking Syrian officials to be tried in absentia could pave way for president’s case

    At midnight on 3 November 2013, five Syrian officials dragged arts and humanities student Patrick Dabbagh from his home in the Mezzeh district of Damascus.

    The following day, at the same hour, the same men, including a representative of the Syrian air force’s intelligence unit, returned with a dozen soldiers to arrest the 20-year-old’s father Mazzen.

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.