A group of House Democrats is urging the Biden administration to use “all tools possible” — including withholding military assistance to Israel — to prevent an Israeli assault on Rafah as Israeli officials are pledging “total annihilation” of Rafah and other neighborhoods in Gaza. In a letter sent Wednesday in an effort led by Representatives Pramila Jayapal (D-Washington) and Madeleine Dean (D…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
After attacking Dr. Jill Stein, St. Louis police charged her with assaulting them. Stein is the presumptive Presidential candidate of the Green Party. On April 27 she spoke at a program of the Green Party of St. Louis and then went to support student protesters at Washington University. There, she was arrested along with Green Party campaign managers Jason Call and Kelly Merrill with about 100 others.
As students peacefully gathered in tents and on the lawn, they were soon confronted by police from four departments: University City, Richmond Heights, St. Louis City and St. Louis County. When Stein arrived at the campus, students asked her to help defuse an already tense situation.
She identified herself to onlooking university administrators as a Green Party Presidential candidate. Stein, along with St. Louis Aldermanic President Megan Green and Alderwoman Alisha Sonnier, attempted to persuade university administrators to let students stay. Police moved to block the conversation. A reporter from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch who attempted a discussion with university vice-chancellor Julie Hail Flory was ordered to leave the campus.
Merrill and Stein looked for a restroom and found all doors locked, but a student was able to unlock one door. Hearing yelling that the police were about to attack, they quickly went outside. They walked into the space between students and police, pleading for calm. But the police stormed in.
Merrill reported that “This was the first time I understood why so many police are on bicycles. They picked them up and used them as weapons to push people down.” When police began assailing protesters, they targeted Stein first and did not bother the two Democratic Party officials. They threw Stein on her head, threw Merrill to the ground, jumped on Call, and dozens became their victims.
Students were charged with trespassing and disruptive behavior. Those who were arrested have been prohibited from re-entering campus even if they will miss final examinations and not graduate. The administration-police reaction followed a pattern at universities across the US as if it had been scripted in Joe Biden’s office.
Being assaulted, arrested and jailed was only the beginning of Stein’s ordeal. Not being told what would happen to her, Stein sat alone in a cell for hours before being released. Exhausted, she did not make it to our house to sleep until 3:00 in the morning.
On Monday morning, April 29 Stein took a break from her mid-states tour to get checked out at University Hospital in Columbia MO. They found that, though very bruised, her rib was not broken; and she continued to Kansas City.
Bob Suberi is a Jewish member of the St. Louis Green Party who has made several solidarity visits to the West Bank. He brings back stories of the Israeli Defense Forces’ deliberately provoking Palestinians in order to have an excuse for over-reacting, sometimes with a massive raid. Similarly, Washington University students committed the trivial infraction of occupying space regularly used for events such as carnivals and this became the excuse for a police invasion.
The similarities between practices in Palestine and on US campuses is unmistakable. This is true not only for intolerance of dissent and brutality. It is also the case with the way Israelis destroy sanitary facilities in Gaza, leaving people with nowhere to relieve themselves except on sidewalks. This serves both to humiliate Palestinians and create a health crisis.
The mounting opposition to Israel’s war is reflected by the wide variety of speakers at the St. Louis Green Party event: Andrew de las Alas (Asians Demanding Justice), Saish Satyal (College Democrats), Lila Steinbach (Jewish Students for Palestine), Bahar Bastani MD (Dar al-Zahra Mosque and Education Center), Shahab Mushtaq (Green Party of St. Louis), Bob Suberi (Veterans For Peace), Chibu Asonye (Green Party of Illinois), Zaki Baruti (Universal African Peoples Organization) and Omali Yeshitela (African People’s Socialist Party).
Jewish herself, Stein insists that “The students are not the villains in this struggle against Israeli violence. They are in fact the heroes, defending the right of free speech and to peacefully protest. Many already see the villains being the Washington University administration, those who conspired with them to destroy free speech, and the Biden gang whose fingerprints are all over efforts to shut down peace initiatives. Out of one side of his mouth Biden claims he is working to end the killing and maiming of Palestinians. From the other side of his mouth comes the push for billions of war dollars that are causing the genocide.”
Dr. Stein joined tens of thousands of students in campuses across the US who are demanding university divestment from Boeing and other companies that manufacture weapons used by Israel. Students presented Washington University with five demands:
University officials told the press that they felt that they had to take action because the demonstrators “had the potential to get out of control and become dangerous.” Apparently skilled at ignoring the obvious, these officials have never noticed that the corporate behavior of their partner, Boeing, has vastly exceeded the “potential” to become dangerous.
One of the great ironies of the episode is that above the April 28 Post-Dispatch story which described events at Washington University was another front page story reporting that Boeing was abandoning efforts to outsource much of its work. It approvingly announced that this would save 550 St. Louis jobs.
Of course, the Post-Dispatch has not published stories regarding the creation of peace-related jobs for Boeing employees if the war-manufacturer were to be downsized. Also worthy of note is the fact that no Boeing executive or government official working with them has been arrested for crimes against humanity, complicity with genocide or any other charge. Maybe they would have to peacefully sit in a tent on the Washington University campus to get busted.
The post Presidential Candidate Jill Stein Attacked in St. Louis first appeared on Dissident Voice.This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
One does not need to be a fortune-teller to understand that the Israel-US game plan for Gaza runs something like this:
1. In public, Biden appears “tough” on Netanyahu, urging him not to “invade” Rafah and pressuring him to allow more “humanitarian aid” into Gaza.
2. But already the White House is preparing the ground to subvert its own messaging. It insists that Israel has offered an “extraordinarily generous” deal to Hamas – one that, Washington suggests, amounts to a ceasefire. It doesn’t. According to reports, the best Israel has offered is an undefined “period of sustained calm”. Even that promise can’t be trusted.’
3. If Hamas accepts the “deal” and agrees to return some of the hostages, the bombing eases for a short while but the famine intensifies, justified by Israel’s determination for “total victory” against Hamas – something that is impossible to achieve. This will simply delay, for a matter of days or weeks, Israel’s move to step 5 below.
4. If, as seems more likely, Hamas rejects the “deal”, it will be painted as the intransigent party and blamed for seeking to continue the “war”. (Note: This was never a war. Only the West pretends either that you can be at war with a territory you’ve been occupying for decades, or that Hamas “started the war” with its October 7 attack when Israel has been blockading the enclave, creating despair and incremental malnutrition there, for 17 years.)Last night US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken moved this script on by stating Hamas was “the only thing standing between the people of Gaza and a ceasefire… They have to decide and they have to decide quickly”.
5. The US will announce that Israel has devised a humanitarian plan that satisfies the conditions Biden laid down for an attack on Rafah to begin.
6. This will give the US, Europe and the region the pretext to stand back as Israel launches the long-awaited assault – an attack Biden has previously asserted would be a “red line”, leading to mass civilian casualties. All that will be forgotten.
7. As Middle East Eye reports, Israel is building a ring of checkpoints around Rafah. Netanyahu will suggest, falsely, that these guarantee its attack meets the conditions laid down in international humanitarian law. Women and children will be allowed out – if they can reach a checkpoint before Israel’s carpet bombing kills them along the way.
8. All men in Rafah, and any women and children who remain, will be treated as armed combatants. If they are not killed by the bombing or falling rubble, they will be either summarily executed or dragged off to Israel’s torture chambers. No one will mention that any Hamas fighters who were in Rafah were able to leave through the tunnels.
9. Rafah will be destroyed, leaving the entire strip in ruins, and the Israeli-induced famine will worsen. The West will throw up its hands, say Hamas brought this on Gaza, agonise over what to do, and press third countries – especially Arab countries – for a “humanitarian plan” that relocates the survivors out of Gaza.
10. The western media will continue describing Israel’s genocide in Gaza in purely humanitarian terms, as though this “disaster” was an act of God.
11. Under US pressure, the International Court of Justice, or World Court, will be in no hurry to issue a definitive ruling on whether South Africa’s case that Israel is committing a genocide – which it has already found “plausible” – is proved.
12. Whatever the World Court eventually decides, and it is almost impossible to imagine it won’t determine that Israel carried out a genocide, it will be too late. The western political and media class will have moved on, leaving it to the historians to decide what it all meant.
13. Meanwhile, Israel is already using the precedents it has created in Gaza, and its erosion of the long-established principles of international law, as the blueprint for the West Bank. Saying Hamas has not been completely routed in Gaza but is using this other Palestinian enclave as its base, Israel will gradually intensify the pressures on the West Bank with another blockade. Rinse and repeat.
That’s the likely plan. Our job is to do everything in our power to stop them making it a reality.
The post The Israel-US game plan for Gaza is staring us in the face first appeared on Dissident Voice.This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
Nothing screams ‘covering up war crimes’ like insisting that there should absolutely not be an independent investigation
Did you know that the Palestinians are the very first people in the world to ethnically cleanse and mass murder themselves? I know it sounds weird, but – as American and Israeli politicians keep reminding us – these are “savages” that we are talking about here. Normal rules don’t apply, you’ve got to follow the Palestine Rules.
The Palestine Rules dictate you do the following: ignore every international agency if that agency says anything remotely critical about Israel. Certainly don’t listen to international aid agencies like Oxfam when they argue that the government of Israel is “deliberately blocking and/or undermining the international humanitarian response in the Gaza Strip”. Nope, the fact that babies in Gaza are dying of malnutrition is all their fault. The fact that children in Gaza are starving at the fastest rate the world has ever known is nothing to do with Israel, it’s the fault of those pesky Palestinians.
Continue reading…This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.
On Howard Stern’s radio program on Friday, President Joe Biden indicated that he was willing to debate former President Donald Trump, his Republican rival in the 2024 presidential election. During the interview, Stern told the Democratic incumbent president that it was a “fantasy” of his to see Biden square off against Trump. Biden replied that a debate would indeed happen at some point during the…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
President Joe Biden is making headway in canceling student debt, despite a right-wing Supreme Court that struck down his initial plan to cancel up to $400 billion in student debt last year. Although his Plan A used the HEROES Act of 2003, the Biden administration has since used the Higher Education Act of 1965 to administer $138 billion in relief. Most of this relief has come as fixes to existing…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
The US Congress authorized a $95 billion military aid package for continuing the wars in Ukraine and Gaza as well as for war preparations against China. This represents, in effect, a downpayment on World War III. US President Joe Biden, reading from a playbook that could well have been scripted by George Orwell, announced: “it’s a good day for world peace.” And in order to dispel any doubt, he added, “for real.”
Biden proclaimed: “It’s going to make the world safer.” In fact, the bipartisan authorization, passed on April 23, could nudge the doomsday clock a little closer to midnight.
Lest there be any confusion about what the head of the US empire means by making the world safer, Biden explains: “it continues America’s leadership in the world.”
US leadership is the crux of the matter. That is, at a time of increasingly challenged US hegemony, the official US strategy is still global “full spectrum dominance.” No longer does the empire justify itself as leading the crusade against communism, or even against what it considered “terrorism,” or its “war on drugs.” Today, the official national security doctrine is naked “great power competition.”
Continuing the Orwellian theme, the US president backed up his claim about US world leadership, saying, “everyone knows it.” This was not reflected in the UN General Assembly vote on an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, where the US side was trounced by an overwhelming 153 in favor. Besides the US and Israel, only eight others voted against and a mere 23 abstained. On any number of issues, the majority of the world’s population opposes the US.
Biden’s boast that “Ukraine has regained over half the territory that Russia took from them” is not particularly reflected by the Annual Threat Assessment of the US Intelligence Community, which concluded that the current deadlock “plays to Russia’s strategic military advantages and is increasingly shifting the momentum in Moscow’s favor.”
Hailing the “brave Ukrainians,” Biden overlooks that 650,000 Ukrainian men of fighting age have fled the country.
Diminishing prospects for a decisive US/NATO victory in Ukraine have precipitated a particularly dangerous response from Washington, which rejects a negotiated settlement. The current administration’s plan is not to pull for peace but to push for more war. This is spun as a strategy “to stop Putin from drawing the United States into a war.” Yet it is the US, which is doing its part feeding the conflict by giving yet more armaments to the military effort.
The expansion of NATO, contrary to earlier US assurances not to advance east, is hailed in Biden’s speech. Yet, this march of NATO toward the Russian border is the very cause that Russian President Putin gave for his country’s incursion into Ukraine. This abundantly articulated Russian “redline” should be well known in Washington.
Yet, Biden in his speech goes on to ominously raise NATO’s Article Five for mutual defense which declares “an attack on one is an attack on all.” This is plainly a taunt for a war with another nuclear power. Veterans for Peace antiwar activist and author Dee Knight calls the military aid package “an open-ended commitment to the NATO war against Russia.”
In yet another spin on reality, Biden condemns “a brutal campaign” that has “killed tens of thousands” and “bombed hospitals.” If you think he is referring to Israel’s US-enabled war on Gaza, guess again.
Biden is not about to call a halt on the genocide of the Palestinians, though he could. In 1982, for instance, Israel bombed civilians. Then US President Ronald Reagan called his counterpart in Tel Aviv and told him to stop what he explicitly called a “holocaust.”
Twenty minutes later Israel ordered cessation of its bombardment. In contrast, The New York Times reports that a member of Israel’s war cabinet predicts the current war may last “a year, a decade or a generation.”
“My commitment to Israel, I want to make clear again, is ironclad,” says the US politician who is by far the “biggest recipient in history of donations from pro-Israeli groups.”
The aid package schizophrenically commits tax-payer dollars to both lethal weapons and humanitarian aid for “the innocent people of Gaza, who are suffering badly.” No recognition is given to what is obvious – that an immediate and permanent ceasefire is the first step for relieving the suffering.
War may not be good for most of humanity, but it is bonanza for US military contractors. As Biden brags, the weapons are “made by American companies here in America…in other words, we’re helping Ukraine while at the same time investing in our own industrial base.” That is, our own merchants of death are making a killing.
Biden has over-performed in his promise to make sure the weapons shipments “start right away.” Without legal pre-authorization, the US has supplied both Ukraine and Israel with proscribed weaponry.
Most of the funds, according to economist Jack Rasmus, are for weapons that have already been delivered or from military stocks that are in the process of being shipped. “Only $13.8 billion of the $61 billion is for weapons Ukraine doesn’t already have!” In a tweet embarrassing to the US-backed war effort and subsequently deleted, CBS News suggested only about 30% of US military aid for Ukraine ever reaches the front lines, in part due to pervasive corruption.
“Everything we do,” the US president explains is, “setting the conditions for an enduring peace.” The question his proclamation raises is what does this vision of a militarily imposed pax Americana look like?
Is it Haiti, where under Yankee benevolence they do not even have a government and even the disgraced appointed prime minister just resigned? Or is it Libya, where a US-led colonial coalition overthrew a major force for African unity and replaced it with military factions allowing slaves to be openly bartered on the streets? Or is it Afghanistan, where the US engineered the overthrow of a socialist government that stood for women’s emancipation, occupied the land for two decades, and then withdrew leaving a humanitarian disaster?
In short, the Biden’s promise of “enduring peace” looks a lot like chaos and “endless war.” “History will remember this moment,” he predicts. And well it may.
The post US Congress Makes Downpayment on World War III first appeared on Dissident Voice.This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
US President Joe Biden has spoken at the annual White House Correspondents’ dinner in Washington in spite of protests over alleged “complicity” of media about Israel’s war on Gaza, offering a toast to “press freedom and democracy” but ignoring the death toll of Palestinian journalists.
Demonstrators targeted the Washington Hilton hotel which hosted the dinner, denouncing the Biden administration’s handling of the war and urging guests — especially media — to boycott the event.
Media freedom watchdogs have cited varying death toll figures for Palestinian journalists killed since October 7 although Al Jazeera network news today reported 142 dead — more than double the number of journalists killed in each of the Second World War and the Vietnam War.
“It’s astonishing. We’ve never seen a White House correspondents’ dinner like this,” reported Al Jazeera’s Washington correspondent Shihab Rattansi.
“The President is here to speak while being warmly applauded by the national US press core.
“But these VIPs are all dressed up in the evening finery, and they have to run the gauntlet of hundreds of protesters out here who are shouting, ‘Shame on you’.
“‘Shame on you’ for breaking bread when there are [142] journalists dead as a result of, as far as they say, Biden’s complicity in their murder.”
Code Pink flag protest
Members of the feminist organisation Code Pink dropped a huge Palestinian flag from a top floor window of the Washington Hilton hotel.
The group said members involved in the action managed “to get out quickly and without arrest”.
The protesters were gathered outside the hotel to express solidarity with the dozens of Palestinian journalists killed in Gaza.
NOW: Protestors have dropped a Palestinian flag out of the window of the Washington Hilton, where the White House Correspondents’ Dinner is being held tonight. pic.twitter.com/v8womcm8QP
— CODEPINK (@codepink) April 27, 2024
More than two dozen Palestinian journalists had called for a boycott of the dinner, writing an open letter urging their American colleagues not to attend.
“You have a unique responsibility to speak truth to power and uphold journalistic integrity,” said the letter from the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate.
“It is unacceptable to stay silent out of fear or professional concern while journalists in Gaza continue to be detained, tortured, and killed for doing our jobs.”
‘It hurts our souls’
Al Jazeera’s Hind Khoudary was one of the signatories of the letter calling for the boycott.
She spoke to the network from Deir el-Balah in central Gaza, saying she did not “have the words” to describe what she had been going through.
“This isn’t something that has been ending. It has been continuous every single day for more than 200 days.
“We have been killed, displaced and homeless, and we’re not only reporting on this, but we’re also living it with every single detail.
“We’re living this war in all aspects of life. We have not seen our families as journalists. We have not been able to eat well. We have been dehydrated.
“We have been reporting in one of the harshest conditions any reporter can go through despite losing a lot of colleagues, and it hurts our souls and our hearts every single day.
“We have been constantly targeted by the Israeli air strikes and shelling.
“All of these daily things we have been living as journalists are overwhelming [and] exhausting, but we still continue because there have been at least 100 Palestinian journalists whom I personally know that have been killed since October 7.
“If they were here today with us, they would be reporting, and they would be raising the voice of the voiceless Palestinians.”
This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by Pacific Media Watch.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
Tourists visiting Spanish cities like Córdoba, Toledo and Sevilla have the option of whiling away an hour or so at a ‘Museum of the Inquisition’, sometimes known as a ‘Gallery of Torture’. For around three euros, visitors can view an exotic range of devices used to impale, immolate, strangle and dismember human beings in the name of God.
It’s tempting to reassure ourselves that these are relics of a far-distant past, horrors that could never happen now. But did the Dark Ages ever really end? Noam Chomsky commented:
‘Part of the tragedy of the Palestinians is that they have essentially no international support. For a good reason – they don’t have wealth, they don’t have power. So they don’t have rights. It’s the way the world works – your rights correspond to your power and your wealth.’
It is indeed the way the world works. It is also the way the medieval world worked. UK Foreign Secretary, Lord David Cameron (Baron Cameron of Chipping Norton), recently passed judgment on the war in Ukraine at a Washington press conference:
‘It is extremely good value for money… Almost half of Russia’s pre-war military equipment has been destroyed without the loss of a single American life. This is an investment in the United States’ security.’
According even to Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky, 31,000 Ukrainians have been killed in the conflict. US officials estimate 70,000 dead, while Russia claims to have killed 444,000. Are these deaths ‘good value for money’?
And what about the 50,000 Russians estimated by the BBC to have died? Do they matter? After all, European civilisation is supposed to be founded on Christ’s teaching that we should love, not just our ‘neighbour’ but our ‘enemy’. On Britain’s Channel 5, BBC stalwart Jeremy Vine offered a different view to Bill, a caller from Manchester:
‘Bill, Bill, the brutal reality is, if you put on a uniform for Putin and you go and fight his war, you probably deserve to die, don’t you?’
Elsewhere, the Most Reverend and Right Honourable Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury, commented after Iran retaliated to Israel’s bombing of an Iranian consulate in Damascus, Syria, killing 16 people, including two senior Iranian generals:
‘The attacks on Israel by Iran this weekend were wrong. They risked civilian lives and they escalated the already dangerous tensions in the region. I pray for the peace and security of Israel’s people at this time and I appeal to all parties both for restraint and to act for peace and mutual security.’ (Our emphasis)
If Christ had done political commentary, he would have declared both the Iranian and Israeli attacks wrong, and he would have prayed ‘for the peace and security’ of the peoples of Israel and Iran, and also Palestine.
Cameron responded on the same issue:
‘[It was] a reckless and dangerous thing for Iran to have done, and I think the whole world can see. All these countries that have somehow wondered, well, you know, what is the true nature of Iran? It’s there in black and white.”
He was immediately asked: ‘What would Britain do if a hostile nation flattened one of our consulates?’
Cameron’s tragicomic response:
‘Well, we would take, you know, we would take very strong action.’
Naturally, ‘we’ would do the same or worse, but it’s a grim sign of Iran’s ‘true nature’ when ‘they’ do it. The ‘Evil’ have no right even to defend themselves when attacked by the ‘Good’. Standard medieval thinking.
‘Murderous’ And ‘Brutal’ – Tilting The Language
In idle moments, we sometimes fantasise about opening our own Media Lens Chamber of Propaganda Horrors, a Hall of Media Infamy. It would be a cavernous space packed with examples of devices used to strangle and dismember Truth.
A special section would be reserved for the sage effusions of BBC security correspondent Frank Gardner, who wrote recently of Israel:
‘It responded to the murderous Hamas-led attacks of 7 October… and then spent the next six months battering the Gaza Strip.’
The Hamas attack was ‘murderous’, then, with Israel administering a mere ‘battering’ with its attack that has caused at least 30 times the loss of life. A ‘battering’ is generally bruising but not necessarily fatal. The term is certainly not synonymous with genocide. Is this biased use of language accidental, or systemic?
Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) commented on their careful study of the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal:
‘Looking at all attributions, 77% of the time when the word “brutal” was used to describe an actor in the conflict, it referred to Palestinians and their actions. This was 73% of the time at the Times, 78% at the Post and 87% at the Journal. Only 23% of the time was “brutal” used to describe Israel’s actions…’
The Intercept reported on a leaked memo which revealed that the New York Times had ‘instructed journalists covering Israel’s war on the Gaza Strip to restrict the use of the terms “genocide” and “ethnic cleansing” and to “avoid” using the phrase “occupied territory” when describing Palestinian land’. The Intercept added:
‘The memo also instructs reporters not to use the word Palestine “except in very rare cases” and to steer clear of the term “refugee camps” to describe areas of Gaza historically settled by displaced Palestinians expelled from other parts of Palestine during previous Israeli–Arab wars. The areas are recognized by the United Nations as refugee camps and house hundreds of thousands of registered refugees.’
The memo was written by Times standards editor Susan Wessling, international editor Philip Pan, and their deputies. A Times newsroom source, who requested anonymity ‘for fear of reprisal’, said:
‘I think it’s the kind of thing that looks professional and logical if you have no knowledge of the historical context of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. But if you do know, it will be clear how apologetic it is to Israel.’
Our Chamber of Propaganda Horrors might feature this barely believable sentence from a BBC report by Lucy Williamson, which reads like something from the film ‘Dr. Strangelove’:
‘If you wanted to map the path to a healthy, functioning Palestinian government, you probably wouldn’t start from here.’
Probably wouldn’t start from where? From the middle of a six-months genocide, with two million civilians starving, with children literally starving to death, with tens of thousands of children murdered, with Gaza in ruins? It is hard to imagine a more ethically or intellectually tone-deaf observation. The BBC’s Jeremy Bowen added to the sense of surreality:
‘The decision not to veto the Ramadan ceasefire resolution is also an attempt by the Americans to push back at accusations that they have enabled Israel’s actions.’
Is it an ‘accusation’ that the US has supplied billions of dollars of missiles and bombs without which Israel could not conduct its genocide? Is there any conceivable way the US could ever ‘push back at’ that unarguable fact? The Guardian described how the US has worked hard to avoid Congressional oversight:
‘The US is reported to have made more than 100 weapons sales to Israel, including thousands of bombs, since the start of the war in Gaza, but the deliveries escaped congressional oversight because each transaction was under the dollar amount requiring approval.
‘The Biden administration… has kept up a quiet but substantial flow of munitions to help replace the tens of thousands of bombs Israel has dropped on the tiny coastal strip, making it one of the most intense bombing campaigns in military history.’
These hidden sales are in addition to the $320m in precision bomb kits sold in November and 14,000 tank shells costing $106m and $147.5m of fuses and other components needed to make 155mm artillery shells in December.
In response to the latest news of a massive additional supply of arms to Israel, Edward Snowden posted on X:
‘ok but you’re definitely gonna hold off on sending like fifteen billion dollars’ worth of weapons to the guys that keep getting caught filling mass graves with kids until an independent international investigation is completed, right?
‘…right?’
Because we no longer live in the Dark Ages, right?
Waiting For The Hiroshima Bombing Scene
People are generally not tortured on the rack in Western societies, but are we really any less callous?
Christopher Nolan’s film ‘Oppenheimer’ has been lauded to the skies. It earned 13 nominations at the Academy Awards, winning seven Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor. It also won five Golden Globe Awards.
And yet the film is a moral disgrace. It focuses on the life of physicist Robert J. Oppenheimer, and particularly, of course, on his key role in developing the first atomic weapons. The direct results of his efforts were the dropping of nuclear fireballs on the civilian populations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan that killed between 129,000 and 226,000 people.
These were the first acts of nuclear terrorism, by far the greatest single acts of terrorism the world has ever seen. Although the moral doubts haunting the ‘Manhattan Project’ then and since feature strongly in the film, a portrayal of the hideous impact of Oppenheimer’s invention on civilians is almost completely absent. This single, dignified comment from an elderly Japanese viewer reported by the Guardian says it all:
‘“I was waiting for the Hiroshima bombing scene to appear, but it never did,” said Mimaki, 82.’
Although the BBC sought out the opinion of cinemagoers in Hiroshima, ‘only meters away’ from where the bomb exploded, the film’s shocking moral failure was not mentioned.
On reflection, our museum might be better called, The Museum Of Media Madness. Thus, the BBC reported on the refusal of event organisers, The European Broadcasting Union (EBU), to ban Israel from the Eurovision Song Contest. The EBU opined:
‘We firmly believe that the Eurovision Song Contest is a platform that should always transcend politics, promote togetherness and bring audiences together across the world.’
The BBC claims to be obsessed with reporting ‘both sides of the story’, but it conveniently forgot to mention that Russia has been banned from the song contest since 2022 for a reason that did not ‘transcend politics’ – its invasion of Ukraine.
Martin Österdahl, EBU’s executive supervisor for Eurovision, was asked to explain the contradiction. He responded that the two situations were ‘completely different’. True enough – Israel’s crimes in Gaza are much worse even than Russia’s crimes in Ukraine. Österdahl’s casual brush off:
‘We are not the arena to solve a Middle East conflict.’
Media and political voices seeking to challenge the reigning brutality are not burned alive, but they are buried alive in high security prisons like Julian Assange, beaten up on the street like George Galloway, and forced into exile like Edward Snowden. Dissidents may not be pelted with rotten fruit and vegetables in the stocks, but they are pelted with relentless media attacks intended to discredit them.
In the Guardian, John Crace greeted the news that Galloway had returned to parliament, with a piece titled:
‘The Ego has landed: George Galloway basks in his swearing in as MP’
Crace wrote:
‘Wherever he goes, his giant ego is there before him. Like most narcissists, the only fool for whom he makes allowances – for whom he has a total blindspot – is himself.’
He added:
‘… there is a lot about Galloway to dislike. His self-importance is breathtaking. Most MPs suffer from an excess of self-regard, but George is off the scale. It has never crossed his mind that he is not right about everything.’
Before Galloway’s victory, a Guardian news piece commented:
‘“A total, total disaster”: Galloway and Danczuk line up for Rochdale push – Two former Labour MPs are back to haunt the party in what has been called “the most radioactive byelection in living memory”’
As we have discussed many times, this is the required view, not just of Galloway, but of all dissidents challenging the status quo – they (and we) are all toxic ‘narcissists’. Thus, the BBC observed of Galloway, a ‘political maverick’:
‘To his critics and opponents, he is a dangerous egotist, someone who arouses division.’
What percentage of Tory and Labour MPs under (and including) Sunak and Starmer are not dangerous egotists? Are the thousands of MPs who, decade after decade, line up to vote for US-UK resource wars of aggression of first resort, for action to exacerbate climate collapse, not dangerous egotists? Of course they are, but they are not labelled that way. The only egotism perceived as ‘dangerous’ by our state-corporate media system is one that threatens biocidal, genocidal and suicidal state-corporate narcissism.
We have to travel far from the ‘mainstream’ to read a more balanced view of Galloway. Former British ambassador Craig Murray commented:
‘I have known George Galloway my entire adult life, although we largely lost touch in the middle bit while I was off diplomating. I know George too well to mistake him for Jesus Christ, but he has been on the right side against appalling wars which the entire political class has cheer-led. His natural gifts of mellifluence and loquacity are unsurpassed, with an added talent for punchy phrase making.
‘… But outwith the public gaze George is humorous, kind and self-aware. He has been deeply involved in politics his entire life, and is a great believer in the democratic process as the ultimate way by which the working classes will ultimately take control of the means of production. He is a very old-fashioned and courteous form of socialist.’
We strongly disagree with Galloway’s views on fossil fuel production and climate change – in fact, he blocked us on X for robustly but politely challenging him on these issues. Nevertheless, it is clear to us that Murray’s view of Galloway is far more reasonable.
Neon-Lit Dark Age
In ‘Brave New World Revisited’, Aldous Huxley wrote:
‘The victim of mind-manipulation does not know that he is a victim. To him, the walls of his prison are invisible, and he believes himself to be free.’ (Huxley, ‘Brave New World Revisited’, archive.org, 1958, p.109)
This is certainly true of corporate journalists. Borrowing illiberally from authentically dissident media, a recurring Guardian appeal asks readers to support its heroic defence of Truth. The declared enemy:
‘Teams of lawyers from the rich and powerful trying to stop us publishing stories they don’t want you to see.
‘Lobby groups with opaque funding who are determined to undermine facts about the climate emergency and other established science.
‘Authoritarian states with no regard for the freedom of the press.
‘Bad actors spreading disinformation online to undermine democracy.
‘But we have something powerful on our side.
‘We’ve got you.
‘The Guardian is funded by its readers and the only person who decides what we publish is our editor.’
They have indeed ‘got you’, many of you, and not in a good way. The real threat to truth in our time, quite obviously, is the fact that profit-maximising, ad-dependent corporate media like the Guardian cannot and will not report the truth of a world dominated by giant corporations. The declared aspiration is a sham, a form of niche marketing exploiting the gullible.
The truth is that ‘mainstream’ media and politics are now captured in a way that is beyond anything we have previously seen. All around the world, political choices have been carefully fixed and filtered to ensure ordinary people are unable to challenge the endless wars, the determination to prioritise profits over climate action at any cost. The job of the corporate media system is to pretend the choices are real, to ensure the walls of the prison remain invisible.
The only hope in this neon-lit Dark Age is genuinely independent media – the blogs and websites that are now being filtered, shadow-banned, buried and marginalised like never before.
This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
The presidential election in November looks set to pit Donald Trump, who will most likely dismantle what is left of our decayed democracy, against Joe Biden, who is a full partner in the genocide of the Palestinians in Gaza. “This is the paradox that we’re faced with,” says former Representative (and current candidate to represent Ohio’s 7th Congressional District) Dennis Kucinich: Americans keep voting, but on the national level, the only groups that consistently win our elections are militarists, corporations, and the billionaire class. “The American people are good-hearted people. They want to help anyone suffering. They’re very fair in the way they look at things.” And yet, we are constantly put in the position of trying to conscientiously participate in a democratic system that has been hijacked by political power brokers with no conscience. What is to be done? How can we reclaim our democracy and provide real and meaningful political alternatives? Are we forever condemned to the diminishing returns offered by the least-worst option? Is there a way to create an electoral system that is not captive to big money and dominated by groups such as the Israel lobby? On this episode of The Chris Hedges Report, Chris Hedges speaks with Kucinich about the paradox US voters are trapped in, and how to get out of it.
Studio Production: Adam Coley
Post-Production: Adam Coley
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.
Chris Hedges:
The presidential election in November looks set to pit Donald Trump, who will most likely dismantle what is left of our decayed democracy, against Joe Biden, who is a full partner in the genocide of the Palestinians in Gaza, not, for most of us, a palatable choice. The two ruling parties who have foisted these candidates on the public have at the same time conspired with their corporate sponsors to block third parties and independents along with mavericks such as Bernie Sanders from running viable campaigns. The only groups that consistently win in our elections are the militarists, corporatists, and billionaires who of course fund and stage-manage the electoral farce. On all the major issues, endless war, trade deals, deindustrialization, government surveillance, the steady decline of social services, including a for-profit healthcare system that allows corporations to prey on the sick, the bloated prison population, and militarized police, there is little daylight between the two ruling parties.
How can we reclaim our democracy and provide real and meaningful political alternatives? Are we forever condemned to the diminishing returns offered by the least worst option? Is there a way to create an electoral system that is not captive to big money and dominated by groups such as the Israel lobby? Joining me to discuss the state of our anemic democracy, A system the political philosopher Sheldon Wolin, referred to as inverted totalitarianism, is Dennis Kucinich. Dennis served as US representative from Ohio’s 10th Congressional District from 1997 to 2013, losing his seat when the Democratic Party engineered redistricting that forced him to run in the newly drawn 9th District. He was a presidential candidate in 2004 and 2008, running on an anti-war platform during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He’s a strong advocate for unions, the restoration of our civil liberties and single-payer healthcare. Dennis, who briefly served as Bobby Kennedy’s campaign manager, is currently running as an independent in Ohio’s 7th Congressional District.
So Dennis, let’s talk about your campaign. It reminds me of you also ran unsuccessfully, I’m sorry to say, for the mayor of Cleveland, Samuel Johnson called it the triumph of hope over experience. He was talking about second marriages. But let’s talk about what you’re doing and why?
Dennis Kucinich:
Well, first of all, I served 16 years in Congress and the district which I served there was a new redistricting a year ago and 45% of the area that I represented for 16 years is in this new district. And in a neighboring county, Medina County, which is where this scene is from, Medina County is really composed of people who used to live in my old district. So I have a constituency here, and this is a moment in American history where people are looking for someone, anyone to step forward and put country above party. And I know the failures of the partisan system. I understand how polarization has created a condition where both parties have lost the plot about what service to the country should be about. They basically have confirmed the admonitions of George Washington and others about the danger of factions. And so I decided that I would run again for Congress to continue my service, but this time as an independent so that I can be in a singular position to create the bridge between the two parties.
Chris, when I was in Congress the last time, I worked on a basis without personalities, without degrading anybody based on their philosophy. And as a result, I was able to build coalitions on both sides of the aisle on things that mattered. This time with the hyper polarization, it could very well be where there’s 217 Democrats, 217 Republicans, and one independent, yours truly. So this represents an opportunity for one individual to be able to make a real difference on behalf of a constituency, Ohio’s 7th District, but also on behalf of the American people who are absolutely fed up with the partisan bickering, which often is pointless, it’s about maneuvering for power. And people are concerned about their economic existence right now. So I think I’ll be in a really great position. Our campaign is off and running, making a lot of personal appearances. I’m connecting with people. They know me from years and years, recognize me on site and I’m ready to go back to work in Washington, but this time as an independent.
Chris Hedges:
Why not as a Democrat?
Dennis Kucinich:
Well, this is a Republican district to begin with. Keep that in mind now. It’s true, when I was elected to Congress in 1996, I defeated a Republican incumbent. And when I was elected to the state Senate before that, I defeated a Republican incumbent. There’s been a sea change in politics, and unfortunately, too many of my former Democratic colleagues have signed up for war. I haven’t. I led the effort against the war in the Balkans and helped to stop it by blocking a resolution that was seeking to keep the bombing of Serbia going. I stopped that. I led the effort against the war in Iraq. I led the effort against war in Libya. I made every effort and parliamentary procedure to get out of Afghanistan. So my whole approach is to point out the folly of war, the destruction of the American dream as well as other people’s dreams. And some of my former Democratic colleagues have seemed to drift into the area of support for this military-industrial complex in a way that doesn’t represent who I am.
Chris Hedges:
Well, we just saw it with, what is it, $61 billion to Ukraine, endless amounts of money to fuel the genocide in Gaza. I believe that the Gaza genocide is an issue in your current campaign, is that correct?
Dennis Kucinich:
Well, it is. I mean, look, the US just gave 26 billion to Israel, and Israel has turned around and is attacking Rafah. Now, if you give that kind of money and you don’t have any conditions at all, conditions would be use it for defensive purposes. No, it’s being used for offensive purposes. If you don’t have conditions, then you’re basically given permission and permission equals complicity. And so since, I think it was October 7th, the United States has had over 100 military aid transfers to Israel, and most of the details, by the way, aren’t public.
And think about this, we have helped to facilitate the dropping of 150 million pounds of explosives on Gaza. That equals to about 68 pounds of explosives per every individual in Gaza. I mean, what are we doing here? Why is the United States doing this? This is open, it’s in a plain sight what’s going on here? And yes, in this campaign in particular, I’m saying that the United States must not permit this genocide to go on, and yet we have paid for it. And this is heartbreaking what’s going on. There isn’t anyone that I know of who approves of what Hamas did on October 7th, but after that, Israel went on the offense, and they’ve been able to do that with massive help from the United States government.
Chris Hedges:
I’m curious as to why you think there is such unequivocal support on both sides of the aisle, both among Republicans and Democrats, for what is just, I mean, we all see the images, just so appalling. And then the US intelligence estimates that only a third of the Hamas fighters have been killed. They’re mostly sheltered in tunnels. This is clearly a war against civilians, hundreds are being killed or wounded a day.
Dennis Kucinich:
Well, I think what you’ve pointed out just now is important. Let’s start with that discussion and then let’s go into why some of our American leaders feel it’s okay. There’s been over 34,000 Gazans who have been killed, and 77,000 wounded. You’re looking at about 72% of the Gazans who have been killed are women and children. 62% of the houses have been destroyed. You got over a million people are facing starvation. So the question is, why would American politicians look the other way when this is going on? And I think it starts with the pretty powerful influence which AIPAC and other groups have had on the Congress over the years, and it has caused members to set aside any critical inquiry. It’s a friendship which has nullified people’s ability to be able to actually articulate what’s going on. And it’s worked against the interests of the American people.
This is the paradox that we’re faced with. The American people are good-hearted people. They want to help anyone suffering. They’re very fair in the way they look at things. But when you have a political class that is able to facilitate the transfer of weapons to go after people who are basically captives in occupation, it’s the long train of support that was built over many years that has squelched the voices of people who know better. And I mean, that’s what I think is going on.
I mean, Chris, the question has to be asked is this, in our national interest, what’s going on in Gaza? There’s wholesale executions going, there’s mass graves. You take Al-Shifa Hospital and Nasser Hospital basically destroyed. You’ve got the head of Al-Shifa who was kidnapped and hasn’t been heard from, the head of the emergency room director, him and his family were killed. We go back to these mass graves bodies are being found that are handcuffed, that are blindfolded, that are still hooked up to IVs. How is this in our national interest? How is it? I want somebody explain this to me because we’re forgetting this America. This isn’t Israel.
When people start speaking of we and then they say, “We’re going to turn Gaza into a parking lot.” Well, who’s we? As the United States, we can have an ally who we want to defend. But what’s happening here is offense, and it is horrific and it needs to be condemned, and it can be condemned in the same breath as we condemn Hamas’s attack on October 7th, no problem with that, but it needs to be condemned and we have to stop funding it, but we’re not. So the United States has taken a new position of complicity in a genocide. Shocking, mind-blowing frankly.
Chris Hedges:
I want to talk about economic issues. The Democratic Party, it often appears, has just written off, especially the white working class, which I assume is a significant part of your constituency, condemning them as racists and bigots, Hillary Clinton called them deplorables, and at least to my mind, not dealing with the very real and distressing economic pain that was caused in large part by a Democratic administration, Bill Clinton. And I just want your take on the importance of the economy in the election, and to what extent that economic dislocation in your mind is behind the rise of a figure like Trump?
Dennis Kucinich:
Well, first of all, the rise of Donald Trump is directly connected to trade policies which decimated industrial areas in the Midwest. Grass years ago was growing in parking lots where they used to make steel, used to make cars, used to build ships, used to make planes or parts for planes and America’s agreements, the North American Free Trade Agreement, NAFTA, the General Agreement on Tariff and Trade, GATT, most favored nation, China all were about the destruction of wages, the destruction of unions, the destruction of a middle class, and so that these goods could be made overseas and then brought back to the United States where the profits would go to the corporations. So you’ve seen a destructive undermining of America’s middle class as a result of these trade agreements. I mean, I’ve called for the repeal of NAFTA numerous times when I was in Congress. I voted against China trade because I just saw that it would accelerate the decline of American manufacturing.
So Trump arrives at this moment of anger of among people who used to have a pretty good standard of living, only to see it start to slip away. And this is not just a social issue and an economic issue, it’s a national security issue. If someone is concerned about America being able to defend itself, folks, you don’t have the ability to make steel, make automotive products, ships, airplanes, how do you defend yourself? We have had our manufacturing capacity severely eroded, and frankly, it started with a democratic administration. So people remember that.
They also remember the Wall Street bailout. This is when Barack Obama came in and basically Obama and McCain, unfortunately, agreed to bail out the banks. Well into the casino economy, banks get bailed out, millions of people lost their homes, people saw the value of their homes decline. And what’s happening right now? You got a housing market where people cannot either can’t buy a home or can’t get rid of a home they want. The market is static right now. Interest rates are up. What it cost a few years ago, I think it was 10 years ago, 21% of a family’s budget would go towards housing. Now it’s over 40%. Think about what that means. The economic forces that have been aggregating and growing over the last few decades are now arriving squarely in the 2024 election, and frankly, with the inflation on major staples of American households, this is a tough time, I think, for the administration to try to explain itself.
And on top of that, adding to the debt, $34 trillion debt and putting all of these wars on the credit card, I mean, I think the American people have had it up to here with all the money that is being spent for war while their own basic needs for healthcare, education, child care, housing are not being met.
Chris Hedges:
I want to talk about your book, The Division of Light and Power, which as you know, I admire very much because it really details how the machinery of the moneyed interests and corporate power works. In this case, it was a chronicle of how these forces drove you from the mayor’s office in Cleveland and how corrupt the media is. And I want you to talk about what we’re fighting against?
Dennis Kucinich:
That book, The Division of Light and Power, it took me 40 years to write. Fortunately, I had time to spare. As mayor of Cleveland, even before I became mayor of Cleveland, a central issue was whether or not the city should sell its municipal electric system, then known as Muni Light. I saw what was happening. I saw that the private utility in Cleveland was engaging in a program of subterfuge to undermine the municipal utility so they could get it for pennies on the dollar. I forced an investigation that finally revealed the Atomic Safety and Licensing Commission of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission found out that this utility, then known as Cleveland Electric Illuminating, and known as First Energy, that this utility was actually creating a lot of the problems on the system that the city owned, including creating blackouts on the system, and then going into neighborhoods where the municipal utility was providing service and saying, “It looks like your utility isn’t working very well. Come with us,” says the private utility.
So there was a dirty tricks campaign against public power, and I stood up to it. As mayor of the city of Cleveland, I refused the demand by the city’s biggest bank to sell a municipal electric system to the bank’s private utility partner. And the bank in turn refused the city’s credit on loans I hadn’t even taken out. I’m the only mayor in America who ran a city on a cash basis in 1978 and ’79. But they put the city into default as a means of trying to get at me politically. All of the media went along with this in Cleveland. It was exposed by people like Robert Scheer, Alex Coburn, Jim Ridgeway, journalists then, Fred Branfman. But for the most part, the Cleveland media covered up what was going on and was complicit by telling a totally different story than what was happening. They reconstructed the social reality of the city to try to create a case saying why I, as mayor, had to sell a municipal electric system. I knew exactly what was going on. I saw the game for what it was, and I said, no.
And I survived a couple of assassination attempts as well over this. It was more than a billion dollars in assets that were at stake. I held the line, I saved the system, lost the next election, but years later, the people in Cleveland figured out that I saved them hundreds of millions of dollars on their electric bill by not selling the municipal electric system, which is still serving Cleveland today as Cleveland Public Power.
Chris Hedges:
Well, let’s talk about how those forces work to destroy political figures like yourself. And that’s what the book, I think, does so brilliantly. It details exactly how that machinery operates. So give us examples, because those forces have not only not gone away, they’re probably even more powerful than when you were the mayor of Cleveland.
Dennis Kucinich:
It’s true. Well, for example, big headline, Sell Muni Light or City Defaults. Okay? News reports, same thing. They created an alternate reality. They reconstructed the social reality of the city, and then it became culturally affirmed. And so I was then, based on the media’s accounts, which were driven by their advertisers, and the top advertiser, which was this private utility, CEI, Cleveland Electric Illuminating, and a bank, one of the biggest banks in America, then known as Cleveland Trust, they’re out of business now. But what they did, they used the media, radio, TV and newspapers to put out a single message that I had to sell our municipal electric system in order to save the city. I mean, it was total baloney. I knew it, but the people by and large weren’t really sure. And some people were saying, “What’s with Dennis? What’s this fixation with light bulbs?”
And so there was this long-standing plan to take over Cleveland’s municipal electric system. Frankly, over 100 municipal electric systems across America were knocked out and off by utility monopolies who basically used cookie-cutter strategies that attacked public officials who supported public power, lied to the people about the value of public power, actually interfered with the operations of the power systems, and then people just threw up their hands and sold. And then later on, they found their electric rates going up twice, three times. Not in Cleveland though.
Chris Hedges:
Let’s talk about those same forces today, how they’re operating both at the local and the national level, including the press?
Dennis Kucinich:
Well, let’s look at what’s happened over the last 40 years. There’s been a contraction in the media, tremendously. We don’t have as many newspapers as we had. There’s less competition. The journalists who are left, if they don’t toe the line, they’re not working for that institution too long. And the line generally is whatever the major advertisers say, and even more so, whatever the owners of the media say. So it’s not about… It’s back to the, I think it was A. J. Liebling who said, “Freedom of the press belongs to he owns one.” And so there’s a narrow narrative that’s being fed to the people. Now, with respect to television. Look, while there’s still a good number of people get their news from TV, a lot more people are getting news off their handheld iPhones and other means. And so there’s a diversity of ways to get news. Radio, again, there’s been a conglomeration occurring.
So the monopolization in the media, which has been going on for, I don’t know, 50, 60 years, works against the interest of the American people. And what makes it even more telling with respect to the electronic media is that the Federal Communications Act of 1934 mandated that all of these companies that started using the airwaves, which belonged to the public, had to serve in the public interest, convenience, and necessity. But that went out the window. And so now all the information is corporatized, all of it is directed on behalf of interest groups and interest groups now, that we may not even be aware of, are feeding a narrative that, in the case of what Eisenhower called the military industrial complex driving fear.
And that fear then has a dollar sign attached to it because when you consider, how in the world does it happen that $1 trillion every year now goes to the Pentagon and intelligence agencies when we got all these people who don’t have access to healthcare, they’re having trouble even affording to send their kids to college. They can’t afford the housing they need. They’re having trouble paying the bills. How does that happen while at the same time, the country builds up this juggernaut, and that’s where we’re putting all the money, and then we’re building a debt doing it. So there’s something wrong in America with that.
And so you have, right now, the wars that have been fought since 9/11 have cost American family of four $97,000 each, 83 million families. So you figure this out, that America’s lost the plot of our constitution, what it was all about. We’re no longer a republic. We’re no longer a government of the people. We’re a government by the corporations of the corporations and for corporate interests, which are primarily now driving wars for profit and putting the hopes and aspirations of the American people in the dumper. And frankly, why I’m running for Congress is to challenge this system, is to let the American people know that we can take a different direction. That our national interest is not to be defined as endless war. That our national interest is to be defined as healthcare for all, jobs for all, education for all, and freedom, because we’re losing our basic freedoms. Chris, this FISA issue, not just reauthorization, but an extension of FISA has given the government so much power to reach into people’s private lives. In this election, in the district I’m running about is about economic freedom and it’s about political freedom.
Chris Hedges:
Who are the candidates? Give us a quick profile of who you’re running against?
Dennis Kucinich:
Yeah, the incumbent is Max Miller. It’s his first year in office. He worked in the Trump White House and displaced a Republican incumbent who raised questions about Mr. Trump. The Democrat is somebody who ran the last time and got beat pretty handily. I’m not sure what he stands for, but Mr. Miller though famously has said, “After October 7th, we are going to turn Gaza into a parking lot.” And to me, it was very clearly a call for genocide, ethnic cleansing, and just chasing people off their land and appropriating it. People who get into politics overnight may find a rude awakening when they start to promote the interest of a country other than the United States.
Chris Hedges:
Let’s talk about the financing of campaigns. It’s a money saturated system. Goldman Sachs is probably not sending you big checks, neither is AIPAC. But I remember when I worked with Ralph Nader and Ralph said, “I can get 10,000 people in Madison Square Garden.” In fact, he got them to pay, I think, $5 at the door so he could pay for the rental of Madison Square Garden. “But I can’t reach the millions of people that I need to on television, on the airwaves, because I don’t have the funds. I can’t raise that kind of money.” Let’s talk about the power of money, especially as we are seeing the Israel lobby go after those few people in Congress who have stood up against this genocide, as you have just done?
Dennis Kucinich:
Well, first of all, is money a factor in elections? Absolutely. Is it the only factor? No. I’ve had the experience of winning over 30 elections, even though in many of them I was outspent. The introduction of fundraising over the internet has been very favorable for someone like me, because people have gone to… My website now is Kucinich.com. People have gone to the website that I had over various campaigns made a contribution, and there were enough people to do it en mass that I was able to raise sufficient funds to be able to run the kind of campaign that I want to. Because you don’t always have to spend more money than the next guy. You have to have enough money to get your message out.
The problem with today’s campaigning is that money often comes in out of nowhere to swamp a campaign. And if people don’t know who you are, I don’t have that problem in this district, but if people don’t know who you are, they can have a flood of money, which will attempt to define you as a candidate. And once Buckley v. Valeo passed, Citizen United, which essentially equated money with free speech, we end up in a situation where anonymous forces can be an invisible hand moving one candidate this way, another candidate this way. It’s a problem. How do you get around it? Organize, organize, organize at a grassroots level, spend your money wisely, raise money over the internet, small dollar fundraisers. These are things that are still possible, and frankly, I think that Summer Lee’s victory and Pennsylvania is a good signal that no matter what interest groups you take on, if you have the support of the people, you’ll find a way through to success.
So I still believe that. I still have hope, not just in my own possibilities here, but I have hoped for our country. But hope has to be matched with good deeds.
Chris Hedges:
I mean, I believe that in the last three weeks of your last unsuccessful campaign to run again for the mayor of Cleveland, huge amounts of dark money came into that campaign to destroy your campaign. Am I correct?
Dennis Kucinich:
You’re absolutely right. I know that. And so I’m aware of what can happen. Does that dissuade me and say, well, there’s no chance. No, you just keep… It’s like the lines in a poem about Prometheus Unbound about hope building from its own wreck, the thing it contemplates. In order to do this, in order for this undertaking that I’m at here in the 7th District in Ohio, attempting to win a seat as an independent, yeah, there’s some hope that goes into it, but there’s also reality base because I do have a constituency because I’m willing to stand up and speak out because people are looking for real leadership, not the warmed over pablum types that are ready to say anything to get elected. So I’m hopeful that people are ready to take a new direction, and if they are, my candidacy gives them a chance to do that.
Chris Hedges:
Just to close, I’m curious, your reflections on the presidential contest, which looks set to become a repeat of Biden and Trump?
Dennis Kucinich:
It’s going to be a very close presidential race. I mean, you could make an argument. It could go either way. I will say that’s ultimately going to depend on the economy. That’s what I’m hearing in talking to people. Some people just hanging on by their fingernails, trying to figure out how they’re going to make their next rent or mortgage payment, how they’re going to pay for their car. There’s people who are sensing that the bottom could fall out of their lives with the shift one way or another in national policy. So I think the candidate that is able to assure the people that there is a path forward that can be brighter, a path out of this massive debt, a path to higher wages, a path to economic security, a path to social security, I think that the candidate would’ve a chance to win.
But right now, unfortunately, we see the focus of America is on war and more war, and that can only lead to the impoverishment of the American people. And so that dynamic tension is at work. And in that, I’m moving forward as an independent candidate. And anybody who’s interested in helping financially or otherwise, please go to Kucinich.com and just follow the prompts to how you want to help. And I’m so grateful to be on with you today, Chris, to talk about the state of where things are right now and to make people aware across the country that there are voices who are willing to call out what’s going on right now, call things what they are, instead of shying away from the truth.
Chris Hedges:
Do you think the Biden administration has, through its policies, addressed these core economic issues?
Dennis Kucinich:
No. No. Not at all. And I don’t know that Mr. Trump has done it either. However, that’s going to be for the voters to declare. I just want to say, as an independent candidate, I’m staying out of the presidential contest. I’m not making any recommendations. I don’t want anything I said to be confused with support for the election or defeat of anyone. Whoever the people pick, I’ll work with them. And as an independent, I could end up being the only independent in the House this year, I’ll be in a really good position to help become a decisive vote on those economic issues that people care about. And war is an economic issue. We can’t afford more war. We can’t continue to fuel these wars. And so America, whatever happened to diplomacy? I mean, is that a word that was crossed out of the dictionary? People don’t even understand it anymore in Washington.
So I’ll help bring that awareness to them with a felicitous approach because I’m not about creating enemies. I’m trying to show people their commonalities, how we can realize who we are. And you know what I found out in traveling America as a presidential candidate in ’04 and ’08? There is an underlying unity in America. Candidates have a responsibility to try to tap it and don’t polarize and don’t drive people apart. But first and foremost, let’s put country above party. Let’s stand up for this country. Let’s unfold the American dream the way we all believed years ago it was possible, but which is drifting away with debt and war and globalization that is driving down our wages and our benefits and our basic rights in this country.
Chris Hedges:
Great. That was Dennis Kucinich, currently running as an independent in Ohio’s 7th Congressional District. I want to thank The Real News Network and its production team, Cameron Granadino, Adam Coley, David Hebden, and Kayla Rivera. You can find me at ChrisHedges.substack.com.
This post was originally published on The Real News Network.
A new poll demonstrates that, in this pivotal election year, abortion rights could play a key role in determining who will win the White House and control of Congress. Several states across the country are set to hold referenda regarding abortion rights and access to the procedure. Those elections will have tremendous consequences for the states themselves, but could also motivate more supporters…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
In the American political tradition, doctrines (political, economic, military, etc.) have a distinct role to play. They prepare the ground for devising policies, making decisions, and enacting laws. Still, among all doctrines that have been shaping the identity of the United States, those related to foreign policy stand out. This is due to their (a) consequences aboard, (b) ideological capacity to keep reproducing, and (c) representative value as embodiment of power. Altogether, such doctrines tell other countries that the United States has a global agenda to pursue regardless of international objections.
Invariably since foundation, foreign policy doctrines were conceived as instruments of imperialist expansions and ideological sources pointing to the worldview and political direction of the United States. Not only did they become the official banners externalizing its aims, but also blueprints for establishing operational plans for territorial conquests, interventions, and wars. The threat of using military force (or other corecitive measures) to implement those plans has consistently been the chosen method. Did the U.S. achieve anything as consequence? Yes. Its colonialistic and imperialistic accomplishments during the past two centuries are vast and impressive.1
From measuring their collective place in the practice of imperialism, foreign policy doctrines can be described as the engine that moves the global objectives of the United States. Once an administration comes up with a specific policy course, the engine is revved up for action, guidelines drafted, and the course is announced. At the same point in time, an army of doctrinaires and agents of the state go into overdrive to procure all military, budgetary, and legislative means needed for the planned enterprise.
For instance, after the breakup of the USSR, the United States relentlessly reprised its previous attempts to be the sole decision maker of world affairs. Or, said differently, to exercise total control over the world system of nations using aggressive tactics—always backed by doctrines. On occasion, adages mix with doctrines. One such adage that U.S. ruling circles have been repeating ad nauseam is the “sole remaining superpower” (1, 2, 3, 4). Interpreted correctly, it means that the United States feels it has “earned the right” to rove around the world unopposed.
Nevertheless, with or without doctrines, the U.S. project to subjugate nations still out of its control has come to a full stop consequent to three convergent events. The first is the Russian intervention in Ukraine. The second is the unstoppable rising of China as a world power. The third is the overdue defiance that the South (formerly called developing countries) has launched against the pan-imperialist American-European order.2
Since their appearance on the scene in the early 19th century, foreign policy doctrines helped build the U.S. imperialist system. For the record, from the very beginning, this system was born neither pacifist nor peaceful or open to re-thinking. George Washington and the Continental Congress’s policy ordering Original Peoples to choose either relocation or war is an irrefutable case in point.
Special Note
In 2012, Mitt Romney recycled Washington’s concept of the U.S. power using a different figure of speech. “If you don’t want America to be the strongest nation on earth, I am not your president“. In 2024, Romney replayed his arrogant refrain. He stated, “What America is as a nation, what has allowed us to be the most powerful nation on Earth, and the leader of the Earth is the character of the people who have been our leaders”. [Italics added].
Comment: Romney stated his vision for America in terms and images that leave no doubt on his hegemonic agenda. Is that surprising? No. he is a product of a system and ideology that sees the world as something to grab, own, manage, and even go to war to keep it. In other words, his vision is about imposing U.S. domination over all other nations. Pertinently though, with phrases such as “strongest nation on earth”, “most powerful nation on Earth”, and “leader of the Earth”, Romney allow his militaristic hyperimperialism to float to the surface but disguised it under the “leadership” heading.
Question: how could Romney install America as a “leader of the earth” without first unleashing global violence to accomplish that installation? More importantly, has China, Russia, Hungary, Serbia, Algeria, Cuba, Brazil, Iran, Palestine, Sri Lanka, India, Colombia, Malaysia, or Turkey, for example, ever asked for such leadership in the first place?
General Discussion
As it developed into a military and economic superpower, the United States emerged first with distinct character: (a) colonialist, racist, and supremacist to the bone, (b) imperialist-focused conduct sold as a product of “democratic” statecraft, and (c) official culture primed for violence domestically and wired for war internationally.
To summarize, as conceived, adopted, and thereafter transformed into programs of the United States, foreign policy doctrines have been occupying a central place in the thinking, policymaking, and actions of presidents, their administrations, and orbiting institutions and think tanks. Remark: doctrines are not announced as such—a president does not go the podium and say: hey, here is my doctrine. Generally, doctrines start as specific acts to serve the system, to stress its assumed prowess and power, and to uphold its declared objectives.
This is how the process works. Initially, the habitual protocol leading to the informal promulgation of doctrines is scripted and introduced to make it sound as a “reasoned” conclusion to debated matters. But debates such as these and conclusions thereof are of no value whatsoever to those affected by their outcome. First, they are not rooted in the natural laws and needs of world societies. Second, they only reflect the hegemonic thus exploitive aims of U.S. ruling circles. For instance, aside from carpet-bombing, burning Viet Nam with Napalm bombs, poisoning it with Agent Orange, and killing three million of its people to prove Robert McNamara’s Domino Theory was never a good reason for the Vietnamese people to accept the U.S. motive for destroying their country.
Successively, when an administration reaches a decision on an issue, makes an announcement against a specific country, and when that issue finds its way to the public, the system’s “pundits” proceed to extract passages from presidents’ speeches and writings, assign to them concept and purpose, and, before you know it, a doctrine is born. In the case of Ukraine, new doctrines are taking the center stage in the defense of U.S. post-USSR unipolarism and hegemonic agendas. One such ad hoc doctrine is that the United States is fighting Russian imperialism in Ukraine.
Doctrines, in the American practice of imperialism, offer a two-layer function. First, they intellectualize the bullying language of imperialism to solemnize the power of the ruling regime at enacting its “rules of engagement” with foreign nations. Second, they set the pattern, methodology, and ideological structure for the next enterprise. (Caveat: despite heavy setbacks in many parts of the world, the U.S. doctrine industry is highly adaptable, and it is not going to close its gates any time soon.)
Given that foreign policy doctrines have become a showcase for displaying the objectives of the ruling circles, as well as a repetitive ideological ritual confirming the unity and continuity of the imperialist state, is there a pattern to their mechanisms?
As it happens, when a president vacates the office for the next occupant, he leaves behind a trail of ideas and political positions highlighting the collective thinking of the system. Comparing the U.S. doctrines to those of religions may be of value. For instance, unlike the field of religions where doctrines are static and permanent (created to defend original, ancient, or old beliefs and dogmas), the U.S. doctrines are dynamic, always open to re-interpretations, and reflect three-stage process with a precise scope of work and finality—all situated in the future.
The first stage begins with deliberation on the objectives of the ruling circles in a given period. The second continues by enshrining them into a general declaration(s) of intent. The third, which is extremely important, turns that declaration into a three-tier sequential process. The first presents the system’s rationales for the decisions taken. The second deals with their implementation. The third is more complex: it turns all interrelated processes and sustaining ideologies into a legacy of some sort. That is, what has been decided by a president (and his administration) at a specific period is going to be invoked, expanded on, and continued by his successors.
For example, with its post-WWII focus on hypothetical threats from international Communism to the Middle East, Eisenhower’s doctrine is a replica of Truman’s doctrine that declared the Soviet Union a universal threat. As for John Kennedy, his doctrine, often referred to as his foreign policy, is a mixture between those of Truman and Eisenhower. To see the U.S. doctrines in a broad perspective, I’m going to briefly discuss the Monroe Doctrine (corner stone of all successive doctrines), and three other doctrines relating to Theodore Roosevelt, Jimmy Carter, and Joe Biden.
The Monroe Doctrine (1823)
When the thirteen colonies became a political state in 1776, the objective was to claim neutrality to avoid further conflict with Britain or potential ones with France and Spain. But when the thirteen states increased to eighteen under the presidency of James Monroe (1817-25), that objective became two-pronged: (1) a call for increased expansion of colonies, and (2) a declaration that United States is the sole power in charge of the entire Western hemisphere. The U.S. Naval Institute describes the Monroe Doctrine as follows:
“As a principle in which the rights and interests of the United States are involved, that the American continents, by the free and independent condition which they have assumed and maintain, are henceforth not to be considered as subjects for future colonization by any European powers. . . We owe it, therefore, to candor and to the amicable relations existing between the United States and those powers to declare that we should consider any attempt on their part to extend their system to any portion of this hemisphere as dangerous to our peace and safety. [Italics added]
Comment
Doctrines: The Reincarnation of Monroe
“In his annual messages to Congress in 1904 and 1905, President Theodore Roosevelt expanded the Monroe Doctrine. The corollary stated that not only were the nations of the Western Hemisphere not open to colonization by European powers, but that the United States had the responsibility to preserve order and protect life and property in those countries.” [Italics added]. The text in Italics proves my point.
“Let our position be absolutely clear: An attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America, and such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force. [Italics added]. Who was talking—Monroe or Carter?
It is beside the point to state that while the Soviet power or its main successor Russia never intervened in the Middle East during the past 107 years (exception in Syria to stop the U.S. and Israel from dismembering it. (Read, The Debate on the Imperialist Violence in Syria series by Kim Petersen and B.J. Sabri). At present, the American power is everywhere in the Middle East. It has full political and military control—direct and indirect—of Iraq, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Libya, Sudan, and Morocco. Conclusion: an attentive study of Carter’s address will prove that the mind of Monroe has transmigrated to that of Carter.
Could specialists in semantics and esoteric writings help us to decode what does “progressive transformation at home and abroad” mean? In the first place, what is progressive? Second, domestically, can Biden, as per Dueck, progressively transform the Zionist mobs inside his party, as well as those of Trump and his crowds? Internationally, could Sweden, Switzerland, Russia, Ukraine, Cameroon, Bolivia, Nepal, or Bolivia, etc. partake in or learn from Biden’s “progressive” doctrine? Incidentally, how would Dueck qualify America before the advent of Biden: progressive, regressive, or what?)
To settle the issue on Dueck’s bogus idea of “progressive transformation”, we need to pose a few questions. Suppose an independent country X is touched by the American wand of “progressive transformation”. Would that touch entail, among other things, invading it, installing military bases on its soil, dissolving its army, partitioning it in “federated” regions, abolishing its national currency, co-opting pro-American elements to lead it, writing constitutions for it, and building “without permit” the largest embassy in the world? It happened in Iraq.
Aside from this thematic mishap, Dueck redeemed himself by presenting articulate arguments—all anchored to the basic elements of U.S. hegemonic imperialism. Not to be overlooked, he permeated—perhaps without realizing it—his elaborations with undeclared references to the Monroe Doctrine and its successors. The following are selected passages:
Propaganda and foreign policy
As I am forfeiting my right to comment, I am curious to know where Monroe is hiding in the statement. Look no farther than (a) “Protect the United States and Americans”, and (b) “Other global interests”.
Preliminary Conclusion
From the end of WWII forward, the phenomenon of U.S. doctrines is what it is—a bizarre menagerie of global power themes. Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush Sr., Clinton, Bush Jr., Obama, Trump, and Biden each have their own doctrine—or, to be exact, doctrines the system prepared for them. Conceptually, all such doctrines are declarations of allegiance to the continuity of imperialism and to the path that many generations of American colonialists, expansionists, supremacists, imperialists, and hegemonists set for the United States.
Observation: none among the above presidents had any doctrine with a specific formulation before taking seats in the halls of power. But once there, the seated presidents reprise the preceding doctrines and amplify content and reach. When you closely examine them, however, you will find out that they mimic each other in essence and means—and all have for a common goal the application of U.S. imperialist power abroad.
Evaluating how doctrines prepare the ground for the solidification of anti-Russian policies can be done by looking at how candidates conduct their campaigns for political positions. During such events, they speak of this and that idea so sketchily but only to sell their electability to a complacent and uninformed audience—normally, details of foreign policy and motivations never appear on the stage. Still, despite the paucity of substantive talk, their endeavor is mainly directed to the establishment, not to the public. Ultimately, this establishment has the overwhelming ability to promote or demote candidates with ease—kneeling to it, therefore, is an electoral necessity.
In the end, when it boils down to voting, the public will have only a Hobson’s choice: candidates, with different names and faces, have identical views on the world—and a plan to rule it. They all have to sell the same merchandise: we control, we want, we oppose, we think, we decide, and so on.
Is selling the imperialist merchandise an important factor in U.S. foreign policy decision-making and actions?
In his book: A Nation of Salesmen, Earl Shorris, an attentive sociological researcher, touched on the crafty art of selling “things”. He delves into the essence of controlled persuasion by taking on advertising as a tool that subverted the American culture. Shorris, of course, did not include foreign policy as “merchandise” that has been subverting the entire American polity for decades while inflicting incalculable heavy damages on all humanity. Briefly, selling its Foreign Policy Brand—by persuasion, coercion, or aggression—has been America’s never-ending endeavor.
At this point, how is the United States merchandizing and selling its Brand and policy schemes on Ukraine and Russia?
ENDNOTES:
This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
The West Papuan resistance OPM leader has condemned Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and US President Joe Biden, accusing their countries of “six decades of treachery” over Papuan independence.
The open letter was released today by OPM chairman Jeffrey P Bomanak on the eve of ANZAC Day 2024.
Praising the courage and determination of Papuans against the Japanese Imperial Forces in World War Two, Bomanak said: “There were no colonial borders in this war — we served Allied Pacific Theatre campaigns across the entire island of New Guinea.
“Our island! From Sorong to Samurai!”
Bomanak’s open letter, addressed to Prime Minister Albanese and President Biden, declared:
“If you cannot stand by those who stood by you, then your idea of ‘loyalty’ and ‘remembrance’ being something special is a myth, a fairy tale.
“There is nothing special in treachery. Six decades of treachery following the Republic of Indonesia’s invasion and fraudulent annexation, always knowing that we were being massacred, tortured, and raped. Our resources, your intention all along.
“When the Japanese Imperial Forces came to our island, you chose our homes to be your defensive line. We fed and nursed you. We formed the Papuan Infantry Brigade. We became your Fuzzy Wuzzy Angels.
“We even fought alongside you and shared the pain and suffering of hardship and loss.
“There were no colonial borders in this war — we served Allied Pacific Theatre campaigns across the entire island of New Guinea. Our island! From Sorong to Samurai!
“Your war became our war. Your graves, our graves. The photos [in the open letter] are from the Australian War Memorial. The part of the legend always ringing true — my people — Papuans! – with your WWII defence forces.
“My message is to you, not ANZAC veterans. We salute the ANZACs. Your unprincipled greed divided our island. Exploitation, no matter what the cost.
“West Papua is filled with Indonesia’s barbarity and the blood and guts of 500,000 Papuans — men, women, and children. Torture, slaughter, and rape of my people in our ancestral homes led by your betrayal.
“In 1969, to help prevent our decolonisation, you placed two of our leaders on Manus Island instead of allowing them to reach the United Nations in New York — an act of shameless appeasement as a criminal accomplice to a mass-murderer (Suharto) that would have made Hideki Tojo proud.
“RAAF Hercules transported 600 TNI [Indonesian military] to slaughter us on Biak Island in 1998. Australian and US subsidies, weapons and munitions to RI, provide logistics for slaughter and bombing of our highland villages. Still happening!
“You were silent about the 1998 roll of film depicting victims of the Biak Island massacre, and you destroyed this roll of film in March 2014 after the revelations from the Biak Massacre Citizens Tribunal were aired on the ABC’s 7:30 Report. (Grateful for the integrity of Edmund McWilliams, Political Counselor at the US Embassy in Jakarta, for his testimony.)
“Every single act and action of your betrayal contravenes Commonwealth and US Criminal Codes and violates the UN Charter, the Genocide Act, and the Torture Convention. The price of this cowardly servitude to assassins, rapists, torturers, and war criminals — from war criminal Suharto to war criminal Prabowo [current President of Indonesia] — complicity and collusion in genocide, ethnocide, infanticide, and wave after wave of ethnic cleansing.
“Friends, we will not forget you? You threw us into the gutter! As Australian and American leaders, your remembrance day is a commemoration of a tradition of loyalty and sacrifice that you have failed to honour.”
The OPM chairman and commander Bomanak concluded his open letter with the independence slogan “Papua Merdeka!” — Papua freedom.
This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.
An Australian author and advocate, Jim Aubrey, today led a national symbolic one minute’s silence to mark the “blood debt” owed to Papuan allies during the Second World War indigenous resistance against the invading Japanese forces.
“A promise to most people is a promise,” Aubrey said in his open letter marking the debt protest — “unless that promise is made by the Australian government.”
After the successes of Australian and US troops against the Japanese in New Guinea, the Allies continued the advance through what was then Dutch New Guinea then on to the Philippines.
The first landing was at Hollandia (now Jayapura) in April 1944, which involved the Australian navy and air force.
Aubrey said in his letter:
“The Australian government’s WWII remembrance oath to Papuan and Timorese allies by the RAAF in flyers dropped over East Timor and the island of New Guinea — ‘FRIENDS, WE WILL NEVER FORGET YOU!’ — is in reality one of history’s most heinous bastard acts in war
and diplomacy.
“Betrayal is the reality of this blood debt and includes consecutive Australian governments’ treachery and culpability as a criminal accomplice and accessory to six decades of the Indonesian government’s crimes against humanity.
“Barbarity that shames us! Genocide, ethnocide, infanticide, and relentless ethnic cleansing.
Aubrey, spokesperson for Genocide Rebellion and the Free West Papua International Coalition, said that he and supporters were commemorating the Second World War “Papuan sacrifice for us” — Australian and American servicemen and women — four days before ANZAC Day without inviting Prime Minister Anthony Albanese or any government minister [and] without inviting US President Biden.
“To have them with us on this special solemn occasion, while honouring the fact that many of us — children and grandchildren – would not be here if it were not for Papuan courage, loyalty, and sacrifice so steadfastly given to our forebears, would be dishonourable.
‘Heartless complicity’
“We condemn outright their heartless complicity and premeditated exploitation of Papuans in their time of peril. A blood debt not honoured by a single Australian government or US administration!
“Lest We Forget . . . six decades of providing the Republic of Indonesia with an environment of impunity for crimes against humanity — 500,000 victims in Western New Guinea, 250,000 in East Timor [now Timor-Leste after the 1999 liberation].
“Future historians will teach their undergraduates that Australian governments did forget! That Australian governments also contravened Commonwealth and State criminal codes by helping the Indonesian government prevent the legal decolonisation of Western New Guinea and achieve their subsequent unlawful annexation; and by concealing and destroying evidence of the 1998 Biak Island Massacre.
“It is not only a matter of honour and truth, it’s personal. I have only just discovered that my father and my uncle were Australian servicemen in the Pacific Theatre campaigns across New Guinea.
“Honourable Australians and Americans, however, only need to know our duty of care and our international obligations cannot be compromised for political and economic plunder. The victims of crimes against humanity deserve the support and the protection they are by law, by right, and decency entitled to.
“Pacific Island nations look to the East for a relationship of integrity in their international affairs. Who can blame them with Australian governments track record of treachery, dishonour, and their demeaning elitism and history in the genocide of indigenous peoples.”
This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.
The U.S. is lobbying fellow UN Security Council members to vote against an upcoming resolution that would recognize Palestinian statehood, leaked documents obtained by The Intercept show, severely undercutting the White House’s stated position of supporting a two-state solution. The State Department cables reportedly show that U.S. officials are pressuring fellow Security Council members like…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Suddenly, western politicians from US President Joe Biden to British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak have become ardent champions of “restraint” – in a very last-minute scramble to avoid regional conflagration.
Iran launched a salvo of drones and missiles at Israel at the weekend in what amounted a largely symbolic show of strength. Many appear to have been shot down, either by Israel’s layers of US-funded interception systems or by US, British and Jordanian fighter jets. No one was killed.
It was the first direct attack by a state on Israel since Iraq fired Scud missiles during the Gulf war of 1991.
The United Nations Security Council was hurriedly pressed into session on Sunday, with Washington and its allies calling for a de-escalation of tensions that could all too easily lead to the outbreak of war across the Middle East and beyond.
“Neither the region nor the world can afford more war,” the UN’s secretary general, Antonio Guterres, told the meeting. “Now is the time to defuse and de-escalate.”
Israel, meanwhile, vowed to “exact the price” against Iran at a time of its choosing.
But the West’s abrupt conversion to “restraint” needs some explaining.
After all, western leaders showed no restraint when Israel bombed Iran’s consulate in Damascus two weeks ago, killing a senior general and more than a dozen other Iranians – the proximate cause of Tehran’s retaliation on Saturday night.
Under the Vienna Convention, the consulate is not only a protected diplomatic mission but is viewed as sovereign Iranian territory. Israel’s attack on it was an unbridled act of aggression – the “supreme international crime”, as the Nuremberg tribunal ruled at the end of the Second World War.
For that reason, Tehran invoked article 51 of the United Nations charter, which allows it to act in self-defence.
Shielding Israel
And yet, rather than condemning Israel’s dangerous belligerence – a flagrant attack on the so-called “rules-based order” so revered by the US – western leaders lined up behind Washington’s favourite client state.
At a Security Council meeting on 4 April, the US, Britain and France intentionally spurned restraint by blocking a resolution that would have condemned Israel’s attack on the Iranian consulate – a vote that, had it not been stymied, might have sufficed to placate Tehran.
At the weekend, British Foreign Secretary David Cameron still gave the thumbs-up to Israel’s flattening of Iran’s diplomatic premises, saying he could “completely understand the frustration Israel feels” – though he added, without any hint of awareness of his own hypocrisy, that the UK “would take very strong action” if a country bombed a British consulate.
The foreign secretary is asked about Israel bombing the Iranian consulate in Syria & he says he understands Israels frustration!
Hes then asked what the UK would do if another country flattened one of our consulates & he says we would take very strong action pic.twitter.com/l3E0A8gzri
— Saul Staniforth (@SaulStaniforth) April 15, 2024
By shielding Israel from any diplomatic consequences for its act of war against Iran, the western powers ensured Tehran would have to pursue a military response instead.
But it did not end there. Having stoked Iran’s sense of grievance at the UN, Biden vowed “iron-clad” support for Israel – and grave consequences for Tehran – should it dare to respond to the attack on its consulate.
Iran ignored those threats. On Saturday night, it launched some 300 drones and missiles, at the same time protesting vociferously about the Security Council’s “inaction and silence, coupled with its failure to condemn the Israeli regime’s aggressions”.
Western leaders failed to take note. They again sided with Israel and denounced Tehran. At Sunday’s Security Council meeting, the same three states – the US, UK and France – that had earlier blocked a statement condemning Israel’s attack on Iran’s diplomatic mission, sought a formal condemnation of Tehran for its response.
Russia’s ambassador to the UN, Vasily Nebenzya, ridiculed what he called “a parade of Western hypocrisy and double standards”. He added: “You know very well that an attack on a diplomatic mission is a casus belli under international law. And if Western missions were attacked, you would not hesitate to retaliate and prove your case in this room.”
There was no restraint visible either as the West publicly celebrated its collusion with Israel in foiling Iran’s attack.
British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak praised RAF pilots for their “bravery and professionalism” in helping to “protect civilians” in Israel.
In a statement, Keir Starmer, leader of the supposedly opposition Labour party, condemned Iran for generating “fear and instability”, rather than “peace and security”, that risked stoking a “wider regional war”. His party, he said, would “stand up for Israel’s security”.
My statement on the Iranian regime’s attack on Israel. pic.twitter.com/8vth7Aok5E
— Keir Starmer (@Keir_Starmer) April 13, 2024
The “restraint” the West demands relates only, it seems, to Iran’s efforts to defend itself.
Given the West’s new-found recognition of the need for caution, and the obvious dangers of military excess, now may be the time for its leaders to consider demanding restraint more generally – and not just to avoid a further escalation between Iran and Israel.
Over the past six months Israel has bombed Gaza into rubble, destroyed its medical facilities and government offices, and killed and maimed many, many tens of thousands of Palestinians. In truth, such is the devastation that Gaza some time ago lost the ability to count its dead and wounded.
At the same time, Israel has intensified its 17-year blockade of the tiny enclave to the point where, so little food and water are getting through, the population are in the grip of famine. People, especially children, are literally starving to death.
The International Court of Justice, the world’s highest court, chaired by an American judge, ruled back in January – when the situation was far less dire than it is now – that a “plausible” case had been made Israel was committing genocide, a crime against humanity strictly defined in international law.
And yet there were no calls by western leaders for “restraint” as Israel bombed Gaza into ruins week after week, striking its hospitals, levelling its government offices, blowing up its universities, mosques and churches, and destroying its bakeries.
Rather, President Biden has repeatedly rushed through emergency arms sales, bypassing Congress, to make sure Israel has enough bombs to keep destroying Gaza and killing its children.
When Israeli leaders vowed to treat Gaza’s population like “human animals”, denying them all food, water and power, western politicians gave their assent.
Sunak was not interested in recruiting his brave RAF pilots to “protect civilians” in Gaza from Israel, and Starmer showed no concern about the “fear and instability” felt by Palestinians from Israel’s reign of terror.
Quite the reverse. Starmer, famed as a human rights lawyer, even gave his approval to Israel’s collective punishment of the people of Gaza, its “complete siege”, as integral to a supposed Israeli “right of self-defence”.
In doing so, he overturned one of the most fundamental principles of international law that civilians should not be targeted for the actions of their leaders. As is now all too apparent, he conferred a death sentence on the people of Gaza.
Where was “restraint” then?
Similarly, restraint went out of the window when Israel fabricated a pretext for eradicating the UN aid agency UNRWA, the last lifeline for Gaza’s starving population.
Even though Israel was unable to offer any evidence for its claim that a handful of UNRWA staff were implicated in an attack on Israel on 7 October, western leaders hurriedly cut off funding to the agency. In doing so, they became actively complicit in what the World Court already feared was a genocide.
Where was the restraint when Israeli officials – with a long history of lying to advance their state’s military agenda – made up stories about Hamas beheading babies, or carrying out systematic rapes on 7 October? All of this was debunked by an Al Jazeera investigation drawing largely on Israeli sources.
Those genocide-justifying deceptions were all too readily amplified by western politicians and media.
Israel showed no restraint in destroying Gaza’s hospitals, or taking hostage and torturing thousands of Palestinians it grabbed off the street.
All of that got a quiet nod from western politicians.
Where was the restraint in western capitals when protesters took to the streets to call for a ceasefire, to stop Israel’s bloodletting of women and children, the majority of Gaza’s dead? The demonstrators were smeared – are still smeared – by western politicians as supporters of terrorism and antisemites.
And where was the demand for restraint when Israel tore up the rulebook on the laws of war, allowing every would-be strongman to cite the West’s indulgence of Israeli atrocities as the precedent justifying their own crimes?
On each occasion, when it favoured Israel’s malevolent goals, the West’s commitment to “restraint” went missing in action.
There is a reason why Israel has been so ostentatious in its savaging of Gaza and its people. And it is the very same reason Israel felt emboldened to violate the diplomatic sanctity of Iran’s consulate in Damascus.
Because for decades Israel has been guaranteed protection and assistance from the West, whatever crimes it commits.
Israel’s founders ethnically cleansed much of Palestine in 1948, far beyond the terms of partition set out by the UN a year earlier. It imposed a military occupation on the remnants of historic Palestine in 1967, driving out yet more of the native population. It then imposed a regime of apartheid on the few areas where Palestinians remained.
In their West Bank reservations, Palestinians have been systematically brutalised, their homes demolished, and illegal Jewish settlements built on their land. The Palestinians’ holy places have been gradually surrounded and taken from them.
Separately, Gaza has been sealed off for 17 years, and its population denied freedom of movement, employment and the basics of life.
Israel’s reign of terror to maintain its absolute control has meant imprisonment and torture are a rite of passage for most Palestinian men. Any protest is ruthlessly crushed.
Now Israel has added mass slaughter in Gaza – genocide – to its long list of crimes.
Israel’s displacements of Palestinians to neighbouring states caused by its ethnic cleansing operations and slaughter have destabilised the wider region. And to secure its militarised settler-colonial project in the Middle East – and its place as Washington’s top-dog client state in the region – Israel has intimidated, bombed and invaded its neighbours on a regular basis.
Its attack on Iran’s consulate in Damascus was just the latest of serial humiliations faced by Arab states.
And through all of this, Washington and its vassal states have directed no more than occasional, lip-service calls for restraint towards Israel. There were never any consequences, but instead rewards from the West in the form of endless billions in aid and special trading status.
So why, after decades of debauched violence from Israel, has the West suddenly become so interested in “restraint”? Because on this rare occasion it serves western interests to calm the fires Israel is so determined to stoke.
The Israeli strike on Iran’s consulate came just as the Biden administration was finally running out of excuses for providing the weapons and diplomatic cover that has allowed Israel to slaughter, maim and orphan tens of thousands of Palestinian children in Gaza over six months.
Demands for a ceasefire and arms embargo on Israel have been reaching fever pitch, with Biden haemorrhaging support among parts of his Democratic base as he faces a re-run presidential election later this year against a resurgent rival, Donald Trump.
Small numbers of votes could be the difference between victory and defeat.
Israel had every reason to fear that its patron might soon pull the rug from under its campaign of mass slaughter in Gaza.
But having destroyed the entire infrastructure needed to support life in the enclave, Israel needs time for the consequences to play out: either mass starvation there, or a relocation of the population elsewhere on supposedly “humanitarian” grounds.
A wider war, centred on Iran, would both distract from Gaza’s desperate plight and force Biden to back Israel unconditionally – to make good on his “iron-clad” commitment to Israel’s protection.
And to top it all, with the US drawn directly into a war against Iran, Washington would have little choice but to assist Israel in its long campaign to destroy Iran’s nuclear energy programme.
Israel wants to remove any potential for Iran to develop a bomb, one that would level the military playing field between the two in ways that would make Israel far less certain that it can continue to act as it pleases across the region with impunity.
That is why Biden officials are airing concerns to the US media that Israel is ready to “do something rash” in an attempt to drag the administration into a wider war.
The truth is, however, that Washington long ago cultivated Israel as its military Frankenstein’s monster. Israel’s role was precisely to project US power ruthlessly into the oil-rich Middle East. The price Washington was more than willing to accept was Israel’s eradication of the Palestinian people, replaced by a fortress “Jewish state”.
Calling for Israel to exercise “restraint” now, as its entrenched lobbies flex their muscles meddling in western politics, and self-confessed fascists rule Israel’s government, is beyond parody.
If the West really prized restraint, they should have insisted on it from Israel decades ago.
• Article first published in Middle East Eye
The post The West now wants “restraint” after months of fuelling a genocide in Gaza first appeared on Dissident Voice.This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
Only this month, the near comatose US President, Joe Biden, made a casual, castaway remark that his administration was “considering” the request by Australia that the case against Julian Assange be concluded. The WikiLeaks founder has already spent five gruelling years in London’s Belmarsh prison, where he continues a remarkable, if draining campaign against the US extradition request on 18 charges, 17 incongruously and outrageously based on the US Espionage Act of 1917.
Like readings of coffee grinds, his defenders took the remark as a sign of progress. Jennifer Robinson, a longtime member of Assange’s legal team, told Sky News Australia that Biden’s “response, this is what we have been asking for over five years. Since 2010 we’ve been saying this is a dangerous precedent that’s being set. So, we certainly hope it was a serious remark and the US will act on it.” WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Kristinn Hrafnsson found the mumbled comment from the president “extraordinary”, hoping “to see in the coming days” whether “clarification of what this means” would be offered by the powerful.
On April 14, the Wall Street Journal reported that Canberra had asked their US counterparts whether a felony plea deal could be reached, enabling the publisher to return to Australia. “Prosecutors and a lawyer for Assange have discussed a range of potential deals, including those that include pleading guilty to a felony under the espionage law under which he was indicted, and those of conspiring to mishandle classified information, which would be a misdemeanor, people familiar with the matter have said.”
Last month, the UK High Court gave what can only be regarded as an absurd prescription to the prosecution should they wish to succeed. Extradition would be unlikely to be refused if Assange was availed of protections offered by the First Amendment (though rejecting claims that he was a legitimate journalist), was guaranteed not to be prejudiced, both during the trial and in sentence on account of his nationality, and not be subject to the death penalty. That such directions were even countenanced shows the somewhat delusionary nature of British justices towards their US counterparts.
On April 16, Assange’s supporters received confirmation that the extradition battle, far from ending, would continue in its tormenting grind. Not wishing to see the prospect of a full hearing of Assange’s already hobbled arguments, the US State Department, almost to the hour, filed the assurances in a diplomatic note to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS). “Assange,” the US Embassy in London claimed with aping fidelity to the formula proposed by the High Court, “will not be prejudiced by reason of nationality with respect to which defenses he may seek to raise at trial and at sentencing.”
Were he to be extradited, “Assange will have the ability to raise and seek to rely upon at trial (which includes any sentencing hearing) the rights and protections given under the First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States.” An obvious caveat, and one that should be observed with wary consideration by the High Court judges, followed. “A decision as to the applicability of the First Amendment is exclusively within the purview of the US Courts.”
The US embassy also promised that, “A sentence of death will neither be sought nor imposed on Assange. The United States is able to provide such assurance as Assange is not charged with a death-penalty eligible offense, and the United States assures that he will not be tried for a death-eligible offense.” This undertaking does not dispel the threat of Assange being charged with additional offences such as traditional espionage, let alone aiding or abetting treason, which would carry the death penalty.
In 2020, Gordon Kromberg, the chief Department of Justice prosecutor behind the case, told the Central Criminal Court of England and Wales that the US “could argue that foreign nationals are not entitled to protections under the First Amendment, at least as it concerns national defense information.” There was also the likelihood that Assange, in allegedly revealing the names of US intelligence sources thereby putting them at risk of harm, would also preclude the possibility of him relying on such protections.
That the zealous Kromberg will be fronting matters should Assange reach US shores is more than troubling. Lawyers and civil rights activists have accused him of using the Eastern District Court of Virginia for selective and malicious prosecutions. As Murtaza Hussain of The Intercept observed with bleak accuracy in July 2021, “[r]ather than being pushed into obscurity by these efforts, today he is serving as a key figure in one of the most important civil liberties cases in the world.”
The High Court also acknowledged Kromberg’s views at trial regarding the possibility that the First Amendment did not cover foreign nationals. “It can fairly be assumed that [Kromberg] would not have said that the prosecution ‘could argue that foreign nationals are not entitled to protections under the First Amendment’ unless that was a tenable argument that the prosecution was entitled to deploy with real prospect of success.” These latest assurances do nothing to change that fact.
A post from Assange’s wife, Stella, provided a neat and damning summary of the embassy note. “The United States has issued a non-assurance in relation to the First Amendment, and a standard assurance in relation to the death penalty. It makes no undertaking to withdraw the prosecution’s previous assertion that Julian has no First Amendment rights because he is not a US citizen. Instead, the US has limited itself to blatant weasel words claiming that Julian can ‘seek to raise’ the First Amendment if extradited.”
Whether the justices are duly satisfied by the latest diplomatic manoeuvre, one non-binding in any tangible or true sense on prosecutors and judges in the US, awaits testing in the hearing on May 20. For Assange, the wheels of judicial torture have been prolonged.
The post Faulty Assurances: The Judicial Torture of Assange Continues first appeared on Dissident Voice.This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
The Middle East has, for some time, been a powder keg where degrees of violence are tolerated with ceremonial mania and a calculus of restraint. Assassinations can take place at a moment’s notice. Revenge killings follow with dashing speed. Suicide bombings of immolating power are carried out. Drone strikes of devastating, collective punishment are ordered, all padded by the retarded notion that such killings are morally justified and confined.
In all this viciousness, the conventional armed forces have been held in check, the arsenals contained, the generals busied by plans of contingency rather than reality. The rhetoric may be vengeful and spicily hysterical, but the states in the region keep their armies in reserve, and Armageddon at bay. Till, naturally, they don’t.
To date, Israel is doing much to test the threshold of what might be called the rule of tolerable violence. With Iran, for instance, it has adopted a “campaign between the wars”, primarily in Syria. For over a decade, the Israeli strategy was to prevent the flow of Iranian weapons to Hezbollah, intercepting weapons shipments and targeting storage facilities. “Importantly,” writes Haid Haid, a consulting fellow for Chatham House’s Middle East and North Africa Programme, “Israel appeared to avoid, whenever feasible, killing Hezbollah or Iranian operatives during these operations.”
But the state of play has changed. The Gaza War, which has become more the Gaza Massacre Project, has moved into its seventh month, packing morgues, destroying families and stimulating the terror of famine. Despite calls from the Israeli military and various officials that Hamas’s capabilities have been irreparably weakened (this claim, like all those battling an idea rather than just a corporeal foe, remains refutable and redundant) the killings and policy of starvation continues against the general Palestinian populace. The International Court of Justice interim orders continue to be ignored, even as the judges deliberate over the issue as to whether genocide is taking place in the Gaza Strip. The restraints, in other words, have been taken off.
The signs are ominous. Spilt blood is becoming hard currency. Daily skirmishes between the IDF and Hezbollah are taking place on the Israeli-Lebanon border. The Houthis are feverishly engaged with blocking and attacking international shipping in the Red Sea, hooting solidarity for the Palestinian cause.
On April 1, a blood crazed strike by Israel suggested that rules of tolerable violence had, if not been pushed, then altogether suspended. The attack on Iran’s consular offices in Damascus by the Israeli Air Force was tantamount to striking Iranian soil. In the process, it killed Brigadier General Mohammad Reza Zahedi and other commanders of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), including Zahedi’s deputy, General Haji Rahimi. Retaliation was accordingly promised, with Iran’s ambassador to Syria, Hossein Akbari, vowing a response “at the same magnitude and harshness”.
It came on April 13, involving 185 drones, 110 ballistic missiles and 36 cruise missiles, all directed at Israel proper. Superficially, this looks anarchically quixotic, streakily disproportionate. But Tehran went for a spectacular theatrical show to terrify and magnify rather than opt for any broader infliction of damage. Israel’s Iron Dome system, along with allied powers, could be counted upon to aid the shooting down of almost all the offensive devices. A statement had been made and the Iranians have so far drawn a line under any further military action. What was deemed by certain pundits a tactical failure can just as easily be read as a strategic if provocative success. The question then is: what follows?
The Israeli approach varies depending on who is being asked. The IDF Chief of Staff, General Herzi Halevi, stated that “Israel is considering next steps” declaring that “the launch of so many missiles and drones to Israeli territory will be answered with retaliation.”
National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir was taloned in his hawkishness, demanding that Israel launch a “crushing” counterattack, “go crazy” and abandon “restraint and proportionality”, “concepts that passed away on October 7.” The “response must not be a scarecrow, in the style of the dune bombings we saw in previous years in Gaza.”
Cabinet minister Benny Gantz, who is a voting member of the war cabinet alongside Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, is tilting for a “regional coalition” to “exact the price from Iran, in the way and at the time that suits us. And most importantly, in the face of the desire of our enemies to harm us, we will unite and become stronger.” The immediate issues for resolution from Gantz’s perspective was the return of Israeli hostages “and the removal of the threat against the residents of the north and south.”
Such thinking will also be prompted by the response from the Biden administration that Netanyahu “think very carefully and strategically” about the next measures. “You got a win,” President Joe Biden is reported to have told Netanyahu. “Take the win.” US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has also expressed the view that, “Strength and wisdom must be the two sides of the same coin.”
For decades, Israel has struck targets in sovereign countries with impunity, using expansive doctrines of pre-emption and self-defence. In doing so, the state always hoped that the understanding of tolerable violence would prevail. Any retaliation, if any, would be modest, with “deterrence” assured. With the war in Gaza and the fanning out of conflict, the equation has changed. To some degree, Ben Gvir is right that concepts of restraint and proportionality have been banished to the mortuary. But such banishment, to a preponderant degree, was initiated by Israel. The Israel-Gaza War is now, effectively, a global conflict, waged in regional miniature.
The post Suspending the Rule of Tolerable Violence: Israel’s Attack and Iran’s Retaliation first appeared on Dissident Voice.This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
In the wake of a series of retaliatory attacks launched by Iran on Saturday after Israel killed 16 people in a bombing of Iran’s embassy in Syria earlier this month, progressive lawmakers in the U.S. are warning fellow lawmakers against calling for a war against Iran — and instead are calling for an immediate ceasefire “on all sides” as Israel’s aggression in Palestine and beyond is causing…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Israel is “clearly” in violation of U.S. foreign assistance laws that bar military aid from being used to commit human rights atrocities, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) said in an op-ed this week calling for the U.S. to end its “complicity” in Israel’s genocide in Gaza. “Blocking desperately needed U.S. humanitarian aid to Palestinians is obscene and unacceptable. It is also a violation of…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Israel is “clearly” in violation of U.S. foreign assistance laws that bar military aid from being used to commit human rights atrocities, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) said in an op-ed this week calling for the U.S. to end its “complicity” in Israel’s genocide in Gaza. “Blocking desperately needed U.S. humanitarian aid to Palestinians is obscene and unacceptable. It is also a violation of…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Walking stiffly, largely distracted, and struggling to focus on the bare essentials, US President Joe Biden was keeping company with his Japanese counterpart, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, when asked the question. It concerned what he was doing regarding Australia’s request that the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange be returned to Australia.
Assange, who has spent five tormenting years in Belmarsh Prison in London, is battling extradition to the US on 18 charges, 17 tenuously and dangerously based on the US Espionage Act of 1917.
The words that followed from the near mummified defender of the Free World were short, yet bright enough for the publisher’s supporters. “We’re considering it.” No details were supplied.
To these barest of crumbs came this reaction from from Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese on ABC’s News Breakfast: “We have raised on behalf of Mr Assange, Australia’s national interest, that enough is enough, that this needs to be brought to a conclusion, and we’ve raised it at each level of government in every possible way.” When pressed on whether this was merely an afterthought from the president, Albanese responded with the usual acknowledgments: the case was complex, and responsibility lay with the US Department of Justice.
One of Assange’s lawyers, the relentless Jennifer Robinson, told Sky News Australia of her encouragement at Biden’s “response, this is what we have been asking for over five years. Since 2010 we’ve been saying this is a dangerous precedent that’s being set. So, we certainly hope it was a serious remark and the US will act on it.” Assange’s brother, Gabriel Shipton, also told Sky News that the statement was significant while WikiLeaks editor-in-chief, Kristinn Hrafnsson thought the utterance “extraordinary”, cautiously hoping “to see in the coming days” whether “clarification of what this means” would be offered by “those in power” and the press corps.
The campaign to free Assange has burgeoned with admirable ferocity. The transformation of the WikiLeaks founder from eccentric, renegade cyber thief deserving punishment to prosecuted and persecuted scribbler and political prisoner has been astonishing.
The boggling legal process has also been shown up as woefully inadequate and scandalous, a form of long-term torture via judicial torment and deprivation. The current ludicrous pitstop entails waiting for a UK Court of Appeal decision as to whether Assange will be granted leave for a full reconsideration of his case, including the merits of the extradition order itself.
The March 26 Court of Appeal decision refused to entertain the glaringly obvious features of the case: that Assange is being prosecuted for his political views, that due process is bound to be denied in a country whose authorities have contemplated his abduction and murder, and that he risks being sentenced for conduct he is not charged with “based on evidence he will not see and which may have been unlawfully obtained.” The refusal to entertain such material as the Yahoo News article from September 2021 outlining the views of intelligence officials on kidnapping and assassination options again cast the entire affair in a poor light.
Even if Assange is granted a full hearing, it is not clear whether the court will go so far as to accept the arguments. The judges have already nobbled the case by offering US prosecutors the chance to offer undertakings, none of which would or could be binding on the DOJ or any US judge hearing the case. Extradition, in other words, is likely to be approved if Assange is “permitted to rely on the First Amendment”, “is not prejudiced at trial (including sentence) by reason of his nationality” and that he “is afforded the same First Amendment protection as a United States citizen, and that the death penalty not be imposed”. These conditions, on the face of it, look absurd in their naïve presumption.
Whether Biden’s latest casual spray lends any credibility to a change of heart remains to be seen. In December 2010, when Vice President in the Obama administration, Biden described Assange as a “high-tech terrorist” for disclosing State Department cables. He failed to identify any parallels with previous cases of disclosures such as the Pentagon papers.
Craig Murray, former British diplomat and Assange confidant, adds a note of cautious sobriety to the recent offering from the president: “I’m not going to get too hopeful immediately on a few words out of the mouth of Biden, because there has been no previous indication, nothing from the Justice Department so far to indicate any easing up.”
For all that, it may well be that the current administration, facing a relentless publicity campaign from human rights organisations, newspapers, legal and medical professionals, not to mention pressure from both his own party in Congress and Republicans, is finally yielding. Caution, however, is the order of the day, and nothing should be read or considered in earnest till signatures are inked and dried. We are quite a way off from that.
The post Flicker of Hope: Biden’s Throwaway Lines on Assange first appeared on Dissident Voice.This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
A top Biden administration official working on international affairs acknowledged on Wednesday that famine is unfolding in Gaza — the first time that a senior member of President Joe Biden’s government has recognized the consequences of Israel’s U.S.-backed starvation campaign in Gaza. In a hearing in front of the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Wednesday, U.S.
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
The State Department is seeing a potentially historic amount of internal defection over the Biden administration’s policies on Gaza, with at least nine dissent memos and two high-profile resignations since October. According to a report published this week by The Independent, over the course of just two months of Israel’s genocidal assault of Gaza, State Department staff sent at least eight…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
No one ever announced that the “war on terror” was over. But the rushed withdrawal of forces from Afghanistan in 2021 was the closest the U.S. came to an official end point. There was no release of prisoners of war; instead “enemy combatants” continued to be caged at the military prison in Guantánamo Bay. Nor was the geographical spread of the U.S.’s counterterrorism operations much reduced…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Debt activists are urging the Biden administration to end its contracts with student debt servicer MOHELA ahead of a hearing for the servicer that was central to the Supreme Court decision that struck down President Joe Biden’s broad-based student debt relief plan, saying that the contracts are still threatening Biden’s current debt cancellation efforts. In a statement released Tuesday…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
In a tepid condemnation of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s genocidal assault of Gaza, President Joe Biden said in an interview that aired Tuesday that Netanyahu’s approach is a “mistake” — even as he has refused to make changes to U.S. policy or the unconditional arms transfers that Israel is using to slaughter Palestinians. “I think what he’s doing is a mistake. I don’t agree with his…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
In a recent interview with Spanish-language cable network Univision that aired on Tuesday, President Joe Biden suggested that he would soon issue an executive order using the same authority former President Donald Trump used to enact racist immigration policies. Lamenting that thousands of migrants are seeking asylum in the U.S. daily under current policy, Biden said during the interview that he…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
After six months – and many tens of thousands of dead and maimed Palestinian women and children later – western commentators are finally wondering whether something may be amiss with Israel’s actions in Gaza.
Israel apparently crossed a red line when it killed a handful of foreign aid workers on 1 April, including three British security contractors.
Three missiles, fired over several minutes, struck vehicles in a World Central Kitchen (WCK) aid convoy heading up Gaza’s coast on one of the few roads still passable after Israel turned the enclave’s homes and streets into rubble. All the vehicles were clearly marked. All were on an approved, safe passage. And the Israeli military had been given the coordinates to track the convoy’s location.
With precise missile holes through the vehicle roofs making it impossible to blame Hamas for the strike, Israel was forced to admit responsibility. Its spokespeople claimed an armed figure had been seen entering the storage area from which the aid convoy had departed.
But even that feeble, formulaic response could not explain why the Israeli military hit cars in which it was known there were aid workers. So Israel hurriedly promised to investigate what Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described as a “tragic incident”.
Israel deeply regrets the tragic incident which claimed the lives of seven humanitarian aid workers.
Our hearts go out to their families and to their home countries.
The IDF is conducting a swift and transparent investigation and we will make our findings public.
Israel…
— Benjamin Netanyahu – ?????? ?????? (@netanyahu) April 2, 2024
Presumably, it was a “tragic incident” just like the 15,000-plus other “tragic incidents” – the ones we know about – that Israel has committed against Palestinian children day after day for six months.
In those cases, of course, western commentators always managed to produce some rationalisation for the slaughter.
Not this time.
Half a year too late, with Gaza’s entire medical infrastructure wrecked by Israel and a population on the brink of starvation, Britain’s Independent newspaper suddenly found its voice to declare decisively on its front page: “Enough.”
Richard Madeley, host of Good Morning Britain, finally felt compelled to opine that Israel had carried out an “execution” of the foreign aid workers. Presumably, 15,000 Palestinian children were not executed, they simply “died”.
When it came to the killing of WCK staff, popular LBC talk-show host Nick Ferrari concluded that Israel’s actions were“indefensible”. Did he think it defensible for Israel to bomb and starve Gaza’s children month after month?
'It could've been our missiles that killed them.'
@NickFerrariLBC calls for the suspension of arms sales to Israel after an Israeli airstrike on Gaza killed seven aid workers, including three Brits. pic.twitter.com/HK4PfHy2JU— LBC (@LBC) April 3, 2024
Like the Independent, he too proclaimed: “This has to stop.”
The attack on the WCK convoy briefly changed the equation for the western media. Seven dead aid workers were a wake-up call when many tens of thousands of dead, maimed and orphaned Palestinian children had not been.
A salutary equation indeed.
British politicians reassured the public that Israel would carry out an “independent investigation” into the killings. That is, the same Israel that never punishes its soldiers even when their atrocities are televised. The same Israel whose military courts find almost every Palestinian guilty of whatever crime Israel chooses to accuse them of, if it allows them a trial.
But at least the foreign aid workers merited an investigation, however much of a foregone conclusion the verdict. That is more than the dead children of Gaza will ever get.
British commentators appeared startled by the thought that Israel had chosen to kill the foreigners working for World Central Kitchen – even if those same journalists still treat tens of thousands of dead Palestinians as unfortunate “collateral damage” in a “war” to “eradicate Hamas”.
But had they been paying closer attention, these pundits would understand that the murder of foreigners is not exceptional. It has been central to Israel’s occupation playbook for decades – and helps explain what Israel hopes to achieve with its current slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza.
Back in the early 2000s, Israel was on another of its rampages, wrecking Gaza and the West Bank supposedly in “retaliation” for Palestinians having had the temerity to rise up against decades of military occupation.
Shocked by the brutality, a group of foreign volunteers, a significant number of them Jewish, ventured into these areas to witness and document the Israeli military’s crimes and act as human shields to protect Palestinians from the violence.
They arrived under the mantle of the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), a Palestinian-led initiative. They were keen to use what were then new technologies such as digital cameras, email and blogs to focus attention on the Israeli military’s atrocities.
Some became a new breed of activist journalist, embedded in Palestinian communities to report the story western establishment journalists, embedded in Israel, never managed to cover.
Israel presented the ISM as a terrorist group and dismissed its filmed documentation as “Pallywood” – a supposedly fiction-producing industry equated to a Palestinian Hollywood.
But the ISM’s evidence increasingly exposed the “most moral army in the world” for what it really was: a criminal enterprise there to enforce land thefts and the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.
Israel needed to take firmer action.
The evidence suggests soldiers received authorisation to execute foreigners in the occupied territories. That included young activists such as Rachel Corrie and Tom Hurndall; James Miller, an independent filmmaker who ventured into Gaza; and even a United Nations official, Iain Hook, based in the West Bank.
This rapid spate of killings – and the maiming of many other activists – had the intended effect. The ISM largely withdrew from the region to protect its volunteers, while Israel formally banned the group from accessing the occupied territories.
Meanwhile, Israel denied press credentials to any journalist not sponsored by a state or a billionaire-owned outlet, kicking them out of the region.
Al Jazeera, the one critical Arab channel whose coverage reached western audiences, found its journalists regularly banned or killed, and its offices bombed.
The battle to isolate the Palestinians, freeing Israel to commit atrocities unmonitored, culminated in Israel’s now 17-year blockade of Gaza. It was sealed off.
With the enclave completely besieged by land, human rights activists focused their efforts on breaking the blockade via the high seas. A series of “freedom flotillas” tried to reach Gaza’s coast from 2008 onwards. Israel soon managed to stop most of them.
The largest was led by the Mavi Marmara, a Turkish vessel laden with aid and medicine. Israeli naval commandos stormed the ship illegally in international waters in 2010, killing 10 foreign aid workers and human rights activists on board and injuring another 30.
The western media soft-pedalled Israel’s preposterous characterisation of the flotillas as a terrorist enterprise. The initiative gradually petered out.
That is the proper context for understanding the latest attack on the WCK aid convoy.
Israel has always had four prongs to its strategy towards the Palestinians. Taken together, they have allowed Israel to refine its apartheid-style rule, and are now allowing it to implement its genocidal policies undisturbed.
The first is to incrementally isolate the Palestinians from the international community.
The second is to make the Palestinians entirely dependent on the Israeli military’s goodwill, and create conditions that are so precarious and unpredictable that most Palestinians try to vacate their historic homeland, leaving it free to be “Judaised”.
Third, Israel has crushed any attempt by outsiders – especially the media and human rights monitors – to scrutinise its activities in real-time or hold it to account.
And fourth, to achieve all this, Israel has needed to erode piece by piece the humanitarian protections that were enshrined in international law to stop a repeat of the common-place atrocities against civilians during the Second World War.
This process, which had been taking place over years and decades, was rapidly accelerated after Hamas’ attack on 7 October. Israel had the pretext to transform apartheid into genocide.
Unrwa, the main United Nations refugee agency, which is mandated to supply aid to the Palestinians, had long been in Israel’s sights, especially in Gaza. It has allowed the international community to keep its foot in the door of the enclave, maintaining a lifeline to the population there independent of Israel, and creating an authoritative framework for judging Israel’s human rights abuses. Worse, for Israel, Unrwa has kept alive the right of return – enshrined in international law – of Palestinian refugees expelled from their original lands so a self-declared Jewish state could be built in their place.
Israel leapt at the chance to accuse Unrwa of being implicated in the 7 October attack, even though it produced zero evidence for the claim. Almost as enthusiastically, western states turned off the funding tap to the UN agency.
The Biden administration appears keen to end UN oversight of Gaza by hiving off its main aid role to private firms. It has been one of the key sponsors of WCK, led by a celebrity Spanish chef with ties to the US State Department.
WCK, which has also been building a pier off Gaza’s coast, was expected to be an adjunct to Washington’s plan to eventually ship in aid from Cyprus – to help those Palestinians who, over the next few weeks, do not starve to death.
Until, that is, Israel struck the aid convoy, killing its staff. WCK has pulled out of Gaza for the time being, and other private aid contractors are backing off, fearful for their workers’ safety.
Goal one has been achieved. The people of Gaza are on their own. The West, rather than their saviour, is now fully complicit not only in Israel’s blockade of Gaza but in its starvation too.
Next, Israel has demonstrated beyond doubt that it regards every Palestinian in Gaza, even its children, as an enemy.
The fact that most of the enclave’s homes are now rubble should serve as proof enough, as should the fact that many tens of thousands there have been violently killed. Only a fraction of the death toll is likely to have been recorded, given Israel’s destruction of the enclave’s health sector.
Israel’s levelling of hospitals, including al-Shifa – as well as the kidnapping and torture of medical staff – has left Palestinians in Gaza completely exposed. The eradication of meaningful healthcare means births, serious injuries and chronic and acute illnesses are quickly becoming a death sentence.
Israel has intentionally been turning life in Gaza into a lottery, with nowhere safe.
According to a new investigation, Israel’s bombing campaign has relied heavily on experimental AI systems that largely automate the killing of Palestinians. That means there is no need for human oversight – and the potential limitations imposed by a human conscience.
Israeli website 972 found that tens of thousands of Palestinians had been put on “kill lists” generated by a program called Lavender, using loose definitions of “terrorist” and with an error rate estimated even by the Israeli military at one in 10.
Another programme called “Where’s Daddy?” tracked many of these “targets” to their family homes, where they – and potentially dozens of other Palestinians unlucky enough to be inside – were killed by air strikes.
An Israeli intelligence official told 972: “The IDF bombed them in homes without hesitation, as a first option. It’s much easier to bomb a family’s home. The system is built to look for them in these situations.”
As so many of these targets were considered to be “junior” operatives, of little military value, Israel preferred to use unguided, imprecise munitions – “dumb bombs” – increasing dramatically the likelihood of large numbers of other Palestinians being killed too.
Or, as another Israeli intelligence official observed: “You don’t want to waste expensive bombs on unimportant people – it’s very expensive for the country and there’s a shortage [of smart bombs].”
That explains how entire extended families, comprising dozens of members, have been so regularly slaughtered.
Separately, Israel’s Haaretz newspaper reported on 31 March that the Israeli military has been operating unmarked “kill zones” in which anyone moving – man, woman or child – is in danger of being shot dead.
Or, as a reserve officer who has been serving in Gaza told the paper: “In practice, a terrorist is anyone the IDF has killed in the areas in which its forces operate.”
This, Haaretz reports, is the likely reason why soldiers gunned down three escaped Israeli hostages who were trying to surrender to them.
Palestinians, of course, rarely know where these kill zones are as they desperately scour ever larger areas in the hope of finding food.
If they are fortunate enough to avoid death from the skies or expiring from starvation, they risk being seized by Israeli soldiers and taken off to one of Israel’s black sites. There, as a whistleblowing Israeli doctor admitted last week, unspeakable, Abu Ghraib-style horrors are being inflicted on the inmates.
Goal two has been achieved, leaving Palestinians terrified of the Israeli military’s largely random violence and desperate to find an escape from the Russian roulette Israel is playing with their lives.
Long ago, Israel barred UN human rights monitors from accessing the occupied territories. That has left scrutiny of its crimes largely in the hands of the media.
Independent foreign reporters have been barred from the region for some 15 years, leaving the field to establishment journalists serving state and corporate media, where there are strong pressures to present Israel’s actions in the best possible light.
That is why the most important stories about 7 October and the Israeli military’s actions in Gaza and treatment of Palestinian prisoners in Israel have been broken by Israeli-based media – as well as small, independent western outlets that have highlighted its coverage.
Since 7 October, Israel has barred all foreign journalists from Gaza, and western reporters have meekly complied. None have been alerting their audience to this major assault on their supposed role as watchdogs.
Israeli spokespeople, well-practised in the dark arts of deception and misdirection, have been allowed to fill the void in London studios.
What on-the-ground information from Gaza has been reaching western publics – when it is not suppressed by media outlets either because it would be too distressing or because its inclusion would enrage Israel – comes via Palestinian journalists. They have been showing the genocide unfolding in real-time.
But for that reason, Israel has been picking them off one by one – just as it did earlier with Rachel Corrie and Tom Hurndall – as well as murdering their extended families as a warning to others.
The one international channel that has many journalists on the ground in Gaza and is in a position to present its reporting in high-quality English is Al Jazeera.
The list of its journalists killed by Israel has grown steadily longer since 7 October. Gaza bureau chief Wael al-Dahdouh has had most of his family executed, as well as being injured himself.
His counterpart in the West Bank, Shireen Abu Akhleh, was shot dead by an Israeli army sniper two years ago.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Israel rushed a law through its parliament last week to ban Al Jazeera from broadcasting from the region. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called it a “terror channel”, claiming it participated in Hamas’ 7 October attack.
Al Jazeera had just aired a documentary revisiting the events of 7 October. It showed that Hamas did not commit the most barbaric crimes Israel accuses it of, and that, in fact, in some cases Israel was responsible for the most horrifying atrocities against its own citizens that it had attributed to Hamas.
Al Jazeera and human rights groups are understandably worried about what further actions Israel is likely to take against the channel’s journalists to snuff out its reporting.
Palestinians in Gaza, meanwhile, fear that they are about to lose the only channel that connects them to the outside world, both telling their stories and keeping them informed about what the watching world knows of their plight.
Goal three has been achieved. The lights are being turned off. Israel can carry out in the dark the potentially ugliest phase of its genocide, as Palestinian children emaciate and starve to death.
And finally, Israel has torn up the rulebook on international humanitarian law intended to protect civilians from atrocities, as well as the infrastructure they rely on.
Israel has destroyed universities, government buildings, mosques, churches and bakeries, as well as, most critically, medical facilities.
Over the past six months, hospitals, once sacrosanct, have slowly become legitimate targets, as have the patients inside.
Collective punishment, absolutely prohibited as a war crime, has become the norm in Gaza since 2007, when the West stood mutely by as Israel besieged the enclave for 17 years.
Now, as Palestinians are starved to death, as children turn to skin and bones, and as aid convoys are bombed and aid seekers are shot dead, there is still apparently room for debate among the western media-political class about whether this all constitutes a violation of international law.
Even after six months of Israel bombing Gaza, treating its people as “human animals” and denying them food, water and power – the very definition of collective punishment – Britain’s deputy prime minister, Oliver Dowden, apparently believes Israel is, unfairly, being held to “incredibly high standards”. David Lammy, shadow foreign secretary for the supposedly opposition Labour party, still has no more than “serious concerns” that international law may have been breached.
Neither party yet proposes banning the sale of British arms to Israel, arms that are being used to commit precisely these violations of international law. Neither is referencing the International Court of Justice’s ruling that Israel is “plausibly” committing genocide.
Meanwhile, the main political conversation in the West is still mired in delusional talk about how to revive the fabled “two-state solution”, rather than how to stop an accelerating genocide.
The reality is that Israel has ripped up the most fundamental of the principles in international law: “distinction” – differentiating between combatants and civilians – and “proportionality” – using only the minimum amount of force needed to achieve legitimate military goals.
The rules of war are in tatters. The system of international humanitarian law is not under threat, it has collapsed.
Every Palestinian in Gaza now faces a death sentence. And with good reason, Israel assumes it is untouchable.
Despite the background noise of endlessly expressed “concerns” from the White House, and of rumours of growing “tensions” between allies, the US and Europe have indicated that the genocide can continue – but must be carried out more discreetly, more unobtrusively.
The killing of the World Central Kitchen staff is a setback. But the destruction of Gaza – Israel’s plan of nearly two decades’ duration – is far from over.
• First published in Middle East Eye
The post Israel’s killing of aid workers is no accident. It’s part of the plan to destroy Gaza first appeared on Dissident Voice.This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
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